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While I prefer to use a slate (use a Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4121 Tablet PC as my main machine for web-browsing, writing, editing, notes, drawing, sketching, drawing up wood-working plans, LaTeX typesetting and some light programming), a convertible literally is the ``Best of Both Worlds'' (for those who're willing to carry the extra weight of the keyboard and deal w/ the hinge mechanism). I'd be glad to be able to run Mac OS X on the Intel version of the MS Surface.

Apple should remember this from a time when they marketed a laptop (PowerBook Duo) and a docking station which swallowed the portable unit as if it were a VCR tape and allowed one to use external keyboard, mouse and monitor on one's desktop.

Similarly, Sony's Tap 20 ( http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/tablets/sony-vaio-tap-20.aspx ) is an all-in-one w/ a 2 hour battery and a stand which allows one to move it around and lay it flat for a more flexible usage. If we could get an option for that sort of thing in an iMac, we might be able to get our proofreaders to buy into soft-proofing jobs on-screen.

A general response to both this post and the other reply: If I can't see a personal selection of apps/widgets/etc across my desktop multi-monitor setup without hitting a keyboard combo or mouse hotspot, then it's the UI that has failed, not my use of it. Why can I not have both interfaces visible at the same time and be able to treat the whole UI as s single entity? Also reference this interview " Usability Expert: Windows 8 on PCs is Confusing, a Cognitive Burden" or the shorter synopsis here or here. For myself I'll be sticking to Win7 for the foreseeable future, and as a Windows admin I'm more interested in the newer Server versions than I am Win8's desktop, even though older windows and scripting is where I do most of my work. - HEX

I was/am sureMSI also offered it for awhile with the 10 inch Wind, not a bad little unit. it sure as fuck wasn't SUSE as I've used SUSE and whatever they had on the thing was NOT SUSE. It looked like a rip of the EEE UI mixed with a little gOS and that sure as fuck ain't SUSE.

But in the end it don't matter, given the choice people took Windows and so nobody cares. I mean if you think there is a market, why did Walmart pull it? Surely you don't think the company that prides itself on undercutting everybody would just walk away from selling laptops cheaper than anybody? they walked away because just as Canonical found out if it don't run the software they don't want it. Oh and just FYI but even one of the RH devs says the Linux desktop model is broken and getting worse and if he don't know the truth then who in the fuck does?

Frankly I wish Linux had a usable product, I really do. I probably went through $300 in bandwidth cap overages trying every. damned. distro. just to find one that would consistently update without shitting itself, know what i found? It don't exist, and frankly probably won't exist as long as Linus Torvalds is controlling the kernel.

I could give you a long list of what is broken but why bother? The community won't listen and things will never get better so who cares. In the end Linux was a beautiful IDEA that was wasted because in the end the community became a bunch of elitist programmer pricks that think regular people shouldn't touch their "precious" OS. The only time that Linux has ever sold shit was when Google took it away from the community and made Android, which mark my words will be locked down as bad as iOS by 2015. Nobody listens, nobody learns, they just keep doing the same old shit, bleeding edge software, kernel fucking, leaning on the CLI, and the shocked when nothing changes and nobody will take Linux. Hell when people would rather steal the other guy's product by like a 30 to 1 margin rather than take yours for 100% free, what does that tell you?

It tells me that nobody in the Linux community will actually bother to make a product people will take, that's what.

This is disingenuous, because it says nothing about what you're actually *buying* for that price. If an iPad is $500 worth of hardware in a $700 package, and a Galaxy Tab is $600 worth of hardware in a $700 package, then it really doesn't matter that they're the same price; the Galaxy Tab is the better deal, all other things considered.

Can you name a reason for people to care about actual hardware when iOS is known to perform much better and be a lot more responsive than Android? Why should a user care about purchasing a product with better hardware specs when it actually performs worse than the competition? And this is not to mention a very specific detail about the hardware that you seem to be ignoring: the A5X completely destroys the Tegra in OpenGL benchmarks while being owned on the CPU performance. One question you have to ask here is: what is the CPU actually being used for in the tablet? Even on the desktop, where you actually perform CPU-intensive tasks, CPU performance has been losing relevance, so why would that be such a big deal on a tablet? The only logical explanation I see for adding extra CPU to an appliance that really doesn't need it is because the firmware is too slow, but then you are compensating in an area for the shortcomings of another, which should be part of your consideration!

Once again, An innaccurate headline fools most of the slashdot readers. Seriously folks, click on the article and just scroll down to the full McDonald's letter. It is seven sentences long and says essentially that the employees deny Dr. Mann's account but that McDonald's is still investigating. Dr. Mann has not yet responded to their queries. Nowhere is it even implied that they are denying Dr. Mann's claims.

Forbes article confirms Mann was asked to leave
"Update: A McDonald’s spokesperson confirms that Mann was in fact asked to leave the restaurant,"

So McDonalds is confirming that they did tell Mann to leave, just like I said, now they're arguing over the manner in which he left. Mann provided this photo which confirms it was physical.

Dude did piss his pants apparently.
http://blog.laptopmag.com/exclusive-cyborg-steve-mann-on-alleged-mcdonalds-assault

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/21/mac_os_x_lion_security/
http://blog.laptopmag.com/mac-os-x-lion-vs-windows-7-which-is-better/9
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Applications/Apple-Mac-OS-X-Lion-Bests-Microsoft-Windows-7-10-Reasons-Why-647298/ (slide 4)
http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/29/lions-upgraded-robust-security-features/
I think you get the point... all of these I found on the first 2 pages by Googling "lion security vs windows 7".

Uhhh...your link shows Microsoft PAID FOR AN AD. Are you no longer allowed to pay for ads because FOSS wants to be "free as in beer"? And did you look at the date? Xandros had already stopped updating by that time. Again do you HONESTLY expect Asus to place an unsupported OS on their units? finally a little link of my own you might find interesting and a far more likely reason they quit carrying Linux, which is a 400% higher return rate for Linux than Windows on netbooks. We are talking about a unit where the average profit per unit is $6-$8. At margins that razor thin literally more than a handful of returns can make the whole line unprofitable. Have you EVER sold anything at retail? If you'd have you'd know high returns are the kiss of death.

This is what never fails to amaze me about FOSS zealots and their perception bubbles. More people STEAL WINDOWS than have EVER used your product, even though your product is free, doesn't that whack you upside the head with a cluebat? Here it is 2012 and you STILL refuse to ask the single most important question: What are my competitors (and it is a competition) doing right that I'm doing wrong? Ask the retailers, we'll be happy to tell you. your driver model is horribly broken and like something from 15 years ago, your sound system is the buggiest POS I've ever seen with updates to seemingly unrelated systems causing Pulseaudio to puke and give silence or static, you still have figured out how to get a machine to wake from sleep, NONE of your devs follow the UI conventions, some use the Windows conventions, some use Mac conventions, some old school Unix which makes the whole experience disjointed. Basically the whole system feels like a bunch of different crap thrown together by people who never talk to each other....which is pretty much what it is. Hell even one of the largest OEMs on the planet Dell has to run their own repos because they can't even get enough QA from the so called "user friendly distro" to keep the drivers from puking, even though they sell less than a dozen models!

Waste your mod points all you want but this is a truth that needs to be spoken, it is THIS, this right here, that keeps Linux in last place. Somewhere along the way making F/LOSS accessible to the masses was thrown to the wayside in favor of the "FLOSSie club" as I call it, where You must prove your "worthy" of using the gifts the great Torvalds and RMS have bestowed upon thee. In this club anything that makes F/LOSS more useful, easier, and friendlier? why that is bad, its "rampant consumerism" or "dumbing down" and anything that makes Linux more complex, obtuse, or fiddly is "smarter" and "more powerful". I have actually been told by a member of the FLOSSie club when i pointed out that Linux was too CLI heavy for my consumers "to make them embrace the power of CLI" like its the Goddamn force!

A wise person once said "You know what the definition of insanity is? Its doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result" and that is EXACTLY what the community has been doing. Insane release schedule, broken drivers, none of that matter because the users will embrace the power of CLI and learn "the Unix way" even though Unix was NEVER supposed to be a consumer OS and died out over a decade ago!

In the end its not a conspiracy, its not magic, hell Microsoft is being run by a bumbling idiot with Apple envy and you STILL can't get ahead! Have you seen Win 8? Its a fricking bad joke and you STILL won't gain any share, people will pirate Win 7 instead, why? Its because you DO NOT LISTEN TO US. You don't listen to the consumers, to the retailers, nor the OEMs, its a bunch of nerds scratching itches and having a "I'm moar leet!" wankfest. You're a good decade behind your competition, here we are in the great XP dieoff in a recession and NOBODY, not Best Buy

"Though he [Labour activist Li Qiang] believes that Apple has done a better job of inspecting its factories than others, Li maintains that the public is right to put more pressure on Tim Cook’s company than its competitors who have the same problems. Because Apple makes the most profit, he reasons, it also bears the most responsibility for fixing a broken system."

You may do a better job than other, but you've got deeper pockets so prepare to be punished.

"“Foxconn is not good,” Li told the New York Times. ”But if we compare all industries, electronics, textile, toys, Foxconn is one of the best.”"

They're not even attacking the right supplier, just the one that's connected with the most high profile name so they can get their mug in the papers.

Tell me which mean were you intending to invoke, was it works for me or works for me at home it does really because it really would help if you would just point to which meme you are gonna sling. Personally i think they ought to just number them, then you can say 'i'm gonna call a number 4, followed by a 6 and a 19" and call it a day.

You want something besides anecdotes? be careful what you wish for because you just might get it friend. BTW if your OS wasn't broken why did ASUS abandon it? could it be the the insane return rate from people buying your shit and finding it be broke? how do you answer the fact that dell has to run their own repo, even though they only offer Linux on a teeny tiny amount, because otherwise the deathmarch upgrades shit all over the drivers?

The simple answer is you can't, you can't and you won't because that would mean stopping all the koolaid guzzling and admitting the dirty little secret of FOSS, and that is the driver model is shit. Its shit because Linus Torvalds doesn't care if its shit and has said there will NEVER be an ABI, even though Solaris, BSD, OSX, Windows and every other OS that is NOT Linux has one. Do you HONESTLY believe Linus is smarter than every single OS designer in the world? arrogant much? Oh and please post that bit from one of the kernel devs against ABIs because i don't have that cultist rant bookmarked yet, thanks. When the guy goes so far as to say 'I hope anybody who uses non free drivers has their devices break often!" he has ceased being a developer and became a FOSSie, which like Moonies only accept "the one true way" all bow before the smelly feet of RMS.

But if you'd like more examples, please just ask, 5 minutes in google and i can wallpaper this page with link after link saying the same thing I am, your shit be broke yo.

Funny you should mention dell because they are actually a poster child for how broken Linux is a consumer platform is because Dell have to run their own repos just to keep there teeny tiny subset of hardware from being shat on when the devs scratch their itches. I will bet my very last dollar if Dell will publish their numbers (which they won't BTW, I even asked them out of curiosity and they won't give you the numbers) that Dell is LOSING money on Ubuntu because the costs of keeping a dev team to do nothing but maintain their own repo is costing more than they are making on the machines. Do you propose that ALL the OEMs lose money hand over fist to support you? Did you know that ASUS, the ones that started the whole Linux on tiny machines aka netbook craze has given up on Linux and no longer sells any Linux machines? or that a decade old Windows stomped Linux on netbooks or that even canonical admitted that returns were FOUR TIMES higher than Windows? do you think ALL of these people are lying? That they "just don't git it"?

Its really simple friend, to get the level of polish required to make Linux work on the desktop, where suzy the checkout girl won't have to learn bash or how to navigate a CLI when things break, where frankly things WON'T break in the first place, is gonna cost north of a hundred million easy and the FOSS model simply won't allow you to make that amount in the consumer market. Look at canonical, they haven't made a single cent, not one penny, on the desktop. if you figure in how much shuttleworth sunk in they have lost millions without a single dime of ROI, you think that is sustainable? in fact I'd bet my last buck that canonical will be out of desktops in less than 5 years, probably less than 3, simply because they won't be able to generate the operating capital. RMS may think you can have a utopia where everyone works for free towards the common good but that is a fallacy because we human like doing fun jobs and HATE doing shitty jobs and in the FOSS model the busted shitters don't get fixed. The FOSS model works in business because business is used to buying support contracts and they make money off their machines so spending money to make money is fine by them. the consumer market simply doesn't work like that and without the steady income you can't herd the devs and if you don't herd the devs you get what you have now, with bugs measured in years, updates that fix one thing and break three, hell I have Windows units out in the field that have been running since 2002 on a single install. can you imagine trying to update a Linux desktop from 2002 to current and still have it functional on the other end? it won't happen friend, hell take a distro disc from just 3 years ago and apt-dist-upgrade to current and watch things fall apart.

Thank you, but I'm just a humble retailer that got tired of being lied to. I mean if their OS was actually good then why has ASUS has given up on Linux? If it is so stable then why does Dell have to run their own repos even though we are talking a teeny tiny subset of hardware? If it is so secure then

how, do you explain these?

So you see somewhere on the way to be a good OS Linux quit being an OS and became a religion. Admittance of the myriad of problems is NOT allowed, anymore that you could question the Koran or Bible in the home of a fundie. Frankly Canonical could change the default picture to Goatse and we'd see apologists come out of the woodwork to explain that is actually a biting social commentary on our times.

Here are some facts: Fact 1- All the major OEMs frankly ignore Linux not because of some secret M$ Ninja conspiracy, but because its so damned unstable thanks to Torvalds treating the kernel as his own playground. this attitude which is expressed by the man himself right here mean a company either has to do like dell and pay a team to basically run their OWN distro, no small task, or deal with a broken mess when Torvalds goes 'Lol Goatse!" and breaks shit. this is why even Canonical admitted there is a FOUR TIMES higher return rate for Ubuntu netbooks which makes linux a money LOSER for any company foolish enough to try. Walmart, Asus, these companies don't just abandon a product willy nilly you know, they did it because of the reasons i listed.

The sad part? All the basic parts are there, a modern kernel, DEs that with some serious polish could be great, plenty of drivers, but the zealots and itch scratching devs make sure Linux goes exactly nowhere. the ONLY reason it has gotten anywhere on servers is MSFT's frankly ass raping prices on CALs. If MSFT dropped the price of WinServer to $100 and the price of CALs to a buck a pop Linux would dry up and blow away, anybody that was honest would admit this. As a Linux admin i know put it "if you give a Windows and Linux admin the same job that the Linux guy has done repeatedly then the Linux admin WILL win, but if its a completely new task? the windows admin will be home making a sandwich before the Linux admin is done Googling".

But instead of admitting that CLIs are for servers and GUIs for desktops you'll get 300 page treaties on how "CLI is leet!" and how much better the world would be if "They would only embrace the POWER of CLI" like its the god damned force. So instead all you get is flag waving and fangirls. notice how many above me rushed to say "And I'm not a fanboi"? Every time you read that the translation should be "I'm such a fangirl I squee like a tweener at a Beiber concert when i see a Bash prompt!"

Ultimately though their denial can't change reality and the simple fact is their precious awesome OS lower than JavaME , a shitty third rate cellphone OS. Why? If it is sooo good why is it so low? Because it ISN'T good, its a buggy, fiddly, unfriendly, unintuitive, CLI heavy fiddly bitch that is about as far from the level of polish from OSX and Win 7 as it is from here to Europa. If they weren't so busy drooling over bash prompts maybe they'd ask the most important question, which is "What are our competitors doing right that we are doing wrong?' but that would mean admitting 70s terminals are as out as Disco, and they'd rather choke on RMS's sandals that admit that little truth.

Well let us say, just for the sake of argument (and remember these were provided by OEMs trying to get lower prices and refuse upgrades of 7 from XP on netbooks, not to mention I can get pro and will be getting 2 copies for Xmas at $39 student discount and I kinda doubt students buying a single copy get a better deal than someone buying 100,000 copies, don't you?) that you data is correct. Now that is talking about Home Premium for $50, which would make starter at around $25. Now considering on last count the average netbooks has nearly FOURTY pieces of trialware installed (just look how many programs are listed under DeCrappifier if you wish for a citation since the OEMs refuse to publish numbers) you are looking at MOST windows costing $15-$30 after the trialware payback is figured in.

Now lets look at just ONE OEM has to pay for Ubuntu. they have to run their own servers, not cheap, they have to hire a team of developers to roll their own version of Ubuntu, what do a developer with experience in rolling their own distros and writing drivers go for? $100,000 a piece? probably need a dozen to run a distro at minimum, and then you have the returns which of course can't be sold as new and as HP admitted when they were looking to sell at an average of $8 profit per unit it really doesn't take but a handful of returns to equal a giant loss. And when we are talking 400% return rates it isn't hard to figure out which OS isn't worth the effort.

This is why ASUS, the ones who created the whole Linux netbook idea, quit carrying Linux, why Windows slaughtered Linux on netbooks where if Windows pricing made a difference anywhere THAT would be the market, yet the ALL abandoned Linux completely.

It is just simple common sense. Ask yourself just ONE single question...If Linux is so great and could save OEMs money then why aren't ANY of them using it? dell hides a handful of Ubuntu machines in the back, basically to get one more checkbox on their bulletpoint list, and the rest don't do even that, why? do you HONESTLY think it is some fast conspiracy to keep your miracle free OS away from the masses? Why isn't any of the little shops like mine using it to undercut competitors?

Because the sad and nasty truth that NO amount of mod points can EVER erase, nor can that one FOSSie going around claiming everyone that doesn't kiss Linus' booty MUST be APK ever change, is this simple truth, which is Linux is free only if your time is worthless and for the OEM frankly MSFT could double their prices and they STILL won't take your OS, because in the end it would cost MORE money. more money to fix broken drivers, more money to deal with the complaints, more money to run their own repos because the default one breaks more than it fixes.

here is a nice article I found several years ago and I hope that you read it. it is a perfect explanation, better than i could EVER write, of why Linux isn't going anywhere. But instead of addressing the problems outlined the "community" will just fling insults like monkeys flinging poo and proclaim their superiority. well I suppose being the biggest failure is still being the biggest at SOMETHING, not sure if I'd brag about it though.

I'm not entirely sure how Ubuntu think they'll compete with Android when it's already free*, though.

The same way they "competed" with Vista on the desktop with the Walmart $200 Ubuntu PC. Too many returns.
The same way they "competed" with Windows with those Dell consumer laptops running Ubuntu ... 30% return rates suck. Ended up being replaced by the aging XP.
The same way they "compete" with Amazon's cloud service (hint - they don't - they use Amazon's EC2 cloud service).
The same way they "compete" with Apple and Microsoft right now - oh wait - they can't even GIVE it away.
Ubuntu is shuttleworth-speak for "make a big announcement, then nothing much happens, then move on to the next Oh shiny!"

The TV and blu-ray manufacturers already have their own customized distros. Nobody's going to switch from Android to a distro that has a history of breaking something important on every update.

Here are some links from this very article comments, collected for your (in)covenience.

I hope you can find which one corresponds to which one of the points you all keep repeating.

like so:

Update: SetteB.IT reports (via Google Translate) that the app wall is part of the Euronics store's design and not commissioned by Samsung.

Samsung's idea of a tablet pre-iPad

Here, I fixed that for you.

See, there is a myth that Macs just work, when in fact they are a gigantic pain-- things that work on 10.5 (cisco VPN client) and 10.6 dont work on 10.7;

Lion's not even been out a month! Those complaints should go to software vendors, not Apple. Personally 99% of my applications worked on Lion (there was a single PPC holdout in there) but everyone who owns a mac will tell people to not upgrade yet unless they need the latest for bragging rights or some indispensable feature. Common sense.

and with Lions new "restart my apps" feature that everyone seems to use, the Macs now boot up as slow as can be and are often slower than Vista laptops with 1gb of ram.

You're comparing apples and oranges: boot vs boot + applications launch. Apple wants to move anyone onto SSD's which come as standard or as an option for every mac now, with an SSD this becomes a non-issue. If it bothers you personally you can disable it.

I could go on and on about the issues they have that seem to be brain-dead UI etc decisions, but its not the point.

"Natural" scrolling, enough said. Nobody's perfect, eh.

My theory is that someone has a bogged down, virus-laden laptop, and theyre considering getting a new one when their friend, who has a Mac, says "go apple-- theyre SO much better". So they go and get a new SandyBridge Macbook Air, and it IS better-- its lighter, faster, and the screen is nicer. THeir belief is reinforced, and they go and tell their friends to buy mac.

Sounds like a success story to me.

But the thing is, for much less they could have gotten a very nice HP Envy, or a high end Sony, or a solid Lenovo, and been just as happy, for less-- but because of the stigma of "PCs are slow", they dont consider it if its price start to approach the Mac. So they make the purchase that costs considerably more, and of course that comes with some nice perks, and of course OSX IS a good OS (though I have scores of issues with it and think Win7 is better in the corporate world by far).

So I basically break it down for my friends like this: You can get a MacBook pro with Thunderbolt, 4gb of ram, and an i3 processor for $1600; or you can get the EXACT same laptop from HP (probook 4530s) sans the thunderbolt port and with a different case (and slightly worse multitouch) for about $450. That is, every year for the next 4 years, you can buy a new probook, and throw the old one in the trash, and youll still come out about where you would have been if youd bought the mac.

First off if you need a laptop that'll be for corporate use exclusively just get a Thinkpad and be done with it, those things are everywhere.
Secondly, all current Apple laptops come with at least an i5, not an i3 like you say. When you compare the i5 HP 4530's they perform worse in nearly every benchmark, compare yourself. Then there's stuff like an aluminum enclosure, a lower profile, much better battery life. I'm not saying you have to like the Macbook they're not for everyone, but there's genuine value there for your extra bucks.

Petty might be a better word. I havent seen any complaints about how awful their UI automation is compared with, say, AutoIt, or how trying to enforce system settings with "defaults" is a bear compared with working with the registry (look up "how do i do XX on windows registry", and then compare with a similar search for apple's defaults), or how it seems to be more UI centric than even windows (with a number of System preferences being simply un-administratable from the shell). Instead, I see a number of people talk about how its enterprise ready when it very clearly is not.

See, there is a myth that Macs just work, when in fact they are a gigantic pain-- things that work on 10.5 (cisco VPN client) and 10.6 dont work on 10.7;

Lion's not even been out a month! Those complaints should go to software vendors, not Apple. Personally 99% of my applications worked on Lion (there was a single PPC holdout in there) but everyone who owns a mac will tell people to not upgrade yet unless they need the latest for bragging rights or some indispensable feature. Common sense.

and with Lions new "restart my apps" feature that everyone seems to use, the Macs now boot up as slow as can be and are often slower than Vista laptops with 1gb of ram.

