Hasta La Gadget!

Most of us who remember Myst are content to relive the halcyon days of click-and-watch puzzle games by loading up the iPhone port. Mike Ando is slightly more… dedicated. He just spent the past six years building a replica of the Cyan game’s signature, Age-traveling link books that includes a full Windows XP PC with a 1.6GHz Atom, a 2-hour battery, a 5-inch touchscreen and every playable game from the Myst series stored on a CF card. And while we’ve seen books hiding devices before, Ando’s attention to detail might just raise the eyebrows of hardcore custom PC and gaming fans alike: he went so far as to gut and emboss a 135-year-old copy of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine to match Cyan’s reference tome as closely as possible. It’s tempting for anyone who cut their teeth on CD-based gameplay through Myst, but perfect devotion to one of the better-known fictional worlds will cost an accordingly steep $15,625. We wouldn’t have minded seeing some real intra-world travel for the cash outlay.

Continue reading Myst linking book replica goes on sale with full PC inside, won’t quite take us to other worlds (video)

Filed under: Gaming, Alt

Myst linking book replica goes on sale with full PC inside, won’t quite take us to other worlds (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Oct 2012 02:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you still cling to that Windows XP-powered PC as your graphics workhorse, Adobe reckons it’s time you upgraded. Photoshop CS6 will be the last release to support Microsoft’s venerable operating system, with Adobe stating that advances in more modern OS’ and graphics processing have allowed for more 3D and Lighting Effect improvements — ones that cannot be rendered within the older Windows iteration. It’s also worth noting that Vista doesn’t support CS6 either, so anyone thinking of upgrading will have to look towards Windows 7, or wait a little longer for the next big thing. Adobe added that specific Creative Cloud updates will also skip over Windows XP users — even if they still take up fair chunk of the PC crowd.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Software

Adobe Photoshop won’t support Windows XP in next major release originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Sep 2012 02:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Relax, Gabe Newell. If you buy a new Windows 8 Pro PC and discover that you really do detest the OS that much, you may be able to switch back to an older version — either Windows 7 or Vista, but not near-death XP — under the same OEM license. Will many folks want to do that? Probably not, and in any case these so-called downgrade rights are actually only helpful in specific circumstances and they don’t come with boxed retail versions of the software. The main practical benefit (albeit still a niche one) is that a manufacturer could technically offer a Windows 7 disc in the box with a new Windows 8 machine and give customers a choice of OS. Alternatively, the manufacturer could install Windows 7 by default (effectively a factory downgrade) and supply Windows 8 Pro installation media so that customers can upgrade for free when they feel good ‘n ready. At some point, of course, staring at a redundant UI-switching button is going to grate.

Filed under: Software

Hate Windows 8 already? The Pro OEM edition will let you downgrade as far back as Vista originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Sep 2012 08:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Windows 8 may be on the horizon with a fall 2012 release, but Microsoft’s current OS, Win 7, just became the world’s most prolific PC operating system, passing the 50-percent threshold last month. According to StatCounter, Windows 7, which overtook XP around the time of its golden anniversary last fall, has made its way onto 50.2 percent of the world’s computers, compared to 29.9 percent for Microsoft’s eXPerience during the same period. Launched in 2001, XP remains in the runner-up position, but shows a steady decline along with Vista, which never had much of a share to begin with. Oddly enough, iOS also appears as a modest portion of StatCounter’s chart, which we presume represents iPads, which in this case fall within the same category (the company tracks mobile operating systems separately, where Android has ticked slightly ahead). If you own a PC running Windows 7, you can rest assured knowing that you’re in good company. And we imagine that an even greater number of those current XP users will depart come 2014, when Microsoft has pledged to discontinue support of the aging millennial. Hit up our source link below for all of StatCounter’s charts.

StatCounter: Windows 7 now powering most PCs, passed 50-percent threshold in June originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Jul 2012 10:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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