5 posts tagged “pc”

 As you are probably aware, I have been looking in to getting a top-spec PC to run my various OSes on under Vrtualisation and use of partitioned hard drives. Also, as I am starting to do some more creative and development work it will be nice to get a more future-proof system and something to play Crysis on...

 I am veering towards a Core i7 system, purely because I've had issues with AMD systems in the past and, basically, if I'm going to pay £2000+ for a system I want to have something that is top of the line, so that it will be less likely to be obsolete within a year when the next crop of games comes around and Adobe brings out the latest Creative Suite. Having worked with SGI and Apple systems in the past, I want something that looks good on the desk and which screams "creative" to clients, so a beige box is out of the question. I know it sounds stupid, but my studio is all white and I like a system that will stand out on the desk and look good - partly out of vanity (I like my workspace to look good), but also because things like that make a difference in giving confidence to clients. After all, a beowulf cluster of home-built PCs is just as good as a dedicated rack server, but which would you trust your mission-critical data to?

 However, whilst I was quite comfortable to build a custom system, the impatient part of me can't wait to collect all the components before I can use the system. So, could I find a pre-built system to suit that I can reasonably afford - that's a big question, as pre-built "gamer" systems tend to fall into two camps: those that are built by small companies to order, but which reflect the off-the-shelf nature of such outfits - they'll work brilliantly, but look like a dog's dinner - or those from the "big name" brands which are usually over-priced, under-perform but at least look like a complete system, rather than a collection of parts. I have memories of a Dell I once used that, once it had a top-flight NVidia card from their configuration list, it ran so hot that the case smelled permanently of burning plastic. So, there is a need to be wary, but in the intervening time there have been a few high points - Alienware, being the notable example.

  Ignoring the recent acquisition by Dell, Alienware was a reasonably small fish, making high-end gaming and creative machines that had a real boutique feel to them - the brand is strong and the system design is usually first-class. However, they aren't cheap. Recently, too, I have noticed a lot of messages on the net about Alienware suffering a drop in quality (presumably as they become more commodity-focussed under Dell's ownership), whilst their cost is still equivalent to a maxed-out Mac Pro, although the raw performance in gaming terms may well be higher.

 

In my trawling of the internet, however, I came across a system that might well tick my boxes - I had been looking at a Core i7 system, with 12GB or DDR3, dual ATI 4870X2s, 6TB of storage and a Lian Li Ati branded red Armoursuit case - and it is made, of all people, by Acer.

 The predator G7700 runs a Core2Duo, 4GB of RAM, has 1.28GB of Storage and a pair of Geforce 9800GT cards, so why does it appeal? Well, the price, basically. I can pick one up for £1700, then buy RAM, drives, Motherboard, Core i7 920 and Dual ATI 4870X2s and still end up paying out less than I would have for my custom sytsem. The drives are hot-swappable, which is a bonus, as I wanted the huge storage to enable me to strip the system drive, then mirror it, whilst having a separate mirrored storage drive. The out-of-the-box reviews are all surprisingly favourable and, well....just look at it.

  This is a truly eye-catching system that, when paired with the matching monitor and a Razer Lachesis keyboard it will certainly turn heads. It's a bit love-it-or-hate-it, but you certainly can't miss it. I personally love it and I will be hopefully picking one up soon!

Well, it's the end of an era at my place. An Englishman's home may well be his castle, but when an Englishman's wife is having a baby, very soon his habit of hoarding old computers comes into view and he needs to clear out the spare room and the heap of machines in his lounge before he is catapulted over his castle's wall via trebuchet (or angry wife). Thus, I'm selling off my old SGI and other hardware to make room for the forthcoming addition to the clan. Fortunately, because my wife is wonderful (and because we have a fairly roomy house), I am still allowed my studio as a retreat, so I can get my fix for wargames, modelling and computer-based tinkering there, as long as I have room for the odds and ends I need for the times I work from home and, more importantly, have space to move.

 I'll be sad to see the old workhorses head off to new owners, but I hope that the new owners appreciate them as much as I do and treat them nicely. I have no doubt that this will be the case, though - SGI fans are pretty fanatical about these boxes. On the upside, given that VMWare and Virtualisation are the buzzwords of the minute, I thought what I'd do was build myself a super-high tech PC workstation and then run things like NeXTStep in VMWare so that I can be as nerdy as I like, yet not have to have 15 machines on my desk. The real benefit is that I get to play that most enjoyable of games - Micro Mart shopping!

