mikeszekely

I'll grant you that, while not necessarily originating these ideas, Halo may have popularized them. Heck, Halo (and Goldeneye before it) really brought FPS games to the console-playing masses, and I'll certainly give it credit where credit is due. The first Halo was one of the first games that I bought for my original Xbox (although it was actually DoA 3 that sold me on the console), and I did like it at the time. Halo's problem isn't that it's always been generic, just that it feels generic now. Halo's problem is that Halo 3 isn't at all different than Halo 2, which wasn't really that different from the original. Meanwhile, other developers are taking pretty much everything off of your checklist, but trying to throw something else into the mix to differentiate themselves. Bioshock gave us so much atmosphere that the setting of Rapture deserves to be though of as a character (as well as giving us Plasmids). Call of Duty gave us intense scripted events that both reminded us that war is hell and made us feel like a part of a greater war, not a super-soldier single-handedly ruining the enemies' days. Crysis gave us nanosuits (with all the cloaking fun that goes along with it). F.E.A.R. gave us surprisingly engaging horror. I guess what I'm trying to say is that Halo isn't a bad game... it was even great in its time, but that time has passed and there happens to be better FPS games on the market now.

What's wrong with 6.0? I'm just curious. I've had an original PSP Phat since launch. I put a custom firmware on it a long time ago. I didn't bother to keep up with it, though. Whatever firmware I had on it was good enough to do Gundam Battle Universe and Macross Ace Frontier. I'm concerned that Ultimate Frontier will require me to update the firmware, and rather than dicking around trying to figure out if I can upgrade my CFW with a newer one, or if the newest CFW is compatible enough, I'm thinking about buying a PSP-3000 and importing Ultimate Frontier. I'd leave the hacked Phat alone with the CFW that's on it, but I figured I'd update the 3000 to whatever the current official firmware is.

Yeah, except for me 95 was fine, it was 98 that gave me issues. And you left out Windows 2000.

Five years is a good run for a computer. Seriously, I know that a lot of people don't think that they need to upgrade if all they do is get on the internet. And I know that a lot of people are kind of spoiled by the fact that XP is still around when it should have been killed years ago. But if you think back, between late August of 1995 and February of 2000 Microsoft released four versions of Windows. Vista's on the way out in under three years. Windows XP's shelf life is a fluke. And since most people don't bother upgrading an OS without simply buying a new computer with it pre-installed, and even if you assume that most customers skip a generation of Windows (that is, had 95 but skipped 98, went with ME but skipped 2000, etc), you're still probably looking at a five-year average between new computers. Then there's people like me. I'll be lucky if I go three years before the lust for "latest and greatest" drives me to upgrade. As it is, I'm fighting to urge to buy the first DirectX 11-compatible video card to hit the market.

I do need a new PSP (my launch unit's UMD drive is busted), but with the PSP-3000 $80 cheaper and me having a small stack of UMDs, not a chance.

I dunno about the rest, but that Bludgeon is going with my Classics/Universe Decepticons.

You misspelled "awesome."

I'm planning on getting it, but probably for the PC. I loves me some mouse and keyboard when I play FPS.

Well, I finished Arkham Asylum (GotY contender, IMHO), so my plate might not be as full as I thought... still, I think I'd give the new Need For Speed a try before ODST. I just played Wolfenstein not long ago, and I've got Modern Warfare 2 to look forward too. Like yelowlightman said, there's enough FPS goodness to go around, but it's probably been at least a year since I played a racing game.

Am I the only 360 owner who's passing on ODST? As much as I liked the original Halo, I feel like other FPS franchises do more things better now. Halo 3 was kind of a snooze for me, and as far as mutliplayer goes I thought Call of Duty 4 was better. Right now I'm addicted to Arkham Asylum, and when I'm done with that I'm going to replay Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 with the anti-registration side. By the time I'm done with all that, I'll move on to Fallout 3 GOTY Edition (since I haven't bought any of the expansions, it'll be a good time and way to replay it), which will occupy me until Alpha Protocol, which will occupy me until Dragon Age. Dragon Age could keep me tied up for the rest of the year, but if not I've got Modern Warfare 2 and Borderlands to cram in there.

