Apple would have to be getting a massive discount on the Intel processors to meet those price points. More than 50% even.
I've seen estimates that say Apple probably spends around $50 for the G4 in an iBook or Mac Mini. Maybe $100 for the Powerbook variant. However Apple may save money by dropping the dedicated graphics and by using a third party chipset instead of their in-house chipset.
However Apple has to compete with other manufacturers, but the sub-$800 laptop market is saturated with Celeron M systems lacking features. Apple doesn't like to scrimp on features, but maybe there will be a Celeron M based iBook, the base model, priced to compete (in Apple terms, i.e., 20% more expensive). The Core Duo iBooks, if there are any, will be at current system prices, give or take $100. Unless Apple get the Centrino Duo bundle for under $150 anyway (processor, chipset, wireless).
Hell, we'll know in a day and a half. May as well wait. I'm sure that they won't be available immediately though.
I would expect that the Radeon 9550, being a discrete chip with its own memory (albeit only 32MB) would outperform pretty much any current integrated graphics setup, including ATI's own.
From ATI's 9550 page we can see that the GPU has 4 pixel pipelines and 2 vertex shader pipelines.
The 945GM features GMA950 graphics. From Intel's GMA950 page we can see that this core runs at up to 400MHz, and can render up to 4 pixels per clock. In terms of performance however, from ExtremeTech we can see that the GMA950 performs much worse than a 6200TC, which is probably on par with a Radeon 9550. "To put it more bluntly, it's a complete and total rout for the GMA950". Some games wouldn't even run, possibly due to driver bugs (and people claim that Intel has great stable chipsets with no issues).
However to cut costs I can't see Apple continuing to use a dedicated graphics chip on their low-end products. They have to compete with PC laptops, and people don't know that integrated graphics suck (but are still usually good enough for desktop use).
I think that many people, as their savings went into orbit, would decide to give more to charity.
Is giving ~2% of your fortune to charity each year really that amazing?
It is more worthy than all of the other donations by people, many of whom might be donating a lot more money in percentage terms, or actually donating their time to the cause?
It's good however, because you don't hear much about other mega-rich people giving to charity. Maybe they do, but don't claim as much publicity from it? And ~2% of a mega-fuck-load is still a fuck-load (20 kilo-fuck-loads!).
Apple's been selling their 30" for god knows how long now. Dell has now joined the game.
I expect that if Dell are using a more modern panel, then Apple will soon have an updated 30" product, not to compete but just because their 30" is due for an update... then again we are talking about Apple, who seem to forget about products once they're launched.
It'd be nice if both had more inputs though. I don't need that many 30" displays in the house, and considering my TV is a 24" widescreen CRT I think I'd switch entirely to the 30" computer display for everything. As a high end product I'd understand if it only offered, say, two HDMI inputs alongside the dual-link DVI. An svideo/SCART would be nice too though.
Getting there. Shame that on the CNET page the picture they choose for this device is a vile green. Then they mention it is thicker than the iPod, which sucks for pocket use. It is $40 more than the equivalent capacity iPod. It doesn't work with iTMS (although this is getting less of a liability every week as other stores sort out their acts). In all other ways it looks like an iPod. Wonder how good the standard headphones are?
But competition is good. If this forces Apple to enhance their iPod again soon, then great. Although we will see if Apple release an 80GB iPod Video (not iPod with video, a real video iPod) next week... if they do, it'll may have a device-sized display, with a touchscreen, or change the form factor a lot.
I think Babylon 5 looks better on VHS than on DVD.
Seriously, they filmed that series with two cameras, a semi decent one that made the sets look a bit plasticy, and something they found in a dumpster. Watching the DVDs you can see the different cameras in use, scene to scene, cut to cut. Decent. Grainy. Decent. Grainy. And they always put the decent camera on the men, and the grainy character on the women. Unforgivable.
It is the last series I would have thought about putting on HD media. Indeed most TV series until the last few years probably haven't got that much resolution.
Also redoing the effects would be an act of sacrilege. You might also get killed by rabid Amiga fans. Video toaster and Lightwave man! 30,000 polygons for B5 itself. Woooo...
