Sounds more like a poor highway design than a problem with the car to me: I live in an area where all on ramps allow even a peddle-propelled car enough time to easily sync with traffic before having to merge, and I've been in many smaller cars that have no issues. If you're saying that 320HP is necessary to do this, then how do you rationalize that transport trucks with 0-60s of about 50 seconds need to get on these highways?
Ignoring your comment on trees (which is a grossly misrepresented factoid given that replacing an old growth, diverse, ecologically sound forest with a canopy of a equa-sized species of highest resale value trees is hardly equal. Okay, so I didn't ignore it.:-)), I was speaking specifically of the strategic position of the Western world (hence volcanoes and cows don't have a lot of relevance), and let's face it this is in regards to the middle-east and the constant vice that it has on the world given our oil dependence. I would say that it is unpatriotic and bordering on treason for someone to unnecessarily hinge the country on the fancy of another, often enemy state.
BTW: The old image of an econo-box straining to go 55mph is an old stereotype that is technically invalid: Cruising at 60MPH takes a measly 12HP in an average car, and given that even efficient small cars have 130+HP engines, I don't see them straining to maintain it.
Well in my case I was speaking about Canada (and our gas taxes are still dramatically lower than Europe. As you see the gas tax increase you see the average size of car decrease), however it is my belief that this is significantly less in most US states. I was sort of mixing and matching facts there.
So true. I was actually just trying to think up a fuel efficient North American brand (and I like the Neon, apart from the head gasket issue that I had on my 98) so that I didn't have to keep mentioning Honda or Toyota in the same breath as patriotism.:-) The Neon, at least with the older 3 speed automatic, is a great example of an inefficient vehicle given its size and utility (at least compared to what it could have been with a better automatic, as it now has).
You know, Soccer Mom's I really don't have that much of an issue with (presuming that they actually transport large numbers of children around, making the additional space and utility of a minivan necessary), but as you mentioned with the Range Rover (which gets 12mpg in the city, 15mpg on the highway. A Toyota Camry gets 24/33mpg, by comparison, and is actually a mid-sized car. A Corolla gets 32mpg/40mpg): There are a massive number of vehicles out there that have absolutely no use or utility whatsoever. Indeed, the public at large doesn't pay enough attention to fuel economy when purchasing cars either (though they absolutely should if they don't like killing kids from emphyzema and they're patriotic), and this is perhaps because of pump prices that too low, considering (why is it that a bottle of Coke costs me about 3x more than some oil which was dug up underground half a world away, processed, transported in many stages, and has about 60% of its price as taxes?).
If the US really cared about being strategically strong (presuming that the administration wasn't in the oil company's pockets) they would impose a large tax (with proceeds going to alternative energy research) based upon energy efficiency, or rather lack thereof, in vehicles.
Sidenote: I was recently urged to buy a minivan because "What about when you go camping in the summer? You'll need the space!" : That in a nutshell defined why most people have inappropriately sized vehicles for daily commutes and runs to the supermarket -> For that once every two year event where they actually might need it. RENT SOMETHING FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! I'm a big fan of rentals, and for a low cost you can have the larger vehicle for the period that you need it, going back to a more efficient configuration when you're done.
Often fuels like hydrogen are used because they are great "Batteries" of sorts (one of the primary problems facing man isn't a lack of energy : We have plenty of it, but rather a lack of ways to store and move that energy) : Being able to separate hydrogen at a nuclear power plant or a solar plant, and then running cars off of that hydrogen, is basically running the car off of the electric power plant, with a battery in between. Gasoline is merely a battery of solar power from many years ago. It really is staggering to contemplate the energy cycle.
Offtopic, but there's something that's been bothering me for wa while: Perpetually the US Administration talks about reducing the dependence on foreign oil, promoting the opening up of the Alaskan Wildlife Refuges for drilling, and basically writing a blank environmental cheque for oil companies to sign. All of this is done under the pretense of being patriotic by reducing the countries strategic vulnerabilities (namely having a primary energy source externally controlled). Yet this is the same administration (I'm not talking about one particular party, or even one make-up of politicians, but I mean government momentum on a whole) that continually refuses to enforce basic fuel efficiency (NOT conservation. There's a difference between conservation and efficiency) directives. I don't have the metrics (nor have I ever looked), but the highways are full of grossly inefficient vehicles (not just large vehicles, either, but additionally inefficient small vehicles. The Chevrolet Cavalier is some ~25% less efficient than most comparably sized competitors). If people want to feel patriotic, they should forsake getting that new Expedition and buy themselves a Dodge Neon or a Toyota Corolla : You're doing a great service to your country.
Re:It's plenty early enough to form first impressi
on
Trouble Ahead for Java
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· Score: 1
Again, you seem to be rather missing the point: When XML hit the scene INSTANTLY a very large percentage of ads added "XML" in the buzzword "nice to have" listing. On that same board there are about 40x more XML results than C#, and I'd wager than less than 5% of those ads are actually for jobs that use XML in any capacity whatsoever. Hell, there are more bluetooth results coming back than C#.
Re:It's plenty early enough to form first impressi
on
Trouble Ahead for Java
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· Score: 1
The claim I responded to was that C# was not going to be successful because there were many more job advertisements for Java than C#.
No, the claim (because it's my post that you were responding to) is that there isn't the buzz around C#/.NET, and it's that buzz that gets mass changes such as it implemented: Java did have the buzz almost immediately, and as I mentioned in my other post, so did XML.
Of course, when CD sales rose a while back the P2P advocate community was the first in line to take credit for it, claiming that Napster encouraged artist awareness and somehow increased purchasing of CDs (usually propped up by lots of anecdotal "I buy way more CDs than I did before").
As the ABG mentioned,.NET is hardly new by any measure of the imaginations: I've been playing with various betas for going on two years now, and Microsoft has been public with language specs, etc.
However, even more importantly is that the job market is tied to the "future" buzzwords that the CTOs/CIOs get sold on (i.e. A couple of years ago XML was all the rage, and every job posting asked for 7 years of XML experience: But we're talking about something that was brand new, but it got a buzz to appear in those ads), and even more frighteningly : Microsoft is the #1 company, normally, of hyping management to go in certain directions. Yet it's flopped.
I love Visual Studio.NET, ASP.NET offers some advantages, but let's face it: This is an evolution of the system for those who already are committed to the Microsoft platform. Being a user of ASP and ADO, sure I'm moving to ASP.NET and ADO.NET, but I doubt there are many Java shops who would do the same.
My personal opinion is that within 2 years C# will be tied or slowly overtaking Java for server-side code. The client-side will be dominated by.NET clients for the desktop and DHTML (or a derivative thereof). Within 4-5 years, Java will be marginalised into cell-phones/PDAs and will likely be offering interoperability with.NET which will have become the de facto standard for server technology.
As a long-time Microsoft droid (with several Microsoft composite certifications to prove it), I have to respectfully disagree: To me it appears that.NET has gone over like a lead balloon, and the industries apathy for it could not be more apparent. Despite it being the future, local job listings show Java leading C# job lists approximately 50:1, and of those few C# listings, most all have it as "one of many laundry list nice-to-have languages". I have no opinion personally about J2EE or C#/.NET, however it is astounding how this has been a giant paradigm shift that the industry just refuses to embrace.
If I had to put it into a nutshell why, I'd say that Microsoft has "revolutionized" a few too many times, and companies are getting sick of seeing their investments in Microsoft technology being obsoleted..NET brings a new component model that fundamentally obsoletes COM, rendering millions of hours of work wasted (yeah you can wrap a COM object in a.NET wrapper, however it isn't managed and has the standard MS slant of it being "dirtier" in some abstract, undefined way). Microsoft is in a continuous game of selling new software, and to do that they need to convince you that what you have is obsolete, and in doing so they continually obsolete customers momentum and investment, and there is absolutely no doubt that there is growing resentment. In just the past few years I've gone from being a dyed in the wool MS advocate, to actively encouraging the use of open standards and more vendor neutral tools : It isn't my responsibility to help Microsoft continue the multiple sales growth, and their dominance says that to continue to do it they'll have to start bleeding every customer that much more.
The only reason computer industry jobs pay 100k a year is because the demand still out weighs the supply, what happens when theres more programmers and technicians than needed and companies can actually choose between you and someone cheaper?
I get the gist of what you're saying, but just a bit of conjecture regarding that situation (highly paid software developers) : One thing I've found in software development is that there are tremendous numbers of people who parade themselves as software developers`, and perhaps they actually completed a technical school course, or maybe even their Comp. Sci degree, maybe even their masters in Computer Science, yet they can't program their way out of a recursive loop. Working in the industry I've found it staggering the number of people who don't have a grasp on the basic tenents of software engineering, and for them the tool companies are progressively making higher and higher level languages, and bounding every operation by countless checks to ensure that the programmer didn't screw up (as a software developer I love this: The more bloated and managed your code is [hence slower, less efficient], the easier it is for me to make superior software). This variance in output and quality of output is the reason that software software developers get paid the big $, and many others don't deserve to be lumped in the same group. I see it as very similar to any other pursuit where the actual value of the employee isn't a constant, but varies considerably : Some salespeople make 100s of thousands of dollars, whereas others make minimum wage.
I wonder if Google is already providing some sort of paid service to large corporations. On my website on day I actually got a hit coming from a chap at the Redmond campus of Microsoft, and he was searching via http://www.google.com/microsoft : BTW, at the time I'm quite sure that that page actually displayed the Microsoft logo as well.
Hence the value of having multiple controllers : Each then has a dedicated pipe to the controller all to themselves, which is a superb reason to have more than the standard 2 controllers (so your CD-R, each of two hard drives, and DVD-ROM drive can all have their own controller).
Who exactly said that "IDE can't be surpassed"? Jesus, hop off the soapbox preacher because you're sadly misdirected: My point is that simply saying "SCSI GOOD! IDE BAD!" is pathetic and ridiculous, and indeed in the workstation/desktop market SCSI has largely disappeared because it simply doesn't prove out to be superior in real world situations. And somehow, maybe I'm crazy, I really don't think that "real computing shops" are looking at getting a couple of these Abit boards to replace their servers, and given that we're talking about the Abit board, hence it isn't contextually relevant.
Why would SCSI be the way to go? This argument has played out dozens of times, but given that IDE controllers are proven, extremely fast, and a dime a dozen, and IDE hardware can be had extremely cost effectively, I'll stick with IDE thanks (despite the hip elusive performance promise of SCSI).
Most of the "Cutting edge" Linux crowd are busy crowing about how they still have their 486 running fine, and how a Athlon XP is far more power than any reasonable man should ever need, so get yerself a 386 damnit. I hardly think Abit is targetting the Linux crowd.
As a "cutting edge" Windows user I have 6 USB devices connected to my PC right now (yup, it's Windows XP, though my cool factor is accomplished by saying that my webserver/firewall/NAT router is a FreeBSD box) and I have never had anything but good experiences with them.
P-II 250? What the heck is that? Do you mean a P2 266? Or was this some bastardized version of a Pentium Pro (though a PPro isn't a P2).
Most people buy new parts because their old parts are, by comparison, junk. I have a big box full of old crap that never actually stopped working, but I think I'd rather have a nice new video card than a Trident 9440 just because it hasn't burned out yet.
Wealthiest? Geekiest? While perhaps geeky, I currently have a USB printer, USB mouse, USB keyboard, USB joystick, USB webcam (for conferencing), USB steering wheel (F1 2000 CS is fantastic)...hrmm, that's all I can think of right now. I use a hub to be able to connect all of these, and I actually haven't bought anything new in about a year : This is all pretty old stuff.
It's not even just that though : I've seen actual slowdowns in some of the demo games running at the local EBs (sidenote: Why is it that usually it's the garbage games that they have running as demos? Perhaps MS has an agreement where they'll give face time to the companies that made games, but these things are KILLING xbox sales. I have NEVER seen Halo, arguably the killer app current for the xbox, running on a demo station) in scenes that my home PC would wail through with ease at 1024x768 : Again I have to presume some gross programmer inefficiency because I know that technically the graphics subsystem is superior to mine, but it just isn't capitalized.
The thing I don't get about this article: What the heck does the RETAILERS opinions of the boxes have to do with things? Retailers have likes/dislikes absolutely and completely different than the general public: They like high margins and lots of co-merchanidizing efforts. They like oily salesmen soliciting regions with cardboard cutouts and salesperson promos. I really don't CARE which box the retailers themselves like because I'm not a retailer, so the like/dislike criteria are totally different.
Having said that, personally I have been incredibly unwhelmed by the games that I have seen on the XBox (As a home user of a GF3 video card, let me say that what I see gaming at home is vastly superior to most of the games that I've seen on the xbox, yet on paper the xbox is technically superior, at least from a graphics perspective). I am curious about why most graphics in the current crop of games are so incredibly poor or simply uninspiring given the apparent promise of the xbox : Is this just because of the race to get games out quickly, so they didn't have time to capitalize on the hardware?
If anyone would, I'd expect Carmack to be the man to actually capitalize on the potentially that supposedly the xbox has, and Doom 3, if released for the xbox, might be what puts it over the top as a killer application. If I were Microsoft I'd be a lap dog at his door everyday helping him along and encouraging support of the xbox platform.
Microsoft is only bigger in market capitalization : IBM is the larger company, and has been for some time. In any case obviously you're trolling as generally IBM targets a very different audience than Microsoft (computing is a massive, and very disparate, field).
Having said that, mergers and acquisitions are hilarious, and it's a riot seeing how upper-management of very large organizations fools the public into believing that they "Create value" worth their enormous compensation packages : The market goes through a flurry of mergers and acquisitions when that fad is big, and then afterwards they turn ship and move into divestitures and spin-offs that'll "recover focus" and "capitalize on success", afterwhich they return to mergers and acquisitions. It really is laughable from a distance, but up close everyone buys it and believes it.
I don't believe anywhere I said "Dude, You're getting a Dell". Instead I expressed that presuming that his hardware needs are low is being presumptuous, especially when he runs the most demanding app out there (flight sims).
Having said that, it's been since about 1992 & the era of mail order Computer Shopper that you could build your own computer for less than the big VARs -> Add up the component costs and that Dell will be largely the same. Simply discounting the convenience (and power savings and better image and cooler running and space savings) of a flat screen monitor isn't quite building a better system either.
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Sounds more like a poor highway design than a problem with the car to me: I live in an area where all on ramps allow even a peddle-propelled car enough time to easily sync with traffic before having to merge, and I've been in many smaller cars that have no issues. If you're saying that 320HP is necessary to do this, then how do you rationalize that transport trucks with 0-60s of about 50 seconds need to get on these highways?
Ignoring your comment on trees (which is a grossly misrepresented factoid given that replacing an old growth, diverse, ecologically sound forest with a canopy of a equa-sized species of highest resale value trees is hardly equal. Okay, so I didn't ignore it. :-)), I was speaking specifically of the strategic position of the Western world (hence volcanoes and cows don't have a lot of relevance), and let's face it this is in regards to the middle-east and the constant vice that it has on the world given our oil dependence. I would say that it is unpatriotic and bordering on treason for someone to unnecessarily hinge the country on the fancy of another, often enemy state.
BTW: The old image of an econo-box straining to go 55mph is an old stereotype that is technically invalid: Cruising at 60MPH takes a measly 12HP in an average car, and given that even efficient small cars have 130+HP engines, I don't see them straining to maintain it.
Well in my case I was speaking about Canada (and our gas taxes are still dramatically lower than Europe. As you see the gas tax increase you see the average size of car decrease), however it is my belief that this is significantly less in most US states. I was sort of mixing and matching facts there.
So true. I was actually just trying to think up a fuel efficient North American brand (and I like the Neon, apart from the head gasket issue that I had on my 98) so that I didn't have to keep mentioning Honda or Toyota in the same breath as patriotism. :-) The Neon, at least with the older 3 speed automatic, is a great example of an inefficient vehicle given its size and utility (at least compared to what it could have been with a better automatic, as it now has).