The only real downside is trying to fit everything into the case. I have the P182 ATX mid-size tower, and I still had to pull out the upper hard drive cage to make room for a GeForce 9800GTX+. If I'm not mistaken, the P180 is just a smaller version of what I have with those funky grills on the front door. A microATX mobo can be placed into a full-size ATX case. Down the road, you can always get a bigger case if your hardware stops fitting, and re-purpose the P180.

I'm looking forward to Dragon Age the way I look forward to all Bioware games... that is, expecting that it will be good enough to necessitate a day one purchase, without really thinking about it in the mean time. For now, it's all about Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. Already finished the pro-registration side, now I'm going to play the anti-reg side. Mind you, the game isn't short at around 12 hours for my first play through. I've just been laid up for the last three days with nothing to do except play the game that was conveniently released the day before I injured myself.

I doubt it. Kawamori's VF's are unique fighters that are as iconic in fighter mode as they are in Battroid or Gerwalk. But TF alt modes, especially early G1 or the movie line, are supposed to be real-world vehicles. So at what point is an ROTF Starscream model kit just another F-22 model kit? It'd probably make more sense for Reprolabels to print up some tribal stickers for an existing F-22 model kit. Bot mode-only model kits, ala Bandai's Gundams, might work though. I've only built a few of the 1/144 HG kits, but the results are very posable. And, it's not like we don't have a precedent for bot-mode only toys. We've already got Action Masters, Robot Replicas, and a few Revoltechs.

Sounds like SATA cables. They provide the connection between any DVD/CD drives and HDDs you've got to the motherboard. The power cables for those devices should have larger (but still flat-ish) connections to the drives, but they probably just look like wires (ala the wiring that becomes the 24-pin motherboard connector).

I'm going to ask a question now instead of answering them, but here goes. Since I picked up Snow Leopard for my MacBook, I'd been wanting to play with it even though I do most of my computing on my Windows 7 desktop. It'd been awhile since I'd used it, so I had some newer files that I wanted to copy from my Windows computer to my Mac. I was doing this with an 8GB SanDisk Cruzer. Here's where things get dicey... rather than manually delete the stuff when I was done, I used Disk Utility on the Mac to erase the disk. I named the volume USB, and formatted it as FAT (MS-DOS). After doing so, the Mac has no trouble mounting and unmounting the disk. But when I plugged it back into the Windows computer (after ejecting the disk... I know how OS X gets pissy about that), Windows demanded the disk be formatted. No biggie, I'd just erased it anyway. The problem is, Windows won't let me format it as anything larger than a 200MB volume. When I open the disk in Disk Management on the Device Manager, Windows is showing it as a 200MB volume, and 7.3GB volume. It will format the 200MB volume fine, and reports it as Drive F:\. But whenever I try to get it to do anything with the remaining 7.3GB, it gives me an error message. Ideas? EDIT: Nevermind. I installed NTFS-3G on my MacBook, went back into the Mac OS Disk Utility, and re-partitioned it as a single NTFS partition. Windows likes it just fine again.

Yeah, I see that one of the reviewers mentions that they put a 500w PSU in it. But CoryHolmes would still be running into the problem of trying to stuff a modern video card in there, and considering that Newegg usually runs decent deals on combo case/PSUs, it's still probably easiest to buy a new case too. Here, Newegg has a combo deal where you can get a case by HEC with a 500w HEC PSU and an EVGA GeForce 9800GTX+ for $172, with a $15 rebate on top of that. Sure, there are better cards now than the 9800GTX+, but I can tell you that the only game I've come across that I can't run at the highest settings is Crysis. I'm sure it'll be plenty for Star Wars: The Old Republic, Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age Origins.

I'd second this idea. Re-case it in a nice big case, buy a good ATX/EPS 12v PSU, and you'll be set for a new video card. The rest of the hardware is good enough that it's not really worth building a whole new system over.

