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Tom's Hardware Investigates Michael's Computers
cojsl writes "Tom's Hardware has an extensive article raising questions about Michael's Computers and their claims of a laptop with a "3DMark03 Average Score - 15,417"." It gets funnier as you go along.
Sociopaths are dangerous people. Tracking them down is fine, but be careful if you decide to tangle with one. Some will dedicate their life to revenge.
'SBEMAIL!' is better than a goat!!
You seem to be confusing 3DMark03 with 3DMark01. The system you described would be lucky to get '5000' in 3DMark03.
Alienware comes to mind. Their machines are pretty cool. Lots of high-end equipment that is pretty to look at, but the prices are a touch high.
If you really want the uber game machine you probably want to build it yourself. Maximum performance doesn't ALWAYS have to cost you stability if you buy the right parts from the right vendors.
You're right about local stores, at least in my area, they are very delayed. I can usually order the latest online and get it in the mail before any local chains get it in stock. As far as I can tell, the local mom n' pop stores are always the most cautious to get the latest hardware. Try the gamer franchises, like EB Games. Best Buy, Circuit City, CrapUSA never have a good enough selection of products. (They might only sell PNY Nvidia cards, when you really want the Hercules.)
15,000 is a very reasonable score for a decent system in the 2001 version where the world record is a few points over 30,000. It's very likely that the marketing guy just made a simple mistake.
3dMark2003 is a whole different ball game however, and a score of 15,000 is clearly impossible. The world record is just over 10,000 points (trivia: made by finnish overclocker 'Macci' with a p4 3.2 EE clocked to 4.5 ghz and a Radeon 9800XT clocked extremely high).
Extreme overclocking has gone a long way. Macci cools both his cpu and gpu with a cascade system which is two phase change coolers (like the Vapochill) connected together in some cool way I don't have the technical know-how to describe. It cools both his cpu and gpu to -100C.
The notebooks featured on Michael's site are actually Clevo (http://www.clevo.com.tw/) notebooks. They are sold in the US under the brand name Sager, available from (among others) pctorque.com. I have the 17" model (tricked out w/ P4 3.2, 1gig RAM, ATI 9600 128MB, DVD burner etc etc) and it *is* bloody quick, but not that quick (about 20 sec to boot XP to usable state). I got it to run 3D CAD/CAM, which it does, like a dream. The only downside of this is it also runs Q3A amazingly well too, so I never actually get any work done ;).
194 decibels, A-weighted, is equivalent to the saturn 5 rocket or 50lbs of TNT detonated 10 feet away.
194 decibels (RMS) sound-pressure-level approaches the atmospheric pressure level.
With an RMS value of 194 decibels, the peak SPL would modulate the atmospheric value entirely. That would make it the loudest possible...
194 Maximum possible (from atmospheric 14.7psi down to 0psi)
177 Record for car audio!
170 Shotgun blast up close
160 Perforation of eardrum
140 Jet Aircraft Taking Off
120 Human Threshold of Pain - 1 watt/sq. meter
120 Loud Rock Concert
110 Moderate rock concert, dance club
100 Motorcycle
-- extended listening above 85-90dB leads to hearing loss --
90 Lawnmower, loud home stereo
85 Jackhammer at 15 meters (50 feet)
80 Moderate home stereo, ringing telephone
75 Average City Street
70 Freeway traffic, TV audio
60 Normal Conversation
50 Large office background noise
40 Quiet office or residential area
30 Whisper at 3 meters (10 feet), Very soft music
20 "Silent" TV Studio, Whisper at 1 meter, Quiet living room
10 Soft rustling of leaves
0 Human threshold of hearing (youths)
(table from http://www.geocities.com/rf-man/db.html )
I was just bored. I wondered to see what sort of response I would get. Mind you, this was in the early days of the web. More detail here:
http://british.nerp.net/commentary/alburt.html