On 29 December 2015 at 13:50, D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh@mimosa.com> wrote:
| From: Giles Orr <gilesorr@gmail.com>
| I've been looking at the Asus UX305 for the past couple months. As | it's been ~$850 the whole time, I was happy to get it for $650. | Thanks for the information.
$850 for the FullHD version (1920x1080) (eg. NCIX right now)? This is $650 for the FullerThanFullHD version (3200x1800) -- 2.7777 times the pixels!
From my experience with the Yoga 2 pro: XTerm with the default bitmap fonts is REALLY hard to read on this screen but the pixels are all there. So I've switched to GNOME Terminal.
| Microsoft's site insists you use or create a Microsoft account to | purchase from them: there's no guest option. Presumably because you | will of course want that acct when you go online with their fine | operating system on your new laptop.
Yeah. And for support etc.
You may well want to keep Windows in a corner just to do firmware updates.
| They don't accept the "+" symbol in email addresses.
Yeah. There seem to be a lot of sites that do that (breaking the RFC 822 and successor requirements). I wonder if some Microsoft framework does that and hence causes the problem on other sites.
| They don't | accept spaces in their passphrases - so I guess they're only | "passwords." So I took the spaces out of the passphrase ... and it | was rejected because they required special characters. Unimpressive.
Yeah. But I never talk about spaces in passwords because that would tell people something about my passwords.
| The irony of buying a computer from the Microsoft Store so I can | install Linux on it isn't lost on me. I gave them money. <sigh> I | hope it was below cost and they aren't actually profiting from this.
I've bought several computers from them. At very good prices. Not all their prices are good but randomly they've had excellent ones.
| From: Tim Tisdall <tisdall@gmail.com>
| No, even better is that you now have a $50 gift card for the Microsoft | store... ^_^
The coupon is only good for credit in the Windows Store (I hope I got the confusing name right). Once you exercise the coupon you get credit that only lives 90 days (if I remember correctly -- check the fine print). As far as I know, the credit can only be used for:
- Windows "apps"
- XBox games
- music
I've always chosen the latter because you can buy mp3s without DRM. It's the only way of getting something OUT of the Microsoft ecosystems. But you've got to be using some Microsoft system to make the purchases and downloads.
And you need a Microsoft account.
Their account identity system pervades all their services. Kind of like Google's and Apple's. It could be worse: lots of unrelated sites let you log in with your Facebook or Twitter identity (I don't have those).
The laptop just arrived (very fast delivery!), and has brought home a couple things I didn't quite realize. As I mentioned, the UX305 has been around $850 at newegg and Canada Computers for a while ... but that's with a 1920 x 1080, non-touch screen. For $650, this has (as Hugh spotted and I did not) a resolution of 3200 x 1800. And it's a touch screen. The deal is still available. The main caveat being that I haven't even turned it on yet (let alone tried to install Linux). Thanks again Hugh. I wonder if I can buy an Arc Mouse with that stupid $50 gift certificate ... -- Giles http://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr@gmail.com