Should I upgrade to 6.0Mbps?

[flasher702]

Actually I didn't misunderstand. Michaelahess, who he quoted, said exactly what I tried to explain to him, and its a different part of the conversation from the one you brought up.

For what it's worth, regarding your point, I agree that you won't need more than 20mbps. In fact I found the whole idea of people here discussing him getting a new router as ridiculous, cause even the 6mbps is obviously not going to saturate his existing router either.

It's not the raw bandwidth that is an issue with the ethernet side of a home user's router, it's the connection memory and the latencies which could have a negative impact on bandwidth, especially in a multi-user environment, and do remember that 802.11x APs can default all the way down to 1mbps half-duplex which is shared between all connected devices. For a very simple environment any router that doesn't crash should be fine, but when you start talking wireless multi-user multi-source a crappy router can destroy internet connection speeds. Turns out he has a decent router so that isn't the issue here, but don't brush it off entirely 😉

 

[Fedor]

True enough I suppose, but I had read the fact that it was the same Linksys I used to have, which worked perfectly fine 😉

 

[ikjadoon]

That is a better test for the kind of real-world performance you can expect, but it's not testing *your* connection to the internet, it's testing the internet itself. Also, all of the speed test servers are located very close to backbones for exactly the reason I stated. If you live in the sticks you could theoretically pay for a connection speed that couldn't be obtained with most real-world single-source file transactions and this test might help you to determine that, but you should do a number of tests at different times of day over a period of more than a week and pick the targets based on hops, not miles and if you're really serious about getting faster be prepared to move (which really makes this entire test more applicable to data centers than home users).

Also relevant to note that it's not the geographical distance that has a significant impact on latency (electrical signals are pretty damn fast), it's the routers in between. "Far" on the internet isn't necessarily a distance. The distance in hops between Palo Alto and Tokyo (which are directly connected to each other) is much shorter than the distance between Montana and North Dakota (which would probably get routed through Chicago, Denver, and Seattle backbone nodes and a number of smaller networks at either end).

I may have missed your point previously, sorry, but I don't think it's a very relevant test for home users and if you are going to try and test real-world internet connection performance it's a bit more complicated than that.

Exactly. I get it now...So I guess the router is just another stop?

~Ibrahim~

 

[JonnyDough]

Exactly. I get it now...So I guess the router is just another stop?
~Ibrahim~

Bingo. Another spot to be bottlenecked.

You're just sending bundles of code back and forth over a wire. The bigger the packets, the faster it is because you don't have to have tiny bits of packet data sent along with it. There's a things called jumbo packets, which help in moving large files across a network. But like all good things they have a catch. They can actually slow down moving small files.

Packet size, frequency, etc...all play a part. It's like any bus in your PC. The wider the tube, the more you can send at once, but the faster the expressway, the more you can also send at once also. It comes down to do you want to send buses filled with data? Or Ferrari's filled with data? Ferrari buses get expensive and you might be able to zip across your network with them, but once you hit the internet they're likely to either slow down when they hit a country road or speed up when they find the autoban. It all depends on your local servers and the server you request from too. Which means that a broader bandwidth internet service doesn't necessarily = faster gaming. On a college campus, a fast T1 or T3 line might mean you can game on campus very well...but even a campus server connects to the internet too, and will ultimately depend on other server upload times.

Upgrading a home router or home internet will both likely help to increase data transfer to and from the net...but you'll see the biggest increase in PC to PC file transfer in your home and have the ease of mind that any lag you see in a game isn't being caused by you.

 

[ikjadoon]

Got it...Are bandwidth and latency directly related? Meaning higher bandwidth = lower latency? That doesn't sound logical...Latency would depend on the number of stops, but then what does bandwidth depend on?

~Ibrahim~

 

[JonnyDough]

I'll do what I can to help guide you in the right direction. But like most people, networking isn't my area either. 😛 What the hell is my area? Being a douche I guess.

You might find this interesting...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measuring_network_throughput

And a guide to help you with home networking, should you so inquire.
http://arstechnica.com/guide/networking/installation-1.html

Another interesting bit...not directly related but still interesting...to show just how f'n spoiled we United States biznitches are...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_broadband_users

If only I'd saved that "electricity and water" map of the world when I saw it...You'd be amazed at what us Americans take for granted and think is our given right to have.

If I have time, I'll see what more direct info I can dig up on broadband and latency. So far that's all I was able to find. I don't know much, but I'll do my best to research what I can.

 

[JonnyDough]

Scroll down on this page and it defines both.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_Networks

Here's a bit more on latency,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Latency

and a list of broadband device bandwidths.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bandwidths

Wikipedia's more technical articles seem to be either written by someone who knows what they're talking about or someone who doesn't. It's often easy to tell how well edited it is. Whoever wrote this appears to be knowledgable to me.

 

[ikjadoon]

Thanks for all the links!

That latency one had some nice analogies in it.

Yeah, we think we're so damn superior, it is going to bite us in the ass sooner or later. Oh, wait, it already did!

~Ibrahim~

 

[JonnyDough]

What's interesting to me is how people in other countries have such differing opinions of the US, much as our own citizens do. I think it's safe to say that the rich politicians and the media stay that way due to chaos and conflicting interests and views. They revel in it and profit from peoples inability to share a common view and unite. Instead, they sell us stories about ourselves and go back and forth (much like laws go one way and then go the other because they've gone too far, meanwhile taxing us to have it in our own courts). Meanwhile we all pay the price. You can quote me on this line....

If only humans weren't so damn entertaining, and so easily entertained.

 

[ikjadoon]

What's interesting to me is how people in other countries have such differing opinions of the US, much as our own citizens do. I think it's safe to say that the rich politicians and the media stay that way due to chaos and conflicting interests and views. They revel in it and profit from peoples inability to share a common view and unite. Instead, they sell us stories about ourselves and go back and forth (much like laws go one way and then go the other because they've gone too far, meanwhile taxing us to have it in our own courts). Meanwhile we all pay the price. You can quote me on this line....

If only humans weren't so damn entertaining, and so easily entertained.

I plan to. lol!

They profit from our bickering...We're both at fault: we shouldn't be fighting and they shouldn't be stealing. It is just like high school: a few d!cks ruin the fun for everyone.

~Ibrahim~

 

[JonnyDough]

Most people don't understand how advertising works. If you have your cable box on a certain channel, you're giving a cable station "viewing points". They can tell that you're seeing their station. So if you leave your tv on all night on the Fox news, Howard Stern, GGW (but who doesn't love them right)...the ratings for those stations go up. Which means they continue to air trash and get money from advertisers for it. I think it works the same for dish too, not sure. Anyway, when we watch filth, they send us more. Fox news has a policy of putting scandalous "controversial" and argumentative "news" on their show to draw in viewers, I say just give me the damn news and don't make all of it bad. Good stuff happens too. CNN seems to be following suit lately...

 

[flasher702]

Got it...Are bandwidth and latency directly related? Meaning higher bandwidth = lower latency? That doesn't sound logical...Latency would depend on the number of stops, but then what does bandwidth depend on?

~Ibrahim~

In very raw terms bandwidth and latency are completely seperate concepts. Latency is how long it takes one unit of data to make it from point A to point B. Bandwidth is how many units of data can be sent at once. In the real world Latency affects Bandwidth, as well as a number of other factors.

