My father has had a Sony Vaio laptop for about 3 years and it's still humming along just fine. That is wierd about your laptop, but just as anecdotal as everything I said about dropping PDAs.
Have you found accounts of other people with similar problems with your laptop model? If so, then there is probably a problem with the design or manufacturing controls. But it's also possible you just got a lemon. Despite QA and all those good things, the auto manufacturers still put out cars that will have any and all conceivable problems and nothing can fix them. I imagine that the same applies with laptops, PDA's, and everything else.
Personally, I just do research and try to find accounts from as many other people as possible on their experience with a product I'm looking to buy. It takes some pretty extraordinary circumstances for me to blacklist a manufacturer completely. If 500 other people tell me model XYZ has worked flawlessly for them for a year and it does everything I need at I price I like, I wouldn't exclude that product from consideration just because I had bad luck with my model PQR from the same company. Sure, I would think about my experience with PQR, but I would take the accounts of 500 other people over my single experience.
Don't get me wrong though. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and based on your experiences, I really don't blame you for considering Sony to be a manufacturer with a bad reputation. My experiences with them have been just the opposite though, but that doesn't mean that I will now buy exclusively Sony products.
BTW: the warrantee on my Clie is 90 days (refurb) so if it dies by the end of the summer, I'll probably think about your conspiracy theory a bit more.;)
If you'd read some of the subsequent messages under this thread you'd notice I did extrapolate a bit on my brother's Visor. When I knocked mine off the cradle it was onto very cheap, old, dorm room carpet which is about as soft as the wall. There is no pad under it and it really is about as hard as the concrete underneath.
But you really misinterpreted my opinion, I wasn't trying to present a weak, anecdotal example as evidence that Visor's are obviously inferior and break at the slightest instance of abuse. At least, I don't recall making that assertion anywhere.
Of course it's possible for a Clie screen to break, but just saying they both use glass and therefore have an equal risk of breaking from a drop lacks logical merit even more than my anecdote. Perhaps one manufacturer mounts the screen inside the case differently. Perhaps the flex undergone by a plastic case tweaks the screen in such a way as to cause fracture more often. Perhaps the higher g-force shock created by a metal case makes dropping a Clie more likely to create a quantum singularity.
Typically comments and opinions expressed publically, especially in a forum like slashdot, are anecdotal examples of a person's experience. That's what I gave. I'll readily admit that I haven't spent 18 months researching the durability of every make and model of PDA available. Nor have I forensically analyzed the likely causes of fracture in dozens of PDA's with broken screens.
I personally believe that Clie's are physically built a little better than Visor's, based on the visible componenture and the relative heft of the units. But I don't really have any evidence to back this up besides anecdotal accounts. If someone wants to send me a bunch of Visors and Clie's (even dead ones so long as they are physically in good condition), I'd be happy to bash, drop, smash, and jar them equally and come up with some empirical evidence as to who makes a more durable PDA. But until then, anecdotal is the best I can do, that's why I didn't say anything about who made a more durable PDA in my first post.
Whew...better stop now before the ghosts of my argumentation teachers completely take control of my body.
I don't have a case yet (only had it for 2 weeks) but what about this: http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/drpalm-clie-pdaprotec tor-review.html. Targus also has some soft leather cases that work with the Clie. I found those 2 in about 5 minutes of surfing, so I'd guess there are some other options too.
I think the key problem in my brother's case was that it landed directly on a corner. The case of the PDA stopped while the screen continued in motion for a short distance and hit a support post inside the case, causing the classic "star pattern" fracture radiating out from one corner of the screen (and making the digitizer completely non responsive). Don't get me wrong, I think Visor makes a pretty good product, but I like the design and dimensions of my Clie alot better.
About two and a half weeks ago, I took receipt of a refurbished Sony Clie PEG-N610C. It cost me $239 + shipping for a 320x320 16-bit color screen and overall a very high quality device. The case is aluminum and it has a nice, attractive flip cover that protects the screen.
Since I've owned it I've "dropped" it twice. Once I knocked it out of the hotsync cradle and onto the floor about 3 feet below. No damage. The second time I brushed it against my leg while I was walking and it went spinning out onto the ground. Again, no damage. My brother dropped his Visor off the kitchen counter and shattered his screen. It you are looking to be a little more budget and don't need/want a color screen, I would recommend the PDA my roommate has, the Sony PEG-T415 (320x320 B&W, 8mb, around $200) or the Sony PEG-S320 (160x160 B&W, 8mb, around $150).
