The problem is the average customer buys a boxed machine at Best Buy, Wal-Mart, etc and takes it home. Upon booting up the machine they get their 30 to 90 day trial of McAfee or Norton, then subscribe at the end up and end up resubbing every year. My guess is this is where he is getting this.
The average reader of Slashdot knows that there are free alternatives. The average consumer that buys a HP, Dell, or whatever at the local brick and mortar retailer does not.
Being that the iPad and the iPhone use the same base OS I'd be really surprised if the iPad did NOT support Exchange Email out of the box since the iPhone already does. The VPN I am not sure on. The iPhone does, the iPad in theory *should* but we won't know for sure until it ships.
Those two points alone should be pretty easy for InfoWorld to get a good educated guess on based on what is available for the iPhone now, and in the developers kit if you have access to it. And from what I've seen the iPad is focused at the consumer market primarily. I would not be surprised if the next version of the iPad has more enterprise features built in just as the iPhone 3g did over the original iPhone.
Meh, I'm running 7 Ultimate (technet license - full version, not the release candidates) on a Dell Latitude E6400 and I'd like to say that so far, RDP is NOT better. It hangs on closing to the point of needing a system reboot. I had better RDP in Ubuntu 9.04, Vista, and XP than this. Sometimes a reboot helps, but lately it has been pretty consistent in the hang on logging out of an RDP session.
Office 2007 (outlook) hangs on certain emails (one from the local Apple store, go figure), and hung on printing an email from a vendor. If I load up my XP VM (for my phone system admin software) Outlook 2007 works fine on the email and printing.
Power management certainly is not better than Ubuntu. I had longer life on a charge from Ubuntu than I get now with 7 - this is with unmodified settings in either OS.
Boot up was generally faster than Vista and XP, but is starting to slow down. Overall time to desktop is definitely better, but with age it is starting to slow down like previous versions of Windows have.
Shut down is another story...sometimes it hangs and I have to hold the power button down to get the laptop to shut down. Other times it seems to take an eternity but does shut down properly on its own.
All drivers are up to date, all updates from Microsoft have been applied, and I am running the Microsoft Security Essentials to see how well it works (so far it seems ok, but haven't really tried to purposely infect the machine).
Overall my impression of it is an updated version of Vista. There are some nice features added to it, but at this point from my experiences I'd say hold off a bit and wait for some updates to come along for both the OS and the hardware drivers.
Wireless in Ubuntu has been pretty darned good the last two or three versions released. I've had zero issues getting wireless to work across three different laptop manufacturers and on my old desktop with an ancient D-Link wireless PCI card. Wireless worked right out of the box so to speak with no tinkering required.
I'll say it has been better than XP and Vista on two of the lap tops and the desktop to set up my wireless networking.
Windows still requires hardware to run (captain obvious moment, I know). Microsoft forced their way into OEMs with some crazy contracts back in the DOS/Win 3.1 days and earned an anti-trust suit from the US government over it (along with bundling IE with Windows, but Microsoft did force vendors into some interesting contracts to be the sole OS they used).
And the last time I built a PC the hardware came up to be more expensive than a Mac and I had to buy an OEM version of Windows to go along with it. Seems I still had to acquire hardware to run that OS, and an iMac was damn similar in specs (2006). That PC runs Ubuntu now and I have an iMac. And I upgraded the RAM in my iMac from 1GB to 3GB by purchasing a 2GB SODIMM from new egg that cost less than $50.
My point is while Microsoft does not produce PC hardware, they certainly work with hardware manufacturers and PC manufacturers to get the product out. Whether you chose a PC with Windows or a Mac you are still buying hardware irregardless of the source.
Or use most other e-readers. The local library is free and paper backs are cheap - I don't have to worry about someone messing with what I am reading...and if they do I can use the book to beat sense into them (please note hard covers are better for this option than paper backs).
This isn't the first time Time Warner has played hard ball and forced a group of channels off the air in the last 12 months. In Central Ohio they've done this twice now, well almost twice - the Viacom thing was averted at the last minute but the first instance was earlier in the year with the CW I think it was and their affiliated channels. I didn't care much to lose the channels, but my mother-in-law sure did and raised a big stink about it.
