This is one of the things I like best about PS/2 ports -- my collection of decent, sturdy, clicky keyboards.
However, there are USB PS/2 adapters; I don't have one for the PC yet, but since I've recently acquired a machine with no PS/2 ports, I guess I need one. My iMate though lets my clicky ADB northgate keyboard work great with my iBook and other modern Macs. And there are a few nice clickies made for USB, but probably nowadays all are 104 key.
I was just happy to find that The Philipino Connection (a very small restaurant here in Knoxville TN, basically takeout with one or two tables) has just opened up a new location near me. I stopped in there yesterday, ate way too much. It's not *great* food, but it's cheap, pretty tasty, and interesting. I would avoid the pepper steak in the future, but the eggrolls, rice dishes, noodles and friend bananas are good. They don't have any of the really exotic Philipino food, but perhaps on some days of the year...
Since there are 802.11 cards available for this, it seems that for about $600 (Zaurus + 802.11 card), you could have most of an access point, with a pretty powerful CPU attached on the side:)
However, is there any way to have both an ethernet jack and an 802.11 card active? (Are there sleeves like for the iPaq to add PCMCIA cards, perhaps, or is it only the one handspring-like slot, with an only-one-at-a-time rule?) It would be cool to have a tiny device which would be stuck onto any network (a friend's cable modem while traveling, say) which provides at least a small wireless network, just like that...
Maybe pipedream; I didn't spend much time looking at these last LWCE after I discovered how clumsy my fingers were on that tiny keyboard.
I am slowly converting my disproportionate-to-my-skills collection of computers to laptops instead of ridiculous boxes (ridiculous to move, lift, find room for, etc) and awkward monitors.
In the tradeoffs that come with laptops, large hard drives are usually one of the sacrificed items. (Yeah, largish ones are available, especially largish in absolute terms, but in relative terms, 'real' hard drives are going to be larger, faster and cheaper for a while yet...)
I tried importing video last night (first time for everything) onto my iBook, and watched alarmingly as the "available space" dropped inexorably... glad I only had 5 minutes of Easter dinner to play with. I was jonesing for a 300GB RAID array transparently available to me, but Nope. Let's see Iomega come out with *that*.
quarters is another one it generally only takes one try to learn. It involves #2 lead pencils, quarters, and a no sympathetic observers to alert the victim.
when it comes to video editing, I am not in the market for a $3000 something:) [It's a legitimate market, and I'm glad people exist to whom that would be a reasonable investment in the pursuit of their art, I'm just not one of them.]
However, I really would like (would gladly pay $50 extra for a distro that allowed me to *easily*, out-of-the-box, no-foolin', no hassles, do the following 3 things, with free software):
1) import over firewire from a digital video camera (yes, it's possible; is it out-of-box ready from any distribution? Can I plug the cheap floor-model Sony digital camera I bought from Best Buy into a box running any available distribution which will correctly recognize / identify the hardware and let me haul in the video from it?]
2) Set edit points something like iMovie allows on the Mac (I believe Windows now comes with a similar program, but I have not seen it), and then duplicate / rearrange / shorten / delete clips. Doesn't have to be pretty, just has to let me define beginning and ending points, and then assemble the resulting collage.
3) Burn to VCD / SVCD
That's it.
Now, there are a lot of other things it would be nice to have -- color correction, titling, fancy fades and wipes, DVD authoring, complex sound capabilities, animations, bluescreen abilities... but just simple "hone down to the best 2 minutes on a typical camcorder home recording, re-order, and burn" would be enough to satisfy me for a while. I'd like to be able to put my own recordings (if any are good) onto cheap CD-Rs to share with friends / family.
I hope interest in video-on-Linux trickles down enough that a real, working, easy integrated package to do at least these three things actually reaches us. (Can be a pretty wrapper adding together separate programs to do each of those things, of course.)
Jogwheels are one of my favorite interfaces, I wish they were more widely used, and I think they would be a good way to approach the thumbliness of a good analog alarm clock. (I like the wind-up Westclox models...) I'm interested in the new Powermate from griffin (http://www.griffintechnology.com/audio/pwrmate_fe atures.html) though I dunno if it's friendly with any free operating system. The idea is the thing! I'd like an alarm clock with a pseudo-analog face and a USB port:) Hook in your external jogwheel, set your time, set your alarm time, and boom:)
Lots of devices should have jogwheels (some of the following do already, but not enough for my taste) -- microwaves. thermostats. video cameras (not just some high-end VCRs). CD players. answering machines. car stereos. Assorted other dashboard controls, like interior illumination, dashboard illumnination, cruise control speed, radar detector sensitivity, etc etc.
On-demand, at-outlet water heaters have had several surges in popularity. I think my dad sold them (electrical ones) as a kid door-to-door in Knoxville (1950s), when many middle-class-and-below homes did not have running hot water, and neither did some wealthy ones. "Hot water? There's the stove, sonny!" That's how he took baths until the age of 4 or 6.
And if you look at old issues of Pop. Science / Pop. Mechanics (at least 70s / 80s), you'll see ads in the back for such systems, too. Whole Earth Catalog techno-hippy appropriate-technology types have been advocating them for a few decades as well;)
My dad and I talked about these recently; he can't understand why they're not popular here in the U.S., while hugely popular / widespread in Europe. I know the reason that *I* like to have a hot-water tank is that if a system fails while I'm in the shower, the water in the tank is already hot, and I won't get frozen;) (He scoffed at at that idea, pointing out that electricity at least in wealthy countries like the U.S. is quite reliable, and outages are not worth worrying much about.) So my reasoning is pretty much psychological; rationally, I like the on-demand system a lot. But boy, I'd like at least a backup tank of piping hot water for when the apocalypse knocks out the electrical grid, for one last long hot shower.
We run / decline those just as happily as we run / decline positive ones.
Our (reader-submitted) book reviews tend to come from readers who liked a book or series enough to finish it because they wanted to, not because they had to. Sometimes, they're from people who disliked a book enough to submit a review partly as a warning to others (like the recent T1 survival guide).
And since when has Slashdot provided an affiliate link to a bookstore? I'm not sure, but it's been a couple of years. That doesn't obligate anyone to buy; there are a lot of online book vendors who would happily accept your filthy lucre:)
I use both GIMP (by preference) and Photoshop, both mostly for amusement (original image creation) and photo manipulation, though have done some of each for publishing original graphics in The Daily Texan (student paper at UT Austin). I'm pretty familiar with both interfaces from years of limited, persistent but untutored use -- would call myself capable, but not a power user of either.
I can't claim to speak for anyone else, but with the choice of both (which I have), I use the GIMP by preference (if it worked on OS 9, I'd use it on my Mac, too). I find the tools more logical, and I have grown to like the right-click menus. Matter of preference and familiarity, both self-reinforcing I know. I also prefer GIMP's multi-window approach, and now find Photoshops's way annoying:)
Yes, for certain things (CMYK is the biggest one I can think of), GIMP isn't the right choice. But for everything else... eh, no accounting for tastes. I've demo'd the GIMP to a lot of people, and most of them (even the Photoshop users) had only positive reactions to it. Yes, in the course of time (a month of year of use, not an hour), they would surely find annoyances as we all can / do. They're not identical; they just overlap huge areas. But I (strongly) disagree with your claim that it's "simple fact" that Photoshop is more pleasant or easier to use, or specifically, easier to pick up. No, it's not:) If it were a simple fact, I wouldn't claim otherwise.
Have these ever been tested in court? That is, requirements like "this may only be installed on a computer running a legally licensed copy of Windows," which I believe Office apps all say.
Even if it works, *if* these clauses hold any weight at all (and I think they're about as worthless as the "install only EnergizerTM brand batteries!" on some pieces of electronics), a lot of companies might say "oohhh... don't want to do anything which might get us in trouble, even for modest savings in cost...."
timothy
if I were naming some spyware / antispyware ...
on
Spy v. Spy
·
· Score: 1
I'd have to go with WhoWhatWhereWhenWhyWHAM!
Sidenote: For obvious reasons (starting with marketshare) most of this spyware affects Windows users. Are there any insidious spyware programs to watch out for under any of the usual *nix contenders? What about OS X?
... and they say (that is, their PR rep said, when I picked up my copy of 6.0) they continue to do so:)
Star Office has been sold packaged before -- I nearly bought one of the 5.2 boxes, but found that other programs did everything I wanted pretty well (my needs are few), and that I hated the 5.2 monolithic interface.
If you'd get Office from one of the P2P networks (free as in beer), but otherwise like SO, then... what's the point? Couldn't you as easily get SO as MS Office, if that's the only concern?
Sun has funded the development of OpenOffice, and still do. They've still got at least some wheels on the open source road...
It has 256 megs of RAM, 1.06GHz celeron, NiCD battery (oh well), 15GB hard drive (eh, I can't complain much, my hard drives are all mostly empty anyhow).
For 900 bucks (800 after mail-in rebate), I am pretty pleased with it, but the Linux aspect is the only sticky thing -- the chipset in here is the i830M. That means it's supported in XF86 4.2, but not earlier. I'd like to do a clean Mandrake install, though, and since I want 8.2 anyhow, I'm downloading that. Rather, I started the download at my dad's place 30 miles from here on his cable modem;) Try explaning even to a retired engineer where to find the 2nd and 3rd ISOs after he's closed the browser sometime! I'll be back there later in the week to grab the other ISOs and burn the CDs.
I'm told that this model works great under 8.2, though. Should, anyhow -- XF86 is the hangup with 8.1, which otherwise goes on fine. Lovely unless you want to use the GIMP, KWord, etc.
(or other webcams, say ones with internal CD-R drives quickly turning every movie into a keepsake;))
Sure would be less conspicuous for someone to have a picturebook there than a conventional videocamera:)
Having eaten / watched one movie like this (at a theatre in Salt Lake City... "Brewskis"?), I think it would be fun for certain types of movies (big action, big comedy, basically any thing BIG and fun), but for serious, concentrated movie watching, I think I'd prefer a regular theatre. [Which is the point of these eating theatres -- they're social places more than theatres, which is fine if that's what you want.]
If it cost a few hundred less, I would have picked it over the Satellite 1005 I just bought, (but the keyboard is a bit pinched for long-term use, I tell myself, mollifying). Still, it has some things that this behemoth does not:
1) side-mounted DVD drive, which is as it should be. Front-mounted drives suck. Eh, I paid less I got less, I was aware of the bargain. That latch / lever mechanism though seems pretty flimsy to me, hope it lasts for you.
2) light -- really nice and stylish, too.
3) trackpoint, my favorite pointing device.
However, I am eagerly waiting for 8.2 for the same reason -- because of the hoops that the few people I've seen online with working i830M systems had to go through to *get* them working.
Actually, they're better now (or maybe I'm less bitter) than they were a few years ago, but I find I always end up hitting the pad with thumb, and especially when using a WM with windows set to focus on rollover, this gets pretty annoying.
However, when I was in a large computer store last week (Fry's in Austin), I ran into a guy looking at laptops at the same time I was -- an ex computer repairman. We talked about why so few laptops come with the (IMO vastly, incomprehensibly better) trackpoint / erasor / nipple thing, and he said that it's because a) they fail a lot (something I can vouch for too) and b) to replace them means replacing the whole keyboard subassembly, rather than just the pointer device, as with a trackpad.
Now that trackballs are optical, I hope some brave company at least makes one optional. I rather liked it on my Powerbook 140.
That's what I was hoping to hear. I've been away from all but dialup connections for a little while now (a few weeks, with occasional 802.11 and borrowed cable modem access, but no CD-R drive at the time, typical;)) and I have not been downloading the betas, but have been following occasionally on mandrakeforum.
If the betas worked, I trust that the real deal will too. When so, this laptop will be even more ridulous -- 1 *gigahertz* processor?! Sheesh, this is more powerful than any laptop I've ever previously *held,* never mind owned (and more powerful than any desktop I've owned, for that matter), and cost only slightly more than half what my iBook did. In 6 months, ads for laptops like this one will grudgingly admit that they're "adequate for basic word processing and limited web-access.";)
Running a decent window manager and galeon, though, I believe I will survive OK:)
So I foolishly bought a new laptop, figuring that all modern laptops were well supported by all modern Linux distros... foolish, like I said;)
Glad to see that the i830M chipset listed as supported under XFree 4.2, BUT -- mandrake's hardware list only lists it as supported under "video." Does this mean that the integrated video on my Satellite 1005-S157 (ridiculously cheap, I saw one online for just under $700, I paid $800 with a discount) will work, but not the sound? 3D acceleration doesn't matter, but sound really would be nice.
Right now, after trying all the options I could to get it to work as an i810 chipset and failing (try googling for XF86 and i830M -- lots of hard-luck cases, a few successes.) Looks like I now have a Windows XP laptop, and Win XP may be more stable than any Windows I've used yet (none very much, so not a big comparison), but ugly and annoying. I hope that 8.2 will go on nicely. No "pirated" software on here, but I would rather have a nice pretty (and *working*) Mandrake or other Linux on this machine, so I could the software I want running free in its native habitat:) [yes, I know there are Win32 versions of GIMP, Xchat, etc, but I don't feel like downloading them over dialup in a motel;)]
Anyone with one of these laptops who's tested it with Mdk8.2?:) If yes, I hope it's been successful!
Some people prefer to make others miserable rather than happy, and some seem to have mixed motivations. I think submitting real stories / information would be a much more pleasant use of time than trolling, overall, but... hey, malice and nihilsm have their own charms, apparently. Escape from Mordor where the shadows lie and all that.
by drastically limiting the scope of the proposal / bill / law, even if it still hits the places where it most matters. (Unlikely you'll be playing a movie on most of your car's microprocessors, so they can give that up easily and pretend it's a big concession.)
One reason I like having a Macintosh around is to watch things in Quicktime format. Sounds like this will (completely?) eliminate that desire.
However, people for the most part never upgrade their hardware *or* software, either because they're scared to (righteously, since a lot of software installation is badly designed and dangerous to one's data and sanity), lazy (an enduring and important human trait), or not allowed (many workplaces).
I bet most computers in the Windows world get new software only when Outlook lets in a virus, and most Linux boxes get new software only when a new distribution / version is installed. Perhaps Mandrake could sell another "Premium" install? Or Red Hat?
Slashdot Mirror
This is one of the things I like best about PS/2 ports -- my collection of decent, sturdy, clicky keyboards.
However, there are USB PS/2 adapters; I don't have one for the PC yet, but since I've recently acquired a machine with no PS/2 ports, I guess I need one. My iMate though lets my clicky ADB northgate keyboard work great with my iBook and other modern Macs. And there are a few nice clickies made for USB, but probably nowadays all are 104 key.
timothy
I was just happy to find that The Philipino Connection (a very small restaurant here in Knoxville TN, basically takeout with one or two tables) has just opened up a new location near me. I stopped in there yesterday, ate way too much. It's not *great* food, but it's cheap, pretty tasty, and interesting. I would avoid the pepper steak in the future, but the eggrolls, rice dishes, noodles and friend bananas are good. They don't have any of the really exotic Philipino food, but perhaps on some days of the year ...
timothy
Go to http://slashcode.com/sites.pl -- there are a lot of them, but it's not a comprehensive global listing ... lots of different sites there, though.
Cheers,
timothy
Since there are 802.11 cards available for this, it seems that for about $600 (Zaurus + 802.11 card), you could have most of an access point, with a pretty powerful CPU attached on the side :)
...
However, is there any way to have both an ethernet jack and an 802.11 card active? (Are there sleeves like for the iPaq to add PCMCIA cards, perhaps, or is it only the one handspring-like slot, with an only-one-at-a-time rule?) It would be cool to have a tiny device which would be stuck onto any network (a friend's cable modem while traveling, say) which provides at least a small wireless network, just like that
Maybe pipedream; I didn't spend much time looking at these last LWCE after I discovered how clumsy my fingers were on that tiny keyboard.
timothy
I am slowly converting my disproportionate-to-my-skills collection of computers to laptops instead of ridiculous boxes (ridiculous to move, lift, find room for, etc) and awkward monitors.
...)
... glad I only had 5 minutes of Easter dinner to play with. I was jonesing for a 300GB RAID array transparently available to me, but Nope. Let's see Iomega come out with *that*.
In the tradeoffs that come with laptops, large hard drives are usually one of the sacrificed items. (Yeah, largish ones are available, especially largish in absolute terms, but in relative terms, 'real' hard drives are going to be larger, faster and cheaper for a while yet
I tried importing video last night (first time for everything) onto my iBook, and watched alarmingly as the "available space" dropped inexorably
timothy
quarters is another one it generally only takes one try to learn. It involves #2 lead pencils, quarters, and a no sympathetic observers to alert the victim.
timothy
when it comes to video editing, I am not in the market for a $3000 something :) [It's a legitimate market, and I'm glad people exist to whom that would be a reasonable investment in the pursuit of their art, I'm just not one of them.]
... but just simple "hone down to the best 2 minutes on a typical camcorder home recording, re-order, and burn" would be enough to satisfy me for a while. I'd like to be able to put my own recordings (if any are good) onto cheap CD-Rs to share with friends / family.
However, I really would like (would gladly pay $50 extra for a distro that allowed me to *easily*, out-of-the-box, no-foolin', no hassles, do the following 3 things, with free software):
1) import over firewire from a digital video camera (yes, it's possible; is it out-of-box ready from any distribution? Can I plug the cheap floor-model Sony digital camera I bought from Best Buy into a box running any available distribution which will correctly recognize / identify the hardware and let me haul in the video from it?]
2) Set edit points something like iMovie allows on the Mac (I believe Windows now comes with a similar program, but I have not seen it), and then duplicate / rearrange / shorten / delete clips. Doesn't have to be pretty, just has to let me define beginning and ending points, and then assemble the resulting collage.
3) Burn to VCD / SVCD
That's it.
Now, there are a lot of other things it would be nice to have -- color correction, titling, fancy fades and wipes, DVD authoring, complex sound capabilities, animations, bluescreen abilities
I hope interest in video-on-Linux trickles down enough that a real, working, easy integrated package to do at least these three things actually reaches us. (Can be a pretty wrapper adding together separate programs to do each of those things, of course.)
timothy
Jogwheels are one of my favorite interfaces, I wish they were more widely used, and I think they would be a good way to approach the thumbliness of a good analog alarm clock. (I like the wind-up Westclox models ...) I'm interested in the new Powermate from griffin (http://www.griffintechnology.com/audio/pwrmate_fe atures.html) though I dunno if it's friendly with any free operating system. The idea is the thing! I'd like an alarm clock with a pseudo-analog face and a USB port :) Hook in your external jogwheel, set your time, set your alarm time, and boom :)
Lots of devices should have jogwheels (some of the following do already, but not enough for my taste) -- microwaves. thermostats. video cameras (not just some high-end VCRs). CD players. answering machines. car stereos. Assorted other dashboard controls, like interior illumination, dashboard illumnination, cruise control speed, radar detector sensitivity, etc etc.
timothy
On-demand, at-outlet water heaters have had several surges in popularity. I think my dad sold them (electrical ones) as a kid door-to-door in Knoxville (1950s), when many middle-class-and-below homes did not have running hot water, and neither did some wealthy ones. "Hot water? There's the stove, sonny!" That's how he took baths until the age of 4 or 6.
;)
;) (He scoffed at at that idea, pointing out that electricity at least in wealthy countries like the U.S. is quite reliable, and outages are not worth worrying much about.) So my reasoning is pretty much psychological; rationally, I like the on-demand system a lot. But boy, I'd like at least a backup tank of piping hot water for when the apocalypse knocks out the electrical grid, for one last long hot shower.
And if you look at old issues of Pop. Science / Pop. Mechanics (at least 70s / 80s), you'll see ads in the back for such systems, too. Whole Earth Catalog techno-hippy appropriate-technology types have been advocating them for a few decades as well
My dad and I talked about these recently; he can't understand why they're not popular here in the U.S., while hugely popular / widespread in Europe. I know the reason that *I* like to have a hot-water tank is that if a system fails while I'm in the shower, the water in the tank is already hot, and I won't get frozen
timothy
We run / decline those just as happily as we run / decline positive ones.
:)
Our (reader-submitted) book reviews tend to come from readers who liked a book or series enough to finish it because they wanted to, not because they had to. Sometimes, they're from people who disliked a book enough to submit a review partly as a warning to others (like the recent T1 survival guide).
And since when has Slashdot provided an affiliate link to a bookstore? I'm not sure, but it's been a couple of years. That doesn't obligate anyone to buy; there are a lot of online book vendors who would happily accept your filthy lucre
timothy
I use both GIMP (by preference) and Photoshop, both mostly for amusement (original image creation) and photo manipulation, though have done some of each for publishing original graphics in The Daily Texan (student paper at UT Austin). I'm pretty familiar with both interfaces from years of limited, persistent but untutored use -- would call myself capable, but not a power user of either.
:)
... eh, no accounting for tastes. I've demo'd the GIMP to a lot of people, and most of them (even the Photoshop users) had only positive reactions to it. Yes, in the course of time (a month of year of use, not an hour), they would surely find annoyances as we all can / do. They're not identical; they just overlap huge areas. But I (strongly) disagree with your claim that it's "simple fact" that Photoshop is more pleasant or easier to use, or specifically, easier to pick up. No, it's not :) If it were a simple fact, I wouldn't claim otherwise.
I can't claim to speak for anyone else, but with the choice of both (which I have), I use the GIMP by preference (if it worked on OS 9, I'd use it on my Mac, too). I find the tools more logical, and I have grown to like the right-click menus. Matter of preference and familiarity, both self-reinforcing I know. I also prefer GIMP's multi-window approach, and now find Photoshops's way annoying
Yes, for certain things (CMYK is the biggest one I can think of), GIMP isn't the right choice. But for everything else
timothy
Have these ever been tested in court? That is, requirements like "this may only be installed on a computer running a legally licensed copy of Windows," which I believe Office apps all say.
... don't want to do anything which might get us in trouble, even for modest savings in cost ...."
Even if it works, *if* these clauses hold any weight at all (and I think they're about as worthless as the "install only EnergizerTM brand batteries!" on some pieces of electronics), a lot of companies might say "oohhh
timothy
I'd have to go with WhoWhatWhereWhenWhyWHAM!
Sidenote: For obvious reasons (starting with marketshare) most of this spyware affects Windows users. Are there any insidious spyware programs to watch out for under any of the usual *nix contenders? What about OS X?
timothy
... and they say (that is, their PR rep said, when I picked up my copy of 6.0) they continue to do so :)
... what's the point? Couldn't you as easily get SO as MS Office, if that's the only concern?
...
Star Office has been sold packaged before -- I nearly bought one of the 5.2 boxes, but found that other programs did everything I wanted pretty well (my needs are few), and that I hated the 5.2 monolithic interface.
If you'd get Office from one of the P2P networks (free as in beer), but otherwise like SO, then
Sun has funded the development of OpenOffice, and still do. They've still got at least some wheels on the open source road
timothy
it's a Satellite 1005-S157, the cheap-oh model :)
;) Try explaning even to a retired engineer where to find the 2nd and 3rd ISOs after he's closed the browser sometime! I'll be back there later in the week to grab the other ISOs and burn the CDs.
It has 256 megs of RAM, 1.06GHz celeron, NiCD battery (oh well), 15GB hard drive (eh, I can't complain much, my hard drives are all mostly empty anyhow).
For 900 bucks (800 after mail-in rebate), I am pretty pleased with it, but the Linux aspect is the only sticky thing -- the chipset in here is the i830M. That means it's supported in XF86 4.2, but not earlier. I'd like to do a clean Mandrake install, though, and since I want 8.2 anyhow, I'm downloading that. Rather, I started the download at my dad's place 30 miles from here on his cable modem
I'm told that this model works great under 8.2, though. Should, anyhow -- XF86 is the hangup with 8.1, which otherwise goes on fine. Lovely unless you want to use the GIMP, KWord, etc.
Cheers,
timothy
(or other webcams, say ones with internal CD-R drives quickly turning every movie into a keepsake ;))
:)
... "Brewskis"?), I think it would be fun for certain types of movies (big action, big comedy, basically any thing BIG and fun), but for serious, concentrated movie watching, I think I'd prefer a regular theatre. [Which is the point of these eating theatres -- they're social places more than theatres, which is fine if that's what you want.]
Sure would be less conspicuous for someone to have a picturebook there than a conventional videocamera
Having eaten / watched one movie like this (at a theatre in Salt Lake City
timothy
If it cost a few hundred less, I would have picked it over the Satellite 1005 I just bought, (but the keyboard is a bit pinched for long-term use, I tell myself, mollifying). Still, it has some things that this behemoth does not:
1) side-mounted DVD drive, which is as it should be. Front-mounted drives suck. Eh, I paid less I got less, I was aware of the bargain. That latch / lever mechanism though seems pretty flimsy to me, hope it lasts for you.
2) light -- really nice and stylish, too.
3) trackpoint, my favorite pointing device.
However, I am eagerly waiting for 8.2 for the same reason -- because of the hoops that the few people I've seen online with working i830M systems had to go through to *get* them working.
timothy
Actually, they're better now (or maybe I'm less bitter) than they were a few years ago, but I find I always end up hitting the pad with thumb, and especially when using a WM with windows set to focus on rollover, this gets pretty annoying.
However, when I was in a large computer store last week (Fry's in Austin), I ran into a guy looking at laptops at the same time I was -- an ex computer repairman. We talked about why so few laptops come with the (IMO vastly, incomprehensibly better) trackpoint / erasor / nipple thing, and he said that it's because a) they fail a lot (something I can vouch for too) and b) to replace them means replacing the whole keyboard subassembly, rather than just the pointer device, as with a trackpad.
Now that trackballs are optical, I hope some brave company at least makes one optional. I rather liked it on my Powerbook 140.
timothy
That's what I was hoping to hear. I've been away from all but dialup connections for a little while now (a few weeks, with occasional 802.11 and borrowed cable modem access, but no CD-R drive at the time, typical ;)) and I have not been downloading the betas, but have been following occasionally on mandrakeforum.
;)
:)
If the betas worked, I trust that the real deal will too. When so, this laptop will be even more ridulous -- 1 *gigahertz* processor?! Sheesh, this is more powerful than any laptop I've ever previously *held,* never mind owned (and more powerful than any desktop I've owned, for that matter), and cost only slightly more than half what my iBook did. In 6 months, ads for laptops like this one will grudgingly admit that they're "adequate for basic word processing and limited web-access."
Running a decent window manager and galeon, though, I believe I will survive OK
thanks for the word,
timothy
So I foolishly bought a new laptop, figuring that all modern laptops were well supported by all modern Linux distros ... foolish, like I said ;)
:) [yes, I know there are Win32 versions of GIMP, Xchat, etc, but I don't feel like downloading them over dialup in a motel ;)]
:) If yes, I hope it's been successful!
Glad to see that the i830M chipset listed as supported under XFree 4.2, BUT -- mandrake's hardware list only lists it as supported under "video." Does this mean that the integrated video on my Satellite 1005-S157 (ridiculously cheap, I saw one online for just under $700, I paid $800 with a discount) will work, but not the sound? 3D acceleration doesn't matter, but sound really would be nice.
Right now, after trying all the options I could to get it to work as an i810 chipset and failing (try googling for XF86 and i830M -- lots of hard-luck cases, a few successes.) Looks like I now have a Windows XP laptop, and Win XP may be more stable than any Windows I've used yet (none very much, so not a big comparison), but ugly and annoying. I hope that 8.2 will go on nicely. No "pirated" software on here, but I would rather have a nice pretty (and *working*) Mandrake or other Linux on this machine, so I could the software I want running free in its native habitat
Anyone with one of these laptops who's tested it with Mdk8.2?
timothy
-- it would be a very strange argument.
Is Mundie in favor of higher taxes all 'round? ()
Does Mundie believe that the State spends tax dollars wisely, and should be given more?
Does Mundie believe that government spending is preferable to directed spending my individual citizens acting in their own perceived best interests?
All very strange. It's like the Wizard of Oz, somehow, only with a transparent curtain.
timothy
.. and I should have spotted it, too. Fixed now, thanks to both of you :)
Tim
And frequently do.
... hey, malice and nihilsm have their own charms, apparently. Escape from Mordor where the shadows lie and all that.
Some people prefer to make others miserable rather than happy, and some seem to have mixed motivations. I think submitting real stories / information would be a much more pleasant use of time than trolling, overall, but
timothy
by drastically limiting the scope of the proposal / bill / law, even if it still hits the places where it most matters. (Unlikely you'll be playing a movie on most of your car's microprocessors, so they can give that up easily and pretend it's a big concession.)
timothy
One reason I like having a Macintosh around is to watch things in Quicktime format. Sounds like this will (completely?) eliminate that desire.
However, people for the most part never upgrade their hardware *or* software, either because they're scared to (righteously, since a lot of software installation is badly designed and dangerous to one's data and sanity), lazy (an enduring and important human trait), or not allowed (many workplaces).
I bet most computers in the Windows world get new software only when Outlook lets in a virus, and most Linux boxes get new software only when a new distribution / version is installed. Perhaps Mandrake could sell another "Premium" install? Or Red Hat?
timothy