despite it somehow being much less reliable - crashes and such)
The stock firmware that came with mine was garbage. Thank goodness for cyanogenmod. I've been running official since the first nightly, and unofficial for months, and not a single crash. Plus I get all the things that were broken on stock, like USB and wifi tethering.
Your post is immediately more interesting than the linked article, because you actually claim experience with a larger device, albeit an archaic one that hardly resembles the smart phones the author is bemoaning.
Ockenden criticizes this 'growing' trend, quotes some twitter users criticizing the trend, and then concludes that the manufacturers of these smart phones don't know anything about their market, because consumers obviously want the old phones; great battery life and diminutive size are obviously all that matter.
This article would have been far more interesting had he actually claimed to have tried one of these newer bigger phones, or at least talked to somebody who has. I carry a Samsung Galaxy Note for work, and the biggest reservation I had coming from the much smaller HTC Desire, was its huge size and potential to eat battery life--the same concerns mentioned by Ockenden. Having read some reviews and seeing that the reviewers quickly overcame the same concerns after very short time with their Notes, I decided to take the plunge. Honesly, it took no time to get used to the size, and whenever I hold a smaller phone I'm amazed that anybody can find them useful for anything, and the battery life is at least as good as the Desire.
I can tell you from experience that an Atom D525, Core i3 550, and Core i7 2500 all idle under 20W at the wall when using solid state storage and a decent DC-DC power supply. The Atom tops out under 30W while the Cores obviously can go much higher.
A Soekris net5501 with SS storage and a PCI GBE card tops out around 17W, and an ASUS WL-520GU sits around 3-4W.
True story: I support a couple hundred staff (small tech school), and by far the most common trouble call after deploying a new computer is "this computer doesn't have Outlook". The correct translation for this, in our case, is "Outlook isn't on my desktop, so it must not be installed".
How somebody can use a computer every day and not know how to use the start menu is a bit baffling to me. My best guess is that these people simply use a small subset of a computer's functionality, all of which somehow magically made its way to the desktop, quick launch or taskbar, as the case may be. This is the same demographic, by the way, that knows Internet Explorer simply as "The Internet".
If you press the start button on the screen or on the keyboard, aren't you still using "the" start button? I too prefer the Windows button on the keyboard, and was greatly disappointed with its effect, or rather lack thereof, in the developer preview.
I don't get the impression that the majority of people really care about MS's abusive behaviour or anything like that (even if they should).
You underestimate the influence of mavens. The average user is not going to drop dollars on a phone or phone plan if their favourite tech expert doesn't like it.
The notable exceptions here would be Windows and iOS, but for two very different reasons. People use Windows because everybody else uses Windows, and it would be just too inconvenient to change. It's a form of lock-in. People use iOS thanks to a combination of effective marketing and design.
Windows phone has little to no lock-in leverage, and MS and its partners have done nothing to pull millions of happy iphonesters away from Apple. Much like Linux on the desktop, it's not good enough for WPn to be as good as iOS, they have to be compellingly better--and convince people of this--to win mindshare at this point. In a karmic twist, MS now finds itself at both ends of this problem.
So with the average user feeling somewhat indifferent about Windows Phone, and their techy friends recommending iphones and android, MS stands without a market until they do something drastic and carve out their own, and it's been decades since they've done anything really significant in that vein.
Exactly this. I have a degree in psychology and now work full time in IT, with IT-related business on the side. For several years before my first full-time IT gig I did things like maintaining computers and networks for the local youth centre and chairing the tech committee of the regional Skills competition. Volunteer work like this can build a reputation quickly if done well, especially in smaller communities. The person who made the decision to hire me at my current position was somebody I had worked with in the Skills competition, or it likely never would have happened.
I really don't see how. I said the ALIX boards are less powerful than the Soekris, and that is true. My initial post made no mention of value, implicit or explicit. I have nothing against ALIX and I have even used them, but like every product, they have their limits.
Last I checked, the ALIX boards max out at 500 MHz and 256 MB RAM. A net5501 can be ordered with the same CPU and double the RAM, while a net6501 is Atom-based and more RAM yet. Cost-equivalent is one thing, but the higher-specced Soekris have no equivalent in the PC Engines world.
Yup. It's why (in my estimation) MS Office has always run poorly on Macs (worse even than it does on Windows)*, and why I have no doubt that Linux will run poorly on Azure.
*to be fair, I've also heard that itunes and Safari run poorly on Windows. It's fairly basic psychology that any user who is accustomed to seeing an app run well on its native platform, then poorly on a less familiar platform, will tend to blame the novel platform.
Just because the bigger ISPs want to see Netflix die a fiery death doesn't necessarily mean they wouldn't want to host their CDN servers. The fact is, until that magical imaginary day when they do kill off Neflix, they're having to carry this traffic or host the CDN servers anyway.
Large corporations have no problem taking cost-cutting measures, even if said measures appear to be working opposite to the direction of some other part of the organism. Witness the companies that produce and distribute documentaries like The Corporation, or Michael Moore's work, which ostensibly carry a message that is against the corporation, but brings the promise of profiting from the promotion of these seemingly self-destructive messages. Also Microsoft and Apple, who have a history of publishing software for each other's OS and keeping voodoo dolls of the other's CEO in the lunch room.
1) I don't see the connection.
2) Android (Linux) has had a functioning Netflix app for a while now.
3) If you mean desktop Linux, then yeah, I'd be all over that.
Apparently the answer is now YES! Keep in mind that keeping your CDN server updated will generate a steady inflow of 80-100 Mbps*
*This is the actual number that was given to a WISP operator by a Netflix agent, as reported on dslreports.com many months ago. Sorry, I went looking but wasn't able to dig up the old thread. I'm sure that number has only grown in the intervening months.
Many Canadians these days have access to alternative ISPs that aren't stepping on the customer to protect their own selfish interests. Can you not get hooked up on Acanac or Teksavvy, where the transfer caps are much more reasonable and they don't content distribution markets to protect?
All the people who say "if you run windows you will get a virus" make me laugh. I have run windows OS's for 15 years and have only been infected by one virus
I agree, that's pretty funny. Did you not believe them?
Will the next version of Windows be the first in decades to not collect personally identifiable information from every user, by way of activation and other control schemes?
It might make the marketeers feel all good inside to spout platitudes like "private by default' in an era when so much user data is collected online," but let MS apply the same sacrosanct wisdom to its own practise.
There is a group of people who do not care about the evidence - the Bible says so, so there it is.
Strawman. Right in the summary Leakey is quoted as saying "It's not covered by Genesis. There's no explanation for this change going back 500 million years in any book I've read from the lips of any God." Saying that the bible doesn't cover the topic of evolution is very different from saying that the bible denies or precludes it. There may be people who make that claim, but I don't see any in this discussion, and you certainly haven't directly addressed any here.
Leakey says the bible doesn't explain creation, and many believers in the bible say that the bible's purpose has never been to explain the science of all things. Why are some folks, particularly here on/., bent on construing this as some sort of Empire versus Rebel Alliance dichotomy?
Slashdot Mirror
despite it somehow being much less reliable - crashes and such)
The stock firmware that came with mine was garbage. Thank goodness for cyanogenmod. I've been running official since the first nightly, and unofficial for months, and not a single crash. Plus I get all the things that were broken on stock, like USB and wifi tethering.
Your post is immediately more interesting than the linked article, because you actually claim experience with a larger device, albeit an archaic one that hardly resembles the smart phones the author is bemoaning.
Ockenden criticizes this 'growing' trend, quotes some twitter users criticizing the trend, and then concludes that the manufacturers of these smart phones don't know anything about their market, because consumers obviously want the old phones; great battery life and diminutive size are obviously all that matter.
This article would have been far more interesting had he actually claimed to have tried one of these newer bigger phones, or at least talked to somebody who has. I carry a Samsung Galaxy Note for work, and the biggest reservation I had coming from the much smaller HTC Desire, was its huge size and potential to eat battery life--the same concerns mentioned by Ockenden. Having read some reviews and seeing that the reviewers quickly overcame the same concerns after very short time with their Notes, I decided to take the plunge. Honesly, it took no time to get used to the size, and whenever I hold a smaller phone I'm amazed that anybody can find them useful for anything, and the battery life is at least as good as the Desire.
So Shaw customers get all their disappointment in one fell swoop, while you suffer subclinical abuse on an ongoing basis. Congrats.
I can tell you from experience that an Atom D525, Core i3 550, and Core i7 2500 all idle under 20W at the wall when using solid state storage and a decent DC-DC power supply. The Atom tops out under 30W while the Cores obviously can go much higher.
A Soekris net5501 with SS storage and a PCI GBE card tops out around 17W, and an ASUS WL-520GU sits around 3-4W.
I'm always slightly surprised that the usual rules...haven't been applied to the mobile phone market.
If the carriers were forced...I suspect the market would shift rather sharply in the average consumer's favour.
I think you answered your own question.
True story: I support a couple hundred staff (small tech school), and by far the most common trouble call after deploying a new computer is "this computer doesn't have Outlook". The correct translation for this, in our case, is "Outlook isn't on my desktop, so it must not be installed".
How somebody can use a computer every day and not know how to use the start menu is a bit baffling to me. My best guess is that these people simply use a small subset of a computer's functionality, all of which somehow magically made its way to the desktop, quick launch or taskbar, as the case may be. This is the same demographic, by the way, that knows Internet Explorer simply as "The Internet".
If you press the start button on the screen or on the keyboard, aren't you still using "the" start button? I too prefer the Windows button on the keyboard, and was greatly disappointed with its effect, or rather lack thereof, in the developer preview.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_Law_of_Headlines
I don't get the impression that the majority of people really care about MS's abusive behaviour or anything like that (even if they should).
You underestimate the influence of mavens. The average user is not going to drop dollars on a phone or phone plan if their favourite tech expert doesn't like it.
The notable exceptions here would be Windows and iOS, but for two very different reasons. People use Windows because everybody else uses Windows, and it would be just too inconvenient to change. It's a form of lock-in. People use iOS thanks to a combination of effective marketing and design.
Windows phone has little to no lock-in leverage, and MS and its partners have done nothing to pull millions of happy iphonesters away from Apple. Much like Linux on the desktop, it's not good enough for WPn to be as good as iOS, they have to be compellingly better--and convince people of this--to win mindshare at this point. In a karmic twist, MS now finds itself at both ends of this problem.
So with the average user feeling somewhat indifferent about Windows Phone, and their techy friends recommending iphones and android, MS stands without a market until they do something drastic and carve out their own, and it's been decades since they've done anything really significant in that vein.
If you're Black in the US you may want to know what tribe or area you ancestor was kidnapped from in africa.
I assume this would be as specious an idea for Americans as for Brits.
Exactly this. I have a degree in psychology and now work full time in IT, with IT-related business on the side. For several years before my first full-time IT gig I did things like maintaining computers and networks for the local youth centre and chairing the tech committee of the regional Skills competition. Volunteer work like this can build a reputation quickly if done well, especially in smaller communities. The person who made the decision to hire me at my current position was somebody I had worked with in the Skills competition, or it likely never would have happened.
I really don't see how. I said the ALIX boards are less powerful than the Soekris, and that is true. My initial post made no mention of value, implicit or explicit. I have nothing against ALIX and I have even used them, but like every product, they have their limits.
Last I checked, the ALIX boards max out at 500 MHz and 256 MB RAM. A net5501 can be ordered with the same CPU and double the RAM, while a net6501 is Atom-based and more RAM yet. Cost-equivalent is one thing, but the higher-specced Soekris have no equivalent in the PC Engines world.
ALIX boards are nice but they're a step back from the soekris in terms of performance.
Yup. It's why (in my estimation) MS Office has always run poorly on Macs (worse even than it does on Windows)*, and why I have no doubt that Linux will run poorly on Azure. *to be fair, I've also heard that itunes and Safari run poorly on Windows. It's fairly basic psychology that any user who is accustomed to seeing an app run well on its native platform, then poorly on a less familiar platform, will tend to blame the novel platform.
Just because the bigger ISPs want to see Netflix die a fiery death doesn't necessarily mean they wouldn't want to host their CDN servers. The fact is, until that magical imaginary day when they do kill off Neflix, they're having to carry this traffic or host the CDN servers anyway.
Large corporations have no problem taking cost-cutting measures, even if said measures appear to be working opposite to the direction of some other part of the organism. Witness the companies that produce and distribute documentaries like The Corporation, or Michael Moore's work, which ostensibly carry a message that is against the corporation, but brings the promise of profiting from the promotion of these seemingly self-destructive messages. Also Microsoft and Apple, who have a history of publishing software for each other's OS and keeping voodoo dolls of the other's CEO in the lunch room.
1) I don't see the connection.
2) Android (Linux) has had a functioning Netflix app for a while now.
3) If you mean desktop Linux, then yeah, I'd be all over that.
Apparently the answer is now YES! Keep in mind that keeping your CDN server updated will generate a steady inflow of 80-100 Mbps* *This is the actual number that was given to a WISP operator by a Netflix agent, as reported on dslreports.com many months ago. Sorry, I went looking but wasn't able to dig up the old thread. I'm sure that number has only grown in the intervening months.
Many Canadians these days have access to alternative ISPs that aren't stepping on the customer to protect their own selfish interests. Can you not get hooked up on Acanac or Teksavvy, where the transfer caps are much more reasonable and they don't content distribution markets to protect?
Religion vs. Religion.
Bingo. That's the great irony underlining all the great religion-bashing going on on /. these days.
All the people who say "if you run windows you will get a virus" make me laugh. I have run windows OS's for 15 years and have only been infected by one virus
I agree, that's pretty funny. Did you not believe them?
Thanks for taking the fun out of it.
Will the next version of Windows be the first in decades to not collect personally identifiable information from every user, by way of activation and other control schemes?
It might make the marketeers feel all good inside to spout platitudes like "private by default' in an era when so much user data is collected online," but let MS apply the same sacrosanct wisdom to its own practise.
I'm still holding out for Mojave!
There is a group of people who do not care about the evidence - the Bible says so, so there it is.
Strawman. Right in the summary Leakey is quoted as saying "It's not covered by Genesis. There's no explanation for this change going back 500 million years in any book I've read from the lips of any God." Saying that the bible doesn't cover the topic of evolution is very different from saying that the bible denies or precludes it. There may be people who make that claim, but I don't see any in this discussion, and you certainly haven't directly addressed any here.
Leakey says the bible doesn't explain creation, and many believers in the bible say that the bible's purpose has never been to explain the science of all things. Why are some folks, particularly here on /., bent on construing this as some sort of Empire versus Rebel Alliance dichotomy?