You're comparing apples and oranges: boot vs boot + applications launch. Apple wants to move anyone onto SSD's which come as standard or as an option for every mac now, with an SSD this becomes a non-issue. If it bothers you personally you can disable it.

I could go on and on about the issues they have that seem to be brain-dead UI etc decisions, but its not the point.

"Natural" scrolling, enough said. Nobody's perfect, eh.

My theory is that someone has a bogged down, virus-laden laptop, and theyre considering getting a new one when their friend, who has a Mac, says "go apple-- theyre SO much better". So they go and get a new SandyBridge Macbook Air, and it IS better-- its lighter, faster, and the screen is nicer. THeir belief is reinforced, and they go and tell their friends to buy mac.

Sounds like a success story to me.

But the thing is, for much less they could have gotten a very nice HP Envy, or a high end Sony, or a solid Lenovo, and been just as happy, for less-- but because of the stigma of "PCs are slow", they dont consider it if its price start to approach the Mac. So they make the purchase that costs considerably more, and of course that comes with some nice perks, and of course OSX IS a good OS (though I have scores of issues with it and think Win7 is better in the corporate world by far).

So I basically break it down for my friends like this: You can get a MacBook pro with Thunderbolt, 4gb of ram, and an i3 processor for $1600; or you can get the EXACT same laptop from HP (probook 4530s) sans the thunderbolt port and with a different case (and slightly worse multitouch) for about $450. That is, every year for the next 4 years, you can buy a new probook, and throw the old one in the trash, and youll still come out about where you would have been if youd bought the mac.

First off if you need a laptop that'll be for corporate use exclusively just get a Thinkpad and be done with it, those things are everywhere.
Secondly, all current Apple laptops come with at least an i5, not an i3 like you say. When you compare the i5 HP 4530's they perform worse in nearly every benchmark, compare yourself. Then there's stuff like an aluminum enclosure, a lower profile, much better battery life. I'm not saying you have to like the Macbook they're not for everyone, but there's genuine value there for your extra bucks.

Petty might be a better word. I havent seen any complaints about how awful their UI automation is compared with, say, AutoIt, or how trying to enforce system settings with "defaults" is a bear compared with working with the registry (look up "how do i do XX on windows registry", and then compare with a similar search for apple's defaults), or how it seems to be more UI centric than even windows (with a number of System preferences being simply un-administratable from the shell). Instead, I see a number of people talk about how its enterprise ready when it very clearly is not.

Haven't read it yet, but here's one with pictures:

http://www.laptopmag.com/review/tablets/viewsonic-viewpad-10.aspx?page=all

No, really at $450 (Acer Iconia A500).

The reviews aren't exactly glowing though. It's cheaper than the iPad at least. Have you heard any news about it though? No? That's because it seems Acer's PR department doesn't seem to know how to do its job. How can it take off if no one knows about it?

Wow, that is unprecedented, unless you count the Kno:

http://www.slashgear.com/kno-dual-screen-tablet-hands-on-07124780/

Or the Acer Iconia 6120:
http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/29/6367167-acers-dual-screen-tablet-behaves-like-a-laptop

Or the Toshiba tablet concept:
http://techtickerblog.com/2006/03/17/dual-screen-tablet-from-toshiba/

Or the MSI dual screen tablet:
http://blog.laptopmag.com/msis-dual-screen-tablet-video-hands-on-much-more-than-an-ereader

Or the Toshiba Libretto
http://www.gottabemobile.com/2010/08/16/toshiba-libretto-dual-screen-tablet-hitting-the-u-s/

Or the Asus Dual Screen concept:
http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/asus-dual-screen-laptop-features-a-touchscreen-keyboard/

If you bought any of those for students, you should be fired.

Viewsonic gTablet?

http://www.laptopmag.com/review/tablets/viewsonic-g-tablet.aspx [laptopmag.com]

Same specs as the iPad2 at half the price, Android, so it is open to being modified with a "school image" to allow them to lock it down and add software they deem useful. I would say that the guy who chose the iPad should be fired for wasting money on Apple crap that could be accomplished for half the price with one of these Android tablets.

So your answers are, in no particular order, YouDisagreeWithMeThereforeYou AreATroll along with WorksForMeAtHomeItDoesReally and ImaginaryProblemsKillWindows with a bit of LinuxSupportsMoreHardwareThan Windows when in reality you get ThisIsAKnownProblemNowGetLost and YouAreUsingTheWrongHardware

Isn't it kinda sad that I can answer EVERY SINGLE THING you and the other FOSS zealots here say with TMs? Doesn't it bother you, even just a little? You know why I can do that so easily? It is because you have been spouting the same bullshit so long there are TMs for it and have been for some time. You are like birthers, same shit, different day.

So I suppose those THOUSANDS asking for help on ANY forum, you pick, are ALL trolls? Maybe you want to list them as paid shills? And you STILL haven't posted an answer to Torvalds and his "We don't need no steenkin plans" which is OUT OF HIS OWN MOUTH.

Look if you want to dumpster dive, or use old hardware, then Linux works fine on a desktop. On a laptop, which is practically proprietary in a box? You'll spend more time fiddling with bullshit than you will using the thing. Tell me AC, when was the last time you had to go CLI? This week? Today? And I bet you had to go CLI when the last 6 month upgrade death march came out didn't you?

But no, stick your head in the sand, label everyone that points out problems a shill, instead of asking yourself this fundamental econ 101 question: What am I doing wrong, that my competitors are doing right? Because NO B&M stores will touch you, from little shops like mine to big shops like Walmart. Do you think we like paying for Windows? It gives us a warm fuzzy?

Nope the answer is your DRIVER MODEL IS ASS, your kernel is run by a douchebag, with every update TWO things break for every ONE fixed, your DEs seem to be run by Bizzaro "Quick, things am getting stable! Must break things by starting over, will cause much am joy for users!" and stability wise you are MAYBE at Win98. How many program lockups have you had? Freezes? Hangs? After I got away from Linux those things just faded away, like a fart in the wind...

So believe what you want, nobody will be able to refute you, even with evidence that the users don't want you, or that given a choice users run in droves AWAY from you or that OEMs now look at you like the clap or that you have less marketshare than JavaME. Nope, instead just cheer that Linux reached 1% while doing what you do best: Ignoring users, ignoring problems, letting Torvalds Goatse the kernel, and generally acting like asses. Hey, maybe in another 20 years you'll be at 2%!

If you bought any of those for students, you should be fired.

Viewsonic gTablet?

http://www.laptopmag.com/review/tablets/viewsonic-g-tablet.aspx

Velocity Cruz?

http://tabletconnect.blogspot.com/2010/11/velocity-micro-cruz-tablet-t104-review.html

Superpad?

Couldn't find a review....

Archos 7?

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2364818,00.asp

I put the FACT in front to separate points, as making lists in /. comments is kinda hit or miss right now in my version of Chromium and since anyone that doesn't suck down the kool aid will be labeled a 'ShillTrollAstroturfer(TM)" I might as well point out that most FOSSie bullshit is INDEED bullshit. And I noticed you STILL haven't answered the main question: What are you doing wrong, that your competitors doing right?

Because if you were actually correct and "ItWorksForMe(TM)" applied to more than just you then why has every B&M and OEM ran away from your product like it is the black death? I'll tell you why because your driver model is a picture of a turd with "Fix it yourself LOL!" written underneath. here try to defend the words of Linus Torvalds himself where he says there is NO PLAN for the kernel and he just "lets it grow like a virus". Yeah Linus its called an STD and that kind of Mickey Mouse shit would get you FIRED anywhere else. Can you imagine telling your boss on a multimillion dollar project "Plans? We don't need no steenkin plans! We gonna let it grow like teh clap LOL!"

