Not really the same animal. The Mac Pro will kick the crap out of the Core 2 Duo in CPU benchmarks. An SLI graphics card setup will beat out the Mac Pro in most games as they are GPU limited rather than CPU. Some games (such as Half Life 2) are CPU limited due to the physics processing however. Also I don't believe Apple has released the Windows drivers for the Mac Pro yet, so it might not be a good test.
It's still a very fast computer. He just paid more for it than he would have from another vendor. That doesn't make it a bad computer, just overpriced.
You know the Alienware computer that is reviewed IS a fast computer. It just isn't a good value or as fast as you can get for the money. The key differences they noted are:
1. Choice of a single dual GPU 7950GTX card vs 2 7900GTX cards in SLI on the other systems. (Note that you could add a 2nd 7950GTX for quad SLI) 2. Standard clock rates on the CPU and video cards versus overclocking on the other systems.
The Alienware system is certainly faster than the Core 2 Duo 6600 + 7900GT system that I just put together. The problem is simply that it is overpriced and not a good value.
These are standard quality parts. Read the review. The place that this system sucks is in the high end. It's not that the parts are low quality, it's that they are overpriced and don't push the limits. The top end system that it is compared to is heavily overclocked - the Alienware is running at stock clocks. The other two systems use to 7900GTX cards in SLI versus Alienware with a single 7950GTX (2 GPUs on one card) which performs slower than 2 cards. Of course you can add another 7950GTX to go to a quad SLI setup. Basically Alienware is overpriced and has been for years. Ever since the name got popular among gamers they attached a premium to the systems. I haven't seen an Alienware system compare favorably on a price/performance basis in years. This doesn't have anything to do with Dell.
Same here. Played for about 10 months. One level 60 character, a 43 and assorted alts in the 20s and 30s. I wasn't into high end raiding and PVP was time consuming. I got bored and the little irritating things started to bug me more and more. Needing to tweak my interface and macros for every patch, having to wait in a queue to login, having to wait in a queue to get in battlegrounds, having to wait an hour or more to get a raid group together. I really enjoyed the game but I didn't see any point in continuing to play as I couldn't find anything to do where the fun outweighed the annoyance.
I went with the one they recommend in the Hot Rod system - the Asus P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe. Fanless design, 2 x16 PCI Xpress slots for SLI, 8 phase power, 2 SATA RAID controllers, dual gig-Ethernet, firewire etc.
Although I've heard some issues, I believe with outdated BIOS and the Conroe chips. I guess I'll see when it comes in.
You are correct in that it is available for PowerPC Macs - just not installed by default and no longer included on the OS disks. There is no Intel version. As the other poster noted you can still run OS 9 applications even on Intel Macs but you must resort to an emulator such as Sheepsaver. This is the same as emulating a Mac under another OS such as Windows or Linux. You don't get the integration you got with Classic. Instead you boot the OS 9 desktop in a seperate emulator window.
Well... not really. Sheepsaver is an emulator. And as the article noted:
"1. This isn't like Classic, where OS 9 and OS X applications co-existed on the screen. OS 9's running in its own X11 window."
SO this is not Apple based support for OS 9 and doesn't integrate with the OS the way Classic did. This is no different from running Sheepsaver or Basilisk on Windows or Linux to emulate MacOS 9 or earlier.
Yeah that one is pretty nice, but I think the others done with Illustrator's gradient mesh are more photo realistic. The Xara one has more of a painterly feel. That isn't a bad thing just different.
I got into EQ2 earlier this year and one thing I found was that very few people had any interest in running the content from expansion #1 (Desert of Flames). I could hardly ever get groups to do the key quests for dungeons or to run the dungeons themselves. Most people were just grinding levels 50-60 in order to get to the expansion #2 (Kingdom of the Sky) content. I guess everyone either didn't like Desert of Flames or had run it before and were leveling alts. Personally I enjoyed the Arabian Nights theme in DoF better than the floating islands of KoS.
"Remember that there is no built-in game finding software in Cities3D yet, so to play online, you will have to arrange a game with someone acting as the host and everyone connecting to their IP address. The IRC channel #settlers on irc.freenode.net is a good place to look for people testing the game."
Well, looks like you need to use IRC to find opponents, but yeah this is a very cool project.
Let's remember that Apple also is a licensee of Amazon's super retarded one click shopping patent. At least in paying out to Creative they are being consistent in their support for bullshit patents.
The good news: There is a version of Settlers of Catan for the computer! The bad news part 1: It's for Windows only. The bad news part 2: It requires that you use Internet Explorer to play the online version. The bad news part 3: You need to create a MS Passport account to play (or have a hotmail account). The bad news part 4: Playing online requires a subscription of $4.95/month or $19.99/year.
Anyway if you are interested check out at Catan Online.
"The difference is this: - Apple bundles apps with their OS and hardware because they want to improve the user experience of their customers. That is what Apple is known for. - Microsoft bundles apps with their OS because they want to kill their competitor. That is what Microsoft is known for."
So you don't think bundling Dashboard into OS X impacted Konfabulator's Mac install base?
Under Classic? Classic is no longer supported, does not come with and will not run on new Macintoshes. Software made for OS 9 and earlier has been abandoned. Maybe not your personal software if you so choose to keep updating it - but there is virtually no software being updated for OS9.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't trading ISK for game time cards allowed? And couldn't you then sell those game time cards on eBay or something fairly anonymously?
My point isn't that Microsoft can do the same, just that company age and size has little to do with it. Crafting the public perception of the brand is what's important. This is where Sony as an old company (founded in the 1940s) was able to position itself in the late 70s. I still know people that are die hard Sony fans. They buy Sony stuff even though the old perception of Sony=quality is no longer true. They just think it must be better because it's Sony. That's impressive considering how much crap Sony has pedaled in the last 20 years. I don't think Microsoft's player is likely to any more of a dent in the market than other non-iPod players. And yes because of how they've (un)managed their brand they have a very difficult time being cool. In the eyes of the public Microsoft IS Bill Gates and Gates is a nerd in the classic sense. Good luck erasing that image from the youth of today.
I've seen guilds purchase characters (not at $10,000) to flesh out a class they are lacking. For example, the core guild members have too many hunters and need another priest. They purchase a 60 priest and have a one of the hunters use the character. I've also seen guild leaders who maintain a couple of accounts in this same way so that critical but understaffed classes (commonly healers) are always available for raiding. High level raiding guilds get crazy like that sometimes.
One man's information is another man's news. It is news in the sense that they have released additional new information about the game. For WoW players or those interested in WoW, this is news.
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Not really the same animal. The Mac Pro will kick the crap out of the Core 2 Duo in CPU benchmarks. An SLI graphics card setup will beat out the Mac Pro in most games as they are GPU limited rather than CPU. Some games (such as Half Life 2) are CPU limited due to the physics processing however.
Also I don't believe Apple has released the Windows drivers for the Mac Pro yet, so it might not be a good test.
It's still a very fast computer. He just paid more for it than he would have from another vendor. That doesn't make it a bad computer, just overpriced.
You know the Alienware computer that is reviewed IS a fast computer. It just isn't a good value or as fast as you can get for the money. The key differences they noted are:
1. Choice of a single dual GPU 7950GTX card vs 2 7900GTX cards in SLI on the other systems. (Note that you could add a 2nd 7950GTX for quad SLI)
2. Standard clock rates on the CPU and video cards versus overclocking on the other systems.
The Alienware system is certainly faster than the Core 2 Duo 6600 + 7900GT system that I just put together. The problem is simply that it is overpriced and not a good value.
These are standard quality parts. Read the review. The place that this system sucks is in the high end. It's not that the parts are low quality, it's that they are overpriced and don't push the limits. The top end system that it is compared to is heavily overclocked - the Alienware is running at stock clocks. The other two systems use to 7900GTX cards in SLI versus Alienware with a single 7950GTX (2 GPUs on one card) which performs slower than 2 cards. Of course you can add another 7950GTX to go to a quad SLI setup.
Basically Alienware is overpriced and has been for years. Ever since the name got popular among gamers they attached a premium to the systems. I haven't seen an Alienware system compare favorably on a price/performance basis in years.
This doesn't have anything to do with Dell.
Same here. Played for about 10 months. One level 60 character, a 43 and assorted alts in the 20s and 30s. I wasn't into high end raiding and PVP was time consuming. I got bored and the little irritating things started to bug me more and more. Needing to tweak my interface and macros for every patch, having to wait in a queue to login, having to wait in a queue to get in battlegrounds, having to wait an hour or more to get a raid group together.
I really enjoyed the game but I didn't see any point in continuing to play as I couldn't find anything to do where the fun outweighed the annoyance.
I went with the one they recommend in the Hot Rod system - the Asus P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe.
Fanless design, 2 x16 PCI Xpress slots for SLI, 8 phase power, 2 SATA RAID controllers, dual gig-Ethernet, firewire etc.
Although I've heard some issues, I believe with outdated BIOS and the Conroe chips. I guess I'll see when it comes in.
You are correct in that it is available for PowerPC Macs - just not installed by default and no longer included on the OS disks. There is no Intel version.
As the other poster noted you can still run OS 9 applications even on Intel Macs but you must resort to an emulator such as Sheepsaver. This is the same as emulating a Mac under another OS such as Windows or Linux. You don't get the integration you got with Classic. Instead you boot the OS 9 desktop in a seperate emulator window.
Well... not really. Sheepsaver is an emulator. And as the article noted:
"1. This isn't like Classic, where OS 9 and OS X applications co-existed on the screen. OS 9's running in its own X11 window."
SO this is not Apple based support for OS 9 and doesn't integrate with the OS the way Classic did. This is no different from running Sheepsaver or Basilisk on Windows or Linux to emulate MacOS 9 or earlier.
Yeah that one is pretty nice, but I think the others done with Illustrator's gradient mesh are more photo realistic. The Xara one has more of a painterly feel. That isn't a bad thing just different.
I got into EQ2 earlier this year and one thing I found was that very few people had any interest in running the content from expansion #1 (Desert of Flames). I could hardly ever get groups to do the key quests for dungeons or to run the dungeons themselves. Most people were just grinding levels 50-60 in order to get to the expansion #2 (Kingdom of the Sky) content.
I guess everyone either didn't like Desert of Flames or had run it before and were leveling alts. Personally I enjoyed the Arabian Nights theme in DoF better than the floating islands of KoS.
Well I quite playing and the game just hasn't been the same without me. So it's obviously going downhill. Poor Blizzard!
A WMV file is much better?
Now THIS is some amazing photorealistic vector artwork.
"Remember that there is no built-in game finding software in Cities3D yet, so to play online, you will have to arrange a game with someone acting as the host and everyone connecting to their IP address. The IRC channel #settlers on irc.freenode.net is a good place to look for people testing the game."
Well, looks like you need to use IRC to find opponents, but yeah this is a very cool project.
Yes but does that pair you up online with players around the country/world? What if you don't have a couple boardgaming friends?
Let's remember that Apple also is a licensee of Amazon's super retarded one click shopping patent. At least in paying out to Creative they are being consistent in their support for bullshit patents.
The good news: There is a version of Settlers of Catan for the computer!
The bad news part 1: It's for Windows only.
The bad news part 2: It requires that you use Internet Explorer to play the online version.
The bad news part 3: You need to create a MS Passport account to play (or have a hotmail account).
The bad news part 4: Playing online requires a subscription of $4.95/month or $19.99/year.
Anyway if you are interested check out at Catan Online.
"The difference is this:
- Apple bundles apps with their OS and hardware because they want to improve the user experience of their customers. That is what Apple is known for.
- Microsoft bundles apps with their OS because they want to kill their competitor. That is what Microsoft is known for."
So you don't think bundling Dashboard into OS X impacted Konfabulator's Mac install base?
"I don't see that in Server 2003, where a web browser has no place."
By default IE in Windows Server 2003 is very tightly locked down and essentially won't browse anywhere you don't designate as a trusted site.
Under Classic? Classic is no longer supported, does not come with and will not run on new Macintoshes.
Software made for OS 9 and earlier has been abandoned. Maybe not your personal software if you so choose to keep updating it - but there is virtually no software being updated for OS9.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't trading ISK for game time cards allowed? And couldn't you then sell those game time cards on eBay or something fairly anonymously?
My point isn't that Microsoft can do the same, just that company age and size has little to do with it. Crafting the public perception of the brand is what's important. This is where Sony as an old company (founded in the 1940s) was able to position itself in the late 70s.
I still know people that are die hard Sony fans. They buy Sony stuff even though the old perception of Sony=quality is no longer true. They just think it must be better because it's Sony. That's impressive considering how much crap Sony has pedaled in the last 20 years.
I don't think Microsoft's player is likely to any more of a dent in the market than other non-iPod players. And yes because of how they've (un)managed their brand they have a very difficult time being cool. In the eyes of the public Microsoft IS Bill Gates and Gates is a nerd in the classic sense. Good luck erasing that image from the youth of today.
"There's nothing hip or cool aboug having some music device from a giant corporation."
I guess you don't remember when having a Sony walkman was a big thing. Sony being a giant corporation.
It's all about how the brand is managed.
I've seen guilds purchase characters (not at $10,000) to flesh out a class they are lacking. For example, the core guild members have too many hunters and need another priest. They purchase a 60 priest and have a one of the hunters use the character.
I've also seen guild leaders who maintain a couple of accounts in this same way so that critical but understaffed classes (commonly healers) are always available for raiding.
High level raiding guilds get crazy like that sometimes.
"it's more information than news"
One man's information is another man's news. It is news in the sense that they have released additional new information about the game. For WoW players or those interested in WoW, this is news.
See the definition:
2. New information of any kind