The 10 Worst Tech Products of 2010 203
Barence writes "PC Pro has a count down of the ten worst tech gadgets of the year. Included in its hall of shame are: iPad Made Simple, 'a book containing 704 pages of advice on how to use a device that's universally acknowledged as being ridiculously easy to use'; the Dell Inspiron Duo, 'a tablet that leaves you longing to return to a keyboard and a touchpad'; and the £99 Next Tablet, the highlight of which was the 'eight-page Quick Start Guide.'"
i hereby nominate (Score:5, Interesting)
the Dell E6xxx series laptops. In my 16 years in the computing industry, i have never seen such a high failure/random wierd issue rate - before the machines even leave the bench (takes 25 minutes to network build with SOE) in many cases.
cheers Dell, for convincing me to move to HP Elitebooks.
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I second your nomination!
If only I had mod points... (Score:2)
No, seriously, you couldn't be more right. The Dell E6700 I had to limp along with when I first began working at my present position was a right pain in the ass. It was a driving force (along with the endless RAM troubles we saw in our PE 2950 servers) that had us going to HP here where I work, both at the user and server level (we're using HP DL 360's for servers now).
I'm typing this missive on an HP EliteBook 8440p (which runs Ubuntu 10.10 very nicely, I must say :) ).
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We've switched to 8540p and 2540p elitebooks. I had an 8540p (nice machine) but wanted something more portable (as a network admin i'm often carrying it around to plug into switches/routers/etc and don't do a any heavy graphics stuff on it). Battery life on the 2540p is great, too.
Oh, and the only dead machine we've had in 6 months and 20 machines so far has been a hard drive failure. Could have happened to anything...
Much happier :)
Re:i hereby nominate (Score:5, Funny)
Expecting a company to make what is damn near an Intel reference design work properly after only 27 BIOS updates(and counting, it was 24 only weeks ago) is cruel and unrealistic. Some people just aren't satisfied with anything(or, like our network manager, satisfied with anything related to his E6400, which he deep-sixed for his prior laptop, despite the significant spec bump...)
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Holy crap, I am so glad I am not alone here. I had an E6500 and that is far and away the worst laptop I have ever used. Cheap materials, the keyboard sucks, the display is dim even on full brightness. Also the trackpad is freaking TINY, the buttons are shit, and the area on the trackpad for scrolling is far too small to be anywhere near useful. It's heavy and awkward to carry: the docking connector in the back adds another inch to the dimensions of the thing, and makes it so it won't fit in most backpacks.
I
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Now that you mention it though, I did notice that the video was noticeably brighter on an external display. There's also a weird 'tearing' effect whenever I try to watch a video with lots of motion in it. Unfortunately, it's a work PC; I can't very well take it
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Interesting. I have an E6500 and don't really have any complaints about it. I suppose it could be because I absolutely loathed the D820 it replaced, and the D610 that the D820 replaced was even worse. Low expectations prevent dissatisfaction.
It goes further back than that. When I worked for a certain large three-letter outsourcing company, the leasing company actually RECALLED our C640s before the lease was up and replaced them with D610s because the failure rate on the C640s was enormously high.
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They have to be better than the Dell D6xx series. We have had the laptops for 1.5 years and so far have a failure rate of about 90%. We had about 20 of them and only 1 is still in use. We have another that is technically functional but has something failing and is to slow to use.
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Dude. I was giving out secondhand D520s and D530s recently to end users who were going to be out of range of phone+dell tech next day repair because they have proven to be far more reliable, even after 2-3 years of use. I even have D510s still going, running Win7 just fine.
If you think the D series is bad, please don't pre-judge the E series. They're FAR worse. We were a dell shop since 2003 until this year when we ditched them, primarily because of the E series.
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Re:i hereby nominate (Score:5, Interesting)
I nominate "3D" TV.
Windows XP drivers basically broken (Score:3)
I have an E6500 and several customers have E65xx models.
I've had mine for 18 months and it's been flawless with Windows 7 x64 as have the others running Windows 7 x86.
Two people are running XP on them and have had all manor of problems and what I've tracked down is that Dell's "official" Windows 7 wifi and network drivers are broken -- the devices don't work well with these drivers, cause odd problems unrelated to the drivers (ie, domain logins away from the domain basically hang forever).
I replaced the dri
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My E6500 is awful. The thing is, I use solely laptops and always the touchpad. I don't like external keyboard or mouse a bit. Now E6500 has this "little" problem that its touchpad freezes every now and then. But sometimes it gets overly sensitive and seems to have a life of its own. IIRC I read from Dell forums that this is a common problem, something to do with the touchpad itself and not a driver problem since some people have experienced this even on Linux while I use Windows 7. The laptop works quite fi
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My touchpad blows, too. It's supposed to be semi-multitouch and have some kind of click and sensitivity options, but it just seems to be inconsistent. I use a bluetooth mouse anytime I use my laptop more than about 5 minutes, so the inconsistent touchpad is less of an annoyance.
I dislike the "nipple" in the center of the keyboard, too, but fortunately that can be disabled completely.
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I have a decked out D630 running Fedora for work, and it was one of the last to go out before we switched to E6xxx machines. The D630 is arguably the most well-rounded and reliable laptop I've ever had. The E6xxx laptops though we have had tons of problems with. Very few D630s actually went out, we had mostly D620s. People with older and newer machines here stare jealously at my D630, but they know the only way to get it is from my cold, dead hands.
Agreed, the E6xxx series is horrible.
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I actually loved my D620 and D630 Latitudes. They were very solid and I loved the keyboard - especially with the 9-cell battery that acts as a palm rest. Plus they had a serial port - which I use quite a bit for initial router and switch configurations.
My new E6510, while loaded to the gills, has a keyboard that's more difficult for me to use. Although I love the screen. I also had issues with some of the Dell provided drivers. Specifically the video driver for my nVidia NVS 3100M which would cause one
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Re:Dell D6xx series (Score:2)
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Re:i hereby nominate (Score:5, Funny)
If an AC endorsing a product doesn't give you pause then you are a brave soul indeed.
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Not that I'm doubting you, but I have an E6400 that I was given, and it's been working pretty well for me.
Of course, if you have 10 broken ones, it sounds like there was either a bad production run and you got unlucky, or a good run which left me the lucky one.
Either way, I probably wouldn't get one of these for myself.
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Ditto with my E6500. No problems, except for the crap that gets caught in the little grill things on either side of the keyboard...
Time to put PC Pro on a list like this... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not inclined to cut Apple any slack and even I would not have put the Mini on that list.
Overall, this list seems pretty lame and mostly filled with stuff that doesn't really belong there.
Give them some credit though (Score:3)
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Most of the stuff on the list seems to be the ultra-cheap low budget stuff, and it seems like a bit of a cheap shot to include them. Obviously a 99 pound tablet isn't going to be that great compared to, say, the iPad. What did they expect?
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Obviously a 99 pound tablet isn't going to be that great compared to, say, the iPad.
Cue lots of Americans thinking "I'll say... the iPad is nowhere near that heavy!" :-)
BTW, for those outside the UK (and those here who didn't realise the connection), "Next" in this case has nothing to do with NeXT, Steve Jobs' old company. [wikipedia.org] (*) In fact, it's the name of the clothing chain [wikipedia.org] who rebranded (I assume) the product under its own name! (No, I'm not mistaken- the logo on the back is the same, and you can even see it here at Next's website [next.co.uk].)
Sounds strange, but as well as their main business of s
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I don't know- it depends how they're selling it. If it's in the clothes shops on the stand beside their wannabe-but-obviously-too-cheap-boys-toys and low-priced after shaves, I suspect that would reduce its chances of being taken seriously.
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Spec-wise, the Mini is a complete screwjob, as Minis have been for ages now; but it occupies a niche practically of its own: all the rough PC equivalents are either atom based and a quarter of the cost or something-vaguely-modern-from-intel based and twice th
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Just put a disc in the drive or try to push that CPU.
You will break the silence.
Minis are silent only so long as you treat them with kid gloves.
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The Dell ZinoHD 410 is less expensive, nearly as small, and vastly superior in almost every way.
even at the $499 price point. Let alone offering one for $299.
and it's not atom based or something vaguely modern from intel at nearly twice the size.
it also makes an EXCELLENT HTPC in every way the mini does not.
Re:Time to put PC Pro on a list like this... (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA agrees with you, and points out that they're being a little unfair. But what they really wanted to do was bitch and moan about £650 for something specced the same as an Acer Aspire Revo; and worse, ripping you off on "optional upgrades" by charging "triple the price difference".
All of which, if true, is pretty shitty. They could probably have found better "worst products of 2010" if they'd wanted to, but their criticisms of the Mac Mini seem valid enough.
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TFA agrees with you, and points out that they're being a little unfair. But what they really wanted to do was bitch and moan about £650 for something specced the same as an Acer Aspire Revo; and worse, ripping you off on "optional upgrades" by charging "triple the price difference".
All of which, if true, is pretty shitty. They could probably have found better "worst products of 2010" if they'd wanted to, but their criticisms of the Mac Mini seem valid enough.
When I bought my macbook, the default harddisk was only 160GB. Upgrading to 250GB would cost €100, while a separate new 320GB disk was €105 back then (in a different shop of course). In effect they say: you buy a new harddisk, we keep the old one (oh no it's not "old", it's brand new!), and we charge you for replacing it. It's a complete rip off.
Re:Time to put PC Pro on a list like this... (Score:4, Interesting)
I've played with the Apple store Mac configuration tool any number of times, and the upgrade prices are preposterous. They are utterly divorced from reality, and it makes them look very bad - if you're charging five times the cost differential between hard drive A and hard drive B, you get the sneaking suspicion—probably accurate—that their initial prices for peripherals are similarly rapacious.
Take the $700 Mac mini. Set aside that it is overpriced, for the moment, since some people will pay more for the fact that it is designed well, and that they want to use MacOS.
Processor
Included: 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Upgrade: 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo [Add $150.00]
Newegg: Difficult to give a precise comparison, but consider that the price difference between the 2.4GHz (P8600) and 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo (P9600) is $120. This is retail pricing, and not what an OEM like Apple would be paying.
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RAM:
Included: 2GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x1GB
Upgrade: 4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB [Add $100.00]
Upgrade: 8GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB [Add $500.00]
Newegg:
2x 1GB DDR3 1066MHz SDRAM: Starting at $27.98
2x 2GB DDR3 1066MHz SDRAM: Starting at $49.98 [Add $22]
2x 4GB DDR3 1066MHz SDRAM: Starting at $139.98 [Add $112]
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Hard drive:
Included: 320GB Serial ATA Drive
Upgrade: 500GB Serial ATA Drive [Add $100.00]
Newegg:
HITACHI Travelstar 7K500 HTE725032A9A364 320GB 7200 RPM 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive $59.99 (this is the exact drive in the default setup, which I feel is the fairest way to go as I don't want to compare it to a drive whose vertical clearance might be slightly different)
HITACHI Travelstar 5K500.B HTS545050B9A300 (0A57915) 500GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive $59.99 [Add $0.00]
I'm told this faster drive also works:
Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9500420AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive $64.99 [Add $5.00]
As well as this larger, faster drive:
Seagate Momentus ST9750420AS 750GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive $109.99 [Add $50]
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I don't mean to be "that guy", because I appreciate why some people prefer Apple, and they make some hardware that, if prices were less insane, I would be interested in, but their prices on upgrades is punitive to say the least.
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The newegg prices just aren't comparable though.
1. Labor. Have you ever taken apart a Mini? If you don't know what you're doing, you'll never get it back together right. Have you ever paid someone to take apart a Mini & install RAM or HDfor you? See if that's the price difference.
2. Some upgrades aren't reasonable ie CPUs that are soldered on.
Having said that, Apple's prices are high and out of proportion to their size/volume. But then again, it's not the teenager down the street who doesn't touch
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Neither of your points are valid. Since Apple is doing the configuration outlays that Apple is offering, whether a third party would have to take it apart and put it together right isn't relevant.
The cost for Apple to upgrade a given component should be equal or less than the cost difference between the base and upgraded product if the consumer were to buy it at retail, as the OEM is getting better prices. Yes, there's a need to build in a profit for upgrades, but a $500 upgrade price for a component upgr
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That's a service I can provide to you, if it would add value for you. Let's talk.
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Well, it pretty much is true. Apple doesn't offer a cheap Mac, never have and probably never will. Particularly their cheapest models - the Mac Mini being the very cheapest - have very crappy hardware value. The reason you buy this is simple, it's the only way to get a genuine Mac that runs OS X and Mac software, unless you're in the very small technical minority who'd be comfortable with a hackintosh. Just to give you an idea, at my favorite price comparison site they now list 262 laptop models. The cheape
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Well, it pretty much is true. Apple doesn't offer a cheap Mac, never have and probably never will. Particularly their cheapest models - the Mac Mini being the very cheapest - have very crappy hardware value. The reason you buy this is simple, it's the only way to get a genuine Mac that runs OS X and Mac software, unless you're in the very small technical minority who'd be comfortable with a hackintosh.
I think there is also a group that likes the smaller form factor. Last I checked, even Shuttles weren't as small as the Mac Mini. I have space for a Mini in my entertainment center, but not a Shuttle and definitely not a tower.
I'm not running Apple but if I was I'd seriously consider taking a rematch with Microsoft on the mainstream market.
Why should they? Sure, MS has better market penetration. However, Apple is valued at just under $300 billion where MS is valued at $240 billion. At the end of the day, that's what matters to the investors. It's like telling Porsche "You should build cars that sell for $20k becau
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I suspect the only people that would notice the performance differences in a side by side Revo versus Mini comparison would be the "geeks".
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I suspect the only people that would notice the performance differences in a side by side Revo versus Mini comparison would be the "geeks".
Really? I'd have thought the 50% faster CPU, 100% faster GPU, and 100% faster memory would make the difference obvious to anyone who did anything more demanding than play a standard definition video. And that isn't just geeks; I find using any flash-heavy web site is demanding enough to seriously show the age of my PC, and that isn't much lower spec than the Revo, at l
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I am the biggest mac fanboy you will ever find.
But their reasoning was solid. The Mini is too damn expensive for it's specs. Either give us a Core i3/i5, or price back at 499.
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If you cant find 10 products from the last year that belong on the "worst" list more than the mac mini then you aren't looking very hard.
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...I wouldn't go that far.
It's a price escalated hash of last years model (quite literally).
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Not quite:
HDMI out standard makes TV integration much easier (not all TVs have an audio in jack along with a DVI/HDMI input), and Mac Minis are great under TVs.
The video is vastly VASTLY improved. And you can now actually take the thing apart without going crazy! The reason why Apple has stuck with the Core 2 is that
a) Its a really good processor
b) They could get a GOOD all-in-one chipset/video solution. No such solution exists for the i5/i7 line.
And thus the improvements are easily worth the extra $10
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Obscure things?
They used a standard 15 pin video port on the early ones, accessed via the standard DVI port (adapter included), then switched to a mini-DVI and mini-Displayport side by side, then the current version swapped to HDMI and mini-Displayport side by side.
Hardly "obscure" by video connection standards.
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There are four different ports over the lifetime of the device, one of which is shared across two generations.
Those are:
* DVI (not obscure by any stretch of the chalk)
* mini-DVI (slightly obscure, but cheap to convert to full size DVI with an adapter)
*mini-displayport (not obscure really - all current Macs ship with this port, as well as some laptops). This port is shared across the most recent generations of Minis, so if you bought the dongle once, you don;t need to replace it if you replace the mini (or m
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Since when are DVI and HDMI "obscure"?
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Video dongles? You mean the adapters that never screw in securely, so my screen turns red when the cat steps on it?
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When the mac mini was less than $600, it would have been something I could see myself buying just to get some experience on a mac. Now? No, it is way over priced.
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If only it were priced more sensibly. Even taking in account the "Apple tax", $699 is way too much for those specs.
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Apple products being overpriced is hardly news or noteworthy.
If they are going to whine about this sort of thing then they should target the Mac Pro. It's a much more expensive proposition for basic expandability features that you can get in a $300 PC. It's the perfect example of "in for a penny,in for a pound".
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I will say that the Mac Pro is a workstation (dual Xeon sockets don't come cheap from anyone) and not a 'consumer desktop' and all dual socket workstations are way expensive regardless of vendor (only a niche market really 'needs' them). Frankly I wonder if those and the 'server' branding of those machines will go the way of the Xserve sooner rather than later.
They simply have nothing in the expandable desktop market. They simply are not interested in serviceable products. I wouldn't be surprised if in t
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>>>Was your Win 7 PC the size of a couple of CDs stacked on top of each other?
No.
Do I care if it is the size of a couple records stacked on top of each other?
Didn't think so.
My priority was and is saving money, so I don't need to work so damn much overtime.
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So, you commute to work in a horse and carriage. No wait, you need to buy food for the horse, unless you feed it by having it eat the grass on the way.
You ride to work on a bike then?
And size is something that costs money (if you want to reduce it, in electronic terms).
People aren't buying tower-sized machines to use as HTPCs. Your comparison with a machine that isn't being used for that purpose is meaningless.
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And now, extending your analogy, you are removing aesthetics and appeal from the product - something that also costs money.
A Mini on your desk, or in your HTPC setup looks nicer than some whitebox PC with a cheap tower case and noisy fans, although one is doubtless cheaper than the other.
Taking it even further, why don't you drive a kit car to work? It's cheaper than a Honda Civic. Oh right, the cost of assembling that $200 windows PC wasn't included in the price? How much is your time worth?
10 worst slashdot articles of 2010 (Score:2)
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Too many to choose from?
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Waiting for the links to slide shows to start appearing.
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It doesn't help when one shows up three or four times.
I nominate the Platystation Move (Score:3, Interesting)
Good job ripping off Nintendo. Who the hell came up the glowing ping-pong ball idea?
I would nominate Kinect, but at least there are other uses for it.
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I picked up a move controller to play party games. After completing Resident Evil 5 (control schemes for that game suck horribly btw) a friend invited me to come over and play Goldeneye. I find the controls were sluggish, inaccurate and because of how they worked it made 4 player goldeneye very difficult (people sitting at angles had major problems).
I thought the Wii controllers were fine but the Move has really rais
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Ive been very disappointed with Goldeneye, but I'm not sure its the Wii's fault. The Link crossbow training game controls worked pretty well, I cant figure out why aiming in Goldeneye is so much more difficult.
The list was lamer than the products (Score:3)
Re:The list was lamer than the products (Score:4, Interesting)
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In fact, there are just as many setting to configure to use an iPad as there are to use a new Windows PC.
I don't have an iPad, but I find this statement in particular to be quite absurd. Having recently set up a new Windows 7 Lenovo laptop for my father, I can only assume you've forgotten how many things there are that need to be configured to get a Windows PC ready for daily use, the least of which include: Uninstall all the bloatware. Install anti-virus software. Set up a non-admin user account with password. Find and install all the required software, clicking through all the multi-page installers and UAC
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1) Turning it on.
2) Enter Username/Password
3) Use computer.
Whereas, you left the entire part of setting up a PC to actually be able to set up an iPad.
Again, setting up a PC is a subset of the steps ne
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This is a little bit off.
For most people, all they do is turn the damn iPad on, tyoe in their wifi password, and they are off and away. If they are a relative power user, they will wish to use its built in email and calendaring apps. Setting up your account is pretty easy for the main free mail providers - you just type in your login and password, and it knows which servers to use. Was that imap.gmail.com or what? Who cares! It handles the details for you. Caldav calendars are similarly easy, as is Ex
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For most people, all they do is turn the damn iPad on, tyoe in their wifi password, and they are off and away.
Don't forget buying, installing and configuring a computer, then installing iTunes so you can actually plug in, activate and use the iPad.
Re:The list was lamer than the products (Score:5, Insightful)
People overestimate how easy the iPad is to use. My first introduction to the iAnything was watching other people struggling to use their new devices. Without watching the screen, I could tell it was not the intuitive interface that everybody claimed.
When I finally got an iPhone I discovered the problem for myself. The interface is littered with hidden features that have no visual indication that they exist, let alone how to use them. Then there is the problem of the inconsistent user interface.
The great example that I always use is to ask how you delete things in iOS. It seems that every app has its own way to do it. Some of them rely on the user just having to know that they have to strike through an item or click and holding on an icon until a little red X appears. The only way to find out how to do it is to try out all the possibilities. I still can't say for sure that you can't delete a song from the iPod app, because maybe there is some method that I haven't tried. Either way it is a rubbish interface.
So I think that there is definitely a use for an iPad how-to book.
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I think the Android UI is better because it has a physical Menu button. Usually functions like delete are in there.
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But nobody was calling Windows XP ridiculously easy like they were with iOS. There is still a need for 3rd party books on that platform, especially because they keep changing the user interface of the printer setup with each version of Windows.
All I ask is that you take off the rose coloured glasses when looking at Apple's user interface.
Just from reading the summary (Score:2)
So we have 3 tablets listed in the summary. I haven't looked at the full article, but are we to conclude that tablets just suck?
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Yes, reading the article would take away valuable time that could be devoted to trying to sound smart on the internet.
BlackBerry Torch? (Score:3)
I'm surprised the BlackBerry Torch didn't make it onto a list like this. It should have been their latest and greatest, but their first large touchscreen device offered a resolution at least a generation behind the competition from Apple, HTC, and friends and poor touch responsiveness as well.
Also, when I asked the Orange store about it and they told me the price, my immediate reaction was that I would be getting it with a 24-month plan, not just off the shelf. They told me the price they were quoting was with the 24-month lock-in. I actually laughed out loud.
