It would have to be more of a utility limitation on removable disks. Anyone and everyone who owns a computer from at least the mid-nineties has a CD-ROM drive in it, and both CD-R and CD-RW media work in them fine. With proprietary "solutions" (or lack thereof) like those from Iomega, you have to buy a separate drive and possibly a controller for it, then buy the media, and if there's any data trading involved that doesn't involve the Internet (and make having these things pointless, IMO), you gotta hope that the other guy has the same proprietary hardware.
Then of course, Iomega for some odd reason has these unproportional prices for Zip and Jaz media that don't make sense when you consider the competition. Sure, you can write to them repeatedly (provided they work), but there isn't enough space to justify it. You walk into a store, you see on one shelf a rack full of Iomega Zip100 disks, something like $12 a piece. Then on another rack, you see 70-minute write-once CDs in cases of 25 for $10. Now, which one makes more sense? Buy one disk and have 1.4% the total space of one of those 70-minute write-once CDs that you could get for 3.3% the cost? I mean, if you screw up one write-once CD, you just toss it (or use it as a coaster) and write another one. If you screw up a Zip100 disk (and provided you can rewrite to them, "screw up" == the disk starts clicking, equivalent to a CD-R's buffer underrun in terms of total data lost in one fell swoop), you're sunk one disc and $12.
I know I'm probably just proving your point, though.:)
I have to agree with you. I got the same letter in the mail yesterday and took a look at it, and then tossed it. Why?
How the hell is this going to compel me to buy another Iomega product, as well as something else that I don't need? Considering 100MB is almost nothing when it comes to storage space, and it's cheaper to just buy an internal IDE drive from some manufacturer like Western Digital (in my opinion, WD = more reliable than Maxtor, I've bought a total of about 30 of them and only one has failed, partly my fault cuz I dropped it). If Iomega starts making internal IDE drives, how would they expect any of their former customers to buy them? I certainly wouldn't want my new internal hard drive having clicks of death. I already have enough problems with blue screens of death. Heh.
I don't have a clue when I bought mine, but my guess is it was some time before the Internal IDE drive came into existence, because I had to buy a SCSI controller to handle it (external SCSI). Aside from my primary computer now not having a spare ISA port to put the controller in (the Zip drive being useless now), the thing hasn't experienced the "click of death" once. Of course, that isn't to say my Zip disks haven't been crap, I've had situations where I'd lose half the data off the drive in a single use for no reason, but I suppose removable magnetic media is always prone to such foulups (floppy disks in the backpack, anyone?)
Re:More thoughts on this matter...
on
Solar Clothes
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· Score: 1
Well in that case, if the fabric has no battery in it, does it have something to regulate the amount of power it absorbs and store it somewhere or what? It almost sounds like if you wear this thing and DON'T plug anything into it, that eventually you'll have converted a lot of light to electricity and that electricity won't have gone anywhere.
More thoughts on this matter...
on
Solar Clothes
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· Score: 1
I thought about this a bit more, and each time I think about it, clothes seem like less of a viable "platform" for this technology. Besides what I've seen earlier from other posters with regards to the "1000 washes" thing, I seriously doubt the tech could survive even one wash. Typically, that's asking for it to be soaked and churned in water followed by tossed and heated in a dryer. I remember learning something in school about water and electricity together being a Bad Idea, so the idea of making this tech into clothing seems out of the question. The battery would have to be waterproof as well as extremely resisitant to shock and heat. Now I'm not an electrical engineer, so I may be wrong on this assumption, but if a dry-cell battery is exposed, or rather, immersed, in water, wouldn't it short out and probably discharge all the power stored?
Heck, if that's the case, then clothing wouldn't be viable at all. In order to get any really good sun exposure, you'd probably have to wear it as close to the coastline as possible within the tropics. There, it's really hot during midday, and you work up a sweat, which has the potential chance to come in contact with whatever form of battery the thing uses, and the next thing you know, you aren't really collecting any energy at all because the small amount that is actually being collected is discharging onto your sweat-covered body. Of course, that's a worst-case scenario, but it could very well turn into a potential legal battle if the tech actually becomes reality.
I would think to get computer geeks out into the sun more often, they'd have to find a more efficient way of capturing sunlight. If you use clothes, about half the clothes would be facing away from the sun at any given time.
I could see this being used more for setups like large beach umbrellas, where the thing is usually intentionally pointed at the sun to keep its user in the shade. Besides blocking the sun from scorching ya, it could also power your laptop. A more efficient use of the material than "solar-powered clothing".
Re:Take that article with a grain of salt
on
Pentium IV study
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· Score: 1
What would you rather have? A poll from a site where 90% of the users are Intel fanatics?
