PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Windows 8... Thought this might help some of you.

Ok, so... I got a new laptop. I am very happy with my Acer V3-551G-x419. Runs multiple games at the same time all on highest settings INCLUDING entropia. And it was also a lot cheaper than similar specs on other machines.

But it came with windows 8. Why Microsoft had to make an OS without a start menu I will never know.. I mean the start screen really doesn't do anything useful. It has live tiles that suck bandwidth. It doesn't give you easy access to your utilities tools and other important programs. Windows 8.1 made it a bit easier of course... But I still wanted to be able to hit a button and see all my stuff in a nice list.

So:

I went to Acer's website looking up other issues, seen a link to go to Pokki. http://www.pokki.com/windows-8-start-menu

It gave me back a real, functional, modernized version of the classic start menu. It is free, do a CUSTOM installation of course on ANY programs you install from anywhere. Seems the standard now is for EVERY company to partner with toolbar and spyware companies. Toolbars will wreck your computer and it's performance.

I am not affiliated with the company, this is not in any way sponsored... I just want to help ease some of everyones frustrations when it comes to Windows 8 bloatware (It is bloatware, 3 gigabyte to patch from 8 to 8.1!!!!)

Everyone Ive said hey, want your start menu back? to Looked at me as if I were nuts.

It is the mission as always of this blog to increase your positive experiences with Entropia and any other areas pertaining to it... And well, if you are happy with your computer you are going to enjoy using it more. And I don't know ANYONE that is happy NOT having a real start menu.

Internet Connection FAQs

All MindArk will say is you need a broadband connection... It is sort of inconclusive and doesn't help a guy find answers and I know a lot of you attribute lag to connection speeds but I have some first hand experiences that blow this wide open... But suffice to say I am taking it upon myself to construct this list.

Dialup: Flame me all you want but I'll say I told you so... Entropia DOES run on dialup!!! But please if you only have dialup install the program and updates at a friends house or somewhere with free Internet. I connect at 26.4Kbps and it runs beautifully. If I up the graphics quality then my old nvidia go 6150 doesn't like it and my framerates sink like president obamas approval ratings!

Satellite: Ok... Theoretically this should have bad lag due to your data being scrambled and beamed to a satellite where it is beamed back to earth... This is called latency and it is the drawback of having to send data into space and back at the speed of light. Entropia should work and you will have easier time downloading and updating but as silly as it sounds... You might want dialup to play without lag once you are updated.

Cable/Dsl: to those of us living in rural America ( I live like two miles out of range for dsl because the phone lines and switches routing to my house are still analog) it is the bane of our existence... We can see other people have it but we can't get it... Dsl is ok but expect a day for fresh install of entropia. Cable is the way to go.

Mobile Broadband: because of the data plan limits usually 5 Gb a month... I know what a joke right? You probably have that much in forgotten porn on your computer... Don't try installing the game... You would rack up a huge bill from overage... A few updates is ok... And playing the game is great because eu is mostly server side with the graphics being client side so there is mere kilobytes being downloaded and uploaded while playing... And nearly no lag!

WiFi vs. Ethernet: Ethernet will give you the best reliability and ping... WiFi can be unstable, however it still works :)

Smoke signals: ok ok I am joking :P but I can just imagine if Indians invented the Internet... You would have computers puffing smoke lol Well for all the money their casinos made off me lately I feel I deserve to make a joke... But I really do have a respect for our native Americans. But I'll save what I have to say for another soapbox...

Thank you my readers for receiving my blog so well and encouraging me to keep writing.

How to back up and restore Entropja without downloading again.

Entropia is getting to be so massive that even on a fast connection it rakes hours to download, so I hated reformatting my computer only to end up downloading Entropia again. So I found the answer.

There are two folders you need to be concerned with. The one in the program files directory is not the whole program like it used to be. They made another folder called entropia universe under c:/users/public. This is where you find the dozen or so gigs of the game.

Backup Instructions:
Copy C:/program files/entropia universe to another disk along with c:/users/public/entropia universe. I you are running 64 bit windows it will be found in program files(x86).

After you reformat, you need to replace those directories and their contents back to their original places. Go into the eu folder in program files and right click the client loader icon and send to desktop as shortcut. This is how you will launch the game.

If after restoring the files and running it, you may notice it is trying to download huge amounts of data. If your installation was up to date, simply copy the eu folder in users/public that you backed up over the one you just put back on the hard drive. For me this will cut the downloading it does to a few paltry megabytes and you are up and running again.

If you use external drives, you want to make sure you are running USB 2.0!

Hope this helps you!