Topic: Xbox One: $399 w/o Kinect, media apps w/o Gold

[W7RE]

I'm using this as my background: http://i2.minus.com/iRLH6dsRKWnWm.jpg

I don't want to just slap a picture on there, because it will mostly be obscured by the tiles. I may use the template they put out a while back to make one, but I don't feel like it right now.

[gpw11]

 I'm leaving it plugged in all the time now.  I hope that doesn't hurt the battery pack.  (Lithium-Ion--it shouldn't, right?)

I looked this up a while ago and all Lithium-ion batteries will have built in circuit monitors to prevent damage from over charging. They don't handle trickle charging well, as Ni-Cad batteries used to, so the circuitry is necessary to prevent them from....well, catching fire I guess. That will shut off the charge to the battery at full capacity (or near) and not turn it back on until a certain threshold is met.   So, in the case of your controller, current to the battery will be cut off (and I'd assume that the controller would then still be powered directly from the hard wire - like a laptop) until the natural power degradation from the battery sitting there unused causes the charging to kick back in - which should be days or weeks.

Lithium Ion batteries are fine to store charged, so you're good.  "Memory effect" is mostly a myth these days, and the only things you really have to worry about with Lithium Ion batteries is that heat causes them to degrade (this is more of an issue with laptops and construction equipment), and keeping them 100% depleted CAN damage the sensors. In most devices, however, the the "out of juice" shutoff is at a similar threshold as the top end - so when my phone shuts off at 0% and refuses to turn back on, there's still probably a 5% charge in there which should ensure that the battery won't hit true zero for a couple weeks after the phone shut off.  Power tools more or less work the same way now, and I'm sure the controllers do as well. 

The prevalent wisdom behind lithium ion batteries these days seems to be "Don't worry about it, don't even think about it, do whatever".

[Cobra951]

. . .

The prevalent wisdom behind lithium ion batteries these days seems to be "Don't worry about it, don't even think about it, do whatever".

Thanks, man.  Good to know all that.  I did know that Li-Ion batteries had some sort of charging smarts, but not the details.  I really like the flexibility.  Keep it wired until I need to untether for whatever reason, then just pull out the wire and keep going.  Perfect.

[Cobra951]

Hello from the XB1.  Got this cheap KB from Amazon when I ordered my mom's new PC.  Her old one is too old and messed up, so I had to get her something as cheaply as possible.  She can't handle Win 8.  She has such a hard time learning new tech stuff.  Luckily I found this little HP desktop with Win 7 (+Win 8 upgrade option).  Some sort of quad-core Pentium with 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, and integrated everything.  I think the case is mostly empty.  Thing is plenty fast online, and for videos.

Anyway, it also found the XB1 on the network, and I was able to set it up as a device.  Now I can stream from media player to the Xbox, which is so sweet.  I can also pair youtube.com on a PC to the Youtube app on the Xbox, and finally get to see Youtube videos the way the rest of you do--smooth playback and full screen.  Oh, her PC does fine with youtube and H.264.  It's my dinosaur that can't keep up.

Not sure if all this belongs in here, but I didn't want to start a new thread for it.  Peace, out!

[MysterD]

Hello from the XB1.  Got this cheap KB from Amazon when I ordered my mom's new PC.  Her old one is too old and messed up, so I had to get her something as cheaply as possible.  She can't handle Win 8.  She has such a hard time learning new tech stuff.  Luckily I found this little HP desktop with Win 7 (+Win 8 upgrade option).  Some sort of quad-core Pentium with 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, and integrated everything.  I think the case is mostly empty.  Thing is plenty fast online, and for videos.

Anyway, it also found the XB1 on the network, and I was able to set it up as a device.  Now I can stream from media player to the Xbox, which is so sweet.  I can also pair youtube.com on a PC to the Youtube app on the Xbox, and finally get to see Youtube videos the way the rest of you do--smooth playback and full screen.  Oh, her PC does fine with youtube and H.264.  It's my dinosaur that can't keep up.

Not sure if all this belongs in here, but I didn't want to start a new thread for it.  Peace, out!

For anyone using Win 8.0 or 8.1 - StartMenu8 puts back in the old start menu [from Win 7]; and it also keeps ModernUI [for Windows 8].
That can be configured and set-up however you like - whether you want to use Old Start Menu by default, Modern UI by default, switch b/t the two, have hot keys to access either UI, whatever.
I'd easily + highly recommend that program.

I'm not a fan of Win 8's new ModernUI when using a KB-mouse combo, either.

I have Win 8.1 (with StartMenu8) installed on my laptop [since the laptop came with Win 8.1 already installed]; and my desktop gaming PC runs Win 7.

[Cobra951]

I had looked extensively into doing that, and even had the process bookmarked.  But then I found the HP with Win 7+8, and so much the better.  No need to modify the basic interface, and I can always bump it to Win 8 in the future, if it makes sense.  Also, Win 7 runs Office 2003, which she already had.  No need to spend another 3 figures on Office.  The compatibility upgrades for the newer formats (like DOCX) are still available too.  I grabbed those right away.  More still, Outlook 2003 has an easy migration path from Outlook Express, including the address book.  Later versions of Outlook make it more difficult.  She has all this organization of her email that would be lost without it.

[MysterD]

I had looked extensively into doing that, and even had the process bookmarked.  But then I found the HP with Win 7+8, and so much the better.  No need to modify the basic interface, and I can always bump it to Win 8 in the future, if it makes sense.  Also, Win 7 runs Office 2003, which she already had.  No need to spend another 3 figures on Office.  The compatibility upgrades for the newer formats (like DOCX) are still available too.  I grabbed those right away.  More still, Outlook 2003 has an easy migration path from Outlook Express, including the address book.  Later versions of Outlook make it more difficult.  She has all this organization of her email that would be lost without it.

Oh, sure - I certainly understand all of that w sticking w/ Win 7! Want to make sure old stuff still works + being so used to Win 7 style/format.

Just if you, her, or anyone does have a PC and it's saddled w/ Win 8,. especially if you get a damn good deal on it - there's ways around it and to modify it! Bookmark them!

Question - will that PC w/ Win 7 + 8 only allow for upgrade?
Or can you dual-boot them?

[Cobra951]

I don't know.  I had not thought about it, since it's for my mom, and she won't be needing anything fancy like a dual-boot.  I must say, though, that since I've moved away from gaming on PCs, a modest, but modern setup like this would not be too bad for me.

But I doubt it.  Dual-booting would require repartitioning the drive, and it's already partitioned 3 ways, with recovery and HP tools each having its own small partition.  I have a feeling it's just a straight upgrade.

Edit:  This is the system, in case you're still curious.

[gpw11]

I bought my mom a new notebook last year and really wish I had a Windows 7 option at the time - literally  everything I looked at was Win 8. I don't know if it's Start8 I put on there to make it more of a familiar interface, but one of them and it works perfectly fine.....but fucking Windows 8, man. There is a bunch of little shit about it that is just so problematic for anyone not familiar with it.  Why they thought it was a good idea to make a computer run with a tablet interface is beyond me, and some file extensions default to an "app" instead of a program. Sure, it's fixable, but it's still ridiculous.

[Cobra951]

A poor decision, likely based on predictions during development that didn't quite pan out (like a mostly keyboard-less market).  But at least that's understandable.  What I don't understand, especially with Microsoft (who will otherwise backpedal in a hurry when needed--see the rest of this thread), is that they haven't fixed it, like they said they were going to.  Windows 8 should detect the environment it's running on, and adjust itself accordingly.  The user shouldn't have to jump through hoops and enlist third parties to get the GUI in a reasonable state for his device's capabilities.  And the KB/mouse PC is still very much a mainstream device.

Related, but back on topic, the Kinect is absolutely no replacement for a mouse.  I don't mean that it's less good; I mean that it's wholly unacceptable to navigate a GUI, even with huge fucking tiles for buttons.  The lag is ridiculous, and the reliability of responses even worse.  Speech works, but that's an entirely different kind of system control, and not suitable for everyday, continuous use.  Besides, I hate talking to inanimate objects.  But that's just me.

[MysterD]

I don't know.  I had not thought about it, since it's for my mom, and she won't be needing anything fancy like a dual-boot.  I must say, though, that since I've moved away from gaming on PCs, a modest, but modern setup like this would not be too bad for me.

But I doubt it.  Dual-booting would require repartitioning the drive, and it's already partitioned 3 ways, with recovery and HP tools each having its own small partition.  I have a feeling it's just a straight upgrade.

Edit:  This is the system, in case you're still curious.

It says Win 8 is optional.
Don't know if they mean it's dual-booted or upgradable from Win 7 to 8.

That seems absolutely fine for doing any non-gaming PC stuff.
If you ever wanted to do any kind of modern PC gaming - especially w/ modern AAA PC titles - I wouldn't touch that thing w/ a ten-foot pole.

Could always try to run older games on it whose requirements you pounce by quite a bit, of course.

[gpw11]

Related, but back on topic, the Kinect is absolutely no replacement for a mouse.  I don't mean that it's less good; I mean that it's wholly unacceptable to navigate a GUI, even with huge fucking tiles for buttons.  The lag is ridiculous, and the reliability of responses even worse.  Speech works, but that's an entirely different kind of system control, and not suitable for everyday, continuous use.  Besides, I hate talking to inanimate objects.  But that's just me.

How does that even work with Kinect?   Do you just point at the tile?

[Cobra951]

When your hands are in range, you get a hand-shaped cursor for each onscreen.  One hand is enough.  You move your hand to a tile, then press forward in the air, and pull back.  (You need to do both.)  That clicks the "button".  You can make a fist, which the system interprets as grabbing the screen.  Then you can pan the screen in the direction you move your fist.  All nice in theory, but in practice, it's a laggy, unreliable and frustrating exercise.  A controller is much better; and a controller is nowhere near as good as a mouse would be for this.  I'm sure they were thinking Minority Report.  The reality falls far short of that.

[scottws]

A poor decision, likely based on predictions during development that didn't quite pan out (like a mostly keyboard-less market).  But at least that's understandable.  What I don't understand, especially with Microsoft (who will otherwise backpedal in a hurry when needed--see the rest of this thread), is that they haven't fixed it, like they said they were going to.  Windows 8 should detect the environment it's running on, and adjust itself accordingly.  The user shouldn't have to jump through hoops and enlist third parties to get the GUI in a reasonable state for his device's capabilities.  And the KB/mouse PC is still very much a mainstream device.

Related, but back on topic, the Kinect is absolutely no replacement for a mouse.  I don't mean that it's less good; I mean that it's wholly unacceptable to navigate a GUI, even with huge fucking tiles for buttons.  The lag is ridiculous, and the reliability of responses even worse.  Speech works, but that's an entirely different kind of system control, and not suitable for everyday, continuous use.  Besides, I hate talking to inanimate objects.  But that's just me.

They did do exactly what you are saying, Cobra. It's called Windows 10.

[Cobra951]

Today, a first, in my entire decades-long history with consoles:  AC Unity crashed hard, with the audio stuck in an evil loud buzz.  I pressed the Home button, and the system actually responded, letting me back out to the dashboard.  It then proceeded to terminate the game program gracefully.  I relaunched it, and played it for the better part of an hour without issue.

Never before has a console game crashed on me where the entire system didn't go down with it.  I feel like celebrating this milestone somehow.  Drink?

[scottws]

Its pretty hard to crash the actual kernel of an OS anymore. Everything is a userland program that can be killed by the (still living) kernel.

[Cobra951]

Yeah, I read that this system runs 2 OS's (XOS, Win 8 ) under a hypervisor, which was a new term for me.  It still surprised me though.  I know that ever since XP (any NT-kernel Windows, really) apps should never crash the OS.  (Only bad drivers could.)  But that nicety did not find its way into the X360.  It always needs a power cycle when a game crashes.

[W7RE]

Around release, Microsoft was referring to it as 3 OS's. One for games, a second for apps, and a third to handle them both. The game OS will keep one game running, even in standby mode. You can go back to it at any time as long as you haven't run another game. The app OS will run 4 or 5 apps simultaneously, and start shutting down old ones when you try to run more than that. This is why you can go back to apps and often see what you were doing last time you ran it.

