Any tips on making my experience better? Are the above things bugs or is it playing like it should? I suppose I could just uninstall and reinstall. I got the game retail and not on Steam so verifying files isn't an option.

Fire_Wa11

Several months ago Borderlands shifted towards fully integrating itself with the Steam framework. You can register your retail key with steam and get the steam version of the game (uninstalling your retail copy first is probably not a bad idea). Once your game is the Steam version, that might improve your overall chances of finding some folks to play online with - as I imagine many may have also done this. I haven't fired up Borderlands in a while so I don't know how thriving the MP environment is right now.

Also, bear in mind that you'll need some of the DLCs to match what the host has, lest you get unceremoniously booted from the MP game if it shifts to one of the add-on areas.

As someone that has been servicing Latitudes for the past 5 years, I can tell you that what you're seeing is normal. Its not the power cord, it is in fact the battery at the end of its useful life. Laptop batteries have a limited number of charges in their life cycle. Some last longer than others, and you won't see me arguing that Dell's aren't sometimes criminally short.

Pop the battery out - I imagine you'll find that the power adapter you bought still powers the laptop fine, you are just going to need it always until you buy a replacement battery.

One thing about SSDs - they collect a bunch of garbage data in areas which eventually lead to write performance degradation unless you have TRIM, an OS feature only avaialble on Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 (in the Windows family). There are a handful of possible alternatives (Intel's SSD Toolbox, hdparm) for this, but IMHO you are best off waiting until you are ready for the Windows 7 plunge to buy a SSD - Especially considering that you have to install Windows 7 from scratch anyhow.

I don't think the 3c905c ever had Vista or Win7 drivers written for it, certainly not for 64-bit. Under 64-bit, the 3c905c is useless to you.

If you have 32-bit windows, there's a (very) slight chance the 2000/XP driver packages that you can find on mass-download sites (like CNET) might work for you.

Otherwise, the Rosewill card has Windows 7 driver support and should work just fine.

Assuming you're going to put it in RAID0 mode (for performance), yes. In fact, both drives will need to be formatted.

If you're putting it in RAID1 (protects your internal HDD data but reduces performance), only the external needs to be formatted.

I'm not sureabout just moving the folder that steam is in but I know that you can install steam into any folder on any hard drive, and it will then save all games on that hard drive(I do this). I imagine you could just try and see what happens.

Black_Dragon

You just have to uninstall steam and re-install it to the new location. Be sure to preserve and move the steamapps subdirectory to the new install location as that contains a majority of the 380GB of games data. Not sure if saved games are there too.

TMNT4 was tops. I really liked Batman Returns too.

You MIGHT be okay with source engine games... not really sure, but GTA will eat your computer up... Im guessing your cpu is not up to snuff either for that game.

mitch2411

Agreed, be careful with GTA4 - that game is pretty harsh on systems. The rest should play alright on a 4350 (or 4650 if you go that route).

When you turn on compatibility mode, did you try checking some of the other options for running in 256 color, 640x480, etc?

Thanks alot! I can run bad company 2 at max except shadows and hbao, its a little bit choppy sometimes, do i need a better gpu then?szafto

Pretty much. Video card is the only thing you could upgrade in your system that would make a significant difference.