Unfortunately, you still can't receive calls without having the app open in the foreground... sort of defeats the purpose of having Skype on your phone, unless you're the kind of person that only MAKES calls.
Seems WinMo is the only platform with this restriction... works fine on Android and I'm guessing iOS too?
You're not alone. I just don't like the fact that it requires actual processing power to work, unlike a regular old Word 2003-style menu... this results in keyboard shortcuts lagging on slow machines (such as netbooks). Other than that, I actually quite like it - much easier to find stuff if you're actually new to Office or haven't used the application for a while...
Unfortunately, it seems that most of the world's laptop using population is too blind for decent pixel densities at typical desktop OS 100% scaling... I actually know people who WANT 1366x768 on a 15.6 inch laptop:(
I still don't get why they didn't respond. The documentaries I've seen pretty much said the captain asked what color the flares were each time he was told about them, and then did nothing. Was there something wrong with the flares' colors?
Oh, and why were the watertight compartments open at the top? What purpose did that serve?
And to be fair, they mostly only drink Chang ("Elephant brand" beer) this way. I played on an ice hockey team with a bunch of Thai dudes in Bangkok for a few months, and Chang beer with ice was their drink of choice after practice... the other stuff was usually shotgunned straight out of the can;)
Yup, I managed to break Ubuntu pretty badly with just 5 packages or so (trying to find a decent DE for myself and get the power consumption on my laptop below 9W [Windows hits about 6W when idle])...
Or, on the PC/Laptop side, the systems are simply more reliable than a typical OOTB Windows 7 or Linux (my basis for comparison is Ubuntu) install. If you're unlucky (this depends highly on which vendor(s) you buy your hardware from, and the quality of the drivers they provide), you'll still run into the occasional bluescreen or things that simply break and require a reboot (yes, even on Ubuntu:p)...
Just in the last two years of Windows 7 use, I've seen a few bluescreens with EMU audio hardware, Realtek laptop NICs, and even a virtual network driver (AVM's Fritz!VPN application - that was a particularly nasty one, because the machine would hang on standby and then only bluescreen about half an hour later... very difficult to troubleshoot). Oh and don't even get me started on Intel's crappy video drivers... bug-infested crap (if it weren't for the higher power consumption and heat I'd switch to a laptop with discrete graphics just for the better drivers).
As far as I know (since I'm more or less a pure Windows user - can't get used to OSX for the life of me, nor do I want to - hell, maybe it's just a "grass is greener" thing), these are problems that more or less don't exist in the Mac camp... I keep hearing from musicians how they've never had a crash with their MacBook - our keyboarder, who uses his Windows 7 laptop as a soundbank on stage, actually had a bluescreen during a gig a few months ago.:(
You realize the person I replied to was complaining about a lack of resolution during handwriting with a stylus on the iPad, right? No mention of weight, thickness or battery life.
And while I will concede that tablet PCs are heavy and thick and bulky, devices like the Thinkpad X200T and newer hit 8-12 hours of battery life easily... isn't that pretty much the same as the iPad?
What you (and I, for that matter!) seem to be waiting waiting for are slate-tablets (not convertibles - same form factor as the iPad and Android tablets) with professional grade digitizers AND capacitive touchscreens AND ARM internals. With Windows 8 for ARM (which should bring a full MS Office suite) we should be looking at 10 hour battery life in an iPad form factor with a fully functioning version of OneNote and a very accurate stylus.
There *are* a few Android devices already available with both capacitive touchscreens and a proper digitizer pen, but a) I'm not quite sure on accuracy and b) the software available just doesn't cut it for real work - at least not if you're used to the incredibly well thought out programs available on x86.
Handing out 35 pieces of paper vs. handing out 3 (to the students whose parents don't have internet access) and sending a single e-mail with an attachment... seems like handing out all of the slips would be more work.
Anything starting from the X61T (Core 2 Duo Merom/Penryn generation and support for 8 gigs of RAM) should be fine, or X200T and up if you need awesome battery life (8 hours and up of note taking vs. about 6 on the X61T).
Have you tried a REAL tablet PC? Like the ones HP, IBM/Lenovo and the like have been making for years? The pens on those things are highly accurate and the palm rejection actually works - you can write on them just like you would with pen and paper, without any learning curve and no accuracy issues.
