What Would Be Your Dream Machine?

isaachulvey asks: "If you could put together your dream machine with any components you want, what would it be? Obviously price is not a factor here or we'd all be putting together 800 MHz systems with 128 MB of RAM. This is your dream machine, so be creative, go as over the top as you need, remember overkill is not a crime."

Comments

Linux compatible

[linvir]

All I want is a machine 100% compatible with my Linux distro of choice. If I can have that, I don't care about the specs.

Re:Linux compatible

[wolrahnaes]

I'm absolutely certain that my circa-1991 IBM PS/1 is completely supported by Linux. 25MHz 486SX, 20MB RAM, 129MB hard drive, and a 2400 baud modem in the ISA slot.

I'll trade you for whatever partially incompatible hardware you've got today, since you don't care about the specs.

Re:Linux compatible

[GreggBz]

I was hoping for a fun comment(s). Instead I get posturing to show what extreme Linux die hards some of you are. Yay for Linux, I love it and all, but come on men, have you no imagination?

Anyway, my dream machine is whatever I can tinker with and learn cool stuff from, and that's usually not a PC, and changes quite frequently. I'd like to play with some serious SGI workstations sometime, that's my current obsession.

Re:Linux compatible

[Anonymous Coward]

Here you go: http://www.dell.com/nseries

Re:Linux compatible

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny... though he said "Linux distro of choice". I tried installing Ubuntu onto my 1998 Pentium (233MHz) and it didn't work; turned out it requires at least a P2, and that was when I knew it had crossed the line from being a usable second machine to something that was mostly just taking up space.

Re:Linux compatible

[linvir]

A Linux die-hard would never admit that there is Linux incompatible hardware, or that there was anything wrong with any Linux distro anywhere. I just really like it and wish it'd fucking work for once.

Re:Linux compatible

[GreggBz]

Where I work, we have dozens of servers that run Linux day in day out, for years at a time. So in a sense it works brilliantly. I've used it on the Desktop at home since probably 1996, (I now use XP mostly, Linux gets exhausting heh) and yes, it's gotten to the point where it almost does work, with almost all hardware. But I think to get over that last hump, to have Windows level hardware compatibility, more people have to adopt it, and my friend, the key to that is cultural not technical. This is of course, is just MHO, and god knows I have absolutely no desire to start any kind of discussion on slashdot regarding MHO.

Re:Linux compatible

[lpcustom]

I don't have a system that isn't fully Linux compatible. On my main machine, for instance, I have an nVidia video card...check....wacom graphics tablet...check.....Viewsonic 22" widescreen at 1680x1050 res...check....my thumbdrives automount...check....my dvd drive plays and writes...check...my tv tuner card is made specifically for Linux and worked automatically on first boot....check...HP photosmart printer...check. Of course it's a mutt I put together and made sure to only buy Linux compatible parts for. My old Dell 1.9ghz laptop works great with Linux. Really this argument was valid about 5 years ago, but now I have less trouble getting everything working under Linux than with Windows. An unfair example being my TV tuner. It works great in Linux but there's very limited Windows support. It's harder to get it working in Windows than it is to get my laptops wifi working in Linux. If you truly want to use Linux, buy hardware that supports the OS. Simple as that.

Re:Linux compatible

[Glonoinha]

Linux will run on ANY hardware that Windows XP runs on, if you don't mind running shim software.
The Answer

The performance hit is minimal (like 5%, practically unnoticeable), it takes about another 128M of memory on top of any other hardware requirements, and it isn't really suitable for running games in Linux, but other than that - it's the cat's meow, a 100% solution for running Linux on any machine that will run XP. As a bonus, you can backup your entire Linux box by shutting it down and burning the VM files to a DVD, and can port the Linux VM to any other machine without reinstalling (your entire machine intact) simply by copying the VM files to the other box (and installing VMware.) As an additional bonus, now the box will also run any game that is 'Windows only' in native mode, full speed, no excuses. Talk about your best of both worlds. And yes, that's how I'm doing it. Deep beneath the covers in my Linux box is a heart of XP on Intel, and honestly given how well the rig works, I don't care one bit.

Here's a follow-on question to the OP's original, something I've been considering - would you get more functionality out of four dual CPU machines (ie, a single AMD x2 or Core 2 Duo CPU per machine) with a GigE backbone between them, two Quad CPU computers, or a single 8-way box? How would you apply the hardware to get the most out of it, assuming a single user? Assume a KVM hooking multiple machines up to a single nice display / keyboard / mouse / audio. My ideal next rig is going to be eight physical cores, but I'm still kicking around how I am going to arrive at that number - ideas here would likely influence that decision.

Re:Linux compatible

[musicon]

Well, I just went through that exercise after researching for a few months. My goals (in order) were 100% free drivers, a significant decrease in noise and heat from my previous system, and small size. As a side benefit, I ended up completely legacy-free. Here's what I ended up with:

• Intel DG965PZ
• Intel Core2 E6600
• 4GB memory, two KVR800D2N5K2/2G kits
• WD1600AAJS 160GB HDD
• Plextor PX-755SA dual-layer DVDRW
• aOpen B200 case
• Samsung 244T 24" LCD

The system is currently running Ubuntu Fiesty, which recognized everything on boot and installed perfectly. The only change I made was from the default X VESA driver to the i810.

The case is the most important thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

The case would be a beautiful woman.

With 4 gigs of RAM.

Re:The case is the most important thing...

[Short Circuit]

Eh? The Athlon64 gave us a 40-bit address bus in a PC. You could have a terabyte of RAM.

Personally, I'd want the whole terabyte, so I could cache all my hard disk space and have 250GB to spare.

Re:The case is the most important thing...

[PyroMosh]

Already been done.

Well, I don't know about the RAM.

talking computers ftw

[uber-human]

I would want it to talk, kinda' like HAL, only without the killing people part. Oh, and it would have a sexy female voice.

Re:talking computers ftw

[robyannetta]

Oh, you want the Planet Express Ship.

Re:talking computers ftw

[Cygfrydd]

I don't know... a spaceship with the voice of Sigourney Weaver. Would this also involve a trip to LV-426? And a housecat?

Re:talking computers ftw

[kent_eh]

Like maybe the AI from the Andromeda Ascendant?

The absolute ultimate dream machine.

[Seumas]

The Sandia / Cray Red Storm super computer crammed inside of a Real Doll.

I build myself a top of the line machine about once a year, so I already have my "dream machine". But the above is a true dream machine. Especially if it washed your dishes, cooked your meals and ran linux.

Re:The absolute ultimate dream machine.

[NayDizz]

Yeah, and output it to two of these

Re:The absolute ultimate dream machine.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Lenny Kravitz had the same idea idea before you.

Re:The absolute ultimate dream machine.

[kinzillah]

Where the hell is the "-1 Creepy" mod?

Re:The absolute ultimate dream machine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right next to "+1, this is gonna be the best prom ever!" mod ;)

Re:The absolute ultimate dream machine.

[Seumas]

Don't be hatin' on me, just because I have now provided the world with the design for the perfect Stepford (and linux) wife.

Re:The absolute ultimate dream machine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoa.. thoroughly seconded.

Re:The absolute ultimate dream machine.

[dunkelfalke]

what's the problem? i actually like the idea.
a robotic woman without any quirks real women got would be really cool.

Re:The absolute ultimate dream machine.

[Seumas]

Where is the "-1 Whipped Pussy" mod?

Re:The absolute ultimate dream machine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Realdolls? Damn, those things creep me out; if someone really wants to spend their hard-earned money on one, it's their choice, but I wouldn't want one if they were free. (Well, okay, I would, but only to sell it...).

Re:The absolute ultimate dream machine.

[lessthan]

People! NSFW warnings!!

Re:The absolute ultimate dream machine.

[Short Circuit]

You should watch an anime series called Chobits. It's about a guy who essentially has that happen. Well, it's more about the android. And there's no sex. But still.

Re:The absolute ultimate dream machine.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's only cause he's japanese and has an on going physical relationship with a number of specialty periodicals.

Re:The absolute ultimate dream machine.

[heinousjay]

If they were given away for free, who would buy one from you? Just admit you want to fuck a hunk of plastic and you'll feel better about yourself.

My first place entry

[Anonymous Coward]

Is a Beowulf cluster of whatever comes in second place.

I think I'll take...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dual quad-core processors with 2 or so 8800GTXs and a 12-drive raptor raid all cooled with liquid nitrogen and overclocked to the max.

At least until the liquid nitrogen tank goes empty. :

800 mhz?

[Anonymous Coward]

I realize there's a long queue, but how many years ago was this question submitted?

Re:800 mhz?

[Soul-Burn666]

A friend of mine just recently upgrade his P2 266mhz to a P3 667mhz and he's quite happy with it.
Guess what? It runs WindowsXP quite well, he can surf the web no problems and play the awesome games that were released at that era and a great number of new small games you can get from the net, including his mmorpg of choise (runescape).
I don't really understand it, but I guess he knows what he's doing.
He does have PS2 and a couple of really cool board games tho.

C= 64

[thhamm]

i want my C64 back. and the whole bunch of good memories too.

Re:C= 64

[lavid]

we're sorry you've lost your memory.

Re:C= 64

[thhamm]

hugh? i don't know you people.

Re:C= 64

[ai3]

But it had only 64KB of'em, which surely wasn't enough for everyone!

Re:C= 64

[einhverfr]

Contact me via email if you really want a C=64. Working condition, drives, monitor, etc. Printer ribbon might not be working though (haven't checked) Will go to the highest bidder. I have one that is taking up space.

Anyway, my dream machine: I was thinking about a nice 64-proc Power5 or something with 64GB RAM and 20TB of disk storage. The thing could even double as a heater in the winter to "reduce" my electricity bills. And no, you probably don't want a Beowulf cluster of these ;-)

And yes, it would run Linux.

Re:C= 64

[Short Circuit]

I feel so lucky.

I was born in 1983. My first computer was a 286. Today, I serviced a guy's computer, and he's offered me his old C64.

I have a fascination with old hardware, and I understand the C64 was quite the hardware-hacker's toy. I'm looking forward to it.

Re:C= 64

[sktea]

i want my C64 back. and the whole bunch of good memories too.

Point of order: once it goes, your memory never comes back.

The Subject.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, well. It'd be a 65536-processor machine running at 100GHz with 10TB of SRAM and 1000TB of MRAM.

