Is that actually true? Are today's typical cell phones more powerful than, say, an i486 PC?
Well, my new Nokia 6680 has a 220 MHz ARM9-based CPU, 20MB of RAM and the option of up to a 512MB flash RAM storage gard. It has enough processing oomph to process images from the camera in real time in order to determine if you're tilting it (cute demo game thing I found). It can play Oggs, MP3s and some videos. It may not have video out, but I'd say, yeah, it's more powerful than most 486s.
I might look like I'm a subscriber, but I turned off all the things that run my subscription down a while back (when Cowboy posted some seriously crap crap, but I forget what). I just use an ad-filter for the same effect.
Sure, the Mini isn't a big FPS frame rate monster, but 128MB of video RAM would at least make World of Warcraft, and other 3rd-person perspective 3D games I guess, run a little more smoothly. I'd probably buy one just for WoW if it didn't have the Frames Per Second of a 3-year old laptop.
Intel will be releasing Pentium M technology in a CPU package that suits typical desktop motherboards in the future. Meanwhile, several manufaturers have produced desktop computers using laptop chipsets so they can offer a cool Pentium M CPU solution.
Indeed. Can anyone point to an article comparing performance and power consumption between AMD and Intel? Much as I like my current "Frame Rate Monster" PC, I'd like my next one to be near silent again.
...and it makes the difference between being getting a good night's sleep with the computer on and being as tired in the morning as when you went to bed. My latest PC would have gone with a Phantom too if I hadn't had such a powerful video card installed.
I've just read the/. article about the Pentium M adapter and this might finally be a reason to go back to Intel. 120W difference under load compared to other Intel CPUs? Time to see what the power consumption of AMD's comparable offerings is.
Given that it has high performance for very low power consumption, it compels one to buy it. 130W less than a P4 @ 3.4GHz under load? Depending on your video card, that might make the difference between a power supply with fans and one without.
Chill dude. I didn't call you names or anything, or condemn how you work. I merely offered up a suggestion for an alternative.
I'll take that bet.
I strongly suspect that you are abusing the ability to add monitors just for the sake of having many monitors.
I think you'll find you both insulted me and condemned the way I work with your opening sentence.
That aside, I can assure you that when things are busy, the ability to have information all laid out without stuff overlaping is not only useful for the person using the PC, me, but for anyone try to assist, or simply understand, who's looking over my shoulder. (And I do so wish other people in the company would take more of an interest in my stuff.)
Right now, what I'm doing could fairly easily be run on two monitors without any loss in productivity. But when the shit hits the fan and I have to kick into overdrive I can consume as many screens as are available for reporting, monitoring, testing and fixing.
I'm sorry that you feel that you have poor management and a cow-orker who abuses the system, but I think your problem is with them, not the concept of multiple monitors.
Just because a lot of people that are in jail are black doesn't mean that all black people are criminals.
True, but when people talk about "Black Felons" they're usually just talking about criminals that are black, not making the implication that all people of African descent are criminals. "This area has a large number of black felons" simply means that people who fit the description "black" and "felon" are a significant group. "Significant" is open to discussion, but if we jump back to WoW for a moment, it becomes significant when someone speaking Chinese (as much as they can with no character support) is constantly killing something you need for a quest, and possibly training mobs onto you if you attempt to do the quest anyway. "Damn Chinese Farmer" is what you might say when someone is both obviously farming and obvious Chinese.
Personally, I'd just say "damn farmers" if I had no way to know if they were Chinese, just as I might say "damn criminals" if I had no way to know what their ethnicity was.
Gosh, you've never met me, but you can tell how I work and what I need just from a post on the Internet. You must be some kind of genius.
I assure you that during peak times I use every pixel of every monitor to fix problems fast. When you need to see information from four or five sources at once, while editing both data and php pages a virtual desktop system is no better than having a pile of windows all on top of each other. Often it's worse because you have to read from one window and type into another that may not be on the same virtual desktop, so you waste time moving windows from one desktop to another more than just quickly moving things aside and raising thing from the bottom of the pile.
with dual screens and/or multiple desktops, overlapping windows should be mostly a thing of the past.
You'd think that, but even with four screens I still have overlaps. Browser, email, main database (many windows), web database tool, editor, SSH, plus all my file windows.
I'm as interested in getting old hardware up and running as the next retro nerd, but on old hardware what does Windows 2000 offer that Windows 98SE does not? I mean, it's nice to not have to reboot the PC when you change network settings, but on a low-spec PC, Windows is just a glorified binary loader.
How about an OS with decent library management? Let's say I have an application that needs to do fourier transforms. If someone has a better library for doing fourier transforms, perhaps something better matched to their CPU than a generic compile, there should be some way for them to use it and get better performance. Every programs seems to have to implement its own plug-in system, when the OS should be able to handle a collection of libraries much more neatly.
I currently have one of these -- at least until the Return Authoristaion form comes through. The hardware is superb, but the drivers are a complete write-off. In between crashing my N-Gage, it really does work well.
The problem with Thin clients is that the software licensing for applications is so paranoid about wringing every drop of blood from a company it can, and then some. If we didn't have to buy extra licenses just to run multiple instances of the one installation of software on the one PC then thin clients would be far more popular. I've worked out some great hardware setups that are either prohibitavely expensive, or just plain illegal, due to crap software licenses.
I stopped adding them to my home PCs a couple of years back. I have one USB floppy drive for the household, if necessary. My mother's latest laptop didn't have a floppy drive built in, she and her work friends with similar laptops also share a USB floppy drive when needed, Where I work I've started ordering PCs without floppy drives unless I know it's going to be used (tax stuff seems to need a floppy) and we have one USB floppy drive that can be plugged in to wherever.
Our computer lab PCs though, Dells, still have to come with a floppy drive because I can't get them to boot from USB. I think the next batch might come from someone else.
Yes, It's "Superdisk". Either the Supderdrive or Superdisk article actually says "not to be confused with [the other one]", yet when you're quickly typing a/. post it's almost guaranteed.
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No, wait...
Nothing like taxation without representation. I believe there was some sort of revolt early in America's history that had something to do with that.
What percentage of players are minors? Judging from player behavior I'd have to say at least two-thirds.
What's the Ham vs Computer vs whatever Nerds chain that's the equivalent of RPGers "greater than" LARPers "greater than" Furries?
Sure, the Mini isn't a big FPS frame rate monster, but 128MB of video RAM would at least make World of Warcraft, and other 3rd-person perspective 3D games I guess, run a little more smoothly. I'd probably buy one just for WoW if it didn't have the Frames Per Second of a 3-year old laptop.
I believe the "it" in your quote is a Pentium M in a standard desktop socket CPU package. A DFI board is in fact used in the review.
Does that explain the apparent contradiction?
Indeed. Can anyone point to an article comparing performance and power consumption between AMD and Intel? Much as I like my current "Frame Rate Monster" PC, I'd like my next one to be near silent again.
I've just read the /. article about the Pentium M adapter and this might finally be a reason to go back to Intel. 120W difference under load compared to other Intel CPUs? Time to see what the power consumption of AMD's comparable offerings is.
Given that it has high performance for very low power consumption, it compels one to buy it. 130W less than a P4 @ 3.4GHz under load? Depending on your video card, that might make the difference between a power supply with fans and one without.
That aside, I can assure you that when things are busy, the ability to have information all laid out without stuff overlaping is not only useful for the person using the PC, me, but for anyone try to assist, or simply understand, who's looking over my shoulder. (And I do so wish other people in the company would take more of an interest in my stuff.)
Right now, what I'm doing could fairly easily be run on two monitors without any loss in productivity. But when the shit hits the fan and I have to kick into overdrive I can consume as many screens as are available for reporting, monitoring, testing and fixing.
I'm sorry that you feel that you have poor management and a cow-orker who abuses the system, but I think your problem is with them, not the concept of multiple monitors.
Personally, I'd just say "damn farmers" if I had no way to know if they were Chinese, just as I might say "damn criminals" if I had no way to know what their ethnicity was.
I assure you that during peak times I use every pixel of every monitor to fix problems fast. When you need to see information from four or five sources at once, while editing both data and php pages a virtual desktop system is no better than having a pile of windows all on top of each other. Often it's worse because you have to read from one window and type into another that may not be on the same virtual desktop, so you waste time moving windows from one desktop to another more than just quickly moving things aside and raising thing from the bottom of the pile.
I'm as interested in getting old hardware up and running as the next retro nerd, but on old hardware what does Windows 2000 offer that Windows 98SE does not? I mean, it's nice to not have to reboot the PC when you change network settings, but on a low-spec PC, Windows is just a glorified binary loader.
How about an OS with decent library management? Let's say I have an application that needs to do fourier transforms. If someone has a better library for doing fourier transforms, perhaps something better matched to their CPU than a generic compile, there should be some way for them to use it and get better performance. Every programs seems to have to implement its own plug-in system, when the OS should be able to handle a collection of libraries much more neatly.
I currently have one of these -- at least until the Return Authoristaion form comes through. The hardware is superb, but the drivers are a complete write-off. In between crashing my N-Gage, it really does work well.
The problem with Thin clients is that the software licensing for applications is so paranoid about wringing every drop of blood from a company it can, and then some. If we didn't have to buy extra licenses just to run multiple instances of the one installation of software on the one PC then thin clients would be far more popular. I've worked out some great hardware setups that are either prohibitavely expensive, or just plain illegal, due to crap software licenses.
Our computer lab PCs though, Dells, still have to come with a floppy drive because I can't get them to boot from USB. I think the next batch might come from someone else.
Yes, It's "Superdisk". Either the Supderdrive or Superdisk article actually says "not to be confused with [the other one]", yet when you're quickly typing a /. post it's almost guaranteed.