Nine Days With an Absurd 9,0. Gaming Laptop. There may exist inside of you a desire that burns white hot for the Acer Predator 2. X, but you will never buy this laptop. It is not for you, because if you want this laptop, you probably cant afford it, and if you can afford it, you are probably old enough to not want to spend 9,0. Need For Speed Underground 2 Save Game Editor Pc' title='Need For Speed Underground 2 Save Game Editor Pc' />But if youre reading Gizmodo youre still enough of a gadget fan to want to at least understand the 9,0. To that end, I spent nine days working almost exclusively with Acers ode to excess. Here is its story. Day 1 The arrival. Our office manager looked suspiciously from me to the box, which is the size of three ten year olds squeezed together. Its a laptop, I explained. While the office manager was incredulous, others were delighted. I want to sit in the box, a colleague shouted while snapping photos. Need for Speed Most Wanted. 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THd7fM/hqdefault.jpg' alt='Need For Speed Underground 2 Save Game Editor Pc' title='Need For Speed Underground 2 Save Game Editor Pc' />Following the included instructions, I managed to open the gigantic cardboard boxas well as the nearly indestructible Pelican case contained within. Desiring nothing more than to game, I plopped the Predator 2. X on my knees as I would a Mac. Book. Fortunately, I used to bicycle a lot, so Ive got strong thighs that dont weep under the weight of 1. When I told inquisitive on lookers the price, they looked at me aghast. Why does a 9,0. 00 machine exist I didnt have a good answer. So I pulled the trackpad out of its slot and showed people that it can be flipped over and used as a number pad. Everyone agreed that was very neat. The trick earned the computer its first wow unrelated to size or price. After an hour and ten minutes of use, the computer died. It was after 5pm, and I did not want to find outlets for the computers two two necessary power supplies, so I left it on a coworkers desk and went home. Day 2 Set up. When I got to the office, I finally found outlets for the the 2. Xs two 3. 30 watt power supplies and began to use the laptop in earnest. It comes with Tobii Eyetracking, but it didnt appear to be working. The Nvidia graphics drivers were out of date too. Nvidia Ge. Force unhelpfully uninstalled its drivers, and the computer broke for twenty minutes. I uninstalled everything with the Nvidia name. Reinstalled. Inexplicably, the eye tracking started working on the third restart. After three hours of futzing with drivers and settings, I got Rise of the Tomb Raider running. My coworkers crowded around the computer shouting their advice on how to walk in a straight line. Take a moment, remember when there was only one controller for the SNES at a slumber party. This moment was like that, but burlier. Yet there was exactly one coworker who did not care. She was the one who told me to mute the computer earlier when shed had enough of Windows notifications exploding from the computers four speakers and two subwoofers. Now she was irritated because the work day was over and people were peering at a laptop. Lets go get beer she bellowed. The horde agreed. I saved my game and closed the laptop. The battery was still not fully charged. Day 3 Making my way downtown, part 1You are taking this on the train. It was not a suggestion. My boss and I agreed that you couldnt review a laptop without testing its mobilityhow easy it was to pack up and move around. In the case of the Acer 2. X, it is a chore. Thanks to the gentle curve of the display, the lid does not sit flush, so the 1. The 2. 1 inch display might crack. So I packed it back up into the Pelican case and headed home an hour and a half early. No one questioned this. A woman offered to help me carry it down the second flight of stairs to the train, but I declined. Star Wars Battlefront 2 Torrent Iso. I need to do this for myself, I said. On the train, everyone eyed me like you always eye the asshole with huge luggage on a rush hour train. It was only 4 4. Thursday, but the train filled up the closer to Brooklyn we got. When I arrived at my stop, I had to muscle my way to the door and pray the wheels on the case didnt roll over a foot. I am too delicate to be shouted at by cranky commuters. Off the train, I made it up one flight of stairs, a line of annoyed passengers forming behind me. A man wordlessly held out a hand and helped me up the second flight of stairs. New York is nicer than youd expect it to be. It is. 4 miles from the train station to my home. The sidewalks arent the smooth and clean ones of the Flatiron District. Theyre broken with concrete jutting up out of the ground. On the day I brought the Predator home, it had just rained, and while the streets were dry, puddles of brown, stagnant awful lay in a pedestrians path at every intersection. I lifted and dodged and hurried home. The shipping weight of the box is 7. Pelican case, power supplies, and 1. I was sure I was dragging all 7. The dog and cat were both alarmed by the monstrosity that took up residence in our living room. That night my roommate arrived home. She saw the computer on my lap and could not take her eyes off of it. Is it like. for army she asked. Her voice was a whisper, barely heard over the hum of the machine. No. It was not for army. Day 4 I cannot feel my toes. The journey home had clearly affected me. Like the best friend in an 1. I was plagued by a cough and a sniffle and a weakness of indeterminate origin. My only salve was the laptop. I found a place for its two plugs, settled it on my lap, and downloaded Mass Effect Andromeda. The machine did not like the internet in my home and it took an hour, three attempts to fix the internet, and one restart to download the game. The laptop rested on my thighs and destroyed all sensation below my knees. I cannot feel my toes, I texted a friend at 3 3. Playing the game on the 2. Xs keyboard and using its trackpad was a study in painful frustration. I couldnt get comfortable. The Cherry Brown mechanical key switches were nice, and the trackpad gave me zero issues, but the spacing between the keyboard and trackpad felt all wrong, especially when the computer was sitting in my lap. I finally gave up and found my Xbox One controller. Gaming was instantly more pleasant. Day 5 Never mind, everything hurts. I played Mass Effect for longer than I should admit in polite company, and at the very least the gaming performance is incredible. The dual Nvidia GTX 1. GB SSDs in a speedy RAID 0 configuration, plus the 6. GB of RAM and the Kaby Lake i. It had zero issues giving me 1. And with two Nvidia GTX 1. As long as the laptop was plugged in. After a very rare bathroom break I sat back down, balanced the computer across my lap and was startled to see the game had slowed to a crawl. I quit. Restarted. Played again. It was still slow. Then I realized the plugs had disconnected, and I was running on battery power. I plugged back in and balance was restored Until my controller started to randomly disconnect every few minutes. As if the computer knew Id been playing Mass Effect for 1. I got annoyed and powered off for the night. Day 6 Its hot in here. It was over 8. 0 degrees outside. The heat didnt bother me, until I balanced the computer on my knee. Then I was reminded of summers in Texas, my god daughter sitting in my lap, all sharp bones and sweat and a furnace that would rival whatever burns in your basement. The laptop is like a toddler I can put in a box at the end of the day. The discomfort grew too bothersome for me to ignore. I tried placing it on my secretary desk, but it was too bigtoo heavyto be supported. I eventually gave up and went and played Mass Effect on my regular PC. I immediately missed the expanded field of vision the 2. How to Start Your Own Podcast. The podcast craze of the past several years shows no signs of slowing down, and while every armchair broadcaster with a voice recorder app is eager to get in the game, creating a professional sounding podcast isnt as simple as it might seem. Heres how to create, record, and publish your own basic podcastand get people to listen. This story originally ran in June 2. August 2. 01. 7 with additional reporting from Patrick Austin. You Start, Be Ready to Commit. Before you rush into things, its important to keep in mind that podcasts take a lot of effort to get going. Theyre not just recordings of people talking not the good ones, anyway. Pat Flynn, host of the Smart Passive Income podcast, recommends you treat podcasting the same way you would any other big project Podcasting is extremely fun and exciting, but there is one thing you must do before you start podcasting Commit. You must internally commit to podcasting, as you must do with anything that is potentially beneficial but takes some time and effort to do. Its easy to assume that podcasts are easy to produce because theyre audio only, but dont be fooled. They can take up a lot of time to put together, especially at first. Also, podcasts do best when theyre released consistently. If youre interested in developing any kind of listener base, you have to be ready to release episodes on a regular basis. All in all, podcasting can be fun work, but its still work and should be treated as such. You also shouldnt expect to get rich from podcasting either. Its certainly possible to generate income from podcasting, but that usually requires advertisements and sponsorshipsboth of which youll get after youve built up a listenership big enough to make it worthwhile to advertisers. If youre not interested in starting a podcast for the fun of it or to have your voice heard, you might not get much out of it unless you already have an audience. What Youll Need. You cant start a podcast without equipment, and good equipment will go a long way. Heres what youll need Microphones Any microphone will work for recording your podcast, but listeners can usually tell the difference between low and high quality microphones. If youre not sure what to look for, our list of the five best desktop microphones is a great place to start I use four analog Audio Technica AT2. As you shop around, youll also need to decide whether you want to use a USB or analog XLR microphone. USB mics convert analog sound into digital so you can plug a USB mic directly into any computer and start recording without much hassle, but you could potentially get lower audio quality compared to analog. Considering you dont need any extra tools or devices to record with a USB mic, they can be a little cheaper in the long run. Adobe Acrobat Reader For Windows 98Se. Analog microphones use XLR connectors, which means you need another device to get your audio onto your computer, but you can get higher audio quality and can use them with other sound equipment if you had a PA system or wanted to play live music, for example. Of course, if you have a gaming headset or other basic microphone around, you can easily use that too. Portable XLR Recorder optional If you plan on using analog microphones for your podcast, youll need something that captures your analog audio and converts it to digital. Portable XLR recorders can capture multiple microphone channels and allow you to do basic sound level adjusting and muting on the fly. Audio files automatically get organized and stored on a memory card that you can insert into a card reader or slot in your computer. These are amazing tools, but they can be expensive. You can find them for anywhere between 1. I use a 4. 00 Zoom H6 Handy Recorder with four available analog channels. Audio Interface optional If you want to record directly to your computer with your analog microphones, youll need an audio interface. These devices allow you to plug in one or more analog microphones and will convert the analog audio to digital. Most audio interfaces will connect to your computer via USB or Firewire. Audio interfaces can cost as little as 3. You can see why a USB microphone is a cheaper option. A Computer Any Windows computer or Mac should work fine to record, edit, and upload your podcast. Thankfully, editing audio doesnt take a ton of computing power. Additionally, depending on how you choose to recorddirectly to the computer or onto a dedicated recording deviceyour computer will also need the right ports. USB microphones, for example, will obviously need an open USB port. If youre using analog microphones with a portable XLR recorder or audio interface device, youll need either a 3. USB port, or in some cases, a Firewire port. So before you spend any money on equipment, make sure you have a computer that can support it. Audio Editing Software For the actual recording and editing, youll need a Digital Audio Workstation or DAW, there are a lot of good options out there, but the licenses for some of them can cost a pretty penny, though. Licenses for professional level DAWs like Reason or Pro Tools can cost anywhere between 3. Apps like Hindenburg offer simpler audio editing software for under 1. Reaper is a fully loaded audio production app for 6. Ppt To Scr Converter. Adobes audio editing software Audition CC is available with a 1. Because of that, most people will recommend free open source programs like Audacity when youre just getting started, and thats what well use an example throughout this how to guide. Pop Filters optional The clearer your audio can sound, the better. Pop filters, while not required, are fairly cheap and can keep your plosives from making a nasty sound on your recording. If you dont want to buy any, though, you can make some of your own. You might be thinking that all this equipment is pretty expensive, and youre not wrong. However keep in mind that decent audio equipment will last forever if you take care of it. It may be expensive to get started, but after the initial purchase, youre set. Step One Narrow Your Topic and Find Your Niche. Just like blogs, there are a ton of podcasts out there. That means that you can probably find a podcast about everything under the sun already. Dont get discouraged While just about every broad topic is already covered, you just have to find your spin on things to make an old idea something new. Dear Lifehacker, As a side projectexperiment, Ive started my own blog. The problem is, now that I Read more Read. For example, if you wanted to make a podcast about music, ask yourself if theres an audience out there for what you want to talk about. Maybe you narrow your idea down from music in general to bluegrass specifically. Now your coverage is specific the music, people, and culture of bluegrass. Once you have your topic narrowed down, it helps to add a spin to it. Maybe you talk about bluegrass music and culture while sipping moonshine with your co hosts. Its kind of true that everything has been done before, but it hasnt all been done the way you would do it. So find an angle thats personally interesting and youll be better off. Step Two Download, Install, and Set Up Audacity. As mentioned earlier, Audacity is a great DAW for podcasting beginners. Its open source, free to use as long as you like, and is available for Windows, OS X, and Linux. Before you can jump into recording, however, there are a few tricks to getting it all set up properly Download Audacity 2.