Differences.

They come in all sizes. Some can be game changing while others can be so minute that you don't notice. For instance, going from 1.2GHz to 1.4GHz on a netbook. Sad news: it isn't game changing. Noticeable? Yes. Spectacular? Not really.

However, going from a 2GHz Athlon X2 on a 939 board to an AM2 Athlon x2 at 2.8GHz is. Surprising I know. But really. I never understood the impact of clock frequency on games until this past weekend. The difference is between WoW lagging hard in Dalaran at lowest settings to running at 40+ fps in Dalaran on highest settings. And on a 9800GT, Dalaran should be no sweat on any quality settings.

So I've come to the easy conclusion, that my gaming desktop needs an upgrade. The Phenom 9600BE was great when I bought it. Quad core multitasking power for under $120 was a steal, no matter the clock speed. But now that 2.3GHz clock speed is starting to show. My Radeon HD4770, which is technically more powerful than a dying 9800GT, also struggles in Dalaran on any setting on this computer. And I've never understood why. Simple: it's being held back by my processor.

Lesson learned? Never underestimate the impact your CPU has on your games. Time for a cheap way out. Overclock? Not on an old school Phenom baby. I can't get it past 2.5GHz without raising the core voltage, which raises the temperature quite a bit. Lemon much? An Athlon II X4 is in my future. With another 4GB of DDR2 and a second HD4770 for some Crossfire love. Now I just need the cash for it. How much do kidneys go for online?

Take it and run with it.

Into a wall. Haven't posted anything in a while, school's been hell.

Apparently the scene has been moving past me. The ultra-portable scene that is. Things are heating up out there in the big bad world of not-quite-netbooks. All the cool companies are getting into the game for a bit of action. Just like with netbooks, people are snatching them up. All these Pentium CULVs and Core 2 Solos hitting the market are making me a bit insecure about my little Athlon 64 (that I use every day now as a school computer).

So what can I do to combat my processor related insecurities? Well, get a new one. But that's out of reach for a poor college student. And you know how that is.

So what else can I do? Cry? Complain? I try to do as little of those as possible. I make due with what I've got. And overclock.

That's how you do it. Hop on over to this forum and check out a few methods. Getting a cool new wallpaper is optional by the way, but highly recommended.

Cause and effect baby.

Last score was 2.4. Oddly enough, the Aero graphics score went up from 2.4 as well. The processor really is the bottleneck on this system. 1.43GHz doesn't seem like a lot, but if it pushes that score up by half a point, I can't wait to take it further. If it'll go further that is. Locked down laptop BIOSes aren't friendly, and neither is restrictive cooling on a laptop.

On a less warranty-voiding note, I finally figured out a way to use my Gateway on my desk comfortably. As you probably know, typing on a completely flat laptop keyboard on a flat surface can get rather tiring after a while. But reading Lifehacker recently has put me in a "solution oriented" mood. So I rummaged through the crap in my room and found a 2" hard plastic ring binder. Makes a perfect mount for my Gateway. It even brings it up perfectly level with my 19" LCD for my desktop. And I can stuff the AC adapter inside the binder to clear the clutter on my desk. Nice.

Impressions, with a new purchase too!

I've been in school a few weeks now, using my Gateway every day like the workhorse it was purchased to become.

Walking around school and around my (mainly) computer science classes, I've been noticing a lot of netbooks floating around. All of the popular ones have been making appearances. Whipping my Gateway out gets a lot of attention. In fact, I had an Aspire One owner lecture me on the difference between a netbook and an ultra-portable. I chuckled inside, and agreed whole-heartedly with him as he pointed out the obvious differences. When he finished I pointed out that last semester I used to bring an Aspire One with me every day, and he remembered. Then I pointed to the Gateway and said "it's just better for me."

The word better may be an understatement in some respects. Have I mentioned that I use Visual Studio 2008 on a daily basis, and that my computer needs to be able to run it quickly and effectively? I think I did in a past post. Something about this computer just gets along with VS2008. For example: right now I have Chrome open with 4 tabs. This Blogger page, my PicasaWeb album, Facebook (I know, ugh.), and a HQ YouTube stream playing. I click VS2008 and it launches in (and I timed it just now) 12 seconds. To a project. And that includes how long it took to pick which project I wanted to open. My Phenom x4 9600BE with 4GB DDR2 and a SATA 3GB drive can't do that. My Aspire One took upwards of 40 seconds just to launch it, and another 30 to get to a usable state. How? I have no idea, don't ask. And don't think my Aspire One was simply poor software working against it. It had maxed out RAM at 1.5GB, and a fresh install of Win7 at least every month.

Another thing I've noticed about laptops in class, is the noise. I find this Gateway to be a bit on the noisy side, especially when playing Flash video (which is nearly all the time). It isn't by any means unbearable, but it's noticable in my nearly silent house at the moment. But in a classroom, I can't even hear it. Not over other laptops in the area and the ambient noise of shuffling impatient students and loud teachers. In fact, yesterday I tested this. I was sitting in my most boring class. Survey of programming languages it's called, yet we've done no programming at all. More than half of the class is sitting on a laptop to liven up the boredom. I was nowhere near an outlet, so I was on battery. I cleared my Reader feeds and my inbox, so I decided to jump on WoW for a minute. I ended up playing in Alterac Valley for the entire class. That's an hour and 15 minutes of WoW on battery. And my fan's noise never even rose to the point of notice. And not to mention when I logged off and put it to sleep for the next class, it had 40% battery remaining. Considering that it was at 84% when I started playing, that's pretty damn nice.

So the moral of the story? This laptop can play WoW, tolerably, for extended periods of time in boring classes on battery. That's exactly what I wanted to hear before I bought it.

Enough about me though. Have you peeped Brad Linder from Lilliputing's latest unboxing of the Acer Aspire 1410? I can't wait to see his take on the device. Sadly though, he says even it's Intel CULV can't handle full screen Hulu any better than an Atom. Did I even mention Hulu on this device? Fullscreen is semi-watchable, but not perfect. From far away, like sitting on my desk with me building a pc on the floor, it seems perfect, heh.

Really though, I have been waiting for those 1410's to hit reviewers for a long time. I eagerly await your review Mr. Linder.

I'm not done yet either. I finally found a case to replace the thin cloth that came in the box to protect it. I've been using that, and my friends have been laughing at it every day. Well laugh at this beefy unit.

Fits like a glove. And you can spy the cloth I've been using behind it.

It's made for a 12" laptop, so it fits my 11.6" with an extended battery perfectly. Almost as if it were made for my device. Snagged it from an eBay seller. Under 10 bones with free shipping. Ordered it Tuesday the 25th, came in the mail today the 28th. Interested? Get one here.

Saturday night, no date, and a two liter bottle of Shasta.

Technically it's Diet Rite, but who pays attention to details? No one.

It gets boring on WoW sometimes. Occasionally you run across a night where there seems to be nothing you feel like doing in game, so you venture out. Tonight I ventured out to my Google Reader feed page (not very far, I know), and found this amazing piece on Gizmodo. I mean, goddamn, why isn't this guy a millionaire by now? Ideas come and go, but that one is a winner. I've never had trouble with my headphones tangling, so it wouldn't be for me, but I know dozens of people who need help badly with them.

Apparently I've been wrapping headphones (and other long wires) correctly for as long as I can remember according to another (old) Gizmodo post from that page.

It's nice to know that my Razer Pro|Tones won't get damaged, even if they were extremely cheap. Best earbuds I've ever owned, by the way. But recently I've been trying out a pair of Lubix NC1s and I've been surprised. They don't sound as good as the Razer buds, but they don't go into your ear so that was expected.

On a more WoW and Gateway related note: I used my LT3103u for an hour to surf the Auction House, craft two Frostsavage Sets, and collect some shiny new gems for a server transfer. It was actually out of desperation. A friend is transfering one of his old crazy-geared 80s to our new server so he can leech his money and professions. He rolled from 71 to 80 just farming AV now that you can get experience from battlegrounds, so his new 80 is completely broke. And instead of farming new gathering professions, he decided a server transfer and neutral AH swap would be easier. So I'm using this as an opportunity to gear out my soon-to-be 80 Mage and get him some Gs.

Ah, the desperation part. I built a new rig (out of old parts) Friday night, and threw my old 9800GT in it just so it could play WoW while I'm not at my apartment. It is running decently, especially with Windows 7 RC 64 bit on it. It's an old Athlon X2 3800+ on a socket 939 board with 1.5GB of DDR400. Why 1.5GB? I have no idea either, it was on the board and I didn't feel like swapping it. I'll have to do that eventually. It actually plows through WoW at a high pace, but for some reason it slowed to a chug when I was logging in and out constantly to craft that shit for the transfer. So I hard reset, grabbed my Gateway, and hit the sofa.

And on an ending note, see if you can tell what this is:

**Edit: I just noticed that I took this picture at 640x480 on medium quality. I knew my phone's camera wasn't THAT bad, sorry.

