Look, I'm still waiting for a killer smartphone app that motivates me well enough to upgrade from my flip phone. Now if someday I walk up to the vending machine at work and it will only accept payments via mobile app, that might do it. On the other hand, the cost/value equation of paying $300 more a year on my cell phone bill just for vending machine access might end up keeping me on a diet. As for Google Glass, perhaps the ability to just look at that Snickers bar and have it fall into my hands might make it worth it. Decisions, decisions.
I'm about as religiously conservative as they come, and I think you've got the wrong villain in you sights. Cradle to grave monitoring and control is a collectivist policy, which like much of current liberal thinking, accepts the ceding of privacy to the state as a contemporary norm. I've never talked to a conservative Christian in any of my circles having the point of view that the state should be entrusted with the right to inspect our daily lives. Rather, they tend to strongly advocate personal freedom, responsibility, and privacy. If you blame the religious conservatives for this sort of thing and they all go away, all you'll have left are the government and those who think government is pretty much the equivalent of God. Of course, I'm sure you'll eventually come to terms with this since there isn't a liberal around who, once they find that they can surreptitiously follow the creationists or any other of their selected villains around, wouldn't love to exercise their omnipotence.
I don't consider adaptive optics "additive" or "artificial". Adaptive optics, as I understand them, do not add new light but correct existing light like a sophisticated focuser. To me, the non-corrected image distorted by the atmosphere is more artificial than the corrected image, in which the atmospheric distortion has been subtracted out . Just as the repair work on the Hubble (or the optics on your glasses) did not "create" new or artificial light, neither does adaptive optics. One of the ways this can be proved is that in a post-processed image, you can only extract or enhance what is there. In this case, we are seeing detail that no post processing of the light could have visually revealed. This is not additive or artificial detail, it is real detail.
If the motorcycle were suddenly invented today, we would have a similar effect. A certain group of people would find the motorcycle very appealing. Compared to the car, they are small, more fuel efficient, and less expensive. So the set of people not needing an enclosed vehicle with room for passengers and cargo would all run out and buy one. In those first few years motorcycle sales would spike relative to cars, and probably displace some car sales.
Anyone looking at the sales figures and marketplace trends in those days would proclaim that the days of the automobile were nearing the end and that the car was doomed. After all, all motor vehicles are the same, right.
Actually, in hindsight, it might have been a good time to invest in cars.
Of course once you've gone completely flat and removed all the ornamentation, it makes one wonder where the next generation will go. Perhaps someone will suddenly realize, wow, we can make those tiles look just like a 3D image of a smartphone (and, of course, be promptly sued for rendering them with curved corners).
Interesting. I'm building an arcade cabinet right now. I have some limited skills working with wood, but by no means am I carpenter. I debated buying a kit, but could not find one that I was happy with. So I'm building from scratch.
I have been proceeding very slowly and teaching myself new skills everytime there is something I want to do, but have not done before. I am *very* happy with the results, and there is absolutely no question that I value this piece of work far more than if I had just purchased it. In fact, I've estimated that considering the time and labor I've put into it, I would need to sell it at at least $10,000 to break even. This is far more than I think anyone would be willing to spend; but it is what I think it is "worth".
On the other hand, this cabinet is highly customized. And perhaps this is the the more practical reason why I value it so highly. It's true that I wouldn't pay $10,000 for a "stock" arcade cabinet like the one I built. But if I had gone to a master woodworker and stood over his shoulder directing him to do all of the major and minor tweaks that I did, ask him--mid stream--to throw away assemblies he had done and re-do them in a different way (because I changed my mind after seeing what it looked like), and to have him overbuild and overfinish it in ways users would never see or appreciate; yeah, I guess I wouldn't be surprised if he charged me at least $10,000.
