I think you're not giving Jobs enough credit even for the first wave of personal computers. The Apple II was probably the most important step into the world of computers in the home, school and business, moving us from the era of hobbiest kit computer to what we view as the standard computer, keyboard and monitor. Jobs was instrumental in that as well. This is a man, whether you liked him or not or approved of everything he did or not, who was in fact instrumental in a number of steps in the post-1960s computer revolution.
So true. What the Apple II represents compared to other computers at the time is amazing.
RAM and hard drive in laptops . Which is good given that HDD is one of the frequent failures in computers. Usually it's easier to service these components than in a desktop. Flip it over, remove two screws, and the component is right in front of you ready for removal.
Actually usually you can access the Mini-PCI-E wifi card, but usually not much gain to replace it.
The tech media loves to focus on growth. If the year over year growth isn't bigger than last year, even though it means more units are being sold than last year, it's considered a dead market or dying company. Tech media also focuses on trends to the point that they think very binary about it. It's either "the next big thing" or it's garbage. No concept of such things as niche markets. So tablets are "the current big thing", and grab a lot of the tech media's attention, even though people are happily using, and buying "older" devices. But if you read them, you'd think "Gee, why would anyone buy a netbook, so obsolete and outdated, they should get a tablet" even though netbooks still sell well, and still serve a certain segment. No they aren't as powerful as a desktop/ full size laptop, nor as slick as a tablet, but they have a keyboard, a lot of internal storage, and can run standard desktop applications, which is sometimes what someone actually wants. Likewise each segment: desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet, ereader serve different niches.
Further, I think the sales of laptops has been overtaking desktops all through Newegg's growth, and certainly prebuilt PCs and laptops exceeding component built PCs, yet there's always a market for parts, and always a market for component built PCs. Plus they don't just sell internal components.
I suggest it may be Intel's Centrino marketing garbage. Consumers used to demand "Centrino processors", but Centrino wasn't even a processor. It was a Pentium-M (or Core/Core2) processor mated with an Intel chipset, and Intel Wireless card. That was the requirement for the platform. This helped lock out other chipset makers, and of course with an Intel Chipset, enabling Intel's crappy integrated was only a few pennies more for the OEM. Much cheaper than specing even a low end ATI or nVidia card. ***
Where I'm going with this is I know some computers the "Centrino" logo would disappear off the boot screen if the wireless card was changed to a non-Intel. This could be part of that detection (though poorly implimented)
***Of course this has meant for the longest while getting a cheaper computer with an AMD processor meant an nVidia or ATI graphics adapter, of which the bargin basement integrated models outperform Intel's garbage. I think Intel's latest efforts may be better but they have a history of making absolute crap. i815 was a crappy integrated solution based on the crappy failed i740 discrete card. Tons of junk video adapters branded "EXTREME GRAPHICS" that couldn't run modern games of the era, i910 chipset which Intel convinced Microsoft to allow in the "Vista Capable" branding fiasco even though the card couldn't run WDDM drivers and thus Aero. It involved lawsuits including one from HP because they invested in new platforms that were actually capable while other OEMs could sell from must have been warehouses of stockpiled 910s. i950 represents the absolute bare minimum adapter that can run Aero. You can not buy a GPU card that runs WDDM, all of ATI and nVidias low end WDDM models are better. Intel continued to sell this for years in netbooks (N270 and N280 processors), even though the power consumption was magnitues higher than the CPU. GMA500 running on Atom Z-series was decent spec hardware (based on PowerVR) for embedded market, but the driver support was absolutely terrible for both Linux and Windows. Some of the hardware accelerated decoding, etc didn't work right. GMA3000 was also terrible as it's based on the crappy 950 line. Starting with the X3000 they've slowly been making progress.
Yeah, same here in the Midwest. Our only choice for hardware is the internet or Best Buy...and Best Buy can hardly be called a choice, unless you're looking for a ridiculously marked up Hard Drive.
10 years ago there were five Mom and Pop places within a 15 minute drive of my house, not to mention a CompUSA (back when they sold computer components in their stores!!), Circuit City, Best Buy. Newegg is great and all, but I really miss the days of being able to go out and replace a stick of RAM or a burnt out CD/DVD burner in 15 minutes...
'Round here there's still a few mom and pop computer stores. Usually I find their prices better than big box stores, and on par with newegg (until you add shipping costs from new egg). The big guys usually only have better prices during sales. Of course the cost of a pre-built from a big box is usually cheaper, but these small shops are still in business, and seem to still do well. They also have much better service than Geek Squad, etc. Though I don't understand. People ask me where to take their broken computer. I list a number of shops and add on "anywhere but best buy. Do not bring it to best buy. They overcharge and and less knowledgable". Yet even though they asked my advice, they ignore it and go to best buy.