The iPad is a joke... writing with a capacitive stylus, come on - you might as well use finger paints.
Couldn't agree more. A convertible tablet with a good stylus (Wacom baby!) and OneNote is the way to go... PDF Annotator also comes in handy if you receive a handout in PDF form and would like to just add to that.
However: In some cases, handwriting is overkill. This depends strongly on the subject matter, and how fast you can write with a pen vs. how fast you can type... if I was taking notes for a lecture about literature of some kind, I'd probably be taking notes on the keyboard in Notepad++.
Luckily, with a convertible, you have the best of both worlds:)
Similar situation here in Germany too, albeit not quite as bad. Most providers (such as Vodafone or o2) don't allow tethering, VoIP and sometimes even IM on their lower end plans. Get a plan that's meant for tethering or use in a laptop and you're golden... that doesn't make the restrictions in lower plans OK, but at least we have a viable alternative.
I do, however, see where the phone companies are coming from - I don't think I've made more than 3 minutes worth of actual cell phone calls in the past month... Viber, SIPdroid (with the SIP landline-calls-flatrate provided by my DSL provider) and Skype pretty much take care of everything in the telephony department.
"The down side is without ambient light they require a much stronger backlight to get through the semi-reflective back layer of the screen."
On machines like laptops, which could be used in ambient mode when on battery power and active mode when connected to an outlet, a screen like this would be awesome. Too bad Pixel Qi doesn't seem to be gaining any ground:(
Slashdot Mirror
How so? Looks fine to me when I need to access it with ALT...?
Imagine that there are already tons of mostly-Windows networks out there ;)
Who cares? The important part is: Let Macs onto your mostly Windows network and you might get a not so fun surprise...
It's in all the articles :(
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Skype-for-Windows-Phone-goes-out-of-beta-final-version-released_id29363
http://blog.gsmarena.com/skype-for-windows-phone-no-longer-in-beta/
http://www.technobuffalo.com/companies/microsoft/windows-phone/skype-for-windows-phone-drops-beta-tag-but-still-wont-work-in-background/
http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/22/2967087/skype-for-windows-phone-version-1-0-final
Unfortunately, you still can't receive calls without having the app open in the foreground... sort of defeats the purpose of having Skype on your phone, unless you're the kind of person that only MAKES calls.
Seems WinMo is the only platform with this restriction... works fine on Android and I'm guessing iOS too?
Screw cars, I want a Thinkpad that only needs to be charged once a week :D
Or you dump 1/10th of that money ($100 million) into creating your own app that does the exact same thing and is tied to Facebook.
Which would be much less effective - don't forget that they snapped up all of Instagram's users along with the app itself.
You're not alone. I just don't like the fact that it requires actual processing power to work, unlike a regular old Word 2003-style menu... this results in keyboard shortcuts lagging on slow machines (such as netbooks). Other than that, I actually quite like it - much easier to find stuff if you're actually new to Office or haven't used the application for a while...
Unfortunately, it seems that most of the world's laptop using population is too blind for decent pixel densities at typical desktop OS 100% scaling... I actually know people who WANT 1366x768 on a 15.6 inch laptop :(
I still don't get why they didn't respond. The documentaries I've seen pretty much said the captain asked what color the flares were each time he was told about them, and then did nothing. Was there something wrong with the flares' colors?
Oh, and why were the watertight compartments open at the top? What purpose did that serve?
And to be fair, they mostly only drink Chang ("Elephant brand" beer) this way. I played on an ice hockey team with a bunch of Thai dudes in Bangkok for a few months, and Chang beer with ice was their drink of choice after practice... the other stuff was usually shotgunned straight out of the can ;)
Yup, I managed to break Ubuntu pretty badly with just 5 packages or so (trying to find a decent DE for myself and get the power consumption on my laptop below 9W [Windows hits about 6W when idle])...
Or, on the PC/Laptop side, the systems are simply more reliable than a typical OOTB Windows 7 or Linux (my basis for comparison is Ubuntu) install. If you're unlucky (this depends highly on which vendor(s) you buy your hardware from, and the quality of the drivers they provide), you'll still run into the occasional bluescreen or things that simply break and require a reboot (yes, even on Ubuntu :p)...
