I'm not doubting the science, but I live in SE Asia, and this place is full of bananas. Love these little Nepali bananas! -- I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH

A replacement will be found, and that person will try and make their mark by doing something, and while that "something" may be good or may be bad, at least someone will be trying to think outside of the buttonless / plugless / bland Ives box. We might even get a touch screen on larger devices...

Just got back from a Tland vacation, and from the get go you are fingerprinted on 8 fingers entering and leaving, in addition to full body shot. Then, wherever you go you are on camera. For example, each parking space in every mall has a license plate camera in addition to roadway cameras galore. If you get a SIM from TRUE or whoever, you are tracked via cell towers as well. As an old hippie starting from the 60's, I find this type of surveillance abhorrent. I'm sure this is the case for most of Asia now, and this is why I now prefer Nepal, a country where you can be anonymous if you want to be. Nothing but paper records here, and very few cameras. Nice.

I've had 10 installed since early beta days, and it has not slowed down one bit here. Using it on a mac via Parallels, and it's a bolt of lightning for anything thrown at it.

well said.

You raise an important point. The fact that if you live in Asia (as I do) and buy ANYTHING hardware-wise, you own it and can do whatever the hell you want with it (outside of converting a vehicle into a tank). So this issue has more to do with the power that manufactures have over consumers in America and Europe. ... a power over what we do with a product that we buy. For example, I bought a 3-year warranty for an iMac, but if I want to replace the crap HDD that came with it - with an SSD of my own choosing. No, that voids the warranty, even though I would take far better care when replacing the part than anyone at the genius bar would, and the machine would be perfectly functional afterwards. We've gone down a rabbit hole, and I don't think those companies are ever going to back off.

or the headphone jack...

I grew up reading Popular Science and felt no need then to comment on any of the articles then, and feel no need to do so now. Our obsession with commenting is just crazy, and here I am commenting on commenting, on a site made for doing one thing: commenting. What happened to the world?

The new start menu was enough for me to flush Classic Shell, and be "trained" into the new way, the metro way. All it means is that you are now farther away from a bigger start menu, if you just boot straight to the desktop, as you do. I run it on an iMac with dual monitors, and it's blazing fast as a VMWare image. The only thing is that some frameworks are not supported yet, so apps like Mindjet 2012 won't install. Besides that, a nice update. love it.

just to add to all of the above: surge protected power strip, and no worries. all the talk about theft is just that. protect yourself and your stuff. been on the road for 13 years now, and no problems but blown apple power adapters (sensitive to voltage surges in places with 240 and poor wiring). but even in someplace like Nepal, you can get parts. happy trails...

A manufacture did! The S4 that's docked in my living room is the desktop for that area.

My Galaxy S4 replaced a desktop, and when not used that way I can put it my bag. Come on Bill, there's an elephant in the room!

Syncmate.

just buy syncmate and get over it.

Ten years ago I was overnighting in a Starbucks parking lot to send my work in. I was one of many living in vehicles and roaming the US, doing a bit of work here or there. Most of the venues mentioned here were our links to the internet - to our bread and butter. But that's nothing new around the globe, most of the under-developing part of the world has been going to community wifi centers for a long time. I'm in Nepal now, and there is a cybercenter on almost every block within the Kathmandu valley (mostly filled with students). But the sad thing is this: America has not progressed to this point: where even the poor can afford an internet connection in the home, and can certainly find an affordable cyber center within walking distance.