I think I'd rather get another 512MB of RAM then get a new case for my computer. I wonder how many people actually have Small-Form Factor cases.(did that take that long to read instead of SFF?)
SFF systems are quite prevalent among those who goto lanparties all the time (as well as college students). It's nice to have an entire system that you can throw in a bag and take with you, and still have an insane amount of power in it.
Myself, I own a Shuttle SN45G with an AthlonXP 2500 (modestly overclocked to 2.1GHz from the stock 1.8). 512mb of memory, 200gb HD and a 6800GT means I can handle Doom3 or HL2 with no problems, and still have a nice portable system (especially since I ditched my CRT in favor of a flat panel). SFF systems provide all the power of your standard desktop without the bulk. I know you can get a laptop to carry around with you, but getting one with decent video means spending quite a bit more money.
Why don't they invent one even more useful to:
* Detect when women are horny
* Detect when a woman has had enough to drink and will sleep with almost anyone
* Detect when a woman has just broken up with a boy friend, and wants to 'show him' by sleeping with another man..
* Warn you when YOU are drunk and hitting on the boss's wife at a party
* One that shows she's gonna sleep with you, and not just leeching drinks off you at the bar
The problem with that comes in that they would need to add a small, high resolution CCD, and some advanced AI. Otherwise, instead of picking up the attractive women that meet any of the above criteria, you run the risk of it picking up some chain-smoking bargoyle. Not a good thing...
Sorry, but the spread in PCG reads less like a "review" and more like "OMFG WE GOT TO PLAY HL2! *FAP*FAP*FAP*FAP*FAP*FAP*FAP*FAP*FAP*FAP*FAP*FAP*F AP*FAP*FAP*FAP*FAP*"
I've seen better reviews written by some of the AC's around here.
Oddly enough, the site you mention works just fine in Mozilla for me. All the goofy little flash games and everything. It has nothing to do with being "compatible" with IE. It's a standard Flash plugin, and it installs almost instantly if the site is kind enough to link to the Macromedia download page.
So now that we know that it works for stupid games, what's the next excuse for still using IE?
(No AMD suggestions please. I've never found them to be as stable as Intel CPUs ).
Then you must be doing something wrong. I've used both Intel and AMD CPU's and have never had a problem with stability on the hardware side of things. In fact, my current AMD system has been up and running since I switched it back on after spring break. According to my command line: "\\SHODAN has been up for: 19 day(s), 11 hour(s), 12 minute(s), 8 second(s)" -- WinXP Pro on an AMD processor. Completely stable.
To be fair, I've never had an issue with Intel chips either. I have a 733mhz P3 that's still going strong after 4 years (not total uptime, but its still stable nonetheless).
I'm not really generalizing. Several friends of mine go to college 2 hours north of me, and have outstanding connections. Unfortunately, that seems to be the exception in my region. Here, we have a single 45mbit pipe servicing the dorms, the academic buildings, and all the public buildings (student center, health center offices, etc) on campus, as well as the local community college. That's approx. 15,000 to 20,000 computers sharing 45mbit of bandwidth. The dorm network is 100mbit locally, but good luck even seeing 16kbit to the outside world. It's fast SOMETIMES on the weekends, and IF it decides it wants to work properly. But not only is the outbound pipe inadequate, the network configuration is completely slipshod. The pipes for my dorm and about 3 others are routed through the one across the street (even tho mine is closer to the NOC). Beginning of last year, part of that dorm floods. Kills EVERYTHING. Network is down for a couple WEEKS while they rush order parts from Dell. What boxes do I finally see? A crapload of 24 port UNMANAGED switches. I really don't understand. They know what wires in the closets go to what rooms, so if they really wanted to know what room was causing trouble, a managed switch could tell them what port, they could match that with the port map and instantly know even know what side of the room was causing hell. But no, they go with unmanaged switches and resort to some lame MAC address registration system linked to your email that you have to redo every semester and it seldom works right on the first try. Anyway, I'll shutup before the off-topic moderations murder what little positive karma I have.
If only that could assure a decent connection. Where I'm at, the connection isn't even worth being a freebie. It's slower than dialup in a lot of cases, and completely unreliable (it went down at least 10 times just this past weekend). Then there's the fact that the support office is a complete joke. A friend of mine took their computer over there because the network adapter was being a pain in the ass. They didn't know what to do with it. The sad thing is, it's an adapter my friend bought at the campus bookstore. Why, then, do they not know how to fix something they presumeably told the bookstore to stock?
Add to this horrific mix of hardware and wetware problems the fact that not one single person in the help office speaks easily intelligible English, then you have one hell of a mess on your hands. I'm not against people from other countries, but damnit if you want to work in tech support for a college where 99% of the students are born on this side of the pond, shouldn't you be able to at least speak English well enough to be easily understood?
And just so I'm not modded COMPLETELY off-topic here, what the fsck is up with this "flash mob supercomputer" crap anyway? Normal flash mobs were retarded enough to begin with, and I could have sworn that annoying little fad was over with. This is just completely insane. The idea behind the supercomputer thing is a novel one, but for the love of all that's holy, give it another name. Attaching "flash mob" to anything automatically earns it the stigma of being something cooked up by complete nutcases just trying to get in the news for their attempt at the "next big/cool/outlandish thing".
My personal system is XP Pro. The computers in the office are Windows 98. I simply log in to a webserver containing the Terminal Services Web Client (running on Apache, btw). Alternatively, you can also install the standalone TS client for 98. Can't use the second option due to the afformentioned paranoid dolt turning into Satan himself if he finds out you installed ANYTHING (thankfully we're moving to a new location he has no control over).
