As an agency that ran the Optiplexes in question, dell only played dumb for about 2 months, after that they admitted the fault. This is first hand knowledge here, I personally replaced or arranged to replace 20 Mobos in question in the 2 month span. I was irritated at first because I kept having to re-explain the issue, but by number 10 or so the techs were all informed of the capacitor issue, and I wish I could find it but there was an article on dell admitting the problem, I remember because it was a bit "I told you so" and you know us geeks love those:)
Ya I dont get why people are hating on dell. The company makes fantastic products and are very open with their customers. I have been running a mix for the last 10 years as a sys admin, OSX, Dell, HP, IBM...each have their place but Dell is my favorite for many many reasons besides their ability to understand HOW I like things to work.
You have to realize what the Optiplex's are meant for though. Optiplex is created for stability, their HAL barely changes and you have a plethora of other image guarantees. The hardware is also a little behind the rest of the lines as they look to more tried and true equipment. With the capacitor issue that was a matter of a manufacturer giving them bad parts unfortunately...7 years ago. I havent seen any issues like that since, I dont know why people are all up in a tiff right now for something admitted 7 years ago.
If you are in it for sheer cutting edge performance, Optiplexes aren't your best bet, but if you are a corporation that does image management, mass deployment, and wants to set and forget the box. Optiplex is the way to go. If you don't understand any of these reasons, then you are right, Vostro or one of the others is the best bet for you.
The resolution improvement is far better than simply looking at the screen pixel counts would suggest.
Right now pixel count is pretty moot, it is all about brightness. At the resolutions people are bragging about you get very little. Hell, people argue about the necessity to have any more than 790p on a 42" display...let alone a phone. I have several ex-iphone users who love the clarity and brightness of their droid phones, including the iPhone4. And yes these are mac fanboys. Tell ya what, take the droidX when it comes out next week and compare it to the iphone I got even money the display looks much better.
You're comparing a yet to be released Android device with a recently released iPhone. I am comparing the current revision of phones, just because there is 4 weeks between the revisions doesn't mean that these devices are responses to iPhones. Yes the streak is out already, was out before the iPhone, it just released in EU first. The specs are solid on these phones, thus why I chose them for comparison. They aren't flimsy devices due out in 6 months, they are coming out now.
Android will always be playing catch up.
Why just because you say so? Again, the Android os has only been out for what...18 months? Already is on the same turf, I don't hear Android users complaining about dropped calls when they hold their phone wrong.
Don't forget the iPhone has videoconferencing- Glad they caught up with the android. Oh thats right, you can only video iPhone to iPhone.tap-to-focus for both stills and video. android has been doing this for how long now?
There isn't a feature that the new iPhone has that the android OS didn't already have.
Not to mention that iPhone JUST enabled multitasking, threading, and a bunch of other things IN RESPONSE to the droid.
You get hardware that's more advanced than any Android phone --only because they released first...and even then it is debatable.
WIth the iPhone you get a 98% satisfaction rating and a 96% good value rating --because it doesnt matter to a fanboy, the sucker could be a piece of crap and they will never admit it.
You get better designed hardware and software. You get hardware that's more advanced than any Android phone, and a wider range of higher quality apps. --Umm no, see above. All the "superior" things are things the android phone has been doing for a while. Do some research fanboy.
Don't get me wrong, I like the iPhone, it dod great things for the market, just as the iPod did, and it still is a fantastic device. But it is a far cry from a superior device.
In that context you are right. Except I think a better analogy would be comparing a Segway and a Tank. Both can get you from point a to b but the tank can do oh so much more. Hulu is a single intent, legal video streaming service, that is all it does, in the same class as Netflix or blockbuster. Torrents are able to track files, you have to spend a considerable amount of effort to get a system that behaves similar to Hulu, but the Torrent based services can do WAY more for the most part, as long as you have the disk space, codecs, and supporting software.
Wow, I was going to flame the parent but I was so impressed at the impartiality of this post...
I support both as well, and dare I say it, several Linux boxes... I hate this mentality of the fanboys shouting that one or the other is better. I have been doing system administration for 8 years and have had pretty much every kind of failure you can imagine from pretty much every brand. I just buy what works best for the situation and prepare for failure.
for playing cool games, pretty much the only thing people do on iPhones, the rest of us who actually want to use a phone for anything else use Android.
