Hijinks Inc.

Category: Reviews

  • Eee PC

    I just purchased an Eee PC from Newegg.com and I’m pretty excited to see what a budget Linux laptop is capable of. I’d also really like to replace the screen with a touch screen, but since the computer is meant for my girlfriend I’m not sure she’ll exactly support that idea. Oh well.

    Now I started writing this post on Monday but I didn’t finish it, and since I just got the computer today (Wednesday) this is going to be more of a review, as opposed to a “oh man, this is gonna be sweet” post.

    Like I said, I just got the computer. Obvious first impression is “holy crap! It’s small!”, because frankly it is… Moving on to a more technical note, I clocked the boot time at 33.7 seconds, just over double the claimed 15 second boot time, still not bad. This is the 2G Surf model, so it has a slightly slower processor which might explain the slower boot time. When compared to the 31 second boot time of my Macbook Pro it truly is an impressive feat.

    More random thoughts on the Eee PC after the jump
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  • Frivolity

    In lieu of any meaningful content to present, I’ve finally decided to break my posting trend with something completely pointless: Commentary on video games!

    Hellgate: London

    First off, it’s not 3D Diablo. Honest. Even if it’s made by the same guys who developed Diablo 2, and you’re using exotic weapons to kill all manner of hell-spawned demons and undead, it’s not D2. Why? Well…we’re really not sure, but it’s not. Truth be told, while it may be unfair to compare the two games, the comparison is inevitable as the Patriots winning the Super Bowl this year. And unfortunately for Bill Roper and the gang, the game doesn’t come close to the polish of the original. It could, and at times you think it does, but you never get the feeling of belonging to the world you’re playing in.

    I got hooked into (not onto) the game after listening to an interview of Bill Roper by the guys over at the 1Up Yours podcast; I came away really excited about the game, and started watching trailers and reading previews like a Flagship fanboy. Thing is, After dropping fifty bucks and spending twenty-thirty hours playing it, I’m not really feeling the quality of “this is awesome” that I expected to. I came into the experience really really wanting to like it, and that managed to carry me through the first week or so of playing it, but now I’m not feeling the urge to pick it back up at all.

    Let’s get down to specifics.

    The graphics? Pretty, but the dark and dank does get a little old after a while. I guess I can’t expect anything else from a game set in post-apocalyptic London though.

    Gameplay? Fun, especially the evoker and marksman classes. My main is a guardian, mostly because it’s the easiest to play and hardest to die when lag strikes. Which brings me to the first of my big concerns. I don’t know if it’s the servers or if it’s because I’m playing the game over a DSL connection, but the lag is ALWAYS horrendous. Usually anywhere from a 1-15 second delay between my mouse-click in real-time and the response in the game. This might have gotten fixed in the past week that I haven’t been playing, but I doubt it. I honestly haven’t even tried to play a different class any farther then the first five levels online because I know I’ll do nothing but die in the later levels if there’s any lag in the game. Guardians do better when surrounded, evokers? Not so much.

    Second big concern: no skill reset. In a game where skills make up EVERYTHING about your character, the lack of a reset button is nothing short of freakin’ ridiculous. If I have to pay 10,000 pallidum to do it, sure. Whatever. Just get that feature in the game and live as soon as possible. Especially in a new game when you really have no idea how all the skills work together in actual gameplay, its just stupid to expect players to put 50-70 hours leveling a character to fifty just to try out ONE set of skills. Please Flagship, please Bill Roper, do the smart thing.

    The other thing people are complaining about is the lack of subscriber content. Since I’m not a subscriber and don’t plan to be, that really doesn’t concern me. My only hope is that the game will be patched to it’s full potential before too long. Because dang it, I need something to keep me occupied until Starcraft 2 comes out.

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  • Mint.com – Reloaded

    After using Mint.com for a few weeks, it certainly has grown on me. So I thought I’d give another go at reviewing it, now that I’ve spent more than a few hours using Mint.

    Anyhow, they recently made some changes to their site (Build ph363.43), I have mixed feelings about the update. On one hand, I was excited to see that I could manually enter the APY for my accounts!
    picture-7.png
    However, my inner obsessive self was disappointed to see that the Update button for manually updating my accounts was gone…
    picture-8.png
    There used to be a nice Update button right there next to the Edit button, Mint! What have you done?!
    Edit: The answer is here!

