Posts by N13L5 624 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Apr 2011
800 bucks for a freakin atom...
The low voltage i7 or at least an i3 would be more like it...
ok, so the screen is nice... its still very small. 13.3" would be a lot more workable for windows productivity stuff, and to make enough room for a virtual touch type keyboard
"Consumer Ultra Low Voltage - skinny laptops, which failed to catch the public's eye" (the last time around)
Don't think they "failed to catch the public's eye, they were just overpriced and plasticky...
I don't want to buy a Mac, I can't stand the OS, and while they will run windoze with boot camp, they are not optimized and run much slower with windows than comparable hardware made for windows.
So, if only, I could get a solid metal PC notebook, carved from a block like Apple's, and not given to some schmuck designer who thinks lots of 'decorative' crap and different hues on all surfaces equal good design.
But look at the old lines people are still thinking along:
"WindPho 7 maybe cheaper than Android" so what? nobody is buying the stupid phones. Nobody who didn't want to be in Apple's locked down ghetto wants to be in Microsoft's locked down ghetto instead.
Some even think Android is successful just by being cheaper... I bought my phone for better hardware, my Samsung GSII phone is plain better than the iPhone 4. And iOS, like all Apple software lacks features and options.
And if there had been an iOS or WindPho7 and a real Linux version of the same phone, I would have picked Linux, but as it was, Android was the closest thing to what I'd prefer. Its very customizable and pretty nice to use.
The review missed a nasty drawback on the M18x... the screen is covered by a cheesy plastic panel that reflects like a mirror and easy to scratch..
There's companies like Sager who offer pretty much the same thing. 17" and 18" screen really isn't that much of a difference.
I'd go for a 22" laptop though, one that's designed to still fit into the roll-aboard bag size airlines allow.
And isn't this review a bit late? The M18x is pretty old news...
Only 2 USB ports mean you can't even hook up an external DVD drive (with their usual dual USB Y cables) and a mouse at the same time.
One more manufacturer following the current retarded hype over Apple products that are starved like fashion models into something less than useful.
I can't wait till all this apple hype is over, the lemmings go home, all the religious apple zealots go home and spare the rest of the world with their gushing.
First you say "the Samsung is not as attractively designed" - admitting its not an imitation. Actually the shape is much like other recent samsung notebooks.
Then you add "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" ...Fanboi much? It appears the ONLY thing Samsung "copied" was using aluminum... otherwise it follows the same design lines of most current Samsung laptops.
So your statement makes about as much sense as claiming that Apple imitated Boeing for using aluminum. The reason I comment is because you are perpetuating the retarded Apple hype and the fact that people are already crediting Apple for 'inventing' a lot of things they did not invent, they just polished the products more.
The HP Envy is something of an imitation, but this is not.
And did you notice that "not as attractive is a matter of taste?" I for one am no fan of Apple's totally flat case design. Yes, Apple has some good detail solutions, and the elements of its design match each other well. The chinese at Foxconn take great care that fit and finish is flawless.
But Samsung's bezel around the screen is smaller than Apples, which I equate to better, cause I get a bigger 14" screen.
Not that I'm a fan of Samsung either, but if they're copying anything in regards to their laptop surface layout, its Sony. They seem to have taken a close look at some details from recent VAIO laptops..
I don't think so...
Andriod UI isn't perfect, but its way better than iOS' stupid icon monotony.
Guess who's copying Google's notification bar? Apple...
"intellectual property" my ass...
Apple and iPhone is like Blizzard and World of Warcraft... they didn't invent anything new, they just put existing things together in a very polished and retard-proof way.
They all should copy to make better devices, and quit trying to compete in the courtroom.
Overblown patent durations will cost the west its current advantage.
I understand patents' original idea, but the whole thing has been perverted into a tool of oppression and enabling monopoly abuse.
I laud Asia for largely ignoring our patents. Thousands should have never been granted, and many more are for such basic and retarded things, you could not patent them anywhere else in the world but the U.S. Its a system of modern piracy enabling a few to steal from everybody, with a mantle of legality.
Like patenting buttons in an application going to an external link.. whoopdidoo! Plenty of prior art, just nobody retarded enough to think of patenting it, so some retard comes along and patents it, and the patent office, clueless as they are (apparently no access to internet search engines either) grants it...
Thats like some crook being given legal means to rob multiple liquor stores simultaneously.
The only reason I have never bought a Nex5 was the fact that there's no portrait lens, and I'd prefer to have a choice of a 30mm pancake.
Regardless of how many new models they throw on the market, I won't buy it without the lenses I normally use. (and no, I don't want to fumble with adapters and crap)
Otherwise, new models are always ok... just hope there will be some non-black-rubbery covered versions too... I'm not a fan of retro looks, and I don't have problems gripping things.
True, a little old lady who has no kids advising her on whats good will swallow up the sales guy's talk, and so be responsible for any sales Windphone7 does get.
Bada phones get bought by people who can't afford Samsung's Android phones and need a good deal but still want to get some of the current trendy features they've been bombarded with on TV and elsewhere.
I'm just wishing for phones that, like PC's, let us install whatever OS we want, including dual boots
Hilarious Apple fanboi fiction...
so WebOS couldn't keep up with Apple's "breakneck speed of innovation"? You are really full of it...
Apple doesn't even have widgets yet, after how many years? And their hardware prowess is limited to shiny casings, the components don't really compare well to other options. But Apple is hands-down the best at generating hype.
As for WebOS:
HP's CEO Apotheker is a stuffy German from SAP with large corporate software tunnel vision. He had them release WebOS on a 2-year old platform with every hope it would bomb, to give him a reason to get rid of the part of HP's business he didn't like to begin with. This says nothing about the quality of WebOS.
I am indifferent to WebOS, mind you, I'd simply like Linux on my mobile devices, so I don't have to feel like the jerks who made my device still own it, after I paid for it.
Apple's whole mobile spiel is not innovation but putting existing technologies together in a really polished way. That deserves credit, no question. But starting to compete in the courts means they'd like to stop improving their stuff and just take your money for the same old same old for a decade or two.
Since Apple put the iPhone together, their biggest 'innovative' energy has been behind up-sizing the walls around their garden, while other companies focused on improvements for users. Witness the Samsung Galaxy SII and others, if you can get your eyes opened to reality for just a moment, between the freight trains of your internal fanboi dialogue"
Lastly, while you see and wish for Android crumbling, it certainly won't be windphone7 to make that happen, cause users just aren't buying it, even though M$ has been paying Telcos to make their sales reps point customers to windphone7 devices.
I remember various phone store trips this year, where they kept trying to push windphone7 devices on me, even after I had repeatedly said I wasn't interested. They kept on coming back trying to make explanations of how it would be great "once I'd get used to it".
Usually, store clerk's interest is in selling you a contract, they could care less what phone you buy... so I know money must have changed hands to get them to exhaust themsevles trying to get me on a specific OS brand.
Obviously, I'm far from the only one where the jawboning fell on deaf ears. People don't like monopoly builders, (except Apple) and they sure didn't like being starved for fixes on old Windows Mobile for a decade, where Ballmer refused to spend a penny, cause he thought he had the market sewn up.
Slimebags they all are, looking for an easy racket.
Punters buying tablets is the equivalent of drug addicts buying crack pipes, they have to; they must feed their addiction.
Buy a Tablet, so you don't have to deal with yourself or your surroundings, even when out and about; there's always some little App diversion in your tablet.
So you get to smoke your crack and think you're looking smart doing it..
(trust me, people with those on buses and trains look retarded)
Wonder how long that hype and illusion will last. I think in 2-3 years, we'll be buried under a pile of tablets that end up nailed to the wall as picture frames or audio players.
Then there'll be the next hype: augmented reality sun glasses, with a virtual 60" heads up display and a computer+phone in your pocket the size of a box of matches powering them. Even better crackpipe and probably more useful...
Have you not noticed the difference?
PC's, we own, we can install on them any Operating System we want.
Tablets and Smartphones are annoyingly totalitarian, its like the jerks who made them continue to own them after we buy them. Add the fact that Apple and M$ prefer to use anything (including the courts) to create monopolies if they can, and its a stinky mess to rival the financial crisis.
I don't want to spend the future in anyone's walled garden. Especially not the totalitarian garden of the company who once made a George Orwell commercial, that makes them look particularly hypocritical now.
All tablets right now are a game for suckers. On all my computers, I can install any OS I want. Dual boot, triple boot, whatever I want, I can do, I OWN the device.
With tablets, the jerks that made them, seem to continue to own them after you pay for them.
So no, I don't want an iCrap, or any other overpriced, unproductive jail cell.
Gadgets are becoming increasingly totalitarian, which leaves you wondering that our governments must be close behind. These are scary times.
There seems to be a lot of spots for potential vulnerabilities...
For one thing, is everything sent encrypted? or is it all open to interception and hacking?
How do I know what international sms fees will be, if I decide to type a load of sms replies on my computer?
As it is, I mostly avoid sms, since its telco controlled, and use other types of messaging clients.
If sms had a reasonable (like 1 cent / message) fee, I'd use it, but international sms often cost upwards of 20 cents.
As for the question in the article, if vendors should pick up the phone and call Micro$oft for windphone:
that's a crap idea, as is obvious by consumer disinterest, nobody wants any more from the company with that nasty desktop monopoly they had to suffer for almost two decades...
Better they call Intel for some more MeeGo Linux goodness...
though Google has been really sloppy about the patent law issues.
Of course patent law is a childish mess, but that's the mafia-rule of the land, so unless you're in blessed asia, you can't ignore it
Well, if vendor interest for Android really does implode, I hope vendors like Samsung, HTC, Sony, are moving to MeeGo, and not crappy M$ windphone, or else, I'll be forced to get out of smartphones alltogether with only the choice of walled garden and walled ghetto.
Unlucky for Dell, Samsung's Galaxy SII won out on several specs I considered necessary.
So, it wasn't the screen size that prompted me to buy something else, it was more modern hardware in the Samsung.
I think 5" screens will come back sooner or later.
Cause that's about the largest size you can carry in a regular pocket on your body.
Kudos to Dell for making that.
People who want to be in a walled garden are already buying the more shiny Apple stuff, and those avoiding Apple's walled garden lock down sure won't want to be in Microsoft's walled ghetto.
A lot of people with windows mobile experience, aren't too eager to go with microsoft either, remembering how M$ won't spend a penny to fix issues if they think they got the market sewn up.
Aside from that, M$ interface is certainly original, but impossible to customize to user's tastes, its either M$ way or the highway. So far, everybody is preferring the Highway...
Here's hoping for Intel to pull the coals out of the fire for Users who'd like to be free from proprietary OS's with padlocks and bars in the windows everywhere, giving you that corporate prison feel on hardware you paid for and should own.
If your carrier removed google market, boohoo...
With half a brain, you can take control over whats on your phone and install whatever you like, including a fresh copy of any app market you'd like to use.
And apps you bought are linked to your name, not your phone. Its also easy to back them up to your computer.
If you can't manage, buy Apple.
Apple has successfully shown that pandering to the inept who feel under pressure to avoid looking inept, has unlimited profit potential. It turns toys like the iPad into a compulsory purchase.
The pipe (telco network) is a commodity.
The OS is a commodity.
The hardware people see in the store is the differentiator.
Companies putting out mediocre hardware will and should fall behind, whatever OS they throw on it.
(Apple is a hype driven anomaly, somewhat deserved, since they were the first to put the pieces together properly, but their hardware isn't exactly at the vanguard like Samsung or HTC)
It won't be long and we'll be able to select the OS independently from the phone, like on PC's.
Companies won't be first to do this, users who cook custom roms will be first, and companies will follow. There's already an application that lets you install a Linux desktop on an Android phone.
I understand your point in regards to Android, but I contend Elop was still wrong. Why?
1) Nokia has lost more money due to the market share crash than M$ paid them, with future losses set for a continued climb.
2) Nokia did have an extremely promising and almost ready to go OS of their own, that would allow them to continue to be their own masters.
3) All Elop needed to do was to re-fashion the departments and get employees set to just finish some MeGoo phones, which they now did in great style, but which would have gone a lot faster without wasting a lot of executive's and employee's time with M$ dealmaking and putting most of of their resources on figuring out Windphone 7, and Microsoft's arcane proprietary code.
Just look at the great MeGoo phone Nokia just put out. Ok,, its technically behind, but the OS is great, its Micro$oft free (which means a lot to people who avoid Apple; cause they don't want to trade a walled garden for a walled ghetto)
MeGoo benefits for Nokia and its customers are pretty good:
1) No single company has complete control over MeGoo
2) not a walled garden/ghetto
3) Its based on Linux.
4) Its not controlled by Google
5) Its not controlled by Apple
6) Its not controlled by Microsoft
7) Nokia did a great job with the implementation
8) Its not an indecipherable proprietary mess like Windphone7
Nokia was starting to get Linux cred, so they would have had loads of programmers buy their phones and - naturally - they'd build cool stuff for MeGoo.
I think MeGoo has 3 times the chance to compete with Android than Windphone has.
DLNA setup really is not complex, give me a break...
These are expensive, they only stream audio in one direction, so they are useless for a headset with mic for musicians, and they can't even inter operate with smartphones and other DLNA devices?
They're basically like a $150 one-way cable that needs 5V power on both ends.
I wonder what their range is, did I miss that in the review..?
Are your monitors protected from loud pops when turning on or off the computer or the mackie unit itself?
I had a Tascam firewire unit, way more expensive than this, yet it fried the tweeters on my old Alesis Studio Monitors due to unforgivably loud pops when the computer hooked up to it was turned on or off.
I have no taste for a repeat on my new KRK's....
Alesis Mixers have never matched the pristine signal quality of Mackie.
Not to mention the longevity of the pots and faders...
I used to have that Alesis mixer once, cause it was cheaper than the Mackie my friend had... it was crap, sold it on ebay...
So I have no reason to believe that an Alesis at half the price will have anywhere near the same quality mic preamps or for that matter any part of it being the same quality as Mackie.
Unless the new owner Loud plans to just coast on Mackie's good name for a couple of years selling cheap crap, but that would be very foolish way to ruin an excellent franchise, so I doubt it.
That is last year's spec...
So, you're essentially saying thats decent for Nokia, given all the amazing troubles they have?
aight..
Lets hope this isn't the only MeeGo phone and it won't be discontinued the second Elop's idiotic Windphones get released :/
Sadly, its one more mount without the ability to attach to a tripod.
As far as mounts go, there are some really smart ones on eBay for $5.
They are flatter (less voluminous than this one too, so your device can be mounted closer to whatever object you're clipping it to)
I still like the design of this one a lot,
But its neither the cheapest working choice, nor is it the best for all applications. Having a sucktion cup as the only option of attachment has turned out impractical for me on a previous holder...
Comments on the build quality would make it easier to decide wether to add it to my collection of holders...
The only reason I don't own any Macbook Pro to run windows, is that Apple, even worse than Sony, chooses out of date, low end graphics cards for their whole range,
I was just on Apple's site yesterday... for £1299, you get a retarded Intel HD 3000 (what you get in netbooks for £300)
for £1549, you get a low end AMD 6490 M with all of 256MB RAM... thats just sad...
should be a 6950 M or at least a 6850 M or 6770 M
And their website advertises how well 8 year old WoW runs. :P
People will have their desktop turn into a slideshow if they try to go retina, even without much in the way of 3D effects...
That guy should have his head elopped off - either for being retarded, or for being a trojan horse, working to sink Nokia, so Microshuft can pick up the company for pennies after bankcrupcy.
First, you never announce discontinuation of all existing products when you have no new products to sell.
There's past examples of other companies that suicided like that. Elop must have been sleeping through the lectures in business school.
Further, there was no need to announce everything dead. Any smart manager, not biased by pre-conceived notions would have gone for keeping up cashflow and sales first. That would have meant announcing continued support and improvements for Symbian, MeeGo, with Windphone7 and Android getting announced as as 2012 additions to the program.
Nokia needs volume to remotely compete with Samsung and HTC's hardware, and they're not going to get that volume out of Windphone 7 alone.
In their current position of being technically behind, they need to make one high end model that can run several operating systems, make a lot of them, and see what OS people want to buy the most before making any further decisions.
But Mr. "idiotic smug grin" Elop is living on another planet.
Granted, nobody is 'waiting' for Windphone 7 models... the few people who had to have one of those could already buy them elsewhere.
But calling the entire existing product line dead, without pressing need to do so, is still retarded and surely doesn't help selling what you have.
I was never much of a Symbian fan, but I did buy 2 phones based on it in the past, figuring there would be updates coming. Once they call it dead, you can be sure I won't be caught dead owning one.
And MeeGo...? I would have preferred a MeeGo phone over Android. But if they won't continue on MeeGo, why take the pain of using the first version, if it won't go anywhere?
And if Nokia sells nothing but Windphones in the future, I simply won't be a Nokia customer at all. I'm not interested in voting with my dollars to extend the windows monopoly to mobile.
I think Nokia is getting close to loosing more money than M$ paid them for this breakneck shift.
How does MS justify making everything harder on professionals in the name of making it easier for the clueless?
Its not impossible to make it easier for the clueless, without making it harder for knowledgeable users.
But in Office 2010, there's no improvement that would justify the loss of speed for experienced users.
So, don't be surprised M$, if people aren't upgrading... The old product is only dead if you can convince everybody that the new product is better for them.
Office 2010 maybe better for people who never used office, but for anyone else, its just an annoyance.
Let me take a dump on all this iPhone dock crap. Either manufacturers haven't noticed that Androids are outselling iPhones, or they figure its too difficult to include a selection of swappable trays with micro USB connectors.
But how about - DLNA - it needs no stinking tray, so we could go back to more universally useful gear, like it used to be before the big Apple psychosis.
A good variation would be active studio monitors with those perfect frequency curves, each driver with its own amp, producing pristine sound beyond any of this consumer clap trap - for less money. (like KRK V4 or V6's, Alesis, M-Audio and similar are all reasonable and have way more accurate sound, cause they were made for audio professionals).
Combine that with a small DLNA receiver (renderer as they call them) and loose the need for a regular stereo alltogether.
When you come home, you can just pull the headphones out of your phone and toss it on the sofa, the speakers will just continue playing what you were listening to...
Its great in the rain or if you just sweat a lot, for whatever reason.
been waiting for the next version.
I have the original version which was reputed to be quite water sensitive, so I'd use a hat or take it off whenever it started to rain.
But there's nothing as great as a walkman with no cables that could break or develop intermittent contacts.
My old one has great sound quality, holds like 300 songs, charges fast, and is now the only walkman I use. All my iPods are in a drawer in the cellar.
This is one of very few products I'll be standing in line for. Surprisingly, its from Sony...
Has everybody fallen to the 'Apple invented everything' hypnosis?
A little over 30 years ago, most smaller computers were all-in-one.
I don't hear automobile reviewers relating every single car review to how its "similar to" Mercedes or Ford, by being packaged in a boxy shape with 4 corners and 4 wheels and a motor. The all-in-one car vs having horses in front?
Its getting tiresome and retarded.
If the media would stop feeding this hysteria, maybe the ass-hats at Apple would one day be forced to let go of their horrible business practices, walled gardens and control freakishness, that prevents anyone with an IQ over 100 from buying their great-looking crap.
this unit's ability to sit like a wacom graphics tablet makes it much more useful than any other all-in-one, including Apple's and Sony's.
However, the bezel design is an ugly mess, if you compare to the clean looks of sony and Apple...
Quote from Article: "Microsoft will be hoping it can influence the courts in the Barnes & Nobel and Motorola cases – and in any future cases – by saying: if you don't believe us on Android violating our patents, just look at all those who accepted we were right and agreed to pay up."
One would hope any judge would know that most companies just fold cause they can't afford to fight the bastards...
The whole concept behind patents is, of course, anti-competitive. That's why the U.S. founding fathers thought the time span should be very limited.
I think an electronics patent should have half the duration of any mechanical engineering patent, and a software patent should only be a quarter of the duration, so humans everywhere can avoid being held back by a few greedy corporations who would ride a patent till 2050, and not make a single improvement, if they can keep others out of the market by patent power.
Of course, Apple is worse than M$... cause they just sue to shut down competitors, they won't even license anything. (unless they got forced into a cross-licensing deal)
they didn't have iCloud up yet...
So, not much point from Apple's point of view.
I think they can do a lot more interesting things with their Datacenter, than trying to get everybody to stream their own music to themselves, and end up with no music if they ever drive through a tunnel or are out of the city...
I like having a good little microcomputer called 'phone' on my travels, can watch downloaded university lectures, read books, listen to music, type stuff, even write code on it - importantly, without needing any connection for all that fun.
So I won't be caught dead making everything on it network dependent no matter how many radios are on that device. Various radios are great, so long as we can turn them on and off as we please...
given how you loved the old 560, you could have at least mentioned how the keyboard is on this in detail, is there flex in the keyboard? does it have a nice tactile action? the layout?
Well, ok, I can see from the picture that the layout is crappy, I despise half size arrow keys.
And with that crummy resolution, i'd prefer buying an MSI U210 for less than 300.
I think you were overly influenced by nostalgic love for some laptop that won't be coming back.
The resolution is really an insult at that price, and turns the machine into a clunker...
I got sick and tired of wasting my time to jailbreak my phones. Its like fighting Jobs tooth and nail for every inch, cause he doesn't want me to be the owner of the crap I paid him for.
Cause in the U.S. Apple/AT&T will *never* unlock your phone, even after you fulfilled your contract, because there's no law protecting consumers from having their phone turned into a worthless paperweight every 2 years - unless you jailbreak...
Good thing that there's now technically more advanced phones.
And since iPads mainly serve as a crack-pipe for the new crack "online addiction" the thought of buying one never crossed my mind.
Bought my last phone in Germany... even though its on a contract, no branding, no SIM lock from the start, cause I got it from a 3rd party distribution partner of Vodafone. Switching it from German to English took 10 seconds. I'll never buy another phone in the U.S. and certainly none from Crapple...
its not about being able to call on Nokia for support... You think Nokia is going to do anything more than the most minimal / absolutely necessary fixes for it? Think...
Its about mindshare with 3rd party developers. Do you think Skype will ever bother to grace it with a new version? ya right :P
And thats just one example of the myriad cool new apps available on iOS and Android.
zombied indeed
If you look at the latest statistics on venues that generate the most advertising views, Tablets are disproportionately high, in comparison to their total market share.
So, tablets are really great for advertisers and anyone else with a need to spread propaganda, as well as carriers who love to drain your account with mobile data-plans, so you can look at -- you guessed it -- propaganda and advertising, always and everywhere.
For consumers, tablets are a fashion item with limited use but to serve their online addiction.
Always connected is the new crack and tablets are the new crack pipes
I think there is no better thing Consumers could do, than to pause buying these for a bit.
Cause all the people needing to spread their spin and advertising will be finding ways to subsidize them soon, just to make sure everybody can have one.
So, they will be getting cheaper, and you'll be better off waiting till tablets are technically more advanced and dropped to a double digit price by virtue of subsidy.
If you have to count your money, better to spend it on gear with more productivity potential like e-readers or laptops.
Yes, I know, there are exceptions, if you're a painter or a musician, you can work on a tablet instead of a net-book, cause the lack of a keyboard is not as significant. But for most people, the lack of a keyboard and the low resolution makes a tablet a pure media consumption device.
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