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Most simple - buy a NAS box

Or...

http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-i-set-home-file-server-free-review-freenas.htm

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/replace-windows-home-server-great-free-tools/

Better yet set up your own 'home cloud'...

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/101441-create-your-own-personal-media-cloud

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/143029-empowered-can-high-efficiency-power-supplies-cut-your-electricity-bill/

Fact: Microsoft is selling exponentially more licenses with Windows 8 than it did with Windows 7.

Huh? Microsoft themselves has already admitted that Windows 8 sales are at nearly the EXACT same pace as Windows 7 sales.

Okay... How about actual web usage: http://www.zdnet.com/statcounter-windows-8-license-sales-not-yet-translating-into-usage-7000008148/

Even though Microsoft sold as many licenses of Windows 8 as they did of Windows 7, Windows 7 saw much higher actual usage after one month on the market compared to Windows 8 after one month on the market. Windows 7 made up 4.93% of internet users 1 month after launch compared to Windows 8's 1.31% 1 month after launch. That paints a pretty bleak picture of actual Windows 8 usage. Even Windows Vista managed to get nearly 2% of web browser share after the first month.

So lets assume that both statistics are correct. Microsoft sold 40 million licenses of Windows 8, the same as Windows 7 for the same time period AND Windows 8's web usage 1 month after launch is only 27% of Windows 7's web usage 1 month after launch. Let's add in a few more facts, like NewEgg saying that windows 8 sales are slow and that sales of Windows devices are down 21% from last year since the launch of Windows 8. Based on these facts, we can extrapolate a story.

The story I extrapolated is this: Microsoft sold 40 million licenses of Windows 8 in several ways: 1) end users taking advantage of the cheap $40 upgrade option that has never been offered before, 2) the volume license sales of Windows that are now Windows 8 licenses that are almost ALL being downgraded to Windows 7 because Microsoft no longer sells Windows 7 licenses, and 3) a whole TON of licenses to OEMs so they could get the initial supply of Windows 8 devices in to sales channels for launch.

So lets go over these sales paths:

1) The end user upgrades are legitimate sales of Windows 8. However, I would expect these numbers to be much higher than the initial Windows 7 upgrade sales simply because of the huge discount that didn't exist for the Windows 7 launch. The $40 upgrade price is either a 60% or 80% discount depending on whether you would buy the home or professional edition. I would expect to see a small rush of people buying to take advantage of the lower price...even over the normal PC enthusiast sales of people who must have the latest-and-greatest. The $40 upgrade option would also explain why direct to consumer upgrades of Windows 8 are selling at a faster pace than Windows 7 did. When you give a very hefty discount to pretty much everyone, people are going to jump on the deal.

2) volume license sales: Business need Windows licenses and you can only buy Windows 8 now. So even though the business is installing Windows 7 with those Windows 8 licenses, they are still being counted as a "Windows 8 sale". These are licenses Microsoft would've sold whether Windows 8 was released or not. Also, i'd be curious to know whether Microsoft is including any previous Windows 7 licenses with Software Assurance as a "Windows 8 sale" as well.

3) OEM sales: This is where I bet Microsoft sold the bulk of their Windows 8 licenses. OEMs had to buy their initial set of licenses to cover their initial stock of Windows 8 devices being shipped to sales channels. World wide PC sales for 2012 are expected to be around 350 million units...or about 30 million PCs per month. I would also expect the sales numbers t

50 per GB

http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Flash-vs-MRAM-performance.jpg

Gauging from that comparison image i'd assume it is 50$ per GB as they are comparing it to 1$ per GB NAND which is upper consumer market price right now.

RTFA? :)

iPhone 5 was twice as fast as its predecessor, and is faster than any leading Android phone on the market.

Lying Apple shill.

It's a matter of negligence in this case. Blizzard quite freely admits that their basic login protection is worthless every time their answer to your account getting hacked is "buy an authenticator". There's a case of fraud, as Blizzard attempts to sell you an optional product rather than fixing what they freely acknowledge is a broken system.

And there's a case of douchebaggery as they tell you that it was your fault for trusting their own account protection systems rather than buying an authenticator because banks totally charge $30 for the same service, so you're really getting a great deal! But wait, there's more douchebaggery! When you buy an authenticator and still get hacked, it's still not Blizzard's fault because the Blizzard rep personally checked just about almost every single account and they all had dirty filesharing software and malware and were all buying gold from gold-farmers!

