A look back at 2013's top picks

The past year has been full of up and downs like every year. Here at LanOC we have been chugging away like always. In the past year we hosted two awesome LAN parties, revamped the entire website, and survived two big launches from Intel, a launch from AMD on the CPU side, and big launches from both AMD and Nvidia on the video card side. Last year when I did my recap we had published 116 reviews for the year. For 2013 we bumped it up to an impressive 158 reviews thanks to a helpful staff and great companies. To start the New Year, I wanted to revisit the products that I gave my personal seal of approval on with the Editor’s Choice award to see if they are still my personal picks.

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LanOC V13 Recap

It’s been a few days now and not only have I set all of the PCs around the house back up, I also took the time to do detail cleaning around my desk. Even after a few days I feel little tired, an impromptu nap that went until 3pm yesterday helped some but it’s going to be a little while before I’m back to normal. All of it means we had another successful LAN. Of course the work doesn’t stop on Sunday for me, but before I get too far into it I wanted to post up a little bit of a roundup. Read on to hear more about it.

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LanOC V12.0

titleThis past weekend 125 of you joined us for another great LanOC event and the rest of you probably wish you had. If you don't wish you had then you are wrong, just plain wrong.

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Fortlan I

title2We here at LanOC love to go to LAN parties for obvious reasons. The LAN staff especially like to make it out to other LAN events so that they can kick their feet up and just enjoy fragging, friends, and fun rather than spending the entire weekend working to bring a great event to the attendees. This weekend a group of us made our way out to Fort Wayne Indiana to the Indiana Tech college campus for the very first FortLan event. With great excitement we hooked up our PCs in preparation for the 27 hour long frag fest that was to follow.

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Guide to Live Streaming (for Free!)

frontA longtime proponent of e-sports, I’m thrilled to see the mass number of viewers live streamed tournaments are bringing in. Even more promising are the views individual gamers are managing to attract, streaming their favorite games, charities, or scrimmages with professional teams. We’ve have a handful of LanOC members that stream their gameplay, and if you’d like to join them, here’s how.

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A look back at 2012's top picks

top2012We have made it through another year. This year we published 116 reviews ranging from phones to computer components and beyond.  Of those reviews we had a few that stood out enough at the time of publishing to earn an Editor’s Choice Award. This is a little different than our Top Honors or Recommended awards. Top Honors, for example, is given to a product that had at most a trivial issue that we could list as a fault and Recommended is anything that we would still recommend if you are on the market. Editor’s Choice on the other hand means that I would pick the product up for myself; a few times we had products with faults that still fell into this category. Today I’m going to look back and see what I’m still using and if things have changed.

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Happy Thanksgiving from LanOC Reviews

thanksgivingWe just wanted to wish everyone a happy thanksgiving. This year the secret that us gamers have is that with Dreamhack Winter starting, there will be more than enough E-Sports for everyone to enjoy throughout the day. For those of you who aren't interested in watching football this is a great alternative. Have a great holiday for those of you who are in the states, we will be back up and running tomorrow morning with a fresh review of the Thecus N5550 before we duck out early for a Black Friday LAN with the VW Turks. 

Rapture Game Studios

titleThose who have been to one of our LAN parties know that our location is central to many larger cities, Fort Wayne being one. We’ve attended a few LAN events in that area, including one hosted by member Reaper from Fort Wayne Gamers. It was exciting enough to hear that John had volunteered his coding expertise for an indie game studio just on the heels of releasing their first game, but we were even more so when we learned the studio was local, operating out of Fort Wayne. We quickly made contact, and were invited to sit in during one of their weekly meetings.

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Breast Cancer Awareness Month

nbcam copyThose that know me best are aware that my passion for electronic gaming goes behind just playing them. I’m an advocate for video games and the industry they are born in. Amidst a society that is constantly looking for scapegoats, the bright side of that industry is often masked by constant, unjustified blame. This is one of the many reasons I get excited when I see groups such as Child’s Play and Extra Life using video games as a means to raise money for very worthy causes. One that hits very close to home for my family is the fight against breast cancer.

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Mid Ohio Comic Con 2012

titleA whole room packed full of people who share similar interests, dress up in amazing Cosplay, and different artist and stars available to meet. For some of you Comic Con isn’t anything new. Those from large cities like LA are used to having a local Comic Con. Those of us in the middle of nowhere typically don’t have events like this. Lucky for me, a few hours away we do have the Mid-Ohio Comic Con once a year. Alex and I took the day and went down to check out what it was all about this weekend. As you can expect, we came back with lots of photos of the Cosplay and just maybe a few story’s as well.

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Systemax Ohio Factory Tour

titleYou know typically being based out of Ohio doesn’t have a lot of upsides. We are normally extremely far away from just about anyone in the industry. There is one exception to this though. You guys may have heard of a company by the name of Systemax, if not you have heard of one of their subsidiaries, Tiger Direct. Systemax’s Ohio factory literally is a giant facility in the middle of cornfields and small towns. I don’t think you could get a more stereotypical representation of what Ohio is to most people. That being said, I jumped at the chance to finally get a peek inside of this random factory that I had come across in the past out in the country. 

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I play LoL; What should I know about Dota 2?

frontThe Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) genre is still relatively young and gaining popularity quickly. Though still in beta, Dota 2 has generated a lot of attention in the past couple of months, having been the spotlight of a million dollar international tournament and in and out of court over the rights to the name Defense of the Ancients. If you’re thinking about trying DoTA or Dota 2, here’s what you should know coming from Summoner’s Rift.

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Beyond the Typical Light Show

LOD HeaderMerry Christmas to everyone! Being a geek, I find it extremely fascinating the various ways people who are of the geek persuasion celebrate the holidays. We do not just go purchase inflatable Santa Clauses on motorcycles and Rudolphs in helicopters to garnish our yards. We also do not just string a bunch of lights and call it quits. We engineer Christmas. Today, I would like to feature a local light display that is long on engineering. Lights on Douglas is an automated, synchronized to music, holiday light display. We go in-depth into the tech behind this type of display and talk to Dennis about how he makes something like this happen.

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Case Week Introduction

caseweektitleIt's been a long time since our last theme week but with Christmas coming in less than a week we thought we would go over a few cases that you may want to consider for your new PC components. Everyone asked for pc goodies right? With holiday steam sales coming up its also a good idea to get your pc ready for all the gaming your going to do in the new year. 

 

'Maximum Security' to Protect Your Gaming Addiction

finalheader1One of the really awesome aspects of being in the computer gaming hardware arena is looking at what people are doing in the terms of case modifications. Let me tell you, the feature that I have for you today is really quite special. Will at Custom Computer Creations agreed to let us bring his 'Maximum Security' build to you.

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Cytog's Blizzcon Adventure

titleBlizzcon, the annual game fest celebrating all things Blizzard Entertainment has been going on since 2005. In my list of gaming events I want to (or have already) attended, it is up there with the likes of Comicon, Quakecon, and DreamHack. Unlike QC, this event is not free, so one must purchase a ticket during a limited sale. I attempted to purchase a ticket in 2010 and was not lucky enough to get one before they all sold out.

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Interview with Zotac USA President Sean Tang

zotactitleWe had the chance to speak with Zotac USA's President Sean Tang about the past, current, and future direction of operations of ZOTAC. Not only that we had a chance to get a little insight on their interest in events like GeforceLAN and even LanOC. Click to find out what he had to say. 

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GeforceLAN 6 LANing on a boat

geforcetitleHey guys sorry for the radio silence yesterday but I will give you guys a quick recap. We will be updating this post with our day to day coverage and also with links to other related coverage. Of course that is only if we come back. Gaming with 600+ people at one of the most epic events even could easily kill us, or cause us to go crazy. The good part is ether way it should be entertaining for you, the reader. Please post up and let us know what you think and even what you would like to see. If you do it soon enough we might even be able to help you out. 

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iRIP: Steve Jobs

frontjobsEarlier today, Apple announced the passing of Steve Jobs. If you visit Apple’s website or https://www.apple.com/stevejobs you will see Apple’s official statement on the incident.

This is a tragic day in the technology world. No one can argue the influence that Mr. Jobs has had on the technology industry, and the world would have been a much different place had he not existed. The man was a visionary.

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