The Icon Bar: More on Omega

Message #88111, posted at 06:35, 25/10/2000, in reply to message #88110

Unregistered user

Okay, the site sucks, but the machine is schweet!
It's on my top list of nice to have gadgets :)
One thing though: why the hell USB iso FireWire... FW is soo much better, and implicitely opens up the world to DV editing on Risc/ARM machines.

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Message #88112, posted at 09:58, 25/10/2000, in reply to message #88111

Unregistered user

Why not firewire? Take a look at web sites and catalogues, and see how many USB peripherals there are compared to firewire ones. Most PCs come with USB built in these days, but firewire is not; so if you want to get access to the biggest possible number of add-ons, you have to stick to the main standard.

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Message #88113, posted at 10:25, 25/10/2000, in reply to message #88112

Unregistered user

There are _lots_ of Fw devices.
Besides, FW is to USB what SCSI is to IDE.
and FW is _lots_ faster than USB
and since the Imago is so multimedia hyped, why not make the Omega even more FW enabled by adding FW ports?
and RiscOS is not mainstream.. will never be mainstream (I hope it will though), so choosing a mainstream device may not be the best way.
Oh well, maybe my PCI FW card will be supported :)

btw: any news on the t-shirt front? :)
--
USB, what USB? FW, that's what kicks me!

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Message #88114, posted at 10:31, 25/10/2000, in reply to message #88113

Unregistered user

Yeach.. I wrote:
... since the Imago is so multimedia hyped, why not make the Omega even more FW enabled by ...

and I meant:
... since the Imago is so multimedia hyped, why not make the Omega even more MULTIMEDIA enabled by ...

duh

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Message #88115, posted at 12:14, 25/10/2000, in reply to message #88114

Unregistered user

I didn't say that RISC OS machines will be more mainstream - that would be silly, thinking that might happen! ;) I meant that it's easier and much cheaper to get USB than firewire devices from your local boxshifter.

The SCSI v. IDE argument is a good one from my point of view too - all RiscPCs come with IDE as standard as the discs are much cheaper and easier to get hold of (there are lots of SCSI discs, but many more IDE discs on sale)! SCSI is prohibitively expensive for the average user, only professional users consider SCSI a necessity these days (hey, professional video people still use a derivative of BetaMax, but I have a VHS VCR at home ;). So in a *standard* *desktop* *machine* I think that all companies involved (not just MicroDigital) are right to go the USB route.

Of course, you could argue FW is a must in the Nucleus, as it's far from standard ;)

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Message #88116, posted at 12:15, 25/10/2000, in reply to message #88115

Unregistered user

BTW, posted something on the T-shirt page an hour or so ago ;)

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[martin]

Message #88117, posted at 12:37, 25/10/2000, in reply to message #88116

Unregistered user

If the website sucks, then no-one will take them seriously. The likes of us will "put up with it" but the rest of the world will laugh - a problem in common with many RiscOS companies...

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Message #88118, posted at 13:03, 25/10/2000, in reply to message #88117

Unregistered user

why can't the riscos developers follow another example iso wintel? like duh apple?
Apple/ Macintosh is booming, and supports FW and USB.. best of both worlds :)

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Jon Hall

Message #88119, posted at 14:31, 25/10/2000, in reply to message #88118

Unregistered user

Apple/Mac 'booming'?
Not according to Hewson in last week's Sunday Times....

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Message #88120, posted at 15:17, 25/10/2000, in reply to message #88119

Unregistered user

bleh.. sunday times, sunday schmollocks .. (dunno, never read the damn thing *grin*)...
What I hear is that the G4 macs sell quite well.

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Message #88121, posted at 16:48, 25/10/2000, in reply to message #88120

Unregistered user

Apparently cubes are not selling well, and Apple just lost 50%(?) of their share value after a profits warning. Or something.
The BBC news site has more info.

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Message #88122, posted at 17:08, 25/10/2000, in reply to message #88121

Unregistered user

Erm, is it me or is this photo of 'inside' the Omega
a bit crap? It doesn't show anything unique or
different from the PC that used to be in it.

I asked Microdigital what 3D acceleration chipset was in the Omega, and what it was capable of. The reply ws 'MPEG'. Lets hope they misread the question,
rarther than not knowning what they are talking about.

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Mark Rowan

Message #88123, posted at 21:10, 26/10/2000, in reply to message #88122

Unregistered user

I think the main problem with their website graphics is that they've used JPEGs on dodgy compression. If they still have the original sprites or whatever they should be able to make nice crisp GIFs out of them :-)

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Message #88124, posted at 22:00, 26/10/2000, in reply to message #88123

Unregistered user

Tsk; PNG :)

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Ian Redman

Message #88125, posted at 22:54, 26/10/2000, in reply to message #88124

Unregistered user

Well GIF's are sometimes smaller....

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[martin]

Message #88126, posted at 09:21, 27/10/2000, in reply to message #88125

Unregistered user

They may be able to make nice crisp GIFs (or PNGs!) but they'll still be red, black and dayglo green!

Alright, let's allow them (him?) to work on the Omega for a while. Once some have been sold, We can expect a less painful new website... :)

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Message #88127, posted at 10:28, 27/10/2000, in reply to message #88126

Unregistered user

Well, if you have a 5x5 image or smaller, then GIF
will prolly win over a /good/ PNG. But then you should use PNG because of the priniciple of the matter. :) I'd use PNGs more often, but Netscape and MSIE are crap.

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Message #88128, posted at 12:32, 27/10/2000, in reply to message #88127

Unregistered user

By the time PNGs are sorted out, SVG will be the way to go for simple images ;)

Seriously off topic, but hey, never mind...

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Message #88129, posted at 10:07, 28/10/2000, in reply to message #88128

Unregistered user

Just out of interest, does Justin's SVG plugin just convert to draw, and then use the DrawFile module or similar to render it? If so, MicroDigital's site wouldn't look all that much better... We need Anti-Aliasing. My poersonal vote is for Xara's web graphics standard; its been around for years and is more capable than SVG.

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Message #88130, posted at 08:13, 29/10/2000, in reply to message #88129

Unregistered user

It dones't matter about Justin's implementation or how good Xara's stuff is - SVG is the W3C reconnendation (ir whatever stage it's at), so is/will be as important as GIF and JPEG support.

If you want it to look decent right *now*, just stick to GIFs and JPEGs ;)

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Message #88131, posted at 12:20, 29/10/2000, in reply to message #88130

Unregistered user

That's not what I asked ;-) W3C recommend a lot of crap things that shouldn't be touched with a bargepoll :)

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Message #88132, posted at 15:49, 29/10/2000, in reply to message #88131

Unregistered user

As you answered your own question, I didn't think you wanted an answer from me as well! :)

SVG is very nice for creating images, and produces very small code; for instance it can do graduated fills and animation, which Draw can't, so I guess a conversion would either be incomplete or be much larger than the original file.

Other than that, I haven't got Justin's implementation, but when I saw it "in action" it produced an image so small you couldn't see *what* it was...

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Lee Johnston

Message #88133, posted at 09:03, 30/10/2000, in reply to message #88132

Unregistered user

What I don't get about the comments made on SVG is that just because the standard doesn't necessarily specify anti-aliased output there's no reason why a renderer couldn't do it. Obviously simply converting the file to a drawfile and then using the drawfile renderer wouldn't do the trick. However given that Vantage uses the drawfile, perhaps there is the possibility of a Vantage renderer like the Artworks renderer. Browsers could check if it was loaded and default to the drawfile renderer if not.

Just a thought...anyone want to put it to cerilicia?

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keith dunlop

Message #88134, posted at 19:13, 3/11/2000, in reply to message #88133

Unregistered user

You've all missed something

Microdigital are quoting the StrongARM @ 287MHz - cool eh? overclocked as standard!

also,

PC133 memory - I thought that the StrongARM was maxed @ 66MHz (albeit on 2 channels - hence the imago dual main bus design)

FireWire - what are you complaining about? There are plenty of PC PCI FireWire cards out there (maker: Evergreen I think) - all we need is drivers...

What is more important is for me (before I place the order!) is:

1) MIDI - does the supplied Soundblaster card support it / integrate wilth RISC OS?

2) SCSI - what PCI cards will we be able to use (hopefully Adaptec ones....)?

3) USB - what support do we have ATM?

TTFN (drowning in drool over this machine...:-))

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