meself88

Yes the AMD's definitely do more work per cycle due to the shorter pipeline: there is less time lost for guessing the next op wrong (which processors DO actually perform fairly frequently). The AMD does not run any hotter I do not believe. But as for P4s being unstable overclockers, The Fastest PCs in the world are P4s (overclocked, of course). I think I remember seeing somewhere that a P4 came very close to breaking 5GHz (phase cooled). Obviously you do have to have more than the run-of-the-mill hardware to do it successfully, though. AMD holds the performance crown fairly solidly right now.

I would not put linux on that machine. We also had an IBM Aptiva and when I tried to put linux on it, it took me four tries. When I finally got it running, it ran VERY slow with only the VESA framebuffer driver for video, and could not start any program in less than 15 seconds. OpenOffice took at least 5 minutes to open. It simply does not have enough RAM or video memory to run up-to-date programs. Formatting those machines is hell, as I remember it. IBM used quite a few proprietary parts (Mwave modem/sound card combination (!?)). It was impossible to find drivers for it under linux, and it ran so slow that I eventually just chunked it in the trash (we had another computer by the time I was messing around w/ it). Windows 98SE would be a good choice if you are going to put a new OS on it. But beware that it may be near impossible to find drivers (you could have to use windows 95 drivers that are on the rescue CD, which could create some serious stability problems). Good Luck.

What do you guys think of the layout?It's obviously not done yet, as the menu does not even function. But is it aesthetically pleasing?

Majestic, I agree with you partially. There should certainly be some basic drivers, and there are. There is a standard VGA driver and a VESA driver in linux that will support any card with VESA or VGA capability (or at least most). I don't know too much about wireless network cards, but I know that linux has a lot of drivers built in for normal hardware NICs, especially since many of them use the same driver (whole families of NICs frequently do.) Windows comes with a lot of drivers, but many still have to be manufacturer supplied. I understand your irritation at the "make config" ordeal, because that is a VERY unfamiliar process for a windows person. I was about to throw my computer out the window the first time that happened. Linux is definitlely not for the average user. In order to run windows executables, you have to manually install WINE, a set of windows DLLs that linux can run, and therefore run windows .exe files. Linux operates very differently, but I have never had it crash on me without it being my fault. It can crash during setup if you have older hardware or are not exactly sure what you are doing. The concept of 'runlevel' is also unfamiliar to most. I think on stability, Linux is more stable if you have widely supported and actively developed hardware drivers. Many web servers run Linux, and most corporate web servers don't run Windows, even IBM's OS is supposed to be better for servers. For the office user, I would say Linux would be a good fit, but it is certainly different. After using Linux for a little while (this could be because it was a slow machine) I had an urge to go back to Windows, becasue it is so familiar. It is also much easier and FASTER to find help for Windows. I am thinking about doing a dual boot on my Laptop (Sony), but am unsure about hardware, since I am sure much of it is proprietary. Also, I've had my windows xp laptop give two BSODs over the ATI video driver, which was provided by ATI but apparently not very well supported by ATI. It is for the IGP345 chipset (onboard video), which is not even listed on their website (only IGP340 is on their site). When I tried to install an "updated" driver from their website, strange things started happening. And for whoever said GIMP is not good, have you tried it? It is plenty powerful for me, but I am not a developer, so maybe there are tools in PSP that I am unfamiliar with. GIMP 2.0 is certainly easy to use. Many Linux distros also choose Gnome as the default window manager, which could annoy some people, since KDE seems to be clearly superior. With windows, the desktop shell (explorer.exe) is a crucial part of the Kernel (go try to shut down explorer.exe, it will just restart it). In linux, if your desktop crashes, you can fall back to the command line shell entrance to the kernel and start up the window manager again. Linux is just different, and is not yet ready for the general public, in my opinion.

Thunderbird is great unless you don't have windows XP. Thunderbird relies on the Documents and Settings folder changing with every user logon. If you have 98SE, ME, etc... then you will only be able to have one account in thunderbird, or everyone will be able to see everybody else's mail. I tried it but needed the functionality of Outlook Express's "Identities." Now I have winXP but have the full Outlook, so I'm not sure if Thunderbird is really going to be better than Outlook (not "Outlook Express").

I visited the link you gave me on Mac OS X 10.4(?) Tiger. I'm not so sure I would like it. The way I think is so structured that I can't stand the thought of not being able to see the directory trees in a search. All of the images it found were placed in some kind of temporary folder for viewing, instead of listing the directory of each one. (That could be completely wrong, because the video was not too clear to me.) It seems like it feels about like the X11 system in Linux, using desktops like twm or xfce, but with the power of KDE. I bet I could get used to it if I used it. There is just something comforting about the 'start' menu being the place to go if you want to open something, it is quick and efficient. I can also do without safari (note that I don't use IE either). Firefox is so powerful. iChat is a very good idea, but you'd have to have a whole corporate office of Macs, which doesn't seem very likely considering most corporate database and office programs are limited to Windows, Linux, or IBM's OS (which I think can communicate with Windows pretty well. Automator is an extremely good idea. Batch files can do the same thing pretty much but you have to be a good programmer. For a non-programmer Automator could save a lot of time. VoiceOver: Windows XP has had that capability for quite some time. Parental controls: can easily be accomplished by only giving kids access to one account on a windows computer; ownership of files prevents the kids from accessing anything in a personal folder in any other account, which includes 'my documents' and the desktop. .Mac sync--windows xp pro will do it, windows xp home will not. Quick Time--Apple compiles an .exe binary! And it doesn't come with quick time pro? Yep, I was right, it says Mac OS is 64 bit UNIX based. The Mac OS X 10.4 definitely looks more user-friendly than windows, but I haven't seen Longhorn, yet, either. Still OS X came out a while ago so they've got a one up on Microsoft there. Windows just feels so powerful if you know what you are doing. I guess it is just because I've used windows for so long. I was not trying to particularly refer to Mac OS X exclusively. It's that Mac hardware is designed to run only Mac software. An Intel or AMD based computer will run just about anything under the sun, and Windows just happens to be the most popular. Even in the hardware realm, it is so easy to upgrade a PC, but a Mac will only accept Mac parts, correct? Or at least that was Apple's original mindset, maybe it has changed, but that was what threw Apple out of the running with Microsoft and Intel and AMD and IBM etc... Microsoft is so much more successful because Windows runs on Dell, Gateway, Alienware, Sony, IBM, Falcon-NW, Micron, or any other PC manufacturer you can think of. Mac OS X only runs on Macs. That's what I meant by apple's mindset. The product may be clearly superior, but what the masses of people see is Windows, and that's what they're stuck to, because most people don't want to take the time to learn a new OS. It's nice to finally find a forum with intelligible people to talk with, Brian.

No, it happens to me too. It only happens in Firefox, though. IE will load the page but the site has been loading slowly. Mozilla says connection refused about 9 of 10 times I try to access a new page on the site. Here are my current connection settings for Firefox.Max Connections: 40Max Coonnections per server: 16Max persistent connections per server: 16Max persistent connections per proxy: 16Pipelining: YESProxy pipelining: YES Pipelining maxrequests: 8Are any of those exceeding the server's limit or something so that the server would refuse me (as if I was trying to DoS attack it)? I have Norton Internet Security, but almost all other sites work fine, except for a few that will give me the same error every once in a while. IE never has any problems (btw, what does IE have for those settings?).

I'm not actually asking for the hosting yet, since I am still designing the web site and would like to put it up immediately. I would be using MySQL and PHP if I can learn it successfully (a good tutorial seems to be hard to find.) But would you allow a clan recruiter type web site to be run on your server? If not, that's ok. But I have an idea to make a relatilvely public recruiter system for the web game Kings of Chaos KoC. The game is driven by a link clicking system, where your army is given one soldier every time someone clicks on your unique link. The only recruiters I could find on Google were clan based where you had to join there clan. Many members of KoC are not in clans, such as myself, and a public recruiter could potentially recieve a fair amount of traffic. I would definitely be willing to put your ads on the website if traffic got too heavy. Just an idea. I was wondering what you think.

I wouldn't be so fast to attribute odd weather to the greenhouse effect. Yes temperatures are rising, but fairly slowly. I think it is supposed to increase precipitation levels due to a higher average of vapor in the atmosphere, however. I actually believe the more immediate problem to be ozone depletion. That hole over antarctica scares me, I mean have you seen the pictures of it? Nature is so unpredictable already that as far as humans are concerned the weather is practically a probability equation. It recently snowed in New Orleans, LA, USA and it has been about 16 years since it happened, so if it happened then, i don't think that it snowing this year would be solely due to the greenhouse effect. But yes you are right, the global weather has been strange this year.

