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Windows 8 represents Microsoft’s next steps into a tumultuous market. Computing hardware has changed in the last year in such a way that the traditional desktop operating system has fallen behind the times. As desktop computing becomes more and more of a niche market, tablet computing continues to be one of the fastest growing market segments. Yet success in the tablet space does not ride solely upon the backs of customer demand – as the abortive launch of HP’s WebOS TouchPad and the utter disgrace of RIM’s PlayBook have proven. These new devices MUST provide a unique, enjoyable and clearly differentiated experience for them to be successful. Microsoft believes that, with Windows 8, they can stand up to the established dominance of the iPad and the tidal rush of Android.

Caveat Lector

Windows 8 has been released for public download in an early pre-beta form. This preview is primarily geared towards developers and is in no way intended for use as a primary operating system. This article should be considered a hands-on or first-impressions piece. I reiterate, THIS IS NOT A REVIEW! It would be totally unfair (and probably impossible) to give a definitive review of the software while it is still in such an early stage of development. That having been said…

Installation and Setup

Not much has changed between Windows 7 and Windows 8 in terms of installation. Period. I installed Windows 8 in a VMware Fusion virtual machine, which recognized the OS kernel as Windows 7 x64 and installation proceeded smooth as glass.

Setup is also similar to Windows 7, albeit with a different graphical style to the interface, and is fairly straightforward - naming the machine, joining wireless networks and setting up user accounts. User accounts are handled in two ways, either on each machine individually or through a hybrid device/cloud system. If you have an Internet connection, you will be asked to create or log in to a Windows Live ID that will sync certain settings (browser history and bookmarks, for example) with the cloud so they can be accessed on other devices.

It is interesting to note that this represents a strange duality that is pervasive through Windows 8, one which will become much more obvious very soon.

Hello Metro

As I mentioned before, the tablet space is growing at an alarming rate, with no sign of slowing any time soon. The operating systems that currently exist for tablets, namely iOS and Android, are extremely popular because of they are lightweight and ease to use. However, there are drawbacks. Take a look at the iPad, for example – it totally lacks a traditional user-facing file system, which means that it is virtually impossible to save a document to the device without using iTunes; furthermore, it’s app selection is limited to that inside the iOS app store. On the other hand, the reduced interface of iOS is a breeze to use on a touchscreen and the operating system runs like a hot knife through butter on Apple’s customer designed ARM processor. With Windows 8, Microsoft has asserted that ease of use does not have to mean forgoing some of the more productive parts of traditional computing.

Let’s be honest, last time Microsoft uttered the words “Windows” and “Tablet” in the same sentence they were normally followed by words like “unusable” or “failure” and tended to result in groans of sorrow and pain. The hardware wasn’t there, and the software definitely wasn’t there. Alas, times have changed, and innovations brought about by the explosion of smartphones (and, in no small way, the arrival of a certain touchscreen iDevice on the scene) have made the tablet a reality. Drawing upon its experience in the mobile phone space, Microsoft feels that they have the key to finally bringing Windows to the slate… they call it “Metro”.

Logging in to Windows 8 for the first time you are presented with a totally redesigned Start Menu based on the design of Windows Phone’s Metro UI. Bright colors, clean text and large ever-so-touchable tiles have completely replaced the mouse-centric menu of old. But don’t make the mistake of confusing the new Start Menu with some sort of UI overlay – oh no, it is much more then that. Windows 8 will no longer boot to the Desktop, instead booting to the Start Menu, which is essentially a fully functional OS in and of itself. The “Metro style” Start Menu comes complete with it’s own selection of apps, represented as tiles, and it’s own app store. These flashy little squares can do any number of things, from simply launching an app to providing quick glance-able information to the user. More importantly, they can draw on the full Windows underpinnings running below them, such as Windows Explorer. Furthermore, despite the emphasis on touch input, the Windows 8 Start Menu is perfectly navigable with a traditional mouse, meaning that the operating system is perfectly compatible with existing Windows 7 hardware.

As a consequence of not booting to the desktop automatically, a fair majority of the Windows codebase is never loaded into memory at start-up. In fact, Microsoft reasons that most users will never have to leave the Start Menu to handle their tasks… but there are certain things that Metro just isn’t good at, and so, sitting front and center at the beginning of the Start Menu is the Desktop tile. Give it a click and boom, your classic windows environment. Unfortunately, this is where things start to get murky.

A Plurality of Paradigms

While the new “Metro style” Start Menu is designed to address new computing paradigms, the Windows 8 desktop does the exact opposite, thus the duality I mentioned earlier. THERE IS QUITE LITERALLY TWO OF EVERYTHING! There are two browsers, two explorers, two different types of application, and even two control panels. The “Metro style” IE does not support plug-ins, whereas the desktop version does. The “Metro style” control panel is literally limited to controlling Metro features, whereas the desktop control panel is much more familiar. Certain apps are Metro apps while others are desktop apps, even though ALL apps are given a tile in the Start Menu… it can get pretty twisted, fairly quick. For example, if I were to launch the Metro app “Socialite” (a Facebook client), the app would open inside, or on top of, the Start Menu. However, if I were to open Chrome, which is a desktop app, through the Start Menu, the OS would first load the desktop and then open my app. Furthermore, once the desktop is open, it is open – there is no closing it.

In the end, the Windows 8 desktop could be a good thing or a bad thing depending upon how well it responds to touch input – something that I am unable to test on my aging MacBook Pro. It is interesting to note, though, that the reference hardware Microsoft provided to developers (a Samsung slate device) features a desktop dock that includes connectivity for a mouse and keyboard. Whether this means that Microsoft plans on limiting access to the Windows desktop in future builds based upon current hardware configuration remains to be seen (think of a docked and undocked version bundled together), but I believe it will be in the best interests of both Microsoft and their developers to get Metro versions of their apps into the Windows Market as fast as possible.

First Impressions

Windows 8 represents an interesting take on the future of operating systems. Bearing in mind that this is a pre-beta build, and that Microsoft has plenty of time to make changes, changes are certain to come. I believe that Microsoft needs to address the tablet market directly with Windows 8, and as things stand right now, they have not. Microsoft needs to commit itself more fully to stream lining their user interface paradigms into one coherent strand – in doing so, they stand to greatly improve user experience while making a coherent stand against iOS and Android. The most important thing that Windows 8 proves is that Microsoft has not fallen asleep on the job, which is good, because they have a lot of ground to cover in the market before they catch the competition.

Some Screenshots

Blizzard has posted a 21 minute gameplay vid of a Starcraft II alpha build. It is even complete with commentary so you kind of have an idea of what the hell is going on.

Check it out….

Starcraft 2 Gameplay Video

and once you’ve watched it, come discuss it in our forum.

Starcraft 2 gameplay thread

Spore

by: Keaoi

Platform : PC / Mac
Genre : Cross-Genre
Context : Pacman meets Earth 2021 meets Black and White meets Civ:Revolutions(X360) meets Harvest Moon.

Gameplay : Right from the beginning you’re hooked on the simplicity of the cell stage. It almost feels like a well designed flash game, being 2d and tier-based. You can choose one of two paths from the start, either Herbivore or Carnivore, both of which give you different bonuses at the final stage of the game. Goal is simple: Eat a bunch of stuff and get bigger. This trend continues, but as this is going on, you also have mini-objectives of collecting strands of DNA in order to upgrade yourself. These range from jet-streamers that greatly increase speed, to Omnivore mouths that allow you to eat both plants and other cells.

At the end of the Cell Stage you advance to the Creature Stage, which feels like a 3d, Party based version of the Cell stage. You get a ton more editing options, as well as the option to form groups you can use to raid other Creatures in the world. I found this stage to be the most uninteresting, because it felt essentially like a 3d version of the one before it. Why that’s a bad thing, I don’t know, but maybe this has something to do with the Carnivore play style I chose. The real draw to this stage is that you really get to make your Creature your own in this stage, which is important due to the fact your creature gets locked in once you get to the…

Tribal Stage was slightly more interesting to me, because of the flexibility of your tribe members. Perhaps I’ve seen this in other RTS games, but being able to turn any class into any other is a nice change from the Industry Standard of Zerglings being useless once created until sent to inevitable doom by the Overmind. Anyway, it plays like any other RTS, except that combat is VERY straight forward. You have the Axeman, who does the most damage, the Spearman, who has range, and the Shaman who heals. Of course your can opt to avoid combat altogether, and instead arm your Tribal Horde with Instruments of Entertainment to woo your rivals to submission. I did not woo anyone.

After Tribal Domination, you enter the Civilization stage, which was also somewhat bland. Of course, with Spore you realize that the game is simple because of the massive size of it, but at the same time, you’re hooked to advance to the next stage because you feel the proverbial “Carrot” in your face. You get one land vehicle and one sea vehicle at the start, be it a war-machine or trading vessel. After you conquer/woo 4 other cities, you gain access to air vehicles, which greatly sped up the last part of this stage for me, leading to said proverbial ‘Carrot’.

Which wasn’t there. Hitting the Space Age feels great, especially as you scroll out and realize the scale of it all. You’ve become attached to your Homeworld, and to see how insignificant it is on a galactic scale is a pretty awesome feeling. Sadly, the Space Age disappointed me intensely, and I’ve still yet to finish it. The problem with this stage is that although you can build this massive Galactic Empire, your race seems unwilling to build additional ships to protect them. Having played the aggressor for approximately 4 Billion Years, my Galactic community tends to pick up on that trait, and attacks me pretty remorselessly, even though the humbling of the universal scale has pacified me.

While I enjoy a good Turtling RTS as much as the next guy, since your ‘Empire’ has exactly one ship, you are forced to constantly return to home systems to defend them. This isn’t super-annoying right at the start when you have 2-3 Colonies, but when you get somewhere around the 20+ I have, and they’re spread way the hell out, AND your opponents tend to attack where ever they want, you’ll spend most of your time reeling back on Defense. I actually purposely take over enemy outposts just to get disposable targets.

Once you’re being attacked by an Empire, they kind of focus on that spot, and it can buy you some time to take out a few of theirs. It becomes this balancing game where if you can destroy/capture in a 2:1 ratio, you are winning, and that’s that. Other Empires will fight to the bitter death, not like Civ Games where they know they’re getting trounced and beg for mercy. Not that I give it, but it’s nice to be asked, you know?

Graphics : Great, in a word. The scale of the game makes you lend some understanding to the non-next gen look, but even then, the game looks good, especially once you’re in space, looking at a planet’s atmosphere. It’s unlike a typical RTS in that detail is not sacrificed when you zoom in, no boxy Riflemen here.

Fun Factor : For all the flaws I found with the game, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it. However, despite the near endless customization options, I have no intention on playing this game again. About as much replay value as the Black&White series, or the latest rendition of WWE.

Sound : Sound is great, and in the 5+ creature’s I’ve designed, they’ve all sounded unique. Music is somewhat odd in that you can customize what it sounds like. However, the tools used in doing so are not entirely user friendly. I’m not sure what Chess’s Knight supposedly sounds like, but a little more thought could of been put into the system. The ‘beat’ is essentially the main thing you hear, which varies from dark techno, to Rastafarian.

Summary

Good
- Cross-Genre games tend to have something for everyone.
- Creature/Building/Unit design is extremely open ended.
- Combat, though simple, is fun and entertaining.

Bad
- Though the cell/creature stages are respective 2d/3d Pacman, everything else is a bland RTS.
- Space Stage for Aggressive players is frustrating and tedious.
- Spice Trading is easily exploited, making end-game currency little more than an obligatory loophole.
Final Score: 7 / 10

I wanted to like this game more than I did. I was immediately hooked from the start, but constantly let down as I progressed through the stages. Though the game is a refreshing take on the RTS genre, the fact remains that it is an RTS, in the most bland way imaginable.

* Just a note, though it is obvious as hell… the screenshots here are from Gamespy, on the off chance you don’t recognize that logo.

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By: Pilgrim

Platform: Xbox Live Arcade

Genre: Puzzle.

OMG a 1200 Point XBLA game!!!! The Humanity!!!!

Braid is a Side Scrolling Puzzle game. If you want to categorize it think of it as Prince of Persia meets Mario meets Portal. There’s a story, told through Text Between worlds. The basic mechanics are pretty predictable. But there is no failing… If you fail you can always rewind. Each world uses it’s own rules, and once you understand the rules of the world you are in then you can begin to quest for all the puzzle pieces. In order to Understand why Braid is so awesome… I had to challenge myself to get all the pieces… every single one. As usual being lazy after dinking with it a few minutes i went to my trusty friend the internet and looked for a Cheat guide to tell me how to do it… None existed. Making frowny faces I turn off the console and go about my day. Then a few hours later I go back… and decide to figure this crap out! It pissed me off that I couldn’t get the last 2 pieces. And then I figured it out. The puzzle clicked, and the last 2 pieces were mine… it was insane. I haven’t felt that much triumph in a game sense Portal.

I turned around and immediately bought it. Worth every penny.

