- So you can restore the phone to 100% charge without having to plug it in for a couple of hours. It is annoying to use a phone while it is plugged in. Even worse if you are trying to use it while it is tethered to one of those "power banks". Carry a couple of extra batteries with you and replace them as needed, and you never have to plug in. It's convenient.
- So you can easily replace the battery when it is old and will no longer hold a charge. Batteries are cheap. New phones are expensive.
- So you can remove the battery to be sure the phone is turned OFF completely. Is the entire phone powered off, or only the screen? Did the phone freeze up with a black screen while the CPU is cpntinues to run? You can hold the power button and wait, or you could remove the voltage source and have immediate certainty. This is useful if you are paranoid about someone spying on you. It's even more useful if you have dropped your phone in water. If you remove the battery immediately and dry your phone out, it usually still works afterwards. Not possible with a permanently-attached battery.
I have taken full advantage of all these things, including dropping my phone in water and then restoring it. Removable battery is a very important feature and it is the main reason I now use an LG phone instead of Samsung or Google Nexus.
This is correct. I was a Windows Mobile user from 2006-2010. It was the best mobile platform at the time -- it did more than the competitors. Microsoft let it rot and fade away into obscurity, while the competition got better and better. By the time Microsoft "upgraded" their mobile OS (read: completely EOL'ed and threw away the previous version and replaced it with a completely new, incompatible, less-functional one), Android and IOS had completely taken over the market.
I was a WM user for two phone-generations and I had no choice but to switch to Android. In 2010, Microsoft simply did not have a viable product anymore, even compared to their old phones, let alone the new Android and iPhones. They started completely over from scratch, breaking all compatibility with previous versions (_twice_, with both WP7 and WP8), way too late in the development cycle to compete with current offerings from competitors. Windows Phone continues to try to catch up to its former self, in features and capability, while Android has gone way beyond that, and continues to improve. Nearly all of the former Windows Mobile developers have switched to Android and will likely never return -- the mindshare loss was devastating.
But Microsoft has a lot of money to throw at the problem -- they will eventually catch up, and then struggle to regain what they once had.
I always clicked "NO" to those Sprint/Google integration prompts. As in-- do not choose either option, and close this dialog box. That means I still have two distinct phone numbers, one associated only with the telco, and one associated with Google that will redirect to your cell phone (or not redirect, if you choose). The way it should be. Integration with the telco kind of defeats the purpose of Google voice, IMO. If you only have a Google voice number then it's already too late, you are fully integrated and must always use Google voice for everything.
The airave piggybacks on a terrestrial (home) internet connection (i.e. AT&T DSL, Roadrunner, etc.) to create a virtual Sprint cell tower. If I am paying Sprint to have a wireless internet connection anywhere I go, how does it make any sense at all to connect to Sprint's service via a secondary internet connection that I also have to pay for? In other words, if I am in a location where I can set up an airave, then I can simply use WIFI instead and thus have absolutely no need for Sprint. (Yes, I know some people do use Sprint to make calls but, imo, that is irrelevant. Sprint is a wireless ISP that also happens to provide voice service).
I had never previously paid any money to play an MMO before LotRO. I used to play Ultima Online, first as a free 1-month trial and then on free unoffical servers many years ago. I joined LotRO a few months ago because it was free to play, and I quickly became hooked. It is a very high-quality game and very fun to play. Yes, I admit it is very commercialized because there is a 'store' built right into the game, and you can purchase points to buy things in-game. These things include additional content, quests and such, items, and lots of other 'little' things that can make things more convenient and/or fun.
But the beauty of it is -- you don't need to purchase _anything_ from the store to play through the main quest line, or to go to any area in the game except the major expansons. You can also _earn_ points without paying real money for them, just by playing the game. So I could avoid a monthly fee altogether and just throw a couple of bucks at it if there's something I want, or I could earn it by playing. And the stuff you spend the points on does not really imbalance the game. Sure, you can level a little bit faster or you can fast-travel to distant lands a bit more easily, but it's not like the free players are at a huge disadvantage.
