At launch, high end PCs usually match the console but for significantly more money. A year later, mid range PCs match the console for more money. A year after that, low end PCs tend to match the console for hardly anything more.
The first two are right, but the last one is wrong. This in fact brings up the point that the "PC gaming is dying" crowd is making- the low end never catches up. This is due to integrated graphics. Sure the CPU power and RAM size might increase for the low end over the years, but the graphics ability has remained at a low level for some time.
Integrated graphics of a low end computer today (say the GMA 950) is actually worse that the graphics card in the original Xbox, never mind the 360. Integrated graphics don't make a jump from generation to generation. The most modern Intel integrated graphics (x3000) is only mildly better than the GMA 950 which is only mildly better than the GMA 915 which is mildly better than GMA8xx. And by mildly I mean "gaming benchmarks won't really run on any of them so we don't know." Heck, the GMA 950 might be the most popular GPU by volume in the world- the new baseline. And that baseline can barely play WOW (a Directx 7 game) let alone anything more modern.
Now I know that the reply might be "throw in a $60 graphics card and you are set," which is true. Problem is that starting last year when the majority of computer sold were laptops, now the bulk of the market is STUCK with integrated graphics.
THAT is what is killing PC Gaming- the fact that the low end (and the mid end in the case of laptops- you usually have to spend over 1k to get one with dedicated graphics) NEVER competes with consoles in their lifetime. Intel has failed Moore's law on graphics. Because most people don't care- GMA 950 does Vista's effects and that is all non gamers need. And actually if it wasn't for ole Aero Glass, the GMA950 wouldn't even be as strong as it is- Intel designed it to be JUST enough to run Vista premium.
So we have a situation were the low end has CPU/RAM/HARDISK power that is 50% of what the mid end has, but has 5% of the graphics power (if by midend you mean "has a low end dedicated graphics card" as I do). Hence Intel is killing PC gaming...
In an extreme case, if Sony suddenly folded up shop on the whole PS3 thing, I seriously seriously doubt you'd be anything but pissed off about it.
No- I would continue to play my old PS2 games, Blue Ray movies, and my ripped dvd collection sitting on its hard drive like I do now.
Amazingly enough, for some people what the Playstation 3 offers other than games designed for it (blue ray, upconverts DVDs and PS2 games so they don't look like crap on my TV, play ripped movies and music, etc.) make it worth the money. If it wasn't for the PS3, I would have put together a MUCH more expensive computer (seeing as how expensive Blue Ray computer drives are) for my living room to do the same thing. I didn't buy it for any game and neither did most of those who have it- being the cheapest Blue Ray player on the market is enough...
Don't use it as a refugee camp for those not happy with their parent's political party.
Why not? Then at least some people would label themselves libertarian, unlike when it just stood for super conservatives. Or is winning elections against the ideals of true libs as well?
Anything you can do with the DS, you can do with the iPhone.
Except play third party games and first party Nintendo games. Even the biggest Apple fanboy can't truly believe that the "magic" Apple can become a better game developer than Nintendo overnight. Or that ANY "console" can thrive on first party games alone (the Gamecube tried)...
Let me break you off a clue: The DS is not successful for what it can do, it is successful for what it does and what it costs. If potential alone sold consoles, than the PSP and the PS3 would rule their markets (rather than being in last place in either). No, all that willl happen is that Apple will release a few puzzle games that only a few Apple nuts will declare to be gaming masterpieces while the rest of us are having fun playing wifi Mariokart on a device meant for that purpose.
Actually if you are counting portables, I think the Gameboy Micro is the least up to date. But I won't ever bash the DS- it is currently my favorite console in the world. It has just enough power for how big the screen is I think...
Anyway, in five years, Wii 2 will be out with HD support. Sorry dude.
Yeah, and that will be a new console. Not the current Nintendo Wii, which is what millions are buying. Who knows if this new market of gamers the Wii is picking up will stomach what traditional gamers have come to love- a new console every five years. Time will tell...
But are they worth the current huge investment compared to older games? There are sooooooo many great games I have never played simply because there are so many, so why should I force feed myself new stuff when old ones rock?
Then stick to older games. I mostly play PS2/1 games on my PS3. The advantage being that the PS3 upconverts and widescreens them so they don't look like crap on my high def TV. The PS3 makes the old games BETTER!
What is the facination with the Wii? Why is it doing so well?...what am I missing about the Wii phenom?
Full disclaimers: I have had a Wii since January and I also own a DS and a PS3, and the guy I live with has a 360 (that I get full access to). My favorite of those is by far my Nintendo DS, which is just a Chrono Trigger away from having everything (literally) which made the SNES great. In fact, I love the DS twice as much as any of the others, so I promise I am not all about graphics. I just expect graphics to be good enough they need to be for me to enjoy the game.
