lenbot

Well Arbitrary, I just wanted to mention that I forgot this was about how much you spend online. I actually probably spend 2 hours checking stuff out , email, forums, news and videos (I love you youtube.com and google videos). maybe if everyone is online and chating in msn perhaps 4 hours actually online. Sorry about the confusion. Cheers-lenbot

Hello All I just wanted to say that within 2 weeks I was easily hosted with this site and even though I had a couple of friends say it wasn't worth my time. I proved to them that with a simple few contributions of postings you can get a nice hosting and not only that get a great community behind it. You don't get this on Geocities, netfirms or any site I can think of. The community is great!, the service is absolutly phenomenal! I just wanted to take a few minutes out of my time to thank Xisto for this service. I needed a database and I couldn't go anywhere else for what I wanted, once I get a few extra bucks I will definatly upgrade, how could you not! I hope that everyone else enjoy's this forum or if there getting hosting also enjoy there hosting. This topic isn't really for those who want to complain about some things lacking in the free service, but a thank you for all the hard work these guys do to give every web developer out there who can't pay for hosting a place to call home for a little while until they can. So if you love Xisto, and forgot to send a thank you. or just want to say how you appreciate the Community of poster's and if you have it free hosting please feel free to add you thank you . I hope this topic is in the right place.Cheers-Lenbotp.s. And thanks agian

Exactly Houdini, just because we see the increase of emmision's in our atmosphere it doesn't mean the the whole world is warming up just because of that singly alone. Hell it's important to keep the enviroment safe and clean and if scaring the little buggers by saying there doing it is a sure fire way to get them to respond. I don't think any automaker wants to put a car out there that is really a polluter and isn't enviromently friendly. The public wants to have these things and I think that these people recogonize it and blow it out of proportion to get the public talking about pollution and stopping it. What they don't say is there also saying don't pollute and there holding out there big fat hands saying well if you don't want to do anything give us your money we will help stop it. Ya I would think most enviromental groups out there are in it for the money. You don't have to show how much your really reducing in fact you don't have to do anything other than just promote don't pollute to other people. It's really a dirty little scam most of them are running. Most of the Enviromentalist who are really trying to help do it with out funding, I think on discovery channel they had a guy on there who figured out how to dim Florecent Light Bulbs. People said it couldn't be done but any 10th grader could of told you other wise and told you how to do it probably. But because this guy invented it he is going to be able to save energy around the world. Most florecent bulbs can actually dimmed to 50% before the eye even notices to much of a difference. And that means Half the Cost of every building around the world once they get it out there and people installing it. That chap didn't ask for money to do it, he went out and did it and did it for saving energy. All that money you donate to most enviromental groups do nothing but promote it, so don't give them all your money for they don't do anything other than promote it more which is good but they did such a good job most people are aware of pollution. Little ideas like that is what we should be investing in. There should be a orginization that you could donate to that will invest in these little energy saving projects around the world. Then perhaps we would see energy reducing stuff go way up and we could be really cut back our green houses gases. Lets face the fact that Greenhouse gases are actually worse for us then they probably are for the world. I mean the world will probably be able to handle it but the question is will we able to. Micheal Chrichton is a well spoken man who talks about the truths global warming in his book State of Fear. He has also written speaches he has brought to congress. A couple of good ones are "Aliens Cause Global Warming". which you can find on his website here.http://www.michaelcrichton.com/index.html. Here is a little snippet from Aliens Cause Global Warming All I can say is it is happening and yes perhaps there is a link. And we should be concerned about the enviroment even if it is at its best and we can't possibly pollute anymore. But seriously we have alot to learn about our enviroment and don't let anyone tell you we know all the answers there is to know about, because we just don't. Hell we barely know why lightening occurs, we just take pokes and jabs. We are in a huge learning stage of our enviroment but to blow it out of proportion is just wrong. TO use it as a pollitical advantage is just wrong, to use it to get money from people caring about pollution is just wrong. If you really want to help tell everyone you meet that polluting shouldn't be tollerated and we should really start taking care of the planet better. We missed 50 years of taking care, we have to catch up but I think this generation is up to the job. Also here is a little video on New Water technology http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Do you think that it will be in next year's cars. Do you think Honda, Ford, and all those guys are going to give up there cut backs from the oil companys. If you don't think there recieving cut backs look at there new hybrid cars. I say $(%^ that ****, give me an fully eletric car then we will start talking your saving the enviroment. Sure it helps but they could litterally get rid of it entirly and they wont because they get a cut, its Worth there intrest to continue to making Cars that run on Gas. Anyways I hope this car comes out soon and we can start doing more for the enviroment. Cheers -Lenbot

