"Which planets in Star Wars (just the movies, not counting novels) other than Tatooine are deserts? "
Heh, I bet he didnt realize that the 'desert scenes' in Episodes 1, 4, and 6 were all the same planet. When I was a little kid, I was kind of confused about that too.
Interesting note: Anybody remember the desert in the X-Files movie? It was called Tautoine, or something like that. Heh I think I was the only person in the theater who caught that.
"16. RoboCop Duh. If this is here why not Predator? This is simply an action film with sci-fi as a backdrop."
Sorry man, if you saw Robocop and thought it was only an action flick, then you really didnt watch it.
From a scifi point of view, Robocop was a hell of a lot more interesting than just an 'action movie with sci-fi as a backdrop.' There was a lot of corporate satire in it too. If you watch Robocop today (particularly the X-rated Director's Edition...), you'll sit there and think 'man... Microsoft could really turn into a company like OCP'. Considering this movie was out in 87, Id say the movie was well ahead of its time.
What cracked me up most about Robocop was the ED-209 'beta' unit that never really worked right. (remind anybody of MS yet?) This company was ready to release these heavily armed and buggy machines into the GENERAL PUBLIC to fight crime! Can you imagine getting gunned down by a robot for jaywalking because of a glitch?
Even Robocop 2 (not nearly as good as the first) expanded on the idea of one corporation soaking up way too much power. The basic plot of the second movie was that OCP was going to build their own City where 'Old Detroit' once stood and keep the government out. Again, for a movie that came out in the late 80s / early 90s, it is eerily familiar to what is going on with corporations today.
Lets not forget the journey of a cyborg returning to humanity. It was interesting watching how Murphy's brain wouldn't let him be a robot. I remember when I was a kid I thought itd be cool to be cyborgified like Alex Murphy was. Robocop, though, changed my mind about that. It gave me an idea of what a true living hell that would be.
For an 'action film with a scifi backdrop', it sure did make me think about my own future.
I see what you are saying, but I do not agree with you.
Even if MS does make this machine you describe, there is still the matter of getting people to buy it. Its not like when Gateway sells a computer and MS says 'sell Windows with it, or ELSE'. Most people will just say 'not interested' for the reasons I described in my previous post. MS cant force an MS brand PC into my home. The only way they can get me or anybody else to buy one is if they can convince me that it is lots better than what I already have today.
A television is a crappy place to do your computing from. Those of us used to our 1600 by 1200 dual monitor setup arent going to be all woopy about using a television to browse Slashdot with. If an MS brand proprietary PC comes along, how well could it possibly sell? I mean, look at the iMac. It does all the right things, but it is still a Mac. It hasn't changed many people's minds about the advantages of a proprietary machine.
I have no doubt MS will dabble in that market at some point, but I think itll take a really long time for them to have any power with it.
But where is the proof that MS intends to do anything besides play games on this machine? I realize the next one down the road might be 'fancier', but MS is going to be in for a shock if they try to release a game console that tries to be more than just a game console. There have been game consoles in the past that nobody has heard of because they tried to be movie players, or internet machines, and so on. For some reason, it just doesnt work.
One major problem is price. Once a game machine reaches past the $200 mark, it is really hard to convince mom and dad to buy one. How many of us geeks here with our own income would say "Hmmm.. Im gonna buy this to do work with"? I dont think a lot of us would.
The alternative strategy would be for MS to make a new set top box that does something like Tivo, but IM having a hard time envisioning that selling very well right away. I can imagine buying a Tivo (which may happen before too long...), but I cant imagine buying a Game machine and then wanting to do Tivo stuff on it.
Hmm I dunno, even if MS does attempt to make their own platform to make their money on, it'll be a huge challenge for them to turn it into a worthwhile business. Im not saying this because I dont believe MS can do it, Im saying this because lots of other companies have tried.
Am I the only one that finds the comparisons to CD burners a bit lacking in perspective? For one thing, its not like they are taking a current CD and stacking it vertically until it can hold 100GB. Instead, they're going to increase the density and add a few layers to it. More density = more bits per disc rotation. A 24x CD Burner would burn 3.6MB a second, but a DVD at the same rotation would be like 3.6MB x 8 because the density is higher.
