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Uhh it was listed as IP68, which meant it could be submerged into 1.5m of water and be fine. AFAIK there isn't a way of making a phone with ports where you can just dunk it in a tank of water and not have issues so I could see this being a feature to those that are at risk of their phone getting wet.

BTW for those that don't know the IP codes here is a handy guide for figuring out IP codes.

But if you turned the AlphaGo Zero team on it it would dominate it in a couple months max.

Uhm.. they did turn the team on it six months ago

For some reason they aren't ready to show anything yet.
I suspect they have problems to adapting to the fog of war mechanics in starcraft, but it could also be that the number of possible moves every frame is virtually infinite so the same kind of decision making that is traditional for chess and go doesn't really work.

Of course it is just a matter of time until the AI will be better than humans, but I suspect we will have to wait at least another six months until they have something to show.

Not sure if they are still around , but in 2011 Asetec released their second refrigerateD case.
http://www.trustedreviews.com/...

See e.g. here or here and there are tons more - I can't remember it being actually advertised by Sony as such, but many HDTV enthusiasts at the time knew about it. It also played Super Audio-CD (SACD) which was another plus.

So are you saying that teh S7's had no problem? Was that all staged? After all, you must have some verifiable basis for pre-declaring this.

The S7 had some problems. I don't think anyone is saying they didn't. But there were a lot of the reports of fire where the people that seemed not to actually exist, or were found out to have faked their reports.

Okay, Here is th eonly cite that I found. http://www.trustedreviews.com/... So Samsung claims 26 false reports. they call faulty on 12 handsets that they checked, and declared the phones okay.

There were seven people they couldn't get hold of, so they declared thos fake as well, and seven other either withdrew their claims of said they threw the phone away. So they declared those fake as well.

Certainly one might be expected to have some doubts as to the veracity of an investigation done by Samsung ( think of you you think that there is not problem and the reports are fake - the same can be applied to my own declarations, because I'm not so certain that a report is fake if I cannot get in touch with the person.

Regardless, I'd love to see your cites of an independent agency, declareing this a fake, because I'm a little skeptical that Samsung just thought it would be awesome to recall the entire line of phones when there is some very good reason to believe that it was all a lie, the batteries are sbject only to random failures, and nothing to see here.

From stated specs and leaked presentation info it looks like Scorpio will be struggling to output today's games at 4k, I think potential buyers will be disappointed in the difference between MS's PR and what the system can realistically output.

After people complained this generation's consoles were underpowered for 1080p output I don't know why they are repeating this for 4k and also saying it will carry a premium price tag.

At that point, since Xbox games will be on PC anyway, why not skip Scorpio and get a 1080 or 1080 Ti and also have access to Steam as well?

both Apple and Samsung make their own SoCs that are as good or better than what Qualcomm puts out

Yeah no. "when it comes to the single-core test, the Snapdragon scores 2,282 and the Exynos scores 1,873"

Then LG Prada got released, won awards and they probably decided to copy it

Official announcement of the iPhone: Jan. 9th 2007 (Happy Birthday)
Official announcement of the LG Prada: Jan. 18th 2007. First blurry pictures Dec. 15th 2006. First mention of an award won (as third to last device in list, with no mention of Prada): Dec. 7th 2006. ("LG Electronics (LG), a leader in consumer electronics and mobile communications, announced the awards for 21 remarkable products given by the prestigious iF product design award 2007" ... "Mobile Phone (KE850)" http://www.newswire.co.kr/newsRead.php?no=210316&picno=82493&ected=

How the hell did Apple copy a phone in just one month, when all they had to go by was the mention of the product number in a list?

Well, almost all articles of the time about the LG Prada mention how much it looks like the iPhone, not the other way around. http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/LG-Prada-Make-iPhone-Look-a-Like And people who actually compared them said there was no comparison really http://gizmodo.com/261172/settling-this-iphone-vs-lg-prada-nonsense

None of UIKit is part of OS X, and AFAIK, it doesn't share any code with AppKit—it doesn't even use the same coordinate system. That means it wouldn't have been just the home screen, but rather all of the user interface views, touch handling, gesture recognition, etc. Realistically, that's not a few weeks' work.

