Very good things! *keep it clean* (big images)

[Kain]

^^^Parts AND labor? That's amazing.

 

Had an '85 honda accord--replacing that one cost $335. Mostly owing to labor.

 

Thats parts; only a fool pays for labor(j/k). Me and my brother-in-law did the job ourselves. I mean its an alternator - tear out and replace. If it was like my engine mounts (which need replaced since when I kick it into gear, the engine lurches about 7 inches foward), I'd take it out to my cousin who lives right next door to the fully equipped auto shop he operates.

 

Connections make taking care of cars EXTREMELY cheap. lol

[Vikinor]

 

Got this recently, scored a few pretty goals too.

 

I also picked up Cataclysm and am hating myself for it.

[Darth Avlectus]

Thats parts; only a fool pays for labor(j/k). Me and my brother-in-law did the job ourselves. I mean its an alternator - tear out and replace. If it was like my engine mounts (which need replaced since when I kick it into gear, the engine lurches about 7 inches foward), I'd take it out to my cousin who lives right next door to the fully equipped auto shop he operates.

 

Connections make taking care of cars EXTREMELY cheap. lol

 

Yes that is quite fortunate. Yea I was a fool. lawl

For me the alternator guy normally didn't charge that much, it's just the fact that specific make & model happens to put the alternator underneath most everything and between the radiator and engine block in a compact space.

 

My car DIY story:

Of course later I was happy to only pay about that much fixing the carburetor myself (and with a resourceful uncle's help). Something of a necessity for 2 reasons:

1) No mechanic was even gonna touch that job,

2) the parts alone were going to be $1560 rebuilt and $3600 for a "new" (racing retrofit) carburetor since originals weren't made anymore.

 

It was probably the. hardest. thing. I've ever done relating to cars. Period.

Funny what you can achieve when you have no other choice.

 

Everyone's jaw hitting the floor (especially the mechanics), driving around, and feeling the near orgasmic euphoria of success is something I'll not soon forget.

 

When its engine irreparably blew up about 2 years later I almost cried. Loved that car. A mechanic took it off my hands for free because he was going to "pimp his ride" and make a racer out of it.

[RoxStar]

 

My friend's system originally. The Blu-Ray drive crapped out and he didn't want to deal with it so I inherited and purchased a new laser for it. So far it's pretty cool. I can't imagine actually having paid the 600 some USD for it back when it was first released though...

 

I just have Uncharted right now, but it's pretty awesome :3

[Darth Avlectus]

^^^Re: Broken laser itself

http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/Blu-ray/site1/

 

Not that I think you'd much care but if you hadn't thrown it away yet, dissecting one could prove to be fun. Least you could see if it was the laser itself or something else inside it.

[Darth Groovy]

 

So I went with the 3GS, because the Apps that I want are not so big that I needed too much memory. 8GB seemed more than I ever had on a phone before. And....the 3GS was only $99.00! The Data plan did not break me either. I got a free upgrade, and actually my monthly bill is now $5 cheaper than before! Woot!

 

So Santa gave me my phone early, because once I transfered all the information from my old phone to the new, the old phone was rendered useless. That being said, I traded a few games in to pick up an i-tunes app card. (thank god gamestop sells those now...) I am actually glad I can connect to my my wireless network with just the phone, and download the apps directly to the phone without installing I-Tunes on my computer! Syncing phones on the PC has been a pain in the ass. Thankfully, no need to do so at this point int time! It is very shiny and fun to play with! Merry Christmas, and thank you Santa!

[Samuel Dravis]

This... will be my only Christmas present.

 

Yamaha P-95

[leXX]

(for Kia & Jade)

 

(for Kia & Jade}

 

(for Jade)

 

(for Jade)

 

(for Kia)

 

(for Kia)

[Darth Groovy]

I see leXX is having a VERY electronic motion controlled Holiday this year! Move AND Kinect leXX? Really? At least your kids will be working off all the sugar from the cookies this year!

[leXX]

Well believe it or not Move and Kinect were my husbands idea. He's a sucker for gadgets.

[edlib]

Give us a full review on them!

 

I have both game systems (and been thinking about also getting a Wii soon, because that's what my girlfriend's kids are already used to...) but I'm unsure if either motion system would benefit me.

 

I like the looks of the Kinect better, though... especially since Forza 4 will be enabled.

[leXX]

Well Jade already got Move for her birthday, and I have to say I like it. It's very accurate and with the right game it's great fun indeed. One example is Sackboy's Prehistoric Moves which I mentioned above and LBP2 which is coming out soon will be Move enabled, and there is a game called

coming out for it which looks impressive. I'll let you know about Kinect after Christmas.

[Kjølen]

 

F.E.A.R.

F.E.A.R. Extraction Point (non-canon expansion pack)

F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate (non-canon expansion pack)

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin

F.E.A.R. 2: Reborn (canon DLC)

 

Total cost: $9.99

http://store.steampowered.com/sub/6945/

 

GO GO GO! NOW.

[BongoBob]

God I hate Steam. In a time where I'm trying to save my money, steam does daily deals that rape my wallet.

 

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands Digital Deluxe Edition: $7.50

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time: Free with Forgotten Sands Digital Deluxe Edition

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within - $2.50

Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones - $2.50

The Witcher Enhanced Edition Directors Cut - $5.00

 

Damn you Steam ><

[leXX]

So far I've only bought The Oddworld Collection (£9.99), Alien vs. Predator (£3.75) and The Indie Future Pack (£3.99). I'm showing remarkable restraint, but I'm sure it won't last long. I still haven't played half the games I got in the sale last year. :/

[jebbers]

my girlfriend got me a new XBOX 360 with Kinect. It's fun with the game that came with it but I need to buy another game to fully approve.

[IG-64]

 

And Rp gifted me Amnesia: The Dark Descent on Steam last night

[TiE23]

Christmas stuff:

New awesome handmade blanket for my bed from my mom.

Some cash from grand parents.

Amazon and Bestbuy giftcards.

A Belkin Kindle case.

Socks and underware.

School sweater and coffee cup.

 

I was spoiled already with my HD7 and Kindle 3... they were early "Christmas presents".

 

Stuff I got with the Amazon giftcards

and

 

**** I got on Steam:

 

Super Meat Boy

Cryostatis

Battlefield Bad Company 2

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising

 

I plan to install and play them when I build my next computer in January.

[Kjølen]

 

Panasonic 50" Plasma, awwwww yeah.

 

TiE23: Just buy one of my spare gaming machines, really.

[TiE23]

 

TiE23: Just buy one of my spare gaming machines, really.

 

Blarg... What do you think of this work-in-progress shopping list? I'll be reusing my GPU, PSU (650watt), Hard drive, and disc drive. And I've got a free copy of Win 7 Ultimate 64bit through school.

 

I'm eyeing the 6GB/s SATA connection features, by the way.

 

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=15141772

 

But in any case, I've also been thinking that I really should upgrade my GPU (9800GTX). Got any suggestions in the $140-180 range (Nvidia preferred)?

[Kjølen]

It looks decent. You could cut the CPU price in half if you went with a six-core Phenom II, but I feel like you're an Intel fanboy so.

 

Video card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125343

[Dath Maximus]

 

Panasonic 50" Plasma, awwwww yeah.

 

 

Thats the TV i have

[TiE23]

It looks decent. You could cut the CPU price in half if you went with a six-core Phenom II, but I feel like you're an Intel fanboy so.

 

Video card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125343

Actually, I don't have much of an opinion on CPU brands. Both desktop computers in my home are AMD, but I do have a preference on nVidia cards. But yeah, I'll definitely look into the Phenom II.

 

Edit: Yeah, the Phenom II looks like a better choice, only about a 10% drop in benchmark performance but is $100 cheaper... So, how about this?

Phenom II 1090T (comes with a heatsink)

EVGA GTX460

8GB DDR3 1333 RAM

ASUS Mobo with a USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=10824889

[Kjølen]

Looks pretty good.

Though I should mention, to anyone interested, that I am currently selling this machine for around $650:

 

Core 2 Quad 2.66GHz (Will run at 3.0GHz if desired)

8GB DDR2 1000 SDRAM

74GB WD Raptor 10,000RPM boot drive

320GB Samsung storage drive

ASUS P5N-D SLI Motherboard

GeForce GTX 295 video card with dual-GPU on one board and 2GB GDDR3 memory

Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 4

eSATA card

DVD+/-RW

750W Rosewill PSU with four +12V rails totaling 72A.

Gigabyte Triton ATX chassis

 

Know for a fact it'll run most new games at their highest settings at 1920x1080 to 2560x1600 (which is what I used) and a healthy amount of AA and AF.

[acdcfanbill]

Actually, I don't have much of an opinion on CPU brands. Both desktop computers in my home are AMD, but I do have a preference on nVidia cards. But yeah, I'll definitely look into the Phenom II.

 

Edit: Yeah, the Phenom II looks like a better choice, only about a 10% drop in benchmark performance but is $100 cheaper... So, how about this?

Phenom II 1090T (comes with a heatsink)

EVGA GTX460

8GB DDR3 1333 RAM

ASUS Mobo with a USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=10824889

 

Just a friendly word of warning about that asus board. I've been an ASUS fan for several years and liking nVidia cards and AMD Prices, it's difficult to find AM3 boards with non-AMD chipsets. I got that ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 figuring it'd be fine since I'd never run SLI.

 

While I've had no problems with my vid card (gtx470) I have had quite a lot of problems with that board. The drivers supplied on the CD rom for the IDE controller caused Vista/7 to drop my 500 gig IDE HDD randomly and it also caused a approx 15-25% of the files to get corrupted. Updated JMicron drivers fixed the problem, but beings as I didn't have it on the internet the first few days, I was fairly annoyed to lose a bunch of data.

 

Also, it doesn't recognize my supported ddr3-1600, but does support the correct timings if I manually enter them.

 

The Realtek onboard sound functions ok, but I find the volume level fluctuates, terribly annoying if you use onboard sound which I started out with.

 

My final gripe is that it doesn't play well with any PCI or PCIe wireless card I've tried. Most start out working fine, but I've had 3 of them die on me now. Vid card and other cards seem to be just fine after several months.

I've seen a lot of people complaining about vista/7 not playing well with wireless cards so I can't say for certain that the board is the cause of the wireless probs, but it's got enough other annoyances that I'm going to have to give ASUS a break for a while

 

I'm going to try out a MSI board with a nForce chipset to see if it's any less crappy. Just my experiance in the last few months anyway. Also, win7 64 has fully updated drivers and i've updated the bios during the last few months of tweaking, trying to get it to perform correctly.