Sadly, this is somewhat true, but then, it is the cost of living. One copy of Windows 7 Ultimate, OEM-pricing off Newegg...not a high price to pay for being able to play games, run Visual Studio (the heroin of the programming world), etc...
Well, let's see here, it does run games, and it is still reasonably open when compared with the walled garden of Mac OS X. God forbid you should install a video card not blessed by the late S. Jobs.
Lol. Yes, the larger OEMs tend to have better testing on their configurations, no, they are not immune to criminal stupidity when sourcing some of their components. They have, in times past, been burned many a time by component providers, and even their weight was not enough to ensure a fix.
Getting hit with a configuration issue is something about as rare as a lightning strike these days. You have to have some serious bad luck to choose some components with a hit or miss issue, which once again, can mostly be avoided / curtailed by reading the customer reviews / doing a little googling when deciding which parts to buy.
Laptops are portable, and the laptop market does not support custom builds.
The desktop or home market, on the other hands, are not portable, and do support custom builds.
Let's compare builds:
Acer Aspire 7600U Weight: 22 lbs Dimensions: 25.98" x 18.58" x 1.37" Screen size: 27" Full HD 1920 x 1080 wide-viewing Touch: 10 points multiuser touch Hard drive size: 1000 GB HDD RAM: 8 GB Processor: 3rd-generation Intel Core i7-3630QM or i5-3210M processor Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT640M, 2 GB VRAM
Lightknight's Custom Build (currently shipping) Screen size: 47" Full HD 1920 x 1080 wide-viewing (Vizio) Touch: None on the screen, optional with slate / stylus (for artists). Hard drive: 240 GB SSD (Corsair Force 3 / GT), 3000 GB HD (Seagate 7200 RPM) RAM: 32 GB (Corsair) Processor: AMD Bulldozer 8150 or Piledriver 8350 (with Corsair self-contained water-cooled setup, currently using SilenX fans) Graphics: HIS ATI Radeon HD 7970, 3GB VRAM
The fans that I am using have not, under the latest loads, proven adequate enough (I like my processors to barely exceed room temperature), so I am swapping them out for some Deltas (which WILL cool the system no matter what the load might be). I also use discrete sound cards, with Asus / Omega being some of the latest offerings. The cases are ATX Full Tower, the optical drives are Blu-Ray burners from LG, the media card bays (accepting any number of flash cards) are AFT (had some issues with the Rosewill parts), the power supplies are Thermaltake ToughPower (supported wattage varies with market availability / pricing, minimum is currently 850 Watts) which are designed to survive a direct lightning strike or something. Keyboards / mice are typically user-specified. Motherboard is an Asus Crosshair V. The machines are not overclocked, but have all the hardware / cooling necessary to overclock them to a frightening degree; customers can safely overclock to a much higher setting. And yes, I have been looking at Intel's offerings, as the Bulldozer / Piledriver fiasco has been an irritation.
The important differences are that the Acer item is self-contained, and has a touch-screen. And I'd probably not ship a machine with Windows 8 (you're getting Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate Edition). So, if you like a machine that 'looks good' but runs like a dog, you'll probably favor the Acer. Or if you have some killer app that needs a 27" touch screen (restriction on the screen size, as I don't think customers will be pleased with having to get up, lean over, or walk around to hit various icons on 40"+ screens; making the touch interface only useful on smaller screens, not exactly a selling point, as I can scale up as large as LCDs can be made; you're stuck with a 27" touch screen, and I'm offering a 60" regular screen with mouse and keyboard...wait you have one too, so what was the point behind your touch screen?).
And that's why there is a market for people who do want to know everything, or at least sizeable chunks of it...and who will pay quite handsomely for any offerings that actually deliver.
Most people are sheep, and would consider a worthwhile life to contain a happy childhood, a good job, and a wonderful family.
Some people want more. Some people are like Cave Johnson, and will not be satisfied with life's meager offerings. They're the ones looking down from distant mountain peeks, and still pressing the elevator button up.
And for many of them, their life's passion started off as a hobby that they practised in their garage.
So why are you asking people to settle for less? L-o-w-e-r E-x-p-e-c-t-a-t-i-o-n-s...
Building your own is cheaper if the market simply doesn't offer what you want.
Surprise surprise, larger OEMs do not tend to put out machines with Radeon HD 7970s. That means the top-end is not being covered either, unless you think a Radeon HD 7870 is the best that ATI can do (it's not). The larger OEMs are sitting kind of on the middle to lower end of hardware offerings, from what I can see.
But they will certainly charge you like they are top of the line if you will let them.
Is it a machine that anyone should be allowed to buy? Hell no. They tend to rank up there with the Cyrix machines of yester-year, something to avoid.
Unfortunately, the types who buy the bottom barrel machines are typically the ones who know the least about the hardware. "They certainly wouldn't sell me a shite machine" -> average person who buys these machines.