Besides, the iOS UI is very much the natural evolution of Newton OS. All touchscreen OSes, including the LG Prada, are basically just imitations of that original design with varying degrees of refinement, so it's no surprise that design-wise, the iOS home screen is almost identical to the Newton's, all the way down to the bottom row of icons being reserved for commonly-used features. The only big difference is that the Newton was in black-and-white/greyscale. By contrast, the iOS home screen looks almost nothing like the home screen on the KE850 except to the extent that they both involve a touchscreen containing some icons. It seems pretty obvious that the iOS UI evolved in-house, inspired mainly by the Newton, and that the LG Prada had no meaningful impact on it, unless I missed something subtle.

Not to mention that both the iPhone and the Newton were based on ARM (Apple being one of the originators of ARM), and so, maybe even some of the Newton OS' Assembly code made its way into the prototypes of the iPhone OS.

However, I do take one small exception to your comment about the "bottom row buttons". In 1982-84, I was designing a stage-lighting controller with a rudimentary touchscreen interface. In the "GUI" I designed for it (from scratch!), the bottom-row was taken up with some dedicated "Navigation" buttons. So, I think it's more of a "natural" place to put stuff, rather than an homage to Newton (although I agree that is a possibility).

None of UIKit is part of OS X, and AFAIK, it doesn't share any code with AppKit—it doesn't even use the same coordinate system. That means it wouldn't have been just the home screen, but rather all of the user interface views, touch handling, gesture recognition, etc. Realistically, that's not a few weeks' work.

Besides, the iOS UI is very much the natural evolution of Newton OS. All touchscreen OSes, including the LG Prada, are basically just imitations of that original design with varying degrees of refinement, so it's no surprise that design-wise, the iOS home screen is almost identical to the Newton's, all the way down to the bottom row of icons being reserved for commonly-used features. The only big difference is that the Newton was in black-and-white/greyscale. By contrast, the iOS home screen looks almost nothing like the home screen on the KE850 except to the extent that they both involve a touchscreen containing some icons. It seems pretty obvious that the iOS UI evolved in-house, inspired mainly by the Newton, and that the LG Prada had no meaningful impact on it, unless I missed something subtle.

I thought that curved screens were more of a marketing gimmick, especially at smaller sizes, where the immersion effect is less noticeable? The article I cited below refers to large screen TV's viewed at a distance; I wonder how this rule applies to smaller screens viewed up close?

http://www.trustedreviews.com/...

"Our experience to date is that the effectiveness of curved screens is directly proportional to their size. With all of the 55-inch models we’ve tested the curve’s benefits felt pretty minimal, while some of the problems – particularly the sweet spot issues – were more noticeable. With the 65-inch models it's easier to appreciate the picture benefits while feeling less aggrieved by the negatives (except for the reflections one). Bigger screens support more viewers more easily too. Despite enjoying the 65-inch models, though, our feeling is that the curve will only potentially feel of significant benefit at truly colossal sizes of 70 inches or more."

Has anyone used a smaller curved screen? Does it improve the viewing experience?

Indeed. Yet in others it wouldn't have stopped a thing. Remember this game is a quite colossal fuck-up. I wouldn't say reviews would have saved a person money as much as saying that even reviews couldn't save the producer of this game.

Reviewers let a lot of bullshit slide through. This is the exception not the norm.

I mean the game has tanked. It could quite possibly the worst tank since E.T. People are refunding where they can. Others are bending refund policies to prevent backlash...

3.5/5 stars TrustedReviews
64% PC Gamer
7/10 "good" Gamespot
4/5 stars Stuff.TV

To the credit of some review sites they've stopped publishing numbers or stars. Still these were the first 4 that came up in my google results which produced actual ratings or numbers for the review. Looks like a good game maybe I should go out and.... no *slap* *thud*.

and Maemo (then Meego)

You've got it backwards, it was called Maemo initially, then renamed to Meego. Jolla, a Finnish company started by ex Nokia engineers, developed Meego further into their own Sailfish OS, which uses a gesture based UI and can run Android apps.
Now they've partnered with Indian electronics company Intex to launch the Intex Aqua Fish, running Sailfish OS 2.0. I bought it recently for the local equivalent of about $75, and it's a pretty slick device.

