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mikeszekely

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Everything posted by mikeszekely

  1. mikeszekely
    Yes, and he has worn it in the Avengers (several during Fear Itself). And most of the time it doesn't look as good as in the pic you posted. If you like the Venom suit, have you seen the Stealth suit he had for a little while? (The glowey parts are sometimes green instead of red, I forget why).
  2. mikeszekely
    Hulu+ is supposed to be really good for TV shows, but don't feel like paying for it and Netflix. Netflix wins for me because they have Star Trek and no commercials.
  3. mikeszekely
    Just got back from seeing it. + Spidey has web shooters, no organic webbing. + Andrew Garfield is, honestly, a much better Peter Parker than Tobey. + Uncle Ben was awesome. Really believable as an uncle who's struggling to be a father to a teenager. - Aside from Dennis Leary as Captain Stacy, the rest of the cast felt pretty bland to me. - The costume. I get that they something visually distinct from the Raimi trilogy (yet they went with the textured look again?), but did they have to pull their inspiration from such an obscure source? If they really wanted something different, I'd have preferred the Ben Reilly Spider-Man, or the House of M suit. Or practically any Spider-Man suit save the white Future Foundation look. - The liberties that were taken with the story. Yeah, they do make Spidey seem a little more... realistic? Grounded? But I feel like they're only there to set it apart from the Raimi trilogy. - It's a reboot. Already. Did we really need to spend a huge chunk of the plot on Spidey's origin again? If they really wanted to distance themselves, they could have done something totally different, like a Michael Morales Ultimate Spider-Man movie. At the end of the day, I'm going to say that it's not a bad movie. If you're a fan of comic books or super hero movies, it's worth a watch. But hang on to your Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 DVDs...
  4. mikeszekely
    Anyone here have any experience ordering from Toshiba Direct? Looks like I can order a Qosmio X870 with a Core i7-3610QM (Ivybridge), 8GB of RAM, a 1TB hard drive, backlit keyboard and GeForce GTX 670M for around $1240 right now. You can actually get it for $1200 if you want to step down to a 750GB drive. Or, if you prefer, you can add a second drive, make one (or both) SSDs (or hybrids), bluetooth, or Blu-ray for additional fees. Only thing I'm not really digging is a 1600x900 resolution, but at that price that seems like a workable compromise.
  5. mikeszekely
    I honestly hadn't considered them. I'd found their Qosimo series to be kind of ugly and plasticky, but this one looks pretty sharp, if a bit more expensive than I'd like. That's really disappointing, since they were offering a GTX 675M, 17", and backlit keyboard for the price you're suggesting for Asus. My biggest gripe with Asus right now is that they don't have backlit keyboards anymore. I can understand skipping it on their $400 entry-level computers (although my wife's current laptop has it), but it's a shame they took it off of their RoG series laptops. For the same price, I'd rather go with MSI's GE70 series, which trades a little RAM for a backlit keyboard. Or spend the extra cash on a GT70. EDIT: Despite what Best Buy put down for the specs on their site, the GE70 series does NOT have a backlit keyboard.
  6. mikeszekely
    As Az is hinting at, it's hard to say. What kinds of games do you want to play? Do you demand maximum performance, or are you ok with putting things on Medium? Do you plan on traveling with it? What else do you plan on using it for? Hardcore gaming laptops tend to be much bigger than regular laptops, even if they have the same screen size. For a starting point, I've used and liked Asus in the past, and MSI seems to be of similar quality. I've been looking at iBuyPower lately because they seem to offer a lot for the price, but they're a smaller company, and I've noticed some complaints about them. Kinda depends. I mean, my desktop's got a first-gen Core i7, 12GB of RAM, and a GeForce GTX 465. It's about two years old. While I'd love to build a new one every time new tech comes out, realistically I'd maybe upgrade the graphics card and run it for at least another year or two. In general, if I've spent more than $1000 on something, I expect to get at least three years out of it. That said, if it's not doing what you want, or you got the money to burn, go for it. I'm at a point in my life right now where I can afford to buy decent electronic toys, but I gotta take care of it and get some use before I can upgrade it. Actually, I think I should try to get a little more use out of my current laptop, but my situation's changed a bit... used to be I only needed it to play a few games when I traveled, but now I expect to use a laptop as my main device, so I need more power. But believe me, if I had more disposable income, I'd be upgrading constantly.
  7. mikeszekely
    Yeah, I'm honestly not sure which I prefer. A little research says that I can actually run most of the games I have/want on high, if not maximum settings, with even a 660M. Which has the advantage of being readily available in an Asus laptop at my local Best Buy, in my price range. The difference between the 660M and the 670M doesn't seem as great as the difference between the 670M and the 675M. Decisions, decisions... As for the hybrid drive, I'll keep it in mind. After I have a computer in hand, I can think about upgrades. Most of the computers I've been looking at have two hard drive bays anyway...
  8. mikeszekely
    More seriously thinking about replacing my laptop with a better gaming one. I'm pretty set on iBuyPower's Valkyrie CZ-17... it's a little pricier than most of the other laptops I've been looking at, but you really seem to get a lot of bang for your buck. I was already thinking to order one with a bigger hard drive than the default 500GB 5400RPM drive (initially I was thinking 1TB 5400RPM, but the 750GB 7200RPM drive is on sale right now). But now I see they're offering a choice of graphics card. The default option, which I figured I'd be fine with, is a GTX 670M, but for about $80 more I can get a GTX 675M. From what I'm reading, the 675M does offer, at least on paper, better performance than the 670M, but the 670M is quite competent (indeed, perhaps better than the GTX 465 I'm running in my desktop). So I want your opinions... is max performance worth the extra money? Or can I save the $80 and order the laptop that much sooner?
  9. mikeszekely
    People still use Windows Media Player? Well, the best suggestion I can make is to not use Windows Media Player. Try something like VLC. It's light, and it'll play just about any media file you can throw at it without the need to download any extra codecs. If you're set on WMP, though, try this. Click on the start menu, and search for "cmd". Right-click on it, and select "Run As Administrator". On the command prompt window that will open, type the following: net localgroup "Administrators" "NT Authority\Local Service" /add Then hit enter, and restart your computer.
  10. mikeszekely
    Where'd you order Bruticus at? I'm holding off to try to snag a SDCC Gen 1-colored Bruticus from the Hasbro Toy Shop.
  11. mikeszekely
    Let's not forget that the Titans Barzam suit is also based on the Mk II.
  12. mikeszekely
    It's really hard for me to say... I've never played any of the previous Civ games, so I can't really comment on the complaints people seem to be having. I think the consensus is that people are glad Civ V uses hexes instead of squares, and glad that you can't stack units any more, but felt that it lacked diplomatic options, especially with city states, and that the AI was a little dumb (and these issues are all supposedly address with the new expansion). All I can tell you is that I find the game to hopelessly addicting. I actually started one game just to kill a little time in the afternoon and wound up playing for six hours. I'd really like to get the expansion, but I'm saving to replace my laptop.
  13. mikeszekely
    Open the run box (windows key + r), and type msconfig and hit enter. Click on the tab that says Startup. See anything unusual or unnecessary? I try to trim this back as much as I can, personally. Usually you're ok with taking off everything except your antivirus and any programs that you need for hardware functions (like special keys or function commands, audio, webcam, etc).
  14. mikeszekely
    Here's the thing... for phones, I love Android. I'm on my second Android phone (third if you count me hacking my old Windows Mobile phone to run Android), and I'll be replacing it in the next six months (crossing my fingers and hoping that HTC comes out with a phone closer to the One X on Verizon than the Incredible 4G). There's stuff I need on my phone that I've got with Android that I can't get with an iPhone (without jailbreaking, but that's another can of worms). When it comes to tablets, though, things get muddier. At the 9-10" range, the iPad really is where it's at. Features you need on a phone you don't need as much in a tablet, there really are more and better apps (especially since Android has very few tablet-specific apps), and web browsing is a lot smoother on my iPad than my Iconia Tab. Where Android excels is at the 7" size. Sure, you could buy a Kindle Fire for $200 or a Nook Tablet for $250... or you could buy the new 7" Galaxy Tab for $250 and install all the Kindle and Nook apps yourself. At 13", I gotta wonder what you'd want that tablet for. It's going to be heavy to hold for an extended period of time. And while there are plenty of great apps for Android and iOS, productivity isn't really what they're known for. Printing can be chore, and the document editors available are pretty sub par. You're better of, as suggested, to buy an ultrabook. Or wait for the Windows 8 tablets that are coming.
  15. mikeszekely
    I've been playing a lot of Civilization V lately. Anyone get the Gods and Kings expansion? Or, for that matter, anyone else even playing Civ V?
  16. mikeszekely
    Fair enough, although it doesn't really change my point, does it?
  17. mikeszekely
    Sort of, yes. If a film was recorded digitally, then the film would have had a fixed resolution. And if that resolution were lower than 1080p (aka 1920x1080), then it would have to be upconverted for a 1080p Blu-ray. Just like upconverting a DVD, somewhere a computer would have had to analyze every frame and try to guess how each image would look if it were made up of more, smaller pixels. Here's where things get fun, though. Older movies, shot on actual film reels? They're analog, not digital. Each frame on that film reel has an effectively unlimited resolution. It's just like when you're scanning something at home, and you want it to look better, so you set your scanner to a higher DPI. As long as the movie studio took the time to do the transfer right, old movies generally look fantastic on Blu-ray. There is one technicality, and that's that most movies filmed digitally today aren't actually 1920x1080. Most films that are 16:9 are actually 2048x1152, and a 2.39:1 (those really widescreen movies that still leave black bands at the top and bottom of the picture even on your HDTV) are 2048x856. That resolution is referred to as 2K. Some movies, and eventually I expect the majority of movies, will be filmed in 4K (4096x2304 or 2048x1712). Yeah, some digital trickery has to be done to get a digitally-filmed movie onto a 1080p Blu-ray, but the thing is it's not really worth getting into. Regardless of the source, Blu-ray or digital file you got grabbed from the dark corners or the interwebs, you're not likely to watch anything higher than 1920x1080 on your computer.
  18. mikeszekely
    The thing with DLC is that there's good DLC and there's bad DLC. Good DLC would be like Rock Band. When Rock Band was released, the game had 58 songs. Today, I have nearly 500 in my collection. Harmonix continues to support the Rock Band series with weekly releases of new songs almost two years after the release of the last game in the series. The songs are reasonably priced, and provide players with incentive to keep playing the game for a long time. Bad DLC is usually material released around the launch of the game or content that is actually on the game disc that can't be accessed without paying extra for. Whether true or not, many gamers believe this sort of DLC is stuff cut from the game or stuff that would have been part of the main game a few years ago that is being used as a blatant attempt to wring more money out of the players. Other bad DLC are preorder bonuses that differ depending on the store. I generally don't consider paints and skins to be bad DLC, no matter how ridiculous the price. If DLC doesn't actually change anything in the game and is purely cosmetic, let them charge whatever people are willing to pay for it.
  19. mikeszekely
    Well, as per my previous posts, I'm trying to maximize bang for my buck, and if iBuyPower is any good, their new Valkyrie laptop is increasingly looking like my top choice. So eliminating Blu-ray for me is a cost-saving measure, but if you watch a lot of movies on your laptop then your scenario might be different. Maybe to you adding a Blu-ray drive to the Valkyrie is worth the extra $99.But as far as the difference between DVD and Blu-ray, no, you can definitely notice the difference, even on a screen that size. Now, once you get into the movie you might not care, but Blu-rays are designed to display at 1920x1080 (in fact, if you play a Blu-ray on a screen that 1600x900, the display will have to drop pixels from the recorded images). A DVD manufactured for distribution in the United States was designed for 720x480 video. That's only 345,600 pixels! Now most Blu-ray players worth their salt will take each frame and guess what each pixel would be if it was blown up to at least 1280x720, but really a Blu-ray is displaying each frame of a movie with six times more pixels.
  20. mikeszekely
    Well, the resolution thing is probably best explained by looking at the iPhone/iPad/new Mac "retina" displays. You have a screen with the same physical dimensions, but there are more pixels. 1600x900 means 1,440,000 pixels. 1920x1080 is 2,073,600 pixels. More pixels in the same dimensions mean smaller pixels. The smaller the pixels are, the less pixelated the image on screen looks. The whole gimmick behind Apple's "retina" displays is that the pixels are supposedly so small that you can no longer see individual pixels with the naked eye. When things are kept in scale (that is, images are displayed at the same dimensions but simply are made of more pixels) the image is sharper and more clear.For stuff like games and movies, it's quite possible that what you've heard is correct and that on a 17" screen the human eye can't detect the difference between 1600x900 and 1920x1080. The pixels may already be so small that adding more stops making the image clearer. The thing is, Windows elements don't scale. That start menu orb? It's got the same number of pixels at either resolution. Increasing the resolution of the display actually means that the start menu (and, for that matter, all icons and text) are smaller on a 1920x1080 screen than on a 1600x900 screen if both screens are 17", 16:9 displays. For some people, that can be an issue. A lot of older cutomers who shop for laptops wind up changing the resolution or playing with the font sizes to make things more readable, because the elements are too small for them at higher resolutions. My eyes are pretty good though (I can comfortably read articles on Engadget on an iPad in portrait mode on my lap without zooming). So to me, the higher resolution means an extra 180 lines of a web page showing. So no, I don't know that the difference in resolution is make or break for a laptop. But there is definitely a difference. As for the Blu-ray, I'd actually prefer not to have it. On Alienware or iBuyPower, where you can pick your specs, adding a Blu-ray drive (just to read, not even write) jacks up the price around $100. And for what? I seriously can't recall the last time I watched a movie on my laptop, and even if I really wanted to most of my Blu-rays are either packed with the DVD version or a code to download an iTunes copy. Even when I was in China, I didn't put any discs into my disc tray, I just downloaded the first three seasons of the Big Bang Theory. I'm not even worried about software. While everyone's thinking that Blu-rays will replace DVDs on consoles, digital distribuition has all but replaced physical media for PC games.
  21. mikeszekely
    Sorry, I misstyped. The Valkyrie is sporting a GTX 670M. I edited my original post to reflect that. As for 1600x900 vs 1920x1080, all I can tell you is while you might not notice the difference in fidelity playing a game or watching a movie, the more horizontal lines for web browsing the better.
  22. mikeszekely
    Anybody have any experience with iBuyPower? Their new Valkyrie laptop looks like a pretty good deal. Same Core i73610QM as the other two I was looking at, 8GB of RAM, 17" 1920x1080 screen, backlit keyboard, and a GTX 670M for $1299. The only major complaint is that it's got a 500GB 5400RPM hard drive. Well, that and I've got no experience with iBuyPower... EDIT: If you customize on their site, the hard drive upgrade options are pretty reasonable. $66 will take it up to 1TB (5400RPM).
  23. mikeszekely
    I think the quality of the writing in each Mass Effect game is directly proportional to Drew Karpyshyn's involvement. First one was great. Second one (which Drew worked heavily on, but wasn't a leader writer for) was good. Then Drew left and everything went to hell for the third.
  24. mikeszekely
    While I do kind of like the portability of a 14" (especially since I can always hook it up to an external display), I think I'd probably be better off with a 15.6". Not gonna lie, though, the backlit keyboard's a big deal for me. I love the one on my Asus. I love it so much I replaced my not-even-a-year-old MK700 for a Logitech Wireless Illuminated keyboard on my desktop. I don't know if it's a deal breaker, though.
  25. mikeszekely
    I do, or did, most of my gaming on a desktop I built for that purpose, but since I moved last fall I find myself using my laptop more, since I can play with it in the living room instead of going downstairs to the finished basement. But lately, I notice it's not quite up to snuff anymore. I tried playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution on it while visiting my in-laws in China, and I was surprised at how many settings I had to turn down to get it to run an a decent frame rate, although Skyrim and Civ V (the only other games I played while I was there) seemed to run just fine near max settings. What I've got now is an Asus G60Vx, with an Intel Core 2 Duo (2.13), 4GB of RAM (maxed), 320GB 7200RPM hard drive, and a GeForce GTX 260M. I've enjoyed it's sturdy build and comfortable, backlit keyboard, haven't cared so much for it's size (it's big for a 15"er), garish top case, and 1360x768 resolution. I'm thinking about replacing it. Just thinking, because I really don't have any money at the moment. Obviously, I'd want something that can handle more recent releases with a bit more gusto, but I still don't feel like sinking a ton of money into a laptop when I've got a Core i7 with 12GB of RAM and a GTX 465 strapped to it, hooked up to a 27" monitor and 5.1 speakers. I started looking at an Alienware M14x, but despite Alienware's reputation, I'm really not a fan of Dell. So what do you guys think of this MSI laptop? It seems similarly-specced, although I'm trading a little RAM and a backlit keyboard for a bigger, higher-res screen, longer warranty, and cheaper price. Or can you guys suggest something comparable in a similar price-range?
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