Video Game Review: Helldivers 2

One of the fondest memories I have is playing video games on Thursday evenings with my brothers and dad. This is when online gaming started taking off and so you didn't have to be in the same room or even the same house. We would log onto our PlayStation 2 consoles and play SOCOM 2 with each other. I have missed the online game playing and so I thought I would start something similar with my own 2 sons. I have one that lives across town and another that lives across the country. Once again we have designated Thursday evenings as our night to play and our game of choice is Helldivers 2.

I started playing the original Helldivers when I still worked at Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) and enjoyed the top-down shooter platform. It didn't feel natural though and took awhile to get used to. The latest version of the game is a 3rd-Person shooter very similar to SOCOM 2. It feels like so many other shooter games that it should be easy for everyone to play.

While I am no longer at SIE, I still work for Sony and have access to discounted versions of the game. I purchased 3 copies so I would have one for myself and my 2 sons. Retail price for the game is $39.99 and well worth it if you are looking for a fun online playing experience.

The game is very similar to the movie Starship Troopers from 1997 where you are part of an elite team of soldiers sent to eradicate either bugs or robots from planets throughout the area. There is a lot of propaganda shown throughout the game relating to how you are spreading freedom throughout the galaxy and it adds a level of humor to the game play.

One difference between Helldivers 2 and SOCOM 2 is that you are always on the same side as the people you play with. The bugs or robots are controlled by the game. That means that the only competition you have with your teammates is to see who has the most kills or other similar statistics. This makes for a much more friendly environment.

The game is limited to squads of 4 and so it will not accommodate larger groups. You can play as a single person, but that can be really tough as you often need others to help unlock storage garages or align communication dishes. Fortunately the game won't keep you solo too long as other players may decide to join your mission and help out. This allows you to see how others play the game and learn from their technique.

My son who lives in Ohio will be gone this evening (Thursday) and so we played Tuesday this week. After an hour or so of running around and squashing man-eating bugs, he sent his brother and me a text saying how much fun he had. I agree, we did have a great time.

Helldivers 2 has an ESRB rating of M for mature due to intense violence and blood and gore. As you can hear other players playing, you will often hear strong language as well. The original version had a rating of T and the new one does deserve that M rating. The game is somewhat limited to the PlayStation 4 and 5 consoles but is also available on the PC. Naturally I play on the PS5.

Video Game Review: Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout

Last night I had some free time and so I sat down to play one of the free games from my PS Plus subscription that came out in August: Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout. My son showed me the game when I visited him earlier this month. He has had a lot of fun playing it and so I thought I would give it a shot.

Normally I wouldn't write a game review until I have completed the game. With Fall Guys, it is hard to know when you are done as it is one of those games that just keeps going on and on as long as you are willing to play. The concept is that you and 59 other players join an online game where you try to get through a virtual obstacle course. The courses seem to be taken directly from the old 2008 television show called "Wipeout." Each run through an obstacle course narrows down the field. If you do well, you continue on. If not, you can watch other players or join another game. Once eliminated you receive points for your effort based on how well you did. You can then progress to higher levels which allow you to unlock clothing options to change your in-game appearance.

While playing with my son, we had a lot of fun. When one of us would die, we would pass the controller and let the other one play. When I played alone last night, I got bored rather quickly and only played for about half an hour before moving onto something else. During that 30 minute session, I racked up 6 trophies. If you are looking to quickly rack up trophies, then this is a good game for you. It is also a great game to play with others. I wish there was a couch-coop mode as I think it would be a fun group activity. Should you want to play with a friend, you will each need your own console and TV along with a copy of the game. There is a mechanism in the game for inviting friends to play with you and I imagine it would be a lot of fun and a great way to hang out with someone but also follow social distancing guidelines.

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is available for the PC from Steam as well as the PlayStation 4 console. If you made the effort to add it to your game library last month through PS Plus, then you could have gotten it for free. If you missed it, then it is $19.99 from the PlayStation store. While I would like to say that it is worth the $20 price tag, I am not sure I would purchase the game had I not gotten it for free. If you are looking for a casual game to play with a group of people, then it is well worth the price.

The game has an ESRB rating of E for everyone and I wouldn't have a problem playing it with my 3-year-old grandson.

Trying to Decide on a New Computer

This evening I find myself seriously looking to replace my 10-year old desktop in my home office. When I got the original machine I made sure to get something that would last. After 10 years I can say, "Mission accomplished." With work providing me a laptop to bring home every weekend I have not really had a need to get anything special. Now that I find myself working from home for the foreseeable future, I can justify an upgrade.

I want to put together some more adventuring videos and so my new desktop will be used to edit video. That means I need to get another powerful machine. In the past I have used iMovie on the Mac to build my videos and it works amazingly well. So should I focus on getting a powerful machine or spend the same amount and get a less powerful Apple Mac?

My oldest son seems to be invested in my decision as he has provided me with a number of references to help with my decision. Unfortunately that has only made my decision more complicated. At one time I expressed an interest in building a Hackintosh, which is a PC that is capable of running Apple's MacOS. My son ran with that idea and sent me a video of a machine that will run MacOS out of the box. Yes, there is a bit of a software configuration that I will have to go through. There is also the chance that future updates of the operating system won't work and I will have to modify things again. However you get a machine that runs circles around the latest hardware from Apple for about a third of the cost. I can also set it up to run Windows, Linux, and MacOS.

I have some time to decide and so I won't make a decision tonight. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to make a comment and let me know what you would do.

The Fortnite Phenomenon

This morning I attended a meeting where we talked about the Fortnite video game. It is one of those hugely successful games that has everyone scratching their heads wondering how they can repeat the process for their own titles. It is from Epic Games, which is also the creator of the Unreal game engine. As a side-note, if you want to try your hand at creating a video game, you can use the Unreal engine for free. You only have to pay Epic when you sell copies of your game and then it is just a small percentage.

So what makes Fortnite so successful? I can try to answer that question but the reality is that if I could explain it, then everyone would use the same formula to make their own games successful. So let me begin by saying that filling a need at the right time is part of the equation and that makes duplicating the game's success very difficult.

Fortnite is very simple to understand. When I played my first Fortnite match, I did so with a small description of the game. I didn't need any lengthy instructions nor in-game tutorials (as is often the first hour or two of many games). All I did was jump out of a flying school bus and try to stay alive as long as possible. I managed to do so more than half of the players in that match and felt pretty good about myself.

Fortnite allows you to play online with your friends. It is no secret that I started playing the PS2, thanks to the console as a birthday gift from my  brother who worked for Sony at the time. Then my Dad, brothers, and I would go online every Thursday evening from 7pm until around midnight playing with and sometimes against each other. Our favorite game was SOCOM 2 and we had a lot of fun. Our group eventually grew to include a brother-in-law as well as a few nephews. At the all-time peak of our gaming, we met together with our consoles at Thanksgiving and played in the same room. This is quite a feat given that one of my brothers lived in San Diego, the other in Portland, and me in Salt Lake City. Fortnite builds upon the ability to play with friends and does a pretty good job of keeping it fun for everyone.

Fortnite makes it tough to cheat. One of the reasons my brothers and I stopped playing online video games together is because of cheaters and campers. As Fortnite serves as a showcase for the Unreal game engine, Epic took care to make it very difficult to cheat. That doesn't mean cheats don't exist but they are few in number. Fortnite also developed a shrinking environment which makes it difficult for someone to find a hiding spot and stay there for the entire game. You may be able to hide for a few minutes but then a storm causes the playable area to shrink and not moving to the active area eliminates you from the game.

Fortnite does not require a huge time commitment. I just finished playing Red Dead Redemption 2 and it took me over 100 hours to complete. While I didn't play the game in a single sitting, sometimes I would play for several hours at a time. With Fortnite you can play in 10-minute increments. That makes it very easy to fill small blocks of time and doesn't require multi-hour commitments.

Fortnite is free to play. You can download it to your video game console, computer, or smartphone for no charge. Free is always an attractive price for any video game.

Finally, Fortnite levels the playing field for everyone. There is no advantage by paying for anything in the game. You all start out with the same inventory and are required to scavenge for weapons and supplies during each match. That means that your friend whose mom has spent hundreds of dollars in the game does not have any advantage. He or she may have a really cool outfit or be able to do a nice victory dance after killing you, but it is skill that ultimately wins the game.