Hello All Let's start off by talking about what a database is and how it would be efficient in using it. It wasn't until about a year and half ago now that I was first introduced to this new age of Database. I discovered a lot of neat things and even learned about databases the very long way. A database is exactly how it sounds its data that has a base. The base being the place where you store all your data. If you have ever been to a library perhaps you have used the Index to search for an author, this is a database of authors. Ever seen a rolodex on someone desk, imagine multiple rolodexâs that were huddled together and were joined together by links of information. Simple it sounds but there is a lot more to it than that, but once you learn the simple stuff it makes a hell of a lot more sense. A phone book is a database of phone numbers; stored alphabetically by last name. You can simply look up Griffin Peter, until you find the Griffin Peter youâre looking for. A database is exactly that, you can use it to store information, and instead of you looking it up, you simple query the database to look up the information in the column in your rolodex. Letâs get some terms and definitionâs out of the way. You donât need to fully understand what the definition mean. Just know that these are termâs used in Data basing is important. You eventually will get the meaning. C.R.U.D. Create, Read, Update, and Delete. Primary Key The candidate key selected as being most important for identifying a body of information (an entity, object or record). Source (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/primary-key) Table A collection of records in a relational database. Source (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/table) Database One or more large structured sets of persistent data, usually associated with software to update and query the data. A simple database might be a single file containing many records, each of which contains the same set of fields where each field is a certain fixed width. Source (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/database) Record An order set of fields usually stored continuously. Sometimes also called a ârowâ in data basing, and in spreadsheets itâs always called a ârowâ. Source (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/record) Normalization In relational database design, the process of organizing data to minimize redundancy. Normalization usually involves dividing a database into two or more tables and defining relationships between the tables. The objective is to isolate data so that additions, deletions, and modifications of a field can be made in just one table and then propagated through the rest of the database via the defined relationships Source (http://internet.com/) So letâs just create a small database that will store studentâs class schedule. I am not going to go into the steps of creating it in Mysql for this is just a theory lesson and understanding on how to create a proper database. So if you have a database of student schedules youâre going to have to store certain information. So we need to store Names of all the students, where they live and there courses, what time there courses are, and grade. Now this sounds easy enough, you have to remember that when creating a database you want to have as few records as possible and little redundancy also, preferably none, and absolutely no anomalies. Because you want have your database spend the least amount of time looking for the information, and never have data that canât C.R.U.D. with out creating an anomaly. Most databases have complicated ways of looking up information stored in there databases. A Database like Oracle is really efficient because they have written algorithms so that it can spend less time searching and return results faster. A simple Mysql program doesn't have such complicated ways, though it is very fast if you have millions and millions of records it will slow it down. And if you have millions of millions of people constantly asking the computer where this information is it can really task a computer and it will be lagy in response. The algorithms in databases are not the only thing that makes them different. So letâs create a skeleton for a database where we want to store a student schedule. Table Name: Class Attendants AttendantID, First Name, Last Name, Address, Table Name: Classes CourseID, Course Name, Teacher, Time, Credits Table Name: Student Course Schedule SchedualID, StudentID, CourseID This is a good database design for a school schedule because it is flexible and can be applied to many different schools if your running any kind of school it can be used. If you considered each table as sort of a rolodex you were looking at, perhaps this would be an easier concept of tables. If you look at the table Class Attendants, you will notice that it contains the Name of the student there last name and there address along with a Primary Key, Attendant. This unique identification (Attendant) allows for multiple students and teachers even if they have the same name, to be stored in the database. Same as the Class Table, along