Excellent NYT article on new, cheaper digital SLR cameras and how they compare to point-and-shoot digital cameras.

Here's something I didn't know:

Compact cameras use much smaller sensor chips than digital S.L.R.’s. Mark Weir, the senior product manager for digital S.L.R. cameras at Sony, said that a typical compact camera sensor is “about half the size of your smallest fingernail.”

“A digital S.L.R. sensor is pretty big,” he added, “about the same as a good-size postage stamp.”

As a result, every pixel on a compact camera’s sensor chip is much smaller than its counterpart on a digital S.L.R.’s sensor. Mr. Weir, whose company also produces sensors for a number of other camera makers, estimates that pixels on a 10-megapixel compact camera sensor are about 2 microns across, compared with 6 microns for a digital S.L.R. sensor of the same resolution. A micron is one-thousandth of a millimeter.

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Gud, is yours the Linux box?

The simple playback PC runs Linux, but it is a special version for video playback called GeeXbox. Mine is installed to the hard drive but you can just run it from a CD-ROM if you want. On a hardwired network you could probably just stream off a shared drive and have a diskless playback computer.

cheaper digital SLR cameras and how they compare to point-and-shoot digital cameras.

That was one of the reasons we wanted a digital SLR, you get better image quality even with fewer pixels.

I just purchased the new Canon Rebel XTi which is a 10 megapixel SLR and the pictures are amazing. My point and shoot is seven megapixel and it doesn't come close.

Also, the low light pictures I can take with the SLR are amazing.

I have a Canon Rebel XT, and it has been a fantastic camera.

I had been planning on getting the Canon 30D and ended with with the XTi because in many ways it is now a better camera than the more expensive 30D.

Also, the low light pictures I can take with the SLR are amazing.

That's what i really miss between my old film SLR and my little Canon P&S digital. I can't quite justify shelling out a grand for a digital SLR right now.

So my 2 Gig of RAM for my MacBook showed up today. I'm gonna set up the MacBook so it can run OS X and XP at the same time. So I gotta decide if I want XP Home Edition or XP Pro. I found this:

Multi-processor support - Windows XP Pro supports up to two microprocessors, while Home Edition supports only one.

So for this purpose, is the Intel Core Duo considered to be two processors or one?

For this purpose, I believe it counts as one. I just went out and looked and there are plenty of Intel Duo Core laptops and desktops shipping with XP Home for sale. Seems like you'd be good to go with Home.

Yeah, I was googling and noticed that. I also just read that XP SP2 added multi-core support to XP Home.

Ah. That could explain it.

Funny thing, back in the day there was an article I read that gave you registry hacks to turn XP Home into XP Pro. Apparently Home still had all the code for Pro, it just had certain functions turned off.

Nowadays I would imagine that's probably not so much the case anymore.