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Intel still has the advantage of QuickSync for super fast decoding/encoding/transcoding. Besides gaming, the most CPU intensive applications is probably centered around mobile media. E.g., transcoding that blu-ray you got from Redbox so you can watch it on your iPad. Sure the quality isn't great, but AMD has no answer for it in the near future. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sandy-bridge-core-i7-2600k-core-i5-2500k,2833-5.html

Related reading: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-failure-rate,2923.html
It features statistics from different data centers on the failure rate of SSD's.

Yes,and I could wallpaper this page with link after link saying it isn't. Once again, the fact that you can't get it to work doesn't mean others can't. Linking to a joke site certainly proves your point though, thank you for that. I'm sure that clears it up for everyone. Oh, and here's another hint for you genius, the same thing holds true for Windows.

The link to theinquirer.net also certainly proves your point. Dell shipping a laptop with non-functioning drivers or software (and really old software at that) is certainly Linus's fault, cause everyone knows Dell would never even be ABLE to do that with Windows, right? Like here or here or, say, here.

As for Asus, the first article you linked explains exactly why they 'abandoned' Linux. To help you out, since reading that much text must really be hard, I'll repeat it here: “People bought the original seven- and eight-inch Eee PCs for a computer to give to the kids,” Kerr said seriously.

The last article is even funnier. Did you even read it? Did it say anything about linux being broken? Bad drivers? Things not working? Nope, none of those. Why are return rates so high? Again, let me paste it in, since reading is so challenging for you:

“Unclear selling is happening, typically online. The customer will get their netbook sent to their home and they imagine to find something like a Microsoft desktop, but they see a brown Ubuntu version. They are unwilling to learn it and they were expecting to have Windows.” Carr stressed that, in these cases, it doesn’t even matter how good or bad the Linux OS is. These customers just don’t want to try something new.

So it turns out, the return rate is so high because folks like you are too lazy or stupid to even give something a try. Go figure.

In the future, if you want to prove how the driver model is broken, or it crashes constantly, or the entire thing is 'shit', you might want to actually find some supporting articles that say that, and not something else. It's how people do this whole 'debate' thing. Argue their side, provide supporting evidence...

Just for the record though, no, I don't think Linus is 'smarter than every single OS designer in the world'. I do think he's a pretty brilliant guy (when did you write your last OS?), and I think the other THOUSANDS of people who work on, and contribute to, the Linux kernel are also by and large pretty bright guys. Brighter than you, certainly. Just the fact that you think Linus is the only person controlling kernel development proves that.

http://techfragments.com/news/982/Software/Apple_iPhone_Virus_Spreads_By_SMS_Messages.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/iphone-virus-botnet-bank-details,9136.html
http://www.mactrast.com/2010/07/iphone-virus-discovered-be-vigilant-and-seek-advice/
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3573755?start=0&tstart=0

1) A vulnerability with a demo. There was never any malware written to exploit it, and as it was long since fixed, there never will be.

2) Only affects jailbroken iPhones.

3) You're the victim of an APRIL FOOL! From 2 years ago!
http://vimeo.com/10587301

4) Is nothing more than a user with a problem and no tech knowledge blaming his problem on a virus. There is no virus.

While reasonably rare, iPhone viruses and malware do exist in the wild.

No they don't. At least not on non-jailbroken iPhones.

While reasonably rare, iPhone viruses and malware do exist in the wild.

http://techfragments.com/news/982/Software/Apple_iPhone_Virus_Spreads_By_SMS_Messages.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/iphone-virus-botnet-bank-details,9136.html
http://www.mactrast.com/2010/07/iphone-virus-discovered-be-vigilant-and-seek-advice/
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3573755?start=0&tstart=0

There was a recent Slashdot article about Firefox memory leaks: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/01/17/1338225/notes-on-reducing-firefoxs-memory-consumption in more recent versions of Firefox, the leaks are all or almost all related to add-ons. Add-ons are a big reason to use Firefox, so it's still a problem, but it's not as bad as it was. And they're working on ways to help developers who create add-ons prevent memory leaks too.

In terms of overall speed and memory usage, Tom's Hardware Guide does a very thorough browser comparison shootout a few times a year. For a long stretch Firefox was awful. But Firefox won the last two comparisons: September 30, 2011 http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/firefox-7-web-browser,3037.html and January 6 http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/macbook-air-chrome-16-firefox-9-benchmark,3108.html

There was a recent Slashdot article about Firefox memory leaks: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/01/17/1338225/notes-on-reducing-firefoxs-memory-consumption in more recent versions of Firefox, the leaks are all or almost all related to add-ons. Add-ons are a big reason to use Firefox, so it's still a problem, but it's not as bad as it was. And they're working on ways to help developers who create add-ons prevent memory leaks too.

