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Has anyone experienced or seen a database server running on a Virtual Machine, i.e. VMWare or Virtual Server? Google tends to confirm my instincts - that disk I/O will be crap and therefore server performance will be crap. What do you guys think?

I assume one of the CPUs isn't maxing out? How about I/O queue depth? Excessive index fragmentation can cause performance problems. SSE closes the database once the client closes table connections (to facilitate copying of the database files). If this is happening, performance is guaranteed to...

Ddrueding, my first question is, how come you need a stove? A stove is a fixture - it's part of the building, like the kitchen sink. Stereodude is 100% correct. You need gas cooking to get off the electricity grid. The good news is that a cooktop can be supplied from a pair of 9kg (20lb)...

While I appreciate the points you are making, Consumer Reports must have made some heroic assumptions to come up with only $4250 difference in TCO between the Yaris and Prius. Consider that there's a $13000 difference in purchase price for starters. If you assume a 10-year design life and...

If you want people to bother posting, try putting a leash on Udaman.

Bullshit. I've had one or two 300HP cars (or thereabouts). And the same goes for multi-core CPUs. So, ddrueding, I take it you'll be upgrading from your puny VW to a decent Chevy V8? How about a rat motor?

I'm with Mercutio on this. You can get quite decent graphics capability on an AMD platform, yet pay appreciably less than the inadequate Intel equivalent. Mind you, I probably wouldn't bother with Phenom over a simple dual core X2. IMO, CPU performance is now compeletely academic for 95% of...

That's bad luck, Will. So far, I haven't had any real trouble with the nine Romisen flashlights I bought (7 different models in three orders). Your faillure be the regulator - although it's rated at 8W - or possibly the switch. Both can be replaced, but I don't know exactly how ... Eastward...

Osram and GE CFLs are miles ahead of anything else (based on longevity/reliability tests as well as efficiency), and I think you'll find the color rendition is better than the cheapies as well. They'll also reach at least 75% brightness within a second of switching on. AFAIK, all fluorescent...

They're going to use banks of lithium-ion batteries in production cars? Wow, that's a lot of large bombs rolling around the streets ...

Timwhit, if they're 45W, I'm guessing they're halogen GU10? Here's an example of a drop-in replacement - note how expensive it is: http://www.megamanbulbs.co.uk/acatalog/info_GU1011DIMWW_1.html Megaman Dimmerable range 11W is a match for 45W incandescent unless you're talking about...

I see that Wikipedia has already corrected the 12 trillion dollar factoid. In fact, 12 trillion dollars is the value of the entire US mortgage market. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae account for 5 trillion of that. Sorry for any confusion. Anyway, it's been a long time since my last post (one day)...

Another bank. IndyMac sacked 3800 workers and started stripping itself before the FDIC took it over. Apparently, it's the 2nd or 3rd biggest bank collapse in American history. What's really scary is the storm cloud hanging over Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Twelve trillion dollars of loans and...

Coug, that's brilliant. Stereodude, you're a dipstick for yelling in the forum. I need to tell you this because apparently Handruin no longer has a dick.

This is probably a bit obvious, but are you sure it's not the graphics card?

I'm in the middle of cleaning an infected PC (my youngest daughter's) :boom: With a suitable tool (Security Task Manager is still my firstline choice over HijackThis etc for reasons of clarity), I can see the hidden instances of the Internet Exploder engine - killed two, but then another popped...

Another Seasonic just went tits-up here. Apparently, it still works in some low-end PC that some guy tried, but it can no longer power up an M2 motherboard - believe it or not. Dead as a dodo in the target PC, with or without graphics card.

Unfortunately, partitioning does not automatically improve performance, and particularly on MS SQL Server, may well decrease performance. Any query that crosses the boundary between partitions will suffer a performance penalty. It can be useful where you need to access large contiguous chunks...

So who's the father? Have you seen that Schwarzenegge-DeVito film? Not sure that's what they mean by emancipation ... Wow, good point.

LiamC, David & Margaret liked Iron Man - it must be pretty good to get them both onside. (Non-Oz members should just google the names if they're sufficiently curious). Chewy, you better get used to 'entertainment at home' - going out will increasingly be a novelty for the next 20 years. It...

Really poor choice of words, Dave.

Good luck for the future, Dave. Just remember: the bigger the wedding, the shorter the marriage. ;)

W o w. Terrific link Mark, and I couldn't agree more with your sentiments.

Hmmm, I thought I had my acronyms muddled, I meant TN rather than TFT. As for the lawsuit against Apple, I imagine their only defense is their deep pockets (which of course in the legal world is the best defense). I see they settled a similar suit a couple of months ago. They advertised...

Okay, would you consider using something other than XTG? I always used the ubiquitous LIST in preference to XTG. Or, how about FileMaster, available from the XTree Fan Page? If you really must have genuine XTG, and you can't find it anywhere else, I'll fire up one of my old drives and see if...

