My dad used to do this too, although at a fairly large (by Australian standards) high school and not a giant US mega-college or anything.
My brother and I would take turns doing data entry into this ancient DOS program called TimeChart, which would attempt to schedule everything. After it spat out a schedule along with a giant list of clashes, it was up to my dad and a room filled with giant pasteboards to manually massage all the problems out.
A sub-$500 PC these days will probably have a Core 2 Duo or equivalent of reasonably frequency. It's vastly faster than the cut-down custom PPC processors used in consoles.
You're absolutely correct about the graphics situation, though. If it's going to have integrated graphics, you at least want something like the NVidia 9400 which is at least comparable to the GPU in a console.
You don't even need to spend $300 on a GPU these days if your primary objective is "better graphics than a console." A Radeon 4870 is less than $150 and can display most modern PC games in greater than full HD resolutions with AF/AA and all the trimmings, something no console can currently do.
Even if you had a SLI board already, buying another 8800GT is a horrible idea. Far more cost effective would be to sell the 8800GT you already have and upgrade to a better card (probably a 4870.)
A single new card draws less power, makes less noise and heat, takes up less space, and probably runs faster in almost every game (but maybe not synthetic benchmarks.) SLI is a bust.
Normal Core i7s are just as fast as the Xeons used in a Mac Pro. Since they don't have to use slow FB-DIMMs they actually have faster RAM latencies, too. Since they're not a Mac, they can be overclocked to be even faster.
Take a look at XBench results one day; all the machines on the top of the charts are Hacks.
Good luck getting flash to work on a 600 MHz linux computer...
Even Mac users with 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duos have issues with Youtube videos and flash ads randomly deciding to take 60% CPU.
By that logic the "real price" (ie. retail) of Windows is known too. What would be more interesting to learn is the amount that the software division gets per unit sale of hardware, assuming they account for it that way.
Since Apple is a single company you could maybe work this out from publicly available information, if they go into that level of detail in their prospectus or regulatory filings.
Good writeup of the process, but there definitely are "patches" for wargames and other tabletop games. Rules errata notes and slight map/unit modifications come out all the time.
Plenty of news and business websites allow googlebot unfettered access to articles/reports, so they can get ranked highly and show up with blurbs of the article in Google News and other aggregators.
If you show up with a plain jane browser user agent though, you may get told to create an account or even that you have to pay to read the article.
The old style SE power connector on my T610 definitely counted as 'fragile'. I don't know if the problem was with the charger plug or the phone socket, but if you so much as looked at it funny after plugging it in then the connection would break.
Think of the hieroglyphic string as a representation of the hash of the password. Even if a shoulder surfer remembers that your password equalled "bird pharaoh obelisk pyramid", it doesn't mean that they can try random strings until they get that hash and still be able to login successfully.
It seems like a good idea to me, although the problem was that there was no documentation about the feature so users never understood the purpose of the changing glyphs.
I played UT2K4 on a 700 MHz iMac G4 with a Geforce 2MX, and many of my friends played it with Geforce 4MXes (which was one of the most popular cards around at that time.) Obviously it wouldn't look as nice as on a PC with a huge resolution and FSAA modes, but I think the Wii could handle it.
And why does that matter? There are very few "real Mac" enthusiasts because Apple does not cater to them. There are thousands and thousands of OSX86 users because of this fact.
Apple doesn't have to cater to them if they do not wish, but it's tiring to continually hear from Mac fans who claim that NOBODY needs PCIe slots, NOBODY needs a good graphics card on a Mac, NOBODY needs more than 4 hard disks or 2 optical drives.
It's also a bit annoying that all my pro-Hackintosh posts get modded way down. I fully believe that I've made legitimate points from my own personal experiences in each one.
I mean that a "PC" Radeon 4870, for which Apple drivers exist already, won't work in a Mac Pro. You must pay several hundred dollars extra for an "Apple" version, or buy a PC version and flash the "Apple" firmware onto it.
Meanwhile, the Hackintosh user gets to buy a "PC" card and have it work in OS X. The drivers exist, it's just that Apple won't let you use the card in OS X.
It's also a bit annoying that all my pro-Hackintosh posts get modded way down. I fully believe that I've made legitimate points from my own personal experiences in each one.
In some cases, they would be *right* to blame OS X. See for example why standard graphics cards don't work in OS X when they work perfectly fine in Windows on the same machine.
What would you really want to use those PCIe slots for that you couldn't find reasonably equivalent functionality via USB or Firewire? Bonus points if there are mac drivers available.
I have a RAID card, a USB card and a wireless card in my Hackintosh. Since it's a Hack, I get PCIe slots AND PCI slots so I can use my older devices, unlike unlucky Mac Pro owners.
I have a 8800GT, and I paid half the price that my Mac Pro owner friend had to pay to get one. In a month or two I'm going to buy a Radeon 4870, and again I will pay much much less for it than a real Mac owner would have to.
Since it's in a standard tower PC case, I can have 7 hard disks in real mounts too, unlike Mac Pro owners who have to cram them into optical drive bays.
Fusion powered 3d graphics card? Are gamers really clambering to run awesome 3D games under OS X?
Some gamers prefer OS X, you know. With OpenCL coming to 10.6, they might even get some use out of it in OS X too!:)
What's so bad about having a cheap, powerful graphics card to run when booted in Windows either? Besides, for the games that do run under OS X the ports are usually so shoddy that you need to throw as much graphics grunt at them as you can.
TV tuners and video capture? There are plenty of those for USB, FW or Ethernet.
PCI/PCI-e devices which do those things are usually better and cheaper. Having the ability to use them is a good thing, a Hack owner can also avail themselves of a USB/FW solution if they wish.
What I'm saying is that the "mid tower" you describe *likely* doesn't differ significantly from the iMac except for not having a built-in display, those PCIe slots and extra optical and internal drive bays - and in the case of the optical and/or hard drive bays, FW800 is an alternative. And I am honestly struggling to think of why those PCIe slots are missed.
Some people use their computers in different ways to you. Judging by the OS X86 community, quite a lot of people, actually.
This could well be correct. Back in the day Java was going to be a "first class citizen" as far as programming Cocoa apps went. You could take your entire backend from an existing Java codebase and give it a fast/pretty/standard OS X UI using Interface Builder and AppKit, and even package the result as a.app that worked exactly like any other Mac application.
Over time, less and less new API functions made it into the Cocoa Bridge, and it eventually got deprecated entirely. Nowadays even Ruby and Python are more usable than Java on OS X.
Nope, it's Pandemic, a game where you are the virus with the eventual goal of wiping out every human being on earth and thereby eradicating your hosts... whoops.
In the game, Madagascar has a single port and a jumpy health department; the latter will close the former as soon as the news about yourself becomes reasonably widespread. The trick therefore is to be a less deadly virus with a long incubation period, and after you manage to infect Mad. you can mutate into something a lot more deadly.
I don't agree with that assertion considering recent technology.
If your CPU gets too hot it will shut down, if the voltage gets to high the mobo will force a reboot, and if the BIOS doesn't POST a few times in a row then it automatically reflashes the BIOS with fail-safe defaults. You have to try very hard indeed to actually break parts.
As far as value for money goes, take the popular Q6600 as an example. Quad core, 2.4 GHz, which can usually get up to 3-3.2 GHz on stock cooling and 3.6-4 GHz on a nice HSF. The 3.2 GHz CPU will cost you a lot more than an extra $100 and there's no 3.6 GHz part at all.
I can't remember where I read this, it might have been in a Reader's Digest in the dentist's or something like that so take it with as much salt as desired.
Medieval grifter peasants would try to sell pigs (quite a valuable animal) in an alley or whatever for a cheap price, but the trick was that the animal itself was ensconced in a sack, and was actually a cat to boot. A bit like the speakers for sale out of the back of a white van.
Anyway, if you were smart enough to open the sack right there then "the cat's out of the bag" and presumably you bludgeon the grifter with your cudgel and get your sixpence back.
Speaking of RTZ, did anyone manage to finish the game after having burn the Dizzyland tickets?
The manual tantalisingly hints that it is possible but I've never managed to find out how.
