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Mercutio

Mercutio

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Handruin said:
The Antec P183 was loads easier to build in than my original P180. Cables fit in the back panel, etc. I don't know how it compares to the Antec 300, but you might want to take a look if your original impression was with the P180. My top fan is still running in my original P180, so it might be your cat causing premature failure of the fan. :)
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My cats liked to sit with their rumps on the top vent of my P180s. Being cats, it's not like I could do much to stop them from that. I had two of them but they're presently retired until I get around to repurposing them.

You're right that I never bothered with any of the newer revisions of the P180 due to the overwhelming idiocy of putting SO MUCH crap basically right at the bottom right corner of the motherboard. That one area always seems to look like Cthulhu having marital relations with a something from a Japanese cartoon no matter how neat I tried to make things.

I also saw the T500s have core i7's in them and I also wanted one. I can't justify it since my current system isn't very old.
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I think it's the combination of the screen and the i7. The newer of my T-series Thinkpads does have a 2.8GHz CPU, so it's not like I'm going to get a big bump in horsepower, but the main battery and/or CPU improvements seems to allow about an hour of extra run time and these guys have probably the nicest screen I've seen on a notebook (which, granted, the previous generation Thinkpads also had).

The thinkpad doesn't have a DVI, but it at least has a DisplayPort. I've used it many times and it works fine.
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What are you plugging it in to? I don't think I have anything that I could connect a displayport to.
 
Handruin

Handruin

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Mercutio said:
My cats liked to sit with their rumps on the top vent of my P180s. Being cats, it's not like I could do much to stop them from that. I had two of them but they're presently retired until I get around to repurposing them.

You're right that I never bothered with any of the newer revisions of the P180 due to the overwhelming idiocy of putting SO MUCH crap basically right at the bottom right corner of the motherboard. That one area always seems to look like Cthulhu having marital relations with a something from a Japanese cartoon no matter how neat I tried to make things.
Click to expand...

You're right, there is a lot going on in that corner. I didn't have much issue with it likely because the Gigabyte motherboard I bought was smaller which in turn left me extra room to manage things.


Mercutio said:
I think it's the combination of the screen and the i7. The newer of my T-series Thinkpads does have a 2.8GHz CPU, so it's not like I'm going to get a big bump in horsepower, but the main battery and/or CPU improvements seems to allow about an hour of extra run time and these guys have probably the nicest screen I've seen on a notebook (which, granted, the previous generation Thinkpads also had).




What are you plugging it in to? I don't think I have anything that I could connect a displayport to.
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Having an extra hour sounds nice, but for whatever reason I try to avoid using the battery at any cost to increase it's lifespan. I know it seems odd, but I'm anal about preserving the life of it for times when I may need it. I probably only have a few dozen recharge cycles on the battery and I've configured it to only charge at most to 95% only after it has dropped below 90%.

I use the display port with my Dell U2410.
 
Mercutio

Mercutio

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If you're going to not use the battery, you should let it discharge to about the halfway point and pull it out of the system. Thinkpads seem to have better power management than Dell systems with regard to not charging when they don't need to (most of the Latitudes I see that are more than maybe a year old seem to have batteries that are completely shot), but leaving a battery on AC all the time is just as bad as continuously recharging and discharging one.

My attitude is that my laptops are systems I use when I can't get to a proper desktop, and a big part of that is using them untethered from the wall. If the battery dies, I'll buy another.
 
Pradeep

Pradeep

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Mercutio said:
My cats liked to sit with their rumps on the top vent of my P180s. Being cats, it's not like I could do much to stop them from that. I had two of them but they're presently retired until I get around to repurposing them.
Click to expand...

I had to read that twice. First time I was 8)
 
Pradeep

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http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/17831/1/

"According to the info, the card will be as custom as it can be. It will feature a total of 4GB of GDDR5 memory, two for each GPU, paired up with a 2x256-bit memory interface. The memory will be clocked at 4800MHz, a 400MHz more than on regular HD 5970. The card has a total of 3200 Stream processors and a core clock of 850MHz. Bare in mind that the reference card was clocked at 725MHz in order to keep the thermals and the power consumption at acceptable levels.

In order to feed this beast, you'll need two 8-pin and one 6-pin PCIe power connector so before you go shopping for one, first check your PSU. The cooler is designed from scratch, and in order to cool those two overclocked GPUs, Asus' will use a large 100mm fan paired with eight copper heatpipes and a large heatsink. Guys at muropaketti claim that it will even be quieter than the reference HD 5970 and that it will score somewhere around X14100 points in 3DMark Vantage, almost 30 percent more than the reference card."

asus_rogares_1.jpg


Artists rendering apparently.
 
mubs

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Mercutio said:
...leaving a battery on AC all the time is just as bad as continuously recharging and discharging one.
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You're right, from my experience. But why is it so? How hard is it to make a charging circuit that bypasses the battery if on AC? Sheesh.
 
Pradeep

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http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/minutes-air-france-447/story?id=9951878&page=4

"For several years now, Airbus has offered its customers a special safety program - called "Buss" -- at a cost of €300,000 per aircraft. If the airspeed indicator fails, this software shows pilots the angle at which they must point the plane.

Up to now, Air France has chosen not to invest in this optional extra for its fleet. "

Now's that an upgrade that I would want on any plane I'm flying on. Hell they could even add it in as a surcharge: "catastropic loss of instrumentation insurance $5 per segment".
 
udaman

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ddrueding said:
Just finished watching "The Big Sleep". Don't know how I hadn't seen it to this point, but I enjoyed it quite a bit.
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Orig or remake w/Bob Mitchum?

