X-Wes

The SphereXP is indeed available and is really quite fun to use. Try it out at http://www.hamar.sk/sphere/ I've been using it for quite a while now and I really like it. It's a great little toy, despite being underpowered for most tasks.

Well the site for Windows Vista is now up. Microsoft is at least moving away from various naming schemes that were, admittedly, quite sub-par. The original version numbering for Windows really wasn't too great for consumers. The year numbering idea really dated their programs more quickly than Microsoft PR could deal with. The tacky abbreviation idea (Me, XP, CE) would have been confusing moving forward. Choosing Vista was a good move.

Like finaldesign has already noted, you would do best to use a partitioning program that can work with your existing filesystems to prevent data loss. Most of these programs will have a "Resize Partition" option. Two of these programs that immediately come to mind are Symantec Norton PartitionMagic and QtParted.

Wow, I feel really quite humbled ;; My first computer was already very modern--it had an Intel 486 DX-2 running at 66 MHz. It had 8 MiB of RAM and a 550 MiB hard disk. The computer even had, in addition to its 3 1/2 inch floppy drive, a dual-speed CD-ROM drive.Sadly, I've had more and more trouble getting it to run what I'd like it to run recently. Especially as the Linux drivers for my CD-ROM drive fail, there is not much I can do with this relatively recent computer.

I was wondering whether the more comprehensive hosting plan uses up hosting credits more quickly. Surely there must be some sort of discrepancy between what is required for Hosting Plan 1 and what is required for Hosting Plan 2.As a bonus, do any of you know how much faster hosting credits are lost on Hosting Plan 2?

microscopic^earthling, you have been kept in the dark about what could be one of the best Windows apps I've ever used. PowerMenu is a great little program that adds the "Always on Top" option to the control menu of each window. It also adds various other useful features--I like the priority setting, myself. I hope that's what you need; good luck! See you on It's Really Cool sometime soon!

Oh. My. Goodness.Today I decided to take the plunge and move completely to a Dvorak keyboard layout. Yes, even this humble little post was painstakingly and lovingly crafted on a Dvorak layout. This is truly a massive pain to use, and I really, really hope this pays off.For those of you who have never tried a new keyboard layout, this is actually quite nutty. So much of the time, when you reach to type a letter, the key you actually press is the position where that key would be if you were on your previous layout. It drives me completely insane.Stay tuned for updates!PS: At least I type so slowly now that I catch nearly all of my spelling mistakes

I'm not totally confident that this will work, but here goes. Click Start, right-click My Documents, click Properties Go to the Sharing tab, uncheck "Make this folder private" Hit OK If that doesn't work, you will probably have to move any documents you want to share into the Shared Documents folder as opposed to keeping them in the My Documents folder. (It just doesn't make sense for a random user connecting to your computer to poke around in your My Documents folder anyway, Windows thinks.)

I have to admit that having a wizard is sometimes something that can be very useful to have on a piece of new and potentially hard-to-understand hardware. I love my Linksys WRT54G to death, and yet I still find that not having a wizard can result in not knowing about certain features of the router to the point of having trouble doing what needs to be done.As for Dlink itself, I have never been a huge fan of its interface. The look of the web interface is a little clumsy at times. However, as the previous poster has said, the Dlink routers get the job done just as well, if not better.I'm probably going to have to get a Dlink if I brick my WRT54G installing a random piece of Sveasoft firmware.

For a solution that doesn't require commercial software, I recommend SystemRescueCd. This is a solution that is based on a distribution of Linux. Thankfully, however, no knowledge of Linux is needed to run SystemRescueCd. As a bonus, SystemRescueCd even includes the program QtParted, a clone of PartitionMagic. Keep in mind that this process is a little longer than simply downloading a demo of PartitionMagic. However, the benefit is that you use truly free software and will have access to this software in the future. Having said all that, you should first download a copy of SystemRescueCd. You can download a copy from SourceForge by clicking any of the little icons on the right side of the page. Once you have downloaded this file (an ISO file), you'll need to record it to CD either by using Nero Burning ROM or a tool such as the ISO Recorder Power Toy. (If anyone reading this has any further problems, feel free to IM me or reply here.) After you finish recording to CD, you'll have a copy of SystemRescueCd. Keep this newly-recorded CD in your computer and restart your computer. If your BIOS is set to boot from CD, you'll see a penguin logo on your screen as the CD waits for its next instruction. (For those of you with BIOS settings that cause your computer not to boot to CD, please feel free to reply or IM, as before.) Simply press enter at this screen, and the computer will load the CD. After a bunch of text scrolls off, you will be left at a prompt with a page full of instructions. Simply type CONSOLE run_qtparted and choose "Auto-Detect" for mouse, and you'll be in the partitioning program QtParted. From there, the controls are somewhat intuitive. Simply click your existing partition, click the resize button, and choose its new size. Next, click on the empty space and create a new partition. If you are using Windows XP, choose "NTFS" as your drive type. For anything older than Windows XP, choose "FAT32" or "FAT" (whichever is available). Finally, just click "commit" and you'll be ready to go. I agree that this seems like a daunting list of instructions, but remember that I'm also detailing instructions I would have given had I recommended PartitionMagic anyway. I'll also think of posting a How-To about using SystemRescueCd based on this post sometime in the future. Good luck, everyone!

Wow, this is really amazing. I've been trying to move to Linux partially because installing Apache is a fun adventure on Windows, but this really looks promising. This will probably be useful for (if nothing else) installing and working backwards to see what things I've done wrong with trying to get a fully-functioning Apache installation on Windows in the past. Thanks in advance, Houdini!

Xevian, although the powerful players can pass avatars to their new accounts, these accounts don't gain impunity on the avatar-off servers. However, newbie accounts on the newbie servers do tend to be annoying at times. The solution is simple though. If you see a player with a thoroughly-overpowering avatar, find someone who isn't. Also, since gifted items cannnot be regifted, the spread of such things is largely controlled.

Well, now that E3 has come and gone, yes, I have definately heard of Revolution. We can only assume that Miyamoto will eventually create another Mario game to dazzle us. Unfortunately, Miyamoto seems to be spending more and more time on his other pet projects, such as the recently released Nintendogs. While such other games are wonderful, I would still like to see a nice, traditional 2-D Mario game. I hope those gyroscopic controllers don't replace the simplicity of having a button for run and a button for jump.I can't complain completely though--the Revolution will be backwards-compatible down to the Nintendo Entertainment System, that thing from way long ago. Far be it from me to complain that a game isn't as good as "Super Mario Bros. 3" or such, when I can download the classic and relive it any time I want.

Hi, everyone. After a long, long break, I'm back yet again.Yes, proxy settings are very unintuitive for Java applets. As I've recently cleared off my hard drive, I don't have Java VM installed on my computer. From what I remember, Windows users can change their default Java proxy settings from their control panel. Also, I believe that the Java VM can take the default Windows proxy settings from the control panel as well. Obviously, for those who only configure their proxies through Firefox, I'd bet that Java apps would run into a lot of trouble.I don't quite know what else to say for now. Combined with a good set of instructions, this applet should be very useful. It all depends how popular the IRC channels get.

That's true--SMF doesn't really lack anything from phpBB, so there really isn't so much of a reason to switch back to phpBB. Also, I agree that a tentative move for the users to experiment might be good as well.I didn't actually think of using different themes to simplify the look of the forums. I'll have to remember to include some instructions on choosing a theme in the forums so that users can choose a theme of their choice should the default not satisfy them.I will probably try to move users over to the new forums soon. Thanks again for your input, and I look forward to using only SMF for the forums on my account.