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Also DVD/CD are slow enough that they work pretty well over USB. They're powered by USB (no wall wart), and reasonably recent laptops can boot from them too. If you want to watch a DVD on the plane, it also saves battery life to copy it to the HDD before you leave instead of bringing the media along.

You're picking Intel's most expensive chip to try and prove a point, and failing horribly. Intel has a $279.99 offering on Newegg that beats the living shit out of the AMD processor for things normal people do on their home computers, and is damn close in the rest. Oh, and it uses far less power both at idle and at load. (Tom's didn't have power numbers for the i7-860).

Now, you might have a point about code "not being optimized for AMD blahblahblah", but here's a newsflash: Not only do the testing suites use libraries compiled with the Intel compiler, but so do nearly all the programs a home user runs on a normal basis. That means the argument is moot, because your average person doesn't give a shit what compiler Microsoft decided to use, and the ones who do can't just go "oh, let's use the AMD-optimized binaries!" - Intel performs better for the same price and lower wattage on real-world applications for this reason, period.

Let's take this to an individual chip level, so my point comes through crystal clear.

Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition Bloomfield 3.33GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor BX80601975 - $1,039.99

AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Thuban 3.2GHz 6 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Six-Core Desktop Processor HDT90ZFBGRBOX $229.00

This is a direct comparison of the "best" Intel desktop chip on newegg.com and the "best" AMD desktop chip on newegg.com. I didn't research this too terribly hard, so I may have missed some uber something or other, but I feel fairly confident that these chips are the best in class for the same class, using newegg as my only source.

I've looked up some reviews and benchmarks online, (here and here - I wanted to find someone who had reviewed both, in order to get a "fair" reviewing process) and I can't claim the AMD is faster, although I suspect that a "fair" test (using software that isn't compiled using anything from Intel (who was proven to have rigged their compiler to give themselves a performance advantage against any other chip manufacturer), and using as many cores simultaneously as is possible) would tell a slightly different story.

Silliness and rumor-mongering aside...

Yes, the Intel chip is slightly faster in single-threaded applications, and even (surprisingly) in the multi-threaded apps.

On the other hand... spending four times the money for a gain of approximately 3-4 fps seems kinda silly.

Oh, and that garbage you're spewing about power consumption (heat output) is an outright fabrication. If you're going to lie, do it in a fashion that is less likely to be easily disproven. To be perfectly clear, the "under load" numbers are similar (of course), but the AMD chips idle with a much lower power consumption. In other words, the Intel chips actually put off more heat than the AMD chips. Yes, I just called you a liar. To your face.

TL;DR:
On the one hand, the Intel chip is slightly better (for many values of "better").
On the other hand, it's 4x the price for roughly 1.04x the performance.

I don't know how you arrived at your pricing figures unless you went with sale prices TBH

I went to newegg.com, and looked at the current pricing. If they were sales, I didn't notice. My current response (the one you're reading, since I appear to have to spell everything out to you twice) is not based on any sale pricing to my knowledge.

Let's take this to an individual chip level, so my point comes through crystal clear.

Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition Bloomfield 3.33GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor BX80601975 - $1,039.99

AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Thuban 3.2GHz 6 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Six-Core Desktop Processor HDT90ZFBGRBOX $229.00

This is a direct comparison of the "best" Intel desktop chip on newegg.com and the "best" AMD desktop chip on newegg.com. I didn't research this too terribly hard, so I may have missed some uber something or other, but I feel fairly confident that these chips are the best in class for the same class, using newegg as my only source.

I've looked up some reviews and benchmarks online, (here and here - I wanted to find someone who had reviewed both, in order to get a "fair" reviewing process) and I can't claim the AMD is faster, although I suspect that a "fair" test (using software that isn't compiled using anything from Intel (who was proven to have rigged their compiler to give themselves a performance advantage against any other chip manufacturer), and using as many cores simultaneously as is possible) would tell a slightly different story.

Silliness and rumor-mongering aside...

Yes, the Intel chip is slightly faster in single-threaded applications, and even (surprisingly) in the multi-threaded apps.

On the other hand... spending four times the money for a gain of approximately 3-4 fps seems kinda silly.

Oh, and that garbage you're spewing about power consumption (heat output) is an outright fabrication. If you're going to lie, do it in a fashion that is less likely to be easily disproven. To be perfectly clear, the "under load" numbers are similar (of course), but the AMD chips idle with a much lower power consumption. In other words, the Intel chips actually put off more heat than the AMD chips. Yes, I just called you a liar. To your face.

