We had a campaign here several years ago, and $50 was the accepted rate most places.
I don’t think you can legally demand it anymore, but you used to be able to demand that windows was removed, and you were compensated for the price of the license.
Here in EU what made that possible was AFAIK regulation about anti competitive practices.
Problem is it’s never Microsoft that pays, it’s always the vendor or retailer.
AFAIK that ended about 10 years ago, due to some legal technicality.
When Microsoft battled Android to sell their own phones, they demanded a $35 license fee for “Microsoft Patents” on Android!.
AFAIK that was about the same as a Windows OEM license! Just about every Android phone maker folded and agreed to pay!
So IDK Microsoft can be very aggressive in their license pricing. There are also different versions of Windows, and a multi language license is AFAIK more expensive.
Still for me it would be absolutely insane to pay that much, as I would just format it anyway, and install Linux. And with Linux I can use whatever language I want!
Wow $140 USD is a lot for preinstalled windows IMO. 😱
Horrible! They sold out, but not as quick as expected.
I played a bit with Suse around 2000, but I switched to Linux as my main OS with Ubuntu in 2005.
Now I use Manjaro, because I like the rolling release concept, and it’s easy to use different kernels, and it’s a good KDE distro IMO.
In my experience it’s also among the best for Steam games.
300 kW chargers are pretty common here (Denmark), I did a search, and the fastest I can find is 400kW. But they are rare, and I don’t think many cars can utilize that yet.
I have no doubt that when cars that can handle 1MW become common, we will also get the chargers for them. But it will probably also be expensive to use.
China doesn’t have 1MW yet either, BYD has just begun building them. The fastest Tesla supercharger here is 250 kW.
We can now get cheap 22kW chargers for home use. But yes electric cars are still expensive, we are hoping 2nd hand EV will drop in price quickly, because there are always new better cars coming out. Here you can almost buy a house for what a new EV with good range cost.
Here it cost extra to use fast chargers, but we have from 50 to 300 kW. But already at 100 kW it’s already more than twice the normal cost of electricity.
We have solar panels, so we would really really like an EV? That’s free charging half the year. 😎
Charging this fast is always battery to battery, right?
It’s DC but I think it’s from grid through inverters. And those inverters are quite expensive. My guess is they can go on indefinitely.
Great article, but when comparing to BYD 5 min charging, the CATL system is incomplete.
The new CATL battery can handle faster charging, but they haven’t made chargers that can handle or deliver the needed power, to charge that fast.
BYD has built the the entire infrastructure from charger to battery, the charging system in the car can handle the 1MW charging power required. (1000 volt at 1000 amp). A battery that can handle it from 10-60% And finally they are setting up charging stations that can supply that level of power.
The CATL battery is great because it shows we can go even further, but BYD has their system available NOW!
What may be the biggest benefit IMO though, is that the new CATL battery will allow cars to charge very fast even with smaller batteries. Which may introduce a completely new type of cheap EV with medium range that can charge super fast, so they can still be used reasonably well for occasional longer trips too. This is also helped by the more than twice as high durability of the new battery. Smaller batteries need to be charged more often, and these batteries can handle that too.
I had some difficulty finding out the content of the Deluxe, so I probably clicked too much around, the icons are the same for the Deluxe and Summer edition for me? Probably because I have Morrowind and Skyrim on Steam but not Oblivion.
It’s weird it’s so hard to find the details on the “includes nine expansions” on Steam. Normally there are descriptions. But it only says for instance “Fighter’s Stronghold Expansion” with no information on it that I can see?
PS: One of the cool things about original Oblivion, is that it allows you to play the Nehrim total conversion. Although I can see it has huge problems on Steam. But I played it when the English version came out, and IMO it is as good as the original game.
I never played an SSI game, the first RPG game I played was Might and Magic Clouds of Xeen. Which I found to be an absolutely amazing game.
I live in Europe (Denmark) I don’t think AOL was ever a thing here, we did have Compuserve for a few years until Internet made it irrelevant.
AOL: Do you mean Amarica On Line?
I only played it years later on Linux. Smooth as butter. 😎
I was not aware there was an SSI game with the same name, I suppose that’s what you meant by AOL?
Absolutely, I know I programmed 8 bit graphics in assembly on the C64, and played with the custom chips of the Amiga in assembly too. fun times 😋
I was pissed that you couldn’t write off computers faster than 3 years, because in 3 years a computer was completely obsolete IMO, as in basically useless. Up until at least around when the GeForce 256 came out in 1999. After that 3 years was still old, but not completely useless.
Nowadays things have stabilized
I agree, nowadays it doesn’t matter much (IMO) to have a GPU that is a couple of years old. Admittedly I only use QHD/1440p. To render the same in 4K requires a 2.4 times more powerful GPU.
But oh boy when Voodoo, Voodoo2 came out, and then TNT, TNT2 and GeForce. Those were a lot of major upgrades in just 3 years. (1996-1999)
ancient Gamebryo tech.
Oh boy how time flies…
But wouldn’t that mean it’s made by the Elders themselves?
I 100% agree, I liked the original graphics, the remake while it is pretty, is also a bit boring IMO.
Absolutely, €55 is like a completely new Tripple A title.
Free however is a bit much to ask, but maybe €15 complete including the original, and €5-10 as an upgrade.
OK Thanks for clearing it up, when I saw the graph I thought it was some sort of cheap trick to make the remake look less expensive.
Glad it was just a mistake.
However just to be clear, the 2009 game of the year is not JUST the original, it also includes the 2 expansions.
Deluxe also includes Morrowind and Skyrim.
This story reeks of AI, or at the very least to be made up, and it’s from 2018, 7 years old.
In civilized countries it’s illegal to fire people in that way.
And very conveniently there is no mention of either company or country.
Why is this upvoted?