It's mostly the 14 year old part.

So this is what hell is like.... computer died so I've had to piece together one from old parts... HD anything gone. No game made after 2003 will run and It's going to be a long long time before I can afford to rebuild.... and now the steam summer sale.... I could cry.... welp time to go play in traffic.

Some of the worst parts of the prequels were in "the frontier", with Anakin making crap out of dirty old parts. The reason the prequels sucked wasn't because of details of the setting or because there wasn't enough arms getting cut off or something. It's because the story was poorly written and the acting was horrible (mostly due to script/direction problems).

Texas is so huge and spread out most places are not at all conducive to pedestrian traffic. there are towns literally built around the interstate.

I think Austin has a good bit of foot/bike traffic, but it's a really young progressive town. There are areas of Fort Worth that are totally bike/walk-able. And critical mass is a pretty big thing for the hip kids who live in the more urban/less suburban areas. The hipper parts of Fort Worth are even starting to get bike lanes.

I live in a small town that is now a full blown suburb of Fort Worth. The new parts of this expanding town are totally built around the interstate/shopping malls.....Fortunately, I live and (now) work in the 150 year old part of town. Everything I need is in safe biking distance. Starting June 6th I will be able to bike my kids to daycare, then bike to work and the grocery store. And plan to do it everyday that it is not raining. I'm completely excited. A friend that lives with us right now also works in the old part of town and he bikes to work everyday as well.

Supposedly the town is planning on dealing with its booming population by eventually making all the different neighborhoods connect with bike and walking trails. They are also building a park n ride/train station to connect this town to popular spots in Fort Worth, it will also go straight to the intermodal transit station in downtown fort worth and connect to both airports, downtown dallas, dallas shopping/club districts, the major medical district, museums, fair grounds,the sports arenas and even the corporate/suburban areas in North Dallas. I'm soooo excited about this!! In a few years I will feasibly be able to ride my bike to the train station and catch a train all the way to Plano (about 1hr 20 minutes north east) to visit my sister for the weekend. Excellent.

Again, not a fan of PC v Mac debates but can't resist putting my oar in.

I do prefer PCs over Macs. I am used to them. Re Windows, well yes we deserve better. The main line of division however is simply that of price. I know plenty of friends and colleagues who might benefit from a Mac. But when you can build a PC out of old parts (hell my main pc uses a 4MB graphics card) then it's easy to see the value for money arguments. I have built computers for a number of friends all of whom could put together enough money for what they needed but certainly couldn't buy a PC for a £1000 in the shops let alone an Ives design classic. When what they want to do is pretty basic including web browsing, why should they?

Then there's the upgradeability argument - not so good on the Apple platform.

And yet Apple can make desirable AND affordable music players. Their flash-based stuff is great and it's no wonder they sell so many. Itunes is rubbish and certainly doesn't feel like a Windows app on Windows, yet users suck it up.

In both areas the main dictating factors are price and crossing that line when something becomes good enough to use.

If Vista can be "fixed" - they really must seriously produce a robust and secure operating system and the shackles of DRM are removed then we might have something worth looking at. Just providing some new eye-candy and catching up on OSX features isn't good enough when so many people use the Windows platform for work and play and deserve something alot better.