How To Save A Favorite Server

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.

6. That should do it!

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

Package Contents

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

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 for BING 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!