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scott wrote:
> Have you tried editing a 10MP photo?
Nope. And neither has anybody else I've ever met. Generally it's a case
of "here's a photo, can you clip the edges to center his head? OK, now
print that 3 times." Requires almost no RAM at all.
> Have you tried editing a full-HD video clip using your PC?
1. Where in the name of God are you going to get HD video data from?
2. Assuming you edit something, where are you going to play it? Nothing
supports it yet.
3. Why would you need lots of RAM? Surely you just need a huge harddrive?
>> basically the cheapest thing in the shop.
>
> While that may be true, I highly doubt that a PC would not have been
> available at the time for under 1000 pounds. WHen was it and what
> spec? We bought a P166 32MB in 1996 (IIRC), it cost something like 800
> pounds and certainly wasn't the cheapest one available.
IIRC, it was about 1994. Back in those days, having a "home computer"
was considered somewhat unusual. I don't recall what spec; I think it
had 8 MB RAM and a 66 MHz CPU of some kind. Short of going back in time,
that's all I can tell you.
>> I just checked online. A copy of Vista that doesn't say "upgrade" on
>
> Where the hell are you looking?
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/119995
Found it on their front page.
> Of course, a company like Dell who buys in bulk will get it a lot
> cheaper.
Probably.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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> Nope. And neither has anybody else I've ever met. Generally it's a case of
> "here's a photo, can you clip the edges to center his head? OK, now print
> that 3 times." Requires almost no RAM at all.
Agreed. But if you only have "almost no RAM at all", eg 256MB, then it can
quickly become a problem. A few levels of undo and your harddrive is
thrashing.
> 1. Where in the name of God are you going to get HD video data from?
A camcorder? People often take them on holiday and stuff, I'm sure you've
seen them. Again, look on Amazon under High Definition camcorders, prices
range from 150 pounds upwards. Or for geeks, maybe we create animations
using POV :-)
> 2. Assuming you edit something, where are you going to play it? Nothing
> supports it yet.
Ermm, you looked in a shop that sells TVs recently? Almost all support
HDTV, when you need to replace your TV you're not going to have a choice. A
quick Google revealed that in 2006 8% of homes had an HD-capable TV, that is
predicted to reach 70% by 2012 (guess it's at about 30% now then), so it
looks to me like lots of people have support for it already.
> 3. Why would you need lots of RAM? Surely you just need a huge harddrive?
Editing programs use up as much of your RAM as they can to make everything
faster while you are working. Of course you can get away with less, but
things go really slowly with your drive thrashing away.
http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/systemreqs/
They recommend you get the extra GB if you're planning to do HD editing.
> http://www.ebuyer.com/product/119995
>
> Found it on their front page.
Hmm, on amazon it seems to be half the price:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Windows-Vista-Ultimate-Service-Pack/dp/B0013O77GM
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> OS+applications requires 1 Gb of RAM
> new OS+same applications requires 2 GB of RAM
>
> It's not the point that RAM is cheap the question is why do you need to
> double your RAM size in order to get similar results as with your previous
> OS?
Because Vista was designed for new computers? I guess MS saw it as a waste
of money optimising it for older machines.
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>> Nope. And neither has anybody else I've ever met. Generally it's a
>> case of "here's a photo, can you clip the edges to center his head?
>> OK, now print that 3 times." Requires almost no RAM at all.
>
> Agreed. But if you only have "almost no RAM at all", eg 256MB, then it
> can quickly become a problem. A few levels of undo and your harddrive
> is thrashing.
Maybe I've missed something, but what image editing software gives you
more than 1 level of undo?
I mean, I'm sure if you're a professional digital artist, you've going
to have some serious high-end software, and some spine-tinglingly
expensive hardware to go with it. But normal people? They're just going
to use the free Hyper Painter XL that comes with your camera...
>> 1. Where in the name of God are you going to get HD video data from?
>
> A camcorder? People often take them on holiday and stuff, I'm sure
> you've seen them. Again, look on Amazon under High Definition
> camcorders, prices range from 150 pounds upwards.
