Android Army
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6 postsThe Verge
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About armpitofdeath
Wearer of non-ironic suits. Old-school nerd, still on the bleeding edge of tech. Always with the new, always with the better.
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Apple Core
All things Apple
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Betamaxed
Home theater and beyond
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Microsoft Tribe
Let your Microsoft flag fly
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The Lens
Calling all photo junkies
3 posts
armpitofdeath
On The Verge since May 21, 2012
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It’d have to be 3840 × 2160/2400 for me to be useful beyond a regular 30" resolution. Otherwise you’d likely get the same ‘off-Retina’ blurriness when you scale.
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As I’ve said before, I’m surprised how many people seem unable to make the simple mental leap to see the advantages of a dual input system. There are plenty of times where prodding the screen makes more sense than with the touchpad, and there are plenty of times when more precise control with a touchpad or mouse makes more sense than prodding the screen. The two however needn’t be exclusive. And in many cases, I’d say that having both, with the slight runtime, weight and cost disadvantages, is still compelling.
What I usually ask is, have you ever actually sat down with one for an extended period of time and tried it? Often at best it’s someone with something like an X201T on which they’ve installed W8 (which, by the way, I also did on an X220T with the Preview – and in hindsight, it was an entirely different experience to using a W8 native touch PC). It’s the same for use on the desktop – a lot of people prefer to extrapolate their iPad or suchlike experiences than actually use a setup. If you point that out then it’s like “I don’t need to, I already know it sucks”.
I know why my opinions differ so much from most: e.g. I differ to Applezombies as not only do I have pretty much the entire Apple inventory, I have the decent selection of the actual high-end Windows competition. Similarly I started my Windows 8 migration – and it won’t be a wholesale one – with touch machines.
And touch response as well as screen response, in terms of an all-aspect touch-friendly viewing angle are cost factors. Cheap machines given the weight of Windows are not as responsive, and have screens which can make them hard to use when at a particular touch-friendly angle.
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That wasn’t the point, though I can see why an Applezombie would see it that way.
Windows makers have plenty of experience in the high end, though Apple have pretty much sewn up the market for the high end trinket category right now. Some are choosing to emulate, others are not. That’s not the issue. The issue is that the Microsoft ecosystem is too geared towards the lowest end of the market, and not because manufacturers can’t make decent machines. It’s just that unless you throw in a colossal dollop of Beats-like marketing, you cannot get your average dumb Joe to part with more than he has to – and Microsoft, being famously bad at marketing, has been pretty happy to let the market go with that flow.
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It’s been out for a while. Anyhow, these 29" ultrawides are only 2560 × 1080 – a 30" is much more useful.
Video’s good tho
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I like where they seem to be going.
The way they’re getting there just frustrates me a lot right now.
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I’ve been saying that for years.
You haven’t really said anything beyond the nebulous three lines, so I’ll drop the Elitebook 8570W or P (though I’ve never used a P, don’t know what they take out to make a W into a cheaper P) into the mix. Meets your requirements, build quality that outines Apple to be the ‘entertainment-grade’ machine it is.
It’s a bit of a brick, but a substantial and long-lasting brick.
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I’m really put off by other guys reeking of scent – sometimes I’m faced with double jeopardy when standing on trains where I have to choose to face a guy with industrial-strength BO, a guy who seems to have tipped an entire bottle of whatever it is over himself, or the nasal equivalent of the Battle of Thermopylae that is the mix of those – that I don’t wear it very often. Usually I’ll just leave it at deodorant.
I like simple, old-school whiffs like Armani but I do have a lot to choose from. But it’s probably telling factor of how often I use them that I don’t actually remember what most of’em smells like, and I just pick a random one when I need to smell of something.
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Recommended benzoate's comment in What's your signature fragrance?
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Something something IKEA.
Honestly, as I keep finding out if you want something nice done that’s exactly as you want it, you either steel yourself for a WTF price tag, or your do it yourself. But you can probably achieve something quite decent by hacking IKEA.
Generally speaking (since I don’t really go out to specifically showcase tech) I don’t have the time nor the inclination to really sweat my furniture, so I either go ‘close enough’ (which is usually nowhere near close enough) throwing stuff together or the WTF route (done properly) when I really, really want something done.
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That it kind of borders on parody. Except you know it’s not. Which is why I commented. Happy now?
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It’s just so… cookie cutter.
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The big problem was Microsoft didn’t respond to outright lies from Apple – they left it too late.
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Display refresh hasn’t been on any kind of schedule from what I know which is why I’m asking. I very much doubt a 27" 4K panel is anywhere near down the line.
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If you read that back to yourself and engage brain, you’ll realise why your particular reasoning makes no sense.
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Well you are going to have at least three cables trailing – the left-to-right, and the USB + analog – although sure, it ends up at the same location. I know being an Appleholic makes you a wannabe minimalist (yet strangely cheap-out) always at the expense of practicality and performance, but is one other cable so bad for much better sound (there’s a limit what 5V @ 500ma can provide, sound-wise)?
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Playcounts. I need them back. I’ve switched back to WP7.8 handsets for playing music+podcasts. I’m not wedded to Zune but I need waaaay better music matching and cloud playcount sync if there’s no local client capable of syncing playcount between multiple devices and the PC.
The Windows Phone sync app is pretty dire. Also MTP doesn’t seem to be necessarily proper MTP as I have a number of problems syncing with third-party software which are supposed to understand MTP. But that matters to me much less than the playcount issue.
International podcasts – you have a podcast section saying ’It’s lonely in here’, and then find you can’t actually put anything in there from the handset. Genius
XBox Music is a disaster. Basically all of the media features need serious fixin’
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Android and flow? LOL.
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Yeah. The one-piece polycarb Lumias are a much more solid take than HTC’s Apple-grade engineering, looks-over-actual-quality interpretation. It’s no wonder the Apple-addled tech reviewers went bananas for the One X, but it’s also no wonder for that reason why it doesn’t take everyday handling punishment anywhere near as well as the Nokias – and that’s even without the other attendant construction issues with the One X.
The 8x for example uses a more ‘traditional’ moulded shell, which is more conservative – and is one of the better HTC phones (though that’s a relative term) in terms of actual handling resistance, though you couldn’t call it outright durable as e.g. the L800.
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You could put it another way – Questionable UI decisions for the lower end of the market, which compromises a huge part of the Windows user base – especially I guess those who think Apple is high end (as opposed to the actual high end of HP & Dell offerings) and for ‘rich people’.
I like Modern Mix among Stardocks offerings, but as someone who considers the Apple-level prices pretty much the start of anywhere near a decent computing experience in any OS, I’ve not felt that Windows 8 has any major issues with it, as I’ve only been buying touch Windows 8 hardware.
But the UI qualms are a valid point for people using their $500 piles of junk – 7 is much better suited to low-end hardware, but by making vendors sell Win8 along with their systems, MS is effectively shooting itself in the foot.
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Posted: Windows Phone Development: Questions about getting started
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Not so much the One X, which was a poor imitation IMO – marked way too easily, unlike the Lumias.
The difference between an aluminium shell and a polycarb shell is that the latter will survive a pretty serious drop.
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Recommended DJFM's comment in Windows 8: forget 100m licences 'sold', here's how many PCs are running it
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I’m interested why you’d think that in these days of footlong-sized phones.
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They seem pretty laissez-faire to me.
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Pointing and laughing at Windows 2.0, and turning back to my IIcx. Followed by almost as much pointing and laughing at 3.0 and then turning back to my IIfx.
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I’d imagine on the Verge staff, that title has got to mean “The one guy who isn’t a total Appleholic”
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You know I’m surprised (maybe I shouldn’t be) how many people are unable to make the simple mental leap for the benefits, even if they don’t own touch hardware. Try it is all I can say.
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I have any number of small issues, most of which are catalogued above, but the glaring ones are:
XBox Music / Video. This is a joke. Not just in the way it works (it doesn’t even remember track states in the same session, let alone on a restart – and no playcount sync) but also in the way it’s managed globally (my market doesn’t have podcasts. Yet it tells me “it’s lonely in here. Get podcasts from the store”). It really is a 24-carat joke. Apple was savaged by it’s user community for introing a podcast app that was panned as crap – which is nevertheless a bazillion times better than the implementation on Windows Phone (especially for us not in the US).
VPN
Encrypted storage bugs
