None of my Vista machines (all 3 of them) were able to install KB935807 via Windows Update. However, I was able to install manually.
Try stopping the Windows Update service, deleting the C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\Download and C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore folders, and then install the patch manually. That worked for me.
This is a major pain in the ass. Thanks, Microsoft.
I believe AMD won't be doing until their quad core line comes to market
You believe wrong. Pretty much all of AMD's current lineup, from my $59 Athlon 64 X2 3600+ to the high-end Opterons, supports AMD-V, which is roughly analagous to Intel's VT. I have even heard from some sources that AMD-V is superior to VT.
Frankly, I think that the 360 is a pretty damn solid platform, but you're absolutely right. There was a lot of awkward clapping by the presenters on the stage, and not a lot of enthusiasm in the crowd.
That said, what did you expect from a press conference? "Our competitors are also good"? Microsoft wanted to point out their advantages (Halo and other exclusive titles, Live Arcade, movie downloads).
Moreover, E3 is as much about publishers as it is about end users. Microsoft is trying to steal PS3 exclusives, and they do that by pointing to their install base.
Typical boring Microsoft presentation. Every one of their presentations is boring, every one is awkward, and every one is fulled with marketing. Apple is so much better at this that it's not even funny. I'm sure Nintendo's presentation will be way better, too, and there's a good chance that Sony's will be as well.
I don't know what you consider 'old fashioned', but the most popular phones here have 3G (usually EVDO), cameras (usually 1.3 or 2 megapixels), video recording, streaming video, music playback, and expandable memory.
Seriously. Walk down to a Verizon or Sprint store sometime and see what people are buying.
As for the iPhone, its lack of 3G is a joke, and everyone but Apple fanboys understand it. It's not selling because it's in the 'backwater' US. It's selling because it's from Apple.
particularly the horrifically overregulated airline industry in the Seventies, when airfares were grotesquely expensive but there was quite a bit of sucking up to the customer, nearly all flights were pretty much direct, and the entire continent's air transport didn't shut down because of a thunderstorm over Boston
You know what? I don't give a fuck whether or not the airline sucks up to me. I don't care whether or not I have to go through Las Vegas. I don't care whether or not I get a crappy meal.
I just spent the 4th of July weekend with my family. Round-trip Ticket: $160. That same ticket, inflation adjusted, would have cost $30 in 1970. In 1970, a round-trip ticket could have easily been $600.
That's 20 to 1. It means that I can reasonably spend a weekend with my family. And that's far, far more important than any of the bullshit service that the airlines ever offered.
No, regulation made people see what was important. It's cheaper to fly than ever. It's also easier to buy tickets (do it online), easier to check-in (again, online), and the airplanes are quieter, the ride is smoother, and on-time performance is better than ever.
All 8 flights I have taken in the past year have been 100% full. Anything less is simply moronic. Flying isn't a luxury anymore. It's the new bus service.
Deregulation is the best thing that ever happened to air travel.
It's funny how "vendor lock-in" is used as though it's a unique reason to avoid Apple products, yet I see examples of it rampant with ALL the major PC vendors
No, it's not rampant. Dells, HPs, and even Gateways now use standard ATX, or, in some cases, SFX power supplies.
I don't trust the scientists, the research, or the theories. I trust the system and the results. The system has proven itself by providing real results, over and over again. From GMO crops to the laser to the refrigirator that most of us own, we can see that the results fit the model.
No, I can't go and verify everything personally. But I would much, much rather have "faith" in a system that prides itself in retesting and modifying hypotheses than a system that says skepticism is wrong.
Every time we find out that our conclusions were wrong, the religous laugh. I smile. Knowing and accepting that you are wrong is the first step towards getting it right. Such an attitude does not exist in most religions.
I can't prove that quantum mechanics works. But I do know that a laser works. Ah, but what if quantum mechanics is wrong, and the laser actually works on a different principle? Irrelevent. We can never be 100% certain of anything. All we can do is to find the theory that best fits our obeservations, run experiments, and try to prove ourselves wrong. What's left over is meerly the model which fits the evidence we have collected thus far. That's all we can really hope for.
Really? Because I just paid $140 for a Core 2 Duo 4400
That's not low-end. My X2 3600+ sells for $59 on Newegg. I have no doubt that your CPU is better than mine. It's also more than twice the price.
And, FYI, it's not that Intel's low-end CPUs have crappy performance. They suck because they don't have EIST (power saving) or VT/AMD-V. They also run on a crappy 800MHz FSB.
$60 on the Intel side buys you a 2.66GHz Pentium D. The cheapest Core 2 CPU is the E2140 for around $80, which runs at 1.6GHz.
If you don't like their products, you're probably outside their target market.
Damn straight I am. I want my phone to work without having to load software on my PC. I want my music player to work with any PC, regardless of whether or not I have loaded specific player software. And I want my OS to run on a wide range of hardware from a wide range of vendors.
Apple owes me nothing. But as a customer, I'm saying that I'm not going to put up with this bullshit.
My phone has a user-replacable battery (brand new OEM battery on eBay: $10), expandable memory (2GB microSD card: $18), and a real keyboard (typing on the iPhone sucks, and no matter how much Apple may say otherwise, the software doesn't make it not suck). It also syncs and charges off of miniUSB (just like my media player and my camera), and runs 3rd-party apps.
I'm sure some Apple fanboy is going to claim that this is sour grapes. Just like they claim for every negative comment about the iPhone. Let me be blunt: this is not the second coming of Jesus. This is a phone. It's revolutionary in some areas (beautiful UI, browser, screen), crappy in others (no MMS/IM/3G/SDK/etc.), and overall it's too damned expensive. It's also an Apple product, which means that it will sell like hotcakes.
No one has voiced it yet, but AMD's 65nm process is a failure. It's 65nm parts overclock worse than processors at 90nm process and that's probably why AMD are still producing all there high end parts at 90nm
Then tell me why the Athlon 64 X2 3600+ Brisbane is an overclocker favorite?
My 1.9GHz Athlon 64 is now running at 2.85GHz, limited by the maximum FSB on my cheapshit $50 motherboard. It's overvolted by 0.1v, and it's cooled by a $9 heatsink and powered by a 250W SFX12V 2.0 power supply. I don't have any case fans.
It's 100% stable, at least according to my 2-process 36-hour Prime95 stress test, 6-hour 3DMark06 stress test, and 12-hour Memtest86+ run.
You mean waste more electricity right? Cheaper the processor, the more goodies they knock out of the chip to keep the price down. That $70 Celeron is built without SpeedStep. The $110 Core 2 has the full sized Smart cache and SpeedStep. The Celeron might be 80% as fast as the Core 2, but the Core 2 will probably use 60% of the energy, meaning the net win (if you can afford to spend $40 more bucks) goes to the Core 2.
The problem is that you're looking at Intel, whose low-end CPUs suck. AMD's $59 Athlon 64 X2 3600+ has the latest process (65nm), power saving features (Cool n Quiet), full AMD-V support, and two cores.
Oh, and the X2 3600+ is massively overclockable, too. Mine hit 2.85GHz (300x9.5) with no trouble - and it probably would have gone higher if my mobo supported higher LDT frequencies.
My system is 100% stable (as far as I know, based on a 36-hour two-process Prime95 run that pegged both cores at 100%, and based on a 12 hour Memtest86+ run). My motherboard is a $49 GeForce 6100 chipset board (right now, my board plus an X2 3600+ sells for $94 on Newegg). My heatsink is a $10 Arctic Cooling Alpine 7. My memory is cheapshit Kingston DDR2-667 (2x1GB).
Including my HDD, DVD burner, GeForce 8600GT, Motherboard, CPU, DDR, and case, I've put maybe $500 into my machine.
The iPhone is the next gen iPod, meaning that all your downloaded/copied/ripped mp3's will play just fine.
Good job not reading the post. The original poster was talking about ringtones, not music playback.
My T-Mobile Dash (and, actually, every Windows Mobile 5/6 device) can use MP3s as ringtones. Any MP3 works - you just copy it to a folder on the device and it shows up as a ringtone.
This is not the case with the iPhone - you have to buy your ringtones from iTunes - existing songs won't work. This is not unlike the T-Mobile Sidekick - Danger's 1.1 update enabled using WAV files for ringtones, but T-Mobile had the functionality disabled so that they could sell you rings for $2 each. Bastards.
90% of the US doesn't even have a real 3G network in place yet
EVDO covers over 250 million people. You may not like CDMA2000, but the majority of mobile users in the US use it. Saying that the US doesn't have 3G widely deployed is simply wrong.
my connectivity on 3G with my Windows Mobile device (both on T-Mobile and Cingular) has been no better than GPRS
That's probably because you don't have a device with the right UMTS bands. AT&T's UMTS/HSDPA is broadly available in the Bay Area, from SF to Oakland to the Valley.
As for T-Mobile, they only just got the spectrum, and there aren't any AWS UMTS devices out in the wild yet. Give them a few months.
In the US, I hardly see the point.
AT&T is rolling out UMTS/HSDPA aggressively. If it's not available in your area now, it will be soon. You're probably going to own whatever phone you buy for 2 years. If the $79 BlackJack has UMTS/HSDPA, it's inexcusable that the $500 "revolutionary Internet device" iPhone doesn't.
yes and all MP3 players play music. Yet there are differences in operation, that have made the iPod a great success while other models languish.
No, the iPod succeeds because it has the brand and the ecosystem. Pick up any of today's portable media players - Creative, iRiver, or maybe even the Zune. You'll find that they offer functionality and usability that's very, very similar to the iPod. You might also find a few surprising things - like a device that doesn't have bullshit "do not disconnect" periods where it can become corrupted, a device that lets you sync with multiple computers, a device that lets you copy tracks back to your PC, or a device that supports open formats like Vorbis or XVID.
very few are problems with the iPhone many people cannot realistically get 3G,
Sprint and Verizon both have networks that cover over 250 million people. Cingular already has major metro areas covered and is bringing on new networks on a daily basis. Even T-Mobile will have 3G on a national level by this time next year.
Remember, you're going to own the iPhone for (at least) two years. No 3G is outdated TODAY. It's going to look much worse tomorrow.
As for the keyboard, all the doubters say they would miss it. Yet all of the reviewers say they do not, even those that started with doubts.
Well, except for Pogue. He pointed out (rightfully) that this is no Blackberry replacement. Maybe you people use your phones for different things. I like to IM on my phone. Not that it matters - the iPhone has no IM support either.
And saying an SD card slot offers "essentially infinite storage" means you have to buy 8GB worth of SD storage to get the inifinte amount of storage to come close to the iPhone
8GB SDHC cards are $65 TODAY. In 6 months, they'll probably be in the $40 range and 16GB cards will be in the $80 range.
Your 8GB iPhone is going to look pretty ridiculous when 32GB SDHC cards are $100. And it's going to happen long, long before your 2-year contract expires.
Maybe YOU don't need the features that the iPhone doesn't have. But it's downright embarrassing that the iPhone lacks features that many of the crappiest free phones have:
MMS
IM
Expandable memory
Removable battery
Video recording
3rd-party app support
A2DP
Voice dialing
3G data
That's not a short list. The iPhone is a "revolutionary widescreen iPod", but it doesn't even work with Bluetooth headphones. It's a "revolutionary Internet device", but outside of WiFi range it's limited to EDGE (slightly faster than dial-up with the added fun of much more latency)!
Want to watch some movies on the nice screen? Great! Too bad you can only put 5-7 on the 8GB device - assuming that you don't have any music, photos, or anything else space intensive.
Want to watch some YouTube videos? Great, except that you're not going to be watching much at all on EDGE. Unless, of course, you like waiting 5 minutes for your 2 minute video to load.
Surf to some pages with the full web browser? Great, except that it takes over two minutes to load Yahoo on EDGE, according to Pogue.
Want to play some games? Tough luck.
Want to hook up your Bluetooth GPS to use Google Maps? Nope.
Place an SIP call via WiFi? You can do that with my $49 Dash, but not the iPhone.
If you stay on the rails, the iPhone might be a great device. But if you use a smartphone, you're going to be sorely disappointed.
I can switch from Google by typing "www.yahoo.com" in my address bar.
How do you get your GMail out? How do your Google Talk friends reach you? How do you stop being tracked by Google's tracking cookies (DoubleClick, Adsense, Analytics)? How do your Docs and Spreadsheets get migrated? Where do your Picasa photos go?
More importantly, how do you advertise online? How do you make money from online advertising?
Many, many people are as locked into Google as they are into Microsoft. I have chosen not to stay clear. I don't use GMail, Google Talk, Analytics, Docs/Spreadsheets, Picasa, Blogger, or any of Google's other services that allow them to "lock me in". I do use Google Search, Maps, and other services where I can switch at any time.
I have my own domains, which I can transfer to another registrar. I can change hosting providers with a couple of hours of work. I can change ISPs with virtually no work. My phone is GSM and unlocked, and I'm not in a contract, so I could change to Cingular tomorrow if I wanted to.
Don't let them lock you in. Google is no different in this regard.
Right, by paying firefox (and others) to default to google search.
If this is false and you know it and M$ paid you to put it here, you have just libled Google on M$'s behalf.
Well then it's a good damn thing that it's true. The Google/Mozilla deal is well publicised and it has made Mozilla a LOT of money. It is aksi the reason why the Mozilla Corporation was created.
Google and Apple have a similar deal for Safari.
I use Google because it's good. But that doesn't mean that these well-known deals don't exist.
In the UK the network operators like to bastardise the phone as they see fit. Rebranding, removing features and often ruining the phone
This is exactly how it works in the US, too. The best provider is probably T-Mobile, who at least doesn't do things like forcing their own UI (Verizon) or preventing you from using the phone as a modem (Sprint, Verizon).
My T-Mobile Dash, for example, is missing the SIP client. It's pretty easy to add, though.
The experience you discuss in sorting it out is just typical of UK customer service within the mobile phone industry. Just like their fixed-line counterparts, mobile phone networks are run by a bunch of arrogant tossers whose attitude is "We don't care. We don't have to. Everyone else is just as bloody awful so there's precious little point in you going elsewhere."
US mobile phone companies are frequently regarded as having horrible customer satisfaction. Personally, though, I don't see it. If your expectations are right, customer service is always friendly and helpful in my experience.
When you're within your contract, they have you and they know it. Once you're off-contract, they get a hell of a lot nicer.
And the whole idea of the "service provider" - does that exist in the US? - whereby you have an operator who runs the network but they don't actually deal with the customer directly
Not exactly. The closest thing we have is called an MVNO - mobile virtual network operator. They contract with one of the major providers (Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, AT&T/Cingular, or Verizon) to provide the network, but handle billing and other customer issues directly. MVNOs typically offer themed or otherwise differentiated service (prepaid service, low-cost no-roaming service, etc.).
American mobile-phone technology is five, maybe seven years behind Europe and Asia
That's just bullshit. 7 years ago, Europe didn't even have GPRS deployed, let alone UMTS, HSDPA, or any other 3G technology. 5 years ago, there were precisely zero operational UMTS networks in Europe.
Most of the country has CDMA2000 1x EV-DO Rev A deployed. It's similar in performance to the HSDPA networks deployed today. HSDPA was deployed in Europe in 2005 and 2006.
So much for being "5 years behind".
American mobile-phone technology is five, maybe seven years behind Europe and Asia. Features which are acceptable in the USA (e.g., EDGE, simlocks, contract-locked Wi-fi, etc) are so archaic as to provoke spontaneous laughter when described to non-US mobile users.
Meanwhile, we're laughing at snooty Europeans - all the way to the bank.
When, exactly, was the last time that you made 5000 minutes of calls for 40? How much do you pay for unlimited data? I pay 4 per month. How much does it cost you to roam in an area 3x the size of Western Europe? Because it doesn't cost me anything. How much to you pay to talk to customer care? Because I don't pay anything.
You just don't get it, do you? You're so goddamn proud of your mobile service that you never bothered to notice how much you were being screwed.
fully half* the phone users outside the USA would have no idea what a "cellular" phone is
Good for them. And, what, precisely, does the fact that we have a different term for mobile phones have to do with ANYTHING?
They're called cellular phones to distinguish them from earlier non-cellular radiophones. Which, unlike in Europe, were at one point decently common among the wealthy here.
user SIMS
My phone is a quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE phone with a user-accessable SIM. It's unlocked. I can use it on two national carriers in the US (AT&T/T-Mobile), several regional carriers, and I can use it anywhere else in the world with my regular SIM or with a local SIM.
EDGE
EDGE sucks. That's why AT&T/Cingular has a UMTS/HSDPA network. Unfortunately, the bands used for UMTS in Europe were used for military purposes in the US. So Cingular had only one option - deploy UMTS on 850/1900. That option unfortunately sucks, because UMTS requires 5MHz of bandwidth for the downlink and 5MHz for the uplink. Cingular has to juggle around their GSM services just to make enough room.
CDMA carriers were able to deploy EVDO much more easily because it fits into their existing spectrum better. This is because Qualcomm designed their technology to fit into the existing RF profile of US providers. The GSM consortium doesn't give a shit about the US, and they can rely on European laws which gurantee them fresh, new spectrum that's only licensed to run UMTS!
It doesn't work that way over here. The FCC doesn't dictate what technologies providers can use.
Fortunately, the FCC managed to free up some new spectrum for mobile phones by nuking the wireless cable service. The new spectrum is called AWS. It's not compatible with the European UMTS frequencies, which are still used by the military here. T-Mobile is deploying a UMTS/HSDPA network on AWS, and Cingular/AT&T is doing the same. It takes time.
Funny that you point out that most Americans don't own their vehicles for 150k miles, yet neglect to indicate that 150k miles is the exact duration of the battery warranty on the Toyota Prius.
How am I going to deal with the battery maintenance on my Prius? I'm not. I don't plan on still owning the car in 2016. Hell, I don't plan on much of anything in 2016.
yet they've become far more popular
The majority of hybrid sales in the US have been in California. Until recently, there were no diesel cars which could be sold in California, because none had emissions that were clean enough. Now that we have ultra-low-sulfur diesel in the US, newer diesel cars are starting to show up that have better emissions.
Let's look at the payoff, shall we:
2007 Toyota Prius - $22,175 MSRP - 46MPG (realistically) 2007 Toyota Matrix XR + Package B - $19955 MSRP - 28MPG (realistically)
Note that you have to add package B to the Matrix to compare; the Prius comes standard with things like ABS and Side Airbags, unlike the base Matrix.
Both vehicles are hatchbacks. Both are similar and size and have similar cargo/passenger capacity. The Matrix has a moonroof. The Prius has a touchscreen, fuel economy monitor, electonic key, and some other nice gadgets.
So, you're paying $2200 more for the Prius. You get some back in a tax credit, but let's discount that for now.
Say you drive 12,000 miles per year (pretty standard for the US). And let's put gas at $3/gal. The Matrix requires 429 gal/year, or $1287. The Prius requires 261 gal/year, or $783.
You save $504 per year buy driving the Prius, compared to a similar Toyota. The Prius will pay for itself in 4 years and 5 months.
Is it nutty to buy a hybrid to save money? Not in the least. Not even at gas prices lower than today's lowest. And you'll save BIG TIME if gas goes up, if you drive a lot, or if you own the car for 10 years. If you replace the battery every 10 years, you'll STILL save money, even if you drive 12k miles/year, even if gas stays at $3/gal, and even if the battery costs $3000.
What's nutty are comparisons that compare the Prius to a base-level Corolla (which doesn't even have power windows or cruise control, let alone a touchscreen, side airbags, or ABS). What's nutty are comparisons that compare the Prius to a 2-door coupe.
The Prius is the cleanest gasoline or diesel vehicle on the road in the US. It's also the most fuel efficient. It produces less smog-forming emissions and less CO2 per mile than any other car sold in the US.
It's got decent pickup (not any worse than a Corolla!), a LOT of nice gadgety features, a solid reliability record (well above average according to CR), good safety ("Good" in IIHS front/side, standard side airbags/ABS, available ESP), plenty of room for 4 adults, excellent cargo room if you put the seats down (and enough for trips even if you don't).
Is it really surprising that it's the 9th best selling vehicle in the US?
Rumors say that iPhone does ~25KBps on data connection. This really sucks. 3.5G network is really spread in Europe so with iPhone's pathetic ~25KBps (I easly 200KBps with my phone and laptop right now) bandwith is not really attractive for retailers in Europe. Well this is hardly a "Breakthrough Internet Device" isn't it?
It's worse than you think.
The iPhone is a GPRS/EDGE device. EDGE can do 20KB/s in the best case, and 15KB/s is more typical.
Guess what, though? There's no EDGE in most of Europe. UMTS got popular before EDGE was really developed. So the iPhone "breakthrough internet device" can do 5-7KB/s in most of Europe. It's as fast as dial-up with 3x the latency!
And, you know what? The iPhone is pretty pathetic by US standards, even. Most smart devices have EVDO (~1-2 Mbps) or HSDPA (yes, we have it). Even the $79 Blackjack has UMTS/HSDPA. So does the free RAZR.
ATT/Cingular may not have great UMTS coverage, but it's improving quickly. Cingular already has HSDPA in the San Jose area (where I am from the summer), and they'll have it in the Denver area by the end of the summer. Even T-Mobile, who only got the spectrum to deploy 3G last December, will have UMTS/HSDPA running nationally by 2009.
The iPhone should have launched with HSDPA/UMTS. Period. There is no excuse for not having it when the "free" phones that Jobs so loves to trash doesn't. The iPhone cannot be a "revolutionary interent device" when it has data capabilities inferior to phones that are 5x cheaper and launched 6 months ago.
My Dash has GPRS/EDGE and WiFi. It has 2GB of storage, it has the full web (with Opera), it plays music and movies (including WMA/MP3/AAC/Vorbis and XVID/DIVX/H.264/MPEG1/MPEG2/WMV), it has HTML mail, and it even has a keyboard.
