You said it isn't an android development toy, I have just pointed out that is EXACTLY what it is. Now back up your assertion that HDMI makes it something other than what it is or please accept your giant fail and go fuck off.
You're right about one thing, nobody cares...about cell phones. they get them for cheap or free with contract and toss them when the contract is up, never to give a crap about them again. And that is Tegra GPU, that is designed for HD video and NOT for hardcore gaming.
And even with your "sea change" big games are KILLING, or are you gonna say that people are gonna give that up for some Peggle?
Sure an AK maybe as the recoil on those bitches would get you but we are talking EVERY WEAPON IN THE GAME behaving like that! And being a country boy i've shot my fair share of weapons including some of those found in the game like the M16 and the 12 gauge pump and there is NO WAY you would miss with a 12 gauge slug at less than 20 feet! Hell at that distance you could cut someone in half with 3 well placed shots!
if they have a demo or something everybody here should try it just to see how "WTF?" a game can be. When you end up using a 9mm everywhere because even an H&K military weapon can't even hit a guy standing 20 feet away? Or even aiming you can't pop them with a 12 gauge at 12 feet? that is SERIOUSLY fucked up man, WTF were they thinking? I emptied SIX CLIPS in an M16 and had to go scrounge for more ammo because I couldn't even hit a single guy standing behind an apple cart from MAYBE 14 feet away, if that!
Thanks but I found out about the SSD problem the hard way. I had two gamer customers with more money than brains (one of them his grandma is on a Skulltrail because he has gone through THAT many machines chasing the benches that the Skulltrail was the slowest he had left over) and they both bought the SSD which at the time had the top bench. one was an OCZ I believe, the other Intel and BOTH had them go tits up in less than a year! I mean sure they got a replacement for free, but who cares about the drive? Their data was poof!
After trying to get their data back I decided i really really REALLY don't want SSD, thanks anyway. i can't remember the last time I had a HDD fail i didn't get ample warning, I'd get SMART errors or delayed write failed or heat issues or more noise or something. with those SSDs it was just...gone, that's it. Despite the story that SSDs are supposed to fail to read only that was not the case, hell even the BIOS wouldn't see the OCZ and the Intel would be seen but you'd try to get the data off and it'd just corrupt it.
So while Atwood at CH can say "go for it!" while listening to his $400 headphones I frankly don't want to be making hourly backups or not be sure if this time will be the time i flip the switch and get "boot drive not found". With 8Gb of RAM in both my desktop and netbook all the programs I use are loaded into RAM anyway so SSD isn't gonna win there, and with hybrid sleep frankly the machine is up and running before I can finish taking my first sip of coffee. The only places I've seen SSD kick HDDs is in boot and large application loading but the price and risk simply isn't worth it to me.
Yet TPB works everywhere, isn't that nice? the problem i have is they will NOT sell you want you want. all I want is to buy an.avi file, that's all. my dad has a nice little Nbox to watch his movies on so he doesn't have to hunt for DVDs and if they would sell.avi I would be gifting them to dad, and dad would be buying every movie and TV show he'd ever liked. but instead you have to go get a DVD, rip the DVD, transcode the DVD, all just to get the.avi...or you can go to TPB and skip all the bullshit.
As much as I hated his character on TNG I have to say Wil Wheaton was right, he said "make it simple, make it easy, give people what they want and they'll buy" and then gave as an example him buying a bunch of Dr Who episodes and then crossing the border into Canada and now he can't watch what he has already paid for and he said 'If I would have just downloaded it they would have worked". And that is the problem, their shit just don't cut it. I'm supposed to go buy a portable DVD burner just so i can legally watch movies that I have bought on my netbook? Fuck off media companies, Keep your damned DRMed shit or hoop jumping and just sell me a damned.avi already!
Actually I've toured the south a few times myself and known several indie bands and most of us put our stuff on P2P, thanks anyway. you know why? Because fans will STILL happily buy your CDs at the shows, along with the T-Shirts, caps, mugs, keyrings, mousepads (those were my idea BTW) and anything else to help out the band because guess what? they are FANS and want to see you get ahead.
BTW I probably shouldn't share this trick, as we were raking in the cash with it, but what the fuck, sharing is caring right? Indie guys, want to make a fuckton of money and sell out your swag? The magic word is "raffle". We would go to a local pawnshop in whatever town we were at, but a cool cheap guitar or bass, me or the guitarist would play it for 3 or 4 songs and at the end of the show we would all sign it and anybody who bought a piece of swag had their name in the drawing for the instrument.
Not only did audiences eat it up but we ended up with several hardcore fans that showed up at nearly every gig simply because they won something that made them feel closer to the band. We'd always let them sit with the wives and GFs and they were happy to hang up posters or post on FB or anything else that got out the word, simply because it made them feel like a winner.
It works, its cheap, makes you a hell of a lot more than the guitar costs, and creates really loyal long lasting fans. Last gig I played even though i wasn't with that band anymore and hadn't been in 5 years i had a guy show up and bring nearly 30 friends, all of whom bought swag, simply because 'hey man I still have that bass i won in Memphis, remember me?" so he and his buds got to hang out with the wives and GFs while we played and we had a beer afterward. Its a great way to get long term fans
. I hereby release this to the world as GPL, if you use the idea just give the old hairyfeet a little credit now and then, kay? Who knows one day i might be your opening act, or you may be mine. peace fellow bass players and never forget to show the ladies we bass players are ALWAYS good with our fingers!
Really? Where please? Because by sticking to the Steam sales I get some crazy cheap gaming goodness. I got five FEAR games over the Halloween for $7 by the time i threw in the games the boys wanted I got something like 9 games for $22.
Don't get me wrong i personally hope your right and they have free shipping! the cheapest I've found is Amazon and then you either pay $7 a game or you get gouged on the shipping, like how I paid a penny for Kane & Lynch II (yes I had to buy it just to see how bad it was and ZOFG its horrible!) and $4 to ship. Funnily enough the game uses Steam so it just ended up in my steam collection anyway.
BTW if anybody here likes MST3K and wants a game that would be perfect for MST3K heckling do NOT get K&L II, its just smelly, get "You Are Empty" which I swear has 20 foot killer mutant attack chickens! but K&L II I swear has the WORST targeting system in history! there is just no way you can have fun with a game where you empty a sub-machine gun less than 20 feet from a guy and do NOT get a single hit!
Nope, sorry, gotta disagree. before the flood dumb shit (who thought they would ALL be in the same damned place) I got 3Tb of HDDs for $93. Even the cheapest low rent SSDs would cost easily 20 times that to give me the same amount of space. Not to mention as a couple of my gamer customers found out SSDs currently really have to be judged by the hot/crazy scale as in smoking hot performance, crazy failure rates.
Maybe in a decade when they figure out how to make MLC as reliable as SLC and figure out all the controller bugs MAYBE, but even then i kinda doubt it. More likely what we will see is a next generation hybrid that will have 128Gb of SSD and 1 to 2Tb of HDD with the ability to turn off the HDD completely when in motion or not in use. With an aware OS you'd get the speed of SSD with the storage space of HDDs. Hell if you made the SSD module replaceable you wouldn't even have to give a shit about SSD failure, as the HDD could have a hidden partition with the OS backed up regularly and in the event of failure the HDD would boot from the hidden partition and tell you to have the SSD changed out.
As for TFA one thing I DO see flash replacing is DVD burners. i can easily see a day where you will have a single burner at home to whip off DVDs (I still say BD isn't gonna make it, they haven't been able to get the price per disc down low enough to make them suitable for small backups or handing out to friends) while all your other machines simply access the DVD burner through the network when they need it. I know i picked up a USB case for my DVD burner from my dead laptop when I switched to a netbook (they have them for like $7 on Amazon) but frankly i haven't needed it once. i just use my 16gb flash stick or the network for everything.
i just wish they'd come up with a cheap replacement for DVDs for archiving. what we need is something that backs up say 100Gb or 200Gb that is close to the price of blank DVDs, or hell even $2 a pop for that amount of space would probably sell. have it on the PCIe bus and you could probably move the data at a decent enough clip but for backing up data that is gonna sit for years you still really haven't seen anything come close to DVD. i have 1X DVDs i burned with my very first burner that are still just as easy to read as the day i bought them.
Meh, I like mashed potatoes on mine. if you have never tried it it is really great, just swing by the KFC after picking up a pizza if you don't feel like making it yourself although homemade of course is best. just put a nice thin and even layer on top, the potatoes absorb the taste of the pizza and give it a nice creamy texture on top, especially good if you have lots of meat and cheese on there.
As for TFA that frankly doesn't surprise me, since when has bureaucratic BS and common sense EVER gone together? I mean this IS the same bunch that made them strip Windows Media Player out of Windows so all the retailers ended up with discs nobody wanted. like it was REALLY so hard to download iTunes? same thing with that stupid browser ballot crap. Hell IE had already became a joke, like "IE is the thing you use to download a browser" rimshot.
At least I have to give them credit for not being complete corporate whores like here in the USA. Since Citizens united I'm frankly shocked that the tobacco and booze companies haven't bribed...err i mean contributed to their campaign funds, to get the old "cigarettes are good for you!" and the booze jingles put back on the air. Our politicians are such whores I bet all it would take is a million or so each and the promise to hire one of their relatives to a lobbying group.
Ya know, that is pretty damned sad when you are so hard up to prove your failure isn't a heap of fail that you have to accuse others of being the same. old APK has been on CNet since the 1990s, and probably been on/. just as long and I had never even heard of this place since I quit using OS/2 as my main system in 01.
Want to know what is pathetic? I gave link after link and ALL you can do is "Its a M$ conspiracy you..you you dirty poo poo head!" I have shown OEMS don't want your shit, i've shown USERS don't want your shit, and I've shown that your numbers are worse than a 7 year old Java crap cell phone OS that is sold at Fred's on $8 phones.
But you go ahead and accuse me of being APK or twitter or hell john Holmes, since you do seem to slobber at my large man meat so...LOL!
What are you smoking, cause I'd like some! Smartphones and netpads? yeah for angry birds maybe, you sure as hell ain't gonna get 1080p HD3D on one of those devices. And don't bring up that streaming game service because the bandwidth simply isn't there except for a handful of major markets.
Those devices are fine...for your mom. someone who wants to play columns or Angry birds or maybe some shooter that looks like it was written for a first gen PS2, but the rest of the planet has gotten spoiled to the big 3D physics heavy boom fest. Hell the easiest sales I've ever had were for HTPCs where i just fire up just Cause II and set off some remote charges on the cooling towers. When people see my guy walk into the sunset while half the world crumbles around him into fire and debris? it is "Thank you come again" and cash the check.
This is the US of fricking A my friend, we like big cars, big screens, and big graphics.
Yes but TFA is specifically talking about new machines like netbooks. i have to say that I too thought I would need one when i switched to a netbook, even bought an external USB case for the DVD burner that was in my old laptop....and I've never plugged it in past testing that it worked.
Once I picked up a 16Gb flash drive I've found I don't hardly need DVDs anymore. for my older games there are disc images and Alcohol 52% and for newer there is Steam. Frankly the ONLY ones who haven't joined the new way of doing things is the damned MPAA who won't simply sell you an AVI file, nope you got to have a DVD burner to rip it and transcode it. Is it any wonder TPB is so popular?
I'm sorry if I wasn't clear, I have NO problem with FOSS users, or those that enjoy ANY tech for that matter. I myself ran OS/2 long after everyone else abandoned ship. No there is a BIG difference between a FOSS enthusiast and what I call a "FOSSie" which is more like a Moonie or other cultist in their flagrant disregard for reality.
They will say "We don't want users" on a post about "Year of the Linux desktop" they will provide a 4 page list of programs written by separate groups and not even working when asked for a replacement for a piece of software where FOSS doesn't actually HAVE a replacement, as I witnessed here when someone asked about a replacement for the AD+Exchange+Sharepoint+Group Policy integration in WinServer, they will SCREAM that "Linux is ready for grandma!" and then when i point out that Dell, one of the largest OEMs on the planet, can't allow their Ubuntu machines to update because it breaks the drivers I get cursed and called a "M$ shill dirty poo poo head" and get followed around by anon trolls for a week for daring to point out reality with citations.
So I doubt VERY seriously you would have a problem with my posts. you probably already accept that in its current form Linux isn't ready for Suzy the checkout girl, you don't mind having to deal with CLI, in fact you probably enjoy it, and you accept that to become as friendly as OSX and Windows you would have to change things you simply don't want to. That's fine, great, I hope you have many years of happy Linux computing. but you sir are NOT a FOSSie, as a FOSSie will argue up and down with you that you can force users to "embrace the power of CLI" like its the God damned force, they cook up one crazy scenario after another of Linux "winning the hearts and minds" without actually having to change its geek heavy design, and will scream bloody murder when you point out that for everyone else CLI has been dead since WinXP and OSX 10.1.
Just accept reality, is that SO hard? If you don't change you won't get users, as i have posted repeatedly the amount of returns and problems that Linux in its current form causes to OEMs. Dell won't even publish what it "makes" on its Ubuntu sales because it is commonly believed that having to hire their own devs and run their own repos has left them in the red, even with the higher price and lower quality parts of the Ubuntu offerings.
THIS sir is reality, i'm not making this stuff up or trolling, I could wallpaper this page with links to back me up. Instead of accepting these facts which I'm sure you do a FOSSie will pray for mod points and follow me around for two weeks posting as anon like they did last month just so they could post "Die you fat fucker die!" over and over AND OVER. And THAT sir is the difference between a FOSS enthusiast and a FOSSie. the fact that you were able to post intelligently instead of spouting memes makes be believe you are the former and not the latter.
Its not just Ubuntu friend, I've had the same problems with Windows XP and 7 with Dragon, Firefox, and Opera. I don't allow IE on my systems (you look at every patch Tuesday and more than half of it is IE) and I'm certainly not gonna compromise the security of systems i use to make money to sign a petition. As another pointed out the EFF and several other have made it as easy as fill in your info, one even has a FB login so you don't have to fill out anything if you already have a FB account.
