Deskthority Secret Santa 2015

[webwit]

I have received! Just in time, leaving for vacation next Tuesday. I'll open it later.

[Madhias]

I have sent my package to oversees today. Better late than never! As always a little bit complicated because of having to use special custom forms, and the usual questions regarding the 'sweets' to fill out another special formular for the food and drugs administration guys, which I never filled out in the past and it was no problem. I think that would be a problem when sending ham, meet or eggs (eggs would be a problem when there is a secret Easter round sometimes though...).

[matt3o]

I wasn't home and my neighbor signed a package for me... wondering if...

edit: no, it wasn't it...

[matt3o]

I got it!

My UK Santa is the best!

[hypkx]

I got my santa package also.

[HzFaq]

To the Photo thread with the pair of you!

[andrewjoy]

It's black rectangle night on Mu's laptop!

Get a better laptop.

You don't even need to spend that much to get a good one .

Take one

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lenovo-ThinkP ... SwSdZWb-UF

and one

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Kingston-SSDN ... SwyQtVxLaV

and add

http://wiki.archbang.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

Done!

Oh and no santa for me yet

[XMIT]

My item has not arrived yet either, and I don't think my outgoing package has been delivered yet. I really hope it was not lost.

[gogusrl]

no worries, got the package last night. will post pics tonight

[photekq]

I'm so sorry to my giftee. I wanted to get something good for you. It will be coming to you soon.

I haven't received anything yet.

[Madhias]

I heard from my reindeers that they are in Dallas right now. As always they are complaining about the heat, those lazy footmen.

[XMIT]

I heard from my reindeers that they are in Dallas right now. As always they are complaining about the heat, those lazy footmen.

16 C and overcast in Dallas right now, just like here!

[photekq]

Mine is on its way now! I also received a little something from my backup Santa today, which I'll have a better look at later..

[lolpes]

Still haven't shipped mine to my giftee pls consider it a new year's present pls! xD

Also haven't received mine yet.

[Muirium]

It's black rectangle night on Mu's laptop!

Get a better laptop.

Cheeky bugger! YouTube was blocked because I was on a Boeing 737 over Oklahoma at the time. I could have proxied around that but I had more interesting things to do than test the service's patience!

High end laptops are pretty stuck at the moment. My 2013 Retina 15 inch MacBook Pro is still top of the line. Apple's barely touched a thing about it since then, let alone the clowns up against them.

[andrewjoy]

I was under the impression you had a r-MBP but i just wanted to see the reaction . Lenovo are one of the few that come close to apple for laptops. Most other stuff is utter junk at least for the consumer grade crap , enterprise grade stuff is better but a bit lacking in display quality.

I cannot stand the crappy PC world laptop 90% of people have as there primary computer, they get it new for 250 quid and wonder why it falls apart and breaks after 1 year. I always advise people to buy second hand enterprise grade gear, my friend got a second hand dell E4300 about a year or two ago for 120 quid fully stacked , that a hell of allot of laptop for the money. Cheap PC world crap does not even come close with its horrible shiny thin plastic ... ewwe.

I have a current gen r-MBP in work but it is not mine it belongs to work.

I don't need a super fast laptop outside of work , a simple workhorse will do . It need to be small but have connectivity, they don't make the type of laptop i would buy for home use anymore. Older X series is closest i am going to get. They where known as sub notebooks back in the day , the whole idea was killed off when netbooks came out and where shit.

[Muirium]

What's really hurting laptops is phones. Used to be that a laptop was the smallest, most convenient way to use the Internet. 2007 changed all that. And the bottom fell out of the laptop market as a result. Web browsing consumers left in their hundreds of millions for the iPhone and Android.

The top, meanwhile, is being held up by Intel. Those bastards have barely moved in years! I wish AMD was still in the game, pushing them forward. (I was AMD loyal back in my home build PC days. 1st gen Athlon power!) But AMD is a shadow of its former self, and Intel's focus is on goodness knows what as they try to get reach beyond the PC market.

My next laptop may have an Apple made ARM processor inside. I'd love to see what they can do without Intel holding them back. My iPhone 6s Plus here is certainly compelling evidence that they have the talent. A laptop's power envelope is so much wider, I wonder what they could achieve. In a few years, we will see!

