Current Technologies

I'm quiet excited, I've been trying to choose what graphics card I'm going to get for Christmas. I really need a new one, all the latest games run quite badly on my setup, but that is considering the stupidly high resolutions (1680 x 1050) I need for them to look good on my screen. I might also get some more RAM, maybe move up to Vista. Been quite impressed with Jam's PC I built a month or two ago which Vista on, it seems very stable and funky. It annoys me how I can't find anything though. Must be like someone else's kitchen or something, you know everything you need is there, but you just don't know the right place to get at it quickly. Still, its not as baffling as Linux or Mac OS, so Microsoft is still the way forward for me. I've ordered Crysis, the latest in graphics, physics and shooting stuff, should be here soon, I hope my hardware doesn't ruin my enjoyment of it. Reviews say its very fun. Jam's excited about the new Mario game, I'm sure that will be fun too, if a bit childish and irritating like most Nintendo games.

Crysis almost looks a bit too real

Can't believe how cheap all the computer stuff is now. 500GB hard disks for 50 quid, 75 quid for an external one and 48 quid for 2 sticks of 2GB ram (4GB in total). Its making upgrading quite an attractive prospect. Except graphics cards, which because of new APIs and chips for Vista (DX10 and HDCP) are stupidly expensive. I was hoping this would have sorted out by Christmas, but appears Nvidia and ATI have only just started pushing out mid range cards. When I built my PC, you either spent 100 quid or less and got a DX9 which wouldn't last, or spend 300 quid and get a future proof beast. Now, you can get some pretty good 200 – 250 priced ones. I don't know, but I really need something better then what I've got. Something better then what Jams got.

I read an interesting thing the other day. Microsoft are currently claiming victory over everyone because of the Halo 3 launch, and are touting the fact that it was the highest grossing “media launch” ever, beating Spiderman 3 and Harry Potter. What they fail to mention: tickets for Spiderman 3 and Harry Potter books don't cost 40 quid each. Apparently, if Harry Potter books did, they would have made twice what Halo 3 did. Mind you, that's a very simple way of looking at it. Maybe Harry Potter sold so well because it was cheaper? But still, Microsoft's PR machine is definitely behind these figures being slightly warped. I still think their doing better then Sony are though. If they keep cutting features off the PS3, there isn't going to be much left. And BluRay sounds like a load of wank. I mean, I saw it once in Oxford street, did look kind of pretty, but I bet the highly compressed discs scratch better then ever before. I haven't tested it, but it makes sense.

I'm loosing faith in optical media on the whole, they seem to break far to easily. I'm now considering getting an external HD just for backup because DVD-R are useless for it. It makes my piracy hard as well, I keep copying movies for people and then finding out their DVD players lasers are too weak to read them. I mean, we did have this problem with CDs for a while, but not this bad, and the technology has been around long enough now for them to sort it out. But, I bet their keeping the lasers weak, to stop pirates probably, same as the region encoding, we see that the distributors are willing to cripple a format just for a few sales. Which might be fine for them, but what about me trying to do my perfectly legal backup?

Sony just seem like a bunch of idiots right now. How did they manage to get so rich? Right now, seems like their always doing everything wrong. I mean, the PSP seemed shit to me, with its crappy movie format called UMD, which meant re-buying all you films, on little discs, so you could watch them on a crappy small screen? For 20 quid? PSP got totally kicked by the DS, so what do they do? Make a new slim version. And BluRay is like 25 quid per disc as well. Its apparently quite expensive for studios to make as well, limiting its appeal further. I keep predicting the demise of Sony recently, but I have to remember, the PS2 is still the most popular console, and most stuff from that works on the PS3, so maybe in a few years once its price comes down, everyone will switch and Ill be proved wrong. I just hope Sony can last that long.

I guess we'll see whose right: Nintendo, who say people want innovative games, not graphics and HD or a media centre, or Sony, who say the reverse. And Microsoft who are just playing the middle ground, Microsoft's online service is meant to be the best though, and the games line up is looking good so far. And most of the games for the Xbox end up on the PC as well, since they both use DirectX, so porting is easier. Which is good enough for me: Gears of War, here I come.