>A burned CD has a lifespan of about 10 years. After that (and often before that) it will lose data, become unreadable, etc.
They say that, but I have CDs burned at the start of '97 that are perfectly fine right now. If they've survived 6 years without a single error, I don't see why they won't keep working.
There are some that don't last, but that's a quality issue, and it certainly isn't intended to be standard.
>It's much smarter to copy all important data on a second hard drive - You can move all you data in one go when you upgrade.
After 10 years, I can assure you, any of the lower grade hard drives will have horrible stiction problems.
>The only problem is, nobody's developing games that are designed for a quick 10-15 minute blast
BINGO! This is why my library of games is almost 100% racing games. I've not yet found one that dissapoints in the "Play a level during a commercial break" area.
PacMan World 2 wasn't too bad either, but suffered from too much die and retry.
My local (real) electronics shop sells 1200 watt power inverters. About $300, lots of fans, and requires a direct battery connection. But enough to power just about anything, save a fridge or hairdryer.
>If that's the case, then why do people need to pirate Windows to get a job as you suggested before?
Because the want the same "leg-up" that everyone else has. Perhaps need is too strong a word.
>You can have an interest in whatever the heck you want; there are no laws against that. Pirating satellite TV is probably illegal, even if you're in Canada, and definitely unethical.
9. (1) No person shall (a) knowingly send, transmit or cause to be sent or transmitted any false or fraudulent distress signal, message, call or radiogram of any kind; (b) without lawful excuse, interfere with or obstruct any radiocommunication; (c) decode an encrypted subscription programming signal or encrypted network feed otherwise than under and in accordance with an authorization from the lawful distributor of the signal or feed; (d) operate a radio apparatus so as to receive an encrypted subscription programming signal or encrypted network feed that has been decoded in contravention of paragraph (c); or (e) retransmit to the public an encrypted subscription programming signal or encrypted network feed that has been decoded in contravention of paragraph (c).
At the time, as you can see, you were required to be a lawful distributor to have protection against having your signal hacked. DirecTV/Dishnetwork/whoever were not lawful in Canada, and therefore not protected by this legislation.
BTW: I can't do that anymore because the Supreme Court redefined the definition of lawful (only in Canada can the Supreme Court basically re-write a law -- So lame, it's beyond definition) to mean anything that is lawful in any country. Technically that means that if sealand beams a pirated, but encrypted, signal to Canada, Canadian citizens wouldn't be able to legally turn them in.:-)
>You can have an interest in whatever the heck you want; there are no laws against that.
Yes, there are. That's the problem. It is illegal for me to watch TV with too low an amount of Canadian content in Canada.
BTW: During the time it was legal to pirate American TV, it was still illegal to pay for it. So, is it unethical for me to have an interest in foreign cultures, in free speech? That's the real question you have to ask yourself.
Piracy isn't always unethical.
What really grates my nerves is that Free Speech TV is outlawed. Isn't that a twisted way for a government to operate!
That's a real conversation stopper. But I'll ignore it for now...
> I want to be a race car driver. Guess what? You have to have money to get into the sport,
Huh? No you don't. Start at the bottom and work your way up. Start as a mechanic, work your way to being a driver.
>I also want to be an NBA player. Guess what? You have to be really good at basketball. Not everyone can do do any job.
Huh? Again, if you were actually interested in basketball, and a healthy person, you can do anything you want to, if you put your mind to it.
Life isn't fair when it's a disability you can't do anything about. But even then, the world makes exceptions.
The world does not make exceptions for people who have ability and simply choose not to use it. The world _does_ make exceptions for those who have actual probles that are unsurmountable, like having no legs, for example. Or at least in my country, they do.
Excuses like yours are used by ever "VCR flashing 12:00" person I've met. "Reading the manual is out of my league". Unless you have dyslexia, it ain't. Just like if I cared to lose 50 pounds, basketball isn't out of my league. But I don't tell people I simply can't do it. I tell them I don't want to. There's a difference.
>This is a bit OT, but I had a few friends in high school who did drugs. Guess where they got their drugs? Other high schoolers. Guess where those dealers got their drugs? Other high schoolers. I knew the largest crack supplier in the county. She was 17. Out of the whole ring of dealers I was aware of, nobody was over 25. Don't tell me dealers don't sell to kids.