My phone came out 9 months ago and is 10 TIMES cheaper than the iPhone. For the $450 less that my phone costs, you could buy TWO 30GB video iPods. Or 40GB of microSD memory cards.
The US phone industry is incredibly warped with respect to the rest of the world, doing things that nobody else would put up with.
Why we put up with it is a mystery to me.
Oh, really?
T-Mobile UK charges £20 (~$40)/mo for a £34 "allowance", good for up to 170 minutes (20p/min) or 340 text messages (10p each). You can make free calls on the weekend. There's an 18 month contract.
T-Mobile US charges the same $40 for 1000 minutes. You can make free calls at night and on the weekend. There's a 24-month contract when you buy a phone.
So, we're paying the same amount, but we're getting more than 5x as many minutes. Yes, we pay for incoming calls, but unless you recieve more than 4x as many calls as you make, you still come out ahead.
We pay less for text messages, less for GPRS, and we don't pay to call customer care. We also don't pay to roam anywhere in the US, which is 4x larger than Western Europe and just as populous.
We're getting screwed. But Europeans are getting screwed way, way more. The funny thing is that they don't seem to realize it - and they somehow believe that we're getting the short end of the stick.
My family is on a "family" plan. We pay $60/mo for three phones (about $25/mo per line), and although we only get 500 peak minutes, we make more than 6000 minutes of calls in a typical month. How? We don't pay to call each other (or anyone on the same provider, for that matter), and we don't pay to call at night or on the weekends.
You know what's even crazier? It's cheaper for me to make or recieive a call from France (99c/min) than it is for someone who has T-Mobile UK (55p/min).
The Honda Fit is 36MPG combined, and it's a 4-door car that you can actually put stuff in. It's around $14,000. The Toyota Yaris liftback is 37MPG combined, and it still has an (albeit small) back seat. It's around $12,000.
We already have small cars in the US. They already have good economy and they are already selling well. Sacrificing the back seat for a small increase in mileage isn't going to sell very well.
And, if you're going to spend a little more, there's always the Toyota Prius. Most people get mileage in the high 40s (48MPG on mine, currently), and it's positively huge compared to the smart.
That depends on your defninition of "urban". I live in Santa Clara, which is most certainly counted in that definitition as "urban". But the population density is nowhere near what it is in NYC.
There are a variety of factors contributing to our low broadband penetration. Population density is one, cheap dial-up is another, and crappy phone/cable companies are certainly factors too.
At the end of the day, does any of this matter?
WHY DOES SLASHDOT KEEP RUNNING THESE FUCKING ARTICLES. Every month it seems that we have one. If I wanted to look at the statistics, I'd check Wikipedia.
The US isn't #1 in a lot of things. Broadband penetration certainly isn't the most pressing.
Slashdot Mirror
None of my Vista machines (all 3 of them) were able to install KB935807 via Windows Update. However, I was able to install manually.
Try stopping the Windows Update service, deleting the C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\Download and C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore folders, and then install the patch manually. That worked for me.
This is a major pain in the ass. Thanks, Microsoft.
You believe wrong. Pretty much all of AMD's current lineup, from my $59 Athlon 64 X2 3600+ to the high-end Opterons, supports AMD-V, which is roughly analagous to Intel's VT. I have even heard from some sources that AMD-V is superior to VT.
Frankly, I think that the 360 is a pretty damn solid platform, but you're absolutely right. There was a lot of awkward clapping by the presenters on the stage, and not a lot of enthusiasm in the crowd.
That said, what did you expect from a press conference? "Our competitors are also good"? Microsoft wanted to point out their advantages (Halo and other exclusive titles, Live Arcade, movie downloads).
Moreover, E3 is as much about publishers as it is about end users. Microsoft is trying to steal PS3 exclusives, and they do that by pointing to their install base.
Typical boring Microsoft presentation. Every one of their presentations is boring, every one is awkward, and every one is fulled with marketing. Apple is so much better at this that it's not even funny. I'm sure Nintendo's presentation will be way better, too, and there's a good chance that Sony's will be as well.
I don't know what you consider 'old fashioned', but the most popular phones here have 3G (usually EVDO), cameras (usually 1.3 or 2 megapixels), video recording, streaming video, music playback, and expandable memory.
Seriously. Walk down to a Verizon or Sprint store sometime and see what people are buying.
As for the iPhone, its lack of 3G is a joke, and everyone but Apple fanboys understand it. It's not selling because it's in the 'backwater' US. It's selling because it's from Apple.
Ooh. Epoxy. Because that stopped iOpener hackers. And XBOX hackers.
And what about software players? How is the key hidden there?
Perhaps Blu-Ray discs won't play on PCs? Guess what? HD-DVD just won.
You know what? I don't give a fuck whether or not the airline sucks up to me. I don't care whether or not I have to go through Las Vegas. I don't care whether or not I get a crappy meal.
I just spent the 4th of July weekend with my family. Round-trip Ticket: $160. That same ticket, inflation adjusted, would have cost $30 in 1970. In 1970, a round-trip ticket could have easily been $600.
That's 20 to 1. It means that I can reasonably spend a weekend with my family. And that's far, far more important than any of the bullshit service that the airlines ever offered.
No, regulation made people see what was important. It's cheaper to fly than ever. It's also easier to buy tickets (do it online), easier to check-in (again, online), and the airplanes are quieter, the ride is smoother, and on-time performance is better than ever.
All 8 flights I have taken in the past year have been 100% full. Anything less is simply moronic. Flying isn't a luxury anymore. It's the new bus service.
Deregulation is the best thing that ever happened to air travel.
No, it's not rampant. Dells, HPs, and even Gateways now use standard ATX, or, in some cases, SFX power supplies.