Yes, yes they would, and their designs are built around the idea that "one is born every minute." The kind of person who does not take the time to understand what they are buying, and thinks that some god out there protects fools from their actions. Well, there might be a god out there who does, but IMHO, he / she / they appear very overworked, so let's do a little something nice for them around this time of year, and try to lighten the workload a little, right?
If you see someone buying a machine with a 5400 RPM HD, stop them. Same thing if it has 2 GBs of RAM, or, arguably, lacks a discrete video card. Just do it, and feel good about doing it. You're saving everyone else a lot of hassle 3 weeks into the future.
Ask the person, when you go to buy a car, do you buy the absolute cheapest model that just ANYONE is offering? No? I didn't think so. This machine is not the one you want, this one over here probably is.
I think a major problem for tech is that there are simply no words which convey an adequate understanding of how much nicer their experience will be for every extra $20 they chip in. I'd say its inversely logarithmic, but even that might be too complicated. Nerf the warranty they are trying to sell you (the manufacturer typically covers machines for 3 years, and so on), and spend the money on better features.
Unfortunately, I would have to agree with you there. There was, at one point, an attempt to fix the laptop market with upgradable motherboards and what not, but I haven't heard anything about it recently.
And yes, non-geeks tend to buy laptops, or tablets. *shudder* They just need to see, first-hand, the difference between a desktop and a laptop, and they will eventually come around to the dark geeky side. The designated comfy chair + hideaway tends to appeal to the masses, as you can do whatever, with a lot of power under your fingertips, in a socially acceptable situation, which does not work elsewhere. Gaming, work, pr0n, etc. And yes, the comfy chair is very comfortable, as is not having a 17" laptop frying your nads.
The only problem with my current build is AMD's attempt to take Intel's "WTF were we thinking" crown that they earned when they bopped out the Itanium. Windows doesn't seem to like the full-core / not full-core design, and keeps throwing up cross-threading errors with Explorer. That it got this far is beyond me...
All the major OEMs are idiots who decided, at some point, that marketing mattered more than the hardware they put in the machines themselves. They're just getting their own desserts in that regard. I mean, the average consumer just has never been taught that a 5400 RPM HD is a giant bottleneck, and can't tell the difference between an OEM that offers one with and without -> they see machines purely as appliances, something to buy and never upgrade. And surprise, OEMs worked to maintain that image -> they shipped 'smaller' cases with no upgradability, custom PSUs, and underpowered heatsinks. They confirmed their customer's bias, which is their own fault...oh, and look, they're doing the same in the Smartphone world! Hands up, how many people have or have had a phone which, while being capable of running ICS, is still stuck on 2.2 or 2.3? How many people fault Google for going nuclear over this, and buying part of Motorola to 'fix' the problem? These people save a few bucks in the short term, and destroy the companies they are working for in the long term. They have no understanding of planning, or maintaining a certain level of brand / quality among their customers. It's just pump and dump: pump a product up (usually done before they are hired), with rave reviews and good hardware, then gut the hardware / fire the engineers, then outsource it all overseas, and cash in as people continue buying the next version of the product, unaware that the quality has gone to shit -> what's it matter? In six months, the people in charge of that Titanic will be piloting another company into an iceberg, while the old one is up on the blocks (all the capital has been spent, the talent gone, and no one wants to buy from them even with special cut-rate deals).
HP? Hands up, who here, having dealt with Compaq for any number of years towards its end, thought that that merger was a good idea? Anyone? See, no one. Compaq needed to die, to prevent spreading the plague to others. Instead, someone arranged a marriage; how trite.
The major OEMs want to save themselves? Fire the morons; if Marketing is telling the techs what to build, you're in for a world of hurt (remember, Marketing would be happy selling hot dogs on a corner somewhere if a customer survey said that it was the next big thing). Then spend the next 5 years actually listening to your techs about your build quality, and maybe you will survive. You'll need to combat brand fatigue, where all your customers are wary of whether or not you are just getting lucky with the latest builds, or if you have actually changed. It will take 5 years to clear out everyone's current beliefs about you and your quality, there is no rushing that. You're going to need to 'lift the brand,' not reinvent it. You'll have to convince your customers, through proof, that you are not following Apple, that you are where they want to be, and hate themselves for not being there right now. Stop trying to guess where Apple is going next; you're not them, you have different advantages, and you do not want to be them. Give the whole form factor thing a miss, as the smaller form factors tend to have lower margins (or as it is commonly known as "Why are we shipping more products than before, but our profits are in the tank?"). And there is nothing wrong with having money on the books if you haven't decided what to do with it yet: there is, and I repeat, there is, nothing wrong with having $2B laying around in the company coffers if you don't see anything worth investing in. I know, Wall St. hates that, as does your Econ professor, but guess what? There are a lot of shit investments out there, and it takes a long time to see if one is worth purchasing; buying shit investments just to get rid of the extra money / please the Street will doom your company. And once again, there is nothing wrong with issuing a one-time Dividend to shut them up, if they get too loud.
