Hardware 2.0

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Happy New Year - and a few tech resolutions

By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes | January 1, 2008, 6:40am PST

Summary: This is also the time of year when we all make resolutions - eat less, exercise more, take up something, quit something else. Rather than bore you with the standard New Year fayre, I thought I’d share with you a few of my tech resolutions for 2008.

Well, Happy New Year to you all - may 2008 be kind to you.

This is also the time of year when we all make resolutions - eat less, exercise more, take up something, quit something else. Rather than bore you with the standard New Year fayre, I thought I’d share with you a few of my tech resolutions for 2008.

Rip all my CDs to high-quality MP3, store them in one place and keep a backup (I know, the RIAA probably has a dozen black helicopters filled with shock troopers headed my way right now for that one).
Rip my favorite DVDs to disc. I’m not sure how many discs this would be yet but given the cost of a few 500GB drives compared to the cost of replacing a damaged disc, it’s worth it in the long run.
Upgrade the two main workhorse systems to Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 processors. Upgrade the four other secondary systems to Q6600s.
Have these PCs installed in such a way that the can easily be moved into a LAN party config (I’ve been meaning for years to host regular LAN parties for friends but have never got round to it). Have the capacity to hook up to a dozen more systems to the LAN.
Try to unify as many chargers as possible and perhaps put together a small charging station for stuff, rather than have chargers scattered about the place.

That’s it - I don’t want to overburden myself already!

Any tech resolutions of your own?

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LAN, Disc, Tech Resolution, LANs, Network Technology, Networking, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is an internationally published technology author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology.

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As for power management, check out this link

mtgarden 4th Jan 2008

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/03/powramid-e-900h-from-kreative-power-why-didnt-you-think-of-thi/

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Resolutions?

Tim Patterson 1st Jan 2008

I thought resolutions were supposed to be challenging...

At least they shouldn't all be fun ones. lol

Be careful Adrian. The RIAA is now suing people who rip their legally purchased CDs.

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Why MP3? AAC is open, standard, smaller files, & sounds better

jayk_z 1st Jan 2008

Why use the antiquated MP3 file
format? AAC is open, standard, yields
smaller files, & sounds better.

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that is kind of a myth

mdemuth 1st Jan 2008

AAC has spotty support outside of Apple (so what, 3% of the market out there?), and honestly, at anything at 256kbps or more, you really can't tell the difference. Save yourself the headaches, and waste some disk space.
MP3's are playable everywhere, so if you are going to used a compressed format, stay with the standard that works everywhere.

In all honesty, though, he wants to go lossless, and then convert down for transfer to a portable player. WMP does this seamlessly per device, and I will assume iTunes can do the same.

BTW, Adrian, get 2 or 3 500GB drives. Once you start ripping movies, the GB flow like water in a stream...

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You'd rather support ancient technology?

jayk_z 2nd Jan 2008

>AAC has spotty support outside of Apple

Huh? Sony, Real Networks, Creative Zen Technology, Microsoft, Palm, Pioneer,
Alpine, Kenwood, JVC, Panasonic, etc.

Even if fewer did support the "new" standard (it's TEN years old!), I don't think we
should put up with sub-standard offerings from do-nothing companies that don't
bother to keep up with better technology.

Once the HD-DVD/Blu-ray stuff settles, should we never buy them because
regular DVD players will still be more prevalent at that time?

At one point USB 2, Firewire, graphics cards, 802.11, Bluetooth, & DVD burners
had spotty support in various electronics or computers. Does that mean we
should've purchased products that didn't have them, when better companies were
putting out better technology? No, you should buy from companies that put out
good technology.

>at anything at 256kbps or more, you really can't tell the difference.

Many people don't want to encode everything at such a space-eating bit rate. At
least not for your portable player. If you encoding for archival storage
purposes...don't even use MP3. Sure, MP3's are playable "everywhere". For now.
But it's not a good permanent file format. One day it will be gone too.

>Save yourself the headaches, and waste some disk space.

What headache? The headache of choosing a decent, modern portable music
player? The headache of not supporting companies that can't be bothered to
implement a ten year old standard (AAC) that yields better results?

>MP3's are playable everywhere, so if you are going to used a compressed format,
stay with the standard that works everywhere.

USB 1 is available "everywhere". So are 640x480 screens. Wired Ethernet
connections. Character-based interfaces/terminals. VCRs. Radios. No thanks,
I'd rather go with standards that are modern, and that offer more. If we don't do
that, nothing good and new will ever get off the ground. We'd still be using VHS,
records, slow, proprietary serial connections, MS-DOS, and lots of cables.

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I want it to work

mdemuth 2nd Jan 2008

Plain and simple.
So until every device out there supports it, why cripple yourself or your choices?

All of your examples are of options that have real advantages. AAC does not. All it does is limit the choices in hardware you can use.
With disk space as inexpensive as it is, why bother?

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I don't want to walk around with a 100GB drive

jayk_z 2nd Jan 2008

>So until every device out there supports it, why cripple yourself or your choices?

Thinking like that is why it took GUIs, USB, PCI, etc so long to get off the ground.

>All of your examples are of options that have real advantages. AAC does not.

AAC sounds better in less space consumed. And it handles high frequencies
better.

>All it does is limit the choices in hardware you can use.

All focusing on MP3 does is limit you to choosing sub-standard hardware, and
having to carry around a big hard drive. If you find a player that does what you
want at a price you like, does it matter if there are 50 other choices you didn't
want or 200 other choices you didn't want?

>With disk space as inexpensive as it is, why bother?

Not every player, particularly flash memory based players, have boatloads of
memory to hold all the MP3s you want at 256kbits.

I'd rather save space and have better sound,

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Why use MP3? Because...

neoanderthal 2nd Jan 2008

After all of this time, it's the only lossy audio compression scheme that can be counted on to work on every platform - AAC support seems a bit spotty. I don't know about AAC being better quality - it sounds 'flatter' to me than MP3 does, at least at the bitrate I use (VBR, 192Kb minimum). The size savings isn't whopping, either.

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Would you like to be stuck with USB 1, 640x480, VCRs, & cables?

jayk_z 2nd Jan 2008

The support is spotty? How about Sony, Real Networks, Creative Zen Technology,
Apple, Microsoft, Palm, Pioneer, Alpine, Kenwood, JVC, Panasonic, etc?

Anyway, the main reason MP3 support is more widespread is because people are
putting up with ancient technology. It's why USB took so long to get off the
ground. And PCI. And GUIs. If we don't vote with our wallets for better
technology, we'll be stuck with things like USB 1, 640x480 screens, wired Ethernet
connections, character-based interfaces/terminals, VCRs, & radios. if we're lucky.
Otherwise it'll be VHS, records, slow, proprietary serial connections, MS-DOS, and
lots of cables.

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Hmmm

neoanderthal 3rd Jan 2008

Well, I can see your point, but frankly I don't see AAC being so superior to MP3 that it should supplant it outright as a method of encoding audio. As for spotty support - how many steroes (home, car, portable, etc.) will play an AAC CD as opposed to an MP3 CD? I know there are models that do so, but even those models play MP3 in addition.

I have AAC tracs from the iTunes Music Store - aside from the fact the DRM tracks are lower quality than what I would rip myself from physical media, I can't tell an appreciable difference between 128K AAC and 128K MP3 - both are of marginal quality IMO. This sort of argument seems to be similar to the discussions wherein everyone is told they should pay the extra for a quad-core CPU, when in practical terms (by which I don't mean folding@home or SETI) there is little benefit to be gained. Sometimes good enough is good enough - it doesn't have to be new to be good, and the newest isn't always the best.

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What about the Mac Mini?

ye 1st Jan 2008

As far as I can tell you bought this thing and it's sitting in the corner gathering dust. Are you doing anything with it? If so what are you using it for? How do you like it?

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Why MP3?

msalzberg 1st Jan 2008

Why use any compressed format at all? Hard drives are
cheap, and if you're making a backup, make a REAL
backup.

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Simple answer to that...

gene_fitz@... 2nd Jan 2008

I personally ripped everything to MP3 for a few reasons:

1) I can burn MP3 disks and play them in my car.
2) I can transfer them to my Ipod, as well as my Sansa.
3) easy on space. 16,000 MP3s takes less than 80 Gigs

That's why I use MP3.

Granted, they are not HQ MP3, but I can't really tell that much of a difference.

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CDs are very small to begin with so no need to compress

georgeou 1st Jan 2008

CDs are very small, no need to compress. Keep it as a WAV file or rip it to lossless WMA. There's also Apple's lossless format.

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FLAC for Lossless

daengbo 2nd Jan 2008

FLAC will save you about 40% over the equivalent WAV file.

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Great, but

bmgoodman 2nd Jan 2008

I certainly see how you'd now have disk space to keep everything as a WAV file, but then do you convert everything you want to put onto your portable player? My cell phone will play WAV, but that's sure going to cut down on the number of tracks I can store. I'm not sure Tivo will play WAV files at all. And I sure don't want to be converting all the time. For now, I'm sticking with VBR MP3, which is not optimal, but seems to work well with my Tivo/home stereo, car CD player, cell phone, and the mp3 player I jog with. Everything else seems to require more hoops or keeping multiple formats of each song.

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LAN party config?

TheBoyBailey 2nd Jan 2008

Please define what a 'LAN party config' is?

Timbo

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I'll give you an example:

Grayson Peddie 2nd Jan 2008

LIAN LI PC-A05B Black Aluminum ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
AMD Phenom 9500 Agena 2.2GHz AM2+ Processor
MSI K9A2 Platinum AM2+/AM2 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard
2x SAPPHIRE 100226L Radeon HD 3850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 Video Card
AuzenTech Auzen X-Fi Prelude 7.1 Sound Card
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
For Gaming/HTPC: LG Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Drive or for non-HTPC but just for gaming: LG DVD Burner
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad (Crossfire Edition) EPS12V 750W Power Supply

That's it for the computer case.

If all the parts get put together, then that'd be a LAN Party case, but in a small form factor, with an ATX motherboard!

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I wish I can edit my post, but I almost forgot about the memory.

Grayson Peddie 2nd Jan 2008

You can put in 4GB of memory by getting this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220293

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My Tech Resolutions

gene_fitz@... 2nd Jan 2008

Great Resolutions Adrian, I am right there with you Adrian.

All my CDs are on my hard drive, all my movies are on my hard drive

My new years Tech Resolutions:

1) Move all home media to computer Media centers. I already manage a complete media center based entertainment system in my bedroom, next stop, the living room.
2) along with the first step, try to make more moves towards Linux (Cuttently testing Linux MCE for that venture)
3) Work smarter, not harder. Instead of buying second grade gear and constantly upgrading, buy top line gear at first and let it sit. (It will save a lot of money in the end)

It's a start...