If Memory-Tech and Toshiba have a working dual-layer DVD/HD-DVD disk, doesn't this mean it will also soon be possible to put HD-DVD on both layers? That would be 30 GB for dual-layer HD-DVD.
Blu-Ray starts out with 25 GB single layer and 50 GB for double...
HD-DVD used to have 2/3 the storage of Blu-Ray, now it will have 1/3 (1/12 if Blu-Ray delivers on 8 layer media)
Why are you comparing single-layer HD-DVD to dual-layer Blu-Ray? Dual-layer HD-DVD (30 GB) is 3/5 the storage of dual-layer Blu-Ray (50 GB). Is inexpensive dual-layer blue laser media even going to be available to movie studios next year?
I understand that Blu-Ray is capable of even more storage in the future (thinner layers), but isn't 30 GB enough for Hollywood movies in hi-def? I want a Blu-Ray burner for my next PC, but I don't care the movie studios use HD-DVD if 30 GB is enough.
The BBC only has only a tiny handfull of programs that I care to watch in a week and most of them are re-runs...
There are also to many bad programs behind each other so I just turn the TV off and remind myself to switch on at XX:XX. Except I forget because I am to deep into something else. End result? Even the programs I find worth watching I don't watch anymore. TV really needs to start to worry when I prefer not waking the cat over getting up for the remote.
It's nice to see an Insightful comment from Europe since TFA is about changing European TV-viewing habits. Your frustrating experiences with TV sounds similar to what we're experiencing in the USA, but I think TV can become more appealing to most people (especially in Europe) if networks (like BBC) show more HDTV content and if consumer electronics companies offer lower-cost HDTVs and DVRs.
As an American, I say "especially in Europe" because another BBC News article from September 2004 ("Europe lines up for TV innovation") seems to say that HDTV hardly exists in Europe today. For TV programs, HDTV offers video quality that cannot be downloaded via broadband in a reasonable amount of time. But the "killer app" for HDTV in Europe might be European football (American soccer). In the USA, American football broadcasts in HDTV have convinced many football freaks to buy HDTVs. In Europe, I predict most electronics stores will soon be showing European football demos on their HDTVs in anticipation of the 2006 World Cup.
Another BBC News article from June 2004 ("The digital home takes shape") seems to describe digital video recorders as an "American" technology and not widely used in Europe yet. A few weeks ago, a BBC News aricle about "the death of the VCR" in the UK didn't even mention DVRs as a reason for the VCR's phase-out. DVRs should mostly solve the problem of reminding ourselves and forgetting to watch or record a program. Heck, many DVR owners don't even know when their favourite programs are shown anymore. They just select their show on the DVR and watch, skip, delete, etc.
It always strikes me as spooky how a large corporations sees a profit problem, hires a PR agency giving it millions of dollars, whereas the PR agency does things such as write bogus reports from "independent" institutes saying whatever the company wanted (Linux was not written by Linus Torvalds, smoking tobacco is not bad for you, whatever...), as well as a media campaign which includes commercials
I think most television-watching people have seen the commercial featuring an eagle gasping and wheezing while flying through a polluted sky in 1970, then showing a present-day eagle soaring through a clear-blue sky "thanks in part to clean coal technologies." This commercial was created by Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC), a non-profit organization that appears to be a grassroots public-interest group.
In summary, this commercial is propaganda from the coal industry. ABEC, which tries to pass itself off as a grassroots public-interest group, has received virtually all of its funding from the coal industry. ABEC receives logistical support (staff and other resources) from the Center for Energy and Economic Development (CEED), a coal-industry trade group that has aggressively lobbied against limits on greenhouse-gas emissions, rejects "the theory of catastrophic global climate change," and takes credit for helping persuade Bush not to support the Kyoto Treaty on reducing emissions.
"Clean coal" is an industry buzz term for technologies that allow coal to be burned with fewer deadly emissions. (see article) The Sierra Club says these technologies focus almost exclusively on toxins such as sulfur dioxide and mercury, but don't address the more contentious matter of carbon dioxide.
If you haven't seen this misleading commercial, you can view it (QT, WMV) at ABEC's web site on this page: Featured Video
From the commercial:
"Thanks in part to clean coal technologies, our air quality has been improving. And by 2015, emissions from coal-based power plants will be 75 percent less than they were in 1970."
Bullshit?
From ABEC President Steve Miller:
"Don't believe the hype about America's environment getting worse. The truth is that our nation's air quality is improving dramatically... The Clean Air Act is working as advanced technologies make it possible to meet new and more stringent standards."