I mean, it's not like a 1.5 kW power supply is going to actually run at 1500 Watts if the components hanging off of it only demand 200 Watts. It just means that it can deliver 1.5 kW if needed; when you factor in the cost savings of several successive upgrades with the same case / power supply, the fact that a 1.5 kW power supply is probably supplying cleaner power than a 200 W power supply, and that energy requirements, in general, increase with most new generations of processors / GPUs...why would you ever buy a power supply without extra capacity? Do you like buying an entirely new power supply every time you add-in an extra hard drive? That's just so...wasteful. And expensive.
And yet there are a frightening number of people who believe that their power supply will run at the labelled wattage all the time, and try to 'save money' by getting one with only 50 Watts or less in capacity...like they're putting their machine on a diet or something ("I have to restrict its intake, or it'll just gobble up all the power it can" -> electricity does not work that way, at least when it comes to computers).
And don't make me laugh about what suffice as a 'gamer' build these days. A sorrier lot of machines I have not seen. "Dude, I got an Intel i5 2.2Ghz, with 4 GBs of G. Skill RAM, a 64 GB Intel SSD drive, and one of those 2 TB 'Green/5400 RPM' drives, topped off with a ATI Radeon HD7430! I am a total gamer now! I can play Portal 1 with 2xAA!" Bong, someone save me from these types; these machines barely suffice as budget machines, not gamer, and not definitely developer (back when that ranked somewhere on the hierarchy). And no, machine you use for gaming != gaming machine.
Let me help you out. A "gaming machine" is going to be packed with the latest / top of the line in hardware. That means if you are not rocking at least a ATI Radeon 7970, a 7990, or last year's 6990 (or whatever it was called), or whatever Nvidia is offering in its top ranks, it is not a gaming machine. If you are not rocking a processor from the top tier of whatever Intel or AMD is currently offering, or was offering as top tier a year ago, again, it is not a gaming machine. If the mouse / keyboard doesn't have waaaaay too many buttons, many of whose functions you have never actually discovered, it is not a gaming machine. If you do not have a discrete sound card (yes, that still matters), it is not a gaming machine. The hard drives would normally be mandated as SSD of some unthinkable size, but since Steam has (only recently) supposedly gotten their acts together with the whole 'storing games on a different hard drive,' I think we can give it a pass (for now) with having a 7200 RPM hard drive (again, only for now, as even the 10,000 RPM HDs don't have enough space for a full Steam collection...which is quietly eating one of my 3TB drives). Unless I am forgetting anything, I think we can establish that as a reasonable baseline for a 'gaming PC,' since it has been the baseline for over a decade.
And a decent development machine, so far as you are concerned, will have a second monitor, as well as much RAM as the motherboard can reasonably hold without resorting to some soldering / reprogramming of various previously non-reprogrammable components.
A network admin machine will probably be sporting 3 monitors, usually with a console or command line open on at least one of them.
Workstations fall into their own category, which I shall not digress into, as do servers. In either case, with the singular exceptions of the video cards offered with the workstations, I have not been impressed with the various offerings.
Well, they need to protect their interests. We are well past the point of looking out for the good of everyone, and well into the looking out for yourself.
Hell, if everyone thought the way they did, the country would be destroyed. It's only because a fair portion of the populace is blissfully unaware of how things are run that we haven't had a revolution yet. They just assume, blindly, that if it isn't bothering them, then everything is going fine.
I mean, look at the cars out there. How many of them are so similar that, if you removed their logos / badges, you would be able to positively identify them as belonging to one manufacturer or another? Even when you account for differing gas mileage, options, etc., you still have some serious overlap.
Probably some attempt to limit vertical integration / introduce competition. Nice idea, but the thinking behind it is a little...wishy-washy / incomplete, as it purports to perform surgery with a sword, and legislate a policy fix for something which, if others laws (which it is dependent on) have not failed, is not a problem.
To recap, it's a law to fix something in a world where laws have already failed to prevent the problem. Closing the barn door after the horse has already bolted?
Hmm. I received several phone calls with various scare messages from people on behalf of Romney. All hours after I had voted (neither for Romney, nor Obama; gotta love those write-ins).
Look guys, I've taken a look at the economic 'plans,' and I use that term loosely here, from both of the major candidates, and I am simply not convinced that either will work. Trying to frighten me one way or the other won't work when it's not my brain stem (fight or flight) doing the thinking, but the various higher order parts of my brain normally associated with algebra, calculus, and reasoning. Now if you're telepathic, you'll know exactly what I think of you for having thought so little of me.
