Thing is, I live in Southern California where Time Warner and FIOS are in place. I was insulted by Verizons offering for the technology they have laid down and their pricing plan; than they tried to copy the Triple Pay package of TW by offering Satellite with it and that was a disaster plan that soon dissolved. Verizons TV service is not ready yet in vast majority of areas; so they cannot compete on that playing field yet. Their speeds are fast, but Time Warner is raising their speeds and Docsis 3.0 is coming soon.
Time Warner when you break down the math actually beats Verizon if you get the triple pay package, add to it you have to sign a several year contract as with Time Warner you can cancel any time without penalty. Also Verizons offerings for some of their higher speeds are damn near ripping you off at around $60+ for their premium package; where as Time Warner you can get it cheaper with the Triple Pay if thats what you want and majority do.
Another thing is Time Warner increased almost all their basic speeds in Southern California to 15/2 and if you are lucky to have City Council with balls who force the ISP companies to raise their speeds if you want to compete there you can live in Huntington Beach with 28/2. Also Time Warner's ping is much better in almost all the areas in SoCal; speaking as someone who's roommate downstairs has FIOS and I have Time Warner.
DSLreports.com covers all this and you get employees who work for the company perspective.
I personally liked the idea I think a University (San Diego) had or did a test with some agency(USGA?) regarding infusing a very lubricated type of mud to cause slip on the faults.
They would inject the mud/lubricant via tubes along the fault which would cause it to slip slowly instead of violent quick jolts.
Theres a video out there of it where they inject the ground with it and set off some type of explosion to test it.
Yes, some of us younger Civil Engineers were looking forward to some of the new features making things much more seamless and the layout of the Ribbon bar makes things nice also while the vets will grunt at you and use the command line.
The 90 days kind of ruins it though; I mean some of my individual projects from survey, layout to estimate take far more than 90 days just to get the wet stamp of approval.
Working only for commission right now is tough in between permanent jobs; would be nice if they Autodesk gave me a longer liscense like a year as more of incentive to use their newer version. They already sell the LT version which is cheaper and without the 3d basically; be nice if they lowered the price even more which is about $150-$200.
Well you should go start a thread labled 'DRM prevented me from playing Battlefield expansion packs' on the EA Battlefield forums, if you seem so determined it was DRM and not the way the EA account system server works to keep online multiplayer stats available. Watch how quickly you get shot down and get a dose of technically explained reason, just use the 'search' function and while at it put in "DRM" to see some of the silly arguments get shot down by civilized explanations.
I saw this whole fiasco go on in the forums there and there wasn't really anyone person who said "DRM caused it". There is no "digital" software installed that prevents you from playig it; it is their online servers that deal with the associating(DRM?) the expansion with your orginal BF2 for online stats. What? you don't like multiplayer games with stats; gee sorry to burst your bubble but thats the way online PC gaming has been going.
Where have you been in the PC Gaming history? This type of scenario plays out all time with expansion packs and booster packs.
Now if you want to talk about 'real DRM' than we can; such as their limit of installing it on 5 same computers which can easily be fixed by calling them. Although there is no reason to run 5 exact copies at the same time online. You are just confused that because it didn't install right online it must be the DRM when in fact it was 'human error' or just a sloppy login interface of instruction at EA's website when associating it. SecureROM is another form of 'real DRM'
The word 'associate' is different meaning from 'DRM'
It most likely wasn't DRM, but rather you did not assign the right EA account name. Speaking as a long time Battlfield veteran there was a fiasco about this, although I don't remember any posts complaining about DRM.
A lot of misconception about this went on and it really had nothing to do with DRM, when really it was EA's system of tying the username together.
You should have asked on the EA Battlfield forums and I am sure some nice folks would have helped you with it, the forums are a good place to get a quicker answer than from EA's ticket system of question. You basically have to go into your EA account and assign your other account names with that main one.
Once again I doubt this problem has anything to do with the DRM system in place, you might have been in a little bit of a rush to assign this problem to DRM. Any decent PC Gaming forum could have probably told you all this, but seeing as this is/. people are quick to tie a programs problem and instantly assign DRM to it.
Sorry to hear about your problem and you missed out on one of the best expansion packs for that game, they have those BF2 all in one packages at FRY's for pretty damn cheap now for about $25 you get the mega pack.
Yah, it is pretty sad that the comments modded up are out of touch of what is going on in the real world.
I know that we could introduce some of this into our engineering house for laying out blueprints and designs, give it time and eventually AutoCAD will have some integrated stuff to take advantage of this. In fact I am sure some of us younger engineers would jump on the newer technologies.
How about us DVR/Tivo people, oh and the wonderful Video On Demand people dominate everything with the massive librarys of episodes for free with no commercials(that sure kicks satellites ass). Although sometimes VOD doesn't show up for a couple hours after or till they update the libraries at midnight, but hey P2P isn't instant either but maybe 2 hours after. Get with the times bro.
I don't think it is always easier to download an episode of P2P; people want to watch it on their big screen tv and not have to download/extract/burn and than cross your finger the right codec.
Still nothing was better than when Family Guy came back from being dropped off FOX, they just talked shit on them about all the dozens of shows they cancelled early.
They are called UAV's and hellfire missiles, this problem has already been solved and they don't need a water jet pack to peak over the horizon. For right now the best thing is to setup a foreign Navy patrols and increase the countries coast guard capabilities.
Add to it the use of night vision and FLIR, the Somali pirates are in a losing battle with the 24/7 UAV. Better radar coverage would help out also.
Also they have increased jet patrols and these guys can sit up quite high in altitudes without being noticed, camera quality has come a long way and no way they can out run or see a jet coming.
Eric Scott has the real Jet Pack, jumping a 1,500ft canyon is pretty damn impressive. This guy is the Richard Branson and Steve Fossett of Rocket Man. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLoHPPsi8HM
I would be more impressed if Slashdot would cover his achievements and future development, besides I am sure the U.S. military or NASA have some cool videos from the 60's of them testing 'REAL' Jet Packs.
Eric Scott's company has already said they are developing a new jet pack that will go for a half hour.
It will run, you just have to use a lot of rubber seals to fill in all the wrong sized parts and the fire hydrants are not compatible with with any of the hoses.
Have you ever been to the site without adblock enabled? You know because all those ads at the bottom are the page are there for free and they don't make any money off of them.
Hey what do you know, adultfriendfinder.com is at the bottom.
Take two of the most expensive and shinniest Christmas decorations, lay one on the ground and while holding a bright flashlight at them smash the other one against it.
duhhh I should have provided a link to the Free Beta that is about to start, so signup early.
battlefield-heroes.com
Also you can follow their development on Twitter twitter.com/bfheroes
Interesting how they use post it notes on some of their pictures to organize the project, I hear that is the best way to organize things like that with stickies on a big board.
I cannot believe this hasn't gotten coverage here and especially since it is a 'FREE GAME' provided by EA.
That is right, EA is testing a new market and they are introducing a free Battlefield game. They will make their money off the game by buying stuff in-game like addons to your character, but you cannot buy gameplay advantages like bigger/powerful weapons.
Not only is it free, but the hardware requirements are very low to the tone of even minimum XP requirements and this game will be a boom on small laptops.
This is very revolutionary in the PC gaming industry, hopefully other developers will take notice and try to follow this model. 'Free as in Beer? No. Free as in EA? Yes'
I have been a Battlefield follower since it came out as Operation Eagle was the original title, In fact if you look at Operation Eagle and compare it to Battlefield Heroes you will see a lot of similarities and stuff that should have been added a long time ago.
EA and the Battlefield team have a notorious history of missing items in-game, empty spaces on the menu where there should have been an item. Overall though the game has been great and you cannot beat the mid air dogfights that take place in BF1942.
Shut up you naive twit, nothing but a bunch of gibberish you just wrote. Thankfully you and the rest of the yahoo's who hate America so much have no credibility.
Good than I guess everybody will be better off with China as the world leader, although to be truthful I would like to see the Chinese way to approach the Middle East. It is gonna be a blood bath over there when the Chinese set foot.
Personally I cannot wait till China gets into it with another country, they will literally slaughter everyone in sight. The world will cry foul and run crying to the U.S..
Either way, the U.S. has the relations and foreign military bases in place around the world.
NASA in shambles? Just because Slashdot loves to hate NASA/America and kiss the EU's ass when they do something real small, doesn't mean NASA is collapsing. In fact there is more development going on than there ever has before, of course you will not see those articles on Slashdot.
But hey go ahead and drool over some pictures of the dark side of the moon or a cheap ass probe sent by the EU but the main instrument developed by Americans which did the discovery was added onto the unit.
It's not that hard to pay some day laborer hanging out in front of Home Depot to dispense these all around.
Guy who doesn't speak english very well and is afraid of being deported, change them up every couple days.
Shit I did this stuff when I was a kid to get AOL accounts so that I would be able to get on the internet, leave the discs around and sure enough I would have a couple dozen emails of AOL username/passwords in my hotmail ready to use.
I remember all the naysayers about how cable was doomed and that docsis 3.0 was vaporware, FIOS was supposed to be the next big thing. Well it came to my area as one of the first places in the nation and "mehhhh" is all I have to say, but luckily our city council has their heads screwed on straight and demanded more speeds/options for their citizens. FIOS could blow them out of the water, but they hold back or you have to cough up big bucks to get real fiber speeds.
As far as I can see, FIOS has laid down the fiber and they are still withholding speeds in a lot of areas where service is available.
Alone head to head FIOS has faster speeds, but might be a little more expensive and you have to sign a damn contract with them for a couple years. I found my ping to actually be better on cable than the same FIOS line coming into the home, roommate has FIOS and I have cable internet because triple package is cheaper.
TWC is doing the same thing nationwide with the implementation of docsis 3.0, since they skipped 2.0.
Although to be honest, 99% of the websites/server out there do not even supply the speeds close to max out the connection of fiber. Everyone on FIOS trying to download at max speed will never work, streaming already works pretty good and this will be a glory to P2p/Warez scene.
The whole article/title just reeks of wrongness and is too early to test.
Testing games on a beta for performance?
First off any real online PC Gamer who hasn't done it already has found out that Punkbuster doesn't exactly work online for Win7 without tricking the Services options. Not news since this was the story on Vista, only story is the customers demanding the developers to get some drivers and compatibility.
The drivers aren't exactly out or have not been polished, so you will still have some performance issues like you did with Vista when it came out. Not including the 10-20% hit you will take in frame performance. Either way the games will run smooth, I made the move from XP to Vista after they worked out all the bugs and compatibility issues in the first 3 months of release.
Game performance really depends heavily on good video card drivers and patches by the developers, I dunno if you can adjust for Win7 as it is basically Vista with the sugarcoated desktop performance. The kernel really will not affect game performance that much when you are talking FPS, really it is developers rushing out half finished games to meet the schedule.
Add to it, all the benchmarks look exactly the same Vista, XP and Win7. You want more performance? Than pay the developers for a couple months of optimization, as far as I can tell most companies are shorting their development teams and rushing them to get out the game.
Personally I am more amazed at all the ass kissing Win7 has got when anybody who spent more than 5 minutes using Vista can clearly see the issues that are on hand for PC gamers and the average desktop user. Only this time, Vista cleared up a lot of those problems and allow a more stream less transition from XP/Vista to Win7.
Uhhhh duhhh Flight Simulator has not been selling like it used to and they are probably fresh out of ideas.
I could even tell that Flight Sim was not selling by the amount of Boxes stacking up at the local FRY's, those games aren't selling anymore and they have moved them over to the crappy section of the shelves. When your product gets denominated to a lower shelf or a corner, well you know where your product stands.
X-Plane is good but Microsoft has always kicked its butt in most areas.
They could start off by not loading them with those crappy weak Intel graphics cards.
So many laptops I have come across those slow weak graphics cards and it's loaded with Vista, Intels drivers did not seem to improve it either.
Intel must have been giving these guys all great deals with these video/sound cards built in that could never be upgraded. Seems manufacturers were trying to save a buck with those all-in-one motherboards, cheap laptops are nice these days though for basic uses.
Slashdot Mirror
Thing is, I live in Southern California where Time Warner and FIOS are in place. I was insulted by Verizons offering for the technology they have laid down and their pricing plan; than they tried to copy the Triple Pay package of TW by offering Satellite with it and that was a disaster plan that soon dissolved. Verizons TV service is not ready yet in vast majority of areas; so they cannot compete on that playing field yet. Their speeds are fast, but Time Warner is raising their speeds and Docsis 3.0 is coming soon.
Time Warner when you break down the math actually beats Verizon if you get the triple pay package, add to it you have to sign a several year contract as with Time Warner you can cancel any time without penalty.
Also Verizons offerings for some of their higher speeds are damn near ripping you off at around $60+ for their premium package; where as Time Warner you can get it cheaper with the Triple Pay if thats what you want and majority do.
Another thing is Time Warner increased almost all their basic speeds in Southern California to 15/2 and if you are lucky to have City Council with balls who force the ISP companies to raise their speeds if you want to compete there you can live in Huntington Beach with 28/2. Also Time Warner's ping is much better in almost all the areas in SoCal; speaking as someone who's roommate downstairs has FIOS and I have Time Warner.
DSLreports.com covers all this and you get employees who work for the company perspective.
I personally liked the idea I think a University (San Diego) had or did a test with some agency(USGA?) regarding infusing a very lubricated type of mud to cause slip on the faults.
They would inject the mud/lubricant via tubes along the fault which would cause it to slip slowly instead of violent quick jolts.
Theres a video out there of it where they inject the ground with it and set off some type of explosion to test it.
Yes, some of us younger Civil Engineers were looking forward to some of the new features making things much more seamless and the layout of the Ribbon bar makes things nice also while the vets will grunt at you and use the command line.
The 90 days kind of ruins it though; I mean some of my individual projects from survey, layout to estimate take far more than 90 days just to get the wet stamp of approval.
Working only for commission right now is tough in between permanent jobs; would be nice if they Autodesk gave me a longer liscense like a year as more of incentive to use their newer version.
They already sell the LT version which is cheaper and without the 3d basically; be nice if they lowered the price even more which is about $150-$200.
What about Itunes?
You can buy music on the internet now, if you haven't heard.
Maybe Apple will have a say in this.
Well you should go start a thread labled 'DRM prevented me from playing Battlefield expansion packs' on the EA Battlefield forums, if you seem so determined it was DRM and not the way the EA account system server works to keep online multiplayer stats available.
Watch how quickly you get shot down and get a dose of technically explained reason, just use the 'search' function and while at it put in "DRM" to see some of the silly arguments get shot down by civilized explanations.
I saw this whole fiasco go on in the forums there and there wasn't really anyone person who said "DRM caused it".
There is no "digital" software installed that prevents you from playig it; it is their online servers that deal with the associating(DRM?) the expansion with your orginal BF2 for online stats.
What? you don't like multiplayer games with stats; gee sorry to burst your bubble but thats the way online PC gaming has been going.
Where have you been in the PC Gaming history? This type of scenario plays out all time with expansion packs and booster packs.
Now if you want to talk about 'real DRM' than we can; such as their limit of installing it on 5 same computers which can easily be fixed by calling them. Although there is no reason to run 5 exact copies at the same time online.
You are just confused that because it didn't install right online it must be the DRM when in fact it was 'human error' or just a sloppy login interface of instruction at EA's website when associating it.
SecureROM is another form of 'real DRM'
The word 'associate' is different meaning from 'DRM'
It most likely wasn't DRM, but rather you did not assign the right EA account name. Speaking as a long time Battlfield veteran there was a fiasco about this, although I don't remember any posts complaining about DRM.
A lot of misconception about this went on and it really had nothing to do with DRM, when really it was EA's system of tying the username together.
You should have asked on the EA Battlfield forums and I am sure some nice folks would have helped you with it, the forums are a good place to get a quicker answer than from EA's ticket system of question. You basically have to go into your EA account and assign your other account names with that main one.
Once again I doubt this problem has anything to do with the DRM system in place, you might have been in a little bit of a rush to assign this problem to DRM. Any decent PC Gaming forum could have probably told you all this, but seeing as this is /. people are quick to tie a programs problem and instantly assign DRM to it.
Sorry to hear about your problem and you missed out on one of the best expansion packs for that game, they have those BF2 all in one packages at FRY's for pretty damn cheap now for about $25 you get the mega pack.
17", 512MB ram and 60 GB hd?
When was the last time you saw a laptop for sale or walked into a computer store, 2004?
Seriously, I don't think they even make 512MB ram anymore and 60GB laptops.
Some of the deals out there
HP Mini 1030NR Netbook (Refurb): Atom 1.6 Ghz, 1GB DDR2, 16GB SSD, WiFi, 10" WSXGA LED Screen, 3-Cell Battery, XP Home $280 or Less
HP Pavilion G60-235DX Notebook, 2.00GHz Intel Dual-Core,3072MB,320GB,LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVDR/RW with Double Layer Support,16.0" High Definition Display --RB'd $500
Yah, it is pretty sad that the comments modded up are out of touch of what is going on in the real world.
