Freeday 15 November 2002

Pic of the day: Who is back in the saddle? The old 'puter returns to power! Literally - I just plugged it in this night.

Out with the new, in with the old

Today I closed down my HP laptop and detached the various extras: Keyboard, monitor, ADSL, mouse, zip drive, camera. Then I put back up the Fujitsu Siemens Scaleo minitower. Yes, I know it's been a while since I got it back from repair. But I have kinda grown used to using the portable as a desktop computer. I like Windows XP. And, above all, I am lazy.

So what scared me up to make the change? Dark Age of Camelot. With the addition of dueling and spellcraft the city of Camelot is swarming with players and ringing with blows and spells. It became a real problem to even move through the city; I would have to wait for a minute or two as I entered, just for the hard disk to stop churning and my character to start moving. Even then, as I moved through the streets, movement would be choppy at best. At worst, the game would stop again while my hard disk archived the data overflow.

The older machine (11 months now) has more RAM (368 vs. "248" - yes, that is what they say. I know it ought to be 256) and a more efficient video card (nvidia Geforce 2 MX) . So I eventually caved in and changed back. I had to install new drivers for the USB ethernet port and for the ADSL. All that stuff has arrived since the machine crashed on September 6. And a good thing too, because the lightning also killed the modem. Now I have ADSL instead, so I don't need to buy a new modem.

***

After I got connected to the Net, I got a jour with Norton anti-virus. There was a download of like 6 MB after a couple months ... evidently some people have been active in the meantime. I also downloaded some critical upgrades for Windows ME, security stuff. The newest patches for DAoC and DAoC Europe. Then off to play.

The Scaleo does indeed handle the load of traffic in Camelot with only slight sluggishness in navigation. Outside the city there is not even a hint of delay. So I was quite happy. Until I discovered that this machine will randomly drop the DSL connection several times an hour. The portable could sometimes drop or lag out the connection, but rarely more than once or twice an evening. This frequency of dropping line is a blow to playing in groups, where people depend on you being there for them. Unless I find a fix for it, I may be forced to go back to the slower portable.

I have looked around in various system areas, like the network part of the settings, and Internet settings. There is nothing I can find that explains why it drops connection. It is not the 20 minutes time-out, and besides DSL should not do that. At first I thought it only happened while I played DAoC, but then the connection dropped while I wrote this entry. So clearly it is not caused by DAoC. But that's where I will notice the effects the most.

I'm tempted to upgrade to Windows XP. Or Linux. Yeah, right. As if my day had 48 hours. So, no Linux. I got my fill of technicity today already: Tried to tinker with the network values, had to de-install and re-install the ADSL package. Spent much of night / morning. It was less fun than playing games. It was, in fact, less fun than most things I usually do. I am getting de-geeked in my old age, it seems... Comparatively, at least. I still managed to fill a whole entry with this stuff!