OT - Video Card Question(s)

...plus the usual floppy drive
Why?

Despite their reported obsolescence, they are still exceedingly useful
for tranfer of small files from machine to machine, especially those
without USB connections and drivers for whatever brand of thumb somebody
has.

The cost? $13 bucks. No sense in eliminating it, for that!
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

A "God Gaming System" without SLI?

I don't get it.

Actually, the first iteration of my system had two video cards (which,
I presume, is what you mean by "SLI"?) -- but for the same money the
owner looked at the specs and decided to go with a better single video
card instead. Dunno why.

And at his cost, with a budget of $1500, not only should SLI be part of the
package, it seems to me that your other components aren't as high-end as
they could be either.

Everything is relative. I paid $3800 for a Compaq 386SX in 1989, so is
$1500 in 2006 money "expensive" for a computer that's 10,000 times more
powerful? He says this system will make FSX sing, and I'm gonna
believe him until I see otherwise.

I'll let you know next week sometime!
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Peter Duniho" wrote in
:

Of course, with product activation, there's no such thing as a perpetual
license anymore. So you do effectively have a subscription...you just
pay for it once, and it runs out whenever Microsoft decides you should
stop using their software (well, you can keep using it until the first
time you have to reinstall it, anyway).

That's an interesting point...

Do you think Microsoft will prohibit Windows XP users from operating once
they deprecate that operating system? Presumably it's a ways away, but I
believe Windows XP SP 1 was officially deprecated in October '06...

[re. floppies] Huh? All modern PCs have USB now

To use it, you need a USB device. They are not free. Floppies are just
about free.

As far as drivers go, Windows
has the USB storage device drivers built in.

No it doesn't. Windows 98 is missing lots of drivers, as is 95. And
yes, I encounter these systems all the time in my travels - my wife uses
a 3.11 machine which is fine for what she does (text).

Blank CDs cost less than a floppy

.... and generally can't be erased and reused like a floppy.

Floppies are still a terrific solution for simple text files (like Emails).

Jose
--
"There are 3 secrets to the perfect landing. Unfortunately, nobody knows
what they are." - (mike).
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

In article ,
Judah wrote:

Do you think Microsoft will prohibit Windows XP users from operating once
they deprecate that operating system? Presumably it's a ways away, but I
believe Windows XP SP 1 was officially deprecated in October '06...

Windows XP sunset is 2009.
Service Pack 3, if it is produced, is expected in 2008.

"Judah" wrote in message
. ..
Do you think Microsoft will prohibit Windows XP users from operating once
they deprecate that operating system? Presumably it's a ways away, but I
believe Windows XP SP 1 was officially deprecated in October '06...

I don't know. What I do know is that there's no reason to believe that once
Windows XP passes the same "no longer supported" mark that the earlier
operating systems have (in part) already passed, Microsoft will continue to
provide activation codes for those products. IMHO, besides the support
costs (especially in today's "security update once a month" environment),
Microsoft also has a lot to gain simply in new sales if they can truly
obsolete your old operating system. I personally am not convinced they
would do this, but there are a lot of people out there who are.

Also, keep in mind that Vista will not only have Microsoft's product
activation, they will actually have code within the operating system that
can *disable* the operating system. Even if you get the operating system
installed and activated, something could happen later down the line that
would cause that code to be activated, and for your operating system to
simply stop working. While I doubt that Microsoft would use this to
actively turn off all operating systems out of their "supported" lifetime
(even as I can't rule that out), there's no reason to believe that the code
will work correctly 100% of the time. It could easily have a bug that
causes the operating system to become disabled unintentially.

And if the operating system is no longer being supported, do you suppose
Microsoft will actually help a customer who calls to ask and try to deal
with such a problem? I suspect they won't. I'd guess that Microsoft
product support will simply tell that user "sorry, we no longer support that
version of Windows".