Thanks to "clean coal" technologies? Of course, the coal industry spent millions of dollars lobbying against the 1970 Clean Air Act. Also note that he doesn't mention carbon dioxide and global warming.
It's not only the hardware I'm going to miss, it's the servicing.
To me, IBM was the easy choice for Windows notebooks because of their excellent service/support. Instead of outsourcing their phone support overseas, IBM actually centralized their phone/e-mail support in Atlanta. This was a big reason why IBM notebooks ruled in PC Magazine's latest Reader Satisfaction Survey.
That survey showed a disturbing trend of declining service/support from almost every other big-name vendor. Can anyone suggest the next-best notebook vendors that provide decent service/support to home/small business users? I know Dell provides great corporate support, but their home/small business support has hit the skids.
A few early posts have praised Toshiba's support. Are they really any better than Dell, HP/Compaq, or Gateway?
I have a work-issued T40 (and a TiBook for comparison) and was startled to learn that this slow, clumsy boat anchor is apparently highly regarded in the laptop world.
Slow? The older Pentium M processor (400MHz bus, 1MB L2 cache) in an IBM T40 should be faster than any G4 processor in any Apple notebook.
If your not just bullshitting, then the T40 probably needs its memory upgraded from 256MB to 512MB. Enable your firewall, stop downloading/installing spyware, and don't run in Administrator mode all the time.
Far too often I'm trying to find a review (and not a "review" like off of Amazon.com) for a product so I'll search by model number. ... A way to filter out all online shops would be invaluable even if it was a bit difficult for Google to discern what was an online shop and what wasn't.
Including the word "article" as the first word in a Google search does a suprisingly good job of this. For some reason, most real product reviews have the word "article" on the page or in the web address, but most shopping sites don't. You don't even need to include the word "review."
For example, the first few pages of my Google search of "article dell dimension 4700" (no quotes in the search) lists mostly reviews, a few product release news articles, and only a few shopping sites.
From Microsoft's support page, that was just three clicks on easy-to-find links. I agree that Microsoft software can sometimes be a pain in the arse, but I think their support site and knowledge base are freakin' great.
On the other hand, I don't know why the heck this info is so hard to find in the local help files.
From that freakin' knowledge base article:
On the Tools menu, click Options.
On the Maintenance tab, click Store Folder.
Select the folder location, and then press CTRL+C to copy the location.
There's also the Shuttle K Series, which has a PCI slot and lets you choose your own monitor. At 28dB, it is a little less quiet than the new iMac (25dB).
You are correct in that Shuttle XPCs do use ICE.... ICE is a all contained liquid heat-pipe & not the traditional liquid cooling kit with pump
Not the newest Shuttle XPC (SB86i), which I think is the first PC built using the picoBTX standard. This new Shuttle XPC does not need the ICE liquid cooling heat pipe system because quiet cooling is built into the BTX standard. Slashdot covered the launch of Intel's BTX form factor last Monday (Intel's BTX Form Factor Launched Today).
I think the ICE cooling system is what made Shuttle's small PC's stand out from the competition, but the picoBTX standard will probably make it easy for competitors to make tiny, quiet PCs.
I'd like to see NVIDIA release a low-end chipset with integrated graphics that competes with Intel's DirectX 9 compatible GMA 900 graphics. Even with shared system and graphics memory, integrated GeForce 6200 graphics would smoke GMA 900. Plus, NVIDIA would probably include a PCI Express x16 slot, unlike Intel's low-cost 915GV and 910GL chipsets.
Unfortunately, like you said, it seems like NVIDIA dumped SoundStorm. Meanwhile, Intel added Intel HD Audio, which apparently encodes Dolby Digital 5.1 in real time.
Name another audio "solution" which is BUYABLE TODAY which does real time digital 5.1 encoding. DTS or DD, I don't care as my receiver does both, but I want 5.1 through a digital interface (coax or optical).
I'll give you a hint:
There are zero on the market. The only possible contender is that new intel pro-audio onboard thing, but NO ONE has plans to impliment it yet.
Dolby* Digital Live
This real-time interactive content encoder
allows 5.1 audio streams to be transported
over an optical connection to your digital
speakers or entertainment center.
Also:
Real-time 5.1 digital encoding: Send Dolby Digital 5.1 (AC3) encoded content to your digital
speakers or home theater over an optical connection.
Is this the feature you're looking for? If it is, then expect to see it implemented on many boards soon (Intel 925/915/910 chipsets). For now, note that the info page says: "Intel Audio Studio comes exclusively with Intel® Desktop Boards."
Along with the good software recommendations, a cheap (~$20) router with NAT for those with broadband. I can't believe ISP's still connect computers directly to the modem when installing broadband for the technically-challenged.