So yes, I think we tend to value things we produce ourselves more highly than those built by others. However, for me in particular, when I really think about it, the reason is less about self-love than it is about customization--and even small customization can have tremendous value if that's the thing that you *need* to make the thing "perfect" for you. The thing I like so much about Open Source is that I can go into it and make those little tweaks that make the software do exactly what I want. A good example of this is Atari800, one of the emulators that I use in the cabinet. I really like this emulator, but it had some annoying (to me) minor issues that made it less than perfect for my application of it. So I contributed fixes for these things to the project. So now my project is perfect. And I value that a lot.
The article says this is also called the Mount Rothwell site. There is also an odd similarity with the appearance of the ground and rocks with those in New Mexico. Is anyone seeing the connection? Could I be on to something?
Maybe this is a tech gap, but maybe its partially due to the fact that some Americans are frugal. When my mother-in-law recently called for Internet service from the same cable company that I get fast broadband service from, the first thing they asked was what what she used it for. They offered different price plans for different speeds, and one of this was a "slow" 1.5MBS. But quite frankly that's all she needs. Really. As a developer, I completely appreciate fast Internet speeds and use them, but if all I did was read email and do light web browsing, why would I pay more? Is my mother-in-law's choice to pay less for lower speed service contributing to the tech gap? Now if she actually *needed* the speed and it just wasn't available, that would be another story, but that's not the case here. Actually, even my service is way over the top 95% of the time. Occasionally, I'll download a large file and I'm happy that it took only an hour instead of overnight (not that it was really worth the extra $20 a month--but I guess I can afford it); and occasionally I'll watch a news clip or YouTube video--maybe even in bit-sucking HD fullscreen (whoohoo!). But really, I could care less about the so called "tech gap". What might be nicer is for all the bandwidth that I don't use but pay for every month) be converted into fuel credits for the needy--hmm, maybe I should switch to 1.5MB too and contribute to the tech gap.
Actually, you're both absolutely correct. The government redistributes funds to whoever it sees fit. This is apparently what Americans want since both rich and poor vote for their leaders, and their leaders (especially the current one) are quite up front about their intentions. It's called socialism, and its nothing new or surprising. What would be surprising is if Americans voted to terminate their welfare and stimulus programs in favor of substantially reduced taxes and greater personal responsibility. Sorry, ain't going to happen.
The last set of fluorescent bulbs I purchased came with a 7 year replacement warranty. Of course, I would need to send a burned-out bulb back and pay postage, so on CFL's the warranty is nice, but its real value is a bit dubious once you count the cost and inconvenience. However, on a $40 bulb the economics improve since return postage would be a much smaller fractional cost of the individual light bulb. It is also much more likely that I would actually use the warranty on a $40 bulb than a $3 or $4 one. If Panasonic were to warranty this bulb for, say 19 years, I think I'd be game to try it.
I worked at RS at the time of the model 100 and nothing else I can remember was closer to the weight and general dimensions of a modern laptop as the model 100. There were definitely more powerful "portables" at the time that were arguably more *functionally* equivalent to a modern laptop; but they existed in a weight/form-factor that doesn't have a counterpart today.
While I hate to admit it, pretty much all of my past contributions to OSS projects have not been to benefit some altruistic "community" as much as to benefit myself. I use OSS quite often to do things that I want or need, and if the software is missing something that I want or need and I'm capable of adding it, I often do. I then make sure to contribute my changes to the project so that future updates include my changes. This pattern of behavior has nothing to do with economics and is unlikely to change due to economic conditions.
Wearing 3D glasses is no more silly than iPod earplugs or bluetooth headsets. It's just that the technology to use them needs to work, and work well before people will use them. I bought (and later returned) a set of eDimensional 3D shutter glasses a year ago. My reaction was Wow! This is the future of gaming. On the couple of games that I got to kind of work, the effect was amazing and well worth the cost of wearing glasses. In Oblivion, for example, the effect was so good that I almost couldn't go back to playing without it. The trouble was just a host of technical issues--In Oblivion it was a graphical glitch that made combat impossible to see. Although I could get some other games to work well enough to see their enormous potential in a few games, ghosting, artifacting, incompatibilities, frame rates, driver issues, and way to much tweaking made the glasses just too much trouble. If Nvidia has solved these issues than I'd drop cash on these in an instant.
