Comment Re:Sticker shock of a new computer (Score 1) 307
Cloud services don't work for an offline iPad.
Cloud services don't work for an offline iPad.
There's Instagram, Vine and Snapchat clients for Windows
...Phone. I visited with Windows 8.1 and got these:
You can use the whatsapp web client on your device so long as you have the app on a smartphone to register.
From the Android download page: "Tablet devices are not supported". I have no smartphone. Is a smartphone still a luxury, or has it become a necessity?
And as I said you can run the Android apps in bluestacks.
Is BlueStacks based on Google Play or AOSP? Android distributions based on AOSP lack Google Play Store and thus cannot download Google Play Store-exclusive applications. In any case, it appears that BlueStacks is something that "everyone's gonna have to install" just as Flash Player and Java used to be; did I miss something in my assessment?
Laying that complaint at the iPad is like whining that you can't carry 4 people on the motorcycle you just purchased...
When you need to haul people, you can take the bus. What's the computing equivalent of public transit? And does it have the same drawback of not operating at night or on Sunday?
Side by side is pretty useless when your windows are 512x300
An 80-column-wide window with a 6-pixel-wide font is 480xsomething inside the chrome, which means two 80-column-wide windows can comfortably fit side-by-side.
On Windows RT you can split the windows and you don't end up with a bunch of useless chrome.
On Windows RT you also can't run a compiler and its output.
The display in my Dell Inspiron mini 1012 is even "worse" at 1024x600, yet 120 dpi doesn't cause a problem for my use cases. If you hate 16:9, think of it as two 8:9 windows side by side. And side by side is something you can do on a netbook or x86 tablet that you can't do on tablets that run a phone OS.
A Windows laptop starts at $200 (source: hp.com) and should last at least four years if not physically mistreated. You may have to replace the rechargeable battery at the two-year mark, but I don't expect that to cost more than $60. How much does four years of cellular Internet access cost, let alone the EC2 or Azure subscription on top of that?
a proprietary instant messaging application that is available only for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone
If there is such a thing
WhatsApp, Vine, Instagram, Snapchat...
The problem comes when a student needs a computer for homework or a hobby, but the parent is unwilling to provide one because "You have an iPad; why aren't you happy with that?" See previous comments by betterunixthanunix and Anonymous Coward.
Amazon EC2? Window Azure?
You need more horsepower, you just give them your credit card #.
Both to them and to the cellular carrier. Connecting to them requires a valid subscription to Internet access. Doing so while riding transit requires a separate subscription to cellular Internet access in addition to what you already pay for Internet at home.
What is it you imagine you can do on a 10" netbook laptop that you can't do on a tablet paired with an external bluetooth keyboard?
Anything that requires multiple windows on screen at once. One example is using a calculator that doesn't fill the screen. Another example is putting a source code window on one half of the screen and the output window on the other half.
Or applications that Apple has not approved. One of them is programming for a class or a hobby. Last time I checked, programming on iOS was limited to a small selection of interpreters for dynamically typed scripting languages such as Codea (a Lua interpreter) and Pythonista (a Python interpreter). On a netbook, on the other hand, if I want to use C++, Java, Fortran, 6502 assembly language, or any other language, usable tools are a sudo apt-get install away.
(For the purposes of this post, I'm treating the ASUS Transformer Book, Surface Pro 3, and other Windows x86 tablets as laptops. My objection is not to the tablet form factor but to the restrictions inherent in iOS.)
On this PC (Windows 8.1 with Classic Shell), it's Ctrl+Esc (opens Start), Alt+U (opens Shut Down menu), Down, Down, Enter. It's probably similar for Windows 7. Which operating system is your PC running?
Desktops are better suited for developers and smart phones are better suited to consumers.
Then what's better for people in the middle? They're not "developers" because they are not directly involved in the production of computer programs, but they're not "consumers" because they do not exclusively view works created by others. Besides, schoolchildren are "developers" in training now that "introduction to computer science" has been added to high school curricula.
Later models of the Transformer run Windows desktop apps. See Transformer Book T100.
The problem comes when one of these iPad-only "many people" comes to need one of the many applications that is not available for the iPad. If he has only an iPad, there's the sticker shock of buying a whole new computer.
"DSLR remote shooting" makes me think it's a tablet connected wirelessly to a digital interchangeable-lens camera.
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