with the Student Course Schedule. The table Student Course Schedule is what we call at junction table, it connects both Class Attendants table and the Classes table together. If we didnât have a Unique ID for each person in the Class Attendant table we would have to use something else to use another unique system of identifying our Class Attendants from one another. Letâs say our table looks like this. Table Name: Class Attendants First Name, Last Name, Address, Table Name: Classes CourseID, Course Name, Teacher, Time, Credits Table Name: Student Course Schedule SchedualID, First Name & Last Name, CourseID With out the unique identifier to tell our students apart, when we try to C.R.U.D we would have problems. Such as we want to pull to look at all the classes Peter Griffin is in. We would call on our database to look at First Name & Last Name and pull all records pertaining Peter Griffin and find out that there are 32 classes for Peter Griffins in the school. Since your school only has 8 Classes for each student and there are 32 for this one student there must be an anomaly. Because there actually must be 4 different Peter Griffins going to your school and because you didnât uniquely identify them apart you have no idea which class this Peter Griffin goes to. We could how ever identify them apart by there address, oh unless your kids come from George Formanâs house. Then you have multiple students with the same name from same house so that wouldnât work either. So it is important when Data basing to take all these considerations in to play because when you C.R.U.D. your data you donât want to have anomalies such as 4 Peter Griffins with no course schedule because you canât tell any of them apart. So our original skeleton of a database is actually quite fine and will work well. Though I am sure there are some out there that would create it differently, I will attempt to explain why you might create a similar database that works fine also but doesnât even look close to mine. Creating a database is almost like an art, the creation of your own database will be exactly what is needed by you, there is but one true rule in creating a database. No anomalies, a bad database will have redundant data in it. But redundant data though it slows the system down and is just a crappy database, you cannot have a database that has anomalies, or you wonât be able to C.R.U.D your data and you donât want that. For a nice tutorial on database normalization and all the rules that go with it please go to http://www.rsolutions.net/RSweb/TOC.htm and click on either Database Normalization or No Slide Title. I know this article is not the greatest but I hope otherâs instead of ranting how poor it is would contribute to what I have missed or didnât make sense of. Cheers Lenbot

The Computer is many tools in one. If you look at all the way people use computers and perhaps you use computers, most people would realize that they are doing several things on there computer and each requires a bit of time. I usually spent an hour reading news, I wouldn't consider that compture time because most people read the news. I just refuse to pay for it and am happy to get second rate news online even if sometimes it is biased. I may also spend hours learning new software, someone recently introduced me to Blender 3d. with all the tutorials online I probably spent 24 hours working with the software in the last 2 Day. Alot of time perhaps sitting at a compture but I am accomplishing something so I do not mind. I also do Photo editing or digital editing in Adobe Photoshop which adds to more hours online. If MSN is on then atleast another 2 hours chatting with friends online. If your fixing your computer that is countless hours. I find that alot of people view that all there time spent on there computer is unproductive or in efficient, or that spending all that time on the computer cannot be good for anyone. As getting outside is important so is excersing your mind, despite all the Porn found on the internet there is a alot of information and knowledge out there than anyone can use. I have spent countless hours on http://www.howstuffworks.com/. The site has plenty of knowledgable information for everyone, including adverts but if thats what they need to keep it up then so be it. In this day in age if your not spending close to 5 hours on your computer, if you have one, it seems almost useless to have one. It is a device that can do many many things and why not enjoy all it's tools. Most people would probably be appauled if I said I spent something like 16 hours aday on my compture. But it isn't I use my time wisely and efficiently. I learn new things every day, work in applications so I am more desirable to an employer if I should be hired. Also writing skills are important and I find forums are a great way to excercise them. Even if you can't wright well at first, just simple reading and doing it every day will make your posts more informative. And spending time on a computer shouldn't be viewed as a bad thing, but as a good thing since even if your looking at porn and getting virusus and getting rid of them you learn something. I really doubt the computer will be going anywhere in the next 100 or even 1000 years and I think our time interacting with them might be less, we will never be without spending time on them.You can unfortunatly spend hours and hours looking for something on google, but with time and use from everyone google will get better. And who knows eventually you might get a Stove that has a connection to the internet and you just tell it to find you an interesting Recipe with all the things in your fridge and it would go on the internet and find it for you. Instead of you looking. So yay to computers and our time spent on them for by using them we will actually eventually have to use them less. So in conclusion the internet is full of a number of things I am sure we should all be as happy as kings. As for me I spend a minumum of 8 hours on computers if I am not working. but for me it's all time well spent, and honestly I think if you weren't using the computer you would be staring at that boob tube that since in most living rooms. Not that the tv is not a place to seek some knowledge just most of the time people will turn it on and watch something just for the sake that there to lazy to go off and do something. Cheers to all those who use computers and all there wonderfull things!-Lenbot

Yes, sorry wutske. I realized I had made some mistakes afterwards on the hard drive section. But I didn't want to go into too much detail. But as you have put it is exactly that. And I am also sorry for using the 9400 series I was just using it as an example, I didn't think there was a 9400 but for sake of an example I used it.As for the processors I had completely forgot to mention that yes the L2 Cache is important in a Processor and that the Celeron's are really lacking in that category. As for the Processors overheating, I have built alot of systems on the Technology of Yesterday and not today. And I hadn't realized that the AMD's had gotten alot cooler while the Intel's have gotten hotter I am glade you had the courtesy to post with the Information about today's technology. I decided not to get into to get into to much detail about the way the Processors calculated, because I don't have that great of understanding and didn't want to confuse anyone, though I did that quite well with the HDD portion. But what I know exactly what you corrected is dead on the money. Thank you wustke for taking the time and reading through it and improving the topic. Especially the HDD part since I knew that it was lacking. Perhaps someone out there knows a bit more about the RAM side of things who can post about it. When orginally buying my CPU I had matched the FSB but then I upgraded the CPU I couldn't afford to match it by buying a new stick and I realized I Limited for awhile. But agian I thank you for Pointing that out.Also what kind of system are you running wustke, and does it seem to run well for you?CheersHappy Computing-Lenbot

Thank you on replaying vusja, and thanks to whom ever reviewed my approval process. I just wanted to say that I was an IT admin at one point and know the sorrows of installing upgrading changing and keeping everything working in order. My sympathy to all those who work in this area. Just a note though, I don't want to sound insulent or anything but perhaps a symple line somewhere when logging in stating that were upgrading would be sufficient. It's just a little blurp in the road I know and you provide awesome service for little in return. Just "be all that you can be in Xisto.com"-Lenbot

Perhaps then just A ETL (estimated Time of Looking at it) . THanks for the response. I just wanted to know what was going on. thanks pyost

Hello all! I have noticed that the last approved account was on July 3 or 4th. It is now the 22 I wanted to know what was going on with that and I am sure some others do as well. I also read some where that you need something like 50 posts to get the service, I was unaware of this situation. I wouldn't have posted anything in that case. I like to write lengthy responses that make sense and are thorough so in 5 posts I recieved 36. points. Now normally it wouldn't bother me to continue up to 50, but I read somwhere that it doesn't matter how many points you have say 30 - 3000 that when you create the website you wipe all the points down to 3. I find this absurd since I would have something like 400 points before I got up to 50. If a website costs 400 Points, put that up don't lie by saying you want a minimum of 30 if you really want us to have a high amount before you grant a website request. I do not know how long it takes for anyone to review a request but I have seen it take a day to grant a request so what's the hold up now. If your going to deny, deny and say why so. So they can adjust what ever you want from them.Its just my opinion, great service and all but I feel like I am left in the dark about what's going on. It seems you say one thing when you really mean another.Cheer-Lenbot

I for a long time didn't really know what made a system, while something show a significant improvment. Such as upgrading a video card, I really wanted to know how to make a system at utmost the fastest for the cheapest or fastest if I came into alot of money. Processing Power:This is important of course, having low processing power can really hinder your system. Processing power counts in Compiling, Rendering, Editing Videos, games sometimes. As it stands as of this date a intel 4 3.0 478 pin CPU is absolutly fine and I find it a bit greedy. I had, had a 2.4 intel celeron before and it was really okay, the Celeron are not so good when it comes to compiling or rendering or anything that really requires alot of Calculations. It was okay for gaming, video card is somewhat important for that factor so you really didn't notice that much though it does but not much. I use Seti@home for my benchmarking letting me know what kind of calculating power the processor has. My 2.4 would calculate in about 6 1/2 to 7 hours, I thought how much could it improve if I throw in a genuine Intel with only 600 more mhz. The 3.0 was poping out