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A bad time to buy new technology.

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notselfcreated:
OK, so it's like, the holidays and such, and the consumeristic side of myself is usually full of glee at so many new releases and gadgets and toys and stuff. But this year it's kind of muted.

Looking around at everything that's coming out, I'm seeing that it would be a bad idea to buy almost anything out there this month. Three big reasons.


* The next-gen DVD standards war still needs to play out. There can be only one winner, we all know that. Although my money's on HD-DVD, does anybody really want to make that gamble this early? Regular DVDs are fine now; I'm sitting tight at least until I know I won't be stuck with the "format that lost".
* Probably the most common refrain in new computer reviews recently is, "doesn't have quite the umph necessary to run Windows Vista". Now I could rant about how the release of Vista at this time in its current state basically does nothing but punish PC users, but I won't. I will say that the PC market looks pretty unfriendly to budget-minded people interested in a truly Vista-ready machine. Not that running last generation OS's is a terrible thing (I've got family members perfectly happy with their Win98 computers), but the hardware market has a long time yet before it catches up with the OS market.
* 2.5G is pretty commonly available now, and it does most people great; but now we've got 3G networks in infancy. Not many phones, laptops, and other gadgets support UMTS/HSDPA yet, but they will. Again, to spend so much money this month on a NEW gadget, wouldn't it suck to be without 3G next year? I vote yes. Sorry Sony UX, I shed a tear for you.
* Related to that is the horrible and non-competitive cost of high speed data plans. The market must rule against this, and eventually, it will, but not yet.
So anyway, too many gambles to be an early adapter. Too many 1.0's. Just my warning: think of the near future when you buy.

Catfish_Man:
Can't say any of those except high speed internet are really relevant to me.

FireStarter:
Sorry, I just get all warm and fuzzy inside when someone talks techie like that. You are probably right about not buying any new hardware this year, although the GeForce 8800 packs more than enough oomph to keep a vista machine ticking over quite nicely, almost on it's own. I am actually somewhat gleeful about Vista, finially AMD will be given the market edge. Mainly through their being the ONLY true 64bit processor out there. I feel sorry for all those people that dropped a grand or so on an e6600 because frankly that's gonna get a mud hole stomped in it's ass for just being a 64bit emulating processor. (Incase you didn't know intel hasn't built a true 64bit archetecture yet, even the Core2 Quatro is STILL a 32bit Processor running off a 64bit register. Not only that but there's four....It's really going to have a hard time with the REAL DEAL in 64bit OS)

Catfish_Man:

--- Quote from: FireStarter on 10 Dec 2006, 04:22 ---(Incase you didn't know intel hasn't built a true 64bit archetecture yet, even the Core2 Quatro is STILL a 32bit Processor running off a 64bit register. Not only that but there's four....It's really going to have a hard time with the REAL DEAL in 64bit OS)

--- End quote ---

Uh, no. Wrong.

<edit> Actually, not so much "wrong" as "nonsense". A processor with 64 bit GPRs and 64 bit fixed point/memory instructions is generally considered to be a 64 bit processor... by definition. Actually basically everything in the post is wrong, but in more subtle ways than the quoted bit. </edit>

FireStarter:
Yes it is "considered" however that statement is still correct. I'll explain it to you this way. AMD's 64bit archetecture runs off of, like intel, a 64 bit register, HOWEVER, AMD's 64bit processors process 64bits at a time. This advantage is suitably noted when one runs a benchmark test Intel vs AMD. Yes intel performs at a higher clockspeed, gets better 3dmark scores, but amd gets a MUCH higher score on Mflops. Hell my athlon 4600+ x2 outperformed intel's core2 duo on the number crunching benches. The reason why Intel can beat AMD on the other benches is because there isn't a TRUE 64bit OS (unless you look over to the unix side of things. When vista launches you will most likely see AMD performing consistantly better...That's also not to mention when ATI and AMD finally release an answer to the GeForce 8800, you will see a GPU that meshes seemlessly with the AMD processors, giving AMD yet another boost.

Now, AMD will have Intel by the short and curlies in a few months. The AMD quad cores have already been produced. (HP and AMD did a Real-Time HD videoconfrencing display, and to prove the system was real and totally working they ran a 3dmark benchmark test as part of the display. It was a quadcore AMD processor.) Now, why hasn't AMD announced or released their's yet? Because they want to perfect the interactions and workload distributions for the 4 cores before they release. Expect to see some amazing shit in a few months.

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