You didn't even check Dell or HP (or any of the post below that did it for you) and configure a computer. I hope honestly that you are not putting a Celeron or 1 Ghz processor in anything. While performance isn't double. (By the way, Apple used to claim that, and it WAS true, it's not anymore, so they don't.) You can take the megahertz of a G4 and add about 60% of the chips speed to it though. A 1.4 Ghz DUAL G4 = 2.27 DUAL Ghz P4. make sure you are adding ATI 9000Pro or Nvidia Ti4600.
When you respond to a post, respond to the questions directly. You have no basis in your arguement, except for the OS is Nice comment.
Who exactly is in the PR/Graphic/Ad Design Dept at Intel? I think the only markettable ideas Intel has ever come out with were the names Pentium and little tone at the end of commercials. The names they come out with are very rarely tongue rolling or memorable. Same goes for their commercials. I mean, one campaign has Homer Simpson getting his brain replaced by a Pentium. The next campaign has aliens using it. The first tells me that stupid people use the Pentium, the second tells me that only aliens think a Pentium is cool,
Not being Apple bias, but you have to hand it to Apple Computer's PR/Design/Ad/Graphic Design Departments. They even get press for what they name variations of the operating system. It's not goofy either. Jaguar and all the promotional material has spawned the entire design industry into using animal prints, especially Jaguar.
Please example with detail how overpriced Macs are. In your answer, make sure to include FULL verions of Office and a better video editor than the "built in Microsoft" editor. Make sure detail ALL hardware in Mac too. Thanks!
I wish we had a topic here about Homeowner's Associations. If I hadn't already called hands on multiple occasions I would get voted in and change a few things;) You are 100% on the money.
My condo association board is nothing but elitists. Condo owners, own an undivided interest in property. The way we could turn this back to topic is: What exactly is my ownership and my undivided interest in music? Should we charge musicians to use our ears? It sounds far fetched. The arguement is you don't have to listen. Actually, if you want to listen to music or you are in an environment such as work, can you really choose not to listen to "boycott" artists?
One of the two of you help me get a topic that relates to tech and condo associations going on Slashdot. An article topic?
While this may be the unpopular flip side to take. Alcohol kills FAR more people and is estimated to be a 300% greater insurance/health related problem than cigarettes. However, Budweiser has one of the largest sponsorship/lobby budgets in the world. I'm not sure if per sale they took Nike or Coke over. I read a statistic (have to get my links down later) that 15 cents out of every Bud you buy is for lobby or advertising. That's cost to the company AND to you.
I have yet to find a relationship or family that was killed by a smoking driver. (sure it's happened but not every 3 minutes like a DUI) I have yet to see a family torn apart and divorce because of Malboro. I know a lot that have personally because of Jack Daniel's.
The point is. The RIAA has a lot of liberal friends. Both parties have cigarette but lately more alcohol friends. It's not what's best in politics and lawmaking, it's what's best for me. (ME = Senator/Representative/Lawyer)
While I would say this kind of scenario is probably less than 1/2 of 1%, it is a case to study none the less.
If P2P networks were not allowed for file sharing and music sharing, what's to say, I don't call home and ask my little junior high school brother to go into my room, grab a "Jimmy Buffet CD" and rip it then put all the songs on LimeWire, call them "Rus's Own Collection 1-15" - I go on LimeWire and get my OWN songs for a party that night. Who's to say, that just before my computer at home is scrapped that I want all the programs off of it. I own legitimate copies at home on my shelf in MY bedroom. I ask my Dad to hook up the hard drive into an external enclosure and put the files up on LimeWire for me to download?
Further, what the RIAA (pushing this "mentioned in the article enforcement" with Congress) doesn't understand is, it's been college students who have SOLD MILLIONS of singles because of p2p. They saw the Mitsubishi Commercials, went on KAzaa or LimeWire or Napster and typed in "Mitsubishi commercial" not knowing the artist or title of the song. Less than a month goes by, each Mitsubishi commercial has been a #1 or top 5 hit. EVERY ONE. Mitsubishi even claims on their website selling 6 million singles for Telepopmusik (Just Breathe), Wiseguys (Start The Commotion), Dirty Vegas (Days Go By) - all three of those songs were almost certainly spread because of college P2P and then subsequent college Radio play. NO ONE (less than 5% of the US population) had ever heard of ANY of those groups I'm sure before the commercials and before p2p.
