I use my Amazon card exclusively for all my purchases now. No fees and the cashback structure is very nice. Since I pay off my balance monthly there's absolutely no downside to using it, but I gain convenience and 1/2/3% cash back on my purchases.
There's semiconductor fab companies that manufacture the wafers in the USA, but still ship them to Asia for packaging and testing, which requires less labor skill and investment. See this Micron video for instance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvf29R7nXlM
Obviously power consumption is important but performance is also very important. An Atom is an extremely cheap CPU that doesn't deserve to go in a $1000 laptop, like I said. Otherwise you can take the argument to silliness by asking why Apple didn't go with ARM or something.
I've found that Macbooks are pretty comparable in price to a Windows laptop now, at least the Airs (since we're on that topic). Nothing out there matches a Macbook Air in price, considering that the Air comes with an SSD and a Sandy Bridge CPU.
Honestly, who cares? You're mischaracterizing the DRM feature as something that is a backdoor into your computer that can what, spy on you? Remotely disable your computer? I haven't seen a single source demonstrate that their DRM feature does this.
Atoms are friggin slow compared to a regular CPU and should only be used for sub-$400 netbooks, not $1000 laptops. One of the great things about the Air is that it doesn't use some dumbed down CPU, it's just a regular Sandy Bridge clocked down.
Processors nowadays are limited by the thermal dissipation limits, instead of how many transistors they can fit on a chip. Transistor scaling was supposed to keep power usage the same while increasing density, but supply voltages have stopped decreasing, so the power efficiency gains are very low. Thus it is now important to think about power efficiency: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/09/13/2148202/whither-moores-law-introducing-koomeys-law
Seriously? Less surface area on an already huge connector is going to magically attenuate the signal? I really don't think you know what you're talking about... We're talking about milliohms of resistance here. Nothing your ears can detect.
Now if there were intermittent contact rubbing issues, then sure, you'd hear scratching as it makes and breaks connection. But if there's enough constant contact then it's negligible.
Are you seriously advocating that companies like Apple stop innovating in making their products smaller than ever? A one-third reduction in thickness would be great. If you don't want something so thin, then you can purchase larger MP3 players which become lower in price once the new fancy thin ones come out.
Foxconn's factories are a mini-city. I'm sure if you compare US city suicide rates to Foxconn mini-city suicide rates, they'd be comparable. It's only really an outrage if their suicide rate was 3x or more higher than US suicide rates.
I dislike Apple software but as an electrical engineer, I'm a huge fan of their hardware.
I wonder if they know that FPGA's are typically only half the online price listed if you talk to a distributor. I'm not sure what kind of minimum order quantity you need though.
No comment about that. I was just pointing out that profitability should theoretically be the same as time goes on. Of course, whether it does will have a huge effect on the long-time viability of bitcoin mining for profit. Even if it only lasts a few more years, you can still make 100% returns on investment in only a year which is pretty good.
I've always thought Bitcoin was stupid, but let's do some more analysis on the energy costs here, which this site really should have included.
The best GPU perf/watt was the 5870x2 (Ares OC) at 1.584 (Mhash/s)/watt. Not sure where they got their total watt figures from, but from a review site, it is 500W, unoverclocked. This site says it's 50W more overclocked. I'll be generous and not include this since the CPU isn't being taxed as much. So 500W power consumption.
So, typing 500 watts * 1 year * (10 cents / (kilowatt*hour)) into Google: about $482. Taking their $1,666 one year profit figure (mining profits - cost of card), it is now really a cost of $1,184. Which isn't as bad as I thought it'd be.
They didn't include the effect of increasing difficulty on decreased mining speed, but theoretically the currency should become more valuable as it goes on.
So if you invent a new manufacturing process and patent it, and some Chinese company goes and steals it and sells their products in the US undercutting you, you don't want to have any means of recourse?
How do you connect your portable hard drive to a music playing device that you could use while walking around? Sure, you could transfer pieces of your music library to your 16GB phone, but wouldn't it be convenient to just stream your music off 3G anywhere?
If you want really cheap boards for prototype purposes, consider these sources:
Seeed Studio: these are a total of $10 to $45 for 10 boards, plus a small amount of shipping from China. I get my boards in 1-2 weeks.
DorkbotPDX: based in the US, but only sends out batches every few weeks. They charged based on raw square inches.
And for volume, pcbcart.com is really great. Probably over 10x cheaper than Advanced Circuits.
Of course it's so cheap since it's outsourced, but that's life. Advanced Circuits is ridiculously expensive in comparison. Their best price on a prototype run is $33 each, 4 minimum order, plus $30+ shipping. I'd only consider them if I had to get my boards within 5 days and was willing to pay for that.
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I use my Amazon card exclusively for all my purchases now. No fees and the cashback structure is very nice. Since I pay off my balance monthly there's absolutely no downside to using it, but I gain convenience and 1/2/3% cash back on my purchases.
There's semiconductor fab companies that manufacture the wafers in the USA, but still ship them to Asia for packaging and testing, which requires less labor skill and investment. See this Micron video for instance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvf29R7nXlM
Obviously power consumption is important but performance is also very important. An Atom is an extremely cheap CPU that doesn't deserve to go in a $1000 laptop, like I said. Otherwise you can take the argument to silliness by asking why Apple didn't go with ARM or something.
