The Original Xbox… Was It The Dreamcast 2?

I have been a huge Sega fan for a long time. The Sega Saturn was amazing, I had a huge game and accessory collection and the Sega Dreamcast was fantastic, but sadly Sony dominated the gaming scene which helped drive Sega out of the hardware business.

While you might see Sonic and other Sega franchise titles on other hardware, sadly we shall never see another Sega branded home console.

However, all was not lost with the demise of the Dreamcast. While many fans hoped for a Dreamcast 2, we did get a new Sega console of sorts, in the form of the original Xbox from Microsoft.

OK, so let's think about that for a moment.

The XBox released in 2001/2002 was in the sixth generation of consoles alongside the Sega Dreamcast released in 1998/1999. The Sony Playstation 2 released 1999/2000 and Nintendo Gamecube released 2001/2002 were also sixth gen home consoles.

As you can see the XBox was two or three years after the Dreamcast.

The Dreamcast was ahead of its time for standards. It was the first console to have built in online capabilities with a modem and it featured four controller ports. The large controller had four coloured buttons labelled X, Y, A and B and a memory card slot in it – called the VMU, because it had a screen and its own buttons like a mini console.

The Xbox was also ahead of its time. It had online capability, with built in ethernet out-of-the-box and it also featured four controller ports. The large controller was very similar to the Dreamcast controller design and I did read that it was based on it. It has four colour buttons labelled X, Y, A and B although the colours are swapped around and it has an additional thumb stick. It also features a memory card slot (two in fact) in the controller.

OK, so Microsoft drew inspiration from the Dreamcast when looking at their first home console. But it doesn’t just stop with hardware.

Some Dreamcast titles featured Windows CE on their discs offering more features than just the standard Dreamcast operating system, so Sega already had tie-ins with Microsoft. It was also rumoured that Sega asked Microsoft if they would make the Xbox backward compatible with Dreamcast discs, but they decided not to – wanting their console to be new and fresh, plus worries over online Dreamcast titles.

However, there were a lot of Sega franchises brought over to the original Xbox. 

Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, House Of The Dead and Shenmue all Dreamcast games, received new versions for the Xbox. Panzer Dragoon was a Saturn game which received a new version for the Xbox and PS2.

Outrun from the Master System/Mega Drive and ToeJam & Earl from the Mega Drive both received new titles for the Xbox.

On top of that – although not exclusive to the Xbox – a number of Sonic titles such as Sonic Heroes, Sonic Riders, Shadow The Hedgehog and Sonic Mega Collection Plus made their way to the Xbox.

Sega really wanted to get their games on to other hardware to keep their software side and game franchises afloat even if they didn't have their own home console systems to do it.

With the hardware similarities and the software titles brought to it, the original Xbox could be considered the closest Sega fans got to the mythical Dreamcast 2.

For me, it was a sad day when Sega announced they were closing their hardware side. Despite the Saturn and the Dreamcast being the underdogs I rate them as some of the best consoles ever. This may be why I have such a fascination and love for the original Xbox – a spiritual successor to some of the greatest consoles ever made.

I love my Xbox and still play it today. I'm not a Microsoft fan and do not like the 360 or One, for me the original Xbox is the best offering from Microsoft.

Written by Simon Royal. Follow me at twitter.com/simonroyal

The Original XBox... A Beautiful Beast

About three months ago I bought an original XBox. I have wanted one for a while and one came up for sale locally. £20 for the console, S controller and 9 games was too good a bargain to give up.

I had an original XBox about 10 years ago, then my kids took it over and it got upgraded to an XBox 360 - which I had no interest in. Since then I have been firmly in the Sony camp - despite being a Sega diehard.

A sixth generation console, the original XBox was Microsofts first step into the console business - besides its brief pairing with the Sega Dreamcast offering Windows CE on discs for added functionality. It competed with the Sony Playstation 2, Nintendo GameCube and the Sega Dreamcast. The XBox was by far the most technologically advanced.

It is basically PC hardware in a fancy case and custom software, powered by a 733Mhz Pentium 3 processor, 64MB RAM, 8/10GB hard drive, DVD drive, built in ethernet and nVidia graphics chip. This is a large and heavy device.

