Okay, being a european, whats the spec of your car - engine, etc.?
I'm running a '99 BMW 318iS, and after converting my economy to US variants, its generally well ahead of the EPA levels.
Its officially rated at 23 city, 32 highway, 26 combined. The absolute worst I've got is 25, after caning the balls off it around town for a couple of weeks. Best so far was on a long run, doing between 80 and 90mph, when I got a 34mpg average.
Maybe this is also partly down to octane ratings? We're typically running 95 octane gas out of the forecourts, with 97/99 getting more regular (and also 101 available in a few places). Next tank will be filled with 99, and once the engine management gets its mind around the bigger bang, either I'll see myself getting better MPG, or get myself wrapped around a tree on the exit from the next roundabout.
Biggest surprise was that I've never before tried UK to US MPG conversions. Jeepers, 42mpg works out as 34 american miles per gallon?
The next gen BMW 118i, 2 liter 140bhp, is rated at an average of 48mpg. The cleverest part is that it does something very "hybrid". It switches the engine off in traffic.
Sure, if you open it up, it'll drop its economy, but driven sensibly, it'll do good mileage.
The diesel version is rated at about the same power, but overall economy is rated at 60+mpg. These averages are supposed to include a variety of urban and highway.
Hybrids are overhyped. In typically mixed driving, at least in the UK, a well setup petrol or diesel easily betters the Prius.
On the UKs top gear, they did the same run, in very similar traffic in both a Prius and a VW (I think it was a Lupo Diesel).
The Diesel gave better mileage, and some of the current spate of diesels result in lower emissions than the Prius. And they're often much better on fuel usage as well. The Prius is clever, but not the right way to go.
Me, I'm sticking to my '99 BMW 318iS. I just cannot get it under 30mpg. Did a long run (250 miles is a fair drive in the UK), averaged between 80 and 110mph, and it got 34mpg. Return journey was a little more sedate, between 70 and 80. Averaged about 45mpg. Thats from a relatively sporting car as well..... haven't had the car for long, but its bloody excellent on fuel.
Reckon it'll be time for a track day son, reckon it should get under 20 to the gallon during that.....
Totally agree that the test was basically a total waste of everyones time.
Not sure about the optical zoom though. Unless you spend a LOT of money, the lenses are compromised. Also, your typical point and shoot only offers about 3x magnification. After years with a few digital point and shoots, and getting continually wound up that the zoom was almost worthless (all had 3x), I virtually decided that the facility wasn't worth bothering with.
Right now, I've got two camera phones - SE W810i (2mp) with the MXE-60 flash (which has a better range than some point and shoots), and a Nokia N73. Both have reasonable cameras, the Nokia does tend to give unnatural colours (reds are waaay to vivid), and offers reasonable video recording.
But if I want a decent picture, then I'll always fall back on my manual SLR. Canon AE-1, circa late 70s. Its been going for about 30 years, can still take breathtaking images, and there is something so good about actually having to focus myself, make aperture adjustments, etc.
I've been in a similar situation, the only qualified/experienced person in an internal call center for a multi-national.
Except that my slant on the problems was more along the lines of "It probably wasn't your fault, we're running Microsoft servers/networks/apps, its probably their fault".
The clincher for me is the seamless integration with my Alpine car audio; having a handy portable 30+gig jukebox sat under the passenger seat well away from prying eyes makes it the perfect device for in car usage. No other manufacturer has close on the level of head unit integration.
I wish I could have gone for a Creative Zen, they do sound a tad better, but the iPod integration is a massive plus, way more important for me than DRM issues or other lock ins.
The PSP is incredibly handy for me, either for watching TV series and the odd movie on the train on the way to/from work (45-60 minutes each way), playing the odd game, browsing the web at WiFi hotspots (saves having to drag the laptop with me), heck even browsing the web at home is easier, due to its massively quicker startup time.
Oh, and whilst those smaller MP3 players are, well, smaller, why are they better? Sound quality? Nope. battery life? nope. The PSP sound output is surprisingly good (typically Sony), and the battery life (with screen off at least) is also surprisingly good (better than a "typical" iPod).
Re:To advance, correct errors rather than drag it.
on
The Future of the PSP
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· Score: 1
Well, point 1 is complete and utter rubbish.
The UMD mechanism is in all odds very similar to the HiMD mechanisms, and those have battery life massively ahead of any competing music player - those (1 gig) drives can go what, 30 hours continual playback on a single AA battery? Sony do have a couple of things totally licked on their products - battery life and sound quality.
Point 3 isn't that good either - the media costs are just way above that of the UMDs.
What I can't get over on here is the number of people comparing FoxPro or VFP to various SQL packages.
Its like apples and oranges, both fruit, but are totally different.
A more apt comparison would be VFP against Access, and I don't doubt that with similar data, VFP would trounce Access quite easily, it always did years back when i developed on it.
The key in FoxPro development was always knowing how to optimise the indexes, get that wrong and you were screwed, get it right and it absolutely flew.
The other area of optimisation that few people seemed to handle well in the migration from the various FoxBase/dBase products to FoxPro/VFP was the language structure optimisations. I cut my teeth working on an application that was allegedly written in FoxPro (v2) for DOS, but the original coder had come from dBase, and hadn't bothered to learn about any of the revised structures or indexing (hardly any indexes, no scan/seek or other optimised searches, everything was locate). I spent a month re-writing the whole application (hotel management), and cut the time for darned near every process down from minutes to just a few seconds.
Could you imagine trying to squirt the data over to another one for further tests, only to get to a "Feck, I needed to do another run over the data to verify, blasted DRM will only allow 3 passes."
The current UK pricing of a SIM free RAZR is about £60....
Didn't you ever RTFM for the Razr? The moto shortcuts system is excellent, so your frequently used options would only ever be two keystrokes away? It was always the best thing in the Moto UI.
Okay, the Moto UI isn't the best around, but for a huge number of people it hits all the right spots - good design (way more ground breaking than the iPhone, imho) - reasonable basic features (ie. camera, text and calls) - reasonable battery life - excellent call quality - bluetooth isn't set to "hi, I'm here, please bluesnarf/whatever me" all the time like on Nokias.
And I still reckon the Moto has the best shortcuts system of any mobile.
I've had a Moto Razr for a few years now, and wouldn't give it up. Sure, right now its not my main phone, but I tend to keep it for nights out, so I don't have an unsightly bulge in my trousers.....
No, NOT based on pixel count. I'm basing this on actual experience of the quality of images taken by both friends and my cameras. Your statement about "All cell phone cameras suck" is typical slashdot, in effect not rtfa.
Be it a Nokia N73, the relatively ancient SE K750, the later K800, Sharp 902/903, Nokia N93, I've seen varying degrees of success, and in most cases, all of these phones cameras are usable in normal day-to-day usage when compared to an (admittedly) cheap point and shoot. I've compared my N73 to a Casio EX-Z600, and it does a better job of focusing, and surprisingly does a better job on video (the N73 shoots at CIF resolution, the Casio at VGA/30fps).
I know, its not just based on numbers, but please stop making sweeping/inaccurate statements.
There definitely is a market for high end phones, but at the moment, they seem to go two distinct routes.
1. Offer reasonably decent imaging - ie. 3/5+ mp cameras, VGA/30fps video recording. 2. Look at Vertu. Thats the real high end of phones, a bit like the Rolex of the phone world.
Totally agree about all the speculation though, its getting damnably irritating the continual its the greatest/its the worst/it'll fail 'cos..... can't people just wait and see?
Thing is, that the iPhone isn't quite as much a smartphone as the windows/symbian devices out there.
There are only two things that the iPhone seems to have over the competition, memory and multi-touch. The negatives, such as lower quality camera, worse battery life, and a lack of an open architecture for freely developing your own apps (which isn't a biggie for many) are definitely bigger issues, at least for a lot of people in the UK.
For your average person over here, the iPhone doesn't offer anything overwhelming when compared to a several year old SE W800. The SE has much better battery life (5+ days?), you can text without having to look at the screen, has a much better camera, and in theory they can support the 8gig duo pros, and the SE fits a lot nicer into your "average" pocket.
And another typical slashdot answer that just beggars belief.
Its true though - the responsible parents wouldn't get themselves into such a stupid situation in the first place, this is nothing about throwing fud and accusations about the parents, its an obvious mention of the truth, and it appears that you have issues with "the truth". Does it hurt?
No decent parent in their right mind would even begin to believe that such an advert would cause issues. Come on, get a grip on REALITY.
My son, now 5 years old, would just see that ad and think it was funny. He would NOT think its a reason to grab our keys and take the car for a spin.