TL;DR:
On the one hand, the Intel chip is slightly better (for many values of "better").
On the other hand, it's 4x the price for roughly 1.04x the performance.

I don't know how you arrived at your pricing figures unless you went with sale prices TBH

I went to newegg.com, and looked at the current pricing. If they were sales, I didn't notice. My current response (the one you're reading, since I appear to have to spell everything out to you twice) is not based on any sale pricing to my knowledge.

You really do have to consider that the performance per watt in the era since the P4 has been stellar from Intel, while AMD hasn't quite been up to par in that department. The roles really have reversed in the past few years in regards to wattage, with Intel also keeping the raw performance crown on the high end.

On the other hand, for the price of the highest-end Intel chip (and a motherboard to run it on) (also note: board and chip ONLY; no OS, no drives, no case, no nothing), I can practically build two high-end AMD systems (If Newegg will sell me a pre-built system for just under a grand, I'm willing to bet I can build it myself for $800 or less - especially without the MSFT tax).

You really do have to consider that the performance per watt in the era since the P4 has been stellar from Intel, while AMD hasn't quite been up to par in that department. The roles really have reversed in the past few years in regards to wattage, with Intel also keeping the raw performance crown on the high end.

On the other hand, for the price of the highest-end Intel chip (and a motherboard to run it on) (also note: board and chip ONLY; no OS, no drives, no case, no nothing), I can practically build two high-end AMD systems (If Newegg will sell me a pre-built system for just under a grand, I'm willing to bet I can build it myself for $800 or less - especially without the MSFT tax).

You really do have to consider that the performance per watt in the era since the P4 has been stellar from Intel, while AMD hasn't quite been up to par in that department. The roles really have reversed in the past few years in regards to wattage, with Intel also keeping the raw performance crown on the high end.

On the other hand, for the price of the highest-end Intel chip (and a motherboard to run it on) (also note: board and chip ONLY; no OS, no drives, no case, no nothing), I can practically build two high-end AMD systems (If Newegg will sell me a pre-built system for just under a grand, I'm willing to bet I can build it myself for $800 or less - especially without the MSFT tax).

How do you shoplift $75,000 and not have it be armed robbery?

Setting jewelry aside for the moment, you could probably fit 45 of these (not in retail boxes) in your trenchcoat. Granted, I don't know a single store that carries them that doesn't keep them away from the hands of the shopping public, but it's not impossible. Mostly, I'm thinking it'd be applied to cases involving jewelry or antiques/rare collectibles (stamps, coins, etc).

You can get 64-gig flash sticks. My main concern would be vandalism. Someone will eventually see the connector sticking out and smash it off with a brick, just because they can. I imagine this is why there is no cord, but even just the connector would still be broken eventually.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139147 256 GB. schweet.

Seriously..? Are you smoking crack? Plenty of motherboards still have one or two PCI slots on them to make use of some older hardware.

Here are a few examples for you... as in, nearly 200 examples: Motherboards w/ PCI slots

Eventually, I plan on getting one of these guys, or some other cordless trackball mouse (weirdly there's only two on Newegg, and that one's the cheaper one - I guess there's not much demand for them?).

When I'm not fighting on Slashdot, I find that I spend a significant amount of time just foraging on the Internet or doing other mouse-only things; there's no reason for me to have my arm out at an unnatural angle when I could just leave it in my lap, and normally I only need a scroll wheel and enough accuracy to click a link. The best part is that I'll be able to leave my normal mouse plugged in - so when it's time to do precision work, I can just put the trackball on top of my computer or somewhere else where it's not in the way and switch over.

But no matter what size flat panel you get these days, their maximum resolution is 1080P, 1920X1080, which is too damned short.

What are you talking about? There are plenty of LCD displays that have a vertical resolution of 1200 or better. Here's a few from Newegg.

Uhhh...you DO know Lenovo makes Netbook Thinkpads with dual cores, Radeon GPUs, and Win 7 Pro for $550 right? You don't have to take a shitty Atom CPU anymore, so I think you may be judging by the garbage you are seeing at the wally world. And any "student" who blows $1000+ on a fricking Macbook instead of simply dual booting fricking Linux, which Ubuntu even holds you hand to set it up, either has more money than brains or is just a plain dumbass, sorry. Hell you can buy twice the hardware at half the price and pocket the difference! And if all they are needing is Linux? well it ain't exactly hard to install now anymore. hell for $900 I can get a bloody quad core laptop. Do we even want to know the price for that much power from apple? Hell does Apple even sell bigger than a dual in a laptop?

