I have zero intention of doing a mobile roundup every week, but it sure seems like there were a few noteworthy developments in the mobile field this week that are worth mentioning. So, here goes.
Buy or rent? Here’s a datapoint
I once looked at a house that spoke loudly to the question of whether to buy or rent. The asking price is about $100,000. It last sold in the late 1980s for $79,000.
Selling for $100K now isn’t a profit. That is why I couldn’t get a house I don’t want out of my head. Read more
How to disable animation on a Hisense Sero 7 Pro (or anything else running Android 4.2)
Disabling animation is one way to make a Hisense Sero 7 Pro, or anything else running Jelly Bean, feel faster and smoother. That’s a hidden feature, but it’s not difficult to make it visible and selectable.
The $99 Android tablet of 2013: The Hisense Sero 7 LT (or Lite)
So when I decided to bring myself into the current decade, tablet-wise, I opted for the $150 Hisense Sero 7 Pro, though I was certainly curious about its $99 little brother. Unfortunately, information on the Sero 7 Lite hasn’t been as easy to come by–people are understandably excited about getting a Nexus 7 clone for $50 less that actually includes two desirable features that the real thing lacks. This must be what it felt like to be in the market for an IBM PC/XT when the Leading Edge Model D came out in the summer of 1985. Read more
Robinson Cano: “The fans don’t understand.”
When Robinson Cano infamously left Billy Butler, the Kansas City Royals representative off the Home Run Derby team at the All-Star Game last summer in Kansas City, (who Butler is and who he plays for is important here), Royals fans booed him mercilessly.
And all he’s been saying since is that Kansas City doesn’t understand.
Fine. Let’s talk about what Kansas City does understand. Because Kansas City understands a lot.
AMD hits 5 GHz
So, AMD announced a new 8-core CPU running at 5 GHz this week. It’s a bit of a hollow victory, since it basically will match the highest-end Intel Core i7 in performance, in spite of its much higher clock rate and wattage. I’m not sure what the appeal of a 220-watt CPU is, and I’m also not sure why AMD is giving Intel a few months to respond to it, because I’m sure Intel could create a 5 GHz CPU with a comparable thermal rating to compete against it, given the desire.
Also note this is the design that shares a math unit with each pair of integer cores. For some people, this won’t matter at all, but for others, it can be a deal breaker. It’s part of the reason that AMD has to crank the clock rate so high in order to compete. The problem is that Intel can play this game too. AMD scored major points a decade ago by releasing chips that were much more power efficient than Intel’s power-hungry P4. The resulting war was good for us, since now we’re getting good, fast CPUs that use 20 watts. But Intel is winning that war right now. So that means if AMD wants to play that game, Intel has more headroom to climb. If AMD can deliver 5 GHz at 220 watts, all Intel really has to do is deliver 5.1 GHz at 220 watts.
So AMD is taking a chance here. But I suppose it means that, for a time, they’ll be able to sell some CPUs to people who insist on having the fastest-clocked CPU, whether it really means anything performance-wise or not. And they probably can use the money.
“Why do we have a server named ‘Vicious?'”
My first non-food service, non-retail job was working desktop support for my college, the University of Missouri-Columbia. They were doing a massive computer upgrade and needed some part-time help. When they realized they’d found a journalism student who knew PC hardware and already knew OS/2, they cut the interview short and showed me around. I started work the next day.
My job was, initially, to unbox a few hundred IBM PC 330s and 350s, install network cards and memory, then install OS/2 on them. We had room for me to set up about 10 of them at a time, on long folding tables on opposite sides of a long room. It was lonely work at times, but I got to work with computers, and they were paying me $8 an hour. I liked it better than retail.
After a few days I had enough time to watch the boot process. OS/2 had a facility called Configuruation, Installation and Distribution (CID), similar to Microsoft’s unattended installation that appeared in later versions of Windows NT, that automated much of the process. An administrator configured machines in advance, and then when build time came, I booted off a floppy, entered a computer name, and the process pulled down what it needed from the network. After 30 minutes or so, we had a functional machine. CID probably saved a couple of hours of repetitive work. On this particular day, after I got nine machines going, I watched the 10th go through its the CID process. I noticed the machine kept addressing a server named \\VICIOUS.
More thoughts on the $150 Hisense Sero 7 Pro tablet
Steve Aubrey wrote in with a link to a useful site dedicated to the Hisense Sero 7. It collects all the useful information that’s surfaced from xda-developers and other sites, including custom ROMs, rooting instructions, and where to get accessories.
He asked if I recommend rooting. The short answer: Yes, if you know what you’re doing. If you’re willing to read the prompts when an app requests root access and understand what it’s asking for, then sure. If you just blindly click yes to everything, then no, by all means, leave the tablet stock.
But if you know what you’re doing, one nice thing you can do is install a firewall, so a rooted Android tablet can be safer than an unrooted one. Have fun wrapping your head around that slice of counter-intuitiveness.
Let’s talk about my impressions of the tablet itself.
How to check your Java version
Sometimes, especially on Windows servers, it’s difficult to check to verify what version of Java you’re running while you’re making your rounds. If you don’t have a scanning tool to check it, here’s how to check your Java version by hand, even if the Java control panel doesn’t show up:
Where Microsoft lost its way
John C. Dvorak wrote an analysis of how Microsoft lost its way with Windows 8 this week.
All in all it sounds reasonable to me. His recollection of DOS and some DOS version 8 confused me at first, but that was what the DOS buried in Windows ME was called. But mentioning it is appropriate, because it shows how DOS faded from center stage to being barely visible in the end, to the point where it was difficult to dig it out, and that it took 15 years for it to happen. He’s completely right, that if Microsoft had pulled the plug on DOS in 1985, Windows would have failed. Read more