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Does anyone plan on setting up the servers for the PC games? Right now they’re out of date, unconfigured, and useless.
Yeah I know but that’s an extra $40 you have to spend, $60+ if you want a good brand. Add $60 to the laptop and you can probably get a better model that comes with one.
No optical drive is a dealbreaker for me.
It was a hassle getting Office07, MATLAB, and Mathematica on my mini via network and USB. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to install games that way.
You’ll also have to use USB or WDS for windows7 reinstalls but those are actually the preferred methods now. Both are lightyears faster than DVD.
@ Lemm: Maybe you can have the best of both worlds…
http://www.gogamer.com/viewproduct.htm?productId=69210130&extid=Dec0910
Phonetically Phamous (dice said:
What would I need to do to my drive to make it work? I have a few sitting around I dont mind wiping one if thats all it takes
The only way to make it work is to convert it to FAT32 which isn’t compatible with video files larger than 4GB. Almost all HD movies are 8+ GB, with bluray rips often reaching 15-20GB.
You basically can’t play HD movies from a USB drive, period.
PS3 doesn’t support MKV and even if it did, there’s so many different video and audio formats that are used in MKV that it’s unlikely it’d be able to play them all. MKV is just a container, to play whats inside you still need the correct codec. It’s unlikely that the PS3 will be compatible with it until DivX 7 is released, which will use the MKV container and at least partially standardize the video format inside.
Your USB drive didn’t work because the PS3 doesn’t support NTFS. Which is retarded. Even the Wii media players can read NTFS partitions…
If you want to play video files, build a home theater PC. They typically run around $300 and use 1/3 the power of a PS3 when watching HD video. Mine uses around 45-50 watts when watching 1080p movies or playing MW2 on high, compared to the PS3 and XBOX which use 185 and 145 respectively during HD video playback.
Syncing phones to electronics isn’t always useful. My phone can’t do jack when bluetoothed to my media center PC and I have yet to figure out how to sync it to my car stereo. Supposedly it will mute my music when the phone rings but uh, yeah that doesn’t happen lol
Then again my phone is running “Verizon POS OS version suck my balls” so that might have something to do with it.
Devices typically can’t control other devices through the HDMI interface. The exception is Sony which allows the PS3 to control newer Sony TVs.
I was not aware that internet could be sent through it but the bandwidth capacity on an HDMI cable is a good deal greater than that needed by a standard 1080p + dolby digital audio feed so I gess I’m not surprised. Many TVs now ship with an ethernet port for internet connectivity.
Yeah NOTHING comes with cables anymore. I get all my HDMI cables at Sams Club, they’ve got a Belkin for like $15.
It’s actually 4.0, my bad.
I don’t think Nintendo did it on purpose. I think the older OS’s require the use of an IOS that is stubbed out on 4.0U and up. When Nintendo updates the System Menu, they only make changes to the individual IOS’s that need updating and when they’re done using one they stub it out so if you don’t go back far enough you’ll put a System Menu version on there that requires an IOS that is empty.
The last time I downgraded I went back to the pre-launch OS and updated one version at a time until I got to 3.2U. It took about 30 minutes on WCU’s internet but everything worked great. Tbh, I think if you went ALL the way back and went up one OS at a time you’d still be able to get the newer Wiis to run SM3.x. Rolling backwards or just installing the OS you want, as most guides do, is extremely dangerous.
Wonder if PS3 homebrewers are releasing custom firmware upgades that retain the bugs from the previous versions?
Somehow I doubt they’d be that ingenious… well at least not yet. Waninkoko coded the foundation for that as well
Then again, Nintendo did the same thing. The Wiis that ship with 4.3U brick when downgraded below 4.2U.
If Waninkoko is on it then it’ll definately happen. It took him a while to create all the fake portions of the Wii firmware and the PS3 is much harder to code on. I don’t know the current homebrew status of the PS3 but I do know that most of the Wii’s security had already been broken by Team Twiizers and that made it considerably easier to allow pirated games to be played because they had all the hardcoded encryption keys needed to run unsigned applications.
Sony cares a little more about security than Nintendo did and I’m sure does a little more to protect their hardcoded encryption keys.
I’ve been playing it off and on for the last few days and I have to say it’s definately worthy of the series. I’ve played through the original 3 and as far as platformers go this is right up there with them. Levels are challenging, soundtrack is a pure homage to the originals, and I get a very nostaligic (in a good way) feel while playing it.
Phonetically Phamous (dice said:
I don’t really care to much about boot time as long as its not dragging ships when up and running.
It took 15-20 seconds for firefox to open a new window. Dragging and causing massive amounts of rage is all they did. IE did alot better but when used coworkers mocked you.
Phonetically Phamous (dice said:
Good to know about user serviceable parts, I always just assumed the HD and RAM were always user serviceable? Is there a list out there comparing these mid sized laptops?
AFAIK, there is no unbiased site that compares them all. You’re probably best just deciding on a specific price and going to each website and coming up with the best laptop you can get for that price.
Maybe so but Acer’s 23% 3-year failure rate is kinda, meh, especially when Dell and Apple are both around 18%. I’m not so sure I believe the study though, it says Asus, Toshiba and Sony are more reliable than Dell and puts HP as the least reliable
IMO, any laptop you spend more than $500 on needs at least a 2 year warranty. You’ll probably be using it
Don’t get Acer. They’re cheap for a reason, mainly because they’re terrible. If I remember correctly, Mike had problems with his when he first got it. He got it fixed but I prefer computers that “just work” from day 1
Also, don’t get a Dell mini, I’ve never used one that performed well. When I was at NCSU we did a race between the office’s dell mini with SSD and my HP mini with a standard 160GB SATA. They were convinced it would run circles around my “slow piece of crap HP.” My mini was booted into win7 pro, logged in, and at the desktop before the dell mini with a SSD got to the winxp pro login screen.
If you get a mini you can’t swap out the HD without a near complete disassemble. Also, minis don’t have good enough GPUs to be used for TV hookup and most only have a VGA, as opposed to laptops which typically have HDMI.
You should be able to swap out HDs if you buy a regular laptop but you’ll have to reinstall windows on it using a DVD. You’ll also lose your recovery partition.
Before buying a laptop, pull up the maintenance guide and see which parts are user replaceable and how hard it is to swap them out. HP and Dell both provide documentation on this and it really helps to decide what you want it to ship with and what you can upgrade later. RAM, HD, and wireless card are almost always user serviceable and sometimes the processor is too. RAM is almost always cheaper on newegg than the manufacturer UNLESS the manufacturer has one of those “free update to 4GB” deals when it ships with what you want to begin with. HD is usually cheaper to upgrade from the manufacturer but if you want a performance drive they’re usually cheaper on newegg.
Just check prices really well before spending any money.
Nickname said:
Also, MS did release the seperate hd-dvd drive for xbox (lol i know)
Rumor has it MS had a bluray made but chose not to release it. Normally I’d shrug that off but MS has definately been off their game the last few years and they don’t really care if they develop something only to toss it in the trash before release. Given how ditzy Ballmer’s been lately I’m hesitant to shrug it off as a 100% falsehood.
josrocket said:
so the built in blueray becomes this bonus addition for consumers that MS cant get royalties from.
I think this is the driving force as much as anything else. MS doesn’t want a portion of every XBOX sale going to pay Sony and crew for royalty fees on a format they don’t explicitly need. It would be MUCH more convenient for their customers but royalty wise it’s a whole lot cheaper to tough it out with what they’ve got than pay the added cost per unit and per game. By the time they release the next system, royalty fees will have come down and MS will (hopefully) have come to their senses.
