As a kid I had a burning desire to own a portable gaming console as awesome as my Sega Mega Drive (called ‘Genesis’ in the US). There was something enormously appealing to me about being able to move around unhindered, with the ability to express my infatuation for gaming wherever I was. Sega played to this desire with a product it launched in 1995 called the Nomad. Not only was it the coolest thing I bought in the 90s, but in my opinion remains the most awesome portable gaming platform ever invented. The Nintendos and Sonys of the world would do well to consider what made the Nomad great – because, frankly, it kicks the DS and PSP for unmitigated awesomeness.

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Last year I wrote a review about Intel’s new range of Penryn processors and the good people at Intel gave me my very own Core 2 Quad 3ghz Extreme processor by accident. It’s pretty much as rad as processors get right now, and it has the word ‘confidential’ stamped on the chip, because they gave it to me before it came out. This makes me happy. But I didn’t have a motherboard to run it on because they’re rare and expensive.

Thankfully local IT distribution powerhouse Mustek has it’s very own in-house messiah in the form of their CTO, Dimitri Tserpis. Dimitri wrangled up an Intel Extreme Series DX38BT board, otherwise known as the ‘Bonetrail’ and gave it to me gratis.

They say good journalists can’t be bought, but this is bollocks. Both Intel and Mustek are now on my List of Legends and other Rad People and Organisations who Rock. They have earned my bias. Buy their stuff.

So if you come ’round my base in Team Fortress 2 looking for aksie, I will hand you your ass with the help of my new arsenal. And my level 70 druid in World of Warcraft will murderise you in any battleground, even though my account was cancelled six months ago and my computer may be off at the time. You have been warned.

Now all I need is one of them new-fangled water-cooled Nvidia cards to make everything look the part. And some DDR3 RAM. It’s a sunny day in geekville.

I put my foot in it last week with my gun-jumping initial response to Grand Theft Auto IV. The game has since grown on me I see what all the fuss is about. Part of the reason I didn’t initially take to the mayhem of Liberty City is because this is the first GTA title I have really bothered to spend time on. Perhaps if I had played one of its predecessors I would have known what to expect and gotten into the swing of things more swiftly. (more…)