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I do use it for torrents and they run at about 1/3 as fast as they would without the VPN. It's fast enough for my needs.

PrivateInternetAccess

I'm sure you're using the same Realtek Audio driver that every other Windows computer built in the last five or six years is. Is it possible that your audio is skipping when you're at high CPU utilization or high internal temperature?

The Dell Venue 8 7000 looks like sexy stuff. I suspect it's going to be a $600 device though.

A couple interesting things I've noticed in the last few weeks: Toshiba says it's planning to step away from consumer laptops, starting by axing products for new markets, which I take to mean zero-profit machines for India and China. And Samsung says it's going to stop selling laptops in Europe...

Microsoft announced a branded Miracast receiver today. Which explains Windows 8.1 getting full support for it in a recent update. Miracast on Android is pretty much perfect. It just works (other than the increased battery drain) and it's fine if it's a thing that you want. Miracast on Windows...

$20/month for an unlimited monthly account is definitely high but probably not out of the realm of reason if you get a lot of content from Newsgroups. I pay $40/year for my VPN account and use a dedicated PC with a full time connection to that VPN, including DNS requests. The provider retains...

Microsoft already has a high level universal run time of its own. I think Android-as-run-time is potentially interesting mostly because it might be able to bring about a degree of desktop/mobile device integration that Microsoft itself has not.

The 8.9" FireHDX is 2560x1600. The rumors I've seen all seem to suggest it's an iFruit Air clone in terms of weight and form factor.

I thought the Nexus 9 compared unfavorably to the FireHDX 8.9. It has a 4:3 screen it's kind of miserly in terms of display DPI for a high end device, and on top of that it's pretty heavy for its size, but then the FireHDX isn't Google-licensed and most models don't have GPS (and none have a...

Chome is now a quasi-runtime for using Android applications on any platform that can run Chrome according to this Lifehacker guide.

Changing the disk controller mode back and forth causes Windows to bluescreen until it's in the state that was used for Windows installation. It's straightforward to fix. DEL to enter firmware. F7 to enter Advanced Mode. Go to Integrated Peripherals, set it to AHCI again, F10 to save. It's also...

I guess it might just be me, but seemingly every Asus motherboard I've picked up that was manufactured in the last three or four years will auto-select the disk controller to IDE mode after a power loss. I have this problem with workstation boards and budget desktop products. I don't have THAT...

As far as I know, the VLC encoder is source-only at the moment. Which isn't terrible, but of course I'm looking for something a little more production ready. ffMPEG also has limited HEVC support, though I understand it's a little picky about what it will actually decode. I know most of you guys...

It looks to me like playable 4k framerates are still a couple generations off for sub $300-hardware. Getting there at all with a card that runs at 165W is definitely an accomplishment. My ears perk up at the idea of hardware HEVC encoding, but I still can't find free software for handling that...

I got bronchitis so "arr" is about all I can manage but this seems to fit the holiday spirit.

It should and it does. Those C2D systems could still have years left in them.

FileHippo seems to have started repackaging binaries in the same way that download.com does. Sigh.

You know you're in for a rough week when you've already worked 40 hours and it's still Monday.

I'm OK with that.

If those drives are capable of acting as if they're compose of SLC RAM, why wouldn't we want them to ALWAYS act as SLC RAM?

There's not very much subjective difference between a C2D Celeron and a Haswell i7 if both have the same amount of RAM and a decent SSD. At least not until you want to play a game or watch some HD video.

I had a CCNA a zillion years ago (seriously, like 2001-ish), but I never got anywhere with it. The feel I got from employers was that I still didn't have the knowledge to be trusted to actually work with their network hardware. Since it never really did anything positive for my career and it was...

Windows 8.1 has some really weird upgrade mechanics associated with it and it's really picky about what kind of product key it will take. If you find yourself in the position of needing to install Windows 8.1 but only have a Windows 8 product key, as might have happened for PCs sold at retail...

Depends on the movie. Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, the Marvel Cinematic movies? I want to watch those in the highest quality available because those are movies that I know I'll watch repeatedly. Something I'm only going to watch one time? Probably doesn't matter but I'd still rather have...

