The moral of that story friend is ask around and find which units give the best customer service, or if you want to deal face to face? Then fuck the OEMs entirely and go to your local mom & pop shop. Personally I like Asus and Samsung units, never had a problem with support from either company, you ship it to them fast and they'll get it back to you fast. I usually go Asus on the smaller units and Samsung for the larger simply because I like the design on the larger Samsung units, but the larger Asus units are fine, just not quite as slick looking.
But ask around, there are plenty of geeks hanging out at sites like Tiger, Amazon, and Newegg that will be happy to give you the skinny. Another good place to check is the Newegg feedback, when you see someone posting bad reviews and the OEM doesn't respond? BAD sign. A good OEM should be trying to minimize bad feedback by working out those problems, not just letting them sit. I've seen both Asus and Samsung reps get on less than an hour after a bad posting saying "Please call us at xxxx, ext xxx and we'll fix the problem" which is frankly what ALL OEMs should be doing.
And on desktops? wouldn't go back to OEM if you paid me. I have to work on OEMs every damned day and it never ceases to amaze me at how bad they'll nickel and dime the customer trying to save a few cents. Shitty fans, not enough RAM for the OS, hell Dell has some units with no PS/2 ports which are what? 4c each? And worse off the damned things have LOUSY legacy USB support which makes them hell if you try to reinstall the OS because half the time the keyboard and/or mouse won't detect!
So you can get laptops that do what you want and still give you options, you just gotta ask around.
It also sounds like it would be good for a lot of my customers. I work with a lot of SOHOs and SMBs where the business is between 5 and 10 workers, so you can back up the whole place with maybe 300Gb for initial and another 40-60Gb worth of differential a week. I'll have to look into this as it sounds like it'd be another level of protection from failure which is always of the good.
"Just cause I am from the CPT
Punk police are afraid of me, huh
A young nigger on the warpath
And when I finish, it is going to be a bloodbath
Of cops dyin in L.A." NWA "Fuck The Police"
There is a BIG difference between saying something and doing something friend, although since we've already had at least two people thrown in jail for thoughtcrimes (The guy that wrote the "pro-pedo" book and another caught at the border with his fantasies written down..on the request of his shrink) frankly nothing surprises me when it comes to the law anymore.
Well I won't be buying anything that I can't have upgrade options but I DO see the point on laptops and here is why: Thanks to the MHz wars between intel and AMD the CPUs went right past good enough and into insanely overpowered so there really isn't a point in upgrading because by the time the system is too slow to run what you want besides games frankly its too old to be worth messing with.
I have many customers on first gen Phenom I triples and quads and first gen Core Duos and they are happy as clams with them. Most PCs from that period can be upgraded to 4Gb of RAM and with that much RAM and a Phenom triple of C2D or C2Q there simply isn't any "killer apps" that will cause the user to want to upgrade. Hell my netbook cost like $350, has a Brazos dual core and you can play L4D and GTA on it! Same as my oldest just started his third year of college today and he's happy with the Phenom II triple core laptop he got right before he entered. Does all his schoolwork, still holds a decent charge on the battery (and easily replaced when it wears out) and even lets him join in with his friends in a little TF2 at the end of a long day.
So the only thing I'd really disagree with them on is the soldering of the RAM because a RAM upgrade is a cheap way to extend the life of a unit. While I prefer having more upgrade options, like being able to swap the battery, buy an aftermarket screen with higher def or touch if I want, I can see why many folks wouldn't care because even a 2006 dual core frankly serves the needs of the majority quite well, just as I can see my hanging onto this 6 core AMD desktop even though there are 12 core CPUs out now, the programs in general just can't slam the CPU I have much less require anything that huge.
But it don't really matter what the masses want Oakgrove, because as long as there is money to be made a market shall exist.
When I started PC building in the early 90s frankly there were a LOT of toasters...remember Compaq RAM? For those that don't know Compaq used propietary RAM that ran at odd volts so if you tried to stick anything but Compaq RAM in it just wouldn't work. Both HP and Compaq also had proprietary PSUs, the worst being the little PITA Pavilion micro PSUs that even if you could get one was crazy high, had too little power to upgrade much at all, and were hell to change out.
So yes it cost me a little more back then to buy systems that used standard easily changeable parts but you know what? Damned well worth it. Hell one of the reasons why the local businesses would rather come to me than order something from Dell is because I sit down with them, find out what the system is gonna be doing, and then try to make sure that the system has an upgrade path if its gonna be used for anything other than the secretaries.
As long as someone is willing to buy someone else will be willing to sell. Hell AMD makes too much off of us system builders to be leaving the DIY crowd high and dry and there are plenty of OEMs like Lenovo and Asus that have large after market suppliers willing to sell you any kind of upgrade for a laptop if you need it.
My guess is there will be one more round of consolidation, because systems are lasting longer, and then things will settle down and won't really be too much different than right now. There will always be a need for powerful desktops, always be people that would like their systems to last longer instead of chunking every 3 years, and as long as people are willing to spend that money somebody else will be willing to take it.
I have to say Oakgrove that you nailed it. My biggest sellers are in the $400-$550 range, both with desktops and laptops, and at those prices you are looking at 1366x768 on the laptops and 1600x900 on the desktops and you know what? People are happy. Never have heard a complaint yet about the screens needing to be more HD. Hell I sold my 1600x900 full size laptop for one of those 12 inch EEEs with 1366 res because after handling a few of them i decided I liked the increased mobility and battery life over the larger more HD screen.
As long as people can read the text clearly and do their tasks on the unit they really don't seem to care about screen resolution, certainly not enough to plop down $2K+ just to get a higher def screen.
