The Spam Thread!

[cpd2009]

Pretty much so, since AW/Rockchip-powered devices mostly caters to a low-end/entry level market, i.e. those in developing markets like the Philippines, India, etc.

Here in the US, they try passing off these low-end tablets as alternatives to more expensive options like Hazel. Currently, ShopKo has a Polaroid tablet on sale for around $90. While having a capacitive screen, it still has a single-core processor and no Google Play. It may be good enough for basic web browsing and light tasks like music or video playback, but seeing as how Angry Birds is becoming more full featured, such apps will start chugging on single-core tablets.

During Black Friday... the market gets filled with such tablets.


As for Lilly... already Windows 8.1 is showing better performance than OSX. It starts up more quickly that OSX, and it seems far more snappier when doing simple tasks such as navigating files. I'm going to get some of my common apps to gauge performance, like Winamp and VLC.

If all goes well, I will skip the All-in-one PC and set up Lilly v2.0... Windows primary (likely Windows 7 Home Premium or Pro) with OSX as secondary. I need a faster system for my Adobe CS applications anyway.

[huckleberrypie]

Pretty much so, since AW/Rockchip-powered devices mostly caters to a low-end/entry level market, i.e. those in developing markets like the Philippines, India, etc.

Here in the US, they try passing off these low-end tablets as alternatives to more expensive options like Hazel. Currently, ShopKo has a Polaroid tablet on sale for around $90. While having a capacitive screen, it still has a single-core processor and no Google Play. It may be good enough for basic web browsing and light tasks like music or video playback, but seeing as how Angry Birds is becoming more full featured, such apps will start chugging on single-core tablets.

During Black Friday... the market gets filled with such tablets.


As for Lilly... already Windows 8.1 is showing better performance than OSX. It starts up more quickly that OSX, and it seems far more snappier when doing simple tasks such as navigating files. I'm going to get some of my common apps to gauge performance, like Winamp and VLC.

If all goes well, I will skip the All-in-one PC and set up Lilly v2.0... Windows primary (likely Windows 7 Home Premium or Pro) with OSX as secondary. I need a faster system for my Adobe CS applications anyway.

That, or sell it as giveaways or as a bargain gift for kids by their relatives.

[cpd2009]

Lilly shall become a very fancy Windows Desktop. The performance of Windows is stellar.

Here is what I am planning to do. I'm going on a trip tomorrow, and I will see if I can find a full non-upgrade copy of Windows at Wal-Mart or at a computer store that I know of in the city. I will try to get Windows 7, but if those retailers don't have Windows 7 on hand, I plan on purchasing it online from a reputable dealer like NewEgg or Walmart.com.

I already have an old student copy of Windows 7 on hand, but it's 32bit, and Boot Camp 5.0 only supports 64bit versions of Windows 7 or higher.

Windows 8.1 is a step in the right direction, but not perfect. It's nice you can boot to the desktop and get a psuedo-Start button, but it still begs to run on a system with a touch screen. There is also no Aero... just flat blandness. Yeah, I'm a sucker for Windows Aero and fancy desktop effects in general.

This means I will also reinstall OSX as well to get everything on a perfect clean slate. I will still use OSX on occasion, such as for word processing, scanning and printing things, and to play my OSX game collection I built up. I still plan on upgrading to OSX "Mavericks" when it comes out this fall.

[huckleberrypie]

Bland is beautiful, or so they think. I kinda' like it, honestly, but it does need a little more embellishment rather than goo too much with being Bauhaus-style again.

[RAMChYLD]

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And so it starts again.

The MPAA and RIAA are greedy @$$#0135 fscks

[cpd2009]

Plans can change....

Sometimes dramatically....

Stay tuned.....

[RAMChYLD]

Errorlevel -1

[cpd2009]

While on my trip, I was thinking about Lilly and the Windows 7 upgrade I wanted to install. I do know that Windows 8.1 preview outperforms Mac OSX in basically everything, but that was a mostly clean, stock system with few applications installed. Would that performance last once I get all my data and programs installed? Would performance be the same with Windows 7?

Another issue was hard drive space. Lilly has a 500gb hard drive, but you can't use all of it for Windows. You still need OSX on the drive. I planned on moving my video production from Greta to Lilly, but for that you need a very hefty hard drive size. I could give Windows around 400gb, which is plenty for the non-HD videos I occasionally make, but that would leave OSX with only 100gb, and seeing as how apps and video are space hungry, that isnt really enough for OSX to run well. I could divide equally between OSX and Windows at 250gb each, which is fine for awhile, but those can fill up after a while still, especially with the amount of videos and music that I download and save.

The final thing is OSX performance overall. I did upgrade her RAM to 8gb not long after I got her, and it did make OSX Lion fly. Then comes Mountain Lion. Apps like VLC and games load fast and run great, but start browsing with Safari for a couple hours and it can take awhile to load and run other apps. Run a memory intensive app like iPhoto, iMovie, or Parallels Desktop and it can take ages to reload an app like Safari or VLC. Spinning beachballs are very common. And, I could never find a perfect alternative to Winamp. Nothing beats Winamp in music management.

So, after thinking about this for about 15 minutes while wandering the WalMart electronics section, I went for it....

[RAMChYLD]

Personally, I'd have built my own, but ah well, each for his own.

Edison's still hanging on. 8GB of RAM is still ample, as is the Phenom II x4 925. The problem now is that his GPU are the troublemakers- apparently GTS450 is 2010's standard and a lot of games don't think that it's good enough anymore.

[cpd2009]

Personally, I'd have built my own, but ah well, each for his own.

Edison's still hanging on. 8GB of RAM is still ample, as is the Phenom II x4 925. The problem now is that his GPU are the troublemakers- apparently GTS450 is 2010's standard and a lot of games don't think that it's good enough anymore.

I'm now thinking that I should have given Lilly that 7200rpm HDD and discrete Radeon GPU. Perhaps that would have improved OSX performance greatly. But, as I was trying to survive on student loans at college, I really couldn't bear to spend close to $1,000 on a computer since I had other expenses to deal with, like books and art supplies.

As for the new Gateway, it has a big air vent on the side, so I was able to shine a flashlight through and see the motherboard. It's quite small, and it does have two PCIe slots... an x1 and x16. That means I can upgrade to a better graphics card in the future, but I need to ensure the current PSU can handle it. Another notable difference is ports in comparison to Lilly. The new tower has two USB 3.0 slots on the front, and six USB 2.0 slots on the back, as well as standard Realtek audio jacks, PS/2 ports, a 10/100/1000 ethernet jack, a VGA port and an HDMI port. I actually recycled Lilly's HDMI to DVI converter so the new tower can use the DVI input on my monitor, and I do get the full 1600x900 resolution the monitor supports.

And, yes, I know the new tower has Windows 8 on it. I was trying to see if WalMart has any Windows 7 PC's on clearance, but none could be found. I still prefer Aero to Metro, but I guess I need to get used to this new kind of computing. It's good to know Windows 8.1 will be a free update.