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Why Ultrabooks Are Falling Well Short of Intel's Targets
nk497 writes "When Paul Otellini announced Ultrabooks last year, he predicted they would grab 40% of the laptop market by this year. One analyst firm has said Ultrabooks will only make up 5% of the market this year, slashing its own sales predictions from 22m this year to 10.3m. However, IHS iSuppli said that Ultrabooks have a chance at success if manufacturers get prices down between $600 to $700 — a discount of as much as $400 on the average selling price of the devices — and they could still grab a third of the laptop market by 2016."
Funny that Apple sell so many retina MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs when they're the most expensive machines you can buy in those form factors. Could it be that a race to the bottom, cutting corners to reduce costs, ISN'T what people want? What happened with Netbooks again?
Lack of on-machine storage.
Most early ultrabooks only had at best 128 GB of SSD memory, which is kind of cutting it close after you load Windows 7 and Office 2010. Why do you think Apple chose to include over 500 GB of SSD memory on some of their new MacBook Pro models?
But now, with SSD technology rapidly improving, I'd say within 18 months you will see "convertible" touchscreen Ultrabooks running Windows 8 Professional with 512 to 1024 GB SSD storage standard with the latest super-efficient Intel "Core" CPU's, and those will definitely be vastly better-selling.
I'd go as far as to say MacBook Air.
If the price is the same, I'm going with the easy purchase, even if it's just to run Windows/Linux (though I suppose after-market Windows license messes the price some).
They really need good screens though, as someone that wants to actually do work, I want higher res screens, I'm perfectly content to move my face closer to see the details, I want to read full pages in the height of a monitor, I really need at least 900px of height.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Apple : Orange :: iPad : Ultrabook.
I'm at the point that unless I get the same specs as apple for like half the price i will buy a Mac.
All the crap pc makers lost my trust a long time ago
I spent $1100 on a 13"Mbp last year and the closest pc counterpart was about $1000.
Apparently, it's a trademarked Intel name, because the article referenced in the summary said:
Devices such as HP's $579 Sleekbook - which runs AMD's chips, so can't be called an Ultrabook
I always thought Ultrabook was a generic term for a more powerful netbook (or a notebook in a smaller formfactor), but apparently it's Intel specific.
Running linux on apple products is no longer an easy thing to do.
Many of the products are a fucking bastard to get working well (much harder than similar PC products).
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I don't think anyone is looking forward to Windows 8 outside Microsoft HQ.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Hey Charlie, if you're on Slashdot, would you like to comment on your blistering excorication of Ultrabooks?
There's a lot of netbook haters out there, and I understand why. Truth is they weren't the right thing for everyone.
I found two great niches for them - children and physically active people on the go.
First of all - children. The first netbook I every bought was one of the 7" eeePC's on that was on Woot.com with a 4GB card SSD. The SSD was so small the included OS couldn't even run its own updates out of the box. I put an ultra small version of Linux and SNES on it (came with a heftier Linux), stuck in a 32 GB SD card - instant portable movie and game machine for my daughter. A couple of years later I upgraded her to a 10" Acer similar to mine and my niece and nephew now have the 7" one. You can fit a lot of movies on a 32 GB SD card if you use the PSP or iPod preset in Handbrake.
Second niche - myself. I bike places, as often as I can. I have a small backpack that's big enough to carry my bike tools, a netbook, and some accessories/other crap I need for my commute to work or just about anywhere else. I BMX a lot and I don't like to carry a bunch of extra garbage I don't need. For coffee shop Internet use - including work responsibilities when I'm consulting - every thing I have to do on the road can be done on my 10" Acer Aspire. I've had two chain related failures on my BMXes while this thing was in my backpack, I wound up tumbling down the road both time my little Aspire took the beating better than I did. Sure a tablet fills this niche for most people, but I like a keyboard and mouse. That being said if Google does come out with a Nexus 10 I'll probably get that and use my old mini Apple bluetooth keyboard on it.
I drool over Ultrabooks - I really want one. Fact is they cost too damned much and they won't fit my physically active lifestyle - I would have to switch to a bigger backpack for more than about a 12" screen, maybe a bit bigger but I don't want to push it too much. Intel's greed - not the kind that motivated them to release Ultrabooks but the kind that made them strong arm manufactures into killing netbooks to do it - is a large part of why they aren't taking off well enough.
