Jan 15 2009
Alienware, Firefox, and Motherboards… Oh My!
I don’t want to distract too much from the Designing a Religious Pantheon article, so instead of moving on to another game desgin topic I am going to direct you to three (non-game design) tech articles I wrote recently. Since most people reading this blog use the internet (hah!) and have an interest in technology/computers, I think you will find them at least moderately interesting or useful.
Alienware Desktop PC Review: 2009 Alienware Desktop PCs - Spoiler Alert: I don’t think too highly of them.
Firefox vs. Internet Explorer - User Base and Market Share Shifting to Mozilla - My question to you all: Is Firefox’s growth pretty much maxed out? Can they ever cross 50%? Will Google Chrome unseat Firefox as the IE challenger?
Building a PC - Choosing a Motherboard - I recently built two new gaming PCs. I hadn’t built my own PC for about 15 years. I learned a lot from the experience.
1.) Me and most of my friends are convinced by Google Chrome, I like the minimalism. I would like the third mouse button scrolling of Internet Explorer and Firefox, besides that, it is very good. I wonder how Internet Explorer and Firefox are going to counter this. The browser got very bad press, but IE sent data to www.alexa.com, too, not sure why people make such a fuss about Chrome, it (basically) transmits the same data as other browers do, too.
2.) Last year for the first time more laptops/notebooks were sold than desktop systems. At least this was claimed by some magazines, forgot their source. I did not put together a computer for over three years and recently bought a new Samsung laptop. I do not really miss it. As I was younger, it was a question of honor to install the latest graphics card in your system and put it together by yourself. And you are right, Alienware is overhyped shite. Their systems are not better or worse than others, and the real geeks build their own rig anyways. I could not read your article yet, the site is not loading at the moment.
3.) My focus is on getting fans and hdds silent in modern laptops nowadays. Guess I am getting old, as I was younger I was trying to squeeze 1 more Mhz out of my graphics card and processor while providing cooling with extremely loud fans and airflow systems, even water-cooling…^^
I am sensitive to noise, too. I can tell you what brand your drive is by listening to the seeking and head parking noise. Western Digital for example, hot, fast, and rather silent, except the clicking noise when parking their heads under power management every few seconds. You can fix that, fortunately… otherwise I would be in hell, as many laptops are sold with Western Digital hdds by default. Even my Samsung laptop does not have a Toshiba/Samsung HDD, but a Western Digital BEVT “Scorpio Blue”.