Get an ISO, AMI, or VM image complete with LAMP already configured. Hell, they even have configurations that include apps already configured like trac, mediawiki or redmine. You'll have full control including root, so no worries about lock-in.
I'd just test one of these out, get your deployment script tested, then roll out the AMI on Amazon EC2 (then apply your deploy script)... where you can scale up the capabilities as needed.
Ultimately, cost/capability will determine whether you host locally, remote or cloud, but there's almost no reason you'll need to roll your own. My only gripe with these services is that they don't have Ruby-on-Rails with Apache and the Rails Passenger module pre-configured (as I find Mongrel/Webrick to be too ligthweight for production usage)... but that's only an issue if you're going production RoR.
1) How does this Samsung chipset compare vs latest Sandforce2 in terms of compressed read/writes? 2) TRIM support? 3) OSX friendliness? 4) Cost? 5) Size max?
So far I've identified 2 use cases that have very nice sweet-spot answers - a) For a desktop with PCI-e, the OCZ Revodrive3 X2 just gives amazing performance, completely bypassing SATA and delivering unbeatable performance/cost ratio. b) For a laptop solution, I'm more interested in max storage/price/performance, and the 512GB Crucial m4 seems unparalleled in delivering this (expensive at $700, but can completely replace an laptop HDD).
It will be interesting to see if Samsung is ready to challenge this market.
... it's maybe the ONE thing I agree with Steve Jobs about -- touch does NOT work as a viable input method for a desktop.
He may have said that at some point, but you should know by now that Apple changes the kool-aid they serve every so often. He's even spoken at length about merging iOS concepts into the desktop OSX.
[trackpad literature snipped]
You do realize that a trackpad is not "touch" as in touchscreen, right? I use a MacbookPro with a magic trackpad, it's a whole lot more efficient than a mouse at numerous things. With things like BetterTouchTool, I can do even more.
The problem with "touchscreen" on a desktop is gorilla arm. Even an iPad with a keyboard is not very fluid... there's a reason that the MacbookTouch doesn't exist. Mouse/trackpad with keyboard has worked so well for so long for a very good reason.
'The president of the FFII has brought to people’s attention this good report from The Prior Art blog, saying that “MPEG-LA’s CEO Larry Horn also heads MobileMedia, a patent troll holding no less than 122 patents bought to Nokia and Sony” '
To me it isn't THAT they fail it is HOW they fail that has me avoiding them. With HDDs I can't remember the last time I had an HDD that failed without plenty of clear warnings something was up. Windows delayed write fails, or SMART errors, temp going nuts, there was ALWAYS a clear warning that there was trouble in HDD town. With both of the gamers there was NO WARNING with the SSDs, they just flipped the switch and....nothing. With the HDDs I was always able to get the data off before they bought the farm, minus a few bad sectors of course, but with the SSDs it was like they didn't exist, it was just...nothing.
Storage failures are nothing new... Google claims most HDD failures don't show any signs on SMART before going off. Add to this the fact that anyone not running with a bootable up-to-date backup (all OSs have cheap or free backup tools that create bootable backups) is asking for trouble. I've had HDDs fail without any warning (mostly on corporate systems). I've also had systems stolen (laptop), and the up-to-date backup was a life (and work) saver.
I own 3 SSDs now that work well and have yet to fail (surprisingly 2 of them are OCZ also). Comprising about 3 total disk-years of service. However, if they do, I just boot from my firewire backup drive, sync dropbox, git and IMAP and I would very likely have lost no work at all.
Seriously, a low-performance core doing administrivia type work sounds great, but won't this require OS support? I can't imagine this detail is completely abstracted from the kernel.
Just curious what exactly Google did to you, and why you perceive Google to be more evil then say Apple?
There is no binary comparison here. Apple is a software company that makes it's money by packaging it in smooth desireable hardware (which they close up as tightly as feasible).
Google is also a software company that makes it's money through advertising on it's free services (in addition to many other people's sites as well). Google claims to be open where Apple makes no such claims. Google claims to "do no evil" while some of it's actions are vaguely in the "evil" arena.
