People have asked me this question on more than one occasion. I am currently running 8 laptops. OK; yes, it is excessive. But I rationalize that there is a reason for each one. OK...there's not. Not in any way more than the fact that I consider myself a self-funded online journalist. Since no company is lining up to send me free gear like they do the Engadgets and CNETs of the webosphere, I have to buy my own. Each does fulfill a function in as much as I use them to learn more about laptops, mobile technology, multi-media, and other tricks that I make my sometimes admittedly poor attempts to pass on to you.

The Gateway P-6860FX is a 17" gaming rig. I bought this one because I initially attempted to upgrade the preceding gaming laptop (an Asus Z96J 15.4") with a 17" HP dv9000-series rig. The HP proved unable to handle basic gaming at times, so I sold it and got the COMPAL IFL-90. But in the short time that I owned it, I became accustomed to and fond of the 17" display. So when these Gateway's hit the market at an incredible price point and were available at retail, I almost felt obliged to pick one up just because of the price.

It is lovely to watch movies on. With its two hard drive bays now populated with double 320GB hard drives, it rocks nearly as much storage as my two desktops, and is proof of the ability to capture the same capability in a desktop replacement as a true desktop. The storage is sufficient to hold its own encoded movie archive, as well as my full iTunes archive; a feat that I can not claim about my MacBook, which is the primary managing device of that iTunes archive. The Gateway has a full keyboard with numeric keypad, which makes it excellent for working in spreadsheets, like updating my workout log. The speakers are of decent quality, certainly not Altec Lansings or Harmon Kardons, but they are of great volume, which is actually more important to me in a laptop than quality, because I know that the limited space in a mobile form factor will always limit speaker quality. But the Gateway is also huge and heavy, with a power brick that is easily heavier than some of my other laptops themselves. If I could only keep one of them, it would not be this one because I have to be mobile. And the Gateway is impossible to work on when on a plane unless the seat next to me is unoccupied and I can place it on the adjacent tray table and turn to my side to work on it.

The COMPAL IFL-90 is a pretty amazing notebook for the price I picked it up at. It is my "normal" sized gaming rig, being equipped with a 15.4" screen. As mentioned earlier, it was purchased as the true successor to the Asus Z96J that I ran as my gaming rig from July of 2006 through August of 2007. The Asus got rolled early because I have a buddy who is the primary benefactor of my superseded gear, and he was about to deploy for a few months and was in bad need of a mobile gaming rig to take with him on the ship. Being the pal that I am, I agreed to sell the Asus to him and conduct my gaming rig upgrade ahead of schedule.

The IFL-90 and I got off to a very rocky start, slightly on account of Windows Vista, but more so due to the poor initial install and configuration of Vista and other baseline drivers and apps that was done by the vendor. Since doing a complete wipe and fresh install myself, the machine runs like a charm, and I am quite pleased with it. Perhaps I am most fond of its aesthetics. Although it has a glossy plastic lid on the reverse side of the LCD, the interior is matte-black and an absolute wonder to work on. With no markings on it to give away its branding, it seems to me to hold the ultimate look of a power-user's laptop. No real hacker would have a gaudy laptop with flashing lights that attracted a bunch of attention; they would be focused on flying below the radar.

It has taken some getting used to, but the keyboard is pretty slick, although the keys seem a bit smaller than the normal 15.4" laptop keyboard. I love the fingerprint reader as it allows me to lock the laptop down without always having to reach for my phone to find the password. The display often surprises me still to this day in how crisp it is. I am usually so enamored with my MacBook Pro's display and considering it the standard, against which I judge other laptop displays, that the IFL's display gets overlooked.

I really can not say anything bad about the IFL-90, other than the bulging battery. Now, I love the battery itself. The fact that I get nearly four hours of battery life out of a gaming laptop is nothing short of staggering. And I like the fact that the battery is something that makes the IFL aesthetically distinctive. However, it creates problems with baggage, where, even though it will fit in bags I have that are spec'd for 15" laptops, sometimes I am stretching the zipper runs to fit over the battery hump, making me nervous that one of these days I will destroy the zipper on one of my (very expensive to replace) booq bags. Another knock is that the hard drive is only 120GB, which is too small to hold a good number of game installs and more importantly hold a good sized media library. As it is, this is one of the laptops that I do not run iTunes on, but rather have it only loaded with my MP3s and use Windows Media Player as my audio jukebox app; VLC Media Player handles the video. This negative gig might change the pecking order if I ever get around to upgrading the internal hard drive to a 320GB drive. For right now, though, if I could keep only one laptop, it would not be this one.

The MacBook makes a strong argument for being the last laptop to be voted off the island (or the last guy does not ever get voted off, does he?). There was a time when I always traveled with my MacBook...on every trip. I grew rather attached to it. In fact, I think it was only the eventual purchase of the MacBook Pro that broke into its consideration as my favorite laptop. Since letting the iPhone go as my primary personal cell phone, my time on the MacBook has been relegated to no more than my time with any other laptop.

Still, I love the notebook. I am still on it slightly more frequently since I always do my iTunes downloads via the MacBook. It is still the laptop that I turn to when I need immediate access to a PC and my desktops are not already running. The MacBook comes out of standby so quickly, without doing a "Restarting Windows" routine like my PCs (the MacBook Pro is frequently in standby from WindowsXP, so it is not always ready for an instant reawakening).

While I have turned to the MacBook Pro for most of my multi-media and digital content creation needs, I still use the MacBook for a fare amount of photo editing. It admittedly has one of the poorer displays of my collection, if not the worst. My Acer ASPIRE One's display is better than the MacBook's, even when running in power saver mode on battery. I might go on record, though, as saying that the MacBook has perhaps the most enjoyable keyboard to type on.

Despite it being one of my more favored laptops, I would not keep the MacBook if it was the only mobile workstation I could keep. The hard drive is too small to support all of my needs. It is 120GB, so it provides the same storage space as the IFL-90. Hence, it also cannot hold all of my music and the iTunes TV Shows that I have downloaded. As it is right now, I immediately back up any TV shows that I buy through iTunes onto the Seagate USB 2.0 external drive that is attached to the MacBook. While one could argue that external storage is expanded storage, my reality is that any laptop carrying the moniker of "primary" must have everything I might possibly need stored locally to the machine, in case I need grab the device and immediately depart. I have on more than one occasion come home with a matter of hours to get packed, and dorking around with moving files back and forth between the local drive and an external drive is a non-starter when I am trying to get out of the door. Combine that with the fact that it would have to be essential that a single notebook was capable of supporting gaming, and have a large enough screen to be enjoyable watching movies on, and the MacBook is, again, taken out of the running.

Then there is the Toshiba, which I have configured as a dual-boot of Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit and UBUNTU LINUX Gutsy Gibbon. The Ubuntu partition is set up as the primary boot partition. For a 14" laptop, this unit has a cavernous hard drive at 250GB. That makes it large enough to permit me to run the dual-boots with the hard drive split right down the middle. Still, the Toshi has a few problems that keep it from being the only laptop I would keep. First, I have had a very hard time getting every DVD to play on the LINUX partition. My success rate is about 50%. When I hit this obstacle, I turn to the Vista side to playback DVDs.

Due to the 5 PC limit imposed for playing back iTunes protected content, this is another machine that runs Windows Media Player and I only load my MP3 files on. Perhaps the most annoying thing about it is that I can not get the speakers to completely mute when I have headphones plugged in. I figure that this is an Ubuntu driver issue with the Toshi's soundcard. When I do have the headphones plugged in, I can still faintly hear the speakers, loud enough that, in a quiet environment, someone might be able to hear them. If I wanted to tote the M305 Fusion as my only laptop, it would have to be based on having to turn to Vista to handle any need that was problematic to meet in the Ubuntu OS. That would then mean relying on a 125GB partition for my fall-back, which, as I've discussed before, is just too small. While I am very fond of the Toshi's keyboard and display, it's HD size limit, while admittedly due to my own insistence in running two OS's on it, would create a limit that I would not want to live with.

Ahhhhhh...the Dell XPX M1330...a 13.3" bundle of joy. Other than the MacBook, this laptop probably comes closest to capturing the crown, in every need that I have for a notebook short of gaming. I am still floored when I consider how much computer I got in this unit for the price that I bought it at. Spec for spec it easily outstrips even the newest version of the MacBook, and still sold for about $200 cheaper. This laptop runs Vista 64-bit and has a generous 320GB hard drive, within which I can store my entire iTunes archive, including TV shows. This laptop and the MacBook are absolutely neck-and-neck for the honors of having the most comfortable keyboard on a 13" notebook I have ever used. The XPS also has the same type of slot loading optical drive that the MacBook does. These are all heretofore luxuries that you would have never been able to get in a budget-priced 13" notebook. In fact, there really has only recently appeared such a thing. Previously, the diminutive size of a laptop like this would have pumped up the price outside of bargain basement levels, and even then it would have been straddled with anemic performance.

The XPS throws in some small accoutrements, such as a hardware Wireless switch (I always give a plus for notebooks equipped with these) and media control buttons on the chassis ribbon bar below the display. Yes, Apple notebooks have ample media-oriented shortcuts, but still, actual dedicated controls are nice. If I had to choose between the XPS and the MacBook, it would be an agonizing struggle to choose one. However, I don't have to make that choice, because the XPS' lack of ability to perform under newer games keeps it from being the one laptop I would keep.

I am extremely proud of my Acer Aspire ONE and Samsung Q1 Ultra. Mainly due to how early in their rollouts I captured each, and also because, to this day, they are still relatively rare devices to have. I will say right now that I would not give up my Q1 Ultra for much of anything. This is the closest thing on the market today (IMO) that comes close to a Star Trek Okuda-tablet. It has the full power of a Windows Operating System in it, with a tolerable amount of chug, in a relatively small form factor. There are other computing devices that have a better form factor, but most of them shoot too low in size (iPhone) or do not render a full OS (Nokia Tablets). Although (as it's currently planned) I will not be purchasing any new notebooks in 2009, my hope is that someone takes the Netbook platform and puts it into a slate format. If this happens, the current plan goes right out the window as this would be a device that I would just have to have.

The only problem that form-factor would create is that it would be forced to run Vista or WinXP Tablet. I am not sure if Microsoft is still supporting WinXP TabletPC, and netbooks are not beefy enough to run Vista well. The iPhone comes next nearest to what I would ultimately like the Samsung to be (which is everything it is now, but thinner), if Apple would just make a slate with the iPhone GUI but a screen about three to four times as large. If it were a Windows Netbook in a slate form-factor, I would actually like the screen to be about the size of my Acer Aspire ONE's (8.9").

Speaking of the Acer, it is a great machine and fills a space of use for me that the Q1 does not (see my blog post here - http://www.gearwerkz.net/techblog/index.php/2008/10/04/the-family-is-getting-bigger). But obviously it can not game; at least not with any oomph. And at the end of the day, if I were to be left with only one laptop, it would need to be equipped with an optical drive. And I am not so sure I could work every day on a keyboard this small. It's fine for a few days at a time, but not all of the time.

So, in case you had not figured it out by now, if I had to give all of my notebooks away and were only allowed to keep one, it would be my MacBook Pro. Of my laptops, I am partial to the looks, design, and feel of the Gateway, IFL-90, and XPS M1330. But the MBP takes them all hands down. It can game competently but yet is leaner than the P-6860FX and the IFL-90. It has a larger HD than the IFL-90, and of course, I could always upgrade it. It has the best display of any of my laptops. Most importantly, it easily allows me to run two OS's. As it is currently configured, I rock OS X Leopard on one partition for all of my multi-media and creative needs. On the other, I run WinXP for its gaming and consistent compatibility with games and other software apps.

I have gone through a lot of laptops in 9 years; some 21 odd or so. The MBP has definitely proven to be the favorite of every one I have gone through. I really lucked out with Apple's return policy and the fact that a MBP update came out three days after I bought mine. Without the extra 40GB of HD space that I picked up when I swapped it out, I may not have installed a WinXP partition, and I might not have flexed it as much as I have across the two OS's.

There is a good chance that I will not have to travel as much in 2009 and going forward. As such, I may not be spending as much time with my notebooks, and I certainly will not be picking up as much new mobile gear. The only thing is that each of these notebooks fills a particular specialized use-space for me. Stripping down to just one or even just two (which was what I used to run) will be more difficult. And I am not ready to start picking a single "all-purpose" notebook; not as long as I have no dependents and don't have to choose just one laptop and computing continues to be my hobby.

At any rate, I still have some time to put what I already have to good use, and I'll be continuing to bring those experiences to the web via these posts. So keep coming back from time to time. Until next time...

- Vr/Zeux..>>

"Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens."

- Tolkien

This question seems to have lost none of its fervor as a debate topic on a lot of the forums that I frequent. The question stems from a few impetus'. Sometimes it is from an inquisiteive person who has logged a good chunk of time on one console or another, but is unfamiliar with PC gaming. Having been exposed to the highly social nature of this generation of console platforms (whether that context is within the confines of their living room or in the online arenas), they catch wind of the game known for being on a cultural ramapage, World of Warcraft. They see themselves paying for an online service now (Xbox Live), or for access to certain services through an otherwise free portal (the Virtual Channel or the Playstation Network). They then want to know if we who are already immersed in PC gaming think that it makes sense to pay this monthly fee to only pay one game.

Now, let me go ahead and get out on the table right now that my own answer is "No!" At least, it is "no" for me. It makes no sense for me, based on my personal tastes and gaming style and my immersion in other forms of entertainment and creative projects to pay a monthly fee to play one title.

I have never personally grasped the allure of paying a monthly fee for a single online title. I can understand paying a monthly fee for access to an online gaming community and a platform as a portal to additional online services (like an XBox Live account). That being said, I think that it is awesome that there is a customer base for this market place that provides a different business model within which gaming can exist. The truth is, as much as I disagree with the constant "the sky is falling" fate prediction of the demise of PC gaming that recurs every three months or so, PC gaming is under constant threat from becoming extinct. The reality is that, sales of World of Warcraft are a bulwark against that imminent threat of PC gaming's possible future demise.

But I have determined that it is not for me. I spread my time over several titles and platforms. I typically play on three different platforms in the course of a week, so the thought of spending time on a PC for a predominant amount of that time to play one game has not appealed to me. My preferred platform is the PC, and I have tons of titles for it, of varying genres. And that is the rub. To play one game in one genre (RPG) for a set amount of time a month just does not fall within my schema.

Each time there comes a title that I think may be the one that brings me over, I wind up not taking the dive. City of Heroes came close. The concept of Champions Online and the Star Trek MMO may be the ones...I guess I'll have to wait and see.

Last year I wrote an article about a financial analysis that had been done indicating that the PC gaming industry was resurging. My counter to the article was that the figures that were used included WoW sales and recurring revenue as well as some other MMO's. My concern over us (PC gamers) taking too much heart in the sales statistics of PC gaming is that I think the sales of WoW are misleading.

I do not feel that WoW has been bad for PC Gaming. Let me say that up front so I don't get flame-sprayed (like I am not going to get flame-sprayed anyway). What I do think is that you can not make a one-for-one assessment that says that the PC Gaming industry is healthy based on sales and revenue numbers that are linked to one title, especially one that is based on a recurring sales model. It begs the question that if WoW goes away one day, does the PC industry remain healthy? I am not saying that it will not, I am saying that the numbers that were previously assembled did not establish this through deeper empirical analysis.

I don't think that the "lost customers" impact on PC Gaming is that significant due to WoW. This is the theoretical analysis as to whether or not the people now playing WoW would spend their money on other PC titles instead of constantly pumping it into their monthly subscriptions, thereby increasing the total unit sales per month of PC gaming titles. I think PC Gaming's biggest hits have come from encroachment driven by sales of consoles and their associated games. Getting rid of WoW as a competitor, for example, would do little to "win" back PC gamers if consoles were still around.

I agree that WoW players have heightened the awareness and interest in PC gaming, much as casual gamers have in the console gaming market. But I do not buy into this being of that much help. (Here starts a somewhat off-topic digression – feel free to skip to the next paragraph) Where casual gamers are concerned in the console market, they do not matter to me, I do not care that their numbers in our ranks mean that there are more total gamers, it has had no impact on me that is "helpful", and I would just as soon they went away because of some of the dynamics that they are causing on the gaming industry. Now, that is just my self-centered point of view in defense of my own personal, individual wants. I am not about to go out and start picketing in front of the local GameStop to boycott the sales of consoles and games to casual gamers. I am just saying that there are aspects of their participation in the gaming market that I do not like. In fact, I am perhaps even wrong to make comments at casual gamers (if this genre of gamer even exists) and say more so that it is the attention to the casual gaming market that console manufacturers are expending that is leading to some concern on my part. (end digression)

The same is true of WoW, from my perspective. As WoW has resurged, we (pc gamers) have not recaptured any more shelf-space at local retailers for our games. That is because it does not take more than one shelf to stock copies of WoW and its applicable expansions. So, in this vein, WoW has not been of any help. The relative success of Xbox Live has made multipalyer features in a console game of major import. Is the same true of WoW? Has the surge of WoW sales helped spur the added concern on PC games with regard to their multiplayer features at the expense of resources being expended in the game development cycle towards a robust single-player experience? But could we label WoW as the sole culprit of that dynamic, if it were true? Hasn't Battlefield had just as much of an impact in that vein?

So where can I give WoW some props in helping out the PC gaming industry? I consider the PCG industry to emcompass every revenue model that offers resources to its end-point sale of an individual title, so that must include hardware. Windows Vista (you can spit at its mention now if you so choose) has done a lot to drive the minimum bar for graphics performance upwards, particularly in laptop sales. WoW has done the same, I think. I can not count the number of times in a week that I get asked to validate whether or not a laptop someone is looking at will play WoW. And this is a good thing. If a laptop can play WoW, it can play some older PC games, and if I can get an entry level or mid-performance laptop that can handle a good chunk of games from the 2004 point rearward at historically cheaper prices, then that is good, as that represents the chunk of titles that I play on my laptops anyway.

In this vein, WoW has helped. I would contend that some people get (finally) interested in playing PC games when they find out that their laptop can handle some games. They have previously been barred from the market because they were not willing to pay the money required to play 3d accelerated games. So maybe, maybe, this is leading to some added interest in PC games. Maybe. Point is, it is getting harder and harder to buy a laptop on the market that can not play WoW at at least minimum settings (head over to LapTopmag.com's recent testing of an Acer Aspire ONE that is shown handling WoW), so more and more consumers are winding up with laptop's in their hands that can handle a game or two.

So, I do not think the gaming industry, specifically the PCG industry would have been better off with WoW out of the picture rather than in, despite the fact that it does not personally interest me. The other "finite resource" question that gets asked is if the human capital resources that are dedicated to cranking out and maintaining WoW were diverted elsewhere, would we have more quality titles released for the PC, and would we therefore have better games in the PC Gaming market, and would the market therefore be garnering more sales?

I do not necessarily think that we would have seen more titles if WoW had not been around. And you, know, we are just talking about the freeing up of human capital resources at Blizzard; admittedly I would have to add to that every developer out there who is trying to crank out a WoW copycat, as well. Where would those people have wound up or what else would Blizzard be cranking out if it was not heavily vested in WoW development and maintenance? I do not think I could say that those people would be out in the industry having a global impact on overall title development that would yield more other products that were not WoW. Maybe those people would be in the movie industry, or taking customer service calls at an AT&T center…who knows? I would say WoW has certainly helped a little, and that its negative impact is probably subjective conjecture at best. And even a little help for PC gaming is better than nothing.

That being said, I am not going to roll over and say that the potential negative impact of WoW is non-existent. I do not think that 15 bucks a month is cheap (the basic monthly fee for a WoW account). It's $180 a year, which is easily the cost of 4 to 6 brand new PC games a year. The way in which this has an impact is that not everyone is oblivious to entertainment expenses. I buy a lot of games. I buy games that I do not get around to playing in a reasonable amount of time. I did not buy fewer games because gas prices went up. But I am not the average consumer. The average person slide-rules their expenses, and as money is being expended in one direction, they curtail money expended in others. In other words, I would say that it is fair to suspect that if someone is spending $180 a year on WoW, they are not expending the same aount of money that they may have on other games.

But the real point here is not the money. It is time. People can do whatever they want with money. They have the ability to earn more, make less, save less, spend more, and so on. But they can not stick more than 24 hours into a day. Ok, admittedly, I have done with less sleep in order to game or do other activities and maintain my work schedule, but that is always a downward spiral if it is maintained. In most discussions with my gaming peers, it is not that they are unwilling to spend money on more games, it is about how they would fit in time to get their return on investment on those other titles.

A WoW account is a lot like my NetFlix account. I know that the more movies I watch, the more that $15 per month buys me. Plus, a MMORPG by its definition rewards the players who invest the most time (with due regard for a curve based on each player's skill…some needing more time than others). When I buy fewer games in a given time frame, it is not because I don't have the money, it is because I have had trouble finding the time to game. The guys who play WoW that I talk to about how great another title is, get concerned about time expended in another title that could be time spent levelling up the character they are paying $15 a month to play. Not saying that they claim they spend all of their time in WoW to the exclusion of any other gaming venue. The point is that they all indicate that there is a point in their mind where they would or could spend too much time in other games and decrease their ROI on their WoW account, and as they approach that barrier, they turn away from investing in other titles (either in time or in money) and get back to investing more time in WoW. For most of them, it is an elastic relationship, where winding up on either extreme end of the specturm results in a snap-back effect to get themselves back to balanced scales.

So, the question to ask yourself is "Will I be satisfied playing just one game?" If the answer is yes, or if you think it could be yes, the truth is likely that you are searching for something else in games rather than game design, or the variated experience to be had in playing multiple titles. You are likely in search of strong community bonds, the carmaraderie that springs from a steady group of people who are likely to stick with one title and therefore in one guild, and will participate in building a common story.

The thing that is interesting that I have observed from afar in MMORPGs is how everyone knows the events of their online world and therefore share that thread in common. If there is a major offensive launched by one faction or another, if one faction is wiped out by a powerful enemy, everyone knows. A wandering traveller may come to join your guild, and turn out to be one of the few survivors of a given event that you have only heard of third-hand.

Admittedly, I have chafed for more than brief moments at the migratory nature of the denizens of Xbox Live, and how they leap from one title to another in a few month's time. There are many times that I invest $60 in a game and three months later, none of my steady friends are playing it; they have moved on to something else.

Additionally, there are very few persistent experiences in the Xbox Live realm. If someone wins a race, or a guy jumps from Lieutenant Colonel to Colonel in CoD 4, there is no story behind it to be shared. It just happens, someone may make a comment when you get together with that group of friends, but you quickly move on as if it is of no import.

There is a type or ****of gamer that the WoW model appeals to. A large chunk of the population sample of this customer base were not gamers when they first subscribed to WoW. The "core gamers" that make up the rest of the population have some inherent characteristics that allow the business model of WoW to appeal to them, and they in turn help keep it afloat. If you think some of those charactersitcs that have been discussed in this post define you well and close enough, then this venue may be one that is for you. As for me, I'll be on XBL, the PSN, and Xfire…playing one of a dozen titles that float my boat more so than the one. But there is room in the world for both types of gamers to exist. Until next time, take care…and game on.

- Vr/Zeux.>>

I've been asking both myself and lot of my friends and online associates about their feelings on Downloadable Content (DLC). As the console generation enters its 3rd year (4th for Microsoft), DLC has become less and less of a battleground, because everyone is pretty much offering the same stuff. I am not talking about audio and video content, because I look at those as separate market-places.

DLC refers partially to the "arcade" market-space. Each of the console manufacturers has some varaint of an online store-front to peddle their "light" games that you download to the accepted storage medium for that platform. Each manufacturer has a slightly different approach to this market-space.

Microsoft seems to be concentrating on offering legacy arcade and PC games, to capture the consumer's feeling of nostalgia. It also leverages the fact that finding legacy games and then making them run on today's hardware is often more pain than it is worth. The easiest way to play a legacy game is to find the original hardware it ran on.

Sony seems to be focused on offering titles from independent developers. This is because they already have a huge catalog of games to deploy for sale on the Playstation Store from the PSOne. Additionally, Sony is using the store a lot like STEAM for the PC, where they are offering full titles that you might otherwise buy at retail. Sometimes the games are sold via both logistics chains, but more and more, certain titles are only available via download from the PS Store.

Just as a note from one consumer, Sony's strategy has proven the lesser with regards to how much of my cash they have been the recipient of. I am a Cold War Kid, as I suspect a lot of 360 and PS3 owners are, because kids (and a lot of 20-somethings) don't make enough money to be able to frivously part with the amount of capital that was required to enter this console generation in the launch windows. As such, Microsoft has hit on all cylinders by offering 21st century ports (and in some cases upgrades) of titles that I plinked quarters at all day as a child. Sony's offerings of indy content? No thanks. Don't get me wrong. I think it is a good thing, and I think it is an important dynamic to impart to the industry. But I have yet to see a title that I personally want to play.

Nintendo is focused on making the vast majority of their offerings ports of legacy platforms that now have no home, as the original hardware platforms are now defunct and had no successor. In this realm exist the titles from Sega and titles that were originally available on the TurboGraFX and 3DO platforms. Nintendo has scored points with me as it has been fun revisiting those old Sega games that I once played. So where is Shadowrun? That's all I want to know. Still, a lot of Nintendo's offered conent is their own legacy content. Having never owned Nintendo hardware platforms until this generation, old Nintendo games were the exact reason that I never bought a Nintendo platform. I know that old Mario and Donkey Kong games for sale on the Virtual Channel are making Nintendo money hand-over-fist (like they need it), but not from me.

Where Sony may have struck paydirt is with their new Playstation Home central hub. I hate to admit it, but I have already spent money there. Home is a neat concept. It is neater when you have stuff that other people don't. It will be interesting to see how they develop it. While it is neat on the front-end, there is a dangerous precipice they are flirting on. If Home becomes a version of "The Sims" plastered in a Sony wrapper, there may be a customer lashback. Right now, they do not offer a lot of variety in the pieces that are available in the Home Mall. They need to offer some level of individual player customization. They also need to come up with some way that individuals have access to uniqe content for their character. Possibly based on their number of hours logged in a particular title, or based on the trophies they've earned. You would think that they would leverage these two firmware updates (their previous rollout of trophies and the new rollout of Home) into an integrated package that made players feel like they were getting the full deal. How hard would it been to have conceived of each player having the ability to place a certain number of their PSN trophies as 3D trophy assets on their mantle in their Home homes?

The second half of DLC that bears consideration is the expansion offerings of titles sold at retail. The retail games and their DLC are almost useless as a discussion topic, and have since rendered themselves useless as a competitive yardstick amongst the three console manufacturers. You release a racing game? You will offer DLC consisting of new tracks and cars. You release a shooter? You will offer DLC consisting of map packs, maybe new character classes, armor, or weapons, and the occassional add-on mission pack or campaign. These consistencies occur across titles released for the both the PS3 and the Xbox 360, including titles that are exclusive to one or the other. The Wii differs in that I have yet to see DLC specific to a released retail game title (of course I may have missed it).

However, DLC still remains relevant as a market dynamic more so for the industry itself than as a competitive advantage for one corporation over the other. DLC is a dual-edged sword I think, and I am not ready to sign-off on saying that it is inherently "bad" or definitively "good".

When DLC first launched (remember when we used to call them "microtransactions"?), it received a well-deserved bad rap due to the tendency for some publishers to nickle-and-dime you to death over chincy add-ons that were of questionable long-term value. I do not mind buying a map pack of 3-6 maps that I know are going to be in the rotation in a lot of rooms online. But I am not paying for a horse, and I do not concur with people being able to buy weapons or add-ons that they have not earned in the game, that they can then use in the game to boost online stats and especially when it is permitted in a multi-player (PVP) arena.

Since its initial inception, DLC has taken a much larger role in the market. In a recent podcast, I commented that the release of certain map packs and add-ons were garnering as much media attention as full-game releases. In fact, certain DLC has led to a better balance in the old market model of good titles only coming out in Q4. Now, big title add-ons sometimes lead to a title's resurgence in the spring and summer months and fill-out a gamer's timeline until we turn the corner into October. I regard this as a good thing, or at least a decent thing with some arguably good benefits to the industry. Games that I buy in the holiday season one year receive an update and/or add-on in the spring/summer, and the game continues giving me ROI through the next holiday season.

However, some of the chinciness continues. Releasing a game and then releasing DLC which is just a token or key to unlock content that is already on the disk is flirting with the cheesy side (ok, not merely flirting). Releasing a game that immediately has a significant amount of DLC available within a few weeks of its launch begs the question as to why they did not just delay release of the game in order to pack the DLC in (I will exclude Rock Band and Guitar Hero from this categorization).

So, that's my stance on DLC in general, but other gamers continue to ask questions, and a lot of us wonder if this market model could stand some evolutionary changes; or is this just the way it is going to be for the foreseeable future? Part of the problem with the DLC is its delivery medium, and its lack of persistence. A lot of us go through a second hardware set of a particular platform in a single console generation. With the PS3 and the 360 each having hard drives now, having to swap out hard drives when you upgrade is akin to upgrading or replacing a PC these days. A lengthy restore period can sometimes follow, and some services and hardware platforms have had to contend with unanticipated behaviors experienced by customers executing such upgrades when they are occuring for the first time in the product's life-cycle.

So the question I would ask is, if the DLC could be delivered to you via some other medium, would you be more accepting of its place in the market? If you could get the media shipped to you on a disc or some other media that you could then install, at the exact same cost as others pay for the DLC direct, would that interest you more? I have to admit, if this option were available, I might use it even though I live in the US and have access to a broadband pipe to download the stuff. This would prevent problems if I ever swapped out my PS3 or my PS3's hard drive and could prevent me from having to download all of the updates again.

For that matter, it is interesting that you can download PS3 firmware updates to a USB drive and then install from there. Maybe it would be nice, if they could figure out a way to police it to keep people from stealing DLC (which I admit would be difficult and a pain), if you could download the stuff for DLC to a thumb drive. Wouldn't it be neat to have all of your map-packs and arcade games backed-up onto a thumb drive? I reckon we are a long way off from a solution like that (like maybe never), but they are interesting possibilities to consider.

- Vr/Gull..>>

Don't worry. This rant is going to be short and to the point. Developers and publishers of racing simulations, stop making us drift.

Every gaming genre has its obligatory mechanisms that it forces people to endure. And every gamer has a genre-based mechanism that they despise for developers to force upon them. If you've been a long-time reader, you may recall my rant about the "level run-back" that I hate in First-Person Shooters. You know, you get the end of a level, and instead of there being a door, there is a stone wall. You look about furtively, expecting to find some new door open or something, but no. The level-designer actually now wants you to retrace your steps all the way back to some ladder, make-shift elevator, or window you crawled through...back at the beginning of the level. On the way back...watch out!!!! Of course those rooms that you thought you had cleared have magically respawned new enemies that are now just lying in wait to blind-side you as you come around a corner you believed was now safe. Rubbish.

This is lazy game design. The FPS genre is probably the rifest with these aggravating mechanisms. There seems to almost always be some goofy water-based level where you are forced to engage in underwater or at least surface swimming combat. Ditto for the inevitable point in the story where you get conked over the head and captured, all of your hard earned weapons are taken, and you are forced to earn them a second time, and complete some part of the level with just a knife; if you're lucky, you'll get a pistol. Rubbish.

The RTS genre has its share as well. The inevitable timed mission, where you have to stave off an attack for a specified period of time. Or what I call the "cripple mission", where you are only given access to infantry and have to stave off an attack by technologically superior opposing forces. Perhaps my most hated is the lame-duck "infiltration" mission. Here, after being granted command of sometimes whole armies, you are reduced to controlling one individual soldier and maybe three or four other (anemic) units. Of course, the single soldier must survive the mission, while concurrently being asked to basically run into an entire hornet's nest of enemy units to grab some MacGuffin that holds the key to the whole war. Yeah...I think if it was that important, I would send in a more robust force; or at least stage a massive diversionary attack somewhere else so the base would not have, like, the entire reserve force of the enemy basically camped out on its perimeter. More rubbish.

Of late, the racing sim genre has taken to a similar debilitating mechanic. Making sure you can't complete the game by forcing you to master drifting. Here is a hint: I don't like drifting; I like racing. No one is being paid millions of dollars to participate in drift races, while TOCA Racing drivers, GT Drivers, and Formula One drivers are making money hand over fist. Just because a bunch of dead heads hopped up on beer and drugs actually paid money to see The Fast and the Furious (more serious illegal substances were required to get those same people to see the sequels), does not mean that that style of driving needs to now be mandatory in racing sim career modes.

You know, I even accept the drag racing mode from Need for Speed: Underground as legit. I admittedly drive in automatic transmission most of the time (because I don't see the realism in driving in manual unless you actually have a wheel-and-pedals controller with a clutch and an actual shift-stick...and who has the money for that?), and I did not mind NFS:U forcing you to drive manually for a single event-type. Even drifting in NFS:U was acceptable, since if you failed to win a drift event, you just did not get that money. You could still go on to other events, and you cold still achieve all of the unlockables.

NFS: Carbon was the beginning of the bad turn, and, as much as I like the game, GRiD followed suit. In Carbon, drift events are part of territory control. It does not hit you with it in the first few territories, but further into the game there are territories with multiple drift events, so you can not take control of them without defeating more than one drift event. This is nauseating to the point of projectile vomiting.

Drifting is still not a universally accepted sport. It is a fringe motor sport, at best. What really torques me off, is, if you are going to foist a fringe event into the core of the game, how the heck does drifting get in front of rally racing? I would be much more interested in playing a few dirt track events instead of being forced to drift.

GRiD almost makes the effect worse. In this title, there are three geographic areas that you have to compete through in order to receive the maximum license levels available, and move on to compete on the global level. The three areas are the US, Europe, and Japan. More than half of the events in Japan are drift-based events.

Warning - GW Analogy/metaphor segue - One of the primary reasons I do not care for college football is that, at the end of every season, there is no definitive champion. Number One and Number Two never play each other, except in very rare instances, so which of the two of them is the better team is always open to controversy. I am not saying that the NCAA Championship is controversial every year, but that it is open to controversy every year, by definition of the system in which it is decided.

When you race another car, it is very clear who is first and who is second. It is not open for debate. When you run a sprint event, your time is your time. The clock does not lie. What is the scoring system for a drift event? Is it defined? I know that there is a software algorithm behind the scores, but the point is that, in this mode, the conveyance of the scoring being subjective is what is transmitted to the gamer. I've never felt like I've broken the code. I've had runs where I thought I was performing better in a drift event than my last run, only to finish the event and see a score posted that was lower than the last time. AI performance in drift events is also frustrating, as it varies between them being completely inept and posting scores nowhere near yours, and them being ridiculously proficient, blowing your score out of the water by magnitudes of as much as 2. Inn most drift-style events in sims to date, you never get to see AI on their drift runs, so you don't how they are slicing scores twcice as high as yours. This is particularly frustrating in GRiD, since, in each heat of a track drift event, there are fewer scoring posts on the track, but yet the AI driver wins every round with essentially the same score he posted in the first round, which is about 98,000 plus.

In the hey-day of Gran Turismo, before it was broken and when it was still a truly great racing sim, I remember running races repeatedly just trying to shave a second or two off of one or two critical corners to get the time I needed. That was what a racing sim should be.

Racing has a purity about it. A simulation of it should reflect that fact of its true nature. There should be no events that you can not figure out, because racing in straight forward. Yes, tweaking and tuning your car is more art than science at the highest levels. However, the foundations of it are founded solidly in mechanical and aerodynamic engineering. In most cases, the effect of a tweak is delineated right in the rule book or in the GUI itself. The only time "art" comes into it is when you are trying to figure out how to make individual tweaks play well together as a combined solution. This inclusion of drift racing is anathema to the racing sim experience because it breaks into that purity, hence breaking the immersion. You guys need to get rid of it. Make it a side-mode, or optional, or a means of achieving certain things in the game that you can't if you don't drift. But do not make it a barrier to completing the game, or a prerequisite to unlock other cars, items, or upgrades that you need to win non-drift events. What developer's really need to take away from this is that, usually, I am having a great time playing a racing title, and then I see that the next event I have to complete is a drift event and I want to throw the controller at the TV. The flow and my immersion into the game, particularly if it has a story-based campaign mode in it, are broken, and I am snapped back to the reality that I am just a rat in a digital maze. Now, where was that cheese again?

