Thanks Iliya.

It's interesting that you built on Azure rather than AWS, what are the reasons that led to this design decision? You have done a really nice piece of work with your marketing website and how you are messaging the product, I can only suggest drawing more attention to the hosting domicile and I would also suggest adding physical contact info to your website to avoid the scenario where someone is concluding that you are trying to obscure where you are located.

It's entirely possible but I tend to believe we are a nation of consumers and I try not to attach a moral judgement to that. For much of the economy, consumption patterns have altered not because of a value shift but because the economy is still in really poor shape.

I just don't see a shift to high quality preference, whatever that ultimately is because even low cost goods produced at absurd volumes can be high quality. The retail landscape is fine grained, the specialization attributes that retailers and manufacturers alike are pursuing is pretty fascinating to watch.

Goto "airplane mode" and dial back the screen brightness and you will get 7+ hours, is my experience

word... I look pretty dope in my beat lab while on video conferences.

I am using the Siberia V2 with an inexpensive USB adapter (which I heard causes an issue in macs but I am on a windows machine now). Sound quality is fantastic, in and out, but I would prefer something a little less bulky.

Another observation is that when wearing the headset and talking, it bothers me because I have the muffled voice in head problem. Usually I will pull one side of the headset off my ear so I can normalize ambient room noise and my own voice.

yes but Google dropped EAS support and Microsoft has only soft committed to CalDAV and CardDAV so if you use Google Apps and want to use Office 2013 you are out of luck. There are some commercial products that fill the gap but they bring additional cost and complexity.

I use Chrome. On occasion I have noticed that IntenseDebate is not very well behaved.

Thanks for the additional info, it's funny how 70 miles is a lot less driving that it used to be! I constantly marvel at how much I can drive in a day, and I don't drive all that much... maybe 10k a year. Given the availability of 3 phase power in industrial and commercial districts, I would not be surprised to see more 480v recharging stations emerge as industrial fleets embrace EVs, which does not seem like a stretch.

You hit on the other key issue, battery technology. The physics problems are substantial but not insurmountable, and I am pretty excited about the development of polymer battery technology at scale (and newer technologies like ultra-capacitor carbon and magnetic tunnel junction). Combine better storage with power management and more efficient solar cells powering trickle chargers that can be vehicle mounted and there could be a tipping point.

thanks for the follow up, and to be clear what I wrote was that "...but I simply don’t see how EVs can ever be mainstream.". I am often wrong and don't have a problem admitting it, but if I am precisely in the target persona for a prospective buyer and yet have the concerns that I have after studying the issue as part of my evaluation, it suggests a problem for this category and consumer interviews do suggest the issue of range and complexity are holding buyers back.

I would not argue that EVs are not more efficient, that is certainly fact and beyond debate. Given the torque output for traction motors these vehicles also have the potential to be more fun to drive as well.

The Leaf looks like the best value going for right now, but I'm curious to know how your range is affected by weather and accessory usage (for example, if it is a cold and rainy day in December when you use your headlights longer vs. sunny in July)? Are you using mobile apps to locate charging stations and what do you do if you need to charge mid-day when you are out-and-around as opposed to parked and stationary?

The horse and buggy metaphor is really tired, and not at all holistic as a metaphor either.

The transition from horse to internal combustion was not a straightforward development. There were competing technologies to replace the horse, including, ironically, electric vehicles which like steam proved to be a less versatile and reliable form of transportation. Electric vehicles are not new, the documented history goes back to the 1830's.

Fast forward to today and the EV again faces competitive threats, not the least of which is hybrid technology that overcomes the range and utility issues while providing the convenience and extended range of internal combustion. By the way, it's not like gas and diesel technology has been at a standstill, the development of high efficiency internal combustion engines continues on an impressive path and parallel developments in variable displacement engine technology is definitely in the mainstream, capturing performance and efficiency in one package. And then there is the waste heat that an internal combustion engine produces and the capacity to capture and convert that energy... perhaps Crower's 6 stroke engine technology will see light (4 strokes for gas, 2 strokes for steam)?

Natural gas is ridiculously abundant and the conversion to a LNG/CNG infrastructure is linear, piggybacking on existing supply chains. Hydrogen fuel cells are ahead of schedule with 2 manufacturers offering production vehicles today, and more coming in 2014/15 model years... although the development of a hydrogen refueling infrastructure is not without its own complexity.

Wow, lot of comments on this topic.

I've been a full week on win8 and am still bullish, have only opened my macbook air this morning to transfer files in bulk and completely commit to the Asus.

A couple of additional comments. I was really struggling with the touchpad on the Zenbook and yesterday I almost returned the machine. I dug into it and updated some drivers and voila that touchpad went from tragic to usable. It's still not up to the level that mac hardware delivers and point in fact an end user should never have to mess around with drivers and registry settings. Asus should never have shipped this touchpad in the shape it is in, especially when competing hardware like the Samsung can deliver a really good touchpad experience.

I have figured out where all the necessary features are in Windows and feel comfortable with the corner gestures. It is becoming clear where they are going with this and I like the direction. Performance is fantastic, I could not be happier with how speedy everything is. The screen is a winner, by any measure, and it pleases me just to look at it. I thought fingerprints would bug me (it's one of "my things") but perhaps we have all become accustomed to fingerprints as a result of smartphone and tablet usage. I have some large sized microfiber cloths and a quick wipe takes care of anything particularly annoying.

The windows app market is pretty crappy, I miss the selection of apps I get on Google Play and iTunes (although I really didn't load much stuff via iTunes). Most of the apps on the windows market are pretty lame... they should clean that up.