While we’re keeping the site itself going as an archive, links and email addresses may not work anymore. You also won’t be able to login.

Given the atrocious amount of spam we’ve accumulated via e-mail, we no longer have any working rabidhardware.net e-mail addresses.

If you’re looking to get a hold of us, you can find a new e-mail address for me (Ben) at MindsMostBroken. I’ll forward the e-mail along to it’s intended recipient.

Thanks to everybody who’s followed and supported the site these past 4.5 years. We couldn’t have done it without ya.

Here are some words (and phrases) of parting from the staff…

So I’ve recently been informed that RH is being shut down for good. While I haven’t contributed to the site in a very very long time, when I look back it still puts a smile on my face. Various friendships were created (and at least as many destroyed) just through the existence of this site. Getting feedback on articles, and scoring sponsorships with companies are only a small part of the highlights of writing for this website.

When I look back I think about staying up late, drinking beer, and artistically destroying computer cases with the rest of the RabidHardware gang. I think about electrocuting a computer and throwing it off the back of a moving truck for the sake of science (also known as the strong hatred for a particularly shit computer brand). I chuckle when I think about the ridiculous articles written by Ben, using peanut butter for better thermal transfer.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to and end, or something. RH has been a hell of a ride, and at the very least left me with 2 great friendships. I had a riot writing articles for the site, and appreciate all the support and criticism we received for writing about a hobby the three of us shared.

Thanks!
[b]Niels AKA Profezzor BoB[/b]

This is going to be the sixth time that I’ve attempted to write something about RH being shutdown and the second time that I’ve opened with this line. What does that tell you? A serious lack of motivation? Perhaps, or maybe it solidifies the decision that RH should be put into a permanent state of archive. Either way, the long, exciting, but somewhat tumultuous ride is over.

With that said there are definitely no regrets with the direction we took RH and the things that we did. I had the chance to make many great friends over the five yearsish that we had this site going and while some of those friendships have faded with my interest in computing others(Ben, Niels) have grown into relationships that I’m sure will last a lifetime.

I will fondly remember the time spent in IRC with the entire RH gang arguing about who was going to fold more protein units this week and/or if a blue led looks prettier than a red led. I will also remember the many fantastic death threats that Ben’s articles tended to invite, whether it be for the thermal paste article, or the keyboard and mouse watercooling adventure he seemed to have that knack for encouraging homicidal computer geeks to send him e-mail.

Other fantastic memories include the first time an RH article got slashdotted and effectively brought our poor host to a screeching halt. Various drunken debacles including Frag 2k2 and being late for my sister’s wedding (sorry Tara! haha), destroying the once great Acer case, and most importantly the many Boston Pizza team pitcher adventures that Niels, Ben and I embarked upon. God bless those giant containers of goodness.

I believe it’s time to close this rant off, so although you likely won’t see activity from RH again I’d like to thank all involved for the good times and the bad.

Take it easy, and always remember that beer is proof that god loves you and wants you to be happy.

[b]Matt AKA Rabbitfacedkilla[/b]

Well, here we are. RH is history and I’m writing this little piece to reflect on my time here. All I can say is I’m glad to have been a part of RabidHardware.

While this site and it’s readers have been a most tolerant outlet for my nonsensical creations, it has also allowed me to make some great friendships along the way, both on line and off. At the risk of sounding geeky, my trip out west for Fragapalooza 2002 was a major turning point for me at the time, though not so much for the event itself so much as it gave me an opportunity to see many new places, as well as meet the rest of the RabidHardware staff in the flesh.

For me, writing for RH wasn’t about the occasional free stuff you’d get for reviewing, but the feedback I got on articles as well as the people I connected with made this site more enjoyable then anything else I’ve previously been involved with online.

Now this doesn’t have to be farewell, so much as until we me meet again. Matt and I are working on a new site that allows us to move in new directions without the restrictions of an affiliated tech site. If you’ve enjoyed our brand of humour here, you may want to check out [url=http://www.mindsmostbroken.com]idle thoughts from minds most broken[/url] as well. (Isn’t that terrible, dropping a semi-plug into a farewell note?)

At any rate, I’ve had a wicked time here. Thanks for these last few years.

Cheers,
[b]Ben AKA Doc[/b]

Also, as we’ve started integrating the new forum system, Private Messaging is now available! Of course, you need to have an account to use them, so
[url=index.php?u=register]register[/url] already!

And now, the news….

Before this beast I had a Samsung n370. Not a terrible phone, mind you. A little bulky and dated compared to today’s offerings (the Treo is roughly the same size, save for a little wider). It had two colours – Black on Blue. It didn’t support email capability and entering text into the thing was like humping a cactus. As the antenna on my particular unit broke (hehe), sound quality ranged from the non-existent to something akin to scouring my ear canal with a wire brush.

Suffice to say, I’m glad I got the Treo. I also carried around a Handspring Visor for the longest time and It was nice to actually find something that could take the place of both devices. Unlike many geeks, I don’t care to have 17 bits of electronics hanging out of every pocket, so the smaller the better. Hell, the thing even has a cheapie digicam built into it, for those interesting little life occurences that really don’t necessitate a real camera.

