Actually, the UI is pretty damn cool, and has lots of good new stuff in it. I like it. I wouldn't pay an extra $200 for it, but I'll gladly take it on the mew PC's I buy.
"Explorer" is the name of the file management system that Windows has used for the past 10-15 years. The version of "Explorer" that ships with Vista is much improved over the version that ships with "XP".
No, this wasn't done in Media Player. Plain ol' Explorer has lots and lots of cool new bells and whistles that handles all of this stuff automagically. She actually plays her much with Winamp.
Actually, some of the little usability tweaks are absolutely awesome. My GF just got a new Vista laptop a few weeks ago, and I dumped her 60 GB mess of music onto it from various places. She has spent a few hours each night for the past few days organizing everything with correct file names and meta data, and she's blown away by how easy it is. There's a lot of real value to some people in all of these little usability tweaks.
I would say that this pictures isn't so much "awkward" as it is "depressing". This happy, shiny, bright picture with people smiling is a lot more depressing than any dystopian sci-fi movies/books I've ever seen/read. Ugh.
Does it come with a super-long straw, so that the same people who need the idiot box 24/7 can also have access to some kind of carbonated high fructose corn syrup beverage 24/7, also? You know, you can get thirsty doing all of that heavy duty television-watching...
Hang on for a second... I thought that one of the MAIN REASONS that Linux people push Linux so hard is because it avoids scary lock-in. Linux is Linux, right? Switching should be no big deal for customers, since there's no worry about lock-in using Linux... right? I honestly have no idea because every time I've tried Linux, I've never gotten it set up to the point of being functional.
Ahh... an anti-Windows zealot shows his true colors... "She now knows what a BSOD is - although I'm saddened to report that it is likely some annoying little hardware problem rather than being a Windows issue per se.". So then, you'd be HAPPY if Windows BSOD'ed for no reason, just so you could jump up and down and point and scream, "SEE??!?!! WINDOWS IS EEEEVIL!!" C'mon. Grow up. If you're married, then you've gotta be at least 16-ish. Instead, you're acting like a 12 year old.
not everyone has easy access to cheap in-person music stores with a wide selection
Well, if you're into music at all, I'd say that that's a problem. I wouldn't live somewhere where my only place to buy stuff was at Big Box stores and chains. That's naaaaas-tay.
I'm fighting it tooth and nail. I canceled my Netflix account a few years ago, and now go exclusively to my local video store (they're great... they have *everything*... even stuff Netflix doesn't have), and I buy all of my music from local stores, and generally buy it used. I'm not a masochist... I actually get excellent prices, and I have better service than all of this big box, mail-order stuff. The best part of it is that I get to meet actual people that are in my community. I feel bad for people who live in the suburbs these days. It's really desolate out there.
I guess I'm luckier than most people. I have 4 good used CD stores within a 5 minute walk from where I work and live. I've never been able to download an entire CD in 20 seconds, though. What kind of Net connection do you have? An OC-48?
Cheaper than most CD's? Where do you shop, Best Buy? I don't remember paying more than $10 for a music CD any time in the last decade. Besides, everything in my life doesn't come with an Apple logo (my car, for one), so I still use physical CD's.
If you want instant gratification and DRM-less music there are NO other *legal* options for this than eMusic and iTunes. I just walk down to my friendly local neighborhood used CD store and buy them there. No DRM, much cheaper prices, and much better quality. But I guess in the current Big Box consumer culture of the US, if you can't get it at Best Buy, then it doesn't exist to most people. Sad.
Why aren't you tempted to buy the CD, which I'm sure you can pick up used for $8, which will give you better quality sound than even these 256 bit downloads, AND the liner notes and art?
What a great deal! So now, people who use iTunes get to buy less-than-CD quality music that comes with no physical CD, no liner notes, and have to spend time downloading the tracks, all for MORE than the price of a CD! What a deal! You know, I think that Apple could put their logo on a piece of doggie poo and sell it to their loyal suckers... ooops, I mean "customers".
The CVV isn't required for many merchant banks. Many merchant banks require other forms of extra information instead of the CVV, like the billing zip code.
This guy talks about incompatibility. I don't know USB from Firewire, but I don't see the problem. My Sansa works perfectly with powered USB (it charges and syncs off of a single regular USB cable). What kind of compatibility problems exist today? What devices don't work with "Regular" USB at this point? I'm not a gadget guy, but everything I've seen and used has worked flawlessly.
It's gonna take a lot more than just saving some money to make people consider switching. Not that I think there's very much room for improvement on MS Office at all at this point, but competing based on price alone doesn't work in almost any business. In fact, that's Business 101.
Same here. Unfortunately, no, nobody I know makes any low-tech cars... I've been looking. Nobody that I know of. I want a pre-fuel injector car that I can actually fix myself, without thousands of dollars worth of proprietary equipment that gives me a secret code that only the dealer knows. You gotta go with something pre-1970's.
Yeah, you're exactly right. And everything you say is why I think that this entire project is vaporware. If what they're saying is true (super rugged at the cost of an iPod), then a commercial manufacturer would have done it long ago.
I, for one, hope it doesn't work. I have a lot of shotgun shells and canned foods that will go to waste if my prediction of bacteria wiping out the human race doesn't come true.
But that does not imply for one second that other sources are any better and that they are free and clear of these problems themselves.
To compare Wikipedia to the a group like the NY Times is absurd. Yes, every academic group and media outlet makes mistakes. The thing is, when the NY Times makes a mistake, it's world news. It's so insanely rare for a publication as well respected as the NY Times, that it's news when it happens. When Wikipedia has a mistake, it's so common, that there's no way to possibly track all of the mistakes and errors, and it's certainly not news. Saying, "The New York Times made a mistake once, so they can't be trusted" is something that I'd expect a mental midget like Bill O'Reilly to say.
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Actually, the UI is pretty damn cool, and has lots of good new stuff in it. I like it. I wouldn't pay an extra $200 for it, but I'll gladly take it on the mew PC's I buy.
Wrong. Read the report.
"Explorer" is the name of the file management system that Windows has used for the past 10-15 years. The version of "Explorer" that ships with Vista is much improved over the version that ships with "XP".
No, this wasn't done in Media Player. Plain ol' Explorer has lots and lots of cool new bells and whistles that handles all of this stuff automagically. She actually plays her much with Winamp.
Cat 5 cable. It's cheaper, faster, more reliable, and more secure.
Actually, some of the little usability tweaks are absolutely awesome. My GF just got a new Vista laptop a few weeks ago, and I dumped her 60 GB mess of music onto it from various places. She has spent a few hours each night for the past few days organizing everything with correct file names and meta data, and she's blown away by how easy it is. There's a lot of real value to some people in all of these little usability tweaks.
Damn! It didn't even realize it, but I DID just see Idiocracy last week!
I would say that this pictures isn't so much "awkward" as it is "depressing". This happy, shiny, bright picture with people smiling is a lot more depressing than any dystopian sci-fi movies/books I've ever seen/read. Ugh.
Does it come with a super-long straw, so that the same people who need the idiot box 24/7 can also have access to some kind of carbonated high fructose corn syrup beverage 24/7, also? You know, you can get thirsty doing all of that heavy duty television-watching...
Hang on for a second... I thought that one of the MAIN REASONS that Linux people push Linux so hard is because it avoids scary lock-in. Linux is Linux, right? Switching should be no big deal for customers, since there's no worry about lock-in using Linux... right? I honestly have no idea because every time I've tried Linux, I've never gotten it set up to the point of being functional.
Ahh... an anti-Windows zealot shows his true colors... "She now knows what a BSOD is - although I'm saddened to report that it is likely some annoying little hardware problem rather than being a Windows issue per se.". So then, you'd be HAPPY if Windows BSOD'ed for no reason, just so you could jump up and down and point and scream, "SEE??!?!! WINDOWS IS EEEEVIL!!" C'mon. Grow up. If you're married, then you've gotta be at least 16-ish. Instead, you're acting like a 12 year old.
not everyone has easy access to cheap in-person music stores with a wide selection
Well, if you're into music at all, I'd say that that's a problem. I wouldn't live somewhere where my only place to buy stuff was at Big Box stores and chains. That's naaaaas-tay.
I'm fighting it tooth and nail. I canceled my Netflix account a few years ago, and now go exclusively to my local video store (they're great... they have *everything*... even stuff Netflix doesn't have), and I buy all of my music from local stores, and generally buy it used. I'm not a masochist... I actually get excellent prices, and I have better service than all of this big box, mail-order stuff. The best part of it is that I get to meet actual people that are in my community. I feel bad for people who live in the suburbs these days. It's really desolate out there.
I guess I'm luckier than most people. I have 4 good used CD stores within a 5 minute walk from where I work and live. I've never been able to download an entire CD in 20 seconds, though. What kind of Net connection do you have? An OC-48?
Cheaper than most CD's? Where do you shop, Best Buy? I don't remember paying more than $10 for a music CD any time in the last decade. Besides, everything in my life doesn't come with an Apple logo (my car, for one), so I still use physical CD's.
If you want instant gratification and DRM-less music there are NO other *legal* options for this than eMusic and iTunes. I just walk down to my friendly local neighborhood used CD store and buy them there. No DRM, much cheaper prices, and much better quality. But I guess in the current Big Box consumer culture of the US, if you can't get it at Best Buy, then it doesn't exist to most people. Sad.
Why aren't you tempted to buy the CD, which I'm sure you can pick up used for $8, which will give you better quality sound than even these 256 bit downloads, AND the liner notes and art?
What a great deal! So now, people who use iTunes get to buy less-than-CD quality music that comes with no physical CD, no liner notes, and have to spend time downloading the tracks, all for MORE than the price of a CD! What a deal! You know, I think that Apple could put their logo on a piece of doggie poo and sell it to their loyal suckers... ooops, I mean "customers".
The CVV isn't required for many merchant banks. Many merchant banks require other forms of extra information instead of the CVV, like the billing zip code.
This guy talks about incompatibility. I don't know USB from Firewire, but I don't see the problem. My Sansa works perfectly with powered USB (it charges and syncs off of a single regular USB cable). What kind of compatibility problems exist today? What devices don't work with "Regular" USB at this point? I'm not a gadget guy, but everything I've seen and used has worked flawlessly.
It's gonna take a lot more than just saving some money to make people consider switching. Not that I think there's very much room for improvement on MS Office at all at this point, but competing based on price alone doesn't work in almost any business. In fact, that's Business 101.
Same here. Unfortunately, no, nobody I know makes any low-tech cars... I've been looking. Nobody that I know of. I want a pre-fuel injector car that I can actually fix myself, without thousands of dollars worth of proprietary equipment that gives me a secret code that only the dealer knows. You gotta go with something pre-1970's.
Yeah, you're exactly right. And everything you say is why I think that this entire project is vaporware. If what they're saying is true (super rugged at the cost of an iPod), then a commercial manufacturer would have done it long ago.
I, for one, hope it doesn't work. I have a lot of shotgun shells and canned foods that will go to waste if my prediction of bacteria wiping out the human race doesn't come true.
But that does not imply for one second that other sources are any better and that they are free and clear of these problems themselves.
To compare Wikipedia to the a group like the NY Times is absurd. Yes, every academic group and media outlet makes mistakes. The thing is, when the NY Times makes a mistake, it's world news. It's so insanely rare for a publication as well respected as the NY Times, that it's news when it happens. When Wikipedia has a mistake, it's so common, that there's no way to possibly track all of the mistakes and errors, and it's certainly not news. Saying, "The New York Times made a mistake once, so they can't be trusted" is something that I'd expect a mental midget like Bill O'Reilly to say.