On my recent trip to Puerto Rico I went to Walmart and came across a treasure trove of electronics, Wii’s, 360’s and PS3’s, at least 8 of each. I wasn’t surprised to see the PS3’s and 360’s but the Wii’s were impressive, it was actually the first time I had seen Wii’s in a retail store for sale. I bought two Wii’s to carry back to NYC for my cousin and brother.

I also came across a pretty interesting site: an 18 wheeler with “spinner rims”, unfortunately it was on the highway and I couldn’t take a picture of it, but it was pretty hilarious and I had to do a double take.

The Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 (GRAW2, for any normal human) demo is now available on the Xbox Live Marketplace. I’m very excited for this. I still haven’t played much of the first GRAW, but it’s high on my list to play, after Gears and Lost Planet. If only that damn Viva Pinata wouldn’t be so addictive… The demo weighs in at approximately 625MB, so it shouldn’t take too long for anyone to download. It’s only a single player demo, but go grab it and start shooting Mexican terrorists!

So I decided to do an upgrade to Vista Ultimate on my laptop instead of a clean install. I figure, if it doesn’t work out well, I can always do a clean install. To jump the gun… I love Vista! The Aero interface is terrific. And it’s working almost perfect…

The install itself took, I shit you not, 5.5 hours. It’s not like I have a slow computer either. My laptop rocks a 2.16ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2GB DDR2-667 RAM. Not too shabby. It’s just painfully slow to do an upgrade. Once I finally got into Vista, I had a few issues with programs that needed to re-installed because they lost their activations, particularly AVG AntiVirus and Nero 7. I can’t install the Visual Studio 2005 SP1, but I hear that’s more a common thing than a Vista issue. Few small things here and there (sleep settings for my laptop, sync’ing with my BlackBerry), but everything seems to be up and running fine. I only have 2 programs that don’t work under Vista, both having to do with my Nikon dSLR. The first is Nikon Capture NX, their Raw processing software. Second is DxO Optics Pro 4, which also is a Raw processing and image enhancement software. Both assure me that new versions will be available “shortly”, but both also said they don’t have a definite ETA. I guess I’ll just run that stuff on my desktop PC for now.

Overall, it went fairly smooth, other than than ridiculous amount of time it took. I’m happy I made the upgrade. Now just waiting for Office 2007 Enterprise to arrive…

In case anyone hasn’t heard, and you live in a bubble somewhere, Windows Vista officially launches today. Most of the big retailers are offering some free things with Vista today. I know Staples is giving away a free PNY 1GB USB flash drive, and rebates for some software that you buy along with it.

Be careful about that update though, there’s still alot of software that doesn’t work properly, and some hardware doesn’t have good drivers yet…

Houston we have news… The Wii news channel launched this past Saturday, January 27, and was made available for all Wii users with a broadband connection. The News Channel required a system update that took no more than a few minutes and was up and running shortly after. The News Channel for me is a bit of a novelty really since I don’t care for the news much and when I turn on my console I intend to game, not check the local bad news. The channel is mainly text based and brings you news from international to your local area and includes sports results. I think Nintendo has some interesting ideas for the console with it’s News Channel, Weather Channel and Internet Browser, the Wii is trying to be more than your average gaming console.

All I can say is Rome on HBO has stepped up its game. Rome Season one was a show that pushed the envelope in many ways, violence, nudity, cursing, etc. but this season has taken that and made it look like nothing. Season two just aired it’s third episode last night and let me say in 3 quick episodes there has been a ton of drama to follow the death of Caesar and Marc Anthony’s take over. The unfortunate part is that Rome is a very expensive series to produce and may not see a third season because it is just far too expensive. If you have missed any of Rome definitely check it out, Rome Season 1 is on DVD and has an episode of gladiator fighting that rivals Gladiator the movie.

On the Xbox 360 marketplace Lumines Live has added some content, 2 add-on packs and a new skin.

• New skin called “Heavenly Star” - A pretty cool skin with a crazy video in the background, I wasn’t terribly impressed with the Japanese style techno music, Lumines 2 has better videos. At least its free for now.
• Player vs. CPU Pack - You play against the computer in a Tetris style battle where you add blocks to the CPU’s screen, pretty fun and you can unlock the skins after you beat each level, 100 MS points for a limited time.
• Puzzle/Mission Pack - This pack gives you a total of 50 missions and 100 puzzles to play through. You need to create boxes in certain shapes in order to solve the puzzles, very challenging, also 100 MS points for a limited time.

So for 200 MS points you can add some options to your Lumines Live, well worth the download time. Prices will change after February 21 to 300 MS points each so take advantage of the bargain.

There will be another content update today (January 26) for Phantasy Star Universe. The update will fix certain bugs and add more items, missions, and weapons. Of most notable addition is the new S2 rank missions, which will be the hardest in the game and also items to change how your Partner Machine looks and functions. Look for me to be online tonight getting the new update.

As a side note I actually stopped playing PSU long enough to get some Lumines Live, Wario Ware and Heavy Weapon Demo in last night.

Major Nelson reports that Sony decided they wanted to steal a Project Gotham Racing 3 image as a background picture for a Gran Turismo HD video download for PSP. Yeah, ummm, this could be one of the dumbest things I’ve seen Sony do in a while. The image is CLEARLY from PGR3. Major posted a screenshot on his Flickr account for when Sony decides to take it down. He also posted the original image on Bizzare Creation’s website here.

Seriously Sony. What the hell is the matter who you people over there? Is your marketing team really that dumb that they think PGR3 shots from the developer’s website are from Gran Turismo HD?

Nintendo gamers sitting on their couch all day long won’t have to get up now to find out the news. The Wii channel will now be coming to a console nearest you:

Nintendo Wii