Hmmm. I'm now fairly dubious of the linked review. For two reasons mostly.
1. The Company of heroes numbers seem off. At least the minimum frame rate number. The test machine is an Intel Quad Core w/ a 8800GTX under XP and got a score about 10FPS less than what I get on my 4400X2 AMD processor and 8800GTX under Windows Vista.
2. HardOCP's review seems to contradict the results. http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTM 0MSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
The HardOCP review seems to be more thorough and includes comparisons to both the 8800GTX and GTX boards. They also don't leave out other performance numbers such as max framerate.
The most telling comparison is with STALKER which the Radeon suffers badly at low settings compared to the 8800GTX.
Incorrect. AAC is absolutely not free. In fact it's more expensive than WMA. Apparently the licensing cost for the three formats are:
250,000 units
WMA: $25,000
MP3: $187,500
AAC: $250,000
500,000 units
WMA: $50,000
MP3: $375,000
AAC: $370,000
1,000,000 units
WMA: $100,000
MP3: $750,000
AAC: $740,000
No I don't but HardOCP is not a review site for average users. It's is a site for Overclockers, Linux users and advanced Windows users. It is not a web site for novice computer users, so yes, they should have known to look for a PCL driver.
30 days and he wasn't able to get his HP 1020 printer to work. Considering even without a native 1020 driver from HP he could have used the included HP Laserjet family PCL5 driver included with Vista to have a working printer, It really throws an unfavorable shadow over the rest of his review for me.
Windows Mail can be vulnerable but only if you were to forward or reply to a message using the exploit. Office 2007 is not affected by the exploit. As mentioned if you are running IE7 under Vista you are not vulnerable to hostile web sites using this exploit.
The original article claims that the UI is white text on black background. That is incorrect. According to Gizmodo (the source of the photo in the article) the UI is white text on colored back grounds with lots of textures. It's possibly skinnable. It's very reminicent of Media Center's UI.
It also left out a very nice feature: from the above link: "FM support is fairly complete, with both an FM tuner and an FM transmitter so you can beam the music to your car. The FM transmitter also feeds up Song and Artist information so you can see what's playing from your car stereo (if it supports that feature, like in GM cars). "
That's going to add a lot of value to the player IMHO.
The scroll wheel is nice and makes an attractive package, but I hate it for when I'm in the car. I'd much rather have tactile buttons for eyes free operation when driving.
8 named storms so far in the Pacific. By this time last year there had been 8 named storms as well. 7 by this time next week in 2004, 10 named storms by the end of august 2003, 8 by the end of august 2002. Hardly anything more frequent that average.
In the Atlantic, on the other hand, we've had 3 named storms so far, none were hurricanes, and they think its going to remain quiet for the next couple of weeks. By then end of August last year we had 12 named storms including Katrina. The Atlantic averages 12 to 16 named storms a year. At this years rate, we're looking at a very quiet year, the global amount of storms will still be significantly down from average.
You're entitled to your opinion, but MCE2005 is not crap. I've been using it for over a year and a half now. It's worked great, day in, day out. And the PC didn't cost me $2000 either. The requirements for MCE2005 are not high at all. Not even for HD TV. That cheap $299 PC at walmart is more than capable to running it, even with a couple of extenders running off of it.
You can't beat the combination of MCE2005 and an extender. Especially if that extender is the XBox 360. The PC stays in the Office/Bedroom/kitchen/wherever where it belongs and the 360 streams the content.
The PS3 isn't going to win a format war. And the 360 has nothing to do with it.
With the PS2, it was the DVD format that helped drive the console sales. It wasn't the other way around. DVD's were already popular and well on their way to replacing VHS. The primary reason being the noticable video qualtiy improvement on any TV in the home. There were also secondary benefits such as no rewind, no degredation of video quality over time, and less storage required for the media. With or without the PS2, DVD was going to replace VHS. Especially since it was only competing with VHS in the consumer space.
Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray have two fights on their hands. First against each other, then against DVDs. While both formats may be superior to DVD, the difference isn't clear to the vast majority of consumers. Most consumers don't own HD-TVs. This little problem alone means that to the majority of consumers the ONLY difference between DVD and the new formats is price.
The PS3 will help Blu-Ray's cause a bit, but not nearly as much as Sony is hoping for. There is, currently, serious doubts that the PS3 is going to be anywhere near as popular as the PS2. Fewer and fewer game studios (and remember, it is a gaming console first and formost) are releasing truly exclusive content. More and more game studios are expressing lack of confidence in the platform itself.
A gaming machine selling well isn't a guarantee for a format either. UMD definatly bares this out.
Sony has also been doing spin control on everything ranging from it's price, availability, marketshare, and titles.
