I just bought a laptop (15", 1920x1080) and finding models without awful screens (15" with 1366x768, or 17" with 1600x900) was a chore. Why do laptop manufacturers hate their customers?
Did I miss a memo about Big Fish Games, or are they evil on Windows? I thought the were a legit game vendor... at least, their Mac client doesn't seem to do anything too stupid/nefarious.
Agreed. Keep your filthy fingers (and my filthy fingers) off my screen!
I've been planning on buying a new laptop this summer, but if "everyone" goes touch-screen I'm going to have to wait until "everyone" owns up to Windows 8 (well, touch interfaces in general) being ridiculous on laptops and desktops.
I'm amazed that "everyone" is jumping on the "touch-screen OMG!" bandwagon instead of the high-resolution display bandwagon, which would actually benefit users. I guess it's cheaper to implement touch and they can keep using cheap-assed 1366x768 displays.
Pretty sure our telecoms oligarchy (Rogers, Bell, Shaw, Telus, Videotron; generally "pick two" depending on where you live) spends more money convincing the CRTC they provide excellent service at a great price than they do on network upgrades and maintenance.
I'm running Win 7 on a P4 machine; that's quite a bit weaker than my phone (QualCom QC8960 I think), although they do both have 2GB of RAM. Granted the P4 is nearly 12 years old... but Win 7 works fairly well on it.
Fellow Canadian here; check the contract again, there's usually a clause stating that they can change the terms at any time, simply by notifying you about the change. And that you have to break the contract, paying those exciting early termination fees, if you don't agree to the changes when they come down.
If you have your own BES, RIM absolutely does not have your encryption keys, and therefore cannot hand them over to anyone. In that situation RIM can't read your email, period.
Now Linux users can experience the joys of Wine Wrapper and Cider gaming without having to borrow someone's Mac!
I suppose the Linux drivers for nVidia chips are probably in better shape than the ones for my MacBook Pro though, so maybe Wine'd games will be more stable there. I'll certainly be checking it out at some point.
I'm a TekSavvy customer and I'm sort of hoping Voltage comes after me... I've never downloaded The Hurt Locker. In fact, it's still sitting on my Bell box waiting for us to watch it... we recorded it when it was on TMN a couple years ago.
The best movie in Voltage's catalogue is Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, which I bought as soon as it was released. That movie's comedy gold!
That's more of an iPad issue than an Android issue though. Of the two, the Android tablet is much more likely to work with other, "foreign" devices in a useful way, without requiring bloaty software (hi iTunes, glad the new version uses about half the RAM of the previous version!) from the original manufacturer.
In my recent experience (trying to play The Witcher on my MacBook Pro) it's irrelevant because the unstable games (ones using Wine wrappers) will have to logging out and/or rebooting every hour or so anyway.
TF2 has been very stable though.
Apple's proven time and again that they're not at all interested in gaming on Mac OS X, I don't know why I even bother trying. They love it on iOS, of course.
I've been using Clementine (http://www.clementine-player.org/ for Linux, Mac, Windows) for a few weeks now, since the last article bitching about iTunes was on/. and it's pretty decent and very flexible.
And it uses a lot less RAM than iTunes, even after this iTunes update cut its RAM usage roughly in half... Clementine's still using only half as much.
The fact that they rated Sophos so highly, when it opens up a huge exciting new attack surface for you sort of suggests this "certification" is fairly pointless.
I've had similar backwards experiences with my AppleTV2... streaming from Apple is unwatchable (5-10 minute 'buffering' sequences every 20-30 minutes), but Netflix runs great on that thing.
I suspect Apple's pathetic Canadian CDN is to blame... downloads from their app store max out around 150K/sec on my connection (damn XCode, why you so big), while Steam can sustain 500K/sec no problem.
Given that I've killed a "server quality" Time Capsule via heat death of the built-in power supply, I don't think I'd trust a "server" Mac Mini for anything important unless I could keep it air conditioned below normal room temperature, with lots of air flow around it.
Which isn't really what you'd expect to do with something in that form factor, you'd probably expect to be able to stack a few of them in a corner somewhere.
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Aren't you describing how iCloud currently works? :-P
I just bought a laptop (15", 1920x1080) and finding models without awful screens (15" with 1366x768, or 17" with 1600x900) was a chore. Why do laptop manufacturers hate their customers?
Hopefully on Linux the second problem won't be such an issue, but I don't see the first problem changing.
I'm going to hold out for an 80x25 character amber VT-220 compatible tablet.
Did I miss a memo about Big Fish Games, or are they evil on Windows? I thought the were a legit game vendor... at least, their Mac client doesn't seem to do anything too stupid/nefarious.
Google me three times and I'm getting a restraining order, you stalker.
