Posts Tagged ‘Ripoff’

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Windows machines can’t use more than 3GB of real memory


2008
09.03

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Who would have ever thought we’d run into the 32-bit limitation. The long and short is that with all versions of Windows, 750MB at the top of memory is useless because it is used for I/O and if you have a 1GB video card, that is memory mapped, so that means you can use at most 2.25GB of real memory in most high end machines on Windows. Sigh. Now that is really a ripoff.

This is why the highest end Mac only has 3GB of real memory, you can’t use more with today’s Leopard, although the newest Santa Rosa chipset 2H2007 machines from Apple use PAE to get around this problem. Windows XP and even Vista don’t support it. Another reason to buy a Mac.

AppleInsider | Road to Mac OS X Snow Leopard: 64-bits, Santa Rosa, and more

“consumers are being scammed by [PC] OEMs on a large scale. OEMs will encourage customers to upgrade a 2GB machine to 4GB, even though the usable RAM might be limited to 2.3GB. This is especially a problem on high-end gaming machines that have huge graphics cards as well as lots of RAM.”

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iPhone 3G Reviews


2008
07.13

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Well, “ilounge”:http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/live-iphone-3g-vs-iphone-comparison-test-results-here/ has a good first review set:

* The White 16GB is going to be much cleaner with fewer fingerprints than the black one. I’m kinda regretting ordering the black one now that I’ve seen photos. The white one is actually quite cute.
* Some folks are saying that this is really like iPhone 1.1 because other than 3G not much has changed, so if you already have a current iPhone you can wait for the next churn. (For those of us who have lost our iPhones, we are screwed!).
* The best thing to do with an iPhone is to try to get an unlocked one. The plans are really expensive at $30/month if you are a consumer. OTOH, the $45/month enterprise one is at least, just as much of a ripoff as the Blackberry plan. So you are no worse off if you are an Exchange user :-)
* Sound quality on Bluetooth is better, but about the same as the original iPhone on the headset. The speakerphone is a little louder (important for me).
* 3G network isn’t always faster. Naturally, it depends on AT&T’s network, which I’m sure is not too high performance. Essentially 3G is about 26% faster in NYC. Wifi is still the method of choice at 2-7x faster than 3G with an average of 4x. In Orange County (who knows where and how that network is configured), 3G about 2x faster than in NYC. So YMMV