In practice latency is ussually measured as a round-trip time for simplicity sake. I ping server X with one packet (on the way there it passes through routers a, b, c, d and e) how long does it take to get my packet back? The size of the packet can affect the latency but this is actually due to MTU, not bandwidth. Maximum Transmission Unit is, as it says, the largest size that one frame can be. If you try to send a 12k packet over gigabith ethernet it's probably going to get chopped into two 8k "jumbo frames" and then sent to your premise equipment ("cable modem" or the like) which will then chop them up into smaller frames to send to your node and this can potentially happen several times dependingon what routers it passes through which make have rather small MTUs as small as 53bytes. Chopping them up takes time and adds more data to the frames requiring more bandwidth and then they have to be reconstructed by the server at the other end and the process repeated on the return trip. Since each indivual frame does have an amount of time in transit, latency, and you can only have a finite number of frames on the line at a time, latency does affect bandwidth but in raw terms this effect is small since you can just keep sending packets and as the size of the file transfer aproaches infinity the amount of impact latency has approaches zero. However, since most transactions you do are acknowleged (ie, you send one unit of data and wait for the recipeint to aknowlege reciept and ask for the next packet) lower latency can yield much higher "throughput" which is a real-world measurement of bandwidth (as apposed to the theoretical peak the interface is capable of).

Basically for small time-sensative data units (VoIP, Games) once you have enough bandwidth to support the application the only thing that matters is latency. For large time-insensative data units (downloading a movie as apposed to video confrencing) once you achieve a decent latency increasing bandwidth matters much more than decreasing latency. Things like webpages are somewhere inbetween.

Latencies in games are software latencies. That's the latency of the network plus the latency of the game software running on the server. That's generally why ping times will go up on a server even if it's no where near having it's bandwidth saturated or connection table over-filled.

A ping test is generally a hardware-level purely network latency test (the NIC on the server at the other end should respond to the ping in hardware). If your network latency is more than ~180ms (typical for dialup modems) you're going to notice that for everything you try to do. Once you get down to less than ~90ms you won't notice a big differance anymore without running a specialized benchmarks or applications that are sensative to latency. The actuall differences are still scaling the same, it's just that the latency is now below human reaction time so any effect it has will be hard to notice. At that point it's ussually best to turn your attention to other ways to speed up your network experience. In my personal experience I can't tell the difference between a game ping time of 70ms vs. 7ms, but a ping time higher than ~130ms can really throw me off (140ms is a bit faster than average simple human visual reaction time so I assume there are both additional latencies involved here and I am a bit faster than average as I am young and gamer with).
http://biology.clemson.edu/bpc/bp/Lab/110/reaction.htm#Mean%20Times

ok... I think that was all technically correct, but I skimmed over a lot of data there so it might not be entirely contextually accurate... Correct me if I'm greiviously wrong.

 

[JonnyDough]

Got it...Are bandwidth and latency directly related? Meaning higher bandwidth = lower latency? That doesn't sound logical...Latency would depend on the number of stops, but then what does bandwidth depend on?

~Ibrahim~

In very raw terms bandwidth and latency are completely seperate concepts. Latency is how long it takes one unit of data to make it from point A to point B.

*Insert hilarious joke about how you're wrong, even though you might not be...just to break the serious silence after such a long winded explanation. 8)

Then, I'll proceed to tell you about quantum physics and their use in computing.

Quantum physic technology researchers recently claimed that they can send information from point A to point B without going in between. This means a message can't be intercepted, and is instantaneous. It's real tech. Dark matter and wormholes and so on, I'm not a physicist or anything...but isn't that cool? 8O I think that would be something like..ZERO latency?

 

[ikjadoon]

Got it...Are bandwidth and latency directly related? Meaning higher bandwidth = lower latency? That doesn't sound logical...Latency would depend on the number of stops, but then what does bandwidth depend on?

~Ibrahim~

In very raw terms bandwidth and latency are completely seperate concepts. Latency is how long it takes one unit of data to make it from point A to point B. Bandwidth is how many units of data can be sent at once. In the real world Latency affects Bandwidth, as well as a number of other factors.

