AMD's Sempron and the death of socket A

I've just read your recent article re upcoming Sempron 3300 CPU and 754-pin sockets. Do I understand correctly that AMD is marketing two completely incompatible chips as "Semprons" - namely the older/slower Socket-A models vs the newer 754-pin models?

Currently, I have a Socket-A board with an XP 2500 and had gotten all excited about the prospect of dropping a '3300' chip into it. There's a BIOS update available that adds "Support for Sempron processors". But if the 754-pin Sempron is incompatible with Socket-A boards, it sounds like I'm out of luck.

Could you please clarify this?

Tony T

[Seems like you are out of luck. Roadmaps we've seen show AMD is hoping to finally dump Socket A by the end of the year. Ed.

Everywhere Gal

ARGHH!!

It's bad enough that we don't know who this young woman is, but a company with my initials, (Charles Milton Greene), is set up to identify faces with their software.

When I used to gather round the coffee urn with the CIA IG & DDO (the Kirkpatrick cousins) in the '60's, I never dreamed it would take this long for military technology to make it to the civilian marketplace and still not have a clue to the identity of the person in a stock photo.

It seems as if the easiest way for a terrorist to slip into the U.S. unnoticed is to get their mug plastered on advertising everywhere so that their visage becomes commonplace. Perish the thought.

CG

Christians and Hollywood

Dear Editor,

I am a very avid Register fan from Cleveland, USA. I look to your site for insight, humor, and a little sense of the absurd. Although challenged by your comments, I am rarely offended. However, when I see an opportunity for clarification, I always seize the opportunity uninvited.

I found your headline "Christians back Hollywood on file sharing " to be inaccurate after reading the report and noting that American political organizations consisting of the Christian Coalition, the Concerned Women for America, and Morality in Media are placing their support behind US lobbyist efforts to make p2p software illegal.

To say that this group represents Christians worldwide, or even much more of a subset of Christian believers in the USA is wholly inaccurate. I fall into the category of bible believers that are appalled by the political agendas, maneuvering, and deception perpetuated by this sort of alliance. I merely see this in the company of other fraud currently perpetuated under the banner of Christianity.

I would have enjoyed the storyline a little better had you clarified this distinction after drawing us in with the sensationalized headline. I hope this letter is received in the spirit in which it is intended. I love great work "The Reg" is doing, I realize that every story has to have an angle, however I feel that journalistic accuracy should be observed unless outright humor and satire is indicated.

My two cents, and worth every penny.

A big fish-head Reg fan,

Paul

The New HP

So, in the past 6-15 months or so, my clients have bought a few HP printers:

deskjet 3420
laserjet 1005
laserjet 1010
laserjet 1300
color laserjet 3500n

And guess what? I just took 3500N to the service yesterday, after it failed to recognize the cartridges (which nobody touched) and as a bonus you get a broken lower paper tray. The printer was just 6 months old or so. And it was the last printer not to have been broken yet. Yes, that's right, I've somehow managed to get a stunning 100% failure rate with the newest HP printers.

Please print this letter, I'm really curious if other people have problems with HP's quality also.

Cheers,
Joel V.

More on religion

It's always heartwarming to see that religious people can still stand up for their beliefs when it really matters. Too bad they had nothing to say about all the lies concerning Irak, and it's really sad that they kept their mouth shut when Dubya was going to war "in God's name". Last I checked, God does not condone war. It's even written "Thou Shalt Not Kill" somewhere, but in a book that's 2000 years old, everyone has obviously forgotten the page. Since the Christian Coalition was not capable of upholding God's word (namely, love thy neighbor), I suggest they go back to their churches and do what they're supposed to do - pray.

As for the Concerned Women for America, and Morality in Media, these are obviously a bunch of upper-middle-class ladies with entirely too much time on their hands. They would do better to cut the chatter and join a charity. For instance, there's a lot of work in Indonesia, from what I hear. I should think these ladies would not have any trouble buying themselves a ticket and going over to help. Unless that's getting a bit too gritty?

Pascal

Celebrities do matter

Not quite a flame, but I believe that the study discussed in the article completely misses the point (as does the news item). The fact that most people do not think that celebrities in advertising affect their purchases is completely irrelevant. It does not matter whether they think it affects them. What matters is whether the advertising is actually effective (in fact, consumers not realizing they are being influenced might be a positive). I am absolutely, categorically certain that the number, breadth and thoroughness of studies done by companies over the years (proving the effectiveness of celebrities in ads) far outweigh this survery by a factor of a thousand. Let me also note that I am not in any way connected to advertising or any related industry, but I do think it rather silly the importance placed on the numerous studies done every day, especially when the things being studied and the conclusions drawn from them are completely unrelated.

Ananth

Microsoft and its cunning Voleishness

Dear Editor, Inquirer,

As a former contractor for the Evil Empire, I can only cringe at the consequences Microsoft users will endure in future Windows releases after the cutting of human testers.

During the development of Windows NT5/2K, employees working in our division were often asked to install nightly builds on one of their spare workstations and run a series of scripts that stressed the machines during the night, regardless if they were an official tester or not.

