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  1. Mercutio

    WMA to MP3

    FormatFactory is a great swiss army knife for anyone with a digital media collection.
  2. Mercutio

    Disk Imaging

    TrueImage 2009 is the one version I don't have installed anyplace. I was able to open a little 2GB .tib I made on my laptop in 2011 on one of my classroom PCs in TrueImage 2010. I didn't actually restore, but the archive opened just fine.
  3. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I don't like to wear clothes either, Coug. I kind of see the need for shirts when cooking bacon, but other than that clothes pretty much suck.
  4. Mercutio

    Something Random

    There's one just a few miles away, and it is where I buy clothes, but at $25 for a new shirt and $45 for a pair of pants, it adds up. I'm thinking about looking into Bozo's suggestion, but in my neck of the woods I doubt I'll find much in the way of professional-looking attire. It's funny that...
  5. Mercutio

    CD TO MP3?

    Xrecode is an excellent program. I use it as well.
  6. Mercutio

    3TB hard drive from Seagate

    I want the chassis, not the whole device. Some day it will be nice to not need four huge rackmount machines to get a paltry 64TB of storage.
  7. Mercutio

    CD TO MP3?

    Because it's not lossy, and once it's on my file server I can put it in any other format if I need to. My portable player plays flac, so I generally don't bother to convert.
  8. Mercutio

    3TB hard drive from Seagate

    I wish I knew where to get that chassis.
  9. Mercutio

    SAS Expander IC tutorial

    I'm pretty sure you just start plugging in cables until they start working.
  10. Mercutio

    Something Random

    The whole point of weighing less is so you get to wear less clothes that have elastic.
  11. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Western Digital: For storing data you didn't really want anyway, since 1970. I'm down to 225lbs. The annoying thing about this is that now I need a bunch of new clothes and I don't really want to buy them.
  12. Mercutio

    PC Gaming = World of Suck

    When I was a kid, my father made me play a game called Robot Odyssey to teach me the basics of Electrical Engineering. Nothing to do with rockets, but looking for a rocket design game reminded me of it.
  13. Mercutio

    400W 80Plus Bronze PSU : 35$

    I'm always on the lookout for a solid $25 PSU. I've never been able to consistently purchase one brand or model at that price point. It seems to really be a crapshoot. I usually do wind up buying $35 spares (Antec Basiqs are also good when I find them that cheap), but I always grumble a little...
  14. Mercutio

    Disk Imaging

    I'm sure I'll have a chance to check soon enough. I can say that TrueImage 10 (from 2007 or 2008) won't open TrueImage 2010 files.
  15. Mercutio

    WMA to MP3

    FormatFactory will do that, and can manage it as a batch conversion job, too.
  16. Mercutio

    Cool system build

    Intel has been doing that on some of their consumer products for at least the last three years. I know it sounds weird but they DO make some hardware they intend to market to gamers and the like. They're just not very good at it since they don't put robotic dragons and anime shit all over their...
  17. Mercutio

    One idea to make money.

    I've only seen four or five Gigabyte boards with bad caps out of hundreds I've built and sold. MSI, Abit and ECS are names I associate with that particular problem. The place I seem to have the most issue on Gigabyte boards usually winds up being USB ports dying. I had to throw away a bunch of...
  18. Mercutio

    CD TO MP3?

    I normally use CDex to convert to .flac.
  19. Mercutio

    Disk Imaging

    Yes, if I'm dealing with a single-drive system I use the ASZ so people don't mess with the space where their backups go. Upon reflection I think I like the 2010 version of TrueImage Home a little bit better. 2011 has a streamlined interface, but that means that more settings are hidden and then...
  20. Mercutio

    Xmarks/ Foxmarks is shutting down

    Xmarks lets you sync to a server of your own choice if you have a server someplace that's WebDAV-enabled. So it might not be a total loss. If I'm using Chrome it's because I need an extra set of cookies or login credentials on some site or other. I don't know if I really care about bookmarks in...
  21. Mercutio

    Disk Imaging

    I use TrueImage for both whenever possible. I'll partition a drive to reserve space for a backup, or add a second drive to store backups if I possibly can. Newer versions of TrueImage automatically consolidate backups so it's unlikely that most users will run out of backup space. That's really...
  22. Mercutio

    Cookie Monster (not the Sesame Street variant)

    I think so, but Windows isn't the only platform that has Flash.
  23. Mercutio

    Cookie Monster (not the Sesame Street variant)

    It's meant to be a technology demonstration at the moment, but as I understand it the source is available, so we'll undoubtedly have more in the not too distant future. Speaking of obnoxious, did everyone know there's such a thing as a Flash cookie? And that they're also a total pain to get rid of?
  24. Mercutio

    SAS/SATA Expander IC?

    The only small one I'm familiar with only works with extremely low-end Syba controllers. SAS expanders do exist, but most of them target large installations. Your best bet is probably just to get an HBA that supports a sufficient number of ports in the first place.
  25. Mercutio

    Disk Imaging

    Meh. It has a lot of pointless UI changes and doesn't seem functionally different from 2010. There's some nice features for people who have used Windows Backup or actually do things with .vhd files. 2010 works just fine.
  26. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I'm not sure where I found this but it's rather amusing for those of us who aren't religious.
  27. Mercutio

    Affordable graphics cards

    The funny thing about that price is that the 5770 actually ran up to about $250 in around December. ATI couldn't make the stupid things fast enough.
  28. Mercutio

    PC Gaming = World of Suck

    The version I have works fine on XP. I have the Linux version too. GoG.com is back. Now with $10 Baldur's Gate and $6 Master of Magic. Sweet.
  29. Mercutio

    Intel's new business model - Chip upgrading?

    I don't know. We can say "No self-respecting hardware enthusiast would own an Acer" but there are plenty of young people who wind up with them because that's what a well-meaning person gave them to work with.
  30. Mercutio

    O&O Defrag with TRIM

    I'm pretty sure Linux has supported TRIM for at least a year or so. And Bozo, I don't normally defrag anything because in a lot of cases it's faster to image a drive and then restore it than it is to run a defragger, and if I look, Windows almost never says that I actually need to.
  31. Mercutio

    PC Gaming = World of Suck

    Apparently GoG.com is back. They were just fucking with people before they launched a new version of their site.
  32. Mercutio

    O&O Defrag with TRIM

    I'm thinking more that there are still going to be people running a defrag just because they've always done defrags. It helped when they had Windows 98, after all, and they like thinking that they're helping and the time they don't have to spend looking at their computer.
  33. Mercutio

    Anyone Building AMD Systems?

    I wish it were still easy to do an apples-to-apples comparison from a performance rating number or, you know, actual CPU frequencies.
  34. Mercutio

    100% broadband coverage

    At one time, I remember reading posts on Slashdot regarding a Canadian initiative for wide broadband availability. time, you're talking about dealing with a flat country with relatively mild weather. Imagine the challenges involved in getting decent network access in, say, the Yukon. I really...
  35. Mercutio

    PC Gaming = World of Suck

    I fired up a game of Alpha Centauri last night. It was Academician Proctor Zakharov's pleasure to deliver a personalized beating to Sister Miriam Godwinson.
  36. Mercutio

    O&O Defrag with TRIM

    Defrag would have to be horrible for an SSD under normal circumstances. Probably better that one have trim support than not. Personally I believe in the time-honored tradition of office workers using defrag as an excuse to get out of doing actual work. In fact, that's one of the things I tell...
  37. Mercutio

    PC Gaming = World of Suck

    Apparently I don't like either of them enough.
  38. Mercutio

    Intel's new business model - Chip upgrading?

    It seems silly to me. I understand that some huge percentage of the chips Intel sells are vastly more capable than their markings and specs indicate; their products already have a certain level of artificial differentiation built in just from that. I imagine this will work better with systems...
  39. Mercutio

    PC Gaming = World of Suck

    Until I can de-couple the games from Steam, and until they tell me exactly what data they're collecting about me and my activities, it meets my definition of malware. I'm sorry, but I don't want that on my computer. I do have a Steam account that I use to send legal copies of games to other...
  40. Mercutio

    Cheap, small, light netbook?

    I have four Thinkpad X201 tablets on my desk right now. 8GB RAM, 2.13GHz i7 CPUs, ultra-bright screen, six hour battery, 3.5lb. weight. Not exactly affordable, but after spending the morning with an Acer Aspire, I certainly am glad that not everyone wants a $300 portable computer.
  41. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Sir Terry Pratchett, famous author of the Discworld novels, went out and forged a sword for himself immediately after being knighted.
  42. Mercutio

    PC Gaming = World of Suck

    I had Half Life 2. I have used Steam to give away game codes I've gotten from buying hardware, but I do that on their web site. I'm not going to install their client until I'm sure I can uninstall it without impacting any of the games I want to play.
  43. Mercutio

    4K sector drives and RAID cards

    I'm shocked that your A7N8X still works.
  44. Mercutio

    PC Gaming = World of Suck

    I gave it a chance. I'm not giving it another.
  45. Mercutio

    PC Gaming = World of Suck

    Apparently gog.com died over the weekend. That is really too bad. I was really hoping they would continue to grow and to suck less than Steam.
  46. Mercutio

    4K sector drives and RAID cards

    At least I'm not the only one.
  47. Mercutio

    Affordable graphics cards

    It's quite handy, depending on your application. If nothing else, it's nice to get a "ding" to know a backup or something is done.
  48. Mercutio

    Crystal Disk Mark?

    I feel like I should say something crass about dickmarks, but I can't think of anything that is not also completely gross.
  49. Mercutio

    little linux file system help

    Well, dd /if=/dev/[whatever the disk device or array is] conv=noerror,sync | bzip2 > blah.bz2 Would in theory make a complete copy of the array, presuming there's a USB drive or something big enough to hold blah.bz2. Then maybe you can run debugfs against that.
  50. Mercutio

    Affordable graphics cards

    That's still a teensy bit lame without sound though, isn't it? At this point I kind of wish I could have a 1080p tablet to be a remote control for my HTPC. Maybe that new AMD IGP will get us there.
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