Finray
Hup! Dos, Tres, Cuatro
+2,629|5758|Catherine Black
TN panels have come a long way, you'd be surprised how good this thing looks.
https://i.imgur.com/qwWEP9F.png
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6741|PNW

I did love the ratio back when I had a monitor with it. Currently, by the time Excel's ribbon and any frozen rows are done hogging my screen space, I don't have a whole lot of space left to work with without scrolling up and down constantly. I'd flip the thing vertical, but there's a lot of columns in my usual spreadsheets as well.
uziq
Member
+492|3422

Finray wrote:

TN panels have come a long way, you'd be surprised how good this thing looks.
well you could say that about every panel type. everything has come a long way! the last time i bought a monitor VA/quantum dot didn't even exist, lmao. i don't doubt that a monitor bought in 2019 is going to look better than one bought in 2010 generally. it would be pretty fucked if they didn't.

TN's viewing angles are brutal and the colour reproduction is very bad. there's no two ways about it. if you're doing anything that requires using the monitor on a broader desk, i.e. as part of a working set-up with flexible viewing angles, then they are horrendous. if i'm doing a proofread on a desk and need to glance up or across at a screen to check it, i don't want to be looking through yellowed or greened text because my viewing angle isn't perfect. bad.

similarly, the dell's IPS is absolutely beautiful to look at, and the screen is just reliably sharp and on-point no matter where i look at it from. but if i recline at the end of the day and want to watch a movie with lots of dark scenes, there's going to be backlight bleed, even on the 'expensive' dell brand option which has much higher quality control than most brands. it's still just not good at darks -- which is fine, because an everyday work screen seldom needs to display perfect black.

i look forward to the day when the nice 'hybrid' monitors that combine the best of all and minimise the worst are under £750, tbh. it's a lot to pay for a nice view. i'm guessing that will basically be the gradual making-affordable of OLED.

Last edited by uziq (2019-12-03 08:02:55)

Finray
Hup! Dos, Tres, Cuatro
+2,629|5758|Catherine Black
Yeah, they're never going to be as good as IPS panels for those things, but I was just saying the trade off isn't so severe anymore, especially when you're head-on to it. It does make sense spending a lot on your monitor though, similar to other peripherals, you've got a great sound system, why would you deny your eyes the same pleasure?
https://i.imgur.com/qwWEP9F.png
uziq
Member
+492|3422
yeah, i'm sure i'm being fussy over TNs. a 1440p monitor is going to be eye-candy regardless at the end of the day, isn't it?

my sound system is pretty ridiculous at this point. i need to spend lots on sound panels and room treatment now. still eyeing up a pair of HD-650s i don't need at all (my sound card has a really nice headphone pre-amp that i'm not utilising at all).

this thing ... sounds ... amazing

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/9WPJtKa7M2Y/maxresdefault.jpg
Finray
Hup! Dos, Tres, Cuatro
+2,629|5758|Catherine Black
I need to get myself a DAC, still running my amp from the onboard sound on my motherboard, gets a bit hissy at times

any suggestions to just get the job done?
https://i.imgur.com/qwWEP9F.png
uziq
Member
+492|3422
just get a dedicated small DAC specifically for that purpose. depends if you mostly listen on headphones or 2x speakers (or both, of course).

schiit audio make really nice stuff, not belied by their name. something like the jotunheim.
or a simple stack of a modi (DAC)/magni (headphones):

https://www.schiit.com/products/modi-1
https://www.schiit.com/products/magni-1

it's literally $200 bucks and will be a leap above any PC brand hardware. the twin RCA output will plug into PC speakers/bookshelf speakers nicely. you're going to need to invest more if you have actually nice speakers (i.e. balanced inputs not RCA).

your audio probably hisses because your motherboard isn't shielded and is loud as fuck. that or you're running audio over a busy USB bus. thank god PCI-E soundcards have gone the way of the dodo. terrible concept.

Last edited by uziq (2019-12-03 08:43:54)

Finray
Hup! Dos, Tres, Cuatro
+2,629|5758|Catherine Black

uziq wrote:

your audio probably hisses because your motherboard isn't shielded and is loud as fuck.
yeah that's what I figured, want to take it out the PC digital then give it to the hifi amp. I listen on a mix of the two. Headphones when gaming, speakers when listening to music/watching stuff. i'll check out schiit cheers.
https://i.imgur.com/qwWEP9F.png
uziq
Member
+492|3422
PCI wi-fi cards make a lot of noise, as well. see if the hissing and noise changes when you run internet over ethernet.

incidentally this is another huge win for Mac and OSX -- audio! even with all the right parts, the way windows treats audio drivers is a fucking nightmare. audio glitches, latency, drops, etc. are all super common on windows, depending on the driver lottery and the hierarchy of system processes on your machine. the audio on mac is a joy.