It was the first console to feature a built in hard drive. However, it isn't for installing games on - like modern consoles, it is for game saves and ripping audio to. 8GB (or 10GB in later models) is plenty for even the biggest gamer and could hold a lot of music as well.

Since buying this XBox I haven’t touched any of my other games devices. There is something amazing about using a simple and dedicated gaming machine. Modern consoles might offer fancier graphics, but they come with a lot of baggage, from having to install games, waiting for large system or games updates and charging wireless controllers.

With the XBox, you plug in a controller, turn it on, put in a disc and you are ready to play in seconds. For a console that is almost 20 years old, the graphics on it stand up very well, even though it doesn’t feature HD graphics.

I have been rocking a selection of games, which is growing very quickly.

Halo is amazing - which I have already completed, Halo 2 is even more fantastic and I am loving classics like Project Gotham Racing 2, Outrun 2, Midtown Madness 3 (an absolute masterpiece of a game) Dead Or Alive 3, XIII, S.W.A.T, Soldier Of Fortune 2 Double Helix, Doom 3 and Doom 3 Resurrection Of Evil (which was an expansion pack for Doom 3, but was released as a stand alone game for the XBox).

As far as I know there were only about a thousand games released for this console, which had a five year life and despite it being fantastic, it doesn’t have the fan base of other consoles. Only 24 million units were sold worldwide which is tiny compared to the 155 million for Playstation 2, however it still outsold the GameCube at 21 million and the Dreamcast at 9 million.

Accessories are expensive, but games are very cheap, however secondhand shops only ever have a few games - yet they have piles of PS2 games.

I am absolutely in love with this games machine. It might be old, it might be heavy and you might have to sit with a controller wire trailing to your console - but the game experience is fantastic.

As with all older consoles they do develop faults. Luckily mine seems to be fault free currently, with the exception of a DVD drawer that sticks occasionally. I have removed the top casing and everything looks tidy in there and it is a 1.6 revision, so one of the later ones. To keep it going I’m going to strip it down and replace the thermal paste on the processor and graphics chip, just to ensure it runs cooler and nicer for longer.

I may not be a Microsoft fan, actually that is an understatement. I own a Mac, cannot stand Windows and detest the XBox 360 and XBox One, but Microsoft got it right with the original XBox. It is an awesome games machine and lead the way for online gaming.

Written by Simon Royal. Follow me at twitter.com/simonroyal

Windows 10 - Almost The Best Version of Windows...

I use Linux for pretty much all of the time, whether it's my Mint 17.2 KDE main desktop or my HP Chromebook 14, (or indeed my Nexus 5 and Motorola Moto G) but there's one thing that I missed and that was the latest and greatest Grand Theft Auto. I decided to get a separate PC to run GTA V and Steam games, so I picked up a cheap HP xw6600 workstation (2.5Ghz quad core Xeon, 4GB RAM, 250GB HDD) that's the exact same model as my main desktop (except my main desktop now has 16GB of RAM and more hard drive space). I installed Windows 8.1 Pro, installed GTA V (using the retail DVDs) and Steam games. I then decided to upgrade to 10 mainly to try it out and get used to it since people have already started asking me whether it is any good or not, and also of course because it is a "free" update, at least as long as you update within a year. 

After many reboots, the update had finished and then I waited for the problems to start, the glitches and the crashes.  But they haven't. So far. Windows 10 boots just as fast as 8.1 did, though I have disabled the hybrid boot mode as my PC was basically hibernating and resuming, and the shutdown took far too long. It now shuts down much faster. Bare in mind I'm using an old 250GB mechanical hard disk. 

I then personalized the desktop a bit, hid the Search bar, and made Chrome default again (seriously Microsoft, it was default in my Windows 8.1 install, why change my preference? Oh yes, to promote Edge browser, which I found to be meh). I was quite happy with the result. I quite like the black taskbar and colours that use hints from my wallpaper, it actually reminds me a little bit of ChromeOS or a dark KDE theme. The login screen actually reminds me of Gnome Shell's login screen, in a bad way! Click to actually see the login box. 

As you can see the Start menu is back, and it's not bad, apart from by default it is filled with Metro tiles that I have no interest in. Even when you remove all the Tiles from the menu, it still stays the same size, wasting screen space. It should resize automatically. you have to manually resize it, like you would a window, grab one edge and drag it. All your apps are in the suitably named All Apps menu in alphabetical order. Anyway it has at least persuaded me not to install a third party start menu. I also have no interest in any of the tablet-like features and Microsoft's app store which basically seems to consist of a few Metro apps and shortcuts to web apps. I have no use for Metro apps on a gaming PC.     

Microsoft has also finally added virtual desktops by default in Windows 10, but they are pretty useless for me compared with those in most Linux desktops, since there's no configurable keyboard shortcuts for them. On KDE, I like to flick quickly between virtual desktops using CTRL + ALT + the Cursor keys. You also cannot reorder the desktops or use different wallpapers for each as you can in OSX and KDE.

Now here's the dark side of Windows 10...

Microsoft have unfortunately made Windows 10 a privacy nightmare, right out of the box. For a bit more privacy you need to disable Wi-fi Sharing, Cortana, Location, Camera Access and other stuff, by following this handy guide on ZDNet, but the problem is, even once you have changed all these settings, Windows 10 sends data to Microsoft, despite privacy settings, which is more than a tad annoying!  

Another area that is causing some problems for some is Windows forced updates which are not disableable on all but the Pro versions, which has caused some users' PCs to fall into a constant upgrade/fail/reboot cycle, though fortunately I have personally not encountered any show-stopping updates, so far. in fact i feel like I'm in the minority of users that hasn't encountered any problems, probably because all I do is play a few games on it. I have not done a fresh install so i can always downgrade to 8.1 if I need to.

Conclusion

So overall I have found Windows 10 to be the best version of Windows so far, but also the worst version in terms of privacy, or rather, the lack of it. And of course when i say "best" i mean "least worst" as after all it is still Windows, it still needs regular updates, it still needs regular scans from the built in antivirus (I am never surprised by all the zero days and security scares) and it still needs to reboot, a lot, and when you're in a hurry it just happens to configure updates on shutdown! In Linux, the only updates that need a reboot are kernel updates, and even that is unnecessary on recent Kernels.

I shall continue using Windows 10 on my gaming rig, but I shall not use it for anything else other than gaming, hence using a separate PC so I don't have to to dual boot. Perhaps one day Rockstar will embrace Steam for Linux so I can remove Windows altogether! In the meantime there has never been a better time to try Linux for those of you who haven't already.

September 2016 Update:

Several months back an update broke Windows 10 and I had to do a fresh install, thankfully this was easy though having to reinstall GTA V from all those DVDs is always a pain! Since then Windows 10 has not given me any trouble, though it still annoys me with trying to schedule updates all the time, and then taking forever to install them on shutdown/startup in that wonderful Windows way! 

HP Stream 11 - A Windows notebook that's not a "Chromebook killer"

So this is Microsoft's answer to Chromebooks, low spec laptops and "Windows 8.1 with Bing" - as if the mere adding of default IE defaulted to Bing search is anything to boast about. I'm sure most sensible users will install either Chrome or Firefox browsers anyway. This is the HP Stream 11 and the build of it looks quite similar to my HP Chromebook 14 but actually feels cheaper in the flesh. It has an 11.6-inch 1366×768 display and 2GB RAM, much like many Chromebooks. It has 2.16 GHz dual-core Intel Celeron N2840 Bay Trail processor, which is somewhat slower than the Haswell CPUs of many Chromebooks.

Some articles have called it a "Chromebook killer" but I think that's far from the truth. Even with it's 32GB SSD, more than most Chromebooks, it only has 17.5GB of free space, which will soon fill up with the detritus from Windows updates and registry bloat, aswell as all those apps the user will install. Advanced users could remove the Windows Restore partition to recover 7.2GB of storage. The user could just install only a few apps or not install any extra apps at all, and just use web apps, but then that would defeat the purpose of getting a Windows laptop, might aswell have bought a Chromebook in the first place. And the hardware with just 2GB RAM is not going to be much fun with anything more than light office work either.

The advantage of a Chromebook is even with meagre hardware it is much quicker than Windows on the same or similar hardware.  And you won't have to worry about intrusive updates (and their many reboots), viruses/malware and there's no overhead of a bloated OS. Even if there is a problem, it takes minutes to wipe the entire OS and restore your Chrome extensions and data. Windows boots in around 30 seconds out the box on the Stream 11, but given time I'd wager that time will only get longer and longer, whereas my Chromebook 14 boots from cold to in use in just 7 seconds, and will stay that way. Not that I often boot mine from cold, I use it all the time, shut the lid and then open it again later and it's connected and working in a second. I actually find it more convenient than waiting for my Nexus 7 to wake up.  

Chromebooks have been a massive hit both in schools and in the consumer market, judging by their appearance in Amazon's best selling laptop list. It is going to take more than cheap hardware and Bing to kill Chromebooks. I would only really recommend buying a HP Stream 11 if you absolutely positively have to use a lightweight native Windows app for something that cannot be done on a Chromebook!

Sources: ZDNet, Arstechnica, Amazon, HP

Windows 9: Microsoft’s Latest Effort to Stay Relevant

Microsoft will announce Windows 8′s successor, codename “Threshold”, at their annual build conference in April this year, and most likely release it as Windows 9 in April 2015.



First a little history lesson. After the poorly received Vista and popular Windows 7, and after having missed the smartphone and tablet boom of the Apple iPad and Google’s Android systems, Microsoft decided to muscle in on the smartphone and tablet market with Windows RT and Phone 8 operating systems. But Microsoft made the big mistake of forcing the Metro (“modern”) interface in Windows 8 onto every platform, including non-touchscreen desktop and laptop computers. This has confused and frustrated a lot of users, no matter how many expensive TV adverts Microsoft put out. Microsoft Surface and Windows Phones have not made much of a dent either.

First Microsoft already has a  minor fix for 8 called 8.1, which merely brings back the Start button as well as some other fixes. This is a mistake since users don’t only miss the Start button, but actually miss the Start Menu too. As I have said before, switching from the touch-friendly Metro to the not very touch friendly desktop and back again feels awkward. Doing that every time I want to search for an application gets old fast! Both Apple and Google have sensibly, generally, kept desktop and mobile devices on separate operating systems (OSX and iOS, ChromeOS and Android) although Android seems to have jumped to all-in-one desktops at CES2014. However Android with it’s many OEMs, is far more flexible than Windows when it comes to custom interfaces. With the right skin, Android could make some inroads into all-in-one or laptop markets.




As Microsoft blogger Paul Thurrott states here, Windows 9 “needs to be everything that Windows 8 is not.” Although nothing has been set in stone yet, it will most likely have a windowed version of Metro that will work better on the desktop. This will supposedly make Metro apps, however few and little-used they are, integrate better into the desktop.

Microsoft’s backtracking fix to Windows basically makes Windows 8/8.1 the new Vista/SP1, but it might be too late for Windows to stay relevant for long. Google Chromebooks have outsold Macbooks in the US, and iPads are still leading tablet sales in the US. With Android dominating smartphones worldwide and making fast inroads into desktops and hybrid laptops, Microsoft Windows seems to becoming increasingly irrelevant. As Thrurrott put it, “Windows 8 has set back Microsoft, and Windows, by years, and possibly for good.” With many home users only needing browser based web apps and social networking sites, a Chromebook or Android desktop/laptop/tablet could be all they need. Even in the usually Windows dominant gaming market, Steam boxes that run Valve’s Linux-based SteamOS could eventually replace Windows once enough games are available in Steam for Linux. In the corporate world, most businesses will probably stick with the familiar Windows 7 until mainstream support for it ends in January 2015 while planning a switch away from Windows to a more secure, flexible platform, be that Chromebook and server based apps, Ubuntu or other desktop Linux, Android or OSX. One thing’s for sure, Microsoft Windows has a treacherous rocky road ahead.

Sources: winsupersite Ibtimes Cnet SteamOS PC World