A letter to Senator Dodd about the sub-prime problems

Senator Dodd,

You have been stating that the "sub-prime' loan problem was caused by predatory practices.  I will argue that the borrowers signed the loan docs knowing that the rates would jump when the fixed period was over and that they planned to refinance or sell prior to that time. 

While housing was rising in price at a humongous rate this was not a problem.  The fact that these people did not see the end of the housing boom approaching is the cause of the problem. 

I do not believe that we, the people of the US, should bail out these people, nor should we bail out the mortgage companies. 

Rather than changing the rules on financing how about enforcing the rules that we have now?  Rule Z, I believe, is the rule that requires full disclosure at the time of applying for a loan. 

I need to disclose that I do have a variable rate mortgage on my property.  I am planning on refinancing prior to the loan going variable.  If I cannot refi then I must be prepared to pay for the loan at the new rate.  I knew this going in and plan to live with the consequences of my actions. 

I have given you my phone number and address; please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss this situation or any other. 

Sincerely, 

Clayton Gradis

Which processor should you buy in your next PC?

I have several computers at home. I have a server, two desktops and two laptops. My computers range in age from five years to just over a year old. Not all of the computers are ideal personal use, I'll explain why.

My server is an old Gateway that I bought about five years ago. I use the server for testing; it features two Pentium III 933 processors, a raid controller with a bunch of drives and a gigabyte of memory. The server is way too slow to use as a desktop but pretty good for testing server products.

The two laptops are my wife’s. She has a two year old Pentium 4 system running at 2.0 GHZ that she uses daily. Her other laptop is an older 1 GHZ or so system that she's had for years. She keeps it because she has some apps on it that we don't have the discs for anymore and she may need the data one day.

The two desktops that we have are AMD Athlon 64 based systems. The older of the two is a 3200+ that I've had since the Athlon was introduced. It's a single core system with a gigabyte of ram. This used to be my main workstation until I put together the new system a year ago. I used to think this system was fast but I'll come back to this story in a minute.

The second of the desktops, my current primary system, is an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ system. The Athlon 64 X2 is a dual core processor allowing this system to process two commands at a time assuming your software supports multi-threading. Multi-threading allows the program to send commands to multiple processors at the same time to spread the load out and make processing faster.

I've been playing games and running my Media Center Edition Windows XP on this system. It's worked fine but friends of mine have purchased newer systems and the X2 is no longer the fastest system while playing multiplayer games. This hasn't been a problem but more a niggling bother.

After buying the large screen HDTV I moved my X2 system into the front room to act as a DVR with the MCE software. I reclaimed the old 3200+ Athlon system and began playing games on it again. What a shocker. I don't remember the 3200+ being slow but then again I wasn't playing Company of Heroes when I was using that system.

The 3200+ system is so slow that the games would just drag and the game would pause for long periods. The game was actually unplayable. That is when I finally got the parts I needed to be able to play in the front room. I'm now back on the X2.

So, the whole point of this article is which processor should you buy if you're buying a new system. I think the keys in processor selection are

1) Get a dual core or better system. Single core processors just don’t cut it anymore. Even if your application is not multi-threaded the dual core processors help with multi-tasking and with background services.

2) The processors should be relatively quick, the 3800+ I'm running is ok but I'd rather have the newer 4600+ or 5000+ that AMD has come out with.

3) Get at least 2GB of memory. I didn't talk much about the need for memory but memory helps processors be more efficient. Not to mention that Vista requires large amounts of memory. If you are going with Vista I'd get four GBs of memory. Two will work but four is much better.

Now I need to go out and build a new system so that I can keep up with my buddies. I'd upgrade my current one but my X2 system is a Socket 939 and AMD is no longer making Socket 939 processors. I'll need to buy one of the new AMD Socket AM2 motherboards and processors or move over to an Intel system. No matter which I decide to go with I'm going to incur the additional cost of new memory as the newer systems all use DDR2 and my old systems use DDR. Oh well, faster memory helps too.

Intel currently has the better performing CPUs. When Intel came out with the Core2Duo systems they leapfrogged AMD’s Athlon processors for the king of performance title.

Fry's always has motherboard and CPU combo deals listed in their advertisements. Each week they feature an Intel and an AMD system. I'm not sure which I'll buy. I've heard rumors that there is a big price cut coming for AMD in April, I'll wait for that before I decide.

to 1080p or not

The question I have beaten to death has come back to life. I was trying to show my wife the difference between 1080i and 1080p last night so I put up a nice 1080p picture of trees and a stream. I pointed out the wonderful detail and then lowered the resolution to 1366X768 and said and here it is at 1080i. My wife couldn't see the difference.

I couldn't really tell much difference either. The main difference was not in the picture but in the desktop, we had lost a lot of real estate. I flipped the resolution back and forth several times until my wife finally conceded that she could see a minor difference and that 1080p was better.

I should have brought up a PIP with television, an MCE window with HDTV in it and a browser all at the same time. Then changing the resolution would have shown how much better 1080p is.

I guess the point of this is if you can find a 1080i monitor in the size you like for a lot less than the 1080p monitors then buy it. If the price is close go for the 1080p. You'll be happy either way. I'm ok with this because the price I paid for this monitor is less than competing 1080i models.

Did I mention I love this monitor?

OK, enough of the 1080p 1080i debate, I promise to bring up new subjects soon.

