Today was a good day in work...

[Brettus]

Apologies in advance but I had a good day and know some of the geeks of the org will appreciate this.

I managed to wangle a laptop just over 4 years ago along with our server order. They discounted it to £4.94 (yes OK instead of discounted perhaps read offset) so I ended up with a Dell XPS M1710, a pretty impressive gaming laptop, knowing there was no way I'd justify another I kept it going and upgraded the RAM and stuck an SSD in there and was quite happy as by now I'd arranged an i7 desktop machine for myself with 3 screens running on an eyefinity card (handy for lunchtime portal fun on surround gaming)

Then the accounts manager tempted me, saying surely I was due to sort myself a new laptop out by now, I explained it would be £1300+ and said I was OK, he didn't balk at the figure and mentioned it again a few days later, I decided to spec one up on Friday and see what he thought, I put together a kickass machine (taking the proverbial really but if you don't ask you don't get) and he thought I'd manage to get one of them.... My bank holiday weekend was very distracted looking up specs and ogling, waiting for Tuesday to come so I could put it forward and either get Christmas come early or laughed out of the FD/MDs office....
As you can probably tell from the title, it got signed off! :D:smt109 \\:D/

I have on order an :alien: alienware M17x! Stock core i7 CPU but beefed up with 16gb ram, geforce GTX580m GPU, bluray drive, some upgraded wireless card and my personal favourite, a 120hz screen for built in nvidia 3d vision. Gaming :-) I've got a few 3d movies ready to try and my usual games. I can't wait the next 10-12 working days are going to DRAG!

Sorry for the braggart post but I'm bouncing off the walls and I can't really tell anyone at work without getting the living poop kicked out of me ;-) (rightly so I guess):-dd

[Specialone]

Top work Brett, most of that spec means nothing to me but sounds powerful lol

[ImplodedHamster]

:o lucky get :p

[Electro]

Nice indeed but i cant game on a laptop. Let me know when you upgrade the ipad :)

[littleoldman2]

Wow well done

[andrewsmith]

Blagging sod!

It easier to escape a prison than get anything out of my company. Trying for a work mobile tomorrow lets see how far that gets.

[Bluefish]

yeah but does it play cd's lol

[appollo1]

yeah but does it play cd's lol

and does it have bluetooth and wireless?

i have no idea what you are going on about with your new puter but i can tell just by reading your OP that you are excited so it must be good!!

[Bluepete]

You'll still look at porn though.

3D porn?

Pete ;)

[Brettus]

LOL thanks for all the replies, and yep, bit of a techie data blast with all the specs but I'm like a kid on December 1st now, the first day of the advent calendar has been opened and I know what I'm getting! The 3d screen is the thing that intrigues me the most, wanted a 3dtv last month as I'd stashed away some savings but we ended up with an American style fridge freezer (not quite sure how that happened but nevermind) so my 3d hopes were dashed, had order confirmation and projected ETA of 14th September, hoping it's sooner but least I've got an end date to my advent calendar! Right, must get sorted for work, Back later.

[Quiff Wichard]

lucky boy...


so why do all you tec geeks hate apple so much??

[Brettus]

In fairness I used to, our users were asking for corporate iphones, we kept telling them no but eventually O2 offered us a trial handset so we could see. My colleage borrowed it overnight and came back singing its praises, I promptly took the p155 and took the phone home myself that night. From that day on I had to eat my words, I think their phones are some of the best, I really love the ipad for its portability and simplicity and as much as I'd still like to hate apple I can't. They do what they do well, their "walled garden" has pros and cons just like an open system, it is their choice and they do it well, making technology accessible to all, not just the "geeks"

and I suspect all those that say they hate apple will also agree that they hate Microsoft, yet they use their products every day. They are both the best at what they do, they aren't in direct competition nearly as much as everyone seems to remember they are.

I haven't yet tried a mac, I wouldn't look at a macbook for this as I want to play games and they are still not as ubiquitous on the mac platform as windows.

I'd probably like MacOS if I took the time, my dislike was all based on animosity with no real basis.

Just my experience of course but when we got that first iPhone I wanted to hate it, I really did, but I couldn't in the end.

Meh, too much rambling, have a picture of my eagerly awaited arrival:
http://cdn1.gamepro.com/blogfaction/images/200804302011_28-alienware-in2.jpg

[Specialone]

I agree brett, apple products on the whole are very good, apple as a company are arrogant, pig headed and a company you want to hate.

General consumers buy the brand rather than the product, im no expert but if i was gonna buy one of the new ipads or tablet thingys, i wouldnt buy an ipad, other manufacturers arent so pig headed as apple so theirs will have expandable memory, usb slots and memory card slots etc

[metalangel]

A friend has one of those laptops, he's managed to break it already (broke one of the corners of the case off) and he's set the light-up keyboard to glow hot pink.

