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I agree that RIAA's methods suck and that music industry is full of scumbags but that's pretty insular thinking on your part and wrong on several points: 1) It's just plain wrong to suggest that the music biz in its entirety doesn't care about consumers. Without consumers the music biz wouldn't exist in the first place. A more nuanced argument would suggest they don't care for consumers who rampantly share their purchases with friends in lossless format while at the same time loving those idiots who purchase ringtones of any kind. Your assertion that the industry has been itching to screw us sounds pretty paranoid to me.
2) Complaining that "jobs are getting eliminated" is not extortion. Whining? Maybe. But not extortion. It *is* a relevant fact.
3) You reference an earlier era where copies were not IDENTICAL IN EVERY WAY to the original. Generation loss is perhaps a 'natural' form of copy protection but might be cynically deemed planned obsolescence. To argue that they "didn't need" this protection is begging the question in our current discussion. You say there's no need for DRM. I'm arguing that we just might need some level of DRM even if it's just generation loss.
4) The speed of tape vs. dvd downloading copying depends on several factors: tape length, tape copy mechanism, bandwith of network connection, etc. If you have a 100Mbps internet connection like you might at M.I.T or something, you can download 4.7GB in 6 and a half minutes. Copying a VHS tape requires maybe 1/3 of the running length of the movie if you have a high-speed copier and will look *horrible*. Most importantly what you said contributes nothing to the discussion at hand. You hate the music biz? Fine! You won't be upset then when it dries up and all you get is home-made roadhouse blues (or some guy playing pachelbel's canon on guitar) on youtube. The question at hand is "What sort of economic model replaces the existing one in the music industry". Some of us worry that when it's trivial to share music, then everyone gets it for free and no one pays for it and there will be no money made to make more music and what will happen is a general whithering of music in general. Yes the way I just expressed it sounds ridiculous and impossible but what doesn't sound so ridiculous is wondering if EMI and Universal music, etc. are gone, who else can afford to buy or use a Neve 88D? You might argue that the motion picture industry will still need them but movies are facing the same fate as music. It's just a matter of time. Does this mean everything is going to be recorded on some cheap ass tascam hard disk recorder? Who's gonna pay for artists to go in the studio for six months like Pink Floyd did for Dark Side of the Moon? OK fine you hate Dark Side of the Moon? Then go and listen to all those Korn and Linkin' Park ripoffs out there producing their own garbage music and giving it away for free./p I know I sound like a music biz apologist here but I'm not. I just want to see what comes next. Also, I'm sincerely concerned about the demise of an entire industry. I don't even watch TV but the writer's strike here in LA has had an impact on everbody: waiters, actors, web designers, software developers, etc. If the music industry evaporates, then everyone who serves the music industry will be out of work. And after the music industry, it's the movie and TV industries. And after them, it's all digitizable intellectual property. The U.S. manafacturing segment is in decline and we are increasingly a service economy. Let's hope we don't all end up working at Starbucks slinging coffee.

AGP (1x) does 254.3MBps, PCI (v1.0) does 127.2MBps. CD data is 172.4KBps. So PCI does 738 CD streams, while AGP does 1475. At 128Kbps, each stream IO is 192.4KBps duplex, so AGP: 1322 encoder streams, PCI 661 encoder streams. A P4/3GHz does 6GFLOPS, including host apps (OS, etc), while a $115 GeForce FX5900 does 20GFLOPS; a $470 GeForce 6800 Ultra does 40GFLOPS. Even at the slowest AGP and PCI speeds, and the fastest theoretical GPGPU speeds, the GPU is still slower than the bus, and 5 of those cards in PCI would have to do over 100 streams each to fill the bus, even leaving 25% PCI capacity for the host P4. That's over 500 streams for about $1000, which can't be done any other way I know of.

Or the Gmini XS200 for only 189.00 (w/o shipping). 20gb sure beats 1...

That with a third-party operating system, it's not that bad.

2.3" X .7" X 2.9" (5.9cm X 1.9cm X 7.6cm)

I have 2 21" CRTs at 1280x1024 and don't see any reason to upgrade to LCD until I can have higher resolution than that, on both displays. Or I could just get one of those $3000 Apple displays, and have a bigger desktop all in one piece, with no divider down the middle. :-)

These guys could at least try to get the dividers ultra-thin.

Another alternative, which I would go for if I was ultra-rich, would be to use a bunch of projectors, with the images seamlessly merged into one big high-res display. About 12 of them, a 4 x 3 array, would be nice.

Ask and you shall receive. 512MB and less than $100. This one even has a screen. click here

I purchased the Pioneer 810H-S a few months ago. Yes, the TiVo service is great. (All the Anti's in the peanut gallery can leave now...)

I would do it again given that while I am highly tech-savvy, my wife is not. She knows her way around a computer but let's just say I won't be hacking my box any time soon. It's just not worth it to mess with what is working. FYI, I've only HAD to restart my box once due to any sort of technical issue.

As far as what you should buy "now" (vs. waiting indefinitely for the "perfect" device), I highly recommend looking at one of the TV Guide-based HD recorder/DVD burners out there. Even with the $100 rebate on activating the Plus service (I went with the unit lifetime), I'm still out $500-600 for the pleasure. FYI, TiVo equipped DVD burners come with a free Basic service. Off-brand units (LiteOn, et al) can be had for under 4 c-notes (like here or here...) with many of the same functions. Though I can't vouch for their usability. One thing that could really be an advantage would be the ability to edit out the commercials for burning to DVD, which my unit won't do.

Another consideration you had was the noise and I'll just tell you my unit is NOT quiet, thanks to a rear-mounted ~60 or 80mm fan. To keep it in perspective, it IS being used for television and movie watching. So it's not as though you can hear it very much. I wouldn't recommend this unit for a bedroom.

The nifty, but lesser used, features are nice. Like the Photo & Music over the wireless network from my computer. Or the online scheduling. Nice & handy, but those shouldn't be a deal breaker. To me, this new TiVoToGo "feature" falls in this catergory.

I think I covered the bases, but if you have any questions: shoot.

Also consider the iRiver H140. It has a 40GB HD and USB2.0, it plays MP3, WMA, ASF, WAV and OGG, you can use it to read text files (8 line lcd), it has a FM radio and a voice recorder,...

It's listed on Froogle for $356.00.

I got that very card from Sandisk for $122.95 including shipping last week from CompUPlus. So far, it is working very well.

$145 Fanless 600 MHz motherboard and processor
$55 12V Power converter
$25 12V Power adapter
Free (own one), otherwise ~$42 or ~$80 for 512MB, or $178 for 2.2GB if you really want to go nuts.
$20 Compact Flash to IDE adapter
$216 1GB PC2100 RAM for VIA EPIA-M
$60 Aluminium Micro-ATX case; rip out the PSU
$62 80GB Seagate Barracuda IVOptional cause if your like me you store lots of junk... (quietest 5,400/7,200 RPM disk they make), set to aggressively spin down when not accessing your p*rn, mp3, software, etc. Collection:

Total: $583
Completely silent PC: Priceless

Not the fastest server on earth, but faster than my p166 POS running Linux just fine; would completely silent (no fans) or at least it is when you're not accessing your p*rn, mp3, software, etc., collection if you go with the HDD. Only pain in the *** would be using syslinux to boot... and of course I don't know about using a RAM disk to run the system, and CF might take all the writes and rerwites over lord only knows how much use... but it's the start of an idea I've been kicking around...

Would be an interesting project though..

ihp 120 20gb hard drive mp3 juke box with mp3 encoding fm tuner & voice recorder
$30 rebate until 2/28/04 brings it down to $300. Friend picked one up and I'll be snagging one Saturday.

There are a bunch of places doing it retail for around $270-280, minus the $20 rebate currently running gives $250.

Example

The cheapest I've heard of someone getting it was about $230, by combining the rebate with some Amazon offer. That's the thing about Apple stuff - you ALWAYS pay full price, no discounts, no rebates, few offers.

I aggree with this in part. I use Pricewatch not to find a merchant, but to find a "good" price for the component I'm shopping for if I'm unfamiliar with the pricing.

I have purchased from pricewatch listed merchants that I had no dealings with in the past. I have only been burned a few times, and have no REAL horror stories, but it's always a risk.

The statement has been made that most of the best prices you find also carry some outrageously horrible shipping price. This is norally true, but if you are up for the risk, it is easy to check the shipping price without placing an order and can turn out to be very beneficial.

Some of the places I know and trust I frequently see in the best price ranges while browsing on pricewatch.

It's a fine balance between price and shipping charge and your "level of knowledge" of the merchant. You can get burned, you can get hosed, you can get abused, but you will always save money on buying a brand name PC (there may come a time in the future when this is not true, but I've never seen it). Most notably because in a home built PC you get exactly what you want. It is hard to get that form a brand name without paying out the butt for a custom job.

Some good places to shop, if you want to take my word (I have made multiple orders from each):

Newegg
Comp-U-Plus
(You will find yourself saying "The sipping is horrible! Why would he recomend this site?!?!" and all I have to say is, check out the price on the 9GB Ultra 160 SCSI drive from Maxtor/Quantum. They have sneak deals like this everywhere on their site. I don't know how they come in $80-$100 dollars less than everyone else, but it makes the shipping way worth it.)

I could list them all day, but those two are my current favorite. I can find everything I'm looking for right there. I sometimes shop buy.com, if they have the product I want at a reasonable price and they are pulling one of their "no shipping cost" deals, like RIGHT NOW. I used to love egghead.com, especially the auction, but that has gone the way of the dodo.

somewhere else that is great to check is sharkyextreme.com, and look at their cpu price or memory price sections. I have bought from a number of these retailers. They only list people who aren't jerking people around on the deals, and they are accuratly reporting the best prices.

