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7976

General Software Discussion / Re: installpad: automate your downloads and get latest versions

« Last post by f0dder on November 06, 2006, 08:12 AM »

http://installpad.com/ ? Sounds interesting.

Personally I use website watcher to monitor the download pages for software I use, but I guess it might be nifty to have it a bit more automated.

7977

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by f0dder on November 06, 2006, 08:04 AM »

I recently got an Antec Neo HE550EC - quiet and neat, and I love that it's modular. The voltage readings in the BIOS are still not what they should optimally be, though, so I'm guessing the BIOS just can't do readings properly (my system is stable, probably wouldn't be if the voltages were wrong). And after switching to the Antec, they don't really fluctuate anymore.

Hm, you got yourself a socket 939 - that is being phased out in favour of their new AM2 socket, so it might be difficult to find a CPU if you want to upgrade later on. Since you got s939 and not AM2, that also means your ram is DDR and not DDR2.

That being said, the system is probably pretty good bang for the buck. I had a 3500+ before ugprading to a 4400+, and that was a fine machine. But I've become addicted to dualcore and the overall better system responsitivity. Of course price wasn't an issue when I bought that CPU (ouch).

So: pretty decent box, probably very good performance/price ratio, but don't have illusions that it will be easy to upgrade (when is that ever the case, though? >_<)

Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB 3200KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM

Seems like a good choice. The WD disks are pretty silent and performant, from what I can tell. Just, as with all harddisks, remember to keep them cool. I made a mistake in choosing a mini-atx casing for the fileserver I built for the museum, which lead to heat problems... and one of the two WD320 disks dropping dead within a month. Good thing I ran raid mirror.

My current system could probably last some years, but I hope to set enough money aside that I can get a core2duo by March or April; the greatly reduced power consumption would be nice, main reason is that my brothers need a new box. They can't afford a brand new one, so I want to sell them this one cheaply.

7978

General Software Discussion / Re: The Dude! - free network monitor

« Last post by f0dder on November 06, 2006, 04:20 AM »

The city map thing looks pretty cute

7979

General Software Discussion / Re: IE7 Rant

« Last post by f0dder on November 06, 2006, 04:16 AM »

The reason why IE opens so fast is because explorer.exe is always running in the background. It's also the reason why all IE based browsers open fast.

If opera or firefox were always running in the background in a similar manner, they could be just as fast at opening.

-app103 (November 06, 2006, 04:12 AM)

Wrong - I use blackbox as a shell instead of explorer.exe, and xPlorer^2 as file manager. Besides, IE is "iexplore.exe" and not "explorer.exe", and it's just a shimmy for a bunch of DLLs anyway.

Also, Opera does obviously not use IE rendering components, but still starts up nearly as fast. Good code.

Oh yes, notice that I'm timing "second-time launches" of the browsers (otherwise FF isn't just a tad slower, but absolutely horrible) - where the necessary executables and DLLs will be in the filesystem cache...

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General Software Discussion / Re: IE7 Rant

« Last post by f0dder on November 06, 2006, 01:26 AM »

10seconds for starting FF sounds like a long time - probably related to dynamic bookmarks or whatever. It's not that bad for me, on a second-time launch of FF it takes around 2½ seconds before the main GUI pops up. With IE6, it's around 0.7 seconds (and pretty much the same level of instantness with other IE-based browsers).

It might be nitpickery to bitch against so short amounts of time, but it annoys me. There are some classes of applications that I don't mind take a bit of time to start, for example photoshop or vs.net. Or, well, the slow startup time still does annoy me, but it seems more justifiable there than with something as - relatively - simple as a browser.

Would you even be pleased if it was not "slow"? Face it, you dont like Firefox heh. Dump it.

I actually do like firefox, it's starting slowness just annoys me. And the symptomatic treatment is what really annoys me - hacks like preloading and minimize-instead-of-close, and then spending development time on stuff like form spell checker. Oh well.

Whats wrong with Opera? - not just a browser?

It has a few minor quirks... it's page caching is overly agressive, which is nice for speed - but means that there's often sites where I have to press Ctrl+R to get the page refreshed. Probably a problem with the site and not Opera, but the end result is the same - an annoyed end-user.

I've also had java-related crashed in Opera, and only Opera. Seemed to be a "first use of java after a computer reboot" kinda thing. Nothing major, but still annoying. And only happens with Opera.

Small rendering quirks here or there. Yes, probably with sites designed for IE. Less problems with FF though.

Built-in mail annoys me a bit, but it's not that bad. Built-in torrent support is awful and intrusive, though - took me too long figuring out how to turn it off.

