What are you talking about? XP was horrible before SP1. Driver nightmares, very similar to early Vista - but SP1a made it rock solid enough for daily use.
Windows 2000 had an awful process scheduler, which I'm guessing caused the problems GP referring to. By the way never attempt to run vmware-server on Windows 2000 box. Also Windows 2000 didn't have plug-and-play whereas Windows 98 did.
Depends how you define awful. I still have an Athlon XP 2400+ sitting in the corner, with a beefy GeForce 7800GS. When playing CPU-bound games like Warcraft III or Left4Dead, it gets 15-25% higher framerates than XP running on the same computer.
I don't actually use it for such games anymore, but I did test it and it was quite enlightening.
I've noted that during heavy HDD activity, Win2k's buffer when burning DVDs will run down to 0%, but XP's will stay in the 80% range. I've never burned a corrupt DVD, but I can see that your claim may have merit. It certainly does have behaviour favouring a single process.
To me plug and play is equivalent to hotplug, but for hardware that doesn't warrant "hot".
Ex: Ubuntu doesn't have Plug'n'Play USB sticks, because you have to unmount them when unplugging, similar to Win2k. In Win2k, none of your changes are written unless you eject first. For Ubuntu, if you delete anything off your USB stick, you can completely corrupt it unless you unmount first.:P Same story for OSX - screwed up an SD card pretty bad by pulling it out of a card reader.
XP, on the other hand, has flawless plug'n'play for USB sticks and SD cards. Once the blinking LED goes out, you can pull it out and you're good to go.
Now, regarding drivers... I really don't care. Windows and Linux use different kernel models - Linux builds tons of drivers into the Kernel, which makes it take forever to boot, and Windows doesn't. Windows has tons on the install DVD, but is fetching drivers really so difficult? I usually use nLite on XP to remove all the drivers I don't need, and then I just download them if I finally need to install something. It seems to speed the OS up a bit.
Windows 2000 was my favorite OS - it ran my few favorite games just fine, was totally stable, I could strip out the few effects I didn't want (fading menus, etc.) and it ran like a champ for YEARS on a 1 GHz Pentium III. I never liked XP (used it at work for years) as much as I like W2K and my experiences with Vista were very much like the stereotypical complaints. Windows 7 is slightly better than Vista in some ways but worse in others, like the taskbar and the fact that you can't use the 'classic' themes. Luckily for me, Mac OS X came out right around when Windows XP did, and it's been getting better and better and better (mostly) over the years while Windows has been getting worse and worse and worse. Mac OS X is the only OS I use for personal reasons and I'm lucky enough to be able to use it at work.
You sound a bit like me. I came from Win98, and Windows 2000 was a huge improvement over it. I disliked most of the UI changes XP brought, but eventually I figured out all the tweaks necessary to put XP back in "Win2k mode" - and then I figured out the tweaks necessary to put Win2k into "XP mode" (mostly icon hacks to make the two OS's look nearly the same) - end result is I'm happy working with either, and I despise a default-install of every OS.
To me there are no UI enhancements in Vista or Win7 - however, there are none in OSX either. I've figured out what works for me, and what speeds me up - all the new OS's go backwards in these areas to make themselves more appealing to novices.
Traditional Windows users don't like virtual desktops. I never understood why. Couldn't do without them myself.
Oh, I love them - I just hate having animated buttons in the taskbar.
When OSX got Spaces - (Alt+ArrowKey to move to a new desktop), I was filled with glee! Unfortunately my experience with Linux (Ubuntu varients) so far has been that programs can intercept such key combinations, so there's no reliable way to use the keyboard for such switching.
Maybe I'm just using the wrong key input daemon doohickey driver thingy - but as a linux novice, I have no clue how to fix it.
Yes, alas, a lot of Americans don't seem to grasp that there are many quite different British accents.
And many British don't seem to understand that many North Americans can peg a British person regardless of where he's from, or his specific accent?
