Agree. If code allows, pull conduit to next to each outlet box or lightswitch box, with a low voltage box installed at the end of the run. (Think about places where you might eventually run some technology, such as near the toilet, behind the fridge, where an alarm panel would go, where a remote control panel would go, etc.) Run some heavy cable-pulling twine out each end of the conduit. Even if you sheetrock over the low voltage box for now, you can always uncover it later when something cool comes about that you want to install, and the first time you have to bust open a wall to run cables, you've already paid for the extra conduit and boxes you can run now.
Also, if you're thinking about home automation, i.e. heater control, keyless entry, automatic shutters or blinds, etc., think about running the wiring now and just tack it to the stud nearest where you would install something. Same goes for A/V equipment (including a possible ceiling-mounted projector!)
Geoworks Ensemble was a great example of this. It was several times faster than Windows 3.1 on older hardware, even though it included scalable screen and printer fonts.
Similarly, if an app takes a long time to save a document, and it blocks the user from doing other things during this process, that's pretty obnoxious. Most people save frequently (or at least they should), and if it takes longer than a second or two at most, you've just interrupted their workflow.
My friend's dad builds houses. I remember his old 8MHz "Turbo" XT used to take 2-3 minutes to redraw his AutoCAD floorplans, and 15 MINUTES to regenerate them. He had to adjust his workflow to do as much as possible between regens. He was a happy man the day he upgraded to a 486 (with VGA instead of a Hercules and amber screen.)
FWIW, I live in a mid-size city and find the $20 Belkin model from WalMart to be usable. After plugging the 6" lead into my mp3 player, I hang the assemblage on my rearview mirror. I find the sound quality OK for voice (All Things Considered, mostly) and movies (on a laptop, when parked of course!) but subpar for music.
But why, oh why, don't all car stereos come with an aux jack?
I had the $20 Belkin first, but got tired of poor range and constantly replacing batteries. (I actually unplugged the power antenna in the trunk of my Honda to get much better coverage.) I've since gotten the next model up Belkin--the one with the 12V adapter. I find that it has the same range when running on batteries, but much better range when plugged in. I also found that placement matters (on the gauge shelf in my wife's Saturn, and in the pocket below the stereo in my Honda.)
The one mandatory feature in my next stereo will be a mini-jack on the front. Even the best FM transmitter doesn't have better quality sound than a wire, and it would be nice to plug my antenna back in.
I bought a unit that did NOT turn off after the audio signal stopped and I frequently forgot to turn it off manually...which resulted in the batteries being dead 90% of the time. Whatever unit that you buy, I suggest looking for one that has this critical feature.
I have the opposite problem. I have the Belkin unit, which shuts off 30 seconds after the audio stops--even when you just pause the player. So I'm talking on the phone, or into the clown's mouth at the fast-food restaurant, and suddenly the transmitter shuts off, and the static and noise of the radio station blasts out the speakers.
I've purchased several $125 Officejet 5610's for the folks at the office for precisely this reason. It has an ADF scanner, and the included software will create searchable PDFs (it OCR's the document and embeds the text into the PDF's metadata). Now the fax machine hardly is used anymore.
Just so you know, in case you want to upgrade later, a Pentium M 1.2GHz with the lid closed draws about 15-16 watts at idle according to the Kill a Watt. I got a Latitude C610 with a broken screen for a song from eBay (with two batteries!), put in a 60GB 5400 RPM drive, attached a monitor long enough to configure CentOS, and now have a rock-solid, quiet and very low-power server.
What I think needs to happen, is Apple needs to find a way of letting people download video for a particular device. Unlike with audio, where most people will listen to the same track on their iPod and through their home stereo (which makes me think that a lot of people must be near-deaf, but I digress), people aren't going to do the same thing with video. They want high-def content for their HDTV, which means a different file from the quick-downloading version for their iPod.
Or better yet, download the high-quality version and have iTunes build an iPod version in the background during and after the download. That way, there's only one download, and with the speed of modern computers, iTunes could probably build the smaller version on the fly at the same speed as a download over cable or DSL.
Of course, make that an option that can be turned off for Apple TV users who don't have an iPod.
On the other hand, a lot of cell companies will charge between $150 and $200 to break a 2-year contract. If I save more than that amount by buying the phone on the contract (i.e. a $500 smart phone for $199, and maybe a waived activation fee), I'll just get the contract. If I break it later, I'm still money ahead over paying the up-front costs.
This will have an interesting effect on the current inkjet printer/ink market. If a printer can print even 5 pages a minute at photo quality, it will drastically shift how much people use it--at least until they realize that they blew through $75 in cartridges in 20 minutes. Just as laser printer makers have had to increase the yield of their cartridges as printing speeds increased (some low-end workgroup Laserjets have cartridges that last 20,000 pages), inkjets will have to change as well.
An average EV consumes around 250Wh/mile. Assuming that an air car is similar, a 400 watt wind generator can propel the car 16 miles in 10 hours of operation. a 1KW generator can propel the car 40 miles in 10 hours of operation.
Going back to the topic of the air car that I commented on, a wind-driven compressor could be a very inexpensive way to supplement the electric compressor that is already producing compressed air for such a car. Very little regulation required, and the plant could be a common off-the-shelf compressor with appropriate gearing and a couple of blades attached.
Hell, you could do wind power without mechanical to electric to mechanical conversion. Simply have the blades drive a compressor directly. It will likely have far higher efficiency than generating electricity and using that to electrolyze water into hydrogen.
At least they should provide a text field that could be displayed indicating the codec used. It sucks when VLC or MPlayer indicate that a codec is needed, but can't tell you exactly which one.
Price wars won't happen in an unregulated cellular market because the cost of entry is very high. If you're an otherwise established business (McDonalds, for instance), you have the real estate already, but you still have to deal with the high cost of equipment, roaming agreements with established carriers in areas where you can't afford to compete, etc. The existing players have high prices because they are very comfortable with keeping the prices high, and know, even if the market were completely unregulated, that the barrier to entry is too high for a low cost carrier to come in.
What surprises me is that XP has been almost completely removed as an option for consumer-level machines. In the past, such as when XP came out, you could often still get machines with 98/ME or 2000 during a transition period. Some even had both on the disc (and dual license keys on the sticker.) With the exception of business machines, XP is rapidly disappearing from retail machines.
Not just that. If a misspelled domain gets "resolved" by this "service", it shows up in your history and URL autocomplete list. Every time you type in that domain again, the misspelled URL comes up.
Very true. My dedicated AT&T rep knows that my company does "web services", and attempts to recommend services based on my usage patterns, but if asked, I doubt she knows specifically what we do.
I occasionally need my NAS to have some CPU as well (audio re-encoding, etc.), so I use a Dell Latitude C610 laptop (Pentium-M 1.2GHz, 256MB RAM) and dropped in a 60GB drive. Running CentOS 4.3, it consumes 14-15 watts idle with the hard drive spinning and the lid closed, but cranks up the CPU when I need it. It also has USB, PCMCIA, 10/100 Ethernet, CDRW and a 3+ hour built-in UPS.:-) You can find one with a broken screen cheap on eBay.
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Agree. If code allows, pull conduit to next to each outlet box or lightswitch box, with a low voltage box installed at the end of the run. (Think about places where you might eventually run some technology, such as near the toilet, behind the fridge, where an alarm panel would go, where a remote control panel would go, etc.) Run some heavy cable-pulling twine out each end of the conduit. Even if you sheetrock over the low voltage box for now, you can always uncover it later when something cool comes about that you want to install, and the first time you have to bust open a wall to run cables, you've already paid for the extra conduit and boxes you can run now. Also, if you're thinking about home automation, i.e. heater control, keyless entry, automatic shutters or blinds, etc., think about running the wiring now and just tack it to the stud nearest where you would install something. Same goes for A/V equipment (including a possible ceiling-mounted projector!)
Geoworks Ensemble was a great example of this. It was several times faster than Windows 3.1 on older hardware, even though it included scalable screen and printer fonts.
My friend's dad builds houses. I remember his old 8MHz "Turbo" XT used to take 2-3 minutes to redraw his AutoCAD floorplans, and 15 MINUTES to regenerate them. He had to adjust his workflow to do as much as possible between regens. He was a happy man the day he upgraded to a 486 (with VGA instead of a Hercules and amber screen.)
Nope, I'm using OEM copies I bought from NewEgg on two MBP's running Parallels. Works great.
But why, oh why, don't all car stereos come with an aux jack?
I had the $20 Belkin first, but got tired of poor range and constantly replacing batteries. (I actually unplugged the power antenna in the trunk of my Honda to get much better coverage.) I've since gotten the next model up Belkin--the one with the 12V adapter. I find that it has the same range when running on batteries, but much better range when plugged in. I also found that placement matters (on the gauge shelf in my wife's Saturn, and in the pocket below the stereo in my Honda.)
The one mandatory feature in my next stereo will be a mini-jack on the front. Even the best FM transmitter doesn't have better quality sound than a wire, and it would be nice to plug my antenna back in.
