However, the issue looks more like the player than anything else. I also want to point to the fact that even they realize that Blu-Ray is going to win and are making movies for it. Not to keep beating a dead horse, but there currently isn't 100k HD-DVD units sold and in 4 months there will be 2 million Blu-Ray players. In a year it will be close to 10 million. The war is over and HD-DVD lost. Sorry Toshiba and Microsoft you lost this one. It is time to go back to the drawing board and figure out a new plan of attack. Perhaps downloadable content? Not including a HD-DVD player in the 360 appears to be a mistake.
I do agree that the average Joe user is completely fine with DVD BUT that same Joe user that will buy a PS3 is in the exact same demographic of a HDTV owner, and when they go to rent a movie from Blockbuster or Netflix they will try the blu-ray version to see what it looks like. They will like it better and then start the process of getting blu-ray disk over time. The snowball effect will begin.
What will drive HD-DVD sales? Computer users? Heck most computer users want larger storage and again Blu-Ray wins hands down on that front as well. 50GB is better than 30GB any day AND 200GB (max) is way better than 45GB (max).
Again, the war is over one month after the PS3 is released.
It is somewhat funny to see another company leverage a monopoly to have a product become a "standard" against the king of illegal monopoly practices.... Microsoft.
Toshiba is loosing over $200 per unit now. When the PS3 hits the shelves the price difference between their player and a Blu-Ray will be $0.00. Oh and you will get a game machine with the Blu-Ray machine.
Blu-Ray hasn't seriously entered the market yet. When it does in November the war is over.
Don't let reason and sanity get in the way of bashing Sony...:-)
Lets see now... 75% of the content providers are behind Blu-Ray. Only ONE content provider has backed HD-DVD.
Less than 100k units sold of HD-DVD.
6 Million (PS3) Blu-Ray players will be sold in 4 months.
The war is over guys Blu-Ray won. Now the only battle is between Blu-Ray and downloadable content, and seeing that most people don't have Gig to the household, it looks like Blu-Ray is here for a while.
Content is king in this battle and Sony learned from it's Betamax/VHS war.
Warner will soon realize that they made a mistake and switch also, that will be the final death nail in HD-DVD. Toshiba can't live forever at a $200 loss per unit. Sony can with the games making up for lost profits.
Yeah and I am sure that Sony Music will want to work with Microsoft... when Hell freezes over.
Microsoft tried hard to get in to the content provider business but failed, and that is going to cost them a ton in lost revenue with the 360 and whatever device they come out with.
"If that were the only factor, UMDs would have taken off."
Unfair comparision. The PSP has sold in the 100k range, yet there will be 6 MILLION PS3's out by next March. The parents post was dead on. In my opinion and most other reasonable people the war is over, and the only issue is "if" downloadable content will make a dent in blu ray.
"I don't think you have much of a sense for how much space a hi-def movie requires with next gen codecs; a standard def dvd that normally takes 6gb can be shrunk to 2gb. Hi-def content contains 6x as much data. If you assume that the size of the compressed file increases linearly with the amount of data (which would be a worse case) you're looking at 12gb for a hi-def movie.
So what you are saying is that you will need to compress and degrade the signal more on HD-DVD. Yep we agree. In short Blue Ray can hold at min 5GB more on single layer. 5GB is 5GB, spin it as you want to, but that is like adding another DVD in storage.
As far as Microsoft goes. Again, as the parent poster mentioned it all comes down to Java. They don't and will never control Java. They hate that. We can argue all day about how much money they get on HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray, but they get control of one format and that isn't Blu-Ray. Not to mention that Blu-Ray gets Java in the living room. That has to scare the crap out of Microsoft.
It allows you to continue purchasing dvd's and have an instant library of hi-def content when you finally purchase a hi-def player.
Yeah and the less than 100k people that bought a HD-DVD player didn't have a DVD player also? This is a very small issue. However, your statement is incorrect. There is already a DVD,BluRay burner out there. So this "advantage" isn't there.
the storage isn't necessary for movies.
Then again it could be. More storage means less compression. Less compression most of the time means better quality.
'm saying from my perspective, if I had to make a purchase, that's the one I'd be looking at. In much the same manner that I'd purchase a Ferrari F430 before getting a Lambo Giardo.
Lets change the analogy a bit. One car is expensive and it run on Disel. The other car is not going to be out for a few months later and it runs on regular gas. Unfortunately this second car is going to initially cost more than the first, but a company is going to release an SUV that also runs on gas and over 100X the people that would buy either car will buy the SUV over the next two years. The market will see this and support gas over disel.
The war is over BluRay won. You may not like it, but the content providers have spoken, all but one hardware company has spoken, and come November 4 million people will speak.
You have to admit that it is funny that Microsoft is bitching about Sony bundling a PS3 with BluRay just to have it be the dominate player. Pot meet kettle
Yeah and it sure will be fun handing people hard drives out to see home video.
While I do agree that it makes sense to have some "near line" backup solution, it is by no means a replacement for tapes and CD/DVD/Blu-Ray. Remember this is first gen, heck it is first. DVD burners cost $2,000 when they were released. Having said that, it would be very nice to backup all my pictures to one of these babies as opposed to the current 3 DVD's it takes now.
Now having said that, I also agree that for me it isn't worth the cost.... yet. When the duel layer blu ray players hit, and they drop to around $500 or less then I will buy one.
don't agree with this. I believe, as do many others on other sites I frequent (including a few here on/.), that there is actually not much of point for the average joe to get a PS3, at least based on your criteria. For the price of the non-ripoff PS3, you can get both a 360 and a Wii. The PS3 has already gotten a lot of negative press with its price point as well as its *surprise* overhyped performance. And the millions of people who already have PS2s aren't gonna be buying $500+ just to play last generation games.
First, I am a fan of both Nintendo and Sony, and I want to make that clear again.
Next, do you honestly believe that Sony won't sell every PS3 made this year? Do you believe that they won't sell their first 6 million units in 4 months? Trust me they will. The question is if they will be the first to break over 20 million. After the first 6 million units are sold and the fanboys all have their PS3, then what happens? To answer that we need to look at the percentage of console sales on a per month basis. To be specific, we need to look at what percentage of consoles sell during the Christmas season. By most estimates over 80% of all console sales occur during this time, so if Sony sells every single console they can produce this Chrismas then they can consider that a success. They then can monitor the market and if needed adjust pricing. Understand that Sony will cement Blu-Ray as the defacto standard of next generation players. That is huge. So Sony has a full year after the launch before they have to "worry" about the average Joe wanting to buy one for his kid.
The best reason I've heard for getting a PS3 are the exclusive games. But most of the really good ones are a 3rd party franchises that've already appeared on both MS and Nintendo consoles in the past
All consoles have their great exclusive games. Currently Sony has the most games, but in my opinion Nintendo has the best kids games that will never make it to the PS3 or 360. That doesn't appear to be changing at all with these new consoles. Sony and Microsoft are targeting a far different audience than Nintendo. Thus it is my prediction that the Wii will be much like the Cube in 3rd party titles.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if PS3 will be just as big on PC ports as the 360/Xbox, given that they've already got Unreal 2k7 slated for it.
