Surface Pro line are hardly "tablets". So far I see that most people still buy keyboards and use them as a very lousy notebook (because for the same money, you can buy a convertible ultrabook that can actually be usable on your laps, and with a proper keyboard that's not made from recycled cardboard).
Well, it would be great if you invented an email client, an calendar, word processor, and the rest of productivity apps that don't need either a keyboard or a mouse.
I think the person asking questions was basically a troll. For one, such generous specs are not needed yet on most tablets for years. Second, a "tablet" with such specs (minus battery) already exists. It's called Surface Pro 4. Newegg lists a 16GB/1TB model for $2699 USD.
There is always some kind of deal going on allowing you to buy a Google Nexus 9 or Samsung Galaxy Tab S/S2 for around 400USD. But the way I see it, 400USD retail price for a large table is sort of a price that forces the manufacturers to cut corners. The Galaxy Tab S/S2 have the best screens, build quality, and SD card slot, but also come with poorly performing SoC (probably worse than some 200USD tablets) and poor battery life. The Nexus 9 comes with good SoC and better battery life, but there is no sd card slot, which is a poor decision as a lot of people get the large tablets to play recorded TV shows, and 32GB of internal storage is just too limiting.
Tablets have a nice niche as a media consumption device, just don't try to use them as a convergence device. I hope the convergence bubble eventually pops as devices like Surface Pro are kinda crappy if used as notebooks, and or the most part hardly qualify or are usable as a tablet. I personally don't understand the unhealthy interest people have in those things. I'd take a Lenovo Yoga any time over Surface.
most of the Android tablets that you seen on store shelves now are probably basically 2012 models with some slight modifications
That's a slight exaggeration, but roughly speaking you are correct. Most tablet manufacturers, including Apple and Samsung, are effectively on a 2-year model cycle. They may refresh their products more often, but a lot of those refreshes are basically marketing tricks to keep consumer interest going at all. I recall Apple's re-release an iPad Mini 2 as an iPad Mini 3 in 2014, with the only difference being the fingerprint reader and a higher price tag. The Air could go for a couple of years without updates. There was barely any improvement going from the flagship Samsung Galaxy Tab S (2014) to a Galaxy Tab S2 (2015), and looking at the specs of the S3, I can tell as a Tab S (2014) user that there is hardly any improvement justifying the 400-500 USD expense for the unreleased yet 2016 model. The tablet market is so slow that flagship Samsung tablets for years now had slower CPUs than the flagship Samsung smartphones.
Having said that, I do not get why people need a tablet with laptop specs (e.g. 1TB storage, etc). Such device already exists, and it's called Surface Pro4. It's very expensive and hardly qualifies as a tablet. Basically a laptop with removable keyboard.
Exactly. Tablets are primarily information and media consumption devices. I use a smaller 8 inch tablet to browse the web on a living room couch or in the kitchen, and a larger 10 inch android tablet more like a portable screen that I can take to a gym, motel or a flight to watch my favorite shows. But trying to do any productivity work with such device? Please. I have used a surface pro 4, and I can tell that it is both lousy as a laptop and lousy as a tablet. It's much easier and more effective to buy a convertible ultrabook like Yoga series, and then if you think you need a tablet, throw a 300 gram iPad Mini 4 or similar into the same backpack (it doesn't even need any special bag).
I am glad there are people like you who can think rationally about devices like Surface Pro 4. Those "tablets" suck. They're too bulky and heavy for any real tablety application. Try to hold an iPad Air or Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 and then tell me after that that surface pro 4 is actually a tablet. Moreover, Surface Pro 4 is also a _bad_ notebook. For one, it's very clumsy to be used as a laptop, since the screen won't stand on its own without the rear hinge. The keyboard bends like its made from carboard. And people end up paying upwards of $1200 for this? I never got what exactly makes Surface Pro 4 better than say a convertible ultrabook such as Lenovo Yoga series. The Yoga is a full-fledged laptop, very lightweight, but still converts into a (relatively thick and bulky tablet) just like Surface Pro.
