They had to make quite a few compromises to get it to that price point. Most notably is the thickness and the low battery life of only 3 hours. I guess it depends on what your use case is, but 3 hours is not enough for me. 5 would be a lot more acceptable.
Which is why I said I will probably end up getting something really cheap or try to make my current phone last until we see what happens with Windows 10. If Windows 10 turns out to be a huge flop, I can still get an Android phone. If Windows 10 turns out to be great, I'll get a Windows 10 phone.
Well, it's only $19 for an individual to register to make Apps for Windows App store (PCs and tablets) and the Windows Phone App store. You can't yet publish Windows 10 apps on the XBox, but I can't see the price going up a lot when they do add that functionality.
I just looked it up, and the water in the ocean weights 1.5 Quintillion Tons (1.5 x 10 ^ 17 tons), which means we are dumping the equivalent of 0.000000005% of the mass of the ocean in plastic into the ocean. At those percentages, I wonder if the effects are really any different if we halved or quartered our pollution of the ocean. Really it would all be about the same to the ocean. Sure we should try to reduce how much we dump, but there's way bigger environmental problems to be working on.
So my only choices are to have a 6 inch phone, which is basically a tablet, or to go with the older model Nexus 5, which is still quite large, and doesn't even have an SD Card slot? The specs are decent for the price, but the phone is still a little high end for me. I like to be able to take my phone hiking or on a bike ride, and I don't quite see the appeal with carrying a $350 computing device while doing those activities. Getting updates shouldn't be a status symbol. It should be available to all Android phones.
It will support running the same "Apps" as Windows 10. This is actually a nice thing about the way Windows is headed. I can write a single app, and have it run on XBox One, Windows PCs, Windows Tablets, and Windows Phones. Sure it doesn't support legacy software, but it makes a lot more tempting to write Windows apps if they will run on so many devices with very little extra work. If they were really smart they'd adopt similar technology to what Xamarin has and allow the C#/.Net code you write to run on Android and iPhone as well.
I for one am very much not happy with Android on my Phone. My current Android Phone is only running version 2.3 even though I bought it 6 months before Android 4 came out. The lack of upgrades on Android is appalling. I'm due for a new phone in the next month (yay 3 year contracts!) and I'm seriously considering just getting a cheap phone or waiting it out to see what happens with Windows 10. The only Android Phone in my price range that I like is the Moto G, which currently doesn't have the update to Android 5 in Canada where I live, and although they say it is coming, they seem to be taking their slow old time with it. Meanwhile Android continues to do stupid things, like removing the functionality to move apps to the SD card. Apparently that's back in Android 5, but like I said, it's hard to be certain that phones will even be upgraded. Windows Phone (at least since 8+) seems to have a much better track record with updates, and doesn't impose stupid restrictions about where apps can be installed. I've bought a few apps and I'm used to the way that Android works, so I really don't want to abandon it, but the lack of updates seriously makes me want to avoid them in the future.
You can get the lowest end Surface Pro for $849 plus $130 for the keyboard. You can often find deals if you wait for a sale and get the lowest end version for $800 or less. So less than $1000. Still about double the iPad, but if you count it as a tablet and a laptop (which it basically is) you save money as a laptop with similar specs, plus buying the iPad. Even compared to buying a laptop and a cheap but good $200 Android tablet, the price is pretty reasonable. Like I said, wait a few more iterations until they can bring the price down. Apple won't be able to last long when their tablets and phones are asking a premium price and delivering the same experience as devices at half their price. It's interesting that you add in the price of the keyboard when the iPad doesn't come with one either. And even the lowest end Surface comes with 64 GB of storage, plus room for an SD Card (Or use USB3 Storage). The iPad base unit only comes with 16 GB of storage, and has no option for expansion. If you want more, you're going to be paying at least $100 more just for the privilege.
