This is a monumentally bad decision. Punching holes in countless devices WILL become a security nightmare. I imagine that there are hundreds to thousands of people currently attempting to determine the means and methods of remote administration and how they can take advantage of it.

I question the health of an organization which decides (as a whole) that enforcing a remote administration hole is a good idea.

I cannot in good conscience recommend any cisco device to the plethora of friends and family who ask such things of me. I would expose them to greatly increased risk, not only from the exposed remote administration, but from legal action concerning the sites/locations that they visit should any such activity raise eyebrows.

As a systems engineer who often has input into data center needs, I will have to think long and hard about using the products of a company which exhibits such poor judgement, lest such management overreach extend into other products/departments. This may seem extreme, but a home router is primarily a security device and if a company cannot enforce basic security practices there, how long before such poor decisions begin to infect enterprise devices?

My old linksys router is elderly and I have concidered replacing it, my list of options just shrank.

actually, high end audio cables used to be worth it. Its not noticeable when replacing a cable or two in a complex setup which, back in those days (15-20 years ago and all analog) meant more cables than some small datacenters I've been at. However, replacing all low end audio cables with the outrageously overpriced ones meant much less hiss/buzz/crackles and much greater frequency range. Mostly it was due to the gold plugs and not the cables themselves, which are always the weak link. Essentially the cumulative affect was large. Wait, you said high-end "digital" cables. Crap, I'm clearly getting old :) High end digital cables are totally worth it, especially if they have pretty lights! ;)

Lots of people with IPhones have considerable investment in apps and, ever moreso, in itunes music. Recently having gotten a droid, I can say that it has become my main portable music player. How can anyone say to simply return the Iphone4 when its clearly more complicated than that? Will a return come with an app that will allow a different phone to play music from itunes? /s Finally, my early on decision not to take part in any of these f*cked up drm schemes is sounding like a very wise decision.

It doesn't help that before vista was released there were vids of compiz/beryl doing things that vista didn't, and still cannot do.

When I show my coworkers impressive eyecandy running on an older, single core system that would not run vista well, if at all...

Or inform them that I get 3 hours battery time with XP, and 4-4.5 with Ubuntu (when the battery was new, still a discrepancy but subtract an hour from all to account for battery age ;) )

Or when someone asks about some random piece of software that may be useful, and I apt-get it and am looking at it in minutes.

One thing running MS was really good for though, new systems. See, linux runs really really well on this older laptop and it becomes difficult to justify upgrades to that kick ass quad core 4GB RAM dual 120GB drives when your old system still runs really well.

Time for more water glasses in the kill zone I guess...