Colin McRae Rally 2.0 Review

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(More customer reviews)I am very impressed with Colin McRae Rally. It provides an all around great gaming experience.
In the game itself, the tracks are widely varied in both their look and feel. If you have a force feedback controller you'll really appreciate the different surfaces. The cars have noticeable handling differences and setting them up for a particular surface/weather combination requires some work. The icing on the cake are the verbal calls from your navigator letting you know about the track up ahead.
As other reviews have mentioned, the damange model is very cool. You can hear and see the damaged parts of your car. Windows break, hoods crumple and bumpers drag on the ground. I've also noticed that if your electric system is damanged you'll occassionally find yourself driving along with a turn signal running. You might also see your headlights fail -- not fun on a night course.
That said, I was still looking for more out of the damange model. I regularly slam the passenger side of the car into a tree.. I was expecting my navigator to be "damanged" after some of those hits. :) Also, I was never able to get a car to completely break down. I don't know if there is a way to DNF in this game.
The 3 skill levels seem non-linear in difficulty. On the lowest level it is pretty easy to win the championship, but as soon as you jump to "intermediate" your competition gets substantially better and it is difficult to pull off top finishes.
One last gripe about the gameplay... when flip the car or go off the road you are immediately returned the road and continue the race. Even if you can't DNF, there should be some sort of large time penalty.
All in all a great game. The gameplay is a lot of fun and it will give your force feedback wheel quite a workout. I've even found the car control I learned in this game helped in other racing sims.

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Microsoft Windows Home Server System Builder with URP1 Review

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(More customer reviews)At the time I'm writing this, Amazon has two versions of WHS listed: this one with a plain white graphic, and another more expensive one with a blue graphic. THIS is the more recent version, despite its lower price.
Microsoft hit a home run with Windows Home Server (WHS). It is one of the first times I've seen a sophisticated software product that is perfect for regular non-techie consumers. It is easy to use, but does not assume the user is a moron. It does this by placing just the right warnings at the right times. Obviously, it's been user-tested a LOT.
Under the covers is is built on Windows Server 2003 SP2. That is an excellent choice, because it is a very mature operating system, and is in use in millions of computer servers around the world. In fact, one of the things I was surprised about when first booting up the software is that you really do have access to the regular Windows desktop, including Start menu and many of the normal programs and features you would expect to see.
So for me, as someone who is very comfortable working with servers, I was very happy to see that although the product does not NEED any kind of tweaking, I had full access to be able to make subtle adjustments that I wanted. For example, I was able to adjust the encryption level on remote desktop sessions to "High" (from the default Normal) in the Administrative Tools > Terminal Services Configuration application. What a great thing that Microsoft did not "dumb down" the product and restrict access for those who know what they're doing.
One of the first things you should do with any new OS install is to run Windows Update, so that it gets patched with all the latest updates from Microsoft. This install is no different, and there were in fact many updates to install (53 or 54 in total). So before playing with your new server, first run Windows Update from the Start > All Programs menu, select the "Custom" option, and check all the boxes to install everything.
Then, after you install the updates (which includes the upgrade from IE6 to IE7) and the computer reboots, run Windows Update again. Typically, in an update that large there are updates that don't install because of some dependencies, and there will be additional updates to the updates you just installed. This is common. Every time Windows Update finishes, immediately run it again -- until you see "0" (zero) next to every category on the left. Also, don't use "Express", keep using "Custom" (contrary to the "recommended" tag next to Express).
Another thing you may want to do is get rid of the Logon Warning that appears every time you log in to the server's desktop (either remotely or on the computer itself). You can do that simply by deleting "Logon Warning" from the All Programs > Startup folder in the Start menu. It is a simple HTML file, so deleting it does not do any harm.
I am really happy with this home server product from Microsoft, and I highly recommend it for any household that has more than one computer.

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