Slashdot Mirror

Or this... http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/msg/corp/flashdreamworks.html ...mentioned in the parents link.

Yep. IEEE 802.3ab, which I cannot cite because I do not have a copy, but every credible reference I've seen indicates category 5 cable as the minimum.

For example: http://docs.hp.com/en//784/copper_final.pdf

A select quote: "The IEEE 802.3ab standard deals with one of the four physical layer specifications. It gives GbE customers the ability to use existing 100BASE-TX CAT5 cabling with 1000BASE-T."

I've had quite the negative experience with HP/Compaq. They've had a ongoing problem with many of their dv2000, dv6000 and dv9000 laptops which are nVidia chipset based, mostly those with AMD processors, where the south bridge chipset fails. This started happening after about one year of use, and more prevlant once laptops got 2+ years old to the point where I see at least two a week now at my local workbench. With such a massive problem, you think they would issue some recall or something? All they did was issue a extended warranty, which adds one year warranty to the affected laptops. Most only had one year warranties.. and if they are two years old, it does NOTHING for them. Also, only those who took the time to search could find the extended warranty information. This is almost worst than the recent Dell problems IMHO, and the press and the like has not picked up on it. http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01087277&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=1842189&lang=en

Computer manufacturers have been doing this for years. I bought a HP Pavilion 8750C back in 2000. The thing would run fine for a couple weeks, and then freeze 10 times in a single afternoon. It drove me nuts... I tried replacing half the hardware, upgrading drivers, bois, etc - no help. I tried doing a clean install of Windows numerous times - 98, 2000, XP, even ME - same problem. Tried disabling the on-board video crap and installing a separate Video Card. Still nothing.

In 2003 I couldn't take it anymore, and built a replacement machine. About that time I ran across a thread on a forum like this one. Turns out many of the 8750C's had a motherboard that was compatible with Intel Celeron processors. My HP had shipped with a regular P3. So I picked up a cheap Celeron processor, dropped it in, gave the machine to my brother and it never had another problem.

HP must have shipped thousands of PC's with processors that were incompatible with the motherboards. I haven't bought anything from HP since, and doubt I ever will. I still can't believe there wasn't a class action lawsuit for that sort of thing.

alright, you are absolutely retarded, I destyoed all of these arguments in another part of this threat against another Mac head. I provided direct links to identical computers from Apple.com and Dell.com, that explicitly show apple to have a pretty constant extra 50% added to their price, for the entire computer.

No, you are absolutely retarded. I did the exact same thing as you did showing Macs were comparable in prices. However when I did it I not only compared Macs to Dells, but to Alienware PCs, HPs, and others. I posted my results several tymes on slashdot. Ballmer Scorns Apple As a $500 Logo is one place, specifically in this post. That's from more than a year ago. How about now? Let's see...

MacBook Pro 17-inch

• 2.66GHz Intel Core i7
• 4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2X2GB
• 500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm
• 1920x1200 pixel LED-backlit display

Total price: $2,549.00

Now for a Dell...
The only 17+ inch Dell laptops I see are two, the Vostro 3700s, and FastTrack Elite Vostro 3700s,. What are their configurations? Let's see...

Vostro 3700s,

• Intel® CoreTM i5-430M (2.26GHz base, up to 2.53GHz, 2C/4T, 3MB/L3)
• 3GB DDR3 Shared Dual Channel at 1066MHZ, 2 DIMM
• 320GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
• 1600 x 900 LED display

Total price, $713.00. While lower cost, it is slower, has less RAM, lower resolution display, and a smaller HDD.

How about the FastTrack Elite Vostro 3700s

• Intel® CoreTM i3-330M (2.13GHz, Dual Core/4 Threads, 3MB L3 Cache).
• 4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3 at 1066MHZ, 2 DIMM
• 500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
• 1600 x 900 LED display

Total price, $994.00. As with the above Dell this one is cheaper but does not meet the Mac's specs. You want a faster CPU and higher resolution display you'll have to get something else.

How about an HP...

G72t series

• Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-540M Dual Core processor (2.53GHz, 3MB L2 Cache) with Turbo Boost up to 3.06GHz
• FREE Upgrade to 4GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
• 640GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
• 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon(TM) HD 5430 Graphics with 5-in-1 integrated Digital Media Reader and HDMI
• 17.3" diagonal HD+ High-Definition HP LED BrightView Widescreen Display (1600 x 900)

Total price, $1,333.98. The CPU is slower and display resolution lower but the HDD is bigger.

And the dv7tse series

• Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-540M Dual Core processor (2.53GHz, 3MB L3 Cache) with Turbo Boost up to 3.06GHz
• 4GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
• FREE Upgrade to 500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
• 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon(TM) HD 5650 switchable graphics
• 17.3" diagonal HD+ High-Definition HP LED BrightView Widescreen Display (1600 x 900)

Total price, $1,333.98. Again though lower priced, it does not meet the Mac's specs.

The OS itself, doesn't matter much because installing an Apple OS on a non-Apple computer is a dangerous thing, compatibility and stability die instantly.

The OS does matter. After years and

alright, you are absolutely retarded, I destyoed all of these arguments in another part of this threat against another Mac head. I provided direct links to identical computers from Apple.com and Dell.com, that explicitly show apple to have a pretty constant extra 50% added to their price, for the entire computer.

No, you are absolutely retarded. I did the exact same thing as you did showing Macs were comparable in prices. However when I did it I not only compared Macs to Dells, but to Alienware PCs, HPs, and others. I posted my results several tymes on slashdot. Ballmer Scorns Apple As a $500 Logo is one place, specifically in this post. That's from more than a year ago. How about now? Let's see...

MacBook Pro 17-inch

• 2.66GHz Intel Core i7
• 4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2X2GB
• 500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm
• 1920x1200 pixel LED-backlit display

Total price: $2,549.00

Now for a Dell...
The only 17+ inch Dell laptops I see are two, the Vostro 3700s, and FastTrack Elite Vostro 3700s,. What are their configurations? Let's see...

Vostro 3700s,

• Intel® CoreTM i5-430M (2.26GHz base, up to 2.53GHz, 2C/4T, 3MB/L3)
• 3GB DDR3 Shared Dual Channel at 1066MHZ, 2 DIMM
• 320GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
• 1600 x 900 LED display

Total price, $713.00. While lower cost, it is slower, has less RAM, lower resolution display, and a smaller HDD.

