rayzoredge

Something I recommend you do if you find yourself activating your copy of Windows XP (or any Microsoft OS, for that matter):When you go to activate your copy of XP, note the hardware code that the activation software spits out. Also, when you receive your activation code, WRITE IT DOWN. The hardware code is basically a hash generated by the hardware you have installed in your machine, and if it's a laptop or a stock, pre-fabricated machine like a Dell where you will never be digging into the guts to upgrade or change anything, the hardware code will always stay the same and thus, the key that will correspond to that particular hash. Save the key in a text document on an external hard drive or somewhere where you can access it if you need it, or just print-screen the hardware code and key before you activate your copy of XP. That way, you don't have to make agonizing phone calls to Microsoft, especially when XP finally leaves the pedestal of being supported thanks to the humongous failure we all know as Vista and the scary prospective of Windows 7, something that strangely resembles Vista. (Hopefully things are a lot better under the hood with that one.)You can also just snag a retail copy of the OS that you use so that you don't have to deal with this all the time. I'm not going to elaborate just how you should go about doing this, but I'll tell you that I've never had to activate my copy each time I had to do a re-wipe and re-install of my copy of Windows XP Professional.

So I'm deciding to move on from my desktop replacement to pursue something much more modern. I have an HP zd8000 (Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz, 2GB RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon X600 w/ 256MB VRAM, 80GB HD) that I will let my girlfriend use to replace her dying Dell Inspiron (Intel Duo Core 1.5GHz, 512MB RAM, some NVIDIA chip) because it suffers from random shutdowns (or more accurately, the computer just losing power on her). Instead of trying to fix the darn thing, I think I'll just use it as a tinker toy and maybe even try to restore some life to it by cleaning it out. The one thing I'm afraid of with her and my laptop is that she'll kill it too with the one thing she's so stubborn about: having coffee near the laptop. (That's what ails the Dell: multiple instances of coffee spillage.) Now, I'm actually at a decision standstill. Aside from being broke, I'm not sure whether to get a desktop or a laptop. I know most of the pros and cons to each, but I'm not sure still where to put my money (when I do have it to purchase a machine). The desktop system that I'm looking at building is a vast improvement from what I'm used to: a custom-built machine that will actually fly in comparison (performance-wise) to anything else I've used in the past. - Case: NZXT TEMPEST Crafted Series CS-NT-TEM-B Black Steel / Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail Motherboard: EVGA 132-CK-NF78-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail Power Supply: CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply - Retail Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor Model BX80562Q6600 - Retail RAM: CORSAIR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X4096-6400C5 - Retail http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Hard Drive: SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD753LJ 750GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM (x2) Optical Drive: SAMSUNG 22X DVD?R DVD Burner with LightScribe Black SATA Model SH-S223Q - OEM Video Card: EVGA 896-P3-1265-AR GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card - Retail - This whole setup will ring up at around $1300... and that doesn't include a monitor or speakers, which would add another good bit. (Any constructive critique to this prospective build would be awesome.) Now... owning a desktop would have the advantages of being able to pick and choose what you put into the machine (component-wise), get the most for your money, and be able to afford more power. Aside from the obvious fact that I can't move this monster around anywhere I want (as opposed to having the portable form factor of a laptop), I'm wondering about how much this rig will run me to keep it ticking, power-usage-wise. (I haven't exactly thrown a Kill-A-Watt into the mix to figure out how much kW I'll be pulling out of the wall to run this thing, but 750W of potential power is a lot of juice.) Of course, there are all the extra cables, and it doesn't come with a monitor or speakers, which add on to more money. I almost feel like this would be the dream rig to purchase in the future (since I wasn't exactly being too careful with picking out cheap components, like running two GT 8800's - $80 each - in SLI instead of the $300 GT 260 I have in the build), but it might be a reality if maybe I tone things down a bit. (But what self-respective geek would want to "tone it down a bit?") - On the other end of the spectrum, I've been looking at the gaming laptop value of the Gateway P-7811FX, a machine with crazy specs for what it's being offered for. Under the hood: Case: 15.7 in x 11.7 in x 1.7 in @ 9.3 lbs Motherboard: integrated Power Supply: 120W AC adapter Processor: Intel Core Duo P8400 @ 2.26GHz RAM: 4 GB DDR3 SDRAM (2x2 DIMM) Hard Drive: 200 GB 7200 rpm Optical Drive: DVD-RW / DVD-RAM Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTS w/ 512MB VRAM Sound Card: Integrated The laptop also includes a 5 in 1 card reader, the 17" 1920 x 1200 WUXGA widescreen display, integrated webcam, integrated wireless connectivity, and a handful of connectivity and expansion opportunities (2 free SODIMM slots, 1 ExpressCard, 3 USB 2.0 ports, 1 VGA port, 1 IEEE 1394 FireWire port, 1 HDMI port). It comes with Vista Premium and a ton of bloatware too. I can find this laptop on eBay @ around $1100. The pros of owning a laptop would be the obvious portability (even at 9.3 lbs, not including the AC adapter), the included display and speakers, less cable mess, and the reduced power usage. Largest con here is that I know I'll be paying more for the form factor than anything else... not exactly a best-bang-for-the-buck (even though this laptop is a steal in itself, performance-wise). - Now, I want to know how much of an impact a 750W machine has in consuming power (and therefore, how much impact it has on the electricity bill) compared to a machine that draws a maximum of 120W. (I often leave my machines idle to download things and lately, I've been running the HP to keep my external hard drive on to stream movies and music to my 360 for the kids and GF while they're at home and while I'm at work.) Also, I want to know your thoughts on the considerations between owning a desktop and owning a laptop. The decision might be dependent on HOW I use my computers too... I usually leave my HP upstairs, but occasionally bring it down to do my thing, physically sitting next to my girlfriend. (Yes, we're weird like that.) I actually use my computer mostly for Internet, but I do some occasional Photoshop work, video processing, and the killer here would be occasional gaming... with emphasis on first-person shooters that I would like to have a good frame rate. (I have NEVER played a game at high quality settings with a frame rate greater than 25. Best graphics I've seen so far is Call of Duty 4 at 1400x900 with NOTHING else turned on... or F.E.A.R. at medium settings @ 1024x768, both at frame rates varying from 4 to 23 FPS.) So what do you guys and gals think?