Hehe. Yes, if the computer models show something other than what we already know to be true (that we can't possibly be special...because you know what that would mean), then their models must be incomplete and reworked until such time as they agree with what we know to be true.
The computer mouse is not a new technology. In a way a mouse is to a computer what a steering wheel is to a car. Sure, there are other steering technologies out there. Sticks work great in fighter jets and handles work great on zero turn lawn mowers, but for general purpose use in cars, there's nothing I've ever seen that's better than a wheel. I'm not stuck on mouse technology...if something genuinely better came around, I'd jump on it in an instant. Touch screens, tablets, pens, touch pads, joysticks, etc., are all better solutions in specific applications, but for plain precision, general purpose pointing on a desktop computer, there is no technology that I've seen that's better than a mouse.
If IM is your only (or primary) means of communicating, that's bad. When it comes to communicating with someone remotely, I use three methods, email, phone, and IM. I use email for most communication since it is formal, asynchronous, provides time to actually think about what I am saying, and creates a useful record. If a dialog is necessary, I use the phone. It is quick, to the point, and when the phone call is over, its usually over. I only use IM when someone else IMs me. When they do, if it's a one line response I'll usually respond. If its more, I pick up the phone and call them.
I too like Vista. I installed Vista as an experiment a few months after it came out with the full intention of sticking with XP till SP1. While there were a few issues, my positive experiences outweighed the negative by a reasonable margin and I never went back. A year later (i.e very recently), I upgraded my hardware and moved to x64 Vista--again as an experiment. With all the FUD out there about x64 creating all kinds of compatibility problems, I was amazed at how few issues I had. All of my hardware works (even a seven year old film scanner), and nearly all software I've thrown at it--even a few older games that I tried(like Independence War 2 and Ground Control) work perfectly. True, there is no longer a 16-bit subsystem in x64, but for the few 16-bit apps around that I like to use, Virtual PC runs them just fine. Vista has some annoyances, I'll admit that, but none serious enough for me to even consider giving it up. In fact, when I do need to use XP, it does feel kind of "old" now. Naturally, with all the people out there, I don't expect everyone to have my experience, but after having gone from VIC-20-> Atari800-> DOS2.11-> DOS3.1-> DOS5.0-> DOS6.0/6.21/22-> Windows3.1-> WindowsFW3.11-> Windows95-> Windows98/SE-> WindowsME(yuck!)-> WindowsXP-> WindowsVista_x86-> WindowsVista_x64 I can honestly say that upgrading to Vista is pretty much like every other upgrade, some part pain, but mostly a benefit (with the two possible exceptions of DOS 6.21->6.22 and Windows ME.
You'll get no argument from me that my system is at a "dead-end". That was precisely my point. My point being that reaching this so-called "dead-end" is now about twice as far out as it was in the past. Twenty, or even ten years ago, I would have reached a similar dead-end after about 2 to 3 years. Now I am reaching it in about 4 to 5 years. This change means that my PC buying patterns have changed, thus making it appear to PC sale bean counters that I don't use PCs as much anymore. No. I just don't need to buy them as frequently as before. My intention in six months to a year is to still drop my typical $2000 to $2500 on a new rig using whatever is the the most current tech at that moment. But I can now expect (with a similar mid-life upgrade) that it will last me a very solid 4 to 5 years now. Even with this said, I have to remark that unlike the past, this dead-end is *only* with respect to the very latest games. In the past, after 2.5 years, I could expect that not only would my gaming capabilities be lagging far behind, but even the latest OS and productivity apps would be performing sluggishly. That simply isn't the case anymore. Vista Ultimate performs swimmingly on this machine, as does Photoshop CS3, Lightroom, and nearly every other game that I own.
My original machine was pretty cutting edge at the time, so I basically maxed out on what my MB could handle, 2.6GHz P4 -> 3.4GHz P4 Extreme (cheap on ebay), an ATI 9800 PRO -> ATI X1950PRO (available in AGP), and an extra 1 GB RAM (total 2GB). Same PSU (450Watt Antec). At 1920x1200 on my 24" flat panel with 4x Anti-aliasing, I can average around 30FPS in Oblivion (and this is in Vista), and everything else I use or play on this machine works well enough to justify pushing out my next expected upgrade almost another year.
I think I agree with the posts saying that PC users are just not upgrading as frequently. Ever since my old VIC-20 days, I've been an avid computer user and have upgraded to a new machine every 2 to 3 years. In fact, 3 years would have been a lot. However, the computer I'm using now is one I built in 2003. Oh my goodness! That's four years ago. I did recently did a multimedia upgrade on it; but this 4 year old machine runs everything from Photoshop CS3 to Oblivion just fine thank you. It even does a decent job on the Crysis demo. Yes, I do have it in my plans to finally build a new machine next year...probably around this time, but that will mean that I've nearly doubled my upgrade interval--and it's not because of money, its simply because the tech is not advancing quite as quickly as it used to relative to the kind of software that I like to run. If someone from the outside was just looking at my credit card records to see my PC buying habits, I'm sure they'd say I must have given up on PCs and moved on to cell phones, DVRs, and console video games--when that would be the furthest thing from the truth.
Sure, those other consumer devices are going to cut somewhat into PC sales as well, but that's ok. Personally, I'd like PCs to become a non-mainstream geeky kind of thing again anyway.
Re:LOGO - not a viable adult language
on
Forty Years of LOGO
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· Score: 4, Insightful
That has been my exact view on Fisher Price toys as well. Take the Fisher Price barn that says moo when you open the door. Have you ever seen a barn door to do this? Playing with this a a child I never learned the subtleties of farming, and was never able to connect the cow to the door. On top of this, everything was much smaller than in real life. I recall visiting a real farm some years later and being overwhelmed by its enormous size compared to the one I kept in my toy box at home. I mean, it was totally irrelevant.
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Look, I'm still waiting for a killer smartphone app that motivates me well enough to upgrade from my flip phone. Now if someday I walk up to the vending machine at work and it will only accept payments via mobile app, that might do it. On the other hand, the cost/value equation of paying $300 more a year on my cell phone bill just for vending machine access might end up keeping me on a diet. As for Google Glass, perhaps the ability to just look at that Snickers bar and have it fall into my hands might make it worth it. Decisions, decisions.
I'm about as religiously conservative as they come, and I think you've got the wrong villain in you sights. Cradle to grave monitoring and control is a collectivist policy, which like much of current liberal thinking, accepts the ceding of privacy to the state as a contemporary norm. I've never talked to a conservative Christian in any of my circles having the point of view that the state should be entrusted with the right to inspect our daily lives. Rather, they tend to strongly advocate personal freedom, responsibility, and privacy. If you blame the religious conservatives for this sort of thing and they all go away, all you'll have left are the government and those who think government is pretty much the equivalent of God. Of course, I'm sure you'll eventually come to terms with this since there isn't a liberal around who, once they find that they can surreptitiously follow the creationists or any other of their selected villains around, wouldn't love to exercise their omnipotence.
I don't consider adaptive optics "additive" or "artificial". Adaptive optics, as I understand them, do not add new light but correct existing light like a sophisticated focuser. To me, the non-corrected image distorted by the atmosphere is more artificial than the corrected image, in which the atmospheric distortion has been subtracted out . Just as the repair work on the Hubble (or the optics on your glasses) did not "create" new or artificial light, neither does adaptive optics. One of the ways this can be proved is that in a post-processed image, you can only extract or enhance what is there. In this case, we are seeing detail that no post processing of the light could have visually revealed. This is not additive or artificial detail, it is real detail.
If the motorcycle were suddenly invented today, we would have a similar effect. A certain group of people would find the motorcycle very appealing. Compared to the car, they are small, more fuel efficient, and less expensive. So the set of people not needing an enclosed vehicle with room for passengers and cargo would all run out and buy one. In those first few years motorcycle sales would spike relative to cars, and probably displace some car sales.
Anyone looking at the sales figures and marketplace trends in those days would proclaim that the days of the automobile were nearing the end and that the car was doomed. After all, all motor vehicles are the same, right.
Actually, in hindsight, it might have been a good time to invest in cars.
Has anyone considered how many scouts will go missing because of this?
Of course once you've gone completely flat and removed all the ornamentation, it makes one wonder where the next generation will go. Perhaps someone will suddenly realize, wow, we can make those tiles look just like a 3D image of a smartphone (and, of course, be promptly sued for rendering them with curved corners).
Interesting. I'm building an arcade cabinet right now. I have some limited skills working with wood, but by no means am I carpenter. I debated buying a kit, but could not find one that I was happy with. So I'm building from scratch.
I have been proceeding very slowly and teaching myself new skills everytime there is something I want to do, but have not done before. I am *very* happy with the results, and there is absolutely no question that I value this piece of work far more than if I had just purchased it. In fact, I've estimated that considering the time and labor I've put into it, I would need to sell it at at least $10,000 to break even. This is far more than I think anyone would be willing to spend; but it is what I think it is "worth".
On the other hand, this cabinet is highly customized. And perhaps this is the the more practical reason why I value it so highly. It's true that I wouldn't pay $10,000 for a "stock" arcade cabinet like the one I built. But if I had gone to a master woodworker and stood over his shoulder directing him to do all of the major and minor tweaks that I did, ask him--mid stream--to throw away assemblies he had done and re-do them in a different way (because I changed my mind after seeing what it looked like), and to have him overbuild and overfinish it in ways users would never see or appreciate; yeah, I guess I wouldn't be surprised if he charged me at least $10,000.
So yes, I think we tend to value things we produce ourselves more highly than those built by others. However, for me in particular, when I really think about it, the reason is less about self-love than it is about customization--and even small customization can have tremendous value if that's the thing that you *need* to make the thing "perfect" for you. The thing I like so much about Open Source is that I can go into it and make those little tweaks that make the software do exactly what I want. A good example of this is Atari800, one of the emulators that I use in the cabinet. I really like this emulator, but it had some annoying (to me) minor issues that made it less than perfect for my application of it. So I contributed fixes for these things to the project. So now my project is perfect. And I value that a lot.
The article says this is also called the Mount Rothwell site. There is also an odd similarity with the appearance of the ground and rocks with those in New Mexico. Is anyone seeing the connection? Could I be on to something?
Maybe this is a tech gap, but maybe its partially due to the fact that some Americans are frugal. When my mother-in-law recently called for Internet service from the same cable company that I get fast broadband service from, the first thing they asked was what what she used it for. They offered different price plans for different speeds, and one of this was a "slow" 1.5MBS. But quite frankly that's all she needs. Really. As a developer, I completely appreciate fast Internet speeds and use them, but if all I did was read email and do light web browsing, why would I pay more? Is my mother-in-law's choice to pay less for lower speed service contributing to the tech gap? Now if she actually *needed* the speed and it just wasn't available, that would be another story, but that's not the case here. Actually, even my service is way over the top 95% of the time. Occasionally, I'll download a large file and I'm happy that it took only an hour instead of overnight (not that it was really worth the extra $20 a month--but I guess I can afford it); and occasionally I'll watch a news clip or YouTube video--maybe even in bit-sucking HD fullscreen (whoohoo!). But really, I could care less about the so called "tech gap". What might be nicer is for all the bandwidth that I don't use but pay for every month) be converted into fuel credits for the needy--hmm, maybe I should switch to 1.5MB too and contribute to the tech gap.
Actually, you're both absolutely correct. The government redistributes funds to whoever it sees fit. This is apparently what Americans want since both rich and poor vote for their leaders, and their leaders (especially the current one) are quite up front about their intentions. It's called socialism, and its nothing new or surprising. What would be surprising is if Americans voted to terminate their welfare and stimulus programs in favor of substantially reduced taxes and greater personal responsibility. Sorry, ain't going to happen.
The last set of fluorescent bulbs I purchased came with a 7 year replacement warranty. Of course, I would need to send a burned-out bulb back and pay postage, so on CFL's the warranty is nice, but its real value is a bit dubious once you count the cost and inconvenience. However, on a $40 bulb the economics improve since return postage would be a much smaller fractional cost of the individual light bulb. It is also much more likely that I would actually use the warranty on a $40 bulb than a $3 or $4 one. If Panasonic were to warranty this bulb for, say 19 years, I think I'd be game to try it.
That goes for notebooks as well, for which I thought the only point of them was to write notes...
I worked at RS at the time of the model 100 and nothing else I can remember was closer to the weight and general dimensions of a modern laptop as the model 100. There were definitely more powerful "portables" at the time that were arguably more *functionally* equivalent to a modern laptop; but they existed in a weight/form-factor that doesn't have a counterpart today.
While I hate to admit it, pretty much all of my past contributions to OSS projects have not been to benefit some altruistic "community" as much as to benefit myself. I use OSS quite often to do things that I want or need, and if the software is missing something that I want or need and I'm capable of adding it, I often do. I then make sure to contribute my changes to the project so that future updates include my changes. This pattern of behavior has nothing to do with economics and is unlikely to change due to economic conditions.
Wearing 3D glasses is no more silly than iPod earplugs or bluetooth headsets. It's just that the technology to use them needs to work, and work well before people will use them. I bought (and later returned) a set of eDimensional 3D shutter glasses a year ago. My reaction was Wow! This is the future of gaming. On the couple of games that I got to kind of work, the effect was amazing and well worth the cost of wearing glasses. In Oblivion, for example, the effect was so good that I almost couldn't go back to playing without it. The trouble was just a host of technical issues--In Oblivion it was a graphical glitch that made combat impossible to see. Although I could get some other games to work well enough to see their enormous potential in a few games, ghosting, artifacting, incompatibilities, frame rates, driver issues, and way to much tweaking made the glasses just too much trouble. If Nvidia has solved these issues than I'd drop cash on these in an instant.
Hehe. Yes, if the computer models show something other than what we already know to be true (that we can't possibly be special...because you know what that would mean), then their models must be incomplete and reworked until such time as they agree with what we know to be true.
I also read an article about the dangers of making sweeping generalizations.
The computer mouse is not a new technology. In a way a mouse is to a computer what a steering wheel is to a car. Sure, there are other steering technologies out there. Sticks work great in fighter jets and handles work great on zero turn lawn mowers, but for general purpose use in cars, there's nothing I've ever seen that's better than a wheel. I'm not stuck on mouse technology...if something genuinely better came around, I'd jump on it in an instant. Touch screens, tablets, pens, touch pads, joysticks, etc., are all better solutions in specific applications, but for plain precision, general purpose pointing on a desktop computer, there is no technology that I've seen that's better than a mouse.
I forgot about that. Hmmm. If we used that same technique, I imagine we could get the ISS to the moon really cheap.
If IM is your only (or primary) means of communicating, that's bad. When it comes to communicating with someone remotely, I use three methods, email, phone, and IM. I use email for most communication since it is formal, asynchronous, provides time to actually think about what I am saying, and creates a useful record. If a dialog is necessary, I use the phone. It is quick, to the point, and when the phone call is over, its usually over. I only use IM when someone else IMs me. When they do, if it's a one line response I'll usually respond. If its more, I pick up the phone and call them.