3. If you have a unified consortium, with enough patents to be dangerous, but it's any kind of open election process, you will see Microsoft use its allies like Intel and it's sagans of dollars to get on the ballot and crush the organization from within, and then create proprietary alternatives that appear to be the same but are really quite different. How do we know? OLPC, that's how.
There's a lot of mis-information about Microsoft and OLPC. OLPC themselves never did any development work for Windows. Rumours are the SD slot was added to allow sufficient storage for Windows. However this is beneficial for G1G1 recipients who wanted to run a standard Linux distro instead of childish Sugar. It is also one of the only "open" implementations of an SD host.
Work was also done on the firmware to make it more compatible with booting other operating systems. Again, not just Windows, it helped for alternate operating systems. No assistance was given to Microsoft for drivers, etc.
OLPC themselves never distributed PCs with Windows on them. And most of the OLPC computers deployed run Linux.
OLPC fails due to other problems. Lack of real leadership, lack of educational content (all sorts of half-baked learn to program apps, but little traditionally academic), and a buggy, sluggish interface based on an interpreted language running on an anemic processor. Run Sugar in a VM, and check out the resource consumption of the apps. Mind boggling!
> It's not like the browser world is making sudden
> great progress.
Browsers today are switching to using hardware accelerated rendering, changing their HTML parsers for the first time in a decade, working on JITs for JavaScript, adding new ECMAScript features, adding a ton of DOM APIs, implementing new networking stacks (SPDY, say), revamping user interfaces (Firefox 4, IE9), adding support for lots of new HTML elements for the first time in over a decade.
What exactly would constitute "great progress" in your book? A fundamental redefinition of how links work or something on that scale?
It looks like Firefox is just aiming for hardware accelerated release schedule.
I doubt it will be a requirement to upgrade. They'd get low to no uptake on the upgrade stream. And as it is few systems are configured for UEFI. They want to make UEFI a requirement for Logo program ("Designed for Windows 8") but that doesn't mean it's a requirement to run Windows 8.
Historical case: Windows 7 logo program requires hardware have support (drivers) for 32 bit AND 64 bit versions. However 32-bit only drivers (and XP drivers) work fine (on 32 bit OSes obviously). Further as of yet Microsoft doesn't support EFI for 32 bit processors.
Requiring EUFI for Logo program is good for pushing BIOS relic aside, but it remains to be seen whether or not final implementation will leave users locked out of using Linux, etc or if a balance will be met between ensuring "key-signed" OSes aren't tampered without user awareness, and users still being able to use their PC for whatever they want, or if there will be no key signing at all.
I don't see a big issue here. Most workstations are bought with an OS pre-installed simply because it is legislated. Corporations wipe them and re-install their own 'flavour' of the OS - even if it is the same version. And many private buyers do too. We install our own flavour of the OS regardless of what came on the PC. We buy workstations with 'Home' editions and install 'Pro' editions (legitimately)...
One of Microsoft's more evil policies is that corporate bulk Windows licenses are only upgrades. Thus, you cannot (legally) install a volume license on a naked machine. Thus, you need to buy a system with an OEM license only to blow it away with the corporate version. This means that you have to do exactly what you are doing (buy systems with preinstalled OSs) in order to remain in compliance with the license.
You don't necessarily have to blow anything away. If you're building your own custom systems you can buy a blister pack of OEM CoAs to cover your licencing, then deploy your VL copy. But with the bulk pricing they get on PCs from Dell, Lenovo, etc. the cost of those OEM licences are still low.
VL licences are upgrade only, however your right to use the VL media are extended for no charge to any machine that comes with that version of windows, or has downgrade rights. For example many businesses use Windows XP on machines with Vista-business or Win7-Pro CoAs. They can continue to use their existing WindowsXP key and media on these machines for no charge. If they wish to deploy Win7-Pro VL, they would only have to pay for VL licences on the XP or vista machines. However to use your existing licence for the paid for VL, or reimage rights, or downgrade rights, they must be "professional" level: XP-Pro, Vista-Business, 7-Pro. Except educational customers, they can buy "Home" level.
They then try to make their money with Software assurance. You pay an annual fee on those PCs in the hope of getting "free" upgrades. What a joke. People who bought it after Office 2003 or Windows XP came out wasted their money, and as we've seen the uptake of upgrades has been very slow. So they try throwing in other perks: Vista/7 Enterprise, Office Home Use Program, and a bunch of features you've never heard of.
