Hardware dies.  It's a fact of life that at some point, your beloved gizmo will give up the ghost and go off to that great big CompUSA in the sky to forever rest comfortably in cushioned boxes with all of its fallen comrades.  Some hardware lasts longer than others, as is evidenced by the Macintosh Powerbook (original) that still runs weather data tools in my dad's lab.  Some hardware however has a short lifespan and can sputter and die sooner than one would expect, and typically just a day or two after the warranty expires.

When the latter happens, we grow frustrated, and even though we may be a day or two past that magical 90 day timeframe, we still try and call tech support.  However, for the past several years, it's been very common to encounter a know-nothing tech support worker in India when calling for help in bringing back to life that card, drive, monitor etc that you shelled out hundreds of dollars for and feel should have lasted perhaps a bit longer than three months.  Now from time to time you'll be (un)lucky and the equipment will die before the warranty expires.  Unfortunately, that does not make the support experience any more bearable as you'll struggle to get your far off friend to understand even the most rudimentary description of your problem.  It only gets worse if you actually KNOW what's wrong and needs to be fixed since you'll still be forced to go through the inane checklist of common problems that tier 1 support is required to go through before transferring you to someone who actually has a clue.  Yes, I have tried rebooting, cycling the power, reseating all the connections, sacrificed the chicken, spun around three times and spit over my shoulder... I work in IT, this is all SOP to me, THE DAMN THING IS BROKEN NOW FIX IT! 

So it was with the dark memories of dealing with support lines from Dell, Gateway, HP, and any cable company I've ever had, that I took to assess my recent situation...

My video card was dying.

In March, I bought an eVGA GeForce 7800GS OC 256MB AGP card from Newegg.com to coincide with the release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (I also picked up an extra two gigs of RAM... I wanted to make sure the game ran as good as it could on my system).  It's a phenomenal card and performs as well as I can possibly expect any AGP card to.  It's essentially the top line card I can get for my aging AGP based system.  So, for five months I was in relative gaming bliss as I was able to get some of the best graphics out of all the latest games and all was good with the world.  Then, shortly after moving to Michigan last month, things started to go awry.  I noticed weird "stuck" pixels on my monitor when playing any 3D game.  This was strange because I have an old CRT monitor and those don't get stuck pixels.  But it was very consistent with which pixels were fried so at first I thought it was my monitor, but no tests I ran showed any issues, and I saw the same problems with my spare LCD monitor.  Additionally, I was seeing odd geometry drawing issues where polygons would have one vertex suddenly stretch off into the distance, and strange colored splotches appeared on more complex textured surfaces.  This brought me to the remaining possible culprit, my video card.

I've had video cards die on me in the past, fans went out, the ability for the card to draw enough power went away etc.  However, my cards typically tend to last a year or two before shuffling off their mortal coil.  I ran power tests to make sure all my rails were pushing the right amount, and that came clean.  I even went so far as to toss in my aging ATI 9800XT 256MB card I had sitting in a box to make sure it wasn't a board or power issue.  That card worked like a charm (though MUCH slower in new games since it's so old).  Now, with my options exhausted, it was time to face the music, pay the piper, bite the bullet, confront my demons and.... CALL SUPPORT!

The dread and fear were palpable, it was like a thick fog that clung all around me, ethereal and slimy all at the same time.  Would it just be easier to go out and buy a completely new card, forsaking this one?  Surely the frustration and agony of dealing with phone support wasn't worth $300.  Well, I don't have any cash at the moment, so I had to suck it up and pick up the phone.

So, since I bought the part through a reseller, I had to call the manufacturer, eVGA.

I call... press my way through the automated option system until I reach the "speak to a goddamn human" option and get into the hold queue.

And wait...