And next time, let's get a better selection of candidates, right? While I am not a member of the Green party (hi guys), I do like seeing them, as well as every other party / candidate that can get at least 4,000 signatures on the ballot. And do not use Facebook for your campaign website, no matter how grass-roots you might want it to be (I'm looking at the you Libertarians right now); you have more than enough techs in your ranks who are willing to throw up a basic Wordpress site for you, go for it. And as for the Democrats / Republicans, I find I don't readily fit into any of your 'issues'; as such, try providing a little more information about your candidates under the "Issues" part of your campaign websites, specifically on things that aren't currently considered up for grabs. Reading about how two candidates, from the major parties, basically agreed (almost copy / paste) on their websites on veteran healthcare issues was incredibly less useful than their party's probably imagined. 1.) I'm not a veteran (or know anyone who is, save from perhaps WWII), and 2.) when you're agreeing with one another, it's not really an issue, is it? "Elect Bob (D) or Jim (R), who both agree that veteran's need more healthcare coverage, and want to implement the same changes." -> not really decisive, is it? "Bob and Jim both like vanilla." Meh.
See, in either case, the Democrats or Republicans were, for many of these non-presidential races, playing some music only a select few could hear. I mean, I listened to the debate between Maxwell and Corbin from out where I live, and Maxwell used every opportunity to talk about how the topic influenced Education / Teachers. I don't think you understand -> he mentioned it at least a dozen times! I walked away from the debate thinking "Maxwell only gives a f*ck about his base, which appears to be made purely up of educators." I could have sworn that the local population was made up of people with many different kinds of vocations, yet, listening to the man, you might think it was a 40,000 acre commune filled purely with teachers. And the funny part is, Corbin was the seasoned politician, who basically said "I can't do anything, our state is bankrupt," giving Maxwell every opportunity to at least TRY to come up with a different solution. It was so bad, that at one point, Maxwell cited his opponent's recent discovery of some unpaid corporate taxes (something like that) as being a solution for paying for some of the things he wanted to bankroll; OMFG, you just complemented your opponent, admitted that your program is basically unfundable, and that your opponent is necessary to have in office to pay for your projects! It's like saying that you need Ron Paul elected president so that he can clean up the US budget, so that Jill Stein can go on a Green energy funding binge! If you need your opponent elected to the position you want, so that you can afford to do the things you want to do...#^$#*@^$#*&^@!Q!
The point is, they had an hour to debate things. When you make it clear that you don't give a f*ck what happens so long as your schools get more funding next year, it's super hard to take you seriously. "I don't care if the world burns so long as I get a new bike" is really, really just...terrible. I mean, perhaps I should be
Indeed, the Nazis did, for a time, enjoy technological superiority. However, they had two things working against them.
1.) Hubris -> from what I understand, their scientists made mistakes, and possibly due to political infiltration, this made it impossible to back-track and fix certain things. If you are a society where some mistakes cannot be repaired because being seen to have made a mistake may impact your lifespan....you're ultimately screwed. Even the best of scientists will make mistakes, and frequently a lot of them. Having to worry about them, or dedicate time to hiding them / playing damage control takes time away from other things. 2.) Stupidity -> their little fear campaign worked wonders for solidifying their power-base across Germany, but it also scared some of the top scientific talent right into the Allies hands. Scaring Einstein into the US's hands was, without a doubt, one of the absolute dumbest things the Nazis could have done. It gets better: supposedly there was an effort to cleanse the sciences of all influences from lesser races. So, German scientists had to spend time, if this bit of history is correct, re-deriving various common parts because the language or ideas surrounding them were dreamt up by 'lesser beings.' Apparently, the political leadership did not like some of the symbols used in common descriptions of things in the sciences; in essence, it would be the equivalent of asking mathematicians to re-derive the concepts behind algebra because the word behind the practices themselves come from the Middle East. That level of stupidity, once it achieves critical mass, acts as a poison.
Indeed. Their conjecture has been proven wrong, if history is anything to go by. A society made up of many non-uniform parts can prevail over a society that is made up of relatively uniform parts. It's fascinating, as it seems to undermine the earlier precedent set by the Spartans, who, with their relentless focus on a uniform society, managed to clobber Athens, a somewhat less uniform society.
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Nonsense. The people at the "Pirate Bay" movie rental service tell me that none of their movies come with DRM...
1.) People who wouldn't pay $300 for a Windows or Linux computer will gladly take out a mortgage to afford a $2000 Mac. So, money.
2.) The hardware is fine, the software is fine if you like being stuck in one of those rolling hamster balls...
Bah, you should have gone for the jugular. Ask him how Gnome / KDE are working out for him lately (we all feel the pain).
Sadly, this is somewhat true, but then, it is the cost of living. One copy of Windows 7 Ultimate, OEM-pricing off Newegg...not a high price to pay for being able to play games, run Visual Studio (the heroin of the programming world), etc...
Indeed. And remind me, how is Ubuntu these days? Loving the Unity interface, and I believe recently, some Amazonian love?
"This boot brought to you by Cheerios. Setting up eth0...."
Well, let's see here, it does run games, and it is still reasonably open when compared with the walled garden of Mac OS X. God forbid you should install a video card not blessed by the late S. Jobs.
Lol. Yes, the larger OEMs tend to have better testing on their configurations, no, they are not immune to criminal stupidity when sourcing some of their components. They have, in times past, been burned many a time by component providers, and even their weight was not enough to ensure a fix.
Getting hit with a configuration issue is something about as rare as a lightning strike these days. You have to have some serious bad luck to choose some components with a hit or miss issue, which once again, can mostly be avoided / curtailed by reading the customer reviews / doing a little googling when deciding which parts to buy.
I do it all the time. Just out of curiosity, what motherboard did you encounter this on, so I can add the company name to the list of people to avoid.
Laptops are portable, and the laptop market does not support custom builds.
The desktop or home market, on the other hands, are not portable, and do support custom builds.
Let's compare builds:
Acer Aspire 7600U
Weight: 22 lbs
Dimensions: 25.98" x 18.58" x 1.37"
Screen size: 27" Full HD 1920 x 1080 wide-viewing
Touch: 10 points multiuser touch
Hard drive size: 1000 GB HDD
RAM: 8 GB
Processor: 3rd-generation Intel Core i7-3630QM or i5-3210M processor
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT640M, 2 GB VRAM
Lightknight's Custom Build (currently shipping)
Screen size: 47" Full HD 1920 x 1080 wide-viewing (Vizio)
Touch: None on the screen, optional with slate / stylus (for artists).
Hard drive: 240 GB SSD (Corsair Force 3 / GT), 3000 GB HD (Seagate 7200 RPM)
RAM: 32 GB (Corsair)
Processor: AMD Bulldozer 8150 or Piledriver 8350 (with Corsair self-contained water-cooled setup, currently using SilenX fans)
Graphics: HIS ATI Radeon HD 7970, 3GB VRAM
The fans that I am using have not, under the latest loads, proven adequate enough (I like my processors to barely exceed room temperature), so I am swapping them out for some Deltas (which WILL cool the system no matter what the load might be). I also use discrete sound cards, with Asus / Omega being some of the latest offerings. The cases are ATX Full Tower, the optical drives are Blu-Ray burners from LG, the media card bays (accepting any number of flash cards) are AFT (had some issues with the Rosewill parts), the power supplies are Thermaltake ToughPower (supported wattage varies with market availability / pricing, minimum is currently 850 Watts) which are designed to survive a direct lightning strike or something. Keyboards / mice are typically user-specified. Motherboard is an Asus Crosshair V. The machines are not overclocked, but have all the hardware / cooling necessary to overclock them to a frightening degree; customers can safely overclock to a much higher setting. And yes, I have been looking at Intel's offerings, as the Bulldozer / Piledriver fiasco has been an irritation.
The important differences are that the Acer item is self-contained, and has a touch-screen. And I'd probably not ship a machine with Windows 8 (you're getting Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate Edition). So, if you like a machine that 'looks good' but runs like a dog, you'll probably favor the Acer. Or if you have some killer app that needs a 27" touch screen (restriction on the screen size, as I don't think customers will be pleased with having to get up, lean over, or walk around to hit various icons on 40"+ screens; making the touch interface only useful on smaller screens, not exactly a selling point, as I can scale up as large as LCDs can be made; you're stuck with a 27" touch screen, and I'm offering a 60" regular screen with mouse and keyboard...wait you have one too, so what was the point behind your touch screen?).
Will not be a problem for much longer. Those corporate marketers have bled their home companies dry.
And that's why there is a market for people who do want to know everything, or at least sizeable chunks of it...and who will pay quite handsomely for any offerings that actually deliver.
Most people are sheep, and would consider a worthwhile life to contain a happy childhood, a good job, and a wonderful family.
Some people want more. Some people are like Cave Johnson, and will not be satisfied with life's meager offerings. They're the ones looking down from distant mountain peeks, and still pressing the elevator button up.
And for many of them, their life's passion started off as a hobby that they practised in their garage.
So why are you asking people to settle for less? L-o-w-e-r E-x-p-e-c-t-a-t-i-o-n-s...
Building your own is cheaper if the market simply doesn't offer what you want.
Surprise surprise, larger OEMs do not tend to put out machines with Radeon HD 7970s. That means the top-end is not being covered either, unless you think a Radeon HD 7870 is the best that ATI can do (it's not). The larger OEMs are sitting kind of on the middle to lower end of hardware offerings, from what I can see.
But they will certainly charge you like they are top of the line if you will let them.