In the end it will be the early adopters that are going to decide the winner of the format war. The people with the money to afford HD-TVs. They aren't going to be the ones to buy a PS3 in order to get a cheap movie player. Especially when the rival format already has better quality movies available on dedicated player for the same price or cheaper.
That's all well and good, but as it was explained to me, the SETI @ Home project has you "listening" to unlikely frequencies that may still be worth investigating. If there were actually a signal, it would likely not picked up through the distributed project but the more likely frequencies that SETI examines themselves.
Even if there were a hit, would we even be able to do anything about it and how long would it take to signal back? Years, Decades, Centuries?
I think it's just more practical to put my CPU cycles to something that can help with more immediate problems. For me, Folding@Home makes more sense.
Why do they think protesting at a MS-Dev conference for it?
Personally, If were leading something like this it would have been last week in New York. Protesting DRM at the opening of the new Apple Store would have been more effective. Huge media coverage, Lots of every day people there, and a perfect example of DRM that is anti-consumer in the form of ITMS. At the very least it would help bring attention of the problems of DRM to the general public rather than to windows developers and tech media who already the situation backwards and forwards.
These are the two biggest points. I'd like to add this as well.
1) System builders (Dell, HP, etc) will decide what these users have as defaults. Microsoft already stated these builders are free to set this as they see fit, so the highest bidder will be default for these customers you are talking about.
On the other hand, systems that will default to MSN Search because they didn't come through a PC vendor will have been either installed on XP machines by the user or by a user upgrading to Vista on their own. In either case, users that have that level of technical savy will also have the ability to change the default to their prefered search engine.
For the record, it takes exactly two clicks of the mouse to change the setting and MS provides a ton of options without jumping through hoops.
IMHO it's no different than MS defaulting IE's homepage to MSN which has/gasp a search box on the front page!
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the search defaulting as it is now. MS in no way prevents users from changing it. They make it easy to do. And unlike what default browser, this requires no downloading and installation of software.
This complaint is totally without merit.
Yep, Lots of the Broadband speeds we get in the US are capped by the providers. Comcast, for example, currently caps for me at 8Mbps but in towns where they compete with Verison's fiber service they are boosting the cap to 15.
I'm a 360 owner and I use it to schedule TV shows all the time. It extends everything I can do on the Media Center Application itself (FM radio, Music, Video, Live TV, stream video from the internet, etc..) with the exception of DVD playback, which is done on the 360 itself.
The people you are talking to may be just using Media Connect which allows the streaming of Video and Audio from ANY WinXP PC to the 360. Media Connect and Media Center Extender are two different products, but supported on the 360.
The household PC is in the kitchen for general use with an XBox 360 in the living room streaming live TV and recorded media to the TV over my wireless network. Win MCE 2005 and Extenders have allowed this for a while now without Viiv.
I'm not so sure. It could be that they are headed in the right direction as well. I saw this comment on another board:
I remember at CDGC, sitting next to one of the Dev's for WoW while it was under construction and listening to Raph talk. When he said that players WANT forced downtime in an MMO - whether they say they do or not - the Blizzard Dev got up and left.
If that statement is true, Then I'm not sorry to see him go.
companies that sell MS based players have been dieing to license Apple Technology. Do you seriously think that The Creative's, Sony's and Rio's of the world wouldn't jump on the chance. One of the compelling reasons people go for the iPod is that it has access to music from the iTunes store. If Creative were able to put a label saying compatible with iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, Yahoo music, they would sell a lot more players. Apple does not want that.
On the flip side, Apple does not want competition to the iTunes store. They don't want any other music stores to sell compatible songs to the point where they will flash iPods to be incompatible. They did it once already when Real created harmony. And since the iPod is the predominant player it effectively block competition. Especially since apple charges more per song than some of it's competition.
Because MS isn't stopping apple from licensing their DRM. On the other hand, Apple refuses to license their DRM. Apple has even gone as far to flash iPods using iTunes to prevent them from using songs from the Real.com after they figured out how to get iPods to play non ITMS DRM'd music.
MS, Real, Napster, etc, all the other players have tried to get Apple to License ITMS. Apple just won't have it.
He means the Mini's competition for the Living room is the 360 and the PS3. and he's correct.
The 360 brings full media capabilities including HDTV and "next gen" gaming to the livingroom. Coupled with a Media Center PC elsewhere in the house, It's simply an awesome combination.
Doesn't having to add external devices such as HD's and TV tuners kind of go counter to the elegant Mac concept? I would much rather have all of that in one box rather than deal with all the extra cables, powerbricks, and external boxes needed to make the mini truely functional and anything but elegant.
