Search results

  1. Mercutio

    Something Random

    This got a laugh out of me.
  2. Mercutio

    problem No way to immediately empty the spam folder's contents in Yahoo Mail

    As a point of order, Yahoo free mail accounts have neither POP access nor the ability to forward mail outside Yahoo without having a for-pay account.
  3. Mercutio

    problem No way to immediately empty the spam folder's contents in Yahoo Mail

    If you have ever paid for a Yahoo Mail account, even if you don't pay any longer, a flag gets set on your account that gives you access to a bunch of things that make Yahoo webmail barely tolerable, like POP3 access, mail forwarding and the ability to set the spam folder to auto-delete. I...
  4. Mercutio

    How long do drives last.

    "Single" drives are packed in cartons of between eight and 24 drives depending on the manufacturer, at least as far as shipping to the local vendor. The interior of the carton is custom foam of some sort so there's very little room for the drives to move around. The singles are pulled from one...
  5. Mercutio

    problem Desktop pc needs Boot Selection Popup Menu to follow boot sequence in BIOS setup

    On your desktop, look in System Properties, Advanced System Settings, Advance, Startup and Recovery. Make sure that Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit is the default OS and un-tick the box for "time to display list of operating systems." Failing that, I'm going to guess there's something goofy happening...
  6. Mercutio

    Merc's Useful Tools of the day

    I was googling for random crap I wanted to hand out to my students for a class tonight and I ran across some guy's repository of collected "cheat sheets" on various topics. Lots of useful things there and they might be worth a peak.
  7. Mercutio

    How long do drives last.

    All I'm going to say is that I seem to have a statistically significant number of additional problems with WD drives vs. anything else I have ever purchased, no matter where bought them or how they were delivered to me. That is the least biased comment I can make about it. My common practice...
  8. Mercutio

    Dell 24" Ultra sharp

    Apropos of almost nothing, HiSense is selling a 50", 4k TV through Walmart and Costco for $2000. Nothing to do with Ultrasharps but that's definitely a step up from Seiki on the OEM food chain.
  9. Mercutio

    Chrome or Firefox & Why (Windows 8)

    I don't have any specific complaints about browsing under Linux, but the computers I use the most from day to day are Windows machines. The Linux machines sort of sit quietly and just behave themselves. Most of the time if I'm using one it's through a shell prompt anyway.
  10. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Have you named them yet? ;)
  11. Mercutio

    Something Random

    It's just a side gig. I kind of don't want to link it. Maybe if I actually decide to publish something. I post there under my unique internet handle rather than the one I use here and one of the things that's keeping me away is the desire to preserve that identity since I argue a lot about the...
  12. Mercutio

    Dell 24" Ultra sharp

    I have a older 22", 24" and 27" Ultrasharps at my desk and I've been messing with those Asus 24" IPS displays and here's what I can say: For day-to-day work, the quality of my older Ultrasharps and the Asus monitors is subjectively very similar. They're all worlds different from crummy TN...
  13. Mercutio

    problem Desktop pc freezes resume after 14 months of utter bliss

    It's available when you want it, man.
  14. Mercutio

    BT Headphones

    During a workout I'm most concerned with drowning out the shit they play on the PA (the gym has a some kind of weird religious affiliation so half the time it's Jesusy Heavy Metal and the other half there's a 100% correlation to what gets played in a strip club and it's terrible either way)...
  15. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Speaking of random, I just got an out of the blue job offer to write techie how-to articles for a web site based on nothing but discussion thread participation.
  16. Mercutio

    Windows 8.1

    I use S voice and Google Voice Search in my car quite a lot, particularly to select music and navigate. The Xbox One is supposed to support voice commands in a way I'm intrigued by. I'd very much like to be able to say "Computer, bring up MyHarto on YouTube and play the newest video" and have...
  17. Mercutio

    BT Headphones

    I almost hate to ask this, but does anyone have any strong opinions about bluetooth headphones? I've had BT headSETS that were pretty crummy for audio quality, but I'd like to find something I can use with my phone while I'm working out that: 1. Doesn't require a cord and works with my phone or...
  18. Mercutio

