On 29 December 2015 at 13:50, D. Hugh Redelmeier <[email protected]> wrote: > | From: Giles Orr <[email protected]> > > | 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 <[email protected]> > > | 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/ [email protected] --- Talk Mailing List [email protected] http://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
