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Comments on Thursday 13 September 2007:
I got a new laptop. It is from Rock Direct rather than one of the big name-brands. I believe it is, at heart, a Sager based system. I had heard good things about these, and early experience bears it out. The screen is lovely, the machine runs quiet and cool. Even after playing Bioshock on it for hours it barely breaks into bothering to turn the fan onto high - unlike the previous high-end (of four years ago) Dell, which ran at 60-70°C when idle, and would swiftly go to 82°C in gaming conditions (at which point it would slow the chips down to prevent melting - not the preferred way to deal with heat, really).

The 8700M graphics chip unfortunately is showing signs of doing the same thing the 4200Go did - not using NVidia's integrated drivers, and not getting driver updates. A third-party hacked driver was required for Bioshock, but hopefully that will be reasonably good for anything in the near future.

For specophiles, it is 2GHz dual-core Intel, 2GB, 100GB 7200rpm, 8700M w/512MB, 1920x1200 17". And Vista.

On the subject of Vista, what's up with this in the license agreement?
You may allow up to 5 other devices to access the software installed on the licensed device to use File Services, Print Services, Internet Information Services and Internet Connection Sharing and Telephony Services.
(or for Vista Premium or Vista Ultimate, replace 5 with 10)
What's up with limiting network access to print services? Why would you do that?
Also, is "you may allow up to" accepted weird binding legalese for "you may not allow more than", or is the license agreement actually failing to restrict you at all, as its wording taken literally fails? There is no corresponding paragraph denying you the option to allow more than 5, there is only this paragraph explicitly allowing you up to 5.

This post brought to you by boring nerdiness, and by the fact that if you give a crap about Bioshock you've already read at least five reviews, and probably even if you don't give a crap. [15:29]

spazz
I can get a legal version of Vista for no money (hurra university!) but I heard a lot of incompatibilities and I hate eyecandy blends.
Can you switch eyecandy off in Vista?

RavenBlack
Yes, my Vista setup resembles my Win2K setup now, which in turn resembles Win95 only with smaller fonts. You can turn off the font smoothing, turn off the transparency, and turn off all the crap that was also in XP.

Digi
I give a bit of a crap about Bioshock, and I've read two reviews, but I want to know how *you* like it, and why.

RavenBlack
Meh, it's alright. I am irked by the divide between easy and medium difficulty - I suck at first person shooters, so medium is uncomfortable for me, but on easy I spend the whole time with all my inventory maxed out, and when I come to the upgrades it's all "meh, don't need to increase max hitpoints or mana, don't need whatever else, er, I'll just not bother then." Which is silly because I'd have really wanted those upgrades in medium difficulty if I'd got that far before becoming annoyed at being killed too much. The hyped "turn baddies against each other" thing isn't much worth it either - the big daddies wipe the floor with anything else. There are nice not-quite-cutscenes that are decently situated so that you're unlikely to miss them though. The hacking is really boring. It's better than HL2, but I preferred System Shock 2.

james
The access limitations are to make you go buy Server licenses for your servers, instead of just using a distributed network for your small office or home business. No other real purpose.
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