ZATS: Episode 2
In this episode of ZATS, Ben Kelly joins us via Skype all the way from Palo Alto in the USA with Simon Dingle, Brett Haggard, Jon Tullett and Duncan McLeod in Johannesburg. We discuss the following:
- HP Labs
- New chip announcements from Intel and AMD
- The future of mobile computing and graphics hardware
- Console vs. PC gaming
- Frets on Fire
- Sentech discontinuing MyWireless
- Alan Knott-Craig stepping down as group CEO of Vodacom
- iPhone triangulation in SA
- Google’s local offerings
- Submarine cable policy
- Cloud computing
- Document security
- Adobe AIR
- Microsoft Silverlight
- The Xbox 360 Blu-ray player
- Xbox Live in SA
Click here for direct file download (you might have to right-click and select ’save target as’).
re ‘The Xbox 360 Blu-ray player’ - there is no such thing. and probably will never be, as Gates and co’s strategy is an online digital media library in which optical drives play little part.
@rob:
I seriously doubt it: there’s money to be made in Blu-ray, and Microsoft is savvy enough to grab it even if the market is fairly time-limited. It was a smart move making the HD drive external so they could switch horses, and I imagine they’ll do exactly that. You can’t argue for an XBox being the “centre of your home entertainment” without it supporting the winning HD optical format.
Replace “Gates and co” with “Apple” though, and I think you’re on to something. The Mac Air comes with no optical drive at all. Why? Because you’re supposed to get your content through iTunes, that’s why. Apple really wants to own this space, but there’s an interesting conversation to be had about whether iTunes is looking dated.
I’d be astonished if Apple hasn’t had chats with Microsoft and Sony (and probably Nintendo) about the feasibility of hosting iTunes (and iTMS) on XBox or PS3. And been firmly rebuffed, I suspect, but you never know.
Nicely done. Very impressed with Skype quality on Ben?
Here’s an idea - and something I think is missing from most podcasts that I’ve listened to. You cover quite a lot of news each week, some that’s just breaking or “scenes from forthcoming”.
I think it would really help listeners and add to show content if you started each episode with a wrap up from the week before. What’s changed? What’s progressed?
Case in point. Vista SP1. The whole discussion around a 1 gig download. Mine came out at 67mb. The download notice said between 67 and 450 odd. (I think based on how patched your system is currently). That’s still a FAR cry for the earth juddering 1 gig spoken about. It’s important for listeners to know that. And a 3-4 min update segment could plug the gap.
use it, don’t use it
One other idea. Start a delicious list of the links you talk about - stream that onto the blog and talk about it. Then post links in blog and on delicious - just makes a nice receptable if people want to check out anything you’ve been talking about post car-listening.
With regards to PC vs. console gaming: Why pay so much for high end graphics cards?
Well, contrary to (it would seem) popular believe, games are not the only applications that require good graphics cards. So called mid-range CAD products like SolidWorks and Solid Edge (about R40k per license) require e.g. NVidia Quaddro cards. Gaming cards simply do not perform that well, they work, but not well. In fact, go look on any (good) CAD vendor’s website and you’ll see that gaming cards are not certified for CAD work.
I can also state from personal experience that a professional CAD graphics card makes a massive difference. So, to fork out R8k for a graphics card makes perfect sense if you need to do real CAD work. Gaming cards are cheap by comparison…