pap

You may wanna price this to sell, mush. I was in PC World just after Chrimbo. Same size Samsung Plasma going for 299.

1366x768 again. Almost the lowest resolution going. Ok, ok - I'm an elitist when it comes to tech, but that's entry level widescreen resolution. At 15.6in, you'll see pixels. All the time. Processor is good, HD is not great, not sure that is enough memory either, considering the GFX card is going to pilfer some ( quite how they can say "up to 1.68Gb dedicated memory" is beyond me. It's either dedicated or it ain't ). That all said, it is a good machine for the money; no doubt about it. Like I say, I'm just an elitist bugger when it comes to tech. It's not just about the games either. As I said earlier, any work your GPU can't do natively gets handed off to the CPU where it'll run in software. Any memory your GPU borrows from main RAM is going to be expensive physical memory, depriving other programs of that self-same memory. When you run out of memory, your computer will then start shuttling stuff off to the HD, and pretend it's memory, which is all well and good except it's tons slower than RAM. Open too many programs and you end up with a situation called thrashing, where the HD is accessed all the time for stuff that is supposed to be in RAM. Budget machines are not for me. However, if you get one, buy RAM. It's cheap and will give you a big performance boost. 8Gb seems to be the sweet spot for Windows 8. If your graphics card is nicking any of that memory, get 10Gb total.

Brilliant, except I lived there for about a year in 1993. Bridge Road. Flat above the chip shop. I was only 17/18 at the time, so would have been a prime candidate for trouble off the local lads. Only one incident. Was having a party. Some people gate crashed. My Bassett mate filled 'em all in. They never came back despite issuing several threats.

Ah, The Sun. Purveyors of the fine "Gotcha" and "It's war, senor" headlines. The Argies are taking the p!ss though.

Why?

Once again, I feel a Ramirez Off Topic Thread moment has been missed.

A lot of hardcore Tintin fans are pretty upset with this movie. They're unhappy that they stitched three Tintin books together to make the plot. Additionally, someone was very unhappy about Tintin's moment of weakness when all seems lost, citing something like "TINTIN WOULD NEVER GIVE UP! HADDOCK WOULD GIVE UP". Comparisons with Crystal Skull abound too. Fans. Gotta love 'em.

There was one. It got locked. I think we're done here.

Ah boll*cks, you've got me there too. Anyone else?

I might be remembering some half-fevered dream, but I seem to remember Alps occasionally changing his stance. Flimsier than wet bog paper as a point, though. Nah, you've mostly got me. Like anyone who posts on here with any regularity, I've had my run ins with our man in Austria. They can be mostly characterised as slanging matches, so you've got a point. That said, I genuinely enjoy our little tete-a-tetes ( soz pedants, can't be arsed going into Character Map for the 'hats' ) and it's good to have a proper ding-dong with someone who won't back down and gets funnier and nastier with each post. So yep, debate it isn't. Boll*cks it was. Having fessed to my crime, I will say that in all the encounters I've had with Alps, the stuff he's chucked my way hasn't been personal; more the generic stuff that we leftie types tend to get labelled with. Water off a duck's back, in other words. I honestly can't say I've reciprocated. I've ripped him mercilessly for his 2 weeks of hell in South Central Hampshire, and all that's been taken in good enough humour. Continuing the Alps love-in, he occasionally says things that I've often thought true of other posters at times, but haven't said it out loud. He's like a release valve. I'm like "yep, he's said it. I don't have to". I too enjoy Alps stubborness, the cul-de-sacs he argues himself into. You have to give a measure of respect for the size of his hauls, and his persistence despite all the abuse he gets back. What I haven't quite worked out is if it's planned trolling or natural talent. For a while there, I thought he might just be on amphetamines like Hitler was toward the end of the war ( yeah, I invoke Godwin ), but an analysis of his posting patterns does not support this theory.

