Recent content by Deadwood

mplayer I too have been trying to convert videos recently. I found that mplayer (common on linux, available on windows) works well for a lot of things. mplayer --identify <filename> should tell you a lot about an existing file. The command-line options for mencoder (an encoder that comes with...

new purchase This seems to be the right place to share my reasoning for my latest purchase: a Nikon D40. I've had a Fuji F10 for a couple of years now, and I wanted something a lot better, especially for close-quarters, indoor, rapid-response photography (taking pictures of my kids). Why not...

RE: run 800 MHz RAM at 667 MHz. Will Wickards is right. I thought I read somewhere that running the RAM at an 1333M?(bytes?words?)/sec speed (667 MHz dual data rate) would be better than running it at 1600M?/sec with a 1333MHz bus. I would get the 800 instead of the 667 RAM simply because it's...

More info: processor/board/ram are the things that I get around to replacing least often. I have some relatively new hard drives, two 250 GB WD, and one 160GB Seagate. One of the WD is short-stroked to use only 30 GB, used for the OS and compiling, and the rest of it is only mounted when I back...

I am considering upgrading my computer, and would like any advice others here can give. Current configuration: Celeron 1.3 GHz Shuttle motherboard, Apollo Pro 133 chipset with VT82C686 south bridge A few parallel ata hard drives 1 broken DVD burner (reads, won't write DVD's anymore, writes CDs)...

I use OpenOffice.org, for cost, and cross-platform reasons. If I created a lot of word processor documents, I might learn latex/tex/lyx. EDIT: I also use Google spreadsheets for things I want universally accessible.

I don't run anti-virus on Windows XP on my laptop. The main family computer is linux.

Congrats on your mostly successful install, Bozo! I'm afraid I have no experience with F@H on linux. The ability to easily install the latest applications is what drove me to Gentoo Linux (from RedHat & Ubuntu). However, Gentoo Linux itself is not easy to install if you do not want to be a...

IMO, the biggest abomination in laptop screens is the reflective display. CrystalView, ClearView, BrightView, MirrorView, RearView, or whatever they're calling it now. I actually like the widescreen, as it makes viewing two text files side by side easier on a laptop without much screen real...

The laptops I've seen on display at WalMart all have missing keys, due to vandalism. Doesn't lend an air of quality to your product to be displayed like that. I assume that desktops will either suffer the same fate or not be put on display, like their current crop of low-budget desktop pcs...

HP I bought a bottom-of-the-barrel laptop 18 months ago. An HP 2500us, 1.8GHz Sempron with ATI IGP. The graphics card is the worst thing on it, but since I don't need 3d capabilities, it's fine. I swapped out the 4200 rpm hard drive for a 5400 rpm one I already had. I eventually upgraded to 768...

vmware server keys mubs: I Imagine that you can simply request a server key, since it's free. The key for a beta product is probably different than for a released product, I imagine. I purchased VmWare 3.x back in the day, and used vmware 4.x through work, and really liked it. I ran it on a...

Very interesting advice.

branded IGP's I bought one of the cheapest laptops I could find in January, a Compaq Presario V2500 or something. It works well for normal tasks, including compiling. At any rate, when I saw the "Graphics by ATI" logo, I thought, "oh, maybe laptop graphics cards are a thing of the past, since...