"What's kindof interesting is, I played with a windows phone lately. To be honest, they're pretty slick. "
Slick, yes. In fact, very slick... but little else, unfortunately.
None of the advantages represented by Windows as a brand are present - whether from Windows Mobile (direct syncing via cable, all the more or less mature business features) or Windows on the desktop (the fairly obvious... useful multitasking, a world of applications), and none of the new features are good enough to sway either Android or iOS users.
Maybe Windows 8 ARM tablets in phone form factor will change that...
It really depends on the Android device - some, like my Desire, just use parts with stupidly high power draw. Take AMOLED screens, for instance - 2-3x higher power draw than an LCD screen of the same size... it's stupid things like that which kill Android battery life on many devices.
But yeah, wireless (WiFi too, just not as heavily when transferring large amounts of data) is a battery killer.
Android phones will last over 24 hours too if all you do on them is read documents without accessing the Internet. However, with a world of apps and a decent web browser available, you tend to do a bit more with it...
On any given day, I'll stream music (Subsonic server, awesome!), open a bunch of web sites, possible stream some video (Flash, that's a pretty big power drain right there), receive all my E-Mail and IMs, read all my RSS feeds, use WiFi tethering for my laptop and take a bunch of pictures, all with geolocation (GPS is a big battery drain) and instant uploading/syncing to Dropbox over the mobile network enabled. Yes, with this kind of use the battery is empty by late afternoon, but what else would you expect?
All correct, of course. Just pointing out that for many people (who really don't know anything about photography whatsoever), snapshots are pretty much the end all be all of all things photography... so for 90% (yes, I pulled that number out of my ass:p) of regular consumers everywhere (i.e. the ones who buy point-and-shoots or just use their smartphone cameras), a non-blurry photo with their subject (or at least half of their subject) somewhere in the frame is pretty much perfect.
Getting a great shot is fantastic, but most people don't need one, want one, or even recognize one when they take it by accident.:p
Maybe we should just coin a new term... snapshotography, or snappography:D
Yep, Siri does the same thing, according to the Slashgear review (at least I think it was Slashgear)... so no difference, other than that Apple isn't directly an advertiser.
The speech recognition (even in relatively accent-free English) is apallingly bad on my one year old high-end Android device. Either Google sucks at speech recognition or HTC installs sub-standard mics in their devices (leaning towards the latter)...
If this catches on, HTC, Samsung, Moto and others will need to install good mics with noice cancellation on their phones... could take a generation or three...
Doesn't change the fact that Magsafe is inherently safer for the machine itself - no flying laptops when you trip over the cord, and no chance to rip the jack right out of the laptop housing... Those magnetic connectors are one of the few reasons I envy MacBook users. It's not the power supply + its cable that should be worrying you - it's the laptop itself.
I wonder if you can find ready-to-use Magsafe parts on eBay... with a little work I'm sure I could get the laptop-side connector into my Thinkpads...
This is the kind of thing you constantly hear from "prosumer" photographers, with their nice big lenses and sensors, and optical + digital image stabilization...
Try taking a decent non-wobbly picture using a cell-phone camera indoors with so-so lighting and no flash allowed... It's much, much harder than it looks.
For snapshots, it is. With smartphone and compact cameras and their tiny sensors requiring extra slow shutter speeds (especially in dark environments where many snapshot-photographers are prone to be taking photos), motion blur is a big problem...
For me personally, it would eliminate one of the few remaining big problems with smartphone cameras... the resolution is good enough, the noise can be ignored and the smearing is just bearable - but motion blur, especially on devices without optical and electronic image stabilization, is absolutely horrid.
VoIP codecs are typically ~10kbit/s, which is a trickle on a 7.2MBit lines... I highly doubt it's the bandwidth that bothers them, especially when you're allowed to stream audio and video as much as you want within your bandwidth allowance;)
Lots of German providers do this too (making VoIP a ToS violation), especially on plans which are for smartphones only... the big 5 gigabyte plans which allow tethering usually don't have this restriction... maybe the same is true here.
"Plus it has that glorious one button PDF export, which in the past was so good that I would write in Word, save, and then open in OO just to use it."
Wouldn't "Save As" directly from Word have been easier? Just select PDF as the filetype and you're good to go...
I'm still trying to get LibreOffice to scroll properly with Thinkpads... no scrolling => tedious navigation => me pulling my hair out.
Office 2010 on the other hand, while expensive, works quite well and provides a lot of functions that just don't exist in open source alternatives (OneNote for instance)...
Yup, cheapo 802.11n stuff doesn't support 5GHz. The only reason I'm still running 2.4GHz is my Android smartphone... stupid cheapo Broadcom BCM4329 doesn't support 5GHz.
At least all my Thinkpads support 5GHz and the router's dual band...
I can definitely recommend going with 5GHz if you don't need all too much range (through walls and such) and the airwaves around 2.4GHz are crowded in your neighborhood.
The non-blue bars are other networks and interference from other networks. Crazy huh? Thank God I'm the only one around here who's discovered 5GHz so far;)
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"What's kindof interesting is, I played with a windows phone lately. To be honest, they're pretty slick. "
Slick, yes. In fact, very slick... but little else, unfortunately.
None of the advantages represented by Windows as a brand are present - whether from Windows Mobile (direct syncing via cable, all the more or less mature business features) or Windows on the desktop (the fairly obvious... useful multitasking, a world of applications), and none of the new features are good enough to sway either Android or iOS users.
Maybe Windows 8 ARM tablets in phone form factor will change that...
It really depends on the Android device - some, like my Desire, just use parts with stupidly high power draw. Take AMOLED screens, for instance - 2-3x higher power draw than an LCD screen of the same size... it's stupid things like that which kill Android battery life on many devices.
But yeah, wireless (WiFi too, just not as heavily when transferring large amounts of data) is a battery killer.
Android phones will last over 24 hours too if all you do on them is read documents without accessing the Internet. However, with a world of apps and a decent web browser available, you tend to do a bit more with it...
On any given day, I'll stream music (Subsonic server, awesome!), open a bunch of web sites, possible stream some video (Flash, that's a pretty big power drain right there), receive all my E-Mail and IMs, read all my RSS feeds, use WiFi tethering for my laptop and take a bunch of pictures, all with geolocation (GPS is a big battery drain) and instant uploading/syncing to Dropbox over the mobile network enabled. Yes, with this kind of use the battery is empty by late afternoon, but what else would you expect?
All correct, of course. Just pointing out that for many people (who really don't know anything about photography whatsoever), snapshots are pretty much the end all be all of all things photography... so for 90% (yes, I pulled that number out of my ass :p) of regular consumers everywhere (i.e. the ones who buy point-and-shoots or just use their smartphone cameras), a non-blurry photo with their subject (or at least half of their subject) somewhere in the frame is pretty much perfect.
Getting a great shot is fantastic, but most people don't need one, want one, or even recognize one when they take it by accident. :p
Maybe we should just coin a new term... snapshotography, or snappography :D
Yep, Siri does the same thing, according to the Slashgear review (at least I think it was Slashgear)... so no difference, other than that Apple isn't directly an advertiser.
The speech recognition (even in relatively accent-free English) is apallingly bad on my one year old high-end Android device. Either Google sucks at speech recognition or HTC installs sub-standard mics in their devices (leaning towards the latter)...
If this catches on, HTC, Samsung, Moto and others will need to install good mics with noice cancellation on their phones... could take a generation or three...
Doesn't change the fact that Magsafe is inherently safer for the machine itself - no flying laptops when you trip over the cord, and no chance to rip the jack right out of the laptop housing... Those magnetic connectors are one of the few reasons I envy MacBook users. It's not the power supply + its cable that should be worrying you - it's the laptop itself.
I wonder if you can find ready-to-use Magsafe parts on eBay... with a little work I'm sure I could get the laptop-side connector into my Thinkpads...
Does it also work for songs which weren't bought from iTunes? I.e. ripped from CDs or bought from other stores?
This is the kind of thing you constantly hear from "prosumer" photographers, with their nice big lenses and sensors, and optical + digital image stabilization...
Try taking a decent non-wobbly picture using a cell-phone camera indoors with so-so lighting and no flash allowed... It's much, much harder than it looks.
For snapshots, it is. With smartphone and compact cameras and their tiny sensors requiring extra slow shutter speeds (especially in dark environments where many snapshot-photographers are prone to be taking photos), motion blur is a big problem...
For me personally, it would eliminate one of the few remaining big problems with smartphone cameras... the resolution is good enough, the noise can be ignored and the smearing is just bearable - but motion blur, especially on devices without optical and electronic image stabilization, is absolutely horrid.
But Thunderbolt is more like Laserdisc in that respect...
Wasn't the situation with Firewire and the original USB eerily similar to the situation we're currently seeing?
If history's taught us anything, it should be not to drink the Thunderbolt koolaid...
Have you used a Honeycomb tablet lately? Still nowhere near as smooth as iOS devices... I've actually been wondering why. Any ideas?
VoIP codecs are typically ~10kbit/s, which is a trickle on a 7.2MBit lines... I highly doubt it's the bandwidth that bothers them, especially when you're allowed to stream audio and video as much as you want within your bandwidth allowance ;)
Lots of German providers do this too (making VoIP a ToS violation), especially on plans which are for smartphones only... the big 5 gigabyte plans which allow tethering usually don't have this restriction... maybe the same is true here.
S3 Sleep.
At ~7W peak, I doubt you'll be feeding this back into your house's electrical system...
"Plus it has that glorious one button PDF export, which in the past was so good that I would write in Word, save, and then open in OO just to use it."
Wouldn't "Save As" directly from Word have been easier? Just select PDF as the filetype and you're good to go...
I'm still trying to get LibreOffice to scroll properly with Thinkpads... no scrolling => tedious navigation => me pulling my hair out.
Office 2010 on the other hand, while expensive, works quite well and provides a lot of functions that just don't exist in open source alternatives (OneNote for instance)...
No no, I was genuinely interested in whether Apple's inability to round properly was catching on :p
+1
It isn't a la carte until you can choose when, where and on what you want to watch your show.
Isn't the iPad 10"?
Or did you fall for the marketingspeak used on the "11-inch" MacBookAir that's actually more of a 12" device?
I still have problems with files that have multiple audio tracks. Haven't found a player that'll handle them properly...
Yup, cheapo 802.11n stuff doesn't support 5GHz. The only reason I'm still running 2.4GHz is my Android smartphone... stupid cheapo Broadcom BCM4329 doesn't support 5GHz.
At least all my Thinkpads support 5GHz and the router's dual band...
I can definitely recommend going with 5GHz if you don't need all too much range (through walls and such) and the airwaves around 2.4GHz are crowded in your neighborhood.
Look at this crap... my neighborhood at 2.4GHz: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7086491/pictures/2.4ghz.PNG
And 5GHz: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7086491/pictures/5ghz.PNG
The non-blue bars are other networks and interference from other networks. Crazy huh? Thank God I'm the only one around here who's discovered 5GHz so far ;)
How exactly? Opening it (the URL) as a "Network Stream" in VLC does nothing, and neither does opening it normally.
So Detroit's a REALLY crappy place to have kids, huh? :p