ROFL guess what? Games run far worse on SteamOS than Windows so I guess their business model don't mean shit,huh?

The Linux kernel is ready. It runs on everything from cell phones to supercomputers and everything in between, so unless he's starting a new project all he can do is sit back and watch. Not that Linux really needs a new DE, there's only so many ways you can start/switch/organize applications and if you look through Win95 to Win10 you're not exactly seeing a revolution. Nor did I see anyone really asking for all these widgets and portlets or system integration of contact management, notifications and all that into the desktop itself.

The OS is a means to run applications. And say what you want, but there's a lot more strange needs than there are OSS developers with an itch to scratch. Not to mention the "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" attitude that creates towards users. Without the Play store, Android would be nothing. AOSP + F-Droid would be roughly as popular as Firefox OS or Linux on the desktop. I'm not going to pretend that Angry Birds for $1 changes the world, but thousands of apps like that do. Open source wins by the long game, slowly improving stealing users and lowering the premium they can charge.

People don't want to make the big jump. Linux is too much new, all at once. And unless you're arrogant or delusional, they won't find good replacement for 100% of their softare, maybe 70%-90% if they're lucky often those are a deal killer. Paid/proprietary software is so obviously not welcome that only a few have dared try. Steam did but it's 0.85% of all Steam users now. In February it was 0.91%, January 0.95%, December 0.96%, November 0.98%... More games, less users that's not a trend which is likely to continue unless Valve can make Steam Machines popular.

If anyone can bring Linux mainstream on the desktop I don't think it's any of the existing open source distros, simply by nature of being just that. I'm guessing it'd be something like Chromebooks, if only Google would go on a full frontal assault on Microsoft. But then they're happy as long as people use Google's services, which they seem to do anyway so I can see why they're not in any hurry. After all Microsoft has a pretty big war chest that you don't want to pick a fight with for no good reason. If you're a business that is, OSS don't play by those rules.

To add on to PopeRatzo, the Samsung S6 compared to the iPhone 6, Samsung was the clear winner in battery life, I would expect that the S7 will similarly beat the iPhone 6S in battery life figures.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/...

All the rest of what you said was utter bullshit, yes you do compare the multithreaded performance between two devices, and the S7 came out the clear winner because it has more processor power.

As long as you can capture the raw video and audio output you can copy anything into your own format.

Not a trivial problem.

Ultra HD Blu-ray will use primarily double-layer 66 GB discs (though 100 GB triple-layer discs are part of the spec) and will be capable of delivering up to 108 Mbps of data. To put this in perspective, consider that Netflix's 4K Ultra HD streams are delivered at about 16 Mbps and represent an average of 14 GB of total data for two hours of entertainment.

Ultra HD Blu-ray arrives March 2016; here's everything we know

And maybe not worth the trouble.

One interesting feature is the Digital Bridge, which makes it possible to make an exact bit for bit copy of an Ultra HD Blu-ray on an authorized media drive, or transfer files to an authorized mobile device. Though Victor Matsuda, Chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association Global Promotions Committee, has explained that the extent of support for this feature will be down to the individual UHD Blu-ray manufacturers.

Ultra HD Blu-ray: All you need to know about 4K Blu-ray players, discs and the rest Read more at http://www.trustedreviews.com/...

As long as you can capture the raw video and audio output you can copy anything into your own format.

Not a trivial problem.

Ultra HD Blu-ray will use primarily double-layer 66 GB discs (though 100 GB triple-layer discs are part of the spec) and will be capable of delivering up to 108 Mbps of data. To put this in perspective, consider that Netflix's 4K Ultra HD streams are delivered at about 16 Mbps and represent an average of 14 GB of total data for two hours of entertainment.

Ultra HD Blu-ray arrives March 2016; here's everything we know

And maybe not worth the trouble.

