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Thanks Ted, this is good to know. In general, Samsung opticals are nowhere near the quality of their HDD products. (Different division maybe?) I don't think I've used their DVD burners, but I'd not really want to given that their CD and DVD products (especially their CD products) have been so...

I am a DVD moron. I have never ripped a DVD in my life. Hell, I have never even made an audio CD. In fact, the only things I have ever done with a CDR or DVDR are: copy an entire CD; burn assorted files to CD; burn assorted files to DVD. I imagine that it's not too difficult to do these other...

If you can see any difference, you are a better man than I. Or Kristi, for that matter. With a good quality RAMDAC (such as provided by the G450) there is no difference that we can see. (This may not apply to lesser cards, of course.)

Except when it's strictly temporary 'cause you are trying to read the damn print to find something out and it's in 2 point type.

I think you will have to usde an add-in controller card, JoJo

sorry tea

She is a nasty little tart, Taz, you gotta watch out for her!

Come to think of it, considering te size of Western Australia, it must be just about the biggest state in the world. Well, second-biggest, I think Siberia is a single state. And Alaska would be #3. Or have I forgotten somewhere?

PS: Alaska is just a fraction smaller than Queensland

That might be the funny bit. The really scary bit, however, is that that cattle station is almost certainly owned by an American company

There is something wrong with being non-white? I don't buy that.

Some virus/malware apps still load, even in safe mode, Merc. Not too many, but when you strike one, it's a real bastard to get rid of. Tea tried the SMCP on the machine that was giving her trouble the other day: no dice. But a couple of the utilities mentioned above did the trick. (Used two or...

Or you might try Autoit. Looks like a real possibility to me.

Tea, you need some batch files. Bring back DOS!

Taz, you are right in at least this much: it is the microscopic imperfections of a heatsink's surface that give rise to the need for thermal paste in the first place. The physical structure of glass (AKA what a chip is made out of) is such that, no matter how carefully you polish it, only about...

Why not use Arctic Silver? Because Arctic Silver is expensive and, in the case of (e.g.) a Sempron 3100, provides no added benefit whatever. In this type of CPU, thermal issues are a complete non-issue. Zip, nada, nil, not part of the agenda. You could use stawberry jam and it wouldn't get...

Nope. I forgot to mention that bit: * they decided who they wanted * then they wrote the job requirents * then they sent the requirements to the employment agency * then the agency called Merc (and a million other people) They wind up with 6 candidates on the short list, but only one of them...

I'll bet money on this answer: one Some — not all — of those weirdo ultra-specific requirements are undoubtedly there as a way to ensure that the "right" person gets the job. Most organisations of any size have a formal equal-opportunity policy. They are required to interview and hire on a...

Unless you are overclocking or have bad case temps or something, you don't even need the Arctic Silver. The hardest part about installing the HSF is getting the cardboard box open. Serously! Plug in CPU, place HSF on top (either way around), slip handleless clip over clipping point, rotate the...

Good link, illi.

I remember those cards, Taz. They were on special to clear them out back around the time the Gforce was taking off at the high end, and were priced a fair bit below what they should have been, given their performance relative to the other stuff around at the time. They weren't exactly cheap...

I would. Yeah. They do that. TNTs just keep on keeping on. Especially the passively coled ones. If something goes wrong with them (or with most video cards, for that matter), it's practically always the fan. Chipset fans on motherboards suck too. What is it with component manufacturers? Is...

Tea's memory is faulty. I have two Tekram (aka LSI chipset) U160 controllers, not one. One runs OS/2, the other W2K. Like the inimitable Gmac, I've had them for about 3 years, and never had the slightest problem with them.

Merc, our RMA figures for video cards are very low. Like really low. I'd have to do a lot of trawling through the paperwork to put an exact number on it, but let me put it this way: every item that comes into the shop gets a coded stamp that tells us who we bought it from, on what date, and how...

HP/Compaq = worst possible idea. Seriously, the days when HP made quirky but solid systems are gone. Long gone. They are appallingly bad. I'd never recommend that anyone bought a retail vomit box, but if you are dead set on something like that (lord alone knows why), then at least get one of the...

They are current model X15s, and the drives I was talking about. It's just that some fool in the marketing department switched labels on me. (Why do the idiots have to change names all the time? Nvidia have done the same thing with their video cards. You show somebody an FX5700 or a 6600GT and...

I have one of those, JPS. (Or is mine the previous, slightly slower, model? Previous model, I think.) Either way, it goes like the proverbial substance off a shovel. I'll have it in service for quite a few years yet. Old, but good. But what is it doing in stock as a "new" drive? It should be...

Thankyou gentlemen! I feel flattered. Not sure about helpful though: all I really said was "don't do anything except maybe spend quite a lot". Perhaps saying what to not bother doing is useful, in a negative sort of way. I don't think more RAM is a good idea. You've only just bought a new...

