I have used XP on older hardware (circa 2008) and it's touch and go at times. Pre-2005? Forget it.
That's surprising. 2002 to 2007 should have been the heyday of XP, with the best driver support from hardware vendors. Maybe some vendors slacked off on XP after the release of Vista, but the period you quote was certainly the best for running XP.
In fact, I got a new PC in 2007 and could not get it to run stable under Windows 2000. Switching to XP helped.
You have a good point, but decent quality replacements won't always fit in small cases, as the low ESR types are often a bit bigger.
Right now, I have a similar problem on my hands. An old Siemens Gigaset 515se that tends to hang up after ten minutes of serious DSL traffic. I've already re-flashed the firmware and started to exchange capacitors on suspicion, but for two of them I see a problem with putting anything but the standard types in: The old capacitors are 470microfarad / 35V, but the case and the neighboring parts allow at best a part with 12mm diameter/18mm length. Any matching low ESR type I could find is at least 20 mm long.
So I guess I'll try replacing the existing caps with new "standard" caps. If that does not help, I see one trusty old DSL router heading for the scrap:-(
We already have a complex system of energy subsidies to industry, at least in Germany.
The subsidies for renewables are paid by an additional fee on one's electricity bill, the so-called EEG apportionment. Only that large industrial consumers don't have to pay it.
The only reference to bandwidth I could find is in the following:
1.1.3. Category D desktop computers and integrated desktop computers meeting all of the following technical parameters are exempt from the requirements specified in points 1.1.1 and 1.1.2: (a) a minimum of six physical cores in the central processing unit (CPU); and (b) discrete GPU(s) providing total frame buffer bandwidths above 320 GB/s; and (c) a minimum 16GB of system memory; and (d) a PSU with a rated output power of at least 1000 W.
In short, it is an exemption for very high end computers from certain power requirements, not a ban. Nordic Hardware's Jacob Hugosson has delivered a very bad article there.
True. I got the digit grouping symbol and the decimal separator mixed up. For a US discussion forum, in Germany it would have been correct. Oops, but with mitigating circumstances...
A country that would have to force a company in another, much more powerful country. Any attempt to lean on Apple must consider the possibility of angering the US government.
Linear would be worse => literally zero left after 1042 years. Also, I'm not aware of any decay mechanisms that are slower than exponential in the long run.
Something must be wrong with the 521 years. 65 million years / 521 years = 124.760 half lifes.
That means only 1 / (2^124.760) = 1 / (3,1787695069134767997232294562089e+37556) of the original DNA should be available for analysis today. Those guys would be lucky to find a single base pair that has not decayed. Hardly a sufficient basis to make a quantitative analysis;-)
I't does not have to be the fully integrated version as in the top image, but a top with multiple sockets and some rack space will be great for putting the measurement equipment.
In this case, a US patent would only prevent US companies from using it. The Russians, Chinese and other nations with at least some space capability could simply ignore the patent.
A much bigger obstacle might be that no government wants to pay for this...
Well, if I was living anywhere geeks.com delivers to, I'd consider the HD 4770 for $38. http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=7120674000G-CO&cat=VCD Almost as fast but a bit easier on the power consumption. According to Wikipedia the HD 4770 is already in 40nm and it shows in the TDP, only 80W vs. 110W.
BTW I find it amazing that the 4xxx series is still sold new. I'd have guessed that production stopped years ago.
Some technical solutions to de-multiply the number of models:
-Multi-language interface, language can be set by the user. Maybe the printer driver can read the country settings from the PC it is installed on and make that the default. Should work for 99% of the SOHO customers, and larger companies tend to have IT departments that handle such stuff.
-Power supply with wide range input voltage, 100-240V. Common in ATX power supplies BTW.
Of course each of that will cost some extra money, as you have to put a bit more memory into the printer or pay a bit more for the power supply. But it's either that or deal with an unreasonable number of models. HP, your choice...
