Recent Posts

251

Living Room / Re: Should I buy a tablet pc, ipad, netbook, or other?

« Last post by Darwin on December 02, 2010, 10:56 AM »

Crap! Sorry - I DID think it was funny! Good thing you posted back, Nosh, I would have not noticed that mistake 

252

Living Room / Re: Five Reasons Why People Hate Apple

« Last post by Darwin on December 02, 2010, 10:43 AM »

Ouch! That is good to know, f0dder (about the update woes). Given that the kid has a second generation iPod Touch, I wonder if it's really necessary for him to upgrade, other than to have the latest and "greatest" OS? AFAIK, he barely uses the thing and his father - who spoils him ROTTEN - is quite likely to be buying him something newer in the near future, probably a Galaxy Tab.

253

Living Room / Re: Should I buy a tablet pc, ipad, netbook, or other?

« Last post by Darwin on December 02, 2010, 09:26 AM »

You assume correctly. I take it you aren't laughing.

-nosh (December 02, 2010, 09:12 AM)

ass-u-me, I'm laughing now!

Actually, I didn't think that it was funny, just wanted to clarify where the joke lay!

254

Living Room / Re: Should I buy a tablet pc, ipad, netbook, or other?

« Last post by Darwin on December 02, 2010, 08:57 AM »

I assume the "You did it wrong" refers to the divide by zero crash 

255

Living Room / Re: Five Reasons Why People Hate Apple

« Last post by Darwin on December 02, 2010, 08:54 AM »

Good point, f0dder. The transfer I made was via Windows Explorers - as stated, I had/have a loathing for iTunes that borders on irrational and am very hesitant to install it on my compter. I'm glad you brought this point up, actually, because it means that I'll be extra vigilant as another friend's son has asked me to help him update his iPod Touch to iOS 4.2. My plan was to install iTunes, update him, and uninstall iTunes. I might try doing it in XP Mode, which will hopefully minimzie the risk to both his music collection and my computer! Doubt it, though... I'll just have to be VERY careful to set iTunes up properly before doing this for him.

256

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Bolide CoolUtils Frigate... ehhh?

« Last post by Darwin on December 02, 2010, 08:49 AM »

Hmmm... interesting, Curt, thank you! I've never tried Frigate 3 under 7, but it worked fine under Vista (3.35 was the update that brought Vista compitability). I do have 3.36 installed on Win 7 in the XP VM, but haven't done much with it (al my file managers are installed in XP Mode, but I rarely, if ever, fire it up). Updates have come glacially slowly - 3.36 is a couple of years old.

257

Living Room / Re: iPod - tell me why I should buy one

« Last post by Darwin on December 02, 2010, 08:42 AM »

tomos - the Zune disappeared from Canada a couple of years ago as well. We never even got the Zune HD. As TheQwerty notes, with WP 7 out - and dependant on the Zune software - we may see a return of the dedicated PMP. I imagine this is going to depend on how successful the phones are. As noted in other threads, MS is going to have to work to make the next version more than an MS version of the iPod Touch, though, if they want to compete with the iPod.

258

Living Room / Re: OK - lets get to know each other... who are you, what do you do, where from?

« Last post by Darwin on December 02, 2010, 08:37 AM »

Thanks, HorseDuck! My wife is fond of tossing out Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours rule on the subject of achieving expertise in a chosen endeavour. I've tried to read the book (Outliers) a few times but can't get past the first couple of pages.

259

General Software Discussion / Re: Lightworks beta is ready for download

« Last post by Darwin on December 02, 2010, 08:27 AM »

heh, heh, I am in the same boat! No time to test at the moment because I am buried under term papers that need marking and lectures to prepare... Mid-December I should think... maybe I'll shoot some family Christmas videos and test over the holdiay...

260

Living Room / Re: Five Reasons Why People Hate Apple

« Last post by Darwin on December 02, 2010, 08:24 AM »

Speaking of iTunes and music, not only does it mess up the tags, moving songs onto an iPod and then off again onto a different computer also creates an epic mess - the filenames themselves are overwritten! I backed up the music off an iPod Nano for the son of a friend who wanted to switch to a non-Apple mp3 player. All the fileneames were like: fE45.mp3 and the tags couldn't be read without iTunes either, so his 4GB music collection had to gone through song by song to figure out what was what and re-tagged before being transferred onto his new device.

