[LaW]Maverick

ASUS's new notebook lineup looks pretty sick: http://www.techtree.com/India/News/CES10_Asus_Announces_New_Laptop_Lineup/551-108561-893.html Personally, the one with the funky speakers would be sweeeet if there were a number-pad. I'd have to see how the dual touch-pads work first I guess. Both of these are pretty beastly systems and could handle serious gaming, however. Man, my G51 is only a few months old and I'm already drooling over the new stuff. Oh, the story of my life: I bought this laptop (because I had to) about 2 months before they started putting i7s in these things. I bought the laptop before this about 2 months before they started putting core2duos in laptops. Bah! Ah well, I'm not disappointed in my G51, it does Borderlands and DragonAge both with the settings all the way up with no trouble . . .

http://filmdrunk.uproxx.com/?attachment_id=22627 It's funny, because when coming out of the theater, my first words were "It was like Pocahontas with blue Indians." That about sums it up...was it worth seeing, definitely. Was the CG better than anything I've seen--nope. I think District 9 and Episode III had better CGI. Were the 3D effects incredible? Fairly, but I don't think they were exactly "revolutionary." One thing I'm extremely happy about is this: it's about time we get a movie with a fairly happy ending (sorry, don't consider that a spoiler because it's obvious ) that is popular. I was getting sick of the overly artsy and depressing crap that has been winning awards lately. Oh, and "unobtainium?" Give me a break. Most predictable movie I think I have ever seen, but still enjoyable. What's my final rating? It's a "if I see it in a sale-bin of BluRays, I will buy it a year or so after release" movie.

I'm fairly certain I'll be able to do it this year--not 100%, more like 90%. I might also bring a friend, but don't add them yet, will find out in the next week or so.

I like Chrome--honestly, it's good stuff...for some reason I keep using Firefox though.

Holy crap, if Fatty has loaded CS back up, I might just have to cut down my Borderlands time to join you guys.

It's pretty slick--I think it came out today...anyone tried it yet? The new persona feature is pretty cool. I like it thus far.

Dude, you go through a LOT of sound cards!

<--- Borderlands, and just bought The Last Remnant for $9.99 on Steam's sale, so I'll probably be playing that. :-) I did play CS last night and the night before a lil' bit.

Hahaha...I would have chirped in had I noticed this thread earlier. The Storm can also run background apps (I'm running latitude right now), has a good media player, and handles Google Voice nicely. It's another alternative to consider when looking at phones. A bunch of people here at work liked my phone so much, we now have 4 Storm 2's and 4 Storms in the office. I'm a little undecided about the Storm2, however, because the on the one my boss has, the call button is sometimes unresponsive. It could just be a fluke, but meh. the Storm 2 also comes with more memory (2 gigs internal with a 16 gig memory card). Another interesting fact, if you're planning on traveling globally ever, the Storm and Storm 2 are some of the very few phones on VZW that are GSM/CDMA and can take a SIM card. I have played with the DROID a little in-store, and it seems pretty slick. Not a good buy for me if I ever need to go out of country again, however. I would go VZW over AT&T ANY day because of the data coverage I've come to enjoy so much with VZW. It's a no-brainer for me. Oh, and your stupid roll-over minutes DO expire . . .

Mo has a good point--aren't you used to people hating you because you kick their butts? In any case, that's crappy man--I've been on a Borderlands kick and haven't played CS in a bit, but I have a feeling those two morons are going to feel the ban-stick (if they haven't already). It looks to me like amer wasn't serious--you had probably killed him a bunch of times that night.

My Zune HD works great (so does my old Zune 30 (bought on launch day))--so does my XBOX...and my PC... That being said, you can download the Zune software for free SJ, then you can browse all you want and buy piece by piece if you want (or you can get the subscription). I love having the pass as the Smart DJ and Mix View are AWESOME for discovering bands I would have never heard before otherwise. Their selection is a lot better than it was at launch (when it was somewhat disappointing) My only real complaint with the pass is that sometimes MS can't get the full rights to use music under their subscription system (same thing happens on Rhapsody and Napster), so you have to buy those songs one by one (which costs around $.99 a piece). You can download here.

$189 at NewEgg right now for the 16 GB

buy one yet? I have been using my Zune HD for a few months now and absolutely love it. I use it every day for both music and audiobooks. You're write, less app support, but I wanted a media player. Having HD radio and FM is pretty slick, but I don't use it that often. That being said, I downloaded 40 or so songs just tonight--which would've cost me $40 through iTunes...with my Zune pass, I'm set. The "SmartDJ" and "MixView" features of the Zune software are also amazing if you're not familiar with those. SmartDJ is especially cool...you click on a song/artist you like, click the "SmartDJ" button, and it will grab music from your collection and the marketplace that is similar and play it for you in its own nifty little playlist. I like it. My Dad saw how smooth and pretty the new Zune is and now wants one to replace his nano. It's small, light, and seems very solidly built. I like it. If I were going to go iPod, I'd go Nano--the touch is kinda nice...but, meh, unless you want to use apps out the wazoo, the nano seems like a better choice to me. Interesting side-note: "wazoo" is a word present in Firefox's spellcheck database, but nano is not. (though, I suppose that's a prefix, not an actual word)

That is freaking awesome!

Personally, my biggest complaints about the PC version of this game are the price and the lack of dedicated servers. I don't want some lame-#@$ friend system like the XBOX has. I like finding random servers SOMETIMES, but I generally like to play on one that has a bunch of people on it that I like to play with. I.E. GC. The $10 extra ticks me off to no end though. The reason that you pay $10 extra on console games is because the console companies all got together in a conference and decided they wanted $10 of pure profit from each NEW game sold. So, rather than take the hit, game companies like EA charge retailers like GameStop $10 more per game. The retailers, in turn, don't want to take the hit on something they don't make much of a profit on anyway, and simply charge $10 more for the game. MW 2 being upped to $60 for the PC is just a blatant grab at some extra profit for no good reason other than the first game was popular.

I do wish it were FiOS . . . the bandwidth caps on U-Verse are pretty severe vs Verizon's 20 up and 20 down (that's Mb\s)

My neighborhood is getting U-Verse lines installed right now as I type this. I'm not sure when the service will actually be available for purchase, but it sounds/looks pretty sweet to me. Does anyone have any experience with U-Verse? Good? Bad?

Yeah, I tried it three times, then I found a thread on it at the forums that were posted here earlier. Basically, you have to rush into the last part and stand by the Doc's door while you kill all the bandits--then it works fine. So, my buy finished that little stint at level 5. Hahahaha...oh well, at least I got some grinding out of the way--albiet unintentionally.

www.evony.com It's a browser based MMO strategy game, basically. It's kind of addicting in a mindless way, and it's free to play. To get stuff done faster, you can spend real money, but I'm not doing any of that.

So, I got the game yesterday and tried playing it. It played beautifully on my laptop with the settings cranked (I love this laptop), but after killing all the bandits in the Firelands (or whatever that first town is called), nothing happens. Claptrap doesn't talk to the dr and I can't hit the switch to open his door. Everything just kind of sits there. Anyone else have this problem?

Interesting with your recent complaints about AT&T: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/181379/verizon_lawsuit_makes_atandt_the_villain_again.html That's pretty sad, going to court just to cover up your own crappy network. Verizon was even nice enough NOT to point out that even in the dark areas, phones tend to switch from 3G to non-3G which causes signal interruption . . . Just thought you might get a kick out of that SJ

Wow, SJ posted a link praising the Zune...I'm blown away... That being said, sorry 'bout your luck with the iPhone--I probably would've joined this conversation earlier, but I was in India. I LOVE my BB Storm--more so now that I've been to India. It doesn't seem to have the call volume issues of other BBs (at least, I've never had a problem with it), and I get coverage EVERYWHERE. I was getting better coverage in India than the local people in India with upscale phones. That being said, the Storm is VZW only--so, not much help to you. Sony is launching a new Android phone in the near future (not sure what it's called) that should be pretty killer. But I just learned with a search that it's the Rachel you posted up there. Hahaha...I wonder if you can get an unlocked Droid (the VZW phone). They are getting very good reviews all around--the biggest complaint being size.

Lol...crap, that'll teach me to check somewhere else. Is it good on PC as well? Not just a bad port like RainbowSix Vegas?

So...this game appears to be SWEET. Has anyone bought it/played it yet? I rented it for the XBOX360 so I could try it before I decided whether or not to buy it on PC. It is good, even though I've only played for a short bit of time. I'm planning on checking out the co-op tonight, and will let you know how it plays!

I think so--it's not perfect, they had to tweak some things to make it a more MMO-friendly platform, but, for the most part, it's pretty dern close. Places like Thorin's hall are pretty much exactly how I pictured them when reading the books...it's impressive.