And perhaps if faced with large costs as a result of poor decisions in the past, companies might be inclined not to repeat the same stupid mistakes again.
Yeah, ati's proprietary drivers suck badly... They crash my macbook and i can't determine why, and they seem totally incompatible with mythtv... On the other hand the open radeonhd drivers seem far more reliable and stable, but not as quick yet. Hopefully that will change in the near future.
There's a big difference between a car with failure of engine or brakes, and a videocard with a failing GPU... Failing brakes could kill you, or others, the legal fallout could easily bankrupt a company making such cars... On the other hand, the engine or brakes make up a relatively small part of the overall cost of a car, replacing them would still be expensive but it's unlikely to bankrupt an auto maker. They are also much easier to repair than the inner workings of a silicon chip, so there's no need for thousands of units to be scrapped.
But with ATI opening up their specs and open source drivers coming along nicely, and now this issue with nvidia chips, chances are my next videocard purchase will be from ATI.
That's assuming you want the box for playing video... For any other use it's great. Also, how much content actually comes in 1080p? Incidentally, all of the Atom boards i've seen only had VGA, not even DVI.. It is possible to do 1080p through DVI, HDMI only gets you the audio through the same connector.
I have a 901, and the fan seems to be running fairly continuously but it doesn't make much noise... It's also sitting on my lap and doesn't have great ventilation underneath and it's fairly warm in here.. The CPU reports itself at 53 degrees.
Using the same components as an eee. but in a desktop case that's less cramped and has some large passive heatsinks should work well and be totally silent. Are there any such machines available, and are they affordably priced? They should cost less than an eee, not needing keyboard/touchpad/screen, but i've not seen anything which was competitively priced.
Computers used to be quiet, i remember keeping my Amiga 1200 running all night silently...
Surely with modern technology it should be possible to produce something completely silent. I have an eee 901 here and it's silent apart from it's internal fan that comes on when under load... If you put the components that make up an eee into a bigger case with large passive heat sinks and good natural ventilation instead of a cramped laptop chassis it should be able to run completely silently.
I have the 20GB eee 901, and it makes a perfect laptop for my needs with it's solid state drive. The drive is perfectly fast enough, and the size is more than adequate... I have my OS and apps on the first 4GB drive with space to spare, and the second 16GB drive is for my data... I can fit several movies and tons of music on there to entertain me while i'm traveling, and there's more than enough space for any documents and code i will typically be working on... And the eee screen is not big enough to justify HD movies.
There's also the SD slot for which 16GB cards are very cheap these days, so i can add more storage if needed, and being on little cards they can be pulled out.
When i've finished watching the movies on the laptop, i just hook up an external usb drive and replace the movies on the eee. I have a set of usb drives (totaling several terabytes) at home with various data files, i don't need access to everything all of the time.
Solid state is perfect for me, it's quiet and low power, and won't get damaged by sudden jolts etc...
And how do you determine that new versions are available and obtain them? All i've seen of MSI is files available to download, no repository like system for updating them. The point is that you need to go and manually download the updates, even if once downloaded you can push them out to all your machines at once.
The ability to push them out across your network automatically is assumed to be a given, and yes unix variants have had methods of doing that for years.
Kids will break and/or steal machines (or their components which are smaller and easier to hide), using worthless computers (old machines make great thin clients on the cheap) or thin clients which are useless without their server reduces the likelihood and cost of theft.
MS makes it mandatory to pay for the software and the lowest level of support wether you need it or not, and charges you extra for better support. I don't think you get any guarantees with their low level support either.
OpenOffice provides choices, everything is optional, you can buy a supported package with a similar level of support and it's still cheaper than MS (eg staroffice, or bundled as part of a supported linux distro), or you can get an unsupported package that's free.
Not everyone wants support, as a slashdot story a few weeks ago pointed out, larger organizations who have their own competent staff are moving more towards free linux distributions instead of paid ones as it's cheaper. If those organizations were using MS they would be paying for low level support they will never use.
And what level of support do you get with the software, and how often is it used? Open source developers and distributors will also supply paid support, but you pay *only* for the support and not the software. Most organisations have their own internal staff and very rarely make use of vendor support for software thus paying for it is often a waste, there was even a slashdot story a few weeks ago about how free distributions are gaining popularity in corporations because of the lower cost.
Any third party app installed on windows needs to be updated seperately... A linux distro on the other hand will typically supply all the apps you're going to require and update them al centrally.
As for all the myriad of possible distros, you just standardise on a single distro across the board and use the apps supported by the distributor. The problem of incompatible versions happens on windows too, and is often worse, even microsoft apps can have incompatibilities with each other and as soon as you throw third party apps into the mix the problem gets much worse, but the apps supported as part of a linux distro will typically be tested fairly well together. Also since the linux apps are far more likely to use documented formats, the chance of third party apps working with them is higher too.
Yes, and because the CPUs are so slow, you could just cluster the laptops that the batteries came from and get better performance from the same size suitcase.
Document the hardware, provide details of how it works, how to control it and how to read data from it.. Provide a few small programs that acquire data and output them in standard formats (as you pointed out, text).
Don't try to be too fancy, provide good functional and open tools that other people can build on. Depending how niche your product is, third parties may write software to work with it, or the customers may have especially custom requirements that aren't served by the bundled software anyway.
Very few people will complain about bugs anymore, microsoft has convinced them that bugs are normal and to be expected, and that you have to try and work around them... People used to complain, but years of getting no sensible response has worn them down.
I had a family member who used to work with these kind of measuring machines... He would often complain about how the old but functional machines would be replaced with fancy computer controlled ones, where the software would be extremely limited and often horrendously buggy.
Slashdot Mirror
And perhaps if faced with large costs as a result of poor decisions in the past, companies might be inclined not to repeat the same stupid mistakes again.
My 8600GT gets rather hot actually, it seems to run fine but if i reboot the machine it won't boot up unless i let it cool off first.
It's a macbook pro 17" from early last year, it most definately has an ati card, i never really liked anything with "pro" in the name tho.
Yeah, ati's proprietary drivers suck badly... They crash my macbook and i can't determine why, and they seem totally incompatible with mythtv...
On the other hand the open radeonhd drivers seem far more reliable and stable, but not as quick yet. Hopefully that will change in the near future.
There's a big difference between a car with failure of engine or brakes, and a videocard with a failing GPU...
Failing brakes could kill you, or others, the legal fallout could easily bankrupt a company making such cars...
On the other hand, the engine or brakes make up a relatively small part of the overall cost of a car, replacing them would still be expensive but it's unlikely to bankrupt an auto maker. They are also much easier to repair than the inner workings of a silicon chip, so there's no need for thousands of units to be scrapped.
I have an 8600GT too, hopefully it's OK...
But with ATI opening up their specs and open source drivers coming along nicely, and now this issue with nvidia chips, chances are my next videocard purchase will be from ATI.
That's not really relevant now is it...
You can replace a defective CPU, ever tried removing a GPU from a videocard and replacing it?
That's assuming you want the box for playing video... For any other use it's great.
Also, how much content actually comes in 1080p?
Incidentally, all of the Atom boards i've seen only had VGA, not even DVI.. It is possible to do 1080p through DVI, HDMI only gets you the audio through the same connector.
Never knew that, you see a lot of people using laptops on aircraft, or does that not apply due to the pressurized cabin?
I have a 901, and the fan seems to be running fairly continuously but it doesn't make much noise... It's also sitting on my lap and doesn't have great ventilation underneath and it's fairly warm in here.. The CPU reports itself at 53 degrees.
Using the same components as an eee. but in a desktop case that's less cramped and has some large passive heatsinks should work well and be totally silent. Are there any such machines available, and are they affordably priced? They should cost less than an eee, not needing keyboard/touchpad/screen, but i've not seen anything which was competitively priced.
Computers used to be quiet, i remember keeping my Amiga 1200 running all night silently...
Surely with modern technology it should be possible to produce something completely silent. I have an eee 901 here and it's silent apart from it's internal fan that comes on when under load... If you put the components that make up an eee into a bigger case with large passive heat sinks and good natural ventilation instead of a cramped laptop chassis it should be able to run completely silently.
