Holy Crap, dude... Yeah- I gotta admit, that's pretty lame. It Sounds like some special cable with a software driver--Like a winmodem. But Jeesh- 250 clams?
My 220 doesn't have a digital out, but I've never considered the need for one either. I'm thinking if there's a decent addon for a laptop for that kind of usage, wouldn't there be some neat pcmcia card/interface? For 250 bucks, that's about what I would expect... That way, I could bring it along to the next laptop I purchase, and wouldn't be sitting on the Parallel port (Yeah- it probably changed speed for this...but still...) Just googled and found one in 2 secs...
http://www.cdrecordingsoftware.com/vxpocket.html
But its about 500 bucks. Its got all the SPDIF stuff though and seems to be pretty industrial grade. If there's one...I'm sure there are more.
Actually I never find this kind of thing insulting. Hardware in large batches has its good and its rotten. However, this is sounding like one of the 200A5s or earlier that had the built in wifi. Mine is a 220 and doesn't have that at all. And why would you need an audio cable, and why would you buy it from them? My laptop has standard earphone-style jacks/ports like yuo'd find on the back of a sound card.
The whole reason I bought the dang thing was that they didn't use any really non-standard parts in it. And it all just "works".
Your buddies notebook was probably where they got all the negative feedback and they tried to fix it with the next model. (I hope) At any rate, though, I'm happy with it, and I don't have to put up with any crappy centrino-type bull. One pcmcia card for wifi, and I'm good to go.
I bought the next generation up from that one. Its a company called VPR Matrix. I don't know about it rivaling apple any more than any other chunk of hardware, but my 220 is actually pretty solid, and though I haven't dropped it or jumped on it, it seems fairly sturdy.
I decided on that one because it had a reasonably fast processor (intel p4 2.2ghz) Nvidia geforce 420Go graphics--I really just can't stand any of ATI's drivers-- And neatest of all, a 1280 x 864 widescreen display amidst a sea of 1024x768 displays. Oh yeah, and with all the rebates etc, I bought it for around a grand.;-) It seems to run Linux pretty well, as there just don't seem to be any really exotic windows-only components.
Downsides? The keyboard doesn't have as much tactile feedback as I would like. No onboard wireless. (Not such a bad thing) No scroll on the trackpad. It gets a bit warm after a while of operation. That's about it for the downsides I think. (Yeah- not much to complain about. I LIKE this laptop...)
All of the Mac people I know (even the ones with the newer macs) still prefer, like, and use OS9 for some unknown reason...Probably because that's where they spent all their dough buying those expensive programs...
And even at work, ALL of our macs, even the new dual 1ghz machines, are running OS9. OS9 Doesn't even support Dual Processors, does it??? (Sure doesn't seem like it...)
Let me tell you...Having tried out OSX on some demo computers, I think I'm pretty sure that the ENTIRE reason I hate Macintosh is OS9. ---Okay, I don't hate it, it just causes cerebral hemmorhaging occaisionally.
Yet these people do not want to leave it behind, and the stations at work are not allowed to be upgraded. (I'm not Chief in charge at the Corp...)
Truly a technology that will not die. No matter how much I want it to...
Hehe...Sorry if my Rubbish lacked the smileyface to label it as 'kidding'.;-)
I actually am interested in getting them to run again, but I don't think I'll do the Win2k install again... Thanks anyway- If you know any tricks to get it running under wine, I'm all ears, but last I checked, that didn't work too well either...But wine has come a good long way since then...maybe I'll try that again instead... So yes- I guess this did help. Maybe I'll get to try something truly exotic to get this thing to run. (I love impossible projects!)
Oddly, though, yes- it was a dual cpu machine. P3 800's (Played it on a p2-300 previously...), that are currently split up into 2 boxes for a head-2-head game station... I think that's probably the highest, best usage for them right now, as we get a LOT of mileage out of those...
And yeah- I've been waiting for Doom3 to come out as well. I probably COULD buy a system that would handle it decently, but until then, my dinky little athlon 1.2 seems to do everything just fine. The longer you hold off on buying, the more you get for less money.
Double-Rubbish on that... I tried exactly that and got it to install and run...It just wasn't playable.
But I will admit that I haven't tried it in a while now either...Maybe some of the updates to win2k have made it playable again, rather than with the stuttering sound and frame freezing...
Dammit- now you're making me think about re-installing win2k on a spare partition...
System SHock 2...Yes- Great game...Unfortunately, both that and the thief games (Anything built on that 'Dark' Engine) aren't compatable with the windows 2000 versions of DirectX, and in emulation don't seem to work in wine either. SO...You're forced back to the win98 era in order to enjoy these. And I find it really hard to give up any disk space to MS anymore at all, let alone with that old klunky version...
OR, they could receive Massive doses of radiation causing them and their descendants to mutate into a race of Super powerful Mutant Monster Mice (on Mars)!!!
So Be nice to your Mice. Because when the time comes to Welcome our new Super-Rodent Overlords, I for one, will be ready...
Actually, Check out the specs for Half-Life 2... I believe that is EXACTLY what they are doing...But I think there are like 4 stepped versions you can buy.
Okay Naive...Because even if you go Dell, you still pay an arm and a leg for that premium UXGA display. Although they do look quite nice.
I picked up one of those vpr matrix notebooks (That also has a 1280 x 864 display) on the cheap and haven't had any problems at all to date. Personally, I think it looks great compared to all the other 1024x768 screens you see on laptops these days...And it's amazing how fast the pre-install of XP Home can vanish into thin air...All you need is a linux install cd..
YES!!! I recently built a new system for a friend of mine and used one of these Sonata Cases....WOW they're a dream. ---Rubber-bushing mounted hard drive rails 90 degrees off axis...Wonder why they hadn't thought of THAT one before... ---Huge and silent exhaust fan at the rear. I'm no good at mm...prob 8 inches diameter? ---Extra silent fan (hidden?) at the front of the case... ---Super quiet Antec power supply. Rock solid too.
Added a Seagate drive and a thermostat controlled processor heatsink, and I can hardly hear it at all...
Yeah- It sounds like a commercial for Antec, but dammit, I'm jealous of that baby and sorry I had to let her go... Just have to pick up another one and build a new system...
HOWEVER.... As campy as this will probably be, filled with so many Shatner-isms like the ever so poignant........pauses, this is STILL likely to make a lot of money. I don't think He's so blind as to not realize that he's just not going to make it to Casey casumz top 40... I think he's trying to move in on Weird Al's territory.
And I, for one, Welcome our new Pause-i-tronic Slim Shady Priceline Discounted Toupayed Captain Overlord...
That was my second Computer...I started out on a 400... Oddly, I had a small flame war going on with my best friend up the street who had a vic-20, then a c-64. And nope- there wasn't much software in stores over here in the us either, but I don't live in california or anyplace on the edge like that either...(Iowa) SO...you have to order from the back of magazines, grab stuff off compuserve (if you have an account-- GO PCS132!) or try to grab it from a BBS at a blazing 300 baud (1200 later)...OR you type stuff in from magazines and learn how to write your own...
I got REALLY good at typing... Learned a bit along the way, too.
and THANK-YOU to whomever wrote those wonderful checksum programs that would calculate a value to compare what you just typed in to the value in the margin of the magazine you were reading from...
Speaking of which... Ever since I heard about car HUD's in the pricier oldsmobuicks or mercedes or what not, I've been looking for an aftermarket solution I can plug into the car I can actually afford... Anyone heard about anything like this?
I'm Not sure what he did, but it might have been the same thing I did...Except mine was an intel P3 800.
How did mine die? Actually, I don't know what the hell happened to it...It just stopped. It was half of a dual system, and the other proc STILL works just fine, but that one burnt out just like a lightbulb... It's a very expensive paperweight now.
I suppose he could be talking about a lot of the earlier generation Athlons...Those ran pretty damn hot and didn't have much of any thermal circuitry at all...Remember the Tom's Hardware Flaming Processor Video? That was some serious bad press for the Athlons...And probably the reason why they beefed up their thermal management stuff.
