For me XPS is an unstable machine: bad firmware, bad wifi chip, bad tb dock, kernel modules crash continuously. Next time i'll buy something else (and cheaper).
3dfx with vga passthrough were the real life changers thanks to advanced texture rendering. Still poly were not anti-aliased. It was a real paradigm change and captured a majority (>80%) of the market. If you remember the game Turok with and without Voodoo you lived that days :)
A comment on /. stated that they use Monero, optimized for customer grade CPUs. Personally I do not see a problem in computing third party code: at the end of the day it's how HTML/JS was designed. If such code is harmful then it's malware and it has to be blocked and the organization spreading it bashed. Otherwise we should ask compensation for all the SELECT * ever written :)
Personally I find great to have a full screen editor/ide without floating file list and symbols one one monitor and documentation/shell on the second. When you look at one you are not interested in the other so I would not call it multitasking but easier process switching.
People who keep the mail client open should try notifications: events versus polling is much more efficient for low clock human beings.