What Im saying is that a single layer version of one of these disks would get filled just as quickly as itd take to fill a CD (huge leap in the amount of data, though...), it might take twice as long if it has 2 layers.. and so on. Who knows, it depends on how the burning technology works.
My point is that the data rate of a CD is going to be incredibly slow compared to the data rate of one of these disks as long as the data density is higher. So stop comparing it to CD Burners. It is sort of like saying that an airplane would be many times slower than a car because it's so much heavier.
"I just bought a 120GB IDE drive for $125. Tell me why it is so impressive that there is now a 100GB optical drive. Yeah, I know, optical is cool - now tell me again why I should care about this? "
Why dont you bring your hard drive over to my house so I can copy your music collection? Oh wait, that'd require shutting down my computer, taking a hard drive out, plugging yours in, and then hoping itll boot again. Maybe if you had a removable disk we'd be able to share our data.
"but for personal use, I wonder what good 100 Gig is good for except having a HUGE music collection.
I have a use for these discs that I see growing in popularity: PC based PVRs.
I have a home-brew PVR at home that I built with an old PC and a Hauppage WinTV card and a program called SnapStream (www.snapstream.com). I use it to capture my favorite shows so I can watch them later.
The reason Im going with the PC approach vs the Tivo approach is that I want to watch an entire series in order, so I start recording the series from the point its at now, and then when the show starts from the beginning thats when I start watching. To do this, I need LOTS of storage. I presently have 2 80 gig drives, but Im concerned because they are nearly full and I dont want to use CDs to back them up, itll take too long.
If I had 100 gig disks to store these shows on, that'd prepare me for when HDTV becomes successful. I would SO love to capture these shows at 1920p and keep them around.:)
Since the data is volmetric, it seems like scratches on the disk wouldnt be that bad of a problem. I am by no means educated on this media (in other words, dont take me too seriously...) but if they are using some form of stereo-scopic laser in order to read the data, its possible the laser could move past the scratch and still get at its data.
The SNES didnt lose to the Genesis. The Genesis had a different market focus. It had more sports games, whereas the SNES seemed to pretty much keep away from that market until really late in the game. The Genesis was able to hold on to a healthy market share, but in the end the SNES was the machine to have.
Before you argue with me about it, consider Sega's attempts to get ahead of Nintendo: Sega CD, 32X, Nomad, and their incredibly expensive SuperFX Clone.
Sega's biggest failing was that their in-house games, though high quality, weren't as exciting as Nintendo's. What was the difference between Sonic 1 and 2? About a year. What was the difference between Super Mario World 1 and 2? Day and night. Sega didn't have a whole lot of incentive to keep people coming back to their machines.
Heh you know what's funny? I damn near posted almost the exact same thing, except like 5 other people did.
It kind of reminds me of a Star Trek convention I went to (the ONLY one I ever went to...) where they had a costume contest. 249 out of 250 people the day before said 'I bet Ill be the only Klingon there!'
This is interesting, my choices werent checked. I may have one little difference though, Im set as 'govt/military'. That is the only thing I can think of that would cause them to not change mine...
" isn't one of the selling points of Itanium its backward i386 compatibility?"
If I remember clearly, the 386 instructions are interpreted instead of being on the chip. That means that those instructions will execute alot slower. It would work, but it wouldnt work well. Its nice because you could transition to IA 64 now and wait for the new software to arrive.
Personally, I dont think that selling point is that worthwhile, but Ill let Intel do their marketing without me.
I imagine the reason they dont is because if you go to Hotmail with Opera, then you get a message saying something along the lines of 'This browser wont work, T.S.'.
On Windows, Opera beats the hell out of IE even with the 'bloat' that you seem to think taints it. I totally enjoy using it, but I do have issues with its stability. Oh well, maybe in version 7...
Actually, ASP is a server side scripting language. Opera doesnt interpret.ASP, the webserver does. If a site using ASP (an MS technology btw...) doesnt render correctly on your machine, its not Opera's fault, it is the site developer's.
One thing that might help is to change how Opera identifies itself. On the version I have, it defaults to IE 5, when I have a problem I switch it to Netscape. I occasionally have good results. The reason for this is sometimes an ASP or PHP site will detect your browser and alter its content based on that.
"With rumors of the PS3 and it's possibility of existing in 1Q 2003..."
Um no, it will NOT exist in 2003. It will, at the earliest, show up in 2005. (2006 is far more concievable) Sony would drive themselves out of business if they were to introduce a new system this soon.
Also, Id hardly describe the Nintendo 64 as a nightmare. It had tons of totally kick ass titles. The Playstation had tons of CRAP. It had its share of cool games, dont get me wrong, but it did not have a single Miyamoto quality game.
The XBOX has a very good chance, mainly because they have a company that will stick with it. The point of competing in the video games market is to make tons of money, not to be number 1. Sony could end up being in more homes than MS, but that doesnt mean it wouldnt be worth MS's while.
What MS needs to do, though, is create a spinoff game company dedicated to making Nintendo-Quality game titles in house and exclusive to the XBOX. The list of games for the machine needs to distinguish the system, vs. being a 'see, we have that game too!' system. Think about it. If MS makes kick ass games only on their own system, then the difference between $200 and $300 isnt as big if you know you are going to be well supported.
As for Nintendo, I doubt they are dropping the price for another few months. They dont need to. The GameCube stands on its own. If the other machines have to cut their price to stay in competition, then it means that Nintendo is doing very well for themselves.
Actually, if you had read my post, youd see that I wasnt defending MS. I was defending 'innocent until proven guilty'. You might have noticed that if you werent so out for MS's blood.
"...because it's one of their execs openly spouting off like that when he SHOULD have kept his mouth shut "
Umm his job as an executive is to come up with ideas on how to stay in business. Contraversial? Oh yeah! But no proof has been provided showing that any crime has been committed. Frankly, the only reason its interesting to/. is because people love to hate MS. Yadda yadda yadda.
They really should provide evidence instead of trying to propaganda MS to death.
'MS told Gateway not to sell computers without Windows' -- that is evidence.
'Somebody at MS said they shouldnt allow Gateway to sell computers without Windows' -- not a crime. Free speech. Expression of ideas. No proven illegal action.
I know Ill probably get modded down for this. So just to be clear, Im not saying MS isnt doing anything wrong, IM saying that *this particular piece of 'evidence'* is not very interesting. Its sad that they're using stuff like this to prove intentions instead of using facts to prove guilt.
"The battle will be pretty much over when Red Hat is supporting OpenBSD desktops."
I honestly think that any flavor of Linux's biggest hurdle is it's dependence on the command prompt. I don't mean that comment to sound like I'm trolling, that's just how I feel it is. The latest version of Redhat I saw was close to it, and I've had people tell me SuSe and Mandrake are really good too. So who knows, maybe if Gateway or Compaq or somebody would start shipping with those, we'd see more adoption.
Once it's up and running, it wouldn't take much to turn Linux into a general computing device that never breaks. It just needs a little more fine tuning to that respect, i.e. simpler driver installation etc.
"Your point about laptops is well taken. I guess the really big problem with being able to build a laptop is that in order to get a modular design (with, say, replaceable video and sound cards) you get a much larger form factor...."
I've been thinking about that, and I'm not so sure it'd be that bad. I think the reason that it's not happening is that it gives the laptop manufacturer total control over what they're building. But if you think about it, they still have to conform to some specs, like the size of the screen, the mobo, and so on...
It seems to me that it wouldn't be hard to have generic mobos made with generic cases. Unfortunately, I don't think that replacable video card would be possible without a new mobo... but that's okay! It'd be really nice to buy one Laptop case, one screen, and replace the mobo every couple of years for about $1,000.
I can sympathize with your complaint about trackball. I'm not a trackball user, but I adamantly hate the glidepoint. I live the eraser tip thing, but I can't stand having both. I always bump that stupid pad and move my mouse heh.
Somebody out there will eventually discover they can build laptop parts and give people the ability to build their own. I look forward to that day. Until then, IBM, Sony, Dell, and Toshiba control my fate as a laptop owner. That bothers me a hell of a lot more than MS does. (Altho MS IS part of the reason that all those manufacturers annoy me...)
"Point 3: In all my years of using the various flavors of Windows, (95,98,ME(eugh), XP, Win2K, NT, ) I've seen quite a few differences between the file managers, and some more annoying than others."
I've seen additions, but not necessarily differences. (Although I suppose an addition is technically a difference, I really mean that if you do something in Win95, more often than not you can do it in 2k also.) I'm a sysadmin here, and there are a couple of Win95 boxes floating around I have to muck with sometimes. When it comes to file operations, it's all basically the same, but Win95 is missing some features Win2k (my primary OS) has. One of the most computer illterate people I know recently went from Win95 to Windows 2000, she had very few questions to ask me. None of them had to do with how the file manager worked. (I'm not the definitive voice here, but at least now you know where I come from.:))
"Point 4: Agreed also, but a lot of stuff on it has been changed and moved around. Plus it gets slower with each new version."
Definitely. I thought about this after I posted that comment. It's a pain in the butt for a Windows 2000 user to tell a Windows NT user how to set their hard drive to DMA mode...
Thanks for the heads up on OfficeXP. I thought MS had finally decided on a good.DOC format, but I'm still on O2k. I appreciate you notifying me of this, I need to make sure we stick with O2k.:)
Slashdot Mirror
"Which planets in Star Wars (just the movies, not counting novels) other than Tatooine are deserts? "
Heh, I bet he didnt realize that the 'desert scenes' in Episodes 1, 4, and 6 were all the same planet. When I was a little kid, I was kind of confused about that too.
Interesting note: Anybody remember the desert in the X-Files movie? It was called Tautoine, or something like that. Heh I think I was the only person in the theater who caught that.
"16. RoboCop
Duh. If this is here why not Predator? This is simply an action film with sci-fi as a backdrop."
Sorry man, if you saw Robocop and thought it was only an action flick, then you really didnt watch it.
From a scifi point of view, Robocop was a hell of a lot more interesting than just an 'action movie with sci-fi as a backdrop.' There was a lot of corporate satire in it too. If you watch Robocop today (particularly the X-rated Director's Edition...), you'll sit there and think 'man... Microsoft could really turn into a company like OCP'. Considering this movie was out in 87, Id say the movie was well ahead of its time.
What cracked me up most about Robocop was the ED-209 'beta' unit that never really worked right. (remind anybody of MS yet?) This company was ready to release these heavily armed and buggy machines into the GENERAL PUBLIC to fight crime! Can you imagine getting gunned down by a robot for jaywalking because of a glitch?
Even Robocop 2 (not nearly as good as the first) expanded on the idea of one corporation soaking up way too much power. The basic plot of the second movie was that OCP was going to build their own City where 'Old Detroit' once stood and keep the government out. Again, for a movie that came out in the late 80s / early 90s, it is eerily familiar to what is going on with corporations today.
Lets not forget the journey of a cyborg returning to humanity. It was interesting watching how Murphy's brain wouldn't let him be a robot. I remember when I was a kid I thought itd be cool to be cyborgified like Alex Murphy was. Robocop, though, changed my mind about that. It gave me an idea of what a true living hell that would be.
For an 'action film with a scifi backdrop', it sure did make me think about my own future.
I see what you are saying, but I do not agree with you.
Even if MS does make this machine you describe, there is still the matter of getting people to buy it. Its not like when Gateway sells a computer and MS says 'sell Windows with it, or ELSE'. Most people will just say 'not interested' for the reasons I described in my previous post. MS cant force an MS brand PC into my home. The only way they can get me or anybody else to buy one is if they can convince me that it is lots better than what I already have today.
