Oh man, awesome article at Gamespot about Infinium opening up its books and putting the Phantom console on hold. For those of you who don’t know, the aptly named Phantom has become an oft-lampooned symbol of vaporware. And to those foolish venture capitalists who sunk money into this horrific company, Infinium released this statement:
We are developing and seeking to commercialize the Phantom Lapboard, a wireless, rotating custom keyboard/turntable with integrated mousepad. After establishing the Phantom Lapboard, we may seek to develop and commercialize the Phantom Game Service.
Hahahaha, after more than 3 years and $62.7 million in losses (only $3.5 million has been lost to development costs), all the investors get is the promise of some piece-of-junk keyboard? Oh, I’m sorry, it’s actually a keybousepad. But, of course, should they secure more funding… This doesn’t sound like one of those 419 scams or anything.
I don’t care what the rest of you haters think, Tim Roberts (founder of Infinium Labs) has done a masterful job of stringing along (kiting even) gullible venture capitalists who are too lazy to run a background check or do research on the company they are investing in. But perhaps even these pitiable fools are starting to wise up…
Yesterday, we finally got our first piece of fine furniture: a beautiful coffee table from Crate and Barrel. Bunky decided she wanted to splurge on a really nice one, and so our living room is now complete. The table is “expresso” in color, and has a very solid, heavy feel to it. Sydney inspected it, and immediately got on top and fell asleep. Later, he went into the middle shelf and slept there, too. So now it has been cat tested and approved.
Got an internal hard drive. Much thanks to everyone who commented and helped me make a decision. The offer for the 200 Gig drive for $39.99 seems to have been a fraud, but I got a 100 Gig drive (with 20 free Gigs to bump it up to 120 Gigs O__o) for $59.99, so I’m still pretty happy. Installation was as easy as popping open the case, plugging the hard drive into the grey primary slave IDE connector, and plugging in the power connectors. Actually, this was the hardest part, since I have two DVD-R drives, a floppy drive, an extra fan, and now two hard drives all needing power, so I had to rearrange some plugs. After that I booted up, the auto-whatevers handled everything else, and I clicked Next three times through the partitioning program. The whole process was a lot less painful that I was anticipating.
Why do they make those damn power cables so hard to disconnect from drives? Wouldn’t it be easier if they sorta had a button latch type release? I’m always afraid to pull too hard, for fear I’ll break the attached drive.
I had been thinking about waiting for Windows Vista before getting a larger hard drive, but I recently saw a deal on Staples for a 200 Gig HD for 39.99 after a $40 rebate. This sounds pretty damn good to me, and I was considering buying the drive and also an external hard drive case. I don’t want to have to go through the hassle yet of backing up all my files, reinstalling Windows, downloading a gazillion patches, and configuring all my options just yet (like what Ender has been stuck doing the last few days). I just want more space for my anime files, really.
Anyone know how hard this is to do and set up? Is it worth the price savings over getting a real external hard drive? And how fast is it (I believe I have the faster USB port, but I haven’t ever really checked if Velius simply drilled a hole into a brick and made it look like a USB port)?
Games | Kabitzin 2/22/2006 | 
Comments (3) 