 This is a variant on the age-old Auto Trader fantasy shopping - give yourself an imagined budget and then see what four-wheeled gems you can get for the money whilst passing time in the bathroom with the latest issue of the weekly car sales magazine. The subtle twist here, as you may have guessed, is that you use a copy of Micro Mart (or some other advert-stuffed PC magazine) to build up the ultimate system.

 Given that I want to run Vista Ultimate (at least until Windows 7 comes out - the techboards are alive with positive rumblings about this upcoming OS, so I am looking forward to a decent OS), Linux (possibly Ubuntu, or maybe I'll stick with Lycoris as I already have it, or go back to SuSE, which is what I started out with many moons ago), and then maybe Solaris, NeXTStep, etc, under VMWare, I need storage - preferably multiple drives (one Windows, one "other OS", one for Video editing and one for work. Ideally, I'd like the lot to be mirrored, but I might go for four 1TB drives, one partiioned with the various OSes, the other for data, then mirror the pair. Western Digital Caviar with 32mb cache? That'll do nicely...

 I'd go for a Core i7 CPU (The 940 mid-range one, not the 960 Extreme, as that's a £1000 near enough, and to be honest, the performance boost won't justify it). I have my eye on an ASRock motherboard designed for creating a Quad SLi system (4 PCIe 16x slots) and a butt-load of DDR3 RAM. So, that'll lead me to a 1796mb Nvidia GTX295 and three GTX260s with 800mb-ish each running in SLi format to allow the use of CUDA technology to create a beast of a GPGPU computer (basically, Nvidia technology allows you to run some OS functions and some things, such as SETI@home, etc, on the GPUs, taking laod off of the CPU) - the aim is to ensure that all my little apps are tailored to use CUDA or Open CL so that the system absolutely screams for rendering, etc. To give an idea, the Nvidia are selling systems based on this tech (but using only 512mb Quadra cards) as deskside supercomputers and the performance is mind-bending. Yes, it costs, £7k-ish, but you'll blow away an SGI that cost £30k+ a year ago or, put it another way, it's capable of the sort of data throughput that makes a Core Duo machine without SLi look like a pocket calculator. Add in 12GB of RAM (Corsair Dominator DDR3 running at 1600MHz, of course).

 Blu-Ray or HD-DVD? Well, now you can have a drive that burns Bluray and reads both formats - two of those, please (one for read, one for write - better to save the wear on hardware) and a nice LG 30" flatpanel in black with 4000:1 contrast and 3ms response time. Better add an XiFi Fatality Pro soundcard to get the best out of those movies, too...

 Finish off with wireless 300MBit network adapter, modular PSU, Razer Keyboard and mouse...got to love the thin black slab with blue lighting - very Sci-Fi...then a water-colling kit, as this lot will be HOT. Then I just need the case to pack it all in to - I'd love this to be the white or laser-cut alloy version of Isotopes iX case, but I don't think that'd work, so I'll be looking for something in aluminium that looks like a Cray or HAL9000 - I want it to intimidate, yet look refined. Unless I scale back the number of GPUs and go for the Isotope...hmm, interesting.

 A while ago I posted about the little G3 iMac and the PowerBook G3 I bought and how I thought they were great, which I am sure you remember and, given that I am typing this on the PowerBook, I think it's safe to say I haven't changed my mind just yet. So, when I was recently left to my own devices for a week, I thought I'd investigate this passion for so-called "obsolete" computer stuff. Or, more precisely, Macintosh stuff.

 There is a very good reason I stayed away from the PC side of things - they are not in any way inspiring. I can recall my first 396SX machine, but I don't wish to relive that experience. No way am I going back to voluntarily creating DOS batch files just to get a game to work, or having to manually edit Config.sys or Autoexec.bat files in order to get Windows to work, no matter how cool I thought "Catacomb: The Abyss" or "The Rocketeer" were. Besides, I can happily run them on my Vaio as it's still fundamentally x86 architecture.

 So, what's so appealing about old Mac stuff? Well, from a purely personal perspective, it goes back to the time I was going to get a computer for studying and doing my GCSE in Computer Studies on. Pocket money, birthday and christmas money and a generous father meant I had about £1500 saved up and I tried out a Macintosh Classic and an LC with 13" colour monitor. Compared to the 12MHz 286-based RM Nimbus harddisc-less machines at school (and they were good for the time, so how old do I feel?), both the Macs felt light years ahead in what they could do, but I couldn't afford the LC, the screen, software and a printer, and my dad wasn't keen on me spending hours in front of a 9" black and white screen. In the end, I was cajoled into buying the 386 and, whilst it did the job, I always felt a bit let down.

 Having been a teenage computer geek, I obviously read Personal Computer World regularly (it used to be interesting and covered Mac and Unix as well as DOS - windows was only at 3.0/3.1 at that point) and I harboured a desire to work on machines such as NeXT, Sun and, the Holy Grail - a Silicon Graphics workstation. Unix, with a friendly GUI-led operating system that had multimedia, 3d and digital audio support in 1992? That was the stuff of dreams. In fact, a review of the Iris Indigo stated that whilst the Indigo cost nearly £15,000, as opposed to an average of £1,000 for a 386/486 PC, it was definitely worth the money as it was far more productive than trying to do the work on 10 or more PCs.

 

 Later in life, whilst working as a software developer, I worked on SGI machines and they were truly as good as I'd hoped they would be. I bought myself an SGI Indigo on eBay for £150 (MIPS R4400 processor upgrade at 150MHz, with 192Mb of RAM and the Elan graphics, with 21" inch monitor) some time ago and I loved it.

 Given that it was made in 1993, my dad (who is now 66 and who has zero experience of video editing) was able to find his way around and tinker with some video clips within ten minutes. I would personally say that the only systems worth using are a Mac running OSX (with Classic supported), a NeXT machine or an SGI machine running IRIX. Anything else is compromised.

 Eventually, I bought myself a swanky new Powermac G4 (I was a early adopter of the G4) running OS9, then later OS X. It was everything I hoped it would be - usable, stable, reliable and a joy to work on. To put it in perspective, I later ran my own business and the Mac G4 was the preferred choice for video editing despite the fact it was sat next to a hugely expensive dual Xeon workstation with 4GB of memory. It just worked better and gave less hassle. Not only that, but I could probably sell the G4 setup for £200 today, despite it's age, whereas the windows machine is essentially worthless. Look on eBay for a used Powermac G5 (a machine that is some 4 or more years old now) and compare that to the cost of a Dell running a four year old Pentium. The price difference is down to the fact that Macs are usable for far longer (their obsolescence is far longer in coming). Windows bloats and bloats and you spend so much time fighting bad OS coding and built-to-a-price hardware, whereas the expensive (comparitively) Apple machines are still good as a workhorse years down the line. If you're more concerned about getting something done than about having the latest new toy, then buy a Mac. You won't ever regret it.

 So, what does this have to do with my original point? Well, aside from an urge to pick up a Mac Classic (or, ideally, a Colour Classic II) for the sake of nostalgia, my love of my old Powerbook G3 means that I'm not likely to be playing Quake 4 anytime soon (ok, I have a PS3 and a PSP, but I was talking about computers!), so I looked into the world of abandonware games. My word, there's a ton of cool things you can play on your old Mac and, because in those days we thought the Megadrive (Sega Genesis to our US friends) was graphically amazing, it means gameplay had to be more engrossing and plots had to mean something. With that in mind, I've explored the universe of Cosmic Osmo (this is the first game any child of mine will play!), along with Broken Sword, Monkey Island 1 and 2, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Day of the Tentacle and Sam and Max.

 

 If you noticed a pattern, then you're right - they are all graphical point and click adventures, a genre which is sadly underwhelming nowadays, but in the days when these were made, they were the nearest you'd get to playing a film and enjoying it.

 I've posted a few clips to give you an idea of what you are missing - if in doubt, you don't need to buy an old Mac (although I would), you can run them under either ScummVM, or you could download a Mac emulator from the trusty old interweb.

 

Personal favourites of mine are:

 

Sam and Max (I love the cartoons, too, as I get the humour)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis - a great sequel to The Last Crusade and very funny in parts.

 

 

 

 

 

Day Of the Tentacle (again, it's funny as hell and looks great)

 

 

 

 

 

The final choice is Broken Sword - great scripting, great graphics, the sound is fantastic and you really get sucked in. I believe I've played Broken sword on every platform it's been released on. The second one is good, too, although the later sequel on the XBox was a bit poor.

  So, have a look, enjoy and realise that whilst new games are lovely, sometimes you can't beat something a decade old for sheer enjoyment. And if anyone has an old Mac Classic/Classic II or Colour Classic they want to donate to aloving home, please let me know!

 

 Well, here we are in 2008 and, as a technophile, what have I bought? That's right, two Macintosh computers taht are at least five years old. The big question is "why?" and the answer is, simply, because they work.

 

The fact is that I am a little wary of trundling around london on the tube with a £750 Vaio laptop for when I am working at the client sites. With this in mind, I wanted something cheap, reliable and quick enoguh to run Office, etc - nothing strenuous, but I might add the need for a DVD player to while away the long commute back home. This list, along with a long-held love of the pre-Intel Macs, meant that I looked on eBay for a nicely specified G3 Pismo. I ended up with an upgraded laptop that has a 500Mhz, 512Mb of RAM, a DVD/CDRW combo drive and 60GB hard drive. Given the legendary Pismo reliability and the fact it still holds a great charge (let alone the ability to hot-swap out the DVD drive for a second battery) and I am more than happy - not bad for £100! Especially when you consider that it's running OS X 10.4 and is more than happy running my copy of Office for Mac.

