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It's even funnier when you realize what you need to run Vista to even get to the point where it "competes" with a Mac:

• New C2D CPU $200+
• new motherboard to support that CPU under Vista $200+
• 2GB RAM minimum to go with that new motherboard: $180
• new graphics card $300+
• high end copy of Vista $300+

Good lord, and that's only if you're adding things to an existing PC! That's almost $1200 right there! Note I'm not talking about pond muck systems, but a system that actually would allow an apples to apples comparison of features with relatively equal quality parts. I think you'll find that these numbers may even be low when compared to a Dell system that will actually be able to run Aero/Glass well.

Windows Vista Home Premium
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (dual-core - 2.2GHz)
160GB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive
1GB DDR2-533MHz SDRAM (2x512)
LightScribe 16X DVD+/-R/RW SuperMulti drive
Front ports: 15-in-1 memory card reader, USB, headphone port
Integrated NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE
Integrated 7.1 channel sound w/front audio ports
HP keyboard and HP scroller mouse
Microsoft Works 8.0

Then compare that to the prices for a Mini @ $700,

a Macbook ~$1400,

It's even funnier when you realize what you need to run Vista to even get to the point where it "competes" with a Mac:

• New C2D CPU $200+
• new motherboard to support that CPU under Vista $200+
• 2GB RAM minimum to go with that new motherboard: $180
• new graphics card $300+
• high end copy of Vista $300+

Good lord, and that's only if you're adding things to an existing PC! That's almost $1200 right there! Note I'm not talking about pond muck systems, but a system that actually would allow an apples to apples comparison of features with relatively equal quality parts. I think you'll find that these numbers may even be low when compared to a Dell system that will actually be able to run Aero/Glass well.

Windows Vista Home Premium
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (dual-core - 2.2GHz)
160GB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive
1GB DDR2-533MHz SDRAM (2x512)
LightScribe 16X DVD+/-R/RW SuperMulti drive
Front ports: 15-in-1 memory card reader, USB, headphone port
Integrated NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE
Integrated 7.1 channel sound w/front audio ports
HP keyboard and HP scroller mouse
Microsoft Works 8.0

Then compare that to the prices for a Mini @ $700,

a Macbook ~$1400,

Your minor quibble is incorrect: the "PC" in the "PC Load Letter" error stands for "Paper Cassette", not "Paper Cartridge".

I don't know what the original source is of that erroneous piece of information, but I've just corrected Wikipedia's article on the subject (they had "cartridge" also).

Don't believe me? Go to one of the many technical documents at the HP site itself. I don't understand why so many people are getting this wrong. Knowing that it stood for "printer cassette" is one of those pointless, geeky credentials I assumed more Slashdotters had. :-)

What no OpenVMS analysis?

The PC as a out-sized home theater component was probably miscast.

As I remember it, when DEC went belly-up the software assets went to Compaq and the hardware assets eventually to Intel, which buried the Alpha - strong competitor to their processor lines.

Actually a South Korean company, Samsung, was producing Alphas though I don't know if they still are. And until April HP will be selling the Alpha Server. Microway the company I got my Alpha from still sales Workstations & Servers using Alphas. Of course they also offer computers with Intel and AMD cpus.

Go here and click the LIVE CHAT link on the page.

Really?

Find it please and quote it.

I'm sure everyone here will be more than happy about the exact line that states something like:

Adding or removing any software outside of this, including a new operating system officially bones you without any ability of pre-applying vasaline.

In fact, here, let me help you: http://h40059.www4.hp.com/warranty/support/tc.php# 1

Per the warranty agreement, HP states that software is given 'as-is' and they have limited to no support for any software on it.

The only section for free or open source software (which included the OS by the way) states they won't cover support (lets say this together) of the SOFTWARE.

In no way does it say they refuse to help with the HARDWARE.

Personally, I would take HP over the coals for this, because it's evidently AGAINST their warranty unlike what you currently believe.

Maybe you should re-read that warranty of yours. And maybe get glasses.

Q17. Will my warranty be affected if I install a non-HP upgrade/option in my HP product ?
HP warranty extends only to HP products and options. If you install a non-HP option into your HP product and this option then fails, you must contact the supplier for warranty cover on that item.
The warranty on your HP product will not be affected by the installation of a non-HP upgrade/option unless your HP product is damaged as a result of installation and/or operation of a third party option, such damage will not be covered by HP warranty.
If your HP product is not operating correctly, you may be asked to verify that any non-HP option is not responsible for the problem be[sic] uninstalling any such items.