[andrewjoy]

I was an AMD fanboy back in the days of the Pentium 4, the P4 was a joke , it turned electricity into mediocre performance and loads of heat, there is a reason the 1.4 Tualatin Pentium 3 kept selling like hotcakes until the later generation Northwood came out as the fist generation P4s where pathetic , its also the reason that the Core architecture is an Extension of the P3 not P4 design. Since the Core2Duo came out intel have been at the top of the market in everything but the super low end , once the i3 came out however that was all over!

Apple may switch to ARM, they where one of Acorns first customers for the ARM in the newton afterall, and RISC has distinct advantages over cisc for power consumption and heat on a portable device. Even if current gen x86 cpus are a risc wrapped in a cisc interpreter for all that crappy legacy x86 code.

EDIT As for intel holding apple back , in away this is true as they want lighter and thinner, the crappy excuse for the current gen macbook is limited by heat as the case is too thin for the cpu. On pure raw performance nothing comes close to intel, i have a current gen i7 2011v3 CPU linked to 32GB of DDR4, i would like to see any mac come even close to that.

[Muirium]

Apple's own CPUs are custom designs. They're really giving the likes of Samsung and Qualcomm the shits in the mobile realm, as they're several steps ahead of everyone now for real world performance.

Something tells me the CPU Apple has in the labs just now for the Mac isn't exactly off the shelf either. They have their own programming language, compiler, operating system, APIs, and beneath it all: the silicon. I can just picture the day they kiss Intel goodbye and start to measure laptop battery life in days!

Like most Mac users, I don't game and I don't run VMware. An architecture switch would be fine by me. Well, once I'd done grumbling about the support outlook for my old i7! My last Apple laptop was a PowerBook G4 after all. I don't exactly replace them often!

[7bit]

2 days to go!

[gogusrl]

Pretty sure mine won't get there on time, it has a loooong way to go. Hope it gets there between Christmas and New Years Eve at least.

[andrewjoy]

Apple's own CPUs are custom designs. They're really giving the likes of Samsung and Qualcomm the shits in the mobile realm, as they're several steps ahead of everyone now for real world performance.

Apple adapt the design into there SoC but the main core is still developed by ARM apple just licence it for use in there SoC. This is the same for anyone who develops an ARM CPU from Samsung to TI.

Don't think mine is getting here before xmas , oh well

[seebart]

Apple adapt the design into there SoC but the main core is still developed by ARM apple just licence it for use in there SoC. This is the same for anyone who develops an ARM CPU from Samsung to TI.

I always find it amusing how many people truly believe that Apple actually manufactures hardware themselfs.

[andrewjoy]

I know that they take a ARM CPU core and a PowerVR GPU and design an SoC then Samsung or TSMC make them for apple.

[Muirium]

TSMC manufactures it. Or Samsung. Same for Qualcomm and whoever else is making mobile ARM processors.

But design is what matters more than cookie cutter fabrication. Apple is in a league of its own now with the A9. They'll surprise you when their desktop class processor does arrive. Only the basic foundational IP is licensed from ARM. Implementation is everything.

[seebart]

Right, I know you know Andrew. Apple is a software company that bundles their OS with custom hardware and is very $$$ successful at it. And their OS is good, no question. It's the success of very stylish lifestyle hardware combined with their software which they practically give away unlike Microsoft. Apple OSX and the iPhone were major milestones for Apple.

Let's not get into a intercontinental OS war Mu.

[andrewjoy]

TSMC manufactures it. Or Samsung. Same for Qualcomm and whoever else is making mobile ARM processors.

But design is what matters more than cookie cutter fabrication. Apple is in a league of its own now with the A9. They'll surprise you when their desktop class processor does arrive. Only the basic foundational IP is licensed from ARM. Implementation is everything.

The main core is still designed by ARM , think of it like building a PC but inside a chip , that is essentially what apple do, they are pretty good at it, Apple and qualcom both.


EDSIT

Secret santa just arrived!

[Halvar]

Message to my dear Secret Santa: I have to apologize that I won't be able to pick up your parcel in time for the Great Unboxing on the 25th. I'm visiting family and will be back home on the 28th and pick it up on the same day hopefully.

[Redmaus]

Oh crap. I remember this now. Please tell me there was a confirm that I had to do that I missed. I was so busy with school this semester I completely forgot about the secret santa. I would hate to have someone not get a gift by christmas day that I was accountable for. I don't see anything about it in my message inbox. Could someone please tell me the state of the secret santa for me?

[Muirium]

Only 7bit knows who got who. PM him about it.