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"Sure, I'd love some monster cables. Also, do you sell a monster cable replacement for the XBox power cord, maybe it'll run faster if it can get more power!"

Heh heh, monster cables crack me up. Almost every time I go to Best Buy I'll check out the monster cable section just for chuckles. The prices are actually so high that I sometimes come close to laughing out loud.

For grins:
$50 - 2 meter S-video cable
$60 - 4 meter RCA cable
$100 - Monster cable surge protector

I could swear they used to sell some phenomenally expensive modem cables too, which were just really really thick telephone cords.

"Sure, I'd love some monster cables. Also, do you sell a monster cable replacement for the XBox power cord, maybe it'll run faster if it can get more power!"

Heh heh, monster cables crack me up. Almost every time I go to Best Buy I'll check out the monster cable section just for chuckles. The prices are actually so high that I sometimes come close to laughing out loud.

For grins:
$50 - 2 meter S-video cable
$60 - 4 meter RCA cable
$100 - Monster cable surge protector

I could swear they used to sell some phenomenally expensive modem cables too, which were just really really thick telephone cords.

nope, doesn't work.

Reward Zone Program
Reward Zone program membership fee is $9.99 for a 1-year membership. It is available to U.S. residents 13 years of age or older. Reward Zone lets you earn points towards reward certificates, which are redeemable towards future in-store purchases. Points are not awarded for online purchases, prior purchases, Gift Cards, sales tax, shipping charges and restocking fees. Full program rules are available in store or at www.MyRewardZone.com.

source

The price-per-meg^H^H^Hgigabyte ratio of SATA to SCSI is phenomenal. 250gig SATA for 200$ at Best Buy.

Compare to 260$ for SCSI's meager 73gig at DC Drives.com.

Regardless of what magical specs, speeds, function (game versus video versus database), etc... sorry folks, SATA smokes SCSI any day of the week. The cost ratio is unmistakable. You'd be a fool to buy into SCSI again at this point in the tech curve. Yes, you can make cases for servers, datacenters, databases, mega-througput, etc.

But for the rest of the non-critical systems (all the home users and most geeks), it's SATA. Period. And yes, I have a U160 SCSI RAID array, and my new 250gig SATA disk smokes it. And significantly cheaper.

I've found that Best Buy never shoves a Product Service Plan (or "PSP," oddly enough) down my throat for video game stuff. They know that the risk is too great.

Notice how Best Buy offers a "Protect Your Investment" link for televisions and laptops, but not for the PS2, PS1, or GameCube. They do offer protection for the Xbox, but we all know how many Slashdot users actually use an Xbox as an Xbox-game player.

I've found that Best Buy never shoves a Product Service Plan (or "PSP," oddly enough) down my throat for video game stuff. They know that the risk is too great.

Notice how Best Buy offers a "Protect Your Investment" link for televisions and laptops, but not for the PS2, PS1, or GameCube. They do offer protection for the Xbox, but we all know how many Slashdot users actually use an Xbox as an Xbox-game player.

I've found that Best Buy never shoves a Product Service Plan (or "PSP," oddly enough) down my throat for video game stuff. They know that the risk is too great.

Notice how Best Buy offers a "Protect Your Investment" link for televisions and laptops, but not for the PS2, PS1, or GameCube. They do offer protection for the Xbox, but we all know how many Slashdot users actually use an Xbox as an Xbox-game player.

I've found that Best Buy never shoves a Product Service Plan (or "PSP," oddly enough) down my throat for video game stuff. They know that the risk is too great.

Notice how Best Buy offers a "Protect Your Investment" link for televisions and laptops, but not for the PS2, PS1, or GameCube. They do offer protection for the Xbox, but we all know how many Slashdot users actually use an Xbox as an Xbox-game player.

I've found that Best Buy never shoves a Product Service Plan (or "PSP," oddly enough) down my throat for video game stuff. They know that the risk is too great.

Notice how Best Buy offers a "Protect Your Investment" link for televisions and laptops, but not for the PS2, PS1, or GameCube. They do offer protection for the Xbox, but we all know how many Slashdot users actually use an Xbox as an Xbox-game player.

