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No major manufacturer doesn't offer drives with a 3 year warranty, but most (all but Segate?) offer drives with 1 year warranties. WD's special edition drives have 3 yr warranties, and Maxtor's MaxPlus drives have 3 yr warranties, but their lower end drives are all 1.

Examples:
250GB WD from Best Buy
120GB WD from Best Buy

80 GB Maxtor from Best Buy
80GB Hitachi from Best Buy
Actually, I looked at 6 drives at Best Buy's website; 4 had 1 yr warranties, and 1 was a Segate I never expected to.

300GB Maxtor from Newegg
120GB Iomega drive from Newegg
120GB external WD drive from Newegg

No major manufacturer doesn't offer drives with a 3 year warranty, but most (all but Segate?) offer drives with 1 year warranties. WD's special edition drives have 3 yr warranties, and Maxtor's MaxPlus drives have 3 yr warranties, but their lower end drives are all 1.

Examples:
250GB WD from Best Buy
120GB WD from Best Buy

80 GB Maxtor from Best Buy
80GB Hitachi from Best Buy
Actually, I looked at 6 drives at Best Buy's website; 4 had 1 yr warranties, and 1 was a Segate I never expected to.

300GB Maxtor from Newegg
120GB Iomega drive from Newegg
120GB external WD drive from Newegg

You dont see anything about warranty in my link because you're full of it. I gave you the Option of looking at any drive since all of them have atleast 3 yr warranty.
Similar (SATA) drive, with three years warranty.
Call yourself a geek/nerd and you shop on CompUsa??? Tsk tsk.

I didn't see anything about warranty on your link.

Sure, 'cause it would be too hard fer ya' to drill down a bit, like click on the link for the Seagate drive - you know, one of the brands the parent mentioned...

Then, mebbe you coulda' clicked on the Detailed Specifications link, and read that it does in fact, as the GP stated, have a 5 year warranty.

You're trolling, or full of it.

It took you more time to type out your ill-thought post than it would have taken for you to check the facts.

Just sayin, is all.

I didn't see anything about warranty on your link.

Sure, 'cause it would be too hard fer ya' to drill down a bit, like click on the link for the Seagate drive - you know, one of the brands the parent mentioned...

Then, mebbe you coulda' clicked on the Detailed Specifications link, and read that it does in fact, as the GP stated, have a 5 year warranty.

You're trolling, or full of it.

It took you more time to type out your ill-thought post than it would have taken for you to check the facts.

Just sayin, is all.

I'm a solo recording artist, and after losing an entire album in a hard disk crash a few years ago, I decided to do something about it. As hard drive prices started going down, I decided to start buying 200GB plus drives to expand my storage capabilities.

Right now I have a 200gb HDD and a 250gb HDD for backup purposes - both are in USB external enclosures, and are IDE drives.

I wait until prices hit around 35 cents or less per gig, and buy then. Keep an eye out on sites such as Fatwallet and Deal News for deals. My favorite time to pick up a new HDD is black friday - day after thanksgiving. Most stores have really great deals on IDE hard disks. I pick up my external enclosures @ Newegg.

Wrong.
No manufacturer is giving less than 3 years warranty.
The 10,000 rpm WD Raptor and all Seagate drives come with 5 year warranty.
I think you wanted to refer to the not so recent attempt by some major players to cut warranty to 1 year. That didn't last long, I guess because their sales must have suffered.

The major advantage of CFs is that they don't have seek time, so in practice a 10M/s harddrive is going to be slower than a 10M/s CF.

Sony can lower prices on Memory sticks. I mean, come on $75 for a 256MB memory card? (http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinit y/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation- Start?ProductSKU=MSXM256N&DCMP=CJ_DF&HQS=ST_MSXM25 6N) I can pick up a 1GB high-speed SD card for $65! (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?DEPA=0& Item=20-163-152&ATT=Memory+Flash+Memory+&CMP=OTC-d ealram)

a 6800 ($190)

In all fairness, you would never install such a card on a low end PC. It would be a waste of money. For the budget gaming machine you could go with an ordinary 6800. They're under $200 now:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16814125142

This card can handle any game out there easily.