In terms of overall speed and memory usage, Tom's Hardware Guide does a very thorough browser comparison shootout a few times a year. For a long stretch Firefox was awful. But Firefox won the last two comparisons: September 30, 2011 http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/firefox-7-web-browser,3037.html and January 6 http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/macbook-air-chrome-16-firefox-9-benchmark,3108.html

Really? Tom's Hardware Guide does comprehensive browser comparisons every few months, and Firefox won the last two of them after years of being outdone by most of the competition. Have a look: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/macbook-air-chrome-16-firefox-9-benchmark,3108.html and http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/firefox-7-web-browser,3037.html Firefox still has more extensions than any other browser and in April they're planning to switch to the Chrome deployment model of auto-updating in the background without prompting the user to apply updates and bug fixes every few days.

I'd say their usability, performance, security, and innovation are top notch.

Really? Tom's Hardware Guide does comprehensive browser comparisons every few months, and Firefox won the last two of them after years of being outdone by most of the competition. Have a look: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/macbook-air-chrome-16-firefox-9-benchmark,3108.html and http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/firefox-7-web-browser,3037.html Firefox still has more extensions than any other browser and in April they're planning to switch to the Chrome deployment model of auto-updating in the background without prompting the user to apply updates and bug fixes every few days.

I'd say their usability, performance, security, and innovation are top notch.

Thanks for that clear answer. Sounds pretty bad to me although I think non-technical users might not care,

The Metro interface itself needs more work to show it can cut it as a launcher interface, too. In its current incarnation, it's scrolls left and right. You can move it with the scroll wheel on your mouse or drag a scroll bar that appears on the bottom, but it feels like a kludge way to navigate through all your apps. It's like someone up in Redmond suddenly realized "oh yeah, you have to have a touch-screen to swipe! That might be a problem for people who don't (like almost all desktop users)". Besides the "extra files" getting tossed into the interface in separate tiles I mentioned, there's the problem or navigating large collections of apps. On a tablet this isn't so much of an issue because of the more limited storage space on tablets, but on a desktop machines you could find yourself getting a bit weary scrolling through all those tiles to reach something at the other end. A full install of the Adobe CS4 Master Collection adds 25 new tiles to the Metro grid. There needs to be a way of dividing the "Full" Metro launcher view into sub-screens, like you can on iOS when you pull up specific "genres" of apps (or like you had programs and their support files segregated into folders named for the publisher on the old Start menu). Non-tech users will feel this as well once they have a healthy collection of free games from the Metro store or traditional apps from other places installed.

The Metro UI (and the included apps that come with it) are also obviously written under the assumption your screen is 13" or smaller. The Metro apps all run full-screen (and can't be changed to windowed) and their controls are all oversize for a desktop environment (I have a 1920x1200 display -- waste. of. space. ). I hate it when I hit certain links in the Desktop zone (usually in control panels) and for some reason instead of Firefox launching IE is coded to launch instead. And not the Desktop (normal) IE, but the Metro full screen version that whooshes everything else I'm working on out of view. I've also been unable to find a way to actually Exit any of these Metro apps, either. I can click out of them and back to the Launcher, but I cannot stop the process without actually End Tasking them from the Process Manager. They eventually go into a "hibernation"-like state instead if you don't use them. Also amusing: the Process Manager keeps track of network utilization and data usage on a per-app basis (obviously written with tablets and metered 3G data plans in mind).

but what interested me most was the bit about the 30% cut with the Metro App Store.

Correction: It's 20% for above $25,000 in sales. But it is exactly what it appears, Microsoft finding a way to take a cut from application sales revenue on programs they ha nothing to do with writing, just like Apple's store.

Does anyone else have a nagging feeling that Nintendo is doomed in the next console cycle? The Wii U didn't grab the same attention that the original Wii did, and Nintendo is being attacked on two fronts--the hardcore market with the PS3 and Xbox 360, and casual gaming with the iPhone. Nintendo always had handheld sales to fall back on, but sales of the 3DS have been underwhelming, forcing an early price drop. It seems like Nintendo backed itself into a corner with the Wii, tying the company too intimately with the casual gaming market, whose gamers are fickle and prone to jump onto the next big thing, which turned out to be the iPhone.

Er, someone already corrected you about the 3DS comment, but I feel the urge to point out that the WIiU's graphics look amazing.

Here's the nightmare scenario for Microsoft and Sony, and why both of them tried to retrofit motion controls into their console:

The big joke of the last 3 generations is that Nintendo has put together under-performing hardware. You simply can't run the same amount of processing power on a Wii, Gamecube, etc as you could with comparable consoles. What they do have this generation is something the other two cannot compete with them over -- motion controls.

Now, the problem facing Sony and Microsoft is that Nintendo can now afford to put out a console with good graphics capability and keep the console very affordable. As any PC gamer knows, game graphics aren't getting any better. A sub $100 card is enough to run video games at a very respectable resolution and quality. You can bump up the AA, the filtering, the resolution by buying a bigger card, but all things considered, we've hit a plateau. What's more, the games aren't even using these advanced cards to their fullest -- and they can't. It's just too expensive to make games with these ultra quality graphics.

The WiiU will be able to play PC ported games. It will be able to feature match Microsoft and Sony, AND has features they cannot match -- high quality, 3rd generation Motion Controls and an integrated tablet for a second viewport and touch screen gaming.

So here's the question that the next generation is going to have to answer -- if the WiiU can play the same games as the PS3 / PS4 / XBox 360 / XBox Next, and can play the WiiU exclusive games... Why in the world would you ever buy the more expensive PS4/XBox Next?

I really have to wonder the point of bothering with PC gaming anymore. Most PC games today are now just unoptimized console ports, and there is restrictive DRM from companies like EA and Ubisoft. I do consider Steam to be a bright spot, and its DRM is so invisible that I've never actually encountered it in practice, but then again, Steam is already moving to consoles as well, and Blizzard seems to be dipping its toes in the water.

I just think integrated platforms, like consoles and mobile devices, always win out in the long-term. I certainly don't want to maintain graphics card drivers or other PC-related issues anymore. It's boring and takes time away from playing games. Consoles today practically are PCs, but without all the headaches.

the problem is what we claim one thing can do. a qr code v40? that is less than what one cga adapter could modulate. frame size frame rate? do you realise how much data can be wrangled by a modern gpu? http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2011-gaming-graphics-charts/Mafia-2-Enthusiast,2670.html
at 1080p with 16x anisotropic filtering and 118 fps that means it can modulate 9.279897e+9 worth of data symbols(frames) and modifies the frames 16 passes (or pretends to based on it's drivers) and you kids wonder why your toys break!

Remember the last hype from those guys? "Canonical sent along a note announcing that its Ubuntu Linux OS (10.10) is now available pre-loaded on three ASUS Eee PC models including the 1001PXD, the 1011PX and the 1015PX. More models packing Ubuntu will be made available throughout the year.", back in June 2011. Didn't happen. Still hasn't happened. Canonical has no credibility.

I think the Tom's Hardware article explaining what's bad about SOPA is excellent, and uses no computerese:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/toms-hardware-sopa-Stop-Online-Piracy-Act-PROTECT-IP-Senate,14393.html

You'll have to provide sources for Firefox's alleged instability. Here's a link to Mozilla's Firefox crash statistics. If you can link to a report about Chrome's stability, it would be very useful.

As for memory, Mozilla have been working on reducing memory in Firefox with the MemShrink project. Nicholas Nethercote's blog has the latest reports on improvements to the upcoming versions. Even then, it's been established before in testing that Chrome is a relative heavyweight when it comes to memory.

There's also the other form where the links are spread over the words such as "There is many tech web sites". :)

Not a big deal, but people could give it just a little thought in general. It forces you to hover over all the links and makes the page harder to read if it's printed. A good rule of thumb could be that the same text should also work completely without the links around the words.

Business Care versus consumer grade warranty is hardly an apples to apples comparison. Even so, my anecdotal evidence runs quite contrary to yours. Apple will send you a prepaid box if you don't want to go to their store. I do not know anyone whose computer took over six days, and I know of nobody whose computer they were unable to fix. Apple also includes diagnostic tools on DVD, maybe you weren't paying attention. Dell will ship you a hard drive and "let" you install it, but did you read the paperwork that came with the drive? If they ship you a bum drive, it's yours, and you will pay for it - I know my former employer did. In fact, they get your credit card number before they will discuss shipping anything to you. It isn't all lollypops and rainbows with Dell.

Of course we all know anecdotes are not evidence. Tom's Hardware: "Based on responses from owners of 3,685 laptop computers, Apple scored 86 points out of 100. Second place Lenovo earned a 63; third place Toshiba had 60; fourth place Dell has a 56; and HP/Compaq has a 53. Trailing far behind was Acer/Gateway/eMachines with 39."

