This is not one of the first Athlon64 laptops. I have had an Athlon64 laptop for almost two months, and they have been available since late October/early November 2003.
If the market doesn't catch fire, your desk or legs will...
This is not true at all. The laptop runs at 800MHz 95% of the time (whenever the full 2GHz is not needed). At that speed, the CPU has a peak heat dissipation of 35W, and a typical output of 28W. This is well below Pentium IV laptops, and is below the peak output of most Pentium-M chips at their full speed. Even at 2GHz, it outputs at most around 85W (max theoretical heat output). Compare this to laptops with the Pentium IV Extreme Edition (available from many vendors), which has a typical heat output of over 100W--and that is at idle! Don't even ask about power usage when actually doing something.
I get a good 3 1/2 hours of battery life on a single charge. That is pretty damn good for a laptop which is more powerful than 95% of the full desktop processors out there, including my own. When it runs at full speed all night, the mouse pad and right side of the keyboard get fairly warm, but not to a point that it makes the machine uncomfortable to use. Warmth is comparable to the Dell Latitude D800, which uses a Pentium-M.
Unfortunately, it does not support dual batteries, and has no modular optical drive bay (the DVD drive is set when the machine is assembled), but these aren't major issues for most people. It also has a rather bulky power supply for the use of A/C power, complete with its own tiny cooling fan. This does not help the weight, which is already nearly 8lbs with battery. Ah well--it's more powerful than my desktop, reasonably light, and is MUCH smaller than certain 12-lb Pentium IV laptops. One often wonders if manufacturers have a different definition of "lap" than the rest of us.
Indeed, you are correct. It seems a kneejerk reaction to comment as to how much better something at NASA could be done, largely from people that don't bother to try to understand why they are doing it that way. And so it seems, ironically, my own post was a kneejerk reaction to what I thought was the same. Heh.:slaps self:. Sleep. Yeah, that's why I didn't RTFA. Not enough sleep. Yeah.:ducks and hides:
One wonders why these literal rocket scientists didn't just get a software programmable Linux or PalmOS based wrist-computer and hack together a Mars-time display application into it?"
It is always such a relief to know that Slashdot readers know more about Astronauts should do and use than NASA engineers. Maybe that was a bit harsh, but have you ever seen a sophisticated piece of consume electronics, such as a Palm Pilot or laptop, taken along with astronauts on their missions? Electronics in space have to be able to handle conditions that your favorite PDA engineers did not exactly have in mind--even on an astronauts wrist. Notice that the watch is not even digital, and that if you think about it, it is probably not because the Engineers didn't read The Hitchhiker's Guide.
...is that the vendor is almost certainly not the manufacturer. Like the hundreds of CD-R companies that sell the CDs of maybe ten chemical companies, laptops are made from a handful of companies, such as Arima, Clevo, Asus, Uniwill, *etc. If these companies discontinue a certain line of laptop, or worse--never offer individual replacement parts for repairs in the first place, you can't do anything about it, and neither can the vendor no matter how much they would like to.
*Exceptions: Most IBM laptops are actually made by IBM, and Apple makes their own laptops.
Part of me wants Tivo to lose the battle, because while they may have been the first to use those ideas for that particular purpose, some of their patents do fit into the "duh" category.
However, another part of me wants them to win. I don't want to see yet another innovative company--and yes, Tivo is an innovative company despite their patents, die simply because imitators like Echostar take their basic idea, after someone else has done all the work and taken all the risk, and "cheap" Tivo out of business. I've seen it too many times, and every time this happens, it makes it that much more difficult for innovative companies to get funding, and that much more logical to justify Microsoft-style innovation as a business model.
The unit conversion was a mistake of JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratories), a part of NASA that works strictly on unmanned spacecraft. The Beagle II is a product of the ESA. They are quite different. While I agree that the conversion was a silly mistake to make, you really have to appreciate how staggeringly complex the undertaking of an unmanned (or manned, in fact) space flight can be. I have three relatives that work for JPL, none of which were on the team that made the error, but they all share the shame. After seeing a small part of what is involved from them, I: 1) Am glad that I do not work for NASA, and 2) Am frankly mystified that, seeing as how we are all human, any successful automated probe missions have been accomplished at all. There is just so much that has to be done *perfectly* to have any hope of even getting off the earth, let alone circling planets at precisely calculated trajectories to gather a specific "amount" of inertia to be able to get to a specific spot over a specific planet so as to be able to exercise a specific number of steps at the exact correct time in the correct order. Complexity-wise, it is not unlike having to build a mature mission-critical operating system in five years, which has no significant bugs and whose problems are often more difficult to solve.