Sorry you went to a shitty high school. At mine the chain always ended at some bad-ass 40 year old from a biker gang.
>Yes, from the standpoint of they are both illegal and unethical. That's all that I was trying to say.
So, it was illegal and unethical for me, as a Canadian, to have an interest in American TV? I put it to you that when I was pirating DirecTV last year at this time it was neither.
Why not sue Microsoft for libel and defamation? According to the letter, the BSA was informed by Microsoft that you had illegal copies of their software on your servers.
Doesn't that constitute libel? Saying untruths about one company to another?
I actively practice encrypted firewall piercing, or, at a minimum, running an external socks server. I can't handle castrated networks. The worst of them don't even allow me to get IMAP traffic. Blech.
"Honestly, a PC with eight $20 CPUs would end up far more responsive and just as useful for every task than one with one single several-hundred-dollar chip"
More responsive and faster don't mean the same thing. Encode some video in windows and set the codec to realtime and notice the speed increase, but also notice that it takes 10 minutes to open up a new explorer window.
With more processors running separate tasks, responsiveness is bound to increase. Sometimes responsiveness is most important, for example, when you're typing in a shell, you'd rather ls take an extra 2 seconds than having to wait 2 seconds between each keystroke appearing.
>My heart's content wants me to get Metroid Prime since Super Metroid was my favorite game of all time, but then again my brain is screaming for the hilarious drop dead fun of Vice City.
>I can only afford one so it's quite a tough decision.
>Any advice, geeks?
Sell one of your two systems and then you can afford the game of your choice, and you'll be able to spare enough for a second controller.
>Suppose for a job that a person has chosen, that person has to have Windows. What's stopping that person from looking for a different job that doesn't require them to pirate software?
Exactly. And while we're excluding low wage earners from getting higher-status jobs, I'd like to also do the same to trailer trash, euro trash, and people from outside my country's borders. Actually, I'd like to ensure that only people that look and act like me can enjoy a good job! Where's them Indians with their caste system when you need 'em?
[ Ugh, having to work with those dirty poor people sucks. I think I'll make having windows experience part of my requirements to work here. ]
>Say you have a guy who grew up in the inner city and for whatever reason dropped out of high school. He's broke and can't find a job. Maybe this person should become a drug dealer. It's not ethical, and it's definitely not legal, but the guy can't seem to find a job anywhere else. Does that make it alright to sell crack to kids? No!
No. But who says a drug dealer sells to children? Only an idiot drug dealer would do that, like the ones most US propaganda shows you. Real drug dealers are a hell of a lot more intelligent than that. That's why the US spends so many billions trying to stop drugs entering the country. Of course, it's always going to be a waste of effort, unless you want to live in a panopticon.
If you're outside the US, I'm not sure where you got that stereotype from, because when I was in grade school, it wasn't until I was old enough to smoke that I was even offered a joint, never mind crack.
>It's not that much different. These circumstances are no excuse for pirating software.
Huh? Selling crack to kids and pirating software are one and the same?
Please say that's not the conclusion you were trying to draw!
>Now you see these new generations of Accords that are coming out, and you want one, you just gotta have one. However, the dealership isn't just going to give you an upgrade to the new Honda just because you bought from them previously. If you were leasing (read as: licensing) your first Accord, chances are your lease for the newer Accord will be higher because of the more advanced features and whatnot.
No problem, but in the case of pirating to upgrade, the upgrade would consist of him walking into a dealership, photocopying the repair manual that explains the sizes of all the parts, and fabricating his own upgraded parts at home, just as he obtained the raw data that is applied to the disc he purchased blank and fabricated at home for a pirated windows upgrade.
It certainly would not consist of leaving his old car there and driving out with a new one for free (not that you said this!). That's the equivalent of shoplifting, an entirely different crime with a _much_ lighter sentence.
[ Yes, boys and girls, if your government puts the smack down on individual piracy, and your morals are lax, you're actually much better off to steal a copy of windows/etc from the shelves of your local computer shop than to pirate it, from a legal liability standpoint. One is a misdemeanor, the other a felony. ] BTW, IANAL.
>Bill Gates is not entitled to hand you a $200 check just because you are poor and he is not. What rubbish!
Agreed.
>What on earth are they indoctrinating kids with these days?
That criminals have to repay society. Microsoft is a criminally run orgnazation, and they need to repay their debt to society properly, rather than by buying themselves out of the problem. Sometimes I'd rather Bill Gates keep his money if he were forced to spend a year or two in jail for the crimes he willingly let his company commit. Seems like the fair way to punish the man who already has everything, anyways.
Tasting a bit of the inside might turn him around from the selfish man he is (Don't point me to the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. It's far too little, far too late, and it smacks of a PR front.)
Well, then you should have no problem if I send you a set of envelope sized clear ziplock sandwich bags that you can use for your mail instead of wasting your money on envelopes, right?
If I included postage on them would you use them? It's not a bad deal really. I mean, if you have nothing to hide, why should you worry if the postman you hate across the street opens all your mail (undetected, because it's ziplock!) and gives it a peruse. Maybe he can even report any mistakes you've made on paying your Visa to the credit agency for you, or errors on your income tax report to the IRS! How excellent!
If you don't want that, well, you must have something to hide. I mean, it's not like it's even going to cost you anything to do this, you'd _make_ money, and your only cost is the privacy you don't value anyways!
>The SB PCI128 doesn't have a real digital output.
Your main complaint seemed to be that the sound quality was abhorrent. Even the $10 SB 128s I pick up have quality that (almost) edges them into amateur studios. It's the only SoundBlaster card that pro audio people don't laugh at when they're told it's high quality. Not that's it's particularly respectable, though...
If it's digital output, well, I have given you the SB 64D that's been sitting about forever. Not that it's better than the 128, but then you wouldn't be complaining.:)
>You're not getting my point, either. The sound was noisy as hell at low volumes, where my Soyo is virtually silent.
I thought I did? The majority of motherboard sound is crap, but motherboards with the Nforce2 chipset seem to be relatively unharmed by this fact.
You just got lucky with the Soyo.
>The board had two IDE interfaces, even though I told the guy it had to handle 5 IDE devices
You didn't specify if he gave you the raid version or not. I see he didn't...
>It didn't detect or use RAM properly. I had to manually set the RAM timings in order to get it to boot without crashing >It crashed during heavy AGP transfers
Bummer. First MSI board I know of to have problems like that. But I don't frequent kernel mailing lists to get info about mobos, so hey, anything's possible.
>I brought it back and I now have an ASUS on the way.
From my experience, here's what I've found as to why to buy from different motherboard manufacturers:
Soyo: A value board. Lots of stuff crammed on for a good price, or hardly anything on it for a bargain basement price. Not a bad board, but not top notch.
MSI: The die-hard motherboard. Might not be a cadillac, might even have some annoyances, has no luxuries at all (usually), but dammit, they _always_ work, and are reasonably priced.
Asus: The "high-end" motherboard. Just like cars, where more money gets you some bells and whistles, but not always more reliability, Asus motherboards are bought by people trying to show their box is "awesome" because it cost more. If you look past the pricing, quite a good board. Lots of support, too.
ABIT: The ricers mobo.;-) Designed for overclockers, with the stability overclockers (not sysadmins) expect. Usually the higher cost for these boards nullifies overclocking benefits, but just like people who add "Type-R" stickers to their cars, the people buying these boards don't care.
PC Chips (aka any weird Chinese name you can think of): When cheap-enough (Soyo) isn't. Zero support, stolen/fake parts, and a high failure rate. But look at those prices! Often found in low-end Brand Name machines.
ECS: PC Chips "top-notch" line. A well supported stolen/fake parts brand motherboard.
A-Open: Overall, pretty good stuff. Good in most categories (price, support, quality, performance) but fell out of favour with after providing me with a broken BIOS for an old board, ruining it (didn't have an EEPROM burner at the time). Definately not an overclocker's board.
Shuttle: Haven't had enough experience with their product. Boards I have seen were reasonable.
Tyan: Haven't seen too many of these boards, but people I know tend to regard them as a good for a frankenserver board.
There's others (gigabyte, biostar [pc chips?], intel, DTK, etc) but I simply don't see these boards in operation much anymore.
So that's why they sold you MSI. You came in telling them your board was causing you hell, so they gave you the bulletproof one. I'd have reccomended you to stick with it and buy a PCI sound card (heck, if it were my store, I'd probably just give you a used SB PCI128), but hey, that's just me. Then again, I'd have replaced your board with an MSI with the Nforce2 chipset, so you'd have decent sound to start with.
The only current, popular console that remains relatively uncracked (GameCube) has rental stores panties in a bunch. For some reason they not only can't rent the damn games, but they can't even sell the things!
My local shop has taken to selling off their remaining used inventory at half price in a hope to recoup their losses. They haven't been successful.
It just goes to show that, just as before, no electronic media system with uncracked protection (if it has any) has ever been popular in North America (usually the world). Witness other heavily copy-protected schemes, such as DAT tapes and MD and you'll see I'm right.
Beats me exactly why it works that way. The best explanation I can come up with is the majority of first buyers are the types that want their stuff modded/cracked/whatever. And without the first time buyers telling all their less technically inclined friends just how kick-ass the equipment is, those next tier buyers hardly even hear about the item, and therefore don't buy it.
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>A burned CD has a lifespan of about 10 years. After that (and often before that) it will lose data, become unreadable, etc.
They say that, but I have CDs burned at the start of '97 that are perfectly fine right now. If they've survived 6 years without a single error, I don't see why they won't keep working.
There are some that don't last, but that's a quality issue, and it certainly isn't intended to be standard.
>It's much smarter to copy all important data on a second hard drive - You can move all you data in one go when you upgrade.
After 10 years, I can assure you, any of the lower grade hard drives will have horrible stiction problems.
Obviously the $4k unit price includes a substantial copyright "fee" for all those movies you are going to steal from the poor MPAA.
Why would you want to make more copies of the movie if you've shoplifted the original already?
Will Sony pull their usual boneheaded stunts and build DRM into the format?
I'd love to buy it, but the Sony name is just too much of a put-off when it comes to media.
Or naming a car "Chevy Nova"...
>The only problem is, nobody's developing games that are designed for a quick 10-15 minute blast
BINGO! This is why my library of games is almost 100% racing games. I've not yet found one that dissapoints in the "Play a level during a commercial break" area.
PacMan World 2 wasn't too bad either, but suffered from too much die and retry.
>The idea of any important servers--database or web or whatever--running NT instead of UNIX was absurd.
Everyone seems to forget about Netware.
Netware is what cushioned the blow and is the main reason that Unix is still found in so many systems today.
Don't forget about netware. In 1992 it was a tougher nut to crack than DOS.
PCI + ISA cards and IDE drives aren't as non-hotswappable as people think. ;-)
My local (real) electronics shop sells 1200 watt power inverters. About $300, lots of fans, and requires a direct battery connection. But enough to power just about anything, save a fridge or hairdryer.
>If that's the case, then why do people need to pirate Windows to get a job as you suggested before?
:-)
Because the want the same "leg-up" that everyone else has. Perhaps need is too strong a word.
>You can have an interest in whatever the heck you want; there are no laws against that. Pirating satellite TV is probably illegal, even if you're in Canada, and definitely unethical.
You can consider it unethical. I don't.
Here's the law at the time:
9. (1) No person shall
(a) knowingly send, transmit or cause to be sent or transmitted any false or fraudulent distress signal, message, call or radiogram of any kind;
(b) without lawful excuse, interfere with or obstruct any radiocommunication;
(c) decode an encrypted subscription programming signal or encrypted network feed otherwise than under and in accordance with an authorization from the lawful distributor of the signal or feed;
(d) operate a radio apparatus so as to receive an encrypted subscription programming signal or encrypted network feed that has been decoded in contravention of paragraph (c); or
(e) retransmit to the public an encrypted subscription programming signal or encrypted network feed that has been decoded in contravention of paragraph (c).
At the time, as you can see, you were required to be a lawful distributor to have protection against having your signal hacked. DirecTV/Dishnetwork/whoever were not lawful in Canada, and therefore not protected by this legislation.
