kevm14

That’s an interesting point. The Verge almost seems to encourage these comparisons of industrial design. It’s a laptop, not a fashion statement.

My 2006-era Sony Vaio has a wedge shape and weighs under 4 lbs. What do I win?

I bought a Studio XPS 435MT in 2009 (prior to Win 7). It had an i7-920, which was pretty high end at the time and Vista x64. It was a refurb, but came in brand-new condition, and was only like $650 after a coupon. Other than a bad PSU a couple months ago, it has been fabulous. I literally couldn’t have built it for within several hundred dollars of the price.

It’s called hardware standards.

Whatever small amount a Win RT license cost is, you could easily pass 100% of it along to the consumer, because the better experience, and better ecosystem is easily worth the slightly higher price.

As was I. But my point was Win 3.1 to 95 was a huge UI change. Win 7 to 8 is actually split – the “future” is there, and wants to be front and center, but the “past” is not only still present, but even more optimized than before. What’s not to like? Evolution is constant. It’s not like MS is like “Ok, THIS time we are done…this is how it is going to be for the next 100 years” each time they do a new OS.

Vista demanded big specs to run properly, compared to XP. Win 7, by comparison, runs better on old stuff than Vista does. And Win 8 is continuing in that direction, running faster than 7 on old hardware.

Um, Metro apps will, by and large, be designed for low power ARM systems. And don’t forget about phones. I don’t expect to see PC levels of power required for Metro apps for a while. Honestly, I think real productivity software belongs on the desktop, with a proper keyboard and mouse.

So now there is an x86 Metro IE10 and a Win RT Metro IE10? I doubt that. But I guess anything is possible.

I think it’s funny that extensive draft support is extremely important to some people.

I would have no problem with ZERO flash support in Metro IE10, if only because it may help push HTML5. However, this may be an acceptable stop gap. Not EVERYTHING is supported, but at the same time, MS ensures a decent end user experience. Surprisingly reasonable solution (for now), really.

Don’t forget about the tuning adapters…they’ll present the only real problem, well, that and general RF SNR issues. But that’s for your cable co to figure out. Hopefully.

Huh. Well, I’ve had no problems at all with my Duet…I think it’s an A188 or something. Dual ATSC…

Find someone with an Evo and show them your boot time. I have. The reactions are priceless.

But even if they somehow take credit for “pushing” MS to make better products, they STILL won’t consider anything MS does or creates to be cool. It’s cultural. Which is a form of bias.

Sometimes I swear the Windows screenshots are either from Parallels or Boot Camp.

That is correct. Though when people use “Fox News” in a negative manner, I do interpret it as “those uber-opinionated asshats.” Which is fine. But, that is not the only thing that is on the network.

Right, they would say “We’re not biased, it’s just that MS stuff is not as good as Apple or Google stuff.”

That’s not a terrible way to summarize it. When I see Apple and Google articles, it’s mostly “Hey, look, Apple or Google is doing something cool again.” With MS stuff it’s more like “Here’s something uncool/unnecessary/unwanted/unpopular, and/or something that MS will screw up.”

I’m not sure about the playlist part, but I can install apps from anywhere and certainly the whole Live ecosystem covers calendar updates. They DO have an ecosystem, you know.

BTW, my setup is MORE stable than a cable box. I’d point to driver issues on your setup, not W7/WMC itself.

From what I’ve seen, Hauppauge drivers just suck, which is why I avoided them when choosing an ATSC tuner. You want Avermedia or Silicon Dust.

I missed my tuner!!
Avermedia Duet. Very happy with it.

Part of the whole job was upgrading the RF side, which was pretty involved. I ran quad shield RG6, bought a big fancy VHF/UHF Winegard, and a pre-amp. Then I was up on my roof for weeks tweaking the aim. I even got rid of some towering white pines, partially because they were blocking some signal. Frankly, I enjoyed the process, and would do it again in a heartbeat.

But as for maintenance after all of this – pretty much nothing. The machine never crashes, and I don’t reboot it. It updates itself. Hard to complain.

I custom built an HTPC in 2009. I also cut the cord in 2009. My setup:
nMEDIA PC HTPC 5000B case (people still think it is my receiver, runs cool, and is quiet – win)
Asus Intel G41 mATX MB
Intel C2D E7500
4GB RAM
320GB 720rpm (boot)
1.5TB Samsung EcoGreen (for recorded TV)
2TB Samsung EcoGreen (for movies)
ATI 4670 running component 1080i to my ancient Sony HD CRT

Remote:
Very simple AVS Gear IR01BK MCE remote…it was $29 and works great

Then I have a gigabit connection to my main desktop, which has photos and music. The photos are pulled in for the awesome screensaver. I rip from the desktop and use YAMMM and DVD Shrink (main title, VOBs).

But the main point is, this is my main TV rig. You press power on the MCE remote, press power on the TV remote, and press power for the receiver. Before the TV is even warmed up, the HTPC comes out of standby.

It has been exceedingly reliable, and is wife-friendly. I have already broken even on the whole job, after ditching cable, and my TV experience is FAR, FAR superior to before (I came from analog expanded basic and a MythTV PVR box).

I did have some issues getting sleep to work properly, and the fix was a BIOS update and MCE Standby Tool or whatever it is called.

There can be ATSC reception issues, which is the only thing that really causes my wife any grief.

Ancillary TV comes from Netflix and Hulu Desktop. Everything is done from the remote, which was a big priority for me on this whole mission. If you load a DVD, it just plays. No hassle.

I don’t want a computer on my TV, though, there are occasional side benefits to that obviously.

Right, that’s when I realized it wasn’t a problem. But in the beginning I was switching back and forth until I committed more by installing stuff I needed. Still, I don’t really understand why it has to basically fully load the OS before presenting those options. Obviously it has to do with the way the Win 8 bootloader works (and is different from previous ones).

One of the things that REALLY annoys me about the new Win 8 bootloader is it does all kinds of processing just to get to the boot menu. Then if I select a different OS than default (such as Win 7) it actually has to restart the machine. Why? It seems like it actually almost fully boots the OS before presenting that menu…

Of course, I have solved the problem. On my laptop (where Win 8 CP is installed) I just don’t use Win 7 anymore.

On my desktop, I’m stuck in Vista, and even on a core i7-920, it takes a while to boot…I can’t even pin anything to the taskbar!!

You must not have been an IT admin in, oh, around 1995. In case you were, are those users still on Win 3.11?

I upgraded my Vista box to 12 gigs of ram. I can finally have all the tabs open I want. Actually, it runs pretty well. Kind of sad that 6 gigs wasn’t enough, though.

Yeah well XP icons in Vista were ugly as hell, too. MS doesn’t make all Windows programs so that is just going to evolve over time. Instant change is impossible.