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You made a funny but for an HTPC? Its just too damned small, it limits the system too much.

IMNSHO as a system builder and VAR a much better choice would be something like the Sempron 3850 if you want a media tank and streaming box or the Athlon 5350 if you want something with a little more kick for tasks like transcoding your vids to your mobile devices. Pair it with this Asrock board and an Apex VCR style case and voila! A VERY capable HTPC based on the same APU used in the XB-One and PS4 that just sips power while being able to do pretty much any HTPC related task, even game as long as you stick to older games or lowered settings. this is one of my most popular builds,just slap a BD player into it and you have a box that looks nice in any media cabinet, can play any popular format with full hardware acceleration, and is quiet as a churchmouse.

those sticks are just too limited, most won't play local content, very few video/audio formats supported, its just too limited in function. Hell the above is flexible enough that when one of my customers had his sister's laptop die he lent her his office PC and while he waited for me to get the parts in to build her what she wanted he used his Athlon quad HTPC as his office computer and was quite happy with the performance. Oh and if you slap a couple of wireless controllers they make damned good emulator boxes, you can play everything from Atari 2600- PS1 on one of those, great for when you have friends or kids/grandkids over.

You made a funny but for an HTPC? Its just too damned small, it limits the system too much.

IMNSHO as a system builder and VAR a much better choice would be something like the Sempron 3850 if you want a media tank and streaming box or the Athlon 5350 if you want something with a little more kick for tasks like transcoding your vids to your mobile devices. Pair it with this Asrock board and an Apex VCR style case and voila! A VERY capable HTPC based on the same APU used in the XB-One and PS4 that just sips power while being able to do pretty much any HTPC related task, even game as long as you stick to older games or lowered settings. this is one of my most popular builds,just slap a BD player into it and you have a box that looks nice in any media cabinet, can play any popular format with full hardware acceleration, and is quiet as a churchmouse.

those sticks are just too limited, most won't play local content, very few video/audio formats supported, its just too limited in function. Hell the above is flexible enough that when one of my customers had his sister's laptop die he lent her his office PC and while he waited for me to get the parts in to build her what she wanted he used his Athlon quad HTPC as his office computer and was quite happy with the performance. Oh and if you slap a couple of wireless controllers they make damned good emulator boxes, you can play everything from Atari 2600- PS1 on one of those, great for when you have friends or kids/grandkids over.

You made a funny but for an HTPC? Its just too damned small, it limits the system too much.

IMNSHO as a system builder and VAR a much better choice would be something like the Sempron 3850 if you want a media tank and streaming box or the Athlon 5350 if you want something with a little more kick for tasks like transcoding your vids to your mobile devices. Pair it with this Asrock board and an Apex VCR style case and voila! A VERY capable HTPC based on the same APU used in the XB-One and PS4 that just sips power while being able to do pretty much any HTPC related task, even game as long as you stick to older games or lowered settings. this is one of my most popular builds,just slap a BD player into it and you have a box that looks nice in any media cabinet, can play any popular format with full hardware acceleration, and is quiet as a churchmouse.

those sticks are just too limited, most won't play local content, very few video/audio formats supported, its just too limited in function. Hell the above is flexible enough that when one of my customers had his sister's laptop die he lent her his office PC and while he waited for me to get the parts in to build her what she wanted he used his Athlon quad HTPC as his office computer and was quite happy with the performance. Oh and if you slap a couple of wireless controllers they make damned good emulator boxes, you can play everything from Atari 2600- PS1 on one of those, great for when you have friends or kids/grandkids over.

The NUC sucks,Look at the new AMD APUs as they have MUCH better graphics performance** as that is what you need in a media box. You can get the quad AM1 Athlon APU with the board for around $100 , just slap it in a VCR style case and you have a kicking HTPC, or if you want something closer to OOTB you can get a Zotac AMD quad micro for just $175. Personally I prefer the Athlon as not only do you get better options on the AM1 boards than either the NUC or the AMD super mini but you get a more powerful APU capable of transcoding if you need to convert some of your media before sticking it on your portable devices.

**.- Try looking up real world tests instead of benchmarks and you'll find the AMD chips are in reality in the single digits when compared with intel and in some cases like the FX8xxx chips (which can be had for less than $140) against the i5 it curbstomps it pretty badly. The reason why the benches say different is pretty easy to explain, intel bribes them to compile their benchmarks with the Intel Cripple Compiler. in some cases even that isn't enough for Intel as Cinebench was recently caught putting "If AMD slow down tests" in their benchmarking software to make Intel look better. Wanna guess where a VERY large portion of their advertising budget comes from? For examples of what happens when you don't use rigged benches see this video where an AMD 8350 goes up against an Intel 3850, a CPU which literally costs double what the 8350 does, and the 8350 wins damned near every test, or this one where a now 3 generations behind Phenom II X6 is placed against the midrange Intel and the difference is still under 5%. Oh and for those that'll say "ZOMFG AMD will wreck your power bill ZOMFG!" that is complete and total bullshit as to make up the difference in cost between an AMD and an Intel, even using the 125w AMD, would take you 18.9 years. if you OC the shit out of the AMD it would still take nearly 7 years, longer than anybody will likely keep a PC.

Google is your friend: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

And the second part of ArchieBunker's question: what devices support it? No smartphone does anything close to a gig. Google is your friend too.

Google is your friend:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

I guess that is what they get for trying to go "Gangnam Style"....sorry couldn't resist, bad old hairy ;-)

But yeah that is why I avoided their shit at the shop, I picked up a couple of their heatsinks on sale and found 'em to be nothing but unfinished crap, pipes not ground correctly that wouldn't set flush with the CPU, fans louder and shittier than on a Worst Buy Special, these were the ones originally in the $50-$70 range but when you looked at the things? Frankly I've seen $15 units by other companies with better quality, they were real junk.

This is why I recommend the Coolermaster units, they have a heatsink at just about every price point and even their $15 units are well built and work better than stock when paired with a little arctic silver. I especially like the N520 which I use on my personal PC and those of my family as it fits nearly any case and is pretty quiet for a dual fan cooler,and for the budget builds the Hyper TX3 is quite nice and works well.

But if anybody is planning on buying Zalman if they get dumped cheap? just be ready to do some sanding, you'll probably want to change out the fans for less noisy ones if possible as well. I should have known that if they were cutting corners on their mid priced units and allowing work that shoddy to leave the factory something hinky must have been up, but seeing them go tits up really don't surprise me, they were the OCZ of heatsinks.

I guess that is what they get for trying to go "Gangnam Style"....sorry couldn't resist, bad old hairy ;-)

But yeah that is why I avoided their shit at the shop, I picked up a couple of their heatsinks on sale and found 'em to be nothing but unfinished crap, pipes not ground correctly that wouldn't set flush with the CPU, fans louder and shittier than on a Worst Buy Special, these were the ones originally in the $50-$70 range but when you looked at the things? Frankly I've seen $15 units by other companies with better quality, they were real junk.

This is why I recommend the Coolermaster units, they have a heatsink at just about every price point and even their $15 units are well built and work better than stock when paired with a little arctic silver. I especially like the N520 which I use on my personal PC and those of my family as it fits nearly any case and is pretty quiet for a dual fan cooler,and for the budget builds the Hyper TX3 is quite nice and works well.

But if anybody is planning on buying Zalman if they get dumped cheap? just be ready to do some sanding, you'll probably want to change out the fans for less noisy ones if possible as well. I should have known that if they were cutting corners on their mid priced units and allowing work that shoddy to leave the factory something hinky must have been up, but seeing them go tits up really don't surprise me, they were the OCZ of heatsinks.

Regardless, I genuiunely don't care enough to pursue this line of questioning.

Then stop hitting the reply button.

It would however serve you well to remember the things you learn here in the future, because you showed several quite dangerous misconceptions both in terms of your legal right and legal obligations, as well as lack of understanding of concept of fraud.

As a professional computer technician with 15+ years of experience, I know what my legal rights and responsibilities are. It's painfully obvious that you're not familiar with using Microsoft products in the real world.

You don't need to be "familiar with pirate bay" to know that most of the modern pirated versions of windows have long ago solved any microsoft DRM problems.

You falsely accuse me of committing crime and fraud, and insinuated that I'm familiar with the various techniques for pirating Windows. I buy my Microsoft products from Microsoft and Newegg. I don't need to know how to pirate Windows when I already bought Windows through legitimate channels.

Windows 7 64 bit

I think Windows 7 is going to be the last Microsoft OS I'm going to buy. Linux is free. Hell, even OSX is free. Yet MS wants to keep gouging customers $100+. Uhm, no thanks.

Especially since you can use the Safe Boot > Repair Computer > and this batch file to have "unlimited" time to "register"

D: reg load HKLM\MY_SYSTEM "D:\Windows\System32\config\system" reg delete HKLM\MY_SYSTEM\WPA /f reg unload HKLM\MY_SYSTEM exit

Oh, you pay for the Linux and OS X, just not directly.

Really? How? I don't pay anyone for any of my numerous Linux systems. I bought the hardware - one time fee, no OS, no Microsoft Tax, etc. My laptop for my startup came with SuSe Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) - and was switched to Kubuntu - and was cheaper than its Windows-based counterpart. So really, I'd love to know whom I paying any money to for using my Linux systems...

OS X is free on Apple hardware only, so you pay the Apple hardware tax.

True - you only get OS X from Apple with Apple Hardware. But nothing stops you from putting it on other systems you own yourself; it's just that Apple won't support it, and no one else can do it for you.

Linux is free because it is open source, but that can have its own associated restrictions (associated with the time input required to it to a certain level of functionality, depending on your Linux expertise.)

I did Windows development as my primary job for nearly 10 years before I was able to switch over to being primarily a Linux dev that happens to also do some Windows work. I knew Windows in-and-out, and it would take me several days to get Windows to the point of being able to do my job - a day lone just to install Visual Studios; there were no shortcuts.

When I switched over to using Linux as my primary desktop environment, I tossed Windows into a Virtual Machine (at that point) to continue supporting it. Any given Linux system was pretty much ready to go to do my work as soon as I could log on to it; at worse, it'd take me 30 minutes to install everything - compilers, etc. Even when I was relatively new to Linux that was always the case - and I've used Linux now for over 10 years, and guess what - it's only gotten easier while Windows has gotten harder.

So Windows is the only OS that directly charges you.

Well, not really. Most people buy Windows with a new computer; so they indirectly pay for it by purchasing it through an OEM where it is usually purchased at a discounted rate. Meanwhile the COTS version of Windows has gone up in price significantly since the Windows 9x days.

Windows 7 64 bit

I think Windows 7 is going to be the last Microsoft OS I'm going to buy. Linux is free. Hell, even OSX is free. Yet MS wants to keep gouging customers $100+. Uhm, no thanks.

Especially since you can use the Safe Boot > Repair Computer > and this batch file to have "unlimited" time to "register"

D:
reg load HKLM\MY_SYSTEM "D:\Windows\System32\config\system"
reg delete HKLM\MY_SYSTEM\WPA /f
reg unload HKLM\MY_SYSTEM
exit

Oh, you pay for the Linux and OS X, just not directly.

OS X is free on Apple hardware only, so you pay the Apple hardware tax.

Linux is free because it is open source, but that can have its own associated restrictions (associated with the time input required to it to a certain level of functionality, depending on your Linux expertise.)

So Windows is the only OS that directly charges you.

Windows 7 64 bit

I think Windows 7 is going to be the last Microsoft OS I'm going to buy. Linux is free. Hell, even OSX is free. Yet MS wants to keep gouging customers $100+. Uhm, no thanks.

Especially since you can use the Safe Boot > Repair Computer > and this batch file to have "unlimited" time to "register"

D:
reg load HKLM\MY_SYSTEM "D:\Windows\System32\config\system"
reg delete HKLM\MY_SYSTEM\WPA /f
reg unload HKLM\MY_SYSTEM
exit

In that case, so is the price of Windows preinstalled on a Sony laptop. If you buy a $1000 laptop, you get a laptop which happens to have the OS installed.

Wrong. There is no SKU, no instance of (currently installed) OS X on the market for a price, no invoice for bulk licensing, no permutation of OS X on the market that a person can buy with cash money and install on their own hardware. It isn't a comparable product.

So where can I buy a Windows OEM version for $30 that it costs Dell? It doesn't exist.

Glib answer: lmgtfy.
Slightly less (but still) glib answer (that doesn't price match Dell or equivalent): http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
Non-glib answer: Where can any person or organization buy an OEM (or any other) version of OS X?

Did the judge say OEM have to refund the retail market price of Windows? I don't think so. They need to refund what it costs them. Then why does Apple have to establish a market price for OS X versus what it costs them?

These aren't comparable. The OEM does not have to refund what it costs Microsoft to develop Windows. In order to approach comparability, there would have to be a market price for OS X which could be assessed.

Anyway, the difference seems to be meaningless semantics, so I wrote up a much better analogy here

It's not meaningless. These are different products, even though they both happen to be silicon and bits. Failing to recognize that is causing you to make silly analogies.

A better analogy than yours (and forgive me if you've already gotten this, I don't have the time to read all of the comments):

1. Hotel O hires caterers, and passes that cost on to its customers. Some of its customers object, because the food served by the caterers is not in line with either their preference or their moral convictions, and the catering was not the service they were seeking, they simply couldn't opt out. They were actually interested in a safe and comfortable place to sleep for the night near some attraction or appointment.
2. Bed & Breakfast A is a hot spot for its (few) patrons because it serves a particular dish of eggs benedict that they enjoy, and has a spectacular view.

This is not meant to establish any claim of quality of service for either, but to point out that one provides a different service than the other.

Every time I've priced them out against something like Sony, that's correct.

However, against Asus, who IMO makes better products, they are much more expensive. Let's do it now.

Holy shit, the only Apple laptop that doesn't use Intel Integrated, is the 15" Macbook Pro with Retina display. It's come along a lot, but still sucks if doing anything 3D that actually uses the graphics card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
Differences: +.1GHz Lenovo
256GB SSD (Lenovo) vs 512GB SSD (Apple)
Resolution: 3840 x 2160 (Lenovo) vs 2880 x 1800 (Apple)
Screen size: 15.6 (Lenovo) vs 15.4 (Apple)
Graphics: 860M (Lenovo) vs 750M (Apple)
Weight: 5.29 (Lenovo) vs 4.46 lbs (Apple)
Apple lacks a built in Gigabit Ethernet port. It has 2 Thunderbolt ports (basically can be considered proprietary, given usage at the moment)

Cost?
  $1,269.99 vs $2499
So 2 laptops with almost all specs, exceeding the Apple's specs for the same price. (~230 for a 512GB SSD, if you want to increase storage that way, which still puts it at 60% of the cost)

So you're amongst the 1% that was dealt a defective monitor? http://www.newegg.com/Product/... You know instead of sitting on your thumb and spinning you could have sent it back to Samsung for a replacement... Is this a site for techs or people pretending to be tech savvy?

> MS doesn't charge any where near $100 to OEM's.

Sorry, should of clarified OEM version of Windows.

* http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
* http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

> MS doesn't charge any where near $100 to OEM's.

Sorry, should of clarified OEM version of Windows.

* http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
* http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

I have an HP MicroServer running Debian Stable, with several VMs running under Xen.

I love the MicroServer. Quiet, easy to work on, and inexpensive enough that I'm going to just buy a second one as a hot spare.

It doesn't support hot swapping of hard drives, but for my home use I don't need four nines reliability; powering down to swap drives is just fine for me.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16859107921

I run an email server with a small number of users (family and a few friends). This makes me appreciate sysadmins more.

I am planning to switch from using Xen VMs to using Docker containers.

Or, buy a box that already runs vyatta. The Ubiquiti EdgeRouter

http://www.ubnt.com/edgemax/ed...

At less than $100, with build in switching, embedded linux and apt-get support, you can't go wrong.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

Oh, and it's quiet. (No fans)

And wait, there's more! Their $175 version the Edgemax Pro has 5 ports and 24/48v poe. (You'll need to buy a third party power brick for 48v poe, but it's worth it)

My PFSense build

Intel Core i5-4570 Haswell Quad-Core 3.2GHz
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 Timing 8-8-8-24
GEOM Raid1 - SAMSUNG 840 EVO 120GB
MSI B85I LGA 1150 Intel B85
Intel Ethernet Server Adapter I350-T2
Case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

About 5% cpu when moving 3gb/s. Down clocks to 200mhz-400mhz during normal operation, even when maxing my 50/50 connection with 20k+ connections.

Windows 7 Home Premium OEM is $100 http://www.newegg.com/Product/.... So it does cost a bit of money.

Hands down the most reliable and easy to use dual wan, VPN enabled Router for quick deployments, silent, low power consumption, handles PPTP, ipsec, etc...

I am no fan of their quickVPN software (a third VPN option included with this router), but it works as well if you dont like pptp or if you find IPSEC too much of a pain to setup.

Plus it has DUAL WAN connections, so you can use a hotspot or DSL, or the neighbors connection as a failover (or you can load balence them, or bind stuff, etc...).

Im blown away noone has mentioned this router as i see it everywhere.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

Pfsense is a huge winner as well, though youll need to buy silent low cost hardware to run it (and its a good deal more involved - though considerably more powerful).

We use these two for all of our client locations with offices of up to 100 or so people, for at least 7-8 years or more.

I agree. If you don't mind tinkering, pfSense is the way to go, but it isn't for the sort of people who want something to just work right out of the box.
I run it on a compact Intel Atom box: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
Round off that setup with 4GB of RAM and a small SSD for a quiet, power-sipping network appliance for around $200.
That setup firewalls/NATs a 50Mb internet connection, runs a VPN server, runs a Snort IDS/IPS, and runs a transparent proxy that captures all http traffic and runs it through a virus scanner.
Add a managed switch that can handle VLANs (Mikrotik sells a 5-port for around $40), and you've got a router on a stick. Now you can run a separate access point to provide free wifi to the neighborhood without compromising your own network, etc.
It's a really flexible setup, and I can't recommend it enough.

Heh, some mod doesn't like the 2560x1440 options, apparently.

Sadly all (or almost all) 2560*1440 monitors are 27". That's too big for my tastes; I find I have to move my head (and my neck) to look around the screen, and that is NOT good.

24" would be MUCH better.

That's a good point - I was considering one of those when I got my 24", and the dpi on the 24 is about as high as I'd like for a desktop monitor (using standard scaling levels). I currently have two displays connected, both at home and work, so I'm used to having to move my head to look around. I consider 2560x1440 a single-monitor upgrade from two 19" 1280x1024 displays, and at 27" should be less head & neck movement than the dual-monitor setup, but for that dpi to be legible might require you to sit too close. You'd need 30+" to match the dpi of the dual-19 setup, and that might require too much vertical craning.

...which is where 29" 2560x1080 comes into play!

when will we finally get hihger than 1920*1080 resolution monitors at a decent price ????

What do you consider a decent price? I got a 24" 1920x1200 IPS monitor (HP zr2440w) this year for $300 - it's fantastic. Newegg has several 2560x1440 screens for less than $400. 20 years ago a decent 17" CRT cost $1000. That's only 786 pixels/$. My current screen is almost 10 times that. 15, counting for inflation. And they're much better pixels.

If you're only looking at the sub-$200 budget monitor market, you're going to have to accept compromises.

(all prices USD)

Well if you were wanting just playback and not transcoding I'd suggest the Socket AM1 Athlon quads, at 25w I've been using it for HTPCs and it works great in that role but for what you are wanting to do? honestly I'd probably stay away from the APUs, the "bang for the buck" just isn't there yet. Now please remember that with these recommendations I'm having to work without a LOT of the data I require, for example i don't know how many streams you are wanting to process, budget, etc so I'm just gonna throw some things out there with pretty wide parameters because of this.

That out of the way lets talk parts. For an HTPC with transcoding I'd probably go for an AM3+, you can get a board for just $25 and use the money you save to get FX6300. if you need to go cheaper you can get an FX 4130 Black Edition for $72 or an Athlon X3 450 and if you spent a little more on the board to get one with AAC I've been seeing more than 80% unlocks on that chip, so for $51 for the used you could have an Athlon X4 at 3.2GHz, can't beat that, in fact my youngest has an unlocked 450 and it plays pretty much any game he desires so its got the strength required for transcoding.

Now for graphics I bet you are wondering "Why should I go discrete instead of APU?" and the answer is simple...bandwidth.Remember when you are multitasking, like say watching a video while doing a transcode lets say, that with an APU your RAM is gonna have to be doing double duty by being the buffer for the GPU as well as being the working memory for the CPU that is gonna end up bottlenecking on ya friend, not to mention 4K is seriously heavy on the bandwidth so having a discrete is just a better call. If you are not gaming I'd go with something like this HD6450 for $37 or if you want to go dirt cheap and silent this HD5450 for $20 after MIR. in both cases you get plenty of GPU memory for video buffering, the AMD drivers not only come with codecs that allow hardware acceleration of most formats but also allow drag and drop transcoding to H.264 or VC1, and most importantly you are leaving your options open. Need to process more streams? Well if you started with the X3 you could go to an X6 or even X8 when you spot one on sale. new video format becomes popular? Get a new GPU that has hardware acceleration of that format.

Again remember I'm doing this without a lot of the data I'd normally work with, also remember that the 95w rating when it comes to AMD is the MAX RATING, I've found IRL its a LOT lower. For example my X6 has a TDP of 95w but acording to asrock IES which measures what the board is feeding the CPU with 8 tabs open in Dragon along with several background programs like Steam my chip is pulling between 8.4w-18w and the reason why is simple, more cores means no waiting for jobs so the chip can idle more often. BTW if you want to save even more power? Spend a little more and get an Asrock board as not only do they come with IES which drops the number of phases when idle but they also come with excellent OCing/UCing ability and its trivially easy to underclock an AMD CPU which will naturally lower the power and heat. There are plenty of forums which will show you how to UC an AMD chip, some guys are running sub 1 volt on their AMD quads which can drop a 95w CPU into 45w territory.

Anyway I hope

Well if you were wanting just playback and not transcoding I'd suggest the Socket AM1 Athlon quads, at 25w I've been using it for HTPCs and it works great in that role but for what you are wanting to do? honestly I'd probably stay away from the APUs, the "bang for the buck" just isn't there yet. Now please remember that with these recommendations I'm having to work without a LOT of the data I require, for example i don't know how many streams you are wanting to process, budget, etc so I'm just gonna throw some things out there with pretty wide parameters because of this.

That out of the way lets talk parts. For an HTPC with transcoding I'd probably go for an AM3+, you can get a board for just $25 and use the money you save to get FX6300. if you need to go cheaper you can get an FX 4130 Black Edition for $72 or an Athlon X3 450 and if you spent a little more on the board to get one with AAC I've been seeing more than 80% unlocks on that chip, so for $51 for the used you could have an Athlon X4 at 3.2GHz, can't beat that, in fact my youngest has an unlocked 450 and it plays pretty much any game he desires so its got the strength required for transcoding.

Now for graphics I bet you are wondering "Why should I go discrete instead of APU?" and the answer is simple...bandwidth.Remember when you are multitasking, like say watching a video while doing a transcode lets say, that with an APU your RAM is gonna have to be doing double duty by being the buffer for the GPU as well as being the working memory for the CPU that is gonna end up bottlenecking on ya friend, not to mention 4K is seriously heavy on the bandwidth so having a discrete is just a better call. If you are not gaming I'd go with something like this HD6450 for $37 or if you want to go dirt cheap and silent this HD5450 for $20 after MIR. in both cases you get plenty of GPU memory for video buffering, the AMD drivers not only come with codecs that allow hardware acceleration of most formats but also allow drag and drop transcoding to H.264 or VC1, and most importantly you are leaving your options open. Need to process more streams? Well if you started with the X3 you could go to an X6 or even X8 when you spot one on sale. new video format becomes popular? Get a new GPU that has hardware acceleration of that format.

Again remember I'm doing this without a lot of the data I'd normally work with, also remember that the 95w rating when it comes to AMD is the MAX RATING, I've found IRL its a LOT lower. For example my X6 has a TDP of 95w but acording to asrock IES which measures what the board is feeding the CPU with 8 tabs open in Dragon along with several background programs like Steam my chip is pulling between 8.4w-18w and the reason why is simple, more cores means no waiting for jobs so the chip can idle more often. BTW if you want to save even more power? Spend a little more and get an Asrock board as not only do they come with IES which drops the number of phases when idle but they also come with excellent OCing/UCing ability and its trivially easy to underclock an AMD CPU which will naturally lower the power and heat. There are plenty of forums which will show you how to UC an AMD chip, some guys are running sub 1 volt on their AMD quads which can drop a 95w CPU into 45w territory.