BTW: I can't do that anymore because the Supreme Court redefined the definition of lawful (only in Canada can the Supreme Court basically re-write a law -- So lame, it's beyond definition) to mean anything that is lawful in any country. Technically that means that if sealand beams a pirated, but encrypted, signal to Canada, Canadian citizens wouldn't be able to legally turn them in.
>You can have an interest in whatever the heck you want; there are no laws against that.
Yes, there are. That's the problem. It is illegal for me to watch TV with too low an amount of Canadian content in Canada.
BTW: During the time it was legal to pirate American TV, it was still illegal to pay for it. So, is it unethical for me to have an interest in foreign cultures, in free speech? That's the real question you have to ask yourself.
Piracy isn't always unethical.
What really grates my nerves is that Free Speech TV is outlawed. Isn't that a twisted way for a government to operate!
>Life's not fair. Get over it.
That's a real conversation stopper. But I'll ignore it for now...
> I want to be a race car driver. Guess what? You have to have money to get into the sport,
Huh? No you don't. Start at the bottom and work your way up. Start as a mechanic, work your way to being a driver.
>I also want to be an NBA player. Guess what? You have to be really good at basketball. Not everyone can do do any job.
Huh? Again, if you were actually interested in basketball, and a healthy person, you can do anything you want to, if you put your mind to it.
Life isn't fair when it's a disability you can't do anything about. But even then, the world makes exceptions.
The world does not make exceptions for people who have ability and simply choose not to use it. The world _does_ make exceptions for those who have actual probles that are unsurmountable, like having no legs, for example. Or at least in my country, they do.
Excuses like yours are used by ever "VCR flashing 12:00" person I've met. "Reading the manual is out of my league". Unless you have dyslexia, it ain't. Just like if I cared to lose 50 pounds, basketball isn't out of my league. But I don't tell people I simply can't do it. I tell them I don't want to. There's a difference.
>This is a bit OT, but I had a few friends in high school who did drugs. Guess where they got their drugs? Other high schoolers. Guess where those dealers got their drugs? Other high schoolers. I knew the largest crack supplier in the county. She was 17. Out of the whole ring of dealers I was aware of, nobody was over 25. Don't tell me dealers don't sell to kids.
Sorry you went to a shitty high school. At mine the chain always ended at some bad-ass 40 year old from a biker gang.
>Yes, from the standpoint of they are both illegal and unethical. That's all that I was trying to say.
So, it was illegal and unethical for me, as a Canadian, to have an interest in American TV? I put it to you that when I was pirating DirecTV last year at this time it was neither.
Why not sue Microsoft for libel and defamation? According to the letter, the BSA was informed by Microsoft that you had illegal copies of their software on your servers.
Doesn't that constitute libel? Saying untruths about one company to another?
I actively practice encrypted firewall piercing, or, at a minimum, running an external socks server. I can't handle castrated networks. The worst of them don't even allow me to get IMAP traffic. Blech.
He said:
"Honestly, a PC with eight $20 CPUs would end up far more responsive and just as useful for every task than one with one single several-hundred-dollar chip"
More responsive and faster don't mean the same thing. Encode some video in windows and set the codec to realtime and notice the speed increase, but also notice that it takes 10 minutes to open up a new explorer window.
With more processors running separate tasks, responsiveness is bound to increase. Sometimes responsiveness is most important, for example, when you're typing in a shell, you'd rather ls take an extra 2 seconds than having to wait 2 seconds between each keystroke appearing.
So what happens when a stalagmite and stalactite meet?
Those chips were manufactured by AMD, though. So technically, intel design, but AMD chip...
:-)
I used to keep one in my wallet for good luck.
No life left in it? From all accounts, the PS2 is, even today, the best selling console of the moment.
I think you're thinking Game Cube.
>My heart's content wants me to get Metroid Prime since Super Metroid was my favorite game of all time, but then again my brain is screaming for the hilarious drop dead fun of Vice City.
>I can only afford one so it's quite a tough decision.
>Any advice, geeks?
Sell one of your two systems and then you can afford the game of your choice, and you'll be able to spare enough for a second controller.
