Today, I hopped into my old company car to return from München to Würzburg.

For those of you who are familiar with my whereabouts, the sentence above might come as a surprise. For the past decades, I’ve been to several places, and I have written about some of them, mostly about those where I went to play music. Some of them were documented in long blog articles, others only in short tweets, others weren’t mentioned at all. But always, at the end of each trip, I would return to München.

Starting this February 1st, I am meeting a new professional challenge, as they say. Which is located in Würzburg, Mittelfranken. Which means I had to move to Würzburg – which I did this past Tuesday and Wednesday. For the first time in my life, I’m moving my permanent residence away from München to another place. The fact that it’s still in Bayern helps, but it’s away from home. From the old MoinSound Studio. From where I grew up, where I spent all of my life.

I’m moving away from the condo which was home of MoinSound for more than ten years. Where the eponymous MoinSound Studio Sessions had their home. Where every record since SAUBER! in 2001 was produced, and where most of the stuff was recorded. I’m also moving away from the town where I spent all of my life – holiday trips, tours and short business engagements maxxing out at three months in Chicago (fantastic town!), Tokyo (wonderful, inspiring place!) and Essen (sucks ass!) nonwithstanding. And while I do think I might very well return to München – to my home, to my place of birth, to my center of life for decades – for the time being, I will be in Würzburg.

the home of the old MoinSound Studio at München Scheidplatz

Passing the Holledau stop, I remembered when Piepsi and I tried to reach Bayreuth in the deepest of winter, but only got as far as here, because of the road conditions. Piepsi back then owned an Opel Tigra, and it was really fun to see how we were able to climb the steep ascent at the roadhouse while big BMW 7s failed to do so.

It wasn’t an easy decision for me. The job offer which (mostly from its contents, and from the people and company involved) looked great did surely help, but it was also that I thought that at this point in my life and in my professional carreer, moving to another town might be the next sensible step. It’s also worth mentioning that during the engagement with my last (or legally speaking, still current) employer, which now lasted more than ten years, this was only the second job offer where it really “clicked” for me – and obviously, the first one which I accepted.

the new place from the outside

First talks were held, if I remember correctly, in July. At that time, it had already become clear that with my current project engagement, things would change, but not how they would change. The main reasons which convinced me of that new company were first that their owner did not expect of them some outrageous growth rates (in fact – none at all), and the fact that they decided to define a new position in the company custom-tailored for my skills. That’s not something that happens everyday.

What also helped to make the transition easy was that I found a condo in Würzburg – in a nice area at that – that was even more odd than the home of the MoinSound Studio 2.x (versions 1.x were still at my parents’ place). Extending over three stories, this condo has exactly one right angle between walls – which makes it tricky to put anything into it. On the other hand, the largest room, aptly named “studio”, has both wooden floor and wooden ceiling – promising for acoustics!

MoinSound Studio 3.0 - still in pre-alpha stage

Ingolstadt. For nearly one year, I used to commute on a daily basis from München to Ingolstadt for a project with Audi. It was about autonomous parking systems, and what we did there was really innovative. Still, the daily commute sucked, even if you could do it (with good traffic conditions) in only a little above half an hour.

So, you may wonder, what does this mean for my creative output? For MoinSound, for future albums, for online collaborations – for the #secretalbum?

The short answer is that it will surely take some time to bring the infrastructure up to speed. Add to that the fact that I’m starting a new job, and it becomes clear that I won’t be up to full productivity for some time. Still, I want to keep the “one album per year” release strategy going, so I plan to be fully operational by or shortly after start of Q2.

Of course, music has, in many cases, to do with work with other performers – and a move might make that difficult. However, you may consider this: all of the releases from the time considered here – SAUBER! up until Reflexiv Hören – had a comparatively small number of collaborators involved: there were the kybermusik participants on Quelques Papiers D’Abord, there was cover designer Anna Bejenke who did SAUBER! and Weird Specialist, and there were some collaborators on the tracks on wie groß ist die luft? However, all of these collaborations did not happen locally in München – so that should not be a problem. Yes, there was A tätowierte Katz’, which was recorded in München, and some #secretalbum tracks were recorded with artists from München as well. However, the majority of my collaborative work had been done via internet channels – and Würzburg does have internet access.

The access to Eichstätt from the Kindlinger Berg exit. I remember an intern I worked with during that Audi period. She was intelligent, charming, pretty, an outstanding cook and baker (sometimes, when she got into a traffic jam, she got so upset that she needed to bake some great cakes to compensate for that). Now she’s with SAP and consequently has moved to Waldorf – which, incidentially is also home of one of the great synth companies of today.

Today, it is expected of creative and carreer people alike that they move to different places a lot. I never did that. While during my educational period, my parents would have been very supportive of tendencies in that direction, I actually never saw a reason for it. When during my senior grammar school years I studied composition at RSK, that wasn’t an option, of course. During my physics terms, I had throught of semesters abroad for “later”. Finally, when studying engineering, I didn’t really understand why I should move to another place when I had the possibility to attend one of the best universities in the world for that subject right at home. That’s right, I’m very Bavarian in that respect: very homestead, and almost afraid to move away from home. But now, I did it.

The weather had been ugly every since the move. For the last stretch, all its ugliness returns. Fortunately, it’s only less than an hour to go. I remember a concert I attended about 20 years ago in Erlangen of Baden-Powell. It was crap. Baden-Powell: crappy as a player, outstanding as a songwriter.

Scheißwetter on the stretch from Nürnberg to Würzburg

So, the next few weeks will be interesting. Getting the MoinSound Studio (and more importantly, my condo) up to speed will be one thing. Starting my job another one. And finally, finding how living in Würzburg is like and how I like it a third one. Fortunately, I consider myself a misanthropic sociopath, so I can easily exist anywhere – as long as there’s access to electric current, manuscript paper and coffee.

Off to bed. Tomorrow will be more of organisation, studio setup – and getting to know the new place!

The rain has stopped. It's quiet under the roof.

Need for Speed: Shift

Type: car-driving action/simulation

Price paid: €5

Short comments: Read the detailed review here. While it does not live up to its simulation goal, it’s a fun racing game in the traditional, nice cars on racetracks genre. Fancy environment graphics of the tracks!

Am I happy? Yes

Assassin’s Creed II – Deluxe Edition

Type: medieval GTA

Price paid: €10.20

Short comments: A very nice, new take on that sandbox thingie. The setting is worth the game alone. Great jump-and-run elements, and nice close combat. Very much recommended!

Make sure to switch the language to Italian (possibly with English subs). Hearing those guys speaking English with a fake Italian accent is unbearable. Italian, on the other hand, is such a beatiful language.

Am I happy? Yes, a lot!

Audiosurf

Type: music-playing action-tetris

Price paid: €1.25

Short comments: You drive in a gilder over a multi-lane track, collect coloured blocks and assemble them in rows. What makes this interesting is that the track/block layout is generated according to the music you supply. Great for some quick recreation!

Am I happy? For the price – yeah!

