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Juicero Memorial [Tech Thread]
Jasconius
sword criminalmad onlineRegistered User regular
sword criminalmad onlineRegistered User regular
The old tech thread is at one-hundo and its 4 pages back so I guess its time for a new one
Here's my take
ALL TECHNOLOGY IS INCREDIBLE GARBAGE EXCEPT SOMEHOW THE PLAYSTATION 4 IS GOOD AGAINST ALL ODDS, and you can buy a legitimately great TV now for under $500
oh yeah and all your passwords are hacked now
tl;dr buy a PS4 and take into a bomb shelter, it's only worse from here
so, guys, technology!
I'm picking up my Razer Stealth tonight and will review it for you. Razer's get a lot press but like the XPS 15, you rarely meet someone who actually owns one. I've now owned both. I'll tell you all about it.
Here's my take
ALL TECHNOLOGY IS INCREDIBLE GARBAGE EXCEPT SOMEHOW THE PLAYSTATION 4 IS GOOD AGAINST ALL ODDS, and you can buy a legitimately great TV now for under $500
- Apple revolutionized the consumer software industry and then rotted it from the inside out. They're now letting people buy ad spaces on app search results. Motherfucking RIP.
- An entire generation of the people think of the internet as just a few different tweetsnapbooks + their banking website
- Basically everyone responsible for the last two bullets are now trying to replicate their success with "smart devices" that will eventually form a SkyNet that will kill us all
- Google tried to make themselves "Microsoft but for Mobile" and have basically inherited the wind, with their premier manufacturer shipping literal bombs to people, and the rest of the cast struggling with bankruptcy and/or weird OnePlus style business models. They basically can't get a tablet off the ground to save their life.
- If you want a laptop you have to choose between cloogey overpriced designer jewelry (Apple, Razer) or crapware filled ultrabooks with limited warranties, bad driver support, and underpowered graphics (the field)
- Microsoft is still years away from getting back into broad based consumer stuff in a serious way
- Video games have basically been taken over by the film industry and operate on the exact same business model. Serial hyper budget artless swill on one end (and their HD remasters), intolerable indie bullshit on the other. Apart from a couple of outstanding players like Miyazake, and an e-sports movement that's getting shit made that would otherwise NEVER get made (do we need our 7th version of DOTA?), there's not that much to look forward to.
- Half-Life 3: not released
oh yeah and all your passwords are hacked now
tl;dr buy a PS4 and take into a bomb shelter, it's only worse from here
so, guys, technology!
I'm picking up my Razer Stealth tonight and will review it for you. Razer's get a lot press but like the XPS 15, you rarely meet someone who actually owns one. I've now owned both. I'll tell you all about it.
Jasconius on
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This is dumb as hell and I want it so bad.
I'm glad technology has finally caught up with my fetishes
generally I would say "slim" unless you did something bad
I don't know tech stuff works, but I use it, so I'm the family expert.
And I have no idea how anything works.
My mom got a cellphone last week
The virus protection on my parents laptop is trying to tall them into buying some kind of virus protection for their phone.
ugh
yeah they don't need that
its light. I think its just under 4 pounds, but also sturdy. It's stockier and feels like super craftsmanship to my 2011 Air. Better hinge. Better materials. The aluminum has a soft quality to it almost. Difficult to describe. Pleasing to the touch relative to my macs.
The screen (4K) is excellent. Clearly superior to the Surface. Godlike color quality. Rich, doesnt feel washed out in the slightest. If you lower the brightness on it past a certain threshold it does seem like it will turn off certain parts of that color perfection to preserve battery, which is actually sort of a feature I would say. The most controversial design piece of the laptop is its ridiculously thick screen bezel. They went full iPad 1 here. I think it's fine. It's black-hole-black and just accentuates how good the color is.
The keyboard is nuts. There is no photograph that can do justice the the Chroma lighting. They're using some sort of trick to create optical illusions with it, for example, you can make it "ripple" which I swear to god makes it look like your keyboard is moving like water. All this stuff is optional but its freaky. There are plenty of fun customizations for it that will definitely impress your grandma or something
Battery life is tentatively "very good" by Windows standards. Three hours ago I pulled the plug at 80%, and I've been doing nothing but installing and cramming updates into it and it's at 39%. The surface 4 would DEFINITELY be dead by now. I want to emphasize for a 4 pound device we are firmly in Apple territory now in terms of size/battery ratios
It gets fucking hot. Like the hottest laptop I've ever touched in my life. Physically painful to your skin. If you're actually planning on gaming with this on your lap you'll need an oven mitt
No crapware except for two Razer apps, one of which I would argue is essential.
Can't really comment on performance yet, as things are still installing.
Considering the price I paid, and how cheap you can actually configure one of these things, this actually seems like incredibly good value in the PC landscape if you want something small but you don't need what the Surface is selling.
Could you plug it into an external monitor and tell us how that performance looks in games?
Yeah, they're super slim, but if you leave them on your lap you burn yourself
Yes, most of them require some initial app to be run. But only once does the appstore need to fail, or enough people sideload and it can get bad.
The appstores themselves are a garbage fire. Full of F2p games that waste your time, and ask you to pay them for wasting less of your time. Then use 80% of the profit to buy adds during F2P games.
I disagree on videogames though.
It's the best time to be playing videogames and 2016 may be the strongest new release year in games ever.
i would say the heat is probably 5-10% worse, but it gets there much more quickly. and on a macbook only an isolated part of the body will get hot. with this, the entire chassis gets hot. your legs will start to sweat
Will do the games stuff soon. Keep in mind the Stealth doesn't have a discrete GPU, they meant for it to be plugged into a Core (didnt buy it yet)... but I will test today probably
it's got the best i7 money can buy, you get a lot of CPU, more than anything in its class
the equivalent new Macbook Pro throttles its CPU substantially
SO! early next year, my girlfriend and I are going in together for a nice TV
We know nothing about TVs
Our plan is to get a nice 1080 screen that is 45-55" and have a switch that we can hook up:
SNES
N64
Wii
Nintendo Switch
PSOne (maybe)
DVD Player
My computer
any recommendations?
a receiver wouldn't be a bad investment
well I definitely know what that is, but to prove to me that you know what that is, I'll ask you to elaborate as if you were talking to a child who doesn't know what that is!
a really fancy switch that's a single point of connection for your AV equipment to your TV and your sound system. I'd watch woot for any receiver + sound bar and/or speaker setup packages.
usually they'll support 5-7+ HDMI connections plus multiple component and composite connections simultaneously. given the number of devices you were talking its an option worth considering if you also wanted to go for a nice sound system as well.
What you end up with would depend entirely on your budget, but a receiver is the device that all your other home entertainment devices connect up to (t.v., console, DVR, BluRay player, speakers) and everything is routed through it.
Systems range from Home Theatre In A Box (HTIB) systems like this to component sytems like this, and also way, WAY beyond that.
Even really nice televisions have shitty little speakers in them that sound like garbage, upgrading to even just a quality HTIB setup like the one I linked makes a world of difference to movies and games, and can also often be used as a loungeroom stereo system. Some receivers even have radio tuners in them!
I knew what a stereo receiver was (I have a nice old Pioneer for my record player and tape decks) but I'd never heard of one for use with video
Living in the future!
dear lord
this was my original plan, but maybe I should revise and save up some money. We actually have many more systems we could hook up, but to save space, we're going to retire our Wii Us (since they both have faulty disc drives) and use a Wii for the GC games. I'm going to leave off my old xbox and atari.
I guess I should trawl amazon and woot
You can just buy a 5.1 HTIB and not plug in the rear two speakers, many have an option to set outputs to 3.1 to take advantage of that. The Yamaha system I linked in the other post actually has an option for people with no way to run the rear surround speakers where it does some shit with signal processing and time shifting to make it sound like you have a 5.1 setup but you put all the speakers at the front.
Yeah what chris said, the systems usually auto adjust depending on what speakers you have plugged in and when you run the setup. I have 7.1 capability but only use 5.1 because I couldn't set up all the speakers in my space.
There aren't any free bluray programs, right?
Even after installing the service pack 5 for winDVD 11 pro that is supposed to improve Windows 10 compability I can't get it to start.
VLC should be able to play back blurays with http://vlc-bluray.whoknowsmy.name/ As I recall, it can't display menus, so you have to navigate through the disc title menu.
