I'm actual pretty sure that the people who complain about LCDs frying eyeballs are the kind of people who use LED-backlit desktop screens on 100% brightness and contrast in a darkened room (or basement).
A decent (matte) LCD that doesn't need to be turned up to searing levels in order to be readable outside, and that can be turned down to suit low-light environments, isn't exactly problematic. Hell, unless I'm actually outside in the sunlight (or watching a movie - that's one of the few cases in which I like to crank the brightness), my laptop TFTs rarely go above half brightness, and they're both older CCFL-based models.
With, say, an hour of browsing the web, 20 minutes of phone calls, an hour of gaming (SNES emulator usually) and two hours of reading, my smartphone (Milestone now, but I used to have WinMo phones too) has about 36 hours of battery life. Heavy use (say four hours of browsing and gaming, an hour of phone calls and 4 hours of reading) cuts the total run time to about 24 hours... and that's all with WiFi on permanently (unless out of range, in which case the phone switches to cellular data) and IM/VoIP apps all running and connected in the background.
Reading with the backlight on low doesn't draw a lot of power, so I'm sure you could get 12 hours straight of reading out of a full charge... It's not really a problem these days.
My girlfriend is the same. A light and an actual book (a laptop display too, usually - although that may be because I tend to type on the relatively loud IBM keyboard when I'm using the laptop) bothers her, but my Milestone (white text on a dark grey background with the LCD turned down as far as it'll go is awesomely nice to read, IMO... nice contrast, and no strain) backlight is too small to be annoying:)
Not to mention that reading at night with someone sleeping in bed next to you or on the train or at the bus stop or on a plance is a lot easier and less disturbing to others without needing an external light source...
I also find a properly adjusted LCD very pleasant to read, especially with decent antialiasing on nice high-resolution screens. As someone who spent a lot of his childhood reading novels in paperback/hardback form (I think my parents actually spent more money on books than any other form of entertainment for me) and now reads exclusively on TFTs, I'd say the switch to LCD full-time doesn't really bother your eyes unless you crank that LED backlight up to 100% in a dark room every day... or buy glare-TFTs and try to use them outside.
But at what point does the battery life stop being a bonus? The 10 hours (or was it more?) of reading you get out of an iPad or netbook aren't exactly problematic unless you're flying halfway around the world - and in that case, get a spare battery (there are external ones too, for the Apple users).
And why is it such a bonus that it "looks like a real book", when you could just get a _real book_? I'd rather have a device that I can use for things other than reading text, so that I don't have to carry around as much crud. Hell, if my tablet-PC ran for 24 hours straight I probably wouldn't even carry a cellphone... just the tablet and bluetooth headset.
Do days and days of battery life and a realistic emulation of the paper reading experience really outweigh the benefits of a far more functional device?
Seconded. I use the European version (Milestone) for my eBooks (Mostly converted to plain text) with the program iReader. The 854x480 screen resolution makes for incredibly crisp text, and the text and background color options let you find a combination that suits your eyes, leading to absolutely effortless reading without tiring out your eyes for hours on end.
Obviously this would work on pretty much any smartphone with a relatively large (the Droid/Milestone is almost too large, IMO, but that just means less page turning), high-pixel-density (HVGA on ~3" will NOT cut it if you want nice crisp text and no fatigue) screen...
The main advantage here is that the damned thing fits in your pocket. If I wanted something the size of an actual eReader (i.e. something I need a bag for), I'd just carry around a paperback... Obviously if you're into e-ink you'll be more inclined to go the eReader route, but for me? I just don't see it...
I'm sure that windows can share files over the net just fine. The issue is that it doesn't do it easily, cleanly, or by default. I could probably learn how to do it, but why bother?
What's not easy about right-clicking on a folder and setting a few permissions in the sharing tab?
>> scp file_location file_destination
That was my original rant - it doesn't matter if either location is on the same file system, a device connected to the computer, a computer on a local network, or running on something in space.
Care to elaborate? How is this easier on *nix? Replace "scp" with "copy" and it'll work just fine on Windows...
As for your snarky reply about me not using windows properly, once again you don't seem to understand how that shit works. I wanted to quickly transfer 1gb of files off a windows laptop in a lab, so I slapped a USB thumb drive into it. As it was the first time it had been plugged in, I was treated to 2 minutes of installation and configuration. The same thumb drive, plugged into the OSX machine across the hall immediately showed up in Finder, and I started pulling files off it 2 seconds later. Sure, should I ever plug that same drive into that same laptop, it probably won't do that. However, it shouldn't have done that in the first place. It's a damn storage device.
