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SaiK wrote:I am irritated at this model of every other release MS still continues to work on the framework of chewing customers, and enabling a better feel alternate release. This is a monopoly driven strategy. Mr. Gates will see heaven and will enjoy hell onlee.
Ballmer needs to be fired. Under this clown's watch, MSFT stock has fallen about 40% and it's about 13 years. At the same time he is kicking out anyone who would be competition to him. MSFT is lost.
I wonder how Win 8 works for people who want to do things like programming.
KJoishy wrote:
What do you pay after the inticement rate is over? Looks like it is $29.99 for a package of 2 channels that we want (Sony and Star). Not really cheap compared to Comcast...
Yeah you pay $30.- after 1st month. For me its cheaper coz I don't have basic cable, I get cable internet onlee. So the cost for me is equivalent to what I would pay if I just had basic cable except in this case I can cancel after parents leave and renew when they return.
Comcast is a$$r@ping me, so looks like I will get this service. I find it annoying that they don't let you choose what channels you want. They put their channels in "packs" and force you to buy some crappy channels. Why not assign a price to each and let you buy what you want? Someone should come up with that model.
^^Exactly. That is why even though this Dish IPTV is not the optimal solution, its better than the bloated packs hawked by the regular cable wallahs. In the land of the free, everything is a monopoly.
Any inputs welcome about touchscreen + business model laptops. Saw an option as well for upgrade of win7 to win8 at about 800 Rs. Is touch screen laptops worth it - looking at 4 year future timeframe for business model configuration laptops.
Anyone heard of upgrade to touchscreen - for screen? Just collecting ideas now.
Not sure if touchscreen is worth it without the ability to flip it into tablet mode. It depends on the user I guess. My must have list for laptop is:
1) Glossy screen - no way. Matte for business and everything else.
2) I have a lenovo x220 convertible tablet, the pen is nice, son loves to draw :p but 1366x768 is too low a resolution. I understand there are touch related issues with higher resolutions but companies have found a way around it. So resolution has to be higher than this.
3) Weight - with the other junk I carry, the laptop should not be over 4lb
4) Battery efficiency. Preferably a dual option (dedicated + Intel HD). I hear the Intel graphics with the next processor series (Haswell) will be leaps and bounds ahead of the HD4000 (which is already better than what I have Intel HD 3000). That should negate the need for a dedicated GPU in business lappies for most people (except graphic designers, CAD modelers).
I am waiting for Haswell to come out in a couple of months. Wait, if you can.
Is the touch screen worth it - the answer is, currently only if it doesn't cost much more (i.e. < $100.- delta). Win8's UI is inherently designed for combined touch screen+touchpad interaction but most legacy apps currently are touchpad onlee and there are only like ~50K proper touchscreen apps which use Metro right now. So no use paying a premium right now for touchscreen, if you get it for a low price then go ahead and get it.
Touchscreen upgrades are difficult if done by self unless one has all the proper tools. This is more so in case of capacitive touch screens which need to be calibrated for EM noise. You can get USB touchscreen overlays which attach on the top of your laptop display but those are heavy & clunky plus they are typically resistive which means crappy sensitivity and crappy transmissivity. Most legacy laptop mainboards are not designed to take in a touchscreen (typically a I2C or SPI interface) and their display housings are not designed for that either.
Raja Bose wrote:
Actually for a pen based experience, the Pro turns out to be pretty good - I use it regularly as a sketchpad (some of the cartoons posted on BRF were drawn/finished on it). The on-screen inking/drawing experience on it is surprisingly better than Wacom's Intuous (the digitizer/pen is still Wacom but drivers are different) and the Wacom tablets with equivalent functionality cost ~ 2x/3x. One complaint I have is the baseline pressure sensitivity threshold needs to be lowered to the level of Wacom's non-display tablets like the Bamboo. As for the price, as Chacha's ChromeBook Pixel demonstrated it doesn't get cheaper than that right now. Chacha's ChromeBook Pixel also demonstrates something I have talked about in the past - gimping software functionality does not decrease the BOM cost becoz the components which dominate the cost are not the ones which are affected by reduced software functionality. This is the fundamental reason why products like the Celio RedFly, Palm Folio and Motorola Atrix Dock were DOA despite anal-e-cysts getting multiple orgasms when they were introduced.
That's all great, but for photo editing workflow the 16:9 10.6" screen is insufficient as camera sensors are 3:2. You get less work area than the iPad 4. For any sort of CAD the same story, its just too small of a surface area. Even the MBA 11.6" 16:9 suffers from this as well. The Surface Pro is great first step, but it is fundamentally flawed in this regard at a high price that it can not be forgiven. All of those other products that have reduced functionality don't cost as much and can be given a pass.
Last edited by Mort Walker on 14 Apr 2013 08:09, edited 1 time in total.
Raja Bose wrote:
Actually for a pen based experience, the Pro turns out to be pretty good - I use it regularly as a sketchpad (some of the cartoons posted on BRF were drawn/finished on it). The on-screen inking/drawing experience on it is surprisingly better than Wacom's Intuous (the digitizer/pen is still Wacom but drivers are different) and the Wacom tablets with equivalent functionality cost ~ 2x/3x. One complaint I have is the baseline pressure sensitivity threshold needs to be lowered to the level of Wacom's non-display tablets like the Bamboo. As for the price, as Chacha's ChromeBook Pixel demonstrated it doesn't get cheaper than that right now. Chacha's ChromeBook Pixel also demonstrates something I have talked about in the past - gimping software functionality does not decrease the BOM cost becoz the components which dominate the cost are not the ones which are affected by reduced software functionality. This is the fundamental reason why products like the Celio RedFly, Palm Folio and Motorola Atrix Dock were DOA despite anal-e-cysts getting multiple orgasms when they were introduced.
That's all great, but for photo editing workflow the 16:9 10.6" screen is insufficient as camera sensors are 4:3. You get less work area than the iPad 4. For any sort of CAD the same story, its just too small of a surface area. Even the MBA 11.6" 16:9 suffers from this as well. The Surface Pro is great first step, but it is fundamentally flawed in this regard at a high price that it can not be forgiven. All of those other products that have reduced functionality don't cost as much and can be given a pass.
Saar pen based input is primarily used for design work, not photo editing. 4:3 works well for reading books but for most other stuff 16:9 or 16:10 is what works best hence, that's what display manufacturers make in large volume (now you know why the ChromeBook Pixel's display costs so much). If 16:9 was such a big issue for designers and photo editors (as opposed to a healthy compromise), they wouldn't buy any Macbook instead everything would be done on the iPad - but that's not supported by reality. And I haven't seen any CAD fella use a 4:3 display (they all use the regular 16:9 high res displays).
^^^Mac Books are 4:3, only the 11.6" MBA is 16:9. CAD and photo editing fellas use multiple large 30"+ 16:10 displays where there is a lot of vertical room - in fact I use 2-3 at a time. The Surface Pro or the MBA 11.6" are both non-starters in this regard because they have very little vertical room.
Correction: Photo sensors are 3:2 not 4:3. The Chrome Book Pixel is a 3:2 display.
^^^MacBook Pros are 16:10 displays (all of them including the Mahdi Retinas). Who makes 4:3 displays? For photo editing/CAD stuff anyways you will plug a laptop/Surface Pro into a large display. I doubt the requirement for the display to match some camera's CCD aspect ratio is that important becoz otherwise we would have seen 4:3 or 3:2 native displays be the norm - instead the industry shifted from 4:3 -> 16:9/16:10.
^^^Yes, I'm sorry, the MBP is 16:10. 16:9 is ideal for video editing. For everything else you need vertical space. Camera sensors are mostly CMOS and CCD is used much less.
^^^Shouldn't this be in the L&M dhaaga?
Can't watch with kids around and no fun watching without SHQ, but if you're with alone with SHQ then there are better things to do.
Contestant Kellie Nightlinger, a former gold miner in Alaska, told New York’s Daily News about her less-than-conventional fishing method during the episode, which involved using her “ladyparts” as bait and catching fish between her legs.
Trying a trial version of Office 365, with the exception of saving to Sky Drive, I didn't see anything else that makes it better than Office 2010. Historically, in recent several years, MS Project and Visio have been part Office, but I don't see it as part of Office 365. If anyone can tell me what I get with Office 365, I'm all ears. Otherwise why the hell should anyone pay for Office 365? Just keep using Office 2010/11 and MSFT will continue to support it.
Its a cloud based Office suite with SkyDrive and cross device integration that's all. If one is happy with their old version of Office, no need to switch till support is switched off by Mickey.
Mort Walker wrote:Trying a trial version of Office 365, with the exception of saving to Sky Drive, I didn't see anything else that makes it better than Office 2010. Historically, in recent several years, MS Project and Visio have been part Office, but I don't see it as part of Office 365. If anyone can tell me what I get with Office 365, I'm all ears. Otherwise why the hell should anyone pay for Office 365? Just keep using Office 2010/11 and MSFT will continue to support it.
Raja Bose wrote:Its a cloud based Office suite with SkyDrive and cross device integration that's all. If one is happy with their old version of Office, no need to switch till support is switched off by Mickey.
^^^No idea - if they do, it probably at the fag end of support life cycle. Office365 is aimed at folks who want a cloud office suite (a lot of them are in the govt/enterprise/education and were previously using Google Docs till Office365 launched).
Im a little wary of metal on gadgets. It bends and dents where plastic would flex and regain its form. It happened to my Lenovo x220T (minor fall while charging on a ottoman lead to a completely chipped off corner) and ASUS Transformer 201 tablet (corner dented after a fall from a chair. Good plastic in both cases and I would not have noticed anything.
Raja Bose wrote:^^^No idea - if they do, it probably at the fag end of support life cycle. Office365 is aimed at folks who want a cloud office suite (a lot of them are in the govt/enterprise/education and were previously using Google Docs till Office365 launched).
I'm not aware of any large institution education or government that is using Google Drive (docs). Email has always typically been client based Outlook or IBM Lotus Notes. Some version of MS Office has been used for everything else and files on institutional network drives. Yes, there are some places that have started to use Google's Gmail, but those are few and I don't think GOOG ever got a good foot hold with large institutions.
MSFT will push Office365, but even now large institutions are upgrading from MS Office 2007 to Office 2010.
Actually a whole bunch of state govts. in massa had moved to cloud based office suites. Chacha had landed several big contracts in the last 2 years but after launch of Office365 out of beta, they lost them. Something like Office365 makes it easy for Mickey to force upgrades to the latest office version and once in, the end-user doesn't have to upgrade by themselves anymore (or pay extra for it). So the argument for OS upgrade doesn't work in context of app software upgrade - the path is not serialized.
^^^Well, relatively small entities within states are using Google Apps for Governments. These were small to begin with and the only ones that are big are NOAA and GSA, and you don't see anyone like the University of California system or a large government agency. Everyone else has always been with MSFT - unfortunately.
Even the cheapest digitizer has ~ 2x higher resolution than the most high-res display used.
And I haven't seen any CAD fella use a 4:3 display (they all use the regular 16:9 high res displays). 
face for this quarter, I suppose.