And the users themselves perpetuate the bullshit because they never got hacked and apparently have no fucking clue about how hacking works, or the problem with using a hotel analogy when it comes to comparing secure systems. For example, I would expect a hotel that admits that its basic locks don't provide protection against a particular hacking practice would CHANGE THE FUCKING LOCKS!!

Oh, and file transfers are now counted in "files per second" rather than "megabytes per second". I certainly hope some MS engineers resigned in disgust over that little change.

Perhaps you clicked on it to change the display?

There is probably a lot of "slack" in the Windows 8 phone pricing as well - if the Windows RT "OEM license fee" is 80-95$, the Phone OS OEM price can't be far off. I'm sure Nokia, HTC and Samsung won't mind if they've got to add an extra 80$ in cost for each phone they produce which Microsoft doesn't have to worry about..

Samsung is supplying LCD panels to Apple now, but not for much longer. This is going to hurt the quality of Apple's products, because LG can't make Retina displays worth a damn; apparently only Samsung can.

These Opteron models are the new server line from AMD. The desktop version based on the same architecture (the Trinity alluded to in the summary) closed some of the gap against Intel. But Intel remains the market leader on single core performance, performance per core, and power utilization. AMD continues to push the number of cores upward more aggressively, but there's not many workloads where that matters enough for their slim advantage to result in a net win. And the lower efficiency means that sometimes even having more cores doesn't aggregate into enough speed to be a useful alternative. That leaves AMD to compete on pricing. And the CPU is a relatively small part of the total budget on larger servers. Load up a Dell 815 for example and you'll find the CPU pricing seems small compared to what filling its RAM capacity up costs. And then there's reliable storage, at a while higher price level altogether.

The rule of thumb I've been using for the last year, based on benchmarking of CPU heavy database work, is that I expect a 32 core AMD server to be about as fast as a 24 core Intel one, while using significantly more power. The 40% performance per watt gain claimed here--from AMD's own hand-picked best case scenario benchmark--is only enough to make the Intel performance and gap decrease in size, not go away. We'll see if these new Opterons benefit from the re-engineering work done recently more than the desktop ones did; so far it doesn't look good.

And here's the photographic proof you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

The language being used does not determine if it's a CPU (Central Processing Unit), neither does it determine if it's a General-Purpose CPU.

Programs would have to be specifically designed and modified to work with Adapteva's Epiphany chips. Could mobile phones or computers use this type of processors? Sure, but it cannot replace a CPU on its own, even the Parallela device requires a separate ARM CPU to operate.

You don't seem to understand what the Parallela project is. I recommend starting here to learn more about this proposed platform and what its pitfalls are.

There is no good reason not to develop on OpenGL, especially if you only have resources to develop for or the other, since OpenGL runs on anything, but DirectX restricts you specifically to Win* systems.

Major studios, however, can't seem to see the writing on the wall, much less read it, which is why indie studios and crowd-funding projects are taking the industry by storm, as witnessed with the recent campaigns for Planetary Annihilation, Project Eternity and the still-in-progress Star Citizen. On all of these projects (and many others besides), the number one request by backers or potential backers has consistently been for Linux and Mac support.

Add to that the fact that from the very beginning of the Humble Bundle program, Linux users have consistently donated more for their games (and significantly so) than Windows and Mac users, and there can be no question that just because they use a free OS, Linux users are more than willing to pay for games they can play natively, and developing for it is just a good idea all around: better performance, wider market, less licensing hassle... what's to lose?

Previous Chromebooks have been unlockable:
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/132300-unleash-your-chromebox-how-to-dual-boot-ubuntu-linux-on-your-chrome-os-device

Since the Nexus 7 is unlockable too, there's a good chance this will be.

Why not build them here? Yes they will cost slightly more but obviously given the rabid demand they haven't crossed the price point that drives away customers. The bigger issue is in spite dividends and buy backs and such Apple still has over 100 billion in their mattress and they don't have a clue what to do with it! Even with the increased production costs it's doubtful it would dent the 100 billion in the bank while it would mean hiring 500,000 new people that might turn into iPhone customers! It worked for Henry Ford. Being a good citizen could result in a windfall instead of reduced profits. Apple can't go broke at this point so why not help their mother country out for once? They get the added benefit of getting rid of two weeks in shipment delays due to having to ship them from China. They could also get them to Europe quicker so it's a win/win!

