Honestly - I'm not really in to CoD. Despite owning the entire series, I've really not put THAT much in - because when ever I played MW or MW2 at my friends' houses, I didn't really enjoy it. Black Ops to me feels very different. I'm not sure about the single player campaigns - I'm still working through CoD 1.. but in terms of multiplayer, I really do enjoy Black Ops more for some reason. Probably because the maps are just... I dunno - I find them better designed. Easier to sort of throw yourself into a game and actually have some idea of where you are and how different parts of the map relate to each other, even on large maps, in much less time. More color in the maps helps a lot in that regard.
The article seems to be mostly aimed at AT&T's lack of bridge support - which by the way, can be bypassed by the way, quite easily - as you can just grab a link for bridge off the net, as opposed to AppWorld. So if you aren't on AT&T - which quite frankly, describes most of the Blackberry using world - this thing is still a great companion to the Blackberry. Plus this review reeks of confirmation bias. Essentially this "review" boils down to "I was expecting it to be bad, and I think it's bad, and AT&T makes it worse, and I can't even be bothered to do a quick look through Blackberry community sites to see if my main gripe with AT&T can be rectified, because I don't want to be wrong."
Or a computer, a bluray drive, and AnyDVDHD. Or a computer with 3 Bluray drives, one Region A, one Region B, and one Region C. So, if you really care, it's merely slightly inconvenient, not particularly undoable.
And it "isn't catching on?" Plus the economy in the US still is pretty much in the crapper... what are worldwide figures? What are figures by country? Just because the US doesn't adopt something doesn't mean it's not getting adopted. The US has access to web streaming in HD of many shows and movies that the rest of the world does not - could that have anything to do with it?
I know the numbers don't back it up, but almost exclusively, the form factor my friends look for in a smartphone, is that of the Blackberry Bold/Curve. It's what my friends who work use, it's what my friends who go to university use, it's what my friends in high school buy as their first smartphone. The number of android users I know - 1. The number of iPhone users I know - I think it's 5 though that's changing to 4 soon, and used to be 6. I'm sure that one consideration is cold winters - physical keyboards are nice, and you don't have to mod your gloves or buy special gloves. It's a selling point in a climate where it's been snowing this past weekend. As for the people who had iPhones, they are moving to Blackberry because they perceive the actual quality of the Blackberry as a phone to be better, and they want to move away from a touchscreen keyboard for communication purposes. The current form factor of the curve/bold is still fairly similar to the 8800 from before the iPhone came out, and the 8800 is not that different from older Blackberry models. So what I can see among my circle of friends? For the most part, the iPhone changed absolutely nothing. I see the same form factor in use on the train everyday, I see the same form factor used by the students at my school... yeah it's probably confirmation bias, but there you have it. A pre-iPhone smartphone concept that has lasted to this day - with new models yet to be introduced to the market, still based on the essentially same concept.
Is it banned from import? The movie WAS released lawfully in Japan on VHS, Beta, and Laserdisc - and as NTSC-J is essentially compatible with NTSC - one could, I assume, legally acquire it that way. Similarly I would imagine that you would legally be allowed to import a whole PAL setup, should you need that, or SECAM, and players for each of the regions... I mean, I'm not sure of that, but I do believe that if you were willing to undergo the inconvenience of traveling to foreign locations, purchasing an item which is legal to purchase there, then, subject to restrictions preventing importing that item for personal use, you would legally be allowed to then carry that item back with you, and play it in the United States. It woudln't be easy, it wouldn't be cheap, but it would very likely be legal.
Or you guys could just vote for some party that isn't Republican or Democrat that might actually get your country out of the copyright situation that you're in and allow you to break DRM for personal use on legitimate copies. So... I think your question confuses inconvenient with illegal / impossible.
Unless of course the importing of the necessary devices (not required for Song of the South specifically) is in fact illegal, in which case, yes, you would have some problems playing back material that is in some way region locked, or in an invompatible format (PAL or something).
And the way that Windows knows the pixels per inch calculation is a user setting. I suppose it is possible that some laptop manufacturers have released their systems in such a way that they assume the user would automatically want to specify a different DPI setting than the default assumed what 72? 96? dpi that has no actual relevance to real world, and is just a basic assumption that "kind of works", and really matters mostly if you want to ensure that 100% zoom in your programs is precisely relevant to a real world 100% size of some thing that you are designing. Obviously very small interface elements on very high resolution screens will be unusable based on this default assumption. But just because the display physically is high dpi doesn't mean that windows cares about that, or will automatically adjust everything based on that, or that you can't turn that off. You might wish to not turn that off because it is of benefit to your situation to have some DPI aware scaling applied, but it is not the general use case - at the moment - for Windows, as much as we might wish that it were.
