800x600 for a 6" paper-replacement display is fairly decent... that's over 160dpi resolution, about double that of most CRTs but still a long way from yesterday's laser printers' 600dpi.
But I would be more interested in full-page tablets with 200dpi resolution, preferably touch-sensitive for easy document annotation... but I would not be surprised if those devices came with DRM to prevent people from doing annotations and highlighting too - if you want to annotate, buy the $10 more expensive annotable and highlightable version or the copy-pastable (maximum of 200 words and one image per operation) $20 more expensive version!
Let's wait and see how far ePaper will advance over the nest couple of years.
I did say any arithmetic function... well-known hashes are only one well-documented class of arbitrary arithmetic functions.
What I had in mind was to hash the secret, specific phrases and the two combined then do arbitrary arithmetic with those five components to produce arbitrary length passwords. The secret phrase protects against algorithm exposure and the hashes protect against all but the most awful scrambler algorithms: those that tend to undo themselves. Basically, the secret phrase is the password, the public site-specific text (to which some undocumented rules may need to be applied first) is the salt and the result is the site-specific password.
BTW, A-Za-z0-9 = 62 alphanumeric characters... add the other standard english keyboard characters (punctuations, brackets, etc.) and you get at least 94.
It is only an overflow bug in a library, Sony will certainly patch it in the near future and the PSP will become increasingly tougher to crack open.
AFAIK, the PSP is the first major proprietary system with user-uppgradable firmware. In any case, the 1.00-2.00 trend indicates that Sony does not intend to let the PSP remain crackable indefinitely if it can do something about it... and fixing the exploit sounds like minimal effort.
I am betting that the PSP firmware and/or SDK has provisions for triggering automatic firmware upgrades when a disc containing a newer valid firmware is first loaded. Throw in firmware signature checks in new games and this either makes PSP hobbyists lives increasingly less convenient or forces them to choose between hobby and running Y2K6+ games.
Sony is in the business for profits... and profits come from title licenses for commercial PSP media. To get media endorsement for the PSP, Sony has to demonstrate that the media and platform are a perfect lock-in solution. Exploits like these un-upgrade hacks put a dent in Sony's PSP lock-in desires so they need to be ironed out to make content providers happy and keep the license money flowing in.
Does it suck? Yes. But that is how this particular business model works.
I am in a similar situation... but in my case, the new desktop was purchased before the laptop.
I spent over $1000 putting together a P4 in a SFF-style micro-ATX case late last year but the form factor was not small enough for my occasional away-from-home computing so I decided to get myself an A64 laptop early this year. Now, my laptop is pretty much the only computer I use at home or anywhere else since it allows me to set up shop nearly anywhere I want... and it has a built-in UPS good for ~2h instead of 15 minutes.
Last time I brought my desktop PC with me, I remember it involving a lot more unplugging/packing/unpacking/plugging/repeat_for_e ach destination than my laptop usually requires.
Another difference is that my laptop weights under 10lbs accessories included while my desktop weights around 10kgs monitor and UPS not included.
I would personally prefer applying arbitrary arithmetic to a string pair. This would produce a stream of garbage that could later be encoded in base-10/16/26/36/52/62/etc. With this, the first string could be stored as plain-text in publically accessible user profiles. Until someone figures out both the arbitrary function and the secret string, the passwords will remain reasonably safe.
The idea of modding the case to make it more proper crossed my mind a number of times... but I decided to leave the exterior look intact. Last year I tried modding the fan control circuit to see if the fan could go faster than 1800RPM and as you said, the stock fan is no good. I ended up soldering a 10k resistor in parallel with the thermistor, this increased the baseline RPMs by ~200, just enough to keep my CPU fan around 2800RPM while idle instead of whizzing at an intolerable 3800RPM... but still no cigar compared to open-case's 2200RPM idle, 2800RPM full-load - I remember reading one Aria review that said the same thing: Aria is quietest when you ditch the noise-dampening side-panels. Kudos to Antec for creating the most extensively vented heat trap.
BTW, there are two PSU case designs for the Aria: one that has only four small intake strips and the other that has strips arcross all sides. My model (the former) has around three square inches worth of intake strips while the other has closer to ten... so, the loose 10+ square inches honeycomb at the rear is a non-issue for me until I do something about the intake.
It would have been a nice case if Antec paid a little more attention to assembly and cooling. For example, simply having the top support bar lay on top of the lateral supports instead of hanging under them would have already made installation much easier - no need to unscrew the PSU from the support bar then wiggle the two back into place over the CPU's HSF during case re-assembly that way and similarly for de-assembly.
If I wanted to (Part II): craft a flexible duct that sits on top of the Aria and put my 200CFM 120mm steel fan on that... but that would be a "little" too loud.
Well, winter is almost here again so cooling is soon going to be the last thing on my mind:)
I did not say that older machines were useless on absolute terms... I only said they were useless for (modern-day) power-users and gamers - the people who routinely push their computers near their limits.
I too would probably still be using my 1GHz P3... if the i815 chipset supported more than 512MB RAM. It would have been sufficient performance-wise for most of what I was doing, were it not for all the swapping from routinely working with over 600MB of code+data.
My first upgrades (8088 to 486DX33 then P100) were from hitting a combined performance and platform wall (no PCI, too slow to play MP3s, etc.), the others up to my P3-1G were more about performance (can't play 720x480 DivX on a P200) but my P4 upgrade was mostly a platform matter. (support for 2GB RAM, USB2, SATA, AGP8X, HyperThreading - useful to test multithreaded code, etc.)
BTW, I do use some old computers... I have a P120 laptop I use as a text console to interface development boards' firmware, a P200 Linux server for POSIX development and a P3-700 in the living room so my sister can print her digital photographs and do her homework.
Geeks and power-users can always recycle their old gear to extend its useful life but there are limits to how much gear we can reuse, the rest is useless, nearly unsellable junk, even more so when the 'gifts' we receive is worse than the spare stuff we already have or had.
There is a simple reason: "Using non-approved chargers voids your warranty, may damage the device and cause the battery to explode."
Funny thing is that some cell phones' "chargers" are only step-down transformers feeding ~9V AC, with the rectifier and charge controllers either built into the phone or battery.
Because manufacturers do not want consumers to use any random adaptor with their products, most use custom plugs and sockets. If everybody used the same connectors, devices and/or adaptors would routinely be destroyed by incorrect pinout and/or voltage. Using custom connectors also creates a market for overpriced replacement adaptors when the cables get munched by the pets/pests, severed in a domestic accident or conductors break from fatigue.
It would be nice if there was a single barrel connector (center-positive) for each of 3.3V, 5V, 9V and 12V... but this is the real world.
In some installations, a 400V DC bus is used for simpler, more efficient and more reliable power distribution. By centralizing line inputs, it is easier to do power factor corrections, power conditioning and since it is all DC, a battery bank directly across the DC bus can replace the UPS. Each (sub-)system afterwards has it own DC-DC converter.
Why is power distribution done at high voltages? Simple: to reduce conduction losses in wires, semiconductors and other devices. Old systems were based on 5V until ATX came along, at which point 3.3V systems became the norm for a short while - stepping down from 3.3V involved too high currents to be practical, this is how we ended up with ATX-12V and today's 12V-based systems where most/all MoBo regulators are fed off the 12V rail.
In the near future, every device will have some form of on-board power regulation - many chips already do have built-in linear regulators for their more sensitive circuits. The trend to ever more localized power regulation is required by high-performance/high-speed circuitry which needs very fast transient response. Look at Intel's recent mobile CPU announcement: the next Pentium-M generation will be multi-chip modules containing, in addition to the CPU, both the north bridge and Vcore regulator.
If you go from line to load, power goes through 3-6 voltage regulators before reaching the target: 1- active PFC (relatively few PSUs where not required by law) 2- bulk transformer 3- magnetic regulator (for most PSUs that actually regulate auxiliary rails) 4- MoBo regulators 5- on-card/device regulators 6- on-chip regulators
Modern CPUs and GPUs require microsecond-scale response time from the bulk PSU when going from idle to 100% load. Failure to deliver will cause crashes. Integrated regulator can have sub-microsecond response times, local board-level regulators are at the microsecond scale and response times quickly climb in the tens of microseconds afterwards due to wiring impedance.
