Search results

So how abut it, Storage Forum people, is Incredimail a menace, or is it as safe to use as any other email client? I see enough machines to state as a fact that more Incredimail users get virus and spyware infections than users of other email clients. (I'm not counting Outlook Express users...

My laptop boot partition is only 15GB. I rarely defrag, but the system clogged up pretty badly lately so I cleaned it up a little and it's much better now. The problem is HYBERFILE.SYS, a 2GB+ file that is in >1600 fragments spread all over the drive. (I must have hibernated at some point with...

I have a machine here that runs Windows ME. (Yeah, yeah, I know. ME is the worst of all possible Windows versions. But that's the version the customer owns, and the machine is too old and crap-ridden to run 2K or XP.) The customer has deleted all the files in the root directory. Now, on a Win...

I have a customer that wants to use three (yes three) screens at once. No games, just spreadsheets and similar. Two screens is easy enough, but what's the go for three screens? Anyone done this recently?

Dear Mr Thinkpad, I am not buying another one of your laptops. At least not this year. Partly this is because the old one ain't broken. But mostly it is because you haven't done anything to make me want the new one. Fair dinkum, how can you expect me to shell out good money on a new laptop...

Prompted, I suppose, by the Firefox update mechanism that triggered just now, I cruised over to their extensions page and scrolled through the first five pages of stuff - i.e., the most popular extensions. And there was not one that looked to me as if it might be worth the trouble of downloading...

Sorry to bother you all with what ought to be a very simple and obvious question, but I'm afraid I just don't get this one. Why are Apple users practically always such sanctimonious turds?

Seems worth giving this its own thread. Tannin wrote: As a kid, I probably had more flights in aeroplanes than I had ice creams. My family comes from Tasmania and nearly every set of school holidays it was off to Tas to stay with grandparents or various other rellies. Plus Sydney a few times...

Trend Micro comprehensively revamped Housecall a month or so ago. New Housecall versions are usually pretty bug-ridden for the first week or two, then get better. But this one has been around for quite a while and is still broken. Opinions please. And - importantly - alternative, for I'm...

"Red Hill, god morning, this is Tony" "Oh ... yeah. (long pause) Listen, I got my computer fixed up there last week and it doesn't work." "Oh? What is the problem, Sir?" "Well, there is no sound. Doesn't make any noises." "OK. Hmmm (Thinks: I remember this one. It came in because it had...

Are there known problems using 4 sticks of RAM in Athlon 64 boards? I have a system (Gigabyte PCI-E board, VIA chipset) that only sees 3.1GB on boot instead of 4GB. All the sticks of RAM work fine individually. Any pair works fine for 2GB. System runs stable with 4GB, just counts the wrong...

It occurs to me that we here at the shop have become really, really boring these last few years. There is bugger-all variety in our products, and we tend to stick religiouly to a very small number of brands. Cases: Bliss, and whatever those things we get from Alice are. Power supplies: Bliss...

Tired of seeing bad news about climate change? Well, here is another one, it is now official: in Australia, last year (2005) was the hottest year ever recorded, and the rate of increase has gone up too.

It's been so long since I was asked to do a dual boot setup that I can't remember how to do it! Customer has a decent machine (Athlon XP something-or-other) and wants us to install a shiny new copy of Win XP on it (to replace the pirated one that the kids put on). I'll be upgrading it to a new...

What's the go with monitor callibration, people? Me, I've never bothered with it, on the theory that I soon get used to whatever colour cast any given screen introduces, just as you quickly adjust to the different colour temperatures of (e.g.) sunlight vs incandescent light. But now that I'm...

News posted by Bozo: Dell to sell AMD. But they are still Dells http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/afx/2005/11/20/afx2347168.html Is this the real deal? Or is it false alarm number 147377?

Is it worth looking at a large TFT screen yet? I have an Acer AL1922 19 inch unit which is excellent for a 19, but am wondering if the bigger ones have (a) the picture quality and (b) the value yet. Requirements: * Decent aspect ratio: none of this so-called "wide screen" crap that is only...

