Seriously...something like this should probably get either top marks or bottom marks - there is no in between. This is a computer for people who want to get on the internet, type a letter, or do other simple operations on their computer. These folks would never use Photoshop even if it was preloaded. They just want (and need) it to work. It didn't. The search bar problem (not opening firefox), and the lack of simple flash support is, imho, a serious flaw. There is too much on the net which requires flash not to include it (and it truly pains me to make that statement). And to not have a driver for the installed modem? That's pretty damned bad.
This computer needs to just work. First time. Out of the box. It's not going to get bought by anyone who knows squat about computers, and you just know that if there is any tech support available its going to suck royally (at $200, what did you expect?).
Sadly, the software matters more than the hardware in this sector, and it appears there just wasn't enough development and testing done on it.
I've got the same panel in my M70. I tried to use the laptop stand and a keyboard mouse as my primary desktop, but after 8 months of serious eye strain at the end of the day I added a 24" desktop LCD (at 1920x1200). The problem is that the scaling technology isn't available, afaict, and the letters are just too damned small at half their intended size (based on "traditional" 72 dpi screen resolution. You can't just use a larger font, as may dialog boxes are hardcoded in pixels and you miss some of the text. Web browsing sucks, since images don't get scaled, and menus tend to get buggered when you increase the font size more than one step. I'd like to see firefox with a real zoom feature which increases the images and the frame widths along with the text instead of just changing sizes.
Fix all those issues and I'd definitely prefer a 300dpi panel on my desktop. Then again, that's a lot of pixels to move around, of your choice of applications moves them quickly.
Here's a data point:
Again, 1600SF ranch on a basement, 1960s construction (R-11 walls, I've added R-25ish in the attic), new argon windows, all electric:
Peak month = $275 @ $0.07/kWh = 3900kWh, or about 131kWh per day Annual avg = $150 @ $0.07/kWh = 2150kWh, or about 71kWh per day
Now, remember that this is all electric - hot water tank (inefficient), heat pump (13 SEER, decent), "old" house.
If the GP had his units correct, 5.7kW avg load is 137kWh per day. That's pretty close to my figure, and if he's using electric radiant (i.e. resistance) heat, I can see his usage being up there. With a $100,000 in line costs to string his new house, PV and thermal solar has a lot of room to play with. Propane is butt-ripping expensive - more expensive than electric resistance heat where I live. But with a good PV array, a backup diesel generator (run it on vegetable oil if you're a real greenie), good passive design, low voltage DC appliances, and some hot water solar, you could reasonably live off grid - maybe for less than your line costs. But, then again, most people just don't have the extra $100,000+ to live remote.
Actually, the original poster was talking about a typical home - you know, like the 100 million in the US that already exist. Sure, you can build a solar house, and chain yourself back to fossil fuels for all of your heating and cooking...but then what's the point? You may as well put in a diesel generator. At least then you could run it off vegetable oil if you wanted to (and converted it for said purpose).
Besides, are you going to put in PVs and a hot water system? What happens when you take a shower or do laundry on a cloudy day? I guess you just get cold. Same with hydronic - if you use hot water to heat your house, you need massive heat storage capacity. Of course, the same can be said for PV. But the idea was cheap, simple solar. Not redesign the entire way a house works, adding tens of thousands of dollars in construction and engineering costs. I happen to be in the building industry, and hydronic heating and large storage tanks / masses are a significant expense.
Remember, the idea was to try and make this stuff cheap and simple. I'm simply pointing out that it's not, for a "typical" house.
The reason interlaced stayed is that the FCC didn't have the backbone and the technical expertise to require that the new standard be done correctly. It's as simple as that. The TV people wanted interlaced, because "that's the way they've always done it" and the computer people couldn't convince the FCC otherwise. The computer people wanted progressive, because it simplifies conversion and eliminates the whole bob/weave/foo that gets done to watch an interlaced signal on a progressive (or full panel or asynchronous) system. It also simplifies upconversion.
Now, the FCC didn't just screw the pooch, once, but twice. They ignored common technical sense and allowed interlaced to stay, but then bowed to pressure to allow multiple formats for ATSC transmission. 18 of them, to be exact. The industry asked for such "flexibility", and then realized when they had to implement it it was an absolute nightmare. If they had decided that the signal for NA HD was to be 1080p/30, we'd all be done now. What? Did I hear you cry that that would have delayed HD adoption? I've got bad news - 1080p30 is common and can be done with consumer hardware _now_, and we still haven't switched over. I refuse to believe that the professional sector couldn't have completed the process 5 years ago. As a bonus, all the 480p/720p/1080i inconsistency would have been avoided, and the set top boxes would only have to negotiate one format instead of 18.
No, interlaced is here because the FCC didn't have the balls to do the transition right.
No, mains in US houses are 240V, with two 120 volt legs 180 degrees out of phase. Homes built before 1980 are likely to have a 100 or 150A panel (which is likely overloaded); those after will probably have a 200A panel. Modern homes over 2000SF which use all electric will likely have at least two 200A panels.
As for the power used, a typical electric tank hot water heater pulls about 6000watts. I have two instant electric heaters in the kitchen (each about the size of two paperbacks) which pull 10kW each when they operate, and a full sized electric instant water heater will pull about 29kW. The heatpump will pull about the same when it's really cold outside and it needs to fire the resistance coils, and about 15kW when it's running full tilt in heat pump mode (in either direction, heat or cool). My electric oven (an old double Whirlpool model) can do about 10kw as well.
There are a lot of things in a house which will drive the peak load (and hence the inverters). In the winter (peak usage), we can use up to about 3500-3800kWh in a month, or 120kWh per day. Unfortunately, this occurs when we only get 9-10 hours of sun, and without tracking, probably only about 3-4 hours of collection. That's 30-40kW needed to meet peak demand. FWIW, I live in a 1600SF, 1960s ranch with a full basement. A modern house with better insulation (without going insane) can be about 70-75% of that number. The annual average use is a bit under half the peak month.
Fugly it is, but in this case it's not some vain attempt to make it look like Robin Williams should be stepping out and offering a split finger handshake. The Cd of this thing is 0.11. That's a significant change from the fugly hybrids running around at 0.25 to 0.28.
It's not just the cost of the panel that matters, but the anticipated life of the panel. Traditionally, it has taken more energy to make a panel than that panel will return to the grid. That's not as big a deal if you're truly off grid - say in the boonies, or in space - but it matters if you want to make it viable in a business sense. And it can't just be equal, it's got to be a significantly low fraction. Otherwise you're creating an energy storage medium (and a very limited one in the case of a solar panel) instead of a power generator.
I think you're off by almost two orders of magnitude. A typical, all-electric house (no nat gas, LP or oil) is going to have a minimum of one 200A-240V panel, and will likely have two (50- or 100kW total). Iirc, the rule of thumb for inverters and storage is a dollar of that backend stuff for every dollar of panel (that could also be off by quite a bit...and probably not in the homeowner's favor). Once you get that part figured out (say $100k) then all you have to do is get 4000SF of southerly facing rooftop, and you're good as gold.
Oops...I just realized - before anyone busts me over the drag thing, of course the drag is going to be the square of the velocity; I was thinking of those percentage top speed / economy reductions relative to my first-sentence 0.38Cd miata with the 1.15 area ratio (.11 vs.38*1.15 ~4; sqrt(4)=2, or about 50%). Anyway, I really want a nice looking (if not super flashy) two-seater for under 30k. Excuse the math...it's the day before the a long holiday weekend.
Wow, everybody is giving dirk shit for this comment, but it rings pretty damed true for most of the population. I would like to know why they can't stick this kind of thing in a Miata or an MR-2?
Now, on the flip side, this is an extreme version. Top speed in a car is highly dependent on the frontal area and the drag coefficient. Frontal area is going to be a somewhat limited value to play with, since most "small" or "sporty" cars are going to be similar in size - you have to have a cab area which allows a comfortably seated pair of humans.
This vehicle looks goofy, but the practical aspect of the shape is that (1) it reduced the square/rectangular front to a circle/oval, which probably buys back 15% or so (accounting for the fact that it has wheels. More significantly, the Cd is 0.11. Given that most small vehicles have a Cd between 0.3 and 0.4, that's a 60% to 75% reduction in drag per square foot.
Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_drag_coefficients to see what's out there. The best commercial car is at about 0.25 at 0.26 - this is less than half that! If you consider that the top speed may be cut by 50-60%, along with the highway range, it's not economical to do so.
So, when it comes to this vehicle, I think it's an anomaly. They've gotten to realistic by pushing the envelope on the car instead of busting their nuts to get the electric components to meet the standards expected for a modern automobile. As for the "normal" market - hey, Honda...I'd be happy with a hybrid Del Sol.
You see, some will burn coal - from plants with scrubbers and pollution controls (we hope), and some will run on nuclear. Some will be powered entirely by wind, others by wave action, solar power, natural gas, oil, etc. Remember - a large plant has a far greater efficiency than an ICE, even if you include the line losses (Remember how far that gallon of gasoline had to travel to get to your local gas station).
By removing the need to burn a specific fuel, i.e. a narrow range of liquified hydrocarbons, an electric car can run on whatever is most cost efficient to produce electricity. You may want to generate the pollution where you live, but not all communities can harness geothermal, wind, hydroelectric, or large-scale solar energy. There are also limits to where nuclear plants can be installed (and not just from the NIMBY perspective).
Sure, there's still the issue of distribution, but the hope is that the current system could be upgraded to handle the new loads as they came on line. You would also reduce/eliminate the transportation-intensive liquid fuel distribution system, and potentially some of the troublesome fuel additives we've devised.
If you have a truly secure browser, that tends to break most modern web coding. Try surfing without flash for a while, for example. You'll find much of the web out of reach, and some major commercial sites entirely inaccessible.
I'm sure that there are lots of "innovative" patents in MS's portfolio, though I'm certain that many were purchased elsewhere rather than developed in house. Also, just because they are producing "innovative" patents, does not necessarily mean that their enduser products are. They seem to fall hopelessly short of the basics in reaching for the new and flashy. Example: wouldn't you think that an automated troubleshooting wizard for internet connectivity problems would flag a blank entry for the gateway? I recently found that it did not.
Here's a recommendation for MS: when you create a troubleshooting wizard, perhaps you should sit an IT expert down and watch them trouble shoot a problem and record the steps. It would probably help a great deal more than asking if the toaster is plugged in and then declaring the problem unsolvable.
"You would think that the NCAA would be thrilled to have reporters live blogging events in order to generate more interest and keep passionate fans talking about NCAA sports."
If they really wanted to keep fans passionate about NCAA football, they'd institute a playoff system in Division I. Every other division manages to have a playoff during exams, and the basketball players seem to do just fine throughout all of spring mid-terms while on on the road 4-5 days a week for a month. No, it's about money - not interest. Money comes from control, and control is what they are exerting here. I'm sure that you can buy a license to blog real-time, it would just cost more (up to and possibly including the price of full broadcast rights).
That's a great idea, but it turns out that most of my clients on construction sites seem unconvinced that carrying a pair of monitors and a computer up to the 6th floor to discuss a connection detail is an efficient use of technology.
Try the venerable HP5si. Built like a tank. Mine has got to be close to 15 years old; I bought it five years ago on fleabay for $250, put a new $150 fuser in it, and have probably printed 40,000 sheets (or more) in it since. It's still my primary 11x17 printer, and with reman toners going for about $70 for 15,000 pages it costs almost nothing to run. I expect I'll probably sell it in 15 years when I retire and don't need the machine anymore. I may even get more than I paid for it, as HP doesn't make durable equipment anymore.
Hey, my bother in law is a certified computer expert. I know if I have a really tough problem with windows, he's probably got the solution, no matter how bad I've screwed things up while trying to fix it...
Again, interesting in that the OS is essentially locked up at this time, with no ability to load other user programs or even accept user input. I realize that 2 billion operations a second seems trivial these days, but you'd think there's be a few million cycles left to serve the user.
Slashdot Mirror
...the inventor of water sports...
I do not think that means what you think it means, though it is still in the realm of impressing a geek.
