It's only been five months since Skyrim hit store shelves, but the amount of work done on the game by both Bethesda and an army of modders has been enormous. With the Creation Kit now in the wild for several months, we've rounded up some of the best mods available and brought them for your consideration. We'll also walk you through the modding process and how to get started. ProTip: If you re-map the "F" key in Skyrim's key bindings, the new key to assign a favorite is "A." This isn't explained or listed anywhere in game; we found it by accident. What Makes a Mod 'Must-Have? There are literally thousands of Skyrim mods available, ranging from small adjustments to NPC dialog or tone of voice, to expansive projects that alter core gameplay and introduce new spells and visual effects. We've prioritized mods that showcase the technical capabilities of the PC, provide a more balanced game experience, fix bugs, and improve Skyrim's UI. In some cases, particularly when it comes to customized post-processing filters, there is no definable "best" -- just the question of what players prefer.

The mods in each section are listed by the scope of their changes rather than being ordered from best to worst. A mod that changes the behavior of one NPC would be farther down the page than a mod that lets you play as Pinkie Pie, from My Little Pony. We've also noted which mods change gameplay and which do not. How To Get Started: There are two basic ways to get started with Skyrim mods, and two main websites devoted to user-created content. If you bought the game through Steam, you can use the Steam Workshop. Login, Click on "Community," then "Workshop," and you'll see two games listed: Team Fortress 2 and Skyrim. Installing mods is as simple as clicking on "Subscribe" to a product that you want to download. Steam offers mods both individually and in collections. The other method is to use the Skyrim Nexus website and the Nexus Mod Manager it offers. The Mod Manager offers players more control over how and when mods are loaded, as well as an organization function that automatically arranges mods in the order necessary for them to load properly.

This last option is extremely useful for play testing and bug-fixing and it's what we primarily used for our own evaluation. Skyrim Nexus has more mods available than Steam's Workshop as of this writing; a number of the projects we recommend aren't yet available on Steam. If you're interested in trying our recommendations via Steam, we've collected all of the available mods into a single package; For the moment, Skyrim Nexus is a better option, though Steam's one-stop-updating is rather handy. blog comments powered byEditors' note: The 32GB SSD in the Acer Chromebook 15 was incorrectly reported as an mSATA drive. It is an M.2 SSD. For however you might feel about Google's Chrome OS and Chromebooks, there's no denying that they are popular alternatives to Windows and Mac computers mainly because they're inexpensive, relatively secure and what can be done within the confines of its browser-based environment continues to grow. What doesn't seem to be growing are their screen sizes, which for the most part are 13.3 inches or smaller.

Acer's Chromebook 15 addresses that very issue by matching up a 15.6-inch display with the budget-friendly components we're used to seeing and selling it at a reasonable price. case logic dlbp 16 laptop backpackAs is the case with any laptop, just because this Chromebook is bigger doesn't mean it's more powerful. weekday mtwtfss backpackIt does have a new fifth-generation (Broadwell) Intel Celeron processor, which does improve its performance over older Celeron-based Chromebooks we've reviewed, but for the most part it simply has a bigger screen. targus pewter 16 laptop backpackThe bigger panel is nice, though. Having more screen space is always handy, whether you're working in Google Docs or watching a movie on Netflix.

For doing things like image editing with Web apps such as Polarr, the 15.6-inch LCD means you can view your pictures larger and still have room for the app's tool panels. The version I reviewed, the CB5-571-C09S, had a 1,920x1,080-pixel-resolution display; configurations with a 1,366x768-pixel-resolution display are also available. Acer never explicitly calls out the full HD display as an IPS panel in the laptop's specs, but I confirmed with Acer that it is. It certainly has the wide viewing angles you'd expect for an IPS panel and the screen doesn't invert or wash out if it is angled too high or low. It does seem to lose a bit of brightness when viewed off to the sides, but it's barely noticeable and the matte finish means you're not fighting much glare, either. Of course, in order to have such a large display, you have to have a fairly large chassis: it measures 15.1 inches wide by 9.7 inches deep by 1 inch thick (38.4x24.6x2.5 cm). It also weighs nearly 5 pounds (2.2 kg). There is a microweave pattern on the all-plastic casing that helps keep it from looking too generic and gives it some grip.

Unfortunately, the white body picks up stray dirt easily, making it look a bit dingy after a little use. Just expect to wipe it down every so often or buy it in black. The keyboard is oddly small given how much room Acer had to play with here. The extra space is used for the stereo speakers instead that flank the keyboard. They sound good, so if you're planning on using this Chromebook for entertainment, you're in luck. But if you were hoping for a more spacious keyboard, this one is the same size you'll find on smaller-screen Chromebooks. The touchpad is large and responsive and showed no signs of jumpiness. It works well with Chrome's multitouch commands like two-finger swipes to the left or right for moving back and forth through Web pages or swiping three fingers up to see all of your open windows. As far as ports and connections are concerned, the left side has a full HDMI-out, a headphone-and-mic jack, a standard USB 3.0 port and the power input. The right side has a USB 2.0 port and a full-size SD card slot supporting capacities up to 128GB.