Irony is alive and well, I see.

Metering 1, AF nil.

Yes, that's why I was wondering about the review.

Considering how few Pentax people there are compared with the others, that's quite something.

... for the K-3, K-50 or K-500?

It's been quite a while now. I know they've done a K-3 preview, but I'd have expected the full monty by now.

I got a cracking deal on a case with no side panels... and it's great for cooling too...

It's not quite so tidy on the other side:

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/IMGP0426.jpg[/IMG]

However, it does have an actual hole. Made it real easy to screw the CPU cooler on tight.

Compared with some I've seen, this thread is remarkably free from fan-boyism. Everyone is being quite restrained, I thought

This made me laugh though...

... you get the 'puter, and a power lead. That's all. No keyboard, no monitor.

If I could afford a Mac Pro, I'd buy a K-3

If we're on to desktops, here's mine - almost silent, self-built, but sadly not round... but the pic is from my Pentax

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/IMGP0427.jpg[/IMG]

I have a good friend who has an iMac; she's a bit computer averse, and pop-up messages tend to alarm her. Consequently, she hasn't applied an update offered to her by the machine for a very long time.

I think you can argue it either way, but it's not obvious to me that either updating by default, or not updating by default, is clearly either wrong or right.

Clearly Microsoft has taken the view that for most users, most of the time, applying updates by default is the better way, and I think it probably is.

My company sells software to schools, and we deliver updates in much the same way - the default is to apply the update, if there is one, silently, when the software is started. The majority of our users have limited experience with computers, so the fewer decisions they have to make about such things, the better all round; trust me on that!!

It was annoying not to be able to boot to the desktop in the original W8, and it's a bit harder to get under the covers than it is with W7. Most of the hatred comes from techies that resent any control being wrested from them, or being forced to do things in ways they don't want. Certainly it's a bit of a learning curve if you want the same granularity of control as with W7.

Some commonly used applications haven't been re-implemented very well for the new tiled start screen - Skype for instance is truly awful.

I don't use it very much yet, and I won't be using it for my main development computer for some time yet. But as an OS it's not too bad, and as you say, it has some advantages.

Yes, good luck with that, with it all balanced on your lap on a train

Horses for courses, if what you have does what you need, all good.

It makes sense only if all other things are equal, which they very rarely are.

Just as an example of how unequal the other things can be, last time I bought a laptop, about a year ago, I considered a Mac.

Having done the research, I discovered to my complete astonishment that no Apple laptop comes with a keyboard that has a separate number pad at the right hand end.

That single detail was a deal breaker since I do quite a lot of numeric input.

The reality is, of course, that the usability gap between Mac and Windows is not what it once was, and only the most determinedly evangelical about one platform or another can claim otherwise. Apple make beautiful hardware, for sure, but Sony and Samsung aren't as far behind there either.