Grafitti

I asked a tech friend of mine, who works with both macs and Windows-based systems, and is also a certified engineer from Microsoft -- he gets free copies of all windows system OSes for review. what he said is that Vista is basically a slow version of Tiger OSX. Same basic thing as Mac, but with a windows based system architecture, and running at a much slower clip than Tiger. His advice? Either switch to Mac, or stick with XP Pro. No use in shelling out for the vistan for several years yet, was his advice. i'm more than happy to follow it. forget the macs as they're out of my price range, but i'll stick with XP, at least for now.

$500 is more than enough to get a decent medium-end computer. especially if you don't need a new monitor, 500 is plenty. Unless you're a die-hard brandname fan, go for OEM. Have any dealership put together a computer for you with out-of-the-box pieces, and you'll save a ton of cash and get the same quality or better than branded. That's not true for laptops, but for desktops, yes.I'm thinking here a decent motherboard around $50, 512 MB memory for another $50, Minimum 2.4Ghz processor -- @ $100, onboard graphics for free, or AGP card 128MB @$35, stick in an 80GB HD for $50, CD-RW drive, hell, get one that plays dvds too @$35, original windows XP (home) @$50, onboard sound is fine for most people. figure in another $50 for peripherials (mouse, keyboard, power supply, case), what's that come to? under $450. --more likely $400.that's below your price limit. just go to the computer store nearest you --hopefully one that's been around for a little - and have them put something together within that price. The only downside is that if the store happens to go out of business you don't have much of a warranty left on it. that's the upside of going with brand names. but the individual pieces should still be under warranty in any case, so that's not so much of an issue.

I have to split my computer with someone else. I have a logon password, admin account for myself and a limited account for him. even if i did have it all to myself, i wouldn't think of leaving it without a password. Why invite risks? then again, i never only use the user account protection unless EFS is enabled, but have another layer 3rd party protection. If you're running WindowsXP and you don't have EFS enabled, you data is basically open for grabs. Bypassing XP's laughable security passwords takes a minute or less. and anyone can do it. it's all a matter of ease vs security

And for those in the states, while if you divide the GNP you might get a pretty high per capita figure, in reality the number is probably closer to szupie's negative number. figure on an economy held up by blind investors faith alone, an economy that is already over 10 trillion dollars in debt, and increasing every year. you're becoming worth less and less every day in the real world. that's probably true for a lot of countries.

No, here, i'll give you an example: System.exe, lsass.exe, etc these processes won't let you close them. What if your system.exe is running at 100% CPU power and gobbling up 300+ MB of ram? a virus? possibly. but then again maybe not. i did find that if your system.exe file is running at max overhead and freezing the computer, check the active printers and faxes folders to see if there are any tasks in queue. a print job that failed to print, etc. that will take up all your available power and if you clear the print queue alot of times things will go right back to normal.

Well here's mine: "You are worth exactly $2,323,386."Not bad, considering i got $0 for a good 7 questions. I don't quite get what the comparison scale is though. it would be cool if you got your results along with a chart showing where between the high and low points of each question you hit. But it's not necessarily a serious test because you can easily stick in these astronomical values, and totally whack the results. looking at the top scoring people, some girl who's at the top of the list right now entered an age of 21 and an income of over $1,000,000.

I wonder if there really is such a thing as an unbiased antivirus review. most people i know, and even companies, are strongly in favor of a certain product and just as strongly opposed to others, myself included. Personally i find it easier just to pay for an antivirus i know works, am comfortable with, and is cheap. My personal favorite is NOD32, but it's not free. there is a one month trial subscription, where you can see how it works. For free i've heard AVG is good. though since you've had less-than-stellar experiences with it, Avast is also one that's supposed to have good reviews, as well as EZtrust, though that one seems to not have as rave reviews. Another one is ClamAV, which must be relatively new on the scene as there isn't much hype or review about it. but from what i've heard, it's a solid piece of freeware.

