You couldn't ask for a lamer topic!

[Spectere]

Double post to say that I truly think that I could use IE9 as my primary browser.

Excellent fucking job, Microsoft.  Seriously.  I haven't tried Opera on this system yet, but against Chrome and Firefox, IE9 is the fastest by far.  It's as fast as Google Chrome used to be at around version 8 or 9 (i.e. instant startup, fast page loads).

On my WinPhone, it does everything significantly faster than Mobile Safari does on my 4th gen iPod touch.  Safari tends to lag when scrolling around large pages.  Mobile IE 9 doesn't do it nearly as much.  It's amazing how far Microsoft has come in such a short time.  It's a shame they didn't keep up with their momentum after IE6 came out (a lot of people forget that IE6 was actually a damn good browser -- possibly the best -- when it was released).  If they did, things would have been a lot different.

Edit: I've got my eyes on this: http://www.daskeyboard.com/model-s-professional-silent/

It uses Cherry MX Browns, so it should be great for both typing and games.  I'd love to get the regular Das Keyboard, with the Blues, but that switch design doesn't favor gaming whatsoever.  If I really wanted to spend $300 on keyboards, I'd get both the clicky Das Keyboard Professional and a SteelSeries 7S (which uses Cherry MX Black switches, which are excellent for games but offer no tactile response), but that seems a bit excessive to me. :p

I might just wind up getting the clicky Das and using my current G15 (or Logitech Elite) for games that require a lot of key bouncing.  I dunno; haven't decided just yet.

Edit 2: Installed Opera on my laptop, as promised.  So far so fast!

[OmegaOmni]

Just got done watching AMV Hell 5..I have to say it redeems the series after the folly of 4.

[Bobbias]

Double post to say that I truly think that I could use IE9 as my primary browser.

Excellent fucking job, Microsoft.  Seriously.  I haven't tried Opera on this system yet, but against Chrome and Firefox, IE9 is the fastest by far.  It's as fast as Google Chrome used to be at around version 8 or 9 (i.e. instant startup, fast page loads).

On my WinPhone, it does everything significantly faster than Mobile Safari does on my 4th gen iPod touch.  Safari tends to lag when scrolling around large pages.  Mobile IE 9 doesn't do it nearly as much.  It's amazing how far Microsoft has come in such a short time.  It's a shame they didn't keep up with their momentum after IE6 came out (a lot of people forget that IE6 was actually a damn good browser -- possibly the best -- when it was released).  If they did, things would have been a lot different.

Edit: I've got my eyes on this: http://www.daskeyboard.com/model-s-professional-silent/

It uses Cherry MX Browns, so it should be great for both typing and games.  I'd love to get the regular Das Keyboard, with the Blues, but that switch design doesn't favor gaming whatsoever.  If I really wanted to spend $300 on keyboards, I'd get both the clicky Das Keyboard Professional and a SteelSeries 7S (which uses Cherry MX Black switches, which are excellent for games but offer no tactile response), but that seems a bit excessive to me. :p

I might just wind up getting the clicky Das and using my current G15 (or Logitech Elite) for games that require a lot of key bouncing.  I dunno; haven't decided just yet.

Edit 2: Installed Opera on my laptop, as promised.  So far so fast!

Damn good keyboard selections! I REALLY want to have enough disposable income that I can actually buy a good keyboard. I absolutely ABHOR the scissor switches in my laptop keyboard. They don't trigger properly if you hit the edge of the key, they're squishy, and I get so many typos because of them.

Also, this is quite possibly one of the coolest documentaries in production right now: http://www.vimeo.com/29565833

[Spectere]

Just got done watching AMV Hell 5..I have to say it redeems the series after the folly of 4.

Ooh, thanks for the heads up.  I didn't realize AMV Hell 5 was out.

Damn good keyboard selections! I REALLY want to have enough disposable income that I can actually buy a good keyboard. I absolutely ABHOR the scissor switches in my laptop keyboard. They don't trigger properly if you hit the edge of the key, they're squishy, and I get so many typos because of them.