Of course, an ISP like Comcast will lease you a (wireless) router for $5 per month and set it up for $200 (2 users) or $300 (3-5 users). Ugh.
I know you're kidding, but have you seen the illustration of what Samsung's "thin" CRT will look like? It looks much easier to knock over and at about 100 lbs, I think it will incur more damage than a LCD. Looks pretty cool, though.
Never mind that the grandparent was talking about CRT vs LCD technology for televisions, not workstation monitors. Why are we bringing up these ultra-high resolutions when HDTV is 1920x1080 and 1280x720? We should be talking about 1920x1080 LCDs like Sharp's LC-45GX6U AQUOS or direct-view HDTV CRTs like Sony's KD-36XS955.
Then we can argue about dark scene detail, sharpness, color range/accuracy, fast-motion scenes, etc.
The AAC files take about half the space as MP3s and sound better. I didn't do a scientific study but on several songs with quiet passages the MP3 version sucks compared to AAC, and the MP3 was encoded at the max bit rate.
In the Multiformat at 128kbps public Listening Test (May 2004), iTunes AAC (4.26/5) "tied" with Lame MP3 (4.18/5). If you look at individual songs, iTunes did better on some songs and Lame did better on others.
In the MP3 at 128kbps public listening test (January 2004), Lame was the best MP3 encoder. iTunes's MP3 encoder was the worst, even worse than the much-maligned Fraunhofer encoder.
Use AAC if you want, but for chrissakes change your awful iTunes MP3 encoder to Lame. If you use OS X, here's a link: iTunes-LAME Encoder
Apple has the Holy Trinity of online music: Software (iTunes), Store (iTMS), Player (iPod). You're just not going to beat Apple until you come to the field with at least those three pieces.
Why does one company need to produce all three pieces? When there are several good competitors for each "piece," why won't the consumer choose a player/store/app that gives them more choice?
There are now several good players made by different companies and they are getting better every year. On the Windows platform, there are several music apps that many people prefer over iTunes (e.g. Quintessential, Media Jukebox, WinAmp, Windows Media Player). DRM music stores are getting better and more numerous.
Let's assume that there are or will be several good non-Apple players, music apps, and music stores. If a consumer likes to use Media Jukebox or Windows Media Player 10 to play/organize their music, why wouldn't he/she choose a good player that synchs with these programs? If that consumer wants to buy DRM'd music, why not choose a player that works with all of the good non-Apple music stores?
Maybe buyers don't want this choice. If a hardware company wants simplicity, they can just bundle Windows Media Player 10 and promote msn music. I would prefer to see the iPod support DRM'd WMA files and synch with the other popular music apps. I would prefer to see Apple license their DRM so iTMS songs can play on other players and apps.
MythTV is the first thought that came to my mind when I saw the AOpen B300 microBTX case and read the words "cool", "quiet", and "small". The case looks about the same size as an XBox and the motherboard has 2 PCI slots, 1 PCIe x1 slot, and 1 PCIe x16 slot.
A picoBTX case/motherboard would seem even better (about the size of a small DVD player), but I don't know if a good MythTV box can be build with only one PCIe x1 slot.
Has anyone heard any announcements about a PCIe x1 HDTV card? Now I'd like to get one before July 1st, 2005.
However all the refrence boards I've seen have fewer expansion and memory slots then the average ATX board.
The motherboard spec for "standard" BTX specifies "up to 7 add-in card slots." The reference boards we have been seeing have been microBTX ("up to 4 add-in card slots") and picoBTX ("up to 1").
In fact, the difference between picoBTX, microBTX, and standard BTX seems to be defined by the number of expansion slots. A previous Anandtech article has a nice illustration on this page: Three different BTX sizes
All three BTX sizes are the same length (10.5"), but their widths differ (8.0"-12.8") depending on how many PCI/PCIe slots are on the right edge of the motherboard. You can think of a picoBTX board as a standard BTX board with all but one of its PCI slots "chopped off."
I'm not convinced it is true. I went to a lecture given by an AMD engineer, and he said the processor rating really was based on the equivalent speed Intel product.
For more proof, just look at the processor ratings of AMD's Sempron processors. For example, the one Athlon64-based Sempron (Sempron 3100+) has the same clockspeed as the Athlon 64 2800+ (1.8GHz), but has half the cache (256K) and no 64-bit support. Why does an obviously slower processor have a higher processor rating? Answer: because Sempron is compared to Celeron. Athlon 64 is compared to Pentium 4.
The benchmark referenced in this article gives Intel a big break by not comparing the Athlon 64 in native 64 bit mode... 64 bit support makes a big difference in an increasing number of applications.
We should also note that Intel currently sells 64-bit Pentium 4 CPUs (EM64T) to system manufacturers and will sell them individually in Q1 2005. I'm not saying Intel's EM64T wouldn't get its clock cleaned by Athlon64, but we don't have to compare 32-bit Pentium 4 to 64-bit Athlon.
Another important fact - a socket 939 based motherboard purchased today should accept a dual core Athlon 64 in about a year.
Another fact - an LGA 775 based motherboard purchased today has PCI Express. Socket 939 motherboards with PCI Express (nForce 4) are supposed to be coming soon.
An LGA 775 based motherboard purchased today will accept a 64-bit Pentium 4 in Q1 2005 and might accept a dual-core Pentium 4 in about a year (Q3 2005). I say "might" because the first dual-core Pentium 4 CPUs will be Prescott-based with 800MHz FSB, which today's chipsets support. However, Anandtech's roadmap says dual-core P4s will be made for next generation's LGA 775 chipsets (Glennwood and Lakeport). But note that Dothan was supposed to work with the next generation Centrino chipset (which is delayed), but works fine with the older Centrino chipset.
Also, the pessimist in me thinks Intel might have set an unrealistic Q3 2005 release date just to counter AMD's dual-core announcements. On the other hand, Opteron and Athlon 64 had long delays before they were finally released. If I was a betting man, I'd bet on AMD being first with dual-core for the desktop.
I'm not trying to sound like an Intel fanboi. I'm just trying to be "fair and balanced" (I hate Fox News).
Don't mention Celeron. I don't know why Intel keep on releasing it... In today's market I just don't understand the need to have a low-end Celeron line.
They keep releasing Celerons because there is a large market for brand-new $400-$500 computers. Dell and HP can't build them without sub-$100 processors and matching low-end chipsets.
They give low-budget a new low.
According to another Anandtech article, today's Prescott-based Celerons (Celeron D) give surprisingly good performance for "low-budget" processors. The Celeron D is a huge improvement over the Northwood-based Celeron, which was hindered by its low cache (8k L1 cache, 128K L2) and resulting pipeline stalls. The Celeron D's increased cache and other architectural improvements have resulted in good performance for a CPU that starts at $66.50. Remember, buyers of sub-$500 PCs aren't expecting good Doom 3 performance.
What's even worse are the laptop Celerons, which perform like 486 chips relabeled.
Again, you aren't looking at the newest Celeron M processors, which are based on the Pentium M core. The Dothan-based Celeron M CPUs have 1MB L2 cache, 400MHz bus, high IPC, and very low power requirements. For moderately-priced thin-and-light notebooks with long battery life, I think the Celeron M is better than any mobile Athlon or G4 processor.
I'm not saying that Intel hasn't released some stinkers under their "Celeron" label. The Pentium 4-based Celerons sucked when they only had 128K of L2 cache, but now they have 256K and the Prescott core. Recent notebook Celerons had the same core as those sucky desktop Celerons, but now they use the highly-praised Pentium M core.
Two years ago, desktop and notebook Celerons did suck. But now, Dell offers a Celeron D desktop with PCI-Express (915G chipset) for $568. HP/Compaq sells a $599 notebook with a Dothan-based Celeron M. I think that's pretty good performance and technology for those prices.
comparable to System X's $5.8 million overall price, including the upgrade to Xserve G5s
Don't forget that this is a "one time deal" that no one else can get if they want to build an Apple-based supercomputer.
As this article states, the $5.8 million cost was calculated by adding a $600,000 upgrade cost to the $5.2 million cost of the original PowerMac-based System X. As Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan said in this article, the original System X cost $3.2 million for cluster hardware plus $2 million for facilities upgrades.
The $600,000 upgrade to System X included upgrading all 1100 PowerMacs to dual 2.3GHz Xserves, plus 50 additional nodes. Note that the fastest Xserves Apple sells to everyone else are only 2.0GHz, so System X got "extreme" versions of the Xserve.
A dual 2.0GHz Xserve "Cluster Node" starts at $2999 at the Apple Store. Since each node has 4GB RAM and the cheapest 4GB RAM upgrade costs $1450 at the Apple store, that makes it $4449 per node. According to this article, Small Tree's InfiniBand cards cost $1095 each, so that makes it $5544 per node (without cables). Therefore, Virginia Tech should have spent at least $277,200 for the additional 50 nodes.
That leaves at most $322,800 to upgrade the 1100 PowerMacs to the special 2.3GHz Xserves. That's about $245 per node, not including any additional costs I can't quantify like labor, additional hardware, and facilities upgrades (if needed).
No one else can buy 1100 dual 2.0GHz PowerMacs and expect to upgrade them all to dual 2.3GHz Xserves (with ECC memory) for only $245 per node (including labor). Comparing the cost/teraflop of System X with non-comparable government-funded, high-bandwidth supercomputers seems silly to me.
What if they do the same thing based on ethnicity? or noticable disability? or a myriad of other potential factors that go into stereotyping?
IANAL, but this would be illegal to include in their policy (ethnicity and disability). However, this happens already (unwritten policy or moronic employee) and I think Best Buy's new strategy of pigeonholing customers (and shunning "undesirable customers") will make it worse.
Shunning customers can be a delicate business... Earlier this year, Mr. Anderson apologized in writing to students at a Washington, D.C., school after employees at one store barred a group of black students while admitting a group of white students.
The WSJ article also says employees "use quick interviews to pigeonhole shoppers" and "receive hours of training in identifying desirable customers according to their shopping preferences and behavior." I've seen first-hand some awful Best Buy employees whose incompetance can't be explained by just poor training or poor management/supervision. It wouldn't surprise me if some of the more moronic employees skip the "quick interview" because they think they can identify "undesirable customers" by looking at them.
Every user's initial view of Star is the Desktop, which resembles the top of an office desk, together with surrounding furniture and equipment. It represents a working environment, where current projects and accessible resources reside.
"What you see is what you get" (or WYSIWYG) refers to the situation in which the display screen portrays an accurate rendition of the printed page.... WYSIWYG is a simplifying technique for document-creation systems. All composition is done
on the screen.... Figure 5: A Star document showing multicolumn text, graphics, and formulas. This is the way the document appears on the screen. It is also the way it will print (at higher resolution, of course).
* PDAs via Newton
Psion 3 was released in 1991. The Newton was released in 1993. I think the Psion 3 qualifies as a PDA since it included an application (AGENDA) that had a Calendar, diary, anniversaries, 100 todo lists, alarms and organiser.
Every user's initial view of Star is the Desktop, which resembles the top of an office desk, together with surrounding furniture and equipment. It represents a working environment, where current projects and accessible resources reside. On the screen (Figure 3) are displayed pictures of familiar office objects, such as documents, folders, file drawers, in-baskets, and out-baskets. These objects are displayed as small pictures, or icons.
Psion 1 was a digital diary, the Newton was a digital assistant.
Psion 3 was a digital assistant (including Calendar, diary, anniversaries, 100 todo lists, alarms and organiser) and was released in 1991. The Newton was released in 1993.
The poster was listing technologies, not that apple had invented outright, but that apple had taken a base inspiration and created a market defining product.
The poster was disagreeing to a post that said:
Apple is not known for doing things 'radically new', but more for
'Taking a good concept/idea that no-one managed to implement in a useful way, and then doing it right'
Many readers will think the poster was listing Apple inventions.
Slashdot Mirror
If Memory-Tech and Toshiba have a working dual-layer DVD/HD-DVD disk, doesn't this mean it will also soon be possible to put HD-DVD on both layers? That would be 30 GB for dual-layer HD-DVD.
Blu-Ray starts out with 25 GB single layer and 50 GB for double...
HD-DVD used to have 2/3 the storage of Blu-Ray, now it will have 1/3 (1/12 if Blu-Ray delivers on 8 layer media)
Why are you comparing single-layer HD-DVD to dual-layer Blu-Ray? Dual-layer HD-DVD (30 GB) is 3/5 the storage of dual-layer Blu-Ray (50 GB). Is inexpensive dual-layer blue laser media even going to be available to movie studios next year?
I understand that Blu-Ray is capable of even more storage in the future (thinner layers), but isn't 30 GB enough for Hollywood movies in hi-def? I want a Blu-Ray burner for my next PC, but I don't care the movie studios use HD-DVD if 30 GB is enough.
There are also to many bad programs behind each other so I just turn the TV off and remind myself to switch on at XX:XX. Except I forget because I am to deep into something else. End result? Even the programs I find worth watching I don't watch anymore. TV really needs to start to worry when I prefer not waking the cat over getting up for the remote.
It's nice to see an Insightful comment from Europe since TFA is about changing European TV-viewing habits. Your frustrating experiences with TV sounds similar to what we're experiencing in the USA, but I think TV can become more appealing to most people (especially in Europe) if networks (like BBC) show more HDTV content and if consumer electronics companies offer lower-cost HDTVs and DVRs.
As an American, I say "especially in Europe" because another BBC News article from September 2004 ("Europe lines up for TV innovation") seems to say that HDTV hardly exists in Europe today. For TV programs, HDTV offers video quality that cannot be downloaded via broadband in a reasonable amount of time. But the "killer app" for HDTV in Europe might be European football (American soccer). In the USA, American football broadcasts in HDTV have convinced many football freaks to buy HDTVs. In Europe, I predict most electronics stores will soon be showing European football demos on their HDTVs in anticipation of the 2006 World Cup.
Another BBC News article from June 2004 ("The digital home takes shape") seems to describe digital video recorders as an "American" technology and not widely used in Europe yet. A few weeks ago, a BBC News aricle about "the death of the VCR" in the UK didn't even mention DVRs as a reason for the VCR's phase-out. DVRs should mostly solve the problem of reminding ourselves and forgetting to watch or record a program. Heck, many DVR owners don't even know when their favourite programs are shown anymore. They just select their show on the DVR and watch, skip, delete, etc.
I think most television-watching people have seen the commercial featuring an eagle gasping and wheezing while flying through a polluted sky in 1970, then showing a present-day eagle soaring through a clear-blue sky "thanks in part to clean coal technologies." This commercial was created by Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC), a non-profit organization that appears to be a grassroots public-interest group.
It's all bullshit: "Spreading misleading messages"
In summary, this commercial is propaganda from the coal industry. ABEC, which tries to pass itself off as a grassroots public-interest group, has received virtually all of its funding from the coal industry. ABEC receives logistical support (staff and other resources) from the Center for Energy and Economic Development (CEED), a coal-industry trade group that has aggressively lobbied against limits on greenhouse-gas emissions, rejects "the theory of catastrophic global climate change," and takes credit for helping persuade Bush not to support the Kyoto Treaty on reducing emissions.
"Clean coal" is an industry buzz term for technologies that allow coal to be burned with fewer deadly emissions. (see article) The Sierra Club says these technologies focus almost exclusively on toxins such as sulfur dioxide and mercury, but don't address the more contentious matter of carbon dioxide.
If you haven't seen this misleading commercial, you can view it (QT, WMV) at ABEC's web site on this page: Featured Video
From the commercial:
Bullshit?From ABEC President Steve Miller:
Thanks to "clean coal" technologies? Of course, the coal industry spent millions of dollars lobbying against the 1970 Clean Air Act. Also note that he doesn't mention carbon dioxide and global warming.To me, IBM was the easy choice for Windows notebooks because of their excellent service/support. Instead of outsourcing their phone support overseas, IBM actually centralized their phone/e-mail support in Atlanta. This was a big reason why IBM notebooks ruled in PC Magazine's latest Reader Satisfaction Survey.
That survey showed a disturbing trend of declining service/support from almost every other big-name vendor. Can anyone suggest the next-best notebook vendors that provide decent service/support to home/small business users? I know Dell provides great corporate support, but their home/small business support has hit the skids.
A few early posts have praised Toshiba's support. Are they really any better than Dell, HP/Compaq, or Gateway?
Slow? The older Pentium M processor (400MHz bus, 1MB L2 cache) in an IBM T40 should be faster than any G4 processor in any Apple notebook.
If your not just bullshitting, then the T40 probably needs its memory upgraded from 256MB to 512MB. Enable your firewall, stop downloading/installing spyware, and don't run in Administrator mode all the time.
...
A way to filter out all online shops would be invaluable even if it was a bit difficult for Google to discern what was an online shop and what wasn't.
Including the word "article" as the first word in a Google search does a suprisingly good job of this. For some reason, most real product reviews have the word "article" on the page or in the web address, but most shopping sites don't. You don't even need to include the word "review."
For example, the first few pages of my Google search of "article dell dimension 4700" (no quotes in the search) lists mostly reviews, a few product release news articles, and only a few shopping sites.
I found this information very easily on Microsoft's web site. From the left side of Microsoft's home page, I clicked the "Support" link, then the "Outlook Express" link, then the "Backup" link. The first How-to article at the top of the "Backup" page is "OLEXP: How to Back Up and Recover Outlook Express Data."
From Microsoft's support page, that was just three clicks on easy-to-find links. I agree that Microsoft software can sometimes be a pain in the arse, but I think their support site and knowledge base are freakin' great.
On the other hand, I don't know why the heck this info is so hard to find in the local help files.
From that freakin' knowledge base article:
There's also the Shuttle K Series, which has a PCI slot and lets you choose your own monitor. At 28dB, it is a little less quiet than the new iMac (25dB).
