I'd been thinking about buying a netbook, but I was leaning against it because I've always been something of a resolution junkie. I never thought I'd be comfortable working with the resolutions on normal 13" screens, much less on the odd ones that most Netbooks have. For reference, I use mostly laptops and my minimum resolution had always been whichever one is around 1680x1050. But since I like portability, I wanted no larger than a 15" screen. My choices have always been quite limited.
Well I received a netbook as a gift. I played with it for a little while, and it was alright. Then I took it on a trip and used it as my sole computer for a week. I realized that I really could deal with it. The portability benefits significantly outweighed the screen size. I started configuring it to alert me in cases where I'd normally just have several windows open, and that's really the point where I fell in love.
Now it's my primary computer. I rarely boot up my not-so-old laptop anymore, and I certainly can't imagine lugging it around. The netbook does everything I need except gaming. Even flash games struggle a bit on it.
I'm intrigued by the Alienware m11x, which promises a similar form factor (a little larger, unfortunately) with a decent video card and a better processor. But for now, I'm quite happy.
So what happens if you have an application window spread across your two hypothetical desktops, and then you switch virtual desktops on one but not the other?
I don't think that virtual desktops really work well as a metaphor in this case. Hacking in support for the feature you want would probably be a major kludge.
Because the thing is, Apple has other notebooks that are the same sizes, only a little bit thicker, and are generally more capable. That's the issue. Is the extra 1.5 pounds really that big a deal?
The physics of moving and jumping were definitely different (slightly) compared to the older games. This really threw me off at first, but I got used to it.
If the delay is really bad, though, you might make sure that your TV isn't trying to do any video processing. I played with one friend who left that on, and it added about 0.5-0.75 seconds lag to each button press.
I think that the more buttons you add, the more you alienate players. For a lot of casual players, more than a couple of buttons is honestly hard to deal with. "I want to pick this up, which button do I press again?"
But shaking is a completely different action. It's not a matter of "which button", but a matter of "what do I do?" People can remember this more easily than remembering yet another button to push.
That's not to say that Nintendo necessarily planned things this way, but they may well have.
If you're thinking about the Lightscribe pens, those actually require that you write on special paper. The paper contains nearly invisible (to the eye) dots in a grid which is actually how the pen tracks what you write.
Pretty interesting comparison. It's also pretty close to being in-line with what I'd expect.
I'd bet that the iPhone does well primarily because of its autocorrection. Mistakes are always going to slow you down, assuming you bother to correct them.
Nobody wants to be responsible for the advertisement by putting their name on it. But that's a whole different issue.
Really? I'd think it quite the opposite. A large corporation has a stake in not alienating their customers. As such, taking stances on high-profile political issues seems like something that most of them would want to avoid.
To me, it boils down to the fact that corporations get huge tax breaks. There's a pretty big conflict of interest there. Once the money gets transferred to an individual, there are a lot fewer ways to avoid paying taxes on it. In theory, these sorts of limitations should reduce corruption. And frankly, if there's any piece of our country that we should desire to see free of corruption, it's our elections.
If the digital handwriting problem could be solved, there would be demand for a tablet. Taking notes is something that computers still don't do particularly well. You can get by, sure, and there are some applications which aid in that, but it's not quite the same as being able to easily sketch or make simple diagrams by hand and integrate those with text.
The other main use for a tablet form factor is for consumption of media. Touchscreens will probably not be as good as typing for quite a long time, if ever. But if you don't need to type much, then it can be fine. Watching movies and reading books would work with a tablet. The main problem, of course, is cost. When you can buy a laptop that also does those things, why in the world would you bother with paying more money to get a tablet? What do you gain, other than perhaps something which is lighter weight?
Nice post, thanks! I think I always assumed that they didn't use EMM386 because it was so new. Ultima 7 ran on computers as old as DOS 3 (though I can't find a reference for this now.) EMM386 wasn't available until DOS 5 (well technically DOS 4, but that was rubbish that no one talks about anymore.)
What actually killed Origin was EA. EA purchased Origin in the same year that Ultima 7 was released--and coincidentally, Ultima 7 was the last really good Ultima game. Ultima 7 part 2 was fun and a good story, but it was far too linear. It also never felt like an Ultima. Ultima 8 was rushed to keep EA's stockholders happy. Ultima 9 was simply a travesty. The constant delays, rewrites, and fighting between Garriot and EA turned what could have been a fantastic ending to the series into a pile of poo.
That said, Origin's always made some poor design choices. The Voodoo memory manager caused no end to problems, and required that the computer be rebooted in order to play the Ultima 7 games (for most people.) Later on, Ultima 9's engine was written with the Voodoo series of graphics cards (no relation) in mind, and DirectX support was tacked on at the last minute. The upshot was that the game played reasonably well, if slowly, with 3DFX cards, and had tons more bugs and horrible performance with anything else. Ultima 8 didn't seem to have any voodoo problems, but they went and changed the format of the game (iirc, at EA's behest) to include action elements in a hope that it would appeal to more gamers. This alienated the core fans, and I suspect that new players were put off by both the paganism/symbolism and the fact that this was the 8th game in the series.
Blunder's all around, but really, it's all traced back to EA.
Lego Batman wasn't based on a particular movie, and is incidentally the only one of the series that I disliked. I think a huge part of my enjoyment of the Lego games is reliving those classic movies. As such, I don't anticipate loving Lego Harry Potter quite as much.
I have an Atom netbook with GMA950 graphics, so I'm getting a kick out of these replies.
You're absolutely right. This thing stutters on low-bitrate 720p h.264 video. It stutters in Windows and Linux. Expecting this Open PC to be capable of playing HD video (at least the kind of HD video that most people will want to play) is absurd.
Its weird how so much support is going towards the mac, that no one appreciates the simplicity of the laptop for what it is.
1) The Open-PC isn't a laptop.
More memory isn't necessarily a good thing. At least on windows i can enter or leave hibernation mode in 26 seconds because i use 1gig of memory. If i had 3 gigs, it'd jump to about 45 seconds both ways. as well as draining more power, and increasing the price needlessly.
2) The Open-PC is the one with more RAM.
blah blah blah power savings blah
Most people don't care about the power that a machine users if it's not running on a battery. Some do, of course. In those cases, sure, go with an Atom. In most cases, though, my desktop is going to be a more powerful processor just so that I have options. An extra couple of bucks a month in electricity is worth it for the flexibility.
Its not a Mac. Seriously. Comparing Linux to mac, and talking about the mac favorably... I have to wonder where slashdot's culture is headed on threads like these.
You missed the point. The point was that for just a little bit more, you could get a computer with (by most people's standards) better hardware. Furthermore, the hardware in the Mac will run Linux just fine.
People who buy this are just paying the "open source tax". If that's what they want, more power to them. But don't act like the hardware specs are going to sway much more than 1% of their market.
Oh sorry, I forgot that all bicyclists are nice, courteous, and stick to the right side of the road.
Most of the time I get upset with them, they're taking up the entire lane. Now they're entitled to by law, but there are lots of things one can do under the law that would make me an asshole and make a reasonable person upset.
If I'm able to pass the cyclist easily, then I'm barely going to notice them and it's not even going to register in my memory as an annoyance.
It likely has to do with how the bike was used and how safe the rider was trying to be. People with the top bar are more likely to be male, and males are more likely to take chances than females.
There's a similar correlation with cars. Men are more likely to be in severe accidents, whereas women are more likely to be in fender-benders.
and don't even want to wait on cyclists when it won't effect their arrival time.
Does riding a bicycle give you psychic powers?
The fact is, this is a fast-paced world. People plan arrival times, and a bicycle going 25mph on a 40mph road can affect it. That doesn't excuse violence, but try to understand their point of view and don't assume that you aren't making them late.
Last I checked, the GMA500 didn't have open-source drivers. Of course, I believe that this is a chip which Intel rebrands, but it does mean that you can't simply trust that if it says "Intel graphics" it will be well-supported.
Yeah. I'm frankly not convinced that we'll see crunch time in my lifetime. There's not a lot of incentive for most places to implement IPv6 until a significant portion of their customers demand it. Customers won't demand it until the sites they use require it. Sites won't want to require it because it limits their customer base. It's a massive chicken/egg problem.
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Definitely. I wouldn't want to imply that a Netbook will fill all possible roles. I think that for most people, though, it would.
Even for my job, I mostly connect to remote shells. SSH is fine, and I can pretty easily see 3-4 at one time on my screen.
I'm sure that if I were a developer, I'd use a larger screen, but even banging out simple shell scripts is just fine on this thing.
Here's another anecdote to add to the pile.
