Well, it’s official. We’ve gone insane! We’ve decided to go ahead and open a FREE computer help page for the general public.

The idea spawned from Connecticon, where there seemed to be a very large number of people with questions about gaming computers, and some of them very likely slipped something into our drinks and brainwashed us into doing this.

To make things easier, we’ve created the free computer help page where you can submit your tickets. An actual person will get back to you with an answer to your question within about 48 hours, no strings attached. Any claims that these people are being held against their will is purely hearsay, and you should make no attempt to search for hidden messages within the reply e-mails.

If everything goes well, we’ll probably spiff up the page and give it a shiny logo and a fancy name (suggestions are welcome).  Be sure to spread the word.

Justin

P.S. Go join our Facebook page!

This weekend Mitch and I went down to Conneticon and held a panel on “How to Build A Gaming Computer.” As promised, we’ve put the PowerPoint slides up on the site here, for those of you that were at the con and wanted a copy. We had a great turn-out and a lot of fun, and I just wanted to thank all of you who showed up and listened to Mitch and I rant for an hour.

We also had some interesting ideas as a result of the con, and I wanted to run them by everyone here. The first idea was to put together a yearly online “Builders and Buyers Guide” for anyone who was looking to build or buy a gaming computer. After the panel, a number of people were very excited about having a place to go to find this information, so we figure, if we’re going to make this a regular Connecticon talk anyway, we might as well put together a companion guide and make it available to everyone.

The second idea was related to our offer to answer any question that anyone at the Connecticon panel had about building a gaming computer, through our e-mail help line. Somehow we got the crazy notion that it would be a good idea to extend that offer to anyone who had any question about buying, building, or fixing a computer. So, in the next few days, we’ll be playing with the idea of creating a page where anyone can submit any computer-related question and get an answer. Very likely, this service will be completely free, because… well… we’re a bit insane.

If you’re excited about either of these ideas, check back here on our blog or, even better, become a fan on our new Facebook page (probably the best way to stay up to date with us… tell your friends), and we’ll let you know what we’re planning.

Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you again to those of you that came. If you have any feedback about the panel (More beach balls? Fewer beach balls? Not enough cow bell?) feel free to post a comment below.

Justin

P.S. A while back we had an idea for a live action Starcraft game… Connecticon 2011?

Everyone thinks Starcraft 2 is the greatest thing since sliced bread. And, while I agree that Starcraft 2 is a fantastic game, I can’t agree with the statement in its entirety.

I mean, where would we be without sliced bread? You can’t butter a piece of Starcraft 2 or make a turkey, bacon, and Starcraft 2 sandwich. It just doesn’t work. The Zerg start harvesting pickles and pretty soon you have a mutalisk problem in your kitchen. Furthermore, there aren’t any downsides to sliced bread. I certainly can’t remember a time when sliced bread kept me up until 6 AM on a work night.

Granted, Starcraft is the most popular RTS of all time, with sales spanning two decades and the game becoming a national sport in South Korea, but sliced bread has been around since 1928, when Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa invented the first bread slicing machine, and has since become a worldwide phenomena! That makes it the longest running, most successful bread in history (eat that KeSPA)!

So, while Starcraft 2 is a perfectly balanced RTS game, set on a rich and imaginative landscape, I just can’t imagine a world where I’d have to slice my own bread. I think I could get by in a world without Starcraft 2, because there’s always the original Starcraft, but not without sliced bread… at least until they come out with sliced bread 2.

I am an avid StarCraft fan. Normally, one starts by saying something like that when they’re about to complain, but this isn’t that sort of post. I’ve been playing the beta of SC2, and, while I’m having to re-learn quite a bit, I’m loving it.

There are many reasons for this, but I’m going to hold off on talking about them until another post. This one is to ask you why you aren’t playing the beta, unless you are, in which case, never mind. But it’s also to pass along the news that an official released date, July 27, has been announced for SC2. As they say in the trailer, “Finally.”

If you’re currently saying, “Curse you and your beta key! I want one!” then you’re in luck. If you weren’t aware, many places will give you a beta key when you pre-order a copy of SC2. But, what if you don’t like pre-ordering? We’ve got that covered, too. If you go to EB Games or GameStop, you can put down a $5 down payment on a pre-order, and they’ll give you a beta key. If you want to abandon your deposit, no harm, no foul, and you still have a beta key.

You’re out of excuses. Go play StarCraft.

We recently made an attempt to appear as a top result for a trending Twitter topic (#ThingsIAintDoneYet) on Google, and it seemed like we should post the results of this little experiment. They are complete and abject failure, compounded with a sense of our own insignificance and a side order of indifference.

It turns out that, much to no one’s surprise, trending Twitter topics are viewed much like edible underwear to a starving, fashion-conscious nymphomaniac – they’re gobbled up very, very quickly. So not only did we fail to appear in the top results, we failed to appear at all in the full 25 pages of results.

One could argue that, being a gaming computer company, posting about PC Gamer would net us higher relevance (that being the post that prompted the experiment), but we choose to view this as an indictment of unscrupulous forces who had the same idea but do it better. We also choose to view the letter “Q” as an offense to right-thinking people everywhere, so you may want to take our opinions with a grain of salt.

Recently, we did a post entitled “PC Gamer June 2010″ and noticed that, within five minutes, it was at the top of Google for the search term because no one had posted about it yet. This got me wondering if I could effectively hijack a high-trending twitter topic that no one was covering and, if so, what the implications might be for today’s bat-shit insane mass media.

Around the time that Michael Jackson passed away, I remember seeing at least three other trends on Twitter claiming that other celebrities had died. This included Jeff Goldblum (the scientist in Independence Day), who was apparently rather surprised to find out he had recently fallen to his death. Within minutes, numerous blogs, websites, and even newspapers had spread this news across the intertubes, even making up fake background stories to fit the incidents.

There comes a point when the speed at which we get our information eclipses our ability to properly research it. It is at this point that our media becomes unreliable as a source of information and turns into a giant game of interblog-telephone.

The fact remains, though, that with great insanity comes great opportunity. Therefore, as part of an ongoing experiment, I’m going to see if I can take over the top Google spots for Twitter topics of my choosing.

So, without further ado, here it is my list of “#ThingsIAintDoneYet”

1. Ridden a water-buffalo.
2. Crossed the highway blindfolded.
3. Determined the difference between “Lite” mayonnaise and “Light” mayonnaise (maybe one of them is moving REALLY fast and the other one doesn’t install adware on your system).
4. Eaten a piece of Quebec.
5. Found all of the cheeseburgers in Meowcenaries.

Something we’ve been waiting for for months now has finally happened. One of LanSlide’s computers has been reviewed in the just released June 2010 issue of PC Gamer!!!! We’re very excited about this, as you can tell by the absurd number of exclamation points on the previous sentence.

Now, when you read the article (and you will read the article, right?), there are several things you should keep in mind:

• We are awesome.
• PC Gamer agrees we are awesome.
• Portable desktops FTW.

You can take a look at the computer they’re talking about over in the store here, or at any of the computers starting from the store home page here, or at the PC-Pack, by far the coolest thing since Antarctic winters during the last Ice Age, here.

Or you can use the sidebar conveniently located on the left side of your screen. Emergency exits are located in the upper right of the window and in the drop-down menu of your browser. In the event of a water landing, you’re pretty much screwed. Good luck!

Mitch and I are at the PAX-East gaming convention and having a blast. We’ve met a ton of interesting people and ended up doing an impromptu pod cast with the guys (and girl) from Bonus-level.com.

We also managed to anger the god Cretos, destroyer of worlds, devourer of virgins, overlord of the tormented horde and master of the dark entities of the ill-forgotten realm / concession stand. Apparently they don’t take credit cards, so we’ll be paying off our debt scrubbing the lake of agonized souls and baking pies (they have a thing for pies).

I have to get back to cleaning unfulfilled dreams from the cesspool of the damned, but I promise to post more PAX East goodness soon.

 __
(oO)
/||\

Everywhere I turn, I seem to see someone else talking about how God of War III has effectively killed off all the Greek (and, for the fastidious, Roman) gods, leaving none for the assumed continuation of the series. But, these same people go on to point out, there are many other pantheons to choose from, and Kratos can continue his deicidal mania in any one of these alternative settings.

To all these people I say, give the man a break. I mean, he’s been killing everyone for a long time now, and it doesn’t seem to be helping much. I mean, can we really say things are better? Personally, I believe Kratos probably has a strong passion for collecting miniature porcelain dolls, and I think we should, as a community of gamers, support his pursuit of healthy, constructive alternatives to killing every supreme being he encounters.

I grant, God of War IV: Display Cabinet Arrangement doesn’t immediately seem to pack the same punch, but we have to give it a chance. If Kratos wants to settle down, I think we owe him the opportunity. And if it doesn’t work out, we steal his tiny Darth Vader doll and tell him Buddha took it.

DRM has been getting a lot of press recently, especially with the recent announcement by Ubisoft of their new server-based rights management system. The system works by requiring a constant connection to Ubisoft’s servers in order to play any of the their DRM-enabled single player games, thus continuing the proud tradition of developers and pirates in their arms race to see who can dick over everyone the most. Point Ubisoft.

Now, most people, ourselves included, believe your gaming PC should function as a stand-alone device for any single player game you purchase. Ubisoft, by contrast, insists you have a hypothetical uninterruptible internet connection run by ISP fairies and overseen by gnomes. Under their new system, all of their future games will require a connection to their servers in order to play. This means that if your internet connection goes down, the DRM stops your game, and you might lose any progress you’ve made since your last save point. “We realize people sometimes go to great lengths to make sure they don’t lose their progress,” said the company, “but we wanted to show them that their dreams are unattainable.”

However, never fear, Ubisoft has also announced the existence of a kill switch for the DRM in case they decide to shut down the servers. We’re not sure if this is Ubisoft’s attempt to taunt gaming PC pirates by painting a big red bulls-eye on their software or if this is evidence of something more sinister. After all, robot apocalypse movies have taught us that a system override is crucial for any automated system. Could Ubisoft be laying the groundwork for an AI piracy detection algorithm that may develop a mind of its own? Maybe Ubisoft’s new DRM includes a cold, emotionless computer that thinks about nothing but hunting down pirates using a private army of robotic minions, and the kill switch announcement is some rogue programmer’s attempt to send word to a rag-tag team of motley adventurers assembled to take down the machine before it tries to wipe out all of humanity in an overzealous attempt to put an end to piracy forever. Or maybe the folks at Ubisoft are just a bunch of jerks.

Only one thing is certain. We’ll be in our underground bunker stocked with guns, ammo, and canned food, waiting for the end to come.