Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Phil — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 16:04:38 -0000

To echo commenter No. 2, my fingers catch on the key edges all the time and it drives me NUTS! You might as well have the computer occasionally blast the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. Argh.

(I typically use an external keyboard, so this is only a problem sometimes.)

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

radaronpaws — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 14:26:03 -0000

"So after years of saying how much better their hardware and software is, they become just another PC company (admittedly, with their own OS)"

... the main reason most people USE the mac... why can't the linux/windows hardcores figure this out?

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

keithcombs — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 02:43:39 -0000

I have the Dell Latitude D820. 15.4" WUXGA. It's far from ugly. Make sure you look closely at this one before purchase. IEEE 1394, ExpressCard slot, powered USB, etc. All the bells and whistles in a light weight package.

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Alan — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 22:39:27 -0000

Someone said let's see Dell tri-boot OSX, Linux and XP. You know if Apple would release OSX to other companies, they might. Unix has been run on PC's for a heck of a lot longer that on Mac's. I think Steve Jobs will not release OSX to PC makers because they have already tested it on some Dells, HPs and IBMs and found it runs better on the PCs. Now I've been around since the Apple II, I was a huge Woz fan, and I respect Jobs, but before using Intel chips (Oh when are the AMD fans going to jump Apple's tush for that HUGE mistake), their hardware was crap!. By putting Intel chips in, they instantly doubled the power of their computers, for the same price. So were they over-charging then, or now? And Apple users ate it up, and keep coming back. So after years of saying how much better their hardware and software is, they become just another PC company (admittedly, with their own OS) and the Apple fans can't praise them enough. What??
Oh dang, did I go way off topic or what, sorry.
Um,oh yeah! Dell has been using UXGA and WUXGA screens for years, nothing new, still have them even in Inspirons, most people hate them, icons too small and web sites are tiny. I love them.
Media Center?? Dude, did you like work for Microsoft or something? MCE is too close to ME and I have a feeling it will go EOL about as fast.

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Mark — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 16:16:31 -0000

"Mark: I’m joining a video content company. I want a monitor that displays all the pixels of my work."

Ahh, I see your angle now. But editing on the road is great on the run with either system, but when you do the major or final edits in studio, you'll probably be on an external monitor anyways, no?

You may not like it, but then you're back to looking at OSs or some other differentiating design of the notebooks.

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Scott — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 14:52:32 -0000

Again, how noble of you guys to institute a moratorium on saying bad things about another blog. I personally am no Dell fan, but why should they care whether or not Scoble or anyone else cheers their blog or not?

This is a serious question, not a bash or argument just for the sake of it.

Seriously, I see "early" bloggers and podcasters acting like they invented the world and it amazes me how much like the old media that attitude is. Isn't that exactly what you people were railing against with blogs and podcasts?

Don't take yourselves so seriously. 20 years from now, no one will remember most of you. Actually, the way kids are today, no one will remember ANY of you.

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Ross Hill — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 02:46:24 -0000

I'm waiting hopefully for the WWDC06 as well. My 04 Powerbook is living it's last days after a couple of years of hard use.

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

mdtcs — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 22:58:37 -0000

I own an HP laptop with widescreen, thinking about buying a dell, mthe battery suck big time

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Byron Prather — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 19:13:49 -0000

I own the Toshiba Qosmio (Pre-HD version.) I absolutely love it. It is heavy though. And the battery life sucks. (Pardon the pun.)

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Scott Royall — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 18:03:38 -0000

Well, I'm sorry to say the new Dell blog appears that it might be censoring comments. Below is the second of two comments I've tried to leave. That fish stinks from the head. :(

"I find it very suspicious that a comment I took great pain to post yesterday to make you aware of a specific customer service issue never made it past moderation. Censoring reasonable complaints—if that’s what happened—will harm your credibility rather than help it. You need to understand a couple of things about customers like me. It is assuredly not in our own best interest to have an antagonistic relationship with Dell because we need you. But, that also means we aren’t going away."