I might have called troll before. Not really the same thing as trying to get someone banned. If someone had done the same thing to you, rest assured that there would have been a similar outcry. This is consistent with my long term stance. In all but the most extreme cases, I think bans are counter-productive. The worst offenders invariably resurface under different monikers.

Personally I think everything should be free. Roll on robotic serfs, I say.

Neither you nor I are in the position to decide that. Alpine Saint is still about. The mods haven't banned him. It's their call. Nothing to do with bandwagon jumping; as you well know. First off, the site would be genuinely poorer in his absence. The amount of traffic and comment his depressed pantomime villain act on the main board is immense. He also knows his geeky stuff, tending to be much less confrontational than he is elsewhere. He likes a laugh, likes a debate - bung a few labels about. Are you honestly that fragile that you can't defend yourself against depressed-uranium shells from Austria? Anyways, as my mate Barry Sanchez used to like to say, no one likes a grass.

Yeah, but TDD is TDD. Even I ignore him when he's in an insulting mood. I'm also discussing it with you, the person who started a thread I termed as pathetic, so yep - my stance is an interesting one. Alps is a provocative sh!te, but makes no attempt to pretend to be anything else. Wanna flame with him? Go for it. I'll enjoy seeing the sparks. I can't claim to have read Alps every post, but there are far worse posters, in terms of the depths they will sink to, than our Austria-based agent provocateur. I do think your thread was pathetic; the forum equivalent of a footy player remonstrating with the ref to get another player sent off.

I actually thought Davis would get it prior to the season starting, especially with his Rangers and NI captain experience. Not first choice for the berth though.

Just occurred to me that both Fonte and Lallana could be out for a few games. Who gets the armband if Ads isn't fit for the Villa game?

Is dune a skate now? Blimey. I knew he was capable of going to extreme measures to get a reaction, but never imagined this. Or is the skate not Barry Sanchez?

Are you part of the Alpine Saint Pitchfork Ban Barbecue Committee? Not accusing you, like. Just drawing battle lines

Well I hope you're wrong, TDD, but

They weigh in because he's perceived as unpopular and he's an easy mark. It's part cowardice, part mob rule and part "finally having something to say" with a lot of them.

I'll defend Alpine again and again as long as there are a load of people ganging up on him. That thread was pathetic, btw.

Don't worry about them. Most people like to see a good barney, and as The Kraken points out; the answer to the question is pretty much covered in post #1. "Old business" is a laugh mate. You're the one that referenced the moon landing threads. It's the sort of thing you do, kid. Take the man, not the ball. You specifically brought that thread into question 'cos you thought it'd diminish me on this one. When you accused me of making "the most unreasonable post" you'd ever seen on here, I essentially said you either didn't read many of the posts on here or were a liar. I seem to remember you losing your sh!t over the second possibility. I don't think you're a liar, Charlie - but I think that this thread proves without a shadow of a doubt that you don't read the posts. That's fair enough. I've done it myself, seen others do it and what tends to happen is a few short posts later, there's an embarrassed admission that they didn't read the post and everything's sorted. You compound the problem by insisting that you are right Worse still, you asked time and time again for Turkish's assessment of Guly when the thread already shows several. You're indifferent to people's opinions in the first place, then sling out the insults when people rightly pull you up on your ridiculous opening justification. The moon landings thread is not the only thread where a very big hole has been dug. Re-read this sh!t, and weep.

You know what, Charlie? I'll happily admit to that. I've often been told I don't know when to shut up. A rare moment of perception by yourself, or simply a case of every broken clock being right at least once per day? Maybe that thread made me look a total cock and you a total hero. Who knows? You and I are obviously excluded from a legit opinion on the matter. If I had to give a subjective view, my bias obviously included, I'd say that you might have won the battle, but look at what you had to become to achieve that victory.

You keep mentioning my moon landings thread. I'd invite anyone reading this to view it to get a view of how you choose to debate, even when you've got a slam-dunk*. * Spoiler - badly and angrily.

Canaries. 4 hour flight. Hot and breezy.