Looks like just a training aid - which is cool - but my guess is the additional complexity of the cranks would cause the crankset to lose stiffness and gain weight? But interesting nonetheless.
But another, lower tech and perhaps more fun way to train would be to ride fixed - without the freewheel (and with only one gear ratio) you are forced to work hard and apparently it really smooths out your cadence, which is why racers train on fixies in the winter. (I'm just getting into fixed bikes)
I'm also interested in the ovoid biopace chainrings that change mechanical advantage depending on whether the pedals are vertical or horizontal.
"In the accident, the 20-year-old driver fell asleep while talking on the phone, crossed three lanes of traffic and hit a car driven by a 55-year-old woman, who later died. Authorities lodged what they thought was Michigan's first cellphone-related negligent-homicide charge. Later, they added drug charges, after a medical exam allegedly turned up illegal drugs in the driver's system."
Besides being a bit of an inane statement, that only shows that you need to address all of the sources of negligent driving.
Here in the UK, we have restrictions of the use of cell phones whilst driving. On top of that I'd like to see: - proactive training of people to prevent dangerous habits like tailgating, poor lane discipline etc - better understanding of the effects of narcotics - at the moment, "don't smoke and drive" is a concept off the radar because we have a government who aren't interested in controlling drugs, just banning them (effectively burying their heads in the sand) - more police to enforce laws - we have a 6-man squad to cover the entire Thames Valley, apparently. How the heck are they supposed to enforce a law against the use of cell phones whilst driving, when they are constantly dealing with RTAs?
At least we have plenty of "don't drive tired" signs. But it's not enough.
Nicely put. But also, we're moving toward a world of cheaper laptops, wireless, media centres and consoles that can look almost as pretty as a mainstream PC from the comfort of your sofa. A dedicated PC for gaming will always appeal to a few people but for a lot of people their laptop graphics chip is good enough, or the console is good enough, or the budget games they can buy for their old PC are good enough. Only a few people are motivated enough to buy a new PC for games (err, I am one of those people:) when there are consoles for a fraction of the price that just work (tm). Ask yourself how many people would rather play games on a comfy sofa than a less comfy office chair:)
Anyway, I thought that quad-sli motherboards were for much more specialised applications than just gaming - like people who actually needed lots of displays at once, whoever they are.
6% of sales, not so good - but four-fold growth in 1 year? Could be very interesting by 2010. The model RIAA doesn't like is the fact that people aren't willing to pay to download musci they already have on CD!
Personally I like emusic (www.emusic.com). But more power to iTunes for bringing downloadable music to the masses.
Point one: the blurb claims 66A (70A peak) on 12v, that's a peak of 840 watts. Since most things run off 12v these days, the claimed 1100 W peak is marketing spin.
Point two: the blurb claims 85% efficiency... over what power range? Most of the enthusiast systems that Anandtech has look like they idle at 200W - so let's go crazy and say they peak at 400W. I doubt that any single chip gaming rig would use this PSU efficiently. Looks like it's designed to delivery an awful lot of power to a workstation, not an enthusiast PC.
"Repetitive strain injuries are the nation's most common and costly occupational health problem, affecting hundreds of thousands of American workers and costing more than $20 billion a year in worker's compensation, so employers have long been interested in the connection between the two conditions."
This makes no sense - it implies that employers have been looking for a link between depression/slacking and RSI - so are the costs associated with lost productivity, or remedial medical action and compensation? No surprises that doing repetitive tasks which cause you pain make you depressed... in fact, no surprises that doing repetitive tasks make you depressed.
On the other hand, how applicable is it to other injuries? Having recently been knocked off my bike and suffering a sore hand (but no more, thank god) I went through a phase of feeling distinctly sorry for myself. How much of that was emotional (loss of confidence and unwillingness to get back on the bike) and how much was it physiological?
I could say "in other news, people react negatively to painful stimuli" but that's not the point. A link between emotional well-being and physical well-being, that's interesting.
"Thanks for the info that jocks are fairies, though. One more reason to stay away from them."
Given that you were modded up, you're obviously the good guy in/. eyes, so I'll assume you're not really homophobic but actually a decent chap... your comment was pretty funny up until then.
Your point about KDE vs Gnome is well made... sort of. KDE and Gnome have gotten stronger as a result of competition between each other - but I can't name one feature that's useful to me or anyone I know that's provided in them that isn't in WinXP or OS X. In the cold eyes of commercial software, the fact that KDE has competed with Gnome is not relevent. If I were managing a project that allowed two different teams to work on two competing interfaces and consume double the resources, I would expect to be sacked unless there were very good reasons for retaining both projects. Shareholders notice such things.
"Why continue to bleat on about this issue when you have no idea how you would ever enforce such a rule?"
Err... standards. Any group that wants to be labled as LSB-compliant gets accredited as such. Google for iso-accreditation, and you'll see why companies think it's a big deal. As for "enforcing the rule" - you seem to think that this move heralds the appearance of FacistStateLinux where all development is sanctioned by a single body. No need to be paranoid. The commercial names backing the new standard are probably doing so because it is strategically useful to all of them to back a "standard" linux, because then they can market "standard linux"-compliant stuff with a greater chance of market penetration (and if I were Adobe I woulnd't market a linux-native Photoshop until I were sure of a sound base for the system that wouldn't detract from the image of my product). Commercial linux corps who want in have to prove themselves via LSB standards. Those who don't (niche, hobbyist etc) can give the LSB the finger if they want to.
Finally, I'm "bleating on" about it because it looks like you've completely misunderstood where I'm coming from.
maybe I just don't get the internet, but i never understood the need to be rude to complete strangers - i'll assume you had a rough week and are just lashing out. anyways, i never claimed to be a programmer, i just took up learning linux for a hobby.
competition is good, but competition with other OS also forces people to make a better product, and gain market visibility. if linux remains inhomogenous for desktop users, how can it compete with windows? where is the incentive to market commercial software (games, for goodness' sake!)? there's nothing stopping you having a niche linux for specialist users as well.
i can understand if you think that the only people who should be able to learn linux are venerated programmers who have gone through a thirty year initiation in obscure computer ritual... no, check that, i don't understand that at all. in what way do you benefit by alienating people like myself - the non-programming but enthusiastic "power users" who know enough to advocate linux to their friends and family, and set up a cheap internet box for an impoverished friend with the spare pc sitting in the attic.
on a final note - linux doesn't need to compete with itself to capture best practice and improve. and i don't buy your survival of the fittest malarkey - if that were the way the world worked day to day, all of us geeks would have starved or been beaten over the head for our shoes by the strong, dumb kids before we got a chance to learn the l33t sk1llz that pay our salaries and make us useful to society today.
apologies for typing one-handed, someone knocked me off my bike on my way home. see, i had a bad day too.
Yes, I've heard of make. Here's my problem: if I have to start editing a makefile to point to the right libraries (assuming my distro has the libraries) to get a compilation going, and depending on which distro I use the bits I need aren't all in the same place. Make isn't a standard unless there is a standard way of writing a makefile - and if there is, it isn't transparent to me, based on my experience. I have a lot of trouble learning how to do a complex and esoteric thing when I have to do something different today than it was yesterday. I think you'll find that most people, even the smart ones, are like that.
Hey, I celebrate diversity. But if you want to teach people to think for themselves, do it in small steps, mmmmkay? I'm a corporate chemist, not a programmer, and this stuff isn't second nature to me. I respect your superior knowledge; please respect my lack of it and how much my time is worth to me. Peace.
From an LSB whitepaper: "without a widely supported binary standard for linux, a single vendor, de facto standard will emerge, effectively removing choice and locking end users in".
I feel that as long as linux competes with itself it won't effectively compete with other commercial OS (at least for mass adoption on the desktop). Also, I'd be more interested in learing compiling stuff if the differences between distros didn't create such a moving target for the student. I'm keen to learn, but make it too hard and I'll go off and learn something different.
OO2beta has been excellent for me, with exception of table pasting suckage and crash issues which I have experienced. If they've fixed these as well, well that's just wonderful. I use the Windows version.
Just the other week friends and I were discussing this. Power Pack would make a great movie - it's certainly ripe for Harry Potter audiences, and it's the only one that interests me, as great things have been done in kid's fiction (Phillip Pullman, anyone?). Power Pack has extremely strong child characters, interesting aliens and technology, and a tight script. Guaranteed, Hollywood will waste the opportunity.
What about cooling graphics and the hard drive? My new PC's CPU rarely hits 30 deg C using a Zalman cooler at low fan speed. The GPU goes to 80 deg C (passive heatpipe, granted). But the hard drives contain all of my data! Yeah I make regular backups, but losing the HD to thermal stress would create a lot of heartache for me.
"we eliminate the majority of the competitive advantage of Free Software desktops in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of consumers"
KDE ain't no killer app - nothing you can do with it you can't do on Windows with a different set of software. Half Life 2 on Linux only, now that would have been a killer app.
I'm with all those here who say that more cross-platform software can only help users migrate. Hell, when the software is no longer an obstacle, you might even get users migrating because of the choice of window managers. Shallow, but that's what got my attention!
So 1 Gb = 1 truckload? I think we need a bit of context here. People do not carry around 10 Gb of text files on their personal devices. They either carry small numbers of big files (maybe some huge Excel files, or more likely.wavs) or lots of little files like.mp3s in devices that have been constructed just for that purpose.
I'm a pack rat because I own an ipod mini? That's just stupid. I bought the ipod mini so I could carry around a chunk of my music collection with me - that's what it's designed for!
Anyway, I'll stop hoarding my work email when they stop sending it to me. I've tried deleting and filing email, but it takes so long that I end up getting behind in my work and all of the new mail that comes along:)
all the clients connected to the network received a partial, but fatal, 'upgrade.'
Is it possible that someone noticed that the updates were going to 60,000 machines instead of just 7, said 'oh shit', and pulled the plug without thinking?
EDS is also thought to be flying in fire brigades.
Yeah, to put out the fires from their smouldering backsides.
I hear a lot of complaints about the level of information required to use Xandros. Whilst the ones concerning data mining are valid, the ones that bitch about having to provide your hardware configuration are just plain stupid. Xandros are providing a beta free, which represents their hard work. The pay-off is that you do a little bug testing for them. In order to know what works, they need to know what hardware you're running out of the millions of possible configurations. I mean, how many Linux BBS tech support questions are ignored because the poster doesn't state what their system is? This is the same, but it would be a nightmare to have to manually extract the system configuration out of every bug report. Go figure.
I bought a netMD minidisc player because it was cheap, and because - get this - it said that it supported mp3. It does in a way - if you can get the (apparently) godawful sonicstage software to install (not on a win98 machine, whatever the box says) then it just takes your mp3 collection and decodes/encodes to ATRAC3 on the fly as you're connecting to your walkman. I never got to try it out (still use win98) but I expect it's not the speediest transfer. It went back the next day and I got an iPod mini, and sync'd it to my wife's ibook - and got what I paid for. It's bizarre, Sony claim pressure from the iPod as a driver for getting a HD walkman out and expect the mainstream consumer to go for their product, that arguably has less market visibility that Apple's, and doesn't support the mainstream file format. And Sony won't officially support a windows installation that hasn't been factory installed - even upgrades of OEM machines aren't supported. Damn them.
You're right, a new standard (XML) isn't going to stop people using the old standard (.doc) *right now*. But maybe in the future people will be less afraid of a non-MS product because instead of an approximate rendering of a proprietary format, they'll get a true rendering of the ISO standard from their open source office suite. Maybe MS will stop locking their customers in to proprietary formats (bloody.pst) and start making interoperable software that competes on feature set and stability. Maybe more developers will make me a better word processer, just like they made me a better web browser. Who knows?
Trying not to troll...
My next computer will probably be a laptop, and it will be an iBook - maily because they're better made than other notebooks, rather than because I'm a Mac fan (I'm not, at least not yet).
At the moment, the choice is a no-brainer. I can get a sub-1000 quid iBook these days that will do all that I want a wintel/*nix laptop for, but with very good quality hardware and *nix set-up with everything working. Compare that to spending the same cash on a less sturdy wintel item with an OS I dislike, or a less sturdy item with a reduced functionality for linux (simply because linux on a laptop is a pig to get working). I'm sure it can be done, but I just don't want to invest cash and then time as well getting it working.
But rather than saying "Use OSX!" I'd say "take a lesson from Apple". Engineer a linux solution specifically for the hardware. Because trying to make it work with every distro is plainly not working, and that's not going to get me to part with my hard-earned wedge...
The only feature I missed from Enlightenment in new WMs was the animated panning in the virtual desktop - coupled with a zooming pager it made virtual desktops very intuitive. On my PII-350 it was sluggish, but with modern processors the overhead should be acceptable. The sphere is cool, but I feel it's kinda overkill, and I'd end up losing my windows.
Slashdot Mirror
Looks like just a training aid - which is cool - but my guess is the additional complexity of the cranks would cause the crankset to lose stiffness and gain weight? But interesting nonetheless.