The good:

It’s brilliant, clever puzzles, with solutions that when you find them, it doesn’t feel cheap… it just works. Brilliant Backgrounds and soothing music (Playing Braid to Death Metal would be interesting) Graphically it’s astounding, but nothing you’re gonna write to momma about. It’s like being in a painting… It’s just a well thought out, well designed and well executed game.

The Bad:

It’s $15 and about 6-8 hours long. But here’s the long and the short of that… If I told you that Portal was $15 and only 4-6 hours, would you buy it? While it’s not fully analogous, the intelligence behind each of these titles is very similar. I think missing Braid would be missing one of the best games that will probably come out this year. It’s another one of “Those” moments like with Portal. You don’t see it coming, but man when you get there it’s awesome.

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by Naxel

Platform : PC and Xbox (yeah the original one)
Genre : FPS, But an out of the box one

I didn’t see the movie, but this one seem to be out of the context of the movie itself and explains the story of Riddick and how he got the ability of the shine-eye. Where all the other games failed in being an extension of the movie by only replaying the same events but with crappier graphics render accompanied by a horrible game play, we have Escape from butcher bay on the other side. Which in my opinion, gives the video-game-inspired-from-a-movie a good name. Wikipedia states that “Reviewers often commented that Butcher Bay was actually better than the accompanying movie” And it’s justified. For the new to the series, the plot follows Riddick, a highly dangerous criminal, as he is imprisoned in Butcher Bay, a fictional triple max security prison. And the whole game revolves on how you get out of there with a bang.

Graphics: Doom 3 engine, and it looks good to me. It runs smoothly, and the character are believable. Riddick is modeled after Vin Diesel and it looks quite the same. It suffer slightly of the Doom 3 syndrome where everything turn black at some point but it’s not all the game that happens to be that way, with the skills of Riddick, you can actually have some sort of night vision whenever you’re in the dark. And the effect is pretty awesome.

Gameplay: It’s an FPS but you are in a prison, which means you don’t have a gun most of the time. You simply use whatever you find for a weapon, or use you mad stealth skills to break the neck of your opponents when sneaking them in their back. Remember the feeling of Gears of War when you chainsaw someone, or when knifing someone in Call of Duty 4? Well, it’s the same.

Sound: It’s rare to have a game that uses sound in cinematic quality as much as Escape from Butcher Bay does, you shift from action sequences to slow and calm sequences with a bang, and it really gives the impression your soundtrack is following you wherever you go. It’d be bad if the sound track wasn’t dynamic but it’s not the case here. Vin Diesel voices Riddick, and Xzibit voices Abbot (Which made me laugh every time he spoke) Overall I can say, it’s a satisfying experience.

Fun Factor: Short single player, but if you find the game in the bin for 5$, it’s totally worth the money.

So in brief

The good
-Original and complete gameplay
-Prequel of the movie, which is better than the movie
-You can buy it for cheap and have a god run of fun for the money

The bad
-It’s short, I wouldn’t expect more than 10 hours
-It’s old, but honestly it’s still looking great even if it’s old

The score : 8/10

8 on 10 means, you find it cheap? buy it. You’ve got a friend how has it? Borrow it. It’s good enough to play but since it’s old and rather short, don’t bother paying an extra for it.

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by Pilgrim

Name: Mass Effect : Bring Down the Sky
Game type : RPG DLC
Context : DLC for Mass Effect
Similar Gameplay : The rest of Mass Effect
Platform : 360 for now, potentially packaged with the PC version, but more then likely available as a separate download.
Price: $5 (400 MS points)

Cliff notes version: You like Mass Effect then this is probably worth it, if you plan on replaying Mass Effect several times then it’s totally worth it.

There’s plenty of reviews of the game Mass Effect, so feel free to read those to get an idea of the full game, this will focus on the first DLC for Mass Effect Bring Down the Sky.

The Basics: Bring Down the Sky is a stand alone mission, similar in scope to the Main Story missions of the main game, while having a feel of the Assignment missions. It’s a mix of the 2 really. The entire mission takes place on an asteroid that you will need to navigate in the Mako, with 4 bases, some mining sites, a few enhancements to base defenses not seen in the main game (Mine Fields, moving rocket turrets and Armored turrets that cannot be fired on till they are firing), a few pieces of equipment, and the introduction of the Batarians (For those who’ve read the book, the Batarians are well known.) The entire mission takes about an hour to an hour and a half to complete and has a single achievement worth 50 points (With cheevo rules being what they are we can assume that bioware has intentions of releasing a potential 5 DLC packs of similar scope to BDTS)

The Story: Some bad guy Batarians have taken over an asteroid mining colony, and using some Giant Thrusters are going to ram it into a populated planet to make a point… if you make us angry we’ll get antsy and drop an asteroid on you! I believe there are a total of 4 sub-assignments and several different resolutions to the story. It’s a pretty simple story, but just as fun as any of the other Story missions in the game.

The Graphics: As a DLC for Mass Effect this really doesn’t have any graphical improvements, however the scenery on the asteroid as it hurdles towards it’s point making impact are some of the best Mako roving in the game. From the “Armageddon” -esque smaller asteroids burning up on the front end of the asteroid, to the looming world in the distance, just waiting for it’s deep impact. Also the Armor you can receive as a reward at the end of the DLC is really nice looking, Shiny black with red highlights.

The value: I guess all DLC has to be rated on it’s value. To me, if you enjoyed Mass Effect as a game, and kinda want that little taste more, then Bring Down the Sky is worth the 5 clams. As the Main game comes down in price (Like 30-25 price point) then I think buying the main game and all 5 potential DLC packs will be worth it.

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by Naxel

Platform : PC
Genre : Shooter (Deathmatch, Capture the flag and such)

It’s been what? 4 month since this one has been released, and I’ve been hesitant to buy this one for a while, BUT steam made it easy for me making Epic’s game available earlier this week. So how does it go?

Graphics are f’n phenomenal. It’s the unreal engine 3 to it’s best and it’s also rather smooth considering the rig I’m testing this on. Is there is better out there now? I doubt it. Crysis looked nice but I had a hard time to boost the engine and see good result compared to this game. Everything is vivid, colorful, lighting is super good and the quality of your sight change depending if you’re too much into blinding light or in snow or in cave, etc. You also get the splatter on the screen when you kill someone else with the hammer a bit a la Gears Of War when you chainsaw’d a locust. Really I haven’t seen graphic that are that good on my PC before. Granted COD4 looks good but this one goes beyond that in the quality of it’s effects.

Gameplay = take UT2k4 Aka the last instance of Unreal tournament and copy paste. The game plays the same BUT There is a bunch of new toys to play with vehicles and updated graphics on the weapons and items, tweaked game play on warfare maps, new elements to play with, but it stays Unreal 100%. Fast paced action shooter period. The assault and ball mode are not present on the game which is really a bummer, which tell me that they’ll probably release it later in another instance of the game or just add the mode with a patch. A novelty would be the single player campaign, which can be played with actual players, if you want to make your game public or with just a bunch of friends. The campaign is a tad like the one in the original UT, you get to do deathmatch, team deatmatch or warfare (whatever the game modes are available) through the monologue of the characters (your general, yourself and your sister) in the fashion of a military campaign overlooking the map of the terrain. It’s more of a campaing with a linear course compared to the older instance of the game where you shoot for the tournament’s golden trophy. Apparently we’re at war and it’s what we’re living.

Sound took me by surprise. The same voice announcing “Multi-kill” Is back but as an hybrid from the original and ut2k4, brighter voice, but still made my sub shake the floor with every mention of double kills or killing sprees :). The voice-over are not perfect, (cuz yes we’re being shown cut scenes) but they sound good enough. Malcolm really sounds like *okay no call for racism here but it’s the only image I have* he sounds like a… an uneducated black man to be fairly polite and not call him a nigga… *oops* Nevertheless it’s hilarious, and realistic where I wouldn’t expect someone that kills people for a living to be philosophical and have a posed tone.

Fun factor goes like this. If you’ve like other UTs instances before, you’ll like this one too. But it is more of the same in majority. There are some novelty in modes such as “vehicles capture the flag” and the hoverboard is always fun to use (makes you feel like Marty Mcfly). If the balance is enough to make you get the game I don’t know, it depends on how much you like the genre, because this game is not redefining anything but makes thing better and more balanced. However I’ll say this as a final word. Any game that makes me stick to my chair and play, even if I really have to go and take a piss but I’ll just keep playing, deserve a fun factor that is fairly high.

So in brief

The good
-Graphics from heavens that can scale to even a mid-range rig without sacrificing beauty or performance too much
-Familiar and solid gameplay for competitive and enthusiasts players
-The maps are amazing and take you through a lot of different environments

The bad
-It’s UT so don’t expect any more than UT
-Where is the Assault mode, damn you Epic

The score : A bloody 9.0/10

I have bought every UT game since the original, and this one doesn’t disappoint either. It’s not new but still feel fresh, and fun, which is more than enough for me to give that game such a high score.

Buy or rental? Try the demo and judge by yourself. It depends if you’re a fan of the genre or not. The game is nothing new compared to the older ones, which might stop you if you didn’t like the other instances of the game.

And now Pics

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by Navarone

Call of Duty 4 for 360
Single player 7/10
Multi Player 10/10

Single player is very linear, very typical, no great levels or environments, but solidly put together. It’s exactly like every other call of duty game, good scripted events, never ending spawns of allies. It’s your popcorn video game. Simple but fun.

Multi player is the pinnacle of perfection. No game has ever played this well online on a console. LIVE takes it further with great achievements, awesome lobby system. Game itself has tons of unlockables, fantastic challenges and keeps that carrot in front of you. Balanced great, always fun to play.

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by Naxel
Game type : Real time strategy
Context : Space stimulation
Similar Gameplay : Fuze Homeworld, Starcraft and C&C together
Platform : PC GAME

I picked the game earlier this month as a desperate seek for space sim that are worth any attention, and damn it was a good idea. Stardock made other game of the same genre and now they are taking this to the next step

Gameplay is like a strategy game, you balance your resources from income, crystal and metal coming from the economy for your planets and the upkeep your military presence have in the world. It’s mostly a conquest game, either you break the other armies and take over their planets, or make peace with em and join forces against another one. The scale of the game is giganormous. A 1vs1 game will spawn over 10 12 planets and the biggest games can go with systems containing over 100 planet systems and 12 different players. There are 4 factions that plays relatively differently according to their research pattern. But the fun part s that you can have capital ships that acts as heroes on the battlefield and they are crucial to the balance of your conquest and the strngth of your armies. What’s also interesting is that pirates are a neutral faction you can bribe to attack other factions in the solar system, and the higher the bid is the more ships they send out there, but you have to be careful cuz they may be jumping on you if other players wants your head on a silver platter.

Graphics are really good, and the interesting part is how you zoom in to see and select a ship, and zoom out to see the entire solar system, which makes the scale of the game very big and also where there is a need to carefully move your units to safe spots to insure the defences or attacks. The visuals are more precise when you come close to see every laser shot ripping a hull apart or out when looking at a planet bombardment making mushroom clouds.

Fun factor is the strong point of this game. You guys remember playing starcraft where you have to have your mind everywhere to plan your actions on the battlefield? Well this game has the same feeling, while the pace is quite slower than other strategies games, you just can’t rst your mind off as you play for the quatity of things you need/ want to manage. It makes the game incredibly addictive and hard to complete as well.

Sound is what you expect out of a RTS, units have an annoyed tone when you select them or give them an order and are characterized by their race and purpose. The music is fun because depending on how much you’re zooming on the action, it will change to the epic battle song to the more relaxed spacey context. You almost immediately know when pirates are around with that kind of interaction.

In Summary

The good
- The addictivness
- The graphic scale
- The gameplay is very balanced and provides a challenge to each play
- Finally a good RTS in a space sim, better han homeworld IMO
- Game is totally unprotected which fucks up less your computer, and no need for cd to play makes it easy

The bad
- No single player campaign
- Learning curve quite steep, it’s not too bad, but the tutorials are essentials
- The addictiveness

Final score, 8.8/10
Why that score? : The lack of a campaign and graphics/ battle stimulation that lacks a bit of dynamism in the end as well as the slow pace of the game detract from the higher score, but the game is extremely well balanced and in sum is really better than it sounds even if it’s not exceptional. A single game can span over 10 hours of game, it’s even beyond the scale of risk. If you like space sim games in any iteration, you HAVE to AT LEAST try this one

There is a demo out there and it’s totally worth trying at the very least
Demo at Gamer’s Hell

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Tags: game review, pc gaming, sins of a solar empire

So over the last few days, I have been getting my butt kicked on this whole ‘dual-boot’ thing with my new Dell. As part of my therapy, I am posting this guide here, on the Ubuntu forums, and on Moschetto.net

A few days ago (March 2008) I purchased a Dell 1420 preloaded with Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy). It came with a 2.2 Ghz P4, 4GB RAM, 160GB SATA HDD, Wireless-N, and integrated Webcam. Now this is my first experience into any Linux environment, and I found myself fairly lost as to how to dual boot with XP. The following is a step by step guide on how I took an out-of-the-box 1420 with Ubuntu 7.10 and put XP Pro on it too.

Note: When this system came to me, the partition table looked like so:

/sda1 FAT16 80MB (Dell's Restore Partition)
/sda2 FAT32 5GB (Dell's Restore Image)
/sda3 EXT3 140GB (Primary Ubuntu Boot partition)
/sda4 – Extended partition
/sda5 EXT3 5.8GB (Swap Partition)

Since I knew that I did NOT want Ubuntu and XP to co-exist on a single partition, the first thing I did was to boot off the live-CD and shrink the Ubuntu installation by about half. This now left me with an un-formated chunk of 70GB on the drive.

Great says I, so now I reboot, pop in the XP CD, but it cannot find any hard disks. Hmm. I finally figure out that XP doesn’t recognize the 160GB SATA drive that came with the Laptop. I went to Dell’s site and downloaded the SATA drivers (320KB) and then downloaded a program called nLite. This article: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Install-Win…-F6-47807.shtml helped me out immensely.

Once I had the Driver on the XP disk, I booted up the XP disk and try to format… but NO! I have reached my 4 partition limit. To make this section very short, I ended up having to remove a partition in order to allow window to allow me to make a new partition. Since the Dell reinstallation image is readily available online to download, I booted off the live-CD and I chose to wipe both the FAT16 and FAT32 partitions. Afterward a trusted friend told me that any FAT16 partition is a security risk, though I have yet to confirm that.

So now I have a 5.1GB unpartitioned space, the 70GB Ubuntu partition, the 70GB unpartitioned space, and then the 5.8 GB Swap. In order to avoid problems with the leading 5 gigs of emptyness, I chose to grow the Ubuntu partition by the 5 GB. This alone took about 2 and a half hours, so go get some lunch.

Once the grow completed, I again booted off the windows CD. This time it let me format the partition. So now I have XP installed, and the system will boot into XP. Almost there!

I restarted and booted off the live-CD, and now I needed to reinstall GRUB on the Master Boot Record. After a great deal of trial and error, this is what to do: First run Gparted off the live-CD and right click on the NTFS partition (this is windows) and click on manage flags. Uncheck the ‘boot’ option. Now right click on the EXT3 partition (this is Ubuntu), click on manage flags, and this time check the ‘boot’ option. Now to reinstall GRUB, I opened a terminal window and typed:


sudo grub
find /boot/grub/stage1 <- showed me the current boot partition
root (hd0,0) <- changed the active partition to the first one (Ubuntu)
setup (hd0) <- installed GRUB to it


At this point I rebooted with a smug look on my face only to be presented with an “ERROR 17” message. I discovered that this basically means your computer is saying, “I cant find any operating systems!! Help PLZ!” For the next hour or so I played with the GRUB loader, and with the GRUB loader in Ubuntu, with almost no effect. That is until I stumbled upon this guide over at APCMag: http://apcmag.com/5459/dualboot_ubuntu_and_windows_xp and it explained how to get GRUB to remember all these things I was telling it. It turns out that for some reason, GRUB didn’t see my partition tables correctly and needed to be told proper what to do. That’s right – proper.

From the failed ERROR 17 window, I entered into the GRUB setup screen, hit ‘e’ to edit the lines, and modified the first line that read ‘root (hd0,2)’ to read ‘root (hd0,0)’. Since (hd0,2) is now the swap partition, there was my error. Now that the line reads ‘root (hd0,0)’ I hit the ‘b’ key to boot and Ubuntu loaded without a problem.

Now to change the GRUB files to remember that I want hd0,0. Open a terminal and type:
sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
This opened a text configuration file for GRUB. I scrolled all the way to the bottom until I found the section where it read:

title Ubuntu 7.10
root (hd0,2) <- Ha HA!


And here I changed it to (hd0,0).

Then I make a new boot option by typing:

title Windows XP Pro
root (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1


This sets up a new option in the GRUB loader to allow XP to boot up without a hitch.

Whew. Finally done. A quick note: This setup made XP install to the F: drive. It makes some installs a bit weird, and thought you might like a heads-up.

I hope someone out there finds this article useful!

Semper Fidelis,
-Dodger

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Tags: dual boot, grub, linux, master boot record, ubuntu, windows, winxp