It's a lot more than that, when Dell is selling it's low-end machiens for around $399. XP Home costs over 25% of the cost of that new PC. Pro is almost half!
It doesn't seem to hurt my system's performance any to have the swap file turned off in XP, though I can't say I've really pushed the hardware all that hard yet.
I'm really less concerned with the system's raw speed as I am its battery life, which I figure will tend to be longer if it doesn't need to have the hard drive spinning all the time for VM swapping.
For browsing, email, and office productivity apps it seems to be just fine, and every bit as responsive as before I turned off the swap file. I had to do a lot of tweaking before I got the system nice and comfy, with only the stuff running on it that I really wanted running, but once I did that I found that it was not too bad, for Windows.
I'd think you should send that question to the editor's desk over at the Seattle Times, rather than in addition to posting it here. Maybe they'll post a follow-up article. More linux coverage in mainstream periodicals is a good thing.
No, they'll have 512, but you'll be able to upgrade your RAM to 1024 or so for about twice what it would cost if you priced the RAM yourself using pricewatch.
I bought a WinXP laptop last month that came with 256MB of RAM (64mb of which went to video, leaving me with 192MB of actual RAM left over for the system) and guess how much the out of the box WinXP Home wanted to use? About 160MB! Enough so that if I launched more than 1-2 IE windows, I was already eating swap file. The laptop was SLOW, because it has a laptop's hard drive (either 4200rpm or 5400rpm, I'm not sure which to be honest) and the latency was killing the user experience.
I went and pared down the system to turn off all the eye candy bullshit, and I'm still using around 120-125 MB when idling, which isn't so bad. But having just 64 MB left for apps is ass, so I went and bought a 512MB SODIMM from Crucial (the "luxury" subsidiary brand of Micron).
I paid $84 for that, when HP wanted over $120 for a 256MB SODIMM... and I happen to know that HP uses Micron RAM in their laptops! HP support couldn't even tell me a part number to order if I wanted a 512MB upgrade through them, so going direct through Crucial was more than a no-brainer in this case... it was, ah, "Essential!"
Now I have a spacious 768MB of RAM which has enabled me to turn off the VM swap file altogether, which in theory should let the hard drive spin down more often, and conserve my battery life some, as well as save wear and tear on the HDD.
Once I get it to dual boot Debian, I'll be really happy with my available memory indeed, and my gf will be able to use her limited user account on the XP install if she happens to need to use the laptop for some reason.
But yeah, in conclusion, OEMs love to ship systems with barely enough RAM to run just the OS, and then charge out the wazoo for a decent RAM upgrade.
Do you like guitars, for example? Here comes spam offering Guitar Strings cheap, along with the 50 others promising natural male enhancement.
There's some really strong research that suggests that male aspiring guitarists are seeking to compensate for a lack of male enhancement... I'd say that's some damn fine cross-marketing!
I am far from screwed on a mouseless Windows box. In fact, I can navigate just about anything using the keyboard. The keyboard in windows can be made to do anything the mouse can, if you know how. And often does so with greater speed and precision, especially if you're computing on a surface that is poorly suited to mousing.
I quote liberally from other sources in my blog. I don't have time to paraphrase and reword every single article I happen to find interesting. I don't consider it plagiarism because:
I credit my source, and often provide a link to it in my posts.
I include the full text of the article in case it goes away, gets slashdotted, gets edited, gets censored, etc.
As to the latter bullet: This happens ALL THE TIME in the age of electronic media, and the only way to prove it is to copy-paste a "snapshot" of what the article looked like at a given point in time before some editor does a hackjob on the original article because its slant was doubleplusungood.
So I'm providing a public service to my many readers, all 50 or so of them. Thbbbbbt!
Shooting two guns at the same time is about as ridiculous as trying to write with both hands simultaneously. You simply can't concentrate on both tasks. Even if you're aiming at the same target, you can only put your eyes on one set of sights, and the other weapon is bound to drift off target by increasing degrees.
The only way this wouldn't matter is if your target is at point blank range or is so large that it's nearly impossible to miss it, in which case you're most likely better off getting a single, larger weapon. The only way it might change is if both weapons are physically connected to each other, as with co-axial machinegun turrets or the like.
A 17" powerbook costs about twice as much as the Acer. That's probably why. Cost/performance is probably another, although if you want to run OS X that's not going to dissuade you.
No one's forcing anyone to use Yahoo, I'm sure that as the links Yahoo provides its customers with become suckier, the customers will flee to other search sites that suck less. How is Yahoo becoming an advertising company that masquerades as a world wide web index infringing on anyone's rights?
They should not, however, be paid per time their software is distributed, or installed, or executed. Building a business model in this way weakens the leverage gained by using computers to increase efficiency.
A computer that can do a task millions of times more efficiently than a human should by all means be allowed to do so. There should be no artificial barrier or artificial scarsity that makes it hard for humans to put computers to work to do these sorts of tasks. By paying the programmer (once) for coding (and additional times, as needed) for maintaining the code, but distributing freely, we can have machines that work for us.
But by paying for the mere distribution of software, or for the rights to install and run it, or worst of all, per instance of execution, we strip away all the advantages in efficiency gained by using computers, and put it all in the programmer's bank account (or, most likely, the company the programmer works for, not the programmer himself).
These companies get fat and rich, meanwhile people who can't afford to pay such ridiculous amounts of money for shrinkwrapped, EULA'd software, remain impoverished and now even enslaved by the software they purchased on the good-faith hope that it would make their lives easier and better.
The one-button mouse problem is even worse on a Mac laptop because you can't simply ditch the detachable USB pointer and replace it with a more suitable tool. On a laptop you have an integrated trackpad, and you're stuck with it. Forever.
I've been having some outstanding support from HP lately. I just bought a laptop from them last month, and had a number of questions for them regarding upgrades and repartitioning my hard drive to dual boot linux and windows. I'm very impressed and glad that I went with HP.
- Their technicians have responded within 24 hours (usually within 2 hours) to all my emails.
- They provided useful information without a load of sales pitch and other BS (minimal indemnification and warnings where prudent and necessary)
- The replies were in good English using complete sentences and proper technical document style and language.
- They told me up front they don't support linux (reasonable because there's so many distros and different ways to configure linux; I'd have expected REAL linux support if they were selling/endorsing a particular distro, of course), yet their techs went ahead and gave assistance with setting up the partitions for dual-booting anyway! (I wasn't just wiping the drive, but needed to re-size the partition so I could avoid having to reinstall, configure, and tweak all the WinXP stuff, and they were very helpful and responsive to my requests for information.)
I thought paying for a ticket was buying music from them.
Of course, a concert promoter would say you're paying only for admittance. If concert promoters had their way, they'd charge you for the air you breathe while at the concert venue.
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It's a lot more than that, when Dell is selling it's low-end machiens for around $399. XP Home costs over 25% of the cost of that new PC. Pro is almost half!
I'd say Windows would be worth using if THEY paid ME. And, seeing as how I'm a sysadmin at work, I guess they kindof are.
Still, it'd be nice if I could get our company migrated to Linux or at leat Mac OS X.
It doesn't seem to hurt my system's performance any to have the swap file turned off in XP, though I can't say I've really pushed the hardware all that hard yet.
I'm really less concerned with the system's raw speed as I am its battery life, which I figure will tend to be longer if it doesn't need to have the hard drive spinning all the time for VM swapping.
For browsing, email, and office productivity apps it seems to be just fine, and every bit as responsive as before I turned off the swap file. I had to do a lot of tweaking before I got the system nice and comfy, with only the stuff running on it that I really wanted running, but once I did that I found that it was not too bad, for Windows.
I'd think you should send that question to the editor's desk over at the Seattle Times, rather than in addition to posting it here. Maybe they'll post a follow-up article. More linux coverage in mainstream periodicals is a good thing.
No, they'll have 512, but you'll be able to upgrade your RAM to 1024 or so for about twice what it would cost if you priced the RAM yourself using pricewatch.
I bought a WinXP laptop last month that came with 256MB of RAM (64mb of which went to video, leaving me with 192MB of actual RAM left over for the system) and guess how much the out of the box WinXP Home wanted to use? About 160MB! Enough so that if I launched more than 1-2 IE windows, I was already eating swap file. The laptop was SLOW, because it has a laptop's hard drive (either 4200rpm or 5400rpm, I'm not sure which to be honest) and the latency was killing the user experience.
I went and pared down the system to turn off all the eye candy bullshit, and I'm still using around 120-125 MB when idling, which isn't so bad. But having just 64 MB left for apps is ass, so I went and bought a 512MB SODIMM from Crucial (the "luxury" subsidiary brand of Micron).
I paid $84 for that, when HP wanted over $120 for a 256MB SODIMM... and I happen to know that HP uses Micron RAM in their laptops! HP support couldn't even tell me a part number to order if I wanted a 512MB upgrade through them, so going direct through Crucial was more than a no-brainer in this case... it was, ah, "Essential!"
Now I have a spacious 768MB of RAM which has enabled me to turn off the VM swap file altogether, which in theory should let the hard drive spin down more often, and conserve my battery life some, as well as save wear and tear on the HDD.
Once I get it to dual boot Debian, I'll be really happy with my available memory indeed, and my gf will be able to use her limited user account on the XP install if she happens to need to use the laptop for some reason.
But yeah, in conclusion, OEMs love to ship systems with barely enough RAM to run just the OS, and then charge out the wazoo for a decent RAM upgrade.
Do you like guitars, for example? Here comes spam offering Guitar Strings cheap, along with the 50 others promising natural male enhancement.
There's some really strong research that suggests that male aspiring guitarists are seeking to compensate for a lack of male enhancement... I'd say that's some damn fine cross-marketing!
I am far from screwed on a mouseless Windows box. In fact, I can navigate just about anything using the keyboard. The keyboard in windows can be made to do anything the mouse can, if you know how. And often does so with greater speed and precision, especially if you're computing on a surface that is poorly suited to mousing.
I take it you missed the article that explains all that?
As to the latter bullet: This happens ALL THE TIME in the age of electronic media, and the only way to prove it is to copy-paste a "snapshot" of what the article looked like at a given point in time before some editor does a hackjob on the original article because its slant was doubleplusungood.
So I'm providing a public service to my many readers, all 50 or so of them. Thbbbbbt!
Shooting two guns at the same time is about as ridiculous as trying to write with both hands simultaneously. You simply can't concentrate on both tasks. Even if you're aiming at the same target, you can only put your eyes on one set of sights, and the other weapon is bound to drift off target by increasing degrees.
The only way this wouldn't matter is if your target is at point blank range or is so large that it's nearly impossible to miss it, in which case you're most likely better off getting a single, larger weapon. The only way it might change is if both weapons are physically connected to each other, as with co-axial machinegun turrets or the like.
A 17" powerbook costs about twice as much as the Acer. That's probably why. Cost/performance is probably another, although if you want to run OS X that's not going to dissuade you.
Just like in Real Genius...
Prankster: "This is God talking. I want you to... blah blah blah... Oh, and by the way: stop masturbating."
Student: It is God...
This should kick of a nice, long round of "BSD is Live" jokes.
No one's forcing anyone to use Yahoo, I'm sure that as the links Yahoo provides its customers with become suckier, the customers will flee to other search sites that suck less. How is Yahoo becoming an advertising company that masquerades as a world wide web index infringing on anyone's rights?
That could mean they're going to return to Deus Ex 1 again, assuming they changed everything back from how they screwed it up with Deus Ex 2...
OK, so it's not likely, but he didn't rule it out, either.
Since this is Xerox that's developing the technology, I'll start worrying about it in about 20 years.
What I want to know is, how much pr0n can you fit in a black hole?
Programmers should be paid to code.
They should not, however, be paid per time their software is distributed, or installed, or executed. Building a business model in this way weakens the leverage gained by using computers to increase efficiency.
A computer that can do a task millions of times more efficiently than a human should by all means be allowed to do so. There should be no artificial barrier or artificial scarsity that makes it hard for humans to put computers to work to do these sorts of tasks. By paying the programmer (once) for coding (and additional times, as needed) for maintaining the code, but distributing freely, we can have machines that work for us.
But by paying for the mere distribution of software, or for the rights to install and run it, or worst of all, per instance of execution, we strip away all the advantages in efficiency gained by using computers, and put it all in the programmer's bank account (or, most likely, the company the programmer works for, not the programmer himself).
These companies get fat and rich, meanwhile people who can't afford to pay such ridiculous amounts of money for shrinkwrapped, EULA'd software, remain impoverished and now even enslaved by the software they purchased on the good-faith hope that it would make their lives easier and better.
I bet MS calls this stripped down version "Windows EU", which will be pronounced "Windows... EWW" by everyone outside of Redmond.
The one-button mouse problem is even worse on a Mac laptop because you can't simply ditch the detachable USB pointer and replace it with a more suitable tool. On a laptop you have an integrated trackpad, and you're stuck with it. Forever.
AL00667 is not the number of the beast; it was off by one. Ergo, it would not be the one to end the world.
Maybe now they can do their PK-ing in the MMO instead of in RL, and we'll ALL be better off.
I've been having some outstanding support from HP lately. I just bought a laptop from them last month, and had a number of questions for them regarding upgrades and repartitioning my hard drive to dual boot linux and windows. I'm very impressed and glad that I went with HP.
- Their technicians have responded within 24 hours (usually within 2 hours) to all my emails.
- They provided useful information without a load of sales pitch and other BS (minimal indemnification and warnings where prudent and necessary)
- The replies were in good English using complete sentences and proper technical document style and language.
- They told me up front they don't support linux (reasonable because there's so many distros and different ways to configure linux; I'd have expected REAL linux support if they were selling/endorsing a particular distro, of course), yet their techs went ahead and gave assistance with setting up the partitions for dual-booting anyway! (I wasn't just wiping the drive, but needed to re-size the partition so I could avoid having to reinstall, configure, and tweak all the WinXP stuff, and they were very helpful and responsive to my requests for information.)
I thought paying for a ticket was buying music from them.
Of course, a concert promoter would say you're paying only for admittance. If concert promoters had their way, they'd charge you for the air you breathe while at the concert venue.
Of course, now my address has changed, and it was so long ago that the check most likely will not be forwarded to my current address. @#$(*%&(