Then there was the highly publicized Big-10/Time Warner spat too - it seems Time Warner is in the habit of pissing off broadcasters and making it public so I don't blame Viacom for broadcasting the banners on the 31st. This one would have affected me with children in the house that enjoy both Nickelodeon and Noggin.
Have any of the other Cable carriers or satellite providers had this same crap happen? I don't remember this happening on Dish or Direct TV when I had them - but it's been two times in the last year with Time Warner that programming either has been affected or was close to being, with the Big 10 network thing being highly publicized on top of those two instances.
Be that as it may, the average consumer is going to see Xbox 360 Pro at $299 and the wireless networking adaptor hanging in the accessories beside it for another $99.
I don't understand why Microsoft bothered having wired and wireless controllers. Nintendo and Sony both made it simple if you want the OEM controllers by offering one and only one option each. I know it works out in the end for Microsoft because they can say "hey, we're cheaper" but when you compare apples to apples it's a wash.
The thing with the $299 XBox (any Xbox for that matter) is that it costs an additional $99 for wireless networking.
While the price point marketing is working for Microsoft it becomes a wash if you pick up the XBox Pro and the wireless adaptor.
The XBox 360 accessories are a nightmare to pick through too - Microsoft has way too many variations of the same thing (controllers for example) for the average consumer to figure out - they are nickle and diming consumers pretty hard after the initial purchase, but hey - it's working for them.
Their prices are in Euros - once you get done converting that to US dollars a suitable replacement (Professional with 200 users) would cost my company approximately $8,400.
I can get Exchange 2007 and the additional 100 new CALS I need to be in compliance for less than $7,000.
Doesn't seem like a good deal to me other than helping break the Microsoft monopoly in this segment. Sadly my corporate over lords won't see it that way and tell me to stick to Exchange since it is at least $1,400 cheaper in the US.
Yes, I know I can boot camp it or use Parallels, but I just don't feel like messing with Windows on my Mac when other MMOs have native OS X Clients (WoW and Eve Online are two big ones).
I'm confused - McCain has stated in the past and then flip-flopped about staying in Iraq for a very long time.
Meanwhile Obama was working with the NATO countries to see what he could do to get more of a NATO presence in Afghanistan and less of our troops there. Sounds to me like Obama wants to get out of Iraq and reduce the number of our troops in Afghanistan - not move from one to the other as you stated. (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/25/obama.trip/index.html)
And to be quite frank (my apologies to those named Frank), had we stayed out of Iraq and focused on the issue at hand in Afghanistan we wouldn't be in the mess we are in now.
I had never heard about Obama's stance towards Iran - do you have a source I can look at to see what he envisions there? The same goes for Georgia.
Whether you like his books or not, he did bring up some very valid points in "Little Brother" about our current state of security, or lack thereof. One of which is the ability to circumvent systems like the gait recognition system.
How does it account for any type of foot, ankle, or leg injury that doesn't require crutches?
How about someone throwing a handful of rocks in the shoe to forcibly change their gait?
How about someone that is conscientious enough to change their gait at every new location?
(I cannot lay claim to these ideas myself - I read Cory Doctrow's "Little Brother" - a very good novel that is licensed under the Creative Commons model and is available at http://craphound.com/littlebrother/ )
This just reeks of wasted money and more governmental control.
I would not count on them having a secure retirement - just ask GM's autoworkers - or Delphi's.
I'm not sure if you saw it or not, but the UAW settled for a VEBA that they will pay out retirement and other expenses for retirees and it is now removed from the Detroit 3's finances. The problem is no money has been put into it yet and there is no guarantee that money will go into it with the financial condition that Ford, GM, and Chrysler are in. Not to mention all the corruption in the Union and the temptation of dipping into a multi-billion dollar fund is going to be an interesting read in a few years if the VEBAs do actually get the funding they are supposed to get.
My point here is the union can only provide retirement and health care so long as their hosts are still alive and not spraying red ink all over the place like Detroit is right now.
Think of it this way - they are not only eliminating 4 of the 6 capitals, but 4 classes as well, two of which are tanking classes for their respective races.
That would be like eliminating all the faction cities in WoW except for Orgrimarr and Ironforge. Granted most interaction took place in those two cities prior to the BC expansion, but it significantly screws the story without the other cities. Think about it - each race has its own starting area, and a capital city. The capitals are pretty much a large defining portion of a race in an MMO. That is now gone for 4 races.
