I was hoping this was true the last time I needed to buy a new laptop.
I compared top of the line offerings from Apple and IBM/Lenovo. Note that I'm not comparing Apples to cheap ass PCs, that would be all too easy. Thinkpads are the gold standard for x86 laptops.
Here's what I got: Thinkpad T61 15.4" LCD, 1680x1050 2.2gHz Intel Core 2 Duo 2 gigs of ram 100gb 7200rpm drive dvd recorder integrated wireless and bluetooth
That comes to.... $1458.
(Seriously, check it out on lenovo.com)
Now let's go to Apple. Surely this machine is at the level of the MacBook Pro. MBPro STARTS at 2 grand, same processor/ram, though 20GB extra hard drive (at a blazing 5400rpm). And I'm stuck at 1440x900 on the screen, not to mention stuck with a crappy ass keyboard that can't hold a candle to the venerated thinkpad keyboard.
Now, it's true that I could add a 20" LCD with a lightning fast 16ms response time for.. SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS?! What the.. I just picked up this Samsung 20 incher, 2ms response, for under two hundred.
The dream that Macs can be price comparable to PCs will probably never come true.
I'll tell you what. Compare the probability of being killed by a terrorist attack
to the probability of being killed by second hand smoke. I think you'll find there
are more effective ways of reducing innocent deaths via legislation, in particular
ones that don't require our government to take a dump on the bill of rights.
Radiohead pretty clearly needs to have a more robust system for handling
orders. I paid around $5 for the album and enjoyed it enough to go back
to (attempt to) buy the discbox. Sadly my registration information was
completely lost, I put off reregistering for a few days to find that
the site appears to be non-functional. Still waiting...
The two best things about a t-series are the keyboard and options for high resolution screens. I don't see how a Mac laptop of any variety fulfills either (having owned powerbooks and ibooks).
I taught in a West African country for 2 years. I taught students who, while extremely poor by Western standards, were not in the position where their biggest worry was where their next meal or water was coming from, it was how they were going to get the money to pay their school fees, and largely how they were going to afford books (most of them didn't). The fact is, even in a '3rd world' country books for secondary school are expensive, enough that a $188 computer would save money over buying all the necessary books for a complete education (using the West African Secondary School Certificate Examination, WASSCE, as a baseline here). I posted on this before:
The whole 3rd world isn't what you see on Christian Children's Fund commercials. There are a huge number of extremely poor people who do eat (often from the family farm) and have shelter, but need to take the next step of getting a proper education to help benefit their country.
I do, however agree on your environmental point. There needs to be a plan for what to do with these machines in the long run.
I'm not sure it would be worth Google's time and money to create the infrastructure necessary to start producing chips for themselves. Why not just give a requirement list to some already established manufacturer? I'm sure they'd be happy to have a guaranteed massive contract for years to come.
I'm currently a science teacher at a secondary school in sub-saharan africa. My opinion is that one day the concept of a computer for every student could help education tremendously; but I think that today the software to do this just isn't here.
What we need is better (free and open) educational software and material -- interactive text books complete with demos to illustrate abstract difficult to visualize concepts (I like the direction many of the vpython demos are heading for physics demos that I use with my students: http://physics.syr.edu/~salgado/software/vpython/ ), beautiful easy to read text, good content (I'm keeping my eye on wikibooks).
I imagine a physics tutorial program which would have demos on force, motion, an interactive ray-tracer, circuit simulation software, etc, alongside typical textbook text. Right now I find a lot of this stuff from various places. What we need is an integrated solution which brings all of this together into one simple easy to use program which reads an open, easy to use format.
As it is today, most of my students have maybe five (poor) text books in the course of 9 years of education. The cost of new textbooks each year would probably exceed or at least come close to the cost of buying a $100 laptop loaded with all the educational material a student will need for that period of time.
I doubt anyone believes that a product called a 'nuclear' battery would succeed on the marketplace. The first thing they need to do is change the name, a la MRI.
I consider myself pretty far out in terms of my ideas about open source (more or less in line with rms), but this guy is way out of the ballpark of even rms. So not only must all software be open source but it can only be used in certain ways by business?
If this is the direction that open source evangelists are heading they seem to be paralleling the popular environmentalist movement, which is no longer a movement for the environment but one against business. An evolution which abandoned myself.
So why didn't you just say that? Your post indicated that the rest of the world is incapable of understanding measurements in inches -- now you admit that at least some can.
If you haven't figured out how to convert inches to cm on your own (or with the help of google) you must have a hard time getting anything done of any consequence in this world.
This will be heavily marketed...
on
Just a Phone?
·
· Score: 1
Slashdot Mirror
Ha. Modded funny, I love it. Here it goes anyway:
I was hoping this was true the last time I needed to buy a new laptop.
I compared top of the line offerings from Apple and IBM/Lenovo. Note that I'm not comparing Apples to cheap ass PCs, that would be all too easy. Thinkpads are the gold standard for x86 laptops.
Here's what I got:
Thinkpad T61
15.4" LCD, 1680x1050
2.2gHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2 gigs of ram
100gb 7200rpm drive
dvd recorder
integrated wireless and bluetooth
That comes to.... $1458.
(Seriously, check it out on lenovo.com)
Now let's go to Apple. Surely this machine is at the level of the MacBook Pro. MBPro STARTS at 2 grand, same processor/ram, though 20GB extra hard drive (at a blazing 5400rpm). And I'm stuck at 1440x900 on the screen, not to mention stuck with a crappy ass keyboard that can't hold a candle to the venerated thinkpad keyboard.
Now, it's true that I could add a 20" LCD with a lightning fast 16ms response time for.. SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS?! What the.. I just picked up this Samsung 20 incher, 2ms response, for under two hundred.
The dream that Macs can be price comparable to PCs will probably never come true.
You remind me of ridiculous patents of the form
... on a PHONE ... on the INTERNET
Doing X
Doing Y
I'll tell you what. Compare the probability of being killed by a terrorist attack to the probability of being killed by second hand smoke. I think you'll find there are more effective ways of reducing innocent deaths via legislation, in particular ones that don't require our government to take a dump on the bill of rights.
The coast guard.
Radiohead pretty clearly needs to have a more robust system for handling orders. I paid around $5 for the album and enjoyed it enough to go back to (attempt to) buy the discbox. Sadly my registration information was completely lost, I put off reregistering for a few days to find that the site appears to be non-functional. Still waiting...
The two best things about a t-series are the keyboard and options for high resolution screens. I don't see how a Mac laptop of any variety fulfills either (having owned powerbooks and ibooks).
I taught in a West African country for 2 years. I taught students who, while extremely poor by Western standards, were not in the position where their biggest worry was where their next meal or water was coming from, it was how they were going to get the money to pay their school fees, and largely how they were going to afford books (most of them didn't). The fact is, even in a '3rd world' country books for secondary school are expensive, enough that a $188 computer would save money over buying all the necessary books for a complete education (using the West African Secondary School Certificate Examination, WASSCE, as a baseline here). I posted on this before:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=192275&cid=15789819
The whole 3rd world isn't what you see on Christian Children's Fund commercials. There are a huge number of extremely poor people who do eat (often from the family farm) and have shelter, but need to take the next step of getting a proper education to help benefit their country.
I do, however agree on your environmental point. There needs to be a plan for what to do with these machines in the long run.
I'm not sure it would be worth Google's time and money to create the
infrastructure necessary to start producing chips for themselves. Why
not just give a requirement list to some already established
manufacturer? I'm sure they'd be happy to have a guaranteed massive
contract for years to come.
well played bro.
I'm currently a science teacher at a secondary school in sub-saharan africa. My opinion is that one day the concept of a computer for every student could help education tremendously; but I think that today the software to do this just isn't here.
What we need is better (free and open) educational software and material -- interactive text books complete with demos to illustrate abstract difficult to visualize concepts (I like the direction many of the vpython demos are heading for physics demos that I use with my students: http://physics.syr.edu/~salgado/software/vpython/ ), beautiful easy to read text, good content (I'm keeping my eye on wikibooks).
I imagine a physics tutorial program which would have demos on force, motion, an interactive ray-tracer, circuit simulation software, etc, alongside typical textbook text. Right now I find a lot of this stuff from various places. What we need is an integrated solution which brings all of this together into one simple easy to use program which reads an open, easy to use format.
As it is today, most of my students have maybe five (poor) text books in the course of 9 years of education. The cost of new textbooks each year would probably exceed or at least come close to the cost of buying a $100 laptop loaded with all the educational material a student will need for that period of time.
Thank you sir I just _literally_ laughed my ass off.
so what was her name?
What of his is retarded?
Thanks for fixing the dupe samzenpus.
I doubt anyone believes that a product called a 'nuclear' battery would succeed on the marketplace. The first thing they need to do is change the name, a la MRI.
I consider myself pretty far out in terms of my ideas about open source (more or less in line with rms), but this guy is way out of the ballpark of even rms. So not only must all software be open source but it can only be used in certain ways by business?
If this is the direction that open source evangelists are heading they seem to be paralleling the popular environmentalist movement, which is no longer a movement for the environment but one against business. An evolution which abandoned myself.
what the hell are you talking about
So why didn't you just say that? Your post indicated that the rest of the world is incapable of understanding measurements in inches -- now you admit that at least some can.
If you haven't figured out how to convert inches to cm on your own (or with the help of google) you must have a hard time getting anything done of any consequence in this world.
in South Korea.
geez, thanks for that laundry list of barely connected ideas, ya know?
I could definitely see some uses for streaming video off a linux device, in particular http://www.dejenerate.net/ruxpin/pub/BLACKPPL.avi
So what, we're stuck at 100dpi forever now?
Come on. Seriously, this is what vector graphics and scalable fonts are for.
http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/courses/306/af rica_diamond_wars1.htm