One day down, many more to go

School has begun, and this semester is looking to be what's more commonly referred to as a bitch. However, on the lighter side, my Gateway LT3103u is shaping up to be a fantastic school-bag tag-along. It makes my bag feel smaller than my Aspire One used to somehow. Perhaps because it fits the contour of my bag instead of poking out at the bottom. Battery life was impressive. Keep in mind, this is only after one day of school, so things could change.

I reinstalled Windows 7 RC 64 bit again, and somehow I prefer it. It just seems to run better than the 32 bit version. I can't explain how, because I probably have no logical basis to argue on anyway. It just feels faster. What really astounded me is how it handled Visual Studio 2008. Now VS2008 isn't exactly a lightweight piece of kit. To be honest, I expected it to take its time to get going and to do anything like my old Acer Travelmate did with it. But it doesn't. It launches instantly, and opens even decently sized solutions in under 10 seconds. And by decently sized I mean something like a 5 member term project from last semester. And this was on battery!

In addition to work, I also played a bit yesterday. I jumped on WoW quickly, but the school's WiFi failed me as it usually does. Then I surfed for a bit, probably close to an hour total. At the end of my day (12:30 - 8, but I went home at 7) the battery read 80%. That includes pulling the laptop out in every class to read through the syllabus and surf a bit on the side.

That's good news for me, because I didn't have to bring my AC adapter with me to weigh my bag down. With my new fancy mouse and laptop, I barely noticed my bag was any heavier. It will probably come with me from now on as intended.

All's well then? Perhaps.

Have you spied the new Acer 1410, or Timeline 1810? Impressive. That's the Timeline I was waiting for when I bought the Gateway. Then Dell launches its own 11.6 incher with a ULV cpu. And now we have a Windows 7 ION-equipped Lenovo S12 coming soon. Then the Samsung variant. The end of summer is shaping up to be an exciting one. The Summer of the Ultraportable. Beware, consumers, your day is dawning.

Rosewill RM-8500

20 bones with free shipping. 1600dpi, 5 buttons, metal scroll wheel, rubberized body. Score.

On a more wordy front, I am liking this mouse. I've been trying to use it as much as possible since it came in early this morning. It's the perfect sensitivity for this size screen (the Gateway's). It feels so solid for a $20 wireless mouse. It's very nicely weighted and palmable. And by palmable I mean it can be used with two fingers in a hovering stance or with your hand wrapped around it. It's your choice.

In the box

-Rosewill RM-8500

-Nano USB RF Reciever

-Carrying Pouch

-AA Battery

-User Manual

Size

It's definitely small, that's for sure. Of course, it being named a "notebook mouse" makes you sort of expect that. But it isn't as small as I thought it would be, and that's a good thing. When I ordered it, I was afraid it would be too small. And since I couldn't find a single comparison picture on the entire internet (googled for like 35 seconds), I decided to take the big $20 plunge.

For comparison's sake, that's the Rosewill on the left, my Apple BT Mighty Mouse, then my Logitech G5 on the right. All next to my favorite tool ever, the Utili-key. Above the Mighty Mouse is the BT dongle, not the Rosewill one.

This is the Rosewill USB dongle. It is actually smaller than my BT one, so that's a plus.

Performance

I've used cheap mice before. And this one definitely doesn't fit the "cheap mouse" feel. The tracking and response it gives would be more likely found on an expensive Logitech or Razer (of which I've had many). It isn't light enough to be compared to a Razer though, it has the solid heavy feel of a Logitech.

This heavy feel makes it very precise. I have only been using it for a few hours, and by now I never misclick at all. And this is a fast mouse for a notebook mouse. 1600dpi is what gaming mice used to be less than a few years ago. On my Aspire One this mouse would simply be too sensitive to handle.

The feet on the bottom of the mouse give it an excellent glide. It makes my BT Mighty Mouse feel like it's sliding across gravel. It almost stacks up to my G5 in terms of slidability. But time will tell on that one. My G5 feels like it did the day I bought it, will this one in a year?

Actually, using it now, and switching back and forth between this Rosewill and my trusty G5 makes the G5 feel so...big.

Conclusion

Another fantastic purchase. I highly recommend this mouse to anyone looking for a mouse for a notebook. I stress that. Notebook. Not netbook.

And one last thing. Took me a while to figure out. The DPI is switchable on the fly. Just press the wheel button and the left click button at the same time. Goes from 800 to 1600 seamlessly.

That was fast, right?

Don't you love that sitting at your front door when you wake up?

Hold on, didn't I order this stuff yesterday? Yes, technically. At 1AM yesterday morning.

First box, the smaller one.

And the second, I don't have a picture of. Because it's in my computer right now ticking along nicely.

Does that work instead of a picture of a box? I think so.