You may be correct, because this is the generation of consoles that will have the same functionality as computers, and in some ways you could consider the PS3 a computer. 1900X1080p resolution, HD, bluetooth, Linux, openGL...
Time will tell, and all consoles look like they will have fun games, but my point is that the controller on the Wii will not make a significant difference in sales in the long run. Most people who would consider the Nintendo would do so even if it didn't have the "wand" controller.
the PS3 has already gotten a lot of negative press with its price point as well as its *surprise* overhyped performance. And the millions of people who already have PS2s aren't gonna be buying $500+ just to play last generation games.
The PS3 has gotten a ton of press. When you take on one of the largest companies in the world and are going to probably crush out their competing format in HDDVD, they will use everything possible to hurt your sales. The ironic thing is that for once Microsoft is having done to them what they do to other companies. A company is bundling in some technology, selling it at a loss and they are complaining about it. You just have to laugh. Now for the 90 million PS2 owners that you say won't buy a PS3, I say that 6 million will buy it as soon as it is produced. You will NOT see one on a store shelf until months after next year. Those 90 million PS2 owners will eventually buy a system and all it takes is Sony to lower the price point to "retain" them.
So in my opinion it breaks down to this: Sony will own the high end, they have the most advan
There has never been a major add on for a console that has done particularly well;
The dual shock controller did well. My point is that offering additional functionality is you own a motion controller isn't that big of a deal. But then again perhaps you are correct and that is why Sony put it in their console as well. Time will tell.
Now again, I like Nintendo and Sony. I am on the fence on what system I will buy and the controller has ZERO effect on my decision. It comes down to cost and good games. As far as the performance difference goes, you can believe what you want to, but most people agree that the 360 has a strong edge in performance over the Wii and the 360 isn't as powerful graphically or processor wise as the PS3. Does that mean that any of these consoles will suck in regards to graphics and gameplay? Nope.
Here is the way it breaks down for me.
Wii advantages Cost - It should be cheaper, and thus I could buy more games. Mario games - I have mentioned this before but Nintendo is the king of family games
Wii Disadvantages HDTV 1 -I have a HDTV and this system doesn't support it. HDTV 2 -I want to play HDDVD's and thus I would need to buy another player. 3rd Party Titles - Time will tell on this one, but if history is any indication, common games will not be ported to the Wii as often as the PS3, Computer and 360.
PS3 advantages HDTV Support 1 - The console supports 1080P. HDTV Support 2 - The console gives me a HDDVD player. Legacy Support - I have a ton of PS2 games that the family still plays Linux support - This has some cool potential for me. OpenGL support - I love the fact that Sony chose to support OpenGL.
PS2 disadvantages Cost - For me this isn't too bad. For some this will be an issue. Launch Titles - Little to no kids (10 and under) games at launch Mario - No Mario, Zelda etc.
So in my household there is a decision to make and as I see it now, the PS3 can easily address two of my concerns over time. Those are Cost (small issue) and Launch Titles. If the system comes with two controllers (wireless) and I can get a good "family" game at launch for say $700, then I will go with the PS3. If there isn't any family games and I can't get my hands on a PS3, then I would probably by a Wii at launch (assuming they are also not sold out), then buy a PS3 later for Blu-Ray. Now if I could get a Blu-Ray player later for say $200-300 then I would skip the PS3 completely.
I first need to say that I am a fan of Nintendo and to a large degree Sony. Now having said that, I can't see a controller "selling" a console. The only advantage the Wii has that the other console makers can't copy is "Mario and company" and possibly price. The HUGE disadvantage it has is its performance compared to a year old 360 and even more to the PS3.
I hope Nindendo does well, and there are a ton of fanboys out there that will buy whatever Nintendo puts out, but I honestly don't see this doing much better than their gamecube. Now I am not saying that the cube did bad, but I honestly don't think a controller will win Nintendo the next console war. What has and will help them possibly win it is the price of the PS3. However, that is a somewhat scary position to be in. All it takes is a serious price drop in the PS3 and a "similar" controller to take away two of Nintendos strongest advantages. That leaves them with "Mario" again, and to be honest that may be enough. I am curious about how many 3rd parties jump on board this time around, and what their development kits offer. Also, I am curious where the 360 will fit in to this mix. It appears that they will have Nintendo on the "low" end and Sony on the high end. I can't see the average consumer picking a 360, at its current price point over the Nintendo (because of Mario and friends), or a PS3 because of the backward compatibility and the hardware advantage. Now if Microsoft lowers the price of the 360 to the same level as the Wii then that will put some pressure on Nintendo, but again you have the "Mario" factor.
So my long winded point is that I don't see a controller putting Nintendo to #1 in the console wars. If the controller is the coolest thing since sliced bread, it will be copied by everyone within a year. So at the end of the day it comes down to the games and hardware. Will Nintendo have the games? Will the 360 just have rehashed PC games?
So unlike the DVD the market that can actually use this technology is smaller
While this is technically true, more people own tv's now than then and the percentage of people that own HD-TV's are the exact same demographics as those who originally bought DVD. So the market is actually larger now for Blu Ray than what it was for DVD.
So to break it down a bit. 100% of the people back in the 80's technically could have bought a DVD player, but way less than half could actually afford one and only the "very rich" bought one. DVD players were around a grand, and that was over 20 years ago... A standard TV was around $500, so we were asking people to spend, on average 2X the amount they spent on their TV, just to watch movies on DVD, yet most households had VHS players that would actually record and play shows. The "average" consumer couln't see the advantage of DVD and this is probably why it took a long time for universal adoption.
Today far more people own TV's, but for arguments sake, lets say it only went up 25%. So now you are at 125% of the total consumer base of the 1980's. Of that 125% ~40% of them have HD-TV's and of that 40% a large majority have spent far far more than $1,000 on a TV. These people won't "love" to spend $1,000 on a Blu Ray player, but a lot will.
Now having said all that. There will be 6 million Blue Ray players out in less than 8 months. By the end of next year there will be over 10 million Blue Ray players. The war is over 2 months after the PS3 launches.
I honestly don't know if what you say is correct or not, but I will say that me and 6 million other people will own a Blu Ray player in less than a year. Granted we may only play games on it, but we will own one.
"In about a year.. when DS Lite and Wii have had a chance to penetrate the market Nintendo may buy Apple... at least CNET will tell us so."
Well that may happen, or it could be possible that both Sony and Microsoft know what they are doing in making a game machine that is high def, and also can do other things besides game. It could also be that Nintendo will still only market to the "kids 12 and under" crowd, and thus at best be in second place in the new console wars. The only thing that appears to be Nintendos' saving grace is their characters (Mario, Zelda etc), but Nintendo has gone to the "Mario" well a bit too much lately and the poor sales of the cube shows it.
Now Nintendo comes out with a console that everyone agrees has a large technology gap from its competiton, and the only thing they have that separates their system is their "Mario" name and possibly a controller, but Sony has managed to include a similar controller and now even that difference is gone to the average consumer.
So in my opinion if they brought the Mario and other characters to the Macintosh hardware, then it would be a huge win for both companies. Nintendo could be out of the hardware business, like Sega, and do what they do best... crank out kids games.
If/when blu-ray wins then the resources that HP put in to supporting both standards will be a hit to them. HP is in a weird position because they helped develop the blu-ray standard and then in came Microsoft and said that they hate it because it runs Java. A ton of higher ups in HP love Microsoft and bet the farm with their company and Microsoft.
In short it will come down to movies. It appears that the chicken and egg problem will be solved by the PS3, and thus it looks like this is one reason that blu-ray will win. It doesn't matter if it is the best hardware or not, but getting 6 million units out while your competition gets well under 500k out is a strong sign you will win. Now add to that the content providers are mostly in favor of blu-ray and you start to have a one sided war. The "only" companies that don't like blu-ray is Toshiba and Microsoft. This isn't Sony against Microsoft, but it is most of the content providers plus Sony plus other hardware manufacturers agains Microsoft. Given that Microsoft can't leverage it's monopoly on this issue and the fact that they didn't inlude a HD-DVD player in their new console, significantly hurts their ability to turn the tide in this battle.
Now the only advantage left for HD-DVD that I see is that it is cheaper. Unfortunately for Toshiba, they are going to compete against a wide range of blu-ray players and the cost difference will probably diminish quickly. So with little to no movies, and little to no content providers it appears that the delay of a cheap blu-ray player (PS3) hasn't hurt blu-ray much at all. It appears that Sony has learned from it's last war and has tied up content providers this time, so the real reason betamax lost won't be an issue again with blu-ray.
So, your point that Dell should "push" both technologies. Why? To most people the war is pretty much over, and it will definately be over by this Christmas when 4 million+ blu-ray players hit the market. It might be time to short some HP stock, and buy some Dell stock.
You are correct not every Nintenod owner is under 12. Most are. A very very large percentage of their current market and future demographics are targeted for just that audience.
HDTV, Blu-Ray, and a HD can and probably will add to the overall fun of a system. Significantly faster load time, better textures, and downloadable content just to name a few things.
"Most of us still have..." Yep, and you are probably not in the target market for a PS3... this year. Now what percentage of new TV's being sold are not HD ready? What percentage have been ready for the last 3 years? My point is that when 1080P TV's drop in price, and it won't take long... using a PS3 as a computer isn't out of the question.
You are correct about Nintendo not loosing money. Great for them, but bad for Nintendo buyers. They have to pay "full" price for a system that PS3 owners get a discount for.
Nintendo AND Sony are planning on 15 to 20 launch titles. Not bad for either console. You are also correct in saying Nintendo has been around for a while... So was Atari.... I wish them well.
Do you honestly believe that Sony won't sell all 6 million consoles at launch time?
Now the next question. Do you believe that they won't sell 20 million by the 2007 Christmas?
That is a huge install base. Remember that Sony at any time can lower the price of the PS3. If price ever truely becomes an issue, then they can adjust it. They will keep it as high as possible as long as possible.
Now on the other hand, it will probably never reach the price of the Nintendo, but then the Nintendo doesn't have HD, Blu-Ray or a hard drive. Those three options add cost, but will probably add significant value to a lot of games.
The way I see the console going is that Sony will dominate the 12 year old and up crowd. Microsoft will own a smaller percentage this time than with the XBOX, and Nintendo will own (as always) the 12 and under crowd.
Now what will the average slashdot/digg reader buy? Well those people generally hate Sony and Microsoft, but at the end of the day, they will buy the console with the best games they like. That will be Sony, and then I could see some of the Slashdot crowd actually tinkering with Linux on the PS3.
I am also curious to see what happens when the development kits get better for both the 360 and PS3. Creating an "easier" way to use the multi cores in those system will show the differences between all the consoles even more, and also display better how well (or poorly) the PS3 runs normal Linux stuff.
The last part of the puzzle is how cheap 1080P TV's will get in the next 5 years. It isn't out of the question to hook up a keyboard, mouse and "cheap" 1080P LCD or Plasma TV to a PS3 and have a computer. This is a giant leap forward for consoles, and Sonys first attempt to bridge the gap between console, computer and DVR type of device.
Time will tell if it will be a sucess or not, but one thing is certain. They will sell all the systems they can make this year and early next. People are asking every day now at EB if they can preorder the system. "If" Sony could make 20 million this year they would sell every one. I kind of wonder why they honestly don't raise the price up even more. It would suck for us gamers, but if I had a product that would max out my manufacturing for the next two years and I was sure I would sell every one I would make, then I would probably rethink my asking price. The only logic I see is that they don't want to anger the initial buyers if they have to lower the price next year for the second wave buyers. If I was Microsoft I would be very worried about the PS3. If I was Nintendo I would keep producing kids games and doing pretty much what they are doing, much like they did with the GameCube, the only difference is that I would try not to over "Mario" the system.
If Sun can stop anyone from using the word "Java" then we agree, but if they allow forks then it appears that Microsoft could call it MsJava and change their vm to also accept Java compiled code.
I am not talking about a complete rewrite of a language like they did with.Net and C#. I am talking about them having control of a JVM. We have lived in that world and it sucked, I don't think anyone wants to go back to it again.
As far as IBM goes they still own a lions share of the server market and could easily fork J2EE. That would also suck.
Now I keep asking myself "what problem are we trying to solve?" People want the source to Java... No problem. They want to write their own JVM? No problem. They just need to pass the certification. Is that free? Nope. Do you have a passion for 3D game programming and want to help develop Java3D? No problem, get on the JCP and I am sure your help will be greatly appriciated. Want to help out with the core API's? No problem again, much like Linux though, it may not be accepted. So I ask again. What problem are we trying to solve?
How is this going to make my life as a Java developer any better?
How is this going to make the average computer users life better?
I am not trying to be a jerk here. I am just curious if I am missing something obvious.
Microsoft says "Great Sun open sourced Java". We will take it bundle it with windows, change all the underlying code so that it actually uses windows API's, remove anything that competes against our stuff like SWING, EJB's, Servlets, messaging API's et al, and make it so that our Java only runs on Windows, and even if you try to run a "normal" Java application , it will not work unless you change it to support com.microsoft.xxx libraries, and jump through a ton of hoops.
Now you and I would say that we would NEVER code to that, but the reality is that the management dorks out there would say that we would have to because it is on 95% of the worlds computers. Thus who really is the standard? It would be the defacto standard, much like IE is today. It sucks but it is the reality of the situation. Trust me, this has happened to me before and the best thing that EVER happened to our development staff was when Microsoft "dropped" support of Java. The management dorks had runs Sun's JVM and suddenly stuff started to work well and we could code to open standards, not Windows standards.
So, on one hand I hope that Sun does open source Java to shut up all the people bitching, but the last thing I want is IBM or Microsoft doing their own fork. I as a developer do not EVER want to have to change my code to run on some specific platform or JVM. If I wanted to do that I would code in C++. Heck it is open, and if peopl code to "standards" they can just port their apps with little trouble.... Oh wait that never really worked out did it?
The good news is that at the point Microsoft probably won't mess with Java, they have to worry about a bunch of other stuff, but that won't stop IBM.
