With the memory and pci-e controllers now getting embedded into the CPU to reduce latency here comes a design that not only makes the PC too big and greatly limits the industry to a crappy form factor but completely destroys low latency and performance? - If I were a judge, I would grant it the dumbest design of the 21st century - its been done in the 80s, 90s and proved not to work, are they just taking the mick now?
The speakers must be situated some distance from eachother or whats the point of stereo, most peripherals you want to actually be able to hotplug to the PC are digital cameras, mp3 players, webcams, etc that dont stack up and this makes expansion much more expensive and greatly reduces performance. Please someone tell me the upside.
Is it just because it has the acronym DRM smeared all over it?
Sata is what 150-300mbps? not 800, but its the latency, not the mbps, and the price. An 80gb hard drive costs $40 on sata, and what, $200 with a firewire bus, a power source, the extra material, the inability to mass produce, etc?
Hell, how many companies will implement this exact form factor? -- This is just retarded.
Hmm, there's an idea:) -- Yeah, I'll do that, but I shamelessly changed the GBP poung sign to a dollar sign as I dont have the former on my keyboard and had some components to salvage to build the thing. Normally what costs 500 GBP here costs $500 in the US but seems hard drives are the exception.
In short, my part list is a gigabyte nforce4 motherboard with 8 onboard sata, an additional sata card with 4 ports that costs peanuts, a coolermaster stacker case and 12 400GB drives (4.8tb total but on 2 raid5s). If building from scratch in the US, the total would come to around $3k (2.4k for hard drives alone) which makes around 50 cents per GB so quite a different price. Still a bargain compared to the $110k 4TB IBM solutions;)
Many nforce4 motherboards have 8 onboard sata ports. I added another sata card to increase the number to 12, and used the coolermaster stacker case and linux software raid5. Western Digital 400gb drives are under 110GBP if you know where to shop and I already had some, so thats a cheat.
So 12 x 400gb is around 1260 and a cheap ass AMD64 with the case is another 400 or so. So 1660 GBP if building from scratch.
Just looking at dollar prices now and seems hard drives are the only thing not miserably overpriced in the UK - typically if something costs 500 GBP in the UK, it costs 500 USD in the US, here 400GB drives are around $200 in the US so $2400 which is quite a different price, sorry.
There's also raid6 if you have a large number of drives. With 4-5 drives, raid5 is safe enough. With more than 7-8 drives I would opt for something safer.
I've learned the hard way that switching to DVDs for backup was a *BIG* mistake. While I could clean my 700MB CDs with sandpaper and they worked fine after that, the slightest mishandling of DVD caused jittery picture/sound or file curruption. Even if HD-DVD and Blueray are not as fragile as DVDs (yeah, right), the thought of losing 28GB of data this time round is, well, why take the risk.
I cant imagine anyone will use this crap for data storage so the capacity is a moot point. I built a nice 4tb array on raid5 that cost me around $800 (20 cents per GB which is CHEAPER than blueray/hd-dvd), or yes, a couple of 400GB drives on raid1 and your data is quite safe and you dont need >10 disks for same capacity.
Furthermore, with consumer ADSL having 2mb these days (granted asymetrical), you can afford to back up to a popular p2p network, best backup method possible and thats how I backup my legally purchased music/movies and other non private media.
Please look at this H.264 codec comparison. Notice that normal, crappy, unadvanced divx BEATS some of the best H.264 codecs, but we see with the newer H.264 codecs that the new format does provide many advantages, so I'd like to see just how great ffmpeg can get.
You have to understand the industry uses the fastest codec they can get their hands on which is lower than divx mpeg4 quality. Xvid with MPEG4 yields far better quality at present.
H.264 is not a codec, its a format. FFMPEG/Lavc codec supports it, mpeg4 that xvid uses is also sufficient to give you indistinguishable quality from around 10GB per film (compressed from 27GB blueray) - There is 0 distinguishable difference in quality, there is also the OGM format that is even more advanced than h264, so what?. And come on, even from around 1.4GB per film you dont see a single block at even the higher 1366 X 768 resolution of those LCD TVs, you just dont have nearly as much detail.
So what are my choices:
1) $8k HDTV plasma, expensive player, $40 movies that look about the same if the picture comes from a VCR. 2) HDTV lcd/crt that is overpriced because of the label and I still need player/movies. 3) Non HDTV lcd/crt with the same or superior resolution/quality, and viewing HD content on a mythtv box or PC that also allows me to browse the web from my TV, listen to music I saved from my CD, have instant access to hundreds of movies that I backed up from DVD, play games, do video and voip, etc.
PS, my TV cost me $200 second hand, it isnt a flat screen but has 120hz and the quality is just amazing. None of the horrible resolution of plasma, or the complete absence of black on LCD TVs, etc and if I want something bigger, I'll get a high resolution non HD-TV projector.
Right, "HDTV" 42" plasma with 1024 x 768 -- I looked at that TV in person and smaller text in HD content was very hard to read. On my 24" monitor with 1600x1200 resolution it was very sharp and far more detailed. If I want a bigger screen, the non HDTV stuff is going for far cheaper and has identical picture quality, just requires a different input source.
Also, take HD and compress it with xvid or any modern codec (i.e. not format), keeping the resolution the same and a high enough bitrate and you can get indistinguishable quality from just 10GB per movie that is playable on even the most basic computers (1ghz plays just fine).
As for hard drive, 400GB for around $170 now capable of storing 40 HD movies per drive - thats just over $4 per movie and 40 movies in a single drive take up less space than 40 disks and if there is a raid package of say 1tb-4tb that these days costs a mere $500-$1000 on raid5, you also dont have to worry about disk scratching (those things are fragile) and just get a housecall when raid is critical to replace a drive (well or fix yourself).
You can also buy external hard drives and prices are dropping everyday. Storage is cheap, everyone knows that.
I.E. 2mbps is cheap at least in the US/UK and at that spead
1) Highest quality HD content in MPEG4 format (around 10GB per film) takes around 9 hours to download (i.e. over night) 2) Standard DVD quality (around 1.4GB per film) takes around 1.5-2 hours to download (realtime) 3) TV quality (around 700mb per film) is realtime with other film downloading in background.
Say charge $80 for option 1, $50 for option 2, and $30 for option 3.. You got cable replacement where people can watch whatever they like - stick a non intrusive advertisement at start and end of download (i.e. make it web interface) and presto, you dont have to spend millions and sue everyone in sight because there wont be a need to pirate.
This way there is no risk that a movie isnt going to sell well so they have 10k copies lying around and the prices can plunnet because there is no risk. Everyone wins. When will the record companies get a clue?
You buy a MythTV box for around $500, and you have a player capable of playing 10x the quality of HD-DVD and Blueray with far superior capacity. Why dont they just have a contract where you pick a resolution and bandwidth and download anything you want for, I donno, a flat rate of $50 per month or $5 per movie (-/+ 30% for different resolutions).
Who the hell wants the media, new TV, new player? -- My monitor is capable of displaying 1600x1200 and is using DVI. All this shit makes no sense. I get BETTER quality on this cheap monitor than I get if I spend $10k and for what? - What improvement do I get?
Fucking makes me mad, I'll carry on pirating the HD content popping up all over the web...
Thats is just not true. Have you seen the transmeta clusters that give you 18gflops at a puny 300W power? -- Atleast twice as efficient as Intel for mhz per watt, but the CPUs are slower. I.E. xvid playback takes 30% cpu on my transmeta, 20% on my centrino. Cant notice difference in speed for office, browsing, etc.
Transmeta Efficeon is far more efficient than the Centrino. Thats what I go with time and time again. For a pretty similar performance in office applications, I get >15 hours battery life on a Fujitsu P2000 compared to the puny 5 hours on a centrino.
There is around a 5-10% performance increase in benchmarks I utterly distrust (i.e. the same benchmarks that always favor Pentium4 3.0ghz to AMD64 4000+), and the battery is generally around 5-10% less for cpu intensive applications. Where's the improvement?
>> Maybe i just haven't found a good RSS reader yet. They all seem to me to be lacking something.
Thats right, the built in crap or even standalone readers just show you whats recent. Get a reader like aKregator
1) Integrates with Kontact and Konqueror showing articles next to your todo list and emails 2) Manages articles as read/unread as apposed to just whats "current" 3) Allows advanced searching through indexed articles (hate searching slashdot for that article?) 4) Allows a convenient way to archive articles for later read on many websites without having to visit the websites
I do agree the RSS built into firefox and ie7 and even many standalone readers are just useless, they just show you whats currently on the site. aKregator allows you to catch up on news any time.
Does Apple charge you if you sell non Apple PCs in your store like Microsoft does? -- If you happen to have a non Microsoft Windows line, you suddenly have to pay twice the price for the Windows licenses.
Its amazing that we tried to presure them to support Firefox or any other browser for that matter, they wont even add LDAP support so we have to have a completely inconsistent insecure user management along side those outdated windows boxes too! - got to love expensive commercial software.
