My Galaxy Note II isn't incredibly powerful compared to either my one year old Ubuntu Laptop or my four year old Linux mint machine, but it's certainly more powerful than the computer I built ten years ago and would be great for simple games, word processing, web surfing and e-mails. I like the stylus for writing texts and taking notes on the phone, but a full keyboard would be even more useful when available.
I could see this being really awesome with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, LAN connection and dual full screen monitors hooked to a docking station, which could really be done with an Android, iPhone or Windows phone. MS should have done this, they might have been on to something if they had implement Metor on Windows 8 for mobile devices that would switch to regular Windows 7 style desktops when plugged into a docking station, rather than the steaming pile of crap Windows 8 turned out to be.
It's interesting. I'm an Ubuntu and Linux Mint user at home, but I can't really see value in having it on a phone. Although it would be nifty if I had a docking station at home and work where I could just drop my phone into it to use it as a more portable computer with a full monitor, keyboard and mouse when available, and the regular phone touch interface when on the go.
Have to agree, I can't remember the last time we called MS support and got anything close to helpful. Linux on the other hand, I could Google for answers and have a solution in a few minutes or post on a board and get one within a few days. But hey, If you'd prefer to spend money for non-support instead of getting it for free, all the power to you.
Here's the nice thing about Ubuntu, if you don't like the standard DE, get another. It's super easy from the command line sudo apt-get install <whatever-de-you-want-here> and there's a DE for any setup anyone at any level could require. The standard DE is for the lowest common denominator, unless you like it, to help ease people in.
I think of it like Internet Explorer, all it's good for is to download another browser.
Every article on Windows 8 UI design since it was released discusses how every usability convention was broken. If flies in the face of every human computer interaction concept I've ever heard of.
Marketers who thought it looked cool developed the windows 8 UI, not usability experts.
recognizing that replacing their current computer with a Mac or a PC that supports Linux isn't the best choice for everyone.
Although I tend to agree with this, I also feel that if Windows 8 is causing such a hassle, as been described all over the interwebs, it's probably going to save you a lot more headaches in the long run. Learning Windows 8 is pretty much learning a new OS for a lot of people and if you're going to have to learn something new you might as well learn something that's free, not going to lock you down (like with Win RT) and will work the way you want.
Most apps people think they need windows for will run in WINE or have equivalent free versions. I made the switch shortly before Win 7 was release. I had XP on a new laptop, which had a free upgrade to Vista, which completely buggered the whole thing. I used the Win 7 developer preview until they revoked it and decided to give Linux a try. I had dabbled in various distros before that, but never made the change because I was always going back to windows to run something because I knew how and it was convenient. There were some significant challenges learning Linux when I first made the switch, but there isn't anything now that I can't do on my home Linux machines that I can't do on my work machine, I use windows at work because that's what the company mandates.
Since I've made the switch everyone I use to provide windows support to, (in-laws, wife, parents, siblings and several less technical friends) has also switched with no issues. I'm actually starting to feel a little lonely, I haven't been asked for help in a few months. In stead I keep hearing about how well things are working.
So getting back to the point. Based on my insignificant anecdotal experiences switching to Linux (I've set everyone up with Ubuntu, although I use both Ubuntu and Linux Mint) can actually be easier for a lot of people than switching to Windows 8.
I was amazed that after bitching about the OtherOS removal for over a year she didn't say, "Maybe we should wait for my husband comes back down stairs".
I don't know which one pushed the button, but I almost suspect she did it on purpose hoping I would stop bitching about it. Unfortunately for her it only made me more militant and now there's a ban on any new Sony products in the house.
On top of that we didn't get to watch the movie because it was too late to start it by the time the update was finished.
or more likely they're throwing all the toilet paper they can find in the toilet and pulling the flusher repeatedly flooding your bathroom and making a huge mess that someone is going to have to clean up. They may also be starting a fire.
