It’s a quick ten minute episode with Clark and Brandon talking Diablo 3, announcing our contest winner and wondering why they’re here when the lord of hell needs slaying.

We’re back with some Tech Corner, a bit of roundtable PC gaming talk, and an awesome tip. Here goes nothin!

What’s Up At Doghouse Systems?

Our laptop line officially has the new Ivy Bridge processors! Keith is just staggered by the performance of these bad boys. Head over to the Doghouse website to check out the new 3rd Gen Mobius models!

Technical Corner

No specific questions this week, but Keith has some really good advice on diagnosing hard drive issues. Here’s the links he specifically mentioned during the show

chkdsk:  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc730714(v=ws.10).aspx

WesternDigital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for Windows:  http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=613&sid=3&lang=en

Seagate’s SeaTools:  http://seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/

Intel’s Solid-State Drive Toolbox:  http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18455

PC Gaming

TERA, aka The Exiled Realm of Arborea, has been released! There’s been quite a bit of hype about this title among MMO enthusiasts, so if you’re out there and enjoying this, send us a written, audio, or link to a video review! Give it your score out of 100, and we may put it up on the Doghouse Network website!

The Diablo 3 Beta has officially ended! We can’t wait for the full title, and we hope you are too! We’ll have a contest about it later in the show, so keep listening reading for details!

We also have an Interview with James from CarbonGames! Thanks James for the interview!

Computer Tip Of The Week!

We have a great tip about Skydrive from James in Holland this week! Here goes!!

Hello Doghouse!

I have learned so much from your podcast and I thought it might be time to give some back. This is not a super technical tip, but surprisingly few people know of it and I would like to share it with the doghouse community!

Securing your files is always a hot topic and you can never have your family photo etc. to many places! I would like to shed light on the Hotmail Skydrive. With every hotmail account there comes a 25gb free online storage. There is a file size limit off 100 mbt but that can easily be circumvented by winrar/zip. The storage is very easy to manage and operates just like the pathfinder with folders and sub folders. Further more you can share a folder (and all its sub folders) with an email account (doesn’t even have to be hotmail) which is great for photos or documents.

25 gb of free storage that is easily shared is great, but there is more! Along with the storage space skydrive comes with a web based version of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote. The web based version works almost as good as the standard version and it is easy to synchronize both from the web to your computer or from your computer to the web. I personally find having an easily accessible OneNote document available is amazing as i always have a place to put notes/ideas and don’t have to worry about loosing them later.

Though great it is not perfect, over the last 6 months I have only run into two problems but they are easy to fix.

Problem: SkyDrive will only let me upload 1 file at the time.
Fix: If you are using an external device you sometimes have to copy them to the c drive or change the browser in order to be able to transfer more than one file at the time

Problem: I have run out of space
Fix: Create a new Hotmail account

Skydrive has been great for me and I hope some one out there can use it as well!

Contests

We’re announcing our Diablo 3 contest! Want to win a free copy of this amazing upcoming title? All you gotta do is sent us a message to contest@doghousenetwork.com with “Diablo 3″ in the subject line and tell us which of the 5 classes you are most excited to play!

Contact Information

We welcome your feedback, comments, and suggestions! If you would like to submit a question for a future podcast you can leave a message for us at our NEW number, (214) 810-4347 . We are no longer under the 1 minute voicemail cap! Feel free to leave your message and we look forward to using it on the next show We can also be reached by email: podcast@doghousenetwork.com. And don’t forget, we’re giving away free PC games every Friday, and your only way to win is to follow us on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook!

And be sure you check out Eric van Skyhawk’s album, “Function”. Skyhawk is the composer of our theme song, as well as the themes for several other shows like Ladies of Leet. You can get it via iTunes or the Amazon MP3 Store.

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My first character was a Charr Engineer, because I really dug the whole “Mordor with guns” vibe. I found the starting area to be really fresh and engaging compared to any other race’s starting zone from any MMO that I’ve played. The tutorial area alone is a huge battle with NPC’s fighting of dozens and dozens of ghosts, and it even has a boss! The way I went from large battle to large battle really sold the fact that I was playing a race that is in a constant state of war, making it through each day by the skin of their teeth.

After playing some PvE, I thought I’d take a stab at PvP. While the PvE combat as an Engineer was  fairly fun, especially with the amazing gun sound effects, I found myself to be a little helpless in PvP. Guardians and Warriors were too tanky for me to dispatch, and Thieves and Rangers were easily able to outdamage me. It seems to me like Engineer’s niche is a support in a larger group.

Having played a bit of Charr Engineer, I decided I wanted to try out other classes and I settled on a Human Thief, who is now my favorite. Normally I dislike playing humans, because they just don’t look right, but Guild Wars 2 persuaded me at a glance by making their default Thief look like a ninja Sam Fisher. I really liked the character creation, but I understand that some people thought it suffered from a case of sameface. Also, the character creation set my graphics cards on fire despite the rest of the game keeping them fairly cool.

Finishing up my Human Thief, I leapt into the starting area. The Human tutorial, like the Charr’s, was a big battle culminating in a boss fight complete with ads and aoe’s that one shot you if you stood still, making it feel like a level one dungeon boss. I imagine that every zone has these kinds of world bosses, and judging by how many I saw in one zone it should make leveling far more engaging.

Questing did come fairly naturally as I explored. I wound up saving farms from centaur assaults, bandit raids, worm attacks, and slime invasions, just while passing by. While leveling I was trying out different weapon combinations, gravitating towards the Shortbow Thief playstyle, but I wanted to try it out in PvP to get a feel for its max level effectiveness.

PvP was, strangely enough, a great place for me to learn my class as I started off. There is a sort of PvP lobby called “Heart of The Mist”  where you can fiddle with armor, weapons, talents, etc. to really get a feel for it. There are even practice bots representing each class for you to duel against, preparing you for the real thing. Finding a structured PvP match is very intuitive. You get a simple list of servers, not unlike popular multiplayer games such as Counter Strike, and you can choose whichever server you like based on map, player count, and ping. The two maps they had last beta were Forest of Niflhel and Battle of Kyhlo, both of which were fairly similar King of The Hill gametypes with 3 capture points. Notable differences are siege weapons in Kyhlo and minibosses that give buffs and points when defeated in Niflhel.

While structured PvP was fun, I wanted to check out the crown jewel of Guild Wars 2 PvP: World vs. World. WvW takes place over 4 worlds, 3 corresponding to the servers taking part, and one neutral world to be competed over. Each zone is littered with keeps, towers, and supply camps which must be captured to earn points. I spent an entire day in WvW, pushing, retreating, going from battle to battle and world to world. Everywhere I looked there were seiges and skirmishes.

Initially we were fighting against the server Fort Aspenwood, but we were unfortunately decimated with them controlling almost 75% of the map. I later learned that they were the unofficial PvP server. Luckily the servers you’re matched against periodically cycle out, so you never find yourself stuck against a server that’s too strong. The next matchup of servers was more balanced, and we were able to narrowly win.

I spent the last day of the beta mostly in WvW. Our server was pushing towards Stonemist Castle in the center of the Eternal Battlegrounds, which was held by the green team. Every time we pushed to their gates and started damaging them, they would rally and push us back to our gates where we would find a foothold and push them right back. We spent nearly all day in this tug of war match, and apparently they were not only defending from us the blue team, they were also defending from the red team on another front. Eventually I found a glitch (if it actually was a glitch) where I could blink onto the ramparts and taunt the green team into chasing me away from their siege weapons. One Elementalist chased me around the whole castle twice, before I jumped down.

I spent a good while taunting them, until I heard that there was going to be a beta weekend finale event. So I made my way over to the location of this event, admiring how beautiful the cities were and how they lit up at night, especially Lion’s Arch.

The event itself was ridiculous. Rabid raccoons, rabbits, deer, pigs, rats, and giant birds attacked mercilessly for about 2 hours. One guy said in chat “At first I never wanted this beta to end, now I just want it to stop”.  And stop it did, but not without leaving a very good impression on me. I eagerly await the next beta weekend.

Lots of Tech, some fun gaming talk, and the Mobius laptops are back and better than ever! Let’s rock!

What’s Up At Doghouse Systems?

The Mobius ES and TL are back! They feature NVIDIA’s new “Kepler” line of video cards:the GTX 670 and 675 models!

Plus you can now preorder the Armor TL system with NVIDIA’s new GTX 680 video card! This thing is freaking amazing. We anticipate anywhere from 15-20% increased performance in most games! They’re in very short supply and choosing to do so will delay your order by a bit, but the option is there!

Technical Corner

Michael V has a followup on CCleaner – How do you know what to clean/fix? Do you just trust that it knows best?

Nate L is curious about 3D gaming, wanting to know if his existing Samsung TV will work for 3D gaming, and if not, what does he need to look for? Here are the links Keith mentioned in the show

3d vision main page: http://www.nvidia.com/object/3d-vision-main.html
3d vision certified displays http://www.nvidia.com/object/3d-vision-displays.html
games coded specifically for use with 3d vision http://www.nvidia.com/object/3d-vision-games.html

Blu-ray 3D player software links
ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre  http://www.arcsoft.com/totalmedia-theatre/
Corel WinDVD http://www.corel.com/corel/product/index.jsp?pid=prod4090069
CyberLink PowerDVD http://www.cyberlink.com/products/powerdvd/overview_en_US.html?&r=1
Roxio CinePlayer 3D  http://www.roxio.com/enu/products/cineplayer/standard/overview.html

PC Gaming

We cover a wide variety of gaming topics: early MOP Beta thoughts, the new Mass Effect 3 multiplayer DLC, and Patch 1.2 for SWTOR deploying Thursday, April 12th!

Computer Tip Of The Week!

We got a computer tip from Toke! He talks about checking your MAC address restriction settings in your switch/router if you or others are having problems connection to your WiFi. How you get to this setting will vary depending on your individual hardware, but you can generally find your MAC address in a Windows machine by going to the command prompt and typing “/ipconfig all”. For most smartphones, you can usually find this in the phone’s settings options.

For more technical information on MAC Addresses, check out the Wikipedia article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address

Contests

We have a winner for our Mass Effect 3 contest! Zach S sent us in our favorite reason for picking Male Shep! Congrats Zach!

Contact Information

We welcome your feedback, comments, and suggestions! If you would like to submit a question for a future podcast you can leave a message for us at our NEW number, (214) 810-4347 . We are no longer under the 1 minute voicemail cap! Feel free to leave your message and we look forward to using it on the next show We can also be reached by email: podcast@doghousenetwork.com. And don’t forget, we’re giving away free PC games every Friday, and your only way to win is to follow us on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook!

And be sure you check out Eric van Skyhawk’s album, “Function”. Skyhawk is the composer of our theme song, as well as the themes for several other shows like Ladies of Leet. You can get it via iTunes or the Amazon MP3 Store.

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These iGremlins live in the iCloset...

Mass Effect 3 full review, random thoughts on WoW Mists of Pandaria Beta, Lots of tips, and of course, Tech Corner! Let’s do this!!

What’s Up At Doghouse Systems?

We’ve taken the Mobius ES and TL off the site temporarily, but only to prepare for a refresh! The next generation of those models will include the forthcoming Intel Ivy Bridge processors and the 600 Series of Nvidia graphics cards! If you’d like to know more, we’d be happy to tell you as much as we can (still under an NDA on some aspects). Send us an email to sales@doghousesystems.com!

Keep an eye on the site for further announcements!

Technical Corner

Troy just built himself a new rig, and wants to know about overclocking. Should he do it? Is it worth the risk? Keith suggests looking at your graphics processors and making sure they aren’t a bottleneck, but if your CPU is maxing out consistently, you might want to take a look at it! Here are the links that can help get you started

Performance Tuning PDF Guide for Troy’s specific processor
AMD blog on Overclocking processors
Tom’s Hardware forum link 1 – How to Overlock your AMD Processor
Tom’s Hardware Forum Link 2 – AMD Black Edition Overclock Guide

Toke F wants to know what Processor and HDD/SSD would be best for his new rig, which is going to be used for 1080p streaming of Starcraft 2 and 3D Rendering in Autodesk Maya. Here’s his specs

Mobo – Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3, Intel Z68, ATX
CPU – Intel Core i5-2500K Box, LGA1155
CPU cooler – Thermalright HR-02 Macho
GFX – Club 3D Radeon HD 7850, 2048MB GDDR5, AMD Radeon HD 7850, PCI- Express
RAM – 4x4GB GeIL EVO Corsa PC3-14900U CL9-10-9-28 (DDR3-1866)
HDD – SEAGATE Barracuda Green 2TB 5900.3 SATA 3 6Gb/s 64MB 8,9cm (3,5″)
SSD – Crucial M4 128GB SSD 6,4cm (2,5″)
DVD Drive – Samsung SH-222AL bare schwarz SATA
Antec High Current Gamer HCG-750 PSU
Cooler Master HAF 912 schwarz Case

Clark thinks this rig is perfectly awesome for the rendering, but the streaming will depend highly on your upload speeds from your ISP. He recommends checking out http://www.speedtest.net/ and seeing if your upload will be able to handle it.

PC Gaming

The full Mass Effect 3 review is up at Doghouse Network! Click Here to read!

Disagree with Brandon? Want to air your own thoughts on the title? Email us! Podcast@doghousenetwork.com. Or leave comments on the site!

Computer Tip Of The Week!

We got a computer tip from Scyfir, advertising a series of tools for folks with multiple monitors! Take a look at

Also we recommend some spring cleaning….of your computer! Get a can of compressed air and blow out all the dirt and hair out of your system! It might not hurt to do it outside if it’s a nice day, get all the dust out in the great outdoors, not in your home!

We got an email from Tyberiuss, showing off his monitor setup! Here’s his email!

I heard episode #46 about Monitors. Thought I would show you what I've done with my Doghouse stuff.

I used to have a nice office in my dinning room, but when we put the house up for sale, I moved my computer stuff to the basement shop and restored the dinning room.

Here are some pictures of my recent quad-monitor setup …. in my basement shop.

The top two monitors run off a Dell laptop (for work) that you see in a dock on the top shelf of the rack. The bottom two run off the Doghouse desktop. The Doghouse laptop on the right (below turn-table), I use for gaming and work when away from home.

I use a KVM switch (had problems with software alternative) to flip the mouse/keyboard between the upper and lower system. The KVM switch is shown just above the mouse, by the right stand leg. The monitor stand is from Visidec. The footpedal is called a Tapchat (found on Blizz store) that I use for Vent/Mumble.

I wanted to use a DVI Matrix to flip the upper and lower displays, but its hard to justify the $500 for that right now.

I’m still fiddling with where I want stuff placed, and when we sell the house, I’ll get my formal office and executive desk back…….and have to do this all again.

Contests

We’re giving away a copy of Mass Effect 3 to go along with our review! All you have to do is email contest@doghousenetwork.com and tell us if you prefer Male Shepard or Female Shepard and why! The best, most creative response will win a copy of Mass Effect 3!

Contact Information

We welcome your feedback, comments, and suggestions! If you would like to submit a question for a future podcast you can leave a message for us at our NEW number, (214) 810-4347 . We are no longer under the 1 minute voicemail cap! Feel free to leave your message and we look forward to using it on the next show We can also be reached by email: podcast@doghousenetwork.com. And don’t forget, we’re giving away free PC games every Friday, and your only way to win is to follow us on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook!

And be sure you check out Eric van Skyhawk’s album, “Function”. Skyhawk is the composer of our theme song, as well as the themes for several other shows like Ladies of Leet. You can get it via iTunes or the Amazon MP3 Store.

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Mass Effect 3 promises to deliver what longtime fans of the series have hoped for since the beginning: an epic war against the Reapers, and on that front, it certainly delivers. Right off the bat you gain firsthand experience of just how much of an obstacle you have to overcome, and just how bad this war is going to be. Lots of people die, and you have to leave Earth behind to get additional support in order to do what the ads say: Take Earth back. This forms the goal of the game: Recruit enough War Assets to have a chance to win this thing, in the form of various races, governments, independant organizations, and more. How much support you get will determine how well you do in the war, and thus what kind of ending you end up with. You do have some “mandatory” allies you have to recruit, mostly the major races such as the Turians and Krogan, but how strong they are will be very dependant on the choices you make during your missions. Make good ones, and you’ll gain strong allies. Make bad ones, and you’ll get substantially weaker ones or lose the potential ally altogether.

Right off the bat you also experience one of the major sources of complaint surrounding the game: iffy facial animations, or so the detractors claim. For my own personal experience, the most egrigious problem I noticed wasn’t that the animations were bad, but they were out of sync with the voices in several key areas. It was not constant, but when you saw it, it was noticable. The animations themselves were perfectly fine, but BioWare should have spent a little more time getting those more lined up.

Gameplay does not differ that much from the second title, but further refinements have been introduced, including combat rolling and a new Melee system incorporating the now-famous “Omni-blade”. It’s still primarily a cover based third-person shooter with the addition of powers, you can still pause the battle to issue orders to your squadmates and take stock of the situation, and the familiar controls to move your squad around the battle are still in place. If you played the second game at all, you’ll feel right at home and ready to pick up the new mechanics to add to your repetoire.

The game’s storyline is, for the most part, extremely well done, and very satisfying. Shepard must run around the galaxy and attempt the unite them into a single force against the Reapers, and thus many of the outstanding storylines will be resolved as the player attempts to do just that. Many of the past decisions made during the past two games have lasting reprecussions, possibly even restricting some of the storyline options available to you. It’s a good incentive to go back into the previous titles, play them differently, and see what might have changed in the third game (or at the very least, download a save file where someone had already done that). Nearly every leftover plot thread will be explored and resolved in some fashion. The Morality system has been revised as well. Instead of seperate Paragon and Renegade scores, Shepard now has a single “Reputation” meter, which both Paragon and Renegade scores feed into. There are also “neutral points” simply called Reputation. These points do not affect Shepard’s Paragon or Renegade scores, but merely represent his increasing reknown in the Galaxy at large. They are usually awarded after completing missions, but can also be awarded through some dialogue choices that don’t necessarily warrant either a Paragon or Renegade response.

All of this comes to a head in perhaps the game’s biggest controversy: the ending. Unless you haven’t really paid attention to any news surrounding the game, you’re likely aware of the huge outcry from fans surrounding this. BioWare has even responded claiming that a new ending is in the works, resulting in even more outcry from people who felt the ending was fine or that this sets a bad precedent for artistry of all sorts: If fans don’t like a work, they should complain loudly enough and force the artist to change it. Whether that is true or not is not for this review to decide, what is for us to say is what we felt about the ending. This reviewer’s opinion is that it is bad, very bad, for a lot of reasons, most of which cannot be gone into without spoiling everything. Ultimately, this can be said: It’s an extremely unsatisfying way to end a series that has given us so many amazing moments, be they exciting, heartfelt, or just awesome in general. Think about all the incredible things you’ve done in this game. The ending should live up to all of them, and it does not. Your choices do make a difference, but only in the most vague way possible. In the first two games, your choices had a direct effect on what happened to you in the game’s end. That is not the case here. Hopefully, BioWare will give Mass Effect 3 the send-off it truly deserves.

What? I can't be a Krogan Engineer? Laaaaame!

One of Mass Effect 3′s most touted features is it’s new Multiplayer. This, of course, is yet another source of controversy from fans, who claim BioWare has turned their favorite Space RPG series into another Call of Duty-fest. This isn’t entirely fair, though parts of the complaint do have merit. For one thing, there is no “Deathmatch” mode in this multiplayer. The only game mode preset is akin to Halo’s Firefight. You team up with up to three other players to survive waves of enemies that assault you. Survive 10 waves plus a final extraction wave, and you win the match. Three of the 10 waves will be objective based, requiring you to complete the assigned objective in a certain timeframe in addition to surviving. This mode ties into the single player by increasing your “Galactic Readiness” rating every time you win a match, which serves as a multiplier to your War Assets to determine which of the endings you get to choose from. Shepard will also see every one of the multiplayer maps in the single player game as well, and after completing the side mission there, it will be mentioned that further teams will be sent in to the locations to keep them secure, giving you an storyline reason for your multiplayer games. This is a particularly neat little addition that not many games bother with, and I liked seeing it.

You’ll earn credits for each game that you complete, be it a success or failure, and those credits can be spent for “packs” in the multiplayer store (you can also spend BioWare points for them as well). These packs include supplies for your missions, new weapons to use, or new race/class combinations to use, which brings us to my main issue with the multiplayer. You start out being able to play any of the game’s classes, but only as humans. To unlock any of the alien races, you have to buy the packs through the store, and frankly, hope you get lucky. The classes aren’t identical to their single player counterparts either. Each one only has three active powers, plus the passive “Class training” power and Fitness. Each race has a different set of active powers as well. Human Adepts, for example, come with Warp, Singularity, and Shockwave. The Asari Adept can use Warp, Stasis, and Throw. There’s no option for retraining them, either. Once you make your choice, you’re stuck with it until you level the character to 20 (allowing you the chance to “promote” them, which resets them back to level 1 but grants you a War Asset in the Singleplayer), or that you get lucky and get a Retraining item from one of your item packs. I personally find the class system to be a little too restricting, and would prefer if all of the alien races were available right from the start, and a more reliable method for retraining a character, such as spending credits directly to do so. This would give players more freedom to experiment with various builds rather than feeling stuck. Still, it’s a very fun system to play in, and I’m glad they didn’t go the traditional “Deathmatch” route, which in my experience leads to far too many instances of bad player behavior. Sticking to a cooperative setting encourages players to help each other out and work together. I do wish they’d given us a wider variety of objectives to fulfill or perhaps some other cooperative game modes, because after a while, you do find yourself longing for a bit of variety. It’s likely we’ll get some new modes or maps in the future as DLC, but the question remains as to when and how much we’ll be expected to pay for it.

And that brings us to that elephant in the room that BioWare is oh-so-well known for (and in many cases, reviled for), DLC. Mass Effect 3 was released on Day 1 with available DLC content, which primarily includes a new character that many consider essential to the storyline. Detractors are using this as clear evidence, on top of BioWare’s longstanding practice on DLC, that all they are interested in is money, and will compromise the integrity of their titles to extort more cash out of players to getting the “full” game experience. Frankly, I have to admit, it’s a pretty shady decision on their part. The new character isn’t “essential” to the game’s story as you might expect, but you DO miss on a lot of really interesting story elements by not having him around, and it’s clear this content was developed alongside the game, because he has many interactions with other main characters, which was not the case in ME2, where the DLC characters never interacted with anyone but Shepard. It really does not speak highly of BioWare as a company to do this, but I don’t consider it gamebreaking to not have this DL, so I can’t give BioWare as much of a negative for this as some might want. The true test of BioWare as a company will be whether or not they charge players for this new ending they’re developing, or they will make it a free download to all.

All in all, Mass Effect 3 is not a bad game. The journey up until the ending was an incredible experience, well written and acted, with only a bad ending to ruin it, something that BioWare has already promised to correct. The multiplayer, despite the restrictions, is still fun to partake in. But it isn’t near as free of problems as its predecessor. BioWare made some bad calls with this game, and it hurts the final rating. If you’re a long time Mass Effect fan, you should pick this up and see where it goes, and if you’re not, well, you should definitely at least pick up the second game and play through it before grabbing this one.

At a glance
A truly epic conclusion to the Mass Effect series with great gameplay improvements over the second title and a brilliantly crafted storyline which is ruined by a shoddy ending that will hopefully be a thing of the past soon. The multiplayer experience is a lot of fun, if a bit restricting on class choice, but suffers from repetition after a time. Finally, because of BioWare’s shady DLC practice, expect to continue to invest in Mass Effect 3 if you want to enjoy the whole experience.

Who needs Ergonomics when you have Information!

Early thoughts on Mass Effect 3, setting up multiple monitors, contest winner and more! Let’s get started!

What’s Up At Doghouse Systems?

Nothing new to report, yet, but we do have some things in the pipe that we’re excited to show you soon! In the meantime, we’re having a great month and we want to thank you, our fans, for it!

Technical Corner

We’ve had multiple questions come in about multiple monitors. Keith loves having a ton of those, in fact, we have a picture of his setup below! Listen to the show for exact details, but it’s really a lot easier than you might think

Keith's office. Totally awesome

PC Gaming

Brandon’s still trying to work his way through Mass Effect 3, so the full review will be showing up here soon! In the meantime, listen to the show to hear early thoughts on graphics, storytelling, the Multiplayer, and general presentation! Go forth and ally the galaxy to fight the Reapers!!

Computer Tip Of The Week!

Still no tips this week from the audience! You guys do know you get 2500 gold to spend at Jinx.com if you submit a tip to us and we use it, right? So send those tips in and get your awesome swag!

Contests

We have a winner in our Minecraft Contest! Aiden F sent us this very awesome creation of the Doghouse logo from within the game itself! He receives the very awesome Creeper Head and Creeper Inside t-shirt! Congrats Aiden!

It's awesome to know we can still be around when the 8-bit apocalypse happens!

Contact Information

We welcome your feedback, comments, and suggestions! If you would like to submit a question for a future podcast you can leave a message for us at our NEW number, (214) 810-4347 . We are no longer under the 1 minute voicemail cap! Feel free to leave your message and we look forward to using it on the next show We can also be reached by email: podcast@doghousenetwork.com. And don’t forget, we’re giving away free PC games every Friday, and your only way to win is to follow us on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook!

And be sure you check out Eric van Skyhawk’s album, “Function”. Skyhawk is the composer of our theme song, as well as the themes for several other shows like Ladies of Leet. You can get it via iTunes or the Amazon MP3 Store.

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RSS Feed

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Okay okay, here’s Keith’s actual setup….

If you look on the far left you'll see one of his cats...

Given my owning several computers I knew any tablet purchase would be very superfluous. For me it would be a convenient means of reading in bed, watching Netflix, enjoying social media and playing some games. Originally I was tempted to stay Android and wanted an Asus Transformer Prime. But in the end, it was and still is a convenience and a toy.

The Prime is an amazing tablet and its keyboard docking station is elegant. Touch screen typing is far from enjoyable and given my propensity to exchange long e-mails with several friends the seamless docking keyboard on the Prime was a major selling point. In an attempt to be as informed a consumer as possible I looked into keyboard options for the iPad. None held the ascetic appeal of the Asus keyboard but there were many that were good enough.

Thus with the keyboard decisions largely mitigated it all came down to Apps. Like I mentioned in part one, I enjoy rooting for the underdog. I want the little guy to succeed. But, having been disappointment by the Android market place offerings time and time again I found myself drawn to Apple’s App Store. Once I realized how many App Store offerings appealed to me there was no turning back. After a little more research to confirm that I was making the correct decision for me, I bought an iPad 2.

So that’s that. And now the iPad 3 comes out next week. Anyone want to buy an iPad 2?

AAAAAAaaaaaaAAAAAAAH!

Lots of great stuff this episode, including some Tech Corner questions, a couple of fun contests, and more! Let’s get started!

What’s Up At Doghouse Systems?

The Armor SS is returning to the DHS lineup very soon! Listen in to hear a preview of just how amazingly decked out this system will be!

The amazing folks over at iRacing are giving away a customized Armor ES! Head on over here for contest details and a preview of this stunning machine!

Technical Corner

Travis is looking for the best upgrade for his Dell XPS 720. He’s looking into getting some RAM to maximize performance in BF3 and SWTOR. It turns out he has 2 different DIMMS in his machine. Keith recommends getting the exact same models to fill his slots. The memory he was looking at isn’t available on Newegg, but it can be bought directly from Crucial here.
ttp://www.crucial.com/search/searchresults.aspx?keywords=CT799182#

We also have a link to the manual for Travis’ machine which should give him all the help he needs in making the upgrade (Hint: It’s on page 90, Travis!)

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/xps720/en/OM_EN/NP756A00.zip

Michael asked in the comments of DHN what the best method for getting internet while traveling was. We had a number of recommendations, most of them involving getting access via cellular data networks. Listen to the show for our specific recommendations!

PC Gaming

Well, it turns out only Brandon’s been doing much gaming this week, but we do have some good reviews coming in the future!

Also, we’re putting out a call for our fans! We want to hear your thoughts on two topics

1. Dear Esther. Brandon has heard wildly divergent views, and is interested in getting opinions from our fans. Is it an awesome piece of work that proves videogames really can be art, or is it a poor excuse for a game that is too artisitc for its own good? Or something in between? Write or record your thoughts and send them to us!

2. TERA Online. If you were in the recent weekend beta, we’d love to get your thoughts on this future competitor in the MMO space!

If you have a written or recorded review of either topic, send it to podcast@doghousenetwork.com!

Computer Tip Of The Week!

What? No tips this week? Did you guys forget that you get 2500 Jinx.com gold if you send us a tip and we use it on the show? You like free money for Jinx.com don’t ya? Cause man, we do.

In the meantime, Clark loves CCleaner, and after you get this amazing piece of free software (here) and see how well it cleans all the junk files and registry entries off your system, we think you will too!

Contests

We have a new contest to announce! You’ll hear more about this on our Facebook and Twitter accounts, but for podcast listeners, you can get in early!

We want you to go into Minecraft and build a replica of the Doghouse Systems logo! Send us a screenshot and the winner will receive two very awesome pieces of Jinx Minecraft gear: The Creeper Head and the Creeper Inside t-shirt!

Contest will run at least two weeks, so get to building!

Contact Information

We welcome your feedback, comments, and suggestions! If you would like to submit a question for a future podcast you can leave a message for us at our NEW number, (214) 810-4347 . We are no longer under the 1 minute voicemail cap! Feel free to leave your message and we look forward to using it on the next show We can also be reached by email: podcast@doghousenetwork.com. And don’t forget, we’re giving away free PC games every Friday, and your only way to win is to follow us on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook!

And be sure you check out Eric van Skyhawk’s album, “Function”. Skyhawk is the composer of our theme song, as well as the themes for several other shows like Ladies of Leet. You can get it via iTunes or the Amazon MP3 Store.

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