DesertKnight is tinkering in his broken airship as he steps outside chatting with you as if you've been with me the whole time.Video Games
and the PC used to play them.
I had an old 486 66Mhz computer that played a lot of good DOS games. Until I had to figure out ow to tinker/tweak/tune the computer in DOS.
My family didn't have the money to buy a new computer/let alone more ram.
So I've had the habit to find ways to get the instruments I did have on hand to play the games I wanted.
I remember in high school how I took an old Pentium II and 4x CD rom, and it struggled to play MystIII: Exile - it stuttered and lagged like crazy. And this was a single player game!
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I have 3 main computers:
1. An Acer Aspire one netbook (1st generation) ZG5 built in 2009.
http://www.engadget.com/products/acer/aspire/one/zg5/specs/A tiny 8.9 screen, portable. Was the real road/school/college warrior that helped me get through Physics, Biology, and other monotonous classes.
Small & weak, it was never truly meant for playing video games. But really for work.
I've gone on 3 tournaments with this netbook and still think it has been a good choice for meThis laptop ran Fedora and XP. But I soon switched to crunchbang, distrohopping towards Linux Mint .
the fan annoyed the living hell out of everyone in the library.
2. A nettop (small desktop / but with the specs of a netbook ) : Asus EEE Box B202
http://gizmodo.com/394563/asus-eee-box-b202-our-first-look-plus-official-specs-only-300Just a beautiful white box, about the size of the netbook.
This was the classic desktop using machine. - mostly for work/banking/and serious stuff, a good backup
Very weak but could fit more memory than the netbook , still it was a joy to have.
took only 5W to power up
3. A true laptop (my main "gaming machine") - Acer 5735 what I played skyrim on to kongregate games, and visit website and do more fun stuff like sing onto vocaroo. write poetry, and tinker. Running windows 7 and Linux Mint.
http://www.cnet.com/products/acer-aspire-5735-4774-15-6-pentium-t3200-vista-home-premium-2-gb-ram-160-gb-hdd/specs/at the time (before Oct 21) it was the strongest machine I had.
This was donated to me by my EX from Australia
....
Well , with my new job at the hospital - it has been everyone's wonder why I don't 'get a new laptop/a tablet/a new NUC i7?!'
My intention was to upgrade all 3 systems.
and I've done the first one, which I'm very happy and pleased to do :
eeebox b202 -- > IPC2 (Intense PC 2 ) by Compulab.
http://www.fit-pc.com/web/about/news/ipc2-press-release/So I went from a 1.1Ghz N270 Atom processor , 4 GB memory 80GB hard drive
to
An i7 2.1Ghz processor , 16 GB memory, 1 TB SSD...
"aye times have changed"
It has no fan!... It's just a solid piece of metal.. and... it's smaller than the eeboxb202
it does take more Watts to run.. 5W vs 15 W but it's a small price to pay..
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The final thoughts was that I got into kongregate and games like elements because I didn't have a PC with good specs on it.
Skyrim was on very low graphics..and modded to death to remove grass/trees/effects and get everything to run at very low specs.
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So.. two more topics here and I'll get your opinion and help here
1st: Old tech stuff doesn't work with New tech stuff - a crash course on HDMI and Displayport
Ahh.. back in 1995 I bought a small 15 inch screen VGA, works beautifully . I got it on a whim - 40% store closing discount - and paying the cash up front STILL made me broke for a week.
I've since then played with 'switching boxes' that would link a laptop and the eeebox together with a few clicks of my keyboard.
Once I got everything installed for the IPC2
I noticed some strange ports on the back and no where to connect my VGA monitor...
http://www.tinygreenpc.com/media/wysiwyg/Diagrams/IPC2_Port_Diagram.jpg;_; So I can't use this monitor anymore, and I've bought and tried different adapters.. but nothing works, my monitor is simply too old..
I did eventually buy a new TV/PC screen that would handle VGA, HDMI.
I lose the ability to quickly switch with my 'switch box' but at least I got it to work...
It was frustrating as I thought I had a broken IPC2 computer...
It was also frustrating as I felt I didn't need to buy a new computer monitor...
More frustrating to buy more cables to connect HDMI
I didn't even use the display port...(I don't see a connector to my monitor for that)
I do have an adapter for it ... might play with that later on (if you feel that I should use the display port instead of the HDMI port.. let me know)
Displayport -> HDMI adapter
"aye times have changed"
...
2nd topic:
so the netbook,
and
"the gaming laptop"
My thoughts was to get a netbook with the similar specs as the IPC2...
or.. go in deep and get a tablet :O
...
I feel that the gaming laptop will be purchased last.. as it will be an expensive investment...
But sadly no, I won't be playing games on the IPC2, I strictly want to use that for my work now
so my friends, do you have any suggestions for my desk?
You ideals and thoughts on tablets? Should I just go for a netbook instead?
Any suggestions on a future 'gaming laptop' ?