I did a lot more than that. I was using my PS3 as a 3D rendering node for some modeling projects and as an alternate testing platform for some of my programming projects. I refused to update the firmware until my cousin RENTED a BluRay movie and while I was upstairs making snacks he and my wife ran the update because it was required to play the movie. Now that I think about it I don't think I've even turned it on since sometime last year, It's just not useful anymore for anything except gaming since I have my laptop which does everything except play PS games. I'm sure I could get that to work for PSX and PS2 games if I wanted to spend the time.
It's an "improvement" because no one tells me what I'm allowed to do with my PC. There are plenty of great new titles being release for Linux, I've bought a couple through Steam, but I also like a lot of the older stuff I have. You could just as easily set up a windows machine to do the same and have all the latest AAA titles if you don't mind being screwed over when they decide to turn off the authentication server or cut you off when your internet connection is dropped or some other DRM nightmare attacks your machine.
I'd be willing to bet with the Xbox One DRM for tying games installed from physical media to an account we're going to start hearing about gamers who lose everything, digital and physical, when their system is bricked, dies or MS cuts off their accounts. I'd also be willing to bet even though Sony hasn't announced anything yet, they'll probably follow suit soon enough citing, "It's what our customers wanted".
I admit I was trolled and focused too much on the fact that I have lots of options on my Ubuntu machine for gaming rather than the original point, which was mainly that there are plenty of games that can be run on a PC or laptop, Linux or Windows, with better specs than the up coming generation of consoles, that can be plugged into a 70" TV.
I've bought plenty of consoles in my day, I still have all the NES systems from the original NES to the Wii and had all the PS systems up to the PS3. The major advantage being I can pull one out at anytime and play some of my old games. Not that I have to, my PS3 is PSX and PS2 compatible, and with my Ubuntu box I have all my old games, including ROMS for NES systems I own. Plus there's a slew of new stuff that's becoming available including a lot of great indi and non-exclusive titles. Other advantages are it's also a media center and because it's a laptop I can unplug the HDMI cable from it and take it with me on a long trip or just to another room if my wife wants the TV. I have most of my gaming library with me since it has Wifi and I have a lot of games through Steam and GOG.com.
I find with the direction the consoles are heading in the only thing you'll get out of a console that you don't get out of a PC is screwed, I learned it the hard way with the PS3. The way I think about it is the reason Sony and MS want your system connected the the net is so at anytime they can turn around and brick your system if they choose or could cut off your account for any reason causing you to lose any and all digital content you have (which we know they've both done) and now even if you own physical media they can take it away. They don't have any control over my PC or what I put on it or what I use it for. The limitations are basically how much time I'm willing to put into it, which I'll admit was a lot up front, but now that everything working is just flipping a switch to turn it on.
what else?
I have several other games that are just finishing up beta testing I pledged for on kickstarter. Banner Saga being one
I'd like to point out that my Dad had a 72" rear projection TV 15 years ago that didn't have an HDMI input. I think it's obvious the GP was complaining that this new fangled buggy technology is incompatible with his well tested moving picture set.
Besides who cares about modern high definition TV's, take the cardboard boxes they come in and cut a hole to make a state of the art TV to plug the best console ever invented into.
Imagination, it's good enough for my one and a half year old, it's good enough for everyone else damn it.
Exactly. If you could swap a battery in less time than it takes to fill a gas tank then you have a good trade off. It takes me 5 mins to fill my tank. As I said earlier each battery swap lane removes four gas pumps. If you could swap a battery in 30 seconds to a minute then you have a decent trade off to keep traffic flowing. Other wise you'd end up with one of those situations where there's a rumor gas prices are going to jump and everyone's lined up around the corner idling their cars waiting to get a chance at the pump.
I have more games for my Ubuntu laptop than I do for my PS2, PS3 and Wii combined.
There are plenty of games that work awesomely in WINE, WOW for example along with all of my favorite older PC games I've bought in the last 20 years. I've also recently bought a number of games through the Linux Steam client and have a bunch more from Windows Steam that work in WinXP under a VM. There are also games I've bought on GOG.com and through humble bundles. Plus I have a ton of ROMS for NES, SNES, N64 and several variations of gameboys. I also have several kickstarter games on the way, the alpha and beta for Banner Saga works fine on my Ubuntu machine running WinXP on a VM, Although Stronic's promised once the beta testing is complete they'll release a native Linux port.
More games coming out for Linux platforms every day.
My one year old Ubuntu 12.10 laptop plugs into my TV through HDMI 2.0. With a wireless keyboard and mouse, or using my PS3 controller, it's far superior to my PS3, and has better hardware specs than the Xbox One.
Thanks for posting that, It was exactly how I envisioned a battery swap would work.
It's a shame Better Place folded, I'm sure with some improvements they could have streamlined the process to make it much faster. Over 5 minutes to change one battery doesn't seem like a long time, but the required space for the lane means they wouldn't be able to do as many cars at one time as gas stations currently can. I imagine there could be four gas pumps for each one battery swap lane. There would be huge lines of cars at battery swap stations if there were as many EVs as there are gas cars today.
However, this does solve one of my primary complaints with EVs, if battery swap stations were as common as gas stations. At the moment my wife and I make two trips a month to visit the in-laws, a good two hour drive, which would be next to impossible to do with a Nisan Leaf or Chevy Volt. They just don't get the mileage and take too long to charge in between.
I'm sure most people will get the context, but I should have specified when I said car batteries I meant in the context of an electric car, not the standard batteries used in gas powered cars today.
I'm under the impression that car batteries are extremely heavy, and often put in very in accessible locations because they take up a lot of space in the vehicle. So It might be ok to swap the battery out once a year when it's up on a lift, but not really practical to swap it out every couple of weeks/days.
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I could see this happening in the near future.
My Galaxy Note II isn't incredibly powerful compared to either my one year old Ubuntu Laptop or my four year old Linux mint machine, but it's certainly more powerful than the computer I built ten years ago and would be great for simple games, word processing, web surfing and e-mails. I like the stylus for writing texts and taking notes on the phone, but a full keyboard would be even more useful when available.
I could see this being really awesome with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, LAN connection and dual full screen monitors hooked to a docking station, which could really be done with an Android, iPhone or Windows phone. MS should have done this, they might have been on to something if they had implement Metor on Windows 8 for mobile devices that would switch to regular Windows 7 style desktops when plugged into a docking station, rather than the steaming pile of crap Windows 8 turned out to be.
It's interesting. I'm an Ubuntu and Linux Mint user at home, but I can't really see value in having it on a phone. Although it would be nifty if I had a docking station at home and work where I could just drop my phone into it to use it as a more portable computer with a full monitor, keyboard and mouse when available, and the regular phone touch interface when on the go.
Have to agree, I can't remember the last time we called MS support and got anything close to helpful. Linux on the other hand, I could Google for answers and have a solution in a few minutes or post on a board and get one within a few days. But hey, If you'd prefer to spend money for non-support instead of getting it for free, all the power to you.
Here's the nice thing about Ubuntu, if you don't like the standard DE, get another. It's super easy from the command line sudo apt-get install <whatever-de-you-want-here> and there's a DE for any setup anyone at any level could require. The standard DE is for the lowest common denominator, unless you like it, to help ease people in.
I think of it like Internet Explorer, all it's good for is to download another browser.
Usability experts did
They most certainly didn't.
Every article on Windows 8 UI design since it was released discusses how every usability convention was broken. If flies in the face of every human computer interaction concept I've ever heard of.
Marketers who thought it looked cool developed the windows 8 UI, not usability experts.
In Ubuntu, it's as easy as connecting to the Internet and running sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop.
That should be your sig. it's pretty catchy.
recognizing that replacing their current computer with a Mac or a PC that supports Linux isn't the best choice for everyone.
Although I tend to agree with this, I also feel that if Windows 8 is causing such a hassle, as been described all over the interwebs, it's probably going to save you a lot more headaches in the long run. Learning Windows 8 is pretty much learning a new OS for a lot of people and if you're going to have to learn something new you might as well learn something that's free, not going to lock you down (like with Win RT) and will work the way you want.
Most apps people think they need windows for will run in WINE or have equivalent free versions. I made the switch shortly before Win 7 was release. I had XP on a new laptop, which had a free upgrade to Vista, which completely buggered the whole thing. I used the Win 7 developer preview until they revoked it and decided to give Linux a try. I had dabbled in various distros before that, but never made the change because I was always going back to windows to run something because I knew how and it was convenient. There were some significant challenges learning Linux when I first made the switch, but there isn't anything now that I can't do on my home Linux machines that I can't do on my work machine, I use windows at work because that's what the company mandates.
Since I've made the switch everyone I use to provide windows support to, (in-laws, wife, parents, siblings and several less technical friends) has also switched with no issues. I'm actually starting to feel a little lonely, I haven't been asked for help in a few months. In stead I keep hearing about how well things are working.
So getting back to the point. Based on my insignificant anecdotal experiences switching to Linux (I've set everyone up with Ubuntu, although I use both Ubuntu and Linux Mint) can actually be easier for a lot of people than switching to Windows 8.
I'm glad you took that in the light hearted joking way it was intended.
Using more than one computer to achieve multiple windows is cheating.
Pine?
I was amazed that after bitching about the OtherOS removal for over a year she didn't say, "Maybe we should wait for my husband comes back down stairs".
I don't know which one pushed the button, but I almost suspect she did it on purpose hoping I would stop bitching about it. Unfortunately for her it only made me more militant and now there's a ban on any new Sony products in the house.
On top of that we didn't get to watch the movie because it was too late to start it by the time the update was finished.
Shih Tzu, why do you think it was playing in the toilet?
or more likely they're throwing all the toilet paper they can find in the toilet and pulling the flusher repeatedly flooding your bathroom and making a huge mess that someone is going to have to clean up. They may also be starting a fire.
I did a lot more than that. I was using my PS3 as a 3D rendering node for some modeling projects and as an alternate testing platform for some of my programming projects. I refused to update the firmware until my cousin RENTED a BluRay movie and while I was upstairs making snacks he and my wife ran the update because it was required to play the movie. Now that I think about it I don't think I've even turned it on since sometime last year, It's just not useful anymore for anything except gaming since I have my laptop which does everything except play PS games. I'm sure I could get that to work for PSX and PS2 games if I wanted to spend the time.
It's an "improvement" because no one tells me what I'm allowed to do with my PC. There are plenty of great new titles being release for Linux, I've bought a couple through Steam, but I also like a lot of the older stuff I have. You could just as easily set up a windows machine to do the same and have all the latest AAA titles if you don't mind being screwed over when they decide to turn off the authentication server or cut you off when your internet connection is dropped or some other DRM nightmare attacks your machine.
I'd be willing to bet with the Xbox One DRM for tying games installed from physical media to an account we're going to start hearing about gamers who lose everything, digital and physical, when their system is bricked, dies or MS cuts off their accounts. I'd also be willing to bet even though Sony hasn't announced anything yet, they'll probably follow suit soon enough citing, "It's what our customers wanted".
I've bought plenty of consoles in my day, I still have all the NES systems from the original NES to the Wii and had all the PS systems up to the PS3. The major advantage being I can pull one out at anytime and play some of my old games. Not that I have to, my PS3 is PSX and PS2 compatible, and with my Ubuntu box I have all my old games, including ROMS for NES systems I own. Plus there's a slew of new stuff that's becoming available including a lot of great indi and non-exclusive titles. Other advantages are it's also a media center and because it's a laptop I can unplug the HDMI cable from it and take it with me on a long trip or just to another room if my wife wants the TV. I have most of my gaming library with me since it has Wifi and I have a lot of games through Steam and GOG.com.
