Vista SP2

[Mystic]

A second Service Pack for Vista is going to be coming out. One of the things included will be built-in ability to burn Blu-Ray disks.

Commercial applications for USB3 are supposed to be coming this year. And there will be USB3 devices coming out in 2010. USB3 is about 10 times faster than USB2 and backward compatible.

It might be good waiting until 2010 to buy a new computer. USB3 will probably be added to motherboards and Windows 7 will be included. And maybe solid state hard drives will be affordable.

 

[StevieC]

And maybe SSD will be big and affordable...

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
USB3 is about 10 times faster than USB2 and backward compatible.

Good. That means valuable time will be saved as the main 150K Excel spreadsheet that I often use will copy from my USB stick will copy 10x faster.

 

[Mystic]

That is a good point StevieC. Even 80 gb and 160 gb hard drives are very expensive today and if there are any 500 gb or larger solid state hard drives available I don't know how much they cost. A 500 or 750 gb AFFORDABLE solid state hard drive would be nice.

 

[StevieC]

Yes it would!

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
That is a good point StevieC. Even 80 gb and 160 gb hard rives are very expensive today and if there are any 500 gb or larger solid state hard drives available I don't know how much they cost. A 500 or 750 gb AFFORDABLE solid state hard drive would be nice.


I am sure that pretty soon research and development, economy of scale and vendor adoption will lower the prices and increase the capacity of SSD's... I mean, 2010 is *years* off.

EDIT: What the &#^& ?!?!?!?! It's 2009 already?! Where is my flying car?

 

[StevieC]

I thought we were supposed to be like the Jetson's 9 years ago... I'm still waiting

hehehe

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
It might be good waiting until 2010 to buy a new computer.

There will always be something better on the horizon. If you keep thinking this way, you'll never buy anything.

 

[StevieC]

Kinda like how the government drags their feet on everything... They are always distracted by the "Better stuff on the Horizon" hehehe

SO TRUE!

 

[Mystic]

I should not need a new computer until about 2010 anyway,Quattro Pete. My computer just keeps moving along-it is between 2 and 3 years old and should last another 2 years or so. Computers age fast but 5 years is pretty good.

It just seems to me there is no reason to buy another computer until the technology justifies it. Eventually all the new technology makes the computer you have not worth keeping.

You are right that there is always something new, especially when it comes to computer technology. But USB 3, SSDHs, and stuff like that may make a new computer necessary. Otherwise, run the old one as long as you can.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
It just seems to me there is no reason to buy another computer until the technology justifies it. Eventually all the new technology makes the computer you have not worth keeping.

Well, obviously, can't argue with that. But if someone needs a new computer now, he's not going to wait until 2010 to get it. And if someone doesn't need a computer now, then why would he buy it anyway?

Me, like you, I buy a new one when the old one becomes just too slow and I feel like I'm wasting time waiting for pages to load or system to boot. The one I bought in 2003 lasted me until 2008 (with minor upgrades along the way). I still use it for secondary duties, but it's not my main workhorse anymore. Kind of useful retirement state...

 

[StevieC]

Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
... Me, like you, I buy a new one when the old one becomes just too slow and I feel like I'm wasting time waiting for pages to load or system to boot. The one I bought in 2003 lasted me until 2008 (with minor upgrades along the way). I still use it for secondary duties, but it's not my main workhorse anymore. Kind of useful retirement state...



Same here...

 

[MONKEYMAN]

One of the computers I use the most for work has a 933 Pentium III processor and 256 MB of RAM. This is fine for the work documents I make in Word. I also mostly use cassettes to play music.

My Vista computers are more for cruising on the Internet. Kind of like a boss I had who drove his Ford probe as a daily driver and his garage queen Ferrari when he had a need for speed.

 

[tmorris1]

I was reading that USB 3.0 might become the standard HD interface and replace SATA and ESATA because it is faster. It doesn't really matter until HDs get faster anyway because the interface is not the bottleneck anymore.

I am still using a 1GHz Athlon that I built in 2000. I have update memory, video, and HD along the way. It is time to replace it, but it does OK for office apps, email, and basic surfing.

 

[MONKEYMAN]

Backed up some video on one computer on my 8 gig Cruzer. I left when it said it was going to be one hour! Now I see why solid state hard drives and USB 3.0 would be useful.

 

[StevieC]

Shouldn't have taken that long... I have a 16gb version and I regularly transfer 4-6 Gb of files in about 20 minutes...

 

[MONKEYMAN]

For some reason that computer was very slow. It took about 5 minutes or so to transfer the files onto my new Vista computer.