>Suppose for a job that a person has chosen, that person has to have Windows. What's stopping that person from looking for a different job that doesn't require them to pirate software?
Exactly. And while we're excluding low wage earners from getting higher-status jobs, I'd like to also do the same to trailer trash, euro trash, and people from outside my country's borders. Actually, I'd like to ensure that only people that look and act like me can enjoy a good job! Where's them Indians with their caste system when you need 'em?
[ Ugh, having to work with those dirty poor people sucks. I think I'll make having windows experience part of my requirements to work here. ]
>Say you have a guy who grew up in the inner city and for whatever reason dropped out of high school. He's broke and can't find a job. Maybe this person should become a drug dealer. It's not ethical, and it's definitely not legal, but the guy can't seem to find a job anywhere else. Does that make it alright to sell crack to kids? No!
No. But who says a drug dealer sells to children? Only an idiot drug dealer would do that, like the ones most US propaganda shows you. Real drug dealers are a hell of a lot more intelligent than that. That's why the US spends so many billions trying to stop drugs entering the country. Of course, it's always going to be a waste of effort, unless you want to live in a panopticon.
If you're outside the US, I'm not sure where you got that stereotype from, because when I was in grade school, it wasn't until I was old enough to smoke that I was even offered a joint, never mind crack.
>It's not that much different. These circumstances are no excuse for pirating software.
Huh? Selling crack to kids and pirating software are one and the same?
Please say that's not the conclusion you were trying to draw!
>Now you see these new generations of Accords that are coming out, and you want one, you just gotta have one. However, the dealership isn't just going to give you an upgrade to the new Honda just because you bought from them previously. If you were leasing (read as: licensing) your first Accord, chances are your lease for the newer Accord will be higher because of the more advanced features and whatnot.
No problem, but in the case of pirating to upgrade, the upgrade would consist of him walking into a dealership, photocopying the repair manual that explains the sizes of all the parts, and fabricating his own upgraded parts at home, just as he obtained the raw data that is applied to the disc he purchased blank and fabricated at home for a pirated windows upgrade.
It certainly would not consist of leaving his old car there and driving out with a new one for free (not that you said this!). That's the equivalent of shoplifting, an entirely different crime with a _much_ lighter sentence.
[ Yes, boys and girls, if your government puts the smack down on individual piracy, and your morals are lax, you're actually much better off to steal a copy of windows/etc from the shelves of your local computer shop than to pirate it, from a legal liability standpoint. One is a misdemeanor, the other a felony. ] BTW, IANAL.
>Bill Gates is not entitled to hand you a $200 check just because you are poor and he is not. What rubbish!
Agreed.
>What on earth are they indoctrinating kids with these days?
That criminals have to repay society. Microsoft is a criminally run orgnazation, and they need to repay their debt to society properly, rather than by buying themselves out of the problem. Sometimes I'd rather Bill Gates keep his money if he were forced to spend a year or two in jail for the crimes he willingly let his company commit. Seems like the fair way to punish the man who already has everything, anyways.
Tasting a bit of the inside might turn him around from the selfish man he is (Don't point me to the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. It's far too little, far too late, and it smacks of a PR front.)
Re-reading your sentence just made me realise it made no sense at all.
Sorry for responding, but it's unclear to me exactly what the hell you're trying to say now that I've taken a second look at it.
Well, then you should have no problem if I send you a set of envelope sized clear ziplock sandwich bags that you can use for your mail instead of wasting your money on envelopes, right?
If I included postage on them would you use them? It's not a bad deal really. I mean, if you have nothing to hide, why should you worry if the postman you hate across the street opens all your mail (undetected, because it's ziplock!) and gives it a peruse. Maybe he can even report any mistakes you've made on paying your Visa to the credit agency for you, or errors on your income tax report to the IRS! How excellent!
If you don't want that, well, you must have something to hide. I mean, it's not like it's even going to cost you anything to do this, you'd _make_ money, and your only cost is the privacy you don't value anyways!
>The SB PCI128 doesn't have a real digital output.