Hell you do a little research before buying and you can get an even better battery than the one that came with the system! Haven't looked at other brands but many of the Asus and Acer systems you can replace the 6 cell with a 10 cell if you don't mind a little extra weight and bulk. Picked up a couple for road warrior customers that wanted the longest life possible with their laptop, it only added around a pound and nearly doubled their useful unplugged time. They're happy, I'm happy, its a win/win.
And don't forget how having user replaceable batteries extends the life of the system as I have several customers that are quite happy with their first gen Core duo laptops, just swap out the battery when it dies and the unit is good to go. Why replace if you don't have to?
Exactly. Most of us couldn't give a rat's ass about retina displays which i personally think on a smaller screen is kinda stupid, but we DO care about being able to upgrade our systems. On my netbook I can upgrade the RAM, change the HDD for an SSD, replace the battery with one of several third party, including a few that make 10 cells so I can run all day, there are even tutorials on how to swap out the screen for a touch complete with links to the screen if I decide I would like touch down the line.
This is why I'll never be an Apple customer, I LIKE being able to upgrade my laptop or netbook so I can get more usage out of it, I LIKE building my own desktops so I can have just the right amount of CPU, RAM, HDD space, and GPU that I need with the option to get bigger down the line, and if I don't have retina to get all that? Fine by me, although there are websites that cater to the medical community where you can buy ultra HD screens in just about any size that you require and frankly with the tutorials it really isn't hard to DIY a screen swap. If you really don't feel comfortable with a screwdriver you can always come by the little mom & pop shops like mine, we'll be happy to do the work for you and when all is said and done you'll end up with a nicer machine built with what YOU want and not what Apple decides you can have this year. Seems like a no brainer to me, but then again I'm not an Apple customer.
BTW slightly OT but has anyone else noticed that Apple users just don't seem to be happy unless they can convince you "the Apple way" is the RIGHT way? They just don't seem to be able to be happy with a product unless they can somehow get others to think they were "right" and the other way is "wrong". My personal theory is there is a doubt sitting there on their shoulder going "You paid too much" and the only way they can soothe that doubt is to get others to agree with their purchase. Personally I like Asus and Samsung laptops, Asrock and Gigabyte boards, and HTC phones, but I don't really need anyone to like or dislike the brands I use because they are a personal preference no different than the pizza i eat or the shoes I wear. I'll just never understand this "need' for want of a better term of Apple users to try to justify their selections. If it makes you happy? Then please use it, I wish you nothing but good luck. but please don't try to make this a black and white issue because its really not, its personal preference, that's all.
Everybody is making jokes when the simple fact is just like the VCR there are plenty of non copyright uses for these sites. lets take myself for example, i have used sites like Rapidshare to send some of my own musical works to someone halfway across the planet so they could load it up and add their own tracks, I've used them to send.reg files for basic fixes like the PITA "Windows no sound device even though the drive is installed" bug, used them to store zip files of family photos so I can send them across the country to distant relatives, plenty of things other than the latest Titney Spears you can use these sites for.
In the end it shouldn't be their job to have to constantly go through everyone's stuff to make the *.A.A happy, we've already seen that doesn't work as you can simply change the name of the files and you are back to square one. No they should be treated no different than Google who takes things down when they get a request. Problem is the *.A.As are lazy bastards and want to pass all the expense to everyone else and they have no problem with bribing officials to write the laws to let them pass on the expense.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics...ever heard of that saying? The problem with trying to predict the future with stats is that there are unpredictable events that throw a big ass monkey wrench into your stats. Do you think anyone in 1899 would have been able to predict 2 world wars and a hundred million plus dead or wounded? Hell would they have predicted WWII in 1925?
Wars, earthquakes, floods, all of these things can devastate a region for a decade or more and simply won't be predicted or fit into those little equations. And in all of the above you end up with the exact same conditions I predicted, too many people in bad health in too small a space. Ever hear of the 1917 superflu? Came about because of wounded in WWI in unsanitary battlefield conditions with weakened immune systems being a perfect breeding ground. Then the troops were shipped home and voila! Instaplague.
You don't even have to go third world, look at the conditions in the barrios and ghettos of any major city, we have too many people, too little access to preventive healthcare so they only go into an ER when they are half dead, rats, roaches, fleas, hell we've seen NYC have a bedbug infestation like it was the 1800s! In the end its not the people, its the conditions and as more and more of rural life is automated the people will have no choice but to crowd into megacities and there goes your equations.
Ugh you bought the AC series on the Steam sale? I was tempted...until I saw the always on Ubisuck DRM and gave it a pass. I went with SR 3 and the Deus Ex series and am quite happy, in fact by the time I was finished shopping I had enough games I should be covered until the next Steam sale...yay Steam!
But Deus Ex gives us a perfect example of "just because the franchise is old doesn't mean you can't do something great with it" as I think Deus Ex HR is truly great, good weapons, the choice to do any objective the way YOU want instead of being forced to do it a single way, sure it isn't as huge as the original but it makes up for that with top notch gameplay and an at least so far good story.
The problem is you get these companies that just squirt out one generic copy of a once successful franchise after another and it looks like the big N is starting to treat Mario the same. Check out games like Bastion, SuperMeatBoy, or Limbo and you'll see there is still plenty of ways to make a good 2D platformer while making it fresh but big N is just riding the nostalgia.
Meh I suppose I shouldn't even care anymore as I've just about got my family completely weaned off consoles for PCs but i just hate to see classic characters fall into crap. Duke Nukem, Sonic, its like seeing your favorite band has fallen on hard times and is now playing the county fairs just trying to cash in on the good old days, its just sad.
The answer is simple enough....don't buy Apple. One of the reasons I bought my current portable, an Asus EEE E350 netbook, is because it has plenty of upgrade options. i was able to upgrade from the default 2Gb to 8Gb of faster RAM for less than $30, there are plenty of tutorials showing how to replace the screen with a touch if you like, or replace the HDD with an SSD, there are even tools to OC or UC the APU if I want more speed or battery life, as well as third party batteries that will let me have all day usage if I need it, although i find the 5-6 hours i get plenty.
Just because Apple is the hipster brand doesn't mean you have to buy it, its not like we don't have plenty of choices. This is why I've built my own desktops for over 15 years, because not only do I get a better quality system at a cheaper price, but I can have it the way I want it, not the way some OEM thinks is best.
If you need PCI slots you best bet would be the ECS Board as it comes with TWO PCI plus a PCIe x16 as well as 4 SATA slots. great for building a mini, not sure what chip it uses for PCI but I think its all AMD so there shouldn't be any hassle if you wanna go Linux. Its also passively cooled so it makes a great silent office box in the corner doing all those little jobs you may need and finally it has the 9w max Brazos chip so it'll idle around 4w.
Exactly. This frankly would have been a trivial problem to fix if MSFT would have spent more than 4 seconds to think about it, but ever since Apple came out with iPad the entire corp has lost their damned minds and have focused so much on consumers the thought that businesses might still have use of this never even entered their thought processes.
Because it lets them lead you by the nose? I USED to try many different Linux distros, now I'll only use Windows, why? Windows Updates don't count against the cap, Linux and Mac updates DO count against the cap. If I use the cable PPV? Don't count. Netflix or Hulu? DO count...get the picture?
What you are gonna end up with is 35Gb to 75Gb caps which make damned sure you will NOT use what they don't want you to because at $1.50 a Gb overage charge it won't take but a couple of $200+ bills to get your ass back in line. Hell I should know as the local cableco recently went to a 40-80Gb for home and 150Gb for $200 for business, lucky I'm grandfathered in for now but if they yank my grandfathered account out from under me its assraping caps or AT&T with speeds so damned low they don't have to worry about caps because with a top speed of 3Mbps and lines that go out if you fart you won't be getting shit anyway.
Does it automatically take care of NAT, dynamic addressing, and any other hassles? because EasyConnect does. Man why they don't package that sucker up and sell it as an extra service for those not on Win 7 I don't know but I've never seen anything as simple and easy when it comes to remote control of a desktop.
Yes and no, because as Jim Sterling wrote about this last week on the escapist they USED to add new gameplay twists with each release like Zelda does. Now you have games like Meatboy and Rayman doing new things and giving us new twists while Mario...just treads water.
I guess its time for the big N to either bring some new talent in or let Mario rest for a few years because they are just rehashing now. Nobody wants to see Mario become another generic where they just slap a new coat of paint and trot it out, Mario is to Nintendo as Sonic was to Sega, you're supposed to bring your A game when you use the mascot.
Bimbo Newton Crosby, if they'd ever tried to actually support a completely clueless user they'd know that VNC would be a BAD idea.
Honestly i just don't see how he is gonna be able to pull it off on both Windows AND OSX without some service in the middle, i really don't. Everything else is gonna require the user to at least have enough skills to start the thing up which is far from assured and leaving it running 24/7 is just asking for trouble.
This is why I'm glad I have all my family and customers on Win 7, MSFT may have made plenty of dumb moves but EasyConnect is a fricking Godsend, its the easiest damned thing I've ever dealt with for remote assistance. I simply pin Remote Assistance to the start menu and its as easy as "Hit start, see that thing at the top that says remote assistance? Yeah click on that, hit next, see my name? Yeah click on my name...hold on...okay I'm hooked up, see that little box that popped up that asks if I can have full control? Just click yes...okay I've got it now" and then I can just sit in my comfy chair and work the system like i was sitting right in front of it.
I wish there was something truly universal and that simple to use but if its out there so far I haven't found it. Just remember when you suggest programs we are talking normal folks, the stuff YOU would think is trivial to do is often so completely over their head it would literally be quicker to simply drive out to where they are and do the work than to sit their on the phone trying to talk them through it.
Oh and one final bit of advice for those that have to support the clueless...get Comodo Time Machine and install it NOW, you'll be glad you did. Think of it as a system restore that actually works and which doesn't get infected by malware. When my GF had to go across the state to take care of a sick relative and her niece screwed her laptop up so bad the thing wouldn't even boot to desktop it took me less than 15 minutes to get her back up and running thanks to CTM. Just set it to use around 10%-15% of the HDD space for snapshots and have it take a snapshot at boot (if you boot more than once a day it'll only take one snapshot so you won't run out of space) and you are golden. You can even lock a snapshot so you can have your own version of a factory refresh that will put the system right back to the way you had it with no muss or fuss. Just have them hit the Home key when they see the big clock, tell them what day you want them to go back to and voila! Instant fix.
"I believe the puppet on the left shares MY beliefs, well I believe the puppet on the right has MY interests at heart...hey wait a minute there is one guy controlling both puppets!"....Bill Hicks.
Frankly the two figureheads can say any damned thing they want, the actual laws are written by the lobbyists of the one that has paid the most bribes...errr..I mean campaign contributions and that will be the ISPs. The figurehead will then either praise the lawmakers for their fine work or talk about what a shame it is the other side is doing this...while the puppet signs it into law. In either case if you think your puny little vote is gonna compete with the power of the big bag o' cash? I have some magic beans you might be interested in.
Even if NN were a real possibility (which it isn't) what we need isn't some rules the ISPs will ignore, but actual opening up of the last miles to competition as we had in the days of dialup so any ISP acting like douchebags would have to worry about losing their customers. As it is now even if they passed NN the ISPs would simply fuck you by making the bandwidth caps so small for anything they didn't get a cut of they'd still be able to lead you by the nose.
Hell considering how little the DSL providers have been keeping up with the times I wouldn't be surprised if they end up just leaving the market to the cable companies while they enjoy the much more lucrative (and as TFA pointed out with no NN rules) wireless, so we'll probably all end up with exactly one company if we want broadband at home and since they won't want competition with their TV they'll cap the living hell out of us.
Final verdict? While the EU and Asia enjoy ever bigger pipes we in the USA thanks to our "corporation yay!" political structure will be riding on the short bus to the information superhighway.
The problem isn't the people so much as the conditions. You pack poor folks like rats and diseases have a perfect breeding ground. You have serious sanitation, health care, and potable drinking water problems compounded by humans simply being packed too tightly into too small a space and get ready for the nasty bugs. Hell look at how many drugs end up in the rivers thanks to sewage being filled with them which also helps the bugs by breeding resistance which again made worse by too many in too small a space.
It might be different if you were putting them into clean skyscrapers or some other form of affordable safe clean housing but as we see all over the third world and sadly more and more in the first world what you get is shanty towns with all of the above problems and disease carrying bugs like mosquitoes, rats, fleas, roaches, we could easily have a drug resistant plague or superflu come out of one of those and with worldwide travel it'd spread like wildfire.
This is of course not figuring in the risk of some crazy terrorist group or nation state actually cooking up a nasty bug for a weapon, or a nice long war in an overpopulated region accelerating the squalor and leaving lots of wounded open to infection. 1917 flu anyone?
Not saying any of this is 100% guaranteed to happen, just pointing out as the numbers get higher so too does the risk. After all its not the people in the nice places having 8 to 10 kids, its those living in hellholes without access to birth control and who need as many hands for manual labor as possible and to insure some live without having access to decent medical care.
Uhhh you DO realize there is also a remote registry service that can royally bone you too...right? The problem isn't the file itself, its the remote access part.
Uhhh...he GAVE you an example, his shop floor manufacturing software requires it, end of story. Anybody who has worked with SMBs knows you end up with a ton of niche software that can have some crazy requirements, hell I've had to build a DOS 3 box in 2008 because a shop had a $150k lathe that required a PC with an ISA slot running DOS 3 to use the unit.
In the end frankly it shouldn't matter WHY he is using it, what should matter is MSFT is taking choice away from you yet again with no real gains. If MSFT thinks its a malware vector? Then let the use of HOSTS be set by GPO using local access. that way those that actually need it can enable it and those that don't use it will have it off by default. Frankly more and more MSFT is reminding me of a bad Apple ripoff with their "our way or the highway" attitude on everything, but unlike Apple their biggest customers aren't consumers, its businesses who are more likely to have the weird corner cases that this will cause headaches for.
Ask and ye shall receive Comodo Personal Firewall. Free, easy to use, has sane defaults while at the same time letting you control any in or outbound with any kind of rule you can think up. Personally I'd just take Comodo Internet Security Free as it gives you the AV and Firewall in one, has sandboxing, again a ton of control over the AV, oh and their license makes it free for home AND business use.
With Windows if you want anything more than the basic you really gotta go third party, that's just the way its always been. I happen to like it that way as it gives me plenty of choices besides whatever MSFT packs in. That said the Win 7 firewall isn't bad, you click on advanced and you can cook up your own rules, not nearly as fine grained as Comodo but for a basic firewall it isn't bad.
But its still illegal friend which means the game companies can NOT package it with a game as it needs to run the Win9X OS that MSFT won't license.
You see with DOSBox they simply reverse engineered DOS and since DOS was a relatively simplistic OS REing it didn't risk running into the minefield of patents and copyrights. With Win9X you are talking about needing DirectX 5-8 as well as being able to ape the GDI memory manager and the way Win9X dealt with sound and networking, there is simply no way ATM you can actually do that without running a Win9X VM which screws the game devs.
Remember the topic here is recouping a chunk of the cost of buying EA by repacking and selling their old games NOT what you can do at home. If you load a pirate VM of Win9X the odds are MSFT will never catch you but if you try to package a stripped down Win9X with your game ala DOSBox you WILL get sued by MSFT.
Dude look at the fucking numbers the guy above you posted okay? that's not bullshit, that's actual sales figures showing truly insane profits brought about by lower pricing.
The problem is you aren't thinking like a PHB like the head of EA. There they don't see price reductions as a way to generate more sales they see it as money slipping away. they'd rather have 1/10th of the sales at assrape prices than 3000% sales at cheap prices because they care more about the STOCK and its perception than they do the actual revenue. You see when some rag puts out "Game X sold Y at $60 a piece" that makes the day traders drool and stock goes up, this is what happens when an investor market becomes pure speculators market as we have now.
Again look at the numbers and realize that once you hit the sweet spot frankly you can get insane sales on even shit games because it becomes an impulse buy. I personally bought K&L II Dog Days, F3AR, and Bulletstorm even though the reviews were all bad because they were on sale for less than $8 a pop and I know a hell of a lot of people that did the same. It doesn't really matter how bad the reviews are in the $3-$10 bracket because most of us figure no matter how shit the game is we can at least get that much entertainment out of the title. Would I have bought ANY of those games for even $20? Not on your life.
Look at those figures and remember it was 'experts in the field" that nearly destroyed the financial markets. just because you've spent years in the field doesn't mean you're not a dumbass, it just means you have experience.
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The moral of that story friend is ask around and find which units give the best customer service, or if you want to deal face to face? Then fuck the OEMs entirely and go to your local mom & pop shop. Personally I like Asus and Samsung units, never had a problem with support from either company, you ship it to them fast and they'll get it back to you fast. I usually go Asus on the smaller units and Samsung for the larger simply because I like the design on the larger Samsung units, but the larger Asus units are fine, just not quite as slick looking.
But ask around, there are plenty of geeks hanging out at sites like Tiger, Amazon, and Newegg that will be happy to give you the skinny. Another good place to check is the Newegg feedback, when you see someone posting bad reviews and the OEM doesn't respond? BAD sign. A good OEM should be trying to minimize bad feedback by working out those problems, not just letting them sit. I've seen both Asus and Samsung reps get on less than an hour after a bad posting saying "Please call us at xxxx, ext xxx and we'll fix the problem" which is frankly what ALL OEMs should be doing.
And on desktops? wouldn't go back to OEM if you paid me. I have to work on OEMs every damned day and it never ceases to amaze me at how bad they'll nickel and dime the customer trying to save a few cents. Shitty fans, not enough RAM for the OS, hell Dell has some units with no PS/2 ports which are what? 4c each? And worse off the damned things have LOUSY legacy USB support which makes them hell if you try to reinstall the OS because half the time the keyboard and/or mouse won't detect!
So you can get laptops that do what you want and still give you options, you just gotta ask around.
It also sounds like it would be good for a lot of my customers. I work with a lot of SOHOs and SMBs where the business is between 5 and 10 workers, so you can back up the whole place with maybe 300Gb for initial and another 40-60Gb worth of differential a week. I'll have to look into this as it sounds like it'd be another level of protection from failure which is always of the good.
"Just cause I am from the CPT Punk police are afraid of me, huh A young nigger on the warpath And when I finish, it is going to be a bloodbath Of cops dyin in L.A." NWA "Fuck The Police"
There is a BIG difference between saying something and doing something friend, although since we've already had at least two people thrown in jail for thoughtcrimes (The guy that wrote the "pro-pedo" book and another caught at the border with his fantasies written down..on the request of his shrink) frankly nothing surprises me when it comes to the law anymore.
Well I won't be buying anything that I can't have upgrade options but I DO see the point on laptops and here is why: Thanks to the MHz wars between intel and AMD the CPUs went right past good enough and into insanely overpowered so there really isn't a point in upgrading because by the time the system is too slow to run what you want besides games frankly its too old to be worth messing with.
I have many customers on first gen Phenom I triples and quads and first gen Core Duos and they are happy as clams with them. Most PCs from that period can be upgraded to 4Gb of RAM and with that much RAM and a Phenom triple of C2D or C2Q there simply isn't any "killer apps" that will cause the user to want to upgrade. Hell my netbook cost like $350, has a Brazos dual core and you can play L4D and GTA on it! Same as my oldest just started his third year of college today and he's happy with the Phenom II triple core laptop he got right before he entered. Does all his schoolwork, still holds a decent charge on the battery (and easily replaced when it wears out) and even lets him join in with his friends in a little TF2 at the end of a long day.
So the only thing I'd really disagree with them on is the soldering of the RAM because a RAM upgrade is a cheap way to extend the life of a unit. While I prefer having more upgrade options, like being able to swap the battery, buy an aftermarket screen with higher def or touch if I want, I can see why many folks wouldn't care because even a 2006 dual core frankly serves the needs of the majority quite well, just as I can see my hanging onto this 6 core AMD desktop even though there are 12 core CPUs out now, the programs in general just can't slam the CPU I have much less require anything that huge.
But it don't really matter what the masses want Oakgrove, because as long as there is money to be made a market shall exist.
When I started PC building in the early 90s frankly there were a LOT of toasters...remember Compaq RAM? For those that don't know Compaq used propietary RAM that ran at odd volts so if you tried to stick anything but Compaq RAM in it just wouldn't work. Both HP and Compaq also had proprietary PSUs, the worst being the little PITA Pavilion micro PSUs that even if you could get one was crazy high, had too little power to upgrade much at all, and were hell to change out.
So yes it cost me a little more back then to buy systems that used standard easily changeable parts but you know what? Damned well worth it. Hell one of the reasons why the local businesses would rather come to me than order something from Dell is because I sit down with them, find out what the system is gonna be doing, and then try to make sure that the system has an upgrade path if its gonna be used for anything other than the secretaries.
As long as someone is willing to buy someone else will be willing to sell. Hell AMD makes too much off of us system builders to be leaving the DIY crowd high and dry and there are plenty of OEMs like Lenovo and Asus that have large after market suppliers willing to sell you any kind of upgrade for a laptop if you need it.
My guess is there will be one more round of consolidation, because systems are lasting longer, and then things will settle down and won't really be too much different than right now. There will always be a need for powerful desktops, always be people that would like their systems to last longer instead of chunking every 3 years, and as long as people are willing to spend that money somebody else will be willing to take it.
I have to say Oakgrove that you nailed it. My biggest sellers are in the $400-$550 range, both with desktops and laptops, and at those prices you are looking at 1366x768 on the laptops and 1600x900 on the desktops and you know what? People are happy. Never have heard a complaint yet about the screens needing to be more HD. Hell I sold my 1600x900 full size laptop for one of those 12 inch EEEs with 1366 res because after handling a few of them i decided I liked the increased mobility and battery life over the larger more HD screen.
As long as people can read the text clearly and do their tasks on the unit they really don't seem to care about screen resolution, certainly not enough to plop down $2K+ just to get a higher def screen.
Hell you do a little research before buying and you can get an even better battery than the one that came with the system! Haven't looked at other brands but many of the Asus and Acer systems you can replace the 6 cell with a 10 cell if you don't mind a little extra weight and bulk. Picked up a couple for road warrior customers that wanted the longest life possible with their laptop, it only added around a pound and nearly doubled their useful unplugged time. They're happy, I'm happy, its a win/win.
And don't forget how having user replaceable batteries extends the life of the system as I have several customers that are quite happy with their first gen Core duo laptops, just swap out the battery when it dies and the unit is good to go. Why replace if you don't have to?
Exactly. Most of us couldn't give a rat's ass about retina displays which i personally think on a smaller screen is kinda stupid, but we DO care about being able to upgrade our systems. On my netbook I can upgrade the RAM, change the HDD for an SSD, replace the battery with one of several third party, including a few that make 10 cells so I can run all day, there are even tutorials on how to swap out the screen for a touch complete with links to the screen if I decide I would like touch down the line.
This is why I'll never be an Apple customer, I LIKE being able to upgrade my laptop or netbook so I can get more usage out of it, I LIKE building my own desktops so I can have just the right amount of CPU, RAM, HDD space, and GPU that I need with the option to get bigger down the line, and if I don't have retina to get all that? Fine by me, although there are websites that cater to the medical community where you can buy ultra HD screens in just about any size that you require and frankly with the tutorials it really isn't hard to DIY a screen swap. If you really don't feel comfortable with a screwdriver you can always come by the little mom & pop shops like mine, we'll be happy to do the work for you and when all is said and done you'll end up with a nicer machine built with what YOU want and not what Apple decides you can have this year. Seems like a no brainer to me, but then again I'm not an Apple customer.
BTW slightly OT but has anyone else noticed that Apple users just don't seem to be happy unless they can convince you "the Apple way" is the RIGHT way? They just don't seem to be able to be happy with a product unless they can somehow get others to think they were "right" and the other way is "wrong". My personal theory is there is a doubt sitting there on their shoulder going "You paid too much" and the only way they can soothe that doubt is to get others to agree with their purchase. Personally I like Asus and Samsung laptops, Asrock and Gigabyte boards, and HTC phones, but I don't really need anyone to like or dislike the brands I use because they are a personal preference no different than the pizza i eat or the shoes I wear. I'll just never understand this "need' for want of a better term of Apple users to try to justify their selections. If it makes you happy? Then please use it, I wish you nothing but good luck. but please don't try to make this a black and white issue because its really not, its personal preference, that's all.
Everybody is making jokes when the simple fact is just like the VCR there are plenty of non copyright uses for these sites. lets take myself for example, i have used sites like Rapidshare to send some of my own musical works to someone halfway across the planet so they could load it up and add their own tracks, I've used them to send .reg files for basic fixes like the PITA "Windows no sound device even though the drive is installed" bug, used them to store zip files of family photos so I can send them across the country to distant relatives, plenty of things other than the latest Titney Spears you can use these sites for.
In the end it shouldn't be their job to have to constantly go through everyone's stuff to make the *.A.A happy, we've already seen that doesn't work as you can simply change the name of the files and you are back to square one. No they should be treated no different than Google who takes things down when they get a request. Problem is the *.A.As are lazy bastards and want to pass all the expense to everyone else and they have no problem with bribing officials to write the laws to let them pass on the expense.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics...ever heard of that saying? The problem with trying to predict the future with stats is that there are unpredictable events that throw a big ass monkey wrench into your stats. Do you think anyone in 1899 would have been able to predict 2 world wars and a hundred million plus dead or wounded? Hell would they have predicted WWII in 1925?
Wars, earthquakes, floods, all of these things can devastate a region for a decade or more and simply won't be predicted or fit into those little equations. And in all of the above you end up with the exact same conditions I predicted, too many people in bad health in too small a space. Ever hear of the 1917 superflu? Came about because of wounded in WWI in unsanitary battlefield conditions with weakened immune systems being a perfect breeding ground. Then the troops were shipped home and voila! Instaplague.
You don't even have to go third world, look at the conditions in the barrios and ghettos of any major city, we have too many people, too little access to preventive healthcare so they only go into an ER when they are half dead, rats, roaches, fleas, hell we've seen NYC have a bedbug infestation like it was the 1800s! In the end its not the people, its the conditions and as more and more of rural life is automated the people will have no choice but to crowd into megacities and there goes your equations.
Ugh you bought the AC series on the Steam sale? I was tempted...until I saw the always on Ubisuck DRM and gave it a pass. I went with SR 3 and the Deus Ex series and am quite happy, in fact by the time I was finished shopping I had enough games I should be covered until the next Steam sale...yay Steam!
But Deus Ex gives us a perfect example of "just because the franchise is old doesn't mean you can't do something great with it" as I think Deus Ex HR is truly great, good weapons, the choice to do any objective the way YOU want instead of being forced to do it a single way, sure it isn't as huge as the original but it makes up for that with top notch gameplay and an at least so far good story.
The problem is you get these companies that just squirt out one generic copy of a once successful franchise after another and it looks like the big N is starting to treat Mario the same. Check out games like Bastion, SuperMeatBoy, or Limbo and you'll see there is still plenty of ways to make a good 2D platformer while making it fresh but big N is just riding the nostalgia.
Meh I suppose I shouldn't even care anymore as I've just about got my family completely weaned off consoles for PCs but i just hate to see classic characters fall into crap. Duke Nukem, Sonic, its like seeing your favorite band has fallen on hard times and is now playing the county fairs just trying to cash in on the good old days, its just sad.
The answer is simple enough....don't buy Apple. One of the reasons I bought my current portable, an Asus EEE E350 netbook, is because it has plenty of upgrade options. i was able to upgrade from the default 2Gb to 8Gb of faster RAM for less than $30, there are plenty of tutorials showing how to replace the screen with a touch if you like, or replace the HDD with an SSD, there are even tools to OC or UC the APU if I want more speed or battery life, as well as third party batteries that will let me have all day usage if I need it, although i find the 5-6 hours i get plenty.
Just because Apple is the hipster brand doesn't mean you have to buy it, its not like we don't have plenty of choices. This is why I've built my own desktops for over 15 years, because not only do I get a better quality system at a cheaper price, but I can have it the way I want it, not the way some OEM thinks is best.
If you need PCI slots you best bet would be the ECS Board as it comes with TWO PCI plus a PCIe x16 as well as 4 SATA slots. great for building a mini, not sure what chip it uses for PCI but I think its all AMD so there shouldn't be any hassle if you wanna go Linux. Its also passively cooled so it makes a great silent office box in the corner doing all those little jobs you may need and finally it has the 9w max Brazos chip so it'll idle around 4w.
Exactly. This frankly would have been a trivial problem to fix if MSFT would have spent more than 4 seconds to think about it, but ever since Apple came out with iPad the entire corp has lost their damned minds and have focused so much on consumers the thought that businesses might still have use of this never even entered their thought processes.
Because it lets them lead you by the nose? I USED to try many different Linux distros, now I'll only use Windows, why? Windows Updates don't count against the cap, Linux and Mac updates DO count against the cap. If I use the cable PPV? Don't count. Netflix or Hulu? DO count...get the picture?
What you are gonna end up with is 35Gb to 75Gb caps which make damned sure you will NOT use what they don't want you to because at $1.50 a Gb overage charge it won't take but a couple of $200+ bills to get your ass back in line. Hell I should know as the local cableco recently went to a 40-80Gb for home and 150Gb for $200 for business, lucky I'm grandfathered in for now but if they yank my grandfathered account out from under me its assraping caps or AT&T with speeds so damned low they don't have to worry about caps because with a top speed of 3Mbps and lines that go out if you fart you won't be getting shit anyway.
Does it automatically take care of NAT, dynamic addressing, and any other hassles? because EasyConnect does. Man why they don't package that sucker up and sell it as an extra service for those not on Win 7 I don't know but I've never seen anything as simple and easy when it comes to remote control of a desktop.
Yes and no, because as Jim Sterling wrote about this last week on the escapist they USED to add new gameplay twists with each release like Zelda does. Now you have games like Meatboy and Rayman doing new things and giving us new twists while Mario...just treads water.
I guess its time for the big N to either bring some new talent in or let Mario rest for a few years because they are just rehashing now. Nobody wants to see Mario become another generic where they just slap a new coat of paint and trot it out, Mario is to Nintendo as Sonic was to Sega, you're supposed to bring your A game when you use the mascot.
Bimbo Newton Crosby, if they'd ever tried to actually support a completely clueless user they'd know that VNC would be a BAD idea.
Honestly i just don't see how he is gonna be able to pull it off on both Windows AND OSX without some service in the middle, i really don't. Everything else is gonna require the user to at least have enough skills to start the thing up which is far from assured and leaving it running 24/7 is just asking for trouble.
This is why I'm glad I have all my family and customers on Win 7, MSFT may have made plenty of dumb moves but EasyConnect is a fricking Godsend, its the easiest damned thing I've ever dealt with for remote assistance. I simply pin Remote Assistance to the start menu and its as easy as "Hit start, see that thing at the top that says remote assistance? Yeah click on that, hit next, see my name? Yeah click on my name...hold on...okay I'm hooked up, see that little box that popped up that asks if I can have full control? Just click yes...okay I've got it now" and then I can just sit in my comfy chair and work the system like i was sitting right in front of it.
I wish there was something truly universal and that simple to use but if its out there so far I haven't found it. Just remember when you suggest programs we are talking normal folks, the stuff YOU would think is trivial to do is often so completely over their head it would literally be quicker to simply drive out to where they are and do the work than to sit their on the phone trying to talk them through it.
Oh and one final bit of advice for those that have to support the clueless...get Comodo Time Machine and install it NOW, you'll be glad you did. Think of it as a system restore that actually works and which doesn't get infected by malware. When my GF had to go across the state to take care of a sick relative and her niece screwed her laptop up so bad the thing wouldn't even boot to desktop it took me less than 15 minutes to get her back up and running thanks to CTM. Just set it to use around 10%-15% of the HDD space for snapshots and have it take a snapshot at boot (if you boot more than once a day it'll only take one snapshot so you won't run out of space) and you are golden. You can even lock a snapshot so you can have your own version of a factory refresh that will put the system right back to the way you had it with no muss or fuss. Just have them hit the Home key when they see the big clock, tell them what day you want them to go back to and voila! Instant fix.
"I believe the puppet on the left shares MY beliefs, well I believe the puppet on the right has MY interests at heart...hey wait a minute there is one guy controlling both puppets!"....Bill Hicks.
Frankly the two figureheads can say any damned thing they want, the actual laws are written by the lobbyists of the one that has paid the most bribes...errr..I mean campaign contributions and that will be the ISPs. The figurehead will then either praise the lawmakers for their fine work or talk about what a shame it is the other side is doing this...while the puppet signs it into law. In either case if you think your puny little vote is gonna compete with the power of the big bag o' cash? I have some magic beans you might be interested in.
Even if NN were a real possibility (which it isn't) what we need isn't some rules the ISPs will ignore, but actual opening up of the last miles to competition as we had in the days of dialup so any ISP acting like douchebags would have to worry about losing their customers. As it is now even if they passed NN the ISPs would simply fuck you by making the bandwidth caps so small for anything they didn't get a cut of they'd still be able to lead you by the nose.
Hell considering how little the DSL providers have been keeping up with the times I wouldn't be surprised if they end up just leaving the market to the cable companies while they enjoy the much more lucrative (and as TFA pointed out with no NN rules) wireless, so we'll probably all end up with exactly one company if we want broadband at home and since they won't want competition with their TV they'll cap the living hell out of us.
Final verdict? While the EU and Asia enjoy ever bigger pipes we in the USA thanks to our "corporation yay!" political structure will be riding on the short bus to the information superhighway.
The problem isn't the people so much as the conditions. You pack poor folks like rats and diseases have a perfect breeding ground. You have serious sanitation, health care, and potable drinking water problems compounded by humans simply being packed too tightly into too small a space and get ready for the nasty bugs. Hell look at how many drugs end up in the rivers thanks to sewage being filled with them which also helps the bugs by breeding resistance which again made worse by too many in too small a space.
It might be different if you were putting them into clean skyscrapers or some other form of affordable safe clean housing but as we see all over the third world and sadly more and more in the first world what you get is shanty towns with all of the above problems and disease carrying bugs like mosquitoes, rats, fleas, roaches, we could easily have a drug resistant plague or superflu come out of one of those and with worldwide travel it'd spread like wildfire.
This is of course not figuring in the risk of some crazy terrorist group or nation state actually cooking up a nasty bug for a weapon, or a nice long war in an overpopulated region accelerating the squalor and leaving lots of wounded open to infection. 1917 flu anyone?
Not saying any of this is 100% guaranteed to happen, just pointing out as the numbers get higher so too does the risk. After all its not the people in the nice places having 8 to 10 kids, its those living in hellholes without access to birth control and who need as many hands for manual labor as possible and to insure some live without having access to decent medical care.
Uhhh you DO realize there is also a remote registry service that can royally bone you too...right? The problem isn't the file itself, its the remote access part.
Uhhh...he GAVE you an example, his shop floor manufacturing software requires it, end of story. Anybody who has worked with SMBs knows you end up with a ton of niche software that can have some crazy requirements, hell I've had to build a DOS 3 box in 2008 because a shop had a $150k lathe that required a PC with an ISA slot running DOS 3 to use the unit.
In the end frankly it shouldn't matter WHY he is using it, what should matter is MSFT is taking choice away from you yet again with no real gains. If MSFT thinks its a malware vector? Then let the use of HOSTS be set by GPO using local access. that way those that actually need it can enable it and those that don't use it will have it off by default. Frankly more and more MSFT is reminding me of a bad Apple ripoff with their "our way or the highway" attitude on everything, but unlike Apple their biggest customers aren't consumers, its businesses who are more likely to have the weird corner cases that this will cause headaches for.
Ask and ye shall receive Comodo Personal Firewall. Free, easy to use, has sane defaults while at the same time letting you control any in or outbound with any kind of rule you can think up. Personally I'd just take Comodo Internet Security Free as it gives you the AV and Firewall in one, has sandboxing, again a ton of control over the AV, oh and their license makes it free for home AND business use.
With Windows if you want anything more than the basic you really gotta go third party, that's just the way its always been. I happen to like it that way as it gives me plenty of choices besides whatever MSFT packs in. That said the Win 7 firewall isn't bad, you click on advanced and you can cook up your own rules, not nearly as fine grained as Comodo but for a basic firewall it isn't bad.
But its still illegal friend which means the game companies can NOT package it with a game as it needs to run the Win9X OS that MSFT won't license.
You see with DOSBox they simply reverse engineered DOS and since DOS was a relatively simplistic OS REing it didn't risk running into the minefield of patents and copyrights. With Win9X you are talking about needing DirectX 5-8 as well as being able to ape the GDI memory manager and the way Win9X dealt with sound and networking, there is simply no way ATM you can actually do that without running a Win9X VM which screws the game devs.
Remember the topic here is recouping a chunk of the cost of buying EA by repacking and selling their old games NOT what you can do at home. If you load a pirate VM of Win9X the odds are MSFT will never catch you but if you try to package a stripped down Win9X with your game ala DOSBox you WILL get sued by MSFT.
Dude look at the fucking numbers the guy above you posted okay? that's not bullshit, that's actual sales figures showing truly insane profits brought about by lower pricing.
The problem is you aren't thinking like a PHB like the head of EA. There they don't see price reductions as a way to generate more sales they see it as money slipping away. they'd rather have 1/10th of the sales at assrape prices than 3000% sales at cheap prices because they care more about the STOCK and its perception than they do the actual revenue. You see when some rag puts out "Game X sold Y at $60 a piece" that makes the day traders drool and stock goes up, this is what happens when an investor market becomes pure speculators market as we have now.
Again look at the numbers and realize that once you hit the sweet spot frankly you can get insane sales on even shit games because it becomes an impulse buy. I personally bought K&L II Dog Days, F3AR, and Bulletstorm even though the reviews were all bad because they were on sale for less than $8 a pop and I know a hell of a lot of people that did the same. It doesn't really matter how bad the reviews are in the $3-$10 bracket because most of us figure no matter how shit the game is we can at least get that much entertainment out of the title. Would I have bought ANY of those games for even $20? Not on your life.
Look at those figures and remember it was 'experts in the field" that nearly destroyed the financial markets. just because you've spent years in the field doesn't mean you're not a dumbass, it just means you have experience.