While it is sometimes fun to make fun of the mistakes of others, I can do no less than stand in awe of how much NASA and the ESA get accomplished with what they have. The ESA in particular, if you compare the Beagle's budget to that of, say, the Galileo project.
There appears to be quite a lot of Interplay bashing. While I will very much miss BIS, which made the Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment, and Fallout 1 (my first, second, and third favorite PC games of all time respectively), Interplay is doing *very* badly in the finance department. They are laying people off because they probably can't pay them if they wanted to. Interplay has had some terrible legal problems preventing them from releasing a next-generation 3D Baldur's Gate-type game--a game 2 years in development shelved for good because of Wizards of the Coast, or whoever owns the AD&D license this week. Fallout 2 was reportedly to be based on the same graphic engine, but after management got excited about the >1 million unit sales of the plotless, worthless, mindless action game, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, and because of a number of PC failures, their management apparently became increasingly dissilusioned disillusioned with PC games. Perhaps it never occurred to them that Dark Alliance sold because of Baldur's Gate's fine name (which it blemishes), and that Fallout: Tactics may have sold because of Fallout's pristinely good name (which it not only blemishes, but it drags through an ocean of shit in its disrespect for the founding masterpieces of the series). Interplay has been focusing on low-quality, quick-to-develop games for their less cerebral fans, and apparently the strategy hasn't worked (hint hint Ionstorm/Deus Ex 2). I am not happy about Interplay's woes, and some of the biggest causes were legal and not necessarily management related, but if you look at Interplay's financial statement, you would be surprised that they aren't declaring bankruptcy right now--no, that will come in mid/late 2004 when they cannot get a line of credit after defaulting on previous loans and being unable to give any clear indication of a light at the end of the tunnel. I hope that the Fallout licence is sold to a company that has some of the original design geniuses behind it, such as Obsidian Entertainment or Troika Games
Anyone who believes Interplay's management enjoys laying people off before Christmas needs to seriously consider the concept of "hearing both sides of the story." Never blame on malice that which you can blame on incompetance (and America's legal system)!
I used Norton Ghost to backup my step-father's business PC running Windows 2000. Some of his drive letters had been reassigned, because Windows kept changing its mind about drive letters whenever certain removeable devices were plugged in before a system boot. This played havoc on many programs which rely on Windows to keep track of their path.
So I make a Ghost image on the old drive, and restore it to the new drive. . .. Windows boots up, and complains that it can't find it's paging file (sometimes incorrectly called "swap file"). Hmm. No big deal, right? Er, no. Windows 2000 absolutely *requires* that you have a paging file, even if you have 2GB of RAM. Windows then proceededed to give me instructions on how to create a swap file by opening the Control Panel, clicking here and there (system-->performance IIRC). That's all fine and dandy, but when I logged on with any account, it would immediately log me off, telling me that, lo and behold, the paging file was missing and that I should click on Control Panel --> System --> Performance, etc. to create one.
How useful!
So I try all sorts of fun key combinations, booting in safe mode, and all the other obvious stuff. Every time it was the same: 1) OMG! Missing paging file! Fix! Here's how:... 2) Log in 3) OMG! Missing paging file! Fix! Here's how:... 4) Insta-logoff.
For some odd reason known only to Microsoft, you can't reasonably edit the registry of another machine simply by plugging in its hard drive. No, this would render system recovery "insufficiently challenging." So, I asked a Microsoft programmer I know for what to do. He suggested I edit it with the remote registry editor. Okay, that service isn't running. (Run a remote registry editor service... on a Microsoft workstation containing important business information? Uh, no?) (note I tried this with a machine in the same situation later, and the Windows system refused to let anything talk to it outside of pinging and a few other things) So, then the Microsoft programmer suggested I boot into console mode and... Uh, oh wait, Microsoft doesn't provide any utilities that can correct this that aren't GUI-based. Then, I kid you not, he recommended I edit the registry file--in binary--using Debug. MmmHmm. Sure. While this would be tough even with the registry file spec, Windows, being a closed-source OS, doesn't have public documentation regarding the details of their binary registry format. Were this nearly any other OS, including previous Microsoftware like DOS/W3.1, this info would probably be stored in a human-readable text file, but I digress.
