I was in Finland, in early March, and had our new laptop with me. I fell so in love with the laptop, that I still haven't really been back to my PC, other than a handful of times, for some files! Instead, I've been spending most days in the living room, where we keep the laptop.

This had also kept me away from The Sims 2... I had The Sims Castaway Stories on the laptop - it's one of those "laptop friendly" Sims games, which starts with a story mode, and once you complete the story, you'll have unlocked all the rewards to continue playing in free mode. However, I did miss The Sims 2...

The other day, I finally decided to install The Sims 2 with all its expansion packs and stuff packs on the laptop! That means 16 different things to install - some of them with more than one CDs / DVDs (if I remember it correctly, there were 21 CDs / DVDs..). I knew that there were loads of them, but I have to admit that I was surprised at HOW many there were! I've just always gotten the new packs when they've been released, never really counting them..

I decided to keep the laptop game almost vanilla, meaning no custom content, except for a few important things I just can't live without.. Although it severely restricts my building and decorating options (not to mention, creating and customising the sims), it's a great thing for the loading time! On the PC, I don't even remember how many GBs my Downloads folder is (=custom content for The Sims 2), but you can tell it's huge as the game takes almost 30 minutes to load - and my PC is not a weak machine.. However, on the laptop, with an extra EP and two extra stuff packs (which I haven't yet installed on the PC), it loads in five minutes! Although I do miss my custom stuff, I have to say that I'm playing much more, now that it doesn't take ages to actually load the game.

There are a few more custom items that I really need to get on the laptop (if only I could remember their names and where I found them..), because I tend to use them in most of my TS2 houses.. Long lace curtains, for example.. And a certain office chair..