A television is a crappy place to do your computing from. Those of us used to our 1600 by 1200 dual monitor setup arent going to be all woopy about using a television to browse Slashdot with. If an MS brand proprietary PC comes along, how well could it possibly sell? I mean, look at the iMac. It does all the right things, but it is still a Mac. It hasn't changed many people's minds about the advantages of a proprietary machine.
I have no doubt MS will dabble in that market at some point, but I think itll take a really long time for them to have any power with it.
Interesting perspective. :)
But where is the proof that MS intends to do anything besides play games on this machine? I realize the next one down the road might be 'fancier', but MS is going to be in for a shock if they try to release a game console that tries to be more than just a game console. There have been game consoles in the past that nobody has heard of because they tried to be movie players, or internet machines, and so on. For some reason, it just doesnt work.
One major problem is price. Once a game machine reaches past the $200 mark, it is really hard to convince mom and dad to buy one. How many of us geeks here with our own income would say "Hmmm.. Im gonna buy this to do work with"? I dont think a lot of us would.
The alternative strategy would be for MS to make a new set top box that does something like Tivo, but IM having a hard time envisioning that selling very well right away. I can imagine buying a Tivo (which may happen before too long...), but I cant imagine buying a Game machine and then wanting to do Tivo stuff on it.
Hmm I dunno, even if MS does attempt to make their own platform to make their money on, it'll be a huge challenge for them to turn it into a worthwhile business. Im not saying this because I dont believe MS can do it, Im saying this because lots of other companies have tried.
Am I the only one that finds the comparisons to CD burners a bit lacking in perspective? For one thing, its not like they are taking a current CD and stacking it vertically until it can hold 100GB. Instead, they're going to increase the density and add a few layers to it. More density = more bits per disc rotation. A 24x CD Burner would burn 3.6MB a second, but a DVD at the same rotation would be like 3.6MB x 8 because the density is higher.
What Im saying is that a single layer version of one of these disks would get filled just as quickly as itd take to fill a CD (huge leap in the amount of data, though...), it might take twice as long if it has 2 layers.. and so on. Who knows, it depends on how the burning technology works.
My point is that the data rate of a CD is going to be incredibly slow compared to the data rate of one of these disks as long as the data density is higher. So stop comparing it to CD Burners. It is sort of like saying that an airplane would be many times slower than a car because it's so much heavier.
"I just bought a 120GB IDE drive for $125. Tell me why it is so impressive that there is now a 100GB optical drive. Yeah, I know, optical is cool - now tell me again why I should care about this? "
Why dont you bring your hard drive over to my house so I can copy your music collection? Oh wait, that'd require shutting down my computer, taking a hard drive out, plugging yours in, and then hoping itll boot again. Maybe if you had a removable disk we'd be able to share our data.
"but for personal use, I wonder what good 100 Gig is good for except having a HUGE music collection.
:)
I have a use for these discs that I see growing in popularity: PC based PVRs.
I have a home-brew PVR at home that I built with an old PC and a Hauppage WinTV card and a program called SnapStream (www.snapstream.com). I use it to capture my favorite shows so I can watch them later.
The reason Im going with the PC approach vs the Tivo approach is that I want to watch an entire series in order, so I start recording the series from the point its at now, and then when the show starts from the beginning thats when I start watching. To do this, I need LOTS of storage. I presently have 2 80 gig drives, but Im concerned because they are nearly full and I dont want to use CDs to back them up, itll take too long.
If I had 100 gig disks to store these shows on, that'd prepare me for when HDTV becomes successful. I would SO love to capture these shows at 1920p and keep them around.
Since the data is volmetric, it seems like scratches on the disk wouldnt be that bad of a problem. I am by no means educated on this media (in other words, dont take me too seriously...) but if they are using some form of stereo-scopic laser in order to read the data, its possible the laser could move past the scratch and still get at its data.
Anybody know if Im right?
The SNES didnt lose to the Genesis. The Genesis had a different market focus. It had more sports games, whereas the SNES seemed to pretty much keep away from that market until really late in the game. The Genesis was able to hold on to a healthy market share, but in the end the SNES was the machine to have.