About a minute.  Wow, that was fast.  A cheerful voice greets me in a perfectly normal and understandable accent.  This guy is a native English speaker!  Oh dear sweet lord, surely I have somehow died while waiting on hold and passed on to heaven, this being but part of my eternal reward for endlessly enduring the stupidity of users and the rivaling stupidity of outsourced tech support.  I check my pulse, pinch my arm and determine that I am in fact still alive, my time to pass from this realm had not yet come... and that meant that I had actually gotten a real English-speaking support rep on the line after virtually no wait on hold.

For the sake of this article, lets say the rep's name is John (I don't remember what it was, I didn't think to write it down at the time) and he was very polite, cheerful, and responsive.  He asked me if I had registered my video card on the eVGA website.  I had.  He then asked for a description of my issues, which I supplied.  Then came the question I was dreading the most "When did you buy your card and from who?"  to which I said "March" fearing for the standard 90 day warranty to bite me in the arse.  Nope, no problem, he informs me that eVGA cards have lifetime warranties.  If the card dies for any reason short of being the result of stupid human tricks, eVGA will replace the card no problem.  Only catch is, they don't cross-ship, meaning I have to ship my card to them before they'll process it and send me a replacement.  This means I'd have to be without my beloved 3D card for a full week or so... of course it's not like it was giving me much performance at this point anyway with the rainbow colored randomly expanding polygons in most of my games.  So I send in an RMA request, a day later it's approved and I ship my card off to eVGA in California.

And a week later, the replacement card lands on my desk, all packed up in a nice little plastic protective bubble.  It's a newer build of my same card so hopefully the old issues won't come back.  I get the card home, plug it in, and I'm getting performance in games I haven't seen for several months!  Implying that the card had been on a steady decline for quite some time now.  I've had the card in my system now for a day and I'm back up to speed playing all my favorite games, and even loaded the Battlefield 2142 beta which is running without a glitch!

Despite the card dieing so soon after purchase, which I'm given to believe is an anomalous glitch, the support from eVGA was so responsive, and easy to understand (yay English!), coupled with the lifetime replacement policy, eVGA has won my graphics card business for a long time to come.  This is especially good for them considering I am building out a new system come next spring and will be considering going SLI and PCIe.  I will recommend them to anyone who asks for a good reliable card manufacturer.

I can’t understand it. Why is Macintosh so disliked by so many? I used to use the Mac a couple of years ago at one of my jobs. The boss liked Macs and only bought Macintosh. As a PC user at the time and having never used the Mac, I didn’t really feel intimidated by it.

It took me a couple of days to get the hang of it and I actually liked it! There was no big deal to it. After having used it for over three years (my time at that position) I actually loved it!

At my next position it was back to PCs again. Once again, it was no problem to get back with the flow of using it.

I came across some comments recently on a blog site and I can’t believe how much the each person either really hated or really loved Macintosh. I mean the things those people wrote, they got personal!

Is it really that serious? Can’t there just be some people who really, really love the Mac and some really, really love the PC? You know what? I blame that commercial that’s on right now. It’s their fault there’s all this ‘be hating’ around now. That or it just picked at a boil that was always under the surface and have opened up a really ripe wound!

These are some of the comments I read on the NY Times. It was an article that wasn’t even so much about PCs or Macs it was a totally different topic. I won’t post the article itself since it had nothing to do with what I’m talking about here, although it (the article) was interesting, that is for another blog at another time.


__________________-

“Mac users always fail to realize how few they are. It is a pain and expensive to create a parallel system for so few people. Don’t believe the product placement in movies, only 6% of our website’s visitors for example come from mac users (almost 3% use lineux for comaprison).
It would be like demanding MTV translate its site into spanish NOW, but at least there are a lot of people who speak Spanish.
You wanted an expensive white computer, and now you have it. Just don’t expect the rest of the world to jump.
Andrew
www.boomchicago.nl
— Posted by Andrew Moskos”





“macs suck
— Posted by Dom”




“Macs have an influential presence online which makes that 4% feels like 75%.
lonelygirl15 sounds like a show already.
— Posted by Ajit”


