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Maybe it is true that some people over clock their CPU's more for the challenge than to save any money.

Check out the price of the cooler and compare it to the price differences between CPU's (of a comparable class. i.e. - Don't compare an intel to an AMD, nor a P4 to a Celeron) and their clock speed differences (what you would be gaining from using the cooler). You will probably notice that the cost of the cooler is more than your savings on purchasing an inferior CPU and going through the trouble of over clocking it.

Is it really worth it?

Maybe it is true that some people over clock their CPU's more for the challenge than to save any money.

Check out the price of the cooler and compare it to the price differences between CPU's (of a comparable class. i.e. - Don't compare an intel to an AMD, nor a P4 to a Celeron) and their clock speed differences (what you would be gaining from using the cooler). You will probably notice that the cost of the cooler is more than your savings on purchasing an inferior CPU and going through the trouble of over clocking it.

Is it really worth it?

"To me this is unnaceptable as it means I have to spend 25% more on hardware to get the same performance. Quite wasteful"

Of course, that's assuming that 25% beefier hardware costs only 25% more, which sadly isn't true; those last few bits get expensive.

These aren't comprehensive numbers, but just checking really quickly with pricegrabber, a 3.0 ghz p4 costs ~$180, while a 3.06 ghz one costs ~$227. Granted, those are bad numbers, since the 3.0 is actually an 800mhz, has twice as much cache, etc. But pretending to compare raw mhz to mhz, we can see that:

3.06ghz/3.0ghz = 2% more muscle
$227/$180 = 26% more money

I know this isn't a perfect example, but the concept generally holds; it's not a linear relationship between price & performance, and especially when you're already near top-of-the-line, those last few mhz cost a LOT.

"To me this is unnaceptable as it means I have to spend 25% more on hardware to get the same performance. Quite wasteful"

Of course, that's assuming that 25% beefier hardware costs only 25% more, which sadly isn't true; those last few bits get expensive.

These aren't comprehensive numbers, but just checking really quickly with pricegrabber, a 3.0 ghz p4 costs ~$180, while a 3.06 ghz one costs ~$227. Granted, those are bad numbers, since the 3.0 is actually an 800mhz, has twice as much cache, etc. But pretending to compare raw mhz to mhz, we can see that:

3.06ghz/3.0ghz = 2% more muscle
$227/$180 = 26% more money

I know this isn't a perfect example, but the concept generally holds; it's not a linear relationship between price & performance, and especially when you're already near top-of-the-line, those last few mhz cost a LOT.

"To me this is unnaceptable as it means I have to spend 25% more on hardware to get the same performance. Quite wasteful"

Of course, that's assuming that 25% beefier hardware costs only 25% more, which sadly isn't true; those last few bits get expensive.

These aren't comprehensive numbers, but just checking really quickly with pricegrabber, a 3.0 ghz p4 costs ~$180, while a 3.06 ghz one costs ~$227. Granted, those are bad numbers, since the 3.0 is actually an 800mhz, has twice as much cache, etc. But pretending to compare raw mhz to mhz, we can see that:

3.06ghz/3.0ghz = 2% more muscle
$227/$180 = 26% more money

I know this isn't a perfect example, but the concept generally holds; it's not a linear relationship between price & performance, and especially when you're already near top-of-the-line, those last few mhz cost a LOT.

The closest equivalent is SD card is 1GB, there is no 2GB version.

I didn't think so either until a web search yesterday yielded this 2GB SD card.

Amazing to me that a company would release such a product without any declarations about how badass they are...

Regards,
Ross

1Gig on the phone, (mostly 15fps converted xvid moveis, mp3's and video capture from the phone)
1Gb on the Istick USB Drive in my wallet
(DSLinux/Qemu, all my pgp keys/apps, a blowfish encrypted iso drive, lastes win SP, spyware remover, antivirus, boot disk iso's)
40GB on the ipod, (lots and lots and lots and lots of music)

Having several full length movies on the cell is just far too useful for waiting on oil changes, mva work, doctors offices.

The Mp3's play in the car and at my desk. It's not unlike carrying around a binder of CD's which a lot of people did before the mp3 days. I don't think carrying a binder of music CD's was ever considered hoarding even if you had 100 discs on you.

If you wanted to stop there, is that really hoarding? You're carring around entertainment. If so people have been hoarding for a long long time and who are we to break tracdition? Would it be any different if you were listening to the radio or watching a portable tv? It could deliver the same content you're just accessing remotely.

Now the crypt data and linux distro has a use in my daily life..ok weekly life.. but I'm willing to grant that's hoarding. But that's also well out of the scope of the article.

When it became feasable to store a few thousand characterd in a magnetic strip, Drivers licenses (some states) and credit cards jumped on the bandwagon. When smartchips appeared on the scene, the financial community was in a rush to embed them in thier credit cards. It's now feasable to carry a small harddrive and battery with you. If a couple of gigs of portable music freak these guys out, just wait till 80GB video players become mainstream.

Win2k3 != $400 if you get it OEM. See here for $295.98. But as others have posted, you need CALs for each user where as with RH you dont and that can make a huge difference (unless its just a webserver, in which case you should be running apache anyway).

Anyone know if XP comes with a 2k3 device CAL?

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...that PriceWatch and Price Grabber are subject to this patent? Seems like they achieve similar functionality in concept.

http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_attrib.php?page _id=15&sortby=popular-&vendors%5B%5D=0&popup1%5B%5 D=0&popup1_attr_id%5B%5D=1022&popup2%5B%5D=0&popup 2_attr_id%5B%5D=389&popup3%5B%5D=16%3A301&popup3_a ttr_id%5B%5D=301&popup4%5B%5D=0&popup4_attr_id%5B% 5D=391&popup5%5B%5D=0&lo_p=0&hi_p=0&form_keyword=& sortby=priceA

A dozen or so monitors that can do that resolution for between $80 and $220.

Corporate Systems Center; they offer a couple of CD duplicators. I've bought SCSI stuff from them in the past and have been very satisfied.

Also check out this list of CD/DVD duplicators from Pricegrabber.

We've had a Targus CUN1 for a few years. Carries our (not very small) Compaq Prolinea and Dell 8000. Also carries a Canon bubblejet printer and a ton of other crap. And it's a pretty small, tough bag.

Why even have a lowest price pledge if you aren't going to honor it?

The purpose of a "low price guarantee" like that is ensuring that your prices are competitive. The problem comes in when someone can find a quote at a particularly shady outfit on Pricewatch or Pricegrabber, favorites of companies who deal in subpar and even stolen goods. The linked company was just the first in the list on a quick search for "lowest ratings" on Pricegrabber; there are pages upon pages more.

Anyhow, as I was saying: the problem comes in when I can get a price quote from some guy selling stolen goods out of his room in the basement of his Mom's house, then take that to Best Buy and demand they give me the same price. That's just unfair. Best Buy may be a buy-low-sell-high retailer out to make money, but they're following the letter of the law. Taking advantage of that seems like a devil to me.

Personally, I'm more interested in comparison shopping for The Internet

Nothing is going to "kill" the iPod

Used properly, this will.

Be careful. Buyer beware, this product may not be as good as the specs say... if these build quality and durability issues haven't been addressed that these reviews mention.

Well I thought this would be a great device until I saw some reviews on Pricegrabber.com. Looks like there are some serious issued with hard drive durability.

JOhn

On the "related links" portion of the page (to the right of the summary) I get a bunch of links that are purely sales related like this one:

Best deals: Microsoft

This used to be where the editors put only links related to the stories. Is this something new, or have I just not been paying attention? Pretty sad either way. The link isn't related to the story in any way whatsoever. I miss the old days of Slashdot.

Why would you go with a crappy little 1500W generator for $475 when you can get a 5,000W generator for only $499 from the same site?

• A generator
• Lots of lead acid batteries

Simple as that. The first option is cheap and effective, but makes a bit of noise, and will need somewhere outside to run it. The second option needs quite a bit of space, is expensive and requires a fair amount of other expenditure for charging circuits, inverters, etc. It also runs out after a while and there is nothing you can do then. If you use a generator, you can always put more petrol/diesel in, assuming you keep a decent stock.

Solution: Google for a 1500W generator (e.g.). Problem solved - next question please.

It doesnt come with a battery or a charger. The cheapest price for the rio carbon is $208. Not a good deal.

...is so we can sound like old-timers to the kiddies.

[Me] In myyyy dayyyy...we didn't have no fancy http://pricewatch.com/!
[Kid] [Rolls eyes, thinking:] Pricewatch? Geez, get with the times, grandpa...try http://pricegrabber.com/...
[Me] We had to go to an actual store, where we paid money for a big huge thick heavy book, printed on actual paper! Aaaaand we had to search (and I don't mean with no fancy Google!) through the pages and pages of ads!
[Kid] Uh...really?
[Me] Hell yeah! And, half the time, instead of a price, the ads would say "Call", meaning you had to use the telephone to get the actual price!
[Kid] Man. That sucks.
[Me] [Wistfully] No, actually...it was great. All I did was party and get laid. Er, I mean, play games and code. I had my whole life ahead of me.

Ok, now I'm depressed.

Best deals: Games

"Excuse me, but what are the advantages that Linux has over Windows on the user desktop space?

