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I don't think Gateway has ever been bankrupt. I think they were losing millions on their retail stores so they closed them all. IBM/Lenovo PCs don't seem to me to fit in the vomit box category, since they don't sell to home users, but if it is a choice I'd say it's a decent one. I looked at a...

For a 100% legit Home PC, my price for a computer ends up being about the same as Dell's... unless I'm building for someone who has access to encheapened software (from a University or something), in which case I usually win by 20% or so, even off the slightly discounted prices Dell generally...

Just to respond to this, because no one else has: One of the main differences between the Virginia Tech thing and our troops is that our troops volunteered to put themselves in harm's way, and they are compensated (not well enough in my opinion but if you're an inner city minority or a...

OK, honestly, I can use whatever is put in front of me. My main issues with the Phone/PDA things are size - you want a PDA that is big enough that you can see what's on the screen and has space for input, but you want a phone that's small and not obtrusive to carry around because people expect...

Literally the *only* thing I see from local screwdriver shops is PC Chips. If I'm lucky, their $1500+ systems will have an Asus or perhaps Abit board, but those systems are about as common as hen's teeth.

Well, yeah. But the point here is, if someone held a gun to your head and said "Recommend a $400 - $700 PC from a multinational name brand", what would you pick? I run into that situation a lot, actually. No guns, but people looking to buy something for a kid away at college or their aunt in...

No particular reason for this, just taking a poll: What, in your opinion, are generally the least offensive vomit boxes among all vomit box brands? Is there anyone willing to stand up and champion an HP or a Dell? Sometimes someone will ask me to recommend one and I cannot bring myself to do it.

More retarded Vistaness. This time from teh Reg. I'm actually kind of sad that Dell is going back to loading XP. I was getting a lot more interest in the computers I've been building since folks have been looking brand name PCs and seeing only a Vista option.

For $50 and considering that it doesn't come with any crappy sorts of fans, that thing might actually be worthwhile for me.

What the hell is that?

OK, the Ninja sucks for my needs. I can get all kinds of stability until I need to use my video card to do something 3D-y... probably because my CPU fan is blowing hot air directly on it. The stability comes back nicely if I switch to a PCI Radeon 9250 but that's a bit limiting for gaming. :(...

Someone needs to convince S*ny to quit making expensive, pathetic failures of proprietary media formats. Preferably, the sort of persuasion that involves pointy things and the anal orifice that is located above every S*ny employee's chin.

It is as you say. One machine too many. Fun way to give a new PC a workout.

I'd have to install Vista to find out. I have it on one machine too many as it is.

An E4300 is $117 at mwave.com right now, for the USians who want some of that old time Celeron 300A feelin'.

WalMart to crushinate Blu-Ray. Generally I don't have anything good about the land of Jebus, gun racks and NASCAR, but if it's going to give the world the price pressure that will result in $200-by-Xmas HD-DVD players I think I can be slightly charitable.

My fans are set back to low now, and my CPUs are over 100% overclocked... System temp is 46C, CPU is 44. I tried blowing the fans "toward" the outside of the case but I did not find it helpful (as in, it didn't cool any better for me). My fan is mounted on the bottom of the cooler and blowing...

I have Geil DIMMs in Red, and Orange and Blue. I don't know what the difference is but they are all PC800... I think one of them is 2.0V - 2.4V or something. Whatever. I spent a very long time messing with my game rig today - trying different fans, mounting positions and even thermal compounds...

Phones are evil and should be killed on sight.

I was going for a kind of non-sequitor thing with that post. Humor isn't as fun when you have to explain it. :P

Some of my clients are real estate agents and another group are appraisers. There's a LOT of collusion between your agent and the sellers, usually. It benefits everyone but the buyer.

My E4300@3.7GHz was idling at 51C, but that was at +.1V and I'm not 100% certain I have a perfect thermal paste application. I toned it down a bit from there...

If it makes you feel any better, Bank of America would not let me look at information about my car loan on their web site since I didn't have a checking/savings account there. I got even by paying the car off 28 months early. Anyway, when do we get to see pictures of the new place?

Running is only for when things are chasing you. And hopefully, those things are the slow kind of living dead. Because if they are '28 Days Later'-Fast zombies, I will be zombie-chow. I can walk all day and not get tired. I will complain and be cranky, but I can certainly do it. I usually do...

People... who need people... are the luckiest people... <blam> OK. I'll stop now.

The Ninja is indeed very heavy and not entirely sufficient for cooling an overclocked C2D. I found that on my gaming rig (E4300 @ 3.7GHz) I couldn't keep temps low enough for my comfort with a Ninja and a low-speed fan. I dropped the OC to something more reasonable, and it's... OK, but...

I am not sure I understand the problem that's supposed to be addressed by this. I can't recall seeing an embedded video that would not play in Firefox in a very, very long time. Does anyone know where one could find something that would require one to use this new player? Of course, these days...

It's not like Intel hasn't developed a largely useless technology for marketing reasons before. E.g. Viiv, Hyperthreading, Centrino

Hilariously, I have found a drawback to the SilenX. It smells funny. When it's operating, it has a very strong "plastic" smell. I really hope that smell goes away soon. I would not mention it except that I can't recall experiencing that with any other computer-type fan I have ever purchased...

As I recall the issue with large DIMM support on 168-pin memory was usually called "Double-Sided Memory" support. A lot of the less expensive 256MB modules available in early/mid-2001 were double sided and therefore only worked with some AMD systems. KT133As certainly worked; my first PC with...

His was literally a freebie. I have a number of XP1700s but I no longer have HSFs for them. I'm sure I can find one for you. I no longer have any spare, functional motherboards. I just have a few CPUs I upgraded for myself and never got around to selling. There's not THAT much difference...

Bought everything from FrozenCPU.com.

The "winner" in my fan contest for CPU cooling is the SilenX. The Noctua has a low-pitched noise I can hear even with the case on. The Scythe 800rpm fan is inaudible (as is the SilenX) with my case closed but it does not move as much air. None of the three is unpleasant to hear. They're all very...

Office 97 inflicted Outlook on the world and therefore is much worse than Office 95. The way I figure it, 90% of the people who have any version of MS Office installed on their PC could get away with using Wordpad, a tabulating calculator and a decent webmail app without any loss in...

Also, Google Documents and Spreadsheets can open Word, Excel and in the near future Powerpoint files. Google Calendar is a calendar app. Gliffy lets you make diagrams online, much like Visio. You don't particularly need an Office suite installed these days.

I generally like Wordperfect better than other word processors. I need to make a spreadsheet about once a year. I firmly believe that presentation software causes a drop in IQ. I still deal with E-mail using a text-only client that doesn't understand MIME about half the time. And if I have to...

I've had four people ask me to fix their blackberry today. And I am including a panic-call that I got at 2:30AM in that. It's NATIONAL NEWS that Blackberry's network is screwed up today but apparently there are people who think that 1. I know something about blackberrys to begin with and 2. I...

That kind of crap only works when you live someplace where jobs are incredibly plentiful. When I was a full-time contractor I only managed to be employed an average of MAYBE seven months out of a year.

The humor works on many levels. :)

Normally silent computing isn't a high priority on my part. I'm happy that most of the systems I build nowadays are pretty quiet, but I'm not all fetishy about it. I'm dimly aware of SPCR but I've only been there a time or two.

Those terms seem pretty reasonable to me. I theoretically get 10 vacation days and 3 sick days a year. If I don't use them I don't get paid for them. That's it. Period.

I ordered one each of the SilenX, Noctua and Scythe fans. We shall see which one is least noisy.

I think it's supposed to be "Keep away from evil day-star", actually. Paugie, don't tell us you are getting a picture taken unless you are showing us the picture.

Just stumbled on to this shirt at Newegg. The reviews for it are pretty funny.

The CPU fan I'm looking to replace right now is a 120mm Silverstone variable speed model. It purports to have, at its lowest speed, a 22dB acoustic rating. It is by far the loudest thing in my bedroom, and even though the computer I'm trying to use it with is under my bed and therefore...

PCChips is so crappy that it is staggering how crappy it is. However, the board from Newegg is *new* and the Gigabyte one is used and at this point is probably a couple years old besides. That's a tough call.

Anyone have a recommendation for a good, *quiet* 120mm fan? I'd like to replace a couple case fans and also get something better than the fan component for a "silent yet somehow very, very loud" heat sink setup I have.

That's pretty typical of how that particular board fails. I believe it's technically still under warranty if you want to try to RMA it. Newegg's option. Socket A stuff is getting hard to come by.

Handy, I'm not seeing anything that makes me want to experience those things. I can look and I can say that those cliffs are pretty. I don't feel anything beyond that. I don't have any desire for additional sensation. They could be CG or they could be a painting or they could be real. Whichever...

I have never really found much value in those sorts of experiences. I can read or look at pictures just as well. Being someplace "special" has never conveyed any additional sense of majesty or wonder to me, and I can enjoy a tree or a rock or a sunset as well from a window or a JPEG as I can...