Odd, I've been using my MCE 2005 box for over a year now. I've only rebooted it for patches that required it(very few), or power failures. I use it to listen to my 400+ CD collection that I ripped and it has never frozen. It's common for it to be recording two shows, running as a ventrilo server with several friends on, having a family member use it to check e-mail and surf, stream video or music to an extender, and use the remaining cycles to Fold. All with no problems or issues.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm. I'm now fairly dubious of the linked review. For two reasons mostly. 1. The Company of heroes numbers seem off. At least the minimum frame rate number. The test machine is an Intel Quad Core w/ a 8800GTX under XP and got a score about 10FPS less than what I get on my 4400X2 AMD processor and 8800GTX under Windows Vista. 2. HardOCP's review seems to contradict the results. http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTM 0MSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
The HardOCP review seems to be more thorough and includes comparisons to both the 8800GTX and GTX boards. They also don't leave out other performance numbers such as max framerate.
The most telling comparison is with STALKER which the Radeon suffers badly at low settings compared to the 8800GTX.
Incorrect. AAC is absolutely not free. In fact it's more expensive than WMA. Apparently the licensing cost for the three formats are: 250,000 units WMA: $25,000 MP3: $187,500 AAC: $250,000 500,000 units WMA: $50,000 MP3: $375,000 AAC: $370,000 1,000,000 units WMA: $100,000 MP3: $750,000 AAC: $740,000
No I don't but HardOCP is not a review site for average users. It's is a site for Overclockers, Linux users and advanced Windows users. It is not a web site for novice computer users, so yes, they should have known to look for a PCL driver.
30 days and he wasn't able to get his HP 1020 printer to work. Considering even without a native 1020 driver from HP he could have used the included HP Laserjet family PCL5 driver included with Vista to have a working printer, It really throws an unfavorable shadow over the rest of his review for me.
Windows Mail can be vulnerable but only if you were to forward or reply to a message using the exploit. Office 2007 is not affected by the exploit. As mentioned if you are running IE7 under Vista you are not vulnerable to hostile web sites using this exploit.
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/top/exclusive-micro soft-zune-details-194957.php
The original article claims that the UI is white text on black background. That is incorrect. According to Gizmodo (the source of the photo in the article) the UI is white text on colored back grounds with lots of textures. It's possibly skinnable. It's very reminicent of Media Center's UI.
It also left out a very nice feature:
from the above link: "FM support is fairly complete, with both an FM tuner and an FM transmitter so you can beam the music to your car. The FM transmitter also feeds up Song and Artist information so you can see what's playing from your car stereo (if it supports that feature, like in GM cars). "
That's going to add a lot of value to the player IMHO.
The scroll wheel is nice and makes an attractive package, but I hate it for when I'm in the car. I'd much rather have tactile buttons for eyes free operation when driving.
8 named storms so far in the Pacific. By this time last year there had been 8 named storms as well. 7 by this time next week in 2004, 10 named storms by the end of august 2003, 8 by the end of august 2002. Hardly anything more frequent that average. In the Atlantic, on the other hand, we've had 3 named storms so far, none were hurricanes, and they think its going to remain quiet for the next couple of weeks. By then end of August last year we had 12 named storms including Katrina. The Atlantic averages 12 to 16 named storms a year. At this years rate, we're looking at a very quiet year, the global amount of storms will still be significantly down from average.
You're entitled to your opinion, but MCE2005 is not crap. I've been using it for over a year and a half now. It's worked great, day in, day out. And the PC didn't cost me $2000 either. The requirements for MCE2005 are not high at all. Not even for HD TV. That cheap $299 PC at walmart is more than capable to running it, even with a couple of extenders running off of it. You can't beat the combination of MCE2005 and an extender. Especially if that extender is the XBox 360. The PC stays in the Office/Bedroom/kitchen/wherever where it belongs and the 360 streams the content.
And Contrary to the PS3 fanboys:
The PS3 isn't going to win a format war. And the 360 has nothing to do with it.
With the PS2, it was the DVD format that helped drive the console sales. It wasn't the other way around. DVD's were already popular and well on their way to replacing VHS. The primary reason being the noticable video qualtiy improvement on any TV in the home. There were also secondary benefits such as no rewind, no degredation of video quality over time, and less storage required for the media. With or without the PS2, DVD was going to replace VHS. Especially since it was only competing with VHS in the consumer space.
Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray have two fights on their hands. First against each other, then against DVDs. While both formats may be superior to DVD, the difference isn't clear to the vast majority of consumers. Most consumers don't own HD-TVs. This little problem alone means that to the majority of consumers the ONLY difference between DVD and the new formats is price.