:)
:-)
Your main complaint seemed to be that the sound quality was abhorrent. Even the $10 SB 128s I pick up have quality that (almost) edges them into amateur studios. It's the only SoundBlaster card that pro audio people don't laugh at when they're told it's high quality. Not that's it's particularly respectable, though...
If it's digital output, well, I have given you the SB 64D that's been sitting about forever. Not that it's better than the 128, but then you wouldn't be complaining.
>You're not getting my point, either. The sound was noisy as hell at low volumes, where my Soyo is virtually silent.
I thought I did? The majority of motherboard sound is crap, but motherboards with the Nforce2 chipset seem to be relatively unharmed by this fact.
You just got lucky with the Soyo.
>The board had two IDE interfaces, even though I told the guy it had to handle 5 IDE devices
You didn't specify if he gave you the raid version or not. I see he didn't...
>It didn't detect or use RAM properly. I had to manually set the RAM timings in order to get it to boot without crashing
>It crashed during heavy AGP transfers
Bummer. First MSI board I know of to have problems like that. But I don't frequent kernel mailing lists to get info about mobos, so hey, anything's possible.
>I brought it back and I now have an ASUS on the way.
Well, there ya go. That should be good enough!
You got an MSI for a reason.
;-) Designed for overclockers, with the stability overclockers (not sysadmins) expect. Usually the higher cost for these boards nullifies overclocking benefits, but just like people who add "Type-R" stickers to their cars, the people buying these boards don't care.
From my experience, here's what I've found as to why to buy from different motherboard manufacturers:
Soyo: A value board. Lots of stuff crammed on for a good price, or hardly anything on it for a bargain basement price. Not a bad board, but not top notch.
MSI: The die-hard motherboard. Might not be a cadillac, might even have some annoyances, has no luxuries at all (usually), but dammit, they _always_ work, and are reasonably priced.
Asus: The "high-end" motherboard. Just like cars, where more money gets you some bells and whistles, but not always more reliability, Asus motherboards are bought by people trying to show their box is "awesome" because it cost more. If you look past the pricing, quite a good board. Lots of support, too.
ABIT: The ricers mobo.
PC Chips (aka any weird Chinese name you can think of): When cheap-enough (Soyo) isn't. Zero support, stolen/fake parts, and a high failure rate. But look at those prices! Often found in low-end Brand Name machines.
ECS: PC Chips "top-notch" line. A well supported stolen/fake parts brand motherboard.
A-Open: Overall, pretty good stuff. Good in most categories (price, support, quality, performance) but fell out of favour with after providing me with a broken BIOS for an old board, ruining it (didn't have an EEPROM burner at the time). Definately not an overclocker's board.
Shuttle: Haven't had enough experience with their product. Boards I have seen were reasonable.
Tyan: Haven't seen too many of these boards, but people I know tend to regard them as a good for a frankenserver board.
There's others (gigabyte, biostar [pc chips?], intel, DTK, etc) but I simply don't see these boards in operation much anymore.
So that's why they sold you MSI. You came in telling them your board was causing you hell, so they gave you the bulletproof one. I'd have reccomended you to stick with it and buy a PCI sound card (heck, if it were my store, I'd probably just give you a used SB PCI128), but hey, that's just me. Then again, I'd have replaced your board with an MSI with the Nforce2 chipset, so you'd have decent sound to start with.
I have some news for you:
The only current, popular console that remains relatively uncracked (GameCube) has rental stores panties in a bunch. For some reason they not only can't rent the damn games, but they can't even sell the things!
My local shop has taken to selling off their remaining used inventory at half price in a hope to recoup their losses. They haven't been successful.
It just goes to show that, just as before, no electronic media system with uncracked protection (if it has any) has ever been popular in North America (usually the world). Witness other heavily copy-protected schemes, such as DAT tapes and MD and you'll see I'm right.
Beats me exactly why it works that way. The best explanation I can come up with is the majority of first buyers are the types that want their stuff modded/cracked/whatever. And without the first time buyers telling all their less technically inclined friends just how kick-ass the equipment is, those next tier buyers hardly even hear about the item, and therefore don't buy it.
>Did you encounter any killer alien clowns in the sewer system around your town when you were a kid?
:-)
Not in a sewer. But I did have to endure a really crappy movie about them... Think that's it?