Dream Computer

[Yaddoshi]

My dream computer may offend some, but please bear in mind I am employed as a PC repair tech who gets to fix Windows computers all day, every day. Even though I presently operate LINUX as my primary laptop OS of choice due to my limited budget, if my budget allowed I would switch to a Mac without hesitation.

"What about games?"

Well, seeing as how PC games no longer fit into my budget either due to hardware requirements, I've switched back from PC gaming to console only, so gaming really isn't a requirement for me anymore.

Imagine a Beowulf cluster...

[Ceriel Nosforit]

I'd like a Beowulf cluster in my basement. That, however, requires I first acquire a basement.

The cluster would be running low-power/performance parts so that I wouldn't have to worry about cooling and power bills too much. It would use solid-state solutions for storage, such as a bank of CF cards mapped into one huge drive. In general, it would require next to no maintenance.
The rest of the house would have microphones, high-def steerable video cameras, screens and speakers in every room, all fed to the cluster.

The software running on the machine would be much more complicated, featuring for example voice control for simple commands and object-recognition of the video-feeds. I'd be able to hold up a piece of paper in-view of a cam, say "OCR this" and have the text written on it turn up on the screen closest to me. More complex commands might be possible through some logically structured command language. Much would not be required.

Re:Imagine a Beowulf cluster...

[Short Circuit]

I used to fantasize about Beowulf clusters, but then I learned how there's essentially no desktop-useful software based around the MPI architecture. The other option was OpenMOSIX, which would allow the entire cluster to appear as one system. Essentially, you'd have the equivalent of a multi-processor NUMA computer with horribly slow interconnects.

At that point, if you were really hard-core, you could compile all your preferred applications to run on an OpenMOSIX distro. But you'd only see a notable performance improvement if you ran several calculation-intensive jobs which didn't require many memory accesses outside local nodes, or ran jobs whose data sources were stored on local nodes.

And if you're really running that kind of job, you probably should have stuck with a dedicated Beowulf cluster, and used a dual-core, 8-way Opteron system as a desktop.

Re:Imagine a Beowulf cluster...

[Glonoinha]

There's plenty of desktop useful cluster software.

Like the Persistence of Vision Raytracer. After I made my Beowulf cluster I spent days and days just raytracing different pictures - I have the image of that skyvase burned into the back of my skull I've seen it so many times. I would run benchmark after benchmark, experimenting with the number of engines running on each box, playing with different machine speeds and network speeds to see what kind of effect each had, comparing my fastest runs to the Top500 numbers over the years. My best run puts me in the top 100 machines in the world, including super computers (from the very first run, which was in 1995. My cluster vs. today's supercomputers ... not so much.)

And ... ummm.

Well that raytracing software is plenty of fun. I highly recommend it.

Re:Imagine a Beowulf cluster...

[Short Circuit]

That had to be fun. But POV rendering doesn't fit my idea of desktop usage. Compiling maps for FPS games, on the other hand, could conceivably be parallelized.

Hmm

[micksam7]

Can we pick two? I'd take a core 2 quad pc with two GeForce 8800GTX in SLi, and maybe a few drives in 0+1 raid. Custom built of course.

Then perhaps a closet full of dual-processor quad-core blade servers for password cra^W^W helping out folding@home or something.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Then perhaps a closet full of dual-processor quad-core blade servers for password cra^W^W helping out folding@home or something.

That's weird. My wife does most of the folding. I usually get the laundry into and out of the machines.

A macbook pro which doesn't suck.

[aliquis]

Ok, if the price isn't important it's already done, just get the most expensive modell. If else just give me lowend model with 256MB vram and maybe a better GPU and I'm all for it. There is hoping for may.

Re:A macbook pro which doesn't suck.

[EvanED]

Or what about a Mac tablet? That's somewhere high on my list.

ev8 Alpha...

[Anonymous Coward]

A 2GHz+ multicore ev8 Alpha, with SMT support.

Too bad that will never happen...

Transmutation device

[Overzeetop]

Why not, the question was pretty open ended? And after changing most of the dirt in my back yard to [insert favorite precious element here], I could go buy whatever I needed.

Re:Transmutation device

[mattpointblank]

Couldn't you just cut out the middleman and turn dirt into the commercial goods you seek? Take that, tax!

Re:Transmutation device

[Anonymous Coward]

Powered by a perpetual motion machine, no doubt.

Forget the innards

[oskard]

Who cares when you can get a decent business machine for 400 bucks?

I want a touch screen, with multi-point technology like on the iPhone or demonstrated here.

Obviously, whatever the fastest desktop hardware configuration is at the time would be a nice touch :)

Re:Forget the innards

[TheRaven64]

In terms of form factor, I think the Psion Series 3 had it about right. I'd like an updated version. Give it an 800x480 touchscreen like the Nokia 770, a 1GHz XScale CPU, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of flash. Throw in WiFi and UMTS. Keep the keyboard. Make it about half a centimetre thinner, and add a web browser and mail client. Oh, and some kind of magic batter technology so it can get the same sort of life that the original Series 3 had...

Re:Forget the innards

[JavaRob]

Oh, and some kind of magic batter technology so it can get the same sort of life that the original Series 3 had... Please -- we are not interested in hearing about your "magic batter".

Re:Forget the innards

[sumdumass]

I belive you can get overlays that add touch screen function onto any existing screen. Some of them have dual pointers (like two mice) build into the setup. I remeber looking at them a while back when making a koisk machine out of a workstation to let customers preview product lines before making a decision.

Google for touchscreens and I'm sure they will pop up somewhere. They were running at around 100-200 bucks depending on how clear the touch stuff was. You should be able to turn your $400 workstation into your dream machine reletivly cheap.

Re:Forget the innards

[tengwar]

The 3 was a nice machine to hold, but I'd go for an updated Series 7 / Netbook: A5 format; big enough to touch type notes in real time; that fancy cantilevered hinge bringing the bottom of the screen forward so that it didn't fall over backwards when you started drawing a diagram in the middle of a document (why doesn't any modern laptop have this?); wrap around leather so that it felt good to carry folded in the hand. Also unlike the 3 it didn't jettison its batteries when you dropped it: it was rated for a 1m fall onto concrete.

Update that with a modern display, WiFi, Bluetooth and HSUPA (UMTS is so two years ago) and you've got my dream machine. As to software: I've become very fond of M$ OneNote - I'd like something like that on it.

Re:Forget the innards

[MythMoth]

Yep. I'd be prepared to pay a lot for a machine with those approximate specs. Presumably there's no demand for such a gizmo, since there's nothing much available in the clamshell form. But it puzzles me, because most of the geeks I know have bemoaned the lack of a "serious" pocket computing device.

Expansion

[architimmy]

Something that would let me add CPUs and Memory up to some ridiculously high number. I do a lot of 3d rendering so number of processors pretty much aids me in a near linear fashion. I work on a small budget though so being able to increase my rendering capability incrementally is really the only way I can go. Right now I do this by buying an affordable machine and upgrading every 12-18 months and putting the old machine in a stripped down box on a network and using it to network render.

Re:Expansion

[Glonoinha]

It's called a Beowulf cluster, and is EXACTLY what you are looking for. In fact, if all you do is 3d rendering and if there's a package like the Persistence of Vision Raytracer for whatever you do ... you'd be all set. Look into it.

I guess if money were no object, I'd buy myself:

[Surt]

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My Selections All Options
# PowerEdge 2900

Date 3/17/2007 2:04:22 PM Central Standard Time
Catalog Number 4 Retail 04
Catalog Number / Description Product Code SKU Id
PowerEdge 2900:
Quad Core Intel® Xeon® X5355, 2x4MB Cache, 2.66GHz, 1333MHz FSB 29C26 [222-7262] 1
Additional Processor:
Quad Core Intel® Xeon® X5355, 2x4MB Cache, 2.66GHz, 1333MHz FSB 2PC26 [311-6941] 2
Memory:
48GB 533MHz (12x4GB), Dual Ranked DIMMs 48G125D [311-5738] 3
Operating System:
Windows Server® 2003 R2, Enterprise x64 Edition, Includes 25 CALs WS6R2E [420-5799] 11
Operating System Addition:
25-pack of Windows® Server 2003 Device CALs (Standard or Enterprise) W2K3L25 [420-4739] 19
Primary Controller:
PERC 5/i, Integrated Controller Card PERC5II [341-3018] 9
2nd Controller and HBAs:
2x PERC 5/E SAS RAID Adapter, PCI-Express, 2x4 Connectors, External 2PERC5E [341-3024] 24
Hard Drive Configuration:
Integrated SAS/SATA RAID 10, PERC 5/i Integrated MSR10N [341-3000] 27
Primary Hard Drive:
300GB, 3Gbps, SAS, 3.5 inch, 15K RPM Hard Drive, Hot Plug 300A15 [341-4424] 8
2nd Hard Drive:
300GB, 3Gbps, SAS, 3.5 inch, 15K RPM Hard Drive, Hot Plug 300A15 [341-4424] 23
3rd Hard Drive:
300GB, 3Gbps, SAS, 3.5 inch, 15K RPM Hard Drive, Hot Plug 300A15 [341-4424] 54
4th Hard Drive:
300GB, 3Gbps, SAS, 3.5 inch, 15K RPM Hard Drive, Hot Plug 300A15 [341-4424] 51
5th Hard Drive:
300GB, 3Gbps, SAS, 3.5 inch, 15K RPM Hard Drive, Hot Plug 300A15 [341-4424] 52
6th Hard Drive:
300GB, 3Gbps, SAS, 3.5 inch, 15K RPM Hard Drive, Hot Plug 300A15 [341-4424] 53
7th Hard Drive:
300GB, 3Gbps, SAS, 3.5 inch, 15K RPM Hard Drive, Hot Plug 300A15 [341-4424] 71
8th Hard Drive:
300GB, 3Gbps, SAS, 3.5 inch, 15K RPM Hard Drive, Hot Plug 300A15 [341-4424] 72
Chassis Configuration:
Tower Chassis Orientation TOWER [310-7489] 28
Power Supply:
Redundant Power Supply with Y-Cord RPSWY [310-7405] 36
Bezel:
Tower Bezel Included TBEZEL [313-4363] 17
Network Adapter:
Intel® PRO 1000PT Dual Port Server Adapter, Gigabit NIC, Cu, PCIe x4 1000PD [430-0959] 13

Ergonomic, effective, and energy friendly

[Tatisimo]

My dream machine would be one that can do simple tasks (check email, check news, etc.) on single button commands (or voice) in order to save my wrist energy for more important stuff. Energy friendly is a big deal for me, I hate paying high electricity bills. When it comes to specs, the only thing I care about is huge storage capacity, and fast enough for media, songs, and downloads. And no useless, RAM crippling tasks, or "antipiracy" malaware. I'm already having trouble with those, since I reinstall windows so often.