I played for about a month and then I purchased the big expansion for the game, Mines of Moria. You need to be level 45+ to really go to the expansion area, anyway.. So along with this expansion I got a 'free' month of 'VIP' access, which includes many of the perks you can purchase using the points system. I really liked having these things after my free trial expired, so I decided to continue my VIP access by paying $10/month. I still play this game every day, so why not? But if I ever start playing less frequently, I can completely stop paying any money and still reap the benefits that I have unlocked already. That, to me, is really awesome. If this were WoW, if I stopped paying I could not play at all, period. It's a really ingenious system, IMO.
Btrfs is under heavy development, but every effort is being made to keep the filesystem stable and fast. As of 2.6.31, we only plan to make forward compatible disk format changes, and many users have been experimenting with Btrfs on their systems with good results. Please email the Btrfs mailing list if you have any problems or questions while using Btrfs.
OK, I guess the word "finalized" was a bit premature. It's "forwards-compatible", lol. I run 2.6.32 btw.
I agree. BTRFS is definitely not ready for production or for storage of anything important that is not backed up elsewhere. It has known bugs, like for example the reported free space on a raid 1 will show the total disk size and not the actual free space, so it may be dangerous to fill the array too close to 100% (shown as 50% in df). It is unclear when (or if) it will be ready, but it is being worked on -- I've seen updates for the userland tools in Debian testing, and the newer kernels have updates for the fs driver. The bug I mentioned is fixed in 2.6.33, I believe. I was only countering the argument that it is too unstable even to test it out. That is untrue. Heck, even Linus Torvalds reportedly uses BTRFS as the root filesystem on one of his laptops.
BTRFS is not that unstable really.. I have been running for a few months now, since the on-disk file structure was finalized. it's in a raid 1 configuration across 2 300gig drives on one of my home servers and it hasn't had a hiccup yet, even with lots of file i/o. i think it would like more than the CPU and RAM I gave it, but its still less resource intensive than ZFS. AFAIK ZFS would not even run on that machine due to the 32 bit processor and only 512mb of RAM. Some of the features are not implemented yet but it is certainly stable enough to test..
I paid about $80 for a brand new Samsung ML-2510 monochrome laser printer. This printer can be found for even less if you get it on sale. I buy the (non-OEM) cartridges on Monoprice for about $20 apiece. One cartridge will last me FOREVER. At least 1000 pages I am sure. Oh, the cartridges are also easily refillable with a $6 bottle of standard copier toner. There is a removable plug on the cartridge that allows direct access to the toner chamber. It's not really worth my time, though, because the cartridges are so cheap. I have been using this printer for about 3 years and have only used up two cartridges.
I haven't been interested enough in color printing to buy a color laser, but I am sure that cheap, good ones do exist.
Wrong again.. Nextel is actually iDEN, which is yet another different technology that happens to use a SIM card. Having a SIM card does not make it GSM.
PS3 may not have RRoD but it does have YLoD. Same thing, really. The graphics chip de-solders itself from the motherboard due to heat buildup and inadequate cooling. If you read up on it, you will find that essentially all of the original 60gb models are dropping like flies now. The 60gb was the best PS3 version that had full hardware-based backward compatibility and memory card readers and "install other os" feature. I wanted this version and I actually went as far as buying a used one but it died within minutes of turning it on. And remember -- this piece of crap cost $600 at release, and barely lasted 2-3 years. I don't think Sony is any better than Microsoft.. Even worse when you consider Sony did not extend any warranties past one year like MS did. Hardware reliability for consoles really took a nosedive this generation.
Provided your phone maker doesn't push out an update that bricks your rooted phone.
This interests me a lot. I am a WM user and I have never owned an Android phone (yet) but at this rate it looks like my next phone will have to run Android or Meego. In the Android case, I certainly plan to run a rooted phone with a hacked ROM like Cyanogen. Isn't it possible to block carrier OTA updates? That's a *serious* downside to Android if not.. The whole purpose of a hacked ROM is to have total control over my own hardware. If the carrier can screw it all up on a whim, then I'm not really in control, am I? I certainly had no idea that could ever be possible. On WM, there was never any such thing as an OTA update, and I like it that way..