I actually greatly prefer scissor switches to rubber domes switches.  At least the one that Dell uses on their keyboards.  I can't speak for most other vendors, though I find HP keyboards pretty pleasant to use (even if the rest of their hardware is unreliable junk...and I speak from considerable experience on this).

I do greatly prefer the newer Dell keyboards over the older ones, but they're both very good.  My Inspiron E1705 keyboard is far clickier and more responsive than the one on my Inspiron 9300, but, sadly, the connector is different, so I can't transplant it into the older system.  One of the reasons that I play VVVVVV on my laptop more than my desktop is because the keyboard on it is so much more crisp and responsive than -- get this -- my G15 gaming keyboard.

[Bobbias]

Well this one they feel really squishy, and if you hit the side of the key instead of directly in the middle you can miss causing it to register a press, since you need to press the key pretty much all the way down. I'd much rather a mechanical keyboard D:

[Spectere]

Yeah, it sounds like your laptop manufacturer just has contempt for its users.  Well-designed scissor keys should be crisp and responsive.

I have a full-sized keyboard that uses scissor keys and, if it had better n-key rollover, I'd probably use that over my G15.

[Bobbias]

Oh yeah, and another mildly annoying feature is that due to the design I can't use ZX ./ for Stepmania, I have to use XC instead of ZX :/ It throws me off a bit, not that I'm any good any more.

[K-Mann]

I decided that I want to upgrade the amount of RAM I have in my computer only to find out that I am forced to use DDR and not DDR2 or 3. Does anyone even carry DDR anymore? It probably won't go any higher than 1GB either, will it?

[Spectere]

I decided that I want to upgrade the amount of RAM I have in my computer only to find out that I am forced to use DDR and not DDR2 or 3. Does anyone even carry DDR anymore? It probably won't go any higher than 1GB either, will it?

If you have your computer or motherboard model, you can go to Crucial's web site to determine what your board will support and what type of memory it uses.

DDR memory is still being sold on most major online stores.  I actually ordered a DDR SODIMM recently for a fairly low price for my iMac G4.

Edit: Oh yeah, I started using Opera a bit on my laptop, as promised.  As always, it's blazing fast as ever.  And, of course, it's kind of nice using the thing that inspired Firefox 4's new layout (did I say inspired?  I mean Mozilla pretty much CTRL+C/V'd it without really adding anything of value...well, until they lifted a feature that IE 7 or 8 popularized and threw it in FF5, but I digress).

I love it for its speed on my aging laptop and its awesome rendering engine, but I really dislike its UI for two good reasons: the number of clicks that it takes to make a private tab (probably configurable, but other browsers essentially standardized CTRL-SHIFT-P...except for Google, but they're "special").  The second reason, which is the biggest one, is that the tabs don't go all the way to to the top of the window.  They sort of look like they do, so you would expect that you could jam your mouse (or touchpad, in my case, which makes the problem that much worse) to the top of the window and select a tab.  This is not so.  You have to move the cursor down a few pixels and then click to activate the tab.  What makes the problem worse is that Opera doesn't support a common key combo for tab switching -- CTRL-PGUP and CTRL-PGDN.  Again, you may be able to configure it like that, but they really need to keep up with their keyboard shortcuts if they want people to be able to adapt to their browser.

I'll play with it a bit more, but at this rate I might go back to the big and bloated fox, just for convenience sake (or maybe use Chrome on my laptop...we'll see).

[Bobbias]

Oh come on, CTRL+SHIFT N is not hard, hell, I use my left hand fr CTRL+SHIFT so its just as easy to hit N as it would be P. And when I use my right hand for it it's easier than P would be, since it's a small cluster.

[Spectere]

When did I say that it was hard to hit?  Might want to read that second to last paragraph again.  Opera's less-than-full-height tabs that are a few pixels from the window border are overly difficult to hit with the mouse cursor, not CTRL+ALT+P.

My issue with CTRL+ALT+P is that there are two extremely popular browsers (as in, consisting of over 75% of the browser market share -- probably more) that use CTRL+ALT+P.  It would be far from difficult to add another binding in to make transitioning between browsers easier.  The only two companies that seem to be watching the playing field and keeping things semi-consistent are Microsoft and Mozilla.