- Vr/Zeuxidamas..>>

Back home. Unfortunately, most of my time has been spent troubleshooting my car rather than playing in the computer room. Looks like the final upshot is that I need a new battery. Of course, the same fear that I have of going to the doctor has proven viable for the car shop. See, my belief is that if you never go to the doctor, they can never find anything wrong, so they can never "refer" you to three different specialists and run your medical bills through the roof. So the trip my car forced me into taking into the car shop just to get a new battery tripped two other alerts that I knew were coming...my 36K service, for which I was about 300 miles overdue for, and the need for new tires, which I knew I probably have needed for a while, but was going to wait until the dealer or the repair shop told me they were required. Now I know what Peter Parker feels like on an average day.

So I am now camped out in Merchant's Automotive and Tire, getting all three major events tended to, since my dealer service department is not open on Saturdays, and I fly out on Monday. I am working on the MacBook, with my AT&T Sierra Aircard 875U providing connectivity. Tunes are being provided by my iPod 80GB 5G, since I am in the process of downloading the latest version of iTunes via the AirCard. I just could not afford to leave the car at the airport parking lot and not be sure that it was going to start when I got back. The cost of this particular trip will sting for some time. I've already cancelled the trips I had planned today to Best Buy (for a 320GB hard drive upgrade for my COMPAL IFL-90, which is due to go with me on the trip to Florida this week) and GameStop (for Call of Duty: World at War for the PS3). I guess I should be happy that the guy recommended very good tires for the Mach 1, and cut me a very good deal on pricing on the whole service call...or so I was led to believe.

Well, in between all of that maudlin, I have gotten a few things done. I returned home last night about 4 PM (3 hours spent at a rest stop waiting on a service truck to administer to my initial discovery of the shot battery). After finding out that my bar-scene wingman had the kids for the weekend, I settled in for a night with the PS3. I checked out the Punisher: War Zone trailer...looks pretty cool. Seems like the third time is the charm for this franchise. It is interesting that, with Thomas Jayne receiving a much warmer reception for his portrayal of Frank Castle (but then who wouldn't after the Dolph Lundgren goon-up?), that they chose to go with yet a third actor for the role. I will say that, based only on what I have seen from the trailers, Ray Stevenson is the first guy who appears to be what I would imagine Frank Castle to actually be like. Bravo.

I also checked out the Prom Night trailer. Meh.

While I have yet to get a chance to play any of the demos I have downloaded since upgrading my PS3's HD (who cares when there are 320GB of capacity?), I still insisted on downloading the Dead Space demo. I don't think this will be a game that I pick up, as it is in a ****of game that I rarely finish. I am, in fact, working on a short list of maybe five games that I am going to (somehow) isolate some time to in order to finish them. So far, PainKiller! is on that list. I think I am just short of halfway through after this week on the road with the Gateway.

The one other game on the list so far is Prince of Persia...that's right, the 3D remake...that plays in 2D...still. But the game is still great. It is available for download now from the Playstation Store, and definitely is a title that contributes to the ROI on my PS3; one of my recent goals. The other title I downloaded was Street Fighter II HD Remix. This is a questionable purchase, as I have never been a Street Fighter fan. But having recently downloaded Eternal Champions on the Wii Virtual Console, it seems to be all about the 2D fighters these days. After I dump all of the cheddar for this car service, that may be all I can afford until next year.

I got about 5 minutes of Far Cry 2 multiplayer before I had to take a call. While I waited for the tow truck to arrive to jump my car this morning, I got about an hour of Fight Night Round 3 in. This title just never gets old. If I retire my PS3 eventually and all I have to show for it is a few careers of fighters in FNR3, maybe that will be ok. Still, that means I need to get moving. My current fighter is new after the HD change out since I chose to not backup my old game files.

I lit off the Gateway briefly this morning, since the MacBook was already packed for the trip to the service shop. My main purpose was to grab the photos I took of my buddy and his family from Thanksgiving. 53 photos taken in total, with 18 being from my "seventh lens", the Sony DSC-S750. Some of those photos actually looked better than the ones from the Sony Alpha a350; which justifies my exact reason for carrying it around with the "master camera". Sometimes a point-and-shoot will snap a better photo than the human being with the reasonably complex camera who is monkeying around with all of the settings (read, me). I plan on taking the cameras on the trip to Florida. Lens selection appears to be the 50mm FFL and the 75-300mm Medium Range Telephoto...not a bad mix.

That means taking the LowePro CompuDayPack. One more trip after this one and I'll have met my minimum requirement to start eyeing one of the booq bags that also double as camera and notebook bags. I have the rest of the loadout fragged, but it is on the Tilt, which is back at home, so I'll have to post that later.

I reckon I'll be back on the PS3 tonight. The Blu-Ray remote is turning out to be one of the best purchases I have made in recent history. It looks like all of the USB ports on myPS3 are shot. But I am not about to either buy a new one and give up my hardware-based backwards compatibility or send it in for repair. OK, maybe the latter...I may consider shipping it out while I at home for the holidays. It will be a toss up between it and the Gateway (to get its "W" key fixed so that I can get back to using standard WASD configurations for gaming and write and type like a normal human being). In the interim, my MacBook seems to be working out as an excellent PS3 controller recharger.

OK; that's it. I'm out. Until next time, take care. And keep the questions coming.
- Vr/Zeux..>>

I've been camped out at my friend's house in Virginia Beach for the Thanksgiving holiday. I actually had to do a double-pak for this trip. Four laptops. 2 for my outside of work projects, and then 2 for work (my company provided one and the personal laptop I use for work). I've been spending the working day on the 2 work laptops and then the evening on others. My buddy is like I used to be, with a  32-bit encryption key on his wireless network. Does he have any idea how much of a pain it is to enter a 32-bit encryption key into four laptops?

I had problems the first night as I was trying to connect with the Gateway P-6860FX. This is a tale of one choice leading to multiple results. I have been unable to get Zone Alarm to run on 64-bit Vista, so I use COMODO Firewall instead. Turns out that Comodo actually installs a Firewall driver that is paired in multiple instances with each of your computer's LAN connections. I had tried downing the firewall, and then completely exiting out of COMODO completely, to no avail. In each instance I was able to connect to my buddy's network, but could not gain internet access. At first, I thought we needed to cycle power to his router in order for it to recognize the new PC on the network and grant it full access. But I was loathe to do this for fear that it might spawn a two hour troubleshooting event if something went wonky with PCs that were already communicating on the network. I used my AT&T 875u Sierra Wireless Card for the first night. In another note on strangeness, for some reason my AT&T Tilt is connected via 3G at his house, but my data modem only connects at EDGE speeds.

The next morning, I was able to connect with my work provided HP nw8440 (running Windows XP and no software firewall) as well as my Dell XPS M1330 (running Windows Vista 64-bit, but not COMODO). I was stumped, but at least it keyed me in to the fact that it was something to do with the wireless settings on the Gateway, and not something inherent to 64-bit Vista. When I logged back into the Gateway later that day, I discovered the aforementioned COMODO Firewall driver in my Wireless Adapter Properties page. So I've toggled that off and the Gateway is surfing fine. I'll have to keep this in mind if I have any other problems with wireless connectivity with the Gateway. I am not ready to load shed COMODO; with this one exception, it seems to have fit the requirement the last several months. For now, it is just something to keep an eye on.

I have not been able to get AdAware 2007 to run on the Gateway this trip. This is my second iteration of this particular fault. The last time, I uninstalled and re-instsalled the latest AdAware version. While I was adverse to doing this now, I just remembered that I am not sure if that uninstall/re-install was done before the System Restore I did recently. Even if it was, it could just be that something was broken in the Registry during the System Restore that has to do with the AdAware install. My feeling yesterday was that Windows Defender (normally my secondary Anti-Spyware app) is working well, so maybe for the Gateway I would just roll down to a single Anti-Spyware app. However, I think I will give one more go with trying to uninstall and re-install AdAware.

I loaded some old episodes of Red Versus Blue onto the Acer Aspire ONE for this trip, and have since been playing them back with VLC Player. I still love the way VLC can not be defeated; pretty much throw any codec at it and it hits the web, finds the plug-in required for it, and away it goes. I have also finally jumped on the phenomenon of using the web to stream current TV shows. I've been using ABC.com for the first entering experiment. While not my normal ilk, due to all of the hype over the recent years, I used Dancing with the Stars and Desperate Housewives, both on the Gateway and on the XPS M1330, for my first test cases.

I got in a little "PainKiller!" last night before going to bed. I know that I always rant and rave about how Clive Barker's Undying is the scariest game I have ever played. But I gotta tell you...PainKiller had me jumping out of my skin last night, too.  In fact, because there is so much less theatrical workup to get you prepared for the thrills, it is a bit scarier when an enemy pops up beside you out of nowhere. This is a game that I could potentially finish, so I will continue slogging away at it today.

Next on the agenda is an update for the main site. I think I need to get back to the OpEd article I was writing up about my concerns about Windows 7.

With projects moving forward, I should also be looking intently at Black Friday sales, but honestly, there is nothing that I need or want that I either (a) actually have time to use or (b) is not going to be a hassle to initially set up and get configured well enough to my liking. A new TV sounds nice, but it could take weeks for me to figure out how to get rid of my current (floor model) TV. Plus, since it is not going to be another floor model, it means needing to get an entertainment stand, potentially new cables, and who knows what else. Of course, it is not just enough to get the TV. I'll need a receiver, maybe, that can accept optical inputs and a set-top Blu-Ray player. Nope, that definitely has to wait.

But for the rest of ya's, get out there, coordinate with your Black Friday Strike Teams so that everyone gets what they want; work out trades later. And shop some for the rest of us who will be staying at home. Happy turkey day, and take care.

  - Vr/GulliverJr.

I have been positively blah today, feeling unmotivated to do anything, not even this post. It is 7PM now, and maybe my second wind is kicking in, so I thought I would give penning a short entry a try. I am working from the Samsung Q1 tonight, with Windows Media player blaring Bon Jovi's Blood on Blood as my background working noise. I'll actually be going on vacation this week, albeit a working one. Below is the loadout kit for this trip:

 

Laptops:                       Gateway P-6860FX 17" Gaming Laptop

                                    Acer Aspire ONE Netbook

PVP:                             iPhone

Thumb Drives:               Lexar 128MB

                                    SanDisk CRUZ Drive 2GB (website files)

Headphones:                 Memorex Noise Canceling Headphones

Movies:                         Encoded Video's (Erik's MP4 File Archive on 

                                    the Gateway; I'll

also transfer some files to the Aspire ONE 

from my NAS)

DAP:                            iPod Nano

Primary Cell Phone:       AT&T Tilt

Equipment Bag:            booq Boa Case

Games:                       PainKiller! and No One Lives Forever 2

 

I have some other pieces of gear that I have to take since I will be working remotely, but I won't be using those for projects and play.

One of the guys from IT came over on Saturday for the first LAN event at my place since maybe 2006. We used the Main and Backup Towers and both performed well. Games in play were Unreal Tournament (Original) and Ghost Recon. I really have not played much Ghost Recon multiplayer, and hardly any on my LAN. From the experience we had, that title, despite its age, should be a blast if we can get four people over here running through Enemy Elimination Co-op.

I downloaded the New Xbox Experience update for the 360's Dashboard. It looks pretty sharp. While it is not a feature rich radical departure from the original Dashboard's functionality, a lot of the interfaces have been slipstreamed so that they are more efficient in the presentation of data. I particularly like the fact that now when you press the X-button, instead of getting the Dashboard flyover from the left as a slice, you get a simple box in the middle of your screen. Avatars are a curiosity, not much more, but I still made one (since I figured everyone else would).  All in all, regardless of whether or not the new GUI is a bit of goofiness designed to make casual gamers feel less overwhelmed by the interface, the fact is that the new GUI gives the 360 a new feel, as if you have just bought a new console and are using it for the first few times.

I also put some time in on the PS3 this weekend. I engaged in Far Cry 2's single-player campaign for the first time. It is a very Grand Theft Auto-ish experience, or perhaps it is more akin to Just Cause. It plays fine, although I still dislike the PS3 Controller's feel for FPS controls in comparison to the 360's. In Fight Night Round 3, however, the PS3 Dual Shock feels spot on, so I spent most of my time in that title after trying out FC2. I also finally got all of the CDs ripped to the PS3 that I wanted.

I finished watching Impromptu and Sleeping with the Enemy from NetFlix. Impromptu was a good 3-star flick...not overly interesting, but well acted. I surprised myself by liking Sleeping with the Enemy as much as I did. One of the last lines in the film is now on my list of all time favorites: "Please send someone quick; I've just shot an intruder." Classic. Transformers and The Caine Mutiny are potentially already down in the mailbox. Since I am already feeling blah, I may go down and grab Transformers, as I have wanted to see it for some time. I watched a couple of episodes of Dog Eat Man from the encoded archives on my NAS. I like the quirkiness of this show, but sometimes it is so far out there that an episode is not funny except for the opening and closing of the 30 minute show.

OK, that's about it for now. Tasks in the queue: I plan on spending some time exploring the Windows Media Player Guide; the web-based front end portal to Microsoft's entertainment menu. I also plan on trying out InkBall, a casual gaming title that comes with TabletPC configured PCs. On my list of project tasks is downloading an e-Book reader and my first few eBooks to get some more use out of my Q1. Finally, I have to spend some time organizing my Photos on the Q1 into Albums within Picasa, and writing some scripts for some very short skits. While I still need to do final processing of the film we shot last year before I engage on any further main projects, the skit-format shorts I want to work on will be of such small scale that they will not be an interference to the primary film project.

Until next time, take care.

            - Vr/Zeux.>>

 

 

 

I spent most of the week on travel, and being reminded of how much I do not like being forced to spend time with people that I would just as soon prefer to have nothing to do with. One of the unfortunate byproducts of being in a high-travel job. If only you could pick your co-workers like you could your friends. Anyway, I took a bunch of gear, and wound up getting very little time to use it. As a result, this particular installment of the post-trip gear report will be a little brief, but here goes.

Gear that went on this trip included the following:

 

Laptop: Dell XPS M1330

Game System: Sony Playstation Portable

Thumb Drives: Lexar 128MB

Lexar (Work) 1GB

SanDisk CRUZDrive 2GB (website)

Headphones: Sony MDR-V700s

Video: Encoded DVD Archive (Formula One Races and The 3 Stooges)

Digital Camera: Sony Alpha a350 dSLR

35-105mm Macro Zoom Lens

100-200mm Macro Zoom Lens

Sony DSC-S750 Compact Digital Camera

DAP: iPod Nano

Cell Phone: AT&T Tilt

Bag: LowePro CompuDayPack

Extras: CompactFlash Card Reader, SimpleTech 250GB Portable HD,

company Blackberry 8800, Sierra Wireless 875u Data Modem,

Plantronics Xplorer 340 Bluetooth Headset

 

I didn't bother mentioning the UMDs shown in the pre-flight photo. Those were one of the sets of things I did not get any time to use. Despite all of the effort downloading items to my PS3 and setting up and validating my PS3-to-PSP RemotePlay connection, I got no time to actually avail myself of it.

It was the first time on travel with the Dell, and it performed a-ok. I used it to uplink on a bridge-wing and OWA into my work email account and send a few emails we needed to get out to have some data analyzed. I watched a few iTunes videos on the flights out and back (wrapping up season one of Roswell). I am giving some thought to not bothering to purchase the extended 9-cell battery. I used to practically not care about battery power, but I have noticed that over the last year, I have become a battery snob. In fact, in some purchases it has become a prime requirement in making my final selection on a particular device. But on this trip, I was getting just over 3 hours of battery power, and that was while viewing iTunes video. Do I really need much more than that? We'll see. The $155 that Dell wants for an extended power battery is a little steep for a pack that may only buy me power that is in the margins of what is practical. I honestly do not think that I would use my laptop for more than 3 hours on an aircraft. The only benefit that I think I would gain is maybe not being so wrapped around the axle about finding a seat near an electrical outlet on layovers, which can sometimes be a pain.

The Dell's CCFL screen worked ok for doing some low-level image editing on the go, which is why I took the CompactFlash Card Reader; to transfer photos from the a350's flash-cards to the XPS. However, the crown for best image-editing screens in my current crop of laptops stays with the Gateway P-6860FX and MacBook Pro.

As expected, the Sony a350 performed perfectly for taking photos. The only real site-seeing I did was right on the harbor directly outside my hotel. My penchant for forcing myself to find the right pictures regardless of what lenses I am caring certainly exceeded my capability. On the second day of photography, I came up against the decommissioned aircraft carrier, MIDWAY, armed only with my 100-200mm MacroZoom lens. I was just not able to get far enough away from the thing to really do anything well with my camera. I did not want to go to any great lengths to find the right shot as I was with someone and did not want them to be held up waiting for me to find a perch across the street. So I was left with only shots of the stern-gate, brow banners, and control tower. Oh well, you can't win them all.

The real hero of the trip was my LowePro CompuDayPack (CDP) that I picked up just before leaving. I really wanted the company's slightly better product, the FastPack 250. However, these were only available at retail for a short time. The CDP was my lower-cost alternative to buying a combination laptop and camera bag from my preferred electronics bag stylist, booq. What I would really like is a booq Python Pack or Python Pro. But with these bags scaling upwards from $250, and me already owning more bags than one man really needs, I actually had to apply (for perhaps the first time), some limitation on my unreasonable desire for quality electronics. To pay that much to add another bag into the rotation that I would not always have a need for (as I do not take my dSLR on every trip) was just not viable. Adding the CompuDayPack for $80, however, was not a bad pitch. It would do the job, not be much skin off my nose, and could just sit there and be available if and when I needed it. Granted, once I have gotten sufficient use out of it, and once I have some time to see whether or not a booq bag is a justifiable expense further down the road, that option will be placed back on the table.

As a combination camera/laptop bag, the CDP did better than ok. Unlike some of my booq bags, it does not have a lot of extra space at the top of the bag, which causes my booq's to stick out from underneath the under-seat storage on aircrafts sometimes. It fits quite snugly beneath, and is not so bulgy along the back that it causes a hassle getting it underneath the seat. I thought that the only way I was going to get a camera and a laptop with me on travel was going to be to get a rolling hard-case that would check planeside, as I already have another carry-on that I have to take with me every time I travel. Either that package or the camera would have to go into this bag, which is why it would need to be a hard-case. With the CDP, I can carry the dSLR two to four lenses, as well as extra batteries, flash-cards, lens-hoods, and my point-and-shoot. That's just for camera gear, and all of that goes into the lower-compartment. The two upper compartments carry my laptop and all of the same electronics gear that much larger booq bags carry. In fact, if I wanted to carry a 15" laptop or smaller, and my Acer Aspire ONE netbook or Samsung Q1 Ultra UMPC, the CDP could accommodate that as well. The CDP is a very vanilla looking bag, which is one of the reasons I was not a fan of going with it. It is a little less stylish than my normal gear selection. However, at least for this first trip, it proved to be an effective workhorse. Well, not everything that looks pretty is actually the best choice, in many things. This bag looks like it will be putting in a lot of miles with me, my cameras, and my laptops, average looks notwithstanding.

- Vr/G.>>

 

I have been very keen to get some positive return on investment out of my PS3. I paid a good chunk for this hunk of black plastic and circuit boards, about $50 more than retail, plus the additional cost of shipping. I paid this on order to get one in the launch window and not have to stand in line or risk getting mugged on my way out to the parking lost. When the PS2 came out, there was a store stock shortage as well, but I was in the Navy and spending time underway, so waiting for one to be available in the stores was not a big deal. It took about 6 months for that inventory shortage to clear up, and I still had to buy a bundle to get my hands on a PS2. But I actually saved money on that purchase. And I got a ton of use out of my PS2. I took it with me on a 6-month deployment, racking up a good amount of game time, especially in Madden 201 (getting through about 10 seasons of rewarding franchise play), Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, and Tekken Tag Tournament.

To get a PS3, I had to go the eBay route. $50 is not small change, but it was also better than the price gouging that some others took. I bided my time until the Thanksgiving holiday, when units were not moving very fast on eBay, and the bottom was just starting to drop out of the extravagant overages that some sellers had been able to get away with. Hawking sales between 2 and 3 AM landed me a unit that went for the aforementioned $50 over retail, and I had to pay for the shipping. No biggie.

Of course, since going through that effort, I have only 12 games to play on my PS3, 4 of which are actually PS2 titles, and one of which I have finished (Resistance: Fall of Man) and only keep around for multiplayer. Of the remaining 7, only three of those were purchased outside the launch window: Battlefield - Bad Company, Ninja Gaiden: Sigma, and Far Cry 2. So the reality is that, in the two years since I purchased the PS3 on eBay, I have really only bought 3 new games since introducing the unit into the 'WERKZ. I have hardly spent any time in the campaign modes of most of my PS3 games. The two notable exceptions are Need for Speed: Carbon and Fight Night: Round 3, two EA games that actually have highly addictive campaigns.

The good thing is that I am pretty comfortable in my belief that the PS3 will be the flagship console for Sony for another 3 years. They have sunk so much into bringing this hardware to a competitive place in the market that they are not about to abandon it for the next unit in the evolutionary console cycle. And, truth be told, the next Microsoft hardware set is likely to just render hardware that is relatively on par with the PS3, rather than drastically surpassing it.

The primary issue that continues to hamper the PS3 is the lack of community that surrounds almost every aspect of the 360. This is not entirely the fault of Sony, at least I do not think so. 2 years since taking ownership of the console, I think the number of people on my friends list is around 7, 3 of whom I actually know or work with. In sharp contrast, in the 3 years that I have owned my 360, I have had to typically go in and prune my Friends List in order to let new people on. I am not sure that I know how or why this phenomenon exists, I just know that whenever I want to hit Xbox Live, or the web, or the Xbox Live website, I am greeted with a host of options to communicate and share ideas, thoughts, and differences of opinion with other 360 gamers. When I want to do this with PS3 owners, it seems to be a little more difficult.

I have not seen a large population of clans who have a strong PSN presence. Admittedly, I am not even a member of the PS Forums, a deficiency that I will remedy this weekend in order to gather further impressions on the contrast between the communities that surround these two platforms. Still, at the end of the day, it is the impact that the community has on the in-game experience that is the key factor in determining how much ROI I am getting out of the PS3.

What hampers the PS3 more than anything is the lack of strong voice implementations in the library of games that I have. I have tried to get into Need for Speed: Carbon online. But hardly anyone ever has a mike. When they do have a mic, comms have been spotty at best. When you cannot talk to the people you are racing with, it makes it hard for the game to be immersive. You cannot compliment them or receive compliments on cars' customization, which is one of the big immersion tickets that NFS: Carbon features. There is less of an allure to pimping out your ride if you cannot hear anyone say anything about it.

I have also tried to pour myself into Resistance: Fall of Man. In R:FoM, you have to click the left analog stick in order to talk, a completely idiotic mechanic that I have railed against in many writings. The surface result is that most gamers will not make the effort, because pressing down on the same control surface they are using for forward/backward movement and strafing is not something most highly competitive gamers want to sacrifice. The deeper result is that playing a round of R:FoM is very akin to playing a shooter on the PC, most of which do not come with integrated voice support, so most people play online with no voice comms. So even when you are enjoying the online experience, you cannot communicate any thoughts to anyone you are playing with.

When I am presented with the deeply community-based experiences available in Call of Duty 4, Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, Forza Motorsport 2, Project Gotham Racing 3 and 4, and GRiD on the 360, it gets hard to justify spending time on the PSN at the opportunity cost of being on XBL.

I had thought that the title that was going to rescue my PS3 was going to be Battlefield: Bad Company. There are a lot of things that BBC does well, and improves upon, but at the end of the day, it is just a revamped Battlefield: 2 Modern Combat. It took me a few rounds to see through the veneer of the newer, brighter color palette in use, but the GUI is largely unchanged. You start each multiplayer spawn session by selecting your **** and then your spawn point, depending on which ones are under your control and where your squad-mates are. You have a host of vehicles to drive, including combat choppers, several open wheeled-ground vehicles as well as closed-wheel (Humvees), APCs, and Tanks. There is not shortage of ways to get around.

That is, to get around on the map in-game. Getting around in the GUI is still a convoluted effort that is frustrating for such a simple thing as gaming online. It is difficult to tell whether or not this is driven by EA DICE, a developer that I am not a fan of where it comes to design choices, or something driven by the PS3's innate GUI tendencies. Inviting a friend to a game is nowhere near as simplified as it is in the 360 environment, which is always integrated into the 360's Dashboard. You are taken to an empty list of people you can invite, then you need to go into your XMB interface for your PS3 (the equivalent of the 360's Dashboard), and then check-mark the people in your PS3 friend's list to invite, then click the OK button. But there is no confirmation like you get on the 360 that the invite has gone out. You are then brought back to the BBC in-game invite list, which should now be populated with the names you checked off in the XMB. But you have no indication that they are accepting the invite or what they are doing at all. It is also unclear as to whether or not you are supposed to wait in the pop-up menu or if you can go back to the game-lobby configuration screen to set up the game you want to start. It just should not be that hard and it should be more intuitive.

In-game, as I played another session this morning, the lack of voice persistently detracts from the game experience. I checked into a game of Conquest, which is a standard attack and defend gaming profile. There are a series of gold crates that one team has to defend, 2 at a time, while the offensive team attempts to penetrate the defensive line, arm charges on the crates, and wait for the charge to detonate. Alternatively, the offensive team can destroy the crates by pumping rounds of various types of conventional ammunition into the crates until they are destroyed. Game play is pretty neat and is, at the basic level, very enjoyable. But the team I was on got progressively worse as each round dragged on. While on defense, it seemed like only a couple of us detached from our on-going efforts to get back to our crates when we received notification that charges had been planted on them. Most of the team was camped out in sniper positions waiting for the enemy to penetrate our lines. At one point, I sat and watched a guy pump an RPG round into one of our crates and destroyed it when a charge was planted, instead of leaving his comfy protected spot and moving down to the crate to disarm the charge and take out the enemy camped around the crate.

While embarked in an armored vehicle with another guy, I was on one of the anti-personnel mounts. I spotted a tank moving in on our flank, but because voice chat is broken in BBC the exact same way it is broken in the 360 version of Battlefield 2, I was not able to call out the enemy tank moving in on our right. The tank driver had the mount trained in the opposite direction, focused in on peppering enemy ground troops with the main battery. Needless to say, my anti-personnel rounds did little to concern the enemy tank and we were promptly dispatched. Similar events occur routinely when in a helo and other vehicles. I will say that some of my frustration is alleviated by not wearing my headset. Giving up on voice entirely means that at least my ears are not sweating inside the ear-cups listening to nothing, and so at least I am more comfortable while I am wishing I was in a 360 game with decent voice comms. I will not lay all of this blame on the PS3, as EA DICE games, and EA games in general, have proven to be buggy with regards to voice comms in just about every console experience I have encountered in this generation.

I intend to persevere with my effort to wrench some decent ROI out of the PS3. I will say that my experience with it as a Blu-Ray player has been excellent. I have recently used it to watch Dreamgirls, The Brothers Grimm (both from NetFlix), and Live Free or Die Hard (from my personal Blu-Ray collection), and am chomping at the bit to finally get around to watching Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. But of course, I did not buy the PS3 to use explicitly as a Blu-Ray player. This is a feature that was foisted on me and other consumers by Sony. I will say that at this point I have garnered more ROI out of the PS3s as a Blu-Ray player then as a gaming platform. While I am not pleased with that fact, at least it is some consolation. Oh, well, the journey continues. Until next time, take care and game on.
- Vr/Gull.>>

My portable electronics of choice this week: the Samsung Q1 Ultra and my MacBook. I spent some time at the coffee shop over the weekend with the MacBook Pro, as well, mostly participating in some of my usual forums. I have been using the Samsung Q1 to view a few movies and downloaded videos. I watched Seven as well as a couple of videos of Red Versus Blue, which I have not watched in some time. I had some problems with the D-Link DNS 343 NAS over the weekend while making a highlight video of a co-worker's kid for his Lacrosse recruiting video's for college. In my attempt to get it [the NAS] recognized again on my network, I think I must have dumped my D-Link DIR-615 Wireless Router's network settings. Most of the times I have experienced issues seeing the NAS, it is with PC's on the Wireless Router side of my two-router in-home network.

I have since restored the router and it is visible by all of the machines on the network again. I had a temporary fear that I was starting to see the same type of issues that I experienced with the DIR-615's predecessor, a NetGear Wireless-G Router. It seems that most of the problems I experienced were not centered on the router, but things I did to myself in the attempt to restore connectivity network-wide with the NAS. I think I caused the NAS problems as well, probably when I did a re-start of the box, or maybe it was knocked off the network during one of the periodic power outages I get in my apartment when a thunderstorm hits. One of the tech projects and purchases I really need to get off of my butt about is purchasing multiple UPS's for the computer room. Anyway, things are ok now, and in fact I am transferring copies of Elizabeth: the Golden Age and Next from the NAS to the Q1 across the wireless section of the network as I type this.

The Q1 is one of the PCs that I run without iTunes. While I don't mind Windows Media Player, and I think it has grown over the years, I still have problems with its attempt to automatically download various video codecs. In its place, my favorite other app for multi-media use, and specifically video playback, is VLC Media Player. This is a great, low-fat, freeware app to use, especially on portable platforms. It comes in especially handy when contending with my current video library, as anything I have encoded since late of 2006 (when I went totally iTunes/iPod for my portable needs) has been in H.264 format.

I have Picasa loaded on the Q1, as well, and one of my other ongoing projects has been to transfer photos from permanent storage on the NAS back to the Q1 for build-up of some photo albums. I am admittedly not very sentimental, but since I have invested a lot of time and financial resources in my rediscovered photography hobby, I figure it is not that bad an idea to have some digital photo albums for viewing when I am in transit. I did not actually get around to setting up the photo albums, but at least I dug through the master image archive and sorted out the folders that hold my 2008 photos. I've also been camped out on the sofa with the Q1, surfing the web and browsing files on the NAS while watching WWE RAW on the big-screen. Ain't life grand? Oh yeah, I also probably have not reported that the TabletKiosk USB Keyboard (foldable) came in, and I've been tapping out a few articles on it, as well. Works fine...no issues. I figure it will serve me in good stead while on travel.

On the MacBook, I have been watching episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond out of my DVD archive of encoded video files. Periodically I do a backup of the master encoded video archive on the NAS onto DVD. The current disc I have been going through has files in various formats, including .AVI and .m4p's. The professional version of Quicktime seems to be handling these, as well. I've (obviously) also been tapping out a few blog posts on the MacBook. The time has rekindled my memories of how much I adored this machine when I first bought it, and admittedly still do. It is my primary machine for managing my iTunes archive and is my sync machine for my iPhone, so it sees routine use at least weekly (when I am not traveling). However, my admiration for the MacBook Pro's design frequently overshadows it. Perhaps the potential upgrade to one of the new, aluminum chassis and black keyboard MacBooks next summer will bring this product line back to the fore of my consideration. My time spent with the new models in Best Buy last week did impress with me with the new MacBook's displays.

Now to the weekend nightmare story of my sideline business of doing videos for people. OK, so I don't get paid, and it cannot legitimately be called a business. If there has ever been an event that has maximized my ROI for all of the gear I horde, this was it. The raw videos came recorded on DVDs. DVDs that seemed to have been encoded and formatted on some Samsung DVR or a Samsung camcorder itself that used a proprietary format. While I could see the expected .VOB files, several other files came back as being in an unexpected format. I tried just about every OS that I use to just copy the files onto a system hard drive...WindowsXP, Windows Vista 64-bit, and Mac OS X Leopoard. When the system failed to copy the files in Leopard, I knew that I was in for a battle.

I broke out my rarely used 3.5mm-to-coax cables for video and audio and tried to run a playback of the DVDs in real-time from my portable DVD player (whose battery has given up the ghost and now only plays when on its wired power supply) to my DVR. To my dismay, the old-****paper sticker labels that the original video editor had used on the DVDs were throwing the portable DVD Player (and just about every other optical drive in my inventory) for fits. On each of the two attempts, I walked back into the living room to find the DVD playback on the portable player frozen and the disc making incredibly awful noises in the drive. In fact, as I struggled through this project, I was amazed that none of the original DVDs actually destroyed any of my DVD drives, as each placement in a DVD player yielded similarly horrific sounds.

I eventually tried the MacBook's OS X Tiger to try and get the individual VOBs off the DVDs. Instead of trying to rip all of the video files, as it seemed to be the .BUP and .IFO files that were the primary culprits, I isolated down to just the main object files that I really needed. I encountered some success with this, but as I rolled through each of the DVDs, my success rate at extracting the .VOBs dropped to below 50%. Unacceptable.

Finally, I turned to my last weapon...the Toshiba M305-S4819's LINUX partition. Super Voltron-mode, enabled. The LINUX OS, I think due in main part to the fact that it didn't care about the errors apparently present on the DVDs, succeeded in ripping every file with the exception of about two from the 4 DVDs. Once I had the files ripped, I connected the SimpleTech Cayenne 250GB Hard Drive that I use for archive storage of work files and dumped the files to it. I wanted to transfer the files to my NAS, so that I could work with them form any machine on the network, but I had not restored connectivity as discussed above, and the Toshi was, at the time, not able to see it on the network. I then took the drive to my Gateway P-6860FX laptop (running Vista 64-bit) and used the 64-it Vista version of Nero 7 to recode the folders into a DVD that would be playable and, most importantly extractable, from a standard format DVD on any DVD player. I maybe could have used the files from the hard drive, but my plan was to use Windows Movie Maker (WMM) to actually create and edit the video, and I did not know how it would react to the files in a folderized format.

That was maybe a good call, as when I went to use WMM (from my Main Tower Desktop running Windows XP Service Pak 3), I realized that the only files it will handle are encoded files of various formats; no raw VOB files. I had also discovered the same issue during the previous travails and attempts to work with the files in Final Cut Express HD in Mac OS X. Since the videos were already of poor quality on the DVDs, and further downgrading had been experienced in the rip, transfer, and recode, I did not want to risk losing that much more video quality by again encoding them and then exporting the video back to DVD. So I turned again to Nero 7, and specifically the Nero Vision sub-app.

I ran into a few problems trying to apply Text and Transitions to the video as I edited. I was getting worn down, as I had been up until 3AM the first night just trying to get the original video extracted (thank goodness for daylight savings time and it being the "fall back" weekend). I then checked the main tower's maintenance log (and thank goodness that I came up with maintaining one of these for each Windows PC in an Excel spreadsheet a few years ago) and realized that I had never gotten around to upgrading the Main Tower's Nero install to the 7.10 update. Another fortunate practice of mine then availed itself, in that I keep all of my software app updates stored on the NAS. The 7.10 update was still there, from having downloaded it late last year as I needed the update to get Nero to work on my Vista laptops. I installed the update and was up and running Nero Vision with none of the (same) app crashes that had plagued me for two or three hours.

From there, I got the video edited and burned to DVD in good order, making two versions, one with background music, one without. I was not able to massage transitions into it because I forgot an important lesson I had learned some time ago that you need sort transitions as you connect the clips, or else it slides your timeline around, making the video itself shorter, and moving your text flyovers to the right in the timeline, making everything out of time-sync from your original plan. Surprisingly, the "customer's" wife and kid liked the video (and actually prefer the one with the background music, which I was not certain would go over well), which I personally regarded as not my best work, and just want me to move the text flyovers to the bottom of each clip that they present themselves in. I really want to go back and get transitions into the video, but I am not certain that the clips themselves are assets in the project library. If they are I could move them out and then put transitions in, followed by the clips, and so on down the line. Even if I am able to do so, I am concerned about the time involved since I still had some app crashes in NERO Vision even after I did the update. This reminds me that despite my complacency with certain software apps (having to use one of my recurring electronic upgrade opportunities is never sexy when it is used for new software), I need to be as actively engaged in the software side of my hobby as I am with the hardware.

Anyway, I'll probably take another swipe at the project tonight, as I took the day off today and have gotten a little more computer time into my day than usual. I'll move the text to the bottom of the screens, as the solution to that is a known. I'll take one attempt at re-compiling the video with transitions. If NERO gives me problems, or if the clips are not self-contained assets now, or if I still get time-sync moving all over the place, I'll just have to give up. Oh well, I guess I cannot hope to get everything right. Wish me luck!!!
- Vr/Z.