"or to people who have monitors capable of displaying full resolution HD content, but are not permitted to because of a lack of HDCP"
It's interesting to know just how recently HDCP-capable devices became available.
While my new monitor supports HDCP, my (relatively) new Dell E1705 does not (at least for external devices, PowerDVD Advisor seems to think the internal screen is OK for whatever reason), and it's less than a year old.
"You can also get ruggedized switches like the Cisco Catalyst 2955S-12 that are designed for extreme heat conditions to begin with."
You can even get that in extra-ruggedized form (well, not quite yet), see the Parvus DuraNet 2955. It's a repackaged Cisco 2955 with MIL-C-38999 connectors, among other nice ruggedization features.
I'm an EE who is working on networking in an extreme environment myself (although with very different requirements as this person), and I agree - find an expert not just in extreme environments, but in YOUR extreme environment.
Fortunately for myself, I'm surrounded by experts with years of experience with the environment I'm dealing with.
Yes, there are some approaches that give many of these nice features in PC-based apps (like AT&T/Lucent/Avaya depending on what year it is) Intuity Message Manager.
Still, something like IMM implemented directly on the phone would be nice so you're not wasting screen real estate and/or having to bring up an app just to use your phone. (Which is why VoIP "hardphones" exist in an era where "softphones" are usually cheaper and more powerful.)
"Jobs is looking for the top buyers who will pay nearly anything for a phone that just plain works and has simple email/text messaging and maybe a web browser."
You just described 90% of the sub-$99 non-smartphone market, including most likely the "1-cent-with-contract" phones.
At the price point of the iPhone, the iPhone is clearly competing in the smartphone segment. If you're not a smartphone, you are DEAD at $500.
This wasn't in the blog itself (http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2007/01/10/the_ five_bigges.html), but in one of the replies to them:
"I have zero interest in this cell phone. But I would love some version of this phone on my business desktop. Current business phones are atrocious. How to do conference calling, holding, transferring is just impossible to remember. Voicemail is a disaster. If they built something to work with PBX and the ability input contacts from Exchange then a $600 business desktop phone is probably cheap. I could see them making a lot more money in that space."
All of the disadvantages of using the iPhone as a cell phone disappear if it is targeted instead as a desk phone. Like the poster in that blog comment, while I have zero interest in the iPhone as a mobile phone (too fragile, too many cases where I need to "blind dial"), I would KILL to have that interface on my desk phone.
"A. Dell buys hardware, it makes nothing and " Maybe. Not sure if this is the case for laptops.
"B. they buy from the lowest bidder as they need parts, making the hardware neither excellent nor uniform during a product family." Possibly true with their low-end desktop units, but definately not the case with their laptops, especially the higher end ones. In fact, their parts often remain uniform and consistent across multiple product families. (for example, Inspiron 8000,8100, and 8200 all using a compatible video card interface)
The only nonuniformity I've seen within a (lapto) product family that isn't explicitly stated by a new model number for a peripheral (e.g. NVidia 7800 Go vs. 7900GS, Dell 350 vs. 355 Bluetooth module) is the hard drive and possibly the display, although I have found Dell displays to always be good (as long as you stick with TrueLife or UltraSharp variants, not the junky lowend stuff.)
I know nothing about their desktop units in terms of quality and such - I always build my own desktop hardware. Not exactly possible with a laptop.
"Dell computer spokesman Marco Pena said the issue is a concern whenever a new operating system is introduced, but said his company has tested every applet they put on their computer to ensure its Vista compatibility. Dell customers who order online are also offered the option to not have applets pre-installed, he said." - Yes Mike, just like you've been testing your XP preinstalls for the past five years.
Dell makes excellent hardware that is sadly crippled by their junk preinstall. Needless to say, I only buy laptops from them and build everything else myself. The laptops get an instant nuke-and-repave.
"Ok, it sucks your crap brand phones smudge and the touch pad doesn't work well, but I'm willing to bet none of your complaints are coming from an Apple branded product."
I own an iPod. Despite being in a rubber case and being careful with it, the screen is far more crapped up than my Treo, and I've owned the iPod for only about 3 months (Specifically, about 2-3 weeks before the 80 gig unit was announced) and it sits on my desk most of the time. My Treo, on the other hand, is crapped up but visibly far less so than the iPod, and I haven't cleaned its screen in over a year and a half, and I carry it around everywhere all the time. I don't know how many times I've dropped the thing onto pavement by accident, my iPod would probably break instantly after one accident.
You seem to forget that Apple has a horrible track record as far as portable device screen durability and quality. Were you hiding under a rock when so many people complained that the Nano's screen was so easy to scratch? Apple's screens are no more durable than anyone else's, and in fact history shows that they are less durable.
Apple makes some great products (I really like my iPod, and I REALLY wanted to buy "non-Apple" but in the end the iPod really was the best supported under Linux and the easiest to obtain. A $100 Best Buy gift card did factor into that, I admit...:) ), but the "Apple is holy and superior in all ways!" fanboys like yourself really hurt Apple's image. Apple makes some good products, but they're not THAT great. I remember when the Dell battery recall made it to Slashdot, and the troll submitter made some snide fanboyish comment about Apple being relatively immune to such problems, when in fact Apple was the first vendor to have a laptop with EBS (Exploding Battery Syndrome).
It's guaranteed (and in fact, required by law) to have certain levels of GPS support (Specifically, Assisted GPS for E911).
The problem is that AGPS performs some of the position fix calculations (used to figure out where you are from the data provided by the GPS signal receiver/correlator) on the carrier side, since the average phone at that time didn't have the CPU to calculate their own position fix. Some providers allow the user to get this information, others (in fact most) do not.
I'm surprised how few smartphones don't support calculation of a position fix from the (locally available) pseudorange data from the GPS receiver. They have the CPU for it...
"I'm confused. You just gave some reason why you wouldn't purchase the iPhone but then say if it had carrier XYZ, you're sold? So I take it only the carrier is reason not any of the others because they are most likely not going to change."
I believe he's coming up with a list of all possible reasons, not all of which will be given by the same people.
One of my biggest gripes when moving to a Treo 600 (I now own a 650) from a Kyocera 6035 was the fact that it was too easy to smudge the display with a cheek imprint during normal telephone operation. This was because the Kyocera had a GIANT keypad over the display that flipped down for PDA usage (It was, by all standards, a phone first and a PDA second, unlike all of its smartphone predecessors. I consider the Kyo 6035 to be the first good smartphone.) This keypad protected 75% of the screen during normal "phone" usage and transport. The Kyo 7135 was a step forward in screen protection, unfortunately Kyo botched the software on that one.:(
The iPhone takes that issue and makes it FAR worse - the screen is no longer recessed or protected in any way. It'll get smudged by fingerprints during normal PDA operation, smudged by one's cheek during normal phone operation, easily scratched during transport, and potentially easily scratched during normal usage if you oversleep and have to run to work without shaving.
Apple doesn't seem to have noticed that every attempt at a phone that didn't have tactile buttons for basic phone functionality (i.e. real buttons for actual dialing) has been a massive flop. Telephone users want (in fact NEED) to be able to "dial blind". This is why my Kyo 6035's giant dialing buttons (it wasn't a thumbboard, it just had the basic phone keys) had a little raised bump on the 5 key, as did my Treo 600 and current 650. As slick as Apple's UI is, they have no way of replicating such a simple and critical feature as the ability to locate a "home" key on your device's interface for "no-look" dialing.
What next, after 50 years of being taught that proper typists don't look at their keyboards, is Steve going to try to replace Mac keyboards with an on-screen gimmick? That is effectively what he is trying to do with the iPhone.
"Plus, AFAIK, there are 0 HD DVD's that have this flag enabled. Rumored it will not be activated on any disc before 2010, if at all."
It may be disabled for Blu-Ray, but it is definately enabled for HD-DVD, which is exactly why the guy that wrote BackupHDDVD did it - his computer wouldn't play his HD-DVDs in their original format, despite a brand new monitor and a less-than-a-year-old video card.
My guess is that it is a dongle that does one of the following: 1) Takes your video card's TV-out (if present) and transmits it wirelessly. Plenty of devices do that at far lower prices. 2) Takes your video card's VGA-out and digitizes it, then either streams the raw digitized video or performs some sort of compression. The question is, what resolution can it handle? I wouldn't be surprised if it was limited to 480p 3) Presents itself as a virtual video card and/or screeenscrapes your PC a la Windows VNC servers, but unlike VNC is optimized for video instead of remote desktop. (Lossy compression vs. lossless to improve framerate for example).
TFA doesn't really have much details.
Either way, I can't see any possible approach that is "codec independent" which will be able to handle HD video at that price point.
In that case, it's the motherboard manufacturer's fault, not AMD's. Some motherboards have junk onboard audio (like my ASUS A7V8X-X), others have very good onboard audio. (Intel has a VERY heavy push towards requiring motherboard manufacturers to meet certain minimum specifications in order to get their "High Definition Audio" certification, I think AMD has similar requirements for Live!)
Get a decent sound card. MythTV works great for me: Backend is an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ with a Hauppauge PVR-500 for analog and an external Silicon Dust HDHomeRun for unencrypted digital cable (basically local OTA retransmissions) Frontend is an Athlon XP 2800+, no audio stuttering when I put in an Audigy 4 (which I would not reccommend if you have any plans for digital audio output, AC3 passthrough doesn't work with new Audigy variants under ALSA.) I couldn't reccommend a current good soundcard for you. I believe the Chaintech AV-710 is part of some sort of "KnoppMyth Reference Platform". I did have massive audio problems (including stuttering) with its onboard sound. This includes using the frontend for HDTV playback (XvMC needed for deinterlaced playback with a piddly Athlon XP 2800 though)
Or Ethernet a la Silicon Dust's HDHomeRun HDTV tuner.
RF in, transport stream over Ethernet out.:)
BTW, from all I've seen of the ATI OCUR (most likely the Cable STB aspect of this system), it's just a USB device (there are provisions for one variant to be mounted internally but it's fundamentally USB still). Of course, thanks to CableLabs it's effectively an "all in one" thing as it's locked in with Vista's DRM (May never be supported by MythTV sadly due to this) and at least now will only be sold with new systems that are "CableLabs Certified".
"The PS3 raised the bar by including HDMI, blu-ray support, a hard disk by default, wi-fi and some other bits and pieces."
While Nintendo did just the opposite by not including many of those features. Despite that, the Wii is doing extremely well, for a number of reasons, including: a) Price. Wii is less than half the price of the PS3. A Dodge Neon is devoid of features compared to a Cadillac, yet the Neon sells extremely well. (Well, sold, I believe the Neon has now been replaced by the Caliber? I haven't looked at their offerings recently.) Not everyone wants a Cadillac, and so a manufacturer doesn't necessarily need to make Cadillacs. b) Focus on gameplay rather than whiz-bang oooh-shiny features that don't necessarily improve gameplay at all.
How well compared to PS3 or 360 is currently impossible to tell, since the Wii is the only of the three systems still limited in sales by availability. (which, in and of itself, is a good sign for the Wii).
PS3 didn't raise the bar in any way with those features, since the Wii has proven that those features are not necessary in any way for a given console to succeed.
The Core will most likely always remain available, because it is always good to have an entry level system to offer those who don't have $12938921704123 to spend on their consoles or have the money but are not willing to spend it on such purchases. (Such as myself, I have yet to buy a console that cost more than $150 for the system, and yes, that means I'm usually playing the previous generation but I have no problem with that. Used games are cheap, and I have better things to spend my money on.)
Nothing can be designed so that it won't become obsolete.
Engineered obsolecence is less about the actual product itself rather than the plan for future products.
For example, a $100 laptop that you have to crank in and itself isn't necessarily designed to go obsolete soon.
Engineered obsolecense is when you release a $100 hand-cranked laptop and have plans to release a $100 fusion-powered laptop in six months, especially if you don't tell your customers about the upcoming fusion unit.
eBay scalping of systems bought in the U.S. to U.S. customers isn't grey market. It's just plain scalping.
Grey market is stuff like Lik-Sang and similar companies selling Japanese versions of consoles to U.S. customers for the purpose of playing import games.
The most common example of "grey market" sales is in the photography industry, where "grey market" imports of cameras are often cheaper than the U.S. version of that camera. Of course, you get what you pay for, and in this case there is no warranty support for the "grey market" cameras and often repair shops will refuse to even touch the grey market units (because they'll lose their certification as an authorized repair shop for that particular manufacturer if they do.)
Slashdot Mirror
"or to people who have monitors capable of displaying full resolution HD content, but are not permitted to because of a lack of HDCP"
It's interesting to know just how recently HDCP-capable devices became available.
While my new monitor supports HDCP, my (relatively) new Dell E1705 does not (at least for external devices, PowerDVD Advisor seems to think the internal screen is OK for whatever reason), and it's less than a year old.
"You can also get ruggedized switches like the Cisco Catalyst 2955S-12 that are designed for extreme heat conditions to begin with."
You can even get that in extra-ruggedized form (well, not quite yet), see the Parvus DuraNet 2955. It's a repackaged Cisco 2955 with MIL-C-38999 connectors, among other nice ruggedization features.
I agree wholeheartedly.
I'm an EE who is working on networking in an extreme environment myself (although with very different requirements as this person), and I agree - find an expert not just in extreme environments, but in YOUR extreme environment.
Fortunately for myself, I'm surrounded by experts with years of experience with the environment I'm dealing with.
I think, by the definition of this mythical "perfect DRM", then it would no longer be "perfect DRM" in this case.
Yet another reason why acceptable "perfect DRM" will never happen.
Those 1-cent-with-contract phones are about as simple as you get.
Yes, there are some approaches that give many of these nice features in PC-based apps (like AT&T/Lucent/Avaya depending on what year it is) Intuity Message Manager.
Still, something like IMM implemented directly on the phone would be nice so you're not wasting screen real estate and/or having to bring up an app just to use your phone. (Which is why VoIP "hardphones" exist in an era where "softphones" are usually cheaper and more powerful.)
"Jobs is looking for the top buyers who will pay nearly anything for a phone that just plain works and has simple email/text messaging and maybe a web browser."
You just described 90% of the sub-$99 non-smartphone market, including most likely the "1-cent-with-contract" phones.
At the price point of the iPhone, the iPhone is clearly competing in the smartphone segment. If you're not a smartphone, you are DEAD at $500.
This wasn't in the blog itself (http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2007/01/10/the_ five_bigges.html), but in one of the replies to them:
"I have zero interest in this cell phone. But I would love some version of this phone on my business desktop. Current business phones are atrocious. How to do conference calling, holding, transferring is just impossible to remember. Voicemail is a disaster. If they built something to work with PBX and the ability input contacts from Exchange then a $600 business desktop phone is probably cheap. I could see them making a lot more money in that space."
All of the disadvantages of using the iPhone as a cell phone disappear if it is targeted instead as a desk phone. Like the poster in that blog comment, while I have zero interest in the iPhone as a mobile phone (too fragile, too many cases where I need to "blind dial"), I would KILL to have that interface on my desk phone.
"A. Dell buys hardware, it makes nothing and "
Maybe. Not sure if this is the case for laptops.
"B. they buy from the lowest bidder as they need parts, making the hardware neither excellent nor uniform during a product family."
Possibly true with their low-end desktop units, but definately not the case with their laptops, especially the higher end ones. In fact, their parts often remain uniform and consistent across multiple product families. (for example, Inspiron 8000,8100, and 8200 all using a compatible video card interface)
The only nonuniformity I've seen within a (lapto) product family that isn't explicitly stated by a new model number for a peripheral (e.g. NVidia 7800 Go vs. 7900GS, Dell 350 vs. 355 Bluetooth module) is the hard drive and possibly the display, although I have found Dell displays to always be good (as long as you stick with TrueLife or UltraSharp variants, not the junky lowend stuff.)
I know nothing about their desktop units in terms of quality and such - I always build my own desktop hardware. Not exactly possible with a laptop.
Simple. Instead of bundling/trying to force bundling, Microsoft should force UNBUNDLING.
"We won't sell Windows to you unless you offer your users the option of a clean install with all the apps you want to bundle on seperate media."
I don't think the DoJ would have any problem with Microsoft forcing vendors to let the user decide what they want.
"Dell computer spokesman Marco Pena said the issue is a concern whenever a new operating system is introduced, but said his company has tested every applet they put on their computer to ensure its Vista compatibility. Dell customers who order online are also offered the option to not have applets pre-installed, he said." - Yes Mike, just like you've been testing your XP preinstalls for the past five years.
Dell makes excellent hardware that is sadly crippled by their junk preinstall. Needless to say, I only buy laptops from them and build everything else myself. The laptops get an instant nuke-and-repave.
"Ok, it sucks your crap brand phones smudge and the touch pad doesn't work well, but I'm willing to bet none of your complaints are coming from an Apple branded product."
:) ), but the "Apple is holy and superior in all ways!" fanboys like yourself really hurt Apple's image. Apple makes some good products, but they're not THAT great. I remember when the Dell battery recall made it to Slashdot, and the troll submitter made some snide fanboyish comment about Apple being relatively immune to such problems, when in fact Apple was the first vendor to have a laptop with EBS (Exploding Battery Syndrome).
I own an iPod. Despite being in a rubber case and being careful with it, the screen is far more crapped up than my Treo, and I've owned the iPod for only about 3 months (Specifically, about 2-3 weeks before the 80 gig unit was announced) and it sits on my desk most of the time. My Treo, on the other hand, is crapped up but visibly far less so than the iPod, and I haven't cleaned its screen in over a year and a half, and I carry it around everywhere all the time. I don't know how many times I've dropped the thing onto pavement by accident, my iPod would probably break instantly after one accident.
You seem to forget that Apple has a horrible track record as far as portable device screen durability and quality. Were you hiding under a rock when so many people complained that the Nano's screen was so easy to scratch? Apple's screens are no more durable than anyone else's, and in fact history shows that they are less durable.
Apple makes some great products (I really like my iPod, and I REALLY wanted to buy "non-Apple" but in the end the iPod really was the best supported under Linux and the easiest to obtain. A $100 Best Buy gift card did factor into that, I admit...
It's guaranteed (and in fact, required by law) to have certain levels of GPS support (Specifically, Assisted GPS for E911).
The problem is that AGPS performs some of the position fix calculations (used to figure out where you are from the data provided by the GPS signal receiver/correlator) on the carrier side, since the average phone at that time didn't have the CPU to calculate their own position fix. Some providers allow the user to get this information, others (in fact most) do not.
I'm surprised how few smartphones don't support calculation of a position fix from the (locally available) pseudorange data from the GPS receiver. They have the CPU for it...
"I'm confused. You just gave some reason why you wouldn't purchase the iPhone but then say if it had carrier XYZ, you're sold? So I take it only the carrier is reason not any of the others because they are most likely not going to change."
I believe he's coming up with a list of all possible reasons, not all of which will be given by the same people.
I have to agree with you.
:(
One of my biggest gripes when moving to a Treo 600 (I now own a 650) from a Kyocera 6035 was the fact that it was too easy to smudge the display with a cheek imprint during normal telephone operation. This was because the Kyocera had a GIANT keypad over the display that flipped down for PDA usage (It was, by all standards, a phone first and a PDA second, unlike all of its smartphone predecessors. I consider the Kyo 6035 to be the first good smartphone.) This keypad protected 75% of the screen during normal "phone" usage and transport. The Kyo 7135 was a step forward in screen protection, unfortunately Kyo botched the software on that one.
The iPhone takes that issue and makes it FAR worse - the screen is no longer recessed or protected in any way. It'll get smudged by fingerprints during normal PDA operation, smudged by one's cheek during normal phone operation, easily scratched during transport, and potentially easily scratched during normal usage if you oversleep and have to run to work without shaving.
Apple doesn't seem to have noticed that every attempt at a phone that didn't have tactile buttons for basic phone functionality (i.e. real buttons for actual dialing) has been a massive flop. Telephone users want (in fact NEED) to be able to "dial blind". This is why my Kyo 6035's giant dialing buttons (it wasn't a thumbboard, it just had the basic phone keys) had a little raised bump on the 5 key, as did my Treo 600 and current 650. As slick as Apple's UI is, they have no way of replicating such a simple and critical feature as the ability to locate a "home" key on your device's interface for "no-look" dialing.
What next, after 50 years of being taught that proper typists don't look at their keyboards, is Steve going to try to replace Mac keyboards with an on-screen gimmick? That is effectively what he is trying to do with the iPhone.
"Plus, AFAIK, there are 0 HD DVD's that have this flag enabled. Rumored it will not be activated on any disc before 2010, if at all."
It may be disabled for Blu-Ray, but it is definately enabled for HD-DVD, which is exactly why the guy that wrote BackupHDDVD did it - his computer wouldn't play his HD-DVDs in their original format, despite a brand new monitor and a less-than-a-year-old video card.
Holy shit... Slingbox claims to be able to encode HD in realtime with the Slingbox PRO.
:)
I wonder how much that thing costs... Depending on its actual capabilities, it may be a new way to record cable/satellite HDTV.
My guess is that it is a dongle that does one of the following:
1) Takes your video card's TV-out (if present) and transmits it wirelessly. Plenty of devices do that at far lower prices.
2) Takes your video card's VGA-out and digitizes it, then either streams the raw digitized video or performs some sort of compression. The question is, what resolution can it handle? I wouldn't be surprised if it was limited to 480p
3) Presents itself as a virtual video card and/or screeenscrapes your PC a la Windows VNC servers, but unlike VNC is optimized for video instead of remote desktop. (Lossy compression vs. lossless to improve framerate for example).
TFA doesn't really have much details.
Either way, I can't see any possible approach that is "codec independent" which will be able to handle HD video at that price point.
Were you using onboard audio in both cases?
In that case, it's the motherboard manufacturer's fault, not AMD's. Some motherboards have junk onboard audio (like my ASUS A7V8X-X), others have very good onboard audio. (Intel has a VERY heavy push towards requiring motherboard manufacturers to meet certain minimum specifications in order to get their "High Definition Audio" certification, I think AMD has similar requirements for Live!)
Get a decent sound card. MythTV works great for me:
Backend is an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ with a Hauppauge PVR-500 for analog and an external Silicon Dust HDHomeRun for unencrypted digital cable (basically local OTA retransmissions)
Frontend is an Athlon XP 2800+, no audio stuttering when I put in an Audigy 4 (which I would not reccommend if you have any plans for digital audio output, AC3 passthrough doesn't work with new Audigy variants under ALSA.) I couldn't reccommend a current good soundcard for you. I believe the Chaintech AV-710 is part of some sort of "KnoppMyth Reference Platform". I did have massive audio problems (including stuttering) with its onboard sound. This includes using the frontend for HDTV playback (XvMC needed for deinterlaced playback with a piddly Athlon XP 2800 though)
Or Ethernet a la Silicon Dust's HDHomeRun HDTV tuner.
:)
RF in, transport stream over Ethernet out.
BTW, from all I've seen of the ATI OCUR (most likely the Cable STB aspect of this system), it's just a USB device (there are provisions for one variant to be mounted internally but it's fundamentally USB still). Of course, thanks to CableLabs it's effectively an "all in one" thing as it's locked in with Vista's DRM (May never be supported by MythTV sadly due to this) and at least now will only be sold with new systems that are "CableLabs Certified".
I would be shocked if the PS3 (even the US version) wasn't RoHS-compliant.
"The PS3 raised the bar by including HDMI, blu-ray support, a hard disk by default, wi-fi and some other bits and pieces."
While Nintendo did just the opposite by not including many of those features. Despite that, the Wii is doing extremely well, for a number of reasons, including:
a) Price. Wii is less than half the price of the PS3. A Dodge Neon is devoid of features compared to a Cadillac, yet the Neon sells extremely well. (Well, sold, I believe the Neon has now been replaced by the Caliber? I haven't looked at their offerings recently.) Not everyone wants a Cadillac, and so a manufacturer doesn't necessarily need to make Cadillacs.
b) Focus on gameplay rather than whiz-bang oooh-shiny features that don't necessarily improve gameplay at all.
How well compared to PS3 or 360 is currently impossible to tell, since the Wii is the only of the three systems still limited in sales by availability. (which, in and of itself, is a good sign for the Wii).
PS3 didn't raise the bar in any way with those features, since the Wii has proven that those features are not necessary in any way for a given console to succeed.
The Core will most likely always remain available, because it is always good to have an entry level system to offer those who don't have $12938921704123 to spend on their consoles or have the money but are not willing to spend it on such purchases. (Such as myself, I have yet to buy a console that cost more than $150 for the system, and yes, that means I'm usually playing the previous generation but I have no problem with that. Used games are cheap, and I have better things to spend my money on.)
"Sometimes I think a bag of rice would be better spent on these areas than air dropping pastel, wind-up computers."
I'm probably going to butcher this quote quite a bit, but you should get the idea.
"Give a man a fish, he is fed for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he is fed for life."
Nothing can be designed so that it won't become obsolete.
Engineered obsolecence is less about the actual product itself rather than the plan for future products.
For example, a $100 laptop that you have to crank in and itself isn't necessarily designed to go obsolete soon.
Engineered obsolecense is when you release a $100 hand-cranked laptop and have plans to release a $100 fusion-powered laptop in six months, especially if you don't tell your customers about the upcoming fusion unit.
eBay scalping of systems bought in the U.S. to U.S. customers isn't grey market. It's just plain scalping.
Grey market is stuff like Lik-Sang and similar companies selling Japanese versions of consoles to U.S. customers for the purpose of playing import games.
The most common example of "grey market" sales is in the photography industry, where "grey market" imports of cameras are often cheaper than the U.S. version of that camera. Of course, you get what you pay for, and in this case there is no warranty support for the "grey market" cameras and often repair shops will refuse to even touch the grey market units (because they'll lose their certification as an authorized repair shop for that particular manufacturer if they do.)