The author does state in the article that he was mistaken about the amount of resources HP has, which amounts to at least $25 billion USD in cash on hand, at least 10x more than HTC and Lenovo (the other big Palm suitors from the past week) have in cash.
When compared to the other major companies in the mobile space, like Nokia, RIM, HTC, or Motorola, Palm seems like a very 'cheap' purchase in order to acquire an entire new line of business, along with their entire patent portfolio.
This same question came up in a forum I frequent, and just like I said there, I'd wonder if Microsoft really wants to fight a two front war in the console and handheld markets. I think they should focus on achieving profits with the XBox 360 before they create another potential money sink.
Of course, they could just say "Look how much of a success Sony has had in just over a year of entering the market!" Well, depending on whose numbers you trust, Sony's PSP could be a good example of a true challenger to the king of the handheld world. By some accounts Sony owns roughly 25% of the market. I think that 25% is only compared to the market it shares with the Nintendo DS, because I don't think the PSP owns 25% of the global handheld market when you consider all the people who still have the older Gameboy Advances, SPs, etc., which numbers in the tens of millions.
Also, there is still the Japanese market. As the last two Microsoft console launches there have shown, reception by the Japanese was lackluster at best. I think for a true challenger to Sony and Nintendo, a Microsoft handheld would really have to succeed in Japan. Sure, many people will say "But Europe and the Americas are Microsoft's main market," but I think this is a limited view. Microsoft does see Japan as a market it must penetrate successfully, which is why they began courting more Japanese companies to create games that cater more to the Japanese people.
Also, Japan is a significant market for games. Over there, the Nintendo DS sold 4 million units in 2005, twice that of the PSP for the same year. If you look at the sales charts for the past several months, every week was basically 6 - 7 DS games in the top 10 sales chart. On the other hand, it was incredibly rare to see a PSP game crack the top 10 of the chart.
And that is also something that Microsoft should learn from. The PSP sells well in the States and Europe probably because it is seen as cooler, more stylish, and it has more capabilities than the admittedly plain-jane DS. However, in my very humble opinion, its game selection is more limited than the DS's. Microsoft could really make an impact if they deliver with a steady stream of good, quality games and not rely on whatever other features their handheld would have (i.e. Sony's UMDs being more popular than the actual games).
Microsoft should also learn that having the most powerful parts does not make a system inherently better than another. At its core, the PSP is more powerful than the DS (dual MIPS 300 MHz processors (locked at 200 Mhz max), more powerful graphics engine), but the DS, at least in Japan, has sold more. Why? Even with a relatively weaker system, the games being developed for it are fun and appealing to more than just the 18-35 demographic. That's why games like the Brain Training games have been so successful and continue to stay on the charts.
Microsoft can make this work, but they might have to shift some of their views.
Dresses, suits, RFID blocking wallets, is there no clothing or accessory you can't make with duct tape?
I'm sure we'll be replacing our tinfoil hats with duct tape hats one of these days.
Re:Hate to break it to you
on
Halo 2 Released
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· Score: 2, Insightful
No jab against Super Mario Bros. (since that game was awesome), but I think's really easy to be all time best selling video game when the game was packaged with a large portion of Nintendo Systems. Same with Tetris and the Gameboy.
Of course, I owned both games, and Tetris is ultimately classic. I can still remember the sound of a goat having sex whenever you got a Tetris.
I'd bet on the Higgs Boson, if only because it's speculated that it can be detected at around 20 TeV (Fermilab's Tevatron has a maximum energy of around 2 TeV AFAIR).
Of course, they're gonna try to detect it sometime in the fall (I think), so I'd have to say that it'd be the thing to look for.
Of course, I'm not a betting man. Gotta save my juice money.
I just hope there's not a Japanese equivalent of "I ate a sandwich today. It sucked. I hate my life and my parents because they make me do homework. Linkin Park is the only thing I relate to. " (grammar and spelling have been corrected)
Oh, I wasn't targetting you with my reply. Just wanted to show everyone what kind of comps they were using.
I completely agree with you. The article was only catering to the upper tier of users with the most bleeding edge and most godly hardware, but that really leaves probably a good 90% of us out in the cold wondering how our less powerful systems actually handle this thing. Carmack and the review say it runs fine on modern hardware, but I just want to know how fine.
But it is hardocp, and the site usually does performance tests only with the most upper tier hardware, instead of giving us results with medium range hardware, the stuff most of us use.