If they stopped their excessive manipulation and gave control back to the manufacturers they may see a surge in Ultrabook sales.
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That is correct. They have to have certain Intel processors in addition to meeting height, weight, battery and storage performance guidelines.
Apparently it's supposed to be a smallish laptop, with emphasis on performance(must have SSD, must have good battery life) and small size, which according to the "choose two out of three" rule means it obviously cannot be cheap. Which means that a "non-ultra" laptop with the same performance and a bit more weight/size costs around $600, while the ultrabook costs $1000.
What they did not think of and what now causes the slow sales is that the price makes ultrabooks a LUXURY item. Most people will look at the ultrabook and think "well, it sure looks nice, but here I can get about the same performance at a couple hundred dollars less". Or, if they DO have the money, they will go buy a Macbook, because "Apple" still has higher bragging value than "Asus" or "Samsung".
It's what happens when marketing people want to say "MacBook Air clone".
when are people going to realize that virtualization is not the same as running linux on the hardware? There are many situations where you solution won't fix anything.
They really need good screens though, as someone that wants to actually do work, I want higher res screens, I'm perfectly content to move my face closer to see the details, I want to read full pages in the height of a monitor, I really need at least 900px of height.
Actually, the 13" MacBook Air does have 900px of height--it's 1440x900. Kind of interesting, because the 13" MBP is only 1280x800.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
I don't understand how the crappy pc manufacturers still haven't learned that just because Apple can do it doesn't mean they can try and make a shitty copy and actually sell it.
They've keep trying.. tablets that flop, ultrabooks that flop, all-in-ones that flop..
Over and over they make shitty copies of apple products, price them the same, and then are bewildered when they don't sell.
I'd say probably the Tablet. The MacBook air is typically considered an ultrabook, and they've been out for a long time. My understanding from talking to quite a few people is that they understand ultrabooks to be basically low-powered laptops for quite a bit more money, much like a more powerful netbook. I imagine those who really want to reduce weight that much just opt for a tablet. Laptops can be had that are more powerful and are reasonably light ( 6 or 7lbs) for a lot less money.
I had to get a laptop a couple of months ago when ultrabooks were getting all the attention (I was replacing my 13 inch laptop). For about $400 got a very nice Lenovo 14-inch laptop with Intel i5 and a DVD ROM. I really wanted a computer to be slimmer and didn't want a DVD drive, but couldn't find it unless I would go with some ultrabook which I seriously considered.
The ultrabooks had:
* Less processing power. In fact, there was no ultrabook at the time to match the power of the mobile i5 processor in a regular notebook.
* Less video connectivity options
* Fewer USB ports
* Worse screen
On a positive side, they were a tiny bit slimmer. Comparing that I could get a slightly thicker laptop without any of those issues for less than half of the price of ultrabook, so I went with a regular 14 inch notebook and installed SSD drive in it. It beats any ultrabook in terms of performance and connectivity and yes, for LESS THAN HALF of the price of ultrabook. No surprises here that they are not selling.
There's no such thing as "illegal download"
VirtualBox, while I love the open source concept, isn't quite as generally stable as something like VMWare. Aside from that, what would be the point of having a OSX/Linux combo? Macports works well enough on OSX. Why not just save a bundle and get a standard laptop to put linux on if you don't need to run OSX software?
It's also hard to install a Yugo drivetrain in a BMW. But it doesn't really matter because, why would you want to?
Terrible analogy, as it's well understood that the guts of a Macbook aren't necessarily any higher in quality than those of many typical namebrand PC laptops.
Now, the bodyshell of a BMW compared to that of a Yugo... you might have been onto something, if you'd gone that route.
Fine if you're happy to lug 15.6" around with you. Me, I need my laptop accessible on my desk, the airline lounge and my airplane seat. And the kilos matter.
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
You are completely correct.
PC manufacturers are in a constant race to the bottom. They don't value their products, so neither do consumers.
> sure its not as slim or as light
Well, umm, there you go. Small and light costs money. This has been the case for the past 15 years with laptops.
This. The macbook air has a decent trackpad, keyboard and screen. You can get a decent keyboard and something close screen wise on a PC ultrabook but every trackpad I've used so far sucks.
It also looks pretty.
The PC Ultrabook is the same price. For me, its a no brainer. Even if I'm looking for a machine to run Windows on, I'd still buy a Macbook air rather than an Ultrabook PC.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
... without the Evil.
You'd be wrong.
Mac's are still making less than 3% global sales. I'll get back to this in a moment, I would like to correct another error you made first.
They aren't.
. for US$1049
An Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A
A "so called" Retina Macbook Air 13" for US$1139
They both have the same processor, same amount of RAM, same GFX capability, same battery life (7h according to the manufacturer) et al.
The difference is the "so called" Retina display is 1440x900 and the Zenbook has a 1920x1080, the Zenbook also has better speakers, and SD card port and standardised Micro HDMI ports.
Now I'll get to why the Ultrabook (and Air) is not going gangbusters
This is why.
Look at the power of web/email machines under US$500. This is all that most users need. Ultrabooks really aren't for the common users. Businesses don't buy Apple or even Asus, they buy from the likes of HP, Lenovo or Dell because when your ring up Apple and say, "I want 300 computers delivered per week for the next 5 weeks" they'll laugh at you, but when you ring Dell and ask the same question they ask which day you want them delivered. Ultrabooks are twice the price of decent laptops and seeing as they meet the needs of most users, most users will pick the cheaper option.
I'm probably buying my mum a laptop soon, She just wants to use it for email, internet shopping and farmville so I sure as hell wont be buying a A$2000 Macbook for that. Her eyes aren't so good so "Retina(R)" displays are useless. I'll look for the lightest 15" 1366x768 screen available under A$600.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
sure its not as slim or as light, it doesnt have as much battery life, but shit, its cost 40 bucks on ebay, why would I want to spend a pile of money on a obsolete computer no matter how sexy it was?
Seriously? 900 bucks for a 13 inch dell ultrabook? I got a 15.6 inch 2.5ghz i5 with twice the ram and a TB hard drive for 499$ at the dell refurb outlet for my mediocre work computer, and it has one scratch across the windows sticker on the bottom.
This.
Ultrabooks are not for everyone. Most people will buy a NEW i5 with a 500 GB spinning HDD for US$500 ish from their local box retailer.
Only people looking for something specific will look outside this range. To elaborate I bought an laptop for traveling last year, because I'd be doing some gaming on it what I needed was a laptop that was light, had a powerful GFX, good battery life, DVD drive and a 14" screen. I ended up with a 14" Asus, 8GB RAM, Hybrid Nvidia 640M/Intel GMA. Using the intel GFX It'd get 9-10 hours on battery, using the Nvidia GFX it would play most games on med to high settings (battery life was about 5-6 hours though). This was only US$850, I spent the rest of my budget on a 256 GB SSD.
People who do a lot of traveling will buy ultrabooks, but not people who just want a machine to pot around home with.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I was in the market for an Ultra Light laptop since I was tired of lugging mine around for 3 hours everyday. I have never been a huge Apple fan so I looked at the Asus ZenBook but it maxes out at 4GB of RAM, I looked at the new Lenovo carbon fiber ultra book but it was hundreds of dollars more expensive. I checked out a few other UltrBooks but they all just looked and felt cheap. When the new MacBook Air's came out I weighed the pro's and con's, sure the RAM is not replaceable but neither is the RAM on the ZenBook and the MBA can take 8GB. The HDD will eventually be upgradeable whenever a third party makes one and the battery is much more replaceable than the Retina MBP. The USB 3.0 supports SCSI over USB protocol and there are a number of other hardware advantages. Although I wanted to punch a hole in the wall when I had to buy a Thunderbolt cable for $50 0_o, there is no reason they should be that expensive but that is Apple pricing for you. Coming from Linux it took me a while to get used to OSX and its limitations but overall I am pretty happy with my purchase and would make it again. You can't find an UltraBook for that price with the same specs and build quality.
"Don't Panic!"
"Running linux on apple products is no longer an easy thing to do."
I just stuck in a vanilla Ubuntu Desktop 12.04 (32-bit) on a USB flash stick on a rMBP for the first time and it booted right up. I've also used VirtualBox with Ubuntu for years (which is probably more practical/useful in most cases).
Ubuntu is certainly easier and faster to run these days on a Mac than how I remember Yellowdog Linux was. (Ahh, those were the days.)
They are nice machine. I would have bought one if I instead on a competing 'ultrabook' if they weren't behaving like they wanted to show Microsoft and Oracle how Evil is *really* done. Giving money to Apple these days is funding the end of open computing.
It all depends on where you look, but generally the same thing holds: cheap, good, fast, pick two.
I mean, Asus' line of Zenbooks is downright sexy and works very well, but they're among the pricier ultrabooks or sometimes entirely leave the denotation because it's more convenient in terms of cost versus performance. Sony's Vaio Z is insane, but it's even more expensive than Macs. HP's Envy line (I own a first-gen 14") is more and more of a Macbook clone, with the latest versions being basically far more blatant than anything Samsung's ever produced, but this does mean they're generally well made with good components and a metal body.
The same thing can be said about tablets, too. Some manufacturers like Asus ans Samsung are doing their best to offer competitive products, and that usually translates into a lot of sales and good publicity. Meanwhile, the more... half-hearted manufacturers like LG, Toshiba, Motorola, etc. seem to put as little work into their products as possible and they end up with something between mediocre and shitty.
Just please don't put them all in the same basket, as some are genuinely good.
and the trackpad works.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
and it booted right up
OK, that's the easy part. How about wifi, sleep, sound, hardware accelerated video, keyboard backlight, and retina resolution?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
p>What they did not think of and what now causes the slow sales is that the price makes ultrabooks a LUXURY item
The people I've been talking to who can afford ultrabooks have been avoiding them because of the SSD drive rather than the price. Max hard drive space on an ultrabook with SSD is 256 GB, which isn't enough for people who have gotten used to having 500 GB to 1 TB on their laptops.
Having said that, I love my ASUS zenbook - especially when travelling.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
It was one of those quick 5-minute tests, but I'm willing to reboot and check some more things for giggles. I can tell you that audio worked, trackpad worked, keyboard, WiFi hardware was recognized but needed the firmware file downloaded and copied into place (been through that before with other Broadcom WiFi stuff), video wasn't horrible VGA res but I didn't try to up it. Let me reboot and post a reply in a few! :')
A "so called" Retina Macbook Air 13"
No need to imply that the Macbook Air 13" falsely claims to have a Retina Display. No one is saying it does. The only one that has that option is the 15" MacBook Pro.
Back but forgot to try hardwired ethernet, oh well. The Live Ubuntu works in a pinch, I would say, but I'd recommend using something like VirtualBox or installing on partition and taking the time to fiddle to get things tweaked out. No backlight on the keyboard and can't tell you about if the video was accelerated (probably not).
As somebody who was just in the market for an ultrabook and ended up running away, let me tell you why the ultrabooks don't sell. The ultrabooks best but narrow market are people who are willing to pay a premium for a combination of good performance, light weight and long battery life. PC manufacturers want to sell a lot of ultrabooks, so they compromise an all three points and as a result loose in competition with their other offerings. Netbooks and tablets offer comparable or even better battery life for 3-4 times less money. Regular laptops offer significantly better performance for 30 to 50% less.
I was looking for a ultrabook with 8GB RAM, 256SSD and no dedicated video card (the onboard intel 4000 chips are perfectly fine) for about $1600. How hard could it be? RAM is so cheap that shipping costs more than the chip and SSD prices have come down to a buck per GB.
After couple of months of trying I gave up, bought myself a Lenovo X230, swapped the hard drive with 512GB SSD and brought the RAM to 16GB. The bill came to more that $1600 but I am happy with the result. I would have paid more if a PC maker would have bothered to offer a comparable system.
You really think selling a device below cost (especially once you factor in reseller margins, shipping costs, etc) is a viable business model in the long run...?
Every ThinkPad X1 Carbon has an anti-glare IPS display with a native resoltion of 1600x900. But you know, it's missing the Apple logo on the top cover.
It's also about 50% more expensive than a comparable Air, at least here in Australia, and that extends to upgrades like increasing RAM from 4 to 8GB or increasing the HDD size. I'd prefer not to buy Apple out of principle but after comparing the latest Zenbooks, the X1 Carbon and the Airs it's the Airs that seem to have the fewest compromises for a 11-13" machine.
Uh, you mean something like this?
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Installing-MacBook-Air-13-Inch-Mid-2011-Battery/6359/1
Remove some screws, and lift the battery out, done...? Is it really that difficult?
netbooks using Intel chips and/or Microsoft software also had those limitations put on them. The difference is that netbooks started with GNU/Linux on them and the name was coined in the open. I should clarify something, those limitations were put on netbooks once Microsoft and Intel got their paws in on the market. Most likely they didn't want cheap hardware and software to eat into their profits and setting those limitations did a nice job at killing that market. Win for Microsoft and a win for Intel.
The tablet sector is yet another attack vector against these two but so much more entrenched with Apple's iPad and ARM hardware. But they are still trying very hard. IMO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
> I'm just waiting for netbooks to die. I've used netbooks on and off for 20 years.
> They just wern't called that until recently, but last year's laptop was a netbook.
There is a legitimate market for netbooks. Not everybody needs one as a desktop replacement or as a gaming machine; then again, not everybody needs a Mercedes. I went on a trip recently, and brought along a 3-year-old 11" netbook http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2347366,00.asp I used it for two things...
1) cursory check of my email every day
2) offloading pics from my camera's card onto disc (250 gig drive), and a backup copy onto a 16 gig USB key.
A lightweight $300 netbook is perfectly sufficient for my needs in this situation. It's maxed out at 2 gigs ram, and is 32-bit-only. The Vista Home that came with it absolutely crawled. I run optimized Gentoo linux with ICEWM (no KDE or GNOME), and it's half-decent. A reverse-engineered opensource Poulsbo video driver for linux has been available in the main kernel since January, 2012, so I can get the full 1366x768 resolution. It'll keep up with Youtube 720p videos in "large-player" mode, but stutters in fullscreen. As for 1080... fuggedaboutit.
For regular computing, I have a desktop machine with a 24 inch monitor.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Everything you mentioned could be done with a tablet, so long as you had a USB hub and you had one that would work as a USB host, not just a slave.
But iPad runs video in native resolution without problems, better than 1080p, in full screen. Of course, it isn't cheap. I have two sub-$100 Android tablets on their way from China now. We'll see how they go.
Learn to love Alaska
did you do to Virtual Box to make it unstable. I do all the Linux development for my Firefox Plugin in a Virtualbox VM (which means lots and lots of flash and HTML5 video) and I've never once crashed it.
:P So not a fair comparison.
Now, getting OSX into a VirtualBox takes an act of God, but then again you're not suppose to do that in the first place
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I wonder how many of the fanboys who modded me down have had to do a reflow on a Macbook logical board... :p
I wouldn't call the nexus 7 a flop. Me and millions of others like it.
Helpful hint for you. When you have compound subjects including yourself, drop the 'and others' and see how it sounds. For example:
"Me and millions of others like it." OK, drop the '... and others'
"Me like it." Nope, sounds retarded...
"I like it." Much better, so now lets put in the other subject...
"I and millions of others like it." Getting closer... now to be technically correct, other subjects go before yourself...
"Millions of others and I like it." There you go. Now you don't sound like a 2nd grade dropout!
Retina MBP has the glued battery not the MBA
"Don't Panic!"
Have they fixed the power sockets yet on any non-Mac lap/note/ultrabook? The first thing that goes on all my laptops have been the power socket where the weight of the plug pulls the socket away from the board and needs to be resoldered.
Why would I buy a Windows laptop for the same price when I know the damn thing won't be able to charge after a couple of years?
Ordinary "netbooks" like the EeePC 1000 are quite competent computers for $275. How much computer do you need to carry around? I run Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, LTSpice and Autodesk 123D on mine. It will play video. What more do you need?
The MacBook Air doesn't have Gigabit Ethernet. When I want to move more than 10GB of stuff to my laptop, wireless doesn't cut it and neither does USB, even USB3 as firstly I actually need a spare drive to use and second I have to wait for the data to be transferred twice rather than once.
Of course, the other thing you get with Apple's rubbish is that you have to use their bullshit overpriced adapters and converters to connect a display, whereas with a PC ultrabook you just plug your stuff straight in cos it uses standard HDMI connectors and you get an included adapter for VGA if it has that. And of course you don't get all the other standard PC features like card readers and swappable memory/HDD.
Macbook Airs are really just overpowered thin clients rather than small laptops.
The main reason I run Linux is because I want to use free software. Free as in Speech. I want to be able to get the source. I want to learn from others and understand. I don't want to rely on a big corporation to handle my data. I want freedom in a digital world. I'm not a consumer, I want to be an actor.
Uhh, Linux ALWAYS takes tweeking to get working 100%, regardless of how standardized your components are.
Simply not true, but that's the impression people get. Whenever I have bought a system which was dedicated to Linux everything has worked great. If you bought a PC and then complained that the OS/X install was difficult people would think you were crazy. If you bought an Amiga and then complained that getting Windows 7 working was difficult they would laugh in your face. For some reason, however, people continue to recommend running Linux on hardware which wasn't set up for it. That's fine for yourself if you are a hobbyist. It's not fine if you are telling other people what to do. I think this is probably the thing which does the most damage to the reputation of Linux overall.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
But then, why buy a Mac? There are a lot more cheaper PCs available, and even cheaper ARM based PCs, whose disadvantage is that they won't run Windows, but they will run Linux or BSD. So one can get one of those, load it up w/ Linux (increasing #distros are including ARM as well as x86 in their default offerings) and then be sure to have liberated software (since there ain't much closed native software there for ARM). Put one of the 'Libre-Linuxes' on it, such as Trisquel, and be off to the races.
They would have fixed it completely with a hippopotamus break-dancing on Saturn.
To make that parse correctly, you need:
Apple? Orange::iPad:Ultrabook
Though it's not clear why iPad is in the Orange namespace or what boolean Apple represents.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
*crosses fingers, toes ,eye, and any other cross-able body part* I hope that PC makers get with the program add offer laptops (and monitors) with high resolution displays. It is sad that my 3 year old laptop has a higher resolution then the newest one from the same company. The old laptop is 1920 X 1200. The same resolution as the IPS 24 inch monitor I have. Most "high res" laptop are 1920 X 1080. I called dell and hp to ask if they offered a new model laptop with 1920 X 1200 or higher resolution display. They did not when I called.
wish list for laptops:
let us be able to upgrade the video card. There a few models that had a video card that you could change back in the day. Now all the video cards are soldered on.
Put out laptop models with the retina display resolution or higher resolution.
It's almost as if there's more to good design than meets the eye... as if Apple actually did some hard work before they introduced the MacBook Air four years ago, rather than just looking at a competitor's product and saying "Thin, silver, wedge-shaped... yeah, we can do that!" and popping out some piece of shit a few months later. And careful, strategic supply-chain planning and management doesn't enter into it at all.
Nah... Apple's success is just due to a) marketing and b) legions of fanbois and style-obsessed sheeple. Yeah. Just keep telling yourself that.
Remember when you were a kid and watched people who were good at stuff and it looked easy? And a grown-up told you "they're really good at it and they make it look easy"? Nope--all lies. If something looks easy, it is, and if they're successful, they're just lucky. No skill is needed at all to become a great artist, designer, surgeon, stunt cyclist, manager, president, juggler, programmer...
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
You've got it backwards. Like always "geeky technical details" are lost on the Apple fashionistas.
It is YOU as the Apple buyer that is bolting a BMW shell on top of a Yugo drive train.
Don't kid yourself. Don't try to kid us either. We know better.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Not certain who is right and wrong, but this was my source:
http://www.zdnet.com/thinkpad-x1-carbon-able-macbook-air-competitor-review-7000002294/
I put Red Hat on a desktop system a handful of years ago. It was a neverending nightmare trying to get everything to work, and I gave up when CERT contacted me because it had been pwnd.