I have the opposite problem. I have the Belkin unit, which shuts off 30 seconds after the audio stops--even when you just pause the player. So I'm talking on the phone, or into the clown's mouth at the fast-food restaurant, and suddenly the transmitter shuts off, and the static and noise of the radio station blasts out the speakers.
Maybe it is the Mac software; I've only tried it on a PC. I'll load it on my MBP on Monday and give it a whirl.
I've purchased several $125 Officejet 5610's for the folks at the office for precisely this reason. It has an ADF scanner, and the included software will create searchable PDFs (it OCR's the document and embeds the text into the PDF's metadata). Now the fax machine hardly is used anymore.
Just so you know, in case you want to upgrade later, a Pentium M 1.2GHz with the lid closed draws about 15-16 watts at idle according to the Kill a Watt. I got a Latitude C610 with a broken screen for a song from eBay (with two batteries!), put in a 60GB 5400 RPM drive, attached a monitor long enough to configure CentOS, and now have a rock-solid, quiet and very low-power server.
Or better yet, download the high-quality version and have iTunes build an iPod version in the background during and after the download. That way, there's only one download, and with the speed of modern computers, iTunes could probably build the smaller version on the fly at the same speed as a download over cable or DSL.
Of course, make that an option that can be turned off for Apple TV users who don't have an iPod.
On the other hand, a lot of cell companies will charge between $150 and $200 to break a 2-year contract. If I save more than that amount by buying the phone on the contract (i.e. a $500 smart phone for $199, and maybe a waived activation fee), I'll just get the contract. If I break it later, I'm still money ahead over paying the up-front costs.
Fixed that for you. :-)
Symantec is where good software goes to die. For example: Norton Utilities, Ghost, BackupExec.
This will have an interesting effect on the current inkjet printer/ink market. If a printer can print even 5 pages a minute at photo quality, it will drastically shift how much people use it--at least until they realize that they blew through $75 in cartridges in 20 minutes. Just as laser printer makers have had to increase the yield of their cartridges as printing speeds increased (some low-end workgroup Laserjets have cartridges that last 20,000 pages), inkjets will have to change as well.
An average EV consumes around 250Wh/mile. Assuming that an air car is similar, a 400 watt wind generator can propel the car 16 miles in 10 hours of operation. a 1KW generator can propel the car 40 miles in 10 hours of operation. Going back to the topic of the air car that I commented on, a wind-driven compressor could be a very inexpensive way to supplement the electric compressor that is already producing compressed air for such a car. Very little regulation required, and the plant could be a common off-the-shelf compressor with appropriate gearing and a couple of blades attached.
It's not illegal, but it is contrary to the contract Visa and Mastercard have with their merchants. There are very few exceptions (such as fuel.)
Hell, you could do wind power without mechanical to electric to mechanical conversion. Simply have the blades drive a compressor directly. It will likely have far higher efficiency than generating electricity and using that to electrolyze water into hydrogen.
At least they should provide a text field that could be displayed indicating the codec used. It sucks when VLC or MPlayer indicate that a codec is needed, but can't tell you exactly which one.
Like a vastly expanded WINE implementation integrated into the OS perhaps?
Price wars won't happen in an unregulated cellular market because the cost of entry is very high. If you're an otherwise established business (McDonalds, for instance), you have the real estate already, but you still have to deal with the high cost of equipment, roaming agreements with established carriers in areas where you can't afford to compete, etc. The existing players have high prices because they are very comfortable with keeping the prices high, and know, even if the market were completely unregulated, that the barrier to entry is too high for a low cost carrier to come in.
What surprises me is that XP has been almost completely removed as an option for consumer-level machines. In the past, such as when XP came out, you could often still get machines with 98/ME or 2000 during a transition period. Some even had both on the disc (and dual license keys on the sticker.) With the exception of business machines, XP is rapidly disappearing from retail machines.
Not just that. If a misspelled domain gets "resolved" by this "service", it shows up in your history and URL autocomplete list. Every time you type in that domain again, the misspelled URL comes up.
Very true. My dedicated AT&T rep knows that my company does "web services", and attempts to recommend services based on my usage patterns, but if asked, I doubt she knows specifically what we do.
To date an online petition has never changed anything.
That's not true at all. I signed an online petition and starting getting lots of spam.
I occasionally need my NAS to have some CPU as well (audio re-encoding, etc.), so I use a Dell Latitude C610 laptop (Pentium-M 1.2GHz, 256MB RAM) and dropped in a 60GB drive. Running CentOS 4.3, it consumes 14-15 watts idle with the hard drive spinning and the lid closed, but cranks up the CPU when I need it. It also has USB, PCMCIA, 10/100 Ethernet, CDRW and a 3+ hour built-in UPS. :-) You can find one with a broken screen cheap on eBay.