Forums > Social Discussion > Microsoft money grabbers

Posted: 7th Dec 2008
Pfffft.

you think that's bad?

Look at Sony.

The existance of flamethrowers says that someone, somewhere, at sometime said "I need to set that thing on fire, but it's too far away."

Posted: 7th Dec 2008
well yeh but at least with sony u can gurantee it will blow up in the first couple of weeks with microsoft it will wait until its a week over its guarntee

he he i am mike the amazing gloscircus person who is mike.

Officaly an exception to the Poi Boys are Girls Thing

Posted: 7th Dec 2008
well yeh but at least with sony u can gurantee it will blow up in the first couple of weeks with microsoft it will wait until its a week over its guarntee

he he i am mike the amazing gloscircus person who is mike.

Officaly an exception to the Poi Boys are Girls Thing

Posted: 7th Dec 2008
You know, this is not something I have ever heard anyone complain about before. The majority of gamers I know would never want their console on wireless anyway, because they ant the best connection while playing. I imagine Microsoft thought the same, people even refuse to use wireless mice and keyboards so there's one less variable to go wrong during a game.

I dunno, I figure by now everyone knew you pay a fee for XBox live functionality. It's also not unreasonable, it requires server usage that requires maintenance and upkeep, because unlike other PC games I don't believe people are hosting them off their consoles. Just like people pay a monthly fee for MMORPGs, it's because the original company has to do more than just make the game, they have to actively keep it working.

Posted: 7th Dec 2008
i understand the paying a subscription and agree with it.... I just dont agree with the having to buy add ons like the adaptor. Because its basicly wanting you to pay for the adaptor to pay the subscription to play the game you have payed for seems a bit silly really.

Personaly i never had a problem with wireless devices etc but i can see your point for relibilty but for us casual gamers wireless adaptors are a must is a must as it is the thing which will hold the 360 because in the current times people will not want to shell out £50 for a adaptor which they could easily put into the machine in production for a lower cost.
EDITED_BY: MikefromGlos (1228683033)

he he i am mike the amazing gloscircus person who is mike.

Officaly an exception to the Poi Boys are Girls Thing

Posted: 8th Dec 2008
What kind of crossover cable d'you need to buy that costs £100?

I can kind of see why they don't build one into every xbox - Either they sell them cheap and make people who want wireless spend extra, or they sell them with wireless for more money and potentially lose sales.
They'll certainly have picked the option that's likely to make them the most money overall.

But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

Posted: 8th Dec 2008
Ha, good spot Bov, I was readying myself to comment on the price of that cable but you beat me too it.

If you even consider paying £100 for a cross-over cable Microsoft are the least of your worries...

Posted: 8th Dec 2008

£100 for a crossover cable? I could make you one as long as you want for the price of a postage stamp. Someone has incorrectly told you this.

It's the same with the old Xbox
Plays DVDs, but in order to watch them, you had to buy the DVD remote control.

Microsoft have ALWAYS (yes, all two of them!) sold their consoles at a loss. They make the money back on the games.


Regarding the wireless controlers, they run on a totally different setup to WiFi, so you cannot say that they already had wireless controllers so why do they not have wireless internet access.

Can you not just use a bog-standard USB WiFi adapter (you can pick these up for about a tenner) to connect?

Posted: 8th Dec 2008
I have a few of em laying around because one comes with every modem or router I've gotten.

Posted: 9th Dec 2008
as i recall xbox controllers were just usb cables with stupid shaped plugs, a friend just cut off the xbox plug and wired on his own usb plug so he could use it on his pc.

perhaps the same scenario is possible with their retarded crossover cables?

yeah the whole obsolete technology and incomplete packages getting sold to us in order to create an constant need for consumption really pisses me off about technology.

"but have you considered there is more to life than your eyelids?"

jointly owned by Fire_Spinning_Angel and Blu_Valley

Posted: 9th Dec 2008
Our two 360's are plugged into our router and a network switch respectively. Standard network cables are all you need.

My biggest gripe with the 360 is that it wont play wav files over a network. You can play them from the colsole itself but not streamed from elsewhere. All of the other computers I've ever tried are capable of this (even with 2 wireless stages in the process) but the xbox cant do it over cables.

Posted: 9th Dec 2008
OMG what dorks.

-Mike

Certified Mad Doctor and HoP High Priest of Nutella



A buckuht n a hooze! -Valura

Posted: 9th Dec 2008
Yup - I don't do compressed music. Someone has sat in a studio and created a wav file and I want to hear what they have created.

Its not like storage or bandwidth are limited any more so why store music as anything else?

(unless you want to stream it through your xbox of course)

Posted: 10th Dec 2008
Mike - you don't need a crossover cable, you just need a standard network cable, and you can use your laptop as a gateway. This is exactly how I've got mine set up, and it works like a dream, especially for media sharing from your pc to your xbox.

Set it up like this: Get your pc online, and plug your xbox into your laptops ethernet port. Make sure they're both switched on.
Then, go to your network connections on the laptop. Hold the shift key and click the wireless adapter and the local area connection, so they're both highlighted. Right click one of the highlighted connections and select "bridge connections".

Thats it. You can now get Xbox live, share media between your pc and your xbox, and get media center if you have a media centre enabled pc.

I have no complaints with the xbox 360, it's an awesome bit of kit, and has quality games. The only thing I want to see is MS releasing a blu-ray drive, as I got the hd-dvd one like the muppet I am.

My Mind is a Ship
Emotions become the Waves
Soul is the Ocean

If a quizz is quizzical, what is a test?

Posted: 10th Dec 2008
Laptop(or Xbox?) auto sences crossover or straight through cables?

If it doesn't, then what you have suggested wouldn't work. However, as you say that that is how you have yours setup, I'm somewhat confused.

Posted: 10th Dec 2008
Yup, the xbox doesn't need a crossover cable. I'm using a normal Cat5 ethernet cable for mine.

From the Xbox 360 support pages:

Check where it says cables

So yes, the 360 auto detects cat5 or crossover cable.

My Mind is a Ship
Emotions become the Waves
Soul is the Ocean

If a quizz is quizzical, what is a test?

Posted: 11th Dec 2008
Nice

I didnt know that!

Thanks.

Posted: 11th Dec 2008
guys nice one for alll your techy help *BIG BIG HUGS* you guys are truely legends.

UCOF: Thanks for the offer of a crossova cable but probebly wont need one now thanks to sambo mucho hugs

Sambo: I have many Cat 5's all ova the place so i plugged one in and bridged the connections and hay presto it connects. YAY!!!!Only problem now is i have to change my mtu to 1364. Which means acessing my router but my brain has gone into melt down with vista being gay and means digging out hard copys of things

he he i am mike the amazing gloscircus person who is mike.

Officaly an exception to the Poi Boys are Girls Thing

Posted: 11th Dec 2008
Hmmm i didn't realised operating systems had a sexual preference or that it affected their operating ability?

I {Heart} hand me downs and spinning in the snow.<br /><br />

Posted: 11th Dec 2008
Electric: I'm not sure about Vista being gay, I think "confused" is possibly more apt....

Mike: Glad to be of help! Yup, mtu is an issue. Easy trick for accessing a router: go start / run, type cmd for a command prompt (edit: in vista, type cmd into the search box at the bottom of the start menu), type ipconfig in the command prompt. Check the IP address of the default gateway (usually 192.168.0.1, but may vary depending on router), and type that ip into the address bar of your browser. As long as you know the username and password of the router (usually admin and password unless you've changed it), you're into the router configuration, and then its just a case of finding the mtu value and changing it. Hopefully that means you won't have to dig out hard copies!

Also, don't know if you're doing this already, but in Vista, it's really easy to set up media sharing to an xbox 360. In Windows Media Player (if you use it), you can share your entire video and music library out by going to the library tab and clicking the drop down menu, then going to media sharing and clicking xbox 360 (which should now be detected). I've known a few issues with getting this working, mostly related to various services that have to be running, but in general its quality. Although word of warning: if you have any *ahem* "biologically educational" movies, anyone using your xbox will be able to see them....
EDITED_BY: Sambo_Flux (1229038364)

My Mind is a Ship
Emotions become the Waves
Soul is the Ocean

If a quizz is quizzical, what is a test?

Posted: 12th Dec 2008
Originally Posted By: Sambo_Flux Although word of warning: if you have any *ahem* "biologically educational" movies, anyone using your xbox will be able to see them....

This is why I keep biologically educational movies out of my regular media library. I don't sue windows media or even have an xbox, but I keep private things outside of my general media library settings. I'm already nervous enough having it on the same external drive I use to play music at parties.

Posted: 12th Dec 2008
Originally Posted By: MRC [quote=Sambo_Flux]I'm already nervous enough having it on the same external drive I use to play music at parties.

lucky none of us are at those same parties

"the geeks have got you" - Gayle

Posted: 13th Dec 2008
Considering all the whipping and sadism that happen at our parties, some loud moaning and squelching wouldn't exactly be out of place, but some times you just don't want people walking in to your personal collection of moaning and squelching.

Posted: 13th Dec 2008
https://www.pc-magic.com/des.htm#mf

Posted: 13th Dec 2008
Originally Posted By: UnscrupulousChavOffersFoothttps://www.pc-magic.com/des.htm#mf



WIN!

*downloading*

The existance of flamethrowers says that someone, somewhere, at sometime said "I need to set that thing on fire, but it's too far away."

Posted: 15th Dec 2008
Yep.

More win than a barrel of monkeys with a broom.

Posted: 15th Dec 2008
Originally Posted By: UnscrupulousChavOffersFoothttps://www.pc-magic.com/des.htm#mf



My God, when IS M$ going to get with the times? This sort of security and more comes out of the box on *nix!

Not that I'm elitist or anything, I just detest M$.

peAce

Posted: 15th Dec 2008
Originally Posted By: plfMy God, when IS M$ going to get with the times? This sort of security and more comes out of the box on *nix!

Not that I'm elitist or anything, I just detest M$.


as a *nix user you obviously know how far behind. ms can be on everything else too. personally i don't hate MS, but i do think for the amount of money in the company they should just be better. if i bought a xbox 360 like some of my friends and it died, then it was fixed and it died within a week of coming back, i think then i would really hate ms.

"the geeks have got you" - Gayle

Posted: 16th Dec 2008
As a kid growing up in the 80s I came to the world of computing before Microsoft became common place and from the start I was never a fan.

My first OS was IBM DOS 5 on an IBM 286 which was top of the range at the time. The OS was mostly terminal based (GUI didn't come till later) and was a bugger to run.

My first look at Windows was a beta of Windows 3.0 and it ran like any other application. You loaded the OS, then loaded Windows on top and it was horrid. I think at the time I was expecting the kind of functionality you got with Windows 95 and the kind of functionality that was already in OS/2 and the fact that it wasn't there really put me off.

I did briefly become a convert to the ways of windows when 98 came out but it didn't take long for me to start looking for a viable alternative.

To me, 98 was the only decent OS ever to come out of redmond, admittedly Win2k was pretty good but XP never did cut it and don't even get me started about their latest debacle.

The true beauty about M$ and the only reason I'll even acknowledge their existence is for what they did to the world of personal computing. They effectively took a product (The personal computer) that was only ever of use within business and gave it to the people in a way that made it easier to use, which as far as Joe public is concerned was a very smart move.

The problem is, M$ did that by ripping off developers. They didn't create Windows, they stole it, butchered it, then forced it onto the world at a price which the common man was forced to pay.

Micro$oft are the worlds biggest hypocrites. They complain about piracy but anyone who has dared peek behind the redmond curtain knows that they are the real pirates of the digital age. Worst, they do so with the governments backing and that made them truly dangerous.

Going back to the 360 for a moment, I'm not a gamer and have never used the 360, or any other console for that matter so cannot speak from experience, but from what I've heard the 360 is just like any other M$ product. Yes it looks pretty but its shoddily built, badly supported and really should never have been unleashed on the world.

Its not all doom and gloom though. I think (with Bill Gates now out of the way) M$ are finally realising the error of their ways and are slowly turning towards the needs of the people over the needs of themselves although this is like an aircraft carrier turning in the ocean. Its slow and cumbersome. It takes time.

The question then becomes is it too late for M$? Linux is now gaining popularity at an alarming rate. More Macs are now being sold to the home user than ever before (although thats another story). Companies and Governments are abandoning SS M$ in droves and seeking viable alternatives.

Truthfully today, the only real reason to remain aboard the SS M$ is for gaming but how long will that last for when even the gaming companies are slowly but surely starting to develop away from M$?

peAce

Posted: 16th Dec 2008
Its even a problem when gaming companies, such as Bethesda, release games that have not been properly tested, considering the variety of 3rd party software most people have simply to play music and videos. Even some of the main codec packages (ffdshow et al) create all sorts of problems when a standard user, having to have installed all sortsa stuff just to do media, wind up with random crashes.

I both love and hate Fallout 3 for this reason.

Curses. I'm going off to get Linux

ohmygodlaserbeamspewpewpew!