The e-mail capabilities of the treo are stellar. While not a big fan of Dingleberry pagers (or the zealots that comprise most of their fan base), I always though having e-mail like that would be a great option, especially since I’m on the road as often as off. The Versamail client works quickly and efficiently, and you can limit email size and/or attachments if you’re worried about data usage.

Now I’ve only had the thing for a few days, but I’ve already got a bunch of nifty apps dropped into it that others may like…

[url=http://www.agilemobile.com/agile_messenger.html]Agile Messenger[/url] (Freeware) – An IM client that supports all the popular networks.

[url=http://diddlebug.sourceforge.net]DiddleBug[/url] (Freeware) – A post-it-note like app with plenty of extras like alarms and data linking.

[url=http://software.palminfocenter.com/product.asp?id=7587]Life as I see it[/url] (Freeware) – A wee journalling app very similar to Palm’s notes app, except entries are automatically datestamped, and the whole thing can be password protected.

[url=http://www.tussh.com]TuSSH[/url] (Freeware) – A fantastic SSH/telnet client with a tonne of options. Works great for those impromptu server logins

[url=http://www.smittyware.com/palm/upirc]UpIRC[/url] (Shareware) – Not a bad little IRC client. Supports DCC Chat, auto completion and all that good stuff.

[url=http://www.normsoft.com/products/palm/trafficstat/]TrafficStat[/url] (Shareware) – This little gem keeps track of data usage, which is perfect as most folks pay by the MB for bandwidth.

[url=http://palmvnc2.free.fr/]PalmVNC[/url] (Freeware) – I was surprised how well VNC works on the Treo. Of course I imagine prolonged use would drain your data allowance considerably. Speaking of remote control apps…

[url=http://mytreo.net/downloads/details-1028.html?EzRemote]EzRemote[/url] (Shareware) – A MS RDP (Remote Desktop/Terminal Services) client for the Palm.

[url=http://www.motionapps.com/products.jsp?msafe]mSafe[/url] (Shareware) – A lockout app that augment’s the built-in Palm security panel. With mSafe, not only do you get more configurability out of local lockout, but with a short little SMS message, you can lock it out by remote if the phone was misplace or (gasp) stolen. This ain’t all, mind you! You can also SMS a self-destruct message which will wipe out all your data (including optionally anything on an expansion card), and randomizes your lockout password. This way, while they may have the phone, they won’t have any of your little secrets. Your skeletons will be (relatively) safe!

Last but now least, there’s [url=http://tcpmp.corecodec.org/about]TCPMP[/url], a freeware media player that supports an assload of audio and video formats. Plays movies pretty good too, even though It really is a strain trying to watch one off a cell phone If you just can’t resist anyway, [url=http://vemode.corecodec.org/]VEMoDe[/url] does a pretty good job at compressing movies for mobile devices and what not.

Anywho, that just about does it for now. The only other thing I’d recommend from the very start is that you get a large SD card for expansion, as the treo sports less then 19 megs of free space, which can fill up all too quickly if you like to play. A 2 gig card ran me about $35cdn at the time of writing.

All in all, the Palm Treo 650 is a great lass.

- There’s now a search function to the left you can use to look through any old news posts and articles

- Comments are now enabled for all posts (including articles), if you wish to leave your two cents

- The site now smells like freshly baked cookies. If you don’t have smellavision(tm), you’re outta luck, sorry!

If you see any falling debris, give us a shout! Oh yeah, and be on the lookout for some new articles VERY shortly

So being the weak willed person I am, and excited at the prospect of playing a brand new game with a good group of friends, I immediately rushed out to Walmart and picked up a copy of the game. Needless to say I was impressed with the $48 CND pricetag and excited by the promise of “Immersive, and groundbreaking online group play.”. Already having peed myself with excitement I rushed home to put on a new pair of pants and install the game.

The feeling of glee subsided when I began installing the game. Like many other MMO’s these days DDO comes on 4 very pretty looking discs. The install process was fairly simply, but it choked on Disc 3 a couple of times for whatever reason. Once I cleaned Disc 3 a few times it seemed to get past it’s issues and installed the rest of the game. Time spent installing? 2 hours.

Now if you think I’ve been a bit on the negative side so far, just wait. Consider this a warning to all those D&D fans out there, although I’m a huge fan of Turbine I think they shit the proverbial bed on this game.

[h2]First Impressions[/h2]

Now I definately don’t have the fastest and/or greatest gaming rig these days (upgrade coming soon) as I’m still a member of that barton 2500+ w/ radeon 9xxx series and 2gb of ram gang, so I wasn’t expecting a whole lot graphically out of the game. That being said I also wasn’t expecting the giant graphic lagfest on even the lowest settings at 1280×1024.

Once you load up the DDO launcher screen, which is eerily similar to the WoW prelaunch screen (you know, the one where they advertise everything and you have to click the play button), you are asked to select a preferred server. There are no explanations as to what each server contains, the player count or the response times of each server, and when you do select a server there is no indication that you’ve picked it other than that it highlights your selection (ie; no check box or anything else). Once finished with the server selection you are allowed to load the game world and create your character.

Once you’ve waited through the lengthy load times the first thing you experience is the long but fairly entertaining cutscene that explains your background in the game world. The jist of it is that you were at war with someone in a far away land, the war is over and you’re looking for something to do so you fall into being an adventurer. Hmmmm, sounds kind of like most generic fantasy introductions to me. The cutscene continually switches back and forth between rendered and ingame footage and lags accordingly.

By the time I was finished being mildly entertained by the content and laginess of the introduction I was faced with the daunting character creation screen. For a non hardcore D&D player such as myself this screen can be fairly scary, I found the interace to be very clunky and lacking some of the basic explanations you would expect for certain things.

There are the standard sets of D&D player classes as the game is based on the D&D ruleset, but there is no real explanation of each attribute, skill, or feat other than your basic statement of the obvious. For example, a skill such as Power Attack was accompanied by an outstanding explanation of “A powerful attack that causes more damage than a standard attack”. Wow! What an awesome statement of the obvious, I bet they had to work really hard on that one!

Anyhow, once you’ve selected your character class, in my case a fighter, you’re given the opportunity to define his appearance. This interface is even clunkier than the last! I mean what ever happened to being able to define the height of your character (within limits of course) or use something like EA’s game face technology to at least come out with a face that isn’t completely generic. There was such a lack of real combinations that you end up with an avatar that is fairly laughable. But once I’m through the character creation screen I can finally play this wonderful game! Wrong. You must first sift through so me more bullshit on your way to what is perhaps the worst part of the game, the game world itself.

[h2]Gameplay[/h2]

I want to say something nice about this game, really I do. It has a very unique combat style and some fairly neat requirements as far as party strategy are concerned when in battle, but the engine is such a hog that it nullifies all of these positives.

Sluggish game engine problems aside, the gameplay [i]is[/i] quite refreshing. The questing in this game isn’t what you see typically in other MMO’s in that it doesn’t seem to be a huge grindfest. In some quests rather than fighting your way through huge hordes of creatures in order to defeat some ominous final boss you fight your way through a few groups of fairly skilled creatures and are encountered with very classic D&D style traps or puzzles to realize the final goals of the quest.

The combat system is another refreshing plus that DDO offers players. Rather then the typical *click* …wait… *click* structure that you see in most modern MMO’s, DDO throws back to the days of a D2 style direct interaction combat system. This definately helps to add to the excitement factor as once again clicking my mouse button actually directly and immediatley effects the battle at hand.

Another nifty element that Turbine managed to throw into the mix, that I’m sure most of you D&D folk would most definately appreciate is an ambient Dungeon Master. I call it an Ambient DM as the sound content is static and you can’t actually interact with the DM but the voice is there to give you hints about your surroundings. The voice actor they chose to do the DM was absolutely spot on, he adds an ambience to the game that as a player you definately learn to appreciate. Whether simply describing your surroundings or dropping subtle hints about varioust traps, secret doors, or other nifty game elements Turbine has an excellent feature on their hands that I hope to see them continue to build on.

Unfortunately, although Turbine managed to incorporate a fairly exciting combat system, a unique DM element, and other fancy features it almost seems as if they forgot about certain character classes. The first thing you will notice with any basher type of character is that there is a staggering lack of skills/feats for these types of classes. I realize that there is only so many things that a person can do while swinging a large, blunt, object at another piece of flesh but for gods sake you’d think a team of professional game designers would have the ability to add some sort of variety to the situation.

Although some of the gameplay elements have been fairly well done I think the largest gaping hole left in the entire game is the complete lack of PVP. There is no possible way that this feature didn’t cross the design teams mind. What modern, popular game nowadays that is worth a damn doesn’t afford the players an option of shooting, maiming, torturing and oblitering their fellow players? I do realize that for the D&D purist PVP was never in the ruleset but a good DM should’ve been able to incorporate PVP elements if desired. In DDO it’s as if they simply ignored PVP or perhaps pretended it wasn’t an option.

I guess the only way to really sum up the gameplay in DDO is with a big giant question mark. I’m really undecided as to whether or not I should’ve enjoyed the experience or felt cheated by some of the gaping holes that Turbine left in the game I think for now I’m just going to pretend that it didn’t happen.

[h2]Graphics / Sound[/h2]

Now earlier I managed to rant pretty hard on the incredible slug that the game engine seems to be. The hardware that I used really isn’t [i]that[/i] pathetically out of date and yet it managed to bring the system to a grinding hault. The fact that it did happen would lead us to the obvious conclusion that with some really modern hardware the game should really kick some serious ass in the graphics department. As dissapointment seems to be the flavor of the day I’m going to have to say no to that one as well. One can browse through screenshot galleries from various different gaming websites and still not see anything out of this world. If I was to compare DDO’s attempt at graphics to another popular MMO I would have to say that the game it most tries to resemble is EQ2, and I think it’s safe to say the EQ2 does a better job anyhow.