I threw everything out the damn window that made me a Republican 8 years ago and until I see a positive change in that party I'm not going back. The Republicans dug the hole they are in. They have to dig themselves out now, and McCain is not the answer. He's already digging that hole deeper.
They've delivered one car so far (as reported) and that went to the CEO. So far they have not delivered a single production car to paying customers outside of employees of Tesla.
It's starting to look like they are heading down the litigation route that SCO was going. Hopefully they can actually deliver the product and not just sue people for IP.
Magna has already filed as suit against Tesla in regards to the transmissions used in their cars, so it should get interesting soon.
I can't really see that being the case. A BD player is still around $300 to $400. A low end DVD player can be picked up for less than $50. That's a significant difference in cost of the player not to mention the cost of the movies.
Right now I can do HD on demand at home through my cable service provider and I have a DVD player that upconverts to HD. Both suit me fine - I see no need to buy BD players or movies anytime in the next two to three years. I'm also the only one in mine and my wife's family that has an HD-TV and no one on either side is planning on upgrading anytime soon.
The problem with the Volt at the moment is it is vaporware. GM has no working model of the thing and they were just quoted form the New York auto show as saying the price is now going to be in the $40,000 USD range and claimed at that price they still wouldn't make a profit on it initially.
I wish I could walk out of my job and still keep it AND get paid when I don't agree with something...Man, I could be at home asleep right now and getting paid for it if that were the case!
They delivered the first car to a company executive, not to a paying customer. Does that actually count as "in production"? The picture from the article is also interesting - they are pushing the car out of a box truck - does it not have a reverse gear? (They've admitted to having problems with transmissions so far).
I like the concept, I just hope they can pull it off before going under. The official release date keeps getting pushed back, upper management has been shuffled, and quite a bit of the staff has been let go recently.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is the average customer buys a boxed machine at Best Buy, Wal-Mart, etc and takes it home. Upon booting up the machine they get their 30 to 90 day trial of McAfee or Norton, then subscribe at the end up and end up resubbing every year. My guess is this is where he is getting this.
The average reader of Slashdot knows that there are free alternatives. The average consumer that buys a HP, Dell, or whatever at the local brick and mortar retailer does not.
Being that the iPad and the iPhone use the same base OS I'd be really surprised if the iPad did NOT support Exchange Email out of the box since the iPhone already does. The VPN I am not sure on. The iPhone does, the iPad in theory *should* but we won't know for sure until it ships.
Those two points alone should be pretty easy for InfoWorld to get a good educated guess on based on what is available for the iPhone now, and in the developers kit if you have access to it. And from what I've seen the iPad is focused at the consumer market primarily. I would not be surprised if the next version of the iPad has more enterprise features built in just as the iPhone 3g did over the original iPhone.
Meh, I'm running 7 Ultimate (technet license - full version, not the release candidates) on a Dell Latitude E6400 and I'd like to say that so far, RDP is NOT better. It hangs on closing to the point of needing a system reboot. I had better RDP in Ubuntu 9.04, Vista, and XP than this. Sometimes a reboot helps, but lately it has been pretty consistent in the hang on logging out of an RDP session.
Office 2007 (outlook) hangs on certain emails (one from the local Apple store, go figure), and hung on printing an email from a vendor. If I load up my XP VM (for my phone system admin software) Outlook 2007 works fine on the email and printing.
Power management certainly is not better than Ubuntu. I had longer life on a charge from Ubuntu than I get now with 7 - this is with unmodified settings in either OS.
Boot up was generally faster than Vista and XP, but is starting to slow down. Overall time to desktop is definitely better, but with age it is starting to slow down like previous versions of Windows have.
Shut down is another story...sometimes it hangs and I have to hold the power button down to get the laptop to shut down. Other times it seems to take an eternity but does shut down properly on its own.
All drivers are up to date, all updates from Microsoft have been applied, and I am running the Microsoft Security Essentials to see how well it works (so far it seems ok, but haven't really tried to purposely infect the machine).
Overall my impression of it is an updated version of Vista. There are some nice features added to it, but at this point from my experiences I'd say hold off a bit and wait for some updates to come along for both the OS and the hardware drivers.
