That's what an advancement in technology is. What else could it be?
>1) NEWCARD is simply specs for a new version of PCMCIA that allows for two NEWCARDs in the place of one PCMCIA. This allows notebook manufactures to keep their dies the same and just swap out the card bay. If they get cute, they might even be able to make a hybrid version that takes either 1 old or 2 new cards--depends on connector pinouts).
Look, it's based on an entirely different bus, and it's a different (albeit similar) form factor. Notebook manufacturer's keeping the same dies?? What dies would those be? The ones that can also turn out PCI, PCI Express, and ISA cards? What about Vesa Local Bus?
>2) Since they will be restricted in connector pin space, they're using a USB2.0 serial bus for communication rather than PCMCIAs parallel bus/bizarre IDE disk protocol. Fewer pins, better reliability and speed.
You said it yourself. Newer protocol, better reliability and speed. Nothing further needed.
>3) This is nothing more than a packaging standard. PCMCIA is just worried about impingement from Compact Flash cards for network/serial/bluetooth/everything else. Note the emphasis on "mobile" computing. Subtext: don't buy Flash, we're better.
Where else do YOU use PCMCIA? I find it quite useful in my laptop. For mobile computing. As for the argument against compact flash, for every compact flash device I've EVER seen (with the sole exception of pure storage), I've been able to find a PCMCIA card at a much lower price. What would you prefer laptops to use? How about ISA, since it's only drawback is that it is an older bus that isn't as fast?
4) (Personal opinion). Unclear to me why they'd trumpet any sort of connection to USB, given the incredibly bad compatibility story it has.
You said it yourself, once again. Personal opinion. I have yet to ever see personally, or in fact hear of anyone (with this one exception) who complains about how incompatible USB is. Boy I sure miss my old serial mouse, parallel printer and SCSI scanner. Those sure were the good old days.
To sum it up, do some research on the technology involved in the future, preferably before you spew random verbiage on the world at large.
Because, and I've heard this question fairly often, at those rotational speeds they can't get as much data density on the platters. Same thing with the 10k-15k scsi, and the same reason that 5400RPM drives come out in the larger sizes first.
*Grin* Yeah, I know, but that's if you're using a VF-45 type connector and don't have to pay $40 for it. I was actually envisioning more of a (at least in the short term) conversion to RJ-45 copper of some type, kind of like a cable modem with conversion from Coax to CatX.
Well, 100megabit works out to 12.5MB/s per second. My hard drive can both read and write considerably faster than that. Gigabit pushes the roof to about 128MB/s. Serial ATA is specced to go to 600MB/s, which is considerably more than 128MB/s. In my company I daily transfer massive collections of CAD drawings back and forth from office to office, and from office to home. When I have a huge project, I put in hours at home as well, and it would be much easier for me if I had that kind of connection speed. And fiber, by the way, is cheaper per megabit BY FAR then copper. The newly ratified 10gigabit standard (which is nowhere near full utilization of fiber, what with frequency multiplexing technology), allows 60gigabit/second to be transfered over 12-strand 50micron multimode cable, which comes in at about $.90/foot. What an end user needs is simply two strands (transmit/recieve pair), which can be scaled up to whatever bandwidth is necessary. It may seem expensive, but fiber has been here a long time, and it's here to stay, so we may as well utilize it rather than saying "100baseTX is good enough for me." Is 640K really enough for you?
Yes, Tom did indeed mention the noise quite prominently. In fact, here's the exact quote:
'A further problem is the noise level. The fan produces an incredible racket on par with a vacuum cleaner - there's simply no other way to describe it. You can hear the card even if you're in another room of the house.'
Please, read the article fully if you are going to critique it. Otherwise, you're just another crony jumping on the bandwagon to bring down someone else's work.
How is it two strikes in a row? They are a company with a business model designed to generate revenue; their games do so very successfully. So, we have:
1.) Create game.
2.) People love/buy game.
3.) Profit.
Because you (personally) don't like the game, does not mean (for them, or anyone else) that the game is a failure, as is proven conclusively through sales. Obviously, since they've sold many, many copies.
Well, I agree that the latest cards are usually overkill, but I'll try to address the question-
The newest cards can generally push more frames than is strictly necessary on existant games, but there are always newer graphics technologies that require the extra processing power. For instance; per-pixel shading. Really, though, that developement is usually around 6 months to a year behind the hardware now. Who really cares if the GeforceFX can push 20% (just a random number, BTW) more frames than the Radeon 9700Pro? Does it really make any difference at that point? Not now, but maybe in six months. And in six months, maybe the GeforceFX will be somewhat affordable. I'll continue buying just behind the latest tech., and I don't really see any reason to buy right on the bleeding edge.
I have used it. Once. I installed it on a non-critical machine, to see what it was like. I found it to be nowhere near as slick and easy for beginners as Redhat 8.0. In fact, although the install was easy (so easy in fact that 8 or 10 shipyard ales had no noticeable effect on said install process...), I found the distro (in general) to be flaky at best.
I don't know how many of you live in New England, but I live in Maine, and the weather here has been severely bizarre the last few years. The icestorm, caused by precipitation and unseasonal warmth. Then several winters with very little snow. In the last 4 weeks, we have gotten more snow than we did all last year. I have around 40in of snow on the ground right now, and it's been snowing off and on since the last major system. It's 37 right now, and supposed to have a high temp. this weekend of around 9 (f). Now, this isn't exactly consistent. I don't have any solid ideas what is causing this. I've heard so many conflicting (drastically) points of view on this, because just about any study that ever gets any attention sets out to "prove" global warming to be either natural or completely man made. Does anyone know of any non-biased research? Someone that doesn't have an agenda with environmentalists or their counterparts?
Actually, as I recall from reading the article, it said the question was whether they'd be relying on GPU processing power or memory bandwidth. The other possibility is that once ATI goes to the.13 micron core, they may raise the clockspeed as well, which will mean a whole new ball game. We'll have to wait and see. Meanwhile, the only games I know of that may potentially use that generation of card is Doom 3; others will follow, but I think it'll be awhile. UT2003 runs just fine on a radeon 7500 or a GeForce 2 GTS.
Is this related at all to the Helios Project? Would this re-zoning have to take place to allow them? As I recall, these were what they were discussing as potential satellite replacements, though I haven't heard anything about them in a long time. They were to be solar powered, and multipurpose, capable of remaining airborne for months at a time and carrying an array of emitters/receivers of various types, at a very low price tag compared to satellites that provide the same service. At the time they were being hailed as the ultimate broadband provider, possibly based on an 802.11 standard of some type.
Humans are omnivores. That is the only argument that has any relevence to this discussion. I choose not to eat veal or a lot of red meat; I do this from choice, as I accept that other people make their own choices, but choosing to rip people down and try to gross them out by discussing the butchering process or suggesting that humans should eat other humans is reprehensible. It is with an obvious superior and elitist attitude that many of these statements have been made, and that proves nothing; nor does it convince "the other side" to convert. Why, then, does PETA not seek the extermination of species that eat other animal species? The answer is simple: they would quickly (assuming the necessary tools existed) decimate life on earth. Why is it different with humankind? Because in many people's eyes humankind is an unnatural aberration; one which only destroys nature. The problem is not eating meat, which is natural and healthy in the correct proportions, it is human overpopulation. Control that, and there is no longer a question of the "efficiency" of eating meat. Besides which, speaking of pure efficiency, how necessary is a home computer? The resources required to construct one are immense, especially in comparison to what it gets used for (mostly). Is Quake necessary? No, but it's fun. People eat meat because they enjoy it, just like people use their computer hardware to read/. because they enjoy it. It is technically inefficient to read/. and I will continue to do it, sometimes even while eating a turkey sandwich or a burger. And I will enjoy the inefficiency, and think about the butchering process as often as I think about mining, smelting, molding plastics, marketing (which is arguably vastly more evil than butchering), etc., etc.
Well, I have Suscom cable internet as my provider, and I pay $40/month (on top of mandatory basic cable) for 512kbps down/256kbps up. That works out to roughly 64KBps down. That sux, but it's all that's available, so $17 for 1.5MBps? Hell, where can I sign?? Seriously though, there are some (I repeat SOME) broadband cable providers that do better. When I had Roadrunner through Time Warner, I have no idea what my max was (wasn't in any of the paperwork, just a very vague "...up to hundreds of times faster than dial-up!", but it was not uncommon for me to get close to 400KBps downstream. That works out to about 3.2Mbps, which is frikkin' incredible. We use roadrunner for my company's connectivity as well, and 400-500KBps is routine. So obviously there is a very wide variance in what is available, but I'd say the cost of ($17) would oust the major providers from any city in the US. Just think, how would Boston or New York respond to that? Would it be to keep on charging $35~$40 a month for broadband? I don't think so; not unless they (competing company's) didn't want customers anymore. I read in one of these posts, that the US is in the Dark Ages as far as connectivity goes, and sadly, while I don't think it's quite that bad, I believe there is far too much truth in that statement.
Did you happen to follow the link and read the story? The drive performed exceptionally with all media, and 52x media will be as cheap as anything else in 3 months. Were you per chance one of those people who figured 640k was plenty, and no one needed a 4x cdrom drive 'cause 3x is plenty for everyone?
I work for a small-medium (~500 employees) telecom on the east coast, and I can tell you for a fact, 3 out of every 5 of our "small" competitors is or has gone out of business within a 2 year timespan. Advantages to small telecoms? I don't think so. Consider this: the equipment to use that dark fiber, first and foremost the dreaded fusion splicer, costs at least $15,000. Used. That will do one single fiber splice in 45 seconds. One. That is only either a transmit or a recieve. Any idea what the cost (don't forget man-hours) to term 20 strands of fiber might run to? How about 13,000 in a fiber to the desktop job? The cost to a small telecom to make any use of that fiber is ridiculously large. So yes, while the Bells may get screwed daily, I watch small telecoms go under daily. This industry is absolutely NOT for the small telecom. They're dropping like flies, and there's no one to make use of the fiber, because NO ONE can afford to, let alone small telecoms. We deal with large telecoms often, and the word (from the horse's mouth, so to speak)is this: "Well, at least the little guys are dropping out and leaving the field open." Now, who benefits from that? Especially considering the work done by these "big telecoms" is often considered some of the shoddiest in the field.
That is possibly the most completely random, uncalled for post I have ever read. Does free software cause you physical pain? I mean, seriously, what has free software, or linux specifically, ever done to cause the obvious psychological difficulty that you labor under? I suppose colleges and universities are also filled with these "fucking smelly hippy liberal tree-fucking dog-kissing faggots" as well? After all, most of these people do have very different viewpoints from you, so they must be, right? It's the idea of FREEDOM OF CHOICE, that embodies the spirit of our independence from England; we went to war over it. Does it really damage anything to exercise that right in the creation (NOT theft) of new software, that is free to be used, changed, customized, or modified, in almost any way seen fit by the user? Nobody is telling you to change the OS you use; linux is not going to surreptitiously sneak onto your computer, and you're not going to catch gay from those "fucking smelly hippy liberal tree-fucking dog-kissing faggots."
Yes, you'd think that there would be either compatibility or performance issues across different hardware, but I've run the new Catalyst unified driver with both a 7500 and an 8500 and performance on both was drastically increased. I'd have to say that the new drivers actually push them much further towards their potential than the old seperate ones did. Ah well; I say kudos if they can do it on the linux platform as well, and certainly nothing (by consumers) is lost in the effort if they can't. Anyone got any benchmarks yet?
