Search results

When I had a washer and dryer to worry about, the hose clogged with clothes fibers. There isn't much you can do about that other than increase the diameter of the hose and maintain a significant incline for the length of the hose (keep the water's speed up so the stuff doesn't settle out, and...

I don't even know if that is good or not. What are "normal" numbers? My last doctor died 9 years ago.

What runs very well is Winamp, Media Player Classic, Microsoft Streets, and Firefox. Combine those applications with an emergency ability to do pretty much anything (thanks to the fact that it is a real computer) and it is quite useful. Further, the 7" display is decent for video/web and the...

I had a 12" laptop for a while, and I got rid of it. It was so much faster to sit at someone else's desk and use their machine. If you need a real computer, this isn't it. But it is the most capable PDA I've ever used.

A long, long, long time ;) If you send me one I will give it a shot. I wasn't even going to install Photoshop CS3 on it because of the slow CPU/HDD.

To give you some numbers, I've broken out a stopwatch: Power button to responsive desktop (including login with fingerprint): 61.8s Shutdown button to silent: 53.6s Enter Hibernate to silent: 28.6s Recover from Hibernate to a responsive desktop: 31.2s Launching Firefox (with ABP and IE Tab...

Thats the way it is with windows. And considering it is based on the hardware spec, I doubt it is different with macs.

About 6 hours of tinkering later, and I am still very impressed by this little toy. The combination of voice and handwriting recognition make a keyboard practically redundant (Vista is ages ahead of XP on both of these) for all but the longest technical documents. The onboard microphone is...

Thanks for mentioning the OS, as it saves me a lot of time. I'm sorry, I have no experience with OSX ;)

Ah, well....try to have fun anyway ;)

After cleaning up and updating, it is quite snappy. After discounting the "gaming" score, it achieves a respectable 2.4 on the Vista Performance scale (Aero Graphics). The hard drive is what really cripples it, IMHO. I suspect I'll be swapping in an SSD within the month...

Initial setup is a fairly significant PITA. The welcome wizard for Vista doesn't support the soft-keyboard, and requires keystrokes, so a USB keyboard better be handy. The machine comes loaded with loads of software and custom utilities for the devices, including Nero and Lightscribe...

I ended up buying the ASUS R2Hv-A1 from Newegg, it arrived about an hour ago. First impressions: This thing is loaded! Unpacking all the accessories is an experience; every adapter and gizmo is already included. This includes a USB mouse, USB sync cable (with software), external GPS antenna...

http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN0131581020070801

Not sure. I just thought you liked quoting me ;)

Nothing has to take 22 years to build. Something can take that long, but only because of bureaucracy and funding issues.

I'll second all of what Fushigi has said, and also warn of mold/mildew. Hard drives also do not like getting wet. When I was working for CNet, we were in the process of moving to a new office on 3rd street. After some of us had moved with our servers, a fire sprinkler in the...

Short-term that is true, but long-term I don't think so. One of the reasons oil is so popular is because you can transport it easily without loss along the way. Oil is also easy and cheap because it is already made; all we have to do is find it and use it. Switching to a renewable source for...

$1500 for an SSD that can do 100MB/sec. For my desktop, I'll definatly be doing 2x Samsung SSD @ 67MB/sec for $1000

I recently got Bourne Supremacy on HD-DVD...very neat.

I've used MS' virtual server, but it simply wasn't as easy to use or as stable. It was also a fair bit slower, and had issues with Linux VMs.

Why?

Who? You? When? Now?

I'll second Ubuntu. It's really the easiest one I've used.

I would recommend NTFS. IIRC, it recovers from corrupted data better (unplugging the drive while data is being written).

...and one drive still won't be enough :(

I'll second VMWare server. Downloading a Linux ISO and doing the install from scratch is a nice learning experience, but you can also just download a ready-to-roll VW from their website.

Interesting. They bunch those two together quite nicely. There are people who opt for sub-prime mortgages, and there are those with weak credit histories; neither necessarily makes you a member of the other.