Software like Accipiter that costs around $5,000 per month for a basic license depends on IE6. We had to find out the hard way that our new shiny Macs failed to work with the IE5 for Mac and now all support is being dropped, great...
Hell, we all know IE is a pos and I witnessed the CIO cracking Accipiter's encryption within 5 minutes (!!) but IE on a Mac was a selling point for the upper management and its a shame to see the support go.
Even if I was to emulate that on another machine it will take me 3 hours to get the automatic window placing together, etc. But you know something? I couldnt find that more intuitive and easy to use now that it does what I want it to.
I guess there are 2 things I would test:
1) Customization to get the environment to behave exactly like the power user might want. Use gentoo and go wild. Spend 6 months learning the ins and outs, painless upgrading, glsa, writing ebuilds to automate things, etc. Then look at how it comes polished with various debian and gentoo based distributions.
2) Ease of use for the complete beginner. I like how on MacOS there is a search as you type in the finder which appears all over the DE, all the typical applications are right there on the taskbar, starting to appreciate the 1 button design, you generally just dont need 2 or 3, the clever mouse wheel emulation on the trackpad, etc. Or Ubuntu's support request in most applications is just genius.
Thats quite a challenge though and I guess just mentioning random points is enough and focusing on what actually "Just Works" as apposed to requires extra security software like firewalls, antiviruses, maintenance tasks, etc. Beginners will always memorize where button x is and advanced users will always find a way to customize.
Firstly thank you very much for analysing my text, I do wish for it to be accurate and list Linux' faults as much as its merits. If you come up with any more suggestions, dont hesitate to just edit the wiki or go to the discussion page.
Yes, installing Linux is easy now (and yes, I installed Slackware back in the mid 90s; I know how much better it is now). But it's not any easier than installing Windows in the vast majority of cases. The statements in (1) conflict directly with those in (2) -- sorry, but if Windows installation is "typically beyond the scope of a typical PC user" then so is installing Linux. They are not radically different in how you install them.
Some distributions maybe, but have you tried Lindows or Arklinux? -- They have a choice of 3 options:
1) Wipe pc and install Linux 2) Make space and install Linux 3) Use available space and install Linux
On Ark, thats it, next question is to remove CD from drive for the reboot (Lindows will ask for your name and stuff, but also trivial). Windows requires partitioning, network configuration, antivirus installation, software installation, etc.
Yes the difference isnt grand but I on more than one occation let friends try installing Windows and Linux and they always phoned me stuck with the windows installation (some early one, many after first boot) but never stuck on the Linux installation.
While the number of bundled apps with Linux is vastly higher, some of your statements in (4) are incorrect. Gimp, while powerful, is nowhere near the level of Photoshop. And gnucash (that's a bad link you have there) is not "accounting software". It's a poor man's Quicken/Money at best (there is better than gnucash nowadays; but it's not bundled with any distro I know of).
Thats debatable. Gimp is more powerful than Photoshop in many ways (i.e. pythonfu) but lacks a couple of major things Photoshop has, granted. I wouldnt call it inferior on any level though, just very different to the point of being frustrating when referred to as a photoshop replacement. As for gnucash, I'm not an accountant, I'll correct the mistake. As for better than gnucash, and accounting software, if you have information about these I'm all ears.
Your continual harping on hardware drivers, both in this section and elsewhere, is simply bogus. Windows comes with the vast majority of drivers, and it's easy to update drivers -- in most cases you can even do it through Windows Update. Stop implying that Linux always has the drivers needed -- it simply does not. Wireless support is seriously crappy, ACPI/APM support is barely any better (extremely important for laptops), and 3D graphics support is essentially non-existant (and recompiling the kernel to add support, if there is any, is well beyond the capabilities of most PC users). Sound support is sketchy at best, particularly anything more advanced than basic audio out. There are certainly areas that Linux is better (the biggest being "outdated" hardware, which is hardly a concern for the average user; the second being SATA drive support, which has been an issue w/ Windows installation for awhile now, but is becoming a non-issue now that BIOS's are making it irrelevant).
* Intel wireless on centrino based laptops wasnt available at the start, but has now cought up. What other wireless devices dont work for you? - Whatever obscure ones you can name are surely supported by ndiswrapper? * ACPI/APM support was poor. Nower days I'm seeing more and more processor features supported by Linux but not by Windows and ability to reduce processor speed way bellow what is possible on Windows. There are some resume from suspend issues like some usb ports not restarting but its a work in progress that believe it or not has advantages on some laptops to Windows. * What desktop oriented distributions dont come with binary nvidia and ati drivers these days?? * Audio support is fantastic provided you ha
I'm talking about using the same background in xterm and putty with putty breaking colours and I wasnt able to run any X applications under putty, maybe I'm doing something wrong..
Slashdot Mirror
With the memory and pci-e controllers now getting embedded into the CPU to reduce latency here comes a design that not only makes the PC too big and greatly limits the industry to a crappy form factor but completely destroys low latency and performance? - If I were a judge, I would grant it the dumbest design of the 21st century - its been done in the 80s, 90s and proved not to work, are they just taking the mick now?
The speakers must be situated some distance from eachother or whats the point of stereo, most peripherals you want to actually be able to hotplug to the PC are digital cameras, mp3 players, webcams, etc that dont stack up and this makes expansion much more expensive and greatly reduces performance. Please someone tell me the upside.
Is it just because it has the acronym DRM smeared all over it?
Sata is what 150-300mbps? not 800, but its the latency, not the mbps, and the price. An 80gb hard drive costs $40 on sata, and what, $200 with a firewire bus, a power source, the extra material, the inability to mass produce, etc?
Hell, how many companies will implement this exact form factor? -- This is just retarded.
Hmm, there's an idea :) -- Yeah, I'll do that, but I shamelessly changed the GBP poung sign to a dollar sign as I dont have the former on my keyboard and had some components to salvage to build the thing. Normally what costs 500 GBP here costs $500 in the US but seems hard drives are the exception.
;)
In short, my part list is a gigabyte nforce4 motherboard with 8 onboard sata, an additional sata card with 4 ports that costs peanuts, a coolermaster stacker case and 12 400GB drives (4.8tb total but on 2 raid5s). If building from scratch in the US, the total would come to around $3k (2.4k for hard drives alone) which makes around 50 cents per GB so quite a different price. Still a bargain compared to the $110k 4TB IBM solutions
Many nforce4 motherboards have 8 onboard sata ports. I added another sata card to increase the number to 12, and used the coolermaster stacker case and linux software raid5. Western Digital 400gb drives are under 110GBP if you know where to shop and I already had some, so thats a cheat.
So 12 x 400gb is around 1260 and a cheap ass AMD64 with the case is another 400 or so. So 1660 GBP if building from scratch.
Just looking at dollar prices now and seems hard drives are the only thing not miserably overpriced in the UK - typically if something costs 500 GBP in the UK, it costs 500 USD in the US, here 400GB drives are around $200 in the US so $2400 which is quite a different price, sorry.
Another identical box in a colocation in san francisco with incremental backups. Only goes online for the backup period.
There's also raid6 if you have a large number of drives. With 4-5 drives, raid5 is safe enough. With more than 7-8 drives I would opt for something safer.
I've learned the hard way that switching to DVDs for backup was a *BIG* mistake. While I could clean my 700MB CDs with sandpaper and they worked fine after that, the slightest mishandling of DVD caused jittery picture/sound or file curruption. Even if HD-DVD and Blueray are not as fragile as DVDs (yeah, right), the thought of losing 28GB of data this time round is, well, why take the risk.
I cant imagine anyone will use this crap for data storage so the capacity is a moot point. I built a nice 4tb array on raid5 that cost me around $800 (20 cents per GB which is CHEAPER than blueray/hd-dvd), or yes, a couple of 400GB drives on raid1 and your data is quite safe and you dont need >10 disks for same capacity.
Furthermore, with consumer ADSL having 2mb these days (granted asymetrical), you can afford to back up to a popular p2p network, best backup method possible and thats how I backup my legally purchased music/movies and other non private media.
Hell, H.264 has the potential to be greater than anything we have, but the movie industry records in a codec thats WORSE than mpeg2: http://www.digigami.com/press/pr/pr.php?PR=2005-12 -22.pr.html&PR_YEAR=ALL#2005-12-22.pr.html
http://www.compression.ru/video/codec_comparison/m peg-4_avc_h264_2005/part4.htm
Please look at this H.264 codec comparison. Notice that normal, crappy, unadvanced divx BEATS some of the best H.264 codecs, but we see with the newer H.264 codecs that the new format does provide many advantages, so I'd like to see just how great ffmpeg can get.
You have to understand the industry uses the fastest codec they can get their hands on which is lower than divx mpeg4 quality. Xvid with MPEG4 yields far better quality at present.
H.264 is not a codec, its a format. FFMPEG/Lavc codec supports it, mpeg4 that xvid uses is also sufficient to give you indistinguishable quality from around 10GB per film (compressed from 27GB blueray) - There is 0 distinguishable difference in quality, there is also the OGM format that is even more advanced than h264, so what?. And come on, even from around 1.4GB per film you dont see a single block at even the higher 1366 X 768 resolution of those LCD TVs, you just dont have nearly as much detail.
So what are my choices:
1) $8k HDTV plasma, expensive player, $40 movies that look about the same if the picture comes from a VCR.
2) HDTV lcd/crt that is overpriced because of the label and I still need player/movies.
3) Non HDTV lcd/crt with the same or superior resolution/quality, and viewing HD content on a mythtv box or PC that also allows me to browse the web from my TV, listen to music I saved from my CD, have instant access to hundreds of movies that I backed up from DVD, play games, do video and voip, etc.
Its a no brainer.
PS, my TV cost me $200 second hand, it isnt a flat screen but has 120hz and the quality is just amazing. None of the horrible resolution of plasma, or the complete absence of black on LCD TVs, etc and if I want something bigger, I'll get a high resolution non HD-TV projector.
http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/+INTERSHOP.enfinit y/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation- Start?CategoryName=&ProductSKU=KDE42XBR950&TabName =specs&var2=#
Right, "HDTV" 42" plasma with 1024 x 768 -- I looked at that TV in person and smaller text in HD content was very hard to read. On my 24" monitor with 1600x1200 resolution it was very sharp and far more detailed. If I want a bigger screen, the non HDTV stuff is going for far cheaper and has identical picture quality, just requires a different input source.
Also, take HD and compress it with xvid or any modern codec (i.e. not format), keeping the resolution the same and a high enough bitrate and you can get indistinguishable quality from just 10GB per movie that is playable on even the most basic computers (1ghz plays just fine).
As for hard drive, 400GB for around $170 now capable of storing 40 HD movies per drive - thats just over $4 per movie and 40 movies in a single drive take up less space than 40 disks and if there is a raid package of say 1tb-4tb that these days costs a mere $500-$1000 on raid5, you also dont have to worry about disk scratching (those things are fragile) and just get a housecall when raid is critical to replace a drive (well or fix yourself).
You can also buy external hard drives and prices are dropping everyday. Storage is cheap, everyone knows that.
I.E. 2mbps is cheap at least in the US/UK and at that spead
1) Highest quality HD content in MPEG4 format (around 10GB per film) takes around 9 hours to download (i.e. over night)
2) Standard DVD quality (around 1.4GB per film) takes around 1.5-2 hours to download (realtime)
3) TV quality (around 700mb per film) is realtime with other film downloading in background.
Say charge $80 for option 1, $50 for option 2, and $30 for option 3.. You got cable replacement where people can watch whatever they like - stick a non intrusive advertisement at start and end of download (i.e. make it web interface) and presto, you dont have to spend millions and sue everyone in sight because there wont be a need to pirate.
This way there is no risk that a movie isnt going to sell well so they have 10k copies lying around and the prices can plunnet because there is no risk. Everyone wins. When will the record companies get a clue?
You buy a MythTV box for around $500, and you have a player capable of playing 10x the quality of HD-DVD and Blueray with far superior capacity. Why dont they just have a contract where you pick a resolution and bandwidth and download anything you want for, I donno, a flat rate of $50 per month or $5 per movie (-/+ 30% for different resolutions).
Who the hell wants the media, new TV, new player? -- My monitor is capable of displaying 1600x1200 and is using DVI. All this shit makes no sense. I get BETTER quality on this cheap monitor than I get if I spend $10k and for what? - What improvement do I get?
Fucking makes me mad, I'll carry on pirating the HD content popping up all over the web...
Thats is just not true. Have you seen the transmeta clusters that give you 18gflops at a puny 300W power? -- Atleast twice as efficient as Intel for mhz per watt, but the CPUs are slower. I.E. xvid playback takes 30% cpu on my transmeta, 20% on my centrino. Cant notice difference in speed for office, browsing, etc.
Transmeta Efficeon is far more efficient than the Centrino. Thats what I go with time and time again. For a pretty similar performance in office applications, I get >15 hours battery life on a Fujitsu P2000 compared to the puny 5 hours on a centrino.
There is around a 5-10% performance increase in benchmarks I utterly distrust (i.e. the same benchmarks that always favor Pentium4 3.0ghz to AMD64 4000+), and the battery is generally around 5-10% less for cpu intensive applications. Where's the improvement?
And please show us some real benchmarks.
better screenshot: http://kde-apps.org/content/pre1/15621-1.jpg
>> Maybe i just haven't found a good RSS reader yet. They all seem to me to be lacking something.
Thats right, the built in crap or even standalone readers just show you whats recent. Get a reader like aKregator
1) Integrates with Kontact and Konqueror showing articles next to your todo list and emails
2) Manages articles as read/unread as apposed to just whats "current"
3) Allows advanced searching through indexed articles (hate searching slashdot for that article?)
4) Allows a convenient way to archive articles for later read on many websites without having to visit the websites
I do agree the RSS built into firefox and ie7 and even many standalone readers are just useless, they just show you whats currently on the site. aKregator allows you to catch up on news any time.
Does Apple charge you if you sell non Apple PCs in your store like Microsoft does? -- If you happen to have a non Microsoft Windows line, you suddenly have to pay twice the price for the Windows licenses.
Its amazing that we tried to presure them to support Firefox or any other browser for that matter, they wont even add LDAP support so we have to have a completely inconsistent insecure user management along side those outdated windows boxes too! - got to love expensive commercial software.
Software like Accipiter that costs around $5,000 per month for a basic license depends on IE6. We had to find out the hard way that our new shiny Macs failed to work with the IE5 for Mac and now all support is being dropped, great...
Hell, we all know IE is a pos and I witnessed the CIO cracking Accipiter's encryption within 5 minutes (!!) but IE on a Mac was a selling point for the upper management and its a shame to see the support go.
I started off as a power windows user, then I tried Linux. After a couple of years, this is what my desktop now looks like: http://ask.slashdot.org/~Hackeron/journal/101301
Even if I was to emulate that on another machine it will take me 3 hours to get the automatic window placing together, etc. But you know something? I couldnt find that more intuitive and easy to use now that it does what I want it to.
I guess there are 2 things I would test:
1) Customization to get the environment to behave exactly like the power user might want. Use gentoo and go wild. Spend 6 months learning the ins and outs, painless upgrading, glsa, writing ebuilds to automate things, etc. Then look at how it comes polished with various debian and gentoo based distributions.
2) Ease of use for the complete beginner. I like how on MacOS there is a search as you type in the finder which appears all over the DE, all the typical applications are right there on the taskbar, starting to appreciate the 1 button design, you generally just dont need 2 or 3, the clever mouse wheel emulation on the trackpad, etc. Or Ubuntu's support request in most applications is just genius.
Thats quite a challenge though and I guess just mentioning random points is enough and focusing on what actually "Just Works" as apposed to requires extra security software like firewalls, antiviruses, maintenance tasks, etc. Beginners will always memorize where button x is and advanced users will always find a way to customize.
Some distributions maybe, but have you tried Lindows or Arklinux? -- They have a choice of 3 options:
1) Wipe pc and install Linux
2) Make space and install Linux
3) Use available space and install Linux
On Ark, thats it, next question is to remove CD from drive for the reboot (Lindows will ask for your name and stuff, but also trivial). Windows requires partitioning, network configuration, antivirus installation, software installation, etc.
Yes the difference isnt grand but I on more than one occation let friends try installing Windows and Linux and they always phoned me stuck with the windows installation (some early one, many after first boot) but never stuck on the Linux installation.
Thats debatable. Gimp is more powerful than Photoshop in many ways (i.e. pythonfu) but lacks a couple of major things Photoshop has, granted. I wouldnt call it inferior on any level though, just very different to the point of being frustrating when referred to as a photoshop replacement. As for gnucash, I'm not an accountant, I'll correct the mistake. As for better than gnucash, and accounting software, if you have information about these I'm all ears.
* Intel wireless on centrino based laptops wasnt available at the start, but has now cought up. What other wireless devices dont work for you? - Whatever obscure ones you can name are surely supported by ndiswrapper?
* ACPI/APM support was poor. Nower days I'm seeing more and more processor features supported by Linux but not by Windows and ability to reduce processor speed way bellow what is possible on Windows. There are some resume from suspend issues like some usb ports not restarting but its a work in progress that believe it or not has advantages on some laptops to Windows.
* What desktop oriented distributions dont come with binary nvidia and ati drivers these days??
* Audio support is fantastic provided you ha
I'm talking about using the same background in xterm and putty with putty breaking colours and I wasnt able to run any X applications under putty, maybe I'm doing something wrong..
As for the website, please do dissect it.