Search results

I bought a refurb Nforce2 today. An Asus something or other. I had some credit at newegg nothing else sounded good. Of course, I hate nvidia with the sort of passion that really defines such words as "deide", "contemn", or "execrate",so, I'm more-or-less expecting to be utterly disappointed...

Someone can make this news later. In a move that must obviously be meant to drive amazon and newegg out of business, the California State Legislature today passed a "net tax" bill requiring that sales tax be tacked on to all purchases in California. Add on 8.25% to everything newegg sells, and...

From time to time I find it necessary to explain my distaste for a particular motherboard via analogy, usually to nontechnical people who are interested in purchasing a new PC. The analogy I end up repeating over and over goes: "That ECS motherboard in your quote from XXXXXX, if that were a...

The details of those buildings, the shadows... wow.

Anyone ever dealt with this before? I got "volunteered" to specify and purchase computers for a US 503(1) charitable organization just a moment ago, and unless the discounts for software licensing for charity are a LOT better than the ones for academic software, I don't know whether I'll be able...

I've read in several different places now that DVD Video discs made with Nero are not highly compatible discs. I've done several now without any problem, using Nero 5.5.10.20 and 5.5.10.28, mostly Disney movies that happened to be below 4.5GB on-disc (e.g. 101 Dalmations). Is there a basis...

I have in my hand an AthlonXP 1700+ that appears to have failed. The problem: No stickers or markings indicating retail or OEM status. This is a very old chip. It's from a time when I was buying retail only (I started buying some OEMs again some few months ago for my personal use)? Markings as...

Is this thing on?

Just thought I'd let everyone know that new Lite On XJ-HD166S 16x DVD-ROM drives appear to be locked at 2x for DVD ripping, just like Toshiba drives. The last drive I have that does fullspeed rips was made in January. The two I got today were both made in early March, and both hover around 2x...

Well, finally got around to installing 2003 Server EE. All I can say is, they finally did something right. Everything is off by default. EVERYTHING. IE's security setting, for the first time ever, is "high", Graphics acceleration, sound (gotta reboot for that one). Other big pluses: Recognized...

Simple question: You've got one CD - 700MB - and you need to fit onto that CD hardware drivers of highest utility. We'll limit ourselves to drivers for 98, 2000 and XP, to make things easier, and no vomitbox hardware or printers. I'm just curious what y'all think should be there.

I got my happy-pack from MSDN this morning. Office 2003 beta 2, Exchange 2003 and... 2003 Server RC2 (only this time a "360 day trial version")? WTF? Didn't 2003 server go gold like a month ago? Anyone else have an action pack sub or MSDN? Didja get 2003 server yet?

Pointless but funny war link of the day here.

Anyone know why, despite the fact that I have SPDIF enabled and "digital output only" on my GA-7VAXP, I'm not getting sound from TOSLink to my receiver? OS can be either 2000 or XP Pro, and yes, the backplate is connected to the motherboard.

We have a toolbox. It has Atto in it. How do we add things? Is there a size limit? F'r instance: I have all 80MB of IE6 SP1 + all the add ons, universal installer. It was a monumental PITA to get it. Microsoft REALLY wants you to use their web installer. Might be a cool thing to share, for the...

Ebay prices are insane, but I need to find 8 or so 4GB hard disks in the next few weeks. There is no way that pull/used drives are worth $35 + shipping each, and that's the pricing I'm seeing.

Oddly quiet here. You'd think we all had other things to do on Friday nights and Saturday mornings. Or something. I have come to the conclusion that the natural enemies of cats are neither dogs nor mice. Nope. They're books and keyboards Case in point: I keep a stack of unread books beside...

Axis of Evil Wannabees by John Cleese Bitter after being snubbed for membership in the "Axis of Evil", Libya, China and Syria today announced that they had formed the "Axis of Just as Evil", which they said would be more evil than that stupid Iran-Iraq-North Korea axis President Bush warned of...

Requires Acrobat. It's worth it.

Here. I tested it. It works, enabling you to play DVDs with WMP8 (whichever one comes with XP). Kind of a neat thing for fellow system builders here.

Got your attention, didn't I? Read all about it here. Story has been on /. since last night but other sites don't seem to be pick it up, so here you go.

Here. Some motherboards will boot off these, even if they aren't explicitly bootable.

I just got four tbred XP2100s from newegg.com. Serial numbers are contiguous (except for one) and they're all - and if I'm reading the little black sticker right "actually" 2800s. Black sticker ADXA2100DUT3C 9819807280064 AIUHB0308WPGW The odd man out is marked as a 2600. 1.) SWEET! 2.) What...

Subject says it all. Ahem. "This video stream is copyright protected. ATI MMC will stop recording now. [OK]" I got that message when my recording of a VHS movie (which recorded just fine, of course, despite being copy protected itself) ran over into regualar broadcast. I've been trying to...

Copying DVDs is most certainly at the top of the list of things most DVD burner owners want to do with their hardware, even if they won't admit it. It certainly was for me. Sadly, most movies seem to have been specifically engineered to be a little bit larger than the 4.7GB disks that are...

Has anyone else here had the unbelievable misfortune to work on an ECS K7SOM? I get asked to upgrade machines to Windows XP pretty regularly, and I'm mostly nice enough to sit down and click "Next" a couple times for $30 or so. Usually, it's an utterly painless process. This thing, though...

