In which I finally get the laptop working

Well I finally got the laptop to the point where I want it.

I added a bunch of software to it, including (yes I’m gonna list them!)

Mozilla Thunderbird (I can now access my e-mail from everywhere)

RocketDock – a GREAT docking program similar to the OS X dock. Cleaned up my desktop so it looks great.

VLS Media Player – an excellent replacement video player, much better than WMP.

Winamp – of course

4 Console Emulators – For playing NES, SNES, Genesis, and Game Boy games – and they run perfectly on this laptop.

Windows Live Writer – which is what I’m using now to write this post

E-Tools and AD&D Core Rules 2.0 – for actually using this computer as a portable DM.

Quackle and Zyzzyva – Scrabble Programs for helping me get better at my game.

and OpenOffice 3.0 – so I can type regular documents.

I’m really loving this laptop.  I’ve finally got used to typing on it.  And now that I have e-mail access on it, it’ll be easier to communicate – which is really cool…

It’s finished!

Well, after 3 weeks, and having a lot of insulation around, the electrical work is finally finished.

Bob and Rob when above and beyond on this project.  What started out as a “Hey can you fix my outlet so I can actually use my microwave?” expanded into a “Ok, we need to actually go in and separate each of the rooms onto individual circuits and re-wire the entire apartment”.

And even then they went in and added lights in each of my closets, added GFI’s in most of the outlets, and added a fan/light fixture in my living room.

It looks great, and I appreciate all the work that both of them have done for me over the past 2-3 weeks.

In which I shoehorn

Amazingly, I managed to shoehorn Wow onto my laptop.

And, It runs at about 20fps in the non-city areas – which is amazing when you think about it.

I think I’m mainly going to use the laptop for my alt – using auctioneer, and maybe the occasional quest with my main.  It’s not built for extreme gaming, but it’ll do the job.

In which I ditch a monitor

I love having a dual-monitor setup.  It gives me lots of screen real-estate to work on and is a neat trick to show friends. I like having my game running in the LCD and a FAQ in the secondary.

But there are downsides.

One is the fact that when you are playing a graphics intensive game (say….oh… World of Warcraft), The graphics card has to render BOTH monitors at the same time. So if you have a Firefox window with Wowhead or Thottbot running, the computer still has to render that screen, even though there is nothing happening on it.  Which decreases the frame rates of any games that are running on the main monitor.

Another downside is the fact that I had an LCD for my Main monitor and a CRT for my second.  The blaring difference is the quality of the picture. I have a really hard time working on a computer that has a CRT monitor.  It’s fuzzy, grainy and really hard to read.

So my solution is easy.  Now that I have my laptop, I run my ventrilo software and any browser on the the laptop, and my desktop runs my main programs.  Just removing the second monitor increased my frame rate by at least 25%.  I’m getting 25-30 FPS in unpopulated areas, and It’s running fantastic.

Oh! And a HUGE shoutout to Damastus for lending me the gold for my Epic Flying – I still owe you 1650 gold. :)

Chuck/Heather are awesome

I love my friends.

Yesterday, I came home to my disorganized apartment to find that the landlord started to do the extra work on my electricity.

We agreed that he would install 3 new overhead lights in my apartment – One in each of the bedrooms, and one in the living room.  “Fantastic” I thought. “Now I can get rid of the lamps that I had to buy.”

Only one problem.  Although they had enough forsight to cover my computer from the dust/debris that came out of my ceiling, they neglected to cover my ceramic heater that I use to heat the bedroom.

So here I am at 8:00 last night, no heat, and Chuck just dropped me off from his place.

So I call him back, tell him my plight, and he was nice and gracious enough to come BACK over, pick me up and take me to Wal-Mart (which didn’t have any heaters) and then to Lowe’s (which did, and I got there 1 minute before closing), to get a new heater for me.

I don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t been able to give me a lift.

Chuck, Heather, Charlie and Annie – you guys are a godsend, and I love you all.

Review – Acer Aspire 4730Z

Ok – this is probably an untimely review.  After all, this computer isn’t the latest powerhouse to come down the block.  For the most part, it’s a decent computer.  Here’s the breakdown.

1. Screen/Graphics

The 14.1” screen is really nice.  The contrast is good enough to make digital photo really pop from the screen, and the text is big enough to read without having to lean in toward the screen.

Graphics are on-board (as are most laptops), and so far it seems to be holding up very well.  I haven’t decided whether or not to shoehorn World of Warcraft of the system yet (I might do it as a test), so I don’t know what the 3d capabilities of the computer are.  It also has a VGA out, so I could hook up a monitor to it to use externally.

2. Sound

The built-in speakers are very tinny, but the sound output from the headphones is very clean.  No popping or distortion, and the jack is located conveniently on the left hand side of the computer.

3. Hard Drive

250 GB. Plenty of room for movies, music and pictures.

4. Keyboard

The keyboard, for me, is hard to get used to.  I’m very used to have the springy tactile response from a regular computer keyboard, so typing on the laptop feels like I’m light touch typing, and it’s not easy to get used to.

5. Touchpad

It’s sensitive.  And the ability to scroll using the right side of the pad is cool, but not easy to control.  I’ll be getting a small laptop mouse for this computer.

6. DVD Drive

It as one, and it burns fine, albeit slower than a desktop’s would.  I haven’t ripped any CD’s off of it, so I don’t know how the read/write speed is yet.

7. Networking

The wireless access is great.  I get faster downloads over wi-fi than I do wired on my desktop.  Whether that is because the computer is new, or because the signal is faster, I’m not sure.  It also has a port for a direct wired connection, and – in a quaint 1990’s gesture – it has a built in 56K modem.

8. Vista

Well… It’s Vista.  Despite the bad publicity and general crapped-on-ness that it’s got, it works fine.  I’ve used Vista at my friend’s place of and on, but I haven’t had any significant time to delve into it and see what it can do.

9. Overall feel

It’s a great machine – I like the fact that I have it setup to do e-mail websurfing. One of the few downsides is the battery life – only 3 hours.  I’m going to try to find a 6-cell battery to replace the current one so that I can get a few more hours of time on it. 

I find it great that I can plug in my headphones and use the laptop as my Ventrilo computer, so I can squeeze a few more frames out of WoW while I’m running it.

All in all, a nifty little package.

Between this and my home computer…

… I should be able to post to my blog much more often.

Which is what I hope to do.  I mean, I do have things to say – granted they might not be extremely witty/funny or insanely profound – but at least I have a way to post pretty much whereever I am.

Which is totally awesome.

Setup my first network yesterday.  Actually, it was really easy.  I thought I would have to jump through 7-8 hoops, but it was literally, plug in the router, plug in the internet, load the software, set the password, and viola!  It’s done.  And my wi-fi signal is awesome even though walls.

First post on the new machine!

And I really have to learn how to type on this thing.  It’s not easy.

Woot! I gots me a laptop!

And I got a nice one as well.

At first I was hoping to get a netbook - you know one of the small, ultra-portable ones that is just used for mail and web surfing.  But as I browsed the offerings at my local Best Buy, I noticed that there were not any that had more than 16GB of hard drive space - And I've seen them with at least 120 online.  Turns out that Best Buy doesn't stock the ones with more HD space.  So I started to look around for a different computer.

I found one for $500, which was $100 more that I wanted to spend, but It had features that I liked.  BUT, there weren't any in stock, and I was gonna walk out of there with a new laptop anyways.  So I asked if I could get the floor model.  They said maybe, and then told they could give that one to me, but at no discount.  And then they did something extraordinary.  The guy then said that he could look out back and see if he had anything comparable to the $500 model.  So he did.

And what a find I got.  An Acer laptop with Vista Home Premium, 2GB of RAM, 250 GB hard drive, DVD Drive, and wireless.  For $449.

Talk about a great buy.  Granted, not what I was planning to buy, but a great little computer nonetheless.

Now all I have to do is wipe the crapware off of it, install a few essentials, and I'm in business.

No dual-specs in WoW 3.0.8

Which is a bummer if you ask me. 

This feature is something that has been asked for, and has been in the works for a while now.  In WoW, you have talent trees – you earn points when you level that go towards talents that give you bonus powers. You also have the ability to “re-spec” your abilities if you are unhappy with the way you speced in the first place.

What this feature will do is allow you to have 2 different versions of your spec.  Which helps for those who use one spec for PvP (Battleground, etc.) play and one for PvE play.  One thing that is still in the dark is how it will be implemented.  As is stands now, you need to go to your trainer, and play x amount in order to respect.  I’m wondering if you’ll have a cooldown timer on the skill, because I’m not sure how they can make it work out outside of your trainer.

Either way, I think it’ll be worth the wait.

Cheers to iTunes!

To paraphrase Peter Griffin – “It’s about freakin’ time!”

Apple announced that by April, 80% of it’s music library will be DRM-Free.  No copy protection.  You can do what you want with the files. On the flipside, tiered pricing will be making an appearance - .69, .99, or 1.29 for songs purchased through iTunes, set by the record labels.

Either way, I think it’s the final death knell for DRM.  At least they are starting to treat their customers as customers and not criminals.

The Demise of 1up

Wow this sucks.

I’ve been a fan of 1up.com’s podcasts for about a year.  I love listening to Retronauts, Legendary Thread and 1up Yours.  But today I found out that UGO bought 1up.com and EGM basically for the name recognition (and the site traffic), and laid off at least 1/3 of their workforce.  Including people that I have tons of respect for.  Skip Pfister, James Mielke, Shane Bettenhausenm Ryan Scott, Phil Kollar, just to name a few.

Does UGO NOT realize the amount of talent they let go?  These guys have been reporting on the gaming industry for years, and they are being tossed by the wayside.

They are even stopping the podcast production of all the shows they were producing.  No more Retronauts, 1up Show, 1up Yours….

I think UGO bought the right company for the wrong reason…

The agony of Yahoo!

Yahoo! to me is a mixed bag of technologies that may or may not work at any given time.

For instance, flickr is a great website that I've had absolutely no trouble with whatsoever.  It just simply works.

Messenger on the other hand...

I've been using Messenger 9 for about 4 months and I love it.  The ability to watch youtube video within a chat window is great, and I use Yahoo to keep in touch with my friends.  However...  For some odd reason, over the last couple days, I've been unable to view webcams.  ANY webcams.  It's simply just not letting me.  And it's very frustrating.

But if I uninstall YM 9 and re-install YM8.1, I get the ability to view webcams, but lose the other functionality of the newer version.

I don't know what I did that caused 9 to malfunction.  But if I ever find out, I'll be writing Yahoo and giving them a piece of my mind.