Why Sony you may ask? While they are a bit more expensive that a lot of PDAs, the 320x320 screen on the 415 and the color models is gorgeous and they all are well built and snug in their aluminum cases. They also have Li-Ion batteries that charge when they are on the cradle (although mine has a slick system where the charger plugs into the cradle normally, but can be plugged directly into the unit and used as a travel charger) so you don't have to buy batteries for it.
Anywho, enough advertising. I don't work for Sony, I've just been very happy with their PDAs. Clearance Club is where I got mine and they have quite a few refurbished B&W models still.
I did quite a bit of research on PDA forums and such and had pretty bad luck finding anyone who had bad things to say about the 610 I got, and so far, I'd have to agree with the good things everyone had to say about it. Everyone I show a high res picture to just ooo's and ahh's and is incredulous when I told them I paid under $250 for it.
It's about time somebody slowed down Nvidia...how the hell am I supposed to keep up with the superest, L3373$7 video card when they come out with a damn new one every 6 freaking months??
As many other people have said, you probably don't want to do this in a business environment when you can get reliable machines for pretty cheap from Dell etc. But if you do decide to, here are some general brand recommendations based on my system assembly business experience (I've built and sold ~40 machines in the last 2 years):
Motherboard:
Asus is reliable and fast but also expensive. Look at Gigabyte, MSI, or FIC. (I especially like the Gigabyte GA-7ZMMH as an Athlon platform.)
CPU:
While I have nothing against Intel, AMD consistently kills them in the price/performance ratio. In the past 2 years I have yet to build an Intel based machine for a customer. I just lay out the options and they invariably pick AMD, but that's just my experience. The Duron is a good chip but I don't sell many of those either, people are usually willing to pay a little more for an Athlon of equivalent speed.
Memory:
Buy name brand memory, not generic stuff. I like Micron/Crucial personally, never had a stick go bad. Corsair and Mushkin make good stuff as well, although I had to RMA the only Corsair stick I've ever bought after about 6 months. Corsair customer service was excellent about it though.
Video Card:
Despite their bad reputation some places, I've had good luck with ATI cards when I need a video card. The Radeon VE provides some nice features at a good price point. But in a business environment, get a motherboard with integrated video if you don't need much. If you buy an NVidia card, do some research on the card's manufacturer and look for a reputation of stability.
Hard Drives:
In machines I build, I use almost exclusively Seagate. Good performance, good price, and I've had zero quality problems with them. I feel about the same about Maxtor. I used a couple Quantum drives in my early systems with no difficulties. I don't have any recent experience with Western Digital so I can't really comment on them. IBM drives are too expensive unless you really need the slight performance edge some models offer.
Optical Drives:
I've had stupendous success with Afreey CD and DVD drives. Only had one fail and that was after some kicked the extended disc tray (we were able to open it up and fix it actually). Afreey drives are also very inexpensive.
CD burner wise I stick with Sony. We tried several different brands (Plextor, Acer, etc..) and found that Sony offered excellent quality for a very reasonable price. Plextor is good quality but you pay extra for the Plextor name.
Enclosures/Power Supply:
Antec cases are top quality and have excellent Antec power supplies. They are lots of less expensive cases you can get (and lots of more expensive ones), but Antec had never let me down. If you do get a cheaper case, get it without a power supply and buy a good Sparkle/Antec power supply for it.
(I don't work for any of the abovementioned companies and I don't profess to be an expert on this topic. Just sharing the experience I've had as a system builder who has dealt with a little more volume and long term support than your average hobbyist. We are by no means a high volume shop so I'm sure there are lots of people out there with more experience than me, hopefully they will respond if they feel I'm wrong about any of the parts I've recommended.)
-Sokie
Re:Disclaimer?
on
Worst Buy
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I think the main problem is that they honored the price for some people. IANAL, but it seems like once they did that, they lost the right to refuse to honor it for everyone who ordered before it was corrected. If they had just held firm to begin with and promptly refunded customers their money, then the people complaining wouldn't have much of a leg to stand on.
It's arbitraty discrimination about who does and doesn't get a card that may get them in trouble here.
Stay away from the chipset cooler on the KT7-RAID, it's a cheap little sleve bearing pile-o-crap that will start sounding like a dying kitten after a few months. My first one died and I sent Abit an e-mail, they mailed me a new fan that seems lots better (I think it's ball bearing).
Zalman makes a big northbridge heatsink that you can glue on in the place of those fans.
I even had the northbridge fan go out on an Asus A7V133, I got absolutly no reply when I e-mailed Asus, so I just replaced it with one of the Zalman heatsinks, no problems so far and it's quieter to boot. ("To boot" as in an additional, bonus feature...I'm not saying it's just quieter when it boots...):)
Every time I try it, I enter my password to confirm and it comes back with:
"Your new password must be at least 3 characters."
In big red letters. Nevermind that my current password is more than 3 letters and I'm not trying to change it anyway.
So can I be upset that they are violating their own privacy policy now by not allowing me a way to delete my account?:)
--Sokie
Re:.... and all free!
on
Hawaii Wi-Fi
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· Score: 2, Informative
26 miles?? This is pretty impressive. Have any ISP's in any city considered doing this as an option of giving broadband internet access?
This one is going about 10 miles as the crow flies, although they are just a local outfit, but you can see from this map how far they are going with 802.11b equipment, most likely amplified.
As far as I can tell from reading the article, all they are doing is trying to leverage the state Business and Operating tax (B&O) tax on every business in the city and then increase the R&D tax credit once they are getting everyone to chip in. Kind of a more people pay but everyone who does pay, now pays less. Except of course for the people who didn't pay anything before.
My brother and I run a small software/hardware business in WA state (not in Seattle) and we don't pay any B&O tax because of a graduating small business tax credit. But since B&O tax is based on gross revenue, I don't see how software companies should be any different. I never for a second looked at our business tax forms and thought that we should be completely exempt from B&O tax, but I'm glad the credit makes it so we don't owe them anything yet.
Is there something in the article that I missed? All I see is some politicians blowing things way out of proportion with regards to "the taxation of intellectual property". I imagine that Sam Goody pays B&O tax even they are just retailing intellectual property (music). I imagine that the all along the way, the companies involved in producing, recording, and mastering a CD all pay B&O tax, or something similar that is based on their revenue.
But since Cisco has already taken the financial hit for a vast majority of their excess dot-com hardware, I doubt if that is a main reason why they are not implementing IPv6. It probably has more to do with a lack of demand. It's the catch-22 of supply and demand, most people don't do any demanding until there is a good supply (and hence a reasonable price), and most suppliers are hesitant to create a supply until they expect an impending demand, kind of a just-in-time delivery philosophy.
So until there is a argument for IPv6 that is more compelling to businesses than "it's better in the long run", most places will be slow to upgrade.
Re:big chip... big fan
on
Intel's Big Chip
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· Score: 2, Insightful
But if you have drastic enough temperature deltas in the die itself to make this appreciable, then there is no heatsink design that is going to be precise enough to effectively combat those hot spots. Basically you have to design your heatsink to cool the hottest part of the chip to acceptable levels. Increasing the surface area of the die (without increasing the amount of total heat output) will lower (however slightly) the highest temperature spot on the die, making it (again however slightly) easier to cool.
Also, there is going to be horizontal thermal dissapation regardless of the thermal resistance of the materials involved. If I have a die that generates 1W of heat in a 200 mm^2 area, even if it is not generated uniformly, and I then increase the area to 300 mm^2 with the same total heat output value, that extra area IS going to be heated, probably substantially, regardless of whether it is generating it's own heat. That means that the overall average temperature has to go down somewhere.
The points you make are however perfectly valid and relevant, but the point of the original poster was supposing that it would be larger surface area of the die that would make it harder to cool, not any new thermal hotspots. I was simply saying that there aren't many ways that increasing the surface area can make something harder to cool.
Actually Appaloosa is the next core in the Duron line of CPU's from AMD. The next Athlon core, due in the 1st half of this year (so by the end of June) is Thoroughbred, which will be a 0.13 micron process, basically a die shrink from 0.18 micron for the current crop of Athlon's. This will allow AMD to again ramp up clock speeds because of the reduction in heat/power consumption. Appaloosa is also a 0.13 micron process btw.
The roadmap further indicates that in the second half of this year, another incarnation of Athlon will appear using a 0.13 micron Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) process.