Can Dell or HP make a cheaper machine? Certainly.
Is it a machine that anyone should be allowed to buy? Hell no.
They tend to rank up there with the Cyrix machines of yester-year, something to avoid.
Unfortunately, the types who buy the bottom barrel machines are typically the ones who know the least about the hardware. "They certainly wouldn't sell me a shite machine" -> average person who buys these machines.
Yes, yes they would, and their designs are built around the idea that "one is born every minute." The kind of person who does not take the time to understand what they are buying, and thinks that some god out there protects fools from their actions. Well, there might be a god out there who does, but IMHO, he / she / they appear very overworked, so let's do a little something nice for them around this time of year, and try to lighten the workload a little, right?
If you see someone buying a machine with a 5400 RPM HD, stop them. Same thing if it has 2 GBs of RAM, or, arguably, lacks a discrete video card. Just do it, and feel good about doing it. You're saving everyone else a lot of hassle 3 weeks into the future.
Ask the person, when you go to buy a car, do you buy the absolute cheapest model that just ANYONE is offering? No? I didn't think so. This machine is not the one you want, this one over here probably is.
I think a major problem for tech is that there are simply no words which convey an adequate understanding of how much nicer their experience will be for every extra $20 they chip in. I'd say its inversely logarithmic, but even that might be too complicated. Nerf the warranty they are trying to sell you (the manufacturer typically covers machines for 3 years, and so on), and spend the money on better features.
Unfortunately, I would have to agree with you there. There was, at one point, an attempt to fix the laptop market with upgradable motherboards and what not, but I haven't heard anything about it recently.
And yes, non-geeks tend to buy laptops, or tablets. *shudder* They just need to see, first-hand, the difference between a desktop and a laptop, and they will eventually come around to the dark geeky side. The designated comfy chair + hideaway tends to appeal to the masses, as you can do whatever, with a lot of power under your fingertips, in a socially acceptable situation, which does not work elsewhere. Gaming, work, pr0n, etc. And yes, the comfy chair is very comfortable, as is not having a 17" laptop frying your nads.
The only problem with my current build is AMD's attempt to take Intel's "WTF were we thinking" crown that they earned when they bopped out the Itanium. Windows doesn't seem to like the full-core / not full-core design, and keeps throwing up cross-threading errors with Explorer. That it got this far is beyond me...
All the major OEMs are idiots who decided, at some point, that marketing mattered more than the hardware they put in the machines themselves. They're just getting their own desserts in that regard. I mean, the average consumer just has never been taught that a 5400 RPM HD is a giant bottleneck, and can't tell the difference between an OEM that offers one with and without -> they see machines purely as appliances, something to buy and never upgrade. And surprise, OEMs worked to maintain that image -> they shipped 'smaller' cases with no upgradability, custom PSUs, and underpowered heatsinks. They confirmed their customer's bias, which is their own fault...oh, and look, they're doing the same in the Smartphone world! Hands up, how many people have or have had a phone which, while being capable of running ICS, is still stuck on 2.2 or 2.3? How many people fault Google for going nuclear over this, and buying part of Motorola to 'fix' the problem? These people save a few bucks in the short term, and destroy the companies they are working for in the long term. They have no understanding of planning, or maintaining a certain level of brand / quality among their customers. It's just pump and dump: pump a product up (usually done before they are hired), with rave reviews and good hardware, then gut the hardware / fire the engineers, then outsource it all overseas, and cash in as people continue buying the next version of the product, unaware that the quality has gone to shit -> what's it matter? In six months, the people in charge of that Titanic will be piloting another company into an iceberg, while the old one is up on the blocks (all the capital has been spent, the talent gone, and no one wants to buy from them even with special cut-rate deals).
HP? Hands up, who here, having dealt with Compaq for any number of years towards its end, thought that that merger was a good idea? Anyone? See, no one. Compaq needed to die, to prevent spreading the plague to others. Instead, someone arranged a marriage; how trite.
The major OEMs want to save themselves? Fire the morons; if Marketing is telling the techs what to build, you're in for a world of hurt (remember, Marketing would be happy selling hot dogs on a corner somewhere if a customer survey said that it was the next big thing). Then spend the next 5 years actually listening to your techs about your build quality, and maybe you will survive. You'll need to combat brand fatigue, where all your customers are wary of whether or not you are just getting lucky with the latest builds, or if you have actually changed. It will take 5 years to clear out everyone's current beliefs about you and your quality, there is no rushing that. You're going to need to 'lift the brand,' not reinvent it. You'll have to convince your customers, through proof, that you are not following Apple, that you are where they want to be, and hate themselves for not being there right now. Stop trying to guess where Apple is going next; you're not them, you have different advantages, and you do not want to be them. Give the whole form factor thing a miss, as the smaller form factors tend to have lower margins (or as it is commonly known as "Why are we shipping more products than before, but our profits are in the tank?"). And there is nothing wrong with having money on the books if you haven't decided what to do with it yet: there is, and I repeat, there is, nothing wrong with having $2B laying around in the company coffers if you don't see anything worth investing in. I know, Wall St. hates that, as does your Econ professor, but guess what? There are a lot of shit investments out there, and it takes a long time to see if one is worth purchasing; buying shit investments just to get rid of the extra money / please the Street will doom your company. And once again, there is nothing wrong with issuing a one-time Dividend to shut them up, if they get too loud.
