5 hours ago, PaoloM wrote

Battery life is definitely *not* the same. Maybe with Haswell it will improve, but for now ARM holds that crown easily.

Haswell will provide be much better battery-life than Ivy Bridge, but it still won't be in the same league as ARM.

For that, Intel is pinning it's hopes on Silvermount, the upcoming replacement for Atom, and the BayTrail platform. This is the one that is potentially an ARM 'killer' - or at least competitive.

That CPU/Platform should allow building of a x86 Surface that provides acceptable performance and long battery-life.

41 minutes ago, evildictait​or wrote

*snip*

I take a simple approach to this: It's immoral, it's completely opposed to the concept of taxation that our democratically elected leaders intended, what the treasury wants, and what the people of our countries think is reasonable; it's based on deliberate evasiveness and semi-fraudulent action by constructing fictitious sales between group companies to off-shore profits.

Sorry, but 'immoral' simply doesn't cut it - your morals are not mine, nor are they those of a corporation, whose primary responsibility is to its shareholders.

Clearly defined laws, and the knowledge that they will be fully enforced, is the only limitations you can realistically expect to be respected.

15 hours ago, cheong wrote

*snip*

I don't think there will be 2012-R2 because of this unless there's huge change inside. Afterall, what people complained for Win8 isn't really relevent to Win2012.

http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/it-s-official-windows-81-blue-will-be-free

I was using the last paragraph of this article as my source.

I actually prefer the look of the 920's plastic body, and think that the 'premium' metallic thing of the 925 is like chrome bumper-bars, but each to their own.

2 hours ago, PopeDai wrote

I understand the 928 is a derivative from the 920 as something for non-GSM carriers.

Yep, essentially a 920 +CDMA and a few other tweaks, including an AMOLED display and Xenon flash.

Good comparison photos on the following page.

http://www.wpcentral.com/nokia-lumia-928-lumia-920-better-and-verizon

It is actually a different size & weight to the 920, but otherwise much the same.

3 hours ago, Srikanth_t wrote

And don't get me started on Windows Phone 8. ... flat UI, jeez.

Don't be holding your breath for the next iPhone upgrade. If Jony Ives gets his way, iOS will also go flat UI.

9 hours ago, yuhong wrote

*snip*

And my point is it is *AHCI*, not SATA itself, causing that.

Yep, AHCI is the issue here, not SATA per-se.

The majority of motherboards provide an option to select AHCI mode or IDE (Legacy) mode for connecting a SATA drive.

Set in IDE mode, WinXP has native support, and everything will just work.

Set in AHCI mode, WinXP requires drivers to be installed.

9 hours ago, Jsoh wrote

When Windows 7 came out OEMs basically stopped purchasing Vista licenses. With the release of Windows 8, Microsoft continued to sell massive amounts of 7 licenses along with the new 8.

I worked as a corporate reseller, the MS position was that once a new version started shipping, the old version (either retail or OEM) was only available while old stock lasted - i.e. no further shipments from MS.

The MS policy was that downgrade rights provide the required cover for people who need the previous version, and so continuing to supply the previous version pre-installed, is not actually a requirement.

I suspect that MS learnt this lesson from the early Vista days, when they provided OEMs with the option to dual-install XP, and OEMs all took the easy route of making XP the primary installation choice. They were forced to change their policy to stop OEMs from doing this - publicizing the downgrade rights and making downgrade disks available, to protect Vista 'sales'.

9 hours ago, wkempf wrote

@elmer: It may be bleeding obvious, but it's also bleeding meaningless. That was my point.

What is pointless about asking where and how those purchases are being made?

Wanting more detail doesn't attempt to negate or diminish the sales figures.

The market has changed since Win7, and MS is re-positioning itself and the role of Windows. A blanket n licenses, doesn't tell you if sales are being made to Tablets, Laptops, Desktops, or if they are Consumer or Corporate purchases, so it would be quite useful to know how that is working out.

Secondly, and although it was a supplementary point, I don't see it as meaningless to ask how many Win8 purchases are being downgraded to Win7.

We know that Win7 was widely installed, but we also know that Vista was not. Despite this, the sales figures for Win7 and Vista were similar. The sales figures alone don't tell you if the product is being accepted or rejected in the marketplace.

5 hours ago, wkempf wrote

This argument always annoys the crap out of me. It's made every single time, which is why it's pointless. We know how many people use the previous versions, and their numbers were calculated the same way, so it doesn't matter in any way how many are sold to OEMs or end users.

Actually, I'm damned if I know how you make the leap from what I wrote, to your comments.

I simply wrote that these figures do not give you details of the purchases by end-users - i.e. it doesn't tell you what sectors are purchasing and what are not - and it doesn't tell you what %age of them are being downgraded.

Nowhere in what I wrote did I attempt (or intend) to invalidate or question the sales figures, and I was simply pointing out the bleeding obvious.

9 minutes ago, Bas wrote

*snip*

Don't they? OEMs aren't just rolling a bunch of dice and then buying whatever number comes out of that times a million.

No, this simple figure doesn't tell you who is buying - consumer, business - or what they are being used for - tablets, laptops, desktops.

This is apparently down on expectations, but not quite the unmitigated disaster that had been claimed.

Of course, sales to OEMs doesn't tell you about end-user purchases, or how (if) they are being used or downgraded, but that's a separate issue.

a moment ago, PopeDai wrote

*snip*

The iPhone has the best picture-taking experience of every phone I've used - though it's a combination of having a great lens, great sensor, great screen to display pictures on, and a great processor to reduce latency and startup times. All of the other phones tend to get something wrong. (Disclaimer: I still haven't used a Windows Phone handset yet).

When I use the camera on my Lumia920 I never consider things like that. I guess that means either that I'm totally clueless (very possible) or that the Nokia 'just works'.

Scoble announced that he was headed to Amsterdam's Red Light District later in the evening, and that anyone in the crowd was welcome to follow him and his Glass.

I've been using CrucialParadigm's Citrix-XEN based VPS.

http://www.crucialp.com/virtual-dedicated-servers-vds/windows-2008-server.php

There are add-on services available, such as R1Soft-Backup (for data versioning backup) and external 'hardware' firewall.

I'm using one to support multiple specialized websites, with different domains, and running specialist local services, that my CMS application requires, and that I wouldn't be allowed to install with traditional web-hosting.

As with any hosted VPS, you get to call the shots on how the O/S is configured and what you do with it, just as you would a dedicated server - e.g. security config is your problem/choice. 

I have customers with their own VPS service (running additional apps that I don't support) and am able to configure a 2nd private LAN to move files between multiple VPS.

Strictly speaking, the self-managed service means re-boots only (if RDP doesn't respond for some reason) but in practice I've found them far more helpful than that, and prepared to assist troubleshoot every problem I've encountered (which are usually Windows software based). I have never been left waiting for a tech-support response for more than 10 mins. Mind you, I'm using the local (Australia) branch, so can't vouch for elsewhere, 

I'm sure there are other services out there that are cheaper, and others that are equally as good - but this is what I've used.

58 minutes ago, cbae wrote

...is networking equipment. It's not even close. I can't recall how many times I've had to replace a network switch or WiFi router over the past several years.

I think you perhaps need to qualify that with the equipment quality and environment.

All of the networking equipment in our server room is either HP or CISCO, is all a minimum of 3 years old, and is all totally reliable.

I even have 3 x HP 10/100 switches that are now 12 years old, but I can't bring myself to throw them out, because they just keep doing their particular job perfectly.

Of course, this is all expensive equipment (or was when we bought it) and is running in a controlled environment.

However, even at our remote home-offices, I've only had one failure over many years - and even that was caused by a lightning strike on the comms link to the cable-modem.

Where possible, I prefer to use SOHO equipment with metal chassis, as I believe it dissipates the heat better for environments that are typically not air-conditioned.

For our remote offices we typically use Cisco-800/900 and Netgear-ProSafe equipment, and always install an APC UPS with comms surge-suppressor options. None of it's cheap, but it all just keeps working, so I don't have support issues with it.

24 minutes ago, sysrpl wrote

I don't have a virus scanner. I turn off Windows defender right after I install (along with windows firewall). I don't install much on my PCs, just textpad (I own a license), vcl, google chrome, and mingw on dev machines or utorrent (downloading mp4 movies) on my htpc.