Vocalabs survey: "Apple is still the leader in tech support, with 58% of customers saying that they were “Very Satisfied” with Apple’s support. However, although this is higher than Dell’s 47% satisfaction rate, and HP’s 53%, we should note that this is a whole 15 percentage points lower than what it was last year." My Web Page

Well, it may be the first time APPLE is doing it, but others have been there, done that ...

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Panasonic-Fuel-Cell-Prototype,6516.html (2008)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/29/lg_chem_fuel_cell/ (2005)
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1008_3-1022130.html (2003)

If any patent office employee granted a patent on the idea of using a fuel cell in notebooks, they are obviously incapable of doing a simple google search and should therefore be fired for being unfit to do their job ...

> there is no difference in between 25 fps, or 30 fps or 40 fps to the human eye playing a game.

Just because YOU can't see a difference, doesn't imply that everyone else is just as blind. I can CLEARLY tell a difference between 30 Hz and 60 Hz gaming, and so can many gamers.

1. You NEED 60+ Hz framerate so that you can GUARANTEE the _worst_ framerate stays ABOVE 60 Hzm such as when explosions/smoke, etc. is shown.

2. Average FPS is a useless number compared to MININUM framerate as it completely masks problems.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/21516/1

Maybe you should try reading up on Micro Stuttering before looking like an idiot.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-geforce-stutter-crossfire,2995.html

The brits run their nukular submarines on windows for some years now. http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Submarines-Windows-Royal-Navy,6718.html
I wonder which would be worse, greenpeace rooting a tanker or a nukesub taking a core dump? The end is nigh, but then I guess this world has bigger problems to ignore right now. Lets just push that big red button to get it over with:)

My time $ for dev work > $ of most expensive hardware, that's an IT philosophy and anybody that says otherwise is blatantly ignorant (want != get here). My experience is not off of hard numbers made by benchmark tools, but by building and watching people use both intel and amd machines around the same price points around the same time (within 6 months). The intel processor rips amd at number crunching, they seem about even on multi-tasking. Intel has hyperthreading, doubling the logical cores allowing multithread apps to really rip the amd equivalent. Compile Linux on amd and on intel, according to Tom's hardware> discussion thread they say the benchmark difference is 15%, when in r/l observing the above, it's more like 50% in my experience.

When you go dirt cheap $130 processor, then AMD starts becoming the better value, but I don't build trash typically either. I mostly build mid-high grade, I don't build gaming grade either except for self xD.

Not yet, but it's coming in version 12. http://www.tomshardware.com/news/mozilla-firefox-silent-update-browser,14217.html

They are 3 different things that server 3 different needs. It's ridiculous to even imagine that you could combine them into one device given the consumer technology right now. Maybe in 20 years, when it's commonplace to sport a holographic projector on a phone, or screens can be unfolded and folded at a whim, then perhaps the tablet and phone can be combined into one (satisfying the needs that a personal computer satisfies would require significant advances in input technology).

A jack of all trades does nothing well at all. That seems to describe the Windows (Mobile and Desktop) strategy right now.

I agree with you. It's ridiculous to even imagine that you could combine them into one device given the consumer technology right now.

However, the phone can be connected to a dock so that:
b) Can be used as a tablet: see the Asus Pad Fone http://event.asus.com/mobile/padfone/
c) Can be used as a computer: Motorola Atrix has a dock with HDMI port and USB port.
d) Can be used as a game console. Let's compare the specs of an iphone s against a xbox 360:
    * RAM Memory: xbox360 512MB RAM. iphone 4s 512MB RAM
    * Triangles/sec: xbox 360 500 Million. iphone 4s 68 MPolygon/s.
    * Filtered Texture Fetch: xbox 360 8.0 Billion Texels/sec. iphone 4s 1000 MTexels/s

iphone A5 cpu is manufactured using a 45nm process. intel is producing its Ivy Bridge processors using a 22nm process right now (see http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ivy-bridge-processor-release-22nm-3d-transistor,13753.html: "CEO Paul Otellini confirmed that Ivy Bridge 22 nm processor volume production has already begun, which is a rather significant achievement as there have been apparently no major hiccups in the implementation of its 3D transistor technology")

Of course, the next xbox will be more powerful than any smartphone, but think about having current xbox 360 games in your smartphone in 2013 or 2014.

sources:
* Xbox 360 http://www.pvcmuseum.com/games/vs/ps3-vs-xbox-360-gpu-specs.htm
* iphone 4s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A5

But but but...how is the situation when the HDD has multiple platters? Assuming that this 1.5TB disk has 3 x 500GB platters, wouldn't short-stroke like that mean that the whole disk area is used, but only one platter? Or is the data interleaved across platters?

The data is interleaved across the platters. If you look at the access times Tom's hardware got from short-stroking, you can see that they drop considerably. This is because the head moves over a much shorter range.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/short-stroking-hdd,2157-5.html

Short-stroking is restricting a HD to the outer area of the disk which is higher performance. This also makes access times better since the max distance the head has to travel is shorter. The capacity of the drive is decreased significantly depending on how much you restrict the area e.g. 1 TB > 100 GB might cut access times by 50% and bring your minimum and average transfer rates close to your max rate.

Tom's hardware article here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/short-stroking-hdd,2157.html

This was more viable when HDs were dirt cheap. I don't think you would want to do it in a hybrid setup since the point is to get capacity + speed. If you just want speed, use the SSD on it's own.

I have no idea why people say that Firefox memory usage is poor, when all test that I have seen come to the conclusion that it is pretty good, and Chrome in particular uses a lot of memory.

Here for example is one article on CNet http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-20047314-12.html

Here are the measurements of memory usage in kb for the three major browsers from that article.
Chrome 10: 390,532
IE 9: 205,616
Firefox 4: 148,020

Here is a slightly older article coming to the same conclusion on Tom's Hardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/firefox-chrome-opera,2558-4.html and there are other articles.

Please also note that Mozilla claims to have reduced memory usage by 20-30% with the Firefox 7 release.

Not true. Firefox is rather lean when it comes to memory use, and Chrome is actually somewhat poor. There are many comparisons available on-line, and the ones I have seen all come to that conclusion.

Here is one on Tom's Hardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/firefox-chrome-opera,2558-4.html

When comparing ten tabs the article states. "The big surprise here is Opera's and Chrome's poor showing in the multi-tab tests. Overall, Firefox delivers the best memory usage results. It comes in first place for the five- and ten-tab usage tests, but fourth in the single-tab metric."

> I still can't fathom spending $300 on a video card....and feeling like I got a slammin deal in the process.

Did you miss the $300 Radeon 5970 on the NewEgg Black Friday sale too? =)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814103195

While I agree it's hard to justify that price point, that combination of THAT bang/buck is phenomenal !
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-3-graphics-performance,3063.html

Specifically ...
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-3-graphics-performance,3063-8.html

> I still can't fathom spending $300 on a video card....and feeling like I got a slammin deal in the process.

Did you miss the $300 Radeon 5970 on the NewEgg Black Friday sale too? =)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814103195

While I agree it's hard to justify that price point, that combination of THAT bang/buck is phenomenal !
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-3-graphics-performance,3063.html

Specifically ...
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-3-graphics-performance,3063-8.html

You aren't going to get 30 MB/sec from the protocol.

Why not? I get 30MB/sec when copying stuff to/from a USB HDD.

It's never going to hit the theoretical 60MB/sec (480Mbps), but I'm certainly not the only one who has managed to get 30MB/sec from a USB interface.

See the USB drives near the bottom:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/external-hard-drive-charts/Maximum-Read-Transfer-Rate,696.html

The Nvidia Patent seems to cover the Cotton Candy device pretty well, though it seems pretty much a load od b***ocks.

and many, many, moooreeee

-mainconcept http://www.lostcircuits.com/mambo//i...&limitstart=17
-mediashow http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-fx...ssor-review/14
-h.264 http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-fx...ssor-review/14
-vp8 http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-fx...ssor-review/17
-sha1 http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-fx...ssor-review/17
-photoshop cs5 http://www.lostcircuits.com/mambo//i...&limitstart=14
-photoshop cs5 http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...x,3043-15.html
-winrar, faster than 2600k http://www.techspot.com/review/452-a...pus/page7.html
-winrar, improves over x6 http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...x,3043-16.html
-7-zip better than 2600k here: http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4955/41698.png http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/t...x8150-tested/7
-7-zip same perf as 2600k http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...x,3043-16.html
-POV-ray, faster than 2600k http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1741/10/
-POV-ray http://www.nordichardware.se/test-la...art=15#content
-x264(2nd pass AVX enabled) http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/t...x8150-tested/7
-x264 (2nd pass, better overall than 2600k) http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=2125&pageID=11108
-x264 (2nd pass +.3 than SB2600k) http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1741/7/
-handbrake; http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1741/9/
-truecrypt; http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=2125&pageID=11111
-solidworks; faster than 2600k http://www.techspot.com/review/452-a...pus/page7.html
-abbyy filereader http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...x,3043-16.html
-C-Ray, as fast as $1k i7-990X, http://i664.photobucket.com/albums/v.../c-rayir38.png

