DVDs and CDs use lasers of different wavelength. If you want to use a DVD player with CD-Rs, which are like CDs just a bit tricky because of their lesser reflectivity, you have to use a double laser pickup.
That obviously increases cost and I guess could impact reliability. AFAIK Sony has never made a player that plays CD-R. Other brands are in that boat too. On the other hand all Pioneer players do, since they have the aforementioned double laser pickup.
To sum it up, it's mainly an engineering decision.
Well, the best bang for you buck is quite probably the Denon AVR-3801. It's the cheapest reciever that does Dolby Digital EX and DTS ES, the new 6.1 formats. It has a power rating of 105w to 7 channels. The list price is around $1200 but you can get it for $900 or so.
Speakers is a quite complicated matter. Basically you'll have to set your budget and then listen to 3 or 4 sets of speakers in your price range.
BTW, if you are still able to return your DVD player I'd do it and get one with progressive scan. Progressive scan players have a much better video quality than the interlaced ones. A good one would be the Toshiba SD-6200.
The book reader on Pocket PC, called eBook, it's really cool. The main feature would be its ClearType technology that renders the pages of the book to reduce eye strain.
After a while you even forget that you are not reading on paper and best of all, whith the beautiful screen of the iPaq or the Cassiopea, you can read in the dark. And on top of that you could even play some background MP3.
You can bet that Bill Gates did not pay huge amounts of money in taxes either, because, like most Microsoft employees, he takes much of his compensation in the form of stock options, and stock capital gains are taxed at a much lower rate than the "unfair" rates charged to me on my income (I'm in the highest tax bracket, but my income is less than 1% of Bill Gates's).
Not so. Stock options are considered income and taxed at the appropiate tax bracket for your yearly income.
Microsoft does not control their own platform anymore. Their installed base is spread across 5+ Win32 implementations, including 95/95OSR2/98/98SE/NT351/NT4/2000. Office *has to* run on every single one of those, because many home and business customers don't upgrade their OS much if ever.
This is not true since new versions of Office require you to have a recent version of IE. For other applications many require you to have a recent Service Pack to even install.
Are we talking about the same MS software (windows, for example, that has gone from retail $69 to retail $189)? If so, you need to learn some math. Down is towards zero. Up is away from zero.
What versions of Windows are you speaking about? If I go to www.pricewatch.com I can get a retail Windows 98 SE for $80. I guess that $189 is for Windows 2000 Professional.
In terms of competitors - Debian -$0. Red Hat - $39.
How much is the version of Solaris you would use on a Workstation? I'm sure that more than $189 which after all is a recommended retail price. Prices for OEMs are much lower.
Office Suites - MS Office - $449. ApplixWare - $99. Corel Office $149 (linux version). Star Office $0.
If you are going to compare MS Office and "things" like Corel Office and ApplixWare as equals then there's not much to discuss. Microsoft spends billions of dollars developing this applications. You may like them or not but charging $495 for a full version of Office is by no means excesive. Again, that price is a recommended price. You can find it much cheaper by shopping around and corporate users have huge discounts.
The class action suit that has been accepted in California claims that Microsoft used its monopolistic position to harm customers by charging high prices.
Since the price of Microsoft software has gone down constantly during the last 15 years and competitors usually charge higher prices they don't have a chance of winning. If it has been accepted it's just because of the particularities of Californian Law.
Hell, even in the main case of the DOJ vs. Microsoft the prosecution admitted that Microsoft charges fair prices.
It's quite sad to see this "article" promoted on \. because it's just a piece of pure Microsoft bashing relying on half trues and some blatant lies.
Internally when Windows 2000 was announced, people were told not to even think about using it for production because it was too unstable
Whoa, then I must have dreamt when ALL the internal production servers and domain controllers (on the thousands and all around the world) were upgraded, not only to the final version but to several interim betas too.
About having services running on non-Windows systems it's a well known fact that some efforts were put on migrating Hotmail but it didn't turn out to be straightforward. However, the current migration using Windows 2000 is under way with good results.
As far as I know MSN runs on Windows 2000. The same goes for big revenue generators like www.expedia.com and other "smaller" sites such as www.carpoint.com or www.sidewalk. Not mentioning www.microsoft.com that gets a good amount of hits per day.
So please, if you want to some Microsoft bashing, at least get your facts right.
This already exists: www.passport.com
on
A Matter Of Trust?
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· Score: 1
There's a company called Microsoft that already has a service like this.
You can create an account with all your details on http://www.passport.com and when you shop on any of the participant sites you don't have to enter any information. For a list of the participant sites go here.
