Tales from the PC Front
Howdy folks,
Last thread I was troubled over the lack of sound on the machine, it turned out to be a connection problem that remains unresolved. I caved and decided to throw money at it in the form of a USB headset. It's worth it though, all I had was earbuds previously, and this USB headset is perfect for any voice applications, music, and is split into a USB to minijack adapter and the headphones which can be used on other apps. Versatile, forward-looking, a bit expensive ($80) but it solved the problem and opens up more possibilities. In Civilization that's a good move, and Civ3 is a model of the real world right? ;)
My dad is currently looking to get a PC for currency trading. FutureShop has a Celeron D 330 2.66 GHx box from eMachines right now for something like $560 without monitor, but that strikes me as tremendous value. When it rains PCs it pours in the Fair family, but in characteristic Mac fashion, the unused Macs are going to the person who knows the least about computers - Mum.
Just discovered the OutFoxed documentary tonight Greg, interesting stuff. The Farenheit 9/11 of media, or Fox. The other interesting documentary that complements it is Control Room, a documentary of Al Jazeera's media coverage in the Iraq war, very eye opening.
Using a PC has been remarkably simple so far, I haven't seen any assimilation tubules (Lame Star Trek Borg reference) coming out of any of the hardware so far. The stock heatsink and fan keep the CPU within an acceptable temperature. The only problem is that the front 120mm fan has no control even though there's a slider on the system management tool Coolermaster included, so it doesn't notch down when the system is mostly unused. Coolermaster produces an amazing array of interesting hardware pieces, with their dual-fan systems, the Hyper 6 (a one pound copper heatsink that aparently requires you to string up support wires because of the stress it puts on the motherboard supports) and the Stacker - so far an awesome case, other than the audio jack wire. I might look to another company offering a heatsink with a 120mm fan mount unless Coolermaster updates the Hyper6 because 120mm fans really are, according to the evidence, the quietest fans per CFM, and this system could stand to lose some noise.
I've got Trillian, Bit Torrent and Firefox up and running, it's breathtaking to dump Microsoft apps and find better alternatives.. wait, I knew that already. Question: If one media center OS to fit them all is bad, is Trillian not equally bad?
Well it's very late, time to get to bed. Consequences of nights of intense Battlefield Vietnam and Dean Martin Variety Show commercials with great jokes and working afternoon shifts.
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Odd.... Oh, it was me.
That was me that made the post, thought I was signed in. Not sure why there are four posts - oh, I know why. I kept getting an error every time I submitted last night and it indicated that the post wasn't submitted.
What is up with old threads showing recent updates in terms of time, but no new posts? My old junk isn't that valuable. ;)
Playing Battlefield Vietnam without sound was cool, but with sound it has virtually halved my death rate and greatly improved my kill rate, which is nice. I used to average 50/50 but sound has tipped the scale to probably 55/45 now, conservative estimate. Also, it lets me listen to the collection of 70s music and Flight of the Valkyries that you can blast from vehicles as you drive and fly around. They even added doppler effect to the sound, so as you zoom by the pitch changes sometimes extremely considerably. This is the future of FPS gaming for sure.
What is missing from BFV is other interesting features, like being able to broadcast your own music, which only makes sense. Also, there are features in it that make unbalanced games considerably less favourable for the underdogs with just a few people. Two on one matches are very hard, for example, and especially if the two have aircraft and you don't. It would be a nice touch to disable features that help people keep track over enemies without actually seeing them in the game, give guerilla tactics more of an advantage, or less of a penalty, or at least add a bot with the AI cranked up to help out.