Sadly, 90% of the content out there isn't good enough for a bloody iPod video resolution, nevermind HD.
Indeed, I did neglect to mention the 'past all this shit' crowd (of which I am one, I got a Mac earlier this year, at least Mac turds smells different from the Windows cowpats and the linux dung) who just want something quick and convenient that works.
It's a braindead installation for braindead computer users.
Not you. Not me. Not even my boss. Well, maybe, but he uses a Mac.
This will drag down a lot of useful software that should be on everybody's PC, and it will be quite visible. Or not, because it isn't on the Google main page, so how will people see it? Oh, wait, I bet AdSense users will get rewards for linking to it.
But if it cleans up a few PCs, if it gets a few more people using Firefox instead of IE, it makes the world a better place.
So if I release ShitLinux(tm) and purposely put security holes in it, I can negatively affect every other Unix vendor (not just other Linux vendors, but Sun, Apple,...), at least in terms of the US-CERT list?
Great. Where's me phone? Ah.... "Hey Bill, how much are you willing to pay..."
I don't care about downloadable ringtones, especially as my phone will play MP3s, so I could (if I cared) just make them on a computer and save myself the rip-off charges (why does a ringtone cost more than the entire song?). The latest fad gimmick is 'videotones', which is a video playing on the screen when someone rings you. Certainly I spend enough time extricating the phone from my pocket/bag/etc that I'm not going to be watching the video, I'm going to be answering/cancelling the call.
However some of the other features are useful. PDA functionality, even if basic, is handy - it saves me a device as I don't need a real PDA, but having the address book, todo list, calendar and so on available is really convenient. Interface for accessing them could be better though...
And cameras... I don't take my real digital camera everywhere with me, and indeed I commonly scavenge my rechargable batteries from it in an emergency so it isn't in a usable state half the time. It is nice to be able to at least take a picture of something that is memorable/funny/etc whenever that may happen. Quality sucks though on most phones.
The real issue with my phone is the touchscreen interface. It doesn't have a thumb-usable interface for many things, so you have to extricate the stylus a lot more than you should. When I want to make a call I have to enter in the unlock code (had my phone stolen a couple of times, so I don't want to make it easy for the thieves) on an on-screen keyboard. ARGH!
I'm seriously hoping that Apple will come out with a phone of their own design in the next year. They might get the UI right... although it'd probably look like an iPod, heh.
"The offering will include exclusive material from MTV, though it will not be compatible with iPods, which are currently the most popular MP3 player."
In my opinoin, that will doom it in the long run. Sure, people will play with it for a while, but those with iPods won't be happy when they can't put the music on the iPod.
Unless someone gets Apple to open up Fairplay to potential licensees, or to include WMA playback on the iPod. I don't see either happening without a court case though.
I don't think the GameCube was a failure, it just didn't achieve what it could have achieved. I don't know if it was a marketing failure, or Nintendo's image amongst gamers that was the issue.
Certainly each console was sold for a profit I'm sure. Also according to another link on this page, 170 million GameCube games have been sold, for the 20m consoles that were sold. That's 8.5 games per console - not too shabby, again especially as they again are all pure profit, whereas for the XBox the first 5 games or so purchased merely paid off the console's loss leader pricing...
The concept of copyright and patents is to encourage development of new creations, so the creator(s) can assure themselves that their hard work won't be copied and ripped off immediately after creation.
However if the period of time for these things is too long, then the creator will sit back on their existing creations. Things become stale. This is what we have now for the most part.
So a balance seems to be what is required. Enough of something to encourage people to create (which takes time and money) which benefits us all, whilst reducing the staleness that companies like Disney have running through them.
The pirates in China are making a parasitic living. Maybe the musicians over there accept that as a higher being they will have lower beings living off of them, it's natural. But it must suck to be in a band if the pirates are making more than you! On the other hand, they are spreading your work to people you couldn't reach yourself - unless they sold their CDs at a reasonable price too. That's the other issue - long copyrights and strict enforcement results in higher prices for society, again, this is bad for society and a sign of staleness, rotteness and foul corruption.