I am sorry OP, but if you want a tablet with 16GB of memory, 1TB of storage, rugged, and a quality screen, then you're going to have to pay the same as for an Ultrabook or tablet with such specs. A Surface Pro 4, comes with about the specs you want, but you gotta pay 2.5K bucks for that.
And in general, I do not get it why people want a tablet with laptop specs. A tablet with laptop specs (e.g. a surface pro 4) ends up being relatively bulky and heavy, and is actually a lousy tablet and a lousy productivity tool.
An ideal application for a tablet is to be a media/information consumption device for the times when using a notebook, or a convertible ultrabook, is less convenient. A small 8-9 inch lightweight tablet is perfect to browse the web or watch a video on a flight or in your bed. But for real productivity work, please do yourself a favor and get a laptop or a convertible ultrabook, like a Lenovo Yoga or similar.
Gosh, the name "semiautomatic" pistol just had to be mentioned in order to distinguish this evil type of weapon from say a bolt action or pump action pistols.. Saying semiautomatic pistol is like saying a "road car".
It's absolutely possible that Trump wins the presidency in November. This is very unusual election cycle. Look at it this way, for the past 4-6 years, everyone, even many Republicans believed that Hillary Clinton was going to win the presidency (not to mention the democratic presidential nomination) "by default". The Democrats were so worried about this issue that many were encouraging Biden to enter the presidential race, probably in order to create a visibility of a fight or a race withing the democratic wing. Ans this is also why the Republicans in the congress have spent so much effort trying to sink her, long before she announced presidential intentions publicly.
And what do we have now? She is probably going to win the democratic nomination, but nobody expected that she would struggle so much against someone named Sanders. Even in America, most people didn't even know him before, even though he is a senator. Her struggle against Sanders suggests that she is not as infallible as people think. Another problem is the ongoing investigation regarding allegedly secret state department information being stored on her private email server, which is illegal.
Ok, I know it's really silly to draw analogies between using ancient laptops and the team performance. I just want to mention here that since 2013 season McLaren has been been a shadow of its former self.
McLaren finished the 2012 season arguably with the fastest car on the grid, but for the 2013 season they abandoned the 2012 design and started with something entirely new. The 2013 performance was so bad, that there were voices calling for McLaren to go back to its 2012 design. Then 2014 season was even worse. McLaren was basically a mid-field team. They switched to Honda engines in 2015, and amazingly finished a season without scoring a point. In 2016, based on their performance, I'd say McLaren is barely a mid-field team.
Well, then she does not spend much time using the smartphone features besides calls and messaging. The less than five year old iPhone 4S was truly painfully slow since iOS8. In fact, the 5+ year old iPhone 4, whose updates stopped at iOS7, is slightly more responsive than 4S. Still, both are pretty slow..
Belgium could have probably managed it, and without hitting quite as many hospitals.
Please don't make people laugh by bringing Belgium into the discussion. A few weeks ago, after the horrific terrorist attacks in Europe, Belgium suddenly was compelled to send a grand total of ONE F16 fighter jets in support of the western coalition against ISIS. Now, that's some serious firepower. Moreover, not even US allies have the smart weapon's munitions to drop on ISIS:
Against an enemy with no airforce and very little air defence, that's hardly an achievement.
Strangely, the fact that ISIS does not have either air force or air defense hasn't prevented the Iraq and the USA-led coalition from being bogged down for YEARS with no real progress against ISIS. At least Assad has already started advancing to the east onto ISIS, and liberating significant towns.
Yes, exactly that one. I don't see a reason why Russia wouldn't agree to it. As far as the implementation is concerned, the party that delaying it is Ukraine, and that's not according me but according to the western diplomats who keep the Ukrainian state under a constant pressure to implement the constitutional reforms and other political they promised.
First of all, T-14 is certainly _NOT_ under series production. A bunch of T-14 were made for testing purposes. That's it. Nobody outside of Russian military knows much about T-14, besides its basic architecture. You have no basis to argue that T-14 was offered for sale, because so far T-14 has not been taken to any international weapons shows. And in fact, nobody wants to buy a product that hasn't been adopted yet by the motherland's military. So basically, Russians will test and adopt the T-14 first, fix its child diseases, and then maybe start offering it for export. We're looking at 10-15 year long window because this does not happen very fast.
You also have no basis to mock the T-50 yet. The T-50 is not the final product. The Indian FGFA will be based on T-50, so we're still many years away from the FGFA. Indians may have criticized the FGFA progress, but they continue investing into it billions. The western archair FGFA "experts" are really blowing things out of proportion, specially considering that no fifth-generation fighter jet project has attracted more criticism than the American F-35. There have been incidents of US pilots giving interviews and arguing that canning the F-35 program even at this point, and restarting F-22 would be a lot more preferable.
I don't know where you get the idea about the under funding of Russian military. First of all, no military will have enough money for all it wants, ever. Look, Pentagon is getting $600 billion USD a year, which in my opinion still an absurdly big figure, and yet lots of people in the military, and a certain party are already screaming bloody murder. Russian military budget had doubled in the past 3-4 years, and now they will be getting something like a 10% cut this and the following years. No major procurement programs will be stopped.
As for Syrian involvement, it shouldn't really matter how much that operation cost. Some political opposition figures argue that the cost was actually pretty high, while the official line is that the cost was low, and the military did not even need additional funds for Syria. But that's not the point. The point is that when called in, the Russian military went into Syria and has done its job. They changed the course of war. Assad is now advancing, while a year ago everyone was predicting he was losing.
I am really puzzled at the armchair experts who are fuming angrily that Russia used dumb bombs (not always). And what should Russia use when bombing basically what's already a bunch of stone age ruble? Russians have plenty of precision weapons, but unlike Americans they will not use a 150K USD missile to take out every ZU-23-2 gunner or a technical.
When I read comments like yours, I always start wonder if you're on the payroll of Lockheed Martin. I mean seriously, what exactly does an armchair expert like you know about the Russian T-50 fighter jet or the Russian T-14 tank or what exactly does anyone know about T-14 armor? Both of these projects are still in testing stages (the Indian FGFA will be based on T-50). India just agreed to continue investing in the FGFA project development to the tune of 4 billion USD.
As for the T-14 tank, you can't really argue that it's behind the western tanks. It has a crewless fully autonomous turret, an armored crew cell, a very extensive electronic counter measures suite, and a design that's meant to accept a higher caliber gun in the future, all of which make it, at least on paper, a step or two ahead of all of western tanks.
Here are a couple of link with beautiful images of the T-50 and T-14 just from days ago:
Not all of new Russian ships rely on the Ukrainian turbines. Among the most notable ships that need Ukrainian engines are 11356Ð Admiral Grigorievich frigates. Only six were meant to be built, but Russians already got the turbine engines for three of them, and the ships will be heading to Black Sea soon. The other three do not have engines, and there was a rumor that they would be sold to India, since Ukraine may sell the turbines to their navy.
PS: Oh yeah, and forget Ukraine. The Ukraine conflict is basically over. The ball is mostly on the Ukrainian side, where they have yet to confirm whether they will conform to the "Minsk" peace agreement protocols that their president already signed.
Sounds like you have been out of touch with the Russian military, as the description you give corresponds to the 1990s or early 00s. Russian military has been undergoing a massive structural reform during the past 10 years, and it has been acquiring and renewing its weapons systems at a very fast pace. Just to give you an idea of the scale of the upgrades, like last year Russian air force received about 200 new 4+ or 4++ generation fighter jets. Currently they're testing, a 5th generation fighter jet and a next generation tank and IFV platform. Yes, Russian navy is the most neglected of all Russian military branches. Russia being more of a land power, has historically spent less money on its ships. But even in the Navy, there is quite a bit of new things happening. For example, the Black Sea Fleet is in the middle of receiving six new diesel submarines, three frigates, a number of corvettes and other ships. It's not a lot, but once you compare this progress to the fact that Black Sea fleet has not received any ships in the previous 20 years, this progress is obvious.
Also observe Syria. Before Russian military got involved there, Assad's government was basically on its last ropes. After Russians came, Assad's forces with Russian help reconquered much of Aleppo, Hops, and Palmyra. The "moderate" rebels begged for cease fire, and Assad is now advancing west onto ISIS held territory.
You are quick to see the faults of the smartwatch, and yet you keep ignoring the real advantages it brings to the table.
Battery life of one week should be adequate for most people, because most people who wear a watch tend to take it off in the shower or in their sleep (or doing dishes, whatever). Connecting the watch to the charging cable is not as much of trouble as you make it.
On the other hand, one killer feature of the smartwatch is that the time is network synced, so you don't ever need to readjust or check its time accuracy. And second, you get the notifications, so you don't need to pull the smartphone every time it vibrates.
The whole point of the smartwatch is not to take your smartphone out of pocket every time it beeps or every time you need to look up the time. This can be useful, you know when you're driving a car or running on treadmill or in other situations. The big problem with all those watches right now is short battery life. That why the first generation mono-color Pebbles are so great. They run like a week on a charge.
Now I know this is not for everyone and that there are a lot of people who don't mind pulling out the phone every it vibrates.
I'll give you a few reasons to buy the first generation mono-screen Pebble Steel (yes, instead of the new color Time Steel):
1. Over a week of run time on a full charge. Nothing beats it. 2. The always-on screen is very well readable under all conditions. 3. It actually looks like a watch, and a good one. You can wear it to a dinner and not tattoo "i am a nerd" on your forehead. 4. Only $130 online.. (I got mine for $90) 5. Works equally well with Apple and Android
It does have some negatives too: 1. The display resolution is too low. Any analog watch face looks kind of grainy.
Based on what I have seen, the Zenwatch 2 is also quite sensible watch, with battery life perhaps the only area it loses to the Pebble.
I can imagine that the software was effectively beta quality then. I got myself a Pebble Steel last year, and it's running extremely smoothly with no bugs or surprised. Recently, they brought the next generation PebbleOS 3.0 to the original Pebble and Steel. For me the killer feature of mono-color Pebbles over the rest of the market is the battery run time. (+week on full charge easily), plus they don't look like a hockey puck on straps.
Slashdot Mirror
Surface Pro line are hardly "tablets". So far I see that most people still buy keyboards and use them as a very lousy notebook (because for the same money, you can buy a convertible ultrabook that can actually be usable on your laps, and with a proper keyboard that's not made from recycled cardboard).
Well, it would be great if you invented an email client, an calendar, word processor, and the rest of productivity apps that don't need either a keyboard or a mouse.
I think the person asking questions was basically a troll. For one, such generous specs are not needed yet on most tablets for years. Second, a "tablet" with such specs (minus battery) already exists. It's called Surface Pro 4. Newegg lists a 16GB/1TB model for $2699 USD.
There is always some kind of deal going on allowing you to buy a Google Nexus 9 or Samsung Galaxy Tab S/S2 for around 400USD. But the way I see it, 400USD retail price for a large table is sort of a price that forces the manufacturers to cut corners. The Galaxy Tab S/S2 have the best screens, build quality, and SD card slot, but also come with poorly performing SoC (probably worse than some 200USD tablets) and poor battery life. The Nexus 9 comes with good SoC and better battery life, but there is no sd card slot, which is a poor decision as a lot of people get the large tablets to play recorded TV shows, and 32GB of internal storage is just too limiting.
Tablets have a nice niche as a media consumption device, just don't try to use them as a convergence device. I hope the convergence bubble eventually pops as devices like Surface Pro are kinda crappy if used as notebooks, and or the most part hardly qualify or are usable as a tablet. I personally don't understand the unhealthy interest people have in those things. I'd take a Lenovo Yoga any time over Surface.
most of the Android tablets that you seen on store shelves now are probably basically 2012 models with some slight modifications
That's a slight exaggeration, but roughly speaking you are correct. Most tablet manufacturers, including Apple and Samsung, are effectively on a 2-year model cycle. They may refresh their products more often, but a lot of those refreshes are basically marketing tricks to keep consumer interest going at all. I recall Apple's re-release an iPad Mini 2 as an iPad Mini 3 in 2014, with the only difference being the fingerprint reader and a higher price tag. The Air could go for a couple of years without updates. There was barely any improvement going from the flagship Samsung Galaxy Tab S (2014) to a Galaxy Tab S2 (2015), and looking at the specs of the S3, I can tell as a Tab S (2014) user that there is hardly any improvement justifying the 400-500 USD expense for the unreleased yet 2016 model. The tablet market is so slow that flagship Samsung tablets for years now had slower CPUs than the flagship Samsung smartphones.