Even then, don't be so sure. I don't know if HP still does it, but when I had an HP tower a few years ago, HP used proprietary parts and a standard PSU wouldn't fit.

Yes, your idea about popping the old card out and popping the new one in is correct. But no, power supply could very well be a problem. Some entry-level cards can draw power directly through the slot. But higher-end cards need one or more connections from the power supply, and they can draw a lot of power. If the total draw on the system is more power than the PSU can supply, you could do some damage to your system. Do you mind posting your computer's model number or a link so we can look into it for you?

Look at the card's interface on the motherboard, removing the card if you have to. If it's just a rectangle with a long slot and a short slot, sort of like this: |-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| |__________________________________________|___________| it's PCI. It's also probably white, and there's probably more than one of them. If it has two of those little breaks in the slot, and an L-shaped clip on the end, it's AGP. It's also probably brown, and all alone. If it's longer than a regular PCI slot, and has some some notches on the ends, it's probably a PCIe x16. If it's shorter than the regular PCI slot and still has a notch on one end, it's either a PCIe x1 or PCIe x4 slot, depending how how much shorter. Of of the PCIe slots have the long slot and short slot that regular PCI does, but the shorter slot is on the opposite side when compared to regular PCI. If you have a PCIe x16 you're probably okay just upgrading the card (but check to make sure your case is big enough and your power supply has a high enough wattage. If you have an AGP or just regular PCI slots, you're better off buying or building a whole new computer. At the moment, I'd recommend any NVIDIA GeForce GTX 2 series card, or any ATI Radeon 48xx card.

I'm going to second the call for PSP Video 9. The company that makes it, Videora, makes converters for the various iPods too. If they've been keeping up with the PSP converter the way they have the iPod converter (I sold my original PSP, and even when I bought a new one later I didn't use it for videos) they might even have instructions for using DVD Decrypter to rip and convert from DVDs.

I'm going to suggest this one then. Gateway P7805u 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo Mobile isn't going to be the fastest CPU in the world, but it'll be fast enough for most activities, and since it's part of the Centrino platform you'll get balanced battery life out of it. The 320GB hard drive isn't the biggest either, but hard drives are usually cheap and easy upgrades. Where this sucker starts to become a value is the 17" screen (1440x900), 4GB of RAM, HDMI 1.2 out if you feel like hooking it up to a TV or something, 9-cell battery should hold out awhile for generic computing, wireless N or gigabit ethernet if you want to plug it in, and the GeForce 9800M GTS with 1GB of DDR3 will give you gaming power if you want it (if not, it'll at least make short work of HD Video). Sucker weighs about nine pounds, so you're definitely going to do some damage should you find the need to brain somebody with it. It's got Vista Home Premium 64-bit, but I'm sure it'll qualify for an upgrade to Windows 7. And it fits neatly into your budget at $899.99. Only downside I can see with it, as far as you were looking, is that it doesn't have a Blu-ray drive (or Bluetooth, but I've never found a good use for Bluetooth on a computer anyway...). If you're dead set on Blu-ray, you can trade some performance (slower RAM, slower CPU, weaker GPU) for a Blu-ray-equipped laptop for about $100 more. VAIO FW series.

Yeah. Especially with laptops, because what people want is often contradictory. "I want a powerful laptop, with good battery life." "I want a huge screen, but I don't want a laptop that's too big." Etc.

How about battery life? Do you plan to use it more at a desk where it'll be plugged in, or unplugged?

If you want to actually watch Blu-ray movies on your laptop, I'd guess that's going to narrow your choices significantly. Due to HDCP requirements, many computers with Blu-ray drives can't actually play Blu-ray movies (between that and expensive blank media, it's a good explanation for why Blu-ray drives aren't more ubiquitous yet). What other kind of stuff do you plan on doing with your laptop? Do you prefer powerful hardware or better battery life? I'll need a little more info to make a solid recommendation.