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>> Besides, who wants a system that can delete the books you've paid for at
>> any time, for no defined reason?
>
> That's what backups are for.
Can the Kindle actually do that? I know Amazon automatically lets you
download items again if they have a record of you purchasing them, but
that's still no help if they delete it from the catalogue.
> (Yes, I typically do strip the
> DRM from my purchases; they're my purchases, after all).
1. How is that possible?
2. Isn't that illegal?
>> It also thinks its am MP3 player. I have no idea why. The sound quality
>> of a 2mm speaker is, obviously, abysmal.
>
> That's what headphones or speakers are for.
Riiight. So I can pay £40 or more for the headphones with the special
phone-specific plug and listen to low-quality MP3 playback.
Or I could, I don't know, use my MP3 player...
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On 14/01/2011 9:04 AM, scott wrote:
>
> A lot of people like to listen to music whilst travelling (using
> headphones), having such functionality in a phone saves having to carry
> an additional device.
And Audio books, great in the car.
--
Regards
Stephen
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>>> It also thinks its am MP3 player. I have no idea why. The sound quality
>>> of a 2mm speaker is, obviously, abysmal.
>>
>> That's what headphones or speakers are for.
>
> Riiight. So I can pay £40 or more for the headphones with the special
> phone-specific plug and listen to low-quality MP3 playback.
Most phones aimed at mp3 playback have either a standard 3.5mm jack or a
cheap converter is available to 3.5mm (or even included in the box).
The sound quality from a phone is in general no different from an mp3
player, they are probably using identical circuits inside. After all, a
DAC that works up to 20 kHz is a walk in the park compared to all the
rest of the electronics in the phone.
> Or I could, I don't know, use my MP3 player...
If you don't mind carrying around, charging and syncing an additional
device, sure.
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>> Riiight. So I can pay £40 or more for the headphones with the special
>> phone-specific plug and listen to low-quality MP3 playback.
>
> Most phones aimed at mp3 playback have either a standard 3.5mm jack or a
> cheap converter is available to 3.5mm (or even included in the box).
Well, my particular phone appears to have only a DC connector and a wide
multi-pin array. No standard audio socket. (And why would they? If they
put in a non-standard connector, they can charge you £40 for an adaptor.
Note that £40 is more money than the actual phone itself, BTW.)
> The
> sound quality from a phone is in general no different from an mp3
> player, they are probably using identical circuits inside. After all, a
> DAC that works up to 20 kHz is a walk in the park compared to all the
> rest of the electronics in the phone.
Making a DAC what "works" is probably quite trivial. Making one that can
isolate all the signal noise from the rest of the phone, handle sudden
transients while being powered only by a feeble half-flat battery, and
so on and so forth is probably much harder.
Then again, it's MP3, so it probably won't sound fantastic anyway.
Certainly most people are going to plug in those horrid £2 things from
the market, so the quality of the electronic signal is quite irrelevant.
>> Or I could, I don't know, use my MP3 player...
>
> If you don't mind carrying around, charging and syncing an additional
> device, sure.
In truth, my entire music collection is encoded as Ogg Vorbis, which my
phone won't support anyway. ;-)
Far more problematic than carrying the player is carrying the large £30
headphones I usually use it with.
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>> A lot of people like to listen to music whilst travelling (using
>> headphones), having such functionality in a phone saves having to carry
>> an additional device.
>
> And Audio books, great in the car.
Finally, a genuine use for a low-quality playback system.
Of course, you can't actually fit an audio book onto a phone with 10MB
of flash RAM, but nice idea.
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On 14/01/2011 9:43 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>> A lot of people like to listen to music whilst travelling (using
>>> headphones), having such functionality in a phone saves having to carry
>>> an additional device.
>>
>> And Audio books, great in the car.
>
> Finally, a genuine use for a low-quality playback system.
>
> Of course, you can't actually fit an audio book onto a phone with 10MB
> of flash RAM, but nice idea.
If you will buy a cheap phone, what do you expect?
--
Regards
Stephen
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On 13/01/2011 05:11 PM, nemesis wrote:
> Trees are consumed much faster than grown. 20 years to grow one, 1
> minute to bring it down to create some, what, 1000 books? How many books
> are consumed over 20 years, let alone paper for office printing, toilet
> paper, comic book paper, newspaper paper etc?...
1000 books? Damn, that's some small tree...
> eInk doesn't consume much energy. OTOH, I'm unsure about its
> durability... not that it matters if it's cheap.
Manufacturing any type of electronic device consumes pretty large
amounts of energy, and almost always involves a number of rare metals
and metaloids. (Arsenic, indium, etc.)
>>>> Besides, who wants a system that can delete the books you've paid for
>>>> at any time, for no defined reason?
>>>
>>> that's plain FUD last time I heard, both from tree killers and
>>> traditional book publishers.
>>
>> Erm, no, it's a documented fact. People actually have had their books
>> deleted. Twice.
>
> once.
That's still not FUD, it's a real event.
> http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/
So... they carry ancient books that have expired copyright?
> that's one good reason for the web browser, BTW. Another is wikipedia
> always at hand... :)
Wikipedia might be useful. (Assuming you can change the text size of
that too.) Presumably most of the diagrams won't come out, of course.
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>> Of course, you can't actually fit an audio book onto a phone with 10MB
>> of flash RAM, but nice idea.
>
> If you will buy a cheap phone, what do you expect?
A device that can make and receive phone calls?
Still, presumably all the unnecessary gadgetry is there merely to make
the product summary sound better. I can't imagine that anybody purposely
chooses the cheapest phone they can find and actually /wants/ to use it
as an MP3 player or a video camera.
(Come to think of it, I find it hard to believe that anybody actually
wants a phone with a camera in it at all, but anyway...)
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> Making a DAC what "works" is probably quite trivial. Making one that can
> isolate all the signal noise from the rest of the phone, handle sudden
> transients while being powered only by a feeble half-flat battery, and
> so on and so forth is probably much harder.
But you're still only talking about 20 kHz signals, the rest of the
phones deals with exactly those same issues for frequencies many orders
of magnitudes higher. The audio DAC is probably one of the simplest
parts in the phone for the designers to do.
> Then again, it's MP3, so it probably won't sound fantastic anyway.
> Certainly most people are going to plug in those horrid £2 things from
> the market, so the quality of the electronic signal is quite irrelevant.
Exactly, they're not really expecting Mr Hi-Fi to connect up his 30 quid
Nokia to a 20k hi-fi with a gold-plated half-inch-thick 2xphono to 3.5mm
cable. At best they are expecting you to connect a 100 quid pair of
headphones to it and listen on the train, and in that case I doubt most
people would be able to tell the difference between having a phone or an
mp3 player connected up.
> Far more problematic than carrying the player is carrying the large £30
> headphones I usually use it with.
Invest in a smaller pair for when it's not practical to carry the large
pair? I rarely take my large pair out of the house (long-haul flights
is one example where I do make the effort to carry the big pair).
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> Of course, you can't actually fit an audio book onto a phone with 10MB
> of flash RAM, but nice idea.
Can you even buy phones without memory card slots nowadays?
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On 14/01/2011 10:00 AM, scott wrote:
>> Making a DAC what "works" is probably quite trivial. Making one that can
>> isolate all the signal noise from the rest of the phone, handle sudden
>> transients while being powered only by a feeble half-flat battery, and
>> so on and so forth is probably much harder.
>
> But you're still only talking about 20 kHz signals, the rest of the
> phones deals with exactly those same issues for frequencies many orders
> of magnitudes higher.
I was under the impression that GSM broadcasts don't care particularly
about 10% THD, and only need to generate constant-amplitude carrier
waves. (Then again, I don't design GSM transmitters...)
> The audio DAC is probably one of the simplest
> parts in the phone for the designers to do.
The audio DAC (and the ADC, for that matter) is presumably an
off-the-shelf component.
>> Then again, it's MP3, so it probably won't sound fantastic anyway.
>> Certainly most people are going to plug in those horrid £2 things from
>> the market, so the quality of the electronic signal is quite irrelevant.
>
> Exactly, they're not really expecting Mr Hi-Fi to connect up his 30 quid
> Nokia to a 20k hi-fi with a gold-plated half-inch-thick 2xphono to 3.5mm
> cable. At best they are expecting you to connect a 100 quid pair of
> headphones to it and listen on the train, and in that case I doubt most
> people would be able to tell the difference between having a phone or an
> mp3 player connected up.
You're talking to somebody who actually owns a £100 pair of headphones.
;-) And they're not just for show. (They never leave the house, in fact.)
But yes, I'm never quite sure why these small portable devices pretend
to be able to produce hi-fi sound when it's perfectly obvious that they
cannot possibly do so.
>> Far more problematic than carrying the player is carrying the large £30
>> headphones I usually use it with.
>
> Invest in a smaller pair?
I could buy a smaller pair, but then what would be the point of listening?
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On 14/01/2011 10:05 AM, scott wrote:
>> Of course, you can't actually fit an audio book onto a phone with 10MB
>> of flash RAM, but nice idea.
>
> Can you even buy phones without memory card slots nowadays?
I have no idea.
If my phone has a card slot, it must be under the battery, and I'm not
rebooting it now to find out.
PS. Why is there a 20-minute delay between turning a phone on and being
able to use it? Even my PC isn't /that/ slow...
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On 14/01/2011 9:55 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>> Of course, you can't actually fit an audio book onto a phone with 10MB
>>> of flash RAM, but nice idea.
>>
>> If you will buy a cheap phone, what do you expect?
>
> A device that can make and receive phone calls?
>
Be happy, that is what you've got. :-)
> Still, presumably all the unnecessary gadgetry is there merely to make
> the product summary sound better. I can't imagine that anybody purposely
> chooses the cheapest phone they can find and actually /wants/ to use it
> as an MP3 player or a video camera.
>
To true.
> (Come to think of it, I find it hard to believe that anybody actually
> wants a phone with a camera in it at all, but anyway...)
There are lots of reasons people want a camera on their phone. I don’t
particularly but I know people who take a photo then email it to someone
to ask their opinion about it.
--
Regards
Stephen
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> PS. Why is there a 20-minute delay between turning a phone on and being
> able to use it? Even my PC isn't /that/ slow...
Probably because they don't anticipate you doing it very often, so don't
bother to optimise it much. The only time mine gets rebooted is when I
go on a plane or I forget to recharge it.
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On 14/01/2011 11:18 AM, scott wrote:
>> PS. Why is there a 20-minute delay between turning a phone on and being
>> able to use it? Even my PC isn't /that/ slow...
>
> Probably because they don't anticipate you doing it very often, so don't
> bother to optimise it much. The only time mine gets rebooted is when I
> go on a plane or I forget to recharge it.
Yeah, I guess. About the only time I reboot mine is when the software
starts being strange, which fortunately is quite rare. Also, the battery
life is quite impressive. I can usually get away with charging it once
per month.
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Invisible escreveu:
>> (Yes, I typically do strip the
>> DRM from my purchases; they're my purchases, after all).
>
> 2. Isn't that illegal?
yes, DRM is illegal.
> Riiight. So I can pay £40 or more for the headphones with the special
> phone-specific plug and listen to low-quality MP3 playback.
why low-quality? are you still in the 56kb/s era?
--
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9
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> yes, DRM is illegal.
In which legal system? :-P
>> Riiight. So I can pay £40 or more for the headphones with the special
>> phone-specific plug and listen to low-quality MP3 playback.
>
> why low-quality? are you still in the 56kb/s era?
