• Home
• Reviews
• News
• Downloads
• CNET TV

About me

My posting summary

1 to 10 of 296

My comments

• Of course, it depends what you mean by "driving." It is reasonably safe to do lots of "unsafe" things if you are only sitting in a traffic jam, occasionally creeping forward a foot or two. Or if you are only waiting for a light. Technically you are "driving," but in practice you are merely sitting there with your foot on the brake. In reply to: "Survey: Third of teens text while driving"

  November 17, 2009

  4 replies

• I live inside the Wash. DC Beltway, and my house appears to be centered on the DC adjunct to the Bermuda Triangle. Cell phone service? Every single carrier is horrid. Over-the-air digitial TV? Forget it! And the problem isn't that my walls are made of lead or something. You have to walk to the curb to get mobile phone reception. (Haven't tried the TV.) People come over my house and don't believe me until they try it with their phone. Go four houses in any direction and the problem disappears. It's bizarre!
  
  All of which is to say: This 3G argument means diddly to me. In reply to: "AT&T vs. Verizon: There's a lawyer for that"

  November 4, 2009

  0 replies

• So they have a robot that goes around indiscriminately eating plants? I think that is called a white-tailed deer. In reply to: "EATR creators: Our robots won't eat corpses"

  August 5, 2009

  0 replies

• Thanks, steeleblue_cactus! How in the world I got incorrect info from the web is beyond me! ;-) In reply to: "Touch screens that consumers didn't touch"

  July 29, 2009

  0 replies

• Thanks, super2online, for suggesting OneNote. I checked it out, and on tablet PCs it does do a lot of what I'd like. It still doesn't recognize cursive handwriting, which is how I normally write -- quickly but illegibly. My "handprinting" is very legible but slow, so I only use it for emphasis when I'm taking notes. (This is no insult to OneNote, because a web search shows that OCR software ranges from bad to nonfunctional on cursive handwriting. The OCR available for the Pulse, which I mentioned above, is no exception to this rule.)
  
  Really, I find it amazing that there isn't an OCR program for cursive writing. It wouldn't have to be fast like text-to-speech, and they can do that pretty reliably now. Anybody know what's the holdup? Is it simply lack of demand? In reply to: "Touch screens that consumers didn't touch"

  July 29, 2009

  1 reply

• Before I will spend the extra money on a touchscreen computer, they need to:
  1) Allow me to take notes on it just like I can on notepaper; and
  2) have it do something useful with those notes that a regular old spiral-bound notebook can't do.
  
  Explanatory Notes:
  For 1), the writing area has to be reasonably large, similar to 8.5" x 11", and it has to show up as I'm writing so I'm not writing blind, and the writing that shows up can't lag or be a quarter-inch below the tip of the stylus. In other words, NOT like those horrid credit card signers at the store,
  For 1), I should also be able to change ink colors.
  For 2), I mean stuff like converting my (really bad) handwriting into text, while keeping my emphasis marks (underlining, changing from cursive to print, etc.) and intelligently making lists.
  For 2), it also has to take any drawings I've made and include them in the final document.
  
  However! All of the stuff above that I want could be done just by using regular old pen and paper to take notes, then scanning it and putting it through the appropriate software. So, even if the software I want existed (which I think it does not), I still wouldn't have a compelling reason to buy a touch-screen laptop. Unless the laptop price < (normal laptop price + price of software described + value of my time saved by not having to scan anything).
  
  Really, for only $150, I could already get a lot of what I want by buying a Pulse Smart Pen, plus it would record sound for me also. So touchscreen laptops have to do significantly better than that. In reply to: "Touch screens that consumers didn't touch"

  July 29, 2009

  3 replies

• Bought this last week. This is a great PC for college students who need to write papers, make presentations, and access the web from their dorm room or library, and who also want to play music and videos. Think OLPC for college students. Its features are better in every way than the $1500 laptop I bought just 3 years ago.
  When will people learn? Do NOT buy the best computer you can afford. Buy the least computer you can that will get the job done. In 2 or 3 years, when it has become inadequate, you can get a brand-new replacement for a fraction of what you paid, and it will be better than the best computer you could have afforded several years prior. In reply to: "Best Buy lists well-equipped Acer laptop for $299"

  July 20, 2009

  0 replies

• If Balmer is so stupid, why is he head of Microsoft and worth 100s of millions, while you people are head of nothing and worth 100s (if that)? In reply to: "Ballmer shrugs at Google's Chrome OS"

  July 14, 2009

  4 replies

• Take away the free internet, which I don't need, and in exchange cut the price to $200. Also, set up an e-book trading system (at a small cost per trade). Or even a system for trading in a physical book for an e-book (again, at a small cost per trade-in). I would find that combo impossible to resist.
  Explanation: If I want to browse the internet, I'll do it on my PC. And though it's cute to download books on the fly, it's not critical to me. I'd really rather keep my money so I can buy books with it. Speaking of books, e-books won't take off with the general public until the booksellers set up systems to make e-books either significantly cheaper than physical books or else more like physical books (tradeable, borrowable, sellable).
  
  One last note: I would pay $300 if it were color and could do equations, figures, photos, etc. You know: the way a cheap laptop can. In reply to: "Amazon drops price of Kindle 2 to $299"

  July 8, 2009

  1 reply

• And Thor! It was in England, so it must have been Thor. Or Bill Gates. In reply to: "Did iPod save girl struck by lightning?"

  June 22, 2009

  0 replies