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Comment Re: Call me cynical (Score 1) 179

Of course I do, IPC has also improved significantly since then. I'm merely disputing the claim that Intel has never "overhyped technology" or "not delivered a product".

They overhyped the P4, and did not deliver on their promise of a 10GHz P4.

Intel has a lot of great products, but the assertion that thegarbz made was absurd.

Comment Re:If you think Windows is bad (Score 3, Insightful) 371

It's the javascript engine that's the problem, not the rest of it. Opera on iOS, for example does not use WebKit, or at least it doesn't in turbo mode. They do the javascript execution on the server side and feed you the results. The downside is lower compatibility, the upside is it can be MUCH faster when you're on a really slow or shoddy connection.

Comment Re:like the lightbulbs that last virtually forever (Score 1) 179

I've got a whole whackload of Cree LED bulbs. I had a 100W completely die, my other 100W flashes on occasion (apparently their 100W bulbs have a notoriously high failure rate), I had to get rid of a 60W from a lamp fixture because it periodically switched back and forth between full brightness and lower brightness. So far, they have not been substantially more reliable than CFL or incandescent. They may not burn out as often, but they "soft-fail" more often than CFL or incandescent did, those tended to either work fine or not at all.

Their warranty is basically worthless. They are only sold by one store (Home Depot), and warranty replacements can't be done where you bought it. You need to ship them the broken lightbulb (at your own cost) to get a replacement, and shipping something that size/weight costs more than buying a new LED bulb in the first place, making the warranty completely useless.

Comment Re:Moor? (Score 2) 179

Practically unlimited? 1000x the endurance of NAND gets you 3 million writes. It's per-byte addressable, and it's supposed to have performance 1000x that of NAND. If you assume NAND has typical access times of 2ms, and then this stuff could write a single byte up to 500,000 times per second.

In short: without wear levelling, you can burn out this stuff in 6 seconds if you overwrite the same byte as fast as possible.

If you implement wear levelling on a block level, and use it for storage (and not to replace RAM), then it should be effectively unlimited write cycles.

Comment Re:Compustick (Score 1) 158

One example was this, which just flat out says discontinued:

http://www.gefen.com/kvm/dprod...

Another is this, which mentions wireless but none of the models seem to support wireless:

http://www.bb-elec.com/Product...

For that last set, the manufacturer's page has no wireless ones either, except in the discontinued section:

http://www.icron.com/products/...

Comment Re:Compustick (Score 1) 158

Short range wireless audio/video is still going to have a lot of the same issues in terms of quality and latency. Some solutions will do lossless video over short distances (the 60GHz wireless video stuff for example), although I'm not sure about latency.

What are you actually looking to put on the TV, though? If it's just media playback, there are lots of solutions involving either dedicated media players or HTPCs that are going to provide a much smoother user experience than how you describe using the laptop (they'll play stuff over your wireless network). If it's videogames, then there are solutions for that too, various in-home streaming options such as those provided by nVidia or Valve that can stream from your desktop computer upstairs to a cheap dedicated device (like an nVidia Shield or a Valve Steam Link, which will be out in November for $50). Those are not lossless, but the quality is decent, and since they're gaming focused, the latency is pretty low. They're designed to use a gamepad with them, though.

So maybe something that is more specific to your use case might work better. Some of them (like the nVidia Shield) could be used for both media and gaming. I think SteamLink is gaming specific, it's pretty optimized for that one task and nothing else, hence the low cost.

Comment Re:Common Scenario (Score 1) 158

I'm not sure that I'd trust a passive 50ft HDMI run to do 1080p60, even at 26AWG... and 26AWG cables aren't exactly slim. If I needed to run 50+ feet, I'd use an active cable (like a monoprice redmere one) or some sort of Cat 6 based extender. The Redmere cable if you want something simple, the Cat 6 extender if you want something cheap (redmere cables are around a buck a foot).

Bonus to using Cat 6 is that it's easy to extend USB over Cat 6 too, so if you just run three Cat 6 cables, you can use cheap passive extenders for both HDMI and USB with a cheap USB hub for the keyboard/mouse.

Comment Re:Compustick (Score 3, Informative) 158

You may be looking at two different solutions, then. One to handle the audio and video, one to handle the keyboard/mouse.

Does it absolutely need to be wireless? Both HDMI and USB are easy to run over ethernet cabling with pretty cheap passive adapters, and it's the only solution that isn't going to have any sort of lag or quality loss. $12 adapters get you 150ft over ethernet cabling for USB, $20 gets you HDMI over 98 feet of ethernet cabling, and there are active solutions if you need to get HDMI farther. Drill some holes between each floor and hide the cable and that should work for you. Note that these don't use a network for extending, they use the ethernet cabling directly.

If it does need to be wireless, it's not going to be cheap, it's not going to be lossless, and it's not going to be low latency. There are various solutions, like WHDI transmitters (~30 feet through walls, maybe $170 for a kit), or h.264 transmitters (~60 feet through walls, maybe $500 for a kit). You may also be able to combined the h.264 transmitters with a powerline network to get more range (the ones that I have do wireless or ethernet, since they use UDP/IP). Both will add latency and reduce quality slightly.

USB is trickier, as wireless USB extenders are VERY rare. The few that I could find had all been discontinued, so the only option might be enterprise-grade USB-over-IP extenders that might work over wifi adapters (they're not tested over wifi).

Really, just drill some holes and run some Cat6 cable with some cheap Monoprice HDMI-to-Cat6 and USB-to-Cat6 passive adapters. This will save you hundreds (or thousands) of dollars as compared to wireless gear that will always be a really crummy experience.

Comment Re:Error 1 (Score 1) 904

Whoever said that the electricity was free? It's the charging that's free, because they treat the cost of the estimated lifetime energy consumption of your car to be a sunk cost as part of the purchase. You've already paid for the electricity.

Tesla eventually intends to have their charging stations be completely solar powered. I'm not convinced that's actually feasible, but if it were, then the cost of electricity would be eliminated, and the remaining cost would be the construction and maintenance of the charging stations.

Comment Re:Error 1 (Score 1) 904

There are 217 stations in the US, not 100. They're still rapidly expanding.

The numbers are also not comparable. Gas stations are required for all refuelling of gasoline-powered vehicles. Supercharger stations are only required for long-distance trips that are typically quite rare. There are often many gas stations in close proximity to eachother, sometimes two or three at the same intersection. That may be useful when there are different gas stations competing with eachother, but pointless when you're talking about a manufacturer-provided charging network that is free to use.

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