Working on a laptop, you have three choices.

1. You can have your head bent over to look at the screen, which is terrible for your neck
2. You can have your laptop on a stand and type with your hands way up instead of the natural position you should type in
3. You can buy an external monitor or keyboard to correct these issues

That's just one reason not to buy a laptop if you don't need it. The cost difference is another big one that others have already addressed here.

But I bet she could see that as soon as she got to the road. Maybe that was the time to make the ridiculous decision to disobey Google's instructions and walk down another nearby road.

I would have been more impressed if MIT students hadn't done the exact same thing just 6 months ago (http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/the-150-space-camera-mit-students-beat-nasa-on-beer-money-budget/)

You could also just tell people to stop printing out their emails.

Isn't the point of online banking that it is convenient? And easy? For me, booting from a Live CD may be a piece of cake, but for a lot of people, it's far from that.

Even if it is a great idea, 98% of the population won't latch on to something like this, and the 2% who might are probably already running linux

I smell another browser-ballot lawsuit from Opera if this app doesn't get approved. And if Apple's App store policies are consistent (a stretch, I know), it won't be.

This is the Innovator's Dilemma. Spinning mechanical hard disks will continue to get larger and larger, but they will be far above the requirements of most users. Some people will want a 4 TB hard drive for their laptop, but for most people 500 GB is more than enough. SSDs will get larger and cheaper until they fit the average consumer's taste. Also, SSDs are faster and more energy efficient, so they will be providing additional benefits on top of size. Thus, my bet is that SSDs will probably move to replace spinning hard disks over the next 5-10 years.

The only thing I have to deal with is a daily popup?!?! Seems like a virus would be less intrusive.