I'm actually going to build this... eventually

[Wonko the Sane]

Case: Koolance PC4-1036
Motherboard: Tyan Thunder n3600M
Raid: 3ware 9650SE-24M8
Hard Drives Seagate 750GB
RAM water cooled
Power supply: Koolance 1200W

Re:I'm actually going to build this... eventually

[empaler]

Sw00t. 16 RAM slots FTW.

It would be a...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lucy Liu-bot.

Uh..

[Threni]

If money were no object, why would anyone's dream machine be one which would have been crap 10 years ago?

Depends on your requirements

[hcdejong]

Sure, it'd be fun to have the fastest computer available, but lots of power comes with drawbacks: noise and high electricity bills.

My main machine is a Mac Mini G4, and you know, it's fast enough for just about everything I do. It's nice and quiet, and doesn't draw ludicrous amounts of power. The only drawback is its lack of room for internal harddisks. I've got two external disks connected for a total of 500 GB, and I still don't have enough space.

I'm shopping for a PVR at the moment. AFAIK, any current machine would do for this purpose; the only thing that may pose a problem is HDTV playback. But given the lack of HDTV broadcasts where I live, this wouldn't be a dealbreaker.

My work machine could do with a bit more power, but in my job (writing technical documents), the CPU rarely is the bottleneck. Disk speed is more of an issue. I just replaced the 4200 rpm disk in my laptop with a 7200 rpm disk, and the difference is quite remarkable.
My ultimate work machine would be a laptop with 4 GB RAM on the fastest bus available [1], a RAID-0 using four of the fastest drives available [1], a 15" internal screen and 2 DVI ports that can drive a 30" screen each. Then again, with that RAID it wouldn't be very portable.

1: note the lack of technicalities. I've no idea which speeds we'd be talking about. Mostly, I just don't care enough to keep up.

Re:Depends on your requirements

[realkiwi]

Mine is the original hush http://www.hushtechnologies.net/ with a VIA Epia-M10000.
I already have an external WD 250 Gb ieee1394 hard drive and a DVB-S card.

I would like an internal WiFi card and a slot-in DVD writer. And a 101cm Sony LCD TV capable of running at 1440x900. I would also like to trade my keyboard/mouse up to a Logitech Di-Nova wireless. Last of all I would like a PSP to use as a remote for VDR http://www.cadsoft.de/vdr/.

big apple

[St. Arbirix]

Go max out a Mac Pro on Apple's site... it's $20k.

I could use that.

Re:big apple

[gEvil (beta)]

Go max out a Mac Pro on Apple's site... it's $20k.

Pfffft. Lemme know when you get it up to $640k. That oughta be enough for anyone...

Re:big apple

[limecat4eva]

Now fit that into a 12" aluminum PowerBook case with a 24-hour battery life, and you've got my dream machine.

How come Apple doesn't sell small laptops anymore? What the fuck, Steve? Power users only use machines the size of aircraft carriers? And please do something about the name. "MacBook" has a ring, all right... the ring of mediocrity.

Re:big apple

[PayPaI]

Naw, I'll wait till it's over $9000k.

Re:big apple

[Jeff DeMaagd]

When the Dell 690 was first introduced, maxing it out came out to something like $80k, where it accepted dual Quadro, 64GB of RAM, four cores and so on. Now, it's about $50k for eight cores

Re:big apple

[Velocir]

Or $32,359.61 in New Zealand. That's about what a new Police officer earns in a year :)

My dream machine has breasts

[Anonymous Coward]

'nuff said!

Re:My dream machine has breasts

[pilsner.urquell]

Cute receptionist at work:
What is that penguin thing "TUX" on [the back window of] your truck?

I:
It's the mascot of a type of operating system.

Cute receptionist at work:
(Dumb Look)

I:
It's computer stuff, you interested?

Cute receptionist at work:
No.

Re:My dream machine has breasts

[pravuil]

Something like a Lucy Liu Bot?

Re:My dream machine has breasts

[Killjoy_NL]

If only :(

Re:My dream machine has breasts

[Corbets]

My dream machine has breasts

Being a slashdotter, you'll likely have to settle for the machine version anyway...

Re:My dream machine has breasts

[The_Rook]

or a marilyn monroebot.

Easy

[Eastside2000]

A 1024 core processor at 10Ghz, 5 Tb of RAM, 3Tb Video card, 1 YB Hard drive... And a custom OS that runs any file system and any types of programs.

Re:easy

[MyOtherUIDis3digits]

I want a machine with an original Pentium I processor (you know the one). Put that together with like 16MB of differently spec'd RAM (2-8s or 4-4s) on a mobo with capacitors circa 2001, and an IBM DeskStar 75GXP hard drive. Oh, and it should be running WinME. That's like a dream come true...

About the only things you're missing are the USB-attached crotch kicker and keyboard with random TASER capability.

Re:easy

[ffsnjb]

I could hook you up with a PackBell P100 wih 56 MiB RAM (feel free to pull some out). It's retardedly heavy, shipping will cost you...

To make it even more fun, I can put a cyrix pr150 in it for you. I had Win98 running on it in the past, but WinME would make your nightmare complete for sure!

Re:easy

[gEvil (beta)]

Thanks for the offer, but that Cyrix chip didn't have the FDIV problem, did it?

Re:easy

[ffsnjb]

Looks like it does not: I didn't find any references with the 6x86L-PR200+GP part number. I do know it'll clock from 150 to 166 without issue (big deal back in the day, not so much today, or yesterday.)

Re:easy

[Short Circuit]

Whoa. I never actually met a techno-sadist. Lots of Windows die-hards, sure. But they don't understand that they're torturing themselves.

But you, sir...wow.

Re:Easy

[bofkentucky]

This is actually pretty close to achiveable, the disk and graphics are where it falls apart
Sun cluster +
32 Sun T2000's 2TB, 1024 Threads +
64 2xTenGbit cards +
64 Dual 4Gb fiber cards +
2 Cisco 6509's +
8 8 port 10gbit switch cards +
EMC DMX 950 1.2PB +
4 32 Port fiber switches

10-12 cabinets and a big honkin' AC and you're there bud

There can be only one!

[Anonymous Coward]

Cray XMP....

Barcelona overkill

[Brian Stretch]

I'd go with four of AMD's upcoming Barcelona quadcore CPUs, max out the RAM capacity, a pair of the upcoming ATI R600 video cards in Crossfire mode, one or two 30" widescreen monitors (I'm not sold on the dual screen thing), a RAID of those new 32GB Sandisk flash drives for the boot partition and a RAID of the upcoming terabyte SATA HDs for data storage so I'd never have to delete MythTV HDTV recordings (using a 3Ware SATA RAID controller?), at least a couple of HD-5500 HDTV tuners, dual boot 64-bit Vista Ultimate (for games) and Fedora 7 (for everything else, running 32-bit WinXP in a KVM instance when I have to), maybe a X-Fi audio card, probably a PC Power & Cooling kilowatt power supply, a Blu-ray burner, watercooling by DangerDen, and a suitable case (maybe a Thermaltake Mozart TX?).

And a naquada generator so I could power it all off-the-grid.

Alternatively, a Tyan Personal Supercomputer might be fun too.

Re:Barcelona overkill

[rainer_d]

While you mention those cute SANdisk drives.
This thing will beat the shit out of these SANdisk-toys.
I'd take one of these, too.

TI 99/4A

[robyannetta]

I want to play Hunt The Wumpus again.

Re:TI 99/4A

[cervo]

Wow, the TI-994a was my first computer. I remember hunt the wumpus...not to mention Spacewar 7.

Re:TI 99/4A

[5pp000]

That's so cool that people still remember Hunt the Wumpus. The author of that game is an old friend of mine -- I'll mention this the next time I see him.

Re:TI 99/4A

[John Courtland]

When I was a little kid, my dad bought a TI99/4a. I can distinctly remember him showing me how to play Hunt the Wumpus and trying to explain to me how the curved arrows and curved caves work. It's one of my best childhood memories.

I hear that...

[interactive_civilian]

If money weren't an issue, I'd be all over a fully decked out 15" MacBook Pro. Unfortunately, I don't have the 394,000 yen to spend on the one I want (I want a JIS keyboard because I am used to the layout and it makes it much easier to switch between typing in Japanese and English).

Of course, while we are imagining things, I'd probably also go for a fully decked out Mac Pro (quad Xeon 3GHz, 16GB memory, 3TB hard drive space, 512MB VRAM, 2 30" Cinema Displays, extra superdrive, and WiFi/Bluetooth). That is 2,145,970 yen.

But, hell, right now, I'd be happy to get my hands on a MacBook. Maybe when I return to Japan someday (currently traveling/working as I travel around the world...right now I'm in Morocco)

Central Standard Time?

[XanC]

I guess Dell is having is having trouble with the new DST rules...

Gmail?!

[XanC]

The guy's got a gmail address, so it can't be too old... I can't figure out what's going on here!

Perpetual Motion Machine

[araphwael]

The question was vague.

My dream machine...

[Hymer]

...does not exist yet...

• it is more powerful than anything you can buy now
• it fits in a normal pocket
• it got infinite batteries in it's casing (miniature fusion reactor ?)
• it got holographic display
• it is fully voice operated
• it got foolproof navigation (GPS + inertial)
• it has AI
• it has infinite storage capacity

...you have seen this device on film... Lamberts SELMA in Time Trax.

Re:My dream machine...

[Surt]

I think your battery problem will be solved by having it be extremely low power ... some breakthrough will drop power requirements a hundredfold some time soon, and then we'll be able to power these things off of solar cells with a small battery backing it that will last overnight.

Re:My dream machine...

[ravenfan]

...would contain the following features: - 38DD - doesn't complain when I have game night - keep the kitchen stock full of Mt. Dew and Doritos

Re:My dream machine...

[Anonymous Coward]

Something integrating gps, virtual reality overlays, and every movie ever made, all in a pair of contact lenses.

Re:My dream machine...

[Short Circuit]

My dream machine would be a dockable laptop, but the key component would be the battery.

It would be radioisotope-powered, so I'd have a 30-year battery life.

Re:My dream machine...

[Short Circuit]

Along those lines? Anything that can connect to the Metaverse. But that would kinda require a Metaverse to go with it. And bandwidth to connect to it...

easy

[gEvil (beta)]

I want a machine with an original Pentium I processor (you know the one). Put that together with like 16MB of differently spec'd RAM (2-8s or 4-4s) on a mobo with capacitors circa 2001, and an IBM DeskStar 75GXP hard drive. Oh, and it should be running WinME. That's like a dream come true...

Multi-arch

[HomelessInLaJolla]

I'd like to build a mobo with a RISC descendant (PPC), Intel, and AMD processor sockets, a POST menu to select the processor of choice, and multiple flashable BIOS (post-POST) banks. Maybe even made so that the other processors can be accessed (somehow) after boot. Two top video cards (nV and ATI), TV tuner capable, whatever SoundBlaster's latest extreme audio card preferably with RCA or bare wire connectors like the back of a home audio receiver. After that I guess it'd be just technicalities. Network, wireless, 56k modem (just for phun), stack in the RAM and storage space. I like experimenting.

UNIVAC

[Anonymous Coward]

I would get all of the chicks.

a man of modest needs.

[the_greywolf]

What I want in a "dream machine" laptop is modest, at best.

• 13" - 14.1" display. I really don't want anything larger, and anything smaller is a PDA.
• 80+ GB 1.8" or 2.5" hard drive. These days, anything smaller is unreasonable, but anything larger, and that's what USB storage is for. :P
• 802.11g, or n when it matures. What I'm describing is a mobile workstation, so I want to take it literally anywhere.
• Extremely low-power CPU with a reasonably high clock (1GHz or more). I'm looking for 9-hour battery performance, under a modest load. ARM seems to fit the bill, but I'd like to see something a little more powerful. A low-end OpenSPARC maybe? x86 is out of the question.
• Low-power 3D accelerator. 3D programming is a hobby of mine, so I want that capability. Low-power profile GPU, with modest 3D power: Equivalent to a GeForce Go 6600, but with an open architecture and Free specs, and easily able to handle a ported version of Folding@Home for GPUs when hooked up to AC power and put in a standby mode. (Read: I don't care how much power it burns in 3D mode, but 2D mode has to use a trickle of power.)
• USB and Firewire - for everything else.

Why can't I get that kind of thing in a laptop computer? Why do I have to move up to 17" desktop replacements to get a usable 3D GPU? Why is the Core CPU always paired with the industry's biggest joke in 3D graphics (the GMA9x0)? Why is battery life still stuck at 3 to 4 hours? The mobile market has had more than enough time to develop beyond that, and it has thus far failed.

silent and fast

[dunkelfalke]

well...

core 2 duo passive cooled
two gigs of ram
a silent psu
quad raid 0 made of a real hardware raid card and 4 sandisk extreme III 16 gb cf cards
any decent passive cooled 3d graphics card (got a radeon 9800 pro with heatpipe now)
a really good soundcard
19" tft display with a mva screen
microsoft natural 4000 keyboard and a DIN A5 size wacom digitizer

and no, i am not into graphics, i just use the digitizer instead of a mouse, because of less wrist pain (rsi sucks).

Does it need to exist?

[miyako]

Do all the components need to actually exist? If not, I'd say that I want a machine with a quantum co-processor. Heck, if we're really getting outlandish, maybe with DNF installed as well.
If we're going to be looking at reality, I've been considering putting together a core2 quad system with 8GB of ram which is totally worth it now that Maya has a 64-bit version.
As far as things that would be neat, but that I wouldn't actually spend any money on, I think it would be neat to have dual SLI video cards (does that even work under Linux?), and a KillerNIC, and one of those physics acceleration cards.

Easy

[Blankhorizons]

Intel QX6700 Asus Stryker Extreme 680i chipset motherboard 2GB (or 4GB is using a 64 bit OS) Corsair 1066MHz 2x Nvidia 8800GTX Promise Supertrack EX4350 PCI-e x4 Raid Controller 4x 750GB Seagate Barracuda in Raid 5 2x Plextor slot-loading DVDRW 20x Galaxy 1000W PSU (way overkill, but this is a dream machine right?) 2x Apple Cinema 30" Widescreen LCDs (not up on monitors, there are probably better) This is pretty easy, because unless you're into development (and thus would want Quadros or FireGLs over the GTXs) there are clear winners in performance right now. The only thing that would be faster is to put Raptors in the RAID 5, but I'd prefer more space in this case.

Riker said it best

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone needs me, I'll be in Holodeck 2.

two words

[Anonymous Coward]

lubricated sleeve

that's easy, because I have one at $WORK

[Yonder Way]

IBM pSeries 595, fully loaded.

Well designed...

[evilviper]

Performance doesn't hardly matter. I have one system that does all the video encoding, game playing, etc., and the rest of my machines are just the cheapest hardware I can find on pricewatch when the old one finally breaks...

Mostly, I'd be happiest with the quietest, lowest power equipment I can get. A 25W Turion CPU, 80%+ efficient Seasonic PSU, etc. Not sure about GPUs, but something low powered, but has full-featured open source 3D drivers, and TV-out. Integrated chips need not apply.

Incidentally, this system is actually pretty cheap to put together. Newegg has a 2GHz Turion for $70, and Socket 754 mobos are only $50. Throw in $40 for the PSU, $40 for the GPU, and maybe $40 for RAM. Throw in the largest capacity HDD available, since I'm not paying for it...

The case really seems the most important part of a computer these days. Front ports for lots of frequently used connectors like audio, USB, Firewire, etc. I'd even like front RS-232 and IR. Importantly, good and quiet cooling is almost entirely a function of a well-designed case layout. Not to mention ease of maintenance is almost always hampered by cramped, poorly located components, and the usual jerry-rigged fans to handle hotspots that shouldn't even exist, in cheap/junk cases.

As for my multimedia machine, mostly the same as above, but lowest power (fast) Opteron available, RAID, and importantly, ECC RAM to guarantee stability/integrity.

For a notebook, a more expensive version of the OLPC, redesigned for adults, would be pretty close. Large HDD, sharper screen (in color mode), DVD burner, decent keyboard, etc.
.

What I'd really like to see in computers, is the various components working together like never before. How about if the monitor's power button actually just sends a signal to the PC, which can decide whether to shut off the monitor, suspend the system, start an idle timer, etc. It wouldn't hurt to have external speakers receive a signal, telling them to power-off when the system does. And networked information sharing, so I can quickly change the esound host for all the machines at once. More useful LEDs (HDD but no CPU activity LED?). A small, 2-line LCD for status/info output while the monitor is off would be good as well.

Time machine!

[DarkPengu]

Time machine.

It starts with the case

[WorldDominationOrBus]

Case: (modded) Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder CPU and paraphernalia: anything (as long as it's not a Mac).

Fast, reliable and silent

[DaleGlass]

My list:

• As fast as possible without making it annoyingly loud. At the very least, dual core. It would be possible to go up to 2 x quad core CPUs, but that's probably too wasteful and loud.
• At least 4GB ECC RAM. Better 8GB. ECC because I REALLY hate memory problems.
  
• Silent. Must be possible to sleep right next to it
• Quiet, fast and reliable storage. Perhaps a Flash drive.
• Assuming Flash can't be large enough, separated mass storage, with hard disks in RAID-1 (with hot spares) located somewhere I can't hear the noise.
• Tape library for backups.
• Automatic backups of small amounts of vital data to an offsite server (tape is for full backups, this is for small things like source code)
  
• Decent video card. Doesn't have to be anything specially overkill
• 4 20" LCD monitors, minimum 1600x1200 resolution.
• Optimus keyboard, or something similar.
• Fully Linux compatible, with no closed source drivers required.
• Easily maintainable. Must have a good case that makes it convenient to replace components if needed.
• Located somewhere reachable but out of sight.
• A second box, with exactly the same hardware, kept in case the primary one fails for some reason.
• System configured in such a way that everything is automatically backed up, and a complete hardware failure can be recovered from in a couple of hours

This should be quite doable right now with current technology, except for the stuff that hasn't been released yet.

Re:Fast, reliable and silent

[MojoStan]

"As fast as possible without making it annoyingly loud. At the very least, dual core. It would be possible to go up to 2 x quad core CPUs, but that's probably too wasteful and loud."

In case you missed it, Intel released two 50W quad-core CPUs (L5320 and L5310) last week for dual-processor servers and workstations. They're 1.86GHz and 1.60GHz with 1066MHz FSB.

specs

slow news day?

[Anonymous Coward]

man, i really feel like i'm getting ripped off around here with shitball "stories" like this. fuck this fucking faggot shithole!

The Logrus

[Anonymous Coward]

Zelazny fans will know what I'm talking about...
It's a hyper-dimensional computer with AI and the ability to manipulate reality.

Actually, my AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400 with 4G sitting here is called logrus. It's pretty freaking quick compared to the XP 2200+ it replaced and 4G of RAM is just awesome. But it doesn't manipulate reality all that well, unless you count the hallucinations I get from staying up late in front of it.

Motorola 88K Harvard Architecture Data General

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

Would love to be able to run a modern OS on Harvard Architecture hardware - something like OpenBSD on a Data General AViiON with lots and lots of Motorolla 88K CPUs.

More recently, a big honkin hypertransport backplane with a mix of quad-core Opterons and FPGAs.

Bonus points if there's an onboard analog processing unit.

Soundcard would have to be the LynxTWO-C: six input channels of 200K samples per second at 24-bits per sample.

Re:Motorola 88K Harvard Architecture Data General

[networkBoy]

I too was thinking retro. I'm torn between wanting a fully loaded and totally decked out (functional) PDP/11 or a Cray Y/MP . . .
but if you want the imagination station:

I want a computer with the following specs:
numa memory
1024 bit vector math units (128 of em should do)
64x64bit CISC processors (core two duo EE)
a couple dozen of those multithreading jobbies from sun
and a full memory addressable array of spartan FPGAs ready to go.
For disk I would like 1TB of DDR2 ram battery backed with redundant controllers with lazy write back to FC disk as working disk and 64TB as archive disk.
64GB of numa flat memory should do the trick for all those CPUs (give each one a dedicated gig as well)

That, along with a really cool OS (open BSD perchance?)
oh, and I want a wall o monitors (6 or 12 [2x3 or 3x4 array] 22" wide screen deals).
-nB

just one more thing....
remember those really old memories that used the persistence of phosphor as memory in a CRT? I want one of those glued on capable of showing the stack of any given CPU as a bitmap, cuz that'd be cool.

Re:Motorola 88K Harvard Architecture Data General

[networkBoy]

you know, now that I'm reading my post, fuck it.
I want a functional quantum computer and a spaceship with warp 9.9 speed. :-)
-nB

it's been one minute since my last post and /. is afraid I'm spamming.
I'll take the sausage, spam, eggs, and spam with a side of vikings please.

Re:Motorola 88K Harvard Architecture Data General

[Fulcrum of Evil]

The hell with your star trek toys. I want a Culture ship that's on good terms with me. Nothing says love like 20k lights and enough boom to erase a planet.

Something a bit different

[91degrees]

Here's the thing... If you want a PC then the dream machine is the fastest CPU around with the fastest graphics card, the most RAM possible, and an array of really fast really big disks. (Hang RAID. I wat RAED - Redundant array of expensive disks)

But what I want is a decent media PC. Plugs into the TV. Can stream video over the LAN. High quality video and sound output. And fanless.

All of the above is possible. But I want more. I want a remote control, negligible boot time (2 seconds or so), a mouseless UI that incorporates a nice video filing system, and a web browser. And to keep the ability to write additional software for it. I want this to remain as a PC.

Thinkpad X60s

[ThisNukes4u]

I'd like a laptop basically the same as an X60s, except with a full-size keyboard(meaning backspace and \ need to be bigger), and a built-in video camera, like how the macbooks have it. And probably the option of having an ultrabay w/o the stupid dock.

Re:I guess if money were no object, I'd buy myself

[Presence2]

What sucks is that most of that price is the software licenses.

Something like the OLPC

[Draconix]

Something light, very portable, rugged, and powered by solar or hand crank, that could handle word-processing easily. Ideally, it could be about the dimensions of a laptop keyboard without numpad, and have a small form-factor, thus being easy to carry along while backpacking. I know it's not exactly a l33t gaming machine, but it's my dream machine. :P

KISS

[r_jensen11]

Keep it simple. Here are my only criteria for a dream computer: No moving parts A sound card that has a built-in mixer and digital out, I'll let my receiver do the decoding for DTS and Dolby Digital Lots and lots of disk space Linux fully supports it A graphics card that can do 1080P out If I want to play games, I'll use a console. Give me something that has excellent 2D performance.

Ultimate Machine

[greywire]

I'm going to assume this means "something that might be possible to make currently or very soon, but is not just something you can go to dell/hp/etc and just configure online".

So...

It would be a laptop/notebook/whatever. It would be smallish, with maybe a 15" widescreen (1280 x 800). It would be light weight, maybe 2 pounds. It would be less than 3/4" thick. It would would have at least 16gig of very fast flash (or one of the other new nonvolatile memory chips coming RSN) for the OS and most frequently accessed data and a large hardrive (100gig). It would get good battery life not needing to access the drive often and good performance. It would need a dual or quad core cpu, of course. 3 hours battery life. 4 gigs ram. The case would be metal, maybe titanium for strength and lightweight.

For the docking base, it would have two video adapters so I could go three heads (including the laptop screen) at work. It would have a full speed PCIe connection to the laptop, and it would have an additional video chip (for SLI) and an additional CPU matching the notebook. Throw in the option for more ram too. And its not some rediculous looking monster, its just a nice little flat platform the notebook sits on, no thicker than 1" in back, inclined so the laptop front is no higher than without it.

I want the keyboard to be translucent, with backlighting for nighttime use.

On the screen, I want flat panel speakers that fold open, like ears, and video cam on top that also folds out. I want the lcd to go right to very edge as close as mechanically possible instead of having a .5 to .75" border. I want the case, the touch pad, etc absolutely smooth.. no little cracks for "style" (I cant stand dirt getting in there). Make the pad large, I mean huge, like double the normal size. Use the extra area for customizable actions, gestures, whatever. Maybe put in some tactile bumps so you know where you are.

I want all lighting to be blues. Aw heck, make all the leds multi color and set them whatever you want.

I want a secure keychain dongle to lock my computer when I walk away (and not some hacked bluetooth mouse, but something really secure).

The wireless card should have an external antenna connector.

I would like all my ports on the back, except the memory card slots on the side. No legacy ports (including no modem). I want 6usb ports, 2 on each side and the back.

The fan and the exhaust should be in the center, not on the side where its going to rest on your leg most of the time.

I wont even get into the OS because that's a much harder request...

Primarily Aesthetic Concern

[fyoder]

For guts, whatever. Give me a couple gigs ram, decent graphics card, and multicore processor (at least dual).

But for aesthetics, give me the classic steampunk keyboard mod featured in this slashdot post (except based on Model M Space Saver), and this 30 inch Apple cinema screen monitor. I'd apply a little black paint and gold leaf accents to the monitor to make it go with the keyboard.

The actual computer would have a black case, be as silent as possible, and be hidden beneath the desk.

Where no man has gone before.

[Umbrae]

How about The Enterprise?

[Not really on-topic]

[empaler]

Session-specific link... Please try again :-)

At any rate, I'll agree though. My boss has been punking me to order a lappy for myself, and the Macbook Pros are just a smidgeon over budget - that's why I haven't ordered yet.

Zalman TNN 500a Case (or simular) + all that fits

[Qbertino]

A Zalman TNN 500a Case or a simulat custom built one with all that fits inside without making noise. All x86 CPUs and all memory that fits in, all OSes and most used software ready configured and installed into an extended BIOS ready to run 5 seconds after I booted. No HDDs, all SSDs. The fastest OpenGL card available.

Curiously enough, the Mac Pro Quad Core maxed out with all that fits in (~19 000 €) comes pretty much close to what I'd consider the best possible workstation.

Imagine a maxed out Quad Core Mac Pro with SSDs in all 4 bays and a passive heatpipe cooling. That would be my dream machine. I guess the SSDs (custom built from these guys), the extended BIOS and the manpower to set it all up for me would be the biggest pricepoints for the box itself. 40 000 to 60 000 dollars? Dunno, something like that.

As periferals I'd like a thermal transfer printer (with 20 000 pages worth of ink and spare parts), a high end inkjet with 200 000 pages top quality paper and the ink for printing on them and a Z-Corp 3D rapid prototyping printer plus enough high-performance material, binder and color to print an entire army of Heavy Gear Mech figures and a few Star Wars Spaceships. All drivers preinstalled, tested and working.

Add in all the software goodies available for good measure (The entire Adobe Line, the entire Apple Line, Lightwave 3D 9, all training DVDs and plugins available + any software needed to make best use of the printers and the prototyper). Maybe some programming productivity / software design applications as an extra (Gentleware Enterprise CASE System, The Visual Paradigm Enterprise line)

Last but not least the system should come with all this in a documented base configuration where all of the above is set up and works and a tested desaster recovery to restore it should the need arise.

All this could easyly amount to 200 000 - 300 000 Euros - and still fit in a normal room. Then again, you said money doesn't matter.

I think that setup would keep me busy for a while. :-)

Re:I guess if money were no object, I'd buy myself

[cgenman]

You spent forty four thousand, four hundred fourty two dollars, with no less than eight hard drives, forty-eight gigs of ram, and three years of onsite gold enterprise level support... But you cheaped out on the DVD drive?

Man, spend the extra twenty bucks!

Hardware video encoding

[SleepyHappyDoc]

Something really fast, say with HyperTransport links to dedicated hardware coprocessors designed to encode MPEG, DivX/Xvid, H264, VC1, and whatever other codecs take a long time to encode (FPGA's that can be updated down the road to support newer codecs?). I want to be able to click "export video to iPod", and have it immediately pop up "Done", regardless of video format.

Dream laptop

[jhoger]

My dream machine would...

Turn on and off instantly, no boot time
Be ultraportable
Run for 20 hours on a charge
Run on off-the-shelf batteries
Be easy to use
Keep working if I drop it
No hard drive, fast, rechargeable-battery backed all-RAM filesystem

Oh wait, that's my TRS-80 Model 100 that was designed 24 years ago.

Too bad the laptop industry hasn't quite caught up with this "obsolete" machine.

-- John.

Re:Dream laptop

[MindStalker]

A slightly hacked ipod can achieve most of this :)

Re:Dream laptop

[danbert8]

I have a TI-83 you might be interested in...

Re:Dream laptop

[jhoger]

I guess I should have specified "QWERTY keyboard" in my dream laptop description. While I'm making amendments, "Doesn't fry the boys" is important to. -- John.

Re:Dream laptop

[Anonymous Coward]

you know, if you're putting your laptop that much in your lap, rather than on your legs, then you're asking for back problems.

Displays are the key for me

[justthinkit]

...4 20" LCD monitors, minimum 1600x1200 resolution...

Yes, acres and acres of LCD!

I want what I wanted 12 years ago -- my full sized desk is my display. Say, eight 24" displays, or six 30" ones -- all touch screen. Driven by six or eight computers. Bookshelfed by a couple of RAID racks of 750GB drives. CPUs and RAMS out the whazoo. Multiple operating systems as appropriate. Dash of Dolby 7.1. Pinch of Dragon Dictate. Dollop of liquid nitro.

12" Mac tablet

[metamatic]

Based around Core Duo.

Or perhaps a Linux tablet running on Antaur, if someone could come up with some decent HWR for Linux.

didja try....

[zogger]

...any of the small distros like..damn small? They might still work, or like slax might be even better. I think for the most part though, today, RAM is more important than CPU speed. I know up to last year I was still using a 200 pentium pro and after I crossed the quarter gig of RAM size it ran fedora (1 and 2) OK.

wrist energy ???

[malraid]

Please, we do NOT want to know why!

Re:I guess if money were no object, I'd buy myself

[Anonymous Coward]

The $26,000 PC
http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/003855.h tml
Thursday, March 08, 2007

Quick--how much did you pay for your last PC? Betcha it was less than the pricetag on a desktop recently assembled by our colleagues at PC World's German edition, PC-Welt. And that prediction holds even if you bought a top-of-the-line Alienware and pulled out all the stops: PC-Welt's computer cost $26,000 to build.

Barcelona

[Joe The Dragon]

I want a 4 cpu AMD quad-core cpus with 4 video cards linked with 2 of them on the HTX bus and 2 on pci-e x16 2 slots with a hardware raid of sata or SAS flash drives And an high end sound card. Or 2 video card on pci-e x16 2 slots with a raid card in slot 3 and some other card (VIDEO IN?) in slot 4 with a FPGA card in the HTX slot with a co Co processor card in the other one or 2 FPGA cards.

My ideas..