GTR: Evolution/Race07 + GT Power Pack

Type: car-driving simulation

Price paid: €25 (+€5 for the power pack)

Short comments: Got this by recommendation from my chassis development colleagues as the only proper driving simulation on the Win platform. Graphics are not state of the art, and I am not happy with the tyre squealing nose. Apart from that: if you want to take a real car over a real racetrack on a windows machine, this is what you have to get. Recommendation: take a BMW E30 M3 over Nordschleife to see what driving is all about.

The power pack adds a few cars and tracks – whether it’s necessary can be argued with.

Am I happy? Yes

Wheelman

Type: car-driving/smashing action

Price paid: €6.70

Short comments: Something like hitman for car drivers. Most of the money for making this seems to have gone into hiring Vin Diesel to play the main character. Unfortunately, nothing was left for proper development. Graphics bugs and stupid controller behaviour. Crap. Stay away.

Am I happy? No. What a waste!

The Longest Journey + Dreamfall

Type: oldskool graphics adventure

Price paid: €6.25

Short comments: I originally had played a lot of those – think back old Sierra stuff. With a metacritic score of 91, I thought I’d give it a try. Got some kind of Japanese take on Disney versions of old European fairytale aesthetic. Played for like ten minutes, and forgot about it. Boring.

Am I happy? No – but some people might like it

X3: Gold Edition

Type: space trading thingie with a spaceship

Price paid: €6.25

Short comments: You fly around in a spacecraft to different planets and ship goods around etc. If that sounds like Elite, it is like Elite, but more with a strategic twist. Better graphics – yes. Boring – yes. Unless you like that kind of thing, then you’ll have lots of fun visiting thousands of planets.

Am I happy? No – but again, some people might like it.

Supreme Commander II

Type: tactics/strategics realtime warfare

Price paid: €5

Short comments: Something like Command & Conquer of Starcraft with a slight SF touch (not too much, you still got your land, sea and air units, only with some slightly SF tech, and you’re sometimes changing the planet). Got a nice storyline, where you alternate between the three different races in a cohesive, sequential plot. Nice, but nothing fancy. Since I played through the campaign, I have only played a small selection of single missions. It seems to predictable.

Am I happy? Well…for the price, it’s ok.

Portal 2

Type: first-person whatever

Price paid: €25

Short comments: A metacritic score of 95 for a game coming from the HalfLife legacy – can you go wrong here? Yes, you can. It’s some kind of first-person jump’n'run, which is based on a portal gun with which you can create two kinds of holes in things and then jump into one and reappear from the other. This thing would somehow have some radical influence on gas drift in the room, but that is not simulated. There’s a stupid story, and it gets boring very quickly. That would be ok for, say, €5 perhaps…I never played through it. Enough said.

Am I happy? No. Not at all. How this got the 95 metacritic score is beyond me.

GTA IV – Complete Bundle

Type: third-person sandbox criminal – it’s GTA, man!

Price paid: €8.50

Short comments: I’ve been a huge fan of GTA, especially the 3D variants, and spent a huge amount of time exploring the countryside of San Andreas. I expected GTA IV to be a huge improvement, as GTA III was over GTA II. Well, it isn’t. It isn’t even on the same level as GTA III. You only got one town. You can’t buy nice houses and businesses. The choice of clothes stores is limited. Only thing nice is that you character, Nico Bellic, is really funny. I also played the two addons (Gay Tony and Lost and Damned or something), and stopped after some time.

A good game no doubt, but in comparison to Vice City/San Andreas? A step back.

Am I happy? Comparing it with the prequels, I was disappointed. Still, not a bad game.

Far Cry Complete

Type: first-person shooter

Price paid: €7.50

Short comments: Two parts: part one, you’re on a (carribean?) island trying to protect a journalist from someone. Straight storyline, you get to fly a very beautiful flight with a hang glider. Difficulty varies quite randomly throughout the game – I got stuck at one point and then fed up.

Part two, you’re coming to a typical African country to kill an arms dealer, then fall sick with malaria and spend the rest of the time in a sandbox-style trying to find him and at the same time supporting two groups of assholes in organizing their civil war. The driving behaviour of the cars is a joke, which is ennerving because you spend lots of time driving around in cars and getting attacked by assholes. Well, not bad, but I’ve seen better games in that category (such as GTA).

Am I happy? Comparing it to other games in that genre – no, rather not.

Red Faction: Guerrilla

Type: sandbox third-person killing with a storyline

Price paid: €2.50

Short comments: They took up the idea from Half Life where you weren’t a special ops guy but a physicist. This time, you’re a mining/demoliton engineer. That gives you a big sledgehammer which is equally great at taking down building and enemies. Doesn’t sound spectacular, but I liked it – perhaps because of the sledgehammer? You got other weapons, too. Great bang for the buck! Although you won’t be that motivated to continue playing after you’ve finished the storyline.

Am I happy? As said: great bang for the buck.

Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II

Type: 3D tactics warfare

Price paid: €5

Short comments: I did play DoW and its extensions quite a lot, so I had to get it. Gameplay has changed vastly. Now, you play a max of four small squads (1-4 people each), each with a leader, which discuss things during the storyline. You need to accomplish something, but I forgot what exactly.

The single battles are not as much fun as the campaign, as the difficulty and joy in the campaign lies in the often very specific requirements of each mission. For that reason: it’s fine, but they shouldn’t have called it “Dawn of War”.

Am I happy? Stupid name. Nice game.

Street Fighter IV

Type: 2D beatemup

Price paid: €20

Short comments: For quite some time, I had wanted something like this: a classic two-person beat-em-up for the windows machine. Seems SF4 is your only choice here. So I got it.

This is, like all of those games, something you need to play with a friend. And as such, it really shines. The characters are well-balanced; while there isn’t one übermonster or a nerd (with the exception of Dan), all of them have their individual strengths and weaknesses, and yes, you can also win without using any super special monster death combos (and lose using them).

I happen to have only one gamepad, and found that some characters are hard to play on the gamepad, while others are hard to play on the keyboard. This is a little of a disappointment, but apart from that – hours of great fun with friends are guaranteed!

Am I happy? Yes – finally I got a nice beatemup!

Test Drive Unlimited 2

Type: car-driving with social networks

Price paid: €5

Short comments: TDU 1 had offered lots of nice cars, and so I got this. Seems the main improvement is some kind of ingame social network integration. And it had problems to properly work with my steering wheel, which required me to plug it in, unplug, start the game, hook up the wheel, quit and restart the game and pray. So I stopped using it.

Am I happy? No. Assholes. “Beta testing” should be a required subject for software people.

Mass Effect 2

Type: SF adventure/roleplaying/third person shooter

Price paid: €5

Short comments: From the description, it seemed like a Starflight with the trading removed and infantry combat added. I liked the idea. Metacritic gave it a 96 score, and they couldn’t always be wrong.

The game consists mainly of combat with three-person teams (which have special powers) where you kill or get killed, and conversations where you advance your character development down the asshole or pussy (or “renegade” and “paragon”) path. While it’s a sandbox universe, you spend most of the time recruiting new crew (which makes up ca. 80% of your storyline missions) and collecting resources on planets via probes to finance research (which is boring). Non-storyline missions are few and boring. You also choose a race for your character and then advance that with special powers. Sometimes, you need to mediate troubles in your crew, which always include female crew members (aka bitch fight). And all alien races look humanoid (boring), and one of them seems to be a band of eastern-European gypsies who all suffer from AIDS. Apart from all those (bitch and English with stupid accent) shortcomings: a great game. I played through the story already three times.

Am I happy? Yes. A lot. Fun!

Blur

Type: car-driving/smashing action

Price paid: €3.70

Short comments: Anyone remember Deathtrack? I wanted something like that for a long time. Blur seemed to be that.

You get to do races in more or less normal cars. While driving, you pick up offensive/defensive powerups. You get lights (?) for winning races, or for getting fans, and you get fans by fancy driving and damaging other players, and for the fans you get new cars, and for the lights you get access to new competitions, and then there’s driver demands which you do to get one-on-one races.

The career system is too strange. And the driver demands get on you nerve quickly. Apart from that, it’s a nice leisure car action game. You even can play it in split screen. However, you can’t control cars one with a keyboard and one with a gamepad, and you can’t freely assign you key mapping. No option of a wheel whatsoever.

Am I happy? It’s ok. The lack of proper controller support is the biggest drawback.

Summary

So, while writing through this, I got into writing longer and longer comments towards the end, for which I’m sorry. Apart from that:

Online distribution means have made it possible for sellers (and thus for gamers) to sell slightly older games for only a fraction of the original price. And that gives you the possibility to get games for the proverbial handful of dollars which only some time ago had cost around 50 bucks and which, if they were great, are still great.

I made use of that a lot, as you can see. From that huge list above, if I was to pick a few to recommend wholeheartedly which are at or below €5, this would be Mass Effect 2, Red Faction, Audiosurf and Need for Speed: Shift or, if we don’t count in the “bang for the buck” aspect, replace NFS with GTR Evolution, Red Faction with Assassin’s Creed and add Street Fighter IV.

Computer games have come a long way. The really great ones are still an exception. But if you get those mentioned above (and the four recommendations together were less than €14!), endless hours of fun are guaranteed!

Standby to logon prompt: 4s

Standby to surf-ready: 9s

Hibernate to logon prompt: 15s

Hibernate to surf-ready: 19s

To me, that looks fairly ok for all of these typical netbook applications, but ymmv.

Note that if you don’t know what computer I’m talking about, read Part 1 and Part 2 of “The Nerdbook”.

System Configuration

The OS used for all tests was Windows XP Professional (32bit) w/ SP3. The system was installed according to typical best practises – a good guide is TweakHound’s XP Tweaking Guide. Acoording to this guide, the “Level 2″ setup was used (which is slightly optimized), but all spiffy optics were turned off (aka W2K appearance). Classic login prompts are used both for standby and hibernate. All of the ThinkVantage software utilities were installed and active. “InstantResume” was not activated (i.e. the system needs to negotiate the WLAN connection when resuming from standby).

The system has a configuration with a GRUB2 boot manager in the MBR and the XP boot loader in the XP partition. The XP boot loader was set to 0s timeout; the GRUB2 has a 5s timeout (which will be subtracted from the relevant hibernate measurements).

Relevant hardware is the standard 320GB HDD and 4GB of RAM.

Measurements

For all measurements, a standard stop watch was used. For that reason, there is some tolerance on behalf of the stopwatch operator. I assume these to be below +/-0.25s.

For the standby measurements, the system was configured to wake on a press of the power button. The power button was pressed and the stop watch started. The stop watch was stopped when the logon prompt appeared – this is the “standby to logon prompt” measurement.

Then the credentials were entered. Upon pressing enter, the stopwatch was started. When the baloon announcing the available WLAN connection appeared, the stopwatch was stopped again. The total reading from both measurements then is the “standby to surf-ready” measurement.

For the hibernate measurements, the system was configured to wake on a press of the power button. The power button was pressed and the stop watch started. I waited through GRUB2′s five-second-timeout (see above). The stop watch was stopped when the logon appeared. Five seconds were subtracted for the GRUB2 timeout, the result is the “hibernate to logon prompt” measurement.

Then the credentials were entered. Upon pressing enter, the stopwatch was started. When the baloon announcing the available WLAN connection appeared, the stopwatch was stopped again. The total reading from both measurements with the five seconds subtracted then is the “hibernate to surf-ready” measurement.

With the thing ordered on December 22nd, it arrived promptly on December 24th. Kudos here both to the store and to DHL for doing that, but then, it’s their job one might say. It’s however noteworthy that it was the case that, according to recent customer reports for some web stores, delievery took extremely long as some kind of wicked business tactic. So for all I had to do with computeruniverse: good prices, proper website, prompt delievery – mission accomplished.

The package for the ThinkPad consists of the computer itself, the battery, a power supply with cables, and a small leaflet which mainly tells you how to connect battery and power supply, what the main buttons on the computer are, and that you may obtain additional info in the manual on the computer (which, obviously, is not available here, as the computer is shipped without any software) or via the Lenovo website.

How does it look?

The X121e considerably moves away from the traditional ThinkPad design which was all centered around the concept of the right angle. It’s more of that smooth affair of today’s competitors, even more so. What has remained is the charcoal colour and the ThinkPad logo in the lower right corner of the lid.

No surprises for the general layout, either: following today’s standard, the battery is sitting on the rear (hence no connectors there), the connectors are on the left side (front to back) headphones, LAN, USB, HDMI (yes, it got one) and VGA, and on the right side card reader (good for SD, MMC, MS and MS Pro), 2xUSB and power.

Opening the computer, you get a typical keyboard layout (with the function key row doubling for additional functions such as screen brightness, turning off WLAN, media player etc.) and, for additional input, a TrackPoint and an UltraNav touch pad with advanced features, both also in typical ThinkPad layout.

The keyboard, which was one of my hard requirements, convinced me from the start. Unlike other designs, the keys here a set slightly apart (so it more resembles a proper desktop computer keyboard) and has a recognizable action.

If there was any critizism, it’s that the lid does not lock in place. Now this has been accepted as standard procedure for many contemporary notebooks (cost savings?), but as I was to find out that the sensor detecting if the lid is open or not is rather sensitive, it sometimes happens that when picking up the computer, it will jump out of suspend (if configured to do so).

Apart from that, it really moves into the nitpicking territory: the cable leading from the PSU to the power socket could have been slightly slimmer and also use a flat connector instead of the German Schuko one – which would not only slightly reduce size, but also help you on trips abroad. Note to self: get cable!

Getting it to run

The following section deals with installing different OSes on this machine. For this reason, it will also cover some of the hazzles of e.g. installing XP on an AHCI-equipped machine from an USB stick, which is not a problem specific to the X121e, but of this choice of installation media and harddisk controller architecture in general.

Excursion: OS selection

I did already mention that this computer doesn’t come with any software, so there was no taking it for a spin before some serious installation. My choices for OS were set on an old Windows XP and some Linux. For the XP, I decided for the 32bit Professional variant. While the Professional is really your choice (and can be had cheaply today, if you still get it), my choice for 32bit, in lieu of the 4GB of RAM expandable to 8, had to do with the fact that for XP, driver support for the 64bit variant (which, incidentially, has not so much to do with the normal XP than with Server 2003) has always been lacking. Not having any other computer with a 32bit XP in use anymore but still using some legacy hardware, the decision was made.

