“If you could rewind your time, would you change your life?”
Just a quick mention that I’ve added a review of a new toy that I’ve recently purchased for my second PC. I’ve been a bit slow on the reviews front but haven’t at all forgotten them. Now that my second PC is out of the way, I can focus on slagging off 360 games, yay!
I’m free! Since it’s release on the 30th January I’ve been tinkering around with Windows Vista and generally being driven mad by it’s quirks. On the upside I’ve found this operating system rather refreshing to use over stale XP. I’ve also been taking down notes on my experiences and have written an article on what Windows XP users can expect when they make the transition to this bloatastic OS.
Now that this write up is out of the way, and my system is semi stable, I can finally get back to writing games reviews, which I’m well behind on right now.
Blimey! My current stunner of a PC case, the legendary Coolermaster 201c wasn’t large enough to accommodate the needs of my new PC rig. The sheer size of my Ninja Scythe CPU heatsink made me realise that it’s time to upgrade the case. After weeks of hunting for a decent one under £150, I had narrowed down my decision to two cases. The Antec Nine Hundred gamer case (approx £100), or the Coolermaster Stacker 830 (£170). The latter is regarded as one of the largest most spacious cases you can buy. As I’m an old school Coolermaster fan, even though their products aren’t as good as they used to be, I purchased the Stacker.
There goes the rumour mill. It’s now true. After a good month of speculation when pictures of a HDMI 360 was leaked onto the web, it has finally been confirmed after the CES show in Las Vegas. Bill Gates’s keynote speech was something a lot of people waited for, hoping he would speak about the future of the Xbox 360. Instead he talked about Windows Vista, Live Anywhere, and then IPTV on ‘a’ 360 - the way he said this seemed to suggest he was talking about new 360’s rather then our current gen models.
Then just before Bill Gates keynote, Dean Takahashi, an Xbox expert and author of the ‘Uncloaked’ series of books on the Xbox and Xbox 360 leaked some news on a new 360 arriving in 2007. He spoke about the Xbox 360 Revision 2, codenamed Zephyr which would have a larger capacity hard drive 120/160mb, HDMI output, and running cooler with its .65nm CPU. It’ll also be IPTV enabled. In the UK, British Telecom will provide our IPTV service…I can hear the boo’s already.
Paul Thurrot, from Windows SuperSite has mentioned on his podcast that a new 360 is on the way during Q4 of 2007. He hasn’t seen it yet, but it has "IPTV capabilities and a larger hard drive", it WILL definitely feature a CPU on a smaller production process so it’ll require less power, emanate less heat and require less cooling too which means that the new 360 should be a bit more quieter then our current models.
I’ve just added two reviews to the reviews section. Call of Duty 2 for the Xbox 360, and the Western Digital 320GB My Book External Hard Drive, which I recently purchased to backup all my data onto.
I’ve been feeling quite poor recently, after the New Years celebrations. I’ve felt unfit, and unwell as a result too, so I really need to get back into shape, not that I went on a mad drinking/eating spree during the festivities, but I did stop going to the gym for a solid 3 weeks and I can now feel the effects of that decision. This unwell feeling isn’t helped by the fact that my Laptop has died, while I awaited parts for my new PC (below). I was meant to use the lappy to write reviews while my main PC was out of action, but that plan backfired. So after spending well over £1100 on components for a new PC, I’ve not got to get the lappy repaired too. Great 
I’ll possibly be away for a few days while I do a total rebuild on this PC, which is an ancient beastie. To be honest I don’t need to build a new rig, but given that Windows Vista arrives towards the end of January, I do want my machine to handle this bloated behemoth of an Operating System (OS). I’d roughly guess that about 90% of PC users who want this OS will end up doing a rebuild of their machine.
It’s slightly absurd that an OS should require so much resource power just to bloody run, but that’s just typical Microsoft. I’m going to stick to XP for as long as I can though, because I’ll be buggered if I’m paying £220 for the Home Premium Edition, I’ll wait for a price drop. I’m not too clear on the upgrade version yet as the info is a bit clouded. So this Friday 5th, my new PC parts will arrive along with XP Media Center 2005. Hopefully everything should go well, because I’ve got a heap of reviews needing checking.
I’ve been trying to make sense of this for sometime now, and only finally understood it. Microsoft have tried to get one over Sony in the HD (High Definition) war, and to be honest they’re hammering them hilariously. Although MS forgot to mention that 1080p wouldn’t be as simple as most people would have thought. The techy geeks knew it would be a complicated matter, and to be fair - it bloomin is. Depending on the method you’re using to connect the Xbox 360 to your TV set, you’ll obtain various results while watching films and playing games. I’ve been staring at a forum for what felt like hours last night and finally got my head around it.
Ragh! Recently I’ve had a ton of cash burning a hole in my pocket, so what better way to splash out then to purchase some LCD screens for my PC? As I’ve previously mentioned, I’ve been hunting for a single large screen LCD or two larger then 17" LCD widescreens. In the end I found some mid-end LCD’s going for roughly £130 each! They’ve got both DVI and VGA connections, so I’m totally sorted!
I should mention that they’re made by Hanns-G….Yes, Hanns Gruber himself, the man who tried to rob the Nakatomi Tower in Los Angeles, from the film Die Hard! Bruce Willis mate, you failed to realise that after you saw Hanns fall off the top of the building, he bounced off the fat doughnut eating cop and survived. He went on to make quality LCD’s! So thats one 20.1" Belinea LCD for the Xbox 360 on the left, and the twin 19" Hanns-G LCD’s for my pc. Overkill? Oh yus!
I’ve written a review on my latest MP3 player, the Zen Vision:M and added it to the Reviews page, which has been long overdue for some content. Enjoy!
So, here I am pondering as to why the new current trend for electronic gadgets, is to have them PINK. I mean, it’s a crap colour, is an eyesore and will NOT attract members of the opposite sex, if that should happen then they’ve clearly escaped from the loony asylum. I cannot even comprehend to understand who would buy such items, let alone why.
So, recently of late there has been quite a few toys appearing in pink form:
A Pink Playstation 2
A Pink Playstation Portable (PSP)
A Pink DS Lite
and a Pink Creative Zen Vision:M
There was a time when white was the cool in thing after the flood of iPods, but now that has been replaced by the most pathetic colour ever. It’s not fashionable, it sucks and anyone who uses such a colour is a pleb. So, if you know of any gadgets that have recently gone PINK, let me know. Let’s name and shame them!