Wireless in Ubuntu has been pretty darned good the last two or three versions released. I've had zero issues getting wireless to work across three different laptop manufacturers and on my old desktop with an ancient D-Link wireless PCI card. Wireless worked right out of the box so to speak with no tinkering required.
I'll say it has been better than XP and Vista on two of the lap tops and the desktop to set up my wireless networking.
Why do we need to do a low end comparison when we can compare existing models from Apple and (pick your maker) Windows based PCs now?
Personally I won't be in the market for a $299 PC or $399 laptop. They tend to be cheaply made and do not have the power that I want.
50% more than whom?
Windows still requires hardware to run (captain obvious moment, I know). Microsoft forced their way into OEMs with some crazy contracts back in the DOS/Win 3.1 days and earned an anti-trust suit from the US government over it (along with bundling IE with Windows, but Microsoft did force vendors into some interesting contracts to be the sole OS they used).
And the last time I built a PC the hardware came up to be more expensive than a Mac and I had to buy an OEM version of Windows to go along with it. Seems I still had to acquire hardware to run that OS, and an iMac was damn similar in specs (2006). That PC runs Ubuntu now and I have an iMac. And I upgraded the RAM in my iMac from 1GB to 3GB by purchasing a 2GB SODIMM from new egg that cost less than $50.
My point is while Microsoft does not produce PC hardware, they certainly work with hardware manufacturers and PC manufacturers to get the product out. Whether you chose a PC with Windows or a Mac you are still buying hardware irregardless of the source.
I'd like to know what they are thinking for 1) considering buying SCO and 2) leaving Darl McBride in charge if allowed to purchase SCO.
One would think after where the company ended up a leadership change would be the first order of business.
That would be an excellent idea if you could borrow like that - I would consider a Kindle or something similar at that point.
Or use most other e-readers. The local library is free and paper backs are cheap - I don't have to worry about someone messing with what I am reading...and if they do I can use the book to beat sense into them (please note hard covers are better for this option than paper backs).
This isn't the first time Time Warner has played hard ball and forced a group of channels off the air in the last 12 months. In Central Ohio they've done this twice now, well almost twice - the Viacom thing was averted at the last minute but the first instance was earlier in the year with the CW I think it was and their affiliated channels. I didn't care much to lose the channels, but my mother-in-law sure did and raised a big stink about it.
Then there was the highly publicized Big-10/Time Warner spat too - it seems Time Warner is in the habit of pissing off broadcasters and making it public so I don't blame Viacom for broadcasting the banners on the 31st. This one would have affected me with children in the house that enjoy both Nickelodeon and Noggin.
Have any of the other Cable carriers or satellite providers had this same crap happen? I don't remember this happening on Dish or Direct TV when I had them - but it's been two times in the last year with Time Warner that programming either has been affected or was close to being, with the Big 10 network thing being highly publicized on top of those two instances.
Be that as it may, the average consumer is going to see Xbox 360 Pro at $299 and the wireless networking adaptor hanging in the accessories beside it for another $99.
I don't understand why Microsoft bothered having wired and wireless controllers. Nintendo and Sony both made it simple if you want the OEM controllers by offering one and only one option each. I know it works out in the end for Microsoft because they can say "hey, we're cheaper" but when you compare apples to apples it's a wash.
The thing with the $299 XBox (any Xbox for that matter) is that it costs an additional $99 for wireless networking.
While the price point marketing is working for Microsoft it becomes a wash if you pick up the XBox Pro and the wireless adaptor.
The XBox 360 accessories are a nightmare to pick through too - Microsoft has way too many variations of the same thing (controllers for example) for the average consumer to figure out - they are nickle and diming consumers pretty hard after the initial purchase, but hey - it's working for them.
Their prices are in Euros - once you get done converting that to US dollars a suitable replacement (Professional with 200 users) would cost my company approximately $8,400.
For reference:
http://www.zarafa.com/?q=en/content/prices
http://www.zarafa.com/content/versions
I can get Exchange 2007 and the additional 100 new CALS I need to be in compliance for less than $7,000.
Doesn't seem like a good deal to me other than helping break the Microsoft monopoly in this segment. Sadly my corporate over lords won't see it that way and tell me to stick to Exchange since it is at least $1,400 cheaper in the US.
So I'm passing for the time being.
Yes, I know I can boot camp it or use Parallels, but I just don't feel like messing with Windows on my Mac when other MMOs have native OS X Clients (WoW and Eve Online are two big ones).