Oh, and recently I had a game (Archeage, a Korean MMO) crashing and giving me BSOD. I wasn't getting it in anything else, only when the game was running. This is in Win7 64bit. This was ultimately the reason I quit playing it.

[Quemaqua]

Huh, interesting. Never really thought about this. I know many times on the PS3 things would crash and not require a hard reset. Though sometimes they would.

[Cobra951]

Around release, Microsoft was referring to it as 3 OS's. One for games, a second for apps, and a third to handle them both. The game OS will keep one game running, even in standby mode. You can go back to it at any time as long as you haven't run another game. The app OS will run 4 or 5 apps simultaneously, and start shutting down old ones when you try to run more than that. This is why you can go back to apps and often see what you were doing last time you ran it.

Oh, and recently I had a game (Archeage, a Korean MMO) crashing and giving me BSOD. I wasn't getting it in anything else, only when the game was running. This is in Win7 64bit. This was ultimately the reason I quit playing it.

If I understood what I read correctly, the hypervisor is sort of a master OS that handles virtual machines, and the XOS and modded Win 8 each runs as a virtual machine.  That they went to such lengths for a game machine is impressive.  (Maybe I'm too easily impressed.)  Then again, MS was thinking beyond games, too far perhaps, which got them in trouble with their Xbox fanbase.

It's so handy to be able to jump out of a game into any app, or use that snap feature (that took me a while to figure out, because it's not intuitive).  Meanwhile, the game is still running, and I can jump back in at any time.  Out of being a computer geek, though, I always quit out of all apps manually when I'm going to play the game in earnest.  One thing that bugs me is Media Player.  It is so limited.  The worst is not being able to keep music playing while I'm running something else.  I'm positive there's no good technical reason for it.

If a program (even a Korean MMO) BSODs your NT-kernel OS (e.g., Win 7), then some driver is buggy.  It could be a driver you already had, like video or audio, which only happens to misbehave for that particular game (but could affect others in the future), or the game itself installed a buggy driver for something.

This is something that I dealt with while I was still a software engineer.  Drivers run at Ring 0 (most open system level), where they can hurt things plenty.  Apps (e.g., user programs, games) run at Ring 2 and up, where they have no power to hurt the OS or underlying system.  If I wanted to manipulate the system at the nuts & bolts level, I had to write a driver, which is a lot more involved than coding an app.

Wikipedia has some info on protection rings.  There happens to be some talk about hypervisors there too.  Interesting.  As I said, that's new to me.  Also, it looks like drivers run at Ring 1, not 0 as I remembered/mis-learned.  Haha!  It makes sense.  0 is the kernel itself, the inner sanctum.

[scottws]

Hypervisors aren't really new technology.  Technically, the first one was out in 1967 although it wasn't called a "hypervisor" at the time.  VMware ESXi (and ESX before it), Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix XenServer are all hypervisors.  VMware ESX was the first modern and well-known one and it was released in 2002.

Hypervisor technology is extremely pervasive in medium and large businesses; pretty much everyone is using it.  For instance, I estimate off-the-cuff that 95% of our 200+ servers are virtualized on eight physical host machines running the VMware ESXi hypervisor and the only reason that other servers aren't virtualized is because they require things like hardware telephony cards.

It's truly awesome technology.  If we need to do something like upgrade RAM on one of the phyisical hosts, we have the ability to migrate the virtual servers running on it to another physical host live with no downtime of the virtual servers and no service outage perceptible to users.  Then we can move it back when the maintenance is complete the same way with the same results.

Of course, if there is a problem with the hypervisor itself and you are unable to migrate the virtual machines off before rebooting it, it sucks because a bunch of virtual servers go down at the same time.  Luckily such events are pretty rare and have only occurred one or two times a year at all the places I've worked.

[Cobra951]

I am so far out of the loop anymore.  That stuff all sounds like magic to me.  Doesn't all that virtualization hamper performance?  Or is the hardware so powerful that a bit of extra overhead doesn't matter?  I'm surprised that I could have gone through 2 decades as an employed software guy without ever hearing the term hypervisor.  I've known about virtual machines for a very long time, though.  Just how new is the term, and what was it called previously?

