So ask for your money back. Oh, that right...

I don't know for sure, but the adaptor may actually be the reason. The adaptor is dumb - it has no electrical linkages to the Nikkor lens. In general practice, this is normally a limitation, as metering / aperture data can't be captured by the camera. But if one is hacking around with camera firmware, the adaptor provides safety as the lens can't be borked by accident. So the use of a cheap but reasonable prime lens separated from the camera electronics might be a good test environment.

...evar.

Damn right. I just gave them some feedback (which you can too at http://ecustomeropinions.com/survey/survey.php?sid=878133413): "Why does the new site use so little screen space? On a fairly standard monitor, less than half of my screen space is being used by content. The yellow/black theme is fine, but throwing blue into the mix is horrible! The shade of blue chosen is also almost identical to that used in Windows 7 to highlighted text. There is also very little commonality in CSS - why are some section headings backed with a yellow banner, but other are not? Randomly scattered white boxes along with the yellow banner spreading out along the screen for no reason also distract. The whole design feels very rushed and unfinished, and not up to the usual BBC standards. The new BBC Food ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/ ) and Weather ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/ ) pages (in particular) have been refreshed much more successfully. Extremely disappointing."

Actually, it depends on what you define as 'work'. For certain aspects of my work (as a science writer), the iPad is a fantastic device. I can work anywhere, read academic publications with ease, and even write monthly columns. My former laptop was stolen; I replaced it with an iPad, and the productivity increase has been huge. This is just my experience, though, and it won't hold for many professions. But don't make such sweeping generalisations unless you look at life outside your cubicle!

Hmm... I'm part of a working group to evaluate IT needs for my department (R&D of a FTSE 100 company). We're pushing for differentiation from our colleagues in marketing / HR et c., so this is a good time to figure-out how bad the boot times are. I was given an HP EliteBook 6930P with Win XP about one year ago - it hasn't been re-imaged since then, so is fairly typical of my team. It's a P8700 Core2Duo with 4Gb ram (2.9Gb addressable), 250 GB 5400 rpm HD. Support is through HP. Obviously, the definition of end-of-boot is perhaps a little loose, so I've defined key points in start-up. Okay - mashing the power button and starting the stop-clock. [pedants - Time quoted in (m,ss)
1,45 seconds and I'm at the RSA SecureID log in (paused the clock for a few seconds to be fair)
3,52 and it's mapping network drives.
4,15 desktop appears
3,35 AV loaded
4,55 Hit the Outlook icon
5,13 It's syncing my 'My Documents' folder
6,00 Outlook splash screen
7,30 Outlook completed start-up Exchange connected
8,05 'My Documents' sync complete
9,32 Outlook completes folder sync.
10,35 CPU usage drops below 10% for first time.

Yeah, not looking too speedy for me. And shut down is hardly rocket-speed either - another forced 'My Documents' sync later, and it's [2,55] to get to power off.
I do use hibernate a few times during the day (boot-up on the train to work, hibernate; resume in the office, hibernate at CoB; resume on the train, hibernate), but the a daily rebook cycle is required or WiFi adaptor starts dying.
So yeah - it's a bag of crap.