My Laptop:Compaq Presario 2595P4 Processor 2.66 Ghz80 GB Toshiba Hard Disk 4200 Rpm1 GB 266Mhz DDR Ram64 MB graphics Radeon 9200XP ProDesktop 1:Asus X-something motherboardP4 HT 2.4Ghz200 GB SATA HD512MB DDR64MB graphics Radeon 7800XP ProDesktop 2:Intel D-915 GAVL MotherboardP4 HT 3.2Ghz400 GB SATA HD80 GB SATA HD80 GB SATA HD1 GB DDR2128 MB PCI-e Nvidia Geforce 6600 GT DDR3XP Pro...sort of stuck with XP for now, but definitely looking into Linux. ---Can't afford a Mac.

Lots of good ripping programs are available. One i wouldn't recommend is DVDXCopy. it sticks this disclaimer at the beginning of every copy, and if you try to back up your protected dvd, it will burn it completely to your blank dvd and tell you everything's fine, but just try to play it and you'll get halfway after which it will freeze. i know this is the software and not just a bad dvd because i tried it many times with lots of different dvds. even with some i first tried to backup via that software, and also ripped it and removed protections from the original with dvd decrypter after which i also burned that to dvd, and guess what? only the pre-ripped decrypted one worked properly.Conclusion: DVDXCopy only works on your homemade dvds. recommended programs: Dvd DecrypterDvd ShrinkNero 7Plus a worthwhile addition even if you don't have those programs is dvdidle or region free, to enable you to at least play any dvd.

I've noticed a problem in mine as well, using version 1.0.7, supposed to be bug-free and stable. after a little while, i can't copy text anymore from anywhere in firefox, and also it insisits that i need to enable javascript to view certain pages. though javascript is enabled and all related permissions are set to minimum. it's never been an issue with any previous versions of firefox that i've used, and so i have to fall back on internet explorer for web sites that rely on scripting to navigate.

ASUS comes with pretty high marks. Don't spring for an Acer unless you're going for their high-end segment. the lower models are cheap, but they look it and act that way a lot too. I've had good experiences with hp. If you go for their corporate segment, those are built to last. Of course IBM has solid performers too, but personally i don't like them. Alienware is great, but can you get it for under $1500? only on Ebay or similar. For photoshop and gaming it'd be nice if you can find one with a dedicated graphics card, but if not, then go for over 512 MB ram and 128 MB allocated for graphics. Radeon Mobility series cards are good.

You definitely earned that steak, and I can't say I was anywhere near that. But I definitely learned something new from you.

As long as you don't spam, Xisto is as good as they come. Sure i might like a bit more space, but really, 150MB for free, with almost no downtime, and good tech response when it does go down, plus a community who can find you the answers to almost any problem you have ... what more do you want. I tried so many "free" hosts, and almost every one of them had hidden nasty surprises. there ARE a few, but definitely hard to come by.

This one second boot happens to me when either my power suppy isn't working correctly, or when the bios thinks the processor or a component on the motherboard is too hot. What solved it for me was that the thermal compound was dried out and cracked. so once i replaced it it took care of most of those problems.

Do you know i actually once ran a lan cable to someone's bathroom so they would be able to surf while sitting? this was before wireless came into common use.

You have waay more experience than me, if you've been doing this for a good while. This may sound stupid, but when i ran into this problem, i just ran the network setup wizard on both computers, and it started working again. it happened when i had bought new computers and was trying to network them, and when one couldn't file share, i would run the wizard and somehow it cleared up the problem.

well i'm not 100% sure, but i think the accepted limit over which a usb wire retains an acceptable charge is 5 meters. but i would think that perhaps something like a printer would have trouble when over 2 meters distance, while a usb mouse could probably work at 6 or more. that part is simply speculation on my part, but i'd like to hear if anyone knows differently.

well warranty here in pak is sort of an issue, isn't it? since the power fluctuates so much you basically get a 10 month warranty on the HD. so i'm just about out of that. yeah it has smart capability, and the wierd thing is that up till the day it crashed it said it was perfectly healthy. i thought the warning system would give me at least a day's worth advance notice. if all it does is after the fact newsflashes i wonder what its purpose is.I tend to lean in favor of a power supply issue. that wouldn't be so uncommon here. as a matter of fact, i lost a monitor and 3 power supplies the other day when i had an "electrician" come to the house, and he switched the house current to 440 VOLTS, of all the stupid things.