A DVD costs around $1 to manufacture in large runs. Add to this the price of packaging, destructive coating and distribution. Substract this to $3 (or even $2.50). What you have left is the total (and paltry) profit. The initial price of a DIVX was $4.49 and according to the DIVX business model they actually lost money if the buyer didn't use the disc again after the 48 hours window had finished. Besides, there are still severe undercapacity problems with DVDs; they can't just produce as many discs as they want and as a result, there are currently many delays with new releases and reprints. And some clever guys are speaking about destroying them? Bollocks.
It seems hard to believe that they'll get twice as much battery life as existing laptops. I'm no expert, but I'd say that the screen, HDD, DVD drive, etc waste much more energy than the microprocessor. Anybody that knows this stuff cares to give his opinion?
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Sorry, I should have specified: I was talking about standalone DVD players, not DVD-ROM units, which by they way may not even be manufactured by Sony.
That obviously increases cost and I guess could impact reliability. AFAIK Sony has never made a player that plays CD-R. Other brands are in that boat too. On the other hand all Pioneer players do, since they have the aforementioned double laser pickup.
To sum it up, it's mainly an engineering decision.
Denon catalogue
Speakers is a quite complicated matter. Basically you'll have to set your budget and then listen to 3 or 4 sets of speakers in your price range.
BTW, if you are still able to return your DVD player I'd do it and get one with progressive scan. Progressive scan players have a much better video quality than the interlaced ones. A good one would be the Toshiba SD-6200.
Some screenshots from eBook:
1.
2.
3.
More info here.
After a while you even forget that you are not reading on paper and best of all, whith the beautiful screen of the iPaq or the Cassiopea, you can read in the dark. And on top of that you could even play some background MP3.
Try to do that with your Palm!!!
Not so. Stock options are considered income and taxed at the appropiate tax bracket for your yearly income.
Wouldn't that be the X-Box? Of course it's not released yet but since you speak in future tense...
This is not true since new versions of Office require you to have a recent version of IE. For other applications many require you to have a recent Service Pack to even install.
For a very good resource on this issue check: http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/ en/ telemarketing.html
What versions of Windows are you speaking about? If I go to www.pricewatch.com I can get a retail Windows 98 SE for $80. I guess that $189 is for Windows 2000 Professional.
In terms of competitors - Debian -$0. Red Hat - $39.
How much is the version of Solaris you would use on a Workstation? I'm sure that more than $189 which after all is a recommended retail price. Prices for OEMs are much lower.
Office Suites - MS Office - $449. ApplixWare - $99. Corel Office $149 (linux version). Star Office $0.
If you are going to compare MS Office and "things" like Corel Office and ApplixWare as equals then there's not much to discuss. Microsoft spends billions of dollars developing this applications. You may like them or not but charging $495 for a full version of Office is by no means excesive. Again, that price is a recommended price. You can find it much cheaper by shopping around and corporate users have huge discounts.
The class action suit that has been accepted in California claims that Microsoft used its monopolistic position to harm customers by charging high prices.
Since the price of Microsoft software has gone down constantly during the last 15 years and competitors usually charge higher prices they don't have a chance of winning. If it has been accepted it's just because of the particularities of Californian Law.
Hell, even in the main case of the DOJ vs. Microsoft the prosecution admitted that Microsoft charges fair prices.
It's quite sad to see this "article" promoted on \. because it's just a piece of pure Microsoft bashing relying on half trues and some blatant lies.
Internally when Windows 2000 was announced, people were told not to even think about using it for production because it was too unstable
Whoa, then I must have dreamt when ALL the internal production servers and domain controllers (on the thousands and all around the world) were upgraded, not only to the final version but to several interim betas too.
About having services running on non-Windows systems it's a well known fact that some efforts were put on migrating Hotmail but it didn't turn out to be straightforward. However, the current migration using Windows 2000 is under way with good results.
As far as I know MSN runs on Windows 2000. The same goes for big revenue generators like www.expedia.com and other "smaller" sites such as www.carpoint.com or www.sidewalk. Not mentioning www.microsoft.com that gets a good amount of hits per day.
So please, if you want to some Microsoft bashing, at least get your facts right.
You can create an account with all your details on http://www.passport.com and when you shop on any of the participant sites you don't have to enter any information. For a list of the participant sites go here.
A DVD costs around $1 to manufacture in large runs. Add to this the price of packaging, destructive coating and distribution. Substract this to $3 (or even $2.50). What you have left is the total (and paltry) profit. The initial price of a DIVX was $4.49 and according to the DIVX business model they actually lost money if the buyer didn't use the disc again after the 48 hours window had finished. Besides, there are still severe undercapacity problems with DVDs; they can't just produce as many discs as they want and as a result, there are currently many delays with new releases and reprints. And some clever guys are speaking about destroying them? Bollocks.
It seems hard to believe that they'll get twice as much battery life as existing laptops. I'm no expert, but I'd say that the screen, HDD, DVD drive, etc waste much more energy than the microprocessor. Anybody that knows this stuff cares to give his opinion?