Any card can drive a 2048x1536 display if all you're doing is relatively static desktop stuff (check the specs).

But not even a vacuum cleaner video card will play Doom 3 at that resolution today. And as soon as you create a quiet, low-power card that can handle Doom 3 at that resolution, someone will write a game that only runs at 800x600 at 10 fps on that card, and you'll need to buy a newer card.

Which are you asking for? You can get a quiet card that will drive a big-ass display, but don't expect it to play the latest and greatest 3D games on it. Those are designed to run crappily on even the leaf blowers, so that they can take advantage of the yet-to-be-released generation of cards.

And, it's a $200 mobo in a $100 case with a $60 hard drive and $100 worth of RAM.

Plus a $400 processor. Maybe $30-50 for some kind of optical drive?

Would they take a loss on each machine at $499? Perhaps a little, but it would be small.

small? wtf? Ok, so I go to dell to try and find the cheapest 3.6GHz Pentium 4 machine and I see that dimensions don't support anything near that, so the precision 380 line which starts at $649 has an option for $580 to upgrade to a 3.6GHz processor. That's $1229 for the non-math majors out there. There is no way this apple development machine comes in anywhere near your $499 price point - not with the processor it sports.

The Mac Mini has no PC equivalent. You can't even buy PCs on today's market with laptop-speed hard drives or video cards 3 generations old. You speak of lowballing. What do you call sticking a bunch of old obsolete crap into a small compact box and calling it a PC?

As far as your wireless, firewire, gigabit ethernet rant goes, these things are commonplace on top of the line motherboards these days. Modern PC motherboards like this one come with everything you just mentioned and more. SATA2, built-in raid, PCI-Express, SLI-enabled. You name it, it has it. And that's $170. Say about $100 for 512 megs of ram, $100 for a sound card, $200 for a video card, and $100 for a hard drive. Throw in a processor and a fancy case and you can _very_ easily price an above-average performance machine below $1000 (one equivalent to a "PowerMac" might run $300-400 more. I couldn't imagine a PC being priced any higher than $1500, and that's top of the line. Beyond that you're simply wasting money (ala additional $500 for 3% performance boost)

I wouldn't say Macs are "grossly" overpriced, but overpriced, yes. You're paying for elite snobbery, not for an equivalent performance machine. Check out some of the benchmarks where the AMD 64-bit processors were run head-to-head against the G5s, then look at cost. AMD is still several hundreds of dollars superior to Apple in cost/performance analysis.

I agree we want different things. You obviously have a lot more experience using tape than I do, I have not ever even heard of DVCPRO. My tape experience basically consists of popping a random cassette into a VCR and playing it or recording on it. I also have used a few video cameras that record to VHS.

As far as recording your own programming it would depend how you set things up whether a DVD recorder would treat it as one big long stream. IMO recording to a hard drive is definately the way to go. I do exactly what you mentioned in your post and it works great. I can put the edited content onto my video server and/or onto some DVD's. I like this setup better than a stand alone DVD recorder for three main reasons:

1) I can record, watch, erase and not waste a DVD .
2) I don't have to worry about space (300 gig HD) and don't have to change out DVD's.
3) I can easily transfer the files onto a DVD, VHS, or send them over the internet.

If you do decide to setup a video server I highly recommend putting the hard drive into an external enclosure. They can be had for 30-50 bucks and makes it really easy to transport large files to another computer that would take a long time to transfer over a network. I use this enclosure and really recommend it: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16817146187

It has USB 2.0 and firewire and it works GREAT as a heatsink so no noisy fan is needed. You can save around 10 more bucks if you only want USB 2.0.

Logitech's MX900 mouse uses Bluetooth, but yeah, why they don't use it more often is beyond me too. Must be a cost issue of some sort. FWIW, I use a Microsoft Bluetooth mouse with my notebook. Logitech's mouse is supposed to be a bit nicer. Shame HP only provides Bluetooth radios with their Configure-To-Order notebooks and not with the gazillions they sell at retail. I always encourage people to add the Bluetooth option when helping them buy notebooks.