So, the DC-bus is pretty much as close to centralized power regulation that would be practical with high-speed loads.
If you designed switchers, then you should know about ripple current.
Take a cheap PSU then check the specs for their output filter capacitors. When I see a flyback PSU with 20A outputs and filter capacitors rated for less than 1A ripple, I am mostly surprised that they lasted that long given that flybacks have the worst ripple currents of all switchers. While forward converters have much lower ripple, their 20-30A outputs often use 1A-rated caps... at ~50% load, the ripple current would still be over 5A RMS or worse if the 50% load point is too far below 50% duty cycle. (For universal PSUs, the 50% load point may even be below 25% duty cycle.)
If you have a 3+ years old $20 PSU (or free with $30 case), open it up and you will probably see that the output filter caps have leaked on the 12V and either 3.3V or 5V rails.
PS: In case of purists, I mean combined duty cycle rather than individual transistors/halves.
The PSU market is looking a lot like the amplified speaker market... in the sense that the marked figured is either a non-standard measurement, completely off the mark or, sometimes, true. As all the PSU reviews I have ever seen showed, many if not most PSUs come short of their markings as far as sustained output is concerned... either that or they do not stay within specifications across the load range.
My Northwood-3G/HT has a 300W PSU... and the Antec Aria case (a thermodynamic and assembly nightmare) in which it is becomes warm enough with only one drive, I would not dare putting three HDDs and a high-end video card in there. Since the wall power is around 170W at full load (2xSETI + Half-Life 2), it seems like I am only about half-way. Drives are around 15W each on average (desktop HDDs idle at 7-8W, seeks go up to 20W) so having four more is only about 60W, leaving ~90W extra (on top of my Radeon 9600XT) for a high-end video card and other accessories. So, a true 300W PSU should be able to handle such a load - as long as you do not have a Prescott.
I suspect the main reason why nVidia and ATI recommend supersized PSUs is because the average supersized PSU is a piece of junk that can sustain only a fraction of its rating. If all PSUs were able to deliver 100% of their rated output and still meet specs, graphics card vendors would not have to recomend so outrageously supersized PSUs. But the reality is that most PSUs will prematurely produce magic smoke at substantially less than full-load and many major-brand PSUs will shutdown or blow up well before delivering full-load even if you disregard specs compliance.
With next-gen consoles featuring HDMI and/or DVI outputs, it makes no difference if the display device is meant primarily as a TV or PC display.
Joe Sixpack generally does not like to have complicated technology standing between himself and the TV shows he watches for countless hours every week. He is far more likely to buy an HDTV set (these start under $800) than buy a more costly equivalent LCD monitor which then requires setting up a living room PC with an OS and tuner card(s). J6P knows or was told by the salesmen that his new HDTV's DVI/HDMI connection can be used to hook a PC or console if he later chooses to do so.
Next year's CPUs are not next year's CPUs anymore long before turning some years old.
The problem with four year ago's CPUs is that the CPUs and the platform they fit in can barely keep up with modern software, media and low-price systems. They also grow increasingly less serviceable and non-upgradable. These systems are often useless to power-users who already have similarly obsolete equipment, a tough proposition for first-time buyers and a hard sell to those who buy used stuff. Additionally, used systems over three years old cost roughly the same so getting remotely decent cash for four years old systems is pretty much impossible.
I have thought about this problem many time before and every time, I came to the conclusion that it was more beneficial for me to keep my old PCs than try to sell them... but I would not accept used stuff older than Athlon64 or Pentium 4 HT or dual-core since I hate junking stuff.
I am no fan of 5" sub-VGA displays and $1000 phones... I'd rather have a decent sub-$200 phone and a decent ~$1000 laptop. I personally have a hard time imagining my computing life below WXGA (1280x800)... I am impatiently waiting for WUXGA (1920x1200) LCDs to enter my price range. (Maybe LEPDs/OLEDDs will get there first.)
