Questions for geeky friends

[eviltammy]

Or anyone else who'd care to answer.

At one of my former places of work, I still have friends. Well, actually, at all my former places of work, I still have friends, but this particular person I actually keep in touch with :) She doesn't get some aspects of computers and, while I can help somewhat, there's a lot that's hard for me to explain. Mostly because either a lack of technical knowledge or it's just something that I don't do, so I can't really explain it to her satisfaction.

None of these questions are really technical, but I'm looking for help here:

1. Explain gaming - MMPORGS(?) or whatever they are. How you do them, who does them, etc.

2. XBox - PS2's - how do they work?

3. LJ/MySpace/Blogger/Vox/other social networking - what's the difference?

4. Does anyone know of something that the library & all the branches can use to cut down on the amount of spam they receive. In chatting with a friend, I came up with either using something like mail2web.com to delete spam from the server before downloading mail or using something like Mailwasher Pro. Something with a one-time low price tag? Mailwasher sounds good to me, but I'm looking for other suggestions also - things that are very easy to set up.

5. Anything new and hot that I can tell her about? Or someplace that she can check to see what's new and hot?

Thanks! ::Puts out plates of nice naughty bickies and lots of drinks for respondents and readers::

Comments

[ninjababe.livejournal.com]

1. Explain gaming - MMPORGS(?) or whatever they are. How you do them, who does them, etc.
MMPORGS - umm... per the yahoo search I did: massively multiplayer online role-playing game. I know a lot of them are basically games you buy and install on your computer, then log in like you would for a chat program or something and enter the world of the game... I've been very good and stayed away from them, as I know that most of them charge you for time (granted, it isn't much) and I'd end up spending all my cash on them.

There is one out there that the time is free, but I can't remember which one. It's one of the newest ones... I think it was Guild War...

MMPORGs look really cool.

There is one of them that I tried to download a few years ago (at 30 Meg) that was free at that time: Ragnarok Online (http://iro.ragnarokonline.com/) The download for the full game is at 1.19 gig. You can currently get a 15 day trial and it's $12 a month, or $7.99 for 30 hours.

Granted, I haven't tried it since it became paid, since I know from looking at it I'd probably end up spending all my money on it... :)

2. XBox - PS2's - how do they work?

Ever play a Nintendo? They work basically the same way. You plug it into an audio and video in port on the back of your tv, and turn it on. The games are proprietary to the system (But, a lot are available for most systems) and most have a 'tutorial' in the beginning of the game to show you how to work the buttons. Well... most that I play, and I play 90% Role-playing Games.

Any more? :-)

[ninjababe.livejournal.com]

I forgot to add... Some systems use internal harddrives to save games, some use memory cards.

For Playstations, you have to have memory cards to save games. And, the memory cards aren't backwards compatible (I can play Playstation games on my PS2, I can save the games off my PS2 using my old Playstation memory cards, but I have to have a PS2 memory card to save a PS2 game.)

As mentioned below, X-box uses an internal harddrive, which is used instead of a memory card.

Gamecube uses memory cards.

But, those are the only systems I know about.