Get the mac, and remove the optical drive. Install a TB size HDD along the SSD. For instance: http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/

I'd take OS X over Windows any day of the week, but by all means, it's your pain.

A few comments: On the mac you can program in any keyboard shortcut yourself, i.e. give any menu item any keyboard shortcut. Very flexible. The "omg no second mouse button" hasn't been true for longer than I've been using a mac (2006 IIRC). The cygwin tools perform not too well and don't integrate well with other shell tools and programming environments, such as python. If I'm wrong - please, tell me how to fix it! By all means - kudos to the cygwin team, but they're in for a big challenge with all the underlying windows issues. Symbolic links, anyone? And the memory issue, that's not something I recognize at all - that must be an issue with the software in question, not with Mac OS? (I'd say the same if you were having memory issues on windows.) I tend to run at least twice as many apps simultaneously on my mac than on my windows machine, but then, RAM is plentiful anyway, so I find the GUI on windows more limiting. Finally, SSH is vastly better than both VNC and remote desktop, but I suppose that depends on what you're up to. If only windows could support a decent shell and SSH, it'd be a lot more livable when you're talking to a *nix server.

This, exactly this. Parent and grandparent are spot on. I've been away from windows since 2007, and got reintroduced to Win 7 when I started working in a new company a few months back. Windows 7 is the best windows so far - but windows still is the worst operating system out there, by FAR. I've got nothing nice to say about it, regarding either ease of use, convenience or anything such. Folders and directories are mixed in ways unimaginable for a linux user. The graphics are more Fischer-Price than ever, eating ever more of your precious screen real estate. The list goes on, and on, and on. I won't choose Windows on a machine if I can at all help it.

I use Ubuntu (to ensure same versions of stuff as Ubuntu servers we have) in a VM (Virtualbox, simple setup, open source, and highly recommended) at work. The VM is way faster than the Windows 7 host, as I've put the virtual hard drive on an SSD, and it's just not windows. I've got transparency, animations and all other kinds of baloney turned on. It's fast enough that, even though I don't need it, I can't possibly be bothered finding the off switch.

tl;dr: You can live in a virtualbox VM all day just fine - you just need RAM for 2 OS'es and applications.

True. LibreOffice actually helped me salvage a Word 2003 file into Word 2010, as Word 2010 itself would scramble the whole darned thing. Libre is much better, in my (limited) experience.

...again. Or, heck, Mac OS X for that matter. Give people the command line - it's the most powerful programming environment out there. Teach people simple automation tasks that will save you lotsa time later - change file names of all your holiday photos, convert movies with ffmpeg, copy files over the network, whatever. Simple conditionals, loops, and variables come along for the ride. It's right there when you open your mac/linux box and it's super useful right out of the box. When people see the amazing power of shell script automation, the route to programming should be short enough...

I agree fully with any other OS, but I'm surprised that it's even possible to get Windows 7 in on less than 40 GB.

I don't believe that for a second. I have an old machine with Win7 on it, and Win7 ate 50 GB of disk after installation. Mac OS X Lion eats much less - I haven't checked, really, but I'm guessing around 10 GB of disk, tops. Of course, linux can eat as little as you want, depending on what you install. At any rate, 120 GB SSD is fine both on my Macbook Pro and on my arch linux box, but would be a disaster on a windows machine.

Ordered mine recently, took 2 weeks from farnell.

Quit using them in your teaching. Graphing calculators are the work of the devil. Kids spend a lot of energy learning something that is obsolete when outside schools, spend money on an overprised product (you can get a much more powerful netbook for the same price, ~ish), and wind up not learning how to do math by hand. That way, you'll stop finding old ones, too.

Oh, and obigatory xkcd.

Depends a lot on the field. There are probably a lot more errors in medicine than in physics.

This is a great idea. You know more about memory problems than most people - maybe you could also consider making an app that's useful for rememebering things? I'm sure the regular TODO apps out there are missing out on what the needs of the handicapped are.

You can't be too rich, too thin, or have a too big stick.

They've actually got their own flavor - Scientific Linux CERN (SLC). Most annoying distro I ever used, but that's another story.

Why isn't this modded funny rather than insightful?