There are many problems with cramming features in one device: 1- miniaturization is costly 2- more electronics use more power 3- seamlessly integrating a disparate feature sets is difficult and sometimes impossible 4- some feature sets will be contradictory 5- packing the features would eventually/quickly defy some laws of physics
The market for $500+ phones is pretty small so I am not expecting phones to become excellent at anything beyond telephony and text messaging for another 10+ years. As far as digital photography is concerned, even $1000+ digital cameras still fall tragically short under many circumstances.
Speaking commands would be optional... iGlasses could track eye movement as a pointing device and use blinks for clicking visible icons. This would let people balance visual clutter and verbal commands whichever way they feel most comfortable with.
Worst case, they could go with a wireless Revolution-style controller for pointing.
Actually, it was "Urectum"... but that's equally pointless.
Many people (politicians in particular) share that same spirit... if they actually found definitive solutions and implemented them, not as many of them would be required anymore.
The days of playing VGA-resolution games on consoles will soon be over since next-gen consoles will be HDTV-ready. IIRC, the XBox360 and PS3 will both have either HDMI or DVI outputs and support resolutions up to 1920x1080i. All we need now is affordable widescreen HDTV sets.
I personally prefer 2048x1536x75Hz, no AA... that's the maximum resolution supported by both my video card and monitor. I wish I had Apple's 32" Cinema display with a dual-link DVI card though.
Next year's CPUs will not be exactly free... and neither are this year or last year's CPUs for that matter.
Since Moore's law is about transistors, increasing cache sizes and going multicores still cause the transistor count per die to increase, though performance often scales much less than linearly and more drastically so with patchwork implementations like Pentium D.
There are simple physical reasons why cache sizes are doubling with every process upgrade even though they provide only 0-10% performance gains: L2 caches have low power density and the extra die space helps to keep power and bonding pad densities at manageable levels. In most modern CPUs, more than half the transistors go in the L2 caches... for Prescott 2M, the L2 accounts for ~80% of the transistors but only ~30% of the area and (probably) under 20% of the power.
Re:hardware is much, ah, *harder* than software
on
The Digital Dark Age
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· Score: 1
Well... 1- lamps (backlight) do 'breathe' a tiny bit so, over a long period, the backlight can stop working. 2- lubrication (HDD, fans, CD/DVD drive, etc.) will evaporate or be absorbed by materials 3- some components may rust or be damaged by their environment some other way 4- capacitors lose capacity over time 5- atmosphere can contaminate semiconductors 6- etc.
But a dead system still leaves complete system specifications behind... then again, possession of a non-"DRM du jour"-compliant device with an equally non-compliant OS/firmware may be illegal and punishable by death penalty before the data can be transcoded.
It would be interesting if music buyers initiated a class-action suit against the RIAA for destroying fair use... but this will have to wait until DRM has become more of a pain in the ass - need more inconvenienced people to show the courts that DRM ultimately creates more problems than it solves.
I was not able to locate an original Nokia vibrating battery for my 5190 two years ago when I went shopping for a replacement battery... vibration was not a standard feature on most phones six years ago.
Having the latest cell phone is not my main concern in life... I am on $10/month prepaid and have accumulated a $400+ airtime credit so far, this shows how little I use it other than as a two-ways pager.
I leave my phone on during classes... but the ringer is at the lowest level and I use a custom tone so short that people cannot pinpoint the sound. If someone happens to be speaking, I often end up not hearing it myself. There are days where I could swear people do not know that setings besides 'LOUDEST - Caution: Very Loud' exist... yes, these are extremely annoying since the very same people are often the ones with the longest and most annoying tones as well.
As far as forcing students to get phones for quizes goes, that would indeed be annoying/dumb/whatever. Me, I am perfectly happy with my antique phones and prepaid $10/month service which includes free CallerID so I can use my phone mostly as a pager.
