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Building 2011's Sub-$200 Computer
adeelarshad82 links to PC Magazine's recent account (updating a similar quest detailed last year) "to see if a decent PC could put together for less than $200. Turns out that between some great deals, an AMD processor, and a Linux OS, it can actually be done." They actually come out with a decent-enough system for that money — but omitting an optical drive in a full-size desktop computer build seems something like cheating.
You can get an eeePC netbook for $199 RETAIL at Best Buy...Best Buy!!! I know this is talking about desktops, but it just doesn't seem that surprising...
but omitting an optical drive in a full-size desktop computer build seems something like cheating.
It's 2011, dammit, why do people still use optical drives?
So they comparison shopped a bunch of parts, and editorialized about every one. Big deal - go to Newegg, hit the sales, and don't overindulge and this is an easy project. How is this even news?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
"omitting an optical drive in a full-size desktop computer build seems something like cheating"
Optical disks? How quaint! :)
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I can't wait until these sorts of things are possible with commodity ARM (or other architecture) chips as well, especially for overall power consumption.
Here Here.
Get a fucking USB one if you are stuck on them.
And it has Linux on it? Crap, at least get Win XP.
That's right, if you want crap, get Win XP. That was too easy.
I use mine mainly to rip audio CDs.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
My optical drive broke down about 3 years ago. I've never had to replace it. So I agree, for some, it might not be needed at all.
I've used my optical drive probably twice this calendar year, once to install an old game and once to install MFC printer s/w that's not available for download. For the most part I can do without one.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Because the people that put out content for the computer ship on them. A cheap 4G mem stick is ~$4, to press 4.7G DVD costs them pennies. Until there is a useful way to allow customers to DL onto their own memory sticks, optical will stick around.
but omitting an optical drive in a full-size desktop computer build seems something like cheating.
It's 2011, dammit, why do people still use optical drives?
Because they want to.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Probably more important than an optical drive
I can unequivocally say no. We sell a lot of little desktop computers without an optical drive. They come with Ubuntu usually and maybe 1/3 of our customer base gets one. They are extra. The minimal configured systems are without keyboard, mouse, monitor or optical drive and run $249. People are not renting DVDs any longer and most have never watched a DVD on the computer in the first place. Some areas have a higher than usual younger user base (Portland) and there is more demand for an optical drive (or at least there was) in these region. Elsewhere though most people do not watch movies on the PC.
I know I did not even blink about missing an optical drive from my latest build. Even MS supports creating a boot-able USB drive with Windows 7 on it! Granted you need an existing copy of windows but still. I cast my vote firmly in the fewer moving parts camp.
What is this "Audio CD" you speak of? Is it like an Audi TT?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It is if you want anything with serious horsepower. Sure, a commodity PC will work fine for most things but if you want 8 cores and 64gb of ram with multiple video cards you'll be better off building it yourself.
I've got to say, at this point there's no contest as far as basic functionality goes, and for doing the things that "most people" tm do on their computers most of the time. Linux is clearly superior to Windows. I dare you to take a dual boot challenge.
Too slow and USB3 are expensive at this time.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Not including the optical drive seems like future proofing to me :-p.
Jonathanjk.com
your spelling is about as good as your thinking.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
It's what recordings that aren't available in the iTunes store come on.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's 2011, dammit, why do people still use optical drives?
When I built my last PC (less than a month ago) I neglected to include an optical drive (which was actually an oversight). I've since had to order one because I can't play DVDs, I can't install games from disc (not everyone has unlimited 100Mbps internet), I can't rip audio CDs and it's hardly practical to keep all the various recovery and install CD images on USB sticks (cheap as they are, buy 20 and they soon add up - plus you can't put them in a wallet).
While blank DVDs cost a hundredth of the price of equivalent flash memory, optical media is not dead. I would happily pay £15 for a SATA DVD+/-RW drive for that convenience.
I've bought 4 USB thumb drives over the past 5 years and so far, 2 have failed. These little bastards weren't cheap either. I've also got CDs I burned about 7 years ago that still work fine. Not ONE failure. Therefore, everything gets backed up to DVDs.
The car stereo also doesn't play MP3s (2007 model, factory stereo) so I can either A: spend about $200 on an aftermarket mp3 adapter or B: burn CDs.
"Optical drive"? Is that the slidey thing you put those sort of shaving mirror thingies into? I remember we used to use something like that in the olden days.
It's 2011, dammit, why do people still use optical drives?
Possibly because, just because it's 2011 doesn't mean all past cds/dvds are magically converted into usbs.
Dammit archaeologists, it's 2011! Why are you still reading clay tablets!
Because I have close to 100 CDs and 30 DVDs. Yeah, I'm old school. Ripping them onto my hard drive would take up too much space.
Kind of tangentially on-topic (wink-wink), but ... I am planning to upgrade my home server machine, which has been humming not so quietly since 2003. Sadly, I have not much dabbed in PC hardware since then -- do you guys know any online references with example configuration for decent, quiet machines to use as a starting point? My basic requirements are ecc registered ram, a terabyte or so of some kind of raid, a quad CPU and a well-supported video running Linux and, very occasionally, an odd windows instance in VirtualBox. TIA for any opinions.
I've used a 3.5" floppy drive more recently than I've used an optical drive.
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Only 30 DVDs? That's not going to take much space at all. Certainly not much at all by modern HDD standards.
Even the drives that come in cheap low profile machines (nettops) are probably large enough to accomodate all of that.
30BD's would be another matter though.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I've got to say, at this point there's no contest as far as basic functionality goes, and for doing the things that "most people" tm do on their computers most of the time. Linux is clearly superior to Windows. I dare you to take a dual boot challenge.
I'll take that dare... here's where linux breaks down for "most people" tm:
1) Itunes - sure there are plenty of great media players and what not for linux... but if you have an ios device whether its a new ipod, ipod touch, iphone, or ipad (and literally tens of millions of completely normal people do, they need itunes).
2) TurboTax etc... yep its just one week a year. But millions of completely ordinary people do their taxes with this type of software.
3) Miscellaneous Toys - from the child friendly Barbie photo manipulation software that came with the Barbie camera to setting up your new Logitech universal remote to an AppleTV to programming a Lego Mindstorms creation with LabView. This affects far more people than you might think.
4) Video games - Believe it or not, lots of perfectly normal people play everything from World of Warcraft,to Left4Dead, to the copy of Bejeweled or Riven they picked up at Walmart for $7 as an impulse buy.
5) Peripherals - Printer fax scanner copier combination devices in particular still suck with linux. Getting printing going is usually relatively straightforward, but anything else is a complicated crapshoot.
I built a better system (WITH A VIDEO CARD AND OPTICAL DRIVE, PCMAG) for $189 on Pricewatch.
AND YOU CAN GAME ON IT.
But you forget about monitor pricing.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Its not my dream rig or anything, but picking off just about the cheapest item in each category yields $184 from newegg.
CPU $42 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103888
Motherboard $38 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813153181
RAM $25 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134635
Case & PSU $30 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811162059
HD $34 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148698
DVD $17 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118031
Even MS supports creating a boot-able USB drive with Windows 7 on it!
Somehow, I had missed that little bit of "trivia". I have to say, "About time!" I remember my early days with Windows, trying to work around a bad CD-rom in some cases, or a scratched up CD in others. And, trying to get someone's driver installed by way of the floppy drive which was often full of lint and dust. Yes, it's about time that MS actually SUPPORTS a boot-able USB. Take all my headaches, multiplied by all the people worldwide who had to work around that limitation, and you most certainly have billions of hours of wasted time!
Of course, these days, I don't spend much time fixing people's trashed out computers. I guess that's why I wasn't aware that Microsoft had come out of the stone ages.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It's because they want to distribute software to you with an optical drive. It's not that big a deal in the Desktop space (its just so they can rip you off an extra $50). The real problem with it is in the laptop market you could fit an extra 2-hours+ of battery life in the space or a descent discrete graphics card or even a more robust cooling system that could add years of life to your laptop. It's ridiculous that you can't even find a 14-inch or larger laptop without a optical drive.
Realy? I've fond hard drives to be cheap and effective.
1TB of storage is a monsterous stack of DVD's or a small hard drive. 2TB is even worse.
As far as hard drive reliability, make 2 or 3 copies. 3 2TB hard drives is pretty easy to handle, DVD's pretty darn difficult.
I don't have a blu ray drive, but I dont' see it being momumentally better.
Optical is dead, and flash drives aren't reliable.
Missing:
- keyboard
- mouse
- network cable
- monitor?
- USB key to install from
- Friend to copy OS onto your USB key
- taxes (for those lucky to have them)
I think the real cheat is any budget that involves a mail-in rebate.
The article starts out about financial difficulties and then provides a price that doesn't reflect the walk home price. 3-6 weeks you might make that money back IF you are lucky that the rebate was honored.
---- The geek shall inherit the Earth.
You must be rather young. You obviously don't remember the good old days, back when this site first started and was overrun with spam and trolls.
I'm currently on a bit of a "get legit" roll when it comes to my media. All my software is acquired legally via the net so that's OK, it's just stuff like movies and music that I still require an optical drive for. Why?
1. I like my music in FLAC format. There are very few digital music stores which sell in this format. My favourite by far is http://bandcamp.com/ but they don't have much mainstream/big-artist stuff.
2. Even if I didn't have a preference for FLAC, there aren't any legal digital music stores around which service my needs with at least a high-bitrate MP3. I don't want to use iTunes because I don't want to deal with AAC (I can convert them but I don't want a dependency on iTunes anyway). Amazon still hasn't, for whatever reason, opened an MP3 store here in Australia yet despite promising to open up to the world many years ago.
3. You can forget about any legit digital movie stores selling non-DRMed stuff either.
So what do I do? I buy music CDs and rip them to FLAC. I buy DVDs and use HandBrake to convert them, or just play them directly with VLC. Both of these cases require an optical drive, and until such a time occurs that physical sales of media are completely abolished, I will continue to do this. UNLESS... a suitable online store apears in my area which sells non-DRMed music AND video of what I want, in my preferred format. At this rate that's going to take a very long time (if ever), so I do what I can to stave off piracy.
Get a $15 optical drive then. Whatever.
You do realize optical drives are shit, right?
expandfairuse.org
So it's where the Pirate Bay stores its torrents?
SSC
you could of gotten a amd board with a newer ATI chipset with DVI for about $15 more and for like $30 more a AM3+ board.
It fails because you need to load an OS from somewhere, from something, so you need to include the cost of the USB stick and time/cost of downloading Linux. I didn't see the cost of HD cable either. CPU Heatsink? Minor stuff but it all adds up. 2 GB of ram? pfft. Why have a HD at all? boot from USB and use Network storage.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I don't have an optical drive in my desktop. When I want to burn a CD to playon my Sega Saturn I have to boot up an old P3 box. That's about all I use it for.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You forgot:
6) Docx support, whilst I prefer open office to MS Office in general. In OO/LibreOffice Docx support is terrible (Images in wrong place, different table sizes, no word art, etc). Nb. from my experience the same isn't true the other way round, open office documents usually display fine in word.
Disclaimer: I dual boot ubuntu with Gnome 3 (btw Unity is reason 7 if we are talking specifically about Ubuntu) and Win 7. For programing, internet browsing and file operations linux is generally better. I also use LibreOffice when I am creating documents (but not for opening or editing documents created in Word). However I generally haven't found good replacements for Windows Live Photo Gallery (although digikam get close in terms of functionality, but with a terrible UI), Photoshop (I have tried gimp), MS Power Point and movie editing software in general (I've tried a large number of linux movie editing software on a reasonably high spec system and they all seemed to crash at random intervals).
Win 7 is also more visually appealing.
null
Don't like the idea of useing a cheap PSU with a case for under $30 much less a under $30 psu.
ARM is a good architecture. It offers the 16 registers recommended, and fast interrupt registers, for quick processor mode changes (helpful for micro kernels). Its 32 bit instructions have conditional instructions to avoid small loops. ARM pioneered the high density code instruction set with Thumb. Today, MIPS is copying the ARM's past innovations.
To instal Windows? To install most versions of Linux? To install a large number of commercial products (E.g. Photoshop)? To boot from a live CD when having boot problems? To install the free stuff that comes with computer Magazines?To play BD movies (I don't live in US and I prefer not to pirate everything)
null
Good point. I have already started using an HD for backups but I still back up to optical too, just in case the HD dies. It certainly is a chore to make several DVDs to back up several GB of files but at least if one or two go bad, I have more backups. If a HD goes bad, I'm screwed.
However, even more to your point, the price per GB falls every year and capacity increases. Behold HD size in rough terms:
1985: top-of-the-line HD had MAYBE 10MB. It also cost about $5000.
1995: about 8-10 GB. Cost: I honestly don't know.
2005: about 500 GB.... around $120.
Today: 2TB... $90.
Imagine 2020... or 2030... holy shit. I can see the Fry's ad now: "100 PB for $120. While supplies last." [Factoring in the estimated inflation].
But what the hell does someone do with 100 PB? As is the case with CPU speeds, we will eventually hit a ceiling. Except in this case, the ceiling will be what is practical vs. what is possible. I can't imagine someone ever using that much HD space except for perhaps a company that never destroys old customer data.
I have not put an optical drive in any of the computers I have built for myself or family for a couple of years now.
I've got 1 USB DVD burner that I swap between computers as needed. I don't use it a whole lot, but sometimes it's nice to have a CDROM or DVD for moving files around or short term back ups.
But, most of the time I use it to rip my CDs and DVDs to disk.
crossover office is $40-70 and works well in my experience.
it's not that much more $$$ in addition to microsoft office and if you're pirating that, then go ahead and pirate crossover too.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
To run any of the numerous games or software packages which use the CD/DVD for DRM?
MS may support it, but I burned myself a DVD anyways. Sometimes you really do need something to be on a WORM disc, I'd hate to think what would happen if I forgot what was on the disc and reformatted it.
That being said, we've hit the point where it's sufficient to have on external optical driver per household.
> It's 2011, dammit, why do people still use optical drives?
Because the lightning fast internet connection that (I'm assuming) you have isn't available in every household on the planet.
It's hard to feel 2011 when you have a 1997 internet connection at home.
People also have boxes of CDs and DVDs. You don't need a burner but you definitely need a reader.
I would not mind having more external optical readers. But I've found that most of them are junk. Expensive, loud, and hot compared to internal drives. But if you do have a nice external drive then you don't need on one your new computer.
The drive is not there for movies or music, but for archived backup disks you created in the past, old applications, old games, etc.
Too slow and USB3 are expensive at this time.
What kind of optical device is going to saturate USB2's 60 MB/s? I'm curious as didn't think they were able to reach those speeds.
But the point isn't the space, but that you have the disks for archive. They're cheaper and more reliable for archive purposes than a hard drive.
Except when you want an archival copy of something.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Don't like the idea of useing a cheap PSU with a case for under $30 much less a under $30 psu.
Get off your horse. One of the best power supplies I ever owned was free after mail-in rebate: a 500 watt no name brand.
I have used WINE for MS Office (which I did not pirate) in the past and it has worked reasonably well (although still a pain, which is why CrossOver Office exists) however it would not have been easy enough for an average user (don't know if CrossOver Office fixes this). If I ever switched to a none dual boot system in the future I might get it (at this point in time there are often stupid little things I need Win 7 for).
In general linux seems to be slightly less stable then win 7, I do however use Ubuntu as my primary OS.
It is good for power users (who can debug computer problems such as weird file permissions and edit config files) and I would suggested it for that class of users, however I would not suggest it to Joe Average.
null
With all of the features, each DVD would be 3-4 gigabytes, so 30 would be 90-120 gigabytes. That would be quite a bit of my Linux partition.
"Optical drive"? Is that the slidey thing you put those sort of shaving mirror thingies into? I remember we used to use something like that in the olden days.
It's the slide out thingie that you set your coffee mug on.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
But what the hell does someone do with 100 PB? As is the case with CPU speeds, we will eventually hit a ceiling. Except in this case, the ceiling will be what is practical vs. what is possible. I can't imagine someone ever using that much HD space except for perhaps a company that never destroys old customer data.
You lack imagination then. I can easily think of someone using that much without even breaking a sweat, like e.g. many people like to keep a pristine collection of their music files as FLAC files, and those tend to take a lot of space. Similarly, many people like to keep 1:1 copies of their movies and animation and TV series, and even at 1080p those tend to eat space like crazy. And just think about it: in 2020 1080p will be really low resolution and movies will likely weigh in at about 200Gb even with reasonable compression.
And think about it, sometimes people have computers serving the whole family. I too have a home server with 2.5Tb storage at the moment, and it's starting to get full, and it's only serving 3 PCs. With a moderately-sized family it could get filled up pretty fast with everyone storing their stuff there.
I do give you that that text-documents and Excel spreadsheets don't use that much space, but many people use their PCs for much more than just using those kinds of files.
From www.tigerdirect.com I bought one of their "kit" computers with an AMD Quad Core CPU, 2gb of Ram, a 500gb HD, a DVD r/w, and Ubuntu. I added a kb with a touchpad that I already had around the office and "viola!" a sub-200 desktop *with* optical drive. I haven't done a thing to it since... and I'm posting from it now.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
crossover makes it a one-click operation.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
It seems to me I remember sometime along in the early 90's arguing with my wife about whether to put a 40MB HD in our new comp, or an 85MB HD. The wife couldn't imagine ever filling up 40MB, much less 85 MB.
Pretty much same argument happened a few years back, arguing over whether to put a 250GB HD in a new comp. That time, *I* was the one who couldn't imagine ever needing that much space.
And in the same way, our grandkids will wonder how we ever managed to limp along with ONLY 1 PB of HD in our comps....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
What content are you talking about? Last time I checked, all I needed for my Linux distro was available from Internet. Oh, maybe you were talking about content for that non-free operating system starting with "win" and ending with "dows"? But that's not the default on that computer, so why should we care?
Beagleboards are 149.00USD and Pandaboards are 179.00USD you then just need an SD card 4G or better. I run a pandaboard myself for some D-Star ham radio stuff.
In the 80s I had boxes of floppy disks. I don't regret that I don't use them anymore, even though I believe I must still have these boxes somewhere.
1) Itunes - sure there are plenty of great media players and what not for linux... but if you have an ios device whether its a new ipod, ipod touch, iphone, or ipad (and literally tens of millions of completely normal people do, they need itunes).
My dad uses Winamp to sync his iPod. He wants to manage his music the way he wants to do it, and not the way Apple tells him to do it. Now granted, Winamp is Windows software, and while I don't know of or care to find similar software for Linux, saying it requires iTunes is false.
2) TurboTax etc... yep its just one week a year. But millions of completely ordinary people do their taxes with this type of software.
TurboTax doesn't do anything particularly funky with respect to Windows. I see no reason why this couldn't run on WINE. You could argue that most people would have no clue how to run an application through WINE. You could also argue that it's trivial to learn to just prepend 'wine' to the command line, and not much more difficult to make an icon in gnome/kde to do so.
3) Miscellaneous Toys - from the child friendly Barbie photo manipulation software that came with the Barbie camera to setting up your new Logitech universal remote to an AppleTV to programming a Lego Mindstorms creation with LabView.
Lego RCX units and Harmony remotes can be programmed on Linux using 3rd party software. Technically, Harmony remotes are programmed on the Logitech servers, through a web application, and the only thing the software is used for is to transfer the profile to the device. LabVIEW offers OSX and Linux versions of all but their bottom end interfaces, and what is someone doing worrying about a $200 computer when they're going to use it to interface with IO boards that start at that price and go way way up? The AppleTV is itself a computer, capable of accessing the iTunes store directly. It has no need for interaction with a PC. If you're talking about streaming content to it, well then there are mechanisms for doing that in Linux too.
4) Video games - Believe it or not, lots of perfectly normal people play everything from World of Warcraft,to Left4Dead, to the copy of Bejeweled or Riven they picked up at Walmart for $7 as an impulse buy.
A quick check puts some 5000 games and applications on the Platinum and Gold compatibility list for WINE. Yes, people will be afraid of things like WINE, but suck it up and put out a little effort if you want to avoid that $100 Windows OEM license. WOW, L4D, and Bejeweled are all on the Platinum list, meaning it works perfectly out-of-the-box with no special configuration.
5) Peripherals - Printer fax scanner copier combination devices in particular still suck with linux. Getting printing going is usually relatively straightforward, but anything else is a complicated crapshoot.
I can't speak to other print companies but HP offers the HPLIP drivers, with support for some 2000 different pieces of hardware. Using it, I had absolutely no trouble getting printing or scanning working on my all-in-one unit.
100 CD + 30 DVD (if they are all full, and all your DVDs are 9 GB, which I both don't think reflects reality) would add up to 340 GB. I really hope that this new computer has an HDD bigger than 340 GB, otherwise, many people will complain about it!
Ever measured the power drain on that? Don't forget to factor in power factor. My old Athlon XP system (which was stripped down of various high-drain performance parts when it became a server) has more draw than my i7 potato cooker thanks to it's no-name 350W supply's 0.67 power factor vs. the 0.98 or so power factor of the i7's high end PSU. Never mind that the voltage from the cheapy PSU varies quite a bit and is actually out of tolerance on the 5V side. I'd replace it, but that machine is due for retirement anyhow as it's now a backup to a backup server...
I do a bit of consulting on the side, and most system failures are caused by no name, came-with-the-cheap-case power supplies. It's like the good old C64 era all over again: most of those died due to the epoxy-filled craptastic power supply being wildly out of spec.
PSU test results:
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ - 110W @0.67 PF = 164W
Intel i7 920 - 130W @0.98 PF = 133W
This is fully powered up (no sleep states) but not doing any heavy workload. Heavy workload flips those around, of course, but the older PSU is still using an extra 50% power for nothing other than heating the mains wires.
- Why would you install Win...s for? ... USB key!
- Most (if not all) Linux distro will support to be setup from USB.