It's poll time!

What a cute little toy! Product is a sealed enclosure with a 3.5" hard disk inside. It supports both firewire and USB2 through a proprietary cable interface on the drive. I installed the drive in its USB2 configuration on a P4-1500 with an NEC-based PCI USB2 controller. I'm fairly used to USB2...

OK. My father gave me about five years worth of back issues of this magazine about six months ago, and they've been piled in the back of my car ever since. Until today. An exceptionally long line at the drive-through window at Taco Bell had me ready to KILL for something to read. I vaguely...

In my life as a consultant I run into 802.11B equipment with something like annoying frequency. It's downright common, truth be told. I'm given to understand that 802.11A is the "next great thing" in wireless - 5GHz band where practically nothing else can cause interference, 54Mbps speeds, and...

Someone on Slashdot pointed me to this site. After playing a bit, my Mozilla installation has reached the point where it is absolutely sublime. A collection of links to goodies: Leech - Context batch downloading (e.g. "all the *.zip files linked on this page"). I don't think I need to explain...

We've all got stories. This guy has stories and pictures.

Anyone know where to get thermal pads to replace those found on retail HSFs? AMD's site makes some mention of them. I've never seen one. Are they out there?

The subject was the PC listed in a previous thread (Pentium 233, 32MB RAM), running WinXP on a non-ACPI HAL. The subject is now an XP2200+ with 512MB on the ACPI HAL for XP. XP was upgraded stopping the install just after the first reboot and ghosting the FAT32 partition to an 80GB hard disk...

I bought a half-dozen Sapphire Radeon 9000 VIVOs for one of my classrooms. Some high points: $75 for composite video in and out, and Svideo in and out, and a passively cooled Radeon 9000. This card uses the newer MMC 7.7 capture software, with "One Touch Record" and a skinnable interface. Visual...

Here. Seems like a pretty damn good deal for a 68-pin drive.

I want to find a low-cost flatbed scanner that doesn't suck. Several reasons, the first being that my office-mate needs one and can't afford it. The second is that the asstastic HP 5100s I've got at work have a Lovelace reading that's right off the scale. Seriously, the drivers I can find for...

Best threads of SF? This site now has some history. A year's worth, anyway. We've got our own in-jokes that need explaining, most having to do somehow with Tea, and we've had some interesting technical threads. The idea is to have a place for beginners to start, and for old-timers to pick...

One of the PCs I built this weekend was for someone who described their Dell as "too slow". It's too slow alright. It's a Pentium 233 with 32MB of RAM and a 3GB hard disk, partitioned as 2 1.5GB FAT drives which is completely and utterly full (I take that back. It has 16k free on the second...

Ontrack Easy Recovery Pro. Legal copy licensed to me (purchased after a couple of successful runs with a not-legal copy). I paid $800 for the software (bought a technician license on sale, I understand it's normally more), but just today is the first time I used it for billable work. Customer's...

I impulse-bought a Sony multi-write DVD burner today. It's easily the most expensive piece of computer hardware I've purchased in the last two years, at $329. I purchased it at a local Circuit City, along with 5-packs of +R and -R discs, and single +RW and -RW media, all of which were...

I wasn't kidding about that. We've had some good threads in the Pub. We've had some good threads in Computers ("Types of Customers"). Rather than bury the good stuff, why not copy it to a forum so it's easy to find?

Subject says it all. Reason for the poll? The people I work for are convinced that I just hate software. But seriously, if these are the things you had to work with every day, wouldn't you be a little bitter? AOL gives us AOL, a bunch of different IM clients, Netscape/Mozilla and Winamp, and is...

Subject says it all. I'm trying to figure out what I'd need to create a database for divx encoding performance. Why? It seems to be the most stressful thing I can do on a PC, outside of gaming. I figure I'll need a "standard" video clip. Something that wouldn't take long to download or...

They've been running in and out of stock for about a week, but NewEgg is listing refurbished GA-7VAXPs for $49. I've bought a few refurbished boards from them in the past (an MSI K7T266 ARU and several Shuttle AK32x's). They've been just fine for me so far. Worst thing I can say is that the...

Current generation maxtor drives continue to carry 3-year warranty. OfficeDepot.com item number is 678133. 80GB Maxtor DM9 8MB cache. Enter coupon code 16006100. Shipping is pretty much always free. Office Depot also has a $30 rebate on the drive . OK. It's not a $69 120GB drive, but I just...

I know there's an enormous worm that's hitting MSSQL servers hard right now, so perhaps this is related. Still, has anyone been able to get to pricewatch in the last couple of days?

I like to tell people that DVD-ROM is the optical medium of... sometime in the future. Everyone responds with "But I don't want to watch movies on my PC!" Of course, when a 16x DVD-ROM costs and performs about the same as a 52X CD-ROM, the DVD is the superior choice. Yet I still get argument...

Not for me, but I could use a recommendation for a decent P4 motherboard. Actually two: a "budget" vanilla model and something on the higher end of things.

I know I'm not the only person here who encodes video. Has anyone else here noticed that divx 5 seems to have a floor for file size when encoding at low bit-rates? When I encode single files longer than 120 minutes, even with no audio, using vdub or tmpeg or even Premier, I end up with a file...