How about the FastTrack Elite Vostro 3700s

• Intel® CoreTM i3-330M (2.13GHz, Dual Core/4 Threads, 3MB L3 Cache).
• 4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3 at 1066MHZ, 2 DIMM
• 500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
• 1600 x 900 LED display

Total price, $994.00. As with the above Dell this one is cheaper but does not meet the Mac's specs. You want a faster CPU and higher resolution display you'll have to get something else.

How about an HP...

G72t series

• Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-540M Dual Core processor (2.53GHz, 3MB L2 Cache) with Turbo Boost up to 3.06GHz
• FREE Upgrade to 4GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
• 640GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
• 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon(TM) HD 5430 Graphics with 5-in-1 integrated Digital Media Reader and HDMI
• 17.3" diagonal HD+ High-Definition HP LED BrightView Widescreen Display (1600 x 900)

Total price, $1,333.98. The CPU is slower and display resolution lower but the HDD is bigger.

And the dv7tse series

• Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-540M Dual Core processor (2.53GHz, 3MB L3 Cache) with Turbo Boost up to 3.06GHz
• 4GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
• FREE Upgrade to 500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
• 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon(TM) HD 5650 switchable graphics
• 17.3" diagonal HD+ High-Definition HP LED BrightView Widescreen Display (1600 x 900)

Total price, $1,333.98. Again though lower priced, it does not meet the Mac's specs.

The OS itself, doesn't matter much because installing an Apple OS on a non-Apple computer is a dangerous thing, compatibility and stability die instantly.

The OS does matter. After years and

http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/contact_us.html I just let them know what I thought, perhaps you should too.

If anyone at HP is reading this, make the drivers fucking work. That’s all I’m asking for.

From the HP color laserjet with its shitty colour that more often than not looked washed out or oversaturated with some odd hue, its 5-minute-long warm up cycle, the inexplicable your-print-job-got-borked please-cycle-the-power error code that the HP site itself could only throw out wild guesses for eliminating (copy and paste entire document into new blank document, re-print... try moving one of the images ever so slightly up, down, left or right... if you are printing from one application try printing from a different application... yeah, those were real suggestions; they’re fucking clueless)...

Or the HP laserjet with faulty firmware which requires the driver to sends it a firmware update every time the computer is booted, which it stupidly does by adding a job to the print queue with the result that if there was already a print job in the print queue when the computer was booted (say, because you rebooted because the fucking thing was frozen when you tried to print, but didn’t delete the job you’d just printed), the printer will freeze up completely (again)... and half the time it seemed like going to hibernation froze the printer up as well, or was it sleep mode that screwed it up... and apparently getting it to work on Ubuntu is even more fun...

HP drivers suck.

That would explain why hp ink is more expensive then human BLOOD.
HP Ink #45: http://www.shopping.hp.com/product/C6650FN%2523140?landing=supplies&category=&family_name= $63.99/84mL which equals $0.76/mL
Blood: Apparently Red Cross classifies ~500mL of blood as being worth $200, so that comes out to $0.40.

I have known about ink refilling for over 10 or 11-years ever since my friend introduce me to his syringe and his tiny Epson ink cartridges. Him and his father would go out of their way to buy ink in bulk from specialty printing stores before ink refilling was even known to be possible by common people. He showed me how it was and as long as you get the knack for it and hit the syringe in the right spot on the cartridge this becomes a routine and clean situation. He later experimented with flexible plastic pipes going directly to his cartridges and large ink tanks on top. I thought it was pretty geeky and cool watching them printing every little picture they could.

I personally am a digital guy and I never had a need for printing. I lived without a printer for almost 5-years because if I ever needed anything printed I would just do it at work or at worst a friend's house every 6-months or so. Then one day a few years back I had enough money and wanted to buy a printer with specific features, an inkjet for occasional color prints, and network connectivity so that multiple computers in my house could print without having to have the main computer on all the time, large ink cartridges for lower ink price and more volume, and with duplex printing so that I could save paper when I do need to print something like tax forms, movie ticket passes, etc. I look around for two years and couldn't find any model that would quality so I stopped my search until one year I came across this printer.

HP DeskJet 6127 Color Inkjet Printer (C8959B) - Network, Duplex, Large Cartriges

HP 78 Inkjet Print Cartridges - (C6578DN) $39.99 (~$18 on eBay), XL (C6578AN) $60.99 (~$20 on eBay)
HP 45 Inkjet Print Cartridges - (51645A) $35.99 (~$16 on eBay), Double (C6650FN) $63.99 (~$24 on eBay)

Since I do not print very much at all, maybe 1-page every 2-weeks when I go to the movies, a 4x6 picture here and there, and some forms every few months I don't use very much ink at all. I also buy the HP 78XL size tri-color cartridges on eBay for ~$20 and HP 45 black for ~$16 from photo stores that seems to sell them at a loss and I get them for a third of the retail HP price.

Ink Price Collusion

I still think that $20 that price is fair for a large cartridge with XL capacity and $15 is a reasonable price to pay for a large size black cartridge. I believe that there is a lot of technology that goes into producing a uniform and consistent liquid that is color matched against industry color standards with UV treated dye type inks to retain the printed image for a long period of time. However, the retail prices that HP charges for ink are astronomical and their chipped cartridges with forced expiration dates just show the company's dishonesty when it comes to selling this refillable product to force the consumer to keep on paying and paying whether they use up all the ink or not. Since they do produce high-quality dye based inks they could easily replace those expiration date chips with a simple note of "please shake vigorously after this date and wipe printer head with a moist tissue to remove any hardened ink" on the cartridge to get it working again. Other manufacturers like Lexmark have also followed suit and I do believe that there is collusion in the printing ink market but the government hasn't stepped in to resolve the issue because none of the small law suits throughout the years have showed enough evidence to really make this stick to these companies.

Forced Obsolescence Through No Driver Updates

Another issue is the planned obsolescence of printers through lack of drive updates for new operating systems that HP has taken up as a company goal

I have known about ink refilling for over 10 or 11-years ever since my friend introduce me to his syringe and his tiny Epson ink cartridges. Him and his father would go out of their way to buy ink in bulk from specialty printing stores before ink refilling was even known to be possible by common people. He showed me how it was and as long as you get the knack for it and hit the syringe in the right spot on the cartridge this becomes a routine and clean situation. He later experimented with flexible plastic pipes going directly to his cartridges and large ink tanks on top. I thought it was pretty geeky and cool watching them printing every little picture they could.

I personally am a digital guy and I never had a need for printing. I lived without a printer for almost 5-years because if I ever needed anything printed I would just do it at work or at worst a friend's house every 6-months or so. Then one day a few years back I had enough money and wanted to buy a printer with specific features, an inkjet for occasional color prints, and network connectivity so that multiple computers in my house could print without having to have the main computer on all the time, large ink cartridges for lower ink price and more volume, and with duplex printing so that I could save paper when I do need to print something like tax forms, movie ticket passes, etc. I look around for two years and couldn't find any model that would quality so I stopped my search until one year I came across this printer.

HP DeskJet 6127 Color Inkjet Printer (C8959B) - Network, Duplex, Large Cartriges

HP 78 Inkjet Print Cartridges - (C6578DN) $39.99 (~$18 on eBay), XL (C6578AN) $60.99 (~$20 on eBay)
HP 45 Inkjet Print Cartridges - (51645A) $35.99 (~$16 on eBay), Double (C6650FN) $63.99 (~$24 on eBay)

Since I do not print very much at all, maybe 1-page every 2-weeks when I go to the movies, a 4x6 picture here and there, and some forms every few months I don't use very much ink at all. I also buy the HP 78XL size tri-color cartridges on eBay for ~$20 and HP 45 black for ~$16 from photo stores that seems to sell them at a loss and I get them for a third of the retail HP price.

Ink Price Collusion

I still think that $20 that price is fair for a large cartridge with XL capacity and $15 is a reasonable price to pay for a large size black cartridge. I believe that there is a lot of technology that goes into producing a uniform and consistent liquid that is color matched against industry color standards with UV treated dye type inks to retain the printed image for a long period of time. However, the retail prices that HP charges for ink are astronomical and their chipped cartridges with forced expiration dates just show the company's dishonesty when it comes to selling this refillable product to force the consumer to keep on paying and paying whether they use up all the ink or not. Since they do produce high-quality dye based inks they could easily replace those expiration date chips with a simple note of "please shake vigorously after this date and wipe printer head with a moist tissue to remove any hardened ink" on the cartridge to get it working again. Other manufacturers like Lexmark have also followed suit and I do believe that there is collusion in the printing ink market but the government hasn't stepped in to resolve the issue because none of the small law suits throughout the years have showed enough evidence to really make this stick to these companies.

Forced Obsolescence Through No Driver Updates

Another issue is the planned obsolescence of printers through lack of drive updates for new operating systems that HP has taken up as a company goal

I have known about ink refilling for over 10 or 11-years ever since my friend introduce me to his syringe and his tiny Epson ink cartridges. Him and his father would go out of their way to buy ink in bulk from specialty printing stores before ink refilling was even known to be possible by common people. He showed me how it was and as long as you get the knack for it and hit the syringe in the right spot on the cartridge this becomes a routine and clean situation. He later experimented with flexible plastic pipes going directly to his cartridges and large ink tanks on top. I thought it was pretty geeky and cool watching them printing every little picture they could.

I personally am a digital guy and I never had a need for printing. I lived without a printer for almost 5-years because if I ever needed anything printed I would just do it at work or at worst a friend's house every 6-months or so. Then one day a few years back I had enough money and wanted to buy a printer with specific features, an inkjet for occasional color prints, and network connectivity so that multiple computers in my house could print without having to have the main computer on all the time, large ink cartridges for lower ink price and more volume, and with duplex printing so that I could save paper when I do need to print something like tax forms, movie ticket passes, etc. I look around for two years and couldn't find any model that would quality so I stopped my search until one year I came across this printer.

HP DeskJet 6127 Color Inkjet Printer (C8959B) - Network, Duplex, Large Cartriges

HP 78 Inkjet Print Cartridges - (C6578DN) $39.99 (~$18 on eBay), XL (C6578AN) $60.99 (~$20 on eBay)
HP 45 Inkjet Print Cartridges - (51645A) $35.99 (~$16 on eBay), Double (C6650FN) $63.99 (~$24 on eBay)

Since I do not print very much at all, maybe 1-page every 2-weeks when I go to the movies, a 4x6 picture here and there, and some forms every few months I don't use very much ink at all. I also buy the HP 78XL size tri-color cartridges on eBay for ~$20 and HP 45 black for ~$16 from photo stores that seems to sell them at a loss and I get them for a third of the retail HP price.

Ink Price Collusion

I still think that $20 that price is fair for a large cartridge with XL capacity and $15 is a reasonable price to pay for a large size black cartridge. I believe that there is a lot of technology that goes into producing a uniform and consistent liquid that is color matched against industry color standards with UV treated dye type inks to retain the printed image for a long period of time. However, the retail prices that HP charges for ink are astronomical and their chipped cartridges with forced expiration dates just show the company's dishonesty when it comes to selling this refillable product to force the consumer to keep on paying and paying whether they use up all the ink or not. Since they do produce high-quality dye based inks they could easily replace those expiration date chips with a simple note of "please shake vigorously after this date and wipe printer head with a moist tissue to remove any hardened ink" on the cartridge to get it working again. Other manufacturers like Lexmark have also followed suit and I do believe that there is collusion in the printing ink market but the government hasn't stepped in to resolve the issue because none of the small law suits throughout the years have showed enough evidence to really make this stick to these companies.

Forced Obsolescence Through No Driver Updates

Another issue is the planned obsolescence of printers through lack of drive updates for new operating systems that HP has taken up as a company goal

As you can see, every single company is making less money than Apple, except for HP. And I'll bet you that when you look up HP's annual financial reports, it will show they're not making that money in the PC-market.

Forgot the topic of conversation, did we? Here, let me remind you:

Jobs is going to loose the smart phone wars just like he lost the PC wars.

Last time I checked, Apple has both larger revenues and larger profits than any other manufacterer of consumer desktop and laptop computers on the market. I'd be happy to "lose" like that too.

The numbers you quoted are for all sales across all departments. And you apparently realize that with your comment on HP.

Sorry, but you still haven't shown Apple's numbers for their "computer desktop and laptop computers" business. You'd be hard pressed to, seeing as how Apple doesn't release those numbers, only how many units they sold and their total revenue / profits.

I'll still go through some of the numbers you listed, though.

