akijikan

My favorite part about ebay is that you can find expensive electronics for anywhere from 30-150 dollars less than typical retail prices

Hajimemashite - How do you do?Akijikan desu - (I) am akijikan (don't need to use "watashi wa" (word for I) because of context).Doozo Yoroshiku - Pleased to meet you.

otaku is literally "freak" but has become more generalized in the states as a person who is obnoxiously obsessed with anime. It was really just a tease on my part. Most real otaku wear the name like a badge of courage, even though it was never really meant as a term of endearment! lol

Hajimemashite. Akijikan desu. Doozo Yoroshiku.What ideas would anyone get just because you're Japanese?

I agree with this, they are completely overrated and under powered. When I got an mp3 player I bought a neuros 20gb. Even though it was bigger in physical size, it was better. It had a built-in FM broacaster so I could listen to it through the car stereo without a tape adapter, it had a FM tuner that you could record off of and it had a on-board mic to bootleg your favorite shows, as well as a line-in to record off of. Plus it played MP3, WMA, as well as OGG! How many mp3 players cover OGG? Certainly not the precious iPod! Now to get the FM brocast to stereo or record from mic with an iPod, you had to buy overpriced attachments and that was on top of the rediculous 300 price tag (for 20gb at the time, I think it's lower now). How much did I pay for the neuros? 200. Clearly, you waste a lot of money on a over-priced, under-powered status symbol when you buy an iPod. Oh, don't forget that regular use and recharging of your iPod caused the battery to wear out in a year to year-and-a-half. If you called apple, they wanted you to pay a price to have it replaced that was near the price of a new iPod! Not that my neuros didn't have the same battery-wearing-out issue (it's un-escapable with these devices) but how much did they want to replace it? 9 dollars. Apple are real rip-off pros. So yeah I agree, and BTW if you want a neuros they are actually selling the 80 gig models for 200 now because they're closing the mp3 player division in favor of another product. You can buy one of their closeouts at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

ugh, otaku is not a good thing!

I agree with you in general, but I'm thinking when I'm sending a file from a harddrive on one computer, to a harddrive on another computer, the higher max speed of my connection, the faster the transfer. Am I wrong?

Wired LAN is faster and much more secure, since you're not broadcasting anything through the air. That means anyone who wants on your network needs a lin connection, they can't just park in your driveway and get on it. Wireless LAN is near painless to set up though. No wiring needed and you can have a network up and running in no time. It's also not that hard to make it fairly secure through use of passcodes and such. If you want to secure a wireless connection here are some steps you can take. They are from this website, visit it to see what I shortened with elipsies. [quote name='http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/) Don't use TCP/IP for File and Printer sharing! Access Points are usually installed on your LAN, behind any router or firewall you may be using. If someone successfully connects to your Access Point... 2) Follow secure file-sharing practices This means... 3) Enable WEP Encryption 802.11b's WEP encryption has had a lot of bad press lately about its weaknesses. But a weak lock is better than no lock at all... 4) Use WEP for data and Authentication Some products allow you to separately set the Authentication method to "Shared Key" or "Open System"... 5) Use non-obvious WEP keys and periodically change them While the limitations that some wireless client utilities have don't help... 6) Secure your wireless router / Access Point (AP) Your router or Access Point should require a password to access its Admin... 7) Disallow router/ AP administration via wireless Unfortunately, this feature is usually only present in "Enterprise-grade" APs... 8) Use MAC address based Access and Association control Previously available only on "Enterprise-grade" products... 9) Don't send the ESSID ORiNOCO and Apple call the ability to stop their products from sending out the... 10) Don't accept "ANY" ESSID ORiNOCO and Apple's "closed network" feature also won't accept connections from clients using the default "ANY" ESSID.... 11) Use VPN Of course, if you really don't want to take chances with your data... I didn't mean to submit the above reply, I still had more to go so here it is: Typically your speeds on a wired network are going to be much quicker. Most ethernet cards today are 10/100 Mbit/sec and 1000 Mbit/sec is becoming increasingly common (especially in corporate fields). Wireless has two standards and a third that is going to be introduced soon. 802.11b is 11 Mbit/sec 802.11g is 54 Mbit/sec There are also some "Pre-N" products (referring to 802.11n) that are labeled as such because the maker is almost certain that the MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) technology deployed by them is going to be used in the 802.11n standard. The current "Pre-N" products do deliver better speeds than their b and g counterparts while maintaining compatibility with them. Pre-N products are also often capable of further range. PC world tested a belkin router and card that could communicate over 50 feet. Much better than b or g. However when the 802.11n specifications are finalized, they likely won't be compatible with these "Pre-N" products that manufacters are developing outside industry standards. One other thing that should be noted about wireless is that the weaker the signal you have (be it becaouse of distance or walls, etc) the slower overall rate of transfer you'll achieve. So after all that information, to answer your question about which is better, like most things it depends on what you need. Wireless is good if you're mainly interested in sharing a broadband connection in your house. The fastest home-consumer broadband options commonly top out at 8 Mbit/sec and are usually operating under that. That speed is within the capabilities of wireless connections. However, if you are going to move a lot of data from computuer to computer, you are going to feel limited by wireless. Even though 802.11g is max of 54 Mbit/sec, you usually see transfers around 20 Mbit/sec average. If you're moving gigabytes of data between computers, a 1000 Mbit/sec wired LAN is going to serve your purpose much better than wireless. Those who are security freaks should also stick to wired. While you can secure a wireless network, there have been cases of some wireless security measures being broken. Hope that answers your question!

