@ryan

The first time I heard of the liquid immersion was in the movie Abyss. They explained it very well in there, I remember I did not believe it at first :)

I have no idea what this is either, a quick explanation what it actually does would have been nice. I will check @lessthantito's link above now, but I am usually way too lazy to bother :)

If XP is your tool of the trade, by all means stick with it. In all likelihood Windows 27 will only be a new version of Windows too, and certainly not as fast as XP on the same machine at that time in the future (even if you run XP in an emulator).

I still don't understand why everybody keeps hacking on Vista. I was very critical as everyone was saying it sucks, but when I bought my new laptop I went for Vista anyway. After using it for a while, it came to apreciate all the little things here and there that improved my everyday use. Sure, if had put an XP on that machine it would probably have been faster - but it was fast enough anyway and I never had any trouble with it... I don't know if I am an exception or something, but I have Vista running on 4 different PCs now, and happy as a pig rolling in mud.

Windows 7 looks like it's going to be even better, so I wonder how it will turn out in practice.

"For me, filesharing has never been about getting stuff for free, (since I continued to purchase DVDs and such), it has been the destruction of the virtual walls that surrounds us, ie regions. TPB is all media, available to me, when it is available to everyone else. Its just that simple."

/seconded

+1.

Those sheep speakers are definitely crappier. At least the buffalo head has enough room to fit a decent-ish speaker. These small buggers just cannot deliver. You're better off using your notebook's integrated speakers - unless you don't mind the roaring laughter of passersby and hold one to each ear.

Same here!

I wonder if the advertisers on the engadget screenshot in the windows7 screenshot had to pay an extra for that extra feature.

I don't understand what the fuss about it having no WiFi is. If I'm at the PC to transfer stuff, plugging in the USB is not that much trouble after all - at least it is nowhere near to a show-stopper. Think of the sheer number of Ebooks you can fit on an SD or MS Duo, and compare the time you need to make the transfer vs the time you need to read all of them. It's all a matter of perspective.

Of course with wifi you can be anywhere in the house and send a new book to the reader tucked under your pillow in the bedroom... and you are SO going to do that every day :)

You are right of course - your 8800 gts is perfectly fine for your holiday photo editing. Even for your photomanipulation attempts you won't notice any big problems. The thing is (as your post clearly demonstrates) that you do not use Photoshop the way many professionals do.

You have to think much bigger, like professional image compositing in the print media industry. Have you ever worked on a 500 MB photoshop file? Maybe you had a look at some art from digital artists - imagine painting canvases often larger than 5.000 pixels (for A3 printing) with hundreds of layers. I wonder just how well your 8800 gts would fare then. I worked on some 10.000 to 30.000 pixel wide illustrations myself, and I think this card is good news indeed.

But that's not all the card is supposed to do - it also helps in AfterEffects and Premiere with video encoding, and on that point you can kiss your 8800 gts goodbye right away... IMHO you really should have put your brain into gear before posting.