You are so right. Vista is the definition of bloatware. It sucks the life out of any PC, and frankly, having it on their machines makes dell look like their machines are utter crap.

I have an inspiron 530 with 4 gigs of Ram (!) and it runs slower exactly the same as my P3 did when XP first came out. That's not progress, that's bollocks.

If I had the same machine running ubuntu, it would be fast as hell and it would look cool doing it too.

I gotta say that except for support from hardware vendors (would it kill you to release an open source driver with your usb card reader/lan card/piece of crap video card?).. and the lack of some windows compatibility features for people stuck interacting with people that use windows, Linux and especially Ubuntu is very ripe and extremely user-friendly, plus it just feels nice, and a lot of the time it actually works.

From what I've heard, it's rumored that Michael Dell himself uses Ubuntu on his own machine.

And to be honest, Dell always had good hardware. The only reason I never bought one of their machines was because it came with windows (really!)

So yea, sorry windows fan boys, pretty soon all your excuses will dry up and you'll jump on the bandwagon like everyone else.

This violates the first law of robotics: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Active polling is for the 1980's. It's a hurry up and wait technology. That's why push was invented.

Ok, double posting will certainly make me unpopular,
but I swear it was a browser glitch.

I'd like to chime in to Apple's defense at the risk of becoming unpopular in this thread.

Apple's iPhone platform is precedent-setting and unique in the field of computing.

While we are tempted to treat it like a microPC or mini laptop platform, it is in fact a device in a field heretofore dominated by embedded devices.

With the iPhone, Apple must provide a Quality of Service (QoS) above and beyond that of a PC or similar device.

On a desktop PC, it makes no difference if you run a program that slows down your system or crashes your OS.

On a phone, that's disastrous. A phone is almost like a real-time device, and the core feauture-set must be protected from the p2p flavour of the month and unneccesary podcast app or what have you. It's bad enough that people are using this thing as a music player, movie player, camera, web browser, mirror, to-do-list tracker, calendar, mame cabinet, telnet client, pocket protector, coffee cup warmer, cellular modem .. you get the idea.

If you want to sail with the big pirates in the ocean of independent software choices, you're going to have to leave the play pen and take responsibility for your actions. Jailbreaking your iPhone is one clear way of doing that, and it's the perfect balance between voiding your warranty and allowing you free reign over your hardware. Your system crashes because you effed it up? It's your fault bigboy. You broke it, you can fix it.

For every forum like engadget's complaining about obstinance on Apple's part, there would be a hundred more starbucks-swigging urban techno-trolls whining that their iPhone stopped working after they installed limewire and tried to download Led zeppelin's entire discography or every episode of the sopranos.

How many other platforms even come this close to the ubiquity of the iPhone? Does anyone complain that there is no SDK for devices X,Y and Z? To be honest I have no idea. I don't even own a cell phone. If I did, I'd buy an iPod touch and jailbreak it to use wifi and voip.

Steve knows exactly what he's doing and I hope he does read this thread. at least he'll know enough to contact me and send me a free ipod as a thanks. (or sue me)

I'd like to chime in to Apple's defense at the risk of becoming unpopular in this thread.

Apple's iPhone platform is precedent-setting and unique in the field of computing.

While we are tempted to treat it like a microPC or mini laptop platform, it is in fact a device in a field heretofore dominated by embedded devices.

With the iPhone, Apple must provide a Quality of Service (QoS) above and beyond that of a PC or similar device.

On a desktop PC, it makes no difference if you run a program that slows down your system or crashes your OS.

On a phone, that's disastrous. A phone is almost like a real-time device, and the core feauture-set must be protected from the p2p flavour of the month and unneccesary podcast app or what have you. It's bad enough that people are using this thing as a music player, movie player, camera, web browser, mirror, to-do-list tracker, calendar, mame cabinet, telnet client, pocket protector, coffee cup warmer, cellular modem .. you get the idea.

If you want to sail with the big pirates in the ocean of independent software choices, you're going to have to leave the play pen and take responsibility for your actions. Jailbreaking your iPhone is one clear way of doing that, and it's the perfect balance between voiding your warranty and allowing you free reign over your hardware. Your system crashes because you effed it up? It's your fault bigboy. You broke it, you can fix it.

For every forum like engadget's complaining about obstinance on Apple's part, there would be a hundred more starbucks-swigging urban techno-trolls whining that their iPhone stopped working after they installed limewire and tried to download Led zeppelin's entire discography or every episode of the sopranos.

How many other platforms even come this close to the ubiquity of the iPhone? Does anyone complain that there is no SDK for devices X,Y and Z? To be honest I have no idea. I don't even own a cell phone. If I did, I'd buy an iPod touch and jailbreak it to use wifi and voip.

Steve knows exactly what he's doing and I hope he does read this thread. at least he'll know enough to contact me and send me a free ipod as a thanks. (or sue me)

But will it blenD????

But seriously folks.

Did I hear the Jerry Seinfeld theme coming out of it during that ghey ass spiel at boot up?

Damn. why can't this machine get any respect?

This is what you want!

www.positioniseverything.net/articles/jello.html

The Jello mold layout! Negative margins min and max width compatible with firefox and crap browsers!

Hey, good point!! There can be like a little icon in the corner. One CSS property adjusted by javascript and the whole thing can be adjusted between fixed width and free!