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  1. Mercutio

    This is the thread for the discussion of interesting apps.

    I just ran across an interesting application for somebody who lives and dies for "push to talk." It's called Heytell and it's an Android/iPhone thing. It's not quite the same thing as Nextel's deal, more like voice text messages, but it's free and looks really easy to use.
  2. Mercutio

    question Which Tablets

    Wikipedia actually has a nice if not fully updated table of Android devices. It seems to include screen technology when known, weight and distinguishing characteristics. You'll have to scroll a while to get to the tablet portion, but it's still a handy reference.
  3. Mercutio

    Android phones: Tips, tricks?

    Something I've found that I like about the 10" tablet over and above the smaller ones: It's a good adjutant to the screens on the computers I'm using. With some experimentation, I've found a collection of widgets and tools to keep on my Xoom so that it's displaying useful information every time...
  4. Mercutio

    Mobile computing

    Nah. He has a special pillow for that now. ;)
  5. Mercutio

    Android phones: Tips, tricks?

    The tree is a might impractical for most people. I can't say I'm terribly worried about someone stealing my spare phone, if only because it doesn't have an Apple logo on it.
  6. Mercutio

    question Which Tablets

    The Asus Transformer would also be worthy of consideration, though it has kind of an odd form factor. As far as the port situation on Samsung tablets, I've never even had my 8.9" one plugged in to anything but AC power. It's less hassle to just run file copies over SMB.
  7. Mercutio

    Ripping Music to MP3

    CDs go into computers and get turned into FLACs. Thereafter the CD is irrelevant.
  8. Mercutio

    Ripping Music to MP3

    Things that don't play FLAC are not worthy of consideration as useful audio devices.
  9. Mercutio

    question Which Tablets

    That 30-pin connector is on both my Galaxy tablets. But I'd be pissed if I had to stick that on my tablet in order to make it useful for my intended purpose.
  10. Mercutio

    Remote Desktop Support

    VNC is a dog regardless. It was made for high bandwidth, low-latency networks. There's just no getting around that. It actually uses UltraVNC for its foundation, but that's because many VNC variants don't work properly with UAC prompts on Vista and Windows 7. Hamachi + RDP is my preferred means...
  11. Mercutio

    Almost free power supply

    That's a really nice PSU for anything under $40 in any case. Thanks Bozo.
  12. Mercutio

    question Which Tablets

    The displays on the Galaxy tablets are wonderful and in fact the 8.9" is my favorite of the tablets I have access to, but the larger ones do not include expandable storage. A few Android tablets (e.g. the Thinkpad tablet made by Lenovo) do have USB root hosts, but the bundled drivers generally...
  13. Mercutio

    question Which Tablets

    Most 10" Android tablets meet most of those qualifications. You might have to use a tool with a small fee attached to keep your bookmarks synchronized, and the ability to do anything useful with Office file formats depends on having an app like Quickoffice or Polaris Office installed. I suspect...
  14. Mercutio

    Linksys E4200 134.99 at local Costco

    802.11 can be frustrating. I swapped an Airport Extreme in to replace an Encore cheapie at a client's office couple weeks ago. The feedback I've gotten is that it's nice and fast for most people but ironically the two Apple computers in the office seem to disconnect more often.
  15. Mercutio

    Mobile computing

    It's bound to happen sooner or later.
  16. Mercutio

    Android phones: Tips, tricks?

    woot.com has a 32GB HP Touchpad for $220 today and a 16GB one for $170 (on deals.woot.com). Honestly, that's a pretty tempting deal. The Touchpads have nice screens. From the little bit that I've gotten to mess with one, WebOS is slick and different from Android, and HP is actually still...
  17. Mercutio

    Mobile computing

    Thanks man
  18. Mercutio

    Android phones: Tips, tricks?

    That thing is probably interesting, but I already have extra Android phones with 32GB microSD cards. You're right that I don't want to plug my phone in when I get in my car. The idea is to just leave on in there all the time.
  19. Mercutio

    iPhone syndrome

    The files I have tend to exceed the attachment limits of most mail servers, so it didn't occur to me to check.
  20. Mercutio

    iPhone syndrome

    The ipad I was messing with wouldn't let me do a single damned thing with it until I plugged it in to a computer with itunes on it. It just came up with a graphic showing a picture of the data cable and an arrow pointing to the word "itunes." If that's changed recently, it's for the best, but I...
  21. Mercutio

    Mobile computing

    For the last couple weeks, some of the most active threads on SF have been about phones and tablets. Those threads are currently in the Pub. We know where they are, but for purposes of organization I was thinking it might make a little more sense to either move that stuff to something under the...
  22. Mercutio

    iPhone syndrome

    The biggest problem I have with istuff is the reliance on itunes to do everything. I can grudgingly accept locking data to an application and Apple's sealed-box approach to its OS, but itunes itself royally sucks. At least the iphone isn't locked into crummy phone networks any more.
  23. Mercutio

    Wikipedia page for storageforum?

    I think the issue might be that our stuff is spread across a bunch of different sites and media, and that google can't index some of it.
  24. Mercutio

    Something Random

    As far as I can tell, that hasn't had an impact on retail pricing for brand name systems. I guess the big guys are eating the costs or getting vastly better pricing since their contracts to get more drives are probably a lot better than anybody else's.
  25. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Well, yeah. There wasn't any new Windows or Office and no real change in form factor, performance or pricing in the last couple years. Netbooks were a big thing a couple years ago, but I'm sure the margins on those amounted to squat anyway. There might still be some businesses migrating to new...
  26. Mercutio

    Android phones: Tips, tricks?

    It SHOULD since it's just a standard USB connection, but as far as I can tell, Saab is the only company that supports Android in its stereos. For head units that have USB support, the current capabilities are to treat the phone as if it were just a flash drive. No control capabilities.
  27. Mercutio

    iPhone syndrome

    Likewise Google and Amazon have their own storage services that can be integrated into Android. It's not like "cloud" is something unique to Apple, though AFAIK Apple is the only game in town for comprehensive service on iOS.
  28. Mercutio

    iPhone syndrome

    And we're back to comparing a built-to-be-low-cost, first generation device to expensive and presumably refined over time hardware, too. The Fire has a slow-ish CPU by current standards (It's "only" a dual core 1GHz system) and probably the most customized, eye candy intensive front end of...
  29. Mercutio

    Android phones: Tips, tricks?

    I'm thinking that it shouldn't much matter. DLNA magically supports control protocols across devices, brands and capabilities. How hard is it to implement a device interface that understands "pause" and "next track?" Apparently I can get something better than what I have via Bluetooth, but IIRC...
  30. Mercutio

    iPhone syndrome

    They're both acceptable. Swiftkey probably is too. I'm used to Swype on my phone and that's what I prefer work with. The biggest annoyance I have between on screen keyboards is the mild lack of standardization about which non-QWERTY keys go on the primary screen. The default keyboard the Xoom...
  31. Mercutio

    iPhone syndrome

    Is it really so hard to type out the name of a company rather than its ticker symbol?
  32. Mercutio

    iPhone syndrome

    There's obviously enough divergence of opinion in what makes a good on screen keyboard that ithing people could probably stand to see some choice in the matter as well.
  33. Mercutio

    Android phones: Tips, tricks?

    Even being able to control music playback on the head unit instead of the screen would be nice. I mounted an Evo in my car on a little arm to basically be a full-time music player but the only control I have without endangering everyone else on the road once I start it playing is volume.
  34. Mercutio

    Android phones: Tips, tricks?

    Why can't we get car stereo integration with Android devices? I've looked. It doesn't seem to exist. Boo.
  35. Mercutio

    The destruction of liberty

    Mildly amusing tidbit relating the Megaupload saga: The morbidly obese multimillionaire who owned the site had a bunch of hip hop stars record a song in support of his service. Apparently those people are actually celebrities for some value of that term. Also, he was apparently ranked as the #1...
  36. Mercutio

    Android phones: Tips, tricks?

    I'd have to see one since I'm not terribly confident about the quality of the panel. They do claim it's IPS at least.
  37. Mercutio

    iPhone syndrome

    The nice thing is, at least Android people get a choice.
  38. Mercutio

    iPhone syndrome

    Actually, yeah. There are several different virtual keyboards to choose from. I prefer Swype. One of my frustrations with the Fire is the fact that Amazon doesn't have any other keyboards for it in its app store.
  39. Mercutio

    iPhone syndrome

    You're talking about a $600 phone from a tier 1 OEM vs. a deliberately inexpensive lowest common denominator 1st generation device.
  40. Mercutio

    Long range wireless PCI network card

    What about adding a repeater or just locating another AP broadcasting the same SSID?
  41. Mercutio

    Long range wireless PCI network card

    I can't say I've ever had good luck with desktop internal WLAN hardware. Your best bet probably is to upgrade antennas, but everything 802.11 has an element of crapshoot to it, just because of all the environmental issues. Can you replace the antennas on the AP side as well?
  42. Mercutio

    Wikipedia page for storageforum?

    Good idea, but what would most likely happen is that if any of the all-powerful meta-editors noticed, we'd wind up fighting over wikipedia's notability requirement.
  43. Mercutio

    Outlook PST Hell

    Contacts are either in the PST or in the Windows Address book. If they're in the PST they can be copied just like anything else. You can choose which PST's contacts you want to look at in the category view thingy. Since Gmail is in the mix, you can also make a nice .csv or something and import...
  44. Mercutio

    Outlook PST Hell

    Yes it will. You're not going to Import the PST. You're going to add it to a mail account. You're right that the account parameters (username/password, server settings) aren't stored in the .pst. They're in the profile. You can just as easily attach somebody else's pst to your outlook profile if...
  45. Mercutio

    The destruction of liberty

    I can tell you that law enforcement computer forensics guys are trained to look for hidden partitions and alternate data streams in files as a matter of course. They're also taught how to deal with non-Windows file structures. They're aware of what steganography is and roughly how large files...
  46. Mercutio

    Google Apps For Your Domain

    Yes they sent me emails about that. Dreamhost is actually very good about customer communication. Dotster had a day-long DNS outage last week and didn't say anything to anybody unless they called to complain.
  47. Mercutio

    Android phones: Tips, tricks?

    I upgraded my Xoom to ICS. It was uneventful. I legitimately like the 8.9" Samsung Galaxy, which has very similar measurement, but it's also a limited device in that it has 16GB of fixed storage and no way to add more. I'd like to see a 7" tablet with a 1280x800 IPS screen and at least an SD...
  48. Mercutio

    Outlook PST Hell

    Do the files still exist on the PC? Did you kill the profile or the data? The stuff that's on Gmail is still on Gmail, but it might not be immediately visible, because it might not be tagged with a "label", which is what other IMAP clients understand as a folder. You can usually find that stuff...
  49. Mercutio

    PC Gaming = World of Suck

    I'd just like to say that while browsing torrents the other night I found a Duke Nukem porn parody. I suspect it's more interesting than the game you guys are are talking about, but I couldn't be bothered to download it and find out.
  50. Mercutio

    The destruction of liberty

    1. We can more or less count on the current court to be wrong on every issue of importance. We can already reliably predict how the court will decide every case set before it; the only real doubt in any decision they hand down is how broadly or narrowly they choose to write their decisions...
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