Looking at the available options, we saw several choices -

- Go on a rampage and punch out all our loud co-workers to teach them to be quieter (HR might get a bit pissed about that…)

- Use normal headphones, and just crank them up to drown out our co-workers and the obnoxiously loud other office tenants (we share a space with other groups…) This is bad for our ears though.

- Get a pair of those active noise cancelling headphones. While those ARE nice, we didn’t like the large size (and price) of the Bose models, and various other brands all had mixed reviews.

- Get a pair of sound isolating bud-style headphones. These had the advantage that they were small, and are somewhat like having ear plugs in, while providing good sound quality and no need for a power source for running active cancelling circuitry.

In the end, we went with a pair of the Shure SE210’s. We considered the older E2C model, but decided to go for the SE210’s (for no real reason other than they were newer.) We paid $120 for these at the local Best Buy store (although they probably can be found cheaper online.) Here’s our impression of the product:

- The packaging was absolute HELL to open! We’re no fan of blister-pack packaging to begin with, but this one was nearly impossible to open without totally destroying the entire thing! WHY do they insist on using that kind of packaging? If they must, could they at least make it in a design that’s easier to open without cutting your hands to shreads in the process?

- The headphones themselves are nice, small and lightweight. The cord comes in two pieces with a quick disconnect (can be useful since you don’t want these getting yanked out of your ear if the cord get snagged.) The cord is a good 5+ feet long as well.

- The unit comes with several different style plugs to put on the ends. We stuck with the default ones for now, but if you find those don’t stay in your ears well, there are other styles to try. You can also get replacement ends from Shure. The ends work similarly to ear plugs, using expansion foam to hold the earphones into place in your ear,while blocking out external sounds.

- The package contained a nice little travel carry case for the headphones and extra plug ends.

Now, in use, we have to say that even without the earphones plugged into a sound source, they block out external sound at least as well as a decent pair of ear plugs will. With these in our ears we really can’t hear any of our co-workers and it allows us a nice quiet area when we’re trying to concentrate on something. While playing music, we can use much lower volume settings to hear as well (which is good for your ears.) Another important aspect is that these don’t stick out so far from your ears, and yet stay in place quite well, so much so that I’ve been able to use them with my motorcycle helmet on. They effectively block most of the engine sound and wind noise while allowing me to hear music much better than the cheap earphones I was using previously.

In the end, while these are rather expensive for a set of earbud headphones, we have to say that they do an excellent job of blocking out external sound while at the same time providing great sound quality. Users who are not used to having earplugs in might find them somewhat uncomfortable though. Do they work as well as a pair of expensive active noise cancelling headphones? Probably not, but they also don’t suffer from the “slight air pressure” sensation that many users report with those style units, and you don’t need to feed them batteries constantly either.

If you’re an earbud style headphone fan, who needs to work or enjoys listening to music in loud environments, we can heartily recommend the Shure SE210’s. You won’t be disappointed!

Bookmark/e-Mail

If you’re somebody who builds your own PC’s, or builds them for others, you no doubt dread that part of installing a motherboard more than any other. Inevitably, it always seems like no two motherboards have the pins in the same place, or grouped together the same way. Worse yet, it often happens that the connectors from the case either aren’t labeled the same way, or the pinouts don’t totally match (like the MB has spot for 2 pins, but the case connector uses a 3 pin connector with 2 wires in it, in the wrong spots.)

Worse yet, some of the connections are orientation important, while others can get plugged in either orientation. How many of us have gone through the process of building our own machine, spending hours putting everything together just to find we have the dreaded “HD light” always on (usually because we plugged the connector in backwards) ?

I really have to ask, why the heck can Intel/AMD and everyone else who’s part of the ATX specification group release an addendum that requires all motherboards and cases to use a single common connector pinout? If the case doesn’t support intrusion detection, just don’t hook wires to those pins of the connector on the case. Or if the motherboard doesn’t support that feature, just don’t provide the pins or traces on the board.

These aren’t the only connectors that currently arent’ 100% standardized between motherboards and cases. For instance, many modern motherboards have pins to hook up front port audio jacks to the on-board sound. Likewise, internal Firewire connectors are rarely standardized, and so the case manufacturers tend to provide each pin as a seperate connector, forcing the user to plug in 8-10 tiny single pin connectors in just the right order. And you better get it right or you risk sending power to the wrong pin and frying that nice $1000+ video camera you bought and hooked up!

We won’t even get into the issues of these pins being WAY too small for your average geek with big hands to work with in a cramped computer case, under a desk in horrible lighting…

Some motherboard manufacturers are starting to get it and are attempting to provide solutions. The last motherboard I bought (Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe) came with little connector blocks for the internal USB and FireWire connectors. With these, you simply hooked the pins from the case connectors onto the adaptor block (a lot easier than trying to do it on the motherboard) and then just plugged the block into the motherboard. Unfortunately, they didn’t include one for the internal sound pins.

In short, this is a simple, tiny, cheap problem to solve that would make it a LOT easier to build systems. Why hasn’t anyone fixed it yet? And why isn’t this being addressed in newer specs like BTX or the new spec that AMD put out for small machines? Am I the only one that finds this frustrating and rediculous?

Bookmark/e-Mail

Five to eight years ago, when we were all just getting started with digital cameras and the biggest size was 1 Megapixel, the 4.5 GB of storage space found on a DVDR seemed like plenty of space. As we’ve seen the MegaPixel race on digital cameras, and the rise of digital video grow, 4.5GB just isn’t enough to back up all of your data. For instance, I have over 50GB of MP3 music and hundreds of GB of recorded video. It would take me DAYS to burn all that to DVDR.

Ok, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray should help with their substantially bigger sizes. But what happens when that huge 50GB Blu-Ray disk containing your entire archive gets lost, or scratched, (or worse yet, for no reason whatsoever refuses to work on your new machine 5 years from now?) This is a very real problem that many of us have already faced from when we used to back up to CD-Rs.

No, the only real viable storage mechanism for backup these days is a big hard drive. Those external USB backup drives have become the rage over the last two years, and they are handy. However, the drives found in those units are the exact same ones that are discussed in that article and analized in the study. In other words - don’t think just because you put it on the external drive that it’s safe!

Instead, anyone who has a lot of data that they can’t afford to lose really should be looking into some sort of RAID solution. Many modern motherboards support at least RAID-0 (mirroring) which takes two identical hard drives and makes them hold mirror copies of each other. In this case, if one of the drives dies, your data is still ok. Just replace the dead drive and the RAID array will rebuild, restoring all of your data. This is fine, but there is a better way…

In comes the home NAS (Network Attached Storage)! These units are small dedicated computers usually with 4 or 5 drive bays, supporting RAID-5 which allows for much greater use of the total capacity of the drives, while at the same time allowing for drive failure. These are also really nice because you can attach them to your home network and access the data from any machine in your network, and many also have the ability to hook up via USB. You can get these either pre-loaded with drives or buy a bare unit and buy whatever drives you want.

I have two friends with NAS units and both couldn’t be happier. The units are small, quiet, easy to administrate, and allow them to access their data from anywhere on the LAN. They also love knowing that their precious data is safe from drive failures.

If you’re interested in this technology, check out products by Thecus,� Buffalo, Infrant or one of the various others out there. Microsoft is also pushing their Windows Home Server initiative which turns a PC into sort of a NAS.� At a minimum, if your PC supports RAID, USE IT!

Bookmark/e-Mail

Personally, I haven’t set foot in a CompUSA in over 2 years, even though there is one only 1.5 miles from my house. 10 years ago, I was a CompUSA addict, in there all the time, spending money, browsing nearly weekly. It was part of my Sunday morning ritual to get up and hit CompUSA, Circuit City and Best Buy and see what they had on sale that week. Over the past 4 years though, with the opening of a MicroCenter and (more importantly) a Fry’s Electronics, and my increasing use of Newegg for online purchases I haven’t seen much of a need to go to CompUSA. (All of those stores are within 4 miles of my home.)

No, what doomed CompUSA was the ever increasing reliance upon Mail in Rebates (MIR) as their “sale” mechanism. Their product selection was so-so, their salespeople were rarely knowledgeable (although better than Best Buy usually) and I got tired of the MIRs. So I stopped shopping there…. And apparently so have a lot of other people. I heard that they started to move away from that policy and started having more of a normal sale item structure but I guess it was too late. The last time I did set foot in the local CompUSA it was loaded with a LCD+Plasma TV section (sorry, but I don’t think I’d be buying home entertainment electronics there of all places), and most of the products I found were insanely overpriced. The one thing I did see that I found interesting was that they were starting to stock more PC modding parts, exotic cooling systems, that sort of thing. Even then, they didn’t carry the more high-end parts.

As far as I’m concerned, good riddance! I’m much happier shopping at Fry’s (fantastic selection and pretty good prices on most stuff) or Best Buy, and I occationally hit MicroCenter when they have something good on sale.

Rule #1 - Don’t screw your customers and nickel and dime them to death to turn a profit if you want them to come back and keep shopping with you!

Bookmark/e-Mail

Back in the “glory days” of PC gaming in the 80’s and 90’s, most games were written by a handful of people (in some cases just one!) As a result, it was possible to put out a large number of games, and the market was so hungry for games on PCs, and expectations were relatively low by the customers. Fast forward to today - gamers today demand and expect cutting edge graphics, ultra-realism, deep story-lines - basically Hollywood level production. That sort of production takes a lot of time, a lot of highly talented (and therefor expensive) people, and a whole lot of money! Therefor, to break even, the game publisher needs to sell a whole lot more copies.

So, let’s examine the game publisher’s position today. They have to put out this fantastic, expensive cutting edge game, and it has to sell well to cover costs and turn a profit so they can afford to work on the next game. They have two markets to build their game for: Console or PC.

The PC market

A hodge podge of machines, no two completely alike. No two have the same video card, same OS, same RAM, same motherboard. This causes the game manufacturer an incredible amount of headache in terms of testing and support. It’s just impossible for a developer to test every possible combination of hardware. Add to that the various crazy applications and configurations that people install on their machines - different AntiVirus, firewall, utilities, hacks, etc. It’s basically a nightmare. However, there’s an awful lot of PC’s out there, the development tools are free, and there’s no royalties to be paid to Sony or Microsoft or Nintendo. Likewise, the control systems on PC’s open a lot of options. Say what you will, but a mouse and a keyboard open a lot of options for control in a game, and PC gamers can add gamepads, joysticks, throttle controls, you name it!

The open architecture nature of the PC which makes it difficult to support is also what empowers it. While a console’s capabilities are fixed in stone the moment the first unit rolls off the assembly line, PCs constantly evolve. New processors are released every few months, new video cards, ram gets cheaper. The problem is that the percentage of PCs that get these new high-end capabilities is always small compared to the number of PCs out there. So, while there are millions of PCs out there in the wild, only a small percentage have the highest capabilities. Most PC that are used for casual gaming are on the order of 3 years old. Casual gamers typically also don’t buy state of the art high end machines due to their cost, so that 3 year old PC probably was at best a mid-range machine at that time and is using parts that were considered high end 4-5 years ago. That would be a sub-2Ghz P4 or AthlonXP, at best 1GB of RAM, and something like a DirectX 8 graphics card. Pretty pathetic by today’s standards.

Does the game producer blow off a large portion of the market and only cater to the small percentage of us with high end machines? No, they instead spend extra time and money to make their games scale according to the hardware they run on. Sure, they set some set of minimum requirement cutoff, but they try to include as many of us as possible (to varying degrees of success.) The reality though is that only those who have the highest end machines get the full experience of the games, and the highest end is a constantly moving target, requiring expensive upgrades constantly. When a new video card costs $500, and a new top end CPU almost as much or more, we’re not talking about a cheap investment. To be a PC gamer means you have to spend a lot of money, patience and fortitude. It’s rare when you just pop in a DVD and can play.

Finally, piracy is rampant in the PC gaming community. When we’re talking about a market that is already a small percentage of the whole, throwing piracy in the mix makes it that much harder to stomach producing for the PC market. It’s relatively easy to pirate games (as all other software) on a PC because we’re talking about games that work on a general purpose open computer with an open operating system that can run any software which makes hacking possible. This means adding the additional cost of anti-piracy schemes to your game to try to keep copying to a minimum.

Consoles

Writing a game for sale to consoles would seem to be a lot easier. The closed hardware architecture and controlled software environment means you know exactly what you have to work with. A game you write for a Nintendo Wii will run on each and every Nintendo Wii - from the first off the assembly line to the last. While developing for console environments can be somewhat more difficult because of their custom hardware, the console manufacturers tend to provide a great deal of support (granted at the ludicrous prices of a development kit and test hardware.)

Console gamers like to claim how powerful their nice shiny new console is. In reality though, consoles are at best 6 months ahead of high end PCs on the day when they are released. The graphics chips found in the new XBox 360 and PS3 are made by ATI/AMD and NVidia, and are only slight variations from the parts put into the newest PC video cards. And keep in mind, those capabilities are fixed in stone and can’t be upgraded until the next generation of console comes out (usually around 4 years down the line.) Consoles typically have substantially less RAM than PCs, but then, they don’t waste that memory with an over-bloated do-everything general purpose operating system.

The control schemes for games on consoles is somewhat more limited, but limited means known. Likewise, the gamepad controllers tend to be very good for most game types and players have gotten very used to these over the years. Sports games, driving games, puzzle games… All are very playable with standard gamepad controllers.

Piracy is almost a non-issue, or at least is a more limited problem on consoles as their closed architecture makes it more complicated to copy games, and often requires some hardware hacking prowess.

Even if a publisher chooses to port their game to all three console platforms, they still only are dealing with three hardware variations, rather than the millions of configurations found in the PC world. So, if a publisher needs to expand their market, they can write for all three consoles and still avoid the PC market altogether.

Console publishers do have a few issues though. Because the hardware is closed, if you want to release a game for a console, you have to get the holy blessing from the console maker (and pay a hefty license fee!) But in return you also get some help in advertising. In addition, while the game prices are still around $40-60 per game, the cost of the console itself is usually heavily subsidized by the manufacturer which means that for the price of a high end PC video card, you can get an entire console system, a second control pad, and probably a game or two.

Finally, unlike PCs which typically are used on smaller screens, with crummy sound systems in a room by itself or a corner, consoles are enjoyed from the comfort of the livingroom, on a big TV with a surround sound stereo system. (Ok, maybe not all of consoles are used this way, but most people buying this newest generation are buying them to use that way.)

So where does that leave us?

Well, that’s a good question. I will admit that the PC gaming market has been going through a downturn over the last 2 years. I think part of that is the costs and complexity of creating new games for the PC, part of it is the expectation of Vista, and part of it certainly is because of the introduction of the new Consoles. Right now, Console games look at least as good as what is found on the PC, and HDTV support found in the new consoles has helped them substantially in that regard. Does that mean that PC gaming is dead?

NO! Like every generation before this, the consoles get a lot of focus in their first year or so. After that, their closed fixed hardware architecture betrays them as PC’s get more powerful, and new PC games come out to take advantage of the new hardware. If you look at what happened with every console, the first wave of titles look only marginally better than what was found on the previous generation console, and over the lifespan of the hardware the games get better and better as the programmers figure out how to push the hardware. When I got my Playstation 2, I thought the graphics on it were amazing, certainly better than what I had on my PC at the time. Fast forward two years and it was no contest. While the developers got better at programming the PS2 and certainly produced better looking games, my PC had gotten substantially faster with a new CPU, new RAM, and a new video card that was 2 entire generations newer than anything found in a console at that time. My PC at the time looked and played so much better than my PS2, that I honestly haven’t really played anything on my PS2 since.

Yes, the PC gaming market is harder to be in, both for a producer and a player. It also is a much more interesting market because of it’s expandability, and it’s flexibility. The types of games found on PCs is much broader than those on consoles (show me a console capable of playing something on the order of MS Flight Simulator and I’ll show you a bridge I have for sale…) Yes, PC gaming costs more, but you can upgrade at your discretion, not when the console maker decides to come out with a new unit (which usually also means you’re tossing out your controllers, memory cards, and games to get ones compatible with the new console…)

Me, personally, I own both (although I have yet to upgrade to a new generation console because I haven’t seen a game yet that I just had to have.) I prefer consoles for some games, PCs for others.

Consoles for:

* Sports games (hockey, football, baseball)
* Racing games (Gran Tourismo, Need for Speed)
* Adventure games

PCs for:

* Real Time Strategy and turn based strategy games (Civ4, Rome Total War, etc.)
* Simulators (Flight Sim for instance)
* Business Simulators (The Sims, Railroad Tycoon, etc.)
* First Person Shooters

(I know I’m going to catch flak for that last one… I’m sorry, but I’ve tried playing FPS games on Consoles and the control schemes just do NOT work for me. Give me a keyboard and mouse control on a console and we’ll talk. Try to tell me that gamepads are great controllers for FPS games - go ahead… Set me up a game where I can use a mouse + keyboard and you use a gamepad and I’ll wipe the floor with you every time!)

So, what would I like to see happen?

In my ideal world of gaming, there would be a gaming option that would take the best of both worlds. It would be a dedicated gaming system, with fixed initial hardware at release, but it would also be upgradeable (in a more limited fashion than PCs) over time. For instance, when you first buy it maybe it has a built in Video solution and a 400 Mhz processor and 1GB of RAM. Then, over time, the manufacturer releases a “Booster Graphics” upgrade module, and a “Turbo Processor” option that adds in a 800 Mhz processor or something like that.

The games would be disc based, playable on insertion (no installing required), and would be labeled as to what upgrades are required to play. Because the console producer controls the hardware upgrades, there wouldn’t be any of the issues with supporting lots of different configurations. The system would have a stripped down gaming oriented OS (maybe with some media capabilities added in.)

It would allow for standard USB keyboard and mouse as well as gamepad controls (no silly proprietary interfaces!), and every game would support each of these (or the OS would provide a standard way for the gamer to select how they want to control the game.) It would use standard memory storage devices like SD memory rather than proprietary interfaces.

My Fear

My biggest fear is that as Consoles continue to gain momentum and market share, PC gaming will continue to die off. We’re already seeing the trend move towards the console, where new releases are developed first (or primarily) for the console and then ported (sometimes rather poorly) to the PC. While this is easy for the developers, it makes for a substandard experience on the PC, further eroding their position as a powerful, flexible gaming device.

My hope is that this is just another of the cycles in the market and the PC market will once again improve. Microsoft has realized that the PC gaming market has been suffering and they’ve come out with their “Games for Windows” initiative to try to combat this. Will it work? Who knows. Vista has some gaming improvements added in, and DirectX-10 should allow PC’s to do some really amazing things graphically. The push towards Physics processing likewise will allow PCs to do more (be it either on a PhysX processor or through the GPUs.)

Likewise, there are some amazing new games coming down the pipe for the PC market that aren’t slated (AFAIK) for the Consoles - Spore, Supreme Commander (great game, watch for my review soon), Crysis, and others. PC gaming is far from dead, it’s just in a slowdown. I full-well expect that 2 years from now the new consoles will once again look like dated relics graphically, and PC gaming will once again take off.

We’ll just have to wait and see.

Bookmark/e-Mail

No, the real competition at this point would be from FlightSim.com. We intensively checked their forums to get an update on their position. As we arrived in the Canaries, one of our team members started calculating how far behind us they were. It was looking like they’d arrive in the Canaries about 5 hours after we did, but they had 6 hours of bonus time on us. The run through the Canaries would give us up to 3 hours bonus time, but it would take some time to perform. We guestimated that it would take a little over an hour to fly all the hops. In reality, it took closer to 2 hours. So, we clawed back 1.5 hours, putting us 30 minutes ahead of FlightSim.com and forcing them to have to run the bonus run as well.

As we got to the final hop in the Canary run, all of the AVSim team members that were available hopped online, jumped in P-51 Mustangs or P-38 Lightenings and off we went. It was a glorious sight lining up on a runway with 10 warbirds in various paint schemes. We flew most of the hop in formation, with some members splitting off to show off their aerobatic skills before joining back up for the landing. Our race finished at 10:38am EDT - 4 days, 38 minutes after we started. All we could do is wait and watch to see what FlightSim.com would do. If they had a crash or maybe a pair of baton handoffs, it would spell disaster for them.

Alas, they managed to make it in and finish safely. Once all the bonus time was tallied up, FlightSim.com was declared the winner, finishing 49 minutes ahead of AVSim.com. This is the closest finish the race has had to date, and all of the teams should be very proud of their achievement. The level of airmanship, professionalism, and friendship exihibited by all the teams was second to none. It was also extremely rewarding to share a hobby that tends to be very unfocused with such a dedicated group of individuals.

Here’s some photos from the race…

I can’t wait for next year!

Bookmark/e-Mail

The team was devistated by this event, the long hours and lack of sleep seriously caused spirits to sink. However, while waiting out the penalty time, it was noticed that the SAME thing happened to the baton carrier for FlightSim.com! Wow this is getting crazy! Suddenly the team was reinvigorated- we still had a chance. Several of the European pilot contingent woke from their slumber and joined in as well.

After taking care of our two 65N requirements, AVSim hit our 2nd below sea level requirement by a stop in Rotterdam, finished off our jet corridor by returning to Cork, Ireland. A quick hop back to mainland Europe and then a run down into France was in order with a short hop in an amphibian and a handoff at a lake to finish off our second water transfer. The team then used their “wildcard” to make a final run down across Spain to return to the Canaries. The race for AVSim will complete in the Canaries with a speed run from island to island, to pick up 3 bonus hours. After that, the team will have to sit and wait to see if FlightSim.com can arrive soon enough to allow their bonus time to give them the win or not.

Hold on tight race fans, this is going to be a photo finish!

Bookmark/e-Mail

Earlier today the race around the world was extremely close as SimOuthouse pulled a surprise manuever by interpreting the rules differently than other teams and used a jet to get to an Atlantic corridor in addition to using a jet in the Trans-Atlantic corridor. As a result of this surprise manuever, they were able to jump ahead of AVSim for the Trans-Atlantic flight by nearly an hour and a half. Looking at the image you can see SimOuthouse’s baton holder, Ferror, being chased by literally the entire AVSim team.

There’s the surprise, now for the heartache… SimOuthouse’s baton holder crashed after that long jet journey across the Atlantic. While that alone is not tragic since you can pass the baton off and only accrue a 30 minute penalty, the wing-man who had the baton passed to him also crashed while landing. Here’s what SimOuthouse posted about their failed landing:

“Second attempt in looked great (first approach slightly too high), but the main wheels hit a small ridge in front of the runway (perhaps 20 or 30 feet in front) and the aircraft exploded”

The crash over the crucial leg gives a distinct advantage to AVSim and Flightsim.com. Speaking of FlightSim.com, they have opted for a route with more bonus hours and have accumulated three more than the other team. While it looks like they are far behind on the world map, the race is far from over and too close to call. It’s expected that this will be the closest challenge ever.

Bookmark/e-Mail

Team AVSim and SimOuthouse both appear to be choosing the southern routes that will shoot them out near the Andes Mountains in South America probably to pick up 2 high-altitude airports and their South American requirements. FlightSim.com has chosen for the crossing route, taking them from Tasmania up to Johnson’s Atol up to Alaska. Presumably, FlightSim.com’s route will allows them to pick up their >65N requirements since they’ve already done their high altitude landings in the Himalayas.

All of the teams have completed their Team Flight bonus flights, capturing maximum bonus times there, as well as a single airport bonus so far. Likewise, all 3 teams spent time in Southern Australia last night, taking advantage of good weather and daylight to knock off most of the historical aircraft requirements.

The interesting thing will be to see how AVSim and SimOuthouse get their >65N requirements in and how FlightSim.com will get down to South America and then cross to get their European requirements in.

It is expected that all 3 teams will make landfall in North or South America this evening and will take the better part of the next day before moving on to the trans-Atlantic crossings.

Another highlight was listening to various Abba songs through AVsim’s SHOUTcast stream.

Bookmark/e-Mail

All teams were given the rules 24 hours in advance of the start of the race (10a EST on Friday). The rules include route requirements (such as two airports about 3000m above sea level and two airports below sea level), bonus airports and various rules such as if a plane crashes and which planes could be used in the race.

The teams use a SHOUTcast server so you can follow the chatter as they are flying around. Here’s Team AVSim’s SHOUTcast page which is Mad Mike’s team. Also, you can perform live tracking and check out the status of race on Google Earth. Look for 2002cbr600 on the AVSim team as that’s Mad Mike!

Looks like his team is furthest along with the most bonus time currently, but they have only done one of the required special landings while the other teams have completed water lands and have no hit and high altitude landings.

We’ll post an update everyday as well as a reviewed Flight Simulator gadget by Mad Mike.

Click on the image for a larger view of the AVSim team finishing a bonus run.

Bookmark/e-Mail