Hey everyone, it's that time again and we'll look some more WTF'ary with Microsoft today and perhaps a ray of hope for all of us looking for a NEW GPU.
Microsoft has released a "teaser version" of Windows 11 since it leaked and they couldn't bottle it back up anyway. I guess they figured they'd just get in front of it and make it seem like that was the plan all along. You can get your teaser copy at Microsoft's website for free now if you wish, but there might be some things you want to check first. If you're running Windows 10 now, you're probably good to run Windows 11, but not in every case. If your computer contains hardware earlier than 2017, there could be issues. There's no single core CPU support for Windows 11. Big deal, I can hear people saying, who has a single core CPU any more anyway? Well, maybe more people than you think. Some folks will run hardware until it's dead before they upgrade and quite Frankly CPU's will run a long damn time. In any case, you'll want to make you have at least a one GHz dual core for Windows 11. Another big thing is to make sure you've got enough drive space to install it. Microsoft says 64GB is minimum they recommend 128GB for a "vaguely normal system". So to me it sounds like you're going to want at least a 240GB boot drive to avoid slow downs. RAM allocation is going to be 4GB, that's the same as Windows 10. Then there's the mass confusion of the TPM (Trusted Platform Module). Things get dicey here because TMP is something lots of folks can just turn on in their BIOS/UEFI and, blam, golden. However, some less expensive or much older boards don't have this option and for those it's looking like a physical TPM plug in chip is necessary. That or a full system upgrade. Or maybe neither because there could be a way to bypass the need for TPM now, who knows... Physical TPM's are being scalped, of course, for something like five times their value already. So you might have to spend $100 to be able to use your free Windows 11 upgrade. So there you go, make sure you're computer is fairly new or at least up to date with current hardware, 2018 and beyond, and you're probably going to be able to check out Window 11 right now with some features disabled in the current teaser version. And honestly we may as well all get used to it because Support for Windows 10 will eventually stop just like it's predecessors.
Microsoft has also signed a windows driver that contains a particularly hard to remove rootkit malware. Luckily it's a driver that folks have to manually install, it doesn't just come with updates. So the likelyhood of your computer being inected is relatively low, but probably this is something Microsoft should address ASAP. I'm going to go ahead and drop a link from The Register here so you can read about this from the source.
China has outlawed crypto mining in full. This is potentially good news for those of us who are looking for new graphics cards because the huge mining farms with dozens or hundreds of GPU's and power supplies are generally pretty useless now. I'd expect to see a flood of used current generation GPU's and PSU's into sites like Ebay, but I'd recommend waiting a bit before just snapping one up. Give it a little time and see what folks who are buying them are saying about general reliability and so on because remember, you have no idea the kinds of conditions these cards were running under. Not to mention the longer we wait the more the prices are likely to fall back toward a more normal number. Don't expect to just see MSRP purchase options though. Scalpers are still going to buy in bulk.
Some sad news for we doggo lovers, River, who was the actual model and inspiration for the companion German Shepard in Fallout 4, has passed away after a long life. Here's the whole story from IGN.
What are we playing this weekend?
AJ: Well Smash Bros got a new character this week: Kazuya Mishima (from the Tekken series), so I'll definitely be playing a good bit of that. Also, GOG is now offering a port of the fantastic LucasArts SNES titles Zombies Ate My Neighbors and Ghoul Patrol which I can't wait to pick up and check out this weekend as well. I may also play a little BioShock Infinite if the mood strikes.
Greywolfe: magic: the gathering's extra awful queue is turned back on again, so i'm suffering in some circle of hell while i deal with that. but also some biomutant. which continues to be a laid back, very pleasant experience. it's never going to win any awards, but then neither is assassin's creed and people play a lot of those games
Scrooloose: I've been messing with Necromunda Hired Gun and it's been mostly good. Not quite as polished as I'd hoped for, but it still gives a good feeling of being in the biggest Underhive in 40k. I also reinstalled MechWarrior 5 and have been playing the Heroes of the Inner Sphere DLC. It's been pretty enjoyable so far, adding some new Mech chassis and mission types and a new biome. It's been fun collecting the new hero variants and just stomping around in four story battle robots causing general havoc. This weekend is also the local Butterfly Days festival and I'm going to go do some chalk art for that.
Yoda: [I mean, let's face it, he's playing Black Desert. The guy has over 2 thousand hours in that game since effing March...]