I too like Vista. I installed Vista as an experiment a few months after it came out with the full intention of sticking with XP till SP1. While there were a few issues, my positive experiences outweighed the negative by a reasonable margin and I never went back. A year later (i.e very recently), I upgraded my hardware and moved to x64 Vista--again as an experiment. With all the FUD out there about x64 creating all kinds of compatibility problems, I was amazed at how few issues I had. All of my hardware works (even a seven year old film scanner), and nearly all software I've thrown at it--even a few older games that I tried(like Independence War 2 and Ground Control) work perfectly. True, there is no longer a 16-bit subsystem in x64, but for the few 16-bit apps around that I like to use, Virtual PC runs them just fine. Vista has some annoyances, I'll admit that, but none serious enough for me to even consider giving it up. In fact, when I do need to use XP, it does feel kind of "old" now. Naturally, with all the people out there, I don't expect everyone to have my experience, but after having gone from VIC-20-> Atari800-> DOS2.11-> DOS3.1-> DOS5.0-> DOS6.0/6.21/22-> Windows3.1-> WindowsFW3.11-> Windows95-> Windows98/SE-> WindowsME(yuck!)-> WindowsXP-> WindowsVista_x86-> WindowsVista_x64 I can honestly say that upgrading to Vista is pretty much like every other upgrade, some part pain, but mostly a benefit (with the two possible exceptions of DOS 6.21->6.22 and Windows ME.
You'll get no argument from me that my system is at a "dead-end". That was precisely my point. My point being that reaching this so-called "dead-end" is now about twice as far out as it was in the past. Twenty, or even ten years ago, I would have reached a similar dead-end after about 2 to 3 years. Now I am reaching it in about 4 to 5 years. This change means that my PC buying patterns have changed, thus making it appear to PC sale bean counters that I don't use PCs as much anymore. No. I just don't need to buy them as frequently as before. My intention in six months to a year is to still drop my typical $2000 to $2500 on a new rig using whatever is the the most current tech at that moment. But I can now expect (with a similar mid-life upgrade) that it will last me a very solid 4 to 5 years now. Even with this said, I have to remark that unlike the past, this dead-end is *only* with respect to the very latest games. In the past, after 2.5 years, I could expect that not only would my gaming capabilities be lagging far behind, but even the latest OS and productivity apps would be performing sluggishly. That simply isn't the case anymore. Vista Ultimate performs swimmingly on this machine, as does Photoshop CS3, Lightroom, and nearly every other game that I own.
My original machine was pretty cutting edge at the time, so I basically maxed out on what my MB could handle, 2.6GHz P4 -> 3.4GHz P4 Extreme (cheap on ebay), an ATI 9800 PRO -> ATI X1950PRO (available in AGP), and an extra 1 GB RAM (total 2GB). Same PSU (450Watt Antec). At 1920x1200 on my 24" flat panel with 4x Anti-aliasing, I can average around 30FPS in Oblivion (and this is in Vista), and everything else I use or play on this machine works well enough to justify pushing out my next expected upgrade almost another year.
I think I agree with the posts saying that PC users are just not upgrading as frequently. Ever since my old VIC-20 days, I've been an avid computer user and have upgraded to a new machine every 2 to 3 years. In fact, 3 years would have been a lot. However, the computer I'm using now is one I built in 2003. Oh my goodness! That's four years ago. I did recently did a multimedia upgrade on it; but this 4 year old machine runs everything from Photoshop CS3 to Oblivion just fine thank you. It even does a decent job on the Crysis demo. Yes, I do have it in my plans to finally build a new machine next year...probably around this time, but that will mean that I've nearly doubled my upgrade interval--and it's not because of money, its simply because the tech is not advancing quite as quickly as it used to relative to the kind of software that I like to run. If someone from the outside was just looking at my credit card records to see my PC buying habits, I'm sure they'd say I must have given up on PCs and moved on to cell phones, DVRs, and console video games--when that would be the furthest thing from the truth. Sure, those other consumer devices are going to cut somewhat into PC sales as well, but that's ok. Personally, I'd like PCs to become a non-mainstream geeky kind of thing again anyway.
That has been my exact view on Fisher Price toys as well. Take the Fisher Price barn that says moo when you open the door. Have you ever seen a barn door to do this? Playing with this a a child I never learned the subtleties of farming, and was never able to connect the cow to the door. On top of this, everything was much smaller than in real life. I recall visiting a real farm some years later and being overwhelmed by its enormous size compared to the one I kept in my toy box at home. I mean, it was totally irrelevant.