I've heard a lot of business students telling me that my Transformer is what they wish their iPad could do, especially when they need to do a lot of spreadsheet work or type long emails. It's the best of both worlds to keep a computer that can be used as a solitary touch-based screen or a keyboard-enabled netbook all in one, with the battery life that outlasts even the Macbook Air and a size and weight that is definitively portable.
For all you boast about not wanting to dock and connect, I've seen plenty of iPad docks with keyboards and music and the like. If people want wireless, they either aren't showing that with their wallet or the market is still some years behind them. That, or your just pulling shit out of your ass.
Then again, based on your argument, I have to think it's the latter.
Honestly, I wouldn't trust the construction of a netbook-type iPad dock, or any similar dock for another tablet. The Transformer has two additional docking clamps to lock it in place, and that means I can carry it like a folded netbook and not worry about killing my docking port if I jostle the tablet the wrong way.
And as far as I've seen, iPad docks are one way or another, battery or keyboard. They definitely don't come with USB ports or an SD card slot as well. Ho hum.
Or you do what's called beta test and let other people test it for you on their tablet. Bring your thinking into the 21st century, all the big kids (read: video game companies and calling 'beta' a gold release) are doing it!
Seriously? You must not have seen ASUS' Eee Pad Transformer or the Transformer Prime (I hate how people keep forgetting about that one). How innovative is it for your tablet to dock with a keyboard (which includes goodies like a battery and USB ports) and become kin to a netbook?
It's not that ICS will be the catalyst. It's that the convergence of ICS on both Tablet and Phone will make it much easier to sell someone an Android tablet versus an iPad. Got that killer app for your phone? Stick it on your tablet and be even more productive with a big screen.
You must not have been in school recently. There's no surfing for ANYTHING with some schools' locked down networks. Even a glimpse of the wrong word on a page gets a website blocked. Even slashdot isn't safe, tech blogs can get blocked for being distracting, too. I've seen it happen.
You don't even need the last part. Stick in the most computer illiterate girls you can find and put them next to the techie geek kids. Then sit back and watch them blossom...or scrape off the geek's guts out of the locker they were shoved into by the girl's husky football/hockey/basketball/wrestling/etc player boyfriend.
Don't worry, I'm sure you didn't mean for that to happen.
Don't restrict this to just between the teacher and student, but allow other students to "peek in" on what their classmates are doing as well or to even collaboratively write software from multiple stations simultaneously.
This has to be approached carefully so students don't get caught cheating, or letting one person carry the whole class.
Another thing that would help here as well is to have "social network" tools available like instant messages and e-mails, with possibly the restriction that you can only contact other students within the school using those tools (various ways to accomplish that task). Include message boards or even a localized version of Diaspora (or something that approximates Facebook)... with the goal in mind that students can "network" with each other to solve assigned problems.
Or Moodle. Yes, I know, Moodle isn't the best thing on earth, and its forum architecture is stuck in 2001, but it's more likely to be in an instructor's arsenal and be accessible to students (like used for other classes, so students might already have an account) than a localized Diaspora or similar mechanism. Also, a software like Moodle takes out the social aspects so students don't get distracted by commenting on each other's walls, getting the most friends or finding the perfect profile picture off the internet and will actually do their schoolwork.
Not exactly cheap? I'm not sure what you consider cheap, then. Compared to the Xoom, Tab 10.1 or iPad, $300-400 for the ASUS Transformer tablet+keyboard is pretty cheap. Compared to the same specs for a netbook or full-blown notebook, sure, I'll give you that it's not a cheap device. But it's not an expensive tablet.
I know a school that does something like this for regular class times, and students HATE it. It locks down their college-owned Windows swivel-screen laptops (I'm trying not to say tablet and get it confused with the iPad, etc) during class, and they can't access any applications besides what the teacher wants. So that means students can't use any alternative note-taking software (besides OneNote) and can't look something up on the internet (such as a reference made in lecture) during class.
Oh, sure it prevents Facebook and solitaire, but honestly, who cares? Students are the ones paying thousands of dollars to attend college, if they're wasting their own class time, it's their money.
There are many programs made for Windows, to the point where it's more convenient to stay in the environment than switch to an environment where I'd have to relearn all the useful programs. I've played around with *nix systems, mostly Ubuntu and a bit of (open)SuSE, and know enough to be moderately comfortable. I can handle CLI input if I need, but generally only if I know what to type first, for which I turn to google.
I honestly haven't tried playing games on linux systems, even with Wine or Transgaming. I don't have an X-box, Playstation or Wii, so my at-home gaming system is my PC. I play a lot of diverse games, from Assassin's Creed to Europa Universalis to Oblivion, and I would hate to find out that one or more of them are impossible or not enjoyable to play on a Linux setup. I also have some of them by Steam, which adds more hoops to jump through.
I do use cross-platform applications when I can. I've got LibreOffice, Pidgin, Firefox, XAMPP, VLC and so forth. My one big productivity application is probably Photoshop, and I don't know how well that would translate on Wine. I know compatibility for Adobe products on *nix systems is a mixed game, and GIMP is an almost good (but not quite there yet) solution.
So it boils down to taking the time to do some research, see if my games would install on Linux and try them out, to find programs that would be equivalents for the Windows-only applications I use, and to take the time to adjust and get truly comfortable in a Linux environment. Due to school and work, I don't know if that's an easy possibility at this point.
Who knows? Maybe Windows 8 will be so bad it'll force me to switch.
It's not illegibly small outside of websites (especially tech blogs, for some reason) that think they should still style their sites with pt size fonts, instead of em. Using CTRL+ helps, but it's still a bit ridiculous. I'm just saying that the same resolution on a 10" tablet would be insanely tiny, mostly for the reason of those same websites. Everything else might scale, but the web would still be an awful place to venture.
The tablet's barely competitive with the iPad's price point as it is. I'm sure the cheaper option for mass production was to boost the screen's brightness and pump up the battery time than invest in a different screen technology. Consider that it's probably not that much of a stretch for their production factories to switch from Transformer 1 to Transformer 2 with similar technologies, and you have the answer for much of your question right there.
Do you know how crazy that is? I have 1920x1080p resolution on my 17" laptop, and text gets insanely small. Now consider stripping 7 inches and reading that on a 10" screen. It'd be impossible!
What they need is better scaling algorithms, not higher resolutions.
cosumer rights here are shit. Get some signs, friends and park your ass at their door. Piitch forks could be used if not enough sings are available.
Well, the holiday season is fast upon us, so it wouldn't be hard to convince some Carolers to take up the cause. Tell them you'll have free hot chocolate, and you're bound to get a few to sign and hold your signs.
I was just going to recommend this. The behavior they're displaying borders on harassment, and should definitely be viewed as unfavorable by police and (hopefully) the shareholders.
If you're talking about corporations that abuse the GPL, such as creating a closed-source product based on modified GPLed code, that's not okay and is the perfect example of where to enforce the GPL.
If you're talking about a company that used to release a GPLed version of their software and doesn't under new management, that's not a good example. Sure, you might cry over the lack of new features, but the company handed something to you on a silver platter (their GPLed source code) that you, as the customer, neither paid for nor deserved. It was a bonus, not a requirement. And the new company isn't required to maintain the GPLed version, either. It doesn't mean that no one else can, though.
Me? You mean the person sitting on the other side of this monitor rocking a rooted-and-CyanogenModded Android phone and switching between Windows and gnome-shelled Ubuntu?
Oh, I thought you meant me.
But that's a nice sentiment for those people I mentioned, I'll pass it on.
Really. You know those people who call tech support frantically saying that their printer doesn't print, and they need 50 copies in five minutes? Or that the Internet is broken?
Now imagine those people with an iPhone 4S during a data outage or in the middle of New York City (or another smartphone sinkhole)? "My phone doesn't work" because Siri is offline or unreachable is a pretty lame excuse, but perfectly valid for people who are going to be trained to rely on it.
You seem deficient in reading post titles. I specifically questioned the article's stated fact that Obama was given a Sectera Edge (the NSA-certified phone-PDA device), which was proven false in my link. Obama's not using a phone-PDA, he's using a juiced-up Blackberry that's been locked down and yeah, probably certified for secure but unclassified communications as well.
While it's television, I might point to the lead character of House, MD, who drives a motorcycle with a handicapped sticker on it. Well, make that drove, I think the show's producers traded it in for a car to crash into Cuddy's dining room.
Slashdot Mirror
I've heard a lot of business students telling me that my Transformer is what they wish their iPad could do, especially when they need to do a lot of spreadsheet work or type long emails. It's the best of both worlds to keep a computer that can be used as a solitary touch-based screen or a keyboard-enabled netbook all in one, with the battery life that outlasts even the Macbook Air and a size and weight that is definitively portable.
For all you boast about not wanting to dock and connect, I've seen plenty of iPad docks with keyboards and music and the like. If people want wireless, they either aren't showing that with their wallet or the market is still some years behind them. That, or your just pulling shit out of your ass.
Then again, based on your argument, I have to think it's the latter.
Honestly, I wouldn't trust the construction of a netbook-type iPad dock, or any similar dock for another tablet. The Transformer has two additional docking clamps to lock it in place, and that means I can carry it like a folded netbook and not worry about killing my docking port if I jostle the tablet the wrong way.
And as far as I've seen, iPad docks are one way or another, battery or keyboard. They definitely don't come with USB ports or an SD card slot as well. Ho hum.
Or you do what's called beta test and let other people test it for you on their tablet. Bring your thinking into the 21st century, all the big kids (read: video game companies and calling 'beta' a gold release) are doing it!
You bought an Acer and you're complaining? lol
Seriously? You must not have seen ASUS' Eee Pad Transformer or the Transformer Prime (I hate how people keep forgetting about that one). How innovative is it for your tablet to dock with a keyboard (which includes goodies like a battery and USB ports) and become kin to a netbook? It's not that ICS will be the catalyst. It's that the convergence of ICS on both Tablet and Phone will make it much easier to sell someone an Android tablet versus an iPad. Got that killer app for your phone? Stick it on your tablet and be even more productive with a big screen.
I rocked to that Rick Roll.
You must not have been in school recently. There's no surfing for ANYTHING with some schools' locked down networks. Even a glimpse of the wrong word on a page gets a website blocked. Even slashdot isn't safe, tech blogs can get blocked for being distracting, too. I've seen it happen.
You don't even need the last part. Stick in the most computer illiterate girls you can find and put them next to the techie geek kids. Then sit back and watch them blossom...or scrape off the geek's guts out of the locker they were shoved into by the girl's husky football/hockey/basketball/wrestling/etc player boyfriend.
Don't worry, I'm sure you didn't mean for that to happen.
Don't restrict this to just between the teacher and student, but allow other students to "peek in" on what their classmates are doing as well or to even collaboratively write software from multiple stations simultaneously.
This has to be approached carefully so students don't get caught cheating, or letting one person carry the whole class.
Another thing that would help here as well is to have "social network" tools available like instant messages and e-mails, with possibly the restriction that you can only contact other students within the school using those tools (various ways to accomplish that task). Include message boards or even a localized version of Diaspora (or something that approximates Facebook)... with the goal in mind that students can "network" with each other to solve assigned problems.
Or Moodle. Yes, I know, Moodle isn't the best thing on earth, and its forum architecture is stuck in 2001, but it's more likely to be in an instructor's arsenal and be accessible to students (like used for other classes, so students might already have an account) than a localized Diaspora or similar mechanism. Also, a software like Moodle takes out the social aspects so students don't get distracted by commenting on each other's walls, getting the most friends or finding the perfect profile picture off the internet and will actually do their schoolwork.
Not exactly cheap? I'm not sure what you consider cheap, then. Compared to the Xoom, Tab 10.1 or iPad, $300-400 for the ASUS Transformer tablet+keyboard is pretty cheap. Compared to the same specs for a netbook or full-blown notebook, sure, I'll give you that it's not a cheap device. But it's not an expensive tablet.
I know a school that does something like this for regular class times, and students HATE it. It locks down their college-owned Windows swivel-screen laptops (I'm trying not to say tablet and get it confused with the iPad, etc) during class, and they can't access any applications besides what the teacher wants. So that means students can't use any alternative note-taking software (besides OneNote) and can't look something up on the internet (such as a reference made in lecture) during class.
Oh, sure it prevents Facebook and solitaire, but honestly, who cares? Students are the ones paying thousands of dollars to attend college, if they're wasting their own class time, it's their money.
There are many programs made for Windows, to the point where it's more convenient to stay in the environment than switch to an environment where I'd have to relearn all the useful programs. I've played around with *nix systems, mostly Ubuntu and a bit of (open)SuSE, and know enough to be moderately comfortable. I can handle CLI input if I need, but generally only if I know what to type first, for which I turn to google.
