Jumping off point indeed. They stock virtually all of VIA's mini-ITX parts. From what I read in this Tom's Hardware Mini-ITX roundup, I think that the newer C3 hardware should work just fine. I'm a bit concerned that the older stuff would have a hard time meeting my customer's needs. DVD playback is a kind of baseline for required performance IMO.
I think I'll make a SP 130000 based system my next project. If the dollars and cents work out, this may find its way into my inventory.
Any chance of getting some part numbers or manufacturers for that system?
The need for cooler running desktops has surpassed the need for faster desktops in the case of most of my customers. They like to browse the internet, write email, and play bridge online, but rarely render anything in 3D, encode much media, or play any games. They'd rather stuff the computer in a cabinet and not have to stare at it.
In the latter part of last year, we replaced three Dells that cooked themselves inside a cabinet, and have at least three more where the customer complains of frequent crashes. We're almost certain that heat is the issue. All Dell will do is send us new case fans.
We've tried cutting vent holes in the desks too. Short of an active fan based ventilation system, it appears that a fast system is not suited for life inside an enclosed cabinet. Enter the need for something not quite as fast, but cooler and quieter.
But it didn't really come out ahead in overall performance. Plus it costs almost $70 more than the Pentium M it was compared to.
There's a lot of AMD pole smoking going on in the comments and it's starting to make me nauseous. I love AMD's desktop processors, but I'm in no way a brand loyalist. I can't stand the thought of buying an inferior product based on brand. The Pentium M still comes away with a lead in this test when you factor in the cost difference and power consumption.
It has never been advisable to run a bottom vented laptop on a plush/cloth surface that could restrict the flow of air to the vents. What happens if you cover all the holes in your PC case? Eventually it will overheat.
My Pentium M laptop rarely has heat issues, but I do have several customers with Pentium 4 based laptops that will char your thighs. Ouch.
For that matter, their entire business model is a "Monopoly(TM)". The iTunes/iPod model isn't much different from the OSX/iMac/PowerMac/iBook/... model. Apple doesn't specifically make provisions for installing other operating systems on the hardware they sell, and you can't easily install their operating system on other hardware.
I've removed Copernic from several of my customer's PCs after complaints of slowdowns and crashes on startup. It might just be a side effect of these types of products (Desktop Search), but based on my experience, you may encounter performance issues.
Isn't this just the catharsis argument? One study's opinion:
"Catharsis theory is elegant and highly plausible, but it is false. It justifies and perpetuates the myth that viewing violence is healthy and beneficial, when in fact viewing violence is unhealthy and detrimental. After reviewing the scientific research, Carol Tavris (1988) concluded, 'It is time to put a bullet, once and for all, through the heart of the catharsis hypothesis. The belief that observing violence (or `ventilating it`) gets rid of hostilities has virtually never been supported by research.'"
I'm not saying I'm happy with their provisions, but I'm also thinking that attempting to sue them over these particular greivances may be a bit optimistic.
"Most folks aren't smart enough to realize that if they switched to Linux, they wouldn't have to pay for upgrades. However, more importantly, they don't realize that they could hold onto their machines a while longer because the newer versions of Linux rarely push you off of your current hardware onto the latest and greatest."
And apparently you're not smart enough to realize that computer hardware is much, much cheaper than man hours.
Knowledge worker salary: $27k-$45k per year Brand new computer: $1200
Take the median of those incomes, $36k/year, and look at what percentage a new computer upgrade costs. It works out to around 3%.
And about the 10 year old hardware. Give me a break. We'll benchmark your 10 year old GIMP workstation against my pretty basic Athlon XP-M 2500 workstation and see what the percentage improvment is. Now, apply that to worker man hours and the math will definitely come out in my favor. Being cheap can be a detriment. Recognizing when it makes sense to upgrade to new hardware is a business decision, not a geek decision.
Basically what you get into is a TCO argument. We all know that there are two camps, but to say one camp is not "smart enough to realize" just because they won't yeild to the other's view, is an incredible display of hubris.
I wonder what percentage of laptops sold today have a dedicated DirectX 9 capable video card. Most are using integrated graphics. I just bought a $1200 laptop that has decent specs (1.73 GHz Banias, 512MB 80GB, USB2&Firewire), but dedicated video wasn't on the list of things I could get in that price range.
