That was a very well written piece and I agree with you up to a point. Whether or not Microsoft is in on it or not that is beyond me and I am an advocate for any OS that you feel comfortable with and can securely lock down yet still complete the functions you need to....

I would also like to add to the thread/rant/whatever in the aspect of that techy is becoming cool. I am trying to figure it out. Now I am rather young creeping on my 21st birthday but I remember programming on my PC Junior when I was 8 years old creating horrible games (which I thought was the most amazing thing). However when I shared the find of computer programming and the power a person has that can obtain the knowledge of prgramming they made fun of me. Well I sorta fell away until about 5 years ago when I was brought back heavily into web design and networking. So needless to say as a 15 year old that was not really a conversation point with my friends. But it seems that as I grow older and I am sure alot of you who have been in the "game" for awhile have seen this ten-fold is that it is slowly becoming more and more "in" to be techy. I see people at local coffee shops and restaurants doing work on their laptops. Now I am not saying that there is a problem with them being on their laptops but have you looked at some of the laptops people have.... For instance...

I ran into one gentleman who was earning his masters degree in economics. Being that economics has always been an interest of mine I struck up a conversation with him noticing that he had a $3000+ Apple notebook I started talking to him about the Apple computers and how he liked it and so on. We continued to talk briefly about local economic problems and how if at all they could be rectified. However it was not the econimics that I wanted to tell you about but the actual reason I started speaking with this gentleman was that he didn't seem like someone who needed THAT laptop so after alittle talking I found out he bought a $3000+ laptop to accomplish three tasks he told me, 1. browse the web, 2. write up documents, 3. listen to music. So what I gathered from this is that he wanted to fit in. He wanted the cool 17inch screen white laptop. It dawned on my that suddenly it is fashionable to have the coolest looking laptops. With very little regards to how the laptop performs. It is sad to say that people actually are buying laptops based on looks as supposed to how they operate. I have seen many people buy a machine based on looks whether it be "cute" or "slick."

I am not saying they can't look good I mean I was drooling over the gentlemans laptop but it was a shame that just because it looks cool he spent $3000+ when a few $100 one would have accomplished the same thing. Oh well when corp america says something is cool it must be.

- Andrew