I know that we could introduce some of this into our engineering house for laying out blueprints and designs, give it time and eventually AutoCAD will have some integrated stuff to take advantage of this. In fact I am sure some of us younger engineers would jump on the newer technologies.
TV people?
How about us DVR/Tivo people, oh and the wonderful Video On Demand people dominate everything with the massive librarys of episodes for free with no commercials(that sure kicks satellites ass). Although sometimes VOD doesn't show up for a couple hours after or till they update the libraries at midnight, but hey P2P isn't instant either but maybe 2 hours after. Get with the times bro.
I don't think it is always easier to download an episode of P2P; people want to watch it on their big screen tv and not have to download/extract/burn and than cross your finger the right codec.
Still nothing was better than when Family Guy came back from being dropped off FOX, they just talked shit on them about all the dozens of shows they cancelled early.
Huhhhh?
They are called UAV's and hellfire missiles, this problem has already been solved and they don't need a water jet pack to peak over the horizon.
For right now the best thing is to setup a foreign Navy patrols and increase the countries coast guard capabilities.
Add to it the use of night vision and FLIR, the Somali pirates are in a losing battle with the 24/7 UAV. Better radar coverage would help out also.
Also they have increased jet patrols and these guys can sit up quite high in altitudes without being noticed, camera quality has come a long way and no way they can out run or see a jet coming.
Eric Scott has the real Jet Pack, jumping a 1,500ft canyon is pretty damn impressive. This guy is the Richard Branson and Steve Fossett of Rocket Man.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLoHPPsi8HM
I would be more impressed if Slashdot would cover his achievements and future development, besides I am sure the U.S. military or NASA have some cool videos from the 60's of them testing 'REAL' Jet Packs.
Eric Scott's company has already said they are developing a new jet pack that will go for a half hour.
It will run, you just have to use a lot of rubber seals to fill in all the wrong sized parts and the fire hydrants are not compatible with with any of the hoses.
You really cannot be that naive, can you?
Have you ever been to the site without adblock enabled?
You know because all those ads at the bottom are the page are there for free and they don't make any money off of them.
Hey what do you know, adultfriendfinder.com is at the bottom.
ADS = CREDIT CARD
+5 insightful?
You can repeat the experiment at home
Take two of the most expensive and shinniest Christmas decorations, lay one on the ground and while holding a bright flashlight at them smash the other one against it.
duhhh I should have provided a link to the Free Beta that is about to start, so signup early.
battlefield-heroes.com
Also you can follow their development on Twitter
twitter.com/bfheroes
Interesting how they use post it notes on some of their pictures to organize the project, I hear that is the best way to organize things like that with stickies on a big board.
I cannot believe this hasn't gotten coverage here and especially since it is a 'FREE GAME' provided by EA.
That is right, EA is testing a new market and they are introducing a free Battlefield game. They will make their money off the game by buying stuff in-game like addons to your character, but you cannot buy gameplay advantages like bigger/powerful weapons.
Not only is it free, but the hardware requirements are very low to the tone of even minimum XP requirements and this game will be a boom on small laptops.
This is very revolutionary in the PC gaming industry, hopefully other developers will take notice and try to follow this model. 'Free as in Beer? No. Free as in EA? Yes'
I have been a Battlefield follower since it came out as Operation Eagle was the original title, In fact if you look at Operation Eagle and compare it to Battlefield Heroes you will see a lot of similarities and stuff that should have been added a long time ago.
EA and the Battlefield team have a notorious history of missing items in-game, empty spaces on the menu where there should have been an item. Overall though the game has been great and you cannot beat the mid air dogfights that take place in BF1942.
Shut up you naive twit, nothing but a bunch of gibberish you just wrote. Thankfully you and the rest of the yahoo's who hate America so much have no credibility.
Good than I guess everybody will be better off with China as the world leader, although to be truthful I would like to see the Chinese way to approach the Middle East. It is gonna be a blood bath over there when the Chinese set foot.
Personally I cannot wait till China gets into it with another country, they will literally slaughter everyone in sight. The world will cry foul and run crying to the U.S..
Either way, the U.S. has the relations and foreign military bases in place around the world.
NASA in shambles? Just because Slashdot loves to hate NASA/America and kiss the EU's ass when they do something real small, doesn't mean NASA is collapsing. In fact there is more development going on than there ever has before, of course you will not see those articles on Slashdot.
But hey go ahead and drool over some pictures of the dark side of the moon or a cheap ass probe sent by the EU but the main instrument developed by Americans which did the discovery was added onto the unit.
It's not that hard to pay some day laborer hanging out in front of Home Depot to dispense these all around.
Guy who doesn't speak english very well and is afraid of being deported, change them up every couple days.
Shit I did this stuff when I was a kid to get AOL accounts so that I would be able to get on the internet, leave the discs around and sure enough I would have a couple dozen emails of AOL username/passwords in my hotmail ready to use.
Don't worry, it should be added just after they are done reskinning their site to look like Digg and adding round edges to all the graphics.
I remember all the naysayers about how cable was doomed and that docsis 3.0 was vaporware, FIOS was supposed to be the next big thing. Well it came to my area as one of the first places in the nation and "mehhhh" is all I have to say, but luckily our city council has their heads screwed on straight and demanded more speeds/options for their citizens. FIOS could blow them out of the water, but they hold back or you have to cough up big bucks to get real fiber speeds.
As far as I can see, FIOS has laid down the fiber and they are still withholding speeds in a lot of areas where service is available.
Alone head to head FIOS has faster speeds, but might be a little more expensive and you have to sign a damn contract with them for a couple years.
I found my ping to actually be better on cable than the same FIOS line coming into the home, roommate has FIOS and I have cable internet because triple package is cheaper.
TWC is doing the same thing nationwide with the implementation of docsis 3.0, since they skipped 2.0.
Although to be honest, 99% of the websites/server out there do not even supply the speeds close to max out the connection of fiber. Everyone on FIOS trying to download at max speed will never work, streaming already works pretty good and this will be a glory to P2p/Warez scene.
Because no one can copy a DVD print right?
I don't understand, if a screener or early release gets out people will obviously get that instead of the cam.
Some guy is probably selling them for (USD)$1
The whole article/title just reeks of wrongness and is too early to test.
Testing games on a beta for performance?
First off any real online PC Gamer who hasn't done it already has found out that Punkbuster doesn't exactly work online for Win7 without tricking the Services options. Not news since this was the story on Vista, only story is the customers demanding the developers to get some drivers and compatibility.
The drivers aren't exactly out or have not been polished, so you will still have some performance issues like you did with Vista when it came out. Not including the 10-20% hit you will take in frame performance. Either way the games will run smooth, I made the move from XP to Vista after they worked out all the bugs and compatibility issues in the first 3 months of release.
Game performance really depends heavily on good video card drivers and patches by the developers, I dunno if you can adjust for Win7 as it is basically Vista with the sugarcoated desktop performance. The kernel really will not affect game performance that much when you are talking FPS, really it is developers rushing out half finished games to meet the schedule.
Add to it, all the benchmarks look exactly the same Vista, XP and Win7. You want more performance? Than pay the developers for a couple months of optimization, as far as I can tell most companies are shorting their development teams and rushing them to get out the game.
Personally I am more amazed at all the ass kissing Win7 has got when anybody who spent more than 5 minutes using Vista can clearly see the issues that are on hand for PC gamers and the average desktop user. Only this time, Vista cleared up a lot of those problems and allow a more stream less transition from XP/Vista to Win7.
Uhhhh duhhh
Flight Simulator has not been selling like it used to and they are probably fresh out of ideas.
I could even tell that Flight Sim was not selling by the amount of Boxes stacking up at the local FRY's, those games aren't selling anymore and they have moved them over to the crappy section of the shelves.
When your product gets denominated to a lower shelf or a corner, well you know where your product stands.
X-Plane is good but Microsoft has always kicked its butt in most areas.
They could start off by not loading them with those crappy weak Intel graphics cards.
So many laptops I have come across those slow weak graphics cards and it's loaded with Vista, Intels drivers did not seem to improve it either.
Intel must have been giving these guys all great deals with these video/sound cards built in that could never be upgraded.
Seems manufacturers were trying to save a buck with those all-in-one motherboards, cheap laptops are nice these days though for basic uses.
What if you are on Vista/Win7 beta?
No seriously, Vista has been nothing but convenience from Viruses and Malware.
People like to use the term 'Windows' out there without defining what versions lately for weird reasons or agenda.