MMO reached another level…

MUST WATCH ON HD!! Trust me it is worth waiting to load..

OSes with new laptops

I have been checking many laptops lately and I have noticed one thing in common..

All the windows laptops are very slow compared to the specs and windows version, here are some keypoints:

- Windows VISTA requires at least 1GB of RAM and a 1GHz Proccessor. source

- Windows XP requires at least 128MB of RAM and a ~300MHz Processor. source

All the new laptops come with at least double the minimum requirements [some triple] for their respective OS, yet they bloat the windows with so many useless consuming apps that takes ages to remove and some of them are even unremovable..

Here are some of experiences:

-Asus EeePC 1000HE: I have posted about buying that earlier, it had windows XP with a 1GB of ram [req x8] and 1.6GHz processor [~req x5] yet still I feel that it is way too slow for an XP machine. I installed Ubuntu and it was ALOT faster, and I think if I install a pirated version of WinXP it would still be better.

-HP Pavilion dv7-1070ee: I have bought this beast for gaming mainly, it had VISTA on it and the PC itself is like 3x or 4x the minimum requirements but still slow. I have installed a pirated windows VISTA and the performance improvement was like %50-%60.

-Toshiba Satellite A200 series: My sister’s laptop came also with VISTA and I have noticed how slow was VISTA on her laptop but she did not want to change it, after a few months she came and told me that her laptop is simply unusable and she wants to change the OS, after I installed Windows 7 the performance boost was somewhere between %100 and %150.

In addition to all that if by any means you want your legal copy of windows clean there are 3 ways:

1- Ask the company for a clean version of windows, they will most likely refuse.

2- buy another legal copy of windows for around 40kd+.

3- download an illegal copy for free and install it.

So hear me up laptop companies, with your great hardware do you really have to cripple it with a bloat-infested operating system?

A good thing to notice that I did not see any linux-based laptops with bloatware …

I can haz more linux laptops?

WIFI and ….?

I just bought a PC from my friend which is quite good and I also had a wireless USB adapter since my home is almost all-wireless, I use wireless 802.11G at home.

I installed the wifi adapter on my new PC and started leeching my server EVE for games, but …. transfer speed was between 100-600Kbyte/sec.

Also there is a high latency and packet loss between the PC and router, latency is somewhere between 450 and 1300 with 20-30% packet loss.

I was like WTH? it is better to download than to leech my server, there is a problem but where!

I turned off all firewall/security things in windows but still no effect. Also I bought another wireless adapter and still no solution. Then i formatted and reinstalled the OS and same problem exists.

I touched the PC case and i was shocked by some static electricity, so I figured maybe static electricity affects the wifi, so i replaced the power cord with a grounded power cord and poof! there was some improvement!

The latency to the router and my PC is back to 1-2ms with occasional 40ms which is great! I thought the problem was solved!

I tried to transfer a 300mb iso but …. 600-800kb/s which is bad

Now i am confused … why would the latency be fixed but not the transfer rate!

By pure coinsidence the maid took the carpet in my room for cleaning, so the ground is all ceramic.

After they took the carpet I tested the wifi transfer and ……..

1.85MB/s goes up to 2.2MB/s ….

is it static? is it the magical carpet? I dont know

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League of Legends

My friends have been talking a lot about this game from Riot that mimic DotA.

I decided to give it a try after my friend got me a beta key!

At first i did not get the hang of the game because of all the unknown heroes [refered to as Champions] in this game.

But today I started playing again and I really liked it! If you played/liked DotA then 90% you will like this game.

First of all, your hero gets the classic 3 abilities with 1 ultimate, but you get two more abilities that depends on your level on the online game and not in the current game. These abilities are chosen regardless of the champion you chose to play.

But most of these abilities have very high cooldown and are very useful regardless of the champion you choose, some of them heal, others blink and some of them add temporary movement speed while cancelling collusion.

The shop in LoL [League of Legends, stupid letters :/] is well built and items are sorted according to their effects.

What I liked in the shop is that the shop suggests items for you depending on your hero, so if you are new like me you can follow the suggested items to have good effect in the game

The game overall i well designed, and I think the balance is decent so I think I will play this game more

The website of the game is www.leagueoflegends.com and as of writing this post the Open Beta is on and you can register and download the game

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

Hey again, I was excited in the past few days about the information about the new World of Warcraft expansion called Cataclysm!

