I've had luck in this department too. All the neighbors have their routers set to, which basically translates to channel 1. So while they're overlapping like crazy, I've got about 10 channels to use that are free and clear.
This device has nothing to do with actual Tablet PCs - it's a tablet form factor, but I doubt you'll get the same accuracy that a Wacom-Tablet/Screen offers with a capacitive stylus and this screen...
For surfing the web or reading eBooks... yah, maybe. I'll stick with my keyboard and trackpoint, thank you very much, but I'm sure a lot of people will find this more intuitive.
That doesn't change the fact that a device with divx support will play nearly every divx/xvid file, and h264/x264 players are SOL with the majority of the encodes I've seen so far. Many only work properly on a computer, and not on mobile devices or dedicated gear (even though changing two encoding options while leaving the bitrate/filesize the same makes the file play...).
If it weren't for the fact that Android doesn't seem to have implemented a divx/xvid codec at all, I'd probably still be using it (and be watching my TV rips without needing to transcode first).
Ah, I misunderstood you a little there. FuzzyFungus posted a pretty good explanation (or at least a few assumptions that make sense a few posts down:
"One of the GPUs is, almost definitely, whatever GPU was integrated into the chipset. It'll be weak as hell; but use minimal power and be virtually free in terms of board space and bill of materials.
The second GPU will be whatever they picked for when actual performance is needed. It will add cost, space, and heat; but there is really no alternative if you want to have actual power available. Odds are, it uses more power in its lowest stable voltage/clock state than the integrated GPU does at full power."
Don't forget that the "idle" scenario isn't only there to dupe customers - it actually happens every now and then.
When taking lecture notes on my tablet, it spends about half the time in idle with the screen shut off, because we usually get a PDF that we can just add our notes to, and there isn't always that much to add. The machine spends a lot of time idle, and actually gets close to its rated battery life (Thinkpad X41T).
It's not always a lie, it just depends on the usage scenario. Obviously manufacturers have chosen the one usage scenario that's the most beneficial to them... but at least they mostly chose the same one;)
Most GPUs DO downclock dynamically to save power... take nVidia for instance: My POS GeForce 9300M GS has 4 modes... Standard 2D, Low Power 3D, High Power 3D and Full Power 3D.
Standard 2D (170MHz core, memory clocked down way far as well) draws about 15W at idle, while Full Power 3D (700MHz core, and IIRC about 1400MHz memory) draws about 22W at idle. Now take the same laptop with Intel integrated graphics - 11W at idle. Same settings, exact same components other than the graphics card.
"Performance" GPUs aren't made with heat and power savings in mind... or at least not nearly as well as onboard graphics.
Oh, and did I mention the nice little audio stutters and skips/pauses (high DPC latency spikes) every time the GPU changes clock speeds? Hope those aren't present on this newfangled switchable stuff (that's actually one of the reasons I'd like a manual switch - preferably a hardware one)...
"J.K. Pot has thus far refused to make any of her Hairy Porter books available physically because of library fears and a desire to see readers experience her books in pixels."
Oh yeah, that REALLY looks like an article with lots of facts and most definitely deserves a +5 Interesting or +5 Informative... *facepalm*
Actually, there's still a lot of hardware with godawful drivers around in the Windows domain... finding a driver that won't crash the machine or cause other problems when going into or coming out of standby for every piece of hardware can be a pain in the ass, especially on older machines.
Take my Thinkpad X41 Tablet, for instance: On Windows 7, sometimes when I resume from Standby or Hibernate, I can't turn on or off my WiFi adapter any more... My old desktop system refused to go into standby with a Radeon 4670 on Windows 7. Sure, the problems are usually solvable by finding the right driver, but there's still the off-chance that the average Joe's pre-configured computer will get stuck with device drivers that BSODs every time you hit the suspend button...
Oh, the OpenMoko can make phone calls, alright... you just have to wait 30 seconds after the other end has picked up until you can start talking. Picking up an incoming call is fun too - Press the button, wait 20 seconds, "Hi!".