Personally, I'm impatiently saving up for an Opteron....I miss my dual system. I just home those dastardly cosmic ray CPU-killers don't visit again... Or whatever caused it.
Not to say you're a pussy, but there IS an alternative... Crossover Office. Runs the ACTUAL office suite and much more under linux. Give that a shot...wuss!;-)
Geesh, man...Your system should run it just fine...With ONE exception...That icky i810 graphics. If your system even HAS an AGP slot, GET A DECENT VIDEOCARD. Heck- even a bottom shelf Best buy Nvidia card..They're going for under a hundred bucks. Trust me---You'll immediately notice the difference. i810 really sucks that bad for games.
Quite True... I bought a top-of-the-line-at-the-time Geforce2 GTS card for a buit more money than I wanted to shell out...Along with my brand spanking new dual P3 800 system. And Guess what---I'm still using it and still getting decent performance at decent resolutions.
Now for the 2 caveats... 1) I was given a game that looked interesting (Birthday present). Unreal2. Looked pretty good, but WOW...somewhere around 10 FPS just isn't very playable. And it made me re-install a win partition for a short while just to try it. That didn't last long...Gave it to a friend with a brand new Athlon XP 2000/GeforceFX and it ran just fine. He's happy, and I can still happily play around with UT2003. (Yes that runs great in linux!) 2) SOON...I'm probably not going to have much choice but to upgrade...Doom is nearing...And I highly doubt my once mighty, but now feeble-in-comparison station is going to be able to cut THAT mustard... But then I oughtta be good for another few years! And I'll still have this dual p3 to crunch things off in the corner or to use as a server, or to use as another game terminal for local lan-gaming... I'm pretty happy with the life I've squeezed outta this box...
That sounds about right...That Also sounds like what BeOS was like...Which is why it ran so damn fast on puny hardware... All the organization work was done at the WAY-TO-THE-FRONT end...in coding...
Actually, it was all legit. You have to go to one of the major fireworks distributors (There are people who make a pretty good living doing nothing but supplying and helping out with setup and shoot of fireworks. These are the people who supply the goods for every little podunk town that wants to shoot off fireworks for July4 or MadCow Days celebration or whatever watermelon-days type festival they throw...
They invite you to their place, teach you about safety, let you test fire a few, then show you some examples of what happens when things go horribly wrong (Just to put the fear -o- fire into you...)
These things really are pretty dangerous...As long as you take some basic precautions, though, the worst that happens is you lose a small percentage of your hearing. The fire dept, etc will also raise quite a fuss about getting permits, scheduling, insurance, etc...
Having said all that...Yeah- It's one of the most fun things I've ever had the pleasure of doing!
Okay- Sure, It's a Darwin award waiting to happen, but WOW... There's just something about explosives and that much kinetic energy... I used to shoot off the BIG July 4 fireworks...the normal "dinky" 3 inch shells are pretty pounding, but the bigger 10"+ shells were just pure Concussion.( And that's just from the launch-) Lotsa material there to feed your inner pyromaniac...
I'd still be pretty spooked about flying metal shards here, though. I've seen the aftermath of firing tubes that have ruptured, and you really can't imagine how steel can twist and rip like paper until you've seen it. There was a REASON we buried those tubes....
Exactly...However...You can also use Partimage---which is actually on the knoppix cd and is also on the Gentoo boot cds and probably a few other ones too... It won't burn to a cd, but you can send your data to a local file (compressed) on a drive, or to a remote ftp location... It's actually pretty slick, and runs in an ncurses type screen.
It has saved me more than a few headaches at work when the users botch up the pub stations..
Screw the flying car- Where's my Personal JetPack???
There's a small group of people who own and operate the few remaining H2O2 Jetpacks from so long ago at that Olympics ceremony, but it seems like there really hasn't been anything else developed like that.
I guess its time to get out the asbestos Jumpsuit and start experimenting with those little estes rocket motors... I wonder how many it would take to get me a darwin award?
Slashdot Mirror
Holy Crap, dude...
l
Yeah- I gotta admit, that's pretty lame.
It Sounds like some special cable with a software driver--Like a winmodem. But Jeesh- 250 clams?
