I was shopping for a new laptop to play WoW on, and was working from a list of possible vendors. Then, by chance I met an old Troll shaman in the game, and he warned me. "Stay away from the voodoo!"
It all started to go wrong when certain programs required a VGA card to be on a VESA bus...
Then you had to have the right proprietary mix and match of parts to play games you wanted until... about DirectX 5 since the earlier ones were kinda brutal and crash-prone.
This often meant a Sound Blaster sound card and a 3dfx video card, otherwise your games like MechWarrior 2, Tomb Raider, or Carmageddon wouldn't be 3D accelerated at all, and you couldn't guarantee you'd have sound effects.
@FrankenPC: I remember that, and Roland-something or other. But really, Soundblaster was the one that made the most difference. It let the computer play actual sound clips, not just synthesized sounds. Pew pew pew!
@imTheKing: Just about any intel box will run OS X. I'm not sure if you can equip this thing with an EFI-fixit dongle, but if you can, then definitely yes.
This is not your home brew liquid cooling guys. The tubes are the highest quality, they're very rigid, and it's sealed. It's designed to last over 7 years without being refilled. It doesn't leak - ever. It would never pass HP Engineering as a volume PC otherwise.. Thus the reason it took us so long to launch it.
@Rahul Sood: I've had a few "sealed" liquid cooling systems over the years and ing the end they all suck.
Even the best of liquid cooling systems will lose some coolant due to evaporation, especially if your rig is a gaming powerhouse that runs hotter than the sun's core. If it's sealed you're just screwing yourself down th eline because you'll never be able to replenish that liquid coolant. A 20% decrease in coolant will render it less useful than the crappiest air-cooling solutions. Super-rigid hoses also mean good luck to you if you ever want to swap out hardware in the future.
Well designed air cooling with case airflow management beats liquid cooling every time in terms of cost, reliability and lack of danger to your hardware. Liquid cooling still can't bring your hardware below room temperature, and even the very best of them needs good-sized fans to pull heat from the radiator.
It's a novelty, nothing more, nothing less. I replaced my last liquid cooling set-up with a $60 fan with 6 heat pipes and a copper block and the results were lower CPU temps and far less noise and more space in my case.
@imTheKing: Cock-in-your-ass types like yourself may only come out to troll at night, but the rest of us have a sense of humor at these late hours. Kindly continue &&&&ing yourself for the rest of your useless life.
What is that big black block to the let side? A powersupply? That thing is the size of an apple mini. While the functionality of the second screen is dubious, the design is cleary out of whack. It reminds me of the first Chevy Lumina minivan: vast amounts of weirdly proportioned unused space, cheap looking and shiny shiny.
What's the use of a tiny screen underneath your big screen? I don't get this. If it were on the cover of your laptop so that you could browse your contacts, I could understand that. If it was on the touchpad as a fun little "oh look my fingers make ripples like as if I was touching water" add-on, that would be okay. If it was a touchscreen with customizable shortcuts and such, that's cool too. But in it's current state, it just looks like added expense and wasted real-estate and no added functionality for the sake of saying "we have two screens!!!"
I guess it'll probably end up as a minor screen with system information and a digital clock display. This seems like a step backward in design and function in order to step forward in marketing and sillyness.
More companies need to look to the wisdom of Dr. Ian Malcolm when coming up with some of these cockamamie designs.
It seems to me that HP was so busy figuring out if they could put a secondary 800x480 screen of only limited use in that they never stop to think if they should.
The lack of humility before a crowded laptop market that's being displayed here, uh... staggers me.
I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that HP and VooDoo are using here: it didn't require any discipline to attain it.
They read what other modders like Ben Heck and Art Lebedev had done and you took the next step. HP and VooDoo didn't earn the knowledge for themselves, so they don't take any responsibility... for it.
They stood on the shoulders of modders to accomplish something as fast as they could and before they even knew what they had, they patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic hulking behemoth of a "laptop", and now -
09/18/09
On the other hand I'm glad I don't have to worry about competing with them anymore.
09/17/09
So, I bought the macbook pro instead.
09/17/09
09/17/09
05/19/09
Then you had to have the right proprietary mix and match of parts to play games you wanted until... about DirectX 5 since the earlier ones were kinda brutal and crash-prone.
This often meant a Sound Blaster sound card and a 3dfx video card, otherwise your games like MechWarrior 2, Tomb Raider, or Carmageddon wouldn't be 3D accelerated at all, and you couldn't guarantee you'd have sound effects.
05/19/09
05/19/09
Good times.....good times.
05/19/09
05/19/09
Now, let's talk about sound cards. Anyone remember the AdLib synthesizer on a card?
05/19/09
05/19/09
05/19/09
01/06/09
01/06/09
01/06/09
01/06/09
01/06/09
Even the best of liquid cooling systems will lose some coolant due to evaporation, especially if your rig is a gaming powerhouse that runs hotter than the sun's core. If it's sealed you're just screwing yourself down th eline because you'll never be able to replenish that liquid coolant. A 20% decrease in coolant will render it less useful than the crappiest air-cooling solutions. Super-rigid hoses also mean good luck to you if you ever want to swap out hardware in the future.
Well designed air cooling with case airflow management beats liquid cooling every time in terms of cost, reliability and lack of danger to your hardware. Liquid cooling still can't bring your hardware below room temperature, and even the very best of them needs good-sized fans to pull heat from the radiator.
It's a novelty, nothing more, nothing less. I replaced my last liquid cooling set-up with a $60 fan with 6 heat pipes and a copper block and the results were lower CPU temps and far less noise and more space in my case.
01/06/09
01/06/09
01/06/09
01/06/09
01/06/09
01/06/09
Ergo;
He is a pointless conundrum of inanity.
01/06/09
01/06/09
01/06/09
01/02/09
01/02/09
01/02/09
What's the use of a tiny screen underneath your big screen? I don't get this. If it were on the cover of your laptop so that you could browse your contacts, I could understand that. If it was on the touchpad as a fun little "oh look my fingers make ripples like as if I was touching water" add-on, that would be okay. If it was a touchscreen with customizable shortcuts and such, that's cool too. But in it's current state, it just looks like added expense and wasted real-estate and no added functionality for the sake of saying "we have two screens!!!"
I guess it'll probably end up as a minor screen with system information and a digital clock display. This seems like a step backward in design and function in order to step forward in marketing and sillyness.
01/02/09
It seems to me that HP was so busy figuring out if they could put a secondary 800x480 screen of only limited use in that they never stop to think if they should.
01/02/09
Win.
01/02/09
01/02/09
The lack of humility before a crowded laptop market that's being displayed here, uh... staggers me.
I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that HP and VooDoo are using here: it didn't require any discipline to attain it.
They read what other modders like Ben Heck and Art Lebedev had done and you took the next step. HP and VooDoo didn't earn the knowledge for themselves, so they don't take any responsibility... for it.
They stood on the shoulders of modders to accomplish something as fast as they could and before they even knew what they had, they patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic hulking behemoth of a "laptop", and now -
They're selling it! They want to sell it!
01/02/09