If they were in the news more for finding serial killers and recovering kidnapped children than they were for using the PATRIOTACT, then perhaps. There is a use for an FBI, but not this one.
Well, if news outlets felt that finding serial killers and recovering kidnapped children made good news, I'm sure we'd see more of it. The FBI does these things daily, it's part of their job. I see this recent "news" as the culmination of recent events such as the NSA wiretaps, Bush's open defense of his actions in the recent state of the address, and (loosely) the recent Google stand against requests for records.
A librarian refusing to turn over computers to officials without a warrant isn't news, it's the proper execution of civil liberty protection. I won't complain too loudly though, because I believe execution of these rights is to be encouraged.
Do they matter? What the hell *matters* at a GAMING conference? Nothing, in the world-peace manner of the term. What's this world coming to when a man can't openly and honestly admit to, and endulge in, being a pig?
A lot of my customers are screaming for the same. One of my personal predictions for this year is that we'll see a shift from bigger, faster, more to moderation, cool, and quiet. All my customers want to put their computer in a cabinet and close the door. You simply cannot do that with modern PCs. The ambient temperature inside the cabinet elevates until the PC's cooling mechanisms can't operate as intended. Lockups and crashes follow.
At one point I was building PCs based on the 45W Athlon Mobile series of CPUs because you could drop them right into a standard nForce based motherboard, but supplies are no longer readily available. What is needed is a solid desktop platform for the Pentium M and Turion, or at least a desktop counterpart to the this type of processor.
Business productivity apps are more demanding of system memory than they are CPU. A PIII 1 GHz with a gig of RAM will seem more responsive than a P4 2.8 GHz running 256 MB of RAM, yet bargain systems, like Dell's "$299 special", ship with an overblown processor and inadequate RAM (256 MB). Chill with the processor speeds and make with the efficiency.
If you go with SATA 150, make sure that the drives and the controller support NCQ. This is incredibly important for a server. If you want to split the difference between SATA and SCSI, go SATAII with a PCIx 64-bit or PCIe RAID card with expandable on-board cache of around 128MB.
You could not be more correct. The goal of these offers is not for you to understand, it is for you to respond. They rely on something they call "breakage" to remain low enough to stay profitable. Breakage is when someone accepts an offer, then actually discovers what they've done and calls to cancel.
I remember this one package that really bugged me. The package looked a lot like one of the mailers you receive when you bounce a check. Inside is a form with "DID YOUR CREDIT CARDS ARRIVE SAFELY?" in big, bold print with a signature line below. Beneath the signature line is a paragraph of copy that said (paraphrased), "Ok, that's great, here's the real offer." When the recipient signed and returned the form, they were enrolled in the program.
The condition of the mail pieces that make it out the door are the result of an internal battle between what the lawyers say they can get away with and the slop that the marketing department puts together. If marketing could legally get away with enclosing fraudulent million dollar checks to get you to sign up, they would.
Is literacy a measure of how well we decipher deceptive verbage?
Exactly what I was thinking, only not exactly. Har har.
I was thinking that more cores would be more beneficial than two really hot, really fast cores. He could have purchased two dual-core Athlon64 X2 3800 processors, overclocked them a bit, and still have a cooler system that will have four cores to dedicate to all that content.
I don't care so much about new features, overall improvements to the OS, or even upgrade paths/incentives as much as I just want to avoid having to install 50+ updates and three reboots after a clean WinXP SP2 install. Any word on whether they'll offer a patch roll-up, or anything of that sort?
IMO, it would be really nice if MS released a quarterly roll-up package that encompased all patches since their last service pack release.
Slashdot Mirror
Jumping off point indeed. They stock virtually all of VIA's mini-ITX parts. From what I read in this Tom's Hardware Mini-ITX roundup, I think that the newer C3 hardware should work just fine. I'm a bit concerned that the older stuff would have a hard time meeting my customer's needs. DVD playback is a kind of baseline for required performance IMO.
I think I'll make a SP 130000 based system my next project. If the dollars and cents work out, this may find its way into my inventory.
Any chance of getting some part numbers or manufacturers for that system?
The need for cooler running desktops has surpassed the need for faster desktops in the case of most of my customers. They like to browse the internet, write email, and play bridge online, but rarely render anything in 3D, encode much media, or play any games. They'd rather stuff the computer in a cabinet and not have to stare at it.
In the latter part of last year, we replaced three Dells that cooked themselves inside a cabinet, and have at least three more where the customer complains of frequent crashes. We're almost certain that heat is the issue. All Dell will do is send us new case fans.
We've tried cutting vent holes in the desks too. Short of an active fan based ventilation system, it appears that a fast system is not suited for life inside an enclosed cabinet. Enter the need for something not quite as fast, but cooler and quieter.
The submitter spells out World of Warcraft in the title, but uses an acronym for GM? WoW... I mean, wow.
But it didn't really come out ahead in overall performance. Plus it costs almost $70 more than the Pentium M it was compared to.
There's a lot of AMD pole smoking going on in the comments and it's starting to make me nauseous. I love AMD's desktop processors, but I'm in no way a brand loyalist. I can't stand the thought of buying an inferior product based on brand. The Pentium M still comes away with a lead in this test when you factor in the cost difference and power consumption.
It has never been advisable to run a bottom vented laptop on a plush/cloth surface that could restrict the flow of air to the vents. What happens if you cover all the holes in your PC case? Eventually it will overheat.
My Pentium M laptop rarely has heat issues, but I do have several customers with Pentium 4 based laptops that will char your thighs. Ouch.
My SMT5600 has something called "flight mode". This turns off all radio systems, but still allows you to use the phones other features.
For that matter, their entire business model is a "Monopoly(TM)". The iTunes/iPod model isn't much different from the OSX/iMac/PowerMac/iBook/... model. Apple doesn't specifically make provisions for installing other operating systems on the hardware they sell, and you can't easily install their operating system on other hardware.
I've removed Copernic from several of my customer's PCs after complaints of slowdowns and crashes on startup. It might just be a side effect of these types of products (Desktop Search), but based on my experience, you may encounter performance issues.
Where do I sign up!
and I wasn't considered an "early adopter" amongst my friends at the time.
In other words, I agree.
Isn't this just the catharsis argument? One study's opinion:
r sis-theory-and-media-effects-eci-01.html
"Catharsis theory is elegant and highly plausible, but it is false. It justifies and perpetuates the myth that viewing violence is healthy and beneficial, when in fact viewing violence is unhealthy and detrimental. After reviewing the scientific research, Carol Tavris (1988) concluded, 'It is time to put a bullet, once and for all, through the heart of the catharsis hypothesis. The belief that observing violence (or `ventilating it`) gets rid of hostilities has virtually never been supported by research.'"
http://www.bookrags.com/other/communication/catha
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,69946-0.htm l
Lego brought in top level hobbyists to develop the new Mindstorms NXT kit. Brilliant move IMO.
Here's looking forward to cardboard SUVs made from bamboo fiber and hog spit!!
For example, Bellsouth DSL provides plenty of description here:
Bellsouth FastAccess DSL - Legal Page
I'm not saying I'm happy with their provisions, but I'm also thinking that attempting to sue them over these particular greivances may be a bit optimistic.
"Most folks aren't smart enough to realize that if they switched to Linux, they wouldn't have to pay for upgrades. However, more importantly, they don't realize that they could hold onto their machines a while longer because the newer versions of Linux rarely push you off of your current hardware onto the latest and greatest."
And apparently you're not smart enough to realize that computer hardware is much, much cheaper than man hours.
Knowledge worker salary: $27k-$45k per year
Brand new computer: $1200
Take the median of those incomes, $36k/year, and look at what percentage a new computer upgrade costs. It works out to around 3%.
And about the 10 year old hardware. Give me a break. We'll benchmark your 10 year old GIMP workstation against my pretty basic Athlon XP-M 2500 workstation and see what the percentage improvment is. Now, apply that to worker man hours and the math will definitely come out in my favor. Being cheap can be a detriment. Recognizing when it makes sense to upgrade to new hardware is a business decision, not a geek decision.
Basically what you get into is a TCO argument. We all know that there are two camps, but to say one camp is not "smart enough to realize" just because they won't yeild to the other's view, is an incredible display of hubris.
Every body has at least one!
Because surely, standing on the side of the road wailing on your car with a hammer is an effective means of avoiding pursuit.
I wonder what percentage of laptops sold today have a dedicated DirectX 9 capable video card. Most are using integrated graphics. I just bought a $1200 laptop that has decent specs (1.73 GHz Banias, 512MB 80GB, USB2&Firewire), but dedicated video wasn't on the list of things I could get in that price range.
If they were in the news more for finding serial killers and recovering kidnapped children than they were for using the PATRIOTACT, then perhaps. There is a use for an FBI, but not this one.
Well, if news outlets felt that finding serial killers and recovering kidnapped children made good news, I'm sure we'd see more of it. The FBI does these things daily, it's part of their job. I see this recent "news" as the culmination of recent events such as the NSA wiretaps, Bush's open defense of his actions in the recent state of the address, and (loosely) the recent Google stand against requests for records.
A librarian refusing to turn over computers to officials without a warrant isn't news, it's the proper execution of civil liberty protection. I won't complain too loudly though, because I believe execution of these rights is to be encouraged.
Do they matter? What the hell *matters* at a GAMING conference? Nothing, in the world-peace manner of the term. What's this world coming to when a man can't openly and honestly admit to, and endulge in, being a pig?
A lot of my customers are screaming for the same. One of my personal predictions for this year is that we'll see a shift from bigger, faster, more to moderation, cool, and quiet. All my customers want to put their computer in a cabinet and close the door. You simply cannot do that with modern PCs. The ambient temperature inside the cabinet elevates until the PC's cooling mechanisms can't operate as intended. Lockups and crashes follow.
At one point I was building PCs based on the 45W Athlon Mobile series of CPUs because you could drop them right into a standard nForce based motherboard, but supplies are no longer readily available. What is needed is a solid desktop platform for the Pentium M and Turion, or at least a desktop counterpart to the this type of processor.
Business productivity apps are more demanding of system memory than they are CPU. A PIII 1 GHz with a gig of RAM will seem more responsive than a P4 2.8 GHz running 256 MB of RAM, yet bargain systems, like Dell's "$299 special", ship with an overblown processor and inadequate RAM (256 MB). Chill with the processor speeds and make with the efficiency.
If you go with SATA 150, make sure that the drives and the controller support NCQ. This is incredibly important for a server. If you want to split the difference between SATA and SCSI, go SATAII with a PCIx 64-bit or PCIe RAID card with expandable on-board cache of around 128MB.
SCSI what?
You could not be more correct. The goal of these offers is not for you to understand, it is for you to respond. They rely on something they call "breakage" to remain low enough to stay profitable. Breakage is when someone accepts an offer, then actually discovers what they've done and calls to cancel.
I remember this one package that really bugged me. The package looked a lot like one of the mailers you receive when you bounce a check. Inside is a form with "DID YOUR CREDIT CARDS ARRIVE SAFELY?" in big, bold print with a signature line below. Beneath the signature line is a paragraph of copy that said (paraphrased), "Ok, that's great, here's the real offer." When the recipient signed and returned the form, they were enrolled in the program.
The condition of the mail pieces that make it out the door are the result of an internal battle between what the lawyers say they can get away with and the slop that the marketing department puts together. If marketing could legally get away with enclosing fraudulent million dollar checks to get you to sign up, they would.
Is literacy a measure of how well we decipher deceptive verbage?
Exactly what I was thinking, only not exactly. Har har.
I was thinking that more cores would be more beneficial than two really hot, really fast cores. He could have purchased two dual-core Athlon64 X2 3800 processors, overclocked them a bit, and still have a cooler system that will have four cores to dedicate to all that content.
I don't care so much about new features, overall improvements to the OS, or even upgrade paths/incentives as much as I just want to avoid having to install 50+ updates and three reboots after a clean WinXP SP2 install. Any word on whether they'll offer a patch roll-up, or anything of that sort?
IMO, it would be really nice if MS released a quarterly roll-up package that encompased all patches since their last service pack release.