E3 has come and gone, EVO 2009 and well underway, and people have gone away for the summer. However, I’m still here for the most part, wasting away in front of the computer…

…Speaking of which, let’s talk about my computer.

My Dell Inspiron 2200

Yes, this is what my computer looked like before it started to fall apart; While I still played mediocre free Korean MMOs (see the screenshot again.) despite still being involved in the community today, before I had to buy a USB headset because my audio jacks fried, and before I had to borrow my friend’s monitor because my knuckles met with the screen and cracked it.

Yep, that was my faithful, beat-up laptop… until about four days ago.  Now it’s time to introduce you to my new baby:

My new laptop, The Toshiba L300

I can tell you this much: It’s nice to have all this desk space again. Even if the laptop was crap I’d be happy, but this one’s pretty damn good, and it wasn’t all that pricey either. Here’s just a quick overview of what this has. Of course it’s not gaming quality, but for now it gets the job done:

CPU: AMD Athlon Dual Core 2.0GHz
RAM: A whopping 4 gigabytes worth! (It`s so nice not to have to page stuff back and forth)
HDD: 250GB (AFAIK the brand doesn’t really matter. Laptop HDs aren’t that great to begin with.)
Video: ATI Radeon 3100, 256MB shared, Pixel shader 3.0, Vertex shader 3.0. Can actually play good games.
Optical: CD-RW/DVD-RW
OS: Vista Home Premium SP2
Other stuff no one cares about: WiFi b/g/draft-N compatible, 100mbit Ethernet, 56k modem, (They STILL make these things?!) Built-in webcam, built-in SD/MS card reader (SDHC supported)

I wasn’t initially going to get the Toshiba. There was an Acer laptop that I wanted that was about 30 bucks less but it was gone before I could get the chance to buy it. I ended up on the Toshiba because I overheard one of the sales reps saying that it was one of his preferred brands; That, and for an extra 30 bucks I got Home Premium instead of Home Basic, which also means I might be able to get a free upgrade to Windows 7, and an extra gigabyte of RAM. It was worth it.

Of course, this means one thing: I CAN ACTUALLY PLAY GAMES THAT OTHER PEOPLE PLAY. Of course, most of the games I’ve been wanting to play are by Valve, so here’s what I’ve been playing:

Portal: I actually bought Portal a while ago because I found out that I might be able to get it to run, albeit very slowly, on my old computer; It didn’t work, and so it sat there on my Steam account unplayed, undownloaded, unloved. After getting all of my stuff transferred from the old computer, the first thing I did was download this and start playing it; And I’ve had fun with it so far.  However, I haven’t been playing this as much as…

Team Fortress 2: Oh yes. I loved playing Team Fortress Classic. I knew my computer couldn’t run TF2 and was sad that I couldn’t play this. I ended up buying this after acquiring this computer and have gotten immersed in it… although for the most part I suck. I’m not all that bad, though. Earlier today I joined a fellow member from Maple Towers and started kicking some serious ass; I went in as a Heavy while he stayed back as a Medic and kept me healed. Needless to say I was bowling over people quite well; It’s the first time in a long time that I’ve finished anything with a positive KD; Although back in TFC my K:D would be absolutely unbelievable with the Heavy.

There’s not much else I want to talk about tonight; My mind is a bit fatigued. If I’m going to say something however, I’m once again going to point to OCRemix. If you remember I gave props to the guys who did the remix album for Tales of Phantasia and Symphonia: Summoning of Spirits.  Just today a remix album was released for another game I can relate to; Final Fantasy 4, titled “Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption.”  I haven’t been able to listen to it yet since I just downloaded it, but if SoS was anything, I would really suggest checking this one out, too.

Anyway, that’s all for now. To close this post out, here’s a video of crash compilations… with some very good dubbing utilizing TF2 voices: