I jumped ship to VirtualBox at the end of last year after being a long time VMWare Server user.
Server's switch to a terrible UI on version 2.0 and the fact that they continue to charge for VMWare fusion made me look for alternatives.
VMWare still has the best enterprise virtualization management products though in the meantime so I'm not terribly worried about them making a vanishing act.
My Macbook is about 4 pounds, this is 3 and I have a bigger screen, more capable keyboard and more capable dual core processor in a system that when I just browse the web and take email lasts 4 hours. Oh and it's rounding it's way to 2 and a half years old.
Oh and for Asus to call this 3rd generation is kind of silly since most other manufacturers skipped the first generation.
... you.... don't.... pay.... for Linux based environments.
So go ahead, mock that Ubuntu comes in: Ubuntu for Gnomers Kubuntu for the KDE users Xubuntu for the XFCErs Ubuntu Studio for the multimedia worker
You don't pay for any of them. You can load one up and fire up VirtualBox and try the other 3 and it cost you nothing more than the time to download and burn to a CD.
It's about choice and there is a nice thread every month in the Ubuntu forums about desktop customization and why people make the choices they make.
I get hit with ads for it from time to time and I think it just jumped to the top of the App store.
So if we're going to worry about a drug dealer simulator game making it onto the iPhone can we worry more about the one that allows you to put hits out on your friends and uses real social networks (cheapening them in the process as well)...
After coming from an HTC Apache (xv6700) on Verizon to an iPhone, I can say that I've gotten far more things to work far easier on the iPhone. Syncing makes much more sense (though I don't get why they do not have Bluetooth syncing support when every Apple computer has Bluetooth). I've already got a media remote software that works with my setup (iTunes). The Apache was just as crippled by Verizon if not more so than the iPhone is by AT&T. In fact I'd argue that at least Apple, the maker of the phone, has such tight control even in the AT&T environment, that at the least every user of an iPhone gets what Apple wants them to get instead of what AT&T wants them to get. I definitely was not getting the phone that HTC developed because of Verizon provisioning and Windows crappiness.
The only thing my iPhone doesn't do that my Apache did is Stereo Bluetooth over A2DP. But that's not anything to brag about considering the quality of media player on the Windows Mobile device sucked and I can plug any pair of headphones (including my high quality Sennheisers) into the iPhone. I needed an adapter for the smaller plug in the HTC-Apache.
"It just works" is still a VERY valid statement for Apple. And I haven't paid a DIME to the App store or unlocked my phone and gotten more functionality and more fun out of my iPhone in less than a month of ownership than I did for 3 years with a comparable device from Verizon.
Front Row is part of the OS and works with any Mac. It's running perfectly fine on my 1st gen MacBook. In fact it's running VERY well and has been significantly updated since I first got my MacBook. So much so that I'm thinking about buying a MacMini when they do a product refresh on the line to replace my 5 year old shuttle that has media duty next to my TV.
PC Gaming isn't dead. But the controller market on computers is and always will be limited to Keyboard and Mouse. Anything else is very niche based and not all that popular and thus never successful.
Sorry "kid" but ageism is abound in the tech world and with a fertile group of newly laid off programmers, the good jobs are getting filled with people willing to take any paycheck over no paycheck at all.
Which is a shame, in the early 90's it used to be one of the best magazines. Cheap, tons of content and covered every game system (and there were more active ones then, than I think there are now).
Just because DRM is gone, doesn't change the fact that the Music companies still think they are licensing you the right to listen to the song (coincidently they want to push it further to meaning that you can listen to it in one format).
Before all of this, you could burn the itunes song to CD and then rerip it and remove the DRM anyway. Nothing has changed except now Apple has opened the door to more expensive music.
I would have been more excited if:
- they allowed you periodic redownloads of already purchased music. - offered options in quality of downloaded music (128 still sucks, 320Kbps should be standard by now and though still not acceptable when compared to CD quality). - offered more than what you get with a CD for a digital download (all music videos too for example and the ability to get videos as they are released).
Well they switched to the magnetic power adapter so that they could patent and trademark it and either prevent other manufacturers from making adapters or at least draw a licensing check from them if they do.
Lets be fair, Apple may do some awesome things, but at the end of the day they do it for a paycheck (and yes I'm an apple fanboy with 2 (obsoleted) ipods, an iPhone and a Macbook).
Thank you, I wish I had mod points to give you. I never knew you could do that with the power adapter from the Cinema Displays.
And what few people don't know is the monitor connectors are no longer large bulky connectors with a ton of breakable pins and huge screws to bolt them in.
Does it keep the macbook on though once I plug it in?
So banish it to the basement, turn it into a file server and run a thin client next to the TV. Mac Mini's are great for this BTW due to the Apple Remote, Bluetooth and small size and the ability to display 1080p (as opposed to the AppleTV which can't out of the box).
I wish they'd make the XBox360 streaming option much more robust.
Currently you're limited to one Watch It Now Queue and can only view movies on the Queue. So you can't even browse their selection for something on the XBox.
There is also no "Favorites" Section to save movies to in case you want to watch again another time.
