LadyCrimson

If you press ctrl+shift+alt+s while in the browser you can alter the buffer but it only goes up to 1500 & so far that's what I'm always on anyway. :/ The enforced 15-20 min buffer is a bit annoying, along with the fact every time you scroll forward the player resets with the 'starting up/detecting quality setting' red screen. One can spend an awful lot of time rating movies...kinda fun initially. I've rated 1500+ so far. It's made me realize how many awful horror flicks are made, that I've never seen (and don't want to) as well as how stingy I am with a 5 star rating.

Under Tools/Folder Options/View there's an "Always show icons, never thumbnails" checkbox. That seems to have prevented actual true thumbnails ever showing up for me, but occasionally folders don't want to default into details mode, or remember which details I want displayed. Don't know for a fact, but it feels like you have to apply settings to "all folders" for each main directory folder to get to all subfolders. All the sleek stuff I have turned off so I know nothing about those things. But it does all run like butter...then again, so did XP...I think on my new PC it would all run smoothly.

Since it costs nothing to do so, I'd say yes. At least the first couple, to see if you like it. I haven't been watching it on TV but 'catch up' on it now and then on hulu...less commercials, too.

Aye...it doesn't look terrible or anything, very watchable. It's just not anywhere near HD on PC (don't know about the 'direct to TV' using boxes etc options). I think the aspect of Netflix I'll like most is being able to re-watch favorite films (or check out ones you weren't sure you'd like) almost as much as I want, when I want, without having to pay $3-5 for each one ala retail rentals. So it's a great bargain in that regard. Very new releases I'll probably still just order them on cable's HD on-demand instead.

Ah...I haven't tried KOTOR1 on this thing yet. I take it the above steps didn't work for you on that one, then?

Started watching Quarantine on Netflix. Shaky-cam style and 18 minutes before the first violence isn't making a good impression on me so far. Pick, pick, pick....

Tried Netflix for the 1st time. It's nice to stream all these movies to my PC screen, but little disappointed in streaming video quality. Even Hulu at 480 looks a bit better when fullscreen. Lots think it's the MS Silverlight player or sneaky throttling. Oh well, what can you expect for 9-13 a month. It looks ok overall and it keeps you from hogging too much bandwidth.

Not sure about invisible, but you can grab the top bar of the active window and "shake" it to make all other open windows minimize (Aero Shake). The only hide thing I know of at the moment is hiding icons in the notification area of the taskbar.

No. It won't even start. Anyone have any ideas? It works in Win7 for me so far. Seems fine, except for the much-faster movement speed w/a faster PC... >.> All I did was put a direct shortcut to the swkotor2.exe on my desktop - ie, don't run it from the CD autoplay menu - and used the compatibility 'run in XP-SP2' mode. One issue: On my PC at least, I can only use up to 1280x1024 resolution w/black bars on the sides. The black bars may be a monitor setting I set, tho, rather than the game itself...I don't remember...

I no longer have top favorite games. They're all kind of blending together into one giant mass called "just another fun time-passer video game."

Whenever the power goes out for a while and I'm reading a book by dim candlelight, I think, "So this is how the pioneers did things. Glad I wasn't a pioneer."

Can't speak to the book, as I haven't read it. But the movie is obviously aimed to appeal to youthful ladies who dream of ultimate romance. Or something. Themes:growing up, teen rebellion/maturing, sacrificing everything for love. Typical romance formula, with a bit of Romeo & Juliet feeling conflicts perhaps. Seriously...Twiglight (at least the first film) isn't a vampire movie. It's a youth romance movie that happens to have vampires (and werewolves) in it.

If this turns into a series, it might give me a reason to temporarily get HBO again, like I did for Rome. And if it turns out to be a good series, I hope it lasts longer than Rome did. >.> It would also save me from having to read the entire book series. Which still sits on my shelf with only the 1st one read.

I only saw 1st Twilight after it came on cable on-demand (for the 2nd or third time I think), so you can guess how much I care about seeing the 2nd one. But I did find the first one entertaining in a teen-angst, unintentional, lol-comedy way, so I'll probably watch the 2nd when it, also, comes on cable on-demand.

Crysis - well, it's pretty. I wish I could see my FPS in it tho...maybe if I get a newer version of FRAPS it'll work w/Win7-Crysis64. Odd. Probably won't get far in it...just wanted to see what all the past hoo-ha was about. Dawn of Discovery gives you silly "take a break" messages after you've been playing for 2 and 4 hours. Kind of funny.

I keep watching because hubby keeps watching, and I like to spend time with hubby. But I have a feeling it won't be long before I decide that SG:U hour is an hour not spent w/hubby. Hubby has some kind of obsession with the SG shows/spinoffs...even when he thinks they're not very good, he seems compelled to watch every episode.

Was rest of the world in any position to laugh at their tactics? Wasn

Dawn of Discovery (Anno 1404). Except for the super-slo-mo saving game times and restrictive DRM, a nice city-builder strategy game. I like it, especially the Continuous free play mode where the "huge" map size is actually huge. Hopping from island to island making new settlements/cities, sailing around the map making trade/political relations...all with Casear3 or 4 like city-building. Awesome.

After trying lots of things, I discovered that for some odd reason, crysis64 doesn't like 8AA setting on my pc. On 4AA, it runs fine. On 8AA it crashes constantly. Well, at least I can play it now.

I bought Crysis, installed. It opens up the setup menus just fine, but when I try to start a new game, I get the loading bar which at 100% gives me the "press any key to continue" message. I press "any key" and screen goes black and freezes, have to close the program. Anyone else get this to run in Win7-64? I tried it in Vista compatibility mode...tried running the Crysis64 and the regular Crysis etc... :/

Finding a good one is the hard part. If you get a bad one, they can really screw things up. Or at the least, don't really get rid of the sluggishness. I don't use them regularly and only use them in alan's friends situation...where it's been ages and you're trying to avoid having to reformat. I also tend to manually delete things off the list, rather than have the program delete everything it finds wholesale. Hubby just tried that CCleaner one, said it wasn't bad. I think I'll try it myself.

Never heard of any of those Playfish games either... I feel like I'm seeing a minor resurgence of enjoyable single-player games, both bigger and low budget, also. Or at least, even if the game has MP emphasis, that the SP is still fun/worthwhile enough I'll buy it. Especially during economic downturns where paying for a lot of online accounts might not be top priority for people. WoW's crazy kind of online success could be a fluke, never to be duplicated. I think things will eventually settle into some kind of balance between online-only and single-player options.

Aye, I still remember when $20 seemed like a lot of moolah. Are other countries having these kind of price hikes, too? Or other US States? I haven't seen any (pc, reg. non-collectors edition) game on the shelf for more than 59.99 around here even when just released (I know console tend to be 5-10 more or something). Maybe every once in a great while, but it's rare. Do I live in some kind of game-price bubble area? Kinda agree w/the Hollywood thing. The emphasis on graphics and realistic engines is, perhaps, akin to the emphasis in movies on budget-busting CGI and action/explosions. And then the big movie houses are so befuddled if a small, cheap indie movie rakes it in.

That made me laugh. We're not rich but we're still in a similar position where if I wanted to go all out for gaming, I could, so I definitely know what you mean. I don't see $50-$60 for a game being that excessive these days, especially since it's been that way a long time - as opposed to, say, my grocery store bill. I find that article an interesting viewpoint, even if it's overly gloomy. Entertainment industries have their fluctuations and restructurings, just the way things go as economies * consumer interests fluctuate and alter. The movie/TV industries have similar financial issues + fickle fans...things will shake out. Who knows...a "collapse" of the current way of things, while initially disruptive, could lead to something better down the line. I might not like change very much, but sometimes things just aren't working very well (from either consumer or business PoV) and one has to change directions. Or get new hobbies. Edit: I still haven't bought a console, so I still buy PC games, and likely always will as long as they're available. Consoles may be the wave of the future but they still haven't gotten to the point where I want one...they may someday, just not quite there yet...

If I don't talk to Baby-kitty at least once a day he starts shredding magazines out of frustration that he can't read. ...spent yesterday/this morning tweaking Win7. Borderlands AA still doesn't seem to work... ...giggling at how almost everything on my computer now falls into that x86 folder. ...if I put my hamsters on the bookshelf, they always go straight for the WoW paper CD container and start chewing. Everyone's a critic.