A Chinese Foxconn worker makes around $400/month, $4800 year. A worker in the USA would cost about 10 times as much once benefits are included.

If it takes 500,000 chinese workers to make the phone, it would probably take 600,000 - 750,000 USA workers because USA workers aren't going to put in the same amount of overtime. But it if takes 500,000....500,000 times $50,000/year is $25B/year in labor costs alone and ignores the billions it would cost to build the factories.

It's not just iOS6. The iPhone5 is seriously substandard. Purple photos, Apple Maps, iPhone5's inability to handle LTE and data concurrently, easily scratched paint, and the new docking port with $30 adaptor makes iPhone5 a real lemon...

Nevermind the actual specs. iPhone5 is slower than Samsung Galaxy S3 despite the fact that the S3 is three months older. iPhone5 doesn't have NFC. iPhone5 still has a tiny screen. iOS market share has been sliding for a while, but after a few million get burned with this device, I think iPhone6 will be a very tough sell.

But the iPhone 5 has huge scratch problems all over the back of the phone, especially compared to the iPhone 4, this has been widely reported, even on arrival of the product. Every other manufacturer did the smart thing as far as the actual camera lens is concerned, and recessed it so it couldn't be scratched. Not to mention even if the iPhone 4 has a similar problem it is far less visible. E.G http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/apple-says-iphone-5-scratches-normal-aluminum-products-222413716.html http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/apple/schiller-says-iphone-5-scratches-are-normal-as-light-leaks-reported-1099691 http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/136835-apple-responds-to-iphone-5-scuffgate-scratches-and-chips-are-normal http://www.metro.co.uk/tech/913150-iphone-5-users-complain-about-scratched-phones http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/24/3381462/iphone-5-scuff-damage-aluminum That enough evidence, or are you saying you would rather a scratched case with a clear lens than no scratches at all (as on the iPhone 4)

Famously motherboards with Intel's new atom?
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/136276-intel-clover-trail-atom-chips-cannot-run-linux

There is a website called "www.google.com". You can search details about a vast resource of information on it by just typing in the related keywords to that information. Awesome, isn't it?

Why would HP need to buy Apple products? HP already makes their own MacBook Pro (which is appropriately named "Envy") as well as their own iMac. They don't need to visit the Apple Store when they can make their own.

I wish I could agree with you, but from what I can tell, Gaben has stalled developing the Linux port in favor of making hardware.

http://androidandme.com/2011/09/news/intel-and-google-announce-android-x86-optimization/
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2109367/df-intel-outlines-developer-tools-android-tablet-integrationhttp://www.itproportal.com/2011/12/05/intel-google-design-android-smartphones-run-atom-processors/
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/105189-intels-x86-android-smartphone-and-tablet-plans-exposed
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5770/lava-xolo-x900-review-the-first-intel-medfield-phone
http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/24/3040706/intel-x86-image-for-android-ice-cream-sandwich-sdk

History shows the FBI considers itself a righteous organization that can and does ignore its own laws and policies in order to "get the bad guy".

Just wait until they couple this with data from Facebook. Oh wait, what am I worried about? They're the good guys, right?! And this is a new age where shit like that could *never* happen. Yeah.

Anyone here remember J. Edgar Hoover?

You remember correctly, people have been doing this for years. I have no idea why TFA calls this "world first bionic eye", perhaps there is something new about their particular method, although it doesn't sound very impressive compared to other options.

Here is a list of some companies producing retinal implants (incl. Bionic Vision from TFA): http://www.upgradeyourbody.com/catalog/bionics/eyes/ At least some of those are already past clinical trials and available commercially.

The latest, greatest breakthrough:
Scientists reverse engineer eye-brain signaling, enabling next generation of implants

More links on retinal implants:
Wikipedia - Retinal implant
1000-electrode implant developed in Stanford
Long-term trials started in Oxford in 2010
Phase II trials of 1500-electrode implant by Retina Implant AG (2011)
Argus II implant goes to market
Bio-Retina 576-pixel implant to start trials in 2013

You remember correctly, people have been doing this for years. I have no idea why TFA calls this "world first bionic eye", perhaps there is something new about their particular method, although it doesn't sound very impressive compared to other options.

Here is a list of some companies producing retinal implants (incl. Bionic Vision from TFA): http://www.upgradeyourbody.com/catalog/bionics/eyes/ At least some of those are already past clinical trials and available commercially.

