You know what the average person does? 1) Click on the icon that "loads the internet", 2) click on the icon that "loads email" (possibly the same as icon #1) and 3) click on the icon that loads some type of word processor. And that's about it, with maybe an instant messenger.
Some more advanced users such a teenagers or college kids will play with music, edit photos, etc.
The hardest thing for the average person would be to load drivers, where at least for XP is generally as easy as popping in a CD and clicking "ok", and I'm sure OS X is nearly as easy.
So, I'm sorry, but OS X is hardly light years ahead of XP for average user usability when much of what I explained above is the same exact thing: clicking an icon. I can't see how much easier it can get./now if you're talking about more advanced stuff like wireless networking than yah, I can see the OS X advantage, as the MS approach is nearly always convoluted.
...in certain circumstances. Hell, I haven't had a positive virus under XP for years. I'm running avast right now, but I'm contemplating just removing it completely. The only reason I haven't is because I occasionally get emails from relatives such as "click on this funny card!" containing links to god knows where.
IIRC the only times I ever did get viruses were downloading porn or cracks. Sandbox what you can download (which at least they said they did in vista, who knows if it will be effective) and that eliminates most vectors, other than relative spam mail.
I'm seriously not trolling, but I havn't enjoyed square-enix games for quite some time. While I loved FF1,3, and 6, I thought 7 was the downfall of the series, and havn't played anything after 8. Not only that, but I finished Kingdom Hearts II and put 25 hours the latest Dragon Warrior, and honestly thought both were junk. To explain myself, I felt KHII was too much of a buttonmasher and the story was too convoluted (this is coming from someone who enjoyed mulholland drive), and the entire time I played DW I kept thinking to myself "why do I even care? I just want to ditch this poor excuse for a king and go do my own thing".
I actually really want to try this game, as I really enjoyed the earlier final fantasies, but I don't want to put another 25 hours into a game only to be disappointed. So, here are my questions.
1. I understand the battlesystem has been streamlined, which is ok by me. But do the boss battles actually involve some strategy?
2. Is the story engrossing enough so that you actually care what is going on? (for instance, I got bored with oblivion after a few hours, but the story of neverwinter nights 2 is engrossing for me so far).
3. Is your character completely railroaded? I understand j-rpgs are more linear, but sometimes at least the illusion of choice allows me to become more engaged in the story.
1. Oblivion (the PC version is modable) 2. Star Trek Legacy (the PC version is modable) 3. Neverwinter Nights 2 (well, when they patch it, but consoles get patched too) 4. Spore 5. Nearly any RTS game: galactic civilizations II for example 6. Tycoon games: just picked up railroad tycoon 3 for $9 and had a blast
The console wins in sports and racing games, which in my opinion are fun too. However, the recent version of madden sucked, and the 360 version of burnout takedown isnt that much different than the xbox version, so I really have no reason to go next generation at this point. Consoles also have more j-rpgs but I'm sort of out of that phase. The Wii may be a blast, but I'm taking a wait and see approach. I figure after 2 years they will release a version with more precise controls and then most of the Wii games will be $10-20. And before you discount modding, the mods for oblivion have made the game so much better IMO, from improving the interface to the textures.
I agree. I believe the dualshock is one of the worst controllers of all time. I much prefer the xbox controller (never played with the wavebird so I can't give my opinion on that).
The ps2 controller for me is uncomfortable after about 20 minutes of play, especially if I am using the analog stick. I'm actually quite surprised that the ps3 hasn't moved the analog stick to the same position as the xbox controller. It just seems an unnatural position for the left analog stick.
From the article it appears that the different PS3 bundles will come without component or HDMI cables. Leaving out HDMI I can kind of understand, but even the premium 360 bundle comes with component cables.
I don't know, but I'm starting to think that nearly anything is better than google. 8 of the first 10 results usually end up being spam mini-search engines that have nothing to do with the product "you can purchase ___enter whatever your search term was here___ for half-cost!".
Lately I've been using either wikipedia or a torrent search engine to find most what I am searching for.
"(And if I hear one more claim of superior speed, I will smack that person with a sock filled with $300.00 in coins representing the extra money they spent to have some douchebag from California over design the plastic thing that holds the real computer.)"
Go ahead and smack me. I just installed kubuntu 6.10 and it runs like a turtle compared to XP. KDE does look nice though, and my system is hardly shovelhardware: amd 3400+, 1 gig ram, etc.
The odd thing is that I'm finding the opposite to be true. I have yet to find a reason to buy a 360, wii, or ps3. The only reason I may purchase a Wii is because I haven't played a zelda game in about 8 or so years (last one was on the SNES), and the controller looks interesting if it doesn't turn out to be a gimmick. Carcassone and Puerto Rico will be coming over to the 360, and that may interest me if it turns out any good. Perhaps in a few years the consoles will have alot more options that interest me. Geometry Wars is awesome but it's not really sane to buy a $400 console for a $5 game.
For the PC: Oblivion (pc has mods), Neverwinter nights 2, Galactic Civilizations 2, the new star trek game coming out (pc has mods), Spore, etc all have me excited.
I think a mistake microsoft made was making it so easy to tie in the 360 games with direct x to port games on both the PC and xbox. If you have a decent PC it gives you little incentive to get a 360.
Download a utility called nHancer (no I do not work for the company). Create a profile for NWN by adding all the.exe files in the neverwinter directory. Force v-sync to be off in the profile.
V-sync seems to be enabled by default in the game with no option to turn it off. I did the above and got about a 10fps boost, making the game at least playable.
Don't do it as a christmas present. Instead, just explain to them the virtues of linux and see if they are interested. And tell them the truth, that it may not run all the software they want to.
As soon as grandma finds out she can't use her greeting card or family tree software she will just get little johnny to format and install xp anyways.
Were you trying to install the 64 bit version or something?
For the life of me I can't figure out how you could have all this difficulty unless you had a bad BIOS driver or something.
I've installed xp pro on countless machines (including ones with a ps/2 mouse) and the only problems I've had was when bad hardware was installed ($5 chinese off-brand soundcard from frys, what was I thinking?) or I had to look up RAID drivers.
I do agree with you about rebooting nightmare. Google slipstreaming windows XP for how to avoid doing this in the future.
I'm not trolling, I'm seriously interested in getting a macbookpro. However, if it gets hot enough so you can't put it on your lap, that is a major turn off. My pentium M fujitsu t4010 may get a little hot, but not so much that you can't put it on your lap. Are the heat issues with the macbookpro exaggerated?
First of all you can get equivalent phones for about $300 with no contract here in the US. Maybe not with opera installed, but tack on an extra $30 and you're still way under.
For that price I would expect it to have 128mb ram, bluetooth (how can it not have bluetooth?!?), miniSD or sd, voiceconnect, speakerphone, and a better screen. And that is what I would expect with a MS phone. One would think a linux phone would be $100 cheaper.
The difference is that horse armor is crap created after the game that doesn't really have anything to do with the core game. I'm assuming Gran Turismo games came with a plethora of tracks and cars, and that usually they are unlocked after playing through parts of the game. Therefore to me it seems cars and tracks are vital to a racing game, where no one cares if oblivion has horse armor or not.
I could understand including all the usual cars and tracks in the game, and then selling additional stuff created afterwards. However, this doesn't seem to be the case (albiet the info given is vague).
I agree. The only reason I havn't picked up a 360 is I keep thinking "Ok, $400. Just what the hell am I going to play on it NOW?" and the only thing that came to mind is geometry wars, which is a great game, but not $400 worthy. Perhaps Lego Star Wars II but I get that essentially free for the xbox with a rental, and I heard the graphics arn't that much better. Burnout takedown is fun, but I already have that for the xbox, and it looks good enough.
Gears of War and Halo 3 look sweet, but am I going to buy a console NOW for games that will be released in months? I don't think so. The sad thing is if the 360 came with native divx and FLAC support I'd probably pick on up right now (as I have no desire to install windows xp media center).
The Wii could be an outright failure. Yah, Nintendo fanboys will boast that they havn't played a console in years even though they have a gamecube and 12 different mario games for it, and internet hype says "oh my godz ta Wii!" which further proves the Wii may be the Snakes on a Plane of consoles. Makes a little bit of money, but eventually the hype doesn't live up. The Wii controller may be just a gimmick, and a few months after the console release we'll see if it truly lives up to the hype. But anyone saying they will buy a Wii without even playing one first is just as much of a sheep and fanboy as a final fantasy droolboy. Time will tell if it is worth buying a slightly souped up gamecube with a new controller. I may buy one just to play some gamecube games that I've missed out on though.
The PS3 will likely deliver the goods, but nevertheless is too expensive. In the end the only exclusives will be metal gear + 100 different japanese RPGs that we've all played different incarnations of dozens of times before.
And the 360 isn't faring much better. The most interesting titles are $5 arcade games (I may pick one up when settlers of cantan is released), and the best games that look good are not only released on the PC as well, but the PC version offers mods (looking at Oblivion and the upcoming Star trek: legacy). Perhaps I wouldn't be so disappointed with the 360 if I wasn't spoiled on xbox media center for my xbox.
Want to know the best bet right now if you havn't jumped onto the ps2/xbox/gamecube generation? Pick up an xbox original and mod it (which is actually not that difficult), install xbox media center, and not only play nes, snes, n64, tg16, genesis, MAME, etc games for free but you'll have an extensive library of great $5-$15 used games available to load onto the harddrive (or rent and steal if you are so inclined). Alot of the xbox games have 480p 16:9 if you have an HDTV, and the only exclusives you will really miss out on are a bunch of square-enix RPGs, which honestly you arn't missing out much on (seriously, did anyone play through more than 25 hours of dragon warrior VIII or kingdom hearts 2 without wanting to rip their eyeballs out?) and katamari damacy (which is a great game, but isn't alone worth getting a console for). Otherwise most games on the ps2 are available on the xbox, and the xbox is a bit more mod friendly (with xbox media center + emulators, etc).
I think what may happen is alot of the people who skipped out on the gamecube may just get a Wii to play gamecube games they missed out on. I actually hope Nintendo does well this generation and doesn't turn into another Sega. I'd hate for the only players in the field to be Sony and Microsoft.
It actually looks quite sexy. I wish the "sharing" aspect allowed for a longer period, such as a week, but I guess they figure most people woudn't buy alot of music if they could listen to it for that long.
The key will be both battery life and ease of use, which it's going to have to meet or beat the ipod if they want any marketshare.
Your just over $500 (nearly $700 actually) comes with an nvidia 7300LE, which just wont cut it for game that are similar to xbox 360 generation. Your box upgraded to the 7900 would cost $200 more, nearing the $1000 price the parent stated.
I guess they are doing this 1/2 assed for windows vista, but it would be nice to have different home and enterprise OS versions. A decent amount of features have been cut or rolled back because of enterprise. For example, personal folder encryption, wifi synch over activsynch, and I'm sure at least a couple others.
It may be nice to download music anytime I want onto my device with wifi, or even better stream to it from a server.
Not sure I would buy or use such a thing, but I am sure others would. If anything, it may convince apple to integrate wifi into ipods./currently use my pocketpc as my mp3 player, already does most of these things, albiet with a limited space compared to an ipod
This is bullshit. I've installed the same copy of XP home on 3 different motherboards, using 3 different CPUs (of course, not all at the same time, but as part of an upgrade), and never had a problem. All it took is a 3 minute call to MS to get a new key. BFD.
Consider a tablet PC, the brand doesn't matter I suppose. Sure, they sound gimicky and cost ~$300 more, but you can get a 12 or 14" screen that can at any time become essentially an ultraportable. It's very handy for airplane trips, car rides, and even if you occasionally use your laptop in bed. Not needed as much if you can stand the small screens of ultraportables. I'm pretty happy with my Fujitsu t4010, but there are a bunch of other great brands, and even some linux tablets.
Slashdot Mirror
According to that article xbox 360 sales are up 320% in Japan.
Perhaps the shoveling of money into japanese RPGs is starting to work out for MS?
Usability?
/now if you're talking about more advanced stuff like wireless networking than yah, I can see the OS X advantage, as the MS approach is nearly always convoluted.
You know what the average person does? 1) Click on the icon that "loads the internet", 2) click on the icon that "loads email" (possibly the same as icon #1) and 3) click on the icon that loads some type of word processor. And that's about it, with maybe an instant messenger.
Some more advanced users such a teenagers or college kids will play with music, edit photos, etc.
The hardest thing for the average person would be to load drivers, where at least for XP is generally as easy as popping in a CD and clicking "ok", and I'm sure OS X is nearly as easy.
So, I'm sorry, but OS X is hardly light years ahead of XP for average user usability when much of what I explained above is the same exact thing: clicking an icon. I can't see how much easier it can get.
Thanks for the help, I appreciate it. It sounds like a fun game.
...in certain circumstances. Hell, I haven't had a positive virus under XP for years. I'm running avast right now, but I'm contemplating just removing it completely. The only reason I haven't is because I occasionally get emails from relatives such as "click on this funny card!" containing links to god knows where.
IIRC the only times I ever did get viruses were downloading porn or cracks. Sandbox what you can download (which at least they said they did in vista, who knows if it will be effective) and that eliminates most vectors, other than relative spam mail.
I'm seriously not trolling, but I havn't enjoyed square-enix games for quite some time. While I loved FF1,3, and 6, I thought 7 was the downfall of the series, and havn't played anything after 8. Not only that, but I finished Kingdom Hearts II and put 25 hours the latest Dragon Warrior, and honestly thought both were junk. To explain myself, I felt KHII was too much of a buttonmasher and the story was too convoluted (this is coming from someone who enjoyed mulholland drive), and the entire time I played DW I kept thinking to myself "why do I even care? I just want to ditch this poor excuse for a king and go do my own thing".
I actually really want to try this game, as I really enjoyed the earlier final fantasies, but I don't want to put another 25 hours into a game only to be disappointed. So, here are my questions.
1. I understand the battlesystem has been streamlined, which is ok by me. But do the boss battles actually involve some strategy?
2. Is the story engrossing enough so that you actually care what is going on? (for instance, I got bored with oblivion after a few hours, but the story of neverwinter nights 2 is engrossing for me so far).
3. Is your character completely railroaded? I understand j-rpgs are more linear, but sometimes at least the illusion of choice allows me to become more engaged in the story.
1. Oblivion (the PC version is modable)
2. Star Trek Legacy (the PC version is modable)
3. Neverwinter Nights 2 (well, when they patch it, but consoles get patched too)
4. Spore
5. Nearly any RTS game: galactic civilizations II for example
6. Tycoon games: just picked up railroad tycoon 3 for $9 and had a blast
The console wins in sports and racing games, which in my opinion are fun too. However, the recent version of madden sucked, and the 360 version of burnout takedown isnt that much different than the xbox version, so I really have no reason to go next generation at this point. Consoles also have more j-rpgs but I'm sort of out of that phase. The Wii may be a blast, but I'm taking a wait and see approach. I figure after 2 years they will release a version with more precise controls and then most of the Wii games will be $10-20. And before you discount modding, the mods for oblivion have made the game so much better IMO, from improving the interface to the textures.
I agree. I believe the dualshock is one of the worst controllers of all time. I much prefer the xbox controller (never played with the wavebird so I can't give my opinion on that).
The ps2 controller for me is uncomfortable after about 20 minutes of play, especially if I am using the analog stick. I'm actually quite surprised that the ps3 hasn't moved the analog stick to the same position as the xbox controller. It just seems an unnatural position for the left analog stick.
From the article it appears that the different PS3 bundles will come without component or HDMI cables. Leaving out HDMI I can kind of understand, but even the premium 360 bundle comes with component cables.
I don't know, but I'm starting to think that nearly anything is better than google. 8 of the first 10 results usually end up being spam mini-search engines that have nothing to do with the product "you can purchase ___enter whatever your search term was here___ for half-cost!".