What, you think they're going to put a top-of-the-range DAC into a cheap
device intended for relaying speech?
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On Fri, 14 Jan 2011 09:16:16 +0000, Invisible wrote:
>>> Besides, who wants a system that can delete the books you've paid for
>>> at any time, for no defined reason?
>>
>> That's what backups are for.
>
> Can the Kindle actually do that? I know Amazon automatically lets you
> download items again if they have a record of you purchasing them, but
> that's still no help if they delete it from the catalogue.
I don't know, I have a Nook, and I can do it on there.
>> (Yes, I typically do strip the
>> DRM from my purchases; they're my purchases, after all).
>
> 1. How is that possible?
GIYF. With Nook purchases, you need to know the name and credit card
number to strip the DRM.
> 2. Isn't that illegal?
Debatable. Are there laws that say circumventing electronic protections
on content is illegal in the US? Yes. (actually, DMCA specifically
prohibits the publication of code that breaks DRM) Does that mean I
can't do that for my own personal use? That's debatable. I bought the
content, and I'm not breaking the DRM to profit from it - but to preserve
my access to the content in the event that I cannot get it back again.
That's something that hasn't been challenged in court (from either side).
>>> It also thinks its am MP3 player. I have no idea why. The sound
>>> quality of a 2mm speaker is, obviously, abysmal.
>>
>> That's what headphones or speakers are for.
>
> Riiight. So I can pay £40 or more for the headphones with the special
> phone-specific plug and listen to low-quality MP3 playback.
Well, on my phone and on my Nook, they use a standard headphone jack.
> Or I could, I don't know, use my MP3 player...
Sure, you could. Or you could have bought a device that uses a standard
jack instead of having something weird that is only compatible with one
device.
Jim
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On Fri, 14 Jan 2011 09:42:14 +0000, Invisible wrote:
> Making a DAC what "works" is probably quite trivial. Making one that can
> isolate all the signal noise from the rest of the phone, handle sudden
> transients while being powered only by a feeble half-flat battery, and
> so on and so forth is probably much harder.
>
> Then again, it's MP3, so it probably won't sound fantastic anyway.
> Certainly most people are going to plug in those horrid £2 things from
> the market, so the quality of the electronic signal is quite irrelevant.
Actually, I've plugged my phone into my 7.1 stereo system and listened to
music on it. Works beautifully, with no extraneous noise from the CDMA
signal at all.
Jim
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Invisible wrote:
> On 13/01/2011 05:22 PM, Darren New wrote:
>
>> That's the link I was looking for.
>>
>> http://www.slashgear.com/qualcomm-mirasol-color-ereader-hands-on-0869191/
>
> That display looks very, very dark. Maybe it's just a bad picture, but
> it looks almost unreadable.
I was thinking as I looked at it that it didn't really show off the product
too well. Hard to say whether it's the photography or the device.
Altho around 15 to 25 seconds, it looks pretty good.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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Invisible wrote:
> my grandparent's favourite authors
Who are some of these authors?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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Invisible wrote:
>>> Besides, who wants a system that can delete the books you've paid for at
>>> any time, for no defined reason?
>>
>> That's what backups are for.
>
> Can the Kindle actually do that?
Yes. Plug it into a computer. They're in the "documents" folder. Your audio
books are in the "audio" folder. Etc.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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scott wrote:
> The audio DAC is probably one of the simplest
> parts in the phone for the designers to do.
You probably have separate DACs for the MP3 player and the rest of the phone
anyway.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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scott wrote:
>> PS. Why is there a 20-minute delay between turning a phone on and being
>> able to use it? Even my PC isn't /that/ slow...
>
> Probably because they don't anticipate you doing it very often,
There's an intentional 20 second delay between the phone being ready and the
phone registering (at least in CDMA) because registration is a lot of work
on the server side (looking up roaming lists, etc) and they don't want you
screwing things up by intentionally cycling the phone over and over.
