Search results

  1. Mercutio

    Windows 10

    It's in the system print dialog boxes, not the print drivers. Chrome, because it's its own damned operating system, doesn't use system print dialog boxes, which is a big reason why I was able to deduce the problem as quickly as I did.
  2. Mercutio

    question Glasses

    I need the lightest lenses I can buy because my eyes are god-awful. I've been talked in to getting the "computer screen" coating a couple times and I feel like there's a subtle loss to contrast in my vision for having it, so my last couple pairs have omitted the coating entirely. I sort of think...
  3. Mercutio

    Windows 10

    It's a dead simple fix. Un-tick the boxes for"Auto-fit" and "Auto-Center" and "Auto-Rotate." But apparently two devs in my office spent something like 30 man-hours this week trying to figure out why the the output they were creating didn't match. But it's something you probably wouldn't even...
  4. Mercutio

    Laser Printer for W2K

    I've seen Samsung CLP-* printers here in the US drop to under $150, which definitely is cheap enough to make the economics work out the way sechs suggests..
  5. Mercutio

    Windows 10

    Well here's one of those hilarious new things you'd probably never notice unless you ran into it. By default, Windows 7 prints documents "Actual Size." Duh, right? By default, Windows 10 (and at least 8.1, though I haven't checked 8), print things "Shrink to fit" and will always shrink things...
  6. Mercutio

    Media Player Appliances

    I describe them as being about as powerful as a five year old smartphone. When I have to do things with one I usually spend most of my time wishing they offered an increased RAM option.
  7. Mercutio

    What's the best wireless router these days?

    I know I saw a lot of them that would lose wireless or switch functions but continue to route just fine.
  8. Mercutio

    Something Random

    IIRC she stopped sometime around 16 weeks. She had a factory job for a little while before she realized how crappy working for a living is. Baby daddy threw her out and hasn't done a damned thing for her since long before baby was born. She lives with me between dudes. I'm mostly OK with this...
  9. Mercutio

    Excruciatingly slow writing to external disks

    Toshiba warranty service is a PITA to deal with in the US. It's probably not going out on a limb to guess it's not going to be better in India. Warranty service is the one and only thing WD has consistently done well.
  10. Mercutio

    Something Random

    My long term houseguest made her with some help from the worst possible choice of reproductive partner in the history of time. The baby isn't terrible. Not my thing. Mostly I pick her up and take her back to mom, or hand her things that she can't hurt by putting them in her mouth. That's stuff...
  11. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Coug, I am also sorry to hear about your co-worker's situation. I hope her partner can bear the burden that has been set before them. The last time I saw my mother's mother alive, she was so deep in dementia that she thought I was my grandfather. And it was their wedding night. It's even...
  12. Mercutio

    Media Player Appliances

    I may get to do something with a Pi3 sooner rather than later. I have to do another Pi class. It's going to be awful since anyone who takes the class will just be asking about Kodi or will leave as soon as they find out that "computer" doesn't equal Windows, but at least the boxes are...
  13. Mercutio

    question Which Tablets

    The RAM is meaningful even if nothing else is. Less re-opening your browser and having to wait for tabs to completely reload because Android decided to kill your last Firefox/Chrome process. I don't have any long time experience with Atom-based Android devices. I'm curious to hear what the...
  14. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Here is a valuable lesson: don't sign up for classes that meet before 10:00AM.
  15. Mercutio

    question Which Tablets

    Asus ZenPads are decent low-cost options. You could also look at the Fire Tablet line since you mostly care about this product's ability to run one or two trivial bits of software. These guys are all going to fall in the $120 or less category.
  16. Mercutio

    Calendar for Android

    Android calendar software is weird because you can have multiple programs installed that are called "Calendar" in your App drawer and none of them are necessarily the Calendar provided by Google or even your handset vendor. The last Samsung Calendar I installed had a silly wood-grain trim along...
  17. Mercutio

    Linux antivirus.

    You can install ClamAV, which is a free, on-demand scanner for Windows viruses. Linux doesn't have viruses as such, but it can deliver Windows viruses to Windows machines. For a home system, it's not I'd be all that concerned about.
  18. Mercutio

    problem Classic Shell corrupted itself / can't get rid of it

    This technet article on defining the User Shell might also be helpful. The issue you're experiencing should be fixable. You might also try System Restore if that looks like too much work.
  19. Mercutio

    problem Classic Shell corrupted itself / can't get rid of it

    You might have to overwrite ntuser.dat to get it going again. Signing in to see if another account works should at least tell you if the problem is with the user or system registry entries.
  20. Mercutio

    Someone is dreaming regarding AMD

    There is at least some evidence to suggest that TSMC will have a working 7nm process by 2017. Given AMD's track record, I'm not holding my breath for shipping product, it appears to be in keeping with the state of the art at least.
  21. Mercutio

    problem Classic Shell corrupted itself / can't get rid of it

    Neat. Maybe create and sign in to a new user account by using Task Manager and the net command?
  22. Mercutio

    Cloud Backup

    You could potentially roll your own thing with btsync or owncloud, but I've found that btsync doesn't like huge (multi-terabyte) backup jobs. I did try Acronis, since it was "Free" with my annual license, but I found it to be even slower for uploading data than Crashplan. I've been tempted to...
  23. Mercutio

    Something Random

    There are also economies of scale. It's a lot easier to deliver ANY utility, transit or health service someplace where there are a lot of people, and there's also the matter of having the opportunity to live where creative, intelligent folks do. If art or live entertainment are as or more...
  24. Mercutio

    PC Gaming = World of Suck

    There's at least one Youtube channel devoted to getting AAA titles running on minimum-spec hardware. I remember seeing him play Witcher 3 on Intel HD graphics. Your best graphics experiences will probably be on older MMOs or less intensive strategy games than graphical showpieces like driving or...
  25. Mercutio

    Top-end System Build

    Why Skylake over all the cores, extra RAM and PCIe lanes you can shove in an LGA2011 system?
  26. Mercutio

    Something Random

    That's what cocaine, hookers and golf outings are for.
  27. Mercutio

    Headphones

    I've found there are places I can drive that will always cause audible interference (static) on my bluetooth headphones or speakers. I suspect it's just a problem with there being some sort of strong 2.4GHz signal in those places since the hardware is completely fine the vast majority of the time.
  28. Mercutio

    NAS Drive

    Or Lunar could let me or dd put something together to get him started.
  29. Mercutio

    NAS Drive

    The NAS has some pretty hefty performance penalties from being built on an ARM or Atom CPU. It has limited amounts of RAM for caching and, functionally, it's also a software RAID, probably one built on Linux LVM or somesuch, only sitting on extremely limited hardware. On FreeNAS you can add RAM...
  30. Mercutio

    NAS Drive

    None. You let FreeNAS handle it in software. Get an LSI-something-or-other in IT mode if you need more ports than your motherboard has and add gobs of RAM and/or cache drives to your zPools if you want to improve performance.
  31. Mercutio

    NAS Drive

    Why not at least give FreeNAS a try? You already know the NAS you bought isn't doing what you want and I'm sure you have some kind of PC sitting around that you can use with it.
  32. Mercutio

    NAS Drive

    We know you don't get rid of old systems. Do you have an LGA1366 system sitting around? An 1155? I'm sure it's loaded up with RAM already, but make sure it has crap tons of RAM. All the RAM. Take that machine. Add a tiny SSD. TINY. 8GB, even. Hell, boot it off a thumb drive. That's how little...
  33. Mercutio

    Headphones

    I've been wearing Jaybird BT headphones for a couple years. I've had to replace them twice. Once because my cat ate them and once because the charging port cover fell off and I don't feel like I can wear those outdoors any more (those are a back-up pair now; they didn't stop working). I've...
  34. Mercutio

    Mic/Audio troubleshooting

    Well the thing is that you weren't getting no sound at all, so somewhere along the line, something wasn't being amplified like it's supposed to. I'm given to understand that contemporary Onkyo receivers have real problems with inputs just dying for no reason.
  35. Mercutio

    HOT

    It's Indiana, so the big advantage of the water park over the beach for a lot folks is that the water park is a lot more friendly to smokers. Yes really.
  36. Mercutio

    Something Random

    $75 really isn't bad for an OEM battery. The T450 has a second, internal battery aside from the rear one. It's just to the right of the touchpad and under the palmrest. It is fairly trivial to replace once it dies. I have several CPUs that I drilled through and use as key fobs, which seems as...
  37. Mercutio

    Mic/Audio troubleshooting

    What is amplifying the mic?
  38. Mercutio

    HOT

    The water park directly across the street from my office opened today. As one might imagine of a water park located in northwest Indiana, it's a lot like getting to see "People of Walmart" but in bathing suits. I'm sure timwhit can come by later to support me on this one.
  39. Mercutio

    NAS Drive

    A single core Atom with 256MB RAM or some crappy ARM system can handle everything you need out of a NAS, Lunar. We're talking about sharing data via SMB for a single user, not differential, deduplicating file replication for hundreds of people.
  40. Mercutio

    Browser Security

    If you want to be safe, I think Noscript + RequestPolicy + whatever decent ad blocker with a good set of subscriptions is the best way to do it. Some people say uMatrix (and is available for Chrome) is better but I find it far too fiddly even compared to Noscript.
  41. Mercutio

    Browser Security

    I don't really think that it is, based on the number of Chrome installs I still have to clean.
  42. Mercutio

    NAS Drive

    You probably need to take it up with the people who make the NAS at that point. Why are you shutting the NAS off in the first place?
  43. Mercutio

    Browser Security

    All of the major browser except Mozilla-derived ones offer sandboxed tabs, but I think I'd rather have Moz's capability for scripting controls via addons than accept Chrome or Edge's baseline security model. Out of the box Firefox is basically swiss cheese as far as security, but I'd never use...
  44. Mercutio

    NAS Drive

    It's been in every Windows release since Vista.
  45. Mercutio

    NAS Drive

    Open up Credential Manager. Delete whatever weird crap you have saved in there for that IP/hostname. Try again.
  46. Mercutio

    NAS Drive

    Windows Home or Pro?
  47. Mercutio

    Digital / e-Signature

    Windows 10 does have IE11 and there's nothing that would prevent you from having crappy old versions of Java or Acrobat. If nothing else, you can upgrade and back out of it, just to have the license. I'm getting second-hand angry about the whole ordeal involved in doing this. It shouldn't be...
  48. Mercutio

    Best movie you've seen

    To be a bit more nuanced: The last third of the movie is set in bad green-screen CGI. I'm talking Phantom Menace level bad. They know it looks like crap and they don't care. Jennifer Lawrence doesn't seem to be present as a performer and her role doesn't make any sense based on the history of...
  49. Mercutio

    Best movie you've seen

    My review of the new X-men movie: meh
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