As already said: I've never felt like I wanted to be locked into the (much smaller) Amazon ecosystem.

I'll be honest: I've never felt like I wanted to be locked into the (much smaller) Amazon ecosystem.

$50k doesn't even cover the cost of MS TV advertisements for a single day. This is roughly the cost of 1/2 to 1/3 of their typical developer salary for a year.

This isn't significant; this is laundry lint.

Chromecast all but requires another smart device running (continuously) to control it. You can't control it directly.

Google TV, on the other hand, AKA "Android TV Sticks", are a full-on Android device, just like your phone or tablet, but without the screen. You control it with something like a mouse/keyboard.

You can turn off your phone/laptop while using a Google TV. You can browse the Internet on your Google TV, without using anything else to help. You can plug in a keyboard/mouse and use it like a computer! You buy apps on it from Google play, just like any other android device, and it's very compatible!

I just loved my first TV stick that I bought on Amazon (MK808b) for $35! I just bought an MK809 when my MK808b finally died after 3 or 4 years of daily use, and it has (so far) been a nice upgrade. Faster processor, better wifi reception, more memory/storage. Still runs just fine off the power from the USB port on the side of my TV...

PS: To control one of these, you want a "flying mouse remote". It's a keyboard that "mouses" by waving it in the air.

We've been using Samsung drives in "non production" status servers, embedded servers, etc. and have had a terrible time of it. The first drives we bought a few years ago (840 Pro) were good, but we've seen Samsung SSDs run entirely through their write capacity (as reported by SMART) and then go dead when not even mounted! Turns out we aren't the only ones to get bit by buggy Samsung drives.

It also turns out that Samsung drives are even blacklisted in the Linux Kernel

I welcome Samsung's excellent cost/size value proposition! I just wish their drives were solid enough for our actual use.

My current laptop, a Dell Precision M3800 has it all: light weight, powerful, reasonable (if not fantastic) battery life, 4K screen, and native support for Linux, out of the box but it's hard to figure out what something the same size would be like at 1/4 the weight.

But I'm agreeing with other comments: I'd rather have this exact weight laptop with 3 days of battery life.

A few years back, I bought the phone with the very best battery life and I don't regret it one minute. Now on its third year, the phone still easily powers through a day with 50% or so battery life, and never leaves me high and dry when flying commercially which is when battery life is most important.

My next phone will be the phone with the best battery life Now that I finally have a powerful laptop that isn't also dreadfully heavy, battery life will once again be #1 for my next purchase.

What's sad is that UOP really could have done it! If they offered actual counseling guidance, and curricula that didn't just suck, and made sure that their clients passed classes with rigor, they could have *easily* made a profitable college with good reviews and earned trust.

Instead, they violated that trust, and probably deserve to be shut down.

Who would have thought that distracting drivers with information would make them less safe as drivers?

+1 for Lemon Pledge. Works GREAT to clear bug remains! We use Lemon Pledge to clean our Cessna at the flight club.

While they had a good run at first, I won't buy Samsung EVO SSDs any longer. They have had terrible issues with reliability, write amplifications, and trim support on Linux.

Friends don't let friends buy Samsung EVO SSDs!

I just bought a house. One of the things I was initially pleased to find is that it was built with full-on, 3/4" sheet rock - quality construction!

That is, until I plugged in my wifi router and tried to connect from my bedroom. I don't know what it is about 3/4" sheetrock made in 1978, but it's practically a Faraday cage. I'm contemplating setting up numerous routers with 1-antenna per room so you can get decent access everywhere in the house.

A compromise position in the hall closet gets the bedrooms *almost* OK through the doors...

You make it sound *onerous* but it doesn't need to be. You can buy many home routers with a USB port. Plug in a thumb drive and enable webDAV shares!

We've been using webDAV for many, many years to create a distributed, "cloud based" storage accessible anywhere with good security. (Authenticated webDAV over SSL is approximately as secure as the password)

I would add Fight For The Future which has been extremely active for Net Neutrality

Maybe you don't remember history the way I do.

Remember VB? An excellent toolkit that gained widespread acceptance in the Enterprise world for it's tight IDE, integration environment and easy forms. But then MS came out with VB.net which was about as related to VB 6 as javascript is to java. It was a horrible mess, everything had to be re-written to be compatible because it was really an entirely new language. Developers were left in the lurch, oh well, perhaps you shouldn'ta Microsoft, you know?

Remember Silverlight? The "Flash Killer", it was an excellent toolkit for writing distributed applications quickly. Performance was excellent. Many big names "bet the farm" on it. Until Microsoft walked away from it, too. Netflix will *never again* bank on a MS technology, I'm sure.

But that's not where it ends. Remember Windows Phone 7? The next big thing (tm) and they ditched it, for WP8, and all the devs were screwed. Again.

But that's not where it ends. Why is the XBox 360 not compatible with the original XBox? Why is the XBox "One" not compatible with the XBox 360? With every console generation, MS has been screwing the developers.

And so it goes. Over and over, the devs get the shaft any time they bet on Microsoft's newest, highly promoted technology.

What's next?

France banned hydrogenated vegetable oil and saw something like a 30% or 40% reduction in heart attacks... in just a single year. Just how blatant of a good idea do you need this to be?