I'll have to take issue with that one. I had a Powerbook from 2004 to about 2006, and a Macbook Pro from 2006 and ongoing, and in both cases the battery went to hell in less than two years. Maybe the new battery technology they're using improves this, I don't know, but I really am not inclined to trust them on this.
Apple's "new battery" page claims that "advanced chemistry and an innovative new charging method" will alllow "up to 1000 recharges before it reaches 80 percent of its original capacity -- nearly three times the lifespan of typical notebook batteries."
Having seen outlandish Apple claims in the past, I'm not incilned to trust them until someone actually recharges their MacBook Pro 1000 times and gets close to 80 percent of original capacity (and gets close to Apple's claimed 8-hour battery life in typical use).
eh? please don't misinform people about rates. The upgrade rates for existing AT&T customers (incl those who own an iPhone) are, with 2-year contract,
These are numbers i got from apple.com as I went through the upgrade process - I am an existing AT&T customer with an old (first gen) iPhone.
Don't misinform people by implying that your rates will apply to other existing AT&T customers. According to an Ars Technica article, AT&T will typically allow full subsidized pricing after about 18 months after buying their previously subsidized phone. Also, your first-gen iPhone was not subsidized.
Snow Leopard costs $29 to upgrade ($129 new). Windows 7 Home Premium: $260 (rumoured).
Wow, troll for making a valid point that this upgrade price is going to look seriously good in comparison to the price of Windows 7?
I still fail to see where the troll is, seriously.
I'm guessing it's where you compare Snow Leopard's $29 upgrade-from-Leopard price to your uncited, rumoured $260 price for Windows 7 Home Premium. You don't need to rediculously inflate the price of a Windows upgrade or compare a relatively small OS X update to a comparably large Windows update.
Also, the $29 upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard is more comparable to 2 free Windows Service Packs and some free API updates (e.g. DirectX,.NET Framework). The upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 is more comparable to a typical $129 upgrade between OS X point releases (Snow Leopard is much less than a typical point release). The upgrade from XP to Windows 7 (same upgrade price) is considerably bigger than a typcial OS X point release.
No, that can't be it. Your simpler, more plausible explanation doesn't justify Apple charging $100 for 16GB of storage. It's gotta be "additional R&D" and a "second assembly line" to add another flash chip.
I'm hoping the moderators thought the GP was being "Funny," but modded the comment "Insightful" to help the GP's karma.
Cheap!?!?!? It's one of the most expensive cables out there now. And I am talking about non gold plated and non premium stuff.
Have you looked at stores that don't treat HDMI cables as a high-profit accessory that makes up for their low-profit HDTV's (e.g. Best Buy)? Monoprice's selection of "non-professional" (scroll down) HDMI cables seems reasonable to me (not much more than DVI).
12-foot HDMI 1.3a cable with gold plated connectors: $5 plus shipping
Here's a beauty that looks like a special buy: gold-plated 6-foot HDMI 1.3a cable for $1.95
I just searched images.google.cn for "Tiananmen Square (massacre OR killing OR event)" and got a page that seems surprisingly uncensored (by China's standards). Is google.cn only censored when it detects IP addresses within China?
If power consumption doesn't matter to you, the AMD X2 7750 + 780G + 400w PSU is a much better performer.
Sure, if the size, silence and low power consumption are not important to you then you should not even consider a mini-ITX based system.
Replace the 95W CPU with a 35W Conroe-L CPU and the micro-ATX motherboard with a mini-ITX LGA775 GeForce 9300 motherboard, and you've got something that's the same size and much closer in noise/power (for desktop users), but should blow away the Atom in gaming.
OTOH, I assume most people don't have serious gaming in mind when they build a mini-ITX desktop. For just HTPC applications (including Blu-ray playback), the Atom looks like it does just fine.
Supposedly it will take up less hard drive space and memory, but I'll believe that when I see it.
I think it's safe to believe the part about less hard drive space, because Apple will save a lot of space with a very simple method. According to AppleInsider, Snow Leopard will trim the standard install size by "several gigabytes" (4GB according to Ars Technica) by only installing printer drivers for currently connected printers. Drivers for newly attached printers will install over the network and Software Update, so this works best with an always-on connection.
Personally, I'm blown away by the fact that printer drivers alone take up anything close a one gigabyte, let alone 4GB.
Even if they fail, I'm glad they attempted this cleanup, even if it just inspires Microsoft to do some similar scrubbing with Windows 8.
I think netbooks have done enough to "inspire" MS (I prefer the word "panic") to scrub their OS.
I somehow suspect these numbers (1% Linux market penetration, and such) are for systems that are shipped with the OS pre-installed by the manufacturer.
If you'd read the article (I'm not new here), then you'd have seen that the 1% estimate comes from web browsing statistics from a large number of sites, which counts only currently installed operating systems on web-browsing PCs. Of course, the selected web sites are mostly USA-based and don't count Linux browsers disguised as Windows, but it doesn't discriminate between bought/installed OSs.
Then I broke down and got a 360, wii, and ps3. My gaming itch is not scratched on a 50 inch screen from my lazy boy.
A much more tangible side effect? I'm off the upgrade mill. I don't have to spend money on new video cards every year, more ram, bigger processors, etc.
So you spent at least $850 on console hardware ($200 + $250 + $400) that's less powerful than a complete gaming PC that costs less than $500 (including case/PSU, not including OS). Of course, games/experiences differ between consoles and PCs, but current consoles don't have the power to play Crisis at 1900x1200 like today's $500 PC can. And upgrades nowadays only require a $100 CPU and $100 GPU only if you want to play at much higher quality/resolution than the consoles can offer.
I'm sure consoles work better for many people's needs/wants, but the "upgrade mill" is getting less expensive for those that don't require resolutions/quality that go way beyond consoles. Personally, I prefer a modest $600-$700 HTPC that can play most current games at around 720p.
I'd like to point out that XP (or prior) has every single one of those features except for:
Restoring window positions after a cascade/similar.
After a cascade in XP, right-click on an empty space of the taskbar. You should see an option to "Undo Cascade."
However, the new window management features (called "Aero Snaps" during the beta and described in a December article) are a bit more than what XP offers and are much easier to use for novices.
In Windows 7, you can tile two windows vertically ("half-maximize" two windows side-by-side) by simply dragging each window to the left/right sides of the screen. Restore them by dragging them off (or do the keyboard shortcut). To do the same in Windows XP, you need to control-click two buttons in the taskbar, right-click one of them, then select "Tile Vertically." There's no way to restore them easily in XP (that I know of).
Windows 7 also offers a way to easily maximize/restore a window vertically, which I think could be useful in this age of wider screens with less vertical resolution.
Windows XP has exactly three things that make it "better" than 2000: Fast user switching, good wireless support and terminal services (only in Pro). The first and the second are good for home use, the terminal services only for business use.
As long as we're including "home use," I think Windows XP is currently "way better" than Windows 2000 in application compatibility. Among the (mostly free) apps my Windows 2000 desktop cannot run (in their most recent versions):
iTunes, Quicktime, Windows Media Player, Foobar2000, Zune software
Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari
Picasa, Adobe Photoshop/Premiere Elements or CS, Adobe Lightroom, paint.net, Sony Vegas
Google Gears
Windows Live Essentials (Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Messenger, Writer, etc)
Silverlight 3
Netflix streaming
Windows Defender
Office 2007
Quickbooks/Quicken
I could go on and on if I wanted to waste more time...
For a long while Geocities was the only place hobbyists could spew their knowledge. Now it's all over the place. Hopefully the internet archive can hold on to some of those soon-to-be lost gems.
I just had to check (for fun) the archive for old versions of Anand's Hardware Tech Page. Unfortunately, the oldest archived Geocities page is just a notice that the site has moved to Anandtech.com.
The Lisa was a technical marvel - the gui itself (the first commercially released GUI) solved issues the Xerox guys hadn't fully figured out yet (for instance, you could drag and drop items on the desktop - the Star relied on context menus for this, and they added conveniences like the menu bar and trash can). The Star it was based on was never meant to see the light of day as a commercial machine - it was a tech demo.
You seem to be mixing up the histories of the Xerox Alto (the "tech demo" introduced in 1973) and the Xerox Star (commercially released in 1981, 2 years before the Lisa). The Lisa's menu bar, trash can, and other additions were important, but we shouldn't downplay the innovations the Star (and Alto) had years before the Lisa: e.g. desktop metaphor, WYSIWYG, icons, folders, mouse, ethernet networking, e-mail, file/print servers, etc.
The two biggest technical problems with the Lisa were the price tag ($10000) and it felt a bit slow.
The Star was even worse (in its initial price): $16,000 per unit and it wasn't really useful without a network of 2 or 3 Stars with a server ($50,000 to $100,000 per installation).
But not good when you have to type while others sleep. Some of us need the quiet keyboards or have them bashed over our heads at 2am.
ABS's M1 keyboard is a mechanical switch keyboard that provides the important tactile feedback, but supposedly does not produce those auditory clicks according to Tech Report's recent review.
I don't know how important the audible clicks are, but a quiet option exists.
Just yesterday, I read a review of the Samsung YP-P3 player and was pleasantly surprised to see FLAC support. I don't know about Samsung's other players, though.
Now, I would much prefer a window manager that could "lock" windows into some sort of tiled zone, so I can expand two windows to fill half my screen each
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're describing here, but can't you achieve this (in Windows 2000/XP) by selecting the two windows in the taskbar (holding down the 'Ctrl' button), right-clicking one of those taskbar buttons, then selecting "Tile Vertically"?
the Mac Pro is the only PC available today on the market with a Nehalem processor
I know you meant Xeon Nehalem, but Nehalem-based Xeon motherboards and processors have been shipping for some time already. Perhaps you meant "pre-built" PC, but I'd bet there's at least a few Slashdot readers who have built their own Nehalem-based Xeon workstations already.
In an update defined by new graphics chipsets that were build specifically to accelerate high definition video playback these geniuses are testing the processor performance.
If you are interested in some useful numbers, anandtech did some good competitive tests on the current generation of integrated graphics chipsets. No, these are not inside a Mac Mini, but it provides much more relevant information than this ridiculous article.
Those Anandtech high-def video benchmarks might be worthless for the Mac mini because, AFAIK, the OS X drivers have not yet enabled full hardware decode for MPEG-2, VC-1 and H.264 on the GPU. This had been a Windows-only feature for a long time and was just recently enabled in a Linux beta driver (NVIDIA binary).
The Linux driver looks like a good sign (for eventual OS X support), but high-bitrate 1080p H.264 playback will continue to be a CPU-hog on the Mac mini (with a whirring CPU fan) until the OS X driver gets full hardware decode support.
So? The existing Core 2 Xeons are identical to their consumer cousins. Is Nehalem different?
The platform (workstation vs desktop) is different, so I don't think it's "fair" to compare the price of a Mac Pro DP-capable workstation to a Core i7 desktop PC (which the original comment in this thread did).
Typical Core i7 systems have a single processor, support at most 16GB of non-ECC memory, has no PCIe x4 slots, limited RAID capabilities, single ethernet port, etc. It just doesn't compare to a dual-socket Xeon workstation.
Of course, I think it's ridiculous that Apple doesn't offer a single-processor desktop Mac that's not in an all-in-one form factor or uses laptop parts.
A Mac Mini looks to be a decent media center if you get a wireless keyboard+mouse and download HandBrake+VLC. A better AppleTV than the AppleTV, since it comes with a DVD player.
Except the Mac mini doesn't have an HDMI port, which cuts down on unnecessary cable clutter between the media center and home theater. The Apple TV has one, of course. All media centers (or "home theater PCs") should have HDMI.
Also, does anybody know if NVIDIA's PureVideo hardware acceleration (for high-def H.264 and WMV/VC-1) work in OS X yet? Linux didn't get support until November 2008 (works great, BTW).
Wasn't there one story where the family of an executive officer of the RIAA was accused of this and he pushed the company to let them off with a warning?
"Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman admitted that he was fairly certain that one or more of his children had downloaded music illegally, but despite this direct admission of guilt, no lawsuits are pending. Surprised? Bronfman insists that, after a stern talking-to, his children have suffered the full consequences of their actions. 'I explained to them what I believe is right, that the principle is that stealing music is stealing music. Frankly, right is right and wrong is wrong, particularly when a parent is talking to a child. A bright line around moral responsibility is very important. I can assure you they no longer do that.' I wonder if all of the people currently being sued/extorted can now just claim that they 'no longer do that.'"
The specs on the Dell are actually very awful, or very wrong (I'm guessing wrong). Directly from their site: Wide Viewing Angle (up to 89 degrees). What does that even mean, is it horizontal or vertical ? Even they don't use that notation on their monitors. 90 degrees means not even 45 degrees each side in the usual notation.
Are you too dense to figure out that 89 degrees times 2 equals 178 degrees? From the iMac's specs:
Typical viewing angle
20-inch models:
160 horizontal
160 vertical
24-inch model:
178 horizontal
178 vertical
Neither Apple nor Dell list panel technology in their iMac and XPS One specs, but it's obvious which ones are TN (20" models) and which are IPS or *VA (24" models).
Slashdot Mirror
I'll have to take issue with that one. I had a Powerbook from 2004 to about 2006, and a Macbook Pro from 2006 and ongoing, and in both cases the battery went to hell in less than two years. Maybe the new battery technology they're using improves this, I don't know, but I really am not inclined to trust them on this.
Apple's "new battery" page claims that "advanced chemistry and an innovative new charging method" will alllow "up to 1000 recharges before it reaches 80 percent of its original capacity -- nearly three times the lifespan of typical notebook batteries."
Having seen outlandish Apple claims in the past, I'm not incilned to trust them until someone actually recharges their MacBook Pro 1000 times and gets close to 80 percent of original capacity (and gets close to Apple's claimed 8-hour battery life in typical use).
eh? please don't misinform people about rates. The upgrade rates for existing AT&T customers (incl those who own an iPhone) are, with 2-year contract,
These are numbers i got from apple.com as I went through the upgrade process - I am an existing AT&T customer with an old (first gen) iPhone.
Don't misinform people by implying that your rates will apply to other existing AT&T customers. According to an Ars Technica article, AT&T will typically allow full subsidized pricing after about 18 months after buying their previously subsidized phone. Also, your first-gen iPhone was not subsidized.
Snow Leopard costs $29 to upgrade ($129 new). Windows 7 Home Premium: $260 (rumoured).
Wow, troll for making a valid point that this upgrade price is going to look seriously good in comparison to the price of Windows 7?
I still fail to see where the troll is, seriously.
I'm guessing it's where you compare Snow Leopard's $29 upgrade-from-Leopard price to your uncited, rumoured $260 price for Windows 7 Home Premium. You don't need to rediculously inflate the price of a Windows upgrade or compare a relatively small OS X update to a comparably large Windows update.
Upgrade prices for "home" versions of Windows are typically around $100. Also, Windows upgrade pricing eligibility applies to the two previous versions of Windows. In this case, Windows XP (released 2002) users are eligible for Windows 7 upgrade pricing. OS X Tiger (released 2005) users are not eligible for Snow Leopard's $29 upgrade price.
Also, the $29 upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard is more comparable to 2 free Windows Service Packs and some free API updates (e.g. DirectX, .NET Framework). The upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 is more comparable to a typical $129 upgrade between OS X point releases (Snow Leopard is much less than a typical point release). The upgrade from XP to Windows 7 (same upgrade price) is considerably bigger than a typcial OS X point release.
I'm hoping the moderators thought the GP was being "Funny," but modded the comment "Insightful" to help the GP's karma.
Cheap!?!?!? It's one of the most expensive cables out there now. And I am talking about non gold plated and non premium stuff.
Have you looked at stores that don't treat HDMI cables as a high-profit accessory that makes up for their low-profit HDTV's (e.g. Best Buy)? Monoprice's selection of "non-professional" (scroll down) HDMI cables seems reasonable to me (not much more than DVI).
For laughs, here's Best Buy's
Here's my search: http://images.google.cn/images?gbv=2&hl=zh-CN&sa=1&q=Tiananmen+Square+(massacre+OR+killing+OR+event)
I thought Windows 7 was everybody's pet name for Vista SP1.
no its Vista SP2
Vista SP2 was finished more than a week ago and Windows 7 will be finished in October at the earliest.
So this lame joke should be updated to "Windows 7 is Vista SP3" (minus all those features that are being added to Windows 7 but not added to Vista).
If power consumption doesn't matter to you, the AMD X2 7750 + 780G + 400w PSU is a much better performer.
Sure, if the size, silence and low power consumption are not important to you then you should not even consider a mini-ITX based system.
Replace the 95W CPU with a 35W Conroe-L CPU and the micro-ATX motherboard with a mini-ITX LGA775 GeForce 9300 motherboard, and you've got something that's the same size and much closer in noise/power (for desktop users), but should blow away the Atom in gaming.
OTOH, I assume most people don't have serious gaming in mind when they build a mini-ITX desktop. For just HTPC applications (including Blu-ray playback), the Atom looks like it does just fine.
Supposedly it will take up less hard drive space and memory, but I'll believe that when I see it.
