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We picked up a 4-DVD set of something interesting yesterday at the tip shop for the princely sum of $4. It turns out to be Blu-ray discs, not DVDs. Assuming that we buy something to play them on - (a) An external USB Blu-ray drive to suit a computer? We mostly watch things via an old...

Hi all, Mrs Tannin uses her PC for various things, the most demanding of which is playing WoW. She currently has an Acer all-in-one - i5 4460-T 1.9GHz, 8GB, 2TB hard drive, Geforce 840m. It's five years old and getting very sluggish. Requirements: In this room, another all-in-one would work...

We bought a Netgear Arlo security camera system the other week. The good news: the machinery is outstanding. Small, neat, beautifully engineered. Expensive, but I've never minded paying for class. Great battery life, very well thought out. The bad news: the associated app and website aren't...

Any recommendations for an app to let me use any of three devices [Android phone, Androit tablet, Windows 8.1 computer] to read and send texts? There seems to be lots of them, but all with diffrrent features and (presumably) different gotchas.

Hi folks, I have a customer who had had to switch from Thunderbird (which she liked) to Microsoft Outlook (which she hates). (Don't ask why. Long story. Let's just say it has to do with a brain-dead service supplier (not us) and an abortion called Exchange.) Anyway, we have dealt with that OK...

One of my much-loved Samsung 21 inch screens is dying. Now you might think that 21 inches isn't very special, but these are real 21 inch screens - 4:3 aspect ratio, 1200 pixels high: better resolution than any Full HD / 1080p monitor ever made (1200px makes a significantly more detailed picture...

My old Internode NBN connection was sluggish. I blame Internode. My new Skymesh NBN connection at the shop is much faster. Then I switched providers at home and - at the same damn time to confuse everyone! - a bloody mouse chewed the fibre-optic cable and took my service off-line! Who'da...

I have a new web connection with, of all people, Telstra. When I plug in the network cable or switch on the fancy new ISP-provided router, a page opens on my default browser. Depending on which browser that is, it either provides a router login and status page, or a cross networking security...

Does anyone know of a phone emulator for Android tablets? I want to check some websites for look and feel and I don't have (or want) a smartphone. Opera (among others) provide this for desktop. Do people just assume that any normal human with a tablet has a smartphone too?

I'm thinking Microsoft are getting tired of the activation millstone for old versions of Windows. (It must be a significant expense for them after all, and one that doesn't generate any income at all. And they have to provide that service, by law, pretty much forever.) Over the last few days...

30-odd years I've been fixing computers, and up until today I have never, ever fixed an Apple. (Well, OK, Brother Tannin fixed the odd Apple IIe and a couple of those Apple IIc things back in the day, but not counting Apple IIs (which were real computers) neither of us has ever worked on, used...

For years now I've been using and recommending the excellent Fastcopy. Version 2.11 has been current forever. No other utility I have met offers its combination of speed, simplicity, and flexibility. Use it for data transfers, as a synch tool, for making backups, even for quickly deleting large...

Any of you guys still building your own computers? Here is a chap who might be able to give you a few handy tips. http://megaprocessor.com/index.html

Tannin's parents recently bought a new TV set which, among other things, has an ethernet socket and a wireless function, either of which can connect to your home network, presumably for watching stuff on-line on your big screen in some manner unfamiliar to me. (We don't have a TV. Life is too...

I've been looking at Seagate's new(ish) shingled drives for archival storage. Has anyone used them? Any thoughts? My primary application is for off-line backup of large, seldom-changing datasets. Performance is almost immaterial for that purpose as the backup task can run in the background for...

A customer has two Nvidia GTX 690s in SLI. One of them just failed. For now, he is operating with just the remaining one, but it occurs to me that things have probably moved on since the time he bought them, and that he could perhaps get similar performance with a single card these days at a...

Tannin has left me in charge of the shop again and the wholesale chain is out of stock of Windows 8.1 64-bit OEM product and I need stock ASAP. Should I and can I - (a) Purchase Win 8.1 OEM 32-bit (yes, they have stock) and install using normal 64-bit media but the product key from the new...

My customer has upgraded from Outlook Express on Windows XP to Thunderbird on a current Windows system. She is uncomfortable with the Thunderbird composition window as it does not show the message as it will look to the addressee including (for example) coloured or underlined links. She is...

I'm building a silent PC for a customer who does a little music recording. We have selected a silent PSU (fanless in normal operation, but has a fan fitted for overload if needed) and a whopping great fanless heatsink. We are not looking at an SSD - it's only an 8GB i3 and an ordinary HDD will...

We had a bloke come in the other day wanting to hire a laptop for his ... er ... is 50th wedding anniversary, i think it was. Anything would do, just something to plug into the venue's projector system and show some pictures on. Nice bloke, good customer. We didn't actually have anything...

I am thinking about getting a smartphone. Really, there is only one reason for this - the woefully primitive state of GPS satellite messaging devices like these - http://www.rei.com/category/40005158 I am perfectly happy with my steam-driven phone in all other respects. I have real web-enabled...

I'm a bit fearful that working this one out myself will take some ridiculous amount of time. Maybe someone can tell me where to start looking. I have two machines, both running Windows 8 Pro and one running XP. Both Win8 machines have Explorer replacements - one uses Explorer++, the other one...

Don't say I never help you with useful tips and tricks. To learn all about this, you MUST watch this video. Do not, repeat DO NOT watch it at work.

Tannin's Thinkpad sucks. It's really, really slow. I'm fairly sure that the performance issues are disk related. We are seeing a glacial boot process, and very slow program start-up times. One operational with whichever tasks are desired, it runs at a perfectly decent pace. The hardware: T 400...

Crikey, the moderation here has gone a bit overboard. I logged in just now to read the A vs A mega-thread, and it isn't here!

Just in case you weren't paying attention, Tannin, tere was another race last Tuesday. Who won that one?

So who won the big race on the first Tuesday in November? (Sorry, I've been out of touch for a while.)

Please excuse long post. It might be better if I give as much detail as possible here to save confusion later. It's almost the end of the financial year and a sensible time, financially speaking, for me to upgrade my Thinkpad. The question is, how much better (if any) would the new system be...

We all know a geek, right? Heck, most of us here probably are one. Geeks are everywhere. Geeks are born every minute of the day. Geeks (so far as I can tell) might as well have the word "geek" tattoed on their foreheads just after the midwife says "it's a boy, Mrs Jones". Except that would...

I want to forward a port on a work system. Tried lots of things, but can't figure it out. The system sits behind two routers, a Smoothwall, and then a little Linksys thing. I've port forwarded through an identical Linksys router at home no worries, and I've tried plugging the target machine...

Nothing here. Mostly because I can't rember where the best stats pages are. But if I could remember, I'd list them here so that even Tannin could find them. (If Tannin ever looked at them, which he doesn't.) (And if I could make sticky threads, which I can't.) (And if I was allowed to make...

Does anyone remember a ripper thread based around a fruitcake of an audio engineer who, hand on heart, swore blind that you can hear the difference between tracks recorded on blank blue media vs blank silver media vs blank gold media? Different tonal quality and all that stuff? He was...

Apparently there is some no-account shop in the USA called Wal-Mart. At least I guess they are a no-account operation because their web site is downright phenomenally bad. I saw a link from the Inq and the result blew my mind. Absolutely, positively, definately should be viewed with Firefox. Or...

Tannin's laptop has 1.5GB of RAM. If I buy him a litlte present of a 2GB stick and take out the 1GB stick, it could have 2.5GB. (There is only one slot.) I'm confident an extra GB will help when he is running several big things at once - which is fairly often. (Photoshop and Paintshop Pro are...

Just wondering if anybody knows what Tannin's new avatar is?

Huh? Why would any sensible ape want to do this? Well, because it would be nice to see how a page performs, loading speed wise, from the point of view of a visitor on a slow ADSL connection or on dial-up. Also, to have a clearer idea of what it looks like while it's loading - some pages you see...

I asked a while ago about dual intalls of IE7 and IE6 (for testing web pages) and decided that the best answers (virtual machines and stuff) were not things I was comfortable doing on Tannin's laptop. It runs beautifully and I don't wan't to mess it up. Nor am I really prepared to put in the...

Had to network two machines together today. An existing laptop and a brand-new desktop. He wants a wireless network (yuk) but lives so far away from any other houses that security is a total non-issue. I can just leave everything wide-open and it won't matter. The Soup Nazi wirelesssly...

Does anyone here know much about monitor callibration and colour spaces and associated topics? Tannin just bought a fancy callibration device and associated software and, typically, expects me to figure out the best way to use it. I've done a little reading up, but have some questions. No...

Guy rang up today, had some problems. From his description, it sounded like it was probably a power supply going bad. Told him to bring it in and we would swap out the PSU. So he turned up an hour or two later, some two or three year old shiny silver thing with a window in it. Pentium 4 2800...

Nope, not looking for wireless network cable this time, I have to try a data recovery on a customer's hard drive. I need to do this stuff one in a blue moon. I really don't have time to try it very often, nor to spend too long on any given drive, so a reasonably low-cost package that takes most...

Can anyone recommend a good brand for me, available in Australia? I need some good quality wireless network cables. Thanks

OK guys, some of you probably know all about this one already, so I won't recite chapter and verse, just hit the high points. (More details available if required though.) I have a Compaq in for upgrade - a half decent one, actually (if that's possible): P4-1800, 384MB of SDRAM, tower case. One...

Let's list them — the over-rated, under-performing hardware components you dislike the most, top 10 from most worstest to slightly less worse. RULEZ! Hardware only — no software, no other stuff. Components only. No complete systems — i.e., you can't list "any system made by Hewlett-Packard"...

Yike! Can I remember how to drive one of these things? I've been away so long I don't know if I remember how or not. it's all Tannin's fault, of course. I was doing just fine till I had a small and minor trivial navigation error and walked home after a small and trivial budgetary error...

Darn Americans! What are you guys playing at? Sleeping when I want to play, eh? Who cares if it's 5AM over there? Get out of bed and talk to me. RIGHT NOW!

Uh-oh. I can feel another credit card abuse session coming on. I'm still firmly undecided about a macro lens, and even more firmly undecided about a walkabout lens, though I might just stay with the Canon 18-55 I got more or less free with the camera - it works fine. I'll wait a while and see...

Before I start navigating the absurd intricacies (and sometimes-amazing prices) of IBM's website, does anyone know what the drill is on internal optical drives for IBM Thinkpads? I have an R51 which came with a combo drive. The entire drive seems to be user-removable. Can I just buy a DVD...

Really, really pushed for time today, but here are a few shots from my trip to the Wimmera last week.

Some time ago, on Pradeep's suggestion, I orderd a Delkin Cardbus PCMCIA to Compact Flash adaptor. Here I report on it. The Delkin adaptor. Underneath is an old style PCMCIA adaptor. There are many ways of downloading images from a digital camera. The most common is to use a USB cable and...