Slashdot Mirror

http://www.hi-ho.ne.jp/vine/annex/x03-09209/index. htm

The shape provides a comfortable rest for your hand. The ball is neither too big nor to small and rests under the fingers. Sorry, thumb-ball apologists, the thumb is just not as dextrous as the fingers. I don't care if it's 'good enough', the fingers are better. The thumb here is used for pressing buttons - the left and right button can be pressed seperately or together with the tiniest movement of the thumb. The buttons have a large surface area and press easily. The wheel is on the left hand side, so it doesn't have to compete for attention with the ball or buttons.

The only reason I'm not still using this device is that it isn't optical, and the two I own have lost precision due to wear on the rollers over the years. I've tried several of the newer trackballs. The current MS trackball has a wheel between the buttons on the side, and the ball is unecessarily big and heavy. Putting the wheel between the buttons makes sense on a mouse where you can have a finger on each button and one on the wheel if necessary, but three controls is a little much for the beleagered thumb.

The logitech I've been using recently ( http://thetechzone.com/db_images/id228_images/pic1 .gif ) is the best I've found so far. The shape is okay, the ball is about right, and the location of the wheel is not ideal but tolerable. Unfortunately the latest version of the driver software doesn't allow the right/left buttons to be mapped to the side of the mouse. I'd use the earlier drivers, but the new drivers also support my keyboard. I also found that the buttons on the side required just enough pressure to click that they'd jog the position of the ball slightly when clicked, which is problematic for certain procedures. The locking ring that held the ball in place on the intellimouse was also a little more comfortable to use than the sharp edge of this one's cradle. Finally, it's wireless, which means changing batteries. I think the arguments for making mice wireless are much stronger than the those for trackballs. A USB dock would have been a nice compromise, but honestly I'd be happy to get a trackball with the buttons in the 'right' place at this point.

Chow's ego is already so large that he advertises his blog with google adwords. I think a link from slashdot might cause his hands to go green and swell up.

If only his writing was as good as his instinct for self promotion.

I'm holding out for duckies!!! They are SOOOOOOO cute!!!

Another way to get free stuff, just walk around with two of these

Easy to id the image with string for jpg, I figure this is the correct image attached to that item.
http://www.thetechzone.com/?m=show&id=477
hence;
http://www.thetechzone.com/nephp/uploads/477_norma l.jpg

Here is the Coral Cache image of that item.
http://www.thetechzone.com.nyud.net:8090/nephp/upl oads/477_normal.jpg

You brute ./ers...

Easy to id the image with string for jpg, I figure this is the correct image attached to that item.
http://www.thetechzone.com/?m=show&id=477
hence;
http://www.thetechzone.com/nephp/uploads/477_norma l.jpg

Here is the Coral Cache image of that item.
http://www.thetechzone.com.nyud.net:8090/nephp/upl oads/477_normal.jpg

You brute ./ers...

On a future desktop interface, computers will display such technical articles without the 90 percent of advertisement on each page and without a wikipedian linking orgie.

If you google around you'll find this thing really is freaking fast . This isn't just an ad, it is the fastest flash drive around. And you can get them for $25 + S/H . I've got one and I must say, they are solid (metal casing) and noticably faster than any other flash drive I've used.

They are reported (with promising pictures) in TFA and its predecessor, but the one vendor link still working shows an only 4-foot short version - insufficient for most places where Ethernet cables are required. Now that /.ers are unlikely to join M$ TechNet for the privilege, where else could one buy the "just-about-long-enough" 10-foot/3+ meters (or more) "Microsoft" model shown on the TTZ pages?

They are reported (with promising pictures) in TFA and its predecessor, but the one vendor link still working shows an only 4-foot short version - insufficient for most places where Ethernet cables are required. Now that /.ers are unlikely to join M$ TechNet for the privilege, where else could one buy the "just-about-long-enough" 10-foot/3+ meters (or more) "Microsoft" model shown on the TTZ pages?

It's just another round of advertising PR thinly disguised as actual news.

You'r so cynical. Why would Mudzy do such a thing?

Mudzy is The Tech Zone Forums moderator and resident network specialist. He maintains The Tech Zone's LAN to keep it running at tip top shape. When not moderating the Forums, Mudzy also does hardware reviews. Mudzy runs a Celeron 366 at 550Mhz using Windows ME. You can email Mudzy at mudzy@thetechzone.com

From http://thetechzone.com/about_us.htm

BTW, the site is slashdotted on a Saturday afternoon of a holiday weekend. Hilarious.

But if you're naive about the net and you go online maybe once a month...then you're a raw piece of meat in a pool full of sharks.

I am one of those naive that really don't have a clue what hardware review sites to trust. My comfort is that I am probably far from alone, in this matter.