Excellent points about J2ME. However, don't blame Sun too much for this one. They where idiots for handing that over to Palm to work with. Then when Palm didn't do jack with it then somewhat took the lead again, but it hasn't had the leadership that SE or EE has had. However, the core code that you would write (business logic) will port fine, it is just the issues with what API's are included and what is not. The other big issues I see is with the GUI, but the orignal poster did not mean J2ME, he meant Java in general.
Now for it being the biggest joke in the industry.... It isn't even close.
I didn't realize that you had an account on Slashdot Bill. You forgot your usual uneducated statement about Java being slow...
By the way how is Microsoft these days?
Seriously, write some Java code for any "modern" JVM and then "if" you can't deploy it to any certified JVM post something. Our company has many Java applications on many different platforms. Most apps are fairly large in size and we have had little to no problems with different platforms. The ONLY JVM we "had" issues with was Microsofts. I wonder why that was????
So Bill in short. Thanks for dropping support of Java. You made our life easier.
And then there are people like me. I would pay $400 more for the HD player, and definately NOT as an add-on. If it is an add-on like Microsoft is going to do, then little to no developers will ever develop for it. However, I do have an HDTV (1080i, and 720P) and was planning on buying a new HD DVD player, so now I can try a poor mans player out before I drop extra cash on a "better" one. To me this is similar to what a lot of us did with the first PS2's. We got a "cheap" DVD player that also played games.
The real question is this. Will Sony sell all 4 million units as fast as they can make them? Does anyone here honestly think that they won't? It appears that Sony has a clue on pricing their hardware and there is nothing saying that they can't or won't lower the price by next Christmas, "IF" they need to. That is a big "IF". People here in the Indianapolis area are already trying to pre order their systems every day at EB in the malls. They know the system will cost them well over $500, and they don't care.
Now, the market that Sony AND Microsoft seem to be ignoring is the children under 12. I see families with children under 12 getting the Wii (what a stupid name), because neither Microsoft OR Sony seems to have an abundance of good games for younger children AND the new system is going to cost around $250.
So I see the breakdown as this Nintendo - Ownes the kids market with no real competition. However, real bargan shoppers will skip the new "expensive" systems and buy a cheap PS2. So this market may not be that large.
Microsoft - Fanboys of XBOX and Halo will buy this system this Christmas year. Also "buddies" of people that already own a 360, but that is about it.
Sony - The fanboys alone will buy every unit that can be made. Their only issue will be that people may buy another system "if" they can't get one for their kid this Christmas.
Your comments basically say that you buy a ton of consoles and you will not buy a PS3 because of the price. Ok, that is one data point. Now "if" Sony sells all 4 million units as fast as they can make them for $500-$600 (depending on the version), then can you say they made a mistake in their price?
Time will tell if Sony is smart or not with the price. Also understand that they can adjust that price any time they want. They can do this with in store rebates or even "shudder" mail in rebates. So "if" there are a lot of people like you that won't buy it because of price, then Sony can and will adjust "if" they need to. I don't think they will need to for this Christmas season.
Lastly, I plan on evaluating all three consoles this Christmas. I see the breakdown as follows: 1. Nintendo - Great kids games. Those games will not be on any other console. No HDTV support and no ability to play HD movies. The price should be half of the PS3. The kids games are very important to me!
2. Sony - Best hardware, the ability to play HD-DVD movies. Cool teenage type games. Downloadable music and possibly tv shows. Price is very high for a console. The ability to play almost all old PS2 games and it runs a form of Linux. It also uses OpenGL! Nice to put my money in a company that helps open standards.
3. Microsoft - Sorry not much here for me. I don't play Halo and I don't think the games are that great on it yet. I am not saying it is a bad console, but it isn't for me. I have a nice computer and the games that are cool on the 360 look even better on my computer.
So for me, cost isn't that big of a factor, and the choice is between the Nintendo and PS3. It is going to be a very tough choice. If Sony has a few kids games at launch it will probably win. If not then it could be the Nintendo.
Ok, I need to understand a few things about your Linux experience. But before I do I want to tell you about a friend of mines "windows" experience. He got his brand new computer with Windows installed on it.
It didn't come with Microsoft Office, and he just assumed that it would have that package. He was a bit taken back by the fact that to do Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access he would have to shell out another $500-$600. He connected to the Internet and was off in running after a few hours of work, and suddenly he started to think how much Windows sucked. The problem you ask? Well he started to get all these "Windows" on the screen that prevented him from working. He also noticed that his computer was now crawling along, and much slower than it use to be. He has no clue of pop-ups and spyware. He does now. He went to load a "new" game and found that the his "video driver" from ATI was beyond buggy and crashed so much that he needed to reload Windows with a recovery CD. (The only CD provided by the manufacturer). He then realized that recovery meant "loose all your data on your HD). Now all this guy wanted to do was surf the web, use and office package, email and print.
Now back to your problems. What exactly was your issues? What distro did you install? You say that you want to use Linux, then you have taken a giant leap forward and I can say without a doubt that almost every online support group is very friendly to new linux users. I would also trying a distro like Ubuntu.
Also what exactly do you want to do with your computer? What hardware are you installing it on?
Lastly, be prepared to hear that Linux may not be the OS for you. If you want all the simplicity of a Macintosh and know that all the Mac hardware you buy will work without ANY hassle, then you probably should go out and buy a Macintosh. Does this mean that Linux sucks? Nope, it just isn't a fit for you. Now if you want to play all the latest games and don't mind fighting spyware, viruses and stability issues, then Windows is probably the best for you.
The advantage of Linux is that there will be competition. RedHat, SuSE, Ubuntu, et all are fighting to provide the best experience, and thus things are improving rapidly in the Linux world. Much much much faster than either Microsoft or Apple, and to be honest it amazes me that Linux has come so far so fast. So if Linux isn't for you today, then perhaps next month....
I am not sure what you mean there. Are you implying that Microsoft inovates? Could you give me an example of this. I honestly can't think of one thing Microsoft has inovated. I can give countless examples of times Microsoft has tried to copy a competitors product, but it was far worse and then just bundled it in with the OS for "free" to just kill out their competion.
Now I am by no way a huge fan of Oracle, or IBM, but at least both of them will work with other technologies. Oracle runs their database on about every platform in the world. IBM ports a ton of their apps to different platforms and both have suppported Java a ton. Now Microsoft on the other hand... I believe their montra is "If it isn't ours destroy it".
I often wonder how long Microsoft would do if people actually had to make a decision about what OS their new computer ran. Specifically if Microsoft was broken up in to around 5 companies and all had the rights to windows. I bet you would see some serious "inovation" then, at the cost of some complexity. People would also have some competion and thus the pricing would go down. As it is now there are countless drones like yourself that will just use whatever version of Windows they have until a new one comes out. Thus no real inovation has occured in the desktop in quite a few years and if it wasn't for Apple and some open source guys you wouldn't be getting a new version of I.E. anytime this century...
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Well put. I wish I could mod you up.
However, the issue looks more like the player than anything else. I also want to point to the fact that even they realize that Blu-Ray is going to win and are making movies for it. Not to keep beating a dead horse, but there currently isn't 100k HD-DVD units sold and in 4 months there will be 2 million Blu-Ray players. In a year it will be close to 10 million. The war is over and HD-DVD lost. Sorry Toshiba and Microsoft you lost this one. It is time to go back to the drawing board and figure out a new plan of attack. Perhaps downloadable content? Not including a HD-DVD player in the 360 appears to be a mistake.
I do agree that the average Joe user is completely fine with DVD BUT that same Joe user that will buy a PS3 is in the exact same demographic of a HDTV owner, and when they go to rent a movie from Blockbuster or Netflix they will try the blu-ray version to see what it looks like. They will like it better and then start the process of getting blu-ray disk over time. The snowball effect will begin.
What will drive HD-DVD sales? Computer users? Heck most computer users want larger storage and again Blu-Ray wins hands down on that front as well. 50GB is better than 30GB any day AND 200GB (max) is way better than 45GB (max).
Again, the war is over one month after the PS3 is released.
It is somewhat funny to see another company leverage a monopoly to have a product become a "standard" against the king of illegal monopoly practices.... Microsoft.
Toshiba is loosing over $200 per unit now. When the PS3 hits the shelves the price difference between their player and a Blu-Ray will be $0.00. Oh and you will get a game machine with the Blu-Ray machine.
Blu-Ray hasn't seriously entered the market yet. When it does in November the war is over.
Don't let reason and sanity get in the way of bashing Sony... :-)
Lets see now... 75% of the content providers are behind Blu-Ray. Only ONE content provider has backed HD-DVD.
Less than 100k units sold of HD-DVD.
6 Million (PS3) Blu-Ray players will be sold in 4 months.
The war is over guys Blu-Ray won. Now the only battle is between Blu-Ray and downloadable content, and seeing that most people don't have Gig to the household, it looks like Blu-Ray is here for a while.
Content is king in this battle and Sony learned from it's Betamax/VHS war.
Warner will soon realize that they made a mistake and switch also, that will be the final death nail in HD-DVD. Toshiba can't live forever at a $200 loss per unit. Sony can with the games making up for lost profits.
Heck the list goes on and on. HD-DVD is dead.
Yeah and I am sure that Sony Music will want to work with Microsoft... when Hell freezes over.
Microsoft tried hard to get in to the content provider business but failed, and that is going to cost them a ton in lost revenue with the 360 and whatever device they come out with.
"If that were the only factor, UMDs would have taken off."
Unfair comparision. The PSP has sold in the 100k range, yet there will be 6 MILLION PS3's out by next March. The parents post was dead on. In my opinion and most other reasonable people the war is over, and the only issue is "if" downloadable content will make a dent in blu ray.
"I don't think you have much of a sense for how much space a hi-def movie requires with next gen codecs; a standard def dvd that normally takes 6gb can be shrunk to 2gb. Hi-def content contains 6x as much data. If you assume that the size of the compressed file increases linearly with the amount of data (which would be a worse case) you're looking at 12gb for a hi-def movie.
So what you are saying is that you will need to compress and degrade the signal more on HD-DVD. Yep we agree. In short Blue Ray can hold at min 5GB more on single layer. 5GB is 5GB, spin it as you want to, but that is like adding another DVD in storage.
As far as Microsoft goes. Again, as the parent poster mentioned it all comes down to Java. They don't and will never control Java. They hate that. We can argue all day about how much money they get on HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray, but they get control of one format and that isn't Blu-Ray. Not to mention that Blu-Ray gets Java in the living room. That has to scare the crap out of Microsoft.
It allows you to continue purchasing dvd's and have an instant library of hi-def content when you finally purchase a hi-def player.
Yeah and the less than 100k people that bought a HD-DVD player didn't have a DVD player also? This is a very small issue. However, your statement is incorrect. There is already a DVD,BluRay burner out there. So this "advantage" isn't there.
the storage isn't necessary for movies.
Then again it could be. More storage means less compression. Less compression most of the time means better quality.
'm saying from my perspective, if I had to make a purchase, that's the one I'd be looking at. In much the same manner that I'd purchase a Ferrari F430 before getting a Lambo Giardo.
Lets change the analogy a bit. One car is expensive and it run on Disel. The other car is not going to be out for a few months later and it runs on regular gas. Unfortunately this second car is going to initially cost more than the first, but a company is going to release an SUV that also runs on gas and over 100X the people that would buy either car will buy the SUV over the next two years. The market will see this and support gas over disel.
The war is over BluRay won. You may not like it, but the content providers have spoken, all but one hardware company has spoken, and come November 4 million people will speak.
You have to admit that it is funny that Microsoft is bitching about Sony bundling a PS3 with BluRay just to have it be the dominate player. Pot meet kettle
Yeah and it sure will be fun handing people hard drives out to see home video.
While I do agree that it makes sense to have some "near line" backup solution, it is by no means a replacement for tapes and CD/DVD/Blu-Ray. Remember this is first gen, heck it is first. DVD burners cost $2,000 when they were released. Having said that, it would be very nice to backup all my pictures to one of these babies as opposed to the current 3 DVD's it takes now.
Now having said that, I also agree that for me it isn't worth the cost.... yet. When the duel layer blu ray players hit, and they drop to around $500 or less then I will buy one.
So what you are saying then is that if Sony and Microsoft copied the controller, you would seriously consider their consoles?
Sony is going to have a motion sensing controller.
Ah, but I bet you would buy the Wii even without the controller, because it still would be the only console that non gamers would play.
don't agree with this. I believe, as do many others on other sites I frequent (including a few here on /.), that there is actually not much of point for the average joe to get a PS3, at least based on your criteria. For the price of the non-ripoff PS3, you can get both a 360 and a Wii. The PS3 has already gotten a lot of negative press with its price point as well as its *surprise* overhyped performance. And the millions of people who already have PS2s aren't gonna be buying $500+ just to play last generation games.
First, I am a fan of both Nintendo and Sony, and I want to make that clear again.
Next, do you honestly believe that Sony won't sell every PS3 made this year? Do you believe that they won't sell their first 6 million units in 4 months? Trust me they will. The question is if they will be the first to break over 20 million. After the first 6 million units are sold and the fanboys all have their PS3, then what happens? To answer that we need to look at the percentage of console sales on a per month basis. To be specific, we need to look at what percentage of consoles sell during the Christmas season. By most estimates over 80% of all console sales occur during this time, so if Sony sells every single console they can produce this Chrismas then they can consider that a success. They then can monitor the market and if needed adjust pricing. Understand that Sony will cement Blu-Ray as the defacto standard of next generation players. That is huge. So Sony has a full year after the launch before they have to "worry" about the average Joe wanting to buy one for his kid.
The best reason I've heard for getting a PS3 are the exclusive games. But most of the really good ones are a 3rd party franchises that've already appeared on both MS and Nintendo consoles in the past
All consoles have their great exclusive games. Currently Sony has the most games, but in my opinion Nintendo has the best kids games that will never make it to the PS3 or 360. That doesn't appear to be changing at all with these new consoles. Sony and Microsoft are targeting a far different audience than Nintendo. Thus it is my prediction that the Wii will be much like the Cube in 3rd party titles.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if PS3 will be just as big on PC ports as the 360/Xbox, given that they've already got Unreal 2k7 slated for it.