Take the same example. I hear the Mitsubishi commercial, go into Tower or Sam Goody, or ANY music store. I say, "Do you have that song off the new Mitsubishi Commercial?" You get one of three replies: "Howzit go?" "Whozit by?" - "I don't watch TV or no I haven't seen it" - in any case even if they can gather what song it is, if it's a new Mitsubishi Commercial THEY NEVER HAVE IT!
I downloaded, recently, the entire Chicago (movie) soundtrack. I wanted to see if it was better than the Broadway CD I own. It was. I went out and bought it. I can't sample like that in ANY store and none of the songs have been on the radio.
Re:Compact Discs Obsolete & Universally Standa
on
The Future of the CD
·
· Score: 1
I have a 12" G4 - it has everything that I mentioned.
I diasagree with the price/performance issue - it is very true, if one were to go configure the exact same computers on the Dell website you would get a $50-$75 difference in favor of the PC. But what you don't get is the versatility of the Mac OS. The PC can not emulate the Mac very well.
Please don't quote anyone and then say it's bogus. Again you're Mac Bashing without justification. I don't bash or biasly speak favorably about Macs.
I gave you actual examples, without links because I can't remember where they are. The website www.barefeats.com is a good start, so is www.xlr8yourMac.com.
One example I don't know the link to involves workflow and another ease of use. Chiat Day, a large advertising firm behind a majority of the good commercials on TV, was given a test on workflow. On average, the Macintosh side of their division, using the same programs on PC & Mac - got the job done with the exact same jobs 20% faster. Both sides had motivation to "be the better of the two". Similarly. 10 Macs and 10 PCs of equivalent hardware are taken into a retirement home boxed up/sealed. 5 Men / 5 Women (all elderly/computer illiterate) - they are told to, "With no help whatsoever" See if you can get this machine on the internet, here is the only advice, both machines have had wireless cards installed so you will not need to plug it in for the internet."
Well, the Mac works driverless out of the box, no selection of even the base station. The PC, any PC or Linux box, needs at the very least drivers for the card and then selection of a network. Further 8 out of 10 Seniors got on within 30 minutes on the Mac - all 10 before all 10 of the PC Testers. 2 PC Testers, never got on, one wasn't able to get the machine turned on. One crashed the PC straight out of the box.
I thought this test had to be rigged. I tried it a year and a half ago at a Mac User's Group meeting. Random sample, no MUG members, no previous retired IBM employees) - the same results!
Actually Virtual PC now reads and writes to the whole hard drive and can be seamless with the Mac desktop if desired. The start menu is now in the dock (if you want it that way)
I didn't say that this currently exists, but it could potentially exist.
If I go to the Run or Browse menu in XP I can see everything on my Laptops 4 hard drives (2 from a 40 gig internal partition) (2 from a firewire 120 gig) and a 5th or 6th if I desire to hook up my iPod or expansion bay hard drive.
It (XP in VPC on a Mac) could EASILY see software on the other partitions. The article (and my post) is about reading software installed on XP hard drives.
Microsoft's motivation could be to also read logs, in OS X, details how many times and how often a program is used. Microsoft could learn if Keynote really was a threat to PowerPoint, if AppleWorks really is beating out Word, how often people really are using Windows (as in VPC) on a Mac, etc.
I was speaking of the information Microsoft can gather about Mac User's Hard Drives and then releasing/developing programs based on "popularity" of programs on resident hard drives. A company could easily discover trends (illegally) by doing this - the equivalent of breaking into my house and rummaging through my dresser to see what kind of clothes I wear - so said intruder could send me Gap/Eddie Baur/Land's End/Etc catalogs and SPAM.
Which health and safety codes are you referring to?
Both lawsuits mentioned are real lawsuits. Both have probably cost McDonald's a profitable quarter or two. Both have have probably made a Big Mac for me 10 cents higher. The point is Bezos is using or will use this "arsenal of patents" this to sue his competition into trouble and bad press.
I give no sympathy to the stupid. You don't hold coffee between your legs in a moving car. I want my coffee hot and I want it to stay that way until I finish it. As for the "Fat Lawsuit", that borders on criminal. I think everyone that eats at McDonald's or who owns shares of McDonald's should sue that guy. But McD's doesn't want bad press or some Jesse Jackson organization marching in front of their corporate headquarters.
It was later discovered, for your records, that the old woman who burned her cooch, was the sister in law to the owner of a small coffee chain in the area where she lived. This illustrates the point of competing through litigation.
I wonder what Virtual PC sends, whether it sends only the info in the Windows Drive image or everything on the Mac.
This may also be an alterior motive to Microsoft buying Virtual PC from Connectix last week. They want this same data from Mac Users. I imagine if it's not there then it will be added to read all partitions mac/Linux/PC
Knowing what your customers have on their hard drives is sensitive corporate data. Basically, you know the Hot or Not Programs in the industry and then develop programs based on their hard drive residency!
I agree. Soon, patent will be so out of hand that everyone will hold a patent on everything. I take your example further and relate it to a recent/. Story about the recent NPR move to not allow even linking or discussion of an article. http://slashdot.org/articles/02/06/19/1438200.shtm l
This will be the "McDonald's made me fat lawsuit" or "I spilled hot coffee on my cooch, now I'm gonna sue lawsuit" of the next millenium
Double Click was a legitimate patent. I think Bezos is starting to feel heat from other esellers again and is building an arsenal to "compete" if eBay gets any bigger!
In the mid 80's I had two TShirts and a Golf Shirt that turned a different color when you got wet or warm. The only problem with the golf shirt was that the whole thing was HyperColor material, so, people saw if you were nervous. I remember finding out that it was the wrong 8th grade date shirt.
What I thought was even more interesting is that at first the company who made it, Generra, was a prime brand, it ended up a few years later in the forgotten trends market at Montgomery Ward.
It's going to be interesting. It's looking like one day we will have clothes that change color, glow, smell and have RFID tags. Maybe Gap will just make any stolen T Shirt Stink and glow with the words, "I stole this" or "I don't fold things back neatly at the Gap"
Re:Compact Discs Obsolete & Universally Standa
on
The Future of the CD
·
· Score: 1
So is EVERY OTHER PC website. (Filled with meaningless benchmarks)
Here's a list of other features that laptop doesn't have: integrated Wifi, integrated GIGABIT ethernet, firewire 800, no backlit solid feeling keyboard, most likely a Sharp LCD (lowest quality) vs a Samsung or Philips LCD (highest quality).
Also, there is the website www.barefeats.com that DOES give real world tests.
There is a lot to say about being productive in speed to. The Apple GUI is clean and consistent. Whether slow or smaller percentage of market, more people get more things done faster on a Mac. That's based on real world tests.
Further, NO PENTIUM LAPTOP EVER compares to an Apple laptop. As for desktops, Yes, the high ends beat Appl's high ends. But anything that has a dektop Pentium processor in it lasts a max of 45 minutes. At least Apple can squeeze 3 hours out of their fastest laptops. This is due to the fact that Apple uses the same processors across the board.
It's obvious you hate Macs, so no matter what benchmark or statistic I threw your way, wouldn't matter. I, on the other hand, use both, I prefer Macs, but really am not that bias towards them.
I am of the opinion that companies like Yahoo; love SPAM. Why, it's so bad that MOST people are buying paid services from Yahoo. Do you think that the ISP/SP's like Yahoo are making the problem worse by allowing more and more SPAM to come throught the world's largest email client?
My other question (I know two are not allowed, but....) whay can't ISPs stop unreolved email or domains from even reaching the mail server? I get mails from expertsales@werwerwetgfhgvlkfvl.com or similar all the time.
Re:Compact Discs Obsolete & Universally Standa
on
The Future of the CD
·
· Score: 1
Well, instead of touche, I will tap your sword.
CDRs are an example of sellers selling below manufacture cost already. The point of the sale is to sell readers not media. CDRs from Staples, OfficeMax, Circuit City, and Best Buy are free for 50 and 100 packs often. Floppies are free, as are a lot of other electronics because they want people to buy other stuff, the high margin stuff. Why couldn't flash ram be the same? Memory (256MB PC 133) this week at Officemax is $14.99.
I also think you have YET to read and comprehend my initial post. I didn't say compact flash necessarily, but CF SIZED media that was flash based.
You are also discounting the internet sales prices, wholesale prices on mass market and retail prices. Even ebay prices have a large impact on retail prices.
Saying that a TV requires less of anything than a memory card is absurd.
Re:Compact Discs Obsolete & Universally Standa
on
The Future of the CD
·
· Score: 1
One other quick point.... Sony spent a lot of R&D on REGULAR CDRs to up the capaicity to 700MB from 650 about a year and a half ago. Everything requires ongoing R&D.
Re:Compact Discs Obsolete & Universally Standa
on
The Future of the CD
·
· Score: 1
I guess you don't see that 32MB Flash storage cards are $6 - used to be $75 - NEVER say ALWAYS and IMPOSSIBLE. If memory were to be mass produced at even greater capacity than it is now (which it will be one day) then prices WILL come to my price point. I'm not saying next week, next year, next five years. But with 10 years it WILL happen. Again, I gave specific examples of how this happening, you can't back anything you spoke of. The Zip analogy wasn't the same, Zip Disks required proprietary drives and very expensive to produce cards with lots of R&D, not to mention the interface was barely faster than a floppy and larger than 3 floppies in size. To top it off IOMEGA produced a drive that had a useage life of no more than 2 years before breaking.
Do some more research on memory putting off a lot of heat, even remotely compreable to 120 degrees + of a DVDR laser. Also, internal firewire interfaces for compact flash SIZE (not necessarily CF itself, but a higher quality SRAM) is already done. Capacity makes no difference. CF cards from 2MB to 2 GIG fit in ANY CF slot ever made! To illustrate my point again. Compact Flash cards 1 gig capacity (not microdrive) were $900 last year about this time. This week I have seen them for as low as $208 shipped. 1 gig capacity is not in high demand, but as soon as it was you would see that price around $25. 4MB of memory 30 pin in 1984 for my Mac SE cost almost $1200, now you can't even give 4MB away of anything, not even flash RAM or smartmedia.
One more illustration. Do you think anyone thought in the 50's or 60's that TV's would eventually be $30? (the equivalent of $5.50 then) Walmart has a 5" B/W w built in FM Tuner for $29.99 this week, and to top it off they HAVE to make making SOME money on it. Do you think anyone in the 80's thought they could get an entite walkman, with headphones, binoculars, flashlight, digital camera; also at Walmart for $20!!! What about a 20" TV with a built in VCR for $99. Just four years a go, most VCR's were $200+. Even a Sanyo 20" FOUR years ago was $399!
Re:Compact Discs Obsolete & Universally Standa
on
The Future of the CD
·
· Score: 1
You bring up some good points, but make a lot of baseless facts and some outright absurd remarks.
First, PC Card slots put of very little if ANY heat; that is heat from INSIDE a notebook. Is a flash card reader even warm to the touch if you use it or transfer lots of data too it?
Flash storage, if made less of a commodity could get to the price point I'm speaking of. The key would be making it ubiquitous. CDRs were a dollar at first, now they are beyond your price point of 25 cents, they are in most respects; free.
The R&D is already done for interface, it would take minimal effort.
A company called www.ADTRON.com has a 2.5" IDE/ATA drive that has 4 gigs of SRAM (high speed, high rewrite/write limit) - usually used in blade servers. If enough people were using these drives they would be as cheap as 4 gig ATA 2.5" drives are today - about $25 - a lot more R&D, and manufacture / material costs goes into a spinning disk than a solid state one.
As I mentioned in the original post, Olympus and Fuji are promising that their XD picture card (which is a type of SRAM by the way) will be at 3 gigs by the end of 2003. This RAM card is smaller than secure digital, truely the size of a 37 cent stamp. That would place a compact flash sized capacity at somewhere around 12 gigs; a 2.5" notebook drive at at LEAST 60 gigs.
Re:Compact Discs Obsolete & Universally Standa
on
The Future of the CD
·
· Score: 1
A P3 Mobile 1.13 is like a 750 Mhz Celeron - the G4 12" has other features that outweigh that laptop as well. There is no DVD-R/CDrW option either.
The G4 867 processor is the same processor used in the 867 desktop units.
Re:Compact Discs Obsolete & Universally Standa
on
The Future of the CD
·
· Score: 1
Never say - always - if memory were made less of a commodity by mass production - it would be as cheap as bubble gum.
Compact Discs Obsolete & Universally Standard
on
The Future of the CD
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Apple Computer often notes in it's technical parts of it's financial statements that optical drives are almost always it's main concern for "aquisition price" and causing R&D to be higher. Apple currently has the thinnest/lightest laptop on the market with an optical drive.
Apple's R&D often notes that the optical drive is the number one bottleneck in data storage speed, reliability, and size reduction. (Not just for laptops, but desktops too) DVD burners, as Apple now includes in most every model of its computers, produce a lot of heat and add about $250 to the consumer cost of the computer.
I wish manufacturers could just agree on another new standard, such as some sort of Flash based storage. With the quality of Mp4 video and audio you could have relatively small capacity "compact flash cards" - the slot should be a combo drive as already seen in the majority of industry with DVD/CDRW combo drives. Be a flash memory reader and a videoFlash reader.
Now as for cost, if manufacturers would do this, Flash RAM (or SRAM) would start to plummet. These manufacturers would make money based on volume. I could see 128MB cards $1 + 512MB $5 1 GB $9 - these may be unrealistic at first, but WOULD come. It would reduce memory of all types for all the different uses there are.
It would also reduce R&D and reduce heat and weight concerns many Video Player/Laptop/music player manufacturers have at this moment. The XD picture card is promising 3 gigs by the end of this year. If they can put that amount of memory in the size of a postage stamp; imagine what they could do with a compact flash card size?
Of course, reasons are clear why music CDs are expensive right now - RIAA litigation costs MONEY - lots of it. Litigation expenses were nearly 33 million dollars last year. The music industry was caught for overcharging. Third, they don't understand that the cost of online distribution at a reasonable price would dramitically reduce print/ink/plastic/distribution (truck/air) costs.
My question is, are blank CD media pressing companies really making a lot of money?
Slashdot Mirror
When you respond to a post, respond to the questions directly. You have no basis in your arguement, except for the OS is Nice comment.
Not being Apple bias, but you have to hand it to Apple Computer's PR/Design/Ad/Graphic Design Departments. They even get press for what they name variations of the operating system. It's not goofy either. Jaguar and all the promotional material has spawned the entire design industry into using animal prints, especially Jaguar.
My condo association board is nothing but elitists. Condo owners, own an undivided interest in property. The way we could turn this back to topic is: What exactly is my ownership and my undivided interest in music? Should we charge musicians to use our ears? It sounds far fetched. The arguement is you don't have to listen. Actually, if you want to listen to music or you are in an environment such as work, can you really choose not to listen to "boycott" artists?
One of the two of you help me get a topic that relates to tech and condo associations going on Slashdot. An article topic?
I have yet to find a relationship or family that was killed by a smoking driver. (sure it's happened but not every 3 minutes like a DUI) I have yet to see a family torn apart and divorce because of Malboro. I know a lot that have personally because of Jack Daniel's.