That leaves access times. This is where the bulk of your disc-related performance problems will lie. There is only one way to get a significant improvement in access times: spend the money. Either you buy a Seagate X15 (or one of the various similar drives from other manufacturers) or you go...

Last time I ran an IDE in any serious way it was Turbo Pascal under DR-DOS 6.0. (Possibly it was some other DOS version - but you get the idea as to general era.) Nevertheless, I think I still have sufficient grasp of the basics to comment usefully. The bottom line, I think, is that provided...

Never buy a secondhand laptop. They are too expensive, and for all practical purposes non-upgradable and unrepairable. Bad idea. Buy a new one, from a quality maker (IBM, Fujitsu, NEC, etc.) with a 3-year factory warranty (less is madness), or go without.

I repeat: huh? Where is the joke?

Huh?

No debate from me. Sony optical products suck. The last good Sony optical I saw was a 16X ... and I don't mean a 16X DVDR. I don't even mean a 16X CDRW. I mean a 16X CD reader. And that was an exception. Their other optical back before that excellent unit were ordinary at best, ranging back to...

But why woiuld anyone willingly use Frontage? (Or IIS, come to that.) Frontpage produces the most appallingly bad code I've ever had the misfortune to try to read, and there are dozens of better, easier-to-use apps out there. Not to mention more secure: there are any number of Frontpage...

Hi Ted. Something was wrong with your M-II or the installation of it. It was probably the (quite uncommon) 75MHz version, as the (much more common) 66MHz bus one was practically bulletproof. We sold just over 100 M571 boards and didn't have trouble with a single one of them. (Nope, not one RMA...

And an excellent choice it was too. At this later time, the Cyrix CPUs still offered the best mainstream value for money, but for non-business oriented systems, or just for maximum possible performance, K6 was the way to go, and the PA-2007, though expensive, was the best darn board money could...

Exactly how is this less honest than Intel selling a $2000 "high-end 1400MHz" chip that couldn't even outperform AMD's $200 low-end 900MHz chip? In any case, the 5x86 was one better than a 486. Easily faster. In a word, no. It was a 100MHz part.

Tea! I thought you were supposed to be on my side.

I take it that the Cato Institute is a right-wing think-tank. The choice of questions for the second part of the quiz betrays an appalling (and probably willful) ignorance of economics.

Nope. First, let's define what we mean by "started off". If we mean the start of the 6x86 (the part that Cyrix is most famous for), then quite cleary it was not like this. The very first 6x86 parts did run hot, about the same as a Pentium-60. Cyrix and IBM went through a series of rapid...

Now, let's start dealing with some of the misinformation above — and there is quite a lot of it to deal with! Bill is quite right in saying that Cyrix was always a fabless manufacturer, more or less, but both Bill and the usually well-informed iGary get the details pretty compregensively...

Damn it, I just lost a whole long post. (Stupid laptop put itself into standby, despite being docked and on mains power. I really, really hate the way that laptops use the same button for "wake up from standby" that they use for "power down now".

I don't know that I ever met an MSI board until we were selling Durons and P-IIIs, Time. No, wait, we used to get 386 boards from Microstar - which I think is MSI. Possibly 486 boards as well, I'm not sure. I was wasting time too, probably more so than you. Yes I was selling millions to the...

I agree, the K6-233 was a tricky damn bastard to get working right: it was a "factory overclock" in all but name. The early K5 parts were curly ones too, as were the very first 6x86 Classic parts, and the first Pentiums. Of those three, the Pentium 60/66 was the worst, and the K5 probably the...

FIC PA-2005 (VIA, 66 or 75MHz) FIC VA-502 (VIA, 66 or 75MHz) Gigabyte 586S (SiS, 66 or 75 MHz) Chaintech 5VGM1 (VX, 66MHz) ASUS VX-97 (VX, 66MHz) ASUS SP-97V (SiS, 66MHz) Many others, but these were the ones we used the most of and liked the best.

As you say, Time, HX boards worked just fine with Cyrix CPUs. The problem with the combination was performance: although HX boards were the best thing you could buy for a Pentium, and worked well with K5 or K6 too, the several different ones we benchmarked with Cyrix chips were all very slow. I...

You are grossly incorrect. We (and countless others like us) shipped a massive volume of Cyrix-equipped systems, and with perfect satisfaction. Through the 100 to 200MHz era - which was a long, long time - we sold more Cyrix-based systems than all other manufacturers combined, and back in...

That was because of the infamous Pentium floating point bug. Cyrix never had a bug of that magnitude, nor were they forced to recall and replace a product because it outright got its sums wrong. That's a gross distortion of history you just attempted there, Merc. Yes another one.