So buy a storage device. Not a device that has "Automagical backup software" and "Virtual Optical Drive Emulation" built into its freakin firmware. Obviously this stuff doesn't work on *nix, because it's programmed for Windows, but you should be placing the blame on the manufacturers for ramming this crap down peoples' throats...
If that laptop had any sort of useful networking on it, I'd have just transferred the files from it to the OSX machine. But windows doesn't come with anything that can talk to OSX by default.
Isn't it also the other way around? i.e., OSX doesn't come with anything that can talk to Windows by default? I'm guessing there'd need to be compatibility on both sides...?
Sorry, but when it comes down to it, Windows blows for networking and file transfers. I'm sure that with some windows-fu and some googling, and some third-party software you can get windows to transfer files securely across the internet to another machine. The real question is "Why would you bother?" Unix based systems just do it by default, pretty much as quickly and as efficient as possible.
So you're saying that Windows is crappy for networking and file transfers because it doesn't have a built-in utility for securely transferring files across the internet?
Sure, I think a built-in facility would be useful, but the majority of Windows (home) users is going to be perfectly satisfied with opening "Network" in "Computer" and selecting the machine they want to transfer files to/from (this needs no setup, by the way - just leave your router with DHCP enabled and the machines will pretty much find each other without problems since XP [although back then it helped if the machines were all set to the same workgroup]).
Windows 7 has added "Homegroups" and all sorts of other crap you don't need (and would have to configure first), but simple file-based networking works perfectly fine without it... just specify which folders you want to share (read-only by default, set specific permissions if you want something else) on the remote machine and you've got access.
If you're setting up a VPN to transfer files, you're not using windows properly. You should be playing games on it, and using a decent OS for networking.
Hmmm, I use my VPN for opening files in place, not for file transfer. Using a VPN means you're effectively _inside_ the network you're VPN'd into, and you can use it as such. No need to keep the files locally at all, unless you have bandwidth constraints that make working in this way difficult...
Decent USB sticks (i.e. no weird autostart firmware or things like that) take about one full second to go through the "Installing New Device Software" on Win7... Is this so much faster on Linux/OS-X?
It's never bothered me much, but hey, maybe I'm missing out on some fantastic USB-Stick superspeed;)
Now if they can just get enough imagery into their database (i.e. every medium-large city world-wide), they might have a chance at actually becoming useful.
No trackpoint? Optimized for fingers-on-screen type usage? Meh, overpriced toy.;)
I'm not exactly going to rush out and buy an iPad, but I'm sure that enough people will for Apple to call it a huge success... People without a netbook or smartphone just might be intrigued.
Here in Germany it's exactly the other way around - direct bank transfers are free with most (free) bank accounts these days, and are more or less instant when moving money within the same bank or group of banks (Sparkasse for instance).
Paypal, on the other hand, charges fees every time you transfer money out of your Paypal account... the only way to use the money without getting hit with fees is by spending it on eBay.
I've been using fountain pens my whole life (my Dad used 'em, so obviously as a little kid, I wanted one), and my handwriting is absolutely atrocious. Seriously, I don't know many people who can actually decipher what I write.
I know, I know, anecdotes aren't evidence, but just saying;)
As for software, I'd recommend OneNote. If you're a student you usually get it for free through MSDNAA... As for Linux, I've heard good things about Xournal.
Another model to look out for is the Rotring 600, as well as the Newton. I've had mine for 5 years and it refuses to die, even after countless beatings. The nib is awesome (I have "Fine" on both of mine), with just the right amount of friction on decent paper...
Sadly mine aren't getting a lot of use since I got my Thinkpad tablet a few weeks ago...
That's just it - the same 1080p video on Youtube uses 50% more CPU than playing it directly with a decent (software-based!) decoder in a regular media player. On XP, on Vista, and on Windows 7.
How many modern applications can you run on an old single core computer?
All of the ones that are coded to use only the resources necessary.
I play 720p HD video on a Pentium M LV 1.5GHz processor without a stutter in sight... now why should that same processor grind to a halt when it hits 320x240 video embedded in a web site?
The problem there being that each of those sites needs to set up something especially for those mobile devices.