It's rather simple. They're undoubtedly targeting the Pentium 4 to be released in a laptop someday, whether it has or not is beyond me, however. That's where power consumption matters. You can already put an Athlon in a laptop and it'll probably run pretty decently, but the only people that really care about how much power it consumes are those buying laptops or hardcore overclocking freaks looking to shave half a degree off their measurements.
Actually, I invite you to ask any Xeon owner whether or not they would willingly part company with their Xeon (or multi-Xeon, in most cases) server for a "new and faster" Pentium 4 server. I bet most of the responses you will get would go along the lines of "hell no". Xeons have massive amounts of cache, as opposed to the Pentium 4's and even the AMD Athlons.
I think this is a much more accurate description:
Xeons are/were targeted at the corporate server market because of their large amounts of cache, something that seems inconsequential to most home users.
Durons are targeted at die-hard gamers with a tight budget.
Athlons are targeted at die-hard gamers with a slightly larger budget.
Pentium III's are targeted at gamers that don't trust AMD or are afraid that they might fry/melt their processor.
Pentium IV's are targeted at average consumers that don't know enough to prevent themselves from being ripped off. They see "1.5 GHz" and think "wow, that's gotta be faster than my friend's Athlon 1 GHz!", and they buy it out of being fooled into thinking that raw MHz/GHz is what really matters.
They basically want to claim to be able to hit the fastest speed, and then add in the portion "yet it's smart enough to slow itself down when it consumes too much power".
To me, that sounds like "it'll run at 1.5GHz on AC power, and 750 MHz on DC power", yet they'll advertise it as a 1.5GHz for laptops (provided they go that route) because the common person that buys a fast laptop usually doesn't get slapped with a reality check until after it's a done deal.
Intel expensive long-term vs AMD cheap short-term.
on
Pentium IV study
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· Score: 1
But figuratively, the only people that will benefit in the end for buying a computer with a Pentium 4 processor in it are the people that won't upgrade after a year or so passes and it comes time for that annual upgrade. The way things are going, the Pentium 4 is in development, but a year from now, the people with the then-slower AMD Athlon chipsets (which are cheaper) will just upgrade to a faster processor. They're essentially paying AMD the same that they would pay Intel, except they get more bang for their money. They pay 1/4th the cost of a Pentium 4 processor now, to get the same performance now. A year from now, when the Pentium 4 is expected to shine, they pay a bit more for a newer processor to beat that aging-yet-still-kicking Pentium 4.
Lather, rinse, and repeat, because the bottle doesn't say when to stop.:)
Slashdot Mirror
It would have to be more of a utility limitation on removable disks. Anyone and everyone who owns a computer from at least the mid-nineties has a CD-ROM drive in it, and both CD-R and CD-RW media work in them fine. With proprietary "solutions" (or lack thereof) like those from Iomega, you have to buy a separate drive and possibly a controller for it, then buy the media, and if there's any data trading involved that doesn't involve the Internet (and make having these things pointless, IMO), you gotta hope that the other guy has the same proprietary hardware.
:)
Then of course, Iomega for some odd reason has these unproportional prices for Zip and Jaz media that don't make sense when you consider the competition. Sure, you can write to them repeatedly (provided they work), but there isn't enough space to justify it. You walk into a store, you see on one shelf a rack full of Iomega Zip100 disks, something like $12 a piece. Then on another rack, you see 70-minute write-once CDs in cases of 25 for $10. Now, which one makes more sense? Buy one disk and have 1.4% the total space of one of those 70-minute write-once CDs that you could get for 3.3% the cost? I mean, if you screw up one write-once CD, you just toss it (or use it as a coaster) and write another one. If you screw up a Zip100 disk (and provided you can rewrite to them, "screw up" == the disk starts clicking, equivalent to a CD-R's buffer underrun in terms of total data lost in one fell swoop), you're sunk one disc and $12.
I know I'm probably just proving your point, though.
I have to agree with you. I got the same letter in the mail yesterday and took a look at it, and then tossed it. Why?
How the hell is this going to compel me to buy another Iomega product, as well as something else that I don't need? Considering 100MB is almost nothing when it comes to storage space, and it's cheaper to just buy an internal IDE drive from some manufacturer like Western Digital (in my opinion, WD = more reliable than Maxtor, I've bought a total of about 30 of them and only one has failed, partly my fault cuz I dropped it). If Iomega starts making internal IDE drives, how would they expect any of their former customers to buy them? I certainly wouldn't want my new internal hard drive having clicks of death. I already have enough problems with blue screens of death. Heh.
I don't have a clue when I bought mine, but my guess is it was some time before the Internal IDE drive came into existence, because I had to buy a SCSI controller to handle it (external SCSI). Aside from my primary computer now not having a spare ISA port to put the controller in (the Zip drive being useless now), the thing hasn't experienced the "click of death" once. Of course, that isn't to say my Zip disks haven't been crap, I've had situations where I'd lose half the data off the drive in a single use for no reason, but I suppose removable magnetic media is always prone to such foulups (floppy disks in the backpack, anyone?)
