After reading so much about how "good" aplles machines and OS are I bought one about 6 months ago.
It is for sale now, I found no significant advantage and a number of disavantages in OSX and the apple hardware.
Plus I got sick of having to use the bloody keyboard to right click! Being a laptop user exclusively, and a fan of touchpads, an external mouse was not an option.
The only area the MAc seemed better was looks/feel. They certainly make a nice looking product but frankly I found everytrhing else to be inferior.
I have seen that in IPAQ too, but a Google search seems to reveal no explosions. It seems the IPAQ battery has a stonger outer sleeve, which can handle great strees without rupturing, something Apple it seems dont have.
I repair a fair few PDA with LiPo batteries. Some of the older IPAQs have a built in battery.
Despite having to apply a reasonably large force, to break the battery free of the double sided tape locating it(Enough to bend thru 90 degrees)none of them have exploded.
A google search shows no exploding IPAQs, and there are a hell of a lot of those around!
Just as a test I will drop some of them from various heights and see what happens.
The issue is not internal seals failing, the issue would be the outer metalized plastic failing allowing air to enter the battery.
Just as dropping a portable device and having it explode is unexpected! Point being portabole devices WILL get dropped and should not expode afterwards.
Dont even start me on modern "Mastering" techniques because it seems there no such thing. The modern method is compress evertything all the time, eliminating the dynamic range of the music.
Drummers definitely do set the volume, and to some extent the louder they play the better. When one is running 12-16 open mics, the accumulative noise from all of them becomes significant, so the louder the level coming from a given mic, the less noise in the mix.
A soft drummer does not get the same tones as a louder one. When gained up to reach the correct level more noise is induced to a mix.
Drums often have 6-8 mics so a significant increase in noise occours and another problem,"spill" the unwanted sound from other nearby instruments is also increased.
Not to say there should be no dynamic though, good musicians and (-: can indeed play well both loudly and softly-at the relevant times.
Some musical styles do not really work at to quiet a volume. I have played in bands too, and I like a fairly loud stage volume myself.....
There is an impact to bass produced from huge ammounts of speaker cone that no smaller system can emulate.
Oh and BTW, Shhhh, civilians are not supposed to know about the pschycho acoustic thing....they might realise...the truth!!!
Actaully, the way the drummer plays is the biggest influence on volume, a loud drummer gives the rest of the band little choice of how loud they play, they have to be able to hear themselves.
Pete Townsend of The Who had hearing damage, which occoured due to excessive headphone volume in the recording studio, not live gigs.
You do kinda have a point regarding volume, but in my experience it is not as big a problem as you may think. As exposure to loud levels is relatively short (At most about 2 hours at a time) the level needs to be very high to cause hearing damage.
Despite mixing (Loudly)for 20 + years I have no hearing damage!
I was always very careful to remove myself from the gig when not mixing, to avoid the usually loud distorted DJ music in beteween sets.
More hearing problems result from loud industrial envronments where repeated exposure to loud uncompressed transients can last all day. Exposure time is the key factor.
Few of the musos I worked with had hearing damage.
Some kinds of music just do not work well unless at a relatively high volume.
A classic example was Bob Marleys backing band The Wailers. I worked with them for a short tour once and they were incredibly loud, but mostly in the low bass area.
This produced a most extraordinary effect, of the whole airmass in the room moving back and forth at very low frequency, producing an incerdible groove in the music.(Having 8X dual 24" sub woofers helped too)
Plenty thanks, only 2000+ shows in 20 years, most of which were repeat bookings, some in the hundreds of shows. Not to mention at least that many more that I had to refuse as I was already booked, often 6 months in adavance.
Where did I say poor equipment that wont go as loud as I want? You just made that up, re read what I wrote. How many times have you mixed a band? Ah of course none.
I will explain it simply as you don't seem to have a clue about live sound. If a rock band for example is very loud on stage(Instrument amps and speakers can be surprisingly efficient)say 105 dbspl one needs to be able to add 10db of volume (115dbspl)above the off stage volume for the vocals to be heard clearly.
A snare drum on its own can when hit hard, exceed 120dbspl.
Hence you need a powerful system capable of exceeding the off stage level. Turning down the volume is not an option in this scenario, unless the band is willing to turn down on stage, and let me tell you that virtually never happens, or if it does only for a few minutes then they are back up again.
To ensure quality some "headroom" (Unused power)is required, that is power above what is required, to keep all points in the signal chain below the threshold of clipping, and hence the sound clean. Even so most systems I used would flash the clip lights on the peaks of the bass drum, this is not unusual with high powered actively crossed over systems.
In an active xover system clipping of the bass amp does not effect the higher frequency channels.
One of the things I discovered was that clean sound can be very loud without bothering listeners, whereas dirty or poorly equalized sound can be annoying at almost any volume.
At no stage did I say I wanted a system to be louder if it was crap. That would just result in louder crap.
As a long time live sound professional I did not choose crap systems for my shows, but some were equipment provided, so one had to make do with what was there. When I specified the systems it was never a problem.
Obviouslyly the quality of the band and their instruments and amps has a huge influence too. On many occasions I mixed multiple acts, some of which sounded like crap and had me working my ass off thinking I was doing something wrong.
When the next act came on all of the problems were gone and the sound great without any changes on my part, but even after many years it is sometimes very difficult for me to be sure whether it was the engineer/system causing the bad sound or just a bad band!
Like I said if you are not at the desk doing the gig you have no idea under what limitations the sound guys is operating, and no real basis for criticism.
I did live sound for 20 years. It is not always the engineers fault if the sound is crap. Some rooms are just impossile to get a good sound. Some bands are so loud on stage that the PA system cannot keep up, again bad sound. Some PA systems are crap.
Bottom line is if you werent at the mixing desk yourself you have no idea of the problems that are in front of the Sound guy.
Not to mention the unprecendented 10 year drought we are suffering in Australia. Our main river system and water supply is at a dangerously low level less than 30%.
South Australia is forced to build a desal plant to ensure water supplies. Currently my gliding club at waikerie in SA has 3% of its irrigation water allowance available.
Large portions of the permanent friut block plantings that have been in place for up to 100 years are dying due to lack of water, and yet we still have idiots like the above mentioned Ian Pilmer denting the bleeding obvious.
We have also had heatwaves of epic proportion.
The lower lakes of the river Murray are dying and turning acidic, threatening the magnificent Coorong. LAke Aleandrina and Lake Albert are turning into acidified wasetland.
I have lived here for 40 years now and the climate has definately changed drastically.
Being a resident of Adelaide where Pilmer lives I have heard his rants on climate change on local radio. He is a goelogist, that is he studies rocks. He is not a climate change expert, and his ludicrous book has been discredited for soem time.
"Oh, and since we know for a fact that CO2 traps heat, you also need to explain why increased CO2 levels *aren't* causing any warming."
Well said Sir, this is the exact point which the moronic deniers never address. It is easily proved that an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere increases the ammount of heat trapped under the atmosphere. The attitude of denialists is roughly the equivalent of asking a baker advice on network design, then crediting the bakers opinion more highly than a qualified networking expert.
The improvement has to do with where the ignition takes place in the cylinders. On direct injection engines, mixture does not always end up where the spark is. With a laser the point where ignition occours can be carefully placed to maximize the benefits of a lean mixture.
Slashdot Mirror
"About 2002 I was a conference"
Is that like being turned into a newt?
Did you get better?
After reading so much about how "good" aplles machines and OS are I bought one about 6 months ago.
It is for sale now, I found no significant advantage and a number of disavantages in OSX and the apple hardware.
Plus I got sick of having to use the bloody keyboard to right click! Being a laptop user exclusively, and a fan of touchpads, an external mouse was not an option.
The only area the MAc seemed better was looks/feel. They certainly make a nice looking product but frankly I found everytrhing else to be inferior.
I have seen that in IPAQ too, but a Google search seems to reveal no explosions. It seems the IPAQ battery has a stonger outer sleeve, which can handle great strees without rupturing, something Apple it seems dont have.
IF the laptop battery was LiPo you would have a point. Most laptops have Lithium ion NOT polymer batteries. Easy to confuse but quite relevant.
L-ion batteries ususally have a metal case whereas LIPo have a metallized plastic case.
I repair a fair few PDA with LiPo batteries. Some of the older IPAQs have a built in battery.
Despite having to apply a reasonably large force, to break the battery free of the double sided tape locating it(Enough to bend thru 90 degrees)none of them have exploded.
A google search shows no exploding IPAQs, and there are a hell of a lot of those around!
Just as a test I will drop some of them from various heights and see what happens.
The issue is not internal seals failing, the issue would be the outer metalized plastic failing allowing air to enter the battery.
Fooom!
