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and don't mind spending the money and don't mind looking around a bit, you can/could get the Grand Canyon Display from Liebermann Inc.

They used to reside at http://www.go-l.com/ but that seems to be defunct now. Last I checked they had one that was even bigger (5 1600x1200 monitors in one I believe), but since it's gone, I'm not entirely sure what it was called.

A teaser http://www.primidi.com/2003/09/25.html (that's a Roland link, sadly) for now though ;)

http://www.go-l.com/monitors/index.htm

Available as single screens, but I don't know what the specifics are of the cards required to run them - probably something "huge". :)

Pick your poison - I don't work for Go-L, I just go to their web site and drool occasionally. :)

Seriously, I think either a two or four screen setup would be good for driving games. Driver sits in front of the right (2), or middle-right (4), screen - or left (2), middle-left (4), depending on which country you want to pretend to be driving in, and if you can get the game to position the steering wheel in that position.

Flight games should be an odd number, unless you're in aircraft/spacecraft sim that have the pilot and co-pilot sitting beside each other - is the F111 the only fighter-bomber military airplane that have the pilot and co-pilot sitting side-by-side in their cockpit escape pod? The F111 is an old f-b compared to others flying these days - still flying in Australia at least - but I reckon it has a certain charm. Then again, I live barely a metric click-and-a-half from the RAAF base at Amberley, so I see these birds cruising around a fair bit. :)

FPS? Odd number of screens, probably three being best - forwards, and left-right peripheral vision.

What I'd really like to see available though is a VR headset that can be focused properly. The last one I got a good chance to look at didn't have proper focusing and it made my eyes hurt after only ten minutes of play. Not good.

It is the first... ...personal computer configurable WITHOUT a System Hard Drive with all operating system and program files permanently sitting a on a Flash RamDisk. It operates at the speed of the maximum available memory bandwidth up to 8.5GB/s and is capable of over 150,000 I/O requests per second, with an average of 0.0% CPU utilization.

go-l.com have been selling desktops built on solid state ram disks for at least a couple of years from this site. That's the lowest model too.

Also their laptops included some of the same technology.

Oh, and checkout the monitors... woah.

AND.. no, I don't work for them.

Dude, guy, dude, guy, dude!

Linux, Quad-SLI, four of these screens (optional size of 110" to 200"), and two 7.1 channel surround sound audio cards linked up in software to act like one with 14 satellites and 2 sub-woofers.

That's not "made me jump outta chair" scary computer gaming, that's "holy crap I think I just shit myself and my chest feels awful tight!"

Overkill? Only to the poor bastard playing. >:)

...with "Instant On" technology. Of course, so far everything is vapour-ware, but here's the site:

http://www.go-l.com/home/index.htm

If money is no object, then look at Liebermann.

Oh wait.. This is /. Of course you don't.
I have a 2 monitor, 2 keyboard+mouse, 4 system
setup that is excellent for my cheap-a$$ budget.
But you can go crazy! So here is what to get!

Monitors
Here is what you need.
http://www.go-l.com/monitors/athens/features/index .htm
92 " of LCD goodness.
However, despite the complete bull$h!t all these other hosers are feeding you about LCDs being the greatest thing since pr0n, you still need at least 1 good CRT (I use a SUN 21", but feel free to go larger!)
Because, really, LCD's only look good in their native resolution, and all this talk about them being clearer, and having a better picture, is complete crap if you are doing anything out of "native" resolution, like playing your favorite FPS, even with your super video card, you are prolly not going to run it at your LCD's wacky native res.

Keyboard:
Preference is all that matters here. Soft, Loud,
Quiet, Mush, wired, wireless.

Even with a KVM switch you are prolly gonna need
at least 2 sets. One on your main pc, and one
on the KVM switch.

If you like the clean quick feel of laptop
keyboards, then you will dig the Logitech
Bluetooth Keyboard+mouse (It's like $150)
(note:this'd be for the main sys, since they
don't work through a KVM switch for $h!t)
Personally I hate the feel of this thing and
need a keyboard with a large travel distance
on the keys.
I use a cheap Dell branded Wireless with a
volume knob right on it and love it.

Mouse:
Most wireless mice are kinda slow but you are gonna want at least 1 on your main system, I have heard that the new Logitech Wireless "Laser" mouse is pretty quick, but I have a wired one on my main system, and a wireless on the kvm switch.


Chair(s): The Aeron is a Must and should cost you less than $1000!
I suggest something with a little more to it also. A lazyboy or something like that to switch to throughout the day.

