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What I'd really like is to have a passively cooled box that's able to play 1080p H.264.

You mean like this?

Well if you read the specs here you will see that it has 12 execution units, which I'm guessing is Intel speak for stream processors, which considering a $30 ATI card has 320, I'm guessing like all Intel GPUs its gonna be of the uber-suck.

About the only ones I saddle piss poor Intel GPUs on anymore is the housewives, who at most are playing a browser game on Facebook. Everyone else gets an Nvidia or ATI onboard so if they decide to do a little light* gaming they can.

* The new ATI onboard GPUs are surprisingly good at gaming. I personally was playing Bioshock and Swat 4 on my 780v until I could get time to order a 4650 discrete. While these games aren't cutting edge, the fact that an onboard could actually game blew my fricking mind! Compared to the horrible chips that Intel calls GPUs it was actually nice, and it had full hardware acceleration for the most popular formats out of the box. I was impressed, and unlike so many horror stories I had heard the ATI drivers were just as solid and stable as could be.

Dude, I have to be the one to break this to you, especially when you've got a good rant on and all in your journal, but if you're having that much trouble then your router is busted or just plain sucks. I got this cheap Trendnet and everything "just works" easy peasy. And hell you can get the wireless version for $2 cheaper thanks to free shipping.

So quit pulling your hair out over badly functioning equipment and just get a cheap one that actually works. I've set up plenty of these Trendnet routers for home users and they really are a breeze. No need to burst a blood vessel over gaming when there is an easier way. Oh, and I hope it doesn't give you a seizure, but UPnP actually works on these as well. So if all you are wanting to do is game these are an easy and cheap way to do it. HTH.

Dude, I have to be the one to break this to you, especially when you've got a good rant on and all in your journal, but if you're having that much trouble then your router is busted or just plain sucks. I got this cheap Trendnet and everything "just works" easy peasy. And hell you can get the wireless version for $2 cheaper thanks to free shipping.

So quit pulling your hair out over badly functioning equipment and just get a cheap one that actually works. I've set up plenty of these Trendnet routers for home users and they really are a breeze. No need to burst a blood vessel over gaming when there is an easier way. Oh, and I hope it doesn't give you a seizure, but UPnP actually works on these as well. So if all you are wanting to do is game these are an easy and cheap way to do it. HTH.

Not even close, at least not for the Mac Pro (which I considered for a while until the price realization came).

The 8-core Mac Pro base sells for $3299. I tried to duplicate the hardware, but unfortunately you can't buy some of it at most stores any more as it's older (i.e., nobody sells it anymore because it's junk compared to current hardware).

• $420 motherboard that is considerably better than that on the Mac Pro, as it includes SAS 2.0 RAID and IPMI (similar to HP's ILO). There are many other similar motherboards in the same price range with slightly different feature sets (SLI support, etc.), so you can pick and choose to get exactly what you might need.
• $770 for 2x Xeon 5520, the same CPU as on the base Mac Pro
• $417 for 12 GB DDR3 RAM, twice that of the base Mac Pro
• $75 Caviar Black 640GB hard drive, which is likely better than what is in the Mac Pro
• $30 24x DVD writer, faster and more fully featured than the Apple "SuperDrive"
• $70 GT 220 video card, which is better than the GT 120 included with the Mac Pro (the GT 120 is basically not available for sale any more because it's about 3 generations behind current tech)
• $300 for case and power supply (a generous allowance, for sure)

So, for less than $2100, you can far exceed the specs on the $3300 Mac Pro, and these are nowhere near the lowest prices on this hardware...it's just that Newegg carries everything and their search is very good.

Not even close, at least not for the Mac Pro (which I considered for a while until the price realization came).

The 8-core Mac Pro base sells for $3299. I tried to duplicate the hardware, but unfortunately you can't buy some of it at most stores any more as it's older (i.e., nobody sells it anymore because it's junk compared to current hardware).

• $420 motherboard that is considerably better than that on the Mac Pro, as it includes SAS 2.0 RAID and IPMI (similar to HP's ILO). There are many other similar motherboards in the same price range with slightly different feature sets (SLI support, etc.), so you can pick and choose to get exactly what you might need.
• $770 for 2x Xeon 5520, the same CPU as on the base Mac Pro
• $417 for 12 GB DDR3 RAM, twice that of the base Mac Pro
• $75 Caviar Black 640GB hard drive, which is likely better than what is in the Mac Pro
• $30 24x DVD writer, faster and more fully featured than the Apple "SuperDrive"
• $70 GT 220 video card, which is better than the GT 120 included with the Mac Pro (the GT 120 is basically not available for sale any more because it's about 3 generations behind current tech)
• $300 for case and power supply (a generous allowance, for sure)

So, for less than $2100, you can far exceed the specs on the $3300 Mac Pro, and these are nowhere near the lowest prices on this hardware...it's just that Newegg carries everything and their search is very good.

Not even close, at least not for the Mac Pro (which I considered for a while until the price realization came).

The 8-core Mac Pro base sells for $3299. I tried to duplicate the hardware, but unfortunately you can't buy some of it at most stores any more as it's older (i.e., nobody sells it anymore because it's junk compared to current hardware).

• $420 motherboard that is considerably better than that on the Mac Pro, as it includes SAS 2.0 RAID and IPMI (similar to HP's ILO). There are many other similar motherboards in the same price range with slightly different feature sets (SLI support, etc.), so you can pick and choose to get exactly what you might need.
• $770 for 2x Xeon 5520, the same CPU as on the base Mac Pro
• $417 for 12 GB DDR3 RAM, twice that of the base Mac Pro
• $75 Caviar Black 640GB hard drive, which is likely better than what is in the Mac Pro
• $30 24x DVD writer, faster and more fully featured than the Apple "SuperDrive"
• $70 GT 220 video card, which is better than the GT 120 included with the Mac Pro (the GT 120 is basically not available for sale any more because it's about 3 generations behind current tech)
• $300 for case and power supply (a generous allowance, for sure)

So, for less than $2100, you can far exceed the specs on the $3300 Mac Pro, and these are nowhere near the lowest prices on this hardware...it's just that Newegg carries everything and their search is very good.

Not even close, at least not for the Mac Pro (which I considered for a while until the price realization came).

The 8-core Mac Pro base sells for $3299. I tried to duplicate the hardware, but unfortunately you can't buy some of it at most stores any more as it's older (i.e., nobody sells it anymore because it's junk compared to current hardware).

• $420 motherboard that is considerably better than that on the Mac Pro, as it includes SAS 2.0 RAID and IPMI (similar to HP's ILO). There are many other similar motherboards in the same price range with slightly different feature sets (SLI support, etc.), so you can pick and choose to get exactly what you might need.
• $770 for 2x Xeon 5520, the same CPU as on the base Mac Pro
• $417 for 12 GB DDR3 RAM, twice that of the base Mac Pro
• $75 Caviar Black 640GB hard drive, which is likely better than what is in the Mac Pro
• $30 24x DVD writer, faster and more fully featured than the Apple "SuperDrive"
• $70 GT 220 video card, which is better than the GT 120 included with the Mac Pro (the GT 120 is basically not available for sale any more because it's about 3 generations behind current tech)
• $300 for case and power supply (a generous allowance, for sure)

So, for less than $2100, you can far exceed the specs on the $3300 Mac Pro, and these are nowhere near the lowest prices on this hardware...it's just that Newegg carries everything and their search is very good.

Not even close, at least not for the Mac Pro (which I considered for a while until the price realization came).

The 8-core Mac Pro base sells for $3299. I tried to duplicate the hardware, but unfortunately you can't buy some of it at most stores any more as it's older (i.e., nobody sells it anymore because it's junk compared to current hardware).

• $420 motherboard that is considerably better than that on the Mac Pro, as it includes SAS 2.0 RAID and IPMI (similar to HP's ILO). There are many other similar motherboards in the same price range with slightly different feature sets (SLI support, etc.), so you can pick and choose to get exactly what you might need.
• $770 for 2x Xeon 5520, the same CPU as on the base Mac Pro
• $417 for 12 GB DDR3 RAM, twice that of the base Mac Pro
• $75 Caviar Black 640GB hard drive, which is likely better than what is in the Mac Pro
• $30 24x DVD writer, faster and more fully featured than the Apple "SuperDrive"
• $70 GT 220 video card, which is better than the GT 120 included with the Mac Pro (the GT 120 is basically not available for sale any more because it's about 3 generations behind current tech)
• $300 for case and power supply (a generous allowance, for sure)

So, for less than $2100, you can far exceed the specs on the $3300 Mac Pro, and these are nowhere near the lowest prices on this hardware...it's just that Newegg carries everything and their search is very good.

Not even close, at least not for the Mac Pro (which I considered for a while until the price realization came).

The 8-core Mac Pro base sells for $3299. I tried to duplicate the hardware, but unfortunately you can't buy some of it at most stores any more as it's older (i.e., nobody sells it anymore because it's junk compared to current hardware).