Well in that case, if the fabric has no battery in it, does it have something to regulate the amount of power it absorbs and store it somewhere or what? It almost sounds like if you wear this thing and DON'T plug anything into it, that eventually you'll have converted a lot of light to electricity and that electricity won't have gone anywhere.
I thought about this a bit more, and each time I think about it, clothes seem like less of a viable "platform" for this technology. Besides what I've seen earlier from other posters with regards to the "1000 washes" thing, I seriously doubt the tech could survive even one wash. Typically, that's asking for it to be soaked and churned in water followed by tossed and heated in a dryer. I remember learning something in school about water and electricity together being a Bad Idea, so the idea of making this tech into clothing seems out of the question. The battery would have to be waterproof as well as extremely resisitant to shock and heat. Now I'm not an electrical engineer, so I may be wrong on this assumption, but if a dry-cell battery is exposed, or rather, immersed, in water, wouldn't it short out and probably discharge all the power stored?
Heck, if that's the case, then clothing wouldn't be viable at all. In order to get any really good sun exposure, you'd probably have to wear it as close to the coastline as possible within the tropics. There, it's really hot during midday, and you work up a sweat, which has the potential chance to come in contact with whatever form of battery the thing uses, and the next thing you know, you aren't really collecting any energy at all because the small amount that is actually being collected is discharging onto your sweat-covered body. Of course, that's a worst-case scenario, but it could very well turn into a potential legal battle if the tech actually becomes reality.
I would think to get computer geeks out into the sun more often, they'd have to find a more efficient way of capturing sunlight. If you use clothes, about half the clothes would be facing away from the sun at any given time. I could see this being used more for setups like large beach umbrellas, where the thing is usually intentionally pointed at the sun to keep its user in the shade. Besides blocking the sun from scorching ya, it could also power your laptop. A more efficient use of the material than "solar-powered clothing".
What would you rather have? A poll from a site where 90% of the users are Intel fanatics?
The Washington Post has reported that Yahoo! has stopped selling porn.
Read it here.
Have you people ever heard of laptops?
It's rather simple. They're undoubtedly targeting the Pentium 4 to be released in a laptop someday, whether it has or not is beyond me, however. That's where power consumption matters. You can already put an Athlon in a laptop and it'll probably run pretty decently, but the only people that really care about how much power it consumes are those buying laptops or hardcore overclocking freaks looking to shave half a degree off their measurements.
Actually, I invite you to ask any Xeon owner whether or not they would willingly part company with their Xeon (or multi-Xeon, in most cases) server for a "new and faster" Pentium 4 server. I bet most of the responses you will get would go along the lines of "hell no". Xeons have massive amounts of cache, as opposed to the Pentium 4's and even the AMD Athlons. I think this is a much more accurate description: Xeons are/were targeted at the corporate server market because of their large amounts of cache, something that seems inconsequential to most home users. Durons are targeted at die-hard gamers with a tight budget. Athlons are targeted at die-hard gamers with a slightly larger budget. Pentium III's are targeted at gamers that don't trust AMD or are afraid that they might fry/melt their processor. Pentium IV's are targeted at average consumers that don't know enough to prevent themselves from being ripped off. They see "1.5 GHz" and think "wow, that's gotta be faster than my friend's Athlon 1 GHz!", and they buy it out of being fooled into thinking that raw MHz/GHz is what really matters.
Would you be referring to the article by some guy at emulators.com? If not, it's also a good (yet long) read. http://www.emulators.com/pentium4.htm
They basically want to claim to be able to hit the fastest speed, and then add in the portion "yet it's smart enough to slow itself down when it consumes too much power".
To me, that sounds like "it'll run at 1.5GHz on AC power, and 750 MHz on DC power", yet they'll advertise it as a 1.5GHz for laptops (provided they go that route) because the common person that buys a fast laptop usually doesn't get slapped with a reality check until after it's a done deal.
But figuratively, the only people that will benefit in the end for buying a computer with a Pentium 4 processor in it are the people that won't upgrade after a year or so passes and it comes time for that annual upgrade. The way things are going, the Pentium 4 is in development, but a year from now, the people with the then-slower AMD Athlon chipsets (which are cheaper) will just upgrade to a faster processor. They're essentially paying AMD the same that they would pay Intel, except they get more bang for their money. They pay 1/4th the cost of a Pentium 4 processor now, to get the same performance now. A year from now, when the Pentium 4 is expected to shine, they pay a bit more for a newer processor to beat that aging-yet-still-kicking Pentium 4.
:)
Lather, rinse, and repeat, because the bottle doesn't say when to stop.
www.palomar.edu It's a two-year community college that operates in northern San Diego, CA.