I agree with the OP about the bastardization of the English language, but not to the extent that some people actually believe he/she went to.I actually make fun of people who use Internet slang and acronyms in real life. I even make fun of the acronyms for the heck of it, like spelling out "LOL" or "OMG" for comic relief. (You leave yourself open to ridicule if you actually use these in normal, regular conversation... not to mention academic applications.) I love how people say that they don't care about spelling or the use of acronyms during IMs and whatnot, but then I end up proofreading their paperwork because out of habit, they can't spell or utilize grammar in an actual, intelligible fashion. Forgive me if I'm on a high horse, but having these kinds of habits can be detrimental, and personally, I feel that we're actually falling back in this "evolution" of the English language.Yes, I understand texting. I hate doing that crap because it takes a few minutes to text what you could physically say in a few seconds, but it does have its advantages. But if I need to get ahold of you in a hurry, I'll call you. (I won't wait for a text message, nor will I spend the time to try to send you a text... because I'm THAT lazy. Go figure.)In IMs, it can actually go either way. If you really want to save time and energy to minimize keystrokes, I've seen results that don't fit the bill. For example, "OMG dats so kool!!!!!!!!!!" will equate to 24 keystrokes. "Oh my God, that's so cool!" will equate to the same, PLUS you don't pass yourself as being immature or lacking the discipline to actually type out the words. And then there are those instances where you actually use MORE keystrokes in putting out what you want to say, like "LOL!!!" instead of "Haha," as you can obviously see.Also, if you are actually texting "BRB" to someone, it's kind of redundant since texting is something that you do if you have the time to kill, and you can even safely assume that if you don't get a timely response, the other person is probably actually doing something instead of bastardizing the English language.