I'd been thinking about buying a netbook, but I was leaning against it because I've always been something of a resolution junkie. I never thought I'd be comfortable working with the resolutions on normal 13" screens, much less on the odd ones that most Netbooks have. For reference, I use mostly laptops and my minimum resolution had always been whichever one is around 1680x1050. But since I like portability, I wanted no larger than a 15" screen. My choices have always been quite limited.
Well I received a netbook as a gift. I played with it for a little while, and it was alright. Then I took it on a trip and used it as my sole computer for a week. I realized that I really could deal with it. The portability benefits significantly outweighed the screen size. I started configuring it to alert me in cases where I'd normally just have several windows open, and that's really the point where I fell in love.
Now it's my primary computer. I rarely boot up my not-so-old laptop anymore, and I certainly can't imagine lugging it around. The netbook does everything I need except gaming. Even flash games struggle a bit on it.
I'm intrigued by the Alienware m11x, which promises a similar form factor (a little larger, unfortunately) with a decent video card and a better processor. But for now, I'm quite happy.
And the summary cuts out that very important, relevant bit. Was that an attempt to sensationalize the story?
So what happens if you have an application window spread across your two hypothetical desktops, and then you switch virtual desktops on one but not the other?
I don't think that virtual desktops really work well as a metaphor in this case. Hacking in support for the feature you want would probably be a major kludge.
What laptops are you comparing it to?
Because the thing is, Apple has other notebooks that are the same sizes, only a little bit thicker, and are generally more capable. That's the issue. Is the extra 1.5 pounds really that big a deal?
The physics of moving and jumping were definitely different (slightly) compared to the older games. This really threw me off at first, but I got used to it.
If the delay is really bad, though, you might make sure that your TV isn't trying to do any video processing. I played with one friend who left that on, and it added about 0.5-0.75 seconds lag to each button press.
I think that the more buttons you add, the more you alienate players. For a lot of casual players, more than a couple of buttons is honestly hard to deal with. "I want to pick this up, which button do I press again?"
But shaking is a completely different action. It's not a matter of "which button", but a matter of "what do I do?" People can remember this more easily than remembering yet another button to push.
That's not to say that Nintendo necessarily planned things this way, but they may well have.
If you're thinking about the Lightscribe pens, those actually require that you write on special paper. The paper contains nearly invisible (to the eye) dots in a grid which is actually how the pen tracks what you write.
Pretty interesting comparison. It's also pretty close to being in-line with what I'd expect.
I'd bet that the iPhone does well primarily because of its autocorrection. Mistakes are always going to slow you down, assuming you bother to correct them.
That's true. I wonder how many people regularly watch video on their phones? It's not perfectly analogous, but it's close.
A better solution is education the populace, and this is happening.
Mmm hmm.....
Nobody wants to be responsible for the advertisement by putting their name on it. But that's a whole different issue.
Really? I'd think it quite the opposite. A large corporation has a stake in not alienating their customers. As such, taking stances on high-profile political issues seems like something that most of them would want to avoid.
To me, it boils down to the fact that corporations get huge tax breaks. There's a pretty big conflict of interest there. Once the money gets transferred to an individual, there are a lot fewer ways to avoid paying taxes on it. In theory, these sorts of limitations should reduce corruption. And frankly, if there's any piece of our country that we should desire to see free of corruption, it's our elections.
If the digital handwriting problem could be solved, there would be demand for a tablet. Taking notes is something that computers still don't do particularly well. You can get by, sure, and there are some applications which aid in that, but it's not quite the same as being able to easily sketch or make simple diagrams by hand and integrate those with text.
The other main use for a tablet form factor is for consumption of media. Touchscreens will probably not be as good as typing for quite a long time, if ever. But if you don't need to type much, then it can be fine. Watching movies and reading books would work with a tablet. The main problem, of course, is cost. When you can buy a laptop that also does those things, why in the world would you bother with paying more money to get a tablet? What do you gain, other than perhaps something which is lighter weight?
Nice post, thanks! I think I always assumed that they didn't use EMM386 because it was so new. Ultima 7 ran on computers as old as DOS 3 (though I can't find a reference for this now.) EMM386 wasn't available until DOS 5 (well technically DOS 4, but that was rubbish that no one talks about anymore.)
