The tale of four displays

I bought both used computer monitors with the intention of comparing them and selling one.

The 4K monitor appears to have more washed out colors. Faces are more pale. The Star Wars crawl is yellow orange on the 1440p monitor, but pure yellow on the 4K monitor.

The color on the 1440P is closer to my 5K iMac display, which is reportedly a high quality display, and has a slightly better viewing angle than the 4K monitor.

I had all three displays playing the same movie at the same time.


So I just compared the cheap 40 inch TV that I originally purchased for my Mom and stepdad, but I am now using as my TV. It appears to have the same washed out color range as the 4K monitor.

I would have never known the difference had I not compared these side by side.

This makes my idea of using a cheap TV as a computer monitor look bad. The color quality might not matter as much for watching television, but depending upon what you do with it, I think that it matters more for a computer monitor.


Best wishes,

John Coffey

Are chatbots the wave of the future?

Many people, myself included, tend to latch onto new technology.

So far, I'm not particularly impressed with the current level of chatbots.  They have no real understanding, but do a great job of imitating human conversation.  They only understand the relationship between words in ordinary speech.  The chatbots are essentially a version of Wikipedia that can hold a conversation with you.

That is all about to change.  It can't be far off because there is an AI arms race going on between major companies.  Eventually computer programs will talk to you with some understanding of what they are talking about.  I see a future, possibly within a decade, where your computer or smartphone is your artificial friend who regularly talks to you, keeps you company, and helps you deal with any problem you may have.  Better than real friends.  

It is inevitable.

Right now people are pushing Augmented Reality, and although I don't see much point, it will likely be the norm in a decade.  For me, it would be nice to spend time with some of my Utah friends as if they were in the room with me.

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Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com

Missed Amazon Prime Day TV deal

During Prime Days, Amazon had this special deal that was invitation only. You had to sign up to be invited. The deal was for a 43 inch Amazon Fire smart 4K TV at $99. Of course, quantities were limited.

I'm kicking myself for not getting the deal.

According to the specs and reviews, the latency and color accuracy of the TV was a little less than ideal for use as a monitor, but I felt that it was good enough. I don't think that something like a 20 millisecond latency is going to be much of a problem.

I like the idea of having a 43 inch 4K monitor that is also a TV.

It would have saved me much trouble that I recently went to in order to buy a couple of used (high-quality) monitors. The 4K 28-inch Samsung monitor I bought only has 1-millisecond latency.

During Prime Days I was not feeling the best, although I've been feeling better lately.

Best wishes,

John Coffey

World's FASTEST SSD?

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/LdwIDv0uLks

Your Graphics Card Needs an SSD!

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ODMKgP4c76c

The Samsung Neo QLED 8K Display...Wow

https://youtube.com/shorts/-dQcoTzCbMk?feature=share

Internet change

Lunar Lander (video game genre)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Lander_(video_game_genre)

This is still playable on one of my Arcade1ups despite a malfunctioning screen.  (I am looking into getting a replacement screen.)

Before the 1979 arcade game came out, I had seen a text-only BASIC version of the game and may have even written one myself.

Around 1979 to 1980, when I was a high school senior, a buddy of mine named Richard and I loved playing Space Wars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Wars) against each other.   In 1980, he signed up to go into the Navy for six years, so we made a pact that after he got out of the Navy he and I would get together and play Space Wars again.

It is my understanding that most of either Lunar Lander or Space Wars arcade games were converted to Asteroid machines which were much more profitable.

Richard and I lost touch with each other.  There was almost no hope of us getting together to play a game that didn't exist anymore.   However, he now lives down the street from me.  I'm thinking of inviting him to see my home "arcade".

Pretending it's still 2004

https://youtu.be/X5DrKWT_XBg

Frankenstein computer

My friend Larry and I were talking about how both of us from 1995 to 1999 had Frankenstein computers that we kept upgrading piece by piece. Mine started out as a 486 33Mhz with absolutely no peripherals like a sound card or CD-ROM. At the time, it was all too costly. I updated the processor at least twice and kept buying peripherals as they became more affordable.

When CD-ROM drives first appeared they cost hundreds of dollars, and ones that could write CDs cost more.

Today a CD-ROM drive costs next to nothing.

I estimated that by the time I was done, I had spent $3,000 on my computer. By the year 2000, I had spent a fortune on it and it was already outdated. This felt like a big waste of money and I vowed to never do this again.

My new plan was just to buy a new computer every five years. By this point, computers came equipped with everything you need. I bought computers in 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2019. I only bought the last computer because the old one had been slowly dying for about a year.


Around 1989 or 1990, before I could afford a PC, I bought a dumb terminal and 150 baud modem so that I could dial into my work mainframe. (Faster modems were available, with 1200 baud being the best, but I bought used and outdated equipment because that was all that I could afford.)

I could type faster than the modem could transmit characters, but this gave me access to Usenet, which was an early form of text-only Internet. This was before 99.99% of the public had heard of the Internet. I used to read and post to the Star Trek and chess forums.

This was actually pretty entertaining.

Best wishes,

John Coffey

iMac LCD Inverter Replacement 2009

I am attempting to fix my 2009 iMac.  It is outdated, but it was a pretty good computer with a core-i7 processor that I think still has some value.  It has a display problem due to a bad inverter board.

One reason I am fixing this computer is that it has a nice 1440P display that can also be used as a display for other computers.  I tentatively planning on buying a very powerful mini-PC.

I ordered an inverter board for just $20.  The following video explains the installation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KXAZXdRVP0

Since I have to open the case, I am also upgrading the storage.  Getting an SSD should make a big improvement in the performance and make it feel more like a modern computer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO3QX6nUr3g

I have decided to use the roughly same parts that are used in this video because I know that they are likely to work.  I ordered a 960 GB Kingston SSD for just $40.

I debated on whether to get a newer, faster, and more costly SSD. The 2009 iMac uses Sata II instead of Sata III, and I read someplace that if you buy a Sata III drive, then you need to get one that is backward compatible.  The only SATA III drive that I could find that claimed backward compatibility was a 2 TB Samsung drive which was a good deal at $99.   However, I didn't want to spend the extra money in case this old computer runs into problems that I can't fix.  I would be throwing good money after bad.

As of this year, the cost of SSD drives is so low that regular hard drives are mostly obsolete.  For mass storage, you can get really large hard drives cheaper, but for everyday usage you are much better off going with an SSD.