My "favourite" with this is the new Windows app (terrible new name for the remote desktop app). You now have to sign in to use the app but then as soon as you connect to any corporate resources (ie remote PCs/Cloud PCs), you have to sign in again! It seems like the perfect opportunity to SAVE the user some hassle but instead it's adding it.
I love this site - it has been listed before, quite a while back, I seem to remember.
Seeing it again, with how powerful phones are and what good macro cameras they often have now, identifying sand seems like it would be a fun ML + mobile app project.
Sorry, might be obvious to some, but is that rate applied to the whole screen or can certain parts be limited to 1Hz whilst others are at a higher rate?
The ability to vary it seems like it would be valuable as there are significant portions of a screen that remain fairly static for longer periods but equally there are sections that would need to change more often and would thus mess with the ability to stick to a low rate if it's a whole screen all-or-nothing scenario.
From what I understand, the laptop will reduce the refresh rate (of the entire display) to as low as 1Hz if what is being displayed effectively βallowsβ it.
I think windows has a feature built in on some adaptive refresh rate displays to dynamically shift the frame rate down (to 30, on my screen) or up to the cap, depending on whatβs actually happening.
I remember playing with it a bit, and it would dynamically change to a high refresh rate as you moved the mouse, and then drop down as soon as the mouse cursor stopped moving.
I had issues with it sometimes being lower refresh rate even when there was motion on screen, so the frame rate swings were unfortunately noticeable. Motion would get smoother for all content whenever the mouse moved.
1hz is drastically fewer refreshes. I hope they have the βis this content staticβ measurement actually worked out to a degree where itβs not noticeable.
Which would make me want the refresh rate to be user-configurable. I would not mind at all if the 1 Hz refresh rate caused parts of the page I don't care about, such as animated ads to stutter and become unwatchable. If given the choice between stuttering ads but longer battery life, or smoothly-animated ads with shorter battery life, I'd choose the unwatchable ads every time.
Ideally, I would be able to bind a keyboard shortcut to the refresh-rate switch, so that the software doesn't have to figure out that now I'm on Youtube so I actually want the higher refresh rate, but now I'm on a mostly-text page so I want the refresh rate to go back down to 1 Hz. If I can control that with a simple Fn+F11 combination or something, that would be the ideal situation.
Not that any laptop manufacturers are likely to see this comment... but you never know.
I assume this will just be using Window's dynamic refresh rate feature, which you can turn on and off in the display settings, and when it's off you can set the refresh rate manually. I guess the question is whether they will let you set it as low as 1hz manually though.
With current LCD controllers but new drivers/firmware you could selectively refresh horizontal stripes of the screen at different rates if you wanted to.
I don't think you could divide vertically though.
Don't think anyone has done this yet. You could be the first.
I believe E-ink displays do this for faster updates for touch interactivity. Updatimg the whole display as the user writes on the touch screen would otherwise be too slow for Eink.
Today it's mostly "all-or-nothing" at the panel level, but under the hood there's already a lot of cleverness trying to approximate the behavior you're describing
To take this further, if the focus really is the "luxury" part of the market, how do they expect this sort of response to go down well with customers?!
If someone is interested in paying luxury size fees, do they really want some cobbled together chatbot? I say this as an advocate for (high quality) chatbots for various practical needs, but it just seems like it is misunderstanding the customers (or maybe luxury is a bit of a loose term new in the area this mechanic works in?)
These customers own expensive cars - or at least, cars that were expensive when they were new. The car might now be ten years old or more, and the owner bought it used. They want a prestige marque, but the customer does not have the money to buy a new prestige car. So they are looking to save on service.
All the time I see cars with expensive names - BMW, Mercedes Benz - broken down on the side of the road, while old Hondas and Toyotas keep cruising by. Those are the customers for this shop: they spent all their money buying an expensive used car, and now they can't afford to maintain it and fix looming problems; meanwhile the Toyota or Hyundai driver gets maintenance and maybe even takes it to the dealer for it.
A mechanic like this can't afford to hire someone to answer the phone. Such a person is expensive, and these customers want rock-bottom prices despite the car being expensive. So a chatbot is good enough and better than nothing.
The most trustworthy mechanic I used in England had an appointment book pretty much full for four months in advance. He didn't answer the phone, didn't have a computer, just a desk diary. If you wanted him to work on your car you turned up at his workshop and spoke to him. If you were willing to wait until he'd finished whatever thing he was doing he'd take a quick look at your car and suggest a course of action. And despite his full order book if something looked urgent enough and small enough he'd fit you in quite quickly.
He charged reasonable prices, but definitely not rock bottom. He had no need to compete with the bottom feeders because every customer acted as his public relations agent.
Overall some potential here, if they follow through, but it's amusing that the first bullet point is essentially "more new surface we can accidently break".
I recall it being crap back in 2009 when the mobile software was highly flakey: it would sync over 1Gb of my playlists but was really unreliable so every few days it would get corrupted and require to resync the data in its entirety. At the time this quickly added up to more than my broadband plan would allow and I was stuck without the music and without normal speed internet (it would revert to some super slow level)
I complained and they didn't seem to care as it stayed unstable and they kept advising to try again when my data cap was removed, it would fail again and then I cancelled my subscription.
It's silly but never causes me issues, I just close the second one. Haven't ever figured out why it happens.
Did the Artemis crew any side effects / problems tied to Outlook?
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