Re: If you've got a TV big enough for this to make any difference,
What do you plan to DO with the wall when you're not projecting on it? Presumably the addition of art, shelves etc would detract from the projected media.
484 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Feb 2008
Perhaps you should....
If people did manufacturers might improve things. In this day and age there is no excuse for wireless networking to be problematic.
Mind you, only 2 years ago Acer sold me a Linux powered Revo with NO wireless driver at all! It had the hardware, and Ubuntu had no issues whatsoever, but Acer couldn't be bothered. £80 less than the Windows version, but still unforgivable.
They might struggle to drive Rovers sadly but I see no reason at all why Cheshire East PCs are swanning about in Hyundais when Vauxhall is nailing Astras together in Ellesmere Port and Toyota and rolling stuff out two counties over in Derby.
Likewise why are we having BMW motorways vehicles when depending on model JLR can supply from Halewood or Birmingham?
I too have an ancient boiler, with an ancient controller (two on, two off in a 24hr period - thats it). I dont trust Combi boilers as they seem to be very fragile...but thats by the by. The timer is now set to be on 24hrs a day, and plugs into a cheap digital 7-day plug timer. The digital timer switches on and energises the old mechanical timer and the heating system. The digital timer switches off and everything powers down.
Digital timers are so cheap I even have a second one programmed for winter use and I just swap them over.
What are you DOING to your PCs?
I only ditched my 7 year old (entry level) Acer lappy last year as it was getting slow and I didnt really have enough room on the (no longer easily sourceable) IDE HD to dual boot. Apart from that its fine.
My six year old desktop is on original parts, was a refurb when I got it and is a Packard Bell, so nothing special. Still runs Linux Mint and XP perfectly well for everything except gaming though.
Interestingly I've just moved over to FirstDirect (NFC on the card, cannot disable it, but thats another gripe...). The chap I was speaking to told me they only had an iPhone app, but consensus was that they had missed a trick not getting an Android one together - one is on the way.
Mind you, the chances of me using an app on my phone to do my banking? Nil.
I'd imagine Samsung were well ready for the strategy, seeing as they have had the last two Nexus phones - its not as if Google or even Moto is making the tablet - its an Asus.
I've been pondering a tablet for a while...this might be the one that pushes me over the edge as I like the whole Nexus concept.
Those energy meters ARE worthless...I've had two.
You switch off everything you can, and you're still using energy. And then the fridge kicks in and throws your efforts to see how much power your house is burning in its 'standby' state. And then a month later the display runs out of batteries. The second or third time you realise that the display is actually eating its way through more batteries than anything else in your house and you pop it in the bin.
Its probably saved a lot less carbon than was spent during its manufacture and distribution.
...because believing it plays 'music for the retired' just makes you sound stupid.
From Wikipedia:
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history
they collect filthy water in the tray under where your hands go and then dribble it down the side of the unit onto the floor (or, hilariously, onto the power socket that feeds the thing if you happen to work here I do).
Then the groove round the yellow fancy trim at the top starts to fill up with mankyness. I do not lke them.
So by the time you're lugging around a keyboard, and presumably a mouse to make your tablet "much better for typing", and something to keep the tablet in an orientation thats useful how is it any different from a badly designed, underpowered netbook? Albeit one thats probably incapable of running the software you routinely use on your desktop...?
Horses for courses...tablet <> desktop replacement or indeed notebook replacement.
Hmmm..I think that says more about iPhone users than abut email...I check my mail on my Android, but nothing beats a keyboard when you actually need to reply.
As for tablets in meetings. I've been to very few meetings where laptops have been generally used. Paper and pencil, yes, laptops, no.
It sounds to me more like the tablet is supplanting clipboards and smart phones than PCs.
but supporting PCs for about half a dozen friends and family the very last thing I want is a user friendly version of BIOS. I want text based. I REALLY want command line based. I want it to scare the crap out of them if they stumble into it.
That way they dont play. They break Windows...I dont want them breaking the BIOS (sic) as well...
Is the least of our worries...
I tried it in my kitchen, with disappointing results. I isolated all the big stuff - fridge, freezer, microwave - to try and clean up the signal.
Turns out a cheapo clock radio from Lidl throws enough dirt into the power lines (I assume..) to single handedly kill the endevour.
"It's like messing around with the engine management software in your car to circumvent that annoying reverse collision detection system system you don't like 'because it is your hardware' . The result is a less safe car, and in addition to voiding the warranty and your insurance you should also be liable if you reverse over someone"
Ford will not care if I do something like that - they may decline to honor the warrentee, but they won't care. Likewise, as long as I inform my insurance company they can up my premiums, or decide they no longer want to cover me, but beyond that they won't give a damn.
Real world, tech example. Nexus One. When I unlocked the bootloader Google explicitly told me that if I went ahead my warrentee would be void. They did nothing to stop me. Likewise they did nothing to stop me rooting. I might have lost root with one update, but it was trivial to root again. They might not warrentee my hardware any more, but they dont care enough to stop me using their services or stop sending me OTA updates.
THAT is how its done.