Yew in retrospect I should have posted. I would have preferred OpenSuse but Ubuntu is a good choice as well. I am often shocked how personally people take things like distros. Maybe they should have picked Gentoo:) just imagine how much fun an installed version of Gentoo would be:) Calm down people I am just kidding. Yes Ubuntu is fine.
Hey OpenSuse's hardware detection seems to work a lot better than Ubuntu's. I do like Ubuntu's default desktop better but the bloody thing can not connect to my WAP from my notebook or detect my monitor on my on my desktop. Now if Ubuntu would just adopt SAX2 then I would a happy man. BTW SAX2 is FOSS. Hopefully that will not be an issue for the systems from Dell but imagine the bad PR Linux will get if people buy Linux Notebooks that can not connect to their WAP or can not set the correct resolution for their monitors! Just so you understand the comment that I would have rather had OpenSuse means exactly what your post means but without the profanity. I would have rather seen them go with OpenSuse but Ubuntu isn't a terrible choice.
"The PS3 is also hardly to be considered a failure (no matter what stories you may read on/.) as it has sold over 3.5 million units in six months. " Sorry but it isn't just what I read on Slashdot. I got my Wii finally, when I was getting a second controller the woman at the local Walmart was telling me, "I just don't understand. When they first came out everybody was so excited about the PS3. Now they just sit on the shelf and we can not keep the Wiis in stock." I suggest you take a look at the sales figures and the store shelves. The PS3 is selling fewer units than the PS2! Not a failure yet since it is still a new console but I am sure it's sales are disappointing.
A friend I know that works for Dell found a time line for selling selling systems with Ubuntu a few weeks ago. I would have rather seen OpenSuse but such is life.
Here is the problem. Just as some people see violent video games as an easy scapegoat other refuse to consider the possibility that they do contribute to violence. I have played video games for 30 odd years. I am now what I consider a casual gamer but in the past I was pretty hard core for the time. A video game will not make a good Quaker in to a mass murder. However they do influence you mood. I can remember going to Malibu Grand prix and driving a few laps. I soon learned that I need to wait a little while to drive home because I was wired that my driving tended to be a little aggressive. Like alcohol violent and intense video games probably can cause problems for people with a certain predispositions and or a lack of life experience. Should parents worry if teens and pre-teens are playing to many violent video games? Probably, but I would worry if they where reading too many handgun magazines and or apocalyptic literature as well. It could very well be that playing a lot of violent video games is a possible symptom and not cause. Or it could be a contributing factor.
BTW the reason that violent crime was so low around late nineties was because of an economic boom.
Actually even that isn't accurate. The F-15 even with the Sparrow AIM-7 did very well. Frankly the AIM-7 sucked compared to the AIM-120 that replaces it. Yes in a turning fight it would have a hard time with an F-16, Mig-29, or and SU-27. However if you compare it to a Mirage F1, Mig 21, or Mig-23 then even in a turning battle it would do very well. Even in an F-16 vs F-15 dogfight it would depend on the skill of the pilot.
"So a bad driver caused him to give up on W2K, then he proceeds to spend endless hours of creating drivers for those crappy webcams?
Wouldn't it be better that an ill-supported webcam gets abandoned by the consumers, thus giving the market better-supported webcams as manufacturers are forced to lift up their games?"
The person that wrote the drivers isn't the one that dropped W2K. BTW I think W2K was the best version of Windows. W2K is as stable and secure as XP and uses fewer resources.
Some people like fixing things. More power too them. If he was on W2K he could have written a few Windows driver for the webcam but writing a Windows driver is a lot bigger pain the writing a Linux driver.
It would be best if people bought devices from companies that support Linux but how someone wants to spend their free time is their business. If they want to write free drivers for cheap webcams then all that anyone should say is "thank you".
The F-15 has not been retired. Many F-15s have had their radar updated as well as their engines. Not all mind you. The F-15 lost an exercise vs Indian Su-32s or some such version of the SU-27. Some would say that the it was stacked in the SUs favor but the F-15 still lost. Here is a news flash. The real reason the F-15 is still a good fighter is that the AIM-120 is a great missile. The AIM-120 isn't old tech...