I like Newegg. I find them to be reliable and cheap. I used them all the time when I lived in AZ. Unfortunately, I moved to CA. Since they are based in CA, I have to pay sales tax, negating some of their price advantages. Any recommendations for good, reliable computer retailers that are not based in CA?

I'm glad you asked!

apple store:

Apple Memory Module 2.0GB PC3200 ECC DDR 2x1.0GB DIMMS Apple Memory Module 2.0GB PC3200 ECC DDR 2x1.0GB DIMMS

Price $1,000.00

from newegg:

CORSAIR XMS Extreme Memory Speed Series, (Twin Pack) 184 Pin 2GB(1GBx2) ECC Registered DDR PC-3200 -Retail

Price: $332.00

On the other hand, I did recently use the free itunes for windows to turn an ancient pc into a standalone jukebox, and I have to give apple credit, it works great, nice interface, logical behaviour. I just feed it new CD's occasionally (from the heaps that litter the space around the stereo amp) while it plays the party shuffle of music that is already loaded.

I still have not figured out how to "reshuffle" the party shuffle deck, so to speak, but even though my bias is generally anti-apple, I am assuming that the option is there somewhere, and I must give them praise where praise is due.

No,no! Look here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16834117051 That's less than half of what you said. Anyhow, I'm happy with my Zaurus

Just pointing our something that struck me as odd.

Greg

>Question 1: What happened to the PowerPC's supposed performance advantage over Intel?

Dissapearing as we speak and that is part of the reason for the move.

>Question 2: What happened to Apple's 64-bit operating system?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16819116198
intel Pentium 4 630 Prescott 800MHz FSB 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 EM64T
$289 NOTE the EMT64T.

The Chip in the dev platform is reportedly:
Nntel Pentium 4 660 Prescott 800MHz FSB 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 EM64T
Again note the EM64T

>Question 3: Where the heck is AMD?
To me this is the lamest question people ask. There are so many reason that it would be a much bigger surprise if it were AMD. Want some:

0: Better deal, simpler engineering if you stick with one.
1: Intel provides the whole platform from a single vendor. Massively simplifying engineering the new platform
2: The myriad of reasons that Dell does the same. Most of them Dollars.
3: Pentium-M Laptop platform.
4: Truly massive Fab capacity, vs AMD history of production problems.

>Question 4: Why announce this chip swap a year before it will even begin for customers?
As said before Developers. Because there is no other way you can give ALL the developers a heads up and keep it a secret.

..or at least Newegg seems to think they already have them in stock

Are these not the processors you're looking for? Are they going to be argued as server-class?

..or at least Newegg seems to think they already have them in stock

Are these not the processors you're looking for? Are they going to be argued as server-class?

http://www.newegg.com/OldVersion/app/viewProductDe sc.asp?description=27-131-608&depa=0

I've seen non sony ones that cost half as much.

Not disagreeing with you or anything.

In order to get 1600x1200, I would have had to buy at least a 20". And judging from the current prices at NewEgg, that's at least $600.

So shop other than at NewEgg.

20" pretty decent 1600x1200 20 inch LCD:
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?prodid=1 1044707&whse=&topnav=&cat=&s=1

I picked up one of these babies for less than the above price last summer, and they've come down further since (under 500 now if you know when/where to look):
http://www.sceptre.com/Products/LCD/Specifications /spec_x20g_NagaII.htm

It will do 16:9 or 4:3, has picture in picture, multi-input (DVI, VGA, S-Video), USB Hub and built in speakers. Great colors, excellent brightness (important to me because my window faces the morning sun), good response times, and very nice video quality.

That said, even NewEgg has 20" LCDs for under 600.

To get a 20" viewable screen in CRT you need to go to a 21" CRT. Of course there will be price differences. What's a 21" going for?

Samsung, NewEgg, 21" flat screen:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16824001149
459 smackers. Definitely not a third of 600, actually comparable to what you can get a 20" viewable LCD w/extras. You got higher resolution but less space to use it with.

Comparing the price of an 18" viewable CRT to the price of a 20" viewable LCD is an invalid comparison.

I recently replaced my old 19" CRT monitor with a Samsung 19" CRT, but not before I looked at comparable LCDs.

