Notebook Critic

Recently I traded my beloved 13″ Unibody Notebook for an Asus G50Vt-X1 gaming notebook. Why? I missed PC games like Mass Effect and Fallout 3 which simply are not as good on the Xbox 360 (frame rate and image quality) and are not available on the Mac at all.

I dabbled in getting older PC games working on the Mac, you can read more about that adventure here. Results were great, but old games will only get you so far (although the library is growing).

The Asus was great. Initially getting well over 8,000 points in 3Dmark06 out of the box, and over 9,000 with some GPU and CPU tweaking. It’s construction was OK – but almost entirely plastic. It’s hard to switch from a CNC machined aluminum body to a generic plastic design.

Also an issue for me is the OS. I tolerate Windows XP because I have no choice. I could probably tolerate XP on a home computer too. It is snappy and simple. Vista on the other hand is less snappy and more complicated. I have to go through a tuning routine with Vista that I hate – turning off indexing, UAC and a few other things. Too bad MS opted not to make these tuning options available in the installation wizard.

I also missed the keyboard and touch pad – the Asus was OK but I found key presses missed and the touch pad was tiny compared to the huge (usable) Apple touch pad. Related to the input method are Multitouch, Expose and Spaces which facilitate navigation. These are minor features, but you get used to them and they are noticeable in their absence.

So, one of my trading buddies had a Macbook and was interested in my Asus and now I am back to Apple. I am also back to trying to squeak out a decent gaming experience on Mac. I’ll use Boot Camp as a last resort.

There is a Cider Oblivion wrapper, and I just bought the Deluxe GoTY version on Steam. I guess I’ll play that through again. Planescape Torment works too – and while it is old, how can anyone ever get tired of playing that game (the finest video game of all time).