pdhq64

See, I disagree with this. For 15 quid per month, you get unlimited access to their massive music library. So no matter how many songs you download, you don't pay any extra. And it's legal. And it's easy enough to use. AND you can put them all on your MP3 player. I actually subscribed for about 8 months, and loved it. The only reason I stopped was because my MP3 player died.

Hey. Just got your text. Kinda sneaking this post in at work, so...lucky you. Firstly, ask yourself - are you actually going to be playing BRAND NEW UBERPCREQUIRED games? Quite a few of my friends have spent loads of money on new computers, only to realise 5 months later that they barely use it to its full potential. If the answer to this is "Yeah", then sure - go for the ultra high-spec machine. However, if all you want to do is play CS:S, GTA Vice City, and City of Heroes/Villains, then why bother? I realise that your current machine isn't so great, which is why you're looking at upgrading. So - let's pretend you decide you dont want to play the UBERPCREQUIRED games on their highest settings. I certainly wouldn't suggest getting the most expensive processor you can afford, for example. Get a few down from the best you can afford. It'll be so much cheaper, and you'll probably be glad you did it when September (and University) comes. Now, I'm not saying buy an awful spec machine. No. Quite the opposite. I'm merely suggesting you don't buy an uber one... One thing I do recommend you spend a bit extra on is the RAM. Get as much as you can afford/the motherboard can take (whichever). I certainly wouldn't go any lower than 1GB. As far as Windows is concerned, save yourself 60 quid. Wait until you get to University. Most Uni's can put you into the MSDN Academic Alliance program, which means you get most MS software free. That includes XP Pro. As I'm sure you've learnt, make sure you spend that bit extra on cooling too. Places to buy? http://www.aria.co.uk <- watch their Super Special Deals. Some of the prices are excellent. They have extremely cheap TFT monitors too. http://www.overclockers.co.uk <- Deal of the Week is always a watcher. http://www.scan.co.uk <- Watch out for the £9 or so delivery charge, but if you buy enough it works out nicely. I reckon you could quite easily build a PC capable of lasting at least 4 years for £600. When I built my computer, the plan was to make it last as long as possible. It's been going for 3 years now, and I still have no plans to upgrade it (apart from hard drives). These are rough prices - I haven't followed component prices AT ALL since I stopped working at the computer shop last september... £100 on the processor £100 on RAM £100 on a video card £100 on a motherboard £100 on a TFT monitor £100 on everything else Also, In your text you asked about getting a small HDD for the OS. I DON'T recommend doing this. Unless by small you mean like, 20GB+ (and not 5gb like I'm imagining). Virtual memory, temporary files, etc...

No thanks.

You think so?

Have you thought about where you want to go, before you decide on what you want to do? I mean, if you want to go abroad, you'll be looking at different companies to if you want to stay in this country...

Quick tip. There's no such thing as unlimited bandwidth. They're just overselling, hoping you and their other customers don't use loads. They have a limit, it just looks nicer if they say they don't. I second Shorty's suggestion - Dreamhost. They've been top notch for around a year and a half now. If it wasn't for me looking to build my own server and have it colocated in a datacentre, I'd be with them forever!

Just got home after a long night at work, so excuse the photo. There used to be a program called 3DMeNow. Did pretty much the same thing. The BBC to 3D Ann Robinson's head for some of the earlier Weakest Link adverts. This gives much better results though!

I don't have a clue how good or bad it is, but round here Derby University has an awful reputation. Got a few friends there though, and they really enjoy it. They all live back home (11 miles from Derby), and it suits them down to the ground. If you're after a good night life, Derby is pretty good. Not sure how it fares against Brum, but Ill be going there in 3 weeks, so I'll let you know.

Right. I'm just going to clear a few things up. I'm an ex-employee of GAME, so I know what goes on. And, so you know, I'm as disappointed as most that GAME stopped stocking the GameCube. (They got a memo yesterday saying they're allowed to stock preowned games again) ....have you not heard about GAME's price match policy? As long as the other shop is in town, GAME will match their price (on new...not preowned, but I think that's up to the store manager). So you get a cheaper price AND the reward card points. Why not? At the end of the day, its just advertising space. Correct. It is. It was extremely rare to sell a single GameCube game in a day. However, many many many PS2 games were sold. It's logical that you have less of what people don't want, and more of what people do... Actually, no. Some shelves, publishers pay for. Chart positions, publishers pay for. The EA tower that GAME used to have? EA paid for it. Posters in the windows? Paid for. Special mentions in the GAME magazines? Paid for. You get the idea. I've only ever had this happen to me once, and that was also for a Nintendo VIP card (Doshin the Giant). You could have asked for whatever you're missing. If you get home and find a manual is missing, take the game back. They'll replace it under the "no quibble 10 day return" policy. And if you kick up a fuss about it, chances are the manager will go into the back and grab a few freebies for your trouble. Demo discs, T-Shirts, keyrings, and other random promo items. Hahahaha. It's not blackmail. It's business. "You pay us more, else we won't promote this game". Not a good thing, but it happens. Ever wonder why, for the first few weeks of release, The Sims 2 was only found in the chart? NOWHERE else in the store. Head Office sent a memo specifically telling stores to comply with this. After a few weeks, EA saw how many sales they'd lost, and they promptly kissed and made up. With GAME's market position (number 1 games retailer in the country), they can afford to do this. Because the only overheads they have are a warehouse. GAME, GameStation, Argos, Asda, Tescos etc... all have shops. That's - rent, water, gas, electricity, all kinds of taxes. They all have to be paid for... (As Ash said). You'll probably find that it wasn't the employees that played it. You know when you do a 10 day return, what happens to the game? Why do you think GAME insist it's in the same condition as when you bought it? They put it back out as new. Sure, technically it's not new, and it's something I questioned my managers about quite a few times, and I never got a straight reply. So I can't answer that one. You'd be suprised. Sure, full price stuff is horribly expensive, but as soon as you start getting promotions, offers, and deal of the week's, thats where it starts to get good. For example, some games get put on Deal of the Week a week after release. If it's a PS2 game, you'll normally find that a £40 game goes down to £20 for that week. GameCube is often £25, and Xbox, £20. The way I've always told customers to do things is, to trade stuff in at GameStation (their trade in prices are much better), and then buy from here. You'll often find GS's cash price is better than GAME's standard trade in price. How can GameStation do this? That's part of why they're around. GAME's reason, however, is (no matter what you think) to sell new (as in..not preowned) games as cheaply as possible. It's their way of keeping the custom. And, to be honest, it's working. I've often had to go and do competitor checks, and you normally find, when there are 20-30 people in GAME, there are 5-10 in GameStation. Ok, people always complain about this, but I've never experienced it myself. Never. Not at GAME, GameStation, or anywhere else. (Tescos, Asda, Argos not included). When a manager hires staff, they do so on the basis that the person will be able to benefit the store. They need to KNOW about games. What the latest releases are, whether there are any Horse Racing games on the PS2 (you get the idea...they need to know about the back catalogue as well), and they also need to be friendly and attentive, as you would expect any person working in retail to be. If you don't think the staff know what they're talking about, go and speak to the manager. Take your CV in, and get a job there. You're obviously much better at the job... So you know, not all GAME staff are on the internet 24/7 looking for the latest rumours and news, etc.. Many people have lives (shock horror!), where they go out and socialise. Perhaps you could take a few tips from these people, eh? And, if your excuse is that "oh..but they should have been told by GAME". Well no, actually. GAME only need to send out information about a console when a rough launch is announced. For example, 2 days ago my local store got their PS3 preorder stuff sent through. Yep, that's a day before the "November" announcement. Retailers only start taking orders for products when they know a release timeframe. So..when is the Revolution coming out? I don't solely shop at GAME. I'm a student - I shop where ever is cheapest. When I find a game I like the look of, I'll walk round town going into every shop that sells games until I find the cheapest price. I'll get on the internet using my phone, and check Froogle. The manager at GAME in my town hates me for it, but at the end of the day, I'm the type of customer each store wants. Every store has it's loyal customers, who ONLY shop at that store. I'm not one of them. I know how GAME works (at store level), and I know how much better it works than competitors. So, please, before saying "GAME is shit, GAME sucks", etc. Think about what they're actually there to do. The company doesn't care if you like the game you bought. It's a business, and that's all it'll ever be. On store level, you'll find that staff actually do care if you like a game. We take customer recommendations very seriously. If a customer comes in and says "Yo, dis fiddy cent game is wack. I wanna return it.", we'll tell other people (if they ask how it is) "Oh. We had a customer in earlier returning it. He didn't like it". Likewise, if we remember the customer bought Gun, while they're at the checkout, we'll ask if they liked it. (You get to remember faces quite quickly). Not only does this provide a good level of customer service (the customer walks away thinking "Yeah. They remembered me." and feels good about it), it also allows staff to gauge how good a game is. I know this might come as a suprise to you all, but GAME staff aren't made of money. We can't necessarily afford to buy every new release. We're only human, afterall.

