Obviously it doesn't need all that, but if it can optionally use it, it can replace a lap-top in a few more occasion, then go back to being a normal tablet the rest of the time.
The irony is that of all the things you said, the only thing the tablet in the article cannot have is the screen (but via hdmi you could plug it to one) and upgradable ram:)
It will support an external harddrive, it has an hdmi port, it has mini-usb host on the tablet and regular usb on the keyboard dock, the dock itself is a full keyboard (but you can hook a normal one via usb), and the dock has a touchpad with left click and right click =P
As long as all that stuff is optional and you can use it as a regular tablet, its pretty useful. (The mouse part is quite a boon when you're typing away emails or whatsnot with the keyboard, so you don't have to keep reaching forward to poke the screen. Having to use a touchscreen at the same time as a keyboard is just painfully annoying)
I actually replaced my netbook with the Transformer Prime (which isn't nearly as nice as this one, and has a few issues the Infinity is supposed to fix), and I did so because Android on that Tegra 3 is way faster than Windows on most netbook CPUs, while still having the insane -mainstream- app ecosystem (that Linux doesn't have).
And then i can remove the dock and get a tablet form factor. Bonus.
Its mainly for use in plain sunlight. The transformer prime at max brightness indoor will destroy your eyes, but outdoor it just makes it bright enough to see very well even if the sun is behind you. Thats it really:)
You might be a bit jealous of Andrew Weiss: fresh out of college, he got interviews with both Microsoft and Google
Hmm... why would someone be jealous? If you want to be in that situation, Google and Microsoft are pretty straightforward. Go to one of the colleges they approach candidates from (and while US college system is a bit silly, anyone CAN go to on of these colleges if they try hard enough and are willing to pile up enough debts...most countries will have a way for people who worked hard enough), and then just talk to them. Then if you have a 3.0 gpa and don't babble too much, you'll probably get the job (if you want to). If you don't, get a job elsewhere and they'll be harassing you a few years later.
My silly community college IT degree didn't catch their attention, but that was a personal decision I made. My wife however made different decision and Google/Microsoft are calling her at least once a month.
I guess in some countries it might not be as trivial, but i doubt the summary was thinking of those when it was written.
Aside that, if you're "jealous", you just didn't make the right decisions to get what you wanted.
To be fair, with tablets like the transformer prime, which has a keyboard and a trackpad, as well as almost any android device with usb host being able to take a usb mouse and keyboard, you can have both.
Its also really big in the finance industry, which is generally Unix based, but ends up making compromises to get some stuff out of the door faster (right tool for right job philosophy, so the big financials usually end up having stuff written in every language you can imagine, but java and stuff usually takes first spot, but they end up with a couple of IIS server farms here and there).
Safari will always be significantly higher than it should unless you code specifically to ignore the splashscreen's preview feature's HTTP header, which you cannot do in javascript (have to do it with server code), if you're using Google Analytics (very likely).
Thats because that stupid splashscreen executes everything, from javascript to flash ads, and thus trigger all tracking scripts and stuff.
That ends up with you seeing ultra-inflated safari figures, as well as inflated safari bounce rate.
On our site (not huge my some standards, but still several hundred thousand hits per day), and catering to a younger demographic (so higher than usual safari), about 30-40% of our safari hits are "fake" because of this.
Its also not even enough to put a 20% down payment for a house in some areas. So maybe 80k isnt that much, but 80k + 100k for two major investments (and what if you have multiple kids?) seriously start adding up as far as life savings go.
And sure, there's all the stuff I "don't really need". But if your life philosophy is work for money that you'll spend for someone to help them work for money... that's not much of a life.
Guild Wars 2 is pretty good on that front. Save for a few dungeon crawls, "raids" are largely replaced by what they call "dynamic events", that just randomly (or sometimes not so randomly, after a string of sub events) happen around you. Everyone can just jump in on those, and everyone gets rewarded according to their contribution. You work with each other even if you're not partied.
Even large epic boss fights work that way. They happen and everyone around the area just jump in for the fun, then leave. No commitment, if you get bored you leave and no one gets pissed. You can jump in mid fight too if you missed the beggining. Baby's crying and need to be fed? Go take care of him/her, and come back when you can, and you'll still get some reward.
