Just Computers

Looks very similar to the AppleTV, yes.



With your internet speeds you won't be able to stream content.  You might/should be able to watch movies & TV you have downloaded to your computer and it might be quite handy for using a laptop (with a DVD drive) to watch a movie on the big TV screen.

The Skype option would be cool if you had enough bandwidth to support it.

But 9/10s of its functionality requires an internet connection faster than string-and-paper-cups -- and if you have that, there are many other options to get to the same end-point.  Like mine: it becomes redundant.

You seem to have forgotten that I got a significant upgrade in my internet speed back in April. My average download speed since then is just under 90 Mbps. It has reached speeds nearing 160 Mbps. I think those numbers would support anything I need. I will never reach the speeds you do, but I can live without it.

Thinking about buying a portable computer - laptop, or whatever they are called these days.
Must have at least decent amount of power, RAM, and SSD.
MUST HAVE USER-REPLACEABLE BATTERIES!

Any suggestions?

Forget user-replaceable batteries and get an iPad.  Why do you think you need user-replaceable batteries?  You don't.

If you really need a laptop for some reason (you don't) the MacBook Air is the best out there. The IBM is slower and heavier and clunkier and has less battery capacity and "an inferior display" and HALF the storage capacity -- and is more expensive -- but this reviewer liked it better anyway.  Because, well, it's not Apple.  Haters gonna hate.

NoCo wrote:

Why do you think you need user-replaceable batteries?  You don't.

NoCo wrote:

If you really need a laptop for some reason (you don't)

As you seem to be so well versed in what I don't need, can you tell me if I need a new battery for my pickup? The one that is in there is quite old. It hasn't given me any trouble as yet, but perhaps your omniscience can help me out.

_Howard wrote:

can you tell me if I need a new battery for my pickup? The one that is in there is quite old. It hasn't given me any trouble as yet.

Then you don't.

No. I didn't need a new battery the last time I drove the truck. That doesn't mean that I can't walk outside and fail to start the damned thing today. The battery's recent history is an indicator that the battery may still be good today, but it is not a definite predictor. If I had told you that the battery is now seven years old, would you have been so quick to assumes its state?

Your answer defines the state of the battery as being good as long as it has not failed in the past. I define the state of the battery as the performance it will provide the next time it is used.

That's crazy. You can't know future failures.

Some things are worth replacing ahead of failure because failure would be so catastrophic: fire extinguishers, smoke detector batteries, pacemakers.

Car batteries are not among them. Besides, failure is rarely pass-fail. It's usually a slow deterioration where your alternator no longer fills up the charge. After a week of slow starts in warm weather, you know your battery needs replacing.

So you didn't answer my question: why do you want user-replaceable batteries in a laptop? So you can carry a spare and go a couple days between charging? So you can disable the laptop when you're not around? Because when you use a laptop/tablet you use it for longer than the battery life (42-65 hours) at a stretch and you have no access to charging in the meantime? You take it hiking in the mountains?

Incidentally, here's why I prefer tablets over laptops.

Portability.  Lightness.  Screen quality and zoom.  Durability.  A software keyboard is less maintenance unless you're writing a book or something and need a "real" keyboard (laptop keyboards aren't very good anymore anyway).  Software (and security) are more easily and frequently updated.  The availability of apps is astounding.  

I guess laptops have their advantages -- if you get one with a DVD drive and watch movies in bed.  But streaming is getting better....

The trend, in mobile electronics, has been away from floppies and drives and toward online storage and file sharing.

NoCoPilot wrote:

You can't know future failures.

What you mean is that you cannot know the TIME of future failures. You can be pretty sure there is going to be a failure.

New acid-cell batteries have a much longer life than thirty years ago, and they fail differently. It's like falling off a cliff. One day is normal; next day is dead. I have had experiences that a few times. But enough of this crap.

As to why I want user-replaceable batteries in a laptop, there are a number of reasons. Batteries - like every other product in the fucking world - sometimes are DOA. Sometimes they are faulty and fail after a short period of time. I don't want to have to go to a fucking store, hassle with a teeny-bopper nerd and then wait three weeks and spend $100 to get a three-dollar battery replaced. And where you got the idea that built-in laptop batteries last 42-65 hours is complete horseshit.

There is also the ability to keep a spare battery or two and use the laptop for extended periods when the power goes out (it has happened five times in the past month here - periods from thirty minutes to six hours - and it is not going to get better).

