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Gear News Archive: July 2004
July 31st XM Satellite Radio Review I've posted a very quick mini-review of my experience with XM Satellite Radio by Delphi. If you were thinking about satellite radio, this review is for you. You can read the review here. Windows DX9.0c Available Earlier this week Microsoft released the latest version of Direct X 9.0. The redistributable version can be downloaded here. Unlike previous versions, this one asks you where you want the temporary files to be put on your hard drive. Remember where you put them, because you have to run the executable file from that directory to do the install. I've installed it on one system here, and so far it looks like it doesn't cause any problems. July 28th Forget About Windows XP-64 It's been delayed because of... you guessed it, the Windows XP Service Pack2 from Hell. Bill is finding out just how hard it is to plug 2000 leaks in his floundering ship, Windows, when he's only got 10 fingers to stick in the holes. Basically, Bill has pulled just about all of of his software engineers off of things like XP-64, (and forget about Long-way-off Horn), and he has been pounding the oar-stroke drums faster and faster. Heave Boys! Heave! It's a long way to shore, and the boat is filling with water fast. By my usually erred reckoning, if SP2 is not going to be out until Fall, then SP5 for 2000 will follow, perhaps in early Winter. That means Windows XP-64 is delayed at least until next Spring, maybe Summer (another year????). Of course, then they can all get back to Long Horn, the cow of all operating systems. Maybe 2006? July 25th SCO Can't Make Money, Loses Financial Support If it weren't so damned amusing, it might have been tragic. First, SCO loses it's biggest financial backer, the Royal Bank of Canada. Then it's hastily, and shoddily prepared lawsuit against DaimlerChrysler is thrown out of court. Now Baystar Capital, SCO's last source of money, is suing SCO over breach of contract. Ouch. SCO also has to pay back $13 million to Baystar. Double ouch! On top of all that, SCO's revenues for the entire last quarter on their SCOsource licensing scheme netted the company a Whopping (with a capital W) $11 thousand dollars (with a T). Their costs for the quarter rose to a measly $4.4 million (that's with an M). Look like a viable business model to anyone? You fly with the crows... you get shot with the crows. July 24th No Wonder Windows XP Service Pack 2 is Delayed CRN is reporting that 3 out of 5 computers that XP Service Pack 2 had been installed on failed to reboot at all. Dead. Is it possible that they need another 6 months to get it working right? The most important take home message here folks is that Microsoft makes really insecure products, and they are so insecure that trying to lock them down breaks them. It is a pitiful state for 90% of the world's personal computers to be in, and we can all thank Microsoft for that. Security and reliability should have come before Internet Explorer, before dot Net, before Media Player, and before Outlook Express. They should have come before Everything Else! Trying to fix something this broken with a patch is probably a fool's errand. July 21st SCO Loses DaimlerChrysler Lawsuit Oh yeah; you gotta love it. It's about time... a judge threw SCO's sorry butt out of court. DaimlerChrysler asked for summary judgment against professional litigant, SCO, and they got it. Blake Stowell of SCO said the whole thing could have been avoided if DaimlerChrysler had just responded to SCO's draconian demands for capitulation. Alas. Time to short SCO stock, if you're unscrupulous enough to own it. Justice is sweet... when it works. New NVidia Drivers Over the last few days NVidia has posted new Forceware and GeForce drivers. So if you've got a computer based on an NForce chipset motherboard, go grab the latest drivers here. Bill Gates Gets Really Generous I have never hesitated to criticize Bill Gates when he is a childish jerk, or a business bully, so I'm going to have to give him some congratulations on his decision to give out $33 billion in stock dividends. He has been extraordinarily cheap over the years by not giving any dividends to shareholders of his very pricey stock, despite billions in the bank. Now, perhaps to make up for that cheapness, he is giving out $3 a share. It won't help folks with 100 shares very much, but think what it will do for those rich guys with 100,000 shares! But that's not the generous part of what Bill is doing. The generous part is that he will be getting a $3.3 billion windfall for himself in the deal, but has pledged to give all of it to his foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This is very good news for malaria research, most of which is funded by the Gates Foundation. Tens of millions of people die each year from malaria, but pharmaceutical companies won't spend a penny on research, because only poor people die of malaria, and they can't afford expensive pills. So Bill is filling a huge funding gap left by the disingenuous and greedy pharmaceutical industry. For this Bill, we all sincerely thank you. Now get back to work on Windows, and make it work right! July 20th Is Dell Really Hell? I
