Halo 3

So I got an Xbox 360 with Halo 3 for Christmas.  I wasn't much of a Halo fan back then because I had never played the first or second games.  I didn't really know what to expect when my brother first set up the 360 and created his Xbox live account.  Little did I know, I was about to play one of the best games I had ever played.  If you don't have an Xbox Live account, you are missing out on most of the fun.  A new and popular feature is the theatre lobby.  You can view up to the latest 20 things you did on campaign, matchmaking, or forge from any angle or any players viewpoint.  The online replay value is great, it feels like a whole new experience each time.  As you gain experience points as you play online, the people who you play with are around your amount of exp. points, so you don't feel like you are pwning noobs all the time.  The story mode is really challenging if you have all skulls (you find them throughout the game) turned on and the difficulty cranked up to "legendary".  I am half-way through the story mode on "heroic" mode.  I usually play Halo on a daily basis, but as usual, school always gets in the way, but it doesn't bother me that much.  My gamertag is "spinmoss1" so if you have a copy of Halo 3 and have an Xbox Live account, feel free to send me a friend request and maybe we can have a battle sometime.  

Overall, if you love first person shooters (FPS) than this is the game for you.  I strongly recommend this game. And also expect to see many more video game articles in the near future.

Leopard's Bugs

When Leopard was first released on October 26, 2007, I have been using it ever since.  After setting up my computer to run on Leopard and getting used to it, I started to notice quite a few bugs. 

 In my previous entry, I mentioned a bug that I found in iMovie.  If I press a wrong button at anytime, it quits immediately and doesn't save your project.  (Like I said before, this may or may not occur on your computer running Leopard)  This aggravated me so much, I almost gave up making videos.  But then I thought that Apple might make a patch to fix this.  Then in November, Apple made a software update that was to fix most of the bugs, as it did do that, iMovie still is quitting just as often.  Now, I can only hope to get a new video editing software (Adobe Premiere Pro: CS3) or wait for Apple to fix this.

Another bug that I found is in iTunes, and I am not entirely sure if this applies to any other Leopard user, so please comment if it does.  If I accidentally add a song to a playlist, I press the delete button on the song to remove it from that playlist.  That doesn't work on my computer, iTunes just quits like iMovie.  I don't know why it does this but all I know is that it only recently started doing this after I upgraded to Leopard.

These are all the bugs that I know of at the time, but eventually I probably will find more, and as I do that, Apple will probably fix the bugs that I find.

MacBook Pro

To start off, I love Apple.  I have been using their computers since I received a blueberry iBook Clamshell when I was 4. I loved it.  Now I use a 15.4" MacBook Pro with Leopard installed.  I have to admit, Leopard does have a-lot of bugs.  For example, in iTunes, whenever I want to delete a song from a playlist, it crashes all of a sudden and quits (this occurs to me, and maybe not to you).  Oh, and iMovie, that crashes all the time.  Whenever I press a wrong key, it quits instantly.  So, enough criticizing Leopard, and on to the MacBook Pro.  (I can talk about Leopard in another post)

Battery Life:

On the 15.4", it can last up to 6 hours, but that is probably with the LEDs backlight off and with a brand new battery.  I found out that if you have a year old battery with the LEDs backlight turned up to full brightness, the battery can last up to about 2 hours.  On the 17", battery life can last up to about 5.75 hours according to Apple.

Display:

As I said earlier, there are two display sizes, 15.4" or 17" (diagonal measurements).  Both have the option to have a glossy screen. Also, they both feature a TFT LED backlit display.  There's nothing much else to say about the display, besides that its fantastic.

Keyboard and Trackpad:

All MacBook Pros have a full-size keyboard with 78 (US) or 79 (ISO) keys, with 12 function keys, and 4 arrow keys, plus an embedded numeric keypad.  Both have a backlit keyboard, which is very helpful typing in the dark, but of course, it does make the battery life suffer.  The trackpad is very helpful when it comes to scrolling down documents and webpages.  All you need to do is place two fingers on the trackpad and move them up or down.  The trackpad also features tap, double-tap and drag capabilities.

Audio (input and output) and Storage:

Both models have built-in stereo speakers, a headphone output, and a microphone input, plus a built in microphone.  I wish the built-in speakers could get a bit more louder, but almost all the time I use headphones.  The 15.4" has the option to have 120GB or 160GB SATA drives, or if you want to do what I did, you can buy a hard-drive with a bigger capacity (200 or 250GB).  I purchased the 250GB one, and with my previous data backed up on an external drive through Time Machine, transferring your data is a snap.  The 17" has a minimum storage capacity of 160GB, and just like the 15.4 inch, you can have the option to replace the hard drive with bigger ones (200 or 250GB).

These are just the few specs. of the MacBook Pro, for more details go to Apple's Detailed Specifications