I think the point is that a standard network is generally the wrong thing for control - therefore you would not want to hook up standard car navigation/media player devices to your control network, but non standard ones which "get out of the way" when necessary. Ethernet (despite all it's nice features) is really unsuitable for control. I know - I've played around with remote IO on ethernet. Devicenet (aka CANBUS for industry) beats the pants off it in terms of latency at lower baud rates on all but dedicated networks. Wrong tool for the job really.

This is why, unless the manufacturers are really stupid, they'll use ethercat, which does have guaranteed latency and priorities. But car systems will only use a fraction of the bandwidth.

Hangouts and skype are slow and bloated. The majority of the rest aren't quite as popular. Telegram might take up the slack if whatsapp goes the way of facebook messenger, but I don't think you have gotten my point. $1 isn't a lot of money to the majority of users. Something simple and fairly well implemented is quite attractive at $1, especially since the cost per message, while infinitesimally higher is still close to zero. The issue isn't cost since of the above are as good as free, and userbase whatsapp has (or had...) is well worth $1 to most people.

Look at it this way, if you will:

(1+5)/(very large number) ~= (0+5)/(very large number)

Both are as close to zero as to make no difference. And yeah, I maybe spend R50 (~US$5) on data for whatsapp a year.

I've found it generally good enough to make out the part number on a PLC card. A quick pinch-zoom works for that, and I have a fairly large smartphone screen(S3). But yeah, the downscaling isn't great. Sometimes in the modern world, your PC isn't that close, and you have to answer a question quickly. Telegram apparently doesn't downscale, so that might be a better option for you. Far worse than whatsapp is my one customer who insists on sending me MMS video messages of his problem components. Ever try zooming in on a low quality video to get a part number?

Given that they charge US$1 per year, and that the data usage on text is very low, I wouldn't complain much, since as the number of messages tends towards infinity, the cost per message tends towards zero. They may not be free in the pedantic way, but for all practical purposes, for a heavy user, they are as close as you're going to get.

I am also a South African, and have noticed that whenever I take a number for business reasons, their status shows up in whatsapp. I end up using it for all sorts of work related stuff (send a quick picture of a panel/PLC etc). Much easier than email...

Whatsapp is(was?) brilliant internationally. I also discovered changing sim cards for an foreign one let me still whatsapp from my SA number. It gave me a cheap line of communication linked to my number which was really useful, since roaming is insanely expensive. I'll see if it breaks, but right now it has too much momentum to change easily... Too many people I know use it...

I was looking at Zimbra, which looks interesting. Unfortunately back in the early 2000s, someone at my company did all sorts of custom mailboxes and weird scripts, so until I find time(unlikely) to figure out what is going on, I'm stuck. I am only a sysadmin in my spare time...

*reasonable.

No, I had a new server and a copy of Microsoft Server Essentials(as part of our companies Action Pack). I installed the new server for testing purposes (as one does), and discovered there was no more exchange. It was a waste of my time, yes, however at the time it didn't seem unreasonable that SBS becoming Essentials wouldn't eliminate the essential reason to get and use SBS.

Pretty much... We installed it on our new server without checking first then had a "uh... wait... Where is exchange?" moment. Turns out Microsoft wants you on the cloud. Or, I dunno, you could just fork out the cash for exchange server. That is, assuming you have an unlimited amount of cash lying around.

This is exactly why I'm running exchange on 2011. Also they killed exchange from SBS when they called it "Essentials". Wish I could ditch it, but I don't have time to rewrite all the legacy stuff that has been added.

Why does the cover of "We are open on Venus" make me think of Freud?

Well, having worked with a lot of theorists, the theoretical model is, while nice and mathematically correct, generally shit in the real world. Have a look at how many people do step tests on PID loops. Oh... I think I just realised why I am single... Shit...

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