For me it definitely would be (I use a laptop as my primary work machine). The responsiveness of a dual-core or dual-CPU machine is a very good thing. No more lag when typing because one of the programs on the laptop is hogging the CPU for a few seconds.
(I base this on my experience with working on a dual-CPU desktop sitting next to me. I'm really looking forward to a dual-core laptop.)
Indeed, back in the 386 era, we had a few Intel 386 PCs in our testing lab.
The fun thing? The cases were identical to the AT&T (Olivetti?) 386s. I'm not sure if AT&T was re-branding the Intel PCs or if it was the other way around.
Interesting bit in there when the troops are training on the surface of Pluto. The author deals with issues such as heat conduction, sudden expansion of frozen surfaces, etc.
IIRC, there was also talk of adding a DVD layer to BluRay disks. So they would have the same capability as the HD-DVD discs in that regards.
Was a story here a few months ago where the "DVD compatible layer" idea was discussed...
Re:Did they use the same media for all their testi
on
DVD Writer RoundUp
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· Score: 1
I haven't even touched DL-R or DL-RW yet - the media costs are prohibitive. Who wants to pay 8-10x as much per platter for a medium which only delivers around 1.8x the data density?
You're spoiled by today's prices for media. Three years ago, you typically paid $2 or so per disc for 4GB media. (Which is the price point at which DVD media sales seem to have taken off.)
8GB media is just getting below the $2 each price point. (There are cakeboxes that are around $2/disc.) So as volume goes up on them, we should see prices start to drop.
I finally ordered my first cakebox of DL media this week.
Re:I have the ND-3540A, and it rocks.
on
DVD Writer RoundUp
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· Score: 1
For the last 2 years, DVD writers have become so cheap ($30-$40, dual-format) that it barely makes sense to save $20 and buy a regular DVD-ROM drive. We no longer order laptops without burner capability.
All of my home-built desktop machines now have burners. Even if I don't have burner software installed, I can always borrow those drives for use in the other machines if one breaks.
Discs are about $2 each if you can find them in a cakebox. (I have some 8x +R DL media in-transit to me now that I paid $40 for a cakebox of 25. Got them from NewEgg.)
3 for $11 isn't too bad. Similar to the prices of DVD 4GB media a few years back.
Thursday night's on NBC are mostly garbage. Joey for an hour, then usually The Apprentice, then ER. The December schedule is rather chaotic (most series are not airing new episodes during December, so it's mostly reruns).
While I do still tape ER and watch it a few days later, I sometimes just mash it to an archive DVD and don't bother watching it.
(There's only about 8 "good" shows on NBC's primetime lineup this fall. Last season it was closer to 12-15.)
Our minimum for office machines is 1GB when we order new units. The cost difference between 512MB (that would have to be upgraded within a year) and a full 1GB is negligible. My almost 4-year-old laptop has 1GB (which tells you how long we've standardized on 1GB minimum).
My game machine has 2GB and runs Civ4 just fine (even on large/huge maps). Civ4 is eating up 800MB on those maps, so if you're trying to play huge maps with less then 1GB, you're shooting yourself in the foot.
Maybe not even for all that long. PCIe has definitely made inroads much faster then I expected it to. I figured we'd see the market split between AGP/PCIe cards / motherboards for at least another year.
Anyone remember how long PCI and VESA co-existed in the marketplace? Or maybe AGP vs VESA is the better comparison?
Actually I'd bet that within the useful lifetime of a laptop bought now (about 3 years), almost all performance-sensitive apps will benefit from multiple cores, because they're quickly becoming standard equipment.
A few years ago, I'd have agreed with the 3-year lifespan. In fact, I used to refresh my laptop every 2 years, passing the older unit off to a less technical user.
Now? I'm using a laptop that is 3.5 years old (almost 4 now). The biggest problem with the unit is that the backlight is fading (fixable). I've upgraded the disk along the way, maxed out the memory to 1GB, and really, unless something goes drastically wrong with the motherboard I expect it to last another 3 years.
I'm not sure what happened in the last few years. I think things finally got "fast enough" and as long as you max out the installed memory, it's not hard to get 4-6 years lifespan out of a laptop. At least, for general office tasks that don't require the latest-n-greatest space heater for heavy CPU work (or graphics, I don't use the laptop for gaming).
Plus, it used to cost us around $3200 to get a laptop with expanded memory and the right peripherals installed. The last laptop that we purchased only cost around $2000 (a Thinkpad T43, 1GB RAM, 1400x1050 screen).
We just bought a T43 for work, from what I hear... very nice machine. Our previous machines have all been Toshiba Tecras with the 1400x1050 screens, but (a) Toshiba no longer sells the 1400x1050 screen and (b) Toshiba no longer puts a TrackPoint pointer in the middle of the keyboard. We've already recommended them to other folks.
Personally, I have no problem using my 3.5 year old Tecra 9100 as my primary machine for office work. Once I boosted the disk capacity and added memory (1GB installed), it's done just fine, even for a nearly 4 year old laptop. I reckon that unless something goes really wrong with the machine (motherboard / CPU goes bad) I'll likely still be using this unit for another few years.
But for CPU-intensive stuff, I also have a dual-CPU Opteron sitting here with almost a TB of disk space.
We brought our first PC clone home in 1986. I used it for around 5 years before retiring it.
IIRC, it came with AT&T DOS 3.0 (although I remember 3.1 and 3.3 also being around at the time).
When I got to college in 1987-1988, only 3 out of a dozen rooms on the floor had a computer in their room. Two of us had IBM compatibles, one person had a C64. Another fellow, one floor up, had a Mac Classic.
Last I heard on the Hitachi drives (probably directly from their site, but it's been a month or two since I looked) is 2006-ish. (Hitachi's PR website)
Phones are in fact an excellent example - we've come a long way from needing to wind your phone up and whistle to clear the lines, but as we add functionality to phones the interfaces have either become more complex (cell phones) or lagged behind the features (most desktop phones).
Whistling to clear the lines? That's a new one to me.
I can understand the purpose of the hand crank (I'm pretty sure it was designed to generate voltage down the line to light up the operator's switch board, who would then pay attention to your line and connect you).
Or maybe you're speaking less literally. And you would either use the hand crank to signal the operator or, if the party line was in use, whistle to indicate that you wanted to use the line?
After 3-4 years of use, I'd gladly pay $400 for another 2-3 years (vs buying a new laptop). My laptop is still in excellent shape, since it spents 90% of its life on the desktop. Biggest issue I have is backlight that's definitely not as bright as it used to be.
How sure is that ~$400 number? (Which I've seen a few times in the discussion so far.)
Hey as long as it runs Linux, the children of the world can play Nethack. It brings a tear to my eye.
You got modded "Funny", but as long as it can run Linux, I don't think there's going to be a shortage of software to run on it. And at $100 or so, that's less then what the original Palm devices sold for. Look how many applications were developed and written for the PalmOS.
As long as we (the public) can purchase these in lots of 1 or 2, I suspect the manufacturers won't be able to meet demand.
Barrett sounds like typical, Intel-style, sour-grapes. Something tells me that they're upset that these systems won't be based on over-priced Intel chips. (Or that, if they were involved, they got shunted to the side due to costs or licensing issues.)
a) 23" Samsung LCD prices finally dropped below the $1k mark (bit under $800 if you shop around)
b) I wanted a slightly bigger TV for my home office (previous was a 13" Toshiba that was S-Video capable
Samsung was doing a very good job at driving the price downards on their LCD stuff 6 months ago. A 23" LCD from the other manuf's was still $1200-$1500. In fact, originally, I was simply going to buy a 17" or 19" wide-screen, but the price on the 23" Samsung was not that much more.
I definitely wouldn't jump into the upper-end of HDTVs right now, but the lower-end models are continually getting less expensive. I'm mostly happy with my 23" LCD (enough inputs on it to hook everything up). When I first bought it, it felt like overkill in place of the old 13", but it's actually a pretty good fit.
#2 is my typical method. At the moment, I have 6 mozilla browsers open, each with half a dozen tabs (maybe more/less).
I rarely have less then 4 browser sessions open. And if I'm multi-tasking, I may have as many as 10 browsers open, each with up to 20+ tabs.
Needless to say, when Mozilla takes a dump... I'm extremely put-out at all of the lost state that just went down the tubes. (And I've given up looking for an extension that can auto-save state while handling that level of browsers/tabs.)
Current plans: In the process of being implemented. Resources have been set aside, contracts are in-progress, maybe there's concrete and steel being laid already. Funds are being spent.
Future plans: Anything that still exists only on paper.
Intel will change this, however; Intel is a rich, powerful, well-staffed company, they can turn it around.
Your blind faith in corporate ability is astounding. After all, this is the same Intel that came out with Itanium and the NetBurst architecture (5Ghz or bust!).
They've shoveled a lot of money down the Pentium 4 / NetBurst hole. How long did it take them to admit that the NetBurst architecture was not living up to expecations and that they were going to go back to the Pentium M designs? (Or an improvement based on the Pentium M?)
Being a rich, powerful, well-staffed company doesn't automatically mean you can turn a situation around. In fact, being a large company can work against you (inertia, fiefdoms, contracts). Or you run into issues where a new product might damage another product line (Sony electronics vs the content-creation side of the business). Or because you're large and rich, there's more leeway for poor business plans to not get corrected right away.
Now, I'm not saying that Intel can't turn the situation around and get back on top of the performance list. But it won't be as simple as "hey! we're rich, powerful and well-staffed so we can turn this around.".
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My UID is in the late 600k range and I *just* started getting moderation points a few months ago. (And I've had excellent karma for a few years.)
Now I get a set of points every week or two.
For me it definitely would be (I use a laptop as my primary work machine). The responsiveness of a dual-core or dual-CPU machine is a very good thing. No more lag when typing because one of the programs on the laptop is hogging the CPU for a few seconds.
(I base this on my experience with working on a dual-CPU desktop sitting next to me. I'm really looking forward to a dual-core laptop.)
Indeed, back in the 386 era, we had a few Intel 386 PCs in our testing lab.
The fun thing? The cases were identical to the AT&T (Olivetti?) 386s. I'm not sure if AT&T was re-branding the Intel PCs or if it was the other way around.
This was around 1990.
Yep yep yep.
18 or 19 years driving here too. I'd rather get there late and alive.
Always signal, even in parking lots. Leave yourself an out. Anticipate what other cars might do (and expect them to be idiots about it).
Ignore the cell phone if it rings if you're at all uncertain about driving conditions. If it's important, they'll call you back.
I also run with my headlamps on, even in full daylight. It has the one advantage that I won't forget to turn my lamps on when conditions get worse.
Ever read Forever War?
Interesting bit in there when the troops are training on the surface of Pluto. The author deals with issues such as heat conduction, sudden expansion of frozen surfaces, etc.
IIRC, there was also talk of adding a DVD layer to BluRay disks. So they would have the same capability as the HD-DVD discs in that regards.
Was a story here a few months ago where the "DVD compatible layer" idea was discussed...
I haven't even touched DL-R or DL-RW yet - the media costs are prohibitive. Who wants to pay 8-10x as much per platter for a medium which only delivers around 1.8x the data density?
You're spoiled by today's prices for media. Three years ago, you typically paid $2 or so per disc for 4GB media. (Which is the price point at which DVD media sales seem to have taken off.)
8GB media is just getting below the $2 each price point. (There are cakeboxes that are around $2/disc.) So as volume goes up on them, we should see prices start to drop.
I finally ordered my first cakebox of DL media this week.
For the last 2 years, DVD writers have become so cheap ($30-$40, dual-format) that it barely makes sense to save $20 and buy a regular DVD-ROM drive. We no longer order laptops without burner capability.
All of my home-built desktop machines now have burners. Even if I don't have burner software installed, I can always borrow those drives for use in the other machines if one breaks.
Discs are about $2 each if you can find them in a cakebox. (I have some 8x +R DL media in-transit to me now that I paid $40 for a cakebox of 25. Got them from NewEgg.)
3 for $11 isn't too bad. Similar to the prices of DVD 4GB media a few years back.
Thursday night's on NBC are mostly garbage. Joey for an hour, then usually The Apprentice, then ER. The December schedule is rather chaotic (most series are not airing new episodes during December, so it's mostly reruns).
While I do still tape ER and watch it a few days later, I sometimes just mash it to an archive DVD and don't bother watching it.
(There's only about 8 "good" shows on NBC's primetime lineup this fall. Last season it was closer to 12-15.)
Our minimum for office machines is 1GB when we order new units. The cost difference between 512MB (that would have to be upgraded within a year) and a full 1GB is negligible. My almost 4-year-old laptop has 1GB (which tells you how long we've standardized on 1GB minimum).
My game machine has 2GB and runs Civ4 just fine (even on large/huge maps). Civ4 is eating up 800MB on those maps, so if you're trying to play huge maps with less then 1GB, you're shooting yourself in the foot.
Maybe not even for all that long. PCIe has definitely made inroads much faster then I expected it to. I figured we'd see the market split between AGP/PCIe cards / motherboards for at least another year.
Anyone remember how long PCI and VESA co-existed in the marketplace? Or maybe AGP vs VESA is the better comparison?
Actually I'd bet that within the useful lifetime of a laptop bought now (about 3 years), almost all performance-sensitive apps will benefit from multiple cores, because they're quickly becoming standard equipment.
A few years ago, I'd have agreed with the 3-year lifespan. In fact, I used to refresh my laptop every 2 years, passing the older unit off to a less technical user.
Now? I'm using a laptop that is 3.5 years old (almost 4 now). The biggest problem with the unit is that the backlight is fading (fixable). I've upgraded the disk along the way, maxed out the memory to 1GB, and really, unless something goes drastically wrong with the motherboard I expect it to last another 3 years.
I'm not sure what happened in the last few years. I think things finally got "fast enough" and as long as you max out the installed memory, it's not hard to get 4-6 years lifespan out of a laptop. At least, for general office tasks that don't require the latest-n-greatest space heater for heavy CPU work (or graphics, I don't use the laptop for gaming).
Plus, it used to cost us around $3200 to get a laptop with expanded memory and the right peripherals installed. The last laptop that we purchased only cost around $2000 (a Thinkpad T43, 1GB RAM, 1400x1050 screen).
We just bought a T43 for work, from what I hear... very nice machine. Our previous machines have all been Toshiba Tecras with the 1400x1050 screens, but (a) Toshiba no longer sells the 1400x1050 screen and (b) Toshiba no longer puts a TrackPoint pointer in the middle of the keyboard. We've already recommended them to other folks.
Personally, I have no problem using my 3.5 year old Tecra 9100 as my primary machine for office work. Once I boosted the disk capacity and added memory (1GB installed), it's done just fine, even for a nearly 4 year old laptop. I reckon that unless something goes really wrong with the machine (motherboard / CPU goes bad) I'll likely still be using this unit for another few years.
But for CPU-intensive stuff, I also have a dual-CPU Opteron sitting here with almost a TB of disk space.
We brought our first PC clone home in 1986. I used it for around 5 years before retiring it.
IIRC, it came with AT&T DOS 3.0 (although I remember 3.1 and 3.3 also being around at the time).
When I got to college in 1987-1988, only 3 out of a dozen rooms on the floor had a computer in their room. Two of us had IBM compatibles, one person had a C64. Another fellow, one floor up, had a Mac Classic.
Last I heard on the Hitachi drives (probably directly from their site, but it's been a month or two since I looked) is 2006-ish. (Hitachi's PR website)
Hmmm, their page now says 2007...
Phones are in fact an excellent example - we've come a long way from needing to wind your phone up and whistle to clear the lines, but as we add functionality to phones the interfaces have either become more complex (cell phones) or lagged behind the features (most desktop phones).
Whistling to clear the lines? That's a new one to me.
I can understand the purpose of the hand crank (I'm pretty sure it was designed to generate voltage down the line to light up the operator's switch board, who would then pay attention to your line and connect you).
Or maybe you're speaking less literally. And you would either use the hand crank to signal the operator or, if the party line was in use, whistle to indicate that you wanted to use the line?
Single-layer DVDs are 4.3GB. Single-layer Blue-Ray is something near 25GB. Which is about 6x.
(I'm 90% sure that single-layer Blue-Ray is ~25GB, with additional layers adding another ~25GB.)
After 3-4 years of use, I'd gladly pay $400 for another 2-3 years (vs buying a new laptop). My laptop is still in excellent shape, since it spents 90% of its life on the desktop. Biggest issue I have is backlight that's definitely not as bright as it used to be.
How sure is that ~$400 number? (Which I've seen a few times in the discussion so far.)
Hey as long as it runs Linux, the children of the world can play Nethack. It brings a tear to my eye.
You got modded "Funny", but as long as it can run Linux, I don't think there's going to be a shortage of software to run on it. And at $100 or so, that's less then what the original Palm devices sold for. Look how many applications were developed and written for the PalmOS.
As long as we (the public) can purchase these in lots of 1 or 2, I suspect the manufacturers won't be able to meet demand.
Barrett sounds like typical, Intel-style, sour-grapes. Something tells me that they're upset that these systems won't be based on over-priced Intel chips. (Or that, if they were involved, they got shunted to the side due to costs or licensing issues.)
I upgraded because:
a) 23" Samsung LCD prices finally dropped below the $1k mark (bit under $800 if you shop around)
b) I wanted a slightly bigger TV for my home office (previous was a 13" Toshiba that was S-Video capable
Samsung was doing a very good job at driving the price downards on their LCD stuff 6 months ago. A 23" LCD from the other manuf's was still $1200-$1500. In fact, originally, I was simply going to buy a 17" or 19" wide-screen, but the price on the 23" Samsung was not that much more.
I definitely wouldn't jump into the upper-end of HDTVs right now, but the lower-end models are continually getting less expensive. I'm mostly happy with my 23" LCD (enough inputs on it to hook everything up). When I first bought it, it felt like overkill in place of the old 13", but it's actually a pretty good fit.
#2 is my typical method. At the moment, I have 6 mozilla browsers open, each with half a dozen tabs (maybe more/less). I rarely have less then 4 browser sessions open. And if I'm multi-tasking, I may have as many as 10 browsers open, each with up to 20+ tabs.
Needless to say, when Mozilla takes a dump... I'm extremely put-out at all of the lost state that just went down the tubes. (And I've given up looking for an extension that can auto-save state while handling that level of browsers/tabs.)
Personally, I'd categorize them as:
Current plans: In the process of being implemented. Resources have been set aside, contracts are in-progress, maybe there's concrete and steel being laid already. Funds are being spent.
Future plans: Anything that still exists only on paper.
No idea if those are common definitions.
Intel will change this, however; Intel is a rich, powerful, well-staffed company, they can turn it around.
Your blind faith in corporate ability is astounding. After all, this is the same Intel that came out with Itanium and the NetBurst architecture (5Ghz or bust!).
They've shoveled a lot of money down the Pentium 4 / NetBurst hole. How long did it take them to admit that the NetBurst architecture was not living up to expecations and that they were going to go back to the Pentium M designs? (Or an improvement based on the Pentium M?)
Being a rich, powerful, well-staffed company doesn't automatically mean you can turn a situation around. In fact, being a large company can work against you (inertia, fiefdoms, contracts). Or you run into issues where a new product might damage another product line (Sony electronics vs the content-creation side of the business). Or because you're large and rich, there's more leeway for poor business plans to not get corrected right away.
Now, I'm not saying that Intel can't turn the situation around and get back on top of the performance list. But it won't be as simple as "hey! we're rich, powerful and well-staffed so we can turn this around.".
Tire pressure would just change how much of the tire is in contact with the ground.