I think he just uses it to play EVE while on business trips.

[Brettus]

Hehe mine won't be far off, will keep me amused when I'm in a north devon hotel. (not to mention pretty much every night at home)
I've already bought a couple of new (new to me, been out a while) games to try out the 3d. I've got 3-4 3d movies now too hehe, bring on the delivery date already :D

From a work POV the core i7 and 16gb of ram will help with running virtual machines and our new qlikview data mining software so it's not all fun (honest :^o)

[Reeder]

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet

[Seggons]

On the 3D side of things I recently upgraded to a Core i7 desktop system and also brought a LG W2363D monitor which is LG's 120hz 3D monitor. I'm sure different people react differently to the 3D but I personally found it great for short bursts on games. But using it for anything more then half an hour made my eyes ache. It also depends massively on the environment your in.

[Brettus]

3d opinion

Now theres an interesting bit, I've scoured the web looking for reviews and pretty much everyone (like I will be when it arrives no doubt) is gushing about it and stuff, nice to have a bit of reality injected in there.

I'd expected it to not be suitable for long term use, I'm looking forward to a few movies and stuff but I guess only time will tell, I wear glasses anyway which may help or hinder the adoption, I'm not sure yet. I have no problems with the cinemas "roy orbison specials" and I don't recall any real difficulty at the demo at the gadget show but it was only a matter of minutes.

two weeks is such a long time when you are waiting, I've already bought two games, a gaming headset and have 7-8 movies ready heh.

I'm interested in the possibility of 3d photography too, I think I could get some interesting stuff, will see what some of them look like first before I start trying to get into that though.

c'mon nice dell assemblers, less crapware installing, more putty together and sendy offy!

[Brettus]

Well today is set to be the best day yet. The machine left castle donington depot shortly before I woke up. Nerdgasm due at some point today. Especially as yesterday, this went live: http://www.speedtest.net/result/1468978086.png up from 8mb for a site of 200-300 employees to that (currently between two IT staff LOL)

[metalangel]

Just over a week to go until Red Orchestra 2, good timing :D

There was a good piece in PC Gamer a few months ago about 3D gaming, he tried several games.

WoW looked amazing, except the depth of the 3D world mixed with all the UI windows being right in the foreground meant his eyes hurt from constantly having to shift the 'distance' they were seeing.

Bad Company 2 also looked awesome, but stereoscopy meant it was hard to render and perceiving the most crucial thing... the gunsight.

Burnout Paradise became a bit easier due to depth perception helping to judge corners, and an RTS (World in Conflict or DoW2) was similarly awesome looking.

So yeah, interesting stuff, share your experiences and make us all jealous.

[Brettus]

I've been reading whatever I could about experiences with it etc, it doesn't suit all games, I've tried to get a selection of ones that work particularly well for when it first arrives. I'm not into war sims, I do like UT and some FPSs so I think most of the awkward ones I won't be wanting to play anyway. Fallout 3 is supposed to look stunning which is my all time favourite game so far. DoW2 was purchased last week and is sat there awaiting playing ;)

Will see how it goes and post up some stuff, will be interesting to see how it matches/differs from other 3D orgers opinions (Seggons, I'm looking at you ;))

must get as much work done as I can before it arrives!

[yorkie_chris]

Bad Company 2 also looked awesome, but stereoscopy meant it was hard to render and perceiving the most crucial thing... the gunsight..

Bitten by realism, irony :)

[Brettus]

This, this is what awesome looks like: (for a geek at least)
http://www.brettnet.co.uk/temp/aw1.jpg

http://www.brettnet.co.uk/temp/aw2.jpg

have had to pack it away as I need to keep working but it looks ace :D

very blingy with the multicolour lights but they can be turned off. (I just don't wanna :P)

[Reeder]

That looks pretty awesome.

On a more interesting note, I saved about 25 of those pepsi glasses from a skip on a site I was working on about 5 or 6 years ago. They're a good size aren't they :)

[HoL]

This, this is what awesome looks like: (for a geek at least)


http://www.brettnet.co.uk/temp/aw2.jpg

have had to pack it away as I need to keep working but it looks ace :D

very blingy with the multicolour lights but they can be turned off. (I just don't wanna :P)


I like the way the orange cable goes into the side & appears on screen :smt045

[Seggons]

The thing with 3D is everything is programmed, rendered or filmed differently. So while it might be amazing for "A" it could also be terrible for "B". I don't play games as such but one that I do fire up every now and then is Live For Speed. In that there is a real sense of depth and it really does look as if in your in the car. I downloaded Despicable Me in 3D and I'm going to give that a go tomorrow but from quick previews the 3D effect looks great.

I just hope that 3D does become more mainstream for the technology to be constantly developed some more.

I'm interested to know how the 3D effect is on a laptop screen. The laptop certainly looks the part if nothing else!