It's a nice and fast browser though - around 1sec startup time on 2nd-time launches here. A bit slower than IE, but better than FF. The reason I use FF and not Opera is that there's a few more of those minor quirks in Opera than in FF, and because there isn't an extension system for Opera.

7981

General Software Discussion / Re: Your Computer Tip of the Day: Use "Save As" and Version your Documents

« Last post by f0dder on November 06, 2006, 12:49 AM »

subversion

7982

Site/Forum Features / Re: Top banner weight

« Last post by f0dder on November 05, 2006, 04:44 PM »

By reducing the image to 8bpp, the png shrinks to ~25kb. There's some color banding and stuff, but I think it's not *too* bad. If somebody did a bit of manual work instead of just reducing the color depth, I'm pretty sure an 8bpp and goodlooking version could be created.

7983

General Software Discussion / Re: IE7 Rant

« Last post by f0dder on November 05, 2006, 03:28 PM »

The infection was a while ago, can't even remember if it was before or after SP2 was released - probably after, though. Wasn't on myspace - not sure where the bug crept in, but it was while a friend borrowed my computer. Hotmail checking, a couple of forums - nothing dirty or whatever.

Pipelining and caching are nice features in firefox (and shame on people running outdated webservers that break with pipelining!), it certainly does make the browsing experience better. It's not just caching that makes FF gobble up ram, though - it does seem like there's some pretty sloppy code in there.

Why should Firefox be identical in use and startup time to a whole different product I dont really know.

-dk70

Because it's still "just a browser". Even a fresh install without extensions (ie, about as useful as vanilla IE) is still a good amount slower to start than IE. There isn't really any excuse for this - for FF2 they should've spent less time on stuff like forum speel hceking, and more on code cleanups.

I guess I should try out an optimized build sometime - but it "feels" a bit pointless, as I don't have problems with CPU usage, only the slow startup time. When there *is* high CPU usage, then it's because of java or flash, and you're not getting optimized builds of those

The "minimize instead of close" is symptomatic treatment instead of fixing the real problem - as a programmer, that's a pretty big insult.

7984

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by f0dder on November 05, 2006, 03:17 PM »

If I was to buy new motherboard today I would hunt down some user forums and check severity/local relevance of problems and what is being done about them.

-dk70

Yeah, you have to do this - I wish the motherboard makers would slow down a bit, have somewhat less products, but focus on stabilizing the stuff.

NVidia firewall was a good idea, but the implementation is horrible. I have no idea whether the problem is at the hardware level, or solely their drives. But drivers were certainly a mess - BSODs galore, ugly memory leaks, and then the "well, we'll install apache and keep it running for the config" - are some of the nvidia programmers on crack?

7985

Living Room / Re: What's better: modern built-in motherboard sound chip or old sound card?

« Last post by f0dder on November 05, 2006, 03:11 PM »

Thanks for the in-depth info, superticker!

I wonder how the (recent) onboard sound chipsets handle things like EAX effects. Certainly wasn't good some years back, I got BSODs if I enabled EAX in some games with onboard sound (and my terratec xfire had buggy drivers as well). It sounds like intel takes onboard sound pretty seriously.

7986

General Software Discussion / Re: IE7 Rant

« Last post by f0dder on November 05, 2006, 10:20 AM »

Well, I'm not going to install IE7 so dunno about it's speed - but IE6 loads *MUCH* faster than firefox, both 1.5 and 2.0, also on second-time loads when files are cached. FF also seems to be a bit slower at rendering, but that's hard to measure on fast CPUs - disk loadtime is not, though

Tabbed IE "addons" like Avant and Maxthon aren't slow with tabs, btw.

7987

General Software Discussion / Re: IE7 Rant

« Last post by f0dder on November 05, 2006, 09:52 AM »

Of course IE is attacked more than everything else, because of it's "marketshare" - that's a no-brainer. Heck, the other browsers might have just as critical flaws (though I somehow doubt it). Fact remains, though, that there are a lot of exploits for IE, and the are pretty damn nasty. Iirc, those ActiveX prompts could be bypassed when they were initially added - so much for security.

And there's a new exploit out too - http://it.slashdot.o.../11/05/0147245.shtml . Yay.

It sucks that IE is so full of nasty bugs, since it's so much more lightweight than firefox...

7988

Living Room / Re: What's better: modern built-in motherboard sound chip or old sound card?

« Last post by f0dder on November 05, 2006, 09:19 AM »

Onboard sound seems to have become pretty nice in the recent years - intel seems to have been doing a lot of nice work there.

Main problem with onboard sound is that it can be pretty noisy because of EMI... dunno if they've been able to fix that. I wouldn't mind getting rid of my Audigy next time I upgrade, creative aren't known for doing the best drivers in the world...

perhaps I shoudl just get a decent DAC and use digital out from my mobo, no noise there

7989

General Software Discussion / Re: IE7 Rant

« Last post by f0dder on November 05, 2006, 09:17 AM »

I don't give a about security in IE. IE security is never as bad as the media makes out, and even when it is bad only twits that surf garbage sites get hammered by that.

-Renegade (November 04, 2006, 08:22 AM)

It is bad. B-A-D, BAD. In a period some years ago where I didn't run any antivirus (because I don't surf garbage sites), I got infected. Probably through a banner ad, the best I can tell. Realized I was infected after I lost half of my JPEGs and a bunch of mp3 files...

IE is a piece of shit in so many ways. But it's fast and lean, and not because "it's built into the OS" as those anti-whatever zealots claim. But security wise, it's about as a watertight as a sieve.

7990

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by f0dder on November 05, 2006, 09:08 AM »

Hm yeah, the hardware firewall thing was extremely unstable - too bad, was a cute idea. Oh, and not only was it unstable, the it required a local install of the Apache web server for configuration - like, wtf?

And yes dk70, you're right about looking at specific products instead of a more coarse-grained blaime/praise thing. Personally, I just stay away from a few brands because I've had nasty problems with them... takes a while to regain trust, etc.

Oh, and while I'm not particularly pleased about the unstable ATi drivers, I do have to say that their multimonitor stuff is a bit better than nvidia - at least if you use rotation. When you enable rotation on a nvidia gpu, it feels as if the desktop that you rotate disables hardware acceleration...

7991

Living Room / Re: Download and play Sauerbraten (a.k.a. Cube 2), a free, open-source game

« Last post by f0dder on November 03, 2006, 05:18 AM »

That looks pretty nifty, especially for something free.

EDIT: runs very well here, GeForce6600 pci-e card.

Graphics are about same quality as quake - with cute bumpmapping and water shaders, but less advanced lighting I think. And q3 has 'curved surfaces', don't think this has.

Levels load blazingly fast.

7992

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by f0dder on November 03, 2006, 05:08 AM »

Well, there might not be problems with VIA and ATI chipsets these days, but I've been burnt too many times - only seriously (VIA chipset + data corruption - I think this was on a k6-2 with VIA) once, but minor stuff like sub-par performance other times.

AMD CPU + NForce chipset + GeForce is probably the best bang for the buck at the moment, although the radeons have somewhat better shader performance. But that won't matter as you aren't a gamer . I'm not touching ATi for a while, because of my bad experience with their drivers.

It's my (non-quantified ) experience that intel tend to make the best chipsets (they have had some issues, but the last I heard about were several years back). I'm currently on AMD64x2 and NForce4, but I hope to get myself a core2duo and intel chipset before Q3 2007 (younger brother needs a new box, might as well inherit mine and give me an excuse for getting a new one ).

For my old P4 system, I got an... SIS, I think... chipset because it supported faster RAM. Funny enough, though, the intel chipset at the time that had slower ram support outperformed the system - and the onboard raid was unstable, giving data corruption when reaching high speeds on striping (only ~5 bytes in a gig of data, but that's bad enough).

Depending on your graphics needs, if you decide to get a new box, onboard graphics might be good enough for you - it's not as shabby as it used to be.

7993

Living Room / XBOX360: one HOT console

« Last post by f0dder on November 03, 2006, 03:48 AM »

This image talks for itself, methinks


Cook An Egg on a Xbox 360!

7994

Living Room / Re: Now Mission Impossible fans can send "self-destructive" emails ...

« Last post by f0dder on November 03, 2006, 03:03 AM »

How lame

And too bad for people who are slow at reading.

7995

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by f0dder on November 03, 2006, 03:00 AM »

As for 32- vs 64-bit XP, I haven't yet seen any reason to install 64bit even though I have an AMD64x2 4400+. It's very little software that can take advantage of the additional address space, and the extra & wider registers don't help that much for much software. So unless you have some software you know can take advantage of 64bit, it isn't worth it yet imho.

-f0dder (November 02, 2006, 09:36 AM)

I was very disappointed to note that on my box which dual boots 32bit and 64bit XP that the 7zip internal benchmark ran faster under 32bit XP than under 64bit. In hindsight I should also have tested a 32bit exe running under 64bit XP, might do so later.

I never looked into this further, though it would be interesting to check out some other programs.

-Eóin (November 02, 2006, 09:45 AM)

Was this a 64bit version of 7zip (sounds like it)? And which compiler was used for compiling it? x86-64 is still pretty new, so not all compilers are very mature yet. Embarassing that performance is *worse*, considering the new registers etc.

I thought AGP was basically part of the PCI bus (which is going to be there anyway) but presumably you can BIOS disable what you aren't using. I take your point though - but if I don't have an AGP interface I have to buy a PCIe graphics card (and/or TV card if I want to retain functionality) which is going to be even more expense.

-Carol Haynes

Nope - the AGP is a separate bus, and it's like bolting on a bigger engine to an old car. And it's a relatively hacky architecture as well.

Btw, you can get PSUs that can work as both 20- and 24-pin, by detaching the extra 4 pins (and hell, if your motherboard has some spare room near the ATX power plug, detaching the pins isn't even necessary).

Oh, and for chipsets: there's only really two choices, intel and nvidia nforce. Stay away from everything else

7996

General Software Discussion / Re: New Winzip will open rar archives

« Last post by f0dder on November 03, 2006, 02:47 AM »

Recent WinRAR uses AES instead of their old custom routine, yes - but AES in .zip is an extension to the zip format, which WinRAR might not support yet.

Nice avatar, btw

7997

Living Room / Re: Best way to protect hard drive that is only used for backup?

« Last post by f0dder on November 03, 2006, 02:47 AM »

Don't worry too much about the lack of pci express - there aren't that many devices out yet for it. Seems like the (high-end ) controllers are still using pci-x or at least 66bit PCI... that won't fit on a normal board anyway, though

7998

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by f0dder on November 02, 2006, 09:36 AM »

mouser: each IDE interface can handle 2 drives - and most motherboards still come with two IDE interfaces. Mine has 2 IDE and 8 SATA, I think

Onboard networking is quite fine for just about all purposes.

Onboard sound is okay quality, but there can be problems with noise because of all the EMI inside a computer box - if you hook up digital out to an external amp, that won't be a problem though

I'd stay away from a dual AGP/PCI-e motherboard; don't have any experiences with them, but the idea of two different and power-hungry buses (that are quite different) on one board feels a bit icky.

Btw. as for RAID on on-board controllers - this is a big can of worms, even if you move to a new board with the same controller. Some of them will not accept that you already have an array if it doesn't know about it (ie., hasn't been configed in that machine), and thus won't "rebuild" the array but will insist on wiping your disks and creating a new array.

----------

As already mentioned, it's probably not worth "upgrading" your old box, so turning it into a "frankenbox" could be smarter. I understand budget is a problem, but if you don't go for the latest & greatest (oh sweet core2duo goodness!), you should still be able to get a decent box without selling your kidneys.

The square 4 pin connector was introduced with pentium4 machines, iirc. Dunno if it's extra juice for the AGP/PCI-e slot or if it's for the CPU - but it's one of those I think. Additionally, modern motherboards have moved from 20- to 24-pin main connectors. I've seen some convertors, which might work, but I wouldn't do that unless the graphics card is a relatively low-end ones. Also note that even some 24-pin PSUs aren't much better than the 20->24 convertor scheme.

As for 32- vs 64-bit XP, I haven't yet seen any reason to install 64bit even though I have an AMD64x2 4400+. It's very little software that can take advantage of the additional address space, and the extra & wider registers don't help that much for much software. So unless you have some software you know can take advantage of 64bit, it isn't worth it yet imho.

7999

Living Room / Re: Best way to protect hard drive that is only used for backup?

« Last post by f0dder on November 02, 2006, 09:23 AM »

Remember that SATA hotswap requires that drive, motherboard/controller (and even the PSU?) supports hotswap.

A drive bay should be good for doing this kind of backup, especially if you get sata hotswap so you don't need reboots. You can then tug the backup disk safely away.

8000

ProcessTamer / Re: Is Cacheman similar to Process Tamer?

« Last post by f0dder on October 31, 2006, 11:45 AM »

That adapter looks pretty neat for us people that juggle a whole bunch of disks every now and then. I think it's been mentioned here at DC before.

Haven't looked into CacheMan, but since it includes a "optimize RAM" feature I'll stay away from it. Some of the cache-related tweaks it can make are worth investigating, but I wouldn't keep the program "running and tweaking".

Quick Format is faster, Full Format gives the harddisk a bit of workout. I tend to do full format (and with the bootcd/floppy/usb/whatever tools from the HDD vendor) when I get a new harddrive, and then mostly stick to quick formats because, well, they're faster. Every once in a while if I need to do major changes, I'll do a full format to give my drive a bit of excercise.