The colors! The colors!
The world seems so much more wonderful, all of a sudden. The air is crisper, the colors more vivid, and the computer fans more... um... whirry. Yes, dear friends, I have just come into possession of a brand-new, top-o'-the-line computer.
It's a very pretty thing. Our IT guy (he does hardware/software/networking support for both FIEA and 360Ed) put it together for me as a favor - we went over a potential hardware list together, he ordered the parts off of Newegg.com (if you haven't been, it's a highly excellent electronics website with lots and lots of good deals), and a week or two (and one painfully-large check) later, I had my machine. Hmm. Lot of parenthetical asides in that previous sentence. Ah, well - whatcha gonna do? Anyway, I learned that it really pays to have a professional put things together for you - he knows his stuff, and even overclocked the system a little.
Now, as my intent in getting this new system was to take advantage of the latest upcoming wave of advanced games (the ones using new DirectX10 graphics), I was forced to make a hard decision concerning its operating system - yep, I went with Windows Vista. Boo, hiss! Anyway, after spending two days setting up my system with Vista Ultimate, I have come to the following conclusions:
Despite all this negativity, Vista does do a lot of things better. It feels smoother and sometimes even more intuitive than anything that's come before, and its got a boatload of neat ideas lined up beside the bad ones. It is, after all, easy to pass over a dozen nifty little cool features due to one blindingly annoying one. However, all of Vista's swoopy awesomeness comes at a price - I'm sure that on a lesser computer, it would strangle its resources like a starving python attacking a capybara (that's right - I just worked capybaras into my simile). To sum up, my conclusion is that Vista's the operating system of the future... but that future isn't exactly here, yet.
However, that's not to say my early investment hasn't had some significant payoffs. Like I said, my main purpose in getting this rig put together and shackled with Vista was to take advantage of the newest and swoopiest games. Today, I tried out the first intended target: BioShock. Now, it's entirely possible that you haven't heard of this one, particularly if you don't pay much attention to the videogame industry. It'll probably come to your attention sooner or later, however, as it's been getting insanely positive reviews from just about everywhere under the sun. The review aggregates are something like 96, which, statistically speaking, puts it in the top tier of the highest-reviewed games of all time. BioShock is a first-person shooter. It's set in 1960, in an underwater city named Rapture, built by an industrial tycoon and scientific genius named Andrew Ryan who has a love for Ayn Rand's way of thinking. By the time you arrive, however, this sunken metropolis has self-destructed, its inhabitants driven insane due to overuse of their bizarre gene-warping technologies and its once-proud art deco-inspired architecture decayed into a rust-filled, leaking tomb. Setting the game on the ocean's floor allows the designers to use all kinds of cool level building tricks and a massive array of water-based effects (they apparently hired one guy to work solely on water, in particular), and the end result is that this game looks gorgeous.
Running on this computer with everything dialed up to the max, this is probably one of the most beautiful games I've ever seen. I'm not sure if one game alone can validate a decision to buy a new computer, of all things, but BioShock is certainly a step in that direction. Besides looks, the game is also exceedingly well-designed and captivating, not to mention deeply disturbing. It's creepy, atmospheric (great sound effects), and just plain wicked, in some parts. Certainly worthy of all the hype it's been getting, I say.
Anyawy, I do believe I've gushed about it enough. In conclusion, BioShock is all kinds of eerie awesomeness, and my new computer is highly shiny and delightful. Now... it's time to be getting to bed, methinks. Have an excellent evening, all!
It's a very pretty thing. Our IT guy (he does hardware/software/networking support for both FIEA and 360Ed) put it together for me as a favor - we went over a potential hardware list together, he ordered the parts off of Newegg.com (if you haven't been, it's a highly excellent electronics website with lots and lots of good deals), and a week or two (and one painfully-large check) later, I had my machine. Hmm. Lot of parenthetical asides in that previous sentence. Ah, well - whatcha gonna do? Anyway, I learned that it really pays to have a professional put things together for you - he knows his stuff, and even overclocked the system a little.
