rayzoredge

Guess I'll add in my two cents too.Never actually built or installed a CPU, but I have pulled one out and put it back onto the motherboard. It was an Intel E6600 dual core with a stock fan and it was easy as pie, and I doubt that anyone would really have any problems doing it. The processor can only (or should only) fit one way and should literally "drop" into place... don't force anything because those pins are easy to bend. When you apply the thermal paste, make sure the surface is clean (as noted above) and don't throw a ton of it on there... a nice, light (slightly liberal) coat will do. I can't vouch for Arctic Silver but I've never heard anything bad about it, not to mention that I don't hear about much else other than that particular brand.As far as static goes, I'm always up for precautions but I usually find myself not bothering with the $6 static wrist strap. As long as you ground yourself you'll be good, and I end up keeping the end of my forearm or elbow on the case while working with components anyway, but it never hurts to be cautious and spend the $6 to prevent destroying the $300+ part you'll be handling. [Personally, I've put the wristband on once to try it out but figured it would get in the way. If any recommendations are to be made, try to get one that has a decent clamp that will actually stay clamped to the object you're grounding yourself with.] Common sense there... but geeks and IT managers alike are the worst violators of that piece of common sense.With all that being said, make sure that the processor is seated correctly, secured correctly, and the fan is installed and secured correctly. Anything that is loose or not installed properly will result in the system turning on for a couple of seconds, then shutting off [as a safety precaution]. Keep that in mind... it took me and a fellow geek about an hour to realize that common-sense safeguard.

I found this for you... hope it helps: Source Read the thread... it includes a member's woes going through the same thing you may be going through and has a happy ending to it. You might want to invest in a mod chip to have that ability to restore your Wii anyway just so that you have that option as well as any other benefits of having a mod chip.

I had no idea whether to put this in Technology or Electronics...1.) When I plug in my laptop with HDMI Out into my HDTV using an HDMI cable, the screen information says that the source is 1366 x 768 @ 60Hz. My HDTV is capable of 120Hz. Is there a reason why the HDMI output from my laptop is actually literally what is being output to my laptop screen instead of using the HDTV as a monitor? How do I solely use my HDTV as a monitor so that I can take advantage of 120Hz if I do so choose? I also read somewhere that viewing PC output at 120Hz is either unnoticeable or detrimental (as it causes a sort of flickering)... is this true? Also, is it a limitation of the GPU when it comes to frequency (Hz) or is it just the monitor? (I don't see anywhere where it says that the 9800M GS has a Hz limit.)2.) When I plug in my laptop with HDMI Out into my HDTV using an HDMI cable and play an MKV (Matroska) file with DTS 6-channel encoded audio, is the 6-channel audio actually input into the HDTV/5.1 surround sound system? (Basically, is what I'm putting into the cable coming out of the cable as far as sound goes?) I know with some homework that with the advent of HDMI 1.3 that multiple-channel audio can be transmitted, but does it actually transmit out of a laptop, into the HDTV, out of the HDTV's digital audio via TOSLINK and into the receiver?If it matters, my HDTV is a Samsung UN46B7100 and my HTIB is a Samsung HT-BD1250. My laptop is an Asus G50VT-X5 with an NVIDIA 9800M GS GPU and it has an HDMI Out port. I have my laptop connected to my HDTV via an HDMI cable. My HDTV has a digital TOSLINK audio out port and is connected to the Samsung receiver, which outputs the received audio to the 5.1 speaker system.

@Lauren: I'll have to look at Traffic Rush... it sounds like a simple yet fun and addicting game. Also, some of the Internet apps that you can just go to the website for can actually still be useful because of an interface designed specifically to be more mobile-friendly, not to mention that the apps themselves can give you audible and visible alerts and notifications if you decide to run them within the background. eBay Mobile is pretty useful when it reminds you of auctions that are nearing their ends. So far, these are the apps that have actually stayed on my iPod Touch 2G: On a side note, here's an interesting article pertaining to how the iPod Touch is helping U.S. soldiers with military applications. What else are you guys finding useful for your iPod Touch / iPhone?

... from here. Short from an actual burglary or just being careless, I don't see how anyone can actually have their laptop stolen. Then again, I'm a paranoid type when it comes to my things, so in the case of my laptop, I'm either on it or carrying it with me in public. At home, it usually is within site, so in the case that we have our house broken into, I can see how this would happen. Knock on wood, though... I suggest that those of you with laptops install Prey as well as take common sense into effect by not leaving your laptop around in a public place, even if you're going to be gone "for a sec." Even though it may seem unlikely to you, I would think a lot of laptop-snatching happens at the local Starbucks, a school campus, or even a library. If you have to step away for a second, always keep a wary eye on it. If it does get snatched then, at least you will be able to confront the would-be thief.

Not sure what I got for Christmas yet... since I still have some stuff at my parents' house. So far, I've received:- stocking stuffers (gum, chocolate, boxers, shirt, deodorant, etc.)- Snoopy ornaments- a super-cool paper craft model of a Big Daddy and Little Sister from Bioshock- Snoopy latte mugs- a $25 Starbucks gift cardI have such a horrible memory... I can't remember a lot of what I got.If it counts, I did buy ourselves (on credit, of course ) our Samsung 46" LED LCD HDTV and Samsung HT-BD1250 Blu-Ray 5.1 surround sound home-theater-in-a-box (with the wireless surround sound speaker receiver on its way). We also got ourselves a lot of home decor stuff for our living room.

I just beat MW2 recently and now working on the Special Ops missions.This game is pretty damn phenomenal, combining awesome gameplay, great graphics, and the ability to run it on an older rig without sacrificing too much on the graphical detail. It almost seems like it has similar system requirements to the first Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.I really liked how the story went and how the game played out... immersive like the first. As with most games dealing with the warfront being brought home [spoiler?], it was a rather eerie but awesome experience fighting at The White House, then zooming to another character to freeze your butt off in the mountain ranges of Kazakhstan. Another weird, out-of-character experience was when you "worked" with Makarov... it's something when you feel weird playing as a terrorist.No AC gunships this time around, but playing around with the Predator was still pretty fun and effective. I still like bringing the fight face to face with a good rifle, but it was a nice balance of power with being able to use different special weapons to even out the fight.Lovin' the environments too... the ambient sounds of the frozen tundra to the warzone of the city to the guerrilla fighting makes me want my wireless receiver for my rear surround speakers to come in so I can insert myself into the game. I haven't tried the multiplayer yet, but I'm sure it's pretty awesome. I'm still having quite a bit of fun working on the Special Ops missions.Still trying to grasp the differences between some of the rifles, but so far I like any rifle [partial to the ACR and the TAR-21] with a holographic sight over the heartbeat sensor (although it does come in handy for Elimination-type missions), the red dot, and the ACOG. Unfortunately, I never really used anything else... although I think this time around I'll be playing more with the machine pistols and the shotguns. I did enjoy using the Barrett .50 cal and the M14 EBR, though.

*beats horse... again* *and again* *and again* I used to think that the utility of a BluRay player bundled into the PS3 would make it a superior entertainment console as far as the home theater goes, but now I'm not so sure. Right now, I've got my Xbox 360 hooked up to an external hard drive with all of my movies loaded onto it, so I basically turned my Xbox 360 into a sort of home theater PC that's capable of gaming, watching movies and shows, listening to music, and watching slideshows of family pictures, etc. It's a crazy powerhouse when you think about it that way... and it has high definition video and digital audio to boot (with HDMI on the newer models or component and digital TOSLINK audio on the older variant - the one I have). Throw in Xbox Live, Netflix streaming, some online social networking (which I'm sure is more of a gimmick than anything else), and I believe you have an all-in-one box, provided that you rip your HD movies to the hard drive so there's no worries with scratched BR discs or whatnot. My current beef with my 360, however, is the file format support. The best quality that I can pull off of that hard drive is limited to 1080p 10Mbps H.264-encoded video with 2-channel STEREO sound. I'm not sure if you can do better with the PS3, however: Source It almost seems like the PS3 and Xbox 360 have similar hurdles when it comes to video and audio codec support, and neither play the superior MKV container, instead only allowing MP4 and AVI. It's a pain in the neck to try to convert 1.5GB to 8GB video files, knowing that you're opting for 2-channel sound over the original 6, which kind of kills the reason why you bought that $500+ surround sound system. I've never owned a PS3, so I can't thoroughly and truthfully comment with experience. All I can say is that it's now at a competitive price point with the new Slim model, but with the price drops of the Xbox 360 and the Wii, it's still going to have a rough time making sales numbers in comparison. There are a decent number of PS3-exclusive titles that I wouldn't mind owning a PS3 to play, but at the moment, it doesn't seem worth it to me to go out and purchase one since I would be limited to such a small library of good [subjectively-speaking, of course] games. Off the top of my head, I would play Killzone 2, Metal Gear Solid 4, Resistance I and II, Gran Turismo, God of War III, Haze, Lair, The Last Guardian, maybe LittleBigPlanet, MAG, and Uncharted I and II [12]. In comparison, the Xbox 360 has these going for me: Alan Wake, America's Army, Dead or Alive 4, Dead Rising, Fable II and III, FarCry Instincts, Forza Motorsport, Gears of War II, the Halo games (ODST, Reach, Halo Wars, and Halo 3), Infinite Undiscovery, Kameo, maybe Kingdom Under Fire, maybe Lost Odyssey, maybe The Outfit, Perfect Dark Zero, Project Gotham Racing, and Too Human [21]. Mind you, these are exclusive to each console.

Looks like your PS3 will hook up to your HDTV via HDMI or component + optical audio, provided that you have similar connectivity options on your HDTV. If you want to utilize your sound system, make sure that your audio is connected from your HDTV to your sound system receiver if you're using HDMI, or just connect your component cables to the HDTV and an optical audio cable to the receiver... or however you have your home theater system set up. As of right now my cable set up isn't exactly the way I want it to be, but that's because I'm waiting for cables from Monoprice to show up before I actually set everything up the way I want it to be set up. I knew that home theater cables were expensive, but I was still surprised to see how much of a markup it is at even Walmart and Best Buy. I picked up a 6 ft. Rocketfish digital optical audio cable at Best Buy for $49.99 and a 6 ft. Philips HDMI cable at Walmart for $34.99. To me, that's robbery... which is why I'm going to return both cables when I get my HDMI and optical audio cables from Monoprice. Keep in mind that with digital cables, a cable is a cable, because the signal either makes it or it doesn't, 100%. The only issues that you will run into when it comes to audio and video cable would be if the signal was analog and if it were to go beyond certain distances like over 10 ft. I believe HDMI has signal issues and introduced artifacts at a maximum optimal length of 30 ft. and optical cable is fiberglass, which means virtually no loss at any length. (Most of us won't ever have to worry about cables longer than 6 ft, though, since sources are usually located at the input/output (HDTV is within close vicinity to the BR player/audio receiver/etc.). Yeah... LED LCD HDTVs are basically LCD HDTVs with a LED backlight instead of the traditional CCFLs, so you are still prone to dead pixels.

I would use a process explorer program to figure out what is creating the file. Whichever one you use, have it run before anything else and check the log to see the actions being taken on start-up to see what created the file and what's calling for it to attempt to run at start-up.I'm running Windows 7 x64 Ultimate right now as well and I've never run into this issue, so maybe you do have some malware and/or a third-party software that's creating that file every time on start-up. Try using Panda Scan and other anti-malware software to do some cross-checking to make sure that your "squeaky-clean" PC is actually free of evil stuff.I personally run Norton Internet Security Suite 2009 and have no issues, so the reputation of being a crappy anti-malware program is either true because it hasn't really caught anything serious, or that I've never been seriously infected. NIS has given me a few warnings about some of my programs and suggests that they are Trojans, so I know it works because key generators and cracked files often come up as being Trojans. Also, NIS2009 isn't a CPU hog like most other previous versions of Norton as well as just about every other anti-malware software out there, so it's a good paid alternative if you want to take a look at it.

Plasma would not have been a bad choice, really. With the leaps and bounds in HDTV technology, plasma is still quite the competitor for a damn good HDTV.The reason why I went with an LED LCD HDTV was because I liked the features that the Samsung UN46B7100 had to offer (DLNA, 120Hz MotionPlus, connectivity, AnyNet with the HT-BD1250, etc.) and I got suckered into the energy savings of the LED. (Of course, I paid a premium to get into the new tech which probably negates any energy savings until it comes back around for me to break even.) Apparently blacks appear much better on the LED LCD HDTV because it can selectively turn off light to produce the deepest black possible (effectively) so that you have the best picture quality you can get for LCD technology.Plasma does offer 600Mhz drives and an awesome picture quality for less, but I was turned off by the "half-life" of the plasma (usually 5-10 years before the display actually loses half of its brightness) and the burn-in qualities that plasma is infamous for. In all reality, if you could squeeze out 5-10 years out of a TV before upgrading (by impulse or by necessity), that's pretty damn good in itself as a return-on-investment, and the burn-in "problems" are more of a thing of the past since most plasmas come with technology to minimize burn-in and "wash it out" anyway, but I was still drawn to the hype of the LED LCD tech. I believe the main advantages of plasma over LCD technology would have to be better picture quality, but LCDs and now LED LCDs have the edge in having picked up in vast leaps and bounds in image quality as well as bringing the moniker of reduced power consumption. If you want to do the analysis of cost of ownership, I'm sure that a plasma will burn through more electricity to power its now-slightly superior picture in comparison to LCD/LED LCD HDTVs, but they still are king when it comes to panels larger than 50" for image quality alone.However, plasma is going away, so if you want to pick one up, I would do so within or after the next few years to get the best bang for your buck. Companies are ditching plasma in favor of the consumer hype for LCDs.

@Strikee: I actually haven't even played any Xbox 360 games yet on this thing, although I did get around to hooking my laptop up via HDMI and playing Modern Warfare 2. Now THAT was sweet. That's another thing that I heavily recommend if you have a nice gaming rig: to be able to hook it up to an HDTV via HDMI or DVI + optical audio and using a wireless keyboard and mouse combo (like the Logitech MX3200 laser mouse/keyboard combo that I have) to play your favorite games. I've never done anything quite like it, since hooking a laptop up to a standard definition TV with crappy resolution is far from being the same.@BuffaloHelp: I know the feeling... it took me a lot of patience in holding off to purchase this HDTV, but I'm glad that I did. Technology is such a blur when it comes to things becoming obsolete in the short time span of a few months, but I think that getting an LCD HDTV or a LED LCD HDTV would be the way to go, unless you don't mind aiming for a plasma HDTV (which isn't a bad choice either). Having done my research, the LED LCD HDTVs are more expensive, but they do provide power savings, deeper blacks, and I believe that they are even thinner than regular LCD HDTVs if wall mounting is a viable option for you. With that being said, a regular LCD HDTV is still a pretty sweet deal and you could get away with what I got, non-LED, for probably at least $500 less... and to be honest, unless you're a videophile, I wouldn't be able to tell any immediate differences in picture quality between the two. Maybe July will bring lower prices to the LED side of things, so it would be more of a budget-friendly spring towards the latest and greatest.I didn't even look into the size of the subwoofer. Of course, larger is better... if you like bass. And when I can feel the rumble of the lightning storms during Pixar's Up and "feel" the gunshots and explosions during Black Hawk Down, I come to figure that I like bass.

We all saw how well Windows 7 worked out for Microsoft when they let everyone beta-test the software before it came out. It showed that it was a much different and better operating system, let users provide feedback and essentially detect bugs FOR Microsoft, let Microsoft see what people were using their computers for and with as far as third-party software and hardware, and basically let Microsoft build an operating system inclined for the user instead of going out and keeping everything under-wraps until release. I'm guessing that it's not so much that Microsoft is being generous, but moreso ingenious in the way that it approaches beta testing and aiming for the final, finished product.What's new about Office 2010? The website didn't work for me at all, even when I had NoScript to allow scripts globally. Looking at Wiki, I saw that they're refining things and making a debut with free online versions of Office programs, incorporating SharePoint to a whole new degree, and supporting ODF and pushing OOXML, and basically making it shinier and prettier, but is there anything else that I'm missing? Would it really be worth getting when most of us are good with Office XP and Office 2007?

So I guess I'm kind of a tech geek and of course, I've been eye-balling the possibility of getting myself and the family a real home theater system. It's been on the back burner for the longest time, and I was hesitant to do it since I would have to purchase on credit, but I guess I just joined the flock of Americans who are glad to be in debt and have made the leap to HD. I've been pretty content with our standard 32" brick and rigged it with my PC's 2.1 speaker system, but I knew that one day I would want to get ourselves the spiffy setup I've always planned to do. For the longest time, I've poured over blogs, articles, reviews, and the like, building dream systems and, of course, upgrading those dream systems with no real action, being patient enough to wait. I'm not sure why I finally gave in and bought it now, but I decided to jump in with a brand new 46" Samsung UN46B7100 LED LCD HDTV and an accompanying Samsung BD-1250 HTIB (Home Theatre In a Box). I bought them both from Best Buy online and opted for the in-store pickup, which, after hearing such horror stories, I was actually pleasantly surprised and satisfied with. I bought them during the day, received my e-mails confirming that they were ready to pick up, then left at about 7:00PM to pick it up. I got to the store at about 8:30PM, grabbed some HDMI and optical cables (which are scary-expensive, but I couldn't wait to set it up and I'm planning on returning them once my cables from Monoprice come in), and after playing some receipt mix-up, we fit this 46" beast and the sound system boxes into my Honda Civic. (Yes, it fit.) It was a crappy ride, but I think I was giddy enough not to care that I finally got home at around 11:30PM. The HDTV box was very long and unwieldy at 50 lbs, but even being the scrawnier type that I am, I managed to bring it into the house without too much trouble. (The HTIB was a piece of cake: light and manageable.) I dug into the HDTV box first, carefully sliding the HDTV out and laying it flat on the floor. I took the stand out next and started to assemble it, which was easy: two parts, four screws. The tricky part was to pick up and hold the LCD, set it onto the stand, and then screwing it to the stand, and trying to pick up a very wide 50 lb object wasn't exactly very graceful, but doable. I finally picked up the whole thing and set it on our entertainment center, then started to work on reducing the existing clutter of wires I already had and taking away the ghetto 2.1 sound system and other stuff. I worked on the HTIB next, unpackaging everything and placing the speakers and the main unit where I wanted it on the entertainment center. Since it would have been hell to tear up the carpet to route my rear surround speaker wires underneath, I'm going to opt for the optional SWA-4000 accessory, which is basically the fancy model name for a wireless receiver unit for the rear speakers. I guess it's not too shabby for $80, but we'll see when it comes in. Right now, I only have the front and center speakers hooked up, along with the subwoofer. Surrounded by styrofoam, plastic, and twisty-ties, I hooked up the component cables from my Xbox 360 to the HDTV, hooked up an optical cable from the 360 to the BT-1250 main unit, and fired everything up. First thing I did was adjust the Xbox 360 settings for HDTV component input and at a 16:9 aspect ratio. The user interface, as dated as it is, became awesome again. The high-definition was clearly noticeable, and I couldn't wait to test something out. For my Xbox 360, I formatted a 500GB hard drive and stored my movies on it to act as a digital library that I could access with my Xbox 360. It works really well, and I recommend that if you are looking to doing this to do it, because the convenience is great and the access to your movies is very easy and painless. (The only painful part is converting movies that don't work to formats that the 360 will accept, but that's another story.) The reason why I brought up the hard drive is that most of my movies are 700-900MB files compressed with xvid or DivX, which, of course, is lossy, resulting in pretty decent but obviously lower quality video. What happens when you take a 700ish by 500ish video and blow it up to fit a 1920x1080 screen? Expecting this, I didn't really care too much and fired up... Pixar's Up. And boy, was I in for a rude awakening. Up looked great. I'm not sure how to explain it, but the Samsung HDTV's 120Hz MotionPlus dejudder processing made a HUGE difference in reducing blur and smoothing out the video in such a way that I could have sworn that I was watching a slightly-hampered quality version of it straight from Blu-Ray disc. It was crazy. I mean, it was obvious that it was a compressed video, but if you sat back on the couch and watched the movie, you most likely wouldn't even notice the characteristic "blocks" of compressed video. It was literally that good. (For reference, my digital copy of Up is 701MB, MPEG-4 DivX 5 720x400 @ 880Kbps, MP3 2 channels @ 128KBps.) I let Up play in the background for a while during my half-arsed clean-up. After the boxes and the packaging was put away in the basement (because I never throw anything away because I'm a pack rat), I sat down on the couch and fired up Black Hawk Down. Now THAT was surreal. Seeing the soldiers move and the action exploding on-screen was like watching the actors acting out scene by scene right in front of me, again thanks to the 120Hz MotionPlus dejudder processing. It was almost "too real," which took away the "film look" that I was accustomed to seeing, so I set the HDTV to a custom mode where I reduced the amount of dejudder processing to retain a good bit of the "film look" but also reap in some benefits of the 120Hz drive. Keep in mind that Black Hawn Down was another compressed video, but with the amount of face-paced action, I didn't even notice any compression artifacts. (This video was slightly worse though: a 1.05GB video file, MPEG-4 XviD Advanced Simple @ L5 608x248 @ 856Kbps, MP3 2 channels @ 126Kbps.) My final thoughts? I'm glad I jumped into HD so far. I know it's only been a day and I haven't even sat through a whole movie yet, but I am clearly impressed. The sound system has to wait for a better review, since I have to get the wireless receiver and have the time and opportunity to watch a movie within the experience. One of these days, it'll be nice to be able to sit down and watch a good war movie like Saving Private Ryan at full volume. Until then, it's back to the daily grind for me.

You forgot to actually list how much it was. Looks like a damn solid system in my book. Future-proofed with the quad-core with a good clock speed, plenty of HD space with 1TB AND at 7200RPM, 4GB of RAM... pretty darn good. The graphics card is up there on the higher end, so you can expect smooth frame rates (60+ FPS with high quality, 4xAA, 4xAF) with the latest games. What puzzles me is that this beast has DDR2 RAM. I would think that it would have that stepped up as well, but maybe it's one of the ways how this system is priced lower than what you would expect. No concern here, though... the only notable differences between DDR2 and DDR3 is a "theoretical" doubled performance (increased bandwidth), power consumption (and savings), and price (DDR3 almost doubling in price compared to DDR2). 4GB of DDR2 RAM, especially coming from 512MB of DDR2 RAM, will be a world of difference already to you, and I wouldn't sweat over not having DDR3 just yet. I wouldn't worry about not having "HD Audio" either, since you're not concerned with hooking this thing up to a surround sound system. Most stock onboard audio processors are pretty good to begin with nowadays. LightScribe is just that: a gimmick. I believe I have one on my laptop and have yet to use it, but then again, I don't really burn CDs/DVDs. Maybe I should use it instead of slapping my fancy labels using a Sharpie, my steady hand, and my consistent inability to figure out where to start writing to center the label, but then I think about having to go out and buy LS-specific CDs and DVDs when I already have a million blank CDs right here at home... it seems like more work than it should be. But you get a pretty wicked good-looking CD/DVD that you shut the case on and never look at again (or find again), so it's really up to you. You could burn a pretty cool library of your favorite shows to DVD, in which case the LightScribe'd discs would look much better than ye ole Sharpie... No one can ever have enough USB ports. I think you're already good with just two in the front, since you have four in the back. And if you really need more, I'd throw in a USB hub to expand it in the back. Card readers are handy only when you need them. I know that sounds kind of obvious, but I know that most people don't ever use their card readers and they serve more as a great home for dust bunnies. This is something else I wouldn't sweat since you can plug a camera in directly into a computer and use IT as your card reader.

I think it's funny how people complain about FREE stuff.I never had any real problems with RapidShare. It was annoying that you could only download one file at a time and that you had to wait a certain amount of time afterwards (depending on the size of the last file you downloaded), but it was FREE. Of course RapidShare is going to want you to pay for their stuff... because on their end, none of the services they provide are free of charge to them. They're already doing YOU a favor by letting YOU use their services for FREE to see if you like it, and if you do, you can pay for it. My wife tried out MegaVideo and has been using it free for the longest time, but the 62 minute time limit drove her nuts, so she paid the $10 for a month's unlimited use... because it was a good service in her eyes. It's just how it is, and it works (evidently in this case).Being limited to a 100MB upload kind of stinks, but with millions of users probably uploading all of their crap, you can understand why there should be a cap to how much you can upload at a time, not to mention the expiration dates for files that don't seem to be of interest to anyone. If it takes two months for just ONE user in the entire world to keep a file alive, I think the 60 day expiration date will be fine.If you're unwilling to pay for your crap, feel free to go to another service or get your fix in another way, or figure out a workaround to make it free for yourself.

For those of you who own laptops, I strongly urge you take a look at the Prey Project. The Prey Project is, simply put, a way for you to flag stolen laptops and possibly figure out who stole your laptop and where it is (somewhat). What happens is that you go to the web site, register, and download a small application that you set up and sync with your unique device ID and your account, set up your parameters, and forget about it. If there is ever the chance that your laptop goes missing, you can go online to flag that device as missing, in which the application, which is always "checking in" with a server every X minutes (which you set the interval when you set the program up), will do a multitude of things every X minutes: take a screenshot, use the laptop's built-in webcam to try to take a picture of the suspect, leave a message for the perpetrator (optional), and report its IP address (which leads to the vicinity of where the laptop actually is). It's a pretty amazing program, and I strongly suggest that everyone take a serious look into what the Prey Project can offer you. Of course, there are a few drawbacks. The laptop obviously has to be online for this to work, but since Prey runs invisibly in the background, the thief will not know unless he or she is savvy enough to shut it down within 2 minutes (which is the shortest interval between actions), and that's IF he or she even knows it's there. The thief could very well just disassemble your laptop and sell it for parts or do a straight format from the get-go, but most thieves keep the laptop for themselves and don't think to take measures to prevent this sort of thing or do an immediate search for personal info on the laptop, which gives Prey enough time to get the information you need. While this may not be pinpoint accuracy in finding your laptop and bringing justice to the person who deserves it, it gives more hope than wringing your hands for days on end, wondering why you ignored that post on Xisto describing something that could at least help you track your stolen laptop.

I bought a cheap Altec Lansing 2.1 speaker set at least a few years back that still surprises me today at how well it holds up. It's gone from my desk now but acts as my "ghetto" sound system for my TV until I can afford to get a 5.1 surround sound system with a real HDTV, and I wish I could share with you the model but I can't seem to find it anywhere. I picked them up for $25 and they are excellent when it comes to gaming on my laptop and pretty good for movie-watching on the tube.

I know most of your questions have already been answered, but I'll throw these little tidbits anyway. Check out [url="http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Hardware[/url]http://forums.xisto.com/ to compare graphics cards and their performance benchmarks with games at different settings, as well as seeing what will be the best bang for your buck. I wouldn't worry so much about compatibility with Windows 7, since there's always compatibility mode. I would understand if older games wouldn't work (like Windows 95 or MS-DOS games), but there's always a workaround. (I've gotten Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries to run on XP, and that's good enough for me since Windows 7 has XP mode... if you're willing to cough up the extra cash for Ultimate.)