- The computer is shipped with Linux, not windows, so how do you exactly install Photoshop on it?
- If you have a problem, then boot on a live
- Is there still some "free stuff" CD with magazines? Oh, sorry... is there still some (paper) computer magazines?
- If you need to play BD films, why don't buy a TV BD player and play on that? We're talking about a computer here, not a TV set...
How many games for Linux are shipped on CD/DVD?
Since moving to Linux 2 years ago, both Windows and OS X are crap.
Except when you want an archival copy of something.
Or when they suddenly stop working, as many USB sticks I've used have done.
The OP said nothing about running Linux. I quote:
Seriously, why would one want an optical drive in a PC these days?
Even then, plenty of Windows games run on Linux.
60mb/sec? I've never gotten over ~20, even in linear-read from a drive I know can do 80.
Still, even a typical SD card is usually a bit faster than a CD due to less seek time. Which is important for installing or booting.
I remember the good old days. Spam? Nope - that's a relatively recent phenomenon (and the lameness filter doesn't do anything for the CleanMyPC or discount shoes posts). Trolls? Yep, and they were fucking hilarious. Far more interesting than the average post, that's for damn sure.
As a great troll once said, Putting a lameness filter on slashdot is like putting a shit filter on your asshole.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
That is why I still prefer internal disc drives especially when it comes to burning discs.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Not only the power factor issue, but that "500w" power supply has a whole 18 amps available on the +12v rail. A whole 216 watts of power available. Go ahead and try to find even a decently built 350w with less amperage on the +12v rails. It won't be easy. I've seen far too many generic power supplies failing, taking other components out with them. I've seen MANY more cases of this than brand name power supplies taking out the motherboard when it fails, even if it was defective on the first power up. A little research on power supplies can go a long way.
If you take out the mail in rebate (which they probably won't honour, and even if they do it will be six months later), it clocks in just over $200.
I understand the fascination with the latest and greatest technology, because I was a willing participant on the upgrade treadmill for many years. But I realized that the best price to performance ratio is actually in used gear.
For the $191 the authors of the article spent on brand new items I could have built a system that is at least twice more powerful, and with better components all around. As an example, I found a Phenom II X4 955 with OEM heatsink for only $4 more than they spent on their Athlon II X2 270. I have many more examples, but the general trend is a used previous generation component will be about twice cheaper than a new current generation component.
When buying used there is the issue of limited availability and timing, since you do need to check your local deals sites daily to find what you need. But even in the worst case scenario I was able to build a system from scratch within a week or two, without compromising on components quality. I may not have been able to chose between Sapphire, eVGA or Asus when buying a new video card, but when saving hundreds of dollars over the brand new prices it suddenly doesn't matter that much.
One thing the article got right was their choice of processors. If costs are not an issue and the overriding criterion is performance, then Intel is your only option. But AMD is by far a much better value as a platform. Most reviews I've seen are comparing the price and performance of the CPUs themselves, but that is only part of the picture. When you add the motherboard and RAM to the equation, an Intel platform becomes significantly more expensive. When the Core i series was released, the cost of the Intel CPU, motherboard and DDR3 RAM was roughly twice more than an equivalent AMD setup with DDR2 RAM, even though the overall performance difference was under 10%.
At that time I chose an AMD Phenom II X4 945 because ironically it was faster than an Intel Core i7 920 when playing Bethesda games (Oblivion and Fallout3 at that time).
Even if you are extremely efficient in turning them around the day after you receive them, "unlimited videos 1-at-a-time" actually means "2 videos per week." Keep each one at home for a couple days on average, you're down to 1 per week.
I know you're kidding a bit, but I'll answer your point anyway.
I still have several USB external R/W DVD drives for situations where people were too cheap to invest in them for laptops, desktops, or servers. DVD and CD drives are still handy for accessing media you've not bothered transferring to ISO images, or burning CD's or DVD's for others when they don't want to deal with the security risks of a USB memory stick that can be too easily rewritten or used to walk away with data. So for me, at least, I don't need such a drive because it's an unnecessary expense.
Local backup is useful, especially for data you don't care to publish or have anyone overwrite. Fiscal data and GPG keys, for example, can be usefully stored on permanent media.
You mean like teh bittorrents
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
While you can't put usb sticks in a wallet, you CAN put sdcards in one. Specifically one made for trading cards.
I would love to see sdcard media get sold in bulk packs like cdrs are. There is a slight problem with capacities not rounding evenly with optical formats... (640-700mb cdr : 1gb sdcard. 4.5gb dvd : 8gb sdcard. 9gb dvd : 12/16gb sdcard) but the form factor is much smaller, you can store waaay more data in a similar sized wallet, and they are less easily destroyed by frequent handling.
Yes. I KNOW they are more expensive. I also remember when cdrs cost over a dollar a pop. These devices don't have to be blazing fast to replace optical media, and while I know it won't be a popular subject with the demographic here, it WOULD work quite well with software firms, because sdcards have to be able to support special hardware drm features to be spec compliant. (This means that your spiffy boxed 3d game you bought off the shelf can chug slowly on install, use your fast sata drive at runtime, and use the sdcard as a dongle to verify game purchase, all in the same package. I am surprised that no software house has tried it yet.
The cards themselves don't need to be fast really, so cheap organic semiconductors, like those used in flexible displays that can exceed amorphous silicon speeds could be used to make the bulk pack cheapo ones.
Like any product, as long as it remains a niche, specialty product it will be expensive, but when it becomes a widespread multi use product, economies of scale drive down the price. I can easily see flash going that way, especially for slow but cheap sdcards.
Mental retardation? Of course that is explained as they are using a full-size desktop computer like some sort of Walmart shopper. I have a usb dvd drive I use for those rare times I need one.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I've done quite a few system builds using this AMD bundle deal that Micro Center has had going on for some time now. Every single system works flawlessly, even the ones with the Powerspec case/power supply (more business if the PSU does fail, and I haven't seen one take a motherboard out yet.)
Phenom II X2 560 Black edition: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0347369 $87.99
Biostar A780L3G AM3 760G mATX Motherboard: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0351634 $FREE
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500gb SATA 6.0gbps: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0352164 $49.99
Micro Center branded 2x2gb of DDR3 1333: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0353218 $19.99
PowerSpec TX-381 Micro ATX Computer Case: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0330536 $24.99
Cooler Master eXtreme Power Plus 500w PSU: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0295037 $37.99
Samsung 22x SATA DVD-RW drive: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0293049 $21.99
Grand Total of $255.10 after tax.
You have an overclockable dual core CPU (I wouldn't push too far with the stock heatsink and with that motherboard, but a little bump to 3.6 GHz shouldn't be an issue.), better graphics than the system in the article, twice as much system memory (4gb vs. 2gb), an optical drive, an actual decent power supply, a case with a handle on it, and I could probably go on, but i'd hope you all get the point. A whole $45 more before tax, not including the lame $8 mail in rebate for the power supply. Definitely worth every penny, and this is all something you could pick up and have together in a couple hours assuming you have a store close to you. Most would likely pay $40+ for the convenience alone. I also didn't shop around too much. Better might be possible.
Hear Hear
I'm typing this from a G4 laptop I threw Debian on. It has everything I need for a "modern" OS and I do web development on it. Paid $200 bucks and couldn't be happier. Well I could, but for the price you can't beat it. If people really want to get the best hardware for cheap, hit up craigslist and put Linux on something, it's the best bang for your buck.
My optical drive broke down about 3 years ago. I've never had to replace it. So I agree, for some, it might not be needed at all.
Then you're not a gamer. Not every game is available on Steam.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
>Optical media
>2011
> omitting an optical drive in a full-size desktop computer build seems something like cheating
Why? Even if you can get a DVD burner for under $20 - if the goal is to build a sub-$200 computer, and you can install all your software without one, then why intentionally eat up 10% of your budget on something you don't even need?
You're right! Its not like you need a monitor, mouse or keyboard. People can read the VGA signals with their tongues and input via their brain.
"To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
Isn't that why you would also want to use a filesystem such as ZFS for better file integrity along with putting several of the drives in RAID so that you can just replace one if it fails.
"To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
Did you burn these disks yourself? If so, I have news for you about that word "reliable" you keep using. Burned CD/DVD failure rates within 5 years are over 30%.
ARCHIVING 101 is the class paying attention? Good! Let's begin. To store data, for any period of time, be it long or short, here is the formula you must use. KEEP IT SPINNING, IN THREE PLACES. Class dismissed. Meaning, copy your shit to a hard drive or three and keep them live, with regular integrity checks. If one shows sings of wobbling, clone the data and get a fresh drive in place. There is no other reliable backup methodology. ENTROPY DEMANDS IT
Also, in this day and age, this solution is dirt cheap. Aren't we in a thread about $200 machines?
Never skimp on the PSU, it will make your hardware less durable, sound worse quality, will behave badly with power micro-outages, take down your PC in a thunderstorm instead of only it failing and so on.
You should cheap out on the rest, even get a Sempron if it's what it takes, as it's worth former $1000 CPUs such as Athlon FX 57 and Pentium 4 Extreme Edition. It even unlocks into Athlon X2 with a simple BIOS setting. You profit from not having to run an antivirus and adobe, java, quicktime etc. updater.
Regarding optical drive : get an used one from the trash, even the one from your Pentium 166 will install ubuntu just fine (and is better at ripping damaged CDs). Even the case can be scavenged from the pentium 2/3 era and will be a bit higher quality and easier to work with.
You should get a $40 PSU, not a $30 PSU + case. a 400W or 350WFortron / FSP group one is rock solid and will run your PC stable for a decade. Those a real watts too :).
Hear hear for your correction of the bogus "here here" - people are really loosing their hold on English grammer.
But yes, you do need to read CDs or DVDs on a computer, and USB drives are really just fine for that, plus you've probably got one left over from some previous computer by now.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It's a thing that holds good sounding music, as opposed to the compressed, lossy garbage that most people download online.
I don't respond to AC's.
I agree. Buying a new computer is a worse deal than buying a new car. I just got a refurbished HP laptop with 6 GB RAM, 750 GB HD, 17" monitor, and Intel Core I5 for less than $400. Equivalent desktops can be gotten for less than $200.
I don't respond to AC's.
My dad uses Winamp to sync his iPod. He wants to manage his music the way he wants to do it, and not the way Apple tells him to do it. Now granted, Winamp is Windows software, and while I don't know of or care to find similar software for Linux, saying it requires iTunes is false.
We were talking about "most people" tm, remember. That you can get some limited functionality out of the device without itunes in some cases with other software is completely irrelevant.
TurboTax doesn't do anything particularly funky with respect to Windows. I see no reason why this couldn't run on WINE.
"Normal people" tm don't install WINE or even know what it is. All they know is the CD doesn't work, and the TurboTax support line is telling them Linux is absolutely not supported.
Lego RCX units and Harmony remotes can be programmed on Linux using 3rd party software. ...and...
5000 games are on the platinum list...
"normal people" tm just know the bundled CD doesn't work, and the support line can't help them.
I don't disagree in the slightest that a lot of this stuff can be made to work, and even made to work well. I might be able to do it. but my Mom isn't going to be able to do it. WINE is not "trivial". Running windows applications on linux is not a unified experience... the folder paths inside the application don't match the ones outside - for example, there can be font issues for another.... And if you have any trouble, support can't help you.
"I can't speak to other print companies but HP offers the HPLIP drivers, with support for some 2000 different pieces of hardware. Using it, I had absolutely no trouble getting printing or scanning working on my all-in-one unit."
Network scanning or just via the USB cable? What about faxxing? Does the automatic document feeder work? What about duplexing? When you say you had no trouble getting it working, is that because you like me know what your doing... or could my mom do it too with no trouble?
the geforce 6100 is still supported by the latest proprietary nvidia drivers. it's very slow but will run your quake 2 and quake 3, tux, 2D opengl games which are the only ones easily running on linux anyway.
You mean Vinyl? Yeah I've seen those in history books.
"Turns out that between some great deals, an AMD processor, and a Linux OS, it can actually be done."
And I don't think you'll buy a Linux laptop just to run (plenty of) windows games on it. It doesn't make sense.
CD / DVDs aren't at all a reliable media for backups. I wouldn't recommend anyone to do that, especially for financial data. If you need a backup, do it with a USB hard drive for the local one, and also send an off-site backup over the wire. That is, at least 3 copies (if you include the one you are working on).
Sorry to burst your bubble. They have not changed, so they were crap before. You have changed.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
640GB ought to be enough for everybody.
If you're a hardcore gamer, then buying an optical drive in your computer is a no-brainer. There are games you can only get on optical media, and there are old games that you'll never find online. Plus there's a degree of nostalgia that you can't really get through services like Steam.
If you're not a gamer, the decision is tougher. I have one computer that still has an optical drive in it, which gets used for backing up audio cd's and dvd's to the network hard drive so I can play them on other systems (including the HTPC). I will never go to itms to buy music, and I prefer not to pirate stuff I'm actually going to use, so I still need an optical drive for those backup purposes. Said optical drive is in my gaming machine, which these days only gets turned on to do such a backup, or for the occasional game of Civ. 99% of my computer use is on an ultraportable Linux-based laptop that doesn't have an optical drive, and I find I don't miss it. I would never be able to do without one entirely, but there's really no reason I couldn't use an external drive that's off/in a drawer most of the time.
two words, raspberry pi
http://www.raspberrypi.org/
An ARM Linux box for $25
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
If it's not on Steam, it's on Pirate Bay.
DVD is MPEG2 video. If you're ripping it, you can convert it to MPEG4, dropping the extra audio channels you don't want, and the subtitles, and cut it to about half that size without any loss at all. Other codecs will allow even more compression... I have found that I can safely rip my DVD movies to about a 1GB MKV (using h.264) without noticing significant loss of quality on my 42" 1080p tv.
It looks like he changed for the better.
"You must be rather young. You obviously don't remember the good old days, back when this site first started and was overrun with spam and trolls."
Says the person with a six-digit slashdot id.
I manage over a dozen boxes with Ubuntu on them. The only hardware that ever caused me headaches are printers. Everything else Just Works.
And even printers are nowhere near as problematic as on the Windows side: I recently connected a new printer to one of those computers: Lexmark E260. The biggest (and only) problem was deleting the old printer and renaming the new one. Both easily done with GUI. The drivers were installed automatically.
Try FLAC audio.
my thought exactly. I used mine about twice this year. It's nice having one around in case you need it, but one per home instead of one per computer is good enough.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Not this hardware abi driver interface bullshit again, you bring it up all the time.. and it is addressed all the time. ( I think this is the third of fourth time I've replied to you on this topic on /. alone, usually long write-ups but don't have the time today)
While this is old, it is something you may find interesting. In short, you don't want a fixed abi, what you want, are stable drivers.
Available from which major online store?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
35€ USB optical drive covers all my needs. I can use it on all machines I own (and those that I don't own) and it rarely to never gets any use. The last time I used it, I think was to burn a Ubuntu ISO for a machine that didn't support PXE boot.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
They're using Linux for the PC, I think gaming has already been discounted (at least mainstream disc-based gaming).
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
In June I got a brand new Dell XPS L502x with 4GB RAM, 500GB RAM and Quad Core i7 and a 15" 1080p screen (NVidia graphics, but of the "bad" Optimus kind).... For 525€ (Always count 1$=1€ when the dollar is weak). How did I do it? Pure luck. I've been subscribed to their newsletter for ages as you pretty much always can get 5% off. If you need a computer, that 5% is at least 5%. Sometimes they do this action "scratch ticket style". You get a code, and this code will give you 5%, 10%, 25% or 50% off. I never expected they would actually give anyone 50%, but I amused myself setting together a laptop I'd think would be nice, but for which I would never have paid full price. I entered my code and to my astonishment, I got the 50% off.
I bought 3 machines. One for my sister, one for my brother and one for me. I could have ordered up to 5, but my credit card wouldn't have let me. (Max 2000€/month)
Now, I agree you had a good deal, but you can get nifty *new* stuff cheap too...
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Great, because, people living in poverty who need affordable computing also typically have permanent residences, consistent (running) AC power, and not enough to carry around during the busy day already -- they need PCs.
This will be worth reading when it's about laptops.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
And just think about it: in 2020 1080p will be really low resolution
Pure bullshit.
1080p isnt going away any time soon. Hell, its not even the standard resolution yet (that would be 720p)
Also, over the past 10 years the number of pixels per inch has gone DOWN towards lower densities, not UP towards higher densities. ~150 pixels per inch was fairly typical on mid-to-high end CRT's but then the LCD craze happened and nearly everyone is now running only 100 pixels per inch or less ('cept in niche cases like hand held devices)
"His name was James Damore."
Over 50% of worldwide PC sales fit this price and description. "White box" manufacturing, aka the "Good enough" market, overtook name brands way back. This is news to the wealthy OECD nations, I guess, but sales in those countries are now less than half of worldwide sales, and white box PCs are about 35% of sales even in the USA.
Gently reply
The Pirate Bay?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
"loosing their hold on English grammer." Really?
And I just wound up 'fixing' a windows xp home theatre pc using linux.
The machines tv tuner card drivers had severe problems, and both the on-board video and tv tuner card did not have windows 7 drivers.
Linux was installed, everything appeared perfectly and as a bonus it now functions as a mythtv backend allowing new functionality the owner is really pleased with.
What use is windows when perfectly good hardware can be deprecated by the vendors at their whim (the motherboard was made late 2006, driver support discontinued 2008)
In regards to wireless, what chipsets are you purchasing that aren't supported? last I checked between the ath5k, ath9k, rt2x00 drivers the overwhelming majority of common hardware has been handled elegantly. I can just plug in a nintendo wifi usb stick and bam wireless is there, same with my pci ar2431 board. No bullshit, plug and play.
Circa 2005-2007 I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you linux wifi support was more than questionable. These days actually being hard-pressed to find hardware that doesn't "just work" out of the box is a testament to how much it has improved.
Frankly, the Raspberry PI looks like a decent system that after adding monitor, keyboard, and various other usb items would make a great computer system for under $200. I plan to pick up several of these when they come on the market and it doesn't appear that they are vapourware like many items from other companies in the past.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
1) Itunes - sure there are plenty of great media players and what not for linux... but if you have an ios device whether its a new ipod, ipod touch, iphone, or ipad (and literally tens of millions of completely normal people do, they need itunes)."
Umm - my daughter uses I-Tunes on her Ubuntu machine. She's 17, and had no problem installing it and getting her ipod working.
2) TurboTax etc... yep its just one week a year. But millions of completely ordinary people do their taxes with this type of software.
LOL - been doing my Turbox Tax on the web under fedora and ubuntu for years. Cheaper than buying the CD's at the store. I have access to all of the forms and everything. Plus I dont have to waste space on my machine with software I only use once.
3) Miscellaneous Toys - from the child friendly Barbie photo manipulation software that came with the Barbie camera to setting up your new Logitech universal remote to an AppleTV to programming a Lego Mindstorms creation with LabView. This affects far more people than you might think.
Dont use any of those. Dont have any need, so I cant say if this is true or not.
4) Video games - Believe it or not, lots of perfectly normal people play everything from World of Warcraft,to Left4Dead, to the copy of Bejeweled or Riven they picked up at Walmart for $7 as an impulse buy.
I run 3d games all the time under Fedora. I used to use Ubuntu for games, but recently changed to gaming under Fedora. I run imprudence as well as others.
5) Peripherals - Printer fax scanner copier combination devices in particular still suck with linux. Getting printing going is usually relatively straightforward, but anything else is a complicated crapshoot.
I have an HP8180C. It prints, copies, scans. Never had any issue under Fedora or Ubuntu. I have a wireless Logitec mouse and keyboard connected to my Ubuntu machine. Never had any problem, Anything I connect to these machines works just fine. I also burn DVD movies under Ubuntu. Hook up my digital camcorder to my firewire port on my laptop running Ubuntu. Copy off all of my daughters high school events and burn them to cd's or DVD's for her and my wife.
I really wish people would stop with these old worn out generalizations. If you dont like Linux, fine dont use it. But please dont tell people that it wont work for anyone. It works fine for my family and many of my neighbours and friends.
Power factor has nothing to do with power consumption.
My laptop has a 320 gigabyte hard drive which is partitioned roughly in half between Windows 7 and Linux.
I'm not sure that we should be focusing on the sub-200 spot at all. The greatest gains are in the 250-550 range; exponential power increases over something at the extreme low-end and newer tech too. I am assuming this is "building an inexpensive PC for anyone" focused more than "building for the extremely impoverished" which really shouldn't even be thought of in terms of retail - either donated/refurbished foundation hardware, and laptops at best, provide for that resource.
As others have shown, the article's box is really not that great and for the same or a little more you can do a lot better. Just buying bundles and sale items from Newegg, Microcenter/Fry's can do MUCH better. Also, its important to note that bargain basement is not always the best way to go, especially with components like PSUs. I also believe we need to start defining what "The Computer" requires. There's been more debate than ever on the nature of including an optical drive or not in this thread, and clearly including a modern LCD monitor (20", widescreen) is going to easily put a few hundred more dollars to the cost of the build. Finally, I think we need to start taking second-hand components into consideration. Here are my opinions on the "questionables"
1. Keyboard and Mouse - Depends. If a first-time buyer or intended as an "always on" PC (no switching existing inputs for maintenance) these are necessary. Thankfully, they're also inexpensive. A cheap optical mouse can be had for as little as $5-10 today. Likewise, keyboards. Spending a little more on each will provide powerful 5-7 button mice and ergonomic keyboards. This should probably be considered after the system is otherwise built and if necessary, equipped with the leftover money and to the user's specs (ie. if this is going to be a HTPC, then wireless may be a good option if available)
2. Optical and/or USB storage - One or the other is mandatory, but it really depends on again the user's situation. Where are they getting their OS? If this is their first PC they have no way to write a Linux distro to a USBkey, but they CAN get a free or ultra low cost disc from one of the linux burning programs. Internal are cheaper, but external are far more flexible - these days I have a single, external DVD SuperMulti DL (Which doesn't require an AC adapter) drive that I use whenever I need to install something from disc (save for the one that came in my laptop). There's also the consideration that typically discs "Just Work" even in Linux, but there can be some annoyances getting a USB drive or SD card flagged, formatted, and mounted properly to replicate a disc. Is there an equivalent of something as easy as "Linux Live USB Creator" on Linux itself? If you opt to go without optical, there needs to be a software way to ensure that USB or cards can replicate optical in every meaningful way. Of course, this may become impossible if you have a user that often buys media on disc, unless they wish to start getting said media from elsewhere.