Anyway I hope

Well if you were wanting just playback and not transcoding I'd suggest the Socket AM1 Athlon quads, at 25w I've been using it for HTPCs and it works great in that role but for what you are wanting to do? honestly I'd probably stay away from the APUs, the "bang for the buck" just isn't there yet. Now please remember that with these recommendations I'm having to work without a LOT of the data I require, for example i don't know how many streams you are wanting to process, budget, etc so I'm just gonna throw some things out there with pretty wide parameters because of this.

That out of the way lets talk parts. For an HTPC with transcoding I'd probably go for an AM3+, you can get a board for just $25 and use the money you save to get FX6300. if you need to go cheaper you can get an FX 4130 Black Edition for $72 or an Athlon X3 450 and if you spent a little more on the board to get one with AAC I've been seeing more than 80% unlocks on that chip, so for $51 for the used you could have an Athlon X4 at 3.2GHz, can't beat that, in fact my youngest has an unlocked 450 and it plays pretty much any game he desires so its got the strength required for transcoding.

Now for graphics I bet you are wondering "Why should I go discrete instead of APU?" and the answer is simple...bandwidth.Remember when you are multitasking, like say watching a video while doing a transcode lets say, that with an APU your RAM is gonna have to be doing double duty by being the buffer for the GPU as well as being the working memory for the CPU that is gonna end up bottlenecking on ya friend, not to mention 4K is seriously heavy on the bandwidth so having a discrete is just a better call. If you are not gaming I'd go with something like this HD6450 for $37 or if you want to go dirt cheap and silent this HD5450 for $20 after MIR. in both cases you get plenty of GPU memory for video buffering, the AMD drivers not only come with codecs that allow hardware acceleration of most formats but also allow drag and drop transcoding to H.264 or VC1, and most importantly you are leaving your options open. Need to process more streams? Well if you started with the X3 you could go to an X6 or even X8 when you spot one on sale. new video format becomes popular? Get a new GPU that has hardware acceleration of that format.

Again remember I'm doing this without a lot of the data I'd normally work with, also remember that the 95w rating when it comes to AMD is the MAX RATING, I've found IRL its a LOT lower. For example my X6 has a TDP of 95w but acording to asrock IES which measures what the board is feeding the CPU with 8 tabs open in Dragon along with several background programs like Steam my chip is pulling between 8.4w-18w and the reason why is simple, more cores means no waiting for jobs so the chip can idle more often. BTW if you want to save even more power? Spend a little more and get an Asrock board as not only do they come with IES which drops the number of phases when idle but they also come with excellent OCing/UCing ability and its trivially easy to underclock an AMD CPU which will naturally lower the power and heat. There are plenty of forums which will show you how to UC an AMD chip, some guys are running sub 1 volt on their AMD quads which can drop a 95w CPU into 45w territory.

Anyway I hope

Well if you were wanting just playback and not transcoding I'd suggest the Socket AM1 Athlon quads, at 25w I've been using it for HTPCs and it works great in that role but for what you are wanting to do? honestly I'd probably stay away from the APUs, the "bang for the buck" just isn't there yet. Now please remember that with these recommendations I'm having to work without a LOT of the data I require, for example i don't know how many streams you are wanting to process, budget, etc so I'm just gonna throw some things out there with pretty wide parameters because of this.

That out of the way lets talk parts. For an HTPC with transcoding I'd probably go for an AM3+, you can get a board for just $25 and use the money you save to get FX6300. if you need to go cheaper you can get an FX 4130 Black Edition for $72 or an Athlon X3 450 and if you spent a little more on the board to get one with AAC I've been seeing more than 80% unlocks on that chip, so for $51 for the used you could have an Athlon X4 at 3.2GHz, can't beat that, in fact my youngest has an unlocked 450 and it plays pretty much any game he desires so its got the strength required for transcoding.

Now for graphics I bet you are wondering "Why should I go discrete instead of APU?" and the answer is simple...bandwidth.Remember when you are multitasking, like say watching a video while doing a transcode lets say, that with an APU your RAM is gonna have to be doing double duty by being the buffer for the GPU as well as being the working memory for the CPU that is gonna end up bottlenecking on ya friend, not to mention 4K is seriously heavy on the bandwidth so having a discrete is just a better call. If you are not gaming I'd go with something like this HD6450 for $37 or if you want to go dirt cheap and silent this HD5450 for $20 after MIR. in both cases you get plenty of GPU memory for video buffering, the AMD drivers not only come with codecs that allow hardware acceleration of most formats but also allow drag and drop transcoding to H.264 or VC1, and most importantly you are leaving your options open. Need to process more streams? Well if you started with the X3 you could go to an X6 or even X8 when you spot one on sale. new video format becomes popular? Get a new GPU that has hardware acceleration of that format.