This exact same thing is what screwed Wii owners. Nintendo didn’t want the $20/unit fee required to enable DVD movie playback so they didn’t include the decoders.
josrocket said:
I dont see how you came to the conclusion that I made because your posts say something different. If this is what you meant to say then sorry about that:
1) If he thinks he’ll play PS3 games, get a PS3
2) If he’s not interested in the games, get a regular bluray player
3) Getting both an XBOX and bluray is a waste of money
I agree completely.
I didn’t just mean to say it, I did say it
MasterP said:
If you’re primary use is watching blu-ray movies you can get something with many of the same features for 1/3 the price of a PS3. Sony, LG, and Samsung all make nice BD players and they’ll be around $100 this time of year. I got my LG this time last year for $125 and it streams netflix.
If you’re actually interested in PS3 games then it seems like a no brainer.
MasterP said:
You can get an XBOX360 and a cheap bluray for the price of a PS3 w/o Move but it’s not really worth it. To get a decent version of the XBOX you have to spend a good deal more and, like you said, pay for online play. A year ago I’d have said go that route but this late in the game I’m just not sure the XBOX is worth getting, not if you also plan on getting a bluray player. Some of the newer XBOX games aren’t fully compatible with the intro-XBOX and while you can install your own HDD it’s a bit of a pain.
It’s cool though.
Btw, what does Zhang have you guys working on now? Is it still the parkinsons/tremor thing?
josrocket said:
lol wow mitch your even stupider than you let on and everyone is enjoying your bs by the way. Well, Lemm all I have to say is seriously go somewhere else for your information or pm me if not then good luck lol.
Wtf dude? You gave the EXACT same advice to the original question that I did.
Since your attention span is around 5 seconds, I’ll summarize what we both agreed on:
1) If he thinks he’ll play PS3 games, get a PS3
2) If he’s not interested in the games, get a regular bluray player
3) Getting both an XBOX and bluray is a waste of money
Take your trolling someplace else, like your own message board. You know, the one where you ban people that don’t agree with you.
Btw, I hope the grammer and word choice in your masters thesis is better than your posts here. If not, Zhang is going to be one disappointed program head.
josrocket said:
You know what *edited* this *edited*. I only got on to help Lemm out, and im not going to discuss the gaming industry or Euler’s proofs with you …Its not worth my time since you will always disagree with something anyone says…..Im not going to continue this. I got to finish my MS thesis and I need to focus and not be ranting on here, so end this and dont post.
Im going back to what I and the rest of the students do. Not get on this *edited*ty site.
Hey man you started it. You have no one to blame for that ranting but yourself. No one baited, asked for, or wanted you to do it. Not only did I agree with you but I did it on 3 seperate points. It’s time to come up with a new one liner.
Now back to the topic:
You can get an XBOX360 and a cheap bluray for the price of a PS3 w/o Move but it’s not really worth it. To get a decent version of the XBOX you have to spend a good deal more and, like you said, pay for online play. A year ago I’d have said go that route but this late in the game I’m just not sure the XBOX is worth getting, not if you also plan on getting a bluray player. Some of the newer XBOX games aren’t fully compatible with the intro-XBOX and while you can install your own HDD it’s a bit of a pain.
It’s a tough call. Microsoft is banking that digital media will take off and Sony is praying bluray stays successful. They’re both going to be right but for the forseeable future there will be very little overlap in media playback abilities. Tbh, I think they’re waiting to see which way Nintendo goes. Sounds fanboyish but it’s not. If Nintendo and MS both adopt digital downloads and make it work, Sony will be left as the only one still requiring you to keep up with DVDs. Conversely, if Nintendo and Sony both use blu ray DVDs and it works out, MS will be left out in the cold. It’s all about selling points and while they may not necessarily care about being in first place, no one wants to be the odd man out.
Why is it that every thread you post in becomes a flame fest? All I said was that they were late to market it. I guess you missed where I said the move was better (?)
No one here is attacking the playstation and no one wants to read your fanboy and blind rage rants so if you can’t carry on a civil conversation without breaking down just go on back to your boycott. It’s *edited* like what you just posted that ran everyone off to begin with and if you look around you’ll notice it hasn’t happened while you’ve been gone.
josrocket said:
Mitch once again your ignorance makes you look like a fool and im sick of it, just shut up. Even on day one the Wii was never revolutionary nor was it the first to use any of the technology it uses. The same engineers that designed the move had the initial design since before 2002. There is a video of the very same engineer presenting his work at an engineering convention in 2002 but i cant find it…here is a tech demo from 2003 for the same device from that very engineer.
Here is an written article from 2003 on it:
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-87510083.html
The PS move is just a rehashing of this motion technology that didnt surface in a product because the ps2 didnt have the processing power to do this kind of video processing and game video processing at the same time.
It’s interesting you’d bring up the EyeToy because it actually was released on the PS2 and never really took off. It’s failure to take off had nothing to do with processing power and everything to do with it just not being a useful accessory. It ended up with about as many games as the Virtual Boy. The Move simply takes this technology and adds the wand interaction. So if what you say is true and they had this back in 2002, why did they wait until now to release it? Had they released it with the PS3, the Wii would have long since been dead and so would the XBOX360. What you imply is that this decision was either a tremendous engineering oversight or a colossal marketing mistake. Making money now is great but putting competitors out of business during early product introduction would be even better.
josrocket said:
The wii motion plus copies the ps3 sixaxis controler if you want to get techincal about it. The wii mote only did x y and z acceleration. The wii motion plus just added pitch, yaw, and roll to the controller..uh oh 6 axis
I’m pretty sure I know more about tait-bryan angles than you do but sure keep assuming you’re the only one here that knows how this stuff works. Btw, I’ll save you the google time, tait-bryan is what the six-axis implementation of Euler angles is called. I guess if you want to get technical, both systems stole the idea from a 300 year old dead guy.
josrocket said:
I dont even need to explain why the Move works better than a wiimote. You dont have to be an engineer to understand that, you just have to use your brain
The wiimote with wiimotion… uses infarred sensor bar to detect location which is the only thing that the ps3 controller lacks.
I know, I said that too. I actually praised the Move and said the wii could never reach it’s level of accuracy. I guess you missed that part…
josrocket said:
I will have to disagree with you on the 3D at this day in age. The new tv frequency syncing stereoscopic 3D will prob. not be going anywhere since it is easy to implement into any movie made. Also, TV wise, the chip that allows for 3D technology to work is such a inexpensive implementation that soon it will be in every tv that comes out. They are just milking it like they do every other new technology. Also, the 3D blue rays are not the only thing that is being backed but also the community that values 3D games. FYI all new PS3 exclusives are ALL in 3D and even some cross platforms like Batman Arkam Asy, Burnout, CoD etc. Its still early but I dont blame you if you disagree. But consumer electronics are my specialty and Im 90% sure that I will be right.
Hey man, I’m just going by what the experts say. Back in the early 50s every movie shown in theaters was in 3D. They tried it again in the 80s and early 90s but in all cases it ultimately flopped. The sticking point back then was that the 3D effect could not be seen by those with eye defects or color blindness and it was too difficult to keep the two movie reels in perfect sync. The required intermission was also unwelcome. The kicker this time is the eyestrain, motion sickness, or headache that roughly 20% of people get while watching. The problem is a fundamental flaw in the polarization method to creating the 3D effect. The eyes being presented with different images isn’t a problem, the problem is that the 3D effect is created by alternating the frames between eyes at 144 FPS. Every .007th of a second one eye sees an updated image while the other sees the old. It creates a better 3D image than the old method but the brain just wasn’t meant to interpret data that way.
3D won’t take off until you don’t have to use glasses and cheap polarization effects to do it. The next big thing is autostereoscopic 3D, which doesn’t require glasses or alternating frames. The Nintendo 3DS is the first major product to use this.
josrocket said:
They just tell the media that they used all the processing power just to impress the typical gaming community to make it sound like its one hell of a game.