work units in 2 hours. It was more than double the speed in doing math calculations, I do alot of rendering and compiling so it was really nice to see that kind of a difference from just going strickly intel. It is Hyper Threading enabled processor but I disabled it since Cloning in Adobe Photoshop CS 2 seems to freeze the computer. Now the truth is that the extra 600 mhz wasn't the kicker it was the fact I had switched to an actual intel. After testing both processors in Counter Strike: source FPS tester my frames went only up 10. From 50 to a steady 60 to 65. My video card is hardly latest or greatest but it should be able to do atleast 100 I thought with a nice processor like that but Processing power for games means little. If I had switched to a genuine Intel 2.4 Processor I would have probably seen about the same increase in FPS in CS:S. Now remember that his is caculating power, if you want a true gaming processor you can't beat AMD chips. They are just genuinly better at processing games. They do run a bit hotter and that can cause the system to freeze, I have seen a number of AMD systems running with the side panel of the machine to allow the processor to cool off faster. But for about 30+ you can get a decent heatsink that will keep it around 30 degrees which is more than reasonable for keeping your chip cool. The Video Card:Having a great video card is literally iceing on the cake. You can eat cake with out iceing but it tastes better with and the more iceing you can afford the better the cake tastes because you can have layers of iceing. poor metaphore perhaps, but that is how it is. There are literally hunderds and hunderds of choices from Video card companies, such as Sapphire ATI cards or Asus ATI or Asus Nvidia. What this basically means is that they bought the little chippy thing that does the calculating of polygones from either Nvidia or ATi the 2 big companies in video cards and slapped it on there board which features there ram and variouse other things. Most of us have either a Asus Mother board or a MSI Mother board if you want to really marry parts together get the ASUS ATI/Nvidia card or the MSI ATI/Nvidia, you will usually have less problems. Though a Geniune ATI video card or Nvidia will work nice too the ASUS or MSI version's of the ATI/Nvidia card are usually less expensive. If there is a price difference I would definatly go for the cheaper one, but of course thats if its ASUS or MSI. The are many other companies out there that buy the chips from ATI/Nvidia and slap it on there card but most of them are junk. I have had neither in my system though and have run Sapphire's ATI cards which are 99% alike and are about 2/3 the cost of a ASUS, MSI or Genuine ATI/Nvidia. I have placed a actual Genuine ATI in my computer of the same kind as my Sapphire and there was no difference in what I could see. The drivers for my sapphire are from ATI it's litterally the exact same as far as I have looked into and it's much cheaper. Back when ATI had there big ATI readon 9800 just coming out I went and bought a Sapphire 9600 and it's been able to play everything I have thrown at it. Though since the release of oblivion I have noticed that I can't put up all the eye candy on it with out seeing some seriously low FPS. More Ram on the video card doesn't neccessarly mean better performace. The cost of more ram on your video card is actually less peformace. For example if you had the ATI readon 9800 256 mb for 200 dollars the 512 version will probably be like 275 dollars and you might see an extra 5 frames. Jumping generations of video cards can significantly improve peformance. Usually a Generation of video card I find is when they stop making the new video cards for a couple of months. ATI jumped from the 9400 which was a good card to the 9800 in just a few months. The 9800 would wipe the 9400 easily but there was a giant price gap, but like I said the 9800 was awesome and it was on top of the pile for awhile. I call those the generation cards since they usually mark a leap in Card Processing power allowing them to stay on top for awhile. The next leap was the x800 by ATI but there were several cards inbetween that were also good but nothing like the x800. To stay on top of the generations of cards you really need to know your stuff and watching the features of the cards. So generation video cards are good, especially from ATi. But your literally dealing about 5 fps on a standerd system if you upgrade so usually its worth waiting for the Generation cards to come down in price. It does suck having to turn off the eye candy in oblivion, I have seen it run on a nice system and it's pretty fantastic. But when the next gen comes into a decent price range I will be able to play with all the eye candy. You don't need the latest in greatest in video cards. If your building a system I would definatly look into many many cards before buying one. There are tons and tons of reviews for almost all brands and kinds of the Video cards out there. When I build a system I usually take a look at what's greatest and then go back a couple of versions. As of right now I for anyone I would recommend the ATI 9800 sure it's almost a year old, and I don't know if you can get them in most computer stores but honestly it's an awesome video card for little money. If you want to save even more get a sapphire ATI readon 9800 256mb. Though some people will say get this or that, it usually always boils down to an extra few fps. Do you honestly care if Quake 3 plays at 1100 fps or 900 fps, naw didn't think so look at the prices read the reviews a decent (meaning good price! and