Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

negi · Post by **negi** » 02 Aug 2014 10:16

Mort Walker wrote:^^^I don't think so. If you look at the high end Lenovo, like ThinkPad Carbon X1, or Dell Precision M3800, they too are not cheap. If you compare specifications, again cost is very comparable. The mid range 13" Mac Book Pro is $1500 USD.

If you can make do with something cheaper and your time isn't as valuable, then that may be the way to go, and more power to you.

Mort sir you should have (if not already) applied for student discount on that as you bought it for your college going kid. MSFT and Apple both have pretty good discounts for students in Khan land.

BhairavP · Post by **BhairavP** » 02 Aug 2014 10:27

krisna wrote:FYI Sony has stopped making vaio computers.

Now only phones tablets and tvs etc .
check their website sony

Nope, they've hived them off to a PE firm. They will continue under the plain Vaio moniker.

@Mort saar - around 4.5-5 hours. That isn't bad, and I have the sheet battery as well, doubles the runtime.

negi · Post by **negi** » 02 Aug 2014 10:32

^ Old Vaio lineup was good, new one is all crap with glossy body and screen. They are thick and heavy too. The netbook or 13" range is good but is expensive. I was in market for a 13" netbook for SHQ got her an ASUS and got back my MBP from her

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 02 Aug 2014 17:23

negi wrote:
Mort Walker wrote:^^^I don't think so. If you look at the high end Lenovo, like ThinkPad Carbon X1, or Dell Precision M3800, they too are not cheap. If you compare specifications, again cost is very comparable. The mid range 13" Mac Book Pro is $1500 USD.

If you can make do with something cheaper and your time isn't as valuable, then that may be the way to go, and more power to you.
Mort sir you should have (if not already) applied for student discount on that as you bought it for your college going kid. MSFT and Apple both have pretty good discounts for students in Khan land.

I did get it at the student discount. I can buy MS Office for discount too, around $10.

Ranjani Brow · Post by **Ranjani Brow** » 02 Aug 2014 17:41

^ Why spend $10 when you can get it for free (at your own risk onlee)

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 02 Aug 2014 19:13

^^^No. I need all authorized licenses. This notebook isn't for me to play around with, but for my child entering college.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 02 Aug 2014 23:45

krisna wrote:
Mort Walker wrote:
+1. The best Windows PC on the market.
but very very expensive compared to the other pcs.

Not if you go for comparative specs, reliability, performance.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 03 Aug 2014 11:10

in lenovo lineup is there a product comparable to the MBP in size , power, BUILD QUALITY and weight? the Y series or W540?

infront of my own eyes I have seen W520 cases crack for two friends in the past, with normal use, on right side of the trackpad. big long cracks. my own 520 the mouse keys above the trackpad have stopped working , so using as a laptop needs to use a external mouse now. the cd-dvd tray constantly slides out if we just shake the chassis. I am trying to nursemaid it till march next yr when refresh becomes due. early refresh needs VP level approval these days

Ranjani Brow · Post by **Ranjani Brow** » 03 Aug 2014 11:17

^ No Accidental Damage Protection ?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 03 Aug 2014 13:47

Keybds font come under their warranty and cost of replacement keybd is steep, to be paid by BU not central IT.

Tanaji · Post by **Tanaji** » 03 Aug 2014 13:54

:rotfl:Singha works in chi chi places where they hand out uber toys such as Lenovo and Macbooks. Us slaves have to make do with el cheapo Dell and HP onlee.. We slaves jealous...

negi · Post by **negi** » 03 Aug 2014 15:34

Singha wrote:Keybds font come under their warranty and cost of replacement keybd is steep, to be paid by BU not central IT.

Costs about INR 2k for Lenovo keyboard , thing is individual keys cannot be replaced the entire assembly fonts+underneath base get replaced . I have been using my KB laptop without 'O' font for about a year (friend's dog ripped it).

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 03 Aug 2014 19:09

negi, make up for the loss of that O by providing Big O in the other front.

nanhas, it has nothing to do with what CLR teaches you.

BhairavP · Post by **BhairavP** » 03 Aug 2014 19:17

Raja Bose wrote: Not if you go for comparative specs, reliability, performance.

