I have been playing a lot Valve‘s games like Half Life 2 and then I also got the chance to play Portal. I thought I would talk about this because of how Steam is giving it away for free until May 24. I had my chance this weekend to play around with the game and I was most impressed with how Valve has incorporated logic into most of their games.

What do I like about Valve’s Games?

I will say I like how they make most of their games use logic but that isn’t all.   I also like how they make it a First Person Shooter but that is just me.   I am sure others like these types of games for their own reasons.   I do know that the development teams work hard at these games and I like how they add commentary to Portal.  I don’t know if they planned that during development or afterwards.  Jusst Like Portal, Half Life 2 has a commentary but the game developers did do it a little differently because of how long the game is to complete.   They put their own level in to talk about the challenges and other such video or audio rendering problems.  I do like to hear how they had troubles with levels in the games and how they got around some of them.   If you want to be agame developer this would be on game to look at and listen to the commentaries to find out if you want to be one.

Who can play Portal or Half Life 2?

Since both of these games are using the Half Life engine, you can play these are almost any system as long as you use my cheat to change the Direct Xrequirements.   If you use those instructions that I have provided on my previous post you can play both games easily with less requirements than expected.  Although to be truthful, you should have the minimum requirements which you can find out if you can play this game successfully by going to Can you run itwebsite. I do know with my new laptop that I bought this year, that I had no problems running Portal or Half Life 2 at the highest settings possible. So I am really happy with this laptop.

What else can you do with Portal?

What I did was go to Portalgamemaps.com and downloaded even more maps to play with portal.   You can add more complex or more easier maps to get even more achievements for your steam account.  You can search the web for more Portal Maps if you want to but I figure I could have hours of fun trying new maps and probably never really get board with this game.    I will recommend this game to anyone who might want to challenge there minds to a new puzzle or a way to just to relax.   This is really a good game just to sit back and relax to!!

Have a Good Monday, See you Wednesday!!

I recently got to test out a new Seagate FreeAgent Go Ultra-Portable Hard Drive with movies pre-loaded onto it.    I wanted to talk about it and let everyone who might be interested to find out more about it.

Product Features

• 5,400 RPM Spin Speed, 8 MB Cache Buffer
• USB 2.0: up to 480 Mb/s
• Sync and back up quickly at your desktop without having to search for cables.
• Guard the privacy of important files and folders.
• Get your storage solution up and running quickly.

System Requirements:

To create and activate a Paramount account for your FreeAgent Theater+ media player you will need a
system with:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer
• Microsoft Windows XP operating system (any version, including MCE) with Service Pack 2
• installed, Windows Vista or Windows 7
• 1.5 GHz CPU or faster (minimum of 600 MHz)
• 512MB or more memory (minimum of 10GB)
• At least 20GB or more, free hard disk space on your computer and drive
• Windows Media Player 10+

For the best viewing experience of the films on your computer we recommend you have a screen
resolution of 1024 x 768 (minimum of 800 x 600) and speakers or other audio output. Internet access is
also required.

A choice of up to 20 popular Paramount titles can be unlocked for a fee including:

• Star Trek (2009) (Free when you buy the Special Edition Hard Drive)
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
• GI Joe
• Shooter
• The Hunt for Red October
• The Italian Job (2003)
• Ghost
• Patriot Games
• Beowulf
• Enemy at the Gates
• The Spiderwick Chronicles
• The Love Guru
• Coach Carter
• The Manchurian Candidate (2004)
• Nacho Libre
• Jackass 2.5
• A Plumm Summer
• Carriers
• Dance Flick
• Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
• Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

I had a chance to test out this hard drive and I wanted to tell you about my experiences with the software and with the Star Trek (2009) movie.   I must say after playing the movie, I was impressed with the High Definition.   My computer can support High Definition and I was quite shocked that it wasn’t Standard Definition.   While playing the movie, you will notice the Hard Drive will get warm but it isn’t a problem.

In order to view these movies on your laptop or computer your will need to acquire the license from the Paramount store to make the movie you choice available to be watched from your computer or if you have the Seagate FreeAgent Theater+1080P HD Media Player STCEA201-RK. This is good for those who might want to view this on your High Definition Television sets. It is just as cheap as the Roku. After your get the rights to watch the movie on that computer, you no longer need to have Internet Access to watch it. Great for when you are traveling and can’t get internet access. You only can give three systems the rights to view that particular movie that you bought through the Paramount store, but the prices are comparable to those you get from Amazon Video on demand. The only drawback is that you will need to use Internet Explorer 8 or Higher to buy or acquire a license from the store. You have to make Internet Explorer your default browser when you want to buy a new license for a movie off the hard drive.

I never heard a sound out of the hard drive while it was running. I could tell they made sure to keep it quite when they made the hard drive. The other nice thing about the FreeAgent Hard drive is that you only need to have one USB port to use this, and no power cords are required either. I must say that is also nice to have when you are on the go, no need to find an extra power outlet.

Seagate FreeAgent Ultra Portable

Amazon: $99.99 (Silver / Black)

Mwave: $107.44 (black)

Mwave: $107.44 (Blue)

Freeagent Go Special Edition(movie)

Seagate: No links available.

Amazon: No links available

NewEgg: No links available

Seagate Docking Station

Amazon: $16.99

No links available

If your backing up a lot of GB’s of data, the drive does get warm but that is also normal. It was never hot enough to burn me or hurt anything. I find the small size to be quite nice to have when traveling and going places with it. Not bulky or overweight, only about 1/2 pound of weight when you pick it up. The only drawback that I can see is the way they use the lights to show you when the hard drive is being used, a few small holes will dim and light up and unless you are really watching those lights you won’t know!

The Programs that come with this are quite powerful. Great Backup tools and Syncing tools for keeping your important data backed up. There is even aCarbonite trial on the Hard drive to encourage your to keep your data backed up off site. I do recommend people trying Carbonite because you never know what will happen to your home or your computer.

Would I recommend this to My Science Fiction Friends?

I most certainly would recommend this to any one who might need to have a way to backup their files and also have a way to have portable movies on the go. I can say that this idea of having media on a portable device like this is a great way to watch movies offline.

I’ve also asked them some questions that I am waiting for a response but when I do find out, I will update this post for those who might have the same questions. I will also update the links so you can buy these hard drives online!