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Robert Scoble — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 16:50:36 -0000

Solomonrex: have you ever been on a plane? Have you ever looked at what people use on their laptops? I have. Dozens of times. A high percentage of people watch movies on their laptops. A better HD experience there is a selling feature for many people. Not all, I understand that, but if something is appealing to 1% of the audience that can provide a bit of growth for a company like Dell.

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

solomonrex — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 16:41:46 -0000

I think HD and media center on laptops are non-starters. Few people are using their laptops to consume non-web media, that the stuff online is still really basic. And if I could watch Lost on the ABC website on my TV, I would do that instead. Same with Channel 9.

I mean, why is ITunes winning huge? Because people don't want to listen to music on a PC. Without the Ipod, Realplayer and Itunes probably aren't THAT much better than WMP. But the Ipod IS much better than the other hardware.

And don't cry for Dell, they are doing the squeezing. Their only problem is that HP and Compaq can now match their prices, and people would rather buy a laptop in person than based on a small picture on a website. Lord knows Dell can't possibly serve high resolution pictures for purchase online.

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Jeff — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 14:41:45 -0000

Did Vista ship? Would you trust your business to a beta OS? When Vista does ship, I suspect it'll already be behind Leopard. QuickTime, available for Windows and OS X, does HD today.

After years of screwing around with Avid on Windows machines, I finally said screw it when I couldn't get any product to talk to my cameras correctly and efficiently edit HD (or more specifically, DVCPRO HD). I bought a MacBook Pro, Final Cut Pro, and I've been having a great time ever since. A few quirks in getting sequence settings to match certain HD flavors, but other than that, it just plain works.

I don't get religious about operating systems either... but OS X is vastly superior in my brief experience to anything in Windows short of developing .NET applications (what I do in my day job). Try to make Windows find and install my networked HP printer, or take my camera photos and organize (and publish) them the way iPhoto does. Not a chance.

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Robert Scoble — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 13:40:05 -0000

Marvin, we just bought a 15" MacBook Pro. I'm well aware of how nice OSX is. Or isn't. I don't get religious about OS's. Personally it isn't that much better than XP and I have Vista which does lots of AV tasks better than OSX. It does HD natively too.

By the way, I did Channel 9 (approx 700 hours of video content) on Windows and it didn't give me many troubles. Not sure what you're talking about. My camera worked with XP the first time out of the box.

Resolution is more important to me than the OS, by the way, but that's just me.

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Marvin Price — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 13:35:12 -0000

I think Mr. Scoble is missing the point. I just purchased a 17" MacBook Pro. I did not purchase the computer first because of appealing design, that's just the cherry on top. I purchased the computer because of OS X. Many people miss this when they talk about Apple design. If other hardware vendors were making OS X machines, my computer might not be so sexy looking, but it would be running OS X. Mr. Scoble should also consider that while a full 1080i is nice, it should be noted that if you want to develop HD content, the Mac is probably the way to go. After having connected my Sony HD camera to a PC running Windows and dealing that the resulting onslaught of problems, watching it just work with iMovie and Final Cut was almost like science fiction.

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Jeff — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 13:24:17 -0000

I HAVE seen 1080p. Heck, I even have a camera that can shoot in that format (Panasonic HVX200). Still, the weak point in video is rarely the screen itself. Usually it's the chips or software that adapt the signal to display on the screen.

For example, I have 37" Westinghouse LCD as my primary TV. If I feed 720p into it via component cables, the TV translates it into 1080p, the TV's native resolution. It looks pretty good. When my DVR computer running BeyondTV outputs via 1920x1080 DVI, the software doing the upscaling, it looks AMAZING. Whatever BeyondTV does to upscale, whether it be something they roll or something through the video hardware and drivers, it does it better than the chip inside the TV.

I like high resolution screens too. My Dell, which I don't use much anymore, has that obscene resolution on a 15" screen, but it doesn't have the CPU balls to playback HD at full frame rate.

That said, the 17" MacBook Pro does more than 1080p. :) And it's still just an inch thick.

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Robert Scoble — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 12:59:31 -0000

Jeff, good point. But after seeing 1080 (no i) on a high res screen you would be VERY impressed.

Plus it's just better all around too. Text is better on such a screen and you can fit more in (if your eyes are good enough to look at small icons and text).

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Robert Scoble — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 12:50:46 -0000

Mark: I'm joining a video content company. I want a monitor that displays all the pixels of my work.

David: watching a DVD while driving is illegal and dangerous. But, my 12-year-old son sits in the back seat with headphones while watching a DVD.

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Mark — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 11:21:13 -0000

Do you want a DVD player? Sounds like that's all that matters.

Get the Mac and use the most advanced OS around. Or tri-boot with OSX, Linux, or Windows. See if the Dell can do that.

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

David McGillveray — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 10:54:54 -0000

What I'm most concerned with is that you want to be able to view this in your car.

I'm a bit of car nazi in that I think talking on your mobile while driving is dangerous but I don't think any one would argue that watching a DVD while driving is just asking for an accident.

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Jeff — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 10:14:28 -0000

Hopefully you'll read this even though I'm a little late responding...

I recently got back to editing video, my profession prior to becoming a code monkey. A few things about what you're talking about here...

First of all, the "i" in 1080i refers to interlaced, which I'm sure you know. Computer monitors, and really all LCD's, are progressive scanning devices. No LCD does interlaced video, as it's deinterlaced in software or hardware before it's displayed. So it's not really correct to refer to a computer monitor as being "1080i," but rather just 1080. Or 1920x1080.

Second, despite Sony's stupidity in forcing 1080i on the world, you're not really getting any more data out of that picture than you are a 720p image. The bandwidth required for 1080/60i and 720/60p is identical. On a small screen, basically anything 20" or smaller, the human eye can't perceive much difference between the two in terms of overall data in any given frame. ESPN and FOX use 720/60p for sports, and that in fact results in a cleaner picture with more fluid motion than 1080/60i ever could.

Bottom line here, I have a MacBook Pro, I edit HD using Final Cut Pro, and if you look at the 720p trailers on Apple's site, you'll see what I mean in terms of 1080 not being critical.

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

RL — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 08:42:35 -0000

If you want a Dell, then go Alienware. They have just released a Superman laptop that will has everything you are looking for and nothing says geek sexy like a Superman logo on your laptop.

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Chris — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 08:35:49 -0000

I picked up a Dell Inspiron 6400 a couple of months ago and have been very pleased with it. I configured a MacBook with extremely similar specs and it was $400 more. I'm not sure if I'm in the position to spend that extra cash on a "designer" computer. Yes, the lit keyboard is snazzy and the chassis is sexier, but is it worth $400 to me? Not really.

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Andrew Denny — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 05:12:34 -0000

Well, I got one of these 'butt-ugly' WUXGA laptops, and simply got a craft artist to paint the clip-on plastic cover (see my url link for result, or search for 'pimp my laptop granny').

Result: A real talking-point in Starbucks and an original work of art that I can unclip and frame when the laptop is obsolete.

The screen is wonderful. I can't go back to fuzzy old screens. But there is a downside: I have to enlarge fonts 154% to set the same dimensions as a standard screen, and unfortunately far too many websites don't allow for this.

Result: many ugly, unreadable websites, but one singularly beautiful laptop cover. Far more impressive than an illuminated apple!

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Robin — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 05:08:56 -0000

I'm still mildly surprised that Apple's penchant for designing attractive boxes hasn't rubbed off on more companies.

Of course it's subjective, but the new Thumper box that Jonathan Schwartz refers to as a "thing of beauty" on his blog seems to me to have undergone a severe bruising with the ugly stick. Still, at least they haven't grafted great lumps of purple plastic all over it.

Perhaps we IT staffers are not meant to be swayed as much by design as the consumer market; perhaps we are meant to relish racks of industrial-looking macho equipment. But I'm not so sure. We like "cool" don't we? You just look at those Xserves and Xserve Raids and you want one.

Still, what do I know? I've never designed a bit of equipment in my life. And at least Sun are making a lot of noise about reducing energy consumption, so good on them for that. If making nice-looking boxes uses more energy and resources then I guess we'd better stick with the ugly ones. Ho hum.