I think it's safe to believe the part about less hard drive space, because Apple will save a lot of space with a very simple method. According to AppleInsider, Snow Leopard will trim the standard install size by "several gigabytes" (4GB according to Ars Technica) by only installing printer drivers for currently connected printers. Drivers for newly attached printers will install over the network and Software Update, so this works best with an always-on connection.
Personally, I'm blown away by the fact that printer drivers alone take up anything close a one gigabyte, let alone 4GB.
Even if they fail, I'm glad they attempted this cleanup, even if it just inspires Microsoft to do some similar scrubbing with Windows 8.
I think netbooks have done enough to "inspire" MS (I prefer the word "panic") to scrub their OS.
I somehow suspect these numbers (1% Linux market penetration, and such) are for systems that are shipped with the OS pre-installed by the manufacturer.
If you'd read the article (I'm not new here), then you'd have seen that the 1% estimate comes from web browsing statistics from a large number of sites, which counts only currently installed operating systems on web-browsing PCs. Of course, the selected web sites are mostly USA-based and don't count Linux browsers disguised as Windows, but it doesn't discriminate between bought/installed OSs.
Then I broke down and got a 360, wii, and ps3. My gaming itch is not scratched on a 50 inch screen from my lazy boy.
A much more tangible side effect? I'm off the upgrade mill. I don't have to spend money on new video cards every year, more ram, bigger processors, etc.
So you spent at least $850 on console hardware ($200 + $250 + $400) that's less powerful than a complete gaming PC that costs less than $500 (including case/PSU, not including OS). Of course, games/experiences differ between consoles and PCs, but current consoles don't have the power to play Crisis at 1900x1200 like today's $500 PC can. And upgrades nowadays only require a $100 CPU and $100 GPU only if you want to play at much higher quality/resolution than the consoles can offer.
I'm sure consoles work better for many people's needs/wants, but the "upgrade mill" is getting less expensive for those that don't require resolutions/quality that go way beyond consoles. Personally, I prefer a modest $600-$700 HTPC that can play most current games at around 720p.
I'd like to point out that XP (or prior) has every single one of those features except for:
Restoring window positions after a cascade/similar.
After a cascade in XP, right-click on an empty space of the taskbar. You should see an option to "Undo Cascade."
However, the new window management features (called "Aero Snaps" during the beta and described in a December article) are a bit more than what XP offers and are much easier to use for novices.
In Windows 7, you can tile two windows vertically ("half-maximize" two windows side-by-side) by simply dragging each window to the left/right sides of the screen. Restore them by dragging them off (or do the keyboard shortcut). To do the same in Windows XP, you need to control-click two buttons in the taskbar, right-click one of them, then select "Tile Vertically." There's no way to restore them easily in XP (that I know of).
Windows 7 also offers a way to easily maximize/restore a window vertically, which I think could be useful in this age of wider screens with less vertical resolution.
Windows XP has exactly three things that make it "better" than 2000: Fast user switching, good wireless support and terminal services (only in Pro). The first and the second are good for home use, the terminal services only for business use.
As long as we're including "home use," I think Windows XP is currently "way better" than Windows 2000 in application compatibility. Among the (mostly free) apps my Windows 2000 desktop cannot run (in their most recent versions):
I could go on and on if I wanted to waste more time...
For a long while Geocities was the only place hobbyists could spew their knowledge. Now it's all over the place. Hopefully the internet archive can hold on to some of those soon-to-be lost gems.
I just had to check (for fun) the archive for old versions of Anand's Hardware Tech Page. Unfortunately, the oldest archived Geocities page is just a notice that the site has moved to Anandtech.com.
The Lisa was a technical marvel - the gui itself (the first commercially released GUI) solved issues the Xerox guys hadn't fully figured out yet (for instance, you could drag and drop items on the desktop - the Star relied on context menus for this, and they added conveniences like the menu bar and trash can). The Star it was based on was never meant to see the light of day as a commercial machine - it was a tech demo.
You seem to be mixing up the histories of the Xerox Alto (the "tech demo" introduced in 1973) and the Xerox Star (commercially released in 1981, 2 years before the Lisa). The Lisa's menu bar, trash can, and other additions were important, but we shouldn't downplay the innovations the Star (and Alto) had years before the Lisa: e.g. desktop metaphor, WYSIWYG, icons, folders, mouse, ethernet networking, e-mail, file/print servers, etc.
The two biggest technical problems with the Lisa were the price tag ($10000) and it felt a bit slow.