Oh and yes, Microsoft should be doing things to make their internal applications work properly in various scenarios.
My point is that the analog gear costs money. The computer stuff is cheap. It's when you start looking at "How many mics do I need to own to mic a drum kit? How many channels of mic pre-amps does that require?" then even in your basic case of like, a copule of decent condenser mics for the overheads and a pair of 57s for the snare and the bass drum, and a mixer with 4 channels worth of mic pre's that aren't crap, you're already talking more than a thousand dollars. Old analog equipment that's GOOD in the audio world - it costs money. You can find ways around it from a personal perspective - my church has a lot of gear that they let me borrow, likewise I have a few friends that own some mics, and we all sort of decide not to buy the same type of mic, and just let each other borrow the other mics as need be - less redundancy, we all help each other out - all that means less money that I personally had to spend, but I don't for a second think that just because I didn't pay for it, that gear doesn't have an actual cost. The Neumann U-87ai mic I have access to costs $3000. Stereo overheads were like $2000 for the pair. Yeah, the SM57 isn't an expensive mic, but even used it's still like $70-$80 for the real thing, and you'll probably want more than one. The Yamaha grand I have access to costs like $40,000, and the specific model streets for more like $70,000 with all the disklavier features. I'm not paying that price by myself, but it's still a price that gets paid (and tuning that piano for recording is in the hundreds by itself).
You absolutely need to have talent, and that's going to get you far. BUT the original comparison was to The Beatles. And you won't get that sound, even if you have that talent, if you don't have the room, or the gear, and you won't get those for a couple hundred, or - likely - a couple thou. It's absolutely an investment, and I'm not complaining about that, and you can definitely do it for cheaper than the labels will charge you for it, their model is broken. But being able to make that investment in gear, space, etc. - Not everybody has that opportunity or ability or connections themselves. And even studio time will cost you a few thousand to make a full length album, if you don't want to build your own.
The recording media (the computer) is cheap/software But are you seriously of the opinion that you can build a room like Abbey Road has, buy the microphones that the beatles used (or even comparable microphones), and the gear (amps, instruments) that they used? Heck, even buying an interface with as many mic-preamps as would be needed to duplicate the recording conditions of the beatles costs more than a few hundred dollars. Not to mention that the speakers you'll need to even know what the hell it is you're recording don't come cheap. Cheaper than they did before, yes, but not cheap.
To build a professional recording rig, and a room to use it in, doesn't cost what it used to. But it's still in the thousands, not the hundreds, if you want to do it "right" - or at least comparably to something like Pink Flloyd, THe Beatles, or Zeppelin - where actually people are behind pretty much everything you hear on the record, and everything on the record is relatively unique to that record. Yes, you can use loops and samples these days, it's not the same... and a midi controller that can actually trigger samples usefully is still going to be more than a couple hundred bucks, but don't act as if you could throw together a full recording experience for anything less than a couple thousand and actually be able to do what those guys did. And that's just on a gear, and not on an experience side.
I'm all for home recording, just don't BS about how inexpensive it is, when it isn't yet.
For storage in devices like printers, etc., where there might be a large amount of storage to facilitate print queuing, etc., I can see how something like this coul be useful. For instance, one of the options on these devices is to self-wipe on power cycle. For companies worried about security, this might be worthwhile in their printers, where the storage itself might be for the purpose of convenience, but they would rather be safe than sorry, and data destruction is of ultimately no consequence because the source for that data is found elsewhere. That way, they can dispose of their printers in relative peace of mind, because if someone powers on the printer to see what it has on it, then poof, no more data. Or even do the "unknown host" thing, and then all you have to do is make it clear to IT that you don't want the valid host (the printer) to survive the disposal process, so if they want to play with some baseball bats in a field to the point of smashing the drive controller... then that's fine with corporate.
Really? You aren't aware that there are problems with focal depth and motion-parallax using our current 3D technology in theatres?
Also - flicker on a computer monitor is different - on a CRT monitor you are depending on the persistance of phosphers to maintain the illusion of an image, while what is really occuring is that a single point is being lit at any time. Film is different - the entire image is being displayed at once on a screen, and the light flickers in order so that the frame is lit when it is at the proper location in front of the screen, and not when the frame is say, halfway between two images. Digital projectors and LCDs are different still - there is no reason for any portion of the screen to not be displaying SOME image. Obviously certain LCD projecting technologies can create a sort of flicker, but ultimately if you are not scanning or scrolling an image, there is very little "flicker."
Wait what? I'm not getting headaches because of the frame rate... People get headaches at 60FPS on their computers... if anything, this will result in a film that looks unnaturally smooth to a movie going audience... essentially adding a distraction for the 2D viewers while not fixing anything for 3D viewers...
Better quality? I have yet to see a downloaded file that was BETTER quality than a bluray... I mean, equal to, yeah, but better? Where are people getting the source video and audio from that's better than bluray??
Your buses don't have power outlets? That's too bad. There are a good number of buses in my city that do. I suppose that they're technically considered "BRT"-style buses, but that seems to have more to do with the body work than the routes that they run, which existed before we ever got any BRT-style buses. Anyway, you should petition your city to look into getting New Flyer D60LF BRTs. The ride is smooth, and the articulation tends to hide the technological antics you get up to at the back of the bus from the driver.
Oh and the source for that: Commercially pressed and purchased Blu-ray discs (A selection of movies, TV shows including Star Trek TOS on BluRay and Battlestar Galactica on BluRay, etc.), Windows 7 x64, CyberLink PowerDVD 10, and both an IBM P275 CRT monitor that displays the content at 1080p over both the DVI-A and VGA connections, and an old Acer LCD that predates HDCP over DVI, run over DVI-D and VGA that likewise also displays the content at 1080p. Also - 1080p to my parents HDTV from the VGA port on my Sony laptop - that computer has PowerDVD 9, not 10.
Yes, yes you can. I do so on a daily basis. In full 1080p. No, I haven't yet bought a disc that has the flag that would disable that option. Yes I have AnyDVD HD so such a flag would do nothing anyways.
Stop spreading FUD. Seriously. The whole "OMG it won't play if I don't have HDCP" crap is tiring as hell. It's wrong. For the incredible majority of BluRay discs it is not only wrong, but you don't have to do a damn thing to make it work. Good lord.
Even more needed is TrackPad++, because the settings avaliable under bootcamp make using the trackpad horrible when compared to OSX on the same computer. Just like you need to grab up to date video drivers from other websites, etc.
And just as an aside - right click menus in most of the applications are very smart, and generally very useful. They provide a contextual menu that has to do with "doing something where my mouse is", that can't really be replaced by having to move your mouse elsewhere to click on something, or with keyboard shortcuts which would in at least half of the cases require two hands to use, and would require burying functionality even deeper, in "documentation" that no one would ever read. I am glad that Mac laptops, and Mac mice now have right click abilities, because it means that most Mac developers can use context menus when they make sense - ie, when in the context, the user could modify something or start some task relating to some specific point on the screen. Maybe I'm biased, because I do a lot of audio recording, and used to do a lot of video editing, both of which are tasks where right clicking is intuitive because the workflow is far from linear, and is by virtue of the task, very complex. I am more comfortable with the standard two button approach to right clicking because I find it tends to never unexpectedly move my cursor, but I know many people who can do great things with a track pad.
However, if you plan on upgrading, and save accordinly long term, then you're talking as a worst case scenario with no interest earned from like, a saving's account, $25 a year, or about $2 a month. At least where I live, minimum wage is $10/hour - so that's about 12 minutes of minimum wage labour a month for 8 years. Which doesn't exactly seem unreasonable from a financial perspective. Of course, as has been noted, other options include running a free modern operating system, and/or running one of the many other browsers. However, I'm still not buying a complaint that an upgrade costs to much, when, yes, that money COULD be spent in other ways... if you care that much about running IE9 to complain that it doesn't run on XP.
Whereas if I valued games or movies or gas more than operating system upgrades, I wouldn't particularly complain that "Feature X" requires an upgrade. It's Windows. Upgrades cost money. They come with new features. It's the model Microsoft uses to make money. They've used the same model to make money for decades. It wasn't a surprise that this would happen....
