If they get a strike on this one and it sucks, the fans will come back at them with more power than they can possibly imagine >:( Syndicate Wars was enough to make most Syndicate fans shudder.
and for the love of jebus, get the same music artist in, those atmospheric moody tunes were 1/3 of the game.
Exactly, 32bit needs to die now, they are holding us all back by releasing a 32bit version of Vista, let alone their second chance to kill it, with Win 7.
Sometimes it's not about glasses and good eye sight even, it's about relaxing when using a computer and being able to read things easily, not just properly or ok but easily.
I have a 15.4" laptop and I'm a geek / nerd / dork but ultimately for my laptop which is primarily a browsing and chat tool, I use a 1280x800 screen, not the 1680x1050 available in this size, nor a 1680x1050 (and I've tried both)
I just want to relax while using my laptop, it's a good example of the low DPI working out well, I don't need to concerntrate to read stuf (Which is still readable) - it just comes naturally I suppose as it's larger and even easier.
And she'd be right. Assuming we're talking about Windows, graphics simply doesn't scale 'right' in the different DPI or font size modes, it simply looks 'wrong' It always has looked wrong and it's why, still today as a support tech in an office of 5000 people that over 50% of the employees use 800x600 or 1024x768. Yes over 50% because they don't like the size of the fonts / text on an LCD in windows.
It's about time they made 20" LCD's with a 1280x1024 resolution for people over the age of 40 who use it as a tool and not a hobby.
Yep right on the money, XP SP3, legit copy, with auto updates, firefox with some decent plugins, a good AV package and remote access, you can do a heck of a lot.
I recommend logmein.com to be installed on there, incase they have a dynamic ip.
Everyone has a different tale, I've been building machines since I was 13 (so that's 18 years in a few months) and I've had 0 problems with Asus, several with gigabyte.
Only ONE company has asked me for money when trying to return a faulty product and that would be gigabyte, so fuck them. Asus may cost a little more but generally their boards are well built, reliable, overclock well and are supported very well (web site etc)
Gigabyte can rot as far as I'm concerned, I wish they were failing instead of ABIT who also once were good.
I am so glad to see that over-rated, stupid, childish piece of plastic rubbish out of my house. I got it for FREE and I was still ripped off, that's how useless the fucking thing is.
If you are a single player or hardcore gamer the thing is absoloutely of no use to you (ok, I exagerrate there's about 4 good games, maybe) The system is a monopoly replacement, in a few days time the same old family members will go over to someones house and realise it's been a year, what did we do last christmas when the meal is over and we're all a bit bored and tired of talking to family? - out comes Wii bowling. It's simply replace monopoly, seriously I'm not even joking here, the system is basically more of a toy than a games console.
If you're serious about good, linear and complex single player (or multiplayer) games with a good story and some immersion (plus some 2005 era graphics at least!) grab a PS3 or 360. Hell I've heard people claim the Dreamcast had better graphics than the Wii.
That system is going to replace the PS2, as the cheap, simple console for people to play singstar (or some equivelant) on and keep young children entertained, despite the ongoing sales for the system it's a 'budget' console and eventually this bubble will burst.
In conclusion, fuck the god damned Wii and good riddance!
The example was more of a 99$ a month vs 50$ a month - small initial fees and high ongoing fees absoloutely drive me insane, I like keeping my overall expenditure down, incase of emergencies.
Truth! My dentist has a set of crooked (albeit healthy looking) teeth, I was surprised when I noticed but he's a damned good dentist (root canal didn't hurt a bit, phew!) Don't worry Americans, I'm in Australia - we have people here with bad teeth, we don't have the same obsession the states does (although we're not like the brits! ohno!)
It was a completely theoretical figure I pulled out of my...... ear.
In Australia I believe cell prices are cheaper than over there too, I pay 0$ a month and only pay for calls,... and no - we don't pay for incoming calls or SMS, the entire concept is insulting and alien, you poor bastards:(
If they want me as a customer, they'll still cater to the single player, linear but good experience, much like a good book or movie, that's how I see the majority of games I play.
I will not pay for installments or addons and they will never see my money, period - I don't like being nickel and dimed. I won't buy a mobile phone for ZERO DOLLARS!!! with a 45$ a month plan. I won't get an internet account with ZERO DOLLARS!!! signup but 99$ a month access. etc.
If they want me, they have me buying stuff now, if they want more from me, tough luck.
FURTHERMORE: The Xbox 360's drive CAN AND WILL scratch discs when it is NOT being moved, some of the earlier models still stuffed up. They added cork or rubber stops, if I recall inside the early drives because one corner jutted out and occassionally the disc would hit it.
Sorry I should've made it clear that I'm a heavy gamer (literally and figuratively, including old classics and modern bleeding edge games, furthermore I support several Windows networks. Effectively for me to switch to linux I would like to be able to run ALL my Windows applications in some kind of VM, excluding games of course, I need to be realistic.
I would then like to boot into that some install of Windows to play the said games, via a simple re-boot. I've been led to believe this is ACTUALLY possible for real on a macos setup using parallels, except of course there's no way to hack OSX on to my hardware as it's effectively top of the shelf and not supported yet.
If *I* was just browsing, burning, downloading and emailing - sure I could switch to linux but I don't do just that (average users of course, do)
Yes I realise linux / unix is pretty powerful and awesome but it doesn't suit my needs, it's getting there but I'd estimate it'll still be 5 years before I switch, so unix based suggestions suck.
I've posted many many times about this, I don't know what more can be said really.
For a start, guess what,... people on the internet have differing opinions on things, terrifying concept but totally true.
Vista could be FLAWLESS now and it's too late, it has the lemon stigma attached to the name, your common simple users have picked up the vibe from the techie types that Vista is a load of rubbish, this stigma is stuck, it's latched on and frankly it's over, we can debate for weeks about this but the fact of the matter is Microsoft are rushing out Windows 7 to get a fresh OS on the scene, much like 2K (or was it XP?) was released soon after ME, because the tarnished name simply wouldn't go away.
Now, after factoring in the above Vista will never take off to a huge extent, infact I'd be surprised to see more than 30% of Windows users ever switch to it at this point, Windows 7 is too close and Windows XP is working fine at this point.
Finally, in *my* geeky opinion, Vista suffers a plethora of stupid, annoying little changes which XP didn't have. The fact is, a high percentage of us who are Windows users and enthusiasts or support / IT staff, we use Windows classic UI, we want to do things on the machine, quickly effectively, get stuff done. My computer is a tool to help me do things, browsing, sorting data, burning, downloading, watching movies, playing games, RDP'ing to users machines -etc. Windows Vista explorer is an abomination, the file system and registry shambles is an abomination (anyone seen all the wacky re-directs from documents and settings to/users? ugh!) - the mere lack of an 'up' button and a 'folders' buton in Windows explorer is a god damned sin - 2 simple little buttons completely and utterly screw me up when they are missing, because they are so handy.
It doesn't remember view settings correctly, it DOES thrash the disk far too often, I don't care what your machine specs are, I don't care how much ram you have and I don't care if once the index is finished it's 'faster' - my disk drives are wearing down faster, noisier, hotter and less responsive (idle time thrashing, my ass) under Windows Vista. (I'd hate to see the life expectancy of an SSD under Vista)
Finally, Windows XP, properly patched does most things we want a machine to do, it emails, burns, browses, lets us get our photos from our camera etc, this is seriously hampering Vista since XP is a fairly good OS overall.
On a similar note, in *my* humble opinion someone needs to take it to the next level with OS's and I refer specifically to file systems and how we interact with data, this needs to change dramatically to take it to the next level. Where is the database driven file system? When can the concept of folders and directories disapear or at least become secondary? THIS is what will truely switch people fast, when I can multi-tag files on my OS or programs are smart enough to do it for you. A file extension is not enough 'tagging' for a type of data now, it's a poor identifier and not helpful overall, I want to see machines much easier to find files I want, when I want and store them easily and convieniently with a fast, intuitive UI to access the data quickly.
If Windows 7 is just a re-skinned, patched Vista with a few basic feature addons, it too will suffer slow adoption.
70mbytes a second sustained from machine to machine using Vista, is this crossover or through a switch?
I find this immensly hard to believe, I'd love a screenshot of perfmon if you can do it, because NO ONE I know has done this, even proper 10,000$ HP servers at work, on high end equipment seem to max out at 40mbyte a second in a single data copy / move.
Vista is infamous for it's appalling disk performance, random disk thrashing etc. I use WD 7200rpm disks with 333gb per platter, SATA II 16mb cache and quad core 3ghz machines, I can write at 70mb a second, no problem but XP / Linux / whatever has never exceeded sustained speeds of 40mbytes for me over gigabit.
Maybe you have a kickass NIC that I've never heard of or Vista SP1 has done some incredible patching and fixes to the network code.
I appreciate your response and while I am a vehement magnetic drive hater / lover due to the in-efficiencies of seek times on the things, you're completely and utterly off target.
A sustained, single, file copy to a blank, formatted drive in sequential order is STILL only 25mbytes a second at maximum from a 480mbit USB 2.0 link........ despite even the slowest of modern disks being around 40 - 60mbyte write speeds now.
The fact is, USB 2.0, much like "54mbit" wifi are simply false advertising.
100mbit ethernet really can sustain 11mbytes a second, gigabit I've never seen beat 40mbits a second, USB 2.0 I've seen peak at 28mbytes a second, Wifi 54mbit at 100% signal strength, I think 2.8mbytes a second. Only one of those is close to it's theoretical maximum and that's 100mbit ethernet, including overhead, it's pretty much maxing out the standard.
USB 2, Gigabit eth, Wifi and likely USB 3 are all,.. well for lack of a better word - dopey:/ Nothing to do with hard disks - they suck but in this case, not their fault.
Ok, I lie but god damn that game had it right and the formula hasn't had to change much since, so people think it's stale, when it's just an old but tested game type.
Look at Dead Space, same as AITD, it has a control and battle system just clunky enough to antagonise you but not enough to hate it and jumpy stuff. I think it's a bloody fantastic genre and if I wasn't such a pussy I'd still be playing it. (As I've gotten older, I've become MORE scared than I used to by these things, I literally can not play Dead Space, period - more than 5 minutes and I have to quit)
Slashdot Mirror
If they get a strike on this one and it sucks, the fans will come back at them with more power than they can possibly imagine >:(
Syndicate Wars was enough to make most Syndicate fans shudder.
and for the love of jebus, get the same music artist in, those atmospheric moody tunes were 1/3 of the game.
Exactly, 32bit needs to die now, they are holding us all back by releasing a 32bit version of Vista, let alone their second chance to kill it, with Win 7.
Idiots.
Yeah, but the comments here don't make me want to kill people.
Who could mod you down? :( such a fail.
You bastard! I just posted that and it told me someone else has posted it :(
Do you like Hewey Lewis and the news?
Murder isn't funny!
Unless clowns or huey lewis and the news are involved.
Sometimes it's not about glasses and good eye sight even, it's about relaxing when using a computer and being able to read things easily, not just properly or ok but easily.
I have a 15.4" laptop and I'm a geek / nerd / dork but ultimately for my laptop which is primarily a browsing and chat tool, I use a 1280x800 screen, not the 1680x1050 available in this size, nor a 1680x1050 (and I've tried both)
I just want to relax while using my laptop, it's a good example of the low DPI working out well, I don't need to concerntrate to read stuf (Which is still readable) - it just comes naturally I suppose as it's larger and even easier.
And she'd be right.
Assuming we're talking about Windows, graphics simply doesn't scale 'right' in the different DPI or font size modes, it simply looks 'wrong'
It always has looked wrong and it's why, still today as a support tech in an office of 5000 people that over 50% of the employees use 800x600 or 1024x768.
Yes over 50% because they don't like the size of the fonts / text on an LCD in windows.
It's about time they made 20" LCD's with a 1280x1024 resolution for people over the age of 40 who use it as a tool and not a hobby.
Yep right on the money, XP SP3, legit copy, with auto updates, firefox with some decent plugins, a good AV package and remote access, you can do a heck of a lot.
I recommend logmein.com to be installed on there, incase they have a dynamic ip.
Everyone has a different tale, I've been building machines since I was 13 (so that's 18 years in a few months) and I've had 0 problems with Asus, several with gigabyte.
Only ONE company has asked me for money when trying to return a faulty product and that would be gigabyte, so fuck them.
Asus may cost a little more but generally their boards are well built, reliable, overclock well and are supported very well (web site etc)
Gigabyte can rot as far as I'm concerned, I wish they were failing instead of ABIT who also once were good.
Finally,
I am so glad to see that over-rated, stupid, childish piece of plastic rubbish out of my house.
I got it for FREE and I was still ripped off, that's how useless the fucking thing is.
If you are a single player or hardcore gamer the thing is absoloutely of no use to you (ok, I exagerrate there's about 4 good games, maybe)
The system is a monopoly replacement, in a few days time the same old family members will go over to someones house and realise it's been a year, what did we do last christmas when the meal is over and we're all a bit bored and tired of talking to family? - out comes Wii bowling.
It's simply replace monopoly, seriously I'm not even joking here, the system is basically more of a toy than a games console.
If you're serious about good, linear and complex single player (or multiplayer) games with a good story and some immersion (plus some 2005 era graphics at least!) grab a PS3 or 360.
Hell I've heard people claim the Dreamcast had better graphics than the Wii.
That system is going to replace the PS2, as the cheap, simple console for people to play singstar (or some equivelant) on and keep young children entertained, despite the ongoing sales for the system it's a 'budget' console and eventually this bubble will burst.
In conclusion, fuck the god damned Wii and good riddance!
The example was more of a 99$ a month vs 50$ a month - small initial fees and high ongoing fees absoloutely drive me insane, I like keeping my overall expenditure down, incase of emergencies.
Truth!
My dentist has a set of crooked (albeit healthy looking) teeth, I was surprised when I noticed but he's a damned good dentist (root canal didn't hurt a bit, phew!)
Don't worry Americans, I'm in Australia - we have people here with bad teeth, we don't have the same obsession the states does (although we're not like the brits! ohno!)
For all 'intensive' purposes? Was this a joke and I missed it? Should I be laughing with you or at you?
It was a completely theoretical figure I pulled out of my...... ear.
In Australia I believe cell prices are cheaper than over there too, I pay 0$ a month and only pay for calls,... and no - we don't pay for incoming calls or SMS, the entire concept is insulting and alien, you poor bastards :(
We miss you klerck :(
Nope.
If they want me as a customer, they'll still cater to the single player, linear but good experience, much like a good book or movie, that's how I see the majority of games I play.
I will not pay for installments or addons and they will never see my money, period - I don't like being nickel and dimed.
I won't buy a mobile phone for ZERO DOLLARS!!! with a 45$ a month plan.
I won't get an internet account with ZERO DOLLARS!!! signup but 99$ a month access.
etc.
If they want me, they have me buying stuff now, if they want more from me, tough luck.
FURTHERMORE: The Xbox 360's drive CAN AND WILL scratch discs when it is NOT being moved, some of the earlier models still stuffed up.
They added cork or rubber stops, if I recall inside the early drives because one corner jutted out and occassionally the disc would hit it.
Sorry I should've made it clear that I'm a heavy gamer (literally and figuratively, including old classics and modern bleeding edge games, furthermore I support several Windows networks.
Effectively for me to switch to linux I would like to be able to run ALL my Windows applications in some kind of VM, excluding games of course, I need to be realistic.
I would then like to boot into that some install of Windows to play the said games, via a simple re-boot.
I've been led to believe this is ACTUALLY possible for real on a macos setup using parallels, except of course there's no way to hack OSX on to my hardware as it's effectively top of the shelf and not supported yet.
If *I* was just browsing, burning, downloading and emailing - sure I could switch to linux but I don't do just that (average users of course, do)
Yes I realise linux / unix is pretty powerful and awesome but it doesn't suit my needs, it's getting there but I'd estimate it'll still be 5 years before I switch, so unix based suggestions suck.
I don't understand how you've managed to burst at 167mbytes a second there, that's 1.3gbits a second.........
Crazy and impressive.
I've posted many many times about this, I don't know what more can be said really.
For a start, guess what,... people on the internet have differing opinions on things, terrifying concept but totally true.
Vista could be FLAWLESS now and it's too late, it has the lemon stigma attached to the name, your common simple users have picked up the vibe from the techie types that Vista is a load of rubbish, this stigma is stuck, it's latched on and frankly it's over, we can debate for weeks about this but the fact of the matter is Microsoft are rushing out Windows 7 to get a fresh OS on the scene, much like 2K (or was it XP?) was released soon after ME, because the tarnished name simply wouldn't go away.
Now, after factoring in the above Vista will never take off to a huge extent, infact I'd be surprised to see more than 30% of Windows users ever switch to it at this point, Windows 7 is too close and Windows XP is working fine at this point.
Finally, in *my* geeky opinion, Vista suffers a plethora of stupid, annoying little changes which XP didn't have. /users? ugh!) - the mere lack of an 'up' button and a 'folders' buton in Windows explorer is a god damned sin - 2 simple little buttons completely and utterly screw me up when they are missing, because they are so handy.
The fact is, a high percentage of us who are Windows users and enthusiasts or support / IT staff, we use Windows classic UI, we want to do things on the machine, quickly effectively, get stuff done.
My computer is a tool to help me do things, browsing, sorting data, burning, downloading, watching movies, playing games, RDP'ing to users machines -etc.
Windows Vista explorer is an abomination, the file system and registry shambles is an abomination (anyone seen all the wacky re-directs from documents and settings to
It doesn't remember view settings correctly, it DOES thrash the disk far too often, I don't care what your machine specs are, I don't care how much ram you have and I don't care if once the index is finished it's 'faster' - my disk drives are wearing down faster, noisier, hotter and less responsive (idle time thrashing, my ass) under Windows Vista.
(I'd hate to see the life expectancy of an SSD under Vista)
Ultimately though, I've covered all this before.
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=364823&cid=21406737
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=622651&cid=24300055
Finally, Windows XP, properly patched does most things we want a machine to do, it emails, burns, browses, lets us get our photos from our camera etc, this is seriously hampering Vista since XP is a fairly good OS overall.
On a similar note, in *my* humble opinion someone needs to take it to the next level with OS's and I refer specifically to file systems and how we interact with data, this needs to change dramatically to take it to the next level.
Where is the database driven file system? When can the concept of folders and directories disapear or at least become secondary?
THIS is what will truely switch people fast, when I can multi-tag files on my OS or programs are smart enough to do it for you.
A file extension is not enough 'tagging' for a type of data now, it's a poor identifier and not helpful overall, I want to see machines much easier to find files I want, when I want and store them easily and convieniently with a fast, intuitive UI to access the data quickly.
If Windows 7 is just a re-skinned, patched Vista with a few basic feature addons, it too will suffer slow adoption.
70mbytes a second sustained from machine to machine using Vista, is this crossover or through a switch?
I find this immensly hard to believe, I'd love a screenshot of perfmon if you can do it, because NO ONE I know has done this, even proper 10,000$ HP servers at work, on high end equipment seem to max out at 40mbyte a second in a single data copy / move.
Vista is infamous for it's appalling disk performance, random disk thrashing etc.
I use WD 7200rpm disks with 333gb per platter, SATA II 16mb cache and quad core 3ghz machines, I can write at 70mb a second, no problem but XP / Linux / whatever has never exceeded sustained speeds of 40mbytes for me over gigabit.
Maybe you have a kickass NIC that I've never heard of or Vista SP1 has done some incredible patching and fixes to the network code.
I appreciate your response and while I am a vehement magnetic drive hater / lover due to the in-efficiencies of seek times on the things, you're completely and utterly off target.
A sustained, single, file copy to a blank, formatted drive in sequential order is STILL only 25mbytes a second at maximum from a 480mbit USB 2.0 link........ despite even the slowest of modern disks being around 40 - 60mbyte write speeds now.
The fact is, USB 2.0, much like "54mbit" wifi are simply false advertising.
100mbit ethernet really can sustain 11mbytes a second, gigabit I've never seen beat 40mbits a second, USB 2.0 I've seen peak at 28mbytes a second, Wifi 54mbit at 100% signal strength, I think 2.8mbytes a second.
Only one of those is close to it's theoretical maximum and that's 100mbit ethernet, including overhead, it's pretty much maxing out the standard.
USB 2, Gigabit eth, Wifi and likely USB 3 are all,.. well for lack of a better word - dopey :/
Nothing to do with hard disks - they suck but in this case, not their fault.
Ok, I lie but god damn that game had it right and the formula hasn't had to change much since, so people think it's stale, when it's just an old but tested game type.
Look at Dead Space, same as AITD, it has a control and battle system just clunky enough to antagonise you but not enough to hate it and jumpy stuff.
I think it's a bloody fantastic genre and if I wasn't such a pussy I'd still be playing it.
(As I've gotten older, I've become MORE scared than I used to by these things, I literally can not play Dead Space, period - more than 5 minutes and I have to quit)