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Guys like Neil Rubenking at PCMag cause more worry among Product Managers and PR than a thousand forum posters. People with microphones are louder than people without, and this sort of thing is no exception.

Whats more amusing is his latest article: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2425840,00.asp

Chewing up all your CPU.

(Yes, this post is a joke. It's an (in)famous old article from everyone's favorite tech writer -- who was, in fact, being serious.)

PC Mag has another video of BSOD http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2425512,00.asp

Then pic up an 8300-series Blackberry Curve. It has maps & GPS, but remains pretty old skool.

http://www1.pcmag.com/media/images/210698-blackberry-curve-8330-verizon.jpg?thumb=y

Why bother making Chromebooks, the market doesn't much seem to care for them

Chromebooks are actually doing pretty well.

I'm a huge Android fan, but there are some issues with apps on Android that don't translate too well to the laptop experience (yet):

• * While multitasking apps works great, there's no support for multiple on-screen app windows. (though some people have tried to add them.)
• * though there is mouse support, there's still a heavy reliance on the touch-based interface compared with laptop point-and-click.

That said, Android is open source. You're free to do a port yourself. Some have done so already.

Another issue is we have IE 6 back again in style.

Its name this decade is called webkit.. If the web server detects it is a mobile device it outputs Webkit specific (chrome/Safari) CSS that is not W3C compliant.

Complain and the answer is webkit owns 95% of the market so go fsck yourself and buy a droid or iphone like everyone else. Kind of like we do not support Netscape anymore in 2003 even though you used Konsqueror or Firefox .4.

Drives me nuts to see the same developers who praise webkit and use non W3C compliant html5test.com to base their opinions then go out and bash IE 6 and who write code on the mobile end that wont work Windows Phone/Windows 8 either.

You have lazy fucking ass web developers who write proprietary non W3C compliant -webkit code to thank. Probably the same ones who bash IE 6 for doing the same and made MS specific CSS back in the day too.

If the web server detects mobile it outputs only webkit CSS as webkit owns 95% of the market so why support anything else?

I am tempted to switch to Firefox from Chrome as I feel I am part of the problem and would be what hte world will look like in the future if Chrome won. Just like 2003 when you received Netscape not supported when you used any browser but IE 6 on 40% of the web.

One question I wonder: will Apple follow suit? So far there has been no indication they are even attempting flexible/bendable screens."

Your google-fu is weak, submitter. Apple is indeed looking at this technology and have filed several patents. Samsung though beat them to market; but it's a pyrric victory at a $1000 price tag.

Maybe you can use poop as shield, not sure how efficient it is, but if is something that you produce and don't change the overall weight of the ship. But you will have better shielding at the end of the trip than at the start.

Please stop spreading the "Google doesn't respect privacy" FUD. Have a look at how well Apple respects your privacy.

Is that the same EFF that claimed undeniable evidence that Apple had DRM in their headphones? Why yes, it is

Is this also the same EFF that receives a lot of their funding from Google? Another rhetoric question.

See subject-line (jak sie masz/dzien dobre/czesc, Polak - ja jestem polak tesz):

Subject Line Translation (I haven't written polish in 40++ yrs. so pardon it IF it's grammatically "off", thanks) = "Why doesn't Apache honor the Do Not Track initiative?" (in case you don't read/write polish natively, assuming you ARE in fact, Polish as am I, that is).

Is it a conflict of WHOM you cater to? I.E.-> I understand MOST folks are online, especially with servers, to make money... ads money/tracking money, doubtless "talks" (they say 'talk is cheap', but not when "the Holy Dollar/Ca$h" does the talking).

APK

P.S.=> Personally? I don't *mind* that you don't - why?? I wrote up a freeware that helps in that capacity (vs. trackers, spammers/phishers, adbanners (good & poisoned both since they're bandwidth robbers or poisoners of systems), sites/servers/hosts-domains known to serve up malicious content in many forms etc.) - Apache NOT doing DNT only helps apps like mine really (but imo, hurts you some):
---

APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ 32/64-bit:

http://start64.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5851:apk-hosts-file-engine-64bit-version&catid=26:64bit-security-software&Itemid=74

* Hosts do FAR more than AdBlock ("souled-out" to GOOGLE, & crippled by default) or Ghostery (Advertiser owned), RequestPolicy etc., do - especially considering the 1st 2 = "Foxes guarding the henhouse".