The other benchmarks after the first benches page was done with AGP cards, using this system: Intel 3.2 Ghz Pentium 4 2 GB RAM Ati Radeon X800 series, 6800, 9800 XT, Geforce 5950...
And I correct my above post. THe 6800GT is $400, not $300 as I stated above.
Have any of you noticed that the comps they're using to run these benchmarks have a minimum of 2 GB RAM? I wonder how much that actually affects the performance, because the majority of we gamers have 1 GB (like myself) or 512 MB.
Also, seeing as how this is one of the most hotly anticipated games in recent memory, it's really painful to see ATi's cards lose out so severely to the Nvidia offerings. I mean, the $300 (MSRP) 6800 GT beats out the top of the line X800 XT ($500 MSRP).
What exactly is holding ATi back with writing better ATi drivers? They can write decent drivers for Direct3D, but what's with this years long problem with OpenGL? I'm not bleeding edge or incredibly demanding; I own a Radeon 9600 myself, but I'm always saddened by ATi's generally poor performance in OpenGL.
I'm pretty sure we'll get arcologies soon and after we build 250 of them, they'll spontaneously just take off with their hapless millions of inhabitants into space.
A mini-firefox project does make more sense, and I want one in hopes that they don't include that bizarre memory leak "feature" in by default. The one where if you let firefox sit there for a while and you keep opening new pages, firefox's memory usage goes from 20 MB up to 150 MB.
It's happened to me, but a fix for it was to type about:config and set 'browser.cache.memory.enable' to 'false'
Overall I enjoyed the article. I'm a complete beginner when it comes to computer graphics, but I'm really interested in computational theory and algorithms and I think I'm pretty good with those subjects (classes I've enjoyed the most on my road to being a CS major are algorithms and mathematical courses for the most part).
The article touches on many subjects I haven't heard about and I learned what a BSP (binary space partitioning) tree is, at least. Graphics are probably the next thing I'll try to get into, and I still have an OpenGL manual lying around that's only been opened once.
Perhaps as a game programmer, you'd probably see that it's not as in-depth as you'd want, and it's probably not simple enough to be understood by everyone, but the article caters to, I guess, intermediate level people with a developing interest in computer graphics? Hits the sweet spot with me.;)
I don't really know of many compatibility problems except that some types of RAM don't work with some Athlon 64 boards. Also, the new Socket 939 (I think that's what it is) Athlon 64s should be out soon and feature dual channel and this is probably the final socket switch for the Athlon 64/FX chips and when we'll see the maturation of the Athlon 64 tech, and also, newer mobos are coming out (like the ones featuring the Nforce 3 250g chipset).
Ah yes, Remote Desktop. I thought that came with XP Home, but guess I'm wrong. Yeah, I use Remote Desktop a lot as well, or VNC depending on the situation.
As for domain, well, this is more for colleges and businesses. My college tells everyone they need XP Pro to join the domain and get all the great software off the network, but I just map a network drive instead. This coming from tech school.
I've talked with an employee of HP and he said that HP had finally released a dual format DVD writer. I even saw a link to it and the product page. However, I tried looking for it right now, and couldn't find it anywhere.
I don't know any self-respecting gamer or power user that would go with XP Home.
This is one of the things that bug me about comp users today. Most gamers and what you'd call power users probably don't even use or need the extra features built into XP Pro. They probably just buy it to have the Professional tag on it.
Granted, there are people who'd use the ability to join a domain or disk quotas or file encryption/permissions, but a lot of the people I've talked to who wanted to by XP Pro had no idea what any of those terms meant and thought Professional was faster.
I'd say for the average gamer, Home would be better since by default, I think it actually has less stuff starting up (like NetMeeting, etc.) so there'd be less burden on resources at startup.
And yes, I use XP Pro; my school offered it to me for $5.
Slashdot Mirror
The author does state in the article that he was mistaken about the amount of resources HP has, which amounts to at least $25 billion USD in cash on hand, at least 10x more than HTC and Lenovo (the other big Palm suitors from the past week) have in cash.
When compared to the other major companies in the mobile space, like Nokia, RIM, HTC, or Motorola, Palm seems like a very 'cheap' purchase in order to acquire an entire new line of business, along with their entire patent portfolio.
Additionally, it seems other articles mention the same patent concerns since Apple is now going after HTC (but not Palm).
http://www.businessinsider.com/apples-htc-patent-suit-could-be-another-reason-for-someone-to-buy-palm-2010-3
http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/28/apple-vs-palm-the-in-depth-analysis/
This same question came up in a forum I frequent, and just like I said there, I'd wonder if Microsoft really wants to fight a two front war in the console and handheld markets. I think they should focus on achieving profits with the XBox 360 before they create another potential money sink.