Edit:  "Virtual-machine monitor", or VMM.  That looks more familiar.  Heh.

[scottws]

I am so far out of the loop anymore.  That stuff all sounds like magic to me.  Doesn't all that virtualization hamper performance?  Or is the hardware so powerful that a bit of extra overhead doesn't matter?  I'm surprised that I could have gone through 2 decades as an employed software guy without ever hearing the term hypervisor.  I've known about virtual machines for a very long time, though.  Just how new is the term, and what was it called previously?

Edit:  "Virtual-machine monitor", or VMM.  That looks more familiar.  Heh.

Trust me, it's still like magic to me too.  Whoever came up with it and got it working the way it does are geniuses.

I'm not sure what hypervisors were called before. Maybe just "virtualization".  I think I first heard the term "hypervisor" maybe around 2007 or so.  VMware's earlier product, GSX, wasn't actually a hypervisor.  Rather it was a type of "paravirtualization" product.  It ran on top of another operating system, so you had both the overhead of the base OS plus the virutalization layer.  In that scenario, everything was virtualized through the virtualization product.  It basically translated requests for the hardware to stuff the OS it was installed on would understand.  Performance here took a big hit, but it was okay for lighter workloads or cost-conscious organizations.

With a real hypervisor, some of the bare metal hardware is actually exposed to virtual machines and they treat it as if they aren't even virtualized.  In such cases, usually the hardware makers have added some extensions or functionality into their product that enable this (like Intel's vt-x).  Other parts of the hardware are still virtualized through the hypervisor OS and yes, there is a performance penalty but it is pretty much insignificant these days.

Windows 8+ actually has a form of the Hyper-V hypervisor built-in.  If you enable it, it basically turns the Windows 8 OS into a hypervisor and then you can create other virtual machines that run at near native speed on the same workstation.  I use this all the time for testing different software, or at least I used to until I got a new laptop where enabling Hyper-V breaks the networking on my computer.  Now I use Oracle VirtualBox, which is an old-fashioned paravirtualization product.  It's a step down, but good enough for my needs.

When I see "VMM", I just think Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager, commonly called just VMM.  I haven't seen that acronym in another context before.

[gpw11]

If a program (even a Korean MMO) BSODs your NT-kernel OS (e.g., Win 7), then some driver is buggy.  It could be a driver you already had, like video or audio, which only happens to misbehave for that particular game (but could affect others in the future), or the game itself installed a buggy driver for something.

This is something that I dealt with while I was still a software engineer.  Drivers run at Ring 0 (most open system level), where they can hurt things plenty.  Apps (e.g., user programs, games) run at Ring 2 and up, where they have no power to hurt the OS or underlying system.  If I wanted to manipulate the system at the nuts & bolts level, I had to write a driver, which is a lot more involved than coding an app.

Wikipedia has some info on protection rings.  There happens to be some talk about hypervisors there too.  Interesting.  As I said, that's new to me.  Also, it looks like drivers run at Ring 1, not 0 as I remembered/mis-learned.  Haha!  It makes sense.  0 is the kernel itself, the inner sanctum.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3.  BSODs all over the place.   Turns out everyone with Realtek integrated audio gets them (read - a virtual shit ton of people), and only on Frostbyte engine games.   Who's at fault here?  I mean, of course it's a driver error, but it seems weird that only DICE's coding brings it out.  As far as I know it was never solved - I ended up just buying a $25 Sound Blaster card to work around it. 

[W7RE]

Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3.  BSODs all over the place.   Turns out everyone with Realtek integrated audio gets them (read - a virtual shit ton of people), and only on Frostbyte engine games.   Who's at fault here?  I mean, of course it's a driver error, but it seems weird that only DICE's coding brings it out.  As far as I know it was never solved - I ended up just buying a $25 Sound Blaster card to work around it. 

I had read that lots of other people were getting BSOD in Archeage as well. So it wasn't just me, but the company hadn't really acknowledged it and no one really knew if there was a common hardware configuration among people that were getting it. I never had the problem in other CryEngine games, just this one. Far Cry, Crysis, Crysis 2, Aion, State of Decay... these all use CryEngine as well, and I've never gotten a BSOD in any of them.

