The amount of media coverage. International press. 24/7 news cycle. The constant lies. "Zimmerman is white". Showing images of Trayvon Martin when he was only 12 and not 17 (and 6'3"). Editing the 911 call from Zimmerman to make him seem racist.
This is all beside the point. He shot an innocent with candies and has not been arrested for it, Mostly because of a complacent police dept. There's an old saying that goes:
After "I-am-sorry" was born, nobody ever got beaten up again.
Apologies won't bring the dead back to life. Zimmerman must be tried for it and, if found guilty, he should be jailed for a lonnnnnng time.
A telephone that can't reliably place or receive calls (thanks to an exclusive partner, AT&T).
An Internet/multimedia tablet that doesn't support Flash. Or has USB/HDMI ports.
Yes, Apple gets away with a lot. Right now, they can sell a fridge to an eskimo.
I own an Archos 5 IMT, which, although doesn't use e-ink, has a touchscreen. Recently, during my first flight with it, I noticed the screen had become completely unresponsive. I was forced to put it aside. The device was working properly the day before, and was back to normal again when I tried it again at the hotel. While not a sample size as large as yours, it's meaningful to me because my device has always worked properly with the exception of that flight.
There might be some component inside these gadgets that is either:
Exactly year ago, when HP released the Slate 500 (the predecessor to this Slate 2), there was a lot excitement among Tablet PC enthusiasts regarding the device. the device had been hinted by Ballmer at CES, then touted by HP, then mysteriously killed by the company, then suddenly resurrected by HP. Once released, the device sold out remarkably quick and became a source of frustration to those that awaited months for production to catch up with demand. It was obvious that HP had underestimated the Slate 500's appeal. The device got mostly good reviews from its owners. But at at treat point, HP had already shifted focus to the Touchpad, which got all attention, marketing and resources.
If you needed dual-boot capability, MS Office (or LibreOffice, like me!), Winamp, Notepad++, VirtualBox, Firefox and other Windows apps; and you happened to be into tablet computing; the Slate 500 offered you a platform to both consume media and do real work on the go....with all the amenities of laptops such USB, HDMI, SD Card slot, Bluetooth, etc. Truth be told, not cheap as a netbook, but you'd get a business-grade machine with decent durability, a docking station and a touchscreen.
Fast forward 12 months to this Slate 2. Intel convinced HP to "upgrade" (this word, plus "innovate" have truly lost their meaning) from the original Atom Z540 used on the Slate 500, to the slower Atom Z670. Not only is the CPU inside the "upgraded" Slate 2 quite slower, but its integrated graphics suffers from some crippling driver-induced sickness that prevents the GPU from even performing at the levels of the year-old Slate 500. Not only the new HP Slate 2 got beat by its predecessor from a year ago, but it also arrived too late, as Fujitsu released a slate of similar specs (the Q550) about 6 months ago.
I own 2 Tablet PCs (I'm handwriting this from one of them right now), but if you want to try this platform (this is not a toy), do yourself a favor and get a Tablet PC from someone else (the Samsung Series 7 Slate looks good). HP has lost its way.
The TabletPC platform failed because of the lack of promotion. Microsoft and the OEMs (Dell, HP, Lenovo, Gateway, etc) have never -- to this day -- to advertise Tablet PCs. I have never seen a Tablet PC ad anywhere. Ever! Not even in brochures mailed by the aforementioned companies! They don't even appear on the Home Page of those OEMs. They've bastardized the technology from the start. Then they waited for someone with more vision and interest in it to fully capitalize on the idea. This someone turned out to be Apple, who, since Day-1, has made enormous fanfare about the platform. Let's face it, Apple's remarkable marketing machine could convince an eskimo to buy an iFridge. Kudos to them.