I know we could have used iTunes to sort the mess out, but at the time I was in an absolute no iTunes is getting anywhere near my Win7 machine... (I also could have told the kid to get on his bike and sort the mess out at home, but he didn't have his own computer at the time)!

261

General Software Discussion / Re: Lightworks beta is ready for download

« Last post by Darwin on December 01, 2010, 06:47 PM »

Wow! Thank you for sharing that, Armando. I'm going to download it and take it for a spin 

262

Living Room / Re: Show us the View Outside Your Window

« Last post by Darwin on December 01, 2010, 06:45 PM »

Awesome picture, kyrathaba - I'm impressed by the technical skill displayed 

263

Living Room / Re: Five Reasons Why People Hate Apple

« Last post by Darwin on December 01, 2010, 02:40 PM »

Good point about the Zune and it not differentiating itself from the iPod Touch. Overall, I think that WRT the "next big (non-Apple) thing" whoever releases it is going to have to control all aspects of the product from hardware, through software, through marketing. MS is in a position to do this right now but haven't been able to capitalize (likely for the reasons you mention, chiefly there's the MS stigma associated with their products). Google could still surprise us all and capitalize on their Android success by releasing some killer hardware... I'm not holding my breath, though.

264

General Software Discussion / Re: Complaint: FeedDemon is now adware, but does not disclose it

« Last post by Darwin on December 01, 2010, 01:38 PM »

Ouch! I haven't had any problems with FeedDemon 3, but I'll watch for that, Jim.

Jibz - I was struck by the choice of wording as well: "unable"?! I think unwilling or uninterested would have been more accurate!

265

General Software Discussion / Re: Complaint: FeedDemon is now adware, but does not disclose it

« Last post by Darwin on December 01, 2010, 12:25 PM »

Nick Bradbury addressed the issue of v2 license holders receiving upgrade discounts in the comments section of the blog posting about v4. The answer is essentially that they are unable to offer us discounts. So, if you have a v1 or a v2 Pro license for FeedDemom you'll have to upgrade at full-price. I think I'll probably just stick with v.3...

266

Official Announcements / Re: November 2010 Giveaway and Discount - e2 Text Editor - Winners Posted

« Last post by Darwin on December 01, 2010, 12:23 PM »

Congratulations, timns, and to all the other winners.

 

Let us know how you like e2 editor!

267

Living Room / Re: Five Reasons Why People Hate Apple

« Last post by Darwin on December 01, 2010, 09:00 AM »

Interesting responses, superboyac and oshyan. However, I don't see how there is that much disagreement between us. Apple gets away with their pricing - and I respectfully disagree about the gap between Apple and non-Apple products; feature for feature you pay more to Jobs and co. for similarly spec'd equipment than you do to a non-Apple manufacturer - because people are willing to pay a premium for the name. As Oshyan notes, this is due to the strength of their brand.

My argument above was that manufacturers can not get away with pricing their products the way that Apple does. Why is the iPhone 4 $800 or $900 vs $450 to $500 for a WP 7 device or an Android device (thesee are current non-contract prices in Canada)? Even differences in the quality of materials do not account for such a huge price difference (and some of the Android based HTC devices I've handles are close in terms of build quality; I'll leave GUI out of it as I've not used Android). The same observations are true of PMP's and personal audio players. Apple's pricing for their products in these categories is astronomical in comparison to the competition; the only place the competition is willing to try pricing their products in the same "range" as Apple is in touchscreen PMP devices, including the iPad (I'm thinking of the Galaxy Tab). Sony and Samsung are the two main competitors here, with both products that have already been released and those that have been announced. Microsoft has been unsuccessfull in trying to market the Zune HD as a competitor to the iPod Touch with a comparable feature set, nice build quality and more bang for the buck (cheaper pricing for capacity). However, they don't seem to be having much luck. I don't believe that people aren't willing buy these products because of inferior quality in either materials or design. Rather, the vast majority of people are unwilling to consider buying non-Apple products in particular niches (personal audio, PMPs and tablets - though it's early days yet), which is perhaps a clearer statement of my original thesis.

You both mention the corporate will to change as being key. Again, I don't see where we disagree that much. My argument is that most technology companies that have tried have failed, and in failure they have to answer to their investors. This makes risk a daunting prospect. Samsung, Microsoft, and Sony are three of the biggest companies on the planet. Smaller companies don't have the resources. Samsung is the only company that looks to me to be willing to take Apple on directly and they seem to be gearing up to do so agressively. I still maintain that the Galaxy Tab is overpriced...

