The Build from Hell: Part VI: Batman: Arkham City

Isn't it nice when things just work? You get in your car, turn the key, and the engine doesn't tell you that your log in information is incorrect. You pick up the phone, push some buttons, and don't have to enter your 20-digit hexadecimal product code to complete the call. You turn a knob on a faucet and don't get a message that you've used water in the maximum number of approved sinks.

This is the way computers should be and, until recently, the way they had been working for me. That all changed with The Build from Hell.

Back in part I, I mentioned that one of the things I wanted to do on the new HTPC was be able to play vidjimagames. A nice new processor, with a good graphics card would make it faster than my desktop, and ideal for playing any games that support a controller.

Around this time, I was working my way through Batman: Arkham City, sequel to the game-of-the-year Batman: Arkham Asylum. I loved Arkham Asylum and pre-ordered Arkham City on Steam as soon as it became available.

The Resident Batman-lover, that is Anne Marie, forbade me from playing either game without her present at every moment. This usually meant me sitting at my desk, with her sitting behind me, looking over my shoulder. A workable solution, but not ideal. This seems like the perfect game to be able to sit on the couch and play with my wireless controller.

So I install Steam on HiFi and begin downloading the many billions of bytes necessary to play the game. While it's downloading would be a good time to explain Steam Cloud.
Valve, in their infinite wisdom, has implemented a feature in Steam called Steam Cloud. Basically, game data, such as saves, preferences, and configurations can be saved to The Cloud, or on Steam's servers. The advantage to this is that you can then move from one computer to any other computer and retain your saved games, or keyboard configuration, or player customizations. Arkham City supports this, so I can easily move from my desktop to the HTPC, and pick up where I left off in the game.

And this feature works exactly as advertised, so after I install Arkham City on the HTPC, I try to play. This is where I crash head-first into the dark and shady side of what is otherwise such an amazing piece of game design: Games for Windows Live.

The Build from Hell: Part V: Watching Blu-Rays

Isn't it nice when things just work? You get in your car, turn the key, and the engine doesn't tell you that it only works on manufacturer-approved roads. You pick up the phone, push some buttons, and don't have to press speakerphone to hear over the handset. You turn a knob on a faucet and don't get an error message that your sink is not in the correct region.

This is the way computers should be and, until recently, the way they had been working for me. That all changed with The Build from Hell.

So part of the reason for the Build from Hell was to be able to watch Blu-rays. A few days after the initial frustrations, I decided to test this ability out.

The movie of choice was Toy Story 3, because it's one of three Blu-rays we have (the other two being Toy Stories 1 and 2). Pop the disc in, Windows Media Center automatically opens and... wants me to set the region for the Blu-ray drive. OK, this is a little odd, considering I had already set the region when I watched a DVD the other night. Can you set the region for Blu-ray playback separately from DVD? Kind of cool, if so, but irrelevant.

So I set the region, then hit play and... an error appears! (Were you expecting anything else?) The error is (some of the more knowledgeable of you may have seen this coming) "Blu-ray playback requires a connection that supports HDCP encryption, such as DVI or HDMI".

BLARGH BLARGH BLARGH BLARGH!

As you may remember from Part III, while the card has DVI out, the TV only has VGA in, thus necessitating a converter (of which I have plenty lying around), and the HDMI plain and simple doesn't work... unless another monitor is plugged into the video card. This gives me my workaround: I leave the DVI-to-VGA connection in place, but reconnect the HDMI. The Windows desktop is now extended from one TV connection to the other. Flipping inputs on the TV changes between the two halves of the Windows desktop. I set up the HDMI-half of the desktop as the primary desktop (and ironically have difficulty getting the Display Settings control panel onto it), and try the Blu-ray again. Now it works.

This is how it remains to this day: the Windows desktop is extended on the same display device. The second half of the display only exists so the first one--the one I want--will actually work.

The Build from Hell: Part IV: Christmas Morning: Part II: Network Nuisances

...First Blood, Part II: Revengeance of the Revengening: The Sequel: Episode I: Breaking Dawn.

Isn't it nice when things just work? You get in your car, turn the key, and the engine doesn't explode. You pick up the phone, push some buttons, and don't get electrocuted. You turn a knob on a faucet and acid doesn't come out.