Of course, they could just say "Look how much of a success Sony has had in just over a year of entering the market!" Well, depending on whose numbers you trust, Sony's PSP could be a good example of a true challenger to the king of the handheld world. By some accounts Sony owns roughly 25% of the market. I think that 25% is only compared to the market it shares with the Nintendo DS, because I don't think the PSP owns 25% of the global handheld market when you consider all the people who still have the older Gameboy Advances, SPs, etc., which numbers in the tens of millions.
Also, there is still the Japanese market. As the last two Microsoft console launches there have shown, reception by the Japanese was lackluster at best. I think for a true challenger to Sony and Nintendo, a Microsoft handheld would really have to succeed in Japan. Sure, many people will say "But Europe and the Americas are Microsoft's main market," but I think this is a limited view. Microsoft does see Japan as a market it must penetrate successfully, which is why they began courting more Japanese companies to create games that cater more to the Japanese people.
Also, Japan is a significant market for games. Over there, the Nintendo DS sold 4 million units in 2005, twice that of the PSP for the same year. If you look at the sales charts for the past several months, every week was basically 6 - 7 DS games in the top 10 sales chart. On the other hand, it was incredibly rare to see a PSP game crack the top 10 of the chart.
And that is also something that Microsoft should learn from. The PSP sells well in the States and Europe probably because it is seen as cooler, more stylish, and it has more capabilities than the admittedly plain-jane DS. However, in my very humble opinion, its game selection is more limited than the DS's. Microsoft could really make an impact if they deliver with a steady stream of good, quality games and not rely on whatever other features their handheld would have (i.e. Sony's UMDs being more popular than the actual games).
Microsoft should also learn that having the most powerful parts does not make a system inherently better than another. At its core, the PSP is more powerful than the DS (dual MIPS 300 MHz processors (locked at 200 Mhz max), more powerful graphics engine), but the DS, at least in Japan, has sold more. Why? Even with a relatively weaker system, the games being developed for it are fun and appealing to more than just the 18-35 demographic. That's why games like the Brain Training games have been so successful and continue to stay on the charts.
Microsoft can make this work, but they might have to shift some of their views.
I guess we could be more accurate and call it our Duct Tape Aluminum Foil hat. Tin is so...1950s.
Dresses, suits, RFID blocking wallets, is there no clothing or accessory you can't make with duct tape?
I'm sure we'll be replacing our tinfoil hats with duct tape hats one of these days.
No jab against Super Mario Bros. (since that game was awesome), but I think's really easy to be all time best selling video game when the game was packaged with a large portion of Nintendo Systems. Same with Tetris and the Gameboy.
Of course, I owned both games, and Tetris is ultimately classic. I can still remember the sound of a goat having sex whenever you got a Tetris.
I'd bet on the Higgs Boson, if only because it's speculated that it can be detected at around 20 TeV (Fermilab's Tevatron has a maximum energy of around 2 TeV AFAIR).
Of course, they're gonna try to detect it sometime in the fall (I think), so I'd have to say that it'd be the thing to look for.
Of course, I'm not a betting man. Gotta save my juice money.
wired is stealing my thunder. i started this trend when my shift key broke. curse you wired.
damn shift key, i can't use the exclamation point to emphasize my rage.
There was a Major League...3?
God, poke my eyes out right now.
Actually, I could say, besides lightsabers, Episode 1 was pretty horrid, but it had a sequel too.
Major League II.
Enough said.
I wouldn't know. I only read Juggs.
Yeah, but think of the ping times!
2004: Woo, I am downloading Planet Urbia's latest music hits.
2010: woo, 20 Kilobytes done, only 3 more centuries to go.
Wbo was it that said "If we get a intelligent radio signal from space, don't answer?"
Because that is probably what would happen - we'd be a fatty food source, or slave labor to our alien masters.
I just hope there's not a Japanese equivalent of "I ate a sandwich today. It sucked. I hate my life and my parents because they make me do homework. Linkin Park is the only thing I relate to. " (grammar and spelling have been corrected)
"If I can't get my daily dose of slashdot, I'll go crazy and kill some endangered animals" - Finnish soldier
Oh, I wasn't targetting you with my reply. Just wanted to show everyone what kind of comps they were using.