Gaming on the big screen

I finally got the last pieces together so that I can game on my big screen tv. I had to buy a 15' USB cable and a USB hub to extend USB behind the couch and around to my easy chair for the mouse. I forgot to buy extension 3.5mm cables for my headphones and microphone. WWW.monoprice.com is sold out on 25' 3.5mm extension cables so instead I used an old microphone I had laying around and ran the sound through the stereo, that wound up working well.

Gaming at 10', the distance from the tv to my easy chair, was difficult. I couldn't see the finer details in the game. I tried lowering the resolution to make everything larger but this didn't help. Company of Heroes, my current game of choice, scales the image so that you see the same text and graphics no matter what resolution you are at. At higher resolutions the graphics look more detailed but they are the same size as lower resolutions.

I wound up pushing my easy chair forward about five feet. At a five foot distance viewing everything was perfect so I changed the resolution back to 1080p and played. Finally the holy grail, 1080p gaming on a 47" tv. Incredible.

Was it better than gaming on my 19" monitor? Yes and no. Graphically it looked the same, 47" at 5 feet is not that much bigger than 19" at 1 foot. The sound coming through my stereo was cool but not that much cooler. The easy chair made all the difference. I was comfortable, kicked back with my legs raised playing for hours on end.

Yes, this is the life.

The wonders of a pc connected to your television

I'm still playing with the new 47" Westinghouse 1080p monitor connected to the Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 computer. I'm having a blast with this combination.
I watched an episode of Jericho on CBS last week, the first that I had seen. I liked the premise of the show so I browsed to CBS' website and found that they had all of the episodes available for watching online. I've now watched four of the twelve available episodes and am enjoying the series.
Prior to purchasing the Westy I would have had to watch the episodes on my computer's 19" LCD while sitting in my cramped office. Now I can lounge in my recliner in the front room and watch the shows in beautiful HD.
A problem has appeared in the MCE computer, one of the HD tuners does not appear to be working. I can only watch or record one show at a time right now. When a scheduled recording comes up the computer pops over to that channel wether we are done watching the current show or not. I'll have to rectify this problem asap.
So, what's next? I'm getting setup to play "Company Of Heroes" on the big screen, I needed to buy a USB hub and a long, 15', USB cable to reach the easy chair via the back of the couch. I didn't want to spend the extra money on a wireless mouse, wired always works out better for gaming and the parts cost about $20 shipped from www.newegg.com. I'll let you know how the gaming at 10' from the set turns out.

1080p the good, the bad and the ugly

Since I purchased the Westinghouse LVM-W471 last week I have been enjoying playing with it. Not all of the play has been good but most has. Here's a breakdown:

The Good:
Picture quality is incredible.
Resolution is incredible.
Design is very nice, looks great in my front room.
Remote is simple to use and well layed out.

The Bad:
Windows XP MCE 2005 is hard to read from ten feet away.
Sitting in my easy chair I have a hard time reading windows fonts.
I can increase the text in the window at ease with CNTRL + but increasing the font size for menu items has proven much hard. I've gone to the Appearance tab in Display properties and raised the font size to Extra Large Fonts. Unfortunately not all fonts change with this setting. I've got more digging and testing to do.

I also haven't figured out how to get both the internal and external speakers to operate at the same time.

The Ugly:
Only one component input, I'm using it for my SD cable box and have to unplug it to plug in my NES to play M.U.L.E.

wow, what have I done

The new monitor (not a televison because the Westinghouse 47w1 doesn't have a tuner) is incredible. 1080p computing and gaming is incredible. Movies and HDTV look incredible.

Web browsing does not look incredible.

The text is so small when sitting 10' away from a 47" monitor that I kind of wonder if I made a mistake in not buying a 1080i instead.

I use cntrl + in windows to enlarge the text in windows but the text in the windows frames and drop down menus is not enlarged. I tried setting larger text in properties but will need to revisit this.

Now I'm wondering if I should have saved two to three hundred dollars by buying 1080i instead of 1080p. If I had gone the 1080i route I'd never know as stores aren't setup for you to test the monitors as you will use them at home.

Other than small, crisp text this monitor is the cat's meow and I'm sure I'll work out the small text issue. In the meantime I am watching incredibly beautiful video on an extremely capable monitor.

I have my HTPC (Home Theater PC running Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005) plugged into DVI port 1. My SD (Standard Definition or non HD) Cable box is plugged into the composite video. My DVD player is plugged into Component Video 1.

I have extra ports now, one more of each DVI and Component and an HDMI all empty and waiting. What devices will I add to this monster next?

I am happy with my purchase, when I look at the price difference between what I paid and the similiarly sized 1080i systems I realize I did the right thing.

Waiting to find a good price on a Westinghouse 1080p was good, jumping on a great price for the 47" was even better.

Wooohoo, I did it!

I finally purchased my HDTV. Now I am eagerly awaiting delivery. I wound up purchasing the Westinghouse 47" LCD monitor from Best Buy. I had never considered this monitor because of the price, I ran across a deal on BestBuy.com that dropped the cost to $1622, about $300 more than the 42" Westy. I had to jump on the deal for that price.

The Westinghouse LVM-47w1 sports 1080p, two DVI inputs, one HDMI, two component and one composite. I think I'm pretty well covered with inputs.

I'll let you know how the monitor looks as soon as I get it and hook the HTPC to it.