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Isn't it just remotely plausible that Linux really isn't going anywhere fast? I see this fanboyism all the time on gaming forums. I've run WinXP on this system for over a year and a half without any real problems because I take care of it. I like that over 90% of software runs on it. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2047517 ,00.aspGaming is going nowhere. Your average user can't touch it because it's too complicated. And as for servers, sure, it's great if you're setting up a little business or gaming server where it's going to be on its own and you can get it set up in a few days, but it's just not an option at the Enterprise level. I'm sure you don't want to hear this, but Windows Server 2003 is far more effective at deployment, management, expansion, and migration. And Linux has nothing approaching the excellence of Sharepoint Portal Server 2003. And they're all getting a full upgrade next year.

If I'm wrong, tell me exactly why. The Microsoft is evil excuse isn't going to work because while they do engage in shady business practices, they are the only ones who are capable of generating an operating system that works on 90% of all systems, has a unified graphics API to ensure games work, keeps IT personnel employed, AND can be used by your average PEBKAC.

As for Mac OS, it will never be very common because Apple will never release a full x86 system version not preinstalled on their own hardware.

I hate Microsoft because they aren't innovators. They piggyback off of others' great ideas and then employ their own special brand of legal/political/economic strongarming/weaseling/nepotism/FUD to gain advantage. Combine that with an incredibly arrogant marketing machine and you the recipe for odiousness.

I mean, can you name a single idea that originated within Redmond (i.e. was not acquired) that went on to become as successful as Microsoft claimed it would be? The Zune is a great example. All indications are it's a laughable piece of shit, and yet here you had that asshole Ballmer popping off for a year beforehand about what a kickass iPod crusher it's going to be. Let's see, more failures: WinFS, MS Bob, UltimateTV... oh damn, there's even a WikiPedia category for this, so I'll save my breath.

Such arrogance leads to complacency, and product quality suffers. All indications are Windows Vista is perhaps the largest clusterfuck ever to grace the commercial software industry. I'll bet a lot of people around here hate Microsoft in advance for the man-years of our lives we're going to lose fixing, deleting, and/or otherwise dealing with that piece of shit in situations where we have no choice: at work, at home, on Mom's computer, wherever. Just like we've been doing since Win 3.1. Cross-apply everything I just said to Internet Explorer, if you've ever designed web sites for a living.

I will give Microsoft credit for one thing: Office is pretty damn good. Whoever runs that division, props. There are some ludicrously half-baked features in there, like master/subdocuments in Word, the whole Word styling engine, all of Frontpage and Infopath, but the core apps are pretty good.

I am surprised nobody mentioned Robson Technology, something proposed by Intel to speed up things including boot times... The technology will be launched sometime in 2007... i suspect middle of 2007... here's the link to some details http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1936630 ,00.asp ... you can also google for it..

I don't see any benchmarks in that article. Here are some,, and they don't make the thing look all that impressive.

The only benefit in this thing, apparently, is that, for games which make too many "select()" polls, there's a faster no-data return. This is really a bug in the game, which ought to be multi-threaded by now. As games are revised for multi-core systems, this problem had better go away. In fact, it probably will go away in Vista, which has a multithreaded network stack.

Also, the fact that you can access the drive normally means you can go into a little folder called .iPod_Control (or something) and do fun things like export your songs and hack the iPod database. The songs aren't on a separate partition or anything, they're just named funny things like SFJI.mp3 and put into weird folders.

Apparently, all PlaysForSure devices also allow "reverse synch" using Windows Media Player 11. Is there a good reason why Apple doesn't allow users to easily transfer songs from the iPod back to the computer without dealing with weird folders and mangled filenames?

This strikes me as so factually inaccurate I can't believe it. FF 2.0 may be more featureful, but it's far faster than FF 1.5 on every piece of hardware I've tried it on. And it has fewer memory leak issues.

Well the people I know who were complaining about the slower performance of FF noticed it with 1.5, not just 2.0. Anyway I found two somewhat recent articles showing a comparison of FF 1.5 to 2.0 as well as comparisons to Opera 9 and IE 7. NONE of them show FF 2.0 being "far faster" than FF 1.5 and for the most part 1.5 is faster or just slower by a marginal amount:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1990855 ,00.asp

This article clearly shows how FF has a pretty significant increase of memory usage after just opening 6 tabs, FF 2.0 nearly doubled its amount of memory usage while FF 1.5 nearly tripled the amount of memory used and yet FF 1.5 still used less memory. Opera actually ended up using LESS memory after opening 6 tabs than it used with no tabs, and it still used less memory overall than FF 2.0 or 1.5 with 6 tabs open.

Here is the next article:
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html#win speed

Here it can be seen that FF 2.0 is slower than FF 1.5 in nearly every category except the cold startup time which did have a significant improvement since it dropped from a rediculous 17.26 seconds to a still very unacceptable 11.64 seconds. Why does it take so damn long to start up a freaking web browser? I mean IE 7 even beats it with a time of 7.8 seconds. Opera 9.01 kills them all with a cold startup time of 2.74 seconds which is as fast or faster than FF 1.5 and 2.0's WARM startup time. When I go to surf the web it is nice to have the browser come up almost instantaneously, I don't want to be waiting around for over 10 seconds, that is just crazy and if I don't have to do it I won't so that is one reason I prefer Opera.

Face it, the only real reason to keep using FF is if you are used to it and the extensions you use with it and/or you seriously care if you can take a look at the source or not (which IMO I don't care about as long as the software performs better). Now that Opera has something to compete with FF's extensions (the widgets), it performs faster and is more stable than FF, and it adheres to the standards better why would you not use it?

Do you have some benchmarks of it against the (newer) Intel GMA 950 (which is the chip the MacBook has)?
Why yes I do! Last one is in German, but numbers are still numbers regardless of language.

Given a choice between the two, I'd actually take the Intel chip because it's got a Free 3D-accelerated driver and the Nvidia one doesn't.
That's like saying "No, I'd rather walk than drive. I'd have to pay for gas."
it's got a Free 3D-accelerated driver
Oh, and the driver is always free. It's the chip itself that cost money.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTI xOCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/11/08/geforce_880 0/
Although the toms article is pretty worthless as most benches are cpu bound with a fx64 cpu.

my favorite has to be this page, 8800 GTX SLI/3.80GHz Core 2 Duo SLI
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2053791 ,00.asp

The new UI requires a DirectX 9-capable card and takes advantage of all the features made possible through DX9. I'm not aware of any internals in Vista that utilize DX10, since it's more orientated at allowing games to run better. Some details about DX10.

http://www.extremetech.com/print_article2/0,1217,a =191008,00.asp

Intel Talks Up Power Savings

I'll point out that the screen isn't all that different. The iPod screen is 320x240, 4:3 aspect ratio, 2.5" diagonal. The Zune screen is is 320x240, 4:3 aspect ratio, 3" diagonal. That extra 1/2" diagonal isn't worth the praise you give it.

That extra 0.5" diagonal translates to 44% more screen space (if my math is correct). The iPod's 2.5" 4:3 screen has an area of 3.0 square inches (1.5" x 2.0"). The Zune's 3.0" diagonal 4:3 screen has an area of 4.32 square inches (1.8" x 2.4"). I haven't visually compared the two screens, but I think 44% more screen space would be a significant improvement over an iPod screen that's too small.

Also, the iPod's screen ranks very low in photo/video quality comparisons like this one: MP3 and Portable Video Player Picture Quality Shoot-Out

I'm still not convinced that watching videos would be a good experience on a 3" screen, but I think photo viewing should be significantly better on the Zune than the iPod.

I think you mean: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2021888 ,00.asp

n00b!

Well that linking format didnt' work: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2021888 ,00.asp

"First of all, WMA has been shown to be the worst (or second worst) CODEC in all the audio tests that have been done." Yeah right. You're not biased are you? http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1561918 ,00.asp Check out the test. Conclusion? WMA9 beats not only mp3, but also Ogg and AAC. Now if you want to provide links to other such tests feel free to do so. Otherwise shut your biased mouth, okay?

At the low end, the E6300 at $190 beat the $187 AMD 4200+ in all tests, and also beat the $253 4600+ in 3 out of 4 (with the 4th test extremely close).

At the midrange, the $360 E6600 beats even the $825 FX-62 in all 4 tests. That is bad, bad, bad for AMD.

At the high end, AMD simply has no answer to the $559 E6700 or the $1075 X6800.

Granted, none of their graphs shows the ScienceMark. But overall the results seem pretty one-sided to me. I'm surprised AMD hasn't dropped prices more.

At the low end, the E6300 at $190 beat the $187 AMD 4200+ in all tests, and also beat the $253 4600+ in 3 out of 4 (with the 4th test extremely close).

At the midrange, the $360 E6600 beats even the $825 FX-62 in all 4 tests. That is bad, bad, bad for AMD.

At the high end, AMD simply has no answer to the $559 E6700 or the $1075 X6800.

Granted, none of their graphs shows the ScienceMark. But overall the results seem pretty one-sided to me. I'm surprised AMD hasn't dropped prices more.

At the low end, the E6300 at $190 beat the $187 AMD 4200+ in all tests, and also beat the $253 4600+ in 3 out of 4 (with the 4th test extremely close).

At the midrange, the $360 E6600 beats even the $825 FX-62 in all 4 tests. That is bad, bad, bad for AMD.

At the high end, AMD simply has no answer to the $559 E6700 or the $1075 X6800.

Granted, none of their graphs shows the ScienceMark. But overall the results seem pretty one-sided to me. I'm surprised AMD hasn't dropped prices more.

Printer-friendly version for those who...

Umm... whoops.

Not a very obvious link, but it's there: printer friendly version

This is why I love sites that have "print view":

http://www.extremetech.com/print_article2/0,1217,a =187287,00.asp

Whole article, one page, no ads, only 1 image (site logo).

Firefox, adblock and the "printable view" of articles are the only things that make websites livable these days. I pity anyone not using FF & Adblock; those are the bare necessities.

And yeah, the "article" is still full of shit, but at least it doesn't assault you with ads in the print layout.

I'm referring to Extreme Tech, who doltishly puts two or three paragraphs per page in a fifty page article that can fit in a single page and be read in a minute or two, if only slashdot would link the fucking printable version.

Am I the only one who hates this greedy advertising shit that, like DRM, only offends and inconvieniences the user? There is no need whatever for a fine site like slashdot to go along with this crap.

Now to the actual FA and its "myths".

Myth: The Playstation 3 will Fail
I think the author's right and hope he's wrong. I hate Sony with a passion and wish they would die a horrible death, with all their stockholders reduced to abject poverty.

Yeah, I'm the guy who got bitten by their rootkit.

PC Games are Doomed
Well, they are and have been since 1993!

You Need a $500 Graphics Card
Er, "These range in price from $250 - $400". Ok, you need a $400 card. Still too Goddamned expensive.

Console Games are for Twitch Gamers
Of COURSE they are. So are PC games. They're not ONLY for twitch gamers, of course.

Handheld Games are for Kids
Well, they are. They're for adults, too.

Console Games are Too Simple
Ok, I'll buy that; it's a myth. Or I suck.

PC Games are Too Complicated
Well, they are. Some are also too simple.

PC Copy Protection is Too Onerous
OK, this guy lost me completely here. ANY copy protection is too onerous! There was a slashdot comment in a thread just today where a guy was pissed at some game company because of its intrusive DRM that wanted an internet connection to play single player. THIS IS TOO ONEROUS. I suppose the author doesn't conesider a root canal to bee too onerous, either. You kids will put up with anything your corporate masters throw at you, won't you? We killed game copy protection back in the 80s by not buying copy protected games, now listen to you dumbass punks. Shit.

Games are Too Violent
Well, GTA is too violent for a five year old. They're too violent for that Jackass Thompson. Me, I like violent games; the more violent the better. YMMV.

I'm Embarrassed About Gaming
It's a myth that the author, who I never heard of, is embarrassed by gaming? Or does he mean everybody is embarrassed by gaming? I'm sure some people are.

Summary: nonsense designed to serve advertising to suckers. Nothing to see here, move along.

Right beneath this article on my front page is one called Ten Gaming Myths Debunked. Myth #1: "The PlayStation 3 Will Fail"

The real winners in the Sony-Nintendo-Microsoft battle for console supremacy: on-line advertisers and opinion columnists.

I'm Embarrassed About Gaming
This is not so much a public myth, as a private one. I've spoken with large numbers of people over the years who confess to me that they're gamers, too, as if we're part of some giant Gamer's Anonymous group trying to break the habit.

It's less about whether the PS3 will be dominating like the PS2 and more about the ridiculous doom and gloom on /. and other gaming blogs.

Personally I think his selection wasn't too bad, I'm especially sick of the "PC games are dead" chant we get at the beginning of every console cycle.

Btw. here's the print version on one page instead of 324

http://www.extremetech.com/print_article2/0,1217,a =187287,00.asp

that page just sucks otherwise.

I was going to try to get free karma with a printer friendly version ... but it automatically redirect ... booooooo

At the end of the day, the worth of the Radeon X1950 XTX comes down to this: Does the improved memory bandwidth you get from GDDR4 really make a difference if you don't change anything else about the card? Unfortunately, the answer is no. In most games, at high resolutions like 1600x1200 with 4x antialiasing and 8x anisotropic filtering applied, the speed goes up by a modest 5% to 8% over the Radeon X1900 XTX. If that's all you get from an almost 30% increase in memory bandwidth, color us unimpressed.

X1950 XTX review

- http://www.madshrimps.be/gotoartik.php?articID=482
- http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?articl eid=861&cid=1
- http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6538
- http://www.mvktech.net/content/view/3357/48/
- http://pcper.com/article.php?aid=287
- http://uk.theinquirer.net/?article=33872
- http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/08/23/review_ati _radeon_x1950_xtx/
- http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/X1950XTX
- http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=954
- http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q3/radeon-x1950x tx/index.x?pg=1
- http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2007324 ,00.asp
- http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/08/23/ati_releases_rad eon_x1950/
- http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/375/
- http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/131
- http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=2 020&cid=3&pg=1
- http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_radeon_x19 50_xtx_performance/
- http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/X1950XTXreview /

up to date list: http://www.madshrimps.be/forums/showthread.php?s=& threadid=26526

In this review Extremetech complains about having Konqueror but NOT having Firefox.
But they CAN simply install it with apt-get, as noted by the poster above.

In their linked review of Xandros http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1996405 ,00.asp/, however, they complain about NOT having Konqueror. But they CAN'T install it. . .at all. . .and then they call Xandros better in the Ark review.

Hey Extremetech, make up your mind!!!

He says that he is dissapointed in Konqueror as the default browser (which by the way I haven't had any problem with, ever, but I still use opera) but in the summary he says this:

Price: Free download.
Pros: Easy to install; KDE desktop; good software selection.
Cons: Uses Firefox as the default browser; feels like it needs a little fine tuning to make it as slick as Xandros; didn't automatically install the right drivers for my nvidia card.
Summary: A decent Linux distro that provides a fair amount of useful software, Ark Linux lags behind Ubuntu and Xandros in polish. It seems to be trying to find its place under the sun.

(emphasis added)
This article wasn't too particularly useful, and even contradicted itself! Well, maybe next time.

Here: http://www.extremetech.com/print_article2/0,1217,a =186517,00.asp

Have a look at this series of articles from Extreme Tech.
Basically, the quality of the LCoS is now on-par with CRT - even exceeding it on some points.

FYI: A federal judge has overruled this with a temporary injunction while the case is reviewed.

See this.

"In a sudden twist of events, a Washington D.C. court has allowed the continued use of DISH PVRs, sold by EchoStar Communications."

Here, on ExtremeTech

As a starting point, I'd like to suggest designers read, "A Whole New Mind" by Daniel Pink, and check out some articles at: http://www.danpink.com/. Furthermore, I suggest visiting IDEO http://www.ideo.com/ideo.asp. Pay special attention to their "method card" deck. Lastly (for purposes of this discussion) I suggest visiting http://www.mcdonough.com/# . The common thread in all this is DESIGN. William McDonough says that the need for regulation indicates a failure in design.

The design of the product goes 'way beyond just cosmetics. There is only so much you can do with an enclosure for a PC board, but there is LOTS you can do with the system as a whole. Case modding is just a place to start. Functional design improvements are being made in everything from the input devices ( http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1112012 ,00.asp http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/input/ ) to really innovative interfaces ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_project http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/).

The IDEO method cards are different from the "Creative Whack Pack" or "Thinkertoys" cards, in that they redefine the product design domain. The jobs of the future are going to be design jobs requiring both high creativity and high technical ability. If someone in India or China can do your job as well and cheaper than you, or if a computer can do your job better and faster, your job is obsolete.

Hi everyone.
I just read a review on Inetl new C2 chips and from the specs, it apparently is faster by almost an order of magnitude than anything AMD has (im not a intel fan boy as everthing i have right now runs AMD)
Anyway, the most interesting thing about these C2 chisp is how much cooler they are at the same time. I've read on article that said they were able to run them fanless.

anyway, heres another articles http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1989036 ,00.asp

I think i might be upgrading to these when they come out in numbers

AMD drank the Kool-Aid some time ago.

It all depends on what is the role of your PC. I used to have somewhere a list of services grouped by profiles like: gaming, workstation, networked etc.. Each profile had diferent services running. For example a workstation needs most of the services while a gaming PC will benefit from the least amount of background processes
Hacking Windows XP: Speed Up Your Boot
You can also use autoruns from systernals (is still online!!11ONE??) to check your startup services/applications

Probably that article page was changed after you read it; now it says Memory Usage in MB Loading Six Tabs.
What I find strange is that it claims that Opera would consume 53 Mb of RAM with no web page, and 52MB of RAM with 6 web pages shown!

Why? This is a comparison of features, not stability, compliance or even speed. Betas are supposed to be feature complete.

True, except that this is a comparison of features, stability, compliance, and speed.

At least that is what I got out of reading TFA.

Why? This is a comparison of features, not stability, compliance or even speed. Betas are supposed to be feature complete.

True, except that this is a comparison of features, stability, compliance, and speed.

At least that is what I got out of reading TFA.

Why? This is a comparison of features, not stability, compliance or even speed. Betas are supposed to be feature complete.

True, except that this is a comparison of features, stability, compliance, and speed.

At least that is what I got out of reading TFA.

Why? This is a comparison of features, not stability, compliance or even speed. Betas are supposed to be feature complete.

True, except that this is a comparison of features, stability, compliance, and speed.

At least that is what I got out of reading TFA.

Here's a working link.

Entire report on one page.

Submitter did a nice summary. BTW, another table shows memory usage, and looks like Firefox Beta 2 comes in a bit heavier (compared to 1.5.04) at least for startup and an initial load of six tabs - unknown if the memory leaks that cause this to skyrocket when viewing dynamic sites (such as this) are fixed.

Also talks about the anti-phishing protection, but says they were unable to have this engage, so maybe it's not functional yet? That seems to be an area where more inovation could be done.

According to this page the scientific benchmark offers a mixed result. Although ScienceMark seems to be well-designed it's Windows-only and closed source. I'd be interested to see some open, Linux-oriented benchmarks. I wrote a very simple one called obench.m which uses Octave running off a live Quantian 0.7.9.1 CD, it might be interesting to get some numbers from it (I have timed some Pentiums, Athlons and Opterons).

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1989036 ,00.asp

This article goes into all the choices for donating--and even getting paid for--your spare cycles--Volunteer Computer GridsBeyond SETI@home

Here's a link to the "for print" version which only has a couple of ads and saves you having to click through multiple pages.