the waste of having 2 gigs for a DNS server
You wouldn't need 2 GB. There are plenty of small GNU/Linux distributions and smaller BusyBox/Linux distributions into which you can install a DNS server.
But how is having a windows account different from your iTunes or Google or Yahoo or Facebook or Slashdot, or countless other social services
Because you might want house guests to be able to log on to the family PC's guest account without being able to read your Hotmail.
I.T. people cant and dont use random weirdo programs from no-name companies.
You mean like Firefox? What makes Mozilla Corp less of a "no-name" developer than Ivo Beltchev?
I have personally wiped quite a few of those new convertible tablet / laptops and replaced Win8 with Ubuntu, and every single person loved it very much after that.
Until they found out that the Windows-exclusive program they needed to use was marked as "garbage" in Wine AppDB.
When you're not a computer geek or Microsoft employee, you don't necessarily touch computers every day, and trying to remember which hot corner to touch or where your application is, or how to get out of a full screen Metro app, is not something they're going to remember or even want to try to figure out.
Then put stickers on the four corners of the monitor: "<- Start Screen" at the bottom left, "<- Switch App" at the top left, and "-> Charms" at the top right. It'd be like the cardboard overlays on the F keys back in the DOS days.
I am working on a project at home where I need virtual machines with hostnames so I can type in the name of the servers in an url in all 3 browsers. I can't do this in Windows 8 as it will ignore my custom HOSTS file.
Then run your own DNS server on one of those VMs.
unlike Linux, Windows costs me money.
I'd wager a good amount that you dick around for hours making linux 'work appropriately'
This sounds like the old saw "Linux is free iff your time is worth nothing." But in practice, the time/money tradeoff isn't the same in all situations. Someone might be learning to operate a computer on the meager amount that a minor is allowed to earn under child labor laws. Building a nettop out of a Raspberry Pi with GNU/Linux is cheaper than building a PC with Windows. Or the Balassa-Samuelson model demonstrates how countries without a mature export industry tend to have undervalued currencies. People in such countries have to buy Windows in US dollars, which are worth more hours of their labor than would be the case for someone in a G8 country buying Windows.
Linux without some form of X based desktop is fine for servers, but really less than appealing in user land.
I'd bet an Android based GUI has been more successful in terms of number of devices in use than all X based GUIs combined.
I don't really know what i'd do with that much bandwidth anyway... apart from maybe download movies and games that I hadn't paid for
Or for streaming high-definition movies that you have paid for. Or for downloading Blu-ray-sized PS3 games from PlayStation Store.
If I can't get the 15Mb/sec they advertise, why bother, right?
Have you tried downloading big files between midnight and 6 AM local time to narrow down where the congestion might be? Some satellite ISPs even turn the meter off during those hours to encourage customers to shift their big downloads to the wee hours when their bandwidth is underused.
If [Comcast] started adding charges on your bill, it might prompt you to switch service
To whom? Dial-up? Satellite and cellular have caps and strictly enforce them.
Look at this another way -- would you want someone carrying a loaded gun
In your analogy, a camera with its flash neutered is closer to an unloaded gun with the ammo carried separately. One has to do an overt act (remove the tape or load the gun) to turn either into a working weapon.
"Money is the root of all money." -- the moving finger
