No need to take the computer to Geek Squad! Below, I’ll show you exactly how to rid your machine of the baddies and get it running up to par again with a few quick and easy steps!
Good evening once again, fellow Gamers and Gamerettes! Your’s truly, Mike checking in, and I have a review on a really cool PC game you might wanna check out. It’s called Tropico 3.
For those of you that are fans of city building experiences, as I am, Tropico 3 is nothing short of pure fun. First of all, I must say the graphics are absolutely astonishing with everything beautifully rendered in high definition detail. Kalypso entertainment gave their graphics engine a MAJOR overhaul. So much so that it won’t even run on my PC! I have to play it whenever I go to Jonathan’s house since his computer is the only machine that can run it.
But Tropico 3 not only has it’s astonishing, crisp graphics to boast about, but the added realism that comes with a city building game is there too. For instance, when you construct a building, you will see it start out as planks and scaffolding. A truck from your construction office will then bring builders to the site, and they will build your building for you.
At first glance, the “Island” and it’s style of buildings, will bear a striking resemblance to Cuba. In fact, this is what the game is based on. In Sandbox mode, you can choose to play as Fidel Castro, Che Guevarra, or create your own avatar that wanders the island and supervises everything that you, El Presidente, are “watching”. Another thing I find to be a really cool feature of the game is how you not only manage tourist attractions, but also the native people within your own country. Have a rebel that is conspiring against the government, and you’re trying to avoid being overthrown? NO PROBLEM! simply arrange for your secret service agents to take him out. Got a riot going on? Call in the army to eliminate and disperse the rioters. In addition, for newer players, the people at Kalypso have also taken the liberty of starting off every island you play with essential buildings – e.g. construction office, Teamsters office to move product to the docks for shipping, and a dock, seeing as how this is the only way for your island to make money.
When you first start playing the islands, I would strongly recommend you place at least one or two tobacco farms right off the start. Tobacco usually gets a good export price to get you going, then you can build a cigar factory later and really amp up your income. The same applies with sugar cane farms and rum distilleries. You can also make a lot of money by building the right tourist attractions. once your island starts attracting more affluent tourists, they usually are extremely hefty spenders, and you’ll make a substantial profit. On the training side of it, the tutorial is extremely user-friendly and thorough, and it’s quite easy to get the hang of the way the game runs.
Overall, Kalypso has come a long way from the Tropico 1 and 2 days back in 1998 and 1999. I would strongly recommend this as a can’t miss edition to every gaming library. a solid 10 of city-building genius
Hey everyone! Jonathan here. I got my Windows 7 Launch Party Kit in the mail today and I’m going to be giving you a quick little overview and unboxing tour.
The best part about my pack is the included 32-bit and 64-bit copy of Windows 7 Ulimate Signature Editon.
So, as you can see, the main essentials that are required to throw any party are included in the pack. Napkins, streamers, balloons, etc. I’m going to hooking my laptop up to my 46” Samsung LCD in the living room to show a presentation and tour of Windows 7.
If you’d like to attend my launch party and you are somewhat local to the Northern NJ area, please shoot me an email at jonathan@diskinserted.com and let me know.
The Pirate Bay was once again inaccessible on Monday afternoon after a group representing copyright owners forced the BitTorrent search engine’s bandwidth provider to cut off service, according to a published report.
NForce, the Pirate Bay’s latest Internet service provider, complied with a request to shut off service to The Pirate Bay made by Netherlands-based anti-piracy group Brein, according to online news site, Tweakers.net.
Monday’s outage follows a three-hour black of The Pirate Bay on Friday. The cause of the blackouts are attorneys based in Sweden who are working for the film industry, according to my film industry sources. The lawyers are hunting down whoever provides bandwidth to The Pirate Bay and then use the threat of lawsuits to pressure the ISPs to stop.
Black Internet, the Pirate Bay’s one-time ISP was threatened with fines in Sweden unless they cut off service. The Pirate Bay then moved to an ISP in the Ukraine, which also received threats, according to the blog TorrentFreak. NForce was next and now that company has had to comply.
Just where The Pirate Bay will go next or how long the site will be down isn’t clear. The founders of the site have vowed to continue operating the site no matter what.
Thanks to CNET News.
Good news for Nero fans! You can now download Nero 9 absolutely free. Yes, we are not talking about any trick to download the Nero 9 as free. Instead, Nero has released a free version of its famous Nero burning software that gives you the best-in-class burning experience. Although there are many free applications available as an alternative to Nero, very few applications come close to Nero as far as the overall performance and features are concerned.
The only catch with this Nero 9 free version is that it comes with only data burning and disc copying features for CDs and DVDs. To get the additional features you need to upgrade to the Nero 9 full version.
Don’t forget to deselect the Ask toolbar installation option during the installation if you don’t like to install only Nero 9.
While Nero 9 free version comes with very few features, its size is still 54MB! You can download it from the link below.
Download
This post is a little about the game Sims 3 for PC. I got this game recently, and despite the $50 price tag, it was worth it. A lot of different elements from previous Sims games were added, such as the ability to “Garden”- from Sims 2 seasons- and also the ability your Sims now have to “collect” things- e.g. rocks, insects, seeds, etc. The community lots are still there from previous Sims games, you can’t build on a community lot, nor can you see inside the actual building at what’s going on- two features I think are lacking from this new installment. An expansion pack is in order, as there are still some things missing-e.g. going to college, pets, running your own business, etc, but it’s hard to say what Maxis is going to be releasing for this series in the future.