According to HP, during fiscal Q2 2010, it made $10 billion (of their company-wide $30.8 billion) in revenues in its Personal Systems Group (i.e. Desktop/Laptop PCs) with a $465 million operating profit.

According to Apple, during fiscal Q2 2010, they made $13.5 billion in revenues (across the entire company) with a $3.07 billion profit. Did I mention this is across the entire company yet?

Having said that, Apple does have more details in their (PDF) 2009 10-K (Amended) form. According to it, across all of 2009, their total revenue on Macs was $13.9 billion. Which would be an average of $3.5 billion per quarter. However, I don't see where in this document they say how much the Mac division made in profit. Instead, they have the average price of Macs sold (which incidentally is $1,333; down 10% from 2008's $1,478). Side Note: These numbers includes their XServe server line.

According to Dell, during fiscal Q1 2010, their Consumer and Small Business groups made a combined total of $6.7 billion in revenues, with an "operating income" of 330 million (Dell doesn't list profit per department). This is not counting their Large Enterprise or Public (health care?) divisions.
       

Irix is dead (literally EOL 4 years ago...).
FreeBSD has flash support.
Solaris has flash support.
64bit Linux has flash support.


Even HP won't try to sell you HPUX for anything but servers at this point, but if you really want it, you can get it. You're going to have to try harder than that.

HP has a _very_ long history of creating tablets --- datingway back to, e.g., the HP OmniGo 100 which ran GEOS and had Graffiti:

http://www.thocp.net/hardware/hp_omnigo100.htm

And they purchased Compaq whose TC1000 hybrid Slate design has yet to be equalled:

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11429_na/11429_na.HTML

Someone has to take over tablet leadership now that Fujitsu has dropped slates....

William

For You, Blue.

Polaris:

http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/mmsl/projects/adv/polaris.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

Virus Safe Computing:

http://www.hpl.hp.com/news/2005/apr-jun/virussafe.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

Download:
Disclaimers:
Polaris uses a kernel driver to work around a bug that Microsoft claims is not security related. We believe this kernel driver is the reason Polaris does not work with Windows Vista. If you run without it, you are vulnerable to an attacker who mounts a Shatter attack after launching a process via the COM server. However, you're probably safe until Polaris becomes widely used.

This version is a first prototype, which means there are a number of things we didn't do and a number of bugs we didn't fix. For example, this version does not support linked files. However, almost 100 people have used Polaris, some of them for several years, and have reported few problems. A few have them have reported that Polaris saved them from some nasty virues.

Polaris is NOT supported by HP. Send all questions to:

alan.karp at hp.com.

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Alan_Karp/polaris/index.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

For You, Blue.

Polaris:

http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/mmsl/projects/adv/polaris.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

Virus Safe Computing:

http://www.hpl.hp.com/news/2005/apr-jun/virussafe.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

Download:
Disclaimers:
Polaris uses a kernel driver to work around a bug that Microsoft claims is not security related. We believe this kernel driver is the reason Polaris does not work with Windows Vista. If you run without it, you are vulnerable to an attacker who mounts a Shatter attack after launching a process via the COM server. However, you're probably safe until Polaris becomes widely used.

This version is a first prototype, which means there are a number of things we didn't do and a number of bugs we didn't fix. For example, this version does not support linked files. However, almost 100 people have used Polaris, some of them for several years, and have reported few problems. A few have them have reported that Polaris saved them from some nasty virues.

Polaris is NOT supported by HP. Send all questions to:

alan.karp at hp.com.

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Alan_Karp/polaris/index.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

For You, Blue.

Polaris:

http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/mmsl/projects/adv/polaris.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

Virus Safe Computing:

http://www.hpl.hp.com/news/2005/apr-jun/virussafe.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

Download:
Disclaimers:
Polaris uses a kernel driver to work around a bug that Microsoft claims is not security related. We believe this kernel driver is the reason Polaris does not work with Windows Vista. If you run without it, you are vulnerable to an attacker who mounts a Shatter attack after launching a process via the COM server. However, you're probably safe until Polaris becomes widely used.

This version is a first prototype, which means there are a number of things we didn't do and a number of bugs we didn't fix. For example, this version does not support linked files. However, almost 100 people have used Polaris, some of them for several years, and have reported few problems. A few have them have reported that Polaris saved them from some nasty virues.

Polaris is NOT supported by HP. Send all questions to:

alan.karp at hp.com.

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Alan_Karp/polaris/index.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

it's also smaller in the 768 pixel direction

But still has 768 pixels! What's your point? I see that you failed to mention that it is LARGER in the other direction! I'm sorry, but in general, a 10.1 inch screen is going to be larger than a 9.7 inch screen. The HP's screen is larger, has more ppi, and as a result, also has a higher resolution. Yes, you got me on the IPS display, but that's just one factor.

It's only got a GB of memory

As opposed to the iPad's 256MB? I'm sorry, 256 is bigger than 1 does not work in this case. 1 GB is more than 256MB and as far as non-volatile memory, 160GB is much more than 16GB (though, you have me on the flash vs HDD argument), and you can upgrade to 250 GB while STILL keeping it under the iPad price point.

and the keyboard would be pretty small to type on.

The largest keyboard you could fit on an iPad is 7.76 inches long. The keyboard on the HP is about 10 inches or at the very least, 9.5 inches. So it seems you think the keyboard on the iPad would be way too small to type on as well. Again, what's your point?

I am also dubious of the HP battery claims.

Be dubious all you want. I can just as easily say that I am dubious about Apple's battery claims. But I have one of these netbooks and they are pretty accurate from my own experience. I get about 8.5-9 hours of normal use with the 6-cell which is pretty close to their 9.5 hour posted value, and not too far off from apple's posted 10 hours. Put your fanboy hat away, and look at the facts. Apple products are overpriced because you are paying for the name and the reputation that comes with it. I'm not saying Apple products are crap, I just don't yet see the iPad as revolutionary. I'll wait til they enhance features or drop the price.

That "worst" version is a lot more usable than any netbook near the same price. Higher resolution and a better quality screen, for example.

Really? 155 ppi, $330 as opposed to the iPad's 132 ppi, $500. With the $170 left over, you could even get some pretty nice upgrades.

What do you mean "resurrect"? AFAIK they never stopped using it.

The don't need to resurrect it. It is already alive.
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF04a/215348-215348-64929-314903-3352590.html

I'd love to do remote desktop viewing for distributed, Linux-based, artistic productions. For HP machines their proprietary Remote Graphics Software is very nice, and fills the bill perfectly, but it does require you to use HP boxes (at least for the server, if not necessarily the viewer). Are there any other open-source or widely-available proprietary desktop sharing systems for Linux?

Yes. There's freenx server for the Linux box and the cross-platform no-machine client for the viewer. It works over SSH by default. IMHO it works much better than any of the VNCs.

They could, but they're announcing very publicly that they won't.

"Palm's innovative operating system provides an ideal platform to expand HP's mobility strategy and create a unique HP experience spanning multiple mobile connected devices."

I would love nothing more than to see HP return to its old greatness and produce great products. I love my iPhone and plan to get an iPad but it is, believe it or not, physically possible for other companies to do good things too.

I'd love to do remote desktop viewing for distributed, Linux-based, artistic productions. For HP machines their proprietary Remote Graphics Software is very nice, and fills the bill perfectly, but it does require you to use HP boxes (at least for the server, if not necessarily the viewer). Are there any other open-source or widely-available proprietary desktop sharing systems for Linux?

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantstorage/drives-enclosures/usb-floppy-drive-key/index.html
This device loads storage controller drivers on to fresh installs of windows 5.x. It does it through emulating a usb floppy drive.

It's not that hard, but you won't find them on a $600 laptop.

Seems like someone missed the annual Standards of Business Conduct training.

From page 12...

We do not bribe
> Do not offer or provide bribes or kickbacks to win
business or to influence a business decision--
anywhere on anything.
> Use agents and distributors only after they have
passed our due diligence process to ensure that our
commissions or fee arrangements will not be used as
bribes on our behalf.

i went through most of my college years using a desktop and an HP Jornada 820

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnfacts/museum/personalsystems/0038/0038threeqtr.html

Ran win CE and had a PCMCIA slot and i used a Cisco Aironet card with it - in fact still have it on a shelf here.

it had the basic win CE office i could check e-mail it had craptastic version of IE (couldn't do much but i could do some things) it also had word processing and i could load an IRC client on it.

it had a very good 12-14h USABLE battery life so i could take notes all day (saved to the CF slot) and then do my home work on my desktop if i felt like..

i loved it - got into a wreck and the screen got damaged so i hunted down and bought another one - by that time HP had discontinued them. it was a precursor to the Netbook line

Science incubators and technology districts are usually the buzzwords evocated by politicians and real-estate investors. Hewlett and Packard years ago demonstrated that, to start a succesful company, everything you need are a bright idea and a garage. I still have to meet a politicians with 1/1000 of the genius of these guys.

Science incubators and technology districts are usually the buzzwords evocated by politicians and real-estate investors. Hewlett and Packard years ago demonstrated that, to start a succesful company, everything you need are a bright idea and a garage. I still have to meet a politicians with 1/1000 of the genius of these guys.

Although I endorse this approach for people with big storage needs, space and power budgets, I had in mind an application that would that would RAID 45 of them for an obscenely high IOPS + bandwidth FC node for media content storage for video work. The kind of thing James Cameron would use for shipping his in-progress movies on. I might actually go with something else, like this instead since it supports up to 70 TB in 5U and now is certified to work with normal SAS controllers instead of a proprietary switch.

Naturally at five racks instead of 5U your suggestion lacks a certain perfomance density for this application - though admittedly you do have the advantage in the $/TB area, that's not always the only consideration.

Over time SSD will become cheaper than spinning disc, and as performant as RAM. That will change many of the market dynamics and may cause some unpleasantness.

A few people were talking about trying to find 'equivalent' PCs and mentioning things like the Dell Precision Mobile Workstation, which isn't really at all the same (they're huge). This is the nearest 'wannabe Macbook' that I found (and ordered):

HP Envy 15

It's definitely aimed squarely at the MBP, and while the build quality is not as good as Apple's, I have to admit that it's come a very long way since the last time I looked in on HP's notebooks. They're also doing better with service options - they offer in-home service now just like Dell does (used to be mail-in).

They routinely have $200, $300, or even (until quite recently) $450 off coupons, so I wouldn't advise buying one at full price. This is what I ended up with:

5.15 lbs @ 1.1" thick (more with the slice battery attached)
i5-540 CPU @ up to 3.06 GHz
4 GB DDR3-1066 RAM
320 GB Intel G2 SSD (2x 160 GB)
ATI 5830 GPU w/1GB VRAM
15.6" 1920x1080 BrightView Glossy display (matte available for $25 less)
Wireless-N + Bluetooth
6-cell Li-Ion battery + 9-cell 'thin-fit Slice' battery

Total: $1,849.99, after a $450 off coupon. Even without that, though, an equivalent-spec'd MBP is over $2,700, and that's with a significantly worse GPU. But that buys you the Apple logo and better historical reliability - HP is improving but Apple is certainly pretty awesome in that respect.

For me, though, they're not $900 more awesome.

uh, how about no? I'd rather read this on a $450-$800 laptop. Something I can install Windows/Linux/OSX/whatever I want on, run the games I like on, rip movies on, etc, etc. The last thing I want is a giant iPod. I'd rather buy something like the Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Hybrid, but here s a non-apple iPad options out there:

• IBM IdeaPad U1 Hybrid
• ASUS Eee Tablet
• MSI's $500 tablet
• HP Slate (roughly $550 as a guess and SUPPORTS Flash)
  • More info on Slate

There are models that meet MIL-STD-810. Have you seen any of these tried in your environment? Some of them have already been mentioned such as the Panasonic Toughbooks and HP Elitebooks.

At half the price and half the weight this would be kick-ass.

Light, cheap or thin: pick any one. You can spend 2x-3x as much as I paid and get a Lenovo or Fujitsu that is close to your weight requirements. Too rich for my blood.

I do not see anything about Wacom active digitizer, without which this thing is useless for drawing or taking notes. The word stylus is not even on the linked
page.

Haven't you heard? After Iphone fetish gadget sites like engadget and gizmodo and all the Apple Polishers have gone gaga for multitouch, it's become fashionable for clueless newbies to touch to get their hate on for the humble-but-useful stylus. Stylii are now basically marketing poison.

However, I can tell you mie came with a stylus and if you look at the HP sales page, there are replacement stylii for sale... Google: tm2 wacom. For more confirmation, look at the drivers on this page - Wacom confirmed there and via PC Magic and lspci. There's even an extensive new bug/patch workup for the Wacom on Lucid.

(Yes, I know it's still technically possible to get a virus. But the chances are extremely slim, given the way I use my computer.)

The chances are extremely slim if you only consider the infection vectors that you know about. I ran my system without AV very successfully for a good while, but over time new vectors cropped up that I was unprotected against. I thought to myself, "This has worked well for a long time," but stupidly equated that with, "This will continue to work well." In fact, the correct conclusion should have been, "It probably can't last much longer."

Security researcher Rafal Los tells this story, which appeared on Slashdot not long ago. Since you won't visit unknown sites, I'll excerpt the key points:

"They volunteered a URL and I started by opening up the page... I tried a few permutations of the common SQL Injection attack [and found that] I wasn't the first to hack at it... someone had not only pillaged their database and broken it - but had also injected it to distribute malware. Malware you say? Yessir... analysis revealed it was a dropper script for the Zeus-bot. So... in 45 minutes the room had gone from non-believers to realizing they not only had a massive SQL Injection problem - but had also been rooted and were now distributing the Zeus bot from one of their main websites."

The author includes some slightly-anonymized screenshots that indicate this is no "seedy" website but the professionally-developed SQL-backed main page of a large restaurant chain. I see no reason to think that Ars or xkcd would be any less vulnerable.

Avoiding the unsafe is easy if the safe stays safe, but it doesn't. Fifteen years ago, users would consult me in a panic upon receiving prank warnings of destructive email viruses. I assured them that email viruses are impossible, because email is not executable. And this was, for a time, true.

Well, let’s see.

For $999, I can get a MacBook with:
- 2.26 GHz dual-core Intel processor
- 13.3” 1280x800 display
- 250 GB 5400 RPM hard drive
- 2 GB of RAM
- NVIDIA GeForce 9400M with 256MB shared memory
- 2 USB ports, gigabit ethernet, mini DisplayPort

Or an HP laptop with:
- 2.4 GHz dual-core AMD processor
- 17.3” 1600x900 display
- 500 GB 7200 RPM hard drive
- 4 GB of RAM
- ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4530 with 512MB dedicated memory
- 4 USB ports, gigabit ethernet, HDMI, VGA, 5-in-1 card reader, eSATA, 56k modem, firewire

(Both of the laptops write DVDs at 8x, have built-in webcams and microphones, similar wireless capabilities)

Actually, that’s not a fair comparison, because my Windows laptop only cost $849.99. Oh, and did I mention $150 in mail-in rebates?

You would have to keep around last 3 snapshots just to be safe from a failed/bad update.

Yes you would. Sorry I left that out.

Using VMs means you can start with a bare windows install fully updated, and save a copy, or "snapshot" of that. Then you can add security layers on top and save a snapshop of that "snap that". A few at a time you can add your critical apps and make snaps until you have a lot of snapshot VMs that take a lot of space - but these days space is cheap. You can store 200 10GB Windows images on a 2TB external drive, and that's not a large external storage device today. Storing your basic images on an external drive also keeps your images safe from really clever malware that might evolve to corrupt even inactive OS VM images.

For the advanced class, you can mount a VM of OpenFiler with a reasonable disk pool, mount that iSCSI volume on your VM and install Windows onto it. Then you can take thin differential snapshots. If OpenFiler won't do what you need then HP's free Virtual SAN Appliance will, or there are other options. Me, I just reinstall the OS in a VM when I have to rebuild because it's a rare thing and dealing with that once a year or so is easier than setting up infrastructure that may change. But one day older versions of Windows will no longer install, so that bare image will have to do.

The HP StorageWorks P2000 G3 disk arrays have only USB and TCP/IP management. For most operating systems that support USB serial devices you can just plug it in and it'll be recognized. For Windows you have to download and install an INF file before Windows will see it.

From page 13 of the summary report:

[quote]During most of our audits, suppliers stated that Apple was the only company that had ever audited their facility for supplier responsibility.[/quote]

IOW, other companies don't give a shit about abusive labor practices from their suppliers.

Two things.

First, they stated that during most of the audits the supplier told them they hadn't been audited. Most is not defined here: it may have been 50.1%, with the other 49.9% of suppliers having never been audited by anyone else because they don't supply anyone else. On top of that, if the supplier had been audited by another company and found to be in breach of their standards, are they likely to tell Apple that for fear of Apple getting concerned?

Second, despite what that report implies Apple aren't the only company to do this:

"In 2008, HP conducted 129 supplier site audits...Ninety-nine of our 2008 audits were follow-up audits to measure progress in reducing nonconformances found during initial reviews...To date, we have assessed and audited (for high-risk sites) suppliers representing over 95 percent of our product materials and manufacturing spend."

"Our priorities include protecting workers’ rights, dignity and respect, raising health and safety standards, minimizing the environmental impact of producing and distributing our products, and upholding the highest standards of business ethics."

  (Taken from here and here.)

I haven't even checked if any other company does it, so who knows who else does. Bear in mind that the Apple report was written by Apple. They're not going to kick themselves in the nuts if they can help it.

From page 13 of the summary report:

[quote]During most of our audits, suppliers stated that Apple was the only company that had ever audited their facility for supplier responsibility.[/quote]

IOW, other companies don't give a shit about abusive labor practices from their suppliers.

Two things.

First, they stated that during most of the audits the supplier told them they hadn't been audited. Most is not defined here: it may have been 50.1%, with the other 49.9% of suppliers having never been audited by anyone else because they don't supply anyone else. On top of that, if the supplier had been audited by another company and found to be in breach of their standards, are they likely to tell Apple that for fear of Apple getting concerned?

Second, despite what that report implies Apple aren't the only company to do this:

"In 2008, HP conducted 129 supplier site audits...Ninety-nine of our 2008 audits were follow-up audits to measure progress in reducing nonconformances found during initial reviews...To date, we have assessed and audited (for high-risk sites) suppliers representing over 95 percent of our product materials and manufacturing spend."

"Our priorities include protecting workers’ rights, dignity and respect, raising health and safety standards, minimizing the environmental impact of producing and distributing our products, and upholding the highest standards of business ethics."

  (Taken from here and here.)

I haven't even checked if any other company does it, so who knows who else does. Bear in mind that the Apple report was written by Apple. They're not going to kick themselves in the nuts if they can help it.

