It's a bit unfortunate that I didn't notice or remember that ./ has a short headline character, it would have been so easy to replace University with "UoM". Too bad it's too late since submissions can't be edited..

They lost me too with their "always connected to LTE". My 10" tablet does have a SIM card slot, so does my 6.5" phablet which I use as a small tablet. I don't have a SIM in either of those and I don't see the point. It's not like I use a laptop or a 10" tablet while I'm walking around outside. Cafe's have WIFI, trains have WIFI, buses have WIFI, I've got WIFI at home and every place I visit has WIFI.

I know Qualcomm is all about LTE always and everywhere (I've seen their presentations, I didn't get it then and I still don't). What, exactly, is the big advantage of using LTE if you have WIFI available? One transmits a very short distance and the other will transmit to something that's pretty far away.

I guess some will buy a device without WIFI but to me that's like trying to sell me a device without other essentials like a SD card slot and a headphone jack. I know some buy devices like that but to me it's like trying to sell me a car without a trunk because who needs that?

I have a 10" tablet. I can use that thing for hours and hours every day for a week without having to charge it. It's not a laptop, but it does have a nice bright 10" IPS screen (which is way better than that TN joke on my laptop). Both my laptops last about two hours or just enough to view a full movie on battery if I'm on a train or something like that. All the laptops seem to have real battery life of 2 (most common) to 4 hours (rare). I've read this Macbook thing has 10 hours, perhaps that's true and if it is then good for those who have one. Generally 2 hours of Screen On Time is very little. It's possible to leave your home without dragging a phone or tablet charger along but there's little to no point in bringing a laptop without the power brick. It's possible to do much, much better. A bigger battery would be a good start. You can detach the battery on some laptops (essential feature, btw). Both of my batteries are really small and light. It's no wonder they don't last that long. I'd personally take the weight and size of a real battery and have an actual mobile device. Current laptops are just "mobile" in the sense that you can move them from power outlet to power outlet.

I see it as pretty obvious that x86/x86-64 CPUs stalled out because Intel decided to milk the market due to the lack of competition (from AMD). Look at Intels offerings in the Xeon E7 Family for examples of exactly why I say this is obvious. It's not like chips that are far better than what is currently offered to average consumers do not exist, they do - they are just priced outrageously.

If AMD delivers with Ryzen and offers something with a good IPC and lots of cores at half the price of Intel then perhaps they will lower their prices on some of their low-end chips.

My guess is what will really force them to finally innovate a bit will be pressure from ARM. Hardware x264 and x265 video decoding and x264 video encoding has been standard in ARM chips for years. Intel just got x264 decoding. They don't have 265 decoding and they don't have any hardware video encoding. I could go on but my point is that Intel has fallen way behind because they figured they didn't have competition.

SATA could be fixed. The CPU doesn't support SATA but it does have limited PCI-express so motherboards could just add controller chip. The RAM limit can't be solved that easily, most ARM chips are made with mobile phones in mind and they are generally limited to 4GB or something like that, the most I've seen is 6GB. Motherboard makers just solder on the max amount supported.

I do love that these small boards have neat things that desktop computers just don't have, like 4k camera support and hardware x264 video encoding. How many laptops are sold with anything beyond a garbage 720p camera? You can probably count them on one hand if they even exist.

Yes, they are absolutely coming to .. servers and laptops and eventually desktops. Remember, all we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the GNU World Order (Many think David Rockefeller said "New World Order" but GNU is actually pronounced new).

Today we have something called ReactOS which is an Android distribution for x86/x86-64 computers. I have an older laptop that I put Fedora and ReactOS on in dual-boot and this let me do something interesting: Benchmark Android on said laptop using the same benchmarking software you'd use on any Android device. Guess what, that AMD E1-6010 CPU is weaker than my current cellphone.

Many people will naturally protest that running win32 software on ARM will be painfully slow. While this is true it's also irrelevant for most people. You don't need win32 to browse websites or post on SpyBook.

..and it's always been _the_ most important part of Windows. Backward- compatibility which allows all the existing programs to work is exactly why Windows remains widely used today. If Windows 10 only allowed those "universal applications" applications made for it then it would probably have close to zero users and installations.

Windows RT ran on ARM and it was an epic failure because you couldn't run software made for Windows XP or Windows 7 or other older Windows platforms on it. Now Microsoft is trying again, this time allowing you to run win32 software on the ARM version of their OS. It probably won't be a big success but it does have a chance this time around.

They haven't taken away Addons from us - yet. The ironic thing is that half my addons just restore functionality that was previously built-in but was taken away.

I live in a small town in a typical modern fascist dictatorship with an illusion of freedom in the northern of the fascist union (EU). The local newspapers announced that a new Recycling Plant(TM) would be opening in our little town. This was apparently huge local news because start-up that employed more than five people.

The news articles detailed how this Recycling Plant(TM) would Recycle old mobile phones and computer equipment.

The CEO explained: There are small amounts of gold and other metals in all electronics. We will burn the electronics we receive up to slightly above the melting points for the metals we are interested in (primarily gold?) and harvest them.

I still wonder how the word "recycle" could possibly apply.

Here are some figures to consider: 1000 kilograms of cell phones can yield around 280 grams of gold, around 140 grams of platinum and palladium, and 140 kilograms of copper. That means that there is a lot of "stuff" that's just burned and not recycled.

The local "recycling" plant didn't make it. They lasted less than a year before going under.

If you want to look better then there's one proven solution which works and has proven itself throughout the centuries since ancient Greece: Lifting weights. Can some "tracker" on your arm measure how much you lift? No, obviously not. These idiotic devices also supposedly track your calorie intake. If you lift and reduce your intake then you won't gain muscle and look like a skeleton. In summery, these devices are useless and those who buy them are wasting money they should be spending on gym memberships and protein rich food. Fatties should get off their asses and lift, not waste money on idiotic technology.

This is offtopic for the subject but yes, I know the Slashdot effect. I had a website with around 1000 daily visitors. That was .. it. Then I got 2 million hits in a 14 hour period. Thank you Slashdot. Amazingly the webserver getting overloaded was not the big problem, back then the providers "Bandwith limit exceeded" error is what made the site go away.