Shame on Microsoft and friends for their utter incompetence at showing people that they have had tablets for a decade and what such machines were like. And before someone starts bitching about the Tablet PC's initial reliance on a stylus (pen), know that Apple is currently working on a stylus for a future iPad. Once it comes out, people will think that Apple invented the tablet....and the stylus! Brilliant!:-D
- Proudly owner of TabletPCs (TC1100 and TM2) for 5 years.
the problem is that a 2-min wait for a boot and a 10-sec wait to launch a browser is not acceptable to many people that have used decent computers before. besides, Flash does not run well on Atom processors. that's a fact. and HP was already bragging about Flash support on the Slate, which, although a nice plus, would leave people with a bitter taste in their mouth when they tried fullscreen playback.
i have the excellent HP tm2 tablet with an Intel SU7300 and 4Gb of RAM running Win7. after tweaking my Services and Startup progs, it still takes it a whole minute to start the tablet and launch IE (takes longer to lauch FF with all my addons. this kind of wait isnt a big deal to me, but the people who have smartphones or have used the iPad, are expecting tablets with 2-sec boots. i would not buy an iPad for the very same reason i would not buy an Atom Slate running Win7: it would be too expensive (HP was planning a $550 price tag) for the half-baked computer experience it would provide.
Dell seems to have realized http://www.androidcentral.com/dell-looking-glass-tablet-tegra-2-love a lot earlier that Windows 7 would not be responsive enough on a slow processor and made the conscious and responsible move towards an alternative OS before HP. It has taken HP months of tests to realize that an Atom CPU and Win7 aren't a match made in heaven. They even posted videos on their YouTube channel recently!
HP should either upgrade the Slate's CPU and stick with Win7 -- which would give them a larger-than-life ecosystem -- or they should go with Android, which, not only is open, but it's also growing in popularity at a great pace http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-features/49518-android-market-hits-50k-app-mark/.
It's not really ironic that with deep discounts in addition to coupons you can get this cheaply, but it's hardly relevant to the average customer, who gets neither.
the average customer is screwed no matter what. he/she doesnt know the difference between a Pentium II, Pentium Dual Core, Pentium D and a Core 2 Duo. hell, even i would have to look for benchmarks on Tom's Hardware website in order to find out what is what.
Tablets, by Apple or HP, are designed to be as light as possible and provide a decent battery life because people who buy them, will be carrying them around and will neither put up with electronic dumbbells nor will they be searching for wall outlets to which the device can be connected. therefore, both the CPU and GPU must be relatively "humble" and spare the battery from the stress to which Alienware lappies are usually subject.
there will never be a Tablet with the latest CPU and Graphics plus the biggest HD..... just as there will never be a sports car there will be suitable to both carry the family to the beach, the horse to the vet, and the hottie lover to a restaurant in Monaco.
i have a TC1100 and will get a tm2 next!:-) i agree with you 100%. i cannot see myself using a regular laptop anymore. a TabletPC covers all bases. and it's great for reading! be it online news, comic books or ebooks!
most of those people dissing the TabletPC have never used one. the only reason why Tablets never got popular is because Dell, HP, Lenovo and Fujitsu never cared (or gave a damn) about promoting the technology! Apple's fanfare over the iPad will payoff with the selling of zillions of units (despite the lack of a real OS or USB!). Apple can sell a fridge to an eskimo!
now it's too late for Dell and the others.... iPads will become synonym of Tablets and no one will ever know that other manufacturers have been making Tablets for more than 5 years.
Apple wasnt the first to make MP3 Players, but they marketed the iPod heavily. on the other hand, Creative, who is one of the pioneers on the field of MP3 devices, has been relegated to oblivion....
the story will repeat itself with the Tablets. being the first to produce something is pointless if no ones knows about it.
i, too, have a TabletPC. it's an old HP TC1100 that shall be replaced with a new HP tm2 sometime this year. when working on it, i only need to switch to laptop mode if i'm coding HMTL or C#. for any other task, i use one of the 2 following features (built-in WinXP Tablet Edition):
- hand-writing recognition (it works very well).
- dictation (works ok coz i'm not a native English speaker).
more affordable?! from Lenovo?! you're are kidding, right? HP has been making Tablets for years and, unlike Lenovo's, they have been truly affordable. compare the tablets below. both are current and have similar specs.
- Lenovo Thinkpad X200 Tablet ($1,500).
- HP tm2t ($950).
and HP is cooking up another Tablet to be released this summer. this new one will be a slate (ie, no physical keyboard). it was briefly showed by Ballmer during the last CES. no doubt the iPad will sell like hotcakes. Apple's hype can sell fridges to Eskimos! however, if there's a company with any chance of competing with Apple on this category, this company is HP! period!
i'm glad Apple got into this market. competition is great. it will lead to cheaper tablets from all manufacturers.
The iPad is the laughing stock of the computer world.
It has become the poster child for joke overhyped products.
Most of the Apple Hipster Douchebag Starbucks iPhone crowd are distancing themselves from the stench of the epic iPad fail.
agreed. the only tablet worth my money is the HP tm2t!
that's a real computer, not an overpriced toy.
mass-adoption is a security liability. it must be feared as much as holes and bugs in software. how does it feel to be in Microsoft's shoes?
go ahead, fanbois. mod me down.
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have acknowledged that the rolling-boulder booby trap in the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark was inspired by the 1954 Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge adventure "The Seven Cities of Cibola" (Uncle Scrooge #7). Lucas and Spielberg have also said that some of Barks's stories about space travel and the depiction of aliens had an influence on them.[3] Lucas wrote the foreword to the 1982 Uncle Scrooge McDuck: His Life and Times. In it he calls Barks's stories "cinematic" and "a priceless part of our literary heritage".
those comics were of a remarkable quality! they expanded both my knowledge of history (Greeks, Romans, Vikings, etc) and vocabulary immensely. it was also through Barks' stories i learned English (painfully translating word-by-word with a dictionary). it's sad that those characters and stories got so over-simplified for the "Ducktales" cartoon.
The argument is still going on, of course, but maybe a little light will be shed on the issue this week at OSCON. On Wednesday night at 7PM Pacific, representatives of the 5 major open source languages [...]
5 geeks.... 90 minutes....
that will be a very dim light to be shed on such unanimously-agreed subject.
In addition to the browser's known features, like mouse gestures, keyboard shortcuts, voice navigation, mail and RSS support, speed dial and so forth[...]
Yes, keyboards are becoming ubiquitous. Who'd have thunk?
Slashdot Mirror
The amount of media coverage. International press. 24/7 news cycle. The constant lies. "Zimmerman is white". Showing images of Trayvon Martin when he was only 12 and not 17 (and 6'3"). Editing the 911 call from Zimmerman to make him seem racist.
This is all beside the point. He shot an innocent with candies and has not been arrested for it, Mostly because of a complacent police dept. There's an old saying that goes:
After "I-am-sorry" was born, nobody ever got beaten up again.
Apologies won't bring the dead back to life. Zimmerman must be tried for it and, if found guilty, he should be jailed for a lonnnnnng time.
This event is exposing the worst of this country.
Agreed. It's exposing racism and impunity.
A telephone that can't reliably place or receive calls (thanks to an exclusive partner, AT&T).
An Internet/multimedia tablet that doesn't support Flash. Or has USB/HDMI ports.
Yes, Apple gets away with a lot. Right now, they can sell a fridge to an eskimo.
Exactly! Mod parent up.
I think the Archos 5 uses resistive screen. But I agree. It could have been anything else. Even the greater proximity to God.
I own an Archos 5 IMT, which, although doesn't use e-ink, has a touchscreen. Recently, during my first flight with it, I noticed the screen had become completely unresponsive. I was forced to put it aside. The device was working properly the day before, and was back to normal again when I tried it again at the hotel. While not a sample size as large as yours, it's meaningful to me because my device has always worked properly with the exception of that flight.
There might be some component inside these gadgets that is either:
a) affected by the pre-flight scanners.
or
b) the in-flight instruments.
Exactly year ago, when HP released the Slate 500 (the predecessor to this Slate 2), there was a lot excitement among Tablet PC enthusiasts regarding the device. the device had been hinted by Ballmer at CES, then touted by HP, then mysteriously killed by the company, then suddenly resurrected by HP. Once released, the device sold out remarkably quick and became a source of frustration to those that awaited months for production to catch up with demand. It was obvious that HP had underestimated the Slate 500's appeal. The device got mostly good reviews from its owners. But at at treat point, HP had already shifted focus to the Touchpad, which got all attention, marketing and resources.
If you needed dual-boot capability, MS Office (or LibreOffice, like me!), Winamp, Notepad++, VirtualBox, Firefox and other Windows apps; and you happened to be into tablet computing; the Slate 500 offered you a platform to both consume media and do real work on the go....with all the amenities of laptops such USB, HDMI, SD Card slot, Bluetooth, etc. Truth be told, not cheap as a netbook, but you'd get a business-grade machine with decent durability, a docking station and a touchscreen.