Wow...I don't know where to start. You obviously don't have the mind to think for yourself! If you don't want to get cheated on eBay, deal with users who have good feedback and you can look at the shipping charges before you bid, so you know what you're getting into. You can also see if an item has a reserve or not before you bid. If you see an item has a reserve and you don't like that, don't bid, how is that getting jipped? Everybody who sells on ebay pads their shipping charges. I do. It's because I'm going to be paid for the time and materials I spend on shipping, not just whatever the place charges me to move it. But like I said, shipping charges are displayed before you even bid, so its not like some big secret. As for faulty, DOA, or broken products, that's why you pay for shipping insurance and deal with trustworthy sellers. You say no one looks at feedback, but that's obviously just you, since you seem to be in the minority of people that have bad transactions on ebay. Maybe if you did look at it you wouldn't have such bad transactions. Feedback is also not your only recourse. You report a seller to ebay and they usually face suspension and more often closure of their accounts. For sellers, if you get a non-paying-bidder than eBay will even refund all your listing-fees. For buyers, pay through pay-pal because all transactions through them are guaranteed and pay-pal will refund you your money if something is wrong. Combine that with the fact that there is almost no one on eBay who doesn't accept pay-pal and you have a fairly nice system. More often than not, any reputable sellers DO offer refunds. I do, but no one ever asks for them since I take the time and care to make my transactions right. And you are falling prey to outright deception if you think Amazon has low prices. Give me a list of the top 100 items sold on Amazon.com and 9/10 can be found somewhere else online (and places other than ebay) for lower prices. Please think things out before you go attacking something you obviously don't know how to use. It's not a poor product on ebay's fault, it's a half-hearted approach to it on your fault. Read through ebay's help section and you would have found everything I've told you. If it's so crappy, then why does everyone use it? I also forgot to add, don't call everyone else stupid because you don't know how to use something. I think anyone who reads what you said and what I said will see whose actions could be considered "stupid".

Not that I doubt you, I'd just like to read up for myself, what are your sources? Thanks.

IF you notice, in part one, the british drive-by joke gets reused in family guy.

These are legit, as there are a lot of people who have completed and earned their product. If you search across the net, you'll find a lot of examples.The ones I trust are run by Gratis Networks (now freepay.com)The deal you have to complete does require a credit card more often than not, and you end up signing up for a free gift card or something like that, but the people giving you the gift card run a service that runs something like 30 bucks a month and you get the card when you've been a member for a couple of months. When you first sign up though, you are signing up for a free trial that you can cancel after you get your credit for your free ipod.That being said, it is fairly easy to complete your offer and get the credit towards your free ipod. The challenge is finding x number of people (5-10 depending on what you're trying to earn, Ipods are usually 5) to sign up and complete their offers.I'm only two refferals away from getting a PSP and though I won't go as low as advertising my own refferal link here, I will say if you want to go for a PSP, let me know and I'll PM you my link. PSPs are your offer completed + 5 refferals.

you're lazier than you imply...you don't even need to search, just scroll up to my post.

If anyone is wondering, and I noticed one person asked, a google mini is a lower-power google appliance search solution. It has the power to index 100,000 documents compared to the full fleged appliance's power to handle upto 15m (depending on configuration and price level see product models). See https://www.google.com/work/search/ If there's one thing google knows how to do...they sure do make their appliances sexy I also agree with guy in that this really doesn't apply to us as most (assumption) of us are not running an enterprise that requires this sort of document search solution.

I think the story is false or it was temporary and they have expanded it. I just downloaded it.

Looking at netfirms' website they advertise the program you mention as costing 9.95/month if you pay annually. There is also no mention of any free plan.

There's already been a thread on this: http://forums.xisto.com/topic/8693-topic/?showtopic=8693 And when Opaque finds out that you directly copied this information from another website he will remove this post and you will lose the credits for it.

The best place to go is pricewatch.comI have built the computers in my house pruely using them as my resource.They will find the lowest price from a huge selection of online retailers including the ones mentioned in the post above.You can serach by price limit, brand, spec, etc.It's not like those others such as pricegrabber or bizrate, etc. This site is purely computer components (and they've started to branch in to electronics a little.They seriously find the lowest price whatever parts you need.

No, I'm asking what technical aspect is he comparing between an xbox 360 and a video card to say which is better. See, he says "better than what the 360 is going to be able to do" he is talking about the capabilities of the card, not price, and I am asking what makes him say that. What specs of the card make it better than the 360's video? And I completely disagree with you. It does not make more sense to upgrade your PC. You get more bang for your buck if you buy a 360. Upgrading your PC to play PC games at a level comparable to the 360 you have to spend 5-600 dollars (and that's being nice, probably more in reality) to buy Memory, a Processor and Video card. And if you say that PS3 has no good titles than you betray your poor knowledge of the gaming world. Everyone and their mother knows that sony is king when it comes to pulling in the best 3rd party titles. That's always been their strong point, and the main point for Nintendo's failure on the gamecube. Most good nintendo games are made by nintendo (with the exception of RE4) and you can't win the console war with 1st party titles alone. PS3 has many more good titles than GTA and FF: I can't believe you would think Metal Gear Solid is not a good game. What about the upcoming Splinter Cell 4? Brothers in Arms 3 is an announced title, and look at how awesome "Earned in Blood" is. Armered Core is also been a good series and the 4th incarnation of the series is coming to PS3. Tekken is going to be on PS3. Don't forget the entire EA sports library is going to be on the PS3 (though it's not exclusive, its good). EA is also bringing the next Medal of Honor game to PS3. The Winning Eleven series is due on PS3 too. All of those are known by the gaming world as "good titles". They may not be your cup of tea, and even I wouldn't be interested in some of them, but none the less, they serve to demonstrate the falicy of your statement.

5-600 dollars? Thats way to much for way to little. Right now you can buy a Gforce 7800 GT For 300 dollars. That is better than what the 360 is going to be able to do. My computer Right now has a Gforce 6800 Ultra 512 mhz. For 60 bucks. Which is still a little bit better than the 360 is going to have. I'm talking about buying a good processor, a gig of ram and a nice video card. What are you basing your assesment of how much better a particular video card is than the 360 on?

I agree, 360 could have been so much better if they had waited. I think the PS3 will fulfill that role.

That's because there isn't one.