At least with XP, once you get the OS activated, as long as you never have
to reinstall it and as long as you never install some Microsoft update that
can disable it the way that Vista can be disabled, you are assured that the
operating system will continue to work indefinitely. With Vista, there is
no such guarantee.

There are many reasons I hate copy protection, and product activation in
particular, and this is one of them.

Pete

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...
Actually, the first iteration of my system had two video cards (which,
I presume, is what you mean by "SLI"?) -- but for the same money the
owner looked at the specs and decided to go with a better single video
card instead. Dunno why.

SLI (Scalable Link Interface) is nVidia's means for using two video cards in
parallel to display a single screen's worth of image. Each video card works
on roughly half of the video image, allowing a single frame to be rendered
in half the time, thus doubling the frame rate. It's pretty much the
opposite of what you're considering (a non-SLI, two-output video card will
be sharing the video processor between the two monitors, halving
performance).

Still, SLI is the way to go for maximum frame rate performance. Given that
you're displaying through a DLP projector (which will lock your frame rate
at 60fps max), it may be overkill, but it still doesn't qualify as a "God
Gaming System" without it.

You can get a single video card with two SLI video processors built
in...that is, an SLI solution that doesn't require a motherboard that
supports SLI (most SLI cards only work with specific motherboards). You
could use a couple of those to get a two-monitor, SLI-rendered output. Now
*that* would cook. I hear there is even some quad-SLI stuff available
now.

And at his cost, with a budget of $1500, not only should SLI be part of
the
package, it seems to me that your other components aren't as high-end as
they could be either.

Everything is relative. I paid $3800 for a Compaq 386SX in 1989, so is
$1500 in 2006 money "expensive" for a computer that's 10,000 times more
powerful? He says this system will make FSX sing, and I'm gonna
believe him until I see otherwise.

Well, my point isn't that $1500 is too much to pay for a PC, nor is it that
the configuration you've posted won't be a good one. The fact is, most
people would never notice the difference between a good value system (best
performance per dollar) and the highest performing system (best performance,
period).

I just feel that for what you've posted, it should cost less. I suspect
that you could build that system using parts bought retail for $1500. So if
you're supposed to be paying his cost, either he's essentially buying his
parts retail, or he's got some profit built into the price.

Not that I think there's necessarily anything wrong with that. If you feel
that you are getting a good computer for the money you're spending and
you're comfortable with the dealer, that's what's important. I think some
people spend a lot more time worrying about that last nickle than they
should. But one should at least know whether they are giving the nickle
away or not.

Pete

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...
The cost? $13 bucks. No sense in eliminating it, for that!

It costs more than $13 (ignoring for the moment that $13 is pretty steep for
a floppy). That's just the cost of the part. There's an incremental cost
in labor to install it, plus additional support costs related to the fact
that it's just one more component that can fail.

And when I wrote that a floppy drive is a "dust collector", I wasn't just
using that as a figure of speech. The floppy drive is literally a place
where dust will collect. Over time, this will impair the functionality of
the drive, and it also provides a route for dust to enter the PC case. Not
that most people have cases that otherwise eliminate dust, but the more dust
going in, the more often the electronics (and especially the heat-sinks and
dissipaters) need to be cleaned off.

There are some people who know for a fact that they will use a floppy drive.
For everyone else, today there is no good reason to have one.

Pete

...or he's got some profit built into the price.

Not that I think there's necessarily anything wrong with that.

Well, if the contract is "at cost", then there =is= something wrong with
it, especially since Jay's serving as a billboard for him.

Jose
--
"There are 3 secrets to the perfect landing. Unfortunately, nobody knows
what they are." - (mike).
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Also, keep in mind that Vista will not only have Microsoft's product
activation, they will actually have code within the operating system that
can *disable* the operating system.

I guess Microsoft has decided that if it can't beat the virus writers,
it might as well join them. Will it offer an SDK?

Jose
--
"There are 3 secrets to the perfect landing. Unfortunately, nobody knows
what they are." - (mike).
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.