Lately I've been using either wikipedia or a torrent search engine to find most what I am searching for.
"(And if I hear one more claim of superior speed, I will smack that person with a sock filled with $300.00 in coins representing the extra money they spent to have some douchebag from California over design the plastic thing that holds the real computer.)"
Go ahead and smack me. I just installed kubuntu 6.10 and it runs like a turtle compared to XP. KDE does look nice though, and my system is hardly shovelhardware: amd 3400+, 1 gig ram, etc.
The odd thing is that I'm finding the opposite to be true. I have yet to find a reason to buy a 360, wii, or ps3. The only reason I may purchase a Wii is because I haven't played a zelda game in about 8 or so years (last one was on the SNES), and the controller looks interesting if it doesn't turn out to be a gimmick. Carcassone and Puerto Rico will be coming over to the 360, and that may interest me if it turns out any good. Perhaps in a few years the consoles will have alot more options that interest me. Geometry Wars is awesome but it's not really sane to buy a $400 console for a $5 game.
For the PC: Oblivion (pc has mods), Neverwinter nights 2, Galactic Civilizations 2, the new star trek game coming out (pc has mods), Spore, etc all have me excited.
I think a mistake microsoft made was making it so easy to tie in the 360 games with direct x to port games on both the PC and xbox. If you have a decent PC it gives you little incentive to get a 360.
Download a utility called nHancer (no I do not work for the company). Create a profile for NWN by adding all the .exe files in the neverwinter directory. Force v-sync to be off in the profile.
V-sync seems to be enabled by default in the game with no option to turn it off. I did the above and got about a 10fps boost, making the game at least playable.
Don't do it as a christmas present. Instead, just explain to them the virtues of linux and see if they are interested. And tell them the truth, that it may not run all the software they want to.
As soon as grandma finds out she can't use her greeting card or family tree software she will just get little johnny to format and install xp anyways.
Were you trying to install the 64 bit version or something?
For the life of me I can't figure out how you could have all this difficulty unless you had a bad BIOS driver or something.
I've installed xp pro on countless machines (including ones with a ps/2 mouse) and the only problems I've had was when bad hardware was installed ($5 chinese off-brand soundcard from frys, what was I thinking?) or I had to look up RAID drivers.
I do agree with you about rebooting nightmare. Google slipstreaming windows XP for how to avoid doing this in the future.
I'm not trolling, I'm seriously interested in getting a macbookpro. However, if it gets hot enough so you can't put it on your lap, that is a major turn off. My pentium M fujitsu t4010 may get a little hot, but not so much that you can't put it on your lap. Are the heat issues with the macbookpro exaggerated?
First of all you can get equivalent phones for about $300 with no contract here in the US. Maybe not with opera installed, but tack on an extra $30 and you're still way under.
For that price I would expect it to have 128mb ram, bluetooth (how can it not have bluetooth?!?), miniSD or sd, voiceconnect, speakerphone, and a better screen. And that is what I would expect with a MS phone. One would think a linux phone would be $100 cheaper.
The difference is that horse armor is crap created after the game that doesn't really have anything to do with the core game. I'm assuming Gran Turismo games came with a plethora of tracks and cars, and that usually they are unlocked after playing through parts of the game. Therefore to me it seems cars and tracks are vital to a racing game, where no one cares if oblivion has horse armor or not.
I could understand including all the usual cars and tracks in the game, and then selling additional stuff created afterwards. However, this doesn't seem to be the case (albiet the info given is vague).
I agree. The only reason I havn't picked up a 360 is I keep thinking "Ok, $400. Just what the hell am I going to play on it NOW?" and the only thing that came to mind is geometry wars, which is a great game, but not $400 worthy. Perhaps Lego Star Wars II but I get that essentially free for the xbox with a rental, and I heard the graphics arn't that much better. Burnout takedown is fun, but I already have that for the xbox, and it looks good enough.
Gears of War and Halo 3 look sweet, but am I going to buy a console NOW for games that will be released in months? I don't think so. The sad thing is if the 360 came with native divx and FLAC support I'd probably pick on up right now (as I have no desire to install windows xp media center).
The Wii could be an outright failure. Yah, Nintendo fanboys will boast that they havn't played a console in years even though they have a gamecube and 12 different mario games for it, and internet hype says "oh my godz ta Wii!" which further proves the Wii may be the Snakes on a Plane of consoles. Makes a little bit of money, but eventually the hype doesn't live up. The Wii controller may be just a gimmick, and a few months after the console release we'll see if it truly lives up to the hype. But anyone saying they will buy a Wii without even playing one first is just as much of a sheep and fanboy as a final fantasy droolboy. Time will tell if it is worth buying a slightly souped up gamecube with a new controller. I may buy one just to play some gamecube games that I've missed out on though.
The PS3 will likely deliver the goods, but nevertheless is too expensive. In the end the only exclusives will be metal gear + 100 different japanese RPGs that we've all played different incarnations of dozens of times before.
And the 360 isn't faring much better. The most interesting titles are $5 arcade games (I may pick one up when settlers of cantan is released), and the best games that look good are not only released on the PC as well, but the PC version offers mods (looking at Oblivion and the upcoming Star trek: legacy). Perhaps I wouldn't be so disappointed with the 360 if I wasn't spoiled on xbox media center for my xbox.
Want to know the best bet right now if you havn't jumped onto the ps2/xbox/gamecube generation? Pick up an xbox original and mod it (which is actually not that difficult), install xbox media center, and not only play nes, snes, n64, tg16, genesis, MAME, etc games for free but you'll have an extensive library of great $5-$15 used games available to load onto the harddrive (or rent and steal if you are so inclined). Alot of the xbox games have 480p 16:9 if you have an HDTV, and the only exclusives you will really miss out on are a bunch of square-enix RPGs, which honestly you arn't missing out much on (seriously, did anyone play through more than 25 hours of dragon warrior VIII or kingdom hearts 2 without wanting to rip their eyeballs out?) and katamari damacy (which is a great game, but isn't alone worth getting a console for). Otherwise most games on the ps2 are available on the xbox, and the xbox is a bit more mod friendly (with xbox media center + emulators, etc).
I think what may happen is alot of the people who skipped out on the gamecube may just get a Wii to play gamecube games they missed out on. I actually hope Nintendo does well this generation and doesn't turn into another Sega. I'd hate for the only players in the field to be Sony and Microsoft.
It actually looks quite sexy. I wish the "sharing" aspect allowed for a longer period, such as a week, but I guess they figure most people woudn't buy alot of music if they could listen to it for that long.
The key will be both battery life and ease of use, which it's going to have to meet or beat the ipod if they want any marketshare.
Your just over $500 (nearly $700 actually) comes with an nvidia 7300LE, which just wont cut it for game that are similar to xbox 360 generation. Your box upgraded to the 7900 would cost $200 more, nearing the $1000 price the parent stated.
I guess they are doing this 1/2 assed for windows vista, but it would be nice to have different home and enterprise OS versions. A decent amount of features have been cut or rolled back because of enterprise. For example, personal folder encryption, wifi synch over activsynch, and I'm sure at least a couple others.
It may be nice to download music anytime I want onto my device with wifi, or even better stream to it from a server.
/currently use my pocketpc as my mp3 player, already does most of these things, albiet with a limited space compared to an ipod
Not sure I would buy or use such a thing, but I am sure others would. If anything, it may convince apple to integrate wifi into ipods.
This is bullshit. I've installed the same copy of XP home on 3 different motherboards, using 3 different CPUs (of course, not all at the same time, but as part of an upgrade), and never had a problem. All it took is a 3 minute call to MS to get a new key. BFD.
Consider a tablet PC, the brand doesn't matter I suppose. Sure, they sound gimicky and cost ~$300 more, but you can get a 12 or 14" screen that can at any time become essentially an ultraportable. It's very handy for airplane trips, car rides, and even if you occasionally use your laptop in bed. Not needed as much if you can stand the small screens of ultraportables. I'm pretty happy with my Fujitsu t4010, but there are a bunch of other great brands, and even some linux tablets.