Speakers: Klipsch PC speakers, Worth every penny. (2 sets) Just trust me on this.

ok.. There are my suggestions on the pieces that matter.
The rest is more a function of what you are working with.
-You will need a main system to write code on. So it has to be able to run your text editor of choice and a visual studio if you use one.
-One to comple on. Um.. Has to run the complier.
-A test machine that is the same that the end user/customer will be using.
-A Gaming machine (Just buy one from Alien Ware)
-A Web browsing/media playin machine. (you don't want all that pr0n and spyware on your other machines!)
-A central storage solution with redundancy. (has to be big enough to hold all your music, pr0n, and images of all your Game CD/DVD's images to load with Daemontools, oh.. and your code)
Good luck.. And really, get the klipsch!

I remember when the Cinerama was their largest monitor... wow this company has come a long way. I dreamt about having their monitors two years ago, and I still do today. Can't wait to afford them though; right now they are ridiculously out of my price range right now!

What about the Grand Canyon display?

Money is noobject?

Ok maybe the athens is overkill, maybe just the 4 monitor rig. With enough ram and nice video cards you could have your flowcharts/diagrams on one screen, your debugging on another, your actual code on another, your Gui/IDE tools in another... well you get the point. This is considering you'd actually use those pixels for work, if you have trouble keeping on task this would be the worst thing you could buy.

Paper is for people who like tangible things, as others have listed, if you like paper then a decent HP laser should be on your list.

Still that would look nice on my desk :P

Anyone remember Lieberman's products?

http://www.go-l.com/

This is as vaporwarish as anything that I've ever seen from Leibermann, Inc.. The only differnce? These guys seem to make even more outrageous claims than Leibermann (but didn't set up a phoney "store"). My question is: what the hell this BS is doing on Slashdot? Are the /. editors trolling us with stories, or did they forget to turn their bullshit story filters on after getting out of bed this morning?

Nothing to see here, move along people.

Maybe the guys from http://www.go-l.com/ are at it again.

PuRAM(tm) anyone?

Ah, but if we are going to go this route, I'd rather go for this offering.

(Sorry, the site is rather awful, check out the source, eww)

I use Avant, and there is an option to turn off ActiveX, so that it won't keep asking you about it. I once did this so that music wouldn't play on one site. Not noticing any problems, I then went to http://www.go-l.com/, which has a flash intro. It did not play, and the "Skip Intro" link is in the animation itself, so I could not get to the main page. I finally figured out that ActiveX being disabled was the problem. So no ActiveX = no Flash animations (and no music) in IE & its derivatives. But http://www.avantbrowser.com/ is good.

cherry, mahogany or sycamore wood PC
Stone PC
racing simulator
Motion Simulator
19200 x 2400 Pixel Monitor

Lieberman's go-l site had some absolutely smoking hot boxes. I thought these overclocked hotrods were toys cobbled together by rich highschool and college nerds but here they are, 64bit, liquid cooled, 5 and 10 GB of ram and a host of RAID options ALL OFF THE SHELF. Also, though not strictly needed to run a server, a 92 inch display [4 video cards!].
Oh, you have budget? never mind.
well, gotta go, there's drool all over my keyboard.

Ok, this is just sad. If I suddenly found 8 15" lcd panels in the basement I probably wouldn't say "Hmm.. these'll make mighty fine fake windows" rather make two of these myself.

if you have never worked with Microsoft® Windows XP, it is time you were introduced to the world's most widely used, exciting, and complete operating system ever assembled

Liebermann has been selling 4.2GHz rigs with watercooling for a while now too.

They have P4 boxes overclocked to 4.2GHz and watercooled Athlon64 "4200+" boxes as well, for the AMD equivalent

Liebermann has been selling 4.2GHz rigs with watercooling for a while now too.

They have P4 boxes overclocked to 4.2GHz and watercooled Athlon64 "4200+" boxes as well, for the AMD equivalent

Pu RAM And sorry, they're a California-based company, not Canadian. Drat.

This Canadian retailer: http://www.go-l.com has Windows XP pre-installed on an in-house flash drive. From what I gather, it boots VERY quickly. AND Yes, the LCD panel on the case is quite sexy. Aye.

I dunno. If I had the $$ I'd buy something even better! Everyone could use a 92" flat screen ;)

Nvidia cards can currently do 2 monitors. Same with ATI. Try playing a modern game on a Parhelia -- even with a single monitor (i.e., low res) it's a slideshow. Forget running all 3 monitors at a decent frame rate.

And any (fast) card can support 2, 3, or 4+ monitors in this configuration.

Finally, if you're waiting for Matrox to do something interesting in the graphics market, you'll most likely be waiting a long, long time. I work with that company occasionally, and have good friends there -- they've given up the fight in the 3d/home market and are focusing on embedded systems and CAD workstations. They've lost most of their design talent too, because that work isn't as fun (or profitable.)

Anyway, nice troll, and good luck with that wait :)

You think Lindows' site is bad? Browse a couple pages on THIS site. People are going to copy Apple no matter what. For the most part, all Apple can do is keep innovating and stay ahead of the game

I bet one of these might be able to run it at a semi-usable speed.

Jaysyn

1) See my other comment in this article about why I think routing data from one card back to the other is silly, and it is a huge bottleneck.

Also, they talk about using different cards. Last time I checked, an ATI card wouldn't work with an NVidia driver. Not likely. No, they'd have to be seperate address spaces for it to work in any sane fashion.

I can imagine if they were the SAME card the driver would create some overlapping maps for a special "joined" render mode. It have to be more at hoping there's a large correlation in the data both cards need pre-render, but you're not going to have perfect scaling.

2) Well, okay. But I was not assuming it'd be as simple as multidrop, that'd be kind of retarded. Ultimately it's whether or not the consumer has a way to take adventage of it...

3) I was explaining what was available in the past which filled the role that dual AGP might have... multiple expensive PCI-X cards in server mobo/chipsets. They did exist, they still exist. You can put 4 XVR-1200s in a Sun v880z if you want... gives you 8 1920x1200 3d-accelerated displays. There was an existing solution, so no market pressure existed.

4) No, it's not. Direct3d would have to do some heavy lifting to reinterpret what the games' graphic engine wants to display to what each card needs to know. A lot of it would be shared, but there'd be a need to modifying vertex programs, adjusting vertex/transformation data, syncronizing retrace, etc.

The easy solution would to be to add a feature to a card that lets it pretend the viewport is XY, then only render the subset XZ. Each card gets all the data required for XY, but knows which subset it's supposed to render independantly. But I don't think any chipsets out there support that yet. So it'd have to be added. Hence, dual AGP would not be useful for existing hardware. And again, it'd only work for matched cards.

But that's AGP, anyway. We're talking about PCI-express. And they are not multidrop. So clearly an extension to Direct3D is needed. I think that's what Alienware is going to do. Define the interface. Pressure Microsoft into updating DirectX to support it and create a software emulation layer to present the right data to each display. Then hope the driver authors can implement the subset rendering feature.

They'll solve combining multiple cards' output into one monitor by selling an Alienware monitor with two inputs that displays seamlessly side by side... taking a cue from Liebermann

because it is really no easier to switch between items in "3D" than with the other types of control features (taskbar, "virtual" desktops, etc.). They all require a physical action by the user to move the focus to the wanted item. Having a 3D desktop is just another take on the "virtual" desktop idea.

It really comes down to the question of how you want to deal with partitioning your work space when you have more items than can be effectively displayed at one time. Your best options are to:

1. Increase the screen size (multiple monitors, elumens VisionStation, Liebermann Inc.'s Grand Canyon monitor, etc.
2. Go with the desktop metaphor that has the best "virtual" desktop interaction mechanism, i.e., the one which makes it easiest for you to navigate among your various items.

Now a truly useful and cool interface would be to have the large thin panel display from "The Minority Report" with complete and accurate voice and gesture recognition.

These guys liquid cool and overclock it before shipping. They also f##k with XP so it runs "optimized". Dont know if theyre reputable, but they do make trick gear. Their displays look nice.

falcon northwest

These guys make KILLER boxes and from what ive read are quite reputable. Nothing fancy though, just the best parts available.

also, Alienware. But if you want a really good rig, build it yourself and save a few bucks, plus youll actually know what goes on inside your box. Nothing is more lame than some rich dude that buys the best, but has no clue whats inside. These people are the ones with "two gigahurts hard disks, and five twelve mega processors." Great boxes, stupid people.

Another similar company i've run across lately has been Liebermann which, among other things, is expensive, and a complete knock-off of Apple.

I find the information presented on their site extremely hard to believe. Has anybody here had any experience in dealing with them?

Another one is Liebermann Inc.. Top notch desktops and notebooks with the style and refinement slashdotters always comment that Apple has, without the problem of, oh, incompatibility with software people want to run, such as high end games.

Don't forget quite a few other companies seem to use Clevo too...or at least the same cases...
If you remember Liebermann Computers (a lot of people thought they might be a hoax with some of their products), even their laptops look the same.

Alienware also looks the same.

I thought gateway was Aquiring them too?

Here? Up to 2 160GB 7200rpm drives, optionally in a RAID setup! Other laptops also can have 2 drives, but I couldn't find one with RAID.

ah, you misunderstand. it was the desktops that attracted the rumors of fraud.

the original descriptions were completely off the wall and since their 3.8GHz model appeared around the time that the 3.0GHz p4 hit the shelves, the timing certainly added to it.

i called them myself, but over the course of two weeks, i never reached anyone but voicemail.

this site has much more indepth information about these guys. it would appear that they are not a fake after all, but there is certainly still something fishy about them. god knows you'd never catch me doing business with em.

If you're gonna do it right, do it like this:

Grand Canyon

It's a single monitor...but it's 92" wide. And it can be yours for the low, low price of just $17,499.99!

Ya know, for $8K I could sell you 4 19" displays as well. Why did people think this was fraud? Is it just that there is one VGA cable or something? What is so special about this?

anybody remember these guys? http://www.go-l.com/monitors/index.htm last i recall, they had fraud rumors flying left and right, but then they showed up to some convention or other with an actual setup and made everyone eat their words. i still think a lot of their desktop descriptions sound like complete hogwash, but whatever. that grand canyon display still looks pretty badass.

anybody remember these guys?
http://www.go-l.com/monitors/index.htm
last i recall, they had fraud rumors flying left and right, but then they showed up to some convention or other with an actual setup and made everyone eat their words. i still think a lot of their desktop descriptions sound like complete hogwash, but whatever. that grand canyon display still looks pretty badass.

...or you get something that's nearly identical to an Alienware for far less...
check out Sager notebooks, a good site for them is Pc Torque. This particular company even allows you to order it without an operating system.

You'll notice that the cases are completely identical (Sager and Alienware). A lot of them seem to buy the base components from one company. If you remember Liebermann Computers (a lot of people thought they might be a hoax with some of their products), even their laptops look the same.

You'll get the same specs, and probably practically the same system for far cheaper. Bottom line: Alienware is not a good price/performance ratio, especially for notebooks.

If this isn't an intel apple, then I don't know what is!

All joking aside, If we are talking Internet art (sites/computer/etc)

Couple sites I think have artistic value.

1. 3d modeling should count, and I really like skinshack the 3dmodels people design for counterstrike. It is art after all, but its the downloads not the site. I liked weapon-hacks, the 3d work was amazing, but with CS sites going down, its not up anymore.

2. As a site that looks like art, Go-l.com Looks kinda like apple.com, but the site is pure eye-candy, which is art in my eyes. (And the specs for the machines are eye-candy as well, geek think...)

Could someone compete with AlienWare? What about a super high-performance company that sells already-cooled OCd systems?

Along those lines, I'd probably buy myself a new monitor. :)

I don't to critisize OpenOffice here, but I do have some problems with it. I have a Liebermann Mach 3.8 machine (A P4 clocked at 3.8Ghz with 4Gb of PC3600 DDR RAM) running Debian Unstable with kernel 2.4.23-bk7 compiled with -o3 with Anacoda installed.

I have been waiting for 2 minutes for it to load, then it types very slowly. Normaly I can do around 50-70 WPM on my Microsoft Natural Internet Keyboard, With Debian I'm lucky to get even 10 WPM. The problems don't end there. I won't even go into the stabillity problems, the annoying command line, the broken package mangement and the annoying kde bias (I'm a gnome user).

Meanwhile, my Dell Optiplex with a Pentium II at 400Mhz, running Mandrake 9.2 loads in 20 seconds, if that and its predictive text and autocorrection means I can get around 80-90 WPM and get it all correct.

I'm sorry, but in the current state, Debian is a piece of dog shit. Don't get me wrong, I love linux, I use it exclusiveley for games thanks to WineX and KDE, but as far as getting REAL work done, Mandrake 9.2 is unbeatable.

Now this is inevitably going to be moderated -1, troll or flamebait, but it dosen't change the fact Debian is the WORST distrobution ever

I don't to critisize OpenOffice here, but i do have some problems with it. I have a Liebermann Mach 3.8 machine (A P4 clocked at 3.8Ghz with 4Gb of PC3600 DDR RAM) running Gentoo 1.4 with kernel 2.6.0-test12 compiled with -o4 -funroll-loops and Open Office 1.1.1 installed with Ximian enchancements.

I have been waiting for over 20 seconds for it to load, then it types very slowly. Normaly I can do around 50-70 WPM on my Microsoft Natural Internet Keyboard, With OpenOffice I'm lucky to get even 10 WPM. The problems don't end there. I won't even go into the Stabillity problems, the annoying lightbulb, the broken spell checker and the annoying Gnome bias (I'm a kde user).

Meanwhile, my Dell Optiplex with a Pentium II at 400Mhz, running Windows 2000 loads Microsoft Office 2003 in 2 seconds, and its predictive text and autocorrection means I can get around 80-90 WPM and get it all correct.

I'm sorry, but in the current state, OpenOffice is a piece of dog shit. Don't get me wrong, I love linux, I use it exclusiveley for games thanks to the Optimized gaming kernel and WineX, but as far as getting REAL work done, Windows 2000 is unbeatable.

2048x1536 screens, 7200 RPM drives, 3.2GHz P4EE, all for about $7000 US pesos...