musichere

You have a very substantial list but when it comes down to it all you genuinly need is:* Window service pack 2 and all updates that have come since then.This is becuase you have to patch up your computer to all the virusses and trojans that are floting aroung the internet and with Service Pack 2 there are especially strong tools for you to do just that*FirewallThe one that comes with Service Pack II is accepptable but you may want to get an external one. Norton is expensive but there are free alteratives, the most prominant one being Zonealarm*AntivirusMicrosoft are making one of these but there is already a great free one called AVG which is free for personal use and has free scans and updates for life. I personally trust this to handle my computer but if you are not as liberal as me you may want to get a commercial one.*AntispywareThere is also a microsoft anti-spyware but also a great number of free ones. The most obvious are Adaware and Spybot Search and Destroy but my personal favourite one is as the original poster mentioned, Webroot, which finds so much more than the others.

Hmm, I recently purchased a bunch of songs from the iTunes Music Store in the United Kingdom, but now whenever I go into the music store or try to log on to authorise my songs, I get the message 'iTunes could not connect to the Music Store. The host cannot be reached. Make sure your network connection is active and try again'.This is frustrating to me becuase I have actually paid for music on their servers and they are not letting me access it becuase of some sort of connection problem which isn't true becuase I'm able to access the internet through other programs...

I've found out that the sound driver that was automatically installed with my computer was Realtek Ac'97 Audio. Does anyone know where I can get this updated or improve it in some way?

I don't need a play for audio, just video. Winamp is OK but the video quality is substantially poorer and Irfanview struggles to play many of the codecs I need. Is there a video player which is as bulky as Windows Media Player but doesn't bother with a music library or support for audio formats? By bulky I mean with many video-specfic features and compatibility.

Ubuntu was actually the distribution I was intending to use on my laptop (when I get it) but I don't see anywhere I can buy that HP laptop you are describing.I have seen a few vendors selling laptops with Linspire though, but not exactly cheaply.

I think it's absolutely fair to criticise any company or corporation. Especially one that is growing as quickly and as dangerously as Google. We are in danger of having monopolies in the computer market, and we have to balance the power. This cookies mumbo jumbo may or may not be true, to be honest it doesn't matter, all that matters is that at the end of the day Google can't stay this strong forever with it's sustained growth and we should find ways to prevent them from being too powerful. After all, the reason people used it in the first place was becuase it was an alternative to the 'Big Guns' like Microsoft and Yahoo. It is in danger of losing some fans because of it's commercialisation and becomming a PLC etc.

Sorry to be a pain but shouldn't this be in a quotation box with a comment or something at the bottom?On topic, I don't see what is different between this and the current adsense. As far as I was aware, the advertisers already bid for the highest price in order to show adverts?

That's not the point I'm trying to make. I know that it is possible to install various distributions of Linux onto laptops but I don't want to pay for a copy of Windoze if I'm not going to use it. It's just a big waste of money esepcially considering how much Microsuck charges for their Windows XP OS even if it is bundled with all kinds of software, much of which is spyware.

Yes, you can change the chmod in either the Control Panel file manager, or use one of the net ftp clients like net2ftp.

This is very useful but it still doesn't compare featurewise with the many many mapping softwares that are already avaliable everywhere, it doesn't even compare to the many mapping websites that already exist and have much greater features. Nevertheless people will continue to use Google's service becuase of the name. This is one of the reasons I hate about Google's sudden surge of popularity, they will become too strong and monopolise the market for areas such as Mapping, which actually they have nothing to do with.

I was just wondering if there were any vendors or manifacturers that sell laptops/notebooks without any form of Windows XP ever touching it. This is because I don't want to have to pay an extra £100-200 for a copy of Windows XP, which I'm never going to use with the laptop (and normally has spyware).Also are all laptops compatible with Linux?

I think it's a great thing what the people at Google are doing for the internet comunity at the moment, and they sure are making a huge influence and impact, but as they get more and more powerful, I feel they will go down the road of Microso%t, and put the green stuff ahead of their loyal customers. I would be against a Google OS, I would never buy it or trust it, as they would simply become too powerful, and they would surely lose a large chunk of the popularity.

The way I have found to be most coveninet for small webisites to share mp3s and large files like that, is to use this website called https://www.hightail.com/, which lets you upload a file onto their servers for 7 days and 35 downloads, whichever comes first.

The price of Digital Cameras has fallen so dramatically that everyone should be using them these days.They used to be about £300 for a 3 megapixels camera but now they go for around £50 with 3x optical zoom!I'm no photo expert but when I go on holiday I like to be able to take photos with a digital camera, transfer and view them on a computer and send them to friends. It's just much more convenient for the modern computer-orientated world.

I have a feeling it's got nothing to do with the sound card driver since it's always worked up to now. I have to dig out the manual to find out the specific sound drive, thanks for your help, I'll get back to you later with the name of it.I think it's the ram that's the problem. It is only 256, and I love playing music and videos on my computer.The make is eMachines, which as we all know is a pretty awful system for reliability and longevity. I do run a lot of programs at the same time. I use Opera, Azureus, GAIM, eMule, AVG Antivirus, Zonealarm Pro firewall etc. all at the same time without comprimise, so that causes huge lag on my computer and may be the reason for the lagging sound.The processor is only 2.66, which isn't exactly great.

I have an emachines PC and although it was really cheap at the time for the specifications, (£599), after using it for 2 years I've had to reformat it many times and sort out all the problems. It is slow as anything and won't run Linux properly. Furthermore, the support is dreadful and there is a reason for them being cheap.It's worth spending a bit more for a PC even if it comprimises the specifications, as you'll get the real quality.

If you want a disk as just a simple backup for in case you want to reinstall windows xp (without any service packs) you can just burn the 200MB complete service pack onto a CD and your Windows installtion wil pick out the bits that you will use.

OK I'm stuck.I watched the movie, after it loaded, the it finished blowing it up and loaded a screen with a bunch of monks smoking opium and digging something up.The music was REALLY REALLY REALLY annoying me so I quit it.Not too impressed

I just installed Windows XP and the drivers came with it.

Since my last formatting of my Windows XP, the sound playback quality has decreased immensely, not necessarily the quality of the one, but the smoothness of what is being played. There seems to be lots of lag during playback, and sometimes it will go to halfspeed. I think it may be because of RAM, but I've always been fine with my 256 RAM card.Can someone diagnose the problem?

SoldatRevoltion would you say that looks better than my site which is running SMF Forums, http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/, thanks for your help vujsa, I think I've gotten the google ads working. Now all I have to do is recruit some members

My favourite is Yahoo because I've had my account for 8+ years and I'm extremely satisfied with the level of service and consistacy that they've provided me with. Gmail might take over but I'm still not too trusting of what it's trying to do at the moment with it's storage increases.

How would I go about putting google ads onto my SMF forum?Ideally what I would like to do it to replace the stupid News box with a section for Adlinks, as they have a high clickthrough rate. Does anyone have any advice?

I just downloaded SMF and installed it on my new Oboe website. It is really really classy isn't it! The package instalation feature is absolutely ingenius, and I am in the process of installing my shoutbox. I will follow your guide.

I use google because I'm familiar with it, and I know when I search, which pages are sponsered advertisement links, and which are genuine search results. I also trust Google not to skewar the results like yahoo and msn supposedly do, in favour of companies that they like.