One interesting feature is the Digital Bridge, which makes it possible to make an exact bit for bit copy of an Ultra HD Blu-ray on an authorized media drive, or transfer files to an authorized mobile device. Though Victor Matsuda, Chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association Global Promotions Committee, has explained that the extent of support for this feature will be down to the individual UHD Blu-ray manufacturers.

Ultra HD Blu-ray: All you need to know about 4K Blu-ray players, discs and the rest Read more at http://www.trustedreviews.com/...

Why will it fail abysmally because the AppleTV is not a bloody TV. This now having to compete with actual big screen Android TVs http://www.trustedreviews.com/... rather than bullshit pretending a box with no screen is a TV. So this time Apple way off the mark and behind the times and just making a token adjustment to try to catch up. All in one computers are rapidly growing in size, dozy M$ also doesn't seem to have woken up to this.

People do not want a box to hook up to their idiot box, they want an idiot box that will do all of it for them and just smarter controllers. Brings up another point, smarter TVs mean the game console is also dying, they just don't know it, yet.

In both specs and independent usage tests the iPhone 6 Plus outlasts the battery of the Nexus 6.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/...

This all reminds me of the fuel consumption figures published by car manufacturers, which have no connection to real world performance.

In both specs and independent usage tests the iPhone 6 Plus outlasts the battery of the Nexus 6.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/...

IP67 waterproofing. Basically indestructible, and a zillion years battery life. What isn't there to like? http://www.trustedreviews.com/samsung-solid-immerse-review

CUDA was released to the public a year and a half before the OpenCL specification was published.

Yes. And is it open? No.

SLI hit the market ages before CrossFire.

I don't really have a problem with those two being closed, as I imagine they're inherently quite vendor-specific in their workings.

G-Sync is commercially available now and has been for some time, while FreeSync is not.

True. A recurring theme here is that Nvidia tends to be the first to innovate, with the open technologies playing catch-up.

FreeSync and Crossfire are not any more open than G-Sync and SLI respectively.

Apparently FreeSync really is open.

In particular, it's worth noting there's nothing *stopping* AMD from writing their own CUDA compiler for their GPUs -- for instance, the Portland Group has an x86 compiler for CUDA.

True, but unlike OpenCL it's controlled entirely by Nvidia, and I presume only OpenCL is documented for both the user and the implementer (though as you say, independent reimplementation is certainly possible anyway).

Lastly, most people making this argument tend to gloss over the fact that AMD/ATI has also tried (and usually failed) to make proprietary technologies.

Yep. Mantle is the obvious one. ATi Stream was ATi's proprietary CUDA competitor, which iiuc went nowhere.

The reason ATI is more "friendly" to open technologies is that their attempts at closed, vendor lock-in technologies have a nasty history of failing miserably, while some of nVidia's (CUDA, PhysX) are still going strong.

I agree. Personally I suspect it's because AMD just don't seem as good at innovating as Nvidia do. Nvidia seem to be much better at coming up with new ideas: see SLI, CUDA, G-Sync. I suspect that if AMD were as good, they too would make their solutions proprietary.

could someone please explain to me then why reviews like these aren't a major scandal all by themselves?

My problem with Apple is more about the lack of choice. My preferred desktop platform is a desktop PC with expansion slots and no built-in monitor. Apple won't sell me one of those. They discontinued the last one they offered, the Mac Pro, which was outside my budget in any case.

What they want to sell me is sealed boxes that I can't expand or upgrade. And they force me to buy a new monitor every time I want to upgrade my computer, which substantially increases the cost of the upgrade cycle, unless I buy a Mac Mini - but that has no GPU so it is unsuitable for my purposes.

I do like their laptop hardware. If I were shopping in the $1000 and up price range for one I would certainly consider a Mac. But my portable hardware is much less expensive than that.

Lack of choice is also a problem with iOS. There my problem isn't so much the limited hardware choices, though they don't have anything for really budget-conscious buyers. A more serious problem is that Apple holds absolute veto power over what apps are available. If they choose not to approve an app, that's the end of the story; you can't get it. (On Android the developer has the option of offering the package for sideloading and/or selling it on an alternative application store. Windows Phone is just as locked down as iOS.) There are entire classes of app that Apple categorically prohibits. Not just adult content, but also language interpreters, and browsers that don't use Apple's HTML rendering engine and Javascript engine. (Reference: http://www.trustedreviews.com/... Said engines, by the way, are basically the ones from an old version of Safari and are inferior to the ones in the current version of Safari, so any third party browser is guaranteed to offer inferior performance to Apple's own browser.)

It's failed over and over again for Microsoft, so why would anyone want to repeat that mistake?

On the contrary the Surface Pro 3 has been reviewed very favorably:
CNet
Engadget
TechRadar
TrustedReviews

You can argue all you want about how it may not fit your workflow but they have produced and undeniably good device. Macs still lack a touchscreen despite iOS apps easily being able to be compiled to x86 and run under OSX which results in you having to carry both a Macbook and an iPad even though technically it could be all done on one if the laptop had a touchscreen. Better for Apple if you have to buy 2 devices though I suppose.

I haven't seen one, but I think the PS4 may look better in real life. Those odd angles make it look fatter in photos. It is quite smalland slimmmer than the XBox 360, at least

The camera always adds a few pounds ;-)
Must be why supermodels have to be super thin.

I haven't seen one, but I think the PS4 may look better in real life. Those odd angles make it look fatter in photos. It is quite smalland slimmmer than the XBox 360, at least

I'm looking for a multipurpose B&W printer, laser, for home.

My current choice is the Brother MFC-7460DN , also good for SOHO. It's a multipurpose B&W laser printer, 26ppm print; 35-sheet Auto Document Feeder; Duplex print, Fax, colour scanner.

It looks like people have less problems with this brand/model than some others, so I think I buy it

I have used Brother laser printers for a number of years and am quite happy with them. They are reliable work horses and relatively cheap to buy and operate. My 5 year old one still works fine and I picked up a duplex wireless one for less than $70 on sale. At those prices, it's cheaper to replace the printer than the drum if and when it wears out. They use really cheap toner as well, I use cheap Amazon refills that cost about $15 and have never had an issue with them.

I'm looking for a multipurpose B&W printer, laser, for home.

My current choice is the Brother MFC-7460DN , also good for SOHO.
It's a multipurpose B&W laser printer, 26ppm print; 35-sheet Auto Document Feeder; Duplex print, Fax, colour scanner.

It looks like people have less problems with this brand/model than some others, so I think I buy it

Several journalists have made this mistake, such as the drivel posted here: Trusted Reviews

They seem to think that the register size being equal means that software written for them is somehow much more similar. In reality the CPUs and the software they run are no closer to each other than before. The main benefit of this move to the latest ARM CPU design is ironically much the same as the advantage brought by x86_64 - more registers are now available and some floating point operations are more efficient. This will translate into a small performance increase but it won't be night and day.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review/4

Speedup in Geekbench (just from a re-compile): Integer gain between -25% (Dijkstra, heavy on pointers) and +825% (AES, uses new cryptographic instructions), geometric avarage +37%, median +9%; FP gain between 0% (Mandelbrot) and +195% (DGEMM, uses new DP-SIMD), geometric avarage +36%, median +21%

Several journalists have made this mistake, such as the drivel posted here: Trusted Reviews

Please give a stronger warning when you post links like that. Quoting, "Smartphones that use older 32-bit processors can only work with data strings that consist of 32 characters" those details are so badly wrong that is well beyond drivel. I believe the much larger performance gain from ARMv8 is the reduction in context by making only branches conditional. While it loses for tiny bits of conditional code, it means far less state is required in the instruction pipeline. Going from 15 general purpose registers (ARM's program counter takes one of those slots) to 31 general purpose registers allows more code to only use registers, but not all that much.

Several journalists have made this mistake, such as the drivel posted here: Trusted Reviews

They seem to think that the register size being equal means that software written for them is somehow much more similar. In reality the CPUs and the software they run are no closer to each other than before. The main benefit of this move to the latest ARM CPU design is ironically much the same as the advantage brought by x86_64 - more registers are now available and some floating point operations are more efficient. This will translate into a small performance increase but it won't be night and day.