Absolutely, any decent smartphone made in the last few years has an actual GPS receiver that communicates with GPS satellites. My point was that it also requires an active internet connection because it does not cache the maps. What good is knowing your latitude/longitude if you still don't know what is around you? If you drive out in the boonies somewhere and you lose cell signal then you also lose your maps and navigation. Maybe Google will improve this with smart caching or something, but right now if you want to store the maps on your device you still need to purchase an app or a standalone GPS from a company like Garmin, TomTom, etc..
Sprint did this before Google did. If you purchased any smartphone recently from Sprint, (i.e. Touch Pro 2 or Palm Pre), then you already have Sprint Navigation on your phone. It has no additional fees, provides turn-by-turn navigation with text-to-speech (reads the street names to you), and requires an internet connection. I'm sure this didn't have much of an impact on standalone GPS and neither will Google Maps Nav.
They both have the fundamental limitation that they require an active internet connection. If you are out in the boonies somewhere and cannot get a cell signal then you have no navigation ability. You will still need a standalone GPS or a Garmin or TomTom app for your phone that stores the maps on the memory of the device.
I recently switched phones and providers, and I could have had my pick of basically any smart phone out there. I could have stuck with AT&T and got an iPhone, but I went with Windows Mobile-- specifically the Sprint (HTC) Touch Pro 2.
I was using AT&T and I decided that their network sucked and my "high-speed" data phone really did not achieve any kind of usable speed when I wanted to use it most. I remembered how Verizon always had great signal with their CDMA network, but they were way too expensive and their phones all sucked. So I went with Sprint (and what an awesome decision that was!). Sprint's network is leaps and bounds better than AT&T where I live-- I get EVDO speed in places I never even got an EDGE connection before. I actually have usable RDP over wireless now 3
Anyway, back to the phones. Sprint has Blackberries, WM phones, and the Palm Pre, among others. My wife went with the Pre and she loves it, and I sprung for the more mature hardware on the Touch Pro 2. Compared to the Pre, the keyboard and screen are simply amazing, not to mention the speaker is louder and clearer and the signal strength is better than the Pre. From a hardware perspective, the HTC TP2 stomps the Pre, the iPhone, the blackberries, and maybe even Nokia. This really is the finest piece of pocket-sized hardware I've ever used, bar none. The software may not be quite as slick as the competitors, and the app store doesn't exist yet, but overall I am VERY happy with this phone (with a bit of app envy).
Actually if they made this exact hardware configuration with Android OS on it, I would try it and probably like it even more. This phone is good IN SPITE OF Microsoft. HTC made the hardware, and HTC customized the software to make it tolerable, and Opera made a sick web browser for it. But I wouldn't count out the Windows Mobile platform just yet... I think MS is going to wise up soon. The app store is coming. They better get with the times, because if they don't, we will all be welcoming our HTC/Android overlords with open arms.
hell, *I* would like to buy one, for my own personal use! $8000 seems very cheap for 67 terabytes of storage in a neat little package. My 4TB raid was quite expensive compared to this (on a $ per TB basis) and it's almost full now. I can definitely see something like this in my future. running ZFS for error detection, of course. And probably 2 redundant PSUs instead of standard consumer-grade ones. Wouldn't want one of those to go out and take half of my drives with it!
Online storage is way too expensive and internet connection speeds here in the USA will suck too badly for too long to even consider it..
less time wasted staring at an hourglass cursor, of course.. atom is dog-slow and it might be fine for these netbook toy-laptops but I would never buy something resembling a full-sized laptop with a dinky atom processor in it. it's barely tolerable with firefox and xp.
if you aren't seriously bothered by the speed of atom processors then i will assume you run linux/fluxbox (or the equivalent) and a very lightweight web browser. and if that's the case (you're already running an OS that is not restricted to x86) then why wouldn't you prefer the more-power-efficient ARM processor over an atom?
i already have an eeepc and i considered purchasing another one but i just don't see the point until they can make a better processor for it that still gets decent battery life. although i dislike apple, the poster above has a point about the new macbook pro with regards to the battery life and speed. still too expensive, though.
Thanks. Part of the reason I posted was to see if someone could confirm that problem with the trackpad. I may give the Macbook Pro 13 another look when they go on sale again, but I still think I could get more hardware for the money buying something else. Maybe not a Thinkpad because their screens seem to suck. If I went with a 15", it would be a damn shame to buy a MBP when I could have this beast from ASUS for the same price. And people try to claim Macs are not overpriced...
Looks fine to me.. This is meant to go in an entertainment center, so you should be comparing it to your DVD player or your A/V receiver. That's the reason for the horizontal case. Also, that keyboard has been around a while and it's actually very ergonomic for non-desk use. It also has good battery life and quite long range. It has a trackball that you use with your thumb and the mouse click is on the index finger of the right hand. Left and right mouse buttons are also found on the left side. My only complaint about it is that it's not bluetooth.
If your only complaint about this PC is that it's not shiny and awesome-looking, then maybe you deserve an Apple. The rest of us would rather spend less money on technically superior hardware.
This thing actually looks like it uses completely standard hardware that I could pick up at Fry's. I might be able to build it for under $250 (it's a stretch), but then I wouldn't have a corporation supporting it with a warranty and such...
you mean that fancy multi-touch trackpad doesn't even work properly in windows? that's about 50% of the reason I even considered buying a macbook. and now I hear the battery life sucks if you don't run OSX. that was the other 50%. i did not intend to run OSX even if I did buy a macbook, but I thought it might be worth the money for the nicer hardware. it doesn't matter if it's apple's apathy or malice that is causing the windows drivers to suck, it just means the laptop does not function as advertised. i guess it's time for me to forget about apple and buy a thinkpad.
I hate that %&$#*#% adapter, it should not be necessary at all. The one that lets you use 3.5 while charging costs $15 online and it's a total ripoff. I keep it in my car to hook up to my stereo for internet radio, but it's very easy to misplace. Good thing MS has required that all WM7 phones have a 3.5 audio port. I think that's the real reason why HTC has included one on their newest phone and all phones thereafter.
I think I would like the G1, but I'm not ready to jump ship to go with Android mainly because it's too new. Same goes for WebOS. I'd rather have an established developer base and mod scene.
Crappy hardware from HTC? What's crappy about it? Crappy software, sure. Windows Mobile really sucks and needs a lot of work but at least it is easily hackable and upgradeable. HTC are assholes about providing drivers for their GPU chips also. Xda-devs help a LOT in making these phones as good as they can be. I can install any damn software I want to using a.cab file that I can download on the internet.
The HTC hardware, on the other hand, kicks total ass IMO. I consider it FAR superior to anything else I have used. Of course I probably have different criteria that I am looking for in a phone.
I want a large, high resolution touchscreen AND a large, comfortable hardware keyboard in a slider or clamshell design. Standard SD card slot for storage and USB port for charging / data transfer are absolute requirements. I also want 3G/HSDPA, Bluetooth, GPS, and perhaps FM radio. 3.5" audio jack is nice to have, too. My HTC Kaiser was near-perfect hardware IMO, and the new Touch Pro 2 is much closer to the mark, since it is higher-res and has 3.5" audio jack in the US versions. Wish it had physical d-pad keys on the face, but oh well, thats the trade-off for a bigger screen. Right now I'm 90% sure my next phone will be the Touch Pro 2 from Sprint.
I think that is a very weak argument. How is it any more difficult to test? If Windows is preinstalled, then the EULA must be accepted before the computer will be able to do anything. Why wouldn't they test using a LiveCD or LiveUSB of some sort, that has nothing to do with the installed OS and can run a series of pre-defined tests? I fully support OEMs (including Apple) being required to sell computers with blank hard drives in them (and refunding the "OS fee") if that option is chosen by the purchaser.
So if I want to build a PC and sell it with Windows on it, you are saying that *I* should be forced to sell it to you without Windows, instead?
No, but maybe you should be required to offer it with no operating system at all (at least the ones that allow customization of the computers). I can understand if you are selling pre-boxed PCs at a store, they cannot be customized prior to sale. But if they let you add an extra stick of RAM or a different video card or a bigger hard drive (Dell, HP, etc), then they can just as easily put a blank, brand new hard drive in it. Is that really so difficult? I think most decent and reputable system builders will do this for you, anyway (PowerNotebooks.com comes to mind..). It's the big-name OEMs that collude with Microsoft and force you to buy Windows when they could just as easily not sell you Windows by not imaging the hard drive with Windows prior to installing it. Most people who use Linux would prefer this option, anyway, because the first thing they do will be to install their distro of choice.
