Posted 07/09/2009 at 12:01:01pm

... I am not buying the upgrade, but not because I am holding off for Ultimate.  It's because there was another post on MaxPC that hinted that there could be (finally) a family pack for Win7.  I run 3 PCs at home (HTPC, my wife's and mine), so I'm definitely interested in the family pack.

 Any other insights on how much this pack would cost ?

Posted 06/03/2009 at 12:35:44pm

As I understand it, the Amiga never got off the ground much in the Americas, compared to the very loyal cult following it maintained for years in Europe.  Nonetheless, the Amiga was the first PC to introduce advanced video imagery to the consumer market - it was in the mid '80s if I remember correctly.  It had great graphics, and games/software were quite available.  Its marketing was obviously not strong enough to compete against the IBM PC and Apple. 

I owned an Apple ][ back then, soon followed by a Mac+, but I remember envying my friends who had much more powerful Amigas.

Posted 03/02/2009 at 09:26:40am

I still have the Apple //e in a closet somewhere.  And yes, my friends and I used to punch holes on the other side of the floppy to double its capacity.  Thanks for reminding me of that one :-)

Posted 02/05/2009 at 03:16:01pm

Cache is right.  :-)

Really, understanding the components, how it all works, and making sure you're doing the right thing is all important.  I have to admit my first post sounded like anyone could do just this.

In my defense, the P6T does a very good job of balancing things out - better than other mobos I've had before.  And it's only after reviewing at length the videos on HardOCP's site that I went that route for my last overclock.  'Sloppy' and 'irresponsible' are certainly not the right terms to be used here (but go ahead... flame away if you feel like it).

For the record, my voltages currently are: CPU: 1.275,  RAM: 1.5 and QPI: 1.2125... well below what this article proposes, and giving me a very stable 3.6 Ghz machine.  Yep, the P6T does deserve that good overclocking reputation it has...

Posted 02/05/2009 at 10:38:50am

Sorry MPC, but I followed HardOCP's method this time for overclocking my 920.  And it's MUCH simpler:

[1] I simply overclocked my BCLK to 180, for a 3.6 Ghz machine; and

[2] I selected 1523 Mhz for the RAM (I know, weird choice)

Everything else I left at "AUTO".  That's it !  Used Prime95 for 2 hours. Stable as a rock.  Did not even need to change the voltages.

I'm not one to shy away from the complexities if that would be the only way to overclock the beast, but it's simply not necessary in this case, so why do it so complicated ??

The Rig:

Core i7 920, overclocked to 3.6 Ghz
6Gb Corsair 1600 Mhz DDR3 
Swiftech H20 water cooling kit (I know, I could push my CPU even further with this)
Asus P6T Deluxe mobo
and lots of other stuff :-)

Posted 01/19/2009 at 08:11:41am

Well, I did not read "DVD" so much as "HTPC" when I first read this.  If this comes with a reasonable hard drive (say, 80 Gb), and 1 Gb RAM, then this is not just a DVD player, but definitely a HTPC... meaning you can view DVDs as well as hold and play your music library and anything else you want from your network.  

 The only thing is, adding Windows, and probably +1 Gb RAM will likely bring the price up.  People saavvy enough to buy a HTPC would likely not go for this dead end (I wouldn't have).

So as a HTPC, this definitely has potential.  Both a Blu-Ray reader should have been included.

Posted 01/11/2009 at 12:50:04am

My first Win7 install was on my old P4 on a Asus P4G8X mobo.  Flawless installation, and works really fast (it has a good enough graphics: ATI 2600).  Still two problems: I was not able to load the mobo drivers for Win7 to recognize the on board LAN.  I tried Asus (which do't even have Vista drivers for this mobo), and then I tried Broadcom themselves, makers of the lan chip.  No luck.

 For my second attempt, I am now attempting to load Win7 in Virtual PC 2007 (SP1).  Install works very well so far. 

[EDIT] made it work, so far quite well, on Virtual PC 2007.  I've allocated 2 Gb RAM to the VPC (I have 6 total).  Graphics are disapointing, but that's the fault of the virtualization, not of Win7.  Install worked, LAN is working, etc.  And quite fast too.  This second attempt is on my main machine, a Core i7 with plenty of goodies.

Posted 12/23/2008 at 07:50:37pm

Appreciate the effort from HP.  But this kind of specs would surely fit more on a Best Buy shelf. 

And how can you have a new PC config in 2009 with anything else but Core i7 ??  Mmmmhhhh...  definitely not a system I would recommend.

Posted 10/22/2008 at 12:32:28pm

It is a good thing for the adoption of blu-Ray to have such prices.  But, it is NOT a good thing if some movies don't play, or if java-heavy menus are jerky.  And (assuming it is not a 2.0 player), the frustration people will have when they see movies have a BD-Live feature that they cannot access.  I'm not even talking about the many players out there still taking 45+ seconds to load the disc.

The technology out there is not yet ready for Blu-Ray.  not surprising that the PS3 remains a good choice (with its on-board memory and CPU power), or better yet, my HTPC.  I don't remember DVD players ever having those technical problems.

Will it hurt the market to have early adopters buy cheap players, if those cannot deliver ?  This remains to be seen.

Posted 09/28/2008 at 06:45:30pm

I basically use more or less the same tactics to get budget approval for a new machine :-)

My 2-year old system is still kicking %$$, with its QX6700 and 8800GTX.  Now, finally, we have worthy replacements for the graphics (either the GTX 280 or the 4870 X2), but I have to wait and see real ife performance of the i7 before I take the plunge.  If we get a minimum of 30% improvements in CPU perfomance accross all benchmarks, then I'll go for it.

I always maintain this spreadsheet for my dream system.  For about 18 months, it was basically never moving, and then, this spring, wow... finally lots of activity in the graphics department. 

The "current" dream system:

Core i7, 4870 X2, 4 Gb RAM @ 1600 Mhz (might be 8 though), 64-bit Vista, 300 Gb Velociraptor and 1 Tb Samsung drives.  I should be able to get all that for $2500 (recycling current peripherals of course).  SSD might not make the cut this time around...