[ILUG] <Highly OT> Windoze gaming problem

[Declan Moriarty]

Was it sean.odonnell at sentia.ie who wrote on Monday 14 January 2002 10:23:
> find a smaller mail client to run in the background,
> something like popcorn, (its tiny). Failing that
> think about switching isps

Thanks for that - the popcorn download is 180K. I'm slow to switch isp 
providers. I get 2 phone lines and free internet access with this shower, for 
little more then the tv stations I had already. They also have a cable modem 
service, but want £50 (?63.50¢) a month for the thing, which I can't justify 
to myself - yet.  

>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Declan Moriarty [mailto:declan.moriarty at ntlworld.ie]
> Sent: 14 January 2002 01:41
> To: ilug at linux.ie
> Subject: [ILUG] <Highly OT> Windoze gaming problem
>
>
> Apologies for tapping the knowledge base for such a problem. If someone
> knows
> where I should send this, please tell me. I never looked for support in
> windoze.
>
> One of my teenage kids has a windoze game called 'starcraft'. He logs on to
> battle.net, meets his friends by arrangements, and has a game with his
> schoolmates. This is one of life's complex pleasures for him. It's all
> windoze based, BTW.
>
> Now my isp (ntlworld) cuts you off after 10 minutes of a dead line, or 2
> hours of surfing. SNIP - you're gone. Problem is, they're cutting him after
> 45 minutes or 1 hour, when he can get well built up in a complex game but
> can't finish off his opponents. It's infuriating, and goes down in the
> statistics as a loss; This only happens on windoze, and in this game - it
> never happens in linux, where I surf. I presume it is the 10 minute thing.
>
> Can I get around it, e.g. Write a batch file to ping  a nameserver every 5
> minutes or some such? I thought of a mail check, (I even have a redundant
> mailbox to check) but that would mean Netscape, (~10 MB overhead) and
> starcraft under windoze stretches this beast (k6/3-500Mhz, 64Mb ram, and
> via
>
> chipset with slow disk access, S3 video card) enough as it is. CPU and
> memory
> overhead is as much of an issue here as anything else. The game takes over
> (15 "quit? - are you sure you're sure?" screens to click through, Alt-Tab
> disabled, etc)

-- 
	Regards,


	Declan Moriarty




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