How is the 3000 series laptops compared to the Thinkpads? Is the build quality any good, and how hard would it be to run Linux on one?
If the build quality is good, the only feature I would really miss is the trackpoint, and I could probably live without that. The V100 looks like a really nice smallish laptop, and my T42 is too big to use properly on trains and such (I ride trains about 500-600 kilometres every week).
And yet again, some of us live in smaller towns where lovely high-speed internet simply isn't available. It's especially bad here in Jutland.
I pay 300DKK (~$52) for 786/384kbit from the local ISP. But that said, I have completely unlimited traffic, 5 email addresses and both the electrician (I had to get an RJ11 connection for the ADSL modem) and the ISP technician who completed the setup were free. But no telephony, unfortunately. They even have dedicated (and knowledgable) *nix and Mac support staff and some of the fastest service I have ever gotten. Not even the HP Selected Customer watchamacallit support where I work can match it.
Still, I'm semi-patiently waiting for the day they start offering fiber... 100Mbit, here I come!:-D
I does look rather snazzy indeed...
Why oh why must the coolest gadgets be Japan-only? I'd kill for a proper localized (danish) Panasonic W5 subnotebook with local support available. Or commit other grievous crimes for just about any other good-quality (close to as good as my Thinkpad T42) completely fanless laptop for less than €2000.
Re:"You are a pirate!" - Microsoft
on
Computer Voodoo?
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· Score: 1
I have a somewhat similar story of switching.
I was using Win2000 on my 350MHz K6-2 and WinXP had just been released, so I borrowed an installation CD from a friend (yeah I know, I'm a dirty pirate, it was the "Devil's Own" and everything), put it in the drive and proceeded to run the compatibility check. It failed on just about every single piece of hardware in my machine. I have no idea why, since it was just a bog-standard whitebox computer with an ASUS P5A motherboard which worked perfectly with Win2000.
So I said "Screw this. I'm not going to have to keep buying new hardware just so I can upgrade Windows." and installed Mandrake Linux, which was later replaced by Debian, then Gentoo. Even though I later got my hands on better hardware (a 733MHz P3) I refused to even touch WinXP until I bought a Thinkpad T42 where it was pre-installed and not 100% sucky.
The K6-2 machine is still in service as an IPCop firewall for my dads computers. It has been functioning perfectly since I installed it, and never had a single failure, so I guess the hardware wasn't at fault;-)
The old Nokia 7100 phone had this as well, and it worked brilliantly. Unfortunately, the phone was butt-ugly and marketed as a WAP phone. I've only ever seen one in use, and the owner wasn't even very pleased with it.
Possibly because the US is often held as a shining example of western culture and progress. the countries on the same end of the scale as the US here are often seen as backwards and "behind the times".
That is why we need to do something about that situation. Isn't it unsettling to you to know that a majority of world leaders, the ones with the proverbial and very real "fingers on the buttons" believe in, and in some cases answer only to one or more invisible and imaginary friends in the sky?
To take one very real and current example; isn't it downright scary that the person currently in command of the only remaining superpower in the world strongly belongs to the protestant christian ideology? The ideology that tells people that as long as they work hard, they will get into "heaven" when they die, and that what you do to the planet is irrelevant, so screw the planet and the future generations, 'cause you're going to heaven?
How the hell did an IBM Stinkpad make the list?!?!?!?!
Let's see... Perhaps because it was one of the first proper and usable laptops? Because Thinkpads are some of the most dependable laptops you can find? Because they have always been and always will be quietly stylish (black is always cool) instead of in-your-face? Because Thinkpads are the laptops most often chosen by companies whose employees depend on their laptops working perfectly all the time?
I have a T42 myself, and the only laptops currently available that I would even consider switching to are: A) A newer Thinkpad, preferably an X model. B) A Panasonic Toughbook (One of the "semi-rugged" ones). or C) A Macbook (If they finally figure out how much thermal paste to apply and sort out a few other bugs in the process).
It may not be flashy, it may not have all kinds of silly features or ultra powerful graphics or a super high resolution monitor, but it's built tough, every built-in function works perfectly every single time, the bundled Windows software is actually useful, the keyboard is the best laptop keyboard ever made, the Linux support is second to none and the configurability is very nice (4- or 8-cell battery in the main battery bay, DVD-drive can be swapped for another type of drive or an additional battery).
Yes, I am very happy with my Stinkpad. It runs Windows XP and GNU/Linux better than any other brand of laptop I have encountered, and it does what I need perfectly.
Oddly enough, I find that using the Kensington Expert Mouse made my hands hurt, whereas using a regular mouse (symmetrical Logitec MX310 at home for my left hand, and an MX500 at work for my right hand) gives me no pain at all.
I eventually had to sell the trackball. I simply could not use it for more than a few minutes at a time.
I second the recommendation for the Zalman VF series. I've put a VF900 on my Geforce FX5900XT and even with the fan at the minimum speed, it's cooler than with the stock heatsink+fan.
The only thing that worries me is the amount of flex the heatsink puts on the PCB when you tighten it down all the way like it says in the manual. It flexed so much that it actually made inserting the card into the AGP slot a bit difficult...
Re:Doom III Engine Doom II the Game
on
Prey Review
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· Score: 1
Personally, I found Quake 4 to be better than Doom 3 in most parts. Especially since it didn't have nearly as many monster closets. Also, I found the enemy design in D3 to be a bit bland, although it got somewhat better in the expansion (the Brawler is a wonderfully crazy creation). I really like the design of the Stream Protector (robot spider thing) and the Gladiator (dude with shield and railgun) in Q4.
Both games did really good with flashing images quickly on ingame monitors, for instance with the giant tower guard in Q4 when you enter the hangar control room.
Re:What's the copy protection like?
on
Prey Review
·
· Score: 1
Since I have plenty of storage on my main computer (and enough for at least a few games on my laptop), I usually just grab images of the game CDs with CloneCD or dd or whatever and mount them with Daemon Tools when I want to play something. CloneCD hasn't let me down yet when trying to make an image file of a copy protected game.
Another good thing about this apart from saving my game CDs from getting scratched is that I can do the minimal installation and still have the same performance as with a full install. This works particularly great with Fallout 1 and 2 where the minimal installation is 6MB and the "HUMONGOUS INSTALLATION" is nearly 700MB.
I have almost every single one of the SCUMM-based LucasArts games (and a few of the non-LucasArts ones), and they are without doubt some of the best games ever made. One problem with adventure games, though, is that they tend to have very limited or no replay value at all. It's an unfortunate side effect of the way the games work.
Lately, I've been replaying some of my favorite games, namely Fallout 1 & 2 and Arcanum, and I really consider them to be almost super advanced adventure games. The story is set from the start, but how you go about solving it is up to you, and there is a strong possibility of failing (mostly related to your character dying, but also in relation to how your influence affects the other people in the world). Plus, the replay value is good, considering the wealth of different skills and such, even though there is no multiplayer.
But sadly, good single player RPGs are also looking to become an as-good-as-dead genre, just like adventure games are today.
Where I work (a medium-sized audio/video equipment and "lifestyle" company) everyone is required to wear their access card in a visible place, and guests are issued specielt guest cards that they have to sign for. Everyone here is strongly reminded that it is their duty to question anyone who does not have a visible access card or guest card as well as anyone who looks out of place.
Also, when visiting any of the research departments and assembly lines, mobile phones and anything else possibly containing a camera are to be stored at the receptionist's desk for the duration of the visit.
In the end, it is very much up to the employees, however. It's a good thing people generally like working here, so they do put in the slight extra effort to maintain some level of security:-)
I'll just finish this sentence which I seem to have overlooked...
And while it does get rather hot while playing games (it's amazing how much heat is generated by playing something as old as the two first Fallout games on a 1.7GHz Pentium-M), it has never once affected stability. It just keeps on going, although the fan noise does build to pretty high levels, and it never seems to shut the fan off once it's started. It just sorta stays in low speed mode, even if I force the clock speed down to 600MHz. Putting it on standby and resuming makes it stop, though, so it's probably a small firmware bug somewhere...
My Pentium 4 Northwood-C first throttles and then shuts down if it reaches approximately 96 degrees C. I "discovered" this because I forgot to plug in the fan on the CPU after assembling the system...
In the manual for my Thinkpad T42 (Pentium-M Dothan) it says that the CPU will shut itself off (triggering the rest of the system to shut down) at a little over 100 degrees C. And I'm pretty sure that it starts throttling at around 72 degrees C, since that's the highest I've ever gotten it to, by running Prime95 on full tilt in the background while working. And while it does get rather hot while playing games (it's amazing how much heat is generated by playing something as old as the two first Fallout games on a 1.7GHz Pentium-M).
So it seems that the thermal throttling is still very much alive and kicking in more moderne Intel CPUs.
Indeed, Odin is the patron saint of rearranging your face*...
But Thor does ride a wagon pulled by mean and angry goats across the skies, causing the earth to scorch and the mountains to crack. That's pretty manly as well...
Any TV made in the last 10 or 15 years and sold in europe is plenty capable of both PAL and NTSC. My own El-Cheapo 21 inch Finlux set handles NTSC perfectly, and it was dirt cheap. Imported PS2 games and DVDs are no problem at all.
I've had one, and you need to be aware of a few things...
Firstly, the scroll ring feels cheap. It works fine, it just feels... cheaply made and not like it's supposed to be a part of a $100 trackball. Actually, the whole thing feels a lot more cheaply made than the old Turbo Mouse (the old, beige, 4 button ADC Mac version of the same trackball) I have laying around here somewhere waiting for an ADC-to-USB adapter and an 8-ball (they fit perfectly in the old mechanical ones, which is way cool)...
Secondly, the tabs used for attaching the wrist rest are prone to breaking very easily if you try to seperate the wrist rest from the trackball once it's attached.
But the tracking and the motion of the ball are as close to flawless as you are probably ever going to get in an optical trackball where the ball isn't suspended in a magnetic field or somesuch trickery. It can be a bit stiff at first, but applying some pressure with your palm and moving it around a bit loosens it up a bit. And the buttons are rather large, which I think is a plus.
It's a good trackball, I just don't think it's worth the full $100 price.
Slashdot Mirror
The sound was probably a Ferrari, but the car certainly wasn't.
It was a Mercedes Benz 450SEL 6.9, a truly legendary machine. You can see part of the grille here.
It is a great piece of film, one of my favourites.
How is the 3000 series laptops compared to the Thinkpads? Is the build quality any good, and how hard would it be to run Linux on one?
If the build quality is good, the only feature I would really miss is the trackpoint, and I could probably live without that. The V100 looks like a really nice smallish laptop, and my T42 is too big to use properly on trains and such (I ride trains about 500-600 kilometres every week).
Can I have your X41? :-P
And yet again, some of us live in smaller towns where lovely high-speed internet simply isn't available. It's especially bad here in Jutland.
:-D
I pay 300DKK (~$52) for 786/384kbit from the local ISP. But that said, I have completely unlimited traffic, 5 email addresses and both the electrician (I had to get an RJ11 connection for the ADSL modem) and the ISP technician who completed the setup were free. But no telephony, unfortunately. They even have dedicated (and knowledgable) *nix and Mac support staff and some of the fastest service I have ever gotten. Not even the HP Selected Customer watchamacallit support where I work can match it.
Still, I'm semi-patiently waiting for the day they start offering fiber... 100Mbit, here I come!
I does look rather snazzy indeed... Why oh why must the coolest gadgets be Japan-only? I'd kill for a proper localized (danish) Panasonic W5 subnotebook with local support available. Or commit other grievous crimes for just about any other good-quality (close to as good as my Thinkpad T42) completely fanless laptop for less than €2000.
I have a somewhat similar story of switching.
;-)
I was using Win2000 on my 350MHz K6-2 and WinXP had just been released, so I borrowed an installation CD from a friend (yeah I know, I'm a dirty pirate, it was the "Devil's Own" and everything), put it in the drive and proceeded to run the compatibility check. It failed on just about every single piece of hardware in my machine. I have no idea why, since it was just a bog-standard whitebox computer with an ASUS P5A motherboard which worked perfectly with Win2000.
So I said "Screw this. I'm not going to have to keep buying new hardware just so I can upgrade Windows." and installed Mandrake Linux, which was later replaced by Debian, then Gentoo. Even though I later got my hands on better hardware (a 733MHz P3) I refused to even touch WinXP until I bought a Thinkpad T42 where it was pre-installed and not 100% sucky.
The K6-2 machine is still in service as an IPCop firewall for my dads computers. It has been functioning perfectly since I installed it, and never had a single failure, so I guess the hardware wasn't at fault
The old Nokia 7100 phone had this as well, and it worked brilliantly. Unfortunately, the phone was butt-ugly and marketed as a WAP phone. I've only ever seen one in use, and the owner wasn't even very pleased with it.
Possibly because the US is often held as a shining example of western culture and progress. the countries on the same end of the scale as the US here are often seen as backwards and "behind the times".
That is why we need to do something about that situation. Isn't it unsettling to you to know that a majority of world leaders, the ones with the proverbial and very real "fingers on the buttons" believe in, and in some cases answer only to one or more invisible and imaginary friends in the sky?
To take one very real and current example; isn't it downright scary that the person currently in command of the only remaining superpower in the world strongly belongs to the protestant christian ideology? The ideology that tells people that as long as they work hard, they will get into "heaven" when they die, and that what you do to the planet is irrelevant, so screw the planet and the future generations, 'cause you're going to heaven?
I find it downright scary.
How the hell did an IBM Stinkpad make the list?!?!?!?!
Let's see...
Perhaps because it was one of the first proper and usable laptops?
Because Thinkpads are some of the most dependable laptops you can find?
Because they have always been and always will be quietly stylish (black is always cool) instead of in-your-face?
Because Thinkpads are the laptops most often chosen by companies whose employees depend on their laptops working perfectly all the time?
I have a T42 myself, and the only laptops currently available that I would even consider switching to are:
A) A newer Thinkpad, preferably an X model.
B) A Panasonic Toughbook (One of the "semi-rugged" ones).
or
C) A Macbook (If they finally figure out how much thermal paste to apply and sort out a few other bugs in the process).
It may not be flashy, it may not have all kinds of silly features or ultra powerful graphics or a super high resolution monitor, but it's built tough, every built-in function works perfectly every single time, the bundled Windows software is actually useful, the keyboard is the best laptop keyboard ever made, the Linux support is second to none and the configurability is very nice (4- or 8-cell battery in the main battery bay, DVD-drive can be swapped for another type of drive or an additional battery).
Yes, I am very happy with my Stinkpad. It runs Windows XP and GNU/Linux better than any other brand of laptop I have encountered, and it does what I need perfectly.
Oddly enough, I find that using the Kensington Expert Mouse made my hands hurt, whereas using a regular mouse (symmetrical Logitec MX310 at home for my left hand, and an MX500 at work for my right hand) gives me no pain at all.
I eventually had to sell the trackball. I simply could not use it for more than a few minutes at a time.
I second the recommendation for the Zalman VF series. I've put a VF900 on my Geforce FX5900XT and even with the fan at the minimum speed, it's cooler than with the stock heatsink+fan.
The only thing that worries me is the amount of flex the heatsink puts on the PCB when you tighten it down all the way like it says in the manual. It flexed so much that it actually made inserting the card into the AGP slot a bit difficult...
Personally, I found Quake 4 to be better than Doom 3 in most parts. Especially since it didn't have nearly as many monster closets. Also, I found the enemy design in D3 to be a bit bland, although it got somewhat better in the expansion (the Brawler is a wonderfully crazy creation). I really like the design of the Stream Protector (robot spider thing) and the Gladiator (dude with shield and railgun) in Q4.
Both games did really good with flashing images quickly on ingame monitors, for instance with the giant tower guard in Q4 when you enter the hangar control room.
Since I have plenty of storage on my main computer (and enough for at least a few games on my laptop), I usually just grab images of the game CDs with CloneCD or dd or whatever and mount them with Daemon Tools when I want to play something. CloneCD hasn't let me down yet when trying to make an image file of a copy protected game.
Another good thing about this apart from saving my game CDs from getting scratched is that I can do the minimal installation and still have the same performance as with a full install. This works particularly great with Fallout 1 and 2 where the minimal installation is 6MB and the "HUMONGOUS INSTALLATION" is nearly 700MB.
I hear you.
I have almost every single one of the SCUMM-based LucasArts games (and a few of the non-LucasArts ones), and they are without doubt some of the best games ever made. One problem with adventure games, though, is that they tend to have very limited or no replay value at all. It's an unfortunate side effect of the way the games work.
Lately, I've been replaying some of my favorite games, namely Fallout 1 & 2 and Arcanum, and I really consider them to be almost super advanced adventure games. The story is set from the start, but how you go about solving it is up to you, and there is a strong possibility of failing (mostly related to your character dying, but also in relation to how your influence affects the other people in the world). Plus, the replay value is good, considering the wealth of different skills and such, even though there is no multiplayer.
But sadly, good single player RPGs are also looking to become an as-good-as-dead genre, just like adventure games are today.
It's scary, but unfortunately true.
:-)
Where I work (a medium-sized audio/video equipment and "lifestyle" company) everyone is required to wear their access card in a visible place, and guests are issued specielt guest cards that they have to sign for. Everyone here is strongly reminded that it is their duty to question anyone who does not have a visible access card or guest card as well as anyone who looks out of place.
Also, when visiting any of the research departments and assembly lines, mobile phones and anything else possibly containing a camera are to be stored at the receptionist's desk for the duration of the visit.
In the end, it is very much up to the employees, however. It's a good thing people generally like working here, so they do put in the slight extra effort to maintain some level of security
I know that, no need to get sarcastic.
But the binaries themselves would have to be made for two different architectures, or are they similar enough for it to be trivial?
Is there an "official" release of MozEx that works with FF 1.5.*?
If there is, I can't seem to locate it. Or you use one of the modified versions and would heartily recommend it?
How would that be possible, considering the vastly different PPC-based Xbox 360 and x86-based PC?
Unless of course everything were to run in a virtual machine, but I can hardly see that happening for performance reasons.
Some serious cross-platform thinking would be needed , and I don't think even MS could make (most) game developers think that way.
I'll just finish this sentence which I seem to have overlooked...
And while it does get rather hot while playing games (it's amazing how much heat is generated by playing something as old as the two first Fallout games on a 1.7GHz Pentium-M), it has never once affected stability. It just keeps on going, although the fan noise does build to pretty high levels, and it never seems to shut the fan off once it's started. It just sorta stays in low speed mode, even if I force the clock speed down to 600MHz. Putting it on standby and resuming makes it stop, though, so it's probably a small firmware bug somewhere...
My Pentium 4 Northwood-C first throttles and then shuts down if it reaches approximately 96 degrees C. I "discovered" this because I forgot to plug in the fan on the CPU after assembling the system...
In the manual for my Thinkpad T42 (Pentium-M Dothan) it says that the CPU will shut itself off (triggering the rest of the system to shut down) at a little over 100 degrees C. And I'm pretty sure that it starts throttling at around 72 degrees C, since that's the highest I've ever gotten it to, by running Prime95 on full tilt in the background while working. And while it does get rather hot while playing games (it's amazing how much heat is generated by playing something as old as the two first Fallout games on a 1.7GHz Pentium-M).
So it seems that the thermal throttling is still very much alive and kicking in more moderne Intel CPUs.
Indeed, Odin is the patron saint of rearranging your face*...
But Thor does ride a wagon pulled by mean and angry goats across the skies, causing the earth to scorch and the mountains to crack. That's pretty manly as well...
* from "The Alphabet of Manliness", by Maddox
orcs and zombies
;-)
I assume that by "orcs and zombies" you actually mean "super mutants and ghouls"?
*Loads turbo plasma rifle*
Any TV made in the last 10 or 15 years and sold in europe is plenty capable of both PAL and NTSC. My own El-Cheapo 21 inch Finlux set handles NTSC perfectly, and it was dirt cheap. Imported PS2 games and DVDs are no problem at all.
I've had one, and you need to be aware of a few things...
Firstly, the scroll ring feels cheap. It works fine, it just feels... cheaply made and not like it's supposed to be a part of a $100 trackball. Actually, the whole thing feels a lot more cheaply made than the old Turbo Mouse (the old, beige, 4 button ADC Mac version of the same trackball) I have laying around here somewhere waiting for an ADC-to-USB adapter and an 8-ball (they fit perfectly in the old mechanical ones, which is way cool)...
Secondly, the tabs used for attaching the wrist rest are prone to breaking very easily if you try to seperate the wrist rest from the trackball once it's attached.
But the tracking and the motion of the ball are as close to flawless as you are probably ever going to get in an optical trackball where the ball isn't suspended in a magnetic field or somesuch trickery. It can be a bit stiff at first, but applying some pressure with your palm and moving it around a bit loosens it up a bit. And the buttons are rather large, which I think is a plus.
It's a good trackball, I just don't think it's worth the full $100 price.