This isn't a direct answer, exactly, but if you're looking for a good console, for not too much money, then just avoid the new crap altogether. You didn't miss anything between the SNES and roughly 1999 (with the exception of Symphony of the Night and R-Type Delta), and there's some great stuff on the current/last generation of consoles:
Dreamcast: Cannon Spike Mars Matrix Zero Gunner 2 (have to find an image online, wasn't released in US) Rez (see Zero Gunner 2) Dead or Alive 2 Soul Calibur GigaWing Crazy Taxi 1/2 Jet Set Radio Maken X
PS2: Symphony of the Night (PS1 game) Gradius III & IV Gradius V R-Type Final R-Type Delta (PS1 game, you probably can't find this, but if you ever see it and have a PS2, grab it) Silpheed Zone of the Enders 1/2 Neo Contra (if you liked the overhead levels in Contra: The Alien Wars (SNES) you will absolutely love this, its an awesome game) Capcom Classics Collection (old stuff, but 1942, 1943, and 1943 Kai with remixed music are worth it) Soul Calibur 2/3 Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution Front Mission 4 Culdcept Champions of Norrath 1/2 Katamari Damacy
Xbox: Oddworld Stranger's Wrath (the only single player FPS really worth playing) Halo (if you like multiplayer with 4 people in one room) Halo 2 (if you want to mess with online multiplayer, the maps suck for 4 person games though) Timesplitters: Future Perfect (another great 4 person FPS) Dead or Alive: Ultimate (gorgeous remake of 2 with online play and tweaked movelist/block methods) Hunter the Reckoning: Redeemer Gunvalkyrie (awesome shooter from Sega, controls have a steep learning curve, but is really neat, has great music too) Panzer Dragoon Orta (lock-on rail shooter, similar to Rez but not as cool) Otogi 1/2 Phantom Crash (the sequel to this is Steel Lancer Arena International on PS2, but I haven't played it) Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (the best of all versions of it) Crimson Skies MechAssualt (never played 2, but 1 is pretty cool)
Can't speak for the Gamecube because I've never messed with one, and I've probably ommitted some stuff, but all of those are great games, and all of them should be easily obtainable for $15-$30 (maybe not the Dreamcast ones, I haven't gone looking since it stopped production). If you get a PS2 or XBox, be sure to grab an s-video cable for it, it makes a right noticable difference. Dreamcast can output VGA if you can find a converter box.
Pick one, get some games, and (maybe) by the time you're tired of it, the new consoles will have some games backing them up.
Are they stupid? I've had a PS2 sitting on top of an XBox, and a Dreamcast sitting on top of both, for two years now. I imagine the Dreamcast would be fairly easily replaced with a Gamecube and stack the same way. What's all this talk of things not stacking?
Any sources or info on those South Pacific islands? That actually sounds sorta interesting.
And do the Indian lake-islands have anything to do with the rare floating islands that are in some American lakes? Are they the same thing? There was a tiny news article last week (I think) about a floating island needing to be towed back to the center of a lake somewhere.
Ah, I didn't mean 'shooter' as in scrolling shooter. Its an FPS, its just that it takes place in a wonderful world, has unique weapons, good sound/music, hell, everything about it is good.
As for scrolling shooters, if you've got a PS2 around, get Gradius V. Made by Treasure for Konami. Its Gradius' core gameplay crossed with Ikaruga's colors, style, and explosions. I think its the better game of the two, and they've done some awesome new things with the 'option' side ships.
Some other good PS2 stuff...
Silpheed - pre-Ikaruga game from Treasure, easier and not as pretty, but cool.
Gradius III/IV - arcade Gradius III is quite a bit different from the SNES one, and IV was the first 3D Gradius, and its pretty good. This is tough to find though, and V is better.
R-Type Final - over 100 different R-Type ships, and branching levels, needs to be on s-video to really look right though.
Neo Contra - if you played the SNES Contra: The Alien Wars and remember the overhead levels, this is a whole Contra game done in that style. Wonderful game, all the levels are good, and a good 2 player co-op game. While this one is great, I would recommend avoiding Contra: Shattered Soldier though, its not very good (I just didn't find it fun enough to justify its difficulty).
Metal Slug III, IV, V - available on PS2, xbox, or MAME.
Not much on the xbox would qualify as a shooter (I keep it around for 4 player games). The two games that have the same sort of appeal to me though, are Panzer Dragoon Orta and Gunvalkyrie (GV is the better of the two, but has quite a bit of learning curve on its controls). Panzer Dragoon really needs to be on s-video or better too, it looks muddy otherwise. Somewhat different genre, but Hunter the Reckoning: Redeemer is an incredible game too, and its great with 3 or 4 players. The definitive version of Gauntlet: Dark Legacy is on xbox too (same as the GC one, but without the game-locking bugs).
You make little sense.
How is the xbox an entry into the set-top box market? They already had WebTV, and the xbox doesn't even have a browser.
How does broadband becoming a staple of homes refute the business rationale of the xbox? It requires broadband to get online. If anything, that supports it.
Have you confused the xbox with the dreamcast? The dreamcast could operate as a set-top box, had a first-party keyboard, and didn't require broadband to get online. Not that it was a major threat to MS; it had some of their software in it.
I don't claim to know MS's business rationale or anything, but I think its fairly obvious that it wasn't to capitalize on the legions of PC-phobic 'consumers' who were afraid of computers and broadband. I don't even care what their business rationale is or was. What matters is the outcome. It may have lost MS money, but it has put a bit of choice back into the console market, made the first good online console gaming system, and it really spurred on their competitors as well. It was good for gamers, maybe better for them than for the manufacturer.
I don't see the wisdom in releasing the 360 right now or in this manner either, but that doesn't diminish the original xbox in any way.
You just reminded me to find my Outlaws CDs... Guilty Gear XX & Isuka, Otogi, and Gunvalkyrie also have great soundtracks. Never had a chance to play Grim Fandango, though.
Oddworld Inhabitants made one incredible Xbox game (hell, its the best shooter on any platform in years): Oddworld Stranger's Wrath. Its a shame that EA buried them.
Heh, I won't buy games that are all grey and black... and there's way too many of them now. Games should be vibrant in color, in geometry, and in sound/music.
Just for a dumb example, compare Contra: Shattered Soldier to Neo Contra. Shattered Soldier is bleak and ugly (and hard as hell, but it doesn't really compel me to try and finish it). Neo Contra is gorgeous in every way, and is one of my favorite shooters (I think it actually beats Cannon Spike, though maybe not Zero Gunner 2 and Mars Matrix). Another game with wonderful art/music design (though not as great on sound) was Gunvalkyrie. Some of the more ambient levels in that were crazy.
Or for an FPS: compare something like Rainbow Six 3 to XIII, Rainbow Six 3 is hideous for the most part (the standalone expansion actually had decent to good art direction, but I don't understand how the original sold), while XIII is awesome looking. Oddworld Stranger's Wrath was also awesome looking (how I wish that had multiplayer; it was the best shooter in years).
The one change I hated in Halo 2 was the pistol model; the one in Halo 2 just looks like a boring off-the-shelf pistol, and its not even shiny. I guess the shiny new covenant carbine and rifle sort of make up for it though.
Eh, I guess what I'm getting at is that I don't like realism because realism seems to mean 'drab', and I don't see how game developers look at the increasingly shiny hardware available and just think 'hey, we can make boring realistic stuff with even more photo-realism!'. The first one that shows me something compelling that I can't see in a photo (a sequel to Rez would be nice), might get a sale from me.
If you have little or nothing, $100 can go to far better uses than some cheapass electronics.
Negroponte isn't interested in its educational usefulness, though. He's only interested in any media attention this can draw for him and any corporate sponsors he's currently feeding from. Negroponte is a joke, and to brand his shenanigans as "research", "design", or "development" is almost offensive. Regardless, people go on and on about him, including Slashdot from time to time.
I thought exactly like you when I was in school (I had an X20), but since I've started working I've found it worth the extra 1.5 pounds to carry around a cd-burner too. I rarely need to install anything, but its invaluable to be able to knock off copies of data/cd images on the fly wherever I need to.
Hey,
This is off-topic, but I noticed you still use an X21... I still use (semi-regularly) an X20. Have you had any issues with battery/power management on it as it has aged, and if so, how have you addressed them? Mine won't hold a charge, even in a new battery, for more than 20 minutes, and it sometimes doesn't even know it has a battery (yet still runs). I can still put it in standby and carry it somewhere to plug in, but its getting really aggravating and I think I might need to retire it. Any ideas?
I never understood why there's even a debate. Not the 'completely dismissing the possibility of God' sort of not understanding, but more of this: if you absolutely can't stand the idea of God/Nixon/etc, and you want to explain life, you've got evolution. Evolution is good, and really seems to be on track. If you do want to believe in God, and that God made life, that's even equally good. Isn't it obvious then (without inventing more stuff) that evolution is the method (the hand, the tool, the forge) of God?
To me, the way things happen is the way things happen. Evolution is the way things happen. Whether God made it happen or the random belligerent awesomeness of existence made it happen is absolutely irrelevant; it still happened. It still happens.
Anything that happens, happens. (1)
So, if the existence of evolution is independent of the existence of God, why the debate about evolution? Couldn't we all just quietly admit that there is, in fact, evolution, and then get back to the root of the issue, which is attacking each other over the possibility that there is or isn't a God?
(1) Blatantly stolen from Douglas Adams, and so as not to be totally removed from context is to be followed by two additional laws, then a corollary to all 3 (or just 2 and 3?), and then an unlikely 5th book of a trilogy, the latter of which I'll not attempt to recall and type below:
[Law 2] Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.
[Law 3] Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.
[Corollary] Although not necessarily in chronological order.
I played both Symphony of the Night and Front Mission 3 for the first time on a PS2, but that's about it. I still like Front Mission 3 better than 4... it was crappier looking but it seemed cooler. Both good though.
Does there seem to be a lot of interest from customers just because they're looking for some new games? I've got the impression lately that MS/publishers have seriously mistreated the xbox these past few months and haven't released much for it, almost as if they want to starve xbox fans and force them to the 360... I love the xbox, but still can't see much to the 360 at this point, especially since I'm not terribly sold on the whole HD thing (s-video on a TV under 36 inches with a decent sharpness filter looks great to me).
Off-topic, but my source of "new" games lately has been the PS2; I finally got one about a month ago as a hand-me-down and I've been playing all the good arcade-ish games on it (which are inexpensive too): Gradius, R-Type, Contra (Neo-Contra is insanely awesome), Silpheed, etc... and I found out the other day that the sequel to Phantom Crash (an xbox game I loved) is on it too, so it'll probly keep me entertained for some time. Because of this, none of the next-gen consoles really look attractive at the moment. Ah well. Maybe when I get bored with the PS2 I'll go grab the few good looking xbox games that I haven't played, and then get a gamecube. And when I get bored with that, perhaps something worthwhile will have happened in the next-gen market.
I used to have more or less the opposite fear... every time I left the house and looked back at a window, I feared seeing something looking back out at me from the empty house. It was such an intense fear that I was sometimes startled when something wasn't there, since I really, really expected it. I dunno why... its more or less gone now.
Look for one called rRootage, by Kenta Cho; its an incredible game. It basically randomly generates wave after wave of crazy boss fights, and you can play it in Ikaruga mode (color flipping), GigaWing mode (points for screen clear bombs), and a few other modes, one of which charges your ship for 'skimming' shots without touchign them. All done in really nice looking vector graphics. There's another interesting game from the same guy called Tumiki Fighters (or something like that), which has an Einhander-like idea... all the ships are made from giant blocks, and you can capture any of them, be they guns or just big parts that work as shields.
Most Windows apps use the registry, but don't need it to operate. I keep Windows & Office (tumor that it is) installed on their own partition, with some scratch space and nothing else. Whenever Windows really glitches (usually from registry mayhem), its usually a better use of my time just to nuke that partition, reinstall those, and let Windows Update have fun overnite rather than try and resolve whatever's going on. Almost all of my applications (with the exception of WinRar context menu integration and PowerDVD) work fine after the format/reinstall. Most of them lose their preferences, but this is no big deal since I can put those back in with a few clicks. The actual programs are self-contained. Hell, VLC will actually load and run from a CD without even being installed. I package it with powerpoint presentations (and some batch files to call and close it) whenever I need to embed video formats that require odd codecs (since I can never be sure the computer I am going to will have them).
That's funny, I have a fine credit rating, perhaps because of paid off student loans, and actually just got a house about 2 weeks ago. Granted, it makes me want to scream, since I hate debt (hence the paid off student loans already, they were priority 1)... but I guess its better than throwing away money on an appartment.
Does anyone know if these "ipod ready" cars just have standard line inputs (it would be about time) or if they're some sort of bastard proprietary jack?
Slashdot Mirror
Hey,
This isn't a direct answer, exactly, but if you're looking for a good console, for not too much money, then just avoid the new crap altogether. You didn't miss anything between the SNES and roughly 1999 (with the exception of Symphony of the Night and R-Type Delta), and there's some great stuff on the current/last generation of consoles:
Dreamcast:
Cannon Spike
Mars Matrix
Zero Gunner 2 (have to find an image online, wasn't released in US)
Rez (see Zero Gunner 2)
Dead or Alive 2
Soul Calibur
GigaWing
Crazy Taxi 1/2
Jet Set Radio
Maken X
PS2:
Symphony of the Night (PS1 game)
Gradius III & IV
Gradius V
R-Type Final
R-Type Delta (PS1 game, you probably can't find this, but if you ever see it and have a PS2, grab it)
Silpheed
Zone of the Enders 1/2
Neo Contra (if you liked the overhead levels in Contra: The Alien Wars (SNES) you will absolutely love this, its an awesome game)
Capcom Classics Collection (old stuff, but 1942, 1943, and 1943 Kai with remixed music are worth it)
Soul Calibur 2/3
Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution
Front Mission 4
Culdcept
Champions of Norrath 1/2
Katamari Damacy
Xbox:
Oddworld Stranger's Wrath (the only single player FPS really worth playing)
Halo (if you like multiplayer with 4 people in one room)
Halo 2 (if you want to mess with online multiplayer, the maps suck for 4 person games though)
Timesplitters: Future Perfect (another great 4 person FPS)
Dead or Alive: Ultimate (gorgeous remake of 2 with online play and tweaked movelist/block methods)
Hunter the Reckoning: Redeemer
Gunvalkyrie (awesome shooter from Sega, controls have a steep learning curve, but is really neat, has great music too)
Panzer Dragoon Orta (lock-on rail shooter, similar to Rez but not as cool)
Otogi 1/2
Phantom Crash (the sequel to this is Steel Lancer Arena International on PS2, but I haven't played it)
Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (the best of all versions of it)
Crimson Skies
MechAssualt (never played 2, but 1 is pretty cool)
Can't speak for the Gamecube because I've never messed with one, and I've probably ommitted some stuff, but all of those are great games, and all of them should be easily obtainable for $15-$30 (maybe not the Dreamcast ones, I haven't gone looking since it stopped production). If you get a PS2 or XBox, be sure to grab an s-video cable for it, it makes a right noticable difference. Dreamcast can output VGA if you can find a converter box.
Pick one, get some games, and (maybe) by the time you're tired of it, the new consoles will have some games backing them up.
Are they stupid? I've had a PS2 sitting on top of an XBox, and a Dreamcast sitting on top of both, for two years now. I imagine the Dreamcast would be fairly easily replaced with a Gamecube and stack the same way. What's all this talk of things not stacking?
Ooh! I've got dibs on the Centaurus Wall and the Norma Supercluster!
Any sources or info on those South Pacific islands? That actually sounds sorta interesting.
And do the Indian lake-islands have anything to do with the rare floating islands that are in some American lakes? Are they the same thing? There was a tiny news article last week (I think) about a floating island needing to be towed back to the center of a lake somewhere.
Don't forget that Al Gore also invented the environment!
And has ridden the mighty moon worm!
Ah, I didn't mean 'shooter' as in scrolling shooter. Its an FPS, its just that it takes place in a wonderful world, has unique weapons, good sound/music, hell, everything about it is good.
As for scrolling shooters, if you've got a PS2 around, get Gradius V. Made by Treasure for Konami. Its Gradius' core gameplay crossed with Ikaruga's colors, style, and explosions. I think its the better game of the two, and they've done some awesome new things with the 'option' side ships.
Some other good PS2 stuff...
Silpheed - pre-Ikaruga game from Treasure, easier and not as pretty, but cool.
Gradius III/IV - arcade Gradius III is quite a bit different from the SNES one, and IV was the first 3D Gradius, and its pretty good. This is tough to find though, and V is better.
R-Type Final - over 100 different R-Type ships, and branching levels, needs to be on s-video to really look right though.
Neo Contra - if you played the SNES Contra: The Alien Wars and remember the overhead levels, this is a whole Contra game done in that style. Wonderful game, all the levels are good, and a good 2 player co-op game. While this one is great, I would recommend avoiding Contra: Shattered Soldier though, its not very good (I just didn't find it fun enough to justify its difficulty).
Metal Slug III, IV, V - available on PS2, xbox, or MAME.
Not much on the xbox would qualify as a shooter (I keep it around for 4 player games). The two games that have the same sort of appeal to me though, are Panzer Dragoon Orta and Gunvalkyrie (GV is the better of the two, but has quite a bit of learning curve on its controls). Panzer Dragoon really needs to be on s-video or better too, it looks muddy otherwise. Somewhat different genre, but Hunter the Reckoning: Redeemer is an incredible game too, and its great with 3 or 4 players. The definitive version of Gauntlet: Dark Legacy is on xbox too (same as the GC one, but without the game-locking bugs).
You make little sense. How is the xbox an entry into the set-top box market? They already had WebTV, and the xbox doesn't even have a browser. How does broadband becoming a staple of homes refute the business rationale of the xbox? It requires broadband to get online. If anything, that supports it. Have you confused the xbox with the dreamcast? The dreamcast could operate as a set-top box, had a first-party keyboard, and didn't require broadband to get online. Not that it was a major threat to MS; it had some of their software in it. I don't claim to know MS's business rationale or anything, but I think its fairly obvious that it wasn't to capitalize on the legions of PC-phobic 'consumers' who were afraid of computers and broadband. I don't even care what their business rationale is or was. What matters is the outcome. It may have lost MS money, but it has put a bit of choice back into the console market, made the first good online console gaming system, and it really spurred on their competitors as well. It was good for gamers, maybe better for them than for the manufacturer. I don't see the wisdom in releasing the 360 right now or in this manner either, but that doesn't diminish the original xbox in any way.
You just reminded me to find my Outlaws CDs... Guilty Gear XX & Isuka, Otogi, and Gunvalkyrie also have great soundtracks. Never had a chance to play Grim Fandango, though.
Oddworld Inhabitants made one incredible Xbox game (hell, its the best shooter on any platform in years): Oddworld Stranger's Wrath. Its a shame that EA buried them.
Heh, I won't buy games that are all grey and black... and there's way too many of them now. Games should be vibrant in color, in geometry, and in sound/music. Just for a dumb example, compare Contra: Shattered Soldier to Neo Contra. Shattered Soldier is bleak and ugly (and hard as hell, but it doesn't really compel me to try and finish it). Neo Contra is gorgeous in every way, and is one of my favorite shooters (I think it actually beats Cannon Spike, though maybe not Zero Gunner 2 and Mars Matrix). Another game with wonderful art/music design (though not as great on sound) was Gunvalkyrie. Some of the more ambient levels in that were crazy. Or for an FPS: compare something like Rainbow Six 3 to XIII, Rainbow Six 3 is hideous for the most part (the standalone expansion actually had decent to good art direction, but I don't understand how the original sold), while XIII is awesome looking. Oddworld Stranger's Wrath was also awesome looking (how I wish that had multiplayer; it was the best shooter in years). The one change I hated in Halo 2 was the pistol model; the one in Halo 2 just looks like a boring off-the-shelf pistol, and its not even shiny. I guess the shiny new covenant carbine and rifle sort of make up for it though. Eh, I guess what I'm getting at is that I don't like realism because realism seems to mean 'drab', and I don't see how game developers look at the increasingly shiny hardware available and just think 'hey, we can make boring realistic stuff with even more photo-realism!'. The first one that shows me something compelling that I can't see in a photo (a sequel to Rez would be nice), might get a sale from me.
If you have little or nothing, $100 can go to far better uses than some cheapass electronics.
Negroponte isn't interested in its educational usefulness, though. He's only interested in any media attention this can draw for him and any corporate sponsors he's currently feeding from. Negroponte is a joke, and to brand his shenanigans as "research", "design", or "development" is almost offensive. Regardless, people go on and on about him, including Slashdot from time to time.
Oh, you're likely right. I moved.
I thought exactly like you when I was in school (I had an X20), but since I've started working I've found it worth the extra 1.5 pounds to carry around a cd-burner too. I rarely need to install anything, but its invaluable to be able to knock off copies of data/cd images on the fly wherever I need to.
Hey, This is off-topic, but I noticed you still use an X21... I still use (semi-regularly) an X20. Have you had any issues with battery/power management on it as it has aged, and if so, how have you addressed them? Mine won't hold a charge, even in a new battery, for more than 20 minutes, and it sometimes doesn't even know it has a battery (yet still runs). I can still put it in standby and carry it somewhere to plug in, but its getting really aggravating and I think I might need to retire it. Any ideas?
I never understood why there's even a debate. Not the 'completely dismissing the possibility of God' sort of not understanding, but more of this: if you absolutely can't stand the idea of God /Nixon/etc, and you want to explain life, you've got evolution. Evolution is good, and really seems to be on track. If you do want to believe in God, and that God made life, that's even equally good. Isn't it obvious then (without inventing more stuff) that evolution is the method (the hand, the tool, the forge) of God?
To me, the way things happen is the way things happen. Evolution is the way things happen. Whether God made it happen or the random belligerent awesomeness of existence made it happen is absolutely irrelevant; it still happened. It still happens.
Anything that happens, happens. (1)
So, if the existence of evolution is independent of the existence of God, why the debate about evolution? Couldn't we all just quietly admit that there is, in fact, evolution, and then get back to the root of the issue, which is attacking each other over the possibility that there is or isn't a God?
(1) Blatantly stolen from Douglas Adams, and so as not to be totally removed from context is to be followed by two additional laws, then a corollary to all 3 (or just 2 and 3?), and then an unlikely 5th book of a trilogy, the latter of which I'll not attempt to recall and type below:
[Law 2] Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.
[Law 3] Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.
[Corollary] Although not necessarily in chronological order.
I played both Symphony of the Night and Front Mission 3 for the first time on a PS2, but that's about it. I still like Front Mission 3 better than 4... it was crappier looking but it seemed cooler. Both good though.
Does there seem to be a lot of interest from customers just because they're looking for some new games? I've got the impression lately that MS/publishers have seriously mistreated the xbox these past few months and haven't released much for it, almost as if they want to starve xbox fans and force them to the 360... I love the xbox, but still can't see much to the 360 at this point, especially since I'm not terribly sold on the whole HD thing (s-video on a TV under 36 inches with a decent sharpness filter looks great to me).
Off-topic, but my source of "new" games lately has been the PS2; I finally got one about a month ago as a hand-me-down and I've been playing all the good arcade-ish games on it (which are inexpensive too): Gradius, R-Type, Contra (Neo-Contra is insanely awesome), Silpheed, etc... and I found out the other day that the sequel to Phantom Crash (an xbox game I loved) is on it too, so it'll probly keep me entertained for some time. Because of this, none of the next-gen consoles really look attractive at the moment. Ah well. Maybe when I get bored with the PS2 I'll go grab the few good looking xbox games that I haven't played, and then get a gamecube. And when I get bored with that, perhaps something worthwhile will have happened in the next-gen market.
Thanks to Fry I now know the secret of CAN EAT MORE!
I used to have more or less the opposite fear... every time I left the house and looked back at a window, I feared seeing something looking back out at me from the empty house. It was such an intense fear that I was sometimes startled when something wasn't there, since I really, really expected it. I dunno why... its more or less gone now.
Look for one called rRootage, by Kenta Cho; its an incredible game. It basically randomly generates wave after wave of crazy boss fights, and you can play it in Ikaruga mode (color flipping), GigaWing mode (points for screen clear bombs), and a few other modes, one of which charges your ship for 'skimming' shots without touchign them. All done in really nice looking vector graphics. There's another interesting game from the same guy called Tumiki Fighters (or something like that), which has an Einhander-like idea... all the ships are made from giant blocks, and you can capture any of them, be they guns or just big parts that work as shields.
Most Windows apps use the registry, but don't need it to operate. I keep Windows & Office (tumor that it is) installed on their own partition, with some scratch space and nothing else. Whenever Windows really glitches (usually from registry mayhem), its usually a better use of my time just to nuke that partition, reinstall those, and let Windows Update have fun overnite rather than try and resolve whatever's going on. Almost all of my applications (with the exception of WinRar context menu integration and PowerDVD) work fine after the format/reinstall. Most of them lose their preferences, but this is no big deal since I can put those back in with a few clicks. The actual programs are self-contained. Hell, VLC will actually load and run from a CD without even being installed. I package it with powerpoint presentations (and some batch files to call and close it) whenever I need to embed video formats that require odd codecs (since I can never be sure the computer I am going to will have them).
That's funny, I have a fine credit rating, perhaps because of paid off student loans, and actually just got a house about 2 weeks ago. Granted, it makes me want to scream, since I hate debt (hence the paid off student loans already, they were priority 1)... but I guess its better than throwing away money on an appartment.
Didn't they make Cybermage: Darklight Awakening? Because that was an absolutely incredible game.
Yar, that's awful... and I thought I might finally be able to get a first-party car stereo with a cd player and a line input... Oh well.
Does anyone know if these "ipod ready" cars just have standard line inputs (it would be about time) or if they're some sort of bastard proprietary jack?