• $420 motherboard that is considerably better than that on the Mac Pro, as it includes SAS 2.0 RAID and IPMI (similar to HP's ILO). There are many other similar motherboards in the same price range with slightly different feature sets (SLI support, etc.), so you can pick and choose to get exactly what you might need.
• $770 for 2x Xeon 5520, the same CPU as on the base Mac Pro
• $417 for 12 GB DDR3 RAM, twice that of the base Mac Pro
• $75 Caviar Black 640GB hard drive, which is likely better than what is in the Mac Pro
• $30 24x DVD writer, faster and more fully featured than the Apple "SuperDrive"
• $70 GT 220 video card, which is better than the GT 120 included with the Mac Pro (the GT 120 is basically not available for sale any more because it's about 3 generations behind current tech)
• $300 for case and power supply (a generous allowance, for sure)

So, for less than $2100, you can far exceed the specs on the $3300 Mac Pro, and these are nowhere near the lowest prices on this hardware...it's just that Newegg carries everything and their search is very good.

And if you really need to read/write DVD's on your netbook, this worked fine for me with my Linux netbook.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106336

I got one about a month ago when they were on sale for $45 with free shipping. It is very small and unlike most USB powered dvd burners, this one only needs a single USB connection.

Microsoft is a company that cannot "let go" of anything. Take .NET for example -- it is a miserable failure that they won't let die.

A few web sites that use .NET technology:

Costco - http://www.costco.com/
Crate & Barrel - http://www.crateandbarrel.com/
Home Shopping Network - http://www.hsn.com/
Buy.com - http://www.buy.com/
Dell - http://www.dell.com/
Nasdaq - http://www.nasdaq.com/
Virgin - http://www.virgin.com/
7-Eleven - http://www.7-eleven.com/
Carnival Cruise Lines - http://www.carnival.com/
L'Oreal - http://www.loreal.com/
Remax - http://www.remax.com/
Monster Jobs - http://www.monster.com/
USA Today - http://www.usatoday.com/
ComputerJobs.com - http://computerjobs.com/
Match.com - http://www.match.com/
National Health Services (UK) - http://www.nhs.uk/
CarrerBuilder.com - http://www.careerbuilder.com/
Newegg http://newegg.com/
Geico http://geico.com/
Capital One http://capitalone.com/
Zecco http://zecco.com/

And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Maybe you should tell all those sites that .NET is a miserable failure? Or if you were just (successfully) karmawhoring, I am sorry to interrupt the circle jerk on here.

The SAN argument is that your storage is so precious it must not be stranded. If you're paying $50K/TB with drives, controllers, FC switches, service, software, support, installation and all that jazz then that's absolutely true. If you're doing something like OpenFiler clusters on BackBlaze 90TB 5U Storage Pods for $90/TB and 720 TB/rack you have a different point of view. As for somebody showing up to replace a drive, I think I could ask Jimmy to put his jacket on and shuffle down to the server room to swap out a few failed drives every couple months - that's what hot and cold spares are for and he's just geeking on MyFace anyway. Low utilization? Use as much or as little as you like - at $90/TB we can afford to buy more. We can afford to overbuy our storage. We can afford to mirror our storage and back it up too. In practice the storage costs less than the meeting where we talk about where to put it or the guy that fills it. If you want to pay for the first tier OEM, it's available but costs 10x as much because first tier OEMs also sell SANs.

Openfiler does CIFS/NFS and offers iSCSI shared storage for Oracle, Exchange and SAP. If you need support, they offer it. OpenFiler is nowhere near the only option for this. If you want to pay license fees you could also just run Windows Server clustered. There are BSD options and others as well. Solaris and Open Solaris are well spoken of, and ZFS is popular, though there are some tradeoffs there. Nexenta is gaining ground. There's also Lustre, which HP uses in its large capacity filers. Since you're building your own solution you can use as much RAM for cache as you like - modern dual socket servers go up to 192GB per node but 48GB is the sweet spot.

Now that we've moved redundancy into the software and performance into the local storage architecture, moving storage to the edge is exactly what we want to do: put it where you need it and if you need a copy for data mining then mirror it to the mining storage cluster. We still need some good dedicated fiber links to do multisite synchronous replication for HA, but that's true of SAN solutions also. We're about 20 years past when we should have ubiquitous metro fiber connections, and that's annoying. Right now without the metro fiber the best solution is to use application redundancy: putting a database cluster member server in the DR site with local shared storage.

Oh, and if you need a lot of IOPS then you choose the right motherboard and splurge on the 6TB of PCIe attached solid state storage per BackBlaze pod for over a million IOPs over 10Gig E. If you need high IOPS and big storage you can use adaptor brackets and 2.5" SSDs or mix in an array of The Collossus, though you're reaching for a $6K/TB price point there and cutting density in half but then the SSD performance SAN has an equal multiple and some serious capacity problems. If you go with the SSD drives you would want to cut down the SAS expanders to five drives per 4x SAS link because those bad boys can almost saturate a 3Gbps link while normal consumer SATA drives you can multiply 3:1.

If you're more compute focused then a BackBlaze node with fewer drives and a dual-quad motherboard with 4 GPGPUs is a better answer. At the high end you're paying almost as much for the network switches as you are for the media. If you're into the multipath SAS thing then buy 2x the controllers and buy the right backplanes for that - but

For one the 64Gb SSD smells like BS to me. If you are making a "cloud" device, one that you intend to subsidize no less, WTF do you need that much storage for? Checking Newegg the cheapest SSD that size is $120, or nearly a third of the cost of the device. Even buying a metric ton of the suckers I doubt they'd get the price below...say $90 as the cost of the chips for those aren't exactly bargain basement.

It just doesn't track. Google is the "king of the cloud" and would want to encourage you to do everything in Google Land. With that much storage space it would be too easy to just do anything you wanted offline and ignore Google. More likely if Google is gonna build a device you will be looking at a max 8Gb SSD, more likely 4Gb, just enough for the OS and enough offline storage so you can do work between hotspots.

That said even if they managed to pull this little miracle of pricing off I wouldn't have it on a bet. Why would you pay $300 for a device locked down tighter than a nun's thighs and be forced to run what Google wants you to run when Netbooks start at the same price, can run what you want to run, and can even run Windows if you so desire or dual boot? This seems like a solution in search of a problem. Those that just want a "browser in a box" have the iPhone and other smartphones, and those that want "baby laptops" have Netbooks that can run their Windows apps and are cheap to boot. If they do manage to come out with this it will be interesting to see if Google can make it just on their name alone, or if the highly locked down nature of the device will turn folks away. I know the big selling point of Netbooks to my customers is the fact that most run XP so they can run all their favorite apps anywhere they want. But I think the SSD size is a giveaway that it is bullshit. Like I said it just doesn't track with Google and the cloud nature of ChromeOS.

Microsoft was still selling XP as of October of this year. In fact XP is still for sale new from New Egg. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116515&cm_re=XP-_-32-116-515-_-Product
Microsoft better start to patch this issue or the drive makers better mark them as not compatible with Windows XP.

There are certain models of the Western Digital Caviar Green drives that are already shipping with a 4K sector size, such as this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136490 Where do you get the 4K sector size from? From here: User Sectors Per Drive 1,953,525,169 1.9 billion * 4K sectors = 7.6 GB 1.9 billion * 512 byte sectors = 972 MB Or am I missing something?

There are certain models of the Western Digital Caviar Green drives that are already shipping with a 4K sector size, such as this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136490

Was gonna say the same thing. Get a cheap NAS, put the two drives in it, go with RAID 0.
The D-Link DNS-321 is $120 from Newegg. It runs Linux and can handle all your Web/FTP/Samba needs.

Thats exactly what I did. Threw a couple of external drives on a Mac Mini.

At this time I'd recommend an Acer Aspire Revo and put the OS of your choice on it, but that's just a quibble.

He said "starts at", not "the ultra high end model".

$660 for the entry model "standard" server (non-upgrade): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116452

Although, contrary to parent's comment, it's per CPU, not box, but it's 4 CPUs, and you don't find many system with more than 4 for that type of server.

Or $680 for the Itanium variant like what you mentioned - no processor limit mentioned: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116806

He said "starts at", not "the ultra high end model".

$660 for the entry model "standard" server (non-upgrade): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116452

Although, contrary to parent's comment, it's per CPU, not box, but it's 4 CPUs, and you don't find many system with more than 4 for that type of server.

Or $680 for the Itanium variant like what you mentioned - no processor limit mentioned: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116806

Huh? Windows Server 2008 starts around $850 and you own it, and the SA is around $150.

No it isn't http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116499&cm_re=windows_server_2008-_-32-116-499-_-Product and no you don't. Microsoft owns it.

My thought exactly, let me link you to exactly what the OP is asking for for 200 bucks:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883103228&Tpk=aspire%20revo

Don't need the hard drive? Who cares??

It sounds like what you are wanting is a Shuttle. It is an AM2+/AM3, supports PCIe x16, 8Gb of RAM, ATI Radeon 3000 built in, just about the perfect size for an HTPC. And if you compare it to the same thing on the Intel side you are looking at a $456 difference. Ouch! Intel certainly isn't THAT nice, not in my book.

Just add one of those $50 low pro Radeon 4350s, along with a $99 quad and whatever HDD floats your boat, and you'd be kicking with an HTPC that has enough horsepower under the hood to transcode anything you can throw at it and THEN some.

It sounds like what you are wanting is a Shuttle. It is an AM2+/AM3, supports PCIe x16, 8Gb of RAM, ATI Radeon 3000 built in, just about the perfect size for an HTPC. And if you compare it to the same thing on the Intel side you are looking at a $456 difference. Ouch! Intel certainly isn't THAT nice, not in my book.

Just add one of those $50 low pro Radeon 4350s, along with a $99 quad and whatever HDD floats your boat, and you'd be kicking with an HTPC that has enough horsepower under the hood to transcode anything you can throw at it and THEN some.

It sounds like what you are wanting is a Shuttle. It is an AM2+/AM3, supports PCIe x16, 8Gb of RAM, ATI Radeon 3000 built in, just about the perfect size for an HTPC. And if you compare it to the same thing on the Intel side you are looking at a $456 difference. Ouch! Intel certainly isn't THAT nice, not in my book.

Just add one of those $50 low pro Radeon 4350s, along with a $99 quad and whatever HDD floats your boat, and you'd be kicking with an HTPC that has enough horsepower under the hood to transcode anything you can throw at it and THEN some.

And the Acer Aspire Revo ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883103228&cm_re=revo-_-83-103-228-_-Product ) looks like a pretty cheap and capable box at $200. VGA and HDMI, low power, and a commodity product, so you can have spares on hand.

From Newegg: Shuttle X27D

Add in a 2GB stick of RAM and you're looking at around $210-230 per seat. They PXE boot, work great with LTSP and Ubuntu, and they drive a Samsung 22" LCD at full resolution. How cheap are you expecting?

If you want to go below that, you're going to have to start salvaging old machines and converting them to thin clients. But then, you're only saving the purchase price, and the real compelling savings with an Atom-based thin client is the 50+ watt power consumption savings.

I think the problem is most folks don't realize how scary fast the new AMDs are at everyday tasks. I took a little of my Xmas money to upgrade from a 7550 ( which frankly was doing everything I wanted it to) to a Quad 925 and the speed of this thing is just insanity. No matter how much multitasking I do it just keeps on coming, no slowdowns or stutters.

And I built the original 7550 dual for just $525 after rebates, with 8Gb of RAM, a 1Gb 4650, dual burners, and Windows 7 HP x64. It is truly crazy the amount of raw horsepower you can get from AMD with very little $$$. I mean you can get a new quad for $99 retail! And you can get a dual OEM for just $53, and a retail box for just $65, it just nuts!

And you're right, when you figure in the cost of a decent motherboard there just isn't any comparison. Like I said I was used to the ultra shit Intel IGPs where you had better get a card in pronto, and I went from that to actually playing Bioshock and SOF:Payback on an IGP? And the video acceleration works REALLY great. Just add Media Player Home Cinema (I prefer the Klite Mega Codec pack, as it sets everything up for DXVA, just check a single checkbox) and you have really nice smooth video with nary a stutter.

The only thing I worried about was all the talk about AMDs being hot, but I found that even under load the stock cooler had never gotten above 107f, and with Cool & Quiet it stays around 88f when I'm doing my day to day. AMD just needs to push the "bang for the buck" mantra IMHO, and get the word out. Because as a life long Intel man I can say without a doubt the new AMDs kick some serious ass without breaking my wallet.

I think the problem is most folks don't realize how scary fast the new AMDs are at everyday tasks. I took a little of my Xmas money to upgrade from a 7550 ( which frankly was doing everything I wanted it to) to a Quad 925 and the speed of this thing is just insanity. No matter how much multitasking I do it just keeps on coming, no slowdowns or stutters.

And I built the original 7550 dual for just $525 after rebates, with 8Gb of RAM, a 1Gb 4650, dual burners, and Windows 7 HP x64. It is truly crazy the amount of raw horsepower you can get from AMD with very little $$$. I mean you can get a new quad for $99 retail! And you can get a dual OEM for just $53, and a retail box for just $65, it just nuts!

