right click the icon, turn on activity animation.. and the globe is to let you know if your connected to the net. Which is pretty much what you wanted out of the icon, wasnt it?

worst controller? maybe sony are just lazy, but three generations of console with the same controller begs to differ..

Intels 3d graphics has been a joke for the longest time. While they might be getting better every year, they still have a lot of catching up to do.

I find it very rare these days the need to reinstall windows. Run malwarebytes in safe mode, maybe use eset online scanner if its a serious infection, run hijackthis and remove any extra cruft and done. Seriously, virus and malware scanners are pretty effective if you use the right ones. I hardly have to google infections anymore for instructions on how to manually remove them.
Or I could spend 2-4 hours reinstalling windows, office, drivers, trying to get various program settings the way they were before, and inevitably miss something and get a call later about how such and such is in a different spot/isn't the same as it was before, and a not so happy customer.
The only times I have actually needed to reinstall windows for a customer is if a bunch of system files are damaged and the thing won't boot. And the thing about windows getting slower over the years is hardly noticeable in my opinion. Most computers just need the shit cleaned out of their startup entries/more ram.

While consoles will always have their strengths with 100% compatibility, works straight away etc I think steam on pc comes close to providing a console like experience for downloading and playing games. 1. Games are always available for download, on any pc with your steam account setup 2. Game patches are downloaded automatically 3. With valves new cloud system, game saves will also be available to download on any pc 4. While it won't help out with installing the latest drivers, it does warn you if they're not up to date and a link to the manufacturers website, although i'm not sure if this works with all games. I don't think Steam can help much in this area though, Nvidia, ATI and all the other companies need to pick up the slack. 5. Steam has a large growing library of new and old games, with a metascore on most games and easily accesable demos and trailers. 6. Steam also regularly runs price promotions on certain games, and offers preloading on certain games so you can play it the minute it comes out. And to top it all off with the new steamworks package, you can make your indie game available through steam, with all the advantages it provides. Try doing that on a console. I think consoles will always have their place, but I also think in the future the issues with patching and hardware compatibility will be greatly reduced on PCs.

On some LCD screens with Dynamic Contrast, wouldn't blackle save power since the LCD turns down the backlight power in darkened scenes? I can't imagine it would be saving much power at all but still.