Comment Re:No surprise (Score 1) 81
Unless you ever want to upgrade or repair it. But of course hardware never fails and 8GB RAM should be fine for years.
Epoxied batteries, soldered RAM, nonstandard SSDs... it's insane anti-consumer BS.
Unless you ever want to upgrade or repair it. But of course hardware never fails and 8GB RAM should be fine for years.
Epoxied batteries, soldered RAM, nonstandard SSDs... it's insane anti-consumer BS.
Also, there's no reason cellular 911 service shouldn't be ultra-reliable.
http://www.mychamplainvalley.c...
What are the odds that all 4 of them will have ALL their overlapping cell towers in an area knocked-out?
What are the odds your family isn't all on a single cellular carrier, making you unable to take advantage of such redundancy?
What is this land line you speak of?
If you care enough about 911 and emergency situations to be reading this article, and you don't have a landline, then that's on you for being irresponsible. People spend more on texting than it costs to have a landline. No excuses.
The monthly cost of a landline is cheap insurance in the event of an emergency. Cell towers go down, fail, become over-congested, and cell phone batteries die.
whats a landline.
If you care enough about 911 and emergency situations to be reading this article, and you don't have a landline, then that's on you for being irresponsible. People spend more on texting than it costs to have a landline. No excuses.
The monthly cost of a landline is cheap insurance in the event of an emergency. Cell towers go down, fail, become over-congested, and cell phone batteries die.
What landline?
If you care enough about 911 and emergency situations to be reading this article, and you don't have a landline, then that's on you for being irresponsible. People spend more on texting than it costs to have a landline. No excuses.
The monthly cost of a landline is cheap insurance in the event of an emergency. Cell towers go down, fail, become over-congested, and cell phone batteries die.
Wake me up when there's a Nexus device with a MicroSD slot. Until then, I couldn't care less about Nexus devices as apparently they don't care about me or all the other countless users who have learned and conditioned their usage of their smartphone around what used to be a standard, logical feature.
My old Northgate Omnikey keyboard had the keycap letterings not printed in paint, but as plastic molded throughout the entire thickness of the key. There was no possible way to wear it off. It was also full-mechanical with a metal base. Could be switched to Dvorak layout in 2 presses.
I miss that keyboard.
Holy shit, ISCABBS is still around? I spent a ton of time on that back in the early 90s and made a lot of friends there (none of whom I have heard from in eons of course).
Soon you won't be finding this Slashdot article in EU Google searches either.
Burn-in is also a problem on OLED screens (having experienced it first-hand). As we see more and more of these, the issue will regrow.
But I agree: auto power-off is preferable.
Dell most certainly does still offer FreeDOS. Perhaps just on some of their business line, but it's there.
We've chosen it to save money when we were just going to put our own non-MS OS on there. Ubunutu is also an option on a number of models. RHEL too, but that'll cost you.
I ditched Linux Mint as an option for my clients when I discovered that major updates required a complete, clean re-install. I switched to Xubuntu and have been perfectly happy. Since kicking Mint to the curb I haven't paid much close attention. Is this still the case with major version upgrades?
You're joking right? Consumers are pushing a desire for thinner lighter devices capable of longer and longer run-times with higher loads.
Believe it or not, consumers also like to not have to replace their device in 2 years because the battery only holds half the capacity it used to. Just because it's not on the box or part of the advertisement's spiel doesn't mean it's not something consumers care about. There are plenty of consumers who can see into the future beyond the length of their nose.
Something has to give when you are designing around these requirements. A lot of modern devices are thin because their batteries lack any kind of protection. Using flat lithium cells gives the designer far more flexibility to design a product rather than having a full battery pack with protective case and protection circuit.
You seem to be under the misconception that these rule each other out. Do you do much electronics repair? How many devices have you owned? Opened? Replaced the batteries on? I am on a tablet right now that is thinner than a Microsoft Surface Pro 2, but unlike the Surface it has a user-removable battery and doesn't sacrifice run-time to get it. My cell phone is thinner than an iPhone... and guess what? Removable battery.
Manufacturers aren't making non-removable batteries because of design constraints. They're making them non-removable because it ensures that when the battery wears out, the consumer is forced to buy a new model. Otherwise why permanently epoxy the battery into the device? I know all about unprotected lithium cells... I'm a certified Apple technician and have opened plenty of MacBooks. But you can have a battery that uses the case of the device to protect it without gluing the damn thing in so it can't even be serviced by someone with the proper training and tools.
The average consumer is likely to damage the types of batteries used in these devices and burn their house down in the process.
I'm well aware of this... it's made quite clear in our training and quite obvious when you're working on them daily. But it's not as necessary as you've been fooled to think. The "design constraints" and "users are demanding thinner" is just the bullshit lines they've come up with as an excuse to mask the actual reason: enforced obsolescence and increased revenue stream. If it were actually true, there would be no need for the epoxy, and no other manufacturers proving them wrong.
Given the pace of technology and the average use life of such devices, replaceable battery is one feature I really no longer care about.
That's nice. Not everyone is rolling in cash and prepared to buy a new phone or tablet every 2 years, especially when there's no technical reason to have to do so. Consumers have been conditioned to accept a worn-out battery as a legitimate reason to trash their otherwise perfectly functional and adequate device, which is insane and inexcusable. This would've never been accepted pre-iPhone/iPod. My sister's HTC One X is less than 2 years old and already can't hold a charge worth a damn. The phone is already 3 times the phone she needs, so why should she be forced to buy a new one? It's criminal. Luckily I am willing to replace it for her but HTC has made it unnecessarily difficult for no legitimate reason. There are thinner phones with user-replaceable batteries... they could've made it so she could do it herself, but that wasn't advantageous to their bottom line.
And if the batteries actually fail a quick and quite cheap trip to the repair shop will see it swapped out.
WHAT "repair shop"? Maybe for the lucky subset of people who live in cities near an Apple Store or some other electronics shop. But guess what? There's a lot more to the USA and world than the big cities. And the fact remains: there's no need for it to not be replaceable by the consumer. There's no need for them to pay $80 to have someone replace a $5 battery. And there's no reason to epoxy the batteries in so the repair shop can't even replace just the battery.
It's a scam, it's bullshit, it's anti-consumer, and it should be criminal. Unfortunately they've sufficiently brainwashed you so that you're inclined to parrot their same line which helps them spread the lie and make you an unpaid salesforce on their behalf, but those of us who have opened enough off these devices, and seen enough of what is possible, know the truth. It's too bad that the technically-informed are the minority of consumers, leaving the majority to be taken advantage of by the manufacturers, but unfortunately that's been the case for years.
Does this have a removable battery?
I've stopped buying consumer electronics that take the markedly ANTI-consumer and needless action of making non-removable batteries. I realize this eliminates most tablets* but I really have little use for a tablet (my job has provided several for me to use but I really couldn't care less about them, having tried them).
* - And all Apple hardware, but I'm ok with that too.
Neutrinos have bad breadth.