And each time it's been way ahead of any Android devices
WTF? Android has only been around for a year, how could each iteration of the iPhone beat out something that did not exist. besides that, hardware wise I am pretty sure that the Android based devices are kicking the living crap out of the iPhone. I say this in that the hardware is nearly identical (exception resolution). But there is no comparison when it comes to features, the android OS is insanely more powerful than the iPhone OS.
lets do a little comparison here:
iPhone 4
capacity 32GB
display 960x640
processor A4
DroidX (example)
capacity 32GB (expandable)
display 854 x 480
processor TI OMAP
Now resolution wise the iPhone is better but this is the first of the Droid X series. This isnt taking into consideration the dell streak, and probably another 50 phones to choose from that will come out this year.
So what do you get with the iPhone? A cool shiny device that works well in many situations and gives bragging rights. What do you get with Android phones? well pretty much unlimited possibilities, wherever the market wants to go and whatever carrier you want to use.
The Mini 5 will be available in the us in late July last time I checked. There will be a couple options available but I have not read any reviews on the other sizes. I am just interested in the Streak 5" for a cell phone. Essentially the streak will be the Archos with a little more power, options, and GSM/CDMA support.
I thought the archos just had SD slots, that is cool that they put a 2.5" drive in there. Will have to do some more research.
Dell tends to make pretty good devices (contrary to the article yesterday), that are very usefull and well designed. So hopefully this will start a good series of android style tablets. This probably wont hurt the apple market but at least it will deliver a useful tablet to those of us who don't want to fight the app store and want some more options.
Your argument makes no sense, in fact it really isn't an argument other than you simply saying you disagree.
Hulu == streaming service, Torrents == file tracking service. What is remotely the same about the two?
iPad == Personal Computing Device, using an LCD display. eReader device == single purpose reader using eInk. What is the same? oh yea both can display books in COMPLETELY different ways.
and neither will the pay service, it will only do the current full season, not past seasons. The shows they mentioned where there are full seasons are already available, thus not a perk to pay for.
Even with my DVR (windows 7), it takes longer to skip the commercials (unless I install software to automatically remove them) than it does to watch the 20 second Hulu commercials.
like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, were all those episodes already available for free?
Yep and Angel, along with other shows like Eureka, however, oddly enough some of the shows would have the first 2 or 3 seasons then skip to the current season.
Full seasons...check (just finished season 8 of Stargate)
High Def...check (high, medium, and low res available)
Ad based viewing...check.
Playable on multiple devices...check (last I knew android OS can play Hulu just fine so that covers many mainstream phones and all the dell iPhone/iPad killers coming out)
So what are we paying for again? The one thing I would be willing to upgrade for, better bandwidth, isnt even offered. There is nothing more fun on Hulu than watching commercials pause every other second on my 15 Mb connection, or when servers are busy, the constant buffering. I would also pay for "big bang theory" and "how I met your mother", neither of which are online anywhere.
Hulu isn't competing against cable, Hulu is competing against torrents.
this statement is....well how do I put it...WRONG!
Most every Hulu user I know uses it as a replacement for cable and DVR. Maybe in your group of friends you enjoy the hassle of torrents. As for me, being able to browse through my shows via remote control is nice. No searching for the latest torrent, in the quality I want, without commercials...in the amount of time it takes to find the show I can have watched all the commercials and the episode a couple times over.
Hulu cannot compete with torrents in any fashion though, with torrents we get to keep the files forever, organize them the way we want, and display them with our chosen software. Hulu is a streaming source, torrents are a file download service. It is like all those idiots trying to compare iPads and eInk devices...
At the time I was a tech for an organization that bought a series of optiplex 270s (I think). had a guaranteed failure. At first dell techs did deny a problem, but after about the 10th failure (of 20) it got to the point where I would just tell the tech capacitors, and they would ship the new mobo. There was a lot of "unofficial" verbage I received from dell saying that there was a problem with the 270s but nothing official was mentioned until a few months later when Dell admitted the problem.
However, that being said, my dell PCs and Servers are extraordinary with support with 4 hour support in my area I often have part in hand less than 2 hours after the phone call. Dell has always done a good job here, and also does a great job of chassis design with the end tech in mind. They also design items that, in my mind, are more intuitive and have practical purpose. No weird theoretical "everyone should be doing this" nonsense...ahem I'm looking at you IBM. Dell R&D has always seemed to have a good line on what the SMB market wants. I cannot speak to big business though, try to stay away from there:)
thus my qualification of my remark with the following sentence. at least a CCD is recording the photons hitting the array. The 'telescope' in this instance isnt even doing that. The equivalent would be taking a picture of a sunburn and calling that a UV radiation sensor...
I assumed they were using the term telescope to satisfy public curiosity, but it only served to confuse me further. It isn't actually looking at the sky though, nor can it see it from what I read, it simply sees reactions of the earth to neutrinos, the scientists then use that data to extrapolate what is happening in the universe. Much the same way that I can make observations about the weather by looking at the electronic thermometer in my bathroom, that doesn't make it Doppler radar..
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As an agency that ran the Optiplexes in question, dell only played dumb for about 2 months, after that they admitted the fault. This is first hand knowledge here, I personally replaced or arranged to replace 20 Mobos in question in the 2 month span. I was irritated at first because I kept having to re-explain the issue, but by number 10 or so the techs were all informed of the capacitor issue, and I wish I could find it but there was an article on dell admitting the problem, I remember because it was a bit "I told you so" and you know us geeks love those :)
Ya I dont get why people are hating on dell. The company makes fantastic products and are very open with their customers. I have been running a mix for the last 10 years as a sys admin, OSX, Dell, HP, IBM...each have their place but Dell is my favorite for many many reasons besides their ability to understand HOW I like things to work.
To be fair, there aren't many apple haters out there, just apple fanboy haters...
If you are in it for sheer cutting edge performance, Optiplexes aren't your best bet, but if you are a corporation that does image management, mass deployment, and wants to set and forget the box. Optiplex is the way to go. If you don't understand any of these reasons, then you are right, Vostro or one of the others is the best bet for you.
Right now pixel count is pretty moot, it is all about brightness. At the resolutions people are bragging about you get very little. Hell, people argue about the necessity to have any more than 790p on a 42" display...let alone a phone. I have several ex-iphone users who love the clarity and brightness of their droid phones, including the iPhone4. And yes these are mac fanboys. Tell ya what, take the droidX when it comes out next week and compare it to the iphone I got even money the display looks much better.
You're comparing a yet to be released Android device with a recently released iPhone. I am comparing the current revision of phones, just because there is 4 weeks between the revisions doesn't mean that these devices are responses to iPhones. Yes the streak is out already, was out before the iPhone, it just released in EU first. The specs are solid on these phones, thus why I chose them for comparison. They aren't flimsy devices due out in 6 months, they are coming out now.
Android will always be playing catch up.
Why just because you say so? Again, the Android os has only been out for what...18 months? Already is on the same turf, I don't hear Android users complaining about dropped calls when they hold their phone wrong.
Don't forget the iPhone has videoconferencing- Glad they caught up with the android. Oh thats right, you can only video iPhone to iPhone.tap-to-focus for both stills and video. android has been doing this for how long now?
There isn't a feature that the new iPhone has that the android OS didn't already have.
Not to mention that iPhone JUST enabled multitasking, threading, and a bunch of other things IN RESPONSE to the droid.
You get hardware that's more advanced than any Android phone --only because they released first...and even then it is debatable.
WIth the iPhone you get a 98% satisfaction rating and a 96% good value rating --because it doesnt matter to a fanboy, the sucker could be a piece of crap and they will never admit it.
You get better designed hardware and software. You get hardware that's more advanced than any Android phone, and a wider range of higher quality apps. --Umm no, see above. All the "superior" things are things the android phone has been doing for a while. Do some research fanboy.
Don't get me wrong, I like the iPhone, it dod great things for the market, just as the iPod did, and it still is a fantastic device. But it is a far cry from a superior device.
In that context you are right. Except I think a better analogy would be comparing a Segway and a Tank. Both can get you from point a to b but the tank can do oh so much more. Hulu is a single intent, legal video streaming service, that is all it does, in the same class as Netflix or blockbuster. Torrents are able to track files, you have to spend a considerable amount of effort to get a system that behaves similar to Hulu, but the Torrent based services can do WAY more for the most part, as long as you have the disk space, codecs, and supporting software.
I support both as well, and dare I say it, several Linux boxes... I hate this mentality of the fanboys shouting that one or the other is better. I have been doing system administration for 8 years and have had pretty much every kind of failure you can imagine from pretty much every brand. I just buy what works best for the situation and prepare for failure.
What link?
for playing cool games, pretty much the only thing people do on iPhones, the rest of us who actually want to use a phone for anything else use Android.
