Don’t get it. I <3 mouse. My really expensive mouse. And keyboard. I even prefer standard/non-wide monitors.

Other quibbles is that AMD’s bulldozer processors aren’t as good as they need to be to keep up. Hoping their Piledriver series will be better, and be around when I’m looking to build a new setup.

One thing I'm curious about with touch tech is how it could be integrated into gaming consoles to mimic a more PC-like experience. Unfortunately, I can't see the console market falling behind PCs, but I miss the days I would spend playing X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, or any other game that had you managing a robust inventory and the like.

I'm wondering if the WiiU gamepad couldn't incorporate layered, touch-based commands and possibly bring sims like X-Wing or Mechwarrior to consoles. A bittersweet prospect, though, because I still have a soft spot for PC gaming.

Meh. The problem with motion controlled interfaces is exactly that, there’s motion involved. A lot of it. It’s hard to relax when you’re flailing your arms all over the place. So I much prefer traditional controls, specifically a mouse and keyboard (because I’ve never gotten the hang of controllers… how do you look or shoot effectively with one of those things?!).

That being said, I think motion gaming is a cool idea, and I would love to have it integrated into traditional controls when appropriate, or if the game calls for it (like Wii Sports games), make the whole thing motion-controlled. An example someone suggested a while ago in an article I read was a sort of wizards dueling game where your hand motions were used to cast spells, both offensive and defensive. It actually sounded like a pretty interesting idea, where it wasn’t about just leveling up to unlock spells but actually “leveling up” in real life by learning and being able to remember more combinations. Stuff like that, motion controls would be perfect for.

EDIT: Also, as detailed in the Minor Quibbles thread, I am a bit annoyed with our ISP right now. We planned to get a modem and router to replace theirs so we wouldn’t have to rent theirs. I specifically contacted support before we bought them to verify that they would be compatible. The lady assured me both were fine. So skip ahead a month, we actually have the things and I’m calling up Charter to get them to turn the internet on in our new modem… only to be told it won’t work, its bandwidth is too low for the connection we pay for. I shake my fist at the lady who told me otherwise and go about hooking up the old modem and call up Charter again to get them to turn the internet back on for that one.

Only to find out that one’s too low too. The one Charter actually gave us. The one that only gives us half the bandwidth we should be getting, while we go on getting charged full price. At the very least, my mom was able to get a partial refund of the extra money we paid for the last six months, but we’ve had this router for longer than that. And the technician who came out today (pointlessly, as it turns out—we’re just going to buy a new router anyway, so he didn’t have to replace our Charter one) was very nice and knowledgeable and was able to suggest a compatible modem.

My point is, never trust a help desk, and any company that doesn’t put specifics on their website (like the speed/bandwidth we’re paying for… seriously, I wasn’t able to find it on Charter’s site at all!) is evil.

I really like how you can sync your computer and your browser nowadays. I’m a Chrome user personally (though I use Firefox for certain programs), but I really like how I can log into any computer, verify with my cellphone and have my theme, preferences, history, everything all set up any ready to use.

Speaking of syncing, one of my favorite parts about Ubuntu and Unity is how connected everything is. I use IRC a lot, and when someone mentions my name or messages me a simple and message will pop up. The same thing happens when my music track changes, when I get a new email, when a friend is online, when someone posts on Facebook, etc. It’s just so incredibly efficient and easy to use.

One thing I’m curious about with touch tech is how it could be integrated into gaming consoles to mimic a more PC-like experience. Unfortunately, I can’t see the console market falling behind PCs, but I miss the days I would spend playing X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, or any other game that had you managing a robust inventory and the like.

I wish the Xbox 360 and PS3 would support mouse and keyboard input. You can plug a regular USB keyboard into an Xbox and use it to send messages and such, but you can’t actually use it in game. Of course, the reason it isn’t supported is because a player using a standard Xbox 360 controller simply can’t compete with a player using a mouse and keyboard. Counter Strike: Global Offensive was supposed to support cross platform play between the PC and the PS3, but they’ve since gone back and retracted that statement. The joystick just isn’t as precise as a high DPI gaming mouse.

I was going to type up a rant about how consoles hurt PC games, but I feel like that’s a discussion for another day. >.>

One thing I’m really looking forward to in the future are cheap Solid State Drives. I picked up a Crucial M4 64GB SSD a few months back for about $100, but today you can pick up the 128GB version for the same price. Mechanical hard drives feel hundreds of years old after using an SSD for a few months. Applications load instantly (literally the only thing holding it back is the window opening animation set by the OS), and the system boots and shuts down in a blink of an eye. If you have a $100 to spare I highly recommend investing in an SSD. You can install your OS and your favorite games and applications on it and use your old HDD for storage. A good SSD will last you several years (I think mine is rated at 40GB a day for 5 years), and it will drastically improve system performance.

I haven’t invested in one myself, but seeing as how we’re all writers here I recommend that the next time your keyboard breaks you think about picking up a mechanical keyboard. If you don’t know what a mechanical keyboard is read Ripster’s Mechanical Keyboard Guide. I’m thinking about picking up Leopold’s Tenkeyless Tactile Touch Otaku Keyboard which uses the Cherry MX Blue switches:

Blue switches are supposed to be the best for typing. So far I’ve only tried Sly’s Cherry MX Reds, though. You can definitely tell the different between the standard rubber dome switches and the mechanical ones. Personally, even though I only used Sly’s keyboard for a short period of time, I really enjoyed typing on it. It felt far more comfortable and imposed far less stress on my hands and wrists. Like with an SSD the initial cost may seem pricey, but a good mechanical keyboard will last you many, many, many years. Remember, unlike a rubber dome keyboard you’re paying for each individual switch, which means if one breaks you can easily replace it.

If you spend hours every day writing and working at a computer a SSD and mechanical keyboard are both very good investments and I highly recommend both.

Except for Valve. <3

Of course, they have other problems.

:3

Not big on shooters myself (which sounds like a good thing) but the FOV in particular was a huge issue in the PC port of Borderlands. To this day there is no in-game way to set the FOV which is something like 65-70 by default — great for a big-screen TV fifteen feet away, I’m sure, but downright myopic for a monitor two feet away. I mean, it’s great that PC gamers can edit config files to bind “FOV 96” to our W keys so that every time the game resets it (= often) we set it back where it should be without thinking, but you know what would be even better? Not getting treated like second-class citizens. Especially in this case where they went on record as saying they designed for PC first. The UI is very obviously proof otherwise, that’s just the largest of many examples :l

I play so few games that don’t have that icky feeling of consolitis. I think it’s pretty telling that the two best new games I can remember from 2011 were indie darlings Magicka and Terraria.

My biggest complaint about PC games is that the graphics settings are so low. I have a beautiful widescreen monitor. I have a very good graphics card. But what good are they if graphics options only range from “practically Minecraft” to “still pretty blurry”?! I’m sure there’s factors at work here I don’t understand, as I don’t know all that much about graphics. But really, I’m running on two-year-old tech, and I can still run brand-new games on the highest settings without a single glitch? That shouldn’t be.

I sort of blame overly-simplified controls on consoles too, especially of the “one button to do everything” Mass Effect variety (although I appreciate that the skill selection screen in combat is drastically different than the console version (because the console version would be awful with a mouse/keyboard!)). I have over a hundred keys here. Even if I can’t reach all of them at once, I can still reach 30 or so with just my left hand. So use them! (I don’t know if this is caused by consoles or not, actually, but it really annoys me nonetheless.)

Also, I really want an SSD. They just seem so cool. My biggest hurdle is the cost, of course…

Interested in solid state hard drives now. Can you get them as USB 2.0 external drives? I’m really not a techie person. I’ve had HDD’s pack up in the past.
And what’s the viability of booting your computer off of a flash drive? I’m thinking it might be a cheap way to resurrect my old laptop for mucking around on.

You could get an external 2.5” HDD enclosure and stick an SSD in it, but that would be a complete waste because USB 2.0 would limit the speed so much that you might as well just use a mechanical hard drive. To get the most out of an SSD you should always use it as your main drive and you should check whether or not your motherboard supports SATA III. My netbook’s MOBO only supports SATA II, which means I get about half the read/write speeds I could get. That said, I believe my SSD is about 5x as fast as the 5400 RPM HDD that came with it. Here are my Crucial M4 benchmarks.

Again, my netbook only supports SATA II, which means on a modern desktop that supports SATA III you can get anywhere between 500-1,000 MB/s read. That is really fast.

If you do end up picking up an SSD someday you could do what I did, Ferret: I swapped out the standard HDD that came with the netbook with the SSD and installed Windows 7 using a 8GB Flash Drive (you only need a 4GB one to install Win 7). I also ordered a 2.5” SATA to USB 2.0 HDD enclosure, which now holds the HDD that came with the netbook. I keep my OS and my programs on the SSD and everything else goes on the 250GB external HDD. Music, videos, pictures, documents, etc. Things that won’t benefit from the greater read speed.

As for the flash drive issue…

It’s very, very easy to install an OS using a flash drive (I much prefer using a stick over a CD), but I’m not sure if you can boot Windows from one. I know it’s possible to install Linux Ubuntu one a flash drive and run it from there, but I don’t think such a thing is possible with Windows. If you don’t already have some I would highly recommend picking up several 4-8GB flash drives, as they are incredibly useful to have around.

@swenson

Hopefully with the release of the “Xbox 720” and “PS4” the graphics quality in PC games will drastically improve. Right now devs have to use all the tricks they’ve got to get their games running on consoles at 30-60fps. Consoles just can’t keep up with PC hardware.

Edit: Haha, Crysis 1 and 2 are *the* games to benchmark your gaming PC. If your computer can run Crysis on the highest settings it can just about run anything.

A SSD is $2630.

Which SSD are you looking at? You shouldn’t need more than 64GB, which shouldn’t cost more than $100 nowadays. Check out Newegg. An Ideal setup would be a 64-128GB SSD paired with several 7200 RPM 1TB drives. You should only install your OS and your favorite games and applications on the SSD, as those benefit the most from the extra speed. Everything else can go on a regular HDD.

I’ve seen guides to running Windows off a flash drive, but an old laptop probably wouldn’t have the necessary support (the old laptop I use can’t even /boot/ from USB).

I’m glad you wrote that up, because I was very curious about how you were doing with that keyboard. Sounds like you’re really enjoying it! I’ve been considering getting one, and honestly… your review right there is starting to push me over the edge. My keyboard’s pretty rotten anyway, it’s very cheap. And with the amount of typing I do (I’m on my computer constantly, and use keyboard controls over the mouse constantly), it just might be worth it for me.

More thread necromancy! Bwa-ha-ha!

ahem

Sorry.

Anyway, my new laptop came equipped with Windows 8. Now that I’ve played around with it a bit, I’m ready to give my thoughts.

First, this was obviously designed for a tablet, not a laptop or desktop. You can get to a regular desktop, and the touch-pad kinda works like a tablet’s screen, but that’s more of an problem than a boon – swipe in the wrong place or the wrong way and the computer does some weird things. And while you can get to the regular desktop, it doesn’t have the Start button in the bottom-left corner like every other version of Windows for the past 15+ years. Yes, I know that’s petty, but I like having it there, and it makes certain actions easier. (Luckily there’s already an easy fix for this available)

The Windows store is seems poorly designed. I shouldn’t have to sift through five layers of stuff to find the free Kindle reader app. There’s a reason the iTunes store comes equipped with a “search” option, is what I’m saying.

Still, it hasn’t crashed on me in the past few weeks, and I more-or-less have it set up like Windows 7 (Windows 7.5, if you will). Hopefully the few problems that can’t easily be solved will be soon. So let’s say I give it a 3.5/5 for right now – there’s definitely things that need fixing, but I’m getting used to it.

First, this was obviously designed for a tablet, not a laptop or desktop.

My dad recently got a Windows 8 laptop, and we all agree with you on this point (although he doesn’t have a touchscreen). It’s very, very, very tablet-y. If I had something with Windows 8, I think I’d indulge in the hacks to get it to look like Windows 7!

The Windows store is seems poorly designed.

I’ve never used it, but if it wants to have a chance of beating anybody else, then this is a very bad thing. It needs to be really good here at the beginning, or it’ll never make it.

I’m glad this thread was resurrected though, because despite the many, many times my brother tried to explain how one could survive with an 64-128GB SSD I simply could not understand until now. Of course, I still have my old HDD still in the my ‘new’ build, so I guess I’m used to the idea of having storage somewhere else.

Right? SSDs are awesome. Speed and efficiency aside, I really enjoy how they’re completely silent (thank you no moving parts) and are so lightweight. It may not seem like much, but swapping out my original netbook’s HDD with my Crucial M4 has made carrying my netbook around a whole lot easier.

And I want a mechanical keyboard.

Get one. I promise you won’t regret it.

It may seem like a lot of money up front ($60 to ~$150 depending where/who you purchase from), but just think of it as an investment; A mechanical keyboard may cost you 3-4x as much as a membrane keyboard, but it will last you 1,000x as long. And when you consider how much time you spend on a computer each day and what you’re doing when you’re spending your time on the computer (it probably has something to do with typing) then getting a mechanical keyboard is a no brainer.

I have Cherry MX Blues and I looooooooove them for typing, and they’re even nicer now that I’ve broken them in, but if you live with other people I would recommend Cherry MX Browns or a solid switch (Blacks and Reds IIRC.)

I dunno if this is relevant exactly, but I saw a Gibson Les Paul outfitted with some pretty heavy electronics :P Not ashamed to say I drooled a little bit and died on the inside at the same time. Ableton Live Lite 8 software installed on it, Robot tuners that change tunings live 500 times on a single charge as well as an internal preamp and parametric EQ. Yeah, I just died a little more.

I haven’t used any myself, but I’m definitely more an Android than Windows phone person—just for the customizability and more apps and whatnot.

I’ve got a friend who’s big into Android that I’d ask for you, but unfortunately he’s not around today—if I remember, I might bug him tomorrow.

Really? I’d heard that the software of the Ascend isn’t as reliable.

From what I’ve seen, I’m starting to agree that I should go with the Ascend as well. I’m not fussed about taking “stunning” pictures.