You know, Soccer Mom's I really don't have that much of an issue with (presuming that they actually transport large numbers of children around, making the additional space and utility of a minivan necessary), but as you mentioned with the Range Rover (which gets 12mpg in the city, 15mpg on the highway. A Toyota Camry gets 24/33mpg, by comparison, and is actually a mid-sized car. A Corolla gets 32mpg/40mpg): There are a massive number of vehicles out there that have absolutely no use or utility whatsoever. Indeed, the public at large doesn't pay enough attention to fuel economy when purchasing cars either (though they absolutely should if they don't like killing kids from emphyzema and they're patriotic), and this is perhaps because of pump prices that too low, considering (why is it that a bottle of Coke costs me about 3x more than some oil which was dug up underground half a world away, processed, transported in many stages, and has about 60% of its price as taxes?).
If the US really cared about being strategically strong (presuming that the administration wasn't in the oil company's pockets) they would impose a large tax (with proceeds going to alternative energy research) based upon energy efficiency, or rather lack thereof, in vehicles.
Sidenote: I was recently urged to buy a minivan because "What about when you go camping in the summer? You'll need the space!" : That in a nutshell defined why most people have inappropriately sized vehicles for daily commutes and runs to the supermarket -> For that once every two year event where they actually might need it. RENT SOMETHING FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! I'm a big fan of rentals, and for a low cost you can have the larger vehicle for the period that you need it, going back to a more efficient configuration when you're done.
Often fuels like hydrogen are used because they are great "Batteries" of sorts (one of the primary problems facing man isn't a lack of energy : We have plenty of it, but rather a lack of ways to store and move that energy) : Being able to separate hydrogen at a nuclear power plant or a solar plant, and then running cars off of that hydrogen, is basically running the car off of the electric power plant, with a battery in between. Gasoline is merely a battery of solar power from many years ago. It really is staggering to contemplate the energy cycle.
Offtopic, but there's something that's been bothering me for wa while: Perpetually the US Administration talks about reducing the dependence on foreign oil, promoting the opening up of the Alaskan Wildlife Refuges for drilling, and basically writing a blank environmental cheque for oil companies to sign. All of this is done under the pretense of being patriotic by reducing the countries strategic vulnerabilities (namely having a primary energy source externally controlled). Yet this is the same administration (I'm not talking about one particular party, or even one make-up of politicians, but I mean government momentum on a whole) that continually refuses to enforce basic fuel efficiency (NOT conservation. There's a difference between conservation and efficiency) directives. I don't have the metrics (nor have I ever looked), but the highways are full of grossly inefficient vehicles (not just large vehicles, either, but additionally inefficient small vehicles. The Chevrolet Cavalier is some ~25% less efficient than most comparably sized competitors). If people want to feel patriotic, they should forsake getting that new Expedition and buy themselves a Dodge Neon or a Toyota Corolla : You're doing a great service to your country.
Again, you seem to be rather missing the point: When XML hit the scene INSTANTLY a very large percentage of ads added "XML" in the buzzword "nice to have" listing. On that same board there are about 40x more XML results than C#, and I'd wager than less than 5% of those ads are actually for jobs that use XML in any capacity whatsoever. Hell, there are more bluetooth results coming back than C#.
The claim I responded to was that C# was not going to be successful because there were many more job advertisements for Java than C#.
No, the claim (because it's my post that you were responding to) is that there isn't the buzz around C#/.NET, and it's that buzz that gets mass changes such as it implemented: Java did have the buzz almost immediately, and as I mentioned in my other post, so did XML.
Of course, when CD sales rose a while back the P2P advocate community was the first in line to take credit for it, claiming that Napster encouraged artist awareness and somehow increased purchasing of CDs (usually propped up by lots of anecdotal "I buy way more CDs than I did before").
Statistics can be twisted any which way.
It's not a legal hole: It's a technical hole.
As the ABG mentioned, .NET is hardly new by any measure of the imaginations: I've been playing with various betas for going on two years now, and Microsoft has been public with language specs, etc.
However, even more importantly is that the job market is tied to the "future" buzzwords that the CTOs/CIOs get sold on (i.e. A couple of years ago XML was all the rage, and every job posting asked for 7 years of XML experience: But we're talking about something that was brand new, but it got a buzz to appear in those ads), and even more frighteningly : Microsoft is the #1 company, normally, of hyping management to go in certain directions. Yet it's flopped.
I love Visual Studio.NET, ASP.NET offers some advantages, but let's face it: This is an evolution of the system for those who already are committed to the Microsoft platform. Being a user of ASP and ADO, sure I'm moving to ASP.NET and ADO.NET, but I doubt there are many Java shops who would do the same.
My personal opinion is that within 2 years C# will be tied or slowly overtaking Java for server-side code. The client-side will be dominated by .NET clients for the desktop and DHTML (or a derivative thereof). Within 4-5 years, Java will be marginalised into cell-phones/PDAs and will likely be offering interoperability with .NET which will have become the de facto standard for server technology.
As a long-time Microsoft droid (with several Microsoft composite certifications to prove it), I have to respectfully disagree: To me it appears that .NET has gone over like a lead balloon, and the industries apathy for it could not be more apparent. Despite it being the future, local job listings show Java leading C# job lists approximately 50:1, and of those few C# listings, most all have it as "one of many laundry list nice-to-have languages". I have no opinion personally about J2EE or C#/.NET, however it is astounding how this has been a giant paradigm shift that the industry just refuses to embrace.
If I had to put it into a nutshell why, I'd say that Microsoft has "revolutionized" a few too many times, and companies are getting sick of seeing their investments in Microsoft technology being obsoleted. .NET brings a new component model that fundamentally obsoletes COM, rendering millions of hours of work wasted (yeah you can wrap a COM object in a .NET wrapper, however it isn't managed and has the standard MS slant of it being "dirtier" in some abstract, undefined way). Microsoft is in a continuous game of selling new software, and to do that they need to convince you that what you have is obsolete, and in doing so they continually obsolete customers momentum and investment, and there is absolutely no doubt that there is growing resentment. In just the past few years I've gone from being a dyed in the wool MS advocate, to actively encouraging the use of open standards and more vendor neutral tools : It isn't my responsibility to help Microsoft continue the multiple sales growth, and their dominance says that to continue to do it they'll have to start bleeding every customer that much more.
The only reason computer industry jobs pay 100k a year is because the demand still out weighs the supply, what happens when theres more programmers and technicians than needed and companies can actually choose between you and someone cheaper?
I get the gist of what you're saying, but just a bit of conjecture regarding that situation (highly paid software developers) : One thing I've found in software development is that there are tremendous numbers of people who parade themselves as software developers`, and perhaps they actually completed a technical school course, or maybe even their Comp. Sci degree, maybe even their masters in Computer Science, yet they can't program their way out of a recursive loop. Working in the industry I've found it staggering the number of people who don't have a grasp on the basic tenents of software engineering, and for them the tool companies are progressively making higher and higher level languages, and bounding every operation by countless checks to ensure that the programmer didn't screw up (as a software developer I love this: The more bloated and managed your code is [hence slower, less efficient], the easier it is for me to make superior software). This variance in output and quality of output is the reason that software software developers get paid the big $, and many others don't deserve to be lumped in the same group. I see it as very similar to any other pursuit where the actual value of the employee isn't a constant, but varies considerably : Some salespeople make 100s of thousands of dollars, whereas others make minimum wage.
I wonder if Google is already providing some sort of paid service to large corporations. On my website on day I actually got a hit coming from a chap at the Redmond campus of Microsoft, and he was searching via http://www.google.com/microsoft : BTW, at the time I'm quite sure that that page actually displayed the Microsoft logo as well.
Hence the value of having multiple controllers : Each then has a dedicated pipe to the controller all to themselves, which is a superb reason to have more than the standard 2 controllers (so your CD-R, each of two hard drives, and DVD-ROM drive can all have their own controller).
Who exactly said that "IDE can't be surpassed"? Jesus, hop off the soapbox preacher because you're sadly misdirected: My point is that simply saying "SCSI GOOD! IDE BAD!" is pathetic and ridiculous, and indeed in the workstation/desktop market SCSI has largely disappeared because it simply doesn't prove out to be superior in real world situations. And somehow, maybe I'm crazy, I really don't think that "real computing shops" are looking at getting a couple of these Abit boards to replace their servers, and given that we're talking about the Abit board, hence it isn't contextually relevant.
