lisa, (DSG, David, kw, jim + others)
OFF TOPIC COMPUTER GEEK STUFF ONLY (alot of it)
PC world is reco'ing the mitsubishi over the viewsonic 810 but it doesnt mention the 815. SO what is the story here and why is the 815 so good...
wouldnt ultrafine .25 mm pitch (810) be more important than ultrafine(which is what the 815 has)
Second question first. The 815 also has .25 ultrafine dot pitch, same as 810. It's got alot more video bandwidth though. It is the top of the line viewsonic monitor. The 813 has the .28 but it uses a different tube technology.
Why so good? It has incredible specs. It will do 1800x1440 at 76Hz, 1600x1280 at 91hz and 1280x1024 at 139hz. What does this mean? the 1280x1024 means the number of pixels(dots or picture elements), horizontal number first, vertical second.
76, 91, or 139 Hz (Hertz) means the number of times per second that the screen is redrawn. The lower the number the more "flicker" the human eye notices. Anything over 70 Hz is considered very viewable.
BTW, when you are doing font or character based stuff like surfing, or word, or excel, 1280x1024 is probably the maximun useful resolution. This wont always be the case. The extra resoultion is breathtaking for graphics stuff.
So why buy this incredible overkill? First I've seen it and it looks fantastic. Second, a 21" monitor is probably the largest useful desktop size. This monitor will be an investment and will last 7-10 years or 3-4 computers. That's why buying the best is the cheapest strategy possible longterm.
There are other great monitors out there. We pay aprox 1800 for them but that's with a volume discount. If your going through Dell, they could (should) pass this along. To find out more or to check dell's pricing, try viewsonic.com .
I dont see how you can get more than 512K L2 cache - at least on Dell
I blew it on this one. I dont think that Intel is shipping more than 512K L2 cache with the Pentium II yet. You've probably seen the Pentium II. It looks more like a card than a chip. It can hold two (I think) high speed L2 propriatary high speed SRAM devices also manufactured by Intel. It can be opened up and upgraded (by Intel) although it remains to be seen if that wouldn't be cutting their own throats by limiting future CPU sales. I thought I read that you could buy 1 Meg of L2 cache in a Pentium II but I can't find that article. To summ it up, get the 512K and don't worry about it.
>>>what is the difference between this 64k edo memory with ECC and sram or dram.. is the EDO better?<<<
Sram or Dram. SRAM or static ram is used in L2 cache it is 10-30 times faster than DRAM (dynamic RAM) and must be located close or on the CPU to avoid bottlenecks arising from the speed of light. It also uses 4 times the number of transistors and much more power than DRAM. Anyway, it's not what is meant by system RAM.
RAM choices: EDO with or without ECC.
Should you get the ECC? Yup. Can't remember all the acronym crap, but ecc memory does error correction which keeps the computer running and error free. Thankfully, the Pentium II's chipsets do not yet support SDRAM or there would be more choices. No ecc means that there is error detection only which means the computer is brought to a crashing halt when a memory error is detected. Almost never happens anyway.
A voice card. I think he meant a sound card. It's worth getting. They have micro phone inputs and audio outputs.
I went to the dell site and looked at a good configuration.
Choices :
Pentium II 266 w/ 512K cache
64 Meg EDO with ECC +$40 from base config.
7 Gb EIDE Drive +$122
No monitor -- price it seperately -- -378$
8 Mb Matrox Millenium video -- base
12/24x EIDE CDROM
MS Office Professional +199$
Yamaha Sound card -- base
Speakers --base config (tempted to say none. This is work right? Walkman headpnones work great, your call, you know your work environ.)
Accesories:
US Rob. x2. +129 Get them to install hardware and software for you or use existing modem. Don't know what you got.
Network card??? Do you have a LAN??
Tape 4gb (non NT) Get it if you pass on the Jazz. Data loss can be catastrophic. Zip is too small to back up. Tape is incredibly slow but you can run it over night. oh yeah +199$
Keyboard upgrade +24 (something like that. keyboards are personal choices. You might want to go out and find your own.)
Intellimouse base config. I like it. Good feel with that cool little wheel that lets you scroll through long meandering things like this)
Don't buy antivirus junk. Download it. SHH!
APC UPS Pro with software. I think it's worth it. Closes all files and shut's down computer softly in event of power outage. Also provides the best power conditioning and surge protection possible Infintely better than surge strip. Oh yeah! +229$. With everything except monitor, $3306.
I almost missed the Jazz vs. Zip question although someone has probably answered it by now. Zip hold 100Meg about 70 floppies. Jazz holds 1 Gb, ten times more than Zip. I don't think they compete much.
Get an external zip. Great for bringing home work or sharing between computers. Too small for backup. Plugs into the printer port and is reasonably fast. Approx 150-200$ Get 2-3 three packs.
Jazz is different beast. Requires SCSI (scuzzy) or it's too damn slow.
Internal as backup with 5-7 disks is a luxury. Around 500-600 for drive and scsi card and 300-500 for media. Kinda hard to justify but its awesome.
Last thing, like in monitors, I am a total believer that buying close to the best computer possible is the cheapest stategy long term. This is a dream machine but it will be a dog in 3 years. Skimp and you could need a computer in 18 months. I hope that helps with the bean counters. Don't believe anyone who says "if all your doing is word processing or spread sheets or SI you could get by with a such an such". Big Bill will continue to come up with standard mainstream applications that will demand vaster system resources.
Sorry I was off by almost a grand in my first estimate. What kind of machine were you looking at that cost 20K?
Good luck and have fun. |