I own a camcorder. It bearly produces SD quality, never mind HD! And it
was not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. (So I'm told anyway. It
was a gift, so I didn't actually pay for it.) The idea that you could
seems really far-fetched to me.
> Or for geeks, maybe we create animations using POV :-)
And why do you think I own a DVD burner? ;-)
BTW, any ideas about *good* DVD authoring software? My drive came with
some freebie that works, but it doesn't work fantastically well...
>> 2. Assuming you edit something, where are you going to play it?
>> Nothing supports it yet.
>
> Ermm, you looked in a shop that sells TVs recently? Almost all support
> HDTV, when you need to replace your TV you're not going to have a
> choice.
Seriously, you're not going to throw away a perfectly good TV just so
that you can get a marginally-sharper picture, are you.
> A quick Google revealed that in 2006 8% of homes had an
> HD-capable TV.
That's a really tiny percentage.
And let's not forget, you still need an HD source. Those are still
prohibitively expensive too. (Last I heard, a BluRay player is abour
>> 3. Why would you need lots of RAM? Surely you just need a huge harddrive?
>
> Editing programs use up as much of your RAM as they can to make
> everything faster while you are working. Of course you can get away
> with less, but things go really slowly with your drive thrashing away.
This suggests to me that you only need large stacks of RAM if you're
doing professional video editing work. I mean seriously, I don't even
*know* anybody else rich enough to afford a video camera, much less
technically expert enough to attempt to *edit* video beyond what you can
do with a DVD recorder...
>> http://www.ebuyer.com/product/119995
>>
>> Found it on their front page.
>
> Hmm, on amazon it seems to be half the price:
>
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Windows-Vista-Ultimate-Service-Pack/dp/B0013O77GM
OK, well that's a little less extortionate, but it's still pretty damned
expensive IMHO.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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48732ac7$1@news.povray.org...
I just bought from Dell a laptop (dual-core) and a desktop (quad) for 700
laptop has a 250 Gb HD and the desktop a 750 Mb HD and a 20 inch screen.
The trick with Dell is that there's always some "special deals" available
and if you're already a client they bombard you with discount vouchers and
such. Also, it's sometimes possible to buy at discount or even bulk prices
(down to 40% off), when one belongs to an organisation that is in
partnership with Dell.
> 4. Why in the name of God would you even *need* that much RAM anyway?
Unless one works exclusively with text-based applications, there's *** never
*** enough RAM. Others have mentioned it already, but even cheap cameras and
camcorder can now generate massive amounts of data and one needs a lot of
RAM to handle this smoothly. Particularly, non-geek family members can be
extremely Gigabytes-hungry once they figured out that one can take
great-looking movies of everything that moves ("no, you can't attach 15 Gb =
90 min of high-def wailing baby movie to your email and send it to all your
friends")...
But even for non-graphic, professional applications, there's never enough
RAM anyway: the more you have, the more you will be tempted to use and will
end up using: Law of the Constantly Maxed Out Resources.
G.
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>> OS+applications requires 1 Gb of RAM
>> new OS+same applications requires 2 GB of RAM
>>
>> It's not the point that RAM is cheap the question is why do you need
>> to double your RAM size in order to get similar results as with your
>> previous OS?
>
> Because Vista was designed for new computers? I guess MS saw it as a
> waste of money optimising it for older machines.
Getting an OS to work with less than a small star system's worth of RAM
doesn't requite "optimising", it requires basic design principles.
But then, Vista isn't really an OS, is it? It's an OS plus a huge stack
of other bits and pieces. I understand that out of the box you get DVD
authoring, a web server (!!), various online collaboration software, and
so forth. Not to mention layer upon layer of unecessary eye candy [which
may or may not be pretty, I don't know].
I think we can safely say that the *real* reason it demands so much
hardware is to keep the hardware vendors (M$'s real customers) happy.
(They say this is why Windows NT displaced Netware. What sane hardware
vendor is going to recommend a product that works on cheap hardware?)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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> I just bought from Dell a laptop (dual-core) and a desktop (quad) for 700
> laptop has a 250 Gb HD and the desktop a 750 Mb HD and a 20 inch screen.