Why would SCSI be the way to go? This argument has played out dozens of times, but given that IDE controllers are proven, extremely fast, and a dime a dozen, and IDE hardware can be had extremely cost effectively, I'll stick with IDE thanks (despite the hip elusive performance promise of SCSI).
Most of the "Cutting edge" Linux crowd are busy crowing about how they still have their 486 running fine, and how a Athlon XP is far more power than any reasonable man should ever need, so get yerself a 386 damnit. I hardly think Abit is targetting the Linux crowd.
As a "cutting edge" Windows user I have 6 USB devices connected to my PC right now (yup, it's Windows XP, though my cool factor is accomplished by saying that my webserver/firewall/NAT router is a FreeBSD box) and I have never had anything but good experiences with them.
P-II 250? What the heck is that? Do you mean a P2 266? Or was this some bastardized version of a Pentium Pro (though a PPro isn't a P2).
Most people buy new parts because their old parts are, by comparison, junk. I have a big box full of old crap that never actually stopped working, but I think I'd rather have a nice new video card than a Trident 9440 just because it hasn't burned out yet.
Wealthiest? Geekiest? While perhaps geeky, I currently have a USB printer, USB mouse, USB keyboard, USB joystick, USB webcam (for conferencing), USB steering wheel (F1 2000 CS is fantastic)...hrmm, that's all I can think of right now. I use a hub to be able to connect all of these, and I actually haven't bought anything new in about a year : This is all pretty old stuff.
It's not even just that though : I've seen actual slowdowns in some of the demo games running at the local EBs (sidenote: Why is it that usually it's the garbage games that they have running as demos? Perhaps MS has an agreement where they'll give face time to the companies that made games, but these things are KILLING xbox sales. I have NEVER seen Halo, arguably the killer app current for the xbox, running on a demo station) in scenes that my home PC would wail through with ease at 1024x768 : Again I have to presume some gross programmer inefficiency because I know that technically the graphics subsystem is superior to mine, but it just isn't capitalized.
The thing I don't get about this article: What the heck does the RETAILERS opinions of the boxes have to do with things? Retailers have likes/dislikes absolutely and completely different than the general public: They like high margins and lots of co-merchanidizing efforts. They like oily salesmen soliciting regions with cardboard cutouts and salesperson promos. I really don't CARE which box the retailers themselves like because I'm not a retailer, so the like/dislike criteria are totally different. Having said that, personally I have been incredibly unwhelmed by the games that I have seen on the XBox (As a home user of a GF3 video card, let me say that what I see gaming at home is vastly superior to most of the games that I've seen on the xbox, yet on paper the xbox is technically superior, at least from a graphics perspective). I am curious about why most graphics in the current crop of games are so incredibly poor or simply uninspiring given the apparent promise of the xbox : Is this just because of the race to get games out quickly, so they didn't have time to capitalize on the hardware? If anyone would, I'd expect Carmack to be the man to actually capitalize on the potentially that supposedly the xbox has, and Doom 3, if released for the xbox, might be what puts it over the top as a killer application. If I were Microsoft I'd be a lap dog at his door everyday helping him along and encouraging support of the xbox platform.
Microsoft is only bigger in market capitalization : IBM is the larger company, and has been for some time. In any case obviously you're trolling as generally IBM targets a very different audience than Microsoft (computing is a massive, and very disparate, field).
Having said that, mergers and acquisitions are hilarious, and it's a riot seeing how upper-management of very large organizations fools the public into believing that they "Create value" worth their enormous compensation packages : The market goes through a flurry of mergers and acquisitions when that fad is big, and then afterwards they turn ship and move into divestitures and spin-offs that'll "recover focus" and "capitalize on success", afterwhich they return to mergers and acquisitions. It really is laughable from a distance, but up close everyone buys it and believes it.
I don't believe anywhere I said "Dude, You're getting a Dell". Instead I expressed that presuming that his hardware needs are low is being presumptuous, especially when he runs the most demanding app out there (flight sims).
Having said that, it's been since about 1992 & the era of mail order Computer Shopper that you could build your own computer for less than the big VARs -> Add up the component costs and that Dell will be largely the same. Simply discounting the convenience (and power savings and better image and cooler running and space savings) of a flat screen monitor isn't quite building a better system either.