This is unique to NTFS. It is also the only implementation of transactional file systems that can coordinate cleanly with a database. For VMS, you were thinking of RMS Journaling. HP still keeps the manuals on-line. As you can see, RMS/J with recovery unit journaling is "close". Combine RMS with DEC ACMS (a TP monitor) and DEC RDB (a relational DB) and you are very very close to what Transactional NTFS provides "but not quite there". Further, RMS/Journaling was said to be a dog -- and it was very expensive. When you start looking closely, you see many many differences between NTFS and any other attempt. For instance, it work works closely with the Volume Snapshot Service to provide transactionally consistent backups; transactional support for memory-mapped files; and enhancements to the mini-filter framework.

Many years ago, I used a HP Jornada 690

It was possible to touch type if you were very careful, and the touch screen with stylus worked as a mouse.
The drawbacks - Windows CE and too short battery life. You had to save your data and programs on a CF card, because when the battery went, your computer went back to ROM defaults. It had a mic and sound recording, a built-in modem, and a slot for CF card and PCMCIA. ActiveSync sucked, you had to use Outlook for mail to synch, and the mini-Office-apps saved to a non-standard format. The modem, mini-IE and POP3 mail client worked pretty well.

The keyboard and screen can't get much smaller than this and still be useable.

I saw "Netgear EVA8000" and thought of HP's midrange disk array.

I'm actually surprised that Netgear chose the name, since it's blatantly similar to this.

Hans Boehm thinks that it is not only difficult, it is impossible. In fact, he has a paper showing why.

The bottom line is that those who think it is easy or straightforward have been unwittingly creating non-deterministic programs that do unexpected things at seemingly random intervals. These non-deterministic things are usually written off as random crashes, but they are due to the fact that threading cannot be implemented at the library level - it must be built into the language standard and compiler to work correctly.

HP's got ink-based page-wide printing today: priced for the enterprise though. Scaling it down for home and small-office use is under development I am sure. Reliability is a challenge when price is a priority.

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/feature_stories/ 2006/06edgeline.html

Check these out:

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/c++mm/

http://www.artima.com/cppsource/threads_meeting.ht ml

http://www.usenix.com/publications/login/2007-02/o penpdfs/standardsfeb07.pdf

http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1 164.htm

or, just google for "boehm threads c++"

That's still extremely expensive for such a small amount of in. You're looking at 40 cents per millilitre. Gas is only $1.00 per liter, and that's way more complex a substance than ink. They act like they are doing you a favour, but in reality are still ripping you off.

> Yes, Microsoft does innovate sometimes. This is one of those occasions.

Well, DEC VMS had this capability decades ago, so is it really innovation?

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/commercial/decdtm/index. html

If you want Linux drivers, you have to let these companies know:

ASUS
Lenovo
HP
Power Color
HIS Tech
Sapphire

The suggested letter is:

Subject: Product Feedback

To whom it may concern,

I recently purchased one of your [graphics cards || notebooks || desktops] that had contained an ATI GPU. While I realize your products are catered toward Microsoft Windows users as they are your largest consumer base, I wish to use this product with Linux. I had used the [your model number for their product] with the ATI Linux drivers, and while they have improved a great deal recently, I still feel there is much room for improvement. The drivers in their current form run much slower under Linux than Windows, lack support for AIGLX (a visual desktop feature), and other features found within the Windows Catalyst drivers but not Linux.

I do realize you may not officially support Linux and that you have limited control over the development of these drivers, but I would kindly ask that you forward this comment to AMD and that you ask them to channel additional resources to the development of these drivers. In good time you should make Linux support from AMD a requirement. Another step that I would hope to see is including the ATI Linux display drivers on your support/driver CD. As the adoption of Linux on desktops continues to increase, I hope you are able to jointly improve your Linux presence with ATI/AMD.

[your name]

http://www.hp.com/go/debian

HP seems to get it. Why don't you?

We can and have purchased systems from Dell and HP without Windows. We purchase Precision n-series workstations from Dell, which always come with Linux, and XW9000 series workstations from HP. Both arrive with RHEL Linux WS4 when we buy them. Here are a few links:

http://premier.dell.com/portal/catalog/SeriesPage. aspx?categoryid=precn&sysCat=Workstations&pid=6_B_ precn_2147483647&cs=RC956934
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF04a/1245 4-12454-296719-307907-296721.html

As for the non-Precision n Series, FreeDOS isn't there for troubleshooting as such. Dell's diagnostic CDs remove the need for an OS when troubleshooting basic hardware issues. It's simply a token OS bundle to avoid the "naked" PC campaign run by a certain OS vendor, and doesn't require significant support on Dell's end. The result little different from a "naked" PC for an end user, unless they truly wanted a DOS box.