atleast 50fps on the newer games) video card can set your system up for some nice gaming.Random Access Memory:Ram has been around for a long time and it's not exactly hard to make ram so everyone and there uncle will offer you different sizes of ram with different bus speeds. Usually you want to match your FSB (front side bus) of your Processor, though that is not really important. Though there is no point in getting ram with a FSB of 500 if your processor only does 400 so that's usually one little thing to check for when upgrading or buying a system. Though usually companies are pretty good at setting up computer systems now, even little hobby computer shops. I have boughten a system literally only for the ram. for 400 bucks you can get 512 of ram which runs out at about 70 bucks. Plus you get a decent hard drive usually 100g or more so thats another 100 bucks. Plus moniter and back up parts and so forth an so on. Though that is definatly not a recommended idea but that just to say that those systems are actually decent enough to just get stuff off. Back in the day when we only had 32mb of ram to have something like 256 would have seemed to much. Most stuff would run with much less and to have tripple that would have been pointless. Thus I learned a lesson with XP. XP will take up 256mb alone to just bout into windows. That is why most systems will offer 512mb since you literally need it to do anything half decent. I had run with 512 which I thought was being zelouse from my 32mb days untill I had boughten a new stick of 512mb with a bitt better FSB. I gave my old stick to my friend who also had the same FSB and had a 512 stick too. Just a quick note if your buying or upgrading your system make sure to get the same FSB on your ram or you will screw your system up something fierce. Anyways after he put it in we did some bench marking and the improvement in my eyes was really amazing. For his system it was like buying a brand new video card. Though he still can't turn up all the eye candy because of a crappy video card, the games he could play showed a Significant improvment of FPS. Almost double. So I had to see if I could get some more FPS on my system for 70 bucks, with out having to spend 200 on a new video card. Upgrading to 1gig of ram really can make a difference I went from 50 fps to 100 fps in CS:S. And that is with all the eye candy turned up so I would recommended any system anyone is building that will have XP as an operating system have atleast 1gig of ram. It will give you decent FPS on your video card and let that old video card you have stay on top a tiny bit longer plus give you some nice FPS on past games. Though it sounds insane Hard Drives can make an improvment:For a long time I was always puzzled by the fact why a hard drive would have any effect on performance in gaming or runing applications. But the truth is it does a bit. I would never say get a faster HDD than the standered out there because the improvement isn't worth it. I mean the latest and greatest is really developed for companies like pixar or Lucas arts. They need that extra power and there really only the ones who can use it. But this is how a HDD can slightly improve performance. Basically the more platters your Hard drives have the better, oh and rpm's are also important. If you have heard someone using a scuzi drive or your mother board comes scuzi enabled. basically that means you can link to Hard drives together creating more platters thus reducing your seek time. Seek time is important in HDD terms so the more the platters the less seek time. Also if you keep your hard drive nicely defragged and about 2/3 filled it should work as if it were wipped and on a new system. If anyone has ever had something like 1gig left or 500mb left of space and there system is slow that is because of your seek time on your hard drive. Thats because your HDD is full and it takes a while to try and find the information your looking for. So keep the HDD someone clean having them completly full will really slow down your computer but if you can get em 2/3 full then do it because you will see significant improvment. Some HDD out there can run at 10 000rpms though the standered is 7200rpms in most computers across the globe. These HDD are fine. HDD is one of those things upgrade it if you need the space otherwise don't worry about. If you want really fast HDD then get 2 scuzi and if you can afford it get the 10 000 rpm ones but I wouldn't recommended. Latest and Greatest is it for us:Nope, if you got the money ya sure it's nice but it really isn't that great. dell was offering a 10 000 dollar computer set up awhile back there and sure it had lots of nice features but what I would consider a good system won't brake the pocket books. It will impress your friends but will impress you more because it didn't cost you a fortune to build it. My current build of system would probably run someone something like 600 bucks excluding a monitor and it comes close to benchmarking with the latest and greatest and thats what counts. Current build Intel P4 3.0 Hyperthreading 500FSB 478 pin2X512mb Kingston 9300/400 FSBSapphire ATI readon 9600 256mb MSI Motherboard 865 PE Neo 2 - V2x60gig HDD 7200RPM'sAll I want to know is what other systems do other's have. How are you experiencing your builds. How does ram or processor's effect your system building. Do you have 2 gig's of ram with a really crappy video card that can pump it up because of the extra ram! I want to know so other's can know to and we can all stop talking about buying the latest 700 dollar video card that's going to get us an extra 30fps.

hah, I can sort of see your concern with the fact that your FPS are increasing and decreasing. This is because if you are stairing at just a wall in the game your FPS will jump to there higest because your video card has to draw very little because your are looking at very little. Now if you are looking across a battle field at wall with guys moving around, your video card will have to draw all the characters inbetween you and that wall. FPS really means absolutly nothing, it literally does if you have above 30 fps. Anything higher is just nice, I played doom 3 with 20 fps and it didn't bother me any. The only time that you want something like 100+ fps is when you are a seriouse gamer. Usually seriouse gamers will put most of there resolutions as low as possible because that 1/10 of a millisecond seeing someone really counts. Most proffesional CPL players will have there machines run at about 200 FPS for something like Counter Strike: source. They usually have really beefed up machines because they win tournaments and can afford the latest and greatest. Plus some of them recieve sponsership from companies like Intel and Nvidia or ATI. The average person should hope for around 60 fps in a game and that's good. I play CS: S at around 100 fps but I also play in tournaments and stuff and really need that extra 40 frames but I used to play with only 50, not to much of a difference for the average player. As for ping, Ping is really important even more than FPS because it's your Latency between you and the server. I would love to play with someone in L.A. but at 140 ping that's to low, most people should be looking at the maximum less than a 50 ping. I usually play with servers that are in my town giving me a ping of around 10 - 20 and I am way up north. As for FPS making you cooler, just remember if your a true techno guru if you see someone playing CS: S with 200 FPS. While they play for just fun on the weekend and don't take gaming seriously. Usually what ever money they spent, usually a fair chunk spent on the system and upgrade is worth nothing. I usually just laugh at them, but then explain to them exactly why they are wasting good money on something that changes every day and that 50fps or even 30+ fps is fine.

Hey all Some of us have a need and desire to be apart of this ever growing gadget world and must find the latest and greatest thing. Even if you can't afford it, it's always nice to know what's out there or what's coming out in the gadget world. I once heard mentions from The Screen Savers on G4 tech TV, that most of there ideas for the show's though from many resources come from https://www.engadget.com/. Its a neat little nifty blog that keeps everyone up to date on the latest and greatest from the next inpending sky net to the new motorola. I just wanted to ask everyone here are there any tech sites that you all visit on a daily bases to view the next latest and greatest. Thanks for all those who post.cheers -Lenbot

Modeling software for free is hard to come by, it literally doesn't exist I don't think except for some really poor version's such as Milkshape but even that has some restrictions. If you want proffesional modeling software lets' face it yours going to have to spend atleast $500 or more on a decent package. Now if you want some restriction's but don't really care about exporting importing, you just want to model and get experience. Plus atleast have some models to show to potential employers I would recommend Softimage XSI 4.2 mod tool. Created for mod developers, this soft ware package offer's plenty of proffesional tools. It really is great, I love it. It's a bit tricky to get used to but softimage definatly has the right idea and will if not already leading the way in modeling creation. Valve software made Half life 2 using Softimage's XSI tools, the professional one of course but the dumbed down version is basically the same. You can even create models for a Half Life 2 game, but it has a 5000 polygon cap limit when exporting it to .smd. Though 5000 is more than enough to create a decent character. I believe only a few models in Half Life 2 go over that mark. You can download this software free via there website http://www.autodesk.com/products/softimage/overview simply in the drop down box select Mod Tool, and download the file that is 202mb. The site also has plenty of tutorials to help out potential future modelers and animators. Though you can purchase tutorials for XSI 5.0 I believe from http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ . The are few limitations of course such as certian character rigging that might be avialable in 5.0 that's not avialable in the 4.2 but for the most part there is tons of stuff to learn. Hope everyone who wants to learn how to model or animate proffesionally finds this helpfull. cheers -Lenbot