can't do justice to this question in a short news post, but I'll give a
synopsis a shot. I've been hearing more and more horror stories from
For example, my brother was trying to get Dell to walk him through a simple hard drive replacement, but the guy on the phone was obviously looking at a different diagram than the one for my brother's computer. No go. Now it's up to me to fix it. Another Dull customer of my acquaintance said that after 5 hours on the phone recently with a foreigner, masquerading as a Dell technician somewhere in Asia, his computer was working even worse than before he called. My few anecdotal accounts can't begin to scratch the surface of Dell customer dissatisfaction. Dell supposedly has stopped outsourcing their tech support to India, but from the complaints I'm still hearing, something isn't right. I'm sure there are many happy Dell customers out there, but most of them are the ones who's computers luckily didn't happen to break down. And the problem is, cheap computers tend to break down. To me personally, as someone who can fix their own computer when it gets a hairball... I would never buy a Dell because of how they are made. They are made from garbage components heaped into an abysmally cheap case with a proprietary power supply, and then sold as top-notch gear. Then when you want to upgrade, they'll say your warranty is void if you install non-Dell parts, even though they will sell you lower-quality parts than you could get at a local store, but at a higher price. On top of all that, they refuse to sell AMD systems, which outperform Intel-based systems. If you want a good computer, you're going to have to shell out the dough for something like Alienware, or KickAss Gear. Tech support is really important, but so is the quality of the hardware. With Dell-Hell, you get crappy hardware, and really awful tech support. But heck... the price is pretty good! July 16th DMCRA May Pass Congress! PC World is reporting that there is growing support for the Digital Millennium Consumer's Rights Act in Congress. The bill, which permits fair use copying of protected media, has languished for 18 months, but now seems to be gathering momentum. That suggests that people really have been calling and writing Congress to express their anger at the draconian measures in the original DMCA. Remember, Republicans currently control our government now, including both Executive and Legislative branches. And because Republicans prefer large corporation's profits over individual consumer's rights, it's a small... nay large wonder that this bill is moving along at all. Democrats proposed the bill a year and a half ago, and for the first year it looked dead. But Democrats kept pushing, and the letters and emails from people started pouring in, so that eventually, even some Republicans got on board. Now, Republican Representative Joe Barton of Texas, who heads the relevant committee, seems ready to bring it up for a vote. There are an awful lot of Republicans in both houses, so it's not a sure thing the bill will pass. But maybe if enough of the Republican Reps and Senators get enough feedback from their constituents, that just might be the push they need to vote yes. Hint, hint. PS, I've written my Rep and Senators in Maryland twice already about it, but they are all Democrats, so they would have voted for it anyway. Link: www.house.gov Link: www.senate.gov July 14th Doom III is Gold id software has finally released Doom III code for manufacturing, and the sale date is between August 3rd and 5th. The wait is almost over. Don't Forget Your Daily Windows Update Microsoft has issued 6 more security patches for Windows today, adding to consumer's worries about the operating system. Based on recent security warnings from CERT and other web watchdogs, some Microsoft Internet Explorer users are switching to other browsers. In fact, I recently switched to using Opera most of the time. But even if you switch to Mozzila or some other browser, that doesn't mean you can be lax on the updates, because sometimes Internet Explorer is invoked even when you have another browser installed, such as when you run Windows update. So until you switch to Linux, keep those updates up to date. Also, if you are surfing the web and you aren't using an anti-spyware program like Pest Patrol or Spybot Search and Destroy, I recommend you use one. Some spyware is quite intrusive, and should be kept in check with anti-spyware software. July 12th Intel Laughing Stock of Chip World Just when you thought that the bad news for Intel had been exhausted, this comes out. Apparently, while doing a poor job at reverse-engineering the Pentium4 to include AMD's 64-bit extensions, Intel missed another little doohickey. Namely, 40-bit address space. Intel's 64-bit CPUs only have 36-bit address space, which may explain their problems with addressing physical memory above 4GB. Woe is Intel. I'd think that the first thing you've got to do when you copy someone else's product (cause you ain't got one of your own) is to make sure you copy it correctly. Intel hasn't had much experience being second fiddle, so maybe they need a little more practice copying AMD chips before they get it right. Intel inside, anyone? July 11th Wherefore Art Thou, GeForce 6800 Ultra? We all know about the IT industry's habit of debuting products while they are still far from store shelves. The practice, known as a "paper release", usually accompanies a competitor's product debut. The big question I had when NVidia and ATI announced their newest video cards in May was, "do either of these companies actually have a product ready to go?" NVidia announced first, and ATI shortly thereafter. At the time, neither company's cards were listed at hardware distributors. ATI actually got their new mid-range card, the Radeon X800 Pro, to market about a month after the announcement. Now, two months later, NVidia still has not shipped any new cards to distributors, and ATI has not released any additional new models based on their new graphics chip. This is a particularly egregious example of a paper release on NVidia's part, and I find it hard to believe they are still announcing products many months before they are ready. In fact, the release date seems to keep falling further and further back. The original ETA at a major distributor was late June, which then slipped to early July, then mid July, and most recently to late July. If the actual ship date slips to August, I will be disgusted. Wake up NVidia, don't announce a product until a week before it ships in quantity! Your customers hate paper releases. July 9th Microsoft's Intel Bias is Showing Microsoft has a PC Gaming Page set up to "inform" gamers of the benefits of PC gaming. The absurd part is, they only mention the Pentium 4 when they discuss processors for gaming, even though the Athlon 64 beats the P4 in almost all benchmarks. Microsoft explicitly discusses multithreading as an important feature, as though it were pulled straight from an Intel talking-points memo. It's stunts like this that make me wonder if the entire delay for Windows-64 is that Intel isn't ready yet. They have been feverishly trying to copy the Athlon64, but have experienced problems and delays, including the problem addressing memory above 4GBs. AMD has been ready with 64-bit CPUs for almost a year. The longer Microsoft delays the debut of Windows XP64, the more suspicious I get. Solar System Rings Like a Bell Scientists had a very unique opportunity last year when the largest solar flares ever recorded erupted from the surface of the sun, it was reported in the NY Times today. In October and November of last year (as I discussed on the Today's News Page), the sun blasted the solar system with billions of tons of ionized gas, which left the surface of the sun at speeds up to 5 million miles an hour. But this time, scientists had space craft dotted all over the solar system to monitor the event. As the wave front approached earth, the astronauts in the international space station had to hunker down in protected areas of the station, while some orbiting satellites took a hit from the massive solar wave. The blast wave damaged the radiation monitor on the Odyssey spacecraft orbiting Mars, but the craft was able to measure how the wave-front stripped away part of the Martian atmosphere. As the wave-front moved out and slammed into Jupiter, it caused that planet to ring with radio emissions for an entire week, which were picked up by the Ulysses space craft. When the wave-front next arrived at Saturn, it was picked up by the Cassini spacecraft which was approaching the planet at the time. Three months ago, the wave front was detected by Voyager 2, which was over 7 billion miles from earth. Sometime later this month, the blast wave will hit Voyager I, which is currently over 9 billion miles from earth, and headed for deep space. By the end of the year, the blast will reach the edge of our solar system, at which point it is expected to expand the envelope of the solar system, the heliosphere, by as much as 400 million miles. Wow. July 7th PCI Express By End of Year The talk on the net is that PCI-Express motherboards and video cards will be ready by the end of the year. A four to five month wait may seem like a long time, but to me there seems little reason to upgrade a system right now, when substantially less obsolete systems will be available in months. The NForce4 chipset will be one of the contenders in the PCI-E revolution, and will pack quite a few features into a neat package. Further, both ATI and NVidia are moving slowly to a 0.11 micron fabrication process for their upcoming PCI-E video cards. I have been contemplating a system upgrade recently, but see no point in spending money now when big changes are well on their way to market. I expect that news of such major changes to new hardware are certain to put a crimp into current hardware sales. July 4th SLI = Scalable Link Interface 3dfx may be dead, but their ideas seem to keep popping up in NVidia cards, now that NVidia owns 3dfx's technologies. 3dfx started the 3D gaming revolution with their Voodoo line of video cards, but they went out of business after making some serious mistakes in the marketplace. For folks who were PC gaming back in the late 1990's, you will no doubt remember what a big deal it was when 3dfx introduced "SLI", which then stood for 'scan line interleave'. Back then, there were no AGP cards or AGP motherboards, just PCI. 3dfx almost doubled the performance of the Voodoo2 video card by making it so you could put 2 of them into a single system, occupying 2 PCI slots and connected by a ribbon cable. This was a fairly odd arrangement, because you still needed a 2D video card for Windows and DOS. That meant folks had 3 video cards in their system at the same time. After the latest round of video card 'debuts', we see ATI with the x800 Pro and NVidia with... well nothing at this exact moment, but they will have the 6800 Ultra out in a week or two (in very small numbers). The problem for NVidia is that ATI has another card in the wings (X800XT) that will be out shortly, and will beat the PCBs off of NVidia's 6800 Ultra. So what is NVidia to do? Bring back SLI, but now bring it back as "scalable link interface". This will let gamers with loads of extra cash and nothing better to spend it on get two 6800 Ultras (most folk can't even buy one!), and put them onto a PCI-Express motherboard with two 16x PCI-E slots. This will actually almost double your frame rates, and the setup is rumored to beat the 20,000 score on 3D Mark 2003. So yes, NVidia did win this round of the graphics wars in a weird sort of way. Their setup is expensive as hell, and probably will be glitchy at first as the bugs get worked out of SLI and PCI-Express. I don't expect the PCI-E version of the 6800 Ultra, or PCI-E motherboards to be readily available for months. So NVidia can claim the speed crown, but only in the future, and only for the wealthy. My guess is that the Radeon X800XT will be out long before NVidia and mobo makers can get their acts together, and it will cost less than half the price of an NVidia SLI setup. Plus, it will work just fine on your existing motherboard. July 1st Intel's Very Hot Seat I'm getting very tired of razzing Intel. It's a thankless job, and it gets very redundant as they make mistake after mistake. But an article today at the Inquirer simply required comment. The article by Mario Rodrigues discusses the thermal problems with the Intel Prescott Pentium 4 processor, Intel's new 90nm, longer pipeline processor. Without wasting too much of your time, the bottom line is that the Prescott is so hot at 3.6GHz that it may be reaching its air-cooled limits. It might require liquid cooling beyond that. The irony is that the whole point of going to the longer pipeline was to allow for increased GHz, but it seems as though Intel got the opposite result. Here are some temps: Standard PC - No load/Full
load/Cool'n'Quiet (oF) For the standard PC on full load, the Prescott system used 33% more power than the Northwood, and 67% more energy than the Athlon 64. For the high-end PC on full load, Prescott used 36% more power than the Northwood and 48% more power than the Athlon 64. Power is heat, and heat is bad. There is also talk that overclocking the Prescott is limited by a lack of core voltage adjustment, due to heat problems. Intel's former (former is a key word here) chief processor architect, Bob Colwell, had wanted to take the Pentium 4 design in a different direction, but management insisted on faster clock speeds at all costs. Hence, Pat Gelsinger instead of Bob Colwell, much longer instruction pipelines, and very hot chips that don't perform hardly better at all. Which HD-DVD Format? Big things are in the works for recordable DVDs. Really big... between 30 and 50GBs big. The two new competing formats for blue laser recorders are coming to fruition, and it is still uncertain which format will win. Blu-Ray is a technology favored by Sony, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, Panasonic, Mitsubishi Electric, Philips Electronics, Pioneer Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, TDK and others. This format will give users 50GB of dual-layer burning power, and supports high definition recording. This format is already out, but the burners cost almost $3000. The competing format is HD-DVD, which is championed by NEC and Toshiba. The maximum capacity with dual-layer burning will be 30GB. This format is not ready yet, but has the advantage that the blank disks can be produced on current DVD production lines. The Blu-Ray disks will require new production facilities, thus reducing its chances of winning the war, despite the larger number of companies supporting the Blu-Ray format. Expect blue laser DVD players for computers early next year, and burners not too long after that. Copyright 2004, KickAss Gear |