Want to view Youtube in the full desktop view on your Android phone's browser? No dice. Hell, I can't even open the video in the phone's dedicated Youtube video player directly from the Youtube page - that requires going to m.youtube.com, which is not what I bought my smartphone for.
How about those nifty videos that Engadget links to (Vimeo, I think)? Nope, not gonna work.
Sure, Youtube support is great, but users want to be able to view every video, not just the ones on Youtube.
Why not just embed a Flash player and a regular link to the H264 source file right below? Most devices will be able to stream that directly (Engadget Show is a great example - click on the direct link to the h264-encoded mp4 [or was it m4v?] file in the mobile browser and it launches your video player and starts playing immediately - in better quality and with less preload time than Youtube)...
So the ancient 528MHz chip (with a few small modifications, IIRC) that's been in use since the HTC Diamond is supposed to be comparable to the Snapdragon in the Nexus? What have you been smoking?
Don't get me wrong, the TP2 is a great device with a decent keyboard and pretty much _the_ WinMo work phone right now, but in terms of processing power, the Nexus won't even blink before throwing the TP2 off a cliff...
Actually, lately a few things like O2 Germany's "My Handy" have popped up, where they sell subsidized phones for decent rates (480€ over 24 months instead of 430€ up front for a Motorola Milestone, for instance... or at least those were the rates when I got mine). The phones are all completely unlocked, and, as far as I know, unbranded.
This is far from the norm, but schemes like it seem to be gaining speed...
My desk is wired, but I still need my WiFi in the bedroom, in the kitchen, in the living room, on the john, for my smartphone, and for standing at the bus stop on the other side of the street (it's a weak signal, but hey, my 3G gets throttled after 200MB of traffic, so I'd rather save that for important stuff:P).
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I'm actual pretty sure that the people who complain about LCDs frying eyeballs are the kind of people who use LED-backlit desktop screens on 100% brightness and contrast in a darkened room (or basement).
A decent (matte) LCD that doesn't need to be turned up to searing levels in order to be readable outside, and that can be turned down to suit low-light environments, isn't exactly problematic. Hell, unless I'm actually outside in the sunlight (or watching a movie - that's one of the few cases in which I like to crank the brightness), my laptop TFTs rarely go above half brightness, and they're both older CCFL-based models.
Interesting, I've had this issue too but attributed it to the cheap USB card reader.
With, say, an hour of browsing the web, 20 minutes of phone calls, an hour of gaming (SNES emulator usually) and two hours of reading, my smartphone (Milestone now, but I used to have WinMo phones too) has about 36 hours of battery life. Heavy use (say four hours of browsing and gaming, an hour of phone calls and 4 hours of reading) cuts the total run time to about 24 hours... and that's all with WiFi on permanently (unless out of range, in which case the phone switches to cellular data) and IM/VoIP apps all running and connected in the background.
Reading with the backlight on low doesn't draw a lot of power, so I'm sure you could get 12 hours straight of reading out of a full charge... It's not really a problem these days.
My girlfriend is the same. A light and an actual book (a laptop display too, usually - although that may be because I tend to type on the relatively loud IBM keyboard when I'm using the laptop) bothers her, but my Milestone (white text on a dark grey background with the LCD turned down as far as it'll go is awesomely nice to read, IMO... nice contrast, and no strain) backlight is too small to be annoying :)
Not to mention that reading at night with someone sleeping in bed next to you or on the train or at the bus stop or on a plance is a lot easier and less disturbing to others without needing an external light source...
I also find a properly adjusted LCD very pleasant to read, especially with decent antialiasing on nice high-resolution screens. As someone who spent a lot of his childhood reading novels in paperback/hardback form (I think my parents actually spent more money on books than any other form of entertainment for me) and now reads exclusively on TFTs, I'd say the switch to LCD full-time doesn't really bother your eyes unless you crank that LED backlight up to 100% in a dark room every day... or buy glare-TFTs and try to use them outside.
But at what point does the battery life stop being a bonus? The 10 hours (or was it more?) of reading you get out of an iPad or netbook aren't exactly problematic unless you're flying halfway around the world - and in that case, get a spare battery (there are external ones too, for the Apple users).
And why is it such a bonus that it "looks like a real book", when you could just get a _real book_? I'd rather have a device that I can use for things other than reading text, so that I don't have to carry around as much crud. Hell, if my tablet-PC ran for 24 hours straight I probably wouldn't even carry a cellphone... just the tablet and bluetooth headset.
Do days and days of battery life and a realistic emulation of the paper reading experience really outweigh the benefits of a far more functional device?
Seconded. I use the European version (Milestone) for my eBooks (Mostly converted to plain text) with the program iReader. The 854x480 screen resolution makes for incredibly crisp text, and the text and background color options let you find a combination that suits your eyes, leading to absolutely effortless reading without tiring out your eyes for hours on end.
Obviously this would work on pretty much any smartphone with a relatively large (the Droid/Milestone is almost too large, IMO, but that just means less page turning), high-pixel-density (HVGA on ~3" will NOT cut it if you want nice crisp text and no fatigue) screen...
The main advantage here is that the damned thing fits in your pocket. If I wanted something the size of an actual eReader (i.e. something I need a bag for), I'd just carry around a paperback... Obviously if you're into e-ink you'll be more inclined to go the eReader route, but for me? I just don't see it...
I'm sure that windows can share files over the net just fine. The issue is that it doesn't do it easily, cleanly, or by default. I could probably learn how to do it, but why bother?
What's not easy about right-clicking on a folder and setting a few permissions in the sharing tab?
>> scp file_location file_destination
That was my original rant - it doesn't matter if either location is on the same file system, a device connected to the computer, a computer on a local network, or running on something in space.
Care to elaborate? How is this easier on *nix? Replace "scp" with "copy" and it'll work just fine on Windows...
As for your snarky reply about me not using windows properly, once again you don't seem to understand how that shit works. I wanted to quickly transfer 1gb of files
off a windows laptop in a lab, so I slapped a USB thumb drive into it. As it was the first time it had been plugged in, I was treated to 2 minutes of installation and configuration. The same thumb drive, plugged into the OSX machine across the hall immediately showed up in Finder, and I started pulling files off it 2 seconds later. Sure, should I ever plug that same drive into that same laptop, it probably won't do that. However, it shouldn't have done that in the first place. It's a damn storage device.
So buy a storage device. Not a device that has "Automagical backup software" and "Virtual Optical Drive Emulation" built into its freakin firmware. Obviously this stuff doesn't work on *nix, because it's programmed for Windows, but you should be placing the blame on the manufacturers for ramming this crap down peoples' throats...
If that laptop had any sort of useful networking on it, I'd have just transferred the files from it to the OSX machine. But windows doesn't come with anything that can talk to OSX by default.
Isn't it also the other way around? i.e., OSX doesn't come with anything that can talk to Windows by default? I'm guessing there'd need to be compatibility on both sides...?
Sorry, but when it comes down to it, Windows blows for networking and file transfers. I'm sure that with some windows-fu and some googling, and some third-party software you can get windows to transfer files securely across the internet to another machine. The real question is "Why would you bother?" Unix based systems just do it by default, pretty much as quickly and as efficient as possible.
So you're saying that Windows is crappy for networking and file transfers because it doesn't have a built-in utility for securely transferring files across the internet?
Sure, I think a built-in facility would be useful, but the majority of Windows (home) users is going to be perfectly satisfied with opening "Network" in "Computer" and selecting the machine they want to transfer files to/from (this needs no setup, by the way - just leave your router with DHCP enabled and the machines will pretty much find each other without problems since XP [although back then it helped if the machines were all set to the same workgroup]).
Windows 7 has added "Homegroups" and all sorts of other crap you don't need (and would have to configure first), but simple file-based networking works perfectly fine without it... just specify which folders you want to share (read-only by default, set specific permissions if you want something else) on the remote machine and you've got access.
If you're setting up a VPN to transfer files, you're not using windows properly. You should be playing games on it, and using a decent OS for networking.
Hmmm, I use my VPN for opening files in place, not for file transfer. Using a VPN means you're effectively _inside_ the network you're VPN'd into, and you can use it as such. No need to keep the files locally at all, unless you have bandwidth constraints that make working in this way difficult...
Decent USB sticks (i.e. no weird autostart firmware or things like that) take about one full second to go through the "Installing New Device Software" on Win7... Is this so much faster on Linux/OS-X?
It's never bothered me much, but hey, maybe I'm missing out on some fantastic USB-Stick superspeed ;)
Now if they can just get enough imagery into their database (i.e. every medium-large city world-wide), they might have a chance at actually becoming useful.
Not that Google's any better in that respect...