[Improv]

19" laptop, 200G disk, 4G RAM, USB ports on both sides, has firewire, no legacy ports (PS/2, modem, parallel), has DVI out, wireless that works without ndiswrapper or any "binary firmware" loading nonsense, soundcard that has excellent ALSA support, gigabit wired interface, battery that lasts 12 hours between charges that's also swappable without powering down the system, CF card interface, high resolution with good 2d performance and open drivers (3d relatively unimportant), 5 year comprehensive warranty, system is very very physically tough. CPU is relatively unimportant (POWER4 or PPC might be amusing, Amd64 would be ok, I'd prefer not to buy Intel).

For those who haven't picked up the little references, I'd probably be running Linux on it (although FreeBSD would be just as nice if the infrastructure were there for the hardware and other things I cared about).

My Dream Machine

[Barkmullz]

Here's mine:

1. Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 Processor - $970.00
2. 2 x EVGA GeForce 8800GTX KO Video Cards in SLI - $1,299.98
3. EVGA 680i Motherboard - $249.99
4. 4 GB Corsair Dominator (PC2 9136) Memory - $878.00
5. Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite - $259.99
6. 4 x Western Digital 10,000 RPM Raptor Hard Drives (RAID 0) - $919.96
7. 4 x Seagate Barracuda ES 750GB Hard Drives (RAID 1) - $1,519.96
8. Koolance PC4-1036BK - $618.95
9. 2 x Dell Ultrasharp 3007WFP Monitors - $3,398.00
10. Lian-Li F1A Computer Desk - $2,895.00
11. Das Keyboard - $89.95
12. Logitech MX Revolution Mouse - $89.99

Total: $13,189.77

Re:My dream machine

[pontifier]

You want localizers from the Vernor Vinge book "A Deepness in the Sky". They seem possible to me.

Ultimate "Manly Man" Machine

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm going to assume this means "something that might be possible to make currently or very soon, but is not just something you can go to dell/hp/etc and just configure online"."

That would be my guess. My "dream machine" is possible however I'd have to step outside the status-quo, and "borrow" some seldom seen paradigms to make it all work. May even have to create a few new ones. Now for the OS. :) Anyway I suspect the "dream machine" is already coming *slowly* together. There's a lot of "what ifs...", and bridges that need to be built before this audiance gets a glimpse through the fog of what it looks like.

Whatever I'd use...

[Ant P.]

...it'd probably have one of these; I've already ran out of windows+* shortcuts to assign.

Yeah; my dream is for someone else to spec it

[JavaRob]

My dream machine has exactly the hardware, peripherals, network connection, etc. that I would come up with, if I put in the enormous amount of mind-numbingly boring time to track down the indisputable best combination of components (and they all have to be compatible with each other...) for my future usage patterns.

It would run the OS that I would select after having tested perfectly-tuned and personally-configured versions of every OS and variant, plus all possible OS extensions, add-ons, enhancements, etc. that are out there.

It would have all of the software that I would select after exhaustive testing, preinstalled and configured just the way I'd like it, if I spent the time tinkering with all the options and exploring every little subfeature and 3rd party extension.

I'm dead serious. I spec'ed out a new computer a couple of years ago, and I'm enough of a perfectionist that it damn near sucked the life out of me doing all the research. And I love the configuration flexibility of many OSes and development tools, but the sheer effort required to *find* that perfect configuration is horrific.

Re:Yeah; my dream is for someone else to spec it

[Anonymous Coward]

best sig ever. thank you :)

Re:I guess if money were no object, I'd buy myself

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I checked, the memory was hideously expensive. In fact, it's 28.280,00 or 37 397,472 US$ according to google, and that's just the price for an upgrade for a system that comes with 2GB standard, which may put the price at 38 085,12 US$ if one deduces 520 EUR for the 2GB. The Windows Server 2003 License is only 2669 EUR, just slightly more expensive than the 3 year RHEL 4 subscription at 2610 EUR. Those prices do not include sales taxes...

My actual dream machine would probably be a bit like SGI's Onyx or Altix machines, where you can add more boxes and CPUs and still run a single operating system image, i.e. start with a lowly 2CPU system, and just add more of the same and you end up with 512 or 1024 CPUs, all in one computer, not a cluster.

It should go without saying...

[MooseMuffin]

...that regardless of specs, this dream machine will have to have a vagina.

Re:It should go without saying...

[Cowclops]

http://www.fu-fme.com/

Problem solved!

Ultimate Dream Machine

[nacturation]

I'd like one with 2^16 quantum processors running in parallel, each running at 1 terahertz with 1 exabyte of RAM. On top of that, I'd like the monitor to be wall sized with a 16M x 16M resolution where each pixel has a less than 10 nanosecond response time and perfect real-life color reproduction. For storage, anything that supports 1 yottabyte of storage would be used in a redundant striped setup. Neural as well as spoken and body language interfaces, of course.

Re:Ultimate Dream Machine

[Anonymous Coward]

All together now ... RAID is not a backup!

Especially not RAID 0...

Re:Ultimate Dream Machine

[Glonoinha]

Using memory as a baseline, we can historically see that the amount of memory in a nice high end desktop (or server) machine doubles roughly every year.
Back of a napkin sketch puts us at 1000x every eight years, plus or minus three.

Your exabyte of memory on the desktop will be available (if a little pricey) in 2027, plus or minus nine years.
I'm guessing that by 2027 (again plus or minus nine years) your CPU, yottabyte of drive space, and display option will also be available, for a price.

Today's hardware doesn't excite me. Tomorrow's hardware excites me not because of what it can do, but because it gives me insight into the next generation of hardware - which excites me verily.

Dream Machine

[Viking Coder]

Well, just get the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud out of Limited Beta, and they've pretty much already built my dream machine.

The latency is a little lousy, but the horse power is awesome, the bandwidth is pretty good, and the storage space is effectively infinite.

And then I guess I'll take a fully loaded Alienware Area-51 ALX as a front-end for it at about, what, $12,000? Sounds good to me.

Price No Object?

[nurb432]

Then its not even a realistic question. I can think of a few in the million dollar range that would be nice to have.

Immortality.

[Anonymous Coward]

An application-specific quantum accelerator for the simulation of very large scale neural networks.

A non-invasive cell-level neural interface.

A hell of a lot of processor power.

Programming written using the medical technology of the 2300s.

I do not intend to die easily.

I can't decide...

[Anonymous Coward]

Either an ST:TNG holodeck or the Matrix.... Probably the Matrix.. cause then you can get martial arts downloaded into your brain. Of course... the holodeck's virtual women are appealing. Is sex really just as good in the Matrix??

It would include an FPGA

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever components I put together, it would have to include a Field Programmable Gate Array, better known as an FPGA, and development software for it. Add a whole megabyte of dedicated SRAM as a gesture of goodwill.

Had all PC's today included FPGA's, you could have compression, decompression, DSP (folding@home, seti@home, audio processing, image processing...), large-integer maths (e.g. en/decryption or factoring of large integers), checksumming (of whatever you may think of), image recognition, game physics, neural networks, and likely many, many scenarios I haven't even considered, for a fraction of the cost and power consumption it'd take a CPU to do it, and for many of these highly paralellizable (is that even a word?) tasks it could run orders of magnitudes faster than you can do it in software on a CPU.

THAT is what I want in all machines - all, to make it a commodity. That would allow computers to become much more general-purpose than todays sequential software+CPU's that for many task are simply too slow to be practically usable.

One that was always cutting edge

[greg_barton]

No matter what it was, in two years it'd be obsolete. The machine would have to come with a support contract that said, "Every year the machine is replaced with a top of the line model."

Hey, you said price was no object. :)

Re:One that was always cutting edge

[dargaud]

No matter what it was, in two years it'd be obsolete. The machine would have to come with a support contract that said, "Every year the machine is replaced with a top of the line model."

Hey, maybe there's an idea:

1. start a company that sells top of the line systems to subscribers
2. every year you receive new top of the line replacements for whatever mobo, mem or disk is faster and yo send back the old part
3. company sells older part in still good machines
4. profit

Absolutely silent

[steveha]

What I want is really two computers.

First you build a big RAID server, with lots of storage. Put this in a closet or something, such that it runs and doesn't overheat, but you aren't near it and you don't hear any noise it makes.

Second, you build a desktop with absolutely no moving parts. Specs: AMD X2 processor that dissipates 35 Watts max; giant heatsink; motherboard with passive heatsink only on the north bridge chip; PicoPSU power supply with silent brick; no hard drive; passively cooled graphics adapter that has adequate power to run a 3D desktop like Beryl.

Okay, I'll allow these moving parts: keyboard/mouse/joystick/whatever, DVD drive, and emergency fan to be used if the weather is really hot or something and the passive cooling won't cut it.

Give it a few GB of RAM, and boot Linux over the net, from the large RAID server box.

Boot Windows XP in VirtualBox or VMWare, for random Windows-only app needs, such as iTunes.

I plan to build these later this year: a terabyte server, and the quiet desktop with about 4 GB of RAM. (1 GB for VirtualBox and 3 GB for Linux.)

I'll hook up some nice speakers to enjoy music; the box will be absolutely silent.

Back in the day, our Atari ST was absolutely silent, and it was nice.

steveha

Price is not a factor, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then I'll buy AMD and wireless companies and printer companies and the lawmaker. Then I'll have myself a computer and a printer with complete and sufficient hardware programming spec without DRM/Macrovision/other things I don't want but put there because the law said so. :)

dream config

[sexybomber]

A rack cabinet (48U, consisting of the following:

2 x Dell PowerEdge 6950 4U rackmount server, one running Windows, one running Linux: $72,592
4 x Dell PowerVault MD3000 3U rackmount hard drive array (4.5 TB apiece): $118,248
1 x Dell PowerVault 114T 2U rackmount tape drive (w/ 100 x 800 GB tapes; 80 TB total): $14,868
1 x Dell PowerVault TL4000 3U rackmount tape library (w/ 100 x 800GB tapes; 80 TB total): $28,016
1 x Dell PowerConnect 6024F 1I fiber / gigabit ethernet Switch (w/ 54n router): $4670
  : ~$7500
1 x Behringer SRC2496 ULTRAMATCH PRO (2U rackmount D/A converter): $130
1 x Behringer TDF1616 16-Channel TDIF Interface (2U/2): $50
1 x ART Digital MPA Tube Microphone Preamplifier (2U): $400
1 x Behringer PX3000 Ultrapatch Pro Patch Bay: $65
1 x Behringer T1952 Tube Composer: $460
1 x PreSonus Central Station Monitor Switch with remote control (1U): $650
1 x MOTU HD192 I/O Expander Interface (4U): $1515

Stuff below the cooling system hooked into a
Behringer Eurodesk SL3242FX-Pro 24-channel mixer: $700

Subtotal: $249,864

+ NY 8.25% sales tax: $270,477.88

Then there's the multitude of guitars, basses, drums, keyboards, and mics that I would need to hook into the system, which would easily tack on another ~$20-40K... ... Of course, then I'd have to set up a full-on, balls-out recording studio: $250,000 ... which would probably require moving into a new apartment: $75,000 ... and then there's all the labor costs involved: $50,000 ... and the costs involved in hiring clean ho's to be my studio groupies: $100,000 ...