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Honestly - I'm not really in to CoD. Despite owning the entire series, I've really not put THAT much in - because when ever I played MW or MW2 at my friends' houses, I didn't really enjoy it. Black Ops to me feels very different. I'm not sure about the single player campaigns - I'm still working through CoD 1.. but in terms of multiplayer, I really do enjoy Black Ops more for some reason. Probably because the maps are just... I dunno - I find them better designed. Easier to sort of throw yourself into a game and actually have some idea of where you are and how different parts of the map relate to each other, even on large maps, in much less time. More color in the maps helps a lot in that regard.
Plus, I like playing Zork on my XBox.
The article seems to be mostly aimed at AT&T's lack of bridge support - which by the way, can be bypassed by the way, quite easily - as you can just grab a link for bridge off the net, as opposed to AppWorld. So if you aren't on AT&T - which quite frankly, describes most of the Blackberry using world - this thing is still a great companion to the Blackberry. Plus this review reeks of confirmation bias. Essentially this "review" boils down to "I was expecting it to be bad, and I think it's bad, and AT&T makes it worse, and I can't even be bothered to do a quick look through Blackberry community sites to see if my main gripe with AT&T can be rectified, because I don't want to be wrong."
MOST people don't have to worry about region support because MOST people aren't going to buy that much stuff outside of their region.
Or a computer, a bluray drive, and AnyDVDHD. Or a computer with 3 Bluray drives, one Region A, one Region B, and one Region C. So, if you really care, it's merely slightly inconvenient, not particularly undoable.
And it "isn't catching on?" Plus the economy in the US still is pretty much in the crapper... what are worldwide figures? What are figures by country? Just because the US doesn't adopt something doesn't mean it's not getting adopted. The US has access to web streaming in HD of many shows and movies that the rest of the world does not - could that have anything to do with it?
I know the numbers don't back it up, but almost exclusively, the form factor my friends look for in a smartphone, is that of the Blackberry Bold/Curve. It's what my friends who work use, it's what my friends who go to university use, it's what my friends in high school buy as their first smartphone. The number of android users I know - 1. The number of iPhone users I know - I think it's 5 though that's changing to 4 soon, and used to be 6. I'm sure that one consideration is cold winters - physical keyboards are nice, and you don't have to mod your gloves or buy special gloves. It's a selling point in a climate where it's been snowing this past weekend. As for the people who had iPhones, they are moving to Blackberry because they perceive the actual quality of the Blackberry as a phone to be better, and they want to move away from a touchscreen keyboard for communication purposes. The current form factor of the curve/bold is still fairly similar to the 8800 from before the iPhone came out, and the 8800 is not that different from older Blackberry models. So what I can see among my circle of friends? For the most part, the iPhone changed absolutely nothing. I see the same form factor in use on the train everyday, I see the same form factor used by the students at my school... yeah it's probably confirmation bias, but there you have it. A pre-iPhone smartphone concept that has lasted to this day - with new models yet to be introduced to the market, still based on the essentially same concept.
Now click both buttons at the same time. How'd that work out for you.
Or how many less new games those people will buy because they're getting less income from selling their used games?
Is it banned from import? The movie WAS released lawfully in Japan on VHS, Beta, and Laserdisc - and as NTSC-J is essentially compatible with NTSC - one could, I assume, legally acquire it that way. Similarly I would imagine that you would legally be allowed to import a whole PAL setup, should you need that, or SECAM, and players for each of the regions... I mean, I'm not sure of that, but I do believe that if you were willing to undergo the inconvenience of traveling to foreign locations, purchasing an item which is legal to purchase there, then, subject to restrictions preventing importing that item for personal use, you would legally be allowed to then carry that item back with you, and play it in the United States. It woudln't be easy, it wouldn't be cheap, but it would very likely be legal. Or you guys could just vote for some party that isn't Republican or Democrat that might actually get your country out of the copyright situation that you're in and allow you to break DRM for personal use on legitimate copies. So... I think your question confuses inconvenient with illegal / impossible. Unless of course the importing of the necessary devices (not required for Song of the South specifically) is in fact illegal, in which case, yes, you would have some problems playing back material that is in some way region locked, or in an invompatible format (PAL or something).
And the way that Windows knows the pixels per inch calculation is a user setting. I suppose it is possible that some laptop manufacturers have released their systems in such a way that they assume the user would automatically want to specify a different DPI setting than the default assumed what 72? 96? dpi that has no actual relevance to real world, and is just a basic assumption that "kind of works", and really matters mostly if you want to ensure that 100% zoom in your programs is precisely relevant to a real world 100% size of some thing that you are designing. Obviously very small interface elements on very high resolution screens will be unusable based on this default assumption. But just because the display physically is high dpi doesn't mean that windows cares about that, or will automatically adjust everything based on that, or that you can't turn that off. You might wish to not turn that off because it is of benefit to your situation to have some DPI aware scaling applied, but it is not the general use case - at the moment - for Windows, as much as we might wish that it were. Oh and yes, Microsoft should be doing things to make their internal applications work properly in various scenarios.
