AMD Breakup

I wrote this article for the latest issue of CPU Magazine, it's about AMD's next steps. I have written about this before, talked about what I would do if I was them -- and now I'm just exploring this a bit further.

AMD is at a major crossroads, the big question is what’s next for them?

In 2006 when AMD started to crack into the mainstream they broke into one of the biggest OEM accounts that very few people expected them to get. I was convinced it would happen, so sure that I made one of the dumbest bets ever (it has gone down in our PR history as one of the best moves ever). I did end up winning the bet, but in the meantime there were a few moves that AMD made that I still question to this day.

For example, at the time AMD had a very compelling offering. Their prices were competitive, they had a much more efficient processor than the competition, and everyone wanted to work with them. So why is it that they opened up the floodgates and all but killed their channel business during one of the most insane expansions ever? I never did quite get it – the channel was dry of AMD parts, high margin parts to boot. In the meantime AMD was busy ramping up low margin (or negative margin?) business with one of the world’s largest OEMs.

When AMD announced that they were buying ATI I was quite bullish about their future prospects. Not only could they position themselves uniquely from the competition, but they could potentially create new products which would be heavily differentiated in the market. Buying ATI and implementing their vision of Fusion would essentially give us a fresh unique way of designing new innovative platforms. Personally I was hoping that this deal would happen much sooner than it did – but for one reason or another it happened very late. Better late than never, I suppose, but there are still many challenges ahead for these guys. For one, Fusion is still a dream – perhaps a wet dream for those who like to think about the future of technology, but a dream nonetheless.

So now what’s up? You have a giant company, completely undervalued from a market capitalization vs. technology standpoint. They have excess capacity, and they are hemorrhaging money. The biggest reason for their dismal valuation is their excess foundry capacity. So how can they possibly fix this?

One of my good friends at AMD always says “We’ve been here before, we were always the underdog, and we’ll come back again…” – and while much of this may be the case, I would disagree that they have been here before. You see, AMD was once an incumbent, a tiny company trying to be relevant. For years they tried to position themselves as a viable alternative to Intel, and while it took almost forever they succeeded. They broke into the largest OEMs, and they are now considered a viable alternative.

Their trouble now is they have successfully commoditized themselves in the process. They went from being Gordon Ramsay to Ronald *@#ing McDonald.

So now their challenge is they are competing head to head against a giant in a battle that they cannot win. They cannot win the commodity battle, they certainly cannot win the process or volume battle, and for them to try to sell three cores for the price of two at the cost of four is insane!

I have suggested this one before, but I think it’s more likely now than before. AMD should really split the business. No, they should not break off ATI; rather they should split their business into a foundry and a fables semi-conductor. This isn’t as easy as saying “okay let’s split” – it would require some serious partnerships, agreements would have to be modified, creative accounting, and their X86 contract would need to be tweaked. More important they would have to find someone who wants to invest in the foundry business.

Finding a savvy investor to invest in a foundry would be like asking Gordon Ramsay if he could dress up as Ronald McDonald and take over McDonald’s kitchen. It is just not an easy problem to solve. There are limited companies and/or people who would be interested in such a thing.

Then again, AMD could partner with Charter Semi, maybe TSMC, or IBM perhaps, who knows.

Splitting AMD would create a fab-less semi-conductor with huge value to Nvidia, or perhaps someone else. We have all seen Jen-Hsun Huang attack Intel openly at what seems to be the most inopportune for Nvidia…maybe this is just some foreshadowing.

Whatever it is, there will be change and we’ll be ready.

Audi & Lamborghini...

I haven’t really had time to update the site lately as I have been on a whirlwind travel schedule. Between getting my wisdom teeth removed I have also found myself in Atlanta, NYC, DC, and Toronto. Next week I’ll be in Montreal, and then Seattle – and finally San Francisco, and San Diego before heading back to Calgary. Then Europe… ahh yes, my life isn’t getting any easier, but I don’t expect you to feel sorry for me.

I wrote this article for Custom PC Magazine in the U.K and thought I would include it on the blog.

In this industry there are quite a few of us who appreciate cars. I appreciate them so much that we built a strategy around a direct parallel in the car industry. In 1997 Audi acquired Lamborghini. Back then Audi cars had some of the coolest ground breaking technologies in them including the highly regarded Quattro all wheel drive system. Although the design of Audi vehicles was somewhat “boxy”, they were incredibly good - and more importantly they had unique innovations that Mercedes or BMW did not. Audi made quality cars packed with incredible innovations, and I think if there was one thing that was obvious it was that their style was somewhat conservative.

In 1997 Lamborghini shipped a little over 200 vehicles for the year. Their cars featured aggressive design, no compromise service, and great performance, but the quality was somewhat inconsistent. Believe me I know, imagine getting stuck inside the car with no way to open the door. Yes, it’s true, the cars had many problems, not least of which was the fact that the door latch would get stuck – and in the event of a vehicle fire you were basically screwed. So you would end up dropping well over a hundred G’s on a car and sometimes you would catch yourself in a very embarrassing situation. That was over ten years ago, mind, and a lot has changed since then.

Since the acquisition of Lamborghini, Audi invested a great deal of resources into the company to get them moving in a positive with profitable growth direction. Not only are new Lamborghini cars such as the Gallardo and Murcielago amazing, but they leverage innovations from Audi such as the Quattro AWD system. All Lamborghini’s now feature all wheel drive! The quality of their cars has never been better – if you ask anyone now with a Lamborghini what they hate most about the car it’s likely the attention they get from driving it around (and we know how much they really love the attention).

2007 Lamborghini Murcielago

On the flipside, Audi has completely changed their outlook. Their designs are more aggressive, and their vehicles continue to raise the bars of innovation and engineering. Take for example the Audi R8, one of the best cars ever released by any car manufacturer. Audi has certainly come a long way – and while ten years ago they struggled to position themselves as an alternative to BMW or Mercedes, they have now put themselves ahead of both companies in many aspects.

2008 Audi R8

I always tend to borrow analogies from the car industry to get people to understand parallels between what they’re doing to what we’re doing. It also sets an attainable vision for all of us to consider as we go forward.

Pay attention to this blog, because soon we’ll have a huge announcement. We look forward to sharing it with all of you!

Bravo to ATI!

Since the launch of Blackbird, we have received numerous awards from many publications on our system. We shipped a mix of review systems, launching with ATI Crossfire, and some with Nvidia SLI graphics.

Some of the ATI reviews went to publications that were very critical of our video card choice. Needless to say these publications were focused on frame rates on very specific scripted benchmarks and narrowed their scope to the graphic subsystem rather than the overall system experience.

Our goal with using ATI on some of these review machines was to show the overall flexibility of the Blackbird platform, and while our competitors choose to limit choices we wanted to keep our customers' options open. So we created machines like the Alpha Configuration and went to market with it.

In the meantime we were seeing a push for 3 and 4 GPUs in the high end PC, and we were still concentrating on making the Vista gaming experience better. Re-read the article on time to market vs stability and you’ll see some of the things I’m speaking about.

Well, I mentioned in that article that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 was released, and shortly after ATI released a hot-fix for their Catalyst driver. Since then I’ve been playing a number of games, and I honestly cannot believe what I’m seeing.

Yes, I can't believe my eyes... It's like I'm dreaming, but I'm just not 100% sure a pinch will change anything. For the last few weeks I have not had ONE driver drop in Vista with ATI Crossfire….all of the games I had the error with are running much better.

This should be a lesson to everyone: ATI is doing great things on the graphics side right now. Frame rates are NOT the most important thing --- the most important factor in gaming is stability and visual quality. If you can buy an PC with optimized graphics for the display resolution that you are running (in my case 2560x1600) then you’ll be a much happier person, believe me.

So cheers to ATI, you graphic ninjas, for getting it right. The fact that I didn't have to replace my hardware to overcome the issue speaks volumes. I still need to go back and re-evaluate Nvidia - but we would love to hear from anyone out there with Vista and driver drop issues - please seed this message to all the forums that you think could provide input. We need as much information as possible to proceed.

Rapid Time to Market ... or Reliability?

Sorry for the lack of updates, I have been away on a number of trips. One of the trips I went on was not work related. I went with a bunch of friends from all over the world to Ensenada to do a Wide Open Baja tour. If anyone hasn't done this I would highly recommend it - it was a memorable trip - completely awesome, and I'll certainly to it again. Check it out at wideopenbaja.com.

I wrote this next article for print this month - it's probably going to raise a few eyebrows, but to be perfectly frank, I'm tired of people asking me why we haven't launched the latest and greatest video card while our competitors have. There is a damn good reason for everything.. read on, and feel free to comment.

When the concept of high-performance PCs came about in the early ’90s, very few people expected this once geek-only hobby would explode into something greater. We watched as new revolutionary hardware manufacturers like 3dfx turned 2D into live 3D. Even though they used our name (and I’m still bitter about it), we loved the new direction the industry took.

At that time, Intel and others balked at the notion that anyone would want a graphics card that did little more than spit a 2D image onto your 14-inch VGA display.

Both Nvidia and ATI drove the hardware to new levels, thereby freeing game developers and 3D content creators to dream about solutions they wanted to create rather than hardware limitations and “imagination ceilings.” AMD was a major grassroots supporter of performance gaming; the company had a dedicated staff of people who would ensure that companies like mine had access to the latest and greatest hardware.

Better late than never, Intel arrived on the scene with its edgy advertising and “street teams” who would spend most of their time trying to build bridges with the performance PC manufacturers in order to build the halo effect that AMD was already enjoying.

Back in the day, when your application didn’t work, you would either download a patch or wait for Nvidia or ATI to drop a new driver; our partners would acknowledge pressing issues and fix them quickly.

Those were the days when we hand-built PCs, and we could usually get everything working with just a few challenges. Hardware manufacturers would sell us hardware that worked for the most part, and when it didn’t work, they would acknowledge the problem and let us know they were working on a fix.

So what’s new?

Since Microsoft launched Vista, it seems like things have changed for the worse. Even the latest service pack, albeit an improvement, doesn’t fix all the bugs we run into. While we continue to struggle with these issues, we’re finding that leading in “time to market” with the latest hardware is more of a detriment to our customers than a benefit.

In other words, we aren't launching all the cutting-edge stuff because it's all coming too quickly, when everyone knows there are still considerable issues that need to be dealt with. Hardware manufacturers are getting way ahead of themselves. They’re trying to ramrod more GPU power, huge power supply requirements, and larger memory requirements into a PC that still has core issues.

Take, for instance, memory requirements. Anyone who’s in the know should realize that more video cards equals less addressable memory for the OS. One solution would be to install Vista 64 so a system can easily address more than 4GB of memory, but of course not everyone is ready with Vista 64 drivers, and so it goes.

When you play games with more than two video cards, your chances of “dropping the driver” in Vista increase exponentially. In other words, you might successfully play for two minutes or five hours, depending on the mood of your system.

For the sake of winning benchmarks, we’re witnessing many computer companies jam hardware that they know doesn’t work into their review machines. The reviewers run scripted benchmarks and they don’t spend the time actually testing the system beyond the surface.

Recently, one of our partners requested a quote for a press release on a new solution, and I had to decline. Whether it’s a hardware or software problem, why would we publically support a solution that we know is plagued with problems?

Although ATI has a unique way of dealing with the issue by disguising the error from the customer, it’s time that Microsoft, AMD (ATI), and Nvidia host a summit with their top engineers and gets these problems fixed.

It’s also time we dump 32-bit OSes: They simply do not meet the latest hardware needs.

Not all is doom and gloom, though—ATI just dropped a hotfix, and so far it looks to be going in the right direction.

Now that we’ve made our position clear to our partners (no more “time to market” until a solution is tight), they’re listening and actively working on the problems. (or at least we hope they are) You can thank us later. . . ;-)

Games for your Mom...

I wrote this article for the latest issue of CPU Magazine just after we returned from GDC. Check out the latest issue over here!

Last month in this space, I wrote about my own confusion surrounding Games for Windows. We had a meeting with Microsoft at GDC, and while they still face challenges, it does seem that they are dedicated to making good on their initiative based on what they said at the meeting. Whatever it is that Microsoft is trying to do, we’re all in agreement that the PC Gaming experience needs to be improved.

Speaking of improving PC Gaming, a group of us had an interesting meeting with the WildTangent team during GDC. As many CPU readers know, Alex St. John, the widely known “father” of DirectX, is the CEO of WildTangent and also a regular CPU columnist. I have always liked Steam’s approach to digital downloads, and their DRM system is pretty well managed. I always have thought that Gabe Newell is a genius, and when I heard that Alex St. John felt he had a good alternative to Steam, my interest piqued.

I always thought WildTangent was about making games easier for my mom to play, and as much as I like looking at Bejeweled, I can’t see myself playing it until my 50th birthday.

Well, surprise, surprise, Alex’s team has been working on a really cool core gamer module that will allow you to play AAA gaming titles (think Company of Heroes or Call of Duty 4) free with ads or on a pay-as-you-go basis. You can even choose to buy the game outright if you’d like and have it downloaded directly to your PC so you can start playing immediately.

The way it works is simple: You log in to your game software and, using a standard gamepad or mouse, you choose a game from a list of titles. If the game is already installed, you may choose to play it. Otherwise, you can cue it up for a download to play later.

Sounds a lot like Steam, right? Not quite. The cool thing about this software is you don’t have to buy the game in order to play it. You can choose to either watch an ad from a sponsor (if there is currently a sponsor) or pop a few virtual WildCoins in to play. WildCoins are the currency WildTangent developed to facilitate its pay-for-play system on casual games, and now they’re alluring to hardcore gamers, as well.

Another way to look at this is you no longer have to worry about spending $50 on a game that sucks; you can play it for $1.50 until you close the application. Or if you prefer not to spend any money you can choose to watch an ad for a particular sponsoring product prior to playing and then play. For those of you who prefer to buy the game outright, WildTangent also gives you the option just to buy it and download it to your hard drive.

So it’s cool to see dedication like this in the PC space, and it gives me big hope for the future—a future where PC gaming should be as easy as consoles, yet deliver the richness you can only get on a PC. That said, the more we try to port console content to the PC, the greater chance we have of killing the creativeness of developers.

Now, who was it who said that PC gaming is dying again? Make no mistake: PC gaming is growing. It grew last year and the only thing that’s changing is the distribution model. WildTangent is definitely doing some wild things, and as long as the gaming experience on the PC gets easier, I’m all for it.

This brings me to the PCGA (PC Gaming Alliance) announcement at GDC. I was representing HP for our PCGA “go or no-go” decision, and since the announcement, people have been asking why we chose not to become a founding member.

While we believe it’s important to make PC gaming easier, we don’t believe that PC gaming is in trouble, and perhaps once we work out our own plans in the performance PC space, we’ll revisit this initiative. For the moment, I’m still enthusiastic about the future.

First it was four, then it was three… could it be two?

I wrote this article for Custom PC Magazine in the U.K. - it's the latest issue, and it's awesome. A warning though, this article is pure speculation! There's my disclaimer before people start freaking out - this is pure "hookah smoking, sitting around with a bunch of friends and chatting" speculation...! I will write an extended version of this later.

A few months ago I wrote an article on some of my own personal thoughts about AMD’s strategic position in the market. I included some ideas around AMD potentially creating strategic partnerships with companies whose pieces fit snugly in their holes (can you guess who?). In the process of doing this they would also need to lighten up some of the assets, and scale the business back enough so profitable growth can be sustained.

Its funny how things seem to make sense when you’re involved in a business for more half your life. If you put all the pieces on the board and stare at them long enough they start to tell a story.

Going further into the potential strategies for AMD, I think they could try to spin of their CPU, chipset, and graphics technology businesses into a separate entity. At the same time they could spin the foundry business into a separate entity or division. I continue to believe that somehow they would need to be linked in order to maintain their X86 license among other things.

Now imagine if they did both of the above; their value on the foundry side would be cut, but on the technology side they may get some great valuations with higher multiples, and thus the IP side would become a great target for acquisition for Nvidia.

Now the question is who in their right mind would want to own shares in a foundry business? Perhaps they could work a deal so existing shareholders get a share of one and half of another, and perhaps if Nvidia decides to come out and play they could also offer some share benefits to existing shareholders.

In my mind it would be easier dealing with two or four giants, then the three header four armed abomination we’re currently contending with. It’s just too bloody confusing.

Sins of a Stolen Empire

From Greg:

You probably haven't heard of Brad Wardell or his company Stardock. And it's my fault. At least partially.

Brad's company developed and publishes the popular Galactic Civilizations series, just published the best-selling Sins of a Solar Empire, and also develops and publishes a robust suite of popular Windows desktop enhancement software.

Brad’s products are always PC-based, always critically acclaimed, and always profitable.

But when I ran PC Gamer magazine, I rarely gave Brad’s games as much coverage as I did other “higher-profile” AAA games – games that didn’t always score as high as Brad’s games, games that didn’t always sell as well as Brad’s games, games that I didn’t always like as much as Brad’s games.

The reason is simple but a little counterintuitive: An Editor’s job is to sell magazines, but unfortunately, games that sell magazines don’t always sell. Sometimes gamers can’t afford a new game, especially when faced with myriad options during the Holiday season. Sometimes a game doesn’t turn out the way they’d hoped. Sometimes it’s easier to pirate.

That last one is a doozy. As Michael Fitch from THQ recently said publicly in reaction to PC game developer Iron Lore’s closure, PC game piracy is so pervasive that if we could simply turn a small percentage of pirates, say 10%, into paying customers, ­some game companies could double their profits: www.quartertothree.com

Michael makes some excellent points, but Brad Wardell sees things a little differently: Piracy PC Gaming

Read what both men have to say on the subject of software piracy and the current state of PC game development and let me know what you think.

Greg Vederman

Ten things you didn't know about..................

The guys over at TGDAILY did a quick interview for a new feature they have called "10 personal questions and 10 personal answers".

10 personal questions and 10 personal answers: We are launching our new series with Rahul Sood, chief technology officer of the HP Voodoo Business Unit. Sood oversees the technical strategy and product vision for the business unit’s products, including the Voodoo Omen and Envy product lines, the award-winning HP Blackbird 002 and other products with the Voodoo DNA ingredient brand. He is also responsible for identifying intellectual property from HP and its partners for use in consumer gaming and high-performance devices. Sood joined HP in November 2006 after it acquired luxury and gaming computer manufacturer VoodooPC, a company he founded in 1991.

I couldn’t survive without … my wife. I wouldn’t be who I am today without her, she’s an amazing person.

The best advice I ever got was … from my father. He basically told me you don’t just plant a business and watch it grow. I think he said something like “it’s not an f#@!ing plant son! You have to work at it in order to make it successful!”

The person I admire most is … Bill Gates. Bill Gates understands that the process of giving away money for the betterment of society is harder than it sounds. It requires a higher level of entrepreneurialism that very few people in the world possess, and perhaps many more don’t care.

If I could go anywhere, or do anything, I would … move to India and live like a king. At the same time I would work out a way to export medical services all over the world profitably while giving it away for free to people in need.

A technology I have no use for is … voicemail. What the hell is voicemail? It’s garbage, I don’t check it, I don’t like it, and in fact we have an answering machine at home and I never check it. So, thanks to my friend Jeff, I found a solution that totally eliminates the need for voicemail.

The best idea I had was … learning how to ride a road bike so we could figure out a way to partner & merge with Hewlett-Packard (check my blog if you don’t know the story). No, but seriously, the concept of taking a high end brand and plugging it into a mainstream company was borrowed from the automotive industry. Lamborghini and Audi is probably the most successful example of this, and thus inspired some of the thinking behind this decision.

Luxury is … in the eye of the beholder. Some people would say spending $5000 on a Vertu phone or accepting an invitation for an American Express Centurion card at $7500 a year is nuts. Yet if you ask anyone who has done either, they will likely tell you that they’ll do it again. A true luxury product should have a noticeable and attributable value attached to it.

I wish I had invented … Rather than talking about what I wish I invented, I’d rather help find the cure for Autism, or at the very least, an explanation for how it happens. Right now there is no known cause or cure and a new case of autism is now found in one in every 150 births. It’s an absolutely incredible phenomenon that requires awareness, research, and compassion.

My tombstone should read … Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A person/trend/technology to watch is … Simulscribe. This company is hot. They have a great solution which eliminates the need to check your voicemail. I think they’re going places fast.

How to advertise in-game...the RIGHT way

EA learned the hard way that using the burger king "king" in Fight Night was a stupid mistake

By Kristin

In-game advertising is not something that's terribly new, nor is it something that's terribly well done.

The first instance that I can remember of in-game advertising that I saw with my own eyes was in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. These ads were all for fictional companies and spoofs on current advertising at the time. Along with the radio commercials. Who didn't love to drive around in the car and listen to the various stations? Heck, I even had an entire GTA:VC loop on in my winamp at one point in time!

The next well executed in-game advertising was in Crackdown. Again, all fictional companies, it was fun to jump around the city and see the billboards, trying to figure out what real life life company they were spoofing.

Then came Guitar Hero 3 with the blatant, over the top, real life company ads. Who REALLY wants to see that huge McDonald's logo? When I started playing and noticing the advertising in the game and how utterly OBNOXIOUS it was, it made me want to boycott those companies that paid to have their ads inserted into the game. Your advertising is on the radio (why I listen to CDs), the television (why I play games and watch movies, I catch my tv shows online), and on billboards (why I watch the cars tail lights in front of me), don't invade my private zone of "my gametime". This is where I go to escape mainstream and life.

However, I do think mainstream advertising can be done well in games. This generation hates anything that smells of marketing unless it's VERY well done, edgy, comical, and memorable.

Cat herding anyone? Yes, you remember that super bowl commercial. It was funny, it's different, it was completely unexpected. Those weird little troll-like-things that quizno did a couple years ago that sang about the moon? Yeah you remember what I'm talking about.

In game marketing can be done successfully, the best way to do it would be to make up a fictions company that is a spoof of your real life company. It makes the gamer see the ad, go oh! That's XYZ company in real life they're spoofing, and they appreciate the company poking fun at itself (although the gamer may not realize the company paid for a spoofed ad - they may think it's the game designer spoofing a company).

You get brand recognition (McDonalds could have flipped their arches to spoof themselves, and shrunk the ad, Gamers LOVE to find easter eggs in games), you get the consumer thinking about your brand, and as they go by your establishment/product on the road/in the store it'll trigger a memory of the game -> trigger memory of your brand -> if executed correctly brand loyalty and a purchase.

I saw some concept art at one point for a blackbird campaign that had in game advertising. It was AWFUL. I'm so thankful everyone that saw the concepts reacted with the same visceral distaste and disgust that I did. Guess why it sucked so bad - it wasn't designed by gamers. Notice the Voodoo laptops in Call of Duty 4? Very understated, very subtle, very sexy. Why use 1 million words when 1 will do?

It can be done people. Just don't let suits design the ads. When your designing for your demographic, ASK your demographic or even better yet; have YOUR demographic design it.



Kristin Reilly

Interview with Notebookreviews.com

I recently answered some pointed questions for the fine people at NotebookReviews.com. This site is a fantastic resource for those looking for information on new notebooks and notebook technology.

Check out the interview with yours truly by Perry Longinotti over here.

by Perry Longinotti

What happens when you combine a PC gamer, a brilliant entrepreneur, and HP's industry muscle? You get Rahul Sood, one of the biggest names in the world of PC gaming and now the man raising HP to new levels in the world of luxury and gaming computers.

Rahul Sood is the chief technology officer of the HP Voodoo Business Unit (VBU), part of HP 's emerging businesses group. Sood oversees the technical strategy and product vision for Voodoo's cutting-edge products, including the Voodoo Omen and Envy product lines, the award-winning HP Blackbird 002 and other products with the "Voodoo DNA" brand.

Sood joined HP in November 2006 after it acquired VoodooPC, a gaming computer company he founded in 1991. As founder and CTO of VoodooPC, Sood was the first to bring liquid cooling and active liquid chilling to the high-performance gaming PC market. These innovations helped VoodooPC's Omen desktop earn the coveted Ziff Davis Editors' Choice award in the Ultimate Gaming Machine competition for five years in a row.

Since joining HP, Sood was instrumental in the design and architecture of HP Blackbird 002, the VBU's flagship product.

NotebookReview.com contributor Perry Longinotti spent some time asking Sood some serious questions about notebook gaming, Voodoo, and HP's plans for the future. Here are a few highlights:

Two segments of the notebook market that seem to be generating a lot of interest right now are Gaming Notebooks and Ultra Mobile PCs.

Let's start with Gaming Notebooks first as that is a VoodooPC forte:

I had a chance to interview Ravi a couple of years ago during a factory tour article - this was before the HP acquisition. At that time, he mentioned that Voodoo was pursuing its own notebook chassis design. Can you update us on that?

Yes. One of the biggest hurdles we faced in the past was getting the ODMs to take us seriously based on our volume commitment, distribution channel, and market size. Even though almost all of them were familiar with the Voodoo brand and believed in us, they couldn't get past the other issues. So this is simply another reason why we merged with HP.

It's amazing how quickly things have changed since. People are calling on us to introduce us to new technologies on a daily basis. ODMs are no longer asking a billion questions, they are excited to work with us, and we now have a team based in Taiwan working for the Voodoo Business Unit (VBU). It seems that everyone is stoked about our future.

Several folks in the NBR forums asked questions along similar lines, how does Voodoo deal with the perception from some people that your notebooks are simply re-branded Clevos? On the desktop side you can point to extensive in-house fabrication as the differentiator, it must be a lot tougher on the notebook side.

Well, for the most part your community is right. How can I argue that? The notebook business, especially in the channel, is bloody challenging.

Prior to the acquisition Voodoo always did our best to differentiate our notebooks by modifying thermals, software, and adding different levels of personalization. In fact, we were the first to offer gaming notebooks with custom high quality automotive paint jobs. Then others came into the market and the space became very competitive and extremely stale. Let's face it; there are only so many ways you can paint a product before you ask yourself what the heck you're doing in the business.

Joining HP has taught us a ton about notebook development. The mainstream notebooks that HP have created feature some cool long lasting imprint designs, quality finishes, and quickplay innovations. Although Clevo notebooks look appealing from a feature set standpoint, from a reliability and engineering standpoint you just cannot compare them to any of the tier 1 companies.

There is a significant difference in engineering and testing that goes into HP notebooks. It's somewhat unreal to me, the development cycle tries our patience, but the results speak for themselves. The bottom line is we are in the business of selling notebooks, not hand grenades.

Comparing Voodoo pre acquisition to today is like comparing a Lamborghini from the early years to the ones of today. Audi brought in significant R&D and engineering resources to Lamborghini allowing them to create some of the best cars they have ever created including the Gallardo and Murcielago. On the flipside Lamborghini brought in some style and edge which allowed Audi to create the new award winning R8 (car of the year in Robb Report Magazines).

What's my point? Tell your community to stay tuned. We're working on some obvious holes in our portfolio.

Are there any plans to develop Voodoo notebooks using existing HP chassis as a starting point rather than more commonly available ODM units?

That's a great question. The 20" HP HDX consumer notebook (aka the Dragon) is an incredible system for gaming, yet we haven't gone ahead and used the same chassis. The fact is HP has afforded us the resources and time to dream up the ultimate portfolio which will be authentic to the Voodoo brand.

We also renamed our business unit from "The Gaming Business Unit" to "The Voodoo Business Unit". This quiet announcement, while seemingly small, has profound implications on our charter.

Mainstream notebooks makers seem to be targeting gaming-capable notebooks as a growth category with some offering high end features such as Nvidia 8800m GPUs at the $1200 price point. How does this trend affect Voodoo's pricing strategy?

In the past Voodoo branded products have never put price ahead of everything else, however "customer value" continues to be (and always has been) very important to the team. I'll say it again, value is huge, and without it we'd be nowhere today. That said, the definition of a good value always changes, and if you don't spent time to revisit it over and over again you'll never be successful at this business.

HP scale has made it possible for us to ensure that we can deliver a killer value in our systems. For example, if you compare a high end Blackbird 002 with our competition, there is no comparison. Blackbird is built better, engineered better, and includes a much better out of box experience -- and you absolutely get what you pay for. You can assume that as we fill out our portfolio we'll keep this in mind.

Why does Voodoo use AMD processors in high end notebooks when Intel products perform better?

Indeed Intel processors currently perform better in most instances. However, HP is agnostic; we offer both AMD and Intel processors in many of our machines including those that fall under the Voodoo Business Unit. That said, as we move forward into our own "grounds up" designs, you can rest assured that we'll use nothing but the best technology in our flagship devices.

On the subject of Ultra Mobile PCs:

Andrew asks: What are your thoughts on this new push for budget $300 / $400 laptops such as the Asus Eee PC and Everex Cloudbook? We know that HP is planning to enter this segment; will Voodoo bring a high end companion device to market?

Though I cannot discuss future HP product possibilities, I do think the ultra mobile is an interesting space. We are actively pursuing new attractive markets in our business unit.

Some general questions:

You are well connected in the industry, where do you see notebook technologies going in the next couple of years.

I'd love to share our vision with you; however this industry is way too competitive. Over the years (especially in the last year) we have found that our competitors look to us for leadership -- so personally, I would rather surprise them with our view of the market.


What non-Voodoo computing products are you most excited about recently? Outside of HP and Voodoo whose products do you respect the most?

Easy answer, respect Apple immensely -- I really like their complete ecosystem view. Their undivided focus on the customer should be a wakeup call for everyone in this industry. If "boutique companies" ignore Apple they might as well shut their doors now.


Is Voodoo planning any entry level products, or will the focus remain strictly high end?

This question requires a bit of background to answer.

At HP we created Blackbird 002 with Voodoo DNA. It's an HP branded product with the Voodoo DNA ingredient brand. It's build by the team at Voodoo in Calgary, and meets the stringent HP standards of engineering excellence. Borrowing from the automotive industry, a similarly tight combination of engineering and design is the creation of the Audi R8.

We really believe in what we're doing currently. That said, even though HP Blackbird is a premium performance PC, the price point in many instances is significantly less than our competition. From a value standpoint there is no comparison, you really have to see it to understand.

As far as Voodoo exclusive products, we plan to refresh our entire portfolio. You'll have to wait and see, but let's just say no matter what you buy - whether it's Compaq, HP, HP with Voodoo DNA, or Voodoo - you will receive value for your money.

As I said before, Blackbird is a start, and it's our pace car, we still have a portfolio to fill.

How has the HP acquisition impacted Voodoo sales?

We don't discuss our sales numbers externally - however, as a result of the HP acquisition we quadrupled the square footage of our facility in Calgary, hired more than 100 people, and expanded office space in Cupertino, Calgary, Taipei, and recently Houston.

We just finished scaling our Calgary facility to accommodate a much larger professional downdraft paint booth. The paint facility now includes three booths, one of which is dedicated to mixing custom colors. It features a clean room which eliminates all dust, and ensures that any personalization you order from us will remain absolutely flawless.

We also ordered some really cool equipment which we're not going to talk about just yet - but let's say that that the investment is going to put us further ahead of the competition in the high-end and performance PC space. HP is clearly committed to this space and based on our expansion on the customer care, sales, engineering, manufacturing, marketing, and business side we're not stopping

I understand you have expanded your facility, is that primarily a result of the HP acquisition? Is the extra space for construction and fabrication or have you added more support and product development capacity too?

Good question. We actually put a higher proportion of resources in our customer facing departments in anticipation for our pending growth.

How has the Blackbird performed for HP? What was Voodoo's role in that project?

Blackbird has been a great success for HP, and is a product which was created from the ground up by our business unit, the Voodoo Business Unit. HP started the Blackbird 001 project prior to the Voodoo acquisition but it was canned before we joined.

All said, I have never been involved in a more successful product launch, ever. We started with Blackbird, and took some time to scale the business while we prepare to fill the portfolio around it. Now that our expansion is complete we're ready to launch new products and initiatives.

Will we see Blackbird notebooks?

Wouldn't that be the most insane thing ever?

Will there be more HP products that have Voodoo DNA contributed to them? When can we expect to see them? Any hints to what they may be?

Not only will you see products with VoodooDNA which feature our core heritage of performance gaming and second-to-none build quality and engineering from HP, but you'll also see Voodoo dedicated products which will continue to tap the luxury and highly personalized market. In the process we will still take full advantage of the engineering, scale, leverage, and quality strengths that HP has brought to the table.

Are there plans to leverage HP's presence in retail to sell more Voodoo PCs? Will we ever see your products at Best Buy?

HP is a huge company with some incredible long-standing relationships in the retail channel. We have not publicly discussed our retail strategy, but you can assume that we will continue to scale our business while delivering the best experience possible to our customer.

The HD optical format war is over, when can we expect to see Blu-Ray in Voodoo notebooks?

We will offer Blu-Ray in our notebooks sometime in 2008.

K-TRON, owner of a couple of Voodoo PCs asks: when is the Vootique is coming back, and when are the new forums supposed to be up?

I'm not sure about the Vootique, but the new community is on the way. It will be hosted by both Kristin Reilly and Greg Vederman so needless to say it should be a pretty cool place to visit. Both Greg and Kristin are currently contributing to my blog at www.rahulsood.com prior to the transition to our new community so it's definitely getting closer. Tell K-Tron I said hi.

LANs, LANs, and MORE LANs!

From Kristin:

Phew, I've had a whirlwind couple of week(ends)! In the past 3 weeks I've been to 3 different LAN's in 3 different states with our Blackbird computer. Go airline miles!

So it all started in Portland, Oregon (go Ducks!) in mid-Feburary with PDXLAN 11. It was a 4 day LAN that I only as able to attend 3 days of due to the Game Developers Conference overlapping. I had a blast after a small melt down when I realized my LCI Blackbird had been shipped to LA for the mall tour and I got the mall tours AC model. Thankfully my personal gaming computer is a Blackbird LC so I ran home and snagged that. It's nice having your own profiles and levels to play on instead of getting a fresh machine with no data on it! I didn't compete at PDXLAN but had fun running around in COD4 with friends and TF2.

I'm not sure which LAN I liked the best honestly. PDXLAN was awesome because I was in my home town and I was able to take friends from out of town to really cool restaurants and they got to see where I live.

The following weekend I went straight from San Francisco to Arkansas for a day long LAN put on by NWALan. After we finally got the power issues figured out after we tripped a circuit every 8 minutes for several games (I still hear yells of BATGIRL! in my sleep), the LAN was awesome! Everyone kept coming over to look at the Blackbird and play on it and I was consistantly a top scorer every game we played. Yay! I will say Arkansas gets a LOT colder than I thought or was expecting.

Mental note, next time pack thermals..... Everyone was so NICE in Arkansas I was pretty blown away. There were even a few other girls that were in attendance! Not once did anyone say anything negative to me or about me being a female at a LAN. I actually love playing at LAN's a lot more than playing online. Everyone is much nicer and respectable when they're not anonymous!

Finally this past weekend I was in Yspilanti, Michigan (it sounds like ip-sill-aunty) for the first annual Gamers for Giving LAN and Halo3 tournament put on by the Gamers Outreach Foundation. I was blown away by the size (250 BYOC machines and roughly 250 people on sat for the Halo3 tournament) and the efficiency of this LAN.

On top of it just being an awesome event, the proceeds all go to charity! The foundation that was chosen to be the recipient of this LAN's proceeds was a local chapter of the MS society. I honestly have never been to a tournament that ran as smoothly as this one did. And it being their first tournament, I can only wait to see what they bring to the table next year!

Michigan was fun especially Sunday night I was invited to be a guest on PWND radio. The guys over there are fun and know their games! So that's a quick recap of the crazy 3 weeks I've had and where I've been. This weekend we'll be setting up at SXSW in Austin, Texas. I for one, am looking forward to finally thawing out!!

- Kristin Reilly

Trash Talking As An Art Form?

From Kristin:

Every one's heard it. Trash talking. Be it friends ribbing each other, someone screaming racial obscenities over Ventrilo/XBoxLIVE/TeamSpeak, or a colorful expression of exasperation at some one's skill, trash talking wont be going away any time soon. That being said, there are some rules that go along with trash talking. I know what you're thinking - rules? How can there be rules for trash talking? Its just a bunch of kids screaming four letter words at each other.

Not exactly.

Trash talking has evolved into something that your either adept at or not. There will always be someone who is better at it than you, just like playing a game or a sport, but to put yourself into the elite category you need to be able to do more than spout off the same 3 four-letter words in a row. It requires having a robust vocabulary (you need to know what's being said to you!) as well as imagination and a VERY quick wit. The most satisfying feeling is being able to best someone in a trash talking exchange by not resorting to cussing.

There are 3 main types of trash talkers and kinds of trash talking.

There's the omni-present simpleton trash talking. This user has exactly 3 words in his vocabulary, 4 if a girl is in the room and loves to display their middle school education. They tend to find that they're talking to themselves because everyone mutes them the first chance they get. Tends to use four letter words and whatever a lot. They'll still talk trash even if they're in last place on the leader board. They can't take a joke and will close down the server if anything negative is said at them. Usually found wandering servers solo and get banned consistently.

Then there's the I-made-it-through-school-and-know-when-to-keep-my-trap-shut (but not how to pull the mic out of my mouth so everyone has to hear my mouth breathing). These are the people you'll hear start telling everyone in the server how awesome they are and how amazing they are and OHMYGOSHDIDYOUSEETHATSHOT?! DIDYOUSEEIT?! I'M UNTOUCHABLE!

They don't care if they're in last place or first place. Every shot is "amazing". If a simpleton comes into their server there tends to be a lot of your mom jokes, whatevers, cursing, questions about genitalia size, and yelling. If jokes are made about this person, they'll laugh but secretly fume and engage in team killing to make them feel better about themselves. Tend to roam in packs with a few simpletons thrown in for good measure. Likes to be the pack leader.

Lastly we have the 1337 trash talkers. These are the people that can talk circles around a person and will use eloquence and intelligence to own someone. These are the people you'll hear in servers who can keep a person running after their own shadow and they wont realize it. They are the dangerous people to get into a verbal sparring match with. They'll rarely use curse words, will take a genitalia question and run with it (talking about how they have an INVERSE of organs), wont always mute simpletons and mouth breathers but instead chose to ignore them until they say something completely asinine and rip them apart. They know how to take a joke and will crack jokes about themselves. Most dangerous in packs, should not be crossed. Can be found either in packs or solo. They have no preference as they make friends wherever they go.

Now what the average Joe doesn't realize is there is a time and a place for trash talking. Trash talking is usually reserved for online matches. Due to the anonymity the Internet affords people, they tend to be much more critical and harsh and use language that they never would use in real life to another person. When you are at an event and seeing people face to face, you don't talk the same way you would if you were playing them online. I've already talked about the biggest burn I have ever received, I usually reserve my trash talking for online matches. At LAN's I tend to be involved in friendly banter with people back and forth, but no insults being thrown. Like everyone though, I am human and do slip up. The biggest burn I've ever thrown someones way was, sadly, to a group of kids about 14.

I was at the Penny Arcade Expo 2006 competing in the Halo2 tournament with 3 friends. We had an even split in our guy/girl ratio on our team, one of the few mixed teams there.

Seed 1 was a team we rolled with no problem.

Seed 2 was the team from Bungie studios. They put up a good fight being the spamming grenade whores they are but we prevailed. And unwittingly lost out on the pink master chief figurines (dang it!).

Seed 3 was a team of 14 year old boys in matching white t-shirts with their gamertags on the back. Now the appearance that these kids gave off is that they had never been to a LAN before, had only played online on Xbox Live, and thus acted accordingly. They were saying very inappropriate things and ended up irritating most of the people in the room through the course of the tournament.

When it came time to play against a team that had two girls on it, the bantering began and quickly escalated into full on trash talking. At one point one of the kids on the other team finally resorted to calling my girlfriend and I that-other-name-for-female-dogs when I snapped.

I stood up from my chair, turned my back on the game, and told the kids to sit down, shut up, and come back when their reproductive organs had dropped. Now I'm not proud of this, but it did put an end to the slurs they were slinging (along with our rolling of their team). Everyone has their breaking point and that was mine. Sadly we lost seed 4 and took home a fourth place finish.

The moral of this story though is - no matter where your playing be it online or in person with someone. You should always treat the person with respect. No matter who they are or what level their skill at the game is acting like I acted is never okay and shouldn't be condoned.

Kristin Reilly

And the Oscar goes to...

From Greg:

Well here it is – my first blog! I would have gotten it up a little sooner, but then GDC happened, then I had to fly to LA to help out at a big pre-Oscar party fundraiser that HP co-sponsored on behalf of the Motion Picture & Television Fund, and then I got the flu. And then pieces of my body started falling off and I turned into a giant fly.

Or was that last part something out of a movie I saw as a child? (Did I mention that I’m still feverish?)

First things first: My name is Greg Vederman and about six months ago I left PC Gamer magazine, where I’d written for nearly ten years, to come work for HP and Voodoo. The title on my new card says Business Development Manager, but like everyone else on this lean, mean innovative team, I wear many different hats. I do some core bizdev, of course, but I’m also leading the charge on community strategy, gaming league sponsorships, and other marketing initiatives. I also help vet new hardware and software technologies and co-own our events plan. There’s more – oh boy, there’s more – but I shan’t bore you with the rest today.

Instead, I shall regale you with a few details about the pre-Oscar party fundraiser I “attended” (i.e., ran a little Blackbird gaming booth at) this past Saturday, mostly because Rahul and I haven’t had a chance to talk about it yet and he made me PROMISE to fill him in on all the details upon my return. Let me just say up front that I’ve never been terribly caught up in the lives of celebrities. Really, they’re just normal people with cool jobs – you know, much like me, but with considerably more money, good looks, fame, hair, prestige, respect, community standing, yachts, chihuahuas, and divorce attorney phone numbers. Still, I must admit it was fun standing in a beautiful room filled with the likes of Cameron Diaz, Harrison Ford, Stephen Spielberg, Will Smith, and the fat kid from Super Bad.

My girlfriend is a celebrity-news addict, so I had fun texting her the names of the celebrities I saw throughout the night. She didn’t know who Casey Affleck, James Caan, or Robert Duvall were, but she wagered that of all the dozens of celebs I saw, Diddy and Tim Gunn probably smelled the best.

I never got the chance to smell Tim, but yeah, Diddy smelled predictably wonderful.

- vede

In search of immersive gaming

From Kristin:

Checking this out during this year’s GDC really made me think about how far display technology has come in delivering that truly immersive entertainment experience – where gaming is more intense than reality.

Playing the proverbial Devil’s Advocate here, will we ever truly get to the stage where our PC games feature the ultimate in immersion and interactive game control? Or will the technology always be met with the same “meh” reception that this did:

Ah, Virtual Boy. Cool, awkward and headache-inducing all at the same time. Ahead of its time or a relic of the past? Discuss amongst yourselves.

Currently, high-end, kick ass gaming rigs like Blackbird are leading the way in providing a platform for tighter game mechanics, 3-D modelling and supremely immersive environment.

But how much further away is technology that allows us to play our favourite console and PC-based games in a fully immersive, virtual reality environment?

Kristin Reilly

Valve for Windows

FYI: This article was edited on 2/24 to match the article in CPU Magazine.

I wrote this article for the latest edition of CPU Magazine. CPU has not posted it on their site yet, and there may be a few edits - however I felt I should post it before my meeting with Microsoft at GDC. I'll likely write an updated article once we get some more perspective on the latest and greatest news from the Games for Windows initiative.

I'd like to start with an interesting (and valid) quote from Anita Frazier from NPD Group.

"The PC games market is greatly impacted by digital downloads and subscriptions, so there is an undetermined amount of PC games industry revenue that isn't reflected in retail sales. As we've seen from a number of our studies, the PC continues to be a top platform in terms of total game playing time, so I don't think this slight decline in retail sales is anything more than a reflection of a shifting of distribution channels..."

A little over a year ago, Microsoft was making all sorts of noise about its renewed Games for Windows initiative, touting it as the savior of PC gaming and acting like it was the most revolutionary thing since the invention of the joystick.

The Games for Windows vision was compelling; imagine walking into a game retailer and seeing a section of games dedicated to Games for Windows, all of which would support any approved gaming controller out of the box, and some of which would support “Tray and Play.”

Many industry players were interested in the concept of making the PC gaming experience easier, but some of us were a bit skeptical due to the fact that Microsoft was driving the initiative. Trouble is, Microsoft is notorious for starting major initiatives that barely get halfway through development before the company decides either to kill them or launch them. It’s sometimes hard to tell whether there is wide internal buy-in on such initiatives.

I have to admit, I was intrigued with the potential of Games for Windows, and I got caught up in the hype—until, that is, I saw Halo 2 with the Games for Windows moniker on it. Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse than an original Xbox port, I tried Shadowrun, which was equally bad. The lack of cross-platform gaming support really buried the program for me.

It was like fool’s gold, and I was one of many who were played by the biggest player in the industry. Perhaps GfW was not as compelling as we once hoped. Shortly after these fiascos, Peter Moore, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business division, decided to jump ship for EA. In the process, the director of Games for Windows stepped away from his role and was apparently replaced by someone else who I have yet to hear from.

So, where does that leave the initiative? Apparently it leaves a bunch of branded boxes on the shelves with an unknown future and some interesting marketing messages that have successfully generated more confusion over what “Games for Windows” actually means to the end user. On top of that, I’m starting to question whether Microsoft is capable of driving its commitment to PC gaming.

Now, before you start interpreting this as a funeral dirge for PC gaming in general, let me just say that we’ve all heard the rumors of PC gaming’s death over and over again, and like many, I’m tired of hearing them. PC gaming is not dying, so get over it. Valve is arguably the best PC game developer out there. Gabe Newell and his team make some of the best games ever, including the Half-Life series and Counter-Strike.

Over the years, Valve has done almost everything right, and while they’re quiet about it, the success of Steam is undeniable. Recently, Valve announced that Steamworks, a complete suite of publishing and development tools including such things as copy protection, social networking services, and server browsing, is now available free of charge to developers and publishers worldwide. In a nutshell, this system could significantly cut down on PC game piracy, which could in turn begin wooing developers and publishers back into the fold. And, of course, it will drive Steam into even more homes.

In implementing Steamworks, developers will gain access to real-time stat tracking, encryption and anti-piracy measures, voice chat, multiplayer matchmaking, and social networking. The buzz on the Internet seems to characterize this as “Games for Windows done right” and hails Valve as the saviors of PC gaming. If you haven’t tried Steam yet, I recommend you take a look. It’s the best game-distribution system on the planet, even remembering your purchases so that when you get a new PC, you can redownload them with no issue. In the meantime, don’t worry about PC gaming—it’s not going anywhere. It continues to grow, and there are new models of monetization coming into play, as well.

As for Games for Windows, well, if anyone at Microsoft would like to discuss this, please feel free to contact me and we’ll set up an interview for another column.

If only everyone had such problems

This letter made me laugh so hard that I had to ask for permission to post it on my blog. We have some very interesting customers - this particular gentleman called to order an Omen, and he ended up ordering two Blackbirds. The catch is he asked that we put one on his American Express Black Card and the other financed as he didn't want any heat from his wife. (For context, he also has a high end laptop from us which lost a key).

Before I post the email, I wanted to share his thinking in purchasing. Interestingly enough, Blackbird wasn't even a consideration for him because he figured it might have been too "inexpensive". Not in an arrogant way, but he really thought that if one of our competitors charges $15,000 for one PC why could he buy two Blackbirds for $15,000 complete with 30" displays and a 750 Gigabyte Media Smart server?

This really put things into perspective for me. Blackbird is the best engineered performance PC on earth. I'll say it again, incase any of our competitors disagree: Blackbird is the BEST engineered performance desktop PC on earth. The system is built like a tank, and in many ways the best way to describe Blackbird is "beautiful technology wrapped in a beautiful shell". Anytime you price out a Blackbird just keep in mind the value you're getting when you compare it with our competitors. You CAN buy a Blackbird with the best current hardware configurations and feel good about the value that you're buying. I'll talk more about "value" later.

The following is the email he sent

Rahul and Chris,

Yes the financing was approved before AB went into the hospital on 2/5. I didn’t want my wife to see a 15K charge on my AMEX. Long story short………………She hasn’t stopped harassing me about my Ferrari 599 GTB I took delivery of this year. We agreed 4 cars are enough. She’s had her Range Rover for 2 years and it has only 8000 miles on it, a pretty good argument unless you’re a dude who loves cars. Well, I went out a bought a Escalade ESV( the longer one) 2 weeks ago , I call it a vehicle of necessity. ……2 kids, 2 dogs, and now 2 black birds. I just knew she was going to shit about the computers, so I’m embezzling the money from myself actually. She rarely opens the AMEX bill, but I’ve gone paperless with my checking account. She actually spends more of our money on thousands of little things, I buy big things. Here’s an example:

We’re in this little town in France and she sees these candle sticks that look like they’re worth $20.00 CAN or US. She asked the women the price. She speaks pretty good French, but not great. She turns to me a says they are either $3300.00US or $33,000.00 followed by, I still want them.

Please someone call me about the financing, I have the stupid letter in my pocket and overnight me a keyboard for her damn computer. Are you guys just trying to get me to buy her a new laptop?

XXXXXXX

P.S. Just so you think I’m not going “green” . I’m considering geo thermal heat, like Al Gore and I’m going to buy a battery powered car like the GM Volt.

Functional Not Just Decorative

From Kristin:

I love attending LANs. I also hate attending LANs.

No matter how many girls there are are a LAN there is always someone who decides they need to be an ass and make some condescending comment regarding my sex and either gaming or my rig. I love being a girl. Really I do.

Last weekend at PDXLAN for instance I sat down with my blackbird and began installing a few updates I needed and the young man sitting next to me inquired about my computer. I was telling him about it and showing off the innards, while he's looking at my dual SLI'd 8800 Ultras he goes on to say, "Oh all this just for surfing the web and checking email?" Wow, way to completely piss me off and make sure that I begin to hunt you down in-game.

The WORST burn I've ever recieved was from a mom interestingly enough. I was attending my first LAN ever at the University of Oregon waiting for the doors to open. I was sitting on a table playing lumines, watching a couple rigs while friends went and got food, and generally just hanging out. This guy walked up with his mom (he carrying the monitor and she carrying the case), she sets the case on the floor and asks me, can I leave this right here? I told her sure, I didn't care where she left his machine. She then continues on to say, "Oh so your functional and not just decorative?" Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah....I have never been rendered *that* speechless my entire life. It was impressive. Although it makes for a great story so now several of my signatures now bear the words "functional, not just decorative" because of this encounter.

Next time you attend a LAN, if you see a girl, don't be a jerk. Really it's not that hard. Instead of going up to her and saying something completely condescending - try something nice. Especially if your sitting there having to reformat your hard drive.