Having said that, I do not get why people need a tablet with laptop specs (e.g. 1TB storage, etc). Such device already exists, and it's called Surface Pro4. It's very expensive and hardly qualifies as a tablet. Basically a laptop with removable keyboard.
Exactly. Tablets are primarily information and media consumption devices. I use a smaller 8 inch tablet to browse the web on a living room couch or in the kitchen, and a larger 10 inch android tablet more like a portable screen that I can take to a gym, motel or a flight to watch my favorite shows. But trying to do any productivity work with such device? Please. I have used a surface pro 4, and I can tell that it is both lousy as a laptop and lousy as a tablet. It's much easier and more effective to buy a convertible ultrabook like Yoga series, and then if you think you need a tablet, throw a 300 gram iPad Mini 4 or similar into the same backpack (it doesn't even need any special bag).
I am glad there are people like you who can think rationally about devices like Surface Pro 4. Those "tablets" suck. They're too bulky and heavy for any real tablety application. Try to hold an iPad Air or Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 and then tell me after that that surface pro 4 is actually a tablet. Moreover, Surface Pro 4 is also a _bad_ notebook. For one, it's very clumsy to be used as a laptop, since the screen won't stand on its own without the rear hinge. The keyboard bends like its made from carboard. And people end up paying upwards of $1200 for this? I never got what exactly makes Surface Pro 4 better than say a convertible ultrabook such as Lenovo Yoga series. The Yoga is a full-fledged laptop, very lightweight, but still converts into a (relatively thick and bulky tablet) just like Surface Pro.
I am sorry OP, but if you want a tablet with 16GB of memory, 1TB of storage, rugged, and a quality screen, then you're going to have to pay the same as for an Ultrabook or tablet with such specs. A Surface Pro 4, comes with about the specs you want, but you gotta pay 2.5K bucks for that.
And in general, I do not get it why people want a tablet with laptop specs. A tablet with laptop specs (e.g. a surface pro 4) ends up being relatively bulky and heavy, and is actually a lousy tablet and a lousy productivity tool.
An ideal application for a tablet is to be a media/information consumption device for the times when using a notebook, or a convertible ultrabook, is less convenient. A small 8-9 inch lightweight tablet is perfect to browse the web or watch a video on a flight or in your bed. But for real productivity work, please do yourself a favor and get a laptop or a convertible ultrabook, like a Lenovo Yoga or similar.
Gosh, the name "semiautomatic" pistol just had to be mentioned in order to distinguish this evil type of weapon from say a bolt action or pump action pistols.. Saying semiautomatic pistol is like saying a "road car".
It's absolutely possible that Trump wins the presidency in November. This is very unusual election cycle. Look at it this way, for the past 4-6 years, everyone, even many Republicans believed that Hillary Clinton was going to win the presidency (not to mention the democratic presidential nomination) "by default". The Democrats were so worried about this issue that many were encouraging Biden to enter the presidential race, probably in order to create a visibility of a fight or a race withing the democratic wing. Ans this is also why the Republicans in the congress have spent so much effort trying to sink her, long before she announced presidential intentions publicly.
And what do we have now? She is probably going to win the democratic nomination, but nobody expected that she would struggle so much against someone named Sanders. Even in America, most people didn't even know him before, even though he is a senator. Her struggle against Sanders suggests that she is not as infallible as people think. Another problem is the ongoing investigation regarding allegedly secret state department information being stored on her private email server, which is illegal.
Ok, I know it's really silly to draw analogies between using ancient laptops and the team performance. I just want to mention here that since 2013 season McLaren has been been a shadow of its former self.
McLaren finished the 2012 season arguably with the fastest car on the grid, but for the 2013 season they abandoned the 2012 design and started with something entirely new. The 2013 performance was so bad, that there were voices calling for McLaren to go back to its 2012 design. Then 2014 season was even worse. McLaren was basically a mid-field team. They switched to Honda engines in 2015, and amazingly finished a season without scoring a point. In 2016, based on their performance, I'd say McLaren is barely a mid-field team.
Well, then she does not spend much time using the smartphone features besides calls and messaging. The less than five year old iPhone 4S was truly painfully slow since iOS8. In fact, the 5+ year old iPhone 4, whose updates stopped at iOS7, is slightly more responsive than 4S. Still, both are pretty slow..
Belgium could have probably managed it, and without hitting quite as many hospitals.
Please don't make people laugh by bringing Belgium into the discussion. A few weeks ago, after the horrific terrorist attacks in Europe, Belgium suddenly was compelled to send a grand total of ONE F16 fighter jets in support of the western coalition against ISIS. Now, that's some serious firepower. Moreover, not even US allies have the smart weapon's munitions to drop on ISIS:
U.S. Allies 'Borrowing' Munitions To Drop On ISIS As U.S. Stockpiles Are Also In Question
Against an enemy with no airforce and very little air defence, that's hardly an achievement.
Strangely, the fact that ISIS does not have either air force or air defense hasn't prevented the Iraq and the USA-led coalition from being bogged down for YEARS with no real progress against ISIS. At least Assad has already started advancing to the east onto ISIS, and liberating significant towns.
Yes, exactly that one. I don't see a reason why Russia wouldn't agree to it. As far as the implementation is concerned, the party that delaying it is Ukraine, and that's not according me but according to the western diplomats who keep the Ukrainian state under a constant pressure to implement the constitutional reforms and other political they promised.
First of all, T-14 is certainly _NOT_ under series production. A bunch of T-14 were made for testing purposes. That's it. Nobody outside of Russian military knows much about T-14, besides its basic architecture. You have no basis to argue that T-14 was offered for sale, because so far T-14 has not been taken to any international weapons shows. And in fact, nobody wants to buy a product that hasn't been adopted yet by the motherland's military. So basically, Russians will test and adopt the T-14 first, fix its child diseases, and then maybe start offering it for export. We're looking at 10-15 year long window because this does not happen very fast.
You also have no basis to mock the T-50 yet. The T-50 is not the final product. The Indian FGFA will be based on T-50, so we're still many years away from the FGFA. Indians may have criticized the FGFA progress, but they continue investing into it billions. The western archair FGFA "experts" are really blowing things out of proportion, specially considering that no fifth-generation fighter jet project has attracted more criticism than the American F-35. There have been incidents of US pilots giving interviews and arguing that canning the F-35 program even at this point, and restarting F-22 would be a lot more preferable.
I don't know where you get the idea about the under funding of Russian military. First of all, no military will have enough money for all it wants, ever. Look, Pentagon is getting $600 billion USD a year, which in my opinion still an absurdly big figure, and yet lots of people in the military, and a certain party are already screaming bloody murder. Russian military budget had doubled in the past 3-4 years, and now they will be getting something like a 10% cut this and the following years. No major procurement programs will be stopped.
As for Syrian involvement, it shouldn't really matter how much that operation cost. Some political opposition figures argue that the cost was actually pretty high, while the official line is that the cost was low, and the military did not even need additional funds for Syria. But that's not the point. The point is that when called in, the Russian military went into Syria and has done its job. They changed the course of war. Assad is now advancing, while a year ago everyone was predicting he was losing.
I am really puzzled at the armchair experts who are fuming angrily that Russia used dumb bombs (not always). And what should Russia use when bombing basically what's already a bunch of stone age ruble? Russians have plenty of precision weapons, but unlike Americans they will not use a 150K USD missile to take out every ZU-23-2 gunner or a technical.
When I read comments like yours, I always start wonder if you're on the payroll of Lockheed Martin. I mean seriously, what exactly does an armchair expert like you know about the Russian T-50 fighter jet or the Russian T-14 tank or what exactly does anyone know about T-14 armor? Both of these projects are still in testing stages (the Indian FGFA will be based on T-50). India just agreed to continue investing in the FGFA project development to the tune of 4 billion USD.
As for the T-14 tank, you can't really argue that it's behind the western tanks. It has a crewless fully autonomous turret, an armored crew cell, a very extensive electronic counter measures suite, and a design that's meant to accept a higher caliber gun in the future, all of which make it, at least on paper, a step or two ahead of all of western tanks.
Here are a couple of link with beautiful images of the T-50 and T-14 just from days ago:
http://bmpd.livejournal.com/1841727.html
http://bmpd.livejournal.com/1834857.html?thread=180674921
Not all of new Russian ships rely on the Ukrainian turbines. Among the most notable ships that need Ukrainian engines are 11356Ð Admiral Grigorievich frigates. Only six were meant to be built, but Russians already got the turbine engines for three of them, and the ships will be heading to Black Sea soon. The other three do not have engines, and there was a rumor that they would be sold to India, since Ukraine may sell the turbines to their navy.
PS: Oh yeah, and forget Ukraine. The Ukraine conflict is basically over. The ball is mostly on the Ukrainian side, where they have yet to confirm whether they will conform to the "Minsk" peace agreement protocols that their president already signed.
Sounds like you have been out of touch with the Russian military, as the description you give corresponds to the 1990s or early 00s. Russian military has been undergoing a massive structural reform during the past 10 years, and it has been acquiring and renewing its weapons systems at a very fast pace. Just to give you an idea of the scale of the upgrades, like last year Russian air force received about 200 new 4+ or 4++ generation fighter jets. Currently they're testing, a 5th generation fighter jet and a next generation tank and IFV platform. Yes, Russian navy is the most neglected of all Russian military branches. Russia being more of a land power, has historically spent less money on its ships. But even in the Navy, there is quite a bit of new things happening. For example, the Black Sea Fleet is in the middle of receiving six new diesel submarines, three frigates, a number of corvettes and other ships. It's not a lot, but once you compare this progress to the fact that Black Sea fleet has not received any ships in the previous 20 years, this progress is obvious.
Also observe Syria. Before Russian military got involved there, Assad's government was basically on its last ropes. After Russians came, Assad's forces with Russian help reconquered much of Aleppo, Hops, and Palmyra. The "moderate" rebels begged for cease fire, and Assad is now advancing west onto ISIS held territory.
You are quick to see the faults of the smartwatch, and yet you keep ignoring the real advantages it brings to the table.
Battery life of one week should be adequate for most people, because most people who wear a watch tend to take it off in the shower or in their sleep (or doing dishes, whatever). Connecting the watch to the charging cable is not as much of trouble as you make it.
On the other hand, one killer feature of the smartwatch is that the time is network synced, so you don't ever need to readjust or check its time accuracy. And second, you get the notifications, so you don't need to pull the smartphone every time it vibrates.
The whole point of the smartwatch is not to take your smartphone out of pocket every time it beeps or every time you need to look up the time. This can be useful, you know when you're driving a car or running on treadmill or in other situations. The big problem with all those watches right now is short battery life. That why the first generation mono-color Pebbles are so great. They run like a week on a charge.
Now I know this is not for everyone and that there are a lot of people who don't mind pulling out the phone every it vibrates.
I'll give you a few reasons to buy the first generation mono-screen Pebble Steel (yes, instead of the new color Time Steel):
1. Over a week of run time on a full charge. Nothing beats it.
2. The always-on screen is very well readable under all conditions.
3. It actually looks like a watch, and a good one. You can wear it to a dinner and not tattoo "i am a nerd" on your forehead.
4. Only $130 online.. (I got mine for $90)
5. Works equally well with Apple and Android
It does have some negatives too:
1. The display resolution is too low. Any analog watch face looks kind of grainy.
Based on what I have seen, the Zenwatch 2 is also quite sensible watch, with battery life perhaps the only area it loses to the Pebble.
I can imagine that the software was effectively beta quality then. I got myself a Pebble Steel last year, and it's running extremely smoothly with no bugs or surprised. Recently, they brought the next generation PebbleOS 3.0 to the original Pebble and Steel. For me the killer feature of mono-color Pebbles over the rest of the market is the battery run time. (+week on full charge easily), plus they don't look like a hockey puck on straps.