I completely agree with you. The article was only catering to the upper tier of users with the most bleeding edge and most godly hardware, but that really leaves probably a good 90% of us out in the cold wondering how our less powerful systems actually handle this thing. Carmack and the review say it runs fine on modern hardware, but I just want to know how fine.
But it is hardocp, and the site usually does performance tests only with the most upper tier hardware, instead of giving us results with medium range hardware, the stuff most of us use.
For those who don't like to look or just skim:
The first page of benchmarks are done on this system:
Intel 3.6 Ghz Pentium 4 LGA775 Pin processor
Radeon X800 XT/Geforce 6800Ultra/Geforce 6800GT PCI-Express versions
Intel i925 Alderwood chipset motherboards
4 GB RAM
The other benchmarks after the first benches page was done with AGP cards, using this system:
Intel 3.2 Ghz Pentium 4
2 GB RAM
Ati Radeon X800 series, 6800, 9800 XT, Geforce 5950...
And I correct my above post. THe 6800GT is $400, not $300 as I stated above.
Have any of you noticed that the comps they're using to run these benchmarks have a minimum of 2 GB RAM? I wonder how much that actually affects the performance, because the majority of we gamers have 1 GB (like myself) or 512 MB.
Also, seeing as how this is one of the most hotly anticipated games in recent memory, it's really painful to see ATi's cards lose out so severely to the Nvidia offerings. I mean, the $300 (MSRP) 6800 GT beats out the top of the line X800 XT ($500 MSRP).
What exactly is holding ATi back with writing better ATi drivers? They can write decent drivers for Direct3D, but what's with this years long problem with OpenGL? I'm not bleeding edge or incredibly demanding; I own a Radeon 9600 myself, but I'm always saddened by ATi's generally poor performance in OpenGL.
I'm pretty sure we'll get arcologies soon and after we build 250 of them, they'll spontaneously just take off with their hapless millions of inhabitants into space.
A mini-firefox project does make more sense, and I want one in hopes that they don't include that bizarre memory leak "feature" in by default. The one where if you let firefox sit there for a while and you keep opening new pages, firefox's memory usage goes from 20 MB up to 150 MB.
It's happened to me, but a fix for it was to type about:config and set 'browser.cache.memory.enable' to 'false'
Overall I enjoyed the article. I'm a complete beginner when it comes to computer graphics, but I'm really interested in computational theory and algorithms and I think I'm pretty good with those subjects (classes I've enjoyed the most on my road to being a CS major are algorithms and mathematical courses for the most part).
;)
The article touches on many subjects I haven't heard about and I learned what a BSP (binary space partitioning) tree is, at least. Graphics are probably the next thing I'll try to get into, and I still have an OpenGL manual lying around that's only been opened once.
Perhaps as a game programmer, you'd probably see that it's not as in-depth as you'd want, and it's probably not simple enough to be understood by everyone, but the article caters to, I guess, intermediate level people with a developing interest in computer graphics? Hits the sweet spot with me.
I was about to say who of you were extreme enough to go warplaning.
I don't really know of many compatibility problems except that some types of RAM don't work with some Athlon 64 boards. Also, the new Socket 939 (I think that's what it is) Athlon 64s should be out soon and feature dual channel and this is probably the final socket switch for the Athlon 64/FX chips and when we'll see the maturation of the Athlon 64 tech, and also, newer mobos are coming out (like the ones featuring the Nforce 3 250g chipset).
Hope that helps.
Ah yes, Remote Desktop. I thought that came with XP Home, but guess I'm wrong. Yeah, I use Remote Desktop a lot as well, or VNC depending on the situation.
As for domain, well, this is more for colleges and businesses. My college tells everyone they need XP Pro to join the domain and get all the great software off the network, but I just map a network drive instead. This coming from tech school.
I've talked with an employee of HP and he said that HP had finally released a dual format DVD writer. I even saw a link to it and the product page. However, I tried looking for it right now, and couldn't find it anywhere.
I don't know any self-respecting gamer or power user that would go with XP Home.
This is one of the things that bug me about comp users today. Most gamers and what you'd call power users probably don't even use or need the extra features built into XP Pro. They probably just buy it to have the Professional tag on it.
Granted, there are people who'd use the ability to join a domain or disk quotas or file encryption/permissions, but a lot of the people I've talked to who wanted to by XP Pro had no idea what any of those terms meant and thought Professional was faster.
I'd say for the average gamer, Home would be better since by default, I think it actually has less stuff starting up (like NetMeeting, etc.) so there'd be less burden on resources at startup.
And yes, I use XP Pro; my school offered it to me for $5.