I gave my aunt my old Mac mini because she needed a computer, and iChat's screen sharing is awesome. When she has a question I can ask her to just show me, or I can drive to teach her how to do something. So much easier than trying to explain it over the phone.

Agreed, if you're going to live in Texas then Austin is the place to go. The weather isn't nearly as bad as North Texas.

We have horrible weather. When most places have storm warnings it means heavy rain and some lightning. In DFW it means 70mph gusts with golf ball or bigger hail plus all of the rain, lightening etc with a side of Tornadoes. It would be different if it was a rare thing, but we get those storm fronts moving through…

I'll take my chances with the Tornadoes and Hurricanes, you keep the snow.

Where is the Advertisement tag for this "article"? Having a high speed connection that only seems to work outdoors is pretty useless in my opinion. I don't miss them at all.

I've done the same swap in iMacs and Mac Minis and they are not simple straight forward upgrades. I kept worrying I would break a clip (or the display in the case of the iMac). They should do an easy access door on the iMacs similar to the PS3 so you can swap the HDD. They already have one in place for RAM.

The other negative is that Hulu seems to have to stop and buffer at least once or twice a show, but I never have that issue with Netflix, HBOGo or Amazon videos.

Amazon's VoD rental service is their strong suit, NOT the instant video. Until they get a better selection of shows it's not worth it.

Generally whatever you can get on iTunes you can also get through Amazon VoD. Amazon works with more devices and tends to be cheaper. The same can be said for music, I'm not sure why you would use iTunes unless you watch a LOT of rented movies on the go (iPod/iPad).

VOTE: Netflix

You're right that there's a much higher initial cost to building software, but there's still a HUGE margin in software. Microsoft and Adobe are bad (not nearly as bad as Oracle, IBM, etc), but Apple actually sells their software relatively cheap to move HW. I think that's where some of the disconnect is because they…

Outside of RAM, a good SSD is the best upgrade you can get IMHO. I have a 100GB OCZ Vertex2 Pro in mine, and it seems like everything is faster - Booting, starting apps, etc.

I would be willing to bet that most of the people that disagree with you don't have any idea how much IT organizations in the US have changed in the last 10-15 years. Most of our devs at my last two companies were H1B employees and most of them aren't worth a shit. India just produces tons of Java programmers that…

I'm still a bit surprised how much I like my Samsung Focus. My Evo was a pretty awesome phone/wireless device, but it's media playing abilities and battery life had issues. I like iPhones and am an Apple guy, but my gadget lust left me wanting something new. The battery life on the Focus is outstanding (1.5-2 days…

I just think everyone is different. I've developed a taste for wine as I've gotten older but I really only like red wine & with booze I like bourbon, but can't stand scotch. People like to look down on other people because their opinions differ from theirs, but when you get down to it it's all subjective and they…

I loved The Blade Itself books...I would be very excited if AMC, HBO, Starz or Showtime took them on.

AUX input??? For that kind of money I want bluetooth stereo.

You do know you're on io9, right?

Just a couple I could think of - Inception, Star Trek, anthing Pixar (TS3, UP). It's definitely possible to make a quality big budget movie.

I use Google (and sometimes spotlight) as my go to calculator, spell check and dictionary.