>
> The trick with Dell is that there's always some "special deals" available
> and if you're already a client they bombard you with discount vouchers and
> such. Also, it's sometimes possible to buy at discount or even bulk prices
> (down to 40% off), when one belongs to an organisation that is in
> partnership with Dell.
Damn. My company *is* in a partnership with Dell. We bought 12 new PCs -
OptiPlex 755 with Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM and some
unit. What the heck do you know that I don't???
(As an aside... is there a reason why Dell is always 3x more expensive
than, say, HP, IBM, Acer, any other company on Earth?)
> Unless one works exclusively with text-based applications, there's *** never
> *** enough RAM.
Really? I seem to have way more than I need. It's almost never fully
utilised, except when trying to build huge histograms. (Not a common
activity, obviously.)
> Others have mentioned it already, but even cheap cameras and
> camcorder can now generate massive amounts of data and one needs a lot of
> RAM to handle this smoothly.
Well, I was editing CDs on a machine with 2 MB of RAM about 10 years
ago... For complex video effects I guess you do need to hold quite a bit
of data in RAM at once though.
> Particularly, non-geek family members can be
> extremely Gigabytes-hungry once they figured out that one can take
> great-looking movies of everything that moves ("no, you can't attach 15 Gb =
> 90 min of high-def wailing baby movie to your email and send it to all your
> friends")...
That's not even funny.
Sure, I can see needing huge amounts of HD space. I'm just not seeing
much need for huge RAM. And besides, I was talking about the bare
minimum amount of RAM required for Vista to even consider operating.
Presumably if Vista needs 2 GB to run, if you want to edit video *as
well* you'd need even more RAM...
(BTW... I did wonder why the hell WeV has 4x 360 GB drives. Until I
discovered that every single one of them is full to busting with illegal
DVDs he's downloaded. *shivers*)
> But even for non-graphic, professional applications, there's never enough
> RAM anyway: the more you have, the more you will be tempted to use and will
> end up using: Law of the Constantly Maxed Out Resources.
Other than audio and video data (which is inherantly large), I can't
think of anything you can do with a computer that actually uses much
memory. Playing games involves audio and video data, but I'm
hard-pressed to think of anything else...
(Unless you're running some kind of server. Don't do that unless you
have stacks of... well, everything really!)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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> I mean, I'm sure if you're a professional digital artist, you've going to
> have some serious high-end software, and some spine-tinglingly expensive
> hardware to go with it. But normal people? They're just going to use the
> free Hyper Painter XL that comes with your camera...
Even MS Paint has 10 levels of undo. I got PSP free with some camera ages
ago (or it's like 50 quid I think), it has configurable levels of undo, the
default seems to be "500MB of space per open image" (I just checked, never
changed it before). You can configure it to a certain number of levels if
you want to.
> I own a camcorder. It bearly produces SD quality, never mind HD! And it
> was not cheap by any stretch of the imagination.
Yawn! How old is it? For 800 pounds today you can buy a really decent HD
camcorder.
> BTW, any ideas about *good* DVD authoring software? My drive came with
> some freebie that works, but it doesn't work fantastically well...
I think I used ULead DVD Movie Factory before, it worked pretty seemlessly,
but I didn't exactly tax it, I just wanted to put a few .avis onto a proper
DVD with a menu so a friend could watch them. Was really quick to use, had
some nice pre-set menu graphics to chose from, and burnt fine first time.
Yawn! You really should do a few clicks on amazon before making statements
like that. You do realise that for 900 pounds you can get a good quality 46
inch full-HD TV! Smaller ones are *considerably* cheaper (like less than
half that price).
> And let's not forget, you still need an HD source. Those are still
> or so. Only rich geeks need apply...)
Yawn! Under 200 pounds now.
> much less technically expert enough to attempt to *edit* video beyond what
> you can do with a DVD recorder...
Programs like Windows Movie Maker make it pretty easy. Judging by the
number of videos on YouTube made with it, I guess a fair number of people
worked out how to use it.
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> I got PSP free with some camera ages ago (or it's like 50 quid I think).
Really? Every camera I've ever seen comes with some random paint package
that nobody ever heard of... [And which does almost nothing beyond
colour adjustments and automatic red-eye removal. Ooo, and maybe a few
warps.]
