10 years on... Starcraft 2 system requirements

Amazon have just notified me that my pre-order for StarCraft II has been dispatched. Yeeeha!

Its been 10 years since the original Starcraft was released. The minimum requirements back then were a poultry:

• Windows 95/98/NT 
• Pentium 90 MHz processor or higher 
• 16 MB RAM 
• DirectDraw-Compatible SVGA Video Card 
• DirectX 2.0 
• Double-Speed CD-ROM (Quad Speed for Cinematics) 
• 80 MB of disk space 
• Mouse/keyboard

Whilst, today's latest StarCraft II requirements are:

• Windows® XP/Windows Vista®/Windows® 7 
• 2.6 GHz Pentium® IV or equivalent AMD 
• 128 MB PCIe NVIDIA® GeForce® or ATI Radeon® card or better 
• 12 GB available HD space 
• 1 GB RAM (1.5 GB required for Windows Vista®/Windows® 7 users) 
• DVD-ROM drive 
• Broadband Internet connection 
• 1024X720 minimum display resolution

So an increase of:

• x28 CPU speed 
• x64 Memory 
• x154 Disk space

So, extrapolating in a silly fashion, StarCraft II in 2020 will require:

• 72.8 Ghz processor (this is unlikely due to heat-constraints, I suspect 
• adding more cores is likely) 
• 64GB memory 
• 1.8TB (1848GB) of disk space

Scary...        

iPhone Dependency..

So, I was on a trip to London yesterday, and someway through the trip it dawned on me how dependent I've become on my iPhone....
 
1. iPhone alarm wakes me at 8.45
2. Check train schedule with Todo PIM app
3. Navigton sat-nav app gets me to the railway station.
4. Realize I dont have my booking id for getting my prepurchased ticket (bought via TheTrainLine iPhone app). Use email app to find booking confirmation.
5. Get on train, listen to podcast for an hour or so
6. Off train, popup Tube Deluxe app to figure out tube route to destination
7. Off tube, use Maps GPS to plot route to destination
8. Later, browse online for London attractions, get location of Science Museum.
9. Tube Deluxe to plot tube route, Maps to get me from tube to museum.
10. Tube Deluxe for route back to final train station, Maps again to get to station
11. Podcast on return journey.
12. Navigon sat-nav to get me back home.

God only knows how I survived before :-)            

EasyPeasy Linux... NOT

So I've been thinking of giving my old EeePC 901 to my brother, as I've upgraded to the superb N10J and he could probably make use of it.

Looking on the web, the EasyPeasy Linux distribution (formerly Ubuntu Eee) seems the most popular and promised a pain free install. So, having an external drive, I decided the simplest method was to simply download and burn the install ISO onto a DVD. So far so good, Eee boots DVD, Ubuntu starts and then.... I'm dumped at a BusyBox console. Er, what? After some annoying checking on the web, it appears I'm not the only person having this problem. Strike 1....

I decide to try the USB stick route, which seems to be more common. So, following their instructions to the letter, I download and execute the little Windows application for transferring the ISO to a stick.  Reboot with the stick in and..... I'm dumped at a bootloader console with the error "Could not find kernel image: linux". WTF? USB stick installation borked as well? Strike 2.....

At this point I've had enough for the morning. I have to say this is the worst Linux install I've experienced in a looong while. I've installed ancient versions of Redhat on creaky old boxes with less fuss than this.

In conclusion - EasyPeasy Linux is anything but!

UPDATE 11:11

Finally got the blasted thing installed using a removeable SD card I had lying around.  Frankly, I'm amazed at how poor the installation support for EasyPeasy Linux is.  The distribution only targets a subset of hardware, namely EEE pcs, not the entire plethora of hardware that standard Linux distros have to cater for.  So why oh why is it so difficult to install on what should be their most popular choice of device?