The Wii's success has completely to do with the remote. Now I know you knew that, but it is an important point to make. It's not a perfect remote- it often reads things wrong and lacks a fine detail of precision gamers are used to with Xbox/PS remotes.
But here is what people miss: the biggest advantage of the remote. It evens the playing field. Gamers like you and me know a Xbox/PS remote so well we can play with our eyes closed. But that has come from hours (years) of associating ourselves with the inputs, curves and expectations ("this button is usually go, this one is usually shoot").
For non-gamers (and I really just want so say "females" instead based on my experience with the device) the Wii is a much more natural/intuitive way to control things moving on a screen- through motion- than the traditional game remotes. Plus much of the advantage gamers built up on the old remotes is gone, which evens the playing field.
The Wii isn't really targeted at traditional gamers. It lacks what we care about (decent online play, having more power in a next gen console than an AppleTV, big traditional non-nintendo franchises) but has everything needed to entertain for hours a family of four.
This is where the appeal comes in, but so far numbers show that the majority of sales are by experienced gamers so far who want to get in first on the excitement. But I think that within a year all the traditional gamers will be saturated as much as they want to be with the Wii and more and more non-gamers will pick one up. Already that is happening- as the Wii will outpace the 360 in a few months in worldwide consoles sold.
Personally after coming to this realization, I bought a PS3. The Wii is not meant for me. I love my Wii when many people are over at the house and I can play with them. I have bought almost every party mini-game the console has to offer, and I have (successfully) used "do you want to come over to my house sometime and play with my Nintendo Wii" as a pick-up line. But I just can't play the Wii alone.
Call me shallow, but I just can't play "serious" games on the Wii. I have bought Zelda, Resident Evil, and Paper Mario (the three best single player games) and the closest one I have come to beating is Paper Mario. It is my favorite Wii game, and I think I like it because it uses the remote in a traditional sense (little "waving") and because its graphics really took advantage of the console. On the other hand Zelda was simply too dark and murky for my liking - the graphics quality was not where I needed it to be to enjoy what they were trying to do with the game (I will play it in a few years on a Gamecube emulator that is upconverting the picture). Plus both it and Resident Evil (the best looking Wii game) suffer from too much waving. It is hard to play a game five hours straight with such repetitive motion, and the "extra" movements and misses from the Wiimote can kill you in pressure situations. It is obvious that the Wii was not meant for such games, and I bet it only gets a few decent ones in its lifetime (probably most of the ones worth playing by Nintendo).
So as I said, I have a PS3 and I love it. It upconverts PS2 games to look better than most Wii games, its controller is an old friend made wireless, I have it dual booting Ubuntu to play downloaded media, and I upconverts DVDs better than my very expensive DVD player does. Oh, and $20 dow
The split between 'casual' and 'hardcore' has never really sat right with me. I don't see why there is a split, to be honest, and I'm having some trouble working out exactly where the line between casual and hardcore is supposed to be.
It is easy to see how the video game industry defines hardcore: in dollars spent. No matter how much time my mom spends playing Bejeweled, she can never be considered hardcore because the most she spent was $19.99 for the experience.
I, on the other hand, am considered to be hardcore gamer because this year I bought a pile of Wii and PS3 games (heck- I BOUGHT an overpriced PS3!) and because right now I have a Newegg tab open of a video card I am about to purchase.
Of course, sometimes those who make up most of the demographic of the hardcore -16-35 year old males like myself- don't want to admit that such a simple concept does let in those that they might not want in the club (like my little sister who has spent more money than I want to count on every Pokemon game possible and all the consoles to play them). That is why there is even a conflicting definition for the concept- they want to make a new definition so that those who don't live and breath Halo/FF/WOW and purchase three video game magazines a month are involved. Luckily for hardcore gamers that base their ego on the title (back like I used to do in high school when "Next Generation" magazine was still around), since most of high end (aka expensive) side of the gaming world is targeting toward them with high def guns and glory it is rare that they have to reconcile the point...
How about you stop pretending the Wii is just a fad and realize that if the PS3 doesn't shape up REALLY quickly it will be buried by that "OMG last gen" console? The PS3 is providing for noone, it lacks the userbase to attract games and it lacks the games to attract a userbase. The Wii is rapidly gaining dev support while the PS3 is losing it. Sony can talk all they want about next gen graphics, the market is proving them wrong.
The success of the Wii will have a much smaller impact on the future of the PS3 (or even the 360) then you assume. The Wii is "winning" by going after a COMPLETELY different market than either of the other two.
