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Am I missing something here? The Sisoft Sandra MFLOPS measurement for a top end Intel Core 2 is 47 GFlops http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/overclocking-intel,r eview-2395-28.html/. OK admitedly this is a sythetic measurement, but it's a ballpark figure right?

You can always just go to print.html on any of the Tom's Hardware articles, just add it to the end of the url on the first page.
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2007/06/04/wd_brings _250_gb_hdds_to_notebooks_uk/print.html

Maybe MS doesn't support it directly

but... http://tomshardware.co.uk/2005/09/09/windows_in_yo ur_pocket/ or http://www.sureboot.com/ or http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-6346-592 8902.html

Here's the reason you can't install Windows directly on the USB drive... turns out its all to do with pageable kernels (that OSX and Linux don't support)

Mod parent up. http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2007/01/09/avivo-vs- purevideo-uk/

Next up to support ODF is..... Lotus Notes! http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/05/15/ibm_demonstra tes_odf_in_lotus_notes_hannover/ I know everyone hates Notes but still pretty cool.

Sorry, tried to un-UK the link, forgot the domain name.

There was a related article at Toms Hardware. 'Who Designed This Crap?'

System RAM is SLOW compared to GPU RAM.

Huh? All the systems on this lineup use standard PC3200 (DDR400) RAM. Which is the same RAM that you could use as system RAM with many motherboards (e.g. this one). I don't see why the RAM would be faster on the video card than in the main system...?

Also, a GPU inside the CPU would get to benefit from the CPU's cache, which would usually contain any data that had recently been modified by the main redraw thread, thus eliminating the need to go out to get data from that memory. I wouldn't be surprised to see something like a 25% reduction in the amount of memory access the GPU needs to perform.

What you've suggested is already done by low end accelerators like the Intel GMA 950. Works ok, but as I said, slow.

The reason this is slow is (a) that it's an intel GPU, and they've never been any good anyway, and (b) that it has to contend with the CPU for access. If you integrate the two into a single component with an nVidia designed GPU, I don't see any reason it couldn't perform as well as current separate systems do. And cost significantly less, and use less power.

"I can't tell my neighbors MythTV is bitchin' because they're not going to have a clue how do it themselves"

Tell them where they can buy it in the high street.

"and I'm running out of support hours and don't have time to set up everyone with MythTV, let alone support it afterwards."

How would that be any different than supporting MS MCE. If you charged more you would get less 'support' calls.

"What would be really cool is if some company pulled a Red Hat, or Suse, etc., with MythTV whereby they offer their "version" of a MythTV distribution bundled with hardware and all"

What exactly are you refering to when you say pull a Red Hat. Since MythTV *is* GPL-licensed why would they even need to pull a SuSE or what ever.

was Re:what would be really nice

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/09/08/the_mythtv_co nvergence_uk/page4.html

It's a horrendously misleading article summary, and it shouldn't have been posted. I can only surmise that the editor didn't look at the submission, either that or they don't care that it's so misleading.

Try this instead
http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/08/16/locking_up_li nux-creating_a_cryptobook_uk/

Yup, UPS & Dell laptops...

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/07/13/ntsb_laptopba ttery_upsfire/ ...a fool proof plan I tell ya ;-)

Does anyone have one? Are there any cool hacks for it? (Can I remotely control a linux box, for example?)

I'm thinking Mythtv remote...

More informative article at Tom's Hardware

Correct link

Even more stunning is the screen on the Sony UX180. That's running a 4.5" diagonal display (about 4" x 2.25") at a resolution of 1024 x 600, which is absolutely phenomenal.

Add to that it's Xbrite and touchscreen capabilities and I reckon it's pretty much about as good as you can get at the moment - sort of coming in at around 260 dpi. When you run Cleartype on it in Windows, the anti-aliasing is virtually invisible, it just looks like paper.

Regarding the power consumption - AFAIK, the UX180 screen is LED backlight driven which saves a large amount of juice and gives a more even effect, hence the UX180's decent battery life when compared to the larger screen (and lower res) UMPCs - one of which is ironically made by Samsung.

Not really.
My motherboard has Dual Bios on it, one copy is the original BIOS, the other is the custom one.

If the custom one breaks or fails, the primary original switches on.

problem solved.

According to my search, there are already graphics cards which have this capability as well, here is an article about a geforce 6600 with it.

The prices for Core 2 Duo compatible motherboards are just plain atrocious [...] So chances are I will pick up either a nForce 590 SLI

According to Tom's Hardware (here), the nForce 590 SLI does support the Core 2 Duo.

How can apple go after the high end market with out cross fire or SLI support in there systems?

AMD's technology preview day (Anandtech's report is at http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2768) said a lot that made me wonder about the future competitivenes of AMD. I'm neutral but the kind of stuff they were talking about made me doubt my conviction that Intel are guaranteed to pwn, but I am certain that the consumer is the winner in the upcoming battle for the best desktop CPU chips (and that's already been noted in the drop in prices between the two http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2006/06/02/drop_in_a verage_processor_pricing/).

The notion of being able to put extra specialised hardware next to the CPU radically alters the way that PC's are going to be laid out and is a good lateral step along the road toward multi-threaded, multi-cored and multiple processing elements in computing. The K8L architecture and beyond are seeking to increase IPC throughput for AMD's chips as Intel has done for the Core architecture. I think that this throughput increase is the greatest asset to the Core's performance both for performance per cycle (==IPC) and performance per watt.

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2005/11/21/the_mother_of _all_cpu_charts_2005uk/page59.html This chart gives a good indication of expected speed. You are right as well in that as well as CPU speed increase the overall system will increase in speed due to newer memory, and I/O etc. Also, i think the Athlon speed ratings are based on a rating of 1000 being derived from the orginal Athlon 1 GHz processor. I don't know if this still applies today, (i thought it did). The previous poster's method of assuming that the XP+ figures are relative to the Intel chips is misguided. Shoot me if I'm talking bollocks.

Vaguely on (parent) topic - I recently hunted for a new high(ish) spec, low priced (as far as possible) desktop machine and found Dell to have many good machines available, most with fantastic offers along the lines of "double memory" or "X% off the price!" which really appealed to me. However, the reason I didn't buy from Dell wasn't because of their (supposed) bad customer relations or any other reason that people can come with except this - they don't offer AMD. I wanted an AMD dual core processor, not an Intel one. There are various reasons for this but for the last Y years I've bought AMD processors and have been happy, plus Toms Hardware seems to agree;

http://tomshardware.co.uk/cpu/charts.html?modelx=3 3&model1=235&chart=66&model2=322

That's ogg encoding between the AMD model I purchased (AMD X2 4200+) and it's nearest priced Intel (D 930). We could argue for days about the relative costs, memory, motherboards and a variety of other topics, but I think the numbers generally speak for themselves.

Dell, wake up, smell the coffee, drink some coffee, realise you need to offer AMD products.