Also, Paul Keeble said: Further to that the core explosion stopped at quads because no one could utilise the additional cores and the memory bus couldn't keep up. Modern CPUs are a cache with a small bit of logic on the side that represents the cores. Did it? Last I checked both AMD and Intel ship 6-core designs, and Intel has 8s as well. They're expensive and mostly aimed at the server market, but it sure seems like the idea that nobody could utilize them, or that it "stopped at quad" is untenable, given that people keep buying them and thinking they're using them pretty well... Memory buses also keep getting faster. Can you give us a source for the idea that most of the content of a modern CPU die is cache rather than cores? It sure doesn't look that way from pictures of, say, an Ivy Bridge i7...

If I dropped a SSD in it, do you honestly think you could tell the difference in real world non-gaming desktop usage between a high end 2009 personal computer and one from today? Yes. But I'm a developer, and I notice my build speeds. (Plus, gaming, which you explicitly bracket. Gaming is real stuff - even for people who don't buy $600 video cards.)

Pauli said: MP3 = LOSS at any bitrate. 320 kbps is great for earbuds - that's it. I will not waste time comparing cds to mp3. There is none. Buy vinyl and a decent table if you want to hear the recorded track in it's purest form. Until you jarheads start MAKING digital music (and some crap I hear these days sounds like 2 notes over and over... 010101010) you will always need to convert to analog to hear it. Uh huh. Purest form. Right. Well, except for the noise, and who cares about wear? Tell you what, how about we get a CD and Vinyl of the same thing, decently mastered*, and compare output waveforms, or do some ABX testing (with "fake record noise" added to the CD so it's as dirty as a record is in the real world). Vinyl is not pure - it's just distortion you're used to and prefer. Then you can posture to me about vinyl after you pass the ABX test. Problem is, audiophiles have historically been very bad at that: http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/bas_speaker/abx_testing2.htm http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=21&t=7953 (* In fairness, some things these days are mastered with so much compression that they just suck, and the one indirect advantage vinyl has is that people mastering for vinyl never ever do that, but that's irrelevant to the format itself.)

Interesting that they use retail packaged USB3 externals. Is there some reasoning behind that?

Michael: HDMI interfaces can support resolutions well beyond 1920x1200. (Not all of them do, of course, just as some sources still only output 720p... but that's not in the HDMI spec itself, it's a limitation of the source.) Some monitors and video cards and driver combinations don't auto-negotiate resolutions like that properly (requiring futzing and manual setup), but there's nothing about the HMDI interface, signaling, or cabling that makes it incompatible or not supported. The HMDI spec (and the fact that a cable adapter alone will work) assures us that the video signal from an HDMI port is identical to that from a DVI-D port. The HDMI spec, in fact, requires full compatibility with DVI 1.0 (HDMI spec v1.3, Appendix C). So I think it really is fair to say that "HDMI is the same as DVI" in this context... with the single caveat that some drivers for video cards aren't very good at detecting resolution capabilities of some HDMI sinks. But it's not a limitation of HDMI itself.

Jan- For example, the HP 2338h costs $239, and has HDMI, and 1920x1080 resolution. That is not $100 more than the competition (especially factoring in HP's industrial design and build quality - you can get a very cheap no-name for about $80 less... and exactly what you deserve along with it). HDMI is not an expensive thing. HDMI and DVI-D are signal-compatible, as Duncansmart says. On Jeff's post - HDMI is indeed aimed at the AV market as well as the computer market, but note that HDMI shouldn't really be thought of as a replacement for S-Video or Component; it's a digital signal at every level, lacking even DVI's (in the DVI-A flavor) analog capability. Pure digital, which is why DVI-D/Mini-DVI and DisplayPort/Mini-DisplayPort adapters are cheap and easy. (And on the DP-DVI adapters... it's kinda odd to call the cable "analog", since DP and DVI-D are digital data. There's no analog conversion process. I suspect the cheap one simply requires the DP provide a DVI/HDMI signal, which DP is capable of. I suspect also that the expensive one has it use the native DP signal and processes it into the dual-link DVI.)

Sosh Sosh: As far as I know, all available research suggests that the vast majority of people (other than a subset of SuperGeeks) run everything maximized whenever possible, and essentially page-flip for their application/task changes. Apart from modals, and things like chat clients that don't maximize, UI can usually be placed at screen edges, for a very large number of applications. Back on the main topic, I notice that a multi-monitor setup makes Fitt's Law significantly less useful in both Windows and OSX; neither does the taskbar or dock/menu on the second screen without hackery, and you end up with windows, typically, maximized with one edge floating in space; your mouse won't stop on it. Awkward, huh?