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Their SB450 sucks. Period. It's outdated and under-performing. With their above-average integrated graphics (average being Intel), it combines for a so-so solution. The average user won't feel the difference. Because the price is good, we use it.

One of the systems we offer is a Pentium D 805 sitting on an Asus P5RD1-VM. The Asus board uses an ATI cheapset. It's quite a bargain for someone not gaming IMO.

It's not Canada, it's Québec. The temperature might reach 25C, maybe 28C max during the day while it should drop to 15C-20C during the night.

Canayantire offers 80W panels for 700$CAN. I don't know what size they are, but I'm sure they are quite competitive on the W per $ ratio. There must be something better on the market though.

Thanks guys. He was looking at the Motomaster Eliminator 1200A and Eliminator 1750A power inverter. You find them on Canuck Tire web site. Use "H4R1W6" for the postal code. The Elminator looks like a kind of "thumper" by Tannin's term. He plans to spend as much as an entire week in a row at...

Someone I know has a camp far away to the North (8 hours north of Montréal). He wants something to power a fridge there. Needless to say, there are no power lines anywhere near. Someone told him a UPS (not a skimpy one for computers) would be the best thing for him. He doesn't want to pay...

How-to guide.

Also, a 15 days trial version of My Drivers can be quite useful to get all your drivers before re-installing.

It was a typo? Sure made sense to me the way it was written. A Windows repair did the trick. Thanks again for your replies.

Also, Zone Alarm is too complicated to be considered an alternative for this intellectually-challenged customer. And I would rather not use the WinXP "back-in-time" tool since I have no idea since when the firewall is broken and that going back would mean bringing back a few evil softwares too.

A rather clueless she-customer arrived yesterday with a computer infested with spywares and a broken WinXP firewall. She had a good anti-virus program (Avast), so no virus was present on her system. After using three different spyware-removal tools under safe mode, I'm fairly confident that...

As anyone noticed if it affects peformances? Ran before/after benchmarks? It is hard to believe that such a temperature drop comes without any drawback.

EBB must be Indian then :wink:

I installed Win2K on it and almost everything works fine. I tested the parts (RAM, hard drive) previously and all are in perfect shape. Unlike many used laptops, the battery is far from behind dead and it is still good for more than 2 hours. I flashed the BIOS and embedded controller firmware...

I take back my statement regarding the screen. It is quite good, but the viewing angles aren't comparable to modern laptops' screens. I'm sorry you didn't like your Groltz. Maybe I like it considering its price, but I still find it quite pleasant to work on. Mercutio, If you still have that...

I had a deal for a lease-return Thinkpad A30. It's a P3-M 1.13GHz with 256MB of RAM and a 30GB hard drive. My first impression when I opened the box was that the thing was big, so I was a little disappointed, but when I lifted the screen and started to play with it, my deception dissappeared...

Most of Samsung's stuff I've used was good, but their DVD burners suck badly.

Well, you said you have some white hairs...

That's the same combo we use for our cheapest system. That ASRock board is truely wonderful for the price.

We read similar announcements every year. None really materialized and/or changed the market share of Linux versus Windows. To me, that's wishful thinking, nothing more. When there will be a DirectX-equivalent for Linux that will be ready for prime time, wake me up. IMO, no 3D games, no...

I often use Irfanview, but I didn't realize it had screen capturing features other than the alt-print screen combo. I'll see how it works and I'll download MWSnap too. Thanks.

I was asked about a screen capture program today, but last time I checked that was what, four years ago? I need something a bit better than Alt-PrintScreen and copy to a drawing program. I did a quick research on Google, but I don't feel like trying a few tens of softwares to evaluate the...

Re : better chassis. Do you have a 300 pounds guy in your settlement? Just place an R serie and a T serie on the floor next to each other and have the 300 pounder walk on both of them. Compare afterward. I know Merc did just that with one of his Thinkpad T and the laptop apparently survived...

My suppliers have increased the price of the DDR SDRAM modules by some 20% in the last week only. Will we see 512Mo memory sticks around 200$ like some 5 years ago? Is this the end of the party? Or is the increase simply caused by the market shift to DDR2 modules?

I thought it was you on Anandtech's forums. I got the wrong guy?

News has been added to the front page. At least this time my response time wasn't horrible (I saw one news submitted by Mangydog several weeks after he submitted it. I was so late that when I tried to reply to his e-mail, his mail account had expired...Sorry).

But DON'T ever use LG's firmware burning software. I tried it twice and both times, the P.O.S. program froze while re-flashing the ROM, resulting in two RMAs (and a case front panel to replace).

I don't know about the GSA-4120, but we used the GSA-4167B for a while and the GSA-H10A for the last two weeks and I have yet to see a customer return and complain about them. I recommend them over the Pioneer DVR-110 to customers (although we now sell the DVR-111 and I have not yet tested it)...

We sell a lot of ASRock boards with the same chipset has the Gigabyte you mention. I'll see Tuesday if I can find the C&Q setting in the BIOS with a Sempron 2800+, but I'm almost certain that it is there. Even if 2800+ and below Sempron run relatively cool, it is a major omition to have...

One of the optional update of WinXP that I noticed (and always avoided to install) was one regarding Windows Media Player DRM, dating January 17th 2006. Maybe you can find it in the "Add/Remove Programs" window and uninstall it (it should be the update #891122). If your customer has only...

Earlier this week, I had a system that would reboot one or two minutes after we power it. I tried to swap everything : PSU, RAM, graphic card, modem, motherboard...nothing fixed it, until I replaced the processor. For some reason, the old Athlon XP had its trip and would reboot the system as...

http://blogs.zdnet.com/threatchaos/?p=311 Some say IIS is a swiss cheese, but to me it looks more like a spagetti meal.

As much as I like Firefox, I believe that adding a little substance to this teletubbies-like advertisement wouldn't hurt. There are very compelling reasons why to use Firefox and that's why it has been my favorite browser for some time now, but none are featured in the above video. My...

Dell Kanada cuurently offers an entire computer system with a 17" CRT for 428$ shipped. That's below my store's cost for similar parts. I'm lucky most people aren't aware of this deal or are afraid of giving their credit card number online. Dell is a small-computer-store-killer.

I don't see Lucky Luke? You can't have a sunset without Lucky Luke.

Nope. You have to use a different driver from nVidia (the one for MCP 410/430) and also install the latest Forceware driver for the integrated GeFarce. I can't tell about the heatsink. I have tried the Asus (just for a system installation), but not this GigaByte board yet. Thanks for...

The PSU we use now also has a 12cm fan at the bottom sucking the hot air from the CPU. I'll try it more extensively, but so far in the two or three systems I've built with the 12cm fans case/PSU combo, the result has been both quiet and efficient. Thanks for your input.

Both Avast and NOD32 find virus that AVG let pass on customers' boxes that we repair. But both Avast and NOD32 aren't free.

I doubt 90% of the cases you can buy have a rear thin grill that won't block the airflow produced by the rear 12cm fan. At least that's not the case here. 0.6mm thickness. That's standard for low cost enclosures. I wouldn't buy this for myself, but I think this is better than many other...

Our past cheapo cases cost us about 20U$ and they come with a 420W (advertized) power supply. Although it is written on the box that their purpose is to house computer's components, I'm pretty sure they are in fact finger-cutting/technician-swearing devices.

This is the enclosure I ended up chosing : Raidmax O2 ATX-302. Somewhat flimsy, although it is expected at this price point, but great airflow thanks to the rear (and silent) 12cm fan (included). The power supplies that come with ours are 450W, also from Raidmax. The whole enclosure is quite...

A GeFarce 6200 is slightly more powerful. But I'm almost sure the integrated GPU from the 6150 is faster than an old GeFarce 5200.

The connector was a two-rows type, so reversing it would have left me with only one functional port. There was a filled hole on the connector preventing me from connecting it backward, using both rows. I haven't noticed the wires colors, sorry. In fact, I have not paid that much attention to...

In fact, our cheapest (and unfortunately most popular) case is still like that. That's one of the many reasons why I want to eliminate it.

Re : VIA's integrated graphics sucks. I agree entirely, but so does Intel's Extreme Graphic 2 engine. Regarding which one sucks less...both are ok for 2D and miserable for 3D, period. There's no winner, both CAN'T do 3D. In my book, it's a tie.

Because the front USB connector isn't standard and it will bust your motherboard. I toasted three freaking boards today before realizing this. That plus a customeer that must be the missing link between ape and man made my day a bad one­.

With the current prices, I favor the Sempron 2500+, then the Sempron 2800+ and for anything above that, the Athlon 64 3000+ for socket 754. The A64 3000+ is faster than even a Sempron 3400+ while being some 20$ cheaper here. Same frequency, twice the L2 cache : a no brainer. Older core, but...

Thanks for sharing. I've seen a full rainbow twice in my childhood, but never since. I'm almost always indoor during the day (at work), so even if one appear, I'll miss it.

Our current bottom-of-the-pit boxes are unacceptable, but unfortunately, they are the ones that we sell the most. Before developping a depression, I'm re-making our entry offerings. Currently, I'm hesitating between Intel and AMD for the best bang-for-the-buck at the extreme low-end of our...

Obviously, you've never seen me when I'm pissed.