You seem to have gathered some experience with Windows 8, so I have a question for you (no time to install the consumer preview myself unti lin a few weeks):
If I want to exclusively use desktop apps, can I use the Metro "start screen" pretty much solely as a start menu replacement? Press start on the keyboard, type the name of the application I want to launch, press enter? Are there any obstacle to this type of usage?
If this continues to work, adn the only thing I'm losing due to the addition of Metro is the traditional start menu, I'm golden...
If I lived in Berlin, I might have noticed that earlier. What's missing for me is consistency - if I need to go somewhere that's nearly off the grid (but still easily findable with Google Maps, i.e. there's cell reception and everything:p), there's a pretty decent chance that I won't be able to get there with an OSM based app. A lot of the problems are from the front end, though, so not entirely OSM's fault...
Even if they don't, having them bet on an easily user-updateable mapping system is pretty cool.
That said, OSM here in Germany is a bit disappointing. I've been adding a few locations around my neighborhood, but OSM based navigation apps are still pretty bad in terms of accuracy and actually finding house numbers:(
Why do you need so much screen space? I've never understood why people want such big diagonals - I just buy the highest resolution display I can find, at the biggest diagonal I'm comfortable tossing in my bag... right now that's about 12 or 13". Currently waiting for the new FullHD 10" screens from the Transformer Infinity to wander over to netbooks...
No, because I'd never use a product that required me to use non-native resolutions, or alter my comfortable viewing habits.
Huh? Why non-native resolution?
As for comfortable viewing habits, weren't you complaining that everything was way too small at 100%? That's NOT comfortable... I'll say it again: If that's the case, your pixel density is too high or you're too far away from your display!
That's why the iPad works for something like this, and products like Sony's micro-sized displays don't. I'm not going to hunch over a screen. That completely defeats the primary benefit of a higher resolution display (if you have to move uncomfortably close to it to use it, then you are just making the relative resolution the same as a larger, lower resolution display!).
You're confusing my reasons for wanting a high resolution display with yours. What I want is more room to work with. I want the smallest possible legible fonts, so that I can fit more of them on the screen at once. I want to be able to work with 4 windows on the screen at once... I want to be able to run a full IDE on a 10" high resolution screen without needing to close all the toolbars and scroll constantly.
AFAICT, your reasons are more along the lines of "Oooooh, pretty, I can no longer see the single pixels!!". For reading, that isn't a bad approach, but to be honest: I'm actually satisfied with Windows' font rendering at 100%. What I want is a small laptop with a very high resolution, so that I have a lot of desktop space without having to drag around an actual huge screen, along with the heavy laptop that goes with it.
Yes, there are many displays that are very low resolution for their size. But that's far away from going with a "retina" display on a netbook (it's the exact opposite end of the spectrum, in fact).
That confirms it, we simply want different things:)
Yes, 125% on Windows 7 isn't atrocious. But you still end up with a lot of rough edges. If it's a matter of choosing between "I can't even fucking read it" and "it's sub-optimal, but at least I can use it this way", then 125% is probably the better trade-off.
If I had a display with a high enough resolution, I'd try out 125% for a while to see where you're coming from... I'm supposing the issues are mostly with third party apps? Unfortunately, the highest density display I have is a 1920x1200 15.4" laptop screen, and that is pretty much perfect at 100%. Lots of room to work... just wish it was smaller;)
But my point here is that on iOS, there's no such trade-off, due to the way it implements this. No other OS does this, so no other OS avoids all these issues out of hand. If they did (or if they implemented seamless resolution independence, and it worked across all apps seamlessly, which again, no other OS does), then it would be a different matter.
Unfortunately, this only works on iOS, and that isn't likely to change very soon, except *maybe* on Windows 8, in the Metro UI. I don't even think Google is going to make any headway here on Android, even though they should have done so by now.
Interesting that you'd mention it - Android is pretty much resolution-independent. You can scale the whole screen to pretty much any size you want (without it looking funky, within limits), if you don't mind the device being flagged as incompatible by the Market. All you need is root and the ability to edit your build.prop file, or you can download apps that do this automatically...
Then it's likely that you're using resolutions that are simply too high for your preferred viewing distance and eyesight. Move closer or get less pixel dense displays:). To be honest, on most displays, I wish that Windows allowed scaling down below 100%. I already have my browsers set to 80% zoom...
But yes, scaling on Windows is a bit kludgy, especially on the higher settings. 125% seems to work well for the most part, though - set my mother in law's 1600x900 15.6" Win7 machine to that and it looks fine...
If it's configurable to run just like Windows 7, but on ARM (with the 60Wh+ batteries that are standard on ultraportable x86 laptops these days, we would be looking at battery life along the lines of few days of actual run time:p)... sure, bring it on!:D
Yup, absolutely horrible. Here's hoping Windows 8 ARM tablets (with a full MS Office suite including a fully functional OneNote, of course) will bring us similarly high resolution screens... just think how awesome a Thinkpad X240T could be: ARM internals for iPad-like battery life, same housing as the X220T, and a 2560x1440 display.
Goddamn, I'm so glad I'm typing this on a Thinkpad... lesser laptops would be short-ciruiting from all my drool by now...
Pfff, 2048x1536 on 10" is only 256ppi. 221ppi (the Sony Vaio P with 1600x768 @ 8") at 100% scalling is great with XP and Windows 7... on this thing I might increase the scaling to 125%, but I'm relatively sure I'd be fine without it:)
See Kayditty's reply to your post. Interleaving is basically just a way to make noisy/error-prone copper usable for high-bandwidth DSL by trading in some latency...
Fastpath was the name for the option to turn off interleaving if your line's noise/error levels were good enough... cost something like 99ct and boosted latency by abou 20ms IIRC.
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What about iOS/Android gamers? Some of those games are pretty taxing and require pretty heavy-duty GPUs to run smoothly...
You seem to have gathered some experience with Windows 8, so I have a question for you (no time to install the consumer preview myself unti lin a few weeks):
If I want to exclusively use desktop apps, can I use the Metro "start screen" pretty much solely as a start menu replacement? Press start on the keyboard, type the name of the application I want to launch, press enter? Are there any obstacle to this type of usage?
If this continues to work, adn the only thing I'm losing due to the addition of Metro is the traditional start menu, I'm golden...
Ah OK, that explains it... I switched to Android as soon as it became viable. :)
Holy crap, I used WinMo for years and never knew. WTF?
Guuuuh... doi. Thanks, I'll try to remember that :D
Ouch... that would suck. Oh well, I'm an Android user anyway, so meh :p
That's true, of course. It ticks me off when I find an error in Google Maps, because I have no idea what to do to fix it...
Not here in Germany. I can navigate ANYWHERE with Google Maps Nav these days... there hasn't been a single address I wasn't able to find.
I suppose it might just vary from country to country?
What exactly does that mean? Don't they update as the maps are added to?
If I lived in Berlin, I might have noticed that earlier. What's missing for me is consistency - if I need to go somewhere that's nearly off the grid (but still easily findable with Google Maps, i.e. there's cell reception and everything :p), there's a pretty decent chance that I won't be able to get there with an OSM based app. A lot of the problems are from the front end, though, so not entirely OSM's fault...
Even if they don't, having them bet on an easily user-updateable mapping system is pretty cool.
That said, OSM here in Germany is a bit disappointing. I've been adding a few locations around my neighborhood, but OSM based navigation apps are still pretty bad in terms of accuracy and actually finding house numbers :(
Why do you need so much screen space? I've never understood why people want such big diagonals - I just buy the highest resolution display I can find, at the biggest diagonal I'm comfortable tossing in my bag... right now that's about 12 or 13". Currently waiting for the new FullHD 10" screens from the Transformer Infinity to wander over to netbooks...
Yup, but with a 12" diagonal or smaller, and no trackpoint :)
No, because I'd never use a product that required me to use non-native resolutions, or alter my comfortable viewing habits.
Huh? Why non-native resolution?
As for comfortable viewing habits, weren't you complaining that everything was way too small at 100%? That's NOT comfortable... I'll say it again: If that's the case, your pixel density is too high or you're too far away from your display!
That's why the iPad works for something like this, and products like Sony's micro-sized displays don't. I'm not going to hunch over a screen. That completely defeats the primary benefit of a higher resolution display (if you have to move uncomfortably close to it to use it, then you are just making the relative resolution the same as a larger, lower resolution display!).
You're confusing my reasons for wanting a high resolution display with yours. What I want is more room to work with. I want the smallest possible legible fonts, so that I can fit more of them on the screen at once. I want to be able to work with 4 windows on the screen at once... I want to be able to run a full IDE on a 10" high resolution screen without needing to close all the toolbars and scroll constantly.
AFAICT, your reasons are more along the lines of "Oooooh, pretty, I can no longer see the single pixels!!". For reading, that isn't a bad approach, but to be honest: I'm actually satisfied with Windows' font rendering at 100%. What I want is a small laptop with a very high resolution, so that I have a lot of desktop space without having to drag around an actual huge screen, along with the heavy laptop that goes with it.
Yes, there are many displays that are very low resolution for their size. But that's far away from going with a "retina" display on a netbook (it's the exact opposite end of the spectrum, in fact).
That confirms it, we simply want different things :)
Yes, 125% on Windows 7 isn't atrocious. But you still end up with a lot of rough edges. If it's a matter of choosing between "I can't even fucking read it" and "it's sub-optimal, but at least I can use it this way", then 125% is probably the better trade-off.
If I had a display with a high enough resolution, I'd try out 125% for a while to see where you're coming from... I'm supposing the issues are mostly with third party apps? Unfortunately, the highest density display I have is a 1920x1200 15.4" laptop screen, and that is pretty much perfect at 100%. Lots of room to work... just wish it was smaller ;)
But my point here is that on iOS, there's no such trade-off, due to the way it implements this. No other OS does this, so no other OS avoids all these issues out of hand. If they did (or if they implemented seamless resolution independence, and it worked across all apps seamlessly, which again, no other OS does), then it would be a different matter.
Unfortunately, this only works on iOS, and that isn't likely to change very soon, except *maybe* on Windows 8, in the Metro UI. I don't even think Google is going to make any headway here on Android, even though they should have done so by now.
Interesting that you'd mention it - Android is pretty much resolution-independent. You can scale the whole screen to pretty much any size you want (without it looking funky, within limits), if you don't mind the device being flagged as incompatible by the Market. All you need is root and the ability to edit your build.prop file, or you can download apps that do this automatically...
Then it's likely that you're using resolutions that are simply too high for your preferred viewing distance and eyesight. Move closer or get less pixel dense displays :). To be honest, on most displays, I wish that Windows allowed scaling down below 100%. I already have my browsers set to 80% zoom...
But yes, scaling on Windows is a bit kludgy, especially on the higher settings. 125% seems to work well for the most part, though - set my mother in law's 1600x900 15.6" Win7 machine to that and it looks fine...
Fine, then just give me an after market 12" 16:10 or 12.5" 16:9 screen with the same pixel density, and I"ll put it in a Thinkpad myself ;)
All I want is the display - they can keep their stupid capacitive touch layer... :p
You know you can get 27" 2560x1440 displays, right? A 24" 2048x1536 display would be nice, sure, but there are alternatives in this area.
200+PPI ultraportable clamshells, on the other hand? Still waiting... I would kill for a 10" or 12" FullHD panel.
If it's configurable to run just like Windows 7, but on ARM (with the 60Wh+ batteries that are standard on ultraportable x86 laptops these days, we would be looking at battery life along the lines of few days of actual run time :p)... sure, bring it on! :D
Agreed. :)
Yup, absolutely horrible. Here's hoping Windows 8 ARM tablets (with a full MS Office suite including a fully functional OneNote, of course) will bring us similarly high resolution screens... just think how awesome a Thinkpad X240T could be: ARM internals for iPad-like battery life, same housing as the X220T, and a 2560x1440 display.
Goddamn, I'm so glad I'm typing this on a Thinkpad... lesser laptops would be short-ciruiting from all my drool by now...
Pfff, 2048x1536 on 10" is only 256ppi. 221ppi (the Sony Vaio P with 1600x768 @ 8") at 100% scalling is great with XP and Windows 7... on this thing I might increase the scaling to 125%, but I'm relatively sure I'd be fine without it :)
Yup, looks pretty awesome. The XGA panel on my Thinkpad X41T is getting a bit old, and I could really use a high-res upgrade for reading...
And put it in a netbook with a Thinkpad-style trackpoint... I'd buy that right away.
See Kayditty's reply to your post. Interleaving is basically just a way to make noisy/error-prone copper usable for high-bandwidth DSL by trading in some latency...
Fastpath was the name for the option to turn off interleaving if your line's noise/error levels were good enough... cost something like 99ct and boosted latency by abou 20ms IIRC.