Non-replaceable batteries are a way to increase profits, not to provide better service to the customer. Get that in your head and keep it there. In fact, you should judge all characteristics of products in this manner - is the benefit for you or for the corporation?

_Howard wrote:

And where you got the idea that built-in laptop batteries last 42-65 hours is complete horseshit.

I got it from the link above:
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/lenovo-thinkpad-x1-carbon-vs-apple-macbook-pro-13/

Maybe "51 watt-hours" doesn't mean what I think it means.

Here you go:
https://www.laptopmag.com/benchmarks/battery-life
Compare:
https://www.lifewire.com/best-ipad-battery-life-tips-1999807

_Howard wrote:

There is also the ability to keep a spare battery or two and use the laptop for extended periods when the power goes out (it has happened five times in the past month here - periods from thirty minutes to six hours - and it is not going to get better).

I don't know about you, but when MY power goes off my router stops working. I may get a cell signal, but I definitely get no internet.

I have a UPS which powers the P.O.E. and the router, as well as the computer. I kill everything except the internet equipment and we have several hours of internet service when the power is off. The only thing we lose is the wi-fi extender. Which is not a problem.

NoCoPilot wrote:

...the MacBook Air is the best out there.but this reviewer liked it better anyway.[/url]  Because, well, it's not Apple.  Haters gonna hate.

If I do buy a laptop - or whatever you want to call it - it will NOT be an Apple. "Haters gonna hate?" Not without reason . If I buy a laptop, it will have an SSD for primary storage; it is easy and -now - reasonably cheap to upgrade - unless it's an Apple. Apple uses proprietary connectors on SSDs that go in their devices. They do not provide any advantage over off-the-shelf devices (except to Apple's bottom line). So you have to buy the SSD from Apple, and often have to send the computer to Apple for installation, so you wind up with an upgrade that you could do yourself in a half hour and be out about $80, or you can pay Apple hundreds and spend a few weeks without your computer.

"Haters gonna hate?" Not without reason.

This short conversation has given me pause to think. I have a computer that I bought about three years ago. It is very fast has massive amounts of memory. 32GB of RAM (or maybe only 16 - whatever, it's a shitload. I removed the 1 TB hard drive and replaced it with four Solid State Drives (and one spare SSD to back up the OS). I have a lot of programs that protect the data and OS.
I could go on, but this is boring.

The point is that I spent decades designing and writing software - starting with writing in Fortran on punch cards for an IBM 360 main frame, through the introduction of the Apple II, the IBM PC, and the hundreds of clones that followed. I programmed in CP/M on early micro-computers and in Mesa, Lisp, Pascal and other esoteric languages for micro-computers which few people still working today have even heard of. Before the near-worldwide switch to the IBM PC clones, I worked with the IBM line of minis that changed the industry and fed the world to the PC.
So out of habit, when I buy a computer - or even an accessory - I find myself evaluating the device in terms of my history. Which is not the way it should be done. I no longer have the need for the fastest computer I can buy or the wonkiest acessories.
I need to break this habit.

but I still won't buy Apples.

_Howard wrote:

I have a UPS which powers the P.O.E. and the router, as well as the computer. I kill everything except the internet equipment and we have several hours of internet service when the  power is off.

What prevents you from using the laptop/tablet on the UPS?

_Howard wrote:

This short conversation has given me pause to think. So out of habit, when I buy a computer I find myself evaluating the device in terms of my history. Which is not the way it should be done.

Yes, you have a long history of tinkering 'under the hood.'

My own history (1992-2015, so only 23 years) of hot-rodding and customizing and swapping out faster graphics cards and maxing out RAM and continuously updating anti-virus software and installing security patches and being constantly worried that I might catch or have caught a virus...

It was fun, actually.  But I got tired of it.

Sorta like owning an exotic sports car.  Yeah, lotta fun in the shop.  But at some point in your life, if you're like me (and I know *I* am) you just want to start driving.  You want to stop spending all your time in the garage, and just go places.

Apple is reliable, fast, trouble-free (mostly), intuitive (mostly) and capable.  Okay, maybe I'm not a "computer guy" anymore. I used to look down on Apple users as technophobes who didn't care what was under the hood.  Who couldn't clear a cache if their life depended on it.  Who exchanged money for expertise.

