Consumer Thoughts » PC

Tons of indie freeware games

Kathryn — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 15:40:44 +0000

Check out Adrian’s Guide to 2007 freeware games!

GameTap is glitchy.

Kathryn — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 08:47:29 +0000

I’m very disappointed with GameTap.

If you don’t know what GameTap is, it’s a subscription-based gaming network for PCs. It features tons of classic games – currently they’re boasting over 600 games. It’s $9.95 monthly.

I have more than enough system resources according to their minimum requirements, as well as bandwidth (minimum 384k download speed – mine is 1.5M), but GameTap downloads s-l-o-w-e-r than my regular broadband downloads.

Also, I tried about 2 dozen games. The only game that played perfectly was 3D Ultra Minigolf Deluxe. (I have regular myself, not deluxe.)

Every game (besides Minigolf Deluxe) had an annoying screen flicker, though to be fair, I suspect that may have something to do with my crappy graphics card – ATI Radeon Mobility 7500. (GameTap itself does not have the flicker.)

And all the games were glitchy… even the old Atari games – sometimes the controls wouldn’t respond – neither the keyboard nor my Logitech gamepad.

For example, Willy Beamish (which I have but haven’t been able to run) locks up just as badly as the regular disk version. QFG1 is glitchy too – another game I have but haven’t been able to get working right. I think I’m better off just trying to run them in DosBox.

Maybe when I get a newer, better laptop, I’ll try again, but for now I think I’m going to cancel when the 2 week free trial is up.

Quick Links: Digital Rights Management (DRM)

Kathryn — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 06:16:33 +0000

Microsoft’s Zune will place DRM on any song you share with someone else, regardless of whether that song has DRM in the first place.

Amazon’s Unbox video download service has some of the worst terms of service ever, including a clause that lets them report on what software you have installed on your computer.

German company Akuma may have figured out a solution to DRM. They are letting their customers download music without DRM. The MP3 files contain a small high-pitched “watermark” that identifies the song’s purchaser. This allows people to play the song on any device they want without restrictions, and allows law-enforcement to catch anyone who shares songs on file-sharing P2P networks.

What slows Windows down?

Kathryn — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 21:56:50 +0000

Wow, check out this article. It seems that running Yahoo Messenger 8 slows down a fresh Windows install more than even Microsoft Office or Photoshop! It came in third place – the worst offender was Norton Internet Security 2006, and the 2nd worse was having over 1000 fonts installed on your system.

Worst-case battery life

Kathryn — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 01:10:17 +0000

Rather than giving you a best case scenario prediction of the battery life in your notebook, Battery Eater Pro uses every power-hungry option to try to drain your battery as fast as possible. This is in many ways a better benchmark, since it’s consistently repeatable, and lets you know what you can expect under the worst conditions. During testing the utility stresses the CPU, RAM, HDD and videocard. For optimal results (meaning the worst battery time), make sure that you turn on WiFi, BlueTooth and IR ports.

Despite it’s name, Battery Eater Pro is free.

Via Download Squad

Vista’s default program feature

Kathryn — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 02:49:46 +0000

From CNet News:

Default Program is a new feature Microsoft has added to Vista to avoid the problem of applications taking over common functions, such as playing music or browsing the Web, from each other. Rather than letting competing applications fight, it will give the user a single interface for deciding which programs should do which jobs.

That’s fabulous news! I hate when apps try to steal functions from each other.

Rumor: Free Vista upgrade

Kathryn — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 14:46:38 +0000

In order to keep computer sales going around the holidays (a very popular time for computer upgrades), rumor has it that some PC vendors are going to ship their new PCs with coupons for a free Vista upgrade. This would help them out a lot, because since Vista is supposed to come out in January, a lot of people would otherwise be holding off until it does get released. This is just a rumor, but it’s a fantastic idea.
via PC World

A note to all software programmers

Kathryn — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 09:10:23 +0000

Software programmers: Stay out of my “My Documents” folder! If I wanted your programs in there, I’d invite them. Don’t make the My Documents folder the default for anything. Not downloads, not saved games, not music files… nothing! (And it’s even worse when certain IM programs put oddly-named folders in like “filelib,” thus making it harder to figure out what program it’s from!) Why is this so hard to understand? I keep DOCUMENTS in My Documents. Sheesh. If I want to find the folder you think I need access to, I’m intelligent enough to go into the C directory or the Program Files directory and find it myself.