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800x600 for a 6" paper-replacement display is fairly decent... that's over 160dpi resolution, about double that of most CRTs but still a long way from yesterday's laser printers' 600dpi.
But I would be more interested in full-page tablets with 200dpi resolution, preferably touch-sensitive for easy document annotation... but I would not be surprised if those devices came with DRM to prevent people from doing annotations and highlighting too - if you want to annotate, buy the $10 more expensive annotable and highlightable version or the copy-pastable (maximum of 200 words and one image per operation) $20 more expensive version!
Let's wait and see how far ePaper will advance over the nest couple of years.
I did say any arithmetic function... well-known hashes are only one well-documented class of arbitrary arithmetic functions.
What I had in mind was to hash the secret, specific phrases and the two combined then do arbitrary arithmetic with those five components to produce arbitrary length passwords. The secret phrase protects against algorithm exposure and the hashes protect against all but the most awful scrambler algorithms: those that tend to undo themselves. Basically, the secret phrase is the password, the public site-specific text (to which some undocumented rules may need to be applied first) is the salt and the result is the site-specific password.
BTW, A-Za-z0-9 = 62 alphanumeric characters... add the other standard english keyboard characters (punctuations, brackets, etc.) and you get at least 94.
But only '2006' could be confusing too... the context would allow it to be interpreted as either a year or some arbitrary number of games.
The confusion will end when the Y2Kx format dies in 2010... unless people upgrade to the Y2Kxx format.
It is only an overflow bug in a library, Sony will certainly patch it in the near future and the PSP will become increasingly tougher to crack open.
AFAIK, the PSP is the first major proprietary system with user-uppgradable firmware. In any case, the 1.00-2.00 trend indicates that Sony does not intend to let the PSP remain crackable indefinitely if it can do something about it... and fixing the exploit sounds like minimal effort.
I am betting that the PSP firmware and/or SDK has provisions for triggering automatic firmware upgrades when a disc containing a newer valid firmware is first loaded. Throw in firmware signature checks in new games and this either makes PSP hobbyists lives increasingly less convenient or forces them to choose between hobby and running Y2K6+ games.
Sony is in the business for profits... and profits come from title licenses for commercial PSP media. To get media endorsement for the PSP, Sony has to demonstrate that the media and platform are a perfect lock-in solution. Exploits like these un-upgrade hacks put a dent in Sony's PSP lock-in desires so they need to be ironed out to make content providers happy and keep the license money flowing in.
Does it suck? Yes. But that is how this particular business model works.
I am in a similar situation... but in my case, the new desktop was purchased before the laptop.
I spent over $1000 putting together a P4 in a SFF-style micro-ATX case late last year but the form factor was not small enough for my occasional away-from-home computing so I decided to get myself an A64 laptop early this year. Now, my laptop is pretty much the only computer I use at home or anywhere else since it allows me to set up shop nearly anywhere I want... and it has a built-in UPS good for ~2h instead of 15 minutes.
Last time I brought my desktop PC with me, I remember it involving a lot more unplugging/packing/unpacking/plugging/repeat_for_e ach destination than my laptop usually requires.
Another difference is that my laptop weights under 10lbs accessories included while my desktop weights around 10kgs monitor and UPS not included.
I would personally prefer applying arbitrary arithmetic to a string pair. This would produce a stream of garbage that could later be encoded in base-10/16/26/36/52/62/etc. With this, the first string could be stored as plain-text in publically accessible user profiles. Until someone figures out both the arbitrary function and the secret string, the passwords will remain reasonably safe.
The idea of modding the case to make it more proper crossed my mind a number of times... but I decided to leave the exterior look intact. Last year I tried modding the fan control circuit to see if the fan could go faster than 1800RPM and as you said, the stock fan is no good. I ended up soldering a 10k resistor in parallel with the thermistor, this increased the baseline RPMs by ~200, just enough to keep my CPU fan around 2800RPM while idle instead of whizzing at an intolerable 3800RPM... but still no cigar compared to open-case's 2200RPM idle, 2800RPM full-load - I remember reading one Aria review that said the same thing: Aria is quietest when you ditch the noise-dampening side-panels. Kudos to Antec for creating the most extensively vented heat trap.
:)
BTW, there are two PSU case designs for the Aria: one that has only four small intake strips and the other that has strips arcross all sides. My model (the former) has around three square inches worth of intake strips while the other has closer to ten... so, the loose 10+ square inches honeycomb at the rear is a non-issue for me until I do something about the intake.
It would have been a nice case if Antec paid a little more attention to assembly and cooling. For example, simply having the top support bar lay on top of the lateral supports instead of hanging under them would have already made installation much easier - no need to unscrew the PSU from the support bar then wiggle the two back into place over the CPU's HSF during case re-assembly that way and similarly for de-assembly.
If I wanted to (Part II): craft a flexible duct that sits on top of the Aria and put my 200CFM 120mm steel fan on that... but that would be a "little" too loud.
Well, winter is almost here again so cooling is soon going to be the last thing on my mind
I did not say that older machines were useless on absolute terms... I only said they were useless for (modern-day) power-users and gamers - the people who routinely push their computers near their limits.
I too would probably still be using my 1GHz P3... if the i815 chipset supported more than 512MB RAM. It would have been sufficient performance-wise for most of what I was doing, were it not for all the swapping from routinely working with over 600MB of code+data.
My first upgrades (8088 to 486DX33 then P100) were from hitting a combined performance and platform wall (no PCI, too slow to play MP3s, etc.), the others up to my P3-1G were more about performance (can't play 720x480 DivX on a P200) but my P4 upgrade was mostly a platform matter. (support for 2GB RAM, USB2, SATA, AGP8X, HyperThreading - useful to test multithreaded code, etc.)
BTW, I do use some old computers... I have a P120 laptop I use as a text console to interface development boards' firmware, a P200 Linux server for POSIX development and a P3-700 in the living room so my sister can print her digital photographs and do her homework.
Geeks and power-users can always recycle their old gear to extend its useful life but there are limits to how much gear we can reuse, the rest is useless, nearly unsellable junk, even more so when the 'gifts' we receive is worse than the spare stuff we already have or had.
There is a simple reason: "Using non-approved chargers voids your warranty, may damage the device and cause the battery to explode."
Funny thing is that some cell phones' "chargers" are only step-down transformers feeding ~9V AC, with the rectifier and charge controllers either built into the phone or battery.
Because manufacturers do not want consumers to use any random adaptor with their products, most use custom plugs and sockets. If everybody used the same connectors, devices and/or adaptors would routinely be destroyed by incorrect pinout and/or voltage. Using custom connectors also creates a market for overpriced replacement adaptors when the cables get munched by the pets/pests, severed in a domestic accident or conductors break from fatigue.
It would be nice if there was a single barrel connector (center-positive) for each of 3.3V, 5V, 9V and 12V... but this is the real world.
In some installations, a 400V DC bus is used for simpler, more efficient and more reliable power distribution. By centralizing line inputs, it is easier to do power factor corrections, power conditioning and since it is all DC, a battery bank directly across the DC bus can replace the UPS. Each (sub-)system afterwards has it own DC-DC converter.
Why is power distribution done at high voltages? Simple: to reduce conduction losses in wires, semiconductors and other devices. Old systems were based on 5V until ATX came along, at which point 3.3V systems became the norm for a short while - stepping down from 3.3V involved too high currents to be practical, this is how we ended up with ATX-12V and today's 12V-based systems where most/all MoBo regulators are fed off the 12V rail.
In the near future, every device will have some form of on-board power regulation - many chips already do have built-in linear regulators for their more sensitive circuits. The trend to ever more localized power regulation is required by high-performance/high-speed circuitry which needs very fast transient response. Look at Intel's recent mobile CPU announcement: the next Pentium-M generation will be multi-chip modules containing, in addition to the CPU, both the north bridge and Vcore regulator.
If you go from line to load, power goes through 3-6 voltage regulators before reaching the target:
1- active PFC (relatively few PSUs where not required by law)
2- bulk transformer
3- magnetic regulator (for most PSUs that actually regulate auxiliary rails)
4- MoBo regulators
5- on-card/device regulators
6- on-chip regulators
Modern CPUs and GPUs require microsecond-scale response time from the bulk PSU when going from idle to 100% load. Failure to deliver will cause crashes. Integrated regulator can have sub-microsecond response times, local board-level regulators are at the microsecond scale and response times quickly climb in the tens of microseconds afterwards due to wiring impedance.
So, the DC-bus is pretty much as close to centralized power regulation that would be practical with high-speed loads.
If you designed switchers, then you should know about ripple current.
Take a cheap PSU then check the specs for their output filter capacitors. When I see a flyback PSU with 20A outputs and filter capacitors rated for less than 1A ripple, I am mostly surprised that they lasted that long given that flybacks have the worst ripple currents of all switchers. While forward converters have much lower ripple, their 20-30A outputs often use 1A-rated caps... at ~50% load, the ripple current would still be over 5A RMS or worse if the 50% load point is too far below 50% duty cycle. (For universal PSUs, the 50% load point may even be below 25% duty cycle.)
If you have a 3+ years old $20 PSU (or free with $30 case), open it up and you will probably see that the output filter caps have leaked on the 12V and either 3.3V or 5V rails.
PS: In case of purists, I mean combined duty cycle rather than individual transistors/halves.
It depends.
The PSU market is looking a lot like the amplified speaker market... in the sense that the marked figured is either a non-standard measurement, completely off the mark or, sometimes, true. As all the PSU reviews I have ever seen showed, many if not most PSUs come short of their markings as far as sustained output is concerned... either that or they do not stay within specifications across the load range.
My Northwood-3G/HT has a 300W PSU... and the Antec Aria case (a thermodynamic and assembly nightmare) in which it is becomes warm enough with only one drive, I would not dare putting three HDDs and a high-end video card in there. Since the wall power is around 170W at full load (2xSETI + Half-Life 2), it seems like I am only about half-way. Drives are around 15W each on average (desktop HDDs idle at 7-8W, seeks go up to 20W) so having four more is only about 60W, leaving ~90W extra (on top of my Radeon 9600XT) for a high-end video card and other accessories. So, a true 300W PSU should be able to handle such a load - as long as you do not have a Prescott.
I suspect the main reason why nVidia and ATI recommend supersized PSUs is because the average supersized PSU is a piece of junk that can sustain only a fraction of its rating. If all PSUs were able to deliver 100% of their rated output and still meet specs, graphics card vendors would not have to recomend so outrageously supersized PSUs. But the reality is that most PSUs will prematurely produce magic smoke at substantially less than full-load and many major-brand PSUs will shutdown or blow up well before delivering full-load even if you disregard specs compliance.
With next-gen consoles featuring HDMI and/or DVI outputs, it makes no difference if the display device is meant primarily as a TV or PC display.
Joe Sixpack generally does not like to have complicated technology standing between himself and the TV shows he watches for countless hours every week. He is far more likely to buy an HDTV set (these start under $800) than buy a more costly equivalent LCD monitor which then requires setting up a living room PC with an OS and tuner card(s). J6P knows or was told by the salesmen that his new HDTV's DVI/HDMI connection can be used to hook a PC or console if he later chooses to do so.
Next year's CPUs are not next year's CPUs anymore long before turning some years old.
The problem with four year ago's CPUs is that the CPUs and the platform they fit in can barely keep up with modern software, media and low-price systems. They also grow increasingly less serviceable and non-upgradable. These systems are often useless to power-users who already have similarly obsolete equipment, a tough proposition for first-time buyers and a hard sell to those who buy used stuff. Additionally, used systems over three years old cost roughly the same so getting remotely decent cash for four years old systems is pretty much impossible.
I have thought about this problem many time before and every time, I came to the conclusion that it was more beneficial for me to keep my old PCs than try to sell them... but I would not accept used stuff older than Athlon64 or Pentium 4 HT or dual-core since I hate junking stuff.
I am no fan of 5" sub-VGA displays and $1000 phones... I'd rather have a decent sub-$200 phone and a decent ~$1000 laptop. I personally have a hard time imagining my computing life below WXGA (1280x800)... I am impatiently waiting for WUXGA (1920x1200) LCDs to enter my price range. (Maybe LEPDs/OLEDDs will get there first.)
There are many problems with cramming features in one device:
1- miniaturization is costly
2- more electronics use more power
3- seamlessly integrating a disparate feature sets is difficult and sometimes impossible
4- some feature sets will be contradictory
5- packing the features would eventually/quickly defy some laws of physics
The market for $500+ phones is pretty small so I am not expecting phones to become excellent at anything beyond telephony and text messaging for another 10+ years. As far as digital photography is concerned, even $1000+ digital cameras still fall tragically short under many circumstances.
Speaking commands would be optional... iGlasses could track eye movement as a pointing device and use blinks for clicking visible icons. This would let people balance visual clutter and verbal commands whichever way they feel most comfortable with.
Worst case, they could go with a wireless Revolution-style controller for pointing.
Actually, it was "Urectum"... but that's equally pointless.
Many people (politicians in particular) share that same spirit... if they actually found definitive solutions and implemented them, not as many of them would be required anymore.
The days of playing VGA-resolution games on consoles will soon be over since next-gen consoles will be HDTV-ready. IIRC, the XBox360 and PS3 will both have either HDMI or DVI outputs and support resolutions up to 1920x1080i. All we need now is affordable widescreen HDTV sets.
I personally prefer 2048x1536x75Hz, no AA... that's the maximum resolution supported by both my video card and monitor. I wish I had Apple's 32" Cinema display with a dual-link DVI card though.
Next year's CPUs will not be exactly free... and neither are this year or last year's CPUs for that matter.
Since Moore's law is about transistors, increasing cache sizes and going multicores still cause the transistor count per die to increase, though performance often scales much less than linearly and more drastically so with patchwork implementations like Pentium D.
There are simple physical reasons why cache sizes are doubling with every process upgrade even though they provide only 0-10% performance gains: L2 caches have low power density and the extra die space helps to keep power and bonding pad densities at manageable levels. In most modern CPUs, more than half the transistors go in the L2 caches... for Prescott 2M, the L2 accounts for ~80% of the transistors but only ~30% of the area and (probably) under 20% of the power.
Well...
1- lamps (backlight) do 'breathe' a tiny bit so, over a long period, the backlight can stop working.
2- lubrication (HDD, fans, CD/DVD drive, etc.) will evaporate or be absorbed by materials
3- some components may rust or be damaged by their environment some other way
4- capacitors lose capacity over time
5- atmosphere can contaminate semiconductors
6- etc.
But a dead system still leaves complete system specifications behind... then again, possession of a non-"DRM du jour"-compliant device with an equally non-compliant OS/firmware may be illegal and punishable by death penalty before the data can be transcoded.
It would be interesting if music buyers initiated a class-action suit against the RIAA for destroying fair use... but this will have to wait until DRM has become more of a pain in the ass - need more inconvenienced people to show the courts that DRM ultimately creates more problems than it solves.
I was not able to locate an original Nokia vibrating battery for my 5190 two years ago when I went shopping for a replacement battery... vibration was not a standard feature on most phones six years ago.
Having the latest cell phone is not my main concern in life... I am on $10/month prepaid and have accumulated a $400+ airtime credit so far, this shows how little I use it other than as a two-ways pager.
I leave my phone on during classes... but the ringer is at the lowest level and I use a custom tone so short that people cannot pinpoint the sound. If someone happens to be speaking, I often end up not hearing it myself. There are days where I could swear people do not know that setings besides 'LOUDEST - Caution: Very Loud' exist... yes, these are extremely annoying since the very same people are often the ones with the longest and most annoying tones as well.
As far as forcing students to get phones for quizes goes, that would indeed be annoying/dumb/whatever. Me, I am perfectly happy with my antique phones and prepaid $10/month service which includes free CallerID so I can use my phone mostly as a pager.