(V): There is no DX11 for XP and i suppose Microsoft do not have plans to develop it in the future either. They have not made dx10 either for xp. There are some third party hacks for dx10 in xp, but i'm not very convinced about them. Maybe there will be third party versions of dx11 for xp but i wouldn't hold my breath.

As far as Linux goes, even older versions of dx do not run perfectly under Wine. Proper dx11 support might come some day but once again, do not hold your breath. OpenGL is the graphics standard in Linuxes anyway (of course DX includes more than just graphics).

So i guess only way to properly run dx11 software is to get Windows 7.

Servant: Which kind of problems have you had because someone has supposedly recorded your searches? And what kind of proof you have that startpage does not do that?

Jim Dandy: Now that iPad is out here is the answer to the most important question about it. Will it blend?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAl28d6tbko&hd=1

Jim Dandy: I really doubt about that decent market share. If you consider 1-2% decent it just might happen.

But we will see in few days when the first iPads hit the market. Surely most of the very first buyers will be Steve's disciples, so we can't really trust the first impressions.

Jim Dandy: No no, its not all hype. All Apple products i have used have been excellent in their area. I'm sure iPad will be an very good product. And Steve is the god of marketing. Surely it will be appealing to some people, even outside of Steve-cult.

But it is not really going to compete with laptops, thus it will not "push them off the cliff". It does not have enough features to do that. Who is really going to need a thingy that will have less features than a decent laptop and it'll be much harder to bring along with you than a mobile phone?

Jim Dandy: Of course it will not. Its much cheaper to get better features on a (non-Apple) laptop. Only the believers in Steve-church will be buying it.

Snoopy: Then i guess you're looking for image editor. Paint.net is a very nice and simple freeware tool for that purpose. You can get it from http://www.getpaint.net/

Snoopy: Are you trying to create graphs of mathematical functions? Or statistical charts? Or are you looking for some general graphics tool?

Yes Avast is good free choice, AVG is also a good free option ( http://free.avg.com/ww-en/homepage )

There no reason whatsoever to pay for antivirus software in home use.

diogenysos Norton Ghost can be used to make a clone image of the drive. And later on you can return the image back to the drive. Company i used to work for years back used Ghost all the time..

MadMonkey: Exactly. Thats a very good question. I never thought i'd say this, but i really think that IE should come with Windows :)

coan.net: I can easily install another browser and make it the default for the system. Even if IE is still installed i never have to use it. Why would that have to bother anyone?

MadMonkey: I've never quite understood the issue with MS shippinng IE with Windows. Of course operating system should be bundled with essential applications. It's always been a mystery to me why this is a legal issue? Can someone enlighten me?

I've only used IE occasionally in the last decade and surely it is inferior product compared to most other browsers i've used. But i still think that there really should be a web browser included in operation system install, at least as an option. And in Microsofts case IE is obvious selection for that.

Czuch Czuckers: There are some utilities that are supposed to store everything you copy to clipboard for easy access. For example: http://www.cybermatrix.com/clipboard_magic.html

I've never used that or anything similar, i just know such sw exists :)

or2ak.com: NeroVision can read vro files and export them in another format. It's not free but it comes bundled with in many dvdr packages. Maybe you have that already?