I'm confused - McCain has stated in the past and then flip-flopped about staying in Iraq for a very long time.
Meanwhile Obama was working with the NATO countries to see what he could do to get more of a NATO presence in Afghanistan and less of our troops there. Sounds to me like Obama wants to get out of Iraq and reduce the number of our troops in Afghanistan - not move from one to the other as you stated. (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/25/obama.trip/index.html)
And to be quite frank (my apologies to those named Frank), had we stayed out of Iraq and focused on the issue at hand in Afghanistan we wouldn't be in the mess we are in now.
I had never heard about Obama's stance towards Iran - do you have a source I can look at to see what he envisions there? The same goes for Georgia.
Whether you like his books or not, he did bring up some very valid points in "Little Brother" about our current state of security, or lack thereof. One of which is the ability to circumvent systems like the gait recognition system.
How does it account for any type of foot, ankle, or leg injury that doesn't require crutches?
How about someone throwing a handful of rocks in the shoe to forcibly change their gait?
How about someone that is conscientious enough to change their gait at every new location?
(I cannot lay claim to these ideas myself - I read Cory Doctrow's "Little Brother" - a very good novel that is licensed under the Creative Commons model and is available at http://craphound.com/littlebrother/ )
This just reeks of wasted money and more governmental control.
I would not count on them having a secure retirement - just ask GM's autoworkers - or Delphi's.
I'm not sure if you saw it or not, but the UAW settled for a VEBA that they will pay out retirement and other expenses for retirees and it is now removed from the Detroit 3's finances. The problem is no money has been put into it yet and there is no guarantee that money will go into it with the financial condition that Ford, GM, and Chrysler are in. Not to mention all the corruption in the Union and the temptation of dipping into a multi-billion dollar fund is going to be an interesting read in a few years if the VEBAs do actually get the funding they are supposed to get.
My point here is the union can only provide retirement and health care so long as their hosts are still alive and not spraying red ink all over the place like Detroit is right now.
Think of it this way - they are not only eliminating 4 of the 6 capitals, but 4 classes as well, two of which are tanking classes for their respective races.
That would be like eliminating all the faction cities in WoW except for Orgrimarr and Ironforge. Granted most interaction took place in those two cities prior to the BC expansion, but it significantly screws the story without the other cities. Think about it - each race has its own starting area, and a capital city. The capitals are pretty much a large defining portion of a race in an MMO. That is now gone for 4 races.
I threw everything out the damn window that made me a Republican 8 years ago and until I see a positive change in that party I'm not going back. The Republicans dug the hole they are in. They have to dig themselves out now, and McCain is not the answer. He's already digging that hole deeper.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/mccain-id-spy-o.html
They've delivered one car so far (as reported) and that went to the CEO. So far they have not delivered a single production car to paying customers outside of employees of Tesla.
It's starting to look like they are heading down the litigation route that SCO was going. Hopefully they can actually deliver the product and not just sue people for IP.
Magna has already filed as suit against Tesla in regards to the transmissions used in their cars, so it should get interesting soon.
I can't really see that being the case. A BD player is still around $300 to $400. A low end DVD player can be picked up for less than $50. That's a significant difference in cost of the player not to mention the cost of the movies. Right now I can do HD on demand at home through my cable service provider and I have a DVD player that upconverts to HD. Both suit me fine - I see no need to buy BD players or movies anytime in the next two to three years. I'm also the only one in mine and my wife's family that has an HD-TV and no one on either side is planning on upgrading anytime soon.
The problem with the Volt at the moment is it is vaporware. GM has no working model of the thing and they were just quoted form the New York auto show as saying the price is now going to be in the $40,000 USD range and claimed at that price they still wouldn't make a profit on it initially.
I wish I could walk out of my job and still keep it AND get paid when I don't agree with something...Man, I could be at home asleep right now and getting paid for it if that were the case!
They delivered the first car to a company executive, not to a paying customer. Does that actually count as "in production"? The picture from the article is also interesting - they are pushing the car out of a box truck - does it not have a reverse gear? (They've admitted to having problems with transmissions so far).
I like the concept, I just hope they can pull it off before going under. The official release date keeps getting pushed back, upper management has been shuffled, and quite a bit of the staff has been let go recently.