Unlike, say, the Mac Pro.
I don't trust the scientists, the research, or the theories. I trust the system and the results. The system has proven itself by providing real results, over and over again. From GMO crops to the laser to the refrigirator that most of us own, we can see that the results fit the model.
No, I can't go and verify everything personally. But I would much, much rather have "faith" in a system that prides itself in retesting and modifying hypotheses than a system that says skepticism is wrong.
Every time we find out that our conclusions were wrong, the religous laugh. I smile. Knowing and accepting that you are wrong is the first step towards getting it right. Such an attitude does not exist in most religions.
I can't prove that quantum mechanics works. But I do know that a laser works. Ah, but what if quantum mechanics is wrong, and the laser actually works on a different principle? Irrelevent. We can never be 100% certain of anything. All we can do is to find the theory that best fits our obeservations, run experiments, and try to prove ourselves wrong. What's left over is meerly the model which fits the evidence we have collected thus far. That's all we can really hope for.
That's not low-end. My X2 3600+ sells for $59 on Newegg. I have no doubt that your CPU is better than mine. It's also more than twice the price.
And, FYI, it's not that Intel's low-end CPUs have crappy performance. They suck because they don't have EIST (power saving) or VT/AMD-V. They also run on a crappy 800MHz FSB.
$60 on the Intel side buys you a 2.66GHz Pentium D. The cheapest Core 2 CPU is the E2140 for around $80, which runs at 1.6GHz.
Damn straight I am. I want my phone to work without having to load software on my PC. I want my music player to work with any PC, regardless of whether or not I have loaded specific player software. And I want my OS to run on a wide range of hardware from a wide range of vendors.
Apple owes me nothing. But as a customer, I'm saying that I'm not going to put up with this bullshit.
My phone has a user-replacable battery (brand new OEM battery on eBay: $10), expandable memory (2GB microSD card: $18), and a real keyboard (typing on the iPhone sucks, and no matter how much Apple may say otherwise, the software doesn't make it not suck). It also syncs and charges off of miniUSB (just like my media player and my camera), and runs 3rd-party apps.
I'm sure some Apple fanboy is going to claim that this is sour grapes. Just like they claim for every negative comment about the iPhone. Let me be blunt: this is not the second coming of Jesus. This is a phone. It's revolutionary in some areas (beautiful UI, browser, screen), crappy in others (no MMS/IM/3G/SDK/etc.), and overall it's too damned expensive. It's also an Apple product, which means that it will sell like hotcakes.
Then tell me why the Athlon 64 X2 3600+ Brisbane is an overclocker favorite?
My 1.9GHz Athlon 64 is now running at 2.85GHz, limited by the maximum FSB on my cheapshit $50 motherboard. It's overvolted by 0.1v, and it's cooled by a $9 heatsink and powered by a 250W SFX12V 2.0 power supply. I don't have any case fans.
It's 100% stable, at least according to my 2-process 36-hour Prime95 stress test, 6-hour 3DMark06 stress test, and 12-hour Memtest86+ run.
Oh, and I paid $65 for the CPU.
The problem is that you're looking at Intel, whose low-end CPUs suck. AMD's $59 Athlon 64 X2 3600+ has the latest process (65nm), power saving features (Cool n Quiet), full AMD-V support, and two cores.
Oh, and the X2 3600+ is massively overclockable, too. Mine hit 2.85GHz (300x9.5) with no trouble - and it probably would have gone higher if my mobo supported higher LDT frequencies.
My system is 100% stable (as far as I know, based on a 36-hour two-process Prime95 run that pegged both cores at 100%, and based on a 12 hour Memtest86+ run). My motherboard is a $49 GeForce 6100 chipset board (right now, my board plus an X2 3600+ sells for $94 on Newegg). My heatsink is a $10 Arctic Cooling Alpine 7. My memory is cheapshit Kingston DDR2-667 (2x1GB).
Including my HDD, DVD burner, GeForce 8600GT, Motherboard, CPU, DDR, and case, I've put maybe $500 into my machine.
Good job not reading the post. The original poster was talking about ringtones, not music playback.
My T-Mobile Dash (and, actually, every Windows Mobile 5/6 device) can use MP3s as ringtones. Any MP3 works - you just copy it to a folder on the device and it shows up as a ringtone.
This is not the case with the iPhone - you have to buy your ringtones from iTunes - existing songs won't work. This is not unlike the T-Mobile Sidekick - Danger's 1.1 update enabled using WAV files for ringtones, but T-Mobile had the functionality disabled so that they could sell you rings for $2 each. Bastards.
EVDO covers over 250 million people. You may not like CDMA2000, but the majority of mobile users in the US use it. Saying that the US doesn't have 3G widely deployed is simply wrong.
That's probably because you don't have a device with the right UMTS bands. AT&T's UMTS/HSDPA is broadly available in the Bay Area, from SF to Oakland to the Valley.
As for T-Mobile, they only just got the spectrum, and there aren't any AWS UMTS devices out in the wild yet. Give them a few months.
AT&T is rolling out UMTS/HSDPA aggressively. If it's not available in your area now, it will be soon. You're probably going to own whatever phone you buy for 2 years. If the $79 BlackJack has UMTS/HSDPA, it's inexcusable that the $500 "revolutionary Internet device" iPhone doesn't.
No, the iPod succeeds because it has the brand and the ecosystem. Pick up any of today's portable media players - Creative, iRiver, or maybe even the Zune. You'll find that they offer functionality and usability that's very, very similar to the iPod. You might also find a few surprising things - like a device that doesn't have bullshit "do not disconnect" periods where it can become corrupted, a device that lets you sync with multiple computers, a device that lets you copy tracks back to your PC, or a device that supports open formats like Vorbis or XVID.