Even if the Wii outsells the PS3/360 by a factor of two, not many huge traditional Xbox and PS franchises are going to "jump" to the Wii. The developers behind games like Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, etc. will not be willing/able to move/port all of the multi-core powered cinematic glory of those two consoles to a box with less power than an AppleTV. The only thing that will change in the market is that all of the non triple A developers (the ones that make most of the crap that fills the game cases, but is never bought by those that know how to look up game reviews online) will be making crappy copies Wii Sports instead of crappy copies of Grand Theft Auto.
That said, I do think that the Wii will "win" this generation by a large margin. But in five years when the majority of the public has high def TVs, the Wii will be the most dated console within its lifetime the industry has ever seen...
Try out VMware Fusion. It is in beta now, but the final release is coming next month. Yet even the beta feels much more solid than Parallels (yet it lacks some eye candy I don't care about) and its Unity mode is much better than Coherence (expose works with it).
After using it for a while, its obvious why VMware is the near billion dollar company with Intel's backing, not Parallels, Inc. Paying for Parallels is handing out good money to be a beta tester.
For the prices you just quoted, some time next month you will be able to put together a quad core desktop with a 10,000 RPM hard drive and a graphics card three times more powerful than a mid-range card (like what the Macbook Pro has).
The Macbook Pro is a pretty good value for what it is, but in 2007 desktops are cheaper than laptops on the high end by a large margin.
The simple truth is that upgrading a core component like the GPU doesn't make economic sense.
That is what people have said for years, when GPUs were only used for games (which is what you seem to assume). But then this Vista thing came along, and suddenly you needed a decent level graphics card just to have a half-way responsive desktop.
There is an army of not that bad, not that old laptops (Pentium Ms and the like) out there that are WORTHLESS with Vista because even though every other component is good enough, the impossible to upgrade graphics card is too weak to run Aero (and I know you can run Vista without Aero, but it will be slower than XP by so much that you might as well just run XP). Yet almost all the desktops made in the same generation are $50 at Newegg away from Flip3d fun.
The GPU will never again just be about gamers. Apple started the trend and MS and Linux are more than happy to copy- in the modern age everyone needs some GPU power. Heck, I don't game at all and I have still spent over $400 the last two years upgrading the video cards in my machines to take advantage of Beryl....
But the problem is that even with upgrade friendly laptops, when you can replace the video card it is only for another card that COULD have come with the model and you usually get it from the manufacturer or on Ebay. There is no real market for laptop video card upgrades and so your options are limited to whatever upgrades you were to cheap to get when you bought the thing originally. The awesome thing about upgrading the graphics card in a desktop is that it is standard based, and there is a big market for discrete cards. Since my Pentium 4 has a PCI Express slot, I can put in it a newly released Directx 10 card that is beyond what was even on the drawing board when I picked up my machine.
In laptops, only the 17inch ones really have decent card options anyway. Who cares if you can upgrade your (normal 15inch sized) notebook if the only options are low end and medium low end? Neither will run games well..
Guys, I simply don't get this package managers wars... It's not like you apt-get something everyday.
Yes, I do use apt-get almost everyday. Every time I get on my Ubuntu box its asking me to upgrade something- either security updates or to keep up to date with the newest developmental Compiz. If it wasn't for apt-get, I could not have the newest Compiz toys without living in front of a compiler seeing as how the code is updated very often.
You install a system, being Slackware, Ubuntu or Vista and then live with it. From time to time, you can (sl)apt-get for some updates. What's the big deal with it?
Because many of us Linux desktop users like updating A LOT. The "set it and forget it" model of Linux works best for servers. I personally upgrade to every Ubuntu release every six months. The longest I "live with" a Linux install is that period of time. The big deal is that for me, upgrading EVERY piece of software on my computer when a new release comes out is as easy as a few mouse clicks...I haven't touched a command line in my last two upgrade cycles.
For every piece of software from that repository, there is a source, just in case LinuxPackages is not enough.
But when you compile a program from source (sans Gentoo), its up to YOU to also get all the dependencies and its up to YOU to decide where everything goes and to make sure it works. With Ubuntu, a (much smarter than me) developer does all this hard work (better than I could do it) and puts all that work into a single package for me to use with a mouse click. Just because I like using my Linux desktop does not mean I am good at putting it together. Because of package managers, I can leave that to the paid professionals...
But why learn a proprietary system to do it for me when I already know how to do it on my own?
To save (tons of) time. Or to make it easier to upgrade in the future (or heck, just get security updates without hassle).
Sure, you can get the source for everything. But it takes time to compile, it takes time to chase dependencies and it takes time to upgrade each package in the future when you want to upgrade. I don't care how good you are at putting together a Linux setup with source packages, I can do it faster with apt-get and Ubuntu. So honestly, the advantage of an apt-get/yum/etc is to save time and make things more convenient- which is the name of the game for any desktop OS.
On a desktop system how often after initial setup and configuration (a week just to be sure?) do you need apt-get?
