Search results

  1. Mercutio

    Quality 19-24" LCD Monitor

    Possibly. I'm sure I've purchased multiples of all of the above over the last few months but they're all back at my office.
  2. Mercutio

    Quality 19-24" LCD Monitor

    I always think it's delightful when we can bring back a five year old thread and continue posting on topic. I really do have to say I love those Asus VS247 IPS displays. I've seen them as cheap as $130. There's something to be said for being able to build a $400 5760 pixel-wide wall of screen.
  3. Mercutio

    Jobs with LOTS of spare time

    One of my former students does IT Support for PCs someplace really big and really recognizable. He has to account for his time in SIX MINUTE increments and has a mandatory incident productivity requirement that does not vary. When he started there were 20 guys on staff in his role. Now there are...
  4. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Mrs. Brown's Boys is pretty damned funny on general principle.
  5. Mercutio

    4k TVs and Monitors

    Other than no-name Korean brands, is there another option besides Sharp that's actually shipping?
  6. Mercutio

    This must be slow, DD: Time to upgrade?

    I have an i7 920 in my office that I don't think has been powered on in two years, sed. Make me an offer.
  7. Mercutio

    This must be slow, DD: Time to upgrade?

    The oldest i7s, the 920s and 860s, are five years old now. They're emphatically NOT slow CPUs, but at the same time a newer i5 is something like 50% faster on a per-core basis. I don't know what Santilli is doing with that machine that he would call it slow, but I can see a huge difference in...
  8. Mercutio

    Something Random

    As it turns out, "Chet Manhammer" is not considered a funny name for an internal reporting e-mail address even if only two people could potentially see it and one of them does not have a sense of humor.
  9. Mercutio

    Success!

    It shouldn't matter. 1% while expanding probably means bad media or a marginal DVD drive since at that point in the install Windows is running with more or less the same state as in safe mode. When I was about your age I remember being super-excited to be the first one on the block to have...
  10. Mercutio

    1000 years of European boarder changes

    I really don't have any strong feelings about whether or not Ukraine should control the Crimea or not. Putin is a shithead and Russia is run by criminals, but the same can really be said for the US at this point. Apparently it was just cheaper to take the land by force of arms than to just buy...
  11. Mercutio

    Media Player Appliances

    I thought I'd be done in this thread for at least a month or so but here's some speculation on Amazon's new HDMI/USB Stick-thing. Apparently it's going to do gaming now, which would be interesting from the standpoint of differentiating it from Chromecast, the Roku stick or the random Android...
  12. Mercutio

    Media Player Appliances

    Somebody took the time to build a catalog of Chromecast-capable apps since Chromecast support isn't a searchable criteria on the Play Store at the moment. Which is useful if you have a Chromecast.
  13. Mercutio

    Macbook Pro first impressions

    I just ran in to my first OS X system with a malware problem. The machine had a memory-resident program called Genieo installed which hijacked both Home Page and Search settings for all installed browsers and seems to have been displaying ads in spite of adblock+ for Firefox, Chrome and Safari...
  14. Mercutio

    Success!

    You probably should go ahead and move to 7 if you're going to keep running Windows.
  15. Mercutio

    Win7 and Win8 media

    I've installed everything from XPSP3 to 8.1 from a thumb drive without issue. I will note, however, that not every thumb drive can be made bootable and not all of them play nice with hard drive emulation settings in a BIOS/UEFI. What I thought P5 would say is that his drive letters got screwed...
  16. Mercutio

    This is the thread for the discussion of interesting apps.

    There are a few third party solutions for Google Drive. Insync is a commercial application that allows someone to sync multiple Google Drive accounts on the same system.
  17. Mercutio

    This is the thread for the discussion of interesting apps.

    Google Drive dropped it's prices today. Storage plans now cost 1/3rd what they did until this morning. 100GB plans are now $24/year.
  18. Mercutio

    XP computers in a business environment

    A LOT of people are under the mistaken impression that Outlook Express is the same thing as Outlook, or it's what they've always used. In a business setting, sometimes it is useful to be able to send batch messages, schedule sending, check multiple accounts, configure message filters or rules...
  19. Mercutio

    XP computers in a business environment

    Plenty of stuff doesn't virtualize, often because it needs access to hardware in a way that the VM can't provide. One of my customers has a line of business application that still uses (sigh) a parallel port dongle. The application vendor stopped supporting the version of the application my...
  20. Mercutio

    XP computers in a business environment

    Plenty of stuff doesn't virtualize, often because it needs access to hardware in a way that the VM can't provide. One of my customers has a line of business application that still uses (sigh) a parallel port dongle. The application vendor stopped supporting the version of the application my...
  21. Mercutio

    XP computers in a business environment

    ... I will say: It is RIDICULOUSLY easy to make IE and Office run in WINE. Office Licenses often aren't transferable to other hardware but there are a couple customers where, in a perfect world, I'd just go in and trash their XP installs for SuSE or something.
  22. Mercutio

    XP computers in a business environment

    My company still does a decent portion of its business training Windows XP and Office 2003. It's the Common Operating Environment for a big customer and they won't be done transitioning to Windows 7/Office 2010 until this August. Several other companies I deal with still have a mandate for IE6...
  23. Mercutio

    Something Random

    timwhit, the Chicago Symphony, Symphony Chorale and Children's Chorus will be performing the full score to "Return of the King" on August 7th and 8th. It's $25/ticket + another $10 to park, though the tickets are not available for sale yet. This is your first warning. :)
  24. Mercutio

    This is the thread for the discussion of interesting apps.

    Not yet. It's just a few buttons that take people to web sites. I cannot imagine that anyone who knows how to mobile device would ever bother to install it.
  25. Mercutio

    This is the thread for the discussion of interesting apps.

    I can either buy the code outright and publish it myself (+$99 for Apple developer tax) or I can pay $10/month and run everything through the code generator's developer account. This is just coming from a stupid customer mandate and I'm hoping we can put it online for six months and show that no...
  26. Mercutio

    This is the thread for the discussion of interesting apps.

    I "made" an HTML5 app today using a code generation platform from machine.infinitemonkeys.com. It took about 10 minutes is going to cost $120/year to publish as a Google/Amazon/Apple app store item. All it does is open a web page or dial a phone numbre or pipe an address in to a device's...
  27. Mercutio

    Win7 and Win8 media

    I can't believe it's that much of a PITA to get decent .ISO files. Let me see what I can do for you.
  28. Mercutio

    High(ish) end SSDs

    SSDs do outlast traditional disks on that basis, but the memory cells that make up SSDs have a limited lifespan of their own. After a certain number of writes, the memory cells stop responding to changes and have to be marked unusable. Eventually enough cells wear out in that fashion such that...
  29. Mercutio

    Something Random

    50 Shades and the Twilight novels both have supremely vacant protagonists. The best theory I have about this is that the utterly generic non-persons at the center of the narrative can be a stand-in for the widest possible range of people in need of fantasy fulfillment. I managed to read about 70...
  30. Mercutio

    This is the thread for the discussion of interesting apps.

    Llama is super-handy for making your phone do things based on its location.
  31. Mercutio

    Holy crap WattOS!

    WINE is an odd thing. Some software will actually run better, some worse, and some things not at all. I used Windows DVD ripping software under WINE continuously and it was utterly flawless, and somebody has a hacked-together script for installing Wine and IE for using Netflix under Linux that's...
  32. Mercutio

    Strange laptop repair/parts-finding issue

    For future reference, the connection is called an FFC (Flat Flexible cable) or FPC (flexible printed circuit) and is a quasi-standard for electronics guys. The connectors are standardized by the number of pins and spacing between them (in millimeters). Mystery solved, and in a way that does not...
  33. Mercutio

    Something Random

    For some reason I am reminded of the words of Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Harvey Kellogg in "The Road to Wellville." I will share with you his wisdom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8Hoz5574VA
  34. Mercutio

    Fixing UEFI BSOD Errors after disk clone on Windows 7 or 8

    ... and of course, 95% of the time that I want to clone a drive, it's a 250 or 320GB HDD to a 120 or 240GB SSD.
  35. Mercutio

    Silent PC, HDD choice?