I don't get it either. A dozen models for each market segment should provide variety enough, methinks. So -a dozen models for the SOHO market -a dozen for the bigger ones that may serve as department printers (one per corridor and shared by everyone -a dozen for oversize formats, so the CAD guys can print out big schematics -a dozen really fast models for high volume printing... ....now I'm at about 50 models and running out of ideas. Maybe I'm a bit of an ignoramus, but I doubt I've just missed 95% of the market:-o
I'm running HD4850s in mine and the boys PCs, run just fine under Win 7 X64 and since they have squeezed every drop of horsepower they can out of the chip already I honestly don't care if the drivers are put into legacy now or not.
A pretty decent card for its time, going by the comparison table from Wikipedia. And I guess the "legacy" driver had time enough to mature.
Today I'd prefer the HD 7770 (which seems the closest equivalent in performance among the 7xxx) for its lower power consumption. But the difference is surprisingly small for four years of development. 80W vs. the 110W of the HD4850.
The problem is the fact that AMD "lies" for want of a better word, to Windows and tells it that its real cores instead of hyperthreading. Lets say you have an 8 core/4 module unit with two related loads, a1 and a2, along with two unrelated loads, b1 and c1. The way it SHOULD be scheduled is a1 and a2 on module 1,b1 on module 3/4 and c1 on module5/6. Instead Windows will give you something like a1 and b1 on cores 1 and 2, a2 and c1 on cores 3 and 4. Now this is NOT the fault of MSFT and Windows, because Windows has NO way based on what the chip tells it to know that all the cores aren't equal so it treats them as full cores instead of modules that share resources.
A problem here is that Bulldozer modules are somewhere in-between hyperthreading and two real cores. So whatever they report to the OS, it will be somewhat misleading. Of course one might wonder how they would perform if they reported each module as hyperthreading-enabled core.
But the question is sort of obsolete, as there is a hotfix for Windows 7: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5448/the-bulldozer-scheduling-patch-tested It brings some minor improvements, but nothing spectacular (and if reporting each module as hyperthreading-enabled core would be better, I'm sure the hotfix would do that ).
But the real problem is that Bulldozer just plain sucks compared to the Phenom II. In the one benchmark from the Anandtech test where a Phenom II X6 was included, it beat the FX. So I think a simple shrink of the Phenom II architecture to 32 nm might have been better than the current FX generation. I hope the upcoming Piledriver architecture can fix that.
If the SemiAccurate article is correct, Clover Trail is pretty large in chip surface and correspondingly expensive to make. So I have my doubts about the "dirt cheap", except maybe for Microsoft selling their own Surface tablets at a loss like game console makers.
It seems that its only justification for existing is that it will be better in performance vs. power consumption than existing Atoms.
So they announce on the 25th of September that they will kill exporting to $OLDFORMAT in the 1st of October? No matter what you think of the format as such, that is going to blindside a few users. I think changes like that should be announced at least two months ago, not five days.
The listeners were undecided about which signal path sounded better. For the question "is the influence of quantization audible?" the answer would be no.
I think it is questionable if the influence of a higher digital resolution is audible at all.
Many years ago, the 'Golden Ears' at the German HiFi magazine Stereoplay tried to find out if the digital quantization on CD makes a difference. They picked some very good analog recordings and played them back on very good equipment. Very good as in one of the better systems they tested over the years, and Stereoplay has tested some very expensive stuff.
To find out if there is a difference, there were two signal paths. One via a purely analog chain of 1) Turntable => pre-amp => power amp => loudspeakers.
The other had an A/D converter and immediately after that a D/A converter somewhere in the chain. Something like 2) Turntable => pre-amp => A/D converter => D/A converter => power amp => loudspeakers.
The digital resolution was 44.1 kHz/16 bit, as they wanted to simulate a CD (albeit an idealized one, as they used very good converters). So they started a double blind test of signal path 1) vs. 2). The result was undecided: The listeners in the test were either unable to hear a difference, or when they thought they heard one, it appeared to be random which one was perceived as better.
If plenty of bit rate is available, one might actually prefer FLAC. Or even uncompressed PCM. Nothing beats a lossless format, end of discussion;-) The interesting question is, what do you do if you are limited to something like 200 kBit/s? In that area, there may still be room for improvement beyond Opus.