It would be nice to be able to throw 400GB of data onto a medium the same size of a CD. Artists could offer lossless quality versions of their albums. Movies can fit even more special features and offer even higher-quality video quality, or, as Jhaslip said, offer multiple HD-quality movies on a single disc instead of having to purchase a 10-disc set. And of course, this throws a viable, possibly cheaper backup solution for PCs considering that once the hardware has been purchased, only the Blu-Ray discs need to be bought for 400GB a pop as opposed to hundreds of dollars for a hard drive of the same size. (The cost per GB would ideally be less than purchasing a hard drive solution, I would think.)SM is on the ball with our inclination towards streamed media and hard drive solutions. Heck, I'm more opt to snag a hard drive over a compact disc just because it eliminates the potential of scratching it. Also, with data transfer technologies, it's much faster to move GBs of data to a hard drive than it is to burn a DVD movie... and I can only imagine how the first-generation Blu-Ray burners are doing at 1X-2X. The form factor of a CD easily beats a portable hard drive, but pales in comparison to the USB sticks that we love to hang on our keychains and wash in the laundry before realizing that they were carelessly left in our pockets...Until Blu-Ray becomes more mainstream and affordable, not to mention become a viable replacement for DVDs, I'm sure that Pioneer's left with just being able to flex the tech muscle.

This is just a personal gripe... but could we bring back New Posts/New Topics at the bottom of each page like it was before?More categories would be nice too... I find myself putting a lot of things under General Talk, but then again, we'll have to identify them as they come along.

I suppose that would mean you threw in a bad stick of RAM... if you just started experiencing these random restarts, inability to run programs at times, etc.If that's the case, I recommend you return the chip and get another one. If that's not the case, you'll have to play with trial and error to find the bad stick of RAM.On a laptop, it is VERY easy to change, add, or remove RAM from the system. Most laptops will have an access panel on the bottom where you can take out a bolt to gain access. Your laptop manual or a quick Google search will be able to tell you where it is, and it should also tell you HOW to change out RAM. The chips usually are held in by tabs, so pushing/pulling the tabs in a direction will free the RAM for removal. I know that in the case of my laptop, I simply insert and remove my RAM at an angle, then seat it flat.Just make sure that you're grounded lest you want to fry components. P.S. About recommending good RAM: You get what you pay for... literally, to an extent. The important things to look for is CAS latency as well as the story behind the RAM history of the company you're buying from. I hear that Dell is cheap and has cheap components, which really means that they'll work but won't last forever. I've heard good things about Kingston and Crucial, of course, but then again, they pretty much dominate as far as brand names go. Not sure how I would feel with Patriot PC or any other brands I've never heard of. Do your homework, read reviews, and see ratings for different products. If you see a trend, I'd steer clear of infamously-bad components and/or brands.

Obviously you didn't relax as much as you should have with the forum upgrade and all... Hope you had a good one, ya old fart. pyost: I LOL'd.

If that's the case, your USB ports in your PC will operate at 2.0 "Hi-Speed" transfer rates. Anything plugged into the hub becomes bottle-necked at 1.1, since it seems that your hub doesn't support USB 2.0. That's why you'll see the message that your device can operate faster if connected to a 2.0 port.

Very nicely done. Kudos.

@ bullet-absorbing newbYou'd probably be all right with going with the Arcade and forking over the $20 for the headset. Then again, there are some games that do some exclusive file work with hard drives though, especially with downloading new content off of XBox Live, so with the Pro having a 60GB HD, it's still a consideration. I'm seeing 20GB HDs on eBay going for $35-40, so if you snag those two items, we're already at $60... $40 less than just going Pro. An actual 60GB HD will run you $50-60. That Pro package is starting to look good...I went with a Pro just because I figured it was a good deal, and I'm glad I didn't skimp out because of the argument I'm putting out here as far as a hard drive and the bundled stuff it comes with. I actually rarely play my 360 nowadays (which hopefully will change soon), so it would have been economical for myself to have gone with the Arcade.Throw the extra $100 bucks in. I'm sure that The Orange Box is going to have a lot of online content to snag, like new maps. P.S. The cake is a lie.