And let me see if I have your complaint correct: You use an OS which everyone acknowledges is broken which even Ballmer himself said was "a mistake" at one of his speeches, use an even more broken OEM disc filled with trialware garbage, which BTW it is trivial to turn into a "good" (which is a relative term with Vista, aka "WinMe Part Deux") DVD with VLite or any number of freeware tools, and THEN you bitch it doesn't work?

Well I could use a FOSSie meme and say "ItWorksForMe(TM)" but instead I'll just point out you are using an abandoned OS that NO major OEM is putting on their devices now, that most retailers (myself included) wouldn't take a crate of if you gave it to us for free, and which will NEVER be fixed. Throw away WinME II and get Win 7 and you'll have a beautiful experience. Besides isn't that what FOSSies do on the "BiannualDeathMarch(TM)" with Ubuntu?

But its okay, you just keep right on believing there is nothing wrong, and that myself and millions of other B&M stores are avoiding your product because its a "Conspiracy(TM)" while Ignoring the fact that if your product actually worked on bigger than basement scale retailers could increase profits by not having to shell out for Windows licenses, and in the cutthroat world of PCs any money saved would make us better at competing.

You just ignore that Walmart, Staples, Best Buy, hell even little shops like myself have found your product to be a fiddly little bitch, or that I can provide link after link after link showing retailers RUNNING AWAY and users simply not touching it (Be sure to notice in the last link how JAVA ME is actually kicking your ass LOL!) but hey, those are just numbers right?

But I would point out this final bit of wisdom: If your product costs $0, and would save both the B&Ms and OEMs significant money by adopting, yet they refuse to take it over competitors that cost a minimum $100 and $700 respectfully? Then something IS rotten in Denmark friend. If your shit didn't stink then everyone in the business wouldn't be treating it like a turd in the urinal, and going out of their way to avoid it so.

Your product is a complete and total failure, except in those areas a corporation can fuck you hard (and then you thank them for the surprise buttsex) thanks to the TiVo trick, ala damned near every router and other CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) and you are so far behind you actually reach 1% and cheer (and it only took 18 years! Wow!).

Meanwhile consumers run away from your product as fast as they can, and tell you in giant letters DO NOT WANT even on products designed around your strengths, and retailers look at you like the black death thanks to all the returns and broken drivers, oh and your great leader says the kernel isn't designed, it grows like a virus LOL! (Yeah Linus, it would be called an STD) and you know what is amazing and sad?

NEVER, not fucking ONCE, does it enter your tiny little mind to even ask the most basic of econ 101 questions, such as "What is my competitors doing right that I'm doing wrong?" Nope, because that would mean admitting your shit sandwich OF FREEDOM was a festering turd, which BTW? It is. Instead you scream shill or astroturfer, which is your version of nigger or spic, for anyone who doesn't suck down the kool aid and wash it down with a heaping dose of RMS cock slobber.

And the part you'll NEVER believe, because it would shatter your tiny little worldview, hiding in your mom's basement eating your Cheetos and thinking if it wasn't for that evil M$ army the world would embrace your precious shit sandwich like the force you love so much? Well guess what sparky, I'm not a shill NOR an astroturfer, I'm in fact a retailer. You know, that group that you constantly whine would carry your shit sandwiches on their shelves? yeah that bunch. And you know WHY we won't carry your rotting bag o' fail? It isn't a conspiracy BTW, it is because we tried your product and we know your lies are just that, LIES.

I tried for nearly FOUR YEARS to find ONE DSITRO, just one mind you, that wouldn't fall apart like a house of old cards when a fat guy farts, just one that would continue to run consistently after updating. Just one mind you? How many did I find? ZERO.Zilch nada squat bumpkiss. Your driver model is a drawing of a pile of shit with "do it yourself LOL!" written underneath, your idea of having software tied to the kernel is frankly laughable if it wasn't so pathetic, your package managers are just band aids on bullet wounds trying to cover up the dependency hell that hangs over everything you do like the Sword of Damocles, shall I go on? Your lack of a stable ABI, which BTW Apple, MSFT, BSD, Solaris, hell even OS fricking 2 has had for like a decade now, means that shopping for devices that will actually work is a game of "hardware roulette" that is more rigged against the consumer than anything in Vegas...

Hell I could do this all day, but why bother. It is like pushing a retard into traffic. Sure it is easy because they are so fucking stupid, but not much in the way of entertainment value, not when I have dozens of top notch AAA games I could be playing, or Netflix, or WMC, or hell washing my socks would be more entertaining than dealing with a FOSSie. BTW do us both a favor before you open your cake hole and check on Linux TM Repo before you chime in, as the horseshit you and the other FOSSies spew has been done so damned many times TM repo actually has all your bullet points down as TMs. Hell I bet whatever you come back with I can match one for one with TMs, such as WorksFo

I dunno, that Thinkpad X220 with 12+ hours of usable (!!! http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/lenovo-thinkpad-x220.aspx?page=3, http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=6056&p=4) battery life (and that's only with the internal 9-cell battery - the strap-under slice battery adds another 10 hours or so) is looking much better to me than any tablet or smartphone I've seen so far. I have a feeling that as soon as laptops start to catch up in terms of battery life and portability, ARM based tablets and smartphones will become much less appealing. It'll come down to a choice between capacitive touchscreens vs. hardware keyboards & pointing devices, and I have a feeling that far fewer people would be willing to choose the latter if it didn't come with much, much lower battery life.

I too own a high-end Android smartphone to go along with my subnotebook, but if I could get all-day always-on battery life out of my subnotebook, I doubt I'd pull out my phone even half as often...

Hi MR FOSSie! You do realize that when you write M$ everyone assumes everything you post is coming from this guy yes? BTW like your Star Trek uniform!

As for your "points" why yes nobody ever bought or pirates MSFT Windows when your free wonderfulness was there, it is all network effects because nobody tried selling Linux...wait a tick...Hasn't everyone from Dell to ASUS and Walmart actually tried selling your OS and thanks to the PITA factor and shitty QA (which for a nice example see this little gem about how the Dell Ubuntu offering breaks if you update it) was labeled by the public a giant DO NOT WANT in fifty foot letters?

Or do you think it was a secret "M$ conspiracy" that OEMs saw 4 TIMES the returns with Linux or that when given a "choice" (you as a FOSSie ARE for freedom of choice, yes?) the customers ran to Windows as fast as they could even on netbooks which were supposed to be designed to take advantage of the strengths of Linux in the first place?

It really is simple MR FOSSie, hell it is practically first day business school 101: Give the customers what they want and listen to them and you gain share, give them a mess of CLI and "RTFM Noob!" bad attitude and watch as they stay away in droves it really is that simple. look at how Apple just waltzed in and royally kicked your ass, why is that? It is because they listen to their customers and designed an OS around the philosophy of "it just works" with little to no hoop jumping required, whereas Linux despite the pretty on top is really just CLI at heart. Which would have been fine if this was still 1997, but it is 2011 and the customers have made it clear all the CLI and hoop jumping (not to mention the driver mess or "update foo broke my drivers" which frankly we haven't seen in Windows since the end of Win9x or OSX since 10.2) is a giant "do NOT want!".