So after consulting with a few other people, I ended up reinstalling Windows, about 70 applications, applying the 11 registry tweaks I normally do, and changing various odd system settings to the "Sane" setting. Seeing as how Windows 2000 does a full surface scan on the drive whether you want it to or not, and how installing and applying all of the needed updates requires rebooting no less than five times, this basically shot my entire day. I had to take a day off of work because this system was needed for business use that day. Fortunately, we had a backup of all his data. This is one of many examples I have that prove to me time and time again that Windows is not a sane server OS, never was and never will be. Some people may point out that Windows NT-based OSes link "C:", "D:" to devices just like Unix. That's all fine and dandy too, except that applications, including Windows itself rely on those arbitrary drive letters, whose ID is written to each drive's MBR for some reason, rather than in a centralized and readable location.
This is largely a matter of opinion. I like www.aceshardware.com, www.ArsTechnica.com, www.anandtech.com, and sometimes check www.hardocp.com. (They don't make any effort to be professional or business-like, but that's what I like about them). There are probably many other good ones, but these are the ones that I check often. YMMV.
Ah, Tom's Hardware. Not trying to be negative, but IMHO, they are a terrible source for tech information, and the bulk of their reviews contain startling errors, conclusions that defy reason, glaring omissions, and sensationalized reporting. The majority of those writing the reviews clearly have no idea what they are talking about, at least regarding the subject they are reporting on. Overall, I would rate them slightly above HotHardware.com.
Tom himself, as far as I can tell, is on the ball and knows his stuff VERY well, but he doesn't write articles much anymore, and obviously doesn't read them either. It is a common practice among hardware enthusiasts to quote Tom's for the humor value, trying to see if the author of the latest article is even more clueless than he was in his (or her) last article. To be fair, they do have some excellent articles occasionally, and were the first ones to dare publish information on Intel's unstable Pentium III 1.13GHz processor, but unfortunately these seem to be the exception rather than the rule.
Also, as has already been stated, XGI is hardly a new company. Of course, these bits of SiS and Trident are in completely new territory if they are trying to compete in the high-end gamer's market. Considering that this is their first real foray into that market, I think they have done an amazing job. I'd say give them the benefit of the doubt until they prove otherwise. Remember, even the (once) most respected companies in the field can faulter, and that XGI has something that is even in the same ballpark as the most seasoned of players is an impressive feat.
Which version of ReiserFS were you using? I have used EXT3, ReiserFS (not V4) and XFS and through many power outtages have never had problems with Reiser or EXT3, though Reiser is better for my uses (lots of small files). As far as XFS, I had a situation similar to Mindriot's above, but not quite as serious. (Still, I reformatted). Now I use a UPS.:) You might want to give Reiser another chance sometime if you have a bit of extra time. It is now a fairly mature and stable file system.
What does "Giga" literally mean? One billion. "Mega" literally means "One million." What about the design of hard drives would make one think that the way that their storage works naturally lends towards binary trees?
If you don't like the way your OS reports disk space, which is all this is about, then edit the source code to df.
How many bytes is a megabyte? Is it 1000x1000? 1024x1000? 1024x1024? Who decides this? What about Microsoft or other disk utility programmers makes them more authoritative about that definition than the metric system? Further, what about the way drives work would make one naturally want to choose 1024x1024 as the definition over 1000x1000, and why are drive manufacturers being sued instead of those that report the sizes. Should either be sued? Probably not. Next, let's sue powerplants for measuring kilowatt hours in groups of 1000W instead of 1024. On this planet, we use a base-10 numbering system, regardless of the numbering system that one particular niche of products happens to use. "kilo" was chosen for 2^10 because it was conveniently close, not because it was meant to be legally binding!
This from the state that charges a 13% tax for satellite TV service. Do they want us to have wires or don't they?
Re:Marketing mantra
on
TiVo Basic
·
· Score: 4, Informative
A no-fee basic system does sound nice (and will probably entice people to get the full service), but $12.95 seems like quite a rip-off when the DirecTV DVR service (another name for Tivo service) is $4.99/mo. Of course, that only works with DirecTV Tivos, but they are better anyway (no re-compressing of video, dual tuners, "purchase and record" pay-per-views, etc.)