Has anybody here ever heard of bebop before? It's apparently the step in between swing and jazz. The only bebop I've ever heard before was in the anime series "Cowboy Bebop," and some of it sounded pretty cool, although i'm not sure it was true bebop because some of it was definitely jazz. It seems to be based very heavily on mood and rhythm. According to some information I dug up, the drums are used mostly just for cymbals, not much bass drum, and the beat is actually kept by the bass. You can't sing to it really because the melody is too complex, so it is instrumental. If anybody has any experience with it, has there been any real modern bebop? Or is the genre extinct?

The Intel AMD debate seems to be mostly opinion based. AMD's do not have to run loud, it is just that the stock HSF and a case with 80mm fans will be loud. The Intel HSF is much better, but then again the P4 naturally runs a lot hotter than the AMD. My friend's case with two 120mm fans (intake and exhaust) and the stock HSF with Arctic Silver Thermal compund runs at 28 degrees celsius at idle thanks to the cool 'n quiet power management driver from AMD. The Intel's do certainly tend to be more quiet on an OEM basis, but if you build your own computer it can be very quiet. My P4-M notebook runs VERY loud when plugged in and running in performance mode, so loud that I can't sleep with it on.

LCD monitors have a much higher contrast ratio and much sharper image than CRT monitors. Unfortunately this also means that unless you run at high resolutions things tend to seem more pixelated. Personally, however, I find the higher contrast ratio much preferable to CRT monitors. The only downfall is still the horizontal viewing angle, however. For those with LCD monitors, just walk to the side a little, or view it from above the monitor, and it will appear dark or in strange colors (less common now, mostly just darkens) and becomes hard to see. But for the person in front of it it is wonderful. Plus they take up less space, wiegh less, and can potentially have a thinner bezel.

I don't even think PCI-E is needed for the top 3dmark scores. Those guys run overclocked video cards, ram, FSB, and processor. I highly doubt it would saturate the AGP bus, especially considering how little it uses right now except maybe in very short burst transfers. (I guess theoretically it could help you load the level faster. PCI-E is in exactly the same spot RAMBUS ram technology was a few years ago. It sounds great on paper, but performs exactly the same with current technology. RAMBUS eventually died out because of its ridiculously high price:performance ratio, when performance was the same anyway. Hopefully, PCI-E won't die out, however, because we will eventually need it (DDR-2 is making a run for it now as main system memory, and even it has come a little early: still no real performance gains). Who knows, maybe PCI-E will die and AGP 16x will emerge as a different slot than AGP 8x, with more pins or something. That's why high end AGP cards have their own 12V molex. I believe the AGP 8x can provide the bandwidth, just not the electricity (that's why there were computers catching on fire if the card came out of the slot; now they have locks). And like I said, who's to say AGP 16x won't emerge, with extra pins just for the electricity.

I don't follow you there. What I am trying to say is this: I do not believe the 'mini mac' will recruit any new people for Apple. It does not seem to have much over say a Shuttle lan box. It will be good for those Mac users that are already loyal to Apple, as you said, for a secondary type computer. The only reason I would even consider a Mac over a PC would be if I was doing a lot of video and 3d developing work (That processor architecture is a beast for it). It certainly will not make it in the enthusiast department, and I don't see what advanteges in portability it has over a laptop, unless you want to use it for lan parties, but with only that Radeon 9200 it wouldn't be very powerful in that market either, especially since there are some games that won't run on Mac OS. Apple's main fault, in my mind, is there strict mindset of 'apple hardware' must run 'apple software' (OS). I didn't particularly care for Mac OS last time I experienced it, and with absolutely no problems with Windows XP and lack of PR from Apple, I wouldn't have even known the mini mac existed unless I had stumbled across this thread. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be anti-Apple here, because I'm not. I would certainly consider an Apple especially if they would let me choose to put Windows on it. Clustering sounds like neat idea, though. With such a small size you could build a relatively powerful cluster in a fairly small area. Only thing there is that you could take some of those Shuttle cases with AMD 64Bit processors, run a 64bit Linux or Unix kernel, and be able to support a much more flexible (if hard to work with) environment. (<-- I wouldn't wan't to do that. The macs sound like a better idea.) It's small, but you have to at least have room for the monitor unless it is on a TV. At least from my point of view, the size was developed solely for aesthetic purposes. Still, I find it amazing they could put all that in that tiny box.

