True, but the same thing applies when trying to get data to someone across town. Would you rather get in a car and carry a hard drive over there or send a link? Especially when it's a tiny file that takes 10 seconds to download on a modern broadband connection?
If you manually back up regularly. Something I hardly ever do for external drives...
+1 convenience vs. TheCloud
Oh really? Carring your external hard drive across a continent and an ocean in your bag and having it be subjected to searches for illegal content when entering certain countries is more convenient than just accessing your files over the web when you get there?
+1 easy of sharing vs. TheCloud
See above, but replace "accessing your files over the web..." with "sending a download link?"
I bought real calc too, but it has problems with longer calculations with many different steps. I get the feeling that it doesn't quite follow the order of operations properly... I was hoping for something along the lines of a standard Casio 2 line scientific calculator.
Have you found a decent Android calculator app? I'm currently using "Scientific Calculator" by Rohan Laishram, but it has annoying syntax issues (like opening parentheses that need to be manually closed for certain operations and throwing a syntax error if you don't close them)...
So don't sit 12" away from a 27" monitor - move back a bit and you've got the same perceived dot pitch as 1080p on a 12" display. In fact, by adjusting your seating and monitor position, you can seamlessly scale the perceived DPI to any value you'd like.
Just duct tape the edges of a 2560x1440 monitor and leave yourself a windows of 1600x1200 pixels in the center - problem solved...
2560x1440 is more pixels in EVERY direction. How is that *worse* than 1600x1200? Hell, think of 2560x1440 as two 1280x1440 displays side by side... *much* better than 1600x1200.
I've got a Windows 8 tablet (Clover Trail based) and I still think Windows 8 should be replaced with something more usable - the start screen and the swipe-happy interface are unintuitive, undiscoverable and clunky. Every time I move or remove a start screen tile, all the other tiles jump into different positions, all desktop apps add a ton of icons to the start screen, Windows (apparently randomly - things like various nested control panel items start showing up) adds certain system applications to the start screen and it all gets completely cluttered.
Why? I'm typing this on a company keyboard (German layout) set to US-English right now. Other than the location of the backslash key, there's no difference whatsoever...
"pretty much all of them will boot win7. every one of them that wouldn't are still slashdot story worthy."
Yes, but will they offer similar battery life under Windows 7 without heavily OEM-optimized device drivers? Going on my previous experiences, I highly highly highly doubt it.
"But there is more to the Windows on OS X story. If you create a Boot Camp partition, and install Windows in Boot Camp, you get even more for your money. Because then when you want, you can boot straight into Windows for maximum performance, if you need it for a graphics-intensive game for example. Then, in OS X, you install VMware and tell it to use your Boot Camp partition as a VM. So you can run it that way, too, if you just want to do the occasional thing in Windows and don't need maximum performance."
That's an AWESOME feature... I wonder if that's possible with an Ubuntu+Windows dualboot as well...?
"You should be able to find the drivers for your mobo, gfx card, soundcard, nic etc direct from the pages of those manufacturers. Not as straightforward as slamming in the recovery disk but I doubt the hardware on new laptops won't support Windows 7."
That's just it - the hardware supports Windows 7 just fine, but releasing customized versions (the customizations are necessary for things like battery life optimization) of Windows 7 drivers is expensive and time-consuming... many manufacturers simply won't bother unless they're still selling the same hardware with Windows 7 anyway, or offer an official downgrade option (like Dell or Lenovo on their business models)...
If you just download a generic driver from Intel/nVidia/ATi, you usually won't get everything your hardware has to offer - be it things like OSDs for display of volume/brightness or battery life (example: Installing straight-from-manufacturer [i.e. all original Intel drivers] on a Thinkpad instead of the Lenovo-customized drivers will reduce your battery life by about 40% - it's a *huge* difference).
IF, and that's a big IF, there are solid Windows 7 drivers available for the device you're buying. Companies like Dell or Lenovo will usually provide older drivers for high-end machines (and ones meant for businesses), but if you buy an Acer/ASUS/Samsung computer with Windows 8, good luck finding manufacturer-specific drivers (and those are necessary for things like OSDs and battery life optimizations to work properly).
If you're planning on doing this, make sure the manufacturer offers all drivers for Windows 7 for the machine...
You joke, but why not? It's open, it's popular, a large part of the world's population already knows how to use it... Promise frequent updates and add BBM and all that other crap, and not only will the loyal Blackberry customers use it, but also Android users looking for decent hardware (like the Q10 with that luscious hardware keyboard)...
YES, this. If the Q10 ran Android, I'd be buying it in a heartbeat. Sufficiently high-res screen, good keyboard, pocket-friendly form factor... Here's to hoping for CyanogenMod on the Q10.
But nooooooo, they had to leave us stuck with touchscreen-only devices (because the only usable Android devices right now are the Nexus line)...
Actually, the Atom tablets are on par with the Android devices in terms of battery life, and actually a bit better than most in terms of performance. The Atom blows Tegra3 out of the water (I have a Nexus 7 to compare to).
As for OneNote on Android: Last time I tried that, it wouldn't even display handwritten notes from my SkyDrive folder... let alone allow me to add any. Has this changed?
I highly doubt that the Android version has anywhere near caught up to the Windows version:). The same goes for PDF annotation - EZPDF and so on... they just don't cut it when compared to Bluebeam or Grahl.
Who said anything about ultrabooks? Ultrabooks are nearly just as bad...
As for regular laptops with 10-hour battery life: Many Thinkpads (the T520 I"m typing on right now gets about 12 hours per charge), certain MacBook Pro models (an older 13" was pretty astounding in this regard - can't quite remember which year it was though), any decent subnotebook...
Yes, a lot of laptops out there get much less battery life, but why settle for a mediocre machine when you could just buy an X220 (i3/i5/i7, 10-15 hours of battery life with the 9-cell, something like 1400 grams)...?
... which is why I bought mine without the keyboard:p
I find the screen much too large for regular tablet use, BTW - very nice size for inking though (allows me to put OneNote only on one half of the screen). Great for watching videos though:)
Also, why would anyone think the Surface Pro was supposed to run on battery all day...? Clearly this is a workstation/tablet hybrid that leans farther to the tablet side.
Because carrying around a power supply is antiquated. Why would you buy a device that needs to be charged more than once a day (i.e. over night)?
Forget the Surface Pro - get an Atom-based Win8 tablet. I'm quite satisfied with mine (ATIV Smart PC): easily gets 10 hours of battery life during PDF annotation or OneNote (usually more - I haven't gotten it below 50% in a workday yet), sufficiently thin and light so as not to be noticeable in a bag, and Wacom stylus tech.
I'm coming from a Thinkpad X41T, which had a bit more CPU grunt than that ST-4121 of yours, and the Clover Trail Atom is quite a bit faster than the Pentium M in the X41T... so you should be fine in terms of processing power as well.
The battery life of a laptop? Maybe the battery life of a cheapo gaming laptop... any laptop worthy of the description "portable computer" will hit 10 hours easily...
Slashdot Mirror
True, but the same thing applies when trying to get data to someone across town. Would you rather get in a car and carry a hard drive over there or send a link? Especially when it's a tiny file that takes 10 seconds to download on a modern broadband connection?
+1 reliability vs. TheCloud
If you manually back up regularly. Something I hardly ever do for external drives...
+1 convenience vs. TheCloud
Oh really? Carring your external hard drive across a continent and an ocean in your bag and having it be subjected to searches for illegal content when entering certain countries is more convenient than just accessing your files over the web when you get there?
+1 easy of sharing vs. TheCloud
See above, but replace "accessing your files over the web..." with "sending a download link?"
+1 accessibility vs. TheCloud
Huh?
I bought real calc too, but it has problems with longer calculations with many different steps. I get the feeling that it doesn't quite follow the order of operations properly... I was hoping for something along the lines of a standard Casio 2 line scientific calculator.
Have you found a decent Android calculator app? I'm currently using "Scientific Calculator" by Rohan Laishram, but it has annoying syntax issues (like opening parentheses that need to be manually closed for certain operations and throwing a syntax error if you don't close them)...
You're probably right :(
I wonder if the catastrophic failure of the Metro-Only Windows RT will be enough to serve as a heads-up...
Wow, quintuple-first-post... impressive :)
I think Microsoft included the virtual XPS printer instead... works fine, but the lack of compatibility makes it pretty much useless...
So don't sit 12" away from a 27" monitor - move back a bit and you've got the same perceived dot pitch as 1080p on a 12" display. In fact, by adjusting your seating and monitor position, you can seamlessly scale the perceived DPI to any value you'd like.
Just duct tape the edges of a 2560x1440 monitor and leave yourself a windows of 1600x1200 pixels in the center - problem solved...
2560x1440 is more pixels in EVERY direction. How is that *worse* than 1600x1200? Hell, think of 2560x1440 as two 1280x1440 displays side by side... *much* better than 1600x1200.
I've got a Windows 8 tablet (Clover Trail based) and I still think Windows 8 should be replaced with something more usable - the start screen and the swipe-happy interface are unintuitive, undiscoverable and clunky. Every time I move or remove a start screen tile, all the other tiles jump into different positions, all desktop apps add a ton of icons to the start screen, Windows (apparently randomly - things like various nested control panel items start showing up) adds certain system applications to the start screen and it all gets completely cluttered.
DO NOT WANT.
Why? I'm typing this on a company keyboard (German layout) set to US-English right now. Other than the location of the backslash key, there's no difference whatsoever...
"pretty much all of them will boot win7. every one of them that wouldn't are still slashdot story worthy."
Yes, but will they offer similar battery life under Windows 7 without heavily OEM-optimized device drivers? Going on my previous experiences, I highly highly highly doubt it.
"But there is more to the Windows on OS X story. If you create a Boot Camp partition, and install Windows in Boot Camp, you get even more for your money. Because then when you want, you can boot straight into Windows for maximum performance, if you need it for a graphics-intensive game for example. Then, in OS X, you install VMware and tell it to use your Boot Camp partition as a VM. So you can run it that way, too, if you just want to do the occasional thing in Windows and don't need maximum performance."
That's an AWESOME feature... I wonder if that's possible with an Ubuntu+Windows dualboot as well...?
"You should be able to find the drivers for your mobo, gfx card, soundcard, nic etc direct from the pages of those manufacturers. Not as straightforward as slamming in the recovery disk but I doubt the hardware on new laptops won't support Windows 7."
That's just it - the hardware supports Windows 7 just fine, but releasing customized versions (the customizations are necessary for things like battery life optimization) of Windows 7 drivers is expensive and time-consuming... many manufacturers simply won't bother unless they're still selling the same hardware with Windows 7 anyway, or offer an official downgrade option (like Dell or Lenovo on their business models)...
If you just download a generic driver from Intel/nVidia/ATi, you usually won't get everything your hardware has to offer - be it things like OSDs for display of volume/brightness or battery life (example: Installing straight-from-manufacturer [i.e. all original Intel drivers] on a Thinkpad instead of the Lenovo-customized drivers will reduce your battery life by about 40% - it's a *huge* difference).
IF, and that's a big IF, there are solid Windows 7 drivers available for the device you're buying. Companies like Dell or Lenovo will usually provide older drivers for high-end machines (and ones meant for businesses), but if you buy an Acer/ASUS/Samsung computer with Windows 8, good luck finding manufacturer-specific drivers (and those are necessary for things like OSDs and battery life optimizations to work properly).
If you're planning on doing this, make sure the manufacturer offers all drivers for Windows 7 for the machine...
You joke, but why not? It's open, it's popular, a large part of the world's population already knows how to use it... Promise frequent updates and add BBM and all that other crap, and not only will the loyal Blackberry customers use it, but also Android users looking for decent hardware (like the Q10 with that luscious hardware keyboard)...
YES, this. If the Q10 ran Android, I'd be buying it in a heartbeat. Sufficiently high-res screen, good keyboard, pocket-friendly form factor... Here's to hoping for CyanogenMod on the Q10.
But nooooooo, they had to leave us stuck with touchscreen-only devices (because the only usable Android devices right now are the Nexus line)...
Actually, the Atom tablets are on par with the Android devices in terms of battery life, and actually a bit better than most in terms of performance. The Atom blows Tegra3 out of the water (I have a Nexus 7 to compare to).
As for OneNote on Android: Last time I tried that, it wouldn't even display handwritten notes from my SkyDrive folder... let alone allow me to add any. Has this changed?
I highly doubt that the Android version has anywhere near caught up to the Windows version :). The same goes for PDF annotation - EZPDF and so on... they just don't cut it when compared to Bluebeam or Grahl.
Thanks for clearing that up. I was under the impression that the stylus actually needed to be battery powered to qualify as active :-)
Just regular old wacom tech... The stylus is passive, but I have yet to find anything better for taking notes and sketching on the go.
Who said anything about ultrabooks? Ultrabooks are nearly just as bad...
As for regular laptops with 10-hour battery life: Many Thinkpads (the T520 I"m typing on right now gets about 12 hours per charge), certain MacBook Pro models (an older 13" was pretty astounding in this regard - can't quite remember which year it was though), any decent subnotebook...
Yes, a lot of laptops out there get much less battery life, but why settle for a mediocre machine when you could just buy an X220 (i3/i5/i7, 10-15 hours of battery life with the 9-cell, something like 1400 grams)...?
... which is why I bought mine without the keyboard :p
I find the screen much too large for regular tablet use, BTW - very nice size for inking though (allows me to put OneNote only on one half of the screen). Great for watching videos though :)
Also, why would anyone think the Surface Pro was supposed to run on battery all day...? Clearly this is a workstation/tablet hybrid that leans farther to the tablet side.
Because carrying around a power supply is antiquated. Why would you buy a device that needs to be charged more than once a day (i.e. over night)?
Forget the Surface Pro - get an Atom-based Win8 tablet. I'm quite satisfied with mine (ATIV Smart PC): easily gets 10 hours of battery life during PDF annotation or OneNote (usually more - I haven't gotten it below 50% in a workday yet), sufficiently thin and light so as not to be noticeable in a bag, and Wacom stylus tech.
I'm coming from a Thinkpad X41T, which had a bit more CPU grunt than that ST-4121 of yours, and the Clover Trail Atom is quite a bit faster than the Pentium M in the X41T... so you should be fine in terms of processing power as well.
The battery life of a laptop? Maybe the battery life of a cheapo gaming laptop... any laptop worthy of the description "portable computer" will hit 10 hours easily...