I wasn't comparing Ubuntu ease of fixing with Windows. If windows is borked for a lot of people the only answer is a nuke and pave. I was comparing Ubuntu with OpenSuse and CentOS. I have had better luck with them getting the install right then Ubuntu.
How can something be almost universally supported? I suggest you look at this page. http://openprinting.org/printer_list.cgi?make=HP You will find that most do work perfectly but a lot "mostly" work, a few don't work well or at all. A lot of Epson printers are also supported and they have even written some of the drivers themselves... And open sourced them as well. The trick is to find which one will work for you. I want a color laser because I hate buying ink.
I suggest you give CentOS 5 and OpenSuse both a look. I haven't setup CentOS5 but I had good luck with Fedora 6. I live with OpenSuse 10.1 at work and it is a fine workstation OS. I have not tried to set up multimedia on it but I do have flash working just fine. I would also suggest sticking to 32 bit for now.
I do think every Linux Distro should include joe but then I bet every Linux user has an editor or tool that they think should be installed by default:)
"Buy supported hardware" Tell me what printer says works with Linux on the box? Actually I have a supported printer and it does work just fine. Finding a supported printer is a pain. And actually you are better off getting a printer from 2002. The latest and greatest may or may not work because no one has had time to test it. A less then brand new printer is usually a safer bet. I am looking at it from the point of view of an average user. BTW a lot of printers also don't work with Vista which I did mention. Why should I throw a printer that is still working in the landfill for sake of Vista or Linux? Printers don't really go obsolete. Printers should last for years and office printers do. Lack of Linux printer drivers is an issue. And yes more printer makers should provide drivers, but it is still a pain.
For the monitor problem Ubuntu should adopt SAX2 it works very well but I have one more suggestion for everyone. Auto detection is nice but let me also select my monitor from a list a lock it. Auto detection can have a fit with KVMs and I use them KVMs are home and at work. One of the things that drives me crazy at work is that Windows doesn't auto detect my flat panel so on boot up I have to unplug the monitor cable from my KVM and plug it into my Windows box. The nice thing is it seems that Suse fixed that in an update. I don't have to play swap the cable on the Suse 10.1 box on boot up any more.
And I don't think this is one specific card. I have seen a lot of people complaining about WiFi not working in 7 and not all of them are using the Prism card that my Thinkpad does. I think it is a bug in the Wifi manager because I can see my WAP but I can not log on to the network. Again it worked fine in Suse 10 and 10.1 and it worked under Ubuntu 6.
Notice that you jump on me about the printing issue yet every Linux user knows that printing is a mess. Why do you think there is a site called Linuxprinting.org? This isn't a problem that is limited to Ubuntu. When I shop for a printer I always ASK the salesman does it work with Linux even if I know that it doesn't. Every Linux user needs to start asking so the people that sell things like printers or scanners that we are their and we do spend our money or not based on it working with Linux.
Linux is a community as such it will not get better unless we are honest about problems. Ubuntu seems to have become a sacred cow. My take on Ubuntu is that if you are one of the people that the install just works for then you are golden. If you have to tweak anything it is a royal pain. Ubuntu doesn't suck but I think it is over rated compared to OpenSuse and probably Fedora.
The real overlooked Linux has got to be CentOS. The latest version has a lot of desktop friendly additions and has the stability and testing of Red Hat Enterprise addition. It does lack Ubuntu's frendly marketing but it looks like a rock solid project if a little dull.
