Recent Posts

2826

General Software Discussion / Re: The OS that won't die!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 22, 2008, 11:41 AM »

Can I suggest you telephone MS to get a disc - it will save a lot of headaches as the MS website s***s in so many ways!

2827

General Software Discussion / Re: The OS that won't die!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 22, 2008, 10:59 AM »

Why can't you get an XP SP3 disc? Just slipstream a previous XP disc with SP3 ???

You can still buy copies too: http://www.amazon.co...nglish/dp/B0018RCADO

or contact MS who will supply a disc for a few pounds/dollars.

2828

General Software Discussion / Re: The OS that won't die!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 22, 2008, 10:10 AM »

I was just reading about that too on TechRepublic ...gotta make you laugh.

So system builders can sell XP until the end of June 2009 and net book manufacturers can see it for a year on top of that (orm a year after W 7 is released which ever is sooner).

Does this mean they are going to produce a version of W 7 that is lean enough to replace XP on net books? AT least that might be a step in the right direction (if they release it for everyone).

2829

General Software Discussion / Re: Corel PaintShop Pro Photo X2 Ultimate

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 22, 2008, 06:32 AM »

The academic price is basically the upgrade price anyway.

Adobe now seem to be offering two options (at least on their suites - not sure about individual apps). You can choose to have an even cheaper student version (with no upgrade rights and non-commercial usage) or the full version at academic price but which can be upgraded and used professionally.

The first makes a good offer during the course but the last is a good option if your studies are coming to an end.

Note you can only buy a product once during a 12 month period.

2830

Living Room / Re: How will the Earth end?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 20, 2008, 04:21 AM »

OK Deo  - I give up. The Earth is perfect as it is, humanity is brilliant and will solve all its problems. Global warming isn't happening, everyone loves living in a giant human toilet, no one really needs more water (OK some people might need more buckets to carry it where it is needed but they don't live in your street so it doesn't matter).

2831

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 20, 2008, 04:16 AM »

If you aren't gaming why not buy a motherboard with integrated graphics? There are plenty out there with something like dual a head GeForce 7300 built in. I was sceptical about this after the first motherboard I ever had came with integrated Intel graphics and wasn't great but the ASRock board I bought has a Geforce 7050 built in and it is fine (even with a couple of silly games I play).

The advantages are that it doesn't need yet another fan whirring, you can still use DVI and they don't generally waste as much RAM if you are using a 32 bit OS. From what I have seen it runs cooler to and leaves the whole case less cluttered.

What are the advantages of adding and extra graphics card if you aren't going to be pushing it?

2832

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 19, 2008, 03:27 PM »

Some WD owners say the drives are loud.  Some say they are quiet.  Same for Seagate.  One thing for sure seems to be that the 1.5 TB Seagate's are breaking down a lot.  So I will avoid those.

-superboyac (December 19, 2008, 03:20 PM)

I have quite a few WD Caviar drives and the noise levels vary. It isn't surprising that there is so much variation between users. Having said that it is probably true of all makes of drive to some extent - each device isn't (and cannot be) 100% identical in every respect - even if it is just the minutest difference in lubrication of bearings.

2833

General Software Discussion / Re: How can I dual boot between Vista and XP?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 19, 2008, 09:10 AM »

I have Windows XP, Vista 32 and Vista 64 all installed on the same machine without problems.

Did you install Vista after XP and with XP "visible" in the machine - in which case Vista should simply update the boot loader on the default boot drive to get access to both during startup.

If you changed things around so that XP and Vista are on separate discs and you made the disc the defualt disc for each OS before installing Vista than Vista may not have seen XP as it was not on the default boot drive. You can simply get around by that by telling your BIOS to show a list of bootable devices during POST and selct the correct drive for the OS you want. Usually there is a key to press for the BIOS device boot menu during POST.

2834

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: And... The Ultimate Steal makes a comeback

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 19, 2008, 08:34 AM »

OK - I didn't know that. Useful stuff

2835

Living Room / Re: R.I.P. Majel Barrett-Roddenberry

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 19, 2008, 06:52 AM »

I love the vending machine:

"Coffee - black!"

"Make it yourself"

2836

General Software Discussion / Re: Converting DRM protected music files: software recommendations

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 19, 2008, 06:29 AM »

Easiest way for MP4 is just to burn them to a CD in iTunes and then rip them back as MP3.

2837

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: EditPad Pro discounted at Bits du Jour on December 18

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 19, 2008, 04:34 AM »

Over now - but anyone notice that Backup4All is on 22nd December for $22.47 (46% discount)

2838

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 19, 2008, 03:19 AM »

Its interesting Seagate used to claim to be the quietest drives in the world but they acheived that by encasing the drive in acoustic damping materials which caused them to run alarmingly hot. I haven't used an internal Seagate drive for years (ever since I had a bad experience of them in a RAID setup where they ran at about 50% of the speed of a single drive) but have they got rid of the silly cladding now?

I have a number of Seagate external drives and they aren't particularly noisy (but they are far from silent).

2839

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: And... The Ultimate Steal makes a comeback

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 19, 2008, 03:14 AM »

I haven't actually installed Windows Server 2003/2008 yet (though I have downloaded it and got a key). Are you saying both 32 bit and 64 bit versions are on the same image because DreamSpark doesn't doesn't mention the installation type.

2840

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: And... The Ultimate Steal makes a comeback

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 18, 2008, 01:58 PM »

Now that is ambiguous - are they saying upgrades are not available or are they saying you can buy an upgrade but need to do a clean install?

2841

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: And... The Ultimate Steal makes a comeback

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 18, 2008, 08:11 AM »

It's also interesting looking at the listed versions of windows that qualify - I thought MS initially said that only Windows 2000 and XP qualified for upgrade prices to Vista?

2842

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: And... The Ultimate Steal makes a comeback

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 18, 2008, 03:43 AM »

I have to confess I bought the Vista 'upgrades' in this offer (shame I hear you cry).

The downloads are upgrade only (though there are techniques to generate ISO discs instead).

Having said that I opted to buy a physical disc. They are not actually 'upgrade' discs they are Vista Anytime discs and repectively contain all flavours of Vista on the 32bit and 64bit discs. They install absolutely as standard - not as upgrades though you can use them as an upgrade disc. I installed to a blank partition without even being asked for a qualifying product.

Interestingly with Vista (unlike XP) you can install for 30 days without even entering a product key but nevertheless you can use Windows update to fully update Vista during the 30 day period. With XP you can't really update it until you activate it.

This is a really good idea in Vista becasue it means you can completely set up your system before you activate and make sure everything is fine before you commit yourself to the activation process. At least then if anything goes wrong you can start again without having to call MS and explain what happened.

2843

Living Room / Re: How will the Earth end?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 18, 2008, 03:36 AM »

Oil production has pretty much reached it's peak, and will start to go downhill from now - and demands are going up (and remember that oil isn't just used for gasoline, but also for plastic materials etc).

-f0dder (December 17, 2008, 03:49 AM)

There's lots of untapped oil in Alaska. And OPEC just made drastic cuts to their oil production.

-Deozaan (December 17, 2008, 09:55 PM)

Those points may be true BUT it doesn't mean that the resource isn't limited and dwindling. There may even be undiscovered reserves of fossil fuel but there are a number of things that follow:

• Whether or not new reserves are found they are finite. Coal, oil and natural gas are the bedrock of modern society and few people in the world would disagree that at best recovering these resources is getting harder and harder as time goes on to the poijnt where some resources are deemed economically unviable. Ultimately people may find cheaper ways of tapping these resources but ultimately limited.
• The fact that new resources are found doesn't necessarily mean that it is morally acceptable to exploit them to the detriment of rare landscape and other species.
• Political games to maintain high profits (as currently exists in OPEC) is not an argument that resources are unlimited. OPEC ONLY exists to maximize profit for a cartel of producers. In any other sphere of international trade this behaviour would be considered illegal in most countries but because the countries have oil reserves they get away with it.

