In the previous ranting I said something about the PowerCore being slightly bigger than what I had bargained for. (or something to that extent, so sue me)
rant
All posts tagged rant
Yeah, my last entry almost went live before I took in the delivery of the PowerCore 20100.
Anyway, here’s a mini gallery review after the jump (as shipped from Amazon Canada).
Here’s something that has been stuck on my mind from a month ago. It also caused me more headache trying to write “straight” for that week…
As a plus, it’s all unedited (if deleting things as I go doesn’t count).
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To be perfectly honest, I have a personal bias that tablets are the future, given how we can be touching to point where we want something to go to or do within the program. (and it will contain personally positive bias for Lenovo/IBM tablets)
Yet, looking at the pre-Windows 8 market a year ago, there was too much fragmentation. Companies jumping around to please potential customers in their respective little bubble in either Android or iOS with almost no concern of the users that are using wacoms on their Windows or Macs; and given how Apple is willing to put everything to their iOS eco-system, I feel depressed on the desktop oriented people who needs the high-power machines to run proper design software.
Why? The tablets aren’t good enough for rendering or any other processor demanding tasks. In a fun little twist, Autodesk also see that and worked to create a remote server farm for doing renders and technical analysis (for a fee, as if they would do that kind of charity). However, I don’t think that’s the final solution as majority of the companies require non-disclosure agreements on their bigger projects, and who would want to drop off their secrets off to a remote server for analysis or rendering?
Power issues aside, both iOS and Android were in use for several years, long enough that they gain the influence of the general public to force Microsoft to create its own tablet operating system, only with the ability to maintain legacy software. And to do that, they would either:
- get the software companies to comply to a touch friendly interface (doubt it)
- select a physically bigger screen for the flagship (doubt that too)
- use a Wacom pen
At least Microsoft chose the latter route with their surface pro, but then Microsoft also implemented some weird scale up of the display that attempts to improve user accuracy with touch displays on a smaller screen, making the company’s position with customers worse in regards to the Surface Pro (and really, Surface RT’s no better for now).
Still, the Wacom pen idea right on the laptop/tablet display wasn’t new, with the most recent pre-tablet example from Thinkpad X series from IBM and Lenovo have tablet variants that uses wacom pens and touchscreens, which allows hand written notes or drawings with more accuracy without any use of a automatic magnifier in a regular Windows Environment. It wasn’t lost on me when I used it, even now I tried to utilize the wacom part of the laptop whenever I can.
So when Lenovo pushed out the Thinkpad Tablet 2, I got quite excited because Lenovo isn’t giving up on the wacom integration. Then as I read on in the review, it seemed to me that Lenovo gave up on integrating a proper keyboard dock to gain more battery space for a bluetooth keyboard; my excitement went away quietly. Then there’s the fact that it’s running on the netbook internals.
…
When they can properly stuff a laptop spec internals into a more portable package with a battery integrated dock and a wacom integration that runs windows 8, I’ll upgrade. Until then, I think I’ll skip this generation of machines if I can…
Tablets themselves aside, The usability of a stylus needs to be more pronounced, as there are not many examples on the internet showcasing people using technical design software with a wacom product. The wonders of a Cintiq display with AutoCAD…
dreams on…
As I was looking at the various houses set in quiet areas around the world, out of the way and devoted of ANY nearby neighbors…
It got to me.
Why aren’t all of the new houses that are being built right now take on some different design instead of some copy and paste job of some “Californian house” (random house type, please ignore) ?
Are we too lazy to sketch out a house of a different shape?
Are we too lazy to limp through the bureaucracy that is the municipal government?
Or are we too poor to get the design pass the numerous design studies by engineers?
…
Or are we just lazy enough to not even bother picking a design and just let the contractor choose the house design because that one design is going to take the least amount time to get approved just so the contractor could finish the job faster and move on to the next?
Takes a deep breath.
So why are we stuck with neighborhoods being replaced by houses taking most of the space that could be used for some tree-based greenery?
At least it would allow for some instant shade so we can take some of what we do indoors outside.
…
While we’re on the space issue, why are the newer townhouses have to be squished into lots with the bare minimum width for the common driveway? Cause there is no way a fire truck can maneuver in that small amount of space.
…and now I’m off topic. So I’ll stop for now.
Future shock…
A term used as a sudo-illness, it defines as a behavior said to be resistive to changes in their environment, whether it is from a screen or actual physical things that are changing. In the article on io9, it was mentioned that information overload is the major cause of the syndrome…
…reads on by himself…
…needless to say, the increasingly larger amounts of information can cause problems for everyone. However (using the most recent real world example), having the recent video game gun violence dispute and the related (and restarted) gun control policies happening around us , I was thinking of how many of the games in the recent exponential growth of games created in the recent years. With the increasing amount of indie game studios, it is almost inevitable to see the sheer amount of violent games in a short period of time would cause the anger of many people that may have been neutral to violence in games in general.
…Yet…
There is this saying, “too much of a good thing”. This single idiom may have been repeated (in example) way too many times through out the twentieth century.
So, would we be able to learn to control ourselves? Or would we ended up being in a state of mind similar to an addict, too late to go back except through some serious rehabilitation and restriction (like some protesters want the United States government do)?
I certainly hope we can do the former…
Idea starter article: How can you tell if you are suffering from Future Shock? (io9)
I should probably explain my absence from the blog. (Even though the lack of personally intriguing architecture may have something to do with this as well)
Well, it’s the Blackberry Z10.
And since it is not the thing I should be blog regularly (pure gadgetry/electronics) I have been silent on the matter. Since we’re (inevitably) here now, I think I should state some of my opinion on the lukewarm reviews that were posted during the same day as the Z10’s launch. (the more prominent ones were linked from Crackberry’s Z10 tech community review page.)
The reviewers were given a full week in advance of the device launch, this presents a good and bad sides:
The good side would be the instant media coverage the Z10. Yes, people want information as soon as possible, but that kind of mentality also have a down side. I’ll explain more of that later.
The bad side would be the incomplete ecosystem of the device and software should some more of the void be filled during the launch day. Sure, We still want surprise by launch day, given the eventual leaks during the year leading up to the device/OS launch (And I am willing to think that a good number of people did not foresee the renaming of the company – from Research in Motion to Blackberry) . But the fact is, all that impatience of ours is continuing to hurt large companies that have to manage international trade in order to manufacture physical products; and yes, that includes Apple, Samsung, Nokia, and all of the other large companies around the world. In the end, all this high expectations from the consumers would end up hurting ourselves.
So can we try and not peek at everything that’s behind the proverbial locked doors? It might just help us. (And patience is a virtue, is it not?)
