Recent Comments:
Tesla Motors says its Roadster is not a converted Lotus Elise {Engadget}
Mar 5th 2008 5:50AM In fact, the Nurburgring has nothing on the page mill to pacific run, check this out! (Warning, this is a great drive, but drive it SLOW the first few times. There are some seriously tight bends that you literally have to take at 15mph, and you need to know when they are coming up.) The payoff ending up on the pacific is alway worth the hair raising drive out :)
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=11765391013648551105,37.254458,-122.347254&saddr=page+mill+road,+ca&daddr=37.25356,-122.350616+to:cabrillo+highway+at+pescadero+creek+road,+ca&mra=dme&mrcr=0&mrsp=1&sz=12&via=1&sll=37.316387,-122.289505&sspn=0.160004,0.307617&ie=UTF8&ll=37.310926,-122.287445&spn=0.160016,0.307617&t=h&z=12
Tesla Motors says its Roadster is not a converted Lotus Elise {Engadget}
Mar 5th 2008 5:36AM I see your Ortega Highway, and I raise you Page Mill road, alpine road, and skyline road. Three of the best roads in california which the Tesla gets driven on regularly (their headquarters is about ten minutes away):
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=page+mill+road,+ca&sll=40.65667,-95.03282&sspn=0.009539,0.019226&ie=UTF8&ll=37.351192,-122.155266&spn=0.079965,0.153809&t=h&z=13
Audiophiles can't tell the difference between Monster Cable and coat hangers {Engadget}
Mar 3rd 2008 10:31PM Nah stay away from ratshack too. The only important thing for cable is guage. The thicker the better. Radioshack actually takes thin, cheap wire and wrap them in very thick insulation, so they look like decent cables but they are not. I know because I cut a few open and ~60% of the thickness is the insulation. And they are still overpriced. Stick with monoprice.com or PartsExpress.com
Mac mini gets the steampunk treatment, matching keyboard and monitor {Engadget}
Mar 3rd 2008 5:56PM Epic Win!
Sigma DP1 priced, dated, and manhandled {Engadget}
Mar 2nd 2008 11:09PM @ Robert,
not quite. You are correct about the bayer sensor color detail being the same. But a bayer sensor has full luminance detail at every pixel. So with a 14MP bayer sensor you get 14 full MP of B&W detail and then the interpolated color detail only, which tends to be done quite while in the higher and cameras. With the foveon, you only get 4.6MP of luminance data. So if you want 14MP, the entire image is interpolated, not just the color, so it ends up looking a lot worse than a 14MP shot from a bayer camera. Still, you're splitting hairs. The full-res images out of this camera are 4.6MP, end of story. Anything larger is made-up detail in both the color AND luminance.
Sigma DP1 priced, dated, and manhandled {Engadget}
Mar 2nd 2008 6:29PM @ L. Kraven,
You start off by saying my post was full of misinformation and lack of research, but you fail to prove anything incorrect about it. It specifically says in the review article that the DP-1 X3F files are not compatible with any software except the sigma conversion software, so you will need to rely on this for raw conversion for the time being.
And I could overlook a few of what I consider to be faults if they were not lying about the megapixel count. It is not a 14 megapixel camera, that is a straight up lie. It is a 4.6 megapixel camera. In the SP-1 sample gallery you linked to, full of hand selected images that are supposed to make the camera look good (a few of them still are still ho-hum), you'll see that the actual resolution is 1760x2640, which is 4.6 megapixels. You can get more than twice the res for half the price with a high-end compact. The G9 will produce better image quality if you downres from 12 megapixels to match the 4.6 of the SP-1, and even so I'd much prefer a 12 megapixel image to make a decent print after some color work.
So call it what it is. It's an $850 4.6 megapixel compact camera with a fixed lens, very similar in size to the G9. I personally think that's a bad deal, as if I really care about images I can use I'm going to bring my DSLR. If I want a camera with great quality but above all a compact form factor, I'd stick with the G9 for far less coin. Just stop calling this thing a 14 megapixel camera. It's not. If this was truly a 14 megapixel shooter I'd have no hesitation recommending it and maybe even picking one up for myself. But it's a thinly veiled marketing campaign for what is as of now a very expensive camera with few features and substandard resolution.