This really becomes the question of whether you're going to plan on getting better hardware or not.Yes, the hard drive and headset and whatnot can be purchased separately. However, they might run you higher than the extra $100 to purchase them altogether with the Pro package. Do you really want a headset? Are you going to establish a component/optical setup instead of the usual RCA hookup? (Do you even have a television and sound system that can take advantage of this?)I wouldn't worry so much about what games you're going to get with the bundle... since you can always snag games cheap used on Amazon or anywhere else. Also, make sure that the 360 was made after 2007 by checking the barcode on the system and looking for "FDOU" and the number "734." This ensures that your 360 has the new Falcon motherboard and chipset, the newest hardware upgrade to the 360 that deals with heat issues much better than the original hardware did (which led up to the infamous Red Rings of Death, which will lead up to two weeks if not more of having to ship your 'box out and waiting for it to be repaired).I personally would go for the Pro, but you might be smart in choosing the Arcade and saving the money for games if you're not going to be worrying about a 60GB hard drive or getting the hybrid composite/component cable right away. But my entertainment priorities are a little different than yours, as I planned at one point to go high-definition... which, of course, changed when the budget took a drastic turn towards being tight.

You don't have to spend a lot for nice, meaningful Christmas gifts.Put those creative muscles to work and make stuff for gifts. Anything from making frames, little trinkets, or anything that they can find use out of will work out... unless your intended recipients are not one for sentimental, hand-crafted items.Gift certificates work wonders too. Throw them $10-$20 towards the stores you know that they shop at most. I usually go for Visa gift cards so that they can use them anywhere instead of being locked to just one store... but it doesn't matter much if you know for a fact that they shop at particular stores often enough.Smaller and cheaper does not necessarily mean "smaller" and being cheaper, either. If you know that something that doesn't cost a whole lot will mean more to them than the $50 doodad over yonder, then go for the cheaper gig.Good luck on that front. I'm on the same boat.

Ugh. I suffered the same exact problem with my Dell Inspiron 8600 when I had it a few years ago. At "maximum" volume, it was barely audible... definitely not something you can deal with if you're going to be trying to watch a movie with half a dozen other onlookers behind you trying to hear the dialogue. If I remember correctly, what I ended up doing after hours of fiddling around advanced settings and updating drivers was that I just installed the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack, which included the gem that I believe fixed my problem: the AC3 filter audio codec. This audio codec included preferences that you could set to bolster your audio volume... not to mention it does it by default anyway. (You will definitely be able to hear audio out of your laptop speakers after installing the codec.) Not trying to push software that you might not be unfamiliar with (because we all know how pleasant it is to download something that doesn't work out the way we want them to, especially when you get the recommendation from someone random on the Internet like me ), but I can personally vouch using the codec pack since its 3.0 revision, and I still use it to be able to play a variety of different audio and video files with Windows Media Player. Give it a shot... I'm sure it'll be able to help you out.