The Star was even worse (in its initial price): $16,000 per unit and it wasn't really useful without a network of 2 or 3 Stars with a server ($50,000 to $100,000 per installation).
But not good when you have to type while others sleep. Some of us need the quiet keyboards or have them bashed over our heads at 2am.
ABS's M1 keyboard is a mechanical switch keyboard that provides the important tactile feedback, but supposedly does not produce those auditory clicks according to Tech Report's recent review.
I don't know how important the audible clicks are, but a quiet option exists.
Also, the FLAC SourceForge page lists some portable/handheld players with FLAC support, but it's obviously not exhaustive since no Samsung players are listed.
Now, I would much prefer a window manager that could "lock" windows into some sort of tiled zone, so I can expand two windows to fill half my screen each
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're describing here, but can't you achieve this (in Windows 2000/XP) by selecting the two windows in the taskbar (holding down the 'Ctrl' button), right-clicking one of those taskbar buttons, then selecting "Tile Vertically"?
the Mac Pro is the only PC available today on the market with a Nehalem processor
I know you meant Xeon Nehalem, but Nehalem-based Xeon motherboards and processors have been shipping for some time already. Perhaps you meant "pre-built" PC, but I'd bet there's at least a few Slashdot readers who have built their own Nehalem-based Xeon workstations already.
In an update defined by new graphics chipsets that were build specifically to accelerate high definition video playback these geniuses are testing the processor performance.
If you are interested in some useful numbers, anandtech did some good competitive tests on the current generation of integrated graphics chipsets. No, these are not inside a Mac Mini, but it provides much more relevant information than this ridiculous article.
Those Anandtech high-def video benchmarks might be worthless for the Mac mini because, AFAIK, the OS X drivers have not yet enabled full hardware decode for MPEG-2, VC-1 and H.264 on the GPU. This had been a Windows-only feature for a long time and was just recently enabled in a Linux beta driver (NVIDIA binary).
The Linux driver looks like a good sign (for eventual OS X support), but high-bitrate 1080p H.264 playback will continue to be a CPU-hog on the Mac mini (with a whirring CPU fan) until the OS X driver gets full hardware decode support.
So? The existing Core 2 Xeons are identical to their consumer cousins. Is Nehalem different?
The platform (workstation vs desktop) is different, so I don't think it's "fair" to compare the price of a Mac Pro DP-capable workstation to a Core i7 desktop PC (which the original comment in this thread did).
Typical Core i7 systems have a single processor, support at most 16GB of non-ECC memory, has no PCIe x4 slots, limited RAID capabilities, single ethernet port, etc. It just doesn't compare to a dual-socket Xeon workstation.
Of course, I think it's ridiculous that Apple doesn't offer a single-processor desktop Mac that's not in an all-in-one form factor or uses laptop parts.
A Mac Mini looks to be a decent media center if you get a wireless keyboard+mouse and download HandBrake+VLC. A better AppleTV than the AppleTV, since it comes with a DVD player.
Except the Mac mini doesn't have an HDMI port, which cuts down on unnecessary cable clutter between the media center and home theater. The Apple TV has one, of course. All media centers (or "home theater PCs") should have HDMI.
Also, does anybody know if NVIDIA's PureVideo hardware acceleration (for high-def H.264 and WMV/VC-1) work in OS X yet? Linux didn't get support until November 2008 (works great, BTW).
Sorry for the ficked up link: "Warner CEO Admits His Kids Stole Music"
Wasn't there one story where the family of an executive officer of the RIAA was accused of this and he pushed the company to let them off with a warning?
I guess this is the story you're thinking about: "Warner CEO Admits His Kids Stole Music".
The summary:
their consumer screens are all TN Film, and they make a point to say PVA or IPS when a screen uses those panel types, which they don't for the XP 24"
Apple doesn't either for their 20" (TN) and 24" (IPS) iMacs.
The specs on the Dell are actually very awful, or very wrong (I'm guessing wrong). Directly from their site: Wide Viewing Angle (up to 89 degrees). What does that even mean, is it horizontal or vertical ? Even they don't use that notation on their monitors. 90 degrees means not even 45 degrees each side in the usual notation.
Are you too dense to figure out that 89 degrees times 2 equals 178 degrees? From the iMac's specs:
160 horizontal
160 vertical
178 horizontal
178 vertical
Neither Apple nor Dell list panel technology in their iMac and XPS One specs, but it's obvious which ones are TN (20" models) and which are IPS or *VA (24" models).