I've found that Best Buy never shoves a Product Service Plan (or "PSP," oddly enough) down my throat for video game stuff. They know that the risk is too great.

Notice how Best Buy offers a "Protect Your Investment" link for televisions and laptops, but not for the PS2, PS1, or GameCube. They do offer protection for the Xbox, but we all know how many Slashdot users actually use an Xbox as an Xbox-game player.

Funny to hear Ballmer say something like this. Heck - Office for "Students and Teachers" is $129.99 [Blatent link to bestbuy ;)]... Guess we can't have that either. Just buy a bare bones box and a hard drive, put Knoppix on it and call it a day.

They already do

Sirius already has a handheld unit, the XACT receiver.

How small?
This small.

Here's one you can get right now: a Maxent ED Plasma. I'm sure there are other examples.

How about sub-$1000?

I'll likely pick this up when it hits the $10 rack.

That is good to know. I heard the commercial saying it was two episodes, and wondered how much they could do in two hours minus commercials. It sounds like you mean four hours minus commercials, or three hours.

I started watching Farscape recently. My wife has been watching it ever since we got married, and being a bored housewife, started channel surfing while I was at work. She has seen most of the episodes and is a fan (but not one of those scary fans that goes to conventions dressed up with Spock ears). Of course I started watching it as something [else] to do while sitting on the couch with her, and was intrigued. For being a relatively low budget production with actors I had never heard of before, it was very well done. I was sucked in, watching it whenever it was on and I was home, but I watched them all out of order. This made it difficult to follow.

I know the episodes are out on DVD, and I am very interested in buying them. Maybe someone can help me. I see that Farscape is letterboxed, which leads me to believe it is filmed in 16:9 high definition. I know CSI is filmed that way, so it is not unreasonable to think Farscape is too. I have a 16:9 HDTV and Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS sound system, will the Farscape DVDs take advantage of my home theater? Are they filmed in high definition? According to Best Buy there are a few DVDs. It looks like each season has six volumes, but then there are other DVDs labeled "Farscape 1" or "Farscape 2." What does this mean? As a Farscape newbie, could someone please explain this to me? Which ones do I need to buy?

I seem to have been misled when I saw the Star Wars Trilogy: DVD Box Set in every major store in the world. Apparently Trilogy no longer means 3 =/

I saw this one a few weeks ago at a Best Buy. It is rather nice.

Swiss Gear Maxxum

I don't really understand this article. It certainly is not new information, hardware passed up most common computer applications a long time ago. Even though most people don't need a ~2.5ghz celeron with 512MB of RAM, 80GB hdd which is about as entry level as you will find in a desktop now.. what are they supposed to do, buy a 3+ year old computer?

The article isn't well written anyway, the introduction makes it sound like the author just realized that the 3+ ghz systems with 4GB of RAM, 256MB video cards, and multi-disc RAID arrays he built for regular email/web using users was overpowered..

Now seriously. Why not throw in wireless support? Maybe they have and it wasn't mentioned in the /. article (I haven't RTFA yet). But this is really surprising to me. I suppose I could spend $70 and get one of these but that just bites. Why Sony? Why?

Most of the problems I've encountered are with Safari. The following sites all have similar problems and are entirely unusable with Safari after applying the patch:

http://www.fedex.com/
http://www.compusa.com/
http://www.bestbuy.com/

I'm sure there are many others. G5 systems do not appear to be affected. G4s are.

As noted on http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=617 98 :

Component: Safari
CVE-ID: CAN-2004-0361
Available for: Mac OS X 10.2.8, Mac OS X Server 10.2.8
Impact: A JavaScript array of negative size can cause Safari to access out of bounds memory resulting in an application crash.
Description: Storing objects into a JavaScript array allocated with negative size can overwrite memory. Safari now stops processing JavaScript programs if an array allocation fails.
This security enhancement was previously made available in Safari 1.0.3, and is being applied inside the Mac OS X 10.2.8 operating system as an extra layer of protection for customers who have not installed that version of Safari. This is a specific fix for Mac OS X 10.2.8 and the issue does not exist in Mac OS X 10.3 or later systems.
----

This particular fix is specific to 10.2.8 and NOT 10.3 or later, yet appears it may install with the 10.3.x update. This could well be the cause of the problems. This is further supported by the fact that all of the known sites that fail to render properly use JavaScript 1.2 extensively.

