[Curtman]

herbie herbie:

Suppliers just notified me of a new Asus Transformer 1801. It's a freaking tablet with a dock. When docked, it's a Windows8 all-in-one touchscreen computer. Press the button to undock it and it reboots into an 18.5" Android tablet. The dock portion contains a 500GB hard drive, i5 CPU and up to 8 GB RAM.
Strikes me as the worst of both worlds. A smallish expensive all-in-one and a tablet too freakin big to lug about.
$1399
At least you'll have a touchscreen. I have an Asus all-in-one upgraded to Windows8 on display. Touchscreen, 18.5" for $599. Not a nibble on it - displayed since November.
Wahh. Screen's too small.
Wahh. Doesn't have an optical drive
Wahh. What's this LibreOffice? Everyone else gives you MSoft Office for FREE
Wahh. I can buy a 27" touchscreen cheaper than that at Staples.
Snow's almost gone. Keeping my Size 14" fireman boots at the shop to plant up the ass of the next fucker who tells me the customer's always right.

For that price, I'd go with the pixel.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebook-pixel/

$1:

4.3 million pixels – each invisible to the unaided eye – work together to deliver crisp text, vivid colors, and extra wide viewing angles. The 12.85” screen has the highest pixel density of any laptop, and a 3:2 photographic format designed for the web puts every one of those pixels to good use.

The display is worth it.

[Regina]

Hard to compare a PC and Tablet. To me they function very differently and I like that. To me a Tablet should be very portable, easy to use and have the ability to plug media cards or a USB drive into. I don't understand why someone should expect a tablet display and performance that match a PC but priced like a cheap Tablet. If they auto sync great. My wife has an ASUS tablet with a keyboard dock and I love it when we travel. The keyboard protects the screen when closed and is nice to doing emails and such. Detach them and the touch screen is perfect for surfing the net and playing Angry Birds.
I'm on my new iPad now which was given to me from work. It's nice enough but when I travel for work I still have to bring my laptop with me. Nothing plugs into it except the charger...............
Nothing beats a big ass PC Video card and 24" monitor for gaming though.

[Jonny_C]

herbie herbie:

I have an Asus all-in-one upgraded to Windows8 on display. Touchscreen, 18.5" for $599. Not a nibble on it - displayed since November.
Wahh. Screen's too small.
Wahh. Doesn't have an optical drive
Wahh. What's this LibreOffice? Everyone else gives you MSoft Office for FREE
Wahh. I can buy a 27" touchscreen cheaper than that at Staples.
Snow's almost gone. Keeping my Size 14" fireman boots at the shop to plant up the ass of the next fucker who tells me the customer's always right.

Sounds like that ASUS hits that un-sweet spot that nobody wants, no matter the price.
Maybe they are right.

{running for the hills}

[Jonny_C]

Regina Regina:

Nothing beats a big ass PC Video card and 24" monitor for gaming though.

Yeah, baby! Got wunna dohse. "Rise of Flight" never looked so good.

(Click pic to enlarge)

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[Regina]

Sadly they don't seem to make much effort designing good flight sims anymore.

[Jonny_C]

Rise of Flight is my sim of choice.

Check out some of the youtube videos. This is one of the best, with the ROF game used to re-create the death of German ace Werner Voss...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKspJtIMPH0

The graphics, minus the captions and music track, are what you see in the game. But crystal clear of course. Recording it leads to loss of quality from what you see in the actual game.

[Jonny_C]

I just helped Ol' Harv install and configure the Classic Shell (Windows 7) over Windows 8 and he's tickled pink with it. Thanks for the pointers, Tricks and Peck!

[jj2424]

Jonny_C Jonny_C:

Regina Regina:

Nothing beats a big ass PC Video card and 24" monitor for gaming though.

Yeah, baby! Got wunna dohse. "Rise of Flight" never looked so good.

(Click pic to enlarge)

1:

The attachment Fokker D-VII ROF.jpg is no longer available

MS Flight always looks better,

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[Regina]

jj2424 jj2424:

MS Flight always looks better,

0:

2013-2-8_21-22-25-995 (2).jpg

Which one is that??

[Jonny_C]

jj2424 jj2424:

MS Flight always looks better,

Nice shot!

You're right, but I think the combat flight simulators have to trade off a little of the visual detail (especially ground) for everything else that goes on - multiple planes, firing and explosion effects, etc.

[BartSimpson]

PC sales are down relative to the spike in sales after so many people upgraded from 32bit to 64bit. The computers we bought four years ago are just fine if you upgrade them.

For instance, right now at work I've been reimaging and upgrading the RAM and CPU's on several HP xw8400 and xw8600 workstations. They were purchased with one Xeon CPU and 2GB of RAM and I'm upgrqading them to two CPUs and 32GB of RAM. They run like new with the upgrades and we save about $3500 on replacing them with comparable HP Z620 workstations.

I guess then that the statistic I'm interested in is the one that speaks to sales of RAM and CPUs. If they're spiking then that tells you people are just doing what I'm doing and that's upgrading in place.

[herbie]

Good God what do you do that requires a 32GB dual Xeon on a workstation?
... are they hiring?

[BartSimpson]

herbie herbie:

Good God what do you do that requires a 32GB dual Xeon on a workstation?
... are they hiring?

3D architectural and seismic simulations and SAS data queries against a database that has over 40 million medical files in it. We use some very cool proprietary programs that allow you to take electronic plans for hospitals and then see how every aspect of the hospital (structure, plumbing, medical gas pipes, fixed medical equipment) all performs in earthquakes.

It's all stuff that used to require very costly shared time on supercomputers and now we're upgrading a number of the workstations to do the same thing at a scant fraction of the cost.

And, yes, we're hiring! Are you a US licensed architect?

[Regina]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

And, yes, we're hiring! Are you a US licensed architect?

No but I play one on TV.

[Canadian_Mind]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

And, yes, we're hiring! Are you a US licensed architect?

I know how to drive Strykers, design my own buildings for sim city, and like guns.