Criterion treats you right

Criterion Games loves their users, its obvious. Not only have they committed to "a year of Burnout", a year of updates and free additional features to their beautiful Burnout Paradise, but they keep improving the game's quality and distribution as well.

On the PS3 they've added proper 1080i support, using the processor to render the game at 720p and 1080i (and also added better 480p support for those pre-HD people). On both the PS3 and 360 they've added additional online content, and rules updates and a new news and calendar system. They're soon releasing their next major content update featuring bikes (motorcycles, not cyclists) and they're working on a new island full of additional content too, all for free.

As if all this weren't enough, and in case they weren't selling enough copies already, they've now announced on the official Playstation blog that they'll be releasing the full game as a download from the PSN store for just under $30 so you won't need a disc copy at all.

No, I don't know how big the download will be (although since the full game also ships for the 360 on DVD, it must be under 9GiB, not including updates). Yes, it is very clear for those who haven't played the game yet that the content on the disc version and the download version will be the same, that updates are available to both and that the motorcyle pack and coming trophy update are not for the download version only, so don't worry.

The question is, can I find someone to buy my disc copy for $30 so I can purchase the downloadable one and not need to put the disc in each time I want to play. I already play Warhawk this way, and I love my other downloaded games like Super Stardust HD for this too. I must say though, even though I upgraded my PS3 hard disk to a 120GiB 7200RPM model, its almost full again. Time to upgrade again.

Sometimes users are fun

Anyone who works in technical support is familiar with some of the incredibly funny situations that can arise on the phone when dealing with customers. I was recently shown an entire website of computer stupidities, many of which made me laugh out loud, for real. Take a look, unless you've called tech support because you don't understand your computer, in which case you may find yourself on the list.

• Customer: "I lost some of my files. I archived them, but when I went to retrieve them, they were gone!"
• Tech Support: "What program did you use to archive your files?"
• Customer: "I used DOS -- but now I can't find them!"
• Tech Support: "Ok, what program are you using to do this?"
• Customer: "I used 'undelete', but they aren't there."
• Tech Support: "Uh...what command did you use to archive your files?"
• Customer: "I used 'del' and the filename."

It turned out that the guy had been deleting files, which would free up disk space (he liked that), and when he wanted a file again, he would undelete it. Apparently he actually got away with this for a while, until he discovered 'defrag', which overwrote his deleted files.

If you have your own stories, make sure to share.

Home, its real, honest

There's no secret to the fact that I enjoy my Playstation 3 immensely, but the long drawn out saga that has been Sony's new Home feature is almost embarrassing at this point. Announced well over a year ago, Sony promised an open Beta by last summer and that never materialized. A website purporting to have instructions 'soon' about how to enter the beta process is now very stale. Some users who got into the closed beta have been leaking information about the state of Home as it goes along, but Sony has been very tight-lipped about it.

Well now it seems there's a new way to get into the beta testing, if you're wanting to do that. Simply download the new PS Home theme from the Playstation Store tonight and you'll be entered automatically. I'm sure quite a few people will jump at that opportunity, despite not knowing the size of this lottery nor how many will make it. I know I will.