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Logo by Tom Purves

January 31, 1998

2:09 PM
The Replacement Killers
Are you ready to watch this movie or what?!  It looks like it's going to be awesome.  It's produced by John Woo, the master of action flicks (although it's actually directed by some guy I've never heard of).  It stars Chow Yun Fat, the big HK action star (mostly thanks to Woo) and Mira Sorvino.  I've got a trailer of it captured, I'll try to upload it later tonight.

Apple's losing market share
Face it...Apple may be turning a profit, but they are losing the war.   Best Buy has decided to drop the Mac line from their stores, citing poor sales.   Computer City looks like it is about to follow...  Other major chains that are still carrying the Apple brand have expressed concern at the low sales volume.

TechWire's story

January 29, 1998

4:35 PM
Rainbow Runner 2.00 drivers released!
Most of you probably don't care, but I do!  Actually, I'm not even entirely sure what these drivers do to merit the 2.00 designation, but I guess I'll find out.  Quite frankly, a software codec for their damn proprietary MJPEG codec would help me a lot more.

http://www.matrox.com/mgaweb/drivers/rainbow.htm

January 28, 1998

6:15 PM
FF7 screenshots (for PC!)
Check out these new screenshots of the 3D accelerated Final Fantasy VII for PC.  Looks pretty good, huh?

January 1998 Video Roundup
The roundup is up on the Articles & Reviews section.  If you took the time to read all the reviews you basically know about all the cards anyway, but putting them all together makes the benchmarks a little easier to understand.

5:12 PM
Thermal Specifications updated
I updated the Thermal Specifications page with the new power dissipation data on the Pentium II 333.   Because the 333 MHz P2 is manufactured on a 0.25 micron process, it dissipates nearly half the heat of the P2-300!

2:34 PM
Thriller 3D on the way
I'll be getting an opportunity to test the Thriller 3D early next week, so expect a comprehensive rundown on that card soon!

1:45 PM
Design?  Verification!
Read this article and get a feel for why verification with today's microprocessors is just as important and often more time-consuming than design.

EE Times' story

January 27, 1998

8:17 PM
Intel's price cuts announced
Once again, Intel has announced its quarterly price cut.  The most interesting thing is that the P2-333, Intel's latest and fastest chip, is starting out at a relatively low price of $722 and, in very non-traditional fashion, will be getting another 22% price cut in another four weeks.  Looks like Intel is really putting the screws on its competitors now.  Here's the full list of pricing.

January 26, 1998

10:03 PM
Rollerblading (or in-line skating)
I went blading today for about the first time in two years.  It was cold as hell and my hands nearly froze off, although the rest of me was OK.  I kind of feel off and I still can't do the hockey stops quite right, but I'm sure I'll pick that up with a little more practice.

1:41 PM
Compaq buys out Digital
The deal is $9.6 billion in the making and will form a huge computing monolith.  Compaq is doing it mainly to obtain the enterprise computing market niche that Digital has a piece of, as well as basically just filling in other holes in its overall strategy.  Digital itself was planning on streamlining and focusing its activities more on the services side, so this makes sense for it too.

ZDNet's story

January 25, 1998

8:44 PM
Virtual GameBoy for Windows CE
Thanks to those of you who sent in this cool new development...Virtual Gameboy for Windows CE has been released, and it even runs at almost full speed on 1st generation devices.  Get it below.  I'll have to try this one out!

http://www.eskimo.com/~hayes/vgbce.html

Weird 3Dfx behavior
Very strange stuff going on with my 3Dfx...I tried to put it in my friend's P2-300 to benchmark it and it absolutely flat out doesn't work.  The game works, and occasionally it flashes up a very distorted image, but it really seems like the signal being sent from the video card is just screwed up.  The monitor can't sync to it at all and when it does, it looks like a scrambled cable channel.  The weirdest part about all this is that it worked just fine in his computer a couple of weeks ago.   Hoo boy!

3:00 PM
New mail sounds
Heehee!  I was recently reminded of these when a friend of mine asked me to send these to him after a reinstall of Windows NT.  These are three "new mail sounds" taken from the game Syndicate Wars that I ripped out with Cool Edit.   They are the best new mail sounds you have ever heard, trust me.  You'll never find better ones.  Well, I guess you might, but I'd be surprised if you didn't like these.

"New mail has arrived."
"New mail is awaiting your attention"
"You have new mail."

2:01 PM
Descent source code released
Seems like releasing the source code for games is becoming more and more popular.  Now we get to take a look at the inner workings of Descent, the game that made everybody veer around in their chair as they were playing.  If that game didn't make you sick, you were doing OK.  Go to the link below to get it.

http://www.ladder.org/ddr/

Capacitor B.S.
What is with the B.S. Anand posts on his web site?  First it's that business with the processor review, where he said that the Cyrix 686MX was a better design than the Pentium II because it was faster than the PII when they were clocked at identical speeds.  That, of course, is total crap.  He later corrected that, but now he has an equally dumb essay on how Intel is not innovative enough because they overwhelm the competition with higher clock speeds.  The amazing thing is that I have seen this review referred to at a couple of news sites.

Now I'm looking at a review of the Tyan Tiger ATX where he has written a very incorrect explanation of capacitors (I mean, for god's sake, he can't even spell the unit of capacitance correctly).  On the front page, I see another explanation of capacitors which is almost as bad, and Anand is apparently using it to try and explain why he rates motherboards on the amount, size and placement of capacitors on the board.

Now what I'm wondering is...how many people out there are knowledgable enough to know what this guy writes is wrong?  Just how irresponsible and presumptuous does a webmaster have to be to give this kind of information to his readers?  What are the costs to the average user when they read misinformation like this?  And how do you warn the public about these things?   Or is it even worth bothering about?  Comments to the Message Board.