Recent Posts

401

Living Room / Re: which is more important, system ram or video ram?

« Last post by techidave on February 07, 2011, 06:22 AM »

it was on xp media center but I blew it away because it was slow.  I have xp pro on it now.  your right, it is a sluggish system.  5400 rpm with a 2 meg buffer on the hard drive and not much ram.

originally with all the HP games that was loaded on it, made it extremely slow and had spyware on it even when I restored to factory defaults.   

402

Living Room / Re: which is more important, system ram or video ram?

« Last post by techidave on February 07, 2011, 05:23 AM »

One of the reasons I am asking is this.  A client brought me their Compaq laptop, a V5000 Presario.  It had 512mb of Ram with 128meg allocated to video.  I know to increase it it to 2 gig (max) would help but she wants to put her money into a new one.  Understandable.

So the question is do I adjust the video ram to 64 meg or 32 meg (only other options)? I would to help it out as much as possible.  they only use it to do email, internet, photos of the grandkids.  Nothing intensive.

403

Living Room / which is more important, system ram or video ram?

« Last post by techidave on February 07, 2011, 03:24 AM »

I was looking to try and find out what is more important in a computer... system RAM or video RAM?  especially on those with onboard video and have a limited amount of memory.

I found the following in searching Google and wanted to see if others agree with it.  But it basically convers most of the componets in a computer:

CPU first
RAM second
HD third
Video Card fourth

CPU does the thinking
RAM Transmits that thinking
HD stores the info
Video card displays i

404

Living Room / Re: IE6 Effects

« Last post by techidave on February 01, 2011, 07:41 PM »

That's bad!!  but I liked it

405

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Block/Unblock all network traffic button (one-click)

« Last post by techidave on February 01, 2011, 12:21 PM »

Nice find 40hz!  just to let others know that the download from Micrsoft is a zip file that should be extracted to the system32 folder.  I d/l the file and then when I tried to run it, it wanted to unzip it.  Looks like there is a 32 and 64 bit version plus the eula.

406

General Software Discussion / user options for audio in win7

« Last post by techidave on February 01, 2011, 04:00 AM »

does win7 support different audio options for each user?  I usually have mine muted but have noticed that the kids will unmute and turn theirs up so then mine is also now unmuted. 

I do not see any options on the sound card software.  I have not found anything on google yet. maybe someone would/could write a small program to just this. 

407

General Software Discussion / Re: computer system info software

« Last post by techidave on January 29, 2011, 05:46 PM »

yeah it does show the keys within the program.  but on the reports it doesn't, at least in the latest build.  you have to buy the pro version to get some of that kind of stuff.  I am using the portable version 2010.7.14.0

408

General Software Discussion / computer system info software

« Last post by techidave on January 29, 2011, 01:59 PM »

I have been looking at all the software out there like Belarc Advisor, SIW, PC Wizard 2010 to name a few.  I really like the output that Belarc gives but it isn't quite as detailed as say SIW is.  SIW will let you save in HTML but it won't show you the licensing keys.  Most of the freeware stuff won't give you a report which is what I really want.  I am wanting this to run on some of my client's computers just so I know what they have.

I don't know if this is possible or not but would like to see it find information on the display and keyboard on laptop so that I don't have to open them up to get the part information off of them so that I can order new ones.  maybe there is another way of getting this info.

Some of these programs give way, way too much info for me.  All I want is a summary.  But would like for it to also tell me the RPM speed of the hard drive and the buffer size as well as the model and make.

maybe there is something out there that I haven't stumbled across yet or perhaps this would be a coding snack (big one?).  

any ideas?

oh yeah, i forgot.  It needs to be portable

409

Living Room / Re: why is it so difficult to pick out a new computer?

« Last post by techidave on January 24, 2011, 10:09 AM »

I understand wraith, but in this case I have client that I am not sure he knows how to purchase anything off the internet.  In this case it will be easier for me to buy it, mark it up some, and then set it up for him.

410

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is System Restore not placed the proper place?

« Last post by techidave on January 24, 2011, 05:58 AM »

I have a few Dell Vostro 3500 laptops that take a rather hard tap on the F8 key to go into safe mode and also a hard tap on the F2 key to get into the BIOS.

If you just tap softly, then it will give you the impression that the F8 doesn't work.   

411

Living Room / Re: why is it so difficult to pick out a new computer?

