Sure there is: Almost the entire world doesn't have a clue about computers or information security. I'm quite proud that they disagree with me in almost every aspect.

Because Windows can't do somethings right, of course. Isn't it nice to have options?

Look, if you suddently realized you are not able to cope with maintaining your Linux desktop anymore, so you had to ditch it after so many years, it's your decision. Relationships eventually go sour, but you don't need to spill bitterness on every opportunity to make sure everybody sides with you. Move along and be happy. Forget and forgive. Nobody you blame you for switching to the "easier", "prettier" side. You have the right to.

Yes, it is not for the average dummy (and that's why it's not for "almost the entire world", which is the same thing). But there are some who see better value on Linux, and DO NOT chose Linux JUST because Windows costs money. And yes, there are nice things which come out of Open Source.

no, I hadn't.

or I could buy a Dell and dual-boot linux, since somethings at that time still required Windows (for example our home banking)

works perfectly with my networked, wireless HP

Yes, and if the free alternative perfectly solves your problem, what's wrong with that? (besides not disliking what you dislike)

Good for you; "better" is a matter of opinion. Everyone is entitled to one. For me, "better" is something that does the job and gives me no headaches for the minimum cost in time&money. If that's being "cheap", there you have it.

enough food for you

Dang, just realized I originally replied to a Troll.

Ok, you won. All Linux users are cheap. I only keep using Linux not because it is safer, easier to maintain (for me), needs less hardware power to run, does not turn the GUI upside down on every release, nor because it does everything my wife needs done. It's because I don't want to pay for Windows (no, wait, it came with Windows from Dell, no option to refuse it - darn, I didn't NEED Linux!)

Few home users would be able to maintain Windows sane for almost 10 years without the help of someone with higher expertise (oh, right, not being cheap, they should scrap their PC and buy a fresh one with a clean Windows once a year).

My wife doesn't know what distro fragmentation is. There are too many religions; that's no reason for going jihad nor being atheist (it's one of the reasons for being agnostic though, which is quite different).

The only "tool" my wife (and lots of users) care about is a browser. Crome and Firefox are pretty good "clones" of their windows counterpars. She browses the web, does webmail, youtube and lots of home banking. She doesn't want Windows although she has a license paid for.

People are different, and have different needs. "I'm tired and disappointed with Linux/Open Source because of this and that" are civilized arguments. "Nothing nice can come from Open Source" and "Linux users are cheap" means I'm wasting time feeding trolls. Bye.

So?
I was answering to "I mean who is gonna care about jumping through the hoops and dealing with the bullshit of a Linux desktop if they can get the latest Windows for $20 or even free?", meaning that most people who "jump through the hoops" do not do it because Linux is free and Windows is not, which the comment implied. If it is 1% or 90% was not the point. The reason for doing it was.
Yes, Linux fares better in servers - I have 5 of them at work, and my wife would never have switched, nor have been able to keep Linux up and running if she hadn't married a Unix sysadmin, but the point is, those (1, 0.1, 0.001%, I don't care) who choose Linux mostly do not do it because of the price.
If you, or most people, got dissapointed because your distros are not going where you wanted them to go, too bad (really, I do think it is bad. I loved Symbian, but it was killed by bad decisions).
Yet some people have true reasons for using Linux on the desktop, and implying that they are just being cheap is kind of dull.

Even on the desktop I doubt that lots of people choose Linux because of the price of the OS.
It's security, flexibility, stability, availability of free tools, etc.
Most hardware come with Windows preinstalled, yet some people choose to wipe it out or dual-boot Linux although their Windows is already paid for.
My (not computer person) wifehas been using Linux for more than 10 years at home, and she is amused when relatives complain about their troubles with ad/malware, bsods, forced upgrades that render the computer unbootable, etc. She does not want Windows, even if she's paid to have it.

Annoyingly, restricting background data isn't available when you select the "Android OS" "app", so the only way to really stop a (non rooted) Android phone to silently eat up your data plan is to completely disable cellular data. Whenever you need it, enable it - knowing that while you are using it, "Android OS" is doing its thing too.
I miss how Symbian respected the fact that you were the one paying for the service, no hacking required.

The radio frequencies are high, but the turning off/on of the radio transmitter, not.
It is that keying of the power amps which caused the audible buzz.

In the US, in medieval times, cell phones used TDMA (IS136) or CDMA (IS95/2000).
TDMA is time-division multiplex, which means the phone radio would turn on and off on a fixed cadence to allow for other phones to share the same frequency channel. At the start of a call (either to or from the cell phone), the cell network still doesn't know how attenuated the phone signal will arrive, so typically the first communication bursts from the phone would be sent with much more power than the subsequent ones, when the cell could tell the phone "whoa, you can lower your voice, I can hear you very well" (power control).
That was why the phones would interfere with other devices just when a call was about to start (before the phone rings, the cell and the network have already established comms).
Europe was right, and everybody went GSM, which then added WCDMA (UMTS, LTE, "3G", "4G").
GSM is also a TDMA technology, so when your phone is in GSM mode, it may also create the same tick-tick-tick-brrrrrz interference for the same reasons.

There are a lot of shades of gray.
For years, Sony ignored Brazil in regards to the Playstation market. There was no PS2 nor PS3 officially sold nor supported by Sony in the country, no way to select Brazil when creating a PSN account, no Sony warranty nor repair centers, Nothing.
Nevertheless, nobody cared, and most people didn't even notice (until they tried to register a PSN account and had to resource to hacks to be able to register one as being in the US and makw Sony accept a Brazilian international credit card).
The consoles could be purchased by several "channels", from black to almost white gray market: From smugglers, by going to the US an bringing one, from legit stores who would legally import them directly and even provided a 1-year warranty, etc.
Sony did not spend a dime with the market. They would't even answer support questions from Brazilian customers, although there was a lot of money coming in from the indirect sales of the consoles, game sales, and PSN purchases.
After Brazil was finally "recognized" by Sony, soon US PSN accounts would no longer accept Brazilian international credit cards via the "hack". Makes one wonder if the well-known hacks (merely using a US city with the same ZIP code of your Brazilian city would work, for example) was tolerated before so Sony could get the profits without the burden of officially supporting the customers.
Maybe Nintendo just wants to save money with the same business model.

Android 5.0 (lollipop) made this a native feature.

I believe it's not per year, but perpetual, and *maybe* it can be leased to more than one driver (one driver won't work 24x7, and to leave such an investment not making money while the driver sleeps is crazy).
But even then, agreed. It's a lot of money to recover!!

It has been demonstrated that the ipad 2 is lighter than an Apple II.

The ipad 2 user interface has been tested and proven much better than the Zilog Z80's.

On a blind test, the ipad's screen resolution has been voted subjectively better than the MSX's!

And an independent research confirmed that it has more available apps than the HP41C!

In a random test with a control group, 3 out of 5 teenagers prefer the ipad when offered the option of an ipad or a Newton, and 2 out of 4 girls prefer the ipad over Justin "Beaver".

Oh my God, the ipad is really the best thing in the whole universe! No, it has been demonstrated that it is better than 5 universes put together with whipped cream and strawberries on top!!

Nobody expected Symbian to survive much longer anymore, but going Microsoft was the dumbest option.

The largest hardware market share with the worst possible OS. Could only come from an American mindset CEO: "Hey, look! An ultra fast way to make the Windows Mobile market share go up and get fat bonuses quick! Let's show these fancy Europeans how a real OS should be!"

Why didn't they go Android then?

Nokia fanboys (like myself) are there for the intrinsic cool factor of a Nokia phone (no matter if cold numbers point to better hardware or more modern OSs out there). They just needed to keep the flame alive sprinkling some edgy tech here and there, no need to sell their souls to the devil. Apple lives up on coolness alone.

What a way to completely "finnish" up with the coolness...

Joao S Veiga

Please excuse me if this sounds pedantic but it is relevant for the subject.

When we're talking about levels of -51, -91, -113, etc., these are probably GSM signal levels, and the unit should be dBm.

dB alone is just a ratio, which is suitable for indicating for example Ec/Io, which is sort of signal to noise ratio when in WCDMA mode (the iPhone, being an UMTS phone can use GSM or WCDMA). -113, -51 do not look like Ec/Io values (these are good around -10dB).

