Yeah, I would have. I got one from the fire sale, and the timing was perfect. Just days earlier, I was tempted to get an Android Transformer. Then after playing with a few tablets in the store, thought the Acer Iconia was the way to go. Then I thought maybe I should think some more and maybe wait for the ArchOS G9 to see what they turn out like.
I played with a whole bunch of Android tablets for hours, and (being new to Android) I actually found them quite difficult to figure out. For example, I could see so many applications open and running, but it was not obvious how to close any of them! I really expected Android to be easier to use.
So now I've got my TouchPad, and it's just awesome. Just swipe the applications off the screen to close them - it feels so natural and obvious. I don't care much for the official HP Store though - most of my apps come from Preware, and the stuff there is awesome.
The native e-mail program is pretty cool, but I wish it had some OpenPGP support. mplayer is currently being ported - can't wait until that's finished. And Debian runs nicely in a chroot. I'm currently typing this on my TouchPad using the official bluetooth keyboard in a Debian chroot running metacity and LXDE, and browsing Slashdot in Chromium. The keyboard is annoying since it's missing the escape, alt and function keys (and I might look to get a better keyboard replacement at some point so I don't have to deal with stupid mappings) but strange keyboard mappings aside it can actually work as a netbook replacement if you need it to.
So... HP Store, Preware, and all the packages in the Debian repos... plus I hear the Android port is coming along... the TouchPad doesn't really lack apps if you know where to look.:)
I brought this just the other day to replace an old Belkin which kept dropping connections when I brought home a HP TouchPad, and it was specifically chosen because it was the only one I could find in my area which was supported by OpenWRT. Was skeptical about it being a D-Link, but figured if the firmware was rubbish I can easily replace it anyway. Actually, I've had no need to so far - no sign of trouble at all.
Yep. It's got so bad that you simply buy almost any foreign products of any large value (say, > ~$50) online, or not at all IMO.
My wife and I have a wiki at home we use to keep track of prices of movies, video games, music CDs etc. that we're interested in. Due the frequency of which these are released, and the fact that I don't have as much free time as I would like, I rarely buy them the day they come out so just snag them when I see them cheap.
Well, JB Hi-Fi has had a few sales on recently (eg 20% off video games). I've been through every video game listed on my wiki to compare prices (currently, that's 13 recently-released games), and even with the sale not a single game is cheaper than it is to import - including postage. Only one game comes remotely close, but it's still a difference of $8. Of course, these are not Australian game publishers.
Here's an example - the PC game Brink:
- A UK eBay store that specifically targets Australia: $18.98
Both prices include postage (JB Hi-Fi is free, but I could just walk into the store and pick it up anyway).
Another example - I brought a set of Panniers for my bike from the UK. Ordered Friday, and they arrived Monday morning. This particular brand and model was less than half the price of anything I've seen in Australian stores (including Australian retail online stores obviously).
The last 20 DVDs I've purchased came from Chicken Feed (a bargain store) and cost $0.80 each when they had a sale. These ~10yr old movies will provide well over a month of entertainment at well under the cost of a single recent US DVD release. This again highlights how crazy pricing of new overseas products can be. Sure, I don't expect even prices in the US could beat $0.80, however that's the competition. That's what DVD stores have to compete against.
These Australian stores that predominately sell products made and owned overseas (especially modern American electronics and entertainment) have to be hurting.
My laptop uses an AMD E-350, running Debian Testing 64-bit. This works fine for 1920x1080 video on an external LCD... provided it makes use of the built-in hardware-decoder. The official Flash Player doesn't do that.
My solution? A VA-API-patched mplayer, gnome-mplayer, a few GreaseMonkey scripts and the gecko-mediaplayer plugin take care of most web videos I watch perfectly (including basically anything on YouTube), and the remaining Flash content is taken care of by a combination of the Gnash plugin and the NoFlash Firefox Add-on.
Even Gnash offers VA-API support these days, although I haven't looked into getting it working. Flash Player would be a big step backwards - even if I did want to run proprietary browser plugins (which I don't).
My ISP (Exetel) uses Optus to provide their Internet services. It is unclear to me if this means I will get the block list, but I don't want to take any chances.
The article mentions two other smaller ISPs voluntarily censoring the web. I'll bet one is Primus. Anyone got any idea what the other one would be?
And use -name instead of -iname to make it case sensitive like the parent... although normally you would *want* such a query to be case insensitive - another win for the find command.