One point to note with respect to the dialogue is that I my thinking and comments are specific to tablets and media players. To a large degree, I no longer think about Apple as a PC manufacturer but as a technology company.

268

Living Room / Re: Five Reasons Why People Hate Apple

« Last post by Darwin on November 30, 2010, 11:37 PM »

But you know what?  None of the other companies have made any tablets nearly as nice as this one.  Do it already!  But it's going to be hard to compete with that build quality and that screen with the great multi-touch responsiveness.

-superboyac (November 30, 2010, 05:37 PM)

I suspect that this is because nobody but Apple can get away with charging the prices that Apple charges for their devices, irrespective of the quality and design (EDIT: and it follows that achieving Apple's build quality would be a money losing proposition). Sony builds premium notebook computers, but I don't see many of them in the wild - just too darned expensive. Samsung is giving it a go with the Galaxy Tab, which I briefly played with the other day, but I don't see them catching Apple. In fact, I think that they've made a blunder and should be marketing the thing at least $100 cheaper...

269

Living Room / Re: KewlAid.net - Posted

« Last post by Darwin on November 30, 2010, 04:36 PM »

she-who-must-be-obeyed doesn't know; I am living DANGEROUSLY

Hilarious!  Know where you're coming from, brother 

-kyrathaba (November 29, 2010, 06:51 AM)

  I can't take credit for the line, though. It's what Horace Rumpole calls his wife in the John Mortimer TV  and book series.

270

Living Room / Re: KewlAid.net - Posted

« Last post by Darwin on November 30, 2010, 04:33 PM »

UPDATE: It doesn't look like I'll be buying an iPod Touch afterall. My wife experienced severe sticker shock and needed reviving when she learned the price of a 32 GB version g4. When she regained consciousness, she wasn't interested even in considering the 8 GB version, preferring to think about it for a week or so.

My money's on young Jack sitting out the 4th generation of this product  We'll probably buy an HD TV instead...

271

Word Processor Roundup / Re: SoftMaker Office 2008 for Linux now in public beta

« Last post by Darwin on November 28, 2010, 10:51 AM »

Free alternatives? I'm not sure what you mean. At any rate you need to get the hardware, which isn't free. You mean a tablet OS that's free?

-Renegade (November 28, 2010, 10:08 AM)

Ah, sorry - I meant free alternatives to SoftMaker Office for Android, such as "ThinkFree Mobile" and "OfficeSuite". Of course, I doubt either of those will handle SoftMaker file formats...

272

Living Room / Re: Should I buy a tablet pc, ipad, netbook, or other?

« Last post by Darwin on November 28, 2010, 10:47 AM »

Out of the box, iTunes is configured NOT to synchronize automatically now and, as I've mentioned before, with even modest equipment (example: my 2 1/2 year old notebook running Windows 7) the resource impact of the services it installs is off the radar (and I'm pretty anal about system resource utilization).

So, to the point: Aram, I can confirm what nosh and cyberdiva are saying - while it's annoying that you have to have iTunes installed, it's not that bad.

273

Living Room / Re: KewlAid.net - Posted

« Last post by Darwin on November 28, 2010, 10:42 AM »

Heh, heh - I was pretty sure that that was the policy  However, actually using the iBook is too painful to bother. The missing point from my previous post is that it was ill-advised to try to shoehorn Tiger onto it so it's pretty much useless. I maxed out the RAM and dropped in a much larger 5400 rpm HD but it's still a pig.

274

Living Room / Re: Jeans pocket - the square-ish one on the right

« Last post by Darwin on November 28, 2010, 10:07 AM »

Now historically having no luck with these things, I'd already strip-searched myself in the parking lot to be sure I wasn't carrying anything eyebrow raising...

-Stoic Joker (November 28, 2010, 09:01 AM)

I'll bet stripping in the parking lot raised a few eyebrows 

275

Word Processor Roundup / Re: SoftMaker Office 2008 for Linux now in public beta

« Last post by Darwin on November 28, 2010, 10:04 AM »

Sneak a peek: A first look at SoftMaker Office for Android
------------------------------------------------------------------------

SoftMaker is currently developing a version of SoftMaker Office for Android phones and tablet computers. There is no release date yet, but you can take a sneak peek here:

http://softmaker.com/english/blog/?p=147

-Curt (November 28, 2010, 07:54 AM)

Thanks for the link, Curt  I should be joining the Android cloud next month (tablet on pre-order) so this might prove interesting, though I understand that there are decent free alternatives out there already.