mikeszekely

In Lucas' own words, the 3D show is a continuation of the 2D show. And while Tartakovsky's not involved, the staff is using his work on the previous show as their reference, and in any case, Lucas hired Tartakovsky to do the first one, Tartakovsky didn't pitch it to Lucas. Maybe I'm letting my hopes get to high, but it sounds more like a sequel than a redo. As for why they're not hiring Tartakovsky and his team again, who knows? Maybe Tartakovsky doesn't want to do it. I don't know if he has a blog or anything to get his opinion on the matter, but it sounds like he might be busy running some animation studio full of Lucasfilm vets, as well as pitching an animated version of The Dark Tower to HBO.

That doesn't make it a redo.. From what I've read, it's a continuation. This movie is a pilot for a second Cartoon Network cartoon, and while they're using CGI, they're supposedly retaining the look of the older series.

I'd honestly just save for a totally new system. AFAIK, there's not a huge difference between PC2700 and PC3200, and 2.8GHz is fast enough. I'm still running a 2.6GHz P4 in my main desktop. Like you said, if you could find one for maybe $50, fine, but if it's more than that, that's money toward a total system upgrade. And let's be honest, it's time to upgrade the whole system. With DDR2 dominating the industry now, you can get 2GB of PC6400 for $30, but you're lucky if you can even get 512MB of PC3200 for that price.

Bummer. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that Scrubs is coming back, but that makes the season just 14 episodes, compared to 22 or so for the other six. And since this is the final season, I'm worried that the big send off will wind up being rushed ala Heroes.

Sure they have. Well, I think it's a Johnny-come-lately addition to the iPhone, but the touch shipped with it. I've sampled a few tracks that way, but I've yet to buy anything via the touch. Or the iTunes application on my computer, either, for that matter. Yeah, I have to have the trendiest, most cutting-edge MP3 player on the market, but I still buy my music on CDs. Might have something to do with the fact that I like hard copies. Might also have something to do with the fact that buying an album from iTunes costs as much as buying a CD, but the CD comes with a nice case, cover art, lyric sheet, and higher-quality audio in a format that plays in my car without me having to burn it myself. Oh, and Apple's supposed to release official iPhone/iPod touch SDKs sometime this month, which opens the door for plenty of other applications. Of course, so did jailbreaking it. Anyway, I was initially pretty skeptical of the whole iPhone thing myself, but once you get some hands on time with an iPod touch, I'm sure you'll like it.

Maybe not, but that's pretty cartoon accurate.

Ah, you've got me on the blind track switching. On the other hand, I actually enjoy pulling the touch back out to switch tracks. I like messing around with Cover Flow. When looking at the screen, I've had ZERO issues hitting the icons on the screen. Yeah, I've mistyped a few things on the onscreen keyboard, but I mistype on a full-size keyboard. At least the iPod is smart enough to fix it while I'm typing (and unlike the PSP/PS3, the iPod gets it right more often than not). What's more, if the text is too small or you can't quite tap a link in mobile Safari, stick your thumb and pointer on the screen together, and spread them apart. The display resizes. Need to see more of the page at a time? Pinch them back together. Between the full qwerty keyboad that pops up when you touch a text box, the ability to quickly and easily resize the display, and the fact that you can actually touch links instead of navigating with a d-pad, mobile Safari comes off more like a non-mobile browser on a tablet PC than a mobile browser. As for the space issues, I'm not really feeling it. I have the 16GB iPod touch, and I've got about 600 (1.5 days) songs, three full-length movies, and one half hour short (5.2 hours) (plus a handful of photos), and that totals to about 5GB. Granted, a lot of people have larger music libraries than me, but then again are you going to listen to every CD you have on your iPod before you sync it again? iTunes lets you manage which albums are synced with the iPod and which aren't. I feel the same way about video. I've got two boxes of filled with video, mostly DivX/Xvid, that I've backed up onto DVDs, literally terabytes of video. It's not just impractical to keep the video on my computer (or PS3, as someone once suggested I was a 360 fanboy for not doing), let alone a portable player. It's easier to convert some video that I might want with me, and switch it out later for other video when I've watched it.

Prior to the iPhone/iPod touch, I would have agreed with you about the need for tactile feedback. But now, I couldn't disagree more. I think it'd be nice if the iPod touch had an actual dedicated volume button, but in every other way it's so intuitive and responsive that players with actual buttons seem old-fashioned. Not to mention that I've used mobile browsers ranging from cell phones to the DS to the PSP, and Safari mobile is the only mobile browser that struck me as being truly usable. Again, I'm no expert. When I first decided I wanted an MP3 player a few years back, I did my homework then and ultimately settled on an iPod that I traded up for an iPod touch. A very Microsoft-loving friend of mine (he waiting in line for the Vista launch, if that gives you an idea) had an iPod and wound up going to the Zune, which I understand is actually a pretty decent player post-revisions. The rest of my friends either have some variety of iPod or just use their cell phones. That said, for hard drive players, I think both the iPod Classic and the new Zune both offer a reasonable blend of storage, features, and interface, not to mention that both players have their own proprietary lossless audio format, so you could convert your FLAC audio files without losing quality. At the risk of sounding like an Apple geek (and honestly, I am a little bit, even if my Windows computers outnumber my MacBook 3-1), I'm a fan of Apple products in general (even if I can't stand their urban-chic hippy corporate image). Apple has a tendency to combine minimalist design with intuitive interfaces. And besides that, I like iTunes as a way to organize my media. Coverflow all the way!

I'd love to help, but FLAC support isn't anything I've ever looked into. I'm content with plain ol' mp3s, and to that end, interface is the single most important factor to me. So, I'm not ashamed to admit that I wound up buying an iPod touch (which doesn't support FLAC, although all iPods/iTunes support a proprietary Apple Lossless audio format). What I do know is hard drives. I'm not real sure what you mean by HDD and Micro-HDD, but as far as I know, MP3 players that use hard drives use 1.8" drives that are nearly as small compared to notebook drives as notebook drives are to desktop drives. The main advantage here is is a lot of storage for a comparatively low price. The iPod Classic goes up to 160GB, and the Zune (which, unfortunately, also doesn't do FLAC) goes up to 80GB, and they do it at about $350 and $250, respectively (Apple also sells an 80GB iPod Classic at $250). The main disadvantage is that you're carrying around a hard drive, which makes your player susceptible to the same problems that laptop hard drives can suffer from. Sudden bumps, shakes, and falls can damage the drive, not to mention the fact that the drive's moving parts will suffer from normal wear and tear, as well as consume more battery power. Technically, although this isn't a huge deal with MP3 players, but a hard drive is also slower. Many MP3 players use flash memory instead of a hard drive. There are many advantages to flash memory. You can pack a very large amount of flash memory into a very small package (I've got a microSD flash memory card in my cell phone that's about the size of my pinky fingernail), so you'll find smaller, thinner, and lighter flash-based players. There are no moving parts, so battery life tends to be better and you can take it with you when you're jogging without worrying about damaging the drive. The downside is that, while flash memory is coming down in price fast, it's still much more expensive than a hard drive. My iPod touch has 16GB of flash memory, and it cost $400... $50 more than a 160GB iPod Classic, and a 10th of the storage. About the largest flash-based player I've seen would probably be the newer 32GB iPod touch, which is retailing for $500. When decided which technology is best for you, think about how big your music collection is, and weigh it against how you'll use your player. If you're looking for something to carry in the front pocket of your jeans or something to listen to when you're exercising, a flash player is probably a better choice since they're smaller and less likely to suffer damage from being bounced around. But, if you want to carry a lot of music (or video) with you or intend to use larger files like FLAC, hard-drive players are definitely an attractive choice.

I'd be more concerned if this wasn't two months old and the anime wasn't still available.

That's pretty much what I heard. I mean, I know that the pain-in-the-butt really long install on the PS3 sucks, and I'm not sure there's much pay off, but it's still a one time install. I don't think I would have been unhappy with the PS3 version, and the 20 minute install didn't dissuade me from that version. I've just sort of got used to thinking of the PS3 as my DVD/Blu-ray player and my Xbox 360 as my game console of choice. No disrespect intended to either. In any case, I'll post on the load times later, but like I said, before I start DMC I want to finish Ratchet & Clank.

I hope you're not putting Vista on it, although at least if you are, you're using ATI video cards. Just ranting now, but the HTPC I built was fine for playing Neverwinter Nights and surfing the net, but crashed constantly when running iTunes, WMP, Joost, other games, etc. I might have mentioned this before. It doesn't seem to be a thermal issues or a power issue. After much research, it seems NVDIA drivers still don't place nice with Vista. So I backed up my stuff and decided to wipe it and install XP. I was getting "NTLDR is missing, press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart" messages... I thought maybe my copy of XP wasn't bootable, so I borrowed another, but I got the same error. I'm googling, and trying to boot other discs for two hours before I stuff my original XP disc in and start banging on the keyboard in frustration... and that's when I realized that even though the BIOS is set to boot from CD first (and certainly some CDs did boot fine), I was supposed to hit the "Enter" key when it said "Reading from CD." Still haven't got XP installed. Overscan on my TV means I can't read what's at the bottom. More frustration before I shut it down for the night and checked the net... how am I supposed to remember that F8 is the key for agreeing to the EULA (which I don't, really, but my computer doesn't have to know that). I think I'm going to wait awhile before I upgrade my desktop. I mean, I know it needs it when the integrated video on the HTPC is better than the card in my desktop (which isn't worth upgrading anymore since my board uses AGP), but I want to wait until everyone's on the same page. Too many PSUs with four pin CPU connectors on mobos that want eight right now (including my HTPC set up, and although EVGA says it's okay to use the four pin connector, a part of me is afraid that's what's causing system instability and that the HTPC isn't going to run any better with XP).

It is. And from what I've read, yeah, you swing the Wiimote to swing the lightsaber, but swinging the lightsaber has default animations and doesn't track with the Wiimote's motion (like Zelda). If all you've got is a Wii and a PS2, maybe the Wii version's looking pretty good. But if you've got a PS3 or 360, I'd imagine that better audio, better visuals, and better physics would make those versions better choices.

I picked up the 360 version, as there doesn't seem to be much difference between the two, and all things being equal I prefer the Achievements that the 360 version will dole out. I really liked the demo, but I haven't started the actual game since I bought it because I want to finish Ratchet and Clank (which I picked up around Christmas, but just started maybe two weeks ago).

Exactly how long have you had the hard drive? I mean, I've had my current desktop of about five years, and for about half that time, it's been on (not sleeping, fully on) 24/7 (mostly grabbing stuff from bittorrent... to be fair, I added a second drive about a year ago specifically for bittorrent downloads). I'm on my third power supply, second video card, second optical drive, second case fan, and haven't had the side panel on the case since I put the third power supply in (in a nutshell, five years ago I didn't know jack about computers and bought a VAIO, which used a proprietary 320w PSU that they wanted over $300 to replace... ultimately I replaced it with a generic ATX 500w PSU that I got for maybe $25, and since it doesn't fit in the case, it sits on the desk next to the computer). I've moved the computer from my desk to my living room and back to my desk. For a short time, I was experimenting with booting Mac OS X on that VAIO with a spare hard drive, and I was constantly switching the cables between the drives. Through all of that, I've never had a hard drive issue. Now, neither of us are naive enough to believe that hard drive issues never happen, especially in externals. However you do it, it's a good idea to make backups (mostly I just back up my documents and media files and just reinstall software as needed from their original discs or downloads). But I don't see any reason to replace a known good hard drive just because it seems a little old. EDIT: Hard drives, AFAIK, don't just up and die. They die for one of three main reasons. 1.) The drive is physically damaged. This is like you dropped it, banged it, or the computer suddenly lost power while the drive was writing and the write head collided with the drive platter. If you've got an UPS, unplug your computer during thunderstorms, your computer is on a stable surface, and you don't remove and start messing with the drive, you don't have to worry about this. 2.) Electrostatic discharge. Unplug the computer during storms, and ground yourself/wear a nerd bracelet when working on the computer, maybe occasionally get some compressed air and blow the dust out, and you should be fine. And in any case, you're more likely to blow the PSU or motherboard than the hard drive. 3.) The drive motor, platter, or write head wears out. Hard drives have moving parts, so it happens. But it's gradual, and when it starts to wear, you'll start to have read/write errors, or bad sectors will start to pop up. So, the first two you can pretty much avoid if you take reasonable precaution, and you'll know if the third one's coming.

I'm guessing it's a conservative estimate that at least half of all Vista users have already violated their EULAs. My wife sometimes wonders why I buy some software, and pirate other software. The answer, I guess, is because some people provide you with quality software at a reasonable prices with few restrictions, and others charge your $400 to license broken bloatware. If it wasn't for the fact that I wanted Media Center for my HTPC and I happened to have an OEM copy of Vista Ultimate, I wouldn't use it. If Microsoft is going to support XP until 2014, stick with it and wait and see how Vienna turns out. That's my plan for my main desktop.

Yeah, that's why I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that SP1 will fix some Vista issues. But the User Account Controls, even when it's turned off, causes a lot more problems than it solved by annoyingly asking you to allow or deny everything you just told the damn thing to do. I mean, I can't even figure out how to uninstall IE7. I'd be happy just to disable it, but Vista won't allow you to modify anything in the IE7 folder, even if you're the admin. Hey, it's my computer, Microsoft... I should be able to delete any file I want, even if it breaks the OS. On a semi-related note, wasn't the whole reason that Microsoft faced anti-trust violations in the first place because they tied IE to the OS?

To go one further on this note, by the time everything's set to take advantage of quad-cores, it may be time to start from scratch. There's only so much future-proofing that you can do. For what you do now, I'd say faster dual-core. As for bus speeds, it's hard to say, as not every bus operates at the same speed, and a computer's only as fast as its slowest component. The faster the bus, basically, the faster the CPU can get info from the RAM (or from other components). Honestly, though, for the thumbnail thing you mentioned earlier, if your bandwidth isn't dragging you down, the CPU cache and the RAM are going to be your primary concern. Either of the processors Azrael or I suggested have 4MB of L2 cache to work with, and while it's not the fastest RAM, DDR2-800 (PC 6400) is plenty fast enough, as long as the board supports it. And Duke, I was just picking something cheap that might suit David's needs, but I actually really like Lian-li cases. My previous home-built unit had a Lian-li case, and I seriously considered using them again (and might when I replace my desktop), but ultimately settled on an In-win case for my HTPC. Reason being, PSUs are a pain to fit in an HTPC case, an aside from looking nice, the In-win had a good 50w on the Lian-li that was my second choice. As for Vista, I used an OEM Vista Ultimate on my HTPC, mostly because I wanted Windows Media Center. So, if David wants Vista, I can safely say that the build I suggested will run Vista. But hindsight, I totally agree with you. Vista has been nothing but headaches. Even logged in as the Admin with User Account Controls turned off, some games simply do not run unless I open the folder, right-click the .exe file, and select "Run As Administrator". I hope SP1 fixes some of Vistas problems, but when I replace my desktop (hopefully this year) I'm sticking with Windows XP. If Windows ME was like a broken Windows 98 with some of XP's eventual features, then Vista is a broken XP with some of Vienna's eventual features.

Cooling's not the only issue. HP uses proprietary parts, and may not fit standard ATX mobos or PSUs.

I'm not saying that you're not picking great parts. You absolutely are. I think you're picking stuff that's better for gamers, enthusiasts, and overclockers, though.

I'm sure you noticed that all Az's links go to Newegg? I recently bought the all of the parts except an optical drive and a hard drive to build a home theater PC. The optical drive I salvaged from another computer, the hard drive I bought at Staples with a coupon. Total cost, including shipping (and the trip to Staples), was about $350 (no OS). Now, with all due respect, some of Azrael's choices are pretty interesting. Like the video card. A GeForce 8600GT definitely won't need upgraded for awhile, but it's also likely more than you want to spend now, as the most-demanding games graphically are FPS anyway (and while you do like variety, I don't really see you playing many of those on a PC). Likewise, while the E6550 is a solid processor and I do agree it's a good deal compared to lower-end models, I determined that an E6650 is the minimum for 720p output should you someday have a Blu-ray or HD-DVD drive. The RAM is a great price for a dual-channel kit, if you buy it now, while it's on sale. I think I've read enough of your posts to know that you've got a few more weeks of reading suggestions, pricing, and thinking about it. And all of Intel's 775 chips come with CPU coolers, and they're perfectly fine unless you plan on overclocking. The optical drive is louder than the fans on the HTPC I built, and even at peak, the fans are quieter than the 360. Instead of just listing some parts, I'm going to walk you though. First, the motherboard is, IMHO, the most important part, since it's going to decide the bulk of what goes into your computer. But, before you can select a mobo, you need to pick a processor. As VF-19 suggested, the LGA 775 socket's going to be around for awhile, and the Core 2 Duo processor family offers solid performance out of the box. For $20 more than Azrael's 6550, I strongly recommend an E6750.. (Honestly, I bought a $45 1.6GHz Celeron Conroe-L, but my budget was $300 for the whole thing. I'll upgrade later). Now you can pick a motherboard. Now, Vista and light (if any) gaming doesn't actually tell me much about your uses. Yes, if you buy a 64-bit version of Vista you can have up to 16GB of RAM, but 3.3GB is the absolute max for any 32-bit OS (and the 32-bit versions of Vista happen to be slightly more compatible with older apps). And how much expandability do you need? Azrael's mobo is a great choice for getting gaming performance out of your box and for maximum expandability. But perhaps you can sacrifice some of that expandability and RAM slots for a board that's a little more flexible out of the box? I'm going to recommend the same board I bought for my HTPC, an EVGA 112-CK-NF77. Yeah, it only supports a max of 4GB of RAM, and yeah, it only has one PCIx1 and one PCIx16 (so no SLI, but you're not gaming with it anyway). But a lot of what you'll need is on the board already, including an on-board GeForce 7150, HDCP-compliant video and audio over HDMI, DVI, or S/PDIF, (plus a good old VGA and regular audio out), gigabit ethernet, four rear USB and one rear Firewire 400 ports (and I think connectors for four front USB, I can't remember as my case only had two), and four SATA controllers (1 IDE, if you go that route). You have to give the onboard video RAM from the system, but you can configure how much in the BIOS. I gave it 128MB. RAM can go in either slot, so I bought a single 2GB stick for it (it doesn't support dual-channel). It's slightly cheaper than buying a pair of 1GB sticks, and you're not wasting money on sticks you'll remove should you decide to add more RAM. And I think the onboard video should be enough. With that board and 2GB or RAM (and the Celeron), Vista rated my HTPC a 3. I've only installed two PC games on it, Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2. NWN runs fine at the highest settings, NWN 2 runs fine with medium settings. The PCIx16 slot will allow you to add a video card later should you decide you need it. I've already listed the RAM, but it's simply a matter of figuring out what kind of configuration works best (in the above case, RAM can go in either slot, a max of 2GB in each slot), then picking the RAM speed that matches the bus, which would be DDR2 800 (PC 6400). We've got the important stuff out of the way, but things get a little muddled after that. You need a case to put it all in, and a power supply to run it all. The board I've selected is a MicroATX board, but taking a quick peak at the MicroATX power supplies shows that we don't have a lot of options there. (In my case, I went with an HTPC case that has a TFX power supply, so my options were limited to a single 300w PSU... the same one that came with the case). When picking a case, you need to find one that fits your board, but also a PSU with enough power for what you want to run. Luckily, there's help. Antec has a power usage calculator. I was able to determine that I'd be using about 210w at peak, so I felt comfortable with the 300w PSU. But I'm going to say that the most powerful MicroATX PSU listed (a 400w unit) doesn't leave enough room for upgradablity. You'd be safer in the 500-750w zone. Luckily, many ATX cases can support a MicroATX board. So, we're going to look at the ATX cases. ATX cases come in a few different sizes, but the most common is the mid tower. Full-size towers offer more room for extra drives and what not, but if you were concerned with enough room for four hard drives in a RAID-0 array, you wouldn't be on a budget, would you? A case is honestly where you can start to cheap out, but sadly, you'll pay for the door. Still, here's a Rosewill case with a door that shouldn't set you back too much. And of course, you'll need a power supply. I know they're not one of the bigger ones, but I've had luck with hec. So, the running total now is about $381, plus shipping (about $20 when I ordered all that stuff). So we'll say $400. If you're replacing your old computer, you can probably salvage your hard drive/optical drive, although that mobo only has one IDE controller, so you have a maximum of two IDE devices. You've also got plenty of budget left over, should you decided to purchase new drives. With the above set up, you could even buy a LG Blu-ray/HD-DVD combo drive ($300) or a Blu-ray writer/HD-DVD reader ($400). Personally, I'm waiting for them to come down more (not to mention I need a processor upgrade), so we'll say they're future upgrades. In the mean time, hard drives seem expensive, but the bigger you get the less it is per GB. Also, SATA is faster (and the board has more SATA controllers). So, I'll suggest a 500GB Western Digital Caviar for a hard drive. As for optical drives, you can get DVD burners cheap from Newegg. The one Azrael linked is fine, but here's an even cheaper Sony NEC unit that burns everything up to dual-layer DVDs. Estimated cost so far, $505+ shipping. Now, should you decide you need a video card (I honestly do think the onboard video will suit you), I definitely don't think you need an 8600GT. Save now, and upgrade later with an MSI 8400GT. If you like the HDMI out (an audio over HDMI, then maybe you're stuck with the 8600GT, but go with MSI again. Azrael's EVGA model didn't have HDMI, but they cost the same. Total cost $565 for the 8400GT, $605 for the 8600GT w/HDMI. Oh, and I didn't count any rebates or sales which may or may not be available when you go to order.

First Mass Effect downloadable content announced.

It's the only picture I could find online, and I didn't feel like driving down and asking if I could photograph their trucks. But they do have at least one traditional firetruck. It's painted the same way, except the paint was a little lighter and not as glossy. I like Octane more now that I've seen him painted. Yeah, his wings are stubby, but I think I'll have him in truck mode more (just as I usually turn Astrotrain into a shuttle). But Powerglide looks like he's got his head on a reformatted Jetfire's body. Not cool.

I beg to differ. Not about the A-10, but about purple firetrucks. SOME firetrucks are indeed purple. For the record, I live in Greensburg, PA, a city between Latrobe and Pittsburgh. Nearby is a little town called Grapeville. And Grapeville's firetrucks are, in fact, purple.

I still have my PS2 hooked up (creatively, I might add), since it's modded for imports that the PS3 doesn't like. Only previous-gen console to have that honor (unless you count the fact that my Dreamcast is hooked up to the bedroom TV.) So for me, the slight edge the 360 would have from having the game installed on the HDD is negated by the fact that it could RRoD at any moment.