OT: Technology and Geek Stuff Thread

[Panoptes]

What projector are you running and is it in a dark room?

[LightninBoy]

Yamaha DPX-1000, which was top-of-the-line several years ago when we finished the HT room. Its ancient now, but still can do 720p and looks fantastic. It looks best when the room is dark, but recent projectors like this are so bright they still look very good with the lights up (assuming a decent screen and no lights shining directly on the screen).

IMO, if you have the right room, you can't beat front projectors for $/size.

[Coop]

The newest iPods were officially released this week - of key significance is the ipod touch, which is in essence an iphone without the phone. The price of the 8GB iphone was also slashed by $200. I want one, but the iphone touch models are only in 8 GB and 16 GB models. Anything short of 60 won't realistically replace my 4th gen.....

I wonder if Apple has realized it can't really be a long term player in the cell phone market....of course their exclusivity with AT&T limited their customer base from the get-go...

[Coop]

The drastic price drop on the iphone was a bit of a slap in the face - Apple countered the criticism by offering a $100 "store credit" ....would have been smarter simply to refund or perhaps, offer battery replacement coupons...

[calijawn]

"Smarter?" Nah, this is a nice face-saving move by Apple that really won't cost them a lot if people use the credit on iTunes downloads instead of other hardware or physical accessories...

[Coop]

it's not about it "costing" apple alot, rather the pissed off customers that paid $200.00 more for a phone barely two months old. A smarter move would simply have been to refund the $ - but that's not Apple's style - instead it has to be spent on more Apple merchandise...

[Coop]

it also smacks of desperation - why the sudden drop? And is it a coincidence that the ipod touch is and iphone without the phone?

[-Deborah-]

One of my poker buddies has an iPhone. It's pretty impressive looking (I'm a gadget geek). But he says he hates it. Lots of limitations that make it less than functional.

[Larsky]

I think Apple dropped the price on the 1st gen iPhone because the internet connection is too slow to be as useful as it should be, they're going to move those models to make way for the 2nd generation 3G-enabled iPhones.

My (unlocked) Sony Ericsson K790a is on the T-Mobile network, and it connects to the T-Mobile network, for $5.99/month. It's a bit faster than dial-up, but it pairs up nicely with Opera Lite to give me some actually useful browsing ability. But an iPhone with a high speed data connection is going to be a killer gadget. Who knows, I may even consider getting one.

[Larsky]

it's not about it "costing" apple alot, rather the pissed off customers that paid $200.00 more for a phone barely two months old. A smarter move would simply have been to refund the $ - but that's not Apple's style - instead it has to be spent on more Apple merchandise...

Technology is a stupid investment in the first place. Technology will almost always decline in value. I'm hard-pressed to think of any technology that actually holds it's value. Well, except for Macintosh computers, which tend to remain in use much longer than comparable Windows machines. :-)

I have no sympathy for early adopters who piss and moan about how much they paid to be the first on their block with an iPhone.

[Coop]

you're correct Larsky, technology does decline in value, however not usually at that rate.

[bimmer84]

I have no sympathy for early adopters who piss and moan about how much they paid to be the first on their block with an iPhone.

Agree. No one owes them anything. They should feel lucky with the $100 store credit.

[Coop]

.....and I caved in yesterday and spent $400 that I don't have on an ipod touch...could not resist after getting my hands on my brother in law's iphone a few weeks ago.

This thing is the shiznit - the only thing I don't like thus far is that they restrict everything to Itunes as far as moving data to/from it. The disk based ipods aren't like that. Hackers have been working diligently on cracking it to open it up for 3rd party apps....

[mason reese]

.....and I caved in yesterday and spent $400 that I don't have on an ipod touch...could not resist after getting my hands on my brother in law's iphone a few weeks ago.

This thing is the shiznit - the only thing I don't like thus far is that they restrict everything to Itunes as far as moving data to/from it. The disk based ipods aren't like that. Hackers have been working diligently on cracking it to open it up for 3rd party apps....

Coop with good things to say about an Apple product? Damn, it must be good. I gotta get one of those.

[Jdoggie]

Question: How do you erase a Laptops hard drive and reinstall Windows? Is it easy? Computer guys want to charge me $125, but that seems alittle much.