Over all I thought the article was pretty well balanced. The author clearly stated he loved Vista at the beginning but made an effort to be honest. As much as I like Linux I think in some areas it was too biased towards Ubuntu. 1. Software. He praised Ubuntu for Gimp and OpenOffice but you can download Gimp and OpenOffice for Windows. Ubuntu makes it easer to get a lot of free software but a lot of the best FOSS applications are available for Windows. 2. Printing. Printing on Linux is a pain. It has been a pain since day one. But I know of more than one person that has had printing problems with Vista. I would call printing a tie. 3. Ubuntu has issues with detecting monitors. What is worse is they don't give you a nice easy interface to let you MAUNUALY select what monitor you have. The suggestion from the wiki? Manually edit your xorg config file. If you mess it up then you loose your screen and have to go in to the command line and fix it. I still don't have it working but I made a copy of my xorg config file before hacking it. NOT a user friendly way to deal with the problem. 4. Ubuntu is having some issues with Wifi. A lot of people are having problems even when their wifi card is in the kernal and worked under the last version of Ubuntu. As I said I really like Linux but I just don't think that Ubuntu 7 is as good as everyone seems to think. I have had more luck with OpenSuse and CentOS than the latest version of Ubuntu. Yes it has a great community but I just don't get it. I am going to try the 32 bit version on my desktop to see if it is any less problematical. I tried it on my notebook but the WiFi problems are a show stopper for me.
Tritium has a very short half life. Around 11 years if I remember so even as you are breeding it you are loosing some of it do decay. Also isn't radioactive it is very easy to deal with. Lithium is had a bad habit of bursting into flames but other than that it isn't too hard to deal with. Tritium is hard to deal with it is radioactive, has a short half life, and is the key to making big and nasty bombs. Even with a classic fission bomb you can multiply the yield by injecting a small amount of tritium gas into the core.
You can breed tritium with a fission reactor. But... If you think Plutonium is a weapon proliferation problem you haven't seen nothing yet. Tritium is the key to making really powerful small nuclear weapons. Buy injecting Tritium gas into the core of a nuclear bomb you can boost the yield a lot.
It all comes down to the UI. I have never found a UI that is as intuitive as folders. Not only that but I use folders for an aid in reading more than an aid in searching. Email from people at my office go into one folder and then some of those go into a sub folders. Email for a few lists I am on go into my lists folder then into a sub folder per list. Emails from vendors goes into a projects folder then into a folder per project. Yes a tagging system could be made that did all that but I haven't seen it yet. If I could have filters that applied tags and then have different views on my mail space based on those tags that would be great. Thunderbird V2.0 has both tags and folders so both camps are happy.
But those are all low power, low price, and soon to be low margin items. That is what will really kill the industry as we know it. When nobody needs to buy a new version of Office because Office or OpenOffice is good enough. No body needs a faster computer but a cheaper lower margin computer. And nobody needs a better smart phone because they all do enough. If PCs are powerful enough each die shrink will just make them cheaper and cheaper until the cost of the case and power supply are the most expensive part of the computer. Heck for a lot of desktop systems I would bet the LCD monitor is close to half the price of the system now.
I have no really desire for any of those games you mentioned. If I did I would have gotten them for my PS2. If they did a game like Thief for the Wii I might sign up. I don't know if ports of "mature" aka lots of blood and killing will help the Wii. There is very little that the Wii can bring to one of those games that you can not get with a 360 or PS3. Maybe a Greenarrow game would be interesting or the dreamed for Starwars light saber game. Just imagine the number of YouTube uploads that will cause:)
Need what people like to call mature games. We need fun games and yes maybe some very different games. Vice City, no thanks.
It is really going to hurt when computers reach a stable point. Let's face it toasters don't get much better every year. The reason is that they are good enough at making toast now that there isn't a lot of need for improvement. PC are reaching that point. If you don't play games why do you need a faster pc? Will it run Firefox faster? Make Quicken more useful? At some point Moore's law will push the price down to next to nothing.
Actually it doesn't seem to scale all that well at all. Take a look at the memory bandwidth scores. Two sockets with Intel Quad core chips looks to be at the saturation point for the FSB. I have heard that the Xeon uses slower memory than the Duo but I think that 8 cores on the Intel FSB is about all your going to get for now. The Itantium and Opteron both will scale to more CPUs than the current Xeon.
I tend to use filters to sort email into folders then I use the search to looks for specific subjects or authors. If I am working on an important project all email related to that project goes into that folder. If I want to find one from my boss I do a search. I didn't say tags where useless but I like folders and I guess others feel the same. What is nice about Thunderbird is that now you have BOTH. Use what works best for you.
The simplest reason is that invites tend to be sent as emails so having them integrated make life easy. I guess it could be possible to create a mime type that is of the type invite and have it call whatever ca lander program you use. The long reason is that your contact list in pretty much at the center of email, your calender, and your todo lists. An email client and a Personal information manager are very closely related now. Lets say you going to schedule a meeting. You then check your calender and put it on your calender and if your on a good system you can check the people you need at the meetings calenders. Then you send invites to everybody that needs to be at them meeting, Then you may one ore more things you need to do for the meeting so you you add them to your todo list. Then of course ideally you sync that with you cell phone. A home user may not need a calender as such but it is nice. However imagine a college or high school student with a good calendering system. The school could put events and assignments. I know that we have iCal and webdav but even I have not found a good way tie them all together. A good open standards calendering system could be great tool. The trick will be how to keep it spam free. Imagine the abuse if Crazy Billy's discount underwear warehouse could push the date of their sale to everyones calender!
Tunderbird V2 adds tags but frankly I like folders. I do not see how tags are obviously the way to go. In fact that is the one thing I don't like about Gmail. Yes you can sort however you like. It really isn't a problem. And so far the search works well for me. Kmail and Evolution only run on Linux and I have to use Windows. Outlook has caused me more grief with blown PSTs and other issues than I can shake a stick at and it only runs on Windows and I have to use Linux. Gmail and Yahoo mail? They are not bad but I need to access my office email server. Thunderbird while not perfect.. Get a good calander interface going guys. Is a good email client. It just isn't a good calender client.
I have yet to see as complete of a solution as Outlook+Exchange yet. I am just not willing to pay the price to use Exchange.
Slashdot Mirror
Want to buy a scanner I have in my closet that doesn't work with XP but did with 98? Driver issues happen even with Windows.
Yew in retrospect I should have posted. I would have preferred OpenSuse but Ubuntu is a good choice as well. I am often shocked how personally people take things like distros. :) just imagine how much fun an installed version of Gentoo would be :)
Maybe they should have picked Gentoo
Calm down people I am just kidding. Yes Ubuntu is fine.
Hey OpenSuse's hardware detection seems to work a lot better than Ubuntu's. I do like Ubuntu's default desktop better but the bloody thing can not connect to my WAP from my notebook or detect my monitor on my on my desktop. Now if Ubuntu would just adopt SAX2 then I would a happy man. BTW SAX2 is FOSS.
Hopefully that will not be an issue for the systems from Dell but imagine the bad PR Linux will get if people buy Linux Notebooks that can not connect to their WAP or can not set the correct resolution for their monitors!
Just so you understand the comment that I would have rather had OpenSuse means exactly what your post means but without the profanity. I would have rather seen them go with OpenSuse but Ubuntu isn't a terrible choice.
"The PS3 is also hardly to be considered a failure (no matter what stories you may read on /.) as it has sold over 3.5 million units in six months. "
Sorry but it isn't just what I read on Slashdot. I got my Wii finally, when I was getting a second controller the woman at the local Walmart was telling me, "I just don't understand. When they first came out everybody was so excited about the PS3. Now they just sit on the shelf and we can not keep the Wiis in stock." I suggest you take a look at the sales figures and the store shelves. The PS3 is selling fewer units than the PS2! Not a failure yet since it is still a new console but I am sure it's sales are disappointing.
A friend I know that works for Dell found a time line for selling selling systems with Ubuntu a few weeks ago. I would have rather seen OpenSuse but such is life.
Here is the problem. Just as some people see violent video games as an easy scapegoat other refuse to consider the possibility that they do contribute to violence.
I have played video games for 30 odd years. I am now what I consider a casual gamer but in the past I was pretty hard core for the time.
A video game will not make a good Quaker in to a mass murder. However they do influence you mood. I can remember going to Malibu Grand prix and driving a few laps. I soon learned that I need to wait a little while to drive home because I was wired that my driving tended to be a little aggressive.
Like alcohol violent and intense video games probably can cause problems for people with a certain predispositions and or a lack of life experience.
Should parents worry if teens and pre-teens are playing to many violent video games? Probably, but I would worry if they where reading too many handgun magazines and or apocalyptic literature as well. It could very well be that playing a lot of violent video games is a possible symptom and not cause. Or it could be a contributing factor.
BTW the reason that violent crime was so low around late nineties was because of an economic boom.
Actually even that isn't accurate. The F-15 even with the Sparrow AIM-7 did very well. Frankly the AIM-7 sucked compared to the AIM-120 that replaces it. Yes in a turning fight it would have a hard time with an F-16, Mig-29, or and SU-27. However if you compare it to a Mirage F1, Mig 21, or Mig-23 then even in a turning battle it would do very well. Even in an F-16 vs F-15 dogfight it would depend on the skill of the pilot.
"So a bad driver caused him to give up on W2K, then he proceeds to spend endless hours of creating drivers for those crappy webcams?
Wouldn't it be better that an ill-supported webcam gets abandoned by the consumers, thus giving the market better-supported webcams as manufacturers are forced to lift up their games?"
The person that wrote the drivers isn't the one that dropped W2K. BTW I think W2K was the best version of Windows. W2K is as stable and secure as XP and uses fewer resources.
Some people like fixing things. More power too them. If he was on W2K he could have written a few Windows driver for the webcam but writing a Windows driver is a lot bigger pain the writing a Linux driver.
It would be best if people bought devices from companies that support Linux but how someone wants to spend their free time is their business. If they want to write free drivers for cheap webcams then all that anyone should say is "thank you".
The F-15 has not been retired.
Many F-15s have had their radar updated as well as their engines. Not all mind you.
The F-15 lost an exercise vs Indian Su-32s or some such version of the SU-27. Some would say that the it was stacked in the SUs favor but the F-15 still lost.
Here is a news flash. The real reason the F-15 is still a good fighter is that the AIM-120 is a great missile.
The AIM-120 isn't old tech...
I wasn't comparing Ubuntu ease of fixing with Windows. If windows is borked for a lot of people the only answer is a nuke and pave. I was comparing Ubuntu with OpenSuse and CentOS.
I have had better luck with them getting the install right then Ubuntu.
Well my wife just picked up a new HP inkjet... So we will see how well it works. So hate inkjets.
How can something be almost universally supported?
I suggest you look at this page. http://openprinting.org/printer_list.cgi?make=HP
You will find that most do work perfectly but a lot "mostly" work, a few don't work well or at all. A lot of Epson printers are also supported and they have even written some of the drivers themselves... And open sourced them as well.
The trick is to find which one will work for you. I want a color laser because I hate buying ink.
I suggest you give CentOS 5 and OpenSuse both a look. I haven't setup CentOS5 but I had good luck with Fedora 6. I live with OpenSuse 10.1 at work and it is a fine workstation OS. I have not tried to set up multimedia on it but I do have flash working just fine. I would also suggest sticking to 32 bit for now.
:)
I do think every Linux Distro should include joe but then I bet every Linux user has an editor or tool that they think should be installed by default
"Buy supported hardware"
Tell me what printer says works with Linux on the box? Actually I have a supported printer and it does work just fine. Finding a supported printer is a pain. And actually you are better off getting a printer from 2002. The latest and greatest may or may not work because no one has had time to test it. A less then brand new printer is usually a safer bet. I am looking at it from the point of view of an average user. BTW a lot of printers also don't work with Vista which I did mention. Why should I throw a printer that is still working in the landfill for sake of Vista or Linux? Printers don't really go obsolete. Printers should last for years and office printers do. Lack of Linux printer drivers is an issue. And yes more printer makers should provide drivers, but it is still a pain.
For the monitor problem Ubuntu should adopt SAX2 it works very well but I have one more suggestion for everyone. Auto detection is nice but let me also select my monitor from a list a lock it. Auto detection can have a fit with KVMs and I use them KVMs are home and at work. One of the things that drives me crazy at work is that Windows doesn't auto detect my flat panel so on boot up I have to unplug the monitor cable from my KVM and plug it into my Windows box. The nice thing is it seems that Suse fixed that in an update. I don't have to play swap the cable on the Suse 10.1 box on boot up any more.
And I don't think this is one specific card. I have seen a lot of people complaining about WiFi not working in 7 and not all of them are using the Prism card that my Thinkpad does. I think it is a bug in the Wifi manager because I can see my WAP but I can not log on to the network. Again it worked fine in Suse 10 and 10.1 and it worked under Ubuntu 6.
Notice that you jump on me about the printing issue yet every Linux user knows that printing is a mess. Why do you think there is a site called Linuxprinting.org? This isn't a problem that is limited to Ubuntu. When I shop for a printer I always ASK the salesman does it work with Linux even if I know that it doesn't. Every Linux user needs to start asking so the people that sell things like printers or scanners that we are their and we do spend our money or not based on it working with Linux.
Linux is a community as such it will not get better unless we are honest about problems. Ubuntu seems to have become a sacred cow. My take on Ubuntu is that if you are one of the people that the install just works for then you are golden. If you have to tweak anything it is a royal pain. Ubuntu doesn't suck but I think it is over rated compared to OpenSuse and probably Fedora.
The real overlooked Linux has got to be CentOS. The latest version has a lot of desktop friendly additions and has the stability and testing of Red Hat Enterprise addition. It does lack Ubuntu's frendly marketing but it looks like a rock solid project if a little dull.
Over all I thought the article was pretty well balanced. The author clearly stated he loved Vista at the beginning but made an effort to be honest. As much as I like Linux I think in some areas it was too biased towards Ubuntu.
1. Software. He praised Ubuntu for Gimp and OpenOffice but you can download Gimp and OpenOffice for Windows. Ubuntu makes it easer to get a lot of free software but a lot of the best FOSS applications are available for Windows.
2. Printing. Printing on Linux is a pain. It has been a pain since day one. But I know of more than one person that has had printing problems with Vista. I would call printing a tie.
3. Ubuntu has issues with detecting monitors. What is worse is they don't give you a nice easy interface to let you MAUNUALY select what monitor you have. The suggestion from the wiki? Manually edit your xorg config file. If you mess it up then you loose your screen and have to go in to the command line and fix it. I still don't have it working but I made a copy of my xorg config file before hacking it. NOT a user friendly way to deal with the problem.
4. Ubuntu is having some issues with Wifi. A lot of people are having problems even when their wifi card is in the kernal and worked under the last version of Ubuntu.
As I said I really like Linux but I just don't think that Ubuntu 7 is as good as everyone seems to think. I have had more luck with OpenSuse and CentOS than the latest version of Ubuntu. Yes it has a great community but I just don't get it. I am going to try the 32 bit version on my desktop to see if it is any less problematical. I tried it on my notebook but the WiFi problems are a show stopper for me.
Tritium has a very short half life. Around 11 years if I remember so even as you are breeding it you are loosing some of it do decay. Also isn't radioactive it is very easy to deal with. Lithium is had a bad habit of bursting into flames but other than that it isn't too hard to deal with. Tritium is hard to deal with it is radioactive, has a short half life, and is the key to making big and nasty bombs. Even with a classic fission bomb you can multiply the yield by injecting a small amount of tritium gas into the core.
You can breed tritium with a fission reactor.
But...
If you think Plutonium is a weapon proliferation problem you haven't seen nothing yet. Tritium is the key to making really powerful small nuclear weapons. Buy injecting Tritium gas into the core of a nuclear bomb you can boost the yield a lot.
It all comes down to the UI. I have never found a UI that is as intuitive as folders. Not only that but I use folders for an aid in reading more than an aid in searching. Email from people at my office go into one folder and then some of those go into a sub folders. Email for a few lists I am on go into my lists folder then into a sub folder per list. Emails from vendors goes into a projects folder then into a folder per project.