Yes, People are starting to grow tired of Fortnite and it looks as if the number of active players is on a slow decline. Ultimately it will take quite a while before those numbers drop to zero and so Epic shouldn't worry too much right now. Besides that gives them time to think about what to create to replace it. I hope they come up with something equally spectacular.

Time Magazine's Top 10 Video Games of 2018

Yesterday I posted about Time Magazine's best inventions of 2018. The 2nd to last article in my copy of the magazine lists the top 10 video games of 2018. I couldn't help but comment on it today.

Once again I disagree with some titles on the list and agree with others. I do have to admit that they did a pretty good job of spreading the list across all different platforms. There are games for the PS4, Switch, Xbox One, iPhone, Android, and PC. If I were to create a list, it would probably be just games for the PlayStation console as that is the only place I play new games. Furthermore I have a tendency to play games a little bit after they have been released and want to make sure I have played them all the way through before recommending them or not.

As there are only 10 games, I can list them here (remember that this is Time Magazine's list and not mine):

1. God of War (PS4)
2. Spider-Man (PS4)
3. Into the Breach (PC, Switch)
4. Subnautica (Xbox One, PC)
5. Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS4, Xbox One)
6. Florence (iPhone, Android)
7. Super Mario Party (Switch)
8. Assassin's Creed Odyssey (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC)
9. Dandara (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC, iPhone, Android)
10. Donut County (PS4, iPhone, PC)

I have to be honest and confess that I have never heard of half of these games.  Part of that is because I don't play a lot of smartphone games. I have one that I play on a regular basis but it is an old version of the Risk board game and didn't come out this year. There are so many smartphone games that I don't even bother trying them out. I also don't play PC games nor do I own an Xbox One or Switch (I do have access to them at work though).

I have a copy of God of War as well as Spider-Man but have yet to play them. Seeing that they are both 1 and 2 on Time's list has me wanting to play them as soon as I finish Red Dead Redemption 2, which is number 5. Judging by comments made by coworkers, both of those games deserve to be on the list.

One surprise for me is Assassin's Creed Odyssey. One of my coworkers is in the middle of the game and speaks very highly of it. I am a fan of Ubisoft games but have never played any of the Assassin' Creed games. I may have to give this one a try. It will have to be after Spider-Man and God of War though.

It is the end of the year and so I am sure there will be plenty of lists like this one. If you don't see your favorite game in this group, don't fret as it probably appears on someone else's list.

Which Flavor of Linux

This week I have been working from home and been doing some playing around with machine learning (ML) in Python. My home Linux box is using an old version of Fedora Core while my machine at work uses Ubuntu Linux. I am having problems getting Python updates to work correctly because some of my system libraries are so old. It is time to update my Linux and I am wondering which version to select.

I started using Red Hat Linux a long time ago. I don't feel the need to pay for Linux as I don't use it as a production server and so I have been running Fedora Core, which is based on Red Hat. If I want to continue using a Red Hat flavor of Linux, I could also install CentOS. So should I stay with Fedora Core or change to CentOS?

As mentioned, my machine at work uses Ubuntu which is based on the Debian distribution of Linux. I like it and it stays updated fairly easily. There are several other options as well but most of the world has settled on Debian or Red Hat. Suse used to be an option but Novell did a pretty good job of killing it in the early 2000's.

So what is the difference between them all? Mostly it has to do with system administration. PC users don't really want to do a lot of system administration work but they do like to install new versions of software. Red Hat uses "yum" to install software while Debian uses "apt-get". The programs are very similar. I have never had a problem finding updates for either flavor of Linux.

One problem I have noticed with Fedora Core is they are constantly changing versions. You may be on version 22 only to have version 23 come out a few months later. Updating your operating system can be a bit of a time sync as you have to make backup copies of your files and then spend hours making sure everything got moved to the same version without any problems. Ubuntu doesn't have that problem and so I think I will make that change over the Christmas break when I have more time. Until then I will have to remote login to my machine at work when running through my ML exercises. You may disagree and I would love to hear why. Feel free to send me a comment.

Children And Technology

Have you ever noticed how the previous generation always seems to be more knowledgeable when it comes to technology. In the 1980's, VCR's always seemed to be blinking 12:00 and the joke was to have your kid set the clock so it would show the correct time. Then the joke changed into having your kid help you with your computer. Now it is having your kid help you with your smartphone. Yesterday I got a call from my son that emphasizes just how true that is.

My grandson has always enjoyed mimicking my son typing on the computer. He also enjoys stealing his parents' smartphones and playing with them. Recently he figured out how to press the "Home" button on his Mom's (my daughter-in-law) iPhone. When Siri asks how she can help, he instructs, "Call Dad." Siri dutifully obeys and call's my daughter-in-law's father. To give perspective, my grandson is not quite 18-months old and has just started creating 2-word sentences.

I think my grandson has a ways to go to pass my son when it comes to understanding technology. So far he is on the right track though and I don't think it will take that long.

Video Game Review: Sniper: Ghost Warrior

Several years ago I started playing Sniper: Ghost Warrior from City Interactive. Somebody gave me the game for free and I played it for about an hour. I put it on the shelf and never got around to playing it again until recently. I felt the need to find a short game that I could complete in a few hours and so I picked it up again as it has an average completion time of five or six hours.

I am a fan of first-person shooters and so I had a lot of fun playing the game. One thing about a sniper-type game is that you can take your time and methodically move through it. You don't win points by rushing through the missions although there are times when you do need to hustle. I only have an hour or so in the evenings a couple of days a week and so it took me about two weeks to run through all of the missions. The first ones take a bit more time while the ones towards the end seem to go quickly. It is almost as if they wanted to make a ten-hour game and decided to cut it by four hours just to get it out.

Sniper is not a triple-A title and so I would not pay more than $15 for it. Especially since it released in 2010. Should you find the game to be a lot of fun, there is Sniper 2 and Sniper 3 also available. I have a copy of Sniper 2 that I picked up super cheap but have yet to break the plastic cover on the game.

Sniper is rated Mature (M) for violence and strong language. Some of the kill scenes are rather graphic. Fortunately you have the option to skip watching them in slow-motion. I would not recommend the game for young teenagers or children but think older teenagers and adults might enjoy it. I played it on my PlayStation 3 but the game is available for the X-Box 360 and PC.

Classic MS-DOS Games

It is no secret I work for a video game company and so it is not uncommon to see people playing video games at work. Today someone showed everyone in the office a site where you can play about 2,300 old MS-DOS games in your web browser. Naturally everyone dropped what they were doing and spent a few minutes reliving the past. I went looking for an old game I spent many a night playing when I was back in college. Unfortunately I didn't find it, but I did find a number of other games that held my interest many years ago.

It is amazing to see how far video games have come in the past few decades. Increasing hardware performance has helped usher things along and it is great to see the progress. There are still a number of old video games that are a lot of fun to play even now. One of the guys at work confessed to only being able to beat a specific game one way even though there were four possible paths and he continues to work at the game. It was also interesting to see how simple even the most complex games were back then.

I have been trying to figure out what to do with my time on the boat this evening. There are a number of games I could play on my PlayStation 3. Perhaps I will search this game site and see if I can't find more of those old games I used to play. It could be fun.

The Death of a Power Supply

A few months ago, I started noticing some weird behavior on my desktop Linux computer at home. I have been able to work around it until I got home from the airport this past Friday night. I went to turn on the computer, but it wouldn't boot. There were not lights nor fans that came on. It was like I was pressing a random part of the computer as the "On" button seemed to have no effect. When this has happened in the past, it was just a matter of disconnecting all of the cables from the back, re-inserting them, and turning it on. Friday night, that didn't work.

It is a good thing I have several other computers in my office at home as I was able to search the Internet for help. My Linux desktop is a Dell. In fact, it is one of the first Dell computers to have the new Intel i7 processor and it seems the engineers never got full credit on their homework assignments in college. Searching on my model number and a few other key words like "won't turn on" brought up numerous accounts of other Dell customers experiencing the same problem. When Dell built my computer, they put in a 300 watt power supply, which turns out to be way too small. Judging from the number of posts, I was lucky my power supply managed to last as long as it did.

Computer power supplies are relatively cheap. I probably could have ordered one online and gotten a better price, but I needed to get my computer running immediately. As it was 1 am by the time I felt I knew how to solve my problem, I went to bed. The next day I added a stop at Best Buy to my list of chores. I read about a 600 watt power supply that solved the problem nicely, but the largest my local store had was 450. I asked to make sure it would fit in my Dell case and was told all power supplies were interchangeable. In truth, they are not, but I decided to give it a shot.

I got home and opened the case only to be amazed at how many wires come out of a power supply. I had removed the case of my computer before but never really noticed all of those wires. There were really only 4 bundles that mattered: 2 for the motherboard, 1 for my graphics card, and 1 for my disk drive and DVD drive. I unplugged them all and pulled out the defective power supply. Getting the old one out took a bit of skill. Putting the new one in was almost impossible. When you build a computer, the first thing you put in the case is the power supply. I didn't want to pull everything out of my case and so it was rather difficult to work the new supply around heat sinks and cooling fans. Bending a bit of the sheet metal in the case helped but it was a non-trivial process. Besides, with the cover back on, nobody can tell I had to bend anything.

I connected everything back up only to discover that the power cable running from the supply to the hard drive and then to the DVD drive wasn't long enough. A quick internet search showed me I could get an 8-inch extension cord for around $5 and so I ordered one. After all the case bending, I didn't want to take out the new power supply and return it for one with more of the newer SATA power interface pig-tails. Right now I don't have a DVD drive as I had to choose between it or the hard drive, but that will be fixed on Wednesday when the part arrives.

I left a panel of the case off and made sure the computer would turn on. It did and so I turned the computer off and put the case back together. That was a huge relief as I really need my Linux desktop. It is nice to have it back from the dead.

Two Heads are Better Than One

If you have seen the movie "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" then you may recall one of the songs by Power Tool that declares "Two Heads are Better Than One." In computer lingo "Two Heads" refers to having two monitors on the same computer. Anyone who has plugged a projector or second monitor into a laptop knows that you have option of having the same (mirror) or different (dual heads) information on each screen. When running with dual heads it is nice to have that extra screen real estate.

When I got my first laptop, the display was only 640x480 pixels. The screen was usable while on an airplane but I was always eager to get to the office or back home where I had a larger monitor waiting. I never really used the dual head option because the laptop screen was just too small. It was like those worthless forarms on a T-rex.

Now technology has evolved to the point where laptop monitors can have resolutions greater than 1280x1024 pixels. My MacBook that I use for my laptop has a screen resolution of 1280x800 pixels. That is about the same as my previous desktop. There is no need to plug in a separate monitor to make the laptop usable. However a second monitor is nice to have when one is available.

When it came time to replace my desktop computer a few months ago, I decided that I wanted one that would support dual monitors. My personal brand recommendation for desktop PCs is Dell. They seem to be of sufficient quality and are reasonably priced. I went on their website and saw that some of their computers come with two monitor ports. That means you don't have to add a second video card (more money and complexity) to support dual heads. I priced out a machine with all of the options I wanted and wrote the information down. Then I went to the local Best Buy to see if they had one in-stock so I could look at it.

There is something to be said for retail locations where you can physically handle the merchandise before buying it. Unfortunately they didn't have the computer I had built on the Internet. They actually had a better model at a lower price. One problem with building your own machine is your knowledge is outdated. I know a lot about computers but I wasn't keeping up with the latest processors and options. Intel had come out with a new Processor that was faster and was in the latest Dell computer at Best Buy. It was on sale too. Since I was at Best Buy, I wasn't stuck with buying Dell Monitors which saved me even more money. In the end I saved myself about $400 between the computer and two monitors. The store also made sure I had all the cables I needed to connect everything (the extra monitor cables ended up being free).

Dell would have taken several weeks to build the computer and ship it to me. With Best Buy I had the computer immediately and was able to bring it home.

The first order of business was cleaning off my desk. It was set up for one 17-inch LCD display. My new computer has two 23-inch displays and I needed to make room for them. It also took some work positioning them so I could use the computer but still be able to have room for my laptop and be able to watch TV at the same time. It took some rearranging but I was able to make it work.

Once the hardware was set up, it was time to get the software working. I booted the machine into Windows and got Vista going without any trouble. I shut down the machine, rebooted with a disk partitioning CD, and moved things around on the hard drive so I could make room for Linux. Then I loaded up Linux and configured it to recognize the second monitor as a separate display. By default Linux thinks the second monitor is a mirror of the first. It is an easy configuration change.

Now I have two monitors on my primary desktop computer and it is a huge improvement over my old system. I can keep my e-mail open on one monitor and then do all my work in the other. When a new e-mail arrives, I simply drag my mouse and the cursor jumps from the right edge of one monitor to the left edge of the other. Now I just need to stop trying to use my desktop mouse on my laptop screen because that doesn't work.

Getting a New Computer

It is always fun to get a new computer. However it can also be a daunting task. What is the best way to move information from one to the other? How can you be sure you got all the information you are going to need? Is there an automated process that makes this easier? Why do we drive on parkways and park in driveways? OK, you can disregard that last question but let's discuss the others.

I generally get a new computer once a year. I have two computers that I use on a frequent basis: my desktop and my laptop. There are several more computers in my home office but they are generally database servers that I use for work and so let's not worry about them.

My laptop is an inexpensive MacBook and my desktop is a PC that dual boots to either Windows Vista or Linux. Last summer I got my MacBook and this summer I got my desktop. I will then hand my laptop to my son next summer as he goes off to college and get a new one. So you can see that I have to go through the computer upgrade process once a year.

When moving from one computer to another, it is important to make sure you get all the right data. It also serves as a good time to throw away all the stuff you will never use again. Perhaps you downloaded a PDF of the instruction manual for that old vacuum cleaner that you sold at the last garage sale. No need to keep that around. I use the following process when upgrading to a new computer:

1. Clean up the old computer
2. Export my e-mail and address book
3. Back up all my files
4. Move all important files to the new computer
5. Install application software like Microsoft Office
   
6. Import my e-mail and address book to the new computer
7. Keep the old computer running for a week or two

If you use a server-hosted email service such as gmail or some Outlook installations, then you can forget steps 2 and 6. I don't and so they are very important steps for me. Most e-mail programs have an export function that takes all of your e-mail folders and spits them out into a file. Then all you need to do is move that file to the new machine and import it back into your e-mail program.

Step 3 is important if you don't have the option of step 7. The previous time I updated my desktop computer was because my old computer died. I elected to get a new one instead of spending money to fix the old one. Luckily I had done a recent backup and was able to restore all my files. I backup my computer files to DVDs and keep the DVDs in a safe place. You could also use a flash drive but be sure to mark it as your backup so it doesn't get used for something else.

There is probably a software program out there that will help upgrade your computer. Especially if you are going from Windows to Windows or Mac to Mac. However I have three different computing environments and so I end up having to do my upgrades manually.

A new computer can be like having a fun new toy. The only problem is that you can plan on spending a day pulling stuff off your old one and moving it to the new one.

You are Never Too Old for Computers

Back in the late 70's, my Dad owned his own company and had a PDP-11 that he kept at our house. As you can see in the background of the picture to the left where I am getting my own copy of "Dune" signed by the author, Frank Herbert, the thing was huge. It looked like three refrigerators and two dishwashers stacked next to each other. It took up a whole room. I remember the power company having to come out and run special wiring to the house. We also had a huge air conditioner required to keep it cool. I was 10-years old at the time and remember spending countless hours playing games and learning how to use computers.

In our house, my wife and I have always had a computer for the kids. We started with a Pentium running Windows 95. I used Visual Basic and wrote a program to teach young kids how to use a mouse. The screen would have several different shapes and each shape had it's own color. I then recorded my voice to correspond with each of the shapes and colors. The program would play one of my voice messages asking the kid to “click on the blue square” or “click on the green circle.” When the correct color and shape were chosen, my voice would come on and say “good job!” After ten shapes the user's score was given and the kid was given an option to play some more.

It was a good thing the computer program only took me about an hour to write because it held my kids' attention for about 5 minutes. Once they got the hang of the mouse, they were off to play other games. We raided the local CompUSA every couple of weeks for educational games that managed to keep everyone occupied for several years.

As soon as your child is coordinated enough to use a mouse and understands basic shapes and colors, he or she is ready for properly supervised computer usage. For some, that can be at a very early age. So that leads to the question: What age is too old for a computer? My experience is that you are never too old to begin using a computer.

I am one of those lucky individuals that still has a complete set of living grandparents. My grandmother is in her mid-80's and owns 7 computers at last count. She started using them to help my Grandfather who is a criminal defense attorney. It began with word processing but has continued progressing to the point where last year she converted all of her videotapes from her camera to DVDs. Now she is in the process of scanning all of her old photos onto the computer and turning them into DVDs. She also reads e-mail, browses the web, and pretty much stays on top of the latest computer trends.

Now it sounds like 7 computers is a lot for an older couple. You might think that they still have an original 8088 PC (my first personal computer from 1985). Nope, my Grandmother replaces her computers frequently and gives the old ones other members of the family. My aunts, uncles, and cousins have all been recipients of Grandma's constant upgrading process.

For the record, my Grandmother has more computers than I do. Yep, you are never to old to use a computer.

The Best Computer for your College Kid

My oldest daughter heads off to school this week to start her Junior year of college. That has me thinking about my decision to buy her a computer before she left for her freshman year. I am one of those technical guys that has one of everything (PC, Mac, and Linux) and I wanted to get my daughter a computer with the following requirements:

1. Low cost
2. Maintenance free
3. Useful for school work
4. Would last all through college
   

I ended up getting her a MacBook and am glad I did. After two years of hard use, it is still going strong.

At the time I actually considered all of the computer options. I looked at getting her a PC laptop running Windows as well as one running Linux. I quickly decided against Linux because of the ubiquity of Microsoft Office. While OpenOffice.org is a great alternative to MS Office, it is not perfect. My fear was that one of her teachers would send her a Word file that OpenOffice.org couldn't understand and that would be a contributing factor to bad grades.

I thought I could save some money by getting a PC Laptop running Windows instead of the Mac. So I pulled up one of the popular PC brand's website and did a feature-by-feature comparison with the lowest-priced MacBook. I was surprised that the costs were exactly the same. Aren't PC's supposed to cost less? When you compare processor speed, RAM, along with size and speed of the hard-disk, the low-end MacBook is the same price as a comperable PC.

When I saw that the pricing was the same, I went with the Mac. You see, my daughter has always had the talent of infecting the family computer with all sorts of malware. I knew that I would be getting countless calls from my daughter wondering why her computer was running so slow. While there are virus programs out there for the Mac, there are many more for Windows and that was a headache I didn't want to deal with.

When I ordered the MacBook I also ordered the latest student version of Microsoft Office. Since the computer was for a college student, Apple threw in a free iPod and knocked $50 off the price of the computer which helped pay for the Office software. Their only requirement was that I identified the school my daughter was attending. My daughter then gave the iPod to her little sister whose iPod she had run through the washing machine a month earlier.

One concern I did have with a Mac was that there are several websites that only work with Windows and Internet Explorer. While they do exist, they are few. My daughter has figured out which ones they are and uses the library or student computer center to access those sites and doesn't consider it to be a hassle.

One benefit with the Mac vs Windows is that there are not nearly as many games available for the Mac. My daughter doesn't really play a lot of computer games but I didn't want her being distracted by games when she should have been studying. This is something to keep in mind when either of my two boys head off to college as they love computer games.

Now as my oldest daughter is heading back for her third year of school and the MacBook is still running. It may not have the fastest processor or largest hard drive, but it is more than adequate for all her school needs.

I was helping my daughter pack this morning and asked her about all her friends that showed up at school with a Windows PC as freshmen. Most of the PC laptops had stopped working before the end of the first year. My concern about malware and virus software was well founded. The other problem was a lack of durability. My daughter's Mac has survived countless falls and other mishaps that have killed off many of her friends' computers. Those MacBooks just keep going and going.

After reading this you might think there have not been any problems with my daughter's computer. For the most part, that has been true. However in the middle of last year I had to replace her hard drive because it failed (probably because she dropped it one too many times). Overall I am more than satisfied with the durability of the machine and am happy with the purchase. The new hard drive was about $150 and week without a computer. That beats the $600 her friends were shelling out for new computers at the beginning of their Sophomore years.

Yep, when it comes time for my son to head off to school next year. It will be a Mac for him as well.