3) "The XHTML is XML" thing doesn't mean much. HTML is XML is SGML. They're all based on a tag format defined in a 1986 standard. HTML 4 needed very minor hacks to make it XML compatible. In fact, the only one I can think of is the new tag completion rule.
Technically HTML is just SGML, XHTML is XML is accurate. XML is NOT SGML, while they are both tag based languages, XML was designed to be at the same level on the tree as SGML is, they are equivalent.
Besides ending single tag elements, this doesn't affect things much since tag minimization has been depreciated for years.
Just because something is deprecated doesn't mean that it still isn't extensively used. Look at the <FONT> tag, it's been deprecated since CSS came out with HTML 4 but it's still widely in use. But the point I was making was that in the future HTML will conform to XML standards and simply be a subset of XML instead of a direct subset of SGML. I was refuting the contention that XML was not going to replace HTML.
On the contrary, I don't think it is misunderstood. By "us" at least. I can't tell you how many times I've laughed at these absurd concoctions for XML: TCP protocols, file systems, database backends...it just goes on. XML is a tag language. It does things tag languages do. XML is a minor extension of SGML to escape the 1986-ness of the format.
XML isn't the end-all future, but these publications make it seem that way, and when it's not that it's Java.
I'm not arguing that it is, all I was pointing out was that: A. XML is not a programming language meant to replace C or PHP or anything else. B. XML, through XHTML, is probably going to replace HTML eventually.
XHMTL 1.0, which is the current W3C recommendation to replace HTML 4.0, IS XML!! The next version of HTML will be XHTML 2.x probably, there will be no HTML 5.x, so people that want to take advantage of any new features introduced in the next version will be using XML for their pages. They will just be using a specific DTD known as XHTML.
I've found that XML is one of the most misunderstood technologies out there, people seem to think that it's a drastic departure from what they know and nobody seems to understand where it's true power lies. XML is not going to replace PHP, Perl, Python, C, Java, or anything else. But you can use XML with all of those technologies and it's really a great way to store and describe large amounts of data if you don't need RDBMS or if you don't want to lock yourself into something.
Sun uses XML DTD's (or maybe Schemas, I dunno) for the StarOffice 6 file formats (maybe this was more an innovation of OpenOffice), which lets people create documents in StarOffice with absolutely no worry that they won't be able to retrieve their data 100 years from now.
XML was created exactly because "programmers dont think alike".
Which leads me to my second point, which is that LCDs aren't the only reason laptops are expensive compared to desktops. Miniature hard drives, low-power consumption CPUs, etc. are more expensive (and are also slower) than their desktop cousins.
Yes, the components are more expensive. But the main reason that laptops are so expensive is that each one basically has to be designed from scratch. Except when all you change is the hard drive capacity or the amount of RAM, you basically have to reengineer a new PCB and fabricate/debug it. This is also why the product development cycle for laptops is so long. It took almost 6 months from NVidia's official GeForce2 Go release to manufacturers before you could actually buy a laptop with the chip in it.
This combined with the fact that laptops are a much smaller market than desktops creates the price/performance delta.
1. It's free (with no ads or other annoyances)
2. It scans both incoming *and* outgoing e-mails for virii if you so choose. (It will even tag them as certified virus free by Grisoft if you want.)
3. Just because it's free (although they do sell commercial versions) doesn't mean you don't get updates or anything. They already have an updated database (out today) for Goner.
Anyway, just something for the Windows people who don't have one of the commercial virus apps already, I've loved AVG since I put it on.
Also, doesn't look like AVG was targetted for deletion by this virus, course that just means AVG isn't very well known, but nice to know for me anyway....
Slashdot Mirror
My father has had a Sony Vaio laptop for about 3 years and it's still humming along just fine. That is wierd about your laptop, but just as anecdotal as everything I said about dropping PDAs.
;)
Have you found accounts of other people with similar problems with your laptop model? If so, then there is probably a problem with the design or manufacturing controls. But it's also possible you just got a lemon. Despite QA and all those good things, the auto manufacturers still put out cars that will have any and all conceivable problems and nothing can fix them. I imagine that the same applies with laptops, PDA's, and everything else.
