"steampunk motors"
Clockwork, not motors!
1293 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Feb 2010
Not everyone uses their portable PCs while actually on the move, some use them mostly at a limited number of fixed locations - quite possibly involving a desk at each location and a car as transport. For this use just having one or two boxes and minimal cables is sufficient portability, it doesn't necessarily have to be light - what used to sometimes be called a luggable is enough.
A couple of example use cases:
1) LAN parties. Yes games can be played over the internet these days, but everyone in one room with beer and snacks is more fun.
2) My work laptop spends almost all of it's powered on time in a docking station at work connected to multiple external monitors. It does however get undocked most evenings in case there is a need to work from home the next day. Given everything except the laptop itself stays in the office I'd not turn down an extra bulky docking station that gave a performance boost (though I can't see work going for this particular model).
Are the real profits even in the frames? The optician I use seems to have a permanent 2-for-1 offer on glasses. However that doesn't include lens upgrades such thinner lens, anti-scratch anti-reflective coating, tint or light-reactive so the second pair can be sunglasses, etc. The 'free' second pair can work out quite expensive if you want anything other than the basics.
I never even liked the Windows 7 version of the start menu. To me cramming it all into the bottom corner of the screen instead of the XP and earlier cascading style seemed a poor use of the available screen space.
When I first saw the Win 7 start menu I assummed it's design was to enable it to work on the smaller screens of mobile devices without space for the earlier cascading version. Windows 8 seemed to disprove that theory, so I've still no idea why they did it.
Admittedly I never played more than a demo, but that was because that was enough to illustrate just how bad a console title lazily converted to the PC could be. I seem to recall my main gripes were:
1) Badly scaled console resolution backgrounds instead of re-doing the for the PC. Net result being that the real-time 3D models looked better than the pre-rendered backgrounds since they were at least at full pixel resolution.
2) Terrible user-interface, which may have been necessary on a console, but not on a PC with a mouse available.
Maybe I'll give it a second chance this time around, if they make a better job of it.
Um, nope. Doom had multiple significant things which even if not unique or first were definitely unusual at the time, but became much more common subsequently:
1) User created content.
2) LAN multi-player
3) The PC no longer being a second-rate games machine compared to a much cheaper Amiga/ST/console - this was a game which benefited from raw processor speed and not assistance from 2D graphics acceleration.
Combine that lot and you've got something pretty significant, Doom was a definite milestone and turning point.
As long as a human has control over a vehicle they'll be able to crash it by operating the controls wrong.
Presumably in this case the chances of the pilot operating this control at the wrong time were judged to be sufficiently low, perhaps less than the chances of a lock-out failing to disengage (which would also cause a crash).
Having downloaded it last night it's not the same game at all.
Yes they're both procedurally generated worlds with block based building. but they've as many differences as similarities. Whether they compete or not depends on what it is you like (or dislike) doing in Minecraft.
For MC players building purely cosmetic structures in creative mode this is definate alternative, especially for those who also use MCEdit in conjunction with the game itself.
For those more interested in the survival aspects of MC then LW doesn't (at least currently) seem to offer much. Although there are occasional mini-figs that you can punch there isn't really the same level of threat as in MC.Likewise there aren't really limits to resources - have as many basic bricks as you want. More complex models (flowers, oil wells, vehicles) you can have as many as you want too once you've found one (provided you have enough 'studs' to buy the first one - they're hardly in short supply).
For explorers LW might offer more. Rather than crafting things you need to find them in the world first (the exact thing, not a few multi-purpose general components), which means lots of travelling around. Time will tell if I'm right on this, it depends on how many things there are to find and how common they are.
For the more technical MC players who like redstone they're not going to find much of interest here. Building is (at least currently) limited to non-functional lego parts. Functional stuff like vehicles is found pre-built. I can see scope for this changing if the start including Technical Lego (aka Lego Technic) parts, but even that I'd expect to feel more like building contraptions in Besiege than MC.