How about FOR the initial setup? I hate compiling new programs, whether its the first week of use for a Linux install or the 36th month. On an Ubuntu box, thanks to apt-get and scripts like Automatix I can setup a new Ubuntu box (meaning blank hard drive to a full install ready to play AVI files, Flash and do everything an average user does) in less than an hour and a half. And most of that time is waiting for packages to download and install themselves- I never have to touch a command line once to get it done anymore.
When you are big on picking up Linux converts, cutting down a two day (at least for me back in the days of compiling what I needed) process to an hour and a half is a big deal...
Yes, when it does not have what I want. Which is far too often.
Where Debian (and Ubuntu) "win" on the desktop is not because they have the best package manager tools, its because they have the most packages. I originally switched to Ubuntu back in 2004 because it was the only Linux distro (besides Debian unstable of course) that had a program I really wanted (bit tornado) in its package repository. Thanks to this huge repository and Ubuntu, I have gotten EVERY linux program I have wanted over the past three years without touching a complier. Heck, I haven't even had a compiler installed in the last year.
I know that ruins the effect of Linux for some, but compiling programs and chasing dependencies is the worst part of the OS for me (and other like minded desktop users). Each to their own...
Windows 2000 still has lots of life left
on
Pimp Your XP
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Even after all modern hardware stops having Windows 2000 drivers, the operating system still has plenty of use. Why?
Because of virtualization.
Windows 2k runs MUCH better in Parallels or VMware than XP does- there is not the hint of sluggishness. Plus it does not require activation (great for having many different virtual machines on the same system) and it works with almost every application that XP does (cept for some things you don't want to virtualize like games).
Every since I got my Macbook, my Windows 2000 disk has been one of my prized possetions. I imagine because of advantages in Parallels I will see my last XP desktop before I see my last Windows 2k one....
My philosophy is: Why change just for change sake? Someday, yes, I know that I am going to have to make that change, and start running full-blown Linux systems... but as long as 98SE continues to run *everything* I need to run, and does it well, why change?
The only reason you would change is if your needs changed or your WANTS change. That is really the only reason any consumer buys or upgrades a computer- their current computer situation does not fit their needs or wants.
Personally I am too addicted to new software to not have my needs change. Developers of the web and applications have raised my needs for power considerably over the past few years with new great features that eat ram and CPU but do great things I never knew I wanted before. Flash movies, browser inline spell checking, interactive DHTML, "Web 2.0" sites like Digg and other web browsing heavy weights that eat the CPU of a modern machine to run "smoothly." I don't NEED that stuff to run smoothly, but I want it to. I have spent over $1000 dollars in monitors and hardware to basically make Firefox run better over the past few years- and it was all worth it! I don't mind when Firefox starts acting up and eats 500mb cause I got another 3 gigs to spare.
That extra hardware means that I can also use that Firefox in 2009 when X great new feature eats a gig when turned on. I will yell "have at me great Mozilla beast!" Just as I have done before. Thats why nothing from the 98 days would work for me and millions of others.
I sell computers to customers all day that are trading in what I consider to be dinosaurs (95 and 98) in order to get a new computer. Their needs are less than yours- most only want to get on the internet. But they all want new computer because they just got a high speed connection and few systems from the pre-XP era can keep up.
If your computer needs and wants haven't changed in a decade, then that is cool. But you know the world has changed around you, and if you ever want something new you are so far behind the curve everything would change. Almost nothing could come with you easily...
I got Parallels to run Windows 98 the other day just for fun, so there might be a way to drag your favorite OS into the future without having to be left behind.....
Kompose does a poor job copying what Beryl and OSX do. The idea is right but Kompose's weak composite capabilities (in no way does it use OpenGl) means it lacks what is needed to do the job.
I comment on this because the "Expose" effect in OSX and Beryl is the one feature I have come to rely on so much that I have trouble using...for instance...Vista because it lacks a version of it. I mean....I can but I hate to.
What you are missing when you have it explained to you or you hit F9 on a Mac is how with both Beryl and OSX I can bind the effect to an extra button on my mouse. So now on my noble Mouseman, the thumb button is now my primary task switcher. A single push of the button and a single click on the mouse on the window I want is by far the best way I have ever found to switch tasks. Sure Alt-Tab "might be faster" but you have to do it multiple times and its easy to go past what you want and have to go through again. Plus for a person like myself that is mostly doing mousework (little typing) its nicer to be able to completely switch tasks without need to reach for the keyboard or trying to hit a box in a small percentage of my screen called a taskbar.
Apple nailed it with Expose (and Beryl's organic mode with a little spring is even better than OSXs)- it is the one feature of composited desktops that is a "must have." More productive than a million cubes or a billion blurred windows....even though I love that stuff too!
On one hand this might seem like Dell is giving in to customer demand for XP systems. This is not a case of such. Instead this is a case where Dell is trying to fleece those who still want XP. They see a market with a specific demand, and it will get them to pay.
All of the systems listed for Windows XP are the base model Dell systems. The only really common thing about the base model is that they have the least amount of "dollars off retail price." You won't get 25% off or $400 dollars off or any of the good deals for dell found all over the web. In many cases when you build up a nicer system, it would be cheaper to just buy a normal Vista highly discounted machine and a box copy of XP. Yet most people don't get this (Dell makes its deals confusing on purpose) so people will go to that part of the website, see they are "cheap" and proceed to fleece themselves as they add upgrades.
I guess if you need XP you have to have it and would be willing to pay a premium....
Apple Macintosh Computers are prices competitively.
I agree for the most part. That is why I bought my Macbook (which this post is written on)- no better laptop for the money. Problem is Apple just doesn't offer the two most popular kinds of systems in the regular computer market- a 15 inch non professional notebook, or a computer tower that is capable of being upgraded at a non professional price. You can talk all day about how the Mac Mini or the iMac works great for most people, but don't tell that to my mom (who likes using Media Center to record TV) or me (who wants to use my two very nice LCD monitors at the same time). Or many other people that want the expandability that made the PC market what it is.
But it is honestly not that useful. With only a 1GHz processor and 256MB of RAM, it might run OSX but not well. If you are gonna hack OSX why not just build a beige box and put OSX86 on it- I recently put together a Pentium D system that would run OSX well with twice as much ram (in a MicroATX case) for less than the Apple TV. Also a well built hackintosh will have use of the audio and ethernet. For those that just want Apple hardware, for around the same price point as the Apple TV you could get an older mini that would be legit.
I just don't see people going out to buy this for a new (even secondary) Mac.
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The first two are right, but the last one is wrong. This in fact brings up the point that the "PC gaming is dying" crowd is making- the low end never catches up. This is due to integrated graphics. Sure the CPU power and RAM size might increase for the low end over the years, but the graphics ability has remained at a low level for some time.
Integrated graphics of a low end computer today (say the GMA 950) is actually worse that the graphics card in the original Xbox, never mind the 360. Integrated graphics don't make a jump from generation to generation. The most modern Intel integrated graphics (x3000) is only mildly better than the GMA 950 which is only mildly better than the GMA 915 which is mildly better than GMA8xx. And by mildly I mean "gaming benchmarks won't really run on any of them so we don't know." Heck, the GMA 950 might be the most popular GPU by volume in the world- the new baseline. And that baseline can barely play WOW (a Directx 7 game) let alone anything more modern.
Now I know that the reply might be "throw in a $60 graphics card and you are set," which is true. Problem is that starting last year when the majority of computer sold were laptops, now the bulk of the market is STUCK with integrated graphics.
THAT is what is killing PC Gaming- the fact that the low end (and the mid end in the case of laptops- you usually have to spend over 1k to get one with dedicated graphics) NEVER competes with consoles in their lifetime. Intel has failed Moore's law on graphics. Because most people don't care- GMA 950 does Vista's effects and that is all non gamers need. And actually if it wasn't for ole Aero Glass, the GMA950 wouldn't even be as strong as it is- Intel designed it to be JUST enough to run Vista premium.
So we have a situation were the low end has CPU/RAM/HARDISK power that is 50% of what the mid end has, but has 5% of the graphics power (if by midend you mean "has a low end dedicated graphics card" as I do). Hence Intel is killing PC gaming...
Thank you for that comment. You just summed up one of the best games ever with a sentence.
No- I would continue to play my old PS2 games, Blue Ray movies, and my ripped dvd collection sitting on its hard drive like I do now.
Amazingly enough, for some people what the Playstation 3 offers other than games designed for it (blue ray, upconverts DVDs and PS2 games so they don't look like crap on my TV, play ripped movies and music, etc.) make it worth the money. If it wasn't for the PS3, I would have put together a MUCH more expensive computer (seeing as how expensive Blue Ray computer drives are) for my living room to do the same thing. I didn't buy it for any game and neither did most of those who have it- being the cheapest Blue Ray player on the market is enough...
Why not? Then at least some people would label themselves libertarian, unlike when it just stood for super conservatives. Or is winning elections against the ideals of true libs as well?
Except play third party games and first party Nintendo games. Even the biggest Apple fanboy can't truly believe that the "magic" Apple can become a better game developer than Nintendo overnight. Or that ANY "console" can thrive on first party games alone (the Gamecube tried)...
Let me break you off a clue: The DS is not successful for what it can do, it is successful for what it does and what it costs. If potential alone sold consoles, than the PSP and the PS3 would rule their markets (rather than being in last place in either). No, all that willl happen is that Apple will release a few puzzle games that only a few Apple nuts will declare to be gaming masterpieces while the rest of us are having fun playing wifi Mariokart on a device meant for that purpose.
Puuuuuma-maaaaan... when will he find love?
Classic.
Actually if you are counting portables, I think the Gameboy Micro is the least up to date. But I won't ever bash the DS- it is currently my favorite console in the world. It has just enough power for how big the screen is I think...
Anyway, in five years, Wii 2 will be out with HD support. Sorry dude.
Yeah, and that will be a new console. Not the current Nintendo Wii, which is what millions are buying. Who knows if this new market of gamers the Wii is picking up will stomach what traditional gamers have come to love- a new console every five years. Time will tell...
Then stick to older games. I mostly play PS2/1 games on my PS3. The advantage being that the PS3 upconverts and widescreens them so they don't look like crap on my high def TV. The PS3 makes the old games BETTER!
Full disclaimers: I have had a Wii since January and I also own a DS and a PS3, and the guy I live with has a 360 (that I get full access to). My favorite of those is by far my Nintendo DS, which is just a Chrono Trigger away from having everything (literally) which made the SNES great. In fact, I love the DS twice as much as any of the others, so I promise I am not all about graphics. I just expect graphics to be good enough they need to be for me to enjoy the game.
The Wii's success has completely to do with the remote. Now I know you knew that, but it is an important point to make. It's not a perfect remote- it often reads things wrong and lacks a fine detail of precision gamers are used to with Xbox/PS remotes.
But here is what people miss: the biggest advantage of the remote. It evens the playing field. Gamers like you and me know a Xbox/PS remote so well we can play with our eyes closed. But that has come from hours (years) of associating ourselves with the inputs, curves and expectations ("this button is usually go, this one is usually shoot").
For non-gamers (and I really just want so say "females" instead based on my experience with the device) the Wii is a much more natural/intuitive way to control things moving on a screen- through motion- than the traditional game remotes. Plus much of the advantage gamers built up on the old remotes is gone, which evens the playing field.
The Wii isn't really targeted at traditional gamers. It lacks what we care about (decent online play, having more power in a next gen console than an AppleTV, big traditional non-nintendo franchises) but has everything needed to entertain for hours a family of four.
This is where the appeal comes in, but so far numbers show that the majority of sales are by experienced gamers so far who want to get in first on the excitement. But I think that within a year all the traditional gamers will be saturated as much as they want to be with the Wii and more and more non-gamers will pick one up. Already that is happening- as the Wii will outpace the 360 in a few months in worldwide consoles sold.
Personally after coming to this realization, I bought a PS3. The Wii is not meant for me. I love my Wii when many people are over at the house and I can play with them. I have bought almost every party mini-game the console has to offer, and I have (successfully) used "do you want to come over to my house sometime and play with my Nintendo Wii" as a pick-up line. But I just can't play the Wii alone.
Call me shallow, but I just can't play "serious" games on the Wii. I have bought Zelda, Resident Evil, and Paper Mario (the three best single player games) and the closest one I have come to beating is Paper Mario. It is my favorite Wii game, and I think I like it because it uses the remote in a traditional sense (little "waving") and because its graphics really took advantage of the console. On the other hand Zelda was simply too dark and murky for my liking - the graphics quality was not where I needed it to be to enjoy what they were trying to do with the game (I will play it in a few years on a Gamecube emulator that is upconverting the picture). Plus both it and Resident Evil (the best looking Wii game) suffer from too much waving. It is hard to play a game five hours straight with such repetitive motion, and the "extra" movements and misses from the Wiimote can kill you in pressure situations. It is obvious that the Wii was not meant for such games, and I bet it only gets a few decent ones in its lifetime (probably most of the ones worth playing by Nintendo).
So as I said, I have a PS3 and I love it. It upconverts PS2 games to look better than most Wii games, its controller is an old friend made wireless, I have it dual booting Ubuntu to play downloaded media, and I upconverts DVDs better than my very expensive DVD player does. Oh, and $20 dow
It is easy to see how the video game industry defines hardcore: in dollars spent. No matter how much time my mom spends playing Bejeweled, she can never be considered hardcore because the most she spent was $19.99 for the experience.
I, on the other hand, am considered to be hardcore gamer because this year I bought a pile of Wii and PS3 games (heck- I BOUGHT an overpriced PS3!) and because right now I have a Newegg tab open of a video card I am about to purchase.
Of course, sometimes those who make up most of the demographic of the hardcore -16-35 year old males like myself- don't want to admit that such a simple concept does let in those that they might not want in the club (like my little sister who has spent more money than I want to count on every Pokemon game possible and all the consoles to play them). That is why there is even a conflicting definition for the concept- they want to make a new definition so that those who don't live and breath Halo/FF/WOW and purchase three video game magazines a month are involved. Luckily for hardcore gamers that base their ego on the title (back like I used to do in high school when "Next Generation" magazine was still around), since most of high end (aka expensive) side of the gaming world is targeting toward them with high def guns and glory it is rare that they have to reconcile the point...
The success of the Wii will have a much smaller impact on the future of the PS3 (or even the 360) then you assume. The Wii is "winning" by going after a COMPLETELY different market than either of the other two.
Even if the Wii outsells the PS3/360 by a factor of two, not many huge traditional Xbox and PS franchises are going to "jump" to the Wii. The developers behind games like Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, etc. will not be willing/able to move/port all of the multi-core powered cinematic glory of those two consoles to a box with less power than an AppleTV. The only thing that will change in the market is that all of the non triple A developers (the ones that make most of the crap that fills the game cases, but is never bought by those that know how to look up game reviews online) will be making crappy copies Wii Sports instead of crappy copies of Grand Theft Auto.
That said, I do think that the Wii will "win" this generation by a large margin. But in five years when the majority of the public has high def TVs, the Wii will be the most dated console within its lifetime the industry has ever seen...
After using it for a while, its obvious why VMware is the near billion dollar company with Intel's backing, not Parallels, Inc. Paying for Parallels is handing out good money to be a beta tester.
The Macbook Pro is a pretty good value for what it is, but in 2007 desktops are cheaper than laptops on the high end by a large margin.
That is what people have said for years, when GPUs were only used for games (which is what you seem to assume). But then this Vista thing came along, and suddenly you needed a decent level graphics card just to have a half-way responsive desktop.
There is an army of not that bad, not that old laptops (Pentium Ms and the like) out there that are WORTHLESS with Vista because even though every other component is good enough, the impossible to upgrade graphics card is too weak to run Aero (and I know you can run Vista without Aero, but it will be slower than XP by so much that you might as well just run XP). Yet almost all the desktops made in the same generation are $50 at Newegg away from Flip3d fun.
The GPU will never again just be about gamers. Apple started the trend and MS and Linux are more than happy to copy- in the modern age everyone needs some GPU power. Heck, I don't game at all and I have still spent over $400 the last two years upgrading the video cards in my machines to take advantage of Beryl....
In laptops, only the 17inch ones really have decent card options anyway. Who cares if you can upgrade your (normal 15inch sized) notebook if the only options are low end and medium low end? Neither will run games well..
Yes, I do use apt-get almost everyday. Every time I get on my Ubuntu box its asking me to upgrade something- either security updates or to keep up to date with the newest developmental Compiz. If it wasn't for apt-get, I could not have the newest Compiz toys without living in front of a compiler seeing as how the code is updated very often.
You install a system, being Slackware, Ubuntu or Vista and then live with it. From time to time, you can (sl)apt-get for some updates. What's the big deal with it?
Because many of us Linux desktop users like updating A LOT. The "set it and forget it" model of Linux works best for servers. I personally upgrade to every Ubuntu release every six months. The longest I "live with" a Linux install is that period of time. The big deal is that for me, upgrading EVERY piece of software on my computer when a new release comes out is as easy as a few mouse clicks...I haven't touched a command line in my last two upgrade cycles.
For every piece of software from that repository, there is a source, just in case LinuxPackages is not enough.
But when you compile a program from source (sans Gentoo), its up to YOU to also get all the dependencies and its up to YOU to decide where everything goes and to make sure it works. With Ubuntu, a (much smarter than me) developer does all this hard work (better than I could do it) and puts all that work into a single package for me to use with a mouse click. Just because I like using my Linux desktop does not mean I am good at putting it together. Because of package managers, I can leave that to the paid professionals...
To save (tons of) time. Or to make it easier to upgrade in the future (or heck, just get security updates without hassle).
Sure, you can get the source for everything. But it takes time to compile, it takes time to chase dependencies and it takes time to upgrade each package in the future when you want to upgrade. I don't care how good you are at putting together a Linux setup with source packages, I can do it faster with apt-get and Ubuntu. So honestly, the advantage of an apt-get/yum/etc is to save time and make things more convenient- which is the name of the game for any desktop OS.
How about FOR the initial setup? I hate compiling new programs, whether its the first week of use for a Linux install or the 36th month. On an Ubuntu box, thanks to apt-get and scripts like Automatix I can setup a new Ubuntu box (meaning blank hard drive to a full install ready to play AVI files, Flash and do everything an average user does) in less than an hour and a half. And most of that time is waiting for packages to download and install themselves- I never have to touch a command line once to get it done anymore.
When you are big on picking up Linux converts, cutting down a two day (at least for me back in the days of compiling what I needed) process to an hour and a half is a big deal...