@T4CT
Also how is the daydream?
video games, if there are things you want to play? Maybe? But honestly this year with just constant bullshit of mid-cycle upgrades and bullshit review policies and just everything. I think it had been one of the worst years (the jimquistion did a video on it actually) it almost makes me want to get out of the console side to be honest.
With the exception of Nintendo. Good Work Nintendo.
Satans..... hints.....
@Emerlmaster999 Beebsy. The Pixel owns. I feel comfortable saying it's my favourite phone I've ever used. Coming from a 5C, you're gonna have to get used to a size bump, but imo it's worth it (the phone I was using to this was an SE, so I sort of get it, but before that it was a Nexus 6P so I'm kind of already used to it.)
For reference, I am using the regular Pixel, not the XL. The specs are the same except the Pixel XL has a quad HD screen (probably a little better for VR) and a larger battery. Here are a list of things that own with the Pixel:
1) The camera is god tier. It seriously takes incredible photos, even in low light, and it's INSANELY fast even though it's shooting in HDR.
2) All the sweet photos you take of the ol' ferret (not a dick reference Beeb has a ferret, I guess if people reading this don't have a ferret feel free to use your imagination) are stored in google photos at FULL resolution, unlimited, which is a major bonus. Google photos already had unlimited photo storage for photos at high resolution (but not necessarily max) so this just makes it all the sweeter.
3) You can swipe down on the fingerprint sensor to pull down the notification bar. Game changer.
4) Battery life gets me an easy 14 hours on most days, the lowest battery life I've ever had on the phone up until yesterday was 11.5 (yesterday was Daydream View day so it was getting used a LOT and it was all for VR, it's not a good metric for the ol' battery life)
5) By the way, Daydream View is a very good VR experience
6) In the US you'll get to use Android Pay (lucky you) and tap payment solutions own the only thing I miss from the SE is apple pay
There are lots of other things I love but most of them just stem from this being a best-in-class android phone and are not Pixel specific
I bought a Daydream View AMA
Iz goooooooooooood
It's shocking good for being phone powered, as someone who played with Gear VR a fair bit.
On my pixel there's very minimal screen dooring (I imagine on a Pixel XL this is nearly nonexistent thanks to the higher rez screen), it does a very very good job of tracking your head movement in space. There's only 10 or so games at launch and some cool experience apps, but there's supposed to be 40 by the end of the year which I'm really excited about. It's got me so excited that I think I'm gonna try and make some VR stuff.
360 videos are super super cool, I know they've been around a while on youtube for phones and stuff but Google released their Youtube VR experience and it's VERY well done, and the different between a cardboard headset and the daydream view is....noticeable. Not only because it's more comfortable (and you aren't holding things onto your face), but in general whatever they're doing with Daydream just seems to track your head movement muuuuch better
The controller is key to this experience and is actually very good I think! So far in the games that I've played I've been pleasantly surprised at the variety of things game makers can do with it.
I got to watch a couple people try VR yesterday, but by far the most fun one was my girlfriend, who only vaguely new VR was a thing that existed and had never seen or tried one (she's about as far removed from tech and gaming as you can get, with the exception of the ol' cellphone.) She put it in and was SHOCKED and gleeful, which is not the usual reaction of pandering enthusiasm I'm used to when I show the latest bullshit thing I bought, and spent like...half an hour in the Fantastic Beast and Where to Find Them experience.
Incidentally, I think that that experience is one of the really really cool ones on the View right now, even if that particular app sometimes loses track of where your wand is pointing in a bizarre way.
Oh, and Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is on this thing and it owns.
what really makes the difference is that the 4k screen elegantly downscales to a lot of traditional resolutions that games already support. a big issue I had with the SP4 was I could never find good downscale resolutions that didnt look like shit
I could take the stealth to minimum resolutions and get 60FPS+ on WoW and it still looked completely fine, pixel-wise.
however it does eventually overheat and throttle back. I think this is manageable with the right settings, and still comparable to any other ultrabook I've used
so in summary "its still an ultrabook", but maybe 10% better
battery life update.. the battery is legit. best battery I've had in a Windows computer. On multiple occasions it's quoted me 10+ hours, which is insane. Most of the time with a browser open and average screen brightness it will quote me 4-5 hours from 100%. Solid.
I think I'm going to buy a Core for it. If the Core makes it even 50% better, that's huge.