I want to see how long Apple can keep on charging $700 for a cell phone. I really don't see how that can be maintained another decade. In an era where a $200 Moto G or similar is enough for most people, I can't see Apple being able to maintain their allure much longer. Same goes for the iPad. Why pay $500 for a tablet that is so limited when you can get a Surface Pro that does so much more for only a little bit more. Give them a couple more iterations and I'm sure they'll have something at the same price as the iPad, but as a full computer, and not a crippled tablet that can only show a single app at a time. I can see how the iPad appeals to some people who never wanted a computer in the first place. But for people who actually want to get work done, or create something, it's a useless device.
Personally I think that Microsoft has been doing quite well lately, but no matter what they do, people seem to find something wrong with it. I haven't heard anything particularly bad about their current iteration of their phone OS, other than the anemic app selection, but the OS itself is top notch. Everybody I know who has a Surface Pro seems to think they are amazing, the only general complaint being that they are too expensive. But I guess that you have to pay a lot of money if you want a proper digitizer built into the lightest laptop on the market. Microsoft has started to give away their OS on cheap devices because it's really the only option that works. You can't charge $50 or even $25 for a Windows license that sells to the end consumer for under $250. It just doesn't make the product competitive. This is a market that didn't exist 5 years ago, so of course they are going to have to make adjustments.
That, and their search engine is still the best around. By a long shot. Many times you don't even have to visit the pages it links to, and Google will simply give you an answer with before having to look at any of the results. When Firefox went and switch my search engine to Yahoo, I noticed by the quality of the results, not by the look of the page, because they were very careful to try to make the results page look as similar as possible.
It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
This was at a time when BASIC didn't even support subroutines or many things, yet people still use it as a reason to be against things like VB.Net, even though it's just as capable as C#.
As long as you have hardware that Linux works well with, then you could probably have a very good experience. However, every machine that I've ever tried to run Linux on personally has had some nagging hardware issues that just don't get resolved. Had I bought a machine specifically with the intention of running Linux on it, then I might have a better experience, as I could verify that all the hardware is compatible before loading on the operating system. But using the machines I just happened to own, it's pretty hit or miss as far as what hardware will have good drivers. Usually the video card isn't very well supported. If it's not that, then it's some other piece of hardware I want to plug in, like a camera, or a scanner, or a printer.
Really depends on how they price it. I have couple old machines that are still running Windows XP, because it's at least $100 for the most recent version of Windows and I can't justify spending $100 all at once on a machine that isn't even worth $100. Now if it was only $20-$30 a year, I might pay for a year or two of the current version of Windows. I might spend more in the long term, assuming I keep those machines around a long time, but it's hard to say.
Great, it's only 2-3 times the price of a similarly sized TV with the "Smart" TV features built in. Some of the features on Smart TVs are actually nice to have, like built in MiraCast, so you can connect any device wirelessly to your TV without an extra box in between.
I have an LG tv with a similar feature. The difference is that the microphone is on the remote, and (I can only assume) it only activates when I press a button on the remote. It's a stupid feature and I never use it anyway, and it doesn't work that well when I've tried it. I guess a press button activation is a nicer way to deal with it, but it only works if you have the remote handy.
I think the reason a lot of people have TVs with these features is that once you get to a certain size of TV, a very large percentage have features like this built in. I got a 50 inch TV last year, and almost all the TVs I looked at had some kind of "smart" TV functionality. Very few were just dumb displays. I actually like having things like Netflix and DLNA client built into the TV. If the apps become outdated, I can still plug in an external box when that time comes, but for now, my TV works pretty well for most uses, and I don't have to run an extra computer in my living room.
I fail to see how the Cheerios I buy at Walmart are any different than the Cheerios I buy at any other store, and they aren't any different than they were before Walmart even existed. Sure if you buy a $100 bike at Walmart then it will be terrible compared to the $400-$1000 bike at your local bike shop, but what did you really expect. That's not specific to Walmart, all large retailers sell the same junk.
Wal-Mart pays some employees slightly above minimum wage, but most of them not. Once an employee has been there for long, they get a little more money, but most of them aren't there long enough for that to happen.