As for a long boot time, chances are you have a crappy slow SIM, and it's
taking 20 minutes to copy the data from the SIM into the volitile memory of
the phone
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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Invisible escreveu:
>> yes, DRM is illegal.
>
> In which legal system? :-P
>
>>> Riiight. So I can pay £40 or more for the headphones with the special
>>> phone-specific plug and listen to low-quality MP3 playback.
>>
>> why low-quality? are you still in the 56kb/s era?
>
> What, you think they're going to put a top-of-the-range DAC into a cheap
> device intended for relaying speech?
that cheap device is more computationally capable than your average PC
from 15 years ago. One day it'll be running Crysis and quality DAC's
will be common in even the cheapest models, let alone models geared at
multimedia playing as today's.
--
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9
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On Fri, 14 Jan 2011 09:20:50 -0800, Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> On 13/01/2011 05:22 PM, Darren New wrote:
>>
>>> That's the link I was looking for.
>>>
>>> http://www.slashgear.com/qualcomm-mirasol-color-ereader-hands-
on-0869191/
>>
>> That display looks very, very dark. Maybe it's just a bad picture, but
>> it looks almost unreadable.
>
> I was thinking as I looked at it that it didn't really show off the
> product too well. Hard to say whether it's the photography or the
> device.
>
> Altho around 15 to 25 seconds, it looks pretty good.
I thought it looked pretty good, myself - going to be interested to see
what comes out in the fall to have a look for myself.
Jim
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BTW, all this talk, the fact my cell phone was quite old already and the fact
Santa gave me nothing at all ;) made me buy a... *drums roll* Motorola
Milestone! :p
So I guess I need to apologise to Stephen, since I'm now on the small screen
side too... :)
Amazing lil pocket computar with 1Ghz CPU and all bang Androide apps can
provide...
This posted from it too. :) kinda hard typing with fingernails in the lil
qwerty kbd or the swype touch one but I will survive... LOL
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On 15/01/2011 1:01 PM, nemesis wrote:
> So I guess I need to apologise to Stephen, since I'm now on the small screen
> side too...:)
No need to apologise, I hope that you enjoy your experience.
BTW My Sony reader’s screen is not that small it is 3.5” X 4.75” or 9 X
12.3 cm if you prefer. About the size of a cheap paperback.
--
Regards
Stephen
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Stephen <mcavoys_at@aoldotcom> wrote:
> On 15/01/2011 1:01 PM, nemesis wrote:
> > So I guess I need to apologise to Stephen, since I'm now on the small screen
> > side too...:)
>
> No need to apologise, I hope that you enjoy your experience.
> BTW My Sony reader’s screen is not that small it is 3.5” X 4.75” or 9 X
> 12.3 cm if you prefer. About the size of a cheap paperback.
>
Me and my big mouth... LOL
Only 6x11cm here... :p
But resolution is damn good at 480x854. And parchment for IF works... :)
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On 14/01/2011 05:21 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> my grandparent's favourite authors
>
> Who are some of these authors?
I can't possibly remember the names now. But basically they like reading
crime / mystery / detective type stuff.
Like I said, you look under "books", and each author has a stack of
stuff. Look under "Kindle", and the lists come up blank or nearly blank.
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On 14/01/2011 05:25 PM, Darren New wrote:
> scott wrote:
>> The audio DAC is probably one of the simplest parts in the phone for
>> the designers to do.
>
> You probably have separate DACs for the MP3 player and the rest of the
> phone anyway.
You reckon? I would have thought space and power consumption
considerations would preclude that.
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>> You probably have separate DACs for the MP3 player and the rest of the
>> phone anyway.
>
> You reckon? I would have thought space and power consumption
> considerations would preclude that.
Well for power consumption the DAC for the the phone conversations can
be much lower quality. It wouldn't surprise me if there was a clever
DAC that could be switched between low-quality-low-power and
high-quality-high-power mode. There is all sorts of stuff like that in
phones.
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> I bought the
> content, and I'm not breaking the DRM to profit from it - but to preserve
> my access to the content in the event that I cannot get it back again.
Presumably they factored in to the original price that a certain % of
customers will re-buy the same material due to losing access, changing
hardware or whatever. They also probably put something in the license
describing that too. If everyone removed the DRM they would probably
need to sell it for a higher price.
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On 17/01/2011 11:30 AM, scott wrote:
>>> You probably have separate DACs for the MP3 player and the rest of the
>>> phone anyway.
>>
>> You reckon? I would have thought space and power consumption
>> considerations would preclude that.
>
> Well for power consumption the DAC for the the phone conversations can
> be much lower quality. It wouldn't surprise me if there was a clever DAC
> that could be switched between low-quality-low-power and
> high-quality-high-power mode. There is all sorts of stuff like that in
> phones.
I wouldn't have thought there's any relationship at all between quality
and power consumption. Not for a DAC, anyway. Either way it's a pretty
low-power device. Presumably the transmitter and backlight use vastly
more power...
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> I wouldn't have thought there's any relationship at all between quality
> and power consumption. Not for a DAC, anyway.
In general more power means you have more possibilities to do stuff to
increase the quality. If you've designed what you think is a great DAC,
and someone tells you to reduce the power by 25%, chances are the
quality will suffer as a result. All sorts of things used to increase
quality (eg digital filters, analogue filters, voltage regulators) draw
power, and usually can be removed/replaced to reduce the power.
> Either way it's a pretty
> low-power device.
Only if it's designed that way, according to Wikipedia a typical DAC for
PC soundcards is the CS4382, which draws almost half a Watt during
normal operation - not really suitable for a portable device! Believe
me, the phone makers will be pushing very hard to get the power for all
components as low as possible, every little helps!
> Presumably the transmitter and backlight use vastly
> more power...
Backlights usually use around 100 - 200 mW depending on the screen size,
but I don't think they usually stay on (at least not at full power)
whilst music is playing, do they? The transmitter should be on almost
zero power whilst playing music, and judging by the talk times and
battery capacities, looks around half a Watt whilst in a call.
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On 17/01/2011 01:30 PM, scott wrote:
>> I wouldn't have thought there's any relationship at all between quality
>> and power consumption. Not for a DAC, anyway.
>
> In general more power means you have more possibilities to do stuff to
> increase the quality. If you've designed what you think is a great DAC,
> and someone tells you to reduce the power by 25%, chances are the
> quality will suffer as a result. All sorts of things used to increase
> quality (eg digital filters, analogue filters, voltage regulators) draw
> power, and usually can be removed/replaced to reduce the power.
I still rather suspect that rather than put in a high-quality DAC and a
low-quality DAC, they'll just not bother with the high-quality one at all.
>> Either way it's a pretty low-power device.
>
> Only if it's designed that way, according to Wikipedia a typical DAC for
> PC soundcards is the CS4382, which draws almost half a Watt during
> normal operation - not really suitable for a portable device!
OK. But also not *designed* for a portable device either. I'm sure
somebody has come up with much more frugal designs.
>> Presumably the transmitter and backlight use vastly more power...
>
> Backlights usually use around 100 - 200 mW depending on the screen size,
> but I don't think they usually stay on (at least not at full power)
> whilst music is playing, do they?
I would hope not.
> The transmitter should be on almost zero power whilst playing music
I don't know that much about GSM, but doesn't it have to periodically
broadcast to keep in touch with the network?
> and judging by the talk times and
> battery capacities, looks around half a Watt whilst in a call.
Mmm, maybe.
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> I still rather suspect that rather than put in a high-quality DAC and a
> low-quality DAC, they'll just not bother with the high-quality one at all.
And then your MP3s sound like phone conversations .... ummm I doubt it.
IIRC phone conversations are up to 3.4 kHz or something, whilst MP3s
are usually up to 20 kHz or so. As a very simple solution you could
just run the same DAC at a slower clock rate for the voice calls to save
power, but I bet there are far more sophisticated solutions actually
used in the handsets.
>> The transmitter should be on almost zero power whilst playing music
>
> I don't know that much about GSM, but doesn't it have to periodically
> broadcast to keep in touch with the network?
Hence "almost" zero, and not actually zero.
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On 17/01/2011 03:03 PM, scott wrote:
>> I still rather suspect that rather than put in a high-quality DAC and a
>> low-quality DAC, they'll just not bother with the high-quality one at
>> all.
>
> And then your MP3s sound like phone conversations .... ummm I doubt it.
> IIRC phone conversations are up to 3.4 kHz or something, whilst MP3s are
> usually up to 20 kHz or so. As a very simple solution you could just run
> the same DAC at a slower clock rate for the voice calls to save power,
> but I bet there are far more sophisticated solutions actually used in
> the handsets.
Is power consumption directly related to clock speed in some way?
>>> The transmitter should be on almost zero power whilst playing music
>>
>> I don't know that much about GSM, but doesn't it have to periodically
>> broadcast to keep in touch with the network?
>
> Hence "almost" zero, and not actually zero.
Oh, OK.
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> Is power consumption directly related to clock speed in some way?
Pretty much always. On the digital side of things transistors use most
power whilst switching (as opposed to being in steady state on or off),
so the more switching they do per second the higher the average power
consumption. On the analogue side the details probably vary depending
on exactly which DAC architecture you're using, but in general I can't
imagine power going down at higher clock speeds. Higher clock speeds
mean faster rate of change of voltage, which usually means higher
currents are involved, so more power gets dissipated in various components.
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On 17/01/2011 03:33 PM, scott wrote:
>> Is power consumption directly related to clock speed in some way?
>
> Pretty much always.
Mmm, OK.
> On the analogue side the details probably vary depending on
> exactly which DAC architecture you're using, but in general I can't
> imagine power going down at higher clock speeds.
No, but it could stay roughly the same.
I suppose the next question is how much power changes with frequency,
but I guess that's going to depend intimately on exactly what you're
doing...
I still rather suspect that the difference between a 30,000 sps DAC and
a 20,000 sps DAC is rather minute, but whatever.
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scott wrote:
> In general more power means you have more possibilities to do stuff to
> increase the quality.
Or, more bitrate means more switching means more power. Running a DAC at
22KHz is going to take lots more power than running it at 8KHz.
> the phone makers will be pushing very hard to get the power for all
> components as low as possible, every little helps!
As an example, the list of phone numbers to start ringing this second is
delivered in numerical order so your phone can wake up, watch the list go
by, and not have to stay turned on for the entire packet before turning off
if its number is not in the list.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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On Mon, 17 Jan 2011 11:35:07 +0000, scott wrote:
> Presumably they factored in to the original price that a certain % of
> customers will re-buy the same material due to losing access, changing
> hardware or whatever.
Not for the Nook, as I can associate any Nook with my account and access
my content.
Making customers have to re-buy material because they lost access would
be very poor customer service indeed.
Jim
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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Jan 2011 11:35:07 +0000, scott wrote:
>
>> Presumably they factored in to the original price that a certain % of
>> customers will re-buy the same material due to losing access, changing
>> hardware or whatever.
>
> Not for the Nook, as I can associate any Nook with my account and access
> my content.
Same with the kindle, yes.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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scott <sco### [at] scott com> writes:
>> I bought the
>> content, and I'm not breaking the DRM to profit from it - but to preserve
>> my access to the content in the event that I cannot get it back again.
>
> Presumably they factored in to the original price that a certain % of
> customers will re-buy the same material due to losing access, changing
> hardware or whatever. They also probably put something in the license
> describing that too. If everyone removed the DRM they would probably
> need to sell it for a higher price.
Very logical, but I'll believe it when I see hard data. There's way too
much involved in selling the arts, and it wouldn't surprise me if this
is the least of their concerns.