This effectively doubled the number of fodder machines the developers could test their builds against. This added to the hundreds of workstations filling the 30 or so labs in the division already running specialized scripts to looking for bugs. So when a news report surfaces that says that Microsoft is cutting testing positions, take it with a grain of salt since in reality everyone in the division is a possible tester.

On the other hand, the problem with scripts is that they tend to be very linear in their testing. People are unpredictable, often performing the same tasks in totally different ways from each other. So while a script writer may only think to test scenarios A through C, in the other room John Doe human tester will attempt to use Windows using scenario D.

Throw enough monkeys in a room with a piano and theory says eventually one of them will play Mozart. Throw enough human testers at a Microsoft product and reality says eventually one of them will find a bug.

Microsoft would do well to preemptively find issues by having human testers attack their software from every conceivable angle possible. If they need ideas, they should just look at a sampling of Microsoft Quality Feedback/Dr. Watson reports submitted by users.

Sadly, having billions of dollars in the bank is not enough for the Evil Empire, who must ultimately answer to stockholders looking for bigger profits. They know that people will purchase Microsoft's product regardless if it has 5000 bugs versus 6000. Perhaps that's why I ran my critical monitoring software on FreeBSD back then at the Evil Empire and continue to do so now with my current job elsewhere.

(If published, please withhold name)

Ancient novel predicts 21st century blues

I was really impressed by that story. Amazing find.

I thought I'd try my own. 80 Years in the future.....

Men will rediscover lost arts and fashion depictions of life around them using various assorted pigments and tree resins.

Men will stand hunched over in order to lessen back strain to carry a multi-purpose wood tool.

Men and women will wear the same kind of clothes fashioned from slower mammals beat by the multi-pupose wood tool.

Most importantly 80 years from now man will have no need for laptops, PDA's, cell phones, Internet, or for that matter electricity. Men and women will transcend the virtual and physicaly become part of their commuities free of spam, critical updates and reboots.

Cheers,
Richard

No Intel, Microsoft conspiracy

Not to sound like a broken record but wasn't there an article on your website not too long ago about NO CONSPIRACY?

Well how is it then that AMD enthusiast's screamed that AMD was ready, and Microsoft, kept saying, nope, not ready, ahhh, no, sorry, not yet. Ahh-huh.

Now of course, intelly welly is already with their chips and lo and behold, Microsoft is ready win XP 64.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

No conspiracy huh. Gee, what a coincidence.

Great website by the way, just pointing to what any normal AMD enthusiast as known for a while that the Microsoft, ala the VOLE was holding out.

:-)

PS, did you guys have an article that said something about Intel releasing the dual cores for cheap? I can't seem to find that.

thanks
Tommy

More on Monsieur Vole

RE: Your good article on Intel timing its 64-bit CPUs to coincide with MSFTs schedule.

I think this demonstrates that, unfortunately, the OS market is a monopoly of techno-sophistication. The Linux crowd has had a year or so to get out a consumer-friendly 64-bit OS and steal a few points of market share from MSFT. They have demonstrated no ability to manage this. The ones that are out have not had much play, as far as I can tell. If there had ever been a golden opportunity to crack the OS market that was it. Now the door is closing and we will be back to the "Wintel standard." This is not progress.

Best--Art Horn

Hi Desire,

In your recent 'Hardware Roundup round the Web' on http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20828, you mentioned that "While Mac Central compares that same Mac mini to Dell's entry level and gets a straight win. I'm almost convinced here. "

Before I continue, I'd like to state that I'm very much Pro-Dell (for some very practical reasons) and I'm working on a Dell PC at this very moment.

However, your statement that you're 'almost convinced' has compelled me to go on Apple's and Dell's website to make a realistic comparison - because after reading MacCentral's article, I was 'almost convinced' as well.

Apple's Mac Mini costs US$632 when you equip it with a mouse, keyboard and an additional 512MB of RAM.

A comparable Dell is NOT any of the Dimension models, as Mac Central states. A TRUE comparable model (one that is small and quiet like the Mac Mini) would be either be the Optiplex 170L with the small desktop case (but still bigger than the Mac Mini), or the Optiplex SX280. You have to select the 'Small Business' section of Dell's website to get to these models.

When equipping these models the same way as the Mac Mini (selecting the lowest end Celeron processor, 512MB ram, 40GB HD, adding wireless, DVD/CD-RW combo, Wordperfect Office, Anti-virus and a DVI card), the price for the Optiplex 170L is US$699 and the price for the Optiplex SX280 is US$829. Just for the hell of it, I did the same comparison with the $399 Dell Dimension PC. By the time I configured the same as other systems I mentioned, the price was up to US$745.

And in terms of performance, I expect that these low end Dells would be comparable in performance to the Mac. The Celeron CPU, while it has a much higher clock rate, is likely to be unnoticeably faster than the PowerPC because it does less work per clock cycle. If Dell equipped their low end systems with AMD Semprons, the price/performance situation might look a little different.

So based on these findings, I have to agree with MacCentral that the Mac Mini is definitely a winner over the cheapest Dell - even when you factor in price.

And if you looked at the big Dell Dimension 3000 PC and then looked at a Mac Mini, which one would you rather have in your living room?

Regards,

Peter Stern
Toronto, Canada