A couple weeks ago I got the opportunity (finally) to play the new Battlefield game’s demo, BF:2142. It is created with the same engine as its predecessor, and is an OK game. BF2 has, for some unknown reason, progressively run slower and slower on my computer. And I seem to not be alone by checking some of the Battlefield forums occasionally. 2142 also runs fairly slow on medium-low graphic settings… Needless to say, I am disappointed. Mostly, because the game runs like crap-o-la on my machine, and it probably shouldn’t.

Some have griped that 2142 is merely a large “mod” for BF2, which is I suppose, a valid argument. Hopefully some of the bugs from BF2 will be gone, but I would have really liked to see this game in a different light than what it has shown so far. I will have to say, I have no idea why a company would push a demo of a product the way they did. The two days that I got on to play the demo, the master server probably kicked me 8 times. Not to mention, 3 times it took over 5 minutes to login or time-out. If the demo is supposed to represent the final game, I sure as hell wouldn’t buy it, but Alex says that the game is better than how the demo played… Sometimes it feels like good games are just too few and far between.

So my brother decided he needed a laptop, but of course he wanted one that would game too. So he decided to get on eBay and find one. On his first attempt, he ended up with just a e-mail that stated that the auction wasn’t valid due to the sellers account being compromised. After that mishap, he started to look for more believable deals. So he found a Dell XPS Gen 2 for sale in one of the 48 contiguous states. A few days and $1,200 later, the laptop arives. I’m a little worried it might be broken, piece of junk, or maybe just really used. Holy crap was I wrong! This laptop doesn’t have a mark on it. Windows XP MCE 2005 freshly installed, all we did was plug it in, start it up and away we went.

This XPS has some real horsepower too! It packs an Intel Centrino M with 1GB RAM and a GeForce Go 6800 Ultra into a quite beautiful package, not to mention the huge screen. It is only slightly less powerful than our desktop PC, which to me is quite impressive! I would have to say, even though it’s not my laptop, I will definitely be looking forward to playing some games (like BF2!) on this massive mathematics mauling machine with its pixel pushing GPU!

Happy New Year. Hope everyone had a good holiday season.

Back to school again, time to reminisce with old friends and attempt to make some new ones. Maybe this semester will be less work… no probably not.

On to more important things. Battlefield 2. If you like FPS and you are one of the elite few that have PC capable of enough FLOPS to cure cancer, this is definitely the game for you. The graphics are ridiculously amazing and the gameplay is addictive. I honestly bought this game, and I don’t buy many games. If you have played any of the Battlefield Series games and liked them, and your PC is one heck of a workhorse, then pick up this game.

Most sites have features such as POTD (Picture of the Day) or SOTD (Site of the Day), well I’m going to start a new feature called… FOTP ( Feature of the Post). This will include just a cool thing I found or use, and a short blurb about it. So here goes the first FOTP.

FOTP: Maxthon

If you dislike the featureless IE and you are not sure you want to switch to the Flaming Fox Browser Thing. Then try this program. It was actually featured at CES and has won alot of awards.

Until next time… Peace out.

-Tom