I honestly haven't tried playing games on linux systems, even with Wine or Transgaming. I don't have an X-box, Playstation or Wii, so my at-home gaming system is my PC. I play a lot of diverse games, from Assassin's Creed to Europa Universalis to Oblivion, and I would hate to find out that one or more of them are impossible or not enjoyable to play on a Linux setup. I also have some of them by Steam, which adds more hoops to jump through.
I do use cross-platform applications when I can. I've got LibreOffice, Pidgin, Firefox, XAMPP, VLC and so forth. My one big productivity application is probably Photoshop, and I don't know how well that would translate on Wine. I know compatibility for Adobe products on *nix systems is a mixed game, and GIMP is an almost good (but not quite there yet) solution.
So it boils down to taking the time to do some research, see if my games would install on Linux and try them out, to find programs that would be equivalents for the Windows-only applications I use, and to take the time to adjust and get truly comfortable in a Linux environment. Due to school and work, I don't know if that's an easy possibility at this point.
Who knows? Maybe Windows 8 will be so bad it'll force me to switch.
It's not illegibly small outside of websites (especially tech blogs, for some reason) that think they should still style their sites with pt size fonts, instead of em. Using CTRL+ helps, but it's still a bit ridiculous. I'm just saying that the same resolution on a 10" tablet would be insanely tiny, mostly for the reason of those same websites. Everything else might scale, but the web would still be an awful place to venture.
The tablet's barely competitive with the iPad's price point as it is. I'm sure the cheaper option for mass production was to boost the screen's brightness and pump up the battery time than invest in a different screen technology. Consider that it's probably not that much of a stretch for their production factories to switch from Transformer 1 to Transformer 2 with similar technologies, and you have the answer for much of your question right there.
Also, it's they're not their.
Do you know how crazy that is? I have 1920x1080p resolution on my 17" laptop, and text gets insanely small. Now consider stripping 7 inches and reading that on a 10" screen. It'd be impossible!
What they need is better scaling algorithms, not higher resolutions.
W8 may be less GPU intensive, but it's more resource intensive. MY time, MY energy and MY stress, thus MY resources are more depleted by using it.
cosumer rights here are shit. Get some signs, friends and park your ass at their door. Piitch forks could be used if not enough sings are available.
Well, the holiday season is fast upon us, so it wouldn't be hard to convince some Carolers to take up the cause. Tell them you'll have free hot chocolate, and you're bound to get a few to sign and hold your signs.
I was just going to recommend this. The behavior they're displaying borders on harassment, and should definitely be viewed as unfavorable by police and (hopefully) the shareholders.
Somehow I doubt an 80-year-old woman has the manual dexterity to operate the buttons on a handheld Nintendo unit.
If you're talking about corporations that abuse the GPL, such as creating a closed-source product based on modified GPLed code, that's not okay and is the perfect example of where to enforce the GPL.
If you're talking about a company that used to release a GPLed version of their software and doesn't under new management, that's not a good example. Sure, you might cry over the lack of new features, but the company handed something to you on a silver platter (their GPLed source code) that you, as the customer, neither paid for nor deserved. It was a bonus, not a requirement. And the new company isn't required to maintain the GPLed version, either. It doesn't mean that no one else can, though.
Me? You mean the person sitting on the other side of this monitor rocking a rooted-and-CyanogenModded Android phone and switching between Windows and gnome-shelled Ubuntu? Oh, I thought you meant me. But that's a nice sentiment for those people I mentioned, I'll pass it on.
Really. You know those people who call tech support frantically saying that their printer doesn't print, and they need 50 copies in five minutes? Or that the Internet is broken?
Now imagine those people with an iPhone 4S during a data outage or in the middle of New York City (or another smartphone sinkhole)? "My phone doesn't work" because Siri is offline or unreachable is a pretty lame excuse, but perfectly valid for people who are going to be trained to rely on it.
You seem deficient in reading post titles. I specifically questioned the article's stated fact that Obama was given a Sectera Edge (the NSA-certified phone-PDA device), which was proven false in my link. Obama's not using a phone-PDA, he's using a juiced-up Blackberry that's been locked down and yeah, probably certified for secure but unclassified communications as well.
Since when?
While it's television, I might point to the lead character of House, MD, who drives a motorcycle with a handicapped sticker on it. Well, make that drove, I think the show's producers traded it in for a car to crash into Cuddy's dining room.