and many, many, moooreeee

-mainconcept http://www.lostcircuits.com/mambo//i...&limitstart=17
-mediashow http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-fx...ssor-review/14
-h.264 http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-fx...ssor-review/14
-vp8 http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-fx...ssor-review/17
-sha1 http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-fx...ssor-review/17
-photoshop cs5 http://www.lostcircuits.com/mambo//i...&limitstart=14
-photoshop cs5 http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...x,3043-15.html
-winrar, faster than 2600k http://www.techspot.com/review/452-a...pus/page7.html
-winrar, improves over x6 http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...x,3043-16.html
-7-zip better than 2600k here: http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4955/41698.png http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/t...x8150-tested/7
-7-zip same perf as 2600k http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...x,3043-16.html
-POV-ray, faster than 2600k http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1741/10/
-POV-ray http://www.nordichardware.se/test-la...art=15#content
-x264(2nd pass AVX enabled) http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/t...x8150-tested/7
-x264 (2nd pass, better overall than 2600k) http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=2125&pageID=11108
-x264 (2nd pass +.3 than SB2600k) http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1741/7/
-handbrake; http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1741/9/
-truecrypt; http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=2125&pageID=11111
-solidworks; faster than 2600k http://www.techspot.com/review/452-a...pus/page7.html
-abbyy filereader http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...x,3043-16.html
-C-Ray, as fast as $1k i7-990X, http://i664.photobucket.com/albums/v.../c-rayir38.png

and many, many, moooreeee

-mainconcept http://www.lostcircuits.com/mambo//i...&limitstart=17
-mediashow http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-fx...ssor-review/14
-h.264 http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-fx...ssor-review/14
-vp8 http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-fx...ssor-review/17
-sha1 http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-fx...ssor-review/17
-photoshop cs5 http://www.lostcircuits.com/mambo//i...&limitstart=14
-photoshop cs5 http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...x,3043-15.html
-winrar, faster than 2600k http://www.techspot.com/review/452-a...pus/page7.html
-winrar, improves over x6 http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...x,3043-16.html
-7-zip better than 2600k here: http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4955/41698.png http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/t...x8150-tested/7
-7-zip same perf as 2600k http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...x,3043-16.html
-POV-ray, faster than 2600k http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1741/10/
-POV-ray http://www.nordichardware.se/test-la...art=15#content
-x264(2nd pass AVX enabled) http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/t...x8150-tested/7
-x264 (2nd pass, better overall than 2600k) http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=2125&pageID=11108
-x264 (2nd pass +.3 than SB2600k) http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1741/7/
-handbrake; http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1741/9/
-truecrypt; http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=2125&pageID=11111
-solidworks; faster than 2600k http://www.techspot.com/review/452-a...pus/page7.html
-abbyy filereader http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...x,3043-16.html
-C-Ray, as fast as $1k i7-990X, http://i664.photobucket.com/albums/v.../c-rayir38.png

and many, many, moooreeee

-mainconcept http://www.lostcircuits.com/mambo//i...&limitstart=17
-mediashow http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-fx...ssor-review/14
-h.264 http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-fx...ssor-review/14
-vp8 http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-fx...ssor-review/17
-sha1 http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-fx...ssor-review/17
-photoshop cs5 http://www.lostcircuits.com/mambo//i...&limitstart=14
-photoshop cs5 http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...x,3043-15.html
-winrar, faster than 2600k http://www.techspot.com/review/452-a...pus/page7.html
-winrar, improves over x6 http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...x,3043-16.html
-7-zip better than 2600k here: http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4955/41698.png http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/t...x8150-tested/7
-7-zip same perf as 2600k http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...x,3043-16.html
-POV-ray, faster than 2600k http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1741/10/
-POV-ray http://www.nordichardware.se/test-la...art=15#content
-x264(2nd pass AVX enabled) http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/t...x8150-tested/7
-x264 (2nd pass, better overall than 2600k) http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=2125&pageID=11108
-x264 (2nd pass +.3 than SB2600k) http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1741/7/
-handbrake; http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1741/9/
-truecrypt; http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=2125&pageID=11111
-solidworks; faster than 2600k http://www.techspot.com/review/452-a...pus/page7.html
-abbyy filereader http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...x,3043-16.html
-C-Ray, as fast as $1k i7-990X, http://i664.photobucket.com/albums/v.../c-rayir38.png

really.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8150-zambezi-bulldozer-990fx,3043-15.html

radial blur, shape blur, median, polar coordinates.

This test employs threaded filters, taxing as many cores as we throw at it. Zambezi’s eight integer units capitalize, flying past the Core i5 and Core i7, outright trouncing the six-core Phenom II X6 1100T, too.

> When buying hardware, trying to future proof is dumb. You could try to "future proof" now and buy a $1500 system. In 3 years it'll be shit though.

That's total nonsense.

a) The gaming rig I built in 2001 lasted until 2008 -- upgrading the video card from a GeForce 2 to GeForce 4 to GeForce 6600GT kept it alive much, much longer.

b) I just priced out a complete gaming rig for a friend based on what I have. For $1300 you can build a gaming rig that WILL be perfectly fine for gaming in 3 years. By that time, you can upgrade the video card and it will play all the latest games.

You _do_ know that MOST games are GPU bound at 1920x1080, not CPU bound right?

Here are the benchmarks to back that claim up:

Sabertooth 990 FX
http://www.guru3d.com/article/asus-sabertooth-990fx-review/17

And proof that GPU's are the bottlenecks in the latest games ...
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-3-graphics-performance,3063.html

I could go on, but there would be little point.

So go ahead, and blow $500 on that latest i7-2600K -- meanwhile us budget AMD guys will be putting money that we saved on buying the cheap 4-core system towards a high end GPU like the 6970, because you are forgetting one tiny, but important fact. Almost ALL the big PC games are designed to run on the 5 year old console hardware -- the PS3 and XBox 360 only have ~6 core and ~2 cores respectively, which means modern CPU's are NOT the bottleneck -- the GPU's are.

I'd say Firefox's biggest problem is that it's bloated. Chrom{e|ium} is considerably faster.

Really? Several report that I have read come the the conclusion the Firefox uses less memory than Chrome. Here is one relatively recent comparison between Firefox 7 and Chrome 14: http://techpp.com/2011/09/28/chrome-14-vs-firefox-7-memory-footprint-comparison/

This is from the article:
"It’s clear that Chrome 14 consumes more memory than Firefox 7."

Tom's Hardware also has comparison of Chrome 14 and Firefox 7, and other browsers, coming to the same conclusion: "Naming a winner for overall memory efficiency is really tough this time, but we have to give the victory to Mozilla. Firefox 7 is simply never weak in our testing.": http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/firefox-7-web-browser,3037.html

Tom's Hardware latest web browser Grand Prix says Firefox 7 now has lower memory use than the competing browsers, so unless you have your own documentation to dispute theirs, I think you're incorrect. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/firefox-7-web-browser,3037.html

I agree that software emulation sucks, but it is becoming less and less relevant. Since it's estimated that73% of CPUs sold today have on-board graphics processing, still no comparison to a dedicated GPU, but one way or another the CPU isn't going to sputter with this.

> However ATi recovered very well with the Radeon 4000 and 5000 series. The 4000 series were extremely competitive cards. Good prices, good performance, low power usage, etc. Then the 5000 series were the first DX11 cards on the market by a number of months, and also great performers.

Yup. What's "ironic" is that the 6970 is significantly _slower_ then the 5970 *, since the 6000 series was even more about low power usage.

It will be interesting to see if the 7000 series focuses more on power or efficiency ....

The 5770 is an amazing bang/buck card.

* "Tom's Hardware : Review battlefield-3 graphics performance"
  http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-3-graphics-performance,3063-8.html

Well..

From that article:

"What is the weather like" -> Does not understand (but gives you weather forecast for "what is the weather" - which is arguably wrong ;) )

Also:
"Understand crazy monkey weather" and "what do you think about this political climate" both returned weather forecast..

Not exactly what I would call "your device recognizing what you mean", to be honest. Still looks mostly like the good old "looking for keywords" approach.

Something like this?

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gaming-graphics-charts-2008-q3/Sum-of-FPS-Benchmarks-Totals,795.html

Don't worry, that's getting fixed for PCs:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/fsf-windows-8-security-secure-boot-linux,13762.html

I've always found it odd that people have so much trouble grokking 'Secure Boot'. It's very simple: it's a locked bootloader for your PC, just like the one everyone hates on their phone.

Just some points:

The S2 screen doesn't have as good of dpi as the iPhone 4S

But on the other hand, many reviews comparing SGS2 screen with the old iPhone 4 screen have put the sgs2 screen as the better one. Not sure if that will change with 4S.. From what I've read, I don't think so.

The S2 doesn't have dual antennas for double the bandwidth like the iPhone 4S

"The iPhone 4S supports up to 14.4Mbps download, which is a lot faster than the current iPhone 4. However the SGS2 is HSPA+ ready and produces 21Mbps download speed"
(from here)

The iPhone 4S can stream content wirelessly to my AppleTV, while the S2 can not.

However, it can stream content to (and from.. mostly) any DLNA-supporting device.

As for some of the other points, like battery life and UI.. Well, it depens. For UI I can't say I've been missing anything, and it certainly feels pretty fluid. The battery life varies a lot on SGS2, from people reporting less than 1 day, to people reporting 7 days.. For me it lasts about two days with normal use, but I tend to recharge it every night, just to be sure.

You also forgot to mention Siri, which looks to be better voice command system than the default installed on the SGS2. (Of course, siri is not perfect either.. )

OCZ's reliability record is in no way different to any other Data Storage Manufacturer past or present.

Seagate's recent 1TB woes: ST31000340AS
Western Digital's recent woes: Caviar Green EARS 1.0TB and 1.5TB SATA

Going further back, anyone who's been around in IT for a decade or longer recalls the old Micropolis 9GB drive failures that sent the company into bankruptcy. In any case, OCZ is a relatively good company and a notable innovator of SSD technology and I personally find most of their products to be just as reliable as any other in the same category.

1- I don't know of any good-quality power supply below about $60. Good quality means Japanese capacitor, low ripple, good resistance to micro cuts, no lead, good current on the 12V rail, at least bronze-level efficiency, silence, and so on. Cheap no-name PS eventually fail, sometime taking the whole PC with them. Most people dismiss the PS, but it is an essential investment in a piece of equipment that runs all the time.

Read this for instance.

2- On a homebrew NAS you want to run ZFS, you really do. In fact this is the number one reason to build a homebrew NAS because the commercial ones never support it. This requires approximately 1GB of RAM per terabyte of data for good performance. ZFS essentially eliminates the possibility that your RAID becomes invalid and unrecoverable due to too many bad silent blocks. Read this.

3- For ZFS, the recommended setup is the equivalent of RAID6 as soon as you hit 4 disks of data, and to split arrays beyond 6 disks of data.

RAID 6 is only needed when it's possible for a drive to fail, and then for another to fail while the array is still recovering

That is precisely the problem. Your array may have already failed without you knowing it. If there is a single unreadable bad block anywhere on the "good" disks while your array is being rebuilt, the reconstruction is impossible with most hardware and software RAID solutions. You have already lost your array completely.

RAID is far from the panacea it is sold to be, in fact it is now an obsolete solution to a real problem.

Steve most like knew of Alan and the Dynabook, at least Alan thinks so...

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/alan-kay-steve-jobs-ipad-iphone,10209.html

Intel.

Look at Tom's chart. How does your particular model of Intel GMA compare to NV's GeForce 3 (the Xbox GPU) and ATI's Radeon 9000 (same fillrate as the Wii GPU)?

Things which used to have a low graphics requirement. :(

In theory, Tetris has just about the lowest graphics requirement possible (a 16 color, 20-by-20 cell screen, including hold and preview spaces), but the new Tetris products for PCs and game consoles have extra eye candy to make them appealing enough that they won't compete with used copies of older Tetris products. This eye candy runs just fine on the majority of devices still in use by even casual gamers in the industralized world, even if it doesn't run on dinosaur computers that were underpowered for gaming even when new. It's almost like complaining about no new PlayStation 2 games anymore.

Perhaps it's just an experiment to see if it's even feasible.

Yes, given that Apple have built other prototype hardware in the past.

But I think it's quite feasible and quite desirable if it allows them to put something between the price of a tablet and full MacBook.

If Apple were to build such a machine, it might well just run straight iOS. iOS already supports hardware keyboards (at least via Bluetooth), and could conceivably support pointing devices other than the ones most people have on their hands (probably a trackpad if they build a machine that's not touchscreen-only; given the Magic Trackpad, Apple's interest in mice seems to be waning). It could well be that Mac OS X, complete with "go ahead and download a source tarball, compile it, and install it, if you want, or buy somebody's non-App Store software and install it", will remain as long as there are enough customers who want that type of OS (truck drivers, if you will, using Jobs' analogy) and iOS will be used for machines for customers for whom it's sufficient, even if those machines happen to look like notebook computers.