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WPA with TKIP was, until today, probably the default security setup most reasonably smart folks had on their wireless routers. Now it looks like you'll need to be switching to WPA2 or WPA/AES instead.

That is why I continue to use software RAID even on cards that can do it in hardware. I like my data to be recoverable if necessary.

It's a process of elimination. And on some level, some of that hardware you probably don't REALLY care about, like the modem. Basically, on a notebook like that, you need drivers for all of the following: Display Adapters, Wired Networking, Wireless Networking, Audio + the Microsoft UAA driver...

Those Perc5 controllers really are a bargain, but if you're using the hardware RAID function, you probably should buy a second one. If that controller fails your data is hosed.

It would probably work as long as the routers were configured to use different networks (192.168.0.1/24 and 192.168.1.1/24 would be good), but every current data plan from a mobile provider (i.e. unless you're grandfathered in on an old plan) caps at either 200MB or 5GB a month. So you'd have...

The sound driver on Gateway's site works for both XP and Vista.

Many recent Gateway notebooks are actually made by Compal. Very often you'll find a Compal model number on the bottom of the notebook. Finding out the Compal model should give you a good way to look up specific hardware. Actually the Gateway web site does a pretty decent job of narrowing down...

Sony notebooks tend to be poorly made and have... idiosyncratic software setups, even weirder than the way Toshiba typically mangles Windows. I'm not even applying my usual Sony bias here. On the other hand, the weight is about right for the specs; she's not looking at some boat anchor desktop...

MRSA is antibiotic resistant staph. There's a much smaller than normal range of antibiotics available that treat it. Staph, once you have it, is very hard to get rid of. In a lot of cases, there are asymptomatic carriers who have some staph bacteria that lives in their nose. My nose was my...

No clue.

Today I was officially diagnosed with my third topical MRSA infection in three months. Lucky me.

What's wrong with GNOME, again?

The only stuff I can find on Ebay is PCI-X or 64bit PCI, which unfortunately doesn't work on anything I have just sitting around my apartment.

I just bought one of these for a customer. Hopefully it'll just sit in a corner with 4TB of disks in it and by a nice file and backup server for them. If WHS is less than perfect I'm sure it'll do just as well as a Linux/Samba server. I really like the form factor, though.

I just bought a Canon SX100IS to replace my now-dead Casio Exlim. As of yet I have no comment on it as a camera, except that it works a great deal better than the camera in my phone.

Interestingly, this batch of drives was not packaged in half a shipping case as I expected it to be. Instead, each drive was placed inside a small cardboard box (the size Newegg uses for RAM and cables and stuff, like 7"x1"x4") that was packed with bubble wrap surrounding the plastic clamshell...

I've not had a problem with recent Seagate notebook drives. I've got 6 of the 500GB 7200.4s doing various things and other than a slightly annoying clicking sound they make when they start up, they've been good.

Why wouldn't you be running data recovery on a server that in all probability has more CPUs, RAM and a better disk subsystem than your laptop in the first place?

First thing is, yes, that Syba Expresscard thing absolutely sucks. I bought one and it seems to disconnect from the system every so often. I get an assload of Error 57 events and I have to pull the card out to make the drive work again. I'm hoping my next Thinkpad just has an eSATA port. Every...

I loaded the .wim files off the DVD onto a Windows Deployment Server earlier in the week. ImageX for custom .wim files probably works fine, too. Otherwise there's always sysprep.

The whole point is to eliminate copper. If I get actual 1000Mbit, I'm looking at roughly 3x the throughput for network transfers vs. cat6. On the other hand, since I don't have any 64 bit PCI slots anyplace, it looks like cheap NICs are out of the question right now.

I've recently come into possession of an 8 port 1000baseSX switch and some cables. Has anyone ever in the history of time seen either 32 bit PCI or any sort of PCIe NICs that support some form of 1000baseSX connectivity? Cheapest things I can find are TrendNet 1x PCIe NICs for $150 a pop.

I'm about to buy 10 of those Samsung 1.5GB units. I'll see how I do. :)

"Loose" is the opposite of tight. "Lose" is the opposite of win.

You know that's not how MBTF works, right?

Not unless you want it to be. I'm just saying that there's a problem with Acer notebooks.

Relative to the number of notebooks that I fix, and relative to the number of Acer notebooks I have ever worked on, Acer notebooks are by far the most likely to have an issue that requires replacing either the display or the inverter. I've done 11 in the last two years. The reason that's a big...

Once, yeah. The server's hardware management told me it had stopped working right, anyway. All the fans and crap were OK so I'm not sure what happened there.

I bought at least two that wouldn't even hit 333MHz. :P

One thing I've found in my life as a tech is that everything with an Acer badge (I don't know who makes their stuff) on it has a REALLY delicate screen. Also, Acer's support site is really bad. I'm sure that thing is pretty nice other than that.

It's a BIOS option in recent Gigabyte motherboards. There's nothing really secret about it.

Why is it so fucking hard for Microsoft to write an operating system that is capable of copying files in an expedient fashion? 6.36GB from an internal SATA drive to an internal X25-M on my Thinkpad. Total time remaining (after 10 minutes): "About 40 minutes" WHY?

The specs for what's allowed in a netbook are mostly set by Microsoft and its desire to not supply Windows XP to anything with actually decent hardware. So Netbooks have Atom CPUs instead of Celerons, support for at most 2GB RAM and use older graphics chipsets. $350 will buy a 1.6GHz Atom + 1GB...

Probably spinrite, honestly.

It is good that both Coug and Lunar are with us. And that Buck apparently still stops by, too.

That's what she said! Thank you! I'll be here all week. Try the chicken.

You should be installing a new version of flash every time you're prompted to anyway, since the semen-gargling morons at Adobe have a standing record of zero-day exploits in every new, patched version of Flash.

Learn to love prompts. They're for your own good anyway. :)

I don't particularly feel like giving up my Integra receiver yet but that is an awfully tempting price for HDMI.

The Lenovo way: I call Lenovo support. I press 1 for Desktops or Notebooks I press 1 for Thinkpads George in Atlanta picks up the phone after at most two rings. I tell George my problem. George makes it better, usually in the form of a box from DHL that arrives the next business day.

On my home machines I just disable SELinux. For functional servers I leave it on and work around it like I'm supposed to, but at home I'm not particularly worried. re: Video players. I switch between (s)MPlayer and VLC. I don't like VLC's GUI very much but it tends to work on things that...

I have no idea what CBS is using for its video but it's probably h.264 in a .FLV container. The Geforce 9600 may or may not support hardware decode of h.264. If it didn't, that would certainly explain your CPU utilization. Updated nVidia drivers might also be helpful. Also I have no idea why...

It's fine as is, a modest step up from Vista. I've got it running on a Thinkpad T61. I did a clean install onto a 7200.4. I have the same issue as in the release candidate, with it preferring to associate with a 2.4GHz WLAN despite a stronger 5.8GHZ signal being present, and it's already crashed...

Today at Chicago Comic Con, I had the opportunity to meet and briefly speak to Edward James "Admiral Adama" Olmos and Michael "Colonel Tigh" Hogan. They were contractually not allowed to pose for photos outside of an expensive meet and greet session but they were both amazingly personable and...

Makes sense to me. Also: ouch.

For what it's worth the "Not the..." and "This Ain't..." series that are coming from Hustler video really do manage to be damned funny and reminiscent of the TV shows they're based on. Some of them are closer than others, but they do manage to succeed as comedies even if the actual porn parts...

As a rule I like the longer format of television better than movies. You can have more complex plots and character development. There are some television shows where you just aren't going to get the full impact without multiple viewings and watching the episodes back to back. That type of...

If you have an MSDN sub you can get Windows 7 now.

Since DVDs became widely available. For $20 - $100, you can buy ten or fifteen times the amount of video entertainment as is available for a typical $15 movie. For $200, I can indulge my science fiction fandom with complete series runs of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or BSG (sorry, no opinion on...

I really, really think you need to step away from that crackpipe.