Word is the Safari team is aware of the problem and working on it.

Uh-oh! These guys better run!

HDTVs are getting pretty cheap too - a quick glance over at the Best Buy (I wouldn't suggest shopping there, but they make a decent reference) turns up an $800 HDTV that will do 1080i, which is 1920x1080. 800 bucks is expensive, but it's not outlandish - plus I bet that you could find a similar TV for 600.

At any rate, I'm looking forward to higher density media for movies. DVDs have a lot of benefits, but the compression artifacts annoy me quite a bit - especially when you're supposed to see a smoth gradient of color and instead you get a bunch of ugly blocks. That's with an ordinary 4:3 analog interlaced TV, even. I'm sure it would look that much worse on a high resolution display.

The TV that I have now is decent enough for my movie/gaming purposes, but once HD-DVD is available and affordable I'm upgrading to a nice widescreen HDTV, hopefully with as little baggage (DRM) as possible.

I have encountered no problems shopping at best buy, I buy cds & dvds from them on a time to time basis, I have purchased some big items from them before and NO PROBLEMS

Not exactly what you have in mind, but it's the only USB/Ethernet combo hard drive I've seen (yet).

You can even buy it at your local BestBuy (assuming they haven't pissed you off too much recently).

To those whining that $55USD is too much... try doing a little leg work before bitching.

Microcenter has a coupon to purchase it until 8/8/04 for $46.87.

Circuit City has it online for $44.99 with free shipping.

Best Buy will price match (in store purchase only) for the difference plus 10%.

What does this mean? You can easily pick up Doom 3 for less than $46USD. Quit your whining and start playing!

You probably are referring to this one. It has a proprietary connector to hook the xbox directly to the tx, not that this is any harder than a normal connection.

Actually, there are S-video switchboxes. You can get them from Best Buy definately (as that's where I got mine).

This one is 90 bucks, but I got a cheaper one for about 30 bucks or so, and mine works very well sharing the S-video between my PS2, 'Cube, and DVD player.

This is getting tiresome.

You must be thinking of something else, like VCDs or whatnot. LaserDiscs were not limited by computing power (they weren't even digital), nor are they inferior to DVDs... LaserDiscs have a resolution that is practically just as high as DVDs, and LaserDiscs use the same AC3 audio format that DVDs now use.

Unless you're giving the word "practically" a really wide berth, you're just wrong. Laserdiscs have a maximum respolution os 400x482. That's around 240 lines of vertical resolution that you're missing there...which is quite a bit, if you ask me -- especially as a percentage.

Now, back to computing power...you're right -- they weren't digital because they couldn't be. Our MPEG2 chips were extremely expensive (and when laserdiscs were first released, weren't available at all). DVD could not exist in the consumer market back then...it's as simple as that.

Another thing to think about when it comes to resolution is that there was no option for a higher resolution TV back in the day. NTSC has remained unchanged for decades. We didn't have a choice -- there was simply no home video that took full advantage of NTSC resolution until DVD that could take full advantage of standard NTSC resolution. When DVD was released, HDTV was already available (yet for 99.9999% of the population, it was still "vaporware"). Now, with more and more new TV's able to scan up to HD resolutions, people will want to take advantage of it -- and it ain't just the $3500 plasmas. Here is a 27" HD-ready TV for $550. I'm sure they're avaialble for cheaper too -- that's the first one I found.

It's a good metric. Sure, TVs are lower res than HDTVs, but just as DVDs are not using up the full resolution of HDTVs, so too were VHS tapes not using up the full res of standard TVs.

It's still a bad metric. You are either forgetting the history of home video, or you are too young and think that we always had it. What did we have before VHS? There was no home video market. It's not as if VHS/BetaMax replaced another home video device that was in every house. VHS/BetaMax was as good as we could do for the money at the time. Laserdiscs never caught on because they were so cumbersome. For example, without a dual sided player, you had to flip the disc every 30 or 60 minutes, depending on the disc -- and the better quality movies came on 2-3 discs. They weren't just expensive, they were a pain to use, with huge (12") media and the market didn't want them (except for the videophiles and home theater geeks). The point is, in a brand-spanking-new market -- people wanted whatever was cheap, with the largest library of movies...and don't even mention BetaMax. If the players could have played VHS tapes, the standard may have survived...but because it was one or the other, the marketplace picked the cheaper one.

And that is assuming perfect backwards compatibility, which is actually quite unlikely.

How and why is this unlikely? I honestly don't know much about blu-ray DVD's (and they were just an example -- there are a number of standards up for consideration of the HD-DVD home)...but if most DVD players are backwards compatible with DVD's and VCD's, how is backwards compatability between the next-gen HD-DVD and standard DVD's unlikely?

Potentially stronger DRM restrictions.

Why is this a problem for the average buyer? If DRM were such a problem, DVD's never would have caught on. You're projecting your Slashdot mentality to the market...which largely doesn't care.

Higher cost of players

This is only an initial cost. If it gains market acceptance, the players will be as cheap as standard DVD players. There is absol

SuperMediaStore and Meritline represent pretty much the cheapest places to safely buy large quantites of high-quality media (read: Ridata, et cetera).

So, if you've got something important to burn, and it's 8.5G in size, it better be $20 important, you'd better not accidentally make a coster, and don't forget to pay your VAT if you're in one of those countries.

Also, the dual-layered NEC2510A runs about $79 (or cheaper!) at NewEgg.

IMHO, just get a stand-alone DVD player. Then get a console if you still want one. Especially connected to a HDTV, progressive scan and component outputs are a must. The new model PS2 has both, but in my experience a stand-alone DVD player is better as far as usability goes. Best Buy offers a Samsung model with 1080i HD Upconvert and MP3 Playback to take advantage of the HDTV's higher resolution. Of course there are cheaper players out there, too (for $30-$50).

The description on the page sucks, but go to your local Best Buy and check out the RoboSapien. Its joints have several degrees of freedom, and the remote looks like a TiVo remote on steroids.

If that's not screaming to be hacked, hooked to a linux box, and used to terrify the cat, I don't know what is. And at 1/14th the price of the Korean `bot. It's not a kit though, which I know is a negative on Slashdot...

About three weeks ago, I went into Best Buy and bought four 50-packs of 4X Verbatim DVD-R blanks ON SALE for $172.36 out the door, which was a very good price (non-sale price would have been $301.66).

I noticed a couple days ago that they had an even better deal: 25-packs of 4X Verbatim DVD-Rs for $14.99 each. So I took back the 3 unopened packs I bought three weeks ago and got a refund of $129.27. I then went and bought EIGHT 25-packs for $129.21 for a net gain of 50 more DVD-R blanks and $0.06. And you bet if I wouldn't have opened the first 50-pack I would have taken that back too. 30-day refund policy is certainly helpful here.

So I ask: Am I a "demon customer" or just "smart"?

About three weeks ago, I went into Best Buy and bought four 50-packs of 4X Verbatim DVD-R blanks ON SALE for $172.36 out the door, which was a very good price (non-sale price would have been $301.66).

I noticed a couple days ago that they had an even better deal: 25-packs of 4X Verbatim DVD-Rs for $14.99 each. So I took back the 3 unopened packs I bought three weeks ago and got a refund of $129.27. I then went and bought EIGHT 25-packs for $129.21 for a net gain of 50 more DVD-R blanks and $0.06. And you bet if I wouldn't have opened the first 50-pack I would have taken that back too. 30-day refund policy is certainly helpful here.