It's certainly another detection option, but it's a file-based scanner that does about the same thing as Malwarebytes. I primarily recommend Spybot because of its immunization function, but it's also a signature-based scanner that updates regularly, so there's some distinction from the feature...

ZFS doesn't deal with size changes in array members very well as it is. These would exacerbate that problem.

Android Apps for ChromeOS are now available, sorta.

Amazon's Cold Storage option? Backblaze? Facebook? Are they actually going to pay extra for the possibility that those drives will have more storage in the future? Or are they just going to buy 8TB drives that they KNOW will have more storage?

Is one of those actually better than the other?

Putting aside my opinion of WD for a moment, who the hell is going to bother with a drive that might have 3% extra capacity after some kind of nebulous upgrade process?

The RAM is a couple 2GB DIMMs I had from upgrading a laptop to 8 or 16GB in the past and the 802.11/BT card was fished out of a dead laptop. The mSATA card was an otherwise too small for anything useful 80GB model, though I'll admit most people don't have spare mSATA cards sitting around. I can...

This was on Imgur, which means it was probably also on reddit, but some of y'all probably haven't seen it yet.

It's probably a 5-platter design. That's kind of Hitachi's thing.

10TB drive announced from WD/HGST.

I may have mentioned this, but if you own a Windows or Android tablet, the XBMC/Plex remote apps available for them are super, super sexy. My mom can't work a TV either, but does pretty well once she's in Plex. I still think the FireTV is pretty nice. The Chromecast is way, way better than it...

Apple invented smart watches, NFC payment systems and phones larger than 4.5" today. Clearly, the world will never be the same.

The worst mistake I ever made was adding the word "dint" to my Swype autocorrect.

There are people uploading raw .ISOs of blu rays to the usual places. I usually Netflix special effects spectacle movies that I don't buy just so that I can convert them myself, but even with a Netflix distribution center just 50 miles from my apartment, they don't mail them faster than I can...

Spywareblaster basically prevents some bothersome toolbar and ActiveX control installations, and stops some cookies from being written. It's like a cherry on top of Spybot's immunizations, but the program is tiny and has zero impact on system resources, so I still install and use it. Spybot...

I agreed to go computer shopping with a few ladies I know of the "working their way through college"-variety this afternoon. We kind of had a pre-meeting about who wants what and some interesting themes came up: * No one was remotely interested in a 17" laptop. Even without my prompting. * No...

Be glad you don't deal with much Classical music, where the "authoritative" sources might list an album's artist by the composer, soloist, conductor or ensemble; albums are frequently untitled and will almost never have anything in the Composer or album artist fields; non-English characters in...

Handy, do you find the wrist rest on your MBP uncomfortable? My generic advice for people who want Macs is to look long and hard at the Mac Mini or Air or to consider some sort of mobile device instead. Most of the time, people who want OSX machines are doing so because "It just works"...

Maybe the audio tool stuff should be in the Toolbox section? Here's a random and pretty interesting look at what it takes to manage the porta-johns for the Burning Man festival.

A desktop. From my laptop. Which is safe for work. I contemplated uploading my main desktop at home complete with plausible-deniability pixel blurring.

I need to do more editing but here's a link to the current file that's sitting on my Google Drive. I'll throw it back on my web site after I get it in better shape. Feedback appreciated.

I'm not a fan. The screens are nice and OSX in and of itself is fine as a marvelously consistent *nix. I like OS X just fine. Spotlight is fantastic and I wish search on Windows worked half so well. But I don't like the touchpad, keyboard or uncomfortable metal finish of the Macbook Pro. I think...

Some of the Metro-ified XBMC remotes for Windows 8 are pretty drool-worthy as well. For the all one of other SF members who will admit to having a WinRT device. ;)

The least reliable drives for me have been 2TB eco drives, but 2TB in general seems to have been a weird spot in terms of reliability. The 3TB Barracudas aren't stellar by any stretch of the imagination, but I bought a LOT of 2TB drives to use for backup systems and I think I've replaced...