In practice latency is ussually measured as a round-trip time for simplicity sake. I ping server X with one packet (on the way there it passes through routers a, b, c, d and e) how long does it take to get my packet back? The size of the packet can affect the latency but this is actually due to MTU, not bandwidth. Maximum Transmission Unit is, as it says, the largest size that one frame can be. If you try to send a 12k packet over gigabith ethernet it's probably going to get chopped into two 8k "jumbo frames" and then sent to your premise equipment ("cable modem" or the like) which will then chop them up into smaller frames to send to your node and this can potentially happen several times dependingon what routers it passes through which make have rather small MTUs as small as 53bytes. Chopping them up takes time and adds more data to the frames requiring more bandwidth and then they have to be reconstructed by the server at the other end and the process repeated on the return trip. Since each indivual frame does have an amount of time in transit, latency, and you can only have a finite number of frames on the line at a time, latency does affect bandwidth but in raw terms this effect is small since you can just keep sending packets and as the size of the file transfer aproaches infinity the amount of impact latency has approaches zero. However, since most transactions you do are acknowleged (ie, you send one unit of data and wait for the recipeint to aknowlege reciept and ask for the next packet) lower latency can yield much higher "throughput" which is a real-world measurement of bandwidth (as apposed to the theoretical peak the interface is capable of).

Basically for small time-sensative data units (VoIP, Games) once you have enough bandwidth to support the application the only thing that matters is latency. For large time-insensative data units (downloading a movie as apposed to video confrencing) once you achieve a decent latency increasing bandwidth matters much more than decreasing latency. Things like webpages are somewhere inbetween.

Latencies in games are software latencies. That's the latency of the network plus the latency of the game software running on the server. That's generally why ping times will go up on a server even if it's no where near having it's bandwidth saturated or connection table over-filled.

A ping test is generally a hardware-level purely network latency test (the NIC on the server at the other end should respond to the ping in hardware). If your network latency is more than ~180ms (typical for dialup modems) you're going to notice that for everything you try to do. Once you get down to less than ~90ms you won't notice a big differance anymore without running a specialized benchmarks or applications that are sensative to latency. The actuall differences are still scaling the same, it's just that the latency is now below human reaction time so any effect it has will be hard to notice. At that point it's ussually best to turn your attention to other ways to speed up your network experience. In my personal experience I can't tell the difference between a game ping time of 70ms vs. 7ms, but a ping time higher than ~130ms can really throw me off (140ms is a bit faster than average simple human visual reaction time so I assume there are both additional latencies involved here and I am a bit faster than average as I am young and gamer with).
http://biology.clemson.edu/bpc/bp/Lab/110/reaction.htm#Mean%20Times

ok... I think that was all technically correct, but I skimmed over a lot of data there so it might not be entirely contextually accurate... Correct me if I'm greiviously wrong.

Wow, great explanation. I think I get this now. I have one last little question: are "packets" the same as frames, serving the same purpose? They sound similar: broken up bits of information.

Thanks again, mate.

~Ibrahim~

 

[JonnyDough]

I got the feeling that Flashers post was a bit copy/paste.

 

[flasher702]

...why do you say that? I wrote that all from scratch 🙁

Packets and frames are the same concept. When you say "frame" you're generally talking about a hardware-level unit of network data. When you say "packet" you're generally talking about a software-level unit of network data. They sometimes get used interchangeably and sometimes the difference between hardware and software gets fuzzy.

For example: From an MS DOS shell you can do ping -L 65500 127.0.0.1 to bombard someone (in this case, yourself) with uber-sized 65kbyte packets (which should tie up a bunch of FIFO buffers on their NIC) but it's going to get chopped up into little frames (and you'll probably run out of upline bandwidth before you even come close to hurting them and they probably have more than enough buffers anyway so this ends up being a poorly executed simple ICMP echo DoS attack).

 

[ikjadoon]

...why do you say that? I wrote that all from scratch 🙁

Packets and frames are the same concept. When you say "frame" you're generally talking about a hardware-level unit of network data. When you say "packet" you're generally talking about a software-level unit of network data. They sometimes get used interchangeably and sometimes the difference between hardware and software gets fuzzy.