3. Monitor - Its hard to justify that a monitor is absolutely required in this day and age, when most households have one or more "monitors" of their own - TVs I see monitors as separate component and for most users it works out this way. Sure, its nice to be able to give your desktop PC its own discrete monitor, and you can do it at a relatively affordable price, but it isn't necessary at time of build for MOST users. Some will already have another monitor from an older PC and many who are not technically inclined think you "have" to upgrade the monitor - that's how big box stores tend to sell PCs. Learning that they can use the perfectly fine on they already have usually makes many users happy. In the case of those that don't have a discrete PC monitor yet, but have relatively modern TVs in the house, this is an easy issue to solve. This group makes up a larger percentage of users than one would think - there are homes with 1990s PCs w/14" CRTs or no PC at all, but equipped with one or more 480p compli
The pitfall is things like memory bus speeds and does it have SATA, USB3, PCIe, etc. I like me some used shit, but for performance, it is rarely worth it.
Although, I was just working on a Compaq Professional Workstation 8000. 1500mb of RDRAM and dual Xeons of some kind, with 15k rpm SCSI 160 (or 320?) drives. Thing is nearly 10 years old, and runs Windows 7 with no static at all. Of course, it was a $10,000 computer when it was new.
Network scanning or just via the USB cable?
I have both USB and Network scanning (wireless) just fine. No special actions necessary. Just asked Fedora to find the unit.
What about faxxing?
yup, not a problem.
Does the automatic document feeder work? What about duplexing?
Yes, the automatic document feeder works. Yes, duplexing works.
When you say you had no trouble getting it working, is that because you like me know what your doing... or could my mom do it too with no trouble?
My wife and daughters have no problem adding software or hardware to our linux boxes. My wife is not a computer tech, nor are my daughters.
Now, I dont think anyone is in any position to state that your mom or anyone else can do something without trouble. My Father uses linux. My Mother uses linux. They are in their late 60's early 70's.
It's 2011, dammit, why do people still use optical drives?
Because they still have CDs, DVDs laying around that are not available in electronic file format yet? (Until they get ripped.)
DVD/CD writers are about $18-$20. Not a huge expense for something that gives you a lot of flexibility like creating CDs/DVDs or reading one of the zillion CDs/DVDs created in the last 2 decades.
That being said - I don't have an optical in my laptop any longer. I do still have a USB DVD drive that I can attach when needed, but I don't need it on a day to day basis as the desktop has an optical drive. (Not because the laptop doesn't have room for the drive, but because I prefer to have a 2nd internal SATA drive in that location. Thinkpads allow you to do that with a simple item that replaces the optical drive bay with a SATA drive slot.)
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Five years? I try to rotate my backups more frequently than that. As far as I can tell, I've never had my own burned discs go bad. Do you have a source for that claim?
Also, wouldn't entropy affect a hard drive more than optical media? If you can afford three hard drives, you can afford quite a bit of DVD-RWs.
That seems like a lot of work.
OH! I remember those, now. Black, with all the ridges!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
CD / DVDs aren't at all a reliable media for backups. I wouldn't recommend anyone to do that, especially for financial data. If you need a backup, do it with a USB hard drive for the local one, and also send an off-site backup over the wire. That is, at least 3 copies (if you include the one you are working on).
If you're going to backup to CD/DVD, you have to definitely make at least 2 copies. And you need to include some sort of parity / ECC / recovery data to increase the odds that you can read the files. And stay away from the cheap media (paying a few extra pennies per disk goes a long way). Then you do generational backups and ensure that a particular piece of data is on at least 3 generations before you stop including it in the backups.
I have decade old CD/DVD recordable discs that are still readable. Some of those have sat in a car year after year (in the shade, but still in temperatures that ranged from 0F up to 140F due to being in a confined, sun-baked car with no ventilation). The ones that start to show errors, I just use dd_rescue to make an ISO of what is still readable, pull one of the PAR2 files off of the disk, then use QuickPar or par2 command line to reconstruct the files from the raw data.
(Opticals, being so cheap and easy to use, are great for things like read-only snapshot backups of small content like your filed taxes every year. Toss the paper receipts, paper copy of the filing, plus a CD-R or DVD-R in a paper sleeve into the envelope and shove the whole thing in a drawer. Heck, there's probably enough room on the disk to include that year plus the previous 7 years.)
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
You can get 512MB SD cards, in bulk, for about $4/card. Also 1GB SD for about $4/card.
Licensing costs, manuf costs and packaging / shipping are fairly significant factor in that. Unlike CD/DVD where you can fit 100 in a tall cake box, the SD cards aren't as easy to handle in bulk.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Says the person with a 5 digit id.
It is if you want anything with serious horsepower. Sure, a commodity PC will work fine for most things but if you want 8 cores and 64gb of ram with multiple video cards you'll be better off building it yourself.
And I doubt an "Under $200" computer that the article talks about is going to be serious horsepower.
There are limits to their reliability and lifespan: but they are _cheap_ compared to duplicaton costs of a lot of paper documents. The format for CD's and DVD's has, fortunately, been quite stable, and PDF format for the documents is also reliable for being able to read them. It's far safer in my experience to have an organized CD of a year's paperwork and put a spare CD in an offsite location than to try to preserve the paper trail, keep it searchable and legible in local file cabinets. And replicating the paperwork becomes labor intensive and expensive in simple printing costs.
umm i just ripped a DVD i bought last night so i could put it on my portable player. So not months for me.
The last music CD i bought went thru the same process about 2 weeks ago.
Until music/video/software only comes on flash, there is still use for optical drives. And no, it being online isnt a substitute, some of us want a physical item for our purchase that can be stored away, and not rely on it being available 'in the cloud', or our current device whenever we want it. Between stupid DRM and companies going bust, no thanks.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Not everyone is slashdot users that go home and spend hours in their mother's windowless basement on the computer. Most real people just want to check their email / facebook / watch a couple of youtube videos / copy photos off their camera.
Similarly, I mainly use mine to timeshift netflix DVD's.
Don't be disingenuous. Why do you need to timeshift *physical media*? I suppose you are going to scrub all those DVD rips from your hd when you drop your netflix subscription, as well? Go fuck yourself, you asshat pirate. You are giving *real* pirates a bad name.
I ignore the potential for this as a home server as most who have home servers recycle old parts/systems to make them.
Instead, I have to consider for whom this $200 computer would be made... and that is typically someone who doesn't already have a computer. That said, this is not a "computer" as most people know it.
There's no keyboard, no mouse, and no monitor. And without an optical drive, there's no ability to watch DVD movies, install software (questionable need with Ubuntu, though), or rip music CDs to MP3s. You may say, "But you can stream the movies you want from Netflix!" And you would be right... but if the person's in need of a $200 budget PC, would the person be paying for cable/dsl internet AND a Netflix subscription? Or would s/he be more immediately concerned with watching the DVDs on hand already?
It's all based on opinion and experience, yes, but my experience says that anyone who needs a budget PC needs the entire system, not just the tower. Instead of setting an artificial budget and then bending the rules, why not just make the best full system you can with as little money as possible? Because that would be useful. (Tom's Hardware does this from time to time.)
And there's a lot to be said for making it to your exact specs. My sister likes to sew, and one time I asked her if she made dresses because it was cheaper. She looked horrified and said that it was usually more expensive, but she ended up with clothes that fit perfectly and had the detailing and adjustments she wanted. That's pretty much the same rationale for building your own computer.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
All the packager needs to do is pack them in a clear polybag type wallet that is 4 x 4 pockets in size, and include 8 such wallets in a rectangular cardboard box. My quick and dirty geometry skills shows that I could reasonably stuff 128 of them in approximtely the same size box used by a 10 pack cdr box. The biggest cost would be slipping the cards into the pockets of the cheapo polybags.
Current packaging is expensive, because they use blisterpacks that also include a rugged clear plastic case. You don't want that in a bulk pack.
Licensing costs would be the hard one to deal with. Corporate drones don't like to renegotiate licenses.
2) TurboTax etc... yep its just one week a year. But millions of completely ordinary people do their taxes with this type of software.
And those people are idiots. They pay money when most of them would qualify for free web file and file the equivalent of the 1040A short form.
I was speaking of non-piracy.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Buy your originals from Amazon and use shiny happy tools to get it in whatever format you like.
It's not like DVDs where the good tools are limited by the DMCA.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I bought 235 gigs of backup for 9.99$ at the grocery store. lets see you do that with flash memory
You can buy them at Frys. Try getting out more.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Of course he's going to scrub them. You end up with a lot of clutter otherwise.
There's really no good reason not to take him at his word.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I still have Linux install disks from the 90s. This includes stuff like the Loki games. If this stuff had followed the App Store or Steam model than they would likely be long gone by now. Physical media means that you have a token of ownership and a means to preserve content indefinitely.
Clueless idiots with no grasp of math like to drone on about floppy disks but clearly don't quite get the scope of the situation.
Optical media is by no means small at this point. It's still big enough to be larger than some of the proposed replacements.
That's something you couldn't say about the floppy when certain people were actively trying to suppress it.
Optical media is cheap enough to be disposable and that's something that none of the alternatives have going for them.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
This is especially true if you are going to use linux. Hardware support is better than it used to be but it's still good to pick and choose hardware that's linux friendly.
Everything you just said about duplication and error correction is true for ANY backup medium.
The particular backup media doesn't alter basic industry best practices.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Like I said. You can easily end up with a low profile machine with that much space. I have a couple of them. ...as far as ripping goes: it is no great bother. You make it sound like you've got to sit there and push the bits around manually. All you do is just put the disk in and run a command. The rest is done by the computer. You aren't wasting any of your own time. Even if you are ripping a 11 season DVD collection, you're still just changing the disks whenever you want.
350G is NOTHING to store and backup. You can get bus powered USB drives much larger than that.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's fortunate you have a digital slave to automate that all for you.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
They might be cheaper. For any serious bulk, they're terribly inconvenient.
Ideally, you would only ever use the media ONCE.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Yes the OP is flaming and a bit trollish with thye offtopic ranting about the CLI but there is a solid nugget of truth in there. Drivers ARE breaking a lot.
Let me give three examples.
1. A desktop box I own with a Highpoint PATA RAID card. It works fine with RHEL3 or 4 and Fedora up through somewhere before 8. I manually butchered the GPL driver from Highpoint into loading into Fedora 9 & 10 but along that release's update stream they put out a kernel version bump that I couldn't figure out how to patch the driver into so I rolled back the kernel and have been stuck on F10 since. Every release I boot the DVD and check and nope, the regression is still there. Since it is a PATA controller it is doubtful it will ever work again.