The point is. The RIAA has a lot of liberal friends. Both parties have cigarette but lately more alcohol friends. It's not what's best in politics and lawmaking, it's what's best for me. (ME = Senator/Representative/Lawyer)
If P2P networks were not allowed for file sharing and music sharing, what's to say, I don't call home and ask my little junior high school brother to go into my room, grab a "Jimmy Buffet CD" and rip it then put all the songs on LimeWire, call them "Rus's Own Collection 1-15" - I go on LimeWire and get my OWN songs for a party that night. Who's to say, that just before my computer at home is scrapped that I want all the programs off of it. I own legitimate copies at home on my shelf in MY bedroom. I ask my Dad to hook up the hard drive into an external enclosure and put the files up on LimeWire for me to download?
Further, what the RIAA (pushing this "mentioned in the article enforcement" with Congress) doesn't understand is, it's been college students who have SOLD MILLIONS of singles because of p2p. They saw the Mitsubishi Commercials, went on KAzaa or LimeWire or Napster and typed in "Mitsubishi commercial" not knowing the artist or title of the song. Less than a month goes by, each Mitsubishi commercial has been a #1 or top 5 hit. EVERY ONE. Mitsubishi even claims on their website selling 6 million singles for Telepopmusik (Just Breathe), Wiseguys (Start The Commotion), Dirty Vegas (Days Go By) - all three of those songs were almost certainly spread because of college P2P and then subsequent college Radio play. NO ONE (less than 5% of the US population) had ever heard of ANY of those groups I'm sure before the commercials and before p2p.
Take the same example. I hear the Mitsubishi commercial, go into Tower or Sam Goody, or ANY music store. I say, "Do you have that song off the new Mitsubishi Commercial?" You get one of three replies: "Howzit go?" "Whozit by?" - "I don't watch TV or no I haven't seen it" - in any case even if they can gather what song it is, if it's a new Mitsubishi Commercial THEY NEVER HAVE IT!
I downloaded, recently, the entire Chicago (movie) soundtrack. I wanted to see if it was better than the Broadway CD I own. It was. I went out and bought it. I can't sample like that in ANY store and none of the songs have been on the radio.
I diasagree with the price/performance issue - it is very true, if one were to go configure the exact same computers on the Dell website you would get a $50-$75 difference in favor of the PC. But what you don't get is the versatility of the Mac OS. The PC can not emulate the Mac very well.
Please don't quote anyone and then say it's bogus. Again you're Mac Bashing without justification. I don't bash or biasly speak favorably about Macs.
I gave you actual examples, without links because I can't remember where they are. The website www.barefeats.com is a good start, so is www.xlr8yourMac.com.
One example I don't know the link to involves workflow and another ease of use. Chiat Day, a large advertising firm behind a majority of the good commercials on TV, was given a test on workflow. On average, the Macintosh side of their division, using the same programs on PC & Mac - got the job done with the exact same jobs 20% faster. Both sides had motivation to "be the better of the two". Similarly. 10 Macs and 10 PCs of equivalent hardware are taken into a retirement home boxed up/sealed. 5 Men / 5 Women (all elderly/computer illiterate) - they are told to, "With no help whatsoever" See if you can get this machine on the internet, here is the only advice, both machines have had wireless cards installed so you will not need to plug it in for the internet."
Well, the Mac works driverless out of the box, no selection of even the base station. The PC, any PC or Linux box, needs at the very least drivers for the card and then selection of a network. Further 8 out of 10 Seniors got on within 30 minutes on the Mac - all 10 before all 10 of the PC Testers. 2 PC Testers, never got on, one wasn't able to get the machine turned on. One crashed the PC straight out of the box.
I thought this test had to be rigged. I tried it a year and a half ago at a Mac User's Group meeting. Random sample, no MUG members, no previous retired IBM employees) - the same results!
I didn't say that this currently exists, but it could potentially exist.
If I go to the Run or Browse menu in XP I can see everything on my Laptops 4 hard drives (2 from a 40 gig internal partition) (2 from a firewire 120 gig) and a 5th or 6th if I desire to hook up my iPod or expansion bay hard drive.
Microsoft's motivation could be to also read logs, in OS X, details how many times and how often a program is used. Microsoft could learn if Keynote really was a threat to PowerPoint, if AppleWorks really is beating out Word, how often people really are using Windows (as in VPC) on a Mac, etc.
Now, Halo is old hat. Luckily, Carmack will never sell ID to M$, so we do have a chance of same day release of DOOM III.
Read with comprehension
The current version of VPC 6 uses XP to which this article is referring.
Both lawsuits mentioned are real lawsuits. Both have probably cost McDonald's a profitable quarter or two. Both have have probably made a Big Mac for me 10 cents higher. The point is Bezos is using or will use this "arsenal of patents" this to sue his competition into trouble and bad press.
I give no sympathy to the stupid. You don't hold coffee between your legs in a moving car. I want my coffee hot and I want it to stay that way until I finish it. As for the "Fat Lawsuit", that borders on criminal. I think everyone that eats at McDonald's or who owns shares of McDonald's should sue that guy. But McD's doesn't want bad press or some Jesse Jackson organization marching in front of their corporate headquarters.
It was later discovered, for your records, that the old woman who burned her cooch, was the sister in law to the owner of a small coffee chain in the area where she lived. This illustrates the point of competing through litigation.
This may also be an alterior motive to Microsoft buying Virtual PC from Connectix last week. They want this same data from Mac Users. I imagine if it's not there then it will be added to read all partitions mac/Linux/PC
Knowing what your customers have on their hard drives is sensitive corporate data. Basically, you know the Hot or Not Programs in the industry and then develop programs based on their hard drive residency!
This will be the "McDonald's made me fat lawsuit" or "I spilled hot coffee on my cooch, now I'm gonna sue lawsuit" of the next millenium
Double Click was a legitimate patent. I think Bezos is starting to feel heat from other esellers again and is building an arsenal to "compete" if eBay gets any bigger!
What I thought was even more interesting is that at first the company who made it, Generra, was a prime brand, it ended up a few years later in the forgotten trends market at Montgomery Ward.
It's going to be interesting. It's looking like one day we will have clothes that change color, glow, smell and have RFID tags. Maybe Gap will just make any stolen T Shirt Stink and glow with the words, "I stole this" or "I don't fold things back neatly at the Gap"
Here's a list of other features that laptop doesn't have: integrated Wifi, integrated GIGABIT ethernet, firewire 800, no backlit solid feeling keyboard, most likely a Sharp LCD (lowest quality) vs a Samsung or Philips LCD (highest quality).
Also, there is the website www.barefeats.com that DOES give real world tests.
There is a lot to say about being productive in speed to. The Apple GUI is clean and consistent. Whether slow or smaller percentage of market, more people get more things done faster on a Mac. That's based on real world tests.
Further, NO PENTIUM LAPTOP EVER compares to an Apple laptop. As for desktops, Yes, the high ends beat Appl's high ends. But anything that has a dektop Pentium processor in it lasts a max of 45 minutes. At least Apple can squeeze 3 hours out of their fastest laptops. This is due to the fact that Apple uses the same processors across the board.
It's obvious you hate Macs, so no matter what benchmark or statistic I threw your way, wouldn't matter. I, on the other hand, use both, I prefer Macs, but really am not that bias towards them.
My other question (I know two are not allowed, but....) whay can't ISPs stop unreolved email or domains from even reaching the mail server? I get mails from expertsales@werwerwetgfhgvlkfvl.com or similar all the time.
CDRs are an example of sellers selling below manufacture cost already. The point of the sale is to sell readers not media. CDRs from Staples, OfficeMax, Circuit City, and Best Buy are free for 50 and 100 packs often. Floppies are free, as are a lot of other electronics because they want people to buy other stuff, the high margin stuff. Why couldn't flash ram be the same? Memory (256MB PC 133) this week at Officemax is $14.99.
I also think you have YET to read and comprehend my initial post. I didn't say compact flash necessarily, but CF SIZED media that was flash based.
You are also discounting the internet sales prices, wholesale prices on mass market and retail prices. Even ebay prices have a large impact on retail prices.
Saying that a TV requires less of anything than a memory card is absurd.
Do some more research on memory putting off a lot of heat, even remotely compreable to 120 degrees + of a DVDR laser. Also, internal firewire interfaces for compact flash SIZE (not necessarily CF itself, but a higher quality SRAM) is already done. Capacity makes no difference. CF cards from 2MB to 2 GIG fit in ANY CF slot ever made! To illustrate my point again. Compact Flash cards 1 gig capacity (not microdrive) were $900 last year about this time. This week I have seen them for as low as $208 shipped. 1 gig capacity is not in high demand, but as soon as it was you would see that price around $25. 4MB of memory 30 pin in 1984 for my Mac SE cost almost $1200, now you can't even give 4MB away of anything, not even flash RAM or smartmedia.
One more illustration. Do you think anyone thought in the 50's or 60's that TV's would eventually be $30? (the equivalent of $5.50 then) Walmart has a 5" B/W w built in FM Tuner for $29.99 this week, and to top it off they HAVE to make making SOME money on it. Do you think anyone in the 80's thought they could get an entite walkman, with headphones, binoculars, flashlight, digital camera; also at Walmart for $20!!! What about a 20" TV with a built in VCR for $99. Just four years a go, most VCR's were $200+. Even a Sanyo 20" FOUR years ago was $399!
First, PC Card slots put of very little if ANY heat; that is heat from INSIDE a notebook. Is a flash card reader even warm to the touch if you use it or transfer lots of data too it?
Flash storage, if made less of a commodity could get to the price point I'm speaking of. The key would be making it ubiquitous. CDRs were a dollar at first, now they are beyond your price point of 25 cents, they are in most respects; free.
The R&D is already done for interface, it would take minimal effort.
A company called www.ADTRON.com has a 2.5" IDE/ATA drive that has 4 gigs of SRAM (high speed, high rewrite/write limit) - usually used in blade servers. If enough people were using these drives they would be as cheap as 4 gig ATA 2.5" drives are today - about $25 - a lot more R&D, and manufacture / material costs goes into a spinning disk than a solid state one.
As I mentioned in the original post, Olympus and Fuji are promising that their XD picture card (which is a type of SRAM by the way) will be at 3 gigs by the end of 2003. This RAM card is smaller than secure digital, truely the size of a 37 cent stamp. That would place a compact flash sized capacity at somewhere around 12 gigs; a 2.5" notebook drive at at LEAST 60 gigs.
The G4 867 processor is the same processor used in the 867 desktop units.
Apple's R&D often notes that the optical drive is the number one bottleneck in data storage speed, reliability, and size reduction. (Not just for laptops, but desktops too) DVD burners, as Apple now includes in most every model of its computers, produce a lot of heat and add about $250 to the consumer cost of the computer.
I wish manufacturers could just agree on another new standard, such as some sort of Flash based storage. With the quality of Mp4 video and audio you could have relatively small capacity "compact flash cards" - the slot should be a combo drive as already seen in the majority of industry with DVD/CDRW combo drives. Be a flash memory reader and a videoFlash reader.
Now as for cost, if manufacturers would do this, Flash RAM (or SRAM) would start to plummet. These manufacturers would make money based on volume. I could see 128MB cards $1 + 512MB $5 1 GB $9 - these may be unrealistic at first, but WOULD come. It would reduce memory of all types for all the different uses there are.
It would also reduce R&D and reduce heat and weight concerns many Video Player/Laptop/music player manufacturers have at this moment. The XD picture card is promising 3 gigs by the end of this year. If they can put that amount of memory in the size of a postage stamp; imagine what they could do with a compact flash card size?
Of course, reasons are clear why music CDs are expensive right now - RIAA litigation costs MONEY - lots of it. Litigation expenses were nearly 33 million dollars last year. The music industry was caught for overcharging. Third, they don't understand that the cost of online distribution at a reasonable price would dramitically reduce print/ink/plastic/distribution (truck/air) costs.
My question is, are blank CD media pressing companies really making a lot of money?