The latest, greatest breakthrough:
Scientists reverse engineer eye-brain signaling, enabling next generation of implants

More links on retinal implants:
Wikipedia - Retinal implant
1000-electrode implant developed in Stanford
Long-term trials started in Oxford in 2010
Phase II trials of 1500-electrode implant by Retina Implant AG (2011)
Argus II implant goes to market
Bio-Retina 576-pixel implant to start trials in 2013

1. Contacts
2. Messaging
3. Photo Wizard
4. Video widzard" (WTF is a widzard?)
5. Gallery
6. Camera (Oh look! It takes pictures too! Neat! Why isn't this first on the list?)
7. Instagram
8. Music
9. Videos
10. Clock
11. Calculator
12. S Planner (I often thought this would be a useful feature in a camera so I could plan my day around developing photos... not much use for it now, though)
13. Memo
14. S Voice
15. Dropbox
16. My Files
17. Samsung Apps
18. Play Store
19. Settings

Usability FAIL. It looks like you've got two competing app stores on your camera (Google's and Samsung's), and how are you going to find your files (is it in my files? gallery? dropbox? Oh, wait, maybe they're in camera?)? It never ceases to amaze me that huge corporations spend all this money developing and releasing these products and it's like no one ever bothered to pick it up and try to use it first. They work so hard to copy Apple, and they can't even do that properly.

I have a Samsung home theater system with an "iPod Dock" that disables the iPod interface and starts playing the first song on the device in alphabetical order. To choose another song, you have to hit the >> button, wait two seconds for it to load and then a few more seconds to figure out if it's something you want to listen to. With over 2,000 songs, it takes about 15 minutes to find a song on-demand.

I have a Samsung TV that doesn't come with a printed manual. Users are expected to read it on the TV, yet the manual includes a troubleshooting section devoted to "The TV will not turn on." If you can't get the TV to turn on, you can't read the manual. I guess they expect you'll go back to the store and read the manual on the floor model to get your TV to turn on. Or you figure out that they have a very nice PDF file on their Web site.

It doesn't have to be that way. You would slowly replace parts of your brain with wetware until it was all artificial.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/135207-harvard-creates-cyborg-flesh-thats-half-man-half-machine

You would then still be "you", and not two of you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

"Plutarch thus questions whether the ship would remain the same if it were entirely replaced, piece by piece. Centuries later, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes introduced a further puzzle, wondering: what would happen if the original planks were gathered up after they were replaced, and used to build a second ship.[3] Which ship, if either, is the original Ship of Theseus?"

You needed fast storage to make Vista useable beyond very basic word processing and browsing (single processing). There's no two ways about that.

In that case care to explain the results here or here or here? Largely the complaints around Vista stemmed from the incompatibilities that came from introducing a new driver and security model (which are the same as in 7) and misconceptions around memory usage because of SuperFetch, the reality is the performance wasn't much different.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/134427-a-paper-based-backup-solution-not-as-stupid-as-it-sounds

I don't think I ever "feel safe" on the ground with the nutbag drivers on the roads. So many people do so many dangerous things in cars. You may think it's safe, but it really isn't.

The only way to feel safer is to remove humans from the equation. Google's unmanned car: 300 000 miles, 0 crashes. There's not many cars that can claim those kind of statistics

Not sure if this link will work, but clicking the print link at the top of most of these articles will bring up a single page view with no ads or sidebars filling up the screen.

Here you go: http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/133637-cache-of-the-titans-ssd-storage-accelerators-from-intel-and-corsair-face-off?print

Low enough latency with accurate enough eye tracking might take some of that strain off. Human vision has some interesting quirks, and if you focus your rendering power where and when it matters, I'd bet you could make do with a lot less resources. Calling our vision hundreds of megapixels with 200fps just isn't fact. For example, we don't see anything at all when our eyes saccade, the brain stops looking at input while the scenery is still in relative motion. This could be exploited, by only drawing when our eyes are not in saccade (of course you need to analyze relative motion of objects with where the eye is going. Read that wiki link for more on that, particularly the bits talking about fast moving objects. Still more reading here.

Basically, if you can track the eye and perhaps even motor feedback (if we get that far, yea) we can exploit all these eye motions. Drawing the full screen at a full rate all the time is extremely wasteful.