For example: From an MS DOS shell you can do ping -L 65500 127.0.0.1 to bombard someone (in this case, yourself) with uber-sized 65kbyte packets (which should tie up a bunch of FIFO buffers on their NIC) but it's going to get chopped up into little frames (and you'll probably run out of upline bandwidth before you even come close to hurting them and they probably have more than enough buffers anyway so this ends up being a poorly executed simple ICMP echo DoS attack).

Got it, thanks.

Don't get the idea, Johnny, that I'm more thankful of Flasher or anything. You guys both have educated me on one of the few things I know very little about. OK, maybe more than a few things. 😉

~Ibrahim~

 

[JonathanDeane]

...why do you say that? I wrote that all from scratch 🙁

Packets and frames are the same concept. When you say "frame" you're generally talking about a hardware-level unit of network data. When you say "packet" you're generally talking about a software-level unit of network data. They sometimes get used interchangeably and sometimes the difference between hardware and software gets fuzzy.

For example: From an MS DOS shell you can do ping -L 65500 127.0.0.1 to bombard someone (in this case, yourself) with uber-sized 65kbyte packets (which should tie up a bunch of FIFO buffers on their NIC) but it's going to get chopped up into little frames (and you'll probably run out of upline bandwidth before you even come close to hurting them and they probably have more than enough buffers anyway so this ends up being a poorly executed simple ICMP echo DoS attack).

I remember the day when you could spoof a packet and have a couple of servers going at it like that...... ahhh the fun old days lol I miss Win Nuke or Liquid nuke lol

 

[JonnyDough]

Ok ok! I believe you! I was kidding! 😛 But you have to admit, that sounded really technical. I didn't bother reading it, because I don't care? I considered going into networking, but then I realized...I just don't care! It's all too technical for my likes. Just not my bag baby! No! Haha. Anyway, as long as someone knows how to build engines, I'll keep on buying cars I guess. Woot!

 

[ikjadoon]

Ok ok! I believe you! I was kidding! 😛 But you have to admit, that sounded really technical. I didn't bother reading it, because I don't care? I considered going into networking, but then I realized...I just don't care! It's all too technical for my likes. Just not my bag baby! No! Haha. Anyway, as long as someone knows how to build engines, I'll keep on buying cars I guess. Woot!

Off topic, but cars are what I want to learn more about. I know too damn much about computers, lol...I'm not bragging, but I wish I knew more about cars, as I'll be needing a new one soon, lol, and if car advertising is anything like computers, it can be very misleading. (PPU, X-RAM, Quad-Core, anyone?)

~Ibrahim~

 

[JonnyDough]

After reading a few of the articles on Anandtech, Tom's, etc...I'm excited about the future of RAM, storage, and CPU's. Something as simple as a thumb drive today is a rather amazing feat, and we continually take today's tech for granted. 250 years ago, people were lucky to have a plow and a good team of horses. Today we just run over to the store for food.

I just hope all this new technology provides some REAL use. Video games are NOT helping mankind. (See: China guy dies playing video games). Gaming is pushing technology...but if the technology is mostly used for video games, then what good is it? Millions of people around the world still don't have clean water. Much has changed for the priveledged countries in the last 250 years, but not for much of the world's population.

Speaking of cars, they have a car that can go 300+ miles on a gallon of gas. Electric race cars capable of going 0-60 in 2.5 seconds. But we don't have these technologies in use yet. There are many many many other amazing technologies out there, but cost is always a factor I guess. The almighty dollar takes precedence. It just really makes me sick that we have the means, but not the power to implement change.

 

[ikjadoon]

After reading a few of the articles on Anandtech, Tom's, etc...I'm excited about the future of RAM, storage, and CPU's. Something as simple as a thumb drive today is a rather amazing feat, and we continually take today's tech for granted. 250 years ago, people were lucky to have a plow and a good team of horses. Today we just run over to the store for food.

