Forex Articles

Read the most popular and helpful Forex articles. All these Forex articles are written by the talented Forex traders, analysts and strategists. You can submit your own Forex article on our Forex article submission page.

Introduction to Forex

Advantages of the Forex Market — by Heather Redmond

Investing in Forex — by Joe Clinton

Forex The Future Investment — by Mike Pachuta

Explosive Profits: 7 Reasons to Trade Forex — by Sorna Devadas

Why Trade the Forex? — by Susan Walker

Forex Avenue: The Road to Riches — by Scott Bianchi

Forex Trading — by Richard Goldie

Forex Enterprise — A Full Review — by Joey Merrick

Introduction To Forex Trading — by Marquez Comelab

The Benefits of Trading The Forex Market — by Marquez Comelab

Trading Forex To Advance Your Financial Position — by Jay Moncliff

The 6 Advantages Forex Trading Has Over Other Investments — by David Morrison

What Is Forex Trading? — by David Morrison

Forex Trade: Main Drawbacks of a Forex Trader — by Raul Lopez

Learn Currency Trade — Intro to The Forex Market — by Anna Rowe

Forex: Benefits of Trading the Forex Market — by Raul Lopez

Forex Trading — Understanding Commissions, Spreads and Trading Costs — by Rich Cochrane

Interested in Forex Trading? — by Jill Kane

Forex: What Is It And How Does It Work? — by Frederic Madore

Futures Versus Forex (Foreign Exchange Market) — by Jeff Slokum

Online Forex Trading — by Bob Hett

How To Get Started In Forex Trading — by Ron King

Forex Market Offers Opportunity And Information — by Jay Moncliff

Forex Glossary — by Norman Fleming

Introduction To Forex — by Norman Fleming

How To Get Started In Forex Trading — by Hana Lee

Reality of Online Forex Trading — by David Jones

Internet Marketing VS Forex Currency Trading — by Amin Sadak

Forex Made Easy for Everyone — by Brian Kolewe

Forex Trading — Opportunities for Individuals — by Anthony Trister

Your Mother Could Make Money In Forex Trading — by Wayne Watson

The History of Forex Trading — by Divyansh Sharma

A Short Introduction To Forex — by Adrian Pablo

Forex 101: Make Money with Currency Trading — by Rich McIver

Online Forex — by Rafik Patel

Shoes Or Forex? — by Marquez Comelab

Forex 101 — by John Sanderson

Currency Trading Is Not The Monopoly Of The Nerds And The Geeks — by Sara Chambers

What Is Rollover Interest In The Forex Market? — by Martin Maier

Investment Myths And The Forex Markets — by David Mclauchlan

The Forex Market And Its Three Distinctive Elements — by David Mclauchlan

The Prime Time For Daily Forex Trading — by David Mclauchlan

A Forex Quickie — How To Get An Educated Quick Start — by David Mclauchlan

Forex Trading, What Hours Should I Be Ready For Trading? — by Adrian Pablo

The Pros and Cons, of Trading a Forex Trading Demonstration Account — by Bill Boyd

Forex: Starting your own trading — by Andrey Moraru

Forex Practice Accounts — Are Demo Accounts Really a Good Thing? — by Paul Bryan

Methods or Techniques for Trading the Forex Market — by Linda Wainman

Why Forex Trading is an Ideal Home Business — by Garry Williams

How to Make Forex Give the Lifestyle You Want — by Ryan Joseph Ferrer

Trade Forex or Invest in Real Estate? — by Marquez Comelab

Forex Brokerage Articles

Avoiding Forex-Related Frauds and Scams — by Marquez Comelab

Trading Currency Through Online Forex Brokers — by Jay Moncliff

Finding Reliable Forex Signals — by Elisha Gan

How To Choose A Forex Broker — by Mark Freeman

Forex Trading Platform — by Gary Berg

Sending Signals For Trading In Forex — by Gary Berg

Forex Software Packages — by Ryan Larson

Forex Broker Involvement Optional — by Jay Moncliff

Forex Signal Services — by Amber Lowery

Forex Brokers — by Simon Harris

Forex Brokers — Helping to Maximize Your Success — by Anthony Trister

Choosing A Forex Broker — by Geoff Turnbull

Forex Software — Choosing The Best — by Oliver Turner

How To Spot Forex Fraud — by Willie Reynolds

Forex Scams: How To Spot Them A Mile Away — by John Bekian

Choosing Your Forex Broker....Important Facts — by David Mclauchlan

How to Save Yourself from Forex Scam — by Teo Gee

8 Basic Tips on choosing Best Forex Broker — by Mostafa Soleimanzadeh

6 Critical Factors For Successful Forex Trading — by Roxanne Manning

How To Find A Forex Broker That Won`t Rob You Blind — by Jimmy Cox

Choosing the Right Forex Broker — by David Thorpe

Are Forex Brokers The Antichrist or is Broker-Bashing one Gigantic Witch Hunt? — by David Thorpe

Forex Technical Analysis Articles

Forex Trading Indicators and the Ever Changing Market Conditions — by Martin Redhead

Pivot Points in Forex: Mapping your Time Frame — by Raul Lopez

What's Fibonacci Forex Trading? — by Adrian Pablo

What's the .382 Fibonacci Ratio in Forex Trading? — by Adrian Pablo

How To Read Forex Charts: 5 Things You Must Know — by Mark Hamburg

Trading Forex With Pivot Points — by E.J. Sieberhagen

Forex and Some Important Facts about Bollinger Bands — by Adrian Pablo

Neural Networks Learn Forex Trading Strategies — by Duncan McQueen

The Elliott Wave Theory For Forex Markets — by David Mclauchlan

Fibonacci And The Forex Market — by David Mclauchlan

Relative Strength Analysis In Forex Trading — by David Mclauchlan

Trading Trend And Ranges In Today's Forex — by David Mclauchlan

Forex Traders Need To Know About Crossing Currency — by David Mclauchlan

Moving Averages Basics And How They Help Forex Traders — by Adrian Pablo

Better Understand Technical Analysis and Some Indicators — by Sorna Devadas

Bollinger Bands — by Cynthia Macy

Gann Angles — A Unique Powerful Tool For Trading Profits — by Sacha Tarkovsky

Fibonacci Numbers — Trade For Huge Profits With This Unique Tool! — by Sacha Tarkovsky

Discover Some Magic to Beat The Forex: The Elliott Wave Theory for Forex Markets — by Joseph Plazo

Forex Information: How To Draw DeMark Trendlines — by Michael A. Jones

Indicator of Forex Market Economy — by Manish

Forex Fundamental Analysis Articles

Introduction To Fundamental Analysis: Forex — by John Sanderson

Forex Capital Markets And Foreign Exchange Transactions — by Gary Berg

World Events and Wise Forex Trading — by Adrian Pablo

What About The Oil Market Does It Affect Forex Trading — by David Mclauchlan

Do Interest Rates Drive The Foreign Exchange Markets? — by David Mclauchlan

Forecasting Forex Trading — by David Mclauchlan

Forex Trading Is Driven By Five Top Economic Indicators — by David Mclauchlan

Understanding What Influences Forex Prices — by Sorna Devadas

Energy Prices, Inflation and Forex — by Peter Grant

How Are Interest Rates Set? — by Glenn Reschke

New Housing Index Benefits Forex Market Investors — by Harman Gilly

Forex Market Trading Hours — by Harman Gilly

The Establishment Survey and the Forex Market — by Harman Gilly

The Forex Market and the Employment Cost Index — by Harman Gilly

The ISM Manufacturing Index and the Economy — by Harman Gilly

Durable Goods and the Forex Market — by Harman Gilly

Forex Money Management Articles

The Sneaky Way To Managing Losses In Your Forex Trading — by David Jenyns

Money Management Tips For Trading On The Forex — by David Mclauchlan

Forex — Dealing With Your Losses — by Don Spanish

The Costs Of Trading — by Marquez Comelab

Forex: Exiting positions at a right time — by Andrey Moraru

Protective Puts — by John Jagerson

The Power of Small Consistent Returns — by Marquez Comelab

Forex Trading Psychology Articles

Forex: Why Psychiatrists Make Better Traders Than Expert Economists? — by Alexander Brin

Emotions And Forex Trading Don't Mix — by David Mclauchlan

Forex Market Trading And The Mind Games — by David Mclauchlan

Forex: No psychological limitations — by Joshua White

Trading Psychology: Mistakes in a Trading Environment — by Raul Lopez

Forex Trading: The Fear Factor — by Michael J Campbell

Forex trading psychology: Learn to see the line between the trading plan and your emotional impulses — by Bofdan Vasile

Your Forex trading potential can be predicted by looking at your daily emotional behavior — by Bofdan Vasile

The Funny Sort Of Traders In Forex Currency Trading — by Kevin Anderson

Forex : How To Handle A String Of Investment Losses — by Amy Goodmann

Why do the best trading systems fail? — by Christopher Temple

How to Take Control in Forex Trading — by Joe Chalhoub

The Advantages of Trading Alone — by Marquez Comelab

Forex General Tips Articles

5 Things You Must Do If You Want To Attain Financial Freedom Through Forex Trading — by Eddie Yakubovich

Real Forex Traders Learn to Like Losses — by Scottie Pippin

Forex Trading Guide — How to deal with Forex Trading — by Gagandeep Dhaliwal

Forex Course: A Quick Forex Guide for Traders — by Raul Lopez

Forex Trading Tips — by Fiorenzo Fontana

Day Trading Forex Market Behaviour — by Jay Moncliff

Forex Trading Education: Things You Should Know About Forex Trading — by Raul Lopez

Trading In The Forex Requires Some Caution — by Sara Jenkins

Forex Training: What to Look for in a Forex Training Program — by Raul Lopez

Your Forex Trading Philosophy — by Ron King

Revealed — Million Dollar Forex Investing Mistakes — by David Jenyns

Are These Simple Trading Mistakes Costing You Money In The Forex Market — by David Jenyns

Forex Day Trading: How To Create Massive Wealth From Forex Day Trading — by I-key Benney, CEO

Managing The Forex Accounts For You — by Gary Berg

Getting a Forex Trading Education — by Jay Moncliff

Where to Get Forex Training — by Jay Moncilff

Forex Trading Philosophy — by Dries Cronje

Forex Profits — by Anthony Trister

Option Arbitrage in the Forex Market — by John Nobile

The Properties Of Price Movement — by Marquez Comelab

The Trading Teacher — by Marquez Comelab

Forex Training: Deadly Forex Mistakes That Assure Failure — by Raul Lopez

Learn By Hands On Forex Trading: Demo Accounts Vs Mini Accounts — by Amber Lowery

Day Trading, Forex Or Currencies Back Testing — A Way To Improve Your Trading Score — by David Jenyns

Is There Such A Thing As Hedging In The Forex Market — by David Mclauchlan

Day Trading Tips for Dummies — by Tim Lee

Boost Forex Trading Profits Using These 3 Simple Guidelines — by Roxanne Manning

The 7 Undeniable Rules of Forex Trading — by Sorna Devadas

How The Matrix Will Boost Your Forex Profits? — by Karima Begag

Two Timeless Rules in Forex Investing — by Adrian Pablo

Secrets To Potentially Making Money In The Forex Markets — by Bill Poulos

FOREX Education — Thinking Of Buying FOREX Advice? Read This First — by Sacha Tarkovsky

Too Many Strategies, But Still Frustrated? — by S.A Ghafari

Stop Loss?? I Don't Want To Use It — by S.A Ghafari

133 Trading Tips — by AKFOREX

Making Forex Day Trading Successful — by Harman Gilly

Tips to Make Money Fast in Forex — by Ryan Joseph Ferrer

Forex Strategy Building Articles

Forex Trading Strategies — by Gay Redmile

How To Loose Everything — The Worst Forex Trading Strategy Ever That You Might Be Using — by David Jenyns

Choosing A Forex Strategy — by Giles Windholm

Forex Trading: The Perfect Forex Trading System — by Raul Lopez

A Sneaky Way to Steal Someone Else's Forex Trading System — by David Jenyns

Trying Forex Trading with the Best Strategy and Approach — by Sara Jenkins

Your Guide to Learning a Forex Trading System — by Morgan Hamilton

Do You Have A Back Up Plan? — by Marquez Comelab

Why You Need To Develop Your Own Trading System — by Marquez Comelab

Forex Trading Systems: Mechanical Vs. Discretionary Systems — by Raul Lopez

Profitable Forex Strategies and Techniques — by Nathaniel Tabares

Moving The Forex Market With Trading And Intervention Techniques — by David Mclauchlan

My Forex Trading Strategy — by Timothy Rohrer

An Overview Of Forex Investing Strategies — by Willie Reynolds

Forex Forecasts — You Never Know What You Will Benefit From — by Kevin Anderson

5 EMAs FOREX SYSTEM, Exponential Moving Averages Full Potential — by Adrian Pablo

Automated Trading Systems for Financial Markets and Recommendations for Their Usage — by Nikita Laukhin

100% Hedging Strategies — by Yannis Karamanakis

How I became a successful part time trader — by Joe Chalhoub

Scalping The Forex Market For Profits Every Day — by Dean Saunders

The Opportunities of Trading the Forex Hedged Grid System — by Mary McArthur

Forex Profits by Buying and Selling at the Same Time? — by Mary McArthur

I am Happy with My System, What's Next? — by Marquez Comelab

Forex Books for Beginners

Here you will find the Forex e-books that provide the basic information on Forex trading. You can learn basic concepts of the Forex market, the technical and fundamental analysis. While all these e-books are recommended for every new Forex trader, they won't be very useful to the very experienced traders.

Almost all Forex e-books are in .pdf format. You'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open these e-books. Some of the e-books (those that are in parts) are zipped.

If you are the copyright owner of any of these e-books and don't want me to share them, please, contact me and I will gladly remove them.

Candlesticks For Support And Resistance — The basics of trading with candlesticks charts by John H. Forman.

Online Trading Courses — Course #1 lesson #1 by Jake Bernstein.

Commodity Futures Trading for Beginners — by Bruce Babcock.

Hidden Divergence — by Barbara Star, Ph.D.

Peaks and Troughs — by Martin J. Pring.

Reverse Divergences And Momentum — by Martin J. Pring.

Strategy:10 — Low-risk, high-return forex trading by W. R. Booker & Co.

The NYSE Tick Index And Candlesticks — by Tim Ord.

Trend Determination — A quick, accurate and effective methodology by John Hayden.

The Original Turtle Trading Rules — by OrignalTurtles.org.

Introduction to Forex — by 1st Forex Trading Academy. This trading course intends to provide to all of the students analytical tools on the trading system and methodologies. In this respect, the purpose of the course is to provide an overview of the many strategies that are being used in Forex market and to discuss the steps and tools that are needed in order to use these strategies successfully.

The Six Forces of Forex — by Scott Owens. A small e-book covering the basic and the main problems of Forex trading.

Study Book for Successful Foreign Exchange Dealing — by Royal Forex.

Forex. On-Line Manual for Successful Trading — an introduction into every aspect of the Forex trading including detailed descriptions of the technical and fundamental analysis techniques, by unknown author.

18 Trading Champions Share Their Keys to Top Trading Profits — as the name suggests, the book shares the secrets of the 18 prominent traders with the Forex beginners, by FWN.

The Way to Trade Forex — a 1st chapter of the book that will show you not only Forex basics but also some unusual techniques and strategies that can work for the newbie traders, by Jay Lakhani.

The Truth About Fibonacci Trading — the basic facts and information about Fibonacci levels and their application to the Forex trading, by Bill Poulo

Valve promises to make DRM obsolete

Valve has released an announcement claiming that updates to the free Steamworks system will now make DRM obsolete



Valve has just announced that unveils several new features to the Steam and Steamworks platforms which the Half-Life developer reckons will make DRM a thing of the past. Steamworks is a system of freely available tools for developers and publishers that allow them to make the most out of the Steam platform. Some of the new features that Valve announced for Steam were things we already knew about, like the ability for developers to make downloadable content available through Steam, which Ubisoft is already doing with a new set of weapons and such for Far Cry 2.

The other updates are much more interesting, namely a new anti-piracy feature called CEG that is being incorporated into the Steamworks system. CEG, which stands for Customer Executable Generation, is Valve's latest anti-piracy effort and works by essentially creating a uniquely structured version of a game for each customer. The benefit for publishers and developers is that the game is then pretty hard to copy as it is distinctly identifiable to a specific user, while legitimate customers are able to use their unique copy on as many PCs as they want. No install limits, no SecuROM, no StarForce, no rootkits, no nuthin'.

Valve reckons that CEG is a system that only benefits customers and publishers and has hopes that it'll be adopted by the market quite quickly. Since Steamworks is free for any developer to use, there's no reason why not.

Think this means the end of DRM nightmares? Let us know your thoughts!

Forex FAQ

What is FOREX?
You can read the detailed answer in the separate section of the site — "What is Forex?".

How can I start trading Forex?
You'll need to register a trading account with a Forex broker, such as Marketiva. Then you can begin using their Forex client program to buy and sell currencies. This will take less than 5 minutes of your time!

Who owns Forex and where is it located?
It's not owned by anyone in particular. Forex is an Interbank market, meaning that it's transactions are conducted only between two participants - seller and the buyer. So as long as existing banking system will exist, Forex will be here. It's not connected to any specific country or government organization.

What the working hours of Forex market?
Forex market is open from 22:00 GMT Sunday (opening of Australia trading session) till 22:00 GMT Friday (closing of USA trading session).

What is margin?
Margin is money you need to have in your broker account to secure your open position. Different brokers require different amount of margin money to keep your positions open.

What are the "long" and "short" positions?
Long position is a "buy" position, meaning that this position will be in profit if price goes up.
Short position is a "sell" position, meaning that this position will be in profit if price goes down.

What is the best Forex trading strategy?
There is none. You should constantly develop your own strategies for every possible market situation, if you want to be in profit. Specific strategies can only be good for a certain period of time and for certain currency pairs.

How much money I need to start trading Forex?
With Marketiva you can start trading Forex with as little as $1. Usually, the minimum amount varies from $100 to $10,000 ($100,000 and more for Interbank trading).

I can't (or don't want to) install any Forex trading software on my computer. Can I still trade Forex?
If you don't want (or it is not possible) to install new software to start trading Forex then a good option for you would be using web based trading platform. You can browse our Forex brokers list to find those which support such platform. Here are those brokers which have web based trading options: Easy Forex, ForexYard, Oanda, Saxo Bank, ACM, Interactive Brokers.

I've downloaded the expert advisor for MetaTrader platform but I don't know how to install it. What should I do?
You can read the MetaTrader Expert Advisors User's Tutorial to find out how to intstall those expert advisors.

I've downloaded a custom indicator for MetaTrader platform but I don't know how to install it. What should I do?
You can read the MetaTrader Indicators User's Tutorial to find out how to intstall those indicators.

Left 4 Dead: Ruthlessly efficient

We’ve all been frothing at the mouth about braaaaains Left 4 Dead on From the Labs and our last podcast, and with good reason, because we’re all zombies it’s a terrfic game. As well as being lots of fun to play though, it’s also ruthlessly efficient when it comes to hardware.

I’ve been benchmarking the game for the last few days in preparation for a forthcoming feature where we’re going to look at how to get the best performance in a massive selection of games, and Left 4 Dead is just incredible in terms of how low its demands are for graphics hardware. So low in fact, that even a card 18 months old such as the GeForce 8800 GT can run it at 1,900 x 1,200 at full detail. I decided just how low down the graphics hardware food chain I could go, and so borrowed a Radeon 4350 from PC Pro. You can buy a 4350 for just over £30 on Scan, which is only a bit more than the game itself costs. Amazingly, the 4350, despite having only 80 stream processors - 10 times less than the HD4850 - can actually play the game at medium detail settings at 1,440 x 900 or 1,280 x 1,024. At times, it’s a couple of FPS below a smooth 25fps minimum, but I was testing it in the final chapter of the No Mercy campaign, when you’re on a large, open area rooftop and being attacked by hundreds of zombies. There’s a lot going on and yet the game felt perfectly playable and looked decent too.

So, there you have it - one more reason why absolutley anyone with a PC and a pulse should play Left 4 Dead. Even the most basic PC hardware will give you a good experience in the game.

WebOS Update Re-enables ITunes Sync on Palm Pre

Palm released webOS 1.1 on Friday as a free update to all existing Palm Pre owners. The update features slight enhancements and UI improvements across the board, a handy new feature that reminds you of specific tasks related to someone when a call from them comes in (so you never miss any opportunity to remind that one friend how much he owes you), and a new application from Sprint that allows you to watch or listen to live NFL games on the Pre itself.



Artwork: Chip TaylorNot bad for a free update, huh? Still not satisfied? Well, there's also this--it reestablishes the Pre's iPhone-like connection with iTunes that allows it to synchronize media from Apple's jukebox application. Or as Palm delicately notes in the change log, it "resolves an issue preventing media sync from working with [the] latest version of iTunes (8.2.1)." Hah, that's one way to put it.

Earlier this month Apple released iTunes 8.2.1, describing a change that "addresses an issue with verifying Apple devices." Immediately thereafter, Pre owners discovered that their devices would no longer sync with iTunes. It had been widely speculated that Apple would yank the rug from under the Pre following the publication of an Apple tech note in June that noted Apple "does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players."

Palm's method of making the Pre work with iTunes is to mask the device as an iPod classic, thus enabling iTunes to treat it as one of its own. So how long will it take Apple to drop iTunes 8.2.2 that once again severs all ties between the two mismatched devices? My guess: not too long. Which begs the question, why is Palm going about it the way they are? Why participate in a cat-and-mouse game where your opponent clearly has the upper hand?

I think it's one of two things: either Palm is in talks with Apple and is hoping to get them officially onboard with this or their lawyers are confident that should Apple take them to court over this, they can charge Apple with antitrust allegations and swing the decision in their favor. And it doesn't hurt to get mentioned on Apple-centric blogs the world over every time you throw the word "iTunes" into a blog post. Seriously, though, how long can they carry forward (and even boldly advertise) this "now it's there, now it's not" feature anyway without attracting the ire of their customers?

The best thing about print media is the jokes - and the story of how the USB Mince pie was born

It’s a common complaint that the way attention works on the web - specifically Google’s love of simplicity - means the art of the punning headline is dying out. The internet has allowed millions of jokes and humour sub-cultures to flourish, but there are certain jokes and puns that only really work in print. This is the story of one such gag, which I found on the blog of US writer and geek Derek Powazek. Over to him:

“In 1992, the features editor of Autocar magazine decided to play a little joke. He rewrote the ledes of the stories in the year-end “Road Test Yearbook” so that the dropcaps spelled out a message for attentive readers, spread across many pages. The message, with punctuation added, was:



“So you think it’s really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up. It’s a real pain in the arse.”

Unfortunately, one of the attentive readers was the editor’s boss. “When I arrived at work that morning,” said the culprit later, “everybody was looking at their shoes and I was summoned to the managing director of the company’s office. The thing had come out and nobody at work had spotted what I’d done. But all the readers had seen it and they’d written in thinking they’d won a prize or a car or something.”

The prankster editor was promptly fired. His name? James May, who is now one of the hosts of BBC’s brilliant car show, Top Gear.”

CPC has been the victim of many puns (I don’t think a single SLI article has gone by without the use of the phrase “slippery slope”) and a previous mince pie megatest featured a similar “character at the start of each sentence spelling a phrase” but the phrase we spelt is a bit too rude for this family friendly blog.

Our best gag remains the USB Mince Pie, which was the whole reason we started running a yearly mince pie megatest. At the time, I was writing the monthly Custom Kit pages, a round-up of fun gadgets, only a steady stream of depressingly unimaginative novelty-shaped USB sticks were crushing my spirit and making the section dull. We came up with the idea of a USB mince pie, so bought a pack of mince pies from Tescos, chopped up a USB cable and brough the two together. Josh added the piece-de-resistance, a green LED, to the top. We then thought that to make it seem more real, we should have it win a group test, and thus the idea of a mince pie test was born.

To make the fake pie even more distinctive, I then created a website (www.usbmincepies.co.uk) for it, and James and I came up with a whole backstory for it (it was made by GenCorp, which “was originally founded in 1978 by two brothers, both ex-crane fishermen. The company first made its name making firecrackers, bicycles and heavy industrial equipment. In the 1990s, GenCorp rode the IT boom and successfully diversified into computer hardware, suceeding, most notably, with its famous “Slaughterer” range of motherboards.”) We then publicised the joke website by sending it out to Engadget and Boing Boing.

After that, USB Mince Pies had a life of their own. We’d put an email address on the site, and people started emailing us from all over the world, wanting to order them. The FT, the Daily Mail, and several European newspapers got in touch wanting review samples to put in their Christmas gift guides. Various Far Eastern companies got in touch asking if they could license the design. Despite the fact we came clean to anyone who asked, the USB Mince Pie lives on - a couple of days ago, James signed into MSN and saw it on the front page there as part of a Christmas feature. We still get emails about them. People just refuse to believe they’re fake. We’d have been rich if they’d been real, which I think goes to show… there’s a sucker born every day? People love mince pies? Christmas makes people take leave of their senses? No idea. It was a lot of fun putting it together though

Next-gen PCs to head into the Cloud?

My last post on whether next-gen gaming PCs (and consoles) are doomed has generated some healthy debate on what is going to happen to gaming rigs. Some of the commenters made the point that while recessions have an impact on business, the fundamental truth is that some people want their PCs to be as powerful as possible, and as such, talk of doom should be taken with a pinch of salt:

Smith: ‘These ‘doom guys’ need to chill out and learn to keep things in perspective. For example, in the car market, during a recession, the market will indeed shrink. But that doesn’t mean there will be no market at all. Some companies may need to close product ranges in order for car manufacturers to make a profit. But people will always need new cars.’

A more radical suggestion about a possible future generation of gaming PCs came from feathers633:

‘”I guess all the little power hungry gaming PC’s with quad SLI and crossfire will evaporate and we will just have very basic cloud terminals being fed from colossal super stream processing engines that are able to watch us whenever we have our webcams turned on. If we misbehave then the super cloud computing brain will deactivate our TV, switch off our lighting & heating until we beg for mercy.’

As it happens, I stumbled across a couple of very good posts on ‘the cloud’ today - one strongly negative, one strongly in favour of it.

Firmly in the negative camp is Jason Scott. F**k the cloud, he says:

Trust it [the Cloud] like you would trust a guy pulling up in a van offering a sweet deal on electronics. Maybe you’ll make out, maybe you won’t. But he ain’t necessarily going to be there tomorrow.

Kevin Kelly makes his pro-pitch by describing the cloud as ‘better than owning’, going on to draw a clever comparison between the way we currently use civic ammenities and infrastructure, and the way we could get hold of games, music and movies in the future:

I use roads that I don’t own. I have immediate access to 99% of the roads and highways of the world (with a few exceptions) because they are a public commons. We are all granted this street access via our payment of local taxes. For almost any purpose I can think of, the roads of the world serve me as if I owned them. Even better than if I owned them since I am not in charge of maintaining them. The bulk of public infrastructure offers the same “better than owning” benefits.

I suspect two main factors will influence how willing we, as consumers are to embrace the cloud:

1. Historical norms. People are used to renting films so we’re fine with streaming video (e.g. YouTube), but when it comes to music, we’ve spent most of the 20th century learning to love accumulating records/tapes/CDs/MP3s. Games, it seems, fall between the two; people are used to owning them, but at the same time, it’s generally accepted they have a finite lifespan in a way music doesn’t (I still listen to the Beatles, I don’t play Spectrum games anymore), and what’s more, increasingly online connectivity is a key part of the way they function.

2. Technical concerns. Streaming decent quality music is fairly easy - WiFi, even 3G can cope with it. Playing back the stream is easy, too; you don’t need much in the way of hardware to decode it. Streaming decent quality video is harder, although we’re getting to the point where we can stream TV-quality video and again, you can decode it on a netbook or portable device such as an iPod. Streaming a HD movie, or a game is far harder, and not only do you increase the strain on the connection, you can increase the strain on the playback device.

When it comes to PC gaming, I think a certain portion of it will move Cloud-wards; indeed, arguably it already has. At the low end (in terms of technical complexity), Flash games such as Desktop Tower Defence are already hosted on the web, while towards the high-end, MMOs already require a constant web connection, to the point that the only reason there’s any local content on your own PC are performance considerations. If Blizzard could make Warcraft live online and work on any online device (phone, iPod, netbook), you can be they would go for it.

New gaming PCs, next-gen Xbox and PlayStation 4 all doomed?

Rahul Sood - onetime CPC columnist, founder of VoodooPC and now big cheese at HP - has been busy recently, presiding over lots of positive coverage of his most recent project, HP’s small-and-sleek gaming PC, the Firebird, while also finding time to write a series of lengthy and doom-laden blog posts. Well, their titles were doom-laden, at any rate: both the gaming PC and games consoles as we know them, are doomed. Both posts are confidently argued, and the reasoning behind both is similar: for Rahul, it’s a question of costs vs benefits. On the gaming PC side of things, the number of people willing to pay thousands and thousands of dollars/pounds for ludicrously powerful gaming machines is getting ever smaller, tempted into causing their own extinction by ever more expensive, power-hungry multi-GPU systems. On the console side of things, Rahul reasons, it’s not the customer but the companies - well, Microsoft and Sony - that can’t afford to create any more machines along the lines of the Xbox 360 and the PS3. Their business model is to sell the console itself at a loss, and make a profit on the add-ons, games and licensing agreements.

I certainly think he’s right about the PS3; all the sales data points to it being convincingly outsold by the 360 (with the pair of them being crushed by the Wii). Yet despite bleak numbers, Sony can’t afford to cut the price, because even at $400/£299, Sony still doesn’t make money on each unit sold. The high price then contributes to the slow sales, and the slow sales mean that the PS3 platform isn’t generating enough revenue to subsidise a price cut, or to fund a next-gen console. Microsoft’s position doesn’t look quite as bleak - the cheapest Xbox 360 can be had for £130, and sales are brisk - but then it did have to write off over $1 billion thanks to the high failure rate of the hardware. Last time round, with the Xbox competing agains the PS2, it was in Microsoft’s advantage to aggressively launch its ‘next-gen’ Xbox 360; now it has the advantage, it isn’t going to want to invest in new hardware. For Sony, life is trickier - moving to the next generation will be expensive, but then its current position is expensive, too.

So what about Rahul’s critique of the gaming PC? He’s of course right that it’s very tough at the moment for very high-end PC manufacturers, some of whom, notably Vadim, have gone out of business recently. That said, high-end PC manufacturers have always found it tough if they focus solely on top-of-the-range kit, because:

A) There’s obviously a limited number of people with large amounts of cash to spend on a computer.
B) Those that know enough about top-of-the-range kit to know why it’s good are also likely to have the knowledge to build their own PCs.

This doesn’t mean there’s zero market for the kind of beautiful PCs Vadim and VoodooPC used to make, but the two factors above certainly do reduce the number of people willing to pay for those kind of machines. The current economic climate is of course increasing the number of people falling into category (A) is only making life harder for the boutique companies, but I think Rahul’s broader critique that it’s game over for big, powerful PCs is coloured by his experience at HP. A small group of gamers and performance enthusiasts are always going to want big, powerful PCs - and a smaller group of these will be willing to buy these pre-built. Whether you can build a business solely devoted to this latter group is the key question. If you’re coming at it from the perspective of HP, the answer is probably “no”, but for a smaller company, the answer may be different. And even if the companies don’t exist to serve the niche, people will always build their own.

Why arent the new AM3 CPUs called Phenom III?

As you may have spotted, AMD has today launched a range of DDR3 Phenom II processors. These new CPUs plug into the new AM3 socket. So why not just call the new range of CPUs Phenom IIIs? That would be nice and clear: AM3, DDR3, Phenom III – job done.

As it is, AMD has created an incredibly confusing situation. It now has some Phenom II CPUs that are DDR3 compatible and some that aren’t. And it hasn’t even tried to distinguish the two by using a different series of numbers, or by making the new CPUs have really high clock speeds.

Let’s take the 3GHz Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition and the 2.8GHz Phenom II X4 925 – which is the better CPU? Surely it’s the former, as this has a higher clock speed and is multiplier unlocked? However, it’s the latter that’s newer and is Socket AM3- and DDR3-compatible. It’s massively confusing that two ranges of CPU can share the same family name (Phenom II X4) and have overlap when it comes to the supposedly differentiating numbers.

Consider the same situation if AMD had called its new range of CPUs Phenom III . Now you’ve got a Phenom III X4 at 2.8GHz and a Phenom II X4 at 3GHz – the situation is a lot clearer, as you know the former has something else to offer and you need to look beyond the relative clock speeds.

Oh, and while I’m ranting, why is the only CPU with an unlocked multiplier a Phenom II X3? Why no Phenom II X4 Black Edition?