As for the Linux, discussions with my friend @frl_sm1lla – an avid Ubuntu user herself – led to a suggestion of Debian due to it being the root for Ubuntu for which she had some expertise. As accessing NTFS partitions from Linux is a breeze today, but not the other way round (or have you easy access to an ext4 from legacy XP?), it was clear to dedicate more harddisk space to the (NTFS) XP partition than to the (ext4) Linux one. Counting in a Linux swap partition, the partitions were planned as 200GB for XP, 8GB for swap and the rest for the Linux root.

Now XP and NT has always been (and I don’t know if there has been a change for newer Windows versions) something what you might call a jealous, chauvinist bitch: if you happen to install XP on a computer which already contains another non-Windows OS, XP will modify the MBR/boot loader structure in a way that XP and any other Windows versions will run, but only those. Linux, on the other hand, has always lived with being a second choice to Windows on typical consumer x86 setups, and copes with that wonderfully. So if installing both XP and Linux on a machine from scratch, the usual order is XP first, Linux second.

Installing XP

People familiar with XP installation will remember that XP will install seamlessly from a CD/DVD medium, unless you have a non-PATA harddisk, in which case you need a floppy disk drive natively supported by the BIOS (a SCSI FDD connected to a host adapter natively supported by XP does also work). It’s relatively easy to use installation over network (if you have a DOS-based network driver stack for your network adapter), but everything else does not work fine.

So step number one was to somehow make it install from an USB stick, as the X121e, like all computers of that size, does not contain an optical drive.

I found this (German) article on the myeee blog very helpful. If you don’t like to learn German, typically some computer magazines have similar instructions. Key in this process is, next to the original copy of the XP medium, the tool WinSetupfromUSB which is covered here.

A word of caution: the thing is obviously programmed for people who know what to do. The tool is neither self-explanatory, nor will it work without some quirks. I personally found the automatic detection of the USB medium a little cumbersome, as it might lead in some situations to misleading error messages. Nevertheless, after some work, the stick was ready and I was ready to go.

Booting the stick up from the X121e worked fine, however the XP installation routine simply told me that there was no medium to install to and that it might need additional mass storage drivers from floppy disk. I knew that from my XP installations on several RAID-equipped machines, so the next step was to look in the computer’s BIOS setup for relevant options. Turns out that right on the first option page, you need to set the “SATA” option to “Compatible”, meaning it behaves like a PATA drive from its interface. Doing that resulted in the XP installation to detect the harddisk, and to install properly and seamlessly as expected.

What I also learned during the various reboots of the XP installation is that on this machine, it’s wise to either not connect a LAN cable (which for this installation you don’t need, anyway), or to disable booting from LAN in the BIOS (which, by default, is enabled). The reason is that this computer allows for booting from (wired) LAN, and for this will try to obtain an IP from your DHCP on every startup, then check for LAN boot options – which takes time. Now having a boot from LAN functionality is typically considered spiffy for some applications (the diskless workstation/client scenario), but why anyone would want to use (and consequently, an OEM would include) boot from LAN for a netbook is beyond me (but might very well come from using the same mainboard for diskless media center applications).

The next step is usually to install all of the hardware-specific drivers (which was not so bad because the plain XP recognized the touchpad as a mouse right from the start). Fortunately, Lenovo provides all of the necessary drivers on their support site. Their choice of OSes includes every kind of Windows, plus some rather odd Unix choices: while the discontinued Caldera and oddities like HP-UX are included, standards such as Debian and Fedora are not on the list – and even for the supported Linuxes like RedHat, the choice is limited to a SSD driver. Oh well, more fun later on…

Also worth of notice is that you must go to the driver download page directly from the link above or their main site, not jump in directly via a google search result. Otherwise, you may select your fifty-odd files for download, only to get the message that you don’t have anything selected when you want to download. Apart from that, I ended up with some fifty-odd downloads, all of them EXEs, which would then just unpack and trigger installation.

Installing those drivers and applications (like all of that ThinkVantage stuff) then worked rather straightforwardly, so some time later, the entire system was running fine and with all hardware options functional.

But then of course, I wanted that AHCI suppport, which I couldn’t just turn on in the BIOS, or otherwise XP would not boot. Help came in form of the readme of the SATA drivers, which, neatly hidden away in the back section of the document, describes how you can switch an existing installation to AHCI without using a floppy disk drive. Mainly it’s executing a cmd script, rebooting the computer, turning on AHCI, and then using hardware detection to install the drivers – and interestingly, it works.

All in all, with the exception of the USB media preparation and the tricky installation of the AHCI drivers (both of which is not the computer’s fault, but XP’s), a very straightforward affair which left the computer in a perfectly running state right away, with all the config options including power management, webcam and such enabled without a quirk. Fine!

This is usually the point in time where to look for the ability to do realtime audio, I run the DPC latency checker. I have dealt with the topic of audio latency at large in another article, the short version: the DPC latency today is the main limiting factor for the minimum audio interface latency obtainable from the computer’s side. It shows how long the computer (in a combination of hardware and software) takes to react to the calls from the audio interface – and if that time is too long, you have to set your interface latency respectively higher. As a rule of thumb, you say that <500us is fine, 500-1000us is ok and >1000us is not nice.

Firing it up plain and simple, a base level around 200us was often interrupted by high spikes in the 3000 to 16000us region. Turning of WLAN (often a remedy) helped insofar as the spikes were more seldom, but didn’t vanish completely. Fortunately, a test by notebookcheck.com (albeit for the Core-i3-variant, so comparisons to be made with caution) had found the same results, but also found that disabling the Lenovo power management AND WLAN cured the problem. Quickly checking, I could confirm those result with a maximum DPC of 247us once, then not when I tried it the next time. So while I’m confident that this computer will work for audio editing or recording, I don’t know yet for realtime applications.

At that point, I also installed drivers for my trusted Marian UCON CX, an audio interface which I got at a factory sale via ebay for ’round €100 (after some time earlier, I had decided against getting it to the original price of €450). I still stick with it: this is a good interface, its only shortcoming being that Marian does not offer any drivers safe for XP 32bit ones, and doesn’t even offer those on their site anymore.

After some basic software installations (Chrome, Thunderbird for internet stuff, LibreOffice for office stuff, Wavelab and Cubase for audio stuff), I decided to call it a success and move on.

Installing Linux

As mentioned before, I had opted for a Debian installation and a 64bit one at that. Preparing an installation medium was a breeze, and the installation process was running in no time – until a specific time:

After the installation routine had partitioned the harddisk, rewritten the master boot record and whatnot, it suddenly found that it couldn’t install the grub boot loader. Trying the lilo alternative (and, already pissed off, ignoring the “do you really want to use lilo?” comments) didn’t work either. So no Linux for now. What had worked, however, was to leave the system in an unuseable state: due to the fact that Debian had essentially ruined my old boot setup before deciding that it didn’t want to install a new one gave me the “no OS installed” message when booting the system.

It was time now for one of those ugly parts of computer life, the XP recovery console – which I could boot from that XP installation USB stick. The Microsoft support article is overwritten with “for advanced users”, so I hoped I was one. I first used DISKPART to delete all but the Windows partition (careful! check the output of the MAP command so you don’t accidentally erase something on your USB stick). The thing somehow worked with the commands FIXMBR (careful! you first need to find out the device name via the MAP command and then specify that as a command line argument, otherwise it will just fix your USB stick’s MBR and fail doing so), followed by FIXBOOT (usually with the “C:” drive letter).

Fortunately, the XP was up and running again, but that left me with the need to decide on another Linux distribution. My own Linux experience is rather dated (meaning: more than 10 years old) and was with a SuSE distribution. In the meantime, I had sometimes thought about giving Fedora a spin, but never gotten through to more than burning a live DVD, starting it, and confirming that somehow I could get it to run a driver for the Promise RAID in my old computer. So I tried Fedora.

As I later discovered, the live image I got wasn’t a 64bit one – but apart from that, everything went smoothly. Not only did it not ruin my XP installation, it also worked right from the start (and contrary to the debian attempt, also worked with all my network adapters, and with AHCI). Swapping the GNOME desktop for a LXDE running under LXDM required some editing of configuration files (if only with the help of some excellent articles on If Not True Then False – thanks!) but also worked right away. Couldn’t get an MP3 codec installed so far, but apart from that…fine. One quirk, however, is things related to power management: hibernate does almost never work, suspend does sometimes work, and so on.

Trying to get me a fedora 64bit image and booting that failed: it simply produced some incomprehensible (for me) error messages while booting up. Ah, well…

Actually doing something with it

After those installation thingies, I decided to actually do some netbook nerd stuff with it, without any systematic approach for some time. Some bullets, in no specific fashion:

• using the webcam and the integrated audio for a google hangout worked just fine, and didn’t tax the CPU very much.
• they keyboard really works fine. I found that out e.g. by writing this here post.
• portability is very ok. It fits in any of the typical carrying bags a man would have (which means: not in a handbag, but in any case of rucksack, document bag etc.). The weight, while being slightly over that what you’d want to carry in your hand for a long time, is also ok.
• battery works fine. On a non-systematic attempt of watching a video for two hours, followed by basic surfing in a low-power configuration for several hours, I wasn’t even below 40% capacity. And it also recharges fast.
• the speakers…well, you wouldn’t want to enjoy my music with it. No bottom end at all (but that’s hardly a surprise, given the laws of physics).
• the “i”s of the ThinkPad logo on the lid and next to the keyboard are LEDs. They light when it’s on, and blink when it’s in standby.
• when carrying the thing around, make sure to properly grip it. If the lid opens just a hint, then the computer will leave standby (if it is configured to do so).
• those touchpads have come a long way. About as complex as learning to master all of the contemporary techniques for playing an electric bass guitar.
• the fan is not annoyingly loud, but clearly audible. Keep your energy load under control if that isn’t acceptable.

A summary

All in all, I believe I made the right choice. The computer does everything I wanted it for in the way I wanted it for. While the XP installation worked fine from the start (or rather, after heaving dealt with the quirks of the installation process), the same can’t be said for Linux so far. I will still be searching for a 64bit distribution which brings the necessary drivers…or I have to go into self-compile mode like decades ago. Ah well…

That’s it for part 2 so far. Stay tuned for a part 3 – which will come after I’ve done a proper Linux 64bit install, and after I’ve gained more experience with it (and maybe also tried some actual audio work with it).

But how nice is it? And why did I get it in the first place? And why not another make or model?

I decided to put this into a series of posts, the first of it deals with the motivation, the requirements and selection. In other words, you won’t read that much about the actual device here.

Motivation

Today, it seems, everybody has mobile computing needs. And for most of these, I also had solutions. There is my power notebook, which I specifically got for doing high-performance realtime audio processing, not for portability, small size or something. And I already talked about this Dell Studio here. I also had, for some time, access to my company notebook, which with time first suffered from a completely failing battery, then from a completely failing display. And finally, an old, non-smart mobile phone (a Sony K800i), which I do actually like and which allows me to check emails or twitter.

So I already had a really powerful portable computer for doing realtime audio stuff, the occasional recording thingie (for the A Tätowierte Katz session, the Dell was used both as a DAW and as a virtual grand piano with sub-1ms-latency). I also had a phone to use to do simple tweets or check email. But I had nothing for the stuff in-between. So what is this stuff in-between for me?

By analyzing all those “now I wish I had a…” moments, I found that it’s mainly to have something to quickly write a blog post. Or to review a requirement specification. Perhaps read a text, and occasionally surf the internet (and have access to something like a bandcamp player). And to do that without running for a power socket every two hours or so. And without breaking my back (or bag) carrying it.

With the availability of various kinds of mobile devices, the choice was a little bit more complex. A smartphone might have been the first choice of many, but as writing texts was one of my first requirements, it’s obvious that this wasn’t my first choice. And I already had a phone for doing phone calls. A tablet would be a consideration. It solves the problem of screen real estate, but not that of the text input. Sure, you can connect a bluetooth keyboard, but that would jeopardize the portability benefit (and at the same time drain battery). No, my choice was a netbook – or subnotebook, I wasn’t exactly sure about that.

For the writing/blogging thing, it would also be nice to integrate photos seamlessly. Now netbooks, contrary to smartphones, usually don’t sport a decent camera, but I already had that base covered with my dumbphone (and, should the need arise, my trusted Olympus C5050). And in addition, it would surely be nice to do some basic music stuff: perhaps change the track spacing on an audio master, or even work on a music score. And finally watch the obvious movie on a boring train ride or so.

And finally, I didn’t want to spend more than €300-€400.

Requirements

So the next step was to sketch out my requirements. In an informal fashion, they looked some like.

1. Must-have:

1. small size and weight
2. long running time on batteries
3. decent keyboard
4. decent display
5. WLAN integration
6. low price, <€400

2. Would-be-nice:

1. sufficient screen real-estate
2. bluetooth
3. xD card reader
4. watch movies
5. run audio applications

To bring those requirements further down, a look at some of them is necessary:

Of course, WLAN (1.4.) is a no-requirement, as all available devices have that covered. The screen real-estate thing is not so much something of area, but more of screen resolution. When we look at the 2.5. requirement, it simply takes some space to use an application such as, say WaveLab. And for watching movies, the heralded “HD-readiness” is also nice.

Of course, “HD-readiness” does not only mean display resolution, but also graphics performance. And finally, the audio apps thingie would mean indirectly “sufficient harddisk capacity”, simply because I was aiming for a slim Linux for the usual stuff, yet wouldn’t want to move away from my Steinberg-centered music design flow – which means two OS installations.

Selection

The form factors here (which directly affect 1.1. and 2.1.) are either built around a 10.1” or a 11.6” display – with the computer with a 11.6” a little larger, or so it seems. Interestingly, the keyboard is also a dominating form element here, so it seems that netbooks with a 10.1” display ususally waste surface on the lid, simply because they couldn’t make the thing smaller because of the keyboard.