In addition to the nice things about this game, the “Style creator” lets you customize anything. and I mean anything. want a plaid paint job on your sports car? go for it! A pink guitar? No problem! This is one of the things that I would have to say that Maxis got very creative on, and I think the style creator is a neat idea in and of itself. Instead of downloading patterns and taking up more space tho, Maxis needs to come out with a “Style package” for the Sims 3, and put new style patterns on a CD that nobody has seen before.
There is so much that can be done with and to this game, that I can’t wait to see what Maxis has in store next. I’ll give it 8/10
Through our sources close to Microsoft, we can now confirm that the Windows 7 RTM build that will be chosen over the next few days will be officially announced on July 13th, 2009, the same day as the WPC09 (Worldwide Partner Conference) will take place in New Orleans.
As I just mentioned, Microsoft is still in the process of testing and choosing from the RTM candidate builds as they need to ensure that all show-stopper bugs present in the OS have been eradicated to ensure as much of a smooth, bug-free release as possible. TechNet, MSDN, and other partner connections will be getting their hands on the RTM build shortly after, if not on the same day.
Ever since many got to experience Windows 7 with many of it’s new features and performance improvements particularly with 6801 and Rafael’s Blue Badge tool, most fell in love with the OS. Stay tuned for our in-depth Inside Windows 7 series, which will highlight and discuss many of 7’s improvements over Vista, along with our RTM build review complete with benchmarks once the build surfaces on TechNet.
Courtesy of GeekSmack
Most of us have been lucky to grace the awesomeness of Windows 7 release candidates and betas, and now Microsoft is on a steady path and ready for an official final release of Windows 7 on October 22nd of this year; just in time for the holiday season.
With the lack of love for Vista released in January two years prior, Microsoft is hoping to reclaim the hearts of end users and enthusiasts by insisting that Windows 7 is in no way built or based on Vista, but rather that the latest NT kernel has since been improved and perfected.
Read more at Engadget.
Loading ...I must say, this is a brilliant stab at Microsoft!
According to Apple, there aren’t any PCs with fast processors and big screens that work without viruses, crashes or headaches. But folks, this isn’t reality, this is advertising. In fact, this is Apple’s first jab since Microsoft took off the gloves with its Laptop Hunters series of pokes against Apple. So grab a Coke (or Pepsi) and check the ad after the break.
Thanks to Engadget!
Hello peoples!
For my first post on DiskInserted, I thought it would be fun to talk about all the desktop clients that seem to be growing out of the woodwork concering twitting, or posting on Twitter.
If you haven’t heard of the site, or let alone tried it out, here’s a brief rundown of what it does.
In its purest form, Twitter is like taking the bloat out of Facebook and MySpace, it just keeping status updates short and simple. It’s like text messaging, except people have to subscribe, or “follow” you, and vice versa. And like the other social networking websites, you can ban/block, or stay private, choosing only to approve people you know or what have you.
At first, I really didn’t get why we needed another social networking site, but it’s been quite useful. I find myself conversing with friends and colleagues from the day job.
Although we find ourselves Tweeting from the web, you also can install apps on your iPhone, iPod touch, and Blackberry to tweet from wherever you may be. Incidentally, I tweeted during the DiskInserted’s trip to Brooklyn to see Throbbing Gristle. It was quite fun! I felt like the whole world was there with us.
Anyways, when I’m not tapping on my iPhone, I like to use a whole bunch of desktop Twitter clients on my iMac, and you can try them out, too. See which fits you best!
Our first client is one I just discovered this morning. Called pocket*, this client rocks, because it rests non-obtrusively under your menu bar. It boasts several themed colors, like orange, black, sky blue, and red, and everything is quite compact. It’s good for the minimalists who want to stay in the know!
Next we have the Twitter plug-in which is featured in the nightly builds of everyone’s favorite multi-network, IM client, Adium! Extremely handy, it keeps all your tweets and your friends’ tweets in one window! Any time someone posts something new, you don’t have to launch a new tab in your browser, or switch to another app. Major high fives go to Adium’s developers for adding this baby in!
Of course, no app can go unnoticed when it comes from The Icon Factory. Those wacky ladies and gents give us awesome desktop pictures, icons, and other cute lil’ handy utilities. They also churned out Twitterific, for both iPhone/iPod touch and the Mac!
And as always, you have to give them props for such gorgeous looking apps! Twitterific sports a sexy GUI, plus adorable lil’ bird chirps to let you know when a new tweet comes in. Sometimes, and I mean very seldom, those sounds do get annoying, but that’s ok, its visuals compensate!
One of the first clients I ever used was recommended by Bob Lefsetz. It’s an Adobe AIR app called TweetDeck! And it’s pretty BIG, but really cool! It also works on Windows and Linux!
TweetDeck covers all your tweeting needs by dividing them into columns. You get one colum for tweets from the people you follow, another for replies to your tweets, also known as “mentions,” and even a column listing all your direct messages. If you have enough screen real estate, you can even hook yourself up with another column to view profiles of your friends and potential followers. I’d recommend this bad boy for power Tweeters who have large displays.
Beak is another client I recently discovered, and visually, its GUI really is pretty. It reminds me of a sexy IM client, hehe. Sometimes you can’t really divulge too much on an app when its simplicity does the talking for it, but a mention here is totally worth it.
I covered the bases on some Twitter clients I like to use, how ’bout you tell us what you like to use?
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