At least at Walmart there is a slight possiblity of moving up in pay and even possibly up the ladder to something like manager. At the mom and pop, they have absolutely no ability to pay you more than minimum wage. And there is no chance of getting into management because the management is the sole function of the owners.
People constantly complain about Walmart, I get that. And they aren't without their faults. But I don't see how they are any worse than any other large retailer. And personally, I would rather work at a place like Walmart than work for a mom and pop store. I think most of the complaints about Walmart are actually correct, but I don't see them being specific to Walmart, but rather just about every retail operation.
I really don't understand what's so bad about Walmart anyway. The customers get lower prices, and the employees probably have it better too. I've worked at a mom and pop store, and there was very little good about it. The pay was minimum wage, there was no benefits. Getting time off was next to impossible because they had so few employees.
I agree with 2 years of foreign language instruction being pointless. Unless you are going to be immersed in the language for a couple years, taking a single course for 2 years does not give you enough time to have a good grasp of the language. I'm in Canada, and just about everyone is forced to take french from grades 1 to 9, but very few people can actually speak or write the language well if this is the only exposure they've had to the language. Even after 9 years of instruction, I never read a single book in French, nor was I ever asked to write more than a couple sentences. My vocabulary probably consists of about 500 words if I had to guess, and I've picked up more that from reading food labels and other french signage than I have from actually taking classes. But boy did we know how to conjugate those verbs.
While I don't think that CS should be regarded as a second language. I do think that having some knowledge in CS can help you communicate with other people, and get out of your cocoon/comfort zone a little bit. If everybody I worked with had a decent understanding of how computers worked and some basic programming skills, it would make my life a lot easier.
I guess the only question is, how far do you take it when determining that somebody is harming their children. I definitely think that everybody except the tiny percentage of individuals who have a medical condition should be vaccinated against things like measles. But I'm not so sure about things like chicken pox or the flu vaccine. While these vaccines are good and safe, I wouldn't think that somebody choosing not to give those to their children should be charged with endangering their life or well being. Where I live, it's illegal to smoke in your car if you have kids under 16 with you. That's probably a good thing as cars are very enclosed, and kids would inhale quite a bit of second hand smoke. However, there is no similar law for now smoking in a private residence, even though kids spend a lot of time at home, and if their parent smokes inside, they are much more likely to inhale second hand smoke in the house than the short amount of time they might be in the car.
I think medicaid could be a factor. I'm from Canada, so I really like my tax funded healthcare. I think that specifically funding certain things like vaccinations to assure that everybody can receive them without cost is a huge advantage to the entire country. I can see why some people wouldn't want to pay for somebody else's knee surgery, or heart transplant if they brought it on themselves by their own lifestyle, but things like vaccinations help the entire population, are just about every person is born susceptible to these diseases. So it makes sense to make sure that as many people as possible are immunized. If somebody isn't immunized, then even the rich people who are insured are at risk in the event that their infants are too young to be vaccinated, or couldn't be vaccinated because of medical complications.
I've always thought it was interesting the way music worked out. It seems like the boy-band model works to attract female listeners, but most guys I know really don't care what the artist looks like. Sure Katy Perry may turn a few heads at the SuperBowl, but I don't know any guys who would go to her concerts or buy her music. In the same way, I know many women who would watch a movie just because a particular good looking actor was in it, regardless of the content. But most guys I know wouldn't go see a movie just because a certain actress is in it. Sure it's nice that there's good looking girls in Transformers, but we went to see the transformers and would have gone to see it even if there was no women in the entire movie. We wouldn't go see a romantic comedy with the same actress in it.
Unions are indeed a form of collusion. Although society has agreed that unions are a legal form of collusion. They definitely work against the corporations and make them pay more in wages and benefits than they would if their employees are not unionized. Usually this works out better for the employees, but sometimes, the employer decides that they just can't afford what the unions are demanding. In this case they fire everyone and try to hire non-union employees, or they just close up shop completely. Either way all the union employees are out of a job. Sometimes they play chicken by letting the union strike for a very long time. The union funds eventually dry up, and the employees start to go against the union because they no longer have a paycheck coming in.
