The End of Vista

February 17th, 2008
By Zheng Gu
You might have heard that Microsoft has released Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista to all testers. I, hoping for an improved experience, went ahead and downloaded it. Read More

The Orange Box Beats the Competition

November 13th, 2007
By Zheng Gu
What’s inside the Orange Box? The anticipated next episode of Half-Life 2 that falls short? Valve’s shiny little gem that won over our hearts? The decade-in-the-making highly worthy sequel to one of the greatest multiplayer games of all time? Yes. In addition to Half-Life 2 and Episode 1, just in case you missed out, you get Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2, as respectively mentioned. It has been a full month since the release of The Orange Box. Has it been worth it? [img_assist|nid=26144|title=|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=500|height=] Read More

Impressions of the iPod touch

October 8th, 2007
By Zheng Gu
In a recent blog entry, I mentioned that I was ditching my Creative Zen Vision M for the new Apple iPod touch. I’ve finally been able to acquire this device at Radio Shack, not the Cornell Store as previously anticipated. According to Cornell Store staff, Apple is delaying the shipment by 3 weeks. But anyhow, this does not matter, as I’m now happy to bring you my impressions and review of the Apple iPod touch. This is the first of a two-part series. This part contains my impressions of the device, after approximately 12 hours of use. The packaging is well-designed. The box is compact, conveying that the device is also compact. The life-size glamour pictures on the front and side of the box also facilitate this purpose. Upon opening the box, I was first greeted by the beautiful face of the iPod Touch. The enclosure design and aesthetics are certainly above any other portable media player that I’ve ever seen. The best word that I can use to describe it is ‘fluid’. Also included in the box are, of course, the earphones, the USB2 cable, the manuals, and also a cloth for cleaning the screen, a piece of plastic that turned out to be the stand, and another piece of plastic that turned out to be the universal dock adapter. Read More

Creative Labs

October 3rd, 2007
By Zheng Gu
Anandtech does Creative Labs. If you have followed my past posts, you can see why I’m not surprised at the author’s conclusions. Read More

The Move to Apple

September 28th, 2007
By Zheng Gu
After finding out that my Creative Zen Vision M fails to operate in Windows Vista due to an instant lockup upon connecting, I’m finally moving over to the world of Steve Jobs, at least for my portable media player needs anyway. Of course, the documentary of that experience will come in the near future because the Cornell Store decided to not have the iPod touch yet. I’ll review my new Apple experience soon. Read More

Bioshock Woes

August 26th, 2007
By Zheng Gu
You may have recently heard about the digital rights management issues with BioShock. The game allows only two installations before failing, and most PC gamers are in an uproar. However, there is another issue: the game requires Shader Model 3.0, which is only supported on the Radeon X1000 series or higher video cards from ATI. An incredibly large number of people still use the previous (and very successful) series of ATI video cards. Especially considering that the underlying graphics engine of the game, the Unreal Engine 3.0, fully supports Shader Model 2.0, the developers’ decision to disable support for it is, to put it bluntly, stupid. Read More