Hosts gain reliability vs. downed DNS servers & protect you vs redirected DNS servers as well + secure you vs. known malicious hosts-domains http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3985079&cid=44310431 w/ far less added "moving parts" room for breakdown, complexity, "Less is more".

---

HOWEVER: I feel, personally, that when your company didn't honor DNT & even patched vs. it http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2409527,00.asp you hurt yourselves (to end users, NOT "money men advertisers" - the dichotomy you doubtless face)... thoughts?

.... apk

oh..... the guy that said "IBM may even be bought by Unisys or maybe Microsoft." on 2002.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,367800,00.asp

There's a couple of problems here.

The first is that Microsoft still assumes that the world wants to do nothing better with their devices that make Word docs and spreadsheets and PPT presentations, and "consume media" (I hate that expression). Meanwhile, the world has found lots of other fun things to do with their devices, and tablets and smartphones are great at doing a lot of them. And those same devices are not that great for doing a lot of serious number crunching, presentation making, and so on. (It's not impossible, but I think power users of ipads etc. would tell you it's not a better experience).

The second problem is that there are other suites out there that work pretty damn well, even off line. I'm a huge fan of softmaker office on both the desktop and on Android. I use it on my Google Nexus 7 to take notes in meetings, then transfer to my desktop for finishing up and distributing, etc. It works perfectly well with no wifi connection available, and is a pretty damned powerful bit of software that's getting good reviews.

The third problem, as mentioned above, is the fact that publishing a sub-standard product for the competing product might work when you've got the market lead and people are already interested in your platform. But when you're playing catch up, it's a loser's strategy. Who wants to buy a crappy version of Office365 only to find out it works better on a platform few others use, with hardware you don't like and don't want to buy, etc.?

This losing strategy is sponsored by Steve "Anchor" Ballmer, sinking Microsoft since the day he took the helm. Watch out for those rocks ahead, captain!

An increase in the exponent is pretty exciting to me! For decades we have been hearing about 3d holographic storage with incredible densities, or 3d processors, and it never appears beyond, say, dual layer DVDs. Granted, Intel Haswell also has 3d lithography, but it is still one layer of transistors, implemented by 2 or 3 layers of material, e.g. each transistor goes across, then up, then over. In contrast Samsung is using 24 cell layers and planning to build up from there. (Probably the heating issues are not far worse with logic gates and dram as opposed to flash).

The global smartphone market is up 47 percent year over year for a total 230 million units shipped in the second quarter.

Android is the greatest benefactor of the uptick, having captured a record 80 percent share of the global smartphone OS market. Strategy Analytics executive director Neil Mawston chalks the success up to competitive licensing costs, numerous hardware partners, and a large app store.

Meanwhile, Apple's iOS reached 14 percent share this quarter — its lowest level since Q2 2010. Microsoft slipped into third place, with 4 percent share — its highest in three years.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2422611,00.asp [pcmag.com]

Strangely enough, Slashdot does not consider this to be news.

The global smartphone market is up 47 percent year over year for a total 230 million units shipped in the second quarter.

Android is the greatest benefactor of the uptick, having captured a record 80 percent share of the global smartphone OS market. Strategy Analytics executive director Neil Mawston chalks the success up to competitive licensing costs, numerous hardware partners, and a large app store.

Meanwhile, Apple's iOS reached 14 percent share this quarter — its lowest level since Q2 2010. Microsoft slipped into third place, with 4 percent share — its highest in three years.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2422611,00.asp

If anyone should be mad at the NSA for all the snooping that appears to be going on, it should be the Department of Commerce, not privacy advocates. The recent revelations are not a threat to national security so much as a threat to the national economy. And if I were Microsoft, I'd be having around-the-clock meetings to discuss how to fix what is about to happen.

Microsoft, despite denials, appears to be in bed with the NSA. Apparently all encryption and other methods to keep documents and discussions private are bypassed and accessible by the NSA and whomever it is working with. This means a third party, for whatever reason, can easily access confidential business deals, love letters, government classified memos, merger paperwork, financial transactions, intra-corporate schemes, and everything in between.

With that said, do you really want to buy a Microsoft product?

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2421733,00.asp

This is not a gimmick, this is 'Murica!

Although, given an average altitude of 8,000 feet for a drone, this is not an easy shot. Nor is the fact that the drone will be flying at ~100 MPH and winds at that altitude could easily be 50 MPH. It would be a hard task for even the best shot. And that math would be terrible.

You just need the right bullet for the job.

. Google have dropped activesync.http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2413283,00.asp (Anyone else forgot how pro Microsoft PCmag was)

The most ironic part of this Windows Phone users used to get gmail messages instantaneously...and now they don't...like Windows Phone was not already second class technology.

Outdated news... Google has dropped nothing.

"Google Extends Windows Phone Exchange ActiveSync Support Until July"

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2414917,00.asp

Microsoft announced today that Google has agreed to delay the removal of support for Microsoft's Exchange ActiveSync protocol (Google Sync) until July.
In the meantime, Microsoft said it is working to build support for the protocols Google will be using going forward, meaning Windows Phone users will still be able to connect to Google services.

Please stop twisting facts or posting misleading stories to further your agenda. Your entire post is bunk.

Thunderbolt is proprietary (although it isnt *Apples*) as is the 'mini display port' which is the only way to attach an external monitor.

The larger issue in my mind is the lack of standard ports. A notebook that has only one USB port, NO ethernet (the option to add it is with a dongle that will then occupy that single USB port,) and NO standard display port on it is pure fail, without even considering the lack of a replaceable battery.

Mini Displayport is a VESA standard, and a Mini Displayport to HDMI cable costs a grand total of $6.58 if you need one.

It's small and light which is wonderful, but in order to actually USE it one would have to first buy and then carry a second case full of dongles, adapters, USB hubs, and quickchargers, and at that point you might as well just buy a real laptop - the total package will be lighter and less bulky as well as less expensive.

Use it for what? Running a recording studio while on the train? What would you do that would require a bunch of USB peripherals while travelling? How many people need a wired ethernet connection when they're not at their desks?

So long as you're just doing "normal" stuff, you don't need to carry a damn thing except the computer itself. The battery is lasts up to 15 hours in real, actual testing, so you can use it all day. It lasts longer than other laptops even with external batteries.

This was the discussion on Slashdot: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/04/07/2029233/is-the-dea-lying-about-imessage-security Here was Schneier's piece, noting concerns: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/04/apples_imessage.html I couldn't find the white paper you refer to on Apple's site, though there are references to it elsewhere. This article (with a dead link to the white paper) makes no mention of iMessage, though it does refer to other aspects of iOS security: http://securitywatch.pcmag.com/none/298642-nothing-new-in-apple-s-ios-security-guide

I think there's a difference here between "controversial" and "sucks". Colonial Marines was the latter.

Also the former.

Rob

Here's a list of the top 10 Ultrabooks in PC magazine as of 5/2/2013.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2400007,00.asp

6 of the 10 are under $1000, and 5 of those 6 are meaningfully under $1000. NONE of them cost $1400+/$1500/whatever incorrect numbers you are quoting. Even the Chromebook only costs $1300, and for that you get a 4MP display and touch screen.

Sucks to be proven wrong! (especially when it's your whole point and not a useless nitpick)

In 10 years no company will be manufacturing spinning hard drives.

Again impressed with the well thought out argument from an AC, Here is a Ramcard from 1982 by Microsoft http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/story/300240/the-secret-history-of-microsoft-hardware/3 that is 21 years ago. I won't bother with any real explanation, because I'd be wasting my time.

I got that from the PC Magazine article which said:

Other games of note include Bungie and Activision's Destiny, Ubisoft's Watch Dogs and Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, 2K Games's NBA 2K14 (complete with video appearance by Lebron James and Lebron James's PS4-rendered digital simulacra), and Bethesda Softworks and Zenimax Online Studios' The Elder Scrolls Online, which will get a PS4-exclusive console port.

But it looks like they may have meant an exclusive ESO beta, from subsequent reports.

"A weak dual core CPU that's more power hungry than an ARM CPU, a battery that'll last an hour in real-life conditions within a year"

`We ran our laptop battery rundown test on the system, and the XPS 18 returned a battery life of 4 hours 38 minutes.'

If someone will finally make a netbook with an e-ink screen, we could get around to that kind of battery life. I know the refresh rates suck, but the equivalent of a Kindle Paperwhite with a full keyboard, a basic word processing app, and a battery that lasts for days on end would be a writer's dream.