Well if we're going to go that far I'm sure a HP HALO system would be far more appropriate.

Personally i couldn't care less about pre-installation, i recently bought a HP laptop (with WinXP pre-installed) simply because it was certified for Novell SLED 10. (The laptop now happily dualboots between XP and Debian Sarge with all hardware working properly).

Now my main problem was that the only vendor that had linux certified laptops avaliable in my local computer store was HP, thus i didn't really have too many options unless i wanted to order from some small manufacturer online. (i want to test my laptops before buying to make sure the monitor and keyboard are good).

I could ofcourse have bought a laptop from any other vendor and simply have hoped that it would work to 100% or get a list of avaliable laptops from the store (that meets my needs), then go back home and research all of them to see which ones works before finally going back to buy one.... (too time consuming imo).

Thus HP got my money simply by taking the time to get some of their laptops certified.

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/317386- 0-0-0-121.html

there is a list of all hp desktops and notebooks along with what linux distros they are certified for. They only have Certifications for Red Hat, Novell, Turbolinux and Mandriva though. (and very few machines are certified for all versions of all distros), But they are far ahead of dell imo.

On the subject of Palm, its unfortunate that the standalone PDA is fading away.

• HP
• Palm
• Garmin

It matters because soon as a major PC manufacturer starts shipping machines without the Windows tax, we can finally get some real competition in the OS world (how ironic that if I want to try free Linux, I usually have to buy Windows - which comes with my PC - and I can't get a discount if I don't want Windows).

1. Installing a dozen operating systems is a lot of work. It was nice to be able to take advantage of work someone else has already done.
2. If you use continuous integration tools like buildbot to test after every checkin, it's best to leave the systems running all the time. I don't have enough RAM to have a dozen operating systems running on my machine at once. VMware at least has some ability to be started and stopped programmatically, but that's more work and is obviously slower.
3. Virtualization tools don't target other architectures, and emulation tools (like QEMU) are generally slow. Not everything is x86.

I used to use SourceForge's Compile Farm (in addition to HP's Test Drive) to test sigsafe. I need to write assembly for the cross-product of supported processors and operating systems. Without the ability to log in, compile, run my automated tests, and use a debugger, I can't support a platform. This decision means I'll have to drop sparc support. It's a shame - I learned a lot from writing assembly for these different platforms.

You're thinking of testdrive. My friend used to run that site. They have lots of machines you can telnet into and compile on.

To sum it up, there are no complete alternatives for SF Compile Farm
at the moment, and it will be missed a lot.

The suggested alternatives can partially alleviate the problem:
http://www.testdrive.hp.com/
[FreeBSD, HP-UX, HP OpenVMS, HP Tru64 Unix,
Mandriva, Debian, RedHat]

http://www.blastwave.org/ [Solaris]

But a lot of stuff is left out (at least NetBSD, OpenBSD, Darwin,
Linux on POWER, AIX).

Please prove me wrong and provide links for alternatives to the CF for those
systems.

You might want to look into HP's TestDrive program. You get access to wide range of OS's, on x86, Itanium and PA-RISC. Sign up, log in, and play.

IIRC, it's not quite such a range of hardware as SF provided, but it is a wider range of OS's on the hardware they do provide.

Hewlett-Packard provides a program called TestDrive, which allows you to access for free some interesting systems like HP-UX, Tru64 Unix, SuSE Linux, FreeBSD, and even OpenVMS! They also just integrated a Windows 2003 box ;-)
Link: http://www.testdrive.hp.com/

http://www.testdrive.hp.com/
HP dude Bdale Garbee has said HP is delighted if people use testdrive to test their code on different architecture and OS combinations.

HP calls it CIFS Server for HP-UX, but it's really Samba.

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/309906- 0-0-0-121.html

HP has been offering Linux on servers for quite some time.

Nothing says welcome to Linux like go to url h30187.www3.hp.com

Okay then, go to linux.hp.com -- it gets redirected to some godawful URL, but it still gets you to the HP Open Source and Linux page, with links off from there to whatever aspect grabs you.

Go the HP Learning center at http://h30187.www3.hp.com/ and look for the free Linux courses.

Apple have the potential to take on Microsoft in the consumer space. In many ways they have an advantage here in that Apple customers (currently) don't have to worry about security problems like viruses. That may change in the future but right now it's not an issue. There's very little your average Apple consumer can't do on OS X that they explicitly need a Windows PC for.

