I agree, 100%. It makes LESS sense to run some form of Windows on your laptop these days, especially with Windows XP and Windows 2000. The hard drive thrashing associated with these two versions of Windows doesn't help with your battery life, and while the networking systems are vastly improved over Windows 98SE, they still leave a lot to be desired.
I just bought a Sony VAIO FXA36 laptop which I have dual booting between Windows 2000 Pro and Linux. I see up to an extra half an hour of battery life with Linux doing simple things like running Mozilla and StarOffice.
I was very tempted to buy a laptop from Apple, but decided to stick with x86 because that's what I know. That, and the price tags were too high.
Yup... Holidays are a great time to do upgrades when the staff/users are on extended vacations. I'm doing two workstation upgrades this week, actually.
Even when you're at work during the holidays, it doesn't feel like it. Most of the people are out of town, and those who are there aren't really there to work like they normally do, so it's a lot of fun.
I'm going to head into work tonight to switch some tapes for the nightly backup. I can't wait until we get our auto-changer!
Other than that and making sure the machines are all up, I don't do much over the holidays. I don't mind working, though, as long as there's enough time to spend with my family before or after work.
Have you ever had a Dell or Gateway system that was DOA? I have. What's the difference?
Sure, DOA Dells and Gateways are pretty rare, but I have seen a couple systems that went bonkers right out of the box (probably due to rough handling during shipping) that I've had to return.
Out of all the PC components I've ever purchased for myself or for work, I've only had two hard drives that were DOA.
I do wish OS X would be released for x86 hardware, though. I'd love to try that out on some of my existing machines!
Actually, Mozilla is one of the more web standards compliant browser out there. I can write an HTML 4.01 Strict web page that will NOT render on MSIE (IE 5.5SP2, at least).
If I can't look at a site in Mozilla or another popular W3C standards compliant browser, I quickly lose interest in what that site has to offer.
Didn't China shut down quite a few internet cafes recently?
I would think that with their current form of government and their tendancy to want to filter content, this expected growth of Chinese on the internet will not come to pass. There are just too many barriers for that kind of growth.
It's easy to get confused about Linux distros if you're on the outside looking in. You've got different versions of the kernel and different distros of the OS with different versions of each distro.
One thing that Microsoft definately has is better marketing, which translates into a better understanding of what versions of their products are current, and which ones are outdated.
What's more current, RedHat 7.2, Slackware 8.0, SUSE 6.4 or Debian 2.2? What kernels do each of these distros ship with, and what's the latest kernel any of them can reasonably run?
No, it's not hard to figure out which Linux distro is the latest and has whatever features you require. It does take time, though, and patience if you're new to Linux. Microsoft removes the time and thought required to shop and support their products (or at least, that's the rumor).
You don't even need to have everyone on the same LAN as you. I've played AOE2 with five people on my local network, two from other networks over 56K modems, and one person in another state over his cable modem.
Just host the game from a machine that's not behind a firewall or NAT, and let everyone know your IP.
There are hacks for many other games that allow you to bypass the lame "game servers" (like Novalogic uses) and connect directly to your friends' games. Just take some time and search around on the 'net!
Well, two out of the three patents that Intel was suit VIA over have been thrown out of court. Intel only has one patent left to sue VIA over, and chances are, it's going to get tossed as well.
Intel isn't doing so hot these days. We'll see how well they fare once they go to the newer.13 micron procs with the larger L2 cache.
Of course, AMD's going to.13 in the near future as well... I love competition!
That's true... Forced induction wasn't on my mind when I wrote my post. My apologies for that!
But even with forced induction vehicles, a chip can't improve a turbo that's tuned for a specific level of operation. Sure, you can up the boost, but most of the time it's done rather inefficiently, creating more heat in the intake charge.
Performance chips certianly do well with other modifications (like an intercooler and better wastegate) on forced induction vehicles. By themselves, though, they're not worth the money, in my experience.
I know the new Corvettes use a "drive by wire" system for the gas pedal these days. I think there's another GM vehicle out there where the steering will be done by electronic control instead of a shaft that runs through the engine bay.
It's just a question of how reliable can the manufacturer make the system. Lots of testing has to be done, and it will take years to perfect something like an optically controlled vehicle.
We'll see these kinds of vehicles more and more in our lifetime, I believe.
And you thought your car was hard to work on NOW!;-)
...because the article the poster is referring to is a load of bunk.
Yes, the Camaro and Firebird are going away. GM decided they'd rather use their resources dedicated to the F-Body platform to produce more profitable automobiles or trucks.
No, the tiny engines in today's imports aren't better than the heavy iron (or aluminum) that comes out of Detroit. Anything you can do to an import you can do to domestic muscle, and vice versa.
And there isn't a chip on the market for a Honda that will give you 50 horsepower over your stock chip. Not unless you've already done a ton of other mods, like new cams, intake, exhaust, pistons, head work, etc. The same is true for Camaros, Firebirds, Mustangs, etc.
Vehicles are just as "hackable" today as they've ever been. You just need more/different tools to do the job now.
Or better yet...
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 2, Informative
Buy a small diesel powered vehicle, like a Volkswagon. INSANE fuel efficiency and pretty good performance.
A properly tuned diesel engine is better for the environment than a gasoline powered engine of the same power output.
One cannot argue with your logic.
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 1
Impressive!
I think I'll go buy a bike, and stop by the Liquor Mart on the way home.:-)
No thanks. I'll stick to my diesel guzzling truck that gets 20MPG in the city, 27mpg on the highway, goes everywhere I've attempted to go (4x4), and I can use it for everything from driving to the movies to moving cross country.
Besides, it's a Ford venture... I'd rather not have the tires explode and fly into a ditch only to land on the roof and have that cave in on me.
...how the Mac would revolutionize the PC industry, and the software writers would just start writing apps for the Mac platform?
I think it's going to take a couple generations of Segways to impact how cities are built, if then.
Sidewalks are already in place, and even if you don't want automobile traffic in your inner city area, you still have to have provisions for commercial traffic, like delivery vans and taxis.
I think the only thing that will result from the Segway, IF it's a huge success, is we'll see wider sidewalks in the future.
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I agree, 100%. It makes LESS sense to run some form of Windows on your laptop these days, especially with Windows XP and Windows 2000. The hard drive thrashing associated with these two versions of Windows doesn't help with your battery life, and while the networking systems are vastly improved over Windows 98SE, they still leave a lot to be desired.
I just bought a Sony VAIO FXA36 laptop which I have dual booting between Windows 2000 Pro and Linux. I see up to an extra half an hour of battery life with Linux doing simple things like running Mozilla and StarOffice.
I was very tempted to buy a laptop from Apple, but decided to stick with x86 because that's what I know. That, and the price tags were too high.
Actually, my family doesn't mind, because they know I'll spend as little time as possible at work during the holidays.
Besides... Both sides of my family are farmers. Holidays don't mean squat when stuff needs to get done.
Yup... Holidays are a great time to do upgrades when the staff/users are on extended vacations. I'm doing two workstation upgrades this week, actually.
Even when you're at work during the holidays, it doesn't feel like it. Most of the people are out of town, and those who are there aren't really there to work like they normally do, so it's a lot of fun.
For those of us who are lucky enough to have jobs we truely enjoy doing, it's like we're on vacation all year long!
I wish everyone would enjoy their jobs as much as I enjoy mine.
I'm going to head into work tonight to switch some tapes for the nightly backup. I can't wait until we get our auto-changer!
:-)
Other than that and making sure the machines are all up, I don't do much over the holidays. I don't mind working, though, as long as there's enough time to spend with my family before or after work.
Systems administrators do it all year long!
Happy Holidays, everyone!
Sure, DOA Dells and Gateways are pretty rare, but I have seen a couple systems that went bonkers right out of the box (probably due to rough handling during shipping) that I've had to return.
Out of all the PC components I've ever purchased for myself or for work, I've only had two hard drives that were DOA.
I do wish OS X would be released for x86 hardware, though. I'd love to try that out on some of my existing machines!
Actually, Mozilla is one of the more web standards compliant browser out there. I can write an HTML 4.01 Strict web page that will NOT render on MSIE (IE 5.5SP2, at least).
If I can't look at a site in Mozilla or another popular W3C standards compliant browser, I quickly lose interest in what that site has to offer.
What an outstanding browser, regardless of the OS you run it on!
Mozilla is good stuff... Keep up the great work.
I've got 2.4.17 running on a Sony VAIO FXA36, which uses the KT133 chipset, and it's working just fine.
Didn't China shut down quite a few internet cafes recently?
I would think that with their current form of government and their tendancy to want to filter content, this expected growth of Chinese on the internet will not come to pass. There are just too many barriers for that kind of growth.
It's easy to get confused about Linux distros if you're on the outside looking in. You've got different versions of the kernel and different distros of the OS with different versions of each distro.
One thing that Microsoft definately has is better marketing, which translates into a better understanding of what versions of their products are current, and which ones are outdated.
What's more current, RedHat 7.2, Slackware 8.0, SUSE 6.4 or Debian 2.2? What kernels do each of these distros ship with, and what's the latest kernel any of them can reasonably run?
No, it's not hard to figure out which Linux distro is the latest and has whatever features you require. It does take time, though, and patience if you're new to Linux. Microsoft removes the time and thought required to shop and support their products (or at least, that's the rumor).
...space moths!
Shoulda spent the extra cash for one of those bug shields. Those space moths past Mars are huge!
You don't even need to have everyone on the same LAN as you. I've played AOE2 with five people on my local network, two from other networks over 56K modems, and one person in another state over his cable modem.
Just host the game from a machine that's not behind a firewall or NAT, and let everyone know your IP.
There are hacks for many other games that allow you to bypass the lame "game servers" (like Novalogic uses) and connect directly to your friends' games. Just take some time and search around on the 'net!
But, there's one solution to the problem.
Another would be hella encryption on downloads with some new kind of checksumming procedure.
I dunno... Just throwing ideas out here, people.
Grab the source, check your code. Don't trust downloadable binaries any farther than you can throw your computer.
Well, two out of the three patents that Intel was suit VIA over have been thrown out of court. Intel only has one patent left to sue VIA over, and chances are, it's going to get tossed as well.
.13 micron procs with the larger L2 cache.
.13 in the near future as well... I love competition!
Intel isn't doing so hot these days. We'll see how well they fare once they go to the newer
Of course, AMD's going to
They took the "HT" out of HTML.
That's true... Forced induction wasn't on my mind when I wrote my post. My apologies for that!
But even with forced induction vehicles, a chip can't improve a turbo that's tuned for a specific level of operation. Sure, you can up the boost, but most of the time it's done rather inefficiently, creating more heat in the intake charge.
Performance chips certianly do well with other modifications (like an intercooler and better wastegate) on forced induction vehicles. By themselves, though, they're not worth the money, in my experience.
I know the new Corvettes use a "drive by wire" system for the gas pedal these days. I think there's another GM vehicle out there where the steering will be done by electronic control instead of a shaft that runs through the engine bay.
;-)
It's just a question of how reliable can the manufacturer make the system. Lots of testing has to be done, and it will take years to perfect something like an optically controlled vehicle.
We'll see these kinds of vehicles more and more in our lifetime, I believe.
And you thought your car was hard to work on NOW!
...because the article the poster is referring to is a load of bunk.
Yes, the Camaro and Firebird are going away. GM decided they'd rather use their resources dedicated to the F-Body platform to produce more profitable automobiles or trucks.
No, the tiny engines in today's imports aren't better than the heavy iron (or aluminum) that comes out of Detroit. Anything you can do to an import you can do to domestic muscle, and vice versa.
And there isn't a chip on the market for a Honda that will give you 50 horsepower over your stock chip. Not unless you've already done a ton of other mods, like new cams, intake, exhaust, pistons, head work, etc. The same is true for Camaros, Firebirds, Mustangs, etc.
Vehicles are just as "hackable" today as they've ever been. You just need more/different tools to do the job now.
Buy a small diesel powered vehicle, like a Volkswagon. INSANE fuel efficiency and pretty good performance.
A properly tuned diesel engine is better for the environment than a gasoline powered engine of the same power output.
Impressive!
:-)
I think I'll go buy a bike, and stop by the Liquor Mart on the way home.
No thanks. I'll stick to my diesel guzzling truck that gets 20MPG in the city, 27mpg on the highway, goes everywhere I've attempted to go (4x4), and I can use it for everything from driving to the movies to moving cross country.
Besides, it's a Ford venture... I'd rather not have the tires explode and fly into a ditch only to land on the roof and have that cave in on me.
...how the Mac would revolutionize the PC industry, and the software writers would just start writing apps for the Mac platform?
I think it's going to take a couple generations of Segways to impact how cities are built, if then.
Sidewalks are already in place, and even if you don't want automobile traffic in your inner city area, you still have to have provisions for commercial traffic, like delivery vans and taxis.
I think the only thing that will result from the Segway, IF it's a huge success, is we'll see wider sidewalks in the future.