*looks around*
Why not?
I mean, it's not like a 1.5 kW power supply is going to actually run at 1500 Watts if the components hanging off of it only demand 200 Watts. It just means that it can deliver 1.5 kW if needed; when you factor in the cost savings of several successive upgrades with the same case / power supply, the fact that a 1.5 kW power supply is probably supplying cleaner power than a 200 W power supply, and that energy requirements, in general, increase with most new generations of processors / GPUs...why would you ever buy a power supply without extra capacity? Do you like buying an entirely new power supply every time you add-in an extra hard drive? That's just so...wasteful. And expensive.
And yet there are a frightening number of people who believe that their power supply will run at the labelled wattage all the time, and try to 'save money' by getting one with only 50 Watts or less in capacity...like they're putting their machine on a diet or something ("I have to restrict its intake, or it'll just gobble up all the power it can" -> electricity does not work that way, at least when it comes to computers).
And don't make me laugh about what suffice as a 'gamer' build these days. A sorrier lot of machines I have not seen. "Dude, I got an Intel i5 2.2Ghz, with 4 GBs of G. Skill RAM, a 64 GB Intel SSD drive, and one of those 2 TB 'Green/5400 RPM' drives, topped off with a ATI Radeon HD7430! I am a total gamer now! I can play Portal 1 with 2xAA!" Bong, someone save me from these types; these machines barely suffice as budget machines, not gamer, and not definitely developer (back when that ranked somewhere on the hierarchy). And no, machine you use for gaming != gaming machine.
Let me help you out. A "gaming machine" is going to be packed with the latest / top of the line in hardware. That means if you are not rocking at least a ATI Radeon 7970, a 7990, or last year's 6990 (or whatever it was called), or whatever Nvidia is offering in its top ranks, it is not a gaming machine. If you are not rocking a processor from the top tier of whatever Intel or AMD is currently offering, or was offering as top tier a year ago, again, it is not a gaming machine. If the mouse / keyboard doesn't have waaaaay too many buttons, many of whose functions you have never actually discovered, it is not a gaming machine. If you do not have a discrete sound card (yes, that still matters), it is not a gaming machine. The hard drives would normally be mandated as SSD of some unthinkable size, but since Steam has (only recently) supposedly gotten their acts together with the whole 'storing games on a different hard drive,' I think we can give it a pass (for now) with having a 7200 RPM hard drive (again, only for now, as even the 10,000 RPM HDs don't have enough space for a full Steam collection...which is quietly eating one of my 3TB drives). Unless I am forgetting anything, I think we can establish that as a reasonable baseline for a 'gaming PC,' since it has been the baseline for over a decade.
And a decent development machine, so far as you are concerned, will have a second monitor, as well as much RAM as the motherboard can reasonably hold without resorting to some soldering / reprogramming of various previously non-reprogrammable components.
A network admin machine will probably be sporting 3 monitors, usually with a console or command line open on at least one of them.
Workstations fall into their own category, which I shall not digress into, as do servers. In either case, with the singular exceptions of the video cards offered with the workstations, I have not been impressed with the various offerings.
Well, they need to protect their interests. We are well past the point of looking out for the good of everyone, and well into the looking out for yourself.
Hell, if everyone thought the way they did, the country would be destroyed. It's only because a fair portion of the populace is blissfully unaware of how things are run that we haven't had a revolution yet. They just assume, blindly, that if it isn't bothering them, then everything is going fine.
Hmm. You seem to be making the fatal assumption that those who wish to secede from the Union are all conservatives.
Lol, only if there were but one manufacturer.
I mean, look at the cars out there. How many of them are so similar that, if you removed their logos / badges, you would be able to positively identify them as belonging to one manufacturer or another? Even when you account for differing gas mileage, options, etc., you still have some serious overlap.
Probably some attempt to limit vertical integration / introduce competition. Nice idea, but the thinking behind it is a little...wishy-washy / incomplete, as it purports to perform surgery with a sword, and legislate a policy fix for something which, if others laws (which it is dependent on) have not failed, is not a problem.
To recap, it's a law to fix something in a world where laws have already failed to prevent the problem. Closing the barn door after the horse has already bolted?
Some people value actually learning stuff. Who knew?