My 220 doesn't have a digital out, but I've never considered the need for one either. I'm thinking if there's a decent addon for a laptop for that kind of usage, wouldn't there be some neat pcmcia card/interface? For 250 bucks, that's about what I would expect... That way, I could bring it along to the next laptop I purchase, and wouldn't be sitting on the Parallel port (Yeah- it probably changed speed for this...but still...) Just googled and found one in 2 secs...
http://www.cdrecordingsoftware.com/vxpocket.htm
But its about 500 bucks. Its got all the SPDIF stuff though and seems to be pretty industrial grade. If there's one...I'm sure there are more.
Actually I never find this kind of thing insulting. Hardware in large batches has its good and its rotten. However, this is sounding like one of the 200A5s or earlier that had the built in wifi. Mine is a 220 and doesn't have that at all. And why would you need an audio cable, and why would you buy it from them? My laptop has standard earphone-style jacks/ports like yuo'd find on the back of a sound card.
The whole reason I bought the dang thing was that they didn't use any really non-standard parts in it. And it all just "works".
Your buddies notebook was probably where they got all the negative feedback and they tried to fix it with the next model. (I hope) At any rate, though, I'm happy with it, and I don't have to put up with any crappy centrino-type bull. One pcmcia card for wifi, and I'm good to go.
I bought the next generation up from that one. Its a company called VPR Matrix.
;-) It seems to run Linux pretty well, as there just don't seem to be any really exotic windows-only components.
I don't know about it rivaling apple any more than any other chunk of hardware, but my 220 is actually pretty solid, and though I haven't dropped it or jumped on it, it seems fairly sturdy.
I decided on that one because it had a reasonably fast processor (intel p4 2.2ghz) Nvidia geforce 420Go graphics--I really just can't stand any of ATI's drivers-- And neatest of all, a 1280 x 864 widescreen display amidst a sea of 1024x768 displays. Oh yeah, and with all the rebates etc, I bought it for around a grand.
Downsides? The keyboard doesn't have as much tactile feedback as I would like. No onboard wireless. (Not such a bad thing) No scroll on the trackpad. It gets a bit warm after a while of operation. That's about it for the downsides I think. (Yeah- not much to complain about. I LIKE this laptop...)
Oh I can only WISH that were true...
All of the Mac people I know (even the ones with the newer macs) still prefer, like, and use OS9 for some unknown reason...Probably because that's where they spent all their dough buying those expensive programs...
And even at work, ALL of our macs, even the new dual 1ghz machines, are running OS9. OS9 Doesn't even support Dual Processors, does it??? (Sure doesn't seem like it...)
Let me tell you...Having tried out OSX on some demo computers, I think I'm pretty sure that the ENTIRE reason I hate Macintosh is OS9. ---Okay, I don't hate it, it just causes cerebral hemmorhaging occaisionally.
Yet these people do not want to leave it behind, and the stations at work are not allowed to be upgraded. (I'm not Chief in charge at the Corp...)
Truly a technology that will not die. No matter how much I want it to...
Hehe...Sorry if my Rubbish lacked the smileyface to label it as 'kidding'. ;-)
I actually am interested in getting them to run again, but I don't think I'll do the Win2k install again... Thanks anyway- If you know any tricks to get it running under wine, I'm all ears, but last I checked, that didn't work too well either...But wine has come a good long way since then...maybe I'll try that again instead... So yes- I guess this did help. Maybe I'll get to try something truly exotic to get this thing to run. (I love impossible projects!)
Oddly, though, yes- it was a dual cpu machine. P3 800's (Played it on a p2-300 previously...), that are currently split up into 2 boxes for a head-2-head game station... I think that's probably the highest, best usage for them right now, as we get a LOT of mileage out of those...
And yeah- I've been waiting for Doom3 to come out as well. I probably COULD buy a system that would handle it decently, but until then, my dinky little athlon 1.2 seems to do everything just fine. The longer you hold off on buying, the more you get for less money.
Double-Rubbish on that... I tried exactly that and got it to install and run...It just wasn't playable.
But I will admit that I haven't tried it in a while now either...Maybe some of the updates to win2k have made it playable again, rather than with the stuttering sound and frame freezing...
Dammit- now you're making me think about re-installing win2k on a spare partition...
System SHock 2...Yes- Great game...Unfortunately, both that and the thief games (Anything built on that 'Dark' Engine) aren't compatable with the windows 2000 versions of DirectX, and in emulation don't seem to work in wine either. SO...You're forced back to the win98 era in order to enjoy these. And I find it really hard to give up any disk space to MS anymore at all, let alone with that old klunky version...
Any word on System Shock 3?
OR, they could receive Massive doses of radiation causing them and their descendants to mutate into a race of Super powerful Mutant Monster Mice (on Mars)!!!
So Be nice to your Mice. Because when the time comes to Welcome our new Super-Rodent Overlords, I for one, will be ready...
Actually, Check out the specs for Half-Life 2... I believe that is EXACTLY what they are doing...But I think there are like 4 stepped versions you can buy.
Okay Naive...Because even if you go Dell, you still pay an arm and a leg for that premium UXGA display. Although they do look quite nice.
I picked up one of those vpr matrix notebooks (That also has a 1280 x 864 display) on the cheap and haven't had any problems at all to date. Personally, I think it looks great compared to all the other 1024x768 screens you see on laptops these days...And it's amazing how fast the pre-install of XP Home can vanish into thin air...All you need is a linux install cd..
Just consider yourself always playing in "Hardcore" mode. You get ONE character....
Of course even then, we can always re-install the game. I suppose as long as you believe in reincarnation, you should be okay!
I Suppose we could try to Slashdot it to test the theory...
YES!!! I recently built a new system for a friend of mine and used one of these Sonata Cases....WOW they're a dream.
---Rubber-bushing mounted hard drive rails 90 degrees off axis...Wonder why they hadn't thought of THAT one before...
---Huge and silent exhaust fan at the rear. I'm no good at mm...prob 8 inches diameter?
---Extra silent fan (hidden?) at the front of the case...
---Super quiet Antec power supply. Rock solid too.
Added a Seagate drive and a thermostat controlled processor heatsink, and I can hardly hear it at all...
Yeah- It sounds like a commercial for Antec, but dammit, I'm jealous of that baby and sorry I had to let her go...
Just have to pick up another one and build a new system...
HOWEVER.... ....pauses, this is STILL likely to make a lot of money. I don't think He's so blind as to not realize that he's just not going to make it to Casey casumz top 40... I think he's trying to move in on Weird Al's territory.
As campy as this will probably be, filled with so many Shatner-isms like the ever so poignant....
And I, for one, Welcome our new Pause-i-tronic Slim Shady Priceline Discounted Toupayed Captain Overlord...
That was my second Computer...I started out on a 400... Oddly, I had a small flame war going on with my best friend up the street who had a vic-20, then a c-64.
And nope- there wasn't much software in stores over here in the us either, but I don't live in california or anyplace on the edge like that either...(Iowa) SO...you have to order from the back of magazines, grab stuff off compuserve (if you have an account-- GO PCS132!) or try to grab it from a BBS at a blazing 300 baud (1200 later)...OR you type stuff in from magazines and learn how to write your own...
I got REALLY good at typing... Learned a bit along the way, too.
and THANK-YOU to whomever wrote those wonderful checksum programs that would calculate a value to compare what you just typed in to the value in the margin of the magazine you were reading from...
Speaking of which... Ever since I heard about car HUD's in the pricier oldsmobuicks or mercedes or what not, I've been looking for an aftermarket solution I can plug into the car I can actually afford...
Anyone heard about anything like this?
I'm Not sure what he did, but it might have been the same thing I did...Except mine was an intel P3 800.
How did mine die? Actually, I don't know what the hell happened to it...It just stopped. It was half of a dual system, and the other proc STILL works just fine, but that one burnt out just like a lightbulb... It's a very expensive paperweight now.
I suppose he could be talking about a lot of the earlier generation Athlons...Those ran pretty damn hot and didn't have much of any thermal circuitry at all...Remember the Tom's Hardware Flaming Processor Video? That was some serious bad press for the Athlons...And probably the reason why they beefed up their thermal management stuff.