Sprint and Verizon both have networks that cover over 250 million people. Cingular already has major metro areas covered and is bringing on new networks on a daily basis. Even T-Mobile will have 3G on a national level by this time next year.
Remember, you're going to own the iPhone for (at least) two years. No 3G is outdated TODAY. It's going to look much worse tomorrow.
Well, except for Pogue. He pointed out (rightfully) that this is no Blackberry replacement. Maybe you people use your phones for different things. I like to IM on my phone. Not that it matters - the iPhone has no IM support either.
8GB SDHC cards are $65 TODAY. In 6 months, they'll probably be in the $40 range and 16GB cards will be in the $80 range.
Your 8GB iPhone is going to look pretty ridiculous when 32GB SDHC cards are $100. And it's going to happen long, long before your 2-year contract expires.
Maybe YOU don't need the features that the iPhone doesn't have. But it's downright embarrassing that the iPhone lacks features that many of the crappiest free phones have:
That's not a short list. The iPhone is a "revolutionary widescreen iPod", but it doesn't even work with Bluetooth headphones. It's a "revolutionary Internet device", but outside of WiFi range it's limited to EDGE (slightly faster than dial-up with the added fun of much more latency)!
Want to watch some movies on the nice screen? Great! Too bad you can only put 5-7 on the 8GB device - assuming that you don't have any music, photos, or anything else space intensive.
Want to watch some YouTube videos? Great, except that you're not going to be watching much at all on EDGE. Unless, of course, you like waiting 5 minutes for your 2 minute video to load.
Surf to some pages with the full web browser? Great, except that it takes over two minutes to load Yahoo on EDGE, according to Pogue.
Want to play some games? Tough luck.
Want to hook up your Bluetooth GPS to use Google Maps? Nope.
Place an SIP call via WiFi? You can do that with my $49 Dash, but not the iPhone.
If you stay on the rails, the iPhone might be a great device. But if you use a smartphone, you're going to be sorely disappointed.
How do you get your GMail out? How do your Google Talk friends reach you? How do you stop being tracked by Google's tracking cookies (DoubleClick, Adsense, Analytics)? How do your Docs and Spreadsheets get migrated? Where do your Picasa photos go?
More importantly, how do you advertise online? How do you make money from online advertising?
Many, many people are as locked into Google as they are into Microsoft. I have chosen not to stay clear. I don't use GMail, Google Talk, Analytics, Docs/Spreadsheets, Picasa, Blogger, or any of Google's other services that allow them to "lock me in". I do use Google Search, Maps, and other services where I can switch at any time.
I have my own domains, which I can transfer to another registrar. I can change hosting providers with a couple of hours of work. I can change ISPs with virtually no work. My phone is GSM and unlocked, and I'm not in a contract, so I could change to Cingular tomorrow if I wanted to.
Don't let them lock you in. Google is no different in this regard.
Well then it's a good damn thing that it's true. The Google/Mozilla deal is well publicised and it has made Mozilla a LOT of money. It is aksi the reason why the Mozilla Corporation was created.
Google and Apple have a similar deal for Safari.
I use Google because it's good. But that doesn't mean that these well-known deals don't exist.
This is exactly how it works in the US, too. The best provider is probably T-Mobile, who at least doesn't do things like forcing their own UI (Verizon) or preventing you from using the phone as a modem (Sprint, Verizon).
My T-Mobile Dash, for example, is missing the SIP client. It's pretty easy to add, though.
US mobile phone companies are frequently regarded as having horrible customer satisfaction. Personally, though, I don't see it. If your expectations are right, customer service is always friendly and helpful in my experience.
When you're within your contract, they have you and they know it. Once you're off-contract, they get a hell of a lot nicer.
Not exactly. The closest thing we have is called an MVNO - mobile virtual network operator. They contract with one of the major providers (Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, AT&T/Cingular, or Verizon) to provide the network, but handle billing and other customer issues directly. MVNOs typically offer themed or otherwise differentiated service (prepaid service, low-cost no-roaming service, etc.).
That's just bullshit. 7 years ago, Europe didn't even have GPRS deployed, let alone UMTS, HSDPA, or any other 3G technology. 5 years ago, there were precisely zero operational UMTS networks in Europe.
Most of the country has CDMA2000 1x EV-DO Rev A deployed. It's similar in performance to the HSDPA networks deployed today. HSDPA was deployed in Europe in 2005 and 2006.
So much for being "5 years behind".
Funny that you point out that most Americans don't own their vehicles for 150k miles, yet neglect to indicate that 150k miles is the exact duration of the battery warranty on the Toyota Prius.
How am I going to deal with the battery maintenance on my Prius? I'm not. I don't plan on still owning the car in 2016. Hell, I don't plan on much of anything in 2016.
The majority of hybrid sales in the US have been in California. Until recently, there were no diesel cars which could be sold in California, because none had emissions that were clean enough. Now that we have ultra-low-sulfur diesel in the US, newer diesel cars are starting to show up that have better emissions.
Let's look at the payoff, shall we:
2007 Toyota Prius - $22,175 MSRP - 46MPG (realistically)
2007 Toyota Matrix XR + Package B - $19955 MSRP - 28MPG (realistically)
Note that you have to add package B to the Matrix to compare; the Prius comes standard with things like ABS and Side Airbags, unlike the base Matrix.
Both vehicles are hatchbacks. Both are similar and size and have similar cargo/passenger capacity. The Matrix has a moonroof. The Prius has a touchscreen, fuel economy monitor, electonic key, and some other nice gadgets.
So, you're paying $2200 more for the Prius. You get some back in a tax credit, but let's discount that for now.
Say you drive 12,000 miles per year (pretty standard for the US). And let's put gas at $3/gal. The Matrix requires 429 gal/year, or $1287. The Prius requires 261 gal/year, or $783.
You save $504 per year buy driving the Prius, compared to a similar Toyota. The Prius will pay for itself in 4 years and 5 months.
Is it nutty to buy a hybrid to save money? Not in the least. Not even at gas prices lower than today's lowest. And you'll save BIG TIME if gas goes up, if you drive a lot, or if you own the car for 10 years. If you replace the battery every 10 years, you'll STILL save money, even if you drive 12k miles/year, even if gas stays at $3/gal, and even if the battery costs $3000.
What's nutty are comparisons that compare the Prius to a base-level Corolla (which doesn't even have power windows or cruise control, let alone a touchscreen, side airbags, or ABS). What's nutty are comparisons that compare the Prius to a 2-door coupe.
The Prius is the cleanest gasoline or diesel vehicle on the road in the US. It's also the most fuel efficient. It produces less smog-forming emissions and less CO2 per mile than any other car sold in the US.
It's got decent pickup (not any worse than a Corolla!), a LOT of nice gadgety features, a solid reliability record (well above average according to CR), good safety ("Good" in IIHS front/side, standard side airbags/ABS, available ESP), plenty of room for 4 adults, excellent cargo room if you put the seats down (and enough for trips even if you don't).
Is it really surprising that it's the 9th best selling vehicle in the US?
It's worse than you think.
The iPhone is a GPRS/EDGE device. EDGE can do 20KB/s in the best case, and 15KB/s is more typical.
Guess what, though? There's no EDGE in most of Europe. UMTS got popular before EDGE was really developed. So the iPhone "breakthrough internet device" can do 5-7KB/s in most of Europe. It's as fast as dial-up with 3x the latency!
And, you know what? The iPhone is pretty pathetic by US standards, even. Most smart devices have EVDO (~1-2 Mbps) or HSDPA (yes, we have it). Even the $79 Blackjack has UMTS/HSDPA. So does the free RAZR.
ATT/Cingular may not have great UMTS coverage, but it's improving quickly. Cingular already has HSDPA in the San Jose area (where I am from the summer), and they'll have it in the Denver area by the end of the summer. Even T-Mobile, who only got the spectrum to deploy 3G last December, will have UMTS/HSDPA running nationally by 2009.
The iPhone should have launched with HSDPA/UMTS. Period. There is no excuse for not having it when the "free" phones that Jobs so loves to trash doesn't. The iPhone cannot be a "revolutionary interent device" when it has data capabilities inferior to phones that are 5x cheaper and launched 6 months ago.
My Dash has GPRS/EDGE and WiFi. It has 2GB of storage, it has the full web (with Opera), it plays music and movies (including WMA/MP3/AAC/Vorbis and XVID/DIVX/H.264/MPEG1/MPEG2/WMV), it has HTML mail, and it even has a keyboard.
My phone came out 9 months ago and is 10 TIMES cheaper than the iPhone. For the $450 less that my phone costs, you could buy TWO 30GB video iPods. Or 40GB of microSD memory cards.
The UI had better be pretty damned good.
Oh, really?
T-Mobile UK charges £20 (~$40)
T-Mobile US charges the same $40 for 1000 minutes. You can make free calls at night and on the weekend. There's a 24-month contract when you buy a phone.
So, we're paying the same amount, but we're getting more than 5x as many minutes. Yes, we pay for incoming calls, but unless you recieve more than 4x as many calls as you make, you still come out ahead.
We pay less for text messages, less for GPRS, and we don't pay to call customer care. We also don't pay to roam anywhere in the US, which is 4x larger than Western Europe and just as populous.
We're getting screwed. But Europeans are getting screwed way, way more. The funny thing is that they don't seem to realize it - and they somehow believe that we're getting the short end of the stick.
My family is on a "family" plan. We pay $60/mo for three phones (about $25/mo per line), and although we only get 500 peak minutes, we make more than 6000 minutes of calls in a typical month. How? We don't pay to call each other (or anyone on the same provider, for that matter), and we don't pay to call at night or on the weekends.
You know what's even crazier? It's cheaper for me to make or recieive a call from France (99c/min) than it is for someone who has T-Mobile UK (55p/min).
Warped? Not exactly.
40MPG? For the size of the car, that's crap.
The Honda Fit is 36MPG combined, and it's a 4-door car that you can actually put stuff in. It's around $14,000.
The Toyota Yaris liftback is 37MPG combined, and it still has an (albeit small) back seat. It's around $12,000.
We already have small cars in the US. They already have good economy and they are already selling well. Sacrificing the back seat for a small increase in mileage isn't going to sell very well.
And, if you're going to spend a little more, there's always the Toyota Prius. Most people get mileage in the high 40s (48MPG on mine, currently), and it's positively huge compared to the smart.
That depends on your defninition of "urban". I live in Santa Clara, which is most certainly counted in that definitition as "urban". But the population density is nowhere near what it is in NYC.
There are a variety of factors contributing to our low broadband penetration. Population density is one, cheap dial-up is another, and crappy phone/cable companies are certainly factors too.
At the end of the day, does any of this matter?
WHY DOES SLASHDOT KEEP RUNNING THESE FUCKING ARTICLES. Every month it seems that we have one. If I wanted to look at the statistics, I'd check Wikipedia.
The US isn't #1 in a lot of things. Broadband penetration certainly isn't the most pressing.