Seriously...something like this should probably get either top marks or bottom marks - there is no in between. This is a computer for people who want to get on the internet, type a letter, or do other simple operations on their computer. These folks would never use Photoshop even if it was preloaded. They just want (and need) it to work. It didn't. The search bar problem (not opening firefox), and the lack of simple flash support is, imho, a serious flaw. There is too much on the net which requires flash not to include it (and it truly pains me to make that statement). And to not have a driver for the installed modem? That's pretty damned bad.
This computer needs to just work. First time. Out of the box. It's not going to get bought by anyone who knows squat about computers, and you just know that if there is any tech support available its going to suck royally (at $200, what did you expect?).
Sadly, the software matters more than the hardware in this sector, and it appears there just wasn't enough development and testing done on it.
I've got the same panel in my M70. I tried to use the laptop stand and a keyboard mouse as my primary desktop, but after 8 months of serious eye strain at the end of the day I added a 24" desktop LCD (at 1920x1200). The problem is that the scaling technology isn't available, afaict, and the letters are just too damned small at half their intended size (based on "traditional" 72 dpi screen resolution. You can't just use a larger font, as may dialog boxes are hardcoded in pixels and you miss some of the text. Web browsing sucks, since images don't get scaled, and menus tend to get buggered when you increase the font size more than one step. I'd like to see firefox with a real zoom feature which increases the images and the frame widths along with the text instead of just changing sizes.
Fix all those issues and I'd definitely prefer a 300dpi panel on my desktop. Then again, that's a lot of pixels to move around, of your choice of applications moves them quickly.
Here's a data point:
Again, 1600SF ranch on a basement, 1960s construction (R-11 walls, I've added R-25ish in the attic), new argon windows, all electric:
Peak month = $275 @ $0.07/kWh = 3900kWh, or about 131kWh per day
Annual avg = $150 @ $0.07/kWh = 2150kWh, or about 71kWh per day
Now, remember that this is all electric - hot water tank (inefficient), heat pump (13 SEER, decent), "old" house.
If the GP had his units correct, 5.7kW avg load is 137kWh per day. That's pretty close to my figure, and if he's using electric radiant (i.e. resistance) heat, I can see his usage being up there. With a $100,000 in line costs to string his new house, PV and thermal solar has a lot of room to play with. Propane is butt-ripping expensive - more expensive than electric resistance heat where I live. But with a good PV array, a backup diesel generator (run it on vegetable oil if you're a real greenie), good passive design, low voltage DC appliances, and some hot water solar, you could reasonably live off grid - maybe for less than your line costs. But, then again, most people just don't have the extra $100,000+ to live remote.
Actually, the original poster was talking about a typical home - you know, like the 100 million in the US that already exist. Sure, you can build a solar house, and chain yourself back to fossil fuels for all of your heating and cooking...but then what's the point? You may as well put in a diesel generator. At least then you could run it off vegetable oil if you wanted to (and converted it for said purpose).
Besides, are you going to put in PVs and a hot water system? What happens when you take a shower or do laundry on a cloudy day? I guess you just get cold. Same with hydronic - if you use hot water to heat your house, you need massive heat storage capacity. Of course, the same can be said for PV. But the idea was cheap, simple solar. Not redesign the entire way a house works, adding tens of thousands of dollars in construction and engineering costs. I happen to be in the building industry, and hydronic heating and large storage tanks / masses are a significant expense.
Remember, the idea was to try and make this stuff cheap and simple. I'm simply pointing out that it's not, for a "typical" house.
The reason interlaced stayed is that the FCC didn't have the backbone and the technical expertise to require that the new standard be done correctly. It's as simple as that. The TV people wanted interlaced, because "that's the way they've always done it" and the computer people couldn't convince the FCC otherwise. The computer people wanted progressive, because it simplifies conversion and eliminates the whole bob/weave/foo that gets done to watch an interlaced signal on a progressive (or full panel or asynchronous) system. It also simplifies upconversion.
Now, the FCC didn't just screw the pooch, once, but twice. They ignored common technical sense and allowed interlaced to stay, but then bowed to pressure to allow multiple formats for ATSC transmission. 18 of them, to be exact. The industry asked for such "flexibility", and then realized when they had to implement it it was an absolute nightmare. If they had decided that the signal for NA HD was to be 1080p/30, we'd all be done now. What? Did I hear you cry that that would have delayed HD adoption? I've got bad news - 1080p30 is common and can be done with consumer hardware _now_, and we still haven't switched over. I refuse to believe that the professional sector couldn't have completed the process 5 years ago. As a bonus, all the 480p/720p/1080i inconsistency would have been avoided, and the set top boxes would only have to negotiate one format instead of 18.
No, interlaced is here because the FCC didn't have the balls to do the transition right.
No, mains in US houses are 240V, with two 120 volt legs 180 degrees out of phase. Homes built before 1980 are likely to have a 100 or 150A panel (which is likely overloaded); those after will probably have a 200A panel. Modern homes over 2000SF which use all electric will likely have at least two 200A panels.
As for the power used, a typical electric tank hot water heater pulls about 6000watts. I have two instant electric heaters in the kitchen (each about the size of two paperbacks) which pull 10kW each when they operate, and a full sized electric instant water heater will pull about 29kW. The heatpump will pull about the same when it's really cold outside and it needs to fire the resistance coils, and about 15kW when it's running full tilt in heat pump mode (in either direction, heat or cool). My electric oven (an old double Whirlpool model) can do about 10kw as well.
There are a lot of things in a house which will drive the peak load (and hence the inverters). In the winter (peak usage), we can use up to about 3500-3800kWh in a month, or 120kWh per day. Unfortunately, this occurs when we only get 9-10 hours of sun, and without tracking, probably only about 3-4 hours of collection. That's 30-40kW needed to meet peak demand. FWIW, I live in a 1600SF, 1960s ranch with a full basement. A modern house with better insulation (without going insane) can be about 70-75% of that number. The annual average use is a bit under half the peak month.
Just curious...it seems that the decision about suspension of copyright and other IP rights might flow to the encryption "protecting" such rights.
Fugly it is, but in this case it's not some vain attempt to make it look like Robin Williams should be stepping out and offering a split finger handshake. The Cd of this thing is 0.11. That's a significant change from the fugly hybrids running around at 0.25 to 0.28.
It's not just the cost of the panel that matters, but the anticipated life of the panel. Traditionally, it has taken more energy to make a panel than that panel will return to the grid. That's not as big a deal if you're truly off grid - say in the boonies, or in space - but it matters if you want to make it viable in a business sense. And it can't just be equal, it's got to be a significantly low fraction. Otherwise you're creating an energy storage medium (and a very limited one in the case of a solar panel) instead of a power generator.
I think you're off by almost two orders of magnitude. A typical, all-electric house (no nat gas, LP or oil) is going to have a minimum of one 200A-240V panel, and will likely have two (50- or 100kW total). Iirc, the rule of thumb for inverters and storage is a dollar of that backend stuff for every dollar of panel (that could also be off by quite a bit...and probably not in the homeowner's favor). Once you get that part figured out (say $100k) then all you have to do is get 4000SF of southerly facing rooftop, and you're good as gold.
Oops...I just realized - before anyone busts me over the drag thing, of course the drag is going to be the square of the velocity; I was thinking of those percentage top speed / economy reductions relative to my first-sentence 0.38Cd miata with the 1.15 area ratio (.11 vs .38*1.15 ~4; sqrt(4)=2, or about 50%). Anyway, I really want a nice looking (if not super flashy) two-seater for under 30k. Excuse the math...it's the day before the a long holiday weekend.
Wow, everybody is giving dirk shit for this comment, but it rings pretty damed true for most of the population. I would like to know why they can't stick this kind of thing in a Miata or an MR-2?
Now, on the flip side, this is an extreme version. Top speed in a car is highly dependent on the frontal area and the drag coefficient. Frontal area is going to be a somewhat limited value to play with, since most "small" or "sporty" cars are going to be similar in size - you have to have a cab area which allows a comfortably seated pair of humans.
This vehicle looks goofy, but the practical aspect of the shape is that (1) it reduced the square/rectangular front to a circle/oval, which probably buys back 15% or so (accounting for the fact that it has wheels. More significantly, the Cd is 0.11. Given that most small vehicles have a Cd between 0.3 and 0.4, that's a 60% to 75% reduction in drag per square foot.
Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_drag_coefficients to see what's out there. The best commercial car is at about 0.25 at 0.26 - this is less than half that! If you consider that the top speed may be cut by 50-60%, along with the highway range, it's not economical to do so.