 

 Whilst I was on the prowl on eBay, I also picked up a 600Mhz iMac with 640Mb of Ram in the rather nifty "Blue Dalmatian" colour scheme. I was going to give it to my mother to act as her web/letter-writing machine, but having used it, I think she can have my old G4 Power Mac instead - the little iMac is more than snappy enough for me to blog on, etc, and I am currently trying to decide between buying a new 24" iMac outright or financing a huge MacPro (and erring towards the latter) and, until I make that choice, I am in need of a little box to sit in my hobby studio to let me watch movies, surf the net and suchlike - once I have my new Mac, I'll either keep the iMac for web surfing and the like (so as not to clog up my new machine with crap), or put it in one of the guest rooms at our house with a selection of games on it - it's something I have seen done before and I like the idea of it, especially as I have always gotten itchy fingers when I have stayed away from home and been unable to check my email, etc. I know a lot of my friends will appreicate it.

 Then, once we have a kid (or kids), they can have it with some nice learing-freindly games on it - I am thinking of things like Cosmic Osmo, although I might need to run that in OS 9, rather than OS X. I am a firm believer of not letting kids spend their days watching TV - play sport rather than watch it, children! However, I do think that children should be encouraged to use a computer as soon as possible and, ideally, it should be an older amchine taht is not doing everything for them - I grew up with BBC Micros, Commodore 64s, Sinclair Spectrums and pre-Windows PCs. I remember Windows 3.1 being state-of-the-art and, because of this, have never felt fazed by a newer machine - every child should learn to use a command-line, or at least a non-plug and play system - it means that anything they will face in a normal working life will simply not scare them. Let me put it like this: once you have written an essay in Wordperfect 5.1 and done your mail-merge using DataEase on a Dos PC, being asked to do a letter in Word is never going to get your palms sweaty. Not only that, but you'll be able to fix your computer without recourse to expensive helpdesks or call centres.

 Still, a lot of this doesn't apply to Apple kit, as it just works. Then again, they are friendly, useful and, unlike a PC, still capable of being of use fve or ten years after they were made, unlike a PC which will devalue quicker than a Lada and generally stop working entirely after five years or so. If all you want to do is surf the net, buy yourself an old iMac for £50. Happy surfing!

 After the last couple of posts that were rather self-indulgent and rather serious, respectively, I am back to talking about fun things. I can hear the rejoicing from here.

  Ok, so what's new? Well, whilst I wait for my PS3 to arrive, I have been playing "Another World: 15th Anniversary Edition" on the PC. Now, those of you too young, or just too new to gaming, to remember the game first time around should definitely go and pick it up. It is the pinnacle of the style of game originally started by the very first "Prince of Persia" (no, not the 3D ones, the old rotoscoped 2D ones made in the early 1990s). I don't want to talk too much about the plot, as discovering what is going on is part of what involves you in this game. Frankly, if you don't get sucked in by "Another World" (or "Flashback", or the original "Prince of Persia"), then you shouldn't really call yourself a gamer, in all honesty. The game was made with hand-drawn graphics and it always looked stylish and somewhat other-worldly, as you came to grips with a learning curve that could be damn-near vertical in places, yet never made you want to give up and stop playing. Once you had struggled through the game (which required you essentially memorise every screen in order to get through in one piece), the real fun began, as you would replay it to see if you could get through in one go, without dying or progressing in stages. The real experts could make the game look almost like a cartoon, with the graphics and atmosphere lending themselves very neatly to this.

 Ok, so enough about the original, what about the anniversary edition? Well, it's the same. No, really it is. All that has been done to the game is to give it a quick polish in the old resolution department, so it looks nice even at 2048*1536 levels of detail on your PC. Other than that, I am pleased to say, the gameplay is the same. Yes, there is a "making of" documentary included, and some design notes and the like, but the best thing about the package is the fact that the game is unaltered, aside from its new set of clothes. Many would have been tempted to go 3d (a la "Prince of Persia"), or to add extra characters, or do something, but the brave decision to trust in the original games' gameplay and quality was the right choice to make - this truly shines, even after 15 years. Go, buy it and either remember how good things were when creativity meant more than brand name, or (if you never played it before), welcome to a game that is possibly older than the people playing it, yet still feels fresh and exciting. A true masterpiece.