Posts by JEDIDIAH

Re: "Everyone on a budget"

I don't care if it's "ugly" if it gets the job done. A pretty thing might not even be able to do the job badly.

Those geeky little details that are supposed to be obsolete now determine whether or not you can actually do something and how pleasant you will be while doing it.

Re: "Everyone on a budget"

500 quid on a phone? You must be insane? I've never spent nearly that much. Although I admit that all of my recent phone purchases (Apple or Android) have all been subsidized.

I would be hard pressed to spend 500 quid on a laptop.

Re: Linux Graphics... is rubbish

> so why should they not move onto something that is not chained to the past?

...because something strange happened while X haters were locked in their little echo chamber.

The rest of the industry discovered the utility of some of the more "esoteric" features of X. The idea of tying things to the hardware is quite frankly a childish way of thinking that belongs back in the 80s with things like the Atari ST. Display technology tied to hardware is simply intolerably primitive.

Unix is a multi-user network operating system.

Mindless Lemming Nonsense...

> Well, that's fine if you want to be stuck with OpenOffice, Kivio/Dia, and all the other really bad applications on the Linux platform

You're just shoveling the same old mindless Lemming FUD that people like you have been pushing since before Linux ever existed. Nothing is acceptable unless it's the herd anointed choice. It doesn't matter how good the alternatives are or what their business models are.

Re: Now is the time?

>>"...what exactly does Office 2013 offer me that LibreOffice doesn't?"

>

> Outlook.

You're back to the same 80% problem. 80% of the users really don't have to care about Outlook.

It's mainly persistent FUD that keeps Microsoft products alive.

Helping to destroy this perception has been one of the nice side effect of the rise of tablets.

Re: Now is the time?

>> "I am going to start recommending LibreOffice "

>

> Good luck with that in the real world. It might suit some home users, but it is laughable inadequate in the enterprise.

I have been a successful stealth OpenOffice user in some of the largest corporations on this planet.

The necessity of any particular brand of spreadsheet or word processor has always been grossly overinflated.

Re: Good article, but does the punter care?

> works just fine on me iPad

Apple products are pants when it comes to what subset of the h264 standard they support. If you are interested in any other video encoding or different container formats then you might as well forget about it.

Then there's all of the other stuff from the original media besides the video.

Confused Lemming.

> We've already seen things where technically the better solution

You are confusing technical superiority with personal preference.

Re: My solution

15 inches isn't a work screen. It's a throwback to the 80s.

It's interesting how people managed to do work for so long perfectly effectively without overpriced luxury technology being considered the bare minimum requirement.

Re: My thoughts...

Shortcuts or symbolic links are great. They are a dreadfully simple way of exposing multiple organizational paths to the end user. You can present the "one big pile" approach of Apple tools while at the same time keeping a sane and powerful organizational scheme. Plus they don't require a database or some special proprietary single-app-only kind of scheme.

If Win8 got rid of shortcuts then that's really retarded.

Re: My thoughts...

> Not only does W8 work beautiful without touch

The missus ended up with a Win8 machine. After having used it for herself she views Win8 as an intolerable drain on her productivity. That includes usability failures as well as being bloated and sucking the life out of otherwise respectable hardware.

Microsoft seems to do poorly whenever there is any sort of measurable end user resistance to a new version of WinDOS.

They have that in spades with Win8. The odd fanboy/shill doesn't change that.

Re: It's not that hard to see the problem

Yes. Win8 is a definite negative. It also has the problem of being associated with devices where you can't install the OS of your choice. It doesn't matter if that "alternative" is Linux or Win7.

Microsoft's intentionally confusing marketing approach doesn't help.

Re: Yes the OS is irrelevant.

Win8 is definitely a turnoff. It's pushing something that you are not looking for if you are buying a PC in 2013. It's bound to be another "downgrade" situation like with Vista. People will want to make sure they can put something ELSE on the hardware.

Win8 tries to flush 30 years of accumulated end user experience.

Stupid is as stupid does.

> Many of us consider it worth £280 to not have these ports on the laptop.

Considering how little space they take up, this is a bit retarded really.

"Look at me! I am TRENDY! I am follwing the hip new crowd of Lemmings..."

Re: Thunderbolt be a solution...

>> A problem that doesn't exist?!?

>

> Clearly you've never upgraded a Mac or PC from a stock HD to an SSD. Throughput is what it is ALL about.

In both cases, your bottleneck is the storage device. The kind of cable you choose to use really doesn't alter that.

Re: *sigh*

> Crashes are not uncommon with eSATA,

That's funny. I run a RAID array off of eSATA. Never had a hiccup with it.

Sounds like a sour little fanboy.

Re: ?

I just worked with a laptop yesterday that had an eSATA port. I was kind of surprised as it was a pretty slim laptop. If it wasn't in the MBA category it was pretty close.

Blithering Fanboy nonsense

> You won't find this sort of stuff on PCs much

My wife uses a USB docking station for her work laptop and has never felt deprived over it.

Thunderbolt is just for suckers that like to brag how they needlessly pay more for everything as if they really have the money to waste like that.

Re: I'm on the fence on this one

> Bring back wolves, problem solved.

This from the same class of people that would not tolerate packs of pet dogs wandering around by themselves.

Wolves are a lot bigger and more vicious.

They're villains in fairy tales. There's a good reason they aren't lurking around cities anymore.

Re: It was bound to happen - somebody LISTENED to CUSTOMERS...

They may be opportunistic bast*rds but that's kind of what capitalism is supposed to be all about. You aren't at the mercy of just one bast*rd. You have a wide selection of them so that when one screws up you can patronize another one.

Yes corporations, knock yourself out to steak me as a customer. Bribe me away from my current brand.

Re: WMA

> BluRay holds more data 25GB per layer rather than 15GB

>

> My BluRay player loads pretty fast

My latest home theatre speaker system comes with an embedded BluRay player. All it took was paying a spinny disk directly JUST ONCE to cure me of any interest in doing that again.

My HTPC doesn't just "load pretty fast". It does so instantly.

Re: Don't really see the need

> You have basically described a Mac Mini with external monitor.

Except perhaps for all of the other things you can get in a full tower PC.

A low profile PC can have plenty of room for expansion. You have lots of options. A PC can be as small as you want or as big as you want. Even low profile motherboards have multiple IO connectors and expansion slots.

A "Mac Mini" style enclosure is just one of the many options available.

PCs have always offered lots of options. Got my first "Mini" in 1999.

Re: Style over substance

H*ell. You could cobble this sort of thing together yourself and it would not be apparent from the front.

Just get a low profile PC and use the standard ANSI mount points on any monitor. Some brands of low profile PC even include the mounting bracket.

A couple of screws and you've got your fake AIO.

Re: Good grief

> fully functional 'Mac' and the ability to upgrade the base.

Not really. The machine is simply not built to expose itself to the end user. What little you can upgrade will require more effort than a conventional PC requires. It's like trying to upgrade an Atari ST.

The Mini will quickly become a doorstop as tech passes it by or something glitches. You can't really repair it or upgrade it with high speed components. It accomodates a limited number of user serviceable components.

Plus there's the whole "lets cook the PC" approach to system design. Although you get that with any consumer Apple product.

Re: Good grief

> but the PCs are rubbish

They are not. They're the same collection of random spare parts as the Apple product.

The only real difference is the OS.

Stop swimming in the kool-aid.

Re: Lot of money....

Except this AIO concept isn't even like a house or a car where you outsource all of the maintenance. This is more like some car where the hood is WELDED shut.

If a device isn't maintainable by an enthusiast then it won't be maintainable by a mechanic either.

Although plugging in a new video card is not nearly the chore some would try to make it out to be.

Re: All fugly except the mac

> but without Apple levels of service etc.

You mean components that cook themselves and leaving your machine at the Apple Store for 2 weeks?

Apple can't touch the "fugly" vendors when it comes to service. It's far too much of a consumer doo-dad company. Apple doesn't really sell to people that have to worry about the cost of downtime. They are completely out of touch when it comes to "service".

Nice self-nuke there.

> and it would push the price up for everyone.

Are you kidding? Really? This isn't Dell we're talking about.This is a "luxury brand". Leaving things out because of some need to cut corners is really not consistent with the usual Apple propaganda.

It could be a useful option.

That space could also be used for other interesting things like a 2nd hard drive.

Not everyone is some iPad wielding granny.

Re: Waste of Space

It would still be an example of crony politics and protectionism even if it were declared acceptable under the law.

The fact that something is legal hardly makes it right.

Re: SOFTWARE SOFTWARE SOFTWARE

> Name one alternative

Why? You will just find some weak excuse to discount them all just as idiots like you have always done.

It doesn't matter if the license is open or not or what the platform.

You can't get over your brand fixation. Quality actually has nothing to do with it. Never has.

Anything that is not the herd choice will get shouted down. It's like you're a pod person.

That's one of the reasons I dumped Windows. I didn't need pod people screeching at me for daring to use an alternative to the herd selected brand.