Personally, I just do research and try to find accounts from as many other people as possible on their experience with a product I'm looking to buy. It takes some pretty extraordinary circumstances for me to blacklist a manufacturer completely. If 500 other people tell me model XYZ has worked flawlessly for them for a year and it does everything I need at I price I like, I wouldn't exclude that product from consideration just because I had bad luck with my model PQR from the same company. Sure, I would think about my experience with PQR, but I would take the accounts of 500 other people over my single experience.
Don't get me wrong though. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and based on your experiences, I really don't blame you for considering Sony to be a manufacturer with a bad reputation. My experiences with them have been just the opposite though, but that doesn't mean that I will now buy exclusively Sony products.
BTW: the warrantee on my Clie is 90 days (refurb) so if it dies by the end of the summer, I'll probably think about your conspiracy theory a bit more.
-Sokie
If you'd read some of the subsequent messages under this thread you'd notice I did extrapolate a bit on my brother's Visor. When I knocked mine off the cradle it was onto very cheap, old, dorm room carpet which is about as soft as the wall. There is no pad under it and it really is about as hard as the concrete underneath.
But you really misinterpreted my opinion, I wasn't trying to present a weak, anecdotal example as evidence that Visor's are obviously inferior and break at the slightest instance of abuse. At least, I don't recall making that assertion anywhere.
Of course it's possible for a Clie screen to break, but just saying they both use glass and therefore have an equal risk of breaking from a drop lacks logical merit even more than my anecdote. Perhaps one manufacturer mounts the screen inside the case differently. Perhaps the flex undergone by a plastic case tweaks the screen in such a way as to cause fracture more often. Perhaps the higher g-force shock created by a metal case makes dropping a Clie more likely to create a quantum singularity.
Typically comments and opinions expressed publically, especially in a forum like slashdot, are anecdotal examples of a person's experience. That's what I gave. I'll readily admit that I haven't spent 18 months researching the durability of every make and model of PDA available. Nor have I forensically analyzed the likely causes of fracture in dozens of PDA's with broken screens.
I personally believe that Clie's are physically built a little better than Visor's, based on the visible componenture and the relative heft of the units. But I don't really have any evidence to back this up besides anecdotal accounts. If someone wants to send me a bunch of Visors and Clie's (even dead ones so long as they are physically in good condition), I'd be happy to bash, drop, smash, and jar them equally and come up with some empirical evidence as to who makes a more durable PDA. But until then, anecdotal is the best I can do, that's why I didn't say anything about who made a more durable PDA in my first post.
Whew...better stop now before the ghosts of my argumentation teachers completely take control of my body.
-Sokie
I don't have a case yet (only had it for 2 weeks) but what about this: http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/drpalm-clie-pdaprotec tor-review.html. Targus also has some soft leather cases that work with the Clie. I found those 2 in about 5 minutes of surfing, so I'd guess there are some other options too.
Hehehe, that's weird. My stylus smells a little like aluminum but I certainly have never noticed an odor. :)
Why did you want an only plastic stylus anyway?
I think the key problem in my brother's case was that it landed directly on a corner. The case of the PDA stopped while the screen continued in motion for a short distance and hit a support post inside the case, causing the classic "star pattern" fracture radiating out from one corner of the screen (and making the digitizer completely non responsive). Don't get me wrong, I think Visor makes a pretty good product, but I like the design and dimensions of my Clie alot better.
About two and a half weeks ago, I took receipt of a refurbished Sony Clie PEG-N610C. It cost me $239 + shipping for a 320x320 16-bit color screen and overall a very high quality device. The case is aluminum and it has a nice, attractive flip cover that protects the screen.
Since I've owned it I've "dropped" it twice. Once I knocked it out of the hotsync cradle and onto the floor about 3 feet below. No damage. The second time I brushed it against my leg while I was walking and it went spinning out onto the ground. Again, no damage. My brother dropped his Visor off the kitchen counter and shattered his screen. It you are looking to be a little more budget and don't need/want a color screen, I would recommend the PDA my roommate has, the Sony PEG-T415 (320x320 B&W, 8mb, around $200) or the Sony PEG-S320 (160x160 B&W, 8mb, around $150).
Why Sony you may ask? While they are a bit more expensive that a lot of PDAs, the 320x320 screen on the 415 and the color models is gorgeous and they all are well built and snug in their aluminum cases. They also have Li-Ion batteries that charge when they are on the cradle (although mine has a slick system where the charger plugs into the cradle normally, but can be plugged directly into the unit and used as a travel charger) so you don't have to buy batteries for it.
