• 300 GB Maxtor DiamondMax 10 lead free 7200rpm 16MB ATA133 – Yeah not amazing but surprisingly cheap and it will do the job.
• Exlixir 512MB DDR400 PC3200 RAM – Again cheap and good enough

And of course some blank DVDs and CDs since were there.

Now to make the hard disk transfer. I thought it’d be easy enough to stick the new drive into the new PC, format and install windows from there. Not happening, not matter how much I messed around in the bios I couldn’t get it to run my Windows XP CD. Great. What I usually do when I encounter such a problem is to go for the old skool floppies. Looking at the new pc I realise that there is one flaw in modern day computers and yep – that is the lack of a floppy drive. So I go and rip out a floppy outta another pc I have lying around and connect it up and guess what – it doesn’t work. I then tried the FDD from another PC and had the same result. Multiple attempts and more fiddling in the bios and we’re still at stage one. Remember that this is over a period of hours, and it’s times like this when you really want to give up! It was at this point that I say to someone on MSN, “I hate working in the pre-OS purgatory!”.

So I’m thinking and finally I decided to transfer the HD back to the other PC. Amazing – the CD will not run. Cursing Windows XP we go for the boot disks. Strangely there is some I/O error with the Windows boot up disks but the good old Windows 98 boot disk got me into the command prompt. Using the nasty fdisk tools I partioned and formatted the HD, a few more hours. Thinking that all is good now I transfer back the HD to the new PC, I wanted to install XP from there just to make sure all the hardware is recognised. Boot up and guess what, XP CD works. Great, we get to the stage where you can choose the partition and yes – there is a problem. The new drive was showing as 130GB, that’s half of what it actually is. Figuring it might just be a miscalculation in XP I go through the installation anyway with a quick NTFS format. Booting up into a fresh XP and unfortunately XP wasn’t just being stupid – it still showed as 130GB. Where is the other 170GB?! HD comes out again and into the other PC. Trying the setup in there was no better, XP still showed it as 130GB. Searching on forums was great – really – when people think that all your problems revolve around something being physically damaged it really makes you feel great, especially when your 99% sure that there is nothing broken. So we work around it and finally after like a hundred different things (more hours) we find the culprit – an old XP CD (no service packs) was causing this. I tried another one of our XP CD’s which had come with SP1 and it showed it as a full 289GB. Great, time to get going. We installed XP onto there and we were finally getting somewhere.

Day 3: Well from now on it is more or less straight forward. Well yeah, it would be if you have a CD with drivers on it. Advent (yak) had provided some nasty recovery CD which would only work if you used the recovery console. My dad strongly advised against it from a past experience from that. Ironically the ethernet driver wasn’t even recognised so I had to find that on the other PC and then onto my SD card and into the new PC (i’m loving built in memory card readers). So once were here I’m searching high and low for drivers. It really doesn’t help when the manufacturer of that piece of hardware has a rubbish website with no drivers and it feels like you’re the only one with a ‘Prism’ wireless card. After getting all the drivers, and yes it was a mission, I decided to compile a pack with drivers for anyone with an Advent T9, you can download it here. Finally we got our software installed and sorted out the drives and yes, we’re finally done! Well actually, after finished we tried out our Creative Inspire 6700 speakers on the built in sound (which claims to be 7.1) and we weren’t completely impressed. Convinced that I required the best hardware we moved the great Creative Audigy2 ZS 7.1 card into the new PC (had to move around the exisiting PCI cards how annoying).

And finally Time to sit back and see what we’ve gained:

Yep, and of course there are a few more things like the nifty little case which is a lot more attractive then the big Dell (although admittedly less accessible). The extra ports on the front especially rock, with all of my card readers, audio ports, firewire and USB. Interestingly this PC also has a scart socket in the back. Yeah, I know I might never use it but that is really cool. Other things, the Dell 8200 ran a motherboard with RDRAM. Yeah – that now pretty much obeslete form of memory which is practically non-upgradable (unless you have a few hundred quid). Now with this new PC we have a much easier ability to upgrade the ram up to 4GB. Another problem with the Dell 8200 was that the AGP slot was 4x so it wasn’t making the best use of the graphics card. This one is 8x which is much better. Of course with PCI-Express now the standard that is really the only step left to get this PC into higher action.

And if your interested from the screenshot, we are running the Vista Transformation pack which is really cool (and with this ram it is not much of a memory hog). Time to update the ‘My Rig’ page!