To me this extra hoop jumping is just a way for them to laugh before they tear up your petition and throw it away, just look at the responses from the other petitions which was the most flowery "Fuck off you peasant you have no monies LOL!" troll I've ever seen. frankly I would have had more respect for the man if he simply would have wadded them up on camera and threw them away, because the thick bullshit he spewed was clearly designed to tell you "I don't give a FUCK what you think!" while not giving the other team a nice soundbyte, that's all.
So as my late grandma put it, who voted in every election from the roaring 20s only to quit in the late 80s and refused up to her death last year to participate anymore, "Why bother, they are only gonna ignore you anyway" and sadly grandma was right. Nothing will change until Goldman Sachs and their friends have dumped all their toxic debt on the fed, we are looking at triple what our current debt is and the fed cranks the presses so hard that bread is $30 a loaf and unemployment is at 45%+. Then we shall have what the rest of the world is having, our very own Arab spring. but until then you are just shouting in a closet while the rich rob and scam.
As far as cars go? No we don't. What we have is a "branded" product where most of the guts come from somewhere else, often a LOT of somewhere elses, and then are simply thrown together here. Look at the Ranger which I drive, its a nice truck but frankly its more Mazda than Ford anymore and for everyone outside the USA it is ALL Mazda with a Ford decal.
And how much of that economy is fictional products, ala IP? I bet if you took California out of the equation we'd drop off the map and biggest thing cali has is Hollywood. Since digital makes it beyond simple to just copy anything you want (a friend went to Asia and said they have movies being sold on every street corner and you can buy Windows 7 all versions on a thumbstick. I wish he would have thought to buy me a Win 7 stick, it was only $6 US) I have to wonder how much longer THAt will last.
Finally here is a figure that will make you want to puke, in just the last decade the USA has lost 21,000 factories although I'd suggest that if you have eaten recently don't click on the link as the data they have will piss you off and ruin your digestion. We were ONCE a truly great nation, but sadly those days are long gone. The "get a better education and you'll compete!" lie has been driven through with a stake thanks to offshoring, H1-Bs, and so many college educated about to default on their loans simply because there is no way to EVER pay them back when everyone is having to compete with 300 other guys for scraps. I wonder if one day people will look back at the cold war years like they did with the old "the sun never sets on the British empire" days, because it is pretty obvious at least to me our good days are over and BRIC is coming to the top of the heap now.
It has nothing to do with sense I'm afraid and everything to do with big fat checks. Anybody who thought it would be different when Obama chose Biden as VP was sadly deluded. The reps suck the military defense contractor cock, the dems suck off big media, and all because of big fat checks.
Hell it has gotten so damned bad it is used as the punchline for jokes, like Colbert did the other day when he told OWS that they needed to "put down the wacky tobacky and give that money to a super packy" so they could just buy politicians like the corps do!
Anybody that thinks that voting or protesting or anything other than outright bribery of our corrupt to the bone officials works anymore is sadly mistaken. just look at the petition the White house which has devolved to the point one of the fastest growing petitions basically says 'Please quit ignoring us and lying to us'. Have NO doubt they will get SOPA, hell they will probably have Nancy Grace and the other talking heads talk about how them other countries "are full of perverts!" and we'll get our own great firewall.
To those in other countries that may be affected by America...please don't blame the American people, we no longer have any say in our own country anymore and nothing short of armed revolt will change that. When the megacorps are done bleeding this country and we get stuck with every bit of bad debt from every failed "investment" they've ever done and are looking at $20 a loaf bread and 45%+ unemployment I'm sure that day will come, but until then we really can't do anything about what is going on here, as OWS found out. sorry.
If you got modded down for responding to me sorry Ratzo, the "FOSSies" really don't like me so in the future you might not want to respond to any of my posts. They go in spurts, I had one follow me around for a couple of weeks last month just so he could mod down and post anon "Fuck off and die fat fuck" over and over and over. FOSSies really don't like it when you point out their bullshit and lies I've found. Sorry.
Bimbo Newton Crosby, what this does is gives the big boys a really nice weapon to shut down the indies. If you'll remember one of the big corps (I think it was Sony, not sure as its early here) finally admitted all the stinks they've been throwing wasn't over IP but over control and as more and more people spend more and more time on the net they are feeling their grip on what the masses see and hear slipping away.
For the first time in history we are seeing artists bypass the gatekeepers completely, going from 'viral sensation' to nationally known artist and this scares the living fuck out of them. They know in the age of YouTube and Twitter and a bazillion other non controlled communication circuits their ability to force artists into assraping contracts where they are basically nothing but cogs and "all your IP belong to us" is becoming a thing of the past.
So all this will do is exactly what you have surmised and allow them to bury anyone who doesn't "play ball" to be crushed by endless trolling. While the big boys have their own law firms the little guys simply won't be able to survive endless lawsuits and will either cave in or go under.
Sadly the only way we have to fight back anymore is massive piracy, there simply is nothing else. Any drops in their revenue they will blame on piracy anyway so boycotts do nothing, as the petitions which have gotten to the point there is actually a petition that says "Please quit ignoring us" prove if you don't have the money to bribe your congressman he sure as fuck isn't going to listen to you, so all that is left is the geeks.
So please geeks, please keep working on anonymous distributed P2P and continue to work to make it so damned simple that Limewire looks like compiling your own kernel. The ONLY way we are gonna get rid of these bastards is to bleed them to death, there is simply no other choices left now. If all your IP laws are unjust and the people no longer have a say at the table the only just thing to do is completely ignore those unjust laws. Does anyone truly believe that if We, The People had any say anymore we would have crap like SOPA or "forever minus a single day" copyright laws?
That is the part I don't get about TFA. The article blathers on about 'Ford did this' and 'Ford did that' but all the ads I saw talked about how it was MSFT's software, so which is it? Is Ford merely calling up their contact at MSFT and saying "We want this feature and do something about this problem" or did they essentially hire MSFT to just write them the OS and hand them the source code which they are having to add features and fixes in house?
Not to mention look up on Yahoo News the latest story on Solyndra (I believe the show is called marketwatch) where an author that actually looked at Obama's 'green tech initiative' found that out of TWENTY billion spent SIXTEEN billion was given to cronies like Al Gore, and that in many cases there wasn't even a review process! One company whose income last year was 13 million and which had NEVER made a profit got 1.3 BILLION with a B in money this year! The author then looked into the background of the company and found it a who's who of campaign donors.
What do this have to do with TFA? simply this, it really doesn't matter what IPCC or anyone else says about the weather as the scammers have come in and the ONLY thing that will get done is the transfer of money from your pocket to theirs, that's it. Anything else and they don't make massive profits by cranking out some panels in China and calling it "green" at a 4000% markup or get billions to build some plant in the desert. they know fear helps them scam money so the nastier things get the more they profit. they profit on food and water shortages, they profit on locking up the IP behind a bazillion patents, they profit by having your taxes diverted into their pockets.
The whole "green" thing, while once a noble idea about taking care of our planet, has become a "heads I win, tails you lose" situation where it frankly doesn't matter WHAT happens to the climate as those elite at the top make money on every possible angle. Oh and before anyone says i'm right wing watch Marketwatch, he names several Rs that likewise pocketed crazy amounts of money for their friends as well as had some nice insider trading going on, like Bacus from AZ that was shorting the economy after getting reports from Bernanke.
While this is true I think they have an ace in their sleeve and I'm not talking about that POS Windows 8, aka Ballmer's Folly. i'm talking about the X720 which the specs have slowly but surely been leaking and is looking to have either an HD5xxx or 6xxx Radeon GPU and be pretty damned loaded.
I have a feeling MSFT is gonna quietly (while having them sign NDAs up the ass and making it clear ANY leaks that get traced back to them they can kiss XBLA and DLC goodbye) have their top devs quietly cooking up X720 content with MSFT putting out a pretty wild Halo edition (possibly a remix of the first 3 in HD 3D) and then they are gonna spring that sucker when nobody expects it to catch Sony with their pants down. The Halo and Madden fans alone will make it a HUGE hit, money will be rolling and I'm betting they drop the X360 down to $99 and use it like Sony has the PS2 to cover the lower price points.
Don't forget the X360 has been making damned good money these past couple of years and with the exception of Japan which is VERY nationalistic and hasn't had a non Japanese consoles take the top spot in nearly 30 years it has taken a pretty good chunk of the market. if they spring the X720 with kick as hardware and some killer launch titles they are gonna possibly kill Sony outright while giving the casual market to Nintendo. If they play it right they can back up the money truck to the vault and start loading it up.
And did YOU miss the point that without storage its a VERY expensive Android development platform? what EXACTLY are you gonna do with it plugged into an HDMI, hmmm? Run angry birds? You sure aren't gonna surf with it because there is NO way to put a decent wireless keyboard and mouse or wireless remote because of drivers, again storage is gonna be a serious issue, so lets hear EXACTLY what this miracle HDMI plug is gonna do for you friend, and please remember we are talking $199 which at that price one can get a C-60 laptop with HDMI that does a hell of a lot more.
So instead of just being a smarmy smartass how about putting your money where your mouth and explaining EXACTLY what makes this worth $199?
Then you sir are a lucky bastard. Here we have Staples (which i refuse to EVAR enter after their management let their employees rig Black Friday a few years back and hand out the limited items to their friends), we have Worst Buy (which you saw from my post my first hand exp dealing with them) and you have Wally World or the land of overpriced Chinese crap, where a 100 pack of blank DVDs will cost you nearly $50.
So all those congress critters saying "you should buy local!" and threatening taxing the Internet is wasting their breath as i'd rather pay the taxes and get a decent price on the stuff I actually need as to pay $32 for an 8Gb flash drive or $28 for a 50 pack of blank DVDs. and here if the PC isn't brand new you can give it up, they'll have ONE stick of older RAM, always 1gb and always nearly $50. No thanks.
That will only be useful IF and this are pretty big IFs 1.- They even know what an alternative OS is and want to run one, and 2.- You have some way to test that Ubuntu will have ALL of the drivers for the myriad of hardware these people have so it all "just works" OOTB.
Since he mentions things such as games it is most likely he is NOT talking about Linux users as they would just get such things from their repo so all they would do is stick in the disc and find a bunch of files they simply wouldn't know what to do with. oh and then you get the "fun" of explaining what a BIOS is, how to get into it, how to switch it from whatever the OEM had it to having a removable drive be first boot, calming them down when they think you are "gonna break it", wow,talk about the gift that keeps on giving!
So let us assume the most likely scenario which is that these are Windows users who don't desire to learn how to switch operating systems for Xmas and think of some truly HELPFUL suggestions. Since I have actually made many a similar device in disc format I believe I can give some good ideas to get the ball rolling. you start with the always useful and free portable apps launcher that gives you a nice base to work off of and gives them a nice single.exe they can "clicky clicky". Then assuming they are happy with their AV and antimalware (which if not I'd put in the launcher for Avast Free and MalwareBytes under a heading of "antivirus") we move on to categories.
First we have LibreOffice which frankly I wouldn't have, while its a nice suite I've found most never use more than Writer and it wastes space so I'd go with AbiWord. For Internet Firefox is too slow and Chrome calls home so I would use either Comodo Dragon which to make portable simply install onto a folder on the flash while checking the "portable' box or QT Web which is a nice portable browser based on QT naturally. Personally I'd give them both, they are light and why not give them choice? Thunderbird, don't bother as even those that think they are on email are actually on webmail nowadays so use that space for InstantBird instead. Oh and throw in a few graphics programs just for fun, like Fotografix and Cornice as they are light and pretty simple.
Moving on to games we have Armagetron for a little Tron goodness, we have Atomic Tanks for a little Worms style fun, i know many will say Wesnoth but that game is a little hardcore if you're not already heavily into TBS so I'd skip it and if I were to put a strategy I'd go with Warzone 2100, Brutal Chess for a little 3D chess fun along with the always popular Texas Hold 'Em along with one of the several shooters and a nice Puzzle collection just to round things out.
Because unless they actually WANT to learn alternative OSes, the inside of their BIOS, and a completely new way of doing everything then saying 'Just put linux on it" really isn't a very nice gift now is it? I hope everyone sees that this gives them a simple useful gift with tons of software they can use NOW without needing to spend an hour or more being walked through changing the BIOS, how to find out if hardware has been detected, what to do if the wireless isn't working, etc. That is about as "fun" a way to spend
I read that and unlike you I watched the video where it was LAPTOPS all the way down. And unless they are planning on building this into a TV set again what is the point? At $199 its too high for the third world, hell at $199 its frankly too high for the first world as they are offering AMD dual core 14 inchers right now!
Yes it is really REALLY small, but so is a cell phone and those are $99 or even free (at least that is how the users see it) so again unless you are an Android developer this just seems like an awfully teeny tiny niche, no pun intended. It won't sell for schools as they all have software which runs X86, so no dice there and MSFT has made it clear they'll whizz copies of Starter at them with free Office to keep them from switching, just like you can get educational discounts from Apple.
Oh and if you mean "trolling" by calling FOSSies out when they come up with insane bullshit? Thanks, I consider a public service to the world to root out bullshit and expose it where ever it may be and as a retailer i'm in a better position than anyone to see their shit be broke. I can take a copy of WinXP RTM, slap it on a machine, update it to current (that's a decade of support if you are counting) and guess what? it WORKS. I can take a distro from just THREE years ago, update it to current and guess what? that shit be broke all to fuck! broke sound, broke video, broke wireless, broke, broke broke. that is why everyone else from BSD to Solaris went with a hardware ABI a decade ago, but Linus is too full of his own ego to ever allow it on Linux, so they get to enjoy windows 3.1 level of driver quality. don't take MY word for it, try it yourself with the distro of your choice!
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You said it isn't an android development toy, I have just pointed out that is EXACTLY what it is. Now back up your assertion that HDMI makes it something other than what it is or please accept your giant fail and go fuck off.
You're right about one thing, nobody cares...about cell phones. they get them for cheap or free with contract and toss them when the contract is up, never to give a crap about them again. And that is Tegra GPU, that is designed for HD video and NOT for hardcore gaming.
And even with your "sea change" big games are KILLING, or are you gonna say that people are gonna give that up for some Peggle?
Sure an AK maybe as the recoil on those bitches would get you but we are talking EVERY WEAPON IN THE GAME behaving like that! And being a country boy i've shot my fair share of weapons including some of those found in the game like the M16 and the 12 gauge pump and there is NO WAY you would miss with a 12 gauge slug at less than 20 feet! Hell at that distance you could cut someone in half with 3 well placed shots!
if they have a demo or something everybody here should try it just to see how "WTF?" a game can be. When you end up using a 9mm everywhere because even an H&K military weapon can't even hit a guy standing 20 feet away? Or even aiming you can't pop them with a 12 gauge at 12 feet? that is SERIOUSLY fucked up man, WTF were they thinking? I emptied SIX CLIPS in an M16 and had to go scrounge for more ammo because I couldn't even hit a single guy standing behind an apple cart from MAYBE 14 feet away, if that!
Thanks but I found out about the SSD problem the hard way. I had two gamer customers with more money than brains (one of them his grandma is on a Skulltrail because he has gone through THAT many machines chasing the benches that the Skulltrail was the slowest he had left over) and they both bought the SSD which at the time had the top bench. one was an OCZ I believe, the other Intel and BOTH had them go tits up in less than a year! I mean sure they got a replacement for free, but who cares about the drive? Their data was poof!
After trying to get their data back I decided i really really REALLY don't want SSD, thanks anyway. i can't remember the last time I had a HDD fail i didn't get ample warning, I'd get SMART errors or delayed write failed or heat issues or more noise or something. with those SSDs it was just...gone, that's it. Despite the story that SSDs are supposed to fail to read only that was not the case, hell even the BIOS wouldn't see the OCZ and the Intel would be seen but you'd try to get the data off and it'd just corrupt it.
So while Atwood at CH can say "go for it!" while listening to his $400 headphones I frankly don't want to be making hourly backups or not be sure if this time will be the time i flip the switch and get "boot drive not found". With 8Gb of RAM in both my desktop and netbook all the programs I use are loaded into RAM anyway so SSD isn't gonna win there, and with hybrid sleep frankly the machine is up and running before I can finish taking my first sip of coffee. The only places I've seen SSD kick HDDs is in boot and large application loading but the price and risk simply isn't worth it to me.
Yet TPB works everywhere, isn't that nice? the problem i have is they will NOT sell you want you want. all I want is to buy an .avi file, that's all. my dad has a nice little Nbox to watch his movies on so he doesn't have to hunt for DVDs and if they would sell .avi I would be gifting them to dad, and dad would be buying every movie and TV show he'd ever liked. but instead you have to go get a DVD, rip the DVD, transcode the DVD, all just to get the .avi...or you can go to TPB and skip all the bullshit.
As much as I hated his character on TNG I have to say Wil Wheaton was right, he said "make it simple, make it easy, give people what they want and they'll buy" and then gave as an example him buying a bunch of Dr Who episodes and then crossing the border into Canada and now he can't watch what he has already paid for and he said 'If I would have just downloaded it they would have worked". And that is the problem, their shit just don't cut it. I'm supposed to go buy a portable DVD burner just so i can legally watch movies that I have bought on my netbook? Fuck off media companies, Keep your damned DRMed shit or hoop jumping and just sell me a damned .avi already!
Actually I've toured the south a few times myself and known several indie bands and most of us put our stuff on P2P, thanks anyway. you know why? Because fans will STILL happily buy your CDs at the shows, along with the T-Shirts, caps, mugs, keyrings, mousepads (those were my idea BTW) and anything else to help out the band because guess what? they are FANS and want to see you get ahead.
BTW I probably shouldn't share this trick, as we were raking in the cash with it, but what the fuck, sharing is caring right? Indie guys, want to make a fuckton of money and sell out your swag? The magic word is "raffle". We would go to a local pawnshop in whatever town we were at, but a cool cheap guitar or bass, me or the guitarist would play it for 3 or 4 songs and at the end of the show we would all sign it and anybody who bought a piece of swag had their name in the drawing for the instrument.
Not only did audiences eat it up but we ended up with several hardcore fans that showed up at nearly every gig simply because they won something that made them feel closer to the band. We'd always let them sit with the wives and GFs and they were happy to hang up posters or post on FB or anything else that got out the word, simply because it made them feel like a winner.
It works, its cheap, makes you a hell of a lot more than the guitar costs, and creates really loyal long lasting fans. Last gig I played even though i wasn't with that band anymore and hadn't been in 5 years i had a guy show up and bring nearly 30 friends, all of whom bought swag, simply because 'hey man I still have that bass i won in Memphis, remember me?" so he and his buds got to hang out with the wives and GFs while we played and we had a beer afterward. Its a great way to get long term fans
. I hereby release this to the world as GPL, if you use the idea just give the old hairyfeet a little credit now and then, kay? Who knows one day i might be your opening act, or you may be mine. peace fellow bass players and never forget to show the ladies we bass players are ALWAYS good with our fingers!
Really? Where please? Because by sticking to the Steam sales I get some crazy cheap gaming goodness. I got five FEAR games over the Halloween for $7 by the time i threw in the games the boys wanted I got something like 9 games for $22.
Don't get me wrong i personally hope your right and they have free shipping! the cheapest I've found is Amazon and then you either pay $7 a game or you get gouged on the shipping, like how I paid a penny for Kane & Lynch II (yes I had to buy it just to see how bad it was and ZOFG its horrible!) and $4 to ship. Funnily enough the game uses Steam so it just ended up in my steam collection anyway.
BTW if anybody here likes MST3K and wants a game that would be perfect for MST3K heckling do NOT get K&L II, its just smelly, get "You Are Empty" which I swear has 20 foot killer mutant attack chickens! but K&L II I swear has the WORST targeting system in history! there is just no way you can have fun with a game where you empty a sub-machine gun less than 20 feet from a guy and do NOT get a single hit!
Nope, sorry, gotta disagree. before the flood dumb shit (who thought they would ALL be in the same damned place) I got 3Tb of HDDs for $93. Even the cheapest low rent SSDs would cost easily 20 times that to give me the same amount of space. Not to mention as a couple of my gamer customers found out SSDs currently really have to be judged by the hot/crazy scale as in smoking hot performance, crazy failure rates.
Maybe in a decade when they figure out how to make MLC as reliable as SLC and figure out all the controller bugs MAYBE, but even then i kinda doubt it. More likely what we will see is a next generation hybrid that will have 128Gb of SSD and 1 to 2Tb of HDD with the ability to turn off the HDD completely when in motion or not in use. With an aware OS you'd get the speed of SSD with the storage space of HDDs. Hell if you made the SSD module replaceable you wouldn't even have to give a shit about SSD failure, as the HDD could have a hidden partition with the OS backed up regularly and in the event of failure the HDD would boot from the hidden partition and tell you to have the SSD changed out.
As for TFA one thing I DO see flash replacing is DVD burners. i can easily see a day where you will have a single burner at home to whip off DVDs (I still say BD isn't gonna make it, they haven't been able to get the price per disc down low enough to make them suitable for small backups or handing out to friends) while all your other machines simply access the DVD burner through the network when they need it. I know i picked up a USB case for my DVD burner from my dead laptop when I switched to a netbook (they have them for like $7 on Amazon) but frankly i haven't needed it once. i just use my 16gb flash stick or the network for everything.
i just wish they'd come up with a cheap replacement for DVDs for archiving. what we need is something that backs up say 100Gb or 200Gb that is close to the price of blank DVDs, or hell even $2 a pop for that amount of space would probably sell. have it on the PCIe bus and you could probably move the data at a decent enough clip but for backing up data that is gonna sit for years you still really haven't seen anything come close to DVD. i have 1X DVDs i burned with my very first burner that are still just as easy to read as the day i bought them.
Meh, I like mashed potatoes on mine. if you have never tried it it is really great, just swing by the KFC after picking up a pizza if you don't feel like making it yourself although homemade of course is best. just put a nice thin and even layer on top, the potatoes absorb the taste of the pizza and give it a nice creamy texture on top, especially good if you have lots of meat and cheese on there.
As for TFA that frankly doesn't surprise me, since when has bureaucratic BS and common sense EVER gone together? I mean this IS the same bunch that made them strip Windows Media Player out of Windows so all the retailers ended up with discs nobody wanted. like it was REALLY so hard to download iTunes? same thing with that stupid browser ballot crap. Hell IE had already became a joke, like "IE is the thing you use to download a browser" rimshot.
At least I have to give them credit for not being complete corporate whores like here in the USA. Since Citizens united I'm frankly shocked that the tobacco and booze companies haven't bribed...err i mean contributed to their campaign funds, to get the old "cigarettes are good for you!" and the booze jingles put back on the air. Our politicians are such whores I bet all it would take is a million or so each and the promise to hire one of their relatives to a lobbying group.
Ya know, that is pretty damned sad when you are so hard up to prove your failure isn't a heap of fail that you have to accuse others of being the same. old APK has been on CNet since the 1990s, and probably been on /. just as long and I had never even heard of this place since I quit using OS/2 as my main system in 01.
Want to know what is pathetic? I gave link after link and ALL you can do is "Its a M$ conspiracy you..you you dirty poo poo head!" I have shown OEMS don't want your shit, i've shown USERS don't want your shit, and I've shown that your numbers are worse than a 7 year old Java crap cell phone OS that is sold at Fred's on $8 phones.
But you go ahead and accuse me of being APK or twitter or hell john Holmes, since you do seem to slobber at my large man meat so...LOL!
What are you smoking, cause I'd like some! Smartphones and netpads? yeah for angry birds maybe, you sure as hell ain't gonna get 1080p HD3D on one of those devices. And don't bring up that streaming game service because the bandwidth simply isn't there except for a handful of major markets.
Those devices are fine...for your mom. someone who wants to play columns or Angry birds or maybe some shooter that looks like it was written for a first gen PS2, but the rest of the planet has gotten spoiled to the big 3D physics heavy boom fest. Hell the easiest sales I've ever had were for HTPCs where i just fire up just Cause II and set off some remote charges on the cooling towers. When people see my guy walk into the sunset while half the world crumbles around him into fire and debris? it is "Thank you come again" and cash the check.
This is the US of fricking A my friend, we like big cars, big screens, and big graphics.
Yes but TFA is specifically talking about new machines like netbooks. i have to say that I too thought I would need one when i switched to a netbook, even bought an external USB case for the DVD burner that was in my old laptop....and I've never plugged it in past testing that it worked.
Once I picked up a 16Gb flash drive I've found I don't hardly need DVDs anymore. for my older games there are disc images and Alcohol 52% and for newer there is Steam. Frankly the ONLY ones who haven't joined the new way of doing things is the damned MPAA who won't simply sell you an AVI file, nope you got to have a DVD burner to rip it and transcode it. Is it any wonder TPB is so popular?
I'm sorry if I wasn't clear, I have NO problem with FOSS users, or those that enjoy ANY tech for that matter. I myself ran OS/2 long after everyone else abandoned ship. No there is a BIG difference between a FOSS enthusiast and what I call a "FOSSie" which is more like a Moonie or other cultist in their flagrant disregard for reality.
They will say "We don't want users" on a post about "Year of the Linux desktop" they will provide a 4 page list of programs written by separate groups and not even working when asked for a replacement for a piece of software where FOSS doesn't actually HAVE a replacement, as I witnessed here when someone asked about a replacement for the AD+Exchange+Sharepoint+Group Policy integration in WinServer, they will SCREAM that "Linux is ready for grandma!" and then when i point out that Dell, one of the largest OEMs on the planet, can't allow their Ubuntu machines to update because it breaks the drivers I get cursed and called a "M$ shill dirty poo poo head" and get followed around by anon trolls for a week for daring to point out reality with citations.
So I doubt VERY seriously you would have a problem with my posts. you probably already accept that in its current form Linux isn't ready for Suzy the checkout girl, you don't mind having to deal with CLI, in fact you probably enjoy it, and you accept that to become as friendly as OSX and Windows you would have to change things you simply don't want to. That's fine, great, I hope you have many years of happy Linux computing. but you sir are NOT a FOSSie, as a FOSSie will argue up and down with you that you can force users to "embrace the power of CLI" like its the God damned force, they cook up one crazy scenario after another of Linux "winning the hearts and minds" without actually having to change its geek heavy design, and will scream bloody murder when you point out that for everyone else CLI has been dead since WinXP and OSX 10.1.
Just accept reality, is that SO hard? If you don't change you won't get users, as i have posted repeatedly the amount of returns and problems that Linux in its current form causes to OEMs. Dell won't even publish what it "makes" on its Ubuntu sales because it is commonly believed that having to hire their own devs and run their own repos has left them in the red, even with the higher price and lower quality parts of the Ubuntu offerings.
THIS sir is reality, i'm not making this stuff up or trolling, I could wallpaper this page with links to back me up. Instead of accepting these facts which I'm sure you do a FOSSie will pray for mod points and follow me around for two weeks posting as anon like they did last month just so they could post "Die you fat fucker die!" over and over AND OVER. And THAT sir is the difference between a FOSS enthusiast and a FOSSie. the fact that you were able to post intelligently instead of spouting memes makes be believe you are the former and not the latter.
Its not just Ubuntu friend, I've had the same problems with Windows XP and 7 with Dragon, Firefox, and Opera. I don't allow IE on my systems (you look at every patch Tuesday and more than half of it is IE) and I'm certainly not gonna compromise the security of systems i use to make money to sign a petition. As another pointed out the EFF and several other have made it as easy as fill in your info, one even has a FB login so you don't have to fill out anything if you already have a FB account.
To me this extra hoop jumping is just a way for them to laugh before they tear up your petition and throw it away, just look at the responses from the other petitions which was the most flowery "Fuck off you peasant you have no monies LOL!" troll I've ever seen. frankly I would have had more respect for the man if he simply would have wadded them up on camera and threw them away, because the thick bullshit he spewed was clearly designed to tell you "I don't give a FUCK what you think!" while not giving the other team a nice soundbyte, that's all.
So as my late grandma put it, who voted in every election from the roaring 20s only to quit in the late 80s and refused up to her death last year to participate anymore, "Why bother, they are only gonna ignore you anyway" and sadly grandma was right. Nothing will change until Goldman Sachs and their friends have dumped all their toxic debt on the fed, we are looking at triple what our current debt is and the fed cranks the presses so hard that bread is $30 a loaf and unemployment is at 45%+. Then we shall have what the rest of the world is having, our very own Arab spring. but until then you are just shouting in a closet while the rich rob and scam.
As far as cars go? No we don't. What we have is a "branded" product where most of the guts come from somewhere else, often a LOT of somewhere elses, and then are simply thrown together here. Look at the Ranger which I drive, its a nice truck but frankly its more Mazda than Ford anymore and for everyone outside the USA it is ALL Mazda with a Ford decal.
And how much of that economy is fictional products, ala IP? I bet if you took California out of the equation we'd drop off the map and biggest thing cali has is Hollywood. Since digital makes it beyond simple to just copy anything you want (a friend went to Asia and said they have movies being sold on every street corner and you can buy Windows 7 all versions on a thumbstick. I wish he would have thought to buy me a Win 7 stick, it was only $6 US) I have to wonder how much longer THAt will last.
Finally here is a figure that will make you want to puke, in just the last decade the USA has lost 21,000 factories although I'd suggest that if you have eaten recently don't click on the link as the data they have will piss you off and ruin your digestion. We were ONCE a truly great nation, but sadly those days are long gone. The "get a better education and you'll compete!" lie has been driven through with a stake thanks to offshoring, H1-Bs, and so many college educated about to default on their loans simply because there is no way to EVER pay them back when everyone is having to compete with 300 other guys for scraps. I wonder if one day people will look back at the cold war years like they did with the old "the sun never sets on the British empire" days, because it is pretty obvious at least to me our good days are over and BRIC is coming to the top of the heap now.
It has nothing to do with sense I'm afraid and everything to do with big fat checks. Anybody who thought it would be different when Obama chose Biden as VP was sadly deluded. The reps suck the military defense contractor cock, the dems suck off big media, and all because of big fat checks.
Hell it has gotten so damned bad it is used as the punchline for jokes, like Colbert did the other day when he told OWS that they needed to "put down the wacky tobacky and give that money to a super packy" so they could just buy politicians like the corps do!
Anybody that thinks that voting or protesting or anything other than outright bribery of our corrupt to the bone officials works anymore is sadly mistaken. just look at the petition the White house which has devolved to the point one of the fastest growing petitions basically says 'Please quit ignoring us and lying to us'. Have NO doubt they will get SOPA, hell they will probably have Nancy Grace and the other talking heads talk about how them other countries "are full of perverts!" and we'll get our own great firewall.
To those in other countries that may be affected by America...please don't blame the American people, we no longer have any say in our own country anymore and nothing short of armed revolt will change that. When the megacorps are done bleeding this country and we get stuck with every bit of bad debt from every failed "investment" they've ever done and are looking at $20 a loaf bread and 45%+ unemployment I'm sure that day will come, but until then we really can't do anything about what is going on here, as OWS found out. sorry.
If you got modded down for responding to me sorry Ratzo, the "FOSSies" really don't like me so in the future you might not want to respond to any of my posts. They go in spurts, I had one follow me around for a couple of weeks last month just so he could mod down and post anon "Fuck off and die fat fuck" over and over and over. FOSSies really don't like it when you point out their bullshit and lies I've found. Sorry.
Bimbo Newton Crosby, what this does is gives the big boys a really nice weapon to shut down the indies. If you'll remember one of the big corps (I think it was Sony, not sure as its early here) finally admitted all the stinks they've been throwing wasn't over IP but over control and as more and more people spend more and more time on the net they are feeling their grip on what the masses see and hear slipping away.
For the first time in history we are seeing artists bypass the gatekeepers completely, going from 'viral sensation' to nationally known artist and this scares the living fuck out of them. They know in the age of YouTube and Twitter and a bazillion other non controlled communication circuits their ability to force artists into assraping contracts where they are basically nothing but cogs and "all your IP belong to us" is becoming a thing of the past.
So all this will do is exactly what you have surmised and allow them to bury anyone who doesn't "play ball" to be crushed by endless trolling. While the big boys have their own law firms the little guys simply won't be able to survive endless lawsuits and will either cave in or go under.
Sadly the only way we have to fight back anymore is massive piracy, there simply is nothing else. Any drops in their revenue they will blame on piracy anyway so boycotts do nothing, as the petitions which have gotten to the point there is actually a petition that says "Please quit ignoring us" prove if you don't have the money to bribe your congressman he sure as fuck isn't going to listen to you, so all that is left is the geeks.
So please geeks, please keep working on anonymous distributed P2P and continue to work to make it so damned simple that Limewire looks like compiling your own kernel. The ONLY way we are gonna get rid of these bastards is to bleed them to death, there is simply no other choices left now. If all your IP laws are unjust and the people no longer have a say at the table the only just thing to do is completely ignore those unjust laws. Does anyone truly believe that if We, The People had any say anymore we would have crap like SOPA or "forever minus a single day" copyright laws?
That is the part I don't get about TFA. The article blathers on about 'Ford did this' and 'Ford did that' but all the ads I saw talked about how it was MSFT's software, so which is it? Is Ford merely calling up their contact at MSFT and saying "We want this feature and do something about this problem" or did they essentially hire MSFT to just write them the OS and hand them the source code which they are having to add features and fixes in house?
Not to mention look up on Yahoo News the latest story on Solyndra (I believe the show is called marketwatch) where an author that actually looked at Obama's 'green tech initiative' found that out of TWENTY billion spent SIXTEEN billion was given to cronies like Al Gore, and that in many cases there wasn't even a review process! One company whose income last year was 13 million and which had NEVER made a profit got 1.3 BILLION with a B in money this year! The author then looked into the background of the company and found it a who's who of campaign donors.
What do this have to do with TFA? simply this, it really doesn't matter what IPCC or anyone else says about the weather as the scammers have come in and the ONLY thing that will get done is the transfer of money from your pocket to theirs, that's it. Anything else and they don't make massive profits by cranking out some panels in China and calling it "green" at a 4000% markup or get billions to build some plant in the desert. they know fear helps them scam money so the nastier things get the more they profit. they profit on food and water shortages, they profit on locking up the IP behind a bazillion patents, they profit by having your taxes diverted into their pockets.
The whole "green" thing, while once a noble idea about taking care of our planet, has become a "heads I win, tails you lose" situation where it frankly doesn't matter WHAT happens to the climate as those elite at the top make money on every possible angle. Oh and before anyone says i'm right wing watch Marketwatch, he names several Rs that likewise pocketed crazy amounts of money for their friends as well as had some nice insider trading going on, like Bacus from AZ that was shorting the economy after getting reports from Bernanke.
While this is true I think they have an ace in their sleeve and I'm not talking about that POS Windows 8, aka Ballmer's Folly. i'm talking about the X720 which the specs have slowly but surely been leaking and is looking to have either an HD5xxx or 6xxx Radeon GPU and be pretty damned loaded.
I have a feeling MSFT is gonna quietly (while having them sign NDAs up the ass and making it clear ANY leaks that get traced back to them they can kiss XBLA and DLC goodbye) have their top devs quietly cooking up X720 content with MSFT putting out a pretty wild Halo edition (possibly a remix of the first 3 in HD 3D) and then they are gonna spring that sucker when nobody expects it to catch Sony with their pants down. The Halo and Madden fans alone will make it a HUGE hit, money will be rolling and I'm betting they drop the X360 down to $99 and use it like Sony has the PS2 to cover the lower price points.
Don't forget the X360 has been making damned good money these past couple of years and with the exception of Japan which is VERY nationalistic and hasn't had a non Japanese consoles take the top spot in nearly 30 years it has taken a pretty good chunk of the market. if they spring the X720 with kick as hardware and some killer launch titles they are gonna possibly kill Sony outright while giving the casual market to Nintendo. If they play it right they can back up the money truck to the vault and start loading it up.
And did YOU miss the point that without storage its a VERY expensive Android development platform? what EXACTLY are you gonna do with it plugged into an HDMI, hmmm? Run angry birds? You sure aren't gonna surf with it because there is NO way to put a decent wireless keyboard and mouse or wireless remote because of drivers, again storage is gonna be a serious issue, so lets hear EXACTLY what this miracle HDMI plug is gonna do for you friend, and please remember we are talking $199 which at that price one can get a C-60 laptop with HDMI that does a hell of a lot more.
So instead of just being a smarmy smartass how about putting your money where your mouth and explaining EXACTLY what makes this worth $199?
Then you sir are a lucky bastard. Here we have Staples (which i refuse to EVAR enter after their management let their employees rig Black Friday a few years back and hand out the limited items to their friends), we have Worst Buy (which you saw from my post my first hand exp dealing with them) and you have Wally World or the land of overpriced Chinese crap, where a 100 pack of blank DVDs will cost you nearly $50.
So all those congress critters saying "you should buy local!" and threatening taxing the Internet is wasting their breath as i'd rather pay the taxes and get a decent price on the stuff I actually need as to pay $32 for an 8Gb flash drive or $28 for a 50 pack of blank DVDs. and here if the PC isn't brand new you can give it up, they'll have ONE stick of older RAM, always 1gb and always nearly $50. No thanks.
That will only be useful IF and this are pretty big IFs 1.- They even know what an alternative OS is and want to run one, and 2.- You have some way to test that Ubuntu will have ALL of the drivers for the myriad of hardware these people have so it all "just works" OOTB.
Since he mentions things such as games it is most likely he is NOT talking about Linux users as they would just get such things from their repo so all they would do is stick in the disc and find a bunch of files they simply wouldn't know what to do with. oh and then you get the "fun" of explaining what a BIOS is, how to get into it, how to switch it from whatever the OEM had it to having a removable drive be first boot, calming them down when they think you are "gonna break it", wow,talk about the gift that keeps on giving!
So let us assume the most likely scenario which is that these are Windows users who don't desire to learn how to switch operating systems for Xmas and think of some truly HELPFUL suggestions. Since I have actually made many a similar device in disc format I believe I can give some good ideas to get the ball rolling. you start with the always useful and free portable apps launcher that gives you a nice base to work off of and gives them a nice single .exe they can "clicky clicky". Then assuming they are happy with their AV and antimalware (which if not I'd put in the launcher for Avast Free and MalwareBytes under a heading of "antivirus") we move on to categories.
First we have LibreOffice which frankly I wouldn't have, while its a nice suite I've found most never use more than Writer and it wastes space so I'd go with AbiWord. For Internet Firefox is too slow and Chrome calls home so I would use either Comodo Dragon which to make portable simply install onto a folder on the flash while checking the "portable' box or QT Web which is a nice portable browser based on QT naturally. Personally I'd give them both, they are light and why not give them choice? Thunderbird, don't bother as even those that think they are on email are actually on webmail nowadays so use that space for InstantBird instead. Oh and throw in a few graphics programs just for fun, like Fotografix and Cornice as they are light and pretty simple.
Moving on to games we have Armagetron for a little Tron goodness, we have Atomic Tanks for a little Worms style fun, i know many will say Wesnoth but that game is a little hardcore if you're not already heavily into TBS so I'd skip it and if I were to put a strategy I'd go with Warzone 2100, Brutal Chess for a little 3D chess fun along with the always popular Texas Hold 'Em along with one of the several shooters and a nice Puzzle collection just to round things out.
Because unless they actually WANT to learn alternative OSes, the inside of their BIOS, and a completely new way of doing everything then saying 'Just put linux on it" really isn't a very nice gift now is it? I hope everyone sees that this gives them a simple useful gift with tons of software they can use NOW without needing to spend an hour or more being walked through changing the BIOS, how to find out if hardware has been detected, what to do if the wireless isn't working, etc. That is about as "fun" a way to spend
I read that and unlike you I watched the video where it was LAPTOPS all the way down. And unless they are planning on building this into a TV set again what is the point? At $199 its too high for the third world, hell at $199 its frankly too high for the first world as they are offering AMD dual core 14 inchers right now!
Yes it is really REALLY small, but so is a cell phone and those are $99 or even free (at least that is how the users see it) so again unless you are an Android developer this just seems like an awfully teeny tiny niche, no pun intended. It won't sell for schools as they all have software which runs X86, so no dice there and MSFT has made it clear they'll whizz copies of Starter at them with free Office to keep them from switching, just like you can get educational discounts from Apple.
Oh and if you mean "trolling" by calling FOSSies out when they come up with insane bullshit? Thanks, I consider a public service to the world to root out bullshit and expose it where ever it may be and as a retailer i'm in a better position than anyone to see their shit be broke. I can take a copy of WinXP RTM, slap it on a machine, update it to current (that's a decade of support if you are counting) and guess what? it WORKS. I can take a distro from just THREE years ago, update it to current and guess what? that shit be broke all to fuck! broke sound, broke video, broke wireless, broke, broke broke. that is why everyone else from BSD to Solaris went with a hardware ABI a decade ago, but Linus is too full of his own ego to ever allow it on Linux, so they get to enjoy windows 3.1 level of driver quality. don't take MY word for it, try it yourself with the distro of your choice!