Absolutely. I got SHQ an rMBP, the first one, late 2012, and it is quite the beast.
Great laptop.

archan · Post by **archan** » 04 Aug 2014 19:35

So I have a Mac mini (2nd Gen) from 2008 which I braught with me to India. I didn't bring the Apple keyboard and mouse. That was not the problem as it worked well with my KVM at home. However, Apple released OS update and since that update it wouldn't boot. Kernel panic - "you need to restart the computer, press the power button for a few seconds..."
Reading on the net, they recommend using the original Apple keyboard and mouse.

Today I tried it with another USB keyboard and mouse. Same boot error. So is this how Apple is going to play now?
Cheapest Apple keyboard I found on ebay/flipkart is at least Rs. 3500. Thank you, Apple.

Anybody have any clues to rescue this box?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 04 Aug 2014 20:07

cant you roll back the update by breaking into some boot time bios menu that can access the recovery partition.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 04 Aug 2014 21:21

Apple computers need Jobswa magic from the keyboard to flow through to the computer to boot up properly.

Another pet peeve of mine is Airport extreme router. I have one and it is a deal with with the devil. It can be configured only using an iOS device or a mac. Because you know, other computers are not good enough to configure an Apple router.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 04 Aug 2014 21:46

I thought you loved your Airport extreme to death.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 04 Aug 2014 21:56

Oh I love my airport extreme. I have signal strength measuring equipment (That SHQ rigged and uses in her lab

) and the beamforming is fantastic. It actually directionally amplifies signals based on where your equipment is, and even does beamforming downwards (the router is on the top in the bedroom and I sit in the living room downstairs). It has never ever dropped a connection and hasnt needed reboot at all

Having said that:
1. You can only configure it using magic pixie dust infused Mac and iOS devices
2. It costs an arm, a leg and your left kidney
3. The connection configurations solely consists of "Connect to internet yes/no" with no QoS throttling, limiting number of clients, configuring static DHCP et al. Because the Mahdi feels that is the only option you could ever need.

All in all it is the same iPhunwa/Androidwa redux. Thats why I called it a deal with the devil.

archan · Post by **archan** » 04 Aug 2014 22:03

Singha wrote:cant you roll back the update by breaking into some boot time bios menu that can access the recovery partition.

For a safe boot you need to press shift or something on the keyboard. It doesnt reconize the keyboard.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 04 Aug 2014 23:31

archan wrote:So is this how Apple is going to play now?

Whaddya mean, "now"? They always play like that.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 04 Aug 2014 23:32

Anujan wrote:Oh I love my airport extreme. I have signal strength measuring equipment (That SHQ rigged and uses in her lab ) and the beamforming is fantastic. It actually directionally amplifies signals based on where your equipment is, and even does beamforming downwards (the router is on the top in the bedroom and I sit in the living room downstairs). It has never ever dropped a connection and hasnt needed reboot at all

You have a spectrum analyzer and an antenna?

Remember to subtract the gain of your antenna when calculating your field strength in W/m^2. Spectrum analyzers will give you power in dBm (dB reference to mili-watts) which is power density and not field strength in V/m.

The specification for IEEE 802.11a/b/c/g/n/c is all defined within a specific pattern with spectrum tolerances (transmission power, spectrum bandwidth, and roll off), along with specified antenna gain that within FCC Part 15 devices (<= 10 dBi). Some manufacturers will be better than others. What AAPL has probably done on the Airport Extreme is use a better low noise amplifier and band pass filter in their design and paid less than 25 cents more for each component. The antenna design on the ApEx is limited by the fact it is within the case, but AAPL may have divided the power and put an antenna on the bottom of the case. Other manufacturers can do the same and may on their high end wireless routers for commercial use.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 04 Aug 2014 23:47

http://www.mondaynote.com/2014/08/03/ma ... d-is-nigh/

Article speculates that FruitCo might move from Intel to ARM for their mac line. I think it is solid speculation, but here is where Anal-yeasts get tripped up:

The aging x86 architecture is beset by layers of architectural silt accreted from a succession of additions to the instruction set. Emerging media formats demand new extensions, while obsolete constructs must be maintained for the sake of Microsoft’s backward compatibility religion.

Which shows that he hasnt taken any course in computer architecture or read an intel architecture manual, but can confidently make claims about "Architectural silt". It is like claiming that the brand new Tesla sold in 2014 has "historical baggage" of cars sold in 1920 because they are forced to have steering wheel and brake pedals and carry "Architectural silt".

Intel architectures, right from Pentium Pro (Introduced in 1995, 20 years ago) have had a RISC execution engine in its heart, with a instruction set translator and a micro-op trace cache. What it means is that they effectively have a "translator" that translates old Instruction set into new-speak which is executed by a very efficient engine. Behind the steering wheel and brake pedal, the entire car is different now. Intel still beats the pants out of anything ARM has come out with, even in things one wouldnt normally think of, like code density (intel binaries tend to be smaller). ARM processors are at best catching up to what Sun UltraSPARC could do back in the day (think late 90's). (Which makes me sad, because Sun could have owned this space) There is also another reason why this "silt" argument is nonsense. Since atleast 2005, nobody has had any decent ideas on what to do with the increasing number of transistors per die. They make bigger and bigger caches out of it. It is like selling you a dog which can do one trick, but with a longer and longer tail. So "silt accumulation" is in fact a good thing, because you find something new to do with the transistors.

The reason ARM is successful is different. It is not that they are "new", "carry no baggage" and "better than Intel". Intel at any given point covers only a tiny price-performance window. You cannot buy a Pentium 4 now, because Intel doesnt make it. ARM, because they license designs, have a basket of processors in a huge price performance swath. Manufacturers pick and choose among the processors and produce a whole basket of (phones/tablets) in a vast spread of price and performance. That is one of the reasons Intel is having problems in mobile (well that and the fact that they have trouble integrating LTE). Second reason is that ARM design has become a platform around which people are designing SOCs. So now the processor is tightly integrated with a GPU and Radio. Intel does not do this on behalf of any customer. They sell their part, you are free to take it and leave.

Which is the the second reason that Apple is likely to get off Intel: Intel does not specialize their processors for customers. The same processor intel sells to HP, they'd sell to to FruitCo. By having an in-house design, and designing for their power dissipation/graphics performance/memory performance targets, FruitCo can get the best bang for their buck. Think of an ultra-thin retina Macbook Air with 12 hour battery life that can play music when the computer is shut down. Plus they dont spend their margins on Intel. That is the chief reason FruitCo will move.

I expect they'll first move the Macbook Air to ARM. They'll keep the Macbook pro and the desktop Mac on Intel.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 05 Aug 2014 00:15

so, in the world of devices and gizmos, we are only seeing two types of languages on them (like we see English and Spanish on manuals). All gizmos are bi lingual - English and Chinese script. Kudos to chippanda for having established a huge market segment competing with English.

Ranjani Brow · Post by **Ranjani Brow** » 05 Aug 2014 00:21

^^Intel was left out of Smartphone revolution but they are trying to not left out of IoT revolution with Quark SoC and Silvermont based Atom SoC. They have even launched a development board, Intel Galileo for hobbyists last year. INTC also announced a SD card sized Intel Edison in Jan this year and was supposed to be available by mid-2014 but is nowhere to be seen

. Any chaiwala news on Intel Edison availability will be much appreciated

.

On a side not, got a chance to listen to Vinod Dham ("Father of the Pentium chip") in Alumni Conclave last year. He's a visionary and a huge inspiration for budding Engineers.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 05 Aug 2014 01:09

Anujan wrote:I expect they'll first move the Macbook Air to ARM. They'll keep the Macbook pro and the desktop Mac on Intel.

What about the echo system onlee ? Does MBA usage profile largely focus on AAPL developed and MacOS bundled apps, such that such a change and potential loss of previously available apps is not an issue ? Both the underlying microarchitecture and the OS pose a barrier between iDevices and Mac* devices, right now.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 05 Aug 2014 02:01

Last I heard the Intel Edison will be "slightly" bigger than the SD card size which was advertised.

IoT revolution? Sounds like teenage $ex to me right now.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 05 Aug 2014 04:10

I think they'll do the same thing as they did in their PowerPC to Intel move. Have legacy binaries (use binary translation), universal binaries (works on both) and modern binaries. They have another advantage. They can binary translate, server side, all the apps they have sold through the Mac app store and let people restore them. That way your legacy apps work on the new Arm macbook air right from the get go. That should cover most of the apps on macbook air nicely.

The reason I think they wont move their Macbook pro and mac pro to ARM, atleast initially is because no ARM design has come close to high end Intel processor. Mid and Low end yes. Apple A7 seems to have about 1b transistors with 28nm technology and 100mm^2 die size. The comparable intel offering is probably a sandybridge-based celeron, with ~650m transistors, 32nm technology, and 130mm^2 die size. Which is a pretty respectable mid-to-low range laptop.

A7 is probably the highest performant ARM design out there. by comparison, Low end haswells have ~1.5b transistors, nearly 200mm^2 and 22nm process. So you cant probably build the trash-can Mac-pro with Arm chips. You can build a Macbook air though.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 05 Aug 2014 05:51

When they moved from PPC to x86 they only had a microarchitectural shift to do. Aiyyo Ess was nowhere around then. Right now, they're also trying to bridge an OS diversity. I don't know if AAPL will do just one, and not the other. That just doesn't seem to be their style.

Personally I prefer a 13" x86 MB Air with a retina screen and Mac OS. I love my 4 year old 15" MBP. Still runs like a champ. But now and then I wish it wasn't so heavy. Bike commuting with that thing in my messenger bag is no fun.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 05 Aug 2014 06:25

so, why they went screaming aiy yo yes and now turning to merge to oh yes x!?

is it the yo say matte that is the answer to future oh yes direction?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 05 Aug 2014 07:53

a system to automatically update sw over wireless or wired on all IoT must be in place though....most of the appliances thus far have only the base sw thats never updated like the fridge, tv, camera, cordless phone, printers, security scanner .... only phones & computers get regular updates.

and if things go wrong who will support and fix this multi-vendor zoo of devices in a billion homes ?

I can imagine customer calls with people from 5 vendors dialing in and each blaming the other and all blaming the network vendor.

pgbhat · Post by **pgbhat** » 05 Aug 2014 10:47

Homegrown phone makers just raced past Samsung in India and China

partha · Post by **partha** » 05 Aug 2014 11:02

pgbhat wrote:Homegrown phone makers just raced past Samsung in India and China

Has anyone here used a Micromax handset? How is it? Is it selling because it is cheap or is it really good?

krishnan · Post by **krishnan** » 05 Aug 2014 11:07

only bought a micromax tablet and its good, except for battery life , which seems to be specific to this model , everything else is good

member_28359 · Post by **member_28359** » 05 Aug 2014 11:19

using micromax canvas 2.2 for 2 months now,other than the battery life everything else is good.
Seems like micromax has a problem with battery life other than that the canvas range is really good......

krishnan · Post by **krishnan** » 05 Aug 2014 11:26

seems to be some issue with the way the battery is used, they talk about calibrating it or something

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 05 Aug 2014 11:35

pgbhat wrote:Homegrown phone makers just raced past Samsung in India and China

it is just the opening salvo of the battle fired at long range using 15" guns.
the real HWT salvo is now running silent and deep tracking the prop noise of HMS Samsung , the explosion will break it into pieces.
its called Android One imo with xiaomi adding its own MIUI spin on that $100 segment surely soon.

Samsung has run out of sea room, ideas and time. they are going to be thrashed with a size14 kolhapuri chappal and banished from the sub-20k segment in quick time.

that will leave them with the S4/S5 to peddle at inflated prices. the Note will soon have serious competition for 15k. Apple can play that game albeit with modding like selling iphone 4S but Samsung has nowhere near the luxury brand image and aspirational feelings of apple.

deep in the wulfbunker CIC, Pichai saar must be tracking the moving dots of the fleet on the map and looking happy

he is getting what he wanted...global market for android , by reliable vendors who do not want to compete with goog in sw and without the tantrums of established legacy brands.

Ranjani Brow · Post by **Ranjani Brow** » 05 Aug 2014 11:57

Singha wrote:a system to automatically update sw over wireless or wired on all IoT must be in place though....most of the appliances thus far have only the base sw thats never updated like the fridge, tv, camera, cordless phone, printers, security scanner .... only phones & computers get regular updates.

Plis to read about Pebble Watch. They have firmware releases and you can even install apps from their app store. IIRC they use a customized version of FreRTOS.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 05 Aug 2014 13:37

Singha wrote: deep in the wulfbunker CIC, Pichai saar must be tracking the moving dots of the fleet on the map and looking happy he is getting what he wanted...global market for android , by reliable vendors who do not want to compete with goog in sw and without the tantrums of established legacy brands.

....and remember, you read about it on BRF 1st.

Yogi_G · Post by **Yogi_G** » 05 Aug 2014 13:51

Samsung is going through its trinitron movement now. MMX is doing to Samsung what Sammie did to Sony.