Yes a tagging system could be made that did all that but I haven't seen it yet. If I could have filters that applied tags and then have different views on my mail space based on those tags that would be great.
Thunderbird V2.0 has both tags and folders so both camps are happy.
But those are all low power, low price, and soon to be low margin items.
That is what will really kill the industry as we know it. When nobody needs to buy a new version of Office because Office or OpenOffice is good enough. No body needs a faster computer but a cheaper lower margin computer. And nobody needs a better smart phone because they all do enough.
If PCs are powerful enough each die shrink will just make them cheaper and cheaper until the cost of the case and power supply are the most expensive part of the computer. Heck for a lot of desktop systems I would bet the LCD monitor is close to half the price of the system now.
I have no really desire for any of those games you mentioned. If I did I would have gotten them for my PS2. :)
If they did a game like Thief for the Wii I might sign up. I don't know if ports of "mature" aka lots of blood and killing will help the Wii. There is very little that the Wii can bring to one of those games that you can not get with a 360 or PS3.
Maybe a Greenarrow game would be interesting or the dreamed for Starwars light saber game. Just imagine the number of YouTube uploads that will cause
Need what people like to call mature games. We need fun games and yes maybe some very different games.
Vice City, no thanks.
It is really going to hurt when computers reach a stable point. Let's face it toasters don't get much better every year. The reason is that they are good enough at making toast now that there isn't a lot of need for improvement. PC are reaching that point. If you don't play games why do you need a faster pc?
Will it run Firefox faster? Make Quicken more useful? At some point Moore's law will push the price down to next to nothing.
Actually it doesn't seem to scale all that well at all. Take a look at the memory bandwidth scores.
Two sockets with Intel Quad core chips looks to be at the saturation point for the FSB. I have heard that the Xeon uses slower memory than the Duo but I think that 8 cores on the Intel FSB is about all your going to get for now.
The Itantium and Opteron both will scale to more CPUs than the current Xeon.
I tend to use filters to sort email into folders then I use the search to looks for specific subjects or authors. If I am working on an important project all email related to that project goes into that folder. If I want to find one from my boss I do a search.
I didn't say tags where useless but I like folders and I guess others feel the same. What is nice about Thunderbird is that now you have BOTH.
Use what works best for you.
The simplest reason is that invites tend to be sent as emails so having them integrated make life easy. I guess it could be possible to create a mime type that is of the type invite and have it call whatever ca lander program you use.
The long reason is that your contact list in pretty much at the center of email, your calender, and your todo lists.
An email client and a Personal information manager are very closely related now.
Lets say you going to schedule a meeting. You then check your calender and put it on your calender and if your on a good system you can check the people you need at the meetings calenders. Then you send invites to everybody that needs to be at them meeting, Then you may one ore more things you need to do for the meeting so you you add them to your todo list. Then of course ideally you sync that with you cell phone.
A home user may not need a calender as such but it is nice.
However imagine a college or high school student with a good calendering system. The school could put events and assignments. I know that we have iCal and webdav but even I have not found a good way tie them all together. A good open standards calendering system could be great tool. The trick will be how to keep it spam free. Imagine the abuse if Crazy Billy's discount underwear warehouse could push the date of their sale to everyones calender!
Tunderbird V2 adds tags but frankly I like folders. I do not see how tags are obviously the way to go. In fact that is the one thing I don't like about Gmail.
Yes you can sort however you like. It really isn't a problem.
And so far the search works well for me.
Kmail and Evolution only run on Linux and I have to use Windows.
Outlook has caused me more grief with blown PSTs and other issues than I can shake a stick at and it only runs on Windows and I have to use Linux.
Gmail and Yahoo mail? They are not bad but I need to access my office email server.
Thunderbird while not perfect.. Get a good calander interface going guys. Is a good email client. It just isn't a good calender client.
I have yet to see as complete of a solution as Outlook+Exchange yet. I am just not willing to pay the price to use Exchange.