GeekLimit

The Inquirer is reporting on a Dell laptop that supposedly spontaneously combusted at a conference in Japan. It appears they put it out witha jug of icewater.

No details on why the laptop suddenly exploded into flame. While I don’t doubt that the laptop was on fire, I’m a little skeptical of the reasons why it set on fire so voraciously. The brightness of the initial flame seems to indicate a very white light that seems to hint at magnesium. Also, the reader mentions the laptop is a Dell, and then in the same sentance starts talking about all of the situations where this could be catastrophic. They also mention the laptop had several other explosions while it sat burning for five minutes, but the last picture given has very little smoke in the room…kinda fishy.
I’m looking forward to seeing what, exactly, the reason for the flame-up was. In the meantime, add this to the lists of pranks NOT to pull at work: loading a laptop up with magnesium shavings. (If that is what happened)

by the way, does anyone know if images of a flame will be useful to a spectrum analyzer? For example, if I put an image of a propane flame on the screen, would an analyzer work?

Ok ok! Yes, I am getting your emails, and I saw the article from Toms Hardware about their $720 gaming machine.

Yes, this is a lower price than my recent “GeekLimit vs. ExtremeTech: $800 Gaming Machine” article, but let’s do a comparison between the box I built and the latest one from Toms, shall we? (GeekLimit still is dominating, IMHO)

Processor: Intel Pentium D 805 2.66Ghz @ 3.6Ghz vs Intel Pentium D 805 2.66Ghz @ 4.0Ghz

They’ve chosen to max out the processor. In my article, I chose to limit the processor to 3.6Ghz so I’d have money for more memory and graphics performance. This enables me to get away with a $40 heatsink vs. $140 for Tom’s.

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-8I945PL-G vs Asrock 775Twins-HDTV

Their motherboard is $4 cheaper than mine. It also has HDTV output, but offers 1.5Gb/sec SATA, while the Gigabyte offers 3.0Gb/sec. The Asrock is missing my Gigabit Ethernet and uses a Radeon Xpress 200 chipset, vs my Intel 945PL.

In my original article, I said I was going with Gigabyte because I was comfortable with the manufacturer. Now I’ll stay with them because 3Gb/sec SATA and Gigabit Ethernet is worth $4 to me, and I can’t see myself using an HDTV for a budget gaming machine. That, and the Asrock isn’t even available to North America!

Memory: pqi power series 2x1GB DDR2-533 vs Adata Vitesta 2x512MB DDR2-667

I’m going to have to take a bit of a detour here from my original box design. Tom’s didn’t include an operating system with their box, which saved them $142. I can take two approaches here – claim that Tom’s box actually costs $840, not the $720 they claim, or go ahead and drop the OS myself and put the extra cash towards components, like they did. This last choice is more interesting to read, and a more fair comparison, so we’ll do that.

This also means this is a new box, compared to my last one. Game on, Tom’s!

I’ll pick up 2GB of DDR2-533 RAM from PQI to counter their 1GB DDR2-667 RAM from Adata. Slower clock speed, but my quantity easily wins over their speed. It also costs me $130 vs their $140, and their CAS is at 5 versus mine at 4. Both not too fast, but hey, that’s DDR2 for you. If you’re keeping track at home, I’m $106 ahead at this point.

Hard Drive: 250GB 7200RPM Maxtor w/ 16MB, 3GB/s SATA NCQ vs 2x160GB RAID0 7200RPM Samsung w/ 8MB, 3GB/s SATA NCQ

Hmm, good one. Not sure what to think about this one. I have the cache, but they have RAID. Their motherboard has 1.5GB/s SATA, so paying for that 3GB/s isn’t going to help much on their budget or the performance. The hard drive is going to determine those load times, but it’s a little close to call. 16MB cache @ 3GB/sec vs. 8MB cache @ 1.5GB/sec w/ RAID…I think they might have a slight advantage here, just because they can spool two drives at the same time. My drive is $88 vs their 2 for $133.

I’ll get 2 drives RAID0′ed @ 3GB/s and 16MB cache and blow theirs out of the water for $174. I’m still $65 ahead.

Optical Drive: DVD-ROM vs DVD burner

I said this before, but I fail to see the purpose of a burner in a gaming machine. Sure, it’s nice to make backup copies of your CD’s and DVD’s, but this is a gaming machine, not a multimedia machine. That’s why I don’t have card readers, etc on there too. I’ll pick up $17 by not making the expenditure.

