The EliteBook is definitely awesome. I was considering that as well, but it was out of my price range and I didn't want to save for something like that (which I didn't need anyway).
The Freshman seem to like it...and NotebookReview claims that it's pretty bulletproof. Now, the REAL question of truth is how long before THEIR motherboards go out! (My nw8240 had its motherboard and LCD swapped twice. Their screens definitely went down in quality.)
2) Hard drive mode support. Almost every other player lets you just view your video/mp3 files on the device as a hard drive and copy files back and forth as you see fit without using ANY software other than your operating system. You want to sync your files? Use iTunes. Nevermind that it's one of the buggiest/bloated/unintuitive/god awful pieces of software I've ever used. You're stuck with it.
Unless you just enable hard drive mode support on the ipod. If you do it shows up as a hard drive just fine. I know it is hard to check a box these days though.
This is incorrect. The iPhone/iPod Touch do not have support for disk mode, and cannot be seen as removable devices under Windows or OS X. The only way to communicate with them in anyway simliar to this functionality is by either using proprietary software that interfaces with the Apple Mobile USB Driver OR by using SSH to SFTP files into it or traverse its tree structure in the shell.
Winamp can sync with the iPhone/iPod Touch, but it's a bit of a dangerous feat, considering how it has totally destroyed my library on multiple occassions.
Forgot to add a few points to the above post; sorry for the length! A lot of the people I know who are quite savvy with computers, development or both have also been switching over to Macs. I think they are fantastic machines; they are extremely well-built, damn light, have the right balance between form and function and are nowhere near as expensive as they used to be. (They can be had for really good prices on eBay if one searches diligently enough.) I didn't get one because I felt like I would get strong buyer's remorse if I put down the cash. It's also a bit limiting; MBPs, for instance, have permanent batteries and no docks, both of which are pretty critical to me. (I know that their batteries are so well-designed that they won't need to be replaced as often, but it's not assuring to know that I can't do it easily). Also, the only issue I've encountered on this laptop so far is that the LED screen, while being very, very good (and very, very, VERY bright), emits a faint high-pitched buzz when it's displaying bright colors. I'm thinking that this is inherent to LED-backlit panels, but I'm unsure. Can someone clarify this?
I LOVED the R series when I had one! The R40 was a fantastic computer...in fact, I might get another one for my media center! It was fast, pretty light and pretty well built for a consumer PC. Also supported Linux really, really well. The screen was a little crap, but at that price point, would you care?
Heck, I'd say that if you aren't into the latest and greatest, pick one of these up for yourself. Last time I bought a R41, it was something like $200. Or get it as a backup. Great machine!
I just bought a new laptop to replace the mobile workstation our school gives us (HP nw8240 for the 2005 class; now you know where I go to school!). While that computer was, even to today's standards, pretty freaking fast, I had no warranty on it and saw that the LCD was going at some points.
Instead of waiting a few months, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade two weeks ago. I was deliberating between a non-unibody Macbook Pro, a Dell Precision M-series and a Latitude E-series. Since I commute and am moving around a lot, I really wanted a computer that could take a bit of a beating and hold a decent charge, all while still being not being as powerful and svelte as my old machine.
In the end, I landed up getting a Latitude E6500 with the Intel Core 2 Duo CPU (P8600 - 2.4GHz with 3MB L2 Cache), 2GB of RAM (though the eBay ad advertised it as having 3GB...bastards:p), 80GB SATA hard drive, nVIDIA Quadro NVS 160M 256MB discrete graphics (not good for Crysis, but good enough for a non-gamer like myself:D), 15.4" LED WXGA LCD and an integrated webcame (VERY IMPORTANT) for $695 shipped.
This thing is awesome. Scratch that; it's FREAKING awesome. It runs Windows 7 like a Cadillac, looks damn good, has THE perfect keyboard (no, really...it's really, really good) and is pretty light (something like six pounds). It's 6-cell battery usually lasts me 3.5 hours, which is perfect for me. Thus, doing development work on it (right now, I'm working on projects in C, though I mainly do a good amount of scripting and am learning C# in the future) is just fantastic. You might want a bigger LCD; they have a WUXGA LED screen available, which I hear is phenomenal. I personally wanted something with a lower-resolution, as I hardly use 1920x1200 anyway (and most mobile graphics cards can't push that many pixels smoothly anyway when under load).
To add, I can get the fingerprint sensor, Bluetooth module and LED-backlit keyboard from Dell (more like from eBay) when I need it. Oh, and it came with a 3-year limited warranty, which isn't business-class, but it's perfect for me.
In short: Macbooks are still overpriced, and AppleCare still comes separately. My Latitude does EVERYTHING a Macbook would do (yes, it even runs OS X successfully)...while looking just as good and with more AWESOME.
We aren't? I mean, it's not like the brain isn't simulatiously thinking about what's for breakfast, lunch and dinner, the work due for the week, the work due for NEXT week, the work due LAST week that was done but needed thinking about, an old girlfriend, sex with said girlfriend, and your reaction to reading this, along with your decision to respond to it...
We definitely think in a multi-threaded fashion, which I think is well-aligned with Google's vision in Wave.
I played with Google Wave for a (very) short time, and it definitely has some strong potential to be a key social networking tool in the future. It's kind of like Facebook mixed with IRC, IM and email...which, in other words, makes it a JUGGERNAUT of a platform to have.
I think it was overhyped, but so was the iPhone before its launch...
I would agree completely if the time constraint was lifted, but it might be safer to build up something that still requires a significant amount of design work, but is somewhat guided (i.e. there are instructions...but to use the instructions, you need to learn this and that).
What I don't recommend, especially considering that this seems to be a general-purpose kind of thing, is writing software. The problem with doing this is that while it is mentally stimulating, and the end result can definitely be appreciable, the amount of time to get there varies from person to person, and the amount of fun in getting there is normally minimal. (If anything, the amount of frustration is really what increases, as these kids will grow more and more tired of not having their thing work out for them.)
Do-it-yourself Lego robot. Not very hard to cook up, and kids will enjoy the thrill of killing other robots in competition. (Because there WILL be a competition.)
Playing music off of Game Boys (i.e. 8-bit). I haven't done this, but I'm sure it could be fun.
Find stuff that's very hand-on (especially if they're younger), but involves a fair share of thinking and conceptualization. You don't want TOO much of that, though (by too much, I mean whole sessions of just thinking and no doing); that will become boring for younger kids.
That's good and all...it also takes quite a bit of time to find the app, download the app, and then install the app (if it installs in the first place, since most developers have different CABs for different versions and would get most regular users confused). Microsoft has its own store in the works, but what guarantee is there that it won't be as restrictive or patrolling as the Apple and Palm solutions?
I'm sure that the companies and individuals that heavily dealt with the inception of the smartphone knew that this was an inevitability. The more demanding a service becomes, the more the service has to provide; simple as that.
I think that fleeing from the problem --- mobile users demanding more ways to use their powerful devices --- is NOT the way to handle it. Can you really consider re-separating the mobile phone, media player and internet device for the sake of battery life progress? I know that the intention is not this extreme, but even the consideration of such a notion does technically promote these lines of thinking.
Like overcoming Moore's Law, this is a problem that needs to be fought. Many research groups are looking into new types of battery cells which are safer and more power-efficient. Mobile operating systems are increasingly recognizing problematic areas in power consumption, and are addressing them readily.
What I think Jobs is or will land up doing is imposing some kind of far-fetched condition for future iPhones; something like, "Make the iPhone run for two or three days with 3G and wireless enabled, Twitter and AIM in the background (via push notification) and my Bob Dylan collection going." Seems impossible...until their jobs are on the line.
This is kind of like the car that parks in the "dangerous" areas with its doors and trunk unlocked and open.
The "baddies" go after the property that's moderately challenging to steal, not after these. Either there's nothing worth taking or it's something they shouldn't take.
I didn't think much of it before; use a timeout, and there you have it. However, I can see the challenge being posed here: the only immediately obvious solution to determining whether a person's there or not is by timing inactivity. As mentioned in the article, determining an "inactive threshold" requires quite a bit of fine tuning and knowledge of usability with the obvious risk of malicious adversaries having access to that open channel for the amount of time the channel is open.
First thing I could think of, at least for laptop users with integrated cameras, is using light mapping to determine whether the computer user is physically there or not. Facial biometrics could be applied, but I think that would be way too computationally intensive (b/c if the face moves even a slight bit, the hash would need to be completely recalculated. Wouldn't it be harsh if we had to check our account balances completely frozen!). However, I'm sure there is some research out there that shows what an average light (luminance) distribution should look like without the person actually being there. Of course, this is flawed, since it only works with laptops that have integrated cameras and cannot distinguish one person from another.
Then, I thought a few other things, and realized that any other somewhat obvious solution probably involves gathering the user's current location and measuring displacement between the user and computer somehow. These would raise great challenges regarding user privacy, though I think that people are becoming much more complacent with privacy violations for security enhancements and/or personal leisure a la Google and Facebook (myself included).
Well, from the article, I'm getting the gist that they are only fueling the fire further. IT departments should be doing what they can to GET OFF IE6 instead of using software like this to breathe new life into it!
Upgrading to IE7 and IE8, as specified in the article, makes this add-on irrelevant. On a side note, I'm also concerned about the heavy-handedness Google has nowadays. I understand that their products constitute a LARGE portion of internet traffic, but it's kind of scary to think that their analytics code IS all over the web....
I don't think that Windows Mobile was a screwed up product. I think that its latest competition is starting to reveal just how outdated the platform is.
Ever since I can remember (user since Smartphone 2002 with the MPx200), WinMo devices were designed to be the jack-of-all-trades. You could check your email on them, play music and videos, surf the web and run most of the apps like being on a PC. Unfortunately, this usually means they inherently become the master-of-none, as their background processes would often cause lock-ups, memory leaks and other baddies and had horribly high power consumption, especially when compared to the RIM and Palm devices.
Today, iPhone can do those same tasks faster, easier and much more elegantly than WinMo could ever dream of doing. Blackberries are still the swiss-knife of corporate and personal email collaboration, but are now able to do media fairly well (though they still suck horrendously for internet browsing). Even Palm, which is on life support, can compete with WebOS. Then there's Android which basically claims ALL advantages Windows Mobile use to have, but in a much more elegant fashion...
On top of all of this, the fact that service providers always had to customize Windows Mobile to extremes (i.e. HTC TouchFLO3D, Palm's customizations, etc.) makes jumping to Android and, for Palm, WebOS that much more attractive. On its face, Windows Mobile 6.1 is a BEAR to use, especially when compared against other devices. (Ever try using that TINY TINY keyboard with your fingers? Sure, the stylus can do it...but who wants to use a stylus anymore?) Windows Mobile 6.5 is getting there, but still has a lot of work to do. (Moving the bar to the bottom is a great step ahead.) Why wouldn't anyone want to save time and money? (As an aside, HTC didn't really need to provide SenseUI for Android, as Android is pretty decent from a usability standpoint as-is, but I guess having TouchFLO3D there made it easier to port.)
Either way, Microsoft was never really known for innovation, and because of this, I highly doubt that even Mobile 7 can really save their mobile division at this point. It's a has-been.
Now that I think about it, I always thought that the Internet was "cloud-like" in nature, since we as Internet users have to upload/download data between several (hypothetically) ethereal servers/databases "in the sky" (relative to our location, anyway).
This "cloud computing" business kind of sounds like how Web 2.0 was utilized when that first "came out."
IANAL, but if you knew the intent of the person wishing to find those bomb-making instructions, and you help him anyway, wouldn't that make you an accomplice to the crime?
If that's the case, then why is he playing hard-to-get with his LV home? The only thing I could think of is that it's a time suck to allow some other hidden process to complete...
As I'm sure other comments below have already addressed, systems that have Windows Firewall on and left at default AND/OR systems behind a firewall that supports SPI will not have problems. A really, really, REALLY big part of me says that the Navy's covered.
Slashdot Mirror
The EliteBook is definitely awesome. I was considering that as well, but it was out of my price range and I didn't want to save for something like that (which I didn't need anyway).
The Freshman seem to like it...and NotebookReview claims that it's pretty bulletproof. Now, the REAL question of truth is how long before THEIR motherboards go out! (My nw8240 had its motherboard and LCD swapped twice. Their screens definitely went down in quality.)
2) Hard drive mode support. Almost every other player lets you just view your video/mp3 files on the device as a hard drive and copy files back and forth as you see fit without using ANY software other than your operating system. You want to sync your files? Use iTunes. Nevermind that it's one of the buggiest/bloated/unintuitive/god awful pieces of software I've ever used. You're stuck with it.
Unless you just enable hard drive mode support on the ipod. If you do it shows up as a hard drive just fine. I know it is hard to check a box these days though.
This is incorrect. The iPhone/iPod Touch do not have support for disk mode, and cannot be seen as removable devices under Windows or OS X. The only way to communicate with them in anyway simliar to this functionality is by either using proprietary software that interfaces with the Apple Mobile USB Driver OR by using SSH to SFTP files into it or traverse its tree structure in the shell.
Winamp can sync with the iPhone/iPod Touch, but it's a bit of a dangerous feat, considering how it has totally destroyed my library on multiple occassions.
Forgot to add a few points to the above post; sorry for the length!
A lot of the people I know who are quite savvy with computers, development or both have also been switching over to Macs. I think they are fantastic machines; they are extremely well-built, damn light, have the right balance between form and function and are nowhere near as expensive as they used to be. (They can be had for really good prices on eBay if one searches diligently enough.) I didn't get one because I felt like I would get strong buyer's remorse if I put down the cash. It's also a bit limiting; MBPs, for instance, have permanent batteries and no docks, both of which are pretty critical to me. (I know that their batteries are so well-designed that they won't need to be replaced as often, but it's not assuring to know that I can't do it easily).
Also, the only issue I've encountered on this laptop so far is that the LED screen, while being very, very good (and very, very, VERY bright), emits a faint high-pitched buzz when it's displaying bright colors. I'm thinking that this is inherent to LED-backlit panels, but I'm unsure. Can someone clarify this?
I LOVED the R series when I had one! The R40 was a fantastic computer...in fact, I might get another one for my media center! It was fast, pretty light and pretty well built for a consumer PC. Also supported Linux really, really well. The screen was a little crap, but at that price point, would you care?
Heck, I'd say that if you aren't into the latest and greatest, pick one of these up for yourself. Last time I bought a R41, it was something like $200. Or get it as a backup. Great machine!
I just bought a new laptop to replace the mobile workstation our school gives us (HP nw8240 for the 2005 class; now you know where I go to school!). While that computer was, even to today's standards, pretty freaking fast, I had no warranty on it and saw that the LCD was going at some points.
Instead of waiting a few months, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade two weeks ago. I was deliberating between a non-unibody Macbook Pro, a Dell Precision M-series and a Latitude E-series. Since I commute and am moving around a lot, I really wanted a computer that could take a bit of a beating and hold a decent charge, all while still being not being as powerful and svelte as my old machine.
In the end, I landed up getting a Latitude E6500 with the Intel Core 2 Duo CPU (P8600 - 2.4GHz with 3MB L2 Cache), 2GB of RAM (though the eBay ad advertised it as having 3GB...bastards :p), 80GB SATA hard drive, nVIDIA Quadro NVS 160M 256MB discrete graphics (not good for Crysis, but good enough for a non-gamer like myself :D), 15.4" LED WXGA LCD and an integrated webcame (VERY IMPORTANT) for $695 shipped.
This thing is awesome. Scratch that; it's FREAKING awesome. It runs Windows 7 like a Cadillac, looks damn good, has THE perfect keyboard (no, really...it's really, really good) and is pretty light (something like six pounds). It's 6-cell battery usually lasts me 3.5 hours, which is perfect for me. Thus, doing development work on it (right now, I'm working on projects in C, though I mainly do a good amount of scripting and am learning C# in the future) is just fantastic. You might want a bigger LCD; they have a WUXGA LED screen available, which I hear is phenomenal. I personally wanted something with a lower-resolution, as I hardly use 1920x1200 anyway (and most mobile graphics cards can't push that many pixels smoothly anyway when under load).
To add, I can get the fingerprint sensor, Bluetooth module and LED-backlit keyboard from Dell (more like from eBay) when I need it. Oh, and it came with a 3-year limited warranty, which isn't business-class, but it's perfect for me.