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1) Why? There are already powerbanks
- So you can restore the phone to 100% charge without having to plug it in for a couple of hours. It is annoying to use a phone while it is plugged in. Even worse if you are trying to use it while it is tethered to one of those "power banks". Carry a couple of extra batteries with you and replace them as needed, and you never have to plug in. It's convenient.
- So you can easily replace the battery when it is old and will no longer hold a charge. Batteries are cheap. New phones are expensive.
- So you can remove the battery to be sure the phone is turned OFF completely. Is the entire phone powered off, or only the screen? Did the phone freeze up with a black screen while the CPU is cpntinues to run? You can hold the power button and wait, or you could remove the voltage source and have immediate certainty. This is useful if you are paranoid about someone spying on you. It's even more useful if you have dropped your phone in water. If you remove the battery immediately and dry your phone out, it usually still works afterwards. Not possible with a permanently-attached battery.
I have taken full advantage of all these things, including dropping my phone in water and then restoring it. Removable battery is a very important feature and it is the main reason I now use an LG phone instead of Samsung or Google Nexus.
This is correct. I was a Windows Mobile user from 2006-2010. It was the best mobile platform at the time -- it did more than the competitors. Microsoft let it rot and fade away into obscurity, while the competition got better and better. By the time Microsoft "upgraded" their mobile OS (read: completely EOL'ed and threw away the previous version and replaced it with a completely new, incompatible, less-functional one), Android and IOS had completely taken over the market.
I was a WM user for two phone-generations and I had no choice but to switch to Android. In 2010, Microsoft simply did not have a viable product anymore, even compared to their old phones, let alone the new Android and iPhones. They started completely over from scratch, breaking all compatibility with previous versions (_twice_, with both WP7 and WP8), way too late in the development cycle to compete with current offerings from competitors. Windows Phone continues to try to catch up to its former self, in features and capability, while Android has gone way beyond that, and continues to improve. Nearly all of the former Windows Mobile developers have switched to Android and will likely never return -- the mindshare loss was devastating.
But Microsoft has a lot of money to throw at the problem -- they will eventually catch up, and then struggle to regain what they once had.
I always clicked "NO" to those Sprint/Google integration prompts. As in-- do not choose either option, and close this dialog box. That means I still have two distinct phone numbers, one associated only with the telco, and one associated with Google that will redirect to your cell phone (or not redirect, if you choose). The way it should be. Integration with the telco kind of defeats the purpose of Google voice, IMO. If you only have a Google voice number then it's already too late, you are fully integrated and must always use Google voice for everything.
The airave piggybacks on a terrestrial (home) internet connection (i.e. AT&T DSL, Roadrunner, etc.) to create a virtual Sprint cell tower. If I am paying Sprint to have a wireless internet connection anywhere I go, how does it make any sense at all to connect to Sprint's service via a secondary internet connection that I also have to pay for? In other words, if I am in a location where I can set up an airave, then I can simply use WIFI instead and thus have absolutely no need for Sprint. (Yes, I know some people do use Sprint to make calls but, imo, that is irrelevant. Sprint is a wireless ISP that also happens to provide voice service).
I had never previously paid any money to play an MMO before LotRO. I used to play Ultima Online, first as a free 1-month trial and then on free unoffical servers many years ago. I joined LotRO a few months ago because it was free to play, and I quickly became hooked. It is a very high-quality game and very fun to play. Yes, I admit it is very commercialized because there is a 'store' built right into the game, and you can purchase points to buy things in-game. These things include additional content, quests and such, items, and lots of other 'little' things that can make things more convenient and/or fun.
But the beauty of it is -- you don't need to purchase _anything_ from the store to play through the main quest line, or to go to any area in the game except the major expansons. You can also _earn_ points without paying real money for them, just by playing the game. So I could avoid a monthly fee altogether and just throw a couple of bucks at it if there's something I want, or I could earn it by playing. And the stuff you spend the points on does not really imbalance the game. Sure, you can level a little bit faster or you can fast-travel to distant lands a bit more easily, but it's not like the free players are at a huge disadvantage.
