How To Make Vista Bearable Pt.1

Its been a year since the release of vista and still this OS seems just as buggy as ever. Most users have resigned themselves to be contempt with the shortcomings of Vista and have given up hope of it improving. After listening to several different tech's about Vista, I have come up with several things which can improve your OS and make Vista liveable.

First off the bat you will want to throttle user account control. Nothing is more annoying in Vista than to get overloaded with Vista's security pop-up system. This is a quick and easy fix that will help keep you from pulling your hair out when dealing with this system. It's easy to do, just visit the User Accounts control panel and click "Turn User Account Control on or off," then uncheck the box in the following screen related to UAC.

Another relatively simple thing that will give your PC a little boost is the refine the Registry with TweakVI. TweakVI is a downloadable application designed to fine-tune your Windows Registry and give your PC a speed boost. To tweak your registry, simply download this free version of the application here and install. When running this application focus your time and energy on the System Information and Tweaks section, then lastly run the CPU Tweaks. While this will in no means turn a core 2 duo into a quad core, expect to see a small increase in overall speed and performance. Don't waste your time and money buying the $50 yearly subscription as the free version should give you everything you need.

This ends my first installment of how to improve your Vista system, there are many more things you can do to increase your overall experience with Vista and make this OS much more enjoyable. These updates should be coming soon.

Call of Duty 4 - First Strike Xfire Event

Xfire is hosting the first officially sponsored Call of Duty 4 Tournament Called First Strike. This is a free tournament opened to all North American players and is scheduled for November 15-21.
I will personally be competing in this tournament with Team 50 Calibre and hope to go far in the tournament.

The prizes include a Voodoo Omen Gaming PC (priced at $7,400) for 1st place and a XFX NVIDIA Video Cards (specs TBA) for 2nd place. A Professional Series Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty will be rewarded to 3rd place and Fatal1ty Gaming Headset will be rewarded to 4th place respectively.

This is good news for the Call of Duty 4 competitive scene as it shows a bright future for the game seeing as it has been sponsored by Xfire within the first week of release.

Soldier of Fortune 3

Recently announced is the game Soldier of Fortune: Payback, which is supposed to be the third game in the Soldier of Fortune series. However the game isn't being designed by Raven Software, who made the Soldier of Fortune and Soldier of Fortune 2: Double Helix. Rather picking up where they left off is Cauldron, who is designing and producing Solder of Fortune: Payback.

For me this leaves some speculation, I loved the first two games made by RavenSoft and hope that Cauldron can make this third game as enjoyable as the first and second. I will be buying the game and I hope to see great things from it. For me what will make or break the game will be the multiplayer, coming from SoF2, which i feel had the greatest multiplayer in any FPS genre so far, I hope to see some of the things that made the Double Helix so great.

A Trailer for Soldier of Fortune: Payback can be seen HERE

Bioshock

I have just finished playing the newly released game Bioshock. While i enjoyed the game i cant help but feel disappointed. I remember System Shock 2 being such a great game and was looking forward to the same feel from Bioshock. Unfortunately it didn't happen. The game felt to easy and at times the story line didn't make sense to me. The cartoonish looks of the game also did not appeal to me. It also got a little old for me killing the same monsters over and over again. I didn't even use some of the weapons like the grenade launcher because i kept saving it for something harder to kill. The boss at the end was a joke and both endings were awful. While the game was fun to play it didnt' live up to my expectations.

The CTF Incursion

After the end of season 5 CAL CTF I have decided to partner with Max Reiger and Curtis Laboiteaux to help design and produce a Call of Duty 2 frag video. The movie will be called The CTF Incursion: It Stops Here. The directing and editing will be done by myself and Max Reiger, with graphics by Curtis. We have decided to make this movie to try and promote the CTF community, which is largely ignored and frowned upon. We are hoping that with the production of a high end movie, it will attract more players to the gametype.

Call of Duty 2 Competitive Gaming Dead?

I have been playing call of duty 2 competitively since the game was released. With season 5 of CAL about to be finished, it seems that there is no longer the same hype about teams and matches as there was during seasons 1, 2, and 3. I used to join irc scorebots, watch shoutcasts, look forward to reading predictions about the teams. Now however it seems that all this has been lost or diluted. With the coming of Call of Duty 4 being released in November, there is just 1 season left of cal before the game dies and the community splits. What will this last season hold in store, will there be new surprises in the form of new teams or will this community continue to be dominated by the same 3-4 teams. I don't see it changing much but hopefully with cod4 coming out all this will change.

New X-FI Soundcard

Lately i have been frustrated with my on-board sound from my motherboard. I play alot of multi-player first person shooters, and nothing frustrates me more than when i hear somebody, and then i cant tell which direction the noise came from. So many times have i died because of this, that i decided to order an X-Fi XtremeGamer sound card. It is arriving within the next couple of days and i expect great things from it.

Edit: I love it! I can hear everything crystal clear and even some things i never even knew existed. A feature that comes with this that i also like is that you can change the sound modes. There are three modes that are "Gaming Mode", "Entertainment Mode", and "Sound Creation Mode". Each with its own specialties that change the sound to optimize your experience. This is a great sound card and it was worth every penny.

Dual Booting XP and Vista

If you want to give vista a shot but at the same time you dont want to give up on XP, then Dual Booting XP and Vista might be a solution for you. The process is simple and gives you all the benefits of both operating systems. This can allow you to use the next generation of software such as DirectX 10 and then go back to the simplicity and reliability of windows XP in a matter of minutes.

MiddleTown OH Review

This is a fun site which pertains to where i live, which is Middletown Ohio. Basically you get to comment on local businesses on whether or not they suck. This can be fun at times when you want to vent some anger because the local McDonalds serves horrible hamburgers. You also get to chat with people you know and have a fun time.

Samsung 3D Television

With Samsung's new three dimensional technology they are sure to blow away the high definition market. I personally am looking forward to playing call of duty 4 and blowing away some bad guys away in 3d, or even just watch some of my favorite tv shows in a new perspective.

Windows Vista and Call of Duty 2

I have been waiting for a chance to see the new windows vista for myself ever since it was first released. I had heard all the bad things about it and just dismissed them as lies concocted by nay-sayers. When i moved to Ohio i finally got to see windows vista first hand on my Mom's computer. But to my avail it was not everything i had wished for. There was so many security issues that it was hard to get anything done at all. Every time i opened a program it wanted to confirm that i indeed had meant to do that. When i went to install call of duty 2 i had to click yes about 5 times before it even began. Coming from windows xp where everything is simpler, i had not anticipated this. When the game finished installing windows vista had alot of compatability errors and i was unable to play. When i contacted windows about this problem they said there was nothing they could do. I agree with one person's view about vista.