I have been a linux user for 3 years, and I decided to try FreeBSD 4.7. I found it much quicker and more stable; kernel compilation was ridiculously easy and fast, and accelerated opengl was one of my only issues with it. That has been taken care of now, so I can honestly say that my impression of FreeBSD is a _very_ good one. I don't hate linux; I still run Gentoo. I'm just tired of bloated, unstable distributions, and the only ones that have approached the performance and stability I've seen in FreeBSD are Gentoo and Debian. Now, I'm sure there are probably others; I just haven't had the pleasure of using them as of yet. So, in conclusion, as a FreeBSD user I do not hate linux, but as a linux user I'm beginning to become frustrated with the state of distributions. Does that answer the question?
Do you realize that the laptops final cost ended up being in the neighborhood of about $300.00 each? That's for a 600MHz laptop, 128mb ram, 20GB hdd, and built in modem, 10/100nic, and built in 802.11b...that, and it's standardized on one platform, one provider, with full warranty and support. As far as I know, that beats the hell out of any generic laptop deal out there. Also, I know NO students who don't want the laptops. But thank you for your very informed opinion, as stated from another continent on an issue that you lack detailed knowledge of.
I live in Maine, AND was one of the estimators involved with the laptop program. Our company was subcontracted by apple to do the physical installations (244 of them in all) in every school, and I have this to say: we spoke to many of the teachers; yes, many were against it to start. By the end of THEIR training, the vast majority of them were in love with the program. It comes down to this; you CANNOT overspend on education. That combination of words has no place in America; or shouldn't, at any rate. Yes, the laptops were expensive, and yes some kids may damage them; but the state was also given a (quite hefty) warranty program by Apple, and rules on whether they (the laptops) go home with the students or not are set individually by each school. It gives not only the schools a sense of independence and technological edge, but the students as well. They know that they are some of the only students in the world involved with a technology initiative this big. Also, it's well known that students who start using computers early and often are those people who don't need a dissertation on double-clicking in order to get "online" later in life:-).
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That's what an advancement in technology is. What else could it be?
>1) NEWCARD is simply specs for a new version of PCMCIA that allows for two NEWCARDs in the place of one PCMCIA. This allows notebook manufactures to keep their dies the same and just swap out the card bay. If they get cute, they might even be able to make a hybrid version that takes either 1 old or 2 new cards--depends on connector pinouts).
Look, it's based on an entirely different bus, and it's a different (albeit similar) form factor. Notebook manufacturer's keeping the same dies?? What dies would those be? The ones that can also turn out PCI, PCI Express, and ISA cards? What about Vesa Local Bus?
>2) Since they will be restricted in connector pin space, they're using a USB2.0 serial bus for communication rather than PCMCIAs parallel bus/bizarre IDE disk protocol. Fewer pins, better reliability and speed.
You said it yourself. Newer protocol, better reliability and speed. Nothing further needed.
>3) This is nothing more than a packaging standard. PCMCIA is just worried about impingement from Compact Flash cards for network/serial/bluetooth/everything else. Note the emphasis on "mobile" computing. Subtext: don't buy Flash, we're better.
Where else do YOU use PCMCIA? I find it quite useful in my laptop. For mobile computing. As for the argument against compact flash, for every compact flash device I've EVER seen (with the sole exception of pure storage), I've been able to find a PCMCIA card at a much lower price. What would you prefer laptops to use? How about ISA, since it's only drawback is that it is an older bus that isn't as fast?
4) (Personal opinion). Unclear to me why they'd trumpet any sort of connection to USB, given the incredibly bad compatibility story it has.
You said it yourself, once again. Personal opinion. I have yet to ever see personally, or in fact hear of anyone (with this one exception) who complains about how incompatible USB is. Boy I sure miss my old serial mouse, parallel printer and SCSI scanner. Those sure were the good old days.
To sum it up, do some research on the technology involved in the future, preferably before you spew random verbiage on the world at large.
Because, and I've heard this question fairly often, at those rotational speeds they can't get as much data density on the platters. Same thing with the 10k-15k scsi, and the same reason that 5400RPM drives come out in the larger sizes first.
*Grin* Yeah, I know, but that's if you're using a VF-45 type connector and don't have to pay $40 for it. I was actually envisioning more of a (at least in the short term) conversion to RJ-45 copper of some type, kind of like a cable modem with conversion from Coax to CatX.
Well, 100megabit works out to 12.5MB/s per second. My hard drive can both read and write considerably faster than that. Gigabit pushes the roof to about 128MB/s. Serial ATA is specced to go to 600MB/s, which is considerably more than 128MB/s. In my company I daily transfer massive collections of CAD drawings back and forth from office to office, and from office to home. When I have a huge project, I put in hours at home as well, and it would be much easier for me if I had that kind of connection speed. And fiber, by the way, is cheaper per megabit BY FAR then copper. The newly ratified 10gigabit standard (which is nowhere near full utilization of fiber, what with frequency multiplexing technology), allows 60gigabit/second to be transfered over 12-strand 50micron multimode cable, which comes in at about $.90/foot. What an end user needs is simply two strands (transmit/recieve pair), which can be scaled up to whatever bandwidth is necessary. It may seem expensive, but fiber has been here a long time, and it's here to stay, so we may as well utilize it rather than saying "100baseTX is good enough for me." Is 640K really enough for you?
Yes, Tom did indeed mention the noise quite prominently. In fact, here's the exact quote:
'A further problem is the noise level. The fan produces an incredible racket on par with a vacuum cleaner - there's simply no other way to describe it. You can hear the card even if you're in another room of the house.'
Please, read the article fully if you are going to critique it. Otherwise, you're just another crony jumping on the bandwagon to bring down someone else's work.
How is it two strikes in a row? They are a company with a business model designed to generate revenue; their games do so very successfully. So, we have: 1.) Create game. 2.) People love/buy game. 3.) Profit. Because you (personally) don't like the game, does not mean (for them, or anyone else) that the game is a failure, as is proven conclusively through sales. Obviously, since they've sold many, many copies.
Well, I agree that the latest cards are usually overkill, but I'll try to address the question-
The newest cards can generally push more frames than is strictly necessary on existant games, but there are always newer graphics technologies that require the extra processing power. For instance; per-pixel shading. Really, though, that developement is usually around 6 months to a year behind the hardware now. Who really cares if the GeforceFX can push 20% (just a random number, BTW) more frames than the Radeon 9700Pro? Does it really make any difference at that point? Not now, but maybe in six months. And in six months, maybe the GeforceFX will be somewhat affordable. I'll continue buying just behind the latest tech., and I don't really see any reason to buy right on the bleeding edge.
I have used it. Once. I installed it on a non-critical machine, to see what it was like. I found it to be nowhere near as slick and easy for beginners as Redhat 8.0. In fact, although the install was easy (so easy in fact that 8 or 10 shipyard ales had no noticeable effect on said install process...), I found the distro (in general) to be flaky at best.
I don't know how many of you live in New England, but I live in Maine, and the weather here has been severely bizarre the last few years. The icestorm, caused by precipitation and unseasonal warmth. Then several winters with very little snow. In the last 4 weeks, we have gotten more snow than we did all last year. I have around 40in of snow on the ground right now, and it's been snowing off and on since the last major system. It's 37 right now, and supposed to have a high temp. this weekend of around 9 (f). Now, this isn't exactly consistent. I don't have any solid ideas what is causing this. I've heard so many conflicting (drastically) points of view on this, because just about any study that ever gets any attention sets out to "prove" global warming to be either natural or completely man made. Does anyone know of any non-biased research? Someone that doesn't have an agenda with environmentalists or their counterparts?
Actually, as I recall from reading the article, it said the question was whether they'd be relying on GPU processing power or memory bandwidth. The other possibility is that once ATI goes to the .13 micron core, they may raise the clockspeed as well, which will mean a whole new ball game. We'll have to wait and see. Meanwhile, the only games I know of that may potentially use that generation of card is Doom 3; others will follow, but I think it'll be awhile. UT2003 runs just fine on a radeon 7500 or a GeForce 2 GTS.
Is this related at all to the Helios Project? Would this re-zoning have to take place to allow them? As I recall, these were what they were discussing as potential satellite replacements, though I haven't heard anything about them in a long time. They were to be solar powered, and multipurpose, capable of remaining airborne for months at a time and carrying an array of emitters/receivers of various types, at a very low price tag compared to satellites that provide the same service. At the time they were being hailed as the ultimate broadband provider, possibly based on an 802.11 standard of some type.
Humans are omnivores. That is the only argument that has any relevence to this discussion. I choose not to eat veal or a lot of red meat; I do this from choice, as I accept that other people make their own choices, but choosing to rip people down and try to gross them out by discussing the butchering process or suggesting that humans should eat other humans is reprehensible. It is with an obvious superior and elitist attitude that many of these statements have been made, and that proves nothing; nor does it convince "the other side" to convert. Why, then, does PETA not seek the extermination of species that eat other animal species? The answer is simple: they would quickly (assuming the necessary tools existed) decimate life on earth. Why is it different with humankind? Because in many people's eyes humankind is an unnatural aberration; one which only destroys nature. The problem is not eating meat, which is natural and healthy in the correct proportions, it is human overpopulation. Control that, and there is no longer a question of the "efficiency" of eating meat. Besides which, speaking of pure efficiency, how necessary is a home computer? The resources required to construct one are immense, especially in comparison to what it gets used for (mostly). Is Quake necessary? No, but it's fun. People eat meat because they enjoy it, just like people use their computer hardware to read /. because they enjoy it. It is technically inefficient to read /. and I will continue to do it, sometimes even while eating a turkey sandwich or a burger. And I will enjoy the inefficiency, and think about the butchering process as often as I think about mining, smelting, molding plastics, marketing (which is arguably vastly more evil than butchering), etc., etc.
Well, I have Suscom cable internet as my provider, and I pay $40/month (on top of mandatory basic cable) for 512kbps down/256kbps up. That works out to roughly 64KBps down. That sux, but it's all that's available, so $17 for 1.5MBps? Hell, where can I sign?? Seriously though, there are some (I repeat SOME) broadband cable providers that do better. When I had Roadrunner through Time Warner, I have no idea what my max was (wasn't in any of the paperwork, just a very vague "...up to hundreds of times faster than dial-up!", but it was not uncommon for me to get close to 400KBps downstream. That works out to about 3.2Mbps, which is frikkin' incredible. We use roadrunner for my company's connectivity as well, and 400-500KBps is routine. So obviously there is a very wide variance in what is available, but I'd say the cost of ($17) would oust the major providers from any city in the US. Just think, how would Boston or New York respond to that? Would it be to keep on charging $35~$40 a month for broadband? I don't think so; not unless they (competing company's) didn't want customers anymore. I read in one of these posts, that the US is in the Dark Ages as far as connectivity goes, and sadly, while I don't think it's quite that bad, I believe there is far too much truth in that statement.
Did you happen to follow the link and read the story? The drive performed exceptionally with all media, and 52x media will be as cheap as anything else in 3 months. Were you per chance one of those people who figured 640k was plenty, and no one needed a 4x cdrom drive 'cause 3x is plenty for everyone?
I work for a small-medium (~500 employees) telecom on the east coast, and I can tell you for a fact, 3 out of every 5 of our "small" competitors is or has gone out of business within a 2 year timespan. Advantages to small telecoms? I don't think so. Consider this: the equipment to use that dark fiber, first and foremost the dreaded fusion splicer, costs at least $15,000. Used. That will do one single fiber splice in 45 seconds. One. That is only either a transmit or a recieve. Any idea what the cost (don't forget man-hours) to term 20 strands of fiber might run to? How about 13,000 in a fiber to the desktop job? The cost to a small telecom to make any use of that fiber is ridiculously large. So yes, while the Bells may get screwed daily, I watch small telecoms go under daily. This industry is absolutely NOT for the small telecom. They're dropping like flies, and there's no one to make use of the fiber, because NO ONE can afford to, let alone small telecoms. We deal with large telecoms often, and the word (from the horse's mouth, so to speak)is this: "Well, at least the little guys are dropping out and leaving the field open." Now, who benefits from that? Especially considering the work done by these "big telecoms" is often considered some of the shoddiest in the field.
That is possibly the most completely random, uncalled for post I have ever read. Does free software cause you physical pain? I mean, seriously, what has free software, or linux specifically, ever done to cause the obvious psychological difficulty that you labor under? I suppose colleges and universities are also filled with these "fucking smelly hippy liberal tree-fucking dog-kissing faggots" as well? After all, most of these people do have very different viewpoints from you, so they must be, right? It's the idea of FREEDOM OF CHOICE, that embodies the spirit of our independence from England; we went to war over it. Does it really damage anything to exercise that right in the creation (NOT theft) of new software, that is free to be used, changed, customized, or modified, in almost any way seen fit by the user? Nobody is telling you to change the OS you use; linux is not going to surreptitiously sneak onto your computer, and you're not going to catch gay from those "fucking smelly hippy liberal tree-fucking dog-kissing faggots."
Yes, you'd think that there would be either compatibility or performance issues across different hardware, but I've run the new Catalyst unified driver with both a 7500 and an 8500 and performance on both was drastically increased. I'd have to say that the new drivers actually push them much further towards their potential than the old seperate ones did. Ah well; I say kudos if they can do it on the linux platform as well, and certainly nothing (by consumers) is lost in the effort if they can't. Anyone got any benchmarks yet?
I have been a linux user for 3 years, and I decided to try FreeBSD 4.7. I found it much quicker and more stable; kernel compilation was ridiculously easy and fast, and accelerated opengl was one of my only issues with it. That has been taken care of now, so I can honestly say that my impression of FreeBSD is a _very_ good one. I don't hate linux; I still run Gentoo. I'm just tired of bloated, unstable distributions, and the only ones that have approached the performance and stability I've seen in FreeBSD are Gentoo and Debian. Now, I'm sure there are probably others; I just haven't had the pleasure of using them as of yet. So, in conclusion, as a FreeBSD user I do not hate linux, but as a linux user I'm beginning to become frustrated with the state of distributions. Does that answer the question?
Yes, actually, I was looking just last night to see if there was any way to make Tuxkart playable :). Now there is...
Do you realize that the laptops final cost ended up being in the neighborhood of about $300.00 each? That's for a 600MHz laptop, 128mb ram, 20GB hdd, and built in modem, 10/100nic, and built in 802.11b...that, and it's standardized on one platform, one provider, with full warranty and support. As far as I know, that beats the hell out of any generic laptop deal out there. Also, I know NO students who don't want the laptops. But thank you for your very informed opinion, as stated from another continent on an issue that you lack detailed knowledge of.
I live in Maine, AND was one of the estimators involved with the laptop program. Our company was subcontracted by apple to do the physical installations (244 of them in all) in every school, and I have this to say: we spoke to many of the teachers; yes, many were against it to start. By the end of THEIR training, the vast majority of them were in love with the program. It comes down to this; you CANNOT overspend on education. That combination of words has no place in America; or shouldn't, at any rate. Yes, the laptops were expensive, and yes some kids may damage them; but the state was also given a (quite hefty) warranty program by Apple, and rules on whether they (the laptops) go home with the students or not are set individually by each school. It gives not only the schools a sense of independence and technological edge, but the students as well. They know that they are some of the only students in the world involved with a technology initiative this big. Also, it's well known that students who start using computers early and often are those people who don't need a dissertation on double-clicking in order to get "online" later in life :-).