Search results

You're thinking of one specific, rather narrow example of where CFLs don't work particularly well, and forgetting the majority of times where they work just fine. Motion detector lights are not a big consumer of energy overall. They go on for a few minutes, then may be off for hours. Why sweat...

Samsung Electronics revealed that they have made a prototype 64 Gb NAND flash chip using a 30 nm process. Production is expected to start in 2009. The new process promises to improve cost efficiency as well as increase capacity to 8 GB on a single chip. I remember back when 8 GB represented...

That seems like a lot of damage given that you were only at running speed. About 20 years ago I went down after hitting a pothole at 37 mph but didn't suffer near that many injuries. I think I had some road rash on both my knees and one elbow. I was back on the bike next day. It more or less...

I agree here 100%. The auto industry is more entrenched than any other industry in history, period, even the railways of the early 1900s (and the robber barons who ran those were notoriously resistant to innovation). Along those lines of thought, GE seems to be showing little interest in LEDs...

That's really the main value I see in this. The concept of buying carbon credits seems like a shell game to me, but at least getting people to think about this stuff is an important first step in getting them to take action. In truth, I'd also like to see some estimates of the cancer deaths a...

Considering that flash RAM cell dimensions are shrinking by a factor of two each year (meaning four times the storage on the same chip), that may come sooner than you think. Today 16GB flash drives are at roughly the same price point as 500 GB hard drives. In 2010, or 3 years time, those same...

It works with the Win98 system files also. I guess making the drive bootable required a complete reformat rather than just using the sys command. While I'm at it I might as well put a bunch of diagnostic tools on the drive since there's plenty of space left, even with all my digicam pictures...

Well, I tried the procedure here and it worked with a single FAT32 partition. The HP USB Flash Drive Format Tool used the Windows ME system files. Maybe the Win98 system files just don't work for whatever arcane reason? I don't care either way. So long as I can boot into some sort of DOS it's...

I'm just interested in booting to DOS for now. XP doesn't have an MS-DOS mode like '98, and I have a few programs I still use which don't work correctly under XP's DOS emulation. In the future I may also want to set up a flash drive to emulate the XP install CD, or perhaps as an emergency boot...

I finally bought my first USB thumb drive. I've been wanting one for a while, but the prices for a given capacity point were too high for my tastes. Staples had a nice 4GB drive on sale for $29.99 last week. This seemed reasonable, so I bought it. Anyway, I figured it might be useful to make...

Interesting. I remember mentioning a few years ago while discussing NVRAM either here, or at SR, that future PCs would probably have slots for NVRAM. This would either completely replace separate hard drives, or at least supplement them. Seems this will actually happen. Half a gigabyte per...

I really love the design. Those are exactly the kinds of cars I thought we would be riding in by the 21st century, not hulking, boring SUVs. As for being unsafe, if everyone were using them it would be fine. It's the huge mass differential between vehicles which makes smaller vehicles less safe...

You're lucky to have a lifestyle where you can do this. A lot of people are stuck in 9-to-5 jobs for whatever reason, and at most get a week or two off a year. The last time I worked for someone else we didn't even get vacations, either paid or unpaid. You got fired even if you were sick for...

That is definitely a concern because you need to charge at 0.3C or better to get a reliable end-of-charge signal. 300 mA is only 0.15C. That being said, the Eneloops are high quality cells, so the charger might still be able to pick up the slight voltage depression near the end of charge. Also...

Actually it's the left arm. It's counterintuitive because the ball bearings exert torque in the opposite direction a regular bearing would. I installed a sealed bearing bottom bracket adaptor on my other bike in order to get rid of the high-maintenance one-piece crank. I didn't notice that they...

They're faily easy to use once you read the instructions. They're better in that you can find bad cells, or match cells for capacity if you'll be using them together in the same device. I've been capacity testing my cells for years using my own setups, and writing the capacity on the cell with...

Forming means charging the battery at 0.1C for 16 hours. The purpose is to evenly distribute the electrolyte so that the battery has maximum capacity and voltage, and also to restore batteries which are performly poorly. You can read about it in the MH-C9000 instructions. Since the MH-C9000...

I'll agree quality of life is more important than age but nothing worse than working your whole life, then not having much of a retirement because you die fairly young. My uncle was only retired a few years. Because he got sick, they weren't as good years as they could have been. Even my dad...

We were hoping the cancer would go into remission as it had a few years ago. No such luck. My uncle was a heavy smoker, so little doubt that was a strong contibuting factor. My condolences to your friend. 58 is really, really way too young to die. BTW, I said young because in my family...

My uncle (my dad's brother) passed away October 4. I went to the funeral yesterday. He was only 69. Too many people dying young lately, and not just in the family. Ironic that the two brothers died only 18 months apart. Online obituary in case anyone is interested.

I came across this article about a state-of-the-art 1GB hard disk from 1980 recently. This really makes you appreciate today's technology. The first picture comparing the drive to a 1GB flash card is really a hoot. A more apt comparison would have been to compare a 16GB card to the roomful of...

I hate tattoos, piercings, or for that matter even makeup. For what it's worth, most of the under 30 crowd here doesn't have piercing or tattoos (at least where I can see them). Anyway, if I were dating, I'd probably avoid anyone over 30 (just the opposite of you) because I don't want baggage...

100W is actually pretty common here, or at least it's the size we used to buy years ago when we only used incandescent bulbs. True. I think 5% of solar maximum is as high as I would care to go for interior lighting. Just to get around without bumping into things a few tens of lumens is all I...

I think once the Bush administration goes a Kyoto-like protocol is likely to be ratified in the US, regardless of which party goes to the White House. A fair number in Bush's own party are disgusted by his environmental stance. A big reason the first Kyoto protocal wasn't ratified was...

We have quad T8s in the kitchen also (it's 10'x12') and in my bedroom (a little smaller), although I have a 23W CFL which I use most of the time in the bedroom. The T8 fixture causes too much glare on my monitor, so I only use it occasionally. My workroom (7'x11') has about 14,000 lumens and 210...

That's one of my points. Selling light bulbs which last on average 750 hours is big business. So long as that's true, the companies that sell them will spread misinformation and just plain not tell consumers the whole story. Stores will not stock as many more efficient, longer lasting lights...

Same here. I can't be bothered counting minutes. Honestly, most of the time I just guestimate my time. Working on a clock is about as artificial as it gets to me.

Minor point-I'm not referring here to batteries built into low-drain devices which often outlast the useful life of the device. I'm referring solely to the commodity AAAs, AAs, Cs, Ds, and 9Vs sold at retail stores. The heart of the problem is really those who use disposables for high-drain...

I'll look into those as soon as my budget allows. I just spent ~$500 on parts for both my bikes. Neither one was really rideable any more so I had no choice. Are the clipless pedals easy to disengage? I need to stop fairly frequently for lights so that's a requirement.

Nice! It's got a 10-speed rear cluster, integrated brake-shift levers, and a triple crank in front so it can conquer hills as well as flats. Yes, it's amazing how much faster a decent road bike is. I rode my friend's MTB a few times. It was a stuggle to even hit 20 mph, never mind maintaining it...

Maybe the auto workers should do what other workers in well-paid but sporadic industries do-save some of their earnings. They make upwards of $30 an hour in a depressed area where housing is fairly inexpensive. They can and should put aside something for a rainy day. This kind of reminds me of...

You can get them here. $12.73 plus $4.99 shipping for 8 cells. Don't let the refurbished part turn you off. These are brand new cells which for whatever reason were opened and then returned. I bought 3 refurbished 8-packs. No problems at all. Well, they'll go soon enough, and then if you buy...

Yes, but there will be far fewer of them to deal with, perhaps only one rechargeable battery per 500 alkalines. Also, many cities are putting recycling programs in place for rechargeable batteries. In NYC it's already against the law to throw away rechargeables. I'll also mention that the energy...

Since we already have one "should we ban it thread" I figured it's time for another. Now our society makes a whole bunch of other, disposable junk I suppose I could pick on, such as one-use cameras, one-serving prepackaged meals, flashlights with no replaceable battery, etc. However, the one...

People don't mind getting dirty if the pay is high enough. The worst jobs are those where the work in boring and the pay stinks. These call center people are probably getting $2 or $3 an hour, and then to add insult to injury the employer has to monitor every minute. Now that's understandable...

Sunlight is what the human eye is optimized for over millions of years of evolution. Matching sunlight makes a lot more sense than matching an arbitrary type of artificial light like incandescent since it's the benchmark. Besides improving contrast, the colors in the room will more or less look...

I agree that CRI is lacking as a metric, but it is the only widely-adopted one. Gamut area (GA) and full-spectral index (FSI) are both better in many respects, but have yet to be widely used. Well, I hate the CFLs which mimic incandescents with a purple passion, especially the 2700K ones. The...

There's so many angles to this question. For starters, direct screw-in incandescent replacements are a half-assed idea whether they are CFL or LED. While it's true that it allows immediate replacement of an inefficient incandescent without replacing the fixture, the fact is that most...

I have had zero problems with the way my Samsung CLP-510 does color prints. Then again my points of reference were a Deskjet 400C and cheap chain store prints. However, even compared to magazine quality photos my color laser prints are not bad. As far as I'm concerned, color laser is...

Not to mention that type of use is a huge factor. 10,000 miles in NYC is probably more wear and tear than half a million on the highway. If certain vehicles happen to be bought more often in NYC they might have very poor reliability numbers, but that still might not be indicative of inferior...

You can't look at transit systems in isolation and say they're losing money. Rather, I look at the big picture. You build a new rail line. Even if it requires subsidies forever to keep fares low enough you'll have new development along it. The real estate and other taxes from new development...

Even though the price is in the stratosphere, at least SDD capacities are finally the same order of magnitude as magnetic disks. A few more years of Moore's Law should get the price per GB more competitive. Right now 32GB, which seems to be the sweet spot for SSDs, can be had for roughly $400 to...

Groups one and two make up the majority by far. I'd say most people fall into group two. They currently use mostly cars, but would gladly use public transit if it was decent, perhaps even not own a car at all if the public transit was comprehensive enough. Very few people actually like to drive...

Interesting. I noticed the green LED has the greatest improvement by far. This is likely because the best blues are already about 50% efficient, while greens are only around 14%. If we can get the efficiency of greens and reds to the same level as blues are, then a red-green-blue white light...

People can be incented to do just about anything. Let's not forget that public transportation works in places where it's fairly comprehensive. And people will gladly give up their cars in exchange for speed. The popularity of air travel and high-speed rail (where it exists) shows this to be...

5 minute recharge is what makes the whole range issue moot. I might understand a 200 mile range being a problem if a vehicle takes overnight to recharge, but if it can be charged as quickly as filling a gas tank then there is no problem. Also, 99% of trips are under 40 miles. A 200 mile range...

I'll second that, especially with $10 gas in the not too distant future, and the hydrogen economy a big if (IMHO hydrogen fuel cells will never be practical in cars). An ICE or fuel cell just adds needless complexity, and takes up weight which could otherwise be used for a larger battery. 200...

Typo. Should read 107-114 lm @ 350 mA, NOT 107-144. We're not at 144 lumens @ 350 mA quite yet. Probably sometime in 2008.

Forgot to mention, as LEDs get more efficient the heat problem you mentioned becomes less and less. See my thoughts on the subject here.

Look at this thread on CPF. Test results of the Rebel are in post 127. 88 lm/W at 350 mA, and holding above 50 lm/W even at 1.5A. The Q5 bin Cree XR-Es (107-144 lm @ 350 mA), which I have on order, should get into the mid-90s. Release of the R2 bin Crees, which hit 100 lm/W at 350 mA, is...