You could call it the Kindle Model 100.

A lot of credit cards in the UK have the Chip'n'Pin system, which requires a physical connection to be made to the payment terminal. Simply "swiping" becomes less and less common, so people have to type their PIN every 5 minutes to pay for a few quid worth of $product. I used to work in the industry, and there was a certain amount of pressure from consumers to be able to do something as quickly and effortlessly as possible, but the magstrip simply isn't deemed secure enough.

The idea was to use NFC, so people could just wave their card for any purchase under 10 or 20 quid, and be on their merry way.

An "office" computer and thin client is a different use scenario from a server. Yeah, he did make a bad comparison, but don't let that steer you off into the weeds. "Real work" and "PC replacement" as he termed it is meant to describe "office" activity. I use my desktop to do email and office document handling and to connect to servers. I don't run servers on my desktop (at work).

The point he's making is that the work he does is handled fine by smartphone-level computing power. You just need good Human Interface Devices and display.

http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow_viewer/0,3253,l=208344&a=208341&po=8,00.asp

Ask a web developer what they think about Chrome?

It is not all positive. It is buggy and has proprietary extensions similiar to something that sounded familiar in the past? Its javascript sometimes does not load on sites and its version of HTML 5 is differnent from others. HTML5test.com tests things that W3C implements a little differently or not at all.

Remember IE 6 was lean mean and standards compliant compared to the god awefull netscape 10 years ago too. Hard to believe in a place like slashdot to admit but if you go read slashdot history on the most discussed stories of all time "What keeps you on Windows from 2002" IE 6 is mentioned!

The switch to a new rendering engine is going to cause issues soon and many corporate oriented SVs and site makers will not be pleased.

I'm not sure they want to be so proud of the last one...

You mean the service that navigates better than Google?

And Apple Maps in that test even beat Waze, which is based on OSM...

As predicted, Apple has fixed maps and is working to now exceed Google for quality of result. Not hard considering that Google has got complacent on maps; people just accepted the flaws because it was the only game in town.

the boot times from win7 to win8 aren't that different tho.

Disagree. Haven't timed my own PC but it is significantly faster booting with Win8 vs Win7. PC Magazine clocked Win8 to boot in less than half the time (!) of Windows 7 on same PC in their test. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2406668,00.asp. For me, that is "that different".

MSE is highly praised by Slashdotters.

Only by those who don't pay attention to current reviews

Yes, because reviews are so trustworthy! It appears that rather than reading reviews, some of us read slashdot and see how reliable reviews are. Since I pay no attention to reviews, how does Malwarebytes fare? Hmm... Google to the rescue:
"Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is a surprisingly effective anti-malware tool given that it hasn't received any major updates in the past few years. Sure, the scans are a bit faster and the installation is definitely smoother, but overall the product remains unaltered." -- C|Net

"Malwarebytes Anti-Malware 1.70 is probably the best-known free removal-only antivirus tool. Even tech support agents for other companies use it. In my own testing it beat out all free and commercial competition, quickly and without any fuss." -- PC Magazine

"Compared to the competition, Malwarebytes offers effective protection against malware that not only complements your current anti-virus, but is also lightweight on resources and snappy in performance." -- TechRepublic

Those are Googles' first three results. Yeah, you keep readinig those glowing reviews for products that brick Windows. I'll stick to reading slashdot.

If you do not have a smartphone and/or a tablet then you are coming very close to pushing yourself out of "average person" pool on that consideration alone.

I guess their approval process got a little more stringent after approving a gas-powered alarm clock.

Yeah, just like the OP who was too busy "pecking" and forgot to include the link to the actual article on the decommissioning: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2417271,00.asp

this. Google's "Zerg Rush" Easter egg.

Herein

http://www.infoworld.com/t/cringely/here-lies-web-journalism-dead-the-hand-of-the-almighty-advertiser-214915

likes this fool shill

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2416859,00.asp

Well, I don't much of substance to add to this conversation, so I'll be pedantic instead. The possessive "dropout's" is actually correct in this case, since he's talking about comments belonging to a hypothetical dropout. And the subject "you" is correct because he's requesting others take a specified action, the reason for which is to improve his own experience while reading the comments.

Personally, I think Slashdot's mod system is about as good as you're going to get on an anonymous internet forum. Good posts tend to get modded up, bad posts tend to get modded down. We need the -1 for posts that are actually worse than simply mediocre (or just haven't attracted interest). I browse at -1 to see everything, and can filter out the stupidity myself when I feel like it.

I like that Slashdot's readership has a much higher-than-average technical knowledge (expected due to the nature of the site), but I don't find the civility to be better than the rest of the internet when corrected for what I assume is a higher age and hopefully maturity.

Regarding the meaning of "nanoscale", I'm not aware of an accepted IEEE defition, or anything similar. Various opinions of its definition range from:
Google: "Of a size measurable in nanometers or microns."
American Heritage Science Dictionary: "Relating to or occurring on a scale of nanometers."
PC Magazine: "At nanometer size. Any device only a few nanometers in size is nanoscale. Nanotechnology is said to comprise elements less than 100 nanometers in size (100 nm)."
Wikipedia gets a little more specific, but claims 1-100 nanometers as one criterion.

The resolution of this printer, at 30nm, seems to satisfy the letter of these definitions, so I'd say it's correct enough to say it's a "nanoscale printer." It's technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.

Like telephone service spreading to the developing world, this won't happen with wires.

I've got a 5Mbps wireless broadband connection right now, and that's WiMAX, old tech. Verizon's LTE does close to 10 Mbps..

My connection costs me $50/month; if we imagine opening things up to real competition, $20/mo doesn't seem unreasonable.

If we had the political will to make 20Mbps broadband as accessible as voice communication is today, yes, we could do it in under a decade.

> And Windows Phone 8 phones will be upgradeable.
> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2416002,00.asp [pcmag.com]

Have you read that article. It was 100% bullshit. They claim WP8 is flexible enough to adopt new hardware components, which WP7 couldn't, because the spec for WP7 phones was really specific.

Well, if WP8 is so flexible, why can't they make it adopt old hardware components like the ones in WP7 phones?
The reasoning in the article would be why WP7 won't run on newer hardware, not why WP8 won't run on older hardware.

FTFA: "We're going to have an upgrade path going forward"

This can easily mean exactly the same as what happened with WP7. We'll skin the homescreen to make the old OS look like the new version, and if you want the new features, buy a new phone.

FTFA: ""Windows Phone 8 can evolve. We have an architecture that enables portability and is fundamentally hardware independent," he said. "As the market evolves and customer requirements demand it, we'll evaluate options."

So basically, they didn't port it to WP7 hardware because customers didn't demand it.

Tell that to Windows Phone 7 users.. Who were not able to upgrade to Windows Phone 8. What makes you think Windows Phone 8 devices will support Windows Phone 9?

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2416002,00.asp

Wow, I didn't think Slashdot could go lower but it just managed to do that.

Next headline: MS to abandon Windows, because Windows XP support Ends April 8, 2014?

Microsoft will make Windows Phone 9, in fact they even have people working on testing it.

http://msftkitchen.com/windows-phone-9-testing-begins-also-windows-9-gets-a-mention-from-microsoft

And Windows Phone 8 phones will be upgradeable.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2416002,00.asp

And Windows Phone is growing marketshare:

http://wmpoweruser.com/italy-shows-their-windows-phone-strength-already-15-of-windows-phone-market/
http://wmpoweruser.com/windows-phone-has-a-16-3-market-share-in-poland-one-of-the-highest-in-the-world/
http://www.fiercewireless.com/europe/story/analyst-windows-phone-sees-strong-growth-uk-and-italy/2013-01-23
http://www.wpcentral.com/long-queues-china-nokia-lumia-920-sells-out-two-hours [And yes, that's actually picture of people queuing for Windows Phone)

Picking up some loyal users who seem to like it :
http://wmpoweruser.com/pcmag-readers-choice-awards-2013-windows-phone-wins-mobile-os-category/
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2013/01/customer-satisfaction-of-windows-phone-on-the-rise-according-to-survey/

And winning some awards
http://www.wpcentral.com/nokia-lumia-920-struts-its-stuff-and-takes-prestigious-innovative-handset-award-2013
http://wmpoweruser.com/nokia-lumia-920-wins-engadget-smartphone-of-2012-user-vote/

And yet we have this bullshit FUD summary, headline and article? No wonder Slashdot is losing readership fast, with barely a few comments for stories compared to earlier.

The partyline biased moderation, calling people with alternate viewpoints shills and chasing them away into karma hell can only last so long before the echo chamber gets tired of listening to itself and packs it up.

Reminds me of this story http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/02/16/2259257/draconian-drm-revealed-in-windows-7

Even the mainstream tech media noticed that. Interesting read: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/02/oh-the-humanity-windows-7s-draconian-drm/

I doubt any one would care now, with most people having written off Slashdot as the hiding place of anti-Microsoft trolls and zealots living in their alternate reality. Posters like bmo, symbolset, tuple666, Zero__Kelvin, LordLimeCat, Jeremiah Cornelius, UnknowingFool, rtfa-troll, binarylarry, MightyMartian, drinkypoo, pieroxy and a whole bunch of others have ruined Slashdot beyond repair and seem to suffer from this affliction: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/07/25/1757253/linus-calls-microsoft-hatred-a-disease

Wow, I didn't think Slashdot could go lower but it just managed to do that.

Next headline: MS to abandon Windows, because Windows XP support Ends April 8, 2014?

Microsoft will make Windows Phone 9, in fact they even have people working on testing it.

http://msftkitchen.com/windows-phone-9-testing-begins-also-windows-9-gets-a-mention-from-microsoft

And Windows Phone 8 phones will be upgradeable.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2416002,00.asp

And Windows Phone is growing marketshare:

http://wmpoweruser.com/italy-shows-their-windows-phone-strength-already-15-of-windows-phone-market/
http://wmpoweruser.com/windows-phone-has-a-16-3-market-share-in-poland-one-of-the-highest-in-the-world/
http://www.fiercewireless.com/europe/story/analyst-windows-phone-sees-strong-growth-uk-and-italy/2013-01-23
http://www.wpcentral.com/long-queues-china-nokia-lumia-920-sells-out-two-hours [And yes, that's actually picture of people queuing for Windows Phone)

And yet we have this bullshit FUD summary, headline and article? No wonder Slashdot is losing readership fast, with barely a few comments for stories compared to earlier.

The partyline biased moderation, calling people with alternate viewpoints shills and chasing them away into karma hell can only last so long before the echo chamber gets tired of listening to itself and packs it up.

Reminds me of this story http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/02/16/2259257/draconian-drm-revealed-in-windows-7

Even the mainstream tech media noticed that. Interesting read: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/02/oh-the-humanity-windows-7s-draconian-drm/

I doubt any one would care now, with most people having written off Slashdot as the hiding place of anti-Microsoft trolls and zealots living in their alternate reality. Posters like bmo, symbolset, tuple666, Zero__Kelvin, LordLimeCat, Jeremiah Cornelius, UnknowingFool, rtfa-troll, binarylarry, MightyMartian, drinkypoo, pieroxy and a whole bunch of others have ruined Slashdot beyond repair and seem to suffer from this affliction: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/07/25/1757253/linus-calls-microsoft-hatred-a-disease

This place was always anti-MS but reasonable and informative comments used to get modded up a few years ago, not anymore.There are enough things to bash Microsoft with, why make up lies and spread FUD?

Of course, the real blame is on moderators for modding up these kind of posts and marking others rebutting replies to them as troll and flamebait.

Last one out, switch off lights.

Yes, WP8 will be abandoned... for WP8.5 or WP9.

Yes, WP8 customerswill be abandoned... for WP8.5 or WP9.

Fixed it for you...they will call it Windows phone 8.8, which they will day is the same as 9 :)

Please, just stop with the stupid FUD.

Microsoft: Windows Phone 8 Will Be Upgradeable
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2416002,00.asp

Maybe great minds think alike http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2414591,00.asp

> Most Facebook users have embarrassing comments or status updates
> hidden in the depths of their social network profile --- long forgotten
> but not gone. So why not tidy up a little with the new FaceWash Web app?

> The service, which is geared primarily toward recent college graduates, aims
> to delete your seedy Facebook history before you enter the professional world.

Well, I have 1,000Mbps in my area; the fastest internet service in the US. See this news article published in 2010 about EPBfi.

All 100,000 customers have EPB power (this is the local electric power company in Chattanooga, TN, USA). Because of EPB's electric smartgrid, they also provide fiber to 100% of their coverage area. This means that every home/business/apartment has access to Gbit Internet and TV/phone.

The slowest speed they currently offer is 50Mbps (for $57.99 per month), the fastest is 1000Mbps($299.99). I am on 100Mbps because it is only $12 more per month than 50Mbps.

Oh, and there are no max bandwidth/transfer caps. You can do 1000Mbps all day long...EPBfi has the upstream bandwidth.

I was on Comcast for 8 years. I telecommute most days; Comcast would go down for hours at a time for no apparent reason. When I would phone Comcast to report the outages, the customer service rep would say that they are upgrading the services in my area. The service person would say it as if that was the script on their screen as why the internet went down for 2 hours at 11am and again at 4pm. It got so bad over the course of a year, that I had to purchase a Sprint broadband card/account to continue to get work done as I came to just expect outages. I could not tell a client that I was having internet connectivity issues when I am doing remote-based network consulting.) ;)

After switching to EPBfi 2 years ago, I haven't had a SINGLE service-affecting outage. They appear to have built their Internet infrastructure as solidly as they build their power distribution network.

Feel free to read more here: https://epbfi.com/internet/

Oh, BTW, I don't own stock in EPB or work for them....I am a customer that likes to pay for internet that works reliably.

Here is a news article published in 2012 about Chattanooga's upgrade of all customers from 30Mbps to 50Mbps.

It is interesting how none of the big media giants want to provide the additional speed/reliability; I guess if you can feed your customers sewage and tell them it's honey...and the customers believe it, more money goes in your pocket.

All this an a sainted device from Google

Except people [including myself have been incredibly impressed with having a high resolution; quad-core; small tablet running latest Android....and so are the reviews. Top searches on Google

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/tablets/google-nexus-7-1087040/review 4.5 stars
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/tablets/379261/nexus-7 3x 5 out of 6 and 1x6 out of 6
http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/laptops/1297408/google-nexus-7 5 out of 5 User 5 out of 5 expert
http://reviews.cnet.com/google-nexus-7/ 4 out 5
http://www.wired.co.uk/reviews/tablets/2012-11/google-nexus-7 9 out of 10
http://www.theverge.com/products/nexus-7/5831 8.8 expert 9.1 User
http://www.laptopmag.com/review/tablets/google-nexus-7.aspx 4 out of 5
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2406552,00.asp 4.5 out of 5

I know you love Apple but right now Apple need compelling products, priced competitively not fanatics spreading lies. It simply tarnishes the Apple brand more, and its been damaged enough just lately.

with a cash prize.... but so far, no takers. Again, this is promotion on a budget, but you'd think somebody would like an easy $100 cash prize, just for filming their cats enjoying my product.

That seems on the low end to generate interest, particularly considering a cat could likely do $100 in damage to the touchpad/tablet just playing with it with its claws ;P

Some possible suggestions:
- People like big reward potential, even if the end result is nothing (see "the lottery"). Obviously your budget is limited, but there are ways to "fake" big rewards without outright offering it. For instance, a scaled reward (such as a progressive jackpot that increases by $10 with every unique contributor).
- People like competitions (see "Kittenwar.com") -- posting updates on the competition progress, or maybe the video that's "in the lead" at the moment, could generate a better response
- People like free -- I'm not entirely sure what your aversion to the "free" route is. There are many apps out there that turn a pretty good profit by the free+advertising route. I can tell you that I'll willing to "try" just about anything, but if the price goes up even one dollar, my interest in the product takes a substantial decline. In this product's case, it is especially true, because cats are fickle creatures. My cats could just as easily not react to the product, lose interest in 30 seconds, or play with it for days. I've had mixed success with various popular cat toys (though cardboard boxes of all shapes and sizes are always a huge win)

On a side note, ever consider a name change? "Virtual Cat Toys" seems very generic and forgettable (albeit accurate). It's like Twitter marketing itself as "One line chat program" :)

I think you're right on with the demo angle though. Have you considered pushing more demo venues? Like say giving some free copies (potentially with a freebie el cheapo tablet: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2412642,00.asp) to a local pet store, with the caveat they leave it on display so people can watch the cats play with it? Having your product on display there for all the traffic that passes through would be huge exposure. You could even offer a kickback to the store for each referral.