Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 26 Oct 2013 12:49

RMS and Arundhoti do share some core characteristics....I dont know about RMS being a good guy at heart or not....his behavior when we hosted him certainly didn't indicate that.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 26 Oct 2013 16:27

Raja Bose wrote:
matrimc wrote:Android and iOS are sub-classed from Linux/BSD. SO the taking over is complete unless MS does some ghotala with Surface Pro/WinMo.
And neither are really open source are they? Linux was supposed to be this harbinger of Freeedddooommmmm from the big bag for-profit software companies which charge money from consumers....as it turns out when you pay for a service, you get better service. Like I said I have been hearing about this takeover of the world by Linux from OSF folks for almost 2 decades now....all I see is Mickey doing double digit growth for 3 decades now YoY, FruitCo making cash hand over fist, Chacha cleverly using the term open source for good PR and smart service play lock-down, while bearded OSF jholawallahs and other assorted hippies like Stallman keep foaming at the mouth and calling for war against the oligarchs like Arundhati.

You bring up a good point, but I will say for Mac OS X, the kernal has a basis in BSD. My point is that open source has a place and the bearded OSF jholawallahs have a place in the development of software more so than the useless idiots like Arundhati who have no function in society except to be a waste of protoplasm.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 26 Oct 2013 16:52

Mort Walker wrote:You bring up a good point, but I will say for Mac OS X, the kernal has a basis in BSD. My point is that open source has a place and the bearded OSF jholawallahs have a place in the development of software more so than the useless idiots like Arundhati who have no function in society except to be a waste of protoplasm.

Even with all their faults they are million times better in every way than both jholawallahs or arundhati.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 26 Oct 2013 19:49

open source does have its place in quickly trying out exciting new ideas that may or may not attract corporate interest later.
the SDN thing thats the rage of startups currently came out of groups like openstack and openflow. not sure how 'open' they are , but everyone in the industry has joined up now.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 26 Oct 2013 20:52

anmol wrote:
Mort Walker wrote:You bring up a good point, but I will say for Mac OS X, the kernal has a basis in BSD. My point is that open source has a place and the bearded OSF jholawallahs have a place in the development of software more so than the useless idiots like Arundhati who have no function in society except to be a waste of protoplasm.
Even with all their faults they are million times better in every way than both jholawallahs or arundhati.

That I have to agree.

My analogue between the two is limited to their tendencies to froth at the mouth and periodically yell for jeehard.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 26 Oct 2013 21:19

non open source has its market.. in the sense, it is huge. support and maintenance is one area that is huge that can't be handled by open source free software. for example, if suddenly all your important documents on chacha disappears, do you have anything to complain against anyone? yeah.. they will respond at their own pace, and has no obligation to serve you.

whereas, iOS has to answer within certain period, and/or face a law suite as well. chacha can cover this up under the open source, in between the lines agreement that none reads before sign up.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 26 Oct 2013 23:17

Will Samsung own Android's future?

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 28 Oct 2013 13:14

Nikon D800e Vs. Nokia Lumia 1020:-
http://evan-theelectricalengineer.blogs ... -1020.html

vina · Post by **vina** » 28 Oct 2013 16:54

Diyar folks. A kweschun with Dharam Sankat. What would you prefer ? A Macbook Air 13" or a HP Split 13 m008tu X2 PC ?

How many years does a Fruit co laptop battery last and what is the replacement cost ? Is it 3 years and I am in the hole for Rs 15000 with either of them ? Hickory Pork has two batteries, so it means double the battery replacement cost innit ?

vina · Post by **vina** » 28 Oct 2013 17:50

Marten wrote:Would avoid the HawaiiPotty in any case. Cost is directly co-related to convenience, but in HP's case, the batteries will conk out before 3 years - they usually support lesser charge cycles than any Apple product. Why do you bother so much about battery cost - feature wise, these are in different categories. So what exactly is your criteria for selection?

I'm not a MacBook/Air user, but am well acquainted with HP products.