Uhhh...you DO know Lenovo makes Netbook Thinkpads with dual cores, Radeon GPUs, and Win 7 Pro for $550 right? You don't have to take a shitty Atom CPU anymore, so I think you may be judging by the garbage you are seeing at the wally world. And any "student" who blows $1000+ on a fricking Macbook instead of simply dual booting fricking Linux, which Ubuntu even holds you hand to set it up, either has more money than brains or is just a plain dumbass, sorry. Hell you can buy twice the hardware at half the price and pocket the difference! And if all they are needing is Linux? well it ain't exactly hard to install now anymore. hell for $900 I can get a bloody quad core laptop. Do we even want to know the price for that much power from apple? Hell does Apple even sell bigger than a dual in a laptop?

With the finite number of read/writes to flash memory, I don't want to be forced to part with a computer because it uses a proprietary flash storage system or be forced to purchase a proprietary replacement storage module.

WTF?

A consumer hard drive you buy today, desktop or laptop, will have a bog-standard SATA port with a bog-standard size. With the possible exception of Apple, NO ONE bothers trying to make those darn things proprietary. They just slap their "use HP spare # XX-XXXXX" on a standard part, and are done with it.

I wouldn't want one in my TiVo, but if the lowest price for a flash SSD was anything close to a classic HDD, I'd make that my system & app partition in a heartbeat. As it is, their entry level is twice as much for half the space.

SSD's on Newegg start over $70: http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=636&Tpk=Flash%20SSD&Order=PRICE

Desktop HDD's start at $35: http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=14&name=Internal-Hard-Drives&Order=PRICE

With the finite number of read/writes to flash memory, I don't want to be forced to part with a computer because it uses a proprietary flash storage system or be forced to purchase a proprietary replacement storage module.

WTF?

A consumer hard drive you buy today, desktop or laptop, will have a bog-standard SATA port with a bog-standard size. With the possible exception of Apple, NO ONE bothers trying to make those darn things proprietary. They just slap their "use HP spare # XX-XXXXX" on a standard part, and are done with it.

I wouldn't want one in my TiVo, but if the lowest price for a flash SSD was anything close to a classic HDD, I'd make that my system & app partition in a heartbeat. As it is, their entry level is twice as much for half the space.

SSD's on Newegg start over $70: http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=636&Tpk=Flash%20SSD&Order=PRICE

Desktop HDD's start at $35: http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=14&name=Internal-Hard-Drives&Order=PRICE

OK, wait a second. No, just no. USB came out in 1996, and the iMac in 1998. PCs didn't have USB "for a few years". USB stuff just happened to start coming out because there were enough computers with USB. I remember 1998, pal. I bought a SCSI scanner then, USB scanners were still unheard of, where I live (Argentina) anyway. And even today, it's still hard to find an USB keyboard here. I was surprised that a local computer store had about 10 different PS/2 keyboards and just one USB. Most motherboards still come with PS2 and serial anyway.

Motherboards DON'T have "that damn space" bullshit you said. For the last 15 years it's been built into a single chip (the super IO), and the ATX connector space has lots of space for the legacy ports. And manufacturers. And here's one you might like: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121388&Tpk=dp55wb

What's next? Ditching Java apps just because Apple deprecated their JVM? EWWWW legacy? deprecated? Sounds to me like OLD. Who wants old stuff in their shiny new computer? Not me, I have a Mac. It's not a computer, it's a lifestyle, a fashion statement.

Try to stay away out of the RDF, buddy.

Are you sure? Dell, New Egg and many others still seems to sell it. I'm not sure why it isn't dead yet, but it should be. It's like the guy in Monty Python's Holy Grail, "I'm not dead yet."

I'm not disagreeing that SSD offers an unattractive price/performance tradeoff for the consumer, but where are you coming up with these price figures?

640GB laptop hard drives seem to be going for about $85.

$85*6=510

So we have $3118 left over. Call it $3120 for easy computation... Where are you getting a Core i5 laptop with a 17" display and 1-TB hard drive for $520? The closest I can find is Dell's Inspiron 17 for $820, and that one only has 500MB storage in it, not the terabyte you'd need to build up your LAN-in-a-shopping-bag (it averages out to 1.6 TB per machine).

Manufacturers get nice bulk-ordering discounts, of course, but given that a (marginally slower) Core i5 is selling for ~$260 and a 1 TB Scorpio Blue is selling for ~$120... something tells me you're not quite comparing apples to the Apple.

I'm not disagreeing that SSD offers an unattractive price/performance tradeoff for the consumer, but where are you coming up with these price figures?

640GB laptop hard drives seem to be going for about $85.

$85*6=510

So we have $3118 left over. Call it $3120 for easy computation... Where are you getting a Core i5 laptop with a 17" display and 1-TB hard drive for $520? The closest I can find is Dell's Inspiron 17 for $820, and that one only has 500MB storage in it, not the terabyte you'd need to build up your LAN-in-a-shopping-bag (it averages out to 1.6 TB per machine).

Manufacturers get nice bulk-ordering discounts, of course, but given that a (marginally slower) Core i5 is selling for ~$260 and a 1 TB Scorpio Blue is selling for ~$120... something tells me you're not quite comparing apples to the Apple.

SSDs are still not a good value for their MBTF (Mean Time Between Failures). I predict the hybrid harddrive/SSD combo drive will be the near term winner (assuming laptops don't all get as small as the Air). I have had several friends recently purchase and install hybrid drives in their laptops and they gave it a "thumbs up" for performance but are very paranoid about failure, so they backup much more frequently. Additionally, these drives spin down quite regularly which increase battery life, however there are concerns about the duty cycle of spinup/spindown before failure.

Example Hybrid Drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148591&cm_re=hybrid_hard_drive-_-22-148-591-_-Product

140 years isn't a good enough value for you? ... velociraptors have only about 15% more projected longevity....

SSDs are still not a good value for their MBTF (Mean Time Between Failures). I predict the hybrid harddrive/SSD combo drive will be the near term winner (assuming laptops don't all get as small as the Air). I have had several friends recently purchase and install hybrid drives in their laptops and they gave it a "thumbs up" for performance but are very paranoid about failure, so they backup much more frequently. Additionally, these drives spin down quite regularly which increase battery life, however there are concerns about the duty cycle of spinup/spindown before failure. Example Hybrid Drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148591&cm_re=hybrid_hard_drive-_-22-148-591-_-Product

Yup Go with VirtualBox. If performance is a worry solve it with hardware.
The new AMD G34 Opterons with 8 cores are under $300 and you can get a mother board for it for not much more. They will support high end video cards as well.
Before Anyone gets too bent over the price of hardware I am suggesting it is about the same as the price of the software he is using.
Also load it with RAM and you will be good to go.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182240
And for the CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819105266
The price on the new G34 CPUs are so low now that building a workstation class machine is getting down right affordable.

Yup Go with VirtualBox. If performance is a worry solve it with hardware.
The new AMD G34 Opterons with 8 cores are under $300 and you can get a mother board for it for not much more. They will support high end video cards as well.
Before Anyone gets too bent over the price of hardware I am suggesting it is about the same as the price of the software he is using.
Also load it with RAM and you will be good to go.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182240
And for the CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819105266
The price on the new G34 CPUs are so low now that building a workstation class machine is getting down right affordable.

...Acronis. You can use it to image a machine, so that you can easily restore it to a known working state again later, even on different hardware. I'm a big fan of trayless disk caddies too, so you could have something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817994076 that would let you swap disks in and out easily. I like it because not only can I upgrade my machine on a new disk with no chance of thrashing my currently working machine, but I can also use the additional tray slots for imaging my machine as well.

That said, I've used an older version of photoshop in a virtual machine running under ubuntu with VMPlayer and it worked great. Virtualbox is an apt-get away and so far has been working great running Windows 7, but I haven't tried running Photoshop on it.

I keep a (quite old, by this point) USB docking station at work.

I just set the laptop down on my desk, plug in a single USB cable, and the following things come up and start working:

10/100 Ethernet
RS-232 serial
Parallel
PS/2 mouse/keyboard ports
2 more USB 2.0 ports. One of these connects a flatbed scanner, while the other is used for audio.

It works fine (especially since the office LAN is still 100mbps). The Ethernet is roughly as fast as that which is built into my laptop, and handily beats the snot out of 802.11-anything.

If Gig-E is all you want, then just buy that by itself.

It ain't as snazzy as something that sits on a PCI Express bus, but sometimes you gotta deal with what you got.