Orig w/Ms Becall, intelligent, sassy, innuendo dialog...no actual sex. But the brunette in the bookstore, yeah baby...seriously, Y don't they all act like that to me...ah, the Boggy charisma, darn. And Ms Becall doing that scratch under the tip of her skirt...just makes you want to rip her clothes off... well, kind of :D

Vivian: Speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them workout a little first, see if they're front runners or come from behind, find out what their whole card is, what makes them run.
Marlowe: Find out mine?
Vivian: I think so.
Marlowe: Go ahead.
Vivian: I'd say you don't like to be rated. You like to get out in front, open up a little lead, take a little breather in the backstretch, and then come home free.
Marlowe: You don't like to be rated yourself.
Vivian: I haven't met anyone yet that can do it. Any suggestions?
Marlowe: Well, I can't tell till I've seen you over a distance of ground. You've got a touch of class, but I don't know how, how far you can go.
Vivian: A lot depends on who's in the saddle.
 
LunarMist

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Pradeep said:
http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/minutes-air-france-447/story?id=9951878&page=4

"For several years now, Airbus has offered its customers a special safety program - called "Buss" -- at a cost of €300,000 per aircraft. If the airspeed indicator fails, this software shows pilots the angle at which they must point the plane.

Up to now, Air France has chosen not to invest in this optional extra for its fleet. "

Now's that an upgrade that I would want on any plane I'm flying on. Hell they could even add it in as a surcharge: "catastropic loss of instrumentation insurance $5 per segment".
Click to expand...


That should be standard, not an option! Or maybe the manufacturer should put the extra money into a redundant system.
 
udaman

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ddrueding said:
The original, of course ;)
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1946 BW vs British location/actors 1978 colour :p. After a while see the '78 version, next year or so, just a different 'vibe' about that one...you won't like it as much, but still good to watch on a rainy day :p.

Different feel, I liked the '46 version better, both based on Raymond Chandler novels.

Boggy had a dumber short tie on, makes a short guy look even shorter...should have gone down to his belt.

A very young Dorothy Malone was looking hot/sharp @20 when she was in this movie....I would have guessed she was in her late 20's.

Bookstore scene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I_tNbfBZMI

^I disagree w/Boggy though, she looked even sexier with the spectacles...only they did not even have temples, just props for the lines Boggy delivers :(. Kind of reminds me of an older/prettier/more intelligent version of Alicia Silverstone in the movie Clueless. Guess she was a dirty blond/light brown hair; future movies, Malone's hair was always dyed very blond.

Quoting Chandler, from the '78 version.

Philip Marlowe: What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a stagnant lake or in a marble tower on the top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that.

Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell.

Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was.

But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes.

And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep.


 
ddrueding

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Just got home from the Panetta Institute Lecture on the economy with Robert Reich and Harvey Pitt (moderated by Ron Insana). Humor, partisan jabs, and bragging aside; they basically agreed on the following:

1. The financial mechanisms in place are so complex that no-one, even at the highest levels of the financial and government sectors, understand any of it.

2. This lack of comprehension has caused a serious lack of transparency, because they are too embarrassed to say they have no idea.

3. This lack of transparency has caused everyone to try and take advantage of the crisis rather than solve it, because no one knows how to solve it.

Anyway, I found it interesting. I also had no idea how short Robert Reich was.
 
ddrueding

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Yup, I like Marketplace. It was interesting to hear the direct accounts of specifically who they were talking and at what point those people openly admitted to not knowing anything. Hopefully it will be televised somewhere, because they named names and it was pretty damning.
 
MaxBurn

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Yes, including shipping both ways from the seller, never had to work with amex. Actually I think the seller was as surprised as I was, or possibly if you wanted to read something into it just cooperating so I don't do anything. I figured I would log a FTC complaint now that I have searched around and seen how many fakes of just this set there are out there, there are a LOT.
 
LunarMist

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MaxBurn said:
Yes, including shipping both ways from the seller, never had to work with amex. Actually I think the seller was as surprised as I was, or possibly if you wanted to read something into it just cooperating so I don't do anything.
Click to expand...

Perhaps I am too skeptical, but perhaps they were surprised that you noticed, not that the disks were counterfeit. :)
 
Mercutio

Mercutio

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I'm not sure that I'd care if the discs were counterfeit, if they had the content at a level of quality that I consider acceptable.
 
S

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In my experience sellers on Amazon's marketplace tend to be very accommodating. I'm not entirely sure why that is. It's probably because Amazon will refund your money if they don't, and I'm sure they get slapped over it.

I've bought a fair quantity of CDs through the marketplace and gotten the wrong disc. In my experience the sellers will just refund your money and let you keep the disc.
 
MaxBurn

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The quality of the box is not matched by the quality of the disks which was straight up crap and is what really clued me in. I might not have even noticed if all the disks worked in the first place. I am glad I got the real things, the image quality is much better on these as they aren't compressed down to a disk half the size it should be.
 
Mercutio

Mercutio

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My least-favorite customer finally saw the light and agreed to move the Exchange server I'm maintaining (on a Comcast dynamic IP, so like half his emails don't go through. Which is my fault) for him alone to a single-user Google Apps Premier domain.

I feel oddly buoyant.
 
ddrueding

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Google Apps has made my life an order of magnitude simpler. E-mail (along with the SPAM and AV to go with it) simply require too much maintenance and specialized knowledge to be worth it for small businesses and consultants.
 
udaman

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ddrueding said:
Google Apps has made my life an order of magnitude simpler. E-mail (along with the SPAM and AV to go with it) simply require too much maintenance and specialized knowledge to be worth it for small businesses and consultants.
Click to expand...

So U don't use Gmail anymore?

How does Google apps *replace* email?
 
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