It might be nice to have random or suggested movies displayed and ratable for you as well, right on your TV.
The Quality of video is however much better than I can get any of my other computers connected to my TV and well worth the $50 I spent on Live that I might not have otherwise (already had the Netflix account and the Xbox360).
You are the anecdotal evidence that comes from a person that sees a spike to 85 frames when looking at the floor and tells everyone that's what they get all the time. Or worse, your "maximum" resolution is on a 1024x800 display.
The average person will not see what you are seeing.
This is my major problem with LCDs. They abruptly thrust the system requirements up to load screens 1920x1200 and LARGER. The primary reason being that larger LCD screens just had higher pixel resolutions and not going native looks terrible in most situations. If you want to drive a large display for newer games, that usually means having top end (expensive) gear or silly multi GPU SLI/Crossfire setups. Maybe it's just an illusion but I know that I felt the need for a huge jump from 1024x800 to 1920x1200 and I know that I was still making a low end jump. I'm hoping with TV resolutions being very acceptable at 1080p24 and 1080p60, that we get more standardization to that resolution for at least the next few years and prevent another resolution inflation.
As far as those "ego-prostetic" CPUs, some are fluff but I think you are far from completely correct. It does pay to upgrade CPUs from time to time but what too many people put too much faith in is the clock speed and number of cores. Beyond two cores in most cases, you won't see much in games. There are only a select few that use more than 2, WoW for instance can identify multiple cores, but when it comes down to it, it doesn't use more than 2. And speed can only do so much, the real gain will be in opening up the bus speed, which can usually but not always compensated for in overclocking a good motherboard and good ram. That decreases the potential life of your CPU though. The more important statistic too look at though is your L2 and L3 cache which you can do absolutely NOTHING but upgrade your CPU to get more of or pay for one of those high priced CPUs.
Starting a little early too to declare gaming dead. Get ready for the:
- 2009 the year PC gaming will die - 2009 the year consoles converge with PCs - 2009 year of Linux - 2009 year of the Mac - 2009 the year Google jumps the shark (oh wait... did that already happen?) - 2009 the year the world ends - etc....
I guess it's time to stop reading Slashdot until after April fools to avoid all the regurgitated year to year crap.
Slashdot Mirror
I jumped ship to VirtualBox at the end of last year after being a long time VMWare Server user.
Server's switch to a terrible UI on version 2.0 and the fact that they continue to charge for VMWare fusion made me look for alternatives.
VMWare still has the best enterprise virtualization management products though in the meantime so I'm not terribly worried about them making a vanishing act.
My Macbook is about 4 pounds, this is 3 and I have a bigger screen, more capable keyboard and more capable dual core processor in a system that when I just browse the web and take email lasts 4 hours. Oh and it's rounding it's way to 2 and a half years old.
Oh and for Asus to call this 3rd generation is kind of silly since most other manufacturers skipped the first generation.
... you.... don't.... pay.... for Linux based environments.
So go ahead, mock that Ubuntu comes in:
Ubuntu for Gnomers
Kubuntu for the KDE users
Xubuntu for the XFCErs
Ubuntu Studio for the multimedia worker
You don't pay for any of them. You can load one up and fire up VirtualBox and try the other 3 and it cost you nothing more than the time to download and burn to a CD.
It's about choice and there is a nice thread every month in the Ubuntu forums about desktop customization and why people make the choices they make.
Vista is more vaporware than Windows 7 at this point....
I get hit with ads for it from time to time and I think it just jumped to the top of the App store.
So if we're going to worry about a drug dealer simulator game making it onto the iPhone can we worry more about the one that allows you to put hits out on your friends and uses real social networks (cheapening them in the process as well)...
There is also UFO: Alien Invasion
http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/
......... ATI is pretty much there too. Might want to read up on the state of Linux drivers.
After coming from an HTC Apache (xv6700) on Verizon to an iPhone, I can say that I've gotten far more things to work far easier on the iPhone. Syncing makes much more sense (though I don't get why they do not have Bluetooth syncing support when every Apple computer has Bluetooth). I've already got a media remote software that works with my setup (iTunes). The Apache was just as crippled by Verizon if not more so than the iPhone is by AT&T. In fact I'd argue that at least Apple, the maker of the phone, has such tight control even in the AT&T environment, that at the least every user of an iPhone gets what Apple wants them to get instead of what AT&T wants them to get. I definitely was not getting the phone that HTC developed because of Verizon provisioning and Windows crappiness.
The only thing my iPhone doesn't do that my Apache did is Stereo Bluetooth over A2DP. But that's not anything to brag about considering the quality of media player on the Windows Mobile device sucked and I can plug any pair of headphones (including my high quality Sennheisers) into the iPhone. I needed an adapter for the smaller plug in the HTC-Apache.
"It just works" is still a VERY valid statement for Apple. And I haven't paid a DIME to the App store or unlocked my phone and gotten more functionality and more fun out of my iPhone in less than a month of ownership than I did for 3 years with a comparable device from Verizon.
Fail.
Front Row is part of the OS and works with any Mac. It's running perfectly fine on my 1st gen MacBook. In fact it's running VERY well and has been significantly updated since I first got my MacBook. So much so that I'm thinking about buying a MacMini when they do a product refresh on the line to replace my 5 year old shuttle that has media duty next to my TV.
We saw this before. I'm pretty sure it's the same thing that happened when they released $2 drm free versions of some of their music.
PC Gaming isn't dead. But the controller market on computers is and always will be limited to Keyboard and Mouse. Anything else is very niche based and not all that popular and thus never successful.
It will fail.
The best way to get market penetration would be to go with making it a console controller.
You really believe that don't you.
Sorry "kid" but ageism is abound in the tech world and with a fertile group of newly laid off programmers, the good jobs are getting filled with people willing to take any paycheck over no paycheck at all.
Reading while on the toilet is a terrible habbit.
Which is a shame, in the early 90's it used to be one of the best magazines. Cheap, tons of content and covered every game system (and there were more active ones then, than I think there are now).
Sharpie makes silver markers just for you.
"But you finally own what you buy."
Just because DRM is gone, doesn't change the fact that the Music companies still think they are licensing you the right to listen to the song (coincidently they want to push it further to meaning that you can listen to it in one format).
Before all of this, you could burn the itunes song to CD and then rerip it and remove the DRM anyway. Nothing has changed except now Apple has opened the door to more expensive music.
I would have been more excited if:
- they allowed you periodic redownloads of already purchased music.
- offered options in quality of downloaded music (128 still sucks, 320Kbps should be standard by now and though still not acceptable when compared to CD quality).
- offered more than what you get with a CD for a digital download (all music videos too for example and the ability to get videos as they are released).
The word is "dock".
Sorry, it bothers me that much despite your low /. id.
Well they switched to the magnetic power adapter so that they could patent and trademark it and either prevent other manufacturers from making adapters or at least draw a licensing check from them if they do.
Lets be fair, Apple may do some awesome things, but at the end of the day they do it for a paycheck (and yes I'm an apple fanboy with 2 (obsoleted) ipods, an iPhone and a Macbook).
Thank you, I wish I had mod points to give you. I never knew you could do that with the power adapter from the Cinema Displays.
And what few people don't know is the monitor connectors are no longer large bulky connectors with a ton of breakable pins and huge screws to bolt them in.
Does it keep the macbook on though once I plug it in?
So banish it to the basement, turn it into a file server and run a thin client next to the TV. Mac Mini's are great for this BTW due to the Apple Remote, Bluetooth and small size and the ability to display 1080p (as opposed to the AppleTV which can't out of the box).
I wish they'd make the XBox360 streaming option much more robust.
Currently you're limited to one Watch It Now Queue and can only view movies on the Queue. So you can't even browse their selection for something on the XBox.
There is also no "Favorites" Section to save movies to in case you want to watch again another time.
It might be nice to have random or suggested movies displayed and ratable for you as well, right on your TV.
The Quality of video is however much better than I can get any of my other computers connected to my TV and well worth the $50 I spent on Live that I might not have otherwise (already had the Netflix account and the Xbox360).
You are the anecdotal evidence that comes from a person that sees a spike to 85 frames when looking at the floor and tells everyone that's what they get all the time. Or worse, your "maximum" resolution is on a 1024x800 display.
The average person will not see what you are seeing.
This is my major problem with LCDs. They abruptly thrust the system requirements up to load screens 1920x1200 and LARGER. The primary reason being that larger LCD screens just had higher pixel resolutions and not going native looks terrible in most situations. If you want to drive a large display for newer games, that usually means having top end (expensive) gear or silly multi GPU SLI/Crossfire setups. Maybe it's just an illusion but I know that I felt the need for a huge jump from 1024x800 to 1920x1200 and I know that I was still making a low end jump. I'm hoping with TV resolutions being very acceptable at 1080p24 and 1080p60, that we get more standardization to that resolution for at least the next few years and prevent another resolution inflation.
As far as those "ego-prostetic" CPUs, some are fluff but I think you are far from completely correct. It does pay to upgrade CPUs from time to time but what too many people put too much faith in is the clock speed and number of cores. Beyond two cores in most cases, you won't see much in games. There are only a select few that use more than 2, WoW for instance can identify multiple cores, but when it comes down to it, it doesn't use more than 2. And speed can only do so much, the real gain will be in opening up the bus speed, which can usually but not always compensated for in overclocking a good motherboard and good ram. That decreases the potential life of your CPU though. The more important statistic too look at though is your L2 and L3 cache which you can do absolutely NOTHING but upgrade your CPU to get more of or pay for one of those high priced CPUs.
Starting a little early too to declare gaming dead. Get ready for the:
- 2009 the year PC gaming will die
- 2009 the year consoles converge with PCs
- 2009 year of Linux
- 2009 year of the Mac
- 2009 the year Google jumps the shark (oh wait... did that already happen?)
- 2009 the year the world ends
- etc....
I guess it's time to stop reading Slashdot until after April fools to avoid all the regurgitated year to year crap.