Arstechnica has put together an interesting article this week that shows the loyalty (or lack thereof) of current BlackBerry owners.
Citing a Crowd Science survey, Ars says that 2 out of every 5 current BlackBerry owners would switch to an Apple iPhone when their contract was up.
Additionally, 33 percent of current iPhone owners, as well as 16 percent of BlackBerry owners use their devices for “exclusively personal use”, not for work. Only 1 percent of iPhone owners use their devices exclusively for business/work and 7 percent of BlackBerry users do the same.
Higher percentages, 66 percent for iPhone owners and 77 percent for BlackBerry users, used their devices for both work and personal reasons.
Finally, the survey showed that 90 percent of both Android and iPhone owners would stick with their current OS/devices when their contracts were up, showing much better loyalty than current RIM users.
Result for: technica
A look at the minimum system requirements for the upcoming blockbuster Just Cause 2 shows that the title won’t work on installations of Windows XP. This would represent one of the first high profile releases not to be supported by the still-popular Microsoft operating system. The requirements specifies that an operating system newer than XP is required, and provides a hint why.
The game requires at least DirectX 10. Windows XP can only officially go as far as DirectX 9, meaning that gamers would need to be using Windows Vista or Windows 7 to play the game. A recent hardware/software survey from Steam showed that 42.15 percent of its users were in fact still running the Windows XP operating system, although Windows 7 was becoming popular very fast.
Of course, there have been several methods used to install DirectX 10 on Windows XP since it was launched, none of which are supported by Microsoft and several of which have no support from their original authors either. So maybe it is “technically” possible to run it on Windows XP, but it is a shame that users should have to install a hacked DirectX 10 package and probably patch the game files themselves to play it on Windows XP.
Amazon.com incorrectly lists XP as supported in search results.
Minimum System Requirements
Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7 (Windows XP is unsupported)
Processor: Dual-core CPU with SSE3 (Athlon 64 X2 4200 / Pentium D 3GHz)
Graphics Card: Nvidia Geforce 8800 Series / ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro with 256MB memory or equivalent DX10 card with 256MB memory
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Result for: technica
Arstechnica is reporting today that RealVideo continues its death spiral, this time with C-SPAN getting rid of the streaming video format in favor of Flash and Windows Media.
Says the C-SPAN site: “Due to lack of demand for the RealVideo format, we will be retiring our links to C-SPAN live video streams in the RealVideo format effective March 1, 2010.”
The Ars reporter says the codec lives on in a few Government committees, such as the Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works but the FCC finally upgraded last year to Flash, after previously broadcasting all their meetings on a server that could handle only up to 200 users and produced 240×240 resolution video.