This, for one, and this.

Considered together, XP and office go retail for about 450 bucks; true, big corporations pay much less, but I think that for all intent and purpose the MS guys get more than a hundred for every office PC licence sold.
given that they want to go to a yearly fee business model, you're facing an annual bill in the region of 50 USD per PC licence. That's money to me.
Anyway, it's not the money involved that makes these pilots important: it is the fact that all big corporations involved will be standing up for open file standards, like strict XML.
That's the only way that the same pilot will be important five years from now.

It's been said before, but one of the games you mentioned, specifically The Sims 2, has a DVD version.

From my experience more people turn onto OpenOffice.org for its one-click PDF generation than anything else. People who publish newsletters, invitations, or just some documents they want on the Web site. Adobe Acrobat is $170 on Pricegrabber, but it's generally $250 retail in stores, so I've seen people wow'ed by OpenOffice single click Word->PDF conversion.

They are not switchers, they continue to use Office (MS Office 97 in some cases), but keep OpenOffice for this feature when they need another PDF.

$400??? You need to look around more. PriceGrabber gives a lowest price of CAD$123. Which is only slightly more than the cost of the network hardware.

Should check out the "Best Deals: Patents" link under "Related Links". Clicking on it allows you to Comparison shop for patents. Thank God the slashdot devs decided to implement this fantastic functionality rather than making Slashdot W3C compliant!

1. The MS Natural Keyboard Pro with the built-in USB hub.
2. The MS Intellimouse Explorer 3.0 - as usual it took a few version to get right; older versions had their 'tail' wire wear out and short after a bit of use.

--

1) Download Mandrake
2) Get the cheapest 40 GB hard drive with USB support you can buy.
3) Voila!

• mount monitor on one of those extension arms like the Dentist X-Ray tube, hooked to the ceiling facing down
• likewise with a keyboard and trackball (mouse would fall)
• lie on your bed, with your back in traction, under this contraption, and lastly but importantly
• take breaks once in a while to have an attractive spousal-unit (gf-unit, bf-unit, whatever) massage you back out of decrepitude.

Apple makes these things, called personal computers called Macintosh computers. Up until the G4 version of the Macintosh (or "Mac"), Apple used the Apple Desktop Bus for keyboard connections.

So yes, opposed to a USB keyboard.

An "Apple keyboard" is a keyboard manfacutured by Apple Computer Inc. Keyboards made for the Macintosh, therefore, would be called "Macintosh keyboards," or simply, "Mac keyboards."

Much like the usage of calling keyboards for (traditionally) Windows-based IBM PC clones "PC keyboards," "Windows Keyboards," or "keyboards that don't have a place for your one-button mouse to plug in."

As for one that you like, there are many to choose from.

Keyboard preferences are subjective. As much as you want me to, I cannot tell you what you like.

So the device they are talking about is the Belkin n52.
You can see the mirror (thanks to JWSWythe) over at his /. link mirror.
And you can order it from any of these vendors.
There are numerous reviews of the device, including some at PC Mag, Extreme Review, and Tom's Hardware. For the lazy it receives rather good reviews when looked at for it's original gaming purpose.

A quick Google found this site selling them from $1,367, not a bad price.

I'm actually as of last week in the process of building a new, faster 2TB box. I previous had a 1TB ATA100 setup, but now with the new 8-12x DVD burners its a little behind things.

Old setup:
P4 2.4Ghz HT
512MB DDR 400
Asus P800
WD 36GB 10kRPM Raptor OS Drive
FreeBSD 5.2.1

two 4-channel ATA-100 PCI Controller Cards
1 2-channel ATA-100
7 160GB
1 185 GB
Vinum 1TB Stripe with the 160s
185GB Separate storage

New setup:
Same Box Hardware box -- ~$500 new

Promise Technology 4port Serial ATA RAID CTLR ~$115(be sure to choose one over $100 -- they list two different models on the same page there
Promise Technology 4X SATA RAID 0-1-10-5 JBOD ~$160 + ~128MB Stick of SDRAM lying around
8 Western Digital Caviar WD2500JD 250GB ~$165 * 8 = ~$1350 w/ shipping


What you have:
Single 1TB Hardware RAID-0 Array Partition
Single 750GB Hardware RAID-5 Array Partition
Gigabit Ethernet
36GB 10K RPM OS Drive (FreeBSD 5.2.1)
HT Dual CPU Box

Total Storage: ~1.8TB
Total Cost: ~$2000

-LogicX
HornyandConfused.com

I'm actually as of last week in the process of building a new, faster 2TB box. I previous had a 1TB ATA100 setup, but now with the new 8-12x DVD burners its a little behind things.