    I suspect a 5400rpm notebook drive would be an even better choice than a green drive, now that I think about it. Slightly more expensive, yes, but you'll have the opportunity to add additional insulation without modding your enclosure.
  36. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I need less money and more one of these.
  37. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Think about how often your car or your phone needs fixed and how often operating systems need to be patched. Would you really trust human technology at its present level with your consciousness? "What's wrong with your hand today, robodrueding?" "I got some sand in it and now only my...
  38. Mercutio

    Fixing UEFI BSOD Errors after disk clone on Windows 7 or 8

    I've tried TrueImage, DriveImage XML, Clonezilla and Easus ToDo. In my case I was swapping 250GB HDDs for 120GB SSDs in HP Probooks. The Windows backup tool disk images I tried first were puking no matter what I tried.
  39. Mercutio

    Fixing UEFI BSOD Errors after disk clone on Windows 7 or 8

    I spent a while experimenting with a proper way to clone a drive on a few Windows 8 machines that were configured to boot off UEFI. So far, exactly none of them have worked 100% properly. The most likely error I seem to run in to is an error in the Windows startup files on the System partition...
  40. Mercutio

    Android phones: Tips, tricks?

    I really don't, but I had already disabled almost all that stuff anyway.
  41. Mercutio

    Android phones: Tips, tricks?

    The S4 got it's OTA update to Kit Kat last night. So far, the only difference I can find is that a half dozen of my favorite apps don't work any more. Both Justpictures and Andmade Share are hosed now. I don't notice any new functionality or performance change but hey I got a new version of Android.
  42. Mercutio

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    The CSR has made it clear that they're going to make it right if I get the drive to someone who works for Samsung, but that depends on at least two other people doing the right thing. Having an employee spend basically an entire work day on a $150 bad drive doesn't make a lot of financial sense...
  43. Mercutio

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    So I sent an 830 back to Samsung a couple weeks ago. Or at least I thought I did. Turns out, I didn't. Since I actually registered the drive for warranty purposes (because I bought it "late" in its life and didn't want to lose eight months of warranty based on date of manufacture), when it...
  44. Mercutio

    Strange laptop repair/parts-finding issue

    I haven't gotten around to actually trying it yet. I'm not sure if the bar part contains any points of contact or if it's just there for tension.
  45. Mercutio

    Strange laptop repair/parts-finding issue

    The guy told me that the bracket (the black piece in your photo I think - I haven't actually seen it) came off with the ribbon and now he can't find that piece. I've never seen one that works that way. I guess I'll go buy some locktite.
  46. Mercutio

    Strange laptop repair/parts-finding issue

    One of my students brought me an Inspiron 1750 this morning. He had attempted to replace its keyboard and in fact had downloaded the proper documentation and followed along. Normally, a keyboard repair is dead simple but in this case the guy broke the little keyboard ribbon cable retention...
  47. Mercutio

    Your opinions on "skinning?"

    Depending on your hardware, that may actually be incorrect. Trying to use Aero on a low-spec system (particularly some of the systems that first shipped with Vista) was a good way to eat CPU time on systems that never should have tried to run it. For the most part, I'm completely fine with...
  48. Mercutio

    Use of IE ... today?

    Chrome has its own internal config, but it also interacts with the registry and with GUID entries in its own profile folders (there are at least two that I know of) and bad guys can interact with any of the above in an effort to make their mal-extensions as difficult to remove as possible. I've...
  49. Mercutio

    Clear differences exist in mobile phone connection speeds

    I'm not sure that this is actually surprising, but is it really a case of particular engineering solution, or just that some devices have faster CPUs and are better able to deal with incoming data? Some of the Apple device scores are a bit lower than I'd expect compared to the generation of...
  50. Mercutio

    Use of IE ... today?

    Wait until you run in to something that manages to convince Windows that a particular Chrome Add-on that it was installed "by Enterprise Policy."
Top