My point was not that the storage really is that cheap - of course it costs four times what I said if you want geographically diverse replication and that's how I would do it. If you want fiber channel with proactive support, go ahead and multiply the cost 40x or more. And yes, there's no such thing as an infinite resource. That's why I said effectively unlimited, as in it doesn't matter that there's not an shoreless sea of pasta salad behind the "all you can eat" claims at the buffet - if there's more than I can or will eat, we're good.

But the many who use little subsidize the few who use much, and your storage needs are very different from those of a shared hosting provider. I don't have much insight into BlueHost's operations, but they claim 1.9 million hosted domains and over 525,000 paying customers. Look closer at those numbers and you'll see that they have less than 1000 servers, and so they're running over 2,000 domains per server. It's a good bet that the vast majority of those customers aren't trying to store terabytes of data or open the new ebay on a $10/month hosting plan, so the many pay for the few because at BlueHost there's only one plan and only one price. They're not going to try and ding me with unexpected charges because my bandwidth or storage went over my limit one month, because there's not any limit to go over. For some people like me and the people in the article who posed the question saying they have little money, that's comforting. Bluehost claims to only have 20Gbps of aggregate bandwidth to the Internet - I have individual servers with more bandwidth to the intranet than that and you probably do too - and if anything that's where their bottleneck is. But my hosted sites come up just fine, so I don't worry about it.

When you operate at that scale, you get economies of that scale. You don't buy your storage from NetApp, HP, EMC or Hitachi. You don't pay $3K/TB for bare 450GB FC drives and another $3K for the software licensing and hardware and support to run it. You build it yourself from stuff like BackBlaze does it, out of commodity hardware that delivers the storage and IOPs through systems engineering, and redundancy through software. You self-warranty by buying hot and cold spares. You buy 24/7/365 15 second response support by hiring rotating shifts of people whose livelihood depends on showing up at work on time. You step up and be responsible for your own systems engineering when you get that big and if you blow it you're toast, so you take good care. You use open-source technologies like openfiler (has those snapshots you like) and Lustre. And for God's sake you're not doing anything so retro as trying to spool all that stuff to tape. Really: Tape? Still? Google and Amazon and others do it in analogous ways.

These guys know that commercial SANs are not made from magical parts - they're servers and drives and software, crafted with engineering that can be bested cheaply and reliably if you know what you're doing. If you can't meet the engineering and service requirements, you're better off buying the SAN. Even if you can meet the requirements, for most people the SAN is a better deal because their needs don't support the time and effort and so roll-your-own solutions, though cheaper up front, offer poor net ROI over the equipment lifecycle. I have heard it said that the SAN also gives you a throat to choke when things go horribly wrong, but I know guys who think like that and I don't like them and I don't respect them.

Of course shared hosting and BlueHost isn't for everybody, nor is roll-your-own servers, storage and networking. Some h

incidentally what other computer has a humidity limit?

Just about any? Want examples? http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins700m/en/OM/G74722LRs.pdf Relative humidity (maximum): Operating 10% to 90% (noncondensing) Storage 5% to 95% (noncondensing). http://docs.hp.com/en/A5191-96018/apbs06.html Operating Humidity 15 to 80% Relative humidity (Non-condensing) at 35oC (95oF) 40 to 60% Relative humidity (Non-condensing) 30% Per hour Relative humidity (Non-condensing) 90% Relative humidity (Non-condensing) at 65oC (149oF)

Note that they keep repeating Non-condensing so everybody gets it.

Most consumer electronics have -10C or -20C as the lower limit when not operating, 0C for operating, and "5% to 95% noncondensing" humidity is normal too. Go to HP's web site for one of its laptops (I just picked the first one on the list):

Temperature Operating 32 to 95 F (0 to 35 C) (not writing optical)
41 to 95 F (5 to 35 C) (writing optical)
Non-operating –4 to 140 F (–20 to 60 C)
Relative Humidity Operating 10% to 90%, non-condensing
Non-operating 5% to 95%, 101.6 F (38.7 C) maximum wet bulb temperature

the batteries are:
Temperature Operating (Charging) 32 to 113 F (0 to 45 C)
Operating (Discharging) 14 to 140 F (–10 to 60 C)
Non-operating –4 to 140 F (–20 to 60 C)

The AC Adapter is much narrower for humidity for some reason:

Environmental Design Operating temperature 32 to 104 F (0 to 40 C)
Non-operating (storage) temperature –4 to 149 F (–20 to 65 C)
Altitude 0 to 10,000 ft (0 to 3,048 m)
Humidity 20% to 80%
Storage Humidity 10% to 90%

Li-ion batteries are particularly prone to damage if the temperature drops below freezing. It's not Apple's fault, it's the nature of the technology itself.

You can get away with using these devices in colder temperatures (I'm in Canada), but they last longer and function better if you keep them in an inside pocket close to your body warmth, and don't leave them exposed in, say, -20C or -30C for long. When I take my laptop to and from work I keep it in a case that is insulated and relatively well sealed. When I get to work I leave it in the case to let it warm up before turning it on so that it warms up slowly and limits the airflow. The last thing you should do is let the fan pump plenty of warm air through a cold unit like that.

It's basic physics and chemistry constraining the "problem" here, and if you understand what happens it isn't that hard to mitigate. Taking a phone call in cold temperatures is not a big deal -- there is some thermal inertia that will keep the temperatures ok for a while, and the heat from operation will heat it up too -- just don't make it a 20 minute call :-)

The people in the article are grumbling about the warranty implications if the condensation trips the liquid sensors. To that I say: if there's enough condensation to trip the liquid sensors, then maybe that's a sign you should be more careful about keeping the unit warmer when outside. -11C for an hour sitting in a box? That's just stupid. Keep it in an inside pocket.