I played for about a month and then I purchased the big expansion for the game, Mines of Moria. You need to be level 45+ to really go to the expansion area, anyway.. So along with this expansion I got a 'free' month of 'VIP' access, which includes many of the perks you can purchase using the points system. I really liked having these things after my free trial expired, so I decided to continue my VIP access by paying $10/month. I still play this game every day, so why not? But if I ever start playing less frequently, I can completely stop paying any money and still reap the benefits that I have unlocked already. That, to me, is really awesome. If this were WoW, if I stopped paying I could not play at all, period. It's a really ingenious system, IMO.
OK, I guess the word "finalized" was a bit premature. It's "forwards-compatible", lol. I run 2.6.32 btw.
I agree. BTRFS is definitely not ready for production or for storage of anything important that is not backed up elsewhere. It has known bugs, like for example the reported free space on a raid 1 will show the total disk size and not the actual free space, so it may be dangerous to fill the array too close to 100% (shown as 50% in df). It is unclear when (or if) it will be ready, but it is being worked on -- I've seen updates for the userland tools in Debian testing, and the newer kernels have updates for the fs driver. The bug I mentioned is fixed in 2.6.33, I believe. I was only countering the argument that it is too unstable even to test it out. That is untrue. Heck, even Linus Torvalds reportedly uses BTRFS as the root filesystem on one of his laptops.
BTRFS is not that unstable really.. I have been running for a few months now, since the on-disk file structure was finalized. it's in a raid 1 configuration across 2 300gig drives on one of my home servers and it hasn't had a hiccup yet, even with lots of file i/o. i think it would like more than the CPU and RAM I gave it, but its still less resource intensive than ZFS. AFAIK ZFS would not even run on that machine due to the 32 bit processor and only 512mb of RAM. Some of the features are not implemented yet but it is certainly stable enough to test..
I paid about $80 for a brand new Samsung ML-2510 monochrome laser printer. This printer can be found for even less if you get it on sale. I buy the (non-OEM) cartridges on Monoprice for about $20 apiece. One cartridge will last me FOREVER. At least 1000 pages I am sure. Oh, the cartridges are also easily refillable with a $6 bottle of standard copier toner. There is a removable plug on the cartridge that allows direct access to the toner chamber. It's not really worth my time, though, because the cartridges are so cheap. I have been using this printer for about 3 years and have only used up two cartridges.
I haven't been interested enough in color printing to buy a color laser, but I am sure that cheap, good ones do exist.
The Nextel portion of Sprint is actually GSM.
Wrong again.. Nextel is actually iDEN, which is yet another different technology that happens to use a SIM card. Having a SIM card does not make it GSM.
PS3 may not have RRoD but it does have YLoD. Same thing, really. The graphics chip de-solders itself from the motherboard due to heat buildup and inadequate cooling. If you read up on it, you will find that essentially all of the original 60gb models are dropping like flies now. The 60gb was the best PS3 version that had full hardware-based backward compatibility and memory card readers and "install other os" feature. I wanted this version and I actually went as far as buying a used one but it died within minutes of turning it on. And remember -- this piece of crap cost $600 at release, and barely lasted 2-3 years. I don't think Sony is any better than Microsoft.. Even worse when you consider Sony did not extend any warranties past one year like MS did. Hardware reliability for consoles really took a nosedive this generation.
Provided your phone maker doesn't push out an update that bricks your rooted phone.
This interests me a lot. I am a WM user and I have never owned an Android phone (yet) but at this rate it looks like my next phone will have to run Android or Meego. In the Android case, I certainly plan to run a rooted phone with a hacked ROM like Cyanogen. Isn't it possible to block carrier OTA updates? That's a *serious* downside to Android if not.. The whole purpose of a hacked ROM is to have total control over my own hardware. If the carrier can screw it all up on a whim, then I'm not really in control, am I? I certainly had no idea that could ever be possible. On WM, there was never any such thing as an OTA update, and I like it that way..
Absolutely, any decent smartphone made in the last few years has an actual GPS receiver that communicates with GPS satellites. My point was that it also requires an active internet connection because it does not cache the maps. What good is knowing your latitude/longitude if you still don't know what is around you? If you drive out in the boonies somewhere and you lose cell signal then you also lose your maps and navigation. Maybe Google will improve this with smart caching or something, but right now if you want to store the maps on your device you still need to purchase an app or a standalone GPS from a company like Garmin, TomTom, etc..
Sprint did this before Google did. If you purchased any smartphone recently from Sprint, (i.e. Touch Pro 2 or Palm Pre), then you already have Sprint Navigation on your phone. It has no additional fees, provides turn-by-turn navigation with text-to-speech (reads the street names to you), and requires an internet connection. I'm sure this didn't have much of an impact on standalone GPS and neither will Google Maps Nav.
They both have the fundamental limitation that they require an active internet connection. If you are out in the boonies somewhere and cannot get a cell signal then you have no navigation ability. You will still need a standalone GPS or a Garmin or TomTom app for your phone that stores the maps on the memory of the device.
I recently switched phones and providers, and I could have had my pick of basically any smart phone out there. I could have stuck with AT&T and got an iPhone, but I went with Windows Mobile-- specifically the Sprint (HTC) Touch Pro 2.
I was using AT&T and I decided that their network sucked and my "high-speed" data phone really did not achieve any kind of usable speed when I wanted to use it most. I remembered how Verizon always had great signal with their CDMA network, but they were way too expensive and their phones all sucked. So I went with Sprint (and what an awesome decision that was!). Sprint's network is leaps and bounds better than AT&T where I live-- I get EVDO speed in places I never even got an EDGE connection before. I actually have usable RDP over wireless now 3
Anyway, back to the phones. Sprint has Blackberries, WM phones, and the Palm Pre, among others. My wife went with the Pre and she loves it, and I sprung for the more mature hardware on the Touch Pro 2. Compared to the Pre, the keyboard and screen are simply amazing, not to mention the speaker is louder and clearer and the signal strength is better than the Pre. From a hardware perspective, the HTC TP2 stomps the Pre, the iPhone, the blackberries, and maybe even Nokia. This really is the finest piece of pocket-sized hardware I've ever used, bar none. The software may not be quite as slick as the competitors, and the app store doesn't exist yet, but overall I am VERY happy with this phone (with a bit of app envy).
Actually if they made this exact hardware configuration with Android OS on it, I would try it and probably like it even more. This phone is good IN SPITE OF Microsoft. HTC made the hardware, and HTC customized the software to make it tolerable, and Opera made a sick web browser for it. But I wouldn't count out the Windows Mobile platform just yet... I think MS is going to wise up soon. The app store is coming. They better get with the times, because if they don't, we will all be welcoming our HTC/Android overlords with open arms.
hell, *I* would like to buy one, for my own personal use! $8000 seems very cheap for 67 terabytes of storage in a neat little package. My 4TB raid was quite expensive compared to this (on a $ per TB basis) and it's almost full now. I can definitely see something like this in my future. running ZFS for error detection, of course. And probably 2 redundant PSUs instead of standard consumer-grade ones. Wouldn't want one of those to go out and take half of my drives with it!
Online storage is way too expensive and internet connection speeds here in the USA will suck too badly for too long to even consider it..
What do you need that extra speed for?
less time wasted staring at an hourglass cursor, of course.. atom is dog-slow and it might be fine for these netbook toy-laptops but I would never buy something resembling a full-sized laptop with a dinky atom processor in it. it's barely tolerable with firefox and xp.
if you aren't seriously bothered by the speed of atom processors then i will assume you run linux/fluxbox (or the equivalent) and a very lightweight web browser. and if that's the case (you're already running an OS that is not restricted to x86) then why wouldn't you prefer the more-power-efficient ARM processor over an atom?
i already have an eeepc and i considered purchasing another one but i just don't see the point until they can make a better processor for it that still gets decent battery life. although i dislike apple, the poster above has a point about the new macbook pro with regards to the battery life and speed. still too expensive, though.