The advert is fictional, any parents complaining about the advert are obviously somewhat retarded, and would complain about anything. Its absolutely pathetic for those individuals who complained to believe that the advert was any form of threat. Bunch of complete and utter retards.
The iPhone prices are NOT subsidised, the 499/599 prices are apparently without any rebates, which does seem a little bizarre, and its not something that I can see happening over in the UK/Europe.
Still not necessarily a good choice though, why not hedge their bets and just come straight out with GPRS/EDGE/3G support, and swap between them as appropriate.
My N73 seems to cope quite nicely - 3G works well in the major cities (I work in London) and quite well in outlying areas, and it drops to EDGE, and then GPRS when required.
Having said that, EDGE really doesn't seem that good, especially when you're used to 3G data speeds. WiFi support would be nice though, but I've got my PSP for that;)
Have you actually used any recent Nokias or SE phones? From your comments, I somehow doubt it.
The current range of S40 Nokia handsets have one of the easiest user interfaces on the planet, its no surprise that the range is the best selling around. Any idiot can figure out how to use it.
I'll admit that S60 isn't quite as intuitive, but its still not exactly rocket science to work around. I'm using a Nokia N73, and the UI has hardly changed since the 7650 made its appearance, not necessarily a bad thing, but there are still some config elements in strange places.
However, the king of UI design on mobiles has to be SE. For the last few years their user interface has been slick, consistent, incredibly easy to use, and generally about the most intuitive UI around.
I think you'll find that a lot of people are just happy with a phone that they can call people on, can send text messages on, and has a decent battery life - the last one is an absolute killer for the iPhone, no-one in their right mind would say that a day or twos battery life is usable. Heck, my N73 can just about stretch to 3 days at a push, I do miss my old SE W550, as that was an easy 5-7 days out of a charge, and that was with an hours music, a few text messages/calls per day.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, being a european, whats the spec of your car - engine, etc.?
I'm running a '99 BMW 318iS, and after converting my economy to US variants, its generally well ahead of the EPA levels.
Its officially rated at 23 city, 32 highway, 26 combined. The absolute worst I've got is 25, after caning the balls off it around town for a couple of weeks. Best so far was on a long run, doing between 80 and 90mph, when I got a 34mpg average.
Maybe this is also partly down to octane ratings? We're typically running 95 octane gas out of the forecourts, with 97/99 getting more regular (and also 101 available in a few places). Next tank will be filled with 99, and once the engine management gets its mind around the bigger bang, either I'll see myself getting better MPG, or get myself wrapped around a tree on the exit from the next roundabout.
Biggest surprise was that I've never before tried UK to US MPG conversions. Jeepers, 42mpg works out as 34 american miles per gallon?
The next gen BMW 118i, 2 liter 140bhp, is rated at an average of 48mpg. The cleverest part is that it does something very "hybrid". It switches the engine off in traffic.
Sure, if you open it up, it'll drop its economy, but driven sensibly, it'll do good mileage.
The diesel version is rated at about the same power, but overall economy is rated at 60+mpg. These averages are supposed to include a variety of urban and highway.
Hybrids are overhyped. In typically mixed driving, at least in the UK, a well setup petrol or diesel easily betters the Prius.
On the UKs top gear, they did the same run, in very similar traffic in both a Prius and a VW (I think it was a Lupo Diesel).
..... haven't had the car for long, but its bloody excellent on fuel.
.....
The Diesel gave better mileage, and some of the current spate of diesels result in lower emissions than the Prius. And they're often much better on fuel usage as well. The Prius is clever, but not the right way to go.
Me, I'm sticking to my '99 BMW 318iS. I just cannot get it under 30mpg. Did a long run (250 miles is a fair drive in the UK), averaged between 80 and 110mph, and it got 34mpg. Return journey was a little more sedate, between 70 and 80. Averaged about 45mpg. Thats from a relatively sporting car as well
Reckon it'll be time for a track day son, reckon it should get under 20 to the gallon during that
Totally agree that the test was basically a total waste of everyones time.
Not sure about the optical zoom though. Unless you spend a LOT of money, the lenses are compromised. Also, your typical point and shoot only offers about 3x magnification. After years with a few digital point and shoots, and getting continually wound up that the zoom was almost worthless (all had 3x), I virtually decided that the facility wasn't worth bothering with.
Right now, I've got two camera phones - SE W810i (2mp) with the MXE-60 flash (which has a better range than some point and shoots), and a Nokia N73. Both have reasonable cameras, the Nokia does tend to give unnatural colours (reds are waaay to vivid), and offers reasonable video recording.
But if I want a decent picture, then I'll always fall back on my manual SLR. Canon AE-1, circa late 70s. Its been going for about 30 years, can still take breathtaking images, and there is something so good about actually having to focus myself, make aperture adjustments, etc.
I've been in a similar situation, the only qualified/experienced person in an internal call center for a multi-national.
Except that my slant on the problems was more along the lines of "It probably wasn't your fault, we're running Microsoft servers/networks/apps, its probably their fault".
I wonder how Research In Motion could have an extra "M" added on.
..... headlines as if they're written by a US president.
Typical slashdot
The clincher for me is the seamless integration with my Alpine car audio; having a handy portable 30+gig jukebox sat under the passenger seat well away from prying eyes makes it the perfect device for in car usage. No other manufacturer has close on the level of head unit integration.
I wish I could have gone for a Creative Zen, they do sound a tad better, but the iPod integration is a massive plus, way more important for me than DRM issues or other lock ins.
The creative Zen V+ also offers video playback, although it does it in some relatively nasty low compression method.
Depends on what you're doing.
The PSP is incredibly handy for me, either for watching TV series and the odd movie on the train on the way to/from work (45-60 minutes each way), playing the odd game, browsing the web at WiFi hotspots (saves having to drag the laptop with me), heck even browsing the web at home is easier, due to its massively quicker startup time.
Oh, and whilst those smaller MP3 players are, well, smaller, why are they better? Sound quality? Nope. battery life? nope. The PSP sound output is surprisingly good (typically Sony), and the battery life (with screen off at least) is also surprisingly good (better than a "typical" iPod).
Well, point 1 is complete and utter rubbish.
The UMD mechanism is in all odds very similar to the HiMD mechanisms, and those have battery life massively ahead of any competing music player - those (1 gig) drives can go what, 30 hours continual playback on a single AA battery? Sony do have a couple of things totally licked on their products - battery life and sound quality.
Point 3 isn't that good either - the media costs are just way above that of the UMDs.
What I can't get over on here is the number of people comparing FoxPro or VFP to various SQL packages.
Its like apples and oranges, both fruit, but are totally different.
A more apt comparison would be VFP against Access, and I don't doubt that with similar data, VFP would trounce Access quite easily, it always did years back when i developed on it.
The key in FoxPro development was always knowing how to optimise the indexes, get that wrong and you were screwed, get it right and it absolutely flew.
The other area of optimisation that few people seemed to handle well in the migration from the various FoxBase/dBase products to FoxPro/VFP was the language structure optimisations. I cut my teeth working on an application that was allegedly written in FoxPro (v2) for DOS, but the original coder had come from dBase, and hadn't bothered to learn about any of the revised structures or indexing (hardly any indexes, no scan/seek or other optimised searches, everything was locate). I spent a month re-writing the whole application (hotel management), and cut the time for darned near every process down from minutes to just a few seconds.
Jeeze, I'll admit to having been on dates that were like that as well.
In the lectures, you could at least have a chat with those around you. On a date, such is verboten.
But be prepared for it to crash and burn once you go out of the 10 meter range .....
Better on an iPod than a zune though.
....
Could you imagine trying to squirt the data over to another one for further tests, only to get to a "Feck, I needed to do another run over the data to verify, blasted DRM will only allow 3 passes."
But of course, the DRM adds value
The current UK pricing of a SIM free RAZR is about £60 ....
Didn't you ever RTFM for the Razr? The moto shortcuts system is excellent, so your frequently used options would only ever be two keystrokes away? It was always the best thing in the Moto UI.
The Razr is still an incredibly popular phone.
.....
Okay, the Moto UI isn't the best around, but for a huge number of people it hits all the right spots
- good design (way more ground breaking than the iPhone, imho)
- reasonable basic features (ie. camera, text and calls)
- reasonable battery life
- excellent call quality
- bluetooth isn't set to "hi, I'm here, please bluesnarf/whatever me" all the time like on Nokias.
And I still reckon the Moto has the best shortcuts system of any mobile.
I've had a Moto Razr for a few years now, and wouldn't give it up. Sure, right now its not my main phone, but I tend to keep it for nights out, so I don't have an unsightly bulge in my trousers
No, NOT based on pixel count. I'm basing this on actual experience of the quality of images taken by both friends and my cameras. Your statement about "All cell phone cameras suck" is typical slashdot, in effect not rtfa. Be it a Nokia N73, the relatively ancient SE K750, the later K800, Sharp 902/903, Nokia N93, I've seen varying degrees of success, and in most cases, all of these phones cameras are usable in normal day-to-day usage when compared to an (admittedly) cheap point and shoot. I've compared my N73 to a Casio EX-Z600, and it does a better job of focusing, and surprisingly does a better job on video (the N73 shoots at CIF resolution, the Casio at VGA/30fps). I know, its not just based on numbers, but please stop making sweeping/inaccurate statements.
Depends on your territory/market segment as to what the killer app is for phones though.
For business, its a combination of voice and data, probably going more towards data now.
For the kids/social types, its text messaging (with the stupid abbreviations, I can hardly understand anything my step daughter sends me).
A phone to make calls? Thats soooo twentieth century. We're totally beyond this voice business now.
There definitely is a market for high end phones, but at the moment, they seem to go two distinct routes.
..... can't people just wait and see?
1. Offer reasonably decent imaging - ie. 3/5+ mp cameras, VGA/30fps video recording.
2. Look at Vertu. Thats the real high end of phones, a bit like the Rolex of the phone world.
Totally agree about all the speculation though, its getting damnably irritating the continual its the greatest/its the worst/it'll fail 'cos
Thing is, that the iPhone isn't quite as much a smartphone as the windows/symbian devices out there.
There are only two things that the iPhone seems to have over the competition, memory and multi-touch. The negatives, such as lower quality camera, worse battery life, and a lack of an open architecture for freely developing your own apps (which isn't a biggie for many) are definitely bigger issues, at least for a lot of people in the UK.
For your average person over here, the iPhone doesn't offer anything overwhelming when compared to a several year old SE W800. The SE has much better battery life (5+ days?), you can text without having to look at the screen, has a much better camera, and in theory they can support the 8gig duo pros, and the SE fits a lot nicer into your "average" pocket.
And another typical slashdot answer that just beggars belief.
Its true though - the responsible parents wouldn't get themselves into such a stupid situation in the first place, this is nothing about throwing fud and accusations about the parents, its an obvious mention of the truth, and it appears that you have issues with "the truth". Does it hurt?
No decent parent in their right mind would even begin to believe that such an advert would cause issues. Come on, get a grip on REALITY.
My son, now 5 years old, would just see that ad and think it was funny. He would NOT think its a reason to grab our keys and take the car for a spin.
The advert is fictional, any parents complaining about the advert are obviously somewhat retarded, and would complain about anything. Its absolutely pathetic for those individuals who complained to believe that the advert was any form of threat. Bunch of complete and utter retards.
The iPhone prices are NOT subsidised, the 499/599 prices are apparently without any rebates, which does seem a little bizarre, and its not something that I can see happening over in the UK/Europe.
Still not necessarily a good choice though, why not hedge their bets and just come straight out with GPRS/EDGE/3G support, and swap between them as appropriate.
;)
My N73 seems to cope quite nicely - 3G works well in the major cities (I work in London) and quite well in outlying areas, and it drops to EDGE, and then GPRS when required.
Having said that, EDGE really doesn't seem that good, especially when you're used to 3G data speeds. WiFi support would be nice though, but I've got my PSP for that
Have you actually used any recent Nokias or SE phones? From your comments, I somehow doubt it.
The current range of S40 Nokia handsets have one of the easiest user interfaces on the planet, its no surprise that the range is the best selling around. Any idiot can figure out how to use it.
I'll admit that S60 isn't quite as intuitive, but its still not exactly rocket science to work around. I'm using a Nokia N73, and the UI has hardly changed since the 7650 made its appearance, not necessarily a bad thing, but there are still some config elements in strange places.
However, the king of UI design on mobiles has to be SE. For the last few years their user interface has been slick, consistent, incredibly easy to use, and generally about the most intuitive UI around.
I think you'll find that a lot of people are just happy with a phone that they can call people on, can send text messages on, and has a decent battery life - the last one is an absolute killer for the iPhone, no-one in their right mind would say that a day or twos battery life is usable. Heck, my N73 can just about stretch to 3 days at a push, I do miss my old SE W550, as that was an easy 5-7 days out of a charge, and that was with an hours music, a few text messages/calls per day.