With the bugs still present in Battlefield Bad Company 2 many are finding it difficult to save a favorite server. To save a server you have to do the following.
1. Click on Multi-player and the Server Browser
2. Click on FULL REFRESH. This could take a bit
3. Sort By server names and make sure the server you wish to add is in the list.
4. In the FILTER box to the right enter a few Keywords exactly as they are in the server name. For example if the server was named “All Lazy Bastards” enter “All Lazy” with lets capitalized, click SEARCH
5. Again sort the list and find the server you wish to add again, click on the ARROW next to its name and select ADD TO FAVORITE.
When it comes to hard drives, or the piece of equipment in your computer that holds “stuff”, you will have to search hard to find a better value than the the Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB Hard Drive. When shopping for a hard drive that you are going to run programs off of, it is always best to go with the fastest drive your can find. To understand this, most laptops have hard drives in them in which the parts in side of them spin at 5400 revolutions per minute or RPM for short. Most desktops have hard drives rotate at 7200 RPM. When accessing data the faster the disk spins , the quicker the file or program will load. In the case of video, it will minimize stuttering. The VelociRaptor spins and a blistering 10,000 RPM, and being 300GB it can act as your primary boot drive for Windows, which means Windows will load faster and feel more responsive.
I item to note. If you plan to use this drive as your primary boot partition, you will need to install it in a secondary computer first, format it, and then procedure to use it in the new computer. If you don’t do this you will be unable to use the drive as the primary boot drive and will get errors during the installation process.
Performance Specifications
Rotational Speed
10,000 RPM (nominal)
Buffer Size
16 MB
Average Latency
3.00 ms (nominal)
Load/unload Cycles
50,000 minimum
Seek Times
Read Seek Time
4.2 ms
Write Seek Time
4.7 ms (average)
Track-To-Track Seek Time
0.7 ms (average)
Transfer Rates
Buffer To Host (Serial ATA)
3 Gb/s (Max)
Physical Specifications
Formatted Capacity
300,069 MB
Capacity
300 GB
Interface
SATA 3 Gb/s
User Sectors Per Drive
586,072,368
Physical Dimensions
English
Height
1.028 Inches
Length
5.787 Inches
Width
4.00 Inches
Weight
1.08 Pounds
Metric
Height
26.1 mm
Length
147 mm
Width
101.6 mm
Weight
0.489 kg
Environmental Specifications
Shock
Operating Shock (Read)
65G, 2 ms
Non-operating Shock
300G, 2 ms
Acoustics
Idle Mode
29 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 0
36 dBA (average)
Temperature (English)
Operating
32° F to 140° F
Non-operating
-40° F to 158° F
Temperature (Metric)
Operating
-0° C to 60° C
Non-operating
-40° C to 70° C
Humidity
Operating
5-95% RH non-condensing
Non-operating
5-95% RH non-condensing
Altitude (English)
Operating
-1,000 feet to 10,000 feet
Non-operating
-1,000 feet to 40,000 feet
Altitude (Metric)
Operating
-305M to 3,050M
Non-operating
-305M to 12,200M
Vibration
Operating
Linear
20-300 Hz, 0.75G (0 to peak)
Random
10-300 Hz, 0.008 g² / Hz
Non-operating
Low Frequency
0.05 g²/Hz (10 to 300 Hz)
High Frequency
20-500 Hz, 4.0G (0 to peak)
Electrical Specifications
Current Requirements
12 VDC
Read/Write
225 mA
Idle
200 mA
Standby
6 mA
Sleep
6 mA
5 VDC
Read/Write
675 mA
Idle
425 mA
Standby
70 mA
Sleep
70 mA
Power Dissipation
Read/Write
6.08 Watts
Idle
4.53 Watts
Standby
0.42 Watts
Sleep
0.42 Watts
As used for storage capacity, one megabyte (MB) = one million bytes, one gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes, and one terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment. As used for buffer or cache, one megabyte (MB) = 1,048,576 bytes. As used for transfer rate or interface, megabyte per second (MB/s) = one million bytes per second, megabit per second (Mb/s) = one million bits per second, and gigabit per second (Gb/s) = one billion bits per second.
User CD-ROM
Maximum Resolution 1920 x 1200
Standard Warranty 3 Year Limited
Ports 15-pin HD-15 VGA In
Ports DVI-D-HDCP In
Ports USB 2.0 USB
Color Black
Speaker Included Yes
Input Voltage 110 V AC
Input Voltage 220 V AC
Manufacturer Hewlett-Packard
Actual Screen Size 21.50″
Parts Warranty/Labor 3 Year
Temperature 41°F (5°C) to 95°F (35°C) Operating
Temperature -29°F (-33.9°C) to 140°F (60°C) Non-operating
Dimensions 13.10″ Height x 20.20″ Width x 3″ Depth
Speaker Form Factor Integrated
Maximum Refresh Rate 60 Hz
Manufacturer Part Number EM891A8#ABA
Dimensions with Stand 16.50″ Height x 20.20″ Width x 9.10″ Depth
Humidity 20 to 80% Operating
Humidity 5 to 95% Non-operating
Widescreen Yes
Manufacturer Website Address hp
Brand Name Compaq
Altitude 0 ft to 10000 ft Operating
Altitude 0 ft to 30000 ft Non-operating
Screen Technology Active Matrix TFT
Weight 10.60 lb
Green Compliance Yes
Weight with Stand 14.10 lb
Pixel Pitch 0.248 mm
Product Model L2105tm
Green Compliance Certificate/Authority Energy Star
Green Compliance Certificate/Authority WEEE
Green Compliance Certificate/Authority RoHS
Contrast Ratio 1000:1
Brightness 250 Nit
Product Name L2105tm Touchscreen LCD Monitor
Maximum Response Time 5 ms
Aspect Ratio 16:9
Horizontal Viewing Angle 170°
Vertical Viewing Angle 160°
Product Type LCD Touchscreen Monitor
Mount Type Arm-mountable
Mount Type Wall-mountable
HDCP Support Yes
I recently purchased this monitor for my Wife. She plays quite a few Face book games and many of them have the tedious task of clicking on several hundred plots in Farmville to harvest your food plots. This monitor simplifies that task for her. The monitor includes a stylus built into the monitor and the stand that comes with the monitor feels quite solid.
Several of my children have also used this monitor in combination with Windows Paint and where able to draw on the screen as opposed to using the mouse. A couple of things to remember is that this monitor, while it will work with most operating systems, requires Windows 7 for multi touch capability. I am not one o read instructions very often either and after fighting with the monitor for a bit, i couldn’t get the touchscreen to work. My mistake was that I failed to connect the included USB cable to the monitor. So the lesson learned is “read the manual”.
Overall this is a great monitor and I would purchase it again for my wife. That said it is a bit pricey. I paid a little over $300 for this monitor, which is about about $90 more than a comparable monitor without the multi touch capability.
I was looking to upgrade my 3 year old Core 2 Duo and 8800 GTS to a new quad core processor and top of the line video card. After scouring the Internet I settled on the XFX Radeon 5850. I can say I haven’t been disappointed. Lets go over some of the specs of this card.
SPECS
Bus Type:
PCI-E 2.0
GPU Clock:
725 Mhz
Memory Bus:
256
Memory Type:
DDR5
Memory Size:
1024 MB
Memory Speed:
4000 Mhz
Thermal Solution:
FANSINK
Minimum Power Supply Requirement:
500W with two 6-pin power cable
Outputs:
HDMI, Dual-Link DVI, Display Port
Card Dimensions:
9.5 X 4.376 X 1.5
Feature:
Directx 11 support, DirectCompute 5.0, Open CL, Eyefinity Technology, Shader Model 5.0, OpenGL 3.2, Windows 7, DisplayPort, HDMI
Warranty:
Package Contents:
DVI Adapter, 6 Pin Y Power Cable
CONTENTS
The Box contained the usual driver software, a DVI to VGA adaptor for those with older monitors, two six pin Y adaptors and a nice door hanger to say leave me alone , I’m gaming. It was a nice touch. Even though this is just the standard reference design, XFXdouble lifetime warranty is what set this card apart from the others I was looking at. Which means when I upgrade in a few years and decide to sell the video card, the warranty will transfer to the new owner. This means that if I choose to sell the card on EBAY it will fetch a higher dollar amount compared to the competition.
COST
Even though chip supplies have stabilized for the video cards in the 5000 series, they still fetch a premium. I was able to pick up my card from EBay for $299.00, but here is a way to recoup some of that money. Sign up forBING cashback and Shop on EBAY. Now for this to work you have to select Buy It Now, and Pay with Paypal. But here is what you can save. Your purchase from EBAY will qualify for 8% cash back, credited to your PAYPAL account within 60 days after the purchase. In addition to that you will also be eligible for EBAY bucks. So for $299.00 I will get back about $32.00. So the price of the card was about $260.00 not a bad deal, considering the going rate for the card off NEWEGG is about $314.00 with no discount.
REAL WORLD PERFORMANCE
Some of the more recent games that I have played with this video card are Left 4 Dead 2, Assassins Creed 2, Battlefield Bad Company 2 and GTA 4.
BATTLEFIELD BAD COMPANY 2
1680X1050 MAX VIDEO SETTINGS DX11 ENABLED
60 FPS
FINAL THOUGHTS
For years I have been a big fan of NVIDIA hardware, but with ATI’s newest release I can say I have jumped ship. I’m sure the next generation of NVIDIA cards will be amazing, but they will be so high cost they will be out of my league. Price, performance and features is what makes the 5850 one of the best cards on the market at this time.
I bought Battlefield Bad Company 2 last week though STEAM. Because of my pre-order I was able to enjoy the BETA though-out February. The game during the BETA was amazing, with very few bugs. So I was expecting with the launch last week of the full game that that experience would continue. Unfortunately that was not the case.
Lets start with the bad first, and this is why I would recommend waiting to purchase the game.
Disconnects, Disconnects, Disconnects
Each day either the EA master server goes down or the servers themselves drop you several times. If this happens you can expect some long wait times before you can log back it. When it is a server drop, it drops everyone. Punkbuster is also causing allot of drops so most servers have turned punk buster off to remedy that problem, but doing that brings the next issue.
Aimbots and Wall Hacks
With punk buster turned off, many are using aimbots or wall hacks to kill you while half way across the map, or running and sniping. So if you are on a particularly infected server, you can expect to be killed within 10 seconds of spawning into the game each time.
Other Annoyances
The friends list works about 20% of the time, with the other 80% switching from the wrong sized font, not showing who’s online, or not showing what map they are playing. Unlocks vanish from time to time. The server browser takes a real long time to update and when it is loaded features such as adding a favorite do not work, without filtering the results. In game VOIP also breaks up most of the the time too, so if you have team mates you will want to use VENT or Teamspeak for communication to your squad.
The Good
Destructible Environments
Most hiding spots and buildings can be blown away, just like in real life, so if you can’t shoot an enemy directly, then bring the building down on their head.
Squad Based Play
Small squads are a blast too, and there is more a sense of teamwork when defending or capturing.
Sound-scape
The sounds in the game are amazing as well, and accurate. It really sounds like a Battlefield, and hearing the subtle clinking of an enemy sneaking up on you can’t be described with words. Using the in-game knife to score a kill is very satisfying, and you get to keep the victims dog tags.
Graphics
The real gem of this game is the graphics, which if your video card supports it, can be viewed in all of its DX11 goodness.
Overall if you like working as a team, like a fast paced shooter, and want to be immersed into a wonderful game environment, then this is the game to get, but, give it some time to let the bugs get worked out.
Arkane Scripts gives this game a rating of GET IT!
