Wednesday 2 March 2005
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Pic of the day: Fujitsu Siemens Scaleo P, front picture, and cable spaghetti. New computerGenerally, I don't recommend borrowing money to buy luxury for yourself. It is ethically dubious, and contrary to popular opinion it is not good for the economy. I'm making an exception for this, though. Of course, making exceptions for ourselves is what humans excel at. Anyway, here is my case if you want to hear it. It began a long time ago, but then again doesn't it always? So let's jump ahead to a few nights ago. I was sitting in front of my living room computer when I noticed an unpleasant smell. Now you might assume that this might be from myself, since I live all alone after all and if I want to smell bad there's no one to stop me. However, I don't smell of overheated plastic and unhealthy chemicals. Nor did the computer in front of me. The bedroom computer did. More exactly the power supply (which doesn't actually supply power but just transforms it from AC to DC, and from 230 volt to 5 or some such, so what's the stress?) Anyway, it was very hot and the fan that normally cools it was not working. This is widely considered a bad thing. The fan has been kinda unstable for quite a while, but then fans are known to be that if they keep doing the same thing all the time for years. So rather than pick it apart, apply some oil (I know I have at least soy oil in the house, because I used it on the bathroom door hinges last year or so) and try to assemble it again, hoping it would last for a long time yet after the warranty was expired ... rather than all that, I decided to buy a new. I may have been partly influenced by the knowledge that the CD-ROM drive hasn't worked for around 2 years. I was definitely influenced by the knowledge that none of my current computers could play my favorite game, City of Heroes, the way it was meant to be played. Even the newest computer, the one in the living room, was approaching slideshow speed when things got crowded, and that was after I turned various graphics options so far down the place seemed wrapped in perpetual haze. City of Heroes is optimized for the NVIDIA graphics chipsets, and the newest card I have is from the competitor, ATI. While the Radeon 9800 is a decent enough card (it renders the Sims in beautiful detail, although they themselves may not always be decent, but that's beside the point) - while the Radeon is good enough for most games, it slows down when it has to translate everything from nvidia language before it can start drawing. You may say that this is a flaw in the game rather than in the machine. But you know we forgive and work around flaws in those we love. And I still love this game, despite my recent fling with World of Warcraft. OK, perhaps more than a fling. Perhaps I just don't believe in mono-game-y! ***The short of it is, I have been looking for a relatively new nvidia card lately, and now I was also looking for a new computer. So when I saw a computer that had the card I was thinking of, I was highly motivated to buy it. Today I did. Actually I ordered it earlier this week. It was almost perfect right there in the shop, but 512 MB RAM just doesn't cut it. So I had them put in another memory module of the exact same type, doubling to 1 GB. This may not be strictly necessary, unless you run several programs at the same time. In my living room computer it sure comes in handy, because it is my anime server and also one of my games machines. So while I play The Sims or (in slow motion) City of Heroes, the machine also keeps track of incoming and outgoing anime. (Fansubs only – I don't rip off commercial products.) Since an anime I download can be distributed among a dozen or more computers, and I've downloaded dozens of them, this is quite a bit of database to keep track of. Having more than minimum RAM comes in handy in those cases. The Sims is also a memory hog. In fact, besides a better-than-minimum video card, memory is the one thing that determines how well that game plays. Processor speed is rarely a problem ... if your machine is new enough to run the game at all, it probably has plenty enough processing power. But there is no help processing and processing if you can't get the data (and thus the Sims) to move from here to there. ***
Anyway, the machine I ended up with was like this: Being already so stylish, I also installed Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail program instead of my usual favorite, Opera. These are the hot and trendy ways to interact with the Net lately, from what I read. And this seemed like a good way to test them. It will take some time before I can give a reasonably unbiased opinion, since I have Opera so much in my fingers already. I tested the machine at work and installed those basic programs there. When I came home, I unplugged the old machine and put it beside a couple other old discarded machines that I haven't thrown away yet. Then I set up the new one and got it started, adding USB units one at a time so the operating system could install the necessary drivers. This was a pretty funny process in itself, the technology is still kinda "plug and pray". For instance, when I tried to install the Bluetooth sender & receiver that would connect me to the home network and thus to the Internet, the machine insisted on downloading the drivers from the Net. Yeah, right. I had to install from the CD that came with the unit. It didn't work. I went into the setup and deleted the unit from the list, then "discovered" it again. Now I have two Bluetooth icons in my system tray, one red in English telling me that the Bluetooth unit is not connected, and a blue one in Norwegian telling me that yes, it is connected. But when all is said and done, the new machine starts a LOT faster than the old. And I have already tried playing City of Heroes on it. In full detail, and I still get movie-like framerates, above 20 even in fairly crowded areas. My hero responds to my slightest thought like my own hand. (As well it should, as long as I keep my hand on the controls. But this used not to be so, far from it.) And all the beautiful detail! This is how the game was meant to be seen, and now I have seen it for the first time. I still won't die happy – indeed, I would rather not die at all – but at least when I threw away that much money, it's nice that I got what I wanted. And then some. |
Still cold, snow on the ground. |
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