No trackpoint? Optimized for fingers-on-screen type usage? Meh, overpriced toy. ;)
I'm not exactly going to rush out and buy an iPad, but I'm sure that enough people will for Apple to call it a huge success... People without a netbook or smartphone just might be intrigued.
Here in Germany it's exactly the other way around - direct bank transfers are free with most (free) bank accounts these days, and are more or less instant when moving money within the same bank or group of banks (Sparkasse for instance).
Paypal, on the other hand, charges fees every time you transfer money out of your Paypal account... the only way to use the money without getting hit with fees is by spending it on eBay.
Pen input (wacom) also needs improvement, especially near the edges of the screens where precision is lost.
Huh, and I thought that was a sign of aging (only having used my X41Tablet). Are newer models (say, the X200T) the same? Even when brand new?
I've been using fountain pens my whole life (my Dad used 'em, so obviously as a little kid, I wanted one), and my handwriting is absolutely atrocious. Seriously, I don't know many people who can actually decipher what I write.
I know, I know, anecdotes aren't evidence, but just saying ;)
As for software, I'd recommend OneNote. If you're a student you usually get it for free through MSDNAA... As for Linux, I've heard good things about Xournal.
Another model to look out for is the Rotring 600, as well as the Newton. I've had mine for 5 years and it refuses to die, even after countless beatings. The nib is awesome (I have "Fine" on both of mine), with just the right amount of friction on decent paper...
Sadly mine aren't getting a lot of use since I got my Thinkpad tablet a few weeks ago...
That's just it - the same 1080p video on Youtube uses 50% more CPU than playing it directly with a decent (software-based!) decoder in a regular media player. On XP, on Vista, and on Windows 7.
The problem is Flash.
How many modern applications can you run on an old single core computer?
All of the ones that are coded to use only the resources necessary.
I play 720p HD video on a Pentium M LV 1.5GHz processor without a stutter in sight... now why should that same processor grind to a halt when it hits 320x240 video embedded in a web site?
That's right, someone fucked up.
The problem there being that each of those sites needs to set up something especially for those mobile devices.
Want to view Youtube in the full desktop view on your Android phone's browser? No dice. Hell, I can't even open the video in the phone's dedicated Youtube video player directly from the Youtube page - that requires going to m.youtube.com, which is not what I bought my smartphone for.
How about those nifty videos that Engadget links to (Vimeo, I think)? Nope, not gonna work.
Sure, Youtube support is great, but users want to be able to view every video, not just the ones on Youtube.
Why not just embed a Flash player and a regular link to the H264 source file right below? Most devices will be able to stream that directly (Engadget Show is a great example - click on the direct link to the h264-encoded mp4 [or was it m4v?] file in the mobile browser and it launches your video player and starts playing immediately - in better quality and with less preload time than Youtube)...
So the ancient 528MHz chip (with a few small modifications, IIRC) that's been in use since the HTC Diamond is supposed to be comparable to the Snapdragon in the Nexus? What have you been smoking?
Don't get me wrong, the TP2 is a great device with a decent keyboard and pretty much _the_ WinMo work phone right now, but in terms of processing power, the Nexus won't even blink before throwing the TP2 off a cliff...
Reading that without "Basement" is a lot funnier... ;)
Actually, lately a few things like O2 Germany's "My Handy" have popped up, where they sell subsidized phones for decent rates (480€ over 24 months instead of 430€ up front for a Motorola Milestone, for instance... or at least those were the rates when I got mine). The phones are all completely unlocked, and, as far as I know, unbranded.
This is far from the norm, but schemes like it seem to be gaining speed...
"I sense a disturbance in the force, as if millions of batteries cried out 'Windows 7 be damned' and bricked themselves."
Awesome. :D
Checking out my Google Reader account leaves me a bit shocked.
~300-400 articles per day, and only about 30 of those (from Reuters and BBC) are actual news. The rest is gadgets, software and other tech stuff.
Oh well, other people waste their time with Twitter, Facebook and the like.
+1.
My desk is wired, but I still need my WiFi in the bedroom, in the kitchen, in the living room, on the john, for my smartphone, and for standing at the bus stop on the other side of the street (it's a weak signal, but hey, my 3G gets throttled after 200MB of traffic, so I'd rather save that for important stuff :P).
Deck, stupid Windows 7 handwriting recognition swallowed my word.
Meant to say that all the neighbors have their routers set on "Auto".