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Lenovo ThinkPad X1 review
For weeks now, Lenovo aficionados have been salivating. Thanks to a series of leaks, more than a few of you have been awaiting the ThinkPad X1, the skinny, girlfriend-proof follow-up to the company's vaunted X series. One problem: it didn't officially exist. Well, the jig is up, and the X1 is at last a real, whirring product, on sale tomorrow with a starting price of $1,349. As expected, it marries that iconic red nub and rock-solid construction with some flourishes you haven't yet seen on a ThinkPad, including a 13.3-inch Gorilla Glass display, integrated, fast-charging battery, and a buttonless trackpad. And, as you may have gathered from those leaked shots, it's the slimmest ThinkPad yet, measuring just 16.5mm (0.65 inches) at its thinnest point. Throw in Intel Core 2011 processor options and you'll see Lenovo has made one lofty promise: a svelte system that performs like a heavyweight and whose design is modern, but not too much of a departure from the classic ThinkPad uniform. So how close does the X1 come to living up to these towering claims? Let's find out. %Gallery-123448%
Breakfast Topic: The noob old days
We were all noobs once. Well, I certainly was, at least. My very first character was a Forsaken Rogue who used a white weapon way past Level 20. Wanting to better his equipment, I searched Thottbot for the fastest weapon, thinking that the more hits I got in, the better my damage would be. I found out about the Daring Dirk, a 1.6 speed dagger sold by vendors, and excitedly went to Stranglethorn Vale to camp it. I was so thrilled when I got it, a green weapon, I eventually dual-wielded them. A 1.6 weapon on my Main Hand. I felt powerful.That was just one of my many, many noob moments back then. When we first started the game, our very first MMO, my wife and I had no concept of tanking or the archetypal roles and group compositions. We headed into Sunken Temple with our friends, a Warlock and a Mage, and we thought that since my wife played a Shaman who wore mail, she should take the hits. Of course, she was also our only healer. Also with no concept of threat, we took about five hours to finish that instance, wiping numerous times. I look back on those days with fondness.
Forum post of the day: Serious business decisions
WoW has changed considerably over the years, often for the better and sometimes for the worse. Better and worse are, of course, a matter of perspective. Slovotsky of Turalyon is getting fed up with people complaining about the easing of raids. He's confident that Blizzard made the choice to lower the difficulty on raids because more of the player base can now have a chance to experience them. He disagrees that casual players have ruined the game. Familiarity may also lead to boredom. Some of the guilds that have progressed through Naxx have already done so either in the Pre-BC era or on the PTR.As some pointed out, Blizzard is a for-profit business. The company's job is to sell a product, not to rule with a heavy hand or coddle the incompetent. The switch to an inclusive raiding environment was most likely a marketing decision. Caydence of Draka drove this point home, to rebut the argument that players will quit WoW because it's easier. It is simply a better business decision for Blizzard to alienate the "hardcore" players who make up a small minority. She suggested that the subscriber base has grown with each ease in difficulty.
WoW Rookie: Keyboard shortcuts
WoW Rookie is brought to our readers to help our newest players get acclimated to the game. Make sure you send a note to WoW Insider if you have suggestions for what new players need to know.Accept this fact: to be good at playing WoW, you need to learn to use your keyboard at least some of the time. You don't have to bail on your mouse, but it's very helpful to learn some of the very basic keyboard shortcuts that will make your life in the game that much easier. (Easy is good, right?)Using the game interfaceThere are hotkeys for almost everything you do in-game. You can find most of them by just hovering your mouse over the icons that you click -- as no doubt you may have already noticed. Let's start with the button bar that you use to bring up your Quest Log, Spellbook and other things. You'll see that when I hover my mouse over the gold cup icon, a tooltip pops up. The L in parentheses after "Quest Log" means you can just press your L key to bring up the log instead of clicking the icon. (Don't worry that it's a capital L, just press lower-case L. When a keyboard command is capitalized, it's written as "Shift-L".) After the break, you'll see a list of keyboard shortcuts for the game interface.
Stuff talks WoW stuff
A story went up on stuff.co.nz about the World of Warcraft just yesterday, and I was pleasantly surprised by what it had to say. I tend to go into these things with a level of caution, because most news stories that attempt to introduce you to WoW do so very poorly, especially on sites that aren't specifically for WoW. I expected this to be largely the same, and it actually did start out that way. The phrase '10 million obsessed teens' made me cringe. Luckily, it got better. While the summary of what WoW is has inaccuracies, it certainly isn't anything that would matter to people who haven't played the game. It wouldn't affect their gameplay any. Only us obsessed teens would make a fuss over something like that, and the article isn't really for us.Overall, it's a pretty good summary of WoW for people who know little about it. It's definitely a social game, and if you don't want to be social or don't have time to invest social time into it, it isn't a game for you. I could have done without the partial endorsement of buying accounts, but... hey, whatcha gonna do?
Breakfast Topic: Horray for n00bies
We have a policy of not using much gamer slang here on WoW Insider. I'm feeling a little naughty today, so I'm going to take this opportunity to break the rules. N00b is on the list of words we generally avoid. It refers to players who should have learned the mechanics of the game, but continue to make stupid mistakes. We are surrounded by n00bs from the Hunter who consistently tab targets to the Shaman that utterly refuses to use Totems. We've all been subjected to the annoying Murloc game where people spam trade chat with movie titles with Murloc replacing one of the words. I find this behavior to be somewhat juvenile and nearly completely asinine. I never participate in the trade chat spam, but like I said, I'm feeling naughty. I propose we go to town with the word n00b. I'll start: 2001: A n00b Odyssey Charlie and the n00b Factory Plan n00b from Outer Space Indiana Jones and the Temple of n00b. Alright, it's your turn! /e defiantly accepts her punishment and saunters down to the torture chambers in the basement of the WoW Insider headquarters.
Newcomers in the WoW community
Most games have a beginning and an end -- if people want more, the developers produce a sequel. But games like WoW are different, of course, because everyone is paying by the month in order to play together, and the developers are constantly adding some new content revising the old. As time goes by, though, a rift appears between people who have been playing a long time and people who are just getting started. Not only does the game development company have to make some hard decisions about whether it's more important to keep people playing every month or to get new people to start from the beginning, but the old players have to figure out how the new ones are going to fit into the social system they've developed.The Burning Crusade tried to appeal to both sorts of gamers, with added content for both ends of the player community, but Wrath of the Lich King is taking another direction, with most of its content only for people who are ready to leave Outland behind. But the patch 2.3 changes reveal a different strategy for attracting new WoW players: rather than adding new content to attract new players, Blizzard can just make the old content faster, more streamlined, and get new players into the new higher-level content more reliably. Will this keep new players coming? Does Blizzard even need new players, financially speaking, or are they content to just try and keep all the existing players subscribing for as long as possible? Either way, a more vital issue is at stake: As the WoW community has gotten older, we have noticed some old-time WoW players like to complain about "noobs" a lot, in a way that doesn't leave any room for new people to join in on the activities. For a newcomer, it feels like an exclusionist attitude. The "noobs" are running around in all the wrong gear, using all the wrong strategies, precisely because no one has interacted with them enough for them to learn how things are done here. Some aspects of WoW are not at all easy or intuitive, and it's counterproductive to blame the noobs instead of reaching out and lending a helping hand where appropriate.
WoW Rookie: Money-making 101
Once a week, WoW Rookie attempts to bring new players useful tips and tricks on improving their game.My first character rarely managed to keep more than a gold to her name until after she hit level 60, and I imagine the story is similar for most new players. There are plenty of skills to buy, so many professions to learn about, and always the lure of the auction house attempting to part you from your hard-earned coin. If I only knew then what I know now, mount money at 40 wouldn't have given me such grief -- instead of being frustrated over my lack of funding, I could have been frolicking through Azeroth on a brand new pony. But for new players struggling with money right now, I'm going to offer a few reasonable financial suggestions to help you on the road to your first big purchase.
Flash heals for everyone
Mystic Worlds (who just changed the color scheme on her blog) has an interesting idea: give every single class in the game the chance to have a flash heal all for themselves.To a certain extent, things already seem to be going in that direction-- the Gift of the Naaru is pretty much exactly what she's talking about, except that it's only for Draenei. And Blood Elves, with Mana Tap and Arcane Torrent, have what you might call a "flash mana heal." Additionally, lots of high end gear is showing up with a chance to heal on it-- there's even an enchant now that periodically heals the whole party. Mobs are hitting harder than ever, but there's also more ways to recover from it.But MW wants a "heal yourself, nub" heal-- for rogues or casters who don't manage aggro, or warriors who don't wait for mana. That idea I'm not thrilled about-- one way to "train" a caster not to pull aggro is to simply let them die. If we gave casters all kinds of outs, there's lowered incentive for them to do their job right in the first place. Of course, MW does say that each class would be required to spec a certain way for the heal, so it wouldn't exactly be free-- players who could play their class right could spec a different way and take the bonuses that came along with it, and players who wanted things to be a little easier could spec for the flash heal.Then again, by the end of MW's piece, you can tell she's just ranting about being told to heal. That I can identify with-- if I'm main healing an instance, you don't have to tell me to heal you. If I'm supposed to heal you, and I can heal you, I'm healing you. Whether every class has a flash heal or not, if you're not the warrior and we're all doing things right, you probably shouldn't be getting hit in the first place.
Designer analog sticks
Do you look at your PSP's analog stick nub thing with disdain? Do you dream up elaborate Road Runneresque schemes to destroy it and eat it for dinner? Well luckily for you, Divineo.com has replacement analog stick nub things for you to put in your PSP if you have some amount of modding skills or friends with modding skills. The pink one looks sorta dirty to me for some reason. If anyone actually has a modded PSP, you should post a link to an image of it in chat so we can all check out your pimped out handheld. [DCEmu]
Make your nub bigger
Are you insecure about your gaming performance? Is your nub too small?There is now a solution!EXTRAPAD FOR THE PSP SYSTEM WILL INCREASE NUB SIZEAvailable in two colors and five shapes and sizes, each nub is coated in rubber for better grip. This approach has resulted in: ROCK SOLID control due to bigger, wider and fuller support THROBBING thumb pains are gone due to easier grip ALL-NIGHT gaming sessions now made possible STRONG and fast installation for multiple gaming sessions! No worries, men! ITMedia has endorsed the EXTRAPAD solution to help men like you achieve their best possible gaming proficiency. Only 500 yen![Via Pocket Gamer. Parody of hilariously named "male enhancement" website.]
Breakfast Topic: The N-word
There's one word that gets my goat in WoW: "noob". With spellings as diverse as "nub", "n00b" and "nubcakes", dropping the N-bomb is seen by many players as a way to enhance their own social standing -- often with the opposite effect.I'm tired of "noob" being the default insult -- of Trade, General, LFG and local channels filling up with the word time and again. Of being called a "nub" for reasons as diverse as refusing a duel, wanting to find a group and capturing the flag in WSG. Of course, sometimes we do behave in ways that deserve reprimand -- but can't anyone come up with a more original insult? Perhaps that should be the next Blizzard competition.
