Opera seems to be a bit more efficient than Firefox, and certainly is usable for example on my old 120MHz Compaq Armada laptop with 32MB RAM (Debian 3.1, Xfce 4.2) which I configured today.
Oh, and may I recommend naim as an AIM client? Talk about efficient chat!
The XBox360 uses a standard DVD drive, not a HD-DVD drive. HD-DVD can hold up to 45GB in its latest 3-layer incarnation, which is 5 times what a DVD can hold. Bluray can hold 54GB in its current incarnation - 6 DVDs worth.
Nintendo have only said that their drive is a 12cm optical drive, and that it supports DVD video playback and gamecube discs. For all we know it could be bluray, hd-dvd or some kind of holographic disc. Nintendo have been quite coy about the drive details, as well as the controller details.
Gamecube was hardly a failure, it just wasn't as big as it could have been - the reason for this is more likely due to poor marketing than hardware deficiencies.
Have you checked out the Revolution pictures? It is the best looking of the three consoles.
I think that both Sony and Nintendo will play up the compatibility aspect this christmas for their existing consoles whilst hyping their 2006 consoles, in order to dent early adopter sales of the XBox360 if it is released on time.
I was under the impression that the Gamecube had sold around 18m consoles, mostly all at a profit, whereas the XBox had sold around 20m consoles, mostly all at a large loss. That 2m difference is hardly "pathetic third spot" when you consider the PS2 has sold 80m consoles.
Worldwide Hardware Sales (End of 2004) PlayStation 2 - 81.39 million Xbox - 19.9 million GameCube - 18.03 million Game Boy Advance - 65.74 million Nintendo DS - 2.84 million (6m April 2005) Sony PSP - 0.51 million N-Gage - 1.3 million PSone - 101.73 million
I agree. From what I remember of the current generation of consoles, the PS2 is the least powerful unless you are a whizz Emotion Engine programmer, the GameCube is pretty damn powerful, and the XBox is marginally more powerful CPU wise, and reasonably more powerful GPU wise again.
Certainly though my Gamecube games have a lot more "play me again" factor than my PS2 games. OTOH I can pick up PS2 games for a fiver these days, sometimes new, I just have to make sure I read metacritic to ensure I get a decent game.
I'll probably get the first next generation console to drop to the £199/$299 mark. I'm willing to bet it'll be the Revolution, in 2007 at the latest, although if it incorporates a Bluray player I might opt to get one sooner because my GC games will work on it, and I can move the GC to my girlfriend's flat.
A DVD is 12cm in diameter. The article clearly stated that the Revolution would use a 12cm diameter disc.
As it is coming out in 2006, I expect that it will either be a Bluray variant, or a HD-DVD variant. I'm hoping it will be a HD-DVD variant. Why? Because I can buy a Revolution for the fun multiplayer games and Nintendo franchise games, and get a free HD-DVD player, and then I can buy a PS3 for the more serious action games, and get a free Bluray player! Either that, or it will be a standard DVD-a-like to cut costs.
The XBox360 is the loser here, everyone has a DVD player already. Maybe if it supported DVD Audio, and the console was silent to boot... to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if the XBox360 is the Saturn or Dreamcast (hmm, both of those were next generation consoles released around a year earlier than the consoles that eventually killed them in the market), although any gaming HDTV owner will have to get one. At least it doesn't look ugly this time around.
I wonder if Broadband is available to over 90% of Americans, like it is in the UK...
And for me, NTL was a case of Ring and Order Broadband, Get It Installed. Yeah, customer service sucks a lot, but installation was a breeze. Maybe the guy who wrote this article should have researched whether he could get cable or not.
I don't know about Paris' underground system, but some new systems install double doors, doors on the platform that match the train doors. It isn't possible to hold each one open at the same time easily. New sections of the london underground have it. it also stops suicides as the inner doors only open when a train is stopped.
Not that I've ever seen a conductor on the london underground, either on the train or on the platform. Just some monitors for the driver to see, and a populace who can behave to some extent.
Note: I don't play games that often, and when I do, they aren't usually the type to require ultra-fast refreshes.
I've got two LCD displays, a 20 month old budget 15" display, and a 16 month old 19" AG Neovo F-419. The latter is, of course, way superior in every way and what I use all the time. I think it has good colour reproduction and IIRC the contrast ratio was 700:1 which is pretty good too.
I use the 19" with the DVI output on my main box, and the VGA output on my Linux development box. I've found that a good way to "auto adjust" the analogue input is to have a background pattern that is a white/black dotted pattern (as you can set with xsetbg or one of those X11 programs automatically). When I use one of these, the input is nearly as sharp as the DVI input. If the background is a low contrast smooth image, it really can't get enough data to adjust the image well.
The 15" budget analogue monitor? I wish I hadn't purchased it. It was a waste of money. Today I could get a 17" DVI monitor for the same price, and I'd be a lot happier. Oh well, you live and learn. It does the job on the other computer, and only has one stuck subpixel IIRC.
I'm still using some 5 year old batteries that came with an Olympus digital camera. I must have recharged them hundreds of times, and although the battery life is lower than it used to be (to be expected) I'm sure that they work out quite cheap by now! I do need to find some decent replacements in the UK for a good price however, some of these 2300mh ones mentioned elsewhere in the comments... I did get 6 1400mh rechargables with a wireless keyboard and mouse I bought though.
So it is nice that these batteries exist, so that if I have need of decent batteries and I have no access to charged batteries I know I'll be getting decent batteries at least.
The only sites I trust at the moment are The Tech Report and Aces Hardware. These sites rarely get exclusives of course! HardOCP I think is also kosher.
Now sites like Toms Hardware Guide and Anandtech I am not sure about.
At least you know you are getting a biased view at a site like AMDZone, heh.
Each icon format has its own advantages and disadvantages in the end.
Windows does have the ability to have different sized icons, which does mean that you can have a small icon in list mode, and a large icon in a different view. However I'm sure you've done the "hunt for the installer icon" when installing an application with tonnes of files in the same directory.
Amiga had any-size icons and clicked alternate images. It didn't have any control over the creator however. Still it was a good solution for the time, given that the usual way of launching an application back then was by running the application directly, not via a menu system or taskbar, etc. Many applications came with a decent setup, a reasonable sized main application image, etc. Games came with vast icons though.
Unimportant, but maybe required at some point, files/folders could have small icons.
Important files (e.g., the application itself) would havea big icon. They'd also have a location in the window that was easy to get to, e.g., the centre.
Files you never need to see had no icon, and you'd have to select the option to view all files to see them.
You're completely correct. The PS3 will drive initial BluRay market penetration.
I know I will want the first PS3 GTA game that is made, and GT5 or whatever. So I'll get a PS3. Millions of people will do the same. Suddenly there are millions of BluRay disc players in a market of $199 BluRay and $199 HD-DVD players (i.e., not much take-up even by late 2006).
The only way HD-DVD has a chance is to woo Microsoft and get a HD-DVD player in the XBox360 with a player. I don't think there will be time for that given that MS want to release the XB360 later this year, and I believe that it will use a standard DVD drive.
Same clock speed. Integrated graphics, it isn't AMD's fault that the Centrino integrated graphics suck at 3D applications. Same HD, same memory,... Same price, apparently.
AMD's TDP is theoretical max. Intel's is achievable max, which is about 80% of theoretical max. AMD's processor also includes a memory controller, which is 2.2W. So (35 - 2.2) * 0.8 = 26.24W, which compares pretty much EXACTLY with Intel's 27W TDP!
I think this test is extremely fair. And yes, if battery life is lower, that is a loss to AMD, but don't compare a 25W or 35W Turion to a 9W or 16W Pentium M either.
its just an intergrated graphics from aATI Xpress 200 chipset
In which case it is totally a valid comparison, and The Register has made itself look stupid yet again. Maybe when ATI release their integrated graphics chipset for Intel there will be an opportunity for a closer comparison of the two platforms.
AMD do offer a 25W 1.8GHz Turion, and that includes the memory controller part of the northbridge, which possibly makes up for the fact that Intel chipsets are quite efficient power wise - I don't know how good the ATI chipset is in regards to power consumption however. Maybe all this means is that AMD think that their 35W Turion is a match for a 27W Pentium-M + the memory and bus units on the Intel chipset, especially given that Intel use TYPICAL TDP and AMD use MAX TDP in their TDP measurements.