That was a bit of a shock for me, even coming from a stone-aged WM5.0 phone...
Seems limited to London/England - O2 Germany's HSDPA is awesome around here (Cologne, Duesseldorf, Aachen... that area), with sustained downloads usually between 100 and 400KByte/s depending on the time of day and signal quality.
"Clits have been deprecated because they wear out. They just can't take any abuse whatosever and you're always having to buy replacement covers for them. The glidepad, on the other hand, is only hard on your fingerprint, and those are a liability anyway.:)"
Bullshit, I've used quite a few decade-old Thinkpads, and not a single one had problems with the trackpoint.
I can understand preferring a trackpad, but a decent trackpoint/nipple/clit (I actually haven't seen any usable ones except on Thinkpads, TBH) won't wear out with regular use.
I actually have a Thinkpad SL500 (which is a 16:10 15.4" machine) as a desktop replacement machine, and it's not half bad for around the house... having 1680x1050 resolution on a laptop is great for heavy multitasking and getting actual work done.
"As for the mile, it comes out to 1609 meters or so, which is no nicer than 5280 feet, so I don't see your complaint. A mile is 1000 paces of the Roman legions (mile comes from mille just like milli- does). Given the Romans built the extensive road system and their legions made good use of their long distances, it was a convenient rule of thumb measurement to use."
So Roman legionnaires moved 1.609m every step? Those guys must have been huge, or on stilts...
"I've never seen anything expressed in "decimeters." Usually height of a person is given in centimeters. Whaaa? I have no idea! That unit is too small to be able to estimate. I can't imagine estimating things the size of a human being in centimeters. I can tell you in feet an inches though."
The nice thing about the metric system is that the conversion between the units is so easy that it doesn't really matter what unit it's in. You don't even need to think (at all!) to convert between millimeters, centimeters, decimeters and meters... If someone tells you they're 1682mm tall, you know right away that they're 1.682m. It doesn't really matter, what you use, because the obvious choices are all easy to interpret...
If you want to use decimeters, then it makes more sense, but otherwise, metric uses nothing that compares roughly to a foot.
"Now, I can step off a room and tell you almost precisely what the dimensions of the room are: with my foot and shoe, it is almost exactly 12 inches (exactly 1 foot!). How do YOU do that in metric?"
Hmmm, let's see... using an object with known dimensions to measure another object. What a new concept!
My steps are roughly a meter apart. I know how to use a tape measure. What was the problem again?
"Also, many games are measured in 100-yards. American football (not soccer), the 100-yard dash, etc. Well 100 meters is a bit farther than 100 yards... What do you want? Re-calculate all the distances to be the fractional equivalent to meters? That's just dumb."
Why would you have to recalculate? Nobody would be stopping you from measuring certain things in archaic units, if you were so inclined. I'm pretty sure that somewhere out there, the people who built an NFL stadium used *gasp* converted metric units and managed not to break anything... I hardly think that the 40-yard-line (is there such a thing?:P) actually being the 39.99997-yard-line is that much of a problem;)
Or are you worried that people are going to start saying Twenty-three-point-seven-two-meter-line in football?:D
Dear God I hope this is true... my laptop just went in for service because the goddamned nVidia GPU was heating up the CPU (they're both connected to the same heatsink) past 80C. Until they become far more reliable it's back to integrated graphics for me (at least on portables).
Just transfer the money directly from account to account... It's easy, domestic transfers are usually free with the account (either via paper or online-banking), and there's a paper trail (albeit usually electronic).
I don't think I've even _seen_ a checkbook in the last 5 years...
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I've had luck in this department too. All the neighbors have their routers set to, which basically translates to channel 1. So while they're overlapping like crazy, I've got about 10 channels to use that are free and clear.
And I don't have a microwave.:D
This device has nothing to do with actual Tablet PCs - it's a tablet form factor, but I doubt you'll get the same accuracy that a Wacom-Tablet/Screen offers with a capacitive stylus and this screen...