Leopard server (when it ships) offers a lot more to the SMB crowd that Tiger currently doesn't, and Apple will be able to leverage some of this new strength to gain further traction into the SMB space.

Where Apple stands no chance at all is in the Enterprise. The majority of Enterprise desktops have too much invested in MS workstations, plus Apple is not producing products targeting the Enterprise that would allow them to mass deploy OS X on the desktop with any advantage over MS Windows. Quite the opposite in fact. I'll give you an example. I was at a VMware presentation/seminar very recently and one products I saw demoed was HP's Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. This allows you to have Active Directory controlled logins, a set of application servers and a suite of VMware servers virtualising the desktop OS with HP thin clients at the front end. The thin client selects a virtual desktop OS to connect to based on load balanced availability, which is then personalised at login time with the (served) apps and data that match the users profile. It's pretty impressive stuff.

I'm not under any kind of NDA so I can quote a specific usage case given (in production today) as Prudential, who in the UK have moved their call center ops to somewhere in India. Only the thin client exists in the Indian call centers, all the virtual desktops, data and applications are in datacentres in the UK. Access to data and applications is centrally controlled on a per account basis and can be updated and (forcibly) refreshed at any time.

The benefits to the Pru are obvious. The security of their data (SAN storage) virtual operating system instances, user accounts and app servers remain in their protected UK datacentres. And the thin remote client architecture means that implementing a remote desktop pretty much any where in the world is cheap, quick and flexible. If in future they want to move their call center ops to somewhere else in india, or eastern europe, or China or even back to the UK, they have the flexibility to do this cheaply, without disrupting their datacentres at all.

Is this possible with Apple desktops? No! Hell, you can't even do it with any of the Linux desktop solutions. The only technology in Unix history that could have matched this solution was Project Athena from MIT, and that was officially retired 16 years ago in 1991 !!

My point is that current *ix desktops (including Apple) are all about glitz and glamor and capturing the hearts and minds of the consumer, and the small footprint of academia. In the mean time, MS and its partners are listening to the Enterprise and building innovative solutions like virtualising desktops for remote, cheap, flexible access.

Somebody please mod parent up. To my mind, the people creating the Linux FHS were under too much pressure from vendors (who just needed *something*) toward the end. And of course some Linux vendors still don't follow the resulting doc...

HP created a doc which defines the layout called the 10FS for HP-UX 10.0, which I believe was done to allow them to advertise the system as Unix95 compatible. It may still be on 11i systems (it was on the early ones, as a .ps file, or it's available at http://docs.hp.com/en/5963-8942/index.html). It's interesting reading, if you're only familiar with Linux and would like some insight into how a commercial Unix designed to accommodate large installations was done.

But that doc defines /etc as "Machine-specific configuration and administration databases. No executables invoked by users". In an ideal world, I don't think anything with the executable bit set should live in /etc. My inner Security Guy wants to be able to mount /etc read-only, at least in hardened environments.

To keep this on-topic, I'd like to mention that in at least some environments, hearing /etc/ referred to as 'et cetera' was handy, in that it allowed you to immediately spot the noob. I've never heard old hands pronounce it any way but 'etsee'. But it's function was very much et cetera, not 'extended tool chest' or some other nonsense. It's about how people sort things out. You divide things into major categories, and you're usually left with a small number of things that just seem to defy categorization, unless you want to expand the count of major categories to the point where they're simply no longer major. They go into an 'et cetera' bucket. Duh.

Some meatware systems ship with an empty /commonsense. I'm against it, but what can you do? It's been a standard since forever.

If we insist that a user must make all these choices, then you're absolutely right. There are some other ideas about. One is that applications only have an absolutely minimal set of privileges instead of having access to everything that the user can do. Profiles for common applications can be created and validated by security experts. Users don't have to do much at all, and applications can't do much by default.

No UAC, clueless users remain safe, and even if some malware ends up on their machine, it basically can't do anything. Check out http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2004/HPL-2004-22 1.html for an example of a system like this that runs on XP - it's a bit of a hack, as XPs security model doesn't really permit this sort of thing, but it gives the general idea.

So, is this just a hallucination?

HP has 3 (4?) flavors of UNIX:
http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/prodserv/serve rs.html
HP-UX, Linux, Tru64

They also have UnixWare, though I'm not sure if that's UNIX or an application suite for UNIX, or something that is "kinda like but not really" UNIX.

VMS is not UNIX, so I won't count that.

Given that these are "for sale", I don't think "dead" is quite the appropriate term.
You can drop out Linux since it's not a IBM creation, reducing their number of Unix OSes by 1, but that's still a positive number.

We use all of the above (except UnixWare) and many more where I work, in various places (LARGE organization).

As for IBM, AIX and Linux. I5 might be a Unix OS also, but I'm not familiar with it.
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/i/os/

Also for sale. And AIX is also still used (they have AIX server in various places in the organization where I work also)

WTF? This is the most retarded article I have ever seen. People seem to think it is a problem - amazing.

So, tell me, why then do people dedicate machines to intensive database applications?

So, according to this story, I should be able to run an infinite number of applications on a computer with no adverse effect on performance?

I think this guy needs an HP Superdome to get the performance he expects of a personal computer.

The article mentions that redhat and hp are listed among their partners. i'm not surprised by red hat or informatica (another partner though they aren't mentioned in the article) but i was a little surprised by hp - since they have been trying to get the word out about their own data warehousing and bi stuff. i wonder what that indicates about how they regard this new player.
 
also interesting is the wikipedia article on Michael Stonebraker if you aren't already familiar with him.

>Not programmatically, but from me personally interacting with Explorer to manage my data.

HP Labs's badly underreported Polaris hooked the file open dialog to add the selected file to the sandbox, recognizing that the user was making an implicit grant of authority to the application to work on the file. That's the way it should be done

"This paper gives an overview of Virus Throttling, a new technique to limit the damage caused by fast spreading computer worms and viruses. Rather than preventing a machine becoming infected, the technique prevents the virus propagating further from the infected machine. This addresses the two main ways that viruses cause damage: the spread of the virus will be slowed (less machines infected) and the traffic created by the virus will be reduced(less likely to overload network infrastructure)."

http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2003/HPL-2003-69 .html

This is slightly off-topic, but a while back I got interested in OpenVMS, and VAX stuff in general. (I started doing some research because I thought I was going to get stuck doing some turd polishing of old mainframe software, but it never materialized. But by then I was just interested.) Even in hindsight (given that I think we can agree that UNIX-derivatives seem to have gained traction over VMS), it's extremely difficult to find any sort of rational comparisons of VAX/VMS and its architecture and design paradigms to that of UNIX. Whenever someone asks, the response is basically "don't ask, you don't want to start that." Nobody wants to talk about anything that might invite UNIX/VMS comparisons, because it will cause flamewars -- even though such a discussion, at this point, might be interesting and productive. (There are so many people around who aren't familiar with VMS, or anything other than Windows and UNIX, that any perspective besides those would be worthwhile.)

At any rate, it struck me as interesting, because sometimes it's easy to assume that Windows/Linux (or Windows/Mac, or Windows/something) is the first Great OS War. But people have been getting emotionally attached to operating systems, probably as long as they have existed; and ever since, it has helped quash rational discussion, both through flamewars themselves, but also because of self-censorship that occurs, in order to try and prevent arguments.

HP is advertising their 2600n Printer as Vista Ready and their only promise to supply drivers is " by July 2007"

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/product _detail.do?category=laserjets&a1=Function&storeNam e=storefronts&v1=Print&aoid=32861&product_code=Q64 55A%23ABA&landing=printers&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/D ocument.jsp?objectID=c00808536

HP is advertising their 2600n Printer as Vista Ready and their only promise to supply drivers is " by July 2007"

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/product _detail.do?category=laserjets&a1=Function&storeNam e=storefronts&v1=Print&aoid=32861&product_code=Q64 55A%23ABA&landing=printers&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/D ocument.jsp?objectID=c00808536

And just how do you propose to do that? The average user doesn't install Windows. FedEx delievers his new HP Vista TouchSmart PC , he plugs it in and he is good to go.

For those who still upgrade their BIOS via floppy (which seems to be the last major use), here's how to format your USB key to be bootable: http://h18000.www1.hp.com/support/files/serveropti ons/us/download/23839.html

These things are really x86 PCs, with upwards of 64MB of memory. They're quite capable computers. The Neoware C50 is a desktop Linux system with no hard drive, for $259. The Wyse S50 is another comparable Linux box. Wyse even has a dual screen model. The HP model runs Debian. HP is having a sale - buy 3, get one free.

Neoware even has a thin client notebook computer. It's only useful when it has a WLAN connection. This is promoted as a security feature; if it's stolen, there's not much data in it.

This may be the way Linux comes to the enterprise desktop. To many companies, this is a cheaper and easier conversion than moving to Vista.

International Business Machines the you realize that they in their inventory (of past products) have servers that have been proven By Actual Troops
to be bullet proof (with actual bullets!!)

I don't know about that. But HP has some systems that are bullet proof, with actual videos of the shooting.