Search results

  1. Mercutio

    New monster build

    Every board I've worked on that used them needed multiple BIOS flashes before those would even boot. Also, what do you suppose the actual real-world gain from using just one might be? I'd put money on under half a second faster for Windows boot time.
  2. Mercutio

    Can't find bluetooth gateway

    Hardware hackers have figured out how to add aux out to an Amazon Echo, who is a pretty cool piece of hardware for a lot of other reasons. I'm not sure it's practical for Aviation, but it would work well in a home setting.
  3. Mercutio

    Financial on phone companies?

    Another aspect of that is that a company that most competitive on that basis may be so because it's not offering advantage in other areas. Sprint is priced lower than Verizon because it can't offer nearly the coverage, for example. I don't think anyone here would consider buying an AMD CPU right...
  4. Mercutio

    Surface Pro

    I have a hard time justifying the pricetag for something I can't add RAM or disks to but I'd have no trouble at all recommending one for other people.
  5. Mercutio

    8k TVs and Monitors

    At $8500 each, surely it would be better/cheaper to just have an array of 1080p projectors, right?
  6. Mercutio

    Surface Pro

    There might be patents or something? Or maybe it's because of how the reversible locking mechanism on the thing works. My guess is that it's going to be some lesser form of Quadro rather than a consumer chip. It sounds like it's getting a mobile-grade CPU rather than a ULV if Microsoft isn't...
  7. Mercutio

    PC Gaming = World of Suck

    3Mbit is probably right on the threshold of what I'd call tolerable. At least that's fast enough that you aren't really waiting for pictures to load on a web page. To give you some idea of how fast 110bps is, I can remember being on a 300bps connection and being able to watch individual words...
  8. Mercutio

    Surface Pro

    They added an nvidia GPU to the new Surface Book. That's pretty serious compared everything else of similar form factor.
  9. Mercutio

    Windows Server 2016

    Storage Spaces has a LOT of weirdness like that. Things that have to fixed with cmdlets in Powershell because the GUI doesn't work or isn't implemented. It's fairly aggravating, though the actual storage is robust enough.
  10. Mercutio

    4K TVs

    It's exotic right now, but at one time, so were DLP and OLED displays.
  11. Mercutio

    Something Random

    My solution is to use Mozbackup to push the settings I want people to have. Unfortunately, it won't actually allow a scripted restore yet, but it's still faster than manually changing all the crap that's wrong with a default Firefox install.
  12. Mercutio

    Windows 10

    My least favorite things about Windows 10, at least from a support aspect: 1. Cortana's local data indexing breaks a lot. Windows Search 4.0 on XP worked better. There's a set of powershell commands to make it reindex, but holy crap why is it losing track of things in \windows or my PATH...
  13. Mercutio

    8k TVs and Monitors

    Fushigi
  14. Mercutio

    Browser Advertisement blocking - yet another discussion

    I use Adblock Latitude for my own needs. I advise others to run Adblock Plus because it is a single brand that is available regardless of one's choice of browser. However, I also have explicit directions for what blocking lists should be installed/enabled, because I think the acceptable ads list...
  15. Mercutio

    Windows Server 2016

    These are the components I'm most interested in using. I have a system deployment that I'm kind of dragging my feet on so that I get 2016 licenses rather than 2012r2 and actually use the new features. I will say that 2012r2 has significant improvements (software RAID6) over plain old 2012.
  16. Mercutio

    Laptop SW problems

    They should be, but if you've had updates fail they might be listed more than once.
  17. Mercutio

    Windows 10

    That was put forward by pundits rather than anyone actually on the Windows product team. I think it's been pretty thoroughly debunked.
  18. Mercutio

    WiFi Access Point suggestions

    Down side: Those are 2.4GHz wireless N only. The new models are UAP-AC-LRs I think, but that one is just a UAP-LR. Up side: if you have a decent client, you'll be able to get a signal in places you wouldn't not expect. I stuck one out on my balcony and I can get on my home network from my...
  19. Mercutio

    Laptop SW problems

    The only worrisome aspect is that some of the symptoms mubs is suggesting don't align with what I'd ordinarily write off as a case of internet herpes. Is it possible that the WLAN hardware is marginal, the database of installed updates got hosed AND there was a lot of miscellaneous wrongness...
  20. Mercutio

    WiFi Access Point suggestions

    You plug in the injector next to your switch and run a short cable to that, then the long cable from that. I do still think the Ubiquiti gear is overkill for a high density residential setting, but that probably just means you'll have the strongest 2.4GHz signal in your building. ;)
  21. Mercutio

    WiFi Access Point suggestions

    I usually avoid D-link because it tends to offer lame firmware, but I base that more on my opinion of its routers than APs.
  22. Mercutio

    WiFi Access Point suggestions

    Ubiquiti APs are overkill for home use unless you have a massive propert you're trying to cover or something. I'd probably buy a Netgear dual band AP and call it a day. I imagine that you would want to be on .AC not so much for available bandwidth but to stay on top of interference from other...
  23. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I'm more of a torrent sort of a person, but the machine doing the downloading will only talk to the internet through its dedicated VPN. NNTP is (mostly) below the radar for stuff-downloading, but I've been able to set up an impressive level of automation and I'm not relying on the retention...
  24. Mercutio

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    Probably not, because those things are a PITA to support and a good justification to extract more money from customers who have good reason to want such things. If you're seriously talking about anything more serious than simple mirrored drives, you probably need to be working with an enterprise...
  25. Mercutio

    Windows 10

    What bothers me nowadays is that Microsoft doesn't really say what updates do any more. "Security Fixes" and "stability enhancements" are more or less the only descriptions we're getting for Windows 10.
  26. Mercutio

    Reasons to Root your phone?

    Thing that drives me nuts about Google Music: It seriously, hard-core mangles file names with non-English characters in them if they're uploaded via Music Manager. Also, Google Music Manager does not implement support for multi-disc albums. You have to re-name tracks after the fact if you want...
  27. Mercutio

    Laptop whines on battery power

    Nope. And there's no surface mount components to replace or glue down. I gave it back and told the user to just cope.
  28. Mercutio

    Laptop SW problems

    It's Windows 8. Unless it has licenses for weird software or ridiculous amounts of user customization, just back up her stuff and reset the PC. Make sure it has Ad-blocking and decent security software before handing it back.
  29. Mercutio

    Windows 10

    Linux can have its own share of weirdness, mostly because someone gets a bright idea to monetize some aspect of system behavior or to switch licensing models or because a particular distro's package management doesn't support Project XYZ and installing XYZ by hand isn't well documented on that...
  30. Mercutio

    NTLite

    I'll give it a try the next time I need to update system images.
  31. Mercutio

    Laptop whines on battery power

    Changing the installed drive has no effect. I took the thing completely apart, something that's a lot more difficult than I'd expect from a business machine, and there aren't any surface-mount components that could be glued down or desoldered and replaced. The battery connection is on the...
  32. Mercutio

    Reasons to Root your phone?

    The result is mildly unsatisfactory since it's a complete replacement of the maintainable system image from LG. I'm basically betting that the guys releasing the rooted image will continue to make system images as the phone needs them.
  33. Mercutio

    Laptop whines on battery power

    The whine happens whether or not a drive is installed, from the moment the machine is powered on and running on battery.
  34. Mercutio

    Reasons to Root your phone?

    The G4 root is kind of awful still. Another warning I have for you, dd, as a person who breaks his phone a lot: I still haven't managed to get a 100% functional replacement screen for mine. I've tried three so far, and none of the replacements has let me use tap-to-turn-on, something that is as...
  35. Mercutio

    Laptop whines on battery power

    I have an HP Powerbook 4550 sitting here that makes a loud, high-pitched whine when it's running off battery power. AFAIK, it's hardly ever used on battery, but I replaced the hard drive in it today and the first thing the user told me is that "it never used to do that" whereas I had assumed it...
  36. Mercutio

    Reasons to Root your phone?

    ... and to get a real, functional backup of your phone, you need to have root in the first place. This is an identified weakness with Android generally. HTC probably has some kind of backup software for you to use but I have no idea if it'll put app settings back the way they were. But in this...
  37. Mercutio

    IPv6

    Maybe. Probably even. IPv6 has been around for quite a while now. Most consumer networking hardware doesn't seem to support it, even if it's technically capable of doing so. My cable modem, for example, has no user interface options for IPv6, even though the hardware manufacturer (SMC, in my...
  38. Mercutio

    Something Random

    With regard to calling movers: my friends tend to be of the young and broke variety rather than comfortably well off and settled in their lives. I think what you'll find is that anything with an AMD CPU is going to qualify as low end and anything with an i5 and discrete graphics is either...
  39. Mercutio

    Goodbye Firefox

    I suspect the relative ease of blocking ads in browsers vs. being able to make mobile apps devote a third of your screen real estate to them will settle that. I can see app-ification of formerly web based content as a possible evolution in response to ad blocking there as well.
  40. Mercutio

    Goodbye Firefox

    I'm not arguing that, just that there are options available. Options that for the most part make javascript seem like the least of all evils, even.
  41. Mercutio

    AMD won't release Zen CPU before Q4 2016 (too late)

    What does Samsung want with AMD? Contracts to build APUs for Microsoft and Sony? An escalation of the competition with Intel? A reason to re-tool its 14nm fabrication process away from all the ARMs it can handle? IBM seems to have turned its back on hardware. Yes, it still does big iron, but its...
  42. Mercutio

    Goodbye Firefox

    Sure there is. You could build your interactive application with Java, Flash or Silverlight. Or you could just stop using the HTTP as a replacement for the top three layers of the OSI model and deliver a proper binary for whatever it is you need to do.
  43. Mercutio

    problem Toshiba laptop's touchpad malfunction

    Sometimes direct replacements are available. I looked at a ~14 month old HP (too new to have DOA spares, too old to be in warranty) with fully broken hinge assembly. Since there were no parts, I actually got the quote from HP Spares: $331 for a display cable, metal hinge assembly and the plastic...
  44. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I spent the weekend helping a friend move. And that's what I'm going to spend next week doing, also. I don't know why I do it. I know no one I help would help me in return. For the exercise, maybe.
  45. Mercutio

    Help - bad Perc or bad cables?!

    Label your cables. Do the disconnected drives follow the cable or the port?
  46. Mercutio

    AMD won't release Zen CPU before Q4 2016 (too late)

    Given that AMD is a fraction of Intel's size, fabless and stuck on badly outdated tech from its manufacturing partners, the writing really is on the wall. Intel is pushing back product releases so as not to bury it, I think.
  47. Mercutio

    Goodbye Firefox

    MDI interfaces break well-understood rules for how GUIs should operate by allowing for arbitrary placement of child windows and/or their content without allowing for an anchoring point for returning to that content. Nearly all of them also need a change in habit for task switching behavior as...
  48. Mercutio

    Fire TV Stick $19

    You can't screencast to Youtube on PC unless you're browsing in Chrome and you can't screencast without having the browser launched. It's not the same as the STB experience where you can override what the display is actually doing to put a video on the screen from your device.
  49. Mercutio

    Fire TV Stick $19

    Buy one for each room, obviously. ;) I don't see the point yet, since it doesn't have an awareness of local resources or content and doesn't integrate with anyone else's cloud services. That thing would be really powerful if it understood files on network drives. I'd love to be able to say...
  50. Mercutio

    Fire TV Stick $19

    I'm going to buy a couple for my labs, but honestly the one I have at home barely gets used as it is. I've already been asked to buy new Apple TVs so I'm thinking the cheaper, better thing won't be a problem. What I have been doing is buying fire tv sticks, installing tvmc and reselling them...
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