As for the computer’s CPUs, it’s the usual juxtaposition of Intel vs. AMD. While Intel had initially completely dominated the market with the original Atom N270, things have changed now. AMD have launched their Fusion series, and that with a trick:

For semiconductors, the manufacturing price is roughly proportional to the chip’s surface area. Now in days of old, it was typically a linear scaling which meant higher performance meant higher number of transistors meant higher surface area meant higher price. Now with today’s integration levels, it’s sometimes not possible to get all the required connectors (the fanout) onto the chip for a given surface area. Which means a low-performance CPU might need more area (and thus higher price) simply because of all the wires emanating from the CPU. AMD was wise enough to optimize on this: they simply integrated a graphics processor onto their Fusion CPUs, which not only saved them the necessity to have a large bus from the CPU to the GPU, but also made use of the silicon real estate required anyway.

So while the Fusions perform roughly equally or a little bit better than the current dual-core Atom counterparts (e.g. the N570) for math-oriented benchmarks, they completely run away for graphics-oriented benchmarks (the N570 and relatives do have some GPU functions, albeit rather basic ones). Not bad for the “watch movie” requirement.

Of course, Intel didn’t just stand and watch: while the (single-core) Pineviews already have integrated graphics (albeit rather weak one), the new Cedar Trail family of Atom CPUs targets just those Fusions: power-efficient dual core CPU with decent integrated graphics processor, but only available recently. And finally, the Sandy Bridge family also has their ultra-low-power Core i3 variants,  the 2357 and 2367, also with embedded graphics. However, those come at a considerably higher price tag, with a recommended customer price of $250 for the 2367.

Of course, when talking about performance, it’s also wise to look at the RAM size: ever since the day that i86 architectures have started to crawl out from under Gates’ “640k should be enough for everyone” dogma, it was well-known that usually, additional money for bigger RAM is better invested than for a faster CPU. This might even be more relevant for those mobile, low-power applications: lacking RAM means lots of disk access, which not only decreases performance, but also drains power. So I decided to specifically keep my eye open for the RAM setup.

As for makers, I always had heard from friends an colleagues that the makers to look for with regard to netbooks were Samsung, Acer and MSI. So I browsed those manufacturer’s web sites, checking the famous Geizhals for street prices to compare. Samsung always had that website which I didn’t like. Also, for the affordable models, they still seemed to be on a technology level from their first generation of netbooks from three years ago – which means single core Pineviews and 1GB RAM, and maximum screen resolution of 1024×600.  Still, with a running time of over 10 hours, they’re at the leading edge of that requirement 1.2., (together with ASUS).

To a degree, the same holds true for MSI. Their U270 model comes with the AMD Fusion E-350 and can be expanded up to 8GB of RAM (usually shipped with 2), however, the maximum screen resolution is 1024×600, which is not nice for the 10.1” models, but for this computer, which sports a 11.6” display (coming with increased size), I consider it unacceptable.

Acer has two contestants available: the smaller one, the D257, is a 10.1” netbook sporting Intel’s N270 and either 1 or 2 GB of RAM, and comes with the genre-typical 320 or 500GB harddisk. Like all Acer models, it accepts xD memory cards (requirement 2.3) but sadly, does not offer Bluetooth (2.2.). The 722 model is an 11.6” subnotebook based on AMD’s C-60 and a maximum memory of 4GB. It comes with the same harddisk options as the D257, and offers Bluetooth and xD-Card reader in all models. Most Acer models come with Windows 7 Home Premium (for the 722, the 64bit variant) installed. However, variants without OS or with a MeGoo Linux are distributed (simply for competitiveness on the price front). This got me thinking: I don’t need (or want) a Windows 7, so why pay for it in the first place? It also offers a 1366×768 pixel display resolution. Comparing to the D257 with a battery capacity of 8 hours, the 722 comes in slightly below that with 7 hours.

I also decided to go to a store and have a look what they had on display. That store sported a selection of Samsung N150, MSI, Acer, Asus and Toshiba models. Comparing them for the haptic impression, I found that only the Acer and, to a lesser degree, the Samsung, had a decent keyboard (requirement 1.3.). Total disappointment on behalf of the Asus.

About that time, I thought about another player altogether: IBM/Lenovo. The subnotebook variants of their ThinkPad series had always been considered a little bit classy (read: huge price in violation of 1.6.). Add to that the first IdeaPads, which had powerful features but a battery capacity good for about 3.5 hours, this wouldn’t look like your first choice. However, I found something in their ThinkPad X series: the ThinkPad X121e sports an AMD E450 (at least in the affordable variants, there’s also Intel-i3-powered ones for roughly double the price), comes with 4GB RAM expandable to 8GB, has (in some models) bluetooth integrated, and while, due to the 11.6” screen, slightly longer (but about as wide) as the benchmark Samsung models, they’re actually a little slimmer, and only weight a tiny bit (~150g) more. And they come at a price which sits in my planned price range.

So there’s the perfect device, or is it? Has IBM/Lenovo simply done some very clever and cost-effective design, or did they put the ThinkPad label on a cheap piece of crap?

One plot to keep the price low is certainly what IBM has begun some time ago: ship their low-end notebooks without any OS. No, not with a free thingie, but with nothing at all, meaning a computer with an empty harddisk and without any media accompanying it. And this, of course, is also the case with the X121e in question. But an integrated OS wasn’t part of my requirements. In fact, with the exception of the xD card reader, all requirements are fulfilled. Measuring in at 29x21x2.3 cm and weighting 1.5kg, it’s a little longer (but less thick) than the typical 10.1” netbooks by e.g. Samsung (1.1.). The specified running time of 8.4 hours is considerably below that of the small Atom-powered netbooks (which sometimes exceed 10 hours), but on par or above all competitors with a decent CPU and memory, such as the aforementioned Acers (1.2.). For the keyboard (1.3.), I decided to take a blind dive (and perhaps make use of a return policy), simply because ThinkPads were always quite ok in that department. The display at least brought the 1366×768 resolution (1.4.), and the WLAN requirement was, as mentioned already, a no-requirement.

2.1. also came with the display dimensions and resolution, 2.2. was fulfilled, 2.4. (watch movies – see AMD Radeon GPU) and 2.5. (audio performance) could also be seen as fulfilled. Missing was 2.3., the xD card reader – which could be worked around by a small card reader costing about five bucks. And 1.6., the price requirement? With prices at €370 on Geizhals, the requirement was still fulfilled. So I opted for that very computer, and had it ordered from computeruniverse.net.

So how did it work? Wait for part 2, where I’ll address first impressions, first attempts at OS installation and some first trials with proper applications!

Yesterday was my last day at work. In an employment situation which had lasted more than ten years, and in a project which, with a duration of more than three years, was my longest continuous project to date.

I’m leaving this job entirely on my own choice, and will start a new job in February 2012 in Würzburg.

I know that there’s both employment situations and people for whom a change of employment and of location happens rather often. This is not the case for me: apart from my more-than-ten-year emplyoment with my still-employer, I have also lived here in München for all of my life. Which means, I have never been away for more than three months on a stretch.

