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>>"Secure boot doesn't make them useless. It makes them useless to the 1% of people who want to buy them as cheap kit and rip a different OS on."

Actually you've already fallen for the FUD. The "Secure Boot" attacks are one of the most dishonest attacks that has ever lasted so long. You can turn it off on any x86 device. In fact, Microsoft requirements actually mandate that you be able to. Here are the requirements: MS Hardware Certification Requirements.. Here is the most relevant sections:

18. Mandatory. Enable/Disable Secure Boot. On non-ARM systems, it is required to implement the ability to disable Secure Boot via firmware setup. A physically present user must be allowed to disable Secure Boot via firmware setup without possession of PKpriv. :

There are other paragraphs that make it further clear. This has been disproven over and over again. But some people prefer a delicious sounding attack to the truth. Secure Boot isn't even a Microsoft technology - it's part of UEFI - a consortium made up of all the major hardware manufacturers such as Samsung, HP, et al. MS has one seat on the board but to some that of course means they're the power behind Samsung and AMD and Intel. *roll eyes*

It's a useful security feature that I look forward to GNU/Linux taking advantage of. And it's about as difficult to turn off as it is to change the boot disk. Only RT devices have it fixed, just the same as iPads and phones are locked down. None of these are RT devices.

If you want a device that is actually locked down for no good reason, look at Google's Pixel. You can run ChromeOS or Ubuntu on it. Any attempt to install anything else you can only achieve by manually putting it into "Developer Mode" every time you turn it on.

Now watch the downvotes come in, not because anything I've written is factually incorrect (it isn't), but because it takes away some hater's favourite toy to attack Microsoft with. What's worse is that I recognize some of the same posters repeating this everytime Windows 8 comes up despite proof they're wrong. Apparently if you hate something enough, it's okay to make up lies to persuade others to hate it to. Because you know, they're the bad guy.