My guess with the phone one is that flipping along the face increases the instability due to the components inside the phone. The other axis are more evenly laid out. Across the face of the phone you have the battery off center, cpu etc all unevenly laid out, so the rotation as it flips becomes more unstable with each spin.

Water one has me stumped... Then again I've never full understood static electricity.

Since the CPU's were different (z80 based vs 6502 based) you can't really just compare speed by comparing clock rates... and it also doesn't take into account the PAL vs NTSC variants of the NES/Famicon.

@ant
@budzos

do either of you know a FREE CPU and GPU benchmark program ?

I just upgraded and want to see what my baby can do !

Your video, How a CPU is made, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

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Nope.
Memory is soldered on. Onboard storage is soldered on. CPU is soldered on. Video card is 100% custom design, impossible to buy elsewhere.
You are buying essentially a $3000 disposable aluminum can warmer.

Are you an AMD CPU guy with a Radeon then....

or.... an Intel CPU with a GeForce....

choose wisely....

These computers will save the world.
Big claim...they are a big game changer though.
They have more conventional processing power than a traditional CPU with registers the size of the count of all atoms in the known universe.

i.e. 64 bit CPU...has 64 bit registers....

In-sane.

Looks like this iteration of the series will require an upgrade of my hardware, so I suppose Rebirth is quite a good fit as a name.

That'll be the end of the longest stretch without an upgrade since 1991. The current setup did its job since shortly after the release of Age of Conan in May of 2008. That's 64 months at 10+ hours a day, slaving away as a gaming rig and HTPC. It was the 8th CPU since '91, the 12th video card -- and they're still running just as smooth as ever.

Maybe I'll get some more Cat 5 and use this box as a dedicated HTPC...

The thing is though, the way it's described in this video. Unless I am totally off in LaLa land concerning electronics and how they hook together. There's just no way his power grid section is going to work with 4 connectors. Let's assume 4 connectors is all anything needs, then how do you swap out pieces and re-arrange them to your desire and still have the connections end up to where they hook up properly to others without replacing the grid backing?

So if you need a grid backing for each arrangement, you're not helping your cause.

He's basically saying the grid back is your motherboard, which needs a bare minimum of things to function and it designed for them to hook up in certain ways with a myriad of different pin configurations. And you think of how many things in the PC market aren't QUITE compatible, like they do hokey things even though standards wise they should be compatible....so you have to look at the MFG sites to see if they have tested it with XYZ....

I mean hell anything PC is kind of throwaway as it is now, they cycle in new standards so fast. The only main difference is you can build it like you want it, so you're less likely to replace it soon....and if most things break you can replace them to keep from throwing everything else out...within some period of time usually 5-6 years would be a good "hope" for things like motherboards, cpu if you're right on the cutting edge. 1-3 if you buy them later in their life cycle.

So, maybe instead of a blok style phone, they need a design where shops could essentially build you a phone around a core module for each phone carrier. Then you wouldn't have 8 bazillion phones being manufactured each year and being tossed. You'd have 20 bazillion parts that could be used as needed within a few years to fit someone's needs/wants.

But, it won't happen. And they'll say it's because they are keeping costs down by doing it how they do it now....you know...not because it helps maintain bigger profit margins or anything.........never.

What they're proposing is essentially similar to how desktop PCs work.

You have a central motherboard and then you swap in and out components.

But there are several problems with this:

First, a technical challenge: You can't simply rearrange the blocks like that. The connections between the cpu and the ram and storage and power are all different and for good reasons.

Next, upgradability: later this year, I will upgrade my primary work/gaming PC. What it really needs is a new CPU. But a new CPU means a new motherboard and probably new RAM. So I don't see this being as upgradeable as they think.

That said.. those are solvable problems compared to the main issue. Economics.

What is the incentive for Apple, Samsung, HTC, etc to produce one of these, or even parts for one? They would essentially commodify their own products and reduce any point of differentiation.

They seem to be fairly naive about how things work. It's true that most everything is a separate component, but their "base" would be nearly impossible to make. Every connection would have to be able to switch from being various bus types (CPU, Memory, Storage, Device), to a power type that can feed to various parts in multiple voltages.

She's obviously looking at the queue and thinking/planning several moves ahead (like a chess player would), but then, I think, the speed would also have to come down to the actual interface and how responsive the controller is in conjunction with the CPU. Not to say that it isn't impressive. Just considering what this *skillfulness probably entails...

I'm pretty sure they will be able to create the Google glass adapter, which will be basically just the right side with battery/CPU, glass screen and what not, mounted on your normal prescription glasses, making it more... acceptable...

The problem is that consoles these days don't have anything really new to offer except for more processing power which people really don't give a shit about as much anymore. The Wii proved that you can make a ton of money without having the best GPU/CPU.

You also had this phenomenon of consoles becoming more popular than PCs. But wait, they achieved this because the console added all these extra features...in other words, Consoles started to beat PCs....by becoming more PC-like. Wait a minute...that's not exactly beating PCs then is it?

Especially since I can still do more with a PC than I can do with a Console and I don't have to be restricted by what MS/Sony/Nintendo lock me into.

With the advent of Media PCs...the need for consoles have been lessened unless you specifically want to play a game that is an exclusive for a console.

What people really want is convergence, which is exactly what console makers don't want. I think people are sick of having to buy multiple consoles to play the games they want. When in reality, a PC can do it all and not be limited by these artificial restrictions.