Over a decade, 12 years (!!!) ago I wrote about who designs this crap (this millenniums laptops). And here we are the Apple MacBooks became even more unusable, with soldered in RAM, SSD, really crappy keyboards, that get stuck by mere dust. And while I would love a nice generic quality PC, there is always something wrong with each and every model. Thermal throttling, crappy keyboards, too. You name it. It is no wonder that PC sales are declining when users can not find a good and matching device:
I thought we went from SATA connected (to AHCI board controllers) straight to PCIe connected NVMe protocol. Turns out there was a short time of PCIE connected SSDs with an AHCI controller. And of course Apple used them:
One can never have enough dongles^W proprietary connectors to lock users out, ..! :-/
My first car –I now drove for 6 years– is a 2012 Mini Countryman SD. Usually I accelerate softly, follow in slipstreams and engine brake. In other words some form of light hypermiling. So with our Countryman SD, which has the 2L turbo-charged Diesel engine and a classic torque converter automatic transmission, even without start/stop automatic I get:
Mini Countryman SD 2012 - 2L Diesel:
@100km/h: ~5 L/100km
@120km/h: ~6 L/100km
Now we may have to switch to something non Diesel soon. Electric is not yet an real option, as I usually do not drive in Berlin, and only driver longer distances, e.g. thru Germany or neighboring countries (in Berlin I walk & public transport). I also do not like the Tesla all-touch controls as well as their spare part and such policy. I may consider an BMW i3, however, for a start I test drove a base Porsche Macan, 2L gasoline to experience an quality upgrade after 6 years. This was intentionally the small engine, to target better fuel economy, 2L gasoline, also turbo-charged but with PDK, double clutch transmission and finally WITH start/stop automatic. I actually had to drive really carefully, a bit more hypermiling to even reach:
I have to say I was hoping for a little less. Now this was the base engine, not the 3L V6, not an 911, Ferrari, Lamborghini, or McLaren. AND driving really slowish. Now even when I driver our Mini Countryman I’m usually one on the slower side to do my part in slow down global warming and usually other driver overtake more on the crazy side. When you watch some famous car YouTubers you probably understand what I mean. And they drive sport cars, Audio R8, Lamborghinis, Ferraris, McLaren you name it. And they accelerate like crazy. So I estimate they consume more like 20 L/100km :-/
Now my question: In this day and age, of global warming, causing forrest fires, hurricanes, floods and more. Why are not more people thinking about this? Heck, even all the non-YouTubers, normal people overtaking me with 160, 200 km/h or even more when I roll 120-130 in other’s slipstream, consume way more than they realistically need to. They need to waste their momentum for other drivers, construction sites and regular speed limits anyway, and arrive how many few percent faster than us hypermiling with 120 in other’s slip stream? When I watch many of those drivers I estimate they could easily save 50% if not more of their consumption, ..!
Is is not clear that we need to do something?
This is also quite significant price-wise, to drive 1000km @ 120 km/h – German € gas (Super+) and Diesel prices of today:
MINI Countryman SD: 6L x 10 x 1.31€ = 78.60€
Porsche Macan: 10L x 10 x 1.54€ = 154.20€
And finally my Re:score:
Fuel economy: 3
Practicality: 6
Comfort: 5
Features: 7
Quality: 7
Styling: 7
Handling: 7
Acceleration: 4
Cool factor: 5
Value: 5 Total: 56 of 100
At first I wanted to rate it Doug DeMuro score compatible, but then it struck me that he does not even have a fuel economy rating. Priorities! Guess he only factors it into “Practicality”, if at all. I therefore scratch the quite useless “Fun factor” while he had “Cool factor” already anyways, ..!
For decades fans of AMD, the inventor of x86-64, GPU infused APUs, and avoiders of a 100% Intel x86 monopoly where longing for a really high end quality machines, like IBM^W Lenovo ThinkPads. The dream came finally true, with AMD Ryzen w/ Vega gfx ThinkPads A285 and A485 this year.
This is a developing story, we will update with a review in a day or two.
So when you install some outdated, unsupported and vintage Windows, e.g. 95, for some retro fun or reverse engineering (of old VGA acceleration) the setup.exe was hanging for me in pcem scanning the (emulated) system for problems and such. Turns out the setup.exe has quite some option to skip things, … like:
/IS do not run ScanDisk
/IM skip the memory check
/ID skip the disk-space check
/iw skip Microsoft EULA licensing dialogs
So I do Linux kernel, driver, libraries, gcc, development since 1998. A little bit everywhere, all over the place. X86, ARM, PowerPC, SPARC you name it. I contributed to the Linux distribution ROCK Linux, later became stable release maintainer, and still run the fork #t2sde for embedded and special custom Linux distributions. My company ExactCODE was involved in many embedded projects and development like that, and in 2008 a customer wanted to base a product on the Nvidia Tega SoC, so I wrote Nvidia if they could release us any register level spec, even under NDA, to work on such a project. To my surprise I got an answer, but it was a simple one-liner, and not really what we needed to hear:
How is your Windows CE experience? We are not supporting Linux on Tegra.
Received: from hqnvupgp03.nvidia.com (Not Verified[172.17.102.18]) by hqemgate03.nvidia.com
id ; Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:56:40 -0700
Subject: RE: NVidia SoC SPECs for Embedded Linux systems
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:57:03 -0700
…
How is your Windows CE experience? We are not supporting Linux on Tegra.
—–Original Message—–
…
For the currently engaging projects we need solid 3D support in
our portfolio we would kindly ask for the possibility to sign an NDA
to receive register level specs support NVidia’s latest integrated
embedded SoC’s in our boards support offerings.
Just for those why I can not, and will never recommend chips without register level data sheets available to developer, ..!
Quite exactly 20 years ago I purchased my first scanner, after saving for years for my first computer: A Pentium 120, at first even running with our old ISA VGA card from my farther’s ageing 386sx25. Lafter, after saving more for my first VGA card, an ELSA Victory 3D w/ S3/Virge3D, it was also time for the first peripherals and of course to get analog material into the digital world I needed a scanner: a c’t mgazine well rated AVision AV630CS. But as Windows crashed too often than not on me, it was also time to migrate to Linux. Remember that was 1998 when few actually heard about it. And of course I had to write my own SANE scanner driver - and the rest is history:
