That is the one thing I have noticed since scouring the net and asking everyone and anyone in the know their opinions on who makes the most well put together laptop. It seems that many folks are extreemely loyal to one particular product or brandname, but one brandname doesn't seem to be conclusive over the other. The Imac sure has its very loyal following, as well as Dell and Toshiba and, another brand rapidly picking up steem is HP, especially their DV6000 and DV9000 lines. I am beginning to conclude that at this point, figure out exactly how much of a laptop you need and can afford, paying particular attention to Size of Hard Drive, How much Memory (RAM), and third, how much graphics card, and lastly and most important, the CPU. I have concluded that the duel core processor is important, as it is essentially two processors stapped together, and the OS uses one for certain functions and the other for certain functions, and most importantly, only one is being used and powered when both are not needed, saving battery power and overall electric consumption. Another rule of thumb, to save money, get the base core duo (1.60GHz, I believe), and skip the upgrade on the CPU and get 2G's of RAM, as your CPU runs out of cache space for storage, it will draw from Ram, and adding RAM is much cheaper than adding a high end CPU. Bottom line, I'm waiting for some hot sales. Another thing to think about is size, and yeah, folks, size does matter... Most of the 17" models that I've tried out in the stores just seem too damn big and heavy, especially if your going to use the thing as a LAP top... it's just too damn big for my lap, and I have a big lap at that... the 12" is just too small, especialy for viewing movies, etc. That's the one thing that turned me off from the DELL XPS 1200... hot looking little machine... just too small. 14-15" seems just right for my taste. It seems to me that all these machines (Toshiba, Dell, HP and many others) are all beginning to become clones of one another. Seems they are are made in China nowadays, and no one has yet to convince me overwhelmingly that one is better than the other...

A follow up to share what I learned. The Smart HDTV is now working and delivering streaming movies to our bedroom via the WiFi. The only wires to the HDTV (Vizio) is the house A/C electricity. 1) Don't change the WiFi password in a router using the WiFi interface, use a Ethernet interface. This is based on experience with 5 year old Netgear (low end) Router still 54 mb capable 802.11n? I tried and the Router ended up locked up. The password change may gone astray in any case the Router could not access the internet for connection to either the Ethernet or the WiFi. Lights on the Router showed both the Internet and WiFi okay. I replaced with a newer Netgear which supports 150 mb and has more Internet based features. 2) My Smart HDTV (all?) does provide for inputting all keyboard characters via an on-screen keyboard(s). I got in trouble because the number only input on the hand controller made me decide to change my Router password to all numbers, which I did on the new Router. Still better, much faster putting in numbers from the channel keypad than to use the "Hunt and Peck" on screen keyboard. The (my) HDTV does not have a touch screen so one has to click the pointer around the keyboard to pick out inputs. This into my view only after I entered the all numeric password and hit the "OK" - the next screen was the subject keyboard - which I no longer needed, but did need later when logging onto Netflix. The operation involves being in a data field, input any leading numbers (best) from the hand held keys then hit the "OK". An on screen keyboard then appears. If nothing more is needed, i.e., all numbers, click down to the "Enter". Side benefit: then new Router specifies Windows 8 compatibility - the old one was XP, maybe Vista qualified and some older Routers have problems with newer OS. The HDTV showing a Netflix movie had no detectible breaks (buffering?). I thought maybe that is because of the new Router, as my W8 computer had (and still has) some breaks in Netflix streaming, not sure about other services. The W8 laptop still exhibits this problem. One last start up issue on the HDTV. After logging on to my WiFi I pushed the Netflix button on my controller and Netflix started to load but failed. I started over again, it failed again. I then tried the Amazon application and it too failed. I then when into "chat" with Netflix technical support (they came on quickly) after the exchange of information on the situation on my end the support person typed, try youtube, so I did, and it come up/worked. I typed back the smart HDTV must be learning or youtube is more fault tolerant, No response, but I then tried Netflix and it worked and continues to work.

I thought I'd revisit this thread from Jan. cause I was just at Best Buy. There were large numbers of flat screen TV's on display which did not have ATSC digital tuner, particularly the smaller sizes like 32" and smaller. The salespeople didn't want to discuss it, saying that only hi-end, very expensive large screen flat screens came with ATSC digital tuners. So what happened to the FCC regulation changes that were the subject of this thread? I guess they were not implemented.

I hate these five minutes of fame interviews done by the morning shows. All that interview was was damage control. It's no different from the famous idiots who publicly humiliate themselves and do the same thing to change public opinion. Mel Gibson, Tiger Woods, Koby Bryant to name a few. They dress up pretty, get prepped for a "controlled" interview and have their professional talking head sitting next to them to make it all seem like it's okay and under control. What's really appalling to me about this guy is not only was he able to talk about how many people agreed with his behavior (which I find hard to believe) he let Matt Lauer scold and force that girl to admit on live TV that she was wrong for posting a stupid letter on her facebook page. IMHO, they're all hypocrites because I don't know an adult alive who at some point during their teens didn't vent to their friends about their parents; the only difference now is thanks to technology, the manner in which it's done is different. Yes Facebook is a public network but her parents did allow her to have the account and she did post it on a PRIVATE page that he had to break into. Would I want to hear my daughter talking about me like that? Of course not but then again, I wouldn't have invaded her privacy the way he did. And honestly, there are a lot worse things she could be doing to lash out with her frustrations. Still instead of seeing there was a problem and working with her to fix it, he grounds her for "months" like she's in prison and destroys the equipment she needs for school. I also feel very strongly that instead of putting a minor on national so she could be further intimidated and humiliated by someone like Matt Lauer, he should be protecting her from the backlash of his stupid antics and taking classes to gain some freaking parenting skills. I just can't believe that people are buying into the facade and don't realize that the behavior in that video is uncensored and THAT guy is who that young girl is really living with, not the jerk on the couch.