That makes sense but how do you know they aren’t maxing it out? I mean unless it has the equivalent of a task manager you’d never really know. The developer said they specifically tried to have every core running at 100% as much as possible but he also said they could have gotten more power out of it if they had better optimized their code. In a way yes, it’s only artificially maxed out but realistically the more time spent on code optimization the longer the development time and the more it costs to develop the game.
Consoles are typically much more powerful than consumers ever realize but it requires that games be perfectly optimized. Perfect example of this is in wii homebrew, they got the Freespace 2 flight sim engine to run on the wii. The PC requirements called for 10x the amount of video memory that the wii has but by heavily optimizing the code and changing the way textures are stored and called, the video memory required was cut to well within the wii’s specs.
If the PS3 homebrewers tried to squeeze every ounce of processing power out of the system, like the the Wii homebrews are almost required to do, I can’t imagine how powerful a console you guys would have.
By any chance have you tried metroid prime trilogy? I’ve really been itching to play that but it won’t load on my current setup.
Well of course the Move is better, Sony had 4 years to copy and refine the concept. <_>
If it were me, I’d wait until after Christmas and see if you can pick up a bluray player for dirt cheap. If you get a PS3 later you can ebay or craigslist it and won’t really be out much. You might also try craigslist NOW, some people might be trying to sell stuff to buy presents.
Just out of curiosity, have you used one of the Wii motion plus controllers? From what I’ve read the motion plus actually puts the wiimote on par with the move in terms of on-screen accuracy. It still can’t beat the move though because of the older infra-red based system. It’s like putting a Dodge Viper engine in a Honda Civic, it may be impressive but it can’t beat an actual Viper.
Sort of off topic, I can’t really understand the marketing strategy behind the Move/Kinect. Instead of trying to make a new console, maybe with motion built in, they’ve seemed to focus almost entirely on bringing their consoles up to where nintendo was 4 years ago. Yeah it’s nice that they made a better product, but their goals seem move profit-driven than consumer-driven. Halo Reach and Uncharted 2 both are reported by developers to be the max of where the systems can go and while that’s cool it’s pretty disappointing that those systems are fully maxed out before the successors even begin full scale development. Remember, the SNES was never maxed out even after the release of the N64.
Btw, good luck with the interview.
If you’re primary use is watching blu-ray movies you can get something with many of the same features for 1/3 the price of a PS3. Sony, LG, and Samsung all make nice BD players and they’ll be around $100 this time of year. I got my LG this time last year for $125 and it streams netflix.
If you’re actually interested in PS3 games then it seems like a no brainer.
I wouldn’t worry about 3D capability. It flopped in the 50s and 80s and many experts are predicting it won’t fair any better this time either. What you can do is play on the stupidity of retailers and pick up the non-3d last gen, but still really nice, HDTVs for dirt cheap. Last weekend Walmart had a last-gen samsung 55″ 240hz for $1300. The only difference between it and the current model was 3D capability, and a $1200 higher price tag.
I skipped on v14 because it had some bugs. v13’s only major flaw is you have to reset the wii between games.
223 (v17) should play everything without issue.
I used the original classic controller and didn’t really like it. The sticks aren’t just aren’t fluid enough for FPS IMO. Many of the reviews I’ve read state that the classic controller pro is virtually identical to a PS3 dualshock, in layout, feel, and stick resistance. The CCP is slightly lighter than the PS3 DS. It can’t match an XBOX controller in FPS but it seems to come *edited* near close. I’ll probably pick one up for myself sometime in the next couple weeks (after exams)
I’m running IOS 249v13 but Hermes223 uses 249v17 so you’d be fine. I really need to update to v17 but just haven’t taken the time. Supposedly SM4.2 was supposed to stub out my IOS249 but I think it failed
