and it was about that time that I realized Sprint was really a three-story tall Lochness monster...

and I said G** D**** MONSTER! I ain't givin you no tree-fiddy!

@ DirtyVegas
... ? wtf are you talking about

@ GRAMMAR

For the Linux computers being returned "so often it is taken off the shelves", I'm not sure if this is true or not... but if so I would argue that it probably has more to do with customers not realizing what they're buying. The vast majority of computer users are mostly unaware that there are options besides Windows or Mac. If you were to tell my parents to go into a Wal Mart and buy a laptop and they saw one that was $299 (or whatever the price of that GPC was) and the next closest one (that happened to run windows) was $499 or $599... they would probably buy the $299 because it was cheaper. Then when they got home they would boot it and say "Hey, this isn't windows... what is this?" and instead of spending the time to learn it they'd just return it for another one.

As for copies being bought off the shelf and installed on systems, i would argue that the vast majority of these systems already had Windows on them and are being upgraded. Someone has XP and buys a copy of Vista as an upgrade for example. This is again most likely due to several factors. 1) The average person will go to a bigbox store to purchase their new operating system and in these stores, you really have only one choice: Windows 2) Most people don't realize there is an alternative to Windows, (not to mention a free alternative that you can download) and 3) When you have a computer already with Windows on it, you are more likely to buy your next computer with Windows on it.

The amount of "clean" systems (no operating system installed) probably make up a very small percentage of the installs of off-the-shelf purchases of operating systems. Also, because it is much rarer to find a "clean" system from a big box dealer, it's more likely that a "clean" systems is home-built... I would argue that the percentage of Linux installs on clean systems is significantly higher than store-bought because 1) It's free 2) If the user can build a computer, they are most likely a power-user who will appreciate the various Linux distros more and will be more aware of / turned off by the various problems with Windows... (i.e. viruses, boot times, inefficient memory usage, memory leaks, malware, etc etc etc)

@GRAMMARPOLICE
First off, most customers don't generally have an option to get the same computer for $X with Linux or $X+200 with Windows. Large companies, like Dell, etc, are usually subsidized quite a bit to offer Windows (especially the latest version) for a comparable price. The same Dell Inspiron 1520 will only see a 40 or 50 dollar price difference at most between the Linux and Windows model. And because the vast majority of the public has grown up with and gotten used to Windows, they see the value in paying $50 more for an operating system that they are already familiar with. It has very little to do with Windows being better than Linux (in this case Ubuntu) or vice versa. Customers buy what they're used to because they don't want to learn something new.

The other thing I should point out is that the majority of large computer retailers (ignoring Apple for the time being) sell Windows-only machines, with possibly a set few machines running Ubuntu. If the users hardware configuration choices don't match the one or two linux options, they will go with the hardware configuration they want on a windows machine. The problem again isn't that Windows is better than Linux, it's that the vast majority of options available are for Windows, the vast majority of the public has used windows before, and the vast majority of Operating system marketing is Windows + Apple. The average computer user has probably never heard of Ubuntu / Fedora / Gentoo / Moblin / openSUSE / Mandriva / etc / etc because they don't have the money to spend on marketing.

But as someone who has used Windows, OS-X, and several flavors of Linux... I can tell you that the major Linux distros match up very well with the latest Windows + OS-X releases. I would much rather run Ubuntu / Fedora / openSUSE than any Windows (especially Vista).

I think the original pictures of the touchstone made people think it was much larger than it actually is. I have two of them (one at home and one at work) and I must say they're very nice to use. The dock has about a 1.5" diameter footprint and is about an inch tall at its highest point. When I'm at the office, I just set the phone on the dock and its charging.

A couple other nice things about it: if you're on a call and you set the phone down on the dock, it automatically switches to speaker phone. If your phone is on the dock and someone calls you, picking the phone up off the dock automatically answers the phone.

nice... i'd like to see how much more i can cram in there!

Now if only they'd lower the prices on these digital-games to $49.99 or something... I mean, selling more digital copies means less money spent on physical-medium production, packaging and shipping, you don't have to pay retailers, people can't lend games to each other (which may or may not result in increased game purchases), and it leads to people buying larger hard drives (which m$ makes a HUGE mark-up on)... Bring on the cheaper games please! (Somehow I don't think they will though)

"I understand and it's wonderful that you don't care whether anyone questions your sexual orientation."

... "I care! I care plenty! I just dunno how to make them stop!"

"One word: Thundercougarfalconbird."

"MacBook Air is about the cheapest, most powerful ultra-portable you can get."

Ya... cuz $999 for a REFURBISHED, 1.6ghz atom with 2gb of ram and an 80gb hd, no optical drive, 1 usb port, no replaceable battery, and no pci slot certainly fits my definition of cheap and powerful...

oh wait... no it doesn't

You could buy a NEW laptop with a dual core, twice the ram, and 3x the HD space, an optical drive, multiple usb ports, a replacable battery and a pci card slot for half that price. Oh but it won't have that little apple logo...

And I know what you'll say: Ya but it doesn't run OS-X... true... but I consider that a feature

They can fix the economy by entrusting all the world's money + resources to me... I'll figure out the rest... I promise!

Oh and that's one sexy sound system!

What's this for again?
Videogames?
I need more of those!