“# 1: Trying to mock Mac users by pointing out how few of them there are doesn’t work. In fact, that’s the key to Apple’s cult-like appeal. If everyone really started buying Macs, hardcore Mac users would be emotionally devastated. And if there are so few of them, why waste your breath baiting them, anyway?
— Posted by ted”



“Ted,
As a Mac user, I have to admit you’re right. If everyone’s computers ran an operating system as intuitive, beautiful, and straightforward as OS X, I’d be seriously upset at having lost my elite status.
Now if only we can get Microsoft to redesign the iPod, maybe I’ll switch back.
— Posted by Nick vdK”

“Mac users are very influential, much bigger than whatg they represent online. Only a single digit porcentage of people using Macs (4%) does not mean they are not important or influential. As an example, 45% of Wired Magazine users, a magazine read by influential people interested on advances in technology, life and culture, are Mac users (by the way, Jews are 0.5% of the world population but they account for more than 20% of Noble prizes).
— Posted by Max
“Andrew Moskos” is only partly right: Mac users are numerically a minority, but like “Ajit” notes, we have a disproportionate influence on the culture. We cluster into info. and other related media jobs, which control the mental world of all you PC hacks. Kind of like gay people. Oh, yes, I remember, the word is “elites”: few but strong!
— Posted by Tdawwg”



“August 3rd,
2006
4:36 pm
Mac Users may only be 6% on your site, but we are also better educated, make and spend more money and dominate the artistic and media-driven world. Once you go Mac you never go back.
— Posted by Mark Flora”

No, not the machines.  I still think they are over priced.  But their service.  We made another 2 trips out there yesterday (to the Apple Store).  But now I know how to make a reservation before going.

The first trip (and the second) was for my Son's iPod.  For some reason it wiped all his songs and then would not let him re-add them.  So we took it in and I let him do all the talking.  And the tech wiped it (the songs are still on the computer) and we went home.  And all seemed to be well.  But at about the same point of adding songs as before, it wiped them again! 

Ok, so I dont know iPods.  but I do know computers.  And this is a problem with the computer, not the software.  But what?  Like I know?  So we went out again.  And again I let my son do the talking (he will make a good tech one day as he had the exact error message written down).  So the (new one this time) clerk says "What is the problem?".  My son starts to explain and then he starts to say "Ok, we will reformat the iPod and....." and I cut him off with a wave of my hand and pointed to my son.  Who then went on to give him the Paul Harvey version - i.e. the rest of the story (as in it did it twice).

Zip, bing, and 10 minutes later, we walked out with a new unit.  No ifs ands or complaints!  Now that impressed me!  So far (and this is 24 hours later), all seems to be well with his iPod.  And I am impressed with their expertise and (somewhat) with their service.  As long as you have a reservation, you can get excellant service and competant service.

Now that I know how to do that on line, it is not so bad.  And the help cant be beat.

On a side note, not related to my travails, I did see them help a Mac customer.  When the "Genius" (that is what they are called, it is not a snide remark) could not help her as it was a problem with 3rd party software, they found another "Genius" that had experience with that package.  It was obvious the user was clueless (and probably a PEBKAC error) but they never were condescending or nasty.  Always professional.

I may not be buying a Mac soon (I figure in about a year), I am buying stock.  I am impressed!

I wanted to take this moment and share some of the skins that have caught my eye in the last few weeks or so. I will try to keep this going every week.

Windowblinds

Eminence by rjsmith2007

A dark skin is something that is sometimes hard to pull off, but I think
Eminence has done it very well. Now I can have another dark WB on my computer
without the word Vista in it.

Eminence





Noctilucent by Fuzzy Logic

A simple and clean skin with lots of color choices. What more could anyone
ask for?

Noctilucent






Neutronium by I.R. Brainiac

I don't know what to say.  It's just a very cool skin.