Agreed. Keep your filthy fingers (and my filthy fingers) off my screen!
I've been planning on buying a new laptop this summer, but if "everyone" goes touch-screen I'm going to have to wait until "everyone" owns up to Windows 8 (well, touch interfaces in general) being ridiculous on laptops and desktops.
I'm amazed that "everyone" is jumping on the "touch-screen OMG!" bandwagon instead of the high-resolution display bandwagon, which would actually benefit users. I guess it's cheaper to implement touch and they can keep using cheap-assed 1366x768 displays.
As long as telecoms continue selling "up to" services with no minimum, you can get this now, everywhere in North America! Victory!
And don't forget the ridiculously low usage limits.
See also: Canada.
Pretty sure our telecoms oligarchy (Rogers, Bell, Shaw, Telus, Videotron; generally "pick two" depending on where you live) spends more money convincing the CRTC they provide excellent service at a great price than they do on network upgrades and maintenance.
OMG SO ELEGANT! :-O
I'm running Win 7 on a P4 machine; that's quite a bit weaker than my phone (QualCom QC8960 I think), although they do both have 2GB of RAM. Granted the P4 is nearly 12 years old... but Win 7 works fairly well on it.
I wonder how it works on the XBox; AFAIK there's no Java there at all. Maybe Mojang ported an open source JVM and bundled it?
Another "me too" product from Apple, hooray.
Fellow Canadian here; check the contract again, there's usually a clause stating that they can change the terms at any time, simply by notifying you about the change. And that you have to break the contract, paying those exciting early termination fees, if you don't agree to the changes when they come down.
If you have your own BES, RIM absolutely does not have your encryption keys, and therefore cannot hand them over to anyone. In that situation RIM can't read your email, period.
Spoiler: I work for RIM.
It used to be fun to type this in messages:
+++ATH0
Also known as, "How to find out who's using a crappy terminal emulator on your BBS."
Now Linux users can experience the joys of Wine Wrapper and Cider gaming without having to borrow someone's Mac!
I suppose the Linux drivers for nVidia chips are probably in better shape than the ones for my MacBook Pro though, so maybe Wine'd games will be more stable there. I'll certainly be checking it out at some point.
I'm a TekSavvy customer and I'm sort of hoping Voltage comes after me... I've never downloaded The Hurt Locker. In fact, it's still sitting on my Bell box waiting for us to watch it... we recorded it when it was on TMN a couple years ago.
The best movie in Voltage's catalogue is Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, which I bought as soon as it was released. That movie's comedy gold!
My favourite part of the article was that you swipe down from the top to get the menu full of your apps at the bottom of the screen.
That's stupid enough on a small tablet or phone screen, but imagine it on a decent-sized LCD or your 1080p TV.
Fitts's Law was proposed in 1954 guys, come on. Did MS's entire UX department somehow miss that one while learning about human-computer interaction?
They did study some HCI, right?
That's more of an iPad issue than an Android issue though. Of the two, the Android tablet is much more likely to work with other, "foreign" devices in a useful way, without requiring bloaty software (hi iTunes, glad the new version uses about half the RAM of the previous version!) from the original manufacturer.
In my recent experience (trying to play The Witcher on my MacBook Pro) it's irrelevant because the unstable games (ones using Wine wrappers) will have to logging out and/or rebooting every hour or so anyway.
TF2 has been very stable though.
Apple's proven time and again that they're not at all interested in gaming on Mac OS X, I don't know why I even bother trying. They love it on iOS, of course.
Rebooting to play games is such a pain though.
I've been using Clementine (http://www.clementine-player.org/ for Linux, Mac, Windows) for a few weeks now, since the last article bitching about iTunes was on /. and it's pretty decent and very flexible.
And it uses a lot less RAM than iTunes, even after this iTunes update cut its RAM usage roughly in half... Clementine's still using only half as much.
The fact that they rated Sophos so highly, when it opens up a huge exciting new attack surface for you sort of suggests this "certification" is fairly pointless.
I've had similar backwards experiences with my AppleTV2... streaming from Apple is unwatchable (5-10 minute 'buffering' sequences every 20-30 minutes), but Netflix runs great on that thing.
I suspect Apple's pathetic Canadian CDN is to blame... downloads from their app store max out around 150K/sec on my connection (damn XCode, why you so big), while Steam can sustain 500K/sec no problem.
Given that I've killed a "server quality" Time Capsule via heat death of the built-in power supply, I don't think I'd trust a "server" Mac Mini for anything important unless I could keep it air conditioned below normal room temperature, with lots of air flow around it.
Which isn't really what you'd expect to do with something in that form factor, you'd probably expect to be able to stack a few of them in a corner somewhere.