In today's episode, the TechStuff guys weigh in on video game consoles, from the models they own to the future of gaming consoles. Learn more about technology in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everybody, and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette, and I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot com. Sitting across from me, as always, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, Crispy, insert coin. I'm sorry, that's great. I get Chris here unfortunately has a bit of a chest cough, and so when I catch him off guard like that, his bronchial tubes all protests at the same time, just like our listeners. Yes you can. You can hear uh a thousand tiny I'll vel I screaming at once and then we're suddenly silence. Yes, that's tragic. So the reason why I said insert coin in the first place was not to make Chris fall over, but was a cheap segue into our topic, which is a video game consoles. Yeah, now, we which don't require coins, no, but you know, well they do a whole lot of coins. That's right, baby. Um. So you guys who have been with us the whole time may remember a long, long time ago. Uh, in a galaxy far far away, we talked about um, about video game consoles. But that was like our seventh episode. That was back when we did episodes that lasted five minutes and we talked like the guy from the micro Machines, right, And currently we do episodes that range about as long as your average German opera. So, uh, we thought felt it was about time to go back and re revisit I'm sorry, Chris, Chris is just totally lost and that's trying to crack me up. No, but we thought we'd go back and revisit the episode UM and kind of talk a little bit more about consoles, especially after getting a couple of iTunes reviews where people said we were lame because we don't cover gaming enough. You know, we're not a gaming podcast. You're not go to argue with you. I'm just saying we're not a gaming podcast. We are not a gaming podcast, but we do sometimes cover gaming because it falls under the umbrella of tech. But we're not exclusively about gaming, so that's why you're not going to hear that many episodes. So please feel free to write to Star Reviews about how we never talked about digital cameras. Please don't. If you're gonna, if you're going to write a review, make it positive. I know, stuff you should know said that they wanted more reviews, but they wanted to they wanted people to be honest. You know, one, give me a one star review. If you really don't like it, it tell us why. I'm telling you our listeners don't do that. Leave us five star reviews. I don't care if you tell us why. Okay, So, now that we've moved on, you can you can give honest reviews to stuff you should know that. Yes, feel free to give honest reviews to stuff you should know. So let's talk about video game consoles now that we've already a united all of our listeners. Now we weren't going to talk about all video game consoles. I mean we we could go back to the whole birth of Pong thing again. But if we start talking about history, will be here for about six German operas. Okay, here, well, let's let's do it this way. Tell me what video game consoles you currently owned that you actually could play like without having to hook him up to your TV, Like, what's hooked up to your settle? It's actually hooked up. The only the only things I have hooked up are technically the sake of Genesis just needs to be plugged in, but it is actually sitting on the entertainment console. Um. The only two that are actually hooked up and you can actually flip the switch and have it come on are the PlayStation two by Sony and the Nintendo We all right, and so for our listeners, here's what I have hooked up to my entertainment system where all you have to do is turn it on and it's ready to go. I've got the Nintendo sixty four. I've got the Nintendo GameCube. I've got the Nintendo we I've got the Sony PlayStation two. I've got the Sony PlayStation one. I've got the Xbox. I've got the Sega Dreamcast. I think that's it. You must have like a B C D E box. I have an HDTV with lots of inputs, and I'd also like to point out that I have a Nintendo DS Light, which does not need to be hooked up to a TV to play it. Yeah, take that, Pillette. So my Game Boy Black and White isn't a box, however, so that that might be another reason why we haven't really tackled video game consoles in a long time because Chris and I, uh, we've neither of us own all of the current generation consoles. That we is the only one we both own. And uh, it's not that we don't necessarily like the others. And there are other factors which we'll get into. We'll talk about that about, you know, why we own what we own and maybe why we don't own the other ones. But let's start just by hitting the basics. So let's start with the Xbox three sixty. It's Microsoft's entry and there of course that's the successor to the Xbox, which was very popular game console. And I would say it's the first of the current generation. Yeah, it was the first one out. It was the first one out on the market. And uh, I would say, well, I mean the we'se we has bigger numbers and sales, but the Xboxes, I mean, that's like the I think that's probably the go to choice for most gamers. Just just as in the side, are we going to talk about these all together and compare them or are we just gonna go one by one? Because I was gonna make a statement, I thought I don't want to ruin the go ahead. Um. Yeah, you know, the the of the three current generation consoles, they're really kind of different machines because the Xbox three sixty in the PlayStation three are high definition machines. They have very very high end processors, at least compared to you know, previous generations and the Wei for that matter, and um, they're really aimed at a different segment of the market, or were when they were released. I think they're all sort of converging on one another now, including the WE. For that, I think the WE is probably bubing the slowest of the three, and the other two are kind of flailing around trying to get to where the WE is. It's kind of interesting really well the WE is. UM. Part of the reason why the WE is so much less expensive, which helped it in sales, um, is because they used Nintendo decided to use off the shelf components. I mean, Sony spent a lot of money developing that processor, which is an amazing processor, especially for a game console. Um, but you know, Nintenna went, you know what, let's just take on of these and that thing are there, and um, six of those okay, We're done, and it it. It helped them because they helped them keep the cost low. Um, but it also means that it doesn't do ten a d P, which is you know, high definition. It basically looks as good as a DVD, which you know, as far as I'm concerned, I don't have an h D t V. I have a standard definition TV. So it's not that big a deal for you. So so for you your you know, it wouldn't really make a difference if you owned one of the other machines because you wouldn't really be able to tell the difference in effex quality. Your television is not capable of showing it. Mine is. That's another matter. That's that's not obviously not what's really important to me if I only own a WE and not an Xbox three sixty or a PS three. So yeah, the processors on the Xbox three six and p S three are much more powerful. Um. The p S three has got that that cell based architecture for the processor, which is pretty amazing stuff. I mean that it's it's really a powerful machine. I think you could say that the out of the three, the p S three has the most horsepower. Really potentially anyway you have to be able to design software that can take advantage of the hardware. It's not the hardware just doesn't like, doesn't make the game just run better on its own. You have to architect the software properly or else you're just not gonna see the benefit. And that's a benefit of having a gaming console too, because, as Jonathan Is frequently pointed out in past podcasts, um PC games suffer from this problem because you want to buy the latest, say Command and Conquer, you find out that your processor might squeak out playing the game, but you don't have enough RAM and your graphics processor. There's no way, right, yeah, you would. You would have to set all the settings solo that you're looking at stick figures throwing rocks at each other. So, I mean the console UH specs are a good thing and a bad thing. I mean, in this case, you have to write for Sony's UH specific custom chip and take advantage you know that that's really geared to making it look great on the machine, and in years to come you're still gonna be able to play games on it because people aren't gonna go out and write something for you know, another five mega hurts worth of processing power where another gigga hurts where the processing power because the console itself really hasn't changed. Yeah, and uh so let's let's jump back over to the xpox really quickly. I was just gonna mention that that comes in three flavors. Oh it does. Yeah, there's the day, there's the past. So there's the three that you can go shop for right now. Are the Xbox Arcade, which only has a two or fifty six megabyte hard drive. And yeah, yeah, yeah, the Arcade only has two or fifty six megabyte hard drive um, which you know what, I remember back when I was a kid and I owned a two eighty six, where I would have thought two fifty six megabytes was going way more than you would ever need. Um. And it also is not compatible with older Xbox games because it doesn't have the hard drive capacity to run them. Uh. Now, the Xbox three sixty, the flagship Basic, the Basic model, I just got a sixty gigabyte hard drive, so that's a pretty big jump. And it also comes with some stuff that the Arcade version doesn't come with, like a headset, comes with a network cable, um, and it's it is compatible with about three hundred titles from the original Xbox. Then you have the Xbox Elite. Yes, that's the hundred and twenty gigabyte hard drive and it's got all that stuff plus as an h d M I cable. Um, all three of them have the capability to plug in via hd M I into a television, but only the Elite actually comes with the cable. Otherwise you have to buy it separately. And those are eight billion dollars. I'm kidding. Approximately, we didn't price it before, but we are willing to bet it is. I'm willing left leg that it's eighty billion dollars. And once again our producer makes it into the segment. Yes, we will call him Stumpy from now on. So uh Now, the Xbox CPU, it's got three symmetrical cores running at three point two giga hurts. That's their CPU. I see you're reading the same information chart that I am. Yes, I'm the one right underneath says to hardware threads per core, six hardware threads total. Yes, so it's a it's a powerful machine. And um, you know even yeah, I mean even now, several years after its release, this is still considered especially when you consider that it's just dedicated to gaming. You know, I've granted, okay, Microsoft would totally have me strung up for saying that, because there are other things you can do besides gaming. But that's what it. That's what it's. That primary missionary purpose is to play video game mission. You could tell what I think of their normal game set. It is nothing. There's nothing wrong with having video games be your primary reason for being. For many years in my teenage phase, video games were my primary reason for being, So I have no problem with a console that's that way. And that's it. It's an IBM power PC chip too, which I find kind of funny in a vague sort of way, since you know, Windows is linked to the Intel processor for you know, computers, yet they went with the IBM power PC chip, which was for a long time the Max processor, although not anymore, you know. And uh, it does have a custom a t I graphics processor as well, running Hurts five Mega Hurts with ten megabytes of embedded RAM. Yeah. That's a pretty impressive stuff too, I mean what and it's understandable because again Sony and Microsoft both really pushed the whole Uh, you know, this is the next step in evolution for graphics and uh, you know. That was that was the big focus, was that look at how much better this looks and sounds compared to the last generation consoles. That was their selling point. It's not the way Nintendo went, which you know ended up working really well for Nintendo. But we'll again go into that a little bit. What what do you you have some smartass comments? Okay, well, I was going to talk about the PS three as well. There was just an announcement today as of the recording of this podcast, so in the near distant past for for all listeners. Yeah, they'll they'll tell you which day it was that you can go back and look to find out what day it was that they announced the the brand new PS three Slim, which apparently you don't mess around with if you live in the South side of Chicago. Um anyhow, Yeah, it's basically, uh, the PS three in a new package. Um and except it does have a sort of semi meager hard drive just eighty gigs. No, No, it's up to now is it? The old one was a new one? Thought the Slim wasn't. Okay, sorry, I was hasty in my my pre podcast research because it just they just announced it. It was a rumor all morning. Yeah, and uh, and so then this one's gonna cost two, which is a big dip in price. I mean, that was the biggest problem that people had with the PS three for the longest time, was that it was the most expensive of the three current consoles on the market, and and Sony seemed unwilling to to cut that price year after year. And it was infuriating gamers who said, I want this system, but I refused to pay five bucks for it. Yeah, yeah, anyhow, Um, yeah, it was. It was very highly touted at the beginning, and people were talking about the PlayStation three and what it was, you know, the big impact it was gonna have in the market. And initially it did, like the first few days when people were lining up around the block to get their hands on them. And then you know, so many people just said, you know, look, I can't I can't afford that. Yeah, that purchase price was a huge hurdle that a lot of people just weren't willing to try and jump over. And uh, you know, I mean even when you factored in the fact that that has Blu Ray that that was because there was the cheapest Blu Ray player you could get for six hundred dollars is the cheapest Blu ray player. That's that's tough. But uh, and that's no longer the case, of course, now, I mean they're Blu ray Players, they're significantly less expensive than that. But but at the time it was the cheapest, and yet it still wasn't enough to get people to you know, jump ship on Moss. Now, you did have the enthusiasts who adopted it and loved it, and there were some really good games that came out pretty early for the p S three and still has a very good library. Um, there are some There's there's one major problem I would have with the p S three, and that's the lack of ability to unplug your previous PlayStations. Yes, that it would be the lack of backwards compatibility. You nailed it. Um, backwards compatibility is really important to me. And uh and yeah, well you know it's kind of because the way I wear my pants, so um, but yeah, backwards compatibility is really important. It's it's you don't want to necessarily have eight machines sitting around your television like Jonathan Strickland does. Well, no, you know, um, yeah, it's just it's it's not nemient to have that many devices all plugged into one television. And if you can upgrade your hardware but still have access to your old library of games, that's great. And some companies have been pretty good about and up until the PS three, Sony was one of them. The PS two could play PS one games, and that was, you know, one of the reasons why upgrading the PS two wasn't a big pain in the butt, because you knew you'd still be able to play all your old games, so you could trade in your PS one for you know, three dollars and put that towards your purchase of the PS two and uh and feel good about it. But the PS three not so much. Not backwards compatible, and there was a lot of there are a lot of people who are hoping that that would maybe be built into the new SLIM package, that you would have backwards compatibility added to that as some sort of firmware upgrade. It does not look like that's the case. It looks like the PS three will remain incompatible when you're talking about older titles. One thing, um, I think that one criticism I did see, and of course nobody has your hands on one of these as of right in the moment, uh is where's all that heat going to go from the processor? Because they said, you know, that's an awful slim case for such a big processing heat plant. You're would be interesting to see if that is an issue too. You remember when the PS two underwent its transformation, I mean they there was the same sort of thing like halfway through or maybe a little well, I guess halfway through the PS twos life it changed because he would the neat thing about the PS two. People are still making games for it. So they're still making games wore now, yeah, exactly. Still. As a matter of fact, Sony is still selling a lot of PS two's, which is another reason why backwards compatibility would be awesome, because that libraries only getting larger. Unlike like you know, Xbox. They discontinued Xbox titles when the Xbox three sixty came out. I mean they came out. There were some Xbox titles for a few months afterwards, and then that was it. And then you couldn't find Xbox titles in any current store. And now you can't even find them, and you stores because no one I mean whenever I go in they have the three sixty titles, but not the Xbox titles. Since I have an Xbox, that kind of bites for me. We don't get to play all these old games that I always want to get ahold of. That's because you know, Microsoft has that relationship with its developers, developers, developers, all right, all right, right, gosh, do you introduced me to that, by the way, it was my fault. Yeah. Um so yeah, Well let's see, I guess we want to get one of the spects on the PlayStation three at all. Well, they're a little more complex because you're talking about a cell based processor, so it's not apples to apples, no, no, um. And but it can't handle to tara flops of of math. That's a lot of math. That's a lot of math. I could only handle up to algebra two. So all right then I was pretty much a flop when it came to calculus. Yeah, but you know what I just thought of what we didn't talk about. Um yeah, I mean you could you could tell sort of the way they go. And this is this is really just another sort of verbal side bar. Um. But U Xbox three sixty sort of hitched its horse to the h D DVD format as its high definition, yeah, versus versus the Blu ray player, which still sad trombone Yeah yeah. But it's it's funny though, because um that really actually this puts puts the we into context, because, um, you could tell what this is what these audiences are looking for. I mean people who buy, or at least initially bought the Xbox three sixty or initially bought the PlayStation three. They were looking for something that would do all of it, you know, high definition, high quality gaming. They're looking for something that can handle a lot of math can show you, you know, realistic three D interpretations of human beings, basically three D representations of human being shooting at one another, and when you weren't playing playing games, you were watching movies and high definition we A is for a totally different audience. Um. You know that it actually bundled a title with it, we Sports, which is not an accurate representation of a human being at all. They're not shooting it one another and you can't watch even a DVD on it. Um, So it's a completely different group of people buying this machine. At the outset, the people who bought WE'SE are people who wanted the gameplay that they could get with the WE remote and UH and the Nintendo characters. They wanted Mario, they wanted um, you know, Link from the Zelda series, and UH, you know, a sort of a new player in this case Sega their relationship with Sega, and they wanted Sonic. Well, they also wanted a game system that would let them play with other people in their living rooms. See. The thing about the Microsoft and Sony approaches are especially Microsoft with Xbox Live, was that the focus wasn't so much get a whole bunch of people in your room and play video games. It was link up with people who are in their living room across the city and shoot at them for a while. We're over the internet. They're shooting across my city anyway. But they don't really use game consoles for well, we do live in Atlanta, the but you know, from Nintendo, it was more about, hey, you know, we got a party going on right here, y'all, so why don't you pick up a WE mode and play? And UH and so that had an appeal to a different group as well. Often, UH will call one group the hardcore gamers and the others the casual gamers. So hardcore gamers are the ones who are really focused on on especially like say Xbox. They're focused on getting achievements, and they're focused on being the best they possibly can be on these games, and they want to dominate in various you know, first person shooters or strategy games. Uh, you know, they very objective oriented. And then you could argue that the people the main audience for the we are more experience oriented, not not experiences in like role playing games, but really like the experience of playing the game is more important than the outcome. Um. And that's just you know, kind of an armchair psychology sort of thing right there. But I mean, as an Xbox owner, part of that mentality was still back then. I mean that was part of that console as well. Was there a lot of some of the most popular games for the Xbox were these first person shooters and strategy games. Halo Halo which is but no, no first person, Yeah, it's first person shooter. Um, there is another Halo game that's more of a third person strategy game. But the you can tell I don't own an Xbox wherever. Halo two was one of my favorite games on the Xbox. And uh, and again that was one of those where I would hook up with folks who are online and we'd all shoot at each other. Um, so, Nintendo We. Why is the Nintendo We the only game console current game console that you own? Chris, You've mentioned some reasons already. Um. Well, frankly, price had a lot to do with it. Sure, Um and the fact that I'm not a first person shooter gamer. So you know, those those systems appealed to me for some games, but the bulk of the games that I saw as being popular for those systems, I said, you know, you know, it's great. I know a lot of people who love those games, but they're not you know, I'm more of a casual gamer. Uh, you know, because I'm old. I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm getting there are Well, I really am old, But that's not why. Um yeah, because there I I know plenty of people who are forty and older who love, you know, shoot them up, plenty of younger people who love casual games. So I'm teasing, but um yeah, it's it's just one of those things that I just never got into. So I said, you know, I'm I don't really want to play Xbox three sixty games. Um, I like some of the the PlayStation three games, but it's way too expensive. Um. Actually, you know I should say I should point out. You know, longtime fans of the podcast will say, wait a minute, you're a Ratchet and Claying fan. You should love the PlayStation three and that's a shooter. Yes, but it's sort of cartoony, so you know, if it's got humor in it, I can I can palate the violence a little bit more. Um. So yeah, okay, I stand, or I sit corrected in this case. Um, but um, yeah, I mean the WE. I said. I had an opportunity to play the WE at a friend's house, admittedly on a projector, so we were playing on the side of a wall and I just fell in love with it. I said, this is really cool. And when actually the same friend found one on the shelf and said, hey, you want me to grab this for you and pay me back? And I said, yeah, sure, you know, two fifty dollars is a good price point for me. So um, you know it was. It was easy to do, and uh, I like a lot of the games. Plus I like the gameplay with the Wii remote and the nunchuck. Um, you know, as long as you don't fling it into your TV. UM. Plus I don't have a high definition television, so it's it's you know, PlayStation three games are virtually inaccessible to me. Um. You know I could, I could use an Xbox three sixty. And they actually have made inroads on reaching out to more casual gamers. I mean, the Arcade is designed for people who like classic arcade style games and and you know, games that are not as resource intensive as some of the you know, high end shooters. UM. And that that has a lot to do with with why I'm a wee person that in than I am. It's true a little person, UM send hate mail to Jonathan. So I'm also I'm also a fan of the Weed. That's the only current game console that I own. UH. The main reason why I purchased it. I agree, the price was a big factor way. And you know, when you only have so many hours of the day that you can even dedicate to playing a game, you start you really start thinking of return on investment. And UH. And also I wanted I wanted a system that would be UH and more likely find games that my wife would also like to play, because you know, that would be a way for us to hang out and have fun without uh you know, she wouldn't just go and to the bedroom and read a book while I'm out there, you know, fragging people on Halo. So that was nice. Um. I was really intrigued by the Wei mode. I wanted to see how well they implemented that, and it turns out it's pretty good implementation. Of course, they've added more to that with some dongles that you can buy plus yes, and uh so I was really interested in that. I thought that was a neat technology and I wanted to see how well it translated, especially for things like you know, I'm I'm sitting there thinking in my mind about the stuff I would love to be able to do, like lightsaber battles. So that was a definitely definite draw for me. Um. And yeah, that was the main reason why I looked at it, besides the you know, there's the price in the gameplay. Um. At this point, I actually am thinking about buying another console, and with the announcement of the Slim, I honestly don't know which one I would go for, although I'm leaning more towards the Xbox three sixty now. When I talked to you, you said that you were actually leaning more towards the slim. Yes, and why would that be? That would be the three words I mentioned earlier, Ratchet and Claim, which is an exclusive. So so that's that's a wow, that's the killer app Yeah for me, that would be again. Um, actually know there's quite a few. There's Halo three well, and some of them are available also on the Sony um. But the neat thing is that each even for for games that that cross platforms, often they have specific content dedicated to just one of the two platforms. Uh, Sony wins out in a big way on one of those because I think it was, Oh, which game was that? I want to say it was one of the fighting games where you could play as either Darth Vader or Yoda, depending on which version you have. Uh, it might have been um, oh, soul Caliber that version. And so if you have soul Caliber for the Xbox, you get Yoda. If you have Soul Caliber for the p S three, you get freaking Darth Vader. That's just wrong. I would need to get us Sony. He's the baddest mofo this side of Alderon, let me tell you. And I want to play as Darth Vader. So that may be enough for me to get up. Yes, I would be willing to bet that. Um. The console manufacturers don't really care if you buy the other guys, just so long as you buy one of theirs. Two um and I think I think the funny thing is we're reaching the upper length of our German opera. Um. But I think that the funny thing is ladies warming up. The reason that we got on this subject anyway was when we were brainstorming, we wanted to talk about next generation consoles, and there's virtually nothing that we're privy to that we can find out about. Part of it is that Sony announced not that long ago that they're just at the halfway mark for their the life of their console. But um, so we're like, we've got another five years of this. But um well, I mean, the thing is that the specs on these are robust enough where I think they could probably make them last a little longer. I think they've also learned a lesson that just because you get more powerful doesn't mean that you're going to sell a ton of consoles. That's not enough to to get the market. Now, you have to have more than just horsepower. Yeah, but I was gonna spend like a minute and and tell you what I thought, or at least start the conversation on what I think is going to happen in the next generation. And I think it's already started happening. Um, I think you've got to have wireless between your between the machine and the Internet. You've got to have Internet access, but you've got to have wireless Internet access, and you've gotta have wireless between that and the remote. You gotta have motion sensing. I mean, that's why Microsoft is already Yes, that looks amazing. By the way, have you have you seen any of the videos and not not very much of it, not nearly enough of it, but it looks pretty amazing. Pretty if they can if they can really tweak that system to work the way that it worked at E three when they were demoing it, that is gonna be phenomenal. Well. I mean, considering they're talking about making that work for the PC and not just for the Xbox where it all becomes gesture based, and the success of the handheld phone games that use the accelerometer like on the iPhone, I think it's just gonna it's just gonna happen. Everything from now on is going to have that functionality, and I think that they're gonna design for basically every market. They're going to encourage developers from every walk of gaming because I think that, I mean, all the rhetoric we heard coming out of Sony channels when WE was announced was oh, this is just a kiddie game console. Like, well, they realized that, you know, people like to play a variety of different kinds of games, and which is why the WE is starting to see fighting games, like serious fighting games. No, there's some really bloody stuff on the Wii and and that wasn't the case early on. And you know you're seeing that, uh, Sony and and Xbox developers are starting to develop more family oriented party games and party games. So I think it's just it's just gonna all diversify. There's just certain technical things and certain developer things that you're just gonna see on all next generation consoles, no matter who it's from. I think ultimately it all boils down to gameplay over everything else. And I think that's one of the reasons why the WE did so well, is because the WE mode was such a revolution in gameplay compared to the other systems that it was more compelling to a lot of people. Plus cheaper, Yeah, cheaper and more compelling. So I think there are a lot of lessons learned during this current generation that you'll see in the next generation, and it may it may incur other people to get in. Yeah, we'll probably see more integration of other services as well, like Netflix and Amazon things like that, so that you can, you know, so that it does become more of a media center. I mean, we've seen media centers trying to make their way in through the gaming market before and fail miserably because they were to to uh, narrowly oriented and very expensive. But you know, we're slowly moving that way. I mean, the Xbox and Sony are both kind of leaning towards that. Nintendo not quite as much, but there's still some of that in the Nintendo system as well. I was totally gonna get into mobile stuff, but we way don't have time. Maybe we should make a podcast. Okay in the future, we'll do a podcast about mobile gaming. Now we don't have to worry about it for another five or six months. Yeah. Uh, well, that brings us to our favorite segment, a listener mail. This listening mail comes from Greg, and Gregg says, thanks for the Linux podcast. However, only losers use Linux. Sigh. I know Chris is terrible for saying that. If you recall, I mentioned that Chris hate Linux and he says only users losers use it. But no, that was me and I was making a joke. So I apologize to all Linux users. You are not losers. You're all very special and we love all of you just as much as our Windows and Matt compatriots. You know, it's not your fault that you don't have a real operation. The house Stuffwork Systems Engineering team would like to take this opportunity to remind Jonathan that we control the servers used to serve his podcast, all of which are some form of Unix or Linux. We also control his Internet access at the office, and as a response to his unfortunate comments, and as a service to text stuffs Linux listeners, we have right limited him to twenty eight point eight kill a bits per second. Sorry, Jonathan, got root kidding. Long term fans know that we like that, we like to tease, and that's part of the thing is we like all kinds of tech, even though we don't all always know everything. About it. Speaking about teasing, this is a good opportunity for me to mention this. We did ask the question in our Linux podcast why is Windows seven called Windows seven when you can't make it add up to seven no matter how you count it. We received lots of interesting answers, most of which conflicted with one another, but we did receive a couple of of people responded with links to the official answer, which we linked to in our blog, the tech stuff Blog. So if you want to know the real answer to why Window seven is called Window seven, visit the tech stuff blog, look up the tech Stuff podcast round up for Lenox and you will find the answer. That also means stop emailing me with your various theories. We already know the real answer. I mean, I bet your theory is awesome, but I've read enough of them. Well there, and there are lots of them, which is really funny. Yes, there the So if you have something you would like to say to us that is not Windows seven oriented, please write us. Our email address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. You can read all about these video game systems at how stuff works dot com and Crispy and I will game with you again. Really soon For more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it How stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the new Tech stuff blog now on the House Stuff Works homepage, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you