Wow! Neat stuff!
Way beyond what I am seeing.
Questions:
(1) Are the video cards in these beasts upgradable?
I would hope that they would be.
Yes. The video card slots are standard PCI-Express, and will accommodate standard video cards. The cards have to be SLI-capable if you want to use both cards in tandem to boost frame rates.
(2) Are any games currently taking advantage of quad core CPUs?
Good question. I know some games take advantage of dual-core CPUs, so I assume there are probably some high-end games (Doom 3, I'd imagine, though I don't know for a fact) that'll take advantage of quad-core CPUs.
(3) What is the demographic of the people who own these super-laptops?
Not me, that's for sure!
The guy I know who has one is a computer professional (works in the IT department of a very large bank), childfree, and has a lot of disposable income. I suspect that's probably the demographic you'll see consistently--people in their mid to late 30s with professional white-collar jobs, lots of money, and a passion for video games.
Two styles of gaming I am seeing:
(1) Weekend LAN parties (oddly enough, the term "LAN party" is never spoken) where groups of young gentlemen bring over their computers - desktop-sized stuff hauled in both arms, not small machines or notebooks. They gather in the nicely finished basement - their territory - and frag well into the early morning hours, long after parents (and doting uncle) are in bed. Apparently the young gentlemen have to have a game server available in addition to their own individual rigs. Some of the guys crash and leave in the morning after adults awaken - or early afternoon.
Not really amenable to close observation, they form a cohesive tribe in the basement - queries from the doting uncle are met with grunts/monosylables - close observation would be an inappropriate intrusion into their nether realm.
All Wintel PCs - not an Apple machine in sight. Not a notebook in sight.
Given the very high cost of desktop-class laptop PCs--easily half again, sometimes double the cost of an equivalent desktop gaming machine. So people without a lot of expendable income aren't likely to opt for the laptops over the desktops.
My friend got an Alienware laptop because he both hosts and goes to a lot of LAN parties, and got sick of lugging his desktop around. He and his family like to go camping, too, and he brings it when they go camping.
Oddly enough, of late there tends to be a girl or two hanging around, as well. What games the girls are playing is another story.
The girls do not seem to be around the next morning.
Lot of women are getting into computer gaming. In the Tampa group that I used to play games with, there are at least six women I can think of off the top of my head who game.
My girlfriend Shelly has been spending the week with me (it's spring break for her), and she's spent most of that time in front of the computer playing World of Warcraft. MMORPGs seem to be especially popular with women; Blizzard says that women outnumber men in World of Warcraft by a small margin.
(2) Console gaming. Xboxen. Generally two guys slouching in chairs side-by-side, both hands attached to console controllers, staring into a television set and fragging other two-man teams over the Internet for several hours at a stretch. Very violent, fast and colourful.
This tends to be more daytime stuff, and has an entirely different social ambience than the LAN party. Enquires from the doting uncle are met with several words spoken in actual succession - not whole sentences of course, but there is not the extent of the tribal non-communication barrier that one sees with the LAN parties.
What cars and girls and alcohol/drugs will do to all of this is of interest - time will tell.
Console games are still very much male-dominated. The main demographic for console games, according to the International Game Developers Association, is young white heterosexual men.
There does seem to be much less focus on girls than what we had in an earlier era.
Earning money for college and hanging out with male friends seem to be squeezing girl time and alcohol/drug time out of their lives.
I would guess that male hormonal energies are currently being spent on fragging various video demons instead of with hormonal demons of an entirely different sort.
I would like to think that I am mistaken.
Come to think of it, the nieces do not seem to be hanging out with gentlemen, either.
I wonder if the young gentlemen who, in an earlier era, would be following the girls' phermonal trails around like flies are now too busy earning money for college and playing video games with the guys?
Well, to be fair, you're probably not looking at a representational sample.
And as online games such as MMORPGs and "virtual environments" like Second Life become more and more popular, they become a real social environment. I've met people in real life that I "met" first in World of Warcraft, for example.
Human social environments are becoming increasingly abstract and virtualized. Chat rooms, social networking sites, game environments, and virtual worlds are all legitimate places for social interaction, and the social relationships that form there can often translate very well into the 'real world.'
Of course, the rules of these virtual environments are different from the normal social rules of meatspace, but that by itself doesn't make virtual environments any less of a legitimate social outlet.
Honestly, though, I think the time that young adult men spend on video games now is probably similar to the time that young adult men might have spent tinkering with hot rods or doing other traditionally male-dominated hobbies before the age of computers.
So - if no boys, what are the girls doing?
An awful lot of academic study and volunteer work.
All three of the girls own laptops - and spend an extraordianaly amount of time using them to access social networking sites.
Ding. The girls are on Myspace and Livejournal, or setting up profiles on OK Cupid, or playing Warcraft or Everquest. (MMORPGs typically have much more modest hardware requirements than games like first-person shooters.)
None of the guys own laptops - the guys seem to think of computers largely in the context of gaming machines.
Of course, I could be wrong about current social trends that I seem to be seeing with my nephews and nieces.
I certainly hope so.
But I do not think so.
Regards,
Epaminondas
Not surprising the guys don't own laptops. You have to spend a metric truckload of money to get a laptop machine that'll play Doom 3 well, and laptops (with few exceptions) are trickier to upgrade when new graphics hardware comes out. I mean, hell, *I* can't afford an Alienware, so it's pretty much a foregone conclusion it's out of the reach of most twentysomethings!
