Well, I can tell you I was really looking forward to the Gamecube after seeing the Zelda/Link spaceworld demo..The Wind Waker kiddy graphics did rather turn me off to the system. After playing it at a friends house I did warm up to it, but it was still a disappointment after that demo..
Of course the new one coming out looks great..Perhaps it's time to pick up a GC.
Credit for Donkey Konga? What about Samba de Amigo on the good 'ol Sega Dreamcast? Seems like the same sort of game, except with drums instead of maracas.
Samba de Amigo was out back in 2000..took Nintendo a bit to catch up.
Not to say it sounds like a bad game or anything -- Samba is a ton of fun with a few friends after a brewski or two..
The same could be said about libraries. (You know, the places with those papery things in them..) Real estate certainly costs money, and I'm fairly sure librarians don't work for free. Where's that money come from? Why couldn't this money come from a similar place?
Well, the "cutesy mommy login page" actually comes in handy from time to time. You don't get to use the fast user switching with the normal login page. (Do with you could do that from the normal login screen though, so you could share a system from several folks in a domain for example..)
Granted it's less useful if you're the only user of a computer, but I still like to keep seperate work/home accounts on my home box. winkey-l and you're back at the login screen and can switch profiles.
There's more under-the-hood tweaks that come in handy too. Just try and "net use" a network drive from a telnetted session on a win2k box (if you're not also logged in interactively). XP actually lets you do that, and maintains seperate drive letter mappings per user. In win2k, if anyone has a drive mapped that drive letter is out of commission for all users.
The new task bar is very handy as well -- I tend to keep a bunch of windows open and it's nice to have them sorted by application.
So I'll grant it's nothing major..but the eye-candy can be turned off easily enough and there's enough under-the-hood changes to make it nice to have.
Well, unlike CRTs, LCDs are digital devices. (Fixed number of pixels, etc..)
Why convert your display signal from digital (the framebuffer of your video card) to analog just to convert it back to digital? DVI saves you a couple conversion steps.
I did see a brick & mortar place in the Boston, MA area that had some knockoff HDMI cables for $25. (Generic bag, Molex connectors..) They also had HDMI to DVI cables for about the same price. They also had the $100 cables there. Didn't look like they'd sold too many.
Anyway, you shouldn't see any improvement over DVI -- they're both digital signals. I could see just having the 1 audio connection to the TV as well though. That could let you do things like use your TV's built in speakers as a center channel, etc..
You do have to wonder why we need to fill out the forms. You'd think the IRS could offer an online form pre-filled out with bank/investment information and the info from the W2. I'd think that would be enough for a good chunk of people. You'd think it could be totally automated for folks who would otherwise fill out a 1040EZ..
I think one thing that really didn't help with NT on Alpha application availability was there was no affordable compiler. They simply didn't offer the "Professional" edition (that was ~$100 for VC++ on X86 at the time) -- you had to get the Enterprise edition for a few hundred more.
A few years back I would have happily run NT on Alpha, but there was no way I was going to pay $300+ just for the compiler when I was in college..
Now..if they included the RISC versions of the tools on the X86 CDs for no extra cost, we could have actually at least seen a few more unsupported Alpha builds of apps. The barrier to entry of building RISC NT apps was way too high..
Compatibility wasn't dropped. Even Itanic systems are still more then capabale of running good 'ol DOS. Granted, you'd have to be a little peculiar to want to run IA-32 apps at Pentium-2 type speeds on such expensive systems, but you can hardly say they dropped compatibility. Perhaps if Itanium hadn't taken so long to appear we'd all be complementing it for it's speedy IA-32 execution.
Actually, that pricing does sound about right. I recall laserdiscs were rather expensive back in the day, and there certainly weren't any (good/cheap) ways to make perfect copies of them.
I wonder if we'll see the same trend once Blueray/HD-DVD movies start appearing on shelves..
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Well, I can tell you I was really looking forward to the Gamecube after seeing the Zelda/Link spaceworld demo..The Wind Waker kiddy graphics did rather turn me off to the system. After playing it at a friends house I did warm up to it, but it was still a disappointment after that demo..
Of course the new one coming out looks great..Perhaps it's time to pick up a GC.
Credit for Donkey Konga? What about Samba de Amigo on the good 'ol Sega Dreamcast? Seems like the same sort of game, except with drums instead of maracas.
Samba de Amigo was out back in 2000..took Nintendo a bit to catch up.
Not to say it sounds like a bad game or anything -- Samba is a ton of fun with a few friends after a brewski or two..
The same could be said about libraries. (You know, the places with those papery things in them..) Real estate certainly costs money, and I'm fairly sure librarians don't work for free. Where's that money come from? Why couldn't this money come from a similar place?
Well, the "cutesy mommy login page" actually comes in handy from time to time. You don't get to use the fast user switching with the normal login page. (Do with you could do that from the normal login screen though, so you could share a system from several folks in a domain for example..)
Granted it's less useful if you're the only user of a computer, but I still like to keep seperate work/home accounts on my home box. winkey-l and you're back at the login screen and can switch profiles.
There's more under-the-hood tweaks that come in handy too. Just try and "net use" a network drive from a telnetted session on a win2k box (if you're not also logged in interactively). XP actually lets you do that, and maintains seperate drive letter mappings per user. In win2k, if anyone has a drive mapped that drive letter is out of commission for all users.
The new task bar is very handy as well -- I tend to keep a bunch of windows open and it's nice to have them sorted by application.
So I'll grant it's nothing major..but the eye-candy can be turned off easily enough and there's enough under-the-hood changes to make it nice to have.
You-Do-It Electronics in Needham off rt 128. Excellent place for cables/components. They're what Radio Shack should be.
Well, unlike CRTs, LCDs are digital devices. (Fixed number of pixels, etc..)
Why convert your display signal from digital (the framebuffer of your video card) to analog just to convert it back to digital? DVI saves you a couple conversion steps.
I did see a brick & mortar place in the Boston, MA area that had some knockoff HDMI cables for $25. (Generic bag, Molex connectors..) They also had HDMI to DVI cables for about the same price. They also had the $100 cables there. Didn't look like they'd sold too many.
Anyway, you shouldn't see any improvement over DVI -- they're both digital signals. I could see just having the 1 audio connection to the TV as well though. That could let you do things like use your TV's built in speakers as a center channel, etc..
You do have to wonder why we need to fill out the forms. You'd think the IRS could offer an online form pre-filled out with bank/investment information and the info from the W2. I'd think that would be enough for a good chunk of people. You'd think it could be totally automated for folks who would otherwise fill out a 1040EZ..
I think one thing that really didn't help with NT on Alpha application availability was there was no affordable compiler. They simply didn't offer the "Professional" edition (that was ~$100 for VC++ on X86 at the time) -- you had to get the Enterprise edition for a few hundred more.
A few years back I would have happily run NT on Alpha, but there was no way I was going to pay $300+ just for the compiler when I was in college..
Now..if they included the RISC versions of the tools on the X86 CDs for no extra cost, we could have actually at least seen a few more unsupported Alpha builds of apps. The barrier to entry of building RISC NT apps was way too high..
Compatibility wasn't dropped. Even Itanic systems are still more then capabale of running good 'ol DOS. Granted, you'd have to be a little peculiar to want to run IA-32 apps at Pentium-2 type speeds on such expensive systems, but you can hardly say they dropped compatibility. Perhaps if Itanium hadn't taken so long to appear we'd all be complementing it for it's speedy IA-32 execution.
3 1803.pdf
Intel's got more information on Itanium IA-32 support at http://www.intel.com/design/itanium/downloads/254
Actually, that pricing does sound about right. I recall laserdiscs were rather expensive back in the day, and there certainly weren't any (good/cheap) ways to make perfect copies of them.
I wonder if we'll see the same trend once Blueray/HD-DVD movies start appearing on shelves..