Developers, developers, developers, developers

[Alexander Nicholi]

I've been playing SimCity 4 on a flash drive the past two days. You talk about hard-to-do, here it is! And it works great when you're not saving the game. Absolutely lovely.

The hard drive is bad with this PC, too. I'm going to list an SSHD for $100 along with a $50 surcharge for its repair. If they don't want it then I'll take it for scrapping (not really) for $50 out of my pocket.

 

[Legendary Silke]

So... Lenovo... yeah, glad I don't have one right now.

Makes you wonder if this is the beginning of the end of bloatware. (At least the kind that borders on malware.)

On the other hand, nobody likes expensive PCs...

I've been playing SimCity 4 on a flash drive the past two days. You talk about hard-to-do, here it is! And it works great when you're not saving the game. Absolutely lovely.

SimCity 4 was designed and released at a time where the average 2.5" hard disk drive is likely to be slower than the USB 2.0 bus itself on average. Just sayin'.

The hard drive is bad with this PC, too. I'm going to list an SSHD for $100 along with a $50 surcharge for its repair. If they don't want it then I'll take it for scrapping (not really) for $50 out of my pocket.

How bad?

 

[Alexander Nicholi]

SimCity 4 was designed and released at a time where the average 2.5" hard disk drive is likely to be slower than the USB 2.0 bus itself on average. Just sayin'.

I still think the Core i3 I picked out will perform better than this i5, from my build sheet. Clock rate and single threaded execution, tbh

How bad?

The hard drive is bad, s'all. It's got a 2nd gen Core i5 and 6GIB of RAM, and a nice 16:9 768p display and a white shell. It also has a Blu-Ray drive which is pretty sweet. It is a Sony Vaio after all.

 

[Legendary Silke]

I still think the Core i3 I picked out will perform better than this i5, from my build sheet. Clock rate and single threaded execution, tbh

Build sheet?

Also, dual-core Intel processors are good enough. However, nothing really beats having two extra physical cores, no? Even if your single-threaded application won't be using all the cores, it still helps a lot to have a lot of spare CPU power lying around.

The hard drive is bad, s'all. It's got a 2nd gen Core i5 and 6GIB of RAM, and a nice 16:9 768p display and a white shell. It also has a Blu-Ray drive which is pretty sweet. It is a Sony Vaio after all.

A lot of things that are wrong with hard disk drives can be boiled down to one thing: poor random I/O performance. Usually, an SSD is the quick way out of getting out of that rut, but in a pinch, getting the amount of start-up programs down and enabling fast start-up helps.

 

[Tsutarja]

So... Lenovo... yeah, glad I don't have one right now.

At least a newer one that is.

I'm not so sure how far back the Superfish software even goes for Lenovo installs, but from what this article on CNET suggests, it's only models from the past year or so.

 

[Legendary Silke]

At least a newer one that is.

I'm not so sure how far back the Superfish software even goes for Lenovo installs, but from what this article on CNET suggests, it's only models from the past year or so.

Things like this would probably have never happened if the OEM PC space was a more profitable land than what it is right now.

 

[obZen]

I'm going through a fun semester of intermediate C++, Assembly, and Calc 2.
So far, so good, but C++ is really killing me. I've been trying to practice by playing around with code from my old textbook

 

[Legendary Silke]

I'm going through a fun semester of intermediate C++, Assembly, and Calc 2.
So far, so good, but C++ is really killing me. I've been trying to practice by playing around with code from my old textbook

Are you new to OOP? Normally a basic crash course on C++ that does not touch on OOP principles should work OK on easing you into the adventure.

 

[obZen]

Are you new to OOP? Normally a basic crash course on C++ that does not touch on OOP principles should work OK on easing you into the adventure.

I took intro to computer science, which was C++.
Unfortunately, that was 2.5+ years ago, and we had a hurricane mid-semester.
Now I'm in the advanced C++ class, so I'm playing catch-up and close the gaps.

 

[Tsutarja]

C++ was a language I wanted to learn back then. Now I'm not so sure. :P

Also, why do my professors use textbooks that don't include Windows 8, or even Office 2013, in 2015? For one of my assignments in one of my classes, I have to use Windows XP. :|

 

[Legendary Silke]

C++ was a language I wanted to learn back then. Now I'm not so sure. :P

Also, why do my professors use textbooks that don't include Windows 8, or even Office 2013, in 2015? For one of my assignments in one of my classes, I have to use Windows XP. :|

I think it's probably a good thing that we have things like this...