Before you argue with me about it, consider Sega's attempts to get ahead of Nintendo: Sega CD, 32X, Nomad, and their incredibly expensive SuperFX Clone.
Sega's biggest failing was that their in-house games, though high quality, weren't as exciting as Nintendo's. What was the difference between Sonic 1 and 2? About a year. What was the difference between Super Mario World 1 and 2? Day and night. Sega didn't have a whole lot of incentive to keep people coming back to their machines.
Heh you know what's funny? I damn near posted almost the exact same thing, except like 5 other people did.
It kind of reminds me of a Star Trek convention I went to (the ONLY one I ever went to...) where they had a costume contest. 249 out of 250 people the day before said 'I bet Ill be the only Klingon there!'
Heh itd also be ironic if the death of the Lone Gunman was a government coverup.
Sorry man, but Homer Simpson gave them new life. "Who'd have thunk that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalkers father?"
If the Simpsons made a reference to it, it's still open to being quoted.
Im getting really tired of Slashdot spoiling it in the headlines.
This is interesting, my choices werent checked. I may have one little difference though, Im set as 'govt/military'. That is the only thing I can think of that would cause them to not change mine...
" isn't one of the selling points of Itanium its backward i386 compatibility?"
If I remember clearly, the 386 instructions are interpreted instead of being on the chip. That means that those instructions will execute alot slower. It would work, but it wouldnt work well. Its nice because you could transition to IA 64 now and wait for the new software to arrive.
Personally, I dont think that selling point is that worthwhile, but Ill let Intel do their marketing without me.
"Intel can't stick with IA64 now that AMD is rolling out their 64bit chips. They'd just fall too far behind the curve."
Yeah, I mean its not like Intel knows how to develop chips or stay in business or anything.
I imagine the reason they dont is because if you go to Hotmail with Opera, then you get a message saying something along the lines of 'This browser wont work, T.S.'.
*kicks MS*
Man, I havent run a 386 in like 10 years! ;)
On Windows, Opera beats the hell out of IE even with the 'bloat' that you seem to think taints it. I totally enjoy using it, but I do have issues with its stability. Oh well, maybe in version 7...
Actually, ASP is a server side scripting language. Opera doesnt interpret .ASP, the webserver does. If a site using ASP (an MS technology btw...) doesnt render correctly on your machine, its not Opera's fault, it is the site developer's.
:)
One thing that might help is to change how Opera identifies itself. On the version I have, it defaults to IE 5, when I have a problem I switch it to Netscape. I occasionally have good results. The reason for this is sometimes an ASP or PHP site will detect your browser and alter its content based on that.
FYI
"With rumors of the PS3 and it's possibility of existing in 1Q 2003..."
Um no, it will NOT exist in 2003. It will, at the earliest, show up in 2005. (2006 is far more concievable) Sony would drive themselves out of business if they were to introduce a new system this soon.
Also, Id hardly describe the Nintendo 64 as a nightmare. It had tons of totally kick ass titles. The Playstation had tons of CRAP. It had its share of cool games, dont get me wrong, but it did not have a single Miyamoto quality game.
The XBOX has a very good chance, mainly because they have a company that will stick with it. The point of competing in the video games market is to make tons of money, not to be number 1. Sony could end up being in more homes than MS, but that doesnt mean it wouldnt be worth MS's while.
What MS needs to do, though, is create a spinoff game company dedicated to making Nintendo-Quality game titles in house and exclusive to the XBOX. The list of games for the machine needs to distinguish the system, vs. being a 'see, we have that game too!' system. Think about it. If MS makes kick ass games only on their own system, then the difference between $200 and $300 isnt as big if you know you are going to be well supported.
As for Nintendo, I doubt they are dropping the price for another few months. They dont need to. The GameCube stands on its own. If the other machines have to cut their price to stay in competition, then it means that Nintendo is doing very well for themselves.
"Why are you defending Microsoft?"
