The point of this processor is that it will be modular. Your points are valid but I think you're missing Intel's greater plan. The GPU on core is not a requirement of the processor line, merely a feature that they can choose to include or not, all on the same assembly line. The bigger picture here is that if the processor is as modular as they are claiming, then they can mix and match different co-processors on the die to meet different market requirements, so the same processor can be bought in XY configuration with an on-board GPU, or in AB configuration with on-board physics engine, etc.
So they claim in the article that the printhead is a full 8" wide on the A4/letter size printer. A4 paper, however, is about 8.3 inches wide, leaving a full 1/3 of an inch of white space on the paper. When you watch the video though, notice that the A4 printer spits out two text pages followed by a series of pages with full width graphics that, with my eyes, I can't see any gap on the sides of the pages. Seem legit to you?
I completely agree. Moreso, iTunes has already gone to lengths to let you sample the songs/movies prior to the purchase so it's really your own fault if you can't tell it's the wrong song after listening to a 30-second clip of it. This is a vast improvement, in my opinion, over brick and mortar stores. It would be ridiculous for iTunes to accept returns and increase their overhead dealing with it for what would most likely be the result of people buying songs just to burn to CD and "return" the download.
Online music stores should only be held accountable for a corrupt of faulty transmission of the file. The area where I could see the consumer being protected more is in retention of the files. Since they are selling a license to download the file, I should be able to redownload it if anything happens to my system. It would add very little overhead (I would imagine) to their system, but protect a lot of people from a random hard drive crash, etc. I would even be willing to pay an extra fee per year (like $10) for them to "keep a copy" of my downloads on their server to redownload in the event something happened.
I completely agree with you. They start off by trying to make Lycos look like that bad guy. Now I didn't read the article / interactions between her and the company and it is possible that it wasn't handled with the best language. But in the end it's tough @!#$. They have a policy, one that you agree to when you sign up for FREE email. It's a policy that they need to keep in place to remove spammer accounts, junk accounts, etc, which is what a lot of people use these services for. I can only imagine, based on the amount of spam I get when I don't use my email address, that some of these accounts could be gathering thousands of emails per day. That's a lot of storage over a couple of months for thousands of users. So you put a policy in place. Sorry for her, but be more careful next time, or get a reputable (i.e., paying) email provider, at least then you'll have more leverage.
Alternatively, many email providers will let you access your email via POP so you can keep copies of all email on your own system, then you don't have to worry about what happens with the service;-)
It seems like everyone is leaving out what is, in my opinion, the best game on the Wii so far. Excite Truck is a BLAST! Multiplayer support for 2 wiimotes, single player is equally addicting. Levels with plenty of tolerance for course selection (you don't have to follow the road all the time)! This game is definitely worth purchasing.
Explore2fs is written and supported by one person and currently doesn't list support for Vista. I would find it hard to recommend to someone else that they use this and expect it to be a reliable solution 5 . ..10 years down the road. And if it was so easy to support ext2 on OSX then why is there no reliable support for Tiger. Last I checked into it (about a month ago) there was ONE person who was working on the project and it had been sitting idle for a while. Given that a lot of Mac users are also linux users, I don't see why there woudln't be widespread support if it was "quite easy". The advantage to the FAT filesystem is that it has been around forever with little changes. It will support MOST archival requirements for file size, etc.
Having immersed myself in Linux for half a decade I, too, believed that Ext2 was the perfect filesystem for this sort of thing. But the hoops you have to jump through to get it working on a non-linux platform are insane. There are drivers "available" for Windows XP (who knows if those will be rewritten to support Vista or not), and to date there is no official support for the latest versions of OSX. Now that our company is transitioning to Mac computers I'm realizing the shortcoming of having most of our storage on Ext2 formatted drives.
With that in mind, I don't think it's a good idea to recommend Ext2 and definitely wouldn't say "can be read by nearly even[sic] operating system out there" when 2 of the 3 biggies don't support it natively. You don't want to rely on one or two individuals' works to support that filesystem 5 years from now if you need to get archival data back. FAT32 / ISO9660 / UDF / and NTFS (read-only) are the only filesystems I can think of that will work out-of-the-box on mac/linux/windows.
