I have an Asus L7300/P3-500/128MB/6GB and I love it. Except one minor problem, IT WON'T RUN X. I tried Mandrake 8, Redhat 7.1, Suse 7.2 and Progeny and EVERY TIME I get stopped cold in my tracks once we come to X setup. Even after I got the H/V sync rates (which are nowhere to be found) from Asus, still no love. Aside from that, the only complaint I have is that the keyboard is a little mushy.
darn right you are. Have the same experience with Suse. Autodetects everything, loads drivers and just works. My recent upgrade from NT4 to W2K was a disaster with 2 crashes, 15 re-boots and about 1/2 of my applications no longer working. Compare 45 minutes for a complete Suse install (incl. apps) vs. 9 hours Win2K (excl apps).
Was that not the line in Jurassic Park about an enzyme prohibiting male offspring? Well, Gnutella may not scale well today, but a legion of MP3 loving programmers WILL find a way to share music. The proverbial cat is out of the bag and millions of consumers have tasted blood. The RIAA cannot put this Genie back in the bottle and only significantly lower prices for music with added goodies will bring buyers back. And it better be online, reliable and good.
I bought 2 of those MPTrips and what trips they are. Most of the time, they do not work and are generally a waste of money. I am looking forward to a MP3/CD player that actually works.
The Napster/MP3 movement is nothing but a revolte against profiteering by music industry. Give me a CD for $3-4 and Napster is out of business, except for finding new and exciting artists you've never heard of. For every Napster shut down, two new ones will pop up. It will not stop. The RIAA will increase prices for CD's and cut Artists portions of the sale in order to pay for the legions of lawyers. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a real "paradigm change" if I've ever seen one. Then, of course, we cannot count out an adaption of Carnivore (or DCS 1000), that will seek out MP3 transfers and our own government will put an end to it all by hounding us down. My only question is, can we pin this on Microsoft somehow???
You are correct. Rebates are a simple way to A) have a low "advertising price" and B) get people to pay the full price. As you correctly stated, the redemption rate is very low. Only when you reach a $100 rebate, will you eventually see a 60-70% redemption rate. For amounts below that redemption varies from 10-25%. In other words, 75-90% of customers who thought they are getting a good deal, have indeed paid full price. And yes, I truly hate rebates too, which is why I rather to to pricewatch.com and buy the OEM model and don't wait for months to get the rebate. However, somtimes the deals are just too good (I got a 45GB WD HDD for $99 after 2 rebates).
KD
but there is an innate satisfaction when you figured out a solution for a problem by yourself. And no, I don't want a "x in Win = y in Linux" dumbed down manual. Linux/BSD/Unix is too powerful for such simplification and if you don't know WHY you need/want Linux, maybe it's not for you quite yet. O'Reilly books and trial and error is the way to go. I am running RH7/Gnome and FreeBSD 4.2/KDE (and NT for work).
I was a product manager for Acer from 87-94 and I have seen my share of good and bad products. The problem really is, that even if you know that your product is bad, management usually decides to ship anyway, hoping no-one will notice. After all, there was an investment in developing the product and if it's someones pet project, it will ship. Politics are more important than quality, cost of support and/or returns and brand reputation. This has led to the creation of Asus by mostly ex-Acer engineers. Compare the product quality today and you will see the philosophy will pay off for the company in the long run.
Let's face it, IE is a good browser, has huge market share (don't recall the last numbers, but it dominates) which means ALL websites will test with IE primarily. IE has won the browser wars! --
I, however, use Opera on a daily basis and LOVE it. It's fast, compliant and for the few cases it does not work I use IE. My only complaint is that Opera is a memory hog on heavy surf sessions. It's also available cross-platform (Win, BeOS, Linux [almost]). By turning off the graphics, it's almost like Lynx with support for tables.
Last Netscape/Mozilla I tried was 4.7 and M14 I think and I have to say, I was not overly impressed.
when they try to contact their old chip customers. I used to work for a major player back when we were using 3dfx chips for our video cards. When 3dfx decided to have a go at the video card market by themselves, they really pissed us off. Knowing our CEO, there is very little chance of those guys coming back to become a chip supplier again. Looks like their only chance is to line up some taiwanese card makers and hope to compete on price alone. How that will improve their margin model I fail to see.
Anyway, my $0.02 worth.
Switching to Linux would be sweet, but it is unrealistic. Given the "experience" people have with Windows, we are bound to see that OS linger around for longer than we'd like.