Sigma DP1 priced, dated, and manhandled {Engadget}
Mar 2nd 2008 2:51PM I said it back when this thing was announced and I'll say it again:
this camera is pointless and a waste of money.
First of all, it's NOT a 14 megapixel camera. It's a four megapixel camera. If you want 14MP it upsamples and looks like crap, as you can see from the sample photos. As long as you keep it at 4MP your images will be sharp and have great color, but have fun printing anything larger than an 8x10. C'mon 4MP?! what is this 2002?
Next up, the lens. First of all, it's a prime wide angle. Why not a more mild wide angle such as a 35mm, or standard 50mm? That would reduce color fringing issues and allow a much larger aperture. Especially with being capped at ISO800 and the poor luminance noise at that level, this camera is very limited in low light situations, and useless indoors.
NO MANUAL FOCUS RING. You get a bullshit dial when all they had to do was put a ring on the lens. Sorry, but for $850 you're gonna have to give me legit manual focus.
No built-in optical viewfinder. You have to dish out an extra $140 for a clip-on rangefinder. So Now you've dropped $1000 on this thing, and it's much less portable.
Shitty video mode. Sorry, but if this thing is supposed to be a compact where's the decent video mode? Almost all consumer compacts can manage at least VGA video these days, and some can manage 720P. This gives you a camera-phone level 320x240, which is bullshit. I might as well draw a flipbook.
Non standard RAW files. You HAVE to use sigma's raw converter, since the X3F raw format isn't supported anywhere else. Yeah, have fun with that! This means an whole extra step of converting and saving all your images if you want to do HDR processing. Plus, sigma's raw conversion engine is probably not the best out there, but you're stuck with it.
Everex gets official with $499 gPC mini desktop {Engadget}
Feb 27th 2008 12:12AM Just so you guys know, the mini PCs like this and the mac mini don't use full sized PC4200 sticks, they use the smaller laptop style chips, probably PC5300, and they may have only one slot and it may even be soldered to the mobo, so find out before claiming you can just snap 2GB in like it's nothing.
Everex gets official with $499 gPC mini desktop {Engadget}
Feb 26th 2008 11:59PM Just get a mac mini. I just set one up to power a 1080P display for an art installation last week and it's working like a charm. Completely silent and has 1GB RAM (hasn't yet sending 1080p content). Install vista media on it and away you go. I use a cheap DVI-HDMI cable, and then it also has optical audio so you get it digital straight into the reciever. I was even able to hide the entire computer including power supply inside the flat panel itself, near the port bays (it's wall mounted on a flush-mount). And oh yeah it has wifi and bluetooth. I browse on it using a logitech mx revolution wireless set from across the room and it works great. Pleasantly surprised; it's a very well built, well designed, silent, small, yet powerful and capable computer.
Everex gets official with $499 gPC mini desktop {Engadget}
Feb 26th 2008 11:50PM Macs are not overpriced at all. Not when you consider that alternative. Sorry, windows is awful. I have to use XP pro at work every day and it's the only thing that sucks about my job. We wish that we could use macs for everything but some lame ancient database software we are using is only available for XP so we're stuck until we find an alternative. Shit just doesn't work on windows. For example, adobe illustrator is completely different under windows than OS X. On OSX it works well and is a useful tool, under XP it's a piece of crap and doesn't feel nearly the same. A computer is an INVESTMENT. And one of the cheaper ones at that. Do you spend more time on your computer or in your car? And how much did you drop on THAT? I'll happily part with $2500 for a computer that will WORK WELL for me for three years and help me do the things I need to do (like illustrator), at which point I'll sell it for about half of what it cost me (macs have much better resale value than others), and buy a new one. So in effect the total life cycle cost for a beautiful machine I use every single day for many hours and that I rely on for my livelihood costs $1200 every three years. TV service costs three times as much. So, although macs are many things, some good and some not, they are NOT overpriced.
