The real strange thing is that external drives with eSATA are so much more expensive than those without. eSATA is simply SATA at higher voltage... Why would it increase the cost of an external drive more than a few cent?
It's not a big deal, but it is an inconvenience. If 1394b flash-sticks had been more common, it would have been a big deal, but since most 1394b-equipment is cable-connected it's, as you said, just a matter of having to get the correct cable. The problem is, most equipment come with only one cable and rarely state which one it is, so I rather often find myself ordering a new cable two minutes after unpacking some new equipment.
The good thing is that S1600 and S3200 will be using the same connectors as S800, so once everyone ditch the S400 standard, we'll have no more problems.
Regarding not seeing weather it's an 1.1 or 2.0 port; This wont be a problem with USB3 versus 1.1/2.0. The connectors will look different, it's just that they will be backwards/forwards compatible. There is a second row of contacts in a 3.0 connector, that doesn't make contact if it is used with 1.1/2.0 connector.
S800 and S400 are electrically compatible, not mechanically, so you can use a S400 device in a S800 port or vice versa using converter cables, but you can't take one of the rare S400 flash-sticks and put it in a S800 port.
USB 3.0 and USB 1.1/2.0 are mechanically compatible. You can take any USB2.0 cable or USB 2.0 flash-stick and plug it into a USB 3.0 port, or take a future USB 3.0 flash-stick and plug it into a USB 1.1 port. The plug has been designed so that the extra connectors only make contact if a USB3 plug is used in a USB3 port.
Problem is, giving PC's with integrated graphics the same gaming capabilities as a PC with powerful discrete graphics would mean also mean than the reason why people buy those PC's is no longer valid. People buy them because they are cheap, which they won't be if they're to have high-end graphics...
There's just much less likelihood of a user installing something bad by accident.
This is only true if the user actually stops and think when asked to give their password when installing an application. Most people don't. If the cute butterfly screensaver they just downloaded ask them to type their password while installing, they most probably will...
The biggest difference is in the amount of compromised software in circulation.
Personally, I've taken the other road. Sold my Mac due to its horrible hardware and went back to using a Thinkpad for a laptop and a standard homebuilt x86 system for a stationary. Rather Windows than Apple hardware i say. =P
For me, the OS is mainly something that glues together my hardware I/O with my applications. As long as I can use the hardware I want and run the applications I want, what OS I run is irrelevant.
Unless Apple will make OS X inconsistent in how it interprets Giga, making it mean 10^9 on some places and 2^30 in others, a Mac will look like it has more RAM. Since they still will be using the same memory as everyone else, they'll be shipped with, say, 4294967296 bytes of RAM, not 4000000000.
A person who's not educated in the field might believe that a PC from Apple specified to have 4.3GB of RAM has more memory than a PC from Dell specified to have 4GB of RAM. =P
It would be fun to see RAM-sizes expressed this way. Since it is a bit unpractical to make RAM in, for instance 4GB modules, we'd instead be buying 4.294967296GB of RAM and when reading minimum requirements of games they'd be stated as "Requires a 536.870912MB Directx 10.1 compatible graphics card." =)
An unlocked Iphone, even if jailbroken, is still a vendor-locked software platform. You can not use the Ipod/Iphone OS on hardware from any other vendor than Apple.
If/when Android gets a large enough userbase for it to be profitable for Tom Tom, or one of its competitors, to release a GPS-navigator application for the platform, someone probably will...
Exactly. Compare the same OS on two laptops with the same chipset, CPU, GPU and similar screens and battery-capacity but that uses different drivers. If one of them runs out of battery significantly faster than the other, it's clearly a driver problem. (Might also be a hardware problem, but then it would affect any OS.)
One wonders if the people having this problem uses mostly Apple-supplied drivers or if they use the drivers available from ATI, Intel, Realtek, etc, for the hardware where there are alternatives to the Apple-supplied ones. Would be interesting to see if there's a difference in power-drain with different drivers...
Every time I've done the maths regarding the cost of obtaining a phone for "free" or at a "subsidised" price bundled with a 12, 24 or even 36(!) months service-contract versus simply buying the phone and then obtaining a service for it, the result has been that it is cheaper to simply buy the phone. In some cases, the cost of the "free" phone has actually been around double that of buying it separately. Don't know about how the numbers work out in the US, but here the "subsidisation" of mobile handsets is purely a marketing-scheme to make people believe they're getting a bargain while getting ripped off.
Shop around and buy the phone where it is the cheapest. Shop around and get the cheapest service that matches your usage characteristics. = Lots of money saved in the long run.
Well... It's kind of, but not exactly, like how Ubuntu 8 runs a kernel whose version is 2.6 Windows Vista runs a kernel with version 6.0 Windows 7 runs a kernel with version 6.1 The biggest difference between the Ubuntu analogy is that the 7 in Windows 7 isn't really a version number. It's part of a product name, like Vista or XP, made up by a marketing department and has probably been selected based on results from lengthy market research and analysis of how to best avoid having the new release being associated too much with the ill-received Windows Vista.
I've read lots of spiffy evidence to support climate change but it really itches my gizzard when 'scientists' attribute every tiny aberration in the weather to it.
But it is logical to consider climate change as a possible contributor to weather change, and all that is being said it that this might be caused by a climate change. Personally, I think it would be very strange if a climate change didn't cause a weather change.
The worst offenders in that area are Imacs... When the built-in computer dies or gets to old, you can't continue using it as a screen. Of to the scrap-heap with the perfectly good 20" 1680x1050 display... =P
Nice to see that Apple finally has started letting the customer choose different panel-options for their laptops. Hopefully, they'll start offering glossy/non-glossy as an option too. High resolution laptop-panels are nothing new, though. I had a 1600x1200 15.6" laptop back somewhere around 2000 - 2001, a 1400x1050 14.7" before that. Right now I'm writing on a six year old 1400x1050 15" laptop.
The main reason why high-density high-resolution panels always have been limited mostly to laptops is probably cost, not availability of the technology itself. Even while mass produced, high-density panels require more expensive production machines and have smaller fault tolerances than standard-density panels, which means worse yields and higher cost. There probably isn't enough market for high-density desktop displays if they cost as much as a bigger, higher quality display with lower pixel-density. In a laptop, you don't want the screen to be too large, since it will make the laptop huge, so you have no option but to go high-density if you want a usable resolution.
I have one of my three bracket-mounted LCD-monitors in portrait mode and there are two problems that I experience with this which, in my opinion, makes it unsuitable for working with text over prolonged periods. 1. If I use sub-pixel anti-aliasing, like cleartype, text get a bit fuzzy on the portrait monitor since the sub-pixels are oriented the wrong way. 2. On most LCD's, especially older ones, the picture changes more per viewing-angle difference in vertical than in horizontal direction. On my portrait screen, which is the oldest of my three, the different angels between my eyes at the distance I'm at are enough that the picture looks a bit different for each eye, which is a bit straining in the long run.
Slashdot Mirror
How long from poweron to a fully working X environment with Gnome or KDE?
The real strange thing is that external drives with eSATA are so much more expensive than those without.
eSATA is simply SATA at higher voltage... Why would it increase the cost of an external drive more than a few cent?
It's not a big deal, but it is an inconvenience.
If 1394b flash-sticks had been more common, it would have been a big deal, but since most 1394b-equipment is cable-connected it's, as you said, just a matter of having to get the correct cable.
The problem is, most equipment come with only one cable and rarely state which one it is, so I rather often find myself ordering a new cable two minutes after unpacking some new equipment.
The good thing is that S1600 and S3200 will be using the same connectors as S800, so once everyone ditch the S400 standard, we'll have no more problems.
Regarding not seeing weather it's an 1.1 or 2.0 port; This wont be a problem with USB3 versus 1.1/2.0. The connectors will look different, it's just that they will be backwards/forwards compatible.
There is a second row of contacts in a 3.0 connector, that doesn't make contact if it is used with 1.1/2.0 connector.
S800 and S400 are electrically compatible, not mechanically, so you can use a S400 device in a S800 port or vice versa using converter cables, but you can't take one of the rare S400 flash-sticks and put it in a S800 port.
USB 3.0 and USB 1.1/2.0 are mechanically compatible.
You can take any USB2.0 cable or USB 2.0 flash-stick and plug it into a USB 3.0 port, or take a future USB 3.0 flash-stick and plug it into a USB 1.1 port.
The plug has been designed so that the extra connectors only make contact if a USB3 plug is used in a USB3 port.
Problem is, giving PC's with integrated graphics the same gaming capabilities as a PC with powerful discrete graphics would mean also mean than the reason why people buy those PC's is no longer valid.
People buy them because they are cheap, which they won't be if they're to have high-end graphics...
There's just much less likelihood of a user installing something bad by accident.
This is only true if the user actually stops and think when asked to give their password when installing an application.
Most people don't. If the cute butterfly screensaver they just downloaded ask them to type their password while installing, they most probably will...
The biggest difference is in the amount of compromised software in circulation.
On the other hand, we're talking high-power LEDs here.
The high power comes at the price of shortened life.
Personally, I've taken the other road.
Sold my Mac due to its horrible hardware and went back to using a Thinkpad for a laptop and a standard homebuilt x86 system for a stationary.
Rather Windows than Apple hardware i say. =P
For me, the OS is mainly something that glues together my hardware I/O with my applications.
As long as I can use the hardware I want and run the applications I want, what OS I run is irrelevant.
Unless Apple will make OS X inconsistent in how it interprets Giga, making it mean 10^9 on some places and 2^30 in others, a Mac will look like it has more RAM.
Since they still will be using the same memory as everyone else, they'll be shipped with, say, 4294967296 bytes of RAM, not 4000000000.