2. My current Thinkpad X200s. It was a current production machine when Fedora 12's update train broke docking on it forcing another kernel rollback and freeze. Fedora 15 finally fixed docking at the cost of GNOME3, hell of a choice ain't it: break docking, break the desktop or run a machine without security patches. What to do, what to do. Fedora 15 with XFCE was my solution.
3. My boss's Thinkpad running Ubuntu lost the second monitor while docked during an update of xorg this week. Yup, rollback again and freeze. For one update cycle? A year? Who the hell knows. Of course since the current Ubuntu is the last to have GNOME2 it probably won't matter until the desktop suicide mission is resolved.
Democrat delenda est
And there are all sorts of other considerations. For instance, I have a webserver that handles a small number of hits, but where each hit is pretty expensive in computing time. I chose a CPU with a small number of fast cores over a larger number of slower cores to optimize page load time. Similarly, I bought smaller-but-faster hard drives over larger-but-slower because I was more interested in quick looks of small files than bulk storage of huge files. A million little decisions like that sometimes make it a lot easier to build to order than to find something premade that would fit the bill.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
How is it flaming? Because the Linux zealots here refuse to accept a single post that isn't "Gee Biff, isn't Linux doubleplusgood? Why it sure is Kim, and RMS smells like cotton candy!"
NAME A SINGLE THING that isn't true, just one. Broken drivers? You yourself admit that one. CLI heavy? For the love of God they have a term link on the desktop in a good 90% of distros for crying out loud! look on this very forum you'll find a Linux zealot that has taken HALF a quote from me and think it "proves"...something, hell if I know what. But the FULL quote bears repeating until the Linux faithful "get it".
As far as users are concerned THERE IS NO CLI in Windows or OSX, it doesn't exist. You could rip out CMD tomorrow on every single copy of Windows on the planet and 90%+ wouldn't even notice that is how little it is used. same for OSX. And before someone brings up Powershell that is SERVER TECH and I have yet to actually see it in the wild on a home machine, even once. I mean you can run a DB server on XP too, that don't mean anybody with any sense actually does it.
Look I have EVERY RIGHT to be royally pissed. i'm tired of being lied to, tired of having smoke blown up my ass, tired of having a bunch of basement dwellers telling me "Use distro X!" when I've already tried damned near a dozen, tired of NOTHING EVER CHANGING. You know what the definition of insanity is? Doing the same thing and expecting a different result. It has been TWENTY YEARS and Linux is STILL at 1%, it was below the margin for error 4 years ago, guess where it will be 4 years from now? same place.
Like it or lump it folks, but you can't change reality. Neckbeards have gone the way of paneling on cars, 99.9995% of the world is NOT made of programmers, the word is CONSUMERS in giant 50 foot neon, the CLI horseshit and 6 month breakage has been declared a giant DO NOT WANT, yet you continue to do the same tired BS and wonder why retailers like me won't carry your OS? maybe it is because you ignore your customers or insult them?
But don't worry, you stay on the same path. The world will ignore you, retailers like me won't touch your OS with a 50 foot pole, but you can sit there typing CLI crap you copypasta from some forum and acting like that connects you to the PDP11 using neckbeards of old. See if the world cares. Look at your numbers! If an OS with a $1000 barrier to entry gains while your FREE PRODUCT don't gain shit? Then dammit how big of a fucking cluebat do you need to be whomped upside the head with? UR DOIN IT WRONG
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Didn't 6 digit UIDs start around 1999? 7 digit about 3 or four years ago?
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Did you even read what you posted to? read it it is a RELIGIOUS TEXT with the writer going on about how basically they wouldn't be able to Goatse the kernel anymore! Well boo hoo, you can't Goatse the kernel if you actually had to support anything, my heart bleeds.
And if you think he is right and I'm bullshit, riddle me this? if that approach would work WHY HASN'T IT BEEN DONE? i'll tell you, because like me riding a purple pony with She Ra it is a complete and total fantasy, that's why. you might as well say "Well if we could place a hardware fairy into each copy of Ubuntu, a little neckbeard that would pop out and fix the drivers whenever they break, we wouldn't have no problems with broken drivers!" which is true, but completely impossible.
Look at the facts...Windows, BSD, Solaris, OSX, OS/2....what do they have in common? A Stable ABI. Do you honestly think that your kernel hackers are so fucking brilliant they know better than the kernel teams of ALL those OSes? Arrogant much? Sadly that is what it comes down to, arrogance and religious dogma. The RMS camp says 'ZOMG If you had a stable ABI you'd lose the 4 freedoms ZOMG!" while ignoring that Nvidia already puts out binary blobs, as do others, it just makes supporting your OS a bigger pain in the ass. And as you found out letting the kernel devs do it can easily end up with fucked and abandoned hardware, they simply don't have enough hours in the day.
But don't take my word for it, mark this post and come back in a year and watch it come true! linux will gain NO SHARE in the next 12 months, they will gain NO SHARE in the next 24 months, they will gain NO SHARE in the next 36, in short Linux is a dead end in its current incarnation. The masses simply won't deal with the fiddly driver breaking CLI heavy bullshit, like it or lump it. Give the people what they want, give the reatilers a product that is easy to support, watch your numbers rise. Don't? I hope you enjoy where you are at, because you sure as hell ain't going anywhere.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I think an optical disc is the most proper format for archiving stuff. Flash memory is purposed only for live systems and is prone to ESD shocks and maybe data degradation in general. But of course a built-in optical drive is not needed, an USB one shared with all computers is the best solution.
Where do you buy this mythical $230 dual core 15.4" eMachines laptop? Used on eBay or Craigslist? Their current model eME443-BZ602, is $329.99.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I have an ancient samsung cdrw, it must be 15-16 years old now, that I just move around if the need to read cds the old skool way arises.
Never had any dvd reader of any kind.
And I don't think you'll buy a Linux laptop just to run (plenty of) windows games on it. It doesn't make sense.
Is that the purpose of WINE? So you can run an OS you like but also run Windows games? Makes sense to me.
FLAC department, aisle 104: https://thepiratebay.org/browse/104
The prices are fair; it is only asked that you seed.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Contrary to your experience, I don't have many driver problems at all with older hardware. Since older hardware is cheap/free, anything I DO have problems with goes on a Winbox.
However, the reason Windows users don't want Linux is SIMPLY that it's not Windows. They wouldn't give a shit if it worked perfectly. That's not on their radar, at all, ever. I can set up nice stable Linux machines all day but users HAVE their invested YEARS of experience in Windows and don't want to throw that away.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
So you are saying Linux is for dumpster divers? Is THAT what you are saying? Because I have to agree with you there as the ONLY PC I EVER saw survive a 6 month upgrade with 100% working drivers was a circa 1999 733Mhz P3 with really old Intel shit. You know what? it ended up in the dump as nobody wants shit that old, not even Goodwill! I can't believe you had the balls to admit that though, bravo good sir!
As for Windows? bullshit, utter bullshit. hell most people would even know if you changed their OS out tomorrow as long as the icons were in the same place. i work for consumers 6 days a week and you have NO idea how many times I've been told "I have Windows" but they have no damned clue if it is Win98 or Windows 7, they honestly don't know.
Lets take a look at some facts, shall we? Now for SMBs and SOHO Linux is right out, as QuickBooks/Quicken is God in those markets, and for a good reason i might add, as a single QB Girl (And it is ALWAYS a girl, they must have a union or something) can run the whole damned company with a copy of QB and an expense sheet, but consumers? In my shop I have got to learn their habits quite well, you tell me what they are doing that doesn't work on Linux....they use Firefox, they go to Facebook, they check their webmail, they watch Youtube and if they are guys or females under 30 they also go to Porntube and the like.
Now is there a SINGLE thing on that list that couldn't run just as well on Linux? Nope not a one. But here is the catch...since I would have to charge MORE for Linux because I'd have to give out lifetime support (And NO, home users won't buy support contracts. Just ask Best Buy how much they howl and scream at even being offered extended warranties) it simply makes no sense. Now if Linux would fix the driver breakage and kill the damned terminal bullshit? Then I could offer the Linux boxes for less and price WILL WIN for a huge number of consumers. this is why Dell can sell tons of $300 laptops even though we both know they are plastic POSes, and why when I get in a load of 4 to 6 year old laptops I sell at $100 each I have them all sold in less than 24 hours. price trumps all for a large majority out there.
When the Linux community accepts that CLI should have remained in the 80s where it belonged and drivers shouldn't constantly break then and ONLY then will Linux gain share. of course when that happens I'll be riding a purple pony with She Ra because I have never met a more delusional elitist bunch in my whole damned life! I swear I even had one tell me I should encourage my customers to "Embrace the POWER of CLI" like it was the God damned force!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Yeah and have you actually used it, because I have and it doesn’t render correctly (images, tables, word art, etc) as well as converting automatic tables of contents to links
null
You're supposed to use the MS USB key creator software. It needs an ISO image of the disk and will then create a bootable flash drive that will install Windows. I've used it and it works quite nicely.
One thing I appreciate that MS has finally done is configured Win7 to allow the usage of any Win7 install Media to activate so long as you have a legal key as I did on Monday with a new system from Walmart (nuke em first then clean install to get rid of all the preloaded garbage).
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Did you even read what you posted to?
Of course, but did you read what you posted to elsewhere in this discussion? This link in particular. You try to make it come off as a thing _against_ the development style of linux, when if you actually read it it simply provides great insight into the evolution of successful software over time.
read it it is a RELIGIOUS TEXT with the writer going on about how basically they wouldn't be able to Goatse the kernel anymore! Well boo hoo, you can't Goatse the kernel if you actually had to support anything, my heart bleeds.
All I'm hearing is "I don't have anything solid against this so I'm going to call it like a religion and compare it to a man with a messed up anus." A bit childish don't you think? If you want to attack it come up with technical points against it.
And if you think he is right and I'm bullshit, riddle me this? if that approach would work WHY HASN'T IT BEEN DONE?
erm... it has been, or you wouldn't be bitching about it would you? lol
Look at the facts...Windows, BSD, Solaris, OSX, OS/2....what do they have in common? A Stable ABI.
What else do they also have in common? Crappy out of the box (and in the case of solaris, os x and os/2 just in general) support for hardware, nowhere near as much code re-use between similar drivers, the deprecation of fully functioning hardware because a vendor now says you need a new device even though the old still runs and suits your functions perfectly, ridiculously long release cycles. The list goes on.
The RMS camp says 'ZOMG If you had a stable ABI you'd lose the 4 freedoms ZOMG!"
The rms camp don't even come into this, this is 'we will not fuck over what is best for the kernel in the long run just to temporarily pander to some companies that don't want to play the game and make it better for all'. It is out of pragmatism and what will result in the technically best kernel.
And as you found out letting the kernel devs do it can easily end up with fucked and abandoned hardware
Still rocking those MFM hard disks I see? I'm sure since you're running late 70's hard drives that using a kernel a year or so old to still get support of them shouldn't be too much of an issue. I can forgive getting rid of support for 30+ year old devices that realistically are impossible to get, and that can simply use an older version to get support.
But don't take my word for it, mark this post and come back in a year and watch it come true! linux will gain NO SHARE in the next 12 months, they will gain NO SHARE in the next 24 months, they will gain NO SHARE in the next 36, in short Linux is a dead end in its current incarnation.
Linux is a kernel, and last I checked, Android/media centres(i.e. wdtv)/routers/servers etc etc are flourishing. But more to the point, from a kernel development perspective why should they care about those who don't use it?
The sole aim of linux is to be a useful, quality kernel. Who defines quality? Those using it. I think you will find it _very_ hard to argue that linux does not serve a whole range of people far better than any other kernel presently in existence. It scales from your mobile phone to top 500 machines. On any architecture that is powerful enough to run it (even some microcontrollers). With better in-built hardware support than any other os presently.
The masses simply won't deal with the fiddly driver breaking CLI heavy bullshit, like it or lump it. Give the people what they want, give the reatilers a product that is easy to support, watch your numbers rise. Don't? I hope you enjoy where you are at, because you sure as hell ain't going anywhere.
The masses already use linux. Whether it be on their phone, their router, or their pc. But again more importantly, so long as I can use it for the needs I (or those I choose to support) have, why should I give a shit what other people use?
- Why would you install Win...s for?
-There are still a fair number of things you can't do without windows, see my other post in the thread for details
- Most (if not all) Linux distro will support to be setup from USB. & - If you have a problem, then boot on a live ... USB key!
USB drives are more expensive then CDs and people don't always have blank ones lying around, it is also more complicated (to hard for Joe Average) to put an image on a USB drive and you often have to change BIOS settings
- The computer is shipped with Linux, not windows, so how do you exactly install Photoshop on it?
-WINE? Again OP was not referring specifically to the computer in the article, or you might decide to install Windows on it
- Is there still some "free stuff" CD with magazines? Oh, sorry... is there still some (paper) computer magazines?
Yes there is, at least in Australia where I live
- If you need to play BD films, why don't buy a TV BD player and play on that? We're talking about a computer here, not a TV set...
People often use there computer to play films nowadays, I certainly do.
I also forgot to mention before, what I use my optical drive for is burning CDs for backing tracks or school projects (I don't like lending USBs they tend not to come back)
null
Good deal. Things are getting better, and your post is evidence of that.
But I'd still cringe if someone said "hi, I bought a new multi-function printer... now make it work with linux".
If you research first, and buy intelligently, sure... but to just wander into a Staples or Costco and come home with something and expect it to work... we're not there yet, your experience notwithstanding.
Compact Disc Digital Audio is like FLAC torrents on The Pirate Bay, except with no risk of becoming the next Jammie Thomas.
Don't really need an existing copy of windows. Just something you can use to partition and format the usb drive, copy over the windows files, then boot the Windows stuff.
Usually if you partition and format with Windows, it puts enough code in the MBR and boot sector to boot windows. There are multiple ways to get that or replace it with free equivalents.
I've used a 3.5" floppy drive more recently than I've used an optical drive.
But with most modern computers coming with a BIOS that can boot from a USB flash drive, PC applications available as an Internet download to anybody in urban areas of developed countries,* and streaming movie rentals becoming available in more countries, the number of PC users who regularly need to use optical media is getting smaller. There are SDHC cards and USB flash drives nearly as big as a single-layer DVD (4 GB) and SDHC cards and USB flash drives as big as a dual-layer DVD (8 GB), big enough for any mainstream operating system you can think of.
Is there a reason why you make it so unpleasant and troublesome to contribute to your site?
There were a few days when Slashdot would require waiting an hour between comments after having made enough in one server day. I'm glad those days are behind me, but here's something to try: get 50 or so of your comments moderated up, and you'll have "excellent" karma like mine and can post once every two minutes or so. That and keep several reply forms open in tabs.
* Steam, Netflix, Mac App Store, and the like aren't practical for users unserved by cable or DSL, whose residents rely on wireless broadband (satellite or 3G) plans that typically have a data transfer cap lower than 10 GB per month.
Not every game is available on Steam.
Or Impulse. Or GOG.
But you still have a point: Not every game is available on PCs at all. A lot of games unavailable on PCs have multiplayer modes suited for gamepads, a 32" monitor, and a sofa more than for a LAN party.
The particular backup media doesn't alter basic industry best practices.
Other than perhaps that optical's reliability is such that it might require more parity data and more independent copies than flash or HDD would.
And where do they go for help? Let me guess: you are the center of your own little linux universe??
Its not a bad thing, I am the center of one too... but remove yourself from the universe and one by one your family, friends, and neighbors will run into problems they can't fix, unless one of them happens to have the nerd-gene too. But "normal people" tm don't... to use linux they need someone like us in their sphere of friends.
Umm - my daughter uses I-Tunes on her Ubuntu machine. She's 17, and had no problem installing it and getting her ipod working.
Really? Just downloaded and installed right? Everything works perfect...
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=21302
The "what doesn't work" is pretty substantial... iphones "ETC"? preferences? Podcast? Yeah, that sounds terrific. And the additional comments to the effect that the program stops responding repeatedly, and reports application crash errors... yeah.
All followed by a page of comments complaining of all kinds of problems.
Linux is great at things its great at. Running windows applications is not one of those things. It ranges from usable to useful.
And stay away from the cheap media (paying a few extra pennies per disk goes a long way).
Where should I learn which brands are good? I'd try Google, but I haven't found a way to use Google to gauge reliability of a review; it's likely to turn up reviews that smack of undue influence from advertisers.
People are not renting DVDs any longer
Have they all switched to Blu-ray Disc? Or have they all switched to iTunes Store, Netflix Instant Watch, Amazon Prime, and other online video rental services that eat a healthy chunk of a plan's monthly cap? They probably have, given that most of them are probably urban or suburban, and cable and DSL reach most urban and suburban areas.
Some areas have a higher than usual younger user base (Portland)
OR or ME?
I'd hate to think what would happen if I forgot what was on the disc and reformatted it.
That's why I label any disc, flash drive, or memory card that has data that I want to keep. I keep a rotating backup set of my programming project repository on a pair of 4 GB SD cards, with homemade labels taped on: "Pino backup bravo" and "Pino backup charlie". (There was an alpha, but it got lost in a move when it was the off-site backup at a relative's house.)
For some, they might be able to do everything over the net or use a USB optical drive on rare occasions. I use mine quite a bit. For starters, I archive any music I buy on line. I also periodically archive any code I've written. The CD players in my workshop and my wife's car only support ordianry CDs (not even a line in jack!), so I burn things for those. I also pick up the occasional game on fixed media as well. And lastly, since storage has gotten cheaper, I'm re-ripping all of my CDs at a higher bit-rate. I don't need the archives very often, but when I do, boy am I glad they're there.
On a related note to the article, I rebuilt all of the PCs at my office late last fall. Windows is licensed separately, so that wasn't an issue, but I spent about $250 upgrading all of them to i3 processors (which for a non-gamming non-development/graphics desktop is positively luxurious) and related equipment. For a business desktop, they are flat out pimpin' and I really couldn't conceive spending more than that. Possibly upgrade the RAM from 2gb to 4gb, but there, we're only talking $17/unit and I don't really care about my users enough to justify that. :)
If you have plenty of games to run, you're aren't betting on running them on an API emulator. You'd get the original OS and run the games on that one.
No, titties come on something called a DVD.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
So let me recap. You need a CD rom because:
- You need windows, but we were talking about a Linux machine.
- You need software for windows to run on your Linux machine.
- You need to read CDs from magazines, which are burning free stuff that, by the way, you will find on the net.
- People are stilling your USB keys (I don't see "average Joe" using Linux, but never mind).
- You (or "average Joe") is/are too dumb to press F11 at boot time (sic!).
- You don't have a BD player for your TV, but still would like to play BD.
All the above are specific to you, and don't cover the general case of using a computer with Linux.
I got to agree the first advice to anybody who building a rig should always be "Don't cheap out on the PSU!" and if you did use a cheap PSU put getting a good PSU on top of your upgrade priority.
With Nvidia and other players getting in on the CPU market I predict a serious price war. The CPU market could look a lot like the Ram market soon. Lots of players = very small price.
History books? Yeah, I've seen those on the Internet.
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
The no-names like that are a gamble. Some of them are perfectly fine - I've had some that have run no problems for years, and others of them are garbage. And you really don't have any way to know without buying and seeing what happens. Generally I don't want to gamble with my power supplies, so I'm willing to spend a few extra bucks to get a decent one.
Grammar
So your reply is...bullshit,bullshit,bullshit and bullshit, correct? I gave you my answer as to ABIs, give me a single reason why EVERYONE ELSE ON THE PLANET is wrong and you are right. Give me a SINGLE EXAMPLE of the magical never break drivers that are called for in that religious text. Hey if that technique works there must be thousands of those that exist, yes? the kernel hackers have had the code FOR YEARS NOW so they must have the 80% in never break quality yes? but guess what Sparky THEY BREAK CONSTANTLY which shows that kernel dev was talking out his ass. Do you REALLY think he is smarter than the entire kernel teams for OSX, Windows, OS/2, Solaris, BSD, etc? I repeat, arrogant much?
And did you even read the post above me? How the guy had enterprise hardware and is stuck with an old kernel because guess what THE DRIVERS ARE BROKEN for ALL the new kernels? Care to tell HIM he should throw away thousands of dollars in hardware? It is THIS arrogant elitist horseshit without the code to back it up that helps keep people as far away from your shitpile OS as possible! With Windows you get a MINIMUM of 8 YEARS of support, often longer. Your OS? You can't even give me a 100% guarantee the stuff you have running now will continue running in 6 months! Yep, sure gonna lure the masses with that level of QA buddy. And oh yeah all those OSes are complete shit, even though most have quite huge numbers, why they just don't know how sweet the Linux koolaid is do they daddy-o? Doesn't matter that their drivers actually WORK and CONTINUE WORKING because CLI gives you gonad powers!
Which brings us to the two bad jokes of your religion, the "Linux is a kernel" and "CLI gives you gonad powers" jokes. you DO realize I can replace every. single. argument. that you have made with the appropriate Linux TM yes? Do you know why that is? Because after all these years you've been coming up with the same tired old horseshit about how it is everyone's fault but yours, how if people would only "embrace the power of CLI" like it is the God damned force that the world would be hearts and flowers. But you know what? NUMBERS DO NOT LIE and you have NOTHING to show for damned near 20 years of work! Read it and weep fucking JavaME is kicking your ass! Don't feel even a little bit ashamed at such shit numbers? or do you think being a dead end with less numbers than a shit cellphone OS just makes you "leet" and connects you to the neckbeards of old, when IRL all you do is copypasta into a term ?
I'll repeat this until it sinks in, i'll even highlight it, Do you know what the definition of insanity is? It is doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome and that is EXACTLY what you and the community have been doing for damned near a decade now. What were your numbers 3 years ago? why they were at 1%. What will your numbers be 3 years from now? I bet my last dollar they'll be 1%. It don't take Kojak to solve this case, and it isn't some conspiracy by Gates and the Illuminati, nor is it payoffs to the OEMs that ended over a decade ago.
Now it is the fact that YOU DON'T LISTEN, not to your customers, nor to the OEMs, nor to the retailers. Wanna read something sad? Dell the current number 3 OEM, even though they only offer Linux on a token amount of frankly outdated hardware, has to run their own repo at considerable out of pocket expense. Why is that? Because if they don't the DRIVERS DIE HARD. And you sir have NO excuse nor argument that can justify that, none at all. That is just typical shitty QA from Canonical and typical Linus Goatse bullshit. But I'm sure you'll say dell is "doin it wrong" or that every retailer and mom&pop shop on the planet should pay programmers to run their own repos so they can bless their customers with your sacred cow. But i
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Try do do a very similar build and see the pricing in other currency....
I also asked her if she gets her system issues taken care of via you tube, and I got another exasperated teen response and eye roll - " Ahh Dad, Google is your friend... DUH".
I laughed and went back to my daily routine. She wants to be a teacher when she gets out of school. I hope her attitude improves before then - LOL.
Since when is "follow a youtube video tutorial" that you presumably have to locate yourself the definition of "no trouble at all"?
To me that sounds more like "I didn't work, so I had to go look for a solution..." worse the solution was involved enough that someone made a video tutorial out of it..."
She is happy. It works for her.
Lets see, it runs pretty mediocre and several features simply don't work. She's happy and it meets here expectations... thing is though... her expectations are pretty low. When she can accept without blinking that having to watch a video tutorial just to get it working poorly that's a pretty clear indicator of where her expectations are.
Furthermore she sounds pretty tech savvy to me though, ... "normal people" tm? Not so much.
Oh, most definitely. I've had more fun messing with the internals of stuff than I ever used to have; I've learned Python and just find it great for coding in, and, above all, the "everything is a file" methodology is *really+* nice - Nothing like messing with raw disks the same as with files, and vice-versa.
99 Bux
Do you REALLY think he is smarter than the entire kernel teams for OSX, Windows, OS/2, Solaris, BSD, etc? I repeat, arrogant much?
The projects have different needs and priorities, and different needs tend to yield *gasp* different methods of solution.
Your argument is akin to "hey, you are doing things differently, you therefore suck". I can only imagine what that kind of effect that attitude would have if it were to be adopted in science where any differing hypothesis from the first must be ridiculed because it isn't the same as other peoples, regardless of merit.
I'll repeat this until it sinks in, i'll even highlight it, Do you know what the definition of insanity is? It is doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome and that is EXACTLY what you and the community have been doing for damned near a decade now. What were your numbers 3 years ago? why they were at 1%. What will your numbers be 3 years from now? I bet my last dollar they'll be 1%. It don't take Kojak to solve this case, and it isn't some conspiracy by Gates and the Illuminati, nor is it payoffs to the OEMs that ended over a decade ago.
Why do you think I give a shit about market share?
Dell the current number 3 OEM, even though they only offer Linux on a token amount of frankly outdated hardware, has to run their own repo [theinquirer.net] at considerable out of pocket expense.
If you read that article the video chipsets specific driver wasn't in mainline so dell were shipping their own drivers with the 8.04 ubuntu install it was shipping with, when updated to 9.04 of course these drivers weren't in mainline and so no automatic support, and thusly the creation of the external repo. The only lesson learned here is dell are silly for not getting their driver in mainline.
But instead they'll just do as I have done in my shop, which is refuse to sell or support your OS
Again, why should I (or anyone else for that matter) care about that?
You seem very emotionally invested in how evil and horrible linus is, combined with an obsession for market share, distribution and support methods which are inefficient and of no real concern to the development process (and a severe hindrance to it if your recommendations were to be followed)
Relax.. and grow up.
First off OP was referring to optical drives in general not just on the PC in the article.
Please read the full post before insulting people, at least read the first line.
- You need windows, but we were talking about a Linux machine.
See above + user may want to install windows or a different linux distro (see above for why most users won't install from a flash drive and why this is expensive.
- You need software for windows to run on your Linux machine.
reading comprehension...
- You need to read CDs from magazines, which are burning free stuff that, by the way, you will find on the net.
Often magazine CDs contain special offers such as software that you would have to pay from if you downloaded them.
- People are stilling your USB keys (I don't see "average Joe" using Linux, but never mind).
I certainly hope they are not stilling my USBs. If you mean stealing then yes people often take USBs are just forget to give them back, this is inconvenient whereas a CD is cheep enough to be given to someone without expecting it back.
- You (or "average Joe") is/are too dumb to press F11 at boot time (sic!).
Really last time I checked on the various computers I use you have to press a random key of the makers choice (usually TAB, Delete of a F* key) then go through three pages of menus to change the boot order. Whilst I can do this easily (although it is a waste of time) most users would not be able to do this if they can figure out how to put a disk image on a USB in the first place and they have enough flash drives to leave one with a recovery image on it all the time (as supposed to a CD which is much cheaper; users buying one of these computers may not have access to a second computer to flash the flash drive from if something goes wrong)
- You don't have a BD player for your TV, but still would like to play BD.
Ain't nothing wrong with that, it is also convenient to be able to play BD on the computer.
All the above are specific to you, and don't cover the general case of using a computer with Linux.
People tend to need things for specific reasons, a number of my points do apply to linux (including proprietary software under WINE as I said before).
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Please read the full post before insulting people, at least read the first line.
I didn't insult anyone. Stop the paranoia (see here, I've written paranoia, I didn't write you are actually a compulsive paranoiac). Please quote the insult.
Contrary to what you wrote, I did read and understood your words, but I just don't agree these are valid arguments. Can you live with that fact? For example, I don't think people setup Linux just because they need to run things under WINE. I tend to think they would use what's available on the archives. I know a quite fair number of Linux users, and not even once in my life, I saw one that were using a proprietary application with WINE. NOT EVEN ONCE! So if you think that's an argument, then this must be a personal thing specific to yourself. Last thing, no need to tell that "user may want to install windows", even if you repeat it again that this is your point, it's not the one of the OP, which wanted to setup a Linux machine. I do read you, I do understand, but you are still off-topic, even if you repeat yourself and point to me as if I didn't understand you. The same goes for people not giving you back your USB key, reading stupid advertisement CD from useless magazines, or the fact that it's not harder to boot on a USB key than it is to boot on a CDROM (people who can't choose a boot device at boot time wont be smart enough to setup ANY operating system anyway, whatever boot device you will use...).
P.S: Did you see how painful it was to read me repeating myself and re-phrase what I already wrote? FYI, I just did that on purpose since you seem to like this style...
You (or "average Joe") is/are too dumb to press F11 at boot time (sic!).
Is considered an insult by most people who read English The OP said:
Of course, like if you had used your optical drive in the last few months.
Seriously, why would one want an optical drive in a PC these days?
My post was in reply to this question, which is referring to all PCs not just those that run linux
No people don't setup linux just to run things under WINE that would be rather stupid. They do however use WINE to run proprietary windows apps, such as MS Office (which is usually installed from a CD) and Windows Games (which often have CD based DRM). This is the whole purpose of WINE which is apparently a very popular application with a big following and which I have seen used by a number of users.
As 'stupid magazines' still sell with CDs on them I would assume I am not the only one who uses them, generally in most forms of writing where you are expressing a point of view you use specific examples to strengthen your argument. This is one such point.
I don't need to repeat myself again on the ease and cost of CDs vs. Flash drives, however you would be surprised how easy it is to install an OS these days compared to knowing how to change BIOS settings. FYI I have no problem with this, but I know many users who would.
At this point I'm beginning to wonder if English is your native language as you don't seem to understand it very well, otherwise you must be trolling.
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No people don't setup linux just to run things under WINE that would be rather stupid. They do however use WINE to run proprietary windows apps, such as MS Office (which is usually installed from a CD) and Windows Games (which often have CD based DRM). This is the whole purpose of WINE which is apparently a very popular application with a big following and which I have seen used by a number of users.
No, people don't do that. Linux users use OpenOffice. As for games, we have a different experience, but none of the people I know running Linux are interested by games using WINE (some use PS3 / Wii though... which are a much better platform if you ask me).
I don't need to repeat myself again on the ease and cost of CDs vs. Flash drives, however you would be surprised how easy it is to install an OS these days compared to knowing how to change BIOS settings. FYI I have no problem with this, but I know many users who would.
I don't know how others are getting their USB keys, but for me, I got about a dozen that have been given for me as company gifts (various conferences and all). I never saw anyone giving CDRW as gifts. Even if you didn't have it as a gift, then it's really cheap: it starts at 2 USD for a 2GB!!!
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=12464357480 (and no, I'm not Chinese...)
So yes, continue your rant about CDs being cheaper if you like, but you're being either a fool (considering the price of the reader and the fact that CDs breaks so fast), or extremely stingy. FYI, 15 Yuan is a bit more than 2 USD.
I guess absolutely everyone using a computer holds at least one USB key anyway. These days, the smallest you will find is 1GB, which is really enough for setting-up an OS (the Debian netinst for example needs less than half of that). The only point with CD, is when you have DRM attached with it, but it's slowly fading away: if you are a company selling software and don't have the option to have your product bought online, you are 10 years in the past and will soon discover that you are loosing money fast... even worse if your competitor really is selling online.
At this point I'm beginning to wonder if English is your native language as you don't seem to understand it very well, otherwise you must be trolling.
What a jerk! At this point, I have no doubt that you are an intolerant USA native.
Actually I'm English living in Australia and as you don't seem to understand my points I must assume there is something wrong, however looking at your post history it appears that you just don't understand that people have the need to run windows apps on linux. As someone who uses linux as there primary operating system I hate to break it to you but your wrong.
Also I'm talking about USBs you buy in the shops not dodgy ones from China (and you price does not include shipping abroad), in Australia (where I live) flash drives cost about $10 - $15 for a 1 or 2GB compared to CD-RWs that cost about 5c each.
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According to Google the closest Frys is 14197 miles away, involves 3 major kayaking events and some 80 toll roads.
I think I can source them more locally :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor
Cheapass power supplies with crappy PF are putting a higher load on the utility company for no purpose. The power factor is basically how far out of phase the return power is from the grid's phase.
Your actual drain is your current * voltage divided by the power factor.
180W (1.5A @120V) with a 0.67 power factor is 269W of loss at the plug.
180W (1.5A @120V) with a 0.98 power factor is 184W of loss at the plug.
Why would companies spend thousands just to correct the power factor if it had nothing to do with actual load?
The figures I used previously were for real life systems measured directly at the plug with a kill-a-watt meter.
There are other factors involved that aren't measured there (like the efficiency during transformation and rectification), but there's no way the Athlon XP 2500 is a higher power consumer than an i7 920. Also, the high end PSU is rated at over 80% efficient in those jobs too.
you all mention sweet deals, but they blow the budget totally. A $300+ system just isn't impressive.