Recent Posts

2026

Living Room / Re: Why I could never buy a Dell or HP computer (rant)

« Last post by Josh on June 04, 2008, 04:29 AM »

Deozaan, This has nothing to do with me being military. I am talking about systems I have purchased for my HOME USE, NOT BUSINESS.

2027

Living Room / Re: Why I could never buy a Dell or HP computer (rant)

« Last post by Josh on June 04, 2008, 12:19 AM »

I have to stand by dell. For the past two systems, I have purchased from them, learning my lesson about building a system on my own when it is not really my passion. Yes, I can build a system given the time, but time has become a valuable commodity to me with the military and my family. Dell's warranty services are the best, turn around time just shy of two days for a received new part on failure. Their system configurations on their website make it very easy for me to customize their systems to my exact needs.

Also, when it comes to "crapware", my last system had about 4-5 apps I had to uninstall. Given how often I reformat, about once every year or so, this is a very very negligible annoyance and one I will gladly put up with to obtain a system that I know will work, continue to work, and if it breaks I can have it fixed without any out of pocket expense. Bravo to you Dell

2028

Living Room / ENGADGET: 95% of returned products still work. Manuals not read

« Last post by Josh on June 03, 2008, 09:27 AM »

Blame it on poor usability or just not reading the frickin' manual, but it turns out that 95 percent of all returned gadgets actually work despite what customers may say or think. That's right -- of the $13.8 billion worth of returned products in 2007, only 5 percent were because gadgets were truly broken. According to Accenture, 68 percent of all returns work but aren't meeting customer expectations -- or they are simply too confusing to use. The other 26 percent are returned due to straight-up buyer's remorse (AKA significant other budgetary freak-outs). Accenture executive Terry Steger believes that the complexity of gadgets is to blame here, and not the fickle nature of American consumers who tend to give up on product setup within a few minutes. We believe this ia all actually due to the implicit nature of -- ooh, look at that shiny thing over there!

Source

2029

Living Room / Re: American Psycho

« Last post by Josh on June 03, 2008, 02:39 AM »

You see, the thing is this, in the movie people confuse bateman for several different people (Davis, Halberstram, etc). This leads me to believe that he very well could have killed all the people, however, no one would recognize him due to the fact that they are always confusing him for other people. His own lawyer confused him for a guy named davis. Paul Allen (Owen in the book) confused him for halberstram. So, I think he could have killed the people and can probably get away with it due to the fact that everyone confuses him for other people. Heck, his own lawyer said he had dinner with owen/allen in london which leads me to believe he also confused the man he had dinner with for paul owen/allen.

2030

Living Room / American Psycho

« Last post by Josh on June 03, 2008, 01:56 AM »

I have a question for those of you who have read the book and seen the movie. My question is this, did Bateman really kill the people shown in both versions? This has left me puzzled as I am 2/3 through the book and have examined the movie on numerous occasions. Does anyone have any input on this?

2031

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: A program to notify when audio is muted?

« Last post by Josh on June 02, 2008, 08:34 AM »

What about the sound icon in the system tray?

2032

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Disktrix's UltimateDefrag V1 released as freeware !

« Last post by Josh on May 31, 2008, 04:42 AM »

Curt, after scanning my WORK PC, I have 12 files over 4GB. So yes, it doesnt happen just on home pc's with DVD Images or game data files, but everywhere. Please, do not yell at people because YOU don't see a reason for a file over 4GB

2033

General Software Discussion / Re: Nero Vision replacement

« Last post by Josh on May 30, 2008, 10:07 AM »

Nero Vision is a video transcoder. Basically, it takes in video files from either MPEG or AVI format (maybe others) and converts them to a DVD IFO structure.

2034

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Disktrix's UltimateDefrag V1 released as freeware !

« Last post by Josh on May 30, 2008, 10:06 AM »

@*!& NO! I hate these guys. The fact that they charge you 7.50 for a document which details how to setup NTFS compression, which is freely available information, is a tactic I do not agree with.

DOWN WITH MOUSER.....errr...Disktrix!

2035

Find And Run Robot / Re: Urgent security notice for all FARR users

« Last post by Josh on May 27, 2008, 02:07 AM »

I blame mouser for this security hole! But again, even if it weren't his fault, I would blame him as well ;-)

2036

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Dynamic shortcuts

« Last post by Josh on May 26, 2008, 10:52 PM »

That would be an option I would like. A way to say "Poll for updated shortcuts every 30 minutes". Or even a program which sits idly waiting for a new drive to be inserted. Then, upon insertion, it scans that drive to see if said path exists and updated the shortcut accordingly.

2037

Find And Run Robot / Re: 10+ suggestions to make FARR the most interesting launcher

« Last post by Josh on May 26, 2008, 10:41 PM »

I think the number one suggestion should be changed to "The name of the launcher itself"

But seriously, great list. There are some really good ideas. Let me scrub through it again and I will modify this post to include which ones I think should be added to the ToDo list so we can get a running tally from users going!