It really is simple: you are busy growing or you are busy dying. The only "growth" we have seen in Linux is Android (which is gonna be TiVo tricked right out from under you and therefor is as useful to the FOSS movement as having a Linux router) and despite FIFTEEN YEARS you are still below the margin for error. I didn't make those numbers up friend, and if those numbers would have been posted by any business they would have closed up shop by now. But you keep on thinking that you can force users to do things your way and that it is a big M$ conspiracy when you find users don't actually enjoy reading man pages or trawling forums for fixes. You DO know what the classic definition of insanity is, right? If it ain't worked after FIFTEEN YEARS perhaps it is time to try a different approach, ya?

Why? Why indeed. Apple's iTunes made $1.1 billion in the first quarter. Now why would anyone want to make a piece of that money? Because they can?

... but where it fails is the business model. It assumes that people are willing to pay to access a single aggregation service when so many already exist free of charge.

And where your model fails is where quality is concerned as well as how income is generated. Some people are willing to pay for quality material, and those who give stuff away won't be around for long unless they have deep pockets.

Ever wonder why music and video piracy is so rampant? Yeah, internet users like their free stuff. So given a choice between a 99 cents a week or a zero cents a week price point, most will just take the latter while wondering why the former would even exist.

Ever wonder how Apple's iTunes and other online music download services stay in business? Because they make a profit. iTunes had a first quarter profit of $1.1 billion.

Falcon

I noticed how you just ignored Via, Realtek, every single AIO printer in Walmart, etc etc etc? Care to comment? Oh that's right, you can't because you know the support sucks as well as I do. Want proof? Take the "hairyfeet challenge. Step right up!

Open up three tabs in your browser. go to Walmart.com, Bestbuy.com, and Staples.com. These are the big three when it comes to retail PC peripherals sales. Now in each store you place these four things, which are the big sellers here, and NO RESEARCH!. Remember, you are an average consumer. No cheating! Ready? An all in one printer, a USB Wifi stick, the latest iPod and a USB TV Tuner. Now if you want this simulation to be accurate, buy the cheapest on half the purchases, as most consumers buy on price. Now go to...lets say Ubuntu, go to their forums and see if the twelve items you just "purchased" as three average shoppers works. Go on, I'll wait.

They don't work, do they? I'll wager you won't get a whole cart out of the store without doing research. I'm sure you also avoided lexmark to try to tip the odds in your favor even though a consumer wouldn't know about lexmark support and wouldn't do that. You see, Linux is GREAT for servers and the enterprise markets. It is great because major corporations spend major bucks on making damned sure that server hardware "just works". But they don't give a flying fart about home users. So just like how you saw how Asus is phasing out Linux and even Canonical admits that Linux netbooks suffer higher return rates you will see more companies try Linux and then abandon it.

Why? Is it a conspiracy? Are they all "stupid" as you trollishly called me? Because the stuff that is sold in the above stores don't work in Linux, that's why. And when it don't work they say the PC is "broken" and come wanting their money back. It is just that simple.

So while I truly support Linux as a server OS, and even as a desktop OS for those that are willing to spend the time and effort to research every product and go CLI whenever something goes wrong, the simple fact is that isn't going to fly in the mainstream markets. If you have to do ANY CLI it is a dealbreaker, just as if you can't support the new gadget they just got at Best Buy they will return the PC. I'm sorry, but the average users is not going to be willing to learn CLI or do research on every single purchase. They're just not going to do it because they don't give a flying fart about "free as in freedom" or "the M$FT monopoly" all they care about is does their stuff work, and you are deluding yourself if you think you can get them to change for Linux. And if their consumer level stuff doesn't work your OS is "free as in worthless" and they'll be taking it back for a Windows machine. Sorry Mr FOSSie, but your RDF doesn't work in the face of reality.

The MINIMUM vertical screen res needs to be 768. There are too many websites and applications to where anything smaller than that causes overlap and scrolling.

The android web browser is very good at scaling content to fit what would ordinarily need 1024x768 or higher into much lower resolutions (I tried 800x480, and the results are reasonable). And no android application is going to be written to need a 768 pixel tall screen, because devices that could run such an application are extremely rare (this is the only one I've ever seen, although I assume there are others).

The problem you had is you were presumably using a netbook with an operating system that was designed for more traditional systems. Get an operating system that's intended for use on low resolution displays and you won't have as much trouble.

Sorry, wrong link:

http://blog.laptopmag.com/deal-of-the-day-hp-pavilion-dm1-with-amd-fusion-for-424

Additionally, it may be worth noting that Apple generally doesn't put release numbers on their products. My iPhone 4 just says iPhone on the back, and I'm pretty sure my 3GS only had iPhone on there too.

Really?

Mine has lots of info on the back.

Even the Engadget Pre Release "Found in a Bar" (planted) iPhone 4 had markings on the back with dummy numbers.

They are referring to the name. The backs of iPhones don't say "iPhone 3GS" or "iPhone 4." They simply say "iPhone" in addition to the other things. In fact, "iPhone 3GS" isn't found anywhere on the phone, even in the "About" page.

Additionally, it may be worth noting that Apple generally doesn't put release numbers on their products. My iPhone 4 just says iPhone on the back, and I'm pretty sure my 3GS only had iPhone on there too.

Really?

Mine has lots of info on the back.

Even the Engadget Pre Release "Found in a Bar" (planted) iPhone 4 had markings on the back with dummy numbers.

Hi, Mr Coward, or may I call you cow? You see Cow, some of us are willing to stand by our words instead of being little trolls hiding behind AC, and I'll even be happy to retort.

What your little "We have no choice! Waaah!" speech seems to forget is over and over the public has been GIVEN the Linux choice and thanks to decisions by the Linux devs that makes the AI in an EA game look like Stephen Hawking it has been rejected by the masses by a long shot. Walmart, Best Buy, MSI, all have sold Linux machines to the public at one time, and what did they get? An 80%+ return rate. Now I don't know if you have ever sold machines at retail like I have (doubtful) but allow me to point out that those figures mean that they lost money on 8 out of every 10 sales since those units will now have to be sold as used or refurb by state law.

But what do you expect from an OS whose leader says Linux isn't designed but instead "evolves like a virus" LOL, while sites are happy to point out what needs to be fixed, as well as guys like me, but instead will be responded to with "shill! MSFT lackey! All must love teh goodness!" like a typical nutter. Hell the fanboi bullshit is so thick in Linux land they actually have a site dedicated to listing all the different ways Linux fans spout total bullshit, instead of...ohh I don't know....actually listening to users?

Finally think about this...your old pal hairyfeet is gonna give you an example of why your OS is so low on the totem pole you brag when you reach 1% like it is an actual achievement. But of course I'm sure after a really big swig of FOSSie koolaid you'll find a way to label it a shill, or not reality, or some other BS. Be sure to pick the right TM from TM repo so we can know which BS you intend to use, okay? Here goes:

Here we have two OSes, the latest Ubuntu and Windows 7: Here is the installation of Windows 7...stick in DVD, answer three questions, the hardest of which is "are you at home or at work?" (for the network settings) and at first boot the OS will check if there is anything without drivers and pop up a little box that says "Hey, I don't have a driver for this, can I go and fetch one for you?" and if you say yes and the device is less than 5 years old (the majority of consumer gear) it WILL find a driver, install it, and off you go. It will even point out you don't have an AV and give you a page with several free ones to choose from. Hell my 67 year old dad installed Windows 7 by himself, and he still can't figure out how to work his cell phone.