[Cobra951]

The March update added screenshots.  Not only that, but they can be exported ("shared") in several ways.  Very nice.  So I played a bit with it.  AC Unity allows turning off the HUD, and I came up with these.  Some are perhaps NSFW, if classic-style nude art presents that problem.  The interior detail and lighting in this game are the best I've ever seen in a game.

Luxembourg palace 1

Luxembourg palace 2

Luxembourg palace 3

Luxembourg palace 4

Luxembourg palace 5

Luxembourg palace 6

The outdoors look fine too:

Outside 1

Outside 2

Outside 3

[W7RE]

Here's a few I took:

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor (photo mode, but I only messed with camera positioning. Color and contrast and such are all at default.)

Halo 4: Master Chief Collection (UI turned off)

Zombie Army Trilogy

Dying Light

Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions

Volgarr the Viking

1001 Spikes



Lords of the Fallen
This one looks pretty terrible. Looking at the character, it looks like it may be running at sub 1080p (or just has some bad AA). It also has some serious blurring in the background, and chromatic aberration is destroying the tree on the right. The game does look better in motion though.

[W7RE]

So I found an option in Lords of the Fallen to remove the chromatic aberration. I couldn't quite get the same shot as before, so I just took 2 more: one with the setting on, one with it off. It makes a pretty drastic difference.

With chromatic aberration
Without chromatic aberration

[Cobra951]

Cool shots.  Is that Spelunky (1001 Spikes)?  Looks like the shots come out at whatever res your screen is set to, which makes sense.  I'm still using my Samsung 720p LCD set, which is one reason I don't care about all the bitching about resolution.

The graphics in LotF don't get much love.  But how is the game?  It's on sale now for half price, but after expecting it for a lot less than that in the big sale (and not getting it), I'm going to hold off.  How does the difficulty compare to the Dark Souls games?

[W7RE]

Nope, that's the default character in 1001 Spikes. There are a bunch of unlockable characters you can buy with coins. So far I only have Master Chief and Commander Video.

Lords of the Fallen is like Dark Souls, but things are explained more clearly, and there are less random difficulty spikes. So far when an enemy is lurking behind a blind corner, he won't 1 or 2 shot me if I didn't anticipate him being there. Bosses don't 2-3 shot me. I understand what all the items in my inventory are for, either because the name makes them clear, or the description does. It is a bit easier, mostly in the amount of damage the bosses do, and the frequency of the save points. There's also a ranged gantlet weapon you get that shoots magic, and you can use it to cheese a lot of fights if you want. Also I don't know if a magic focused character is viable, maybe later in the game. At the start you have enough magic to cast 1 or 2 spells at the beginning, then you have to wait 20-30 seconds for mana to regen.

And when I say "like Dark Souls", I mean that. It's very obvious these guys said "hey, let's make our own version of Dark Souls", and copied almost every system. Weapon and armor weight determine your movement and attack speed, you have a fixed number of health potions, and when you go to a save point it refill them and your HP. You gain xp from enemy kills, but have to get back to a save point to spend it on increasing your stats. It's very much a copy of Dark Souls, and probably seen by most as Dark Souls on easy mode. Though I don't know that I'd call it an easy game, just easier and more approachable than Dark Souls.

[Cobra951]

. . . probably seen by most as Dark Souls on easy mode. Though I don't know that I'd call it an easy game, just easier and more approachable than Dark Souls.

Sounds perfect.  I like the idea of Dark Souls, just not the crazy difficulty.  I can do reasonably hard.  I'm waiting for a low price, but eventually I'll get it.

[Cobra951]

I ended up getting a 2TB WD My Passport Ultra locally at Microcenter.  They had a lot of good press, the best warranty, are powered through the USB cable, and were on a good sale for brick-and-mortar.  The My Passport X specifically mentions the Xbox on the packaging, but they wanted $50 (!) more for it.  Crazy.

It comes formatted with NTFS.  The system recognized it right away, and the "formatting" step was instant.  Transferred Sunset Overdrive to it for testing, because I can reinstall it from disc if something goes wrong.  Works like a charm.  I went from about 15 GB free to 1.8 TB free.  I started the transfer of The Witcher 3 last night, then went to bed.  I'll see how that works today.  It's supposed to be better because the internal drive and 3GB/sec (SATA II) speed are kinda pokey.  If it streams better, I'll know it, especially in Novigrad.

Assuming no bad surprises, I guess I'm pretty well set now.  2 TB should hold about the same number of games as my 250GB drive does on the 360, and that has been plenty big enough for everything I care about.  The only bummer is that the drive doesn't fully power off when the system is (truly) off.  The USB port keeps getting power, and the drive spins down and goes into standby.  There goes one reason I wanted a USB-powered drive (the other being not having to snake an extension cord all the way to my already crowded UPS).

Edit:  Can't tell the difference, really.  There were no hiccups in Novigrad, but load times didn't improve as far as I can tell, and cutscene loading along with their textures was variable, as usual.  The one good thing is the load split across 2 separate drives, with save files, DVR stuff and any system I/O staying on the internal.  That has to help overall.  Regardless, it serves the desperate need for more space without issues.  That will have to do.

[W7RE]

When I got my external, I set it as the default location for new installs. I'm not sure if that would be better, or to leave it set to the internal. On one hand, if I redeem a code from the web and it starts installing a game, I want it on the external. On the other hand, it also puts all apps and saves and such there. I guess that's not a big deal, since saves are stored int he cloud anyway. I copied a few games to the internal, then unplugged the external, and the only thing I noticed was that upon running a transferred game for the first time, it gave me a brief "getting your game ready" message for 5-10 seconds before actually launching the game.

[Cobra951]

By default, it sets itself up as the default installation drive.  That makes the most sense, since the internal filling up is what makes us go out and buy the things.  It's probably best that way, though I'll try to keep all apps on the internal, since those are often run concurrently with games.  Division of labor for best performance (games run off the external, apps run off the internal).  So I'll probably move any new downloaded apps to the internal after they install.

I ran The Witcher 3 for a long time today, with no more problems than it usually has.  As I've progressed in the game, there are some spots in the big city of Novigrad where the game will freeze momentarily and the screen blurs out as more stuff is streamed in.  That can happen anywhere, but it's far more common in Novigrad.  The screen smearing to a blur is what really bugs me.  (Momentary hitching is no big deal in open-world games, unless the developers choose to emphasize it with idiotic screen smearing.)  They didn't have to do that, and there is no way to defeat it.  I can't blame the drive for that.  It's behaving quite well, and it's apparently plenty fast for what it is.

You said saves go on the external too.  How do you know that?  I have no control at all over the saves.  I can copy or move other things between the drives, but not the saves.  There is no indication of where they are, so I assumed they are still on the internal.  That makes sense, because saves are treated like system files rather than user files (which I hate).

[W7RE]

Yeah I think you're right about the save data. I had assumed it was on the external because I went in to manage a game that was on the external, and it says the name of the drive it's on, with a list of the dlc and whatnot. Then to the right of that, with no drive label is saved data. I just assumed the lack of a drive label meant it too was on the external. It does have a different background for that section though, which is probably meant to differentiate it.

[Cobra951]

That was my impression.  The save data is shown in this separate grey area, like the system is telling you that it's out of your reach.

[Cobra951]

The NXOE is finally out officially.  It takes some getting used to, and I'm still doing that.  It's definitely faster.  The most notable perk is backward compatibility, which just works.  All the compatible 360 digital purchases show up on the ready-to-install list.  Click on them and wait for the download.  I installed some of my 360 games on it to check it out, and booted up Borderlands intending to spend only a short time in it.  I ended up playing for over an hour, and getting up to Level 7.  All the DLC for it (which I owned) migrated too.

The 360 virtual machine works just about exactly like the real system, once you're in a 360 game.  Game progress saved to the "cloud" (local saving with sync to the "cloud", actually) on a real 360 will be loaded (and saved) on the virtual 360.  So the same game can be played back and forth between consoles.  The only real difference is that bringing up the 360 guide takes the press of 2 buttons (since the big Xbox button is taken).  Frame rates can suffer, but I think a lot of that is due to the emulator insisting on full-time locked vsync.  I had already experienced this with one Rare Replay game.  I hoped they added the adaptive vsync the real system uses on many games.  Not yet.  Maybe it isn't practical?  Regardless, Borderlands plays very well, and it looks better for some reason.  There are still jaggies on the edges of the 3D-rendered geometry, but on the whole, it looks cleaner.  The 360 has these coarse edges on everything, and those are happily missing here.  [Edit:  Eurogamer has some good insights into the back-compat feature here.]

Not everything was rosy yesterday.  Before I even installed the update (which I delayed intentionally), I noticed that one game in Rare Replay would not work.  The system thought I didn't own it, and refused to let me launch it.  A chat with support ruined my morning.  They ended up sending me to a support forum.  Turns out that back-compat going active broke the 360 Rare Replay games.  (My guess is they conflicted with the same games under the general BC).  Fortunately, they addressed this quickly, and the RR version of Banjo-Tooie now works again.  I haven't tried the others yet.

Edit:  Update on the external drive:  It definitely helps with performance.  I've used it a lot more extensively, and there's no question that load times and streaming are better.  I moved Forza Horizon 2 over to it recently, and that was the right decision.  That's not so much praise for USB 3.0 or WD MP Ultras as it is a smack against the half-speed SATA both current consoles use internally.

W7RE, some folks out there swear that their game saves move over to the external along with the games.  I was questioning this before, but it seems I was wrong about that.  I haven't figured out a way to test it yet.  The most obvious way would require 2 consoles.  Play an externally installed game offline; save; move the drive to the second console (also offline); launch the game; see if the saved progress persists.

[W7RE]

To be honest I haven't run any of the Rare Replay games in a while, so if they stopped working for a while I hadn't noticed. I did notice that every one of them needed an update when NXOE went out to everyone. I'm not sure if these updates were pushed at the same time as NXOE, or just soon afterward. I just remember every time I put my Xbox in sleep mode it would start a download, which would kill the internet. So I paused it, and left it on until everyone was asleep.

NXOE is a bit of a mixed bag. Some of the core features of the OS, like friends and parties, are built into it now instead of apps, so they load a lot faster. The quick guide has most of what you need just a couple button presses away, and it usually comes up fast. Things that aren't integrated into the quick guide are still cumbersome without Kinect though. The recently played section feels like a lot of wasted space, and it seems weird having all your pins down below that (but yes, you can get to them quickly by pulling the right trigger).

[Cobra951]

I'm glad I'm not alone thinking they went backwards with the recently played space.  We had 4 slots plus the disc before.  Now we have 3 + disc.  How's that an improvement?  They could have fit 3 times as much history in that space they're wasting with so much blank transparency.

At least there's more room for pins now.  I had it filled up before, and now I have nearly a whole line of tiles free to add more stuff.

As I said in the Rare Replay thread, there was a massive improvement in the performance of the one back-compat 360 game that was behaving so poorly--BK: Nut & Bolts.  I won't regurgitate it all here.  Suffice it to say that it now maintains seamless audio, and the frame rate inside the worlds is just about perfectly locked at 30 fps.  Those updates to the RR games have all been in the neighborhood of 720 MB.  I'm going to guess it's the emulator/virtual-machine code for each game.  Banjo-Tooie is all of about 90 MB on the 360, yet it gets a 720MB+ update?  Ha!

Your router should allocate the internet usage more sanely.  One user should not be able to suck down the entire pipe.

[W7RE]

Your router should allocate the internet usage more sanely.  One user should not be able to suck down the entire pipe.

We've tried QOS settings and such, but the router just doesn't have the right options. All it allows is to assign 3 different devices high or low priority. I do have some ports forwarded to the Xbox One, and disabling that might help, but then I'd get a strict NAT and have connection issues with party chat and some games. I play online a lot, so I don't want that happening. It's also not my router, it's my brother's. He's not willing to put custom firmware on it, and he doesn't let me have the password to it. (I once blocked someone's PC from the internet because they were killing the network with torrents, so he changed the password and won't let me have it.)

It might help if we had more than 8Mbit down and 1Mbit up, but I don't pay the bills around here, and everyone else thinks that's plenty.