The PS3 will help Blu-Ray's cause a bit, but not nearly as much as Sony is hoping for. There is, currently, serious doubts that the PS3 is going to be anywhere near as popular as the PS2. Fewer and fewer game studios (and remember, it is a gaming console first and formost) are releasing truly exclusive content. More and more game studios are expressing lack of confidence in the platform itself.
A gaming machine selling well isn't a guarantee for a format either. UMD definatly bares this out.
Sony has also been doing spin control on everything ranging from it's price, availability, marketshare, and titles.
In the end it will be the early adopters that are going to decide the winner of the format war. The people with the money to afford HD-TVs. They aren't going to be the ones to buy a PS3 in order to get a cheap movie player. Especially when the rival format already has better quality movies available on dedicated player for the same price or cheaper.
That's all well and good, but as it was explained to me, the SETI @ Home project has you "listening" to unlikely frequencies that may still be worth investigating. If there were actually a signal, it would likely not picked up through the distributed project but the more likely frequencies that SETI examines themselves. Even if there were a hit, would we even be able to do anything about it and how long would it take to signal back? Years, Decades, Centuries? I think it's just more practical to put my CPU cycles to something that can help with more immediate problems. For me, Folding@Home makes more sense.
Why do they think protesting at a MS-Dev conference for it? Personally, If were leading something like this it would have been last week in New York. Protesting DRM at the opening of the new Apple Store would have been more effective. Huge media coverage, Lots of every day people there, and a perfect example of DRM that is anti-consumer in the form of ITMS. At the very least it would help bring attention of the problems of DRM to the general public rather than to windows developers and tech media who already the situation backwards and forwards.
Wouldn't this be considered more of a trojam than an exploit?
For the record, it takes exactly two clicks of the mouse to change the setting and MS provides a ton of options without jumping through hoops. IMHO it's no different than MS defaulting IE's homepage to MSN which has /gasp a search box on the front page!
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the search defaulting as it is now. MS in no way prevents users from changing it. They make it easy to do. And unlike what default browser, this requires no downloading and installation of software.
This complaint is totally without merit.
Yep, Lots of the Broadband speeds we get in the US are capped by the providers. Comcast, for example, currently caps for me at 8Mbps but in towns where they compete with Verison's fiber service they are boosting the cap to 15.
I'm a 360 owner and I use it to schedule TV shows all the time. It extends everything I can do on the Media Center Application itself (FM radio, Music, Video, Live TV, stream video from the internet, etc..) with the exception of DVD playback, which is done on the 360 itself. The people you are talking to may be just using Media Connect which allows the streaming of Video and Audio from ANY WinXP PC to the 360. Media Connect and Media Center Extender are two different products, but supported on the 360.
The household PC is in the kitchen for general use with an XBox 360 in the living room streaming live TV and recorded media to the TV over my wireless network. Win MCE 2005 and Extenders have allowed this for a while now without Viiv.
Ars has some info: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060324-6453 .html
They are calling it FUD. I tend to agree.
companies that sell MS based players have been dieing to license Apple Technology. Do you seriously think that The Creative's, Sony's and Rio's of the world wouldn't jump on the chance. One of the compelling reasons people go for the iPod is that it has access to music from the iTunes store. If Creative were able to put a label saying compatible with iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, Yahoo music, they would sell a lot more players. Apple does not want that. On the flip side, Apple does not want competition to the iTunes store. They don't want any other music stores to sell compatible songs to the point where they will flash iPods to be incompatible. They did it once already when Real created harmony. And since the iPod is the predominant player it effectively block competition. Especially since apple charges more per song than some of it's competition.
Because MS isn't stopping apple from licensing their DRM. On the other hand, Apple refuses to license their DRM. Apple has even gone as far to flash iPods using iTunes to prevent them from using songs from the Real.com after they figured out how to get iPods to play non ITMS DRM'd music. MS, Real, Napster, etc, all the other players have tried to get Apple to License ITMS. Apple just won't have it.
He means the Mini's competition for the Living room is the 360 and the PS3. and he's correct. The 360 brings full media capabilities including HDTV and "next gen" gaming to the livingroom. Coupled with a Media Center PC elsewhere in the house, It's simply an awesome combination.
Doesn't having to add external devices such as HD's and TV tuners kind of go counter to the elegant Mac concept? I would much rather have all of that in one box rather than deal with all the extra cables, powerbricks, and external boxes needed to make the mini truely functional and anything but elegant.
Odd, I've been using my MCE 2005 box for over a year now. I've only rebooted it for patches that required it(very few), or power failures. I use it to listen to my 400+ CD collection that I ripped and it has never frozen. It's common for it to be recording two shows, running as a ventrilo server with several friends on, having a family member use it to check e-mail and surf, stream video or music to an extender, and use the remaining cycles to Fold. All with no problems or issues.