Case and PSU: 400W Rosewill vs. 500W Broadway.com

Some people don’t mind the power supply that comes with the case. I do. I’ll stick with my case because it comes with a power supply from a company I know of for power supplies, and with my added fan is all-120mm, which should keep the noise down while giving some good airflow. Theirs comes with 500W and 2x80mm fans. I’ve sworn off power supplies I don’t know and 80mm noisemakers, so I’ll stick with mine, especially since 400W should be enough. I also save $13 over the broadway, probably because I bought a lower-rated power supply and bought my extra 120mm fans myself for $4 each.

Graphics Cards: Sapphire Radeon X850XT 256MB vs Asus Radeon X1300 128 MB

And here’s where it all comes down to the line. So far, my machine is costing me a measly $548. To reach their machine price of $720, I’ve got $172 to spend on a “budget” graphics card. They have a PCIe16, 128MB, 64-bit 450mhz card running its DDR memory at 500mhz over 4 pixel pipelines to a DVI or VGA connector. For $66.

Ouch. You’re joking, right? What is this, 2001? Very, very disappointing.

I’ll spend $150 on mine and get PCIe16, 256MB, 256-bit 520mhz card running its GDDR3 memory at 1.08Ghz over 16 pipelines to a DVI, VGA or S-Video connector. No contest.

Summary

All in all, the GeekLimit machine has a processor 400mhz slower, no HDTV output, 134mhz slower memory, no DVD-burning capability and minus 100W. It also has 3GB/sec SATA, 90GB more w/ 16MB cache, 2x 120mm fans, and the bloody slaughter in the graphics card area.

The GeekLimit machine also came in at $698, $22 less than the Tom’s machine. Ultimately, what seems to have happened is that the cooling systems required for a dual-core 4Ghz rig drew too much money out of their budget, and sacrifices had to be made in their motherboard, memory and graphics card. (I should note that Tom’s went on to correct these shortcomings and built an ok gaming machine based off of the 4Ghz-overclocked 805D…for $1223.)

So as the latest post in the “$800 Gaming Machine” wars, how do you think GeekLimit did?

Google has yet again offered for free what others decide to outrageously charge for. Welcome to Google Spreadsheets, an online spreadsheet application that can work with both .csv and .xls files. Once again, this is all about the true meaning of Web 2.0 – making the internet more valuable. With the addition of Writely, this is signaling the beginning of a web-based Office-type application.

Microsoft Office is currently in a rebuild, and estimates were that sales would be expected to reach $20 billion by 2011. With the inevitable addition of document management to GMail, these numbers will be seriously jeopardized. After all, why spend the estimated $679 on Office 2007 Ultimate Edition when 99% of what you do is simple document creation? This is nothing but bad news for Microsoft, count on either severe price reductions or serious sales problems. In the meantime, Microsoft shares don’t seem to be responding well to the latest news from Mountain View, CA, and are down a half-percent in the last 30 minutes, to $22.38. Google, however, has gained 5% in the two hours since the announcement of its tap into the $20 billion Office cashflow.

Add this latest development to Google Earth, an application that negates Microsoft’s Terraserver, and Google’s recent jostle to the 3D modeling space with its acquisition and free offering of SketchUp.

One could easily see the conversion of this 3D design software to 2D to compete with Adobe’s vector-based design application, Illustrator. Add this development to the addition of PDF translation in Google’s search portal; Adobe is being pressured on multiple fronts.

2006 is shaping up to be the year that Google goes after all of the heavy hitters in the industry, simultaneously.

My predictions for 2006-2007

1. Google Adds document management to GMail by adding online storage and a ‘My Documents’ sidebar.

2. Google launches G Office to bring together the office apps Writely and Spreadsheets.

3. Google adapts SketchUp to be a basic 2D, vector-based design application to compete with Illustrator.

4. Goobuntu is confirmed as being in development/available for beta, with the help of Sun Microsystems. It will be offered as an installed OS by Dell. Microsoft Vista prices drop from their estimated $450 to XP Home’s $200. It won’t be enough.

5. A network appliance will be launched to locally host your own G Office web application, with limited success.

6. Further development into municipal WiFi will result in a slew of Google app ports for mobile devices, such as GMaps and GLocal.

7. Development in Mobile apps will result in concentration on local, location-relevant searches for Froogle, GMaps and GLocal.

8. GMaps will integrate public transportation as optional routes to the user.

9. Google Groups will be refined and integrated into the Gmail app, which is now more like Google Portal than a mail app. Corporate users will be able to have private groups for online collaboration. Around this time, IBM will start gearing up, as they’ve owned this sector for years.

10. Google will get tied up for a few years in the legal system as companies go after them for being a monopoly, a victim of their own successes. It will be determined that there was adequate competition in the marketplace, but the ‘don’t be evil’ model won out over the ‘force them to a product, then charge what we want’ model.

Oh,

11. Google hires me to manage the think-up-ideas-and-make-them-into-prototype-apps department in R&D. I realize I forgot all of my possessions as the plane lifts off an hour later.

When it comes to choosing a processor for my computer, or when helping some friend of mine to assemble a new one, I prefer to go with AMD CPU. In my case it’s 100%, while some friends still have the notion of that Intel are superior and so on (result of strong branding and history) and AMD still not being 100% compatible(!). They are not geeks, so I try to forgive them for such, hmm …, meaningless thoughts. Well then, to previewing the latest processors from AMD that are Socket-AM2 based.

Despite the upcoming announcement of pretty promising Intel CPUs, Socket AM2 platform from AMD attracted a lot of attention. The AM2 desktop (revision F) processors being announced today are based upon Windsor, Orleans, and Manila cores for the Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64, and Sempron series respectively. AMD’s physical socket change does not appear to have been necessary for the move from DDR to DDR2, but it was likely done to prevent consumer confusion when installing components. While component-wise this AMD launch today isn’t as ground-breaking as Intel’s Grantsdale and Alderwood launch that had delivered DDR2, PCI Express, Land Grid Array CPU package, and other changes for the platform, today is AMD’s first time benefiting from Double Data Rate 2 system memory. With many of the initial DDR2 problems now addressed, such as the high latencies, and the frequencies now exceeding 1GHz, it is certainly time for AMD to join this bandwagon. One of the advantages of AMD’s DDR2 adoption is the official support for DDR2-800MHz by the CPU, while Intel’s competition remains at DDR2-667 until later this year when they will finally get into DDR2-800+ support.

Speaking of the “devil”, here are what Athlon 64 X2 core Revision F and AM2 scoket with 940 pins look like:

(not much different from current S939 X2 processors)

Another important achievement resulting from the transition to AMD’s new Revision F core is the lowering of processors’ power consumption. As announced last week, the energy efficient (EE) AM2 processors can provide 37 percent greater performance-per-watt than standard AMD processors, and the new Athlon 64 X2 solutions can provide up to 154 percent greater performance-per-watt. One of the numbers that AMD has thrown out in its press release last week as a dual-core processor consuming a mere 14 Watts … picture that.

One of the other advantages to have been delivered is with AMD’s Pacifica Virtualization Technology — the competitor to Intel’s Vanderpool Virtualization Technology. AMD’s Pacifica will support all x86 modes, including the Virtual 8086. AMD has also implemented Presidio technology for enhanced security built-in and can support TPM components. Pacifica technology will also boast an exclusive feature for protecting buggy code or malicious content from running on the AM2 processor.

All major motherboard makers have shown strong support for AM2 socket – DFI, Epox, ABIT, ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, which have ready versions to roll-out. On the chipset side, nVidia’s nForce 500 series becoming available today include the nForce 590 SLI, nForce 570 SLI, nForce 570, and nForce 550. The ATI Xpress 1100, for use with AMD notebooks can also be used with desktop systems and Xpress 1150 now integrates faster graphics (X300 core), and a handful of additional optimizations. SiS and VIA will also be throwing new AM2-supportive chipsets as well. As usual I see nVidia having the best mix of features to performance comparing to competitors, and as I currently am using nForce4 Ultra, when time will come to upgrading my system, I am likely to go with nVidia again. Here is how they have categorized their 5xx family.

On Linux Front

ATI’s SB600 with its SATA, PATA, and audio capabilities, have already been merged with the 2.6.17 kernel in its release candidate 3. For those motherboards continuing to use previous Socket 939 Chipsets, such as the ASRock AM2NF4G-SATA2, there should be no extraordinary Linux problems to note as the nForce 4 is already well supported within Linux. We do anticipate that the nForce 500 series arrival will be smooth now that NVIDIA has experienced territory in Linux as they now know what will be required of them in this arena.

My Upgrade Path

As I am currently running Athlon64 S939 Venice E-6 core processor, which is overclocked to 2.9Ghz, I find it quite sufficient and wont be upgrading to AM2 this year. You may ask why. Well the reasons are that not much applications, including games, are utilizing the power of dual-core processors. I don’t see that I’ll be able to run dual-core each running at 2.9+Ghz. By the time I decide to upgrade the prices on processors will be lower, compared to premium AMD will charge in coming months as they are new, and newer revision will be out, with even lesser power consumption, maximising the overclocking potential of the CPU. The pricing on DDR2-800 are also likely to fall in next 6-8 months, especially the ones with lower latency, though time has shown that prices start to go up on DRAM chips when there is high demand, or cause of some factory catching fire. Same is true for motherboards. When they are just released in market, pricing is quite harsh on users, and I am no rich guy.

Another factor, which is very important one for me is the support of new hardware in Linux kernel. By the time I will decide to upgrade, newer kernel be rolled out with much better support and integration for AM2 chipsets, and the features that these chipsets will have. Hopefully such kernel will be supplied with the next major release of SUSE Linux, which will be 10.2. And really would love to see much lesser problems when encountering with smp-kernel and drivers and also applications.

In future I’ll be looking at mid-range AM2 Athlon X2 processor which can overclock to around 3Ghz on each core, and also motherboard with nForce 570 Ultra. Why not SLI, because I don’t need one. If I have money for two video cards to use in SLI mode, I will prefer to go with one card that is more powerful. And on top of that I don’t have 3-4 monitors, hence the need for more than two connectors. I can also opt for video cards that have 2 GPUs on one PCB. And as I am not into gaming that much, don’t think I’ll be getting such one either. Unless I find a bag full of $$$

Final Thoughts

Am I impressed? Not sure, at least as of now. One thing that I have to mention is that I was expecting more performance gain when switching to new AM2. Basically I see minor modifications to already famous Athlon64 processors and noticed that they didn’t make any in-depth architectural changes. These type of moves from AMD can lead to loosing market share and eventually to complete defeat. So I hope that AMD will be gearing up and bringing faster technological breakthroughs and implementing them in their processors and really hope that they have some trump card under their sleeves.

More on this:

• AMD Socket-AM2 (anandtech)
  
• AM2: AMD Reinvents Itself (tomshardware)
• AM2 Platform: Athlon 64 FX-62 (pcperspective)
• AMD Launches The Socket AM2 Platform (legitreviews)

If you’re a geek, you know about Wikipedia. If you’re a real geek, you’ve found yourself wanting access to wikipedia when you, ahem, go outside. It’s true tat you can fire up your web-enabled phone, surf to wikipedia, search for what you want, and finally get the information on what you’re looking at. Chances are, you might learn more about wherever you are, and maybe even learn some things they would never tell you on the tour.

If you’ve found yourself in this situation, the wait is over. Semapedia has developed a 2D bar code that maps to a specific wikipedia article. A small application on your phone analyzes a 2D barcode affixed to an object or location via the phone’s camera, and pulls up the corresponding wikipedia article. Cool!

Unfortunately, there are some drawbacks. Whoever owns the object might not like to have barcodes stuck to it. Imagine the problems with marking a national monument… But it wouldn’t be hard to have it affixed to a plaque or something, right next to the text and braille descriptions. Besides the sticker ugliness, there may be those who don’t have a favorable wikipedia entry that they want advertised. But for those who do, there may be an opportunity to put a 2D bar code on the back of a business card.

To me, this is what Web 2.0 is all about. The name has been tossed around so much that it’s pretty much a joke now, and has come to describe rounded corners and AJAX-y effects. But Semapedia is on the right course here as to the true meaning of Web 2.0; to add more functionality to the web to the same degree that web 1.0 added more functionality to everything.

One thing I noticed is that you can make a semapedia-based hyperlink tag (physilink?) of any URL. Check this out:

In the true spirit of Web 2.0, I hope this means that the mobile application by Semapedia is set up to access the web directly, which would be ideal. This system could easily be overwhelmed if it depended on a single point of failure, i.e. a table at the Semapedia site that is doing the “tag #100237563 = http://www.geeklimit.com” translation.

I don’t think this is the case, but I can’t confim, since I’m not fluent in 2D bar code… If anyone can confirm the mechanism, please do so.