I have the 20GB eee 901, and it makes a perfect laptop for my needs with it's solid state drive.
The drive is perfectly fast enough, and the size is more than adequate... I have my OS and apps on the first 4GB drive with space to spare, and the second 16GB drive is for my data... I can fit several movies and tons of music on there to entertain me while i'm traveling, and there's more than enough space for any documents and code i will typically be working on... And the eee screen is not big enough to justify HD movies.
There's also the SD slot for which 16GB cards are very cheap these days, so i can add more storage if needed, and being on little cards they can be pulled out.
When i've finished watching the movies on the laptop, i just hook up an external usb drive and replace the movies on the eee.
I have a set of usb drives (totaling several terabytes) at home with various data files, i don't need access to everything all of the time.
Solid state is perfect for me, it's quiet and low power, and won't get damaged by sudden jolts etc...
So put the hard drive in an external case, and only connect it up when you need to...
I always found truetype fonts sucked period, and the adobe type1 fonts seemed to render better, especially when printed.
And how do you determine that new versions are available and obtain them?
All i've seen of MSI is files available to download, no repository like system for updating them.
The point is that you need to go and manually download the updates, even if once downloaded you can push them out to all your machines at once.
The ability to push them out across your network automatically is assumed to be a given, and yes unix variants have had methods of doing that for years.
More importantly...
Kids will break and/or steal machines (or their components which are smaller and easier to hide), using worthless computers (old machines make great thin clients on the cheap) or thin clients which are useless without their server reduces the likelihood and cost of theft.
MS makes it mandatory to pay for the software and the lowest level of support wether you need it or not, and charges you extra for better support. I don't think you get any guarantees with their low level support either.
OpenOffice provides choices, everything is optional, you can buy a supported package with a similar level of support and it's still cheaper than MS (eg staroffice, or bundled as part of a supported linux distro), or you can get an unsupported package that's free.
Not everyone wants support, as a slashdot story a few weeks ago pointed out, larger organizations who have their own competent staff are moving more towards free linux distributions instead of paid ones as it's cheaper. If those organizations were using MS they would be paying for low level support they will never use.
And what level of support do you get with the software, and how often is it used?
Open source developers and distributors will also supply paid support, but you pay *only* for the support and not the software. Most organisations have their own internal staff and very rarely make use of vendor support for software thus paying for it is often a waste, there was even a slashdot story a few weeks ago about how free distributions are gaining popularity in corporations because of the lower cost.
merde!
Any third party app installed on windows needs to be updated seperately... A linux distro on the other hand will typically supply all the apps you're going to require and update them al centrally.
As for all the myriad of possible distros, you just standardise on a single distro across the board and use the apps supported by the distributor.
The problem of incompatible versions happens on windows too, and is often worse, even microsoft apps can have incompatibilities with each other and as soon as you throw third party apps into the mix the problem gets much worse, but the apps supported as part of a linux distro will typically be tested fairly well together. Also since the linux apps are far more likely to use documented formats, the chance of third party apps working with them is higher too.
Yes, and because the CPUs are so slow, you could just cluster the laptops that the batteries came from and get better performance from the same size suitcase.
Dont forget the power, the space cube requires a power source... while the eee does too long term, it can run for a length of time on it's battery.
Document the hardware, provide details of how it works, how to control it and how to read data from it..
Provide a few small programs that acquire data and output them in standard formats (as you pointed out, text).
Don't try to be too fancy, provide good functional and open tools that other people can build on. Depending how niche your product is, third parties may write software to work with it, or the customers may have especially custom requirements that aren't served by the bundled software anyway.
Very few people will complain about bugs anymore, microsoft has convinced them that bugs are normal and to be expected, and that you have to try and work around them...
People used to complain, but years of getting no sensible response has worn them down.
I had a family member who used to work with these kind of measuring machines...
He would often complain about how the old but functional machines would be replaced with fancy computer controlled ones, where the software would be extremely limited and often horrendously buggy.