A quality gaming system for £250

DELL recently had an offer that if you bought a Vostro 270 desktop, you could purchase another one for half-price. So I bought two systems each with an Intel i3-3220 3.3GHz processor, 4Gb memory and 500Gb hard disk plus Windows 8 Professional for just £400. Obviously, this offer isn't for everyone unless you have a friend who also wants a cheap, basic system. [It has since expired.]

I expected DELL to cancel my order, but they arrived this morning. After installing Windows 8 (never a pleasant experience), I was pleased to discover that this was a fast, well-built system that just needed a good graphics card. I used a £50 Asus HD 6670 with 1Gb GDDR5 memory. This card does not require an extra power connection and with DELL's 300W quality power supply, I felt that this would be a good choice. Also the GDDR5 memory alleviates somewhat the HD6670's poor memory bandwidth. It is much faster than the commoner DDR3 versions.

This ends up as being a really good mid-range gaming system (Windows Experience 7.2, 5.9, 7.0, 7.0, 5.9) that is able to handle most modern games, even though you might have to lower the detail levels slightly. And all for just £250 including VAT and delivery! An obvious upgrade would be an SSD drive.

I challenge the DIY system builders to configure a better, faster system that includes Windows 8 and perhaps even the two years next day warranty.

Age of Empires Online

It is funny that when you return to play a game again, you often enjoy it more. I played Microsoft's Age of Empire Online game for free when it first came out, did a few quests and became bored and moved on.
I played all the original Age of Empires and Mythology games and enjoyed them.

I was cleaning out my games testing PC and tried to update AOEO but it failed with file corruption problems. I then read that Microsoft had rewarded all the original players with 500 Empire Points. So, I decided to re-install the game on my main gaming PC and reactivate my account and play some more. I enjoyed it as a change from the First Person Shooter games that I've been playing recently.

I built a bigger capital city (MadDadium) and was able to win a couple of the quests that had been stalling me by spending some of those Empire Points on improvements and upgrades. I was enjoying it so much that I spent some real money on more Empire Points to upgrade to the Premium Greek civilisation and unlock more enhancements. It is a fun game to play and though I haven't yet played with other people I might as I progress further. Well done Microsoft, you got me! It seems a pity that it is not being developed further.

Typography

I've recently become interested in typography; the design and use of fonts, again. Especially some of the newer fonts from Microsoft included in Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. The so called 'C' fonts (Microsoft Clear Type Font Collection); Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Consolas, Corbel and Constantia.

This collection is also distributed with the free Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer and the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack. My special favourite is the sans-serif Candara with the non-lining numerals and small-caps. These are all full feature, OpenType fonts which are really modern designs for screen and print. I've used these fonts to improve a couple of my working documents such as price-lists and configuration examples. They are very refreshing and give a more modern appearance that the usual Arial and Times New Roman text.

I re-read a couple of my old books; The Word for Windows Print and Presentation Kit by Christine Solomon ©1992 (with 5¼" floppy disc) and Making digital type look good by Bob Gordon ©2001, which helped with basic layout principles plus kerning, tracking, leading, etc.

I've also had to remove a lot (over 150) fonts and corresponding files from my Windows 7 and later systems as they contain Arabic, Far Eastern and other languages that I don't need. This helps when you have to scroll through font lists in Word and other programs. To purchase these new 'C' fonts from a commercial supplier cost hundreds of pounds, so to have them freely available to use in the modern versions of Windows is a real bargain.