The final point also works in terms of international agricultural agreements. Back in the 80s the EU had policies to maintain high food prices. Basically they built food surpluses that were ultimately destroyed rather than sell them at a lower price to the starving millions in Africa. It wasn't that we really had excess food it was just profit orientated manipulation.

OPEC knows that their oil reserves are limited and use that fact to blackmail the world into giving them the maximum amount of money. Heaven help us all when the oil runs out ... that is when WWI and WWII will look like local skirmishes!

2844

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 17, 2008, 04:34 PM »

I have bought a couple of 24" BenQ monitors. Cheap and cheerful and no bad spots. The current models support Analogue, DVI and HDMI interfaces. I have been very impressed.

2845

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: HTML Code Auto-Complete for free

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 17, 2008, 02:35 PM »

Looks very nice and helpful. Thanks and happy Christmas.

(I moved your post to this board because it seemed a more appropriate location)

2846

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 16, 2008, 07:35 PM »

I just bought this case from Newegg.

CoolerMaster CM 690

-Cloq (December 16, 2008, 06:01 PM)

That looks like an awesome case.  I'm going to go with it unless I come across something better.  Thanks!

-superboyac (December 16, 2008, 07:09 PM)

Is it me or is it a bit odd to have the power supply at the bottom of the case under the motherboard? Two things strike me:

• first heat rises so the PSU will add to mobo heat (OK with a cood PSU and a decent fan it shouldn't be a big problem but it is an odd placement)
• second all the cables to connect to the motherboard are likely to have to cross the motherboard and this will disrupt air flow and hence cooling. It is to be hoped that the DVD power cables are long enough to stretch that far - but generally the ATX power socket is towards the top of the board or the right of the board so the thick cable is likely to be in the way of any air flow from front to rear fans????

What do others think?

2847

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 16, 2008, 06:40 PM »

That is rather a sad experience. I had a bad stick once and they exchanged it within 3 days with no questions asked. I just told them I set the system to default (conservative) settings and ran MEMTEST+ and it came up a nuumber of errors. They said sorry and replaced it instantly.

I have to say I like Crucial memory too and their lifetime return policy is also excellent (and easy to use). The only reason I suggest Corsair is that Crucial's memory is never able to be pushed as hard as Corsair's. Plus the Corsair sticks had nice cooling built in whereas most Crucial stuff is just bare chips (unless you pay megabucks).

2848

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft updates - annoying folder proliferation

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 16, 2008, 07:41 AM »

Interestingly after my intial post I got a slew of Windows Updates. If you update through windows update you see nothing but if you manually download the patches then you see them unpack the files to a randomly named route level folder on the disc with the most space (I presume that is the criterion for choice as it seems pretty random and seem particularly stupid to select external USB drives!).

2849

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 15, 2008, 07:29 PM »

Re: USB drives - I quite like the Seagate FreeAgent range. They are USB2 only but I have two (500Gb and 750Gb, but they now do 1Tb+ models) and they work fine.

If the motherboard you buy supports eSata you may prefer to look at external drives or enclosures that support eSata.

Have you thought of 1Gigabit access NAS with RAID 1 as a viable backup medium? You could wire it up in the garage so that it is in a separate location or you can get NAS enclosures that allow external USB2 drives to be attached and stored offsite so you could have the best of both worlds, plus the NAS setup would allow you to access the drives from any computer (including via the internet if you want/need that). Lots of the new NAS systems are effectively a file server with automated torrent downloads (without computer) and printer server functionality too.

2850

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 15, 2008, 07:22 PM »

Memory: Corsair isn't the cheapest but is good and comes with a lifetime no quibble warranty.

I agree with Mouser - what is the point of getting more than 4Gb at the current time - there is hardly any software that takes advantage of 4Gb let alone 8Gb and getting 8G of matched memory is going to cost you an arm and a leg.

Having said that when you decide on a motherboard check out the manufacturer's website and they will have a list of memory modules that have been tested and certified to work.