You may be correct, because this is the generation of consoles that will have the same functionality as computers, and in some ways you could consider the PS3 a computer. 1900X1080p resolution, HD, bluetooth, Linux, openGL...
Time will tell, and all consoles look like they will have fun games, but my point is that the controller on the Wii will not make a significant difference in sales in the long run. Most people who would consider the Nintendo would do so even if it didn't have the "wand" controller.
the PS3 has already gotten a lot of negative press with its price point as well as its *surprise* overhyped performance. And the millions of people who already have PS2s aren't gonna be buying $500+ just to play last generation games.
The PS3 has gotten a ton of press. When you take on one of the largest companies in the world and are going to probably crush out their competing format in HDDVD, they will use everything possible to hurt your sales. The ironic thing is that for once Microsoft is having done to them what they do to other companies. A company is bundling in some technology, selling it at a loss and they are complaining about it. You just have to laugh. Now for the 90 million PS2 owners that you say won't buy a PS3, I say that 6 million will buy it as soon as it is produced. You will NOT see one on a store shelf until months after next year. Those 90 million PS2 owners will eventually buy a system and all it takes is Sony to lower the price point to "retain" them.
So in my opinion it breaks down to this: Sony will own the high end, they have the most advan
There has never been a major add on for a console that has done particularly well;
The dual shock controller did well. My point is that offering additional functionality is you own a motion controller isn't that big of a deal. But then again perhaps you are correct and that is why Sony put it in their console as well. Time will tell.
Now again, I like Nintendo and Sony. I am on the fence on what system I will buy and the controller has ZERO effect on my decision. It comes down to cost and good games. As far as the performance difference goes, you can believe what you want to, but most people agree that the 360 has a strong edge in performance over the Wii and the 360 isn't as powerful graphically or processor wise as the PS3. Does that mean that any of these consoles will suck in regards to graphics and gameplay? Nope.
Here is the way it breaks down for me.
Wii advantages
Cost - It should be cheaper, and thus I could buy more games.
Mario games - I have mentioned this before but Nintendo is the king of family games
Wii Disadvantages
HDTV 1 -I have a HDTV and this system doesn't support it.
HDTV 2 -I want to play HDDVD's and thus I would need to buy another player.
3rd Party Titles - Time will tell on this one, but if history is any indication, common games will not be ported to the Wii as often as the PS3, Computer and 360.
PS3 advantages
HDTV Support 1 - The console supports 1080P.
HDTV Support 2 - The console gives me a HDDVD player.
Legacy Support - I have a ton of PS2 games that the family still plays
Linux support - This has some cool potential for me.
OpenGL support - I love the fact that Sony chose to support OpenGL.
PS2 disadvantages
Cost - For me this isn't too bad. For some this will be an issue.
Launch Titles - Little to no kids (10 and under) games at launch
Mario - No Mario, Zelda etc.
So in my household there is a decision to make and as I see it now, the PS3 can easily address two of my concerns over time. Those are Cost (small issue) and Launch Titles. If the system comes with two controllers (wireless) and I can get a good "family" game at launch for say $700, then I will go with the PS3. If there isn't any family games and I can't get my hands on a PS3, then I would probably by a Wii at launch (assuming they are also not sold out), then buy a PS3 later for Blu-Ray. Now if I could get a Blu-Ray player later for say $200-300 then I would skip the PS3 completely.
I first need to say that I am a fan of Nintendo and to a large degree Sony. Now having said that, I can't see a controller "selling" a console. The only advantage the Wii has that the other console makers can't copy is "Mario and company" and possibly price. The HUGE disadvantage it has is its performance compared to a year old 360 and even more to the PS3.
I hope Nindendo does well, and there are a ton of fanboys out there that will buy whatever Nintendo puts out, but I honestly don't see this doing much better than their gamecube. Now I am not saying that the cube did bad, but I honestly don't think a controller will win Nintendo the next console war. What has and will help them possibly win it is the price of the PS3. However, that is a somewhat scary position to be in. All it takes is a serious price drop in the PS3 and a "similar" controller to take away two of Nintendos strongest advantages. That leaves them with "Mario" again, and to be honest that may be enough. I am curious about how many 3rd parties jump on board this time around, and what their development kits offer. Also, I am curious where the 360 will fit in to this mix. It appears that they will have Nintendo on the "low" end and Sony on the high end. I can't see the average consumer picking a 360, at its current price point over the Nintendo (because of Mario and friends), or a PS3 because of the backward compatibility and the hardware advantage. Now if Microsoft lowers the price of the 360 to the same level as the Wii then that will put some pressure on Nintendo, but again you have the "Mario" factor.
So my long winded point is that I don't see a controller putting Nintendo to #1 in the console wars. If the controller is the coolest thing since sliced bread, it will be copied by everyone within a year. So at the end of the day it comes down to the games and hardware. Will Nintendo have the games? Will the 360 just have rehashed PC games?
So unlike the DVD the market that can actually use this technology is smaller
While this is technically true, more people own tv's now than then and the percentage of people that own HD-TV's are the exact same demographics as those who originally bought DVD. So the market is actually larger now for Blu Ray than what it was for DVD.
So to break it down a bit.
100% of the people back in the 80's technically could have bought a DVD player, but way less than half could actually afford one and only the "very rich" bought one. DVD players were around a grand, and that was over 20 years ago... A standard TV was around $500, so we were asking people to spend, on average 2X the amount they spent on their TV, just to watch movies on DVD, yet most households had VHS players that would actually record and play shows. The "average" consumer couln't see the advantage of DVD and this is probably why it took a long time for universal adoption.
Today far more people own TV's, but for arguments sake, lets say it only went up 25%. So now you are at 125% of the total consumer base of the 1980's. Of that 125% ~40% of them have HD-TV's and of that 40% a large majority have spent far far more than $1,000 on a TV. These people won't "love" to spend $1,000 on a Blu Ray player, but a lot will.
Now having said all that. There will be 6 million Blue Ray players out in less than 8 months. By the end of next year there will be over 10 million Blue Ray players. The war is over 2 months after the PS3 launches.
I honestly don't know if what you say is correct or not, but I will say that me and 6 million other people will own a Blu Ray player in less than a year. Granted we may only play games on it, but we will own one.
"In about a year .. when DS Lite and Wii have had a chance to penetrate the market Nintendo may buy Apple ... at least CNET will tell us so."
Well that may happen, or it could be possible that both Sony and Microsoft know what they are doing in making a game machine that is high def, and also can do other things besides game. It could also be that Nintendo will still only market to the "kids 12 and under" crowd, and thus at best be in second place in the new console wars. The only thing that appears to be Nintendos' saving grace is their characters (Mario, Zelda etc), but Nintendo has gone to the "Mario" well a bit too much lately and the poor sales of the cube shows it.
Now Nintendo comes out with a console that everyone agrees has a large technology gap from its competiton, and the only thing they have that separates their system is their "Mario" name and possibly a controller, but Sony has managed to include a similar controller and now even that difference is gone to the average consumer.