If you give Sexybomber a cookie...

This question needs more context

[Cthefuture]

To even begin to answer this we need more information.

A home PC type machine? With current off-the-shelf technology? Server? Desktop? Graphics? Games? Number crunching? How much space can it take up? Do we have ulimited power feeds? Or...?

Sort of what I already have...

[NerveGas]

    I currently have a Core 2 Duo 6600 with 4 gigs of RAM, a couple of Raptors and a few 400-gig drives for bulk storage. The video card is a 7900 GS. To make it a "dream" machine, I think all I'd have to do would be to add some more disk drives.

    Sure, I could go for a Core 2 Extreme, or even for the 8-socket, dual-core Opteron with 16 gigs from my office, or SLI video cards, etc., But the speed benefits to me would be pretty minor.

    If Adobe would get with the times (or at least with the times from 10 years ago), and release a 64-bit version of Photoshop, then I'd wish for more memory... but there's no reason to wish for something you can't use.

Dream Machine......heh heh

[partowel]

Ram : infinite

Speed : infinite

Bus speed : infinite

Power source : infinite

Video power : infinite

and oh yes....back up systems infinite.

Now..into more specifics.

Quantum processors, Tachyon bus units, black hole power systems, white hole transmitters, biotech backup systems.

Dna storage/retrievel, scanner using quantum rays, printer using dark matter. Optics is too slow.

Lets use 300 x light speed subroutines. To protect the system, a multi-dimensional shielding system with complete time

stop fields in place, as well as extreme time dilation fields to destroy the ones that get caught in them.

Video can be xd [ x is 0 to infinity ] , so 3d , 4d, 5d, etc....not a problem.

Multi-system backup, no waiting times. Self-repair diagnostics, average IQ of each quauntum processor equal to an iq of

1 billion.

In case of system invasion, last course of action : big bang.

Destroy everything and make the seeds for the next universe.

Thats all for now. Lets see how long till this gets deleted.

F****king modders.

Re:Dream Machine......heh heh

[maxwell demon]

This first line is just to please Slashdot's lame[ness] filter, which for some unknown reason considers an average line length of 38.3 as inacceptable. Moreover it seems to just ignore any material added to the end of the text. iopf itopre udfisop gfd gdfjksl gfjdkls hgfjdkls ghfjdkls hgfjdksl hgfjdkls hgfjdkls ghfjdskl ghfdkl ghjdfskl hgjfdskl hgfdksl hgfjkdls hgfjkdsl hjghuiuigfeos reuio uitreoz ztrueiozuitorezrtio uioq zeruwio zruewiop zutiwop zreowpz uoiwe

Well, I'm much more modest than you:

Ram : infinite

I'll be satisfied with more RAM than I'll ever need. Which may be large, but still infinitely smaller than infinite.

Speed : infinite

I'd be completely satisfied if it solved any problem I give to it in a time too short to notice.

Bus speed : infinite

Same as above.

Power source : infinite

Since my dream computer would not need any power, it also wouldn't need any power source. Indeed, I'd hate to think about my power bill, if the computer drawed infinite power :-)

Video power : infinite

Well, for me it would be completely satisfying if the video power matched the video power of my eyes. Indeed, ideally it would send the high-def image directly into my eyes, so I don't need to use a big screen taking away space.

and oh yes....back up systems infinite.

My dream computer would be 100% reliable with an infinite lifetime, therefore I'd not need the slightest backup.

Now..into more specifics.

Quantum processors, Tachyon bus units, black hole power systems, white hole transmitters, biotech backup systems.

Huh, with infinite memory and infinite speed, what do you need quantum processors? You can emulate quantum computers with classical ones; it just takes exponential memory and time. With infinite memory and speed, both are not a problem.

Indeed, even with my infinitely lower system requirements, a classical CPU would be more than sufficient. I'd however want it to have quantum communication ports for secure communication.

Dna storage/retrievel, scanner using quantum rays, printer using dark matter. Optics is too slow.

I don't knowe what you need that DMA storage retrieval for (do you want to do bio-hacking?), but scanners using quantum rays should not be a problem: Laser scanners already exist, and what is a Laser if not a quantum ray?

I'd not like my printer to use dark matter. I prefer if I can see the printout.

Lets use 300 x light speed subroutines.

Huh? What are "300x Light speed subroutines?" Light speed is measured in meters per second, while subroutine speed is measured in operations per second. They are completely different things.

To protect the system, a multi-dimensional shielding system with complete time

stop fields in place, as well as extreme time dilation fields to destroy the ones that get caught in them.

Of course that complete time stop field means that you also won't get the results out (or even your programs in). In other words, your supercomputer would be as useful as a rock.

My dream computer would simply be immune against any physical damage and would have AI routines which could reliably filter out any malicious data.

Video can be xd [ x is 0 to infinity ] , so 3d , 4d, 5d, etc....not a problem.

Well, since my brain cannot handle anything above 3D, I don't see any advantage to anything higher.

Multi-system backup, no waiting times. Self-repair diagnostics, average IQ of each quauntum processor equal to an iq of

1 billion.

As I said, I'd prefer a 100% reliable computer which doesn't need backup. OTOH, why are you suddenly so modest w

What Would Be Your Dream Machine?

[wizrd_nml]

Definitely a 2007 BMW 335Ci Coupe.

Re:What Would Be Your Dream Machine?

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

Your the only post I saw that was in the realm of what I was thinking.

TESLA ROADSTER. Nothing gets me excited like the combination of great performance, low operating cost, with minimum environmental impact. Currently I drive a LS1 powered '00 Firebird and I love everything except the price of gas!

unlimited budget and still can't afford games?

[Anonymous Coward]

by going with mac for unlimited budget you'd still deprive yourself of the games you're missing because of the limited budget? missing your logic here.

my dream machine WOPR

[carlosap]

I want that WOPR computer from wargames so I could destroy the world mua ha ha ha ha

Turtled Beowulfs

[Joelfabulous]

Actually, I was think of a cluster of Beowulf clusters, clustered yet again. It's turtles all the way down, except... Up in this case?

Not too fancy

[tsa]

I would like a small quantum computer with a big 3D screen and an infinitely fast internet connection that I can play MystOnline on. That this computer should harm the environment as little as possible goes without saying of course.

Virtualized of course...

[JamesTRexx]

What I think of could be feasable in a few years;

Hardware: at least 3 servers running a virtual backbone like ESX/XEN, 3 portable wireless thin clients for the output of whatever virtual machine I choose (I prefer separate desktops instead of one giant desktop), a wireless network capable of enough graphic throuput to the clients
CPU, GPU etc. should be able to run with passive cooling, being able to deliver performance but also to throttle back to very low power use (like VIA) when idle, flash disks that are both fast and live forever

Software: the virtual backbone must be able to run accelerated graphics and any hardware I plug into the clients or servers, in case I want to play a game or work on graphics it should be able to use 2 or 3 clients together so I'd have a wide field of view unless the program itself has cluster capabilities

Droolworthy peripherals

[hcdejong]

Monitor: GVS Panoramic quintuple display. 5x 20", 9600x1200 resolution, or

Zenview Arena, 6 screens, one 2560x1600 and five 1600x1200

Input: 3D motion controller 3DConnexion SpacePilot

I take two

[rainer_d]

A maxed out Mac Pro (for MacOS) and a maxed out XW9400 (from HP) for Linux and FreeBSD.
But I'd wait with the former until Leopard and iLife 07 is released, because I can get them for free with the new hardware.

My dream machine

[popsicle67]

I've thought long and hard about it and I can state with certainty that what I want will never be built. I want a machine that does anything I throw at it with no fuss, never locks up no matter how many things I'm asking it to do, is ready to use before I need it, and completely free of any charges whatsoever. Furthermore it should be completely thought operated (in real time) and instantly reprogrammable to suit my slightest whim. All of this plus instant upgradability and zero downtime with hardware that reacts to new demands by instantaneously rebuilding itself to suit the changing environment. Lastly, The whole setup would be completely portable and unseen while still being instantly accessible. That is my perfect computer

My unrealistic machine

[joto]

Is so small I don't even notice the lump where it's surgically placed inside my body. It runs on electricity generated within my body by consuming fat. It interfaces directly with my nervous system, and can do nifty tasks such as recording and playback of all sensory input, visual overlays over real world data, etc... It is immensively powerful, and won't need an upgrade for several life-times. It has easy-to-use software that is both intuitive (reacts to your reflexes), easy to learn, and hacker friendly. It must communicate with everything (e.g. GSM/GPRS/3G, wireless networks, TCP/IP, GPS, morse-code, whatever), yet still be perfectly secure.

What I use at work

[marros]

And it spools it for me at home. Asus dual opteron mb with nvidia chipset, dual-dual core opterons...watered cooled with nvidia sli video, sata drives and dual layer dvd-rw. Actually the water cooled is the dream, but otherwise this is what I work on. And the os is either ubuntu or CentOS.

My Dream Machine...

[dshaw858]

... is all of the other dream machines people have listed in this thread, put together in a Beowulf cluster...

the ultimate PC would be green and blue

[hildi]

green for the environment
blue for the labor that made it

it would be built by unionized employees (or ones treated so well they voted against a union) in a clean factory that did not endanger their health or safety. they would be able to go to the doctor if they got sick and not worry about whether or not they would lose their jobs for it. they could have a baby and not have to work right up until delivery and then get only 1 month off. the CEO would not make 300 times the workers pay - instead the workers would have decent stock options and would be payed enough to live decently on. they would only have to work 40 hours a week, and more hours would be payed overtime, and they would only be needed 2 or 3 times a year.

the factory would emit minimal pollution, which was being actively reduced year by year. the computer would be built of recycled metal and would not include unncessary toxins like lead. the 'necessary' toxins would be being phased out year by year. the end product would be either easily recyclable or biodegradable. as part of this design requirement, it would be easily disassemblable into the constituent types of components - metals in one pile, degradables in another, and 'waste' in a third, tiny pile, that would be being reduced year by year. disassembly would take less than 10 minutes with ordinary small tools.

it would be very power efficient and ideally have few, or no, moving parts. power generation would be part of the standard add-on accessories, and could be coupled to walking (up/down motion) generators, hand crank, foot pedal cranks, and other types of easily generated power.

it would provide voice and/or visual interface and/or sign language and/or braille interface, and would work in every major language. year by year more languages would be covered. it would have an instant translation gizmo that would learn by itself to improve its work over time.

we solved most of the other problems, such as ease of use, reliability, networking, speed, etc, about 5 years ago. its called 'macintosh osx'.

