Some computer and game thingies that may or may not be of interest to folks.
At the end of October last year I received an Email from Nero offering what looked to be their full version 11 for £15. Despite a couple of glitches that have been present in this program since version 6 I decided to buy Version 11 anyway, full version for £15 seemed good to me.
Only it wasn’t the full version. Apparently ‘Nero Burning ROM’ equates to Lite Version whilst plain old ‘Nero 11’ is the full version. So when they offered me full version upgrade for another £15 I bit the bullet and went with it, mostly because version 12 was about to be launched and Nero promised to e-mail me a code number for V12 ‘within a matter of weeks’ if I bought V11.
So what I thought I’d bought, in a roundabout fashion, was Nero Full Version 12 for £30.00. Not so bad if you like the software as it normally sells for between £50 & £80 depending where you shop.
7th February 2013 rolled around though and still no email with Nero 12 code, so I messaged them from within the Version 11 program asking where my code number was. Trying to contact them via their official site is hard work btw, but that’s another story.
Yesterday I received by email two codes from Nero, one for Version 12 of their software, the other for a pile of add-on goodies for V12. Both are now loaded and appear to be ok.
On my storage hard drive I have a folder named ‘Applications’ which currently totals 22.5Gb so I thought it would be a good idea to burn that little lot to a Bluray disk for safe keeping and also free up a little disk space.
Nero told me my Bluray drive could burn CD-R’s & DVD-R’s but not BD (Bluray) blank disks. Eh? So I noted my Bluray drive was a Liteon iHES112 and Googled it. It appears to be a combo drive, which means it will play Bluray disks (with the requisite software) but not burn them.
Doh. Mr Muggins here bought the wrong drive. So, I can either buy a drive capable of burning Bluray disks and put the existing drive in my bedroom computer or leave things as they are and transfer a 22.5Gb file across my network to my Media computer which does have a drive capable of burning Bluray disks. A new Bluray burner drive is around £70 so may just put that purchase on hold for a while.
If you want to make a movie Bluray disk btw, it appears that Nero will only burn AVCHD files to a bluray disk, not avi or mpeg files, as some software named ‘Imtoo Bluray Creator’ will do. The Imtoo software, though, is $50.00 (probably around £33 atm).
Games. Decided to trade in a few Xbox 360 games: Toy Story 3; Need For Speed The Run & Lollipop Chainsaw. Why? Toy Story 3 has fabulous graphics and fluid gameplay but it is first and foremost a kid’s game. Very much a kid’s game and therefore I found it boring. Recommended for ages 3 to 7 methinks.
NFS The Run, quite simply, I found too hard and frustrating. Got to level three and tried to complete it about a zillion times and almost ended up kicking a hole in the wall. So it had to go. Damn annoying DRM popups on it all the time as well.
I was enjoying Lollipop Chainsaw, great fun, until I’d played around 45 minutes in and arrived at a ‘Mini Game’ which there was no way of skipping and I promptly died. I had no idea what I had to do and got game over. Then had to play through ten minutes of the game I’d already completed just to reach the part I failed on. Again. And again. And again. Gaaaaah! Get right out of here.
A bit of a shame cos when the game’s main cheerleader character tells the player to ‘Stop trying to look up my skirt you perv’ that seems like a game I’d like
So, took those three down to GAME store and was offered £22 part exchange for them plus I had £3 credit in bonus sales points with them so 25 quid in. Perused shop, Picked up Forza Horizons for Xbox 360 for £25 and was considering Halo 4 for Xbox for £25 but then some PC games caught my eye.
The Divinity Trilogy box set was selling for £20 as was Lego Lord Of The Rings but both were in an offer ‘2 for £25’ so I bought those 2 instead. Total 50 quids worth of games, £25 ‘credit’ so paid out £25 and came home with three games. Have installed all 3 Divinity games (it’s an RPG) but haven’t tried any of my new games yet.
I also bought Final Fantasy VII as a download from Square Enix for £5 but it won’t work, neither in Win 7 or Win XP. Emailed Square Enix Friday, they replied Monday, they want me to send msinfo32 & DxDiag files to them for analysis. If no go I’ll ask for my money back. Watch this space. Only thing amiss I can think of is motherboard BIOS is 15 months old but everything else working ok so possibly not.
Didn’t manage to sell my Coffin Disco Module on Ebay – one offer made but the creep welshed on the deal – so have taken out the mixer to sell seperately. I’m now going to waterproof the coffin shell and put it on my patio as a table for a few potted plants. That should make a good conversation piece. Will post pix when completed.
Still have a couple of disco light columns with controller and cables to go, don’t expect to get much for those as they are home made, in fact if anybody wants to come here and collect them, gimme a tenner and they’re yours.
Have a rotten stinking cold atm, it’s been snowing here, so I’ve been drinking small tots of brandy and pints of draught Guinness and sleeping a lot.
I have plenty of home hobby projects on the go atm but have been limited in what I can do by the weather as it’s preferable, for several reasons, to work outside (paint spraying and sanding down wood, for instance).
No work on atm, eldest’s birthday on Thursday, dentist for me on Friday. And that’s it, as Charlie Rich muttered at the end of ‘Feel Like Going Home’.
(Excuse my spelling0