A person who's not educated in the field might believe that a PC from Apple specified to have 4.3GB of RAM has more memory than a PC from Dell specified to have 4GB of RAM. =P
It would be fun to see RAM-sizes expressed this way.
Since it is a bit unpractical to make RAM in, for instance 4GB modules, we'd instead be buying 4.294967296GB of RAM and when reading minimum requirements of games they'd be stated as "Requires a 536.870912MB Directx 10.1 compatible graphics card." =)
An unlocked Iphone, even if jailbroken, is still a vendor-locked software platform.
You can not use the Ipod/Iphone OS on hardware from any other vendor than Apple.
If/when Android gets a large enough userbase for it to be profitable for Tom Tom, or one of its competitors, to release a GPS-navigator application for the platform, someone probably will...
Well... Comparison to the NanoKey would be in order. =)
Exactly.
Compare the same OS on two laptops with the same chipset, CPU, GPU and similar screens and battery-capacity but that uses different drivers.
If one of them runs out of battery significantly faster than the other, it's clearly a driver problem. (Might also be a hardware problem, but then it would affect any OS.)
One wonders if the people having this problem uses mostly Apple-supplied drivers or if they use the drivers available from ATI, Intel, Realtek, etc, for the hardware where there are alternatives to the Apple-supplied ones.
Would be interesting to see if there's a difference in power-drain with different drivers...
What is needed is to make lobbying illegal and campaign contributions count as bribes.
It's not illegal to do this as far as I know.
So selling a product and then later intentionally breaking it is legal as long as the product you sold is digital?
And he also knows exactly how the OS and the software works. ^_^
Every time I've done the maths regarding the cost of obtaining a phone for "free" or at a "subsidised" price bundled with a 12, 24 or even 36(!) months service-contract versus simply buying the phone and then obtaining a service for it, the result has been that it is cheaper to simply buy the phone.
In some cases, the cost of the "free" phone has actually been around double that of buying it separately.
Don't know about how the numbers work out in the US, but here the "subsidisation" of mobile handsets is purely a marketing-scheme to make people believe they're getting a bargain while getting ripped off.
Shop around and buy the phone where it is the cheapest.
Shop around and get the cheapest service that matches your usage characteristics.
=
Lots of money saved in the long run.
Well... It's kind of, but not exactly, like how Ubuntu 8 runs a kernel whose version is 2.6
Windows Vista runs a kernel with version 6.0
Windows 7 runs a kernel with version 6.1
The biggest difference between the Ubuntu analogy is that the 7 in Windows 7 isn't really a version number.
It's part of a product name, like Vista or XP, made up by a marketing department and has probably been selected based on results from lengthy market research and analysis of how to best avoid having the new release being associated too much with the ill-received Windows Vista.
I've read lots of spiffy evidence to support climate change but it really itches my gizzard when 'scientists' attribute every tiny aberration in the weather to it.
But it is logical to consider climate change as a possible contributor to weather change, and all that is being said it that this might be caused by a climate change.
Personally, I think it would be very strange if a climate change didn't cause a weather change.
Or the end user might have only an SDTV.
...which works just as great for PC's as it does for consoles if your PC has a S-Video port. =)
...if better games by big publishers are pushed back to make way for lower quality games by indies.
The question is; Why would games by big publishers be pushed back by Microsoft also offering games by small publishers?
The worst offenders in that area are Imacs...
When the built-in computer dies or gets to old, you can't continue using it as a screen. Of to the scrap-heap with the perfectly good 20" 1680x1050 display... =P
Nice to see that Apple finally has started letting the customer choose different panel-options for their laptops. Hopefully, they'll start offering glossy/non-glossy as an option too.
High resolution laptop-panels are nothing new, though. I had a 1600x1200 15.6" laptop back somewhere around 2000 - 2001, a 1400x1050 14.7" before that. Right now I'm writing on a six year old 1400x1050 15" laptop.
The main reason why high-density high-resolution panels always have been limited mostly to laptops is probably cost, not availability of the technology itself.
Even while mass produced, high-density panels require more expensive production machines and have smaller fault tolerances than standard-density panels, which means worse yields and higher cost.
There probably isn't enough market for high-density desktop displays if they cost as much as a bigger, higher quality display with lower pixel-density.
In a laptop, you don't want the screen to be too large, since it will make the laptop huge, so you have no option but to go high-density if you want a usable resolution.
I have one of my three bracket-mounted LCD-monitors in portrait mode and there are two problems that I experience with this which, in my opinion, makes it unsuitable for working with text over prolonged periods.
1. If I use sub-pixel anti-aliasing, like cleartype, text get a bit fuzzy on the portrait monitor since the sub-pixels are oriented the wrong way.
2. On most LCD's, especially older ones, the picture changes more per viewing-angle difference in vertical than in horizontal direction. On my portrait screen, which is the oldest of my three, the different angels between my eyes at the distance I'm at are enough that the picture looks a bit different for each eye, which is a bit straining in the long run.