Razer Mice - Are they worth the price? Plus a cheaper alternate just as good!

Trying to find a good 5 button or even 7 button mouse these days is pretty easy. Razer mice are by far some of the best that you can get on the market.  They have great in depth dpi and the ability to customise each feature including but not limited to the flashing logo.

These mice can range from £30 - £60+ depending on where you shop for them.

However there are great cheaper alternates on Ebay which you can import from countries such as China, Hong Kong (these being the main two) etc.

For example if you search "5 button mouse" within the mice category of Ebay. You can browse through yourself on either the auction tab or the buy it now. you may also change the search criteria to 6 or 7 button mouse to a greater selection.

I would recommend looking at "Top-Tech-Ltd" (sorted lowest to highest including P&P) shop range as they have a very good selection starting from as low as £5.95; their most expensive (currently of posting this post) is £29.99. Therefore far cheaper than Razer.

However when it arrives you may find that the 'Back' and 'Forward' buttons are the wrong way around. In which case you can fix this by downloading and running X-Mouse Button Control. This program is fantastic and allows you to customise the buttons on your mouse.

I personally bought the '7D Cruiser Transformer 2 II USB'. It's smaller than I thought it was but the quality is fantastic.

Hope you found this helpful in making a choice and saving yourself a lot of cash!

Guide to installing Open Transport Tycoon (inc. TTD Patch and addons recommended for UK)

This guide has been updated recently.
Please visit the following blog post:
http://charityalbumman.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/recommended-open-transport-tycoon.html

Windows XP Pro BSOD Event ID 7000 "Parallel Port Driver Service failed ..." [Solution]

Do you keep getting blue screen of death (BSOD) or sudden system power off with a restart? I had this recently when playing OMSI Bus Simulator but this can happen in other circumstances as well from the research I did on this. Either way this should help you fix this issue.

If you do check 'System' within your Event Viewer (Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Event Viewer). Look out for:

Event ID 7000, Source "Service control Manager", Description "The Parallel port driver service failed to start due to the following error: The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it.

Print Screen:

SOLUTION

Step 1) Boot into your motherboards BIOS and disable the parallel port (see your motherboards manual on how to do this).

If you don't know what make and model your motherboard is then use PC Wizard to find this out so you can download the manual from your motherboards manufactures web site (Google the manufacture if you don't know their web site address).

Step 2) Within Windows XP Professional open Device Manager (Start - Run, type in "devmgmt.msc" without the quotes and click ok).

Within Device Manager click on the 'View' menu and select 'Show hidden devices'. Scroll through device manager until you find 'Non-plug and Play Drivers - Parallel port driver', Right click and select 'Disable', click 'Yes' when presented with the stop functioning warning and restart when asked.

Can't play Command and Conquer Generals Zero Hour Online with 1.04 Patch [Solution]

If you're having problems with C & C Generals Zero Hour online whereby you can connect after applying the 1.04 patch but you cannot play against other players due to having a "different version"; it is more than likely you have applied a no cd crack.

The solution to this is to ...

1) Uninstall C & C Generals Zero Hour (not Generals, just Zero Hour).

2) Then visit the EA Games folder where you installed Zero Hour (default is C:\ Program Files \ EA Games \ Command & Conquer Generals Zero Hour) and delete the entire directory "Command & Conquer Generals Zero Hour". If you cannot delete it due to write permissions or access denied; simply reboot your computer and then you should be able to.

3) Re-install C & C Generals Zero Hour. After installation apply the 1.04 patch (either by downloading it yourself from here, or by going in-game, then online and applying it that way).

4) To apply the no cd crack correctly so you can play others online download the no cd crack from here (the one named "C&C Generals: Zero Hour v1.04 [ENGLISH] No-CD/Fixed EXE").

Once downloaded copy across the 'generals.exe' only to your Zero Hour directory and over-write once prompted.

Do not copy across the 'game.dat' (about 6.2mb); simply delete it as this is the file which caused the initial problem.

5) Load Zero Hour and you should be able to play online against other users now.

Cannot download Flight Plan in vroute? [Solution]

Hi all,

Not sure if any of you out there are flight sim enthusiasts; probably some of you are!

If like me you've recently had problems whereby you've chosen a flight; selected export, chosen your flight time and aircraft, date etc ... then clicked on the button which creates the FP ... only to have internet explorer open and suddenly close ... there is another way to download the flight plan :)

Simply right click on the link within vroute and select 'Save target as ...'; then save the flight plan to your flight plan folder and away you go as normal.

hope this helps someone because it irritated me for hours today.