So, unless there is a card for substantially less (like, if the 8800gs went down in price a bit) the 9600gt looks like the best card for me and I would be able to play Crysis on settings higher than 800×600 with everything on low.

I should probably get some RAM too, but I might just hold off until I upgrade my machine and just jump to DD3 when it finally drops to reasonable prices.  Anyways, I still have to buy an XBox 360!

We are so passionate about our gaming that we even have a platform war, which is really nothing more than drinking the proverbial [sugary beverage] of your favorite console’s marketing campaign. We have Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft all vying for our undying attention and obviously our money. Each company’s marketing campaign is a bit different, but overall they just want to get their console into your home. In reality, anyone that plays a game is a gamer. If you can sit down and enjoy a video game and want to play it again and possibly branch out to other games, then you are a gamer. Don’t believe this crap that someone playing a casual game is less important to the industry than someone who plays Halo for 30+ hours a week. Both are gamers and both are equally important to the evolution of the industry. People that fight over which platform is better are ignorant fools who have joined the cult and have stopped thinking for themselves. We need open-minded individuals to be aware of big picture and take advantage of the industry’s strengths. The industry is constantly growing and changing, mostly for the better, so you are either with it or against it.

The big three companies responsible for gaming in your home are Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. Nintendo’s Wii has the Wii-mote which allows control through motion sensing. It even has a little speaker built into it. Sony has incorporated motion control through its Six Axis Controller, which is fairly intuitive, but it still hasn’t been taken advantage of to the degree it should be. Microsoft’s XBox 360 controller is a slightly more streamlined version of their last controller. It doesn’t have any major features as far as intuitiveness goes, but it is a solid controller and can interface with a headset and a small add-on keypad. The XBox Live! service allows for decent network play and voice chatting, which has yet to be match by the other two consoles. Each system has its weakness, but they are fun to play nonetheless.

This brings me to my main point. Each console has its target demographic, but overall they want to win everyone over. They have made advancements in wireless controller technology, networking. voice chatting, and intuitive gameplay with motion sensors and analog controls. A lot of the technology is something similar to what PC gamers have had for years, but it is in a more streamlined and in an easily accessible package. The unfortunate thing about PC gaming is that it is the equivalent of the crotchety old man of the industry. We buy our fancy and expensive hardware, monitors, and speakers to make us feel like we really are in the game, but we have been using the same controls since the “dawn of Doom”.

You can buy mice and keyboards that cost a hundred dollars or more a piece, but they are pretty much the same thing as their $10 siblings from 10 years ago. Buying a laser mouse and fancy keyboard doesn’t make you better… it just proves you have more money and you like having “new” technology. We use the WASD keys to move around and the mouse to look or navigate menus. Need more buttons for new gameplay features? Just assign them around the WASD set. Now, I’m not saying that PC gamers should drop their keyboards and mice and pick up a controller, but for all the engineering prowess that we have in the PC industry, you would think that we could invent some better equipment to interface with. To think that in ten or twenty years people will still be playing first person shooters with a mouse and keyboard is ridiculous since a handful of keys and a mouse will not be enough to control a realistic character in a digital world just as complicated as our own. The controllers of the future may resemble mouse and keyboards, but they will be more intuitive, more ergonomic, and have all the bells and whistles that we should already have today. I’ve been a huge fan of Counter Strike: Source and Team Fortress 2 and can’t imagine playing them any other way, but for newer games that keep trying to revolutionize the way we think in games (Bioshock and Crysis, for example) why can’t we include gameplay and peripherals that make our movements just as intuitive as our brains solving the puzzles?

All of our games are getting more intelligent, but we continue to play harder, when we should be playing smarter. Imagine the freedom that PC game developers would have with making drastically new gameplay dynamics if we started using more intuitive peripherals instead of continue using peripherals for that old school-button pushing-linear gameplay that we have grown so accustomed to.

