Well, personally I tend to buy stuff that I've been really looking forward to new, and stuff I'm reasonably interested in at a point down the line second hand (especially single-player only games - give it three months and the second hand market is generally flooded. Good examples here would be Assassin's Creed or Mirrors Edge - while neither game is worth the fifty quid or so they were brand new, for a tenner three months down the line I was more than happy with them.
On the flip side however I genenrally never trade games in, instead I like to have a library of games that will be sold on with the console when I eventually tire of it/choose to upgrade.
Until I can either get the DLC via Steam (as I did the original game) or just buy it in a shop I'm not interested - I don't want anything to do with Games for Windows, tvm - the horror stories are more than enough to make me give that platform a wide bearth.
I've found this to be reasonably accurate - I picked up a EeePC 1000 back before Christmas and have since used my laptop so rarely that I ended up giving it to my fiancee (A farly decent XPS M1530 too).
Instead I've found that the Eee has enough power for 95% of what I want to do with the machine - browsing, IM and so on, and if I do every need to do some heavy lifting it's trivial to open up a terminal to either my server or my desktop and let that do the grunt work.
We both loved the film, and I'm looking forward to adding it to my movie collection. As an aside she's the one insisting on the extended directors cut (not that I don't agree with her).
Wasn't TDK a PG-13 in the US? I thought all that showed was that it wasn't necessary for tits, blood and swearing to make a really *good* superhero movie:)
I'm a casual fan of the comics and was into the idea enough to pay £10 and drive over to the next city over to catch the movie on an IMAX rather than a regular screen.
My missus had never read the comic, and hwer only interest in going was basically down to enjoying the trailers and Zach Snyder's previous film (the 300, which Again, she'd never read).
Thats part of the point of the Survival mode - the games are a lot shorter (from what I've read you're doing well to last ten minutes once you started the game clock)
Very much seconded - piss simple to install and run and since it's running on a machine that is always on anyway I don't have to consider leaving my desktop on to finish a download or anything like that.
I never got on with the Xandros disto that came with my Eee 1000 either. Thankfully I found that Ubuntu + the Ubuntu Netbook Remix interface worked well for me - although it was a bit of a bodge to get everything working (Install Ubunutu, install Array Kernel for better hardware support, install acpi scripts for the Fn keys and then install Ubuntu Netook Remix (and istalling a couple of repo's along the way). Fine for me, not so much for Joe Normal on the streets.
Thankfully though the next release (due in a coupel of weeks) apparantly makes *huge* strides in improving this - the special kernel isn't needed, nor the acpi scripts and the UNR is in the default repo's now - personally I can't wait to give it a spin.
No problems here - I've basically standardised on using MicroSD cards here then adapting them to fit whichever device it needs, and have yet to have a problem.
Likewise, I went with the Linux SSD one, although I really didn't get on with Xandros while trailing my friends machines, so within five minutes of opening the box was happily bodging Ubuntu onto it:)
Of course the only reason it took five minutes to get Ubunut going was that the absolute first thing I did was get the back off to replace the RAM and WLAN card...
Weight is also not the only factor - I have a EeePC 1000 that I specifically picked over the 901 for a very simple reason - the extra size allows a keyboard that I (as a fairly stocky 6'5 man) can actually use, whereas the one on the 901's is just too small and is an exercise in frustration for me.
Having extensive first hand experience of both models (I know folks with both and borrowed each for a week to have a play before buying one) I can confirm the weight difference is very noticable, but for me the trade-off was worth it. Of course I ended up with 40gig of storage instead of the 20 on the 901, but that was a fringe benefit and not a significant factor in my decision.
Also a factor in the perception of a carrying weight is how you're carrying it, and what else you are carrying - for example in 'normal' use the machine is slung in a satchel with my phone, MP3 player and a few other bits and bobs that I use every day - I can notice the difference in weight then between the two models, although for me at least it has no noticable impact. Conversely I've also stuffed the machine into a rucksack of clothes when travelling with work for a week, and under those circumstances an extra half kilo of weight is entirely unnoticable.
Ah sorry, I was replying to the suggestion of Lucifer's Hammer - when I started typing my response there were no replies, by the time I posted there were a couple. Apologies for the lack of clarity.
In saying that I'd be all for a Ringworld movie or series too - so long as it was left in the hands of someone other than the usual gibbering idiots that get SF movies these days. As you say, the two sequels would be equally suitable for use as followup material.
While a truly excellent book I don't think it would suit a movie - way *way* too much would have to be cut out to make it work. What I would love to see is it turned into a standard 24-episode TV series.
Of course the problem then is that if it was successful you'd farce the prospect of someone trying to write a follow-up *shudder*
As has been mentioned elsewhere, short stories would probably be a better place to look for inspiration for a movie, and in keeping with that I would humbly put forward Inconstant Moon for consideration
To be honest I *hated* Vista - hated it enough that I went to the effort of finding XP drivers for my supposedly unsupported laptop and rolled back to XP on it (for gaming purposes, otherwise I'm using Ubuntu on it) but I've been playing with the Windows 7 beta on a spare box at work - so far I've been very impressed, it seems to have built on the things that worked well in Vista, while hugely improving the things that bugged the hell out of me about the OS.
It's reasonable to point out that Win7 is very much a point release to Vista, in the same way that XP was to 2000, or 98SE was to 98 but I never had a problem with Microsoft's approach on either of those cases
And lets be honest, with the massive backlash that Vista has recieved, I can hardly fault the marketing department from doing everything possible to seperate Win7 from the Vista brand and reputation - in their shoes I'd be doing the exact same thing!
Given your point agrees with GP's I'm not sure "really not true" is correct from your perspective;)
Both you and GP agree that most people never use the CLI, but he continues to point out that some of whats left use it from time to time (such as myself) and then a minority of people that seem to live in the CLI environment
For me it's the same as Ubuntu - theres a lot of stuff its simply faster to do in CLI - you can do it with the gui, its just more laborious is all
Agreed, hell I used my EeePC to rip and convert a DVD the other day - sure, it didn't do it as fast as my (much more powerful) desktop would, but was still a lot faster than waiting for the end of the working day, going home, firing up my desktop and then doing it:)
You're quite correct - the resolution of the 9" and 10" Eee's (and most other netbooks) are the same.
My eyesight is great yet I still went for the Eee 1000 over 901 - why?
Simple - thanks to the larger screen they had more room for a bigger keyboard. As I'm 6'5 I was rather glad of this, and the 33% or so extra weight made no real difference to me - the tradeoff was more than worth it:)
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Does mean rebuying the original game though which is a bit of a hassle...
Well, personally I tend to buy stuff that I've been really looking forward to new, and stuff I'm reasonably interested in at a point down the line second hand (especially single-player only games - give it three months and the second hand market is generally flooded. Good examples here would be Assassin's Creed or Mirrors Edge - while neither game is worth the fifty quid or so they were brand new, for a tenner three months down the line I was more than happy with them. On the flip side however I genenrally never trade games in, instead I like to have a library of games that will be sold on with the console when I eventually tire of it/choose to upgrade.
Until I can either get the DLC via Steam (as I did the original game) or just buy it in a shop I'm not interested - I don't want anything to do with Games for Windows, tvm - the horror stories are more than enough to make me give that platform a wide bearth.
I think he means Gunman Chronicles
I've found this to be reasonably accurate - I picked up a EeePC 1000 back before Christmas and have since used my laptop so rarely that I ended up giving it to my fiancee (A farly decent XPS M1530 too).
Instead I've found that the Eee has enough power for 95% of what I want to do with the machine - browsing, IM and so on, and if I do every need to do some heavy lifting it's trivial to open up a terminal to either my server or my desktop and let that do the grunt work.
Whups, last paragraph fail!
I finished with:
We both loved the film, and I'm looking forward to adding it to my movie collection. As an aside she's the one insisting on the extended directors cut (not that I don't agree with her).
Wasn't TDK a PG-13 in the US? I thought all that showed was that it wasn't necessary for tits, blood and swearing to make a really *good* superhero movie :)
I'm a casual fan of the comics and was into the idea enough to pay £10 and drive over to the next city over to catch the movie on an IMAX rather than a regular screen.
My missus had never read the comic, and hwer only interest in going was basically down to enjoying the trailers and Zach Snyder's previous film (the 300, which Again, she'd never read).
Thats part of the point of the Survival mode - the games are a lot shorter (from what I've read you're doing well to last ten minutes once you started the game clock)
I did a clean install of the beta on my Eee 1000 over the weekend and have found the boot performance to be substantially improved.
I use Vobcopy with it as well - rip a bunch of DVDs to HDD then I can queue up a buch of transcodes in Handbrake.
Very much seconded - piss simple to install and run and since it's running on a machine that is always on anyway I don't have to consider leaving my desktop on to finish a download or anything like that.
I never got on with the Xandros disto that came with my Eee 1000 either. Thankfully I found that Ubuntu + the Ubuntu Netbook Remix interface worked well for me - although it was a bit of a bodge to get everything working (Install Ubunutu, install Array Kernel for better hardware support, install acpi scripts for the Fn keys and then install Ubuntu Netook Remix (and istalling a couple of repo's along the way). Fine for me, not so much for Joe Normal on the streets.
Thankfully though the next release (due in a coupel of weeks) apparantly makes *huge* strides in improving this - the special kernel isn't needed, nor the acpi scripts and the UNR is in the default repo's now - personally I can't wait to give it a spin.
Anyone ever read The Fourth Profession by Larry Niven? (It's on the N-Space anthology) that touches on unexpected supernova...
No problems here - I've basically standardised on using MicroSD cards here then adapting them to fit whichever device it needs, and have yet to have a problem.
Likewise, I went with the Linux SSD one, although I really didn't get on with Xandros while trailing my friends machines, so within five minutes of opening the box was happily bodging Ubuntu onto it :)
Of course the only reason it took five minutes to get Ubunut going was that the absolute first thing I did was get the back off to replace the RAM and WLAN card...
Weight is also not the only factor - I have a EeePC 1000 that I specifically picked over the 901 for a very simple reason - the extra size allows a keyboard that I (as a fairly stocky 6'5 man) can actually use, whereas the one on the 901's is just too small and is an exercise in frustration for me.
Having extensive first hand experience of both models (I know folks with both and borrowed each for a week to have a play before buying one) I can confirm the weight difference is very noticable, but for me the trade-off was worth it. Of course I ended up with 40gig of storage instead of the 20 on the 901, but that was a fringe benefit and not a significant factor in my decision.
Also a factor in the perception of a carrying weight is how you're carrying it, and what else you are carrying - for example in 'normal' use the machine is slung in a satchel with my phone, MP3 player and a few other bits and bobs that I use every day - I can notice the difference in weight then between the two models, although for me at least it has no noticable impact. Conversely I've also stuffed the machine into a rucksack of clothes when travelling with work for a week, and under those circumstances an extra half kilo of weight is entirely unnoticable.
Ah sorry, I was replying to the suggestion of Lucifer's Hammer - when I started typing my response there were no replies, by the time I posted there were a couple. Apologies for the lack of clarity.
In saying that I'd be all for a Ringworld movie or series too - so long as it was left in the hands of someone other than the usual gibbering idiots that get SF movies these days. As you say, the two sequels would be equally suitable for use as followup material.
While a truly excellent book I don't think it would suit a movie - way *way* too much would have to be cut out to make it work. What I would love to see is it turned into a standard 24-episode TV series.
Of course the problem then is that if it was successful you'd farce the prospect of someone trying to write a follow-up *shudder*
As has been mentioned elsewhere, short stories would probably be a better place to look for inspiration for a movie, and in keeping with that I would humbly put forward Inconstant Moon for consideration
Or at the very least the Matrix - There should be only one :)
To be honest I *hated* Vista - hated it enough that I went to the effort of finding XP drivers for my supposedly unsupported laptop and rolled back to XP on it (for gaming purposes, otherwise I'm using Ubuntu on it) but I've been playing with the Windows 7 beta on a spare box at work - so far I've been very impressed, it seems to have built on the things that worked well in Vista, while hugely improving the things that bugged the hell out of me about the OS.
It's reasonable to point out that Win7 is very much a point release to Vista, in the same way that XP was to 2000, or 98SE was to 98 but I never had a problem with Microsoft's approach on either of those cases
And lets be honest, with the massive backlash that Vista has recieved, I can hardly fault the marketing department from doing everything possible to seperate Win7 from the Vista brand and reputation - in their shoes I'd be doing the exact same thing!
Given your point agrees with GP's I'm not sure "really not true" is correct from your perspective ;)
Both you and GP agree that most people never use the CLI, but he continues to point out that some of whats left use it from time to time (such as myself) and then a minority of people that seem to live in the CLI environment
For me it's the same as Ubuntu - theres a lot of stuff its simply faster to do in CLI - you can do it with the gui, its just more laborious is all
Agreed, hell I used my EeePC to rip and convert a DVD the other day - sure, it didn't do it as fast as my (much more powerful) desktop would, but was still a lot faster than waiting for the end of the working day, going home, firing up my desktop and then doing it :)
(Potentially) More accurately a quest that's dogshit... (Fowl is chicken, foul is something a dog does to the street :))
You're quite correct - the resolution of the 9" and 10" Eee's (and most other netbooks) are the same.
My eyesight is great yet I still went for the Eee 1000 over 901 - why?
Simple - thanks to the larger screen they had more room for a bigger keyboard. As I'm 6'5 I was rather glad of this, and the 33% or so extra weight made no real difference to me - the tradeoff was more than worth it :)