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Many places require that suicide be covered under life insurance policies, provided it's a certain amount of time after they were insured.
They had to make quite a few compromises to get it to that price point. Most notably is the thickness and the low battery life of only 3 hours. I guess it depends on what your use case is, but 3 hours is not enough for me. 5 would be a lot more acceptable.
Which is why I said I will probably end up getting something really cheap or try to make my current phone last until we see what happens with Windows 10. If Windows 10 turns out to be a huge flop, I can still get an Android phone. If Windows 10 turns out to be great, I'll get a Windows 10 phone.
Well, it's only $19 for an individual to register to make Apps for Windows App store (PCs and tablets) and the Windows Phone App store. You can't yet publish Windows 10 apps on the XBox, but I can't see the price going up a lot when they do add that functionality.
I just looked it up, and the water in the ocean weights 1.5 Quintillion Tons (1.5 x 10 ^ 17 tons), which means we are dumping the equivalent of 0.000000005% of the mass of the ocean in plastic into the ocean. At those percentages, I wonder if the effects are really any different if we halved or quartered our pollution of the ocean. Really it would all be about the same to the ocean. Sure we should try to reduce how much we dump, but there's way bigger environmental problems to be working on.
So my only choices are to have a 6 inch phone, which is basically a tablet, or to go with the older model Nexus 5, which is still quite large, and doesn't even have an SD Card slot? The specs are decent for the price, but the phone is still a little high end for me. I like to be able to take my phone hiking or on a bike ride, and I don't quite see the appeal with carrying a $350 computing device while doing those activities. Getting updates shouldn't be a status symbol. It should be available to all Android phones.
It will support running the same "Apps" as Windows 10. This is actually a nice thing about the way Windows is headed. I can write a single app, and have it run on XBox One, Windows PCs, Windows Tablets, and Windows Phones. Sure it doesn't support legacy software, but it makes a lot more tempting to write Windows apps if they will run on so many devices with very little extra work. If they were really smart they'd adopt similar technology to what Xamarin has and allow the C#/.Net code you write to run on Android and iPhone as well.
I for one am very much not happy with Android on my Phone. My current Android Phone is only running version 2.3 even though I bought it 6 months before Android 4 came out. The lack of upgrades on Android is appalling. I'm due for a new phone in the next month (yay 3 year contracts!) and I'm seriously considering just getting a cheap phone or waiting it out to see what happens with Windows 10. The only Android Phone in my price range that I like is the Moto G, which currently doesn't have the update to Android 5 in Canada where I live, and although they say it is coming, they seem to be taking their slow old time with it. Meanwhile Android continues to do stupid things, like removing the functionality to move apps to the SD card. Apparently that's back in Android 5, but like I said, it's hard to be certain that phones will even be upgraded. Windows Phone (at least since 8+) seems to have a much better track record with updates, and doesn't impose stupid restrictions about where apps can be installed. I've bought a few apps and I'm used to the way that Android works, so I really don't want to abandon it, but the lack of updates seriously makes me want to avoid them in the future.
You can get the lowest end Surface Pro for $849 plus $130 for the keyboard. You can often find deals if you wait for a sale and get the lowest end version for $800 or less. So less than $1000. Still about double the iPad, but if you count it as a tablet and a laptop (which it basically is) you save money as a laptop with similar specs, plus buying the iPad. Even compared to buying a laptop and a cheap but good $200 Android tablet, the price is pretty reasonable. Like I said, wait a few more iterations until they can bring the price down. Apple won't be able to last long when their tablets and phones are asking a premium price and delivering the same experience as devices at half their price. It's interesting that you add in the price of the keyboard when the iPad doesn't come with one either. And even the lowest end Surface comes with 64 GB of storage, plus room for an SD Card (Or use USB3 Storage). The iPad base unit only comes with 16 GB of storage, and has no option for expansion. If you want more, you're going to be paying at least $100 more just for the privilege.