*shrug*

Yeah no shit. I was the first in line ready to rip Windows 7 a new one because I fricking HATED Vista, I hated it so damned bad I gave my disc away and last I heard it was still being passed around like a bad fruitcake. But then I got 7 and it was just...damn. How in the hell did they go from Vista, which frankly was sluggish on a dual core with 2Gb of RAM, to an OS that ran great on a 2.4Ghz P4 with the same? And why in hell didn't they hire THAT team to do Vista? Oh and BTW you do NOT have to turn off Aero if you don't want to, just slap in a cheap AGP card and it purrs like a kitten. I have a customer with a nice Cedar Mill P4 with 4Gb of RAM that wanted the Aero experience so I just added a cheap AMD HD4650 AGP and the thing frankly runs Aero smooth as butter. And as a nice bonus the HD4650 will hardware accelerate just about any video format with Media Player Classic Home Cinema, which means his widescreen videos are really nice to enjoy.

So I have to agree with the fanboi bullshit, which frankly I never understood. It's a tool folks NOT a ball club, there is no needs for fans here. If I am building a web server or reusing older hardware for a single purpose, like the late model P3s I turned into simple secretary boxes for the local church? I use Linux. For the Joe Average consumer stuff I use Windows. If I wanted an ultra thin laptop I'd probably get an Apple (although knowing me I'd just get a Netbook and go Hackintosh) so really what's the point? If this was Vista I'd have been right there with him as when a customer says they have Vista the FIRST words out of my mouth are "I'm sorry" which apprently from their reaction is the thing everyone tells them, but Windows 7 is damned good. I have been running it since Beta 2 without a single fuckup, not one. It is solid as a rock, has a damned nice UI, easy to network, it is just a joy to deal with. While I'm sure Apple is nice their crazy prices put them out of reach of a good 80% of the market, which is of course by design. Kinda hard to be all hip and exclusive if Joe Average has a MBP.

Your only option is an autoloader which isn't cheap.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16840119028

Single LTO 3 drive plus 8 tape magazine. 3.2TB capacity (6.4TB w/ compression YMMV)

It appears Seagate beat them. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148580&cm_re=3tb-_-22-148-580-_-Product

The poster went for a 2500 dollar PC, so I found a 2500 Mac.

You could do a Nehalem for $800 total? The CPU is $1300 for a retail box CPU

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100008494%2050001157%20600048526&IsNodeId=1&name=Nehalem
Intel Xeon X5560 Nehalem 2.8GHz LGA 1366 95W Quad-Core Server Processor - $1372

Allow me to say "duh" I KNOW this, but OEM copies of Windows CAN be bought in bulk by ANYONE. Just go to Newegg or hell call up MSFT and negotiate directly. If he is buying a thousand keys I'm sure they'll cut him a deal. You are STILL averaging out around $580 a PC, which is much cheaper than the $1000 he was quoted. As for the "$100 an hour" cost to put it together? Total bullshit! You got a college around close by I'm sure? Put an ad in the CS dept for system builders at $25 bucks an hour and watch how quick you have a geek army. That is what I did and didn't have a single lick of trouble, as nearly ever CS guy I've ever known was always building their own trying to squeeze more performance.

The reason I brought up the VLK is in every larger build I've done there is ALWAYS at least one or two that will demand some funky OS, and the VLK has any weird variants covered. The ones I built wanted XP Pro EXCEPT for a handful that demanded and got XP Pro X64. Thanks to the VLK switching from XP 32 to XP 64 wasn't a hassle, and by using bog standard AMD Business Class I already had the drivers for everything from XP to Vista/7. But now that you have 7 being the main OS I'm sure there will be a few running an older app that requires XP, the VLK has that covered.

IMHO the two reason to go DIY is this: One is price, but more importantly is good quality at a low price. With Dell or any other of the OEMs I've found anything they sell for less than $1000 is real garbage. Cheap caps, lousy RAM, any place they can low ball they will, which equals more downtime and more headaches. With my builds I KNOW what is in them, and that is it quality, and therefor it takes a lot of the headaches out. As for warranties if Dell didn't make such crap you wouldn't need them in the first place. Most parts have a 3 year warranty standard, and I frankly have very rarely needed to ever use them on a business box. Usually if something is gonna go bad it is bad from the shop, which means DOA or runs a little and dies. That is easy to spot and replace, just run a good stress test over the weekend before shipping them to the site. If you buy in large quantities from someone like Tigerdirect they are REAL friendly and helpful with RMAs, because they don't want you going to Newegg.

But by using quality business class boards most of my machines are still running great at the nearly decade old mark, and I've found because they are so reliable that when a business goes to upgrade their employees end up with the boxes which they pass down to relatives. You'd be surprised how many PCs I built for businesses 5,6,7 years ago is now in somebody's kids room. If you use quality parts there is NO reason why you can't get AT LEAST 5 years per PC, especially if you use AMD so you can give them low end triples or quads. That will give them enough power you can simply pop in a RAM chip if they need it later and for business they will be good to go. Like I said Tigerdirect was selling AMD quads with 2Gb of RAM last week, fully loaded, for $269. Add in the OEM Pro and hiring a kid to put it together and you'll be looking at a little over $600 depending on monitor chosen. That is nearly $400 less than what he was quoted, which gives him the money for spares and still leaves money in the budget. For laptops it is strictly OEM, but for desktops and low end servers you really can't beat DIY for price and quality.

On-board processor was dropped [citation needed]

Here, here, here, and here.

Depth camera runs at 320x240 so it can't detect fingers? Maybe not, but it's doing infinitely more skeletal recognition than Move is.

Actually, Kinect only allows skeletal recognition for its own Avatars -- that functionality is not available to games developers. Both consoles are doing an equal amount of skeletal recognition in the SDK exposed to developers -- none.

Not ambitious? PS3 or PC could do the same thing trivially with two cameras? OK, then why aren't they?

Because, quite simply, everyone else knows it's not worth it. In fact, Sony was offered the Kinect technology and chose not to use it, specifically because they knew its marketability is limited.

Sony has already tried the no-controller camera-driven games with the EyeToy, which bombed. There have been all kinds of toy programs using webcams, which are all forgotten. Adding a depth camera does not fundamentally change the interaction -- in fact, it barely affects it at all. In userspace, Kinect is EyeToy, is doomed. You cannot play engaging games without a controller.

Overpriced? Perhaps, but I have a hard time believing that Microsoft is pricing it significantly higher than they have to - they want it to be a success and the know it's up against a less expensive competitor.

If they cannot sell two cameras and a toy motor for less than $150 I'll eat my hat. Do you really believe, for instance, that they "can't sell" a 250GB hard drive for less than $129.99 when normal 250GB hard drives can be had for less than $50 (a third of the price, ultimately)?

Basically, it sounds like you don't think they're going far enough, but I think if they went as far as you want them to they would completely price themselves out of the market. At some point you have to compromise ship something practical.

If I put a box of trash up on eBay for only a 10% markup over what it all cost me, how many people do you think will buy it? The market doesn't care what you spent. It cares what the price is and what they get out of it. $150 is going to sail right over everyone's head. You may bookmark this post and refer back to it when the Kinect line is officially discontinued (I will give it say Summer of 2012, after Microsoft loses a lot of money, which is what their games division has been doing all along.)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824176141

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824176053

Also, there is the Dell 2007FP for about the same price.

Nonsense.

Don't confuse "Full 1080p HD Support!" with not being a 16x10 monitor. Look at the actually resolution/ratio. Hanns.G for example (available on Newegg) has a plethora of fantastic 16x10 (1920x1200) monitors at very reasonable prices.

Just go with the classic Kensington Expert Mouse. Hard to beat.

Where are you looking?!?!?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=Property&Subcategory=32&Description=&Type=&N=100006740&IsNodeId=1&srchInDesc=&MinPrice=&MaxPrice=&PropertyCodeValue=400:43771&PropertyCodeValue=400:6722&PropertyCodeValue=400:6718&PropertyCodeValue=400:40986&PropertyCodeValue=400:40015&PropertyCodeValue=400:6723

Many cost less than or equal to what you originally paid.

Really?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100009312%20600036586&IsNodeId=1&name=1080p

Or am I missing something?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007617%20600012349&IsNodeId=1&name=1920%20x%201200

it seems to be harder and harder to find non-wide-format monitors

The list of 1920x1200 monitors is making a comeback on Newegg. 1920x1200 is now the third most popular resolution according to what Newegg sells. Maybe there is hope yet. I am about to purchase this one myself, which has enjoyed nothing but stellar reviews.

To hell with TV screens. I want a real computer monitor, for real work.

it seems to be harder and harder to find non-wide-format monitors

The list of 1920x1200 monitors is making a comeback on Newegg. 1920x1200 is now the third most popular resolution according to what Newegg sells. Maybe there is hope yet. I am about to purchase this one myself, which has enjoyed nothing but stellar reviews.

To hell with TV screens. I want a real computer monitor, for real work.

Right now, NewEgg has exactly two 1600x1200 LCD monitors. The cheaper is $859: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824002361

Hard to find on newegg? What?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007617%20600012349&IsNodeId=1&name=1920%20x%201200

Okay, prove it. Here is mine show me how to put ANY of those you named on it. Or show me how to put any of the above on even half of those on this page. My guess is you MAYBE, and that is a serious maybe, might get ONE.

I think you are VASTLY overestimating the skills of the FOSS community my friend. It is like when Linux advocates say "OMG Just run Linux! It works on anything!" and then when I point out the hardware i can't get to work I get "Why are you using THAT? You need to get rid of that as (insert..they don't support FOSS, don't share, suck, etc) and buy this!" which just kinda kills the whole "Linux runs on anything" argument ALL to hell. I stand by my statement, most home routers are gonna be a big mountain of eWaste when IPv6 rolls around. Hell I don't think even a single router on that page is IPv6.

Okay, prove it. Here is mine show me how to put ANY of those you named on it. Or show me how to put any of the above on even half of those on this page. My guess is you MAYBE, and that is a serious maybe, might get ONE.

I think you are VASTLY overestimating the skills of the FOSS community my friend. It is like when Linux advocates say "OMG Just run Linux! It works on anything!" and then when I point out the hardware i can't get to work I get "Why are you using THAT? You need to get rid of that as (insert..they don't support FOSS, don't share, suck, etc) and buy this!" which just kinda kills the whole "Linux runs on anything" argument ALL to hell. I stand by my statement, most home routers are gonna be a big mountain of eWaste when IPv6 rolls around. Hell I don't think even a single router on that page is IPv6.

If you are drawing THAT much at idle I'd say you were running a P4 or other bad design. Here, let me show you how to have good performance AND low wattage at the same time. Take the board I listed above, or if you want to go even lower Newegg has this Zotac board for cheap, then add this CPU which maxes at 65w and idles at around 10w, finally add at least 4Gb of RAM (to minimize hard drive loading) and use a Caviar Green drive which lowers rotation speed and thus power, as well as has a large cache which lowers the read/writes the drive has to do.

With the ECS board you are looking at maybe 80w max draw, the Zotac around 75w, idle on both less than 20w and you still have all the advantages of a desktop, non proprietary, ability to upgrade as needs arise, ability to customize for the job, etc over laptops. Working PC repair I hate to say it but with most of the laptops, even the expensive ones, it is frankly better to just shitcan than to get them fixed anymore. Which means unless you are willing to just replace every two -three years with all the hassles that entails they really aren't worth it. Unless of course you want to buy a $1600+ Apple with another $500 spent on a five year warranty. It is up to you but I tell customers unless they have a real reason for needing mobility it just isn't worth the trade offs 90% of the time. Good luck!

If you are drawing THAT much at idle I'd say you were running a P4 or other bad design. Here, let me show you how to have good performance AND low wattage at the same time. Take the board I listed above, or if you want to go even lower Newegg has this Zotac board for cheap, then add this CPU which maxes at 65w and idles at around 10w, finally add at least 4Gb of RAM (to minimize hard drive loading) and use a Caviar Green drive which lowers rotation speed and thus power, as well as has a large cache which lowers the read/writes the drive has to do.

With the ECS board you are looking at maybe 80w max draw, the Zotac around 75w, idle on both less than 20w and you still have all the advantages of a desktop, non proprietary, ability to upgrade as needs arise, ability to customize for the job, etc over laptops. Working PC repair I hate to say it but with most of the laptops, even the expensive ones, it is frankly better to just shitcan than to get them fixed anymore. Which means unless you are willing to just replace every two -three years with all the hassles that entails they really aren't worth it. Unless of course you want to buy a $1600+ Apple with another $500 spent on a five year warranty. It is up to you but I tell customers unless they have a real reason for needing mobility it just isn't worth the trade offs 90% of the time. Good luck!

