[gentoo-amd64] Re: Machine recommendations?

[Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

Thanasis posted on Mon, 16 Mar 2015 22:37:50 +0200 as excerpted:

> On 03/16/2015 08:31 AM, Duncan wrote:
>> Thanasis posted on Sun, 15 Mar 2015 21:44:54 +0200 as excerpted:
>> 
>>> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151113
>> 
>> So it's /not/ a standard ATX power supply,
> 
> If the case has enough space to accommodate it, then all you might have
> to do is drill a hole or two for the fixing screws.
> 
> 
>> 2) This PSU /does/ say "super low fan noise" in the specs, and the
>> reviews seem to agree, tho the noise level in dB isn't actually
>> quantified for comparison purposes.
>> 
>> I'd be a bit skeptical of the feature claim on its own without an
>> actual comparable dB quantification, but the reviews do alleviate my
>> skepticism somewhat.  That may be an additional reason for the price.
> 
> Most probably this PSU is going to be totally silent for you. Why? Take
> a closer look at the third one image, the small label near the PSU's fan
> (rotate the image 180 degrees to read it):
> 
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151113

I see it now. Thanks, both of you.  =:^) (Someone else mailed me directly 
pointing that out as well.  Maybe they don't want their address posted 
publicly on the list and thus didn't post there, so I won't be specific.)


And someone else mailed, saying lucky me, they can still only get 1.5 
Mbit DSL.  FWIW, I'm actually on a much lower plan now, ~6 Mbit/768 Kbyte/
sec down, I think 1.5 Mbit up (I'm actually not sure on the upstream, but 
it's certainly slower).  I do use it for some higher quality youtube 
streams, and of course for larger sources tarball downloads, but not 
really for much else.  (Netflix, etc, the common modern high-bandwidth 
usage, is DRMed with, AFAIK, closed source decoding required, which makes 
it not an option, for me.)

But my theory has always been that in-home LANs really didn't really take 
off at 10 Mbit either -- it wasn't until 100 Mbit fast-ethernet that 
speeds were fast enough to really start doing more than limited stuff 
over the LAN instead of local storage or at least cache and sneakernet.  
I actually believe there's a breakover threshold somewhere between 10 Mbit 
and 100 Mbit, arguably near 50 Mbit or 64 Mbit (8 Mbyte), and that once 
access speeds exceed that, it becomes much less trouble to store things 
centrally (once in the home with 100 Mbit LANs, once on the net with 
50-100 Mbit plus WANs) and simply download on demand.

If that's the case, and I think it may well be so with me, usage will 
increase only somewhat as speeds go up between say half a megabit or even 
simply always-on 140 kbps ISDL, thru 30 Mbit and possibly up to near 64 
Mbit.  But somewhere around 64 Mbit, 8 Mbyte, I expect I'd reach a 
usability threshold and my usage would take a huge jump, much as it did 
when I left dialup and switched to always-on.

So I really haven't seen the need for more bandwidth, at the still 
significantly under 64 or 100 Mbit speeds previously on offer.  Yes, I 
use more bandwidth than I used to with my 608 kbps connection, but not /
that/ much more.  But were I to go gigablast or even the so-called 
ultimate plan, IIRC 150 Mbps, I expect things would change and I'd both 
consider it worth it, and try my best to avoid dropping below that 
threshold ever again, must as when I first got always-on DSL, there 
really was no going back to dialup.

With this router I've been thinking about for awhile and now actually 
plan to start procuring parts later this week after I do some more 
research over my coming days off, my own network should be ready for it, 
making it an option I can practically look at and probably eventually 
get, even if "eventually" ends up being another year or two or five...  
To date, I've not really considered it that much as I've known with the 
current router I couldn't make use of the over-threshold speed if I /did/ 
upgrade to it, I'd get some upgrade, but still be in the below-threshold 
doldrums where I'd not find it particularly useful.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman