rayzoredge

All right, so here's the deal:Nowadays, we have HDTVs with computer inputs like VGA, and computers have video cards that now support HDMI outputs. If you think about it, you can hook up a reasonably-equipped rig to a screen larger than your average computer monitor... and it seems like you can save some dough this way too.With this thinking, I'm wondering if it's a hardware-wise decision to actually see about getting an HDTV for a computer. Of course, you have to take into consideration HDMI/DVI/alternative audio inputs and outputs, but if you've got the connectivity, why not? What are the pros and cons of having an HDTV over a monitor, or vice versa? I know that there are things to consider like a "minimum" refresh rate of 8ms for LCDs (with lower being better), and there's the worries with having adapters to convert DVI-to-HDMI (which doesn't make sense to do, quality-wise), and whatnot. And I'm sure that a dedicated computer monitor may still be the way to go. From what I figure, 720p is good enough for a resolution considering that if you get a decent size HDTV, you'll still be less than 6' away from it, and if you decide to go larger, you'll still be at a somewhat-optimal distance for 720p but not enough to actually fork over the money for 1080p (since you literally won't notice the difference... unless you sit that closely to your display).What are your thoughts on doing this? Would you go for an HDTV or a dedicated computer monitor?

I'm actually going to be delving more into Windows 7, because it just occurred to me that I have a Dell kicking around that had Vista on it. (Old GF's computer... but I guess it's mine now.) So figuring that I needed Vista and SP1, I started on the install for SP1 while downloading and burning the Windows 7 beta install DVD... and then I found out in mid-SP1 install that I could just install a fresh copy of W7. (I was using two computers simultaneously.) Installation was pretty typical of a Windows OS, I would say, give or take less dialogs asking for regional settings and such. Boot time was decent... I didn't time it with a stopwatch or anything, but I did notice that it took less time than it does my current XP installation on my HP zd8000 and less time than that computer did with Vista. I started exploring and installing things, taking into consideration that I could now take advantage of the 64-bit system (as the Dell I have now has an AMD 64 Turion processor). I found out that the latest versions of MagicDisc and RocketDock don't play nicely with W7, resulting in hangs (that I could still do other things, but Explorer was basically bust when I tried copying things from an image or accessing My Computer from RocketDock), and Firefox 3.0.5 has the simple irritation of not being able to press Enter from the search bar. (Pressing Enter is unresponsive, but you can go to the Google site and search from there.) I installed Microsoft Office XP without a hitch but haven't tried working with it yet. (I refuse to upgrade to 2007 thanks to the .***x extension which monopolizes compatibility with that suite.) Windows Media Player 12 doesn't like working after messing with RocketDock or MagicDisc, but from a fresh boot, seems to work fine. The look and feel of the OS just feels like Vista to me with a few UI changes... and I'm not sure if I'll get used to it and actually like it until I work with it exclusively for quite some time. I forced Aero using a registry hack (Google for "aero Windows 7" to try it out if you have a system that doesn't allow Aero personalization) and it actually works surprisingly well with this Dell Inspiron 1501 (which has integrated graphics, I must mention). Slight lag, but like I said, it surprised me. The Aero peek is nice, but I thought it was retarded because I could just move my cursor to the bottom right to click for Show Desktop. So far, Aero reminds me of Ubuntu's Compiz/Beryl, which really isn't innovatingly-amazing, but I do appreciate the eye candy. I installed World of Goo without a hitch, and ran it but didn't get a chance to play it. I don't have a heck of a game selection that I can run on this laptop that won't break the system (since it only sports a Intel 1.8 GHz Duo Core, 1GB RAM, and integrated graphics), so I can't comment on much about how games run on it... not to mention that I don't have a dual boot setup going to compare. (I'm being selfish here... I'm only doing this for my experience and I'm waiting to see how benchmarks compare later.) Instant wake-up is awesome and works as advertised. It's literally like shaking your mouse to wake up from screensaver... the computer wakes up that quickly. The taskbar can be confusing to the untrained eye, but a quick fix of customizing how your taskbar looks fixes that. I don't like how much real estate it takes on my screen with the slight growth, but that's just a gripe and it's not that big of a deal. UAC was actually still kind of annoying at the minimal setting (yes, I gave it a chance), so I just turned it off. That itself required a restart (which really wasn't too much of a surprise), but afterwards, UAC stopped bothering me, and I had administrative rights to my computer as an administrator again. (W00t!) So far, I'm impressed as to how it feels like it works better than Vista, but at the same time I'm not impressed as to how it feels like it works LIKE Vista. (But duh... it has a Vista code platform.) I'll be exploring this more when I get the time and throw out my own opinions... and maybe, just maybe, I'll have an OS I can feel a bit more confident in upgrading to. Addendum (01/30/2009): More gripes... Explorer hung on me when I tried copying files from my external (connected via USB) to the video library with three copy tasks in tandem. Most of the files made it through, but the OS froze completely. Windows Media Player 12 was a disappointment too, not being able to stream to my 360. It sees it, but my 360 doesn't see my computer in Media Center or WMP12. Sadly, that's quite a dealbreaker there, since I was planning on using this Dell to be the main streaming machine in my house. After doing some outside research, it looks like even if I were to be able to stream to the 360, the quality of the stream is very poor, which kind of kills the whole point. It will be nice when/if everything works, since I actually see potential in Windows 7. Right now, it's not meeting my needs.

Actually, I believe Circuit City is closing its 400+ "remaining stores" due to its bankruptcy. That's why everyone was out there on Saturday, when CC started its liquidation sales, from 30% off and up.I find it really awesome that this thread had more of a focus on the people of Circuit City (employees and their families) as opposed to the fire sale across the nation.

Most computers infected are from the commercial sector, with over 8 million PCs infected in various corporate office all over the world as of last Friday. If I read the article on CNN correctly, no one knows what the virus does, but it IS capable of sending information back to the origin to steal passwords and blah blah blah. Pretty crazy stuff... and the best part is that I'm sure not a lot of people even know they're infected, since it's a sleeper.

I'm actually interested, as I have quite a bit of travel photos that can be of use to your website.Seems like a cool idea, and it looks like it could work for you and for your contributors, considering the fact that you have the means and you also have the resources, that being us. Let us know what's up with the website, what legal work and entitlements we would have, and what is expected of contributions. Lay down some strict guidelines... obviously you wouldn't want sub-par photos to clog up your site which would keep visitors from coming back.

We've heard initial bashings and have Tramposch's benchmarks. I'm sure a good number of you have download, installed, and experienced the beta build. What are your thoughts on it? I've read quite a bit just now about what Windows 7 has to offer, thanks to Paul Thurrott's Windows site. There are a number of things that I can see as vast improvements as well as new, cool features, but there are also a number of things that disconcert me in wondering if the new and improved Windows is really new and improved underneath the hood. Windows 7 brings into play a semblance of Microsoft's WinFS file system with its library feature, which in the sense of being able to organize and query things by meta-data (view selective pictures by date, songs filtered by artist, etc.) is an awesome deal, but the whole virtual filing system worries me as far as actually organizing your personal pictures, videos, documents, and what-have-you. Everything sounds like it's simply thrown into one folder that Windows now calls Personal Documents, and what you see out of that folder utilizing the query service is filtered by what you place for a query. To people who plan on sticking with Windows 7, this might not be a problem, but it doesn't seem very nice that Windows uses a false pretense for a folder/directory tree and makes you think that all your family photos are in your "Family Photos" folder when in fact it's thrown into a mess with your travel photos, your home videos, and whatnot. The taskbar seems like a potential nightmare as far as actual usability. With so many functions and so many ways to get to those functions, not to mention that if you opt for the simplified look which leads to instant confusion as to what is a shortcut, what is a running application, etc., it looks like as far as user friendliness goes, the taskbar is setting consumers in for a world of hurt and re-familiarization. It looks nice, and it looks clean, but it doesn't help out if it takes you a few tries just to get to something. Something that scares me is that with the Vista infrastructure too is that with the same code come the same faults. It looks like benchmark performance is "in the ballpark with Vista" for local file transfers and transfers over a network, which still means meaningless Microsoft minutes and longer-than-expected copy-and-paste and move tasks. That does not impress me at all, but I'm sure that Microsoft will address this issue and polish up how the operating system will handle files and not repeat Vista's inefficiency. There are things that looked good in Windows 7, though, which actually makes things easier on the mind about migrating to this OS. I liked the concept of the homegroup, which looks like a dummy-proof way on networking and filesharing. No more tricky