I hope DVDs will go the same way as floppies already have, they are cumbersome and just takes up space. Create more PCs without DVDs.. To be honest I don't see the issue. They are the standard. If you find them too bulky for your needs 1) 80mm media 2) jump drives 3) copy to HD / virtual drive
Nothing stopping you from putting your important portable shit on any of these.
Well, who started calling this 13.3" thing an ultraportable anyway? It's under 5 pounds, and while it does have a larger than average foot print, it's pretty damned thin, and the fact that it uses that custom cpu, 1.8inch (thought it was 1.7) HD puts it into the ultra portable class.
As I was discussing this with someone else, I would call it an ultra portable based on it's weight (sub 5lbs) and its thinness. For me, and keep in mind I'm not buying this, thinness represents more usable space savings. A 1/4 inch off the top to me means extra room for a couple of shirts or 75 to 150 sheets of paper. A 1/2 inch off the sides to me represents traveler sized shaving cream, tooth paste, perhaps a travelers brush and maybe a razor. The space crunch in my bag comes from thickness not width.
A half inch off the sides, for sure. I'm only carrying one laptop, no matter how much other paper I have (and I've had plenty). It's a lot easier to get a carryon that's 1/4 of an inch fatter than a tray table that's 1/2 an inch wider. Well, funny thing about those airline tray tables. IIRC they will accommodate an object wider than their size, though to be honest I can't remember their design from the last time I traveled. I use a toshiba r10 which isn't an ultra portable but I find switching to tablet mode makes it easier to work in a cramped space. I used my laptop on my lap, silly me. But either way a reduction in height to me represents something like 150 sheets of paper or so, perhaps a couple of shirts. A reduction in width represents small tube of toothpaste, small shaving cream, and a portable toothbrush.
It's easier to get a briefcase that's 1/4 inch thicker than a desk or bench that's 1/2 inch wider. So you agree that because it's space savings eliminates the need for a larger briefcase that it is not a pretender ultra portable? There are limits to what you can take as a carry on bag you see. Even then, it's a good idea to go with the smallest possible size you can.
Look I don't like this product, I wouldn't buy it. But I do respect their target market. It does meet with ultra portable in terms of size and weight. I do respect the CPU speed for the size the laptop takes up.
This is presumably why you can download the Kings James Version of the bible for free, and also the New International Version.... oh, wait... As someone else pointed out you can download these versions of the bible. But to be fair the bible is about 750k words, the sort of thing if you are going to read you WANT it to be in book format.
The Gideons to this day still provide free bibles for hotels among other places. You can ask a church for one, sometimes you'll get a old one, but sometimes a new one. Free bible here and here and other places too. The Mormons ship a free Bible, KJV I believe. The book of Mormon is given away like hotcakes. If you can't manage to score a free bible, to be fair word per word it's reasonably priced starting at about.002c per word.
If you want a bible, there is NO excuse not to have one.
One could say the catholics dictate you eating schedule by dictating a wafer during mass and fish on Fridays. Ummm, the catholics don't do fish on Fridays anymore. They did very much until recently, in fact there are those who believe the McDonald's fillet-o-fish was put on the menu because of this. I do fish on Fridays out of respect for my late father, but not for religious reasons. The Jesus waffler, well, yes they still practice that. Good Friday is a day for no meat, but fish is OK.
I would say yes, that is an indicator but it's different then someone who tells you when to eat everyday and severely punished you if you slip. I don't know Buddhism well, but I believe among the Theravada the monks do hold fast to times for eating.
The Macbook Air with the solid state drive is still three pounds. Could be given it ships with a 1.7 inch HD. I have to say I don't know.
Those are cool in a geeky sense, but they're not something that directly benefit the user unless they actually make it smaller and lighter There ARE smaller laptops than the Air, I'm not sure about thinner. The specs are semi-decent given the size.
Thinness doesn't really benefit the user either, beyond a certain point... and the plain old Macbook is thin enough that it's really a matter of style to go thinner. I beg to differ. If you have ever had to move with briefs about you would see an advantage to thinner. Think about what you would benefit more from, a 1/2 inch off the sides or 1/4 inch off the top. To me when traveling thinner means more shirts, more documents.
The main characteristics of an ultraportable are overall footprint and weight. Where weight 5lbs. The Toshiba r500 with little doubt takes up less volume than the Macbook air, which to be fair is hard to calculate due to the "sleekness".
If you get the Toshiba configured similarly to the Macbook Air is 1.7 lbs. That's close to half the weight. Fully loaded you get a computer that's still lighter and still has all the missing features that you can't get integrated into the Macbook Air for any price. That's a real "ultraportable". The Toshiba only weighs in at 1.7lbs if, AFAIK, if you go with a solid state drive. Yep, I double checked it on the site. Similarly configured it's 3lbs vs 2.4+lbs.
you'll see the difference between the Macbook Air and the Toshiba is the difference between a real ultralight notebook and a pretender. The macbook air is NOT a pretender. It's got the 1.7 inch drive, it's got the ultra small profile cpu, by no meaning of the word is it a pretender. It weighs in a fair bit more (.6lbs), but you get 13.3inch screen rather than 12.1inch, the ability to have a full 4gigs of ram rather than 1.5gb or 2gb, and a faster cpu yet a reasonably low profile.
While it's NOT something i'd buy, I can't see it's a pretender by any means.
The Toshiba Portege R500 is pretty close to half the weight of the Macbook Air, in its minimal configuration, and even fully loaded it's lighter AND includes an optical drive, a faster and larger hard drive, Ethernet, a PC-card slot, removable battery, basically all the things that you can't get or cost more in the Macbook Air. The other computers you named are also lighter and more capable. Near as i'm aware this is the first time in a while that Toshiba is shipping this series with an optical drive on board. Keep in mind I wouldn't buy the air, but to be fair to the macbook air
Base Air VS Toshiba R800 s5001x
CPU: Core Duo 1.6ghz VS 1.2ghz U7600 GPU: intel GMA x1300 VS i950 Screen: 13.3inch VS 12.1inch Max memory: 4gb vs 1.5gb (2.0gb in the top end) Stock HD: 1.7 inch 80gb VS 120gb Weight: 3lbs vs 2.4+lbs. Price: $1700 VS $2000
Close to half the weight? Not according to what I'm reading. Don't get me wrong the Toshiba is a fine product. I'm sure the HD is faster, as I'm sure it's not a 1.7 inch. But more capable? Looks like the base model supports less memory, is stuck with the i950 graphics board, and a slower cpu, and it looks like you have to buy the R500-S5004 @ $3000 to get 2gb of ram onboard, otherwise you are stuck at 1.5gig. Now it is using the ultra small core duo which may or may not be continued, but at this point that's neither here nor there.
Not all ultra-portables have onboard optical drives, in all fairness.
If it's lacking features and it's similarly priced, how can you describe it as anything BUT 'expensive'? While I FULLY AGREE it lacks features, the ones that it lacks don't typically add much to the price tag. But I can not describe it as being expensive when ultra portables in this class start at about $2000.
Anyway, it doesn't really matter what a bunch of people on slashdot think, Your right, however all my criticisms are legit criticisms. I don't say it's to expensive, they are on par with other ultra-portable systems. I won't say it's useless, as I see a legit need. I won't say the CPU is inadequate as given it's class it's not too bad. However the lack of express card, flash slots, and only one USB port I see either a pigtail or a game of musical ports.
otherwise the ipod would have been a dud. Yes... I'm among the silly who felt that DVD-mp3 would be adequate. Still do in fact.
I do see the similarity between this and the Powerbook Duo laptops of the early 90s. I would have tought TiBook my self.
Now if they could come out with a version of TimeCapsule with an integrated DVD burner, that would be even better. That WOULD be a nice feature, as well as media card slots, and perhaps wireless usb. That would at least take care of some short comings.
That's assuming that the target market is the "road warrior" type and not the "I'll just add it to my student loan" college kid. Or did everyone assume that it was aimed at business because of the inter-office memo envelope ad? No, it's a result of watching the Macworld 2008 presentation. Besides, while a student might benefit from a thinner laptop as a road warrior would, i'm willing to wager they would rather put the macbook pro on the student loan. It claims longer battery life whether 15 inch or 17 inch, and actually saves dorm space as it has a DVD drive.
so how long do you think it would take for apple to release an update for the iPhone so that it could be tethered to the MBA in order to use the cellphone as a modem? I would "think" the iPhone would already have that feature over bluetooth. Some Nokias do.
But something like the Fujitsu Lifebook q2010 (non-US AFAIK) already comes with UMTS as does their P7230 and ESPRIMO Mobile U9200.
sounds like an opportunity for some company to create a wireless docking station that has all the missing ports people keep complaining about. While a wireless dock would be kinda handy, it is a legit criticism esp when the price and the target market.
Not only is it super-expensive, but Apple's actually charging for things that have come included in all their other laptops, I'm critical of the air book or whatever they call it, however I can't say it's super-expensive. Look at the price of the Toshiba Portege R500, the Sony vaio TZ, ASUS U1F A1, . The ultra portable in this class starts about about $2000. The apple, while lacking in features in contrast to other notebooks in this class, is NOT over priced considering.
$29 buys you a tiny usb dongle with an RJ-45 port for wired lan. It's listed on the accessories section of store.apple.com. You know this sucker only has ONE usb port don't you? No optical drive, no flash media (SD/xD) slots, no Express card. Please enjoy pigtails or musical ports. Ipods AFAIK don't wireless, and Iphone AFAIK doesn't let you transfer data wirelessly.
Imovie installed without a firewire port, that's annoying. Other ultra-portables in the road warrior tend to offer UMTS.
Overall, a simpler design has positive aspects in that Apple can spend time making features that most of their target users will benefit from The target market is clear, the road warrior. For this market, they sort of failed to take their needs into account.
Other notebooks in this class would include at least two usb ports at least. Since Imovie is installed, I would expect a means of getting camera to PC which firewire is rather the standard, or for stills flash media. UMTS would be ultra handy for remote access. Swappable batteries is a desirable feature in this class as the road warrior may need beyond 5 hours of battery life.
What I can't fathom is how in the hell American soap operas have been able to maintain 30 year runs. Doesn't anyone get tired of watching the same old crap without resolution? I can't say I've really watched any soaps with the exception of Soap. It was rather cutting edge in 1977 dealing with homosexuality, marital infidelity, impotence, interracial marriage, gay parenting and alien abduction. From what I'm told in the 80s soaps started featuring alien abduction, impotence, interracial marriage.
I can't pretend to know how soaps work but I would imagine there are resolutions and new twists each week. What I can't understand is anyone who would watch a daily television series that's recorded on the fly.
I bought my parents a DVD recorder for Christmas only to find out later they could not copy their legally purchased VHS collection to DVD due to some macrovision crap. Macrovision proection has been around for a good long while, at least a decade. It was first put into place so you couldn't rent a tape and copy it. This was back in the mid 80s when prerecorded tapes cost hundreds of dollars. You can't tweak with the vertical hold anymore, but if you could you would see something blinking black&white on the vertical interval bar. From my understanding the white is too white, the recorder adjusts and results in an over saturated and dim image. Note, this really wasn't an issue on older decks, modern ones pretty much looked for the this encoding and blocked your ability to record. Some TVs reacted badly to macrovision, and people who used vcrs with digital tuners as switch boxes found some units wouldn't let you. Smarter units would only kick in the distortion when you hit record.
But macrovision circumvention has been around for some time, and i'm sure there are DVRs with the ability to disable macrovision protection.
In considering getting an HDTV, my wife casually asked about recording shows. You should make it clear whether you are talking off the air, cable, or dish. Near as I'm aware all recorders in the US in 2007 must include ATSC tuners, so in theory you could record as before, just DVD-video doesn't support HD. However there are units like DViCO's TiVX 5010-P HDTV Recorder which will record in 1080, but not sold in the states.
If you don't believe that contraception, abortion, homosexuality, premarital sex, etc. are immoral, you are not Catholic A catholic heretic is still a heretic, and still a catholic until excommunicated. I've not heard of any case of excommunication for contraception, or prematital sex.
American catholics are rather querky this way, and I'm sure many others. Near as I'm aware all you really need to do to be a catholic is to be baptized. The Spanish did this on mass. Confirmation and reconciliation i'm sure would be helpful too but it's really the baptism that makes you subject to papple law.
My question is: Why don't people understand that Apple's tight and tiny designs don't allow for battery hatches? People like me reject the idea that something as to be a closed clam shell to be 100% sleek. And for something you have to replace... it's a legit critique. Is it really a design issue or is it a cost issue?
The site you linked to doesn't show the bug/cheat where you go in reverse, press joystick up, and you are able to scroll off the screen. With most of your bulk on the right side of the screen, yet still able to fire from the left, you were almost invulnerable, well until you ran out of fuel.
And even though they had the exact same connector as an Atari joystick, they weren't compatible. Not directly, however there were plenty of places which sold adapters which would permit you to use a standard joystick of the age, which was good as any joystick would fail after extended use.
Mine eventually failed with the TI version of Star Trek. There was a point in this game where each level advance would give you so many photons it was in your best interest to fire them everywhere, and firing them then jumping to warp would destroy the ships which by this point were faster than you.
Alpiner (until I got pissed off at it when it heckled me-- "Did you mean to do that?" screw you 99/4a!) The heckling didn't bug me so much, but what bugged family members was the noises the character made when you touched things like trees.
Parsec on the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. And we had a cassette deck for the system so my Dad + I could save the BASIC programs we wrote. Good times. I remember that Parsec actually used the Speech Synthesizer. As I recall, it didn't use it often, and wasn't required for the game, but as long as you had one it didn't hurt. It impressed the hell out of the neighbors kids, you know the ones who had a 2600.
Seeing how most people still don't have an HDTV, they won't bother getting either an HD-DVD player or a Blu-Ray or a combo unit (if they even make these yet). Until that changes a cheapo DVD player works fine still. It's a start, but I think whoever gets a $100 player out first will win the war. (not on sale, but one that normally retails for $100) $150 is about the right price for your average consumer to look at it and think, "Do I want regular or HD".
For me, $150 is the buy me now price however unless the Toshiba HD-A3 did divx really well I have no need for one. Like others, I don't own an HDTV and in fact use my PC monitor for viewing. When the price for a modest sized HDTV drops to below $300 then I'll buy one.
I don't remember the name as I was surly under age 6, but I certainly remember some form of above view track game. It wasn't atari Lemans as I remember very well that you could cut across the track which seemed like a good thing to do as a child. Whatever it was I know it was pre-asteroids.
Slashdot Mirror
1) 80mm media
2) jump drives
3) copy to HD / virtual drive
Nothing stopping you from putting your important portable shit on any of these.
As I was discussing this with someone else, I would call it an ultra portable based on it's weight (sub 5lbs) and its thinness. For me, and keep in mind I'm not buying this, thinness represents more usable space savings. A 1/4 inch off the top to me means extra room for a couple of shirts or 75 to 150 sheets of paper. A 1/2 inch off the sides to me represents traveler sized shaving cream, tooth paste, perhaps a travelers brush and maybe a razor. The space crunch in my bag comes from thickness not width.
Change the name, start a new project, abandon the old. Problem solved.
Look I don't like this product, I wouldn't buy it. But I do respect their target market. It does meet with ultra portable in terms of size and weight. I do respect the CPU speed for the size the laptop takes up.
The Gideons to this day still provide free bibles for hotels among other places. You can ask a church for one, sometimes you'll get a old one, but sometimes a new one. Free bible here and here and other places too. The Mormons ship a free Bible, KJV I believe. The book of Mormon is given away like hotcakes. If you can't manage to score a free bible, to be fair word per word it's reasonably priced starting at about
If you want a bible, there is NO excuse not to have one.
While it's NOT something i'd buy, I can't see it's a pretender by any means.
The other computers you named are also lighter and more capable. Near as i'm aware this is the first time in a while that Toshiba is shipping this series with an optical drive on board. Keep in mind I wouldn't buy the air, but to be fair to the macbook air
Base Air VS Toshiba R800 s5001x
CPU: Core Duo 1.6ghz VS 1.2ghz U7600
GPU: intel GMA x1300 VS i950
Screen: 13.3inch VS 12.1inch
Max memory: 4gb vs 1.5gb (2.0gb in the top end)
Stock HD: 1.7 inch 80gb VS 120gb
Weight: 3lbs vs 2.4+lbs.
Price: $1700 VS $2000
Close to half the weight? Not according to what I'm reading. Don't get me wrong the Toshiba is a fine product. I'm sure the HD is faster, as I'm sure it's not a 1.7 inch. But more capable? Looks like the base model supports less memory, is stuck with the i950 graphics board, and a slower cpu, and it looks like you have to buy the R500-S5004 @ $3000 to get 2gb of ram onboard, otherwise you are stuck at 1.5gig. Now it is using the ultra small core duo which may or may not be continued, but at this point that's neither here nor there.
Not all ultra-portables have onboard optical drives, in all fairness. If it's lacking features and it's similarly priced, how can you describe it as anything BUT 'expensive'? While I FULLY AGREE it lacks features, the ones that it lacks don't typically add much to the price tag. But I can not describe it as being expensive when ultra portables in this class start at about $2000.
But something like the Fujitsu Lifebook q2010 (non-US AFAIK) already comes with UMTS as does their P7230 and ESPRIMO Mobile U9200. sounds like an opportunity for some company to create a wireless docking station that has all the missing ports people keep complaining about. While a wireless dock would be kinda handy, it is a legit criticism esp when the price and the target market.
Imovie installed without a firewire port, that's annoying. Other ultra-portables in the road warrior tend to offer UMTS. Overall, a simpler design has positive aspects in that Apple can spend time making features that most of their target users will benefit from The target market is clear, the road warrior. For this market, they sort of failed to take their needs into account.
Other notebooks in this class would include at least two usb ports at least. Since Imovie is installed, I would expect a means of getting camera to PC which firewire is rather the standard, or for stills flash media. UMTS would be ultra handy for remote access. Swappable batteries is a desirable feature in this class as the road warrior may need beyond 5 hours of battery life.
I can't pretend to know how soaps work but I would imagine there are resolutions and new twists each week. What I can't understand is anyone who would watch a daily television series that's recorded on the fly.
But macrovision circumvention has been around for some time, and i'm sure there are DVRs with the ability to disable macrovision protection.
American catholics are rather querky this way, and I'm sure many others. Near as I'm aware all you really need to do to be a catholic is to be baptized. The Spanish did this on mass. Confirmation and reconciliation i'm sure would be helpful too but it's really the baptism that makes you subject to papple law.
The site you linked to doesn't show the bug/cheat where you go in reverse, press joystick up, and you are able to scroll off the screen. With most of your bulk on the right side of the screen, yet still able to fire from the left, you were almost invulnerable, well until you ran out of fuel.
Mine eventually failed with the TI version of Star Trek. There was a point in this game where each level advance would give you so many photons it was in your best interest to fire them everywhere, and firing them then jumping to warp would destroy the ships which by this point were faster than you.
"uh, ah, ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"
I was told they sounded pornographic.
For me, $150 is the buy me now price however unless the Toshiba HD-A3 did divx really well I have no need for one. Like others, I don't own an HDTV and in fact use my PC monitor for viewing. When the price for a modest sized HDTV drops to below $300 then I'll buy one.
I don't remember the name as I was surly under age 6, but I certainly remember some form of above view track game. It wasn't atari Lemans as I remember very well that you could cut across the track which seemed like a good thing to do as a child. Whatever it was I know it was pre-asteroids.