So, when it comes to this vehicle, I think it's an anomaly. They've gotten to realistic by pushing the envelope on the car instead of busting their nuts to get the electric components to meet the standards expected for a modern automobile. As for the "normal" market - hey, Honda...I'd be happy with a hybrid Del Sol.
You see, some will burn coal - from plants with scrubbers and pollution controls (we hope), and some will run on nuclear. Some will be powered entirely by wind, others by wave action, solar power, natural gas, oil, etc. Remember - a large plant has a far greater efficiency than an ICE, even if you include the line losses (Remember how far that gallon of gasoline had to travel to get to your local gas station).
By removing the need to burn a specific fuel, i.e. a narrow range of liquified hydrocarbons, an electric car can run on whatever is most cost efficient to produce electricity. You may want to generate the pollution where you live, but not all communities can harness geothermal, wind, hydroelectric, or large-scale solar energy. There are also limits to where nuclear plants can be installed (and not just from the NIMBY perspective).
Sure, there's still the issue of distribution, but the hope is that the current system could be upgraded to handle the new loads as they came on line. You would also reduce/eliminate the transportation-intensive liquid fuel distribution system, and potentially some of the troublesome fuel additives we've devised.
If you have a truly secure browser, that tends to break most modern web coding. Try surfing without flash for a while, for example. You'll find much of the web out of reach, and some major commercial sites entirely inaccessible.
I'm sure that there are lots of "innovative" patents in MS's portfolio, though I'm certain that many were purchased elsewhere rather than developed in house. Also, just because they are producing "innovative" patents, does not necessarily mean that their enduser products are. They seem to fall hopelessly short of the basics in reaching for the new and flashy. Example: wouldn't you think that an automated troubleshooting wizard for internet connectivity problems would flag a blank entry for the gateway? I recently found that it did not.
Here's a recommendation for MS: when you create a troubleshooting wizard, perhaps you should sit an IT expert down and watch them trouble shoot a problem and record the steps. It would probably help a great deal more than asking if the toaster is plugged in and then declaring the problem unsolvable.
"You would think that the NCAA would be thrilled to have reporters live blogging events in order to generate more interest and keep passionate fans talking about NCAA sports."
If they really wanted to keep fans passionate about NCAA football, they'd institute a playoff system in Division I. Every other division manages to have a playoff during exams, and the basketball players seem to do just fine throughout all of spring mid-terms while on on the road 4-5 days a week for a month. No, it's about money - not interest. Money comes from control, and control is what they are exerting here. I'm sure that you can buy a license to blog real-time, it would just cost more (up to and possibly including the price of full broadcast rights).
That's a great idea, but it turns out that most of my clients on construction sites seem unconvinced that carrying a pair of monitors and a computer up to the 6th floor to discuss a connection detail is an efficient use of technology.
LJII?
Try the venerable HP5si. Built like a tank. Mine has got to be close to 15 years old; I bought it five years ago on fleabay for $250, put a new $150 fuser in it, and have probably printed 40,000 sheets (or more) in it since. It's still my primary 11x17 printer, and with reman toners going for about $70 for 15,000 pages it costs almost nothing to run. I expect I'll probably sell it in 15 years when I retire and don't need the machine anymore. I may even get more than I paid for it, as HP doesn't make durable equipment anymore.
Damn it, shouldn't you be out on the picket lines?
...Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern and Eddie Murphy...
Actually, I've been taken to understand that Chris Rock has taken over the funny-misfit-black-guy roles lately.
Funny, that. It seems that the current president seems to have the same approach to the middle east.
"Beer Can Optimize Internet Bottlenecks"
I'm not sure what the alcohol has to do with network optimization, but I'll just say right now that I'm for it.
Hey, my bother in law is a certified computer expert. I know if I have a really tough problem with windows, he's probably got the solution, no matter how bad I've screwed things up while trying to fix it...
Oh, I guess that might make me his brot...
nevermind
Again, interesting in that the OS is essentially locked up at this time, with no ability to load other user programs or even accept user input. I realize that 2 billion operations a second seems trivial these days, but you'd think there's be a few million cycles left to serve the user.