Actually, if you had read my post, youd see that I wasnt defending MS. I was defending 'innocent until proven guilty'. You might have noticed that if you werent so out for MS's blood.
"...because it's one of their execs openly spouting off like that when he SHOULD have kept his mouth shut "
/. is because people love to hate MS. Yadda yadda yadda.
Umm his job as an executive is to come up with ideas on how to stay in business. Contraversial? Oh yeah! But no proof has been provided showing that any crime has been committed. Frankly, the only reason its interesting to
They really should provide evidence instead of trying to propaganda MS to death.
'MS told Gateway not to sell computers without Windows' -- that is evidence.
'Somebody at MS said they shouldnt allow Gateway to sell computers without Windows' -- not a crime. Free speech. Expression of ideas. No proven illegal action.
I know Ill probably get modded down for this. So just to be clear, Im not saying MS isnt doing anything wrong, IM saying that *this particular piece of 'evidence'* is not very interesting. Its sad that they're using stuff like this to prove intentions instead of using facts to prove guilt.
"The battle will be pretty much over when Red Hat is supporting OpenBSD desktops."
I honestly think that any flavor of Linux's biggest hurdle is it's dependence on the command prompt. I don't mean that comment to sound like I'm trolling, that's just how I feel it is. The latest version of Redhat I saw was close to it, and I've had people tell me SuSe and Mandrake are really good too. So who knows, maybe if Gateway or Compaq or somebody would start shipping with those, we'd see more adoption.
Once it's up and running, it wouldn't take much to turn Linux into a general computing device that never breaks. It just needs a little more fine tuning to that respect, i.e. simpler driver installation etc.
"Your point about laptops is well taken. I guess the really big problem with being able to build a laptop is that in order to get a modular design (with, say, replaceable video and sound cards) you get a much larger form factor...."
I've been thinking about that, and I'm not so sure it'd be that bad. I think the reason that it's not happening is that it gives the laptop manufacturer total control over what they're building. But if you think about it, they still have to conform to some specs, like the size of the screen, the mobo, and so on...
It seems to me that it wouldn't be hard to have generic mobos made with generic cases. Unfortunately, I don't think that replacable video card would be possible without a new mobo... but that's okay! It'd be really nice to buy one Laptop case, one screen, and replace the mobo every couple of years for about $1,000.
I can sympathize with your complaint about trackball. I'm not a trackball user, but I adamantly hate the glidepoint. I live the eraser tip thing, but I can't stand having both. I always bump that stupid pad and move my mouse heh.
Somebody out there will eventually discover they can build laptop parts and give people the ability to build their own. I look forward to that day. Until then, IBM, Sony, Dell, and Toshiba control my fate as a laptop owner. That bothers me a hell of a lot more than MS does. (Altho MS IS part of the reason that all those manufacturers annoy me...)
"Point 3: In all my years of using the various flavors of Windows, (95,98,ME(eugh), XP, Win2K, NT, ) I've seen quite a few differences between the file managers, and some more annoying than others."
:))
.DOC format, but I'm still on O2k. I appreciate you notifying me of this, I need to make sure we stick with O2k. :)
I've seen additions, but not necessarily differences. (Although I suppose an addition is technically a difference, I really mean that if you do something in Win95, more often than not you can do it in 2k also.) I'm a sysadmin here, and there are a couple of Win95 boxes floating around I have to muck with sometimes. When it comes to file operations, it's all basically the same, but Win95 is missing some features Win2k (my primary OS) has. One of the most computer illterate people I know recently went from Win95 to Windows 2000, she had very few questions to ask me. None of them had to do with how the file manager worked. (I'm not the definitive voice here, but at least now you know where I come from.
"Point 4: Agreed also, but a lot of stuff on it has been changed and moved around. Plus it gets slower with each new version."
Definitely. I thought about this after I posted that comment. It's a pain in the butt for a Windows 2000 user to tell a Windows NT user how to set their hard drive to DMA mode...
Thanks for the heads up on OfficeXP. I thought MS had finally decided on a good