Blast from the past: originally published June 17th 2003.

Next up is American Conquest from CDV. Not a big name in North America, but they’ve has a lot of European hits like Sudden Strike and Cossacks. American Conquest is a real time strategy game set in the Americas from the Spaniards arrival to American independence.
This is a big game, with 42 missions and 12 nations or tribes to play. It provides some innovation, albeit slight. It’s a traditional real time strategy: collect resources, build a base, pump out …

Blast from the past: originally published June 17th 2003.

Unreal II is the follow up to the huge first person shooter hit of many years ago from Epic. You run a small ship and get sent on mission killing bad guys. Cut scenes fill in the story, as do refits and mission briefings aboard your ship before each new level. Unreal II is a standard first person shooter: run around shooting things, getting new weapons and solving simple puzzles to advance. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
What’s …

In the wake of the Gmail temporary loss of accounts a lot of tech sites are highlighting ways to back up your account.  I like the suggestion of Hotmail accessing your Gmail through POP but that’s another cloud solution to maintain.  Using Thunderbird and POP access is another good idea but you need to have it running to pick up your mail.

The best solution I’ve found is MailStore Home.  It will backup and restore your email from basically any email client native or online and it’s free for personal use.  …

All-In-One Tray is a great free Windows 7 utility that sits in your system tray and provides access to pretty well all the operating system’s built in utilities plus a lot more like purging DNS cache and rebuilding icons.  As well there are four custom spots for whatever you’d like.

Very slick and a 7 MB footprint make All-In-One Tray a must have.

It’s hard for those who like to maintain anonymity and privacy on the internet, especially when downloading files from torrents.  PeerBlock is designed to help with that: here is the straight goods from their FAQ:

What is PeerBlock?  The short version is: PeerBlock blocks “known bad” computers from accessing yours, and vice versa.  Depending on the lists you have it set up to use, you can block governments, corporations, machines flagged for anti-p2p activites, even entire countries!  Whether you’re sharing files with Bittorrent or just surfing the web, PeerBlock can help …

Blast from the past: originally published December 14th 2001.

I don’t have to tell you that Microsoft launched their latest operating system on October 25th. There was enough media coverage, advertising and hoopla to let everyone who has a PC get word of the new Windows eXPerience. I was at the product launch in Toronto, Ontario and received my press copy of Windows XP Professional. The question is why did I take so long getting to it? It’s the latest and greatest, so shouldn’t it have been installed ages ago?
Way …

While on my recent trip I picked up the June 2010 issue of PC Plus; in it they glowingly recommended a product called DriverEasy.  I was on vacation and although PC Plus is the most expensive British tech mag import I was in Paris and splurged, but that’s an aside; back to DriverEasy.  It is a tool that scans, downloads and installs device drivers for your Windows system, all for free.  You can upgrade to the paid version that provides device driver backups and faster downloads.  I took the free …

Setting up a PC for a friend and they needed some sort of backup.  My first thought is always Windows Home Server but this was a single PC and the extra cost couldn’t be justified.  I turned again to Macrium Reflect Free Edition: the user had an older 200 GB Maxtor external USB hard drive that would hold the backup files.  To be fair I first tried Paragon Backup & Recovery 10 Free Edition and ToDo Backup but neither one did exactly what I wanted: a backup that could be …

Eventually every PC user comes to the point when they try to save something on their PC and there isn’t enough space.  We all react the same way: what’s filled my hard drive?  It seemed for a while gargantuan hard drives with 1 to 2 TB were the norm and we could never fill that space, but now SSDs are the hot item and most of us can only afford something 40 to 120 GB.  Or you store everything on a server and only run the operating system and applications …

Update 16-Mar-10.  Forfiles command line updated to show @file instead of @path; testing and working.
Update 02-Aug-10.  Download location for ForFiles changed since Microsoft CodePlex page has been removed.

