JonCole

Eh... I really contest that. Sure, most iPhone games aren't of the calibur of the best NDS games, but there are some solid titles that are pretty complementary to the 5-10 minute gaming sessions that you have on the run, waiting for food at a restaurant, taking an elevator, etc. Before Pokemon came around, I can honestly say that I had done more gaming on my iPod Touch than on my NDS.

As far as I know, there is no upcoming tech that will specifically make laptop gaming any cheaper, just stuff that will improve battery life due to GPU switching (nVidia Optimus) and stuff like that. As far as your question, it's really hard to find laptops capable of decent gaming at sub-$700 rates... after a quick Googling, this choice looks pretty decent at $750: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834157046 The Alienware M11x is pretty good if you actually want your laptop to be moderately portable, but that bottoms out at $800: http://www.alienware.com/microsite/m11x/m11x.aspx Beyond that, I don't really have too much insight in budget gaming laptops. $1000 seems to be the sweet spot as far as price-to-performance possibilities go, but that's obviously over your upper limit.

<object width="640" height="505"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3-p_4z6FiM&hl=en_US&fs=1&start=120"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3-p_4z6FiM&hl=en_US&fs=1&start=120" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="505"></embed></object> I made the embed skip to the money shot, for the impatient.

Yeah, my biggest desired feature in 4.0 is actually usage of the locked screen, which there's really no excuse for. Why not show weather stats? Missed calls? Emails? Battery life? SOMETHING? The lock screen is absolutely useless for practically no reason.

Yes, it's absolutely a huge deal to me too. I get about 5 hours of battery life on my netbook right now, which is just under what I think I want... it's not enough for those overlong school days when I really need it. Not only that, but anecdontal reports of battery life have actually ranged from 8 hours to 12 hours, so I'm feeling really positive on that note.

You don't get the This American Life podcast?

My name's not Jake, but if you'd be so kind, I'd like to throw in my two cents on the Slate, since I think it's a reasonable point that I feel you're trying to make. One of my major problems with the Slate is that it sticks with the shitty 1024x600 resolution that I honestly don't think is worth the purchase. One of the biggest selling points of the Slate is the Broadcom Crystal HD chip in there that allows for Flash acceleration supporting up to 1080p video, but with that screen you're farther away from 720p than even the iPad is. Furthermore, the tablet is running Windows 7 Home Premium, which is definitely nice if you like multitasking and all of that. But your mention of the specs makes me wary about the performance of the machine, because Windows 7 Home Premium simply doesn't run fantastically on 1GB of RAM and an Atom processor. Finally, I'm not sure whether not being "locked down" in this case is a good thing. Are there really going to be game developers out there who are going to develop for a non-iPad touchscreen interface in any great numbers? I honestly don't think so, and speaking as a gamer, that doesn't really make me optimistic.

Huh... that's strange. I once used an iPhone, but I guess I was being deceived since it's not usable. I think the iPad is more reason for iPhone OS 4.0 to have multitasking, though I think it'll be limited to either just the iPad or the iPad/3GS. Apple is so concerned with stability that they just wouldn't risk it with lower powered models, I imagine.

I think it makes a lot of sense, but what you're saying absolutely confirms what I think to be the silliest latent assumption that people seem to love to latch onto - that the iPad should be judged on the desktop end of the computer spectrum. Consoles may be more locked down, as you said, but I would say that almost every console is technologically closer to what we consider a desktop computer to be than what the iPad is. If anything, the iPad is far more like a smartphone than anything else... and by that comparison, the iPad actually has far more features than one should really "expect". The people who are complaining about the concept of this device largely want a tablet device that emulates the desktop computer paradigm, similar to how a netbook mimics the functionality of a fully-fledged desktop though not nearly at the same level of power. The problem is, Apple doesn't want to deliver that experience, they want to put out an iPhone with expanded functionality.

Yeah, it gets pretty intense. EV training isn't even that difficult, the hard part is breeding (tens and tens of times) for IVs and natures, which has been much refined in the most recent games but still remains a completely cumbersome process.

Late reception matters a whole lot less than early reception, to be honest. The technology culture has become increasingly dependent on the early-adopters who act as evangelists of products and cause mainstream success regardless of their "actual" value. Case in point, the Palm Pre. To be honest, Palm has a pretty decent product out there as far as specs and the OS are concerned, but the hardcore reaction was largely negative due to some niggling facts that most people wouldn't be too concerned about. That's why Palm in in the hole and the iPhone is the big seller - the early adopters help earn the late adopters.

I call bullshit. So many people thought the dual-screen concept of the DS was stupid, I remember plenty of forum threads all over the internet with people predicting the death of the DS before it even came out.

Let me rephrase, then. The first part was written for techies, but is sure to be the only one quoted by vitriolic techies who want to find reasons to hate the iPad. The truth of the matter (and what I think the review as a whole tries to get at) is succinctly stated here: I read this as:

My girlfriend gave this to me today. I love her.

I haven't tried the Flash beta, but you're wrong about the implementation of Flash on the iPad because it simply doesn't use Flash. It uses HTML5. Furthermore, I also use Chrome and upgraded my RAM to 2GB. Despite all of these things, the processor, gpu, and screen resolution result in a subpar experience. You can quote your own success as much as you care to, I simply haven't experienced a similar level of performance. And honestly, I've complained about things like this before and have gotten responses like yours as well as more drastic ones suggesting I try installing Ubuntu Netbook remix and such. I don't want to work that hard to get an acceptable experience. The simple fact of the matter is that netbooks are designed to be cheap and easy to sell, not for the sake of being powerful, effective machines. I've had it suggested to me that I should just buy a more current netbook with Tegra and a dual-core Atom processor, but however you slice it, a netbook is still what it is - an underpowered machine that just scrapes by. Finally, I'm curious as to whether or not you've actually used an iPad for any length of time, because I find it interesting that you're so certain that internet browsing and such is in "no way" better than on a netbook.

It's not something to scoff at, but I was really just coming from the angle that comparing Windows success to Android potential for long-term success is essentially apples and oranges, so noting the equally ridiculous apples to oranges PC vs console disparity was an easy seg. It wasn't meant to take a shot at PC gaming, more a shot at the idea that a mobile OS serves nearly the same purpose as a desktop operating system. The ipad may support 720p it's not native though, in the same way my 720p TV supports 1080i, yet is below that resolution. I get your drift, but again, the point was less about the resolution and more about the ability to stream video sufficiently. Hell, I can't even use YouTube comfortably on my netbook. I guess that my point is that portable computing is not acceptably grouped with entertainment device, which you seem to believe in based on your forward-slash usage. I'm absolutely with you as far as a portable computer goes. If I want to do some serious document editing, database managing, image editing, multitasking, etc, I'd buy an Alienware M11x. 11 inch screen, 1366x768 screen, ULV processor, discrete graphics chip, and many more factors make it a great machine to get a desktop computer-like experience and yet still have a little bit of portability. But that's not what I want. I don't need an $800 laptop to get satisfaction, considering the goals I seek to achieve with this device. I want to have a good internet browsing experience. I want to play some rad games. I want to watch video on a beautiful screen. I might want to check out an e-book or two. I don't need a notebook for those things.

If you want to get snarky, how about we talk about how massively successful Windows gaming is nowadays? For what it's worth, you only quoted half of what I'd agree is a pretty well written review by David Pogue, the quoted half specifically targeted toward the vitriolic techies who want to find anything they can as reason to hate the iPad. The second half of the review is posed to the typical consumer who doesn't have a modern laptop and smartphone and may not be used to a wide variety of apps and such. Furthermore, I've heard pretty dissenting opinions from the common consensus on the readability of the screen for the purpose of books and such, mostly coming out of the only people who've handled the device already. Namely, Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times said he's perfectly satisfied with reading books on the iPad and has no mindblowing readability issues. Plus, he's owned and read from a Kindle for months and months now, being a fully converted digital book reader, so he seems fairly well qualified to speak about the reading experience. --- As someone who has owned a couple netbooks at this point, I want an iPad for the simple reason that a netbook has the ability to do a lot of things, but it does none of those things particularly well. Sure, my Eee PC 1000HE can multitask, but slowdown from running anything more than two programs makes me never want to pick up the machine again. Background processes? Forget about it. Streaming 720p video? Go somewhere else. This stuff wouldn't be too bad if it wasn't for a couple other snags. Honestly, I don't need HD streaming or tons of programs running. But the low resolution of the screen hinders internet browsing, the reduced keyboard and odd key placement makes typing short documents cumbersome, and the slow processor and pathetic GPU cause framerate hiccups even in Peggle. All I want out of a light, portable machine is the ability to browse the internet effectively, write short blog posts, and play a couple casual games. The iPad promises (and seems to deliver) strong results on all these fronts and even manages to do some other things really well that are practically icing on the cake for me. And honestly, for a robust machine that does exactly what I want it to do, $500 isn't so bad. At this point, I'm just waiting to see if the promises continue to hold water and the iPad proves to be everything it's cracked up to be.

Android is a strong competitor, but I expect that Google's platform will be harmed by fragmentation because they just don't have enough regulation and requirements. If they reign in the purpose of Android soon, I think you're right, it'll prove to be an interesting fight, but developers just aren't following it en masse like the iPhone, because of all the different crowds you have to please with so many different devices with different resolutions and specs.

For what it's worth, I'd recommend Age of Booty, Defense Grid, Lumines, and SSF2HDR with no hesitation. Can't say a thing about W&G, though I imagine someone around here has to have checked it out.

Just saw that Amazon has the Logitech G500 mouse going for $45 as their lightning deal, so now might be a good time to act if you've been craving a quality mouse. Deal's only good for a little less than an hour at this point, so hopefully anyone interested sees this by then: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002J9GDXI/

Hmm... I see what you're saying here, let me take that ball and run with it a little... Boston Dynamics -> Big Dog Massive Dynamic (Boston, MA) -> Massive Big Dog? Oh sweet Jesus.

Burn Notice is definitely my favorite "popcorn" TV show. Nothing totally high concept, but it's definitely entertaining.

Yeah, it's a shame that the PC version isn't quite up to snuff. I imagine the disparity between the two games is that ME1's PC version was given plenty of development time to get ported over to PC (didn't they have at least a year between 360 and PC release?) and thus came out feeling more polished.

Yeah... I honestly just saw that list and was grateful, considering most of it is total shit. Many of the best games on there have already been on sale on Amazon (i.e. MW2 @ $40, Prototype @ $20, etc) and I don't have to pay any taxes there. On a related note, Wolfenstein is going for $13.53/$18.27 (360/PS3) on Amazon at the moment... anyone know a thing about this game? I heard that it's far from ideal, but for <$20 it's a pretty decent shooter.

I suppose that if I wanted to fly off a ridge, that would be the hoodie for me.