Fast forward 12 months to this Slate 2. Intel convinced HP to "upgrade" (this word, plus "innovate" have truly lost their meaning) from the original Atom Z540 used on the Slate 500, to the slower Atom Z670. Not only is the CPU inside the "upgraded" Slate 2 quite slower, but its integrated graphics suffers from some crippling driver-induced sickness that prevents the GPU from even performing at the levels of the year-old Slate 500. Not only the new HP Slate 2 got beat by its predecessor from a year ago, but it also arrived too late, as Fujitsu released a slate of similar specs (the Q550) about 6 months ago.
I own 2 Tablet PCs (I'm handwriting this from one of them right now), but if you want to try this platform (this is not a toy), do yourself a favor and get a Tablet PC from someone else (the Samsung Series 7 Slate looks good). HP has lost its way.
The TabletPC platform failed because of the lack of promotion. Microsoft and the OEMs (Dell, HP, Lenovo, Gateway, etc) have never -- to this day -- to advertise Tablet PCs. I have never seen a Tablet PC ad anywhere. Ever! Not even in brochures mailed by the aforementioned companies! They don't even appear on the Home Page of those OEMs. They've bastardized the technology from the start. Then they waited for someone with more vision and interest in it to fully capitalize on the idea. This someone turned out to be Apple, who, since Day-1, has made enormous fanfare about the platform. Let's face it, Apple's remarkable marketing machine could convince an eskimo to buy an iFridge. Kudos to them.
:-D
Shame on Microsoft and friends for their utter incompetence at showing people that they have had tablets for a decade and what such machines were like. And before someone starts bitching about the Tablet PC's initial reliance on a stylus (pen), know that Apple is currently working on a stylus for a future iPad. Once it comes out, people will think that Apple invented the tablet....and the stylus! Brilliant!
- Proudly owner of TabletPCs (TC1100 and TM2) for 5 years.
the problem is that a 2-min wait for a boot and a 10-sec wait to launch a browser is not acceptable to many people that have used decent computers before. besides, Flash does not run well on Atom processors. that's a fact. and HP was already bragging about Flash support on the Slate, which, although a nice plus, would leave people with a bitter taste in their mouth when they tried fullscreen playback.
i have the excellent HP tm2 tablet with an Intel SU7300 and 4Gb of RAM running Win7. after tweaking my Services and Startup progs, it still takes it a whole minute to start the tablet and launch IE (takes longer to lauch FF with all my addons. this kind of wait isnt a big deal to me, but the people who have smartphones or have used the iPad, are expecting tablets with 2-sec boots. i would not buy an iPad for the very same reason i would not buy an Atom Slate running Win7: it would be too expensive (HP was planning a $550 price tag) for the half-baked computer experience it would provide.
Dell seems to have realized http://www.androidcentral.com/dell-looking-glass-tablet-tegra-2-love a lot earlier that Windows 7 would not be responsive enough on a slow processor and made the conscious and responsible move towards an alternative OS before HP. It has taken HP months of tests to realize that an Atom CPU and Win7 aren't a match made in heaven. They even posted videos on their YouTube channel recently! HP should either upgrade the Slate's CPU and stick with Win7 -- which would give them a larger-than-life ecosystem -- or they should go with Android, which, not only is open, but it's also growing in popularity at a great pace http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-features/49518-android-market-hits-50k-app-mark/.
It's not really ironic that with deep discounts in addition to coupons you can get this cheaply, but it's hardly relevant to the average customer, who gets neither.
the average customer is screwed no matter what. he/she doesnt know the difference between a Pentium II, Pentium Dual Core, Pentium D and a Core 2 Duo. hell, even i would have to look for benchmarks on Tom's Hardware website in order to find out what is what.
you are not being realistic.
Tablets, by Apple or HP, are designed to be as light as possible and provide a decent battery life because people who buy them, will be carrying them around and will neither put up with electronic dumbbells nor will they be searching for wall outlets to which the device can be connected. therefore, both the CPU and GPU must be relatively "humble" and spare the battery from the stress to which Alienware lappies are usually subject.
there will never be a Tablet with the latest CPU and Graphics plus the biggest HD..... just as there will never be a sports car there will be suitable to both carry the family to the beach, the horse to the vet, and the hottie lover to a restaurant in Monaco.
for around $500 and less than 2lbs,
there's the soon-to-be-released HP Slate:
http://geeksmack.net/hardware/1162-hp-slate-specs-reported
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/18642
i have a TC1100 and will get a tm2 next! :-) i agree with you 100%. i cannot see myself using a regular laptop anymore. a TabletPC covers all bases. and it's great for reading! be it online news, comic books or ebooks!
most of those people dissing the TabletPC have never used one. the only reason why Tablets never got popular is because Dell, HP, Lenovo and Fujitsu never cared (or gave a damn) about promoting the technology! Apple's fanfare over the iPad will payoff with the selling of zillions of units (despite the lack of a real OS or USB!). Apple can sell a fridge to an eskimo!
now it's too late for Dell and the others.... iPads will become synonym of Tablets and no one will ever know that other manufacturers have been making Tablets for more than 5 years.