So I ask: Am I a "demon customer" or just "smart"?

About three weeks ago, I went into Best Buy and bought four 50-packs of 4X Verbatim DVD-R blanks ON SALE for $172.36 out the door, which was a very good price (non-sale price would have been $301.66).

I noticed a couple days ago that they had an even better deal: 25-packs of 4X Verbatim DVD-Rs for $14.99 each. So I took back the 3 unopened packs I bought three weeks ago and got a refund of $129.27. I then went and bought EIGHT 25-packs for $129.21 for a net gain of 50 more DVD-R blanks and $0.06. And you bet if I wouldn't have opened the first 50-pack I would have taken that back too. 30-day refund policy is certainly helpful here.

So I ask: Am I a "demon customer" or just "smart"?

I definitely agree...I love the 8-function version....only $25 and it has Tivo and ReplayTV buttons. Plus it is incredibly light and thin. The only flaw is that the buttons are not backlit or glow-in-the-dark (which should be a minimum requirement for all remotes).

I used to geek out on my Philips NeoPronto, their $200 "low end" progammable remote, until my toddler introduced it to the floor. It was more fun to program than it was to use, though...you don't really care about having 20-step macros and custom logo bitmaps for all your favorite channels when you keep hitting the wrong fsckin' numbers on the touch screen.

Not to mention the exact same storage (20gig) is on an Ipod for the same price at best buy.

Er, make that Spider-Man 2: The Game for the Nintendo Gamecube.

Howdy, true believers. Don't forget to pick up your copy of Spider-Man 2: The Game for the Nintendo Gamecube. It's your chance ot be part of the action!

G5 for sale on Best Buy's website

Don't worry about it any longer. You are.

I've got a collection of about 60 PSOne disks, from "Resident Evil" through "Final Fantasy" looping into "Dance Dance Revolution" and plenty of others...

Did you take a hammer to your Playstation? They would still be quite playable on that box.

Yes, there will be "must have" games upon launch, but if comes down to space (already at a premium with 3 consoles), or cost...

It's pretty well established that people who buy consoles at launch and at original price don't care about anything but being first. The PS2 sold insanely well at launch not as a PS replacement (a Playstation could have been had for a third to half of the price), not as a DVD player (half the price and DVD playback blew), and barely to play the bad-ass launch games (they sucked). It sold because it was considered "cool" as a gamer to have one.

If Xbox has good launch games, it will sell because gamers want to play games and many want to be "first on the block."

People who are cheap can still get a PSOne for about $79-$100, and games for around $20-$30...

No, actually they can get a PSOne for $50 (before tax of course) at most. I recommend not using numbers unless you've looked some up.

Even when the PS2 came out, there were still good upcoming PSOne games to look forward to.

Sure, because there was an insane number of consoles out there. There will still be some Xbox games (likely mostly ports/multi-platform) coming out when Xbox 2 hits. They'll still be perfectly playable on the Xbox.

In short, I consider backward compatibility one of those things that everyone talks about being important despite the fact that, outside the GBA and unsuccessful Atari consoles, it's only happened once. I consider the logic that backward compatibility sells consoles to be faulty since if one wants to play the old games the old console can be had on the cheap (as others have pointed out, the Xbox will almost certainly be $100 when Xbox 2 streets).

Of course, for Slashdot to pile on this subject it's even sillier considering that every other Xbox harangue contains somewhere words to the effect that "Halo is the only game to play and I can play that on PC." Why would backward compatibility be important for a console that supposedly only has PC ports and no good exclusives?

Attempting to predict the Xbox 2's success, or lack thereof, by pointing to the lack of backward compatibility is just dumb. There's only one example (PS2) on which to base analysis and that sample size clearly isn't big enough.

People who are cheap can still get a PSOne for about $79-$100

I'm hoping you live in Australia, otherwise you got robbed.

The $999 HD-Tivo is already out, and it's very useful.

The revolution may have to wait a while.

I recently purchsed a couple Bose PC speakers, and have been pretty happy with them.