Yes, when it does not have what I want. Which is far too often.
Where Debian (and Ubuntu) "win" on the desktop is not because they have the best package manager tools, its because they have the most packages. I originally switched to Ubuntu back in 2004 because it was the only Linux distro (besides Debian unstable of course) that had a program I really wanted (bit tornado) in its package repository. Thanks to this huge repository and Ubuntu, I have gotten EVERY linux program I have wanted over the past three years without touching a complier. Heck, I haven't even had a compiler installed in the last year.
I know that ruins the effect of Linux for some, but compiling programs and chasing dependencies is the worst part of the OS for me (and other like minded desktop users). Each to their own...
Because of virtualization.
Windows 2k runs MUCH better in Parallels or VMware than XP does- there is not the hint of sluggishness. Plus it does not require activation (great for having many different virtual machines on the same system) and it works with almost every application that XP does (cept for some things you don't want to virtualize like games).
Every since I got my Macbook, my Windows 2000 disk has been one of my prized possetions. I imagine because of advantages in Parallels I will see my last XP desktop before I see my last Windows 2k one....
The only reason you would change is if your needs changed or your WANTS change. That is really the only reason any consumer buys or upgrades a computer- their current computer situation does not fit their needs or wants.
Personally I am too addicted to new software to not have my needs change. Developers of the web and applications have raised my needs for power considerably over the past few years with new great features that eat ram and CPU but do great things I never knew I wanted before. Flash movies, browser inline spell checking, interactive DHTML, "Web 2.0" sites like Digg and other web browsing heavy weights that eat the CPU of a modern machine to run "smoothly." I don't NEED that stuff to run smoothly, but I want it to. I have spent over $1000 dollars in monitors and hardware to basically make Firefox run better over the past few years- and it was all worth it! I don't mind when Firefox starts acting up and eats 500mb cause I got another 3 gigs to spare.
That extra hardware means that I can also use that Firefox in 2009 when X great new feature eats a gig when turned on. I will yell "have at me great Mozilla beast!" Just as I have done before. Thats why nothing from the 98 days would work for me and millions of others.
I sell computers to customers all day that are trading in what I consider to be dinosaurs (95 and 98) in order to get a new computer. Their needs are less than yours- most only want to get on the internet. But they all want new computer because they just got a high speed connection and few systems from the pre-XP era can keep up.
If your computer needs and wants haven't changed in a decade, then that is cool. But you know the world has changed around you, and if you ever want something new you are so far behind the curve everything would change. Almost nothing could come with you easily...
I got Parallels to run Windows 98 the other day just for fun, so there might be a way to drag your favorite OS into the future without having to be left behind.....
I comment on this because the "Expose" effect in OSX and Beryl is the one feature I have come to rely on so much that I have trouble using...for instance...Vista because it lacks a version of it. I mean....I can but I hate to.
What you are missing when you have it explained to you or you hit F9 on a Mac is how with both Beryl and OSX I can bind the effect to an extra button on my mouse. So now on my noble Mouseman, the thumb button is now my primary task switcher. A single push of the button and a single click on the mouse on the window I want is by far the best way I have ever found to switch tasks. Sure Alt-Tab "might be faster" but you have to do it multiple times and its easy to go past what you want and have to go through again. Plus for a person like myself that is mostly doing mousework (little typing) its nicer to be able to completely switch tasks without need to reach for the keyboard or trying to hit a box in a small percentage of my screen called a taskbar.
Apple nailed it with Expose (and Beryl's organic mode with a little spring is even better than OSXs)- it is the one feature of composited desktops that is a "must have." More productive than a million cubes or a billion blurred windows....even though I love that stuff too!
All of the systems listed for Windows XP are the base model Dell systems. The only really common thing about the base model is that they have the least amount of "dollars off retail price." You won't get 25% off or $400 dollars off or any of the good deals for dell found all over the web. In many cases when you build up a nicer system, it would be cheaper to just buy a normal Vista highly discounted machine and a box copy of XP. Yet most people don't get this (Dell makes its deals confusing on purpose) so people will go to that part of the website, see they are "cheap" and proceed to fleece themselves as they add upgrades.
I guess if you need XP you have to have it and would be willing to pay a premium....
I agree for the most part. That is why I bought my Macbook (which this post is written on)- no better laptop for the money. Problem is Apple just doesn't offer the two most popular kinds of systems in the regular computer market- a 15 inch non professional notebook, or a computer tower that is capable of being upgraded at a non professional price. You can talk all day about how the Mac Mini or the iMac works great for most people, but don't tell that to my mom (who likes using Media Center to record TV) or me (who wants to use my two very nice LCD monitors at the same time). Or many other people that want the expandability that made the PC market what it is.
I just don't see people going out to buy this for a new (even secondary) Mac.