Not the newest Shuttle XPC (SB86i), which I think is the first PC built using the picoBTX standard. This new Shuttle XPC does not need the ICE liquid cooling heat pipe system because quiet cooling is built into the BTX standard. Slashdot covered the launch of Intel's BTX form factor last Monday (Intel's BTX Form Factor Launched Today).
I think the ICE cooling system is what made Shuttle's small PC's stand out from the competition, but the picoBTX standard will probably make it easy for competitors to make tiny, quiet PCs.
- SLI graphics (2 graphics cards powering 1 monitor)
- 3Gb/s SATA (Intel uses 1.5Gb/s SATA)
- NVIDIA ActiveArmor (firewall)
I'd like to see NVIDIA release a low-end chipset with integrated graphics that competes with Intel's DirectX 9 compatible GMA 900 graphics. Even with shared system and graphics memory, integrated GeForce 6200 graphics would smoke GMA 900. Plus, NVIDIA would probably include a PCI Express x16 slot, unlike Intel's low-cost 915GV and 910GL chipsets.Unfortunately, like you said, it seems like NVIDIA dumped SoundStorm. Meanwhile, Intel added Intel HD Audio, which apparently encodes Dolby Digital 5.1 in real time.
I'll give you a hint: There are zero on the market. The only possible contender is that new intel pro-audio onboard thing, but NO ONE has plans to impliment it yet.
I'm not sure if this is what you're referring to, but from the Product Brief (pdf) on the Intel Audio Studio page:
Also: Is this the feature you're looking for? If it is, then expect to see it implemented on many boards soon (Intel 925/915/910 chipsets). For now, note that the info page says: "Intel Audio Studio comes exclusively with Intel® Desktop Boards."Of course, an ISP like Comcast will lease you a (wireless) router for $5 per month and set it up for $200 (2 users) or $300 (3-5 users). Ugh.
Never mind that the grandparent was talking about CRT vs LCD technology for televisions, not workstation monitors. Why are we bringing up these ultra-high resolutions when HDTV is 1920x1080 and 1280x720? We should be talking about 1920x1080 LCDs like Sharp's LC-45GX6U AQUOS or direct-view HDTV CRTs like Sony's KD-36XS955.
Then we can argue about dark scene detail, sharpness, color range/accuracy, fast-motion scenes, etc.
In the Multiformat at 128kbps public Listening Test (May 2004), iTunes AAC (4.26/5) "tied" with Lame MP3 (4.18/5). If you look at individual songs, iTunes did better on some songs and Lame did better on others.
In the MP3 at 128kbps public listening test (January 2004), Lame was the best MP3 encoder. iTunes's MP3 encoder was the worst, even worse than the much-maligned Fraunhofer encoder.
Use AAC if you want, but for chrissakes change your awful iTunes MP3 encoder to Lame. If you use OS X, here's a link: iTunes-LAME Encoder
There are now several good players made by different companies and they are getting better every year. On the Windows platform, there are several music apps that many people prefer over iTunes (e.g. Quintessential, Media Jukebox, WinAmp, Windows Media Player). DRM music stores are getting better and more numerous.
Let's assume that there are or will be several good non-Apple players, music apps, and music stores. If a consumer likes to use Media Jukebox or Windows Media Player 10 to play/organize their music, why wouldn't he/she choose a good player that synchs with these programs? If that consumer wants to buy DRM'd music, why not choose a player that works with all of the good non-Apple music stores?
Maybe buyers don't want this choice. If a hardware company wants simplicity, they can just bundle Windows Media Player 10 and promote msn music. I would prefer to see the iPod support DRM'd WMA files and synch with the other popular music apps. I would prefer to see Apple license their DRM so iTMS songs can play on other players and apps.
A picoBTX case/motherboard would seem even better (about the size of a small DVD player), but I don't know if a good MythTV box can be build with only one PCIe x1 slot.
Has anyone heard any announcements about a PCIe x1 HDTV card? Now I'd like to get one before July 1st, 2005.
In fact, the difference between picoBTX, microBTX, and standard BTX seems to be defined by the number of expansion slots. A previous Anandtech article has a nice illustration on this page: Three different BTX sizes
All three BTX sizes are the same length (10.5"), but their widths differ (8.0"-12.8") depending on how many PCI/PCIe slots are on the right edge of the motherboard. You can think of a picoBTX board as a standard BTX board with all but one of its PCI slots "chopped off."