If nothing else is clear, it's that Microsoft licencing is confusing.
But the BIOS manufacturer differs from the final OEM. For example a Phenoix BIOS on a standalone motherboard (Gigabit for example) will typically offer a lot more options than a Phenoix BIOS on a Dell, HP, etc. The OEM controls what options are availible. For example VM extensions are blocked in the BIOS of some Intel-CPU computers.
Yes, and no... If you're used to a certain amount of polish, you rarely want to go back. I made the corporate disk image for the company I work for. It's Windows XP and I defaulted the theme to "Classic" because I like it more than "Luna". No user has kept it that way (didn't enforce it): all went to Luna. (It's a small company with +/-10 users... so it's not really representative)
Did they go with blue Luna? I can't stand blue Luna, but the silver one is almost decent.
My understanding is there's several different HAL's: ACPI, ACPI-Uniprocessor, and ACPI-Multiprocessor. If your single core is using "uniprocessor" it will automatically recognize new cores and convert to "multiprocessor". If it's ACPI, it will still only recognize one core. What's more, in Win2K, you can go into device manager and "update driver" to change the HAL. With WinXP you can only change DOWN levels, not up. That is, without an aftermarket hack, a program called "HALu" that's hard to find.
Not everyone is slashdot users that go home and spend hours in their mother's windowless basement on the computer. Most real people just want to check their email / facebook / watch a couple of youtube videos / copy photos off their camera.
It is if you want anything with serious horsepower. Sure, a commodity PC will work fine for most things but if you want 8 cores and 64gb of ram with multiple video cards you'll be better off building it yourself.
And I doubt an "Under $200" computer that the article talks about is going to be serious horsepower.
Slashdot Mirror
here's an interesting article that suggests you get a great deal of benefit from usability testing with just 5 users:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html
I think you're not giving Jobs enough credit even for the first wave of personal computers. The Apple II was probably the most important step into the world of computers in the home, school and business, moving us from the era of hobbiest kit computer to what we view as the standard computer, keyboard and monitor. Jobs was instrumental in that as well. This is a man, whether you liked him or not or approved of everything he did or not, who was in fact instrumental in a number of steps in the post-1960s computer revolution.
So true. What the Apple II represents compared to other computers at the time is amazing.
Say nothing of having to use HTML to start text on a new line.
Seriously, what decade is this?
much better to type the name, then hit enter
[win], n o [arrow as needed] [enter]
RAM and hard drive in laptops . Which is good given that HDD is one of the frequent failures in computers. Usually it's easier to service these components than in a desktop. Flip it over, remove two screws, and the component is right in front of you ready for removal. Actually usually you can access the Mini-PCI-E wifi card, but usually not much gain to replace it.
The tech media loves to focus on growth. If the year over year growth isn't bigger than last year, even though it means more units are being sold than last year, it's considered a dead market or dying company. Tech media also focuses on trends to the point that they think very binary about it. It's either "the next big thing" or it's garbage. No concept of such things as niche markets. So tablets are "the current big thing", and grab a lot of the tech media's attention, even though people are happily using, and buying "older" devices. But if you read them, you'd think "Gee, why would anyone buy a netbook, so obsolete and outdated, they should get a tablet" even though netbooks still sell well, and still serve a certain segment. No they aren't as powerful as a desktop/ full size laptop, nor as slick as a tablet, but they have a keyboard, a lot of internal storage, and can run standard desktop applications, which is sometimes what someone actually wants. Likewise each segment: desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet, ereader serve different niches.
Further, I think the sales of laptops has been overtaking desktops all through Newegg's growth, and certainly prebuilt PCs and laptops exceeding component built PCs, yet there's always a market for parts, and always a market for component built PCs. Plus they don't just sell internal components.
Civil engineers design bridges, not mechanical.
I suggest it may be Intel's Centrino marketing garbage. Consumers used to demand "Centrino processors", but Centrino wasn't even a processor. It was a Pentium-M (or Core /Core2) processor mated with an Intel chipset, and Intel Wireless card. That was the requirement for the platform. This helped lock out other chipset makers, and of course with an Intel Chipset, enabling Intel's crappy integrated was only a few pennies more for the OEM. Much cheaper than specing even a low end ATI or nVidia card. ***
Where I'm going with this is I know some computers the "Centrino" logo would disappear off the boot screen if the wireless card was changed to a non-Intel. This could be part of that detection (though poorly implimented)
***Of course this has meant for the longest while getting a cheaper computer with an AMD processor meant an nVidia or ATI graphics adapter, of which the bargin basement integrated models outperform Intel's garbage. I think Intel's latest efforts may be better but they have a history of making absolute crap. i815 was a crappy integrated solution based on the crappy failed i740 discrete card. Tons of junk video adapters branded "EXTREME GRAPHICS" that couldn't run modern games of the era, i910 chipset which Intel convinced Microsoft to allow in the "Vista Capable" branding fiasco even though the card couldn't run WDDM drivers and thus Aero. It involved lawsuits including one from HP because they invested in new platforms that were actually capable while other OEMs could sell from must have been warehouses of stockpiled 910s. i950 represents the absolute bare minimum adapter that can run Aero. You can not buy a GPU card that runs WDDM, all of ATI and nVidias low end WDDM models are better. Intel continued to sell this for years in netbooks (N270 and N280 processors), even though the power consumption was magnitues higher than the CPU. GMA500 running on Atom Z-series was decent spec hardware (based on PowerVR) for embedded market, but the driver support was absolutely terrible for both Linux and Windows. Some of the hardware accelerated decoding, etc didn't work right. GMA3000 was also terrible as it's based on the crappy 950 line. Starting with the X3000 they've slowly been making progress.
Yeah, same here in the Midwest. Our only choice for hardware is the internet or Best Buy...and Best Buy can hardly be called a choice, unless you're looking for a ridiculously marked up Hard Drive.
10 years ago there were five Mom and Pop places within a 15 minute drive of my house, not to mention a CompUSA (back when they sold computer components in their stores!!), Circuit City, Best Buy. Newegg is great and all, but I really miss the days of being able to go out and replace a stick of RAM or a burnt out CD/DVD burner in 15 minutes...
'Round here there's still a few mom and pop computer stores. Usually I find their prices better than big box stores, and on par with newegg (until you add shipping costs from new egg). The big guys usually only have better prices during sales. Of course the cost of a pre-built from a big box is usually cheaper, but these small shops are still in business, and seem to still do well. They also have much better service than Geek Squad, etc. Though I don't understand. People ask me where to take their broken computer. I list a number of shops and add on "anywhere but best buy. Do not bring it to best buy. They overcharge and and less knowledgable". Yet even though they asked my advice, they ignore it and go to best buy.
3. If you have a unified consortium, with enough patents to be dangerous, but it's any kind of open election process, you will see Microsoft use its allies like Intel and it's sagans of dollars to get on the ballot and crush the organization from within, and then create proprietary alternatives that appear to be the same but are really quite different. How do we know? OLPC, that's how.
There's a lot of mis-information about Microsoft and OLPC. OLPC themselves never did any development work for Windows. Rumours are the SD slot was added to allow sufficient storage for Windows. However this is beneficial for G1G1 recipients who wanted to run a standard Linux distro instead of childish Sugar. It is also one of the only "open" implementations of an SD host.
Work was also done on the firmware to make it more compatible with booting other operating systems. Again, not just Windows, it helped for alternate operating systems. No assistance was given to Microsoft for drivers, etc.
OLPC themselves never distributed PCs with Windows on them. And most of the OLPC computers deployed run Linux.
OLPC fails due to other problems. Lack of real leadership, lack of educational content (all sorts of half-baked learn to program apps, but little traditionally academic), and a buggy, sluggish interface based on an interpreted language running on an anemic processor. Run Sugar in a VM, and check out the resource consumption of the apps. Mind boggling!
So releases will become exponentially more frequent, just like RAM consumption increases exponentially.
> It's not like the browser world is making sudden > great progress.
Browsers today are switching to using hardware accelerated rendering, changing their HTML parsers for the first time in a decade, working on JITs for JavaScript, adding new ECMAScript features, adding a ton of DOM APIs, implementing new networking stacks (SPDY, say), revamping user interfaces (Firefox 4, IE9), adding support for lots of new HTML elements for the first time in over a decade.
What exactly would constitute "great progress" in your book? A fundamental redefinition of how links work or something on that scale?
It looks like Firefox is just aiming for hardware accelerated release schedule.
This is the first actual NO-CARRIER that I've seen on /. in a while.
Did you document this trip?
OK. Then how about recruiting ones who speak English and shower once a month whether they need it or not?
It's not them you're smelling when you call tech support.
I doubt it will be a requirement to upgrade. They'd get low to no uptake on the upgrade stream. And as it is few systems are configured for UEFI. They want to make UEFI a requirement for Logo program ("Designed for Windows 8") but that doesn't mean it's a requirement to run Windows 8.
