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Indeed, 24x7 is the way to go. I have four WD drives in my main PC, all of them going strong. One of them, the WD153BA has been running practically 24x7 for almost 5 years now. Occasional bearing whine, but it's still going like the Energizer bunny. Sadly, due to my ever expanding mp3...

Good luck! i'll keep my fingers crossed for ya. Buying a home is an exciting transaction. Better than bidding on eBay :)

Vastly improved custom filtering could make a significant difference if Hotmail and others were willing to implement it. Sadly, you must resort to whitelisting to keep your account clean.

I think any computer savvy person -- judging from most of my techie friends anyways -- hates the restrictions DRM, SCMS, and DMCA crap put on music files. I was waiting for a legit way to add to my music collection for the past few years now. I have absolutely no problem with paying for my...

Well it's certainly getting better, and it's miles better than the POP mail account my parents have with their local ISP (I suspect they sold their members' e-mail addresses to anyone who would buy them). I am extremely pleased my own domain's mail service. Minimal spam, tons of storage space...

Indeed. I was very skeptical about the quality of the OEM G450 that I bought for $20 -- I thought it wasn't even a Matrox card. But it is, and it's the perfect solution for a low-cost PC. It's a shame the store ran out of the G450's; this thread got me thinking I should go out and buy another...

Yeah, but ever since the earlier Millenium cards until the Parhelia, Matrox didn't even bother to compete in the 3D arena. As Gary said, the G400 Max was the pinnacle of Matrox' 3D performance until recently.

RAM doesn't make that much difference as long as you have enough of it :) Seriously, though... if you have enough RAM that you don't need to rely on virtual memory or significant paging to run apps, then the main difference you'll see IMO is the amount that can remain cached in RAM versus paged...

I have been using Firefox lately at work with the mouse gestures and multiple tabs extensions to test my HTML for compliance with non-IE browsers; it's been a pleasant surprise. I haven't tried any of the recent versions of Moz, but I assume it's been improved over the earlier versions. Have...

I notice you didn't mention W2k, my all-time favourite OS. 98SE was good to me, but I realized how truly outclassed it was when I started using NT4, and especially W2k. The best multitasking OS I've ever used was NT4 Server, which seemed gracefully responsive no matter what I did -- even more so...

I have taken the 3D gaming vs. no 3D gaming approach to video card selection. For my 3D gaming computer, I spent a fair bit on an ATI Radeon 9550 Pro. Beautiful card. Totally restored my faith in ATI after a frustrating stint with an ATI AIW 128 card. With either a high quality Sony or Samsung...

Well, I have never run a Linux distro yet that wasn't significantly slower and less stable than my Windows OSes, so I'm not surprised. Who knows, maybe next time I try it they will have sorted things out enough to be able to compete with Windows. Then again, Longhorn will be probably be out by...

If the availability on the Momentus 7200 is anything like it was on the Momentus 5400, I think we'll be waiting for the better part of a year before they actually become widely available in the channel.

I was just talking about the ridiculousness of wireless frequency allocation with someone the other day. He was asking me about setting up a wireless network in his house. I explained the general components (router/AP and wireless PCI or PCMCIA) and the three 802.11 standards. When I got into...

I'm curious, Will... why no love for the Samsung?

Yeah, inkjets are pieces of sh*t. Either you use them often to keep the print heads from drying out or you keep buying new cartridges. Either way you end up spending a fortune on consumables. With the Epsons you couldn't even do that because the print heads were not on the cartridge, but on the...

There were a few good laser printer threads on either here or SR during the past couple years you may want to check out for reference. In lieu of that, here are a couple quick comments: 1. Beware of brother drums. I used to love the separate brother toner/drum configuration because I could...

BTW, what do you guys mean by programs? Registry objects or running processes? I have 32 running processes: Listing running processes ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ #:1 [smss.exe] #:2 [winlogon.exe] #:3 [services.exe] #:4 [lsass.exe] #:5 [ati2evxx.exe] #:6 [svchost.exe] #:7...

I guess I did better than everybody expected. There was only 1 program. The about:blank possible browser hijack attempt is not a real threat because I always set my browser to use about:blank as the start page. 78 tracking cookies is probably a little low because I moved my Temp Internet Files...

As promised, here are the results of my virgin Ad-Aware scan: Memory scan result : ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ New objects : 0 Objects found so far: 0 Started registry scan ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ Alexa Object recognized! Type : RegKey Data...

I'm sure it would find its share of cookies, as it's been the greater part of a decade since I stopped trying to maintain my privacy and selectively block cookies. Programs, well I doubt there are any significant offenders on my system. I don't have Kazaa or the usual suspects. I must say that I...

Nope. I use NAV from 2001 but with updated virus def's. It has never let me down either. (use free AVG lite on auxilliary PC's) No personal firewall, but I have a hardware firewall. No adware protector. I use IE and Outlook exclusively. Never had a problem. Patch every now and then, don't...

That is expensive. That's why duallies haven't been too popular these days. Few people want to spend > C$600 on a motherboard, let alone 2 CPU's @ C$400 each. That amount of money can buy 4 Athlon XP mobo + CPU combos! Certainly you won't have PCI-X or 64-bit capability, but I'm not sure a dual...