This is the way computers should be and, until recently, the way they had been working for me. That all changed with The Build from Hell.

So as we read in the last chapter, Christmas morning is rapidly deteriorating from "spend wonderful time with wonderful family" into "fight to the death with technology". At least now we can actually see stuff on a screen. This is a big step forward. The next step is to plug in the network adapter.

I have a fancy-dancy D-Link USB wireless network adapter that I used to connect the old computer to our wireless network, so I didn't need to run a 50' network cable from the den to the living room. The wireless network doesn't work when the baby monitor handset is turned on. Weird, but irrelevant to our tale.

I installed the drivers for it, plugged it in, and attempted to connect to the network. It connected, but--oddly--had no internet connection. Windows' network troubleshooter was exactly as useful as a screendoor on a submarine. I tried resetting the adapter, resetting the connection, unplugging and replugging the adapter, cussing at it, sacrificing a goat to Baal. No dice.

I checked the router page, and it showed the computer was connected and had an assigned IP address, however, running ipconfig on the computer showed a different address, not in the given subnet. A google search showed that sometimes, D-Link's built-in software could conflict, and there were recommendations to remove that, install the driver only, and use the Windows network connections to connect. Tried that and it still didn't work.

At this point, I was out of time and patience, so I just left it and went to take care of the boys. About 30 minutes later I returned and, hey! An internet connection! Aren't the best problems the ones that solve themselves? Actually, not at all, because then you don't know how to fix it when it inevitably occurs again.

The Build from Hell: Part III: Christmas Morning: Part I: Display Dilemmas

Isn't it nice when things just work? You get in your car, turn the key, and the engine starts. You pick up the phone, push some buttons, and someone answers on the other end. You turn a knob on a faucet and water comes out.

This is the way computers should be and, until recently, the way they had been working for me. That all changed with The Build from Hell.

As I forgot to mention in parts I and II, the Build from Hell (which we shall from henceforth refer to by its given name "HiFi" because that's kinda what the case looks like) was intended to be a Christmas present for "Rie" and by "Rie" I mean primarily for myself, but Rie can use it too.

When I ordered the parts, I had them shipped to work, and I assembled it there, so Rie wouldn't know about it. My vision was that early on Christmas morning, before Rie got out of bed, I'd set up the computer in the living room, then cook her breakfast, so she'd arise to two perfect children, a perfect hubby, a perfect breakfast, and a nice shiny new computer under the TV.

The reality is she woke up to two screaming children, no breakfast, and a hubby who was fussing and fuming at a computer that wouldn't DO WHAT IT'S SUPPOSED TO DO, GORAMMIT!

Ah, Christmas, that magical time of year when our thoughts turn to peace, love, and disemboweling the graphics chip set designers at AMD and HIS.

The specific issue here was one of display. The video card has two DVI outputs and one HDMI output. I figured I could just use the HDMI output to hook it straight into the TV. This has the advantage of a) it does not require an adapter, which the DVI connections would need to plug into the TV's VGA connector, b) it does not require any additional audio cables, since HDMI carries an audio signal as well (and the video card has a built-in audio card!), and c) it would make flipping to the computer easier, since the TV's remote has a shortcut button for the HDMI inputs, but not for the VGA.

So I hooked up the computer and powered it on. It POSTed, everything looked fine, it started Windows, then the screen went blank. After waiting about five minutes, I realized something was up (maybe it hung, maybe it was the hard drive issue), so I restarted. Same thing.

The Build from Hell: Part II: Assembly

Isn't it nice when things just work? You get in your car, turn the key, and the engine starts. You pick up the phone, push some buttons, and someone answers on the other end. You turn a knob on a faucet and water comes out.

This is the way computers should be and, until recently, the way they had been working for me. That all changed with The Build from Hell.

So, when we last met our intrepid hero, he had just ordered the components for the Ultimate HTPC of Ultimate destiny. He had also decided to refer to himself in the third person.

Order was placed on a Thursday. Parts arrived on Friday, except the case, which arrived the following Monday. Eager to put the thing together, I dove into the boxes, ripping them open. Everything was good and new and shiny and OH, DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN!

The Build from Hell: Part I: Shopping

Isn't it nice when things just work? You get in your car, turn the key, and the engine starts. You pick up the phone, push some buttons, and someone answers on the other end. You turn a knob on a faucet and water comes out.

This is the way computers should be and, until recently, the way they had been working for me. That all changed with The Build from Hell.

So, as is becoming an annual custom, at my yearly review, my boss informed me that they had underpaid me by quiggly-thousand dollars (again) this year, so I'd be receiving a large check to cover the balance. This should make me furious that they've been underpaying all my (snerk) "hard work", but, for some reason, I look forward to this inevitable occurrence. Probably because, like an IRS refund, the brain just interprets it as FREE MONEY! WOOHOO! when it's actually been my money all along, and someone else was just holding on to it, interest free. Secondly, because this is the closest I ever get to a Christmas bonus. You see, my company doesn't pay Christmas bonuses, because our directors are too busy taking the entire UK staff up to the Lake District to stay in a rented castle (I imagine it looks like Hogwarts), so they need us poor saps in the US to stay in the office during the week between Christmas and New Years and if we could just come in on Saturday that would be greeeeeeat.

So I actually almost prefer that they don't pay me all my salary over the year, but save some until the very end, so it feels like I'm getting an end-of-the-year bonus. So long as we don't tell me brain, it's happy to live in its own little delusion.

All of this is a very roundabout way (or "traffic-circular" way, for those in the US) of pointing out that I recently had a bunch of money burning a hole in my pocket. Instead of doing something responsible with it, like investing in a college fund for Damien and Anthony, or paying off my credit card or student loans, I decided it was time to upgrade our living room computer.

When I last upgraded my desktop computer, I took the old one and hooked it up to the TV to create a home theater-esque PC. Since we didn't have a good DVD player in the living room, this was what we used, and since the TV's speakers were crappy, but we have a nice THX-certified 200 watt speaker system for computer, this was our method of actually hearing audio from the TV. But the computer was getting old. I built it nearly 8 years ago, right after we got married, when it was totally the rage to have a computer with enough fans to power a NASA wind tunnel. The thing was loud. Loud enough to drown out audio from the TV, and since it needed to be on to get audio for the TV, it was its own Catch-22. Also, the DVD drive had about a 10% success rate on reading DVDs, so the whole purpose of using it to watch movies was kind of defeated.

I decided now was the time to upgrade to a real Home Theater PC, with Blu-ray support. We've had a 1080p TV for about 4 years now, but with no Blu-ray player, only 720p cable TV HD, and a video card manufactured in the Dark Ages of twenty-aught-four, before 1920x1080 was a commonly-supported video card resolution, we had no way of using all 360 of those extra rows.

Shopping for a Delli Sandwich

If buying a sandwich were like shopping for a computer from Dell.
(Inspired by Shamus Young: "PC Hardware is 'Toast'".)

INT. "The Delli"

"Hi, how can I help you?"

"I'd like a ham sandwich on rye with swiss cheese."

"I'm sorry, we don't sell sandwiches like that."

"What, you don't sell ham sandwiches? Or on rye bread?"

"No, we have ham sandwiches and rye bread, but we don't sell them in that manner."

"You mean custom made to order?"

"No, we have custom-made sandwiches but—lemme just explain. We've determined that to serve our customers better, it's most efficient if we offer different lines of sandwiches, each tailored for a particular customer demographic's needs."

"Ok... tell me about your sandwich lines."

"Well, we have the Latitude line of sandwiches for our business user who need best-in-class sandwich reliability. Our Vostro line is popular with small business eaters who need a filling sandwich for not too much money. Our Inspiron sandwiches are great for home and home office eaters who need style and satisfaction from their lunches. And our Alienware line is best for power-eaters who want top-of-the-line sandwich performance."

"That... means nothing to me. Do any of them have ham on rye with swiss?"

"You can get that with just about any of our sandwich lines."

"Ok. Then—I don't know—I guess I need a Vostro ham sandwich? On rye with swiss?"

"Well, we have several different Vostro sandwich models to choose from."

"What's the difference between them?"

"Well, mainly bread size and the amount of meat."

"Ok, I see on your menu that you offer a Vostro V130 on two slices of rye. Can I get that?"

"Sure, but the V130 line doesn't have a cheese option. If you want cheese, you'll need to get either the Vostro 3300 or the Vostro 1014, but keep in mind the 1014 comes on three slices of rye."

"Um, I think I only want two slices. I'll go with the Vostro 3300."

"Ok, we have several different configurations of the Vostro 3300. Do you want the 'essential', 'enhanced', or 'ship fast' configuration?"

"Ship fast?"

"Yeah, we pre-build the most popular sandwiches so that we have them available and ready to go when you order."

"That sounds good. What's on it?"

"It comes with mustard, mayo, lettuce, tomato, and onions."

"Can I get it without the onions?"

"Not in the Vostro line. There's a similar Latitude sandwich—the E4310—that comes without the onions, but it's $200 more expensive."

"Um... I think I'll just pick the onions off myself then, thanks."

"Great. So you wanted the Vostro 3300 fast ship with ham on rye. American cheese OK?"

"Can I get it with swiss?"

"Not with the ship fast option. If you go with the enhanced configuration option, you can choose from five different cheeses and three different meats, but it'll take two weeks to make your sandwich."

"TWO WEEKS?!?!"

"Yeah, it's a non-standard build, so it takes our factory a little extra time. But for an extra $100, we can express ship it, and you'll get it in 7 business days."

"You know what? Forget it. I'll have an apple for lunch."

This is basically the experience I have every time I try to build a work computer with Dell, and I dare you to figure out their system. I went through it twice recently—once when configuring my new laptop and another time when configuring a new desktop for my co-worker.

See, for my home computer, I just by the parts I want, throw them into a case, and call it a day. But Dell doesn't allow you to buy computers that way. Instead, they have five different lines of eight different models of
ten different configurations of computers, and it's next to impossible to determine what's in each configuration and what options you have until you've drilled all the way to the bottom level and started configuring it.

The first thing they ask you is if you want a home, small or medium, public sector, or large enterprise computer. They then offer you several different lines, each of which is described by meaningless buzz words that tell me nothing about the computer. You pick a line and are presented with several different models. The model number seems to correspond loosely to the screen size, but are indecipherable apart from that. For instance, the Vostro line of laptops have model numbers 1015, 1014, V13, V130, 3500, 3400, 3700, and 3300 (that's the order they're listed on the website). One of the numbers in the model name corresponds to the screen size. So for instance, the 1015 and 3500 both have 15.6" screens (see? The 5 in the model number?). The V13, V130, and 3300 all have 13.3" screens. But I dare you to determine from the model number alone which is better or has options for faster components or more memory.

So you pick a model and are presented with several different configurations, each of which can be further customized. Certain models also have a "fast ship" configuration that will ship in two business days instead of ten, but woe unto you if the fast ship configuration has one option you don't want. So I pick a certain configuration and start from there, only to find out that there's no option for 64-bit Windows, despite the fact that the computer offers 4GB of RAM (essentially, wasting a quarter gigabyte since 32-bit OSes can only address 3.25GB). So I go back out and pick another Vostro laptop model, and configure it with basically the same options. It has a 64-bit OS option, but is inexplicably $200 more, despite the fact the Microsoft doesn't charge differently for 32- vs. 64-bit OSes. Same processor, memory, HD size, and peripherals. Whatever, I'm not paying for it.

For curiousity, I also compare it against a Latitude and an Inspiron. The Inspiron doesn't have one of the options I like, and the Latitude is inexplicably $300 more expensive for the same options. It's at this point that I want to rip my hair out and see the Dell executives die in a fire. All I want is a small laptop, Intel Core iX processor, 4GB of memory or greater, 500GB hard drive, with Windows 7 64-bit. But any given line-model-configuration option will only have half those options and its impossible to tell which ones will until you've selected from about four hundred different possible builds. And heaven help you should you want to price compare. "How much extra would it be for a configuration with 6GB instead of 4GB memory?"

Browser Fight

Time for another holy flame war. For some reason I now have five web browsers installed. Naturally, I decided to run them all at the same time. How about a standards-compliance matchup? First up, the Acid2 Test:

Surprisingly, Firefox is the only one that failed. Next, the newer Acid3 test (I need another monitor):

Only Opera reported a perfect 100/100 and matched the reference rendering. Chrome has a graphical artifact, although it reports no errors. Oddly, Firefox and SeaMonkey report different scores although they use the same rendering engine. Microsoft haters will love the FAIL on IE. Lastly, a memory usage comparison:

Don't ask me why my mouse driver takes 20MB of memory. Chrome and IE each run two processes even when only displaying one page, so the browser with the lowest total memory footprint is Opera. I only just installed it last week, so I may actually try it out now to see how well it works.

Hm. What to post, what to post, what to post.

Oh! Computer! Right!

So the Resident Murloc's profit sharing bonus came in the other day, and we used a small amount of it to upgrade our computers. It had been over five years since I had upgraded and the signs of age were starting to show. I do have to say, though, that I like how the upgrade treadmill has slowed to the point where a five-year-old computer can still play recent releases and make them look good. Is Moore's law finally reaching its end or is software just not bloating to take up the space provided? Perhaps games are scaling better to low end machines? All I have to say is that my 1998 purchase (Pentium II 266, 32MB RAM) would not have run the 2003 releases the way my 2004 purchase (AMD Athlon 64 3000+, 512MB RAM) runs the 2009 releases.

Anyhoo, the specs:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 processor, 2.5 Ghz

Asus P5QL Pro motherboard, using the Intel P43 chipset

G.Skill DDR2 PC1066 memory (4GB)

EVGA GeForce GTX 260, 896MB RAM

Seagate Barracuda 500GB hard drive

Cooler Master Centurion case and 500W power supply

Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition

The Murloc's is almost identical, except she wanted an ATI card, so I gave her a Radeon HD 4870, 1GB. (I would like to point out that her video card has as much memory as my entire old computer.) Also, since hers was an upgrade, where mine was a clean build, she didn't need the case, hard drive, or OS and just re-used her old ones. She did need a new PS, as the video cards we got both required 500W power supplies, minimum.

The Murloc's birthday present had been an Acer 22" flat screen monitor (I can't believe how cheap those things are now!) and a 17" monitor, so she could have dual monitors. With this round of purchases, I got another 22" for her and took her 17". Her desk can now better be described as one big display, with a little bit of space for other miscellanous items.

All were purchased from Newegg (Once You Know...). The totals were about $800 for mine and $700 for hers, which is a flipping sweet deal for two brand-spanking-new high-end computers.

A few thoughts:

-I'd been planning and researching this build for a little over a year. Initially, I'd been planning on getting a dual core processor, probably the Core 2 Duo E8500. At the last moment, I noticed that Intel had introduced a new quad core (probably the last of the Core 2 Quads) in December, priced in the range I was looking for. After doing a little bit of research, I opted for it over the dual core. While I figure the dual core probably would have been faster for single applications such as games and such that don't require much multi-tasking, there just something really cool about playing WoW with the settings at maximum and having two cores completely unused. 

I wonder if I could run both WoW AND Call of Duty at the same time?

-Shamus Young wrote this hilarious satire on video card shopping which, I have to say, I have never experienced. My process for buying a video card is:

1) Determine a price point (usually $200)

2) Find out what ATI and NVIDIA offer at that price

3) Visit Tom's hardware to see which one is faster (they're usually almost identical; in this case, NVIDIA seemed to have a bit of a lead).

I didn't really understand what the performance difference was going to be between 1GB of 256-bit GDDR5 memory and 896MB of 448-bit GDDR3 memory. Nor do I care. Manufacturers are usually quite good about pricing their hardware at the same cost as the similar-performing product of their competition. Similarly, they're also usually quite good about pricing their own items in a relative cost scale. Really, the only fluctuation comes from the video card brand, so all you have to do is pick a chipset and find the cheapest brand (that you trust) that uses that chipset.

Processors are similar, as when AMD released their quad cores a little over a year ago, they were 13% slower than Intel's. They were also 13% cheaper.

Which brings us to....

-This is my first Intel-based computer since my first one (the afformentioned Pentium II). My previous two have both been AMD based. I had been following the war between the two manufacturers for a while, and while AMD did have a performance and price lead over Intel for the first half of the decade, Intel eventually got their act together and used their behemoth might to start out-engineering AMD. When I first began planning this build, Intel was the clear leader in processor performance, so I was only considering them. Since then, AMD has started competing in all but the bleeding-edge market. However, as I had already researched Intel motherboards and processors, I didn't want to then have to do the same for AMD as well.

Also, my understanding is that AMD chips are, as they have always been, geared towards the enthusiast and over-clockers market, the idea being that you buy a relatively cheap AMD and OC it to be as fast as the high-end Intels. As OCing is something I have never had a desire to do, I opted for Intel's offerings.

-I LOVE the new pin-less CPU designs. Fretting about bending pins while installing the CPU always bothered me. I would place the CPU in the motherboard, then take it out to check I had put it in right and hadn't bent anything, then put it back in, then take it out to make sure I hadn't bent anything that time, put it back in, rinse, repeat. Now the CPUs just have copper contacts, and the motherboard has a shell that clamps the CPU in position. Voila! No bent pins.

-Speaking of designs, the new video cards are BEHEMOTHS. I remember when I was appalled that video cards began requiring that you connect them to the power supply. Now, it seems, all video cards require two plugs from the PS, from different rails. And they take up two slots in the case. And they're longer than the motherboard is wide. Although, it is cool how they're completely encased in a plastic shell, so all the delicate electronics are inside. Rie's card also has copper piping to direct heat to different parts of the heat sink.

-Installation notes: If you assemble a computer and you go to turn it on, and it doesn't power on, the absolute first thing you should do (after making sure that you're not an idiot and you remembered to plug the thing in) is unscrew the motherboard and try it again. This was a failure mode I first encountered when I assembled the Murloc's first computer in 2004. After struggling over why it would not power on for two days, I finally found out that removing one of the mobo screws allowed it to turn on. Apparently, using screws that are two short can bend the motherboard and that will cause it—for some reason—not to turn on.

I encountered the same thing with my computer this time, and after just a little bit of fiddling, got it to work. Oddest. Failure mode. Ever. And a royal pain to diagnose.

-Always, always, always backup your data before upgrading. Almost as expected, installing a new everything in the Murloc's computer required a re-install of Windows (it could probably be better though of as installing an old hard drive in a new computer). Her documents were all saved on a separate partition, but for a while we thought she'd lost everything in her user profile directory, which includes all documents on the desktop, and her Firefox bookmarks. It wasn't until a day later that I discovered that the XP installer, in its infinite wisdom, will not overwrite existing user profile directories when installing a fresh copy of Windows, even if you overwrite the existing copy of Windows. Data saved.

-My OS installation was much simpler. Blank hard drive, fresh install. I have been using Vista for over a year now at work, and now I've finally gotten it at home. I really have to say that I really, really, really don't understand all the Vista hate. It's a great OS. It's slick and smooth. Now that I have two computers with (almost) identical builds, and have XP and Vista, I can really compare the two, and Vista seems faster in most shell operations. In my last rant on the subject, I covered some of the annoyances of the XP shell, such as the pauses when opening or changing directories in Windows Explorer. There were also annoyances, like when you'd delete a shortcut off the desktop, or out of the Start menu, and it would take 5-10 seconds and give you a progress bar(!) to delete one item. Shuffling shortcuts and groups around in the Start menu was also similarly frustrating in XP. I always thought it was just a hardware thing, and the reason that didn't occur in Vista was because the Vista machines I've used have had faster hardware. Now that I have a Vista machine and XP machine with nearly identical specs, I can verify that those OS shell lags and latencies really are a product of XP and are gone on Vista.

Another complaint about Vista is the memory usage, but come on, you can get 4GB for $50 now. RAM is cheap. And even with WoW running and sucking up 1.5GB of memory, I still haven't seen the memory usage go much above 3GB.

-My original plan was to put Ubuntu on this computer and have a Vista/Ubuntu dual boot. That seems less and less necessary now. I'm more likely to put Ubuntu on my old computer. We'll see.

-Off-topic: The first chapter of Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures dropped last week. Why haven't you played it? Anyways, it's quite fun, though it seemed much shorter than most of Telltale's other episodic adventures, or maybe I'm just getting faster at solving the puzzles.

One thing Telltale captured beautifully was the claymation style. While I was playing, I began subconsciously noticing the imperfections in the models, as if they had been hand crafted. It then dawned on me that they had bump-mapped fingerprints onto the models, to really give it that hand-animation feel. Brilliant.

That is all. Further bulletins as events warrant.