I want to see how long Apple can keep on charging $700 for a cell phone. I really don't see how that can be maintained another decade. In an era where a $200 Moto G or similar is enough for most people, I can't see Apple being able to maintain their allure much longer. Same goes for the iPad. Why pay $500 for a tablet that is so limited when you can get a Surface Pro that does so much more for only a little bit more. Give them a couple more iterations and I'm sure they'll have something at the same price as the iPad, but as a full computer, and not a crippled tablet that can only show a single app at a time. I can see how the iPad appeals to some people who never wanted a computer in the first place. But for people who actually want to get work done, or create something, it's a useless device.
Personally I think that Microsoft has been doing quite well lately, but no matter what they do, people seem to find something wrong with it. I haven't heard anything particularly bad about their current iteration of their phone OS, other than the anemic app selection, but the OS itself is top notch. Everybody I know who has a Surface Pro seems to think they are amazing, the only general complaint being that they are too expensive. But I guess that you have to pay a lot of money if you want a proper digitizer built into the lightest laptop on the market. Microsoft has started to give away their OS on cheap devices because it's really the only option that works. You can't charge $50 or even $25 for a Windows license that sells to the end consumer for under $250. It just doesn't make the product competitive. This is a market that didn't exist 5 years ago, so of course they are going to have to make adjustments.
That, and their search engine is still the best around. By a long shot. Many times you don't even have to visit the pages it links to, and Google will simply give you an answer with before having to look at any of the results. When Firefox went and switch my search engine to Yahoo, I noticed by the quality of the results, not by the look of the page, because they were very careful to try to make the results page look as similar as possible.
This was at a time when BASIC didn't even support subroutines or many things, yet people still use it as a reason to be against things like VB.Net, even though it's just as capable as C#.
As long as you have hardware that Linux works well with, then you could probably have a very good experience. However, every machine that I've ever tried to run Linux on personally has had some nagging hardware issues that just don't get resolved. Had I bought a machine specifically with the intention of running Linux on it, then I might have a better experience, as I could verify that all the hardware is compatible before loading on the operating system. But using the machines I just happened to own, it's pretty hit or miss as far as what hardware will have good drivers. Usually the video card isn't very well supported. If it's not that, then it's some other piece of hardware I want to plug in, like a camera, or a scanner, or a printer.
Really depends on how they price it. I have couple old machines that are still running Windows XP, because it's at least $100 for the most recent version of Windows and I can't justify spending $100 all at once on a machine that isn't even worth $100. Now if it was only $20-$30 a year, I might pay for a year or two of the current version of Windows. I might spend more in the long term, assuming I keep those machines around a long time, but it's hard to say.
Great, it's only 2-3 times the price of a similarly sized TV with the "Smart" TV features built in. Some of the features on Smart TVs are actually nice to have, like built in MiraCast, so you can connect any device wirelessly to your TV without an extra box in between.
I have an LG tv with a similar feature. The difference is that the microphone is on the remote, and (I can only assume) it only activates when I press a button on the remote. It's a stupid feature and I never use it anyway, and it doesn't work that well when I've tried it. I guess a press button activation is a nicer way to deal with it, but it only works if you have the remote handy.
I think the reason a lot of people have TVs with these features is that once you get to a certain size of TV, a very large percentage have features like this built in. I got a 50 inch TV last year, and almost all the TVs I looked at had some kind of "smart" TV functionality. Very few were just dumb displays. I actually like having things like Netflix and DLNA client built into the TV. If the apps become outdated, I can still plug in an external box when that time comes, but for now, my TV works pretty well for most uses, and I don't have to run an extra computer in my living room.
I fail to see how the Cheerios I buy at Walmart are any different than the Cheerios I buy at any other store, and they aren't any different than they were before Walmart even existed. Sure if you buy a $100 bike at Walmart then it will be terrible compared to the $400-$1000 bike at your local bike shop, but what did you really expect. That's not specific to Walmart, all large retailers sell the same junk.
