If most of the updates will be available for current versions of Windows, what is the incentive to upgrade?
Remember the product activation in XP? All MS has to do is end-of-life XP and you can't re-install it because MS won't authorize it. You'll be fine with your current system until you need to do a re-install, then you'll buy the next version even though it offers you nothing new and you know you'll have the same problem in another 3-4 years.
How do you know Steam will be around next year to authenticate the game based on your login and pw. If you have the CDs and Key, you're covered for as long as you keep the media in decent shape.
Silicon carbide is a very hard, brittle material with a very high melting point commonly used to make crucibles and high speed saw blades and drill bits.
Comparing this to charcol is like saying that Carbon Monoxide is the same thing as Oxygen because CO contains oxygen.
Just because MS says it can run in 4 meg doesn't make it so. Win95 in 4 meg was agonizingly slow. According to microsoft.com, windows XP professional will run in 64 meg of ram.
Also, 10 years ago, a low to midrange system was $2000, an extra $300 to double your memory wasn't that much in the grand scheme of things.
My battery lasts 6 hours doing general things (word processing, etc) with the WiFi off and about 5 with it on.
For DVD playback with the WiFi off, it's good for 3.5-4 hours.
I use it for DVDs about half the time. That doesn't mean I want it specialized towards playing DVDs. A smaller battery is not acceptable because of the shorter life in regular-computer mode. I also think I lose so much time playing DVDs because of the HD access, not the extra processing power needed.
I don't object to a specialized DVD chip anyway, just this idea is incredibly stupid. The extra hardware in this machine doesn't include a DVD playback chip; it still does all the work in software. The idea here is booting the machine into an instantOn linux with media player applications to compensate for the machine not having a proper standby mode. How about fixing the standby mode instead? If a lowly apple can go into a deep sleep mode and wake up in 1 second, why can't a powerful PC?:)
If it came with a remote, I could plug it into the TV in a hotel, and use it like a standalone, without having to get out of bed to FF/RW.
You might want to try the ATI Remote Wonder. On the Mac, it doesn't integrate properly with the DVD software, so I'm stuck using the cursor keys to control the mouse pointer which is more trouble than it's worth. On a PC, you might have better luck with it.
Did you even read what you were reply to? I said waking up from sleep mode takes about 1 second - not a couple of minutes like booting, and I DO use my machine to play DVDs A LOT. Therefore if this were a good idea, it would be a great feature for me, but it's a stupid idea.
I also have a 12" notebook since portability is my main criteria. There isn't even room for a PC card slot; it's a tiny machine, and it's packed solidly; there isn't room to add a single board or single chip.
I agree with you. One of the reasons I bought my notebook in the first place was as portable DVD player. I really don't understand why people those stand-alone units that are half the price of a notebook.
My point is that it's stupid to add another whole OS, especially an embedded OS to avoid waiting for the system to boot. Doesn't windows have a decent sleep mode? Isn't putting the machine to sleep a better solution than adding another whole OS?
You still have to wait for the machine to boot to do anything else, so a quickboot DVD player and mp3 player seems pretty useless (and about 50% of what I do with my notebook is run the DVD player, so my opinion is hardly biased by having no use for the feature).
I think the only reason you're arguing with me is because I made the heretical implication that linux is not the ultimate solution to every possible problem.
OS/2 Warp came out over a year before windows 95, and it did everything MS promised win95 would do plus a lot more. People still waited the extra year, win95 failed on most of its promises; OS/2 was far superior, and yet people still bought win95.
OS/2 warp could also run windows applications, and since OS/2 was far more stable and one app couldn't bring down the whole system, it was a long-standing joke that OS/2 was a far better windows than windows...Oh, OS/2 was also cheaper.
I was using the windows version of borland C++ on both systems quite a bit back them. I caused windows to completely crash a lot. The same errors on OS/2 wouldn't even close the C++ compiler, it would pop up a message that my app did something wrong and would be closed. I would click OK and I was right back to the compiler screen.
What a waste of money to have to buy all that extra crap when the notebook is easily able to do it in software. It's an even bigger waste in a notebook where space for internal peripherals is at a huge premium.
All that so you can watch DVDs or listen to MP3s without waiting to boot? My Powerbook has a 74 day uptime now; I just put it in sleep mode and take it with. It takes it about 1 second to wake up and then it's ready to play movies or music.
Even if a windows machine can't do that, You're still a lot better off buying a standalone portable mp3 player than having to pay to include it in your notebook. You can take an mp3 player a lot of places you can't take a notebook.
That's exactly that Best Buy does. You're right that it's just wrong, but that's why they're being sued. I bought a router from them about 2 years ago that was supposed to have a $10 mail in rebate. I very carefully filled everything out, sent it in, and got no reply from them.
Normally I avoid class actions because the only people they help are the lawyers, but in this case I'll sign up just to hurt best buy.
I just went into Best Buy yesterday ...
on
Best Buy Sued By Ohio
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· Score: 5, Interesting
for the first time in years, and it will probably be the last time.
I wanted a bluetooth keyboard for my notebook and some other accessories. I got all the accessories and then I was looking at the keyboards. The sales girl came and said that if I'm going to get a keyboard, I should get the extended warranty.
She didn't even try to see how interested I was in the keyboards or try to convince me to buy one. When I said "that's okay", she said I should read about it and shoved a brochure in front of me. I said "no thanks", and she angrily shoved it even closer and said "I really should at least read it; it's a great deal". I ignored her and she kept trying. I finally just abandoned my cart full of things I'd already decided to buy right in front of her and walked out of the store.
In summary, I didn't RTFA, but I hope this lawsuit breaks them.
On the other hand, apples paid subscription service (idisk) with 100 MB of storage (At $99/yr) starts to look a little paltry - It will be interesteing to see what they do in response to this. ... Whoa, hang back a second here. I'm not saying that the other bits of.mac don't exist. I am just saying that they are of relatively little value to me.
That sure sounds like you're saying the other parts of.mac don't exist.
I'm not saying.mac is suitable for me; even if it were free I wouldn't have signed up. I have an account through a webhost that gives me 2 gig of storage and I can allocate it for files or email however I want.
Other people do find it a useful service as more than just data storage space. Pretending that's all it is because that's the only feature that interests you is being deliberately misleading.
On the other hand, you raise a lot of good points about apple.
I find it really annoying that my powerbook came with adapters for DVI and VGA outputs, but the composite one is not included. They sell any of the 3 in their store for $20, since one of the reasons I bought the powerbook was to use as a set-top DVD player, I need that cable. It's disgusting that Apple nickle-and-dime's me on cables the same day I'm spending $1600 on a notebook. The cost of other accessories is also just insane -- $50 for an ordinary USB mouse that only has 1 button?
Also, I bought the 12" powerbook because I wanted a tiny and portable machine, not because I wanted a low end one. Apple seems to be locked into the small size = inferior notebook mentality. The larger powerbooks have a superior video card, the option of a faster CPU, a lighted keyboard, Gigabit ethernet, and a whole list of other features I lose on my 12" powerbook.
The extra $400 for the 15" is a bargain compared to the 12", but size is too important a factor to me.
Don't consider this an attack on apple; I think my powerbook is the best computer I've ever owned and I recommend Apple to all my friends (some of whom think Apple's brainwashed me). It's just that Apple is really out to screw their customers at times.
However, its the only bit I'm really interested in, and its way too small.
What a brilliant comment. So if you only read the sports section of the newspaper the newspaper is a rip-off for having the nerve to charge you for all those pesky other pages and you should go around ranting that it is only a sports section, the rest of the paper doesn't exist?
The.mac service obviously isn't for you but why are you lying and pretending the part you have no interest in doesn't exist at all?
Search eBay for "web hosting". You'll find a lot of people willing to give you unlimited storage space for $10/year or even less. Of course if you try one, you'll be back posting what a bargain.mac is.
Well then why not tax everyone down to $2,000 regardless of income. Then the government can use all that money to pay for everyone to have identical apartments, cars, eat the same food everyday, the same clothes, etc. The $2,000 could cover entertainment.
All of which means that between Google's delay in applying for the trademark, the other organizations' attempt at what can only be called cybersquatting, and the USPTO's bureaucracy, Google could well be denied the use of Gmail as a trademark
Now if we replaced Google with Microsoft and gmail with hotmail, we'd all be critisizing MS for stomping on the rights of these poor little companies and non-profits.
Re:basic... very basic.
on
You've Got PC
·
· Score: 1
But you can get very good dial-up internet access for under $10/month. That means for the PC, you can add $14/month right on the cost of the hardware.
DSL with a 256k up cap is available in the mid-20's. So you're paying DSL prices for dial-up with this plan.
The is no such thing as a 12" Powerbook 1.25 GHz. Up until a few months ago, the 12" powerbook was 1 GHz, and then they bumped the speed to 1.33 GHz (which is what I have).
It is a fantastic machine, with the brightness up and the WiFi on, I get about 4.5 hours of battery life. With the brightness down and WiFi off, it's around 6 hours. Running the DVD lowers the life, but at least up here in Canada, it's perfectly legal to rip the DVD and play back from the HD. I've watched 2 ~2-hour movies on a single charge a few times.
The idea is not to rewrite the price in the tag, it's to rewrite the tag to the checkout scanner thinks your getting something else. Rewrite the code for that $800 digital camcorder to a $2 box of pasta that weighs the same. The automated system won't be able to tell them apart, so it will think it's selling you the pasta and charge you accordingly.
Slashdot Mirror
If most of the updates will be available for current versions of Windows, what is the incentive to upgrade?
Remember the product activation in XP? All MS has to do is end-of-life XP and you can't re-install it because MS won't authorize it. You'll be fine with your current system until you need to do a re-install, then you'll buy the next version even though it offers you nothing new and you know you'll have the same problem in another 3-4 years.
How do you know Steam will be around next year to authenticate the game based on your login and pw. If you have the CDs and Key, you're covered for as long as you keep the media in decent shape.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Silicon carbide is a very hard, brittle material with a very high melting point commonly used to make crucibles and high speed saw blades and drill bits.
Comparing this to charcol is like saying that Carbon Monoxide is the same thing as Oxygen because CO contains oxygen.
Jason
Just because MS says it can run in 4 meg doesn't make it so. Win95 in 4 meg was agonizingly slow. According to microsoft.com, windows XP professional will run in 64 meg of ram.
Also, 10 years ago, a low to midrange system was $2000, an extra $300 to double your memory wasn't that much in the grand scheme of things.
My battery lasts 6 hours doing general things (word processing, etc) with the WiFi off and about 5 with it on.
:)
For DVD playback with the WiFi off, it's good for 3.5-4 hours.
I use it for DVDs about half the time. That doesn't mean I want it specialized towards playing DVDs. A smaller battery is not acceptable because of the shorter life in regular-computer mode. I also think I lose so much time playing DVDs because of the HD access, not the extra processing power needed.
I don't object to a specialized DVD chip anyway, just this idea is incredibly stupid. The extra hardware in this machine doesn't include a DVD playback chip; it still does all the work in software. The idea here is booting the machine into an instantOn linux with media player applications to compensate for the machine not having a proper standby mode. How about fixing the standby mode instead? If a lowly apple can go into a deep sleep mode and wake up in 1 second, why can't a powerful PC?
If it came with a remote, I could plug it into the TV in a hotel, and use it like a standalone, without having to get out of bed to FF/RW.
You might want to try the ATI Remote Wonder. On the Mac, it doesn't integrate properly with the DVD software, so I'm stuck using the cursor keys to control the mouse pointer which is more trouble than it's worth. On a PC, you might have better luck with it.
Did you even read what you were reply to? I said waking up from sleep mode takes about 1 second - not a couple of minutes like booting, and I DO use my machine to play DVDs A LOT. Therefore if this were a good idea, it would be a great feature for me, but it's a stupid idea.
I also have a 12" notebook since portability is my main criteria. There isn't even room for a PC card slot; it's a tiny machine, and it's packed solidly; there isn't room to add a single board or single chip.
I agree with you. One of the reasons I bought my notebook in the first place was as portable DVD player. I really don't understand why people those stand-alone units that are half the price of a notebook.
My point is that it's stupid to add another whole OS, especially an embedded OS to avoid waiting for the system to boot. Doesn't windows have a decent sleep mode? Isn't putting the machine to sleep a better solution than adding another whole OS?
You still have to wait for the machine to boot to do anything else, so a quickboot DVD player and mp3 player seems pretty useless (and about 50% of what I do with my notebook is run the DVD player, so my opinion is hardly biased by having no use for the feature).
I think the only reason you're arguing with me is because I made the heretical implication that linux is not the ultimate solution to every possible problem.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Um, have you ever heard of OS/2?
OS/2 Warp came out over a year before windows 95, and it did everything MS promised win95 would do plus a lot more. People still waited the extra year, win95 failed on most of its promises; OS/2 was far superior, and yet people still bought win95.
OS/2 warp could also run windows applications, and since OS/2 was far more stable and one app couldn't bring down the whole system, it was a long-standing joke that OS/2 was a far better windows than windows...Oh, OS/2 was also cheaper.
I was using the windows version of borland C++ on both systems quite a bit back them. I caused windows to completely crash a lot. The same errors on OS/2 wouldn't even close the C++ compiler, it would pop up a message that my app did something wrong and would be closed. I would click OK and I was right back to the compiler screen.
This will not be any problem for Microsoft.
Jason
ProfQuotes
What a waste of money to have to buy all that extra crap when the notebook is easily able to do it in software. It's an even bigger waste in a notebook where space for internal peripherals is at a huge premium.
All that so you can watch DVDs or listen to MP3s without waiting to boot? My Powerbook has a 74 day uptime now; I just put it in sleep mode and take it with. It takes it about 1 second to wake up and then it's ready to play movies or music.
Even if a windows machine can't do that, You're still a lot better off buying a standalone portable mp3 player than having to pay to include it in your notebook. You can take an mp3 player a lot of places you can't take a notebook.
Jason
ProfQuotes
If they really are out to get you, you're not paranoid. I think this proves I'm not paranoid.
put black electrical tape over the lens when not using the camera. I thought most people did something to cover the lens or plug the camera.
Jason
ProfQuotes
I don't think they care. It seems like they'd rather not have the sale than have it without a PSP.
That's exactly that Best Buy does. You're right that it's just wrong, but that's why they're being sued. I bought a router from them about 2 years ago that was supposed to have a $10 mail in rebate. I very carefully filled everything out, sent it in, and got no reply from them.
Normally I avoid class actions because the only people they help are the lawyers, but in this case I'll sign up just to hurt best buy.
for the first time in years, and it will probably be the last time.
I wanted a bluetooth keyboard for my notebook and some other accessories. I got all the accessories and then I was looking at the keyboards. The sales girl came and said that if I'm going to get a keyboard, I should get the extended warranty.
She didn't even try to see how interested I was in the keyboards or try to convince me to buy one. When I said "that's okay", she said I should read about it and shoved a brochure in front of me. I said "no thanks", and she angrily shoved it even closer and said "I really should at least read it; it's a great deal". I ignored her and she kept trying. I finally just abandoned my cart full of things I'd already decided to buy right in front of her and walked out of the store.
In summary, I didn't RTFA, but I hope this lawsuit breaks them.
On the other hand, apples paid subscription service (idisk) with 100 MB of storage (At $99 /yr) starts to look a little paltry - It will be interesteing to see what they do in response to this. .mac don't exist. I am just saying that they are of relatively little value to me.
.mac don't exist.
.mac is suitable for me; even if it were free I wouldn't have signed up. I have an account through a webhost that gives me 2 gig of storage and I can allocate it for files or email however I want.
...
Whoa, hang back a second here. I'm not saying that the other bits of
That sure sounds like you're saying the other parts of
I'm not saying
Other people do find it a useful service as more than just data storage space. Pretending that's all it is because that's the only feature that interests you is being deliberately misleading.
On the other hand, you raise a lot of good points about apple.
I find it really annoying that my powerbook came with adapters for DVI and VGA outputs, but the composite one is not included. They sell any of the 3 in their store for $20, since one of the reasons I bought the powerbook was to use as a set-top DVD player, I need that cable. It's disgusting that Apple nickle-and-dime's me on cables the same day I'm spending $1600 on a notebook. The cost of other accessories is also just insane -- $50 for an ordinary USB mouse that only has 1 button?
Also, I bought the 12" powerbook because I wanted a tiny and portable machine, not because I wanted a low end one. Apple seems to be locked into the small size = inferior notebook mentality. The larger powerbooks have a superior video card, the option of a faster CPU, a lighted keyboard, Gigabit ethernet, and a whole list of other features I lose on my 12" powerbook. The extra $400 for the 15" is a bargain compared to the 12", but size is too important a factor to me.
Don't consider this an attack on apple; I think my powerbook is the best computer I've ever owned and I recommend Apple to all my friends (some of whom think Apple's brainwashed me). It's just that Apple is really out to screw their customers at times.
However, its the only bit I'm really interested in, and its way too small.
.mac service obviously isn't for you but why are you lying and pretending the part you have no interest in doesn't exist at all?
.mac is.
What a brilliant comment. So if you only read the sports section of the newspaper the newspaper is a rip-off for having the nerve to charge you for all those pesky other pages and you should go around ranting that it is only a sports section, the rest of the paper doesn't exist?
The
Search eBay for "web hosting". You'll find a lot of people willing to give you unlimited storage space for $10/year or even less. Of course if you try one, you'll be back posting what a bargain
Well then why not tax everyone down to $2,000 regardless of income. Then the government can use all that money to pay for everyone to have identical apartments, cars, eat the same food everyday, the same clothes, etc. The $2,000 could cover entertainment.
All of which means that between Google's delay in applying for the trademark, the other organizations' attempt at what can only be called cybersquatting, and the USPTO's bureaucracy, Google could well be denied the use of Gmail as a trademark
Now if we replaced Google with Microsoft and gmail with hotmail, we'd all be critisizing MS for stomping on the rights of these poor little companies and non-profits.
But you can get very good dial-up internet access for under $10/month. That means for the PC, you can add $14/month right on the cost of the hardware.
DSL with a 256k up cap is available in the mid-20's. So you're paying DSL prices for dial-up with this plan.
You thought wrong
A PCMCIA card slot? I have the 12" powerbook and I know there is nowhere inside that they could have fit the slot, but I can still ask for one :)
The is no such thing as a 12" Powerbook 1.25 GHz. Up until a few months ago, the 12" powerbook was 1 GHz, and then they bumped the speed to 1.33 GHz (which is what I have).
It is a fantastic machine, with the brightness up and the WiFi on, I get about 4.5 hours of battery life. With the brightness down and WiFi off, it's around 6 hours. Running the DVD lowers the life, but at least up here in Canada, it's perfectly legal to rip the DVD and play back from the HD. I've watched 2 ~2-hour movies on a single charge a few times.
The idea is not to rewrite the price in the tag, it's to rewrite the tag to the checkout scanner thinks your getting something else. Rewrite the code for that $800 digital camcorder to a $2 box of pasta that weighs the same. The automated system won't be able to tell them apart, so it will think it's selling you the pasta and charge you accordingly.
Jason
ProfQuotes
It's be like starting a shoe company called Kneebock, or a car company called Chevrolait.
.com's. Now that they've been mentioned on slashdot, we'll see if they get taken in the next few days.
Both these names are still available as
Jason
ProfQuotes