LadyCrimson

Considering Walsh mentions filling up a 300GB HD I'd guess spending thousands for 500GB+ of SSD drives wouldn't be high on his list priorities. It certainly wouldn't be one of mine, at least. But yea, you could have a SSD for the OS HD and a high capcity SATA for the storage, perhaps. My personal opinion is I'll wait for SSD to 1-come down in price per GB and 2-improves upon it's longevity and other potential windfalls, first. I know they already have improved a lot, but not nearly enough for me to rush out and get one or three.

As said, if you're fine w/your current card for a while, I'd wait, too. There's always a latest and greatest card. I even decided to buy the cheaper geForce 275, in case 6-12 months from now I'm using Win7 & wanted the brand new ge. Plus I read the 285 wasn't really all that better for the price point. The 275 is more than enough card for me right now, especially considering I'm using XP/can't use all the hardware's power atm, too. Har.

Is what a decent a hard drive? I see nothing. How big is your current, full drive - ie, how much more do you need for it to last you a while? How much of it has to be on your main computer, vs. either backed up and/or just accessible occasionally? There's a few main ways I deal with storage issues. 1-external drives you know about. You buy one or two, dump everything you want to transfer on it, buy the new HD, and when you have it all ready w/the OS etc. you dump everything back on to it. 2-Buy a 2nd (and 3rd, if you want) hard drive, install it on your PC and use it as a data drive. That way you don't have to transfer anything or reformat initially. Just plug in the new 2nd drive and dump your space-hogging data onto it. Your main HD/OS programs can see & access data on the extra drives, so you don't need to have anything but the actual running programs on your "main" HD. My "C" drives are relatively empty most of the time. Thus if I need to reformat the OS HD, there isn't tons of stuff on it to worry about in the 1st place, because it's all on the data drives. Just backup bookmarks, email files, that sort of stuff before a reformat. 3-if you have more than one computer w/a LAN, you can temporarily dump data onto it, then dump it back to your pc. If you're concerned about trying to transfer programs wholesale onto a newly installed/formatted HD, so you can have all your settings, mods, etc back in one shot, that's a crapshoot. Sometimes it works to install the basic program then copy everything from the old, backed up Program Files folder into the new install folder & overwrite and it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Cleaned up my desk area and got rid of the unorganized tangle of wires near my chair that seemed to magically appear over the last year and which I kept tripping over. Rearranged where all the tech things sit (to get rid of the wires), and put a good dent into a lot of paper filing work I needed to do. Plus tossed out more old VHS videos and other boxed junk I no longer need to hang onto. A couple new shelves so more things can be out of boxes (from moving 1.5 yrs ago...). A lot of those little things that pile up over a year or so until you finally get off your butt and do them. It took hours and hours. Now time to relax before bed.

Based only on what was said in your first post, it feels to me like you over-reacted a little bit to her decision to share her feelings about media violence (what you quoted didn't seem particularly judgmental on a personal level, ie directly at you), but then she turned around and over-reacted at your response. I don't know her so you'd know far better her possible hidden meanings behind actions, but sometimes people just like to...explain *why* they don't like (or like) something, even when not asked. A way of sharing who they are, perhaps. Dunno. Still, her being initially miffed, ok, but deleting from facebook and complaining to other family members...that's a bit much. She could've at least waited for a few more rounds of possibly escalating emails/posts.

I'd like to see NY lose, but on the other hand, I think a Phillies/NY match up would be a lot more interesting to watch. Either way, I'll probably watch the end of most of the WS games, but don't know if I'll sit through all of them beginning to end.

Nero's like that too. I love their DVD playback interface. At least, with my version of Nero. I acquired the OEM suite 3 of Nero 6 when I bought a piece of hardware years ago. Upgraded it once...doesn't have all the capabilities of a full version of course but it's worked fine for basic nub things-CD/DVD burning, making simple slide shows, DVD watching etc-and still does. As long as it works on whatever OS I'm using, I'll keep using it. :D I never record any video more complex than FRAPS game vids so no need for those features.

Currently watching my GPU temp and playing w/the GPU fan. Yes it's thrilling. I guess if I want lower than 42C I either run the fan at plane-level noise speed or get liquid cooling. After a busy day yesterday, I've been enjoying a very nothing day today. In about 20 minutes I'm going out to check video games and buy a small table to supplement my giant desk.

Never heard of 7-zip either. I've been using Nero (DVD) and k-lite (standard w/the media classic player) so long I guess I haven't looked for other options. I only use Winamp for music, I hate their video option.

That guy is seriously talented. If only there was someone able to make character models of that quality. I want that mod. I loved M&B, and battle map textures/scenery like that would be awesome.

What Walsh said. I find the "tricking your brain by confidence redirection" works best for me...it's like taking a break but do NOT watch TV/play a game as the "break"...I find yardwork or housework does the trick...physical movement+sense of satisfaction at completing the annoying chore+dislike of wanting to do more chore=more motivation to do the original task I was avoiding.

I had the feeling Hellgate (minus the bugs) was a bit more fun in multi-player than single-player, since a shooter-like MP feel was more of its focus. Sounds like Borderlands has the same focus, as well. Way of the gaming trends. Oh well...there's always Diablo3.