PvP in it is the same way. Large scale 2 week long (or something) wars where you just jump in and leave at your leisure, and you get scaled up to max level no matter your real level.
Its not perfect by any mean, but for those who want the MMO experience without needing to give your heart and soul to the game, it seems to be the best middle ground so far.
No need for a citation when its not a quantified statement really. "Often" can mean anything.
As a legal green card holder, illegals also piss me off. I waited years to be in a position where I could apply and i'm freagin Canadian (there's treaties between the two countries to make it super easy for some people to just move in, but i wanted permanent resident, and besides, I didn't qualify).
If there wasn't all the illegals to push aside, how hard do you think it would be for a senior software engineer married to an american citizen to just come in? I doubt i'd have had to even be either of those to do so.
Which is why it can be toggled with one button. It also works fine if all you're doing is browsing the web, looking up a calendar or checking your email, which is what 90% of people do anyway. I'm a software developer (as many here are too I guess). 90% of the time i'm looking at a computer when I'm not coding still would work perfectly fine on a tablet-style UI. A big chunk of the rest of the time is a game...which only needs to get launched.
Because a normal desktop UI doesnt work so hot on a tablet, which in the future are bound to replace a big portion of the desktop market. Hybrids (like the Transformer Prime), with a 2 mode tablet/desktop interface, like Windows 8, could seriously replace lap-tops for everyone except serious developers and graphic designers/3d artists/CAD/etc that need a lot of horse power.
Sticking to desktop-only UI would be suicide for Microsoft. Metro works quite fine if you look at it from a tablet point of view.
Get a transformer prime. It can be pretty much whatever you want, and the keyboard is solid, as well as having a USB port if you need something else (could even plug a small wacom tablet if you were that hardcore). Tablet or lap-top, it will do the job.
Apple is now the biggest manufacturer of PCs in the world (and hell, the most valuable company at this point if i remember well? By a fair margin?). No windows there. Phones and tablets are replacing PCs and lap-tops quickly, and unless Windows 8 pulls a miracle, it will stay that way.
If you put all "general purpose computing devices" together (and now, tablets and high end phones count in that category), Windows is nowhere close to dominating anymore (which is a shame, Im one of the few who loves Windows... but even I now replaced my lap-top with a Transformer Prime and a keyboard dock, running Android 4...way better).
thats why i like t-mobile's way of doing it. Its pretty simple. X amount of gb at full speed, then it slows down, good enough to read my emails, not good enough to watch a movie. It may not be a great plan, and its overpriced compared to others, but at least its honest (as far as telecoms can be honest anyway...)
not that bad if you have a transformer prime with a keyboard. Thats not a full mechanical keyboard, but its better than many lap-top keyboards ive used:) and you can plug a mouse in if you don't like trackpad. Didn't try plugging a normal keyboard in the usb...maybe it would work?
I really hate Ruby, but its hard to ignore that there's a ton of Ruby shops hiring in the big north american metro areas and that they have more contracts than they can deal with right now. Ruby is pretty hot these days.
do they not have passes there? I mean i in boston it costs me 59 bucks a month for a bus/subway pass. I used it at least twice a day, potentially more on weekends., making it pennies per use....
While there's probably (most likely) dodgy interpretation of a lot of laws involved, I would think the difference is the intent. If google's index showed warez 90%+ of the time, they never removed anything from it, and renamed themselves to "Pirate Search", they'd probably be in dicey water too.
Then people still go to work while sick, and call in sick to "extend" their vacations, going as far as getting a "friend" family doctor to write notes if needed.
Still better to have paid sick days than not, i sure know if im sick im using them.
We're having trouble hiring here. The job is fun, the salary is in 6 figures, but we need a lot of people and there's lots of competition. Often, bad candidates get jobs before we even get a chance to talk to them. Out of state candidates usually don't want to move even with generous compensation.
We only have a single H1B, and the guy is really, really good (and paid accordingly. No money saving there).
Just saying that depending where you're located, if the demand is high, it can be REALLY hard to find good candidates. Most devs who think they're good are terrible.
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Obviously it doesn't need all that, but if it can optionally use it, it can replace a lap-top in a few more occasion, then go back to being a normal tablet the rest of the time.
The irony is that of all the things you said, the only thing the tablet in the article cannot have is the screen (but via hdmi you could plug it to one) and upgradable ram :)
It will support an external harddrive, it has an hdmi port, it has mini-usb host on the tablet and regular usb on the keyboard dock, the dock itself is a full keyboard (but you can hook a normal one via usb), and the dock has a touchpad with left click and right click =P
As long as all that stuff is optional and you can use it as a regular tablet, its pretty useful. (The mouse part is quite a boon when you're typing away emails or whatsnot with the keyboard, so you don't have to keep reaching forward to poke the screen. Having to use a touchscreen at the same time as a keyboard is just painfully annoying)
I actually replaced my netbook with the Transformer Prime (which isn't nearly as nice as this one, and has a few issues the Infinity is supposed to fix), and I did so because Android on that Tegra 3 is way faster than Windows on most netbook CPUs, while still having the insane -mainstream- app ecosystem (that Linux doesn't have).
And then i can remove the dock and get a tablet form factor. Bonus.
Its mainly for use in plain sunlight. The transformer prime at max brightness indoor will destroy your eyes, but outdoor it just makes it bright enough to see very well even if the sun is behind you. Thats it really :)
Hmm... why would someone be jealous? If you want to be in that situation, Google and Microsoft are pretty straightforward. Go to one of the colleges they approach candidates from (and while US college system is a bit silly, anyone CAN go to on of these colleges if they try hard enough and are willing to pile up enough debts...most countries will have a way for people who worked hard enough), and then just talk to them. Then if you have a 3.0 gpa and don't babble too much, you'll probably get the job (if you want to). If you don't, get a job elsewhere and they'll be harassing you a few years later.
My silly community college IT degree didn't catch their attention, but that was a personal decision I made. My wife however made different decision and Google/Microsoft are calling her at least once a month.
I guess in some countries it might not be as trivial, but i doubt the summary was thinking of those when it was written.
Aside that, if you're "jealous", you just didn't make the right decisions to get what you wanted.
Oh of course. On Android any random USB keyword works too. Where it gets interesting however, is the mouse part. How's ipad mouse support these days?
To be fair, with tablets like the transformer prime, which has a keyboard and a trackpad, as well as almost any android device with usb host being able to take a usb mouse and keyboard, you can have both.
Making 100k by 25 gets you a porsche and lets you bang a lot of chicks? Damn, why didn't anyone tell me? I've been missing out >.
Never looked at Dell's website or Newegg?
Its also really big in the finance industry, which is generally Unix based, but ends up making compromises to get some stuff out of the door faster (right tool for right job philosophy, so the big financials usually end up having stuff written in every language you can imagine, but java and stuff usually takes first spot, but they end up with a couple of IIS server farms here and there).
Safari will always be significantly higher than it should unless you code specifically to ignore the splashscreen's preview feature's HTTP header, which you cannot do in javascript (have to do it with server code), if you're using Google Analytics (very likely).
Thats because that stupid splashscreen executes everything, from javascript to flash ads, and thus trigger all tracking scripts and stuff.
That ends up with you seeing ultra-inflated safari figures, as well as inflated safari bounce rate.
On our site (not huge my some standards, but still several hundred thousand hits per day), and catering to a younger demographic (so higher than usual safari), about 30-40% of our safari hits are "fake" because of this.
Its also not even enough to put a 20% down payment for a house in some areas. So maybe 80k isnt that much, but 80k + 100k for two major investments (and what if you have multiple kids?) seriously start adding up as far as life savings go.
And sure, there's all the stuff I "don't really need". But if your life philosophy is work for money that you'll spend for someone to help them work for money... that's not much of a life.
Guild Wars 2 is pretty good on that front. Save for a few dungeon crawls, "raids" are largely replaced by what they call "dynamic events", that just randomly (or sometimes not so randomly, after a string of sub events) happen around you. Everyone can just jump in on those, and everyone gets rewarded according to their contribution. You work with each other even if you're not partied.
Even large epic boss fights work that way. They happen and everyone around the area just jump in for the fun, then leave. No commitment, if you get bored you leave and no one gets pissed. You can jump in mid fight too if you missed the beggining. Baby's crying and need to be fed? Go take care of him/her, and come back when you can, and you'll still get some reward.
PvP in it is the same way. Large scale 2 week long (or something) wars where you just jump in and leave at your leisure, and you get scaled up to max level no matter your real level.
Its not perfect by any mean, but for those who want the MMO experience without needing to give your heart and soul to the game, it seems to be the best middle ground so far.
No need for a citation when its not a quantified statement really. "Often" can mean anything.
As a legal green card holder, illegals also piss me off. I waited years to be in a position where I could apply and i'm freagin Canadian (there's treaties between the two countries to make it super easy for some people to just move in, but i wanted permanent resident, and besides, I didn't qualify).
If there wasn't all the illegals to push aside, how hard do you think it would be for a senior software engineer married to an american citizen to just come in? I doubt i'd have had to even be either of those to do so.
Which is why it can be toggled with one button. It also works fine if all you're doing is browsing the web, looking up a calendar or checking your email, which is what 90% of people do anyway. I'm a software developer (as many here are too I guess). 90% of the time i'm looking at a computer when I'm not coding still would work perfectly fine on a tablet-style UI. A big chunk of the rest of the time is a game...which only needs to get launched.
Because a normal desktop UI doesnt work so hot on a tablet, which in the future are bound to replace a big portion of the desktop market. Hybrids (like the Transformer Prime), with a 2 mode tablet/desktop interface, like Windows 8, could seriously replace lap-tops for everyone except serious developers and graphic designers/3d artists/CAD/etc that need a lot of horse power.
Sticking to desktop-only UI would be suicide for Microsoft. Metro works quite fine if you look at it from a tablet point of view.
Get a transformer prime. It can be pretty much whatever you want, and the keyboard is solid, as well as having a USB port if you need something else (could even plug a small wacom tablet if you were that hardcore). Tablet or lap-top, it will do the job.
Bring pen and paper just in case.
Apple is now the biggest manufacturer of PCs in the world (and hell, the most valuable company at this point if i remember well? By a fair margin?). No windows there. Phones and tablets are replacing PCs and lap-tops quickly, and unless Windows 8 pulls a miracle, it will stay that way.
If you put all "general purpose computing devices" together (and now, tablets and high end phones count in that category), Windows is nowhere close to dominating anymore (which is a shame, Im one of the few who loves Windows... but even I now replaced my lap-top with a Transformer Prime and a keyboard dock, running Android 4...way better).
thats why i like t-mobile's way of doing it. Its pretty simple. X amount of gb at full speed, then it slows down, good enough to read my emails, not good enough to watch a movie. It may not be a great plan, and its overpriced compared to others, but at least its honest (as far as telecoms can be honest anyway...)
not that bad if you have a transformer prime with a keyboard. Thats not a full mechanical keyboard, but its better than many lap-top keyboards ive used :) and you can plug a mouse in if you don't like trackpad. Didn't try plugging a normal keyboard in the usb...maybe it would work?
I really hate Ruby, but its hard to ignore that there's a ton of Ruby shops hiring in the big north american metro areas and that they have more contracts than they can deal with right now. Ruby is pretty hot these days.
do they not have passes there? I mean i in boston it costs me 59 bucks a month for a bus/subway pass. I used it at least twice a day, potentially more on weekends., making it pennies per use....
except it IS integrated with gmail. You have your circles on the left and you get the notifications at the top. Unless you meant something else?
hmm? I read it as fixing the system responsible for the correction. Not as fixing the connection (even though in this case, they're the same thing)
While there's probably (most likely) dodgy interpretation of a lot of laws involved, I would think the difference is the intent. If google's index showed warez 90%+ of the time, they never removed anything from it, and renamed themselves to "Pirate Search", they'd probably be in dicey water too.
Then people still go to work while sick, and call in sick to "extend" their vacations, going as far as getting a "friend" family doctor to write notes if needed.
Still better to have paid sick days than not, i sure know if im sick im using them.
We're having trouble hiring here. The job is fun, the salary is in 6 figures, but we need a lot of people and there's lots of competition. Often, bad candidates get jobs before we even get a chance to talk to them. Out of state candidates usually don't want to move even with generous compensation.
We only have a single H1B, and the guy is really, really good (and paid accordingly. No money saving there).
Just saying that depending where you're located, if the demand is high, it can be REALLY hard to find good candidates. Most devs who think they're good are terrible.