And you're right, when you figure in the cost of a decent motherboard there just isn't any comparison. Like I said I was used to the ultra shit Intel IGPs where you had better get a card in pronto, and I went from that to actually playing Bioshock and SOF:Payback on an IGP? And the video acceleration works REALLY great. Just add Media Player Home Cinema (I prefer the Klite Mega Codec pack, as it sets everything up for DXVA, just check a single checkbox) and you have really nice smooth video with nary a stutter.

The only thing I worried about was all the talk about AMDs being hot, but I found that even under load the stock cooler had never gotten above 107f, and with Cool & Quiet it stays around 88f when I'm doing my day to day. AMD just needs to push the "bang for the buck" mantra IMHO, and get the word out. Because as a life long Intel man I can say without a doubt the new AMDs kick some serious ass without breaking my wallet.

I think the problem is most folks don't realize how scary fast the new AMDs are at everyday tasks. I took a little of my Xmas money to upgrade from a 7550 ( which frankly was doing everything I wanted it to) to a Quad 925 and the speed of this thing is just insanity. No matter how much multitasking I do it just keeps on coming, no slowdowns or stutters.

And I built the original 7550 dual for just $525 after rebates, with 8Gb of RAM, a 1Gb 4650, dual burners, and Windows 7 HP x64. It is truly crazy the amount of raw horsepower you can get from AMD with very little $$$. I mean you can get a new quad for $99 retail! And you can get a dual OEM for just $53, and a retail box for just $65, it just nuts!

And you're right, when you figure in the cost of a decent motherboard there just isn't any comparison. Like I said I was used to the ultra shit Intel IGPs where you had better get a card in pronto, and I went from that to actually playing Bioshock and SOF:Payback on an IGP? And the video acceleration works REALLY great. Just add Media Player Home Cinema (I prefer the Klite Mega Codec pack, as it sets everything up for DXVA, just check a single checkbox) and you have really nice smooth video with nary a stutter.

The only thing I worried about was all the talk about AMDs being hot, but I found that even under load the stock cooler had never gotten above 107f, and with Cool & Quiet it stays around 88f when I'm doing my day to day. AMD just needs to push the "bang for the buck" mantra IMHO, and get the word out. Because as a life long Intel man I can say without a doubt the new AMDs kick some serious ass without breaking my wallet.

I think the problem is most folks don't realize how scary fast the new AMDs are at everyday tasks. I took a little of my Xmas money to upgrade from a 7550 ( which frankly was doing everything I wanted it to) to a Quad 925 and the speed of this thing is just insanity. No matter how much multitasking I do it just keeps on coming, no slowdowns or stutters.

And I built the original 7550 dual for just $525 after rebates, with 8Gb of RAM, a 1Gb 4650, dual burners, and Windows 7 HP x64. It is truly crazy the amount of raw horsepower you can get from AMD with very little $$$. I mean you can get a new quad for $99 retail! And you can get a dual OEM for just $53, and a retail box for just $65, it just nuts!

And you're right, when you figure in the cost of a decent motherboard there just isn't any comparison. Like I said I was used to the ultra shit Intel IGPs where you had better get a card in pronto, and I went from that to actually playing Bioshock and SOF:Payback on an IGP? And the video acceleration works REALLY great. Just add Media Player Home Cinema (I prefer the Klite Mega Codec pack, as it sets everything up for DXVA, just check a single checkbox) and you have really nice smooth video with nary a stutter.

The only thing I worried about was all the talk about AMDs being hot, but I found that even under load the stock cooler had never gotten above 107f, and with Cool & Quiet it stays around 88f when I'm doing my day to day. AMD just needs to push the "bang for the buck" mantra IMHO, and get the word out. Because as a life long Intel man I can say without a doubt the new AMDs kick some serious ass without breaking my wallet.

So you add a cheap PCI card, in this case an 8400GS for a whole $42. You could go even cheaper, but if you want to drive multiple monitors and have decent resolution this would be the best bet. This is the best one for Linux as well, due to the fact Nvidia drivers are better ATM. If you would prefer something with open drivers (I heard the older Radeons are well supported now) you can save a couple of bucks by going with a Radeon 9250 instead at $40.

Adding the $42 to the $75 for the machine you come out at $117 which is still far below the $200 that the poster said he wanted to spend. With a 1.7GHz CPU, 512Mb of RAM (expandable to 2Gb) and 20Gb of offline storage I still think this is the best thin client candidate for the $$$. Where else are you gonna find a thin client that can drive multiple monitors, has enough power for decent video resolution without stutter, and plenty of offline storage, all for less than $120?

And if he wants to spend a whole extra $20 he can nearly double his CPU to a 2.4GHz, double his offline storage space, and even have a copy of XP Pro to use when the network is down, all for less than $160 with the extra video card. I doubt VERY seriously he is gonna find a better deal on a PC usable for a decent thin client any cheaper.

So you add a cheap PCI card, in this case an 8400GS for a whole $42. You could go even cheaper, but if you want to drive multiple monitors and have decent resolution this would be the best bet. This is the best one for Linux as well, due to the fact Nvidia drivers are better ATM. If you would prefer something with open drivers (I heard the older Radeons are well supported now) you can save a couple of bucks by going with a Radeon 9250 instead at $40.

Adding the $42 to the $75 for the machine you come out at $117 which is still far below the $200 that the poster said he wanted to spend. With a 1.7GHz CPU, 512Mb of RAM (expandable to 2Gb) and 20Gb of offline storage I still think this is the best thin client candidate for the $$$. Where else are you gonna find a thin client that can drive multiple monitors, has enough power for decent video resolution without stutter, and plenty of offline storage, all for less than $120?

And if he wants to spend a whole extra $20 he can nearly double his CPU to a 2.4GHz, double his offline storage space, and even have a copy of XP Pro to use when the network is down, all for less than $160 with the extra video card. I doubt VERY seriously he is gonna find a better deal on a PC usable for a decent thin client any cheaper.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883103228

$200 and should drive a 22" monitor no problems, can't confirm PXE bootable, but with 160GB HD it should be easy enough to load up a netboot stack.

Question: Why not just build a nice AMD quad with a couple of Cell Cards in it? Then you get the best of both worlds-the ability to run x86-64 code if you so desire, and the processing power of the cell. And you can build a really nice AMD quad for quite cheap these days. I built mine for just a little over $750 before rebates with 8Gb of RAM.

So it sounds like to me what you are going for could be done quite well using an AMD or Intel board with some cell CPUs thrown in. And at less than $200 each they are cheaper than PS3s and you can run more code on them. It sounds like a win/win to me, unless there is some reason you just hate x86 and don't want to have anything to do with it on personal grounds.

Best I could find sofar.
I am sure someone else can come up with some goodies.

Is there anyone out there that knows what the difference is between a lithium ion laptop battery and a lithium ion powerdrill battery? As far as I know, there are significant production differences between a laptop lithium ion battery is produced and how a powerdrill lithium ion battery.

And because no discussion is ever complete without a car analogy, Why would a Mercedes V6 engine cost more than a Ford V6 engine.

How about a computer analogy?

Why is one 750W power supply so much more expensive than another 750W power supply?


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The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Winston Churchill

Is there anyone out there that knows what the difference is between a lithium ion laptop battery and a lithium ion powerdrill battery? As far as I know, there are significant production differences between a laptop lithium ion battery is produced and how a powerdrill lithium ion battery.

And because no discussion is ever complete without a car analogy, Why would a Mercedes V6 engine cost more than a Ford V6 engine.

How about a computer analogy?

Why is one 750W power supply so much more expensive than another 750W power supply?


============
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Winston Churchill

So Nokia's little Apple-wannabe store(s) somewhere near er... Chicago, or something, falls flat and that means no one wants unlocked phones? Whatever.

If you would like to participate in the failing unlocked phone market don't lament the poor performance of Nokia's fail brick-and-mortar outlets. Just head over here and buy a perfectly good unlocked Nokia 5530 GSM or any one of 105 other unlocked phones of all levels of capability. Need a cheap unlocked phone that works well with no monthly bill? Buy a RAZR V3 for $80, get some minutes from T-Mobile and forget about it. It works fine.

Bundling is a racket. Don't support it.

You still need a reasonably similar fab and quality engineering, it isn't just a matter of taking 'the plans' and copying them, and the idea that someone is going to reverse several hundred million transistors with an electron microscope has basically zero credibility (and Intel ships chips that run at "75% of Intel speed" for $50-$100, at least to the extent that the statement even has meaning, they just don't make them on their most modern processes. For example: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116091 ).

My Ass!

Dariks Boot and Nuke+Replace

That is why I just went and ordered an AMD Phenom II 925 Quad as like you I was seeing more of a CPU bottleneck than anything else. You really can't beat the 'bang for the buck' on the AMD Quads, especially when you figure in the cheaper cost of a decent AMD 790 based board. I just put it in over the weekend and the speed is niiice.

I probably could have stuck with my 2.6GHz 7550 dual, but I figured CPUs are getting phased out so quickly now I wanted to get one of the biggest quads I could fit in my board before they are replaced for the next gen. I figure I can probably get me 4-5 years off that CPU, just change out the GPU in a year or two when games finally start taxing the graphics enough for me to notice.

If you are only running a 2.14GHz it would probably be wise to try to get one of the biggest chips your board can take (that you can afford of course) before the next gen chips come out and the older chips become harder to find. I waited too long on my P4 based board and it ended up cheaper just to pass down the box and build a new one than it did to track down one of those P4 based Smithfield duals. So I would see what they got at Newegg that'll fit your board and not break your budget. Better to go for the cheaper CPU upgrade now than to have to start over IMHO.

So what's the problem?

It's like you think they don't make colour laser printers or something.

++ as far as tivo's actual DVR functionality.

if pytivo thinks you have an HD Tivo, it won't change the resolution at all (it does transcode to mpeg2). The series3 will scale the video itself (and it has a pretty good scaler chip in my experience).

If it thinks you have a series2, it will change the res, presumably to 640x480 but i haven't checked. Perhaps you misconfigured it so it thought you had a series2.

pytivo tries to detect if your file uses a supported codec (includes ac3), and just copy the audio stream if so; otherwise it transcodes, but the default transcoding target is in fact AC3.

I *have* had problems with 5.1 sound not being properly mixed down to stereo (yeah, yuck, but it's what i had until recently). The center channel was always sent to one speaker or the other. not sure if it's pytivo (ffmpeg really, it does the transcoding) or the tivo that causes this. I haven't really tried to debug it.

it is under active development and the devs seem to pay attention to support requests on the forums, so i'd suggest you give it another shot.

you need to make sure you have a good ffmpeg build. this can be non-trivial; the one that comes with your linux distro may not be good/new enough. the pytivo forums have links to win32 binaries that work for most people. If you're on a mac or bsd, try the ffmpeg-devel port rather than the ffmpeg port.

pytivo recently gained the ability to stream from DVD images. I haven't tested this but i suspect it works fine.

I like pytivo a lot, the only issue i have with it is speed. I have this cpu (1.9GHz dual-core athlon) and it's not fast enough to transcode hi-def in realtime.

you xfer the program and it dribbles through and you can watch it later.

More importantly, i've tried pre-transcoding and just transferring the mpeg-2 stream (pytivo will not transcode this at all), and the tivo (presumably) can't keep up, it still is a bit slower than realtime. That's annoying; i can pre-transcode or buy a faster cpu, but if the streaming just isn't fast enough then i'm kinda stuck. I am using 100Mbit wired ethernet, it's not some crappy wireless that's the issue. I haven't really investigated this.

Exactly. We got one of these for work: Supermicro Flex Atom 330+ Intel 945GC

Draws about ~16W of power with a laptop 2.5" sata harddrive and full ram slots. Pair it with either CentOS or a prepackaged firewall setup like Clarkconnect, M0n0wall, shorewall, or firestarter (IP tables gui for full linux install). You can even setup something like Asterisk NOW! and pair in an IP Tables firewall and OpenVPN support for a very robust, small, silent, and low power solution.

"For my new PC I went with a large (26") screen instead of 2x22" for the same price, and I regret my choice."

Glad I went the other way. I had the option of going big screen or adding a second LCD. Went with the second LCD and I love it, couldn't imagine life without it. Great having one page load while reading another, or a video running on one screen and searching with the other, and full screen games take up just one monitor while the other remains open. I'm actually considering going with a third LCD and a PCI-e x1 video card like a Radeon 4350 since my mb is equipped with only one x16 slot.

I think a dual screen laptop would be very useful, I'd rather have two screens that slide out like demonstrated then a huge 19"

I expect you either have an inferior manufacturing run, an inferior model, or an inferior brand.

There are basically no cheap home routers than can handle a 50/20Mbps link at full speed when NAT is involved.

I've tested both dedicated appliance hardware and software (either running on an actual PC or some micro system, like the Soekris) by hooking up the test router between two gigabit NICs and using netcat to send the output from /dev/urandom to /dev/null on the other machine (to avoid timing any hard drive speeds).

The Netgear FVS338 is what I settled on after verifying that it could handle 50Mbps symmetric, although I'm sure that other devices will work. I couldn't find anything in the under-$100 price range that could handle more than 20Mbps symmetric.

You can actually get a 4890 for $180. $160 after MIR: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161299

augh! yes indeed, I meant $400. You can also get the 4870 for cheap even when it was new, and for super cheap now that it has some age on it...an extremely capable card that will likely last at least another generation or two of video cards.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814129113

$170, awesome stuff