To the true nerds

[Mikey]

And believe me, I've heard about how quickly your Desire works.

[Nickswitz]

Ok, true, you can get it to work, however most people I know will try and use a million and one apps and then blame t he stupid phone for crashing, and that's on phones like the droid etc. Plus it seems to be running the HTC sense which is the biggest power hog ever, it burns at least 150 MHz if you aren't using it, and if you are using it then your wasting about 200 MHz, so the amount of pretty you get cuts your productivity down tsp low that it isn't worth it, and Android itself uses about 50-150 MHz, you would think that the add ons would use less than the actual OS, but then again, that's why HTC doesn't do software, they do hardware and attempt software, so it could be fine but the majority of the time as a nominal user you would have only about 250 MHz to run other software, which means that you would be able to run about 10-20 other normal apps before you started to see the slow down. Now that seems like a lot Android keeps all apps running in memory, so when you don't go into the memory management you start to lose power in the processor fast.

So no reliant, it isn't elitist thoughts, it's knowledge.

And I don't know if these tests are published online anywhere, but I actually tested it on someone's HTC incredible with the senseUI on it.

This is why I feel it is outdated, because HTC always bogs down their hardware with software that isn't able to run on the hardware they give it, the HTC incredible was their highest end phone running Android and it's only got a 1 GHz processor, which isn't slow by any means but it's very bogged down with their software.

[Reliant121]

Im gonna go into the debate head first here.


To hell with tests. The greatest test of how a phone works is someone pickin the thing up and using it. And the Legend is one of the faster phones i've used. It floored a Touch Pro2 that I had with ease, and its comfortable able to manage the 6 apps max that Android keeps open without a hitch. I tell you that the Legend, or the Aria for AT&T will easily run what a normal user will run.

As to the Incredible, Its identical spec wise (besides a bigger screen) to my Desire which is a GSM phone hence why you guys dont have it much. It is the fastest phone i've ever used and thats even with the sense UI. It's not that far of the X10 which is powerful even if the phone itself is naff and I think its only marginally behind the nexus one which is incredibly fast. I would quite willing pit it vs. an iphone even, which is well noted for its smoothness even with a small processor. And the incredible ONLY has a 1ghz processor. Thats the biggest on the damn market! (at the moment at least, I think Qualcomm are trying to bring a 1.2 ghz)

The Aria will work just fine with all this because it has a smaller screen, meaning there's less real estate for the 600mhz to push the system around. I stand my ground that the Legend is more than adequate.

We gotta remember that you and I (Nick I mean) are absolute geeks for phones. Sonic, while a trekky, isnt a phone nerd and doesnt need a superphone. I found the Legend more than comfortable compared to the touch pro 2 which I believe he has, and so I think the Aria equivalent will be great for him. The only thing he will miss is the smaller screen.

[Nickswitz]

Fair enough about the phone nerd thing, it does make a big difference, and I didn't know that stock it only held 6 apps in memory, the Incredible they had held all in memory, in which case with the 6 in memory it should be fine.

And I know that the 1 GHz is the biggest thing on the market, doesn't mean it's slow, I was saying that with the SenseUI it's severly bogged down and runs much slower than say the Motorola Droid that runs on the same processor. If they made SenseUI more power-efficient I wouldn't have a problem with it, but overall it is a power hog and in my estimation will severely cripple a slower processor.

However, for you Sonic it should be fine, just don't try and run a ton of high powered apps on it, and it should work pretty well.
The Motorola Backflip actually isn't bad either, it's older, but it's also cheaper, but again the MotoBlur is crippling as software can be, but it does make social networking much much easier. So basically you have to decide between those two phones on AT&T and the Motorola Backflip is a little bit cheaper, and has a real keyboard, and a huge keyboard at that if your one that's big on texting.

[Reliant121]

My first android phone was a HTC Tattoo (don't think you Colonials get it) and it had a 400 something processor and yet it still managed fine. Sense isnt really all that big of a bug bear. It wont be as quick as a non-customized OS, sure, but I think sense benefits more than outclass its drawbacks.


Most android phones can get a task killer installed from the market which is really worthwhile, even the most powerful ones can do with a task killer.

[Nickswitz]

Yeah, most certainly a task killer, and remember that the Tattoo was running on a much older OS, so it wouldn't have had much of a problem, however your right, Android is so little of a power hungry beast that it can take a lot more than most will give it, however some people will try something out and then will end up burning the phone out by customizing it to the extreme, which I would love to do, but it's better to not do on a weaker phone.

[Reliant121]

Yeah, most certainly a task killer, and remember that the Tattoo was running on a much older OS, so it wouldn't have had much of a problem, however your right, Android is so little of a power hungry beast that it can take a lot more than most will give it, however some people will try something out and then will end up burning the phone out by customizing it to the extreme, which I would love to do, but it's better to not do on a weaker phone.

Thats where you'd buy the likes of the Nexus One. Its immensely powerful, and with no fiddly stuff to get past like customised OS.

[Nickswitz]

I would love a Nexus One, sadly I don't have the money to spend on one and I wouldn't want it unless I could put it on a contract, which I would never go into a contract with T-Mobile over here, because they are such a horrible service here in the US.

Now, I've been looking into starting up a buisness of my own, electronics repair/servicing/costumizing, the works, I can do it all, but I need a standardized pay rate. And I don't want to charge per hour because that's rediculous with the amount of hours I spend working on these things, but rather based on the job.
So for all you Americans on here, and heck, everyone, just give me what you would pay for these services,
Virus removal- I know it's easy, but people are stupid and will pay for this, it would be insanely cheap, like $20, because my tools are free, so might as well
Full overhaul of computer- removing everything and reinstalling the base OS and keeping user data intact, this would be for serious viruses that have corrupted base OS files, and would only be a last resort.
Upgrade- upgrading RAM, HDD, anything on the computer, I could do it, I have the software and the ability to do it, so it would be no problem for me, and they would pay for parts and installation, what I'm wondering is how much to charge for installation, I think $20 is reasonable, tell me what you think.
Customized computer- built from scratch and using my own knowledge of computers to make the best computer for the designated price you want, obviously I won't do ludicrous ones like $200 for a beastly machine, it wouldn't happen, however I'm not sure how much to charge for the actual building of it, I mean I did it before and charged about 50 for it, but I think instead of a base pay I think it should be a percentage, most of these would be far over $500 so I think about a 10% construction fee would be appropriate, and would make the machine still less costly then buying it off the store shelf, plus I would install whatever OS and other stuff they want installed on it.

So what do people think, give me some numbers you think are appropriate or that you would pay, because then I could defenitly set something up and then set up some real numbers to post up wherever I get space to do so.

[Nickswitz]

Well I just thought about this, for gaming, what is the most important thing to spend your money on? I honestly believe that the CPU is one of the more important things, but if you can get a video card with a dedicated CPU on it then that for the most part works very well if you have a lower end you want to upgrade without upping the mobo and CPU.

[Reliant121]

ive always found RAM to be a big problem.

[Tyyr]

For gaming it's your video card, then your RAM, and finally your processor. The heaviest load gaming puts on your rig is rendering graphics which it dumps off on the video card. Your RAM is also important as you're moving lots of data around. Your processor is rarely going to be a bottleneck when it comes to gaming. It has to be REALLY out of date to drag your whole system down if you've got a solid up to date video card and plenty of RAM.

[Nickswitz]

Very true, but for the most part your limited by the mobo, and it can be upgraded basically till the OS no longer recognizes it. So for Macs indefinetly, for Windows much lower... Not sure why windows is limited.

Reliant, do you specialty pick your RAM or do you pick out whatever is there and not really care about the brand, I used to not care, then I really noticed how much better some RAM is than others.

[Reliant121]

Depends. Most computers we have cobbled together from whatever we had, but we do take note of the brand.

my current computer was a prebuilt package. Dont know the brand, dont really care since it works just fine for me.

[Tyyr]

I like Corsair and GSkill for my RAM. Corsair is top of the line but GSkill is very good as well.

[Nickswitz]

For gaming it's your video card, then your RAM, and finally your processor. The heaviest load gaming puts on your rig is rendering graphics which it dumps off on the video card. Your RAM is also important as you're moving lots of data around. Your processor is rarely going to be a bottleneck when it comes to gaming. It has to be REALLY out of date to drag your whole system down if you've got a solid up to date video card and plenty of RAM.

Yes, but the biggest problem is that unless you have a dedicated processor on your video card, the processing power is taken from your CPU, as well as the RAM, which now they have video cards that pretty much could run a computer by themselves. So it depends on the age of your rig, if it's over 5 years the biggest problem will probably be your graphics card, if it's fairly new then the most likely culprit, if you have an up to date card is going to be your RAM.