I knew I wanted at least a 19" that was capable of displaying 1600x1200. I scoured NewEgg, but all I got were 19" LCDs with a native resolution of 1280x1024. I could put up with a lower resolution, but the fact that they all run at a non-4:3 resolution kills the deal for me. It just looks wrong.

In order to get 1600x1200, I would have had to buy at least a 20". And judging from the current prices at NewEgg, that's at least $600. So I went with the Samsung 997DF-T/T CRT monitor for $210. That's nearly a third of the cost for a flatscreen CRT with great colors and dotpitch.

LCDs are great, and had I $600+ to spend, I would have jumped at the chance. But for now, the cost difference is enough to make me stick with CRTs for now.

Totally off-topic, but I just got my first DVD burner, and I'm loving it. You should check out how cheap they've gotten -- I was surprised.

http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/Category.asp?Cat egory=10

The burn-any-format drives are less than $50, and media is $35/100. That's definitely getting down in the why-the-hell-not range, for me ...

Totally off-topic, but I just got my first DVD burner, and I'm loving it. You should check out how cheap they've gotten -- I was surprised.

http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/Category.asp?Cat egory=10

The burn-any-format drives are less than $50, and media is $35/100. That's definitely getting down in the why-the-hell-not range, for me ...

Totally off-topic, but I just got my first DVD burner, and I'm loving it. You should check out how cheap they've gotten -- I was surprised.

http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/Category.asp?Cat egory=10

The burn-any-format drives are less than $50, and media is $35/100. That's definitely getting down in the why-the-hell-not range, for me ...

Totally off-topic, but I just got my first DVD burner, and I'm loving it. You should check out how cheap they've gotten -- I was surprised.

http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/Category.asp?Cat egory=10

The burn-any-format drives are less than $50, and media is $35/100. That's definitely getting down in the why-the-hell-not range, for me ...

Sure...here ya go. What do you need? AGP or PCI-express?

Sure...here ya go. What do you need? AGP or PCI-express?

I'm sorry to hear that you have never used a high quality CRT. An equivalent LCD with a low response time costs $700+.

I found this easy explanation of horizontal refresh rate. For shutter glass use it is probably the most important spec. I am currently using a Philips 201B (which I don't recommend) I bought in the 90s. It has a 115khz maximum horizontal refresh rate (scanning frequency). I see that as the absolute minimum for sequential stereo display. You should really be looking for 120khz and higher

The Samsung 1100DF has a 121khz horizontal refresh rate and is only $449+$35 shipping at newegg. I'd recommend that one. According to the tomshardware article 121,000/1024*0.95 = 112 hz for a refresh rate (at 1280x1024) or 56 hz in sequential stereo mode. Ouch. That doesn't quite make it, does it? Anyone know of a currently manufactured monitor with a higher horizontal refresh rate?

The vendors have said that autostereo LCDs are on the way in 12 to 18 months, but what can I do in the meantime?

Autostereo LCDs are already here if you have the cash. They are just expensive and those dealers choose not to sell them.

I have several sets of shutter glasses myself (including a Revelator) and love them for gaming. The only problem is that I can only use them for 30 minutes or so before I have to rest or I will get a very severe headache. This can get tiresome for gaming. But images sticking out of (or into) your monitor are pretty addictive and it's hard to stop. So I end up with headaches. I presume you don't have this problem.

I recommend looking into a genuine HMD. I just checked and Christoph Bungert still has his siteup after all these years. It used to be the best site for news and information on stereo displays, especially shutter glasses. I don't know if it still is.

Furthermore, does this mean the end is near for CRTs? While there does still seem to be a market for CRTs, it seems to be dwindling to a narrow niche. Are LCDs ready to take over as the primary computer display or is the retirement of CRTs, premature?

I think it really is the beginning of the end for them as a mainstream consumer product. For that reason it is an especially good time to buy the best one we can afford to hold us over until new stereo display tech is introduced or HMDs drop in price and improve enough in quality to be a viable alternative.

There seem to still be quite a few suitable 21" CRT monitors for sale here for around half of what they cost when I last bought one in the 90s. And some of them have some very high refresh rates at 2048x1536. Hopefully that means 1280x1024 sequential stereo refresh rates will be high enough (60+). I don't know who your vendors are, but I would advise dumping them and just buying from Newegg.

