Search results

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    (Australia) iiNET services, mainly QLD

    That's the death of the remaining competition in the Australian ISP market. #4 eats #3 (or possibly #2 - I don't trust Optus figures). So you're left with a choice of the phone and exchange monopolist (Arstel/Telstra), the Singapore company that bought into a duopoly when the government wanted...
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    Beverages

    If you lived in Australia, that might quite possibly be true. Or the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain ... I guess a lot of countries, really. Hard liquor is expensive here, but widely available unless you're under 18 (in which case your older friends have to buy it for you). When I saw...
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    problem Avast

    Lunar, why on earth are you using a free antivirus? Saving up for the next big lens perhaps?
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    question RDP patch broken in Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 by Windows Update?

    After reading their claims, I'd say they may be the fastest remote desktop software across a 10Gbps LAN for graphics images. Specifically, they claim it is "possible to perform office tasks fluently from 100 kB/sec of available bandwidth". That's conservatively 800kbps, which as it happens is...
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    Locking Down Firefox

    OK, the idea in the last post only works with Opera. Chrome has a dummy spit because the file has changed. I wouldn't be surprised if it's updating it even with the browser closed.
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    Locking Down Firefox

    Another idea is to create a desktop shortcut that copies a backup preferences file over the top of the current one. Look under C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\<appname>\< filename>. For Opera, <appname>\<filename> is "Opera Software\Opera Next\Preferences" or "Opera Software\Opera...
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    Locking Down Firefox

    There are just so many ways to disable the toolbars in Firefox, I wondered if you wouldn't be better off with a different browser? Solution 1: Use Chrome and set the Home page to chrome://bookmarks. Even if he hides the bookmarks bar, he can still click on the Home button to open the bookmarks...
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    Best free anti virus

    You must have read an entirely different article. The one I read implied no such thing. In fact, it looks like a pretty good research effort to me. Definitely worth a quick read.
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    (Australia) iiNET services, mainly QLD

    iiNet (and others) are being squeezed by Telstra and now Optus. AFAIK they abandoned reselling Telstra DSLAMs some years ago after anti-competitive wholesale price increases. More recently, Optus has been squeezing out its 3G/4G network resellers, such as Woolworths. I was amazed when I checked...
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    (Australia) iiNET services, mainly QLD

    Not much help here I'm afraid. :( Still with Internode / Optus and now only 6 Mb/s with about 0.7 Mb/s upstream. I haven't had contact with the ISP for a while, which I guess is a good sign.
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    All In One Scanner/Copier/Fax/Printer

    We purchased a Samsung laser MFP about 18 months ago and have had no problems. The starter cartridges have now run out so I'm looking at a few hundred AU dollars to buy full-sized replacements, which of course is the downside of these things. Picture print quality is quite decent, but I think...
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    question 27" 1920x1080 monitor recommendation

    As it happens, I was looking for that monitor spec only a few weeks ago. I ended up choosing a Benq VA model: http://www.amazon.com/BenQ-GW2760HS-27-Inch-LED-Lit-Monitor/dp/B00ITORMDC It's widely reviewed on the web (all good) and has excellent user-satisfaction feedback. I played with it and...
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    Windows 10

    I was hoping to update a <6-year old Pentium from XP to Windows 8 (long story short, it was going to be replaced but the HDD started to die and I had to replace both it and the PSU). Which Intel chipsets are cursed with this issue?
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    Something Random

    I had an Intel-branded Sandy bridge board die completely just a couple of months back. I was able to reactivate Windows 7 with the Haswell/Asus H97 combo that replaced it, although like Lunar, I re-used the SSD boot drive.
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    Merc's Useful Tools of the day

    Isn't he one of Mark's creations?
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    Phone Dying

    I don't see why not. I know what you mean though - some other cases aren't all that durable.
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    Phone Dying

    Better demo here: https://www.youtube.com/embed/j4uMTZWh0Rc
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    Phone Dying

    Tech21 case demo: https://www.youtube.com/embed/jw0Kky6sZCA I was going to buy a (business) Otter Box, but witnessed an iPhone with one of these being thrown around the shop and was sold on the spot.
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    Phone Dying

    I was pretty much sold on a G3 - clearly state-of-the-art technology - but in the end I felt that for my personal situation, the Note 3 display was a better solution.
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    Phone Dying

    I know what you mean, but it isn't just the display size per se. The Note 3 is 5.5", the Note 4 5.7" - it's not at all easy to tell the difference. And yet they feel completely different to the 5.1" S5, for instance. The only phone with a 6" display I'm aware of is the LG G-Flex. It was purely...
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    Something Random

    Mind you, that's nearly three times faster than my DSL uplink speed in the backward world down under. :cry:
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    Something Random

    10.5 days for 200GB. Have you considered a courier instead?
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    Phone Dying

    At the moment, Samsung's top offerings appear to surpass everything else on the market. Not because of stupid bench tests, but because of fundamentals such as display quality and overall utility. In 2012, I was tempted by the Note 2, but was swayed by the practicality and lower price of the S3...
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    Cheapish Speakers

    Unfortunately, no. I've been debating whether or not to borrow a receiver to double-check. And a quick check of my recent motherboards shows no S/PDIF port, so I can't cross-check that way either. :( My Blu-ray player has a single HDMI port and a LAN port and that's it.
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    8TB and no helium

    Isn't that bits rather than bytes? So statistically you can expect 2 unrecoverable errors every 3 full drive reads? Certainly, these need to be in RAID of some sort and preferably RAID 1 or 10 to avoid the highly likely rebuild failures under RAID 5.
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    Cheapish Speakers

    Yes, the manual clearly labels it as an optical output. The light source only turns on when you switch between "TV Speaker" and "Audio System" in the TV menus. The speakers are set to "Optical" input. Sounds like the speakers need to go back, thanks.
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    Cheapish Speakers

    Constrained by what I can source here, I settled on a pair of Microlab Solo 8C. I favored them because the midrange driver is 4" instead of 6.5" as it is in the next model up, the Solo 9C. They sound reasonable, but I can't get any sign of life out of the optical input. I can see red light at...
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    Quiet Keys

    Quiet rules out all "mechanical" (encapsulated) switches such as Cherry MX. If you can handle short travel keys such as found on Thinkpads, try a keyboard with "scissor-switch" keys, such as Cherry Stream XT, Gigabyte Force K7 or Cougar 200K (these are current models I've tried personally)...
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    Hard drive Failure Rates

    After wasting a lot of hours trying to find the truth, I think this is mostly true: the designs for the legacy HGST desktop models passed to Toshiba, along with the factories. Toshiba also received enough IP to be able to design (or complete a design for) new 5TB and 6TB drives, which are now...
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    Cheapish Speakers

    I have to give joint points to CougTek and sdbardwick for ultimately targeting a store about 10 minutes away from where I work. But Coug, if that map was accurate, it would take days of plane-hopping travel to get there (as you well know). In fact, they're about 1125 miles (1800km) away by...
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    Cheapish Speakers

    Regretfully, I've just about given up on soundbars; the Yamaha YSP-2500 sells here for US$660 + tax ($AU$895). Unfortunately, supplies of Genius products have dried up in Australia. I managed to get a 5.1 wooden enclosure setup about 21 months ago and it was great value (although it's only...
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    Cheapish Speakers

    It's selectable in the menu so no, they don't need a remote.
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    Cheapish Speakers

    I'm looking for some speakers (and amplifier) under about US$400 to enhance the sound of a couple of TVs. I've looked at secondhand home theater systems, but people seem to offload those when something is broken or they're just crap. New, everything under $1000 appears to be crap, but it might...
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    Storage Review?

    All this nostalgia makes me pine for the Grammar Police. In their absence, may I point out that you should use "I" for the subject and "me" for the object? So "I am lighter than you" is fine, but the reverse should be "You are lighter than me". :diablo:
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    Can't convert Win2k to VM

    SP3. I tried restoring to the VM (after adding the drive manually) but I think it was so slow I thought it had crashed. The main problem though was that I couldn't configure the VM itself and shrink the drives. I will try a new conversion of just C drive and start with that. Paragon works just...
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    Something Random

    Actually, I'm not at all happy about any increase in headlight brightness, especially when it's presumably so directional ("laser"). I get really tired of being blinded by cars with HID headlamps because they're wallowing around while following bumps in the road.
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    Can't convert Win2k to VM

    No, just Acronis. But it's the only one that VMWare Converter can use. :( I fixed the (minor) error on the paritition and went through the backup ordeal again, but the Converter failed again. After exporting the logs, I see that it is reporting a "bad block". I scanned the portable drive, but...
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    SSDs - State of the Product?

    I was waiting for the Samsung 850 EVO to become available, because it's clearly a huge step up from the 840 EVO. I was all fired up to pick up a 1TB model today, but then I noticed that the SanDisk Extreme Pro 960GB was less than 10% more. I'm still vacillating. Many Anandtech benchmarks show...
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    question Maxtor 7345 AT data retrieval

    I don't know how you guys can remember stuff from 20 years ago with such clarity. John, when you said "a PII-233 machine containing an Abit LX6 board. The chipset is intel 440LX (82371AB). The OS is win98 SE", I wanted to ask if you are the curator of a PC museum? My memories of this era...
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    Can't convert Win2k to VM

    This has proven to be an odyssey - complete with one-eyed giants. Here's the story with the benefit of hindsight: Thanks to SDBardwick for the (trial) copy of TrueImage 11. Unfortunately,the original Win2k installation is split over 2 partitions (eg Program Files is on D drive). It took many...
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    problem Dying Computer

    :rotfl:
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    problem Dying Computer

    Is it just me, or is the 4790K likely to out-perform a 5930K in almost all desktop applications? And that's before any over-clocking ... I guess it can support double the RAM - if you're prepared to quadruple how much you spend on RAM. CougTek, Intel CPUs/chipsets don't have enough PCI-e lanes...
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    USB Flash Drive

    Can't buy PNY locally. :( I think A-RAM has long since perished, but nearly 3 years on, I noticed that a supplier still had four 32GB USB sticks (although probably MLC rather than SLC). Picked them up for US$20 each. I've confirmed the file copy speeds with a stopwatch. Copied a 7.4GB video...
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    question WD60EZRX or Others?

    Yep. That's the maximum water temperature in these parts because it takes 5 minutes to deliver 3rd degree burns, whereas 60°C takes just 1 second. In other words, it's a benign temperature in the overall scheme of things. Hotter than Google's optimal 45°C target for a 24x7 array, but almost...
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    Scanner for photos

    Awesome review of the V600 that explains the limitations of scanning prints, negatives and slides, as well as some practical tips. Highly recommended read.
  46. T

    Can't convert Win2k to VM

    Double post.
  47. T

    Can't convert Win2k to VM

    Microsoft's VHD imaging tool relies on Shadow Copy so isn't supported until XP. The last version of Acronis TrueImage that supports Win2k is 11 (Home). I don't have it and there are no download links on their website. Because the last version of VMWare Converter that supports Win2k is 4.01, I...
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    Something Random

    I've read satirical fiction about this, but here's the reality: Girl's lemonade stand closed by council
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    Smartwatches

    A Fitbit Charge will provide the notification (vibration) and caller id. It's obviously not dressy, but it's discrete (and you can change the color if desired). Anyone who does notice it will assume you're a health nut, which is not a bad look for a doctor. Bear in mind that almost all...
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    "Windows Technical Services"

    That is awesome! :bow:
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