So in my opinion if they brought the Mario and other characters to the Macintosh hardware, then it would be a huge win for both companies. Nintendo could be out of the hardware business, like Sega, and do what they do best... crank out kids games.
If/when blu-ray wins then the resources that HP put in to supporting both standards will be a hit to them. HP is in a weird position because they helped develop the blu-ray standard and then in came Microsoft and said that they hate it because it runs Java. A ton of higher ups in HP love Microsoft and bet the farm with their company and Microsoft.
In short it will come down to movies. It appears that the chicken and egg problem will be solved by the PS3, and thus it looks like this is one reason that blu-ray will win. It doesn't matter if it is the best hardware or not, but getting 6 million units out while your competition gets well under 500k out is a strong sign you will win. Now add to that the content providers are mostly in favor of blu-ray and you start to have a one sided war. The "only" companies that don't like blu-ray is Toshiba and Microsoft. This isn't Sony against Microsoft, but it is most of the content providers plus Sony plus other hardware manufacturers agains Microsoft. Given that Microsoft can't leverage it's monopoly on this issue and the fact that they didn't inlude a HD-DVD player in their new console, significantly hurts their ability to turn the tide in this battle.
Now the only advantage left for HD-DVD that I see is that it is cheaper. Unfortunately for Toshiba, they are going to compete against a wide range of blu-ray players and the cost difference will probably diminish quickly. So with little to no movies, and little to no content providers it appears that the delay of a cheap blu-ray player (PS3) hasn't hurt blu-ray much at all. It appears that Sony has learned from it's last war and has tied up content providers this time, so the real reason betamax lost won't be an issue again with blu-ray.
So, your point that Dell should "push" both technologies. Why? To most people the war is pretty much over, and it will definately be over by this Christmas when 4 million+ blu-ray players hit the market.
It might be time to short some HP stock, and buy some Dell stock.
You are correct not every Nintenod owner is under 12. Most are. A very very large percentage of their current market and future demographics are targeted for just that audience.
HDTV, Blu-Ray, and a HD can and probably will add to the overall fun of a system. Significantly faster load time, better textures, and downloadable content just to name a few things.
"Most of us still have..." Yep, and you are probably not in the target market for a PS3... this year. Now what percentage of new TV's being sold are not HD ready? What percentage have been ready for the last 3 years? My point is that when 1080P TV's drop in price, and it won't take long... using a PS3 as a computer isn't out of the question.
You are correct about Nintendo not loosing money. Great for them, but bad for Nintendo buyers. They have to pay "full" price for a system that PS3 owners get a discount for.
Nintendo AND Sony are planning on 15 to 20 launch titles. Not bad for either console. You are also correct in saying Nintendo has been around for a while... So was Atari.... I wish them well.
Do you honestly believe that Sony won't sell all 6 million consoles at launch time?
Now the next question. Do you believe that they won't sell 20 million by the 2007 Christmas?
That is a huge install base. Remember that Sony at any time can lower the price of the PS3. If price ever truely becomes an issue, then they can adjust it. They will keep it as high as possible as long as possible.
Now on the other hand, it will probably never reach the price of the Nintendo, but then the Nintendo doesn't have HD, Blu-Ray or a hard drive. Those three options add cost, but will probably add significant value to a lot of games.
The way I see the console going is that Sony will dominate the 12 year old and up crowd. Microsoft will own a smaller percentage this time than with the XBOX, and Nintendo will own (as always) the 12 and under crowd.
Now what will the average slashdot/digg reader buy? Well those people generally hate Sony and Microsoft, but at the end of the day, they will buy the console with the best games they like. That will be Sony, and then I could see some of the Slashdot crowd actually tinkering with Linux on the PS3.
I am also curious to see what happens when the development kits get better for both the 360 and PS3. Creating an "easier" way to use the multi cores in those system will show the differences between all the consoles even more, and also display better how well (or poorly) the PS3 runs normal Linux stuff.
The last part of the puzzle is how cheap 1080P TV's will get in the next 5 years. It isn't out of the question to hook up a keyboard, mouse and "cheap" 1080P LCD or Plasma TV to a PS3 and have a computer. This is a giant leap forward for consoles, and Sonys first attempt to bridge the gap between console, computer and DVR type of device.
Time will tell if it will be a sucess or not, but one thing is certain. They will sell all the systems they can make this year and early next. People are asking every day now at EB if they can preorder the system. "If" Sony could make 20 million this year they would sell every one. I kind of wonder why they honestly don't raise the price up even more. It would suck for us gamers, but if I had a product that would max out my manufacturing for the next two years and I was sure I would sell every one I would make, then I would probably rethink my asking price. The only logic I see is that they don't want to anger the initial buyers if they have to lower the price next year for the second wave buyers. If I was Microsoft I would be very worried about the PS3. If I was Nintendo I would keep producing kids games and doing pretty much what they are doing, much like they did with the GameCube, the only difference is that I would try not to over "Mario" the system.
If Sun can stop anyone from using the word "Java" then we agree, but if they allow forks then it appears that Microsoft could call it MsJava and change their vm to also accept Java compiled code.
.Net and C#. I am talking about them having control of a JVM. We have lived in that world and it sucked, I don't think anyone wants to go back to it again.
I am not talking about a complete rewrite of a language like they did with
As far as IBM goes they still own a lions share of the server market and could easily fork J2EE. That would also suck.
Now I keep asking myself "what problem are we trying to solve?" People want the source to Java... No problem. They want to write their own JVM? No problem. They just need to pass the certification. Is that free? Nope. Do you have a passion for 3D game programming and want to help develop Java3D? No problem, get on the JCP and I am sure your help will be greatly appriciated. Want to help out with the core API's? No problem again, much like Linux though, it may not be accepted. So I ask again. What problem are we trying to solve?
How is this going to make my life as a Java developer any better?
How is this going to make the average computer users life better?
I am not trying to be a jerk here. I am just curious if I am missing something obvious.
Ok, I will throw out an example.
Microsoft says "Great Sun open sourced Java". We will take it bundle it with windows, change all the underlying code so that it actually uses windows API's, remove anything that competes against our stuff like SWING, EJB's, Servlets, messaging API's et al, and make it so that our Java only runs on Windows, and even if you try to run a "normal" Java application , it will not work unless you change it to support com.microsoft.xxx libraries, and jump through a ton of hoops.
Now you and I would say that we would NEVER code to that, but the reality is that the management dorks out there would say that we would have to because it is on 95% of the worlds computers. Thus who really is the standard? It would be the defacto standard, much like IE is today. It sucks but it is the reality of the situation. Trust me, this has happened to me before and the best thing that EVER happened to our development staff was when Microsoft "dropped" support of Java. The management dorks had runs Sun's JVM and suddenly stuff started to work well and we could code to open standards, not Windows standards.
So, on one hand I hope that Sun does open source Java to shut up all the people bitching, but the last thing I want is IBM or Microsoft doing their own fork. I as a developer do not EVER want to have to change my code to run on some specific platform or JVM. If I wanted to do that I would code in C++. Heck it is open, and if peopl code to "standards" they can just port their apps with little trouble.... Oh wait that never really worked out did it?