I'm not a big audio person, but they sound fine to me. Not a ton of low end, but the mids and highs are nice.

"You forgot that in order to get print from your digital camera, you need a printer."
Ahh...see there's another big difference. To this date, I have yet to actually print out a photo. They go up on my website, or into a digital picture frame. I don't *have* to print them out. However, with a regular film camera, you *have* to print them out in some form.

"25 CD @ 2$ per = $50"
Where are you getting gouged for CD's? $15 for 50 CD's at Wal-Mart.

Storage cost is minimal and takes up little space. First of all, let's look at harddrive storage. 250 GB, 3.5" drive for $200 will store 125000 2MB pictures in the space of a VHS cassette. How many albums will it take to store 125000 negatives or slides?
Even if we use CD's, 125000 pictures will fit on 625 600MB CDs, or about $180 worth (at the price above). I think even 625 CD's will not take up as much room as 125000 negatives in a organized album.

Digital is still a better deal. Even if you develope your own photos and negatives, you still have to deal with dangerous, smelly chemicals, *and* you have to have room for a darkroom. A friend of mine had to convert an extra bathroom into a darkroom to develope her photos. Meanwhile, I just plug my camera into my computer...

Film is definitely not without it's place, but for a beginner, digital is the sensible choice.

I can't believe no one has mentioned the Gyration product line. They are gyroscopic mice. You don't need any surface to make them work. Here is a link to my personal favorite.

I haven't heard of any major complaints, but thene again I haven't gone looking for them either.

That's generally true, although with things like RAM that's totally not the case - PC133 ram is stupidly expensive for its slow and outdated performance - it still costs $50 for a 128mb DIMM. The same amount DDR ram is actually cheaper!

I realize it's partly due to the fact that far fewer companies manufacture the older RAM, but either way, paying high prices for outdated hardware seems kind of odd if you ask me...

Getting back to your original topic, another good thing about new CPUs getting faster is the "old" computers that get thrown out are getting faster, too. I found a 400mhz Celeron computer thrown out behind a computer store, as well as numerous 166mhz Pentium systems. Most were stripped of their parts, but the motherboards/CPUs were still there.. awesome :)

That's generally true, although with things like RAM that's totally not the case - PC133 ram is stupidly expensive for its slow and outdated performance - it still costs $50 for a 128mb DIMM. The same amount DDR ram is actually cheaper!

I realize it's partly due to the fact that far fewer companies manufacture the older RAM, but either way, paying high prices for outdated hardware seems kind of odd if you ask me...

Getting back to your original topic, another good thing about new CPUs getting faster is the "old" computers that get thrown out are getting faster, too. I found a 400mhz Celeron computer thrown out behind a computer store, as well as numerous 166mhz Pentium systems. Most were stripped of their parts, but the motherboards/CPUs were still there.. awesome :)

Right, here we go for a corporate desktop.

Hey, he was the one talking about using Apache on a desktop. I was merely pointing out that you CAN do this.

This is about a ready-to-go solution - XP Home does not provide this.

In corporate environments, there's plenty of custom software that users need that isn't provided by either Windows OR Linux. So if you're going to be making custom disk images anyway, might as well throw in all that software that Windows doesn't have in the first place. So I don't see why everyone keeps thinking that a couple CDs full of free software is so amazing, considering that you can just download it before you make the corporate disk image.

Bzz. We are not taking about Linux. We talk about SuSE - and SuSE provides a secure, virus-free work environment for the corporate desktop.

No it doesn't, unless SuSE has absolutely no viruses or exploits. What you mean is it's more secure.

Windows on AMD64 is still a no-go for example, while it is quite possible with linux.

Really? That's news to me, seeing as how you can buy these AMD64 laptops with Windows XP pre-installed (and just in case you come back with "but that's not really 64-bit!" don't forget that Microsoft will let you download a copy of XP that works with AMD-64 right now, and for free).

How do you get this right license-wise without loosing OEM licenses/doublelicensing?

Volume licensing.

Hi. I'm your new neighbor and I've got a nifty new phone!