When in WCDMA mode, Ec/Io is much more relevant than signal level and I believe phones show bars proportional to that. When in GSM mode, signal level is more relevant, and phones show bars proportional to that.

In WCDMA mode, the level is much less important than the phone capacity of extracting meaning out of the noise. You may have a very low signal level, but if the Ec/Io is good, you can place a call. You may have a high signal level, and not be able to place a call if your Ec/Io is poor. This is also true (but not as critical) for GSM mode.

A conclusive test or comparison should not be based only on signal levels, but use a proper GSM/WCDMA phone test equipment, capable of generating different signal levels (GSM) and Ec/Io (WCDMA), then collecting the phone's received Bit Error Rate, or Frame Error Rate. Believing in the level information the phone itself informs and relating that to dropped calls is quite subjective, as it is not a controlled environment, and what the phone informs may be wrong.

In the analog times (AMPS), signal level was all you could measure, and interference just meant the sound would be crappy (and the occasional undesired "group call"). If there was a good signal level, you could place the call (but the quality could be awful, there was no way of knowing).

With digital, bit error rate is what matters, and signal quality is more important than signal level. As long as the received signal level is above the phone's sensitivity (and here is a place where you separate manufacturers who know their RF from the ones who don't), then that's "level enough". It doesn't help to have a lot of signal strength (power) if due to the signal quality (signal/noise) or your hardware/software quality you cannot pull the useful data from it.

In the digital age, it's not the size of your signal which matters, but what you manage to do with it.

Good point, but just to add some more information, here are my two cents:

When an UMTS phone (like the iPhone) is in GSM (and GPRS and EDGE) modes, the signal to noise could be measured by comparing what the receiver gets during its receive timeslot (GSM/GPRS/EDGE use Time Division Multiplex Access - TDMA) against what it gets out of its receiving timeslot. Nevertheless, this is not how the phones measure the signal quality or signal to noise, which as you pointed out is more important.

What is actually considered as a measure of signal quality in GSM is called RxQual (receive quality), which is derived from actual Bit Error Rates (this is part of the GSM/UMTS standard; there is a table relating RxQual to BER in GSM 05.08). The phone reports RxLev (level) and RxQual back to the network for the network to decide about changing the serving cell site (handover). The phone bars however (as far as I know) show something logarithmically related to signal level. This may be not a good indication if you have a LOT of signal, but it's all interference (good RxLev, bad RxQual).

When a UMTS phone is in WCDMA mode, then signal to noise is even more important, but it is measured by the phone by comparing the level it pulls out of the "noise" when using the correct scrambling code against the total received level. Remember that WCDMA uses codes to separate each data "stream", all mixed in the same wideband frequency channel. The more codes in use, the more "noise" you see out of your own code. This measurement is generally called Ec/Io (UMTS standard 3GPP TS 25.133), and is also reported back to the network, with other information, for handover decisions.

I *think* that when in WCDMA mode the phone bars are related to Ec/Io, not actual signal level. If not, they should, as receiving a lot of signal "power" in your antenna when in WCDMA mode does not mean you can get/maintain calls. In GSM mode the "noise" is interference in the GSM frequency, generally coming from (poor) network design allowing channel reuse in cellsites that can "reach" the same spot. In WCDMA, a lot of "noise" comes from normal network usage, so it's a fact of life. Have you heard that CDMA/WCDMA cell coverage "shrinks" with traffic? This is why. You may have good WCDMA/CDMA quality off peak usage hours but "no coverage" at the same spot during peak hours.

All these measurements are ready to use in the phone's UMTS chipset, as they are mandatory by the standards (which by the way are freely downloadable from 3gpp.org), and the standard is strict about how they are measured/calculated - phones have to do it right to pass compliance tests.

Apple (intentionally or not) may have converted them wrong to the bar display (maybe they did not figure out the logarithms right, being newbies in the RF world...), but the measurements could not be wrong, or the phone shouldn't have passed conformity tests.