Agreed, choosing between a car and a phone is indeed stupid. You need both. Why would I want a phone built into the car when I have one in my pocket?

My 26 year old daughter, in college in Cincinnati, hasn't had a car since the head broke in her old one a few years ago.

And you STILL want to do business with them? You STILL want to trust their OS with your personal files and/or communications?

It's pretty hard to buy a laptop without "doing business" with them. And I'm sure the NSA can get in my Linux box with little effort, too.

If MS's poorly designed, feature-poor, buggy, user-hostile OS doesn't make folks change OSes I don't think anything will. The only thing keeping Windows on this notebook is laziness, and except for the Patch Tuesday bullshit W7 is almost tolerable. But I'll have to put Linux on it pretty soon, it gets slower every Patch Tuesday.

I'm running kubuntu on the tower. When a patch notification comes in, one click and it's done. No lengthy reboots with "configuring patches, do not turn off your computer." No reopening all the apps that were open after it reboots, no hunting for where I was on that document I was working on when the patch notice comes through.

I haven't booted the tower in months, it only gets shut off when I know I won't be using it for a few days. When I turn the power on it enters the password for me (I live alone) and reopens everything that was open when I shut it down. Guys, if you haven't tried Linux you don't know what you're missing.

I always thought it was odd that after the DoJ kicking MS's ass in court that the incoming Bush administration would pretty much let them off scott-free.

Pretty good guess as to why now.

I have to get off my lazy butt and get Linux on this notebook now...

This kind of crap is why I don't trust Vine reviews. Instead I try to find an ordinary Joe

I'm shaking my head in wonder here. I was probably a teenager when I stopped taking any review of anything seriously, especially reviews of movies, music, and fiction books. Of course, that was a long, long time ago. There was no internet back then, you had to either physically visit a store or buy via mail order. In a physical store you could sample the wares; page through books or listen to records before buying.

There's no way I'd buy a book or record from an author or band I wasn't familiar with. Sadly, physical book and music stores are almost dead. Luckily, we have the Pirate Bay. If it's good I'll buy it, if it sucks I'll delete it.

I got burned by reviews at a young age.

My wife is a writer, we've got about 10 books out there ( different pen names )

Interesting. I hope you're not her ( editor ).

Like I was trying to tell you, no matter your age you are in her position. You're just starting here. It looks to me like you should be OK.

Hi, kid, welcome to slashdot. Twelve comments, yours FP IIRC. Suspiciously trollish, too stupid to be serious. Note my answer to your stupid comment sits at 3.

Then I see a completely offtopic comment by the same username and same insanely huge UID and looked at your comments.

There's this thing here called "karma." You might want to be a bit more careful.

What percentage of politicians believe in God? This makes 99+% of politicians in America stupid, or at liars pretending to be stupid, or both.

3/4ths of the world's population believe God or some variation. A third is Christian and a third is Muslim.

Over half of scientists believe in God. You're saying the 2/3rds of thye world's population and over half of its scientists are stupid?

That's just stupid.

So you're just trolling then? OK.

STFU with the stupid offtopic blather, ok? You've posted that same stupid comment more than once.

Someone please mod this guy down.

And you think Apple and Microsoft are any less evil?? How many wind and solar farms are they bankrolling? What kind of phone are YOU using, hypocrite?

I have two words for you -- bribery and extortion. It's how politics work in the US.

The median income here is $50k. You're facing the same problems as my daughter in college now. Only she's living on a third of what you earn, plus has the expense of college. It sounds like you were born into a wealthy family and are spoiled.

Sorry, fellow, but I'm not sympathetic. I'll give you the same advice I gave Patty -- take out a "payday loan" at an insanely high rate of interest. Just make sure they report to the credit bureaus.