« Last post by techidave on January 23, 2011, 04:41 PM »

Thanks for the tips.  some of them i was aware of and some of the stuff I wasn't.  After doing a quick search on the Asus system that Carol mentioned, it appears its not available in the US.  Asus motherboards are but not those type of barebone systems.  I can find Asus m/bs in a different case on Tiger Direct but those Power Up cases are not getting very good reviews.

Somebody correct me if I am wrong.

412

Living Room / Re: why is it so difficult to pick out a new computer?

« Last post by techidave on January 22, 2011, 09:31 PM »

I have purchased from Geeks before.  It looks like most of their stuff is refurbs, which in my opinion are too high priced for a slightly used computer as compared to a new one.

413

Living Room / Re: why is it so difficult to pick out a new computer?

« Last post by techidave on January 22, 2011, 09:25 PM »

4wd.. your prices are Australian dollars, correct?

AU$421

414

Living Room / Re: why is it so difficult to pick out a new computer?

« Last post by techidave on January 22, 2011, 08:45 PM »

$400 to 500 or so and for my builds and the online builders it was around $700 or more. 

415

Living Room / why is it so difficult to pick out a new computer?

« Last post by techidave on January 22, 2011, 08:19 PM »

I have a client wanting to purchase a new desktop computer.  It will be used basically for only email and web surfing.  So I went looking to see if I could come up with a good deal for them.  I looked at the price of buying a system as well as the possibility of me building one.  But when I compare an HP, Dell to what I can build one for, mine is several hundred dollars higher and I haven't even tacked on any labor yet!

I am not talking about a high end machine either, but wanted something to last them a number of years.  I realize that I cannot compete with the big guns but I would think some of the system builders would be more competitive than they were.  My findings were they were only a few dollars cheaper than my build.

I have looked on the online stores of officemax, walmart, dell, HP, newegg, tigerdirect, zipzoomfly to name a few.  Plus I looked on pricewatch also.

My specs were an Intel D55PJ board running i3 3.02 ghz and 4gb of ddr3 ram and a 500 or 750gb WD 7200rpm-32mb hard drive.  Also a decent case like a Antec 4482 case.

Am i missing something here or is this just the way it is???

416

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Wireless sensor

« Last post by techidave on January 17, 2011, 07:06 AM »

Thanks for trying 4wd.  I know you gave it your all!  Thanks to Stoic Joker for all his input too!  Perhaps in the future it will be possible. 

417

Living Room / Re: Startup Applications List: Executables that do/dont need to boot with windows

« Last post by techidave on January 17, 2011, 07:03 AM »

Hopefully someone can block the china on sale spammers. 

418

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Snap DB

« Last post by techidave on January 11, 2011, 06:41 PM »

Sorry, I was being lazy.  Yes, the tips do showup when you mouserover the icons.  haven't tried the new version yet.

419

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Snap DB

« Last post by techidave on January 11, 2011, 06:37 PM »

do the toolbars have the tips on the mouseover?  if so, I think that I can make that work.

420

Living Room / Re: Spokeo - new stalking social networking site?

« Last post by techidave on January 10, 2011, 08:25 AM »

thanks for telling us about this!  I was able to remove myself as well.

421

Finished Programs / Re: Utility: Convert Multiple Columns in Excel to a Single Column

« Last post by techidave on January 10, 2011, 06:35 AM »

Nice Renegade and Thanks for sharing!

This will come in handy at my school since I have users who aren't tech savy enough to do the concatenation feature.  Heck, I don't use it all that much because I find it too time consuming.  But heck, I have to look up how to do it each and every time I want to combine a few columns.

This will make it so much easier!

422

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Snap DB

« Last post by techidave on December 30, 2010, 10:42 PM »

ok, skwire here are some screenshots.  I decided to zip them to save space.  also included in the zip file are details of the screenshots.

423

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Snap DB

« Last post by techidave on December 30, 2010, 10:19 PM »

I was just playing with it again and if I make the window wider to get rid of the horizontal scroll bar then it works like it should.  how weird.

424

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Snap DB

« Last post by techidave on December 30, 2010, 10:15 PM »

i will try to give a screenshot but let me see if I can clarify it first.

by default snapdb gives you 4 columns.  If you create a new column to the left of any of the 4 original columns, then it works like it should.

if you add a new column to the right of the 4th column, then that is when I had the problems.

425

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Snap DB

« Last post by techidave on December 30, 2010, 04:47 PM »

whoops, may have found a glitch.

I added two columns after the default of 4 columns but there is no option to rename them or even add another new column on either side.  If I add a column to the right of the 4th column, then I get the option to rename it.

Add on:  I also cannot delete these columns