I have a PS2 and while I suspect there are games which require swapping, I haven't played one yet. As for the PC, since the advent of wonderful tools like Alcohol 1xx and Daemon Tools, the days of handling and swapping discs are over. I guess you just don't play many games these days on the PC.
Once again I highly recommend monoprice.com. They've got great cables at a cheap price. Wouldn't surprise me if the Monster cable factory were turning these cables out, they're that good.
That's interesting and a highly rated drive. My point was originally that since they were cutting the hole for the drive, that piece was waste, so they might as well include it as an applique. All it needs is a strip of double sided tape and its good to go.
If you have a spare AM2 chip laying around (which is what this supports), then that's rather unusual. Also strange to have DDR2 laying around. Both are so new they'll require a purchase.
The only thing I see missing from this box, though, is the little piece of aluminum you're supposed to glue to your DVD door. When's the last time you saw a DVD drive for sale with a grain-matched brushed aluminum tray on it? Oh, never.:)
Just to let you know, these guys http://www.monoprice.com/ have awesome deals and great quality cables. I'm not an employee, just a fan. I started with a 6' Monster HDMI cable that was outrageously expensive ($120 USD) and monoprice had one for $15. The $15 cable was identical. Zero problems with it for four months. I also bought the 5-line composite cable (3 yb cables and a pair of analog audio rcas all in the same ribbon) and it has been perfect as well.
You are correct, Sony is footing most of the bill. The funny thing is, the majority of the batteries involved (in the older D600 series and across the line) have already gone to battery heaven due to their age and lack of storage ability. None of my 6 clients with D600's had a battery affected by the recall.
Dell estimated the bill at around $300m USD so it's just a one-time write-off for Sony. With their total sales of $71.2B USD in 2004, I doubt that 300m USD will hurt them at all. It's more painful for their reputation than anything. After all, when big boys like Dell and Apple rely on you for batteries and you give them C4, they get upset.
I would have to agree. The only time Alienware really trumps anything in value is when it comes to their laptops. You just can't get very many gaming laptops that perform like theirs do. Then again, nobody likes spending 5k+ for a laptop that weighs 17lbs.
I think the main difference here is that their high tax rates land them usable services and discounted services, as opposed to the US, where our relatively low tax rate nets you almost zero benefits.
I've always wondered what they're going to call the updates when they run out of big, dangerous cats. I suggest they move to something like poisonous frogs or deadly spiders.
How am I incorrect in saying that noobs without history are a higher risk? If you can't judge a driver by their driving record (since they don't have one), that equates to them being a high risk just by having no history. Like I said before, the credit industry treats noobs the exact same way. If they don't know they can trust you, by default, they won't and your rates suffer as a result.
You are correct in saying that teenage drivers have high accident rates though, but my original point was that being a noob had dual implications, one being that statistically you're likely to have a wreck, the second being that you have no history to feed the great statistics computer. I imagine that a first time driver, regardless of age, has rates equal to that of a teenage driver.
Mad props to Darwin's law. BTW it's not necessarily the death rate, it's the accident rate that causes the insurance companies to freak out and have high rates. Who's more risky, a noob or a 30 year veteran? Noobs have no history so you can't judge their abilities, so they're instantly high risk..same goes for creditors.
The same goes for Windows gamers also. Any serious gamer just chooses Nvidia, you know with Nvidia your games will all render properly and the drivers always work.
I don't see how ATI has such high quality hardware and such crappy drivers, on 2 platforms, year after year.
I think it's interesting that there are already battle lines drawn in the plasma vs. lcd debate. I had no idea a thread from 3 days ago would still be drawing hits.:)
Anyway, I paid around $1400 for my Aquos which was a bargain, since last year it was well over $2400 for the same model. I bought it as a discontinued (outgoing) model so I saved alot. For my needs, 32" is more than adequate. 42" would be overkill and probably motion-sickness inducing due to the shallow depth of my living room. Bigger isn't necessarily better when you're talking about viewing distance which is one thing alot of people don't realize. Also the bigger you go, the larger those pixels are, so a 1024x768 native 42" will look worse than a 1366x768 native 32".
HD content is indeed scarce, but as HDTV owners build up to critical mass, the content providers will be obligated to give them something to watch. On Comcast (now Time Warner) digital cable here, there are HBO original shows every night in HD and quite a few other channels. Nothing topped watching our Dallas Mavericks in the playoffs in HD.:) InHD has 100% hd programming on 2 channels and alot of it is gorgeous Imax content. Many local broadcasters also have HD programming, and shows such as 24, Smallville, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, etc. are all broadcasting in HD. So there is content, and with the new wave of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players, there will be even more. Also don't forget specialty satellite provider Voom, who provides 100% hd programming.
I wonder, why even take sides on the debate if you don't even own the hardware in question? If you're still watching an antiquated CRT, why bother to argue?
Good thing they got this 'fixed'. It depends on what they did to fix it. If they permanently underclocked it to get temperatures down, then the customers are getting ripped off for not getting the performance they paid a premium for. If it was an ACPI tweak that was never present (fan control timing or whatever) then kudos to them. I'll have to check on one of my clients' laptops next time I see him and see if the update fixes it.
Plasma burn in generally happens with things like CNN tickers and other persistent imagery. You may never experience it but it is a concern for some people.
As for the Panasonic...well, you get what you pay for when you buy cheap electronics.
Well in my estimation, something that's generating more heat is using more power. Take the Core Duo vs. Athlon dual cores for example. I've seen plenty of Athlons run cool and use less wattage while a Macbook Pro with the core duo feels like a hotplate. Maybe this is a bad example since the Macbooks suffer a bad design and run hot as a result, but the heat issue is still there. Also lots of LCDs are Energy Saver compliant, and without an active signal, by default they'll 'idle' and shut down the backlight. I can't vouch for plasma displays as I don't know that much about their technical details in this regard.
Personally I've found the Aquos more than adequate in any lighting condition. They all come with the OPC system which uses a light sensor to darken or brighten the backlight automatically to compensate for ambient light conditions. I have it turned off on my set, since I find the brightness is just right under 95% of circumstances. Also it's kinda counter-intuitive, as the backlight dims in a dark room (when IMHO it should be less dim).
One more thing to add is that nearly all LCDs and some plasmas feature 'black level expansion' to produce deeper blacks. All it does is shift the gamma to darken the really dark colors, but you lose definition in blacks under that setting. It's another feature I disable, but there are selectable, preset modes for different viewing conditions.
You still can't argue with the native resolution of LCDs compared to plasmas though. LCDs make wonderful hidef monitors, so your Xbox360, PS2 with component, or computer displays everything beautifully. Some sets have quite a bit of overscan, so I recommend you go with a 'monitor' rather than a TV if you plan on hooking up computers to these displays.
I'll tell you from firsthand experience that LCD is far superior. I bought a 32" Sharp Aquos this year and it rules.
I looked at a ton of different makes and models for months before settling on this one. Let's see the pros and cons laid out for plasma vs. lcd.
Plasma: Pros 1. Relatively cheap at large sizes 2. Good contrast 3. Nearly perfect refresh, just like a CRT, so fast moving imagery doesn't ghost 4. Bright and viewable from all angles
Plasma: Cons 1. Eats alot of power and generates a ton of heat. Put your face next to one and it's like standing under a hair dryer. 2. Image burn-in is *still* a concern 3. Glass covering screen doubles as a mirror. Very distracting. 4. Looks really bad close up due to CRT-style pixel gates, can count the columns 5. Low native resolutions regardless of size. Most 42" and below only do 1024x768 native, which is a 4:3 resolution, so displaying a pc on one guarantees a stupid looking stretched desktop since the screen is actually 16:9 sized. 6. Fragile and delicate 7. Supposedly short life
Now for my friend the LCD.
LCD: Pros 1. Proven technology used for computers and other devices for years. 2. Light and durable, easily moved at nearly any size. 3. Contrast and black levels have improved dramatically over the last 3 years. 4. High native resolutions; most screens give you a true 16:9 ratio out of the box with 1366x768 being the standard. 5. Anti-reflective coated screens ensure that you're watching the movie instead of watching yourself eat popcorn. Similar to laptop and other LCD screens in that respect. 6. Some models feature user-replaceable backlights (mine does) 7. Latest screens have very fast (8ms or less) refresh times, no more ghosting or problems watching sports 8. Save quite a bit of power when compared to CRT or plasma screens
LCD: Cons 1. Expensive when you get into 42"+ territory 2. Can exhibit dead or stuck pixels eventually, sometimes this is user-repairable, sometimes not 3. Still not 100% 'contrasty' like plasma or CRTs, this is changing though
So the way I see it, an LCD is the clear winner. All of my clients bought LCD instead of plasma, even though they all tend to be thrifty and save money wherever they can. A trip to a very good home theater store, and you'll see why they (and I) chose LCD over plasma. It really is worth a few extra bucks.
