I Can See Clearly Now ... Wow. What a difference a new processor makes. I had no idea how much detail there was in the Sims 2, and I don't even have my new video card yet. It's like getting a new pair of glasses. Everything looks so much nicer, and I can see things that were blurry before ... details on clothing, the picture on the back of the sell-o-phone machine, the details on the bubble blower, the icons in the thought bubbles (a lot of them look like fuzzy blobs before). My sims look great too! Just crisper and clearer and ... wow! Yes, the neighbor's houses are ghostly looking and I can't see everything in the neighborhood, but that's OK. I'm just excited to find all these new and exciting details ... plus, of course, my sims don't take twelve years to get from one place to another. Getting skillpoints is faster now, loading community lots is too. And I can get the game up and running in about a minute instead of five. Just wanted to share! It almost makes killing everyone off worth it ...
Fantastic news SBW. I remember how amazed I was that the clarity of the screenshots that we were being tempted with for a whole year before the game came out was possible on my own machine. It's the visual detail that keeps me interested. I never played the first generation sims for as long as I do the TS2's.
I know! Now it's like watching a movie. I guess for those of you who already had a high-powered machine it's hard to imagine, but trust me, this is amazing. It used to take a full ten seconds to click between floors, for example, and my "regular" people walked as slow as my college students do now.
It used to take a full ten seconds to click between floors, for example, and my "regular" people walked as slow as my college students do now. chuckle chuckle (I tried to add to your reputation but Josh wouldn't let me)
This post has inspired me to order more memory for my computer. I'd been meaning to do it for awhile, but after reading this I stopped procrastinating, and it's on its way! My larger houses definitely have that "lag" that occures when switching floors, I can't wait for that to stop!
I got an AMD motherboard (don't ask me what kind, it's at home, but my friend assures me it's designed to work with "new" technology) with a 1.4 GHz processor, also the latest tech, and 512K of RAM (I'm going to get more RAM when I start making money again). I already had an Invidia Video card and a 165 GB hard drive. My old machine, for comparison, had said video card, an 8 GB HD (the first thing I updated!!!), an old Dell motherboard, and an 800 GHz processor. Oh, and 256K RAM. You can see why I'm skipping merrily. I may not have the latest and greatest, but my machine does very nicely now, thank you very much. Plus, I'm trying not to download everything under the sun. Keeping it to a minimum as much as possible ... which also helps.
OK, so this is why I have someone else put my machine together ... Major blushing ... But you knew what I meant!!!!
Well...actually VChat...that wasn't a lesson. It was simply a correction. A lesson would have explained the difference in Ghz and Mhz.
Well...I don't. It's why I keep my computer specs printed off. I keep it with my driver's license. This way I can hand it to the techs at the computer store when I need to buy something. This should indicate to them that all discussions must be done on a very elementary level. Hopefully they won't throw out all those meaningless numbers and letters or use tech shorthand. (I use to get this, honestly. I think I got old about the time the numbers started hitting gigabites. Either my brain shorted out or some perverse part of me doesn't want to understand. I suspect the latter.)
I was like you, though not so smart as to print out my specs. I got shamed into learning a little, though obviously not enough, by my tech-savvy brother. I know how to install a new video card or cpu, if that counts for anything. I just don't know what to CALL them. And I'm the one who got my computer up and running. Had to sacrifice my sims, but I did it.
Good for you SBW! It's only by having a poke around that you start picking up the lingo. Your "new" machine will definitely be a better performer than an off the shelf bargain combo from some mall or other. My own puter is charging at the game since I added in NL but this was also because I uninstalled all the Norton security at the same time. Why on earth I didn't think of using this old laptop for the net I'll never know ... it just sits on a little side table in my lounge, hooked up to my DSL connection ... when I get the cabling sorted I'll network it to my PC so I can post game pics and some the neat community lots I've been building recently.
The Lesson VChat Began. . . Once upon a time computers were as big as a room in your house and moved slower than molassas on a cold day in h___. These huge machines (for you younger people who never saw one of these gargantuans, think back to some of the old NASA videos or photos of Mission Control, or think of the WOPOR on the old 80's movie "War Games.") These giants moved in clock speeds measured in hertz, and they used bytes to store their memory. Well, as our computers evolved into machines that could fit in a corner desk in our livingrooms, or on our laps in a notebook, or, heck, in a pocket, they became faster and smarter. Our terminology did not evolve as quickly, however. We just added prefixes to the language. So, a Megabyte became 1,000 bytes. And a Gigahertz became one million hertz. We who consider ourselves "cool techies" speak in terms of 160 gigs or 800 megs. Yep, in our techinical society, we geeks run the world. LOL (Flashing back to the 80's again and hearing Huey Lewis singing, "It's hip to be square.") Okay, that ends my computer history lesson. Class dismissed.
