AlgaeEater
Senior member
Looks like 99% of Anandtech members need to move to Japan
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Why is the american public disinterested in hightech gadgets?
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Looks like 99% of Anandtech members need to move to Japan
Koing
Elite Member <br> Super Moderator<br> Health and F
FAT FINGERS.
If your big you don't want something SO small. It just doesn't work. If your small you want something small. Average asian person is smaller then the average American person.
If I was big and had big fingers I wouldn't get something too small. The remote on my dads HD camcorder is SMALL. The older one with the DV camcorder was a better size imo. Same with buttons. Don't make them too small.
With your laptop example the battery life would take an absolute hammering and the heat given off it in the small 12" laptop would be crazy. No one pairs a top end graphics card with a 'mid range cpu' I'm afraid. Mid range graphics card with mid range cpu is paired.
Koing
If your big you don't want something SO small. It just doesn't work. If your small you want something small. Average asian person is smaller then the average American person.
If I was big and had big fingers I wouldn't get something too small. The remote on my dads HD camcorder is SMALL. The older one with the DV camcorder was a better size imo. Same with buttons. Don't make them too small.
With your laptop example the battery life would take an absolute hammering and the heat given off it in the small 12" laptop would be crazy. No one pairs a top end graphics card with a 'mid range cpu' I'm afraid. Mid range graphics card with mid range cpu is paired.
Koing
It's more because the corporations here in America are all about making money. They make more money continuing to produce the same old junk they always have. Upgrading production facilities to produce new things is expensive. If you watch the American market once market share starts to slidde all-of-a-sudden WOW a brand new toy!!!! (that europe had 3 years ago)
Also, alot of things like frequency use is VERY heavily regulated here unlike Europe and Asia and big business lobbiests do a great job of keeping out new technologies.
Look at Betamax, that went to the Supreme Court and hollywood said VHS would ruin the movie market. No one would go to a movie ever again. Not only do movies now make up 75% of the income annualy for hollywood, they make many times over the percent profit they once did.
Same thing with CDs, same with MP3s etc.....eventually America will learn to embrace new technologies and get rich off them instead of try and cover them up. Why do you think Bill Gates is such an anomoly here? Did he steal ideas? Sure, but if he hadn't we might never have had a mouse or the like. It's just an American attitude.
Also, alot of things like frequency use is VERY heavily regulated here unlike Europe and Asia and big business lobbiests do a great job of keeping out new technologies.
Look at Betamax, that went to the Supreme Court and hollywood said VHS would ruin the movie market. No one would go to a movie ever again. Not only do movies now make up 75% of the income annualy for hollywood, they make many times over the percent profit they once did.
Same thing with CDs, same with MP3s etc.....eventually America will learn to embrace new technologies and get rich off them instead of try and cover them up. Why do you think Bill Gates is such an anomoly here? Did he steal ideas? Sure, but if he hadn't we might never have had a mouse or the like. It's just an American attitude.
Speaking from personal experience, how much do you NEED?
I have a relatively large cell phone compared to newer models. But I have Nextel because I have a friend who is an employee -- the friend/family discounts are wonderful. Cameras are not allowed where I work. So, I chose the roughest toughest model that I could find. Relatively low resolution screen, no bluetooth, very primitive web browsing. Makes phone calls great.
Same for laptops. I will be buying one in a few months. My budget will be in the $500 to $600 range. Why? Because that will be all the processing horsepower that I need. Why pay for stuff that I could care less about? If it floats your boat to spend $2000 on a laptop, feel free. I have better things that I could spend the extra $1500 on -- paint for the house, down-payment for a better car, new pistol, pay off some bills, etc.
Face it: features cost money. What if you found a laptop that had a drink mixer built-in for only $200 more? If you don't buy it, somebody would be complaining about how Europe has drink mixers and they are unavailalbe over here. Just because it is shiny and has flashing lights does not mean that you have to run out and give somebody all of your money. Eventually it gets to a point where your technology owns you instead of the other way around.
My advice: find a nice park with trees. Maybe even a forest. Take a nice long walk. Enjoy the view. Smell a flower. Just don't forget the GPS so that you can find your way home again 😉
I have a relatively large cell phone compared to newer models. But I have Nextel because I have a friend who is an employee -- the friend/family discounts are wonderful. Cameras are not allowed where I work. So, I chose the roughest toughest model that I could find. Relatively low resolution screen, no bluetooth, very primitive web browsing. Makes phone calls great.
Same for laptops. I will be buying one in a few months. My budget will be in the $500 to $600 range. Why? Because that will be all the processing horsepower that I need. Why pay for stuff that I could care less about? If it floats your boat to spend $2000 on a laptop, feel free. I have better things that I could spend the extra $1500 on -- paint for the house, down-payment for a better car, new pistol, pay off some bills, etc.
Face it: features cost money. What if you found a laptop that had a drink mixer built-in for only $200 more? If you don't buy it, somebody would be complaining about how Europe has drink mixers and they are unavailalbe over here. Just because it is shiny and has flashing lights does not mean that you have to run out and give somebody all of your money. Eventually it gets to a point where your technology owns you instead of the other way around.
My advice: find a nice park with trees. Maybe even a forest. Take a nice long walk. Enjoy the view. Smell a flower. Just don't forget the GPS so that you can find your way home again 😉
Actually, the small size of a laptop is one of the reasons I won't buy one. I want a laptop that's built about the size of a briefcase. I want it with all of the capabilities and power of a desktop, nice big keyboard, fold-out mousepad, nice built in speakers, 19" minimum screen, all of the hardware you would expect to find in a functional desktop setup.
Basically, I want a portable desktop computer.
JeffreyLebowski
Lifer
hahahahahahaha, OOHHHHH< I can't breathe......
"they'd know that processor speed isn't really everything and that anything over a 1GHZ especially today is essentially unneeded and wasted."
1GHz is way underpowered. try working in a corporate environment where users run Anti-virus, Outlook, Word, Excel, internet, and custom apps all day long. We have 1ghz machines and they are dog slow. Even our 2GHz machines are getting long in the tooth and are showing their age.
We finally are getting 3GHz machines now and they are so much quicker and responsive.
"they'd know that processor speed isn't really everything and that anything over a 1GHZ especially today is essentially unneeded and wasted."
1GHz is way underpowered. try working in a corporate environment where users run Anti-virus, Outlook, Word, Excel, internet, and custom apps all day long. We have 1ghz machines and they are dog slow. Even our 2GHz machines are getting long in the tooth and are showing their age.
We finally are getting 3GHz machines now and they are so much quicker and responsive.
I for one don't even understand the concept of texting someone with a phone IT"S A PHONE! You can talk to the other person or leave a voicemail. Why spend all that time typing something on a little phone pad. Plus I don't need to check my E-Mail with the phone, I have a computer to check my mail. All I want in a phone is good reception and battery life. Don't get me wrong I like gadgets and stuff, but I like neat gadgets that do something like the USB missle launcher not something that lets people bug me more than they already do. Plus with the money you pay for some of these new phones and mini laptops that will be obsolete in 4 days I can get a new pistol or knife. 🙂
imported_goku
Diamond Member
If I were you, I'd get a high end used laptop instead of an elcheapo dell since it's clear you don't need all the bells and whistles..
imported_goku
Diamond Member
Well considering the fact that notebook nowadays are coming with pentium Ms, 1GHZ pentium M IS overkill. Computers don't 'slow down' as they age (at least to my knowledge), they're only as useful as the software they run. Your computers are slow because they're poorly maintained and you're running bloated POS software. Do you really believe you need 2GHZ to do all the things you mentioned quickly?
Hell I've done all of the things you just mentioned on my PII 450mhz system and it was about as fast as my current rig (when it comes to those tasks). So long as you don't have too many processes running in the background, have sufficient ram, spyware/virus free system and a contiguous HDD with plenty of hard drive space, then there shouldn't be an issue.
It's understandable that you could think a 2GHZ system is slow, hell I've got a P4 1.7GHZ system that at one time was fast but strangely has increasingly gotten slower despite reformatting. It may be possible that a system can physically get slower with age, possibly the processor or components in the system are failing and the hardware that performes ECC is having to work harder and harder therefore slowing things down.