Last edited by uziq (2019-12-03 08:51:45)

Finray
Hup! Dos, Tres, Cuatro
+2,629|5758|Catherine Black
that shit is so pretty omg, I want all of it.

I'm cabled in already. Yeah even I can't deny that, apple just outright wins at audio.
https://i.imgur.com/qwWEP9F.png
uziq
Member
+492|3422
it's ironic that you were warning me about 144 hz monitors and 'making you want to spend money'. monitors do not hold a fucking candle, so to speak, to audio hardware. it really is a giant black hole. soon you'll be buying high-impedance cables for your headphones for £200 - 'bargain!' - and spending £500 on headphones amplifiers with vintage tubes to 'add warmth and space to the sound'.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6741|PNW

Way I see it, good or even passable audio is something you can use during both work and play. An LCD monitor primarily geared towards optimizing headshot timing in CS:GO, more of a narrow scope.

it really is a giant black hole. soon you'll be buying high-impedance cables for your headphones for £200 - 'bargain!' - and spending £500 on headphones amplifiers with vintage tubes to 'add warmth and space to the sound'.
Or depending on the specific type of hobbyist, slowly transforming your car into an unholy sound canon that will degrease your hair and blast your shirt off your body.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
If you're scrolling and zooming documents all day a space mouse is a useful productivity tool.
Works great for PDFs, not bad for word, a bit clunky with spreadsheets, and you can link macros to buttons. Your experience may vary.

https://www.3dconnexion.eu/fileadmin/templates/images/3dx_category_page_spacemousefamily/smw_thumb.png

https://www.3dconnexion.eu/fileadmin/templates/images/3dx_category_page_spacemousefamily/smp_thumb.png

Plus it feels like you're flying a spaceship.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422
i'm sorry but apple have perfected office/productivity peripherals. the trackpad on MacBooks (and the standalone) is one of the best pieces of tech i have ever used. the gestures, haptic feedback, feel and glide of the thing ... you just have to use one.

those images bring back memories of the absurd plastic contraptions i used to have when flying jets/helis in BF2. jesus christ why IS gamer gear so crud? compare it to this -- no contest:

https://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/cmsdata/features/3674483/apple-imac-pro_review41.jpg

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
Nah, these are industrial CAD peripherals, many more degrees of freedom than your faggy Mac stuff.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422
it looks like a cross between a logitech peripheral and a device for aiding female conception.

i can picture some overweight walloon in HR sitting down heavily in her herman miller chair and scrolling through an excel sheet with one of those, actually.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
Its basically like fondling a boob all day, so yeah a lesbian would go for it.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6741|PNW

I quite enjoyed some of my older gamer gadgets. Still use a few.

I dread the day my MS Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 will finally call it quits. What am I going to do, fly with my 360 gamepad that mildly vibrates in protest? The SFF2 will try to jump out of your hand. Was decently precise for a gamer market stick, and was my go-to for BF1942/V/2 and any space game I got my hands on.

It's incredible to me that there is so little interest from Microsoft. Look at a "best of" list for like 2018 and there's the Force Feedback 2 shuffling into the fore from ancient history. It gets featured or at least mentioned on enthusiast sites, like this spacegamejunkie article from August. If for some reason a list doesn't include it (usually because it's a second-hand market), the comments will usually chime in with a what-about. People go out of their way to get these shipped internationally or have them repaired.

Why Microsoft doesn't renew these for a modern run is a mystery to me. I would even pay double the original MSRP for one with an even more robust chassis and substantial thumb-throttle. Just don't cover it in blue LEDs and gamer spikes.

e:

PC Perspective got one of these sent in by a viewer in 2017, along with a bunch of cookies. One of the games brought up was good ol' TIE Fighter, a genre the franchise has long since abandoned that I wouldn't mind seeing a remake or remaster of beyond Steam's flaccid dosbox effort.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6741|PNW

Going to try out Opera GX. One draw for it being that it's Opera with a convenient RAM use (e: also CPU, bandwidth) limiter which should help for a hefty amount of open tabs. Whether or not I stay depends on how customizable the interface is.

Apparently coming to Mac soon as well.

e:

https://i.imgur.com/DSGPLeS.png
These interactive screen wipes Apple puts on their long brochures always always puts me in mind of web design classes where people discovered neat features for the first time and peppered their whole project with them regardless of sense. Not bad using page down, but drastically hampers mwheel scrolling. As you're scrolling down, the picture is zooming in. So it feels like you're going even more slowly.

https://i.imgur.com/s95spIR.png
Border colors are full on RGB, but you can't enter specific numerical values. Unless there's a specific cfg file to edit. I really don't like being constrained to these sliders.

If you can change the color of the boundary, it doesn't seem to be in this menu. Very dark twitch-purple, which makes sense because one of the features it immediately boasted of was twitch implementation. Still disappointing. Not really the features that made me want to check it out, but you'd figure with all the rainbow light accessorization gaming stuff has these days that they'd want to up their game.
uziq
Member
+492|3422

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

I quite enjoyed some of my older gamer gadgets. Still use a few.

I dread the day my MS Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 will finally call it quits. What am I going to do, fly with my 360 gamepad that mildly vibrates in protest? The SFF2 will try to jump out of your hand. Was decently precise for a gamer market stick, and was my go-to for BF1942/V/2 and any space game I got my hands on.

It's incredible to me that there is so little interest from Microsoft. Look at a "best of" list for like 2018 and there's the Force Feedback 2 shuffling into the fore from ancient history. It gets featured or at least mentioned on enthusiast sites, like this spacegamejunkie article from August. If for some reason a list doesn't include it (usually because it's a second-hand market), the comments will usually chime in with a what-about. People go out of their way to get these shipped internationally or have them repaired.

Why Microsoft doesn't renew these for a modern run is a mystery to me. I would even pay double the original MSRP for one with an even more robust chassis and substantial thumb-throttle. Just don't cover it in blue LEDs and gamer spikes.

e:

PC Perspective got one of these sent in by a viewer in 2017, along with a bunch of cookies. One of the games brought up was good ol' TIE Fighter, a genre the franchise has long since abandoned that I wouldn't mind seeing a remake or remaster of beyond Steam's flaccid dosbox effort.
have microsoft even re-released their famous mice yet? i have a few of those things sitting around with the much-fetishised avago sensors. they were really good for quake and did very good trade on eBay. it would be such an easy win for them to just re-issue those things. most 'top-end' gamer brand mice, like Zowie, have pretty comfortably made a business out of just repackaging those same, or similar, sensors from 90s intellimice or whatever.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
suffice to say, I've got enough room to work now.

https://i.imgur.com/gwbIGZP.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/56j10WD.jpg
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6741|PNW

I really shouldn't have new screen envy given that my LG is treating me well, but I do. Look at that thing.

uziq wrote:

have microsoft even re-released their famous mice yet? i have a few of those things sitting around with the much-fetishised avago sensors. they were really good for quake and did very good trade on eBay. it would be such an easy win for them to just re-issue those things. most 'top-end' gamer brand mice, like Zowie, have pretty comfortably made a business out of just repackaging those same, or similar, sensors from 90s intellimice or whatever.
https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2019/05/ … ing-sensor
uziq
Member
+492|3422
wait ... they changed the sensor? sounds confusing. the avago original was the sole thing that people valued in those mice lol. they were just two click buttons and a nice sensor. low DPI, too.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6741|PNW

The whole thing's screwy. At a glance, there's been some acquisitions and rebranding. BENQ somehow involved somewhere? I guess it's between Pixart and Avago now? Here's a different writeup ( https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digi … eview-7002 2018) quoting a different model of sensor. Maybe two different intellimice, I dunno. I'm using a Logitech mmo mouse.

Reddit post with some bullet points on some sensor models. Didn't fact check: https://www.reddit.com/r/MouseReview/co … _smoothing

e: Finally dug up the specs from msft:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/micro … chspecstab
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6741|PNW

I'm not really seeing it in any category of ranked lists. I guess not a lot of them have a section for sentimental value. That said, some of the top ranked ones still look like a Predator's multitool. Even PC gamer had this to say about the G903: "Cons: Aesthetic is acquired taste."

The new sensor's supposed to be good and other things equalized, you might not be able to tell the difference between it and other modern sensors.

Normally, I use the mouse with my left hand, so I always had a slightly askew grip on the old version of that IntelliMouse. MMO mouse has a slightly awkward claw grip, but instead of using the thumb for the numberpads I've got two fingers on it. Useful, but not terribly comfy. I wish there were more asymmetrical mice with left-handed models to choose from. Forever an underclass, like left-handed golfers I guess.

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