This is not shocking, not new for the Internet, and definitely not unexpected.There is an imageboard/forum that I'm sure a handful of us may be familiar with that subjects this kind of material just about every day, not to mention that it is a very common reply to a newbie to any forum on the Internet.People kill themselves every day, for one reason or another. A lot of younger folks threaten suicide for attention, and then there is a portion of that lot that actually are willing to push that limit. Usually the folks that threaten with it to receive attention would do it on a wide-scale medium, like the Internet in this case, so I'm sure that even the part of the audience that was joking didn't take his threat seriously. But it would probably be surprising to know for a lot of us that people show the lowest standards of humanity while they stay anonymous behind a computer monitor on the Internet. Just look at YouTube comments. And forum posts in flaming threads. It's amazing what gumption people will muster when they know that no one knows who they are.The imageboard/forum that I talked about earlier earned its nickname of being the "*ssh*l* of the Internet" because it promotes anonymity with its participants... with no membership, no information, not even a name required to post content onto the forum. Everyone is Anonymous. And I'm sure it's starting to click with some more Internet-savvy folk why Anonymous is an Internet meme.I think that this kind of thing desensitizes people. It's easy to see how people become less caring for human life when we're constantly bombarded on the news with numbers, casualties, environmental disasters, and criminal activity. A murder here and there doesn't even faze us... it just commands a sort of "mandatory response" like "Oh my word" just to add to the supposed drama of the situation at hand. Do you really care about all of the kids that perish from malnutrition, the people that lose their homes and lives to the latest floods, the murder that happened in a city miles away from your home? That's something that we can all ask ourselves when we catch ourselves "feeling sympathy." Is it really sympathy, or is it the expected response that we've literally trained ourselves to reply with when confronted with a matter that doesn't deal with ourselves?This teenager is one of many that will undergo depressive cycles, or become a victim of a supposed mental condition, or whatever. Are we going to be equally shocked to hear about the suicides that we DON'T hear about? Television does a pretty good job of blowing things out of proportion, doesn't it? While we throw out "grievances" towards this one incident, many others will die unbeknownst to us... with the "war" in Iraq, the epidemics in third world countries, even the situations like poverty, lack of heat, or anything else that we've put ourselves into in the "good 'ol USA."I guess what I'm trying to say is that this kind of stuff is not new, especially with an audience goading a particular someone to go kill themselves with no inclination of actually facing that reality if and when it does happen. It's been on the Internet and will probably always be on the Internet... along with all the other horrible things that people say under the protection of anonymity.

This is going to be a forever-ongoing discussion... I took a gander at the reports on AV Comparatives and saw their test results for affecting performance as well as scanning efficiency and ability to detect threats. I also noticed that Norton is rather non-intrusive in affecting general performance, notably boot time, according to AVC's testing. What I'm not understanding is why when I load up Norton Antivirus 2007 onto my machine, it adds a solid minute to my boot time, keeping the Welcome screen on for a full minute before finally booting into Windows. I recently changed over to Avira to give it a good solid test run and my computer boots up MUCH quicker into Windows than it previously did. Also, just for kicks I did a manual scan with Avira on my external hard drive, which I know harbors a few threats that I know of thanks to Norton. Avira found the same threats, although it seemed slower in scanning during a manual scan compared to Norton. I guess that in conclusion, if you used Norton and found the same problem with a long boot time as a result of installing NAV, I can recommend Avira. I'd recommend the Premium Suite though as far as a replacement goes, considering that it has similar components minus the firewall feature (which is included with the Security Suite).

Looking at the picture a little more closely, it looks like it represents TWO USB ports, instead of the one. I'm seeing backwards-compatibility with having two sets of contacts... the purple being the older USB 2.0, and the red being the newer USB 3.0. It seems to work out quite well, actually... because now you have three generations of technology in one "universal" port. I'm glad I've waited this long so far to buy my next computer. USB 3.0 is going to be a godsend when it becomes a standard to providing super-high-speed external devices, instead of having to hunt down all of the components to set up an eSATA external hard drive. And if the claims for 4.8GB/s maximum transfer speeds are accurate, then I'm sure that the actual transfer rates would be near, if not exceeding, the 3.0GB/s transfer rates of SATA technology. (No bottlenecking!)

serverph, that's absolutely insane... and awesome.

I find it humorous that words like these make it into the dictionary as official words. I'm sure that the creators and the people who use them don't use them in official documentation... but I guess it's possible now. The question is if and how you would incorporate words like "meh" and "ginormous" into technical writing or even a college essay without getting a funny look from a potential reader.Meh.

I actually just ran into another option for you today while trying to research why Adobe Photoshop CS3 wouldn't install. (Instead, there were two instances of Photoshop CS3 "installed" onto my computer, according to Add/Remove Programs.) Take a look into the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility. It's free and Adobe mentions its use to clean out bad CS3/CS2 installations... and from using Adobe's script in conjunction with the utility, my work computer finally got around to installing Photoshop CS3 correctly and with no hassle. Can't vouch too much for it, though, since I've only used it once...

It's interesting to know that waiting pays off.I was actually thinking of picking up one of these PCs for use and experimentation... with it being nigh-indestructible and easy for kids to use. I'd love to pick them up for my girlfriend's kids, but they're a little out of my budget at the moment.These things seem awesome. There have been demonstrations of children taking apart and putting back together these things, and the fact that the Linux interface provided with these laptops is easy enough for anyone to use. Combine that with automatic peer-to-peer network connectivity, WiFi, a chassis that can survive extreme heat and cold, dust-resistant and if I remember correctly a rugged, water-resistant design, and wrap all that up in a package less than $200 is a winner in a lot of books... putting every kids laptop you see for $80 or more at your local Toys 'R Us to shame.I'm not sure how these things actually work out in reality, as all of my opinions are based on... well... what's told about it, plus the peer reviews that consumers have put out on it, but I wouldn't hesitate to buy three of these for the kids... given that I was a little better off and was able to afford three of them.

First off, this opinion is going to be biased against World of Warcraft. And I'm going to tell you why, along with all the cons of playing this game. (Apparently, 10.5 million people can't be wrong... so I'm one of the odd ducklings out.)So here's a massively-multiplayer online role playing game. The concept seems neat, and a lot of people world-wide love this game for some reason. Maybe it's the vast in-game world. Or the plethora of instances/quests that have you find this person, kill this thing, kill everything, get this thing. Or the fact that it's an easy, hack-and-slash game that most people would be able to pick up and mindlessly use their all-powerful characters to kill anything in their way.I am not an RPG guy anymore. Since Diablo II, I've lost the fancy for bunny-bashing to save up meager amounts of gold to buy something slightly better than what I have to make my character a bit better. Something about taking the time to level a character up to level 60, which is a feat in itself that takes up a lot of time, only to find out that I can only max out at level 60 (which now is level 80, with Wrath of the Lich King out) and none of the things I kill matter to my experience point level anymore. A handful of friends that I know that play the game are perfectly content with being in their guilds, skinning stuff for their leatherworking ability and selling their goods, finding motes and rare items, and going on repetitive, mindless quests to increase their reputation which grants them availability to better items.I don't get the incentive to do all of this constantly for years on end, considering the fact that World of Warcraft came out in 2004. That's FOUR years of playing the same game, day by day or even once in a while.Think of that time table. Now think of how much this costs the hardcore gamer.I'm sure that World of Warcraft came in at a vanilla price of $40 at least when it was released. Burning Crusades followed it at the same price... an expansion that would then cost more than the game. Now Wrath of the Lich King has come out, which I grudgingly bought for my girlfriend since she loves that one game so much... for $40. So far, we're up to $120 on software, assuming that we bought these at retail and around the time of release.World of Warcraft was released on November 23, 2004, according to Wiki. It is almost the four-year anniversary for the game. World of Warcraft is a pay-to-play MMORPG, which hits the wallet at $15 a month, essentially. If you followed this game since inception, you would have forked over $720, not to mention the $120 on the software itself... giving you the sad number of $840 for the continuous play of ONE game.Ouch.I understand that there's a social component to the game too, and my girlfriend really plays to help out her guild as well as "hang out" with her friends virtually. The funny thing is that anyone can already do that with a multitude of free, online games. They are not what World of Warcraft is, by no doubt, but at the same time, is World of Warcraft that good of a game?I actually sat down last week to give the game a shot, since it would only be fair for me to try it out, not to mention that I wanted to add something to the list of things that my girlfriend and I (as well as some friends) could do together. My experience was more than disappointing and frustrating, even though I KNEW what I was going to be going through. Well, for the most part, anyway.If you are going to start World of Warcraft now, keep in mind what I had to go through... look at my arguments against the game, and then ask yourself if it's really worth it.I began my trial by receiving an invite for the game from my girlfriend. I set up my account, then I got the link to download the trial version of the game. After downloading it, I realized that Blizzard's web site passed on to me a slip stream version of the trial, which wasn't going to work due to servers being bogged down to content updates. (This instance won't happen all of the time... I just have bad luck.) So already I'm a little peeved for wasting my time to download something that won't do me any good, and then I proceeded to download the trial version of the game that would work.All 5GB of it.After day one of my trial gone (as I let this download overnight), I was ready to play. I ran the WoW client, installed the game, then ran the game.A splash screen came up, graying out the Play button and putting up the notification that it was downloading a patch. After some prompting, I agreed to download the patch... which was a 25MB file. Not bad for bandwidth nowadays... although DSL users would have complained. So I applied the patch and ran the application again.And again.And again.The client would not let me play the game. Each time I ran it, another patch would have to be downloaded and installed. This was beyond stupid, as each patch required you to sit there and wait, prompt you that it was done (which required you to acknowledge it), and the killer was that you had to do this each time for each patch, instead of downloading them all at once. I believe I downloaded about 3GB worth of patches, so now we're up to an 8GB game.Now here's my gripe about the trial: Why couldn't they incorporated all of the current patches into the current trial download so that you wouldn't have to suffer through this crap? Or even at least consolidate all of the patches into a trial-to-X.X.0 patch? Or something that would make more sense than what I just had to do?Ridiculous.So now with two days of my trial, dead, I'm left with 7 days of my trial. 7 days to enjoy a game that I'm already pissed at.The game itself looks cartoonish in-game... not really close to the cinematics that are shown to bolster the "cool" factor of the game. You can customize your characters from a set of faces, hairstyles, skin color, and facial hair, as well as gender, race, and class. I can't remember if you can change your clothing or not. When in-game, there is a decent tool-tip function to figure out the mechanics of the game, but a lot of the stuff I had to learn for myself, which was okay because I'm used to that kind of thing. Not very fun to those just entering the MMORPG world...The game seems somewhat based with Dungeons and Dragons mechanics, and I know because I used to actually roll some dice when I was younger. It was nostalgic to see how my elven rogue character couldn't wear anything better than cloth or leather as per D&D tradition, and some things I recognized which felt good that they stayed to the traditional aspect of things. I should have known that the dice rolling would have been a killjoy to the game experience (in my opinion), since the tacky damage numbers that arise from damage per second (as opposed to damage per hit) made things just look... well, tacky.Then again, I'm a guy that likes to see my sword connect with what I'm hitting before the dice roll calculations make up how much damage I do to my target and determining if I slay them or not, as opposed to the damage per second where the enemy lays dead after a delay in information processing in-game. Horrible.I got up to level 4 before I had to stop my gameplay because I wanted to sleep. Most gamers stay up past the wee hours of morning on raids and instances for this game... thankfully enough, my girlfriend was not one of them.The next day, I looked up the cool stuff I would be missing out on if I didn't follow up with this game. A lot of the abilities and skills that I could do seemed kind of neat, but I'm afraid that my Backstab ability for my rogue would end up being a lackluster animation that would lead to XX points of damage and a insta-dead enemy that the server lag would cause in-game.That's another thing. Lag.My friend just tried playing the other day and couldn't even log into the game because WoW servers were so bogged down with players that there was a waiting list. In his case, his queue was 600.He didn't even bother to play that night.My girlfriend who just got the Wrath of the Lich King, itching to play, was fortunate enough to jump onto the Moonrunner server. It would have been cool to try out the new expansion... but when everyone else in the world was trying to play the game and checking out the new additions to it, and along with the waiting lists and the immense LAG, I could feel her pain. Her 1-4 frame-per-second pain.I know I'm not an RPG guy at heart anymore... or at least I don't have any special place for World of Warcraft, so of course there will be heavy bias against the game itself. Anyone would like to defend this game? Like I've read somewhere online, 10.5 million people can't be wrong... so prove me wrong.

Delete this post. I just realized how much of a dope I am.

I think that this should share categorization with being a tutorial for creating your own external hard drive solution as opposed to purchasing a pre-fabricated external hard drive.You'll have to post some sort of review on the hard drive and enclosure you're using sometime in the future, not to mention the backup solutions that you'll use. I personally just manually drag and drop after wiping out the backup once each month... it eliminates having to install software, but then again, the automated process makes sure that you don't forget to do it in the first place. Also, backing up frequently makes sure that you have the latest and greatest, but at the same time it deteriorates the lifespan of your hard drive... and I'm already scared to lose everything on my external that I use for everything, not to even mention what I would lose on a 1TB if it died unexpectantly. With that in mind, the DVD route would be a pain in the bum... especially with bad burns, the possibility of scratching the disc, and actually losing the DVDs themselves in the massive piles of CDs and DVDs that we've all accumulated over the years. That's why I actually opted for the hard disk solution like you did a while back and have been doing it since I purchased my first 200GB.Very, very informative. People that are scared of technology, take note on how easy this is instead of paying for a pre-fabricated external hard drive that you might pay more for or sacrifice looks (or even functionality and reliability) for the other.

My portable solution is nowhere near as portable as I'd like it to be. I run a 500GB internal hard drive in a 3.5" enclosure that requires a power supply along with the USB device cable. It's awesome to keep all of my pictures, personal items, downloaded movies and program installation files, music, and everything in between... and I back all of this stuff up on an identical, "backup" drive at least once a month. It really is the way to go for people like me that download movies and such, not to mention actually be able to fit all that data without compromising valuable scratch disk space as well as page file potential on the local hard drive of a laptop.It's an ideal solution for desktops too, as you can make your backup and then leave the backup drive alone until the next time you need to backup. Hard drives have a lifespan, so the longer and more often you have them on, the more hours of life that are sucked out of the very hard drive that you store your files on and boot your computer with... so I would recommend at the very least to get an external hard drive to back up the important stuff, especially pictures of friends, family, the kids, etc. (Keep in mind that with pictures, the newer digital cameras with the increase in image quality will take up more room per picture... and I don't think anyone in their right mind would want to compress or shrink any personal photos to save up disk space.)I got my 500GB solution for around $160 USD... and the same solution now cost probably about $120 USD. (Darn progression of technology and declining prices... ) You can get external solutions even cheaper, but you might as well future-proof yourself and look towards of 250+ GB, since even the terabyte isn't that unreachable to the average consumer.As far as 2.5" hard drives go, you pay for the form factor, so expect to fork over more of an arm and a leg to be able to fit a hard drive in your pocket.Note to laptop users: If your laptop is new enough to support ExpressCard 2.0 or has an eSATA port and your external hard drive has a SATA interface, use it in conjunction with your external hard drive(s). Your hard drive's data transfer rates will then not be bottlenecked as much with USB 2.0's maximum, which is highly theoretical with its overhead. SATA is the way to go. It is worth throwing the extra $30-50 towards the additional equipment if it means a few hours less of waiting time when backing up 500GB's worth of data.

Everyone's going to be slightly biased, at the very least, in their choices for best members of Xisto.I don't have a personal favorite, but I do know for a fact that there are some notably-fine members that actually make contributions to discussions as well as help members. This list will be edited many, many times as I realize how many people I forget :Saint MichaelJlhaslipAnwiiPrincessTikiTrueFusionShadowXrvalkassSonesayServerphVelmaGalexcdOnScreenWaterMonkeyElectriicInkKansukeKojimaBuffaloHelpBlueBearkobra500travstatesmanbthaxorwillielwggThere are a lot more people that are deserving of having so much informative input, and we have a lot to learn from each other. This includes regulars, old members, and new additions. I don't think that we have a best member... but there are a lot of candidates and unsung heroes. P.S. Hopefully I didn't spell anyone's username incorrectly... and if I did, sorry.