I've been out of college for a few years now but if I remember my what I learned with my 'C' in second quarter calculus (man that guy was boring), by fixing holes, you REDUCE the number of security holes and . . . therefore (sorry, throwing in some dedcutive reasoning from geometry class) make the product more secure, which could be seen as Microsoft taking security seriously.
It does get tiring to see the "26 down, 1 billion to go" comments. Can't we just leave it at "Click your update button". Hell, I got a few emails from Ubuntu today about security updates, where's that slashdot headline? Every product has something that can be evolved/fixed/improved, even "hello world". Since I don't foresee that changing soon, we might as well get comfortable and even cozy with the idea of installing updates, be it one every couple of days in the linux world, every tuesday or whatever the nonesense is in the microsoft world, or every month/week/whenever in the mac world.
I agree with you. In this day and age there has to be some way for the "good citizens" to unite to fight this kind of cyber terrorism. With the direction that world-wide entities are going in moving everything to computer data storage that is connected to the internet, it would seem to be in every government's best interest to protect those resources. You would think that something like the UN could help promote a free, open source client, that every one could download and install that would, at the very least, report port scans back to a central intelligence organization (note I didn't say "agency"). Send the data to Interpol for all I care. At least with that much data collection taking place from around the world, along with "cooperating" ISP's we should be able to make a large dent in this terrorist/lame high school student infrastructure. The cost savings to large organizations would have to be tremendous if even half of the exploiting computers were shut down. This probably won't happen, at least anytime soon since there would have to be a neutral and powerful law enforcement organization to utilize the data and ISP's would have to be subject to their demands and cooperate across international borders and I don't see that happening soon.
I for one do NOT welcome our new botnet overlords.
Web site slow . . .download links below
on
Mandriva 2007 Released
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· Score: 4, Informative
Since the site is slow to respond, here are the download links for the 3CD version for i586 and x86_64, these are bit torrents . . .
I agree completely. In the end there are still going to be plenty of years of analog video signals over S-VIDEO to feed the OSD. This unit, however, is definitely aimed at the non-videophile market. I mean, it doesn't even have an S-VIDEO out for the TV, so all of your signals are being fed over composite video lines, NOT COMPONENT, COMPOSITE. The lack of a tuner makes this device even more useless since it'll have to getting its signal from the tv or a cable box. There's no mention of software packages so there's no way of knowing whether it can obtain a show listing and tell your cable box to switch channels at a given time or not. No mention of supported file systems, audio codecs, network discovery mechanisms, etc. Can it share recorded media over NFS? SMB? No mention of a keyboard so everything must have to be done through a GUI and I have trouble believing that their OS will be as polished as what users have come to expect with devices like TIVO's. Based on the info on their website, which is severely lacking, it's hard to justify spending the money.
K, straight to the point. I worked for several years as a kid fixing computers at home and at my parents company. In college I worked for the dorm system repairing students' computers. I won't tell you how to run the actual business cause I'm not oriented well that way, but I'll give you pointers on how to fix the computers and what types of services to perform:
1) I agree with other posters, it's not advisable to work on their comptuer at their place unless you know exactly what the problem is and how to fix it. Virus scans alone on a cluttered hard drive *CAN* take up to 2 hours. That's a lot of time to sit there with the client over your back wondering why he/she is being charged for you to watch the system work. Have the client fill out a form with all the information about the computer and the condition it's in and have them sign it and then take the computer back to your office.
2) You will be most successful if you can fix problems without formatting people's hard drives. These people can't fix their own computers because they don't know what they're doing. And if they don't know what they're doing then you can bet they haven't backed up everything they need. Almost any problem in Windows CAN be fixed without a reformat/reinstall if you know what you're doing. Google can help you here and I haven't found a problem yet that couldn't be fixed with a Google search.
3) Don't install things that weren't on the system before. Users are particular and are used to the way things are working for them. If they've been using IE for 8 years they might not want Firefox on there, and when you bring back a system with new software on it they may wonder what else you did that wasn't at their request that they've now paid for. If you want to install Firefox and Antispyware software, advertise an additional service package that you can bundle in for some price ($40?). If they take the bait, then you can modify their system settings, software, etc. But if you're asked to remove a virus, don't send them back a computer with a different browser.
4) It'd be my suggestion to offer different support "packages". Write these up in a nice looking sheet and send a sheet back with every computer along with their receipt. Offer things like Backups to CD, Performance Boost (defrag, spyware removal, etc), Software/Hardware Upgrades, etc. These would be in addition to the call-by-call fixes you would already do, but they might remind your customer or someone they talk to of another service they've been wanting to do.
5) If you determine that the problem ultimately requires the machine to be wiped (hard drive failure, unrecoverable partition table, etc) absolutely DO NOT modify their hard drive without their permission. Call them and tell them, in the simplest words you can, what the problem is and why it will require them to lose everything they have. Remind them that there are other options (date recovery centers that charge several thousands of dollars) if they want that. If they still say to format it, then have them sign a form agreeing to it.
6) Don't install any commercial software that they haven't bought. It may seem obvious but it's worth stating, don't install your copy of Windows, Adobe Photoshop, blah blah blah. If they can't find their OEM CD's then offer to contact the manufacturer on their behalf (your billing them for time anyway). Ultimately though if they need to buy a copy of Windows then you can offer to buy it for them.
The "typical home user" as you refer to him/her also does not want to use their TV as their computer. They have a separate computer for that. It's on that computer that they will be purchasing music, purchasing movies, organizing content, etc. So yes, it does make sense for all of the media to be stored on that computer and streamed to a device connected to the TV which will handle the video and audio rendering. If I were wrong then HTPC's would be more prevalent than they are. Clearly the consumer is looking for something better, and the mini is currently the most likely candidate being offered that a "typical home user" will get exposed to.
Your setup is great and all that, but it's also costly and complicated to integrate for the "typical home user".
If that were true then every graph on the article page would have a linear fit, and not a single one does. I have to agree with the comments above, while this gives an "idea" of the efficiency of a Core 2 Duo, it's not an apples to apples comparison, there's also no information given on the memory speed or other platform characteristics between the AMD and Intel setups. I'm not familiar enough with these algorithms to know how dependent they are on memory bandwidth.
I disagree. Your HTPC should be a portal for media, not the full blown computer with fans, heat, noise, size, etc sitting next to your elegant TV/DVD/Receiver, etc. Those consumer devices are usually designed to be sleek and have a uniform feel. It's my opinion, and opinions can't be wrong, that something *LIKE* a Mac Mini would be an ideal solution. You'll also note that my comment said they needed to add a built-in HD tuner and CableCard before the solution would work. I don't think that the ideal setup will entail the storage medium to be situated locally. I think that most people who build up a large media collection will keep that on a data server somewhere so that they can maintain backups, watch it from other systems in the house, etc. In which case, all you really need is a network connection (could be terrestrial, could be wireless) to stream that media to a decoding / display unit, like the Mini.
I'm just entering month 6 with my cable modem but I haven't had any issues with it yet. Motorola equipment is very reliable from my experience, and the nice thing about owning your own cable modem is you aren't stuck with whatever they want to give you, you can buy any brand you want (I think).
Wow, that's all I can say. But let me add that it has nothing to do with being pretentious. People value their time in different ways. A college kid might not care that it takes several nights of tinkering to get a MythTV box to meet his/her needs, in which case, go for it. All that I said was that if you value your time (and that doesn't have to be monetarily, it could mean you just would rather hang out with your kids/spouse or actually watching TV), then spending an extra couple hundred of bucks to get a system that works out of the box with no hassle for years to come is probably a worth while investment and shouldn't just be compared to the cost of the hardware alone of other options. To say that time isn't worth anything is pure ignorance in the face of priorities. Ultimately, your decision to purchase one solution or another will depend on your priorities.
Just for everyone's information, I live in Illinois and have Comcast cable, to BUY my cable card (which is now mine to keep and use with any TV now and forever) was about $23. So if you're paying $5 a month you should probably check what the cost of purchasing that cable card is. Same goes for your cable internet modem, renting is $5/mo but they can be bought for $40 - $50. FYI.
While I would LOVE the idea of doing everything the TIVO can do on a PC (assuming you can find a sleek looking one that won't look absurd next to the TV and A/V receiver), the biggest shortcoming is the software. Your solution doesn't include the cost of software to power this behemoth. Windows Media Center isn't cheap, even at OEM costs. MythTV can be downloaded for free, as can a supporting Linux distro, but the value of your time isn't in here. I've read, continuously, that MythTV is not easy to install, and highly volatile depending on the exact models of tuner/video cards, etc. Assuming an average yearly nerd wage of like $60,000/yr at 2,000 hrs per year that's $30 per hour. If it takes you 20 hours to research/configure/build this machine then your cost is now up to $1440, which will get you several years of TIVO service along with their shiny box. I'm still a firm believer that the Mac Mini is the best candidate (convenient design, DVI output, HD resolution output, remote control, networkable), they just need to add an HD tuner or two and CableCard support.
There is one problem with the situation as you describe it though. Often, in order to make something as secure as possible, it needs to be as proprietary as possible. I don't want to get into an open source / closed source security debate but look at it like this. If all of these hooks are integrated into the system to allow built in security measures to be disable then those same hooks can be used to compromise the system by some adware software that is masquerading as a firewall / AV service. It's been my experience that the only people running XP that have spyware issues are the amateur users who can't tell the difference between an actual windows error message and a web browser pop-up with a fake error message. Those people install software without reading anything about what they just clicked "OK" to. And those are the same people who will just as likely install some 3rd party software in Vista that will use these hooks to compromise the entire security system without the user even noticing.
It's not so different in the Linux/OSX world either. I've installed Ubuntu a dozen or more times now and NOT ONCE has it asked me a single question related to security other than to enter my user password. No firewall setup, no anti-virus software, etc. (I know, since no ports are open my default I don't need a firewall). OSX is no different, everything is integrated (except AV) and the user isn't expected to go and hunt down any 3rd party firewall software. Just select which services you want to run and you're good to go. Why should Windows be any different. This whole EU proposition is definitely not in the consumer's best interest. It almost goes as far to say "if you're software can't be infected by spyware then you're going to put a bunch of anti-spyware companies out of business and that's not good for the economy." Well I'm sorry your business model isn't going to be able to keep up with evolving software and technologies. However, just because a shortcoming on Microsoft's behalf created a job for you 2 years ago doesn't mean that they are in your debt and have to provide that job forever. Just my two cents.
Actually, according to the article it can be had online for $179 after a $20 mail in rebate at most places. The XFX overclocked version is the one that runs about $220, or $200 after a $20 mail in rebate.
It's interesting that nearly the entire comment/response section for this article is dedicated to the noise factor. Assuming normal TV/Movie/Music listening levels, the sound coming out of the HTPC should be negligible, and if not, it's one of the easiest things to fix. The bigger issue, it would seem to me, is media support. Their website claims that out of the box this is nothing more than a TV/radio box, which is useful to about . . . . nobody. In fact, it doesn't even include a TV or radio tuner, just the applications! Using stock FC5 you can pretty much rule out working DVD playback or MP3 streaming. So as near as I can tell they're bundling a MB/PS/Case and giving you an install that won't sufficiently play back what 95% of people are going to want to play on it. Don't get me wrong, I'd love a linux based HTPC that I can have shipped to my door, plug in, and GO! I just think that this product is misleading since it doesn't appear to do anything.
That's not ENTIRELY true . . . one of the problems that I have with Linux backups is that system configuration files are strewn all over the place. Sure MOST are in/etc but it's not always guaranteed, some are also present in/var. So now you're stuck pretty much backing up every directory anyway and you're back to the Windows problem.
That being said, the original poster should probably heed the advice of the majority and begin backing up to a hard drive. I have a stack of DVD's and am just as turned off at having to switch to a hard drive but they are cheap enough now that it's not a financial burden to buy an extra and make it big. Furthermore, it's been alluded to but I haven't seen it stated, PUT THE BACKUP IN A SAFE. It will at least prevent misplacing it, someone else finding it and erasing it for God knows why, and might even save you in a fire if the safe survives.
Slashdot Mirror
The point of this processor is that it will be modular. Your points are valid but I think you're missing Intel's greater plan. The GPU on core is not a requirement of the processor line, merely a feature that they can choose to include or not, all on the same assembly line. The bigger picture here is that if the processor is as modular as they are claiming, then they can mix and match different co-processors on the die to meet different market requirements, so the same processor can be bought in XY configuration with an on-board GPU, or in AB configuration with on-board physics engine, etc.