The mini mac will probably do well within the already established mac "community" or loyal following. I have never used a mac, or at least one of the recent ones, but it seems that whoever use them really like them. The Mac "news" doesn't really get out very well because acccording to the computer techies at places like anandtech and pcstats apple's PR department is very difficult to work with. Am I still correct that Macs only have one mouse button? That would irritate me for sure, but a lot of people can stand it. According to apple's web site, it has a G4 processor (IBM architecture, i think) which is plenty fast, and up to 1GB of RAM (which is not as much as many computers these days.) The only thing is that it has a "dedicated video processor" which happens to be an ATI Radeon 9200. It does seem to be lacking in the video department, especially considering apple mainly focuses on the media crowd. It would be good as a stylish office machine or college computer, but most of those roles are filled by Microsoft almost completely, and since Apple will only work in proprietary technology, it seems to me like the mini mac will be probably a success, but not a huge one like the dual G5s in the PowerMac (these have been used extensively in video game development (anybody heard of Halo 2??)).

Unfortunately big Microsoft decided to disable Offline File Synchronization for Windows XP Home edition. However, if you have Windows XP Professional on the laptop and the desktop, check out this article at PCStats.com: Beginners Guides: Synchronizing Files and Folders Sometimes Microsoft can be really irritating. If you don't have Windows XP Pro, you can use Briefcase (also discussed in the article), which appears to be somewhat tedious compared to Synchronization since you have to use a floppy or jump drive. Also, I think State Migration also only works on Professional, or at least that's what it said on the link.

I believe the ASCII table would not have greek characters unless the language was set to greek. The OS does definitely use a keyboard map that can be changed. I had a funny idea a while back to make a program that could dynamically change the keymap on-the-fly. Not sure on how you would make a keylogger. You would have to go down to the level of the kernel and intercept the input off the stream somewhat like the cin stream in c++, except at a lower level. Could be tricky.

I love these questions just waiting to start a flame war. Personally, I vote Intel, but it all depends on what you do and what you want to do. I don't play many computer games or do a serious amount of floating point work, which is where the AMD truly excels due to its short pipeline design. I have a P4-M 3.06GHz and am completely happy with it. Of course that could be due to the fact that I came from an 800MHz K7 Athlon. The P4 excels in video (i.e. MPEG video, not D3D render) and audio encoding/decoding and all general media-rich content. The Athlon can encipher or encode data faster, excepting media.) The pentium can encode video an audio faster, and does better at 3d rendering software, whereas the AMD line does much better with document creation and games. It all depends on where your interests lie.

DSL can theoretically download at up to 8Mbit/s, but that assumes you live next door to the CO and are willing to pay for it, if the telco even offers it. My cable connection runs at 4Mbit/s down and 512Kbit/s up, which equates to a download speed of 500KB/s. Notice that KB is different from Kb. KB=Kilobyte Kb=Kilobit where KB is 8 * Kb. Cox Communications, Inc. for cable has never had a problem with neighborhood sharing slowing down the connection. I had bittorrent topped out at 500KB/s downloading Fedora Core 3 and finished 4GB pretty quickly. It all depends on which you prefer, I guess. ADSL operates like cable, where you have a lot of download and not that much upload. SDSL, which is far more expensive, is usually a 1.5Mbit/s down 1.5Mbit/s up connection, with the highest i've ever seen or heard of being 3Mbit/s both ways. Also, with cable, I can always get full speed. With DSL, the farther away you are, the slower your connection gets (i.e. a 3Mbit connection turns into an effective 2.5Mbit connection.) Around here cable is faster for sure.

Yes. Adaware and Spybot are wonderful programs. I use them both and have only had one serious spyware outbreak (it was more of a worm than spyware). Firefox is far more secure and far more advanced than IE. I would also like to point out that the learning curve for Linux is a tad steep for many people, especially with older machines where drivers and hardware can get touchy. I recently installed RedHat Fedora Core 3 on an older machine and had no problems whatsoever. Fortunately, there is plenty of help out there for Fedora Core 3 specifically. Anyways, about the dial-up, I don't think it is too uncommon for this to happen. One of my friends has a laptop and one day the dial-up just stopped working. On Dial-up, do you use internet explorer or AOL or some other ISP-based browser? One thing you could try is going to the control panel, going to Internet Options, and going to the connections panel. Remove any connections that refer to AOL, Dial-up, or anything of that nature (should have a picture of a little phone by it). Then click on Setup near the top, and let windows guide you through. once that is done, make sure the radio button "Dial whenever a network connection is unavailable" is selected. Reboot. If that doesn't work, sounds like your Winsock drivers may have been hijacked or something. Good luck.