Now, as my intent in getting this new system was to take advantage of the latest upcoming wave of advanced games (the ones using new DirectX10 graphics), I was forced to make a hard decision concerning its operating system - yep, I went with Windows Vista. Boo, hiss! Anyway, after spending two days setting up my system with Vista Ultimate, I have come to the following conclusions:
- Vista is slick as hell. It's all swoopy and graphical and cool, and smells like the future.
- Vista is infuriatingly incompatible with a great deal of programs, particularly if you go with the 64-bit architecture (basically, you can go 32-bit, which most of today's systems use, or you can pick 64-bit to take advantage of extra memory - 4 GBs of RAM and up - and other cool future-related possibilities).
- Vista has some ludicrous bugs and design problems, some of which stem from its aforementioned incompatibility. As an example, moving a shortcut icon from something like the My Computer window to my desktop results in that icon disappearing from space and time. It's there, but I can't find it. I need to Arrange Icons in order for it to appear. Dragging the icon from the Start Menu to the desktop, however, presents no such problems. As a result, I now drag all my program shortcuts to the Start Menu first. It's kind of like a little journey for them. A little annoying journey.
- Vista was designed with slack-jawed troglodytes in mind. However, you can disable most (if not all) of its troglodontic features, such as the much-maligned - and rightfully so - User Access Control. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this delightful feature, it basically prompts you with a "Do You Want to Allow This Thing You Just Started Up to... You Know... Start Up?" confirmation prompt every time you try to do anything. Yeah... that little bit of fun got disabled so very, very fast.
Despite all this negativity, Vista does do a lot of things better. It feels smoother and sometimes even more intuitive than anything that's come before, and its got a boatload of neat ideas lined up beside the bad ones. It is, after all, easy to pass over a dozen nifty little cool features due to one blindingly annoying one. However, all of Vista's swoopy awesomeness comes at a price - I'm sure that on a lesser computer, it would strangle its resources like a starving python attacking a capybara (that's right - I just worked capybaras into my simile). To sum up, my conclusion is that Vista's the operating system of the future... but that future isn't exactly here, yet.
However, that's not to say my early investment hasn't had some significant payoffs. Like I said, my main purpose in getting this rig put together and shackled with Vista was to take advantage of the newest and swoopiest games. Today, I tried out the first intended target: BioShock. Now, it's entirely possible that you haven't heard of this one, particularly if you don't pay much attention to the videogame industry. It'll probably come to your attention sooner or later, however, as it's been getting insanely positive reviews from just about everywhere under the sun. The review aggregates are something like 96, which, statistically speaking, puts it in the top tier of the highest-reviewed games of all time. BioShock is a first-person shooter. It's set in 1960, in an underwater city named Rapture, built by an industrial tycoon and scientific genius named Andrew Ryan who has a love for Ayn Rand's way of thinking. By the time you arrive, however, this sunken metropolis has self-destructed, its inhabitants driven insane due to overuse of their bizarre gene-warping technologies and its once-proud art deco-inspired architecture decayed into a rust-filled, leaking tomb. Setting the game on the ocean's floor allows the designers to use all kinds of cool level building tricks and a massive array of water-based effects (they apparently hired one guy to work solely on water, in particular), and the end result is that this game looks gorgeous.
Running on this computer with everything dialed up to the max, this is probably one of the most beautiful games I've ever seen. I'm not sure if one game alone can validate a decision to buy a new computer, of all things, but BioShock is certainly a step in that direction. Besides looks, the game is also exceedingly well-designed and captivating, not to mention deeply disturbing. It's creepy, atmospheric (great sound effects), and just plain wicked, in some parts. Certainly worthy of all the hype it's been getting, I say.
Anyawy, I do believe I've gushed about it enough. In conclusion, BioShock is all kinds of eerie awesomeness, and my new computer is highly shiny and delightful. Now... it's time to be getting to bed, methinks. Have an excellent evening, all!