My dream machine

[Orig_Club_Soda]

I love Apples, so much so its hard to let go of them. Intested of speed, RAM or other requirements, I'd love it if OSse had the built in ability to link up for distributed processing. Example, if I had 5 Core Duo Mac minis, linked, I would really have a pent-processor. The linking would only depend on a module in the OS, not on hardware. Also, the control panel would suggest optimized settings for different apps and working conditions.

For Apples, I'd say that any machine capable of OS X should be capable of this feature. For Windows that would be WIN2K, XP, and Vista.

This way, each new computer upgrades your computing power, rather than replaces it. It would save on landfill space too.

Re:I guess if money were no object, I'd buy myself

[Glonoinha]

A year from now I will still want one.
In three years it will be just fast enough to run the newest games with all the options on.
In four years Dell's entry level machine will smoke it, and will come with a 20" LCD for under $1,000
And five years from now they'll be using that PC-Welt machine to hold open doors.

real dream machine

[The_Rook]

a 1958 cadillac eldorado with tri-carb power, and a blonde.

Oh, Alpha

[StarKruzr]

Dammit. I just washed these pants.

You want a C64_Direct-to-TV emulator

[billstewart]

Jeri Ellsworth's C64 Emulator. Built into a joystick. Rocks.

Her Stanford talk on how she learned to do VLSI design herself was cool too.

Re:I guess if money were no object, I'd buy myself

[Surt]

It was an oversight ... there are a lot of options on that page. :-)
I also didn't notice til it was too late that it doesn't come with any video cards, and I don't know if it even has slots for those.

Laptop vs. Desktop vs. Wearables

[billstewart]

If you don't care about specs, sounds like you're looking for a desktop - Not only because you get more horsepower and screen space per dollar, but because laptops seem to be more likely to have some part or other you care about that isn't compatible with your Linux distro that you can't easily replace by adding another card.

I want video eyeglasses with decent resolution (e.g. 1440 or 1600 stereo), with some kinds of transparency (either really transparent or a camera system that emulates it), voice and/or dataglove input, and a sufficiently lightweight CPU that carrying it around doesn't annoy my back. Unfortunately, the best glasses I've seen have still been ~640x480 or less, because they're designed for TV watchers or video game players, not people who need to actually read significant quantities of text.

Silence, please!

[allanj]

Make it silent. Given that constraint max out the specs with regards to CPU, GPU, RAM, HDD etc. I'd love a 30" full-HD screen too. But remember to make it all SILENT. Any takes on what I'd end up with?

I was actually designing that last week...

[haplo21112]

I want to replace most of my sever infrastructure for supporting my domain, development, SQL, Web, etc at home with VMWare ESX servers, so my dream machine is actually 2 machines, at least for this purpose. Quad Xeon's, 256GB of RAM(I found a board that will do it), EMC Clariion Disk Array, Fiber Channel Adapters, Video doesn't matter since the server is headless once its built.

For a Game machine Dual Fastest Currently available Intel Processor since they are ahead in the processor race right now, Dual 8800GTX's, Fiber Channel Adapters plugged into the Disk array above, SAS Boot Drive 250GB, 30in Wide Screen LCD, Killer NIC, Sound Blaster whatever is the current top of the line.

Laptop/BaseUnit - no wires

[pentalive]

The laptop has the CPU, Screen (high resolution) and Keyboard, and sufficient flash based hard drive disk space for the OS and working files. Batteries run this for 10 hours between charges. The laptop part is instant on and instant off. The laptop part weighs no more than a pound and is no thicker than 3/4 inch, and the display can be swiveled so the unit may be used as a tablet PC.

The docking station is a mat that the laptop system sets on and a floor standing box. The laptop charges inductively just by sitting on the mat. The laptop communicates with with box via bluetooth or 802.11(whatever). Inside the box are several large hard (for archival storage) drives, a cd/dvd/blue-ray burner, and a high capacity tape drive. You can also connect the BHIIIG screen monitor and fancy keyboard and mouse to the floorbox or you can just use the screen and keyboard of the laptop. With the proper VPN software the laptop part should be able to contact it's floorbox via the Internet from anywhere there is 802.11 connectivity.

The laptop can access the floorbox any time it's in range, or via VPN - but when it sits on it's charging mat, they become one computer. The keyboard and mouse and display on the floorbox can become the primary keyboard, mouse and display.

My dream machine??

[gstoddart]

I'll take a TARDIS thank you.

If that's not available, I want an infinite improbability drive.

If I can't have that, a sonic screw driver would be nice.

Failing that, I guess it's an espresso machine.

Oh, did you mean a computer? ;-)

Cheers

Dahak

[phorm]

Hmmmm, I think something along the lines of Dahak would be cool. For those that don't know about Dahak, read here

As a bonus, it would give me a fairly safe refuge from all those annoying IT patent laws etc that are getting passed around these parts.

Dream Machine

[Acey99]

With what's out there now? an Intel Dual Quad Core (that's right 2 Quad Core Cpu's on one MB, if I can) 16gb Ram (I like overkill) 2 500gb Hds (I only need a TB right now) Blue-Ray /HD Burner/Reader Blue-Ray /HD Reader Probably an ATI Radeon x1950 512 Vid card. Probably Creative Labs Creative Labs Audigy SE for sound (Dunno, I like me Ensonic) 1000/100/10 Nic Card (Probably on MB) after that, who cares !

Connection Machine CM-2 w/ Symbolics LISP Consol

[Anonymous Coward]

Best blinking lights EVER!!!!!

Re:I guess if money were no object, I'd buy myself

[Anonymous Coward]

It has onboard video (being lucky enough to have two of these, though with a bit less memory than you specced!)

Living the dream

[6-tew]

I am writing this on my Athlon 64 X2, which I built with my own hands, a screwdriver and many zip ties. It is a pretty bad-ass system.

I have this brute of a system which has two cores, two super fast HDDs, two huge HDDs, burns DVDs, has phenomenal surround sound, two HUGE monitors, two ridiculously powerful video cards and all sorts of little tweaks and mods that make it my dream come true, just like the last one I built, and the one before that...

I build these machines and upgrade weekly, tweak daily. That's the dream come true for me. I began building and upgrading in 1998, I just haven't quite nailed down the final specs.

Sometimes it's best part for the money (I got a great deal on 500GB HDDs), other times it's performance (8800GTX anyone?), sometimes two 30' monitors is just too cool to not buy (a point my girlfriend refutes).

Oddly I still use a Pentium 150 with 1.2 GB HDD and 16 MBs of RAM as my main notebook (NEC 2650 CDT), and my backup notebook is an IBM PS/2 Model L40 SX, which is a monster 386 SX 25 with 4 MBs of RAM and 60 MB HDD. So as far as mobile computers are concerned, I could get excited over a good scientific calculator.

Price not an issue? Ok...

[jd]

Conventional Architecture System:

I'd build a machine that was a heterogenius cluster of clusters. Each cluster is homogenius, but uses a different architecture from the others. So there'd be one section which was Opteron based, another that used the latest Power chip, a third that used Cell processors, a fourth based on the 68040 (for semi-retro stuff), a fifth based on the Transputer (retro and cool), a sixth based on the DEC Alpha (more retro), a seventh on the UltraSPARC and an eighth based on the MIPS64. Each cluster would be fully populated with the highest-speed RAM on the market, local busses would be whatever was fastest (eg: Opteron would be HyperTransport 3, whereas the 68040 would probably be fastest on the VME/VXI architecture) and inter-nodal connects would be 24-lane InfiniBand.

Now, if money is no object, the above would not be good enough. Flexible, sure, but the segments are too specialized. For the ubercool dream machine, I'd go for:

Wafer-scale system-on-a-chip/processor-in-memory architecture with built-in message-passing (based around MPI-2.1 and Bulk Synchronous Processing) and 32 built-in 10 Gb/s interconnects, where the memory is processor-speed and 16 gigabytes per wafer, where the underlying instruction set is RISC-based and heavily optimized, but also where there is direct hardware support for linear algebra, matrix algebra and FFTs up to 3D (ie: pretty much everything from BLAS, LINPACK, ATLAS and FFTW). The heavy numerical stuff doesn't have to be absolutely maxed-out performance, it just has to be faster than any combination of existing software and existing hardware. As per the Crusoe, there would be translation support from other instruction sets, only this would actually include support for processors that were useful. The cluster would then be a 5D or 6D hypercube topology (no, not really built in six dimensions, just wired as though it were a regular hypercube in that number of dimensions).

(Since money is no object, it doesn't matter that the reject rate would be something like 95%. I'd merely need to make something like 3,276,800 such wafers in order to have enough that worked to build a really good cluster.)

Re:I guess if money were no object, I'd buy myself

[ameoba]

What, exactly, would you do with this other than make sure your accountant gets the depreciation right on it every year? It looks like you just picked the most expensive server you could get from Dell. If you're going to be boring like that, at least find somebody that'll sell you something exciting - like... maybe something with a graphics card? ...or something OSHA would allow you to sit next to without hearing protecton.

Re:I guess if money were no object, I'd buy myself

[Surt]

I wanted a system with really fast, reliable storage, because that's what I can't really afford to buy for myself. Basically, I'd use it for all the disk intensive things I do now.

A box with fast graphics is comparatively cheap.

OTOH, I had intended to outfit it with graphics (as mentioned in a followup), but the dell website doesn't let you configure that on that box.

JIS keyboard on a US MacBook isn't expensive...

[profmathers]

Since the part is a non-exchange module, an Apple service center (try an independent, not an Apple Store) can get you a JIS keyboard to swap onto a cheaper US MacBook Pro for (their cost) under $50.

Example: the part number for a JIS keyboard on a MBP Core 2 15" is J922-7908.

OT, i know...