Moral of the story: We need to play smarter, not harder, and we won’t be able to do that until we work together to have the right tools to do so.

I don’t want to spoil the surprise of what the laptop looks like since it is full customized with a sleek paint job, but here is a pic of the case just to show you a hint at what great things are in store for Aberrantech.

Speculation is that the 3800 cards will be priced between $150 and $250 based on clock speed and memory configurations, which will be a nice option for many of us that cannot drop $400+ on a video card. It will be interesting to see how this card will stack up against the soon-to-be released nVidia 8800GT in respect to most bang for your buck. Interestingly enough, the 8800GT does not support 10.1, so ATI is beating nVidia to the punch this round. Now it will just be a matter of waiting for games to catch up to the new DirectX standard.

I currently use a R2 Mark II from Good Work Systems (GWS) which completely blows away any other gaming mouse I have used. So, I was elated to hear that GWS will be releasing a very powerful new iteration of their R2 and Fragpedal technology in November. This will be the largest single release by far of new features for GWS. It will be based on a new cutting-edge 32 bit microprocessor just released by ST Microelectronics.

The new R2 mouse is the R2 Mark III Omnimouse, and the name says it all. It will completely own your PC on behalf of your input strategy(s). It controls the keyboard, the sound system, the monitor, unites the Fragpedal and R2 as one device and even listens to the games and applications, reading their data for your possible use. It no longer needs only buttons for macros, but can just “do things” on its own, reading subtle triggers from mouse movement, direction, speed, the count of button presses or other events and any sort of timing relationships.  It’s all conditional evaluation. Also, there is dynamic recording of the keyboard/mouse/Fragpedal suite with full editing to speed up, truncate, join and otherwise modify recordings.

There are some things it can do that will fundamentally change the way we play games, so this is going to be a “very interesting and controversial product”. The words that personally come to my mind are revolutionary and customizable which are two things that any hardcore gamer likes to hear.

Click to enlarge

Very interested with this product, I contacted Acme Portable and discussed the LPG370TS a bit with Martin Yen, a marketing representative.

Doomzilla: Can you purchase the LPG370TS with just one 17″ LCD Screen?
Martin Yen: No, but we do offer standard 1-display rugged portable unit. It is called the EMP370.
Doomzilla: When you hide the two side screens, do you have to manually disable them in the properties?
Martin Yen:No, you do not need to disable them in the properties. They function like your single one screen portable computer.
Doomzilla: What cooling system do you use for the Core 2 Duo processor?
Martin Yen: We used high performance cooling heatsink and fan for the processor. However, to keep the unit running cool, our entire chassis has been designed to avoid any potential thermal issues.
Doomzilla: What form factor is the motherboard?
Martin Yen: Standard ATX board
Doomzilla: What Hard Drives come with the unit?
Martin Yen: 3x 750GB, SATA
Doomzilla: It says that the unit is powered by a Seasonic 650W power supply, does that power the monitors as well?
Martin Yen: Yes, the power supply powers both the system and the displays.
Doomzilla: Can you make upgrades, such as add a new sound card on your own after purchasing the LPG370TS?
Martin Yen: Yes, absolutely. Unlike laptop computers, our system components can be upgraded with off-the-shelve parts. Your system can keep up with the fast changing computing world.
Doomzilla: How many Firewire and USB ports are available?
Martin Yen: 4x USB 2.0 and 1x Firewire
Doomzilla: Since this is obviously going to be great for LAN Parties, if the LPG370TS is successful, do you see Acme Portable building more products to market directly to the gaming market?
Martin Yen: This is the first real gaming system we’ve built. In the past, we have always dealt with industrial computing needs. If our vision can be successful, we may just keep rolling out more innovative products to the gaming market.
Doomzilla: What made you want to develop a system aimed towards the gaming market? Was it a goal from the start or was it something that was realized after building a PC with such power and flexibility?
Martin Yen: Our product has always being portable computer since 1994. As a result, we have always wanting to explore other possibilities where customers can benefit from a portable system. We have been studying markets like computer forensics, film industry, sports, and video editing also. We realized with the advancement in LCD and graphic technologies, we can build a multi-display system for gaming and simulation. Which is was not possible before with the heavy and bulky CRT monitor. Hence, the first two versions of LPG units are born.