I can't say anything about the motor feedback. Given the recent bionic eye work, and brain implants restoring a facsimile of vision, that might not be as far off as you think. We have basic working eye tracking already and a visor is the ideal environment for such a thing anyway.

The great thing about VOIP is it doesn't matter. You can install and run both clients at the same time and then just make sure you are visible in Jitsi as much as possible whilst being visible very rarely in Skype, and then only when you want something (sit there invisible, but turn on notifications so you see when friends without Jitsi come on line). From time to time suggest to people that it would be easier to get you if they had Jitsi. When you meet people show them how to set up Jitsi (or whichever other client you prefer) to work better than Skype.

No need to get political. The simple phrase "I want to have something I can rely on; I don't trust Microsoft not to mess me about later; remember how they killed off KIN / Windows Mobile 6 / Windows Mobile 7 / the desktop PC / efficient working in Office / flight simulator / plays for sure / etc. etc.". Preferably choose a Microsoft betrayal that cost you personally There are so many simple technical betrayals by Microsoft that you can start with those before going into the political. Even there, you should start with things like "because Microsoft chooses to support Chinese censorship" which are simple and clear to understand.

Not much except potential backlash from human customers. Amazon still depends on very many human customers. So they have to boil the frog slowly and carefully.

They're not far from being able to get rid of most human workers in their warehouses:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/123765-automation-warehouse-robots-come-of-age-as-amazon-buys-kiva/3

You don't need that much brains to do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWNuaPE4DTc
So a more fancy pick-n-place robot could replace the human in that job.

I'd like to bring this little nugget to all of those commenters who seem to imply "well it says no camreas its his own fault.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/132918-the-laser-powered-bionic-eye-that-gives-576-pixel-grayscale-vision-to-the-blind

What about a sign make assault acceptable? Perhaps if the persons in question didn't want to be seen my someone else, they should return to their caves. This behavior is indicative of people who only deserve to live in a cave, and do not have a place in modern society.

PS : I guess blind people in France will have to remain blind if they don't want to run the risk of being beaten to death.

What Ubuntu has been referring to as Grub2 was Grub1.9x, a pre-release of Grub2. What the OP means is their dropping it because of legal issues around GPLv3, on Windows 8 approved hardware they won't be able to keep the private signing key, private which would result in their certificates being revoked. http://www.extremetech.com/computing/131628-canonical-explains-decision-to-ditch-grub-2-on-uefi-systems

See The fanless heatsink: Silent, dust-immune, and almost ready for prime time, and an interview with the inventor.

Disbelief of the dust-immune property of this cooler is addressed in the first question of the interview:

Jeff Koplow: I did not mean to imply that there is literally no dust fouling; some dust accumulation eventually becomes visible to the naked eye on the very leading edge of the blades. The point is that dust fouling is reduced to such a large extent that we are unable to detect any degradation of cooling performance operating the device in a relatively dirty environment over an extended period of time. Thus for all intents and purposes the dust fouling problem has been taken off the table. In contrast, with conventional CPU coolers, eventually the entire heat exchanger surface becomes entombed in dust. I suppose there are some applications in which computers are operated in extremely dusty environments that might be too much for the heat-sink-impeller. This is common sense. In trying to figure out a way around the longstanding problem of CPU cooler dust fouling, I was thinking in terms of residential and commercial environments where the vast majority of PCs are found.

Once again, it is disappointing how many people so yearn for the status quo, when presented with clearly superior technologies. Not that they always pan out, but it is disheartening to see such hostility toward progress.

See The fanless heatsink: Silent, dust-immune, and almost ready for prime time, and an interview with the inventor.

Disbelief of the dust-immune property of this cooler is addressed in the first question of the interview:

Jeff Koplow: I did not mean to imply that there is literally no dust fouling; some dust accumulation eventually becomes visible to the naked eye on the very leading edge of the blades. The point is that dust fouling is reduced to such a large extent that we are unable to detect any degradation of cooling performance operating the device in a relatively dirty environment over an extended period of time. Thus for all intents and purposes the dust fouling problem has been taken off the table. In contrast, with conventional CPU coolers, eventually the entire heat exchanger surface becomes entombed in dust. I suppose there are some applications in which computers are operated in extremely dusty environments that might be too much for the heat-sink-impeller. This is common sense. In trying to figure out a way around the longstanding problem of CPU cooler dust fouling, I was thinking in terms of residential and commercial environments where the vast majority of PCs are found.

Once again, it is disappointing how many people so yearn for the status quo, when presented with clearly superior technologies. Not that they always pan out, but it is disheartening to see such hostility toward progress.

What's even funnier is that the blog post speaks of some things as uncertain where specific answers to them have been known for a long time now.

Will Win8 ARM devices be locked? - yes, all of them; it's a mandatory part of certification requirements.

Will Win8 Intel devices be locked? - no, at least not for those with "Designed for Windows" label (i.e. those you can actually buy in store); it's a mandatory part of certification requirements.

Will you be able to run any software you want on a Win8 ARM device? - no, it comes from Windows Store only, similar to Apple's walled garden.

Will you be able to run any software you want on a Win8 Intel device? - yes, same as Windows today.

Will you be able to publish F/OSS, and specifically GPL'd, software in Windows Store? - yes, it has specific provisions for that.

And yet the license for Windows Store explicitly permits GPL. So it can be done. Apple just decided that it's not worth the hassle.

Several tables these days are sold with a keyboard docking station (or as optional equipment) - which not only gives you a good keyboard but also added battery capacity. The keyboards are thin and compact. I fancied the Asus Transformer Prime, but it was Android only. Though there appear to be coming some nice Windows powered tablets: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/130364-the-answer-to-all-our-windows-8-dreams-the-ivy-bridge-asus-transformer-book

“There are two kinds of Android apps,” Bell says. “Those that use Dalvik, and ones that run natively.” Dalvik is Google’s Java-like virtual machine which many Android apps run inside. Theoretically, as long as Dalvik works on x86, then all of the apps will. “We have a large team working on making sure Dalvik apps work well.” I push the mobile chief on the topic of native apps, and he hums and haws a little. “We have developed some software that translates native apps to x86, and it seems to work well,” he says. Seizing this opening, I ask if it would be possible to build the same kind of translation layer for Windows 8 and Windows RT. In return, I get a shrug, a smile, and a non-answer.

Actually, now reading that quote again, it doesn't give me much confidence in their capability. They might have to rely on going to a smaller size for it to work.

I wonder why the fans are enclosed in plastic shrouds? http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/macbook-pro-retina-display-innards-labelled.jpg

I think it's because, like most laptops Apple has made recently, they're blowers. A long time ago (like 2001 or 2002), they used a traditional fan, where air comes in one side and goes straight through out the other - to fit it, they angled it at 30 degrees or so inside the laptop. Since then, they've mostly been using blowers, where air comes in at the center of one side, but is then blown out at a 90-degree angle, off the ends of the blades. They make these much larger, which lets them run at lower RPMs while moving the same amount of air, meaning they're quieter and sound less like a mosquito. The plastic shroud keeps the air from blowing out in all directions, and directs it out the back of the computer.

It looks like the airflow in there is designed to enter near the battery (you can see ducts on what I believe are the speakers), cruise over the logic board, enter at the exposed center part of the blowers, and exit out the back on the sides, through some heat sink fins connected to a heat pipe that goes over the CPU and GPU. Some air also enters through the middle back, to go over the top of the RAM.

I wonder why the fans are enclosed in plastic shrouds? http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/macbook-pro-retina-display-innards-labelled.jpg

"The battery has a capacity of 95 watt-hours, some 20% larger than 77.5 watt-hour battery in the non-Retina MacBook Pro. As far as I know, this is the largest built-in laptop battery ever produced â" and yet the new MBP "only" has a battery life of seven hours."

It's amazing how many hours laptop makers can squeeze out of batteries. This may be the largest battery ever produced, but would still only power my reading light (40 watt bulb) for 2 and 1/3 hours...... they ought to put some of that technology into a desktop to make it low-power (and green).

"If you run out of flash storage (and 256GB isnâ(TM)t a whole lot), your only option is expensive external storage. "

Only? Sounds like a lot to me. And external storage isn't expensive... $70 for a 500GB and $90 for a 1000GB drive.

There is already an alternative already. It's called external PCIe, and while quite similar to thunderbolt, is simpler (both in software and hardware) and more scalable.

And less capable, and NOT HERE YET.

So now what?

What are you talking about? I have been using a 2560x1600 30" for years. It runs 1080p in a little window.

IBM had a super hi-res (3kx2k?) a decade ago, but they pulled it. Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors

You mean THIS one? It is The (sadly discontinued) 3840×2400, 22-inch IBM T221 -- 204 PPI!