While we're on the subject of the fiendish and sometimes arbitrary puzzles, don't forget about the instant deaths from taking the innocuous "ROad to the South" or trying to cross a bridge which the player can't see has only one half. (Why doesn't the character notice that the bridge ends halfway across the river and just stop crossing it??)
Oh, and if you rent a hotel room and go to sleep in it of course you get eaten by a grue.:)
You can't run steam in offline mode unless Steam is up and you're logged in to begin with. If you wake up tomorrow and Valve is gone, then it's too late for your library of now-useless games unless you were already set to play offline-only.
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My dad used to do this too, although at a fairly large (by Australian standards) high school and not a giant US mega-college or anything.
My brother and I would take turns doing data entry into this ancient DOS program called TimeChart, which would attempt to schedule everything. After it spat out a schedule along with a giant list of clashes, it was up to my dad and a room filled with giant pasteboards to manually massage all the problems out.
You're absolutely correct about the graphics situation, though. If it's going to have integrated graphics, you at least want something like the NVidia 9400 which is at least comparable to the GPU in a console.
You don't even need to spend $300 on a GPU these days if your primary objective is "better graphics than a console." A Radeon 4870 is less than $150 and can display most modern PC games in greater than full HD resolutions with AF/AA and all the trimmings, something no console can currently do.
Even if you had a SLI board already, buying another 8800GT is a horrible idea. Far more cost effective would be to sell the 8800GT you already have and upgrade to a better card (probably a 4870.)
A single new card draws less power, makes less noise and heat, takes up less space, and probably runs faster in almost every game (but maybe not synthetic benchmarks.) SLI is a bust.
Take a look at XBench results one day; all the machines on the top of the charts are Hacks.
Good luck getting flash to work on a 600 MHz linux computer... Even Mac users with 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duos have issues with Youtube videos and flash ads randomly deciding to take 60% CPU.
Since Apple is a single company you could maybe work this out from publicly available information, if they go into that level of detail in their prospectus or regulatory filings.
In an hour, therefore your PSU wastes 3Wh. In 1000 hours it wastes 3kWh, or about 30-50c depending on the cost of electricity.
Good writeup of the process, but there definitely are "patches" for wargames and other tabletop games. Rules errata notes and slight map/unit modifications come out all the time.
If you show up with a plain jane browser user agent though, you may get told to create an account or even that you have to pay to read the article.
The old style SE power connector on my T610 definitely counted as 'fragile'. I don't know if the problem was with the charger plug or the phone socket, but if you so much as looked at it funny after plugging it in then the connection would break.
It seems like a good idea to me, although the problem was that there was no documentation about the feature so users never understood the purpose of the changing glyphs.
I played UT2K4 on a 700 MHz iMac G4 with a Geforce 2MX, and many of my friends played it with Geforce 4MXes (which was one of the most popular cards around at that time.) Obviously it wouldn't look as nice as on a PC with a huge resolution and FSAA modes, but I think the Wii could handle it.
And why does that matter? There are very few "real Mac" enthusiasts because Apple does not cater to them. There are thousands and thousands of OSX86 users because of this fact.
Apple doesn't have to cater to them if they do not wish, but it's tiring to continually hear from Mac fans who claim that NOBODY needs PCIe slots, NOBODY needs a good graphics card on a Mac, NOBODY needs more than 4 hard disks or 2 optical drives.
It's also a bit annoying that all my pro-Hackintosh posts get modded way down. I fully believe that I've made legitimate points from my own personal experiences in each one.
I mean that a "PC" Radeon 4870, for which Apple drivers exist already, won't work in a Mac Pro. You must pay several hundred dollars extra for an "Apple" version, or buy a PC version and flash the "Apple" firmware onto it.
Meanwhile, the Hackintosh user gets to buy a "PC" card and have it work in OS X. The drivers exist, it's just that Apple won't let you use the card in OS X.
It's also a bit annoying that all my pro-Hackintosh posts get modded way down. I fully believe that I've made legitimate points from my own personal experiences in each one.
In some cases, they would be *right* to blame OS X. See for example why standard graphics cards don't work in OS X when they work perfectly fine in Windows on the same machine.