This has been brougt up numerous times in the StorageReview.com forums. There are several companies making solid-state drives, including PCI-SDRAM drives with battery backup, and FLASH drives which need no such backup. They're great I'm sure, but the price per GB is sky high. Take a look at the cost/GB of Compact Flash, multiply that by "server part for server budget" marketing. You get the idea. I'd love to provide links, but I can't remember any of the manufacturer's names, and Google doesn't bring them up. You might try a quick search in SR's forums once the server recovers for "solid state" if you're interested though--I seem to remember a 4GB SCSI FLASH drive being almost within the realm of the average geek's budget.
My current 7500rpm Segate drive makes noticeable amount of noise, this one is even noisier, why can't the drive manufacturers come up with some noise suppression case/jacket for the drives. For my new desktop I would rather go in for 2 low speed (4500rpm) drive in a RAID 0 configuration. The more recent Seagate and Samsung drives are among the quietest available. Take a look at the noise state on StorageReview.com's database. You may have an older model, but their new ones are barely audible.
Well, it was a little unfair of me to mention only the Seagate 15K.3, as all other 15KRPM hard drives generate significantly more heat. There's actually a thread in the Storagereview forum about someone wondering why his X15-36LP (Seagates generation of 15K drive immediately preceding the 15K.3) is hot to the touch. Honestly, I am completely amazed that Seagates engineers were able to do what they did with the.3's heat output. If they can do that, why aren't their 5400RPM drives freezing over?:-)
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This is not one of the first Athlon64 laptops. I have had an Athlon64 laptop for almost two months, and they have been available since late October/early November 2003.
If the market doesn't catch fire, your desk or legs will...
This is not true at all. The laptop runs at 800MHz 95% of the time (whenever the full 2GHz is not needed). At that speed, the CPU has a peak heat dissipation of 35W, and a typical output of 28W. This is well below Pentium IV laptops, and is below the peak output of most Pentium-M chips at their full speed.
Even at 2GHz, it outputs at most around 85W (max theoretical heat output). Compare this to laptops with the Pentium IV Extreme Edition (available from many vendors), which has a typical heat output of over 100W--and that is at idle! Don't even ask about power usage when actually doing something.
I get a good 3 1/2 hours of battery life on a single charge. That is pretty damn good for a laptop which is more powerful than 95% of the full desktop processors out there, including my own. When it runs at full speed all night, the mouse pad and right side of the keyboard get fairly warm, but not to a point that it makes the machine uncomfortable to use. Warmth is comparable to the Dell Latitude D800, which uses a Pentium-M.
Unfortunately, it does not support dual batteries, and has no modular optical drive bay (the DVD drive is set when the machine is assembled), but these aren't major issues for most people. It also has a rather bulky power supply for the use of A/C power, complete with its own tiny cooling fan. This does not help the weight, which is already nearly 8lbs with battery. Ah well--it's more powerful than my desktop, reasonably light, and is MUCH smaller than certain 12-lb Pentium IV laptops. One often wonders if manufacturers have a different definition of "lap" than the rest of us.
Indeed, you are correct. :slaps self:. Sleep. Yeah, that's why I didn't RTFA. Not enough sleep. Yeah. :ducks and hides:
It seems a kneejerk reaction to comment as to how much better something at NASA could be done, largely from people that don't bother to try to understand why they are doing it that way.
And so it seems, ironically, my own post was a kneejerk reaction to what I thought was the same. Heh.
One wonders why these literal rocket scientists didn't just get a software programmable Linux or PalmOS based wrist-computer and hack together a Mars-time display application into it?"
It is always such a relief to know that Slashdot readers know more about Astronauts should do and use than NASA engineers.
Maybe that was a bit harsh, but have you ever seen a sophisticated piece of consume electronics, such as a Palm Pilot or laptop, taken along with astronauts on their missions?
Electronics in space have to be able to handle conditions that your favorite PDA engineers did not exactly have in mind--even on an astronauts wrist. Notice that the watch is not even digital, and that if you think about it, it is probably not because the Engineers didn't read The Hitchhiker's Guide.