The good news is that at the point Microsoft probably won't mess with Java, they have to worry about a bunch of other stuff, but that won't stop IBM.
Excellent points about J2ME. However, don't blame Sun too much for this one. They where idiots for handing that over to Palm to work with. Then when Palm didn't do jack with it then somewhat took the lead again, but it hasn't had the leadership that SE or EE has had. However, the core code that you would write (business logic) will port fine, it is just the issues with what API's are included and what is not. The other big issues I see is with the GUI, but the orignal poster did not mean J2ME, he meant Java in general.
Now for it being the biggest joke in the industry.... It isn't even close.
I didn't realize that you had an account on Slashdot Bill. You forgot your usual uneducated statement about Java being slow...
By the way how is Microsoft these days?
Seriously, write some Java code for any "modern" JVM and then "if" you can't deploy it to any certified JVM post something. Our company has many Java applications on many different platforms. Most apps are fairly large in size and we have had little to no problems with different platforms. The ONLY JVM we "had" issues with was Microsofts. I wonder why that was????
So Bill in short.
Thanks for dropping support of Java. You made our life easier.
And then there are people like me. I would pay $400 more for the HD player, and definately NOT as an add-on. If it is an add-on like Microsoft is going to do, then little to no developers will ever develop for it. However, I do have an HDTV (1080i, and 720P) and was planning on buying a new HD DVD player, so now I can try a poor mans player out before I drop extra cash on a "better" one. To me this is similar to what a lot of us did with the first PS2's. We got a "cheap" DVD player that also played games.
The real question is this. Will Sony sell all 4 million units as fast as they can make them? Does anyone here honestly think that they won't? It appears that Sony has a clue on pricing their hardware and there is nothing saying that they can't or won't lower the price by next Christmas, "IF" they need to. That is a big "IF". People here in the Indianapolis area are already trying to pre order their systems every day at EB in the malls. They know the system will cost them well over $500, and they don't care.
Now, the market that Sony AND Microsoft seem to be ignoring is the children under 12. I see families with children under 12 getting the Wii (what a stupid name), because neither Microsoft OR Sony seems to have an abundance of good games for younger children AND the new system is going to cost around $250.
So I see the breakdown as this
Nintendo - Ownes the kids market with no real competition. However, real bargan shoppers will skip the new "expensive" systems and buy a cheap PS2. So this market may not be that large.
Microsoft - Fanboys of XBOX and Halo will buy this system this Christmas year. Also "buddies" of people that already own a 360, but that is about it.
Sony - The fanboys alone will buy every unit that can be made. Their only issue will be that people may buy another system "if" they can't get one for their kid this Christmas.
Your comments basically say that you buy a ton of consoles and you will not buy a PS3 because of the price. Ok, that is one data point. Now "if" Sony sells all 4 million units as fast as they can make them for $500-$600 (depending on the version), then can you say they made a mistake in their price?
Time will tell if Sony is smart or not with the price. Also understand that they can adjust that price any time they want. They can do this with in store rebates or even "shudder" mail in rebates. So "if" there are a lot of people like you that won't buy it because of price, then Sony can and will adjust "if" they need to. I don't think they will need to for this Christmas season.
Lastly, I plan on evaluating all three consoles this Christmas. I see the breakdown as follows:
1. Nintendo - Great kids games. Those games will not be on any other console. No HDTV support and no ability to play HD movies. The price should be half of the PS3. The kids games are very important to me!
2. Sony - Best hardware, the ability to play HD-DVD movies. Cool teenage type games. Downloadable music and possibly tv shows. Price is very high for a console. The ability to play almost all old PS2 games and it runs a form of Linux. It also uses OpenGL! Nice to put my money in a company that helps open standards.
3. Microsoft - Sorry not much here for me. I don't play Halo and I don't think the games are that great on it yet. I am not saying it is a bad console, but it isn't for me. I have a nice computer and the games that are cool on the 360 look even better on my computer.
So for me, cost isn't that big of a factor, and the choice is between the Nintendo and PS3. It is going to be a very tough choice. If Sony has a few kids games at launch it will probably win. If not then it could be the Nintendo.
Ok, I need to understand a few things about your Linux experience. But before I do I want to tell you about a friend of mines "windows" experience. He got his brand new computer with Windows installed on it.
It didn't come with Microsoft Office, and he just assumed that it would have that package. He was a bit taken back by the fact that to do Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access he would have to shell out another $500-$600.
He connected to the Internet and was off in running after a few hours of work, and suddenly he started to think how much Windows sucked. The problem you ask? Well he started to get all these "Windows" on the screen that prevented him from working. He also noticed that his computer was now crawling along, and much slower than it use to be. He has no clue of pop-ups and spyware. He does now. He went to load a "new" game and found that the his "video driver" from ATI was beyond buggy and crashed so much that he needed to reload Windows with a recovery CD. (The only CD provided by the manufacturer). He then realized that recovery meant "loose all your data on your HD). Now all this guy wanted to do was surf the web, use and office package, email and print.
Now back to your problems. What exactly was your issues? What distro did you install? You say that you want to use Linux, then you have taken a giant leap forward and I can say without a doubt that almost every online support group is very friendly to new linux users. I would also trying a distro like Ubuntu.
Also what exactly do you want to do with your computer?
What hardware are you installing it on?
Lastly, be prepared to hear that Linux may not be the OS for you. If you want all the simplicity of a Macintosh and know that all the Mac hardware you buy will work without ANY hassle, then you probably should go out and buy a Macintosh. Does this mean that Linux sucks? Nope, it just isn't a fit for you. Now if you want to play all the latest games and don't mind fighting spyware, viruses and stability issues, then Windows is probably the best for you.
The advantage of Linux is that there will be competition. RedHat, SuSE, Ubuntu, et all are fighting to provide the best experience, and thus things are improving rapidly in the Linux world. Much much much faster than either Microsoft or Apple, and to be honest it amazes me that Linux has come so far so fast. So if Linux isn't for you today, then perhaps next month....
They might be able to compete with Microsoft?
I am not sure what you mean there. Are you implying that Microsoft inovates? Could you give me an example of this. I honestly can't think of one thing Microsoft has inovated. I can give countless examples of times Microsoft has tried to copy a competitors product, but it was far worse and then just bundled it in with the OS for "free" to just kill out their competion.
Now I am by no way a huge fan of Oracle, or IBM, but at least both of them will work with other technologies. Oracle runs their database on about every platform in the world. IBM ports a ton of their apps to different platforms and both have suppported Java a ton. Now Microsoft on the other hand... I believe their montra is "If it isn't ours destroy it".
I often wonder how long Microsoft would do if people actually had to make a decision about what OS their new computer ran. Specifically if Microsoft was broken up in to around 5 companies and all had the rights to windows. I bet you would see some serious "inovation" then, at the cost of some complexity. People would also have some competion and thus the pricing would go down. As it is now there are countless drones like yourself that will just use whatever version of Windows they have until a new one comes out. Thus no real inovation has occured in the desktop in quite a few years and if it wasn't for Apple and some open source guys you wouldn't be getting a new version of I.E. anytime this century...