I got the picture from TFA. The description above was the caption of the photo. Rather than looking up the monitor in Wikipedia, you could have just said, "TFA".

2016 is in 4 years. Let's see...

In 2008, Seagate announced the world's first 1.5TB drive.

And in 2012, Hitachi announced the first 4TB drive.

And in 2016, this will magically become 60TB?!

If you said 10TB, I would believe it. I'll even go along with 15TB.

But 60TB? don't believe it for a second.

Here's a link to the article in 1 page.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/128735-microsoft-creates-kinect-like-system-using-your-laptops-built-in-speaker-microphone
Microsoft creates Kinect-like system using your laptop’s built-in speaker & microphone
By Sebastian Anthony on May 7, 2012 at 9:02 am

SoundWave: Sound-based motion detection from Microsoft Research
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Not one to be outdone by Disney’s any-surface touch interface, Microsoft Research, working with the University of Washington, has developed a Kinect-like system that uses your computer’s built-in microphone and speakers to provide object detection and gesture recognition, much in the same way that a submarine uses sonar.

Called SoundWave, the new technology uses the Doppler effect to detect any movements and gestures in the proximity of a computer. The Doppler effect, if you remember high school physics, is where the frequency of a sound alters depending on your distance from it — the Doppler effect describes the change of a police siren’s pitch as it comes towards you and then recedes into the distance. In the case of SoundWave, your computer’s built-in speaker is used to emit ultrasonic (18-22KHz) sound waves, which change frequency depending on where your hand (or body) is in relation to the computer. This change in frequency is measured by your computer’s built-in microphone, and then some fairly complex software works out your motion/gesture.

Now, the obvious advantage of SoundWave over a product like Kinect is that it uses existing, commodity hardware; it could effectively equip every modern laptop with a gesture-sensing interface. The flip side, though, is that SoundWave, with a single sound source and microphone, isn’t going to allow for the same kind of accurate, 3D sensing that Kinect, Sony Move, or Wii Motion can provide with cameras and stereo IR sensors.

Microsoft SoundWave, measuring the Doppler effect of a moving handWatching the SoundWave video though (embedded below), I am surprised at what has already been achieved with a very simple hardware setup. The most obvious example is a laptop that automatically locks when you move away from it, and unlocks when you return — but it seems that the software is already advanced enough to detect up/down and left/right swipes of the hand. The system’s accuracy, according to the research paper, is between 90 and 100%, even in noisy environments. In one example, some fairly complex hand gestures are used to control the rotation and descending of Tetris blocks. If you added another ultrasonic sound source, and a few more microphones (many laptops already have microphone arrays anyway), SoundWave could probably replicate Kinect very well.

The video also makes clear, however, that waving your hands around — when the keyboard is right there — is a little bit foolish. Still, SoundWave is a freebie — it doesn’t interfere with any other sounds played by the computer (you can listen to music while SoundWave is active), and there’s no reason why laptops shouldn’t come with SoundWave preinstalled. I doubt it will ever reach the accuracy or resolution of camera-based solutions, though, and in all likelihood it won’t be long until we see laptops and smartphones with Kinect built in, anyway. Still, who knows — maybe SoundWave could provide a cheaper option for developing countries, or perhaps it could simply augment Kinect to provide greater accuracy over a wider range of motions/gestures.

IMHO, it's because Ubuntu was really the only distro that had a fighting chance at "mass" adoption (that number is relative, but considering how MacOX was sitting at 9% for an eternity...) with their tri-force of:

A pretty, and relatively user friendly interface,
A centralized software update suites that didn't requiring googling what to sudo apt-get for in a console
And pretty good brand recognition and media attention.

UNTIL they decided to completely over-indulge their own sense of relevance by forcing the mandatory Unity interface on users with some absolutely retarded idea that they would to do this for the huge wave of tablet adoption they were now going to see, since I'm assuming Desktop users are already totes in the Ubuntu bandwagon?

I think the real issue isn't that (consumer) Desktop Linux hasn't taken off, but that the people behind the main distro that actually had a fighting chance decided to chop some of the more useful limbs off of it to make it more...fingerable.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/102599-ubuntu-14-04-will-be-a-smartphone-and-tablet-os-so-what

I suspect this is related (at least conceptually, it appears to be a different group): http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/110031-a-bionic-prosthetic-eye-that-speaks-the-language-of-your-brain