Old setup:
P4 2.4Ghz HT
512MB DDR 400
Asus P800
WD 36GB 10kRPM Raptor OS Drive
FreeBSD 5.2.1

two 4-channel ATA-100 PCI Controller Cards
1 2-channel ATA-100
7 160GB
1 185 GB
Vinum 1TB Stripe with the 160s
185GB Separate storage

New setup:
Same Box Hardware box -- ~$500 new

Promise Technology 4port Serial ATA RAID CTLR ~$115(be sure to choose one over $100 -- they list two different models on the same page there
Promise Technology 4X SATA RAID 0-1-10-5 JBOD ~$160 + ~128MB Stick of SDRAM lying around
8 Western Digital Caviar WD2500JD 250GB ~$165 * 8 = ~$1350 w/ shipping


What you have:
Single 1TB Hardware RAID-0 Array Partition
Single 750GB Hardware RAID-5 Array Partition
Gigabit Ethernet
36GB 10K RPM OS Drive (FreeBSD 5.2.1)
HT Dual CPU Box

Total Storage: ~1.8TB
Total Cost: ~$2000

-LogicX
HornyandConfused.com

I'm actually as of last week in the process of building a new, faster 2TB box. I previous had a 1TB ATA100 setup, but now with the new 8-12x DVD burners its a little behind things.

Old setup:
P4 2.4Ghz HT
512MB DDR 400
Asus P800
WD 36GB 10kRPM Raptor OS Drive
FreeBSD 5.2.1

two 4-channel ATA-100 PCI Controller Cards
1 2-channel ATA-100
7 160GB
1 185 GB
Vinum 1TB Stripe with the 160s
185GB Separate storage

New setup:
Same Box Hardware box -- ~$500 new

Promise Technology 4port Serial ATA RAID CTLR ~$115(be sure to choose one over $100 -- they list two different models on the same page there
Promise Technology 4X SATA RAID 0-1-10-5 JBOD ~$160 + ~128MB Stick of SDRAM lying around
8 Western Digital Caviar WD2500JD 250GB ~$165 * 8 = ~$1350 w/ shipping


What you have:
Single 1TB Hardware RAID-0 Array Partition
Single 750GB Hardware RAID-5 Array Partition
Gigabit Ethernet
36GB 10K RPM OS Drive (FreeBSD 5.2.1)
HT Dual CPU Box

Total Storage: ~1.8TB
Total Cost: ~$2000

-LogicX
HornyandConfused.com

section 1001(4) clearly defines [a "digital audio recording medium"] in such a way that they are used to make recordings by a "digital audio recording device"

I fail to see anything like that. I have 17 USC 1001 in front of me; do you refer to (4)(A), (4)(B)(i), or (4)(B)(ii)? Besides, a blank "music CD-R" medium clearly works in any of these digital audio recording devices.

not that I'm a big m$ fan, but direct 3d sorta makes up for the changing hardware; and last I heard, they are trying to make a standard pc gaming controler. probably will end up as one of theese and one of theese

Maybe you should trash the modem they gave you and go get a good one! I've got an older Toshiba cable modem (a PCX1100, Pricegrabber lists it for $64 right now) and it is absolutely rock solid. Never unplugged the thing in 3 years, except to get the speed doubling they promoted a little while back!

Call it the Mongol Horde approach (or, for Slashdotters, the Beowulf Cluster Graphics Array -- or maybe some more catchy acronym along the lines of RAID).

Take a load of cheap cards -- for instance, one of the many low-end cards available -- say, nine of them (nice square number: 3x3 array), and have each assigned to one tenth of your display, then have something downstream tile them back together, and bingo, super duper card. Better yet, design a single card using the cores of the nine low-end cards, which would no doubt be cheaper than nine times the cost of the single card (not to mention not requiring nine free slots on your motherboard(s) (!)), at which point maybe you'd bump it up to 16 or 25 cores.

Is there some fundamental reason this would not work (besides the basic issue of splitting and recombining your display)?

Agreed but look for pricing on froogle/pricewatch/pricegrabber etc first.

I have the Sony TG-50, and reading ebooks is what I spend the most time doing with it. While the organizer functions are useful, I really purchased it for the ability to store books and manuals. The combination of Palmreader, Wordsmith, and Acrobat Reader allow me to access everything from text to pdf's.

The only issue you might have with it is the price, but the backlighting, multiple formats, and memory stick capability are well worth the extra money for me. 128MB can hold a lot of text.

I dont know what comparison site you have been using but at PriceGrabber you dont have to go site to site checking shipping costs, calculating taxes or any of that, they calculate all of that for you after you put in your zip... plus they have user ratings so you know if the retailer sucks.