Hello all After coming off a year and a bit of playing world of warcraft, I decided what I didn't like about MMORPG's. Though World of Warcraft is great it has some things lacking, such as the fact sitting in Ironforge spaming Looking for group or group looking for one more healer or tank. I highly dislike that since you can spend hours upon hours of just doing that unless you get a guild to stay together for more than a couple of months or have plenty of fun, World of Warcraft can be a drag. Well I traded in a bunch of my xbox games at a local ebgames store and wanted to try out Guild wars. I had play tested it big back in 2004, and this was the expansion so it had to be doing somewhat well to get a expansion, plus it was Free online play. Most of the time you would think if you had Free online play you would get the worse players playing, and usually you get constant spams in that area chat and well perhaps some of you remember the trading area in Diablo II expansion. Ya, agreed it's really not that bad but it can get annoying. Anyways I installed the game and created an account and I have found a new love, Guild Wars Factions. Now this game is hardly perfect, For me I would put it ahead of World of Warcraft because for one thing it offers free online play. Big bonus in my eyes, another thing that I liked right off the bat is that the world is pretty explorable, though I haven't gotten to see any elites mobs yet, I am sure I will eventually but perhaps there not in the game. They do have bosses and have a system built into capture special elite skills from the fallen boss. Of course the bosses only drop some skills and some you might already have from purchasing at a skill trainer but the possibility of elite skill lets allows you to give reason to kill all the bosses in the game. Now since there alot of explorable areas and well you might not have 8 friends to play with, ya you heard me a party can only consist of 8 from what I gathered playing. Thats okay though the game is tough in some parts, but if you don't have 8 friends most towns and areas offer Henchmen for Hire. The Henchmen or hench women don't cost anything other than you share experience with them and gold, though what a NPC for hire would want with gold who knows. There are towns in the game which you can travel to once you have reached them, which is somewhat better than World of Warcraft though that really isn't a problem. Though once you leave the town you are in an instance of your own with your party, so you don't have to worry about being ganked. There are also alot of missions to do along with main story quests to complete. There are also 13 areas in the game that you can if you want beat them on Master which means you must beat it quick and no deaths, which is harder than it sounds. There are also plenty of items to find off mobs, and you can turn them into crafting material so you can craft your next item if you haven't found a better one. The only thing that is really lacking in the game is a economy system. Though prices of craftign materials fluctuat according to supply and demand from the Merchants it is hardly anything compared to Star Wars Galaxies Bazaar's or World of Warcrafts Auction house. That is really only one side of the game though. The idea is to unlock as many skills as possible, most likely you will beat the RPG side of the game first, you can create a character for PVP. I have yet to experience the PVP side of the game yet since I have not completed the RPG side of it. But from what I gather it will be fun. There is a level cap of only 20 though you can continue to gather experience and hit 20 multiple times. The reason for this is that you get Skill points everytime you fill up the 20 bar agian. The skill point allows you to purchase skills from Skill merchants which are found in most major cities. All in all this for me is a game that I can pick up and play and get farther in the game by just simply playing from time to time. Every hour put into the game is worth something, unlike World of Warcraft which like I said you can sit in Iron Forge for 2 hours trying to put a pug together for Upper black rock spire. The visuals in the game are not the best. The system sort of like is Star Wars Galaxies but a little bit better on the texture side of things. Now of course there is also Guilds in Guild Wars factions, though you don't have to be apart of one or you can create on yourself and recruit members. All in all if your looking for a game you can pick up play put down and put away and pick up agian and enjoy I would recommend it. If you really like trading economy systems then I would probably stay away from it because it lacks it terribly. There is probably tons of things I am missing that are in the game that I just forgot to mention but from my experience I would definatly recommend it as a potential Christmas Present or Birthday Present. Happy RPGing to all those gathering experience!Cheers-Lenbot