Just as dropping a portable device and having it explode is unexpected! Point being portabole devices WILL get dropped and should not expode afterwards.
Bloody hell, it exploded for goodness sake.
Are you saying that a portable product that explodes when dropped is OK?
Note how the fanboys are posting AC a lot on this thread eh?
You want a story about another manufaturer.
Recently I had problems with a Samsung 19" analog TV/monitor. When it was not fixed within 2 months
they replaced it with a 22" digital model.
I was very impressed. Apple is not the only company to give good service, despite the fanboi claims.
And for the purpose of balance I offer my experience with Dells. I am responsible for purchasing hardware at several schools.
I have bought over a hundered now, both laptops and desktops. Failiures, 1 desktop needed a new mother board. Thats is all the failiures.
Even the now 4 year old cheap low end laptops are still going fine.
No complaints here.
And THAT is the problem with anecdotal evidence, there is always someone who has has a different expeience.
So rant on Ray, but remember, you just might have been unlucky!
Dont even start me on modern "Mastering" techniques because it seems there no such thing.
The modern method is compress evertything all the time, eliminating the dynamic range of the music.
Drummers definitely do set the volume, and to some extent the louder they play the better. When one is running 12-16 open mics, the accumulative noise from all of them becomes significant, so the louder the level coming from a given mic, the less noise in the mix.
A soft drummer does not get the same tones as a louder one. When gained up to reach the correct level more noise is induced to a mix.
Drums often have 6-8 mics so a significant increase in noise occours and another problem ,"spill" the unwanted sound from other nearby instruments is also increased.
Not to say there should be no dynamic though, good musicians and (-: can indeed play well both loudly and softly-at the relevant times.
Some musical styles do not really work at to quiet a volume. I have played in bands too, and I like a fairly loud stage volume myself.....
There is an impact to bass produced from huge ammounts of speaker cone that no smaller system can emulate.
Oh and BTW, Shhhh, civilians are not supposed to know about the pschycho acoustic thing....they might realise...the truth!!!
What was that about getting my shearing checked?
Actaully, the way the drummer plays is the biggest influence on volume, a loud drummer gives the rest of the band little choice of how loud they play, they have to be able to hear themselves.
Pete Townsend of The Who had hearing damage, which occoured due to excessive headphone volume in the recording studio, not live gigs.
You do kinda have a point regarding volume, but in my experience it is not as big a problem as you may think. As exposure to loud levels is relatively short (At most about 2 hours at a time) the level needs to be very high to cause hearing damage.
Despite mixing (Loudly)for 20 + years I have no hearing damage!
I was always very careful to remove myself from the gig when not mixing, to avoid the usually loud distorted DJ music in beteween sets.
More hearing problems result from loud industrial envronments where repeated exposure to loud uncompressed transients can last all day. Exposure time is the key factor.
Few of the musos I worked with had hearing damage.
Some kinds of music just do not work well unless at a relatively high volume.
A classic example was Bob Marleys backing band The Wailers. I worked with them for a short tour once and they were incredibly loud, but mostly in the low bass area.
This produced a most extraordinary effect, of the whole airmass in the room moving back and forth at very low frequency, producing an incerdible groove in the music.(Having 8X dual 24" sub woofers helped too)
Plenty thanks, only 2000+ shows in 20 years, most of which were repeat bookings, some in the hundreds of shows. Not to mention at least that many more that I had to refuse as I was already booked, often 6 months in adavance.
Where did I say poor equipment that wont go as loud as I want? You just made that up, re read what I wrote. How many times have you mixed a band? Ah of course none.
I will explain it simply as you don't seem to have a clue about live sound. If a rock band for example is very loud on stage(Instrument amps and speakers can be surprisingly efficient)say 105 dbspl one needs to be able to add 10db of volume (115dbspl)above the off stage volume for the vocals to be heard clearly.
A snare drum on its own can when hit hard, exceed 120dbspl.
Hence you need a powerful system capable of exceeding the off stage level. Turning down the volume is not an option in this scenario, unless the band is willing to turn down on stage, and let me tell you that virtually never happens, or if it does only for a few minutes then they are back up again.
To ensure quality some "headroom" (Unused power)is required, that is power above what is required, to keep all points in the signal chain below the threshold of clipping, and hence the sound clean. Even so most systems I used would flash the clip lights on the peaks of the bass drum, this is not unusual with high powered actively crossed over systems.
In an active xover system clipping of the bass amp does not effect the higher frequency channels.
One of the things I discovered was that clean sound can be very loud without bothering listeners, whereas dirty or poorly equalized sound can be annoying at almost any volume.
At no stage did I say I wanted a system to be louder if it was crap. That would just result in louder crap.
As a long time live sound professional I did not choose crap systems for my shows, but some were equipment provided, so one had to make do with what was there. When I specified the systems it was never a problem.
Obviouslyly the quality of the band and their instruments and amps has a huge influence too.
On many occasions I mixed multiple acts, some of which sounded like crap and had me working my ass off thinking I was doing something wrong.
When the next act came on all of the problems were gone and the sound great without any changes on my part, but even after many years it is sometimes very difficult for me to be sure whether it was the engineer/system causing the bad sound or just a bad band!
Like I said if you are not at the desk doing the gig you have no idea under what limitations the sound guys is operating, and no real basis for criticism.
Record companies decide to "promote" on the basis
of how good looking an artist is, see Brittany Spears or Kylie Minogue for examples.
Getting rid of the "Industry" who are nothing more than leaches would be a very good thing.
I did live sound for 20 years. It is not always the engineers fault if the sound is crap. Some rooms are just impossile to get a good sound. Some bands are so loud on stage that the PA system cannot keep up, again bad sound. Some PA systems are crap.
Bottom line is if you werent at the mixing desk yourself you have no idea of the problems that are in front of the Sound guy.
How many times have you actually mixed a band?
Yeh right never, it shows.
As a non Us citizen, I can tell you that Mr Obama
has improved the US reputation overseas greatly.
Having a dumb half wit like Bush made you all look like idiotic violent rednecks.
If you view being respected internationally as valuable, Mr Obama has done a great job.
By the way how many wars has Obama started, causing the deaths of thousands of soldiers since he took office? You define harm very strangely sir.
Not to mention the unprecendented 10 year drought we are suffering in Australia. Our main river system and water supply is at a dangerously low level less than 30%.
South Australia is forced to build a desal plant to ensure water supplies. Currently my gliding club at waikerie in SA has 3% of its irrigation water allowance available.
Large portions of the permanent friut block plantings that have been in place for up to 100 years are dying due to lack of water, and yet we still have idiots like the above mentioned Ian Pilmer denting the bleeding obvious.
We have also had heatwaves of epic proportion.
The lower lakes of the river Murray are dying and turning acidic, threatening the magnificent Coorong. LAke Aleandrina and Lake Albert are turning into acidified wasetland.
I have lived here for 40 years now and the climate has definately changed drastically.
Being a resident of Adelaide where Pilmer lives I have heard his rants on climate change on local radio. He is a goelogist, that is he studies rocks. He is not a climate change expert, and his ludicrous book has been discredited for soem time.
Way to quote another irelevant non expert.
"Oh, and since we know for a fact that CO2 traps heat, you also need to explain why increased CO2 levels *aren't* causing any warming."
Well said Sir, this is the exact point which the moronic deniers never address. It is easily proved that an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere increases the ammount of heat trapped under the atmosphere. The attitude of denialists is roughly the equivalent of asking a baker advice on network design, then crediting the bakers opinion more highly than a qualified networking expert.
Phone number portability is a legal requirement here in Australia. No carrier can refuse you transfering a number to another carrier.
It amazes me that the US "Free market" is anything but free, you have less flexibility than well regulated markets.
Oh and recieving SMS is free here too.
Personally I am very happy with my IPAQ 6365 phone, made by HTC.
I have had no crashes, and it runs everything I throw at it. The XDA forum is an excellent source of info.
What a pity the Iphone is not as flexible and open as WM phones.
Dont try and reason with CTS, he is totally biased against Islamic countries for some reason, I am guessing ethnic background.
He will dissemble wriggle and play fast and loose with the truth to justify his paranoia. Just ignore him.
"not understanding that there are other valid points of view out there other than yours"
You CTS, of all people cannot accuse anyone of this.
You constantly push a paranoid anti Islamic line in your posts, and never consider anyone elses point of view.
Windows ME eh, I see your XKCD with;
http://xkcd.com/323/
The improvement has to do with where the ignition takes place in the cylinders. On direct injection engines, mixture does not always end up where the spark is. With a laser the point where ignition occours can be carefully placed to maximize the benefits of a lean mixture.
How pray tell does hydrogen and oxygen burning produce C02? It would be a bloody miracle if it did.....