The point is, it's an option, and folks like yourself never have to use it. Besides, at least the KDE folks are doing more interesting things than changing color schemes and moving menu items around every release... :)

As for browser tabs, I find them pretty useful. Yes, I'm only doing a single thing at a given moment, but they allow me to scan a news site like Slashdot, clicking to open interesting articles in new tabs, then peruse through them at my leisure, without "losing my place" when the phone rings or there's another interruption.

The real benefit to apptabs will be the ability to open several programs as one, which will be tremendously useful to programmers, multimedia folks, and others who generally have a mess of programs open to do a single job, but switch projects repeatedly throughout the day, especially contractors, who need to keep things straight while they're working for, and interacting with, multiple clients.

One desktop icon opening everything I need for a project without having to script a custom startup icon or tweak those scripts as the project progresses? I like that! :)

Tossing out the TV would save a lot of marriages. Folks don't talk anymore, they drool into the tube for hours on end. Plus, people see things on TV, decide they need that in their life, and throw away perfectly good relationships because of some cheesy screenwriting. Of course, it doesn't help marrying someone for superficial reasons...like Ron White says, you can buy a bigger rack, but you can't fix stupid. :)
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As for the topic, I'd go with archival CD/DVDs (read-only) for the things you can't print, they're popular enough now that even if the disk warps or is otherwise obsolete, there should be someone around who will still have the ability to extract information from them. Might want to toss in a pack of baseball cards or something else that will accumulate in value during that time, just to pay for it, though. lol

Had a maxtor 80G die about a month ago. Didn't even realize what it was, every 1/2 hour or so a single, quiet "chirp" would sound. Just above audible, more like background noise, it took me maybe 2 weeks to nail it down as not just my imagination or a bird flying by outside.

Being notably lazy, chalked it up to a dying fan (3 + CPU fan), and put it on my lengthy to-do list. Finally the noise started to increase to the point of slightly annoying, but still was up in the 10+ minute range, long enough that I'd give up hunting for it after a while. I decided I'd deal with it once it was steady enough to isolate.

And it did. Problem was, when it was finally making the noise every couple minutes, I restarted the system, and got that beloved "click, click, click" that is undeniably bad (the kind that makes your power supply freak out). Needless to say, it didn't boot.

The good news was, it was an old drive, I was basically using it to boot and a partition of it as a swap drive. Everything of remote value on it had been copied off it long ago (it's 8 years old, it wasn't entirely a shock that it died).

The bummer was that it died like it did. I've seen plenty of drives die, but either you get plenty of clear warning (after the first one), or they just fail. I've never had one "chirp" so delicately for so long. It lasted at least 2 months since it started, running nearly 24/7. The drive itself showed nothing aside from the usual wear you'd expect after such a long run.

It wasn't that it died, it was that it caught me off-guard the way it did, mixed with the realization that sometimes I'm a little too lazy...

Plus, if said student's annoyed with your harassing behavior, they're far more willing and able to jab that atropine needle into your heart.

Of course, they might "accidentally" wiggle it about a bit, too...

Because, as Encyclopedia Dramatica clealy states, "There are no girls on the internet". So it's insightful, because someone's 'nerd rush' has allowed them insight into their feminine side.

Wait, Will Smith isn't real?!!

An easy to clean board and disposable wax pencil work pretty good. Depending on your lab, a hanger for the board on the lab window will help keep contaminates in/out of the lab, while allowing you to check your notes as needed. Paper and lab books run the risk of bringing things in/out of the lab, and constantly sterilizing items has it's own problems.

The best solution, of course, is to use a provided, sealed system, linked to your own system outside the lab area. Upload your info (matlab formulas, previous data, etc.) into the lab, use them during the experiment, then download the results into your system for later analysis.

Same here. The mouse is a killer with RSI after a while, but the keyboard only bugs me if I'm typing for a couple solid hours. Linux helps a lot, letting me configure things so when it does start to become a problem, I'm not totally knocked out, or forced to suffer to finish a project. Of course, micro-softheads can't admit that their billion dollar company is getting it's tail kicked by free software, so they have to spam IT sites with comments that don't even address the question.

Speaking of the question, I haven't found anything useful all-around for such things. Each system has it's quirks, some go haywire in certain types of noise environments, others are geared towards a certain system, (Mac), and their ports don't perform as well under a different set of common commands (such as Unix or Windows). Plus, as someone else alluded to, some are good for command use, while others tend to be better for dictation.

So, still, a decade after these things appeared, it's a matter of trial and error for your particular situation. Unfortunately, because this stuff is so heavily patented, there's unlikely to be little improvement in the future, as only a limited number of people are working on these systems, and the lawyers are getting more done than the designers.

Too bad, too. Imagine what could be done if people weren't restrained by their typing speed, and could just pour out their thoughts as they came to them. Well, I mean productive people...