So they claim in the article that the printhead is a full 8" wide on the A4/letter size printer. A4 paper, however, is about 8.3 inches wide, leaving a full 1/3 of an inch of white space on the paper. When you watch the video though, notice that the A4 printer spits out two text pages followed by a series of pages with full width graphics that, with my eyes, I can't see any gap on the sides of the pages. Seem legit to you?
I completely agree. Moreso, iTunes has already gone to lengths to let you sample the songs/movies prior to the purchase so it's really your own fault if you can't tell it's the wrong song after listening to a 30-second clip of it. This is a vast improvement, in my opinion, over brick and mortar stores. It would be ridiculous for iTunes to accept returns and increase their overhead dealing with it for what would most likely be the result of people buying songs just to burn to CD and "return" the download.
Online music stores should only be held accountable for a corrupt of faulty transmission of the file. The area where I could see the consumer being protected more is in retention of the files. Since they are selling a license to download the file, I should be able to redownload it if anything happens to my system. It would add very little overhead (I would imagine) to their system, but protect a lot of people from a random hard drive crash, etc. I would even be willing to pay an extra fee per year (like $10) for them to "keep a copy" of my downloads on their server to redownload in the event something happened.
I completely agree with you. They start off by trying to make Lycos look like that bad guy. Now I didn't read the article / interactions between her and the company and it is possible that it wasn't handled with the best language. But in the end it's tough @!#$. They have a policy, one that you agree to when you sign up for FREE email. It's a policy that they need to keep in place to remove spammer accounts, junk accounts, etc, which is what a lot of people use these services for. I can only imagine, based on the amount of spam I get when I don't use my email address, that some of these accounts could be gathering thousands of emails per day. That's a lot of storage over a couple of months for thousands of users. So you put a policy in place. Sorry for her, but be more careful next time, or get a reputable (i.e., paying) email provider, at least then you'll have more leverage.
;-)
Alternatively, many email providers will let you access your email via POP so you can keep copies of all email on your own system, then you don't have to worry about what happens with the service
It seems like everyone is leaving out what is, in my opinion, the best game on the Wii so far. Excite Truck is a BLAST! Multiplayer support for 2 wiimotes, single player is equally addicting. Levels with plenty of tolerance for course selection (you don't have to follow the road all the time)! This game is definitely worth purchasing.
Explore2fs is written and supported by one person and currently doesn't list support for Vista. I would find it hard to recommend to someone else that they use this and expect it to be a reliable solution 5 . . .10 years down the road. And if it was so easy to support ext2 on OSX then why is there no reliable support for Tiger. Last I checked into it (about a month ago) there was ONE person who was working on the project and it had been sitting idle for a while. Given that a lot of Mac users are also linux users, I don't see why there woudln't be widespread support if it was "quite easy". The advantage to the FAT filesystem is that it has been around forever with little changes. It will support MOST archival requirements for file size, etc.
Having immersed myself in Linux for half a decade I, too, believed that Ext2 was the perfect filesystem for this sort of thing. But the hoops you have to jump through to get it working on a non-linux platform are insane. There are drivers "available" for Windows XP (who knows if those will be rewritten to support Vista or not), and to date there is no official support for the latest versions of OSX. Now that our company is transitioning to Mac computers I'm realizing the shortcoming of having most of our storage on Ext2 formatted drives.
With that in mind, I don't think it's a good idea to recommend Ext2 and definitely wouldn't say "can be read by nearly even[sic] operating system out there" when 2 of the 3 biggies don't support it natively. You don't want to rely on one or two individuals' works to support that filesystem 5 years from now if you need to get archival data back. FAT32 / ISO9660 / UDF / and NTFS (read-only) are the only filesystems I can think of that will work out-of-the-box on mac/linux/windows.
EXT2 would be a good start . . .
I've been out of college for a few years now but if I remember my what I learned with my 'C' in second quarter calculus (man that guy was boring), by fixing holes, you REDUCE the number of security holes and . . . therefore (sorry, throwing in some dedcutive reasoning from geometry class) make the product more secure, which could be seen as Microsoft taking security seriously.
It does get tiring to see the "26 down, 1 billion to go" comments. Can't we just leave it at "Click your update button". Hell, I got a few emails from Ubuntu today about security updates, where's that slashdot headline? Every product has something that can be evolved/fixed/improved, even "hello world". Since I don't foresee that changing soon, we might as well get comfortable and even cozy with the idea of installing updates, be it one every couple of days in the linux world, every tuesday or whatever the nonesense is in the microsoft world, or every month/week/whenever in the mac world.
I agree with you. In this day and age there has to be some way for the "good citizens" to unite to fight this kind of cyber terrorism. With the direction that world-wide entities are going in moving everything to computer data storage that is connected to the internet, it would seem to be in every government's best interest to protect those resources. You would think that something like the UN could help promote a free, open source client, that every one could download and install that would, at the very least, report port scans back to a central intelligence organization (note I didn't say "agency"). Send the data to Interpol for all I care. At least with that much data collection taking place from around the world, along with "cooperating" ISP's we should be able to make a large dent in this terrorist/lame high school student infrastructure. The cost savings to large organizations would have to be tremendous if even half of the exploiting computers were shut down. This probably won't happen, at least anytime soon since there would have to be a neutral and powerful law enforcement organization to utilize the data and ISP's would have to be subject to their demands and cooperate across international borders and I don't see that happening soon.
I for one do NOT welcome our new botnet overlords.
Since the site is slow to respond, here are the download links for the 3CD version for i586 and x86_64, these are bit torrents . . .
- 2007-CD.i586.torrent
- 2007-CD.x86_64.torrent
- 2007-DVD.torrent
i586
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http://qa.mandriva.com/torrent/2007/mandriva-free
x86_64
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http://qa.mandriva.com/torrent/2007/mandriva-free
dual architecture DVD
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http://qa.mandriva.com/torrent/2007/mandriva-free
I agree completely. In the end there are still going to be plenty of years of analog video signals over S-VIDEO to feed the OSD. This unit, however, is definitely aimed at the non-videophile market. I mean, it doesn't even have an S-VIDEO out for the TV, so all of your signals are being fed over composite video lines, NOT COMPONENT, COMPOSITE.
The lack of a tuner makes this device even more useless since it'll have to getting its signal from the tv or a cable box. There's no mention of software packages so there's no way of knowing whether it can obtain a show listing and tell your cable box to switch channels at a given time or not. No mention of supported file systems, audio codecs, network discovery mechanisms, etc. Can it share recorded media over NFS? SMB? No mention of a keyboard so everything must have to be done through a GUI and I have trouble believing that their OS will be as polished as what users have come to expect with devices like TIVO's. Based on the info on their website, which is severely lacking, it's hard to justify spending the money.
K, straight to the point. I worked for several years as a kid fixing computers at home and at my parents company. In college I worked for the dorm system repairing students' computers. I won't tell you how to run the actual business cause I'm not oriented well that way, but I'll give you pointers on how to fix the computers and what types of services to perform:
1) I agree with other posters, it's not advisable to work on their comptuer at their place unless you know exactly what the problem is and how to fix it. Virus scans alone on a cluttered hard drive *CAN* take up to 2 hours. That's a lot of time to sit there with the client over your back wondering why he/she is being charged for you to watch the system work. Have the client fill out a form with all the information about the computer and the condition it's in and have them sign it and then take the computer back to your office.
2) You will be most successful if you can fix problems without formatting people's hard drives. These people can't fix their own computers because they don't know what they're doing. And if they don't know what they're doing then you can bet they haven't backed up everything they need. Almost any problem in Windows CAN be fixed without a reformat/reinstall if you know what you're doing. Google can help you here and I haven't found a problem yet that couldn't be fixed with a Google search.
3) Don't install things that weren't on the system before. Users are particular and are used to the way things are working for them. If they've been using IE for 8 years they might not want Firefox on there, and when you bring back a system with new software on it they may wonder what else you did that wasn't at their request that they've now paid for. If you want to install Firefox and Antispyware software, advertise an additional service package that you can bundle in for some price ($40?). If they take the bait, then you can modify their system settings, software, etc. But if you're asked to remove a virus, don't send them back a computer with a different browser.
4) It'd be my suggestion to offer different support "packages". Write these up in a nice looking sheet and send a sheet back with every computer along with their receipt. Offer things like Backups to CD, Performance Boost (defrag, spyware removal, etc), Software/Hardware Upgrades, etc. These would be in addition to the call-by-call fixes you would already do, but they might remind your customer or someone they talk to of another service they've been wanting to do.
5) If you determine that the problem ultimately requires the machine to be wiped (hard drive failure, unrecoverable partition table, etc) absolutely DO NOT modify their hard drive without their permission. Call them and tell them, in the simplest words you can, what the problem is and why it will require them to lose everything they have. Remind them that there are other options (date recovery centers that charge several thousands of dollars) if they want that. If they still say to format it, then have them sign a form agreeing to it.
6) Don't install any commercial software that they haven't bought. It may seem obvious but it's worth stating, don't install your copy of Windows, Adobe Photoshop, blah blah blah. If they can't find their OEM CD's then offer to contact the manufacturer on their behalf (your billing them for time anyway). Ultimately though if they need to buy a copy of Windows then you can offer to buy it for them.
The "typical home user" as you refer to him/her also does not want to use their TV as their computer. They have a separate computer for that. It's on that computer that they will be purchasing music, purchasing movies, organizing content, etc. So yes, it does make sense for all of the media to be stored on that computer and streamed to a device connected to the TV which will handle the video and audio rendering. If I were wrong then HTPC's would be more prevalent than they are. Clearly the consumer is looking for something better, and the mini is currently the most likely candidate being offered that a "typical home user" will get exposed to.
Your setup is great and all that, but it's also costly and complicated to integrate for the "typical home user".
If that were true then every graph on the article page would have a linear fit, and not a single one does. I have to agree with the comments above, while this gives an "idea" of the efficiency of a Core 2 Duo, it's not an apples to apples comparison, there's also no information given on the memory speed or other platform characteristics between the AMD and Intel setups. I'm not familiar enough with these algorithms to know how dependent they are on memory bandwidth.
I disagree. Your HTPC should be a portal for media, not the full blown computer with fans, heat, noise, size, etc sitting next to your elegant TV/DVD/Receiver, etc. Those consumer devices are usually designed to be sleek and have a uniform feel. It's my opinion, and opinions can't be wrong, that something *LIKE* a Mac Mini would be an ideal solution. You'll also note that my comment said they needed to add a built-in HD tuner and CableCard before the solution would work. I don't think that the ideal setup will entail the storage medium to be situated locally. I think that most people who build up a large media collection will keep that on a data server somewhere so that they can maintain backups, watch it from other systems in the house, etc. In which case, all you really need is a network connection (could be terrestrial, could be wireless) to stream that media to a decoding / display unit, like the Mini.
I'm just entering month 6 with my cable modem but I haven't had any issues with it yet. Motorola equipment is very reliable from my experience, and the nice thing about owning your own cable modem is you aren't stuck with whatever they want to give you, you can buy any brand you want (I think).
Wow, that's all I can say. But let me add that it has nothing to do with being pretentious. People value their time in different ways. A college kid might not care that it takes several nights of tinkering to get a MythTV box to meet his/her needs, in which case, go for it. All that I said was that if you value your time (and that doesn't have to be monetarily, it could mean you just would rather hang out with your kids/spouse or actually watching TV), then spending an extra couple hundred of bucks to get a system that works out of the box with no hassle for years to come is probably a worth while investment and shouldn't just be compared to the cost of the hardware alone of other options. To say that time isn't worth anything is pure ignorance in the face of priorities. Ultimately, your decision to purchase one solution or another will depend on your priorities.
Just for everyone's information, I live in Illinois and have Comcast cable, to BUY my cable card (which is now mine to keep and use with any TV now and forever) was about $23. So if you're paying $5 a month you should probably check what the cost of purchasing that cable card is. Same goes for your cable internet modem, renting is $5/mo but they can be bought for $40 - $50. FYI.
While I would LOVE the idea of doing everything the TIVO can do on a PC (assuming you can find a sleek looking one that won't look absurd next to the TV and A/V receiver), the biggest shortcoming is the software. Your solution doesn't include the cost of software to power this behemoth. Windows Media Center isn't cheap, even at OEM costs. MythTV can be downloaded for free, as can a supporting Linux distro, but the value of your time isn't in here. I've read, continuously, that MythTV is not easy to install, and highly volatile depending on the exact models of tuner/video cards, etc. Assuming an average yearly nerd wage of like $60,000/yr at 2,000 hrs per year that's $30 per hour. If it takes you 20 hours to research/configure/build this machine then your cost is now up to $1440, which will get you several years of TIVO service along with their shiny box. I'm still a firm believer that the Mac Mini is the best candidate (convenient design, DVI output, HD resolution output, remote control, networkable), they just need to add an HD tuner or two and CableCard support.
There is one problem with the situation as you describe it though. Often, in order to make something as secure as possible, it needs to be as proprietary as possible. I don't want to get into an open source / closed source security debate but look at it like this. If all of these hooks are integrated into the system to allow built in security measures to be disable then those same hooks can be used to compromise the system by some adware software that is masquerading as a firewall / AV service. It's been my experience that the only people running XP that have spyware issues are the amateur users who can't tell the difference between an actual windows error message and a web browser pop-up with a fake error message. Those people install software without reading anything about what they just clicked "OK" to. And those are the same people who will just as likely install some 3rd party software in Vista that will use these hooks to compromise the entire security system without the user even noticing.
It's not so different in the Linux/OSX world either. I've installed Ubuntu a dozen or more times now and NOT ONCE has it asked me a single question related to security other than to enter my user password. No firewall setup, no anti-virus software, etc. (I know, since no ports are open my default I don't need a firewall). OSX is no different, everything is integrated (except AV) and the user isn't expected to go and hunt down any 3rd party firewall software. Just select which services you want to run and you're good to go. Why should Windows be any different. This whole EU proposition is definitely not in the consumer's best interest. It almost goes as far to say "if you're software can't be infected by spyware then you're going to put a bunch of anti-spyware companies out of business and that's not good for the economy." Well I'm sorry your business model isn't going to be able to keep up with evolving software and technologies. However, just because a shortcoming on Microsoft's behalf created a job for you 2 years ago doesn't mean that they are in your debt and have to provide that job forever. Just my two cents.
Actually, according to the article it can be had online for $179 after a $20 mail in rebate at most places. The XFX overclocked version is the one that runs about $220, or $200 after a $20 mail in rebate.
It's interesting that nearly the entire comment/response section for this article is dedicated to the noise factor. Assuming normal TV/Movie/Music listening levels, the sound coming out of the HTPC should be negligible, and if not, it's one of the easiest things to fix. The bigger issue, it would seem to me, is media support. Their website claims that out of the box this is nothing more than a TV/radio box, which is useful to about . . . . nobody. In fact, it doesn't even include a TV or radio tuner, just the applications! Using stock FC5 you can pretty much rule out working DVD playback or MP3 streaming. So as near as I can tell they're bundling a MB/PS/Case and giving you an install that won't sufficiently play back what 95% of people are going to want to play on it. Don't get me wrong, I'd love a linux based HTPC that I can have shipped to my door, plug in, and GO! I just think that this product is misleading since it doesn't appear to do anything.
That's not ENTIRELY true . . . one of the problems that I have with Linux backups is that system configuration files are strewn all over the place. Sure MOST are in /etc but it's not always guaranteed, some are also present in /var. So now you're stuck pretty much backing up every directory anyway and you're back to the Windows problem.
That being said, the original poster should probably heed the advice of the majority and begin backing up to a hard drive. I have a stack of DVD's and am just as turned off at having to switch to a hard drive but they are cheap enough now that it's not a financial burden to buy an extra and make it big. Furthermore, it's been alluded to but I haven't seen it stated, PUT THE BACKUP IN A SAFE. It will at least prevent misplacing it, someone else finding it and erasing it for God knows why, and might even save you in a fire if the safe survives.
Closest I can find on Amazon right now without spending more than 10 seconds looking. But I belive you can find them in different color temperatures with a little more effort. Only uses 36 watts. http://www.amazon.com/150-Watt-Replacement/dp/B000 13VM6C/sr=8-1/qid=1156886866/ref=sr_1_1/103-363414 9-8977438?ie=UTF8