I've found that Macbooks are pretty comparable in price to a Windows laptop now, at least the Airs (since we're on that topic). Nothing out there matches a Macbook Air in price, considering that the Air comes with an SSD and a Sandy Bridge CPU.
Honestly, who cares? You're mischaracterizing the DRM feature as something that is a backdoor into your computer that can what, spy on you? Remotely disable your computer? I haven't seen a single source demonstrate that their DRM feature does this.
Atoms are friggin slow compared to a regular CPU and should only be used for sub-$400 netbooks, not $1000 laptops. One of the great things about the Air is that it doesn't use some dumbed down CPU, it's just a regular Sandy Bridge clocked down.
A lot more information here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5077/arms-malit658-gpu-in-2013-up-to-10x-faster-than-mali400
Skip the middleman
http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/Amazon-Sells-Kindle-Fire-at-Low-Profit-Margin-to-Promote-Online-Merchandize-Sales.aspx
Processors nowadays are limited by the thermal dissipation limits, instead of how many transistors they can fit on a chip. Transistor scaling was supposed to keep power usage the same while increasing density, but supply voltages have stopped decreasing, so the power efficiency gains are very low. Thus it is now important to think about power efficiency: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/09/13/2148202/whither-moores-law-introducing-koomeys-law
Seriously? Less surface area on an already huge connector is going to magically attenuate the signal? I really don't think you know what you're talking about... We're talking about milliohms of resistance here. Nothing your ears can detect.
Now if there were intermittent contact rubbing issues, then sure, you'd hear scratching as it makes and breaks connection. But if there's enough constant contact then it's negligible.
Are you seriously advocating that companies like Apple stop innovating in making their products smaller than ever? A one-third reduction in thickness would be great. If you don't want something so thin, then you can purchase larger MP3 players which become lower in price once the new fancy thin ones come out.
Foxconn's factories are a mini-city. I'm sure if you compare US city suicide rates to Foxconn mini-city suicide rates, they'd be comparable. It's only really an outrage if their suicide rate was 3x or more higher than US suicide rates.
I dislike Apple software but as an electrical engineer, I'm a huge fan of their hardware.
You do realize that all computer companies outsource their manufacturing work to the likes of Foxconn, not just Apple right?
On the suicide note from your other troll post: the suicide rate at the Foxconn factories are less than the suicide rate at US universities.
It'd be pretty useful for augmented reality, or position indoors.
I wonder if they know that FPGA's are typically only half the online price listed if you talk to a distributor. I'm not sure what kind of minimum order quantity you need though.
No comment about that. I was just pointing out that profitability should theoretically be the same as time goes on. Of course, whether it does will have a huge effect on the long-time viability of bitcoin mining for profit. Even if it only lasts a few more years, you can still make 100% returns on investment in only a year which is pretty good.
Sorry, a few typos: 500 watts -> $438 per year in energy costs, which makes for a total profit of $1,228.
I've always thought Bitcoin was stupid, but let's do some more analysis on the energy costs here, which this site really should have included.
The best GPU perf/watt was the 5870x2 (Ares OC) at 1.584 (Mhash/s)/watt. Not sure where they got their total watt figures from, but from a review site, it is 500W, unoverclocked. This site says it's 50W more overclocked. I'll be generous and not include this since the CPU isn't being taxed as much. So 500W power consumption.
So, typing 500 watts * 1 year * (10 cents / (kilowatt*hour)) into Google: about $482. Taking their $1,666 one year profit figure (mining profits - cost of card), it is now really a cost of $1,184. Which isn't as bad as I thought it'd be.
They didn't include the effect of increasing difficulty on decreased mining speed, but theoretically the currency should become more valuable as it goes on.
Well that took an unexpected turn.
So if you invent a new manufacturing process and patent it, and some Chinese company goes and steals it and sells their products in the US undercutting you, you don't want to have any means of recourse?
How do you connect your portable hard drive to a music playing device that you could use while walking around? Sure, you could transfer pieces of your music library to your 16GB phone, but wouldn't it be convenient to just stream your music off 3G anywhere?
http://www.afrotechmods.com/hdoc.htm
If you want really cheap boards for prototype purposes, consider these sources:
Seeed Studio: these are a total of $10 to $45 for 10 boards, plus a small amount of shipping from China. I get my boards in 1-2 weeks.
DorkbotPDX: based in the US, but only sends out batches every few weeks. They charged based on raw square inches.
And for volume, pcbcart.com is really great. Probably over 10x cheaper than Advanced Circuits.
Of course it's so cheap since it's outsourced, but that's life. Advanced Circuits is ridiculously expensive in comparison. Their best price on a prototype run is $33 each, 4 minimum order, plus $30+ shipping. I'd only consider them if I had to get my boards within 5 days and was willing to pay for that.
Not affiliated, just a happy customer.
If you took enough AP classes, you shouldn't need to take many general ed classes.
Yeah I hate having to buy a new car or computer every year.
All of them.