For surfing the web or reading eBooks... yah, maybe. I'll stick with my keyboard and trackpoint, thank you very much, but I'm sure a lot of people will find this more intuitive.
But for actual work? Forget it.
Why France?
Just curious. :)
I'm guessing torrented episodes also count, as would Hulu and so on...
Hmmm, that explains the halway decent performance... are you implying that these chips couldn't also be used for XviD/DivX?
True, but the codec is slow as hell compared to CoreAVC... so for a lot of people, it's just bloat...
That doesn't change the fact that a device with divx support will play nearly every divx/xvid file, and h264/x264 players are SOL with the majority of the encodes I've seen so far. Many only work properly on a computer, and not on mobile devices or dedicated gear (even though changing two encoding options while leaving the bitrate/filesize the same makes the file play...).
If it weren't for the fact that Android doesn't seem to have implemented a divx/xvid codec at all, I'd probably still be using it (and be watching my TV rips without needing to transcode first).
Weird, I use Chrome as my site-doesn't-work-on-Firefox-alternative too... on Win7 ;)
It's not like there's a lack of browsers on either system.
Ah, I misunderstood you a little there. FuzzyFungus posted a pretty good explanation (or at least a few assumptions that make sense a few posts down:
"One of the GPUs is, almost definitely, whatever GPU was integrated into the chipset. It'll be weak as hell; but use minimal power and be virtually free in terms of board space and bill of materials.
The second GPU will be whatever they picked for when actual performance is needed. It will add cost, space, and heat; but there is really no alternative if you want to have actual power available. Odds are, it uses more power in its lowest stable voltage/clock state than the integrated GPU does at full power."
Don't forget that the "idle" scenario isn't only there to dupe customers - it actually happens every now and then.
When taking lecture notes on my tablet, it spends about half the time in idle with the screen shut off, because we usually get a PDF that we can just add our notes to, and there isn't always that much to add. The machine spends a lot of time idle, and actually gets close to its rated battery life (Thinkpad X41T).
It's not always a lie, it just depends on the usage scenario. Obviously manufacturers have chosen the one usage scenario that's the most beneficial to them... but at least they mostly chose the same one ;)
Most GPUs DO downclock dynamically to save power... take nVidia for instance: My POS GeForce 9300M GS has 4 modes... Standard 2D, Low Power 3D, High Power 3D and Full Power 3D.
Standard 2D (170MHz core, memory clocked down way far as well) draws about 15W at idle, while Full Power 3D (700MHz core, and IIRC about 1400MHz memory) draws about 22W at idle. Now take the same laptop with Intel integrated graphics - 11W at idle. Same settings, exact same components other than the graphics card.
"Performance" GPUs aren't made with heat and power savings in mind... or at least not nearly as well as onboard graphics.
Oh, and did I mention the nice little audio stutters and skips/pauses (high DPC latency spikes) every time the GPU changes clock speeds? Hope those aren't present on this newfangled switchable stuff (that's actually one of the reasons I'd like a manual switch - preferably a hardware one)...
Now try that with heavily compressed video or audio...
Ooops.
"J.K. Pot has thus far refused to make any of her Hairy Porter books available physically because of library fears and a desire to see readers experience her books in pixels."
Oh yeah, that REALLY looks like an article with lots of facts and most definitely deserves a +5 Interesting or +5 Informative... *facepalm*
Actually, there's still a lot of hardware with godawful drivers around in the Windows domain... finding a driver that won't crash the machine or cause other problems when going into or coming out of standby for every piece of hardware can be a pain in the ass, especially on older machines.
Take my Thinkpad X41 Tablet, for instance: On Windows 7, sometimes when I resume from Standby or Hibernate, I can't turn on or off my WiFi adapter any more... My old desktop system refused to go into standby with a Radeon 4670 on Windows 7. Sure, the problems are usually solvable by finding the right driver, but there's still the off-chance that the average Joe's pre-configured computer will get stuck with device drivers that BSODs every time you hit the suspend button...