...is that the vendor is almost certainly not the manufacturer. Like the hundreds of CD-R companies that sell the CDs of maybe ten chemical companies, laptops are made from a handful of companies, such as Arima, Clevo, Asus, Uniwill, *etc.
If these companies discontinue a certain line of laptop, or worse--never offer individual replacement parts for repairs in the first place, you can't do anything about it, and neither can the vendor no matter how much they would like to.
*Exceptions: Most IBM laptops are actually made by IBM, and Apple makes their own laptops.
Part of me wants Tivo to lose the battle, because while they may have been the first to use those ideas for that particular purpose, some of their patents do fit into the "duh" category.
However, another part of me wants them to win. I don't want to see yet another innovative company--and yes, Tivo is an innovative company despite their patents, die simply because imitators like Echostar take their basic idea, after someone else has done all the work and taken all the risk, and "cheap" Tivo out of business. I've seen it too many times, and every time this happens, it makes it that much more difficult for innovative companies to get funding, and that much more logical to justify Microsoft-style innovation as a business model.
Hell, i would consider toms hardware to be a extremely respectable source even compared to them......
Ouch!
The unit conversion was a mistake of JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratories), a part of NASA that works strictly on unmanned spacecraft.
The Beagle II is a product of the ESA. They are quite different.
While I agree that the conversion was a silly mistake to make, you really have to appreciate how staggeringly complex the undertaking of an unmanned (or manned, in fact) space flight can be. I have three relatives that work for JPL, none of which were on the team that made the error, but they all share the shame. After seeing a small part of what is involved from them, I:
1) Am glad that I do not work for NASA, and
2) Am frankly mystified that, seeing as how we are all human, any successful automated probe missions have been accomplished at all. There is just so much that has to be done *perfectly* to have any hope of even getting off the earth, let alone circling planets at precisely calculated trajectories to gather a specific "amount" of inertia to be able to get to a specific spot over a specific planet so as to be able to exercise a specific number of steps at the exact correct time in the correct order.
Complexity-wise, it is not unlike having to build a mature mission-critical operating system in five years, which has no significant bugs and whose problems are often more difficult to solve.
While it is sometimes fun to make fun of the mistakes of others, I can do no less than stand in awe of how much NASA and the ESA get accomplished with what they have. The ESA in particular, if you compare the Beagle's budget to that of, say, the Galileo project.
Not quite. They're on the roadmap for Q1, which would just miss christmas at the earliest.
Roadmap or not, you can buy 512K cache Athlon64s right now.
Matrix Revolutions, overrated?
It was rated very poorly by nearly every crit...
Oh.
There appears to be quite a lot of Interplay bashing. While I will very much miss BIS, which made the Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment, and Fallout 1 (my first, second, and third favorite PC games of all time respectively), Interplay is doing *very* badly in the finance department. They are laying people off because they probably can't pay them if they wanted to.
Interplay has had some terrible legal problems preventing them from releasing a next-generation 3D Baldur's Gate-type game--a game 2 years in development shelved for good because of Wizards of the Coast, or whoever owns the AD&D license this week.
Fallout 2 was reportedly to be based on the same graphic engine, but after management got excited about the >1 million unit sales of the plotless, worthless, mindless action game, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, and because of a number of PC failures, their management apparently became increasingly dissilusioned disillusioned with PC games.
Perhaps it never occurred to them that Dark Alliance sold because of Baldur's Gate's fine name (which it blemishes), and that Fallout: Tactics may have sold because of Fallout's pristinely good name (which it not only blemishes, but it drags through an ocean of shit in its disrespect for the founding masterpieces of the series).
Interplay has been focusing on low-quality, quick-to-develop games for their less cerebral fans, and apparently the strategy hasn't worked (hint hint Ionstorm/Deus Ex 2).
I am not happy about Interplay's woes, and some of the biggest causes were legal and not necessarily management related, but if you look at Interplay's financial statement, you would be surprised that they aren't declaring bankruptcy right now--no, that will come in mid/late 2004 when they cannot get a line of credit after defaulting on previous loans and being unable to give any clear indication of a light at the end of the tunnel.
I hope that the Fallout licence is sold to a company that has some of the original design geniuses behind it, such as Obsidian Entertainment or Troika Games
Anyone who believes Interplay's management enjoys laying people off before Christmas needs to seriously consider the concept of "hearing both sides of the story."
Never blame on malice that which you can blame on incompetance (and America's legal system)!
I used Norton Ghost to backup my step-father's business PC running Windows 2000.
.
Some of his drive letters had been reassigned, because Windows kept changing its mind about drive letters whenever certain removeable devices were plugged in before a system boot. This played havoc on many programs which rely on Windows to keep track of their path.
So I make a Ghost image on the old drive, and restore it to the new drive.
. .
Windows boots up, and complains that it can't find it's paging file (sometimes incorrectly called "swap file"). Hmm. No big deal, right? Er, no. Windows 2000 absolutely *requires* that you have a paging file, even if you have 2GB of RAM. Windows then proceededed to give me instructions on how to create a swap file by opening the Control Panel, clicking here and there (system-->performance IIRC).
That's all fine and dandy, but when I logged on with any account, it would immediately log me off, telling me that, lo and behold, the paging file was missing and that I should click on Control Panel --> System --> Performance, etc. to create one.
How useful!
So I try all sorts of fun key combinations, booting in safe mode, and all the other obvious stuff. Every time it was the same:
1) OMG! Missing paging file! Fix! Here's how:...
2) Log in
3) OMG! Missing paging file! Fix! Here's how:...
4) Insta-logoff.
For some odd reason known only to Microsoft, you can't reasonably edit the registry of another machine simply by plugging in its hard drive. No, this would render system recovery "insufficiently challenging."
So, I asked a Microsoft programmer I know for what to do. He suggested I edit it with the remote registry editor. Okay, that service isn't running. (Run a remote registry editor service... on a Microsoft workstation containing important business information? Uh, no?)
(note I tried this with a machine in the same situation later, and the Windows system refused to let anything talk to it outside of pinging and a few other things)
So, then the Microsoft programmer suggested I boot into console mode and... Uh, oh wait, Microsoft doesn't provide any utilities that can correct this that aren't GUI-based.
Then, I kid you not, he recommended I edit the registry file--in binary--using Debug. MmmHmm. Sure. While this would be tough even with the registry file spec, Windows, being a closed-source OS, doesn't have public documentation regarding the details of their binary registry format. Were this nearly any other OS, including previous Microsoftware like DOS/W3.1, this info would probably be stored in a human-readable text file, but I digress.
So after consulting with a few other people, I ended up reinstalling Windows, about 70 applications, applying the 11 registry tweaks I normally do, and changing various odd system settings to the "Sane" setting.
Seeing as how Windows 2000 does a full surface scan on the drive whether you want it to or not, and how installing and applying all of the needed updates requires rebooting no less than five times, this basically shot my entire day. I had to take a day off of work because this system was needed for business use that day. Fortunately, we had a backup of all his data.
This is one of many examples I have that prove to me time and time again that Windows is not a sane server OS, never was and never will be.
Some people may point out that Windows NT-based OSes link "C:", "D:" to devices just like Unix. That's all fine and dandy too, except that applications, including Windows itself rely on those arbitrary drive letters, whose ID is written to each drive's MBR for some reason, rather than in a centralized and readable location.
No better way to spend one's day...
This is largely a matter of opinion. I like www.aceshardware.com, www.ArsTechnica.com, www.anandtech.com, and sometimes check www.hardocp.com. (They don't make any effort to be professional or business-like, but that's what I like about them). There are probably many other good ones, but these are the ones that I check often. YMMV.
Ah, Tom's Hardware. Not trying to be negative, but IMHO, they are a terrible source for tech information, and the bulk of their reviews contain startling errors, conclusions that defy reason, glaring omissions, and sensationalized reporting.
The majority of those writing the reviews clearly have no idea what they are talking about, at least regarding the subject they are reporting on. Overall, I would rate them slightly above HotHardware.com.
Tom himself, as far as I can tell, is on the ball and knows his stuff VERY well, but he doesn't write articles much anymore, and obviously doesn't read them either.
It is a common practice among hardware enthusiasts to quote Tom's for the humor value, trying to see if the author of the latest article is even more clueless than he was in his (or her) last article.
To be fair, they do have some excellent articles occasionally, and were the first ones to dare publish information on Intel's unstable Pentium III 1.13GHz processor, but unfortunately these seem to be the exception rather than the rule.
Also, as has already been stated, XGI is hardly a new company. Of course, these bits of SiS and Trident are in completely new territory if they are trying to compete in the high-end gamer's market. Considering that this is their first real foray into that market, I think they have done an amazing job. I'd say give them the benefit of the doubt until they prove otherwise. Remember, even the (once) most respected companies in the field can faulter, and that XGI has something that is even in the same ballpark as the most seasoned of players is an impressive feat.
Which version of ReiserFS were you using? :)
I have used EXT3, ReiserFS (not V4) and XFS and through many power outtages have never had problems with Reiser or EXT3, though Reiser is better for my uses (lots of small files).
As far as XFS, I had a situation similar to Mindriot's above, but not quite as serious. (Still, I reformatted).
Now I use a UPS.
You might want to give Reiser another chance sometime if you have a bit of extra time. It is now a fairly mature and stable file system.
What does "Giga" literally mean? One billion.
"Mega" literally means "One million."
What about the design of hard drives would make one think that the way that their storage works naturally lends towards binary trees?
If you don't like the way your OS reports disk space, which is all this is about, then edit the source code to df.
How many bytes is a megabyte? Is it 1000x1000? 1024x1000? 1024x1024?
Who decides this? What about Microsoft or other disk utility programmers makes them more authoritative about that definition than the metric system? Further, what about the way drives work would make one naturally want to choose 1024x1024 as the definition over 1000x1000, and why are drive manufacturers being sued instead of those that report the sizes. Should either be sued? Probably not.
Next, let's sue powerplants for measuring kilowatt hours in groups of 1000W instead of 1024.
On this planet, we use a base-10 numbering system, regardless of the numbering system that one particular niche of products happens to use. "kilo" was chosen for 2^10 because it was conveniently close, not because it was meant to be legally binding!
Yes, but... It's Halflife 2!
Actually, Philo T. Farnsworth was a resident of Idaho, he waw just born in Utah and moved when he was 11.
This from the state that charges a 13% tax for satellite TV service. Do they want us to have wires or don't they?
A no-fee basic system does sound nice (and will probably entice people to get the full service), but $12.95 seems like quite a rip-off when the DirecTV DVR service (another name for Tivo service) is $4.99/mo. Of course, that only works with DirecTV Tivos, but they are better anyway (no re-compressing of video, dual tuners, "purchase and record" pay-per-views, etc.)
Any faster, and AMD will grow angry at their loss of the Heat Champion Throne. ;)
AMD already lost that title to Intel's 3.06GHz P4, which can output over 100W of heat (compared to 74 for the hottest AMD chip).
10K hard drive?! Did we go back in time to 1975?!
hey, it's a lot better than current 7.2K hard drives. I can barely fit my grocery list on those things!
I wouldn't be impressed with a 0K drive either.
This has been brougt up numerous times in the StorageReview.com forums. There are several companies making solid-state drives, including PCI-SDRAM drives with battery backup, and FLASH drives which need no such backup.
They're great I'm sure, but the price per GB is sky high.
Take a look at the cost/GB of Compact Flash, multiply that by "server part for server budget" marketing. You get the idea.
I'd love to provide links, but I can't remember any of the manufacturer's names, and Google doesn't bring them up. You might try a quick search in SR's forums once the server recovers for "solid state" if you're interested though--I seem to remember a 4GB SCSI FLASH drive being almost within the realm of the average geek's budget.
My current 7500rpm Segate drive makes noticeable amount of noise, this one is even noisier, why can't the drive manufacturers come up with some noise suppression case/jacket for the drives. For my new desktop I would rather go in for 2 low speed (4500rpm) drive in a RAID 0 configuration.
The more recent Seagate and Samsung drives are among the quietest available.
Take a look at the noise state on StorageReview.com's database. You may have an older model, but their new ones are barely audible.
Well, it was a little unfair of me to mention only the Seagate 15K.3, as all other 15KRPM hard drives generate significantly more heat. There's actually a thread in the Storagereview forum about someone wondering why his X15-36LP (Seagates generation of 15K drive immediately preceding the 15K.3) is hot to the touch. .3's heat output. If they can do that, why aren't their 5400RPM drives freezing over? :-)
Honestly, I am completely amazed that Seagates engineers were able to do what they did with the