Oh I wish this were true!!! I truly do. Unfortunately though, yes, they are this stupid.

My Flickr photo with notes shows the problem best:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jacobgordon/2455618195/

I'm utterly, utterly furious about this.

I'm not mistaken. OS X includes *some* of the Linux apps I have in mind, but nowhere near all of them, not by a long chalk.

This is misleading. The Linux OSes include a whole host of software which are also being counted here, hence giving them such big bars, whilst Windows and OS X are jus operating systems without the exta software.

If we were to compare apples with apples, and not include software included with Linux which does more than a basic Windows/OS X install, then we'll find the Linux bars shrink dramatically.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

I've had my Acer Travelmate C111TCi TabletPC with 1.0GHz ULV Pentium M for over 3 and a half years now. Awesome machine, almost silent and draws only 15W of power during normal usage (11W without the screen turned on). I'm typing away on it now in fact. Needed to upgrade the RAM to 1.5GB but apart from that its been superb.

Can't wait until I can get a similar but updated machine with a 1.2GHz U7600 and hopefully a 64+GB SSD HDD, 2GB RAM, built in webcam, brighter screen, 8+hour battery life, still silent and drawing just 10Watts of power... will finally be worth the upgrade! Hopefully only about 6 months left to wait for that [droool...]

Stop with the stupid MacBook comparisons. The MacBook is a huge beast of a machine which is completely NOT ultra portable and gets hotter than the sun. And I couldn't give a flying monkey's about 'MagSafe' and a remote (for a laptop??? what's the point in that???).

Importantly, this laptop comes with a Core Solo ULV processor which is far and away the best feature of this machine - it will run real cool, draw very little power, and the battery will last 7 long hours.

The only thing it really lacks which I would want is a webcam.

This isn't a Celeron guys. I think its a different-brand in different-country thing. Its a "Intel® Celero® M 753 (1.2GHz)"... I think 'Celero' means 'Centrino' or something. The 753 is an ultra low voltage (ULV) Pentium M. My laptop is the Acer TravelMate C110 with a 1GHz ULV pentium M - and its still fast enough for me. Best of all - my whole laptop including 10.4" screen draws just 13Watts of power under normal use.

But I want a solid state hard drive! I've been trying to get one for three years, but still far too expensive. With a SSD, the only noise left in my laptop will disappear, and power consumption should drop to under 10Watts.

- Sony's new ebook will be mildly successful and encourage others to release ebooks. By end of 2006, there will be good ebooks on the market and people will start to understand their appeal

- Due to oil/gas production peaking, energy prices will continue to rise. This will encourage the industry to reduce power consumption - laptop chips, HDDs etc will make their way into desktop units. It will also mean the cost of computers will increase rather than decrease as energy costs hit manufacturing and raw material costs

- Again partly due to energy concerns, the first laptop with an OLEP/D or similar screen will be released. Many mobile phones, mp3 players, cameras, pdas etc with lower drain screens will also be released

- Video/movie sales online will become commonplace like mp3s/music today. Towards the end of the year, the same will happen for books/magazines/newspapers for the new ebook devices

- Drupal CMS will become commonplace on many, many websites.

- Windows Vista, launched second half of the year, will be a great success

- Laptops will start to ship towards the end of the year with solid state hard drives (SSDs) alongside magnetic drives. SSD drives will have capacity of around 10GB, filled with the OS, programmes, common file setc. The larger (80GB+) HDDs will be used to store music, video. Due to the speed of SSDs over conventional drives, they will very quickly catch on and by end of year they will be standard

Perhaps this is just a wishlist though :)