I never suspected that it wouldn't work without Kinect attached. I throw this clearly into the FUD category. I think Microsoft was clarifying that idiots assumed it needed Kinect to work, not reversing a decision that it would require Kinect to work.

Asked 'does Kinect always have to be connected for the Xbox One to function', Harvey Eagle, Microsoft's Marketing Director of Xbox UK stated simply: "yes it does, in all cases."

Not FUD.

....but calling it FUD works for the people disconnected enough not to know the truth.

I never suspected that it wouldn't work without Kinect attached. I throw this clearly into the FUD category. I think Microsoft was clarifying that idiots assumed it needed Kinect to work, not reversing a decision that it would require Kinect to work.

Asked 'does Kinect always have to be connected for the Xbox One to function', Harvey Eagle, Microsoft's Marketing Director of Xbox UK stated simply: "yes it does, in all cases."

Not FUD.

Care to qualify that?

Come on. Not to defend Apple as such, but how can you call being outsold 1:5 a failure when you have one single model competing with hundreds of other models?

Its like cheating somehow!? The Samsung Galaxy III has sold more than the iPhone on its own. Although I do not think it is somehow cheating to sell more than one phone lol.

says who? iPhone 5 sold 5 million in 3 days and is on track to sell 46.5 million in the 4th quarter while the S3 took two months to sell only 10 million. Clearly Samsung is going to have to step-up their astroturfing marketing campaign. Samsung has been caught astroturfing forums, think they're posting fake comments on /. too?

They didn't even copy Palm

If you were being sarcastic, allow me to support you. If you were being sincere, allow me to refute you.

Here's a device that is full screen, one primary button on the bottom middle, icons lined up in rows and columns, has installable apps, and is rectangular shaped with rounded corners. I'm sure you know by looking at the image provided that it is NOT an Apple device and came out years before the first iphone. The design for this device had been around for years before this particular model came out.

Panasonic do a 4k resolution 20" monitor. My hope is that as 4k TVs start to appear we will get 4k consumer monitors too.

The picture that you link to is misleading at best: http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/CeBIT-2007-Samsung-Blasts-Into-Digital-Photo-Frames

This shows that the Samsung is ~1.25" thick and the frame is noticably curved. The white frame is even less convincing, and is styled with a white ribbed plastic design similar to that used on some Apple monitors from that period.

Oh right, and of course Apple's exhibits haven't been misleading at all have they? Photoshopped to remove logos and change the dimensions. I only showed the front of the device because that's all Apple ever compares with the ipad and galaxy tab, if you compare from other angles there's clearly no case anyway.

There are lots of them - and have been for good long time. I have one of these, that I got when a local hospital was selling off the old generation of computers and upgrading to these. These things are freaking amazing - usable in full sunlgiht, nearly indestructible, great battery life (plus hot-swappable batteries), but they do cost $2000+, which is why you never see them, except in hospitals or government contracted job-sites, or on sci-fi tv shows.

Fujitsu, Acer, HP, Dell, or Lenovo all have Windows tablet offerings. They just tend to be full-fledged computers, rather than toys, and so carry a higher price. Windows 7 with gestures / flicks works quite well as a tablet OS, but it is helpful to have the active digitizer with stylus, regardless of whether you also have a iPad style touchscreen.

Here is a review of a modern laser printer that is not recommended due to "horrendous running costs".
http://www.trustedreviews.com/HP-LaserJet-Pro-CP1025-Color_Printer_review

Yeah, it's a color. Most color lasers have horrible toner costs - replacing an entire set of 4 can often run easily $600+.

But a cheap laser printer that only does black and white can be had very cheaply, and for most of them, even the toner cartridges tend to last at least 1000 pages on the one packed in. 2500 seems to be around the standard for consumer lasers, and 5000+ for office lasers. And we're talking about cartridge prices of $100 or under normally (versus $100 for inkjets that barely do 500).

We've moved from an inkjet to a laser, and I don't think I've ever run into a situation where I've missed the ability to print in color.

Photos are best done with a real printer using real photo paper - they'll last longer and look better than those inkjet based photo printers at the store. Costco digital prints can be had very cheaply.

Yes, the biggest expense is the ink, but getting a "real laser printer" is NOT the solution.

We've reached the point where the price you have to pay for re-fills, whether for laser printers or ink-jets, has nothing to do with the actual cost or with the efficiency of the print system. It is purely a question of what the seller can get away with.

Here is a review of a modern laser printer that is not recommended due to "horrendous running costs".
http://www.trustedreviews.com/HP-LaserJet-Pro-CP1025-Color_Printer_review

The solution is to select your printer based primarily on the running cost rather then the sticker price.

I'm thinking about getting a FiiO E7. It's both a USB DAC and a headphone amp. The internal battery is charged via USB, so you can use it as a (biggish) headphone amp while mobile. Audio quality is reportedly quite good for a "budget-fi" component. It's also cheap (< 100 USD). One review is at http://www.trustedreviews.com/mp3/review/2010/08/28/FiiO-E7/p1, many more at head-fi.

NVidia's PureVideo product was in development in 2003. See the GeForce 6-series page for some information. I don't know if it was doing encoding on the GPU, but it was definitely doing post-processing and I believe video decoding on the GPU. This line was released in mid-2004, and features of PureVideo were released throughout that year so must have been in development since sometime in 2003.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/graphics/news/2004/12/20/nVidia-Launches-PureVideo/p1

"nVidia has also added support for video encoding with the introduction of PureVideo and most of the playback features can be applied to the encoding side of the equation as well, with the video noise reduction looking particularly handy."

"Who's going to care?"

Just about everyone that isn't besotted with the likes of Apple and Android handsets:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/mobile-phones/news/2010/01/29/Nokia-Regains-40--Mobile-Phone-Market-Share/p1

See this graph here? -

http://stats.getjar.com/statistics/

Apple, HTC et. al. are the little black line at the bottom, otherwise known as the x-axis.

When you step outside the world of Slashdot and other IT sites that focus purely on smartphones a term which gets redefined depending on the bias of the site you visit anyway, you'll begin to realise that Nokia's ~45% - 50% of the world cell phone market does actually kinda matter, and Apple and HTC's ~0.2% share just doesn't.

So say what you want, but Nokia is far and away the big fish in the ocean, the likes of the iPhone is like a microbe still waiting to evolve in comparison.

Nokia still wins the hearts and minds of far more people than any other phone manufacturer can come even close to.

You covered the main drawback to such monitors - price.

Did you also catch the insanely low refresh rate (25 or 41 Hz) and rather high 50 ms (or 25 ms, depending on how you measure) response time? Anything involving moving images would be a streaky, smeared mess. That said, it does seem odd that nothing similar is offered today for photo & graphic design folks.

FWIW, review of the VP2290b here: http://www.trustedreviews.com/monitors/review/2004/06/30/ViewSonic-VP2290b-High-Resolution-TFT/p1

[Apple] are well on their way to becoming the only viable choice in the market for portable electronic computers - just as they are for portable electronic music players - just as they are slowly becoming for portable phones.

Uhh, which universe are you living in?

Does apple even care about personal computers any more?

Yes - its just that the flavour of the month is the iPad. The rumour sites are saying that they'll be updating their PC range Real Soon Now.

The last noteworthy computer they announced was the Air (which in retrospect seems like a super-advanced iPad that was largely ignored).

Nope - The Air was pretty obviously designed to compete with premium-priced ultraportables such as the Sony Vaios. Apple just had bad luck that the netbook phenomenon happened around the time the Air was ready for launch - so instead of reviews of the Air vs. a $2000 Vaio, we saw reviews of the Air vs. a $200 EEE.

The unibody MacBooks were pretty noteworthy in terms of design, if not tech (apart from the Coca Cola years, design has always been an important factor for Apple). Its also noteworthy how many laptop makers have copied Apple's "scrabble tile" keyboards (which, surprisingly, are actually rather nice to use).

You know, this list of old netbooks (some of them several years old) might not be the right thing to compare to a product which literally has not even been released for purchase yet...

Maybe instead we should go to a good review site and compare the iPad to current netbooks, especially ones in its price range?