If you are drawing THAT much at idle I'd say you were running a P4 or other bad design. Here, let me show you how to have good performance AND low wattage at the same time. Take the board I listed above, or if you want to go even lower Newegg has this Zotac board for cheap, then add this CPU which maxes at 65w and idles at around 10w, finally add at least 4Gb of RAM (to minimize hard drive loading) and use a Caviar Green drive which lowers rotation speed and thus power, as well as has a large cache which lowers the read/writes the drive has to do.

With the ECS board you are looking at maybe 80w max draw, the Zotac around 75w, idle on both less than 20w and you still have all the advantages of a desktop, non proprietary, ability to upgrade as needs arise, ability to customize for the job, etc over laptops. Working PC repair I hate to say it but with most of the laptops, even the expensive ones, it is frankly better to just shitcan than to get them fixed anymore. Which means unless you are willing to just replace every two -three years with all the hassles that entails they really aren't worth it. Unless of course you want to buy a $1600+ Apple with another $500 spent on a five year warranty. It is up to you but I tell customers unless they have a real reason for needing mobility it just isn't worth the trade offs 90% of the time. Good luck!

Are you using a UPS? I've had customers with the same "bad luck" and putting them on a UPS cleared it right up. You'd be surprised how many spikes and sags you get in some areas. As for a motherboard I've never had much luck with Asus, they're often expensive, but don't seem to last, at least for me, any better than a cheapy. If you aren't gonna go SLI/Crossfire I'd look at a Gigabyte or ECS business class motherboard. I've built quite a few with ECS business class (I'm typing this on one now, as I liked the board enough to use it on my own PC) and they use top notch parts like solid caps and sturdier connectors.

Here is the board I've been using lately, it comes with support for XP 32/64 - Windows 7 32/64 and it runs like a champ with the 95w Phenom II and 8Gb of RAM. Finally about your apps? You can either dual boot or use XP Mode with Windows 7 Pro, although you'd be surprised how many older apps will work even with Windows 7 X64. Out of all my apps I have found exactly two I can't run on 7 X64 (my older version of Cubase and a DVD authoring app) so I just reboot into XP when I need those apps. If you are gonna stay with XP 32 you might want to look into Superspeed RAMDisk Plus as it'll let you take advantage of over 4Gb of RAM using PAE by allowing you to convert the unused RAM into a RAMDisk. Really gives XP a kick in the pants to have paging running from RAM.

You can actually get an HD4650 with the AGP interface for $80, which is certainly cheaper than buying a full box and which will GPU accelerate flash and just about anything else. I got one for a customer who has a late model Cedar mill P4 and I'd forsee him getting another 4-5 years out of that box easily for the kinds of things he does.

And THAT, that right there, is what MSFT is having bite them in the ass. Computers passed "good enough" quite awhile back and the average Joe isn't even hitting his P4 hard, and XP is mature and stable, so why switch? While I have Windows 7 HP X64 on my gamer box, the box I'm typing this on is a 1.8GHz Sempron with 1.5Gb of RAM XP I use as a Nettop. Even with the crappy SiS GPU for the basics, Youtube, web surfing, downloading, etc it is more than fast enough for everyday tasks, and the Windows 7 upgrade money would be better spent on a GPU or maxing out the RAM.

And I'd finally point out that damned Ballmer monkey is to blame for part of this, and here is why: I knew plenty of guys that pirated XP, and nearly all of them switched to a legal copy of Windows 7, why? The $50 Windows 7 Home deal. It is pretty obvious at least to me that $50 is the "sweet spot" for Home as I saw so many pirate boxes go legit. The ones that didn't planned to after Xmas and then the Ballmer monkey shot the company in the foot (surprise) by raising the price. If he actually wanted to get all those XP boxes onto Windows 7, which he should as Windows 7 is MUCH safer for average folks which cuts down on Windows bad rep, and it gives him a chance to upsell them on new tech like Silverlight, IE9, and of course anytime upgrade to Pro, which I know quite a few that did for XP Mode, he'd drop the price for Home back to $50. But I'm afraid I have to agree with the pirates that $100 for Home is simply too much, which means I'll be sticking with XP for the Sempron. By the time 2014 rolls around and XP is EOL I'll probably pick up a dirt cheap duallie and hand the Sempron to my mom, who only uses a PC to play her old Windows games. Hell she refuses to let go of an old 733Mhz with a dual Win98/XP boot, because for what she does (Bounce Out and Age Of Empires 1) that is "good enough". While most folks aren't THAT hooked on an older machine a Prescott era P4 is frankly overkill for the web. Sorry MSFT, but my money is staying in MY pocket, thanks anyway.