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> writes:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Some people like to refer back to the books they bought and already
>> read, that's my point.
>
> Sure. You buy Animal Farm for the Kindle. You pay $10. You read it on
> your Kindle. Amazon deletes it off your Kindle and gives you your $10
> back. You drive to B&N and buy a paper copy for $10.
>
> I'm not saying it's good that Amazon can do this, but on the grand scale
> from "inconvenience" to "catastrophe", it seems it's much closer to the
> former.
All good and well for books that are widely in print. People like me
who've read books my parents bought 50 years ago would like the ebooks
we buy today to be equally readable for our kids/grandkids.
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nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> writes:
> Trees are consumed much faster than grown. 20 years to grow one, 1
> minute to bring it down to create some, what, 1000 books? How many
> books are consumed over 20 years, let alone paper for office printing,
> toilet paper, comic book paper, newspaper paper etc?...
I'm not sure people will use their Kindles as toilet paper, so logging
for toilet paper is irrelevant.
It's not obvious that the amount of trees chopped down for paper is
unsustainable. Do you have a link to a study?
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> writes:
> Invisible wrote:
>> my grandparent's favourite authors
>
> Who are some of these authors?
He didn't say, but it's not hard to believe. Consider Arthur C. Clarke:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&search-alias=digital-text&field-author=Arthur%20C.%20Clarke
A pitiful list.
Isaac Asimov's is similar (15 books).
Precious little of Ray Bradbury.
Only one Roald Dahl.
If you're not particular, there's lots on the Kindle. If you have
favorite authors, you may have problems.
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Stephen <mcavoys_at@aoldotcom> writes:
>> Riiiight. So the bit where I sat there looking up my grandparent's
>> favourite authors and found that most of them had zero or one books
>> available for the Kindle, but dozens or hundreds in dead tree format...
>> that was all a figment of my imagination, yes?
>
> Looked in the right places.
>
>>> Unless of course the Kindle cannot upload from a PC.
>>
>> How does that help?
>
> There are lots of places where you can download ebooks to your PC.
> For instance:
>
> http://www.archive.org/details/texts
>
> http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
Somehow I doubt Gutenberg will have their favorite authors.
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Neeum Zawan wrote:
> He didn't say, but it's not hard to believe. Consider Arthur C. Clarke:
> Isaac Asimov's is similar (15 books).
> Precious little of Ray Bradbury.
Sure. None of which I'd guess were favorites of anyone's grandparents. :-)
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> writes:
> Besides, who wants a system that can delete the books you've paid for at
> any time, for no defined reason?
Get an ereader that is not a Kindle, and learn how to strip DRM if
you're brave enough.
> Still, it's not without advantages. (Size and weight being the obvious
> ones, but also the ability to enlarge the text to the point that even my
> grandparents can read it.) They're just not advances that are especially
> important to me.
One quite unintended benefit for me was the ability to read my news
through it. I use Calibre - a cross platform software for managing
ebooks. One benefit is that it has a database of news sites (and you can
add your own). You can have it once a day download all the news and save
it in a nice format (like epub, which the Kindle is arrogant enough not
to support - but you can try the mobi format).
That transformed my ereader from something I had hoped to use a few
times a year to something I use daily. After spending all my time in
front of a computer at work, it was becoming a (literal) pain to sit in
front of it at home to read the news. And what's more, it's simply more
fun reading on the ereader. Much more like reading a real newspaper than
it is on the computer. All the offensive CSS styling and other
intrusions gone.
Mind you, it *really* helps if your ereader has a touch sensitive
display (or some other mechanism that lets you easily click a link on a
given screen).
Also, I just got sick of having so many physical books. A pain each time
I move. I was refusing to buy physical books for a while, but that's not
a problem for me. What's more, I discovered sites like BookMooch and
PaperbackSwap, so now I can get rid of extraneous books, and
occasionally get one for cheap.
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