    Windows 8.1

    For what it's worth, a guy I went to college with still maintains a 486 and contributes kernel patches to Linux 2.4. Or at least he was still doing in in 2011. He did finally give up and start compiling binaries on a Pentium 4 in 2008 or thereabouts. For all the haters all I can say is that...
  19. Mercutio

    Chrome or Firefox & Why (Windows 8)

    Just to argue this a bit: Firefox has a different layout and javascript engine than Chrome/Safari/Opera, so one thing it absolutely is NOT is a Chrome clone. I know you've never liked or appreciated the power of Firefox's addons, but for the application that we probably all spend the single most...
  20. Mercutio

    problem Desktop pc freezes resume after 14 months of utter bliss

    How complete do you need? I have a stack of E6300s (the OLDEST C2Ds) on Intel G31PR boards with 2GB RAM and a bunch of old 250GB SATA drives that will start XP/Vista/7.
  21. Mercutio

    problem Desktop pc freezes resume after 14 months of utter bliss

    I'll probably send something like a Gigabyte G41 microATX board. I have a few brand new ones set aside for spares. I also have some Intel boards but they were purchased as refurbished and those are more valuable to me because they match my fleet systems.
  22. Mercutio

    New here...

    Greetings sedrosken. Thank you for stopping by.
  23. Mercutio

    problem Desktop pc freezes resume after 14 months of utter bliss

    I'd donate a motherboard if anything. I have a small stack of LGA775 boards in particular for machines that I've decommissioned over the last year. But in this case my thinking is that moving the RAM has no impact on the operation of the power supply or overall electrical load, so if there were...
  24. Mercutio

    Chrome or Firefox & Why (Windows 8)

    Here's how I break it down for my students: Firefox + Rich ability to customize, particularly for things outside what mainstream sites want you to be able to do (e.g. Ad blocking on mobile, Streaming video downloading) + Easier to secure because of Noscript/Ghostery + Uses fewer resources for...
  25. Mercutio

    Everyday monitors

    As I suspected, the first thing I was told was "too tall." But I bought a dozen of them anyway and I'm going to fight to keep them. My students are 60ish men who refuse to wear their reading glasses. The largest monitors possible are the only ones that make any damned sense.
  26. Mercutio

    problem Desktop pc freezes resume after 14 months of utter bliss

    Your motherboard should actually have a "PC Health" category in the BIOS which will give you some idea of whether the PSU is behaving. You can also spot check it with a voltmeter. Yellow lines should be 12V and red lines should be 5V, with plus or minus 10%. A more thorough examination requires...
  27. Mercutio

    Something Random

    There's a reason most of humanity lives within 50 miles of a coastline.
  28. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Why does Taco Bell need to be open at 9AM? Don't drunken benders usually end around dawn?
  29. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Essentially a phone call is a demand for immediate attention. I'm very attentive, but at this point there are people who expect the phone to be answered instantly at all hours of the day or night. I won't answer while I'm driving for example and lately that's caused problems for me. Using...
  30. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I refuse to hand out business cards. I spent a fortune on them up to about 10 years ago, then realized that the fewer people who have my contact info the happier I am. The worst part about the "helpless"-type people is that I know I would give them five or ten cards over a couple years and...
  31. Mercutio

    Virtual Router Plus

    Windows has had Internet Connection Sharing built in since Windows 98 and the ability to form ad hoc WLANs since XP. Is this doing anything extra above and beyond those things?
  32. Mercutio

    Windows 8.1

    The correct answer is that it depends if the PC was meant to be sold with a Window 7 COA or Windows 8. You have to have a Pro version of Windows to downgrade at all, but assuming the machine has a Win 8 sticker on it, you can just do an upgrade install using the Windows 8 license number...
  33. Mercutio

    Haswell Laptops 14" and smaller with at least FHD screens

    That's an Ideapad. It's explicitly not a Thinkpad. Not all GMs are Cadillacs.
  34. Mercutio

    question Which RAM

    Crucial, Kingston or Corsair for me.
  35. Mercutio

    low-end laser printers these days?

