My dad insisted using it on native resolution (1600x1200) and 96dpi. I had more trouble at reading the screen than he did... old hawk:-P
I think we just need to agree to disagree. I don't think that current IGPs fail when using basic modern programs (Meaning, Aero/Compiz. I don't know of any "basic" program requiring a 3D graphics card except those) and do "high resolution" (Which I will define now as Full HD, which is the most common you'll find) output. In the thread you'll find plenty people defending that stance.
You prefer non IGP? Fair enough. I don't need it and I'd rather spend the saved money on something that has value to me.
I'd gladly try out Shaker on my 01/2007 laptop and get back to you.... If you want, I just won't spend money on it... I'd be very surprised if it didn't work adequately.
We're on slashdot. I am not surprised in any way that I'll find people who need extra power.
At work, I do have a better machine even that on todays standards it's still low end (Core2Duo, 4GB RAM, NVidia Quadro, got it new when I started here 2 years ago), but I also run Linux and not Windows. That makes a world in resource usage. Yes, and I do run a few VMs too. Graphics usage, however, limit themselves to compiz and the occasional Flash Game.
For non-work, well, I do basically the same... Which is run Linux and sometimes a few VMs. Sure with the 2GB RAM, I have in my personal laptop, I have to limit myself to two VMs, but it works fine. I played (and finished) World Of Goo on that machine, worked fine, but that's really about the maximum needs in the graphics department.
I also admit that I am a dumpster diver by passion and have fun at making my hardware last as much as possible saving money in the long run. Thing is, I can do exactly what you do: put myself in a coffee shop and do whatever I'd do at home. Difference is that we have different usage patterns. Now, the question here is: which usage pattern of us to is closer to the usage pattern of the normal user. I don't know...
I hope you saw the post about me admitting being wrong about the fact that the iMacs graphics card is not an IGP. I really thought it was, because I didn't realize it had dedicated memory.
Yes, I know, someone admitting on slashdot he's wrong... The riders on the apocalypse are in sight.
I agree completely... IF you need the power, THEN you need to go that way. You see, that's where all these anti IGP people are erring. Those 50€ more, are 50€ I'd rather spend on something that important to me. You see, why would I spend 50€ more for something I will not use... ever... I don't game, the IGP of a laptop is usually matched to its screen size for normal usage, and desktop effects (if you really want any) can be done with modern entry-level-IGPs.
Of course, you are talking a desktop... when you have the extra flexibility. Start off with the IGP and if you really do discover that it's not enough, plunk down 50€ and be done with it... Or 500€, doesn't matter as you will be buying a PCIe card anyway and you can (somehow) justify spending money on the performance
but it's nice to be able to support many open windows.
I'm confused. In what way does the number of windows you can have open on your desktop relates to the hardware capacities of your graphics card?!? The only way I see is resolution, and modern IGP run high resolutions quite fine.
Okay, I see... IGP means to you that it has dedicated memory, according to wikipedia, that's even correct.
Personally, we bought that iMac mainly for surf-duty, and I never intensively studied its graphics capacities. I am surprised to learn it has its own graphics memory. Good, I'm wrong on that... Still, I doubt that a ATI Radeon HD 4200 (which definitely is an integrated graphics chipset) couldn't drive a 256x1600 screen... Yup, it can... : "Primary supports 18-, 24-, and 30-bit digital displays at all resolutions up to 1920x1200 (single-link DVI) or 2560x1600 (dual-link DVI) "
You mean, I can go out and buy a new graphics card for my wifes iMac? As in an NVidia PCIe based, one? Integrated graphics mean just that: integrated in the motherboard. I just clicked on the link you gave, chose the 27" model for buying and expected to get a presented with a choice of ATI... Well, it doesn't... There is no choice, which suggests heavily that it isn't some daughterboard, but integrated on the motherboard.... IPG... Case closed.
Yes, my father had one of these too. 4:3 relation, see.. Try even finding that these days. I was looking at the consumer end (and I have been saying that from the beginning) Incidentally, I am responsible for buying laptops at my company and yes, we go with Dell. The Latitude series, which is their business range. Let me check, we want a typical 15" or so? Hmmm, lessee... E6520 (which is one of the biggest models), highest resolution available: 1920x1080. I'm not sure, you realize that, but a 1920x1080 is just 8% larger than that 1600x1200 our dads had years ago and are unfindable now. (Never mind that vertical space is worth much more while working that horizontal space)
I truly ask you where those 2560x1600 laptops you seem to find, because I most certainly don't find anything beyond 1920x1200.... And, again: modern day IGPs drive those just fine for desktop usage!
Basically your gripe is with the 945GM, which is one of the worst from Intel... and only because of that you're not even considering that the newer offerings (todays IGPs) or that Non-Intel offerings of the day may be adequate. Your information on integrated graphics is severely out of date and tainted by one of the worst graphics chipset in existence.
The high resolutions you talk about are absolutely non-typical on the range of laptops that do have integrated graphics. Go to your local geek provider and check. Laptops seem to hover around 1366x768. Typical stand alone screen is 1920x1080, simply because of economies of scale on HDTVs. My moms computer (Single core AMD Athlon 64 2800+, 2GB RAM, and.... a Geforce 4400MX, which is for all intents and purposes not better than any IGP these days) drives a 23" 1920x1080 screen just fine.
In the consumer-end, the standalone screens I see most are 1920x1080 and 1440x900. That's for NEW systems or people who replaced a screen that crapped out.
More to the point: my wifes iMac is powered by integrated graphics (pretty much everything from Apple is) and drives a 2560x1600 just fine... Incidentally, that resolution is the highest one I can find in my preferred online store at prices most consumers wouldn't spend. So, "start at around 1900x1200" sounds, let's just say a bit exaggerated.
Might it just be that your fathers laptop had other issues? It wouldn't be the first time that I see people complaining about something not working right and in the end its, either Windows that's really in a bad state, not enough RAM (A 2005 laptop? 512MB RAM... might be an issue, considering Windows XP SP3 pretty much requires 512MB RAM. Swapping takes an insane toll) or a failing harddisk. (Failing harddisk => I had that in my laptop... Ubuntu notified me about it... Replacing the HDD with another one, and suddenly the machine was very responsive again) Finally, even BIOS settings might influence it. In my laptop, there was a "Save Battery" option, disabled by default. I thought it was perhaps a good idea to turn it on. Turns out, it basically locked the CPU into 800MHz. Ooops!
I just checked. Shatter was released in 2010(!) for Windows. The Integrated graphics you mention were released in January 2006. Go and read my comment again: I said, older games on modern-day integrated graphics. I'm pretty sure Shatter will work perfectly fine on my wifes ATI Radeon HD 5750 (iMac bought in fall 2010)... which are the integrated graphics sold these days. Will Shatter work on my 2007 laptop? Can't say, because I can't find system requirements of Shatter. However, the ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 (which is crappy) runs Portal decently. Portal, however is a 2007 video game (Based on the Half-Life 2 engine, released in 2004).
You pretty much INVERTED my statement: use modern-day games on old integrated graphics.
I hope you see a problem with that...
Furthermore: nobody needs Aero... It's useless gimmics and the specs are insanely high for something compiz can do on a Gefore2 MX.
As for the high resolution comment: I've driven a 1280x1024 screen without a problem with my Asus EEE PC 701 4G. I fail to see how rendering a desktop is hard for those integrated graphics. Perhaps when running a GAME on those resolutions, but nobody in his right mind would do that. Back in the early days of graphics card, what interested you most was to know how much memory it had, because you could calculate how high resolution it would support. Those times are over. Integrated graphics drive two monitors at 1440x900 each just fine. I see that every day at work.
How long can one expect machine like that to last? A year? two maybe?
Heh.... Don't you think you just put your finger on the whole point? Computers are strong enough (most people really overestimate their real needs, and think they really do need that i7, if the Core2Duo would have overkill already.) and have been, for I dare to say, the last 6 years. I use today a machine I bought in january 2007 and it was one on sale, to get rid of it before the Vista release. So it was already bottom-line back then. It's purring along, doing exactly what it needs to do even now.
That's 4 years functional and no sign of stopping to work. My brother uses a dumpster sourced laptop, from around 2003. Works perfectly fine and unlike mine it doesn't heat up at all.
So there are two main reasons to buy computers these days: because you want to... or to replace a defective one. Unless a gamer (and other niche usages), the "want to" group doesn't seem to be very large. From a business perspective, making laptops fail earlier is a good business choice.
I realize that Integrated Graphics are sub-par, but to say they're useless for games unless you're a masochist (the "self" is redundant...), is a bit overstating it. Many of us non-gamers do like to play a game from time to time, but we don't want to spend ourself into bankruptcy. Guess, what? This means we buy older games (cheaper!), and from my experience today's integrated graphics (also cheaper!) handle older games perfectly fine.
For your Canon LiDE25... I have a Canon LiDE 20 and I use VueScan instead. Supported on OS X (Natively, the LiDE 20 is not supported by OS X), Windows (Never tried though) and Linux (Tried on Ubuntu 10.04, works fine). It supports an insane amount of scanners. My dads AGFA SnapScan 310 (SCSI) and his Minolta DImage (also SCSI) dia scanner work perfectly using it.
In all fairness, XSane worked fine with both the LiDE 20 and the SnapScan 310 (but not the Minolta Dimage), but the interface is... something to get used to.
It's also a good example how commercial software can work in the Linux world.
A question: how did you get TCP over USB to work on Linux? My mother in law has an all-in-one scanner. As a printer/scanner works fine directly connected to USB under Linux, but I have connected it to a print server so the other computers can also print. It uses JetDirect (port 9100) and works fine on all computers on the network. However, I never managed to get the scanning part to work. The print server supports USB-TCP, but I haven't found how to get it working under Ubuntu.
You'd think, eh? How many people even know that there is a VGA input on their TV? As you and I know, they should not use that, but use a DVI-HDMI cable. For that, however, they need to know that those are pin-compatible and you can get them for cheap. Heck, they probably don't even know what DVI or HDMI is. To them the connectors look different and thus they are incompatible. Try putting yourself in the mindset of someone who does not know the abbreviations.
Given your nick "geekoid", I can understand this is absolutely foreign to you.
Also, keep in mind that for many people a Monitor and a TV are two very different things. This is historical, as the older analog TVs don't interface well at all with PC-Devices at all. I know, I still have a 16:9 CRT TV and I'm not going to replace it unless it breaks. It cost too much money in 2003, just to replace it because it's not current. This outdated knowledge remains in the minds of people and as such they do not think it is possible.
For people who are more at home with tech (or grew up with it, but in my generation 30++, that's not really a given unless you had proto-geek parents), this is easy. My sister uses her TV connected to her computer and PS3 and that's it. It is never used to watch TV. My brother has a big screen TV and a PS3. However BOTH connected the PS3 originally with the cable that came with it, which was not a HDMI cable. Ooops. I bet that 80% of all PS3 consoles are not connected over HDMI! I informed them, bough them HDMI cables and "fixed" the problem for them, even though -of course- you don't really notice the problem in the first place.
As for your Pong Comment. I can't say for Pong, but for a Commodore 64, you needed to program your TV in such a way that a certain channel was set up so you could get the output of the C64. I'm also pretty sure that if you had a C64 back then, you were tech-inclined. It's a self-selected sample. These days, everyone buys consoles. In the days of Pong/C64, not so much.
No... Only the first instance of each (Not even sure of that... I have my doubts on Police Quest, for example) series were made. So, KQ1, SQ1 and LSL1 are those I know of.
MS Word destroyed entire documents (as in start from scratch because it no longer loads)
Yes, I've had that happen to me too. You want to know how to repair it? Open it in OpenOffice, save it, and then open it back in Microsoft Word. Tadaaaa!
This is not exclusive to Valve. It's true for pretty much all tech purchases.... If the dollar is weak, it's 1USD=1EUR... If the dollar is strong, it's 1USD=2EUR. The maths are simple, and we're getting screwed over. Be glad you don't live in Great Britain. They have it worse.
Been told RALink is Linux-Friendly. I booted it up in Ubuntu before installing 7, but I had it wired up and didn't think of checking. If I find time this weekend, I'll try to test it. The machine is still at my place, as I had some trouble installing a game (defective CD-Rom it seems)
The worst, I had was an Atheros based chip, but on all machines I had wireless problems with this worked. (Obviously, if I didn't have problems, it was supported) Granted, it was always on Ubuntu which make this stuff braindeadly easy. The other distribution I use regularly is Debian, but rarely on desktop/laptop computers.
Just to add in a little anecdote of mine. I recently upgraded my brothers PC, in the sense that we replaced motherboard/CPU and RAM. The rest stayed the same. As he now has 16GB RAM, we decided to shell out for Win7 Pro 64-bit instead of reusing the OEM XP license (which would be borderline in legality).
Anyway, that machine has a Linksys WMP54G (version 1.0) wireless PCI card. Silly me, expected it to work by default in Windows as the card was a bit older and my experience from XP was that "if it existed prior to release, there is a driver". Well, no.... *sigh*
Linksys website, no avail. Tried their customer support which said "Not Supported". Call me old-fashioned, but a NIC should be one of the things that is least-"obsoleteable". Luckily, I found a forum post (look for the post by "skinnypirate") that this particular card uses a RALink Chip and you can use their drivers.
Now, I freely admit I didn't try Linux on this machine... (Gaming machine) Perhaps it wouldn't work either... Who knows...
As for Win7 obsoleted scanners... Before throwing them out, consider the following first: VueScan (Not affiliated, just a very happy customer). It's an amazing little piece of software that seems to operate pretty much any scanner you throw at it. My dad has a SCSI Dia/Negative-Scanner with advanced functions for rewinding film and stuff like that. On Linux, XSane doesn't even detect it... VueScan sees it and all functions can be used. Same for my wifes cheap Canon LiDE20. Not supported on Mac OS X 10.6.x at all... VueScan sees it and it works perfectly. Old SCSI AGFA SnapScan 310? No problem... (XSane does this one too though.)
I've never used in on Windows though... Only on Linux and Mac OS X. I have no reason to believe that the quality of the software is less on Windows. You may argue that the software is more expensive than a new cheap scanner. True, but once you have the software, you'll never use another one ever again.
...and I'm wrong... The Exxx series seem to be non-64 bit. haven't seen those anywhere yet, but since they have been released in Fall 2010, they qualify as "new".
Slashdot Mirror
AC is the tool for killing Elephants though. linky
Shatter, not Shaker... Sorry.
My dad insisted using it on native resolution (1600x1200) and 96dpi. I had more trouble at reading the screen than he did... old hawk :-P
I think we just need to agree to disagree. I don't think that current IGPs fail when using basic modern programs (Meaning, Aero/Compiz. I don't know of any "basic" program requiring a 3D graphics card except those) and do "high resolution" (Which I will define now as Full HD, which is the most common you'll find) output. In the thread you'll find plenty people defending that stance.
You prefer non IGP? Fair enough. I don't need it and I'd rather spend the saved money on something that has value to me.
I'd gladly try out Shaker on my 01/2007 laptop and get back to you.... If you want, I just won't spend money on it... I'd be very surprised if it didn't work adequately.
We're on slashdot. I am not surprised in any way that I'll find people who need extra power.
At work, I do have a better machine even that on todays standards it's still low end (Core2Duo, 4GB RAM, NVidia Quadro, got it new when I started here 2 years ago), but I also run Linux and not Windows. That makes a world in resource usage. Yes, and I do run a few VMs too. Graphics usage, however, limit themselves to compiz and the occasional Flash Game.
For non-work, well, I do basically the same... Which is run Linux and sometimes a few VMs. Sure with the 2GB RAM, I have in my personal laptop, I have to limit myself to two VMs, but it works fine. I played (and finished) World Of Goo on that machine, worked fine, but that's really about the maximum needs in the graphics department.
I also admit that I am a dumpster diver by passion and have fun at making my hardware last as much as possible saving money in the long run. Thing is, I can do exactly what you do: put myself in a coffee shop and do whatever I'd do at home. Difference is that we have different usage patterns. Now, the question here is: which usage pattern of us to is closer to the usage pattern of the normal user. I don't know...
I hope you saw the post about me admitting being wrong about the fact that the iMacs graphics card is not an IGP. I really thought it was, because I didn't realize it had dedicated memory.
Yes, I know, someone admitting on slashdot he's wrong... The riders on the apocalypse are in sight.
I agree completely... IF you need the power, THEN you need to go that way. You see, that's where all these anti IGP people are erring. Those 50€ more, are 50€ I'd rather spend on something that important to me. You see, why would I spend 50€ more for something I will not use... ever... I don't game, the IGP of a laptop is usually matched to its screen size for normal usage, and desktop effects (if you really want any) can be done with modern entry-level-IGPs.
Of course, you are talking a desktop... when you have the extra flexibility. Start off with the IGP and if you really do discover that it's not enough, plunk down 50€ and be done with it... Or 500€, doesn't matter as you will be buying a PCIe card anyway and you can (somehow) justify spending money on the performance
I'm confused. In what way does the number of windows you can have open on your desktop relates to the hardware capacities of your graphics card?!? The only way I see is resolution, and modern IGP run high resolutions quite fine.
Okay, I see... IGP means to you that it has dedicated memory, according to wikipedia, that's even correct.
Personally, we bought that iMac mainly for surf-duty, and I never intensively studied its graphics capacities. I am surprised to learn it has its own graphics memory. Good, I'm wrong on that... Still, I doubt that a ATI Radeon HD 4200 (which definitely is an integrated graphics chipset) couldn't drive a 256x1600 screen... Yup, it can... : "Primary supports 18-, 24-, and 30-bit digital displays at all resolutions up to 1920x1200 (single-link DVI) or 2560x1600 (dual-link DVI) "
You mean, I can go out and buy a new graphics card for my wifes iMac? As in an NVidia PCIe based, one? Integrated graphics mean just that: integrated in the motherboard. I just clicked on the link you gave, chose the 27" model for buying and expected to get a presented with a choice of ATI... Well, it doesn't... There is no choice, which suggests heavily that it isn't some daughterboard, but integrated on the motherboard.... IPG... Case closed.
Yes, my father had one of these too. 4:3 relation, see.. Try even finding that these days. I was looking at the consumer end (and I have been saying that from the beginning) Incidentally, I am responsible for buying laptops at my company and yes, we go with Dell. The Latitude series, which is their business range. Let me check, we want a typical 15" or so? Hmmm, lessee... E6520 (which is one of the biggest models), highest resolution available: 1920x1080. I'm not sure, you realize that, but a 1920x1080 is just 8% larger than that 1600x1200 our dads had years ago and are unfindable now. (Never mind that vertical space is worth much more while working that horizontal space)
I truly ask you where those 2560x1600 laptops you seem to find, because I most certainly don't find anything beyond 1920x1200.... And, again: modern day IGPs drive those just fine for desktop usage!
Basically your gripe is with the 945GM, which is one of the worst from Intel... and only because of that you're not even considering that the newer offerings (todays IGPs) or that Non-Intel offerings of the day may be adequate. Your information on integrated graphics is severely out of date and tainted by one of the worst graphics chipset in existence.
The high resolutions you talk about are absolutely non-typical on the range of laptops that do have integrated graphics. Go to your local geek provider and check. Laptops seem to hover around 1366x768. Typical stand alone screen is 1920x1080, simply because of economies of scale on HDTVs. My moms computer (Single core AMD Athlon 64 2800+, 2GB RAM, and.... a Geforce 4400MX, which is for all intents and purposes not better than any IGP these days) drives a 23" 1920x1080 screen just fine.
In the consumer-end, the standalone screens I see most are 1920x1080 and 1440x900. That's for NEW systems or people who replaced a screen that crapped out.
More to the point: my wifes iMac is powered by integrated graphics (pretty much everything from Apple is) and drives a 2560x1600 just fine... Incidentally, that resolution is the highest one I can find in my preferred online store at prices most consumers wouldn't spend. So, "start at around 1900x1200" sounds, let's just say a bit exaggerated.
Might it just be that your fathers laptop had other issues? It wouldn't be the first time that I see people complaining about something not working right and in the end its, either Windows that's really in a bad state, not enough RAM (A 2005 laptop? 512MB RAM... might be an issue, considering Windows XP SP3 pretty much requires 512MB RAM. Swapping takes an insane toll) or a failing harddisk. (Failing harddisk => I had that in my laptop... Ubuntu notified me about it... Replacing the HDD with another one, and suddenly the machine was very responsive again) Finally, even BIOS settings might influence it. In my laptop, there was a "Save Battery" option, disabled by default. I thought it was perhaps a good idea to turn it on. Turns out, it basically locked the CPU into 800MHz. Ooops!
An Atom 330 with ION chipset (NVidia 9400M, aka integrated graphics) handles Full HD just fine.
Ehm...
I just checked. Shatter was released in 2010(!) for Windows. The Integrated graphics you mention were released in January 2006. Go and read my comment again: I said, older games on modern-day integrated graphics. I'm pretty sure Shatter will work perfectly fine on my wifes ATI Radeon HD 5750 (iMac bought in fall 2010)... which are the integrated graphics sold these days. Will Shatter work on my 2007 laptop? Can't say, because I can't find system requirements of Shatter. However, the ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 (which is crappy) runs Portal decently. Portal, however is a 2007 video game (Based on the Half-Life 2 engine, released in 2004).
You pretty much INVERTED my statement: use modern-day games on old integrated graphics.
I hope you see a problem with that...
Furthermore: nobody needs Aero... It's useless gimmics and the specs are insanely high for something compiz can do on a Gefore2 MX.
As for the high resolution comment: I've driven a 1280x1024 screen without a problem with my Asus EEE PC 701 4G. I fail to see how rendering a desktop is hard for those integrated graphics. Perhaps when running a GAME on those resolutions, but nobody in his right mind would do that. Back in the early days of graphics card, what interested you most was to know how much memory it had, because you could calculate how high resolution it would support. Those times are over. Integrated graphics drive two monitors at 1440x900 each just fine. I see that every day at work.
Heh.... Don't you think you just put your finger on the whole point? Computers are strong enough (most people really overestimate their real needs, and think they really do need that i7, if the Core2Duo would have overkill already.) and have been, for I dare to say, the last 6 years. I use today a machine I bought in january 2007 and it was one on sale, to get rid of it before the Vista release. So it was already bottom-line back then. It's purring along, doing exactly what it needs to do even now.
That's 4 years functional and no sign of stopping to work. My brother uses a dumpster sourced laptop, from around 2003. Works perfectly fine and unlike mine it doesn't heat up at all.
So there are two main reasons to buy computers these days: because you want to... or to replace a defective one. Unless a gamer (and other niche usages), the "want to" group doesn't seem to be very large. From a business perspective, making laptops fail earlier is a good business choice.
I realize that Integrated Graphics are sub-par, but to say they're useless for games unless you're a masochist (the "self" is redundant...), is a bit overstating it. Many of us non-gamers do like to play a game from time to time, but we don't want to spend ourself into bankruptcy. Guess, what? This means we buy older games (cheaper!), and from my experience today's integrated graphics (also cheaper!) handle older games perfectly fine.
For your Canon LiDE25... I have a Canon LiDE 20 and I use VueScan instead. Supported on OS X (Natively, the LiDE 20 is not supported by OS X), Windows (Never tried though) and Linux (Tried on Ubuntu 10.04, works fine). It supports an insane amount of scanners. My dads AGFA SnapScan 310 (SCSI) and his Minolta DImage (also SCSI) dia scanner work perfectly using it.
In all fairness, XSane worked fine with both the LiDE 20 and the SnapScan 310 (but not the Minolta Dimage), but the interface is... something to get used to.
It's also a good example how commercial software can work in the Linux world.
A question: how did you get TCP over USB to work on Linux? My mother in law has an all-in-one scanner. As a printer/scanner works fine directly connected to USB under Linux, but I have connected it to a print server so the other computers can also print. It uses JetDirect (port 9100) and works fine on all computers on the network. However, I never managed to get the scanning part to work. The print server supports USB-TCP, but I haven't found how to get it working under Ubuntu.
You'd think, eh? How many people even know that there is a VGA input on their TV? As you and I know, they should not use that, but use a DVI-HDMI cable. For that, however, they need to know that those are pin-compatible and you can get them for cheap. Heck, they probably don't even know what DVI or HDMI is. To them the connectors look different and thus they are incompatible. Try putting yourself in the mindset of someone who does not know the abbreviations.
Given your nick "geekoid", I can understand this is absolutely foreign to you.
Also, keep in mind that for many people a Monitor and a TV are two very different things. This is historical, as the older analog TVs don't interface well at all with PC-Devices at all. I know, I still have a 16:9 CRT TV and I'm not going to replace it unless it breaks. It cost too much money in 2003, just to replace it because it's not current. This outdated knowledge remains in the minds of people and as such they do not think it is possible.
For people who are more at home with tech (or grew up with it, but in my generation 30++, that's not really a given unless you had proto-geek parents), this is easy. My sister uses her TV connected to her computer and PS3 and that's it. It is never used to watch TV. My brother has a big screen TV and a PS3. However BOTH connected the PS3 originally with the cable that came with it, which was not a HDMI cable. Ooops. I bet that 80% of all PS3 consoles are not connected over HDMI! I informed them, bough them HDMI cables and "fixed" the problem for them, even though -of course- you don't really notice the problem in the first place.
As for your Pong Comment. I can't say for Pong, but for a Commodore 64, you needed to program your TV in such a way that a certain channel was set up so you could get the output of the C64. I'm also pretty sure that if you had a C64 back then, you were tech-inclined. It's a self-selected sample. These days, everyone buys consoles. In the days of Pong/C64, not so much.
Cool... Didn't know about that one.
No... Only the first instance of each (Not even sure of that... I have my doubts on Police Quest, for example) series were made. So, KQ1, SQ1 and LSL1 are those I know of.
Yes, I've had that happen to me too. You want to know how to repair it? Open it in OpenOffice, save it, and then open it back in Microsoft Word. Tadaaaa!
This is not exclusive to Valve. It's true for pretty much all tech purchases.... If the dollar is weak, it's 1USD=1EUR... If the dollar is strong, it's 1USD=2EUR. The maths are simple, and we're getting screwed over. Be glad you don't live in Great Britain. They have it worse.
You shouldn't steal your employees phones :-P
Been told RALink is Linux-Friendly. I booted it up in Ubuntu before installing 7, but I had it wired up and didn't think of checking. If I find time this weekend, I'll try to test it. The machine is still at my place, as I had some trouble installing a game (defective CD-Rom it seems)
The worst, I had was an Atheros based chip, but on all machines I had wireless problems with this worked. (Obviously, if I didn't have problems, it was supported) Granted, it was always on Ubuntu which make this stuff braindeadly easy. The other distribution I use regularly is Debian, but rarely on desktop/laptop computers.
Just to add in a little anecdote of mine. I recently upgraded my brothers PC, in the sense that we replaced motherboard/CPU and RAM. The rest stayed the same. As he now has 16GB RAM, we decided to shell out for Win7 Pro 64-bit instead of reusing the OEM XP license (which would be borderline in legality).
Anyway, that machine has a Linksys WMP54G (version 1.0) wireless PCI card. Silly me, expected it to work by default in Windows as the card was a bit older and my experience from XP was that "if it existed prior to release, there is a driver". Well, no.... *sigh*
Linksys website, no avail. Tried their customer support which said "Not Supported". Call me old-fashioned, but a NIC should be one of the things that is least-"obsoleteable". Luckily, I found a forum post (look for the post by "skinnypirate") that this particular card uses a RALink Chip and you can use their drivers.
Now, I freely admit I didn't try Linux on this machine... (Gaming machine) Perhaps it wouldn't work either... Who knows...
As for Win7 obsoleted scanners... Before throwing them out, consider the following first: VueScan (Not affiliated, just a very happy customer). It's an amazing little piece of software that seems to operate pretty much any scanner you throw at it. My dad has a SCSI Dia/Negative-Scanner with advanced functions for rewinding film and stuff like that. On Linux, XSane doesn't even detect it... VueScan sees it and all functions can be used. Same for my wifes cheap Canon LiDE20. Not supported on Mac OS X 10.6.x at all... VueScan sees it and it works perfectly. Old SCSI AGFA SnapScan 310? No problem... (XSane does this one too though.)
I've never used in on Windows though... Only on Linux and Mac OS X. I have no reason to believe that the quality of the software is less on Windows. You may argue that the software is more expensive than a new cheap scanner. True, but once you have the software, you'll never use another one ever again.
...and I'm wrong... The Exxx series seem to be non-64 bit. haven't seen those anywhere yet, but since they have been released in Fall 2010, they qualify as "new".
Ok, granted... Oversaw the "an". All new Atoms do seem to be 64-bit capable, though.