also, if the thing has the remote possibility of choking on a bad mp3 and crashing, i'd love to have a manual reset button that doesn't go through software. That process sounds like something M$ came up with. many times mine will crash and run itself dead because the reset method doesn't work. even docked.
That doesn't really surprise me much. That reminds me of some of the old Macs that I have used - when they crashed (quite often), sometimes the only option to get them to restart was to physically yank the power cord out. I don't miss those days.
I've never really heard of people having iPod's crash on playback. Is that a fairly common occurance? My old RCA CD-MP3 player would crash occasionally, but my flash based iRiver player has never crashed.
I use Opera, and while I have FireFox installed, I very rarely launch it. Usually the only reason I open it is that there is some site that doesn't work in Opera, so I give Firefex a try before resorting to the big blue e. Firefox is nice, but I like Opera better.
Opera does something simular to what you want, it even has a search tool. Of course, you could always use IE, where the bookmarks are stored as individual files and you can browse through them with Windows Explorer.
If someone trips over the power cord, or the power goes out, does she have the patience to start over?
Remember, for her it's just a matter of plugging the thing back in and starting it back up. The poor little Centris is the one that has to do all the work. Good thing computers are infinently patient.
A 486/33 is useless, even for a mundane task like web browsing.
14 years ago, that computer was top-of-the-line, and people did all kinds of work on computers just like that. It may be old and horribly outclassed, but I would hardly call it useless. And yes, you can run a web browser on a 486/33, because I have done it!
My favorite site for used computers is www.retrobox.com. About a year ago I picked up a HP Vectra, PIII 866Mhz, 512MB of ram, 30GB HDD, DVD, Dual head video card(!), a pretty nice machine, for $230. I just ordered a computer for my Grandpa, a HP 500Mhz PIII with 512MB for $88. I have yet to find any place cheaper except for dumpsters. Right now, it seems about 600Mhz with a decent amount of Ram will run you $100 there, which will run any x86 OS you throw at it without a problem.
But originally, this was about being reliable and effective.
I seem to remember water cooling was originally about overclocking the hell out of Pentium II's and K6's. Now it's normal people fighting the heat created by today's processors and video cards running at their spec'd speeds. I'd say now they need to be more reliable than ever. If I was to water cool my system, I would want several years (atleast) of reliable service. An overclocker who constantly tweaks his system would be more likely to put up with constant maintance and repairs than I would.
There's dozens of freewares playing QT movies full screen
That doesn't change the fact that Apple's official Quicktime player is a steaming pile of crap, on both the Mac and Windows. Even Windows Media Player isn't that bad.
Where Apple might be missing the boat is in the ultra low end where you can buy a system for $600. (But why should they try to compete down there where margins are razor-thin?)
Because poor college students like me, who buy $600 computers is going to buy a PC. And when I get out of college and have the means to drop $2500 on a computer, guess what I'll probably buy.
Actually, the two real reasons why Apple doesn't sell low end machines is that it would undercut sales of their more expensive machines, and totally destroy the second hand Mac market (where used Macs are way overvalued, IMHO). Without a strong second hand market to sell a used Mac for a good price, people will be less likely to buy their high end machines.
Most schools, including mine, ban wireless routers for this reason. They want to track who does what with what computer on the school network. They also ban regular wired routers too, for the same reasons. You might want to check to see if Michigan even allows wireless routers - they probably don't. While a wired router is hard for them to find, my school will sniff out student-run wireless and bust people for running them. So the first thing I would do is just make sure you aren't wasting your time trying to get this to work.
Even if they do allow wireless routers, you might want to re-evaluate just how badly he needs that wireless. Dorm rooms aren't that big - just buy a long cable. Or buy a cheap hub and run a cable to the desk, to the bed, and anywhere else he's going to use a laptop. One of my roommates did just that, worked fine. Lastly, you might just try unplugging your router and seeing if you can pick the school's wireless if they have it. If he's really lucky, he might get a good signal from some other sucker's wireless router. In which he can download as much music, movies, warez, and p0rn as he wants, and if the RIAA/MPAA/BSA comes around, or if the ResNet people get annoyed at the excessive bandwidth use - they'll bust the poor guy who registered the MAC address on that router.
There's only a finite number of old films. Of those old films, most are either shoddy or have been long forgotten. Only a very small number of movies are beloved enough that studios are willing to cost out the restoration work.
True, but as Lucas has demonstrated, you can take the same 3 films and rerelease them as many times as you want. So really, the cash cow will never run out.
I seem to recall at first there was no thermal protection built into motherboards, and it was only in response to things like Tom's Demostration that it was added. However, the thermal protection diode is still too slow to react in time if an Athlon is ran without a heatsink - it will still burn up. All the diode is really good for is to shut off the CPU if the cooling fan fails.
I seem to recall the boards that came out mid-2002 were the first ones that had the thermal protection. The board in this computer (KT333 based, circa early 2002) has no protection at all.
There are only 3 computers in the bunch. And one of them doesn't even have its own monitor (it shares the flat panel with another computer). My roommate brought up a VGA amp, and we both brought up all our spare monitors. We can switch the input between 2 of the computers, and basically use 5 of the screens to play movies, music videos, whatever. It's crazy.
And to get back on topic, yes the room is quite warm.
Honestly you're right - but I've found CRT monitors more effective at producing heat. Older, larger CRT monitors are basically small space heaters. A multi-monitor setup with old IBM 'powerdisplay' model CRTs will heat a dorm room VERY quickly.
At the very least, locate the battery someplace where it won't do much damage if it does go boom, and run an extension cord to your computer. You don't want to be near one of those suckers if it explodes.
I can't beleive they want an extra $65 for a 15 inch monitor. That's laughable.
I don't think $65 for a new 15" monitor is unreasonable. Monitors are somewhat big and complicated devices, they can't manufacture them for free, you know. Just because you can get as many used 15" monitors as you need by diving in dumpsters doesn't mean they are charging too much.
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also, if the thing has the remote possibility of choking on a bad mp3 and crashing, i'd love to have a manual reset button that doesn't go through software. That process sounds like something M$ came up with. many times mine will crash and run itself dead because the reset method doesn't work. even docked.
That doesn't really surprise me much. That reminds me of some of the old Macs that I have used - when they crashed (quite often), sometimes the only option to get them to restart was to physically yank the power cord out. I don't miss those days.
I've never really heard of people having iPod's crash on playback. Is that a fairly common occurance? My old RCA CD-MP3 player would crash occasionally, but my flash based iRiver player has never crashed.
I thought the original plan was to inject the FireFox code back into Mozilla when it hit 1.0? Or am I just plain wrong about that?
I use Opera, and while I have FireFox installed, I very rarely launch it. Usually the only reason I open it is that there is some site that doesn't work in Opera, so I give Firefex a try before resorting to the big blue e. Firefox is nice, but I like Opera better.
Opera does something simular to what you want, it even has a search tool. Of course, you could always use IE, where the bookmarks are stored as individual files and you can browse through them with Windows Explorer.
Holy crap, that rocks! How come no one ever told me about this before?
If someone trips over the power cord, or the power goes out, does she have the patience to start over?
Remember, for her it's just a matter of plugging the thing back in and starting it back up. The poor little Centris is the one that has to do all the work. Good thing computers are infinently patient.
A 486/33 is useless, even for a mundane task like web browsing.
14 years ago, that computer was top-of-the-line, and people did all kinds of work on computers just like that. It may be old and horribly outclassed, but I would hardly call it useless. And yes, you can run a web browser on a 486/33, because I have done it!
My favorite site for used computers is www.retrobox.com. About a year ago I picked up a HP Vectra, PIII 866Mhz, 512MB of ram, 30GB HDD, DVD, Dual head video card(!), a pretty nice machine, for $230. I just ordered a computer for my Grandpa, a HP 500Mhz PIII with 512MB for $88. I have yet to find any place cheaper except for dumpsters. Right now, it seems about 600Mhz with a decent amount of Ram will run you $100 there, which will run any x86 OS you throw at it without a problem.
Where do you live, where computers found on the curb are on average a midlevel PIII? I need to move there!
But originally, this was about being reliable and effective.
I seem to remember water cooling was originally about overclocking the hell out of Pentium II's and K6's. Now it's normal people fighting the heat created by today's processors and video cards running at their spec'd speeds. I'd say now they need to be more reliable than ever. If I was to water cool my system, I would want several years (atleast) of reliable service. An overclocker who constantly tweaks his system would be more likely to put up with constant maintance and repairs than I would.
There's dozens of freewares playing QT movies full screen
That doesn't change the fact that Apple's official Quicktime player is a steaming pile of crap, on both the Mac and Windows. Even Windows Media Player isn't that bad.
Where Apple might be missing the boat is in the ultra low end where you can buy a system for $600. (But why should they try to compete down there where margins are razor-thin?)
Because poor college students like me, who buy $600 computers is going to buy a PC. And when I get out of college and have the means to drop $2500 on a computer, guess what I'll probably buy.
Actually, the two real reasons why Apple doesn't sell low end machines is that it would undercut sales of their more expensive machines, and totally destroy the second hand Mac market (where used Macs are way overvalued, IMHO). Without a strong second hand market to sell a used Mac for a good price, people will be less likely to buy their high end machines.
Most schools, including mine, ban wireless routers for this reason. They want to track who does what with what computer on the school network. They also ban regular wired routers too, for the same reasons. You might want to check to see if Michigan even allows wireless routers - they probably don't. While a wired router is hard for them to find, my school will sniff out student-run wireless and bust people for running them. So the first thing I would do is just make sure you aren't wasting your time trying to get this to work.
Even if they do allow wireless routers, you might want to re-evaluate just how badly he needs that wireless. Dorm rooms aren't that big - just buy a long cable. Or buy a cheap hub and run a cable to the desk, to the bed, and anywhere else he's going to use a laptop. One of my roommates did just that, worked fine. Lastly, you might just try unplugging your router and seeing if you can pick the school's wireless if they have it. If he's really lucky, he might get a good signal from some other sucker's wireless router. In which he can download as much music, movies, warez, and p0rn as he wants, and if the RIAA/MPAA/BSA comes around, or if the ResNet people get annoyed at the excessive bandwidth use - they'll bust the poor guy who registered the MAC address on that router.
A web browser is not an operating system. I repeat a web browser is not an operating styem!
It is if you ask Microsoft!
While it had little to do with Netscape, I would say "a poorly debugged set of device drivers." pretty much described Windows until Win2k came out.
There's only a finite number of old films. Of those old films, most are either shoddy or have been long forgotten. Only a very small number of movies are beloved enough that studios are willing to cost out the restoration work.
True, but as Lucas has demonstrated, you can take the same 3 films and rerelease them as many times as you want. So really, the cash cow will never run out.
I seem to recall at first there was no thermal protection built into motherboards, and it was only in response to things like Tom's Demostration that it was added. However, the thermal protection diode is still too slow to react in time if an Athlon is ran without a heatsink - it will still burn up. All the diode is really good for is to shut off the CPU if the cooling fan fails.
I seem to recall the boards that came out mid-2002 were the first ones that had the thermal protection. The board in this computer (KT333 based, circa early 2002) has no protection at all.
Why?
Because.
There are only 3 computers in the bunch. And one of them doesn't even have its own monitor (it shares the flat panel with another computer). My roommate brought up a VGA amp, and we both brought up all our spare monitors. We can switch the input between 2 of the computers, and basically use 5 of the screens to play movies, music videos, whatever. It's crazy.
And to get back on topic, yes the room is quite warm.
Honestly you're right - but I've found CRT monitors more effective at producing heat. Older, larger CRT monitors are basically small space heaters. A multi-monitor setup with old IBM 'powerdisplay' model CRTs will heat a dorm room VERY quickly.
You mean like this?
Yes, they are all functional, and there is even one more screen you can't see in this picture.
At the very least, locate the battery someplace where it won't do much damage if it does go boom, and run an extension cord to your computer. You don't want to be near one of those suckers if it explodes.
A lot depends on what you're doing. I don't suppose you control your web browser with just a keyboard?
I can't beleive they want an extra $65 for a 15 inch monitor. That's laughable.
I don't think $65 for a new 15" monitor is unreasonable. Monitors are somewhat big and complicated devices, they can't manufacture them for free, you know. Just because you can get as many used 15" monitors as you need by diving in dumpsters doesn't mean they are charging too much.
A 700Mhz machine that's "ancient"? You youngsters! Any PC that is fast enough to run some flavor of Windows past 2.0 is not ancient!
Well, if one layer isn't enough, why not stack them? I bet even 1,000 layers would still be a lot lighter than anything else we got now.