Proprietary motherboards, but readily available and cheap. I haven't had many issues with the power supplies, especially with this low a load. I like the form factor because it keeps them on the desks and off the floor. Way less dust.

Might switch to these when the corps go to Vista...

My next re-install will be 64-bit, because I'd like to go over 3.5GB of RAM. The games I like to play take about 1GB on their own. Add to that my VMWare play boxes (3-5@512MB each) and work stuff (3-5 RDC sessions, Firefox with ~20 tabs, Word 2007) in addition to Winamp and/or MPC. I could...

Corporate Box: Shuttle SD30G2B - $200 Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 - $125 CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB DDR2 667 - $35 Seagate 2.5" 5400.3 80GB 5400 RPM SATA - $60 SAMSUNG 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black SATA - $35 $455

Yup, it is over specified for an office machine. But it is the best bank-for-the-buck out there I think. My office clients fall into 3 categories; cheapskates, corporations, wealthy. These days the cheapskates get Dell Optiplex + Dell LCDs, the corps get Shuttle SFF PCs and Samsung LCDs, and the...

Added another drive to my RAID-5 array, looks like the online capacity expansion will take 4 full days (96 hours) to complete.

30 year fixed is what I will probably be looking at. If I were to go for something unconventional, it would be interest-only. AFAIK, its the only sub-prime that never increases.

Bang for the buck box, 8-13-07: Core2Quad Q6600 - $295 GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L - $95 GIGABYTE GV-NX86T256H GeForce 8600GT 256MB - $125 GeIL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 - $85 SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD403LJ 400GB - $85 Antec New Solution NSK3300 - $90 SAMSUNG 20X DVD±R DVD Burner...

Wooooo! Congrats on the milestone. Hope to see more of the same ;)

Good idea. I have one post to make first....

IIRC: Windows XP-64 - After the fact kludge that includes the Server 2003 kernel. Vista 64 - Native goodness, Vista fatness Server 2003 x64 - Pretty darn good all around, minor app compatability issues. No matter what, you are likely to have some driver issue somewhere; 64-bit drivers are...

Seconded. I must admit, my only fear of buying a house is having to sell soon or in a hurry. Where I am looking the market is already down ~60% from 2 years ago, to about 1999 prices. It might still go down some more, but not much (I don't think :crap:). If I stay in at least 5 years I'm...

Interesting. I'm playing with the idea of getting into a home within the next 6-12 months, you think it will continue to get worse? I don't want to do it as an investment, I want to do it because I like to mess with stuff. I'm tired of not being able to rip out the drywall and install smurf...

One of their industry-specific crap applications requires a manual procedure to get the services on the server up and running. They had a power outage over the weekend. There is a lovely 4-page (with screenshots!) document next to the server showing how to fix it. They called me at 6:15AM instead.

My new policy for stupid early morning calls: Client is billed double for every hour from when they call me until 9AM. It used to be just billed double, but that isn't enough encouragement for me. It's important that you like your job, the easiest way to do that is to make sure you feel you...

It is Tor with Privoxy, and a bunch of other stuff. Already configured, with another layer of VM protective goodness. (I think, it's early)

Wow, that looks really neat. I'll have to test it for deployment to my PITA clients with teenagers.

Good perspective. You actually got a good deal; my rent is more than double that.

Congratulations Handruin. It sucks that your life turned that way, it sucks that it took so long to close your house, and it sucks that you didn't get more for it. But at least you can start looking forward instead of backwards. That is worth just about any price IMHO.

Sweet. Magnetic disks may keep themselves relevant for a while longer. I keep expecting solid-state stuff to catch up, with all the hype (and therefore research money) around it.

Mine are all from CA. They do weird things, though. Several dozen parts in many large boxes all overnighted from City of Industry, CA; and a single stick of DDR400 1GB overnighted from New Jersey in it's own large box.

I would be cautious putting this stuff in an old case with an old PS, what are the make/model? This will draw significantly more power, and put out significantly more heat than you current system. The good news is you can get rid of the PCI cards.