Neutronium






CursorXP

Red Flame by TYCUS

A great cursor that will go with many WB skins.

Red Flame






DesktopX Widgets

Clear Weather No. 2 by Richard Mohler

I have always been a fan of the "clear" series by Richard Mohler.  This is
just another great addition with other one's in his gallery.

Clear Weather No. 2





Rabid-MP3 by rabidrobot

One of the best MP3 players I have seen in a while.  Be sure to download this
one.

Rabid-MP3




There are many more skins by these and many other
artists here on Wincustomize.  These are just a few I wanted to share with the
rest of you.  Please add your suggestions to this thead for some other great skins
you have seen lately.

Be sure to check out the Wincustomize Gallery for more great skins.

I don't usually blog about computer related topics.  My hubby does more than enough of that for the both of us   I felt compelled to write about Natural Desktop though.

I am one of those people who can't function when there is silence.  I usually have the radio or TV going in the background when others aren't up and about making noise.  Last week my boys had left Natural Desktop running on their computer and I heard wonderful sounds of birds chirping when I got up in the morning.  I enjoyed it so much I didn't bother turning the radio on.

Throughout the day and night Natural Desktop changes sounds according to the animal noises and local weather.  The other night there was a forecast for scattered thunderstorms so I got to enjoy the sounds of the rumbling of thunder and the pitter-patter of rain.  I love it!  I highly recommend it too!!

Microsoft has released the public betas for Vista and Office 2007.

You can download Office 2007 here - http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/download/en/default.mspx

Vista download will be available soon here - http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/get_it.mspx

 

Today Nintendo showed some more of their Wii.  The next console from Nintendo that is.

The Wii will be available in the fourth quarter of the year, most likely around the holiday season.  While they did not announce the price there are many people that are speculating that the Wii will be around $199. 

One of the most impressive parts of the conference was the Wii controller.  It was best demonstrated with a game in which the user controlls such things as a sword.  Check out the videos.

http://www.gamespot.com/wii/action/redsteel/media.html

Many games for both the Wii and Gamecube were announced today also.  Zelda, Super Mario Galaxy, and Sonic Wildfire are just a few of the titles that were mentioned.

Check out Gamespots coverage of the Wii at E3.

http://www.gamespot.com/wii/index.html

There are some interesting things on this page, but the highlights are the price and release date.

"Hirai takes the stage once again and recaps what's been seen so far. Then he announces the global launch details. It will be available in two versions: one with a 60GB hard drive, and one with 20GB. It will launch in the US on November 17 for $499 for the 20GB version and $599 for the 60GB one."

$499?  I will not spend that much.  I guess the Xbox 360 is coming my way.

 

I was messing around with my Linux desktop settings and kinda like the results. This is my current Gnome desktop.



WIth a terminal window open


With Firefox running


Nothing too fancy, but I kinda like it.

I am a PC gamer.  I admit it.  I play Battlefield 2 and right now there is no game better than this.  I built my computer about 2 years ago, and at that time it could handle any game you put at it.  I put a Radeon 9800 pro graphics card, which was the best at the time, and it does a good job at Battlefield 2 which is very demanding.  I have a 2.8ghz Intel CPU and about a gig of RAM.

I downloaded the new demo for Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter.  http://www.ghostrecon.com/us/

I could only run it on a low setting to play, and the graphics at that setting are a disappointment to what the game is capable of.  There are many new PC games coming out this year that I am excited about, but I just hate the thought of upgrading again.  I have been looking into the "midrange" gaming cards, but their reviews show performance less than my card performs at now.  I really wanted to use the money to buy another Mac to replace my desktop as my primary machine, but I think my gaming might get in the way of that.

Now I have been playing with the idea of buying an Xbox 360, or waiting until the PS3 comes out.  Although I will probably end up buying both systems, I don't think either one can replace games on the PC.   So back to the original question.....what is a PC gamer to do?