What I was trying to say was that the problem is more fundamental than a bad UI.

Windows failed to learn a lot of the lessons that iOS and Android could have taught it. It failed to learn the lessons it should have from GNOME 3. It failed to bring the Internet to the desktop in a way which hadn't been tried in Windows since Windows 98.

Windows 8 finally brought us a managed application repository with automatic updates, monetization features, etc but only for modern UI. The Desktop apps were still their own special snowflakes stuck in "Don't accidentally a toolbar" install and update hell.

Windows 8 has tight integration with cloud services, but those are limited to only services and features hand picked by Microsoft and (last I checked) has no openness for third parties to integrate in the same way. GNOME 3 on the other hand, has lots of integration with various social and cloud services. Sign into Google for instance and your Google Docs are available in your Docs folder, your contacts show up in your Contacts app, your Google handouts get routed therough Empathy etc. Windows 8 does this for Facebook and Sky Drive but, again, only in the Modern UI.

Windows 8 Modern apps are firewalled from Windows 8 Desktop apps. Do you have Skype? You have two Skype apps. Do you have a chat client? You have two apps again. The same app on Android can run on everything from a wrist watch to a Television supporting tons of different input paradigms ALMOST natively (the developer has to do some basic UI legwork of course).

As a consequence of the previous point, lots of services (push notifications, application lifecycle management, etc) are available ONLY in Modern and not on the Desktop. Desktop apps still need to manage their own networking state and messaging. Many of the native applications were rebuilt as Modern full screen apps and their desktop equavalents were removed. The most galling is the Photo Viewer. If you open a picture in Explorer in the Desktop, all your windows go away and the image takes up the full screen.

In conclusion, Windows 8 problems don't stop at the Start Screen and framing the Start Screen as the biggest and only problem fundamentally misses what Microsoft did very, very wrong. Microsoft did not TRY to bring modern cloud technologies to the desktop. They ported their tablet OS to the desktop and stopped there.

Other than Honeycomb and GoogleTV being not open sourced (which Google admits is a one off which will be fixed in Ice Cream Sandwich), what other evidence of them locking Android down is there? It really felt like a throw away line.

Meanwhile, HTC makes rather awesome phones and this makes it much easier to suggest phones to other developers.

I would suggest a Thinkpad T series or X series as her primary machine. The 420, 520, 220 series are quite modern but still rolling out. For a little less money you can get the yesteryear model which offer more choices of features. Dell Latitudes are also solid machines in my experience and I have heard good things about HP's Elite book line but lack first hand experience. As a rule of thumb if you see it in a big box store stay away; the build quality is often compromised for cost, and the Windows install is often full of crapware.

To the /. crowd who can't understand why someone would not like Windows on Mac hardware, Windows 7 on Macs as of November is a hit or miss affair (two finger mouse press sends both a right AND left click, audio is always turned down, and one other issue which eludes me). The touch pad is the best I have ever used, but it doesn't replace a touch point and three buttons. Home, del, insert, page up, page down are sorely missed. Chicklet keyboards don't feel right to me, and finally, Macs tend to have a lower screen resolution for their size than what you can find on Windows laptops.

OP was referring to the Nexus One (Google's phone). Gingerbread hasn't OTAed to the Nexus One yet. In December they said it would be in a few weeks and it has turned into in a few months.

I happen to be someone who actually likes Spring. A few months ago, I was asked to do a proof of concept project; it was basically a event organizing system with a plug-in architecture.

A little google fu later and I found out Eclipse used OSGi for its plug in systems, Netbeans was going to support OSGi for their plugins, and Spring had an OSGi container solution called Spring DM AND Manning had this book in MEAP. I downloaded the earliest copy, ran through the "Hello World!"s and was on my way.

Then I actually had to implement OSGi. Packages wouldn't load, they would load in the wrong order, jars weren't OSGi aware, etc etc etc. After two weeks of long nights of frustration I gave up. The next morning I wrote a classloader and was up and running in about 2 hours.

To add insult to injury, SpringSource gave Spring DM to the Eclipse foundation and washed their hands of future development.

TL;DR; If you want to use OSGi + Spring DM: Don't, Spring gave DM to Eclipse and OSGi is a shitstorm waiting to rain itself out. Write your own classloader and in two hours and 200 lines of Java you will have 80% of OSGi and 99% of what you care about.

The trashcans just tell if they have been rolled out to be picked up. If they haven't recorded a roll out then you get fined if your trash has more than 10% recyclable material.

To one significant figure, they are.

The Nexus one is most likely the ADP 3. IE the third generation developer phone. IE Purchasable on Google's developer site. IE Not marketed to fucking consumers.

What makes me think this is that Google has given out the ADP1 at their Christmas party last year, the ADP2 at IO, and the Nexus-One (presumed ADP3) at their Christmas party this year.
There is no more or less magic to this.

Since we are going the consumer protect route, wouldn't it be better for headphones/ear buds to require noise cancelling technologies so the music doesn't have to be turned up as high?

That would make it harder to hear things while driving, but you shouldn't have headphones in while driving.