In short: Macbooks are still overpriced, and AppleCare still comes separately. My Latitude does EVERYTHING a Macbook would do (yes, it even runs OS X successfully)...while looking just as good and with more AWESOME.
I don't know what you're talking about. I d---OH LOOK, A DUCK
We aren't? I mean, it's not like the brain isn't simulatiously thinking about what's for breakfast, lunch and dinner, the work due for the week, the work due for NEXT week, the work due LAST week that was done but needed thinking about, an old girlfriend, sex with said girlfriend, and your reaction to reading this, along with your decision to respond to it...
We definitely think in a multi-threaded fashion, which I think is well-aligned with Google's vision in Wave.
I played with Google Wave for a (very) short time, and it definitely has some strong potential to be a key social networking tool in the future. It's kind of like Facebook mixed with IRC, IM and email...which, in other words, makes it a JUGGERNAUT of a platform to have.
I think it was overhyped, but so was the iPhone before its launch...
Ni hao Kai Lin takes care of that.
Please don't tell me you actually find that interesting. Good training for the corporation; not so good for students to actually have some fun.
I would agree completely if the time constraint was lifted, but it might be safer to build up something that still requires a significant amount of design work, but is somewhat guided (i.e. there are instructions...but to use the instructions, you need to learn this and that).
What I don't recommend, especially considering that this seems to be a general-purpose kind of thing, is writing software. The problem with doing this is that while it is mentally stimulating, and the end result can definitely be appreciable, the amount of time to get there varies from person to person, and the amount of fun in getting there is normally minimal. (If anything, the amount of frustration is really what increases, as these kids will grow more and more tired of not having their thing work out for them.)
Do-it-yourself Lego robot. Not very hard to cook up, and kids will enjoy the thrill of killing other robots in competition. (Because there WILL be a competition.)
Playing music off of Game Boys (i.e. 8-bit). I haven't done this, but I'm sure it could be fun.
Find stuff that's very hand-on (especially if they're younger), but involves a fair share of thinking and conceptualization. You don't want TOO much of that, though (by too much, I mean whole sessions of just thinking and no doing); that will become boring for younger kids.
Good luck!
MSE offers real-time protection, whereas Windows Defender does not. (This is stated in the article.)
That's good and all...it also takes quite a bit of time to find the app, download the app, and then install the app (if it installs in the first place, since most developers have different CABs for different versions and would get most regular users confused). Microsoft has its own store in the works, but what guarantee is there that it won't be as restrictive or patrolling as the Apple and Palm solutions?
There's always give and take.
I can reach similarly lengthy runtimes on my iPhone as well, but it all goes to shit as soon as Wifi is enabled...
I really hope that research in reducing power consumption on 3G and Wifi networks is hot right now. Being able to do this would be a HUGE plus.
I'm sure that the companies and individuals that heavily dealt with the inception of the smartphone knew that this was an inevitability. The more demanding a service becomes, the more the service has to provide; simple as that.
I think that fleeing from the problem --- mobile users demanding more ways to use their powerful devices --- is NOT the way to handle it. Can you really consider re-separating the mobile phone, media player and internet device for the sake of battery life progress? I know that the intention is not this extreme, but even the consideration of such a notion does technically promote these lines of thinking.
Like overcoming Moore's Law, this is a problem that needs to be fought. Many research groups are looking into new types of battery cells which are safer and more power-efficient. Mobile operating systems are increasingly recognizing problematic areas in power consumption, and are addressing them readily.
What I think Jobs is or will land up doing is imposing some kind of far-fetched condition for future iPhones; something like, "Make the iPhone run for two or three days with 3G and wireless enabled, Twitter and AIM in the background (via push notification) and my Bob Dylan collection going." Seems impossible...until their jobs are on the line.
This is kind of like the car that parks in the "dangerous" areas with its doors and trunk unlocked and open.
The "baddies" go after the property that's moderately challenging to steal, not after these. Either there's nothing worth taking or it's something they shouldn't take.
I didn't think much of it before; use a timeout, and there you have it. However, I can see the challenge being posed here: the only immediately obvious solution to determining whether a person's there or not is by timing inactivity. As mentioned in the article, determining an "inactive threshold" requires quite a bit of fine tuning and knowledge of usability with the obvious risk of malicious adversaries having access to that open channel for the amount of time the channel is open.
First thing I could think of, at least for laptop users with integrated cameras, is using light mapping to determine whether the computer user is physically there or not. Facial biometrics could be applied, but I think that would be way too computationally intensive (b/c if the face moves even a slight bit, the hash would need to be completely recalculated. Wouldn't it be harsh if we had to check our account balances completely frozen!). However, I'm sure there is some research out there that shows what an average light (luminance) distribution should look like without the person actually being there. Of course, this is flawed, since it only works with laptops that have integrated cameras and cannot distinguish one person from another.
Then, I thought a few other things, and realized that any other somewhat obvious solution probably involves gathering the user's current location and measuring displacement between the user and computer somehow. These would raise great challenges regarding user privacy, though I think that people are becoming much more complacent with privacy violations for security enhancements and/or personal leisure a la Google and Facebook (myself included).
Well, from the article, I'm getting the gist that they are only fueling the fire further. IT departments should be doing what they can to GET OFF IE6 instead of using software like this to breathe new life into it!
Upgrading to IE7 and IE8, as specified in the article, makes this add-on irrelevant. On a side note, I'm also concerned about the heavy-handedness Google has nowadays. I understand that their products constitute a LARGE portion of internet traffic, but it's kind of scary to think that their analytics code IS all over the web....
I disagree somewhat.
I don't think that Windows Mobile was a screwed up product. I think that its latest competition is starting to reveal just how outdated the platform is.
Ever since I can remember (user since Smartphone 2002 with the MPx200), WinMo devices were designed to be the jack-of-all-trades. You could check your email on them, play music and videos, surf the web and run most of the apps like being on a PC. Unfortunately, this usually means they inherently become the master-of-none, as their background processes would often cause lock-ups, memory leaks and other baddies and had horribly high power consumption, especially when compared to the RIM and Palm devices.
Today, iPhone can do those same tasks faster, easier and much more elegantly than WinMo could ever dream of doing. Blackberries are still the swiss-knife of corporate and personal email collaboration, but are now able to do media fairly well (though they still suck horrendously for internet browsing). Even Palm, which is on life support, can compete with WebOS. Then there's Android which basically claims ALL advantages Windows Mobile use to have, but in a much more elegant fashion...
On top of all of this, the fact that service providers always had to customize Windows Mobile to extremes (i.e. HTC TouchFLO3D, Palm's customizations, etc.) makes jumping to Android and, for Palm, WebOS that much more attractive. On its face, Windows Mobile 6.1 is a BEAR to use, especially when compared against other devices. (Ever try using that TINY TINY keyboard with your fingers? Sure, the stylus can do it...but who wants to use a stylus anymore?) Windows Mobile 6.5 is getting there, but still has a lot of work to do. (Moving the bar to the bottom is a great step ahead.) Why wouldn't anyone want to save time and money? (As an aside, HTC didn't really need to provide SenseUI for Android, as Android is pretty decent from a usability standpoint as-is, but I guess having TouchFLO3D there made it easier to port.)
Either way, Microsoft was never really known for innovation, and because of this, I highly doubt that even Mobile 7 can really save their mobile division at this point. It's a has-been.
Now that I think about it, I always thought that the Internet was "cloud-like" in nature, since we as Internet users have to upload/download data between several (hypothetically) ethereal servers/databases "in the sky" (relative to our location, anyway).
This "cloud computing" business kind of sounds like how Web 2.0 was utilized when that first "came out."
IANAL, but if you knew the intent of the person wishing to find those bomb-making instructions, and you help him anyway, wouldn't that make you an accomplice to the crime?
If that's the case, then why is he playing hard-to-get with his LV home? The only thing I could think of is that it's a time suck to allow some other hidden process to complete...
As I'm sure other comments below have already addressed, systems that have Windows Firewall on and left at default AND/OR systems behind a firewall that supports SPI will not have problems. A really, really, REALLY big part of me says that the Navy's covered.
You mean the same thing that T-Mobile already introduced with MyFaves well over a year ago...at cheaper rates, even with data?
Talk about being late.