It's also easier to lump everyone together under the name of a country. I'm from Canada - Texas, Miami, or New York are all American accents. Since my accent knowledge is mostly from TV, it's safer to specify the country than specify a state and get it wrong.
I have a Macbook and an old Toshiba with a matte screen, and the screen on the macbook is much more useful when, say, outdoors as long as I don't have the sun directly at my back and I don't wear a bright shirt.
I have a Samsung LCD monitor with a matte screen, and it works wonderously in direct sunlight. I use it outdoors(on the patio) all the time.
In my experience, matte always trumps glossy for outdoors - but new also trumps old, which was a factor in your experience.
In this case the guy is a developer, and likely isn't watching movies or looking at pictures on it. I'd say go for matte if possible.
I find the targeted ads on Google searches to be useful. When I'm searching for information on Product X and there's a sponsored link along the lines of "Buy Product X here for $...", I'll often click that link if the stated price is reasonable. Well-targeted non-intrusive ads can be quite helpful for comparison shopping.
Not quite the same thing. That's targeted at the subject (what you're searching for) rather than you.
To quote the article:
Asked if online ad vendors should deliver targeted ads by tracking customers' behavior across multiple Web sites, 86 percent of the 1,000 respondents said no.
So rather than displaying advertisements related to what you're searching, it'll display advertisements for things related to past purchases or stuff you might be interested in. I despise that kind of advertising and tracking. If I'm interested in something, I'll decide when and where I want to buy it - and it's Google's job to provide me with links and suggestions when I finally search it out.
There's also potential for it going wrong. If it tracks only one online purchase that I make - for tampons - then it might keep displaying tampon ads to me. That's despite me being a guy. (And yes, I did purchase tampons once. I am the most computer savvy person in this household, after all.)
Anyone remember that slashdot article about camera facial recognition for targeted marketing? You're female, with a short person next to you, so tampons and kiddie toys must be for you! Doesn't matter that you're a war vet, or just incredibly short. And actually, the guy next to you is a guy, but he has to wear shiny-clear lipstick stuff because of an illness that dries out and cracks his lips, and then he gets sores all over them - but I'm sure he'll want some tampons.
Don't target ads at me, or whatever it thinks makes me "me". Just give me something related to what I'm searching, and that's it.
My biggest OSX complaint is that it can't format stuff properly.
I just had to drag an SD card over to a Windows 2000 PC to format it, so that a Kodak camera wouldn't lock up immediately after it was inserted.
That's because OSX throws all these crappy hidden folders inside every mounted volume. Linux(Ubuntu) does the same thing. Windows does too, but for XP at least it was very easy to turn off. And XP has the correct (to me) behaviour of just deleting stuff permanently from flash drives, rather than making hidden trash folders that screws up cameras.
My other big OSX complaint was the firewire glitch in the old PowerPC ones, which fried one of my enclosures. Seriously - drawing too much power and frying the chips? What a moronic thing to do! And then not patching it forever!...
Oh, there's plenty of valid reasons to dislike Apple - but I agree that most people latch onto petty and pointless ones.
This is what I did, and it worked out quite well for me. After my research I came up with a few conclusions. Here's an outline of my situation and what I discovered.
-I'm Canadian -Black and White laser printers print thousands more B&W pages per cheaper black toner cartridge, compared to colour laser printers. -Just 3 B&W toner cartridges for a colour laser printer is likely to cover the cost of a B&W laser printer. -Networked B&W laser printers are waaaaay cheaper than Networked colour laser printers. By going networked, your OS support is fairly indifferent. You still need drivers, but XP/Vista/Win7/OSX/Linux probably have them.
I opted for the Brother HL2170W. It was on sale for $80, which was a price I couldn't beat. Then I picked up some TN360 toner cartidges from 123inkcartidges.ca, for under $30 a piece. Those print close to 3000 pages each, which puts the price at $0.01/pg (excluding cost of paper)
The cheap OEM TN360 toner has the same quality as the 500-pg starter toner. The starter toner lasted 562 pages according to the web-based UI. That's at 600DPI (fine for text and printing out maps), with toner save OFF. (makes it look like crap) I'm about 2000 pages in now, and the toner is going strong, so I expect it to last at least 2800.