Both companies can be dangerous at industry controlling sizes (just like Microsoft, IBM, AT&T or say, Standard Oil)... the question is, do either of them control entire industries? If Apple has it's way, it will sell the most popular and highest margin devices, reap a vast majority of profits and leave the low-end for competitors who don't mind the non-existent margins (see iPod in mp3 player market). If Google has it's way, Android will have close to monopoly share of devices, becoming an industry standard through network effects, all running Google services and ad network... there would be no escaping Google's tracking of you
In the mobile market I'm not sure which one is worse, but I can tell you that Google at such scales can very truly be evil (as would Apple).
Am I the only person completely unexcited by 4G given the bandwidth limit to speed ratio?
On either Verizon or AT&T one can easily swallow up the entire 200/250MB lower tier limit in a matter of minutes. The 2GB higher end plan is a mere hours of airtime away. What happens when some rogue app or website pushes you well over the edge? Is this the texting overage nightmare ripe for abuse again? How the hell can you game on this kind of network with such low limits?
4G/LTE means nothing if the bandwidth limits are so paltry as to effectively make it a metered service.
The key areas for almost all TV services is content, price and usability. Look at the success of Hulu in years past and the recent stumble of Netflix (somewhat attributable to both increased prices and the loss of the Starz contract which gave them Disney and Sony content). Look at the failure of divx (the single-use DVDs). Big Content two of these three key factors (they've learned since TiVo).
So Ballmer says "Negotiations with content partners are still underway, but options for live TV will include both news and sports"... good luck man. Perhaps big media is so scared of Netflix and Apple that they'll give you some great combo of content... but if the content isn't there, or the price is too high, it's a lose.
So they think Kinnect is somehow going to make their system more usable than say, an AppleTV or Roku? Novelty aside, that's just crazy talk. Poeple have been using remotes for decades now.
Enter electronic discovery. Expect HP to be giving up all of their emails involving any communication with the board for at least the last fiscal year.
I have done ediscovery and with all sorts of attorney-client and work product privilege and redaction of non-relevant details, you can expect that at most 10% of the total emails get released. A good ediscovery consultant can get upwards of 95% content reduction for discovery purposes.
He even went so far as to compare the search for truth about his alleged original work as a witch hunt like he was Khadaffi or Breivik (the norwegian bomber and mass-murderer).
So he compares himself to a ruthless dictator and fundamentalist terrorist... not exactly bolstering his case, is he?
It is actually a rather brilliant move (not that I endorse it in any way) by Microsoft to leverage their desktop supremacy into the mobile space while seemingly avoiding anti-trust issues. I am sure that some of their competitors may try to call them out on this, but it seems like it would be an upward legal battle.
This isn't brilliant at all. Strong-arming their way into markets is the only way Microsoft knows how to work. It worked in the early part of the web when they slew a dangerous but small Netscape and subdued Oracle, Sun etc. This time they're competing with Google and Apple both of which have 2+ year head-starts on modern mobile touch devices.
One of these companies provides a better-than-free OS (Google will share search income from your device) and the other company (re)defined the market and owns 50%+ of profit share in the sector. Microsoft has a tough fight ahead... and this time Intel won't necessarily be their ally.
Quote from link: "Every screen needs to be touch. A monitor without touch feels dead."
Touch-screen 22" Monitor is costly and unusable. I like what Apple did with OSX Lion - Grab a magic trackpad and you have multi-touch trackpad gestures that are quite immersive while not suffering the gorilla arm fatigue issue (or fingerprints as other commenters have noted).
I fear you may be right, but I find it nauseating. It's as if the entire world has gone blind and addle-brained.
I have a tablet coputer. It says "CRAIG" right on the front, is a 7" tablet, is shaped nothing like the iPad and bears no fruit logo. And people still ask me how i like my iPad. It's as if the entire world were collectively kicked in the head by a horse.
People like to associate canonical brands with generic items. Back in the day (say the 90s), a copy was a "xerox" (even for some folks today). Being computer proficient meant you had to know "windows" and "office". People wouldn't login to the Internet, they would login to AOL (now Facebook).
d) doesn't require the user to understand the the certificate system and make sound judgments about when it can safely be bypassed.
Doesn't the perspectives firefox plugin handle this? If that concept were included within the browser framework, it might add a secondary check to the top-down hierarchical (and thus critical-point-of-failure) of trusting CAs alone.