I don't really know, but what I DO know is that my sister's 1.5GHZ P4 system is seemingly slower than my PII 450 system despite the fact that I've reinstalled windows twice and she has plenty of ram and everything that could be installed IS installed (Drivers etc.)
Edit: BTW you say that you're now getting 3ghz machines, whats to say that those machines won't become 'dog slow' anytime soon? There is a point of diminishing returns and from what I've seen, that has LONG PASSED when the 1GHZ processor came out to the point where it's completely unnecessary to have such a fast processor especially if other important components aren't lagging such as amount of Ram and HDD speed+Space. (A decent motherboard is also much much MUCH!!!! More important than you can imagine)
Babbles
Diamond Member
Holy mule muffins Assumption Boy!
To support what that Lebowski guy said, at my job we need to have ~2Ghz machines with plenty of RAM to run all of the applications and they are very well maintained (and probably much moreso than a typical place because we have to do so for compliance reasons) and the software while very "large" is not needlessly bloated. All day every day I have Excel open with tons of workbooks, a few Word documents open, Outlook, some in-house information database thing, Adobe Acrobat, and my instrument analysis software (research chemistry thing). I must have this stuff available and with a lesser machine I simply could not be productive.
Once again you demonstrate how you can not separate your personal experiences and opinions with how the rest of the world works. There are very good reasons why people make the choices they do and we all make those choices for different reasons.
mugs
Lifer
I think Americans just don't see the value of it, particularly with new technologies when they know the price WILL come down substantially. Why spend $800 on a cell phone that I'll be able to get for $100 in a year?
Regarding laptops - if you're JUST going to use a laptop and no desktop, it makes more sense to get a big laptop. The inconvenience of lugging around a large laptop is less than the inconvenience of using a tiny laptop 24/7. I believe you also get more performance for your money in a larger laptop. And I want a laptop that'll last a long time.
And frankly, I don't think a lot of people WANT high-end video cards in their laptops. I don't want to spend a few hundred bucks on a video card in a laptop that I'll never use to play games. There are gaming laptops if you want that.
Regarding laptops - if you're JUST going to use a laptop and no desktop, it makes more sense to get a big laptop. The inconvenience of lugging around a large laptop is less than the inconvenience of using a tiny laptop 24/7. I believe you also get more performance for your money in a larger laptop. And I want a laptop that'll last a long time.
And frankly, I don't think a lot of people WANT high-end video cards in their laptops. I don't want to spend a few hundred bucks on a video card in a laptop that I'll never use to play games. There are gaming laptops if you want that.
You must be mistaking America for Australia.
Americans love glitz...just look at Vegas, the hip-hop culture, the SUV culture, the thousands of magazines, TV shows, and other stuff glamourizing the rich and famous...
The ipod isn't popular because it caters to Average Joe. The iPod is popular because Apple marketing implies that by buying their products, you're part of some elite group that's above all the other morons who buy PCs and whose MP3 players aren't white.
I'll take my 15.4" laptop to a 12" any day of the week. But I have reason for hauling around all that power and screen real estate. And don't argue with me about battery life, mine does battle with a lot of 12" units. And I'll take my mobile GF4MX to a 7900GTX any day - my laptop is not for playing games.
The cell phone market is so far behind because our phone networks are so far behind, and it's so difficult to upgrade those because of the MASSIVELY larger amount of space, vastly different terrain, and the fact that all our cell nets are privately held and unsubsidized. Cell phone manufacturers are slow to port "better" techs to these older network architectures, and the less bandwidth we use on our older networks, the better, so they're priced prohibitively. In short, we're so far behind in cell phones because our size limits us.
The cell phone market is so far behind because our phone networks are so far behind, and it's so difficult to upgrade those because of the MASSIVELY larger amount of space, vastly different terrain, and the fact that all our cell nets are privately held and unsubsidized. Cell phone manufacturers are slow to port "better" techs to these older network architectures, and the less bandwidth we use on our older networks, the better, so they're priced prohibitively. In short, we're so far behind in cell phones because our size limits us.
imported_goku
Diamond Member
Unless you've got monsterously large documents or using some application like autocad, again, I do NOT see the need for a 2GHZ machine. Running a custom application?
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