Now let us compare Ubuntu, the flagship for "Linux for humans" and the supposedly easy (to the point fanbois call it dumbed down) Linux, ready? Install OS, get asked a half a dozen questions, although to be fair it is getting better in that regard. Upon first startup OS will NOT tell you if anything doesn't work because of drivers, you have to figure that out yourself. Is there a "find drivers" button, like Windows has had since 2000? Nope, because lack of a hardware ABI means that shit that worked in Ubuntu 9 will NOT work in Ubuntu 10, lovely. So AFTER you find where the fuck the version of device manager is you have to go trawl some forum (which NO user is likely to find easily since nobody puts a fucking button to it anywhere) looking for "fixes" which require you to know which firmware/hardware rev you had (yeah, good fucking luck on a user knowing THAT) and then "tweak said fix" because it was written for firmware A rev b and you have firmware d rev f (again good fucking luck). Follow that by using an interface called Bash that looks like a 1979 reject without autocomplete or spellc

On the other hand, Steve Jobs was right. This is a bigger problem for Adobe. Let them admit thet they need some help wit Flash...maybe Linus hackers can help out.

Bottom line: Flash sucks on Android big time.

Actually, flash doesn't suck on android - at least on my N1 running cyanogen's CM6. Even in the article you link they admit "When Flash 10.1 for Android is good, it’s great, but when it’s bad, ...". Then they go on claiming that only videos optimised for mobile phones are smooth on the android, but that hasn't been my experience. I didn't set out to test exactly the same sites as on that article, but on regular usage (Portuguese, Italian and UK news sites, youtube [directly with the browser claiming it is a desktop pc], atdhe, etc.) I never had any of the symptoms described in that article. Some jerkiness from time to time, yes, but that was mostly due to slow net connections or overloaded sources. The games I didn't try - I was never a fan of flash games - but I assume most games make assumptions that won't work on touch screens. I don't see exactly how that is a failure with flash, though.

All in all, I never got the bugs and inconveniences reported in that article. And judging from the comments section there, I wasn't the only one. I know flash bashing is fashionable here at slashdot, but the article you quote is too much against mine and other users real life experience to be trusted. And don't take just my work for it, check this article, for another example of flash working on android, or this one for a take from a iphone user on the same "problem".

Bottom line: Flash doesn't suck on my android phone, or of any of my friends; and I'd rather have it available than having a "benevolent dictator" deciding I can't use it on my phone just because.

On the other hand, Steve Jobs was right. This is a bigger problem for Adobe. Let them admit thet they need some help wit Flash...maybe Linus hackers can help out.

Bottom line: Flash sucks on Android big time.

A couple of reviews of Flash running on Android 2.2 have come out. I submitted this story awhile ago to the editors but for some reason (anti-Apple bias?) they chose not to run it.

"shockingly bad" http://newteevee.com/2010/08/31/video-flash-on-android-is-startlingly-bad/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+OmMalik+(GigaOM)

"Weak Android player proves Steve Jobs right": http://blog.laptopmag.com/mobile-flash-fail-weak-android-player-proves-jobs-right

From the reviews:

"Adobe needs to have a better answer to whether or not Flash is still relevant in a world where other technologies have rapidly started displacing it. Based on my early experience with Flash Player 10.1 for mobile, it could soon join the floppy drive in the tech graveyard, something else Steve Jobs helped kill."

and

"While in theory Flash video might be a competitive advantage for Android users, in practice it’s difficult to imagine anyone actually trying to watch non-optimized web video on an Android handset, all of which makes one believe that maybe Steve Jobs was right to eschew Flash in lieu of HTML5 on the iPhone and iPad."

So is it better to have a sucky experience or none at all?

The one think you have to understand about Jobs is that he's primarily motivated by good design. Like all businessmen he wants to sell products and make money, but that's not an end in itself. He already has more money than he could ever spend. Sales are the way by which design decisions in his products are judged. They are like applause from an audience.

Technical reasons? Would the fact that most Flash apps are unusable on a touch screen count as technical reasons? For the most obvious reason Flash apps tend to use mouse hover a lot. Impossible on a touch screen. Or that much flash video is encoded in formats that suit desktops, but are terrible on the processors/bandwidth/screens of phones. And the fact that non-Windows versions of Flash are buggy and crash often.

Here, this is how awful Flash is on another phone platform.
http://blog.laptopmag.com/mobile-flash-fail-weak-android-player-proves-jobs-right

But even though there are plenty of technical reasons for not allowing Flash, the primary one is design. Purpose built apps using the native API will always be better than the equivalent app written to run on a cross platform API. There will be a better UI (where better means living up to the expectations of users of other apps on the same device), there will be better usage of resources, and the battery life will be far better.

Of course the usual counter argument to this is: Give the user the choice. But choice isn't the universal good that people assume. e.g. If there is one good product and 9 bad products, it's better to give the consumer a choice of one than a choice of 10. Why should every potential user waste their time evaluating 10 products, with the chance that they'll get bored before getting to the good one?

Augen included proprietary Google software in their product via an unauthorized vendor. Google only licenses its software to partners and OHA [Open Handset Alliance] members directly.

And Augen's CEO responded saying it was unintentional:

the Google Mobile Service and Android Apps were pre installed during the development process on our tablets for testing purposes, and were not removed unintentionally before releasing the products in the market place. Google and Augen came to a mutual understanding that the Google Mobile Services Application Suite pre-installed on the GENTOUCH/ GENBOOK Series; could not be removed due to technological constraints for the products that were sold, shipped, or already produced. For future production runs and deliveries, Augen will block and remove the Google Mobile Services Application Suite from the current devices until further notice.

Augen is not listed as a member of the Open Handset Alliance. Augen's website still says:

The GENTOUCH78 is a sleek Android powered tablet with a 7” touch screen that connects you with hundreds of your favorite applications from the App Store.

But does not indicate which "App Store."

Augen included proprietary Google software in their product via an unauthorized vendor. Google only licenses its software to partners and OHA [Open Handset Alliance] members directly.

And Augen's CEO responded saying it was unintentional:

the Google Mobile Service and Android Apps were pre installed during the development process on our tablets for testing purposes, and were not removed unintentionally before releasing the products in the market place. Google and Augen came to a mutual understanding that the Google Mobile Services Application Suite pre-installed on the GENTOUCH/ GENBOOK Series; could not be removed due to technological constraints for the products that were sold, shipped, or already produced. For future production runs and deliveries, Augen will block and remove the Google Mobile Services Application Suite from the current devices until further notice.

Augen is not listed as a member of the Open Handset Alliance. Augen's website still says:

The GENTOUCH78 is a sleek Android powered tablet with a 7” touch screen that connects you with hundreds of your favorite applications from the App Store.

But does not indicate which "App Store."

First of all, WTF is it with the jack off font? You think you're hip making the thing look like a bad bash prompt? Second of all my money is not "tied into MSFT" as I give customers what they want instead of trying to force them to do things my way which is what Linux does. Here is my last conversation with a FLOSSie: "My customers do NOT WANT bash prompts and trawling forums! This is a problem!" /FLOSSie/"but CLI is powerful!/ "My customers DO NOT WANT and don't care! Make it simple and easy to fix problems!" /FLOSSie/"If they would only embrace the power of bash/ walks off in disgust at brainwashed FLOSSie

And here I am talking about desktops and the magic bullet problem, and you bring up...servers? Who gives a fuck? Symbian is number 1 on mobile phones! Yay! Doesn't have a damned thing to do with what we are talking about, which is why Linux is sucking on the desktop, how even machines built with Linux strengths in mind still won't sell with Linux, and how OEMs found out the hard way that Linux on the desktop is a deathtrap. I'm not the the only one saying these things by a long shot, yet we get ignored or ridiculed by a group that brags they got 1% while companies walk away in disgust.

It is a good thing the community "supports" Linux, because if it were a company it would be in chapter 11 right now. And don't waste your breath bringing up server companies because we are talking desktops, so stay on topic. You would think that after sitting in dead lasts for years someone would wake up and ask "what are we doing wrong?" but instead of finding out what the problems are and working to correct it we just see the same tired memes about Linux Security and how Linux is more usable and even you yourself trotted out the just use Wine and Linux supports more hardware along with hurling insults! You know why the call them trademarks? Because it is the same tired old shit we hear year after year AFTER YEAR. Nothing gets better, nothing ever changes, Linux still sits in the basement.

