My First Apple Month
One of my happiest days in recent memory was when I got the call from my wife that the FedEx lady had dropped off my iMac. That was a day to leave work early. ^_^ As soon as I got home, I got to the unpacking and setting it up. Needless to say it was the sexiest piece of technology I'd ever owned.
No new computer experience is without it's speed bumps, and this one is no different. Overall the G5 iMac is great. I'm still not used to the one button mouse, and will probably be getting the MS Bluetooth Internet Explorer mouse this weekend. Amazingly, I think that will have the biggest impact to my satisfaction with my Mac, and with gaming.
One great thing is all the small developers that make great arcade and puzzle games. I can't say how often I'm only looking for a quick game fix, and don't have time to dig into NWN, XIII or WC3. And WC3 brings me to my one complaint about the hardware... I want a 1280x1024 resolution!
I want to be able to play non-widescreen games at the highest possible detail, and that could easily be 1280x1024. WC3 doesn't support widescreen (it stretches the image), so I would choose to place at 1024x768. Problem with that is that the image is way too blurry from being blown up. Why can't Apple offer 1280x1024 so games like WC3 can look as good as possible.
One big win was realizing that my Nostromo n52 Speedpad had Mac drivers. I got that installed, and was quite pleased. I've used it extensively on my PC, and couldn't imagine going without it on the Mac. I'm going to hold off on my final impression of the iMac as a gaming machine until I get the new mouse, and until Apple releases 10.3.6 to fix the GeForce 5200 performance issues.
Overall I've been happy with how the machine has performed, and I've spent a lot of time downloading demos and seeing which games support widescreen, and which don't. I was happy to find that C&C: Generals and XIII both supported widescreen on the Mac, like they do on the PC. Hopefully performance will improve with the 10.3.6 release.
I'm so glad I made the switch, I can't wait to have more time to play, and until then I'm enjoying all the game demos that are out there. I'm digging through as many as I can to see which support widescreen, or can be "convinced" to do so.
You can stay on top of my newest finds by subscribing to the Mac RSS feed at the WSGF - http://rss.widescreengamingforum.com/mac.xml, and then visiting the WSGF for all of our solutions.
Talk to you soon
Posted on November 3, 2004 at 9:59 pm
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My Inital Plans
I started to post this as a comment, to the comments on my first post. It started getting so big that I realized I might as well make a new blog entry...
Most of my first efforts will be to compare the performance and look of games between the two systems. Here is my first set of plans:
Warcraft III - I never quite finished it on the PC, but since it's dual format, I've got full versions for both. I know the widescreen stretches on the PC, just wondering if it does the same on the Mac.
World of Warcraft - I will be comparing WoW, when it comes out, since everything by Blizzard is dual format.
Freedom Force: I've got it on the PC, and selected it as one of my free games from IMGPro. So I've got two full versions.
Neverwinter Nights, Command & Conquer: Generals, & XIII - These all run great in widescreen on the PC (1440x900 on my zd7k). I've got the full versions, but never really got started on them. There are demos out, and if they run in widescreen at 1680x1050, then they might be worth selling on eBay to get Mac versions. ^_^
Myst - I never, ever played the Myst games. There is a DVD Myst collection out now, with the first three games. Thought I'd give that a spin on both systems.
Worms 3D - There are demos out for both the PC and Mac versions.
Fun times ahead.... :-)
Posted on October 1, 2004 at 8:02 am
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My Story Begins...
I've wanted a Mac since the first G4 iMacs came out, and especially since the 17" widescreen ones hit the street. With that machine I also fell in love with widescreens. Making the switch at that time wasn't feasible, so I sated my widescreen desires with an HP zd7000 notebook (and a year later I got a small Apple fix with a 40GB 3G iPod).
After that I set up the Widescreen Gaming Forum at http://www.widescreengamingforum.com. It is a hardware-neutral site where people can come and post about games that do and don't work in widescreen, and help find tips, tricks and hacks to make them work. The PC side is going very well, but I've yet to get much Mac support. Seeing that void always caused me internal strife, and I realized the only way I could fix it was to dig in and get a Mac of my own.
So, about two weeks ago I put in my order for a G5 iMac. I got the 20" with Airport, Bluetooth, a 250GB HDD and 512MB RAM. I picked up Office 2004, Keynote and the Apple Care plan. Since then I've got another half gig of RAM on order from RamJet and signed up for two years with IMG Pro and the IMG DVD.
I got the email today saying that my iMac had shipped from China - a full two weeks ahead of my 10/15 ship date. Woo-Hoo!!! I can't wait to get the iMac here and enjoy the beauty that is Apple hardware and software. I'm also looking forward to comparing the iMac to my latop, and sneak in a few tests my wife's new work laptop:
iMac: 1.8GHz G5, 1GB RAM, 64MB GeForce 5200
zd7k: 3.2GHz P4, 1GB RAM, 128MB GeForce 5700
Dell: 1.6Ghz PM, 512 RAM, 64MB GeForce 5200
Now, if the iMac could just grow wings and get here... :-)
-Skip
Posted on September 30, 2004 at 10:33 am
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| Games Playing: |
City of Heroes
Freedom Force
Neverwinter Nights
Think Tanks
& a ton of demos...
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| System Details: |
OS: 10.3
Processor: G5
CPU Speed: 1.6 - 1.8 GHz
Memory: 1 GB
Video: NVIDIA GeForceFX 5200 Ultra
Display: Apple Flat Panel
HD Space: 250 GB +
DVD: SuperDrive
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| Blog Stats: |
| Entries: 3 |
| Reviews: 0 |
| Comments: 10 |
| Visits: 5130 |
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