I tried obtaining a LPG370TS for review, but they are so popular that they are on a 45 day backorder. Maybe in a month and a half we may get lucky and be able to give some more information from first-hand experience with the unit.

To comment on this article click here.

Eye-Fi is trying to allow ease of use for users, so they can upload their pictures directly from the camera to their computer without the use of a USB cable like we have relied on for the past few years. Not only will it ease the frustration of being tied to cables, Eye-Fi’s goal is to create a community of sharing photos. It looks like an ambitious effort and seeing a product designed directly for their cause makes it look ever so promising.

Eye-Fi’s latest news on their website was in September, but with the release of the news of their SD Data/WiFi card, expect to be hearing more from them very soon. You can check out their site for future updates, or to maybe get a job at a decent startup if you live in the Mountain View area. They are currently looking to fill three positions.

With the thousand or so phones already hooked into the system James David, spokesman for Mobile Complete, said that the Apple iPhone was “the most challenging handset” they’ve had. Access to use the phones for development starts at $200 and $17 an hour and up. Once Apple allows third party app development, the DeviceAnywhere service will probably be very busy with the rush to create the much desired third-party applications for the iPhone.

Check out the full article here.

If you hadn’t guessed by our website’s name yet, we like being a little different (just look at the main page’s About section). Lately, I have been working on getting some very unique hardware and accessories that you don’t usually see reviews for. I am currently in discussion with companies to review a mid-range gaming laptop, a DIY Kit, and an all in one PC that slightly resembles a project I almost did for my Senior Project while in college. If there is any product in particular that you think would make for a good review, feel free to send me an email at eric.doty[at]aberrantech.com and I will check it out.

According to Tweaktown the 8800GT will sport a nice single slot cooler that will cover the entire PCB. It is not seen in the picture, but it is assumed that the card will use a 6-pin PCI-Express power. Hopefully, we will see these popping up for sale within a week or two. Some online retailers are already listing the 8800GT for anywhere between $240 to $300 even though they are not in stock yet. It’s tough to say since we have almost no facts, but I have the feeling that this card will fit in with the rest of the nVidia lineup and be just under the 8800GTS in terms of power. If we are lucky though it will have some decent overclock ability and give the midrange crowd a good bang for their buck.

Now think about comparing to similar tech products by competing companies. Let’s pretend that both of those products are compared by the same publication within a week of each other. Company A gets a 9/10 for their product and Company B gets a 7/10. Now many people, when shopping for that particular product are going to have to choose between A or B. The consumer that doesn’t want to think about it, or doesn’t know a lot about that type of product may just look at the ratings and choose the product that got the higher score. Is this the right choice? Many would say “no”, but nonetheless it effects our purchases more than we would like to admit.

So, the consumer bought product A because it had a higher score, but when they get home they find out that this multifaceted item is great, but its a bit lacking in the main task that they will use it for. “Oh well”, they say as they still feel they have bought the right item. Then they realize that it doesn’t communicate well with the rest of their gadgets because of proprietary software or protocol. Again they say “Oh well”, except not quite as convinced this time. Wanting to do a little more research about the company who made the product they just bought they find out that the company is a very large corporation. Also, the company has poor reviews for their customer service and one device they made two years ago was faulty and caused instability in the company with an obnoxious amount of RMAs and repairs. Now the customer isn’t so sure of their product, but at least it had a higher score in the review by a company who is affiliated with them through a promotion.

Now, I understand this is a bit dramatic, but I’m just trying to prove a point. You can easily compare two items side by side and assume the one with the higher score is better, but in the end you may end up hurting yourself with a bad purchase. Reviewers should not feel that they have to score everything on a scale of 10, 100, or just a letter grade. They should just concentrate on giving the facts about the product and the company. It is human nature to sway a little towards a product if you think it is nice or like the company, but to have that effect on a system where people may make side-by-side comparisons based on a single score is wrong. Consumers should only see the pros and cons and make the decision for themselves based on their own personal wants and needs. Consumers should be inspired by reviews to get all the facts about a product that they are going to spend their hard earned money on.

I feel the biggest market effected by this is the laptop market. Even if two scores for two laptops were the same, those two laptops could be significantly different from each other and suit very different user needs. Anyways, the moral of the story is to shop smart and don’t be afraid to do some research of your own. Reviews are a great starting point, but your personal needs should definitely outweigh the fact that some guy on the internet thought the product was the next greatest thing since silicon wafers and gave it a perfect ten followed by a string of unnecessary exclamation points.

The only downfall of the Asus C90 is that it is very hard right now to buy a MXM Graphics Card by itself. I contacted a few companies that sell custom laptops and they said that they could not sell me a single graphics card because they get them from the distributor already in the laptop. That really didn’t make sense since they say they are custom computer “builders”, not resellers. So, if you get a laptop you may want to order it with the video card that you know will get you through until your next laptop build. You may not be able to find a card to upgrade with from a retailer if you decide to upgrade later on.

Check out the Computer Shopper video overview of the Asus C90S from this month.

The case is almost exactly the same dimensions as my Ultra MicroFly and Aspire/Apevia X-QPack. The front button appears to have an LED behind it, but I don’t know what color it is yet. The pop down drive covers are pretty solid and would blend right in if they didn’t have the little screenprinted labels on them. The front has access to two optical drives, one 3.5” drive, and a little hub with two USB ports and front audio. All pretty standard stuff.

I have owned the original Aspire/Apevia X-QPack, the Antec Aria, and the Ultra MicroFly. This case blows them out of the water because it is designed so well. It accepts a standard size ATX PSU and might accept one of those gargantuan 1000KW extended PSUs if you remove the hard drive cage. It might have some issues with the modular PSUs that have the extremely long modular connectors, but fairly standard modular PSUs shouldn’t have any issues.

The coolest thing about this case that I did not know about is that the top does not come completely off. It resides on a hinge so it carefully tilts off to the side as shown below. The top is locked into place by two plastic “slides” that tighten it down. They are quite sturdy.

Once the top comes off, there is complete unrestricted access to the motherboard tray and components. Once the motherboard is in place there is just under 120mm height clearance for your heatsink which is more than enough for most. The one issue that a lot of you might wonder about is cable routing. Overall there is plenty of room to route your cables to the lower half, but I would suggest sticking with all SATA drives just to make it easier on yourself (my SATA DVD burner was only $35). Also, a modular PSU would make it a little easier as you could disconnect from the top when you wanted to fully open the case up.

For those of you who care about ventilation, this thing rocks the boat for the better there as well (especially for a smaller case). No fans are included, but I think most of us have a pretty decent collection of fans by now. Plus if you don’t have any fans you can tailor the fans to exactly what you want, high CFM for great cooling or low dB for quiet/silent operation. In the top half there is a 60mm right in front of the hard drive cage and an 80mm in the back. For some reason the 80mm has the grill fixed into place with plastic rivets. These can easily be removed. The bottom of the case has a 120mm in the front that blows directly back to the expansion cards. The back has a plastic bracket that holds two 80mm fans even thought the metal vent is really made for 60mm fans. With some decent low decibel fans you could have the wind tunnel in this thing. I was contemplating water cooling for those of us that must overclock. If you are very careful a small water cooling rig could fit in this with the right modding, but the hinged design will give you some more issues over traditional cases. Though I’m sure someone crafty with a dremel could figure something out. Since my video card exhausts heat and the power supply exhausts heat as well, I think I am only going to run an 80mm fan on the top to exhaust any other hot air in the case. I think that should be enough, but since there will be a lack of major airflow I may have to add an active Northbridge cooler to the mobo.

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Pros:

• Solid, solid, solid
• Great hinged feature that allows access to tray easily
• Ventilation is superb
• Would make a great gaming or HTPC build.

Cons:

• It is made out of steel (instead of aluminum)
• Cable routing may be tough for newbies
• The one-piece metal cover is a pain to remove and put back on
• The 80mm fan vent in the top has the fan grill held in place with plastic rivets

To comment on this review click here.

For those of you that don’t know, ReadyBoost was included with Vista to allow users to add more memory to their system via USB flash memory without cracking open their case. To test the performance of ReadyBoost they compared the time needed to reboot Vista and how long it took to open 15 photos in Photoshop. Using ReadyBoost made little of no difference in opening the images, and when the amount of memory available to ReadyBoost was increased, it actually took even longer to open them. Also, when ReadyBoost was activated it took longer to boot Windows all the way across the board with every model of flash memory.

It was nice to see what USB Flash drives the major manufacturers are putting out these days, but I will just stick with using them for file transfers. The results for ReadyBoost really didn’t impress me and I have yet to see where it can be properly implemented where it will actually improve performance. I was glad to see someone take the time to compare all the different brands and the difference between a system running ReadyBoost and without it. Recently, I have been hearing about how great ReadyBoost is and I was believing it, to a point, but unless something revolutionary comes down the pipe these results should silence the ReadyBoost fanboys… if such a person even exists.

You can read a little bit or the article here, but for full results you’ll have to go pick up October’s issue of CPU Magazine at your local news stand.

Next I wandered over to the Portal setup and hopped on after some kid left the station with a big grin on his face. As soon as I moved my character I fell through a hole in the floor and my momentum threw me out of the exit hole which was right beside it. It was trippy and I’m sure will make some people a little nauseous. Luckily, before moving on to the next area, I snagged a free voucher for Day of Defeat: Source.

I also wandered around to check out Samsung’s UMPCs which are very cool looking. The keyboards look a bit hard to type on, but I’m sure it just takes getting use to. Thermaltake and Sapphire had huge displays showing off all of their new products. Kingston was there as well, with a small display with their enthusiast memory and flash drives. They also had a display PC with Kingston DDR3 and a nVidia 8800 Ultra. I figured the probability of me getting out of there with that PC without getting tackled was pretty slim. Razer mice and keyboards were everywhere as I assume they donated them to each of the companies to use with their display PCs. The mice were nice, but the keyboards seemed really big and clunky. It seemed like they had a lot of unused space on them.

As I left they were beginning to have a big opening ceremony with some crazy guy and a human beatbox… it seemed a little out of place. It was a whole lot of fun for the limited time I spent there, but I met some cool people and got a free game. I’d say I got my money’s worth.

The design will carry over to the mouse, keyboard, speakers, and external HDD.

So far my hardware includes:
- Abacus mITX motherboard
- Intel Core Duo T2300
- AMS eCube Flex-ATX Case
- Noctua NC-U6 Northbridge Cooler
- Crucial 2GB DDR2-667
- Hitachi 250GB SATA HDD
- R2 Mark II and Fragpedals (GamingMouse.com)

I am still looking to obtain a PCI-Express x16 Video Card (8600GTS or better), Solid Power Supply, and a USB to 2.5″ HDD Adapter. Hopefully a sponsor will pull through on at least the video card as I really do not make enough to afford even a $150 card. Once I get the video card, I will have to obtain a waterblock as even if I do not water cool the CPU I will use it on the GPU.

I plan on featuring my project on a couple modding forums, my own website, a YouTube feature, local computer shows, and hopefully a spot in the local art newspaper, The Stranger.