Fortunately, there is a really nice "Office" suite available for FREE from software602.com . This free software can read/write word/excel documents and is very user friendly. While it does not have ALL the features of MS Office, it does come very close indeed. I installed it on all my machines and even my kids love it.
Have had BellSouth ADSL service for about 4-5 months now and I am quite happy with the service. I get consistent download speeds between 800-1200kb and the service hardly ever goes down.
I opted for the $150 install in order to get the external ethernet ADSL box (I really did not feel like having a USB or PCI ADSL modem for networking reasons). When the guy came to install, I pretty much took the box from his hands and installed it myself. I am really anal about someone else installing stuff on my PC's. I had a Win98 machine set aside for this purpose. Once we had it up and running and he left, it was time to take it back down and set up routing for my network of 12 machines. At the time, I had a Win2K box sitting around and I downloaded the PPPoE protocol from some guys website in Germany (email me for details). 60k, sweet install and zero problems. A lot nicer than the Enternet solution BellSouth gives you. Once i get around, BSD will go on this machine.
As for the few outages I have experienced, I just wish they'd smack that guy in the backroom playing around with settings. DNS servers (both) died for a few hours once. Their news servers must run on limited drive capacity, judging by the short time the articles stay alive.
Also, watch the billing. When I signed up, the price was $59 and a few days later they announced their $40 deal. If you don't call, you won't get it. Although I have to say, when I called and bitched, they actually gave me a rebate of $150 on the installation fee.
As for their tech support, solution number one - reboot modem, reboot system, re-install Windows. Fortunately I am a network engineer (for a cable modem manufacturer no less) and I can figure out what's wrong by myself. Poor regular endusers.
Bottom line, I am happy with the service and with BellSouth and I would still be happy even if there were more problems. The speed is just something you NEED!!! So I say, go for it.
degree. Even though it only helps you GET the interview and to IMPRESS the interviewer! Other than that, f*** it. I'm 40 now and I wish I had a degree just for the above reason. I know I'm up-to-date with technology on a breadth of technologies, but try getting in the door without "the check point" on your resume is a real b*tch.
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I have an Asus L7300/P3-500/128MB/6GB and I love it. Except one minor problem, IT WON'T RUN X. I tried Mandrake 8, Redhat 7.1, Suse 7.2 and Progeny and EVERY TIME I get stopped cold in my tracks once we come to X setup. Even after I got the H/V sync rates (which are nowhere to be found) from Asus, still no love. Aside from that, the only complaint I have is that the keyboard is a little mushy.
darn right you are. Have the same experience with Suse. Autodetects everything, loads drivers and just works. My recent upgrade from NT4 to W2K was a disaster with 2 crashes, 15 re-boots and about 1/2 of my applications no longer working. Compare 45 minutes for a complete Suse install (incl. apps) vs. 9 hours Win2K (excl apps).
BSOD. Who the heck is gonna push the reset button 200 meters away????
Was that not the line in Jurassic Park about an enzyme prohibiting male offspring? Well, Gnutella may not scale well today, but a legion of MP3 loving programmers WILL find a way to share music. The proverbial cat is out of the bag and millions of consumers have tasted blood. The RIAA cannot put this Genie back in the bottle and only significantly lower prices for music with added goodies will bring buyers back. And it better be online, reliable and good.
I bought 2 of those MPTrips and what trips they are. Most of the time, they do not work and are generally a waste of money. I am looking forward to a MP3/CD player that actually works.
The Napster/MP3 movement is nothing but a revolte against profiteering by music industry. Give me a CD for $3-4 and Napster is out of business, except for finding new and exciting artists you've never heard of. For every Napster shut down, two new ones will pop up. It will not stop. The RIAA will increase prices for CD's and cut Artists portions of the sale in order to pay for the legions of lawyers. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a real "paradigm change" if I've ever seen one. Then, of course, we cannot count out an adaption of Carnivore (or DCS 1000), that will seek out MP3 transfers and our own government will put an end to it all by hounding us down. My only question is, can we pin this on Microsoft somehow???
You are correct. Rebates are a simple way to A) have a low "advertising price" and B) get people to pay the full price. As you correctly stated, the redemption rate is very low. Only when you reach a $100 rebate, will you eventually see a 60-70% redemption rate. For amounts below that redemption varies from 10-25%. In other words, 75-90% of customers who thought they are getting a good deal, have indeed paid full price. And yes, I truly hate rebates too, which is why I rather to to pricewatch.com and buy the OEM model and don't wait for months to get the rebate. However, somtimes the deals are just too good (I got a 45GB WD HDD for $99 after 2 rebates). KD
That just works the best.......