Unlike the past expansion, this one does not introduce a new continent but instead focuses on improving the long-forgotten Azeroth!

First of all, the level cap will be raised to 85 which is strange, since blizzard are used to increase the level cap by 10 every expansion. In my opinion this is a very nice thing and should be done long time ago.

The level increase by 5 instead of 10 helps at not forgetting all content quickly, as the gear u gain at level 80 would still be viable at 85.

Also, the revamp of Azeroth is exactly what this game needed in the past 2 years, since throughout leveling you tend to get a lot of stupid gear like a cloth with agility, plate/mail with spirit and so on…

Another thing about revamping Azeroth is changing some current zones and adding more zones, for example:

-The long-forgotten Azshara will be a level 10-20 leveling zone.

-The biggest zone in Azeroth will be split into two zones, and yes i mean the Barrens.

-The first appearing of the Kingdom of Gilneas [to the south of Silverpine forest]

-Uldum! which was the target of many many player questions.

And of course many more!

Another thing that I liked is the new class-race combinations which some of them as far as I know are related to warcraft lore:

-Taurens have started asking questions about the Earthmother, The Earthmother in their religion has 2 eyes, The moon [Elune] and the sun [An’she], Many of the taurens decided to follow the Light as another aspect of the Earthmother, which gave the taurens both Paladin and Priest classes.

-If you ventured enough through Northrend, you will see a lot of places where dwarves are tied to lightning and rocks, even the Vault of Archavon you will see three bosses: The Storm Watcher, The Earth watcher and in 3.2.2 they will add the Flame Watcher, if you can recall what a shaman in warcraft 3 says: “Storm, Earth and Fire, Heed my call!”, So dwarves through the knowledge of these three elements gained access to Shaman class!

-Trolls, you saw them in many dungeons related to animals, in Zul’Furrak you saw them tied to serpents. In Zul’Gurub you saw them tied to panthers, bats and tigers. And in Zul’Aman you saw their bonds with bears, lynxes and birds. So I think it’s very logical to give trolls access to Druidism [My favorite!].

 

One more thing i am excited about is the guild leveling idea, from what I have read it goes like this:

Every time someone in the guild does something big, like max up a profession or a guild group killing a boss, Guild exp will be awarded. The guild will have its own talent trees with many exciting things like reduce durability loss on wipes, reduce repair costs and mass summon/resurrection.

 

There are a lot more to read about it on MMO-Champion web site!

Asus EeePC 1000-HE

I have always been amazed by the idea of netbooks. A cheap replacement for laptop used mostly for browsing.

So yesterday I went with one of my friends to see the prices and specs, I had put my mind on one of three choices:

1- Toshiba netbook with 6cell battery. [130KD]

2- Asus EeePC 1000-HE with 6cell battery. [119KD]

3- An HP-Compaq netbook with built in HSDPA modem. [not sure but I think around 105KD?]

And as seen from the topic I got the Asus one because its cheap and I am cheap .

When I decided to go for Asus i chose the black color, but what I did not know that the black colored Asus wasn’t a 1000HE but instead it was 1000H. These two models are identical except for the 6cell battery with the HE, What was funny that the seller did not know and insisted that the black one was with the 6cell battery. Not to mention the seller was going to give us the laptop on the show instead of a sealed one.

After many checks to see if the black one came with enhanced battery or not I decided to go for the gold laptop just to be sure that it was 1000HE.

Laptop specs:

Intel Atom N280/1.66GHz, 1GB DDR2 RAM, Intel GMA950 VGA Card, 160GB HDD, Wireless 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth, 10″ TFT Display with 1024×600 resolution, 1.3 MP camera.

The netbook was slightly heavy compared to other ones, I think about 1.25-1.5KG, but i guess this is because the Laptop-sized keyboard and the 10.1″ screen.

As for the battery I think the laptop can sustain at least 5hrs of continuous usage, but i have not measured it myself.

First thing to do! install UBUNTU!! Thank god for Wubi

Ubuntu recognized everything without any problems, sound/video/wireless were working flawlessly, yet i have not figured a way to connect to the internet using bluetooth and my E90 in Ubuntu.

[Edit: I managed to connect by bluetooth successfully using a program called "Blueman" under ubuntu]

Here are some pictures i took on the go: