Amen. I have the same issue since I switched to Ubuntu for all my "serious" computer use. It's a pain in the ass to have to reboot into Windows XP, not to mention maintaining a dual-boot configuration, just to play a game. Then reboot again, when I'm done. Some days, it seems as if I spend more time waiting for my computer to start up than I do using it.
Why does MS always have to go and screw it up? I have been using the Win 7 RC off and on since last October, and I really like it. There are many good features, but some that really knocked my socks off:
-More stable than XP. Badly-behaved programs that would lock up my Win XP SP3 box are allowed to die in Win 7, without taking the system down. Also it doesn't take 15 minutes to pop up an error dialog. This is how it should be. -First time I've ever had a reasonable display mode on a fresh Windows install, before installing video drivers. Win 7 has finally caught up to Ubuntu in this regard. -Robust and useful disk imaging for backup. Finally a real backup solution, included with the OS.
And so on.
But this phone-home BS, even if "optional," has me rethinking whether I really want to drop real $ to support more DRM shenanigans. Even the $64.95 student price seems like too much, if I'm only paying to be treated like a criminal. The last OS I actually bought was Windows XP Home, years ago. It might stay that way.
Hokie alum here. Ack, sorry to hear that never worked out, but not that surprised. I know I suffered with VT modem pool "service" in the very late '90's until 2001.
If it makes you feel any better, I now live in a huge city in the southwest US, but options are about what you describe: slow DSL or somewhat faster cable. Actually you're better off than I am; my DSL options are 1.5 Mbit or nothing. Pathetic. Qwest is NEVER going to upgrade its infrastructure. You can get faster ADSL - maybe as much as 7 Mbit - in a few parts of downtown, but that's pretty much it.
I have suffered from one of the multiple-display-device solutions, in the form of an Alienware M15X, so Optimus sounds like a huge step forward.
While in theory it was nice to have both a battery-friendly Intel GMA and a reasonably powerful Nvidia GeForce card in one (relatively) portable package, in reality it was lousy. As suggested by TFA, you had to reboot to switch between them, whether running Windows XP or Vista. That would have been bad enough, but wait, there's more!
This effectively meant that I could never switch, because us mere users were not permitted to authorize UAC prompts or do "admin" things under XP. Yes, you needed administrator-level access to switch between display devices. I don't know why, maybe because it involved changes to startup files. Huge software limitation there, as well as a shortcoming of our boneheaded IT rules.
But you really shouldn't have to reboot to switch devices.
Not necessarily. There have been thousands of refurbished Acer Aspire One netbooks sold on Woot.com just in the past month or so, and the vast majority - maybe all - have 2009 manufacturing dates.
Not everyone who buys a refurb netbook from Woot gets the Square Trade warranty, but those who do are getting warranties on essentially new gear. The refurbed D150 I bought a month ago has a March 2009 manufacture date.
I don't know how something so new ends up as a "refurb," but there you are.
That's a ridiculous comparison. FusionIO cards are not anywhere near the same class at the Intel drives. They have a certain purpose and are geared toward a certain market. The Intel SSDs are a completely different beast. You can't very well use a PCI card in a notebook, which is a typical host for SSDs.
The Intel SSDs are coming pretty close to maxing out the SATA 2 port, and that's all that matters for consumer-level systems. It's pretty frelling impressive. I, for one, welcome our performance-improving firmware overlords!
Weird. I routinely get about 35 MB/s over USB 2.0, using an external HDD with a Western Digital drive at its core. It may not be the USB 2.0 connection that's slowing you down.
FWIW, the 35 MB/s figure I obtained on the same machine where I was getting 70 MB/s reads over eSATA, using the same external HDD (Cavalry CAXE-3701T0). I was shocked that the difference was so stark. I had expected something, but not a factor of 2.
That's what I was thinking. With regular old mechanical hard drives, anything past eSATA is pretty much pointless.
I've had plenty of 60-70 MB/s reads from an ordinary SATA II, 7200 rpm external HDD over eSATA. It comes nowhere close to the max theoretical speed of eSATA, about 380 MB/s.
Having a faster connection is just pointless, until the hard drives get a lot faster. Mechanical drives are about at their limit now. Once solid-state drives get even faster - and lots cheaper - I could see the need, but not yet.
It's not just me, then? I have an Audigy 2 ZS in my nForce-based system (Abit NF7S-2.0 mobo, AMD Athlon XP 3400 CPU) and I occasionally get those annoying pops and clicks. I always figured it was a drivers issue that simply would never get fixed.
It seemed to happen more often when I was using the onboard audio (nForce MCP-T IIRC), which is one reason I got the Audigy.
Some games seem worse than others. Among the shovelware included with the Audigy was Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Raven Shield - and it is absolutely unbearable. If you turn the sound up to get the full effect of EAX, you get ear-shattering pops and clicks quite often. That's odd, for a game that was presumably included to show off the EAX capabilities of the card.
It doesn't happen as much (or at all in some cases) with most older games, like Freespace 2 and its variants, and some newer, such as Thief: Deadly Shadows.
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Big difference: In the car or airplane, you can shift your head slightly to see what may have been blocked by the roof pillar or window frame.
You cannot do this with the computer display. Its image is 2-dimensional, so there is no parallax possible.
Amen. I have the same issue since I switched to Ubuntu for all my "serious" computer use. It's a pain in the ass to have to reboot into Windows XP, not to mention maintaining a dual-boot configuration, just to play a game. Then reboot again, when I'm done. Some days, it seems as if I spend more time waiting for my computer to start up than I do using it.
Why does MS always have to go and screw it up? I have been using the Win 7 RC off and on since last October, and I really like it. There are many good features, but some that really knocked my socks off:
-More stable than XP. Badly-behaved programs that would lock up my Win XP SP3 box are allowed to die in Win 7, without taking the system down. Also it doesn't take 15 minutes to pop up an error dialog. This is how it should be.
-First time I've ever had a reasonable display mode on a fresh Windows install, before installing video drivers. Win 7 has finally caught up to Ubuntu in this regard.
-Robust and useful disk imaging for backup. Finally a real backup solution, included with the OS.
And so on.
But this phone-home BS, even if "optional," has me rethinking whether I really want to drop real $ to support more DRM shenanigans. Even the $64.95 student price seems like too much, if I'm only paying to be treated like a criminal. The last OS I actually bought was Windows XP Home, years ago. It might stay that way.
Hokie alum here. Ack, sorry to hear that never worked out, but not that surprised. I know I suffered with VT modem pool "service" in the very late '90's until 2001.
If it makes you feel any better, I now live in a huge city in the southwest US, but options are about what you describe: slow DSL or somewhat faster cable. Actually you're better off than I am; my DSL options are 1.5 Mbit or nothing. Pathetic. Qwest is NEVER going to upgrade its infrastructure. You can get faster ADSL - maybe as much as 7 Mbit - in a few parts of downtown, but that's pretty much it.
I have suffered from one of the multiple-display-device solutions, in the form of an Alienware M15X, so Optimus sounds like a huge step forward.
While in theory it was nice to have both a battery-friendly Intel GMA and a reasonably powerful Nvidia GeForce card in one (relatively) portable package, in reality it was lousy. As suggested by TFA, you had to reboot to switch between them, whether running Windows XP or Vista. That would have been bad enough, but wait, there's more!
This effectively meant that I could never switch, because us mere users were not permitted to authorize UAC prompts or do "admin" things under XP. Yes, you needed administrator-level access to switch between display devices. I don't know why, maybe because it involved changes to startup files. Huge software limitation there, as well as a shortcoming of our boneheaded IT rules.
But you really shouldn't have to reboot to switch devices.
Not necessarily. There have been thousands of refurbished Acer Aspire One netbooks sold on Woot.com just in the past month or so, and the vast majority - maybe all - have 2009 manufacturing dates. Not everyone who buys a refurb netbook from Woot gets the Square Trade warranty, but those who do are getting warranties on essentially new gear. The refurbed D150 I bought a month ago has a March 2009 manufacture date. I don't know how something so new ends up as a "refurb," but there you are.
Figures. I haven't bought a new notebook in 6 years so I've clearly missed a few things.
That's a ridiculous comparison. FusionIO cards are not anywhere near the same class at the Intel drives. They have a certain purpose and are geared toward a certain market. The Intel SSDs are a completely different beast. You can't very well use a PCI card in a notebook, which is a typical host for SSDs. The Intel SSDs are coming pretty close to maxing out the SATA 2 port, and that's all that matters for consumer-level systems. It's pretty frelling impressive. I, for one, welcome our performance-improving firmware overlords!
Weird. I routinely get about 35 MB/s over USB 2.0, using an external HDD with a Western Digital drive at its core. It may not be the USB 2.0 connection that's slowing you down. FWIW, the 35 MB/s figure I obtained on the same machine where I was getting 70 MB/s reads over eSATA, using the same external HDD (Cavalry CAXE-3701T0). I was shocked that the difference was so stark. I had expected something, but not a factor of 2.
That's what I was thinking. With regular old mechanical hard drives, anything past eSATA is pretty much pointless. I've had plenty of 60-70 MB/s reads from an ordinary SATA II, 7200 rpm external HDD over eSATA. It comes nowhere close to the max theoretical speed of eSATA, about 380 MB/s. Having a faster connection is just pointless, until the hard drives get a lot faster. Mechanical drives are about at their limit now. Once solid-state drives get even faster - and lots cheaper - I could see the need, but not yet.
It's not just me, then? I have an Audigy 2 ZS in my nForce-based system (Abit NF7S-2.0 mobo, AMD Athlon XP 3400 CPU) and I occasionally get those annoying pops and clicks. I always figured it was a drivers issue that simply would never get fixed.
It seemed to happen more often when I was using the onboard audio (nForce MCP-T IIRC), which is one reason I got the Audigy.
Some games seem worse than others. Among the shovelware included with the Audigy was Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Raven Shield - and it is absolutely unbearable. If you turn the sound up to get the full effect of EAX, you get ear-shattering pops and clicks quite often. That's odd, for a game that was presumably included to show off the EAX capabilities of the card.
It doesn't happen as much (or at all in some cases) with most older games, like Freespace 2 and its variants, and some newer, such as Thief: Deadly Shadows.