Second rate scientists should be paid NOT to do research.
Finally a BSD/ports like distribution for Linux.
to buy your own politician. It's really cheap in Latin America, expensive in the US/Europe.
but there is an innate satisfaction when you figured out a solution for a problem by yourself. And no, I don't want a "x in Win = y in Linux" dumbed down manual. Linux/BSD/Unix is too powerful for such simplification and if you don't know WHY you need/want Linux, maybe it's not for you quite yet. O'Reilly books and trial and error is the way to go. I am running RH7/Gnome and FreeBSD 4.2/KDE (and NT for work).
I was a product manager for Acer from 87-94 and I have seen my share of good and bad products. The problem really is, that even if you know that your product is bad, management usually decides to ship anyway, hoping no-one will notice. After all, there was an investment in developing the product and if it's someones pet project, it will ship. Politics are more important than quality, cost of support and/or returns and brand reputation. This has led to the creation of Asus by mostly ex-Acer engineers. Compare the product quality today and you will see the philosophy will pay off for the company in the long run.
Let's face it, IE is a good browser, has huge market share (don't recall the last numbers, but it dominates) which means ALL websites will test with IE primarily. IE has won the browser wars! -- I, however, use Opera on a daily basis and LOVE it. It's fast, compliant and for the few cases it does not work I use IE. My only complaint is that Opera is a memory hog on heavy surf sessions. It's also available cross-platform (Win, BeOS, Linux [almost]). By turning off the graphics, it's almost like Lynx with support for tables. Last Netscape/Mozilla I tried was 4.7 and M14 I think and I have to say, I was not overly impressed.
when they try to contact their old chip customers. I used to work for a major player back when we were using 3dfx chips for our video cards. When 3dfx decided to have a go at the video card market by themselves, they really pissed us off. Knowing our CEO, there is very little chance of those guys coming back to become a chip supplier again. Looks like their only chance is to line up some taiwanese card makers and hope to compete on price alone. How that will improve their margin model I fail to see. Anyway, my $0.02 worth.
Switching to Linux would be sweet, but it is unrealistic. Given the "experience" people have with Windows, we are bound to see that OS linger around for longer than we'd like. Fortunately, there is a really nice "Office" suite available for FREE from software602.com . This free software can read/write word/excel documents and is very user friendly. While it does not have ALL the features of MS Office, it does come very close indeed. I installed it on all my machines and even my kids love it.
Have had BellSouth ADSL service for about 4-5 months now and I am quite happy with the service. I get consistent download speeds between 800-1200kb and the service hardly ever goes down. I opted for the $150 install in order to get the external ethernet ADSL box (I really did not feel like having a USB or PCI ADSL modem for networking reasons). When the guy came to install, I pretty much took the box from his hands and installed it myself. I am really anal about someone else installing stuff on my PC's. I had a Win98 machine set aside for this purpose. Once we had it up and running and he left, it was time to take it back down and set up routing for my network of 12 machines. At the time, I had a Win2K box sitting around and I downloaded the PPPoE protocol from some guys website in Germany (email me for details). 60k, sweet install and zero problems. A lot nicer than the Enternet solution BellSouth gives you. Once i get around, BSD will go on this machine. As for the few outages I have experienced, I just wish they'd smack that guy in the backroom playing around with settings. DNS servers (both) died for a few hours once. Their news servers must run on limited drive capacity, judging by the short time the articles stay alive. Also, watch the billing. When I signed up, the price was $59 and a few days later they announced their $40 deal. If you don't call, you won't get it. Although I have to say, when I called and bitched, they actually gave me a rebate of $150 on the installation fee. As for their tech support, solution number one - reboot modem, reboot system, re-install Windows. Fortunately I am a network engineer (for a cable modem manufacturer no less) and I can figure out what's wrong by myself. Poor regular endusers. Bottom line, I am happy with the service and with BellSouth and I would still be happy even if there were more problems. The speed is just something you NEED!!! So I say, go for it.
degree. Even though it only helps you GET the interview and to IMPRESS the interviewer! Other than that, f*** it. I'm 40 now and I wish I had a degree just for the above reason. I know I'm up-to-date with technology on a breadth of technologies, but try getting in the door without "the check point" on your resume is a real b*tch.