I needed a simple and free backup program for a single purpose PC that chugged along day in day out.  It ran Windows XP Professional and had a total used space of 8 GB on a 40 GB hard drive.  For convenience I installed a second 40 GB hard drive that would hold the backup files. Since it was always running the program …

Just finished the February 2010 issue of PC World.  They had an article called “The State Of Windows 7 Satisfaction” about early adopters of Windows 7 and their general feedback about installation and features.  Information was gathered from 615 people at www.technologizer.com.

Something really jumped out at me: 64% rated themselves as Windows experts and 41.3% had to resolve driver issues.  To me any Windows expert would search out, verify and download all drivers for a new operating system before installing it.  That was certainly the case when I installed the …

Blast from the past: originally published August 28th 2001.
After a week of furious mouse and keyboard movement I’ve finished Max Payne. If you have any interest in PC gaming, you’ve heard it mentioned. Amazing visuals wrapped around a compelling story and straight forward action. I tried to contain myself, but this title is a sensational asset to any first person shooter’s library. Let me break it down by gameplay, graphics and environment.
You are Max Payne, tough as nails cop who is pursuing the killers of his family. I don’t want …

I’ve gushed extensively about the wonder that is Windows Home Server.  I recently gave Windows Small Business Server 2008 a spin to check it’s backup handling but it left me wanting: no current Windows platform backup program gets as much done at such a low cost as Windows Home Server.
For the small business backup is key.  You probably have file sharing set up on your local file server and nightly backups of that data, most likely to a removable hard drive or NAS device.  You may even have a dedicated …

To create some buzz for the upcoming Red Alert 3 Electronic Arts has released the original Red Alert for free.
Command & Conquer Red Alert

Can’t favor one system over another, so Dungeon Siege: Legends Of Aranna has occupied my free time for the last three weeks. Some may remember the original title from a few years ago: this is a follow up slash expansion, somewhere right in the middle. Legends Of Aranna follows the same game style: a third person point and click fighting game based on a fantasy genre, like Dungeons and Dragons or Diablo. You work your way through the world, fighting monsters, acquiring new weapons, armor and equipment, adding teammates, trying to finish various …

Rome Total War ( RTW ) is the best game I’ve ever played. There, I said it. I could quantify it by saying I love strategy games and this is the best of that genre, but the first statement holds true. Creative Assembly’s last game Medieval Total War also received a glowing review from yours truly. A combination of turn based strategy and real time strategy bridge genres and make a compelling title.
The time is more or less the rise of the Roman empire. You choose one of three houses and receive missions from …

Being a true die hard fan of RTS ( real time strategy ) games, I had to give MechCommander 2 a try. The original had come out a few years ago, but I had missed out on that one and didn’t want to repeat that error. I’m a little behind the rest of the press pack on this review, but I was slow installing it. On the surface MechCommander 2 appears to be a limited RTS title, but just like your mother says it’s what’s inside that counts.
After an uneventful install I fired …

I think most game players are familiar with the two concepts of Medieval: Total War that make it such a compelling and enjoyable title. Take the turn based play of Risk ( or Axis & Allies ) and add real time combat. This simple idea of combining real time strategy with turn based strategy games makes this second title from the Total War series a must have
A few years ago Creative Assembly developed their first title in the series, Shogun: Total War. It was a huge hit and won a ton of awards …

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy is an easy win for longest game title of the year. Fortunately it’s also the best first or third person shooter so far this year. This time around is the most immersive game in the Star Wars universe, or more specifically the world of the Jedi.
Any guy after watching a Star Wars film has the overwhelming urge to run through a pack of storm troopers swinging a lightsaber and doing heavy damage. Jedi Academy puts you in the role of a new student under the tutelage of …

This article originally appeared in the March 2003 issue of L.A.I.D. Magazine.  Published online February 28th 2003, edited September 15th 2003.
Counter-strike is one of the true game success stories of the last decade. Two guys wanted to modify Sierra’s Half-Life to make it a terrorist versus counter terrorist. They chose Half-Life because the developers of the game, Valve Software, released tools and information on the net. And so Counter-strike was born, and the term “mod” became common vocabulary for the gaming community. It’s so successful that Valve has taken the …