A place for things and stuff
Total War: Warhammer looks great! Real time strategy is usually my least favorite game genre, or almost least, MMORPGs keep that slot locked down, but this game is shaping up to be something special. I still hope that I can customize the look of my armies (pink orcs!), but the way this game is looking, I will probably get it either way.
Oh yeah to all you SysAdmins like myself, Happy SysAdmin Day!
I celebrated the release of Windows 10 yesterday like most techy people, installing the software on just about every PC I could. Two in particular, my wife’s old laptop, and my mid-range gaming rig.
First up the Gateway T-1424u:
I believe this laptop is like six years old (could be older), and since it is a budget laptop anyway it should be long dead, but I do my best to keep it running. It has an old Athlon 64 X2 dual core processor running at 1.9 GHz, and an integrated Radeon X1270 graphics card. It only has three gigs of RAM, and it is still running on its original hard-drive which is a bit of a minor miracle.
The Windows 10 compatibility test said that it wouldn’t work since Gateway/Acer hasn’t updated their version of the Radeon X1270 video card since for forever, but I went ahead and installed it anyway. For the most part everything worked great except for the aforementioned video card. Luckily I was able to dig around on some forums and find a way to get the Vista x64 driver to work.
The experience on the laptop has been pretty good. Windows 10 has lower system requirements than Windows 7, so it is running a little faster. It is still slow, but it is fast enough that I am thinking of slamming a solid state hard-drive in it and seeing how much longer I can get this machine to last.
Next up my custom gaming rig:
Now if there was ever a PC that was going to upgrade well this was it. All new hardware, and it has processing power to spare. Windows 10 took like fifteen minutes to install, and it was running great. I didn’t run in to any issues until I decided to link it with my Microsoft account.
The problem is that I have like three Microsoft accounts that I am using. Mrs. Shmee’s OneDrive to sync her pictures, my work account for my Office 365, and my personal Microsoft account for my email and Xbox. My personal account wrote over the settings for the other two, and it temporarily locked me out my wife’s pictures and caused my Excel to crash.
I was able to go in and overwrite all the settings for the various programs again, and I got it working the way it was while still having access to the Xbox App (very important), but it was a bit of a struggle. Now that it is running well it makes my fast computer, just slightly faster, so what is not to like?
Should you upgrade?
As you can see from my two computer installs above for the most part everything worked fine, better than most day-one Windows installs. So if you are like me and love the latest and greatest go ahead and download the OS and install it (you probably already have anyway). However if you just want your computer to work, I would hold off. I would still upgrade eventually (especially while it is free), but I would let people like me deal with all the issues for a few months, and write up their solutions to issues on forums. Let Microsoft patch a couple of things, so that way your computer upgrade tale will be a happy one.
Windows 10 is out today! I have been using it on PC for awhile, and I think it is just dandy. If you want to give it a try just head here. With the Media Tool you will be able to upgrade the computer you just downloaded it on, or create a bootable flash drive or ISO for another computer. Just remember that if you are going to do a clean install to have you Windows 7 or 8 product key at the ready. Other than that have fun with your new OS!
One DC’s big announcements at Comic-Con was the they are making a Batman: The Killing Joke animated movie, and just this week it was confirmed that the “THE” Joker himself Mark Hamill would reprise his role as the Clown Prince. Now The Killing Joke is a landmark graphic novel, and I am always okay with Mark Hamill’s devious laugh tickling my ears, but do we really want a Killing Joke movie?
The Killing Joke is about the Joker trying to drive Jim Gordon crazy, and pushing the Batman to break his code not to kill. Real light reading. Again a great book, but not one I am sure that I want to see acted out. Between the torture of Jim Gordon, and assault and crippling of Barbra Gordon it will be a hard movie to get through. I don’t expect all movies to be daisies and lollipops, but The Killing Joke might just be too grim to watch. Especially one featuring a mainline comic book hero.
We will see how this pans out, and Mark Hamill has wanted to do it for years, so I am sure that DC will make the best possible movie out of it they can. I just don’t know if I will want to watch it. Knowing me I probably will, but I may not be very happy with what I will witness. Hey at least we will get an Oracle origin story out of this right?