Thanks. Part of the reason I posted was to see if someone could confirm that problem with the trackpad. I may give the Macbook Pro 13 another look when they go on sale again, but I still think I could get more hardware for the money buying something else. Maybe not a Thinkpad because their screens seem to suck. If I went with a 15", it would be a damn shame to buy a MBP when I could have this beast from ASUS for the same price. And people try to claim Macs are not overpriced...
Looks fine to me.. This is meant to go in an entertainment center, so you should be comparing it to your DVD player or your A/V receiver. That's the reason for the horizontal case. Also, that keyboard has been around a while and it's actually very ergonomic for non-desk use. It also has good battery life and quite long range. It has a trackball that you use with your thumb and the mouse click is on the index finger of the right hand. Left and right mouse buttons are also found on the left side. My only complaint about it is that it's not bluetooth.
If your only complaint about this PC is that it's not shiny and awesome-looking, then maybe you deserve an Apple. The rest of us would rather spend less money on technically superior hardware.
This thing actually looks like it uses completely standard hardware that I could pick up at Fry's. I might be able to build it for under $250 (it's a stretch), but then I wouldn't have a corporation supporting it with a warranty and such...
you mean that fancy multi-touch trackpad doesn't even work properly in windows? that's about 50% of the reason I even considered buying a macbook. and now I hear the battery life sucks if you don't run OSX. that was the other 50%. i did not intend to run OSX even if I did buy a macbook, but I thought it might be worth the money for the nicer hardware. it doesn't matter if it's apple's apathy or malice that is causing the windows drivers to suck, it just means the laptop does not function as advertised. i guess it's time for me to forget about apple and buy a thinkpad.
I think I would like the G1, but I'm not ready to jump ship to go with Android mainly because it's too new. Same goes for WebOS. I'd rather have an established developer base and mod scene.
err, 3.5mm, sorry :)
Crappy hardware from HTC? What's crappy about it? Crappy software, sure. Windows Mobile really sucks and needs a lot of work but at least it is easily hackable and upgradeable. HTC are assholes about providing drivers for their GPU chips also. Xda-devs help a LOT in making these phones as good as they can be. I can install any damn software I want to using a .cab file that I can download on the internet.
The HTC hardware, on the other hand, kicks total ass IMO. I consider it FAR superior to anything else I have used. Of course I probably have different criteria that I am looking for in a phone.
I want a large, high resolution touchscreen AND a large, comfortable hardware keyboard in a slider or clamshell design. Standard SD card slot for storage and USB port for charging / data transfer are absolute requirements. I also want 3G/HSDPA, Bluetooth, GPS, and perhaps FM radio. 3.5" audio jack is nice to have, too. My HTC Kaiser was near-perfect hardware IMO, and the new Touch Pro 2 is much closer to the mark, since it is higher-res and has 3.5" audio jack in the US versions. Wish it had physical d-pad keys on the face, but oh well, thats the trade-off for a bigger screen. Right now I'm 90% sure my next phone will be the Touch Pro 2 from Sprint.
I think that is a very weak argument. How is it any more difficult to test? If Windows is preinstalled, then the EULA must be accepted before the computer will be able to do anything. Why wouldn't they test using a LiveCD or LiveUSB of some sort, that has nothing to do with the installed OS and can run a series of pre-defined tests? I fully support OEMs (including Apple) being required to sell computers with blank hard drives in them (and refunding the "OS fee") if that option is chosen by the purchaser.
So if I want to build a PC and sell it with Windows on it, you are saying that *I* should be forced to sell it to you without Windows, instead?
No, but maybe you should be required to offer it with no operating system at all (at least the ones that allow customization of the computers). I can understand if you are selling pre-boxed PCs at a store, they cannot be customized prior to sale. But if they let you add an extra stick of RAM or a different video card or a bigger hard drive (Dell, HP, etc), then they can just as easily put a blank, brand new hard drive in it. Is that really so difficult? I think most decent and reputable system builders will do this for you, anyway (PowerNotebooks.com comes to mind..). It's the big-name OEMs that collude with Microsoft and force you to buy Windows when they could just as easily not sell you Windows by not imaging the hard drive with Windows prior to installing it. Most people who use Linux would prefer this option, anyway, because the first thing they do will be to install their distro of choice.