At 70 lumens, they're ridiculously dim (a cluster wouldn't be all that much more efficient than the halogen you already have). In short, a scam.

Same problem here. Of course, I' only a three-fingered typist anyway ... :p

Spot on, Greg. 22" widescreen (or as Tannin accurately calls them, "shallow-screen") is probably the best price-point right now. It's also a good replacement for your 21" CRT monitor, in that it should have about the same vertical height, but more width. There's always something better out...

Wjen you say "for DOS", do you mean literally 16-bit or do you mean text-mode? I've used EXTREME Advanced File Manager to satisfy the latter requirement. It's a character-mode application that runs in a 'DOS box' under 32-bit/16-bit Windows. For all intents and purposes, it's a free XTG clone.

India buys British Icons For those who haven't yet heard, Indian company Tata is buying former British car brands Jaguar and LandRover from Ford. Britain no longer has any native marque, but surely these are two of the most emotive British icons of yesteryear? I find it strangely ironic that...

This may be a singularly unsuccessful topic, but what the hell ... France rebuilds relations with Anglo cousin ... For the first time in 12 years (remarkable considering the countries are only 20 miles apart at their closest points), a French president is visiting the UK. Further, he's making...

Not sure where you got that from, Fushigi.

Wow, the ride just got scarier. Fed moves to bail out major US bank Bear Stearns gets emergency funds In case anyone didn't get it, a major bank just fell over.

Only 15 of the 27 EU states use the euro - the UK, for instance, doesn't. The EU states retain their own sovereignty (and therefore military), but functionally they're pretty similar to the United States. That is, for most practical purposes, the EU can be viewed as a single country. The linked...

Seven and a half weeks on, things are still moving in the same direction. As expected, the US dollar has started to collapse. US no longer world's biggest economy

Britain makes camera that "sees" under clothes I thought this was a few years away - I'm impressed. Once again, science fiction becomes everyday fact. This further blurs the already frayed line between fantasy and reality in our brave new world.

I'm a little jaded about this (over the years, we seem to have acquired four smaller humans), so I'm not sure what to say. Congratulations are obviously due (commiserations come later), but I think it's important to remember who just went through 0.75 years of 24x7 discomfort, capped off with a...

Always a worry, it's been nearly a fortnight. Sorry, I now have a day job, and there haven't been enough topics to tempt me anyway (sadly, FairTax doesn't make it onto my list of crap worth responding to). Perhaps you could complain about your thwarted desires to be a dance instructor...

I've had a few hobbies over the years that were geeky, but that I no longer spend any time on. Building computers is very close to falling into that category. As a kid, my chief hobby was electronics. I was also a part-time musician for several years, and then I used to obsess about listening...

How could the diagnostic tools affect the results? Isn't it really just an interface for the drive self-diagnostics? Given how IDE/SATA drives work, why would you expect the tools to even need an upgrade, and in what way? If this was WD, no-one would bat an eyelid. I think everyone needs a...

Well, the Federal Reserve appears to have staved off the day with an emergency rate cut. Therefore, I wuz wrong. :) Or, I suppose, I was potentially right, which is why they did it. Looks like the damage is going to be spread over a longer period now. Of particular interest are the losses in...

I can't recall using an HP laser printer (except for some ancient ones) for years now. The copier companies appear to have won that war. Wretched HP inkjets, on the other hand, are everywhere. 38MB is laughably tiny compared to the normal software install with these pestilential printers. Last...

By the time you read this, the first big stockmarket crash of the 21st century should be underway. This one's different; it's predicated by a loss of confidence in the future of the United States. There will be subsequent gains and losses - indeed, this may not be the biggest fall - but I...

It's unwise to poke one's nose into another country's politics, but I'd suggest that your future choice of president isn't going to make a whole lot of difference - you had your chance 7 years ago and you blew it. Your current choice is more than capable of driving your country (and the world)...

It's good to see you facing up to reality, Dave. I've been winding down my business for the last 2-3 years, and five weeks ago I started my first 'permanent' job in nearly 20 years. I still don't know if this shelter will be enough to weather the storm. Mind you, the writing's been on the wall...

Ummm ... who?

Thanks, Merc. IMAP means actual email isn't an issue - it's the contacts to enable sending emails that I'm concerned about.

Paugie, Doctors are a necessary evil - that's the best I can say about them (apologies to our resident doctor). If they can't explain it, it must be in your head. That appears to be the extent of modern medical knowledge. :evil: Actually, I'm being unfair; my current doctor doesn't say that -...

I figure this isn't exactly a Tech Support question. I can't seem to find any kind of utility to sync contacts from Thunderbird to Blackberry. What little information I could find on RIM's pathetic site was from 2002 (and didn't mention Thunderbird - or for that matter any email client except...

I realize Mark was being flippant, but a hand-crank flashlight is a really bad idea. AFAIK, most - if not all - rely on internal rechargeable batteries. If not used for a long time, NiCd will self-discharge so much that they will be unable to hold a charge after cranking. Under such erratic...