Barbed Wireless - Why high-speed Net access won't be free. By Paul Boutin

Barbed Wireless - Why high-speed Net access won't be free. By Paul Boutin

PCI Express will please serious power junkies

By DWIGHT SILVERMAN
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

Computer shoppers who want and can afford the fastest machines face a dilemma as they decide just how to spend all that cash.

Desktop PCs using the new PCI Express design — a faster way of moving information around — are now widely available online and in stores. Those who want to build their own machines can find motherboards and PCI Express components to pop in those shiny new slots (see www.chron.com/pciexpress).

You'll pay a premium for PCI Express now because it's new. Even if your wallet's fat, you'll notice the difference.

I've gotten my hands on a pair of PCI Express-based systems, from Compaq and Dell.

If you're shopping at the high end of the spectrum, must you have one?

The answer is a qualified yes.

• PRESARIO SA4000T — $2,524, Compaq/HP. Processor: Intel Pentium 4 550 3.6 GHz. Memory: 1 GB DDR2 533 MHz. Hard drive: Dual 160 GB Serial ATA drives, RAID. Optical: DVD+RW, CD-ROM. Removable drive: 160 GB Personal Media Drive. Graphics: ATI Radeon X600 256 MB. Audio: Sound Blaster Audigy 2. Monitor: 15-inch LCD. Ports: 56k fax modem, Ethernet, memory-card reader, USB 2.0, FireWire.
HP continues to market its Compaq name at the "serious" computer user and hobbyist. Packaged in a black and silver case that's easy to get into and work in, it has lots of room for expansion.

The Compaq system has an interesting feature aimed at fans of digital music and video, a removable 160-GB hard drive called the HP Personal Media Drive. You can store tons of digital media files here, yank it from the PC and connect it to any other PC via a USB 2.0 port. It's a little pricey, adding $219 to the package, or about $30 more than similar products, but being able to plug it into the front of your main PC is handy.

The Presario SA4000T comes with an ATI Radeon X600 graphics card that uses the PCI Express bus. This is not ATI's fastest card — that's the X800 — but this one is still impressive. A recent driver release for all of ATI's Radeon cards helps boost performance a little more, as well.

The machines come with a little too much "free" software that is little more than advertisements for commercial programs. One window kept appearing asking me if I wanted to keep seeing "Internet deals" — and it wasn't being generated over the Web. As if pop-up ads at Web sites aren't maddening enough, now PC makers are starting to put them right on the machines!

The built-in benchmark that comes with id Software's game Doom 3 — currently considered the most challenging program for testing PC performance — gave me a little over 50 frames per second on the Compaq. It might be possible to do a little better with a more powerful graphics card. The Radeon X600 is a midrange PCI Express card; using the higher-end X800 would give a significant boost, as we'll see in the competition's machine.

• DIMENSION 8400 — $2,264, Dell. Processor: Intel Pentium 4 540 3.2 GHz. Memory: 1 GB DDR2 533 MHz. Hard drive: Dual 160 GB Serial ATA drives, RAID. Optical: CD-RW, DVD-ROM. Graphics: ATI Radeon X800 128 MB. Audio: Integrated 5.1 surround. Speakers: Dell 5.1 SurroundSound. Monitor: 19-inch LCD.Ports: 56k fax modem, Ethernet, USB 2.0, FireWire.
The Dimension 8400 is not Dell's highest-end system. That's the Dimension XPS, a box specifically aimed at gamers. But the 8400 is no slouch and is a good choice for mainstream users who don't feel the need to show off a pretty case at the next LAN party.

And speaking of the case — Dell continues to use a clamshell design that opens after you push buttons on the top and bottom of the case. It's easy to get into, but a little hard to work in. In some of the machines, wiring from one side of the case crosses to the other, and it's easy to knock one of these wires loose.

The model Dell sent was tricked out with ATI's highest-end graphics card, the X800, though with 128 MB, it has less memory than the Presario's X600, which had 256. But this is an interesting case because, while the Presario's processor is faster and there's more memory in its graphics card, the Dell outperformed it in the Doom 3 test. It got about 65 frames per second, a significant boost on a system to the Presario.

The card, in combination with a 19-inch LCD monitor, produced an exquisite display.

Dell shipped this with a nice set of 5.1 speakers that take up minimal space but deliver maximum sound. The controls for them are placed on the center speaker, which sits atop a stylish silver stand, making it easy to do quick adjustments.

While those who just want machine for everyday uses — a little Internet surfing, playing some games, watching a movie or two, burning music CDs — computers with the older PCI standards will do just fine, and you'll be happy with one for a long time to come.

As an example, my personal machine — which has a 2.26-GHz Pentium 4 chip, a gigabyte of memory and an nVidia GeForce 6800 XT graphics card with 256 MB of video RAM — got 40 fps per second in Doom 3's benchmark. That's not too shabby for a PC that's almost 3 years old (although the new graphics card gets a lot of credit for those numbers).

But if you are a gamer, edit home video or work with computer-aided design programs, you'll want PCI Express. The performance increase in these systems is significant enough to warrant consideration from serious power junkies.

And you'll really want it if you like to upgrade your machine over time, because that's where higher-end components — especially graphics cards — are headed. It may cost a little more, but it will be an investment in your computing future.
HoustonChronicle.com - Computing

The Sims' extreme makeover goes right down to the DNA

By DWIGHT N. ODELIUS
For The Chronicle

When you really think about it, The Sims should never have been made.

For one, it wasn't aimed specifically at pasty 16-year-olds without girlfriends, the major market at the time. No one got to shoot anything. Nothing blew up. The graphics weren't even very good.

Worse still, the game amounted to nothing more than micromanagement of tiny simulated people — Sims — and watching them in their tiny simulated house living their tiny simulated lives. They went to work, came home, learned stuff, messed up the kitchen, forgot to pay their bills and fell in love with each other.

And gamers the world over ate it up. The Sims bridged the gender gap and drew more people into the world of gaming than any PC title before it. It has been translated into 17 languages and sold more copies than any PC game ever.

Now, after four years and seven expansion packs, The Sims franchise has reached its end. The replacement, The Sims 2, is a souped-up version with slick 3-D graphics, a revamped character creation system and a reconceptualized Sim life, one more involving than ever.

Of course, you still micromanage the daily lives of your Sim family, telling them when to eat, sleep and shower. You still have to get them off to work in a good mood, encourage them to interact with each other and deal with the chaos of their lives.

The basic gameplay may be the same, but the overall experience has changed. Sims now have traits, aspirations and memories that make them seem all the more real.

The game's robust character-creation system lets players tweak nearly every detail of a Sim's appearance and create an identity. The system makes possible the game's most significant feature: Sims now have a genetic makeup they can pass on.

When Sims procreate, they pass along behavioral traits as well as family resemblance. Parent Sims must take care of child Sims until they reach maturity and can move out. All Sims die, leaving only a legacy of descendants as testament to their tiny little lives.

It's all very entertaining and engaging, although veteran players may find that the game suffers slightly without the expansion packs to which we've all grown accustomed. Although no expansions have been announced yet, it's a pretty sure bet that they're on their way.
HoustonChronicle.com - At Home

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Review D-Link DI-514 Wireless 802.11b CableDSL Router

D-Link DI-514 Wireless 802.11b CableDSL Router

The Code Project - How to start the Microsoft System Information dialog - System

The Code Project - How to start the Microsoft System Information dialog - System

CBT Nuggets: Free Videos

CBT Nuggets: Free Videos

Sims 2 gives lessons in godlike omnipotence

By ANTHONY BREZNICAN
Associated Press LOS ANGELES --

If you could play God, would you be kind, cruel or just careless?
The answer can reveal itself by the way you play "The Sims 2," the highly anticipated follow-up to the "real life" personal computer game "The Sims," which placed omnipotent players in control of the fates of digital people.
The characters in "The Sims 2" -- which was released in stores earlier this month -- are born, grow older, make friends and enemies, struggle for success, and try to become better people before they're finished.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Will Wright, the creator of "The Sims" games, says he hopes the same thing will happen to players.
AP: The original Sims had a lot more to do with survival -- eating, working, cleaning up -- but the sequel puts the chores aside. What are the goals this time?
Wright: The characters have memory now. They have much greater awareness. They age. They now have five aspirations ... knowledge, romance, wealth, family and popularity. ... If their aspiration is wealth and they're poor, as they get older and older, it's really going to be a drag on their self-esteem because they didn't meet up with what they wanted. Or if they want romance, but don't have any lovers ...
AP: And if the self-esteem is low ... ?
Wright: That's where it has an impact on how much time you have to spend managing them. With higher self-esteem you can go more and more hands-off and you're basically buying yourself freedom as a player. And they'll make better decisions, minute to minute.
AP: How do you know what will make your Sim happy?
Wright: They have wants and fears. On the fear side traumatic things can happen to them and they can form phobias or negative associations. On the want side, that is driven by their aspirations. The game will tell you, "My want is romance and I want to meet the next-door neighbor." Then if you do that, it'll change and say, "I want to kiss her now." It cascades.
AP: So if you create a family, and the husband's aspiration is romance, he may want to have an affair with the sexy neighbor. His wife and child probably have different aspirations, right?
Wright: That's where you have to make real value judgments. The Sims will frequently have wants that are in conflict with each other. You have to step back and say, `Where am I going to draw the line? What balance do I want to achieve here? Putting the player in some of these ethical quandaries, that's where a lot of the dramatic interest comes from.
AP: So it's sort of a juggling act of all their different desires ...
Wright: This guy wants to have an affair with the neighbor and she wants to get a promotion in her job and the daughter wants to run away with her boyfriend. The wants are relative to their age level. The Sims age very smoothly now from a baby to a toddler to a child to a teenager to an adult and then an elder. At each stage they have very different behaviors and issues.
AP: Fans can create skins through the program "Sims 2 Body Shop" and swap them on the Internet. In addition to creating a lot of naked Sims, they're also making a lot of celebrity look-alikes, like Conan O'Brien and Paris Hilton, famous characters like Gandalf and Gollum from "The Lord of the Rings." How does that fit into the game?
Wright: What's funny is that we have a genetics feature now (which allows characters who mate to have children who share their looks and aspirations). So you can download some of the celebrities that the players have made, put them in the game and have them have kids. You can have Britney Spears living with Gollum, and their offspring would be ... (trails off laughing.)
AP: When you tested "The Sims 2" on new players, what did you learn about them from the way they played the game? Does it reveal child anarchists and punk-rock grannies?
Wright: Definitely, you can look at somebody's house and get a good sense of their personality. It's especially fun when you talk to 10-year-olds who complain that their Sims never get to bed on time even though they have work in the morning, and they stay up all night eating candy. Hearing a 10-year-old become the parent, there's something deeply ironic about that.
AP: How is it different when adults play?
Wright: What a lot of people do right off the bat is they'll put themselves, their family, their house and their neighbors in the game. I talk to a lot of teenage girls who do that, they put their boyfriends in the game and then tell their boyfriend what happened. I don't think they expect the game to predict (their futures) but I think what they enjoy is telling their boyfriend what happened. "Oh, you were flirting with so and so in the game."
AP: When you play, are you a kind god or a cruel god?
Wright: I'm generally both. Mainly I like to test all the different boundaries. ... Sometimes I get to the point where I feel guilty in the game. That's a really great find.
AP: Would you like to confess now what you've done to feel guilty?
Wright: I've done the old, "How many ways can I torture my Sims?" It's easy with kids now, because you can just screw up their childhood and they end up as a really screwed-up dysfunctional adult. That always presses the guilt button.
AP: But the Sims exist in an overall safe world. There's no realistic violence ... The fights are just clouds of dust with limbs punching and kicking, like a cartoon.
Wright: We wanted it to have the feeling that it was a bright and shiny toy. It's not "The Sopranos." ... So, for instance, babies in the game won't die. If you ever neglect your baby, eventually the social worker will come and take the baby away, but the baby won't die. Older Sims can die. ...
AP: Do you see much irony in the fact that people are neglecting real life to play a game about virtual real life?
Wright: There's a kind of epiphany that a lot of players go through, when in the game, you can buy a computer for your Sim, and on the computer you can have your Sim actually play little games. A lot of players get to the point where it's 2 in the morning for the Sim and the Sim is up playing computer games, and the player is trying to get him to stop playing because the Sim has to get up in the morning. Then they step back and realize it's actually 2 in the morning and that they actually need to go to work. It's almost a creepy model of the real world.
AP: What happens then?
Wright: A lot of players stop playing the game at that point. Not a lot of them, but I've heard certain ones say, "As soon as I realized I was taking better care of the Sim than I was of myself, I stopped playing the game."