Will it let you lock the steering wheel when the transmission selector is any gear other than park? Because the car I own has an interlock to enforce this. Basically I can't turn the key all the way back or remove the key if the transmission is not in park.
On the other hand, cars with a manual transmission don't seem to have an equivalent feature so you could look the steering and even remove the key while the car is moving. But on the other hand, with a manual you shouldn't have a problem disengaging the engine from the wheels in the first place.
I'm really not so sure about that, from a standstill, perhaps, running at highway speeds? Thats another story. You run into brake fade issues very quickly unless you are running highly exotic ceramic brakes (which they are not). Some Aurions have really got obscene amounts of power too. Whilst it is probably true that you *can* apply enough force to stop a car at WOT, the question is can most average drivers actually pull this off before their brakes overheat and become quite useless? I personally remain unconvinced.
Granted, it does appear that brakes heating up is a concern, and can be an issue if the car is moving at around 120MPH or more. Probably the big mistake many drivers will make is to not apply the full brakes at first, or partially let up on them when they start to smell - all this is going to accomplish is heating the brakes without getting the full stopping power out of them. The key is to apply full brakes and to not let up until the car stops.
Judging by how the power button appears to work in the Prius, I would guess all that it does is tell the computer to shut down the engine. It's not like a typical car where the turning the key to Acc or off would cut the power to several critical systems. So if the computer is messed up to the point where the gear shift selector is not working, I wouldn't count on the power button to help you either.
The AMD Athlon is alive and well, now as AMD's budget line of processors. They've just released a bunch of new ones for Socket AM3 as a matter of fact, calling them the Athlon II. They appear to basically be Phenom II's but lacking the L3 cache. The Sempron is still alive too, though I think now it's more of an ultra-low power embedded chip than a budget chip. The Phenoms, of course, are the top-of-the-line AMD chip.
If the 4 year machine is relatively high end, you might be surprised. A good GPU from 2006 will stomp all over a modern integrated GPU. Low-end 5400RPM drives are slow compared to an older 7200RPM drive. A high end 2006 system and a low end 2010 system would likely both be using DDR2 memory of similar speed. It would be kind of hard to screw up the CPU though, unless you bought an Atom.
You really have to take into account the whole system. The typical AMD socket AM3 motherboard uses less power than the Intel LGA775 (Core 2) boards, because the AMD chips have things like the memory controller integrated into the CPU where the Core 2 chips do not. However, it seems to be nearly impossible to find the power draw of various motherboards and chipsets so good luck there.
Well, I guess that since you're so important that you view everything in terms of how many billable hours you can get out of it, you would have little use for a computer capable of gaming. Enjoy your Mac:)
For a while, they were still selling the Netburst Pentium 4/Pentium D chips alongside the Pentium Dual Core chips. Extremely confusing, as you wouldn't want the former, but the latter are an okay budget chip. The Pentium D and Pentium Dual-Core are especially easy to confuse.
What are you talking about? The ATI 9250 was an extremely common budget model back when AGP ruled the scene. You can still buy them new as a cheap deal head capable PCI (not Express) graphics card.
Of course, to make things confusing, it should have never been called the 9250 as it didn't implement DirectX9 in hardware, unlike the ATI 9600/9800 and similar.
The really funny thing is that it seems that absolutely no one remembers that there were two versions of Opera available - an ad-free version that you had to buy, or the free version with ads that everyone remembers. I know this as I actually bought it - it wasn't very expensive and well worth it when the main competition was an aging Netscape 4 or IE. I wonder if they would have been better off with just the paid version, as then people would remember Opera as one of the last browsers to go free after IE and Netscape?
The idea is that you only need to get enough adapters and plugs to make your laptop work. From there, you can power everything else off the laptop. With that said, my AA/AAA battery charger happens to accept 100-240V 50-60 Hz and uses the same IEC connector as the laptop, and there wasn't even any attempt on my part to make that happen.
Don't you know your Apple history? The original iPod only worked on Apple computers, 2002 was a pretty low point when it came to the number of people using Macs.
Well, the first time I played with an iPod, I didn't realize that the circle on the front was actually a capacitive sensor that I was supposed to run my fingers across to make the thing work. Once I figured that out, the rest was pretty easy, but still not a very intuitive design to someone who's not familiar with them - in that sense the old click wheel iPods were better.
Well, at least it would be building up infrastructure that would provide long term benefits for decades to come. Sure beats buying people new cars and dishwashers.
Granted, having your power steering crap out is a bit less dramatic than having your car suddenly accelerate uncontrollably. Of course, if I was GM and I could pick a time to recall a bunch of vehicles, now might be a good time as everyone seems focused on Toyota. I also noticed that Nissan has just recalled over a half-million vehicles too.
How about all the cars where you have to turn the key the other way for accessory? (or in other words, the order is ACC-OFF-ON-START). I think this may be a US car (or just GM?) thing, as I have never seen a Japanese or European car work this way. Granted, I don't know if the steering wheel is actually locked in accessory, but you would still have to go through off to get there.
My car has an interlock that doesn't allow the steering wheel lock to engage unless the transmission is in park. So if I have to kill the engine while the car is moving, I can just turn the key back without worrying about locking my steering. Interestingly, the manual version of my same car does not have a comparable system, so you could engage the steering wheel lock by turning the key too far regardless of the position of the gearshift, making this one rare case where the automatic wins in terms of safety.
It's an American thing, dating back to the days when cars had bench seats in the front, so there was no place for the handbrake where you would expect it (same for the gear shift, which went on the steering column). Here's a good example of a classic American car: http://www.pontiacserver.com/dash.jpg Note the parking brake and release on the bottom left of photo.
I actually thought that a lot more cars nowadays had handbrakes, now that bench seats are no longer fashionable in favor of bucket seats. Or are things going backwards now?
I like the one-pedal the Swedes were working on better. Basically, you combine the gas and brake into one pedal. To accelerate, you pivot the pedal with your foot. To brake you just mash the whole thing down (which also cuts the accelerator). Not only do you eliminate the lag time it takes to move the foot from the gas to the brake, in a panic situation it eliminates the possibility of flooring the gas when you meant to hit the brakes.
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Will it let you lock the steering wheel when the transmission selector is any gear other than park? Because the car I own has an interlock to enforce this. Basically I can't turn the key all the way back or remove the key if the transmission is not in park.
On the other hand, cars with a manual transmission don't seem to have an equivalent feature so you could look the steering and even remove the key while the car is moving. But on the other hand, with a manual you shouldn't have a problem disengaging the engine from the wheels in the first place.
I'm really not so sure about that, from a standstill, perhaps, running at highway speeds? Thats another story. You run into brake fade issues very quickly unless you are running highly exotic ceramic brakes (which they are not). Some Aurions have really got obscene amounts of power too. Whilst it is probably true that you *can* apply enough force to stop a car at WOT, the question is can most average drivers actually pull this off before their brakes overheat and become quite useless? I personally remain unconvinced.
Car and Driver put it to the test, and found that with full throttle and full brakes the car would come to the stop:
http://www.caranddriver.com/features/09q4/how_to_deal_with_unintended_acceleration-tech_dept
Granted, it does appear that brakes heating up is a concern, and can be an issue if the car is moving at around 120MPH or more. Probably the big mistake many drivers will make is to not apply the full brakes at first, or partially let up on them when they start to smell - all this is going to accomplish is heating the brakes without getting the full stopping power out of them. The key is to apply full brakes and to not let up until the car stops.
Judging by how the power button appears to work in the Prius, I would guess all that it does is tell the computer to shut down the engine. It's not like a typical car where the turning the key to Acc or off would cut the power to several critical systems. So if the computer is messed up to the point where the gear shift selector is not working, I wouldn't count on the power button to help you either.
Well to be fair, that was an issue, but most people were complaining about the size and battery life of the CRT-based eReaders.
You might try http://www.cpu-collector.com/. They might be interested in a Pentium Pro in at an unreleased clock speed.
The AMD Athlon is alive and well, now as AMD's budget line of processors. They've just released a bunch of new ones for Socket AM3 as a matter of fact, calling them the Athlon II. They appear to basically be Phenom II's but lacking the L3 cache. The Sempron is still alive too, though I think now it's more of an ultra-low power embedded chip than a budget chip. The Phenoms, of course, are the top-of-the-line AMD chip.
If the 4 year machine is relatively high end, you might be surprised. A good GPU from 2006 will stomp all over a modern integrated GPU. Low-end 5400RPM drives are slow compared to an older 7200RPM drive. A high end 2006 system and a low end 2010 system would likely both be using DDR2 memory of similar speed. It would be kind of hard to screw up the CPU though, unless you bought an Atom.
You really have to take into account the whole system. The typical AMD socket AM3 motherboard uses less power than the Intel LGA775 (Core 2) boards, because the AMD chips have things like the memory controller integrated into the CPU where the Core 2 chips do not. However, it seems to be nearly impossible to find the power draw of various motherboards and chipsets so good luck there.
Well, I guess that since you're so important that you view everything in terms of how many billable hours you can get out of it, you would have little use for a computer capable of gaming. Enjoy your Mac :)
For a while, they were still selling the Netburst Pentium 4/Pentium D chips alongside the Pentium Dual Core chips. Extremely confusing, as you wouldn't want the former, but the latter are an okay budget chip. The Pentium D and Pentium Dual-Core are especially easy to confuse.
What are you talking about? The ATI 9250 was an extremely common budget model back when AGP ruled the scene. You can still buy them new as a cheap deal head capable PCI (not Express) graphics card.
Of course, to make things confusing, it should have never been called the 9250 as it didn't implement DirectX9 in hardware, unlike the ATI 9600/9800 and similar.
For a while IE was the most popular browser on the Mac, until better browsers came along and Microsoft stopped updating it.
The really funny thing is that it seems that absolutely no one remembers that there were two versions of Opera available - an ad-free version that you had to buy, or the free version with ads that everyone remembers. I know this as I actually bought it - it wasn't very expensive and well worth it when the main competition was an aging Netscape 4 or IE. I wonder if they would have been better off with just the paid version, as then people would remember Opera as one of the last browsers to go free after IE and Netscape?
The idea is that you only need to get enough adapters and plugs to make your laptop work. From there, you can power everything else off the laptop. With that said, my AA/AAA battery charger happens to accept 100-240V 50-60 Hz and uses the same IEC connector as the laptop, and there wasn't even any attempt on my part to make that happen.
Don't you know your Apple history? The original iPod only worked on Apple computers, 2002 was a pretty low point when it came to the number of people using Macs.
Well, the first time I played with an iPod, I didn't realize that the circle on the front was actually a capacitive sensor that I was supposed to run my fingers across to make the thing work. Once I figured that out, the rest was pretty easy, but still not a very intuitive design to someone who's not familiar with them - in that sense the old click wheel iPods were better.
Well, at least it would be building up infrastructure that would provide long term benefits for decades to come. Sure beats buying people new cars and dishwashers.
Your DVR doesn't show its own ads or periodically phone home?
Well, it's state of the art now. However, it wouldn't surprise me at all if the systems they are running now will still be limping along in 2035.
http://www.newsoxy.com/gm/recall-and-steering-12719.html
Granted, having your power steering crap out is a bit less dramatic than having your car suddenly accelerate uncontrollably. Of course, if I was GM and I could pick a time to recall a bunch of vehicles, now might be a good time as everyone seems focused on Toyota. I also noticed that Nissan has just recalled over a half-million vehicles too.
How about all the cars where you have to turn the key the other way for accessory? (or in other words, the order is ACC-OFF-ON-START). I think this may be a US car (or just GM?) thing, as I have never seen a Japanese or European car work this way. Granted, I don't know if the steering wheel is actually locked in accessory, but you would still have to go through off to get there.
My car has an interlock that doesn't allow the steering wheel lock to engage unless the transmission is in park. So if I have to kill the engine while the car is moving, I can just turn the key back without worrying about locking my steering. Interestingly, the manual version of my same car does not have a comparable system, so you could engage the steering wheel lock by turning the key too far regardless of the position of the gearshift, making this one rare case where the automatic wins in terms of safety.
It's an American thing, dating back to the days when cars had bench seats in the front, so there was no place for the handbrake where you would expect it (same for the gear shift, which went on the steering column). Here's a good example of a classic American car:
http://www.pontiacserver.com/dash.jpg
Note the parking brake and release on the bottom left of photo.
I actually thought that a lot more cars nowadays had handbrakes, now that bench seats are no longer fashionable in favor of bucket seats. Or are things going backwards now?
I like the one-pedal the Swedes were working on better. Basically, you combine the gas and brake into one pedal. To accelerate, you pivot the pedal with your foot. To brake you just mash the whole thing down (which also cuts the accelerator). Not only do you eliminate the lag time it takes to move the foot from the gas to the brake, in a panic situation it eliminates the possibility of flooring the gas when you meant to hit the brakes.
Didn't GM just have to recall over a million of their cars because the power steering can fail?