On that note, 1300 posts!

2038

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Dynamic shortcuts

« Last post by Josh on May 26, 2008, 10:38 PM »

The problem with this is I would like to be able to run this on multiple PC's. This would require me have a batch file for every conceivable PC I use this on as path's change from PC to PC. I could use the %USERPROFILE% environment variable, however, some PC's I have access to do not allow those variables.

2039

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Dynamic shortcuts

« Last post by Josh on May 25, 2008, 11:46 PM »

I dont see why it shouldnt be possible. All that should be required is a program which monitors new drive letters, scans the drive for a given shortcut on the desktop's path, and then updates the shortcut accordingly.

2040

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Dynamic shortcuts

« Last post by Josh on May 25, 2008, 11:26 PM »

Actually, I am looking more for something that doesnt display an icon on the desktop for the thumb drive, but more updates an existing icon to point to a proper path for an application on a removable drive.

Say I have inserted a drive for the first time and made a shortcut on the desktop to D:\Apps\FirefoxPortable.exe

Now. I remove this drive and insert another which then becomes D:\. Now I reinsert the original drive at the same time as the other and now the original D:\ is now E:\.

I want a program that will change the properties of the existing shortcut to point from D:\Apps\FirefoxPortable.exe to E:\Apps\FirefoxPortable.exe

Is this possible?

2041

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Dynamic shortcuts

« Last post by Josh on May 25, 2008, 09:28 AM »

Here is an idea that I have had for a bit now. What if you could create a shortcut on your desktop that is updated, automatically, each time a thumb drive is put into the PC? That way, you can have a shortcut to firefox portable (FOR EXAMPLE), which points to D:\Apps\PortableFirefox.exe. Then, if you were to insert another thumb drive prior to inserting the one with FF Port on it, the shortcut would be updated to point to an updated path when the proper drive is inserted. Basically, you have a smart shortcut that can detect when you put the right drive in and have it change the shortcuts properties accordingly.

Is this a possibility?

2042

General Software Discussion / Re: Track a Stolen PC with Freeware LocatePC - Cybernetnews Essay

« Last post by Josh on May 25, 2008, 03:37 AM »

Carol, This already exists (The BIOS tracker). The us army and various other organizations work with OEMs to get this feature implimented in the bios. Even if you reset the bios by removing the CMOS battery, you still have that feature permanently enabled once its turned on for the first time.

2043

Living Room / Re: Digital Camera Help

« Last post by Josh on May 24, 2008, 11:55 PM »

iph: What does the Macro do for me? I am looking into it online and wanting to learn more. Also, what exactly is SLR, I know the net definition, but in reality what is it?

2044

Living Room / Re: Digital Camera Help

« Last post by Josh on May 24, 2008, 09:01 AM »

After looking around, this is the one I am looking at for my wife.

http://www.olympusam...uct.asp?product=1367

Any thoughts?

2045

Living Room / Re: The last time your AntiVirus saved you!

« Last post by Josh on May 24, 2008, 07:42 AM »

oldfart: How can you HONESTLY claim that you stay away from the back alley's of the internet? Surely donationcoder.com is one of the darkest walkways in the back alley of the internet!!!

2046

Living Room / Re: The last time your AntiVirus saved you!

« Last post by Josh on May 24, 2008, 07:02 AM »

I actually just purchased a 3 year license to adaware. Yes, it might use about 4-5MB more of memory for the main module, but it is highly accurate in my experiences. I am testing the A/V functions of it as well. As such, I have uninstalled NOD32 and am running soley on AAW. I will keep everyone posted on my results.

2047

Living Room / Digital Camera Help

« Last post by Josh on May 24, 2008, 01:39 AM »

To the community,

My wife recently informed me that she wants to get a new digital camera for the sole purpose of taking pictures of small objects with a good amount of zoom. Well, I know a bit about normal digital cameras, but I am looking for one with a better lens and that has a good zoom. I also need a camera which doesnt produce pictures with large amounts of grain or distortion/noise. This is a problem I have found with many digital cameras when you get into the larger megapixel range.

Now, I know I am being gulliable in this request (right word?), but is it possible to find a camera like this for around the 200-300 dollar price range?

Any recommendations are appreciated.

Josh

2048

Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?

« Last post by Josh on May 24, 2008, 01:00 AM »

Mouser: Can we split off the global warming discussion into another thread? It seems to have hijacked this one

2049

Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?

« Last post by Josh on May 23, 2008, 09:39 AM »

People who post reviews which are nothing more than summaries of what they read on another site rather than independent thoughts of their own. You see this running rampant on betanews.com and any anti-microsoft site where people take the word of someone else rather than checking into the issue at hand for themselves.

2050

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Synology DS207+ NAS

« Last post by Josh on May 23, 2008, 07:23 AM »

OK, this has got to be the best written review I've seen. And right at the time where I am briefing a commander on what type of redundancy storage device he should buy! THANKS!