Damn it, you might have to pay for your copy. Shit, that's terrible :)
My point is that the analog gear costs money. The computer stuff is cheap. It's when you start looking at "How many mics do I need to own to mic a drum kit? How many channels of mic pre-amps does that require?" then even in your basic case of like, a copule of decent condenser mics for the overheads and a pair of 57s for the snare and the bass drum, and a mixer with 4 channels worth of mic pre's that aren't crap, you're already talking more than a thousand dollars. Old analog equipment that's GOOD in the audio world - it costs money. You can find ways around it from a personal perspective - my church has a lot of gear that they let me borrow, likewise I have a few friends that own some mics, and we all sort of decide not to buy the same type of mic, and just let each other borrow the other mics as need be - less redundancy, we all help each other out - all that means less money that I personally had to spend, but I don't for a second think that just because I didn't pay for it, that gear doesn't have an actual cost. The Neumann U-87ai mic I have access to costs $3000. Stereo overheads were like $2000 for the pair. Yeah, the SM57 isn't an expensive mic, but even used it's still like $70-$80 for the real thing, and you'll probably want more than one. The Yamaha grand I have access to costs like $40,000, and the specific model streets for more like $70,000 with all the disklavier features. I'm not paying that price by myself, but it's still a price that gets paid (and tuning that piano for recording is in the hundreds by itself). You absolutely need to have talent, and that's going to get you far. BUT the original comparison was to The Beatles. And you won't get that sound, even if you have that talent, if you don't have the room, or the gear, and you won't get those for a couple hundred, or - likely - a couple thou. It's absolutely an investment, and I'm not complaining about that, and you can definitely do it for cheaper than the labels will charge you for it, their model is broken. But being able to make that investment in gear, space, etc. - Not everybody has that opportunity or ability or connections themselves. And even studio time will cost you a few thousand to make a full length album, if you don't want to build your own.
The recording media (the computer) is cheap/software But are you seriously of the opinion that you can build a room like Abbey Road has, buy the microphones that the beatles used (or even comparable microphones), and the gear (amps, instruments) that they used? Heck, even buying an interface with as many mic-preamps as would be needed to duplicate the recording conditions of the beatles costs more than a few hundred dollars. Not to mention that the speakers you'll need to even know what the hell it is you're recording don't come cheap. Cheaper than they did before, yes, but not cheap.
To build a professional recording rig, and a room to use it in, doesn't cost what it used to. But it's still in the thousands, not the hundreds, if you want to do it "right" - or at least comparably to something like Pink Flloyd, THe Beatles, or Zeppelin - where actually people are behind pretty much everything you hear on the record, and everything on the record is relatively unique to that record. Yes, you can use loops and samples these days, it's not the same... and a midi controller that can actually trigger samples usefully is still going to be more than a couple hundred bucks, but don't act as if you could throw together a full recording experience for anything less than a couple thousand and actually be able to do what those guys did. And that's just on a gear, and not on an experience side.
I'm all for home recording, just don't BS about how inexpensive it is, when it isn't yet.
For storage in devices like printers, etc., where there might be a large amount of storage to facilitate print queuing, etc., I can see how something like this coul be useful. For instance, one of the options on these devices is to self-wipe on power cycle. For companies worried about security, this might be worthwhile in their printers, where the storage itself might be for the purpose of convenience, but they would rather be safe than sorry, and data destruction is of ultimately no consequence because the source for that data is found elsewhere. That way, they can dispose of their printers in relative peace of mind, because if someone powers on the printer to see what it has on it, then poof, no more data. Or even do the "unknown host" thing, and then all you have to do is make it clear to IT that you don't want the valid host (the printer) to survive the disposal process, so if they want to play with some baseball bats in a field to the point of smashing the drive controller... then that's fine with corporate.
Really? You aren't aware that there are problems with focal depth and motion-parallax using our current 3D technology in theatres? Also - flicker on a computer monitor is different - on a CRT monitor you are depending on the persistance of phosphers to maintain the illusion of an image, while what is really occuring is that a single point is being lit at any time. Film is different - the entire image is being displayed at once on a screen, and the light flickers in order so that the frame is lit when it is at the proper location in front of the screen, and not when the frame is say, halfway between two images. Digital projectors and LCDs are different still - there is no reason for any portion of the screen to not be displaying SOME image. Obviously certain LCD projecting technologies can create a sort of flicker, but ultimately if you are not scanning or scrolling an image, there is very little "flicker."
Wait what? I'm not getting headaches because of the frame rate... People get headaches at 60FPS on their computers... if anything, this will result in a film that looks unnaturally smooth to a movie going audience... essentially adding a distraction for the 2D viewers while not fixing anything for 3D viewers...
Better quality? I have yet to see a downloaded file that was BETTER quality than a bluray... I mean, equal to, yeah, but better? Where are people getting the source video and audio from that's better than bluray??
Your buses don't have power outlets? That's too bad. There are a good number of buses in my city that do. I suppose that they're technically considered "BRT"-style buses, but that seems to have more to do with the body work than the routes that they run, which existed before we ever got any BRT-style buses. Anyway, you should petition your city to look into getting New Flyer D60LF BRTs. The ride is smooth, and the articulation tends to hide the technological antics you get up to at the back of the bus from the driver.
Oh and the source for that: Commercially pressed and purchased Blu-ray discs (A selection of movies, TV shows including Star Trek TOS on BluRay and Battlestar Galactica on BluRay, etc.), Windows 7 x64, CyberLink PowerDVD 10, and both an IBM P275 CRT monitor that displays the content at 1080p over both the DVI-A and VGA connections, and an old Acer LCD that predates HDCP over DVI, run over DVI-D and VGA that likewise also displays the content at 1080p. Also - 1080p to my parents HDTV from the VGA port on my Sony laptop - that computer has PowerDVD 9, not 10.
Yes, yes you can. I do so on a daily basis. In full 1080p. No, I haven't yet bought a disc that has the flag that would disable that option. Yes I have AnyDVD HD so such a flag would do nothing anyways. Stop spreading FUD. Seriously. The whole "OMG it won't play if I don't have HDCP" crap is tiring as hell. It's wrong. For the incredible majority of BluRay discs it is not only wrong, but you don't have to do a damn thing to make it work. Good lord.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6iW-8xPw3k&feature=related has the context that makes it even funnier.
If only there were other nuclear fuels. Cough. Thorium. Cough.
You are wrong. Buy a camera. Use the camera. Notice how things are not horizontally flipped.
Even more needed is TrackPad++, because the settings avaliable under bootcamp make using the trackpad horrible when compared to OSX on the same computer. Just like you need to grab up to date video drivers from other websites, etc.
And just as an aside - right click menus in most of the applications are very smart, and generally very useful. They provide a contextual menu that has to do with "doing something where my mouse is", that can't really be replaced by having to move your mouse elsewhere to click on something, or with keyboard shortcuts which would in at least half of the cases require two hands to use, and would require burying functionality even deeper, in "documentation" that no one would ever read. I am glad that Mac laptops, and Mac mice now have right click abilities, because it means that most Mac developers can use context menus when they make sense - ie, when in the context, the user could modify something or start some task relating to some specific point on the screen. Maybe I'm biased, because I do a lot of audio recording, and used to do a lot of video editing, both of which are tasks where right clicking is intuitive because the workflow is far from linear, and is by virtue of the task, very complex. I am more comfortable with the standard two button approach to right clicking because I find it tends to never unexpectedly move my cursor, but I know many people who can do great things with a track pad.
However, if you plan on upgrading, and save accordinly long term, then you're talking as a worst case scenario with no interest earned from like, a saving's account, $25 a year, or about $2 a month. At least where I live, minimum wage is $10/hour - so that's about 12 minutes of minimum wage labour a month for 8 years. Which doesn't exactly seem unreasonable from a financial perspective. Of course, as has been noted, other options include running a free modern operating system, and/or running one of the many other browsers. However, I'm still not buying a complaint that an upgrade costs to much, when, yes, that money COULD be spent in other ways... if you care that much about running IE9 to complain that it doesn't run on XP.
Whereas if I valued games or movies or gas more than operating system upgrades, I wouldn't particularly complain that "Feature X" requires an upgrade. It's Windows. Upgrades cost money. They come with new features. It's the model Microsoft uses to make money. They've used the same model to make money for decades. It wasn't a surprise that this would happen....