Sadly, the article (as news from elsewhere on the net) is awfully vague about what Pono is actually supposed to be. A lossless format that compresses better than FLAC? A lossy format with better quality at the same bitrate? All we really know is that Neil Young applied for a bunch of trademarks. On the technical side, there is a lot of hot air and no facts to be had.
I don't think there are any left that use "only" custom DOS programs. But there may be the occasional old program that is still considered important for business. Especially if it is closed source and the vendor does not exist anymore.
Personally, I'm working for a medical technology company that still has a lot of devices with DOS in the field. Right now, the successor to that particular system is under development, using Windows 7 with a realtime extension for the time critical stuff. But until recently, the DOS powered device was actually produced and sold. Maybe still is.
What 7 brings to the table, and the only reason I recommend it, is 64-bit. If you need more than 4GB RAM, get 7. I think Microsoft should do a "Windows Classic" which is XP re-branded, and sell it as a subscription to finance future patches. Let's say 5â/month. I think it would sell like hotcakes. I think I'd take it for the few remaining XP machines, I haven't converted to Linux yet. (I'll probably convert one back to XP as the ATI drivers for that laptop suck donkeys balls)
In terms of general usability, however, I don't see a big difference to XP. The desktop concept was reasonably mature with Windows 95, what came after that were details.
Considering the laptop, are you running Catalyst or the Open Source driver (Radeon)? Catalyst is fast but much cursed for unreliability. The Open Source driver is slow, but reportedly much more stable.
Slashdot Mirror
I have used XP on older hardware (circa 2008) and it's touch and go at times. Pre-2005? Forget it.
That's surprising. 2002 to 2007 should have been the heyday of XP, with the best driver support from hardware vendors. Maybe some vendors slacked off on XP after the release of Vista, but the period you quote was certainly the best for running XP.
In fact, I got a new PC in 2007 and could not get it to run stable under Windows 2000. Switching to XP helped.
You have a good point, but decent quality replacements won't always fit in small cases, as the low ESR types are often a bit bigger.
Right now, I have a similar problem on my hands. An old Siemens Gigaset 515se that tends to hang up after ten minutes of serious DSL traffic. I've already re-flashed the firmware and started to exchange capacitors on suspicion, but for two of them I see a problem with putting anything but the standard types in:
The old capacitors are 470microfarad / 35V, but the case and the neighboring parts allow at best a part with 12mm diameter/18mm length. Any matching low ESR type I could find is at least 20 mm long.
So I guess I'll try replacing the existing caps with new "standard" caps. If that does not help, I see one trusty old DSL router heading for the scrap :-(
We already have a complex system of energy subsidies to industry, at least in Germany.
The subsidies for renewables are paid by an additional fee on one's electricity bill, the so-called EEG apportionment. Only that large industrial consumers don't have to pay it.
Yes, that seems to be misreported.
The only reference to bandwidth I could find is in the following:
1.1.3. Category D desktop computers and integrated desktop
computers meeting all of the following technical parameters are
exempt from the requirements specified in points 1.1.1 and
1.1.2:
(a) a minimum of six physical cores in the central processing
unit (CPU); and
(b) discrete GPU(s) providing total frame buffer bandwidths
above 320 GB/s; and
(c) a minimum 16GB of system memory; and
(d) a PSU with a rated output power of at least 1000 W.
In short, it is an exemption for very high end computers from certain power requirements, not a ban. Nordic Hardware's Jacob Hugosson has delivered a very bad article there.
In theory, a DMCA takedown is supposed to be "under penalty of perjury". The penalty rarely happens, but it is possible. This lawyer website has some examples:
http://www.aaronkellylaw.com/internet-law/consequences-of-filing-a-false-dmca-takedown-request/.
Lenz vs. Universal may become another such example.
True. I got the digit grouping symbol and the decimal separator mixed up. For a US discussion forum, in Germany it would have been correct. Oops, but with mitigating circumstances...
A country that would have to force a company in another, much more powerful country. Any attempt to lean on Apple must consider the possibility of angering the US government.
Linear would be worse => literally zero left after 1042 years.
Also, I'm not aware of any decay mechanisms that are slower than exponential in the long run.
Something must be wrong with the 521 years. 65 million years / 521 years = 124.760 half lifes.
That means only 1 / (2^124.760) = 1 / (3,1787695069134767997232294562089e+37556) of the original DNA should be available for analysis today. Those guys would be lucky to find a single base pair that has not decayed. Hardly a sufficient basis to make a quantitative analysis ;-)
If you can afford it, something like this:
http://www.hera.de/fileadmin/downloads/hauptkatalog_de/Kap01d.pdf
I't does not have to be the fully integrated version as in the top image, but a top with multiple sockets and some rack space will be great for putting the measurement equipment.
In this case, a US patent would only prevent US companies from using it. The Russians, Chinese and other nations with at least some space capability could simply ignore the patent.
A much bigger obstacle might be that no government wants to pay for this...
Well,
if I was living anywhere geeks.com delivers to, I'd consider the HD 4770 for $38. http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=7120674000G-CO&cat=VCD
Almost as fast but a bit easier on the power consumption. According to Wikipedia the HD 4770 is already in 40nm and it shows in the TDP, only 80W vs. 110W.
BTW I find it amazing that the 4xxx series is still sold new. I'd have guessed that production stopped years ago.
Some technical solutions to de-multiply the number of models:
-Multi-language interface, language can be set by the user. Maybe the printer driver can read the country settings from the PC it is installed on and make that the default. Should work for 99% of the SOHO customers, and larger companies tend to have IT departments that handle such stuff.
-Power supply with wide range input voltage, 100-240V. Common in ATX power supplies BTW.
Of course each of that will cost some extra money, as you have to put a bit more memory into the printer or pay a bit more for the power supply. But it's either that or deal with an unreasonable number of models. HP, your choice...
I don't get it either. A dozen models for each market segment should provide variety enough, methinks. So ...now I'm at about 50 models and running out of ideas. Maybe I'm a bit of an ignoramus, but I doubt I've just missed 95% of the market :-o
-a dozen models for the SOHO market
-a dozen for the bigger ones that may serve as department printers (one per corridor and shared by everyone
-a dozen for oversize formats, so the CAD guys can print out big schematics
-a dozen really fast models for high volume printing...
.
I'm running HD4850s in mine and the boys PCs, run just fine under Win 7 X64 and since they have squeezed every drop of horsepower they can out of the chip already I honestly don't care if the drivers are put into legacy now or not.
A pretty decent card for its time, going by the comparison table from Wikipedia. And I guess the "legacy" driver had time enough to mature.
Today I'd prefer the HD 7770 (which seems the closest equivalent in performance among the 7xxx) for its lower power consumption. But the difference is surprisingly small for four years of development. 80W vs. the 110W of the HD4850.
The problem is the fact that AMD "lies" for want of a better word, to Windows and tells it that its real cores instead of hyperthreading. Lets say you have an 8 core/4 module unit with two related loads, a1 and a2, along with two unrelated loads, b1 and c1. The way it SHOULD be scheduled is a1 and a2 on module 1,b1 on module 3/4 and c1 on module5/6. Instead Windows will give you something like a1 and b1 on cores 1 and 2, a2 and c1 on cores 3 and 4. Now this is NOT the fault of MSFT and Windows, because Windows has NO way based on what the chip tells it to know that all the cores aren't equal so it treats them as full cores instead of modules that share resources.
A problem here is that Bulldozer modules are somewhere in-between hyperthreading and two real cores. So whatever they report to the OS, it will be somewhat misleading. Of course one might wonder how they would perform if they reported each module as hyperthreading-enabled core.
But the question is sort of obsolete, as there is a hotfix for Windows 7:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5448/the-bulldozer-scheduling-patch-tested
It brings some minor improvements, but nothing spectacular (and if reporting each module as hyperthreading-enabled core would be better, I'm sure the hotfix would do that ).
But the real problem is that Bulldozer just plain sucks compared to the Phenom II. In the one benchmark from the Anandtech test where a Phenom II X6 was included, it beat the FX.
So I think a simple shrink of the Phenom II architecture to 32 nm might have been better than the current FX generation. I hope the upcoming Piledriver architecture can fix that.
If the SemiAccurate article is correct, Clover Trail is pretty large in chip surface and correspondingly expensive to make. So I have my doubts about the "dirt cheap", except maybe for Microsoft selling their own Surface tablets at a loss like game console makers.
It seems that its only justification for existing is that it will be better in performance vs. power consumption than existing Atoms.
So they announce on the 25th of September that they will kill exporting to $OLDFORMAT in the 1st of October?
No matter what you think of the format as such, that is going to blindside a few users. I think changes like that should be announced at least two months ago, not five days.
Yes, poor wording on my part.
The listeners were undecided about which signal path sounded better.
For the question "is the influence of quantization audible?" the answer would be no.
I think it is questionable if the influence of a higher digital resolution is audible at all.
Many years ago, the 'Golden Ears' at the German HiFi magazine Stereoplay tried to find out if the digital quantization on CD makes a difference. They picked some very good analog recordings and played them back on very good equipment. Very good as in one of the better systems they tested over the years, and Stereoplay has tested some very expensive stuff.
To find out if there is a difference, there were two signal paths. One via a purely analog chain of
1) Turntable => pre-amp => power amp => loudspeakers.
The other had an A/D converter and immediately after that a D/A converter somewhere in the chain. Something like
2) Turntable => pre-amp => A/D converter => D/A converter => power amp => loudspeakers.
The digital resolution was 44.1 kHz/16 bit, as they wanted to simulate a CD (albeit an idealized one, as they used very good converters). So they started a double blind test of signal path 1) vs. 2). The result was undecided:
The listeners in the test were either unable to hear a difference, or when they thought they heard one, it appeared to be random which one was perceived as better.
If plenty of bit rate is available, one might actually prefer FLAC. Or even uncompressed PCM. Nothing beats a lossless format, end of discussion ;-)
The interesting question is, what do you do if you are limited to something like 200 kBit/s? In that area, there may still be room for improvement beyond Opus.
Sadly, the article (as news from elsewhere on the net) is awfully vague about what Pono is actually supposed to be. A lossless format that compresses better than FLAC? A lossy format with better quality at the same bitrate? All we really know is that Neil Young applied for a bunch of trademarks. On the technical side, there is a lot of hot air and no facts to be had.
Just recently, there was an article about a superior new audio format on /. : :-)
http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/09/11/2156225/opus-the-codec-to-end-all-codecs
Free as in speech, too
Show me that Pono is better and equally free, and I might consider it...
I don't think there are any left that use "only" custom DOS programs. But there may be the occasional old program that is still considered important for business. Especially if it is closed source and the vendor does not exist anymore.
Personally, I'm working for a medical technology company that still has a lot of devices with DOS in the field.
Right now, the successor to that particular system is under development, using Windows 7 with a realtime extension for the time critical stuff. But until recently, the DOS powered device was actually produced and sold. Maybe still is.
Maybe a distribution with a more lightweight desktop manager might help?
Such as Linux Mint with XFCE?
What 7 brings to the table, and the only reason I recommend it, is 64-bit. If you need more than 4GB RAM, get 7. I think Microsoft should do a "Windows Classic" which is XP re-branded, and sell it as a subscription to finance future patches. Let's say 5â/month. I think it would sell like hotcakes. I think I'd take it for the few remaining XP machines, I haven't converted to Linux yet. (I'll probably convert one back to XP as the ATI drivers for that laptop suck donkeys balls)
I think UAC is also an improvement. At least for people who understand when "allowing change to the computer" actually makes sense. And there are technical details like support for 4k sector drives (see http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/are-you-ready-for-4k-sector-drives/731.
In terms of general usability, however, I don't see a big difference to XP. The desktop concept was reasonably mature with Windows 95, what came after that were details.
Considering the laptop, are you running Catalyst or the Open Source driver (Radeon)? Catalyst is fast but much cursed for unreliability. The Open Source driver is slow, but reportedly much more stable.