My Casear4 50,000+ population cities are a lot more fun on my new computer. Maybe if I had Win7/64bit-dx10 I could even run it in 16AA. Assuming the game would run on Win7... I forgot how abusing city-builders can be a good way to stress out your gaming system when you're curious how much it can handle. Plus they're fun, too.

One of my twit acquaintances who bought it for 360 says "It is pretty fun if you like grinding & stat-building (ala Diablo), lots of (dark) humor too." ... unfortunately, it's hard to be more descriptive in 140 chrs. If it *is* similar to Hellgate:London, only with more amusing/funny humor vids, then I probably won't like it all that much. Hellgate was briefly fun (the single-player, never tried mp) but between it's repetitive levels and loot/skill system, it was an utter failure. Edit: If hubby liked to play games a lot more and the mp feature is fun, I might like such more...but he doesn't, so...

Based on this thread, I had to check out VLC. It seems ok (for general all purpose playback anyway) but I like my Nero+winamp combo better for playing DVD's & music. I do have one question...where's the "repeat constant/loop" option for playback on VLC? I can't find it.

Yeah...I was just curious about the new PC itself, not the total of everything I use. With the articles talking about peak power of the newer GPU's etc I was expecting more average consumption. Since I often have 2 pc's going+monitor+my speakers(nothing fancy, but they still suck a bit of power), I'd guess at idle or casual use I'm up around 250w average. Which doesn't sound too awful until I start counting how many hours per day they're on. Interestingly, this Asus mobo has a software feature ala hibernate/sleep to turn pc "off" w/out disturbing your work...when I use it, the volmeter drops not at all, maybe 1-3w at the most...making me think such "power saving" features don't really make much of a difference. Not sure tho.

I keep buying DVD-RW drives but then find I rarely burn any discs. Used to be I'd burn backups, but these days it's easier and better to use external HD's (or whatever) instead. But I still like having one in case I do want it, and for me there's no point in having two drives. The cheaper stuff sometimes works fine for years, btw. We have lots of such and they still work. But it is a crapshoot, yes. Then again, w/quality control these days, everything is, to a degree.

My impression is that it isn't like (or supposed to be like) Fallout in terms of gameplay...people seem to be making the comparison simply because of the post-apocalyptic "look and feel" to the game graphics, vs fantasy/magic. Maybe. From what I can tell via articles/videos, it's a combo of hack n slash RPG with shooter. Some aspects of it remind me just a little bit of Hellgate:London.

This is because of the way the credit scoring works debt ratios. If you have 4 cards with 5000 limits for a total of 20k, and your total debt on all of them is 5000, that means you're using 25% of your total credit limit. If you then drop/close 2 of those cards and consolidate, you now only have 10k of credit, meaning that 5000 debt = 50%, which looks worse and consequently your score drops. At least, that's how I understand it. There's also many other (more silly) ways your score takes temporary, small hits...it's all kinda wonky. I currently have 2 credit cards. One I use only for a few monthly-charge internet things (webservers, gaming) and it gets paid off. The other I use for occasional bigger purchases (big household bills or 'toys" like my computer) and pay them off over 4-6 months, while not using them for anything else. So instead of using the card every month and paying it in full, I use it twice a year for something bigger and then pay it off slowly. Costs me a little more in interest but eh, not much... If for some reason one is talking about very big purchases, debit cards often won't work then because they have a daily purchase limit (dependent on your account/bank etc). Lastly, I used to have an American Express, but once I started using debit cards for most "everyday" expenses, and since I doubt I'll ever be able to pay off, say, a brand new car in one month, I found I didn't need the AmEx and canceled it.

Dungeon Keeper 2, just because it was a fast install. I can now have 60 vampires all summoning skeletons for an hour (constant hero-invasion) and it doesn't lag my computer to death. From the sound of the reviews I read, I guess I'll try Risen this weekend.

Self-question of the day: "I can't be the only one who compulsively bookmarks almost everything, can I?" ...I import them every time I reformat, and thus I have 5 years worth. Clean out dead links now and then, but my bookmark file is still huge. Subcategories have subcategories...

Just wanted to report that the new i7 rig, using the volt meter, suggests that I'm only using about 130w when at idle/web surfing. When I put in a simpler game (ie, not graphic hogging etc) and play, it's about 180-200w. Actually not as bad as I was envisioning...tho I'm sure something like Crysis maxed out would up that another 100w.

Yup. Everything breaks, and sometimes you just get a faulty one that breaks earlier than most. If you don't mind OEM (not in a box) especially, you can a DVD drive for $30. I've had a lot of fail-drives off and on, until I bought this Sony. I now like Sony.

Now that I have a new fancy (tho not-quite-uber) rig, I need some new games to play on it. Problem is, while I do like action/combat "rpgs", I don't like shooters. ....I guess I could see how "awesome" NWN2, KOTOR, and a few others might run now but... Anyone tried Risen or Dawn of Discovery?

I just heard about this game. If the singleplayer component is ok (like Diablo2's was), then I might like it. Certainly looks amusing.