Oh, I need to get a laptop to do YumBeeYea giri with customers when I hit the road. With Apple throwing in a wordprocessor, spread sheet and a presentation software in for free, it becomes attractive. I dont care for touch in a laptop. Looking for something nice and easy to carry and doesnt weigh a ton. Choice between MickeySaaft Ultrabooks (Sony Vaio Power 13) and Phruit 13" MacBook Air. Funnily Mac is cheaper than the Vaio (which has a touchscreen though).

sampat · Post by **sampat** » 28 Oct 2013 18:10

For anything above 1000 €, I would go for apple. My shiny 1300€ HP laptop went kaput in 13 months. Same for my 1000€ HP Desktop, all shiny from outside but cheap from inside.

habal · Post by **habal** » 28 Oct 2013 19:22

vina wrote:How many years does a Fruit co laptop battery last and what is the replacement cost ?

haven't changed battery on my macbook white since November 2009. Replacement cost is 7K as per present Montek/Mohan/Rajan/RahulG adjusted rates. It can still last 2 hrs, plenty enough for me.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 28 Oct 2013 20:41

I would run away from hp Sony dell as fast as I can. Either thinkpad or MacBook.
avoid the air as its probably more failure prone and delicate
vs the proper macbook....get the retina MacBook model.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 28 Oct 2013 20:52

Mba need to adapt nd edit things on the road too for quick cya

negi · Post by **negi** » 28 Oct 2013 21:13

Macbook or Thinkpad . For battery life Macs are hard to beat they are expensive but Applewa does good job at QC.
My 13" MBP has been running without any anti-virus since 2011 and I haven't formatted it even once. It runs windoze on VMware fusion for work related stuff.
I had a IBM T61 the last of the thinkpads from IBM which is still running (2007 built). Thinkpads these days are hit or miss when it comes to battery otherwise they are solid machines I have a T420 given by kompany bahadur and I have no complaints but battery life degrades faster after 1 year . My Mac still gives me ~2 hours on wifi .

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 28 Oct 2013 21:35

battery is a totally separate component when it comes to laptops. compare TP to dell, who usually gives excellent battery life and is compltely bad on QC otherwise

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 28 Oct 2013 21:37

vina wrote:
Marten wrote:Would avoid the HawaiiPotty in any case. Cost is directly co-related to convenience, but in HP's case, the batteries will conk out before 3 years - they usually support lesser charge cycles than any Apple product. Why do you bother so much about battery cost - feature wise, these are in different categories. So what exactly is your criteria for selection?

I'm not a MacBook/Air user, but am well acquainted with HP products.
Oh, I need to get a laptop to do YumBeeYea giri with customers when I hit the road. With Apple throwing in a wordprocessor, spread sheet and a presentation software in for free, it becomes attractive. I dont care for touch in a laptop. Looking for something nice and easy to carry and doesnt weigh a ton. Choice between MickeySaaft Ultrabooks (Sony Vaio Power 13) and Phruit 13" MacBook Air. Funnily Mac is cheaper than the Vaio (which has a touchscreen though).

TYping:- thinkpad wins.

cost : if you can get it from the US..thinkpads are good again.

apple 's version of Office is not as good as the wintel machines' for obv reasons. keep in mind.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 28 Oct 2013 22:40

vina wrote:Diyar folks. A kweschun with Dharam Sankat. What would you prefer ? A Macbook Air 13" or a HP Split 13 m008tu X2 PC ?

How many years does a Fruit co laptop battery last and what is the replacement cost ? Is it 3 years and I am in the hole for Rs 15000 with either of them ? Hickory Pork has two batteries, so it means double the battery replacement cost innit ?

Go with Macbook Air - no question.

Dipanker · Post by **Dipanker** » 28 Oct 2013 22:43

I don't favor Macbook because essentially they have the same hardware as any other laptop (cpu, motherboard, memory, hard drive, CD/DVD dirve, GPU etc.) but may cost upto $400 - $500 more. Getting a laptop and installing Linux ( i.e. if one doesn't want a Windows OS) is a much more cost effective solution!

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 29 Oct 2013 00:48

Raja Bose wrote:
vina wrote:Diyar folks. A kweschun with Dharam Sankat. What would you prefer ? A Macbook Air 13" or a HP Split 13 m008tu X2 PC ?

How many years does a Fruit co laptop battery last and what is the replacement cost ? Is it 3 years and I am in the hole for Rs 15000 with either of them ? Hickory Pork has two batteries, so it means double the battery replacement cost innit ?
Go with Macbook Air - no question.

I agree. The forum moderator is absolutely correct on this matter.

hanumadu · Post by **hanumadu** » 29 Oct 2013 01:53

How do people who use mac book or Linux get around the need for Microsoft office, especially word? Do macs come with MSOffice with them? Or do they buy macs for personal use and company given laptop and Office?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 29 Oct 2013 02:05

hanumadu wrote:How do people who use mac book or Linux get around the need for Microsoft office, especially word? Do macs come with MSOffice with them? Or do they buy macs for personal use and company given laptop and Office?

Microsoft Office is the largest selling Mac software since last coupla decades and consequently Mickey has been Apple's largest software supplier in terms of sales volume for a coupla decades now. Ironic isn't it?

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 29 Oct 2013 02:25

On Linux use Open Office. For Mac MS Office is a best seller and if you need something lightweight, then Apple's iWork is compatible with MS Office, which is now free.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 29 Oct 2013 02:27

Open Office just plain sux....I mean what is wrong with their dev team that despite all office docs specs being public they can't make it compatible and decently bug free After one nasty incident involving my MS thesis and Open Office literally corrupting it to Pakiness, I permanently gave up on them and stuck to MS Office. For pee-chaddi of course one has to use Latex onlee to maintain echandee.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 29 Oct 2013 02:36

^^^Just be happy you didn't have to do your thesis in Word Star or Word Perfect.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 29 Oct 2013 02:52

^^^I used to type our rental agreements in WordStar back in the days....it was pretty reliable and got the job done. I cannot say the same for Open Office.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 29 Oct 2013 03:03

Open Office has come a long way from when Bose uncle ji got his MS. Also, Libre Office (forked from openoffice.org after Oracle takeover) is extremely good - it is better than even yo' latest Office (MS that is) in openening old MS Office format files.

As for Word Perfect, their "reveal codes" was one feature I miss on all these fancy-smancy WYSIWY(don't usually)G new fangled MS Office and its poorly made clones (Abiword anyone?), especially when there is strange pagination, nested lists going completely out of whack, strange unexplained font changes and those kinds of shhhiiite. There is no beating LaTeX for technical documents - very algebraic as opposed to eye-candy bling.

Yayavar · Post by **Yayavar** » 29 Oct 2013 03:20

oo is good though ms has some features it does better. oo can save in pdf too ..so am quite happy with it. Instead of Kingsoft or whatever need a oo or libre version to run on android phones.

archan · Post by **archan** » 29 Oct 2013 06:27

fyi there is a free add on which lets you save any MS Office document as a PDF and IIRC it comes from MS itself. Pretty convenient.

KJo · Post by **KJo** » 29 Oct 2013 06:41

Raja Bose wrote:Open Office just plain sux....I mean what is wrong with their dev team that despite all office docs specs being public they can't make it compatible and decently bug free After one nasty incident involving my MS thesis and Open Office literally corrupting it to Pakiness, I permanently gave up on them and stuck to MS Office. For pee-chaddi of course one has to use Latex onlee to maintain echandee.

Now why is that? During MS, for thesis and even for some piddly class projects, senior students would insist on Latex with its goofy syntax. WTF is up wif dat?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 29 Oct 2013 06:51

^^^Latex is great for documents which have symbols, formulae etc and personally I like the output from Latex. Initial learning curve is high especially if one is not in CS or related fields. Maybe senior students were pulling your chaddi KJo. Even today Latex produces much more professional typeset documents than MS Word. My CV is still maintained in Latex for that very reason.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 29 Oct 2013 07:11

archan wrote:fyi there is a free add on which lets you save any MS Office document as a PDF and IIRC it comes from MS itself. Pretty convenient.

I don't think I understand. Typically, I print to a pdf file from an MS Office application such as Word or Excel.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 29 Oct 2013 07:16

Raja Bose wrote:^^^I used to type our rental agreements in WordStar back in the days....it was pretty reliable and got the job done. I cannot say the same for Open Office.

Hmmm...WordStar and Word~~Per~~Defect were pretty bad for corrupting files. Anything important back in the day (circa 1988-1993), our engineers would use MentorGraphics word processing documentation software to get the job done on Unix workstations. I guess everyone has a different UX.

hanumadu · Post by **hanumadu** » 29 Oct 2013 07:28

It gets really expensive to buy a mac and if you have to buy Office on top of that. If you buy a Mac, its paisa vasool only if you use it for a lot of years. Hard ware is improving so fast, its probably not worthwhile to stick with a 5 year old computers. Buy a $600-$700 windows laptop and dual boot with Linux. It should take care of most of the things. Laptop construction has improved quite a bit in recent years and you should get a decent computer for $600-$700. I am much more comfortable with mucking around with my PC than an expensive mac. To take care of battery, you can get extended warranty or probably it is cheaper to just replace it than getting an extended warranty. Going forward, macbooks won't be coming with any optical media. That means more adapters, more external hardware.

Linux also has come a long way in the last ten years. It seems you don't have to be a hard core geek these days to work with Linux and a lazy bum like me can get along just fine. I was so wary of clicking links that show up on google before I started dual booting with Linux recently. I got tired of reinstalling the OS and all the software along with it. No such worries now. There is a lot of free software available on Linux which you rarely use and not worth buying. Some of the improvements in Windows seem to be directly inspired or forced by Linux. If not for anything, that alone is worthwhile to encourage open source software.

--Added Later--
PS: This is coming from a guy who never owned a mac and who is a newbie with Linux. So I may be off by quite a bit in my assessment.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 29 Oct 2013 07:39

Mort Walker wrote:
Raja Bose wrote:^^^I used to type our rental agreements in WordStar back in the days....it was pretty reliable and got the job done. I cannot say the same for Open Office.
Hmmm...WordStar and Word~~Per~~Defect were pretty bad for corrupting files. Anything important back in the day (circa 1988-1993), our engineers would use MentorGraphics word processing documentation software to get the job done on Unix workstations. I guess everyone has a different UX.

WordStar was OK....WordPerfect was paki.

Yayavar · Post by **Yayavar** » 29 Oct 2013 07:45

ha ha .. late 80's had Wipro's Wordstar(?) and wipro123 (lotus123). It was legal copy, the rest (MS word) had to be either illegal or bought through Infosys (as reseller).

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 29 Oct 2013 07:49

rbull/matrimc - tried http://texpoint.necula.org/ for word?

i have not used it.. only used only miktex, and winedt.

also used z/eves for z models - forgot!

vina · Post by **vina** » 29 Oct 2013 07:56

matrimc wrote:Open Office has come a long way from when Bose uncle ji got his MS. Also, Libre Office (forked from openoffice.org after Oracle takeover) is extremely good - it is better than even yo' latest Office (MS that is) in openening old MS Office format files.

As for Word Perfect, their "reveal codes" was one feature I miss on all these fancy-smancy WYSIWY(don't usually)G new fangled MS Office and its poorly made clones (Abiword anyone?), especially when there is strange pagination, nested lists going completely out of whack, strange unexplained font changes and those kinds of shhhiiite. There is no beating LaTeX for technical documents - very algebraic as opposed to eye-candy bling.

Indeed. Libreoffice is pretty good. I use it on my Ubuntu machine. However, since the world is standardized on office , there are things which it can't do. Eg, running the free excel utility from the IT dept to do your taxes and generate the XML to file!

However the formulas and stuff is fully compatible with office and it does have the ₹ symbol, which my version of office ( 2010) doesn't seem to have

vina · Post by **vina** » 29 Oct 2013 08:03

hanumadu wrote:It gets really expensive to buy a mac and if you have to buy Office on top of that. If you buy a Mac, its paisa vasool only if you use it for a lot of years. Hard ware is improving so fast, its probably not worthwhile to stick with a 5 year old computers. Buy a $600-$700 windows laptop and dual boot with Linux. It should take care of most of the things. Laptop construction has improved quite a bit in recent years t.

A good laptop is still around $1500 or so. The $ 600 ones are too compromised and weigh a ton. If you want one with a i5 Haswell and the high definition IPS screen in a 13 to 15 in form factor, that is what it is going to cost. If you can make do with a lower res screen, you can pick up the MacBook Air for $1000 or so

Between OSx and Linux, Linux is not worth the pain, unless you want to make do with 2nd rung hardware and want to junk Mickey or do an el cheap thing by buying the dabba with just DOS installed.

BTw, the Office for Mac home and student edition is rs 5000, the same as for Windows

vina · Post by **vina** » 29 Oct 2013 08:06

Mort Walker wrote:^^^Just be happy you didn't have to do your thesis in Word Star or Word Perfect.

Pah! What a bunch of wussies! You guys never banged out stuff on Chiwriter on an 80386.