So what is your recommended dual Opteron setup in Canada with regards to availability as well as price/performance. I haven't been able to find an AGP capable dual Operton board in Canada, though...

35-350? Yikes. That sounds bad just looking at that 10:1 zoom ratio. I wouldn't expect something like that to be good throughout its range, and especially if not stopped down. I quite like zooms, myself, especially when you know what range they perform well in (I rarely need large apertures /...

What do you guys think of a dual Athlon XP on a Tyan Tiger MPX chipset board? I was thinking of putting my two T-bred B 1800+'s on one or getting two mobile Barton 2500+'s. The reason I ask is that the popularity of SMP seems to have decreased to nearly undetectable levels recently in the...

One time the C-2040 let me down was at a wedding a couple weeks ago. I tried to get a quick shot of the bride & groom kissing in front of a window (strong backlighting condition). I didn't have time to futz around with the spot exposure or exposure comp settings so I just pressed the shutter...

In general, the Olympus C-series were excellent choices for prosumer point and shoots in that they offered excellent manual control and low light capability. I purchased the Olympus C-2040 back in the day for those reasons. However, I think the other manufacturers have caught up to Olympus in...

L-series lenses can never be truely nasty, can they? Although, you can never expect too much out of a zoom...

I think I would put Marantz in between regular Onkyo and Onkyo Integra in terms of performance. Perhaps closer to regular Onkyo depending on the model. Thanks, Merc. That is important information to know. I thought SB Live was the only sound solution that got maligned for upsampling to 48 kHz...

Marantz is actually pretty good in that they are widely available yet a cut above the mass market stuff. I would put them roughly around the same level as Denon and harmon/kardon, which would be about the same or perhaps a notch above Yamaha and Onkyo, who are in turn a cut above Sony, Pioneer...

The first things I would ask is how comfortable are you with headphones? Headphones is easily your best bet in terms of sonic bang for buck. If you prefer listening to speakers, however, I would suggest using Winamp and getting a good parametric EQ like "Shibatch Super EQ". I have a .eq file I...

That's a good idea, too, assuming you already have such a motherboard. I don't think I would personally limit my choice of motherboards by requiring a Toslink out when I could buy a nice soundcard instead. However, a mobo with a real nForce SoundStorm APU on it (as opposed to the Realtek AL650...

Get a stereo mini 1/8" male to stereo RCA male (aka mini-to-RCA) patch cable at Radio Shack. Make sure it's a stereo model as opposed to mono. Plug the 1/8" end into the line out (preferred) or front speaker jack of your sound card. Plug the RCA end into the CD, Aux, or some other line level...

Indeed, Merc's suggestion of a real stereo receiver and real (i.e., not computer) speakers gives you infinitely better sound than almost any PC speaker you can find, and this includes the "high end" PC speakers like Klipsch, top of the line Logitech, Midiland, Monsoon, possibly even...

Why doesn't everybody just ignore him? People get so worked up over trolls when they put out their troll bait. Don't feed the trolls. Ignore them and they will go away.

Thank you for passing that on, Buck. It should really be titled "The State of the Union"

The Lord of the Blings

LOL... I couldn't wait to hear this one. I can't believe you were serious... man, this forum is so white-bread Bling bling? Gold chains, Escalade, 22" chrome BB's, brutha be stackin and mackin'... a P.I.M.P. Bling bling is all about pretentiousness and showing off. It's about the status...

Yep. I bet they use the godawful clear plastic blister packaging that I was complaining about. I honestly don't know what was wrong with recycled paper box packaging that paved the way for this plastic crap.

Ah, I was finally able to google it to see what you meant. At first glance, it doesn't seem significantly superior to the recycling system we have here in N.America. Most of the packaging material in Canada can be recycled, and plastics are especially marked for that purpose. The problem...

And we're not even as bad as Japan. Have you ever seen those packages of snacks or candies? Each piece of chocolate, candy, ju jube, jellybean, nut... everything is packaged by the molecule, for god's sake!

I was thinking about calling them blister packs, but isn't that what they call the type of packaging pharmaceutical companies use to package pills like birth control pills, antihistamines, etc. where you have to push the pill through the metal foil?

Honestly, is there anything more annoying? I usually have to resort to using scissors or a utility knife to split open the sharp edged plastic. What, good old paper boxes were too convenient for the consumer to open?

Honestly, I don't like either option. Projectors are rather impractical for daily use, and DLP RPTV's are rather disappointing in many aspects. I know because I just got a Samsung 43" DLP a couple months ago. It looks great when you feed it tailor-made HDTV source material of sufficient...

But don't adult entertainment magazines usually come in discreet opaque plastic bags? You can't tell whether it's an annual report from GM or a Penthouse mag.

Some articles on RAM supply shortages: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/memory/display/20040401010318.html http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14598

So the classic spam revenge of subscribing the delinquent to a whole bunch of ridiculous newsletters, submitting his e-mail address to dozens of mailing lists, and posting messages using their e-mail address on Usenet groups doesn't do it for you? The spam count on his inbox would easily triple.

High-quality quiet compressor that you can stow in your trunk? Yeah, let me know when you find one. :) As far as quietness goes, the only thing that will do the job is a compressed air tank. But they aren't exactly the most compact nor practical devices.

The last time I saw ferrite rings bundled with a PC was with my Apple IIe, circa 1983.