Now this changes. I’m moving. A new condo has already been found (and a really beautiful one at that!), still looking for a new car, and some organisational details need to be taken care of, but apart from that…I really don’t have to do anything for more than one and a half months.

To celebrate that, today was that newly invented holiday for me. I even had to keep myself from doing anything worthwile, like going shopping, or recording music, or something that’s more work than listening to music, playing computer games, or just chillaxing.

I’m really looking forward to that new thing in Würzburg. More details on past and future will follow – until then, I need to decide whether going to a pub for a beer is allowed on this special day.

Rainer

Ein lustiger Vortrag!

I’m proud to announce the release of Akustik Kies: Reflexiv Hören on this year’s St. Nicholas Day, December 6th 2011!

Reflexiv Hören is the second part of my piano solo album. Containing freely improvised material exclusively, this double album is all piano solo (or rather, a virtual grand piano, namely Steinberg’s The Grand 3).

While the first part, Transitiv Sehen, contained only material with the piano “and nothing else”, this new release contrasts that by incorporating the whole array of electronic processing and realtime loops, dubbed komische Elektronik.

All of the recordings for Reflexiv Hören come from my now discontinued by-weekly series of virtual video concerts – the MoinSound Studio Sessions.

Grand Piano – and komische Elektronik

While people enjoyed the power of a grand piano all on its own on Transitiv Sehen, the new Reflexiv Hören release expands that with the well-known computer-based processing setup: centered around Ableton Live (which, in this setup, is only used as a VST host and very flexible virtual mixing console), there’s lots of fancy plugins let loose on the piano. Or rather, most of it is Jeff Larson’s fantastic live looping software Möbius (it’s free! go check it out!).

But where does it go from there?

Transitiv Sehen vs. Reflexiv Hören

performing "Transporttheorie und Glas"

There’s a lot of symmetry between both halves of this my first double album ever. It starts with the booklet (yes, the new album also has a very fancy booklet!), where the two booklets exhibit a strong degree of reflection symmetry.

Then there’s the tracks: many of the Transitiv Sehen tracks have a sibling on the new album.

To name the most important ones: one of the center tunes of Transitiv Sehen, Der Schicksalsfurz, has found its companion in Grüner Wind.

There’s Kohlmeisen, which on Reflexiv Hören is complemented by one of the strongest (and the longest) track, Panthermeisen.  The audience favorite, Ersatzverkehr, has found a proper suitor in Ein Strandspaziergang ohne Netzwerk (lang). And finally, the whole structure in three parts is equivalent on both releases.

More than the sum of its parts…

The strong symmetry (without being in any way redundant) is also the strength of these releases. After all, they form a double album, and as such, both releases together are simply more than the sum of its parts.

And for that reason, if you don’t have Transitiv Sehen yet: Get over and download your copy of Transitiv Sehen already!

Kreativität ist kein linker Schmarrn!

As always running against the stream, here’s another fruity light drink. In a tall longdrink glass, add:

• freshly pressed juice of two oranges
• frehsly pressed juice of one lemon
• dash of D.O.M Bénédictine

Stir in glass, top off with soda water, add ice cubes (unless it’s a few degrees above zero, in which case you can skip that last part).

Of course, the dominating components in this recipe are the juices. And let me tell you, as these are really what makes (or fails to make) this drink happen, “freshly pressed” is not optional here.

The holy pope of cocktail art himself, Charles Schumann, has this to say about juices (and I’m paraphrasing here): Lemon juice and orange juice are the two most important juices for cocktails, by a wide margin. They are contained in so many great drinks, and in such a vital function, that it’s never acceptable to have anything than “freshly pressed”. And “freshly pressed” means the fruits are cut up and pressed right before the drink is mixed.

There’s really not much to add to this statement. Out of curiosity, you may try to fix a drink (be it this one, or one of the classics which come to mind, e.g. any Sour or Collins, a Screwdriver or an Abbey Cocktail, first with some juice from the store, and then with some freshly pressed juice. The difference, let me give you the abstract right here, is much more radical than you would expect.

A last note on the addition of the D.O.M Bénédictine:  this is one of those odd liqueurs with a “secret recipe” and century-old monk tradition and whatnot. It’s taste is many-faced, rather complex, and as such, it’s not found in that many mixed drinks. For Autonomous Cruise Control, the key is the right amount for the dash, of course. What makes this harder is that lemons and oranges vary in size and also in intensity of taste quite a lot. However, if you’d like to find a good starting point for the “dash”, add two to three barspoons first. Stir, and see how it works. Interestingly, the D.O.M comes out more after the soda has been added, so a good process would be to add “below optimum”, add soda, taste again and if necessary add another few drops of D.O.M afterwards.

A sidenote about responsible drinking: this is a really-low-alcohol drink. Although the D.O.M has some 40% vol of alcohol, with the drink containing less than half a cl, the total amount of alcohol would be 2mg, which is less than a tenth of e.g. a pint of beer, and also less than a tenth than your standard cocktail which follows the “6cl of spirits” rule. On the other hand, drinking ten of those also makes this a small beer, and in legislation where DUI starts at zero, also one of those is too much. So even if this drink does contain only miniscule amounts of alcohol, it’s still not alcohol free – and sadly, its specific charme is not possible without the D.O.M.

Like all other things computer, car driving games (in the widest sense) have come quite a long way. In today’s world, you’ll find anything between simulation, action game including driveby shooting, illegal street racing, race team management, and everything in between.

A big player in the field, since the first eponymous release in 1994, was “Need for Speed” (distributed by Electronic Arts). If we include the announced release for this November, there’s no less than 19 releases, including several looks at professional racing, street racing, cop vs. driver and whatnot. Just recently, they’ve started the sub-series “Shift”, which is meant to be more professional motorsports and more simulation-oriented.

Today, I’m reviewing the original “Shift” release from 2009, not this year’s sequel “Shift 2: Unleashed”. Why do I review it? Valid until Sept. 12th 1900 MESZ, all the latest Need for Speed games are on sale at Steam with 50-75% off, giving Shift a price of €5. I thought that was worth a try.

General Concept

Need for Speed: Shift is built around races which happen on official race tracks, using street-legal cars. The races here consist of different speed-oriented challenges (which can be either normal races or “hot lap”-style) and drift challenges – I’m really happy that this game seems to lack drag races completely!

There’s over 60 cars, mainly focussing on contemporary products (the Toyota AE86 being a welcome exception here), and 19 race tracks, modelled after real-world tracks.

In the game, you advance through some career with the usual concept: you win races, and if you do that a lot, you can start in more challenging races and afford better cars. There’s upgrades and tuning (albeit on a rather basic level – Underground 2 had more tuning complexity there), and the genre-typical vinyls you can stick on your car.

Cars and Tracks

On the cars side, the game provides a good overview of genre-typcial cars: there’s your choice of European, Japanese and US cars. Sadly, some important brands are missing (most notably: Ferrari), but apart from that, the usual suspects are all there.

Cars are grouped into four tiers, from top to bottom normal sporty cars (e.g. Mazda RX-8, BMW 135i), special sports versions of normal cars or more sports-car oriented cars (e.g. BMW M3 E92, Porsche Cayman), supercars and race-oriented cars (e.g. Porsche 911 GT2, Nissan GT-R) and hypercars (Bugatti Veyron, Pagani Zonda etc.).

The mother of all sensible sport cars at the edge of oversteer

There’s both upgrade and tuning options, and with the upgrade options, things get a little complicated: in general, following the concept known from e.g. Most Wanted, you can tune the tier 1 cars in three steps, whereas you only can tune tier 3 cars one step and can’t tune tier 4 cars at all – which means that a fully tuned tier 1 car advances in performance regions normally held by hypercars. There’s also the so-called Works upgrade available for some cars, and there’s also drift adaption for some…etc. You get the point – it’s a little complicated.

Tuning options are directly related to the upgrades you have installed: on a standard tier 1 car, you can only adjust tyre pressure etc., while a fully tuned car gives you access to chassis parameters, drivetrain ratio etc.

And of course, there’s the optical side: vinyls and paint, plus your choice of fancy rims.

A point of critizism here is the complexity of what can be tuned with which upgrades etc. – this upgrade/tuning system is not understandable at all. Plus, the optical side leaves much to ask: why can’t we have the same flexibility as in e.g. Underground 2 from the NFS series?

A nice thing is the visuals of the helmet camera: the dashboards of the cars are very accuratley modelled, at least from their optical appeal, not so much for the functional: as one example, if traction control and stability control is turned off, the corresponding lights in the dashboard fail to light up. And unfortunately, the game does also not make use of some car-specific features which would be benefical for racing use, such as the E92 M3′s adaptive suspension.

And there’s the question of realism – but about that, see the “how much of  a simulator?” chapter below.

As for the tracks, there’s also your usual choice of tracks from Europe, Japan and the US, all of them already known from other games, not only from the NFS series. There’s Autopolis and Ebisu, there’s Brands Hatch, Donington, Spa and the revered Nürburgring Nordschleife. All of these tracks really look fine (a real eyecatcher: the theme park next to the Spa Francorchamps track) – as for the realism topic, see again the “how much of a simulator?” chapter.

Your Career

You just received points for...what was it again?

Your career works with three different currencies, namely dollars, stars and points. Dollars are used to buy cars and upgrades, and are earned for winning races. Stars are also earned for winning races (and possible side-missions, such as “do a clean lap”) and unlock additional competition events and cars. Points finally are awarded in two categories, namely precision (such as staying on the track) and aggression (e.g. spinning an opponent), and both advance you through a system of driver levels, which in turn unlock additional stuff such as vinyls, free cars, storage space in your garage etc.

This complex economy seems to make the game and the advance in the career path unneccessarily complicated. However, I have found that by simply playing through the game, this doesn’t stand in your way. You normally simply advance at the correct pace, have the right amount of money and the right driver level. Still, if it’s no good anyway, why this complex system?

How does it look?

First of all, I’m more looking at the actual driving than at the graphics for such a game. That being said, I found the optical impression to be, if I may say so, up-to-date without being overtly spiffy. There’s smoke from the tyres (which looks cool), there’s a funny damage system, the environment is modelled with a high degree of detail etc. – all in all, nice to look at. On the other hand, some details that are actually important to the racing experience are simply missing: one example would be the “Yokohama” sign on the right side, cleverly marking the turn-in point for the Tiergarten bend at Nordschleife.

General Gameplay

Europe vs. US challenge - not much of a challenge, if you ask me...

Typically, you launch into a race or a series of 2-3 races, doing each race and trying to win. The game allows you to set different levels of driving aids (from “nothing at all” up to “full stabillity system and braking and turning aid”). It also displays a race line which by its colour tries to tell you if your speed is right – which doesn’t work. So why not be able to turn that off, or rather replace it with/add a display which suggests gears for each bend? The full-blown HUD also leaves a lot to be desired: there’s the race positions in light grey-blue on the area of the screen which usually shows the sky (which is also about the same colour). Based on the complex driver points and side-mission stars (see above), you also get tons of messages displayed all the time, the best thing here is to simply ignore them. Fortunately, in every view except for the helmet camera (I usuall stick to hood camera because it most closely resembles how I feel the environment when I drive a car), the dials of the car are displayed in a well-readable fashion on the bottom of the screen, so you’re able to throw out all that unneccesary and confusing info and still get the info you need.

Apropos gameplay, more specifically computer AI: these drivers are bound to have different personalities, and they are usually a little on the aggressive/reckless side, at least for professional motorsports. Some drivers will simply tap you out in corners (but of course, you can do that, too), so if you’re not used to that and/or don’t like that, that can be a little annoying.

How much of a simulator?

As already mentioned, Shift is meant to be more into the simulation and away from the action game genre, so let’s find out how it goes here. Of course, with more than 60 cars and about 20 tracks, it’s hard for most people to really compare that to real life, so I did at least try to have a look at what I can with good conscience judge:

First, the cars are not exactly that much “simulated”. To give an example, the real-life BMW 135i and the BMW E92 M3 are from their chassis completely different cars: the 1 series more prone to oversteer, the M3 much more well-balanced and if anything at all, then with a slight tendency for turn-in understeer.

In the game, however, the M3 behaves like the 135i with more power, while the 135i behaves more like a Mazda RX-8 (which, in the game, rather performs like a 1984 911 Turbo). Do those cars feel different? Yes. Do they feel like actual, physical cars? Yes, sort of. Do those models properly reflect the differences between those cars? No, not at all.

Let it be known that in real life this is possible without smoke!

Unfortunately, the same is true when it comes to the tracks: there’s one (if only one thing) I can say something about here, and that’s a standard E92 M3 on the Nordschleife. The short version: if you’re going for somewhat dynamic driving, everything is different than in reality. Just to give a few ideas: there’s a whole new line possible at Kallenhard, and the triple-right after Kallenhard can be done at much higher speeds than in real life. Interestingly, Angstkurve can be done with about 20 km/h more (!) in real life than in the game, and the same (albeit not with that much of a speed difference) is true for Pflanzgarten I, where in the simulator the lane choice of the crest before Pflanzgarten II is completely irrelevant as to how far you fly. I could go on…

This example shows about the same for the tracks as for the cars: it’s a model of some track, which happens to look like an actual track. But it’s not the same.

Summary

So, Shift has tried to be a simulator, and failed. This is not so much of a problem, unless you are looking for a simulator because you need one. If on the other hand, you’re looking for a car-driving game in which the cars behave like cars, where there’s still more to it than just lap times, and which gives you a lot of fancy cars and beautiful race tracks, then – at least as part of that Steam sale – you really can’t go wrong here.

• 1 cl of Peach Tree
• 2 cl of fresh lemon juice
• dashes of Orange Bitter

Add four ice cubes, stir in the glass, then top off with soda. Cut the zest of a lemon slice, then use as garnish. Serve with a straw.

A good and light longdrink for those warm summer evenings when just a soda may seem too boring, a hard drink is too hard and a colada or punch much too heavy.

Enjoy!

Rainer