Also, The Register article wittered on about ULV Pentium Ms, forgive me if I am incorrect, but an ULV P-M runs at 1.1GHz, maybe 1.2 or 1.3 now, and has way lower power consumption because of this limitation (16W?). It isn't surprising that an ULV P-M will run longer than a 25W or 35W TDP processor, sheesh!
Looking at both specifications I think they are reasonably fair. The P-M had more memory bandwidth and L2 cache available for example.
Yeah, I know I made a mistake with the FX57 thing, but there's no edit functionality, or even an Append a Note functionality here, so I didn't bother.
Yeah, I know that AMD overstate the TDP, and that 2.2GHz 90nm Athlon 64s are drawing 33W of power and stuff despite the 67W TDP figure, and that Intel really play it close to the line with their TDP figures.
Both AMD's dual-core and Intel's dual-core (Smithfield) will have separate caches.
AMD's dual-core will connect at the on-die SRQ which will mean very low latency connections between each core. Performance scaling could be very very good.
Intel's dual-core will connect via the FSB, which will mean higher latency and lower bandwidth connections between each core. Intel's dual-core is most like SMP therefore. You can guess the performance of Intel's dual-core processor by running a non-HyperThreaded 1MB L2 SMP machine at the likely clocks of 2.8,3.0 and 3.2 GHz.
64-bit is useful for the next generation of graphics cards with 512MB of onboard memory, simply for addressing purposes. Yeah, you'll be waiting for Windows XP 64 too. Also it does speed up a lot of applications when they are written for 64-bit.
There are plenty of 2.0Ghz single core chips out there that can deliver beter performance than a 3.5Ghz P4
There aren't many 2.0Ghz P4s that deliver beter (sic) performance than a 3.5GHz P4!
Which was the point!
The fastest Athlon 64 you can currently get is either a 2.4GHz 4000+ with 1MB cache, or a 2.6GHz Athlon FX57 with 1MB cache. The latter has a 95W power draw already, but it is 130nm. So within the next few months, AMD will be selling a dual-core 2.4GHz Athlon "FXD" with a max power consumption of 100W. Even in a single threaded environment, you'd hardly lose any performance.
There's a rumour of a 2.2GHz dual core Athlon 64 at 55W! Sure, this will be a "low power" edition at $$$$. It will still outperform 98%+ of the computers out there at the moment in single threaded stuff.
I bought a Lexmark printer once. It sucked so badly that I never bought new cartridges for it. That was not an economical purchase even though it was cheap.
Since then I got a Xerox laser printer that worked well for a while, but even with a new toner it wasn't good for quality printing (good for listing and stuff though). After that I got a Samsung ML2250 and have been very happy with it, especially with the fact that they do 1 years on-site repairs if required. Hopefully this printer will keep on going for a few years.
Yeah, I was thinking that it could include Bluetooth at least, even in that small formfactor.
It could be a very low power ARM chip, or even a Dragonball processor runnign PalmOS 4, it just needs to be able to do what a standard Palm has always done, not do anything more, be able to communicate, have a small stylus (heh), be readable. Dunno if they could fit that all into such a small motherboard (you'd need space for a battery and the screen in that small case as well).
I wouldn't mind having a Palm IIIc level device that was simply the screen at a higher pixel density (i.e., smaller) and half as thick. Yeah, make it about the size of a credit card, 160x240 screen with softgraffiti area. That's all I need. Put a fricking keyring hole in the corner.
i've seen PalmOS running on a wristwatch, so the above should be quite doable, and ideal for the average person that wants a device that does PDA stuff. It doesn't need colour, although greyscale would be nice. Make the display OLED, 'cos that is thin. I mean, if you can do 320x480 in a hires monochrome OLED at that size, then go for it.
Of course, maybe I'm the only person that would want a device like this, that is always with me because it is on my keyring, etc.
What you described is exactly why AMD moved to specifying wattages for entire families of processors (e.g., the 89W rating for the 130nm Athlon 64s). It meant you couldn't get a heatsink for such a system that wouldn't work on all processors.
What happened to you sounds like a poor thermal interface though, even a naff heatsink would have absorbed enough heat for the processor to run for a while if it had been properly applied. Enough time for the motherboard to do the "omg processor is too hot" warning alarm. Admittedly Socket A wasn't the best design for adding heatsinks, S754 and S939 are much better.
All Athlon 64s also have Cool'n'Quiet which does the stepping down when full power isn't required. This new Intel processor adds something similar. All Intel processors have had thermal throttling for when the cooling system isn't adequate, and given Prescott's horrible power consumption and heat issues under load, this actually can happen quite frequently. It is a good solution for something that you don't want happening - is it worth the $100-$200 higher electricity bills over a few years though? Might as well spend $50 on some high-tech quiet cooling system from the get-go that you know will work.
Athlon 64s all have PowerNow technology and have been able to do this from the start to cut power consumption drastically.
Considering that all the sites are now talking about Intel finally catching up by having a similar feature enabled by default, I'd say that it wasn't available before now.
Anyway, power consumption tests on these new Intel processors on other reviews (Tech Report) show that this technology is only useful when you aren't doing any work at all on the processor, when you do stuff, the Intel 6xx processor jumps to 50W-70W higher than an Athlon64 90nm under the same load. So if you are folding or SETIing or whatever, 24 hours a day, and your electricity is 10 cents a unit, you are talking up to $62 more a year in electricity bills.
If you keep a system for three years, a P4 will cost $180 more to run than an A64, and that is certainly something that should be factored into the purchase price for people who like their systems to keep on doing stuff. If you leave it idle overnight, then the cost difference will be a lot less of course, or if your overnight electricity is a lot cheaper then folding at night only is a good choice.
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Opera seems to be a bit more efficient than Firefox, and certainly is usable for example on my old 120MHz Compaq Armada laptop with 32MB RAM (Debian 3.1, Xfce 4.2) which I configured today.
Oh, and may I recommend naim as an AIM client? Talk about efficient chat!
The XBox360 uses a standard DVD drive, not a HD-DVD drive. HD-DVD can hold up to 45GB in its latest 3-layer incarnation, which is 5 times what a DVD can hold. Bluray can hold 54GB in its current incarnation - 6 DVDs worth.
Nintendo have only said that their drive is a 12cm optical drive, and that it supports DVD video playback and gamecube discs. For all we know it could be bluray, hd-dvd or some kind of holographic disc. Nintendo have been quite coy about the drive details, as well as the controller details.
Gamecube was hardly a failure, it just wasn't as big as it could have been - the reason for this is more likely due to poor marketing than hardware deficiencies.
Have you checked out the Revolution pictures? It is the best looking of the three consoles.
I think that both Sony and Nintendo will play up the compatibility aspect this christmas for their existing consoles whilst hyping their 2006 consoles, in order to dent early adopter sales of the XBox360 if it is released on time.
I was under the impression that the Gamecube had sold around 18m consoles, mostly all at a profit, whereas the XBox had sold around 20m consoles, mostly all at a large loss. That 2m difference is hardly "pathetic third spot" when you consider the PS2 has sold 80m consoles.
4 306&page=1
Worldwide Hardware Sales (End of 2004)
PlayStation 2 - 81.39 million
Xbox - 19.9 million
GameCube - 18.03 million
Game Boy Advance - 65.74 million
Nintendo DS - 2.84 million (6m April 2005)
Sony PSP - 0.51 million
N-Gage - 1.3 million
PSone - 101.73 million
http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=1
If Nintendo have to change something, it is to reverse the decline: NES: 60m, SNES: 50m, N64: 33m, GC: 18m
(they'll probably sell a couple more million GC this year - maybe Nintendo should reduce the size a bit and cut the cost a bit more)
I agree. From what I remember of the current generation of consoles, the PS2 is the least powerful unless you are a whizz Emotion Engine programmer, the GameCube is pretty damn powerful, and the XBox is marginally more powerful CPU wise, and reasonably more powerful GPU wise again.
Certainly though my Gamecube games have a lot more "play me again" factor than my PS2 games. OTOH I can pick up PS2 games for a fiver these days, sometimes new, I just have to make sure I read metacritic to ensure I get a decent game.
I'll probably get the first next generation console to drop to the £199/$299 mark. I'm willing to bet it'll be the Revolution, in 2007 at the latest, although if it incorporates a Bluray player I might opt to get one sooner because my GC games will work on it, and I can move the GC to my girlfriend's flat.
A DVD is 12cm in diameter. The article clearly stated that the Revolution would use a 12cm diameter disc.
... to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if the XBox360 is the Saturn or Dreamcast (hmm, both of those were next generation consoles released around a year earlier than the consoles that eventually killed them in the market), although any gaming HDTV owner will have to get one. At least it doesn't look ugly this time around.
As it is coming out in 2006, I expect that it will either be a Bluray variant, or a HD-DVD variant. I'm hoping it will be a HD-DVD variant. Why? Because I can buy a Revolution for the fun multiplayer games and Nintendo franchise games, and get a free HD-DVD player, and then I can buy a PS3 for the more serious action games, and get a free Bluray player! Either that, or it will be a standard DVD-a-like to cut costs.
The XBox360 is the loser here, everyone has a DVD player already. Maybe if it supported DVD Audio, and the console was silent to boot
I wonder if Broadband is available to over 90% of Americans, like it is in the UK ...
And for me, NTL was a case of Ring and Order Broadband, Get It Installed. Yeah, customer service sucks a lot, but installation was a breeze. Maybe the guy who wrote this article should have researched whether he could get cable or not.
I don't know about Paris' underground system, but some new systems install double doors, doors on the platform that match the train doors. It isn't possible to hold each one open at the same time easily. New sections of the london underground have it. it also stops suicides as the inner doors only open when a train is stopped.
Not that I've ever seen a conductor on the london underground, either on the train or on the platform. Just some monitors for the driver to see, and a populace who can behave to some extent.
Note: I don't play games that often, and when I do, they aren't usually the type to require ultra-fast refreshes.
I've got two LCD displays, a 20 month old budget 15" display, and a 16 month old 19" AG Neovo F-419. The latter is, of course, way superior in every way and what I use all the time. I think it has good colour reproduction and IIRC the contrast ratio was 700:1 which is pretty good too.
I use the 19" with the DVI output on my main box, and the VGA output on my Linux development box. I've found that a good way to "auto adjust" the analogue input is to have a background pattern that is a white/black dotted pattern (as you can set with xsetbg or one of those X11 programs automatically). When I use one of these, the input is nearly as sharp as the DVI input. If the background is a low contrast smooth image, it really can't get enough data to adjust the image well.
The 15" budget analogue monitor? I wish I hadn't purchased it. It was a waste of money. Today I could get a 17" DVI monitor for the same price, and I'd be a lot happier. Oh well, you live and learn. It does the job on the other computer, and only has one stuck subpixel IIRC.
I'm still using some 5 year old batteries that came with an Olympus digital camera. I must have recharged them hundreds of times, and although the battery life is lower than it used to be (to be expected) I'm sure that they work out quite cheap by now! I do need to find some decent replacements in the UK for a good price however, some of these 2300mh ones mentioned elsewhere in the comments... I did get 6 1400mh rechargables with a wireless keyboard and mouse I bought though.
So it is nice that these batteries exist, so that if I have need of decent batteries and I have no access to charged batteries I know I'll be getting decent batteries at least.
I wonder how they act in bonfires...
The only sites I trust at the moment are The Tech Report and Aces Hardware. These sites rarely get exclusives of course! HardOCP I think is also kosher.
Now sites like Toms Hardware Guide and Anandtech I am not sure about.
At least you know you are getting a biased view at a site like AMDZone, heh.
Each icon format has its own advantages and disadvantages in the end.
Windows does have the ability to have different sized icons, which does mean that you can have a small icon in list mode, and a large icon in a different view. However I'm sure you've done the "hunt for the installer icon" when installing an application with tonnes of files in the same directory.
Amiga had any-size icons and clicked alternate images. It didn't have any control over the creator however. Still it was a good solution for the time, given that the usual way of launching an application back then was by running the application directly, not via a menu system or taskbar, etc. Many applications came with a decent setup, a reasonable sized main application image, etc. Games came with vast icons though.
These days it isn't such an issue though.
Yes, it was a good idea.
Unimportant, but maybe required at some point, files/folders could have small icons.
Important files (e.g., the application itself) would havea big icon. They'd also have a location in the window that was easy to get to, e.g., the centre.
Files you never need to see had no icon, and you'd have to select the option to view all files to see them.
A good use of Fitt's Law.
You're completely correct. The PS3 will drive initial BluRay market penetration.
I know I will want the first PS3 GTA game that is made, and GT5 or whatever. So I'll get a PS3. Millions of people will do the same. Suddenly there are millions of BluRay disc players in a market of $199 BluRay and $199 HD-DVD players (i.e., not much take-up even by late 2006).
The only way HD-DVD has a chance is to woo Microsoft and get a HD-DVD player in the XBox360 with a player. I don't think there will be time for that given that MS want to release the XB360 later this year, and I believe that it will use a standard DVD drive.
Except they did use the most comparable offering.
...
Same clock speed.
Integrated graphics, it isn't AMD's fault that the Centrino integrated graphics suck at 3D applications.
Same HD, same memory,
Same price, apparently.
AMD's TDP is theoretical max. Intel's is achievable max, which is about 80% of theoretical max. AMD's processor also includes a memory controller, which is 2.2W. So (35 - 2.2) * 0.8 = 26.24W, which compares pretty much EXACTLY with Intel's 27W TDP!
I think this test is extremely fair. And yes, if battery life is lower, that is a loss to AMD, but don't compare a 25W or 35W Turion to a 9W or 16W Pentium M either.
its just an intergrated graphics from aATI Xpress 200 chipset
In which case it is totally a valid comparison, and The Register has made itself look stupid yet again. Maybe when ATI release their integrated graphics chipset for Intel there will be an opportunity for a closer comparison of the two platforms.
AMD do offer a 25W 1.8GHz Turion, and that includes the memory controller part of the northbridge, which possibly makes up for the fact that Intel chipsets are quite efficient power wise - I don't know how good the ATI chipset is in regards to power consumption however. Maybe all this means is that AMD think that their 35W Turion is a match for a 27W Pentium-M + the memory and bus units on the Intel chipset, especially given that Intel use TYPICAL TDP and AMD use MAX TDP in their TDP measurements.
Also, The Register article wittered on about ULV Pentium Ms, forgive me if I am incorrect, but an ULV P-M runs at 1.1GHz, maybe 1.2 or 1.3 now, and has way lower power consumption because of this limitation (16W?). It isn't surprising that an ULV P-M will run longer than a 25W or 35W TDP processor, sheesh!
Looking at both specifications I think they are reasonably fair. The P-M had more memory bandwidth and L2 cache available for example.
Yeah, I know I made a mistake with the FX57 thing, but there's no edit functionality, or even an Append a Note functionality here, so I didn't bother.
Yeah, I know that AMD overstate the TDP, and that 2.2GHz 90nm Athlon 64s are drawing 33W of power and stuff despite the 67W TDP figure, and that Intel really play it close to the line with their TDP figures.
Both AMD's dual-core and Intel's dual-core (Smithfield) will have separate caches.
AMD's dual-core will connect at the on-die SRQ which will mean very low latency connections between each core. Performance scaling could be very very good.
Intel's dual-core will connect via the FSB, which will mean higher latency and lower bandwidth connections between each core. Intel's dual-core is most like SMP therefore. You can guess the performance of Intel's dual-core processor by running a non-HyperThreaded 1MB L2 SMP machine at the likely clocks of 2.8,3.0 and 3.2 GHz.
64-bit is useful for the next generation of graphics cards with 512MB of onboard memory, simply for addressing purposes. Yeah, you'll be waiting for Windows XP 64 too. Also it does speed up a lot of applications when they are written for 64-bit.
There are plenty of 2.0Ghz single core chips out there that can deliver beter performance than a 3.5Ghz P4
There aren't many 2.0Ghz P4s that deliver beter (sic) performance than a 3.5GHz P4!
Which was the point!
The fastest Athlon 64 you can currently get is either a 2.4GHz 4000+ with 1MB cache, or a 2.6GHz Athlon FX57 with 1MB cache. The latter has a 95W power draw already, but it is 130nm. So within the next few months, AMD will be selling a dual-core 2.4GHz Athlon "FXD" with a max power consumption of 100W. Even in a single threaded environment, you'd hardly lose any performance.
There's a rumour of a 2.2GHz dual core Athlon 64 at 55W! Sure, this will be a "low power" edition at $$$$. It will still outperform 98%+ of the computers out there at the moment in single threaded stuff.
I bought a Lexmark printer once. It sucked so badly that I never bought new cartridges for it. That was not an economical purchase even though it was cheap.
Since then I got a Xerox laser printer that worked well for a while, but even with a new toner it wasn't good for quality printing (good for listing and stuff though). After that I got a Samsung ML2250 and have been very happy with it, especially with the fact that they do 1 years on-site repairs if required. Hopefully this printer will keep on going for a few years.
Yeah, I was thinking that it could include Bluetooth at least, even in that small formfactor.
It could be a very low power ARM chip, or even a Dragonball processor runnign PalmOS 4, it just needs to be able to do what a standard Palm has always done, not do anything more, be able to communicate, have a small stylus (heh), be readable. Dunno if they could fit that all into such a small motherboard (you'd need space for a battery and the screen in that small case as well).
But I think they should have a go!
I wouldn't mind having a Palm IIIc level device that was simply the screen at a higher pixel density (i.e., smaller) and half as thick. Yeah, make it about the size of a credit card, 160x240 screen with softgraffiti area. That's all I need. Put a fricking keyring hole in the corner.
i've seen PalmOS running on a wristwatch, so the above should be quite doable, and ideal for the average person that wants a device that does PDA stuff. It doesn't need colour, although greyscale would be nice. Make the display OLED, 'cos that is thin. I mean, if you can do 320x480 in a hires monochrome OLED at that size, then go for it.
Of course, maybe I'm the only person that would want a device like this, that is always with me because it is on my keyring, etc.
What you described is exactly why AMD moved to specifying wattages for entire families of processors (e.g., the 89W rating for the 130nm Athlon 64s). It meant you couldn't get a heatsink for such a system that wouldn't work on all processors.
What happened to you sounds like a poor thermal interface though, even a naff heatsink would have absorbed enough heat for the processor to run for a while if it had been properly applied. Enough time for the motherboard to do the "omg processor is too hot" warning alarm. Admittedly Socket A wasn't the best design for adding heatsinks, S754 and S939 are much better.
All Athlon 64s also have Cool'n'Quiet which does the stepping down when full power isn't required. This new Intel processor adds something similar. All Intel processors have had thermal throttling for when the cooling system isn't adequate, and given Prescott's horrible power consumption and heat issues under load, this actually can happen quite frequently. It is a good solution for something that you don't want happening - is it worth the $100-$200 higher electricity bills over a few years though? Might as well spend $50 on some high-tech quiet cooling system from the get-go that you know will work.
Athlon 64s all have PowerNow technology and have been able to do this from the start to cut power consumption drastically.
Considering that all the sites are now talking about Intel finally catching up by having a similar feature enabled by default, I'd say that it wasn't available before now.
Anyway, power consumption tests on these new Intel processors on other reviews (Tech Report) show that this technology is only useful when you aren't doing any work at all on the processor, when you do stuff, the Intel 6xx processor jumps to 50W-70W higher than an Athlon64 90nm under the same load. So if you are folding or SETIing or whatever, 24 hours a day, and your electricity is 10 cents a unit, you are talking up to $62 more a year in electricity bills.
If you keep a system for three years, a P4 will cost $180 more to run than an A64, and that is certainly something that should be factored into the purchase price for people who like their systems to keep on doing stuff. If you leave it idle overnight, then the cost difference will be a lot less of course, or if your overnight electricity is a lot cheaper then folding at night only is a good choice.
I submitted it around 3 hours ago, heh. The page was "Breaking News" at the time.
How much money for 14 million power cables plus packing and shipping do you reckon?
How does that compare to Directory Opus?
I believe that it is up to version 8 on the PC now, but I remember it at version 4 on the Amiga, that was a powerful file management application!