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The Mac at the LAN party

Tomorrow said:
I didn't realize they even have LAN parties anymore.

OP, how do you find these people? Look them up on the local BBS?
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Haha. My roommate and a few of my friends host LANs from time to time. 2 or 3 of them are "hardcore gamers" in that they play a lot of video games. Most have custom build desktop PCs with 24 inch and up screens. We're talking 5-6 fans inside each case, colored LED lights, 3-4 hard drives inside each case, etc etc.

I think its funny how many posts here are like "I didn't know LANs still existed." This is a joke I hear from PC gamers, "See Mac users don't even know what gaming is so that's why their computers can't play games."

The tide is really turning in favor of Macs at LANs, with graphics cards that hold their own and Valve's Steam software on Mac OS X. Of course a desktop PC still remains more powerful for gaming than a laptop, which is why at most LANs people come with huge desktop PCs.
 
ActionableMango said:
Friendly smack-talking is required at LAN parties. If you can't deal with it, or dish it out yourself, don't go.

People don't just smack-talk Macs. There's AMD vs Intel, Nvidia vs ATI, etc.

It's part of the life of the LAN party.
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So true. My favorite comeback is "Its a Mac right? How come it just works? What's wrong with your PC (insert connection, display, adapter, game, OS)?"
 
At the risk of showing my age... the last time I took part in a LAN party was back in the days when we couldn't afford the dial-up costs and wanted a 4-player gamer of Doom, Duke Nukem or Hexen! Now I feel old!
 
I can beat that. I don't do LAN parties much, but I remember the days of the high school computer labs. We had Macintosh LC III's and there were many lunch hours (and even computer classes) spent playing 16-player networked games of a silly tank game called Bolo.

Good times.
 
I miss LAN parties. First LAN party was for Doom 4-player. Last LAN party I had was in the Battlefield 2 era.

The Internet has ruined LAN parties. Sure, I can still play MP with my friends, but it's not the same as face to face with stacks of Mountain Dew cans and Pizza Hut boxes.
 
"Why are you giving me a hard time about my computer, got some time between virus scans?"

Honestly, the PC vs Mac thing is so tired. I ditched Windows probably 6 years ago for Linux, ran that for a year, but got sick of no support, hacking together everything just to run an application...I heard OS X was based on Unix, so I bought a Mac mini. A few Macs later, I'm blissfully deep into the Apple ecosystem, with no plans to go anywhere.

The point of the story is, I don't trash Windows machines because I don't use them. I use Boot Camp for gaming, VMware Fusion for some Windows-only apps on my OS X desktop. However, I think Windows sucks ass, and would never reconsider going back. But I never trash talk it, I only realize its shortcomings.

Every OS has its benefits and detriments. Use whatever computer you prefer, leave your attitude at home.
 
quickmac said:
The tide is really turning in favor of Macs at LANs, with graphics cards that hold their own and Valve's Steam software on Mac OS X. Of course a desktop PC still remains more powerful for gaming than a laptop, which is why at most LANs people come with huge desktop PCs.
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What? You can still get a decent Asus or HP notebook with like double the gpu performance for hundreds less. We still get inferior ports on OSX, the GPU performance is still a good 30% higher on windows via bootcamp.....
 
PC gamers can talk all the trash they want, but in the end, the Mac is waiting on all the PCs to play catch-up.

Buddy of mine had a LAN party not too long ago. Two people showed up with i7-based custom-built PCs that had everything from BSoD issues to network problems. I swear we wasted 2 hours trying to figure out what components wiggled out of their slots, what cables were plugged in, BIOS settings, firmware versions, drivers out of date.

Fired up my mid-2007 iMac 2.4/4GB/WD Caviar Black 1TB/Radeon HD 2600 XT with Windows 7 x64 in Boot Camp and went on my way to tearing them up the whole night. The joke of the night was how they wanted to play Crysis so that they could knock on my framerate, but they couldn't get their PCs to cooperate enough to even get a game started.
 
I used to take my iMac to lan parties. The setup was really easy. I was often up and pwning before most others were situated. Yeah, the graphics card couldn't beat some of the behemoth machines present, but I got good enough framerates to do what I needed to do. All-in-one setup ftw.
 
Maybe it should be named WiFi party?

I don't remember when it was the last time I saw people gaming via wires.
 
Tomorrow said:
I didn't realize they even have LAN parties anymore.

OP, how do you find these people? Look them up on the local BBS?
Click to expand...

This made me lol a lot, and is a much more witty way of expressing exactly what I'm thinking.

I remember LAN parties, but they were 7 or 8 years ago now. Fun mind you, had an atmosphere you can't replicate on PSN!
 
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