I nominate... (Score:2)
Every goddamned laptop vendor who ships godawful synaptics touchpads.
Yes, synaptics makes good touchpads, they also make shitty ones. Like the one on my T410, which supposedly has multitouch but never wants to recognize multitouch gestures.
So sad to see Norton Utilities here (Score:3)
Doesn't anyone else remember when a boot floppy with Norton Utilities and XTreeGold was the ultimate PC repair tool?
It's sad to see the name associated with a set of snake-oil "optimizers".
No no no.. the iPad itself! (Score:4, Insightful)
I say the iPad itself stands as king on Mount Crapmore for 2010. So far, all the people who bought one of those tablets can _not_ tell me what they are using it for. I can think of very few people who'd actually have a legitimate use for it. Others would be better off with a Blackberry or a cheap netbook.
I've witnessed a conversation that illustrates my anger. I do sysadmin work and one of the systems is an immersive 3D Cave system to examine medical images. When two ladies heard an iPad was going to be purchased for the Cave so you can take notes, they exclaimed "How modern!". Right.. A visual system that runs on 6 servers, a number of beamers and camera's costing up to half a million euros isn't modern until we add a fucking iPad! You know what even works better then an iPad to take notes with? A pen and goddamn clipboard!
So because the whole world has been brainwashed that it's oh so useful, this is the most horribly useless product of 2010.
If you disagree, (and I expect many will), please, PLEASE tell me what you actually use it for. And if you say something that can be solved better by a cheaper product, (like ebook reading, for which a kindle is better and cheaper), I'm going to hit you on the head with a wiffle bat until you're free of your Apple worship affliction. I wouldn't accept an iPad if they offered it to me for free.
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I can think of very few people who'd actually have a legitimate use for it.
Since when do you get to decide what's "legitimate" and what isn't? If some people have a use for it that you don't, is that less legitimate than if you have a use for it that they don't?
The only Apple product I own is an iPad and I use it every day. So often that I need a second one because my girlfriend is constantly bogarting it. It's hands down the most useful format for couch computing of anything out there
Re:No no no.. the iPad itself! (Score:4, Insightful)
THANK YOU GOOD SIR.
I wholeheartedly agree. The iPad is one of the most ridiculously overpriced pieces of garbage out there. You're paying 450 dollars for what? An app store and a browser on a touchscreen. Sweet mother of baby jesus. Buy a laptop or a netbook. You get so much more for what you pay for. I have to hand it to Apple though, if they can brainwash their lemming customers to buy this useless piece of plastic, they can do anything, especially when you have full OS tablets out.
And that is what worries me. Users don't care and aren't interested in the backend of computers. They never were. That is why the app store idea is so popular. Google with their Chrominium OS and Apple's appstore idea are driving the next gen computer user-experience. No one cares what goes where, how things are installed, or how the backend is functioning. All they care about is that they can press a button and download Angry Birds or Bejeweled then press another button and play. Who cares where it went as long as I can find it. This is exactly the same kind of nonsense that spawned from iTunes users where they think their music is magically "inside" iTunes rather than being parsed as a library from a location on the hd. Common users don't care about understanding these core components of the computer experience. They want simple, dumbed down, minimalistic experiences, which provide lean options but also minimal options to fuck up their system.
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Yes, the iPad got a lot of love from Apple. It's all shiny. But come on - it looks like Dell doesn't even test things once before they drop kick it out the door. Kinda like those no-name Chinese Android junk makers....
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With the exception of some notable fuckups(the E6XXXs as mentioned by various people above), they are pretty good at coming up with hardware that doesn't totally suck at very aggressive price points. However, the moment you want to produce something that isn't a bog-standard PC, laptop, or exactly-what-MS-had-in-mind-for-the-tablet-PC, you need
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This is certainly true - look how many posters just strip the Dell 'inspired' software image off and put bog standard Windows on. Further, this seems to be the same modius operandi that Acer, HP, Toshiba etc. use.
What I've never understood is that these are all enormous companies with lots of
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i suspect we'll see a general shift towards capacitive touchscreen netbooks within a year. The phone and iPad markets will lower the cost of production to the point where it makes sense.
Expecting Windows to provide the touchscreen experience is unnecessary. There's now Android. If Intel were smart, they'd release an Atom that had the necessary virtualisation extensions. OEMs could configure Android (or Meego, as favoured by Intel) and Windows to run in a Xen hypervisor.
Thus providing the Android experience
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Let's keep that straight (no pun intended).
I don't get it.
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