Pricing

Retail Price: $239.99 = £135

Av. online selling prices: £75 exc VAT+Del

Purchase Price: £63 inc VAT+Del [eBay - New]

Specifications

• Minimum of 10MB/second sequential read speed for ultra-fast image viewing and data transfer
• Minimum 9MB/second sequential write speed lets you capture large image files faster
• Backed by a lifetime limited warranty (10 Years Europe)
• Low power consumption for longer battery life

Usage

I purchased this 2GB card because I didn’t have enough space on my Pocket PC. Before purchasing this card I had 2x256MB SanDIsk SD cards (Standard) and about 150MB Internal memory. As my last two SanDisk SD Cards have been perfectly reliable I felt that purchasing another SanDisk card would be a wise choice. I am going to be using this card for pretty much everything, photos, applications, files, music etc. I already have a SanDisk USB SD Card reader/writer which is USB2/Plug and Play so that makes it a lot easier to transfer files to and from the SD Card at high speeds wherever I am.

I was slightly worried before purchasing the card that it would not be recognised on my HP iPaq rx3715 PDA. I checked around and a few people who had purchased 2GB cards had confirmed that they worked but not this particular model. The SanDisk website was also slightly unclear about it, but I went for it anyway. As you can see on the PDA screenshot, it does work pefectly well.

Evaluation

This SD card is fast and light and as they claim, it doesn’t use too much power (though I am yet to test that properly). I am glad I waited and purchased a 2GB SD card rather than the 1GB which I was going to get a while back – it was worth the wait. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the two 256MB SD Cards but I guess they will still come in useful.

Overall Rating:

External Links:
SanDisk Ultra II Webpage

I was playing “liberty city” and to my eyes the quality was just as good as the PS2, I am aware of the fact that many people who read blogs and who know just the slightest about PC will loath all forms of consoles, but you know what this is different.

I think that I could spend a whole day in the back of a car with one of these playing games or watching movies. I think by now most probably have seen the PSP on TV or even in real life, if you have seen it on TV well all I have to say is that it doesn’t do the PSP any justice, the screen is so much bigger than you could imagine but saying that the console itself isn’t too big.

I have thought quite hard to find some bad things on the PSP here is what I have come up with………………………….. …. …. ..umm.. no but seriously the only thing that I could think of well in my eyes is the fact that they use some crappy UMD, I think if I am right in saying that is stands for Universal Media Disk these are some small cassettes type CD’s which can fit in to the palm of you hand but they really do cost an arm and a leg. The only other bad points of the PSP is the things it doesn’t have (like the feature of being a mobile phone) which if it did have I would be sure to buy.

I think consoles are on the brink of a revolution if the PS3 is as good as the PSP, and I definitely think that Sony have got there act together…well I still disagree with putting multi-player games on consoles I think that ruins the experience. If you do have the money then definitely I am 100 percent behind you if you buy the PSP its a bargain in my view.

Well I don’t own a PSP so I cant talk about the long term experiences of a PSP e.g. malfunctions, glitches, overheats and warranty’s but still a great little toy. if you disagree with the PSP just because it is a “console” or a “Sony” play it first, or if you have played it and still disagree with any thing I have just wrote, write below.

IGN: The double agent aspect sounds like it’s more intrinsic to the game’s overall design than just the story plotline. Can you talk a bit about this?

Daniel Roy: You’re absolutely right! When we came up with the Double Agent concept, we thought long and hard on what it could mean for the gameplay, especially in the context of Splinter Cell. For instance, as a double agent, you will be given dual, sometimes contradictory objectives by terrorists and Third Echelon. For instance, you could be asked to plant a bomb by the terrorists, while at the same time having to sabotage it for the NSA. In some instances, these dual objectives lead to direct contradictions, and this is when you, as Sam Fisher, must make difficult, moral choices.

Read the rest of the interview: IGN

Release dates:
PC – Q1 2006
PS3 – Q4 2006
Xbox – Q1 2006
Xbox 360 – Q1 2006
GameCube – Q1 2006
PS2 – Q1 2006

Ever since the first details of the Xbox 360 hit the web, gamers have drawn comparisons to Sega’s ill-fated (yet still highly regarded) Dreamcast console. There are the obvious examples – the timing of the launches or the color of the hardware – but then there are a lot of not so obvious ones, too.Read the Dreamcast-xbox360 comparison article at 1Up.com

And I must say, there are A LOT of similarities. It’s actually quite frightening to see how much the Xbox 360 and Sega Dreamcast look alike, even the logo is practically the same!
But not to worry, after going through the similarities, you get another list, but this time with 10 reasons why the Xbox360 will not fail.
It’s a must read, well actually more of a must see (there isn’t much to read) even if you aren’t in to xbox or dreamcast.

I myself have an Xbox, but I’m not thinking of getting a 360 just yet. I mean, €300 for the cheapest model?! That’s way too much, especially if you know that they’re bound to lower their prices once the PS3 and Nintendo Revolution are released. That’s what MS did before, and I’m sure they’ll do it again.

 "Tom’s Hardware has a review of the Bart PE Builder software utility takes Windows XP and shrinks the OS to your USB flash drive. Besides converting your mini-drive into an emergency boot disk, you can use the utility to load a Web browser, media burning software and more – to have handy anywhere you go. And by the way, it doesn’t violate the Windows XP EULA." From the article: "If your PC has a relatively new motherboard, its BIOS will already include the functions necessary to support USB-attached boot media. If so, you need only make the right selections in that BIOS menu to boot from a USB flash drive. Older PCs, on the other hand, won’t accept USB drives as valid boot devices. This means a BIOS update that supports USB boot options is necessary. You can find information about where to obtain such updates from your PC’s (or motherboard’s) user manual, on the driver CD included with the PC (or motherboard) or on the vendor’s Website."

 I might give it a go, it seems like a great way of solving any issues on the pc very quickly!

  BartPE

It makes me feel a whole lot older, how did ten years pass by like that! I remember the release of the PS1 which was a revolution in the console gaming world. I’m not gonna lie, I never owned one – but so many of my friends and relatives did that I might’swell have. I never was much of a console guy (pc all the way) but the Playstation certainly had its place in the worlds advancing video games market, and for that I pay my dues. 

September 9th will go down as a day notorious in American gaming history. Two consoles launched on September 9th; one, which launched in 1999, was a failure that doomed a hardware manufacturer to a future of software production. The other, launched in 1995, is one of the most successful consoles in gaming history. But you’re not reading this to lament over the late Dreamcast, we hope. Instead, you’re here to read up and celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the PlayStation’s U.S. launch. Sony’s little grey machine that could is a decade old now, and its ripple effect over gamers, popular culture, and technology carries a profound legacy.

 :arrow: Gamespy, Top 25 PSone Games of All-Time

 Now I won’t ruin for you their number one game, but it does bring back memories of the fun times I had on the PSone – especially the days of Tekken 3, what a game. It comes to show how far Technology is advancing and not only changing the gaming world, but also the political and even religious world around us.

Thank God for my Warranty!

Anyways called HP today and told them this would be the 5th time they would be taking in my iPaq, I wanted more then another repair which produced more problems. The technical guy transferred me over to some other department, the woman looked @ my case referenece I told her my problem she said she’d issue me with:
New iPaq from their stock, and 3 months extended warrantly.
I am so far happy with that, i hope that this doesn’t dissapoint. My iPaq was purchased last october and in that time it’d taken 4 repairs.

A few pointers from this is 1. iPaqs are not robust (i love them tho) and they cannot be self repaired generally. and 2. If you have alot of problems with yours and had it repaired alot, you have a case for a replacement!

I hope to see it by Thursday. Till then i’m going to try and back up my data and stuff. I hope the next one lasts a little longer – and i’m so going to have to extend that warranty!!

EA and DICE are pleased to announce that today, after two weeks of Closed Beta testing, we are releasing the first public version of the Battlefield 2 editor! Over the last couple of days you’ve probably seen some of the outstanding work that the Closed Beta teams have created using the tools, and now we’re giving everyone else the chance to join the fun. Keep in mind that we are considering this release "Beta" software, so it’s still a little rough around the edges, though we’ve worked out many of the kinks. Also, though most core functionality is editable as of this release, there are several more advanced areas of the tools that are still being worked on. One example of of a tool to be delivered in a future update is the Single Player Editor.

Also worth noting is that the current Battlefield 2 Dedicated Server files are not yet compatible with Mods. DICE is already working on a fix for the Dedicated Server files that will be included with the 1.03 patch. In the meantime, this will not prevent Mods from being tested over the Internet entirely. For testing purposes, Mod Teams can still create a non-dedicated server game through the regular in-game multiplayer interface that will allow anyone to connect to your game, either locally or over the net, provided that the rest of the team connects by IP .

 Read more…

Ok, I found this news at Battlefield2.com. This is great news for people who have been waiting all the time for making modifications for Battlefield 2. Now this is released, the Battlefield 2 community will be expanded with lots and lots of mods. Atleast, thats what I think.

 Download Mod Editor
 Download Mod Tutorials
 Download Mod Samples