Then I got sick of always fiddling with everything and never being ready to take on projects.  It's a paradigm shift, and I admit I succumbed to the Apple Kool-Aid.  Go back and read the "internet connection speed" thread -- I have a ton of stuff interconnected now, and it all pretty much talks to each other, and works without any input from me.

NoCoPilot wrote:

_Howard wrote:

I have a UPS which powers the P.O.E. and the router, as well as the computer. I kill everything except the internet equipment and we have several hours of internet service when the  power is off.

What prevents you from using the laptop/tablet on the UPS?

Very good question.

The UPS (except for hundred-horsepower diesel models) is designed for short-term use - not designed to provide hours of power to a fully-operational computer, laptop or otherwise. They are designed to give you enough time to finish a small task, close all your files and programs, and shut down the computer in the normal manner.

A high-powered laptop may use enough power to drain a several-hundred-dollar UPS in ten or fifteen minutes,

There is also the convenience matter: I would have to sit on the floor behind my desk to plug the laptop into the UPS. Too old and creaky for that. Me - not the laptop.

Good damn question, though.

My dad designed a big UPS for the Senior Center up on the island, it was a huge diesel thing on a concrete pad out back -- anyway, the hard part was designing the interface, so that when the county power went out -- as it did up there a half-dozen times per year -- the UPS would kick in seamlessly and still provide power to the pacemakers and defibrillators and I-don't-know-what-was-so-important. It had to take into account the occasional brown-out -- voltage falling below 100v without actually cutting off -- and the spikes that occurred when the power went out suddenly or came back on suddenly -- and the tendency to 'bounce' off-and-on in the process of going out or coming back. In the end, with a little engineering help from the company that made the generator, he left them with a system that was 100% stable.

Or so he said.

Your UPS sounds like it could use a little of your engineering magic.

And I doubt a tablet is that much of a drain -- they'll run 14 hours on a LiPo.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Yes, you have a long history of tinkering 'under the hood.'

"Tinkering under the hood" was when I was a rather free-thinking mechanic and thought that 120-150 mph on the highway was just fine, thank you very much.

With software, what some may consider tinkering was no more than classes in grad school followed by many years of 100-hour work weeks.

JUST NUMBERS.

We are all aware of the decline in the costs of computers and parts, but when I decided to calculate one figure, I was surprised.



Here is a a picture of a shipping box for a 30 Megabyte hard drive, with a three terabyte hard drive leaning against it. If you don't recognize the computer brand, PC'S LIIMITED, you will recognize the company's new name: Dell Computer. Yes, I bought that drive many years ago, and the guy who took my order on the phone was named Mike Dell. (There was no internet at the time.)

The point is the numbers. Looking at the cost per byte (and doesn't that seem like a reasonable way to compare hard drive costs?) the bytes on the gigantic, ten- (maybe fifteen-) pound, very loud, incredibly slow 30-megabyte drive each cost 833,000 times as much as the bytes on the small 3-terabyte drive (not accounting for inflation, which more than doubles the prices of the old drive). The big old drive was $700 (about $1,700 in today's money), and the little three-terabyte drives  is selling today for $84.

Just a bit of junk dribbling out of my brain.

Give a read to the reviews of Google's new laptop. It sounds promising.
https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2019/10/16/hands-on-googles-pixelbook-go-feels-way-fancy-for-a-649-laptop/

Without intending any demeaning of your opinion, that article says very close to zero about the device. Nothing whatsoever about performance or capabilities, just some crap about cosmetics. Amazing. And disappointing that computer users these days consider that worthwhile information.

I have looked into Chromebooks and don't think they are of any use to me. They are for on-line use almost completely. They are cloud-based browsers and little more. (I have grown to hate the word "cloud".) Everything you have is stored on someone else's servers. That shouts out "Come get me! Here I am!" What information about my business and finances do you want? Here it is!")
That doesn't make them bad devices, just not the one for me.

_Howard wrote:

Here is a a picture of a shipping box for a 30 Megabyte hard drive, with a three terabyte hard drive leaning against it. The point is the numbers. Looking at the cost per byte (and doesn't that seem like a reasonable way to compare hard drive costs?) the bytes on the gigantic, ten- (maybe fifteen-) pound, very loud, incredibly slow 30-megabyte drive each cost 833,000 times as much as the bytes on the small 3-terabyte drive.

You should compare instead to one of these: