Now technically, you’ll find that all the major Whirlpool parts outlets include these as part of a $400-500 rear tub. Yes, Whirlpool wants you to buy the big honking tub because 1 or 2 $10-20 bearings stopped working. Presumably you’re then supposed to throw your old tub away. If I ever start an “I hate the environment” club, Whirlpool’s the first company I’m asking to join.

So bearings are a bit of a pain to find. Well, maybe not that bad. These are the bearing numbers:
6205
6206

(I pulled the numbers from http://www.hometask.com/washerrepair.aspx where you can find bearing numbers for a number of Kenmore & Whirlpool Duet machines). It’s worth noting that you can buy seals or seals+bearings directly through their site as well.

Otherwise, you can find bearings online for anywhere from $3.50 up (depending on the quality of bearing you’re looking for – I doubt I’d opt for anything less than something made in Japan which is a good bit more, or a stainless steel bearing which starts at around $20), or find them at your local bearing shop. Now finding a new seal is a pain, though the site mentioned above carries them.

—

Installation:

I was going to write up a big massive guide with pictures, but as it turns out, others have already put together impressive YouTube videos. The one I’d recommend using as a guide is embedded below.

Again, to give credit where it’s due, this excellent video was created by Jerrod from http://www.hometask.com/washerrepair.aspx – and again, they sell the seals and bearings for the Whirlpool Duet WFW9200SQ02 as well as other models.

They also have a short version available on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd5NKbpVSRM

If you’re interested in getting a general idea as to the process, I’d suggest the short YouTube video. When you’re actually ready to buckle down and start disassembling, watch the long one.

—

In case you wanted some pictures anyway, I took a few during disassembly before I realized that my pictures were never going to compete with a video. Here they are if you want to see them anyway.

A few notes (watch the video first, or you won’t know what I’m referring to):

• The 4 shocks that connect the tub to the bottom of the cage… In the short version of the video, he mentions that you just twist and they come out. I found that there’s a little clip/lock on opposite sides of each shock (not opposite as in top/bottom, opposite as in the side you can see and the side you can’t) and to release them you’ll have to put a little screwdriver in the slot and pry a little to open each one. Ideally you’d have 3 arms and do both clips while you twist – however since most of us aren’t that fortunate, I twisted as far as I could without snapping it, and while twisting, did 1 clip/lock, did the one on the opposite side, went back to the 1st side, etc. As long as you’re twisting, the clips/locks will catch a little each time, it’ll twist a little further, and eventually the whole thing will twist 90 degrees and come down.
• the video doesn’t show every possible wire/connector/hose that you disconnect. They’re generally pretty easy to figure out, but make sure everything’s disconnected from the tub before you drop it – the thing’s heavy enough to rip/destroy anything you forgot to detach.
• for the front drain pump – in the video, it’s a screw that comes out. On my model, there are no screws – just a big rubber “latch” on the front that pops out toward you (you can wiggle the pump assembly out from there).
• the main nut on the shaft (15/16 “) was very tight on mine. He uses a ratchet with a pipe – I needed an impact gun.
• he’s not kidding when he says lifting the tub isn’t for the feint-of-heart. I think I pulled 2 or 3 muscles. I’ll either have a helper for reinstallation, or I’ll remove the counter-weights.
• the shaft was seized to the bearings on mine.Thus, I needed a small sledge hammer to pound the shaft through once the tub was split (a regular hammer didn’t cut it). If you do this, make sure you partly thread the bolt on (to protect the threads), put the socket on the bolt (to protect the bolt head), and hit the socket (preferably an impact socket, but wear gloves & eye protection regardless in case it shatters) with the hammer. If you just smack the shaft directly with the hammer, you’ll destroy the threads.
• Take Pictures As You Go!!! Very important, and I can’t stress it enough. Particularly with the wiring, if it takes you a few days in total, you might not remember where everything went. Just about every cell phone has a camera nowadays, so even if you don’t have a regular camera, you should have an option. It’s a good idea to label things with tape (or write with a sharpie marker where appropriate) as well. A few extra minutes being careful in this area might save you hours troubleshooting later.
• keep the screws separate. I like to take a piece of duct tape, and tape screws to whatever panel they came from. I duck-tape clamps to their respective hoses so they don’t get lost. As a side note, for some reason, my rear panel had a mix of fine/coarse threaded screws. By the time I realized it, I’d already pulled 5-6 out and had to guess which went where. Every time you pull a screw it might be worth checking to make sure it’s the same size/type as the other screws you just pulled.

My original bearings were… well… in bad shape. It’s clear why the previous owners couldn’t stand the noise from the unit anymore:

These are the inner bearings, and they’re obviously toast. Things got so bad that some of the bearings wore through the cage and fell out (there was a mess of rusted metal shavings left behind). What’s left of this bearing ws seized to the shaft, so I had to use a grinder/dremel to cut away until I was close enough to the shaft to snap it off.

You can see the seal behind the bearings (black, covered in rust) – upon removal, it actually looks to be in great shape, but obviously it didn’t do it’s job.

The outer bearings were in surprisingly good shape, but they’ll be replaced anyway.

—

Thoughts:

on The Process:
-Despite the many things that need to be disconnected/labelled, it’s a pretty quick process.
-Once I got to the shaft/bolt/bearings… let’s just say it took about 80% of the time I spent.
-While you could use a hex screwdriver for everything, the 7mm socket on a ratchet is probably a better idea where possible (easier on the wrists, and less chance of stripping). You WILL need the hex screw for a couple items though, so don’t go thinking you can do it all with the socket.
-Bearing replacement reminds me very much of bearing replacement on cars (the process, and the headaches I ran into). If you’ve ever swapped brake drum bearings, this should be comfortable territory for you.

on Whirlpool…
-Very disappointing that they don’t sell the bearings & seal separately.  Clearly a conscious effort on their part to rake customers for cash.
-Based on reviews I’ve seen around the web, bearing failures are very common. From the sounds of it, the bearings/seals that Whirlpool uses aren’t that great to begin with, and if you use non-HE detergent, it’ll suds up and quickly get in behind the seal and start wrecking the bearings. You HAVE to use the HE stuff.
-Another common issue on these washing machines (usually noticed when draining) is that either they won’t drain, or you’ll get a nasty noise from the pump.  There’s a “catch” by the pump (filter) which has usually picked up coins/socks/etc. I found a penny and a foam bra insert left by the previous owners in my washer. If you’re doing the bearings you’ll be pulling off the pump anyway, so you may as well open the catch and clean anything out of it.
-I wouldn’t buy another Whirlpool unless it were being sold used for cheap (in need of repair). Unless of course they change their ways (for starters, have the bearings as a serviceable item which they sell parts for).

on The Video (linked further up)…
-A fantastic video, and a big thanks to Jerrod from HomeTask for putting it out there to help people around the globe repair their own machines.
-Again, make sure everything’s disconnected from the tub before you drop it. The video isn’t quite as thorough when it comes to all the connectors.
-If the video helps you, by all means consider buying the seal (and possibly bearings) from his site. If for whatever reason that won’t work for you (need a specific method of international shipping that isn’t listed on the HomeTask site for example), it’s possible to find kits on eBay, though I suspect the quality of Jerrod’s seals is probably better than the average eBay kit (and cheaper too).
-As a reminder, the seals/bearings on the HomeTask site are located at http://www.hometask.com/washerrepair.aspx .

Finally, I’m not in any way associated with the HomeTask site. The video’s simply awesome, and I think HomeTask deserves some positive word-of-mouth for putting it up. If you find other videos that you believe are super-helpful in repairing/maintaining/etc a Whirlpool Duet WFW9200SQ02 Washer, have some tips of your own, or found additional places for bearings/seals/etc for these washing machines, feel free to post it in the comments below.

• Garmin 1500W Oil-Filled Heater – 043-5963 (Canadian Tire)
• Bionaire 1500W Oil Filler Radiator – BOF2001-CN (Wal-Mart)

Both have a thermostat that can be set, a digital display, and claim to have a frost protection feature.

Here are a couple pictures of them, side-by-side. Bionaire (black) is on the left. Garrison (white) on the right:

Both are powered on – it’s a bit dim in the room, so in the 1st image, the camera’s flash is off. In the 2nd image, the camera’s flash is on.

As you can see, the Bionaire has a blue backlit display, with some pretty large numbers. You’ll have no problem reading it in the dark. On the other hand, the Garrison has a small display, and it’s not backlit – it’s very difficult to see in the dark. A couple more images closer up:

It’s really tough to read some of the indicators on the Garrison model (right-side). Particularly the stuff on the top and bottom. If your room’s not very well-lit, it’s an exercise in frustration. Try reading/making-out as much as you can in the image above. See what you can pick out.

Now here’s another image with the flash on:

Really, the Garrison’s not meant for a dark room, assuming you plan to read the display. If you’re planning to set-and-forget, it might be just fine though.

—

With that out of the way, let’s get this comparison / review moving….

—

It’s worth noting that Bionaire’s also has an “Energy Savings Heat & Save(tm)” mode. What it actually does is has the heater run on high for 10 minutes, followed by 30 minutes of medium. This cycle repeats. Unless there’s some particular reason you want the thing automatically switching between high/medium while it’s running, you’ll probably never use it. If you actually want to save energy, you’ll just use the thermostat.

—

Conclusion

The Bionaire has a great display and is easy to use. Being able to see the current temperature is a definite plus. If you like to monitor your heater at a glance, prefer big displays, or want something you can figure out without the manual, it’s probably the model to get.

The Garrison has well-rounded wattage settings, locking wheels (a good idea on what’s essentially a hot case of oil on wheels), and is pretty strong when it comes to programmability. It’s not as intuitive, and the display could really use a backlight, but functionally, it’s superior in most ways.

-

One major flaw with both models is the lack of any sort of memory when unplugged. This really diminishes the value of the “anti frost” features. Power loss means you have to get back to the oil based radiator/heater before the temperature in the room drops from 5 degrees to 0. Technically, this makes the “manual” models superior for those applications. You might not be able to set the “manual” models to a specific temperature, but at least when the power comes back on, they do too.

—

The Bionaire BOF2001-CN is currently available at Wal-Mart Canada for $69.96.
The Garrison 043-5963-6 is currently available at Canadian Tire for $79.99.

A really oddball situation recently arose in Plex. Namely, all of season 3 was picked up in Plex Media Manager except for the 6th episode (“Chuck Versus the Nacho Sampler”). Basically, it jumped from 5-7. I tried a pile of tricks to no avail – moving the folder out and back in, renaming the file to use periods instead of spaces (Chuck.S03E06.Chuck.Versus.the.Nacho.Sampler.mkv), having it as the only episode in the folder (in case for some reason I had a duplicate), etc.

Turns out, the problem is having “sample” in the filename (I suppose there’s a filter for those.. *ahem*… torrents which include samples). To be clear, I’d named the file as so:

Chuck – S03E06 – Chuck Versus the Nacho Sampler.mkv

The fix was dumping “Sampler” from the file name. I changed the name to the following and it worked:

Chuck – S03E06 – Chuck Versus the Nacho.mkv

An ALT-refresh (the files aren’t stored on the local machine, hence the required “alt” to actually rescan the network folder) allowed it to be picked up by Plex.

I’d assume dropping the title completely (and having Chuck – S03E06) would work too, though I like having the episode name in the filename when I’m playing videos on another machine through VLC (Plex clients shouldn’t care – it should show you the properly scraped name including the “Sampler” part). If you’re really irked/OCD about losing part of the episode name in the file name, you could always be creative and try using S4mpler or fudging the name enough that it doesn’t look like it’s a “sample”.

-It’s paired with a Winegard HD 8200U
-There’s an improvement over the radio-shack 10db antenna
-The 3 towers less than 20 miles away didn’t cause overload (though it’s not aimed directly at them and we’re running through 100 feet of coax)
-Between the 2, we’re getting a digital station ~60 miles away perfectly, with a closer digital station (which it’s not aimed at) still artifacting every once in a while (which I’m sure will be cured when Mr Saw meets a family of trees causing multipath). Most of the analog stations are coming in perfectly with a couple having you-have-to-look-for-it-to-see-it ghosting. One analog station is a bit snowy at the moment, which will likely be cured when the antenna’s re-aimed (it’s in the antenna’s ‘blind spot’ right now).

–

Okay then.

In the last write-up, I’d grabbed and installed the Winegard HD 8200U antenna. Due largely to a 100-ft cable run, it was using a cheap 10db in-line amplifier – something that probably cost around $10-15 about a decade ago. If you want to read up on the remaining issues it left, you can check out the Winegard HD 8200U review (scroll to the bottom).

Moving on, with some tweaking the issues were minimized but still existed at certain times of day (well.. night actually). I decided to grab the Winegard AP-8275 antenna amplifier to see if it would help. Turns out, it gave quite the improvement…

I’ll start with the bad. The thing only includes 1 cable, and that’s for the power inserter, so if you’re currently runnng an amp-less setup, you’ll probably need to buy/obtain/make 2 cables. Like the antenna, the amplifier costs a fortune in Canada. To avoid paying $100 for the thing, which is within the ballpark every Canadian retailer wants to charge, I grabbed it from Amazon.ca for $66.

So that’s the bad. Now the good.

—

The un-necessary concern

Before buying, I was a little concerned about the possibility of overloading the TV-tuner with the high-gain amp. Really, the AP-8275 is about the highest-gain consumer-oriented preamp you can buy. If you overload the tuner, all channels suffer.

I’ll explain a little further with the pros/cons I’d come up with:

Reasons TO get the 8275:
-one of the transmitters (~60 miles away) could use improvement
-potential to possibly get Grand Forks station (~120 miles away) during tropo events
-100-foot cable run

Reasons NOT TO get the 8275:
- 3 transmitters fairly close (10-20 mile range) risks overloading
-the weakest Winegard (the HDP-269) would be slightly stronger than the current 10db amp, and less noisy anyway, which might be a safer bet.

The things I had going for me were that I was running a 100-ft run which would probably eat around 10db of the gain anyway, I wasn’t planning to aim the antenna directly at any of the near stations, and that I was planning to throw in a 4-way splitter at some point which would undoubtedly drop the signal some anyway.

Turns out, the concern was unwarranted. No overloading, so I’m glad I went with the beefiest amp I could find. At least now I won’t be left wondering “could I have gone higher?”

–

The install

It installs pretty easily, and includes a couple rubber boots to help weatherproof the connections. The amp mounts to the antenna mast (a black box of sorts with a U-clamp), while the power inserter (about the size of a common splitter) goes inside near the TV.

I’d throw up pictures, but it’s pretty unexciting and you can find images all around the web.

–

Reception

Reception-wise, there was a notable improvement over the 10db amp, although it took a little while to fully realize it. The “signal meter” numbers on the TV didn’t increase drastically or anything (though they moved up slightly), and we didn’t instantly pull in the stations that are 120+ miles away (which are the only “new” stations we could possibly get at this point), but…

…artificating/cutouts reduced in severity rather significantly. One of those stations (around 120 miles away) are also picked up by the tuner for a few seconds every so often. The antenna isn’t aimed yet (I reset the aim to where the Antenna was pointed in the previous writeup so that I’d have a fair comparison), but it’s very possible we’ll end up seeing those channels periodically and during tropo events once the thing’s aimed well.

–

The next step…

The antenna’s obviously got to be aimed again, and we’ve got a few trees that’ll have to be murdered as well. Between the HD8200U antenna and the AP8275 amplifier, I’m very pleased with the results thus far though. Once the rest of Winnipeg goes to digital OTA in under 90 days, I have no doubt we’ll get all the local stations + US FOX perfectly, 24/7 (minus some glitches during lighting of course).

6 – CBC
7 – CTV (CKY)
9 – Global (CKND)
12 – FOX (from Pembina, ND – very tough to get)
13 – CityTV (CHMI, previously A-Channel, previously MTN)
35 – JoyTV

There’s also a french channel on 3. Channel 35′s relatively new. Aside from FOX (12), you’ve generally been able to get the others without much difficulty in rural areas around Winnipeg.

Canada’s in the midst of the Digital Over-The-Air transition, and while Aug 2011 is the deadline, only Global has transitioned thus far (over 40.1 & 40.2 though the HD stream’s currently remapped to channel 9.1). If you live near Winnipeg, you might want to check it out – it’s pretty sweet. If you can grab FOX’s digital (channel 12.1), it’s worth a shot too.

—

Now I don’t watch much TV, but the goal was to pull in FOX. It’s a challenge, but challenges are usually pretty fun. For reference, we’re about 60 miles (90-100km) away from that transmitter.

Turns out, it can be a bit tough. I started out with an RCA CANT711 (from Walmart), which mounted outdoors about 25 feet in the air, using the built-in 10db amplifier, shockingly managed to pull in FOX’s digital station… sometimes. It’s one of those tiny antennas in a plastic tube, and surprisingly it beat out the massive standalone YAGI antennas I tried (a 14-foot and an 8-foot).

—

Of course, nothing’s more frustrating than a signal that only comes in some of the time. After a pile of research, I decided to give the Winegard HD8200U a try. It’s supposed to be similar to the 8200P, except that it’s in sections so that it can be shipped by standard delivery services (UPS/Purolator/FedEx/etc) rather than having to be shipped by truck.

I ordered it through xtek.ca, who shipped it via Purolator.

Here’s the box:

I left the sandals there (large mens) to give you an idea as to how big this box is. It managed to obtain a small hole during shipping, but didn’t sustain any damage inside.

Opening the box, you can see things are really packed in there:

It’s all loose in there – if you stand the box up and shake it around you’ll hear everything rattle around, but it’s a “tight fit” if that makes any sense.

One issue was that a loose bolt was in the box, with no nut (I’m assuming it fell out). I’ve read complaints about this elsewhere (it was something I actually expected). I’m actually surprised the screw didn’t make it’s way out too. I found a nut lying around which saved me a drive to the hardware store.

Incidentally, the loose screw (and missing nut) were the ones to connect the 2 booms together.

Note to Winegard: spend the nickel for a ziplock bag, put the nut/bolt in it, and staple it to the inside of the box. Alternately, thread it through one of the booms the way all the other nuts/bolts were done to keep things together.

—

Assembly

Instructions are included, though they take some careful reading. Once you’ve pulled everything out, you’ll want to find a large area to work in while you assemble it. Above, you can see one of the elements that has to be moved into position.

You might notice a little circular plastic “nib” on the lower black plastic piece. I actually ripped these off, but it turns out that by default, 4 of the elements swing out to the “wrong side”, and these nibs (4 of them) are supposed to encourage you to swing them out all the way around to the “right way”. For clarification, in the above image, based on the orientation of the element, you might think you’d rotate CLOCKWISE, when in actuality you need to rotate this one COUNTERCLOCKWISE, which means bending the element up and over the others (hopefully without permanently bending anything).

The instruction sheet that comes with the antenna shows the orientation. Essentially, you’re supposed to end up with a left-right-left-right-left-right pattern (same thing on the opposite side of the boom). Breaking off the nibs and orienting things where they slid easiest into place I had something like Left-right-left-right-right-right-left-right-left-left which was INCORRECT (and I had to change it afterwards).

I’m not sure why they didn’t just orient everything to be a little easier. Rotating the element over the boom isn’t fun, and despite the solid construction, I wasn’t pleased about forcing the element over the others + rivets.

The UHF elements were non-complicated, though the plastic mounts here felt a bit chitzy. I was careful to hold them while I rotated the metal elements into place. You’ll see 2 little holes in the metal (and 2 corresponding bumps in the plastic to lock them in once you’ve rotated). Unfortunately, the metal elements basically shaved off the tops of the plastic bumps (though they still held tight in place).

Above, you can see both main booms (VHF and UHF) with all the elements extended. This was right before connecting the 2 booms together.

NOTE that you have to flip the VHF boom at some point (since you have to do the elements on both sides). Be careful so that you don’t bend/break/put_any_stress_on any of the elements as you flip the thing. Might be handy to have a helper here.

Sliding them together took a bit of work. It’s possible for one person, but there are a few issues:

• It’s a very tight fit (which is good, mind you – nobody wants a wobbly antenna). You’ve gotta line up very carefully and wiggle them together. There’s 0 clearance.
• The booms are heavy, making it tough for 1 person to wiggle.
• The UHF “phasing lines” (the 2 wires you see) have to be worked into the black box and into the guides at the same time.

It took me about 3 minutes – I didn’t want to smash the phasing lines into the side of the box and bend everything up, so I had to go slowly. Really, if somebody else is around, have them spend a few seconds giving you a hand. One person can be the muscle, while the other guides the lines in – it’ll probably take 15-20 seconds that way.

Make sure the phasing lines aren’t touching the metal boom (now’s a good time). It’ll screw up your reception if they are. I had to bend the phasing lines a little bit because mine were touching the boom.

Note that there’s a single element (reflector actually) in the box. This is supposed to attach with the bolt that connects the booms together. I missed it and installed it later, so you won’t see it in the next few pics (it’s easy to install after-the-fact if you forget).

Above, you’ll see one of the corner reflectors being installed. They just slide between the metal plates and are locked in with a bolt/nut. The instructions are pretty clear that the clip tips have to point away from the boom. Basically, the 2 metal “tabs” that you see in the image holding the reflector element in place have to be positioned/oriented the way you see in the pic.

Above, you can see another shot of it from a little further away. Fairly straightforward.

The opposite corner reflector is exactly the same, and installs exactly the same way (just with the antenna flipped over). Be careful not to bend/break anything when flipping the entire antenna over – get a helper if need be and take it slow. With both installed, you get the image above. Might not be the greatest idea to have all the weight on the reflector (the way I did), though I didn’t notice any bending/damage by sitting it that way and didn’t really have anything to distribute the weight along the boom anyway.

A quick close-up in case anything has you confused. Remember that I still hadn’t put on the single reflector/element that attaches to the bolt you see coming out of the main boom yet (if you installed it now, it would go on the top as you see it, in this case by taking the nut off, plunking it on, then putting the nut back on).

Now, the “boom brace” goes on. It’s basically the bar without any elements on it. Above, you can see I’ve attached it to the top reflector, though I haven’t tightened the screw just yet (you need the boom to rotate so that you can attach it to the main boom next). Positioning is important – the black balun box (the one the phasing lines went into) is facing down. If your black balun box is facing up, you’ve got the antenna upside-down and have gotta flip the antenna over.

Above’s a view from further away. Once you’ve attached the “boom brace” to the element, you attach it to the main boom. Unless you bent the bananas out of something, all the holes line up. Make sure to tighten the bolt to the main boom (as well as tighten the bolt on the reflector-side).

PROBLEM ABOVE! The U-clamps (that will mount to the mast) are on opposite sides (naughty, naughty, Winegard!) Fortunately, it’s easy to reverse the apparatus on the “boom brace” by yanking out the bolts.

Above, I’ve reversed the clamp so that they now line up.

That single element/reflector I mentioned forgetting earlier… Well here’s where I realized it was the only piece I had left over. It’s on now, as seen in the image above.

At some point, I popped the cover for the balun box on (sorry, forgot to take a pic). It’s a bit tight – there are metal prongs inside that have to grip the “phase lines”, so make sure you line it up right before pushing it on so that they don’t bend instead of gripping.

Done, and installed up on a tripod.

Observations/good stuff/flaws

The 8200U is pretty darn solid. The holes lined up, booms fit tightly together, and the metal’s just plan strong. There’s a lot more metal than there is plastic, and everything just feels sturdy.

All the bolts/nuts (aside from the 1 missing/loose one) were attached to the places they were supposed to go. This was a big plus – no guessing as to which bolt goes where – this made it very obvious, which was quite helpful.

Putting it up on the garage was a 2-man job, though it wasn’t particularly difficult. The 2 reflectors would make it really tough to solo it up the ladder. I’d be particularly careful if you’re installing it on a tall roof (or a tower) mind you (anywhere you have a high chance of dying if you fall) – maneuvering the thing around is a bit clumsy, so you’ve gotta be slow and accurate.

Once mounted to the mast (an 11mm deep-socket for the bolts on the U-clamp btw) the thing just didn’t move, even with the trees blowing around. I’m sure the boom-brace helped quite a bit here.

The “flaws” were mentioned in the writeup above, but:

• missing nut (due to the nut/screw being loose in the box)
• 4 of the VHF elements had to be rotated/bent over the boom to rotate into the proper position. I don’t know how/why those plastic “nibs” are in there rather than simply riveting the things on in the ideal position.
• The plastic UHF clips felt like they might break while rotating the UHF elements, and the 2 plastic points were generally shaved by the elements during rotation.

—

Performance – the improvement

We’ve got 2 digital stations to work with. Global (within 20 miles), and FOX (about 60 miles or 90-100km). It’s hard not to get Global, even with rabbit ears. FOX on the other hand is a challenge, as I mentioned earlier.

With the amplified RCA CANT711, we typically saw a 17-20% signal on FOX (when it worked), although we managed a peak at 30% one day (for a couple hours until we lost the signal completely). It was *very* picky about aim. About 1-2? of rotation to work with, and about 1 foot on the mast to work with for height (too high or too low = no signal)

With the Winegard HD 8200U, we get approximately 40% on the signal meter on FOX, so far with a peak of around 50%. A pretty solid improvement, though we’re still using a 10db pre-amplifier (we have a 100ft RG-6 quad-shield cable run, so we absolutely need the pre-amp). It’s not as picky about directionality as the RCA (closer to 5? to work with where we still get a signal on the Winegard), and ghosting on the analog channels is minimal. That said, despite strong signals (40%+ FOX and 90%+ Global), there’s still some tuning to do – for whatever reason the digital channels are being a little crazy – we’re getting periodic artifacting despite the stronger signal on the meter. My guesses are either noise, or strong reflections that are wreaking havoc. The weather’s been rough today, so that could have an impact as well.

—

Conclusion

So far I’m quite pleased. 2 old yagi-style antennas wouldn’t pick up FOX at all. The newer dinky (but surprisingly good) RCA 711 did, but not all the time, and it was very picky about placement.

We do have a new kink to work out (the artifacting), but with a considerably stronger signal strength, it’s a new issue, so at the very least it’s a fresh challenge.

Tomorrow (weather permitting), I’ll play with the antenna positioning a bit and do a little tree trimming and update. I may look into a low-noise preamp to replace our 10+ year old Radio Shack whatever-was-cheapest-at-the-time-preamp, since if the antenna’s grabbing noise I’m sure we’re not helping it with the current preamp. Another option would be to try the attic – higher elevation (and fewer trees), but we’re bound to lose a chunk of signal going through the shingles.

I bought DA2 through Steam (PC) and have been playing it there, and decided to give it a run through OS X.

The good news is… if you bought the Windows version (through a service like Steam), your serial number will probably work on the Mac (mine did anyway). You’ll have to borrow an install disc from somebody however. If you have the retail box copy, it includes both installers. In fact, if you have the retail disc copy, you can try it out on OS X, and if you hate it, bootcamp into Windows and just install/play it in Windows. And the game itself is quite good. So that’s the good news.

The bad news is… the Mac version blows.

Update/Edit: That statement has been controversial, so let me be clear. The Mac version blows compared to the Windows version (you’re reading a comparison after all). The Windows version is well-tuned. The Mac version isn’t tuned at all. The Windows version gets 2x the frame rate of the Mac version. The Windows version was QA-tested, whereas the Mac version clearly wasn’t (2 of the 3 bugs I came across were very obvious and there’s no way they’d miss QA). The Windows version is native, the Mac version is a Cider port (wrapped and translated rather than actually programmed for Mac OS).

That’s not to say that you’ll necessarily have a bad experience with the Mac version – you may very well have an enjoyable experience. If it meets your standards then great. If on the other hand you find the experience…. wanting…. you may want to consider trying it through Windows. This is in stark contrast to other Mac games out there (Blizzards, Valves, and even the latest Civilization), where the Mac experience is just as good as the Windows experience.

UPDATE2: Ran the game again through a brand new 2011 MacBook Pro, with the 6750m GPU. It plays very well, and is a very reasonable gaming experience. That said, it’s truly disappointing that you need a top-of-the-line Mac for DA2 to have what I’d consider a reasonably good playable experience in OSX.

If you’ve got a mid-range Mac, or a Mac from 1-2 years ago, you have my condolences. Try the game in Mac OS X first, and if you find it “acceptable”, then great. If you find the performance to be wanting, fire up a Windows bootcamp partition, and you’ll get the higher framerates you expect/deserve.

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PART 1 – A FEW QUICK SCREENSHOTS

Let’s hit up some details.

First, a quick couple screenshots to show the location that was loaded:

The Windows Screenshot - Click the image to see it in full-size (warning... it's kinda huge)

The OS X Screenshot - Click the image to see it in full-size (warning... it's also kinda huge)

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You probably won’t find any substantial differences between them. Meril’s face is lighter in the first one, but I believe it’s just the lack of clouds overhead (in previous testing with the demo, I noticed that it was tough to get consistency when it came to face brightness).

You can skip the following grey section if you’re not interested in the game’s overall differences between quality settings – it’s not terribly important to the Mac/PC comparison.

The above screenshots are at the “low” setting, with everything else turned off. I have screenshots of the higher quality settings, but for anyone interested, rather than upload them all, it basically goes like this:

• Low (as you see above) seems to rely on ambient lights (no difference between PC and Mac). Objects don’t appear to cast their own shadows, and this includes characters. You don’t see shadows coming from anyone in the party, and if you look at the dwarves in the scene (left-mid), there’s only a circular shadow below them. Note that I also grabbed a “low” with the DX11 renderer, but it looked identical.
• Medium adds character shadows, and objects appear to cast their own shadows as well. Much of the scene looks different – everything from the stone shadows on the left (the shadows add depth) to the wall/pillars on the right (shadows add realism). Fairly important to note that “medium” on the PC is the same as “high” on the Mac. Yes, the Mac has “low” and “high” settings, but they’re actually “low” and “medium”. Note that I compared “medium” under DX9 and DX11, and there didn’t appear to be any difference in visual quality.
• High (PC-only) actually had no discernible difference from Medium. It’s possible that some of the character shadows were slightly smoother, but I didn’t take enough screenshots to verify it. Important to note that this is just 1 area – there could actually be significant differences when it comes to spell effects, or in other locations, but since that wasn’t the primary focus of this write-up, I didn’t do further testing.
• Very high (PC-only) had fairly significant differences. In particular, shadows were smooth and had blur (couple ways of doing this, but from the screenshots, I don’t believe every light was able to cast a shadow or anything… possibly raytracing rather than shadow maps, or shadow maps with really high depth map resolutions). The other largely obvious change had to do with the ground tiles. Rather than explain it, I’ll just stick the very-high screenshot below…

Here’s the very-high screenshot (only available in the Windows version of DA2):

Very High settings in Windows (DirectX 11) - Note that all the fancy options were turned OFF. No ambient occlusion, no AA, no AF, no "high quality blur", etc.

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Here’s the gist of the visual quality: The Mac version basically has “low” and “medium” settings. Basically, the same settings as a Windows user with a DX9-only video card. The Windows version on the other hand has “high” and “very high” as well for those with DX11. Nothing quality-wise seems to be lost in the conversion from Windows’ DirectX9 to the Mac’s OpenGL, aside from the higher DX11-only options.

However, that doesn’t mean the total experience is anywhere close to the same. Read on to find out why.

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PART 2 – FRAME RATE COMPARISON

A playable framerate’s kinda important. Does the Mac port hold up?

Nope.

I also tested at medium, but since "low" is about all you'll be using on the Mac (for reasons listed below), I didn't upload the chart. 52/48/35 are the numbers (dx9/dx11/mac) if you're curious. On High and Very High (only available on Windows in DX11), the numbers are 42/19. Yes, "very high" is quite taxing on the video card.

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Windows hit about 60FPS. The Mac OS X port hit about 40FPS.

Still playable though, right?

WRONG.

Normally 40fps would be reasonable. However, the Mac OS X port of DA2 suffers from serious graphical anomalies when VSYNC is off. Visually, it looks like screen-tearing without actually tearing. As you walk through Kirkwall, flickering lines appear across buildings, and “blocks” along the walls update sporadically. It looks pretty hideous.

Unfortunately, when VSYNC is turned on to correct the anomalies, the Mac’s numbers plummet from 39 FPS all the way down to 26 FPS. That’s a whopping 33% drop in framerate to correct an issue that shouldn’t exist. Below 30fps things start to get into “painful” territory.

I don’t think I can express how absurdly poor this is. For reference, this is running at 1600 x 900 on a mid-2010 iMac with an ATI/AMD 5730m. That’s a fairly high card, not even running the iMac at full resolution. What’s worse is that the game is basically using DirectX 9 – something that hasn’t been cutting-edge since 2004.

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So in Windows, the game hits a very respectable 60 FPS at low settings. Run the same game on the same machine, but through Mac OS X, and it’s choking along at 26 FPS.

Half the quality options? CHECK.
Half the frame rate? CHECK.

If you wondered why I said “the Mac version blows” at the beginning, you’re probably starting to understand why.

Not convinced? Don’t worry, there’s a part 3.

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PART 3 – MAC BUGS

UPDATE2: I tested for all 3 bugs on a 2011 MBP, and it appears they no longer exist. It’s possible they were quashed in the OS X 10.6.7 update, or the DA2 1.1 patch. You can see the original write-up for this section here, though note that since the issue doesn’t present, it’s no longer a good argument against the OS X vesion:

To be fair here, the following are only the bugs I came across during this test. There are probably a lot more in this broken Mac port of a game that I’m not giving it proper credit for.

1) VSYNC switching. If you’re in the game, and decide to turn VSYNC on or off (perhaps to deal with the above problem I mentioned), I hope you saved first. The game becomes unresponsive. You have to quit and restart. Actually, the game still runs in the background – the display just never refreshes. You get to look at the options screen until you realize that’s all you’re going to be looking at if you don’t do something, and quit.

2) Anti-Aliasing. The good news is that it works. You’ll be running at 15-20 FPS, but it’ll remove those unsightly jaggies. The bad news is that the same non-responsive issue occurs here as with #1. Hope you saved.

3) Poor OS X integration. I tried to make this sound nicer than it is… you know like they just left out some cool integration feature or something. The truth is that certain actions in the Mac OS (like taking an Apple-Shift-4 screenshot of the game window as I did a few times) cause the keyboard to go unresponsive in-game.  Again… hope you saved your game before you popped into OS X.

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PART 4 – WHY IS THE MAC VERSION SO AWFUL?

The Mac port is done through a “wrapper” known as Cider (made by a company called “Transgaming”). The game was never actually made for the Mac OS.

What Cider does is… it essentially fakes a Windows environment. The Mac version of DA 2 thinks it’s running on Windows. Cider intercepts all the DirectX (Windows) calls, and converts them to an OpenGL (Mac) equivalent on the fly, along with a bunch of other system calls. This is a very slow, lazy, and buggy way of doing things.

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EA’s been working with Transgaming for years. That’s why games like the Sims, Dragon Age, etc all end up with substandard Mac ports. The Windows version is always better, because the Windows version is done properly. To make the Mac version, rather than doing the work they should, they hand the game to Transgaming who crams it into their aging Mac wrapper. Everyone crosses their fingers and hopes for the best.

If the Mac wrap kinda works (as in doesn’t instantly crash and burn), it’s released as the Mac client.

That’s what we have here. Dragon Age II for the Mac OS is buggy (update: fixed), and performs poorly even on new hardware. Boot up Windows on the same machine, and you go from a painful game experience to a quality game experience.

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Unfortunately, this all creates a self-fulfilling prophecy:

1. They don’t create high quality native mac ports, because they don’t believe there are enough Mac gamers to make it worthwhile.
2. Instead, they create awful Mac ports through a wrapper (and have to split some of those profits with the wrapping company – Transgaming in this case).
3. Mac users buy the game. Being an awful wrap, it’s unsurprisingly… awful. They say “never again”.
4. Go back to #1.

As it stands, the behemoth known as “Blizzard” is the only large developer to consistently create quality native Mac ports (though Valve’s started recently as well). This actually works out well for them, because most of the Mac users buy their quality games, knowing they’ll have as good or better experience than the Windows users. This is in stark contrast to EA, who presently allows wrapped Mac ports which ensure a worse experience than their Windows counterparts.

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Part 5 – CONCLUSION

Quite clearly, the Windows version is superior, as it’s not done through a wrapper the way the Mac version is. Really, the Mac version is just the Windows version, but crammed through Cider which makes it slower and buggier (appears to be fixed).

In Windows, you get twice the frame-rate, no bugs when adjusting video options, and have the option to utilize DX11 if your video card supports it. On the Mac side, even a high-end video card can’t make up for the massive performance hit caused by Cider. You’ll be playing at the lowest of settings, yet your framerate will be so poor you’ll wish you could turn something down. It’s that bad.

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If you have an older Mac, the game probably won’t be playable unless you choose a very low resolution (800 x 600 for example). You’ll probably get twice the frame rate if you bootcamp into Windows however.

With a newer Mac, at the lowest settings you might survive at a higher resolution, though the native resolution on the iMacs might be tough – the frame rate doesn’t drop much at full-screen-native-resolution (compared to a lower resolution in windowed mode), though the large screen makes the < 30 FPS quite obvious.

Regardless, if playing on the Mac, be sure to save before changing video options, and turn on VSYNC to remove the tearing-but-not-tearing graphic anomalies (appears to be fixed).

Playing through Windows is almost certain to garner twice the frame rate, and provide a better game experience overall. You’ll have to run bootcamp, have a copy of Windows, and restart your Mac every time you want to play, but it’s almost certainly worth it. The Mac port’s just too awful to recommend.

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PART 6 – TESTING

The machine used was the iMac (11,2) with an i3 processor (3.2Ghz), 8GB RAM, and a Mobility Radeon 5730m.

OS X 10.6.6 was used on the Mac-side, and Windows 7 Ultimate (x64) was used on the Windows-side (through bootcamp).

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Screenshots and FPS testing were done by loading the same save-game and essentially sitting/watching the meter.

In Windows, frame rates were grabbed with fraps. Frame rates were consistent in this location (+/- 1 fps).

On the Mac, OpenGL Profiler (part of Xcode) was used to grab frame rates. The fps tended to wander, so I ditched outliers, leaving me with numbers in the +/- 1 range.

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I’d hoped to do full-screen testing at the native resolution (1920 x 1080), but since I couldn’t watch OpenGL Profiler when in full screen (only when Apple-Tabbed), I decided not to use those numbers, and to stick with 1600 x 900 in a window on both sides. Since full-screen-full-resolution was pretty brutal on OS X (and I don’t expect many would find it acceptable), windowed seemed to make even more sense.

There aren’t FPS numbers while moving/playing, as it’d be tough to run/fight a specific path. The only notes I can provide are that on DA2 for OS X, moving forward seemed smooth enough, but any rotating was painful. The stealth effect also severely dropped the frame-rate from what I could tell visually. I didn’t specifically test those 2 aspects on Windows, as I’ve played an entire playthough on Windows (medium settings through DX11 at native resolution) and didn’t come across similar issues.

I’ll sum up the positives by saying that on the surface, it’s a typical BioWare game, with a great story and huge level of immersion. Your choices have consequences, sometimes immediate and other times, in the future. For someone who’s never played a BioWare game, it’s similar to the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books some may have read when they were younger. Or for the non-book-readers, has aspects similar to the movie “The Butterfly Effect”. Your choices change what happens, for better or for worse. It’s all wrapped in a cinematic, fully voiced story. Ever watched a TV show or movie and thought “if the main character did this instead of that, imagine how things would have turned out!?” In BioWare games, you’re the main character, and you’re making those decisions. And yes, the consequences will change.

On top of that, it’s a new game engine with a polished UI. DA:O (and Awakening) didn’t have that cutting-edge game feel to them. The epic story was the saving grace. In DA2, the game looks and feels stunning. The combat’s got a quicker pace to it, with nice visual effects. It feels a little less like a chess game, and a little more like a high-pace shootout. You can still play tactically if you want, pausing and issuing orders (you’ll need to at higher difficulties), but for a typical player, you can treat the combat like an action-RPG.

That said, there’s so much awesome in it, that rather than spew out all the positive changes (and there are many improvements over the original Origins), I’ll focus on the things that could still use some improvement. I’ve tried to leave out Dragon Age II spoilers, but there’s a small degree of spoilage from the original Dragon Age Origins and Awakening. It’s color-coded:
Red means it really annoys me.
Orange means I’ve got some strong feelings about it.
Green means it’s probably not as big a deal as I’ve made it out to be.

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Companion Gear – While I really love what was done with the companion base gear (changed to an upgradeable companion-specific armor), I wish rings/trinkets/waistbands had something similar. I still end up with way too many rings in my inventory and spent too much time sifting through companions to make sure they have what’s best. I suppose BioWare might have only gone half-far so as not to alienate the people who love customizing their companions, but this is something that should probably be 100% one way, or 100% the other way… not half-and-half.

Junk Item inventory – I love this new category (and the “sell all junk” button), but I’d prefer it if gear that nobody can wear ended up here too. Specifically I’m talking about stuff like chestpieces… if I’m a warrior, nobody can wear any mage chestpieces (since my mage companions have their own stuff), so I’d prefer if it went straight to junk by default. The saving grace is that it’s dead-easy to move stuff to junk with a right-click while I’m equipping items, making for a 5-second stop at the vendor to quickly dump everything I don’t want.

Set bonus clarification – Everything in Dragon Age II has a better description… talents, abilities…. everything except for the item set bonuses. I’d heard it was supposed to be more clear about these, but I sure didn’t come across it. It’s either not there, not clear, or too hard to find.

Tactics screen navigation – The new interface for everything is amazing, but it doesn’t translate well to the tactics screen. You could navigate through the Origins tactics pretty easily to see what all is there. In DA2, you’re constantly clicking “back” unless you know exactly which trees to follow. That said, I won’t be too hard on this oversight… the increased tactics slots, and certain conditions (STAGGARED, etc) in the tactics are aweseome.

Default tactics – Particularly with casters, and this is an Origins carryover…. As an example of the problem, when I set a mage as a healer, I want them to prioritize healing, but use ALL the damage/control/etc spells at their disposal. Why else would I have given them those extra talents? Yet they don’t. Certain spells/abilities will never be used with certain tactics. The only way to have everything used is to create custom tactics. I’m not sure why this is… if it’s mana concerns (a risk that your healer burns out all their mana on DPS and doesn’t have anything left to heal with), having a built-in condition set where they won’t DPS once their mana drops below 25% or 50% would solve it. Alternately, a few more default tactics would work. Something like “Balanced (focus-healing)” and “Balanced (focus-controller)” would be alright.

Nowhere to equip all your characters – In Origins, you could access the inventory of all your characters at camp. There’s nowhere to do this anymore though, so if you want to upgrade weapons or jewelry on your companions, you have to take them out a few at a time, upgrade, go back, take out the new characters, go back, etc.

Loot delay – It’s massively improved. Insanely improved actually. It’s still there though. Kill a wave of enemies, and they might not be lootable for a few seconds.

Bugs – They’re few (fortunately we didn’t get a repeat of the nightmare known as Awakening), but I still hit a quest that wasn’t completable, and a couple quests that claimed they could be done but couldn’t until another trigger took place. I also had a companion conversation that obviously triggered hours later than it should have. That’s the stuff that should be ironed out in QA. The other bug I hit was a delay/freeze periodically during cutscenes, where I’d miss 10-15 seconds of what was happening, though to be fair I suppose this might only affect certain systems (hopefully it’s quashed in a patch though). On the plus side, I had 0 crashes throughout an entire playthrough of DA 2 – something that was impossible in Origins and Awakening.

Unobvious quests – there are a couple places where side-quests can show up (certain boards, NPC’s, and clearing certain areas), where you don’t find out until/unless you check. This is a different situation from Origins – in DA 2 you’re largely travelling across the same areas multiple times (as opposed to Origins where you were travelling across different areas very few times and things like the chanters board or mage bag were available in multiple locations). It’s incredibly time consuming to completely walk through 7+ locations once during the day, again during the night, and then repeat that during the next act just to make sure you don’t miss anything. A cure would perhaps be an additional Side-side quest that says “it’s been awhile since you walked through ____  at day/night, and there are reports of sinister activities should you wish to check them out”, or NPC’s that say “I just saw a new notice going up at ____ board. I wonder what _____ wants?”. Really, any indication that avoids having to trial/error every location would be nice.

Overhead map views that don’t change – I don’t mind that locations were reused multiple times – it saves having to completely explore a new-but-similar area over and over again to ensure you don’t miss anything. Blocking off portions through doors to make it a bit different is fine with me too. However, I HATE that the overhead map still shows the un-open portion as available. It’s like a slap-in-the-face-reminder that “OH BY THE WAY THIS IS A REUSED LOCATION”. It’s even a bit immersion breaking. The cure? There’s 1 major location that changes during the game and has the overhead map “fizzle out” the now-inaccessible area – do the same with all the reused locations. It’s just an overhead map, and shouldn’t take an awful lot of time.

Healing talents – let’s be honest, there aren’t a lot. The DA2 talent overhaul is awesome, but there isn’t a lot for healers to do. You have 1 direct heal on a massive cooldown (no HoT’s). Maybe a group heal (on a long cooldown) if you content to enable a mode that doesn’t really let you do anything else. In DA:O, Wynne was pretty awesome. Healing, buffing, casting spells that restore mana/energy, and casting DPS spells in between. Healers in DA2 are a bit bland. The only benefit they get over a non-healer are that they have the group heal. Honestly, your best option is taking one of the mages with a healing tree and using them as DPS (micro-ing them when you need the group heal), or simply taking a DPS class and giving them the single-heal. There’s no real difference.

Journal/Inventory/Character buttons – they’re tiny,out of the way, and on the right now. Not terribly easy to use (compared to Origins where they were large, at the top, and easy to see/use. I suspect at this point, most people will either hit escape, or use hot-keys.

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One thing I would have preferred to see would have been more, smaller acts as opposed to the few larger ones. As I mentioned in the beginning, I completed the game in 34 hours, but some acts actually felt a bit long. I suppose if I’d skipped the many sidequests it would have felt really quick, but since the sidequests are tied to each act and can’t be done later, I didn’t want to miss any of them.

Compare DA2′s 34 hours of game time to Origins where my playthrough took something in the neighborhood of 100 hours, and you’ll see that Origins gave more entertainment-time per dollar. Though even Origins started to feel a bit long, the portions were well spread out.

My hope is that they add further acts in the form of DLC or expansions. I’d be a little dismayed if new DLC simply made the current acts longer, but would certainly be willing to shell out money for content that advances the game further.

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Honestly, despite the things I took issue with, I’d give the game a 9.5 out of 10.

I tend to enjoy the BioWare level of storytelling though, with VO, cinematics, and with choices that have consequences. Other games simply don’t have that level of immersion, that level of defining your character, or that level of determining how the game plays out. Sometimes other games give you a “choice” but the consequences often don’t affect how things turn out. Important to note that my rating takes that story/choice/experience into account. Most of the other stuff (combat, etc) just has to be “good enough” that I’m able to enjoy the BioWare experience. That’s in stark contrast to other game genres where visuals and combat take precedence (FPS’s), or game balance and strategic depth are important (Civilization series). If I were basing DA2 on those types of games, it’d have a mediocre rating (not bad though all things considered).

If you’ve been watching the news in Canada, you’ve probably seen the recent outrage over UBB. At this point the CRTC has delayed implementation while they look at the issue again. Unfortunately, the quotes I’ve read from the head of the CRTC sounded like they came directly from Bell.

If you haven’t been watching the news, basically Bell asked the CRTC to pass something called “usage based billing”, and they did. Bell claims that it’s because a small percentage of users are using the majority of the data. What UBB does is set a low cap on users, and force them to pay DOLLARS per GB when they go over.

What Bell didn’t say of course was that the true goal of UBB is to make it insanely expensive to watch Netflix, YouTube, etc. That way, people won’t replace their Bell TV/Satellite with Netflix, an Apple TV, etc. Very few people have replaced Bell TV/ExpressVu so far, but the number’s growing as the internet continues to grow, and online video services get better and better. Bell’s concerned, because right now they don’t have any real competition in Canada, so they can charge whatever they want for their TV packages. As we move forward and more content becomes available on the internet, it’s probable that in 10 years, nobody will have Satellite/Cable TV and will instead plug their TV into their internet connection and watch TV through a price-competitive provider.

UBB stops that before it happens. If it’s too expensive to watch TV online, people won’t do it. Bell’s leveraging a monopoly in one market (internet access) to keep a monopoly in another (television). It’s anti-competitive.

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There’s a pile of other collateral damage caused by UBB. The tiny bit of ISP competition that Bell has is forced to adhere to UBB pricing (against their will), which means they can’t offer unlimited packages, which means they’ll lose that competitive edge and will be killed off. Digital distribution methods like Steam, Apple’s app store, and heck, even Windows updates are going to be problematic in Canada. You’ll never be able to use an online backup service for your pictures/videos unless you pay through the nose for the data transfer, so if a fire takes down your home and you didn’t burn your family pics/vids to a DVD and store it offsite… well say goodbye to years of memories. Those are just a few starter examples.

Really, the largest-growing medium in the world is the internet, and this makes sure it stagnates in Canada.

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Anyway, that’s my take on it.

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For Mr. Angus’s take (the NDP’s digital affairs critic), watch the video below. Yes, the sound quality’s rather poor, but Charlie Angus (NDP) really has a grasp of the issues. I found him to be quite likable too. A good quality to have as a politician, no doubt.

Ironically, he admits he’s not a “techie”, but for a non-techie, the guy really *gets* it.

I don’t know about you, but I want this guy representing us in our next government.

If you’ve tried to get the Civ 5 achievement that requires you to start 5 Golden Ages as Darius (Persian), you may have found that it bugged out. You start dozens of Golden Ages, but don’t get the credit. This is particularly annoying if you played Persia specifically to get it.

Looking around, quite a few people have encountered the bug (Civilization V seems to have suffered quite a few in the achievement system). Since it should be one of the easiest nation-based achievement to get, and only 2.2% of people have it, well… it seems it’s hit quite a few people.

There’s a common belief  that manually triggering golden ages causes the bug. Incidentally, that’s the one that seems to make the most sense.

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In any case, what worked for me was as follows:

• Start a game as Darius. If you’ve been “robbed” by the bug before, you may as well play on the easiest difficulty (Settler).
• When you receive a “Great Person” (Great Artist, Great General, Great Scientist, Great Engineer), DO NOT use them to trigger a golden age.
• DO NOT take policies that directly affect golden ages. Don’t take Rationalism (it instantly triggers a 5-turn golden age). Don’t take Piety (policy to reduce happiness needed to start a golden age, trigger for 5-turn golden age).
• DO NOT build the Taj Mahal (instant golden age) or other World Wonders you believe might interfere.

It’s possible that only 1 of these is the culprit, but unless you enjoy trial-and-error (or enjoy playing as Darius/Persia), don’t take anything that triggers a golden age. To be on the safe side, I also avoided wonders/policies that reduce the happiness needed to trigger a golden age as well.

Basically, make sure golden ages happen on their own, as organically as possible. If you place an emphasis keeping your empire really happy and avoid the potential bug triggers, it’s pretty easy to obtain.

I’ll be clear. I’m not allergic to anything I know of except mosquito bites. If you’re reading this because you have allergies, it’s not going to help you. If you’re breathing smokey air, it might.

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A couple problems with air purifiers, and how I was looking to avoid them in the purchase:

• Noise levels. Most air purifiers have low/medium/high settings. Manufacturers explain these very poorly, so I’ll explain them better for you.Low usually means that the sound level might be bearable. Some people might be able to sleep through it, but many won’t. Medium is for people who have already lost a portion of their hearing. High is the speed necessary to meet the CADR levels on the box, but is loud enough that it’ll bother you even if you’re in another room. There are exceptions, but they’re few and far between.To alleviate this problem, I planned to use the Low setting on whatever purifier I chose. This meant that although the room in question would probably suit a CADR of 40 or so, I looked for models that were rated considerably higher.
• Replacement filter costs. I wanted to eliminate them completely. This meant either going with a washable filter, or a lifetime filter. This avoids the problem where you spend more on the filters long-term than the unit itself actually cost, as well as the pain of finding filters for a model once it becomes a few years old.

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The first purchase was a “Honeywell Tower Air Purifier”. If I find the manual I lost, I’ll update this with a model number.

However, it looks like the picture you see on the right.

Since I stole the image from Canadian Tire’s website, it’s only fair to provide a link:

Honeywell Tower Air Purifier
Product Number: 43-5008-2

It currently costs $149.99. When on sale recently, it was about $100.

It has a washable filter, but it’s not a TRUE HEPA filter. It looks to be an ionizer-style. The filters are pretty easy to clean. If you look at the little indented “handle” at the top of the picture, it’s basically a matter of pushing a button and pulling that handle up. The entire assembly slides out, containing the pre-filter and 2 main filters.

The pre-filter is just a screen. It’ll stop larger objects from getting inside – tiny bugs, cat hair, and anything else large-ish that might otherwise manage to get sucked in. A quick rinse with water is all this thing needs if it starts getting plugged up.

The 2 main filters push out of the assembly (a top and bottom filter). Again, these appear to be ionizer plates made primarily of a solid material. It’s done in a grid formation – tiny hollow squares that collect particles which have been electrically charged as they pass through.

I can certainly vouch for the ionizer filter working well. After 12 days, I gave the filters a cleaning in the sink, and the sink was full of brown dirty water – the brown stuff being all the smoke and other junk in the air that the plates had collected.

Air was noticably freshened while the unit was running. It removed smoke from the air (and much of the smell) really well. It made a huge difference.

It was noisier than I liked at the low setting – being placed a couple feet away, I still had to turn up the volume on the computer speakers. It wasn’t by any means unbearable, but not silent by any stretch of the imagination. Medium speed was surprisingly bearable, although the computer speakers had to be cranked significantly to hear anything on the computer. With an active cigarette, medium speed was sufficient to keep the air clear while the cigarette was burning. If you were a chain-smoker, medium would probably be the minimum setting you’d get away with, although you could use low while you slept. High speed was terribly loud. You wouldn’t want to be in the same room.

After 12 days, the unit began to have a serious problem. One of the 2 fans started dying. The sound of “marbles” bouncing around was the first indication, followed quickly by a racket indicating that the fan wasn’t aligned perfectly. Yes, the bearings were dying. After only 12 days. This is actually what prompted the cleaning mentioned above (which obviously had no effect but was worth a shot).

Needless to say, the unit went back to Canadian Tire. It’s unfortunate, because it was very impressive otherwise.

A few other things to note about the unit:
-it’s got a timer you can set if you want the unit to shut off in a few hours
-the CADR is rated at 80
-looking inside, the fans *look* like solid units – you can see the motor assemblies if you look inside, and they’re not dinky little things.
-the humidifier’s Energy Star rated. Again, I lost the manual, but I seem to recall it being rated at around 35W.

In short, a unit with a lot of strengths, overshadowed by a fan that started dying in under 2 weeks. What a shame.

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The second purchase (actually an exchange) was a “Honeywell Permanent True HEPA Round Air Purifier”. Model is the #50100 .

Again, picture is on the right.

Again, I lifted the picture from Canadian Tire’s site, so here’s the link:

Honeywell Permanent True HEPA Round Air Purifier
Product Number: 43-5050-8

It currently costs $99.99. Sale price wasn’t as significant as the 1st model – about $85 this time.

The pre-filter’s an activated charcoal filter. You’re supposed to replace it a few times a year.

The main filter is a HEPA filter. It’s considered permanent/life-time. To clean it, you have to vacuum it.

Here are the issues with the pre-filter… The pre-filter is supposed to be replaced every few months. That part makes sense. Activated charcoal is basically used to freshen the air. Once it’s “used up”, it’s done freshening. Activated charcoal on it’s own doesn’t actually have any filtration characteristics that I’m aware of – it just makes the air smell nicer. Because it’s turned into a mesh in most cases, it does catch large particles (like bugs, etc), but you could do the same thing with a piece of breathable foam, or a screen, etc. In any case, if you want to maintain the “freshness” part, you’ll have to shell out money a few times a year. If you don’t care about the freshness part, you could probably try washing/drying it, or cut up a screen on your own. The other big issue with the pre-filter is that the “mesh” is made up of a lot of loose material. As soon as you install this thing and turn the humidifier on, the main filter sucks up a lot of these chunks of loose material. You’re essentially plugging up the main filter within seconds of turning the thing on.

Issues with the main filter are… it has to be vacuumed. You can’t wash it. The ability for your vacuum to actually suck out all the small particles plugging the filter in the first place is up for debate. Now assume for the moment that your vacuum cleaner manages to suck every last particle out of the filter, making it “like-new”. If your vacuum cleaner doesn’t use a HEPA filter, all those particles are just going back into the air where they’ll end up either in your lungs, or back in the purifier again! If your vacuum cleaner DOES use a HEPA filter, you’ve just instantly plugged up THAT filter.

Talk about a lose-lose situation. Alternately, you could buy another filter once it plugs up. But then what’s the point of calling it a “permanent life-time” filter?

Moving on, the sound levels are somewhat similar to the 1st purifier, although slightly louder. It moves more air though (100 CADR vs 80 CADR). Using the previous example of a chain-smoker, you can leave this thing on “low” and it seems to do almost as well as the 1st one on “medium” in terms of keeping the room from filling up with a smokey haze.

Air freshness isn’t quite as good for smoke. The room smells more smokey than the first model, even though it isn’t. Technically, this thing should catch smaller particles though (since it’s a True HEPA filter). There are trade-offs here.

In terms of filter replacement/cleaning, it’s a little more involved. First, there aren’t any built-in indicators. You have to turn little knobs to adjust the “calendar” and use that as a reminder as to when you need to do it. It seems to me like we’re seeing ground-breaking technology of the 1960′s in action. As far as actual replacement goes, you flip the unit upside-down, unscrew a knob, and then pull the inside section out. The pre-filter wraps around the main one and is secured in place by velcro. It’s not as elegant as the 1st one, but it’s pretty simple nonetheless. Once you’ve replaced/vacuumed/etc, it just slides back in, you tighten the knob, and flip the unit back over again.

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Overall, I’m a little disappointed with the sound levels of each. I’d really like a purifier that’s truly quiet on the lower settings. It’s honestly not that hard to design. It’s called “using one massive fan that utilizes the maximum possible space”, and “designing an enclosure to minimize restrictions in airflow”. If you want to get really fancy, you can get into actual fan-blade design, well thought-out-bearings, and all that other fun stuff, but I’ll keep my expectations for the future low for now.

In terms of smokey-air, the 1st purifier really did a good job alleviating it. The 2nd got rid of the smoke, but not as much of the smell.

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As a final note, smokers should keep in mind that an air purifier will pull smoke out of the air, and maybe even some of the chemicals that smell. However, there are toxins created by smoking that it won’t remove. A simple example is carbon monoxide (CO – the same gas in car exhaust that helps in making it so deadly). Thus, you still want to make sure that you still introduce fresh air, even with a purifier running. The air might not smell like it’s poisonous, but it might be getting poisonous without your knowledge.

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UPDATE: I picked up the Honeywell HFD-122C from Canadian Tire (2 actually). Image on the right. It’s very similar to the black purifier listed at the beginning, although this one is rated at 110 CADR (more than either of the 2 above). The low setting is quite a bit quieter than the others, and medium’s pretty reasonable too. High isn’t brutal, although it still drowns out other nearby sounds.

Compared to the round HEPA, the removal of smoke smell was instantly noticable. Since I bought two, I placed the first in a smokey room, and the second near a littlerbox in the basement where it started getting rid of the litterbox-smell right away.

It has the additional benefit of being able to automatically oscillate (rotate) roughly 90 degrees. It’s also Energy Star rated – I’d have to run down and double check the box but I seem to recall 42 watts at max speed being the rating.

Regular price was about $170, but on sale it went for about $100 – the same sale price as the 1st purifier mentioned.

Given that it’s quieter, has a higher CADR rating, oscillates, and can be found for the same sale price as the black one, I’d easily recommend this one over the others for smoke. Even at regular price, it’s worth the extra $20 over the black model.

I’ve only had them running for a couple hours, but I’ll update if I find anything amiss.