Apple wasnt the first to make MP3 Players, but they marketed the iPod heavily. on the other hand, Creative, who is one of the pioneers on the field of MP3 devices, has been relegated to oblivion....
the story will repeat itself with the Tablets. being the first to produce something is pointless if no ones knows about it.
i, too, have a TabletPC. it's an old HP TC1100 that shall be replaced with a new HP tm2 sometime this year. when working on it, i only need to switch to laptop mode if i'm coding HMTL or C#. for any other task, i use one of the 2 following features (built-in WinXP Tablet Edition):
- hand-writing recognition (it works very well).
- dictation (works ok coz i'm not a native English speaker).
more affordable?! from Lenovo?! you're are kidding, right? HP has been making Tablets for years and, unlike Lenovo's, they have been truly affordable. compare the tablets below. both are current and have similar specs.
- Lenovo Thinkpad X200 Tablet ($1,500).
- HP tm2t ($950).
and HP is cooking up another Tablet to be released this summer. this new one will be a slate (ie, no physical keyboard). it was briefly showed by Ballmer during the last CES. no doubt the iPad will sell like hotcakes. Apple's hype can sell fridges to Eskimos! however, if there's a company with any chance of competing with Apple on this category, this company is HP! period!
i'm glad Apple got into this market. competition is great. it will lead to cheaper tablets from all manufacturers.
The iPad is the laughing stock of the computer world.
It has become the poster child for joke overhyped products.
Most of the Apple Hipster Douchebag Starbucks iPhone crowd are distancing themselves from the stench of the epic iPad fail.
agreed. the only tablet worth my money is the HP tm2t! that's a real computer, not an overpriced toy.
cut the guy some slack.... maybe all he wants is to keep track of how many times his photo has appeared on the news or on the package of some gadget.
mass-adoption is a security liability. it must be feared as much as holes and bugs in software. how does it feel to be in Microsoft's shoes? go ahead, fanbois. mod me down.
from Wikipedia:
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have acknowledged that the rolling-boulder booby trap in the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark was inspired by the 1954 Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge adventure "The Seven Cities of Cibola" (Uncle Scrooge #7). Lucas and Spielberg have also said that some of Barks's stories about space travel and the depiction of aliens had an influence on them.[3] Lucas wrote the foreword to the 1982 Uncle Scrooge McDuck: His Life and Times. In it he calls Barks's stories "cinematic" and "a priceless part of our literary heritage".
those comics were of a remarkable quality! they expanded both my knowledge of history (Greeks, Romans, Vikings, etc) and vocabulary immensely. it was also through Barks' stories i learned English (painfully translating word-by-word with a dictionary). it's sad that those characters and stories got so over-simplified for the "Ducktales" cartoon.
for more info on Barks works, check out:
inducks.org
BarksBase
hasnt MS advised on making a clean install? i guess this is a great way to show people that a clean install is named "clean" for a good reason!
Power consumption and processor temperature is dramatically lower, which should lead to significant improvements in laptop battery life.
worry not. Microsoft and Adobe will find a way to offset that....
The argument is still going on, of course, but maybe a little light will be shed on the issue this week at OSCON. On Wednesday night at 7PM Pacific, representatives of the 5 major open source languages [...]
5 geeks.... 90 minutes.... that will be a very dim light to be shed on such unanimously-agreed subject.
from TFS:
In addition to the browser's known features, like mouse gestures, keyboard shortcuts, voice navigation, mail and RSS support, speed dial and so forth[...]
Yes, keyboards are becoming ubiquitous. Who'd have thunk?
But even the corrected graph shows that Theora has gone from garbage to only 3 dB behind x264.
only?! inst 3db about 50%? huge lag behind.
the "consumer" and the "taxpayer" are the same entity. therefore, the consumer *is* paying for the patents.