I don't see why Nintendo are doing so much advertising for the DS. Sure, there's Mario Kart. But Nintendogs? I can only really speak to the GAME I work in, and the others in the region, but nobody can get hold of Nintendogs for love more money. The same goes for all game shops (such as GameStation) in my area. I've had to tell people they might not get Nintendogs (even more so, a coloured DS) before christmas. GAME expect a *tiny* amount of stock sometime in December, but when that's gone - it's gone. If you're after a DS bundled with Nintendogs, you might as well forget about it.

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Damn. You guys are much better at this than me... Simon Click to view my test results

Best of luck mate. Make sure you update us when the baby is born. We expect photos!

Is the Karma thing that little icon that says "Add to *user*'s reputation"? I've clicked that a few times today already, if it is...

Heh. We have the county's Police HQ across the road. I'm liking yours more. :p Although the Hospital is a 2 minute walk, and the Fire Station is literally just behind the halls too....

I can't imagine they would do that. Lumping all of the disabled people together is probably seen as 'treating them differently'. Nobody wants to be seen to be discriminating, so chances are you're in a block with everybody else. I went to Hudd. a while back to have a look around (it was going to be my second choice, until I saw the Uni :P). I'm assuming you're staying in the Student Village, right? You'll have a hell of a trek to get anywhere decent at night. :P (3 miles to the town!) Chances are, you just got your application for accomodation in first, and thats why you've been put there. I bet you find you'll be put in the same block as all of the girls - my thinking is that they tend to be more worried about it, so get their form in as soon as possible. You could be onto a winner there. Just create an account over at NewStudent.org, and see if anyone else is living in the same block as you... EEVIL: Sorry, didn't realise I stole your topic. :P It's just something constantly in my mind right now. I'm just taking a break from getting stuff together now. Keep your eyes out for a few of my friends at DMU - I have quite a few going there...

Hehe cool. Kinda nifty. I'm just checking out the different display modes. Using Threaded at the moment. It makes the pages a hell of a lot shorter, but I'm not really used to browsing forums like that.

An event like Spaceworld would take a few months of planning. With October being the month after this, I'm sure we'd have heard something about Spaceworld by now. Chances are, it'll just be shown to a few major sites like IGN, GameSpot etc.., and they'll just spread it around in their usual way.

N64 Europe #1 N64 Europe #2 Cube-Europe #1 Cube-Europe #2 Cube-Europe #3 Revo-Europe #1

I guess a few of you will remember me, so I won't need any introduction for you lot. For the others - I'm pdhq64. I used to be a Moderator on the Cube-Europe boards, until I left. However, I still hung around in the IRC channel, which is where Shorty told me to "git back on dem dere boards" in his newfound American accent....So I did.

So I left, and now I'm back. I've only been speaking to the IRC lot, which isn't a lot of you to be honest. :P (Get on IRC!) So, for those that are heading to Uni this year: 1. Where are you going? 2. What course are you doing? 3. When do you leave? 4. Living at home? Or in halls? Me? I'm going to Staffordshire University on Sunday. O_O (Along with ModoX and g9icy from IRC ) My course? Forensic Computing. I'll be living in Halls, where g9icy has already reported download speeds of 800kb/s - that's 1.9GB in 20 minutes. \o/ Edit: Oh, by the way. Register at NewStudent.org. Once you've selected your University, you'll be able to use the forums and find out who will be living next door to you for the next year (provided they use the site too). I've already found out I'll be living next to a girl called Emily for my first year...we've been talking on MSN.

Foo Fighters - DOA Head Automatica - Beating Heart Baby Franz Ferdinand - Do You Want To Gorillaz - Dare Jack Johnson - Better Together