Hmm. I received several phone calls with various scare messages from people on behalf of Romney. All hours after I had voted (neither for Romney, nor Obama; gotta love those write-ins).
"Obamacare..." -> hang-up. "blah blah blah" -> hang-up.
Look guys, I've taken a look at the economic 'plans,' and I use that term loosely here, from both of the major candidates, and I am simply not convinced that either will work. Trying to frighten me one way or the other won't work when it's not my brain stem (fight or flight) doing the thinking, but the various higher order parts of my brain normally associated with algebra, calculus, and reasoning. Now if you're telepathic, you'll know exactly what I think of you for having thought so little of me.
And next time, let's get a better selection of candidates, right? While I am not a member of the Green party (hi guys), I do like seeing them, as well as every other party / candidate that can get at least 4,000 signatures on the ballot. And do not use Facebook for your campaign website, no matter how grass-roots you might want it to be (I'm looking at the you Libertarians right now); you have more than enough techs in your ranks who are willing to throw up a basic Wordpress site for you, go for it. And as for the Democrats / Republicans, I find I don't readily fit into any of your 'issues'; as such, try providing a little more information about your candidates under the "Issues" part of your campaign websites, specifically on things that aren't currently considered up for grabs. Reading about how two candidates, from the major parties, basically agreed (almost copy / paste) on their websites on veteran healthcare issues was incredibly less useful than their party's probably imagined. 1.) I'm not a veteran (or know anyone who is, save from perhaps WWII), and 2.) when you're agreeing with one another, it's not really an issue, is it? "Elect Bob (D) or Jim (R), who both agree that veteran's need more healthcare coverage, and want to implement the same changes." -> not really decisive, is it? "Bob and Jim both like vanilla." Meh.
See, in either case, the Democrats or Republicans were, for many of these non-presidential races, playing some music only a select few could hear. I mean, I listened to the debate between Maxwell and Corbin from out where I live, and Maxwell used every opportunity to talk about how the topic influenced Education / Teachers. I don't think you understand -> he mentioned it at least a dozen times! I walked away from the debate thinking "Maxwell only gives a f*ck about his base, which appears to be made purely up of educators." I could have sworn that the local population was made up of people with many different kinds of vocations, yet, listening to the man, you might think it was a 40,000 acre commune filled purely with teachers. And the funny part is, Corbin was the seasoned politician, who basically said "I can't do anything, our state is bankrupt," giving Maxwell every opportunity to at least TRY to come up with a different solution. It was so bad, that at one point, Maxwell cited his opponent's recent discovery of some unpaid corporate taxes (something like that) as being a solution for paying for some of the things he wanted to bankroll; OMFG, you just complemented your opponent, admitted that your program is basically unfundable, and that your opponent is necessary to have in office to pay for your projects! It's like saying that you need Ron Paul elected president so that he can clean up the US budget, so that Jill Stein can go on a Green energy funding binge! If you need your opponent elected to the position you want, so that you can afford to do the things you want to do...#^$#*@^$#*&^@!Q!
The point is, they had an hour to debate things. When you make it clear that you don't give a f*ck what happens so long as your schools get more funding next year, it's super hard to take you seriously. "I don't care if the world burns so long as I get a new bike" is really, really just...terrible. I mean, perhaps I should be
Indeed, the Nazis did, for a time, enjoy technological superiority. However, they had two things working against them.
1.) Hubris -> from what I understand, their scientists made mistakes, and possibly due to political infiltration, this made it impossible to back-track and fix certain things. If you are a society where some mistakes cannot be repaired because being seen to have made a mistake may impact your lifespan....you're ultimately screwed. Even the best of scientists will make mistakes, and frequently a lot of them. Having to worry about them, or dedicate time to hiding them / playing damage control takes time away from other things.
2.) Stupidity -> their little fear campaign worked wonders for solidifying their power-base across Germany, but it also scared some of the top scientific talent right into the Allies hands. Scaring Einstein into the US's hands was, without a doubt, one of the absolute dumbest things the Nazis could have done. It gets better: supposedly there was an effort to cleanse the sciences of all influences from lesser races. So, German scientists had to spend time, if this bit of history is correct, re-deriving various common parts because the language or ideas surrounding them were dreamt up by 'lesser beings.' Apparently, the political leadership did not like some of the symbols used in common descriptions of things in the sciences; in essence, it would be the equivalent of asking mathematicians to re-derive the concepts behind algebra because the word behind the practices themselves come from the Middle East. That level of stupidity, once it achieves critical mass, acts as a poison.
Indeed. Their conjecture has been proven wrong, if history is anything to go by. A society made up of many non-uniform parts can prevail over a society that is made up of relatively uniform parts. It's fascinating, as it seems to undermine the earlier precedent set by the Spartans, who, with their relentless focus on a uniform society, managed to clobber Athens, a somewhat less uniform society.