paul smith's Snaps & Bytes e-home
April 2004: PAUL SMITH - Greater than the sum of his parts.
When I first heard that Prescott had come out, I can't say I was all that surprised. There had always been something of the 'in denial' about his corpulent Northern pie-eating piggy-eyed persona, to my mind. However, I didn't think I'd be bumping into him down at G.A.Y. any time soon. They have a door policy you know. But then, I discovered that the Prescott in question wasn't our esteemed Deputy-Prime-Minister at all, but the latest generation of Intel CPUs. It's still a P4, but one with more cache on a smaller die. Homosexuals, give a sigh of relief now. Your carefully crafted reputation for having great taste in fashion and design isn't in jeopardy after all.
The next version of the chip will move away from those 478 pesky breakable pins, onto a 775 'contact' platform, where the pins are housed safely inside the CPU socket on the motherboard. They rise to meet the chip when you tension the retaining lever. A nice neat design.
Another soon-to-be-released revamp of PC architecture is the replacement for the ATX mainboard, called the BTX. Improved cooling and the new PCI-express slot (replacing 8x AGP) will be featured, along with the 775-pin socket needed, as mentioned above. I suspect Serial-ATA will be present too, supporting drives like the Western Digital Raptor. Pairs of these (in 36 or 73Gb capacity) are proving popular with gamers, as they can be striped to run in parallel, simultaneously reading and writing. This greatly increases data transfer rates to hurry up loading. The 10k RPM spin speed and 8Mb buffer can't hurt either.
12x DVD rewriters are expected to be released soon, to be followed soon after by media that can take advantage of their extra performance. In the meantime 8x speed drives can be picked up sub £60, to retail around the £80 mark.
Question: Is ebuyer the semi-respectable front of an evil organisation hell-bent on word domination? Certainly I'm aware of a well-known dealer who thinks it's owned by a man who likes to stroke a white cat whilst being careful to keep his face in the shadows. It was interesting to learn that they let their principles over-rule their business sense. Even when it could save them money it seems they just don't want to dance with this particular devil. Is this pride, or foolhardiness? Only on the rare occasion that they believe ebuyer is losing money on a deal will they put business their way, on the grounds that they're pushing them towards the financial grave, rather than passing them feathers with which to nest-build.
While I was talking money, I let slip that I now also write for Erotic Trade Only, a magazine for the adult entertainment industry. I know for a fact that R18 DVDs bought by dealers for £6.40+VAT retail at £29.99 or more. When was the last time you made that sort of margin? It's enough to make you want to think about sex. But not with John Prescott.
Paul Smith is still 'resting'. Job offers to info@snapsandbytes.co.uk please
499 componenty words Dale. Any problems please let me know mate.
Paul