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You missed a fairly important point. Your Desktop is also terrible as an input device. That's why you add a keyboard and mouse to the beigeness.
The phone is not your input device (although with continuum it becomes a touchpad). You connect a wireless keyboard and moust, wireless (or wired) monitor, and have wireless (or, again, wired) charging.
The difference between a phone and an ultraportable that an you already have a phone and it fits in your pocket. An Ultraportable is a second device. If you have a setup where you have handy access to a monitor and wireless input devices (ie travelling between home and work) then you don't need two devices.
The caveat here is that if you're travelling and want a decent screen and keyboard then your phone won't cut it. But neither does your desktop. In these situations a tablet with a smartcover will get you through if you can stand using them. Or you grab an ultraportable.
Pricepoint? See above: you already have a phone. YOU may need something more powerful than a phone and a phone as your PC may simply not work. However, power, speed and capacity is increasing and there will be point where a phone will, probably, be "good enough".
Just a few short years ago a laptop was "good enough" for me, but not great. Now my Macbook Air is well and truly good enough. Phones will catch up (and are catching up) soon.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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At least you get it.
My primary work machine is a VM host that's in a room away from my office and runs all of my "real" work machines (a bunch of VMs). The "computer" at my desk can be underpowered, I don't care; I just need to be able to hook it up to my USB hub, to which my mouse/keyboard/3 monitors are attached. That used to be a first-gen Surface Pro. It's now an Intel NUC, because unlike my Surface Pro, it can do 4K. But there's nothing else running locally.
If a phone running something like Continuum and Remote Desktop can be hooked up to a USB hub, I could see using a phone being the only device on my desk in the future.
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I like how it sounds. Haven't been able to test it tho, but saw it demonstrated.
But it will never replace my main desktop (just as a laptop will never replace it).
I like to have at least 2 screens (preferably 3) when doing some serious work. And somewhere around the 24" range.
I have a laptop from work that I use whenever I work from home and always find it annoying to work on the native screen, if only I could find that spare vga cable I have somewhere so I could connect one of my screens. (have a thousand and one cables but not the one I need)
But as a traveling companion I can see great power in it.
Also (but less relevant) I doubt phones will ever be powerful enough to keep up with latest games (so I don't see the "gamers" using it).
I like where this is going and the possibilities it will bring, but I won't be rushing out to the store to get me a new phone. I like to use my phones until they break and that usually only happens once every 3 to 4 years (and my current phone is only a year old so...)
Tom
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Tom Deketelaere wrote: doubt phones will ever be powerful enough to keep up with latest games (so I don't see the "gamers" using it).
I just had this exact argument with Yuriy, and while they can certainly do awesome things with big, SLI'd cards on your PC, what they are doing on phones and tablets is not too shabby at all. There's seriously cool graphics going on.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Yes and for 50% or so off the games it's going to be more than enough, but the games that are truly graphical intensive, I don't know.
I currently have the Nokia Lumia 1020 phone. And I love it but 2 things:
- heat: when I use the gps app (native from nokia) and the spotify app (offline) together, the phone does it beautifully but it gets so hot I can bake an egg on it. So if that phone (that's supposed to be a flag ship phone) gets so hot from 2 "simple" apps, what's it going to do when running visual studio + sql + a couple browsers + some more stuff, blow up?
- battery life: if I do nothing on the phone I might get 2 days out off it. As soon as I use it, it drops down to about 1 day (depending on what I actually do on it). And if I use the camera or gps it drops down to an hour or 2. It's so bad that when I use the gps + spotify app at the same time I can see the charge leaving the phone. Even if I plug it into my car (since that's where I usually use the gps), using the cable that came with it, since that does make a difference for some reason, the battery still drains (at an alarming rate)
And my previous phone (also a nokia windows phone) had similar issues, not as bad as this one but ...
So I'm a bit worried about those things, giving my current and previous experiences.
So yeah there is a future in it but I think they still have a way to go.
But all great adventures start with one step 
And if they can make it work with 2 screens, no heat issues and a acceptable battery life I can definitely see it replace most of the desktops / laptops (especially the work desktops / laptops).
Tom
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You realise you're not actually meant to bake eggs on your phone.
I just have a horrible feeling no one has mentioned this to you.
However, regarding battery life, they'll (a) improve that with the new battery technology that's coming through, and (b) provide a wireless charger.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote: You realise you're not actually meant to bake eggs on your phone.
 You'r not? Now you tell me 
I actually don't eat eggs anymore, had the "brilliant" idea to eat 12 at one time because they where going to go bad, since then I just don't like them anymore
Seriously tho, the heat is a issue. The new phone's (and I think you can only use continuum on the new ones) do have liquid cooling so that might solve it, but I'd have to test it out.
Battery life is always improving that's true, but the wireless charger is (0) currently to constraint (your phone still has to be very near to or on the "mat", don't know the technical term) and (1) if a wired charger can't keep up with the battery drain at the moment I don't see a wireless charger keep up.
Like I said it's a great step forward but (like with all new technologies) they will have some hurdles left to jump over.
As a side note, reading up on continuum: it's seems you can't have 2 programs / apps visually open at the same time on the screen. You can have them running on the background but not side by side on the screen.
Tom
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I wouldn't accept it as being "normal" if you can only get an hour or two of use out of the battery before it's completely drained.
I also wouldn't accept it as being "normal" that it gets that hot.
Heat = wasted energy. I'd say one of these problems is the cause of the other.
If the store that sold me such a phone wasn't willing to exchange it, I'd insist on having them demonstrate to me that other identical phones they have in stock perform in the same fashion.
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Well it hasn't been a problem so far.
When I use the GPS + spotify I can plug the phone into my car charger that keeps the drain at bay a bit, it still drains but at a lower pace.
The heat dissipate pretty fast so I can just put it in my jacket pocket (not pants tho or I'll have a burn) for a minute or so and it's cool again.
Overall I'v never had a empty battery, but I'v never had to go longer than 4 hours without the option to charge.
And the store was a online store (first time I bought anything from an online store) without a "real" store. So a bit hard to have them demonstrate it
Tom
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I'm thinking of buying this[^] phone to replace my old one. Where would I get a cable for it to hook to my PC?
New version: WinHeist Version You didn't fall from the stupid tree you got dragged through the whole dumbass forest.
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Digital age here I come!
Now if I could just afford to upgrade my Commodore 64!
New version: WinHeist Version You didn't fall from the stupid tree you got dragged through the whole dumbass forest.
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You can't afford not to upgrade.
I present to you... the Commodore 65![^]
There are two types of people in this world: those that pronounce GIF with a soft G, and those who do not deserve to speak words, ever.
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Man at a blistering 3.54 Mhz clock speed, I'll be the fastest hi-tech redneck on the block!
New version: WinHeist Version You didn't fall from the stupid tree you got dragged through the whole dumbass forest.
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Awesomeness.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Oh yes, now I can have two tiny devices.
My android phone and my PC-Phone 
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson
Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia
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As I was often getting Out Of Memory errors from the Java runtime.
Minecraft runs super-fast now! It also got rid of all lag issues I was having.
Finally I can use the latest version of Forge for mod loading (the versions since 11.14.3.1530 use a whole lot of RAM for no obvious reason)
At least I have 24 GB total RAM in my machine, so everything else still runs smoothly.
What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?
The metaphorical solid rear-end expulsions have impacted the metaphorical motorized bladed rotating air movement mechanism.
Do questions with multiple question marks annoy you???
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Well, cheers, those 24 gigs should help you postpone getting a life a few more years
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
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From what I've read, this thing supports up to 128GB using 16GB sticks.
I don't think I'll need THAT much RAM, though! 24GB seems to run a whole heck of a lot on this thing.
I still hate Java, though. What a memory hog it can be. I ran a Hello World app with Java 6 some time ago, and it allocated and used 3GB of RAM! A quick test on Java 8 shows that it only uses 3MB with a similar program, so that is a rather nice improvement.
What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?
The metaphorical solid rear-end expulsions have impacted the metaphorical motorized bladed rotating air movement mechanism.
Do questions with multiple question marks annoy you???
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Brisingr Aerowing wrote: From what I've read, this thing supports up to 128GB using 16GB sticks.
I don't think I'll need THAT much RAM, though! 24GB seems to run a whole heck of a lot on this thing.
One word: VMs. It'll get you there.
My VM host is now at 64GB, and I think there's a firmware update for my motherboard that'll let it use 16GB sticks. So while I don't need it yet, I could definitely see it happening before the board dies.
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I don't have any VMs set up right now.
What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?
The metaphorical solid rear-end expulsions have impacted the metaphorical motorized bladed rotating air movement mechanism.
Do questions with multiple question marks annoy you???
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Does it still make the fan go?
I've running Minecraft just to heat the small office-room we have...
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My laptop generates little to no heat. The fans run sometimes, but I can barely hear them as they are very quiet. Even if I am running a whole bunch of programs at once.
What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?
The metaphorical solid rear-end expulsions have impacted the metaphorical motorized bladed rotating air movement mechanism.
Do questions with multiple question marks annoy you???
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If you get divorced in Tennessee are you still brother and sister?
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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