Just in the last two years of Windows 7 use, I've seen a few bluescreens with EMU audio hardware, Realtek laptop NICs, and even a virtual network driver (AVM's Fritz!VPN application - that was a particularly nasty one, because the machine would hang on standby and then only bluescreen about half an hour later... very difficult to troubleshoot). Oh and don't even get me started on Intel's crappy video drivers... bug-infested crap (if it weren't for the higher power consumption and heat I'd switch to a laptop with discrete graphics just for the better drivers).
As far as I know (since I'm more or less a pure Windows user - can't get used to OSX for the life of me, nor do I want to - hell, maybe it's just a "grass is greener" thing), these are problems that more or less don't exist in the Mac camp... I keep hearing from musicians how they've never had a crash with their MacBook - our keyboarder, who uses his Windows 7 laptop as a soundbank on stage, actually had a bluescreen during a gig a few months ago. :(
You might consider it more grim if you lived there...
You realize the person I replied to was complaining about a lack of resolution during handwriting with a stylus on the iPad, right? No mention of weight, thickness or battery life.
And while I will concede that tablet PCs are heavy and thick and bulky, devices like the Thinkpad X200T and newer hit 8-12 hours of battery life easily... isn't that pretty much the same as the iPad?
What you (and I, for that matter!) seem to be waiting waiting for are slate-tablets (not convertibles - same form factor as the iPad and Android tablets) with professional grade digitizers AND capacitive touchscreens AND ARM internals. With Windows 8 for ARM (which should bring a full MS Office suite) we should be looking at 10 hour battery life in an iPad form factor with a fully functioning version of OneNote and a very accurate stylus.
There *are* a few Android devices already available with both capacitive touchscreens and a proper digitizer pen, but a) I'm not quite sure on accuracy and b) the software available just doesn't cut it for real work - at least not if you're used to the incredibly well thought out programs available on x86.
2 systems? Double workload?
Handing out 35 pieces of paper vs. handing out 3 (to the students whose parents don't have internet access) and sending a single e-mail with an attachment... seems like handing out all of the slips would be more work.
A Thinkpad X-Series convertible tablet.
Anything starting from the X61T (Core 2 Duo Merom/Penryn generation and support for 8 gigs of RAM) should be fine, or X200T and up if you need awesome battery life (8 hours and up of note taking vs. about 6 on the X61T).
Have you tried a REAL tablet PC? Like the ones HP, IBM/Lenovo and the like have been making for years? The pens on those things are highly accurate and the palm rejection actually works - you can write on them just like you would with pen and paper, without any learning curve and no accuracy issues.
The iPad is a joke... writing with a capacitive stylus, come on - you might as well use finger paints.
Couldn't agree more. A convertible tablet with a good stylus (Wacom baby!) and OneNote is the way to go... PDF Annotator also comes in handy if you receive a handout in PDF form and would like to just add to that.
However: In some cases, handwriting is overkill. This depends strongly on the subject matter, and how fast you can write with a pen vs. how fast you can type... if I was taking notes for a lecture about literature of some kind, I'd probably be taking notes on the keyboard in Notepad++.
Luckily, with a convertible, you have the best of both worlds :)
What exactly, in the realm of productivity, is easier on a Blackberry? I'd be interested in hearing some examples :)
Similar situation here in Germany too, albeit not quite as bad. Most providers (such as Vodafone or o2) don't allow tethering, VoIP and sometimes even IM on their lower end plans. Get a plan that's meant for tethering or use in a laptop and you're golden... that doesn't make the restrictions in lower plans OK, but at least we have a viable alternative.
I do, however, see where the phone companies are coming from - I don't think I've made more than 3 minutes worth of actual cell phone calls in the past month... Viber, SIPdroid (with the SIP landline-calls-flatrate provided by my DSL provider) and Skype pretty much take care of everything in the telephony department.
"The down side is without ambient light they require a much stronger backlight to get through the semi-reflective back layer of the screen."
On machines like laptops, which could be used in ambient mode when on battery power and active mode when connected to an outlet, a screen like this would be awesome. Too bad Pixel Qi doesn't seem to be gaining any ground :(
Awesome. :D
Wary.
But yes, it's always a good idea to take a closer look... although tbh, the same thing applies for Google's alternative ;)
The entire lecture hall is looking at me... damn you for making me laugh!