Dreamweaver is what i started using when i first got into web stuff, and i've grown accustomed to using it. Not like i do such heavy work, but for what i use it for it's fine. i like to use the code interface as much as possible, as it helps my practice and knowledge, and yes, i like the auto-fill feature. But i'm not at a level where i can simply work in code and visualise the page creation in my mind, so i have to frequently refer to the wysiwyg layout, to fix a sticky mistake i made, or just to quickly view changes. all in all, i would say if you're not a hard-core coder, nothing is better than dreamweaver, especially version 8.

ok then, i tried booting the laptop from the cd rom. works fine, except that when i get to the install page, i have C, D, and E. D and E are formatted properly with NTFS, while C is simply raw. So i thought i'd install to the D drive, but it won't let me do that without first formatting C -- which is what i'm trying to avoid. For the other HD, running chkdsk from the recovery mode and then scandisk recovered the drive and files intact. Not working though for the C drive.

I've had this happen to 3 hard drives in the last couple of months. First, a friend gave me his 80 GB HD which he had dropped from about a foot off the desk. It registers in the BIOS as an 80GB disk, but windows refuses to go past that. I'm thinking he knocked the needle out of alignment, and whether this is the case or not, is it repairable? The second thing that happened, both to the C partition of a brand new laptop, and to a brand new 120GB hard disk i bought. the first was formatted with basic, the second dynamic. All NTFS of course. So one fine day they just refuse to read. i've checked them previously with chkdsk and disk doctor, and it said they were perfectly healthy. so in diskmgmt.msc all of a sudden it says they're empty "raw" partitions, with 100% free space. of course i know they're not empty, because one had the windows OS on them. and the other i just copied 50 GB of data to it. so i try to reformat them without losign the data, or just to get it back to the ntfs file system without losing my data. but i'm at a blank wall. how do i do that?

here's another reason that it may not be working...and i speak from experience with my drives and cdroms. certain cases and hard disks---generally, the larger the disk, the more this applies--- require a healthy supply of power through the usb. certain 2.5 enclosures actually come with 2 seperate usb plugs, one for the data transfer, and the other for power supply. you may also notice that the 2 front usb posts on your computer don't handle heavy external drive enclosures well. The best bet for a properly working external drive is to plug it into the back of the computer where the onboard USB ports are... that way you have better power supply. Also the length of the cable can have an effect on the quality - the shorter the better. generally anything over 2 meters though is stretching the limit a bit. Going through a hub breaks down the supply even more, and you'll definitely have a weak connection unless the hub is plugged into a wall power socket in addition to the usb port

I concede Xbox'z point. also macace. While i do feel that windows is the most user friendly environment for a newbie, past that i can see where it stops. I suppose then I would have to put my use of XP in the "personal preferences" section. Ok, but one thing against Macs: They're too expensive. Otherwise i would have gotten one. This hampers their user coverage. hopefully once the intel chips get streamlined, apple will come up with something a little more affordable.

thanks. will try it. XIII, i tried the ubuntu first. but as i said, for some reason either i have a buggy version or just unlucky.

I think I can come up with one more reason why Windows is "so great", as we put it. Though the argument that there's more software available for it is quite a strong supporting one. Aside from that, though, the other point in its favor applies to the vast majority of people in the world, and (sadly) somewhat applies to me. This point is that Microsoft has poured immense amounts of time and money into the GUI. Windows, although not necessarily the best of motors under the hood, at least does a very commendable job with the dashboard. This means that anyone, with hardly any understanding of computers whatsoever, can sit down at a windows terminal and figure his way around. I liken it to a difference between manual and automatic transmission. a manual is unequalled, but if you were to stick a non-drvier behind the wheel he would have a much smoother time with the automatic. While the windows system may not be the all-in-all, its simplicity, ease-of-use, and high compatibility is what most people are looking for.