And iOS is still ahead of Android in marketshare when you include all iOS devices - yet another vector you refuse to consider but is indicative of anything but Apple being stagnant.
Sorry, the facts say you're wrong. StatCounter includes ALL mobile devices, including tablets and iTouch devices - anything that is mobile. Android has passed iOS in marketshare and is second only to Symbian - which hasn't lost any marketshare.
From StatCounter's FAQ about marketshare methodology: "StatCounter is a web analytics service. As of 1 June 2010, our tracking code is installed on more than 3 million sites globally. (These sites cover various activities and geographic locations.)"
So this means that StatCounter only counts web accesses from mobile devices that hit statcounter enabled web sites.
This is not necessarily representative of ACTUAL marketshare. For example, nowhere on that FAQ does it state how they calculate "unique" visitors or devices (this is critically important in web statistics).
Furthermore, there IS a real way to measure market-share... reported unit sales (not shipped, sold to actual customers). Apple has this information, Google and other Android vendors do not (whether they choose to not publish this data or find it hard to come by is unclear).
EVERY analyst in this field has said that Android will emerge on top, marketshare wise, and that Windows Phone will probably end up in second place, with iOS battling for 3rd with Blackberry. That doesn't sound like Windows Phone 7 (get the name right) will eat up Android so much as it will eat up iOS.
Most analysts in 2007 thought the iPhone would barely be able to compete against the Blackberry, Palm and Windows Mobile. Most analysts in 2010 thought that the iPad was not feature-filled enough and it would fizzle. The fact that these same folks think that iOS will fall to 3rd place behind WP7/8 is laughable. Analysts say what you pay them to say. Microsoft and Gartner, for example, have a very long customer relationship.
I'm not sure about you, but I just have orders: "leave on doorstep unless signature absolutely required by sender" with the large carriers (UPS, FedEx, DHL).
The way you worded it make it sound like you've made some kind of a general delivery instruction, rather than doing it on every purchase. If that is correct, how do you do that?
I remember being instructed to just call the delivery carriers directly when I repeated had similar problems for small-ticket items (this was way back in 2001)... they offered to set a default for my profile. Perhaps things have changed, but my experience has been (in the past 8 years or so) that unless it's mandatory by the sender (ie, Apple does this for $100+ orders) it is left in my mailbox if it fits, and on the doorstep if not... When I got my Kindle, it was left on the doorstep just like any book.
This is not exclusive to Amazon, I've had similar experience for all small-ticket items from sellers like NewEgg, Amazon, Dell, etc. Only rarely do I get the FedEx or UPS slip saying they couldn't leave it.
You still need to waste an hour to go to the post office and get it when there's nobody home to sign for the delivery. Compared to picking up a book at a Barnes & Noble store, it's more or less a wash.
I'm not sure about you, but I just have orders: "leave on doorstep unless signature absolutely required by sender" with the large carriers (UPS, FedEx, DHL). That way, if it's an iPod or something, I am forced to be there to sign, but if it's a book, they just drop it on the doorstep (it used to be even better, when I lived in an apartment, they would leave it at the manager's office - secured).
My sister has all her packages sent to her work office.
If HP had sold these even at $150/$200 or maybe $200/$250, sure they would have lost money on each unit, but how long until it overtook iPad?
My take: Never. Let's say theoretically the $200/$250 touchpads were super popular... with any decent uptake, Apple could have run (this was signaled by Cook in one of those quarterly reports... Apple would compete on price if needed) a promotion and lowered the iPad price point to compete (say $400)... Apple with it's $75B in ca$h could burn as much as they wanted to compete against unsustainable prices by also posting (not as painful) unsustainable prices for pretty much eternity.
HP and others realized that the only way to beat Apple would be to make something successful and profitable (which is apparently impossible vs. the iPad given the results over the past 16 months).
How exactly is an ISO 9660 file system image (.iso) more convenient than a Microsoft Installer package (.msi)?
Several legitimate reasons: 1) burnable 2) multi-platform but I imagine the GP poster was really saying that the OSX method of DMG/ISO + application binary (which can be directly copied to Applications folder) is more intuitive and convenient than running an installer with 10 wizard steps.
No. Your HABITS are the product. Google is a marketing machine and they sell insight into current, past and future trends in various groups, and for that they need to follow people's habits.
If that were the case, then they would support verified pseudonyms [1] like every other site like StackOverflow or Slashdot.
The fact that they aren't allowing pseudonyms is a clear indication that they are either morons or very much interested in data-mining to the personal and personal group level.
[1] Verified by matching against verified email address, but not publicly tied with the account.
So that is primarily due to the Macbook Air (2 successive releases of Air subnotebooks)? No wonder Intel is shitting bricks trying to clone the air with it's Ultrabook initiative.
For a gaming laptop? With games now taking 10-20 GB of space each? You'll either need a hell of an connection and stay deleting/redownloading using steam or whatever, or an external drive which will ruin the look.
Yeah, that sounds really weak. If it were the ultimate gaming laptop, it would have SSD + HD and load all the OS/Apps on the SSD and HD for things that won't fit on the SSD... even a 60G/500G combo is quite stellar and cost effective.
I must say, you are pretty spot-on with pretty much everything.
The touchpad doesn't have a Netflix client. I can't fathom why HP didn't just pay Netflix to develop it, as it would easily have helped drive sales. I'm pretty sure they could have partnered with Amazon too for video and music services. At the moment, every non-apple brand of tablet is a compromise, yet there's no discount on price to reflect this. As a result, their userbase remains small and the apps remain undeveloped.
Unless someone really tries to compete with Apple, either by offering a better product at the same price point, or a similar product at a discount, tablet sales will continue and only one manufacturer will benefit.
Just to continue your line of thought... perhaps Amazon is that competitor (I do think their current app-store is meh, and the Kindle isn't the answer, but they will learn). Also, Google's acquisition of Motorola may pretty much signal that Google is interested in the tablet space... for reals this time.
Slashdot Mirror
Get an ISO, AMI, or VM image complete with LAMP already configured. Hell, they even have configurations that include apps already configured like trac, mediawiki or redmine. You'll have full control including root, so no worries about lock-in.
I'd just test one of these out, get your deployment script tested, then roll out the AMI on Amazon EC2 (then apply your deploy script)... where you can scale up the capabilities as needed.
Ultimately, cost/capability will determine whether you host locally, remote or cloud, but there's almost no reason you'll need to roll your own. My only gripe with these services is that they don't have Ruby-on-Rails with Apache and the Rails Passenger module pre-configured (as I find Mongrel/Webrick to be too ligthweight for production usage)... but that's only an issue if you're going production RoR.
1) How does this Samsung chipset compare vs latest Sandforce2 in terms of compressed read/writes?
2) TRIM support?
3) OSX friendliness?
4) Cost?
5) Size max?
So far I've identified 2 use cases that have very nice sweet-spot answers - a) For a desktop with PCI-e, the OCZ Revodrive3 X2 just gives amazing performance, completely bypassing SATA and delivering unbeatable performance/cost ratio. b) For a laptop solution, I'm more interested in max storage/price/performance, and the 512GB Crucial m4 seems unparalleled in delivering this (expensive at $700, but can completely replace an laptop HDD).
It will be interesting to see if Samsung is ready to challenge this market.
... it's maybe the ONE thing I agree with Steve Jobs about -- touch does NOT work as a viable input method for a desktop.
He may have said that at some point, but you should know by now that Apple changes the kool-aid they serve every so often. He's even spoken at length about merging iOS concepts into the desktop OSX.
[trackpad literature snipped]
You do realize that a trackpad is not "touch" as in touchscreen, right? I use a MacbookPro with a magic trackpad, it's a whole lot more efficient than a mouse at numerous things. With things like BetterTouchTool, I can do even more.
The problem with "touchscreen" on a desktop is gorilla arm. Even an iPad with a keyboard is not very fluid... there's a reason that the MacbookTouch doesn't exist. Mouse/trackpad with keyboard has worked so well for so long for a very good reason.
The Patent Pool isn't to kill WebM, it is to protect those who choose to use WebM from litigation.
Sure, but protection from whom? From themselves perhaps?
