Maker Pro
Maker Pro

IBM Power6 to 6GHz

F

Frank Bemelman

Jan 1, 1970
0
I see why Li batteries almost have to be the future. Considering that I
don't do my work much differently than in the 90's I just fail to see
any net progress for mankind here.

You mean you don't see a net progress for yourself. Many actually do
work differently than in the 90's, demanding more from their laptops.
You can't blame the industry they quit making 640x480 screen laptops
with external floppy drive. Power is not the most important issue
for most laptop users. In a car you have your cigarettelighter, and
at a customer you plug in your power cord, if it is going to take a
while.

BTW, I remember a colleage who didn't carry a laptop around in those
days, but an entire PC - with a drawer handle screwed on top. He
borrowed the CRT at the customer's place. His priority was a good
tool at the workfloor and had little interest in playing with a
laptop during a 2 hour flight.
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hello Spehro,
I bought a couple aftermarket Li batteries for the Nikon last time I
was in Hong Kong for a decent price (maybe $25 US for 7.4V 1500mAh--
that wasn't the lowest price-- cells made in Japan). ...


I paid around $10 for 6 AA Panasonic NiMH from Costco. That's 7.2V
2600mAh :)

But they are bigger, of course.
The 2500mAh cells are pretty heavy. They also self-discharge pretty
quickly. I can imagine a market for what you suggest, but it does not
seem to be the mainstream market. Maybe a $499 student laptop.

It's the chicken and egg situation. Mfgs fail to see market, therefore
suitable gear isn't available, consequently market does not develop.

I can't count the number of occasions where biz travelers have
corroborated my hesitance to take a laptop. Or sometimes even to buy
one. Battery runtime was the number one reason. Many of them bought a
Blackberry instead and have the office do the fancy stuff. That is
because the Blackberry goes all day. Well, depending on how the patent
skirmish comes out, maybe not.

Regards, Joerg
 
Joerg said:
Really? That doesn't make much sense.

What would make sense but hasn't sunk in with the marketeers: Build a
laptop that uses regular AA rechargeables and, in a pinch, can also run
on alkalines for a while. Ah, but that would be too practical I guess.
Because then you could buy replacement batteries pretty much anywhere in
the world and maybe that's what they don't want you to be able to do.
They want you to have to buy their $100 replacement battery and not 16
AA cells for $20 when they are on sale at the local wholesaler.

The only thing IBM has ever sold in it's
entire existent are buisness cards that say:

"I'm an IBM salesman".
And AA cells don't fall under that heading.
 
R

Roy L. Fuchs

Jan 1, 1970
0
"Civil Defense" warnings and the "Emergency Broadcast System" were
replaced by the "Emergency Alert System". WLW is not the only station
on 700 KHz.

AFAIK it is. Are you able to name ANY other AM radio station that
has been assigned that frequency slot?
It is one of the old "Clear Channel" allocations that lets
them run full power at night while the others reduce power or go off the
air.

OK. That meant that other stations COULD be assigned that slot, but
to my knowledge none were. AFAIR there is a western US station set up
for the same purpose, but on a different frequency assignment.
At one time that was 500 KW around the clock. See:
http://www.700wlw.com/ and http://hawkins.pair.com/wlw.shtml for more
information about WLW.

I used to live in Cinci. Quite near the Colerain and Galbraith Rd
Billboard location, in fact.
 
R

Roy L. Fuchs

Jan 1, 1970
0
The OS is probably the most prevalent problem WRT to bloat. That's why I
love DOS. Except for very few apps I could still use it. But my CAD
system doesn't come in DOS anymore :-(


Have you booted DOS on both laptops and timed the battery life?
 
R

Roy L. Fuchs

Jan 1, 1970
0
I called Dell and asked. Two rather current laptops (Inspiron series) do
not have that feature. The lady at the other end of the line sounded
very knowledgeable about hardware. I felt that 'mobile processors' had
just made a leap backwards in ingenuity. It's like taking the coast fuel
shut-off out of cars again, something no auto mfg would ever dare to
think about.

As far as I know, it is handled at the OS level now.

You could search up the CPU in the device and then find out if it
has a slow mode or a sleep mode.
 
R

Roy L. Fuchs

Jan 1, 1970
0
A process / thread that is doing nothing should consume little
power, right?
It's mostly in a wait state ...

There are plenty of ACTIVE process threads that are ALWAYS running
on say an XP machine that did not exist on say a Win2K or DOS machine.

Event monitors, scheduler timers, Power management timers, etc. etc.
Mostly "advanced" GUI related.
 
R

Roy L. Fuchs

Jan 1, 1970
0
IIRC A few years back someone had a used time machine or something
for sale or wanted.
Anyone recall the ad?


Some kook perhaps?
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hello Roy,
Have you booted DOS on both laptops and timed the battery life?


Only with the first laptop, a Dell Inspiron 2500, about 4 years old now.
Did an OrCad schematic with more or less the same work pattern that I
did on the Compaq. You know, drawing an amp and a mixer, thinking a bit,
then drawing some more. The low battery warning came after about 1-1/4
hours. Ye olde Contura could run circles around that.

That one has a Li-Ion battery. The other one is NiMH and contains a
faster processor so I assume it would have probably been worse there.

Regards, Joerg
 
S

Spehro Pefhany

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hello Spehro,



I paid around $10 for 6 AA Panasonic NiMH from Costco. That's 7.2V
2600mAh :)

But they are bigger, of course.

My point, of course, is that $25 is a pittance. I'm hardly going to
want to lug around a heavier camera and worry about self-discharge for
the sake of saving 1% on the cost of the device. I'm very happy about
their design choice.
It's the chicken and egg situation. Mfgs fail to see market, therefore
suitable gear isn't available, consequently market does not develop.

I'd would *like* 10 hour battery life, I *need* 100G (preferably 200G)
of HDD and a 2GHz-class processor to have all my info at hand. The
biggest thing I would like and can't get readily is a really high-res
display, such as 15" 1600 x 1200 touch-screen tablet, at least not
from a preferred supplier for a decent price. So the battery dies in 3
hours, no big deal, I'll plug it in when I get to the remote location.
It's a bonus it works at all without a wall plug. When they develop
in-flight always-on internet for free, I'll probably revisit the
thought, but maybe they'll have on-board power sources on the A380s by
then.
I can't count the number of occasions where biz travelers have
corroborated my hesitance to take a laptop. Or sometimes even to buy
one. Battery runtime was the number one reason. Many of them bought a
Blackberry instead and have the office do the fancy stuff. That is
because the Blackberry goes all day. Well, depending on how the patent
skirmish comes out, maybe not.

Having spent some time recently looking at the issue, I don't think a
Blackberry or an IPAQ is going to substitute for a laptop for anything
by the most rudimentary e-mail purposes. I'm pretty sure many of us
will end up hauling *both* around. ;-) It is nice to be able to check
various things out while/st sitting in a coffee shop, though, even if
it is a bit cumbersome.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hello Roy,
As far as I know, it is handled at the OS level now.

AFAIR the Contura does it via the BIOS. I like that much better. It's
like driving a stick shift, the person usually knows better than a
machine when to shift. The machine can't see the sheet of ice coming ...

You could search up the CPU in the device and then find out if it
has a slow mode or a sleep mode.


Well, it's the Celeron. No luck there, plus the motherboard would have
to support that which the customer service folks told me it definitely
doesn't.

Regards, Joerg
 
F

Frank Bemelman

Jan 1, 1970
0
will end up hauling *both* around. ;-) It is nice to be able to check
various things out while/st sitting in a coffee shop, though, even if
it is a bit cumbersome.

It's even nicer to clumsily disassemble your pen, bits and pieces
flying around, and stealing a smile from that lovely girl sitting
at the other table ;)
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
The only thing IBM has ever sold in it's
entire existent are buisness cards that say:

"I'm an IBM salesman".
And AA cells don't fall under that heading.

Nah, that's not quite so. I remember when they successfully set up
computing centers in Europe where others had miserably failed. It was an
excellent company but IMHO problems crept up when they did their huge
round of reducing the median age of their employees. Many old hands were
offered early retirement deals. The deals were pretty good so they took
it but those were the folks who really knew stuff.

Regards, Joerg
 
S

Spehro Pefhany

Jan 1, 1970
0
There are plenty of ACTIVE process threads that are ALWAYS running
on say an XP machine that did not exist on say a Win2K or DOS machine.

Event monitors, scheduler timers, Power management timers, etc. etc.
Mostly "advanced" GUI related.

If you put a sniffer on there, you'll seee an incredible number of
transactions just on the USB ports. Then the WiFi and Bluetooth radios
may be on, and the optical mouse illumination..


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
 
S

Spehro Pefhany

Jan 1, 1970
0
It's even nicer to clumsily disassemble your pen, bits and pieces
flying around, and stealing a smile from that lovely girl sitting
at the other table ;)

They only sell coffee in our coffee shops, Frank, and no smoking (of
anything) allowed anyway. Mostly I try to tune out the babble from the
coffee klatches of well-coiffed and well-preserved soccer moms and the
deal-making real-estate dudes and dudettes.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
 
Joerg said:
Nah, that's not quite so. I remember when they successfully set up
computing centers in Europe where others had miserably failed. It was an
excellent company but IMHO problems crept up when they did their huge
round of reducing the median age of their employees.

That was only the standard IBM slight-of-hand.
Ford did it for them, and they simply called AT&T
to say: "Ma, we're home".



Many old hands were
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hello Spehro,

My point, of course, is that $25 is a pittance. I'm hardly going to
want to lug around a heavier camera and worry about self-discharge for
the sake of saving 1% on the cost of the device. I'm very happy about
their design choice.

True, I was only mentioning it for laptop use, not small gear. A camera
or cell phone needs the highest energy density one can pack. But the
trend for thing like cell phone goes into the laptop/OS/SW direction.
Lots of gimmicks added that are mostly of little practical use yet they
guzzle watt hours.

Finally that we can receive a signal here in the office I am going to
get a cell phone. The simplest one they have already comes with color
screen, games and you name it. What for? All I need is to dial a number
and talk.

Regards, Joerg
 
Z

zadoc

Jan 1, 1970
0
|>On Thu, 09 Feb 2006 19:10:56 GMT, "Michael A. Terrell"
|><[email protected]> Gave us:
|>
|>>"Roy L. Fuchs" wrote:
|>>>
|>>> What ever happened to the good old days of AM radio civil defense?
|>>> AM radio 700, WLW. The voice of Cincinnati! The only station in the
|>>> country assigned to that frequency. There is also another out this
|>>> way (westward). Don't know the call letters. They still do civil
|>>> defense broadcasts though... both IIRC.
|>>
|>>
|>> "Civil Defense" warnings and the "Emergency Broadcast System" were
|>>replaced by the "Emergency Alert System". WLW is not the only station
|>>on 700 KHz.
|>
|> AFAIK it is. Are you able to name ANY other AM radio station that
|>has been assigned that frequency slot?

<Zadoc comment starts>

A quick look on google provides at least one :)
---------------
KGRV-AM 700 kHz
Winston, Oregon
"The Praise Station"
Station Format: Religious
what are Religious stations?
more Religious stations
Website:
Websitehttp://www.kgrv700.net

</ Zadoc comment ends>

|>
|>> It is one of the old "Clear Channel" allocations that lets
|>>them run full power at night while the others reduce power or go off the
|>>air.
|>
|> OK. That meant that other stations COULD be assigned that slot, but
|>to my knowledge none were. AFAIR there is a western US station set up
|>for the same purpose, but on a different frequency assignment.
|>
|>> At one time that was 500 KW around the clock. See:
|>>http://www.700wlw.com/ and http://hawkins.pair.com/wlw.shtml for more
|>>information about WLW.
|>
|> I used to live in Cinci. Quite near the Colerain and Galbraith Rd
|>Billboard location, in fact.
Cheers,
[email protected]
 
Top