    Minor things I know, but here’s the big kicker. Stability, Mint has gone a little janky since the update, now when I delete one entry from my alerts it hides all of them until I refresh the page, then they come back. Also, the email and mobile alerts I have set up haven’t been working 80% of the time, I might get the email update, but not the mobile one… or I may get it three days after I get the email. Rather annoying.

    The Spending at the Pump feature on the Accounts page also seems to omit random trips to the gas station, one day it told me I’d spent $124 on gas, and the next it said $83. The truth is I’d spent like $113 for the month.

    Then there’s the Spending Trends page, which random display little to no information , here’s what it told me my expenses were for the entire month of November:
    picture-10.png
    Clearly, $48 + $64 do not equal $1,091. On top of that, I know I had more than 8 transactions for the month, that and I spent well over the claimed $1,091, after all I spent $948 at Newegg.com alone. The Spending Trends feature was working prior to the update, so hopefully they’ll get that fixed soon.

    I’m still waiting with baited breath for them to start supporting brokerage accounts, I don’t even know if this is a planned feature, but if they ever add it I will be ecstatic. In fact, I might even do a little dance.

    Another feature I’d really like to see soon is the ability to import/export transaction records. But I complained about that in my last review as well, so I’ll shut up now.

  • Leopard Upgrade

    I upgraded to Leopard the other day, and overall I’m pretty happy with it. I like all the new features, tabs in Terminal is awesome, Spaces has increased my productivity by 7%, Stacks are so-so, Front Row going all Apple TV on me is amazing, Web Clipping almost makes Dashboard relevant again, iCal finally getting a dynamic icon is minor, but a nice touch, and OS X finally playing nice with my NAS (network attached storage) and the rest of my network is saving me a lot of trouble, however, there are some things that bug me.

    Booting is slow, I used to start my computer up and 30-35 seconds later I was good to go, but since I upgraded to Leopard its been booting in 55-70 seconds. It started taking over a minute to boot right after the upgrade, but after resetting my PRAM, and clearing my cache it sped up a bit.

    Sluggishness. Randomly, I’ll get beached balled. I’m just sitting there browsing the web and next thing I know, I’m looking at a spinning beach ball… for no apparent reason. This has happened a couple times since the upgrade, might be an issue with Firefox.

    Ejecting discs. I was burning a few CDs using Disc Utility, and after ejecting them from within Disk Utility I went back to my desktop to find them still listed… odd, I tried ejecting them from the desktop, that made them disappear, but then I opened Finder and one of them was still listed under devices, but I couldn’t eject it, I had to drag it off to the side and then it poofed out of existence.

    The latest build of Joost never quits since the upgrade, it just hangs, you have to Force Quit, then it cries. But that’s a problem with Joost, not Leopard.

    As justifcation of my speed complaints, I’m running 10.5.1 on a Macbook Pro, 2.4Ghz dual core and 4GB of RAM, so I think I should be running a bit faster than I am.

    Compared to my experience when upgrading to Windows Vista, my complaints with Leopard are minor, Vista caused me to suffer from depression and self loathing… Yeah, I’d rather not relive that time in my life. Back to focusing on the present, Leopard actually offers a worthwhile set of new features that are actually useful, Vista on the other hand, offers eye candy and headaches (Windows XP forever!).

    But Vista sucking so bad keeps me employed, so thanks Microsoft!

  • Mint.com – Financies just got really shiny

    I know, the hype is over… Everyone else has already reviewed Mint. So what? Maybe I’ve held off on trying Mint.com for a while, I’m quite happy with my current financial management program, even if it is rather basic. Anyhow, I broke down, registered an account and gave it a try.

    Long story short, Mint is hot. But if you need a little bit more incentive to try it, here’s the break down.

    The good…

    • Slick interface, staring at numbers has never been more attractive
    • Wide range of banks and credit cards are support
    • Automatically downloads transactions and categorizes your spending (it’s not always correct, but you can easily change things)
    • Great range of information is available at a glance, you login and right away you can see the key numbers for all your accounts
    • Ridiculously easy to use

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