You're used to not having choice, so when it comes to deciding between models you're getting confused. Instead, you should figure out what laptop specs you want, and then look for models available that meet your criteria. Once you know exactly what you want, finding an ideal laptop is usually a piece of cake.
Wait until ARM-based laptops come out running Ubuntu Netbook Remix, Chrome OS or Android.
Battery life on laptops largely sucks because of the x86-compatibility required solely by people who want Windows - which isn't what you should be comparing anyway.
I built two machines recently (one for my wife). One had an ATI 4850, and the other (newer one) an nVidia GTX480. Tried to test three or so games under the ATI with the proprietary drivers, and got crashes and corrupted images. Tried the same games with nVidia... no problem. I thought ATI was improving, but they are still useless for gaming under WINE. Apparently useless for Firefox too!
> 'It seems incredibly short sighted to reject software based on perceived legal usage,' I fully agree, but this isn't the first time I've ran into this problem.
Eg. I currently run Ubuntu in a dual-boot configuration on an Apple MacBook. I thought that dual-booting sucks, and it would be better if I could just delete the OS X partition entirely and run it in a VirtualBox VM on the off chance I find I need it.
This should not cause any licensing issues AFAICT. I would only have a single installation of OS X on my Apple MacBook. Sounds completely logical, but Sun (now Oracle) wouldn't hear of it. Apparently if that feature was included, people could use it to easily run OS X on non-apple hardware.
Just another case of rejecting a feature based on perceived *possible* illegal usage.
Slashdot Mirror
*Not* the parent of your post here either, but...
Yeah, I would have. I got one from the fire sale, and the timing was perfect. Just days earlier, I was tempted to get an Android Transformer. Then after playing with a few tablets in the store, thought the Acer Iconia was the way to go. Then I thought maybe I should think some more and maybe wait for the ArchOS G9 to see what they turn out like.
I played with a whole bunch of Android tablets for hours, and (being new to Android) I actually found them quite difficult to figure out. For example, I could see so many applications open and running, but it was not obvious how to close any of them! I really expected Android to be easier to use.
So now I've got my TouchPad, and it's just awesome. Just swipe the applications off the screen to close them - it feels so natural and obvious. I don't care much for the official HP Store though - most of my apps come from Preware, and the stuff there is awesome.
The native e-mail program is pretty cool, but I wish it had some OpenPGP support. mplayer is currently being ported - can't wait until that's finished. And Debian runs nicely in a chroot. I'm currently typing this on my TouchPad using the official bluetooth keyboard in a Debian chroot running metacity and LXDE, and browsing Slashdot in Chromium. The keyboard is annoying since it's missing the escape, alt and function keys (and I might look to get a better keyboard replacement at some point so I don't have to deal with stupid mappings) but strange keyboard mappings aside it can actually work as a netbook replacement if you need it to.
So... HP Store, Preware, and all the packages in the Debian repos... plus I hear the Android port is coming along... the TouchPad doesn't really lack apps if you know where to look. :)
I brought this just the other day to replace an old Belkin which kept dropping connections when I brought home a HP TouchPad, and it was specifically chosen because it was the only one I could find in my area which was supported by OpenWRT. Was skeptical about it being a D-Link, but figured if the firmware was rubbish I can easily replace it anyway. Actually, I've had no need to so far - no sign of trouble at all.
Three. Count me in!! :D
Yep. It's got so bad that you simply buy almost any foreign products of any large value (say, > ~$50) online, or not at all IMO.
My wife and I have a wiki at home we use to keep track of prices of movies, video games, music CDs etc. that we're interested in. Due the frequency of which these are released, and the fact that I don't have as much free time as I would like, I rarely buy them the day they come out so just snag them when I see them cheap.
Well, JB Hi-Fi has had a few sales on recently (eg 20% off video games). I've been through every video game listed on my wiki to compare prices (currently, that's 13 recently-released games), and even with the sale not a single game is cheaper than it is to import - including postage. Only one game comes remotely close, but it's still a difference of $8. Of course, these are not Australian game publishers.
Here's an example - the PC game Brink:
- A UK eBay store that specifically targets Australia: $18.98
- JB Hi-Fi: $63.20
Both prices include postage (JB Hi-Fi is free, but I could just walk into the store and pick it up anyway).
Another example - I brought a set of Panniers for my bike from the UK. Ordered Friday, and they arrived Monday morning. This particular brand and model was less than half the price of anything I've seen in Australian stores (including Australian retail online stores obviously).
The last 20 DVDs I've purchased came from Chicken Feed (a bargain store) and cost $0.80 each when they had a sale. These ~10yr old movies will provide well over a month of entertainment at well under the cost of a single recent US DVD release. This again highlights how crazy pricing of new overseas products can be. Sure, I don't expect even prices in the US could beat $0.80, however that's the competition. That's what DVD stores have to compete against.
These Australian stores that predominately sell products made and owned overseas (especially modern American electronics and entertainment) have to be hurting.
Some of it's on my blog.
http://systemsaviour.com/?p=339
My laptop uses an AMD E-350, running Debian Testing 64-bit. This works fine for 1920x1080 video on an external LCD... provided it makes use of the built-in hardware-decoder. The official Flash Player doesn't do that.
My solution? A VA-API-patched mplayer, gnome-mplayer, a few GreaseMonkey scripts and the gecko-mediaplayer plugin take care of most web videos I watch perfectly (including basically anything on YouTube), and the remaining Flash content is taken care of by a combination of the Gnash plugin and the NoFlash Firefox Add-on.
Even Gnash offers VA-API support these days, although I haven't looked into getting it working. Flash Player would be a big step backwards - even if I did want to run proprietary browser plugins (which I don't).
My ISP (Exetel) uses Optus to provide their Internet services. It is unclear to me if this means I will get the block list, but I don't want to take any chances.
The article mentions two other smaller ISPs voluntarily censoring the web. I'll bet one is Primus. Anyone got any idea what the other one would be?
Churning to a different ISP doesn't occur instantly, unfortunately. Not in Australia at least.
Telstra and Optus announced support for filtering back then too.
Looking through the comments of that old link, I see the suspicions have long been present.
Gizmondo recently wrote that Optus and Telstra have just signed a lucrative NBN deal. Coincidence?
Can't force it through parliament, so get the major ISPs to voluntarily do it via an offer they can't refuse?
WikiLeaks will show them the stupidity of this.
In the meantime, time to fire up Tor and change ISPs.
Not at all - it's very useful for mining bitcoins. :)
+1 if I could.
And use -name instead of -iname to make it case sensitive like the parent... although normally you would *want* such a query to be case insensitive - another win for the find command.
Correct. More accurately, it could be written with the command:
$ find . -maxdepth 1 -iname "[^\.]*.jpg" -exec ImageProcessor -scale 50p -filter \(contrast, 1.1\) '{}' \;
Still not 100% identical (it prepends a "./" to each file), but it would take a very obscure/poorly coded program to complain about the differences.
You're used to not having choice, so when it comes to deciding between models you're getting confused. Instead, you should figure out what laptop specs you want, and then look for models available that meet your criteria. Once you know exactly what you want, finding an ideal laptop is usually a piece of cake.
Just announced on the NHK channel.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/
Wait until ARM-based laptops come out running Ubuntu Netbook Remix, Chrome OS or Android.
Battery life on laptops largely sucks because of the x86-compatibility required solely by people who want Windows - which isn't what you should be comparing anyway.
Wait until PS3 games require online activation, which won't work if your PS3 is banned from the PSN. Will you see the big deal then?
ESR has suggested possibly 24 months.
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2931
Scared the hell out of me. It's 2AM here, and I use that as my ring tone.
I built two machines recently (one for my wife). One had an ATI 4850, and the other (newer one) an nVidia GTX480. Tried to test three or so games under the ATI with the proprietary drivers, and got crashes and corrupted images. Tried the same games with nVidia... no problem. I thought ATI was improving, but they are still useless for gaming under WINE. Apparently useless for Firefox too!
Take it from a serious WINE gamer.
Hmm... I've occasionally used catdoc. Might have to look into Antiword, but fortunately I rarely need to open .doc files since changing companies.
> 'It seems incredibly short sighted to reject software based on perceived legal usage,'
I fully agree, but this isn't the first time I've ran into this problem.
Eg. I currently run Ubuntu in a dual-boot configuration on an Apple MacBook. I thought that dual-booting sucks, and it would be better if I could just delete the OS X partition entirely and run it in a VirtualBox VM on the off chance I find I need it.
This should not cause any licensing issues AFAICT. I would only have a single installation of OS X on my Apple MacBook. Sounds completely logical, but Sun (now Oracle) wouldn't hear of it. Apparently if that feature was included, people could use it to easily run OS X on non-apple hardware.
Just another case of rejecting a feature based on perceived *possible* illegal usage.
Been there, done that. Brought a copy of Mario 64 that way back in the day. The store kicked us both out, but we both already had what we wanted. :)