Calling an i5 a desktop chip and an Atom the mobile chip is fairly inaccurate. Intel has a whole line of mobile Core i parts that are much lower power than their desktop variants. This isn't the old days of shoving Pentium 4s into laptops, and an Atom is NOT a good choice for a full size laptop (nor is it anywhere close to a Turion in performance), being designed for netbooks.

The only problem I have with this is the statement that "Intel graphics downright stink." For gaming? Mostly. For everything else in the world? Intel graphics are more than enough. The HD3000 that came with SandyBridge (and the new IvyBridge GPU... HD4000?) is good enough to play Diablo 3 pretty well, and definitely good enough for any general desktop work.

Though, also to be fair, 2006 is what, 7 years after HL1 came out, and several years after HL2? I think by that point the game had long been in the bargain bin that spurred this topic.

On one hand, yes. On the other hand, we're talking about them replacing a 5 year out of warranty iPod Nano. Who gives a shit if you're without it for a week? It's an iPod!

I do recall the guy going to plug an external hard drive with a label saying something like "GPU Test" on it. My impression was they boot from that drive and it runs some sort of, well, GPU test. The way my GPU failed though just displayed ridiculous graphical corruption on the screen, so when the tech powered it on and saw the screen he just said "yup, that's a GPU failure" and skipped any further testing.

That's strange... I had this exact same problem and Apple replaced my motherboard for free when the time came. I wonder why they denied it for him?

Woah woah woah.

You mad bro?

When I was still young enough that I regularly would go to my friends' to play Xbox games I would typically log into my account on their xbox either way so that my gameplay would still go towards my stats/unlocks/achievements etc. That, and on the xbox, online multiplayer wasn't free so often times you *had* to be logged in to play or to get full support (typically guests don't have voice chat). Finally, logging in let you play as you, with your gamer tag that you use and not just a (1) after your friend's name.

I'd imagine taking your profile with you would be the prevalent method of bringing a game over, rather than your whole console.

Then again, I am/was a fairly hardcore gamer, so maybe all of those reasons to sign in anyway don't apply to the rest of the market. Either way, it would be more convenient than lugging your console, though lugging a console isn't that big of a deal (2-3 cords to unplug, swap it in when you get there to their existing cords).

Oops, modded you overrated instead of underrated. Posting to wipe it, since you are correct.

Office 2008 on my Mac opens the Microsoft Software Updater to check for updates once a month (as long as I open a Microsoft product, including the Office suite or RDP).

When you say "we're already at the limits of the resolution of television" I think you're missing that the vast majority of games are rendered below 1080P and then scaled, since the current consoles don't have the horsepower to actually render that resolution.

If you don't mind me asking, what is this Fastpath you speak of? I'm a fairly hardcore gamer and I've never heard of it. I use DSL and from your post it sounds like something I should look into?

Perhaps, but I doubt that's the case here. AFAIK CenturyLink doesn't really provide any VOIP or content streaming services that they'd want to "emphasize" and as a CenturyLink customer (carried over from the Qwest merger) I haven't experienced any of the issues the OP reports.

Agreed. I think the problem is that people don't realize that Firefox 10 is really just Firefox 4.6. In 4 they did a major change from 3, but now each "major version number" is only as different as what used to be a minor version update before. It's not like Mozilla has done twice as much development in the year and a half or so between 4 and 10 as they did in all the years leading up to 3.0, they've just moved the decimal place for the same revisions.

Woah, what Firefox 10 are you running? I've been running it for 2 hours and it's already at 400MB of RAM, and the 2 hour mark is just because I restarted it to release the gig and a half it was using.