[Bobbias]

Wasn't trying to imply that you said it was hard to hit :/ I just meant that I liked it more than the "standard" shortcut for the reasons I mentioned... I could care less about consistency in browsers for what shortcut they make something, if I plan on sticking with 1 browser for a long time... I still find that every time I end up using IE 9 it feels sluggish to me, and FF just doesn't feel right to me any more. Chrome's really minimal interface, and still fast speeds.

[Spectere]

Wasn't trying to imply that you said it was hard to hit :/

Oh come on, CTRL+SHIFT N is not hard, hell, I use my left hand fr CTRL+SHIFT so its just as easy to hit N as it would be P.

^ Not sure how you expect me to interpret that any other way, honestly.

I just meant that I liked it more than the "standard" shortcut for the reasons I mentioned... I could care less about consistency in browsers for what shortcut they make something, if I plan on sticking with 1 browser for a long time...

The thing is, with the number of good browsers out there now, it's hard to justify not keeping things consistent.  Even if you don't count end-users, picture what web designers have to go through.  On top of rendering engines that give slightly different results they have to deal with a multitude of different interfaces.  And again, IE and Firefox managed to come to a silent consensus on most of their common commands.  Considering they're the two top browsers by far, you'd think Apple, Google, and Opera would be paying more attention.

To add to that, why do you think most of the common shortcuts are identical between Windows, Mac OS, and various X11 environments?  Consisistency, even between platforms, is crucial for adoption.  Why is it easier for me to jump between using keyboard commands on Windows and Mac OS X than it is to jump between IE and Chrome?

I still find that every time I end up using IE 9 it feels sluggish to me, and FF just doesn't feel right to me any more. Chrome's really minimal interface, and still fast speeds.

On every system I've used lately (and we're talking about four different boxes with a wide range of specs), IE9 has been the fastest on systems that it runs on, followed by Opera, followed by Chrome, followed by IE8 (on my laptop, which has XP), followed by Firefox.  IE shares a lot of "problems" with Windows, as in most of its problems are caused solely by a third-party.  The only systems that I'd say ran IE9 poorly are ones that had a bunch of add-ons or were riddled with toolbars.  Adobe Reader is a great example of a bad "legit" plugin.  Bad coding ruins everything.

Edit: As I suspected, I was able to customize Opera's keyboard shortcuts to make it work in a way that I'm used to.  Its flexibility proved to be quite a boon, too, since I was able to use Chrome's private browsing shortcut to open a new private tab and IE/Firefox's shortcut to open a new private window.  Not too shabby.

As for the tabs not stretching to the top of the screen, I'll just have to live with that.  To illustrate what I'm talking about, here's a snip:



As you can see, the tabs do not extend to the top of the screen.  In fact, double-clicking the space on top will restore/maximize the window, just as double-clicking on the taskbar would.  Right-clicking brings up the context menu for Opera's main window, not the one for the tabs.

Like I said, this probably wouldn't be a big deal with a more precise pointing device, like a mouse or trackball, but on a trackpad it's very irritating.  Thankfully, Opera's flexibility makes that easier to deal with by allowing me to customize the tab switch shortcut keys back to the familiar CTRL+PGUP and CTRL+PGDN, so I'm satisfied.

So yeah, Opera is definitely remaining my browser of choice on my laptop.  It's fast, flexible, and exceedingly compliant, so I'll keep it.

[MortifiedocAlot]

would you recommend IE9? I swear I have some plugin that causes memory leaks with chrome and every time I check my running programs it has like 9 things that say chrome.

[Bobbias]

Sorry spec, my sleep schedule is messed up, and I didn't really pay as much attention to your post before I wrote that as I should have.

I do like when there's some consistency between competing products, but I do still prefer CTRL+SHIFT+N. It just makes more sense to me that to get a new window, you press CTRL+N, and if you want to modify that window to become a private window, you just hold down shift, and voila. I should point out that CTRL+N is extremely natural and is already part of windows.

I'd consider this to be an issue like that XP and Vista stuff (you know, Vista moving options to places that actually made sense, but bothered people because it wasn't the same as XP...) CTRL-N and CTRL-SHIFT-N make more sense than CTRL-N and CTRL-SHIFT-P.