Plot, you missed my point. I can upgrade my computer for 5-600 dollars to get close to 360 graphics or I can spend 400 dollars on the 360 itself. I think you really underrate the 360. My illustration in cost difference is not about which is better, but marketshare and what the average consumer is going to do. You are wrong about console pricing. When the systems are new, more often than not the makers are taking a hit when they wholesale to the retailers. You painted a nice little 50 dollars per unit profit scenario, but that's just not reality. The reality is that the consoles are so expensive to make when they're brand spanking new that Sony and Microsoft actually lose a little bit when they sell them to the retailers, they've admitted to it. And they can do it because they are such large companies with so much profit coming in from their other divisions that they're sustained until the profits from software come in to more than cover the loss on the hardware. Marketshare is that important because once the consoles are in the livingrooms, the people buy the software and that nets a huge profit even after subtracting the console loss. Later in the life-span though, production costs are much lower and this is no longer the case. And retailers do make just 8 dollars per new console. At least I know the PS2's and Xboxes sitting on shelves right now were sold to the stores at 142 dollars and then they sell them for 150. That's the main reason for selling the extra warranties and all that, to improve the the profit margin. Also, gamestores will try to sell you a used copy of a game before a new. You might think they're doing you a favor by suggesting a lower priced item, but they have a much larger profit margin on used games. Usually 5-7 on new games, the same game they purchsed from some kid for a lot less than its worth (in store credit), they turn around and make a 17-20 profit on.

If you are talking to plot, I think he was actually talking to aznpride32, who had a one word reply

Something that hasn't been discussed, except for Nintendo's system: Cost. This is a huge factor when talking about PC vs 360 vs PS3 vs Reveolution. The problem with PCs is that to get graphics as good as th 360, you have to buy a 2-300 processor, 1-200 in memory, 2-300 videocard, etc. The great things about consoles is that they deliver bleeding-edge-like graphics at a price affordable enough for most consumers. I can't play Battlefield 2 or Call of Duty 2. I can barely play Age of Empires 3 with lowest settings one everything, and at that point, it kind of sucks when it still moves slowly. To play those games, I'd have to make some expensive upgrades to my computer. Or I can go buy the 360, for 400 dollars in its strongest configuration and get very comparable graphics. This, along with titles only made for consoles, has always been the main selling point behind consoles. 360 has awesome graphics, and its hitting the market as the first of the three next-generation consoles. This is going to be a huge leg up on the market share. Remeber when dreamcast came out way before anyone else? It sold like hotcakes. Of course, it also had a much bigger lead on its competion, than the 360 will have. Something that seems like most of you don't understand: Pricepoint for consoles is not where Sony, Microsoft, and Gamecube make their money. Not even close. Microsoft took a hit on the xbox when it launched, and sony took a hit on the recent PSPs. Stores were making 8 bucks on a system. No, software is where the money is made. You push the console, and even take a hit, because once that system is sitting in the consumer's home, then they're buying all the games. All the GTAs, Gran Turismos, Metal Gear Solids, Halos, etc. All the killer apps are where the money is made. For those arguing over who won the second generation console war, and I see you Killer, trying to say the gamecube didn't do that bad, if you look at the number of consoles sold over the life of the generation (24m for PS2, 9.3m for Microsoft, and 7.6 for gamecube, launch of each through July2004 per NPD Group), Sony is Nintendo and Microsoft's daddy. Yeah Xbox had Halo and GC had a late-in-the-life RE4 exclusive, but those are like putting a bandaid on a hemorrhage. and now to clear up misnomers spoken in this thread: 4-5 years is a long time between consoles Did you pull that expectation out of you nether-region? Have you seen the cell processor's specs? You obviously haven't read any reliable sources regarding concerning the new generation of consoles. There are not consoles launching within 3 hours of each other. To get some ideas, here's the known specs for the ps3 [quote name='http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ name: PlayStation 3 Logo: PLAYSTATION®3 CPU Cell Processor PowerPC-base Core @3.2GHz 1 VMX vector unit per core 512KB L2 cache 7 x SPE @3.2GHz 7 x 128b 128 SIMD GPRs 7 x 256KB SRAM for SPE * 1 of 8 SPEs reserved for redundancy total floating point performance: 218 GFLOPS GPU RSX @550MHz 1.8 TFLOPS floating point performance Full HD (up to 1080p) x 2 channels Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines Sound Dolby 5.1ch, DTS, LPCM, etc. (Cell- base processing) Memory 256MB XDR Main RAM @3.2GHz 256MB GDDR3 VRAM @700MHz System Bandwidth Main RAM 25.6GB/s VRAM 22.4GB/s RSX 20GB/s (write) + 15GB/s (read) SB< 2.5GB/s (write) + 2.5GB/s (read) System Floating Point Performance 2 TFLOPS Storage Detachable 2.5" HDD slot x 1 I/O USB Front x 4, Rear x 2 (USB2.0) Memory Stick standard/Duo, PRO x 1 SD standard/mini x 1 CompactFlash (Type I, II) x 1 Communication Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T) x 3 (input x 1 + output x 2) Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 b/g Bluetooth 2.0 (EDR) Controller Bluetooth (up to 7) USB 2.0 (wired) Wi-Fi (PSP) Network (over IP) AV Output Screen size: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p HDMI: HDMI out x 2 Analog: AV MULTI OUT x 1 Digital audio: DIGITAL OUT (OPTICAL) x 1 Disc Media CD PlayStation CD-ROM, PlayStation 2 CD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-DA (ROM), CD-R, CD-RW, SACD, SACD Hybrid (CD layer), SACD HD, DualDisc, DualDisc (audio side), DualDisc (DVD side) DVD: PlayStation 2 DVD-ROM, PlayStation 3 DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW Blu-ray Disc: PlayStation 3 BD-ROM, BD-Video, BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE [quote name='http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ IBM PowerPC-based CPU • Three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each • Two hardware threads per core; six hardware threads total • VMX-128 vector unit per core; three total • 128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread • 1 MB L2 cache CPU Game Math Performance • 9 billion dot product operations per second Custom ATI Graphics Processor • 500MHz processor • 10 MB of embedded DRAM • 48-way parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines • Unified shader architecture Polygon Performance • 500 million triangles per second Pixel Fill Rate • 16 gigasamples per second fill rate using 4x MSAA Shader Performance • 48 billion shader operations per second Memory • 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM • 700 MHz of DDR • Unified memory architecture Memory Bandwidth • 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth • 256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM • 21.6 GB/s front-side bus Overall System Floating-Point Performance • 1 teraflop Storage • Detachable and upgradeable 20GB hard drive • 12x dual-layer DVD-ROM • Memory Unit support starting at 64 MB I/O • Support for up to four wireless game controllers • Three USB 2.0 ports • Two memory unit slots Optimized for Online • Instant, out-of-the-box access to Xbox Live features with broadband service, including Xbox Live Marketplace for downloadable content, gamer profile for digital identity, and voice chat to talk to friends while playing games, watching movies or listening to music • Built-in Ethernet port • Wi-Fi ready: 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g • Video camera ready Digital Media Support • Support for DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 CD, JPEG Photo CD • Ability to stream media from portable music devices, digital cameras and Windows XP-based PCs • Ability to rip music to the Xbox 360 hard drive • Custom playlists in every game • Built-in Media Center Extender for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 • Interactive, full-screen 3-D visualizers High-Definition Game Support • All games supported at 16:9, 720p and 1080i, anti-aliasing • Standard-definition and high-definition video output supported Audio • Multichannel surround sound output • Supports 48KHz 16-bit audio • 320 independent decompression channels • 32-bit audio processing • Over 256 audio channels System Orientation • Stands vertically or horizontally Customizable Face Plates • Interchangeable to personalize the console Winners Processing: PS3 (PS3's 7 3.2Ghz PPC cores to XB360's 3) Memory: XB360 (XB360's 512 GDDR + 700 DDR ram to PS3's 256 XDR + 256 GDDR) Grapics: PS3, by a hair (PS3's 550Mhz GPU to XB360's 500mhz) The good news for me is that it looks like the launch is so far apart, I'll be able to save up to get both.