Posted 08/29/2008 at 04:08:46pm

I hate to debate against some of my fellow nerds, but honestly I feel that this is a way to make people more aware of what they use, just like water. This will cause outrage just as if, during a water shortage, the city were to ban watering lawns. All those with nice houses and lawns will throw a fit because they can't have they're sprinklers on.

But let's think things through. One user mentioned that Netflix streaming takes about 1GB/hour, which actually would allow you to watch at an average of 2hr. per movie, 125 movies in a month, or 4 movies a day in a 31 day month. Of course, people will browse, watch real tv, actual DVDs they may have, go out to play putt putt, or go to work, so maybe 25 movies a month would stream over Netflix, consuming 50GBs, or 1/5th of your Comcast bandwidth.

So let's say you decide to purchase 4 new albums in July from Amazon (at 256kb/s). That may take you just past the 1GB line.

Let's also say you have 3 gamers in the house, gaming maybe 4 hours a day (leaving the rest of the day for movies, a job, a life, etc.). That's 12 hours of gaming a day, and following this rule from [url=http://www.maximumpc.com/article/comcast_closes_in_on_bandwidth_limits_and_overage_charges]a post from[/url] Dave Murphy, "Playing 24 hours a day for each day in the month, by yourself, would only cost you 62 GB of bandwidth." So cut that in half for 12 hours of gaming in a day, that would be 31GB of bandwidth.

As for VOIP, according to two posts on the [url=http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/777085.html]Whirlpool forums[/url], "as a rough guide your looking at 14Mb per hour during active calls." If you hold 4 hours of conversation a day, you're looking at using 1.736GB per month.

As for Hulu and web surfing, it might amount to 300-500MB per day. that equals out to (rounded up) 15GB per month of bandwidth.

The above usage of 250GB per month is peanuts. I bet the average home with broadband uses much less than this, which is about 100GB of bandwidth. Here's some positives I see to come from this:

By the way, this is a great example of price discrimination.

The Good:

1. Over some time, the U.S. internet speeds will free up and speed up a bit, by limiting overzealous downloaders.

2. Kids will be kicked out of the house more often to play with neighbors again.

3. The free up of speeds should allow broadband providers to handle to exponential growth of internet users, giving them time to install a newer broadband internet, seeing as we have one of the oldest internet networks in th world.

4. Metering, if it comes to charging households by the GB, will allow people who couldn't afford the internet in the first place to have it. Think $10, full speed broadband, per month, or even less for struggling families.

5. If everything goes right, those who consume less will pay less and those who consume more will get a faster internet for the same price.

6. The above points would lead to more price and speed competition between broadband providers, as well as filling this nation with broadband, which has been a challenge to many urban areas.

7. Metering will be necessary, in leau with upgrading our network, to be able to come close to speeds of the 26Mb/s some in Tokyo enjoy, for about $40 a month.

Posted 08/27/2008 at 01:24:22am

So does this mean they will be developing 3d and blu-ray combos or a 3d tv themselves? I'm assuming the former. But with the performance of 3d screens out now, that won't be too attractive.

Posted 08/25/2008 at 05:50:36pm

I think they may be underselling the performance of the upcoming Larrabee. I mean I bet they are producing such product to reduce their costs of production, especially to those laptops and desktops that are running integrated graphics, that way the graphics channeling is managed through the CPU socket instead of where the integrated graphics usually are, that way they can make more changes to the GPU core without having to reengineer the layout of a motherboard to get it to work.

That's my guess but I never read the original article. If they're trying to compete with nVidia on this, I think they're misguided. Graphics is nVidia's specialty. They may bring in a slight bit more market share for integrated graphics, but I just don't see it being a big deal. Personally I feel AMD's resources could give it a different, and much more effective take on this. We'll just have to see I suppose.

Posted 08/24/2008 at 03:12:50pm

I'm investing in NoDoze.

Posted 08/21/2008 at 12:35:34pm

Hardware and software just gets better. Wow. This whole shpeel reminds me of how desperately I need a new computer, and I how I never should have bought the hardware I did. I bought a Pentium 4 2.4 GHz (Prescott so it was pre-hyper-threading) in 2004. I AM STILL USING IT. It's the only computer I have. This anniversary should mark a new era of updated and competitive computing. But, I'm a college student, and I'll have to wait a few more months until I can afford a laptop.

But MaximumPC, thanks for giving me my hopes and dreams for computing.

Posted 08/21/2008 at 11:48:23am

well dude, the x2 goes into one pcie slot. and it outperforms the 280, as you can see on the benchmarks. So if your motherboard can harness it, I don't see why not.

Posted 08/21/2008 at 11:35:29am

I'm sorry, I've never really understood the speed ratings of SATA, but if they're marked as being good for speeds up to 1.5Gb/s and 3Gb/s, how is 250mb/s saturating even the original SATA?

Posted 08/12/2008 at 02:15:38pm

God bless America, thank you for giving us another top of the line, best of the best ATi videocard!! This has to be good news for the future of AMD.

Posted 08/11/2008 at 10:38:21pm

This to me is why Gordon Mah Ung is the greatest geek ever. He KNOWS Mac Users are Latte Sipping bastards, and the fact that plenty more people would have purchased that app for their iPhones proves his point. It would cause a black hole, due to all the ***damn yuppies that would be sitting by the window of Starbucks, talking on their self-righteous Bluetooth headset, with their new 3G iPhone resting on the iGloat (a picture frame like stand that attaches to the back of the iPhone for public display, also know as the iSleeze), with their iPhone on the home screen, facing the window of that Starbucks, so that all passerbys know that these bastards are rich, dumb a**holes.

In essence, Apple did something kinda smart. Really, I don't hate Apple, I just side with Gordon when in comes to those select Apple users who are latte sipping bastards. I myself want an iPhone, just for practical reasons. I like the phone and wi-fi functionality, I need an MP3 player (still have never had one), and the 16GB version is actually cheaper than the Touch with a new contract.

Posted 08/11/2008 at 10:16:44pm

I will note that on Newegg, the predecessor is $10 cheaper, going for $270 with free 3 day shipping, and amazon offers a similar price. Also by LG's website, the predecessor is only $120 more than the new model. I apologize if I come across as a smart a$$. If I do, it's the geek in me.