'The president of the FFII has brought to people’s attention this good report from The Prior Art blog, saying that “MPEG-LA’s CEO Larry Horn also heads MobileMedia, a patent troll holding no less than 122 patents bought to Nokia and Sony” '
To me it isn't THAT they fail it is HOW they fail that has me avoiding them. With HDDs I can't remember the last time I had an HDD that failed without plenty of clear warnings something was up. Windows delayed write fails, or SMART errors, temp going nuts, there was ALWAYS a clear warning that there was trouble in HDD town. With both of the gamers there was NO WARNING with the SSDs, they just flipped the switch and....nothing. With the HDDs I was always able to get the data off before they bought the farm, minus a few bad sectors of course, but with the SSDs it was like they didn't exist, it was just...nothing.
Storage failures are nothing new... Google claims most HDD failures don't show any signs on SMART before going off. Add to this the fact that anyone not running with a bootable up-to-date backup (all OSs have cheap or free backup tools that create bootable backups) is asking for trouble. I've had HDDs fail without any warning (mostly on corporate systems). I've also had systems stolen (laptop), and the up-to-date backup was a life (and work) saver.
I own 3 SSDs now that work well and have yet to fail (surprisingly 2 of them are OCZ also). Comprising about 3 total disk-years of service. However, if they do, I just boot from my firewire backup drive, sync dropbox, git and IMAP and I would very likely have lost no work at all.
Obligatory:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades,11056/
Seriously, a low-performance core doing administrivia type work sounds great, but won't this require OS support? I can't imagine this detail is completely abstracted from the kernel.
That takes the cake in paranoia... Like they couldn't do this already to maximize profits ?
Paranoia++ = "How do you know they aren't doing this already? What if Adobe's Flash division is secretly funded by Intel?";
Just curious what exactly Google did to you, and why you perceive Google to be more evil then say Apple?
There is no binary comparison here. Apple is a software company that makes it's money by packaging it in smooth desireable hardware (which they close up as tightly as feasible).
Google is also a software company that makes it's money through advertising on it's free services (in addition to many other people's sites as well). Google claims to be open where Apple makes no such claims. Google claims to "do no evil" while some of it's actions are vaguely in the "evil" arena.
Both companies can be dangerous at industry controlling sizes (just like Microsoft, IBM, AT&T or say, Standard Oil)... the question is, do either of them control entire industries? If Apple has it's way, it will sell the most popular and highest margin devices, reap a vast majority of profits and leave the low-end for competitors who don't mind the non-existent margins (see iPod in mp3 player market). If Google has it's way, Android will have close to monopoly share of devices, becoming an industry standard through network effects, all running Google services and ad network... there would be no escaping Google's tracking of you
In the mobile market I'm not sure which one is worse, but I can tell you that Google at such scales can very truly be evil (as would Apple).
Am I the only person completely unexcited by 4G given the bandwidth limit to speed ratio?
On either Verizon or AT&T one can easily swallow up the entire 200/250MB lower tier limit in a matter of minutes. The 2GB higher end plan is a mere hours of airtime away. What happens when some rogue app or website pushes you well over the edge? Is this the texting overage nightmare ripe for abuse again? How the hell can you game on this kind of network with such low limits?
4G/LTE means nothing if the bandwidth limits are so paltry as to effectively make it a metered service.
The key areas for almost all TV services is content, price and usability. Look at the success of Hulu in years past and the recent stumble of Netflix (somewhat attributable to both increased prices and the loss of the Starz contract which gave them Disney and Sony content). Look at the failure of divx (the single-use DVDs). Big Content two of these three key factors (they've learned since TiVo).
So Ballmer says "Negotiations with content partners are still underway, but options for live TV will include both news and sports"... good luck man. Perhaps big media is so scared of Netflix and Apple that they'll give you some great combo of content... but if the content isn't there, or the price is too high, it's a lose.
So they think Kinnect is somehow going to make their system more usable than say, an AppleTV or Roku? Novelty aside, that's just crazy talk. Poeple have been using remotes for decades now.
Enter electronic discovery. Expect HP to be giving up all of their emails involving any communication with the board for at least the last fiscal year.
I have done ediscovery and with all sorts of attorney-client and work product privilege and redaction of non-relevant details, you can expect that at most 10% of the total emails get released. A good ediscovery consultant can get upwards of 95% content reduction for discovery purposes.
He even went so far as to compare the search for truth about his alleged original work as a witch hunt like he was Khadaffi or Breivik (the norwegian bomber and mass-murderer).
So he compares himself to a ruthless dictator and fundamentalist terrorist... not exactly bolstering his case, is he?
It is actually a rather brilliant move (not that I endorse it in any way) by Microsoft to leverage their desktop supremacy into the mobile space while seemingly avoiding anti-trust issues. I am sure that some of their competitors may try to call them out on this, but it seems like it would be an upward legal battle.
This isn't brilliant at all. Strong-arming their way into markets is the only way Microsoft knows how to work. It worked in the early part of the web when they slew a dangerous but small Netscape and subdued Oracle, Sun etc. This time they're competing with Google and Apple both of which have 2+ year head-starts on modern mobile touch devices.
One of these companies provides a better-than-free OS (Google will share search income from your device) and the other company (re)defined the market and owns 50%+ of profit share in the sector. Microsoft has a tough fight ahead... and this time Intel won't necessarily be their ally.
Quote from link: "Every screen needs to be touch. A monitor without touch feels dead."
Touch-screen 22" Monitor is costly and unusable. I like what Apple did with OSX Lion - Grab a magic trackpad and you have multi-touch trackpad gestures that are quite immersive while not suffering the gorilla arm fatigue issue (or fingerprints as other commenters have noted).
I fear you may be right, but I find it nauseating. It's as if the entire world has gone blind and addle-brained.
I have a tablet coputer. It says "CRAIG" right on the front, is a 7" tablet, is shaped nothing like the iPad and bears no fruit logo. And people still ask me how i like my iPad. It's as if the entire world were collectively kicked in the head by a horse.
People like to associate canonical brands with generic items. Back in the day (say the 90s), a copy was a "xerox" (even for some folks today). Being computer proficient meant you had to know "windows" and "office". People wouldn't login to the Internet, they would login to AOL (now Facebook).
The examples are legion.
d) doesn't require the user to understand the the certificate system and make sound judgments about when it can safely be bypassed.
Doesn't the perspectives firefox plugin handle this? If that concept were included within the browser framework, it might add a secondary check to the top-down hierarchical (and thus critical-point-of-failure) of trusting CAs alone.
And iOS is still ahead of Android in marketshare when you include all iOS devices - yet another vector you refuse to consider but is indicative of anything but Apple being stagnant.
Sorry, the facts say you're wrong. StatCounter includes ALL mobile devices, including tablets and iTouch devices - anything that is mobile. Android has passed iOS in marketshare and is second only to Symbian - which hasn't lost any marketshare.
From StatCounter's FAQ about marketshare methodology: "StatCounter is a web analytics service. As of 1 June 2010, our tracking code is installed on more than 3 million sites globally. (These sites cover various activities and geographic locations.)"
So this means that StatCounter only counts web accesses from mobile devices that hit statcounter enabled web sites.
This is not necessarily representative of ACTUAL marketshare. For example, nowhere on that FAQ does it state how they calculate "unique" visitors or devices (this is critically important in web statistics).
Furthermore, there IS a real way to measure market-share... reported unit sales (not shipped, sold to actual customers). Apple has this information, Google and other Android vendors do not (whether they choose to not publish this data or find it hard to come by is unclear).
EVERY analyst in this field has said that Android will emerge on top, marketshare wise, and that Windows Phone will probably end up in second place, with iOS battling for 3rd with Blackberry. That doesn't sound like Windows Phone 7 (get the name right) will eat up Android so much as it will eat up iOS.
Most analysts in 2007 thought the iPhone would barely be able to compete against the Blackberry, Palm and Windows Mobile. Most analysts in 2010 thought that the iPad was not feature-filled enough and it would fizzle. The fact that these same folks think that iOS will fall to 3rd place behind WP7/8 is laughable. Analysts say what you pay them to say. Microsoft and Gartner, for example, have a very long customer relationship.
I'm not sure about you, but I just have orders: "leave on doorstep unless signature absolutely required by sender" with the large carriers (UPS, FedEx, DHL).
The way you worded it make it sound like you've made some kind of a general delivery instruction, rather than doing it on every purchase. If that is correct, how do you do that?
