Yeah, but the addition of "autofocus" to the phrase is new, isn't it?

Not really, my SLR can take into account multiple focal points and adjust as needed. There's a menu buried in there somewhere that will even allow me to set which point, or group of points is being used.

Automatically? Or manually?

When the camera is in full automatic mode, then it does it all automatically. Beyond that it's all about how much I want to do manually. It really just sounds like Apple is bringing a bunch of SLR features into play on the camera phone.

Even though the principle of deciding on the ultimate focus on an SLR can be done by sampling different points, it's not usually called matrix. That term is currently used for exposure only in common parlance. Is Apple just talking about same old same old by extending a metaphor, or are they doing something new?

Are they using the exposure array in the autofocus process? Do the sensors that measure difference somehow look or behave significantly like the exposure array?

Look at the autofocus points section of this [link] What have cameraphones traditionally been using? Even the example on the left isn't called a matrix, though.

Also--what kind of focusing do most cameraphones use?

Well, rats. My 7-year-old laptop won't launch Win7 normally, won't launch in safe mode, and won't launch from the rescue disk. It will boot from my Damn Small Linux CD, but only in failsafe mode, and I don't remember enough command line stuff to be useful.

This could be a problem.

I suspect you've already tried it, but have you given it a hard reboot by taking out the battery for a few minutes before restarting?

::kicks self::

I'm embarrassed to admit, I forgot to try that.

The bad news is, it didn't fix the problem.

The good news is, the recovery utility from here did what I needed.

I am up and running and busily making fresh backups of everything.

Gud, you use solid state hard drives, right? Anyone else?

You built yourself, right? What OS are you running?

I'm looking at preconfigured units, starting with Frys (so disillusioned with them recently) and then Best Buy (less disillusioned, but I hate the crap they install on computers), and primarily SSD comes on gaming beasts, which I don't require. I'm expecting an SSD drive to take a $500-$600 computer up by about $300 all considered.

What other vendors are good places to look for *non* power desktop PCs with SSD options? I really really don't want to build it myself or install SSD into a configured PC I get that comes with no software discs. I just decided that this laptop was the last non-SSD device I should buy (ha! When I look at the next SSD Macbook prices I will revisit that, but it seemed a fair call at the time).

I think my desktop monitor has been with me for 12 years. 20 or 21 inch LCD, expensive as fuck when I bought it, apart from the tinny audio, not one reason to replace it, but since it's not my primary monitor, that Viewsonic keeps on keeping on, while budget PCs die or become obsolete behind it.

So, after spending $250 at Weaknees, the Tivo is still periodically crashing to the grey screen of death at random intervals. It's working right now, but who knows how long that will last.

(When I emailed Weaknees customer service to complain that they had, essentially, charged me $250 plus shipping to return the Tivo to me in exactly the same semi-broken condition as before, they responded with an incredibly snotty email to the effect that it wasn't their fault the unit they'd just repaired twice wasn't working, and if I want them to diagnose anything else it would cost another $99, and anyway, I didn't pack it very well when I shipped it to them. So I'm done with them, because they are assholes.)

The one potentially useful suggestion they had was for me to get a UPS, instead of just a surge protector. The price range I'm seeing is about $40 on the low end into the hundreds of dollars. I'm guessing that for my purposes, the low-end models will do just fine for me - any reason I should spend more? Any specific features I should look for?