workarounds, no more technical jargon on trying to get network sharing to work. (Not like I had a problem with sharing on XP anyway.) Instant-wakeup seems like an awesome feature. Taking just a second or so to wake up from standby and having immediate network access sounds like a good deal to me. Standby mode, however, doesn't seem to actually save any power, but maybe power settings are more efficient in W7, and this is somewhat evident with my next pointer. Smart power for network devices in W7 prevents wasted power by disabling power to devices not being used... like the example of an unused Ethernet port. W7 will actually not power that port until you connect it with an Ethernet cable to another device, in which it would "wake up" that port and resume functionality as usual. Cool? Yes. It makes me wonder if this feature also applies to other devices that eat up power that can possibly be turned off without affecting overall functionality... like turning off a modem chip, a Bluetooth module, etc. Also, here's a cool plus for software compatibility: 'nuff said. Awesome move on Microsoft's part, assuming that it works as described. The Play To feature in Windows Media Player 12 that comes with W7 sounds like another great, easy way to stream media anywhere to supported devices around your home... such as an Xbox 360. The fact that you won't have to add things to the library manually anymore is a huge plus, considering that this was one of my personal gripes about streaming media to my 360 with WMP 11. (I love it when things just work.) User Access Control is now less annoying, and you can actually change how you're notified about things (like whether you want to actually have it actually ask you for permission or never let you know about anything). The Windows Solution Center is the new Security Center from XP... and what's nice about it is that it's less annoying (if even), plus it consolidates all your security features (firewall, antivirus, updates, etc.). Device Stage is another cool gig that I think would benefit the prevention of throwing on all the bloatware that comes with your new printers and other multi-function gadgets that require their own proprietary software. Now, instead of installing that 300MB software package that HP wants you to have to enjoy full functionality of your multi-function printer/scanner/copier/yada, you can use Device Stage and access all those functions from one place. (You can actually skip the install in XP, but the functions are split with the Camera and Scanner Wizard, the usual printing dialog, etc.) One last thing that I'd like to mention about decent things about Windows 7 is that all drivers are going to be based on the Vista model. Initial reception with having to develop Vista drivers for everything wasn't exactly fun, but with Vista taking the blow as the "OS that didn't work" and Windows 7 taking the reigns at a time where Vista is more viable as far as drivers go, Windows 7 will avoid that hit without too many people even noticing. No more driver incompatibility! So with all of this said and done, who can confirm all of this? What do you guys like and don't like? Would you recommend that users holding onto XP actually move up to Windows 7?

Tramposch, you make Windows 7 seem pretty promising. I'll take your word for it that it's pretty damn good for a new Windows OS... guess they really did an overhaul on Vista code to make Windows 7 work as well as everyone's deeming it to be. It will be nice to have a way to upgrade from XP as it fades away like Windows 98 SE as the last stable Windows platform. For those of you who are wondering what Windows 7 will bring to the table, Paul Thurrott provides a great list of things to look forward to. I broke down and actually looked at what Windows 7 will feature, and as much as I'm impressed with what the future brings, I'm also skeptical (again) because I felt the same way with being swallowed by the eye candy and the stability and usability that Vista was supposed to offer during Microsoft's sales pitch for the OS a few years ago. If people are actually liking it now, there's room for hope for the software giant.

I did some homework on this gig that you're promoting and as a natural skeptic, I wasn't too keen on the sales pitch that they attempted with their website. Looking at some peer reviews, I discovered that there is a free alternative called nLite which I will give a try just for giggles to see if it actually does any good for my work laptop. Source nLite site

Looks like Windows 7 is getting the debut that Microsoft needs to recover from its slump with Vista.I wonder what people mean when they say that the operating system is "stable," exactly. (No more BSODs as a fault of the OS?) Apparently usability is a plus in W7 too, and the endorsement from Intel is sure to raise an eyebrow from a lot of skeptical folk like me. We'll see what happens when W7 releases an RC. Let the general public sweep the "final" product before the die-hard XP fans adopt a "new" Windows OS, eh?

Definitely reminds me of another incident when a millionaire won a million-dollar scratch ticket. When he was reached for comment, he told them that "it won't drastically change my lifestyle." Duh. The irony... and the wit. Funny how a sex offender is a God-fearing man... anything more wrong with this picture?

I completely agree with you on that one, which is why I have such bias against Vista and the fact that it hoards resources for some reason unbeknownst to me. (Supposedly Vista makes the most use of your RAM by utilizing what's free and idling... which is why there's a constant load on your RAM.) If anyone can tell me why in Vista that your RAM is under constant load, that would be great. Software is still going to be made compatible with XP for quite some time just because Vista has an 18% usage rate (or something along those lines) when you look at the whole picture of consumer/commercial OS use. Until people will be convinced that Vista has been improved or until Windows 7 receives a successful debut, XP will still stay as a viable "downgrade" option for computer manufacturers, consequently keeping the software development field in an XP mentality. (Heck... we still have software compatible with Windows 2000.)

Depending on what the topics are about, I will have to agree and disagree.Some of the topics that have come up are age-old discussions, like the console wars, the browser wars, and the OS wars... which I think should stay for the sake of discussion and being able to read the more valuable input others have to contribute about their side of the argument. Then there are the "spam" threads, as I remember galexcd calling them, that basically ask a simple question like "What's your favorite game?" (I'm guilty of posting in some of them.) As it provokes some discussion, in that aspect they're fine, but at the same time, I don't feel that it contributes much unless you look at the social aspect of things (if people even read the pages and pages of one-liners and short replies to respond to certain people). And of course, there are the problem threads... which are great when you have the problem solved (which makes it rather informative for anyone else experiencing the problem), but they become an eyesore when someone posts something irrevalent or whatever to a problem originally posted a few years ago. (Unless it's more helpful input ABOUT the problem that other members can utilize, I think that topics like those should have the ability to be closed and archived.)I just get the feeling that a lot of new members initially try to post in older topics because they come up on the Similar Topics section, and they don't note how old the threads are before they reply. And then there are those that flood old topics with one-liners, which could be a bit annoying, personally-speaking.

I will second leaving Internet Explorer alone and just getting rid of the links to it so that you won't have to deal with it (for the most part). Set Firefox to be your default browser (which it should have offered for you to do initially) and you should be all set.You can't exactly remove Internet Explorer from Windows, as it is basically Explorer, which is your file/window manager within Windows. There is a way to completely wipe it off of your Windows installation, but it's more of a pain and doesn't bring much benefit as much as anyone would think it would.

I have to add my experiences with Norton's latest: Norton Internet Security 2009.It is feature rich. It sports a two-way firewall. It has protection against spyware, spam, phishing, and what-have-you. It has a low impact on resources. It has a clean and fast installation AND uninstallation. It has dummy-proof, automatic updates by the second (given that they push definitions that quickly). It looks good, has a plethora of options, preferences, and settings to tweak your protection how you want it. And it doesn't impact your boot time or real-time tasking as much as most anti-viruses do.I recommend it. CNet recommends it with an Excellent rating. It's one you pay for, but you do get what you pay for... maybe more.

I'm surprised that no one mentioned the radical depictions of society in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I thought it was a great book, and it basically pitches the idea of a perfected existence using a caste system, mass cloning, drugs, encouragement of sexual experiences, discouragement of ownership (to include not having the idea of a family, instead being replaced by an "everyone is everyone else's" mentality), and enjoying life... amongst all of the lower castes which are born and raised to work for the Alpha and Beta castes of the societal hierarchy. It's a pretty crazy way to see another system that actually works, and as strange and almost inhumane as it may seem to most readers, I'm sure that everyone can find some sort of subtle agreement as to how things are run in Brave New World.If Equilibrium has a book base, that would be another pretty crazy way to see society years from now. The basis here includes the eradication of all things that invoke emotion... and a drug that suppresses it to continue an efficient existence of humanity, throwing away the incentives and reasons for hate crimes, war, murder, but also throws away the idea of love, compassion, care, and all the other emotions on the other side of the spectrum. Again, there's feelings and possible agreement towards both the existing status quo and the Resistance that fights for the right to feel... which makes for a rather interesting concept for a movie.

RAM is relatively cheap nowadays, and as much of an advocate as I am that the operating system/software shouldn't dictate what you need as opposed to what it has to its disposal to utilize efficiently, you might want to throw more RAM into your system to catch up with the times, not to mention run your other programs more efficiently and have an overall better computing experience. (There's a pretty large difference between having 1GB of RAM and 2GB of RAM... trust me. ) Remember:

From what I read on the white papers for SP3, none of the features or updates are even considerable for Joe Schmoe, the average consumer. A lot of the updates have to deal with networking updates and whatnot... I actually remember talking about how SP3 was unnecessary to just about everyone minus the commercial sector. (I can't remember where my post was, nor can I find it or want to spend the time finding it right now... because I'm lazy.) So in short, as most of you already know, I recommend to the highest degree to stick to Windows XP Professional SP2 for stability, usability, and yada... and if you have ANY flavor of Linux or Mac OSX 10.x, more power to you all, because those would be the better/equivalent for most people anyway. And of course, as much as I hate Vista and dread what Windows 7 has to offer (since it seems to have a Vista core), if it works for you, great.

We'll see when Microsoft publishes the minimum and recommended system requirements for this operating system. (I also want to know what specifications are required to run it well in conjunction with other programs... not what it needs.)

Adobe is awesome and horrible. I love the power behind Adobe's creative suites, being able to manipulate photos with Photoshop, create vector images with Illustrator, create and edit videos with Premiere, work with audio in SoundBooth, and everything else in between. The software is very powerful, and it's easy to say that it is the industry standard. With all that power, however, Adobe has its faults. A lot of their programs are bloated beyond relief. Adobe Acrobat is one of the worse programs to deal with, having to go with a hefty install of bloatware, then being constantly reminded to download and look for updates using the updating client. Worse off, it takes forever to load compared to a free and MUCH faster alternative: Foxit. Another thing that's pretty bad is the uninstallation/installation process for Photoshop CS3... because it doesn't work off of the CD. (You have to copy the contents onto your hard drive and install it from there, and if it failed once, PS CS3 won't let you reinstall it until you clean up the previous installation that failed... which is another headache altogether, in which even Adobe provides an article on how to clean up its own program installation using a third-party piece of software.) The programs are rather slow on midrange PCs, although CS3 has improved in the performance tier. (CS4, apparently, doesn't give hardcore users much of an upgrade in performance, but it does offer some features that some people will be willing to bite the bullet for.) Speaking of bullets, the price for the software is a wicked turn-off, steering budget consumers towards piracy of the programs or even to the other free alternatives like the GIMP, which, in its own right, is an awesome piece of free image manipulation software with power that rivals Photoshop. So I'll agree and disagree... Adobe creates awesome programs that is pretty much engraved into today's design professions, whether it involved web development, image and video processing, publishing and documentation, or anything involving media. The creative suites contain an insane powerhouse of tools for anyone, professional or casual. All this is enough to wave aside some of the discrepancies that occasionally occur that drive people absolutely nuts.

LOL @ Tramposch Like rvalkass said, the 9800GT supports maximum digital resolutions up to 2560x1000 and VGA resolutions up to 2048x1536 (although if you've got a 9800GT, I can safely assume that you'll never go back to VGA once you make your next monitor purchase). You can probably go for monitors with recommended widescreen resolutions up to 1920x1200 (courtesy of NewEgg), and if you snagged the 9800GT to tax its potential, I'm sure you'll be good to go with the loads it will take anyway from playing the latest games or being pushed by the latest software involving render tasks and whatnot. You can even look into the possibility of snagging an LCD HDTV... which might be another viable option. I believe the 9800GT supports HDMI, and if so, that will be your best bet to connect your video card to a TV via HDMI if you want to utilize the output capability of your video card. From what I can see, the 9800GT has DVI ports and can do HDMI via an adapter... which means that you can connect to most HDTVs nowadays. It won't have HD, but the connectivity is there.

If you guys want a lot of clever questions and one-liners, I would recommend you check out Stephen Wright. He's a really good deadpan comedian.

Hopefully, more manufacturers will be providing Vista/W7 driver compatibility. That's what's plaguing Vista right now with its supposed incompatibility with a lot of devices... manufacturers are still working to develop drivers for their existing hardware and for some, they are doubling their efforts by making drivers for XP for their new products. I'm actually looking forward to your benchmarking figures between XP, Vista, and W7b. Download speeds from the Internet are going to vary by server load, bandwidth, and whatnot... so I wouldn't be praising W7b on that at all, unless there was proof of efficiency (like network packet management specific to the OS or something to that effect).

Quick suggestion: Go to the Adobe website and search for uninstallation assistance with CS3. I had to uninstall just Adobe Photoshop CS3 once and since their uninstaller is quite terrible, they actually put up an article on how to uninstall CS3 and wipe it clean from your system (registry keys, DLLs, configuration files, everything) using a third-party program. (I had to do this because an installation of PS CS3 failed, and I couldn't install or reinstall it at all.)

I have a guess... which isn't very helpful in actually fixing the problem (maybe), but it does explain why this happens.If Vista does the same thing XP does with OEM versions where you need to activate your copy using a hardware code, then that would be why your OS's license was deactivated, requiring activation again. My guess is that Vista sees a hardware change (even though it was a driver change) and thinks that you have a copy of Vista where it's not supposed to be (on the "original" PC with original components and configuration). This would be why it wants you to reactivate... and activation through the Internet would fail (I believe) because your machine will throw out a hardware code that is inconsistent with your copy of Vista. Calling them to reactivate would work if you can get the tech on the other end of the line convinced that you haven't installed an illegal copy of Vista onto another machine... and in this instance, when the tech gives you the recoded hash to activate your copy of Vista, I'd write down or save the code just in case this happens again.Does this explain it a bit? I'm going off of what I figure and not off of any official explanations as to how WGA works... but this does make sense to me.

For the most part, "downgrading" is not impossible with Vista to XP and XP to Vista, considering that a simple Google search coupled with hours of forum perusal can land you a frustrating but somewhat satisfying experience.I remember having downgraded my friend's laptop from Vista to XP. Just about everything worked driver-wise... except for the network card, which was quite a doozy to go without. I spent a total of two hours scrounging forums and sites looking for a fix... and I was finally rewarded with a backwards way of making her Atheros wireless card work in her Dell. In a way, it was a good experience because now I know there are hidden devices that aren't shown normally in Device Manager. If you have the time and you've got some tech-savviness under your belt, I would always recommend going to XP just because of my bias with Vista. But if Vista works for your machine, it would hurt much less to suffer through my personal grovels about the operating system than it is to spend hours for the possibility of being able to run XP flawlessly... or the possibility that your research, time, and effort will turn up fruitless.Remember: If tech support says that you can't do something, they're giving up on you. The only thing that tech support is good for (as far as Dell goes, anyway) are the super-secret-squirrel key combinations and shortcuts that Dells have for diagnostics and quick-fixes. (HP has been good to me with the one time I did call for recovery discs. )And a note on drivers: You can always download them from the manufacturer's website, and some of them offer Vista and XP drivers in the case you need to move up or down in the OS chain.