I find with the direction the consoles are heading in the only thing you'll get out of a console that you don't get out of a PC is screwed, I learned it the hard way with the PS3. The way I think about it is the reason Sony and MS want your system connected the the net is so at anytime they can turn around and brick your system if they choose or could cut off your account for any reason causing you to lose any and all digital content you have (which we know they've both done) and now even if you own physical media they can take it away. They don't have any control over my PC or what I put on it or what I use it for. The limitations are basically how much time I'm willing to put into it, which I'll admit was a lot up front, but now that everything working is just flipping a switch to turn it on.
what else?
I have several other games that are just finishing up beta testing I pledged for on kickstarter. Banner Saga being one
I'd like to point out that my Dad had a 72" rear projection TV 15 years ago that didn't have an HDMI input. I think it's obvious the GP was complaining that this new fangled buggy technology is incompatible with his well tested moving picture set.
Besides who cares about modern high definition TV's, take the cardboard boxes they come in and cut a hole to make a state of the art TV to plug the best console ever invented into.
Imagination, it's good enough for my one and a half year old, it's good enough for everyone else damn it.
Exactly. If you could swap a battery in less time than it takes to fill a gas tank then you have a good trade off. It takes me 5 mins to fill my tank. As I said earlier each battery swap lane removes four gas pumps. If you could swap a battery in 30 seconds to a minute then you have a decent trade off to keep traffic flowing. Other wise you'd end up with one of those situations where there's a rumor gas prices are going to jump and everyone's lined up around the corner idling their cars waiting to get a chance at the pump.
You really need to do some research.
I have more games for my Ubuntu laptop than I do for my PS2, PS3 and Wii combined.
There are plenty of games that work awesomely in WINE, WOW for example along with all of my favorite older PC games I've bought in the last 20 years. I've also recently bought a number of games through the Linux Steam client and have a bunch more from Windows Steam that work in WinXP under a VM. There are also games I've bought on GOG.com and through humble bundles. Plus I have a ton of ROMS for NES, SNES, N64 and several variations of gameboys. I also have several kickstarter games on the way, the alpha and beta for Banner Saga works fine on my Ubuntu machine running WinXP on a VM, Although Stronic's promised once the beta testing is complete they'll release a native Linux port.
More games coming out for Linux platforms every day.
My one year old Ubuntu 12.10 laptop plugs into my TV through HDMI 2.0. With a wireless keyboard and mouse, or using my PS3 controller, it's far superior to my PS3, and has better hardware specs than the Xbox One.
Sorry console loses again.
Thanks for posting that, It was exactly how I envisioned a battery swap would work.
It's a shame Better Place folded, I'm sure with some improvements they could have streamlined the process to make it much faster. Over 5 minutes to change one battery doesn't seem like a long time, but the required space for the lane means they wouldn't be able to do as many cars at one time as gas stations currently can. I imagine there could be four gas pumps for each one battery swap lane. There would be huge lines of cars at battery swap stations if there were as many EVs as there are gas cars today.
However, this does solve one of my primary complaints with EVs, if battery swap stations were as common as gas stations. At the moment my wife and I make two trips a month to visit the in-laws, a good two hour drive, which would be next to impossible to do with a Nisan Leaf or Chevy Volt. They just don't get the mileage and take too long to charge in between.
I'm sure most people will get the context, but I should have specified when I said car batteries I meant in the context of an electric car, not the standard batteries used in gas powered cars today.
I'm under the impression that car batteries are extremely heavy, and often put in very in accessible locations because they take up a lot of space in the vehicle. So It might be ok to swap the battery out once a year when it's up on a lift, but not really practical to swap it out every couple of weeks/days.
Until you mentioned it, I never considered it. I'm even more convinced they're doing it on purpose now.
That was a pretty good laugh. Thanks