I am a businessman, I WANT to sell your product! I want and believe in free market competition! But instead of working to make a better product, we get instead 6 month release schedule (you HONESTLY think any real QA can get done in less than 6 months? Because I got some swamp land in Florida to sell you buddy!) and insults thrown whenever anyone points out the emperor has no clothes. But don't worry, you can keep your elitist attitude and insult throwing. Myself and every other business that has tried selling your product at retail have realized Linux is a dead end and walked away. Walmart, ASUS, Best Buy, Staples, nobody will carry your product. When no American retailers will touch your product, even for free, it is time to take a hard look and see what you are doing wrong. Will anyone do that? Nope they will delude themselves into thinking CLI is bet

The problem with Linux on consumer devices like that is this: Unless you make it like an embedded device, no updates and no plugging in anything non approved, then it will only work until the next update, because Linux from the kernel up is like the shifting sands and things that work today may not work tomorrow. I was talking on here just the other week with someone that bought one of the Dell Ubuntu netbooks. He gets it home, he updates it...can you guess what happened? No Sound and no wireless after the update!

Linux has great security, Linux has really nice looking UIs, what it needs now is some serious stability. It needs a stable driver ABI, it needs a way that retailers like me can actually sell your product without having to disable security just to make it usable. I ran Ubuntu on 4 machines, 3 desktops and a laptop, hoping against hope that they would get it right on the next release, but by 9.04 I simply gave up. Not once, not ever, did I get that damned OS to update without something breaking. wireless, sound, video, my printer, it got to the point I looked at the update notification as a "break your OS NOW!" button.

Canonical can put out 31 flavors of Ubuntu, hell even have a different one for every day of the week, but as long as you need a CS degree to fix the damned thing every time an update is released most OEMs are gonna avoid it like the plague. Just look at how quick netbooks, which were supposed to usher in Linux on the desktop, were switched over to XP. Hell even Canonical admitted Ubuntu netbooks had higher returns which of course hurts any retailers bottom line.

As a retailer I'd like to sell your OS, I really would. But until I can take a bog standard AMD or Intel PC, install Ubuntu, run the updates, and have 100% of the hardware that worked before work after I run the update, then I just can't allow it in my shop. The time wasted trawling forums looking for "fixes" will cost me more than simply putting Windows Home on it. Sorry.

Can you point me an another IPS screen device under the 500$ mark?

Probably not, but at least one device has a screen that works better than the iPad's under diverse lighting conditions.

Flash: Get over it, flash is as good as VB6. Its time for evolve.

Tell that to the countless web sites that use Flash. Content has to evolve first, then it will be time for devices to stop supporting the old technology.

And content won't evolve until developer tools do. Flash has great developer tools, which is what made it popular in the first place. Where are the equivalents for HTML 5 (or whatever else you think should replace Flash)? Or are you somehow going to convince an artist to write a thousand lines of JavaScript instead of drawing a few keyframes in Flash?

What you can really do more on a Netbook?

Type blog posts and emails, edit documents (try OpenOffice or an older MS Office if you think the ribbon is too big), play thousands of popular Flash games and PC games, visit web sites and have them "just work" instead of showing blue squares where the unsupported plugins should be, watch DivX videos...

You may want to consider Notion Ink's Adam http://blog.laptopmag.com/hands-on-with-notion-ink-adam-prototype-its-amazing http://notionink.wordpress.com/ Seems like it has better readability. But it will not be out until the middle of the year though.

I would argue this is only a limitation on apple device.

You're wrong. It's a limitation on Palm devices, it's a problem with Android, it can be a problem with Windows Mobile. It's therefore very very important for a mobile device that the interface doesn't feel laggy, and it's not a trivial problem.

But not more than that. You can't possibly begin to compare processors through UI responsiveness when they're running different operating systems.

As an end user, that's exactly what you'll do. You don't care about the particular processor, what you care about is whether the device you have in your hand is responsive and performs well - that's a combination of lots of factors, and it's perfectly valid to compare different devices based on their UI responsiveness, and attribute some of the speed to the processor (not all, but some).

> Now, if only maths graduates could program their way out of a wet cardboard box, then we could truly start designing giant flame breathing killer robots. This guy's pretty good: http://www.laptopmag.com/business/feature/25-most-influential-people-in-mobile-technology.aspx?page=4

It is actually quite simple, having a stble ABI would mean that device manufacturers could write once, use for years, as they currently enjoy with Windows and OSX, thus making it trivial to support you! Put yourself in their shoes for a moment. I have a device I need to decide which OSes to support, and I have a limited budget. I can pay my devs to write just a couple of Windows drivers and pretty much cover every desktop sold in the past decade, add a single driver for 10.5 and I have OSX covered. NO more out of pocket, no more worries, I'm good to go. Now before you say "What if Windows comes out with a new version 6 years from now"? Well I don't care, because by then my device will long be off the shelves and I don't support dumpster divers.

But then we get to Linux. to support Linux first of all I can't do the logical thing, which is write a driver and put in on the CD, which would make life easy for both me and my customers, oh noooo, that would be too easy! can't have that! No, I either have to give all my code to some guy whom I have NO control over, who can make my device run like shit and thus hurt my business if he is short on time or just doesn't give a fuck, and then get on my knees and pray he'll get off his ass fast enough that support will actually reach mainline before my device is no longer sold (which BTW is almost never) or I can "pull an Nvidia" and spend huge amounts on developers to constantly "tweak" my drivers because everything from the kernel on up changes like the shifting sands. And either way I still can't put the fucking driver on the CD, nor a penguin on the box, because the driver I write today will in all likelihood NOT WORK by the time my device makes it to the shelves!

So it is actually quite simple: Windows and OSX makes it easy for me to support them, with Linux I have to give up control to some guy and pray he doesn't fuck me or spend crazy money constantly cranking out new drivers. BTW, do you know why Nvidia supports you? It isn't because they give a flying fuck about Linux on the desktop, you can piss up a rope for all they care. Look at the ones that have decided to play your little reindeer games, what do they have in common? HP, AMD, Nvidia, Intel, what is the common thread? Answer: They ALL have interests in the HPC or server markets and no that by giving the enterprise desktops used to support such setups the bird they will hurt their bottom line. Again like with my Joe analogy that is nothing at all like the home consumer market, most of whom have NO interest in the server and HPC lines and therefor aren't gonna kill themselves for you. See the problem?

But in the end our debate is moot, as neither of us have any sway with the kernel devs, who will keep their elitist attitude and continue to ensure that Linux has no place on the desk. On servers, where the manufacturers will play the game and jump through the hoops? It works just fine, although in many places I see Linux being used on the web facing servers and Winserver being used behind the firewall because of AD and GPO being so easy to manage. Cell Phones and other embedded devices? Well seeing as how a good 90%+ of those are black boxes where you can't do anything the developers don't approve of it really doesn't matter what you use there, and Linux is free.

But sadly after 15 years Linux is still no further to breaking out in the desktop market than when they first started. Just look at netbooks, which were originally trumpeted as a chance to finally get Linux to break out into the mainstream, only to have high returns followed by MSFT releasing a nearly decade old WinXP onto the lanscape, which promptly completely slaughtered. You know you have problems when a competitor's decade old product completely hammers your latest offering. But there are those out there that have written about the m

... without the proper software.. yet. http://blog.laptopmag.com/msis-dual-screen-tablet-video-hands-on-much-more-than-an-ereader