This post made me laugh...
"I rarely post on forums so forgive my lack of fancy banners etc but I do have an opinion I wish to share. For those at Micorsoft working on the next release of Flight Simulator - your product is no longer the mainstay of the flightsim world - PMDG has become the primary product such is the excellence of the 737 and particularly the 744/F. As far as I am concerned and I urge other PMDG fans to join me on this - any future versions of MSFS should be PMDG compatible or I won't be buying it. Why should PMDG have to re-work perfection just to suit the entirely non perfect Flight Simulator software?
The days of developers modifying their products to suit Microsoft have gone - its time for Microsoft to work with companies like PMDG to ensure compatibility.
Well done PMDG, the 744 is now perfect! To Microsoft - make sure the box on your new versions of Flight Simulator carry a PMDG compatible sticker or else!"
Is YOUR product PMDG-certified compatible? :-)
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Monday, March 20, 2006
Ooomph-carrying laptop
I've been promising myself to write about my new laptop - a Fujitsu-Siemens M1437G (Amilo series). It took a little bit of research to finally decide to get this one, so I wanted to explain the thought process a bit, as I went through it:
Background, first: I wanted a laptop that will support both demonstration and development purposes. Since the main work I do is Flight Simulation aircraft addon code (99% of it written in C++ on Visual Studio - all flavors), I had to find a lappy that will support debugging with Microsoft Flight Sim open as a (smaller) window. At the same time, it should be able to run Flight Sim in full screen, with as little performance degradation as possible.
All this meant two things: a) CPU, b) Graphics Card, c) RAM :-).
Reading through the web, it looked as though I should go for the most CPU I could find, which would be the new dual core ones coming out. The question was: Are they available? Well, not today, not in Athens, not yet. Also, reading along, I discovered that they suffered from a (fatal, IMO) flaw: if you plugged any USB2.0 device into them, battery time would be reduced, sometimes by 80%. Well, that's no good... scratch dual core laptops (for now).
What about a video card? Well, availability dictated decisions here as well... the "best" card available today for laptops was the ATI x700, unless I wanted to lug around a 17" beast (at 4Kg NOT the easiest thing to carry through airports, if you consider that the bag would be another 0.5 to 1kg.)
The M1437G has a 2.13GHz Centrino CPU, with 2GB of (pretty fast) RAM, a nice 15" screen (wideview, unfortunately - seems the market's saturated with those nowadays - I looked and looked, and couldn't find any "regular" screens) and an X700 VGA that would most likely run MSFS "adequately".
These are the results (for the newly released 747-400F Queen of the Skies Cargo):
Not half bad, it seems :-). I am happy with it. If you read this description and want further info, don't hesitate to contact me about it!
Background, first: I wanted a laptop that will support both demonstration and development purposes. Since the main work I do is Flight Simulation aircraft addon code (99% of it written in C++ on Visual Studio - all flavors), I had to find a lappy that will support debugging with Microsoft Flight Sim open as a (smaller) window. At the same time, it should be able to run Flight Sim in full screen, with as little performance degradation as possible.
All this meant two things: a) CPU, b) Graphics Card, c) RAM :-).
Reading through the web, it looked as though I should go for the most CPU I could find, which would be the new dual core ones coming out. The question was: Are they available? Well, not today, not in Athens, not yet. Also, reading along, I discovered that they suffered from a (fatal, IMO) flaw: if you plugged any USB2.0 device into them, battery time would be reduced, sometimes by 80%. Well, that's no good... scratch dual core laptops (for now).
What about a video card? Well, availability dictated decisions here as well... the "best" card available today for laptops was the ATI x700, unless I wanted to lug around a 17" beast (at 4Kg NOT the easiest thing to carry through airports, if you consider that the bag would be another 0.5 to 1kg.)
The M1437G has a 2.13GHz Centrino CPU, with 2GB of (pretty fast) RAM, a nice 15" screen (wideview, unfortunately - seems the market's saturated with those nowadays - I looked and looked, and couldn't find any "regular" screens) and an X700 VGA that would most likely run MSFS "adequately".
These are the results (for the newly released 747-400F Queen of the Skies Cargo):
Not half bad, it seems :-). I am happy with it. If you read this description and want further info, don't hesitate to contact me about it!
Thursday, March 16, 2006
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