Grafitti

I use FTP. I find filemanagers to be much slower with all the browsing from one directory to another. Filezilla has always been my mainstay, and it does have a keep-alive function, which the servers should disconnect. It sends empty packets to keep the connection open. So if the server is dropping out, it's probably some other problem.

Far as I know, the corporate partnerships are AMD+ATI and INTEL+NVIDIA, so you buy ones that combine well, and you might get a bit better performance. For motherboards, I like MSI, ASUS, or GIGABYTE. Haven't much liked Intel ones, and never tried ECS. 2 GB is well enough for almost everything. But if you're buying for the future, why not get a motherboard that has 4 memory slots. So you put in 2x1GB chips now, and if you want to upgrade later, just pop in a couple more.

I voted to wait until the price drops, but then a 1TB disk would be a very attractive option for me. Right now, here in Pakistan, the best price vs size drive you can buy is 500GB. after that, you can find 750GB models, but you pay insanely high prices for them. i think the 750 is around $260 vs the 500GB price of $130. 1TB drives are still mostly unheard of. But with 4 hard drives in my computer and a total of 800GB space (300+200+160+160) I've filled up a good three quarters of it. Doing a lot of graphics and video work, and storing the files. Then I finally shelled out and bought a 500GB external WD drive for my collection of documentaries, but filled it up and realized i still had another 200GB to go, and at the rate I download/record them, about 2GB per day, it won't be long before I'll have filled up another 500GB, and then i'll be stuck. That's without the movies I originally planned to back up as well... so when those terabyte drives come down to my price range, I'll be putting in an order for at least two. I'd have to RAID them, because I'm not about to gamble on losing a whole terabyte of stuff.

I have a few gripes about Vista. I've got the Ultimate version, I've tried running it on both my laptop and my desktop. With both laptop + desktop systems running at least dual core processors, 2GB ram, dedicated GPU on desktop, I haven't had issues about memory hogging. It does use a lot, but with so much available it doesn't impact so much on the resources. And the speed is pretty decent. Not a huge improvement over XP, but it does work fine. Only slow on logging in + running startup applications. I turned off UAC since i'll be the only one using the computer and i know what i'm doing most of the time. Plus I use 3rd party programs for those needs. So as a basic OS, it's not that bad, and the new games, bitlocker security, and general suspicious behavior of Vista towards anything you try to do are useful. I do run frequently into compatibility issues, though. I'm no programmer, so maybe there are workarounds that I'm not aware of, but things like Internet Explorer 7, Yahoo Messenger, basic stuff, freeze occasionally and have to be restarted. This has now happened twice. Once after full activation, and once right after i installed it as a 30 day trial. Then I don't like that Manufacturers are beginning to lock XP out of being used, by shipping laptop models only with Vista, and no drivers available for XP. This has now happened to a Sony laptop, and to a HP desktop, both of which came with Vista Business Premium, but only on a restore partition (no cd). So I had to mirror the drive before trying to install XP on it, and it refused to recognize several parts. Then looking online at the manufacturer's website, there are no drivers for XP. So unless you build your own computer from OEM pieces, they're starting to phase out even the possibility of running XP. I'm sure hacked drivers will surface, but it's really annoying that they would do that.XP can be just as safe as Vista, if you take good care of it, and follow common sense security procedures. Then I've found XP to be more stable, faster running, and easy to configure and modify to suit your needs.For me, the bottom line is: For a computer idiot, or in a comparision of clean installed XP vs. Vista, Vista is the OS of choice. It doesn't leave you room to make many mistakes. For those who know what they're doing, XP still has the upper hand over Vista.

I didn't have to personally pay for the upgrade, it went on the company bill. But it's not the Master collection, just the Design Premium. I probably won't end up getting the master collection, but will have to make do with Premiere Pro 2.0Though if you're just dabbling in graphics I wouldn't say an upgrade is a good idea, because of the prohibitive cost. You should be able to find a CS or CS2 used version floating around on the net for much less than the price of the new one. But if your work is mostly revolving around these products, then the upgrade is a good idea. It takes time to get used to the new layouts of most of the programs, and the installer is so freaking slow you wonder if they just ripped it out of a pre-Pentium version, but once it's there and you've learned it, it's so much faster, and such useful features. Even in Photoshop, I love how now you can edit movies frame by frame. I never liked After Effects for the nitty-gritty work, and exporting frame by frame to Photoshop was a tedious process. Now you can just work on the clip in a filmstrip and realtime preview and edit. (only available in the Extended version -- if you're deciding on which to get, regular or extended, please get extended. Otherwise you'll regret it later).Getting Dreamweaver and Flash built in to the Adobe suite is also a major plus... things work so much more smoothly than before.Though it is rather hungry for memory. Working on large files, and having Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Firefox, KMPlayer, and others open at once on my 2.8 dual core with 1GB ram, I would spend 10 or 15 seconds twiddling my thumbs sometimes after applying a filter or something similar. After upgrading to 2GB (and 800Mhz vs. 533) I notice a marked difference. Speed reigns supreme!

I used the Ontrack program (thanks, Jimmy) and was able to recover around 60% of my stuff. The other pieces wouldn't read as anything intelligible. I did try another one afterwards, just to see if i could squeeze any more recovered files out of the disk, and File Scavenger actually worked pretty nicely, getting me another 20% of the data. So I ended up losing a bit, but not too much. Thanks!

Though it's a lot more expensive, I like the nokia equivalent to the iPhone a lot better, and if I were to blow that much cash on something so small, it would be the Nokia.... but in reality I never will. I've got a Nokia 3210 from 2005 that I paid $45 for, and a Creative MP3 20GB player that I picked up at a duty free for $200 3 years ago, so unless something goes bad, I don't plan on wasting more money on those things.

How come nobody likes uTorrent? It's the one I like the best --- nice features, small and extremely light on resources. ---Aside from Azureus and Limewire, I suppose. I've never gotten around to using those ones.

Sorry I don't have any technical help to offer, but I can say that I've used MSI, Intel, and Asus motherboards with both SATA and SATAII hard disks, up to 400GB, and never had any of those issues. Only once on an Intel915 board and a new 160GB SATAII DiamondMax hard disk, did the computer hang for a while, getting to the windows installation screen took almost 20 minutes. Popped the disk out and tried it with a new 160GB IDE drive, and it was at the installation screen in a couple minutes. Now that it's installed it works fine. Have you taken your case down to the shop and have them see the problem right there? Just maybe they'll be more inclined to be helpful if you've proved it in front of them. Otherwise alot of these people have the attitude that you're an idiot who doesn't know what he's doing, and screwing things up himself because he thinks he knows better than them.... just a thought.

I have a hard disk that had been running XP Pro and I accidentaly mixed it up with an empty disk, reformatted it, and installed Windows XP over. But I now realize I had tons of important information on it, and aside from kicking myself for my stupidity, I'd like to recover the files, if at all possible. What software would be recommended to start with? something that can read from a reformatted disk, but that isn't too expensive -- even freeware, if there is such a robust free product -- with a decent chance of recovery. The files were NTFS, with simple Admin security permissions, not EFS encryption. I reformatted the drive with quick format, not regular. Most of the files i need were in the Documents&Settings>Username>MyDocuments folder, so I don't know if that would have any effect on the recovery. Does windows automatically write these default folders to the same or a similar physical location on the disk, and if so, does that lessen my chances of recovery?

Mine has 2 extra large fans, plus I have an HP inkjet 3950 in my room. I have my computer set to automatically restart after a power failure, which happens about twice per night. The fans, on startup, whir extremely loudly, and the inkjet clacks around for about 5 seconds. But I've gotten accustomed to it, and it doesn't wake me. Aside from power cuts, the computer starting up in the middle of the night is not a problem with me, as I leave it on all day and all night anyways -- just flick the screen off at night.

I wouldn't be able to say I hate Internet Explorer 7, I've almost never used it. It's just something I ignore most of the time, apart from the very infrequent occasions when a site only wants to display in IE -- I run into this mostly with some shareware and driver download sites... they don't work properly in firefox. Other than that, it's just an icon that sits hidden away and never used; Firefox is simply better. I do have a recurring problem with Firefox though. If I leave the firefox window open for a long time, like several hours, and especially if I've had lots of tabs opened, and downloaded a lot of images, or viewed a lot of image galleries, firefox starts hogging huge amounts of ram, like on my 2 GB system it'll take up to 400 or 500 MB. I've had this happen on different machines, always with firefox. Then when that happens, if I want to save a page with images on it, processor usage jumps to +90%, and the window freezes while it tries to download the page. On a page with a megabyte of photos, it'll freeze for about 30 seconds, after which I can keep working. But the good part is the auto recovery of pages open, so I can just kill the process and open again everything i had, and the memory bug is fixed. IE7, on the other hand, would crash intermittently, for no particular reason.

Unfortunately i don't have that ability to visualize code, so for me a wysiwyg interface is a must. If such is the case, then you can't do any better than Dreamweaver, assuming of course that you can afford it. But I never liked Frontpage... it was too basic. IMO that was for absolute novices.

Reading various articles on the subject, it seems businesses are a bit wary of it, for several reasons -- and probably the reason that weighs in heaviest: it's a full-featured video iPod as well, and while countless stories abound of businesses who don't know anything or couldn't care less about the security holes in their phones, not one employer likes the idea of employees goofing off on company time. Admittedly, if someone gave me an iPhone (because i wouldn't dream of buying one) I would spend a lot of time including work hours browsing the internet and listening to music. So I think unless they come out with a way to disable those functions of it, it won't see much expansion in the business community. I suspect that the iPhone will become a hot target, like the Acura Integra or the Supra. Once they've hacked it to accept SIMs from other providers, iPhone snatching will probably shoot up. I doubt it would be worth their while to make a generic iPhone but selling a stolen set for a couple hundred bucks is pretty good money. Are there any anti-theft capabilities built in to the iPhone?

Though I'm sure they have some hidden motive for doing this, even if it's just for good PR, it's nice to see Microsoft putting the customer first once in a while.

With all the buzz and hype surrounding the iPhone, is it going to be something that dies down and levels off at a niche market, such as with the AppleTV, or is it going to be more of an iPod success story? Personally, I wouldn't buy one, as they're just too expensive, not to mention the heavy contract you get saddled with... I believe it's currently $60 per month? I would rather get a regular cellphone for $100, and spend the extra cash on a laptop or desktop, or whatever else. Aside from Apple fans, who will buy just about anything Apple makes, I suppose a lot of people are drawn to buy it because off the all-in-one features it boasts. But then is this simply brand awareness, like the iPod, which admittedly is a good product, but besides that there are tons of people who buy one either because they've heard about it or because it's fashionable, not necessarily because its features put it ahead of the competition. There are phones that offer similar capabilities, but there's no craze to buy them. Apple definitely is not aiming at those pressed for cash, but still, is this something that a year down the road will have become too commonplace, and instead of drawing admiring attention, elicit comments like "There's another one of those guys with an iPhone." Viewpoints? Notice from BuffaloHELP: Title modified.

Average usage for a 7200RPM hard disk below 500GB is 25-30W.

I just had a P4 that had those exact problems, out of the blue would shut down and sometimes had to completely power off and wait before it would restart. it was a buildup of dust in the fins of the processor heat sink.Then another P4, exactly the same model and config, wouldn't shut down, but froze and the mouse jerked around erratically. Was the same dust problem. I'd try that one first, as it's the cheapest to fix.

What I've done sometimes -- of course it's probably not going to be top quality, since every time it goes through a connection it loses something, but i used a cable with a male headphone jack at each end, plugged one end into the speaker-out, and the other into the line-in. It may not be as good as direct sound, but a world better than holding the speakers up.

I have 2 GB ram on my desktop running XP Pro, and 2 GB on my laptop running Vista Ultimate (a waste of money, but too late...)Factoring in a small handicap for laptop parts being slower than desktop ones, the two systems run about the same. Vista does take about 10 seconds longer to boot up, but other than that no major differences. And I'm running latest games, Video editing, and graphics work... So though I'm sure 4 GB would help it run even better, I've not had any problems running Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Indesign all at once.

And what OS? Windows 98?

I'll be waiting a bit till it gets more solid, and looks like it'll stick around. why should i pay premium price for a cell phone that has Skype, but i can't use alot of the time. Plus I think i remember hearing somewhere that Skype was being eyed by some big player in the communications field, so if they were to get bought out i'd want to see whether they still offered the same deals.

I don't know if you can buy both types over there, but here they sell dry-cell and wet-cell UPS models. I have some dry cell ones, a local brand, so already they're not that good, and when new they hold a charge of @ 8 minutes when i had a 300w PSU and 17 inch monitor. The same UPS will last up to 20 min if you have a 15 inch monitor, and with my 21 inch, it lasts barely a minute and a half. Here i'm talking CRT monitors, if they were LCD they'd use alot less power. Within a year, though, the batteries have degraded to the point that they take like 6 hours to charge, and only give me 5 minutes of backup, plus they occasionally don't kick in when there's a drop in current, and the computer reboots.... Never mind what i paid for them back then, but today the street price for them (550w) is around $50. If i were to double that price, i can get branded UPS with wet cell batteries, which will last up to 2 hours with a 15 incher, and around 1 hr 15 min with a 17 inch. Have a friend who got one, and he's happy with the performance.

Maybe it's just that my browser has a longer timeout tolerance than DAP, but it will still work if i have uTorrent running. A bit slow, yes, but it still works. I tried the TCPIP patch and though it hasn't completely solved the problem, i have noticed an improvement. Thanks.

It's not just those who come into the country illegally that group together. Any ethnic, racial or religious group that moves to an unfamiliar location will group together. This is initially due to being unfamiliar and insecure. Possibly later down the road if things haven't improved, then there are other factors involved, not least of which is mistrust both on the part of the immigrants and also of the society they've emigrated to. Everyone regards their culture as superior, so it's not just their fault that it's led to hate & resentment. I'm not saying that this illegal immigration is correct, I just don't feel it's a simple black-and-white equation. It's a complicated issue that you can't judge unless you know the full story, and even then each case will be different. Moral and legal theoretics have a way of presenting different facets under mitigating circumstances. To theorize: Say it's illegal to jump the border. But the guy is poor and he doesn't have enough to send his kids to school. So he sneaks across the border because he knows he can get the money for it there. Then would you say his actions are justified? what if his kid was dying and he needed the money to buy medicine? would that change your vote? I'm just saying that it's hard to get an across the board label you can slap on anyone who falls under the general category.