Gah, they must have sold out, I don't see it on Lenovo's site any more.
(Lenovo was running the special. And it was on 7764-CTOs, too, not a predefined config. But, no SXGA+ screen. (I've got a ~1.5 year old 7764-CTO WITH the SXGA+ screen, myself.)
The Das II is identical to the Cherry G80-3000LSCRC and G80-3000LSCEU, just with blank keycaps. Those are good boards.
The Das III is a festering pile of shit, and it's a crapshoot as to whether you'll get a good one. And even the good ones have nasty issues with key rollover bugs.
Cherry G80-3000LSCRC or LSCEU is probably the best bet. (The difference is the printing on the keycaps - the RC has Chinese printing in addition to the regular US printing, whereas the EU is only the US printing, but the keyboard is otherwise identical.)
There is the Ione Scorpius M10, which is about $15 cheaper than the cheapest of the Cherries, but it's got some quality issues. Less quality issues than the Das III does, though. (I have an M10 that I got used.)
Oh, and Micro Center carries the Das III, so if you want to get your hands on it, that's a good place to go. Even if you aren't interested in buying the Das III, it uses the same Cherry MX blue-stem switches as the Cherry and Ione boards I mentioned, so you can feel what the switches are like.
You could always replace the keyswitch. Or, it's an Alps switch, you might even be able to open it up and repair it (this is one of many threads on opening Alps switches on this forum): http://geekhack.org/showthread.php?t=1681
Cherry, actually, and the Cherry design is nothing like the Alps design.
But, the Das III has some nasty, nasty quality issues. Myself, I use a ($50 new) Ione Scorpius M10, which has the exact same switches as the Das II and III. It has nasty quality issues, too, but they're not as bad as the ones on the Das III, and apparently not as frequent. And the board is $80 cheaper.
Grease the springs. Actually, there's a guy on Geekhack that's posted about various modifications to quiet down various mechanical keyboards, just look in the keyboard modifications forum there.
Ah, in that case, you probably want a Topre Realforce. It uses a rubber dome for cushioning the blow when bottoming out.
But, ideally, you won't bottom out at all. A good mechanical keyboard will give you at least tactile feedback at the point of actuation, allowing you to begin releasing the key right then.
Well, if you want a short travel scissor switch board, it's full-size laptop form factor, but there's the IBM/Lenovo UltraNav board, which is the same basic board as the T4x/R5x's board, but in USB.
And, there is the IBM Model M13, for a Model M with a TrackPoint, or the Unicomp EnduraPro, for a buckling spring board with a (poor implementation of a) pointing stick.
AMD wouldn't lose 3DNow - that's their own extension set.
Losing SSE, OTOH, would be a problem.
But, there's also the i486 extensions that may not have quite expired yet, the Pentium extensions, etc., etc. And making an i386 chip in 2010 will be suicide. Even if it is fast.
Well, and Apple used emulation through each generation switch, too.
And, commodity x86 hardware has been able to do full speed 68040-based Mac emulation for quite a while. PowerPC emulation is still slow, but is usefully fast.
One other thing... sometimes running old OSes on a modern PC doesn't work anyway. Which means you have to use an emulator or at least a virtualization environment. (Enter DOSbox, which really is a good app.) Oh, wait, now we're emulating an early x86 PC, at a fast speed, even on old low-end hardware?
Well, Windows NT on Alpha did have a pre-recompiler for x86 code available from DEC, and Windows XP 2003, Server 2003, and Server 2008 IIRC have a software JIT recompiler for x86 code on Itanium.
Peak power consumption probably won't change much.
Computing power per watt will significantly increase, and the Geode was pathetic.
And the modern belief is that rather than merely lowering peak power consumption, the lowest total power consumption will be if the processor can finish processing quickly, and drop back down into a very low power idle state. And this ARM can probably idle at much lower power than the Geode, and get out of peak power consumption much more quickly.
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The beauty of their license is, you can scrape their DB, make a new wiki-based encyclopedia, and try to compete on flexibility of rules.
Gah, they must have sold out, I don't see it on Lenovo's site any more.
(Lenovo was running the special. And it was on 7764-CTOs, too, not a predefined config. But, no SXGA+ screen. (I've got a ~1.5 year old 7764-CTO WITH the SXGA+ screen, myself.)
Hell, you can get an X61 Tablet with a 1.6 GHz Core 2 Duo (and even one core at 800 MHz beats the shit out of an Atom) for $650 now.
And the quiet model is a rubber dome.
Grease the springs. You'll quiet that thing down quite nicely. :)
The Das II is identical to the Cherry G80-3000LSCRC and G80-3000LSCEU, just with blank keycaps. Those are good boards.
The Das III is a festering pile of shit, and it's a crapshoot as to whether you'll get a good one. And even the good ones have nasty issues with key rollover bugs.
Cherry G80-3000LSCRC or LSCEU is probably the best bet. (The difference is the printing on the keycaps - the RC has Chinese printing in addition to the regular US printing, whereas the EU is only the US printing, but the keyboard is otherwise identical.)
There is the Ione Scorpius M10, which is about $15 cheaper than the cheapest of the Cherries, but it's got some quality issues. Less quality issues than the Das III does, though. (I have an M10 that I got used.)
Oh, and Micro Center carries the Das III, so if you want to get your hands on it, that's a good place to go. Even if you aren't interested in buying the Das III, it uses the same Cherry MX blue-stem switches as the Cherry and Ione boards I mentioned, so you can feel what the switches are like.
Did you throw it out?
You could always replace the keyswitch. Or, it's an Alps switch, you might even be able to open it up and repair it (this is one of many threads on opening Alps switches on this forum): http://geekhack.org/showthread.php?t=1681
Cherry, actually, and the Cherry design is nothing like the Alps design.
But, the Das III has some nasty, nasty quality issues. Myself, I use a ($50 new) Ione Scorpius M10, which has the exact same switches as the Das II and III. It has nasty quality issues, too, but they're not as bad as the ones on the Das III, and apparently not as frequent. And the board is $80 cheaper.
Probably a KB-7001 (goes under several brands, I think Chicony is the OEM,) with white Alps switches.
Grease the springs. Actually, there's a guy on Geekhack that's posted about various modifications to quiet down various mechanical keyboards, just look in the keyboard modifications forum there.
Ah, in that case, you probably want a Topre Realforce. It uses a rubber dome for cushioning the blow when bottoming out.
But, ideally, you won't bottom out at all. A good mechanical keyboard will give you at least tactile feedback at the point of actuation, allowing you to begin releasing the key right then.
It's not neophobia, although there may be a nostalgic element.
(Well, OK, the "ZOMG WINDOWS KEYS SUCK" crowd is all about neophobia. Call the Windows keys "Super" and "Hyper," and then they're all Unixy.)
Personally, I prefer Cherry MX blue stem switches, they're much lighter to type on, yet still providing reasonable tactile and auditory feedback.
Well, if you want a short travel scissor switch board, it's full-size laptop form factor, but there's the IBM/Lenovo UltraNav board, which is the same basic board as the T4x/R5x's board, but in USB.
And, there is the IBM Model M13, for a Model M with a TrackPoint, or the Unicomp EnduraPro, for a buckling spring board with a (poor implementation of a) pointing stick.
Option #4: Take it down after it hits Google Cache, post to Slashdot about it, and get the Streisand effect in full operation.
AMD wouldn't lose 3DNow - that's their own extension set.
Losing SSE, OTOH, would be a problem.
But, there's also the i486 extensions that may not have quite expired yet, the Pentium extensions, etc., etc. And making an i386 chip in 2010 will be suicide. Even if it is fast.
Well, and Apple used emulation through each generation switch, too.
And, commodity x86 hardware has been able to do full speed 68040-based Mac emulation for quite a while. PowerPC emulation is still slow, but is usefully fast.
One other thing... sometimes running old OSes on a modern PC doesn't work anyway. Which means you have to use an emulator or at least a virtualization environment. (Enter DOSbox, which really is a good app.) Oh, wait, now we're emulating an early x86 PC, at a fast speed, even on old low-end hardware?
Actually, on a serious note, that happened a few years ago.
AMD at their strongest with the highly successful K8 chips, Intel at their weakest with the Prescott P4.
But if you use the new Slashdot comments page, it automoderates. As in, as soon as you select.
(I don't use the comments page, though.)
IIRC, Intel still sells the XScale IOPs... and it was only ~6 months ago that a desktop based on an Intel XScale IOP was discontinued.
Except Itanium also had serious performance issues in the real world.
*whoosh*
(Or is that just explaining the joke?)
Well, Windows NT on Alpha did have a pre-recompiler for x86 code available from DEC, and Windows XP 2003, Server 2003, and Server 2008 IIRC have a software JIT recompiler for x86 code on Itanium.
Adobe has versions of Flash 9 and I believe 10 for Linux/ARM.
Peak power consumption probably won't change much.
Computing power per watt will significantly increase, and the Geode was pathetic.
And the modern belief is that rather than merely lowering peak power consumption, the lowest total power consumption will be if the processor can finish processing quickly, and drop back down into a very low power idle state. And this ARM can probably idle at much lower power than the Geode, and get out of peak power consumption much more quickly.
Wait until June. There'll be some Freescale i.MX515-based 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 netbooks, from what I've read.