This is what competition (in this instance, between flash memory and tiny hard drives) is all about - better products for less money.
$18.50 a gigabyte is pretty nice for such a small device. Flash isn't near that currently, but probably will be in 6 to 12 months time. Of course flash pushers will come up with other advantages for their side I'm sure...
What's more interesting is that these drives are so thin - under 4mm thick! That's kinda sexy. Would I want it in a battered cell phone? Dunno. Do I need 10GB in a phone even? I'd prefer it in a digital camera, or tiny media player. It'll be a 'hit' in the integrated phone/media player market I'm sure. Somehow these devices take the worst aspect of every platform they try to integrate and reproduce it - but one day they'll get it right.
Hmmm ... unlikely, but if true then it could be:
on
Google PC to Hit Walmart?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Solaris 10 or Linux with a Gnome front-end (custom theme) and a document/data centric file browser and application suite. Of course the GTK load/save dialogs would also be replaced with document/data centric interfaces rather than the traditional file system view. Office tasks would be handled via StarOffice or OpenOffice. The browser would be Firefox. Again, the theme would be consistent for these applications as well. I'd expect a certain amount of lock-down and customisability restrictions.
The computer would also act as a home search box, it'd index all accessible data sources - network drives, etc. The file browser would give you a simple interface to all of these, again in a document centric manner.
Thing is, whilst possible, and indeed I wouldn't mind having the OS manage my files for me if it did it well and the files were properly indexed, I don't think Google could have arranged this in even 3 years of development - it is a lot of work. Then again, they are a very motivated company.
Yeah, the system has two cores in it, but the term dual-core really means a single chip with two processor cores on it, connected via something (the cache, the on-chip arbiter or whatever) and then attaching to the rest of the system via a single interface.
AMD's processors are dual-core as they connect via an on-chip arbiter, the SRQ. They then connect to the rest of the system via a HyperTransport link. AMD's next core revision, the F-Step, will have 4 core connections from the SRQ, allowing for future quad-core processors.
Intel's current 'dual-core' processors aren't really dual-core as they connect to the FSB independently. Indeed Intel's latest Presler processors have separate dies on the processor packaging. In practice however it doesn't really matter that much, so they get away with calling it 'dual-core' when it is technically SMP on a chip. Yonah will be Intel's first true dual-core processor because the cores are connected at the L2 cache level, which they share.
So now people defined the number of cores a processor has by the number of cores per socket in the system. In your system you have one core per socket, so the processors are single core, the system is dual-processor. In the reviewed laptop there are two cores in one socket, for the system is single-processor, but the processor is dual-core. Quite simple really.
"Apple did dual processor laptops 10 years AGO in 1996."
The poster didn't say it was a Mac, merely a dual processor laptop.
Hell, Apple could have sold dual-processor G4 based [17"] Powerbooks for the last couple of years if they cared about their customers to make up the performance difference. At least the G4 is quite low power, and Apple gets them quite cheaply - they should have tried something to jazz up the glacial speed increases of that processor line.
Anyway I wouldn't call this a laptop, not if it is a desktop replacement. It's a portable all-in-one system. It's probably just as portable as a Shuttle case with handle and separate LCD, but requires less cables.:)
What is your point about just passing his driving test? In England many people don't bother to learn to drive until after university, they don't need to. We have a reasonable (if not European standard) public transport system for a start. Secondly petrol costs a lot, which is a lot if you are a student, never mind the car, insurance, tax, MOTs... Thirdly we're a small country, no need to drive 30 miles to the superstore.
This guy in my opinion got lucky, but he made his own luck. The idea is quite silly, a one-off zero-product media-driven website, but all it has proved is that a press release or two, a gimmick and so on will sell to the media, and hence make him money. It won't last forever, but he has got a million which should net him a nice house, a hot girlfriend and a better car along the line - if he manages it well. He was in the right place at the right time and at the right age too. Git!:)
Alphabetical letters are easier to find and keys are color-coded on the NSK535R to aid hunt & peck typists Easier to find if you have never typed before, otherwise they will be just as hard to find.
Surely an alphabetical arrangement is a long 1D array of keys?
This keyboard is not even the 1D arrangement split up into 3 rows.
