I'm trying to decide if i should buy a gaming laptop, upgrade my current desktop or just let my common sense override my "moar shinies!!! (but it's on sale!) impulse.

Here are the options :

   
Dell XPS M1730 Laptop

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T8300 (2.4GHz/800Mhz FSB/3MB cache)
17 inch UltraSharp TrueLife Wide-screen WUXGA       
4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz
Speed: 320GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) with Free Fall Sensor
NVIDIA®SLI™Dual GeForce®8700MGT with 512MB GDDR3 Memory   
Integrated Sound Blaster Audigy HD Software Edition

Dell XPS 730X Desktop
Intel® Core™ i7-920 (2.66GHz, 8MB cache)
3GB Tri-Channel DDR3 at 1066MHZ (3x1GB DIMM)
300GB Western Digital Velociraptor - SATA-II, 3GB/S, 10000RPM, 16MB Cache
500GB - SATA-II, 3GB/S, 7200RPM, 16MB Cache
nVidia GeForce 9800GT 512M OR ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio


How do you think both of these babies would run The Sims (with all the expansion packs) or the just-around-the-corner Sims 3.

You're also welcome to try to argue me out of dropping 2k on a frivolous geeky purchase

I don't use Norton so I can't say much about it, but I use Mcafee firewall, and when it detects a new network, it asks if it should trust the network.  If you say yes, it will allow file sharing, among other things, within the internal network.  However, never choose to trust a network, unless it's your own, properly locked down, and secured router.  You should never do that in a cafe for example,  or if you (gasp) connect straight to the Internet without a router, or if you did not lock down your own wireless router.

Are you intending to reinstall the game on your new computer?  I assume yes.  If so all you need to transfer is everything from your document folder that is in EA Games\The Sims 2.   This way you are assured that have absolutely everything.

The absolute easiest way to transfer is to purchase a USB drive and transfer everything you want on it, and then back to the new computer.  A USB drive is a darn useful thing to have around, if for nothing else than backup/offline storage.

If you want to do it through a network, you must be ON a network.  For example, both your machines must be connected to the same network, typically the same router.  If you do not have a router, you can use a special cable called a cross-over cable.  However everyone who connects to the Internet should have a router, as it's an important security measure

In any case, you do not need to google anything.  Windows comes with a wizard that can set this up for you.  it's located in "my Network Places".  The wizard is called "Set up a Home or  or Small Office network".  It should set everything up for you.  Not sure how this will work between a vista and xp machine however, as the wizard was written pre-vista.  However if you set up the home network, you should at the very least be able to access your xp machine from Vista, if not the reverse.


Note:  If anyone is interested, my plan to reinstall The Sims 2 without having to reinstall a million CD's, worked beautifully. I just copied over the files, and imported the necessary registry keys and voila. 

I think I figured it out.  Haven't had a chance to test it yet, as I'm not quite ready to reinstall, and I don't have a second computer to test it on.

If anyone is interested, I'll report my findings, once I test it

I want to reinstall my computer, but I really don't want to reinstall a million and a half expansion packs. Some programs can be happily transplanted to a new system by just copying the program files and data.  TS2 apparently does not.  I'm not really surprised.

I'm assuming I'm missing some key registry keys.  Does anyone know of a way to backup an existing installation and to restore into into a clean system?

She probably means that bookcase you get with the education career.  Although I wouldn't have described it as an altar, but it does have an opened book on top.

Err....no.  That was just a quick comment before I went back to being on topic.  The topic is BLUESOUP is it not?  From the accounts here, she seem to fit the drama whore profile.

Similar to what happened to Roy of Siegfried and Roy.  I'm sure the tiger was just being playful

Seems to me that there is a disproportionate number of drama queens on the 'tubes.  Makes me wonder.  Is it the relative anonymity that makes people give in to impulses they might otherwise contain, if it had consequences, as in a relationship or a job.

Or is it something about forums that attracts drama queens.  Or maybe DQ tend to post more and get involved more. I dunno.  Part of the attention whore thing, I'll guess.

That looks perfect.  THanks!  baaaa baaaa

I've also seen some weird issues where the game didn't like that I named some of my folders lot.residential.xxxx

It would ignore the cc inside such folders.

That kinda reminds me.  It seems  all the rage these days to create "blended" skin.  Has any one seen a tutorial that explain how to do this?

Don't worry this is a titter worthy thread

I saw in several custom skin files found on adult sites, additional details for the item in question. They are part of the skin texture.  I don't know if Crammy's extra bits use that texture or not.  I never really stopped to pay attention.  It might be it's only used by the clothing only equivalent to Crammy's boy toy

lol.  I had to look up "town bicycle".  How did I ever live without Google.

Well having 6 unwanted gets would seem to be a logical end result of being the town bicycle(s).  And since they are from good stock (you said they were pretty), They might turn up okay after all.  Why not work them into your story.

Insim allows you to change a sims first name. 

I would image that new kids would be created once you remove one from the pool.  Notownieregen might stop that though.

I haven't used the option yet, but what I plan to do is only age children that my sim has a relationship to.  This way they can grow up together.  I think it's a cute option and better than having your kids be friends with their great great grandparents friends.  How creepy is that.

If I attach a new university, will this hack prevent the creation of a whole slew of butt ugly professors, or will it reuse the useless bunch that's currently ensconced in my game.  And what about the rest of that sorry lot, the cheerleader and mascot and such?  I'm sick of the look of my university but I won't create a new one if it means even moar undesirable Maxis characters

Has anyone figured this out yet? 

I just moved 7 sims into a college dorm, all payables from my neighborhoods.  Most had not been played before FT, so they had not acquired any interests yet. 

I've let them loose in the dorm and a couple have found their one true hobby.  However there seems to be a disproportionate amount of sports lovers in the bunch.  So I'm really curious as to how the game picks their one true hobby.

It's not that this model is freakishly ugly.  What disturbs me, is rather that it's too obviously a self-sim and that she uses it for almost all her clothing.  Narcissism? Wish fulfillment ? You decide.

Also the middle-aged look of the face doesn't really match the hot 20 year old body.  Bit of a cognitive dissonance there.
 

What exactly are you hoping to achieve by doing this?

Zazazu did you mean the toddlers?  Because it was the children that the game offered to grow up, not the teens. 

I know there is a cheat to do that, and I use it a lot. But I just thought it's neat the way the game offers to grow your sim child friends.  It makes the concept of 'childhood friends' an integral part of the game, instead of having to use a cheat or hack.

The frozen animation is funny. The sims keel over into a frozen statue.  But you can direct your sims to revive them, which they proceed to do with a hair dryer.

My child sim just grew into a teen today and I had a neat surprise.  When one of your sim grows up you have the option of growing up other townies of the same age.  I think your sim has to  know them.  I don't know if the same applies to adults or teens yet.

I can't remember.  It was on a small site.  They looked ok from the screen shots.  I'm always on the look out for nice skins so i downloaded them into my game.  ick.  Not good.  They got the boot right after I took a screen shot for this thread. 

These are no where near as horrible as some of the contenders here, but I thought this skin was pretty nasty looking.  If you are going to use a real picture for your skin texture, at least use someone with good skin

Gonna try this.  I get so annoyed when sims freak out to see their partner/lover naked. 

I vote for funny myself.  Totally the wrong pond lol




Ack that is just too freaking bizarre.  I can understand ear piercings, naval piercing, nose (even though I think its unattractive, but the rest is just weird.  Whatever.  Just ignore me, I'm just an old trout.