I suspect that the cable providers need more satellites to bring more content to subscribers at their headends. Believe it or not coax has massive bandwidth, and in most major cities they already have fiber to the pole. A multiplexer splits that signal out at each node then individual cable lines run to each residence. Cable companies in most cases are limited only by the bandwidth the headend provides. That is why Comcast and others can double or triple the bandwidth they provide to you without stepping foot inside your home.
They need satellites because, contrary to popular belief, television *broadcasts* from content providers aren't delivered by *magic*. They are sucked down to each local cable branch via satellite dishes. I worked on a buildup of a provider headend before and they had a small satellite farm there just for receiving multiple broadcasts which they planned on sending out via a new fiber network.
Your local news stations also use satellites to deliver live television broadcasts from various places. For everything else, they use tubes.;)
There's nothing wrong, persay, with the act of bundling, but it adds a bunch of resource-hogging bloat depending on how the bundle is configured. See any consumer level Dell fresh out of the box for an example.
Yeah Communicator was a fucking hog. It aspired to be so much more than a browser and ended up suffocating under it's own fat. The Communicator 'suite' consisted of a news reader, a mail client, a web browser and a lightweight WYSIWYG html editor. While I liked the news reader (nicely threaded) the rest of it was for the birds.
Firefox at least has the wisdom to let users choose what kind of extra pork to add to the browser via the beautifully simple extensions manager. That and they keep the mail client (Thunderbird) separate. I think at it's peak, the Communciator suite weighed in at a (then hefty) 25mb download, while Firefox is still a svelte 5mb.
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I have a PS2 and while I suspect there are games which require swapping, I haven't played one yet. As for the PC, since the advent of wonderful tools like Alcohol 1xx and Daemon Tools, the days of handling and swapping discs are over. I guess you just don't play many games these days on the PC.
Well played, Clerks. Well played.
Once again I highly recommend monoprice.com. They've got great cables at a cheap price. Wouldn't surprise me if the Monster cable factory were turning these cables out, they're that good.
That's interesting and a highly rated drive. My point was originally that since they were cutting the hole for the drive, that piece was waste, so they might as well include it as an applique. All it needs is a strip of double sided tape and its good to go.
If you have a spare AM2 chip laying around (which is what this supports), then that's rather unusual. Also strange to have DDR2 laying around. Both are so new they'll require a purchase.
:)
The only thing I see missing from this box, though, is the little piece of aluminum you're supposed to glue to your DVD door. When's the last time you saw a DVD drive for sale with a grain-matched brushed aluminum tray on it? Oh, never.
Just to let you know, these guys http://www.monoprice.com/ have awesome deals and great quality cables. I'm not an employee, just a fan. I started with a 6' Monster HDMI cable that was outrageously expensive ($120 USD) and monoprice had one for $15. The $15 cable was identical. Zero problems with it for four months. I also bought the 5-line composite cable (3 yb cables and a pair of analog audio rcas all in the same ribbon) and it has been perfect as well.
HIGHLY recommended.
You are correct, Sony is footing most of the bill. The funny thing is, the majority of the batteries involved (in the older D600 series and across the line) have already gone to battery heaven due to their age and lack of storage ability. None of my 6 clients with D600's had a battery affected by the recall.
Dell estimated the bill at around $300m USD so it's just a one-time write-off for Sony. With their total sales of $71.2B USD in 2004, I doubt that 300m USD will hurt them at all. It's more painful for their reputation than anything. After all, when big boys like Dell and Apple rely on you for batteries and you give them C4, they get upset.
Well, at least it'll attract the hippie crowd. Mention anything 'green' and they're all over it.
Oh Captain Obvious, what would we do without you?
;)
Look! Under your hands! IT'S A KEYBOARD!
I would have to agree. The only time Alienware really trumps anything in value is when it comes to their laptops. You just can't get very many gaming laptops that perform like theirs do. Then again, nobody likes spending 5k+ for a laptop that weighs 17lbs.
I think the main difference here is that their high tax rates land them usable services and discounted services, as opposed to the US, where our relatively low tax rate nets you almost zero benefits.
I've always wondered what they're going to call the updates when they run out of big, dangerous cats. I suggest they move to something like poisonous frogs or deadly spiders.
How am I incorrect in saying that noobs without history are a higher risk? If you can't judge a driver by their driving record (since they don't have one), that equates to them being a high risk just by having no history. Like I said before, the credit industry treats noobs the exact same way. If they don't know they can trust you, by default, they won't and your rates suffer as a result.
You are correct in saying that teenage drivers have high accident rates though, but my original point was that being a noob had dual implications, one being that statistically you're likely to have a wreck, the second being that you have no history to feed the great statistics computer. I imagine that a first time driver, regardless of age, has rates equal to that of a teenage driver.
"Vehicles + 16 year olds = a high death rate"
Mad props to Darwin's law. BTW it's not necessarily the death rate, it's the accident rate that causes the insurance companies to freak out and have high rates. Who's more risky, a noob or a 30 year veteran? Noobs have no history so you can't judge their abilities, so they're instantly high risk..same goes for creditors.
The same goes for Windows gamers also. Any serious gamer just chooses Nvidia, you know with Nvidia your games will all render properly and the drivers always work.
I don't see how ATI has such high quality hardware and such crappy drivers, on 2 platforms, year after year.
I think it's interesting that there are already battle lines drawn in the plasma vs. lcd debate. I had no idea a thread from 3 days ago would still be drawing hits. :)
:) InHD has 100% hd programming on 2 channels and alot of it is gorgeous Imax content. Many local broadcasters also have HD programming, and shows such as 24, Smallville, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, etc. are all broadcasting in HD. So there is content, and with the new wave of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players, there will be even more. Also don't forget specialty satellite provider Voom, who provides 100% hd programming.
Anyway, I paid around $1400 for my Aquos which was a bargain, since last year it was well over $2400 for the same model. I bought it as a discontinued (outgoing) model so I saved alot. For my needs, 32" is more than adequate. 42" would be overkill and probably motion-sickness inducing due to the shallow depth of my living room. Bigger isn't necessarily better when you're talking about viewing distance which is one thing alot of people don't realize. Also the bigger you go, the larger those pixels are, so a 1024x768 native 42" will look worse than a 1366x768 native 32".
HD content is indeed scarce, but as HDTV owners build up to critical mass, the content providers will be obligated to give them something to watch. On Comcast (now Time Warner) digital cable here, there are HBO original shows every night in HD and quite a few other channels. Nothing topped watching our Dallas Mavericks in the playoffs in HD.
I wonder, why even take sides on the debate if you don't even own the hardware in question? If you're still watching an antiquated CRT, why bother to argue?
Good thing they got this 'fixed'. It depends on what they did to fix it. If they permanently underclocked it to get temperatures down, then the customers are getting ripped off for not getting the performance they paid a premium for. If it was an ACPI tweak that was never present (fan control timing or whatever) then kudos to them. I'll have to check on one of my clients' laptops next time I see him and see if the update fixes it.
Plasma burn in generally happens with things like CNN tickers and other persistent imagery. You may never experience it but it is a concern for some people.
As for the Panasonic...well, you get what you pay for when you buy cheap electronics.
Well in my estimation, something that's generating more heat is using more power. Take the Core Duo vs. Athlon dual cores for example. I've seen plenty of Athlons run cool and use less wattage while a Macbook Pro with the core duo feels like a hotplate. Maybe this is a bad example since the Macbooks suffer a bad design and run hot as a result, but the heat issue is still there. Also lots of LCDs are Energy Saver compliant, and without an active signal, by default they'll 'idle' and shut down the backlight. I can't vouch for plasma displays as I don't know that much about their technical details in this regard.
Personally I've found the Aquos more than adequate in any lighting condition. They all come with the OPC system which uses a light sensor to darken or brighten the backlight automatically to compensate for ambient light conditions. I have it turned off on my set, since I find the brightness is just right under 95% of circumstances. Also it's kinda counter-intuitive, as the backlight dims in a dark room (when IMHO it should be less dim).
