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mikeszekely

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Everything posted by mikeszekely

  1. mikeszekely
    If your main use is school, and you can't take a laptop, there's nothing particularly wrong with the Surface Pro, per se. Just, as I said, I don't think Windows 8 is a particularly good tablet OS. If you've used the regular Surface already, you kind of know what you're getting... slightly thicker, worse battery, more power, better compatibility. I haven't had hands-on time with it yet, but the Surface Pro 2 is basically the Surface Pro with a bump from Ivy Bridge to Haswell. That means a little better performance all-around and a little better battery life, but it's up to you if that's worth the extra money.
  2. mikeszekely
    That's what I plan to give it to. But I figured, based on hype, that i'd better play TLoU and Tomb Raider to be sure.
  3. mikeszekely
    Not showing up for me.
  4. mikeszekely
    Bummer. No one I know can get me any good discounts on anything anymore. Although I did used to know a guy at Microsoft. Not sure if he could have got me a discount on hardware, but I have keys for Windows XP, Vista, and 7, plus keys for Office 2007, 2010, and 2013 (plus Project 2013 and Visio 2013). That's pretty handy when you're a grad student who builds his own PCs...
  5. mikeszekely
    If you're planning on gaming, the Surface Pro 2 has around 9% improvement over the original Surface Pro, going by strictly benchmarks. Honestly, as the owner of a Windows 8 tablet (but not the Surface Pro or Pro 2), I kind of feel like Windows 8 isn't all that great of a tablet OS. Mine is almost always docked with the keyboard, which begs the question, why not just get a decent portable laptop instead? For a little under $1300, you can get a 13" Digital Storm laptop with an i7 and a Geforce 765M (although it's admittedly nowhere near as thin as a Surface, or even an Ultrabook). Although I personally haven't used Digital Storm, a friend of mine got a desktop from them, and he was extremely satisfied with their service.
  6. mikeszekely
    $430 with the extras? That's totally worth it. In my area, sales tax would but a $400 system alone at $424.
  7. mikeszekely
    Thanks for looking out for me, David, but I can't honestly say I need one. I wasn't even planning on buying any games for it right now. It's pure gadget lust for me at the moment.
  8. mikeszekely
    Have the day off today. Woke up, called Target, no joy. Back to bed.
  9. mikeszekely
    Before picking a game of the year, there were a few big games I missed. So, I'm finally playing The Last of Us. So far, I fail to see what the hype is about.
  10. mikeszekely
    None of it was. "Games you actually want to play will come out sometime next year!" Anybody get theirs yet? I never bothered to reserve a PS4, because I kind of don't care if I get one or not. Like I said, it's more of an interested in owning a new gadget than actually wanting to play any of the launch games. I was out, though, so I stopped by Walmart. No luck.
  11. mikeszekely
    This, pretty much. I think SSDs have come down in price and provide a significant enough performance boost that a small 64-128GB one is great to have as a boot drive. I have one in both my desktop and my gaming laptop, and I use them primarily for the OS, security software, and the browser. I'll install other software on them until they're closer to full. My main desktop has two spinning platters, though. One is 1TB, just for games. The other is 3TB, for my pictures, videos, music, documents, larger programs, downloads, etc. For the record, I've got about 20 GB left on my 128GB SSD, under 500GB on the game drive, and a little over 2TB on the storage drive.
  12. mikeszekely
    I liked CoD 2 and Modern Warfare a lot, and I kind of liked World at War. But Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops just felt like a mess, and by MW3 I was just going through the motions. Skipped Black Ops 2 entirely, and I was planning on skipping Ghosts, too. If anyone here does play it and thinks the single player is actually pretty good, let me know. Maybe I'll change my mind.
  13. mikeszekely
    I might give Breaker a try, but I'm passing on Full Boost, at least for now. The Vs. Games don't feel as fun since the Battle series. It'd be nice if Artdink would get back to the Vita with more than just SEED.
  14. mikeszekely
    Seems Warframe's going to available for PS4 at or near launch. For those of you unfamiliar with it, Warframe's a free-to-play online cooperative multiplayer third-person shooter. I know online multiplayer's not really my thing, but coop is at least tolerable. My friends and I actually played this until the wee hours of the morning on PC at a LAN. It's not the most amazing game ever, but for free it was pretty fun. Only downside is you can't use the same account on both PC and PS4.
  15. mikeszekely
    I certainly don't prefer it. My main computer is a desktop with a 27" monitor and surround sound speakers in my basement man-cave. That said, a gaming laptop is convenient when you travel. I took my previous lappy to Beijing with me, and Civ V was pretty much what kept me sane in the evenings when my wife and her family were watching some soap opera set during WWII.
  16. mikeszekely
    You can do that with a PC.
  17. mikeszekely
    Absolutely! I believe you. I don't really follow console gaming enough keep up with all the differences between the versions, just jaded enough to expect them to be less than significant. Not joking. Not saying that some people can't or won't (as I said, I spent around $1400 on my desktop, but you can definitely get away with spending less. For one thing, an adequate gaming PC doesn't have to play everything on the highest settings, just settings that are equal to or better than the PS4/Xbone. Going beyond that would be optional. An adequate gaming PC doesn't need a K-series Intel CPU, because the difference between the K and non-Ks are the unlocked multiplier. If you're overclocking, you're getting into enthusiast territory (which I gladly encourage, but it's not necessary for adequacy). For that matter, while an i5 or an i7 is definitely a better choice, I think an i3 might be adequate. GPU matters more than CPU for most games. Likewise, you can halve the RAM, spend half on the PSU (and still get quality... I have a 750w Antec that was $65 at rebates), spend half on the DVD drive (an adequate gaming system doesn't need Blu-ray, especially when most of the games you buy are digital), and skip the thermal paste entirely. If you're buying an Intel CPU and you're not overclocking it, the stock fan and the thermal paste are perfectly fine. And you definitely don't need a motherboard with SLI/Crossfire. It's been an option on two of the boards I've used, and I've always found a single card to be plenty, and by the time it's not it's almost always cheaper and easier to replace the card than to pair the one you have with another. Lastly, $400 for a graphics card is definitely enthusiast (and I'm not sure why it's not working for you for Battlefield). My year old GTX 660ti was $240 and I had no issues running Crysis 3 on the highest settings, or anything else I've played. BF4Central suggests most bang-for-your-buck actually comes from a 2GB GTX 760, for around $250. I've seen videos on YouTube of the gaming running at 30fps on High with an i3-3220 and a GeForce 650ti (yes, 50, not 60). You're probably right that, at this point in time, you'd need slightly better gear to match the new consoles, I'll give you that. If I were pricing a system with a Haswell i5 and a GeForce 760, I'd probably need around $800, which I could probably drop a bit after Nvidia comes out with a 750ti. As an aside, I'd never buy Battlefield 4, since the single player is supposed to be crap and I'm not big on multiplayer. But you've got me half tempted to pirate it just to see how it runs on my system (i7-3770k, 16GB of RAM, GeForce 660ti). By your own admission, sooner or later a console's graphics can't hold a candle to a PCs. So, if you care so little for the eye candy that you're cool with paying that console "flat rate" every six years, then you really don't need to spend a lot upgrading that PC, do you? Even then, a new graphics card every two or three years isn't so bad. Because you're still paying way for more the actual games on a console. Yep. Honestly, I don't care what people choose to do their gaming on, I just take exception to the notion that PC gaming is somehow more expensive. I think it can be (I usually get an urge to build a new PC every three years or so, and spend $1000-$1500 every time, and I'm still a far cry from some of the enthusiasts out there), but I don't think it has to be. I also believe that whatever extra you invest in the hardware you'll save in software. But if you and your friends are into Killzone and you have fun playing it together on the PS4, that's what really matters. I'm not going to do that, because it wouldn't be fun for me personally, though. Shooters with a controller... *shudders*. Seriously, I'll probably hit a few stores on Friday, see if anyone has a PS4 in stock, and buy one if they do. If they don't, I'll live, and either way, I have no intention of buying any games for it. Probably not for the rest of the year. When did Sony say Infamous: Second Son was coming out?
  18. mikeszekely
    I have an GE70 0ND-213US. It's got a 17" screen, but otherwise is spec-for-spec the same as this one, and I paid $1200 for it back in April or May. I'm not sure I'd pay that much for it again... I wanted a more portable laptop than my old Asus, and while the MSI GE series is thinner than comparable gaming laptops, that really just brings it down from "tank" to "ordinary"... it's not ultrabook thin, or anything. Thing is, I did wind up getting a really portable laptop for generic stuff, and I could have got more gaming power for my money if I'd not cared about the size. That said, for $750, it's a steal. The only game I had any trouble running was BioShock Infinite, but oddly enough, only when I had Windows 8 on it. I actually installed an mSATA SSD in mine, then put Windows 7 on it with some drivers from an identical Windows 7 MSI laptop. Everything runs pretty good on it after that, and it goes from completely off to even the background Windows processes loaded in under 30 seconds.
  19. mikeszekely
    I know, right? Just like bootlegs have killed designer brands and Rolex watches. ...oh, wait, they haven't. In fact, people still prefer the genuine articles and the prestige that comes with them. KOs exist because people simply aren't always willing to pay a premium price. You can argue that clothes are different if you want, but I disagree. Clothes are a necessity, designer labels aren't. They're a status symbol, just like you want MP toys to be. Takara MPs have gotten expensive. Sure, inflation's part of it, but I remember importing MP Megatron for around $100, now $200+ has becoem the norm for smaller (MP-10 sized) toys, and Deluxe-sized MPs (and Alternity) are pushing $100. The Asia reissues are even worse. I know you've advocated for even more expensive Transformers, but the reality is that there's a market for quality KOs many people think they're already too expensive. Per your own argument, the problem is the casuals. If Takara would stop trying to fleece a niche market and produce larger runs at lower prices in the first place, there wouldn't be nearly as much demand for KOs.
  20. mikeszekely
    As far as I know, the Wiimote is an option for some games, and mandatory for some games. All I can tell you is that it's not necessary for New Super Mario Bros. U, the only game I have.
  21. mikeszekely
    While your reasoning -console exclusives- are the reason I will probably buy a PS4, Killzone will never be a part of my collection. There isn't a single exclusive that's a must-buy for me, yet. Of all the next-gen console-exclusives coming out in 2013, the closest to a must-buy for me is actually Forza 5, but it's not enough to sell me an Xbone. Are you sure about that? Technically true. Bull. Especially on these boards, where half the members will spend more on toys. You can build an adequate gaming PC for around the price of an Xbox One, and one capable of running most games on the highest settings for under $1000. Just because PC enthusiasts can spend thousands of dollars on a custom rig doesn't mean it's necessary. What's more, any extra you put into hardware vs. consoles you'll make back shortly on software.
  22. mikeszekely
    I seem to recall needing to keep my Wii anyway to transfer virtual console games and stuff, too, plus the Wii U doesn't come with a Wiimote or sensor bar. If you were planning on using those with your Wii U, you were probably going to need to hang on to your Wii anyway. My advice on the Wii U basically comes down to me asking, "How much do you like Nintendo's first party games?" I've had a Wii U since almost launch, and the only game I have for it is New Super Mario Bros. U, although I'm thinking about getting New Super Luigi Bros, and Super Mario 3D World is actually my most-anticipated holiday game.
  23. mikeszekely
    Yeah, that's kind of old news. The PS4 is based on very different architecture than the Cell. There was some talk about using Gakai's tech to run PSX/PS2/PS3 software server-side and stream it to a PS4, but so far as I know the only confirmed streaming is streaming PS4 games to a Vita. Something else I was wondering... are the Dualshock 4s using micro-USB this time? It seems like I've got at least a dozen or so micro-USB cords in each room, but I only have three total mini-USB (one for my Harmony, one for my Garmin, and one for the Dualshock 3).
  24. mikeszekely
    As we get closer to Friday, I find myself really wanting to buy a PS4. Just no PS4 games. I know the PS4 isn't supposed to be able to play PS3 games, either retail or downloaded. Will it play other PSN games, like PS2 games? I just picked up the Fatal Frame series around Halloween...
  25. mikeszekely
    From where? I'd pay $40 for a close-enough Sideswipe.
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