Adblock Plus is a huge hog, with ublock and privacy badger I'm now at only 880MB use with a bunch of shit open (though usually it's more 1.1GB to 1.5GB)
A dedicated device for stereo graphics is interesting, each eye got its own picture and you can bet the games are developed with it in mind. Even if it is anti-social by nature, when someone's using a giant 3D TV all you can see is a scrambled overbright overlaid thing and it is not very much better. I've only seen it once in some museum-like convention, next to an Osborne 1.
I also think the red light thing is cool, it's something different. A scanning display with one light per line, that leaves me asking if we can make a laser projector that way. And I don't care if one screen is monochrome, we're surrounded with color screens otherwise (and even that weird video game called "life").
For that matter I would like to see a monochrome smartphone : lower power, readable, potentially cheaper and just pixels, not sub pixels. Flashy colors aren't exactly needed for looking at icons, contact lists, etc.
I'm sure it is fine with a high quality 300W PSU with a lowish power use consumer CPU (including i5, i7) while a high quality 350W is perfect to use the card with a power hungry CPU (AMD FX, 2011 socket)
Radeon 5870 is old but it was an almost 200W high end card, still a strong performer.
Car analogy : Meh, my 40-year-old Porsche does 120 mph easily. Any 40-year-old car does 120 mph. This new $15900 car that does 120 mph is pointless, keep your old Porsche.
Why do we need spotify? Why do we need itunes? I don't need them or use them.
Your argument is like we should need only one type restaurant, just as happened after the Restaurant Wars in Demolition Man. Or we don't need an email provider because there is yahoo/microsoft/gmail.
Doesn't stop the restaurants using the same technology such as dishes, salt and vinegar, or datacenters from using racks of x86 PCs and ethernet, or mobile phones from using ARM (or MIPS) and GSM, LTE, wifi.
Let's say the smartphone costs on the order of one people's monthly income - similar to buying a desktop computer in the 90s in developed countries. You can't afford to bet on a smartphone that may be a dud - crappy, low quality build, unsupported etc. ; for one thing the vendor may save $1 on flash and you get very crappy one that locks the phone for 15 seconds when doing some of the writes, or you risk it dying. A few $ more in the BOM may go a long way : higher quality flash, high res screen (800x480), connector that keeps working..
US slashdot user solutions aren't workable (don't use the smart features, put it in a drawer, give it to kids, use it as a remote for a PC or gadget) US smartphones prices from Amazon and huge low cost supermarket chains are also along the lowest on the planet.
Well, anecdotal evidence, a guy had some PC laptop with the very first i5 (32nm Westmere, dual core, four threads) which implies year 2010 or 2011 at best, 4GB RAM. Bare Windows 7 with malware. I installed Windows 7 32bit (don't care) with proper security, and the thing just didn't choke ever even when running what's apparently the most heavy task for a Windows PC : Windows Update. Damn thing is better than my linux desktop. Powerful hardware is powerful.
There are iFixit guides for random laptops, and for something as recent as 5 years you tend to get "accidental" cross-vendor compatibility for LCD panels (the 1366x768 15.6") and PSU so you can actually mix parts from different laptops. But brands like HP etc. are dicks and use an identical PSU with a different connector, and all your other points stand.
Some more efficient.. things.. the most easily understandable is better multitasking on the GPU. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... And some.. things.. a wild guess is that it allows great performance in alt-tabbing out and in of a game. We all cordially hate Windows 8, but it is amazingly fast and smooth at showing you a Metro thing or the Charmed bar, whether you wanted it or not.
Windows 7 has the Home Basic version, install that and you only get the 2D desktop.
Changing visual style? with Windows 8 they removed classic look, and with Windows 7 they removed the color schemes in clasic look.. I could use a very old third party tool but it didn't include the old styles only additional ugly ones. With Windows 8 you can get such train wreck of a theme http://kizo2703.deviantart.com...
So with Windows the easy way I found is to install 7 Home Basic and leave it alone ("Aero Basic"). I don't put it on my PC though.
1) and 2) yes, 3) not. You do get the real GPU, which does display at full 3D acceleration and low latency. It might be possible to get the IGP or second graphics card (with or without passthrough) to display the hypervisor or another OS (say linux) in which case you need 2nd display, or KVM switch or a monitor with two inputs. Serial console would be nice, else ssh. Worst case only the Windows desktop can display, but from there you could ssh or VNC etc. into a linux VM, and if you reboot the Windows VM for applying updates the linux one(s) stay online. You can pass through a USB controller or SATA controller etc. One mild thing some people do is to install such hypervisor setting but only for headless linux / BSD VMs : a SATA/SAS controller card is passed to a NAS VM (say FreeBSD with ZFS) which gets to see it as real hardware. VGA pass through is harder because the VGA BIOS is something a bit special, and so it might fail.
Minimum hardware is Xeon on X58 chipset, or AMD CPU on 970, 990FX etc. (or some prior) motherboard ; AMD since has IOMMU even on lowest end hardware. But to know if it works you're left googling for reports of people getting it to run.
Bloody horror. And I wondered why you would ever need gbaseT on the desktop. Roaming profiles never crossed my mind. I have just one repressed memory of it on a then very new and powerful PC (damn thing had to create the profile I assume and it took an eon or two. Then I logged out and back to dumb graphical *nix terminals)
ESXi and Xen do that, you need a IOMMU (Vt-d) and a compatible chipset, BIOS/EFI and graphics card. Every hardware has the IOMMU now but Intel disables it at random (but increasingly leaves it enabled) and nvidia does disable compatibility for market segmenting too. Then the whole mess has to be supported enough to work together. It's still a niche thing but you can possibly get that crap running.
One "upgrade" I did on my PC (the other being switching from Ad Block Plus to ublock) was to switch to stand-by rather than shut down, this preserves the disk cache. So if I didn't use too much RAM, I can launch VLC and not have to wait for it. What's going on there? VLC hiding a flight simulator in the about screen? So I wonder if you get Windows to sleep or hibernate rather than shutdown (let's say hibernate and if someone was logged in he/she is kicked out) then you get a preserved disk cache and thus don't wait on crap to load.
(I'm disabling on-disk browser cache, damn those HDD writes:))
On the other hand if I ran a Windows desktop, 256MB for a linux VM would be plenty to mess around with the shell and so on. Need graphics? Run the X server on Windows.
A few years ago came the Celeron G1610 and it's insanely fast for bottom of the barrel price and low heat, same deal with the current G1820 or G1840, higher tech at the same price. Or throw a bone at AMD and get an A4 6300, A6 6400K etc. from them.
Most people probably ponder between an i3, i5 or i7 but if you don't know why you need it, then you don't need it! Even editing a web picture or a greeting card once a year on warez photoshop will not stress the CPU, as it sits idle between clicks and key presses and you'll wait like 10 seconds for something to apply which is good enough.
On the other hand RAM quantity has always been the bottleneck, 2GB RAM is huge, but quickly wasted by the OS and browser. So get 8GB RAM while it's still cheap : prices have come down. May be a good idea to get a motherboard with four RAM slots so you're not stuck years from now, or to get 16GB off the bat if you feel concerned or really want a two slot mobo. Even the integrated GPU is high tech, and does not slow down the PC : it sits on an insanely fast on-die bus and doesn't really steal the ample bandwith from the CPU.
Other rambling : I'll choose 8GB RAM and a HDD over 4GB RAM and an SSD, especially if the latter is a gamble on a lower end model. Celeron with 16GB may get more things done than i7 and 4GB depending on use. If you didn't spend enough money, think of the peripherals : a $1000 computer with $10 speakers is not worth using, personally.
Then software hygiene keeps the PC fast running for 10 years.
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Adblock Plus is a huge hog, with ublock and privacy badger I'm now at only 880MB use with a bunch of shit open (though usually it's more 1.1GB to 1.5GB)
A dedicated device for stereo graphics is interesting, each eye got its own picture and you can bet the games are developed with it in mind. Even if it is anti-social by nature, when someone's using a giant 3D TV all you can see is a scrambled overbright overlaid thing and it is not very much better.
I've only seen it once in some museum-like convention, next to an Osborne 1.
I also think the red light thing is cool, it's something different. A scanning display with one light per line, that leaves me asking if we can make a laser projector that way.
And I don't care if one screen is monochrome, we're surrounded with color screens otherwise (and even that weird video game called "life").
For that matter I would like to see a monochrome smartphone : lower power, readable, potentially cheaper and just pixels, not sub pixels. Flashy colors aren't exactly needed for looking at icons, contact lists, etc.
It has high GPU clock and really high memory clock.
I'm sure it is fine with a high quality 300W PSU with a lowish power use consumer CPU (including i5, i7) while a high quality 350W is perfect to use the card with a power hungry CPU (AMD FX, 2011 socket)
Radeon 5870 is old but it was an almost 200W high end card, still a strong performer.
Car analogy : Meh, my 40-year-old Porsche does 120 mph easily. Any 40-year-old car does 120 mph. This new $15900 car that does 120 mph is pointless, keep your old Porsche.
Why do we need spotify? Why do we need itunes? I don't need them or use them.
Your argument is like we should need only one type restaurant, just as happened after the Restaurant Wars in Demolition Man. Or we don't need an email provider because there is yahoo/microsoft/gmail.
Doesn't stop the restaurants using the same technology such as dishes, salt and vinegar, or datacenters from using racks of x86 PCs and ethernet, or mobile phones from using ARM (or MIPS) and GSM, LTE, wifi.
Let's say the smartphone costs on the order of one people's monthly income - similar to buying a desktop computer in the 90s in developed countries. You can't afford to bet on a smartphone that may be a dud - crappy, low quality build, unsupported etc. ; for one thing the vendor may save $1 on flash and you get very crappy one that locks the phone for 15 seconds when doing some of the writes, or you risk it dying.
A few $ more in the BOM may go a long way : higher quality flash, high res screen (800x480), connector that keeps working..
US slashdot user solutions aren't workable (don't use the smart features, put it in a drawer, give it to kids, use it as a remote for a PC or gadget)
US smartphones prices from Amazon and huge low cost supermarket chains are also along the lowest on the planet.
What does "pay-as-you-go" mean?, locked to a carrier but no contract, or unlocked and you happen to use a no-contract SIM card that comes with it?
Is there that much science other than life and biology in space? A space station that teaches how to live in a space station is fairly boring.
get it with Intel graphics only.. well, don't get it for other reasons, such as the keyboard.
Well, anecdotal evidence, a guy had some PC laptop with the very first i5 (32nm Westmere, dual core, four threads) which implies year 2010 or 2011 at best, 4GB RAM. Bare Windows 7 with malware. I installed Windows 7 32bit (don't care) with proper security, and the thing just didn't choke ever even when running what's apparently the most heavy task for a Windows PC : Windows Update.
Damn thing is better than my linux desktop. Powerful hardware is powerful.
There are iFixit guides for random laptops, and for something as recent as 5 years you tend to get "accidental" cross-vendor compatibility for LCD panels (the 1366x768 15.6") and PSU so you can actually mix parts from different laptops. But brands like HP etc. are dicks and use an identical PSU with a different connector, and all your other points stand.
Just to be the contrarian, they're also responsible for chiclet keyboards everywhere. The Commodore PET 2001 was panned for having one!
Some more efficient.. things.. the most easily understandable is better multitasking on the GPU.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And some.. things.. a wild guess is that it allows great performance in alt-tabbing out and in of a game. We all cordially hate Windows 8, but it is amazingly fast and smooth at showing you a Metro thing or the Charmed bar, whether you wanted it or not.
Windows 7 has the Home Basic version, install that and you only get the 2D desktop.
Changing visual style? with Windows 8 they removed classic look, and with Windows 7 they removed the color schemes in clasic look.. I could use a very old third party tool but it didn't include the old styles only additional ugly ones.
With Windows 8 you can get such train wreck of a theme http://kizo2703.deviantart.com...
So with Windows the easy way I found is to install 7 Home Basic and leave it alone ("Aero Basic"). I don't put it on my PC though.
Except for the ugly window borders and other pet things.
I don't even like Windows 7 that much either, it's mostly fine but I hate the file manager.
1) and 2) yes, 3) not.
You do get the real GPU, which does display at full 3D acceleration and low latency.
It might be possible to get the IGP or second graphics card (with or without passthrough) to display the hypervisor or another OS (say linux) in which case you need 2nd display, or KVM switch or a monitor with two inputs.
Serial console would be nice, else ssh. Worst case only the Windows desktop can display, but from there you could ssh or VNC etc. into a linux VM, and if you reboot the Windows VM for applying updates the linux one(s) stay online.
You can pass through a USB controller or SATA controller etc. One mild thing some people do is to install such hypervisor setting but only for headless linux / BSD VMs : a SATA/SAS controller card is passed to a NAS VM (say FreeBSD with ZFS) which gets to see it as real hardware. VGA pass through is harder because the VGA BIOS is something a bit special, and so it might fail.
Minimum hardware is Xeon on X58 chipset, or AMD CPU on 970, 990FX etc. (or some prior) motherboard ; AMD since has IOMMU even on lowest end hardware. But to know if it works you're left googling for reports of people getting it to run.
Thanks for that story, it's fun somewhat. Really mundane and really demanding things at once.
Bloody horror.
And I wondered why you would ever need gbaseT on the desktop. Roaming profiles never crossed my mind. I have just one repressed memory of it on a then very new and powerful PC (damn thing had to create the profile I assume and it took an eon or two. Then I logged out and back to dumb graphical *nix terminals)
ESXi and Xen do that, you need a IOMMU (Vt-d) and a compatible chipset, BIOS/EFI and graphics card. Every hardware has the IOMMU now but Intel disables it at random (but increasingly leaves it enabled) and nvidia does disable compatibility for market segmenting too. Then the whole mess has to be supported enough to work together.
It's still a niche thing but you can possibly get that crap running.
And you need PCIe with NVMe not PCIe with AHCI to bring the latency down some more.
And VM can use any made up amount of RAM, so nudge it a little. For instance give it 2432MB, why?, because I made that up.
One "upgrade" I did on my PC (the other being switching from Ad Block Plus to ublock) was to switch to stand-by rather than shut down, this preserves the disk cache.
So if I didn't use too much RAM, I can launch VLC and not have to wait for it. What's going on there? VLC hiding a flight simulator in the about screen?
So I wonder if you get Windows to sleep or hibernate rather than shutdown (let's say hibernate and if someone was logged in he/she is kicked out) then you get a preserved disk cache and thus don't wait on crap to load.
(I'm disabling on-disk browser cache, damn those HDD writes :))
On the other hand if I ran a Windows desktop, 256MB for a linux VM would be plenty to mess around with the shell and so on. Need graphics? Run the X server on Windows.
A few years ago came the Celeron G1610 and it's insanely fast for bottom of the barrel price and low heat, same deal with the current G1820 or G1840, higher tech at the same price. Or throw a bone at AMD and get an A4 6300, A6 6400K etc. from them.
Most people probably ponder between an i3, i5 or i7 but if you don't know why you need it, then you don't need it! Even editing a web picture or a greeting card once a year on warez photoshop will not stress the CPU, as it sits idle between clicks and key presses and you'll wait like 10 seconds for something to apply which is good enough.
On the other hand RAM quantity has always been the bottleneck, 2GB RAM is huge, but quickly wasted by the OS and browser. So get 8GB RAM while it's still cheap : prices have come down. May be a good idea to get a motherboard with four RAM slots so you're not stuck years from now, or to get 16GB off the bat if you feel concerned or really want a two slot mobo.
Even the integrated GPU is high tech, and does not slow down the PC : it sits on an insanely fast on-die bus and doesn't really steal the ample bandwith from the CPU.
Other rambling : I'll choose 8GB RAM and a HDD over 4GB RAM and an SSD, especially if the latter is a gamble on a lower end model.
Celeron with 16GB may get more things done than i7 and 4GB depending on use.
If you didn't spend enough money, think of the peripherals : a $1000 computer with $10 speakers is not worth using, personally.
Then software hygiene keeps the PC fast running for 10 years.