BioShock Demo

August 13, 2007 1 Comment

The BioShock Demo came out last night so I let it download over night. Not a small demo at over a gig in size. I got home to night and wanted to check it out. Now up intill tonight I wasn’t really looking forward to this one. I’ve seen all the movies and read all the hype but not till I try something out will I get into it. And man am I into it now.

I check out Major Nelson’s podcast last night were he had an interview with Ken Levine, Creative Director of Irrational Games, creators of BioShock. He describes the demo as something of a directors cut were you start at the beginning of the game. You just lived through a plane crash and there just one tall building for you to swim to. From there everything pretty much is trying to kill you but the guy your talking to on a radio. Hes trying to get you to help him save his wife and kid.

The thing that really got me was the level of detail all over. From the 50′s posters and rugs to the music that plays almost everywhere. The architecture fells right. The lighting fells right. To me it just felt like everything comes together just right. The only thing that I didn’t like was the guy on the radio. My 360 is setup with optical out so I have 5.1 but for some reason he was really hard to understand at times. I don’t know if thats the way it is for everyone or just my setup. Other than that I can’t wait to check out more of Rapture.

Filed under BioShock, Gaming, Microsoft, Xbox 360 Tagged with ,

Thermal Expert Examines Xbox 360

August 6, 2007 Leave a Comment

I am liking Gizmodo more and more everyday. This time they have a story from Nikkei about a thermal design expert looking inside of two Xbox 360′s. One of the 360′s is from Nikkei’s IT Pro editorial office that was purchased at the end of 2005. The other belongs to a reporter in the IT Pro editorial office and was repaired in May 2007. Here is some of the things he found.

The cooler fan’s maximum wind speed was 1.1 m/s, only 1/2 to 1/3 compared with general desktop PCs. It may be partly because the fan rotation was reduced to lower noise. According to an expert’s analysis, “The amount of switched air is slightly in short considering the chassis’ size (309 x 258 x 83 mm3).”

“The heat sink on the graphics LSI is so small, I wonder if it can really cool down the board,” our expert said.

Microsoft apparently had no choice but to downsize the graphics LSI heat sink in order to locate a DVD drive above it. The DVD drive’s bottom surface covers the top of the heat sink and forms an air channel.

In only five minutes since we started playing the game, the temperature of the heat sink on the graphics LSI rose to 70°C (158°F). The thermal gradient was about 10°C/min (50°F).

In 15 minutes, the microprocessor heat sink temperature stabilized at 58°C (136.4°F), but the heat sink on the graphics LSI rose to 80°C (176°F), 57°C (134.6°F) above the room temperature.

You should go to there site and read it but in short the design sucks. But I am still playing with it.

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Checking for the Red Rings

August 3, 2007 Leave a Comment

Over at Gizmodo they have a post on how you can check if you have the new heatsink in your Xbox 360 with out opening it. You just take your camera and put the lens on the vent on the power side. Turn on your flash and take a few pictures. If you end up with a picture like the one below from my new system then you don’t have the new heatsink and might be a getting the Red Rings sooner then you think.

Checking for the Red Rings

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Waiting for the Red Rings

July 28, 2007 Leave a Comment

Now that I have my Xbox 360 back I thought I would share my thoughts on the whole ordeal. First thing is that this never should of happen in the first place. Paul Thurrott has said may times on Windows Weekly that he saw when Microsoft was working in the 360 before it was a console and ask them “How are you going to get all this hardware into a console?”. Guess it fit but now runs hot.

Another thing is that they didn’t fix my system. They just gave me a new one. How does that work? I would understand if the manufacturer’s date on the one I got back was a month old or something around there but it wasn’t. It was four months older then the one I sent in. So there not fixing the problem, there just replacing systems with new system that could still give you the red rings. And if your just going to replace them why should the old one be sent in and wait a month to get a new one? Why not work a deal with a store so people could just bring there broke one in and get a new one.

Overall they are not fixing the problem. There trying to control bad P.R. and if I get another set of red rings I might just break down a go with a PS3. Which is sad because up to this point I really liked my 360. Now it fells like I am just waiting for it to break.

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COD4 Trailer is Sex for the Eyes

July 8, 2007 Leave a Comment

Call of Duty 1 took the over played WW2 games and made them fun again. Then again in COD2 they, meaning Infinity Ward, made it better. But then came COD3. Yet another WW2 game and not a very good one at that but its wasn’t made by Infinity Ward. Now we have Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I wasn’t sure what to think when they said they were making COD4. Mostly I thought “Great another WW2, just what we need”. Turns out its nothing like that.

So here is the setup. Take everything that made COD 1 so good, put it in the 21st century and have the power of the next gen consoles. And put it back in the hands of Infinity Ward. This is the part I like best because nobody does this anymore. Release a trailer for the game only using footage from the game. Nice! Read more of this post

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The Red Ring of Death

July 5, 2007 23 Comments

Updated: August 12th, 2007

So there I was last night watching a movie and enjoying the 4th when I got the Ring of Death on my Xbox 360. At first I thought “Ill just turn it off and on again it will be fine”. But its as dead as Anna Nicole Smith. Now I might understand if I was playing some game like Forza 2 and the system crapped out on me but all I was doing was opening the tray to get the movie out. And this happens after all the reports of the 33% failure rate on the 360.

Ring of Death

So what I thought I would do is keep this post updated with a time line of getting the console sent back in, repaired and returned to me. I hope its just a new console and not a repaired one but that’s just hope. Lets begin.

Edit: After posting this I saw the letter that Peter Moore put on Xbox.com about extending the warranty of all the consoles that have had or will have the ring of death to 3 years from the date it was purchase. Good timing and about time. Read more of this post

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Vista = Shit on a Stick

June 24, 2007 68 Comments

I have been using Vista for about 2 weeks now and I have to say that it is the worst OS from Microsoft that I have ever used. Yes even Windows Me. There is an endless number of problems that I have been having with this crap of zeros and ones. Its as if it knows I want to do something plans ahead to not let me do it. Little green fuckers running around the program just trying to see how pissed off they can get you.

I downloaded the iPhone video and with it was the _MACOSX folder with another copy of the video. We’ll skip the fact that I downloaded the video twice the size that I should of and look to the fact that Vista won’t let me delete the _MACOSX folder. Maybe its a Microsoft joke at Apple but it locks the system up. Not funny.

Another thing is that anytime I wish to move some files from one drive to another it takes forever. In XP it was not really fast to do the same thing but it was a lot faster then this. Then you get a pop-up window (that you get for just about everything) that tell you to hold on it thinking on how long this is going to take. And then just to tease you theres a small more button so you can see how long its taking just to move one file.

Some other things are that the ATI drivers suck. Everything is moved around so you have sub menus of sub menus. Firefox is crashing so much I almost started using IE. The Horror!

Hopefully I will be getting a MacBook soon and then won’t have to come back to crap. Then again OS 10 might suck and I will have to turn to Ubuntu.

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Vista Upgrade Chart

February 3, 2007 Leave a Comment

Follow this chart to see if you need or can upgrade to Windows Vista. Trust me.

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Clean install with Vista upgrade

February 1, 2007 Leave a Comment

A workaround for Vista upgrade DVD’s to do a clean install. Awesome!

    Boot from the Windows Vista Upgrade DVD and start the setup program.

    When prompted to enter your product key, DO NOT enter it. Click “Next” and proceed with setup. This will install Windows Vista as a 30-day trial.

    When prompted, select the edition of Vista which you have purchased and continue with setup.

    Once setup has been completed and you have been brought to the desktop for the first time, run the install program from within Windows Vista.

    This time, type in your product key when prompted.

    When asked whether to perform an Upgrade or Custom (advanced) install, choose Custom (advanced) to perform a clean install of Vista. Yes, this means that you will have to install Vista for a second time.

    Once setup has completed for the second time, you should be able to activate Windows Vista normally. You can also delete the Windows.old directory which contains information from the first Vista install.

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TV shows and movies coming to XBL

November 6, 2006 Leave a Comment

Microsoft put out a press release to day saying that very soon you can download TV shows and movies to your Xbox 360. Starting on Nov. 22 you will see them on XBL. Some of the shows you can get by years end are CSI, Survivor, South Park, and Chappelle’s Show. The movies in the press release are M:i:III, Nacho Libre, Jackass: The Movie, The Matrix, Superman Returns, and Batman Forever. You can read the full PR after the jump.

There are two question that they didn’t answer. One is how much? If its anything higher than whats on iTunes thats bad. Two is if this is going to be high-definition (or some of it) where going to need a much bigger hard drive. I’m talking huge. Like 120 gigs. But if a 20 gig cost $100 then 120 gig would be $600. That can’t be good.

Update: At the press event yesterday someone got a this shot showing a 70 gig hard drive.

Read more of this post

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