I find that the bezel issue with 3 displays isn't really a problem. It's like driving a car, where you have separate windows and dividers between them. You end up forgetting they're there pretty quickly.

Not ideal then, I can barely fit two monitors on my current desk

nods

I keep trying to decide how to upgrade my current set up but to upgrade one thing I'll either have to/want to upgrade other things

Another monitor means a new desk, liquid cooling means a new case

And a new case feels like a waste for just that

Hehe. Yeah. When I went with my Eyefinity setup, I had to upgrade my desk to support three monitors.

My Radeon 7870 would happily run three screens although I'd have to mount an arm to the wall and then screens on that.

@sidran32 the only eyefinity games i could really see myself using are like, real time strategy or turn based strategy

It's interesting though. Now, I find that when I go back to a one-screen setup for gaming, I feel like I'm looking through a tunnel. It's weird.

and even then i wouldn't want the entire map stretched over the three monitors, i'd want them to display three separate areas or something

or have one of them dedicated to a certain panel displaying info and the other dedicated to the battlefield

@allquixotic I could see those working very well with eyefinity. I play Guild Wars 2 a lot and viewing the world map stretched across 3 screens is very nice to have.

kind of like rudimentary window management within the game

I don't think I could strech to 3 screens so I would want one in front of me, and then one to the side for the map or something.

So with eyefinity do you just see that many more degrees of the world in an FPS or is it the same view stretched or what?

@sidran32 I have shop.panasonic.com/shop/model/TC-L32DT30

@BenBrocka You see that much more. Basically, you get your peripheral vision back. No weird stretching. That'd annoy the heck out of me :P

@allquixotic Ooh, complete with dinosaur? Awesome :P

Mine: samsung.com/us/computer/monitors/LS23A950DS/ZA

@sidran32 That'd be cool then. That much less "Who's shooting me"

yeah, the dinosaur is included

@allquixotic wait and you game, PC, on that?

They actually work great for Eyefinity due to the ultrathin bezels.

@BenBrocka Definitely

I learned after the fact that it was @jokerdino so i RMA'ed it to Panasonic to get a real dinosaur

@sidran32 Arg it's off balance!

Okay, this is a Widescreen video of Just Cause 2 Multiplayer. This should give you an idea.

3x Benq 24" 1080p monitors in eyefinity (5760x1080)

@BenBrocka I like the look. :P Also, the base is wider in real life than the picture (at least on my models)

@tombull89 I watch television (digital terrestrial airwaves), play games, write code, etc... I use it like an LCD monitor

I also have an older Dell 24" TN LCD (1920x1200) and a 22" 1680x1050, also TN

Here's my massive folder of screenshots I took in Guild Wars 2 in Eyefinity, to get a sense of what kind of thing I see there: sdrv.ms/OhzSbI

Seriously, that game is so photogenic

the asymmetry, steep angling (necessary due to desk size), and thick bezels of my monitors make it very impractical to use eyefinity

@sidran32 It's an interesting look...but a little weird

@BenBrocka I like it, but I understand where you're coming from.

and I've only used the 3D glasses for my monitor for about an hour in Deus Ex: Human Revolution

I couldn't stand it after that; it really messes with my vision

@allquixotic I've done a lot of gaming in 3D, actually. I don't often because I have to disable Eyefinity (need different cards to get both)

It's really nice in Trine 2 (2.5D platformer). Guild Wars 2 also looks awesome in 3D, but if I turn it up all the way (to make it look good), I have to sit very far back from the screen or else I get massive eyestrain.

And I can't do that and game comfortably.

When I bought my new screen I went for this one, iiyama E2475HDS

I have a 3D TV and never got glasses. Then I won a non-3D TV of slightly higher display quality without 3D...so I've never actually tried it

I recently started playing Trine 1 on Linux, but they don't plan on releasing Trine 2 for Linux so screw them :P I'll run it in wine if i feel like it

@allquixotic That sucks. Trine 2 is awesome. And very pretty. Never played Trine 1 though.

Trine is one of many many games I have on Steam due to sales/bundles that I never played for more than 10 minutes

I mainly got it for a good, relaxing platformer that works natively with my gamepad. Sometimes I want that kind of game.

i sooooooooo want an IPS on my laptop and to replace my TNs with IPSes on my desktop, but that's a multi-thousand-dollar investment probably

Um... my Sony VAIO Duo 11 has an IPS panel (and it's awesome) :P

:(

Seriously. First laptop device I ever had where the colors weren't all washed out and ugly.

The colors really pop on this thing.

how does IPS compare to AMOLED? I don't think I've ever seen an IPS screen in person

the smartphones I've used/seen and my Nexus 7 both have quite good AMOLED displays, but they don't use IPS on mobile devices for some reason

AMOLED has burn-in. But it's hard to say. They're both nice. But I'd prefer IPS, probably (for the lack of burn-in, mainly).

and I've always thought that TN is "good enough" for dreary programming/browsing activities, reinforced by the fact that we exclusively use TN at work

TN is good enough for most things. IPS is very popular for graphics artists, though.

haven't ever seen AMOLED burn-in on a mobile device, but I guess the screen doesn't stay on for long enough

or changes too often

@allquixotic It's starting to show on mine, but mainly because I have a tendency to use it as a GPS, which keeps the screen on a lot. It's hard to notice, but it's there.

interesting

I replace my smartphones so often that I've been wearing the same pair of shoes during the entire lifespan of my previous smartphone

and the shoes still look pretty good

It showed like hell on the Galaxy S

I should probably try and get a picture of it on my phone. I can see the little burned-in boxes for the speed limit indicator and stuff on my screen sometimes.

My parents used these dock things that kept the screen on, it got crazy burn in. It eventually fades away, but it was really bad

I hate to admit it but I usually buy full retail smartphones from the local Verizon retailer on release day... I've been following the Motorola phone release cycle of late

so that's why I don't have enough money to buy an IPS... I spend it all on smartphones

Haha

I have two fully working, viable, 4G smartphones in a drawer somewhere that most people would consider high tech, but they're gathering dust in my room

Nice Chrome plugin

@OliverSalzburg yeah, because people still use Netscape Navigator in 2012

I'd spend more money on smartphones if the carriers weren't going to neuter it to hell and tax me 1000% of the phone's price for the priviledge to boot

I want a nexus 4 but I can't get a straight answer out of T mobile if I can use their prepaid plan with it or not

I switched orientation for when I use my phone as a GPS to minimize the severity of the burn-in on my phone. I also started using Nokia's free GPS app more too. Changing things up helps slow down the burn-in severity.

@BenBrocka Verizon seems fair; I admit (guiltily) to sucking down approximately 50 GB of data on LTE in a month, and received no warnings, no nasty letters, no punishment, no extra fees, and no changes to my contract... and I have unlimited grandfathered data

I think they like my business. It's kind of a handshake deal: you let me suck down data like LTE is FiOS, and I buy flagship retail smartphones for $650 three times over a period of two years

as soon as a quad core phone with 2GB of memory and battery life to rival my current phone (that last one is important to me) comes out, I'll probably switch away from the phone I just got a month ago :P

I'm leaning toward prepaid because contracts are terrible and I rarely use my talk minutes anyway

I bought my Lumia 900 from AT&T at full price so as to avoid an extended contract. I'm gonna hold onto it for a while, even though the new Windows Phone 8 phones are coming out soon. I spent $450 and I'm gonna get my money out of it. :P

Sounds like T mobile would be perfect for me all around, I'm right in a 4 g coverage zone (like the only one in Iowa too). But I can't tell if I can use them or not

contracts for unlimited data for like $45/month are not "terrible", as long as they don't threaten to change, or revoke your contract

Do those still exist for new customers? Most places charge more like $90 for that

no, they most certainly do not exist for new customers

if they have unlimited at all, which is increasingly rare

only Sprint offers unlimited data for new customers, and they throttle you if you use more than like 2GB

Verizon only throttles data hogs if the cell tower you're connected to happens to be overloaded

T mobile has unlimited for $30, but only 100 minutes of talk (don't care), and you're throttled after 5 GB I believe

mine never is because my neighborhood is populated by luddites who wouldn't buy FiOS if it were only $5/month, which is why we can't get FiOS

I swear I could go door to door and say "do you know what youtube is?" and 9 out of 10 would say "no"

@allquixotic Didn't know that about Sprint. I put my wife on Sprint so she'd have unlimited data

@r.tanner.f fail... prepare to be throttled to 2G speeds once you exceed their hidden cap

@allquixotic same here, zero competition for internet

sure, you can use as much as you want of 2G, and max out your paltry connection 24/7

TBH she probably wouldn't notice the throttling anyway...

> You've earned the "Marshal" badge.

Quite proud of myself for this one

@KronoS Congratulations!

@r.tanner.f that's what SHE said / cue dirty old man jokes

Sprint may throttle, but it will take you so long to get to 2GB, you'll have started over already

and you can use the Nexus 4 on T-Mo prepaid. You supply the phone, it just has to be compatible with their network, which it is

@corwin01 are you implying Sprint is slow? :P

because I can surpass 2GB on Verizon LTE in about 2 hours

=D

less in good data areas

I'm not too data intensive on my phone, so its not that big of a deal to me

however, I do plan to move to the T-Mo $30 prepaid

much cheaper for me, and I can get an N4 =D

@corwin01 Really? I couldn't see a way to start a plan without buying a phone on their site

It's entirely possible it's just because the IA of their site is terrible though

@corwin01 exactly what I plan on

it is terrible, hang on

It'll save me about $35 a month, pays for the nexus 4 itself in 10 months

prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/monthly-4g-plans

$30 plan is listed at the top

I've seen that, could I couldn't find a "buy this plan/sim card" without gonig through the phones

one sec...

Their call to actions are terrible

I want that. Just put a big "GIVE US MONEY" button right next to the thing I want. Trust me

yea, pretty much

I know you'll need to buy a micro-sim

I hate "busy" websites

its as bad as fake download buttons

I think this is what I need: prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-activate but I won't have the activate number and sim card

@corwin01 yeah, very annoying

hey guys

anybody here?

nope

just us bots

i need to buy DDR ram , 3200

it's 200 MHz or 400 MHz?

it's like double 200 MHz or what?

it's called DDR-400A or DDR-400B or DDR-400C ...

pc3200 is 400 MHz

but the Memory clock is 200 MHz and /O bus clock also 200 MHz

@corwin01 k, think I got it: Buy a sim card here: prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-phone/… activate here: t-mobile.com/shop/plans/ActivateCodes.aspx

but the data rate is 400 MHz

Buuut...the sim card kit says GSM, not sure if it does the HSPA+

so it's 400 right?

I don't want to buy something which I can't use in my PC

;o)

T-Mo is a GSM carrier

thats what you want

@EinsteinsGrandson you should take a look at lyberty.com/encyc/articles/tech/RAM.html

also, DDR "1" (the original DDR) is extremely old by now; you can probably get a new PC with DDR3 for just a little more money than buying ancient DDR

I still didn't finish writing my letter about sending me a new laptop to Bill Gates\

;o)\

I should do it today

@corwin01 they have HSPA+ though, that's their 4G

in big air quotes -- "4G"

I'm not aware of any market worldwide where ITU 4G is available

Yes, they do. But GSM has nothing to do with 4G, its the network type

AT&T and T-Mobile both use GSM. Verizon and Sprint both use CDMA

4G technically specifies a link layer maximum expected throughput, and nobody reaches ITU's 4G spec

its all up in the air for now. Like how my work iPhone on AT&T shows "4G"

LTE as deployed today is basically 3.5G, and HSPA+ is 3.2G

more or less. if you're reaching maximum speeds on either you really won't notice a difference

unless you're using it to provide internet to your household

=p

compared to full ITU-specced 4G? yes, you would notice a huge difference

What matters isn't really how well it meets the spec, but the fact that it's over 10x faster than standard 3G

ITU 4G is 100 Mbps downstream, iirc

As with everything else you're unlikely to ever actually get the theoretical speeds anyway

Yeah, but LTE Advanced should give us about 50 Mbps sustained even in moderate signal areas

hurry up 2015

And in what cases is a mobile user really going to notice a difference in a webpage loading at 20 Mbit vs 100 Mbit. Its a matter of milliseconds

100Mbps really wouldn't be that different from 42Mbps for most sites, load times would probably be different by less than human reaction times

exactly

latency is more important than bandwidth for "sites", but if you're downloading a 2 GB OS image, 42 Mbps vs 100 Mbps is huge

not like you're going to be downloading a huge .iso to your phone

It'd mostly matter for video and very large content, but still, I'm willing to get 10x instead of waiting 5 years for 20x

@corwin01 LTE is my primary internet connection

yes, how many people are going to do that on their phone? Thats a very niche case

I use it on my tablet, laptop and desktop

I know, I poked fun earlier =p

not niche at all

tons and tons and tons of people tether, just look at the app sales on Play Store for tethering apps

most people tether in small amounts because they're capped, but if they weren't capped (or aren't, like me), they'd tether a lot more, and maybe drop their crap DSL

it's not niche at all; it's just that carriers hamper the tethering ability of people by charging the absolutely heinous fee of $10/GB for overages

Very few people still have the unlimited LTE plans though, exactly because phone companies don't want people doing what you're doing

tons of people tether, though I suspect thats more so to provide internet to tablets

pretty much. more power to you though

they can "not want" it until the cows come home, but unless someone's willing to provide decent land lines that actually work and provide enough of a capped data package to let me listen to spotify and netflix and MLB TV as much as I want to on my phone without overaging, there's a demand... and except for grandfathered unlimited, the carriers generally aren't selling what people are buying

pretty much

the fact is, there's a demand, a market out there for unlimited data and using it as a primary internet connection, but tower density and carrier greed, combined, pretty much make it impossible to allow that for widespread use -- the carriers would have to substantially increase tower density (expensive) and charge less for overages or nothing (also expensive unless your plan is for $500/month flat rate)

its much like cable companies

and the 700 MHz block of LTE allows for even worse tower density, which is going the wrong way

they have a stanglehold on the market

the tower density needs to increase, not decrease

hell, I'd pay them to put a tower on my roof

and then pay again for the service

in my case, I pay a bit more for an uncapped cable connection

so within my house, I don't have to worry about getting capped due to too much netflix

though, it does cost more, but I feel its worth it

still cheaper than cable =D

@allquixotic Lots of people are buying. Almost everyone is buying, actually. That's the problem

Trying to get non-techies to push market change for stuff like this is extremely difficult, multiply that times grandfathered plans which everyone is used to

I think my price point would be $200/month if they would (1) guarantee me a perpetual unlimited contract and not reneg on it, (2) offer new unlimited contracts to new customers, (3) explicitly allow tethering and rooting/unlocking of all smartphones, (4) sell LTE modem/router/wireless access points which also can access the unlimited LTE, (5) no throttling or caps, unless the tower is overloaded, then throttle as necessary

hell I'd go $250 for that

I'd go $250/month for that AND pay full retail price for a new smartphone every 6-8 months

throw all my tech money behind my internet connection

worth it because most of what i do (or want to do) involves huge amounts of data

Yeah, but they don't want to do that. It's more efficient to rip off less tech-smart users for $70 a month because they'll pay for it. They won't pay for $200 a month when they don't appreciate the difference

but they just won't sell that

remember when they charged by the hour for dial-up modem ISPs? and then after a while it was taken for granted that they were unlimited?

T mobile's Q&A section is freaking terrible. You can't even search

"we don't have enough phone lines to support unlimited", they said... not enough endpoints to keep the connections online

Also 750 questions : 100 answers...

how long until 4G (or will 5G finally be it?) hits the same

People have to get fed up with the old way, AND someone has to offer better. A non-trivial amount of us are fed up but no one's offering better

what they need is for one brave carrier to break the market open with a liberally-contracted unlimited data plan like the one i laid out above, and then the others will be forced to adapt to the same or die out

@BenBrocka exactly

I'm still waiting for Google to eat all the cable/ISP company's lunches with fiber

Google doesn't know how to scale things out in the physical world, only datacenters

they think "rolling out fiber" means installing fiber in senators' neighborhoods in about 3 states

the big problem with landlines is the last mile / half mile / quarter mile... with a laser pointer and a steady hand I could directly point a line of sight to a fiber cable hanging from a telephone pole within sight of my house (from the upstairs window), yet Verizon hasn't installed it in our neighborhood, despite spamming us with TONS of mail and phone ads since 2006

we've called, we've escalated, we've carpet bombed emails, we've offered them bribes... NOTHING, and I mean absolutely NOTHING will get them to take that fiber another 1/4 mile or so to our house

am I bitter? just a little

Their fiberhood plan is actually pretty smart. And they had to start somewhere, you can't just start a multi-billion dollar project across one of the largest countries in the world without even doing a test run

yeah, but they have no short, medium, or long-term plan for rolling it out in any sort of wider area

it's a toy for their employees and the senators they're lobbying for, basically

plus in the mean time, Time Warner is going crazy just trying to compete

so whether they do it efficiently or not, their forcing the cable companies to play a better game

People should go crazy trying to compete. I'm sure that's in part the point

Anyone hear about OSX 10.9's name?

Google wins even if they get beat by someone else; better internet connections only help them (and everyone)

I mean, Verizon Wireless knows how to get stuff done -- they've already announced, mere days after releasing LTE to production 2011, that they're planning to replace LTE with LTE Advanced 100 Mbps by 2015-2016 timeframe

when you announce something four or five years in advance, you know you're doing great in terms of planning to roll out a huge project nationwide

Google has said nothing of the sort for fiber, not even set an approximate decade when we might see it in Smalltown USA

Verizon has been in the wireless deployment business for what, decades? Google is starting something that's not only new to them, but insanely transformative for anyone

@BenBrocka not a bad point, but Google is an absolutely enormous business (the same could be argued for Verizon Wireless) and should be able to develop a roadmap

No point in developing a roadmap if no one buys it. They need a test market first, that's what they're doing

Intel develops and publishes roadmaps, and sticks to them. So do AMD and Nvidia. Absolutely enormous scale projects, designing massive ASICs, testing, validating, certifying and shipping reltaively on time. Verizon landline sticks to their deployment dates for FiOS, despite the limited deployment. VZW sticks to their deployment dates for new generations of cellular data.

@BenBrocka fair enough, but they've been testing it for, what? 5 years?

the whole Google fiber thing seems like to me that it's at least 4-5 years old

What do you mean testing? They just allowed people to sign up this year. The concept is a couple years old but they're only recently about able to get started

ah... I thought they were already in the pilot markets in like 2009, I read some story about it

maybe that was just a single fiber optic terminal doing a test run in their lab or something

as for Verizon's experience in rolling out new data generations, I think it's only been since about the early 2000s. It's been: analog cellular, then digital cellular (1G), then GPRS, then CDMA2000 (aptly named because it was rolled out in the very early 2000s), then EvDO, then EvDO Rev. A, then LTE

longer than Google has been in business, though, I think

Ugh T mobile WTF. They have two options to get an activation kit, one requires a plan, one doesn't. Both are accessed from different parts of the site, but both cost the same and both have the same items

Why would you do this

It's like they really really don't want me to actually get their prepaid plan they advertise so damn much

just go into a store and get a micro sim

Nearest one is an hour away

@BenBrocka lol... and I watch FiOS ads on television about 25 times per week and just glare at them dubiously and say "if only..."

they literally just rolled out google fiber like 6 months ago

more people reaching lvl 4

quickly approaching 10% win rate chance

@corwin01 actually it's down to 50% if you've completed 4 and all tiles ;)

again by my approximation, which may or may not be accurate depending on how well I made my formulas =S and how much beer I had that night...

No, I mean just for the Surface

heh

who wants a stinky surface, anyway? they smell like steve ballmer's armpit sweat.

from a guy with no tablet, me

@allquixotic I want to see just how much remote management you can do to one, that's about it

or basically how "enterprisey" it can be

but if I don't win (assuming I even make lvl 4) I'll sprint for a Nexus 7 sooner or later

If it's as bad as an iPad it can burn in hell :|

@corwin01 Nexus 7 yummy. Nexus 7 good. Good, Nexus, good. Buy it, you want to. This is the droid you are looking for.

Smooth creamy jelly bean flavored ice cream sandwich. Good, Nexus, good. Melting butter.

lol

Disclaimer: I do not work for Google

as a Nexus S owner, yes I know Jelly Bean is delicious

@allquixotic Why did that make my mouth water?

also as a Nexus S owner, I really want a Nexus 4

Nexus 4 is a glass cannon, like the USS Defiant -- poor battery life of Nexus is to weak durability of escort class ships in Star Trek (weird analogy I know)

Razr Maxx HD is better for my use because it has a long battery life... durable cruiser... less elegant but stays alive longer

smooth as... concrete? sandpaper?

@corwin01 Jelly bean 4.2 is even better