A few months back I dunked my printer in a jug of water by accident. (was watering plants - knocked it over and doused it while it was turned on) I yanked the power cord out, dumped the printer/water on the floor, and dried it out with a hair drier as soon as I could. So far it's been printing same as usual.
Conclusion: Decent, cheap printer with super cheap and adequate toner.
Note: I tested this printer with XP and Ubuntu - it works just fine for both. I have it connected over Wifi to my WRT54GL. It cuts out occasionally, but that's related to the number of desks it has to broadcast through to reach the router. Had totally solid wireless before I moved it, and still is solid when wired. (as should be expected - oh, and I moved it after the water dunking...)
The desire for better CPUs is somewhat plateauing, too. I can't recall seeing a game with min reqs higher than a 2ghz Athlon X2 or 3ghz Pentium D. That's despite much faster dual and quad cores becoming the norm.
For a while, I actually played Left4Dead on my old Athlon XP 2400+ and 7800GS. Got about 30fps with VSYNC on, and settings set somewhat low. But now I've got an Athlon II X2, and 8800GS (which cost $30 brand new, one year ago!)
I don't have any upgrade plans at the moment. If a game runs too slowly, I'll hunt around for a good deal - but for now, my desire to upgrade is gone.
I found an LCD that looks better than all CRT monitors that I've seen.
It cost $600, and one year into use it started bleeding dark pixels down the screen, like liquid.
But for that first year it was beautiful. Perfect viewing angles, both vertical and horizontal. Not even any dimming, let alone colour distortions. Amazing colour - including pitch black blacks. Great resolution, too.
I think this time around I'll go for a $99 Dell. I'm getting tired of sending it back to NEC for repairs.
You joke about it, but I say it with a straight face.
I don't do a lot of virus removal - maybe one per week, just as a service for friends and friends of friends - but about 30% of those "virus" removals are actually tossing out Antivirus and Firewall products.
Ethernet broken? Programs taking 4 minutes to start and 30 minutes to install? Horrible graphical lag, and start menu lockups? Can't shut down the computer or open IE?
First thing I do is disable the AV already on the computer, to check if that's causing it. 30% isn't "usually", but it's high enough that I can't help but want to scream "WTF" at these AV vendors.
No, it reduces fragmentation. Look at it this way:
-You are a webmaster. -You have a website that works in IE.
Result: No further action required. No fragmentation.
-You are a webmaster. -You are coding a fancy DOM website, and need to implement ugly hacks to get it to work in IE. -It's too difficult. You site has too many great features, like a Canvas banner. -You either create a page educating users on the benefits of other browsers... -Or you check for Chrome Frame, and if it isn't there, give them a button to install it. It's just another plugin like flash, right? People will for sure click on that.
Result: More fragmentation, but you save yourself effort, and are less likely to piss off IE lovers that refuse to use another browser.
You struck the nail on the head. 1500mah batteries are really puny. I've seen 4250 mah in similar sized devices. (somewhere between a DS and DS lite in size, but a bit thicker)
A fat phone(or heck, just a larger phone in all directions) could have magnitudes larger batteries and battery life.
You have a misconception of how much of a laptop is battery.
If you had a laptop twice as thick, and battery was somehow shoved into 80% of that extra room, you would have almost 10x the capacity that you do now.
Just keep in mind that that much Lithium in a single device could be used for terrorism and isn't allowed on airplanes. Also, CE/FCC testing would likely fail, so you probably wouldn't be able to sell such a laptop in North America.
Same problem with that 250-hour Hydrogen fuel cell laptop that sony made. Can't sell it until regulations change! (not that a hydrogen fuel cell lappy is at all affordable!)
Wifi nails a lot of battery life, as does the screen. The Pandora devs gave some specific measurements - the Pandora has a separate chip for measuring consumption.
Playing PSX4all at 500MHz: 599mA (peak value I saw) and at 800MHz: 692mA (peak value)
Here was an idling kernel with various backlight settings: 100% - 507mA 88% - 484mA 70% - 456mA 53% - 424mA 35% - 390mA 18% - 364mA 0% - 337mA
You can see that turning that backlight down when not needed can add a fair bit of battery life. You can also see that overclocking the ARM core does not have a significant impact on battery life (relatively speaking). It certainly will reduce battery life but 2x the clock does not mean 1/2 the battery life.
So that puts CPU/GPU power consumption in the sub-100mw range. Under half the consumption of an LED-backlit LCD, and probably still less than OLED.
Really, the solution for phones is to make them bigger. Pockets are fairly large - a bigger phone with a tactile thumb-keyboard, loaded up with a 4200-6000 mah battery and closed-source power management drivers would get ludcrious battery life. Easily a day or two.
Can you imagine a phone as heavy as a Gameboy? That thing would easily have 20k mah in a Li-Po battery. 5-10 days of talk time and usage!
Slashdot Mirror
He's referring to Classic behaviour being removed. Rather than Win2k-XP-Vista behaviour, you're locked to Vista-Win7 behaviour.
What are you talking about? XP was horrible before SP1. Driver nightmares, very similar to early Vista - but SP1a made it rock solid enough for daily use.
Windows 2000 had an awful process scheduler, which I'm guessing caused the problems GP referring to. By the way never attempt to run vmware-server on Windows 2000 box. Also Windows 2000 didn't have plug-and-play whereas Windows 98 did.
Depends how you define awful. I still have an Athlon XP 2400+ sitting in the corner, with a beefy GeForce 7800GS. When playing CPU-bound games like Warcraft III or Left4Dead, it gets 15-25% higher framerates than XP running on the same computer.
I don't actually use it for such games anymore, but I did test it and it was quite enlightening.
I've noted that during heavy HDD activity, Win2k's buffer when burning DVDs will run down to 0%, but XP's will stay in the 80% range. I've never burned a corrupt DVD, but I can see that your claim may have merit. It certainly does have behaviour favouring a single process.
To me plug and play is equivalent to hotplug, but for hardware that doesn't warrant "hot".
Ex: Ubuntu doesn't have Plug'n'Play USB sticks, because you have to unmount them when unplugging, similar to Win2k. In Win2k, none of your changes are written unless you eject first. For Ubuntu, if you delete anything off your USB stick, you can completely corrupt it unless you unmount first. :P Same story for OSX - screwed up an SD card pretty bad by pulling it out of a card reader.
XP, on the other hand, has flawless plug'n'play for USB sticks and SD cards. Once the blinking LED goes out, you can pull it out and you're good to go.
Now, regarding drivers... I really don't care. Windows and Linux use different kernel models - Linux builds tons of drivers into the Kernel, which makes it take forever to boot, and Windows doesn't. Windows has tons on the install DVD, but is fetching drivers really so difficult? I usually use nLite on XP to remove all the drivers I don't need, and then I just download them if I finally need to install something. It seems to speed the OS up a bit.
Windows 2000 was my favorite OS - it ran my few favorite games just fine, was totally stable, I could strip out the few effects I didn't want (fading menus, etc.) and it ran like a champ for YEARS on a 1 GHz Pentium III. I never liked XP (used it at work for years) as much as I like W2K and my experiences with Vista were very much like the stereotypical complaints. Windows 7 is slightly better than Vista in some ways but worse in others, like the taskbar and the fact that you can't use the 'classic' themes. Luckily for me, Mac OS X came out right around when Windows XP did, and it's been getting better and better and better (mostly) over the years while Windows has been getting worse and worse and worse. Mac OS X is the only OS I use for personal reasons and I'm lucky enough to be able to use it at work.
You sound a bit like me. I came from Win98, and Windows 2000 was a huge improvement over it. I disliked most of the UI changes XP brought, but eventually I figured out all the tweaks necessary to put XP back in "Win2k mode" - and then I figured out the tweaks necessary to put Win2k into "XP mode" (mostly icon hacks to make the two OS's look nearly the same) - end result is I'm happy working with either, and I despise a default-install of every OS.
To me there are no UI enhancements in Vista or Win7 - however, there are none in OSX either. I've figured out what works for me, and what speeds me up - all the new OS's go backwards in these areas to make themselves more appealing to novices.
Traditional Windows users don't like virtual desktops. I never understood why. Couldn't do without them myself.
Oh, I love them - I just hate having animated buttons in the taskbar.
When OSX got Spaces - (Alt+ArrowKey to move to a new desktop), I was filled with glee! Unfortunately my experience with Linux (Ubuntu varients) so far has been that programs can intercept such key combinations, so there's no reliable way to use the keyboard for such switching.
Maybe I'm just using the wrong key input daemon doohickey driver thingy - but as a linux novice, I have no clue how to fix it.
Yes, alas, a lot of Americans don't seem to grasp that there are many quite different British accents.
And many British don't seem to understand that many North Americans can peg a British person regardless of where he's from, or his specific accent?
It's also easier to lump everyone together under the name of a country. I'm from Canada - Texas, Miami, or New York are all American accents. Since my accent knowledge is mostly from TV, it's safer to specify the country than specify a state and get it wrong.
I have a Macbook and an old Toshiba with a matte screen, and the screen on the macbook is much more useful when, say, outdoors as long as I don't have the sun directly at my back and I don't wear a bright shirt.
I have a Samsung LCD monitor with a matte screen, and it works wonderously in direct sunlight. I use it outdoors(on the patio) all the time.
In my experience, matte always trumps glossy for outdoors - but new also trumps old, which was a factor in your experience.
In this case the guy is a developer, and likely isn't watching movies or looking at pictures on it. I'd say go for matte if possible.
You noticed that too, huh?
I was going to make a "First Post - after 2 hours!" joke, but the submission error prevented me.
Congrats, OpenSSH team! I think anyone that has used linux has probably used SSH, intentionally or not!
I find the targeted ads on Google searches to be useful. When I'm searching for information on Product X and there's a sponsored link along the lines of "Buy Product X here for $...", I'll often click that link if the stated price is reasonable. Well-targeted non-intrusive ads can be quite helpful for comparison shopping.
Not quite the same thing. That's targeted at the subject (what you're searching for) rather than you.
To quote the article:
Asked if online ad vendors should deliver targeted ads by tracking customers' behavior across multiple Web sites, 86 percent of the 1,000 respondents said no.
So rather than displaying advertisements related to what you're searching, it'll display advertisements for things related to past purchases or stuff you might be interested in. I despise that kind of advertising and tracking. If I'm interested in something, I'll decide when and where I want to buy it - and it's Google's job to provide me with links and suggestions when I finally search it out.
There's also potential for it going wrong. If it tracks only one online purchase that I make - for tampons - then it might keep displaying tampon ads to me. That's despite me being a guy. (And yes, I did purchase tampons once. I am the most computer savvy person in this household, after all.)
Anyone remember that slashdot article about camera facial recognition for targeted marketing? You're female, with a short person next to you, so tampons and kiddie toys must be for you! Doesn't matter that you're a war vet, or just incredibly short. And actually, the guy next to you is a guy, but he has to wear shiny-clear lipstick stuff because of an illness that dries out and cracks his lips, and then he gets sores all over them - but I'm sure he'll want some tampons.
Don't target ads at me, or whatever it thinks makes me "me". Just give me something related to what I'm searching, and that's it.
My biggest OSX complaint is that it can't format stuff properly.
I just had to drag an SD card over to a Windows 2000 PC to format it, so that a Kodak camera wouldn't lock up immediately after it was inserted.
That's because OSX throws all these crappy hidden folders inside every mounted volume. Linux(Ubuntu) does the same thing. Windows does too, but for XP at least it was very easy to turn off. And XP has the correct (to me) behaviour of just deleting stuff permanently from flash drives, rather than making hidden trash folders that screws up cameras.
My other big OSX complaint was the firewire glitch in the old PowerPC ones, which fried one of my enclosures. Seriously - drawing too much power and frying the chips? What a moronic thing to do! And then not patching it forever!...
Oh, there's plenty of valid reasons to dislike Apple - but I agree that most people latch onto petty and pointless ones.
If I had to guess - based on no knowledge whatsoever - I'd say less than half a kilometre.
This is what I did, and it worked out quite well for me. After my research I came up with a few conclusions. Here's an outline of my situation and what I discovered.
-I'm Canadian
-Black and White laser printers print thousands more B&W pages per cheaper black toner cartridge, compared to colour laser printers.
-Just 3 B&W toner cartridges for a colour laser printer is likely to cover the cost of a B&W laser printer.
-Networked B&W laser printers are waaaaay cheaper than Networked colour laser printers. By going networked, your OS support is fairly indifferent. You still need drivers, but XP/Vista/Win7/OSX/Linux probably have them.
I opted for the Brother HL2170W. It was on sale for $80, which was a price I couldn't beat. Then I picked up some TN360 toner cartidges from 123inkcartidges.ca, for under $30 a piece. Those print close to 3000 pages each, which puts the price at $0.01/pg (excluding cost of paper)
The cheap OEM TN360 toner has the same quality as the 500-pg starter toner. The starter toner lasted 562 pages according to the web-based UI. That's at 600DPI (fine for text and printing out maps), with toner save OFF. (makes it look like crap) I'm about 2000 pages in now, and the toner is going strong, so I expect it to last at least 2800.
A few months back I dunked my printer in a jug of water by accident. (was watering plants - knocked it over and doused it while it was turned on) I yanked the power cord out, dumped the printer/water on the floor, and dried it out with a hair drier as soon as I could. So far it's been printing same as usual.
Conclusion: Decent, cheap printer with super cheap and adequate toner.
Note: I tested this printer with XP and Ubuntu - it works just fine for both. I have it connected over Wifi to my WRT54GL. It cuts out occasionally, but that's related to the number of desks it has to broadcast through to reach the router. Had totally solid wireless before I moved it, and still is solid when wired. (as should be expected - oh, and I moved it after the water dunking...)
The desire for better CPUs is somewhat plateauing, too. I can't recall seeing a game with min reqs higher than a 2ghz Athlon X2 or 3ghz Pentium D. That's despite much faster dual and quad cores becoming the norm.
For a while, I actually played Left4Dead on my old Athlon XP 2400+ and 7800GS. Got about 30fps with VSYNC on, and settings set somewhat low. But now I've got an Athlon II X2, and 8800GS (which cost $30 brand new, one year ago!)
I don't have any upgrade plans at the moment. If a game runs too slowly, I'll hunt around for a good deal - but for now, my desire to upgrade is gone.
I found an LCD that looks better than all CRT monitors that I've seen.
It cost $600, and one year into use it started bleeding dark pixels down the screen, like liquid.
But for that first year it was beautiful. Perfect viewing angles, both vertical and horizontal. Not even any dimming, let alone colour distortions. Amazing colour - including pitch black blacks. Great resolution, too.
I think this time around I'll go for a $99 Dell. I'm getting tired of sending it back to NEC for repairs.
How about they fix a real issue like SLI still being horribly unstable after all these years of being around?
You joke about it, but I say it with a straight face.
I don't do a lot of virus removal - maybe one per week, just as a service for friends and friends of friends - but about 30% of those "virus" removals are actually tossing out Antivirus and Firewall products.