    Here in the US, replacement parts are probably a fairly substantial chunk of the total cost of the printer. Sounds like you got a bum unit (and it might not be the drum - the fuser could be just a touch under recommended temperature and smearing stuff just a bit). You could try to sell it and...
  36. Mercutio

    problem Desktop pc freezes resume after 14 months of utter bliss

    I'm generally willing to discount RAM as cause of problems in the first place. RAM is pretty damned reliable these days, but nothing in that laundry list tells me you've done a full hard disk diagnostic. Honestly, no, I don't think that's what's going on, but you really should use WDdiag or the...
  37. Mercutio

    low-end laser printers these days?

    Print online. Kodak (out of business) was king of low cost consumables and Canon is generally said to be next cheapest. HP OfficeJets are Lexmarkian in their reliability. OJ6000s are the #1 reason I'm so familiar with Brother 2270DWs.
  38. Mercutio

    Media Player Appliances

    One word review of Chromecast: Meh.
  39. Mercutio

    How long do drives last.

    I only beat the ones that say Western Digital on them. But to be fair, they deserve it.
  40. Mercutio

    How long do drives last.

    There's a file server in my back bedroom with 36 high capacity 7200rpm drives attached to it. It's shoved in a closet with the door closed and there's not really any moving air. The machine itself is relatively cool (4U case, giant Scythe HSFs on both CPUs), but there's no active cooling at all...
  41. Mercutio

    low-end laser printers these days?

    I've gotten Brother HL2270DWs for $75. They're monochrome, duplexing networked printers that support 802.11. They usually sell for $110, but they go on sale pretty regularly. They're relatively small and quiet for laser printers, so they're actually my first choice for personal printers at this...
  42. Mercutio

    What constitutes "basic computer knowledge" in 2014?

    I do believe we have an extended set of exercises for demonstrating the concepts, but some people are too dense to work with the abstraction and/or decide it's just too damned much work. As an aside, I do quite like the balance struck by Android, in that users can choose to use folders and...
  43. Mercutio

    Everyday monitors

    Weird.
  44. Mercutio

    Everyday monitors

    It's not labelled, but since it's on the bottom of the monitor next to the VGA, DVI and HDMI ports, it's more logical to think it's a line-in and given that configuration of ports if it WERE a headphone jack it would only be for HDMI users. The bezel design also suggests that there are speakers...
  45. Mercutio

    What constitutes "basic computer knowledge" in 2014?

    Basically, a lot of people think of files and folders as things that magically happen outside their control. Cameras make files, users don't. They assume their web browser or music player or whatever puts things where they're supposed to go so that they don't have to know anything about it.
  46. Mercutio

    What constitutes "basic computer knowledge" in 2014?

    We've tried explaining files and folders for years, but it's foreign to too many people. Even people who work in offices and spend their whole day in Word and Excel don't really understand that they can be more organized than just saving things in the place Word and Excel want to save things by...
  47. Mercutio

    What constitutes "basic computer knowledge" in 2014?

    It's a purposefully open-ended question but it's something I'm thinking about as I talk to co-workers about what we're teaching, especially to people who are new to technology. For example, I think it's a big deal to be able to switch wireless networks or to pick a non-default printer, and to...
  48. Mercutio

    Everyday monitors

    It has a speaker jack. Why have the port if there aren't any actual speakers?
  49. Mercutio

    This is the thread for the discussion of interesting apps.

    Cyanogen has a lot more hooks to hang customizations from, where stock Android is pretty barren. It's a bit like the difference between the Bios of a name brand machine vs. a white box. They're both very speedy but if you want say six rows of smaller icons on your home screen, Cyanogen is more...
  50. Mercutio

    What constitutes "basic computer knowledge" in 2014?

    Here's a fun, simple question for everybody: What do you think constitutes basic computer knowledge in 2014? A few thoughts: Windows presently has at least three radically different interfaces. XP, Vista/7 and 8 all behave differently, meaning that instruction using rote memorization is...
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