Anywho, enough advertising. I don't work for Sony, I've just been very happy with their PDAs. Clearance Club is where I got mine and they have quite a few refurbished B&W models still.
I did quite a bit of research on PDA forums and such and had pretty bad luck finding anyone who had bad things to say about the 610 I got, and so far, I'd have to agree with the good things everyone had to say about it. Everyone I show a high res picture to just ooo's and ahh's and is incredulous when I told them I paid under $250 for it.
-Sokie
(inexcusible attempt at generic slashdot humor)
It's about time somebody slowed down Nvidia...how the hell am I supposed to keep up with the superest, L3373$7 video card when they come out with a damn new one every 6 freaking months??
What's that? Oh...different G-Force....sorry
http://www.musiclink.com/ (also called FairTunes). It is by no means complete, but it's a start.
-Sokie
As many other people have said, you probably don't want to do this in a business environment when you can get reliable machines for pretty cheap from Dell etc. But if you do decide to, here are some general brand recommendations based on my system assembly business experience (I've built and sold ~40 machines in the last 2 years):
Motherboard:
Asus is reliable and fast but also expensive. Look at Gigabyte, MSI, or FIC. (I especially like the Gigabyte GA-7ZMMH as an Athlon platform.)
CPU:
While I have nothing against Intel, AMD consistently kills them in the price/performance ratio. In the past 2 years I have yet to build an Intel based machine for a customer. I just lay out the options and they invariably pick AMD, but that's just my experience. The Duron is a good chip but I don't sell many of those either, people are usually willing to pay a little more for an Athlon of equivalent speed.
Memory:
Buy name brand memory, not generic stuff. I like Micron/Crucial personally, never had a stick go bad. Corsair and Mushkin make good stuff as well, although I had to RMA the only Corsair stick I've ever bought after about 6 months. Corsair customer service was excellent about it though.
Video Card:
Despite their bad reputation some places, I've had good luck with ATI cards when I need a video card. The Radeon VE provides some nice features at a good price point. But in a business environment, get a motherboard with integrated video if you don't need much. If you buy an NVidia card, do some research on the card's manufacturer and look for a reputation of stability.
Hard Drives:
In machines I build, I use almost exclusively Seagate. Good performance, good price, and I've had zero quality problems with them. I feel about the same about Maxtor. I used a couple Quantum drives in my early systems with no difficulties. I don't have any recent experience with Western Digital so I can't really comment on them. IBM drives are too expensive unless you really need the slight performance edge some models offer.
Optical Drives:
I've had stupendous success with Afreey CD and DVD drives. Only had one fail and that was after some kicked the extended disc tray (we were able to open it up and fix it actually). Afreey drives are also very inexpensive.
CD burner wise I stick with Sony. We tried several different brands (Plextor, Acer, etc..) and found that Sony offered excellent quality for a very reasonable price. Plextor is good quality but you pay extra for the Plextor name.
Enclosures/Power Supply:
Antec cases are top quality and have excellent Antec power supplies. They are lots of less expensive cases you can get (and lots of more expensive ones), but Antec had never let me down. If you do get a cheaper case, get it without a power supply and buy a good Sparkle/Antec power supply for it.
(I don't work for any of the abovementioned companies and I don't profess to be an expert on this topic. Just sharing the experience I've had as a system builder who has dealt with a little more volume and long term support than your average hobbyist. We are by no means a high volume shop so I'm sure there are lots of people out there with more experience than me, hopefully they will respond if they feel I'm wrong about any of the parts I've recommended.)
-Sokie
I think the main problem is that they honored the price for some people. IANAL, but it seems like once they did that, they lost the right to refuse to honor it for everyone who ordered before it was corrected. If they had just held firm to begin with and promptly refunded customers their money, then the people complaining wouldn't have much of a leg to stand on.
It's arbitraty discrimination about who does and doesn't get a card that may get them in trouble here.
--Sokie
Stay away from the chipset cooler on the KT7-RAID, it's a cheap little sleve bearing pile-o-crap that will start sounding like a dying kitten after a few months. My first one died and I sent Abit an e-mail, they mailed me a new fan that seems lots better (I think it's ball bearing).
:)
Zalman makes a big northbridge heatsink that you can glue on in the place of those fans.
I even had the northbridge fan go out on an Asus A7V133, I got absolutly no reply when I e-mailed Asus, so I just replaced it with one of the Zalman heatsinks, no problems so far and it's quieter to boot. ("To boot" as in an additional, bonus feature...I'm not saying it's just quieter when it boots...)
-Sokie
Now if only it worked.
:)
Every time I try it, I enter my password to confirm and it comes back with:
"Your new password must be at least 3 characters."
In big red letters. Nevermind that my current password is more than 3 letters and I'm not trying to change it anyway.
So can I be upset that they are violating their own privacy policy now by not allowing me a way to delete my account?
--Sokie
26 miles?? This is pretty impressive. Have any ISP's in any city considered doing this as an option of giving broadband internet access?
This one is going about 10 miles as the crow flies, although they are just a local outfit, but you can see from this map how far they are going with 802.11b equipment, most likely amplified.
As far as I can tell from reading the article, all they are doing is trying to leverage the state Business and Operating tax (B&O) tax on every business in the city and then increase the R&D tax credit once they are getting everyone to chip in. Kind of a more people pay but everyone who does pay, now pays less. Except of course for the people who didn't pay anything before.
My brother and I run a small software/hardware business in WA state (not in Seattle) and we don't pay any B&O tax because of a graduating small business tax credit. But since B&O tax is based on gross revenue, I don't see how software companies should be any different. I never for a second looked at our business tax forms and thought that we should be completely exempt from B&O tax, but I'm glad the credit makes it so we don't owe them anything yet.
Is there something in the article that I missed? All I see is some politicians blowing things way out of proportion with regards to "the taxation of intellectual property". I imagine that Sam Goody pays B&O tax even they are just retailing intellectual property (music). I imagine that the all along the way, the companies involved in producing, recording, and mastering a CD all pay B&O tax, or something similar that is based on their revenue.
But maybe I missed something...
In May 2001, Cisco wrote off about $2.5 Billion of excess inventory, in essence, saying that they never expected to sell that inventory for anything near what it is valued at. More recently they have been getting a nice little boost to their fiscal bottom line by bringing in "excess inventory benefits", that is they are discovering that they actually have been able to sell some of the inventory that had previously been written off.
But since Cisco has already taken the financial hit for a vast majority of their excess dot-com hardware, I doubt if that is a main reason why they are not implementing IPv6. It probably has more to do with a lack of demand. It's the catch-22 of supply and demand, most people don't do any demanding until there is a good supply (and hence a reasonable price), and most suppliers are hesitant to create a supply until they expect an impending demand, kind of a just-in-time delivery philosophy.
So until there is a argument for IPv6 that is more compelling to businesses than "it's better in the long run", most places will be slow to upgrade.
worked fine for me....
try replacing the www in the URL with archive
c ircuits/07NEXT.html
e.g. http://archive.nytimes.com/2002/02/07/technology/
But if you have drastic enough temperature deltas in the die itself to make this appreciable, then there is no heatsink design that is going to be precise enough to effectively combat those hot spots. Basically you have to design your heatsink to cool the hottest part of the chip to acceptable levels. Increasing the surface area of the die (without increasing the amount of total heat output) will lower (however slightly) the highest temperature spot on the die, making it (again however slightly) easier to cool.
Also, there is going to be horizontal thermal dissapation regardless of the thermal resistance of the materials involved. If I have a die that generates 1W of heat in a 200 mm^2 area, even if it is not generated uniformly, and I then increase the area to 300 mm^2 with the same total heat output value, that extra area IS going to be heated, probably substantially, regardless of whether it is generating it's own heat. That means that the overall average temperature has to go down somewhere.
The points you make are however perfectly valid and relevant, but the point of the original poster was supposing that it would be larger surface area of the die that would make it harder to cool, not any new thermal hotspots. I was simply saying that there aren't many ways that increasing the surface area can make something harder to cool.
Wouldn't a larger surface area allow for better cooling? Isn't that the whole principle of a heatsink in the first place?
--Sokie
["You only have to be open-minded if you are wrong."]
Actually Appaloosa is the next core in the Duron line of CPU's from AMD. The next Athlon core, due in the 1st half of this year (so by the end of June) is Thoroughbred, which will be a 0.13 micron process, basically a die shrink from 0.18 micron for the current crop of Athlon's. This will allow AMD to again ramp up clock speeds because of the reduction in heat/power consumption. Appaloosa is also a 0.13 micron process btw.
The roadmap further indicates that in the second half of this year, another incarnation of Athlon will appear using a 0.13 micron Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) process.
AMD Processor Roadmap
-Sokie
Yea, even as it happened in the day of Moses, a great flood is being brought down upon us.
Don't you mean in the days of Noah? (Noah's Ark, big flood, etc, etc...)
3) "The XHTML is XML" thing doesn't mean much. HTML is XML is SGML. They're all based on a tag format defined in a 1986 standard. HTML 4 needed very minor hacks to make it XML compatible. In fact, the only one I can think of is the new tag completion rule.
Technically HTML is just SGML, XHTML is XML is accurate. XML is NOT SGML, while they are both tag based languages, XML was designed to be at the same level on the tree as SGML is, they are equivalent.
Besides ending single tag elements, this doesn't affect things much since tag minimization has been depreciated for years.
Just because something is deprecated doesn't mean that it still isn't extensively used. Look at the <FONT> tag, it's been deprecated since CSS came out with HTML 4 but it's still widely in use. But the point I was making was that in the future HTML will conform to XML standards and simply be a subset of XML instead of a direct subset of SGML. I was refuting the contention that XML was not going to replace HTML.
On the contrary, I don't think it is misunderstood. By "us" at least. I can't tell you how many times I've laughed at these absurd concoctions for XML: TCP protocols, file systems, database backends...it just goes on. XML is a tag language. It does things tag languages do. XML is a minor extension of SGML to escape the 1986-ness of the format.
XML isn't the end-all future, but these publications make it seem that way, and when it's not that it's Java.
I'm not arguing that it is, all I was pointing out was that: A. XML is not a programming language meant to replace C or PHP or anything else. B. XML, through XHTML, is probably going to replace HTML eventually.
Here is a great document by the W3C that goes over XML and how it relates to SGML, HTML, etc:
http://www.w3c.org/XML/1999/XML-in-10-points.
XHMTL 1.0, which is the current W3C recommendation to replace HTML 4.0, IS XML!! The next version of HTML will be XHTML 2.x probably, there will be no HTML 5.x, so people that want to take advantage of any new features introduced in the next version will be using XML for their pages. They will just be using a specific DTD known as XHTML.
I've found that XML is one of the most misunderstood technologies out there, people seem to think that it's a drastic departure from what they know and nobody seems to understand where it's true power lies. XML is not going to replace PHP, Perl, Python, C, Java, or anything else. But you can use XML with all of those technologies and it's really a great way to store and describe large amounts of data if you don't need RDBMS or if you don't want to lock yourself into something.
Sun uses XML DTD's (or maybe Schemas, I dunno) for the StarOffice 6 file formats (maybe this was more an innovation of OpenOffice), which lets people create documents in StarOffice with absolutely no worry that they won't be able to retrieve their data 100 years from now.
XML was created exactly because "programmers dont think alike".
Which leads me to my second point, which is that LCDs aren't the only reason laptops are expensive compared to desktops. Miniature hard drives, low-power consumption CPUs, etc. are more expensive (and are also slower) than their desktop cousins.
Yes, the components are more expensive. But the main reason that laptops are so expensive is that each one basically has to be designed from scratch. Except when all you change is the hard drive capacity or the amount of RAM, you basically have to reengineer a new PCB and fabricate/debug it. This is also why the product development cycle for laptops is so long. It took almost 6 months from NVidia's official GeForce2 Go release to manufacturers before you could actually buy a laptop with the chip in it.
This combined with the fact that laptops are a much smaller market than desktops creates the price/performance delta.
http://www.grisoft.com, in my opinion, about the best virus program out there.
1. It's free (with no ads or other annoyances)
2. It scans both incoming *and* outgoing e-mails for virii if you so choose. (It will even tag them as certified virus free by Grisoft if you want.)
3. Just because it's free (although they do sell commercial versions) doesn't mean you don't get updates or anything. They already have an updated database (out today) for Goner.
Anyway, just something for the Windows people who don't have one of the commercial virus apps already, I've loved AVG since I put it on.
Also, doesn't look like AVG was targetted for deletion by this virus, course that just means AVG isn't very well known, but nice to know for me anyway....