Ethernet broken? Programs taking 4 minutes to start and 30 minutes to install? Horrible graphical lag, and start menu lockups? Can't shut down the computer or open IE?
First thing I do is disable the AV already on the computer, to check if that's causing it. 30% isn't "usually", but it's high enough that I can't help but want to scream "WTF" at these AV vendors.
For your example:
D) Do Nothing. (No action required)
Presto Support --> Presto Support
Gecko Support --> Gecko Support
Webkit Support --> Webkit Support
Trident Support --> Webkit Support
Again, seems to simplify things. Might even make it easier for the page to work properly in the other three.
No, it reduces fragmentation. Look at it this way:
-You are a webmaster.
-You have a website that works in IE.
Result: No further action required. No fragmentation.
-You are a webmaster.
-You are coding a fancy DOM website, and need to implement ugly hacks to get it to work in IE.
-It's too difficult. You site has too many great features, like a Canvas banner.
-You either create a page educating users on the benefits of other browsers...
-Or you check for Chrome Frame, and if it isn't there, give them a button to install it. It's just another plugin like flash, right? People will for sure click on that.
Result: More fragmentation, but you save yourself effort, and are less likely to piss off IE lovers that refuse to use another browser.
Seems like a win win to me!
You're off a bit. No conversion is necessary when converting bits to... bits. You just have to divide the time.
See the replies below.
I know how you feel. My ISP advertises "Up To 3/1mbit" - which translates into roughly 2700kbit downstream (good!) and 450kbit upstream. (not so good)
You struck the nail on the head. 1500mah batteries are really puny. I've seen 4250 mah in similar sized devices. (somewhere between a DS and DS lite in size, but a bit thicker)
A fat phone(or heck, just a larger phone in all directions) could have magnitudes larger batteries and battery life.
You have a misconception of how much of a laptop is battery.
If you had a laptop twice as thick, and battery was somehow shoved into 80% of that extra room, you would have almost 10x the capacity that you do now.
Just keep in mind that that much Lithium in a single device could be used for terrorism and isn't allowed on airplanes. Also, CE/FCC testing would likely fail, so you probably wouldn't be able to sell such a laptop in North America.
Same problem with that 250-hour Hydrogen fuel cell laptop that sony made. Can't sell it until regulations change! (not that a hydrogen fuel cell lappy is at all affordable!)
Wifi nails a lot of battery life, as does the screen. The Pandora devs gave some specific measurements - the Pandora has a separate chip for measuring consumption.
http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?/topic/49385-current-drains-by-speed-and-device/page__view__findpost__p__751966
http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?/topic/49478-pandora-battery-upgrade/page__view__findpost__p__753323
Playing PSX4all at 500MHz: 599mA (peak value I saw) and at 800MHz: 692mA (peak value)
Here was an idling kernel with various backlight settings:
100% - 507mA
88% - 484mA
70% - 456mA
53% - 424mA
35% - 390mA
18% - 364mA
0% - 337mA
You can see that turning that backlight down when not needed can add a fair bit of battery life. You can also see that overclocking the ARM core does not have a significant impact on battery life (relatively speaking). It certainly will reduce battery life but 2x the clock does not mean 1/2 the battery life.
So that puts CPU/GPU power consumption in the sub-100mw range. Under half the consumption of an LED-backlit LCD, and probably still less than OLED.
Really, the solution for phones is to make them bigger. Pockets are fairly large - a bigger phone with a tactile thumb-keyboard, loaded up with a 4200-6000 mah battery and closed-source power management drivers would get ludcrious battery life. Easily a day or two.
Can you imagine a phone as heavy as a Gameboy? That thing would easily have 20k mah in a Li-Po battery. 5-10 days of talk time and usage!
So I guess this means Charles Barkley RPG is totally 100% legal? Actually, it probably was before this ruling, because of its price. (Free)
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/01/22/fan-made-charles-barkley-rpg-sees-full-release/
I wouldn't mind seeing that on the app store. :P