At least at Walmart there is a slight possiblity of moving up in pay and even possibly up the ladder to something like manager. At the mom and pop, they have absolutely no ability to pay you more than minimum wage. And there is no chance of getting into management because the management is the sole function of the owners.
People constantly complain about Walmart, I get that. And they aren't without their faults. But I don't see how they are any worse than any other large retailer. And personally, I would rather work at a place like Walmart than work for a mom and pop store. I think most of the complaints about Walmart are actually correct, but I don't see them being specific to Walmart, but rather just about every retail operation.
I really don't understand what's so bad about Walmart anyway. The customers get lower prices, and the employees probably have it better too. I've worked at a mom and pop store, and there was very little good about it. The pay was minimum wage, there was no benefits. Getting time off was next to impossible because they had so few employees.
I agree with 2 years of foreign language instruction being pointless. Unless you are going to be immersed in the language for a couple years, taking a single course for 2 years does not give you enough time to have a good grasp of the language. I'm in Canada, and just about everyone is forced to take french from grades 1 to 9, but very few people can actually speak or write the language well if this is the only exposure they've had to the language. Even after 9 years of instruction, I never read a single book in French, nor was I ever asked to write more than a couple sentences. My vocabulary probably consists of about 500 words if I had to guess, and I've picked up more that from reading food labels and other french signage than I have from actually taking classes. But boy did we know how to conjugate those verbs.
While I don't think that CS should be regarded as a second language. I do think that having some knowledge in CS can help you communicate with other people, and get out of your cocoon/comfort zone a little bit. If everybody I worked with had a decent understanding of how computers worked and some basic programming skills, it would make my life a lot easier.
I guess the only question is, how far do you take it when determining that somebody is harming their children. I definitely think that everybody except the tiny percentage of individuals who have a medical condition should be vaccinated against things like measles. But I'm not so sure about things like chicken pox or the flu vaccine. While these vaccines are good and safe, I wouldn't think that somebody choosing not to give those to their children should be charged with endangering their life or well being. Where I live, it's illegal to smoke in your car if you have kids under 16 with you. That's probably a good thing as cars are very enclosed, and kids would inhale quite a bit of second hand smoke. However, there is no similar law for now smoking in a private residence, even though kids spend a lot of time at home, and if their parent smokes inside, they are much more likely to inhale second hand smoke in the house than the short amount of time they might be in the car.
I think medicaid could be a factor. I'm from Canada, so I really like my tax funded healthcare. I think that specifically funding certain things like vaccinations to assure that everybody can receive them without cost is a huge advantage to the entire country. I can see why some people wouldn't want to pay for somebody else's knee surgery, or heart transplant if they brought it on themselves by their own lifestyle, but things like vaccinations help the entire population, are just about every person is born susceptible to these diseases. So it makes sense to make sure that as many people as possible are immunized. If somebody isn't immunized, then even the rich people who are insured are at risk in the event that their infants are too young to be vaccinated, or couldn't be vaccinated because of medical complications.
I've always thought it was interesting the way music worked out. It seems like the boy-band model works to attract female listeners, but most guys I know really don't care what the artist looks like. Sure Katy Perry may turn a few heads at the SuperBowl, but I don't know any guys who would go to her concerts or buy her music. In the same way, I know many women who would watch a movie just because a particular good looking actor was in it, regardless of the content. But most guys I know wouldn't go see a movie just because a certain actress is in it. Sure it's nice that there's good looking girls in Transformers, but we went to see the transformers and would have gone to see it even if there was no women in the entire movie. We wouldn't go see a romantic comedy with the same actress in it.
Unions are indeed a form of collusion. Although society has agreed that unions are a legal form of collusion. They definitely work against the corporations and make them pay more in wages and benefits than they would if their employees are not unionized. Usually this works out better for the employees, but sometimes, the employer decides that they just can't afford what the unions are demanding. In this case they fire everyone and try to hire non-union employees, or they just close up shop completely. Either way all the union employees are out of a job. Sometimes they play chicken by letting the union strike for a very long time. The union funds eventually dry up, and the employees start to go against the union because they no longer have a paycheck coming in.