To assist me and other naives(sp?), please join this silly poll and review the following sites (regarding credibility) with a scale ranging from 1 to 10, where 1 is "No credibility at all" and 10 is "Perfect credibility, these guys wouldn't post a biased review for world domination":

About PC Hardware Reviews
Ace's Hardware
Anandtech
Ars Technica
Beyond 3D
Cnet Reviews
Dan's Data
Dev Hardware
Extremetech
Firingsquad
[H]ard|OCP
Hardware Analysis
Hardwarecentral
Hardwarezone
IT Reviews
OcPrices
Overclockers.com
ProCooling.com
The Tech Report
The Tech Zone
Tom's Hardware
TrustedReviews
Viperlair
Xtreme Resources

If you know only a few of them, give your opinion on those.

Maybe someone with the right facilities could set up an independent poll?

Here are some more sites covering it... all about the same content, really:
viperlair.com
hardocp.com
techreport.com
thetechzone.com
tweaktown.com
thetechzone.com
hothardware.com
hexus.net
pcper.com
legionhardware.com
thetechlounge.com
bigbruin.com

Here are some more sites covering it... all about the same content, really:
viperlair.com
hardocp.com
techreport.com
thetechzone.com
tweaktown.com
thetechzone.com
hothardware.com
hexus.net
pcper.com
legionhardware.com
thetechlounge.com
bigbruin.com

That is AFTER I turn off the animation effects in WinXP (those induce hella lag).

Definately! XP in general is laggy, but the thing with Windows is, it's either all or nothing. That is, when you click on something, it either comes up right away, or you're sitting there like an idiot waiting for "something" to finish.

I am seriously wanting to experiment here, if you can pick where you notice it the most it would be helpful.

I would actually very much appreciate it. The system in question was a G4, though I don't know the processor speed. It's a slightly older system, however, so probably 733 Mhz. It had about a gig of RAM, but since most of the work involved large images in Photoshop, it still probably ended up swapping to disk.

The primary use was web design. To simulate it, load up Fetch, Photoshop with a (let's say) 2 MB image, and Safari on a page with Flash. Do a little of whatever in each of the programs, then pick a program with context menus and right-click (or control-click for one-button mice).

As the moment of button release, the menu should pop up. Or even easier, go to the top bar and open a menu item. Again, this should be instant, but all the Macs I've used have a slight delay--it's not enough to cry home about, but it hasn't helped to sell the Mac to me.

I'll have to try one of the new mini's out and give Apple another shot. Perhaps the processor wasn't up to snuff, or the systems I've used have been underpowered in some regard. If the new mini does indeed kick as much butt as all the fanatics say, that would be a hell of a price-point.

Just a quick Googling reveals I'm not the only person who's noticed this problem. It's funny, because the way he describes it is almost exactly the way I feel: "It's a hard phenomena to describe objectively--all I can say for sure is that when I go back to using my home PC or my work PC, the mouse movement is crisp, reliable and predictable."

It's so subtle that I usually just suck it up, but it is aggrivating when you're not used to it.

1gb flash drives? Never heard of em.

God bless Google.

Doesn't seems to work on the Slashdotted TheTechZone site, unforunately. :/

Here, try for yourselves:
http://www.thetechzone.com.nyud.net:8090/?m=show&i d=79

Source.

Last week I saw the new Sony A170 in the store, and the display is indeed as amazing as they say. Time for Apple to upgrade their displays I'd say.

But, seems like that's a pretty common phrase in the industry and has been so for years....

Hell, it's even used to refer to [H]ard|OCP's own RatPadz.

A poster above suggested a new section on Slashdot for lawsuits... I think that's a great idea. SCO's newsworthy lawsuits may be dying out finally, but Phantom might keep the section viable for a year by itself. Especially if that "Pre-Order" link starts working and consumers get suckered as well as investors, or if they decide to defend their *cough* "Intellectual Property" *cough* by suing half the gaming industry for trademark infringement.

Wonder if that's where they hope to make a profit?

Oh wait... there IS such a thing!

just thought i'd share this, i'd like to shake his hand, giant hairy cajones...

Which would you pick?

I think the Alienware laptops are mostly built by Clevo (story here, brochure or press release here). I had someone come in with a Clevo quote recently. They look like capable machines.

Here's the article I submitted.

Thanks for the mod down guys... how's this for "overrated"?

Some pics:
http://www.thetechzone.com/display.php?i=165&p =1

Small article then lots of pics (some cute some HORRENDOUS):
http://www.graphicpower.com/showreports/boothbabes .stm

More babe lovin':
http://www.psillustrated.com/e3_2000/babes_report. html

And last, a short documentary on booth babes:
http://www.gamesfirst.com/articles/shawn/boothbabe s/boothbabes.htm

Enjoy!

Basically it boils down to: Yes, if you want to play the latest 3D-Games you better get a new machine.

I don't see why this is bad? I personally dislike 3D Games since they all look alike. If you want you can still play great games with older Hardware, the whole simulation, build-up scene for instance. And most likely your system could even handle games such as DarkAge of Camelot or Everquest, wich are games with a focus on gameplay and not grafics. I agree, there are a lot of crappy games out there with really stunning grafic fx, but i don't care about them (anymore). I let my friends play them and when one diamond among them is found i consider wether it's worth the hardware upgrade. The last game i did this for was Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Had to upgrade for 20$ and get a TNT2 to play it at decent fps. Now i wonder what doom3 brings. Is it worth the upgrade to Radeon/GeForceFx? I don't know. Maybe I will keep waiting for WarhammerOnline until I upgrade. But someone will betatest for me and then i can still stick with my XentorTNT2/32MB and keep playing Anno1503 or DarkAges.

Of course. And she plays XBox every day.

Good-looking women will sell stuff, no matter what it is. Be it neat cell phone-camera combos, or the latest games that require you to blow up monsters.

don't forget to check out barebones systems. They offer the perfect middleground between prebuilt and DIY, and are cheaper than both.

case in point - the asus terminator k7. Add proc, ram, and HD, and you are done. And it's only $175.

check a review.

Here's a link to pics of the booth babes at E3

Enjoy.

Ok, here's some more booth babe links here they are! and here! more and more here too here's a documentary on the species and here's an interesting article including interviews with the babes

http://www.thetechzone.com/display.php?i=165&p=1

Errors all over the site.. but like we care. Have fun slashdotting a E3 Babes Page

You can read it here if the above link gets slashdotted. They have more pretty pictures than the review at hothardware. This review is slightly different in that they used a Pentium 4 instead of an Anthlon XP.

from Voodoo Extreme:

Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU

Without getting into details here, you can read an intro about them here:

http://thetechzone.com/articles/peltier_intro/inde x.html

and how to make one here:

http://www.thetechzone.com/articles/how_to/peltier _cooler/

Once thing that I'd be cautious is running their dual CPU liquid cooler. According to the picture on the right of this page :

http://www.koolance.com/Clickable%20Case/largeview /CPUjacket.html

the heated "exhaust" coolant from the first CPU is directly looped into the intake of the second CPU, rather than having separate coolant loops for each. I'd be interested in knowing exactly what the difference in CPU temp was between the first and second CPU's when running full tilt.

(And yes, I do realize that the primary CPU in a dual system generally runs under a greater load & therfore would require greater degree of cooling,)

-ct

Without getting into details here, you can read an intro about them here:

http://thetechzone.com/articles/peltier_intro/inde x.html

and how to make one here:

http://www.thetechzone.com/articles/how_to/peltier _cooler/

Once thing that I'd be cautious is running their dual CPU liquid cooler. According to the picture on the right of this page :

http://www.koolance.com/Clickable%20Case/largeview /CPUjacket.html

the heated "exhaust" coolant from the first CPU is directly looped into the intake of the second CPU, rather than having separate coolant loops for each. I'd be interested in knowing exactly what the difference in CPU temp was between the first and second CPU's when running full tilt.

(And yes, I do realize that the primary CPU in a dual system generally runs under a greater load & therfore would require greater degree of cooling,)

-ct

well if you go here: http://www.thetechzone.com/articles/preview/winxp/ page2.shtml youll see that Windows XP has skinning abilities. So it is possible for people to make MacOSX skins for Whistler.

Back on 8/23 Moto over at TechZone, wrote up a great piece on how to start a tech site. In it, he clearly talks about ad's, and how most networks pay for them only when they're not for other network sites. It seems to me, if you're going to work within and industry, and make deals with other companies within that industry, you ought to do your footwork. It's simply irresponsible, to sign a contract with a company, without reading what you're agreeing to. And if you do that, you have nobody to blame but yourself.

And I don't see fault with not being allowed to solicit outside advertising either. I would think, that part of being a network, is that the network can control it's identity. If you start working on side deals, it will dilute the brand identity that the network is trying to build. It's just part of the price you pay, for the convenience of not having to shop for your own ad's, and for the strength of co-marketing that you should get from the affiliated sites.

I'd basically chalk this whole episode up, as a sterling example of a variation of "caveat emptor". Be sure of what you are getting, before you lay out the cash to get it. I feel for the guy, but at least he'll provide an object lesson to some others by publicizing his mistakes.

http://www.virtualhideout.net/ is a good starting point for Case Mod ideas.

The Cool Case Gallery has pictures of 161 mods (to date).

I think we have to give credit to gamers for driving the cool case idea a while ago (like the unreal case) but they've been left behind now by hardware nuts who don't care what runs on the computer, just how fast, how cool and how it looks.

Don't misread that; I liked the Fifth Element; while the story may have been somewhat lame, the music and visuals more than made up for that.

But I don't want a computer made up in the colour of the Diva.

No, what the self respecting Linux nerd actually needs is a serious Rack Mount System.

Those that want cheaper options might want to Build A Rack Mount Case, and check out Rack Mount Hardware at eBay. Here may be the true ultimate case.

• Sharky Extreme
• Ars Technica
• AnandTech
• Hard OCP
• Ace's Hardware
• CompHardware
• Tom's Hardware
• The Tech Zone
• Thresh's FiringSquad
• Review News

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