1.) The lag with cause-and-effect has to be server lag. I wouldn't imagine that DICE would have it as acceptable to have even a quarter of a second before "drawing" the desired effect on a sprite or affected surface. Your tank example reminds me of what I hated about Halo 2 on XBL when I played: going toe-to-toe with shotguns, firing, then waiting to see if you or the other guy died.2.) Fallout 3 has a decent system with limb damage, although it's not perfect. (If you shoot someone in the arm, they can drop their weapon, but after cradling their arm for a bit, they "go back to normal," pick up their weapon, and go back at shooting at you.) Not sure if anyone knows about Soldier of Fortune 2, but it had the Ghoul engine where you could selectively shoot limbs off (although this killed the target no matter what you shot off). If there was a nice balance where you could hit limbs and hamper the target's abilities to hold their weapon to steady it, run, etc., and if there was the option of complete incapacitation of a limb, I think it would be neat.3.) When a tank fires, there's a flash of flame, followed by smoke and a very, very loud BOOM. I haven't seen the tank effects of BC2 yet, but if it's anything like you described it, that's pretty realistic. Also, C4 explodes in the same way where there's a flash of fire, but mostly smoke and the dust it kicks up. (I speak from experience.) 4.) I think that they should keep the absence of the health bar but lose the regeneration. Have sound effects cue you in on your health condition, like heavier breathing, heartbeat, etc.5.) Agreed. I can't remember how many times in how many games I was shot at with a rocket, cringing and expecting immediate death, only to realize that my health dropped 50% at most. (I'll just keep in mind that in real life, I can survive 2 RPGs.) I think Doom 2 was the only game I can remember that I was pretty much dead if a Rocket Demon came my way.6.) HMMWVs are fun to drive, but they get stuck almost too easily in stupid situations like mud. Maybe DICE had the right idea. Dry, rough terrain shouldn't be too much of a problem with the HMMWV, though.7.) I'm surprised this wasn't changed.8.) Here's the toss-up: you can go for realism here or go for fun. A tank is not an easy thing to fix, and if you screw up the armor on that bad boy, you're taking off those armored skirts and replacing them. If you throw track, you're spending a day fixing that. If anything penetrates the armor AND into the interior, that tank is pretty much done for. An engine overhaul is no small feat either. As far as "tank fights" go, it's really who gets who first, because there's no recovery from a tank blast. Once that 105mm sabot round hits, it will penetrate and destroy the other tank. A single Javelin round will destroy a tank. A well-placed RPG round could probably destroy a tank in one hit, if not damage it. They should correct those damage points and take away that stupid drill. That would keep the fire superiority of the tank but also keep the opposing team with the necessity of having an anti-tank weapon at all times.I've been asking for realism from first-person shooters for a long time... and it's been a long time coming. However, I still have fun with what the games nowadays have to offer. I think that the best shooters, if you want to call them that, I've played to date would include Fallout 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. I've played a little bit of Crysis too, but for some reason, I wasn't drawn to it as much as I thought I would be for some reason.It's a tough call when it comes to realism, because you have to figure how much realism you want in the game before it starts to complicate things. Do you really think that every magazine you pick up in a battlefield is full? Shouldn't every magazine be different in how many rounds are in it? When you reload and put in that fresh magazine of 30 rounds into your M4, did you really take the time to take the rounds out of all the other magazines and fill that one up to 30? Is every magazine that you pick up perfect and won't jam your weapon? Will you really know how many rounds are in your magazine (unless you keep an accurate, mental count in the heat of battle)? Could you really physically carry 800 rounds of 5.56mm? (That stuff gets pretty darn heavy, let me assure you... not to mention 20 lbs in armored plate, the weight of all of your gear, the weight of your weapon, your kevlar, your equipment, etc.) And that's just the magazines... I didn't even touch on retaining natural night vision (30 minutes after you take off your NVGs, unless you use PVS-14s, which are monocular) or anything like that.

Think about it this way:Almost everyone has a cell phone or will have one. Cell phones are becoming more and more of a part of our daily lives, not just as a communications device but an entertainment one as well. With the vast amount of things you can do with smart phones and the direction that cell phone companies are taking in saturating the consumer market with rich digital media, mass storage, and whatnot, HDTV via a cell phone with mass storage would almost be something that makes sense.Think of the infamous iPhone, which, despite AT&T's efforts to struggle with the data bandwidth that iPhone users are straining the network with, still is popular and can store your pictures, movies, and music. Wouldn't it be convenient to be able to go over to someone's house, talk about the day, get around to talking about family, then whipping out your iPhone 7GS, connecting it to your buddy's HDTV (wirelessly or by wire), and share photos of your kids in full HD? (It would literally replace taking pictures out of your wallet to pass around.)Or if you had a few or a dozen HD movies stored on your phone and had access to a HDTV, you could just stream or play the HD content to the HDTV.Or what-have-you.

ShadowX has a pretty good detailed post over there... I'd just junk the bad keyboard and get another one, but I know how it is when $20 is a lot of money. (Believe me, I'm still there.) I didn't post detailed instructions because every laptop is different, but for the most part, there's a bezel piece you remove with a screwdriver (carefully, unless you like broken pieces of plastic), get to and undo the (usually 2) bolts that secure the keyboard to the laptop, then sliding and lifting (gently and slowly) the keyboard upward to get at the ribbon cable to disconnect it from the motherboard. Replacement is the same deal in reverse, although be careful that you actually insert and secure the ribbon cable correctly; otherwise, the keyboard won't function. (I would boot the laptop up and test the keyboard before replacing the bolts and the bezel.)Of course, grounding is important before disassembling or handling any PC component, since a simple static charge can kill your lovely pieces of silicon. (That multi-hundred dollar graphics card can be turned into a useless piece of junk in less time than you can blink.) I usually touch the case of a desktop machine if I'm working on one, and with laptops, I keep a part of my hand or arm on one of the metal pieces of the laptop case while I work. There are anti-static wristbands, and I'm sure they work well, but I don't even wear the one I bought because it likes to get in the way of things, not to mention that it doesn't like staying where I clamp it.@Ash-Bash: My wife used to love keeping her coffee mugs ON the palm rest of her Dell. Stupid? Yes. Did she still do it? Yes. Did they spill on the laptop? Yes... three times. Third time was a charm, and it "died." Fortunately, opening it up, letting it dry, cleaning it up, and reassembling brought it back to life. Now I have her put her coffee AWAY from the laptop, which does have unfortunate side effects with six cats running amuck. My advice here, though, would be to have a wooden or folding chair next to your workstation and putting your delicious beverages on it so that even if it does get knocked over, only the chair and floor gets wet (and wall, in some cases... unless you like "ye 'ole coffee drip wallpaper").I also like to put my drinks BEHIND my laptop so I can't knock it over, especially when that beefy arm of mine does a sweep over to the home keys. (I've done that once: a nice, tall bottle of water all over my work laptop. No harm, no foul... but work was definitely brought to a screeching halt.)

What do you mean by restore?I'm sure you know how, but I'm going to reiterate anyway in the case that you don't. Obtain the latest firmware AND previous releases online for your model of iPod and flash them using iTunes. (They are files with an IPSW extension. Use Google to find them online.) Plug in your iPod, open up iTunes to the default screen for your iPod (by clicking on your iPod under Devices on the left navigation bar), and either hold Shift and click on Restore for PC or hold the Option key and click on Restore for a Mac. This will bring up a dialog screen where you can locate your IPSW files by browsing for them. Try the latest firmware first, flash it, and see if everything's good to go. If not, try a previous release.Let us know how that goes for you. If you could, take pictures of your screens on your iPod to show us what you're dealing with. Be descriptive.

x2 on CPU coolers not being properly installed.It's a fail safe that I'm sure every motherboard has now. Although there may be other reasons for this to occur, this is the most likely case since the motherboard will employ the fail safe with the absence of an installed CPU cooler to prevent damage to the CPU. Read that manual, make sure everything "clicks" in place, and try again. Of course, this applies to CPU upgrades or new builds.There could be other problems that may require more troubleshooting. The PSU isn't always to blame. Sometimes, motherboards emit beeps from the system speaker that could clue you in to an error code. Consult your motherboard's manual, or get ahold of another PC to search online for solutions (obviously).If the computer is shutting itself off after a few seconds on boot or if it randomly shuts itself off abruptly (especially if it's a laptop), the problem is heat. Something is not keeping your computer cool for normal operation.For a desktop, you might want to make sure that ventilation isn't being blocked, restricted, or inadequate for normal operation. Add more fans, heat sinks (coolers), or consider a liquid cooling system. Remember that GPUs run pretty hot nowadays and that a GPU cooler can be beneficial. Of course, make sure that all this stuff will actually fit within your case.For a laptop, make sure that your vents aren't being blocked and that the fans are operating normally. Clean out any dust that may be impeding the flow of hot air outward. One of the larger culprits of keeping heat in your system is the horrible design of having vents on the bottom of the laptop. (Usually, people put their laptops on desks, beds, pillows, or what-have-you, rendering the fans and vents on the bottom of the laptop useless.) If you're going to locate your laptop on a desk or surface of some kind, elevate it. Do the simple solution and use card boxes or something stable to stand the laptop, making sure not to block the fans and vents in the process. You can get a laptop cooler (USB-powered or static), but they are mostly overrated and usually add to the problem. There are only a few of them that actually work as advertised... do your research if you decide to go with this route.

To all iGuest members that spilled something onto their laptops:I suppose I never addressed anything about residue.@AndyC: Sounds like your keyboard is pretty messed up since it's delivering input by itself alongside your external keyboard. What you should do is seeing if you can disable your laptop's keyboard by going through Device Manager and disabling it there, or turning your laptop off, unplugging it, disassembling down to just the keyboard, then disconnecting the ribbon cable to the keyboard so that you can't use it anymore. (It's a fairly easy process... look online for disassembly instructions for your make and model. MAKE SURE TO GROUND YOURSELF FIRST AND FOREMOST.) Either replace your keyboard (through your warranty or spending $20 on eBay or something) or continue with your external.@TeeKay: Cheapest route is to just go with an external keyboard. If you're not afraid of opening it up, I suggest you do that and clean as much Pepsi residue as you can from system components and making sure that it's relatively dust-free. (See the precautions I laid out for AndyC.) Most laptops are designed so that if there are any spills ON the laptop, all the liquid will pour off to the sides and away from the internal components as much as possible. I actually revived a presumed-dead Dell doing this: after three coffee spills over time, I disconnected it, drained it, let it dry, opened it up, cleaned off dried coffee residue and blew out dust, put it back together, and miraculously, it worked for over a year before I sold it on eBay to someone whom I know will be able to squeeze more years out of that laptop, provided it was taken care of.@Kenny: I'm guessing the last two posts were both by you. Same advice as above: open the laptop up (without battery and unplugged) after grounding yourself, clean up any visible residue, clean out the dust, reassemble.If you are not comfortable with opening up your laptop, find a friendly geek or a computer-savvy friend that can do it for you. They are actually not very hard to disassemble and reassemble, but I know it can be intimidating. (Believe me, I wasn't super-comfortable with my first time, but after I popped that cherry, it's cake now.)