You don't understand Mesh networks. Go read up on them first, then post back.

Hint: you only have to be close to ANY mesh access point to be able to get to EVERY other access point, and then bridge to the first working broadband connection, which could be a long way away.

Actually, home wifi works great for voice. Jitter issues not withstanding.

The built in TALK app in Android can open a voice (or video) chat with any other Android user, and the quality is more than acceptable.

True, Sip is better. Using the built in SIP (Internet calling) feature of just about any Android phone (or any of a dozen such apps on the Play store) you can make calls to any other SIP phone. Calls to Land lines usually requires a sip to POTS gateway subscription somewhere. This is slightly harder to set up, because you have to know a thing or three about SIP to get it to work.

Or simply install GrooVe IP and you can use your Free Google Voice account to make and receive calls from your cell phone, as long as you have wifi. Calls are free anywhere in north America. This app emulates the Google Chat client found in Gmail and as a stand alone app on windows, to allow calls in and out over wifi (or 3g). Voice quality is exceptional.

(For 38 bucks you can also use Google Voice with your home phones. For most people this pays for itself in the first month).

Agreed, probably voice is out of the question, if for no other reasons than bandwidth, to say nothing of getting the session handed off to POTS somewhere if you need to communicate outside of the immediate area.

But text chats (google talk, twitter, etc) and email are probably enough in situations like this, as long as one of your mesh partners somewhere along the line has a working internet connection.

The problem here is that nobody will have this set up ahead of time. So nobody will be able to download what ever is necessary, nor do the research
to find out how it works. Basic Chicken/Egg problem, unless it comes pre-installed, or geeks adopt it widely.

Unless or until there is a one-stop App you can freely install, configure, and test ahead of time, its not likely to happen. You would think FEMA would mandate this sort of thing if they weren't so busy worrying about Control instead of Assistance.

Sorry, I missed the memo that appointed you meme master.

This.

It's been years since most people ever saw any training on MS Office, if ever, and the sands have shifted under their feet. It has become more obtuse every release.

At work we switched totally to Office Libre, and haven't looked back. There is a wealth of How To information on line, making the training available on par with anything Microsoft provides.

Better hardware, faster, more responsive touch screen.

In the business world people aren't' looking for flashy new confusing UIs or re-writing all their existing apps so that they look and operate differently. They want immediate functionality. They don't want a retraining curve just to run the same inventory management, patient care, shop-floor management apps. They just want it to work.

This is why RT was universally panned in the corporate world. By the time you rewrote for RT, you might as well rewrite for IOS or Android. The job was just about as big, and your platform ended up costing way less.

I have one of the older Win7 32bit tablet. Too small (tap sensitivity way too flaky). It was hard to use.
Why? Because touch layer was a bolt on. (You could actually go in and shut the touch layer down if you had a keyboard and mouse attached by USB or Bluetooth. And when you did, it ran BETTER). In essence its a toy.

Surface Pro brings an OS and Hardware optimized for touch, while maintaining backward compatibility with people's huge software investment.

See, that's where you are mistaken, right there in that last sentence. Perhaps that's the source of your misconception.

In Surface Pro, (win32) existing applications all run just fine on touch screens. Buttons push. Check boxes check, data entry fields pop up on screen keyboards, scroll bars scroll, all with just a finger tap. Zero rewrite needed. RT not needed.

Hell, this much even worked under Windows 7 on prior versions of the windows tablets such as the HP Slate. Finger is mouse, except when a keyboard appears. And it just knows when a keyboard is appropriate.

So, a full win32 Surface Pro works fine with legacy software, and you can even get some level of integration with the desktop UI to some extent (icons etc) with no reprogramming.

Oh, I don't know, seems to me naming anything after the Holodeck is just asking for trouble. Second to warp drive, Holodeck failures seemed to suggest they were the most troublesome piece of equipment ever invented.

While that might be part of solution, remember that Stuxnet was delivered on a thumb drive.

Also remember that you need some computer system for plant management in the modern world. If not for doing actual machine control, at least for doing monitoring and reporting. And therein lies the problem. Even if you air-gap your control network from your corporate net, you have to put stuff onto the control net and take stuff off. And you still end up hooking a lot of machine controllers to your control network.

Other than physically locking the cable plant, removing USB ports, diskette drives, and wifi, you are always going to face the possibility of rogue software creeping onto your control net somehow.

Maybe it would be easier to detect, profile, and filter machine control at the transmission layer than to rely solely on preventing any future camel from getting its nose under the tent.

True it has existed, but it universally sucked which is exactly why they bought the laptop instead.

How is it different? I should have thought that would be obvious. Windows 8 is designed for touch
from the ground up, not having touch bolted on in slapdash fashion after the fact. Being
smaller lighter and easier to use than prior tablets, it has a chance of being successful.

There are wealth of uses for the portability that the tablet offers above and beyond the laptop.
First and foremost among them being no need for an actual LAP. You have absolutely no hope
of getting a Doctor to schlep a laptop around. Most won't even touch them for research.

True. Anyone who has been around for a long while sees the same discarded technology pushed to the forefront again and again, often being forced to relearn the same lessons.

We hired service bureaus, then we got our own terminals, then we got our own mainframes, then we got departmental mini-computers, then company wide mainframes then PCs, then file servers, etc etc etc.

This isn't always bad, mind you. New technology can make old ideas better.

I've watched State government division directors railing red-faced in rage at an IT director that overwrote years of backup tapes.
I've also seen entire offices lose everything to a worm.

If data has that much value, no rational person would entrust it ONLY to cloud. Still I can and do see the cloud treated like a long piece of CAT5. Most rational cloud users only use the cloud this way, as a pathway to distribution, not as the ultimate or only means of storage. In this way it works fine.

What is missing is strong encryption of cloud data. When the feds can demand all of your data with nothing more than a rubber stamped national security letter, and you are never told about it, putting anything on the cloud without client side encryption is stupid.

Unless, of course that data is public knowledge anyway (stripped of private identifiers etc). And in that regard, much of government data is (or can be made to be) of this type. In which case the cloud is a good way of freely distributing it.

Just don't rely on it for storage.

Much beyond simple mathematics (addition subtraction multiplication and division) is seldom encountered in the lives of many people.
However people working in the trades (electricians, carpenters, mechanics) usually need a little more.

But your first sentence seem to contain an internal contradiction. You claim china speed too much time on memorization and not enough
time on understanding. Yet you state that China leads the US in this regard.

So, by your own example Understanding is less important than memorization.

Maybe I just misread what you typed.

Yes, I know. I have one. (HP Slate)

I wouldn't try to do much of anything other than email on it tho.
My associates asked if they should get one for their office, and I had to tell them NO.

I think the prior versions were pretty much a lash-up.
Maybe the PRO will better.

Well, my tongue was lodged firmly in my cheek.....
So I guess we agree for the most part.

Still when they announce something like this the fanbois will line up a midnight,
Apple has been reselling to its customers for years, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

Yeah I have one sitting right here, HP Slate 500, Intel Atom processor running Windows 7.
Just slow enough to be a pain in the ass, and just small enough to require a stylus much of the time.
The touch business was a problem on the Slate. It should be better on the Pro.

But it too, runs just about anything you would care to install.