WTF? Android has only been around for a year, how could each iteration of the iPhone beat out something that did not exist. besides that, hardware wise I am pretty sure that the Android based devices are kicking the living crap out of the iPhone. I say this in that the hardware is nearly identical (exception resolution). But there is no comparison when it comes to features, the android OS is insanely more powerful than the iPhone OS.
lets do a little comparison here:
iPhone 4
capacity 32GB
display 960x640
processor A4
DroidX (example)
capacity 32GB (expandable)
display 854 x 480
processor TI OMAP
Now resolution wise the iPhone is better but this is the first of the Droid X series. This isnt taking into consideration the dell streak, and probably another 50 phones to choose from that will come out this year.
So what do you get with the iPhone? A cool shiny device that works well in many situations and gives bragging rights. What do you get with Android phones? well pretty much unlimited possibilities, wherever the market wants to go and whatever carrier you want to use.
I thought the archos just had SD slots, that is cool that they put a 2.5" drive in there. Will have to do some more research.
Ya the archos is definitely cool but why spend $200 on a video player when I can spend a little more for a mini5 :)
http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/11/dell-mini-5-we-have-it/
Dell tends to make pretty good devices (contrary to the article yesterday), that are very usefull and well designed. So hopefully this will start a good series of android style tablets. This probably wont hurt the apple market but at least it will deliver a useful tablet to those of us who don't want to fight the app store and want some more options.
Hulu == streaming service, Torrents == file tracking service. What is remotely the same about the two?
iPad == Personal Computing Device, using an LCD display. eReader device == single purpose reader using eInk. What is the same? oh yea both can display books in COMPLETELY different ways.
Ya the lack of availability with Big Bang Theory is an Epic fail.
and neither will the pay service, it will only do the current full season, not past seasons. The shows they mentioned where there are full seasons are already available, thus not a perk to pay for.
Hmmmm, I think you may be correct, I guess I assumed it was 720 and the medium was 480. "High" looked great on my 42".
Even with my DVR (windows 7), it takes longer to skip the commercials (unless I install software to automatically remove them) than it does to watch the 20 second Hulu commercials.
Yep and Angel, along with other shows like Eureka, however, oddly enough some of the shows would have the first 2 or 3 seasons then skip to the current season.
Full seasons...check (just finished season 8 of Stargate)
High Def...check (high, medium, and low res available)
Ad based viewing...check.
Playable on multiple devices...check (last I knew android OS can play Hulu just fine so that covers many mainstream phones and all the dell iPhone/iPad killers coming out)
So what are we paying for again? The one thing I would be willing to upgrade for, better bandwidth, isnt even offered. There is nothing more fun on Hulu than watching commercials pause every other second on my 15 Mb connection, or when servers are busy, the constant buffering. I would also pay for "big bang theory" and "how I met your mother", neither of which are online anywhere.
this statement is....well how do I put it...WRONG!
Most every Hulu user I know uses it as a replacement for cable and DVR. Maybe in your group of friends you enjoy the hassle of torrents. As for me, being able to browse through my shows via remote control is nice. No searching for the latest torrent, in the quality I want, without commercials...in the amount of time it takes to find the show I can have watched all the commercials and the episode a couple times over.
Hulu cannot compete with torrents in any fashion though, with torrents we get to keep the files forever, organize them the way we want, and display them with our chosen software. Hulu is a streaming source, torrents are a file download service. It is like all those idiots trying to compare iPads and eInk devices...
However, that being said, my dell PCs and Servers are extraordinary with support with 4 hour support in my area I often have part in hand less than 2 hours after the phone call. Dell has always done a good job here, and also does a great job of chassis design with the end tech in mind. They also design items that, in my mind, are more intuitive and have practical purpose. No weird theoretical "everyone should be doing this" nonsense...ahem I'm looking at you IBM. Dell R&D has always seemed to have a good line on what the SMB market wants. I cannot speak to big business though, try to stay away from there :)
thus my qualification of my remark with the following sentence. at least a CCD is recording the photons hitting the array. The 'telescope' in this instance isnt even doing that. The equivalent would be taking a picture of a sunburn and calling that a UV radiation sensor...
I assumed they were using the term telescope to satisfy public curiosity, but it only served to confuse me further. It isn't actually looking at the sky though, nor can it see it from what I read, it simply sees reactions of the earth to neutrinos, the scientists then use that data to extrapolate what is happening in the universe. Much the same way that I can make observations about the weather by looking at the electronic thermometer in my bathroom, that doesn't make it Doppler radar..
Oh I agree, working for Con Agra is a lot different than owning a restaurant :)