It is the 1D arrangement split up into SIX rows, three on the left (A-M) and three on the right (N-Z).
People don't actually have a natural association regarding the alphabet that maps it to a 4x6 (+2 extra somewhere) layout.
So that whole advantage is just made up, it is probably a disadvantage, as the person will be using a layout that will never be useful for them to learn.
A good keyboard isn't about the number of keys being optimal, it is about how good it is to use, it's tactile response and a myriad of other things.
Take for example the MSX style cursor + in the middle of the keyboard. It isn't biased to either side for single-handed operation, and an upside-down T is better for the middle finger anyway than a +. They'd have been better off adding a 'Cursor' function key and assigning it to WASD or IJKL (well, the alphabetical arrangement that corresponds to those qwerty keys anyway).
As for the ordering, Serenity shows that we'd still be using standard plastic PC keyboards in the distant future. So why bother trying to reinvent the keyboard. Again. Times a hundred.
The major issue with keyboards these days is that navigation isn't integrated (excepting nipple/clit mice) so most users will spend their time switching between the mouse and the keyboard. There are some keyboards that integrate a trackpad, but they lack the feedback that normal keys provide.
From the other replies it seems that pay-off time for one of these ramps is more like 100 years than 15-20 years. Indeed the cost of powering lights will probably go down a lot in the next 30 years too, from the 25W that another responder said to maybe 10W. So maybe if these ramps lasted a couple of hundred years...
(Also I'm sure that the cost of electricity would be a lot cheaper for government than for consumers)
As for remote installations, I think a traffic light with batteries inside the pole and a solar panel would be a lot cheaper than this bulky contraption.
Maybe it'll be useful somewhere, but in most places I think it will be a waste of money. If it gets used it may be worth checking how the owner of the company making the product stands in relation to the political party in power in that area...
Slashdot Mirror
Apple would have to be getting a massive discount on the Intel processors to meet those price points. More than 50% even.
I've seen estimates that say Apple probably spends around $50 for the G4 in an iBook or Mac Mini. Maybe $100 for the Powerbook variant. However Apple may save money by dropping the dedicated graphics and by using a third party chipset instead of their in-house chipset.
However Apple has to compete with other manufacturers, but the sub-$800 laptop market is saturated with Celeron M systems lacking features. Apple doesn't like to scrimp on features, but maybe there will be a Celeron M based iBook, the base model, priced to compete (in Apple terms, i.e., 20% more expensive). The Core Duo iBooks, if there are any, will be at current system prices, give or take $100. Unless Apple get the Centrino Duo bundle for under $150 anyway (processor, chipset, wireless).
Hell, we'll know in a day and a half. May as well wait. I'm sure that they won't be available immediately though.
I would expect that the Radeon 9550, being a discrete chip with its own memory (albeit only 32MB) would outperform pretty much any current integrated graphics setup, including ATI's own.
From ATI's 9550 page we can see that the GPU has 4 pixel pipelines and 2 vertex shader pipelines.
The 945GM features GMA950 graphics. From Intel's GMA950 page we can see that this core runs at up to 400MHz, and can render up to 4 pixels per clock. In terms of performance however, from ExtremeTech we can see that the GMA950 performs much worse than a 6200TC, which is probably on par with a Radeon 9550. "To put it more bluntly, it's a complete and total rout for the GMA950". Some games wouldn't even run, possibly due to driver bugs (and people claim that Intel has great stable chipsets with no issues).
However to cut costs I can't see Apple continuing to use a dedicated graphics chip on their low-end products. They have to compete with PC laptops, and people don't know that integrated graphics suck (but are still usually good enough for desktop use).
I think that many people, as their savings went into orbit, would decide to give more to charity.
Is giving ~2% of your fortune to charity each year really that amazing?
It is more worthy than all of the other donations by people, many of whom might be donating a lot more money in percentage terms, or actually donating their time to the cause?
It's good however, because you don't hear much about other mega-rich people giving to charity. Maybe they do, but don't claim as much publicity from it? And ~2% of a mega-fuck-load is still a fuck-load (20 kilo-fuck-loads!).
Apple's been selling their 30" for god knows how long now. Dell has now joined the game.
I expect that if Dell are using a more modern panel, then Apple will soon have an updated 30" product, not to compete but just because their 30" is due for an update... then again we are talking about Apple, who seem to forget about products once they're launched.
It'd be nice if both had more inputs though. I don't need that many 30" displays in the house, and considering my TV is a 24" widescreen CRT I think I'd switch entirely to the 30" computer display for everything. As a high end product I'd understand if it only offered, say, two HDMI inputs alongside the dual-link DVI. An svideo/SCART would be nice too though.
Getting there. Shame that on the CNET page the picture they choose for this device is a vile green. Then they mention it is thicker than the iPod, which sucks for pocket use. It is $40 more than the equivalent capacity iPod. It doesn't work with iTMS (although this is getting less of a liability every week as other stores sort out their acts). In all other ways it looks like an iPod. Wonder how good the standard headphones are?
But competition is good. If this forces Apple to enhance their iPod again soon, then great. Although we will see if Apple release an 80GB iPod Video (not iPod with video, a real video iPod) next week... if they do, it'll may have a device-sized display, with a touchscreen, or change the form factor a lot.
I think Babylon 5 looks better on VHS than on DVD.
Seriously, they filmed that series with two cameras, a semi decent one that made the sets look a bit plasticy, and something they found in a dumpster. Watching the DVDs you can see the different cameras in use, scene to scene, cut to cut. Decent. Grainy. Decent. Grainy. And they always put the decent camera on the men, and the grainy character on the women. Unforgivable.
It is the last series I would have thought about putting on HD media. Indeed most TV series until the last few years probably haven't got that much resolution.
Also redoing the effects would be an act of sacrilege. You might also get killed by rabid Amiga fans. Video toaster and Lightwave man! 30,000 polygons for B5 itself. Woooo...
Sadly, 90% of the content out there isn't good enough for a bloody iPod video resolution, nevermind HD.
Sweet! Count me in for Fifth Element!
Seriously though, I still would need to buy a decent HDTV and the player first. That's a lot of dosh, especially to look at Bruce Willis' face in HD.
(and yeah, I probably spelt her name wrong, like I care)
Indeed, I did neglect to mention the 'past all this shit' crowd (of which I am one, I got a Mac earlier this year, at least Mac turds smells different from the Windows cowpats and the linux dung) who just want something quick and convenient that works.
It's a braindead installation for braindead computer users.
Not you. Not me. Not even my boss. Well, maybe, but he uses a Mac.
This will drag down a lot of useful software that should be on everybody's PC, and it will be quite visible. Or not, because it isn't on the Google main page, so how will people see it? Oh, wait, I bet AdSense users will get rewards for linking to it.
But if it cleans up a few PCs, if it gets a few more people using Firefox instead of IE, it makes the world a better place.
Surely the racism is in the eyes of the people complaining about this, rather than in the programmed system that is probably matching keywords?
You always get a slightly strange recommendation when shopping on sites with this feature. It is to be expected, categorisation can only go so far...
So if I release ShitLinux(tm) and purposely put security holes in it, I can negatively affect every other Unix vendor (not just other Linux vendors, but Sun, Apple, ...), at least in terms of the US-CERT list?
..."
Great. Where's me phone? Ah.... "Hey Bill, how much are you willing to pay
I don't care about downloadable ringtones, especially as my phone will play MP3s, so I could (if I cared) just make them on a computer and save myself the rip-off charges (why does a ringtone cost more than the entire song?). The latest fad gimmick is 'videotones', which is a video playing on the screen when someone rings you. Certainly I spend enough time extricating the phone from my pocket/bag/etc that I'm not going to be watching the video, I'm going to be answering/cancelling the call.
... I don't take my real digital camera everywhere with me, and indeed I commonly scavenge my rechargable batteries from it in an emergency so it isn't in a usable state half the time. It is nice to be able to at least take a picture of something that is memorable/funny/etc whenever that may happen. Quality sucks though on most phones.
... although it'd probably look like an iPod, heh.
However some of the other features are useful. PDA functionality, even if basic, is handy - it saves me a device as I don't need a real PDA, but having the address book, todo list, calendar and so on available is really convenient. Interface for accessing them could be better though...
And cameras
The real issue with my phone is the touchscreen interface. It doesn't have a thumb-usable interface for many things, so you have to extricate the stylus a lot more than you should. When I want to make a call I have to enter in the unlock code (had my phone stolen a couple of times, so I don't want to make it easy for the thieves) on an on-screen keyboard. ARGH!
I'm seriously hoping that Apple will come out with a phone of their own design in the next year. They might get the UI right
"The offering will include exclusive material from MTV, though it will not be compatible with iPods, which are currently the most popular MP3 player."
In my opinoin, that will doom it in the long run. Sure, people will play with it for a while, but those with iPods won't be happy when they can't put the music on the iPod.
Unless someone gets Apple to open up Fairplay to potential licensees, or to include WMA playback on the iPod. I don't see either happening without a court case though.
I don't think the GameCube was a failure, it just didn't achieve what it could have achieved. I don't know if it was a marketing failure, or Nintendo's image amongst gamers that was the issue.
Certainly each console was sold for a profit I'm sure. Also according to another link on this page, 170 million GameCube games have been sold, for the 20m consoles that were sold. That's 8.5 games per console - not too shabby, again especially as they again are all pure profit, whereas for the XBox the first 5 games or so purchased merely paid off the console's loss leader pricing...
The concept of copyright and patents is to encourage development of new creations, so the creator(s) can assure themselves that their hard work won't be copied and ripped off immediately after creation.
However if the period of time for these things is too long, then the creator will sit back on their existing creations. Things become stale. This is what we have now for the most part.
So a balance seems to be what is required. Enough of something to encourage people to create (which takes time and money) which benefits us all, whilst reducing the staleness that companies like Disney have running through them.
The pirates in China are making a parasitic living. Maybe the musicians over there accept that as a higher being they will have lower beings living off of them, it's natural. But it must suck to be in a band if the pirates are making more than you! On the other hand, they are spreading your work to people you couldn't reach yourself - unless they sold their CDs at a reasonable price too. That's the other issue - long copyrights and strict enforcement results in higher prices for society, again, this is bad for society and a sign of staleness, rotteness and foul corruption.
Well, maybe that'd be a more advanced feature to attract the early buyers.
:p
That, or maybe he wants to see what is on his neighbour's unsecured wireless network
This is what competition (in this instance, between flash memory and tiny hard drives) is all about - better products for less money.
...
$18.50 a gigabyte is pretty nice for such a small device. Flash isn't near that currently, but probably will be in 6 to 12 months time. Of course flash pushers will come up with other advantages for their side I'm sure
What's more interesting is that these drives are so thin - under 4mm thick! That's kinda sexy. Would I want it in a battered cell phone? Dunno. Do I need 10GB in a phone even? I'd prefer it in a digital camera, or tiny media player. It'll be a 'hit' in the integrated phone/media player market I'm sure. Somehow these devices take the worst aspect of every platform they try to integrate and reproduce it - but one day they'll get it right.
Solaris 10 or Linux with a Gnome front-end (custom theme) and a document/data centric file browser and application suite. Of course the GTK load/save dialogs would also be replaced with document/data centric interfaces rather than the traditional file system view. Office tasks would be handled via StarOffice or OpenOffice. The browser would be Firefox. Again, the theme would be consistent for these applications as well. I'd expect a certain amount of lock-down and customisability restrictions.
The computer would also act as a home search box, it'd index all accessible data sources - network drives, etc. The file browser would give you a simple interface to all of these, again in a document centric manner.
Thing is, whilst possible, and indeed I wouldn't mind having the OS manage my files for me if it did it well and the files were properly indexed, I don't think Google could have arranged this in even 3 years of development - it is a lot of work. Then again, they are a very motivated company.
Yeah, the system has two cores in it, but the term dual-core really means a single chip with two processor cores on it, connected via something (the cache, the on-chip arbiter or whatever) and then attaching to the rest of the system via a single interface.
AMD's processors are dual-core as they connect via an on-chip arbiter, the SRQ. They then connect to the rest of the system via a HyperTransport link. AMD's next core revision, the F-Step, will have 4 core connections from the SRQ, allowing for future quad-core processors.
Intel's current 'dual-core' processors aren't really dual-core as they connect to the FSB independently. Indeed Intel's latest Presler processors have separate dies on the processor packaging. In practice however it doesn't really matter that much, so they get away with calling it 'dual-core' when it is technically SMP on a chip. Yonah will be Intel's first true dual-core processor because the cores are connected at the L2 cache level, which they share.
So now people defined the number of cores a processor has by the number of cores per socket in the system. In your system you have one core per socket, so the processors are single core, the system is dual-processor. In the reviewed laptop there are two cores in one socket, for the system is single-processor, but the processor is dual-core. Quite simple really.
"Apple did dual processor laptops 10 years AGO in 1996."
:)
The poster didn't say it was a Mac, merely a dual processor laptop.
Hell, Apple could have sold dual-processor G4 based [17"] Powerbooks for the last couple of years if they cared about their customers to make up the performance difference. At least the G4 is quite low power, and Apple gets them quite cheaply - they should have tried something to jazz up the glacial speed increases of that processor line.
Anyway I wouldn't call this a laptop, not if it is a desktop replacement. It's a portable all-in-one system. It's probably just as portable as a Shuttle case with handle and separate LCD, but requires less cables.
What is your point about just passing his driving test? In England many people don't bother to learn to drive until after university, they don't need to. We have a reasonable (if not European standard) public transport system for a start. Secondly petrol costs a lot, which is a lot if you are a student, never mind the car, insurance, tax, MOTs ... Thirdly we're a small country, no need to drive 30 miles to the superstore.
:)
This guy in my opinion got lucky, but he made his own luck. The idea is quite silly, a one-off zero-product media-driven website, but all it has proved is that a press release or two, a gimmick and so on will sell to the media, and hence make him money. It won't last forever, but he has got a million which should net him a nice house, a hot girlfriend and a better car along the line - if he manages it well. He was in the right place at the right time and at the right age too. Git!
Surely an alphabetical arrangement is a long 1D array of keys?
This keyboard is not even the 1D arrangement split up into 3 rows.
It is the 1D arrangement split up into SIX rows, three on the left (A-M) and three on the right (N-Z).
People don't actually have a natural association regarding the alphabet that maps it to a 4x6 (+2 extra somewhere) layout.
So that whole advantage is just made up, it is probably a disadvantage, as the person will be using a layout that will never be useful for them to learn.
A good keyboard isn't about the number of keys being optimal, it is about how good it is to use, it's tactile response and a myriad of other things.
Take for example the MSX style cursor + in the middle of the keyboard. It isn't biased to either side for single-handed operation, and an upside-down T is better for the middle finger anyway than a +. They'd have been better off adding a 'Cursor' function key and assigning it to WASD or IJKL (well, the alphabetical arrangement that corresponds to those qwerty keys anyway).
As for the ordering, Serenity shows that we'd still be using standard plastic PC keyboards in the distant future. So why bother trying to reinvent the keyboard. Again. Times a hundred.
The major issue with keyboards these days is that navigation isn't integrated (excepting nipple/clit mice) so most users will spend their time switching between the mouse and the keyboard. There are some keyboards that integrate a trackpad, but they lack the feedback that normal keys provide.
From the other replies it seems that pay-off time for one of these ramps is more like 100 years than 15-20 years. Indeed the cost of powering lights will probably go down a lot in the next 30 years too, from the 25W that another responder said to maybe 10W. So maybe if these ramps lasted a couple of hundred years...
(Also I'm sure that the cost of electricity would be a lot cheaper for government than for consumers)
As for remote installations, I think a traffic light with batteries inside the pole and a solar panel would be a lot cheaper than this bulky contraption.
Maybe it'll be useful somewhere, but in most places I think it will be a waste of money. If it gets used it may be worth checking how the owner of the company making the product stands in relation to the political party in power in that area...
The article mentions that the drivers will be released on the 22nd December, once they're WHQL certified.