What actually killed Origin was EA. EA purchased Origin in the same year that Ultima 7 was released--and coincidentally, Ultima 7 was the last really good Ultima game. Ultima 7 part 2 was fun and a good story, but it was far too linear. It also never felt like an Ultima. Ultima 8 was rushed to keep EA's stockholders happy. Ultima 9 was simply a travesty. The constant delays, rewrites, and fighting between Garriot and EA turned what could have been a fantastic ending to the series into a pile of poo.
That said, Origin's always made some poor design choices. The Voodoo memory manager caused no end to problems, and required that the computer be rebooted in order to play the Ultima 7 games (for most people.) Later on, Ultima 9's engine was written with the Voodoo series of graphics cards (no relation) in mind, and DirectX support was tacked on at the last minute. The upshot was that the game played reasonably well, if slowly, with 3DFX cards, and had tons more bugs and horrible performance with anything else. Ultima 8 didn't seem to have any voodoo problems, but they went and changed the format of the game (iirc, at EA's behest) to include action elements in a hope that it would appeal to more gamers. This alienated the core fans, and I suspect that new players were put off by both the paganism/symbolism and the fact that this was the 8th game in the series.
Blunder's all around, but really, it's all traced back to EA.
Lego Batman wasn't based on a particular movie, and is incidentally the only one of the series that I disliked. I think a huge part of my enjoyment of the Lego games is reliving those classic movies. As such, I don't anticipate loving Lego Harry Potter quite as much.
I have an Atom netbook with GMA950 graphics, so I'm getting a kick out of these replies.
You're absolutely right. This thing stutters on low-bitrate 720p h.264 video. It stutters in Windows and Linux. Expecting this Open PC to be capable of playing HD video (at least the kind of HD video that most people will want to play) is absurd.
Insightful?
Its weird how so much support is going towards the mac, that no one appreciates the simplicity of the laptop for what it is.
1) The Open-PC isn't a laptop.
More memory isn't necessarily a good thing. At least on windows i can enter or leave hibernation mode in 26 seconds because i use 1gig of memory. If i had 3 gigs, it'd jump to about 45 seconds both ways. as well as draining more power, and increasing the price needlessly.
2) The Open-PC is the one with more RAM.
blah blah blah power savings blah
Most people don't care about the power that a machine users if it's not running on a battery. Some do, of course. In those cases, sure, go with an Atom. In most cases, though, my desktop is going to be a more powerful processor just so that I have options. An extra couple of bucks a month in electricity is worth it for the flexibility.
Its not a Mac. Seriously. Comparing Linux to mac, and talking about the mac favorably... I have to wonder where slashdot's culture is headed on threads like these.
You missed the point. The point was that for just a little bit more, you could get a computer with (by most people's standards) better hardware. Furthermore, the hardware in the Mac will run Linux just fine.
People who buy this are just paying the "open source tax". If that's what they want, more power to them. But don't act like the hardware specs are going to sway much more than 1% of their market.
Oh sorry, I forgot that all bicyclists are nice, courteous, and stick to the right side of the road.
Most of the time I get upset with them, they're taking up the entire lane. Now they're entitled to by law, but there are lots of things one can do under the law that would make me an asshole and make a reasonable person upset.
If I'm able to pass the cyclist easily, then I'm barely going to notice them and it's not even going to register in my memory as an annoyance.
It likely has to do with how the bike was used and how safe the rider was trying to be. People with the top bar are more likely to be male, and males are more likely to take chances than females.
There's a similar correlation with cars. Men are more likely to be in severe accidents, whereas women are more likely to be in fender-benders.
and don't even want to wait on cyclists when it won't effect their arrival time.
Does riding a bicycle give you psychic powers?
The fact is, this is a fast-paced world. People plan arrival times, and a bicycle going 25mph on a 40mph road can affect it. That doesn't excuse violence, but try to understand their point of view and don't assume that you aren't making them late.
Last I checked, the GMA500 didn't have open-source drivers. Of course, I believe that this is a chip which Intel rebrands, but it does mean that you can't simply trust that if it says "Intel graphics" it will be well-supported.
Not my assertion. I was using data and a quote from the summary.
Certainly, but it's still going to be a tough sell. As long as most websites have an IPv4 presence, there's no incentive for customers to go IPv6.
A mandate like that would not go over well.
Yeah. I'm frankly not convinced that we'll see crunch time in my lifetime. There's not a lot of incentive for most places to implement IPv6 until a significant portion of their customers demand it. Customers won't demand it until the sites they use require it. Sites won't want to require it because it limits their customer base. It's a massive chicken/egg problem.