Historical case: Windows 7 logo program requires hardware have support (drivers) for 32 bit AND 64 bit versions. However 32-bit only drivers (and XP drivers) work fine (on 32 bit OSes obviously). Further as of yet Microsoft doesn't support EFI for 32 bit processors.
Requiring EUFI for Logo program is good for pushing BIOS relic aside, but it remains to be seen whether or not final implementation will leave users locked out of using Linux, etc or if a balance will be met between ensuring "key-signed" OSes aren't tampered without user awareness, and users still being able to use their PC for whatever they want, or if there will be no key signing at all.
I don't see a big issue here. Most workstations are bought with an OS pre-installed simply because it is legislated. Corporations wipe them and re-install their own 'flavour' of the OS - even if it is the same version. And many private buyers do too. We install our own flavour of the OS regardless of what came on the PC. We buy workstations with 'Home' editions and install 'Pro' editions (legitimately) ...
One of Microsoft's more evil policies is that corporate bulk Windows licenses are only upgrades. Thus, you cannot (legally) install a volume license on a naked machine. Thus, you need to buy a system with an OEM license only to blow it away with the corporate version. This means that you have to do exactly what you are doing (buy systems with preinstalled OSs) in order to remain in compliance with the license.
You don't necessarily have to blow anything away. If you're building your own custom systems you can buy a blister pack of OEM CoAs to cover your licencing, then deploy your VL copy. But with the bulk pricing they get on PCs from Dell, Lenovo, etc. the cost of those OEM licences are still low.
VL licences are upgrade only, however your right to use the VL media are extended for no charge to any machine that comes with that version of windows, or has downgrade rights. For example many businesses use Windows XP on machines with Vista-business or Win7-Pro CoAs. They can continue to use their existing WindowsXP key and media on these machines for no charge. If they wish to deploy Win7-Pro VL, they would only have to pay for VL licences on the XP or vista machines. However to use your existing licence for the paid for VL, or reimage rights, or downgrade rights, they must be "professional" level: XP-Pro, Vista-Business, 7-Pro. Except educational customers, they can buy "Home" level.
They then try to make their money with Software assurance. You pay an annual fee on those PCs in the hope of getting "free" upgrades. What a joke. People who bought it after Office 2003 or Windows XP came out wasted their money, and as we've seen the uptake of upgrades has been very slow. So they try throwing in other perks: Vista/7 Enterprise, Office Home Use Program, and a bunch of features you've never heard of.
If nothing else is clear, it's that Microsoft licencing is confusing.
Info on re-image rights: http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/d/4/3d42bdc2-6725-4b29-b75a-a5b04179958b/reimaging.docx
But the BIOS manufacturer differs from the final OEM. For example a Phenoix BIOS on a standalone motherboard (Gigabit for example) will typically offer a lot more options than a Phenoix BIOS on a Dell, HP, etc. The OEM controls what options are availible. For example VM extensions are blocked in the BIOS of some Intel-CPU computers.
Yes, and no... If you're used to a certain amount of polish, you rarely want to go back. I made the corporate disk image for the company I work for. It's Windows XP and I defaulted the theme to "Classic" because I like it more than "Luna". No user has kept it that way (didn't enforce it): all went to Luna. (It's a small company with +/-10 users... so it's not really representative)
Did they go with blue Luna? I can't stand blue Luna, but the silver one is almost decent.
My understanding is there's several different HAL's: ACPI, ACPI-Uniprocessor, and ACPI-Multiprocessor. If your single core is using "uniprocessor" it will automatically recognize new cores and convert to "multiprocessor". If it's ACPI, it will still only recognize one core. What's more, in Win2K, you can go into device manager and "update driver" to change the HAL. With WinXP you can only change DOWN levels, not up. That is, without an aftermarket hack, a program called "HALu" that's hard to find.
You also won't experience GPU blowouts: http://www.nvidiadefect.com/
Not everyone is slashdot users that go home and spend hours in their mother's windowless basement on the computer. Most real people just want to check their email / facebook / watch a couple of youtube videos / copy photos off their camera.
I bought a 24.7" Asus VE247 LED backlit monitor for $170.
It is if you want anything with serious horsepower. Sure, a commodity PC will work fine for most things but if you want 8 cores and 64gb of ram with multiple video cards you'll be better off building it yourself.
And I doubt an "Under $200" computer that the article talks about is going to be serious horsepower.
Batteries are composed by cells. In this case the lantern battery is composed of AA cells.