Again remember I'm doing this without a lot of the data I'd normally work with, also remember that the 95w rating when it comes to AMD is the MAX RATING, I've found IRL its a LOT lower. For example my X6 has a TDP of 95w but acording to asrock IES which measures what the board is feeding the CPU with 8 tabs open in Dragon along with several background programs like Steam my chip is pulling between 8.4w-18w and the reason why is simple, more cores means no waiting for jobs so the chip can idle more often. BTW if you want to save even more power? Spend a little more and get an Asrock board as not only do they come with IES which drops the number of phases when idle but they also come with excellent OCing/UCing ability and its trivially easy to underclock an AMD CPU which will naturally lower the power and heat. There are plenty of forums which will show you how to UC an AMD chip, some guys are running sub 1 volt on their AMD quads which can drop a 95w CPU into 45w territory.

Anyway I hope

I'd say just a new GPU would be fine. I use an Asus 770GTX and can play everything I've tried on max settings @1440p, so you should fine @1080p.

The 770 doesn't take advantage of the higher power efficiency parts in the newest Nvidia generation, but the price on some of the variants is quite good. Newegg has a Zotac verison for $275: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

The 280X can be picked up for a little less, bit it uses more power and is louder from what I have read.

I can easily hammer a VGA cable into a DVI port...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

Hammer it alllll day long.

Mine's got the PSU on bottom, but it does have the intake (with a removable hair screen) on the bottom, raised pegs, and the exhaust on back. Meaning that the PSU doesn't blow hot air anywhere inside the case.

Tons of airflow on this case, even with the fans on the lowest setting my CPU fan hardly ever needs to spin fast.

Why hasn't Google given Microsoft the coup de grace and actively developed some desktop/laptop distro ala Chromebook but without the stupid "web only" focus?

Yep, a desktop "Chromebox" would be just the ticket.

This with more power, more OFFLINE, more backing:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
http://promos.asus.com/us/chro...

They could have an add-on to play blu-ray/DVD (complete with non-free licensing, whatever) as well as LibreOffice or OpenOffice and a client like Thunderbird (which many from the Outlook Express era - even Outlook itself - could migrate to easily).

I believe it is more than their web-centric focus and it relates to carving up fiefdoms and not needlessly pissing in MSFT's Cheerios (TM). Not only is Microsoft a dangerous competitor, however oafish, there is not much profit in their destruction for Google (IMO). The threat of desktop takeover might be more profitable than the takeover itself. Keeps the #2 competitor far away...

The last Windows PC I bought didn't come with any crapware installed (other than Windows itself), just the OS and the device drivers necessary to support the hardware. "Fact is" if you're willing to do your research beforehand and maybe buy from a less well-known vendor, you don't necessarily have to deal with bloat.

I build my own using this Inwin case (bolts to a monitor's VESA mounts):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

The mini-ITX motherboard of choice changes (as does solid-state hard drive, CPU) but that style case with external power adapter is the CAT'S ASS!

Anyway, I hope you like my hyperlink above and please share with us in the future your resarch.

You already know this, but it takes less time to slap together components and do a clean win 7 install than it does to remove all the crapware on some new PCs. This is doubly true when you don't know which of 20 Dellware programs you can dump.

Uhhh...it took me a grand total of 20 seconds to find a 50 count single layer for $27 and that is retail, on the scale FB would be buying I'm sure they could shave another $5-$10 off the price.

Nope.

The only laptop on Newegg under $250 is a refurbed Thinkpad with 2GB of RAM.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834317733

You might want to check again.

Nope.

The only laptop on Newegg under $250 is a refurbed Thinkpad with 2GB of RAM.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834317733

You might want to check again.

The enemy of better is "good enough". :-/

One thing that might help your buddy is to give him incentive. Is he still renting his DOCSIS 2 modem? Comcast and other ISPs charge ~$7/month for a cable modem rental! If he paid ~$70 and bought a DOCSIS 3 modem outright after ~7 months he would be saving money since he would no longer be being nickeled and dimed for the router rental.

You can find a list of DOCSIS 3 supported modems here ... make sure to check "[x] Latest (DOCSIS 3.0) Devices"
http://mydeviceinfo.comcast.ne...

I picked up the MOTOROLA SB6121 SURFboard Cable Modem RJ-45 from NewEgg for ~$69.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

Probably is the Surface Pro is meant to be a laptop replacement while having tablet functionality. But as it turns out people are learning that tablets are intrinsically useless. But the Surface Pro suffers because of it's price. It's starting price of $800 gives you a Core i3 with 64GB of storage. This Acer laptop is also $800 but gives you a Core i7 with 1TB storage and a real graphics card made by Nvidia, cause you'll never know when Microsoft will actually bring their Halo games over to Windows. Why would you get a Surface Pro 3?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

I ran tomato for a long time and recently upgraded to a ASUS RT-N66U. Its happily running toastman's tomato.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

http://toastmanfirmware.yolasi...

Easy for the elderly to see? You'll need a large screen. So get a large screen of the kind they're used to seeing. Use a television.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
This Logitech camera has Skype built right into it, plugs in via HDMI. What more could you ask for?

This is what I think of whenever I hear something about "fucking love science".

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

"identically specced" Only for very liberal interpretations for "identically specced". The problem is that when you actually try to build one identically-specced, in some cases, you'd find you spend more money on a PC than a Mac. There are specs you may not care about: small form factor, workstation processors, etc which may drive the price down. However ignoring them means you don't have an identically specced machine.

Take for example the cost of the video chips in the Mac Pro. It is actually cheaper to buy a Mac Pro upgrades than discrete cards. The D300 cards are roughly equivalent to the FirePro W7000 (~$750) while the D500 is almost equivalent to the W8000(~$1250). The D700 is roughly equivalent to a W9000 (~$3200). The prices are newegg prices. To upgrade from D300 to D500 is $400 on Apple. If you had two W7000 discrete cards, the upgrade price to dual W8000 would be $800. To upgrade to D700s would be $1000. To upgrade from dual W7000 to dual W9000 is $5500.

Now you make say you don't need workstation level cards, but that's the problem with your argument. Using a consumer level card would be cheaper; however, a Mac Pro is not designed for consumers. It's designed for professionals.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/... and it just works in every system I tried. Sounds good too.

That's a great setup! There's also this motherboard by ASRock that has a laptop power input. It uses the new quad-core Athlon (25 watts)...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157491

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113364

That's a great setup! There's also this motherboard by ASRock that has a laptop power input. It uses the new quad-core Athlon (25 watts)...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157491

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113364

Except with Glass it's easier to do it by casually looking in the direction of the person. I'm fairly certain if someone has their smartphone or camcorder pointed in your direction steadily it's a little more obvious than someone just looking past you who happens to be wearing Glass.

Except with every other inexpensive video only device on market, and especially those designed for the task, it is even easier and more stealthy than Glass.
Ex. http://www.newegg.com/Camcorde...
Those start around $10.
For $45 you can get a pair of sunglasses that look very much like average sunglasses and have a 720p video recorder. http://www.newegg.com/Product/... ... and I'm sure all those and more can be found cheaper elsewhere.

This is not a Google Glass hack in any way, shape, or form. It would not surprise me at all if there were more people with "spy" glasses like those above than there are Google Glass owners, and those with "spy" glasses are MUCH more likely to be trying to hide their actions (Glass isn't exactly normal looking).

Except with Glass it's easier to do it by casually looking in the direction of the person. I'm fairly certain if someone has their smartphone or camcorder pointed in your direction steadily it's a little more obvious than someone just looking past you who happens to be wearing Glass.

Except with every other inexpensive video only device on market, and especially those designed for the task, it is even easier and more stealthy than Glass.
Ex. http://www.newegg.com/Camcorde...
Those start around $10.
For $45 you can get a pair of sunglasses that look very much like average sunglasses and have a 720p video recorder. http://www.newegg.com/Product/... ... and I'm sure all those and more can be found cheaper elsewhere.

This is not a Google Glass hack in any way, shape, or form. It would not surprise me at all if there were more people with "spy" glasses like those above than there are Google Glass owners, and those with "spy" glasses are MUCH more likely to be trying to hide their actions (Glass isn't exactly normal looking).

The principle reason to put 2560x1440 pixels on a phone is to further the embarrassment of monitor manufacturers who can only manage to get 1/4 of the pixels into a 19" screen.

Damn right... when will I be able to buy a laptop with 2560x1440 resolution?

What do you mean, I can buy one today? Shut yo mouf!

I see your 2560x1400 and the cough, cough, only 4GB of RAM...seriously? Why have the better resolution and limit the amount of RAM (or disk space)?

Instead I would rather have either 16GB (or 32GB) of triple channel memory (RAM) with only 1920x1080 pixels (here) granted it would be best to have both, my guess is companies like ZaReason will when customers clamor for it. The Verix-545 is one heck of a sweet laptop, especially for the price, works with your preferred version of Linux out of the box, everything, it just works. Love having 2 TB of storage too. No more limitations, except resolution, if you consider HD at 1920x1080 to be a limitiation that is.

My only regret is that it does not have a 17", 19" or 21" laptop screen size. Granted I hook it to larger monitors to do work anyway. My future monitor will be a 60" LED 300hz LG TV. Have seen them in the stores on sale for $680, which is phenominal. My last LG was an LCD, 42" and cost over $1,000 on sale years ago.

Best of all, by buying from a Linux vendor only, you are not limited to only MS Win8 via the proprietary hardware...no more blind alleys.

With a LInux vendor, you can always buy a copy of Windows and run it, however the converse is not true, any hardware sold today that is meant for Windows 8 or 9, will *not* run Linux without paying for a Windows license, whether you need it or not.

The only reason not to purchase from a Linux vendor is if you want to run Macintosh OS X, of course that Macbook Pro will cost you considerablly more for less bang...good machines those Apple Macs, just always expensive.

The principle reason to put 2560x1440 pixels on a phone is to further the embarrassment of monitor manufacturers who can only manage to get 1/4 of the pixels into a 19" screen.

Damn right... when will I be able to buy a laptop with 2560x1440 resolution?

What do you mean, I can buy one today [newegg.com] ? Shut yo mouf!

Thats not a 19" monitor. Can you find a monitor in the 19" - 26" range with that resolution?