The good news is that Sony will no longer be manufacturing thir pox-ridden optical drives in-hous as of next year. The bad news is that they are setting up a shared manufacturing facility with NEC, and Sony will own 55% of it. That seems to say that Sony drives will live on, and NEC drives...

I have a customer who runs about 5 or 6 main computers, plus various accessory machines. They are in a light light engineering trade. Fileserver: Athlon XP 2500, Windows 2000 Workstation, reception: someting old that ain't broke yet so we ain't fixing it. Win98. Will be replaced soon. Drawing...

A really weird thing, ths one. Customer rang me, can't acces the web. She had been onto Telstra Big Pond (that well-known lowest common demoninator of Australian ISPs) and they said everything was perfect. But she can't access any of the three most important URLs she needs to run her business...

This is a classic example of the hard-shouted half-truth that people all too often substitute for genuine science and actual knowledge. (Not that you were shouting, I hasten to add, Sechs - you just happeed to spout an ideal example of the sort of nonsense that most people seem, these days, to...

(My thanks to Tea for her help preparing this post.) Here is the notebook I'd rush out and buy tommorow. It won't suit everyone, of course, but it would be perfect for my needs. Screen: At least 17 inch, standard shape - i.e., same proportions as a 17 inch desktop LCD. None of this wide...

Essentially, I don't watch TV. But dimly remembered from back before I had a life (well, about three lives actually, but I'm trying to squeze them into one) these are the first ten things I remember watching at least semi-regularly. RULEZ: Must be a series not a oncer. I've added hints for the...

These days it is cool to have your site coded in XHTML instead of HTML. OK, I'm cool with that, but why? The other week I spent a couple of hours reading stuff at various sites about the differences and why XHTML is such a fantastic idea and all the rest of it, and the down-to-earth...

OK, it's mad money time again. I am looking at buying a new camera in the fairly near future (a timescale of a few weeks). Is there any reason NOT to buy the obvious - i.e., a Canon EOS 20D and the 100-400 IS zoom lens? The role of this camera is to fill the gap between my digiscoping rig (~ a...

Interesting poll results from the Melbourne Age. (Generally regarded as the best newspaper in Australia - which, when you think about it, isn't saying very nice things about the rest of them! Still, it's certainly the least-worst newspaper in the country. Err .. on the the poll results.) Gaza...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/01/ecs_amd_intel_mobo/ Sorry for the link without explanatory text, but ... well ... you sort of have to see this for yourself

Lawyers, says LiamC. Me, I'd add: Telephone company sales peope Car yard service department managers The sort of computer vendor you see at swap meets Nine out of ten politicians The average accountant Marketing weenies Nine out of ten plumbers Real estate agents Anyone who goes to school at...

I lost my temper with a customer today. First time in ... oh .. I don't know, maybe five years, maybe 10. I have no excuse. It was a perfectly pleasant morning, I was well rested, had enough work to keep me occupied, not so much that I was having trouble coping with it. No problems at home, in...

Fushigi's post in another thread sparked this off. Must be time we had a look at what people are using in their everyday computers these days.

I just bought the new Acer 19 inch LCD with the swivel: AL1922. It's awesomely good. The amount of crisp, clear little text you can get into a spreadsheet this way is phenomenal. Also, on the same day, the best quality display I've ever seen on a laptop: a Fujitsu, which cost far more than I...

We hear a lot of hype about browsers and PR stuff about how the average user is turning away from Internet Explorer. Often, you tend to discount that as probably just spin. But it's real. Here are the browser stats from redhill.net.au for the current month: * Internet Explore 59% * Firefox...

No big deal this one, but I thought someone might have a quick & easy fix for me. Seeing as my IBM laptop has gigabit ethernet already, I thought I'd buy a little 5-port gigabit hub and a gigabit card for my desktop at home - it has all those nice fast SCSI drives in it, so why not make the...

I saw a fax-out from a supplier today and it caught my eye. Mitsubishi 42 inch plasma screen, not much over $2000 ex tax. "Wow!" I said, "that sounds fantastic!" I'd thought plasma screens were mega-expensive. But I could just about spring for one of those. It's just about time I replaced my...

I have a customer with an Athlon XP 2800, 1GB DDR, and a Gforce 6 6600GT. He likes the gaming performance, but still wants more. I am reluctant to tell him he needs to spend even more on the video card than he just did - hey, AU$395 is the last sensible stopping place before you go into the...

OK, seeing as the topic is live right now, let's try a little thought-experiment. Imagine that web browsers were like operating systems or office software (ignoring OO and Linux) - i.e., that there was no such thing as a free web browser. I'm asking you to imagine, in other words, that Windows...

Seems sensible to make a new thread of this, rather than drag the spyware thread off-topic. Well I did try it, or at least I tried to try it. My (bought and paid for genuine-spent-my-own-money Opera 7.X claims that it's a 7.54. I seem to remember upgrading to that version some time back...

Q (From another forum - nothing to do with computers - where I hang out from time to time.) I didn't know I had firewire. I've since found my motherboard manual and it says there are three IEEE 1394 "by cable". What does this mean? How can I tell which ports are firewire as I can't see three...

Hmmm .... Didn't we get this one before a while back? When I try to change my avatar, I get this: Warning: copy(./images/avatars/gallery/userupload/8310440184195e5f9d94c4.jpg): failed to open stream: Permission denied in / home/handruin/public_html/forum/includes/usercp_avatar.php on line 227...

What's the story with LCD/laptop projectors, team? What are the: * Brands to prefer? * Brands to avoid? * Features that matter? * Features that ain't worth a toss? I'm about to buy one. So far, I have looked at the specs and prices of several likely-looking models from manufacturers that I...

Do we have an all-time hall of fame somewhere? Inevitably, it was a Friday. "Red Hill, good afternoon, this is Tony." "Oh ... yeah. Look, I brought a computer in to be fixed last week and I've just picked it up and it's lost Windows." "It's lost Windows. Hmmm.. You're not getting anything...

The other evening I had a friend visit me at the office. We had a whole stack of stuff to talk about and information to exchange: Word documents, Excel data, lots of maps, all sorts of stuff he was pulling out of an Access database. No problem. He brought his laptop, and we were at the office...

Looks like Kristi is having the little blue Barina and I'm buying a new one. But what? For me, the Barina is just about perfect in all bar a couple of cruical details. First the things I like about it, and also the things that are OK but not great. $15,000 brand new with all the usual...

I have a client that runs Netscape 7.1 as their standard browser and email client. (Yeah, yeah, but at least I got them weaned off Outbreak and Microsoft Internet Infector, and Netscape 7.x is, if you ignore the added crap, really Mozilla 1.x.) They have quite a few machines and this problem...

The other day I bought a Samsung 160GB 8MB cache drive to replace my 80GB data drive with. Seeing as >128GB drives have been around for quite a while now, I didn't expect any issues. Plonked it in, booted W2K SP4 off the X15-36LP same as usual, went to partition it from the Disk Management...

I was posting here and dithering about switching over from NT 4.0 to 2000? It was a fair while back - indeed, it may well have been before there was a Storage Forum - i.e., perhaps it was on the old SR pre-MBF. Well, I switched my home machine, and I have to hand it to the guys at Microsoft...

Easy question: all things considered, what has been the most newsworthy event to happen around here over, oh, say the last three or four months?

What's wrong with this code? It works fine in IE 5.0, IE 6., and Mozilla. In Opera 7.23 I get the text and it's functional but no stylesheet - just plain vanilla black and white text. In Opera 6.05, I just get a blank page. OK, OK, mayube the correct question is "what's wrong with Opera", but...

Before I wander off to troll the shareware/freeware archives, I thought I'd ask here. I have many thousands of photographs. Mostly I just store them in folders and the auto-generated Nikon file-names keep them in cronological order, which is what I want. But sometimes I want to prepare a...

Have we had this question before? I once read a claim for 100 years, but it sounds sus. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/32593.html says 2 years for cheap no-names.