"OK, we do know that our subject nominally requires Ubuntu and some form of gcc, but...nobody really uses Ubuntu, so Windows and Visual Studio is also OK...and in fact, it's preferred in this particular campus."

 

[Tsutarja]

Part of the class involves usage of Fedora, but I installed that into a virtual machine as well.

 

[Buoysel]

I learned this weekend if you want your YouTube video to get a decent amount of views you should post it to Reddit. I got 1600 views in 24 hours.

 

[donavannj]

Also, why do my professors use textbooks that don't include Windows 8, or even Office 2013, in 2015? For one of my assignments in one of my classes, I have to use Windows XP. :|

Department budgets, really. I was working out of a textbook made in 2005 in 2010 for a Linux class, and they had just phased Windows 2000 out of the curriculum at my school before I enrolled.

Also, dual-core Intel processors are good enough. However, nothing really beats having two extra physical cores, no? Even if your single-threaded application won't be using all the cores, it still helps a lot to have a lot of spare CPU power lying around.

Sim City 4 works best being limited to a single core that has a lot of excess clock speed available. Without mods, its recommended minimum clock speed is just 1GHz (a lot in 2003, mind). With mods, I've personally experienced slowness even with 2.xGHz (don't remember what my clock speed is on my home PC). Really, you'd probably want something close to or above 3GHz if you're going to mod the hell out of the game like a lot of players do. It's a very processor intensive game.

 

[Legendary Silke]

Sim City 4 works best being limited to a single core that has a lot of excess clock speed available. Without mods, its recommended minimum clock speed is just 1GHz (a lot in 2003, mind). With mods, I've personally experienced slowness even with 2.xGHz (don't remember what my clock speed is on my home PC). Really, you'd probably want something close to or above 3GHz if you're going to mod the hell out of the game like a lot of players do. It's a very processor intensive game.

Mmm hmm.

And, if running on Windows 8 or later, stick to windowed mode or accept that the frame rate might end up effectively capped at 30 no matter how fast it can actually draw, even with the software renderer. (For some reason, pre-DirectX 8.x (or was it 9.0?) apps that are running full screen seem unusually handicapped in terms of frame rate no matter what I do on my system. (SimCity 4 was DX7.))

 

[Alexander Nicholi]

I got a new laptop you guys!

I spent $215 and got an ASUS notebook that was hardly used at all. It has a Silvermont Celeron (N2815), iGPU, 16:9 768p display, and 4GiB of RAM. I have another 4GiB card from my old Lenovo and may very well double this thing's RAM with that :o

I think when I fried my netbook I partially damaged the SSD in it as well, so it looks like I may not be able to have this thing totally maxed out. :\

 

[Alexander Nicholi]

I got a new laptop you guys!

I spent $215 and got an ASUS notebook that was hardly used at all. It has a Silvermont Celeron (N2815), iGPU, 16:9 768p display, and 4GiB of RAM. I have another 4GiB card from my old Lenovo and may very well double this thing's RAM with that :o

I think when I fried my netbook I partially damaged the SSD in it as well, so it looks like I may not be able to have this thing totally maxed out. :\

 

[Tsutarja]

So, I rearranged the tiles on my phone last night...

Spoiler:

And yes, no scrolling. :P

 

[Legendary Silke]

I got a new laptop you guys!

I spent $215 and got an ASUS notebook that was hardly used at all. It has a Silvermont Celeron (N2815), iGPU, 16:9 768p display, and 4GiB of RAM. I have another 4GiB card from my old Lenovo and may very well double this thing's RAM with that :o

I think when I fried my netbook I partially damaged the SSD in it as well, so it looks like I may not be able to have this thing totally maxed out. :\

Sssh...did you know that you now have a laptop that can run Crysis (if barely)?

So, I rearranged the tiles on my phone last night...

Spoiler:

And yes, no scrolling. :P

I want Windows 10 to come as soon as possible.

 

[Tsutarja]

I want Windows 10 to come as soon as possible.

Thankfully, all Lumia devices are eligible for upgrade to Windows Phone 10. :)