An LGA 775 based motherboard purchased today will accept a 64-bit Pentium 4 in Q1 2005 and might accept a dual-core Pentium 4 in about a year (Q3 2005). I say "might" because the first dual-core Pentium 4 CPUs will be Prescott-based with 800MHz FSB, which today's chipsets support. However, Anandtech's roadmap says dual-core P4s will be made for next generation's LGA 775 chipsets (Glennwood and Lakeport). But note that Dothan was supposed to work with the next generation Centrino chipset (which is delayed), but works fine with the older Centrino chipset.
Also, the pessimist in me thinks Intel might have set an unrealistic Q3 2005 release date just to counter AMD's dual-core announcements. On the other hand, Opteron and Athlon 64 had long delays before they were finally released. If I was a betting man, I'd bet on AMD being first with dual-core for the desktop.
I'm not trying to sound like an Intel fanboi. I'm just trying to be "fair and balanced" (I hate Fox News).
I'm not saying that Intel hasn't released some stinkers under their "Celeron" label. The Pentium 4-based Celerons sucked when they only had 128K of L2 cache, but now they have 256K and the Prescott core. Recent notebook Celerons had the same core as those sucky desktop Celerons, but now they use the highly-praised Pentium M core.
Two years ago, desktop and notebook Celerons did suck. But now, Dell offers a Celeron D desktop with PCI-Express (915G chipset) for $568. HP/Compaq sells a $599 notebook with a Dothan-based Celeron M. I think that's pretty good performance and technology for those prices.
Don't forget that this is a "one time deal" that no one else can get if they want to build an Apple-based supercomputer.
As this article states, the $5.8 million cost was calculated by adding a $600,000 upgrade cost to the $5.2 million cost of the original PowerMac-based System X. As Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan said in this article, the original System X cost $3.2 million for cluster hardware plus $2 million for facilities upgrades.
The $600,000 upgrade to System X included upgrading all 1100 PowerMacs to dual 2.3GHz Xserves, plus 50 additional nodes. Note that the fastest Xserves Apple sells to everyone else are only 2.0GHz, so System X got "extreme" versions of the Xserve.
A dual 2.0GHz Xserve "Cluster Node" starts at $2999 at the Apple Store. Since each node has 4GB RAM and the cheapest 4GB RAM upgrade costs $1450 at the Apple store, that makes it $4449 per node. According to this article, Small Tree's InfiniBand cards cost $1095 each, so that makes it $5544 per node (without cables). Therefore, Virginia Tech should have spent at least $277,200 for the additional 50 nodes.
That leaves at most $322,800 to upgrade the 1100 PowerMacs to the special 2.3GHz Xserves. That's about $245 per node, not including any additional costs I can't quantify like labor, additional hardware, and facilities upgrades (if needed).
No one else can buy 1100 dual 2.0GHz PowerMacs and expect to upgrade them all to dual 2.3GHz Xserves (with ECC memory) for only $245 per node (including labor). Comparing the cost/teraflop of System X with non-comparable government-funded, high-bandwidth supercomputers seems silly to me.
IANAL, but this would be illegal to include in their policy (ethnicity and disability). However, this happens already (unwritten policy or moronic employee) and I think Best Buy's new strategy of pigeonholing customers (and shunning "undesirable customers") will make it worse.
In case you didn't read the related Wall Street Journal article:
The WSJ article also says employees "use quick interviews to pigeonhole shoppers" and "receive hours of training in identifying desirable customers according to their shopping preferences and behavior." I've seen first-hand some awful Best Buy employees whose incompetance can't be explained by just poor training or poor management/supervision. It wouldn't surprise me if some of the more moronic employees skip the "quick interview" because they think they can identify "undesirable customers" by looking at them.Xerox Star was announced in 1981. Apple Lisa was announced in 1983. From "The Star user interface: an overview" (1982):
* WYSIWYG publishing with a laser printerFigure 5 from "Designing the Star User Interface" (Byte, 1982) looks like WYSIWYG publishing to me. From that article:
* PDAs via NewtonPsion 3 was released in 1991. The Newton was released in 1993. I think the Psion 3 qualifies as a PDA since it included an application (AGENDA) that had a Calendar, diary, anniversaries, 100 todo lists, alarms and organiser.
The Xerox Star was announced in April 1981. The Apple Lisa was announced in January 1983. From "The Star user interface: an overview" (1982):
Psion 1 was a digital diary, the Newton was a digital assistant.Psion 3 was a digital assistant (including Calendar, diary, anniversaries, 100 todo lists, alarms and organiser) and was released in 1991. The Newton was released in 1993.
The poster was listing technologies, not that apple had invented outright, but that apple had taken a base inspiration and created a market defining product.
The poster was disagreeing to a post that said:
Many readers will think the poster was listing Apple inventions.