Actually, there are legitimate uses for ActiveX. One example being the Remote Desktop Web Client. It's a simple little ActiveX control that lets you log into your computer without having to install the terminal services client. While I would love to be able to get rid of that, it really isn't possible. The "engineer" where I work is a paranoid dolt who insists that no one should ever be allowed to install anything on any of the computers in the office (including popup killers...imagine the horror) and won't upgrade the machines (933mhz systems) to anything higher than Win98. Come to think of it, it's somewhat of a miracle that I can even remote into my system at all from there.
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Myself, I own a Shuttle SN45G with an AthlonXP 2500 (modestly overclocked to 2.1GHz from the stock 1.8). 512mb of memory, 200gb HD and a 6800GT means I can handle Doom3 or HL2 with no problems, and still have a nice portable system (especially since I ditched my CRT in favor of a flat panel). SFF systems provide all the power of your standard desktop without the bulk. I know you can get a laptop to carry around with you, but getting one with decent video means spending quite a bit more money.
Sorry, but the spread in PCG reads less like a "review" and more like "OMFG WE GOT TO PLAY HL2! *FAP*FAP*FAP*FAP*FAP*FAP*FAP*FAP*FAP*FAP*FAP*FAP*F AP*FAP*FAP*FAP*FAP*"
I've seen better reviews written by some of the AC's around here.
Oddly enough, the site you mention works just fine in Mozilla for me. All the goofy little flash games and everything. It has nothing to do with being "compatible" with IE. It's a standard Flash plugin, and it installs almost instantly if the site is kind enough to link to the Macromedia download page. So now that we know that it works for stupid games, what's the next excuse for still using IE?
I would hate to see how much space one frame from this thing takes up...
(No AMD suggestions please. I've never found them to be as stable as Intel CPUs ).
Then you must be doing something wrong. I've used both Intel and AMD CPU's and have never had a problem with stability on the hardware side of things. In fact, my current AMD system has been up and running since I switched it back on after spring break. According to my command line: "\\SHODAN has been up for: 19 day(s), 11 hour(s), 12 minute(s), 8 second(s)" -- WinXP Pro on an AMD processor. Completely stable. To be fair, I've never had an issue with Intel chips either. I have a 733mhz P3 that's still going strong after 4 years (not total uptime, but its still stable nonetheless).
I'm not really generalizing. Several friends of mine go to college 2 hours north of me, and have outstanding connections. Unfortunately, that seems to be the exception in my region. Here, we have a single 45mbit pipe servicing the dorms, the academic buildings, and all the public buildings (student center, health center offices, etc) on campus, as well as the local community college. That's approx. 15,000 to 20,000 computers sharing 45mbit of bandwidth. The dorm network is 100mbit locally, but good luck even seeing 16kbit to the outside world. It's fast SOMETIMES on the weekends, and IF it decides it wants to work properly. But not only is the outbound pipe inadequate, the network configuration is completely slipshod. The pipes for my dorm and about 3 others are routed through the one across the street (even tho mine is closer to the NOC). Beginning of last year, part of that dorm floods. Kills EVERYTHING. Network is down for a couple WEEKS while they rush order parts from Dell. What boxes do I finally see? A crapload of 24 port UNMANAGED switches. I really don't understand. They know what wires in the closets go to what rooms, so if they really wanted to know what room was causing trouble, a managed switch could tell them what port, they could match that with the port map and instantly know even know what side of the room was causing hell. But no, they go with unmanaged switches and resort to some lame MAC address registration system linked to your email that you have to redo every semester and it seldom works right on the first try. Anyway, I'll shutup before the off-topic moderations murder what little positive karma I have.
If only that could assure a decent connection. Where I'm at, the connection isn't even worth being a freebie. It's slower than dialup in a lot of cases, and completely unreliable (it went down at least 10 times just this past weekend). Then there's the fact that the support office is a complete joke. A friend of mine took their computer over there because the network adapter was being a pain in the ass. They didn't know what to do with it. The sad thing is, it's an adapter my friend bought at the campus bookstore. Why, then, do they not know how to fix something they presumeably told the bookstore to stock?
Add to this horrific mix of hardware and wetware problems the fact that not one single person in the help office speaks easily intelligible English, then you have one hell of a mess on your hands. I'm not against people from other countries, but damnit if you want to work in tech support for a college where 99% of the students are born on this side of the pond, shouldn't you be able to at least speak English well enough to be easily understood?
And just so I'm not modded COMPLETELY off-topic here, what the fsck is up with this "flash mob supercomputer" crap anyway? Normal flash mobs were retarded enough to begin with, and I could have sworn that annoying little fad was over with. This is just completely insane. The idea behind the supercomputer thing is a novel one, but for the love of all that's holy, give it another name. Attaching "flash mob" to anything automatically earns it the stigma of being something cooked up by complete nutcases just trying to get in the news for their attempt at the "next big/cool/outlandish thing".
My personal system is XP Pro. The computers in the office are Windows 98. I simply log in to a webserver containing the Terminal Services Web Client (running on Apache, btw). Alternatively, you can also install the standalone TS client for 98. Can't use the second option due to the afformentioned paranoid dolt turning into Satan himself if he finds out you installed ANYTHING (thankfully we're moving to a new location he has no control over).
Actually, there are legitimate uses for ActiveX. One example being the Remote Desktop Web Client. It's a simple little ActiveX control that lets you log into your computer without having to install the terminal services client. While I would love to be able to get rid of that, it really isn't possible. The "engineer" where I work is a paranoid dolt who insists that no one should ever be allowed to install anything on any of the computers in the office (including popup killers...imagine the horror) and won't upgrade the machines (933mhz systems) to anything higher than Win98. Come to think of it, it's somewhat of a miracle that I can even remote into my system at all from there.