>> I own a camcorder. It bearly produces SD quality, never mind HD! And
>> it was not cheap by any stretch of the imagination.
>
> Yawn! How old is it?
About 1 year?
> For 800 pounds today you can buy a really decent HD camcorder.
I didn't think you could buy a *still* camera for that kind of money.
>> BTW, any ideas about *good* DVD authoring software? My drive came with
>> some freebie that works, but it doesn't work fantastically well...
>
> I think I used ULead DVD Movie Factory before, it worked pretty
> seemlessly, but I didn't exactly tax it, I just wanted to put a few
> .avis onto a proper DVD with a menu so a friend could watch them. Was
> really quick to use, had some nice pre-set menu graphics to chose from,
> and burnt fine first time.
That's more or less the level of what I'm trying to do too. I make
POV-Ray render some insane stuff, build AVIs out of it, and then put it
onto a real DVD so it can be played anywhere. (Plus playing uncompressed
video seems to stress my HD.)
The thing I've got seems to crash a lot. It allows you to do some
limited video editing, but stubbornly refuses to allow you to do things
like insert pauses or writing and so on.
>
> Yawn! You really should do a few clicks on amazon before making
> statements like that. You do realise that for 900 pounds you can get a
> good quality 46 inch full-HD TV! Smaller ones are *considerably*
> cheaper (like less than half that price).
You do realise that I was *in* Curries looking at new TVs only a few
days ago, right?
>> And let's not forget, you still need an HD source. Those are still
>> prohibitively expensive too. (Last I heard, a BluRay player is abour
>
> Yawn! Under 200 pounds now.
Really? That's a rather sudden price drop, don't you think? I mean, the
format is still brand-spanking-new. Are there even any BluRay titles to
play yet?
>> much less technically expert enough to attempt to *edit* video beyond
>> what you can do with a DVD recorder...
>
> Programs like Windows Movie Maker make it pretty easy. Judging by the
> number of videos on YouTube made with it, I guess a fair number of
> people worked out how to use it.
Now that's just puzzling. I tried to use Windows Movie Maker once, and
it wouldn't do *anything* I wanted it to do. Sure, I could take a bunch
of videos and join them together to make one video. But that seemed to
be the sum total of its abilities.
OTOH, most videos on YouTube seem to be unedited mobile phone videos... :-P
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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> That's more or less the level of what I'm trying to do too. I make POV-Ray
> render some insane stuff, build AVIs out of it, and then put it onto a
> real DVD so it can be played anywhere. (Plus playing uncompressed video
> seems to stress my HD.)
For playback on PCs (and on the PS3 connected to my TV) I usually convert to
h264 which is really good for high resolution. I found a program called
xvid4psp which is free and has a nice GUI to do all the conversion, without
needing some huge command line only to find that your player doesn't support
"adaptive b-frames" or some pyramid thingy.
> The thing I've got seems to crash a lot. It allows you to do some limited
> video editing, but stubbornly refuses to allow you to do things like
> insert pauses or writing and so on.
Oh, Windows Movie Maker is good for stuff like that, it's what I usually use
for simple editing with text, still images, pauses etc. I've got a feeling
that it's only the version that comes with Vista that lets you do HD quality
though, but I guess that's not a problem for you.
> You do realise that I was *in* Curries looking at new TVs only a few days
> ago, right?
That's funny, on their website they have plenty of HDTVs under 400 pounds.
> Really? That's a rather sudden price drop, don't you think? I mean, the
> format is still brand-spanking-new.
Hmm I don't think so, once the PS3 came out, basically nobody could sell a
blu-ray player for above 400 pounds. Since then the prices have gradually
come down from 350 or so to the 200 you see today.
> Are there even any BluRay titles to play yet?
Amazon only have 1507 titles listed.
> Now that's just puzzling. I tried to use Windows Movie Maker once, and it
> wouldn't do *anything* I wanted it to do. Sure, I could take a bunch of
> videos and join them together to make one video. But that seemed to be the
> sum total of its abilities.
You didn't notice the fades and text and all the effects you could add then?
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