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When the patents expire, expect a candybar smartphone to be as trivially cheap and as trivially available as a simple 12 button corded handset once was.
I don't see how patents will ever expire on cell phones so long as carriers continue to mandate migration to new air interfaces. Analog and D-AMPS have already disappeared in favor of GSM, UMTS, and now LTE, and once LTE Advanced begins deployment, I expect carriers to sunset GSM as well.
Of course, that novel also speculated that the deceased personality would still inhabit the body, despite the brain transplant too.
That depends on how much of the personality comes from the endocrine system.
That upsets me the most. Just bought an Acer Iconia W700. Came with Windows 8 which I never used. What it is, I guess.
PS Works ok with Fedora 20. No application support for multi touch or the accelerometer though.
And yet you bought and use Windows 8 rather than abstaining and hitting MS in the pocket book where it counts.
What new laptop should people buy instead? A MacBook, which is even more expensive?
The main advantage at this point to the Win8 ARM platforms is the epic battery life
There are plenty of Windows desktop apps that have no close WinRT counterpart. If your workflow relies on one of those, you can't complete your workflow on a Windows RT device unless you pay for a cellular data plan so that you can RDP to a PC elsewhere on the Internet. And for that price, you might as well just buy a laptop and a spare battery.
unless the license states you can't install on a system with any other OS, which it does not
As I understand this article and others like it, the license of the OEM version of Windows and the license of Google Play Store probably have exactly such a provision.
You cannot exchange diamonds for things of value -- unless you count things of very low value. There is no market accessible to the general public where you can trade diamonds.
The OECD report is just the PISA test. That has been thoroughly debunked.
If your product relies on a 3rd-party to actually attract customers (and/or make a profit), your business model is flawed and you're doomed.
Are petrol stations doomed because they rely on automakers to bring in customers? Are game console makers* doomed because they rely on third-party developers to attract customers, and vice versa?
* Other than Nintendo, whose consoles rely heavily on the first-party lineup.
until you need to lug around either a heavy bulky laptop or spend a lot of money for a light one
I learned on Scroogled.com a couple weeks ago that 10" Windows laptops are back in production.
You are better of getting a cheap tablet or chromebook with a Data Plan and have your Linux running on a server where you can access for nearly anywhere.
If you're going to just use a Chromebook as an X11 or VNC terminal for a GNU/Linux VPS, how much does a data plan for that cost over the 48-month expected service life of a laptop? And how well does 3D graphics (e.g. Blender) tunnel over such a connection?
Do let us all know when you have solved basic issues like drivers for printers, scanners
The printer and scanner on my HP OfficeJet 4500 work well with Ubuntu, and any PC running Chrome can act as a proxy for printing from an Android device.
sync with mobile devices
True, GNU/Linux has had trouble communicating with Android over MTP. But Android Debug Bridge works, as does setting up a Samba share on your GNU/Linux PC and accessing it with Rhythm Software File Manager for Android.
Apple complied in 2011 by including a Lightning->micro-USB adapter in the box with all of its European models, and has done so for the last three years.
They certainly sell an adapter, but it is not supplied in the box, at least in my experience of devices bought from Apple stores in the UK.
Testing can show the presense of bugs, but not their absence. -- Dijkstra