I just hope all this new technology provides some REAL use. Video games are NOT helping mankind. (See: China guy dies playing video games). Gaming is pushing technology...but if the technology is mostly used for video games, then what good is it? Millions of people around the world still don't have clean water. Much has changed for the priveledged countries in the last 250 years, but not for much of the world's population.

Speaking of cars, they have a car that can go 300+ miles on a gallon of gas. Electric race cars capable of going 0-60 in 2.5 seconds. But we don't have these technologies in use yet. There are many many many other amazing technologies out there, but cost is always a factor I guess. The almighty dollar takes precedence. It just really makes me sick that we have the means, but not the power to implement change.

Wow...That makes me almost want me to throw away my 8800GTS, lol!

You should watch "Who killed the Electric Car?".

~Ibrahim~

 

[JonnyDough]

A movie? I should look for it at blockbuster. 😛

 

[flasher702]

Off topic, but cars are what I want to learn more about. I know too damn much about computers, lol...I'm not bragging, but I wish I knew more about cars, as I'll be needing a new one soon, lol, and if car advertising is anything like computers, it can be very misleading. (PPU, X-RAM, Quad-Core, anyone?)

~Ibrahim~

It helps a lot if you don't live in the USA... Japan, Europe, even Canada get way more options for good cars years earlier than USA, we get the H3 and hybrid "muscle" cars (that aren't very fast and don't get very good gas mileage either). I gave up and just bought an old VW Golf... I hope it lasts until there are better cars to choose from. Dealing with cars after being a techy will make you cry. Things that we take for granted simply don't exist in the world of the Automobile Industry (interop, specs, customization, competetive pricing, selection... progress... some sort of corolation between quality and price... etc.). I mean, there is no such thing as a standarized engine mount. Even within a single manufacturer they will use multiple proprietary mounting systems. And they still sell Sedans. For god sake it's a body design from the 60s. Consumers managed to kill the beige mid-tower box concept of the PC within a few years but we are still up to our gills in freaking sedans with their ineffecient capacity charicteristics and inferior drag co-effecients. This is what happens to a market when it goes mainstream and is dominated but uninformed, undiscerning, apathetic consumers and it's starting to happen to the PC market 🙁

Of course there is the custome modding and tuning segment of the car market but the information to do such things is not readily available and the cost range is mid to upper whereas custom computing cost range drops below OEM at the low end and offers very good price/performance comparisons in the mid-range. For cost/performance concious custom cars you're generally trying to get the performance of a +$40k car for <$30k but you void all your warrenties, sacrifice reliability, and don't get a lot of the bells and whistles that the premium car would come with and you need a mechanic that knows WTF you did to your car to do any work on it and you're still only slightly better than a stock $16k car. You could, of course, mod used cars for less but this becomes incredibly time and knowlege intensive. After I crashed my CRX I just gave up and bought an old VW Golf... it's slow 🙁 Hopefully they come out with some hybrids that aren't lame. A few years ago the Insight and Prius were revolutionary, but they haven't advanced since then and every other hybrid car since them has been god-awful. Tesla Motors's work looks encouraging, but I don't think they are going to release anything in my price range before my '98 dies xD A toy hydrogen fuel cell car kit can be had for <$130 and it includes a solar powered hydrogen generator... If you would assume that it would cost 1000x as much to make it 20times bigger and fully functional you would have a $130k car that you never had to buy fuel for ever again, but the american people surely wouldn't be interested in that. Just like the electric and pod cars that they say we don't want but can't seem to keep in stock whenever they actually sell them here at reasonable prices (I tried to buy a Yarris, which is the re-named Vitz that has been sold for several years in Asia and Europe already, and they told me I had to wait 4-8weeks, oh and that I couldn't have antilock breaks unless I added 25% to the sticker price of the base model, but would I like to buy a camry or a scion xA?).

Eh, I hope no one comes along and actually tries to read this thread... could we get more off-topic? xD

 

[ikjadoon]

Off topic, but cars are what I want to learn more about. I know too damn much about computers, lol...I'm not bragging, but I wish I knew more about cars, as I'll be needing a new one soon, lol, and if car advertising is anything like computers, it can be very misleading. (PPU, X-RAM, Quad-Core, anyone?)

~Ibrahim~

It helps a lot if you don't live in the USA... Japan, Europe, even Canada get way more options for good cars years earlier than USA, we get the H3 and hybrid "muscle" cars (that aren't very fast and don't get very good gas mileage either). I gave up and just bought an old VW Golf... I hope it lasts until there are better cars to choose from. Dealing with cars after being a techy will make you cry. Things that we take for granted simply don't exist in the world of the Automobile Industry (interop, specs, customization, competetive pricing, selection... progress... some sort of corolation between quality and price... etc.). I mean, there is no such thing as a standarized engine mount. Even within a single manufacturer they will use multiple proprietary mounting systems. And they still sell Sedans. For god sake it's a body design from the 60s. Consumers managed to kill the beige mid-tower box concept of the PC within a few years but we are still up to our gills in freaking sedans with their ineffecient capacity charicteristics and inferior drag co-effecients. This is what happens to a market when it goes mainstream and is dominated but uninformed, undiscerning, apathetic consumers and it's starting to happen to the PC market 🙁

Of course there is the custome modding and tuning segment of the car market but the information to do such things is not readily available and the cost range is mid to upper whereas custom computing cost range drops below OEM at the low end and offers very good price/performance comparisons in the mid-range. For cost/performance concious custom cars you're generally trying to get the performance of a +$40k car for <$30k but you void all your warrenties, sacrifice reliability, and don't get a lot of the bells and whistles that the premium car would come with and you need a mechanic that knows WTF you did to your car to do any work on it and you're still only slightly better than a stock $16k car. You could, of course, mod used cars for less but this becomes incredibly time and knowlege intensive. After I crashed my CRX I just gave up and bought an old VW Golf... it's slow 🙁 Hopefully they come out with some hybrids that aren't lame. A few years ago the Insight and Prius were revolutionary, but they haven't advanced since then and every other hybrid car since them has been god-awful. Tesla Motors's work looks encouraging, but I don't think they are going to release anything in my price range before my '98 dies xD A toy hydrogen fuel cell car kit can be had for <$130 and it includes a solar powered hydrogen generator... If you would assume that it would cost 1000x as much to make it 20times bigger and fully functional you would have a $130k car that you never had to buy fuel for ever again, but the american people surely wouldn't be interested in that. Just like the electric and pod cars that they say we don't want but can't seem to keep in stock whenever they actually sell them here at reasonable prices (I tried to buy a Yarris, which is the re-named Vitz that has been sold for several years in Asia and Europe already, and they told me I had to wait 4-8weeks, oh and that I couldn't have antilock breaks unless I added 25% to the sticker price of the base model, but would I like to buy a camry or a scion xA?).

Eh, I hope no one comes along and actually tries to read this thread... could we get more off-topic? xD

Ah...Darn, I was hoping I could 'mod' my car as much as I've done my computer.

"void all your warrenties, sacrifice reliability, and don't get a lot of the bells and whistles that the premium car would come with and you need a mechanic that knows WTF you did to your car to do any work on it"

Couldn't this be said for computers as well? Don't we sacrifice getting a 680i board to get a 650i board, that overclocks just as well but doesn't have three PCI-e x16 slots and enormous copper heatpipes?

That Telsa Motors company looks amazing. I'd love to get a car from them, albeit one that is more efficient (More seats, come on! How can you dare to be called an efficient car if you can only provide two seats?) and one that is cheaper.

25%?? That is outrageous! Just for anti-lock brakes? Isn't that feature standard on a lot of cars already? I'm telling, someone is paying these CEOs of these companies an arse load of money for these "gimmicks". (*cough*Shell*cough*)

~Ibrahim~

P.S. haha, lol!