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Intelligent or not, either they will cave to market pressures, or the format will vaporize and another will take its place.

I think this has happened, and they just don't realize it. This external drive box supports up to five of these 1TB drives. Net that's $800 for 5TB of storage, today. 5TB of storage at BD's 6MB/s is about 200 hours of BD video. Come to think of it, that's about all of it. Another one could store 2000 hours of DVD video, which is more than anybody should want to have on hand. Just one 1TB drive can store more high fidelity music than you could listen to in a lifetime. 1.5TB drives are already out, and these prices are expected to drop given the season and the market.

What exactly are people doing with this stuff if they're not storing content? Backing up their email?

The drives are moving so fast they don't even shelve them off the skids in some stores. Internals, externals, NAS devices and PCs designes with 8 SATA ports and bays are getting fairly common. There's a good chance that by the time Sony "gets it" they'll be selling into a market where everbody already "has it" because they weren't willing to wait - even though they were willing to pay at the time they're not going to pay to download a movie their friend already brought over to watch on a portable drive.

They're called 'nettops' -- MSI and Asus both make them, as well as Koolu, CompuLab, and Everex.

Physically, microSD is up to (at least) 8 GB these days:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2000070068%201053131144&name=Micro%20SDHC

Of course, an SDHC card won't work in an SD reader, so there is room to argue about what is what.

caitsith01:You will also get some brands of Windows laptop much cheaper by shopping around. In fact, Dell is one of the only companies who don't fall into this category.

Not to mention that the review picks Lenovo and Sony, two of the most expensive brands. Where is Asus, for instance?

Honestly, I spent about two months looking for something with comparable specs earlier this summer, and nothing could be had for under $900, and the Lenovo I found that was pretty close to this was $1200. Dell's still starting their lines with ATi and Nvidia video cards at $899 and selling suckers more expensive "XPS" laptops, pitching them for gaming and "entertainment" use with Intel GPUs, much like Apple did up until a week or two ago.

$999 is a fair price for something with a real video card - The whole point of this article is that, by including a real video card for once, the $999 price point becomes fair. Before that, the MacBooks were $200-300 more than like-spec'ed Windows laptops. When we get down to a hundred dollars or less, that is no longer anywhere near significant enough to have their competition be considered "much cheaper."

Good luck finding even a previous generation Penryn proc and Nvidia card for less than $900. I still can't. That Newegg link shows every Penryn and Wolfdale-powered laptop they sell with ATi and Nvidia GPUs. Not a one can be had for less than $949 ($200 cheaper than the cheapest ASUS), and the one that can is a Lenovo - Hardly one "of the most expensive brands." If you dropped the new Macbook into Newegg's search results it would be the third cheapest new laptop in its class.

If you take a look at the newegg reviews, you'll find 16% of them give the 1TB 7200.11 drive a 1 star review, most of which are because of DOA or D shortly after A. So it's not just you who noticed.

Seagate's Barracuda line had a good run with high reliability for quite a while. If you check the reliability database at storagereview (unfortunately you have to go through some trouble to become a member and see the data), the Barracuda ATA III, IV, and V are ranked near the top--92, 90, and 96th percentile respectively. Then things went way downhile--7200.7 hits 88, the 7200.8 at 49, and the 7200.9 at 43. That matches my own anecdotal experience.

Sometime after the 750GB drives came out reliability took a further dive south. I believe that was caused by switching a large amount of production to a new plant in Thailand (the reliable models came out of Singapore). That seems to be the inevitable way hard drive manufacturing works--whenever some company moves to a new facility, quality dives for a few years afterward. I predict that 5 or 10 years from now talk will be about how reliable the old Thai drives were compared to the new junk coming out of [new country of origin].

I've managed to fill 2/3rds of my 1TB storage drive already.

640 GB of porn ought to be enough for anybody!

Seriously, my experience has been remarkably similar to yours, except without the little care and maintenance bit. I once dropped one of these down the stairs at a LAN party. Worked just fine afterward. I've also had good luck with Maxtor, however one of these died after only 10 years of use (in an incident perhaps relating to a Coke set on it), so I generally buy Seagate.

The baseline cost for a Mac Desktop from the online Apple store looks pretty good, but try adding some RAM. Upgrading from the baseline 2GB of 800MHZ FB-DIMMs to 4GB will cost you $500. You can buy 2x2GB of mushkin FB-DIMMs (800 mhz, cas latency of 5, heat spreaders, fully compatible) from newegg.com and pop them in your mac for a total of 6GB of RAM for only $130.

Upgrading your hard drive from 320GB to 1TB at the apple store will cost you $300. You can add a whole new 1TB hard drive on top of the existing drive for $130 at newegg.

If it's not a Mac Tax then perhaps it's an Apple Tax. It's definitely an Ignorance Tax.

The baseline cost for a Mac Desktop from the online Apple store looks pretty good, but try adding some RAM. Upgrading from the baseline 2GB of 800MHZ FB-DIMMs to 4GB will cost you $500. You can buy 2x2GB of mushkin FB-DIMMs (800 mhz, cas latency of 5, heat spreaders, fully compatible) from newegg.com and pop them in your mac for a total of 6GB of RAM for only $130.

Upgrading your hard drive from 320GB to 1TB at the apple store will cost you $300. You can add a whole new 1TB hard drive on top of the existing drive for $130 at newegg.

If it's not a Mac Tax then perhaps it's an Apple Tax. It's definitely an Ignorance Tax.

Hell, just look at this.

$200 cheaper, better CPU, Video card, larger hard drive, and twice the RAM. But no fany aluminum case :-(

It is 15" instead of 13" though...

Here is the searched I used on Newegg...pulls all laptops with the same specs or better than the MacBook (most of them are better).

Hell, just look at this.

$200 cheaper, better CPU, Video card, larger hard drive, and twice the RAM. But no fany aluminum case :-(

It is 15" instead of 13" though...

Here is the searched I used on Newegg...pulls all laptops with the same specs or better than the MacBook (most of them are better).

Good thing the hard drive is user-accessible in a matter of seconds, and can be used in any external enclosure, such as this, into which the drive can be inserted with no tools or hassle.

or Express Gate ... and it's available now: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131322

Get your game together Microsoft. We seriously need to see some self developed innovation from you soon or people will care even less.

Its clear that the extra 7gig you get isn't worth $20.
AC

Yep... 8GB SD Card - $16, open OS, removable memory and battery - priceless.....

Actually, last weekend I put a computer in my kitchen that is just a Neoware thin client I bought used from a nearby University for $20. The unit is actually between two studs in the wall, below the monitor. The monitor is set into the wall, such that it is flush with the drywall. And since it's just RDP'ed into my main desktop (using that old hack to allow multiple concurrent sessions), I have all my programs, and more importantly, my settings and data, so it's much more useful for me and my wife than having a second whole computer.

Next time I'll use a cheap touch screen instead of a mouse, I think.

Total cost for this one was $200 (most of that was the monitor) plus about 4 hours of tinkering and installing.

And yes, it will soon be running a recipe database.

Your not really testing with them then. Any IO card that slides into an ISA/PCI/PCIE or whatever slot has a tab on the bottom that sticks past the main board. You have to elevate them to accound for this or risk pulling the card our and not making a good contact or damaging something in the process.

If your just testing drives, then USB enclosures would do the job just fine.

But when you do something like leave the sides open or prop a main board on something for testing, it isn't really practical if you use the area. I saw a guy doing this and the seemingly innocent act of attempting to figure out why his ink pen wouldn't work cause him to burn the brand new $600 main board up when the spring inside the ink pen shot out and landed on it.

8gb MicroSD: $27 The problem with my phone is that it needs a USB to 2.5mm adapter, then a 2.5mm-3.5mm adapter. (They might make a USB to 3.5mm adapter, but it is probably overpriced. The USB to 2.5mm adapter came in the box). I also have the wrong kind of 2.5mm-3.5mm adapter, so I have to put it in a certain amount (but not all the way), otherwise my phone crashes and I have to reboot it or I get no sound in either the left or right headphone.

amd doesn't have any thousand dollar chips and i can't remember when the last time they had a chip that expensive was. maybe 2004? earlier? i know it hasn't been in the past 3 years, for 100%

and right now, AMD has the cheapest dual core chip at newegg, although it is an x2. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103215 vs intel's cheapest celeron http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116064

as far as 'having the lead' goes the world of benchmarking systems is as corrupt as technology gets. just ask Via how much better their nano processor runs when it 'spoofs' it's cpuid as a intel or as an amd.

amd doesn't have any thousand dollar chips and i can't remember when the last time they had a chip that expensive was. maybe 2004? earlier? i know it hasn't been in the past 3 years, for 100%

and right now, AMD has the cheapest dual core chip at newegg, although it is an x2. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103215 vs intel's cheapest celeron http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116064

as far as 'having the lead' goes the world of benchmarking systems is as corrupt as technology gets. just ask Via how much better their nano processor runs when it 'spoofs' it's cpuid as a intel or as an amd.

video cards come standard overclocked now a days

No they don't.

Yes they do Same core, same ram, different speeds

video cards come standard overclocked now a days

No they don't.

Yes they do Same core, same ram, different speeds

You're right that many computers do come with built-in card readers. I haven't purchased a pre-built PC in a long time, but saw the current selection at a local Microcenter, and almost all of their pre-builds had the card readers.

Newegg is also selling a $150 Blu-ray DVD ROM, but I don't see the average PC user buying and installing one of these.

With a 750GB hard drive selling under $100, what has changed?

This is assuming that you have a 750GB drive. I don't. My laptop has 4GB of RAM and about 60GB of SSD disk. So no, I won't waste 8GB for useless swap. And even conventional hard drives for laptops are often not much bigger, MacBook Air come with 64GB, for example.

My experience: I used a laptop with 2GB ram for 2 years, as my main computer. I was doing quite heavy stuff, like running MySQL/Apache/memcached all the time, lots of open files, often Eclipse and often VirtualBox (which is memory hungry). I didn't see the machine swapping even ONCE, except from cases when I had some bug in my code which allocated infinite memory, in which case no amount of swap could help me. My new laptop does the same. All the servers I monitor do the same.

So my advice: start with a swap *file*, not partition, of 512MB. This way you have the flexibility to change it very easily and contrary to what some people might say, there's no performance penalty (especially if it's never used!). Quite probably is won't even swap. If it starts swapping you can increase it, or keep less programs open or buy more RAM. In most cases, when the PC swaps it will become so slow that you'll have to do something to make it stop.

The above assumes you're not interested in hibernation. If you are, then allocate a swap partition of 1x RAM, to be sure you can always hibernate. In theory you can hibernate in swap files, but in practice you'll regret trying.

There is a whole wiki page on Solid State HDs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

There is a SATA one by gigabyte for example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-RAM

Newegg has a wide variety of them available, bit pricey for me 'tho:

http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=636&name=Solid-State-Disks

'Is 8 gigs of swap really necessary?'

With a 750GB hard drive selling under $100, what has changed?

Yeah, your 256MB of space was trivial when you had a 30GB hard drive ... and 8GB of space is still trivial with a 750GB hard drive.

That said, I'll forward you some common information on paging.

Linux and other Unix-like operating systems use the term "swap" to describe both the act of moving memory pages between RAM and disk, and the region of a disk the pages are stored on. It is common to use a whole partition of a hard disk for swapping. However, with the 2.6 Linux kernel, swap files are just as fast as swap partitions, although Red Hat recommends using a swap partition. The administrative flexibility of swap files outweighs that of partitions; since modern high capacity hard drives can remap physical sectors, no partition is guaranteed to be contiguous.

I'm no expert but the short answer to this is to look at your swap partition as your extended virtual memory. By saying that your swap partition should be 2x your main memory is like saying that you will never use 3x of what your main memory is (in this case 12GB). While that rule of thumb is a good one, there may in fact be applications today in the graphics and processing world that require insane amounts of memory. While Firefox is probably never going to reach that critical mass (nor will most average programs) it's probable that a few years from now it will be common place. I know it's insane to think of but 'ought to be enough for anybody' is not the phrase you want to throw around in the digital information world.

It's those days when I'm playing Warcraft through wine, listening to streaming radio through Amarok, have 20 windows open behind it, idling a LAMP server for my development projects, running a vent client, some form of news aggregater, pidgin & an e-mail client hooked up to several POP3/IMAP accounts that I am happy I erred on the side of a whole ton of swap space.

So instead, you're saying that all new mac users need to spend $3000 on their machine... Well for $2800 price you get:
A motherboard worth $530 (the one in the MacPro is actually better than this one slightly, but this is the closest you can get retail. Two CPUs worth $1000 each.

Firstly, you're looking at the price of the wrong CPU - the Mac Pro's is 2.8Ghz, not 3Ghz. If you want a Mac Pro with two of those CPUs, it's another $800., taking the price to $3600. I think the CPUs in the standard Mac Pro are http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117144">this one, for a mere $729 each. (The motherboard seems comparable, but Apple are a bit vague about stuff like the real PCIe capabilities of the Mac Pro.)

So, going for the cheaper CPUs, motherboard+2 CPUs is $1988. Memory will be slightly painful, since it's server-class - 2x1Gb fully-buffered EDO DDR2 at $41 each. Graphics card is $63 before rebate (or you can get something a bit newer and faster for $90). 320Gb hard drive is $50, a DVD burner $24. That's $2207. Add in a bit more for a decent case+PSU of your choice, and you're looking at about $2400, depending on your exact choices of course.

Secondly, very few people have a need for a workstation with two expensive server-class quad-core processors and fully-buffered RAM. Especially as the rest of the spec is somewhat less good - only 2Gb of RAM and a 320Gb hard disk, and a mid-range graphics card from a couple of half-generations ago that's the same as the one in my desktop. Plus, if you want better specs, you'll pay through the nose. Most people will be quite happy with, at most, a desktop machine with one Core2 Quad, 4Gb or so of memory, a decent hard disk or two (750Gb, say) and proper high-end graphics.

So instead, you're saying that all new mac users need to spend $3000 on their machine... Well for $2800 price you get:
A motherboard worth $530 (the one in the MacPro is actually better than this one slightly, but this is the closest you can get retail. Two CPUs worth $1000 each.

Firstly, you're looking at the price of the wrong CPU - the Mac Pro's is 2.8Ghz, not 3Ghz. If you want a Mac Pro with two of those CPUs, it's another $800., taking the price to $3600. I think the CPUs in the standard Mac Pro are http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117144">this one, for a mere $729 each. (The motherboard seems comparable, but Apple are a bit vague about stuff like the real PCIe capabilities of the Mac Pro.)

So, going for the cheaper CPUs, motherboard+2 CPUs is $1988. Memory will be slightly painful, since it's server-class - 2x1Gb fully-buffered EDO DDR2 at $41 each. Graphics card is $63 before rebate (or you can get something a bit newer and faster for $90). 320Gb hard drive is $50, a DVD burner $24. That's $2207. Add in a bit more for a decent case+PSU of your choice, and you're looking at about $2400, depending on your exact choices of course.

Secondly, very few people have a need for a workstation with two expensive server-class quad-core processors and fully-buffered RAM. Especially as the rest of the spec is somewhat less good - only 2Gb of RAM and a 320Gb hard disk, and a mid-range graphics card from a couple of half-generations ago that's the same as the one in my desktop. Plus, if you want better specs, you'll pay through the nose. Most people will be quite happy with, at most, a desktop machine with one Core2 Quad, 4Gb or so of memory, a decent hard disk or two (750Gb, say) and proper high-end graphics.

So instead, you're saying that all new mac users need to spend $3000 on their machine... Well for $2800 price you get:
A motherboard worth $530 (the one in the MacPro is actually better than this one slightly, but this is the closest you can get retail. Two CPUs worth $1000 each.

Firstly, you're looking at the price of the wrong CPU - the Mac Pro's is 2.8Ghz, not 3Ghz. If you want a Mac Pro with two of those CPUs, it's another $800., taking the price to $3600. I think the CPUs in the standard Mac Pro are http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117144">this one, for a mere $729 each. (The motherboard seems comparable, but Apple are a bit vague about stuff like the real PCIe capabilities of the Mac Pro.)

So, going for the cheaper CPUs, motherboard+2 CPUs is $1988. Memory will be slightly painful, since it's server-class - 2x1Gb fully-buffered EDO DDR2 at $41 each. Graphics card is $63 before rebate (or you can get something a bit newer and faster for $90). 320Gb hard drive is $50, a DVD burner $24. That's $2207. Add in a bit more for a decent case+PSU of your choice, and you're looking at about $2400, depending on your exact choices of course.

Secondly, very few people have a need for a workstation with two expensive server-class quad-core processors and fully-buffered RAM. Especially as the rest of the spec is somewhat less good - only 2Gb of RAM and a 320Gb hard disk, and a mid-range graphics card from a couple of half-generations ago that's the same as the one in my desktop. Plus, if you want better specs, you'll pay through the nose. Most people will be quite happy with, at most, a desktop machine with one Core2 Quad, 4Gb or so of memory, a decent hard disk or two (750Gb, say) and proper high-end graphics.

So instead, you're saying that all new mac users need to spend $3000 on their machine... Well for $2800 price you get:
A motherboard worth $530 (the one in the MacPro is actually better than this one slightly, but this is the closest you can get retail. Two CPUs worth $1000 each.

Firstly, you're looking at the price of the wrong CPU - the Mac Pro's is 2.8Ghz, not 3Ghz. If you want a Mac Pro with two of those CPUs, it's another $800., taking the price to $3600. I think the CPUs in the standard Mac Pro are http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117144">this one, for a mere $729 each. (The motherboard seems comparable, but Apple are a bit vague about stuff like the real PCIe capabilities of the Mac Pro.)

So, going for the cheaper CPUs, motherboard+2 CPUs is $1988. Memory will be slightly painful, since it's server-class - 2x1Gb fully-buffered EDO DDR2 at $41 each. Graphics card is $63 before rebate (or you can get something a bit newer and faster for $90). 320Gb hard drive is $50, a DVD burner $24. That's $2207. Add in a bit more for a decent case+PSU of your choice, and you're looking at about $2400, depending on your exact choices of course.

Secondly, very few people have a need for a workstation with two expensive server-class quad-core processors and fully-buffered RAM. Especially as the rest of the spec is somewhat less good - only 2Gb of RAM and a 320Gb hard disk, and a mid-range graphics card from a couple of half-generations ago that's the same as the one in my desktop. Plus, if you want better specs, you'll pay through the nose. Most people will be quite happy with, at most, a desktop machine with one Core2 Quad, 4Gb or so of memory, a decent hard disk or two (750Gb, say) and proper high-end graphics.

So instead, you're saying that all new mac users need to spend $3000 on their machine... Well for $2800 price you get:
A motherboard worth $530 (the one in the MacPro is actually better than this one slightly, but this is the closest you can get retail. Two CPUs worth $1000 each.

Firstly, you're looking at the price of the wrong CPU - the Mac Pro's is 2.8Ghz, not 3Ghz. If you want a Mac Pro with two of those CPUs, it's another $800., taking the price to $3600. I think the CPUs in the standard Mac Pro are http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117144">this one, for a mere $729 each. (The motherboard seems comparable, but Apple are a bit vague about stuff like the real PCIe capabilities of the Mac Pro.)

So, going for the cheaper CPUs, motherboard+2 CPUs is $1988. Memory will be slightly painful, since it's server-class - 2x1Gb fully-buffered EDO DDR2 at $41 each. Graphics card is $63 before rebate (or you can get something a bit newer and faster for $90). 320Gb hard drive is $50, a DVD burner $24. That's $2207. Add in a bit more for a decent case+PSU of your choice, and you're looking at about $2400, depending on your exact choices of course.

Secondly, very few people have a need for a workstation with two expensive server-class quad-core processors and fully-buffered RAM. Especially as the rest of the spec is somewhat less good - only 2Gb of RAM and a 320Gb hard disk, and a mid-range graphics card from a couple of half-generations ago that's the same as the one in my desktop. Plus, if you want better specs, you'll pay through the nose. Most people will be quite happy with, at most, a desktop machine with one Core2 Quad, 4Gb or so of memory, a decent hard disk or two (750Gb, say) and proper high-end graphics.

So instead, you're saying that all new mac users need to spend $3000 on their machine... Well for $2800 price you get:
A motherboard worth $530 (the one in the MacPro is actually better than this one slightly, but this is the closest you can get retail. Two CPUs worth $1000 each.

Firstly, you're looking at the price of the wrong CPU - the Mac Pro's is 2.8Ghz, not 3Ghz. If you want a Mac Pro with two of those CPUs, it's another $800., taking the price to $3600. I think the CPUs in the standard Mac Pro are http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117144">this one, for a mere $729 each. (The motherboard seems comparable, but Apple are a bit vague about stuff like the real PCIe capabilities of the Mac Pro.)

So, going for the cheaper CPUs, motherboard+2 CPUs is $1988. Memory will be slightly painful, since it's server-class - 2x1Gb fully-buffered EDO DDR2 at $41 each. Graphics card is $63 before rebate (or you can get something a bit newer and faster for $90). 320Gb hard drive is $50, a DVD burner $24. That's $2207. Add in a bit more for a decent case+PSU of your choice, and you're looking at about $2400, depending on your exact choices of course.

Secondly, very few people have a need for a workstation with two expensive server-class quad-core processors and fully-buffered RAM. Especially as the rest of the spec is somewhat less good - only 2Gb of RAM and a 320Gb hard disk, and a mid-range graphics card from a couple of half-generations ago that's the same as the one in my desktop. Plus, if you want better specs, you'll pay through the nose. Most people will be quite happy with, at most, a desktop machine with one Core2 Quad, 4Gb or so of memory, a decent hard disk or two (750Gb, say) and proper high-end graphics.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048+1069633099&Configurator=&Subcategory=48&description=&Ntk=&SpeTabStoreType=&Order=PRICED&srchInDesc=

As you can see, the first cards to hit around $~300 are the GTX 260s. The GTX 280s are high end. The 260 is a peg below it.

If you don't know Nvidia, all you need to know is for the past 4 generations is this:

8 = flagship.
x9xx > x8xx >> x6xx >> x5xx > x4xx >> x6xx > x0xx
Ultra > GTX > GT > GTS > [no special branding] > GS >>>> FX (fuuuuuuuck the FX series!!)
ABxx : CDxx :: (C-A) : (D-B)
X2 means there are 2 GPUs on a single board.

For example, the 6800 was the flagship of that generation. There was the Ultra, the GT, and I believe a vanilla for a short while. Then you had the 6600, 6200, etc.

Things got crazy with the 8800 series - we got Ultra, GT, GTX, GTS, and GTS2 (usually just branded as GTS).

There is a huge difference between the x8xx and x6xx chips. The 8800 blows the 8600 out of the water, just as the 6800 did to the 6600, and the 5800 FX did to the 5600 FX (though anything in the FX generation is shit).
The difference transcends generations. The 6800 will outperform the 7600, and would be a good match for the 8600 (video processing and other features aside, of course).

Sometimes nvidia ramps up yields and throws us a x9xx line, such as the 79xx series a while back, but these show only marginal improvements over the x8xx lines.

With the new number, (280, 260), just imagine they went from the 9xxx line to the 10xxx line.
The 280 would be the 10280, but decided to drop the first number designator. I suppose we'll be looking at the 380 in while, though I wonder if they'll stick with that when they realize that 360 will remind people of xbox 360.

ATI went from the 7xxx to the 8xxx to the 9xxx series. The 9800 Pro was the flagship. SE was the shitty edition, XT was the higher end version.

After 9xxx, ATI went to x800, x700, etc, all the way down to x300. Then they went to x1800, x1700, etc. Then then dropped the X and went to HD 2xxx etc. Then HD 3xxx and HD 4xxx.

The point of all this is that once you wade through the horriblenes, you can tell just from the model number whether it's a high, mid, or low end part.

An 8800 is high end from 2 years ago.
Today, it's the fool's mid end. Why buy that when you can get the 4850 (upper mid end, but great value/$) for similar levels of $?

$300 is mid-end.
If you count rebates (I don't), then maybe you can get a slightly better card, but it won't be high end, and you better go with evga to take advantage of their step-up program.

Passive cooled video cards are notorious for dying due to memory/chip heat failure. That being said, I bought this gigabyte 8600 GT for my HTPC, and it actually doesn't even get very hot to the touch.

Wow, this thing is only $50 after rebate now. And it runs most games just fine at medium settings.

I had an ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe 478 Intel 875P ATX http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131464/ IC start smoking when I first powered it up, that was fun. I RMA'ed for an ABIT board (back in 2004 when they were still good).

After fighting some obnoxiously loud video card fans for a while I swapped my main desktop system over to a Gigabyte GV-NX86T256H, which is a fanless 8600GT. That seemed to be the cheapest product level capable of dual DVI output, and I have my doubts about whether a more powerful card can run with passive cooling effectively.

I'm pretty happy with mine, it is hard to get good gaming performance from a fanless design though without the whole thing overheating (as you can tell from the amount of negative comments listed at newegg). And said overheating is rough on the components, too. The impression I got from culling through lots of reviews of this type of product is that if you switch to a passively cooled video card, you do remove fan failure from the list of problems--but instead you're significantly more likely to have a failure in the voltage regulator or other hot component that ends up with a much shorter lifespan because there's no active cooling.

So instead, you're saying that all new mac users need to spend $3000 on their machine... Well for $2800 price you get:
A motherboard worth $530 (the one in the MacPro is actually better than this one slightly, but this is the closest you can get retail.
Two CPUs worth $1000 each.

That's already more than the price of the MacPro when you include the dongle and OS X, and you haven't even started on the RAM/Graphics card/PSU/Case/Hard Drive/anything at all in fact.

Remind me why anyone is planning on buying a PC and this dongle?

So instead, you're saying that all new mac users need to spend $3000 on their machine... Well for $2800 price you get:
A motherboard worth $530 (the one in the MacPro is actually better than this one slightly, but this is the closest you can get retail.
Two CPUs worth $1000 each.

That's already more than the price of the MacPro when you include the dongle and OS X, and you haven't even started on the RAM/Graphics card/PSU/Case/Hard Drive/anything at all in fact.

Remind me why anyone is planning on buying a PC and this dongle?

The higher end iMacs, the Mac Pros, and the MacBook Pros all have real graphic cards.

But do they have real SCREENS?

I mean a proper 8-bit color space, instead of 6-bit dithering? I mean the ability choose matt vs glossy.

Obviously the Mac Pro lets you attach whatever you want to it, but the imacs and macbook pros stick you with the choice of exactly the one LCD screen apple chooses. (although the mbp used to let you choose between matte and glossy; i don't know if it still does; but that's just the finish not the technology.)

As far as i know, all Apple laptops use 6-bit TN screens. And there is a fair bit of information out there that iMacs have switched to 6-bit TN screens too, at least for 20" models. The 24" model is apparently an 8-bit S-IPS... but its not like apple makes this info readily available and the specs are subject to change, so you've got to pay constant attention.

Wow! You state the current scene for the entire PC market space and act as if Apple is an anomally.

Take a look at the 22/24 inch screens from all vendors and you'll be hard-pressed to find an S-IPS display under $600.

HP just finally released their:

HP LP2275w Black 22" 6ms(GTG) Widescreen LCD Monitor with DisplayPort input 300 cd/m2 1000:1 - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824176098

$379.99

for a S-PVA panel.

Personally, it's a great monitor and one I'd add as a secondary display on an iMac for a secondary display. Most video editing setups deal with dual displays.

A quick search turns up that a single recordable 50GB blank blu-ray disk (blank) costs somewhere around $47, and a spindle of 50 25GB disks costs something like $996 - about $20 a disk.

I don't collect movies, but if I did, I would be most concerned that chip based storage technology is going to overtake the clunky optical-mechanical drives and leave me with a (yet again) obsolete media library.

If I collected movies, I'd be more interested in the fact that your same $996 could buy you 10TB of hard drive space instead of a measly 1.25TB of slow, inconvenient optical media. Furthermore, considering that few movies are likely to fill 100% of the original BluRay disk, you can pack more movies per unit of storage on the hard drives than on optical media (where you'll end up with one movie per disk regardless).

If BluRay disks come down to about $1.50 a disk, they might start to become competitive on price per storage capacity. Of course, hard drives will also be much cheaper by then, and will always have the convenience of not requiring you to swap media.

Try again. Cheapest is $29.99 for a standalone player. Also, a DVD drive is a perfectly good player, and come standard in most computers, which can hook up to most TVs with the right cables. And nevermind that if you shop around, you can buy a standalone player for less than $20 USD at retail outlets. DVD players are incredibly cheap.

That's a DVD DRIVE, not a player. If you're going to compare apples to appples, then Blu-Ray "players" are also selling at Newegg for $99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106227

As someone else already noted you are comparing a computer dvd drive to the price of a standalone Bluray drive. Newegg has a computer Bluray drive for $99 already. Last year they were several hundred dollars so they appear to be dropping in price fairly quickly.

That's a DVD Drive, which requires a computer. A stand-alone DVD Player is about $50 at newegg.

Calling "less than $200" cheap is pretty absurd. Perfectly solid DVD players are flying off the shelves for less than $18 bucks at newegg. Why would someone buy a $200 blu ray player when they can get all their favorite movies on a player that costs less than a single DVD?

I wonder if there are MicroSD to SD converters/wrappers.

You got me curious, so I looked it up.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010070068%201053118914&bop=And&Order=RATING

Looks like about half of the MicroSD cards at Newegg come with SD adapters.

The CyberLink Linux software DVD player(32 bit systems only) from Canonical costs ~$50

I can buy a 20X DVD writer drive with Lightscribe that includes Nero 8 Essentials(Windows only) for ~$35

Canonical will act surprised that their sales fall short of "expectations". Seriously though, a software only DVD player should not cost more than $10

Complaining? About what? For Nvidia, what you would be looking for is PureVideo HD. I know that the Geforce 8600gt has it, and you can get that for about $80.

Which is why I went with the best deal I could find for ~$1,000. But if you want to spend more I'd much rather go with something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220364

Just the slightest bit slower than any of the 3 listed in this 'article' and barely half the price of the cheapest of the three.

RAM is cheap.

Please allow me to submit that if someone can afford a $500 laptop, they can probably afford to swap in 2 gigs of DDR2. They just need someone to either a) help them do so, either by instruction, consultation, or gift or b) guide them toward a computer which includes at least a couple of gigs of RAM out of the box.

The problem, as I see it, is not that Vista wants lots of memory, but that OEMs continue to sell computers which, unmodified, are completely unsuitable for any computing purpose. This problem isn't new, having existed since Windows became the defacto installed OS with Windows for Workgroups 3.11, and it is very clearly an abomination bordering on fraud, but at least a problem that is cheap and easy for folks to rectify these days (once it's pointed out to them).

Again, RAM is cheap. What has long been the overall best upgrade for any multitasking computer, is now quite likely also the least expensive and easiest to perform. So do your part, kid[1]: Quit whining and start coaching the people you meet about getting more RAM into their PCs.

[1]: Yep, I said it. It's not my fault that you're the one with the 7-digit UID.

during hurricanes as we are so prone to getting, we rely on our portable televisions to watch information about the storm when we lose power.
...
what will we do?

Well, you can get a good (2.4GHz+) laptop, if you don't have one already; and then get one of these for less than $100.

I'm actually using this Hauppauge on a 1.5GHz Celeron M, and most of the time, it works at least OK, with a good antenna.

during hurricanes as we are so prone to getting, we rely on our portable televisions to watch information about the storm when we lose power.
...
what will we do?

Well, you can get a good (2.4GHz+) laptop, if you don't have one already; and then get one of these for less than $100.

I'm actually using this Hauppauge on a 1.5GHz Celeron M, and most of the time, it works at least OK, with a good antenna.