Posts by Another Anonymous Coward 1 28 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009
Or, to at least come close to it.
This article is misleading... from the sounds of it there's nothing wrong with usb 3.0 or the controller and it's clearly the disk that can't physically output more than 130 MB/s.
Calling USB 3.0 slow because the disk it's connected to can't fill up the pipe is a bit like saying my 20 Mb internet is slow because I just visited a site where the server hosting it couldn't output more than 26 kb/s. Completely the wrong end of the stick.
I didn't think 40 GB would be enough until I fired up control panel and released that despite having 128 installs there's still only 30 GB of stuff on there and 20 GB of that is games.
Everything else is pretty small, with the utorrent install winning the prize at 264 KB
This drive is no good for gamers who should probably plump for 80 GB, but for everyone else the space seems about right.
I'll consider it... to back it up, I might even be able to clone the boot disk onto a 32 GB SD card to have a completely internal backup solution.
I wish they'd start embedding this stuff into high-end motherboards.
Finally, the return of the small cheap computer that is actually all 3 of those things.
Very glad to see ASUS returning to it's original eeePC concept.. I'm way more likely to pick up something under the £200 mark than one of the current batch of £300 netbooks that are crippled to 1gb of ram and 1024x600 by Wintel.
Linux should be great for a system like this. It'll be interesting to see the battery life now that those tiny mobile phone processors have breached the 1 ghz mark needed for a decent modern computing experience. If they also go with a snappy 16gb SSD as standard the overall performance could put a lot of bigger machines to shame.
Tax-deductable.
Either as a business expense, or as purchased by someone who's self-employed and uses it for work.
If they're earning enough to put them in the higher tax bracket then they effectively get 40% off the shiny new gear. I'll consider one if I ever start earning that much, beats paying the 40%.
For recreational use though? You'd have to be nuts. Not that you're not permitted some recreational use out of a business purchase of course. :)
While technically, it should be a good selling point...
I still wouldn't trust any advertising campaign that claimed "new and improved, no more explosions this time, honest!".
Most people probably aren't very aware of the various "laptops burning your crotch with acidic flaming goop" stories, so it's probably best not to call attention to it even when progress is made on cutting down the average frequency of exploding.
It's actually Microsoft policy that restricts the RAM and HD capacity when the other specs meet certain net-booky standards, not Intel.
The Intel restriction is on screen resolution, and has recently been lifted or modified, hence why this one is allowed to have something a bit better than the usual pathetic 1024x576 on a 12" screen.
Not entirely sure what the specific specs that trigger Microsoft's "this laptop must be crap" flag are (think they're related to screen size mostly), which may explain a few ones with 2gb onboard. Also, the restriction does not apply to desktops, only netbooks.
Anyway, my point was.. big mess of hardware restrictions are still the main thing holding netbooks back.
We'd already have 4gb RAM, Atom 330 + Ion, 500GB HD, 1280x800 netbooks on sale if it wasn't for all the restrictions. There's nothing physically stopping such a device from being made.
Design and build quality, brilliant.
Screen res, brilliant.
Battery life, brilliant.
3G and SIM slot, great.
Processor and HD, nothing spectacular, but fine.
RAM - 1GB, soldered on to motherboard, non-upgradable.
Ding ding, we have a dealbreaker!
The problem does of course, lie with Intel's infuriating "1 GB only or no atom for you" policy.. but still, nokia should have compensated by adding an easy upgrade slot.
I'm not buying any new external HDs until 3.0 is up for sale, just doesn't make sense when it's a few months away.
Transfer speeds on 2.0 are way too low to support hundreds of gigs of data transfer, just filling half of that 2tb drive would take several hours.
@Iain: Technically speaking, the knobby thingy controls the glowiness of the glowy thingy.
Currently get the full 10 MB/s with no problems, and £5 off the monthly bill for paying direct debit, extra discount for having their phone line as well.
Almost no downtime, and traffic shaping can be managed by careful scheduling, and leaving big downloads to run overnight. Even if I do get hit with traffic shaping, it's not like being reduced to 2 MB/s is particularly terrible or makes the internet unusable.
As for phone service, I've noticed a big improvement since virgin took over.. no more indians on the phone when I ring up.
Asteroid splats Earth, wipes out humanity and all because we could spare a few hundred mil to keep an eye on the sky.
So many things on this world aren't done because "we can't afford to", in reality, there is no money, only allocation of resources and manpower. There is always the physical capability to achieve these things.
AS3 features very close integration with XML that is used on thousands of websites.
Hell, why not order them to remove flash player from the internet with immediate effect, I'm sure that would be a very smart move.
You don't have to like Microsoft to recognise that removing Word is the most stupid ruling that could have been passed.
Unless of course this new format contains a way to embed non-removable advertising.
Google might not have any inline vids on youtube, but the rest of the industry relies on a pre-roll ad before the content plays.. and advertisers will not pay to put those there if they can be skipped with ease using a <video> tag.
Flash isn't just video, it adds a lot more additional functionality besides simple playback.. it has it's own OOP language.. not entirely sure that the new format is going to be capable of replicating that.
You sure you aren't mistaking bits and bytes there?
A 1 Mbit line would generally result in 120 kb/s download, it's another annoying thing about ISP advertising, the exaggeration of speed by using bits when the majority of people only understand megabytes, gigabytes etc. Divide by 8 to convert the headline speeds into what you'll see in the download bar.
Would be better if Ofcom forced the ISPs to measure speed in kilobytes or megabytes per second.
Posted from a 20mbs virgin line... I get the full speed, and don't have a problem with capping, the process is transparent and listed on their website in a table.
After 9pm there's no throttling, so it's fine as far as leaving big downloads overnight goes.
As it generally hails price cuts on the capacities way below it. Nice to see the high end continuing to stamp along.. it was only a few months ago that 128gb drives came out.
I remember very clearly, 6 years ago, seeing the latest flash stick online for over a thousand bucks. The capacity? 4 GB.
If that rate of progress remains steady...
Mines the one from 2015 with the 16TB drive in the pocket. That's enough to back up the entire contents of my brain, assuming the cyborg hardware manufacturers get their finger out and come up with an interface by then.
Makes sense really, 30p premium or so per egg to save the hassle of...
Filling kettle, putting it on, waiting for it to boil, taking it off, putting on hob, adding egg carefully, waiting for it to cook, taking it out, putting it under cold water for a bit, then carefully spending the next minute or so peeling off the damn shell and all the fiddly little bits that get left on if you mess it up.
So, 30p to save 2 minutes of effort.
For these eggs to be worthwhile on a logical "time = money" basis, you would have to be earning over £9/hour. For anyone earning less than that, boiling your own eggs is a much more sensible investment.
I also like those little cheese slices (not american cheese), and pre-chopped/ peeled/ washed carrots.. much less faffing about involved.
Brilliant news. As for the movies, the format was messed up, and that was the main problem... each time they had to make a complete 90-minute movie that could also be broken up into 4 distinct and seperate 22 minute episodes. End result - bit of a mess, the stories didn't flow well at all as a movie and the episode breaks were stark (think of the xmas episode slap in the middle of the first movie).
I still liked the movies (third one was the only really terrible one), and it certainly can't hold the crown for "worst comeback ever"... that award has already been claimed by Red Dwarf.
Futurama's humour is fast-paced and isn't well-suited to anything longer than 22 minutes... storylines just can't be sustained for longer than that, scripts rely on running gags more than you might realise, and those get tiring if spread out over 90 minutes.
The show was really going places in it's 4th tv series, hopefully we'll see a return to that. Much happier to see Futurama back than yet another Seth McFarlane show.
.. but there are very good guides online that tell you exactly what to do. The OC'ing community is really helpful and friendly to newbies too.
I managed to get the 920 on my main rig running at 4 ghz stable. Didn't want to risk pushing it any further than that.
As for how it runs, think "bat out of hell".. I have the thing churning out HD video renders 5 times as fast as my old Q6600, there's a big difference between "wait for 5 hours" and "wait for 1 hour" when it comes to that sort of work.
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