I know with only 30 end users getting the funds to do this can be a challenge....It was for use (local council) until literally every time our HVAC systems would draw extra because of heat or cold, the whole phase would trip out...Thus we would have a mad panic to the DC to shutdown servers manually! Finally got a electrician (big hint here, get one familiar with Datacentres!) who looked at all three phases of power coming into our building. The first thing that we did (after a facepalm of the original setup) was to load balance ALL the power coming in, and moved the Datacentre power to a different phase than the HVAC - a no brainer, but no one before me really had thought of this! The second phase of what we did, was to run our own 3 phases right from the main switchboard into the Datacentre with the main breakers in the Datacentre, then a couple of sub-panels.We now have our Datacentre with a North/South power distribution feeding two Liebert UPS's that in turn, feed PDU's. So if we loose one phase, things will "scream" and email off alerts - but things will stay up. We still (because of the age of our first UPS) need a physical server connected to the UPS via serial, but the newer one has a web card in it. I have a script that if both UPS end up on battery mode, a graceful suspend of the VM's starts, with our exchange and DC's being the last to suspend. We happen to be a Windows shop, with a HP C7000 blade enclosure that is our VMware farm, connected to HP EVA 4100 which the two SAN switches have up to 96 hours of write cache. The other thing that I am looking at on its own small UPS is a MikroTik 411u with a prepaid 3G to give us independent source of SMS's. There is little point of having a SMS server that is going to be shutdown because it is on UPS. The key thing to remember about UPS (as far as I am concerned) - is that they are not a replacement for mains power. The suggestions for a generator are interesting given the fact that you only have 30 end users, the expense, maintenance of them would make them cost prohibitive tive in your environment. But 30 minutes to bring up a DC?

I know with only 30 end users getting the funds to do this can be a challenge....It was for use (local council) until literally every time our HVAC systems would draw extra because of heat or cold, the whole phase would trip out...Thus we would have a mad panic to the DC to shutdown servers manually! Finally got a electrician (big hint here, get one familiar with Datacentres!) who looked at all three phases of power coming into our building. The first thing that we did (after a facepalm of the original setup) was to load balance ALL the power coming in, and moved the Datacentre power to a different phase than the HVAC - a no brainer, but no one before me really had thought of this! The second phase of what we did, was to run our own 3 phases right from the main switchboard into the Datacentre with the main breakers in the Datacentre, then a couple of sub-panels.We now have our Datacentre with a North/South power distribution feeding two Liebert UPS's that in turn, feed PDU's. So if we loose one phase, things will "scream" and email off alerts - but things will stay up. We still (because of the age of our first UPS) need a physical server connected to the UPS via serial, but the newer one has a web card in it. I have a script that if both UPS end up on battery mode, a graceful suspend of the VM's starts, with our exchange and DC's being the last to suspend. We happen to be a Windows shop, with a HP C7000 blade enclosure that is our VMware farm, connected to HP EVA 4100 which the two SAN switches have up to 96 hours of write cache. The other thing that I am looking at on its own small UPS is a MikroTik 411u with a prepaid 3G to give us independent source of SMS's. There is little point of having a SMS server that is going to be shutdown because it is on UPS. The key thing to remember about UPS (as far as I am concerned) - is that they are not a replacement for mains power. The suggestions for a generator are interesting given the fact that you only have 30 end users, the expense, maintenance of them would make them cost prohibitive tive in your environment. But 30 minutes to bring up a DC?

We have had good experiences with the HP R5500 XR. You may require a smaller and cheaper model like the R3000 or R1500 depending on your servers.
These UPS are fully supported by NUT.

I have to second the use of a regular tablet (or convertible notebook ... whatever). I also used one similar to: http://www.shopping.hp.com/series/category/notebooks/tm2t_series/3/computer_store for notetaking during my courses. With Office 2007 / 2010 beta the inking support is actually pretty good if you're looking for handwriting recognitions as well.

If you're not interested in a purely digital approach, I have also used the electronic pen/tablet combos and have been very impressed (plus they are cheap by comparison)

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5712837&findingMethod=rr

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Adesso-CYBERPAD-A4-CyberPad-Digital-Notepad/13259130?sourceid=44444444440210055914

Canon Canonscan LiDE 30 scanner - Win7 Not supported - Ubuntu/OpenSuSE - works perfectly HP Color Laserjet 3600N networked colour laser printer - Win7 Not supported - Ubuntu/OpenSuSE - works perfectly

The Windows driver model is different from Linux in that it is generally up to the hardware manufacturer to provide drivers, as opposed to Linux, where if it is supported the relevant driver is probably included with the kernel. The drivers included with Windows are the result of MS liaising with the relevant companies and negotiating to include certain drivers of theirs in the base Windows installation. I didn't think this was uncommon knowledge? I checked the HP Windows 7 Compatibility List and your printer does appear to be supported under Windows 7. Your scanner doesn't presently in that Canon doesn't have a Windows 7 OS category for drivers yet, but that may change, and I'd suggest trying the Vista drivers in the interim.

NOTES: Fair's fair: the netbook's WiFi Linux driver (both O/S's) will not connect to WEP WiFi APs (WPA works fine).

It's probably doing you a favour considering how rubbish WEP encryption is ;)

All Win7 Home versions have had the ability to connect to domains REMOVED. All previous versions of Windows allowed this. Windows7 Home (all versions) is a DOWNGRADE from Vista/XP in terms of this connectivity.

I'm not sure this is a fair criticism as the Home editions of Windows have never been able to join a domain officially; by definition, they are targeted at home users, where a domain is unlikely to be in use. This was only ever possible by using various hacks and modifications to the OS. The fact that it's no longer possible at all (if this is the case, I haven't read about it) is hardly a reasonable criticism, as MS never said Home editions could join domains nor were they ever intended to do so.

Microsoft should do the right thing and return this 'feature' to the home edition(s) - you can't connect Win7 to an NAS server for basic backups - for example.

Why not? Why do you require domain join capability to connect to a NAS server? Surely there are other means you can use to make the connection? If not, well, the above still applies, you shouldn't be using a Home edition if you require domain functionality.

The default NTFS filesystem that Win7 creates is NOT backward compatible with XP/Vista.

NTFS has traditionally been forward-compatible with new versions of Windows, but not necessarily backwards-compatible. Similar to Linux, if an older revision of a file system is mounted on a system running a newer revision, the file system structure may be updated or modified to bring it up to date with the current version, in the process, making it incompatible with the older version. Mounting read-only is an obvious way to work around this. That being said, it should be backwards compatible with Vista? XP is more unlikely.

Boot times to having network and desktop on the desktop machine: Win7 - 64 seconds, Ubuntu - 32 seconds

Fair enough.

Service Packs traditionally fix bugs in the operating system and add features or improve existing ones, but none of the grievances you list are either of these, with the possible exception of boot time which has in the past been improved in SPs.