I work for the evil HP and the employee discount is usually about 5% off MSRP. Yes, we can purchase gear at prices WELL ABOVE the price offered at retail outlets.

Oh... its a wonderful news, i had never thought of that.

The discount sounds cool. The "permanent" address sounds like a money grab. First off, there is no such thing as a "permanent" address. Domains can change, the companies can change. And of course the longer you have a an e-mail address the more spam you get. I used to have a "permanent" emailuser.net address. Well not just an address, a whole domain of addresses. "Free" for life. The only catch is that bandwidth was capped. That address worked well for about 4 years. Then some spammer harvested my e-mail address to sign guest books with. By the time I cancelled the account I was getting so much spam my account would go over bandwidth limits within the first two hours of each month.

I have other accounts such as my "gmail" account that have lasted longer without meeting spam death. But that is because I rarely give out that address. Even so, I now get a significant amount of spam that makes it past gmail's filters.

Incidentally, my gmail account is also "permanent" as near as "permanent" could be. So is my fedora address, my suse address, my sourceforge address, etc. You can bet I did not pay a penny for any of those.

Great article, Linux computer are for the win!

The 'permanent' email address sounds like an ego thing... a ploy aimed AT the ego... so just where and what are the mail SERVERS, anyway???