Oh, the OpenMoko can make phone calls, alright... you just have to wait 30 seconds after the other end has picked up until you can start talking. Picking up an incoming call is fun too - Press the button, wait 20 seconds, "Hi!".
That was a bit of a shock for me, even coming from a stone-aged WM5.0 phone...
I was thinking more along the lines of "tasty"... otherwise, what's the point?
Seems limited to London/England - O2 Germany's HSDPA is awesome around here (Cologne, Duesseldorf, Aachen... that area), with sustained downloads usually between 100 and 400KByte/s depending on the time of day and signal quality.
"Clits have been deprecated because they wear out. They just can't take any abuse whatosever and you're always having to buy replacement covers for them. The glidepad, on the other hand, is only hard on your fingerprint, and those are a liability anyway. :)"
Bullshit, I've used quite a few decade-old Thinkpads, and not a single one had problems with the trackpoint.
I can understand preferring a trackpad, but a decent trackpoint/nipple/clit (I actually haven't seen any usable ones except on Thinkpads, TBH) won't wear out with regular use.
I actually have a Thinkpad SL500 (which is a 16:10 15.4" machine) as a desktop replacement machine, and it's not half bad for around the house... having 1680x1050 resolution on a laptop is great for heavy multitasking and getting actual work done.
Hmmm, the 12" machine (X41 Tablet) I'm typing on right now has one of the best keyboards I've ever used... full-sized and everything too ;)
Now if only it had a (W)SXGA(+) display, it would be the perfect laptop...
"As for the mile, it comes out to 1609 meters or so, which is no nicer than 5280 feet, so I don't see your complaint. A mile is 1000 paces of the Roman legions (mile comes from mille just like milli- does). Given the Romans built the extensive road system and their legions made good use of their long distances, it was a convenient rule of thumb measurement to use."
So Roman legionnaires moved 1.609m every step? Those guys must have been huge, or on stilts...
Are you sure about that?
"I've never seen anything expressed in "decimeters." Usually height of a person is given in centimeters. Whaaa? I have no idea! That unit is too small to be able to estimate. I can't imagine estimating things the size of a human being in centimeters. I can tell you in feet an inches though."
The nice thing about the metric system is that the conversion between the units is so easy that it doesn't really matter what unit it's in. You don't even need to think (at all!) to convert between millimeters, centimeters, decimeters and meters... If someone tells you they're 1682mm tall, you know right away that they're 1.682m. It doesn't really matter, what you use, because the obvious choices are all easy to interpret...
If you want to use decimeters, then it makes more sense, but otherwise, metric uses nothing that compares roughly to a foot.
"Now, I can step off a room and tell you almost precisely what the dimensions of the room are: with my foot and shoe, it is almost exactly 12 inches (exactly 1 foot!). How do YOU do that in metric?"
Hmmm, let's see... using an object with known dimensions to measure another object. What a new concept!
My steps are roughly a meter apart. I know how to use a tape measure. What was the problem again?
"Also, many games are measured in 100-yards. American football (not soccer), the 100-yard dash, etc. Well 100 meters is a bit farther than 100 yards... What do you want? Re-calculate all the distances to be the fractional equivalent to meters? That's just dumb."
Why would you have to recalculate? Nobody would be stopping you from measuring certain things in archaic units, if you were so inclined. I'm pretty sure that somewhere out there, the people who built an NFL stadium used *gasp* converted metric units and managed not to break anything... I hardly think that the 40-yard-line (is there such a thing? :P) actually being the 39.99997-yard-line is that much of a problem ;)
Or are you worried that people are going to start saying Twenty-three-point-seven-two-meter-line in football? :D
Dear God I hope this is true... my laptop just went in for service because the goddamned nVidia GPU was heating up the CPU (they're both connected to the same heatsink) past 80C. Until they become far more reliable it's back to integrated graphics for me (at least on portables).
Just transfer the money directly from account to account... It's easy, domestic transfers are usually free with the account (either via paper or online-banking), and there's a paper trail (albeit usually electronic).
I don't think I've even _seen_ a checkbook in the last 5 years...