One more thing to add is that nearly all LCDs and some plasmas feature 'black level expansion' to produce deeper blacks. All it does is shift the gamma to darken the really dark colors, but you lose definition in blacks under that setting. It's another feature I disable, but there are selectable, preset modes for different viewing conditions.
You still can't argue with the native resolution of LCDs compared to plasmas though. LCDs make wonderful hidef monitors, so your Xbox360, PS2 with component, or computer displays everything beautifully. Some sets have quite a bit of overscan, so I recommend you go with a 'monitor' rather than a TV if you plan on hooking up computers to these displays.
I'll tell you from firsthand experience that LCD is far superior. I bought a 32" Sharp Aquos this year and it rules.
I looked at a ton of different makes and models for months before settling on this one. Let's see the pros and cons laid out for plasma vs. lcd.
Plasma: Pros
1. Relatively cheap at large sizes
2. Good contrast
3. Nearly perfect refresh, just like a CRT, so fast moving imagery doesn't ghost
4. Bright and viewable from all angles
Plasma: Cons
1. Eats alot of power and generates a ton of heat. Put your face next to one and it's like standing under a hair dryer.
2. Image burn-in is *still* a concern
3. Glass covering screen doubles as a mirror. Very distracting.
4. Looks really bad close up due to CRT-style pixel gates, can count the columns
5. Low native resolutions regardless of size. Most 42" and below only do 1024x768 native, which is a 4:3 resolution, so displaying a pc on one guarantees a stupid looking stretched desktop since the screen is actually 16:9 sized.
6. Fragile and delicate
7. Supposedly short life
Now for my friend the LCD.
LCD: Pros
1. Proven technology used for computers and other devices for years.
2. Light and durable, easily moved at nearly any size.
3. Contrast and black levels have improved dramatically over the last 3 years.
4. High native resolutions; most screens give you a true 16:9 ratio out of the box with 1366x768 being the standard.
5. Anti-reflective coated screens ensure that you're watching the movie instead of watching yourself eat popcorn. Similar to laptop and other LCD screens in that respect.
6. Some models feature user-replaceable backlights (mine does)
7. Latest screens have very fast (8ms or less) refresh times, no more ghosting or problems watching sports
8. Save quite a bit of power when compared to CRT or plasma screens
LCD: Cons
1. Expensive when you get into 42"+ territory
2. Can exhibit dead or stuck pixels eventually, sometimes this is user-repairable, sometimes not
3. Still not 100% 'contrasty' like plasma or CRTs, this is changing though
So the way I see it, an LCD is the clear winner. All of my clients bought LCD instead of plasma, even though they all tend to be thrifty and save money wherever they can. A trip to a very good home theater store, and you'll see why they (and I) chose LCD over plasma. It really is worth a few extra bucks.
I suspect that the cable providers need more satellites to bring more content to subscribers at their headends. Believe it or not coax has massive bandwidth, and in most major cities they already have fiber to the pole. A multiplexer splits that signal out at each node then individual cable lines run to each residence. Cable companies in most cases are limited only by the bandwidth the headend provides. That is why Comcast and others can double or triple the bandwidth they provide to you without stepping foot inside your home.
They need satellites because, contrary to popular belief, television *broadcasts* from content providers aren't delivered by *magic*. They are sucked down to each local cable branch via satellite dishes. I worked on a buildup of a provider headend before and they had a small satellite farm there just for receiving multiple broadcasts which they planned on sending out via a new fiber network.
;)
Your local news stations also use satellites to deliver live television broadcasts from various places. For everything else, they use tubes.
There's nothing wrong, persay, with the act of bundling, but it adds a bunch of resource-hogging bloat depending on how the bundle is configured. See any consumer level Dell fresh out of the box for an example.
Yeah Communicator was a fucking hog. It aspired to be so much more than a browser and ended up suffocating under it's own fat. The Communicator 'suite' consisted of a news reader, a mail client, a web browser and a lightweight WYSIWYG html editor. While I liked the news reader (nicely threaded) the rest of it was for the birds.
Firefox at least has the wisdom to let users choose what kind of extra pork to add to the browser via the beautifully simple extensions manager. That and they keep the mail client (Thunderbird) separate. I think at it's peak, the Communciator suite weighed in at a (then hefty) 25mb download, while Firefox is still a svelte 5mb.
God I hope you run a spellchecker before your book goes to press.