Final note (I swear). Don't shop pricewatch form RAM. You'll get the first 8 pages filled with that nasty generic like CAS1000 crap. More holes than swiss cheese. The price is good enough to sucker some, but nothing beats going straigt to crucial.com for RAM. Good prices, and great quality. I hate cheap RAM. I have coworkers who only buy the stuff, swearing that one bad stick out of 5 with a no return policy is better than shelling out the same price for the 5 for one stick (which is a little exagerated, but at the right place you can honesly find deals that are close). I'll never buy anything less than CAS2, 8ns with a resonable chip density, but do what makes you happy.

A couple of other people suggested tcwo.com, and I tend to agree. After an extensive research done about a week ago, I came up with the following result for my needs. By the way, they don't charge for shipping or tax, so what you see is what you get. on their web site. In the end, when you factor shipping and fax into the equation, tcwo.com beats newegg.com on nearly every single price.

• CPU: Intel P4 2.26 533MHz FSB $279.00
• Case: Antec Perf. Plus1080 430W Beige $146.00
• MOBO: Asus P4B533E i845e DDR S/R/L/U2 (NIC integrated, FireWire integrated) $205.00
• HDD: Maxtor 80GB U133 7200 2MB version $117.00
• RAM: 512MB PC2700 333MHz $116.00
• Monitor: Hansol 19IN/18V 1600X1200 96KHZ 25MM 920D OSD MPRII DYNAFLAT $289.68. provantage.com
• GPU: Visiontek XTASY GeForce4 TI4600 AGP 128MB DDR (VIVO) $392.00
• Sound: Creative Labs Audigy X-Gamer 5.1 $89.00
• DVD: Samsung 16X DVD Retail $59.00
• CDRW: TDK VEloCD 40X/12X/48X EDIDE $133.95. compuplus.com
• Input Logitech Cordless Optical Mse/KB $79.00
• floppy: Beige 1.44 FDD $14.00
• Voice/Fax/Modem : USR v.90 56k voice/fax winmodem $24.00
• FireWire : integrated with MOBO
• NIC : integrated with MOBO

A couple of other people suggested tcwo.com, and I tend to agree. After an extensive research done about a week ago, I came up with the following result for my needs. By the way, they don't charge for shipping or tax, so what you see is what you get. on their web site. In the end, when you factor shipping and fax into the equation, tcwo.com beats newegg.com on nearly every single price.

• CPU: Intel P4 2.26 533MHz FSB $279.00
• Case: Antec Perf. Plus1080 430W Beige $146.00
• MOBO: Asus P4B533E i845e DDR S/R/L/U2 (NIC integrated, FireWire integrated) $205.00
• HDD: Maxtor 80GB U133 7200 2MB version $117.00
• RAM: 512MB PC2700 333MHz $116.00
• Monitor: Hansol 19IN/18V 1600X1200 96KHZ 25MM 920D OSD MPRII DYNAFLAT $289.68. provantage.com
• GPU: Visiontek XTASY GeForce4 TI4600 AGP 128MB DDR (VIVO) $392.00
• Sound: Creative Labs Audigy X-Gamer 5.1 $89.00
• DVD: Samsung 16X DVD Retail $59.00
• CDRW: TDK VEloCD 40X/12X/48X EDIDE $133.95. compuplus.com
• Input Logitech Cordless Optical Mse/KB $79.00
• floppy: Beige 1.44 FDD $14.00
• Voice/Fax/Modem : USR v.90 56k voice/fax winmodem $24.00
• FireWire : integrated with MOBO
• NIC : integrated with MOBO

A couple of other people suggested tcwo.com, and I tend to agree. After an extensive research done about a week ago, I came up with the following result for my needs. By the way, they don't charge for shipping or tax, so what you see is what you get. on their web site. In the end, when you factor shipping and fax into the equation, tcwo.com beats newegg.com on nearly every single price.

• CPU: Intel P4 2.26 533MHz FSB $279.00
• Case: Antec Perf. Plus1080 430W Beige $146.00
• MOBO: Asus P4B533E i845e DDR S/R/L/U2 (NIC integrated, FireWire integrated) $205.00
• HDD: Maxtor 80GB U133 7200 2MB version $117.00
• RAM: 512MB PC2700 333MHz $116.00
• Monitor: Hansol 19IN/18V 1600X1200 96KHZ 25MM 920D OSD MPRII DYNAFLAT $289.68. provantage.com
• GPU: Visiontek XTASY GeForce4 TI4600 AGP 128MB DDR (VIVO) $392.00
• Sound: Creative Labs Audigy X-Gamer 5.1 $89.00
• DVD: Samsung 16X DVD Retail $59.00
• CDRW: TDK VEloCD 40X/12X/48X EDIDE $133.95. compuplus.com
• Input Logitech Cordless Optical Mse/KB $79.00
• floppy: Beige 1.44 FDD $14.00
• Voice/Fax/Modem : USR v.90 56k voice/fax winmodem $24.00
• FireWire : integrated with MOBO
• NIC : integrated with MOBO

Between the two of those site, you should be able to make a decision. Both don't have the greatest selection, but they do have good prices and decent service.

This whole thing over translucent cases is rediculous. We have people in our advertising department who don't care if their machine is a Mac or PC, just as long as it is 'blueberry' and not 'strawberry.'

You can get ATX translucent cases here.

-Kris