DSkippy

Techman, yeah, I was vacillating on the $100 dollar Toshiba HD-DVD (in lieu of PS3 good value there I think) but, Sony Beta is in my head....so I was figuring I can wait a bit on that. I'm probably going to hang until there's a more affordable dual mode HD-DVD/Blue Ray Rom drive.

I'm running a MythTV front end w/ a DVI out adapted to an HDMI input on my receiver, and my ideal scenario is one drive that does BlueRay and HD-DVD....they're a grand right now (so guess who ain't biting yet?)....I think there's enough weight on both sides of the fulcrum for there to possibly be two coexisting formats (too much money to be lost on either side)......if this were to happen, this would not be a bad thing....COMPETITION and CAPITALISM always good, this will drive the price down on both and we make out (other than having to have both formats supported).

I do, again, say though, Sony is very bright to officially support Linux. Many people don't need a "traditional" computer. They want to Browse, word process, email and a few other things....why not give them an appliance that does that in addition to Gaming/Video, etc?

I just thought of this and I think it's kind of interesting....It really has come full circle, some of the first widely distributed computers were Commodore 64's hooked up to TV's used to play games more than compute, now Sony's bringing a gaming console that could start to be used more for computing than gaming. Apropos, no?

Jeremiah 29:11

You must be old if you remember the Commodore 64's .

DSkippy

My first computer was a TI994A (actually my mom's), I loved that thing, after a few months she finally got a cassette tape (so you could save programs and not have to key them in every time).....it's funny to see where they are now.

Was watching Science Channel the other night, they were covering the Apollo and the first moon landing. They started talking about the computers, NASA's super computer at the time was almost as powerful as a standard notebook these days. The computers on the actually Rocket and Lander were somewhere between a digital watch and a calculator.

Love it.

Plum70Rag

Hey, I still have a Commodore 64 -- and SX64, no less. They called it an "Executive Computer", and it was probably the first "laptop". It's the size of a big briefcase and HEAVY. The keyboard clips on the front to protect the 4 or 5 inch screen and the floppy drive. Still works, too, I break it out once every three years or so and spend an hour or so playing Pitfall. Thinking of selling it on Ebay for money to buy springs for the Challenger...

DSkippy

Good luck! May the 'Bay be w/ you!

RLSH700

Wow, now we are getting into the older than dirt stuff. In my first 7 years of school, we were using Apple IIe's and the sad thing is I still have one of those noisy things, but it's rotting in away in our garage. I still remember my father's DOS-Shell powered IBM compatible off-brand computer (I think it was an Excel in 1988).

DSkippy

Let's not forget about the Radio Shack Trash 80's, fine compatibles.......

TechmanBD

My friend when I was a lad, had a keyboard you hooked to the TV. And put tapes in it for programs. Was that the commadore 64? This would have been early late 70's or early 80's. Of course the first game console we had was PONG. I remember when my dad brought that home. It was the coolest thing ever.


Anyways. One reason I came to this thread was for RLSH. DS had mentioned OPenOffice. It is a good program, I used it with linux but didn't realize they made it for PC and Mac. I downloaded it last night for my PC, because I don't have office and refuse to pay that price. And I also downloaded it for my wife for her Mac so she can update her resume. You can read all M$ office stuff and when saving you can save as an office doc so others can read it on office. I say check it out, and it is the best price, FREE.
Here is the link. www.openoffice.org

DSkippy

Yeah dude, back in the Dizzy, I think they even ported to OS/2! Loved OS/2 once you got it set up, but if something happened in that ridiculously big 500 line config.sys file, their default editor had no line count, so you'd get "bad instruction set in line 327" and you have to 1,2,3,4.....'til you got to 327 and then try to figure out what the heck was going on.

As for WAY back in the Dizzy, again, first computer was the TI994A and took awhile before my mother dropped coin on a tape drive for it so you could save your programs...wow......now to go back just a scant 9 or 10 years ago...(man, I'm getting old) there used to be ways to back up your PC w/ your VCR (tape back up fo the masses) never did it but fun to think of....now in the day of cheap chinese everything, grab an external drive for $120 and back up to disk. Nice!

Back to the M$FT Office tingy though, another viable alternative is all the online free office offerings, during the AJAX glut of apps that came out a couple years back and then Google started collecting some of the more notable ones, now you can go to any machine w/ a Java VM in it's browser and roll in that fashion. The editor and spreadsheets are remarkably robust and usable. So those w/ Gmail accounts start looking in the upper left hand corner of the browser and start playing w/ those (the calendaring offering is compatible with Outlook so you can send and accept invites to and from outlook. Google's doing an excellent job of chipping away and freeing up the computing environment, couple this with capable $200 dollar workstations, PS3s, etc.....there may be desktop choice in our time. People used to laugh at me with Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox then people started to realize it was less susceptible to hijacking.....just takes time..I'll get off the pulpit now! ;-)

RLSH700

XP! I've been meaning to get caught up to the point that I would tell all of you who participated in helping me make the decision that I got a new computer. I ended up getting a new Toshiba Qosmio.

It has an Intel Centrino Duo processor,
17 inch Diagonal WUXGA Ultimate Trubrite Display,
Integrated Toshiba TV Tuner,
Qosmioplayer (instant on TV/CD/DVD playback),
1024 MB (2X512MB) DDR2 SDRAM,
200GB (2X100GB) 500 RPM Hard Disk Drives,
HD DVD Rom (I know it lost to Blue-Ray, oh well)/ DVD Supermulti Double Layer Drive,
Dolby Home Theater Virtual Surround Sound,
1-Bit Digital Amplifier,
Harman Kardon Speakers, etc.

I love it. Much better than the generic Gateway with no options that the campus supplied us with (and we had to pay for whether or not we used them). Did I do well?