Personally, I'm impatiently saving up for an Opteron....I miss my dual system. I just home those dastardly cosmic ray CPU-killers don't visit again... Or whatever caused it.
Not to say you're a pussy, but there IS an alternative... ;-)
Crossover Office. Runs the ACTUAL office suite and much more under linux.
Give that a shot...wuss!
Geesh, man...Your system should run it just fine...With ONE exception...That icky i810 graphics.
If your system even HAS an AGP slot, GET A DECENT VIDEOCARD. Heck- even a bottom shelf Best buy Nvidia card..They're going for under a hundred bucks. Trust me---You'll immediately notice the difference. i810 really sucks that bad for games.
Quite True...
I bought a top-of-the-line-at-the-time Geforce2 GTS card for a buit more money than I wanted to shell out...Along with my brand spanking new dual P3 800 system. And Guess what---I'm still using it and still getting decent performance at decent resolutions.
Now for the 2 caveats...
1) I was given a game that looked interesting (Birthday present). Unreal2. Looked pretty good, but WOW...somewhere around 10 FPS just isn't very playable. And it made me re-install a win partition for a short while just to try it. That didn't last long...Gave it to a friend with a brand new Athlon XP 2000/GeforceFX and it ran just fine. He's happy, and I can still happily play around with UT2003. (Yes that runs great in linux!)
2) SOON...I'm probably not going to have much choice but to upgrade...Doom is nearing...And I highly doubt my once mighty, but now feeble-in-comparison station is going to be able to cut THAT mustard...
But then I oughtta be good for another few years! And I'll still have this dual p3 to crunch things off in the corner or to use as a server, or to use as another game terminal for local lan-gaming...
I'm pretty happy with the life I've squeezed outta this box...
That sounds about right...That Also sounds like what BeOS was like...Which is why it ran so damn fast on puny hardware... All the organization work was done at the WAY-TO-THE-FRONT end...in coding...
It did work pretty well, though...
Actually, it was all legit.
You have to go to one of the major fireworks distributors (There are people who make a pretty good living doing nothing but supplying and helping out with setup and shoot of fireworks. These are the people who supply the goods for every little podunk town that wants to shoot off fireworks for July4 or MadCow Days celebration or whatever watermelon-days type festival they throw...
They invite you to their place, teach you about safety, let you test fire a few, then show you some examples of what happens when things go horribly wrong (Just to put the fear -o- fire into you...)
These things really are pretty dangerous...As long as you take some basic precautions, though, the worst that happens is you lose a small percentage of your hearing. The fire dept, etc will also raise quite a fuss about getting permits, scheduling, insurance, etc...
Having said all that...Yeah- It's one of the most fun things I've ever had the pleasure of doing!
Okay- Sure, It's a Darwin award waiting to happen, but WOW... There's just something about explosives and that much kinetic energy... I used to shoot off the BIG July 4 fireworks...the normal "dinky" 3 inch shells are pretty pounding, but the bigger 10"+ shells were just pure Concussion.( And that's just from the launch-) Lotsa material there to feed your inner pyromaniac...
I'd still be pretty spooked about flying metal shards here, though. I've seen the aftermath of firing tubes that have ruptured, and you really can't imagine how steel can twist and rip like paper until you've seen it. There was a REASON we buried those tubes....
Exactly...However...You can also use Partimage---which is actually on the knoppix cd and is also on the Gentoo boot cds and probably a few other ones too... It won't burn to a cd, but you can send your data to a local file (compressed) on a drive, or to a remote ftp location... It's actually pretty slick, and runs in an ncurses type screen.
It has saved me more than a few headaches at work when the users botch up the pub stations..
Screw the flying car-
Where's my Personal JetPack???
There's a small group of people who own and operate the few remaining H2O2 Jetpacks from so long ago at that Olympics ceremony, but it seems like there really hasn't been anything else developed like that.
I guess its time to get out the asbestos Jumpsuit and start experimenting with those little estes rocket motors... I wonder how many it would take to get me a darwin award?