Nope. The research money will just go elsewhere; the current production lines will become streamlined; and the price point will be fixed by lesser know vendors. The CRT market (amply supplied by the way) is just transitioning from growth tech to tech commodity.

It sounds to me like your vendor is playing a little loosely with facts. There are plenty of purchase points for CRTs. I like http://www.newegg.com/ for hardware purchasing, but also check out http://www.buy.com/ and http://www.cdw.com/. Those are the major vendors, but there are tons of others out there that will sell you the high quality CRTs that you need, and won't BS you about CRTs going away. As many of the other articles are saying LCDs may be popular, but CRTs are still the better, and more cost effective, solution. My recommendation is to get a new vendor.

newegg

Other than Opteron server boards with HT slots, where is a motherboard that could hook in two grpahic cards?
Well here's the list from NewEgg.
SLI Equipped Motherboards.

Quality keyboard... $30
Fine-grit sandpaper... $2
Label proclaiming übergeek status to all... $0.25
Getting morons to spend $80 for 5 minutes of labor... priceless.

It's funny. I've tried many different mice, most recently being the Logitech MX1000 (gets rave reviews) yet kept going back to my trusty Intellimouse Optical simply because I'm very effective with it. This mouse is really all you need. http://www.newegg.com/OldVersion/app/ViewProductDe sc.asp?description=26-105-122&depa=0/

Granted, I think I can see the point of spending a few extra dollars on an ergonomic keyboard (read: $20, versus $10 for a regular one), and spending a few more dollars on wireless seems luxurious to me at best. An extra $5 on a gel pad or something should prevent most stress injuries, and *gasp* NOT typing for a minute or two helps too.

But spending almost $50 on a massive clump of a mouse that (in the end) really doesn't do more than a normal mouse? Save for maybe targetting airliners or blinding your friends, a laser pointer in a mouse has a minimal effect on 99% of anything you would use a mouse for. Unless, of course, you're using the thing on a rocky floor or something, in which case you have more important things to worry about.

Unless these things drop down in price to the $5 of my two button wireless laptop mouse w/scrollwheel (made in China baby $), they're almost not worth reporting.

500 bucks, about as much as buying Windows XP Pro, for the Mac Mini,

Since when has Windows XP cost $500? I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but atleast get your facts straight.

Chaintech's product page

There are plenty of LCD's available for $200 now. Granted, that definitely won't work in the living room, and may or may not work in the bedroom, but it'll definitely work in the bathroom, kitchen, and computer room anyway.

In terms of what current hardware can and can't do, please read this. XBox, with a 733Mhz Intel Pentium-III, can decode and upscale to 1080i lots of stuff with no problem. However, it can't decode full-bandwidth (eg. 19 - 25 mbps) 720p or 1080i video. If you want to make sure you don't run into some video streams in the future that are too dense for your hardware, you simply want to get XBox2-era hardware.

The real US price is more like $460, at which the Dell is still a better deal. But that doesn't change the fact that it's a Dell ;)

Ok, so it's a little more than just a little more expensive. But let's do it with the 65MB RAM model of the MyPal and the 4GB Microdrive:

ASUS MyPal A730 - $480.00
Hitachi 4GB Microdrive - $174.00

Having something way better than a "LifeDrive" (VGA, 1.3 MP camera, voice recording, CF slot)- Priceless

Ok, so it's a little more than just a little more expensive. But let's do it with the 65MB RAM model of the MyPal and the 4GB Microdrive:

ASUS MyPal A730 - $480.00
Hitachi 4GB Microdrive - $174.00

Having something way better than a "LifeDrive" (VGA, 1.3 MP camera, voice recording, CF slot)- Priceless

But when they tell Dell that every person who orders a computer there has to also buy a copy of windows, that's pretty crappy. Easy fix: don't buy a Dell. Look at http://www.newegg.com/ or *shudder* TigerDirct. They have complete systems or you can have your local geek tell you what parts to buy and (s)he can build it for you. Total flexability.

You can try your luck with Netgear USB Adapter Though I am not sure if there are drivers via Linux.