I remember being instructed to just call the delivery carriers directly when I repeated had similar problems for small-ticket items (this was way back in 2001)... they offered to set a default for my profile. Perhaps things have changed, but my experience has been (in the past 8 years or so) that unless it's mandatory by the sender (ie, Apple does this for $100+ orders) it is left in my mailbox if it fits, and on the doorstep if not... When I got my Kindle, it was left on the doorstep just like any book.
This is not exclusive to Amazon, I've had similar experience for all small-ticket items from sellers like NewEgg, Amazon, Dell, etc. Only rarely do I get the FedEx or UPS slip saying they couldn't leave it.
You still need to waste an hour to go to the post office and get it when there's nobody home to sign for the delivery. Compared to picking up a book at a Barnes & Noble store, it's more or less a wash.
I'm not sure about you, but I just have orders: "leave on doorstep unless signature absolutely required by sender" with the large carriers (UPS, FedEx, DHL). That way, if it's an iPod or something, I am forced to be there to sign, but if it's a book, they just drop it on the doorstep (it used to be even better, when I lived in an apartment, they would leave it at the manager's office - secured).
My sister has all her packages sent to her work office.
If HP had sold these even at $150/$200 or maybe $200/$250, sure they would have lost money on each unit, but how long until it overtook iPad?
My take: Never. Let's say theoretically the $200/$250 touchpads were super popular... with any decent uptake, Apple could have run (this was signaled by Cook in one of those quarterly reports... Apple would compete on price if needed) a promotion and lowered the iPad price point to compete (say $400)... Apple with it's $75B in ca$h could burn as much as they wanted to compete against unsustainable prices by also posting (not as painful) unsustainable prices for pretty much eternity.
HP and others realized that the only way to beat Apple would be to make something successful and profitable (which is apparently impossible vs. the iPad given the results over the past 16 months).
How exactly is an ISO 9660 file system image (.iso) more convenient than a Microsoft Installer package (.msi)?
Several legitimate reasons: 1) burnable 2) multi-platform but I imagine the GP poster was really saying that the OSX method of DMG/ISO + application binary (which can be directly copied to Applications folder) is more intuitive and convenient than running an installer with 10 wizard steps.
No. Your HABITS are the product. Google is a marketing machine and they sell insight into current, past and future trends in various groups, and for that they need to follow people's habits.
If that were the case, then they would support verified pseudonyms [1] like every other site like StackOverflow or Slashdot.
The fact that they aren't allowing pseudonyms is a clear indication that they are either morons or very much interested in data-mining to the personal and personal group level.
[1] Verified by matching against verified email address, but not publicly tied with the account.
The average selling price for subnotebooks rose to $521 last july from $343 in July of 2010." The industry is desperately trying to stop generic $200 machines from taking over the industry.
So that is primarily due to the Macbook Air (2 successive releases of Air subnotebooks)? No wonder Intel is shitting bricks trying to clone the air with it's Ultrabook initiative.
"320GB 7200rpm SATA HDD"
For a gaming laptop? With games now taking 10-20 GB of space each? You'll either need a hell of an connection and stay deleting/redownloading using steam or whatever, or an external drive which will ruin the look.
Yeah, that sounds really weak. If it were the ultimate gaming laptop, it would have SSD + HD and load all the OS/Apps on the SSD and HD for things that won't fit on the SSD... even a 60G/500G combo is quite stellar and cost effective.
I must say, you are pretty spot-on with pretty much everything.
The touchpad doesn't have a Netflix client. I can't fathom why HP didn't just pay Netflix to develop it, as it would easily have helped drive sales. I'm pretty sure they could have partnered with Amazon too for video and music services. At the moment, every non-apple brand of tablet is a compromise, yet there's no discount on price to reflect this. As a result, their userbase remains small and the apps remain undeveloped.
Unless someone really tries to compete with Apple, either by offering a better product at the same price point, or a similar product at a discount, tablet sales will continue and only one manufacturer will benefit.
Just to continue your line of thought... perhaps Amazon is that competitor (I do think their current app-store is meh, and the Kindle isn't the answer, but they will learn). Also, Google's acquisition of Motorola may pretty much signal that Google is interested in the tablet space... for reals this time.