What would you really want to use those PCIe slots for that you couldn't find reasonably equivalent functionality via USB or Firewire? Bonus points if there are mac drivers available.
I have a RAID card, a USB card and a wireless card in my Hackintosh. Since it's a Hack, I get PCIe slots AND PCI slots so I can use my older devices, unlike unlucky Mac Pro owners.
I have a 8800GT, and I paid half the price that my Mac Pro owner friend had to pay to get one. In a month or two I'm going to buy a Radeon 4870, and again I will pay much much less for it than a real Mac owner would have to.
Since it's in a standard tower PC case, I can have 7 hard disks in real mounts too, unlike Mac Pro owners who have to cram them into optical drive bays.
Fusion powered 3d graphics card? Are gamers really clambering to run awesome 3D games under OS X?
Some gamers prefer OS X, you know. With OpenCL coming to 10.6, they might even get some use out of it in OS X too! :)
What's so bad about having a cheap, powerful graphics card to run when booted in Windows either? Besides, for the games that do run under OS X the ports are usually so shoddy that you need to throw as much graphics grunt at them as you can.
TV tuners and video capture? There are plenty of those for USB, FW or Ethernet.
PCI/PCI-e devices which do those things are usually better and cheaper. Having the ability to use them is a good thing, a Hack owner can also avail themselves of a USB/FW solution if they wish.
What I'm saying is that the "mid tower" you describe *likely* doesn't differ significantly from the iMac except for not having a built-in display, those PCIe slots and extra optical and internal drive bays - and in the case of the optical and/or hard drive bays, FW800 is an alternative. And I am honestly struggling to think of why those PCIe slots are missed.
Some people use their computers in different ways to you. Judging by the OS X86 community, quite a lot of people, actually.
This could well be correct. Back in the day Java was going to be a "first class citizen" as far as programming Cocoa apps went. You could take your entire backend from an existing Java codebase and give it a fast/pretty/standard OS X UI using Interface Builder and AppKit, and even package the result as a .app that worked exactly like any other Mac application.
Over time, less and less new API functions made it into the Cocoa Bridge, and it eventually got deprecated entirely. Nowadays even Ruby and Python are more usable than Java on OS X.
In the game, Madagascar has a single port and a jumpy health department; the latter will close the former as soon as the news about yourself becomes reasonably widespread. The trick therefore is to be a less deadly virus with a long incubation period, and after you manage to infect Mad. you can mutate into something a lot more deadly.
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/448950
If your CPU gets too hot it will shut down, if the voltage gets to high the mobo will force a reboot, and if the BIOS doesn't POST a few times in a row then it automatically reflashes the BIOS with fail-safe defaults. You have to try very hard indeed to actually break parts.
As far as value for money goes, take the popular Q6600 as an example. Quad core, 2.4 GHz, which can usually get up to 3-3.2 GHz on stock cooling and 3.6-4 GHz on a nice HSF. The 3.2 GHz CPU will cost you a lot more than an extra $100 and there's no 3.6 GHz part at all.
Medieval grifter peasants would try to sell pigs (quite a valuable animal) in an alley or whatever for a cheap price, but the trick was that the animal itself was ensconced in a sack, and was actually a cat to boot. A bit like the speakers for sale out of the back of a white van.
Anyway, if you were smart enough to open the sack right there then "the cat's out of the bag" and presumably you bludgeon the grifter with your cudgel and get your sixpence back.
The manual tantalisingly hints that it is possible but I've never managed to find out how.
While we're on the subject of the fiendish and sometimes arbitrary puzzles, don't forget about the instant deaths from taking the innocuous "ROad to the South" or trying to cross a bridge which the player can't see has only one half. (Why doesn't the character notice that the bridge ends halfway across the river and just stop crossing it??) Oh, and if you rent a hotel room and go to sleep in it of course you get eaten by a grue. :)
You can't run steam in offline mode unless Steam is up and you're logged in to begin with. If you wake up tomorrow and Valve is gone, then it's too late for your library of now-useless games unless you were already set to play offline-only.
Mac still get pretty insane resale value but your experience is more about the luck of the draw than being typical.