But another, lower tech and perhaps more fun way to train would be to ride fixed - without the freewheel (and with only one gear ratio) you are forced to work hard and apparently it really smooths out your cadence, which is why racers train on fixies in the winter. (I'm just getting into fixed bikes)
I'm also interested in the ovoid biopace chainrings that change mechanical advantage depending on whether the pedals are vertical or horizontal.
"In the accident, the 20-year-old driver fell asleep while talking on the phone, crossed three lanes of traffic and hit a car driven by a 55-year-old woman, who later died. Authorities lodged what they thought was Michigan's first cellphone-related negligent-homicide charge. Later, they added drug charges, after a medical exam allegedly turned up illegal drugs in the driver's system."
Besides being a bit of an inane statement, that only shows that you need to address all of the sources of negligent driving.
Here in the UK, we have restrictions of the use of cell phones whilst driving. On top of that I'd like to see:
- proactive training of people to prevent dangerous habits like tailgating, poor lane discipline etc
- better understanding of the effects of narcotics - at the moment, "don't smoke and drive" is a concept off the radar because we have a government who aren't interested in controlling drugs, just banning them (effectively burying their heads in the sand)
- more police to enforce laws - we have a 6-man squad to cover the entire Thames Valley, apparently. How the heck are they supposed to enforce a law against the use of cell phones whilst driving, when they are constantly dealing with RTAs?
At least we have plenty of "don't drive tired" signs. But it's not enough.
Nicely put. But also, we're moving toward a world of cheaper laptops, wireless, media centres and consoles that can look almost as pretty as a mainstream PC from the comfort of your sofa. A dedicated PC for gaming will always appeal to a few people but for a lot of people their laptop graphics chip is good enough, or the console is good enough, or the budget games they can buy for their old PC are good enough. Only a few people are motivated enough to buy a new PC for games (err, I am one of those people :) when there are consoles for a fraction of the price that just work (tm). Ask yourself how many people would rather play games on a comfy sofa than a less comfy office chair :)
Anyway, I thought that quad-sli motherboards were for much more specialised applications than just gaming - like people who actually needed lots of displays at once, whoever they are.
6% of sales, not so good - but four-fold growth in 1 year? Could be very interesting by 2010. The model RIAA doesn't like is the fact that people aren't willing to pay to download musci they already have on CD!
Personally I like emusic (www.emusic.com). But more power to iTunes for bringing downloadable music to the masses.
Point one: the blurb claims 66A (70A peak) on 12v, that's a peak of 840 watts. Since most things run off 12v these days, the claimed 1100 W peak is marketing spin.
Point two: the blurb claims 85% efficiency... over what power range? Most of the enthusiast systems that Anandtech has look like they idle at 200W - so let's go crazy and say they peak at 400W. I doubt that any single chip gaming rig would use this PSU efficiently. Looks like it's designed to delivery an awful lot of power to a workstation, not an enthusiast PC.
From TFA:
"Repetitive strain injuries are the nation's most common and costly occupational health problem, affecting hundreds of thousands of American workers and costing more than $20 billion a year in worker's compensation, so employers have long been interested in the connection between the two conditions."
This makes no sense - it implies that employers have been looking for a link between depression/slacking and RSI - so are the costs associated with lost productivity, or remedial medical action and compensation? No surprises that doing repetitive tasks which cause you pain make you depressed... in fact, no surprises that doing repetitive tasks make you depressed.
On the other hand, how applicable is it to other injuries? Having recently been knocked off my bike and suffering a sore hand (but no more, thank god) I went through a phase of feeling distinctly sorry for myself. How much of that was emotional (loss of confidence and unwillingness to get back on the bike) and how much was it physiological?
I could say "in other news, people react negatively to painful stimuli" but that's not the point. A link between emotional well-being and physical well-being, that's interesting.
"Thanks for the info that jocks are fairies, though. One more reason to stay away from them."
/. eyes, so I'll assume you're not really homophobic but actually a decent chap... your comment was pretty funny up until then.
Given that you were modded up, you're obviously the good guy in
Your point about KDE vs Gnome is well made... sort of. KDE and Gnome have gotten stronger as a result of competition between each other - but I can't name one feature that's useful to me or anyone I know that's provided in them that isn't in WinXP or OS X. In the cold eyes of commercial software, the fact that KDE has competed with Gnome is not relevent. If I were managing a project that allowed two different teams to work on two competing interfaces and consume double the resources, I would expect to be sacked unless there were very good reasons for retaining both projects. Shareholders notice such things.
"Why continue to bleat on about this issue when you have no idea how you would ever enforce such a rule?"
Err... standards. Any group that wants to be labled as LSB-compliant gets accredited as such. Google for iso-accreditation, and you'll see why companies think it's a big deal. As for "enforcing the rule" - you seem to think that this move heralds the appearance of FacistStateLinux where all development is sanctioned by a single body. No need to be paranoid. The commercial names backing the new standard are probably doing so because it is strategically useful to all of them to back a "standard" linux, because then they can market "standard linux"-compliant stuff with a greater chance of market penetration (and if I were Adobe I woulnd't market a linux-native Photoshop until I were sure of a sound base for the system that wouldn't detract from the image of my product). Commercial linux corps who want in have to prove themselves via LSB standards. Those who don't (niche, hobbyist etc) can give the LSB the finger if they want to.
Finally, I'm "bleating on" about it because it looks like you've completely misunderstood where I'm coming from.
maybe I just don't get the internet, but i never understood the need to be rude to complete strangers - i'll assume you had a rough week and are just lashing out. anyways, i never claimed to be a programmer, i just took up learning linux for a hobby.
competition is good, but competition with other OS also forces people to make a better product, and gain market visibility. if linux remains inhomogenous for desktop users, how can it compete with windows? where is the incentive to market commercial software (games, for goodness' sake!)? there's nothing stopping you having a niche linux for specialist users as well.
i can understand if you think that the only people who should be able to learn linux are venerated programmers who have gone through a thirty year initiation in obscure computer ritual... no, check that, i don't understand that at all. in what way do you benefit by alienating people like myself - the non-programming but enthusiastic "power users" who know enough to advocate linux to their friends and family, and set up a cheap internet box for an impoverished friend with the spare pc sitting in the attic.
on a final note - linux doesn't need to compete with itself to capture best practice and improve. and i don't buy your survival of the fittest malarkey - if that were the way the world worked day to day, all of us geeks would have starved or been beaten over the head for our shoes by the strong, dumb kids before we got a chance to learn the l33t sk1llz that pay our salaries and make us useful to society today.
apologies for typing one-handed, someone knocked me off my bike on my way home. see, i had a bad day too.
Goodness me...
Yes, I've heard of make. Here's my problem: if I have to start editing a makefile to point to the right libraries (assuming my distro has the libraries) to get a compilation going, and depending on which distro I use the bits I need aren't all in the same place. Make isn't a standard unless there is a standard way of writing a makefile - and if there is, it isn't transparent to me, based on my experience. I have a lot of trouble learning how to do a complex and esoteric thing when I have to do something different today than it was yesterday. I think you'll find that most people, even the smart ones, are like that.
Hey, I celebrate diversity. But if you want to teach people to think for themselves, do it in small steps, mmmmkay? I'm a corporate chemist, not a programmer, and this stuff isn't second nature to me. I respect your superior knowledge; please respect my lack of it and how much my time is worth to me. Peace.
From an LSB whitepaper: "without a widely supported binary standard for linux, a single vendor, de facto standard will emerge, effectively removing choice and locking end users in". I feel that as long as linux competes with itself it won't effectively compete with other commercial OS (at least for mass adoption on the desktop). Also, I'd be more interested in learing compiling stuff if the differences between distros didn't create such a moving target for the student. I'm keen to learn, but make it too hard and I'll go off and learn something different.
OO2beta has been excellent for me, with exception of table pasting suckage and crash issues which I have experienced. If they've fixed these as well, well that's just wonderful. I use the Windows version.
Just the other week friends and I were discussing this. Power Pack would make a great movie - it's certainly ripe for Harry Potter audiences, and it's the only one that interests me, as great things have been done in kid's fiction (Phillip Pullman, anyone?). Power Pack has extremely strong child characters, interesting aliens and technology, and a tight script. Guaranteed, Hollywood will waste the opportunity.
What about cooling graphics and the hard drive? My new PC's CPU rarely hits 30 deg C using a Zalman cooler at low fan speed. The GPU goes to 80 deg C (passive heatpipe, granted). But the hard drives contain all of my data! Yeah I make regular backups, but losing the HD to thermal stress would create a lot of heartache for me.
"we eliminate the majority of the competitive advantage of Free Software desktops in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of consumers" KDE ain't no killer app - nothing you can do with it you can't do on Windows with a different set of software. Half Life 2 on Linux only, now that would have been a killer app. I'm with all those here who say that more cross-platform software can only help users migrate. Hell, when the software is no longer an obstacle, you might even get users migrating because of the choice of window managers. Shallow, but that's what got my attention!
So 1 Gb = 1 truckload? I think we need a bit of context here. People do not carry around 10 Gb of text files on their personal devices. They either carry small numbers of big files (maybe some huge Excel files, or more likely .wavs) or lots of little files like .mp3s in devices that have been constructed just for that purpose.
:)
I'm a pack rat because I own an ipod mini? That's just stupid. I bought the ipod mini so I could carry around a chunk of my music collection with me - that's what it's designed for!
Anyway, I'll stop hoarding my work email when they stop sending it to me. I've tried deleting and filing email, but it takes so long that I end up getting behind in my work and all of the new mail that comes along
Yes. You can point the program at whatever directory you want to. I keep my mail under E:/Mozilla, works for both Moz and Thunderbird.
.pst.
And it's in mbox format - I have successfully moved the files between linux and windows. Unlike
...is what, a year late?
all the clients connected to the network received a partial, but fatal, 'upgrade.'
Is it possible that someone noticed that the updates were going to 60,000 machines instead of just 7, said 'oh shit', and pulled the plug without thinking?
EDS is also thought to be flying in fire brigades.
Yeah, to put out the fires from their smouldering backsides.
I hear a lot of complaints about the level of information required to use Xandros. Whilst the ones concerning data mining are valid, the ones that bitch about having to provide your hardware configuration are just plain stupid. Xandros are providing a beta free, which represents their hard work. The pay-off is that you do a little bug testing for them. In order to know what works, they need to know what hardware you're running out of the millions of possible configurations. I mean, how many Linux BBS tech support questions are ignored because the poster doesn't state what their system is? This is the same, but it would be a nightmare to have to manually extract the system configuration out of every bug report. Go figure.
I bought a netMD minidisc player because it was cheap, and because - get this - it said that it supported mp3. It does in a way - if you can get the (apparently) godawful sonicstage software to install (not on a win98 machine, whatever the box says) then it just takes your mp3 collection and decodes/encodes to ATRAC3 on the fly as you're connecting to your walkman. I never got to try it out (still use win98) but I expect it's not the speediest transfer. It went back the next day and I got an iPod mini, and sync'd it to my wife's ibook - and got what I paid for. It's bizarre, Sony claim pressure from the iPod as a driver for getting a HD walkman out and expect the mainstream consumer to go for their product, that arguably has less market visibility that Apple's, and doesn't support the mainstream file format. And Sony won't officially support a windows installation that hasn't been factory installed - even upgrades of OEM machines aren't supported. Damn them.
You're right, a new standard (XML) isn't going to stop people using the old standard (.doc) *right now*. But maybe in the future people will be less afraid of a non-MS product because instead of an approximate rendering of a proprietary format, they'll get a true rendering of the ISO standard from their open source office suite. Maybe MS will stop locking their customers in to proprietary formats (bloody .pst) and start making interoperable software that competes on feature set and stability. Maybe more developers will make me a better word processer, just like they made me a better web browser. Who knows?
Trying not to troll... My next computer will probably be a laptop, and it will be an iBook - maily because they're better made than other notebooks, rather than because I'm a Mac fan (I'm not, at least not yet). At the moment, the choice is a no-brainer. I can get a sub-1000 quid iBook these days that will do all that I want a wintel/*nix laptop for, but with very good quality hardware and *nix set-up with everything working. Compare that to spending the same cash on a less sturdy wintel item with an OS I dislike, or a less sturdy item with a reduced functionality for linux (simply because linux on a laptop is a pig to get working). I'm sure it can be done, but I just don't want to invest cash and then time as well getting it working. But rather than saying "Use OSX!" I'd say "take a lesson from Apple". Engineer a linux solution specifically for the hardware. Because trying to make it work with every distro is plainly not working, and that's not going to get me to part with my hard-earned wedge...
The only feature I missed from Enlightenment in new WMs was the animated panning in the virtual desktop - coupled with a zooming pager it made virtual desktops very intuitive. On my PII-350 it was sluggish, but with modern processors the overhead should be acceptable. The sphere is cool, but I feel it's kinda overkill, and I'd end up losing my windows.
That would be a Perl necklace, right? Sorry. I am a bad man.