On 3/9/2013 7:43 AM, Keith Nuttle wrote:
On 3/9/2013 8:29 AM, Swingman wrote:
Bill wrote:
Gramp's shop wrote:
Bill ...

I bought a Lenovo with 4gb ram and a 500gb HD. $350 from Best Buy. No
touch screen. Like the computer but (H)8 Windows 8.

Lrry
It sounds like you did real well! I was mainly looking for something to
attach to a big screen tv, so I have been looking at those with HD,
1080P
(1920x1080)--matching the TV. Most (all?) of the candidates seem to have
"4000HD" (integrated) graphics. Has anyone tried streaming video from
web
pages this way with success in the way of video quality? I have a hunch
it will be hit and miss. I doubt Roy Underhill's show is recorded (at
PBS) in HD, for instance, but I'm assuming a laptop as described would
give the best possible configuration. I'll be sure to try to avoid
Windows8until I hear kinder words said about it! I was mildly
enthusiastic aboutthe touchscreen concept, but now I think I'll sit on
thesideline and hear more what those on the front line have to
report.

Bill

Don't believe all the naysayers about the underlying OS itself, as
technically it is one of MSFT's best operating systems yet, very resource
efficient, fast and relatively more secure than any MSFT consumer OS to
date (notice the word "relatively", no such thing as a totally secure OS,
just one that hasn't been targeted).

It is the GUI that throws everyone, and that can be infuriating
because it
is such a drastic sea change and humans simply don't like change. I'm
not a
big fan of the Win8 GUI myself, but having run it on a seven year old
laptop since it came out I find myself getting used to it, and
appreciating
most parts of it.

Short story - because you are human you will NOT like it at first because
of the GUI, but you will like the benefits of the underlying technical
aspects, so try it for an extended period and see if the angst doesn't
become more tempered than not ... and do keep in mind it is a first
iteration, and you do have the option to use the classic desktop.

And yes, it does run Sketchup, handily.

As far as your media center:

Get a Raspberry Pi for $40 and load up xbmc:

http://lifehacker.com/5929913/build-...5-raspberry-pi




My objection is to the touch interface. On anything of any size, the
motion of the hands and fingers on the touch screen will create a whole
new set of syndroms. The act of hold your arms outward for any lenght
of time is going to create stress in the upper arm shoulder areas. To
move the to the exteme for the point imaging use 70" screen with a touch
screen.


I had not even thought of that. My big objection has always been the
finger prints on the screen, something that is a constant situation with
my iPad and iPhone.