Be Excellent To Each Other

Yeah, I was going to revisit that and see if it was up to date and if there was anything from my Steam history worth recommending for you. Annoy me about it during the evening when I'm at home and I'll redo it.

Take note if you find the original list that it was specifically stuff on my own 'to play' list so I can't say for sure any of it's worth playing; it's just stuff that either reviewed well or I liked the sound of. As I say, I'll make a new list with stuff I've actually played and can recommend.

Also: my experience of this kind of thing is it can take a while because they'll build them from scratch and do some amount of testing. Obviously they could just be understaffed as well.

As well as Lewies link (mentioned above) also keep an eye on what comes up on the Humble Bundle site - they typically have a humble bundle once every 2 or 3 weeks (typically 4 games for around $1 or 6 for about $6) , there is also usually a weekly bundle sale which is a random assortment (sometimes good / sometimes bad).

Right now the Humble bundle is ebook stuff and the weekly bundle is rhythm games

https://www.humblebundle.com/weekly

So pay 68p for

Symphony
Sequence
BIT.TRIP RUNNER

or about £4 to add on
Audiosurf
Beat Hazard Ultra
Retro/Grade

Along with soundtracks

It does seem quite slow, although they're a solid company and have been around for yoinks and regularly win prizes and stuff so there's nothing to actually worry about.

Their profit margin on the PC you've bought is probably about £1.75p though, so they might prioritise higher margin PCs if they're busy.

I'd definitely be giving them a little prod by now though.

How strange. That was for the Dark Souls 2 thread...

Fuck me, am I going mad or have I missed the deal already. It's now showing as £7 from £2 this afternoon. PC gaming moves quickly it seems.

Yeah you'll need to get used to that, PC deals are usually better quality and you get many more per second.

Yeah, looks like it's finished I'm afraid. The deals can be for very limited time as Trooper says. It'll be back on sale, or in a Humble Bundle or something, soon again no doubt.

Elitist scum.

I ordered a Mac from Apple.com last autumn and it took ten days to arrive, and then they sent the wrong spec (although it was better than the one I ordered, so win).

They're worth the wait.

I finally have an answer...

Especially if they're better than what you ordered.

Hold on guys, this is the PC thread, and we all know Macs aren't PCs.

Yes they are! Good PCs. Ones that work properly (mostly).

Yes I agree!

Worth every penny not to have to use Windows.

My Mac is a PC. I think.

Man, it must be fun doing this operating system using thing.

I prefer to just run software, Windows does that just fine.

It really bloody doesn't. Mainly because most of the software is made by third parties. So you have hardware, OS and software all made by different companies. No wonder it's mostly shit and doesn't work together properly half the time.

citation needed

What have you been doing?

Aside from trying to justify overpaying on a computer, that is.

I fully admit I'm a clueless arse, but I like to think I can sniff out bullshit/being ripped off? Apple Macs are for hipsters (IMO) who don't mind paying a (considerable) premium to have cool looking stuff that looks good in swanky coffee bars and hip student joints.

People buy PCs because they *need* them, and Macs because they *want* them. Fair play to Apple; great business model.

To be fair I think they can be a bit easier to use, especially for the elderly, artists and anyone else who generally struggles with technology.

Nah, disagree. I have a Mac because at the time it was the best bit of hardware for the price point. There really wasn't a comparable model, and it was cheaper that less powerful alternatives. It's the best bit of hardware I've ever owned, but I can't stand OSX, so I run Windows on it. So it's the best Windows PC I've ever owned, the fact that it's got an Apple logo on top is entirely irrelevant.

What don't you like about it?

Horrid UI choices. The menu for a given window being at the top of the screen instead of at the top of the window, obvious things not being in the context-sensitive right-click menu, a just nasty way of dealing with mounted drives, application installs, etc.

Probably all stuff I could get used to, but I don't really want to bother.

It was cheaper to buy a Mac and run Windows on it (as a PC laptop), than buy an equivalent power Dell or similar...? Honestly?

I'm still running my 6-year old Dell lappy (on XP); still going strong despite being (daily) thrown around trains, building sites, factories. Same story for the other guys in the office: all Dell laptops; none less than 5 years old, all still on XP, all still running fine. (And I should point out that we use fairly power-hungry stuff like MatLab, CAD, proprietary 3D modelling software like CATT)

Best £600 I ever spent.

Shit, I'm so buying a Mac now. I'll love it.

This must be like a new personal record for wrongness. And, as it's you, means we're probably on track for a new world record as well.

Regardless of buying a Mac or not you should probably buy another computer



Microsoft is just about to pull the plug on XP , once that happens no more updates - expect people to be poking around anything that gets released as a patch for future versions of windows to be tested to see if it was broken on XP and it to be harder and harder to keep the machine 'safe' as those exploits get out there and are known (also you'll struggle to get an up to date browser to run on with patches as well)

If it really was top of the range you might get away with just updating the OS to something later but it might be time to move on.

That's all fair enough, it is a subjective choice after all. I never found Windows all that bad when I didn't know any different, even in the really bad old days of 95/98/ME. Just when I tried out OS X for the first time I found it a revelation. Yes, it took me a while to figure out where a lot of stuff was, but it just makes a lot more sense and is a joy to use. Every time I come back to Windows now it feels a clunky mess. Even MS agree because it seems that every 'innovation' in 7 and 8 seem to come from OS X or Linux. Even now they're moving towards a walled garden approach, funnelling people through the Metro interface and the marketplace. So the reasons for using it are rapidly diminishing.

I'll be glad if SteamOS takes a hold for gaming in future, it'll mean I can stop using Windows completely.

Yeah I know about the XP non support issue mate; am dreading Windows 8.
One thing's for sure though; the new laptop won't be an Apple.

Just install Classic Shell and forget all the Win8 bollocks even exists. You can even make it look and behave just like XP if you want; although the Win7 Start Menu is genuinely better in my opinion and worth trying at least.

I don't think so. There's a reason most of the world's network infrastructure runs on hardware and OS which is made by the same manufacturer (whether it be Cisco, Blue Coat, or whomever). It is the most reliable way of minimising any incompatibility between hardware/OS/software layers.

That's fecking awesome mate, thanks very much for that, I owe you several beers.

Yep. Note that I'm referring to the specific requirement of wanting an ultralightweight, top spec laptop - I strongly suspect it wouldn't have been the case if I was after a desktop machine.

Yeah - networking is really boring. Nobody wants to make an OS for network kit except the spods who build the network kit.

My work here is done

You said that Windows and PC hardware and apps don't "work together properly half the time". That's self-evidently a load of nonsense. Any chat about Cisco or whomever doesn't change that in the slightest.

It's a pretty good bit of software and the sole reason my girlfriend, mum, niece and several workmates are happy enough running Win8 rather than having to fight with the thing. Bear in mind that you will still see some differences coming all the way from XP as the general UI design obviously inherits changes made through Vista and Win7 but it shouldn't be too jarring with the worst of Win8's bullshit hidden by Classic Shell.

Looks like I picked the right day to be off work

How much did it cost mate, if you don't mind my asking?

It was 1200 quid. Not cheap, by any stretch of the imagination, but at the time there was nothing of that spec from any other manufacturer that was cheaper.

£1200 for a laptop, plus OS on top of that? Fuck me.

Still, each to his own. I don't give a stuff about computers as long as they basically work; my passions lie elsewhere & plenty of people have (quite rightly) laughed and pointed at the amount I spend on cars, bikes or whatever. Each to his own mate.

Plus I *do* have an Apple 5S phone, precisely because I *do* want it to look good in meetings etc. I readily admit it.

What fight do you have to do with Windows 8? You click the desk top button and you are on the desktop.

You have a go at Myp for talking bollocks

Here's the thing: I don't like Windows 8. Lots of other people don't like it. That fact won't change no matter how much you disagree or how often you pop-up to defend it. I'm past the point of even trying to argue with you about it, these things are just facts that you'll need to deal with. I've put my issues with it forward in some amount of detail in the past and you don't accept/believe them. That's fine, we're now at the point of having to agree to disagree.

Any fucking idiot should be able to tell that I'm exaggerating for effect. There are far too many conflicts and incompatibility issues for my liking. It's why I don't like using Windows. Fair enough if you like it - it's down to personal choice as I've already said.

Oh behave. You made a wild claim and I called you on it; there's no reason to brand me a fucking idiot over it while doing the 'Oh, I obviously didn't mean it!' dance.



You're talking about two different things here though. Obviously there's a massive amount of personal preference involved in what you prefer to use (c.f. you and Craster's both very reasonable comments about UI on both sides of the fence), I haven't spoken to that because it is so subjective. Making a sweeping claim about the functionality and/or stability of a particular platform is completely different though and it's only that I took issue with in your comments.

Gotta love a bit of Mac Vs PC!

I've been working in Mac-based IT for a while now so I've been learning a little about the pros and cons. Personally, I do prefer the Mac format, I won't lie. I think OS X is vastly better than Windows. I can imagine the differences between the two formats creating a bit of a headache for someone brought up purely with Windows, but OS X - IMO, obviously - seems a more robust system and usually very easy to troubleshoot and support. The Mac format does get an amusing amount of bile chucked at it from the Windows crowd though.

Apple hardware is terrific. Their laptops are frankly unparalleled in terms of design and build quality. Obviously you tend to get more bang for your buck when it comes to raw performance with PC hardware, but Apple's build quality is absolutely second-to-none. Even some of their less popular design choices, like the non-user-replaceable batteries in their modern laptops, offer some very clear advantages - super thin and light laptops with colossal battery life. The current 13-inch MacBook Air models are plenty powerful machines, whilst being supremely portable and boasting 12-hour battery life. I can believe that too - my Late 2013 13-inch MacBook Pro is advertised as having 8-hour battery life and I've got it to run past that with constant, moderate Internet and MS Office use.

Where it all falls down, of course, is in the Enterprise environment. Apple have ditched their Xserve rack-mounted server line, OS X Server itself seems to be getting dumbed down these days, the Mac version of MS Office is fucking atrocious under heavy use (the software itself is fantastic for most people, but really heavy use of Outlook and Excel for Mac shows both up as having horrific stability issues compared to the Windows versions) and no-one's made a worthy MS-compatible equivalent. That said, I understand Apple's integration with Active Directory is at least coming on in leaps and bounds - Mavericks is meant to integrate a lot better into AD than it's predecessors (though we're only just starting to roll out Mavericks where I'm working at the moment).

I can completely see Cavey's point of PCs being something people "need" and Macs being something people "want", but surely that's true of a lot of things? I don't doubt plenty of people buy a Mac laptop so they can pose with it in Starbucks or wherever, but a lot of people do genuinely prefer the OS X experience. I had Windows on my MacBook - I recently deleted it because I was never using the bloody thing and it was taking up unnecessary disk space.

Oh, don't get me wrong here mate, I applaud Apple. No-one wants to be the guy knocking out tins of blue stripe baked beans at 3p/tin; far better to be Heinz selling almost the same stuff for 60p/tin. They've created desirability for their stuff through immaculate marketing, careful placement in all manner of TV/films/media, PR, advertising and all the rest, not to mention tasteful ergonomic design. Their stuff looks cool.

Apple are the Audi of computers. Everyone knows that most Audis are nothing more than puffed up VWs (costing thousands more, with identical engines/plaforms/near identical bodies etc.), but people pay the premium because they desire the perceived cachet. In plain speaking terms, it's 'snob factor'.

I don't have a problem with it btw; I do this, we all do, but I like to think I'm honest enough with myself at least about stuff like this.