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  1. Mercutio

    Forum complaints / problems to fix master list

    I hate to mention this again, but any chance there might be an increase in PMbox size, soonish?
  2. Mercutio

    RAID Superblock disappeared from one of my disks after crash. Fix?

    This is very useful information Gilbo. Thank you for sharing it. Messing around with data recovery on a RAID array is pretty much a cold-sweat nightmare for any techie.
  3. Mercutio

    80mm ->92mm convertor + fan == better temps?

    Bozo, Tannin, mubs, time and Buck, paugie and Groltz are all older-ish members. Clocker's somewhere between, as are Cougtek and Fushigi. Pradeep, myself and Handruin are all around the same age, a bit younger. ddrueding is the young 'un. I'd say the average age of members is probably closer to...
  4. Mercutio

    woot is in woot off mode

    Nope. Merc built a computer that he actually plans to sell for a profit. Most of the time I make around $10 when I sell a computer.
  5. Mercutio

    Best 20" LCD display

    That's why I keep buying projectors. However, it's damned hard to get any work done on a projected screen. They aren't bright enough for text, and it's hard to set up a desk space to really make using your 3 meter^2 screen so that it's actually all readable, anyway. Personally, I use the...
  6. Mercutio

    woot is in woot off mode

    Well, I put the two cards into one machine that I built last night. It's going to be a very nice Core 2 Duo E6400 system. Probably the most pimped-out machine I've built in a couple years. Four 400GB drives in RAID10, 2GB DDR800 RAM, and those two 7900GS cards. Asus motherboard, but it's already...
  7. Mercutio

    More Vista nonsense

    Just to be slightly on-topic, Vista RC1 is finally on MSDN and Technet, for those who have access. Not that I'm expecting anything like an improvement. Folks who are interested in TinyXP, PM me.
  8. Mercutio

    64 GB USB Thumb Drive (For The Filthy Rich)

    It's a trade-off. Flash drives have zero seek time. As long as the chunk of data you want is smaller that the maximum DTR of the flash module - something that's highly likely - the flash drive wins.
  9. Mercutio

    Best 20" LCD display

    You can probably find two budget 19" LCDs for the price of Dell's high end models. I like Sceptre monitors a lot, for the money.
  10. Mercutio

    Best 20" LCD display

    I'd recommend a 4:3 monitor for any monitor you're going to be using for actual work. 16:9 = a ton of extra scrolling.
  11. Mercutio

    64 GB USB Thumb Drive (For The Filthy Rich)

    I suppose it makes a difference if you have one of those bargain-basement Dells with 128MB RAM. Vista basically creates and uses the thumb drive for swap space.
  12. Mercutio

    Good, inexpensive place to by Network Cable & Plugs?

    It's not helpful to you in Nova Scotia, but I buy lots of things from Cableconn.com. Recently they switched policies, though, and now they don't do free shipping for $20 orders any more, which makes me a sad panda.
  13. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Northern Indiana Public Service Company. Who, by the way, are even worse. There's no civic entity like Chicago to keep NIPSCO in check.
  14. Mercutio

    64 GB USB Thumb Drive (For The Filthy Rich)

    If you have Vista 64-bit edition, that's one hell of a lot of extra memory.
  15. Mercutio

    Server 2003/memory

    I do believe that's an architectural limitation of your system chipset. IIRC the limit for AMD64 is actually slightly lower. Basically, you need a "server" chipset if you want to see all 4GB of your RAM on a 32-bit OS.
  16. Mercutio

    Something Random

    About a half hour ago I had the gob-smacking realization that the last time I paid a power bill was early May. So I hastily called up the local power monopoly to find out what I need to do to make sure my power stays on. Turns out, they had grossly overestimated my "budget billing", and I...
  17. Mercutio

    Steve Irwin dead

    Nope. Isn't the Discovery Channel the one that likes to pretend that Ghosts and UFOs are "Science" topics?
  18. Mercutio

    Steve Irwin dead

    I had no idea who the guy was. But apparently there is video of him actually removing the barb from his heart. I imagine that'll be on the internet in a week or so.
  19. Mercutio

    Audio Equipment

    Yes, but taken in combination, the sound projector is a better deal than buying a HTiB kit. And for what it's worth, it DOES have real speakers. About 30 of them. As I understand it, there's a longish setup process where it figures out where to point each of the speakers to maximize echos and...
  20. Mercutio

    Audio Equipment

    I can think of maybe a half-dozen DVDs that have 6.1 soundtracks, let alone seven. Did you look at that Yamaha sound projector?
  21. Mercutio

    More Vista nonsense

    The version I have came from a torrent site. It's one of the more stripped down releases. It's slightly annoying for defaulting to the UK keyboard layout and language setting, but that's easy enough to fix.
  22. Mercutio

    Cell Phone batteries and other parts

    I like cellphoneshop.com. They had the battery for my phone at a literal 80% discount from what the local Verizon store wanted to charge. I've bought other people data cables and face plates there. They identify phones by the manufacturer. In some cases you have to figure out the actual phone...
  23. Mercutio

    December 2006 desktop PC

    AC97 is its own special category of horrid. As a techie it offends me. As a music enthusiast it repulses me. The main issue is that in an AC97 implementation, all sound is upsampled to 48kHz, processed and then output back to whatever quality you've selected for playback (almost always...
  24. Mercutio

    Your favorite browser is now v1.5

    You just made my list, bucko. :P
  25. Mercutio

    Audio Equipment

    Wanna know a movie that's cool to look at and listen to, even if it's not really that good? The George Clooney version of Solaris. It's a great test disc for a home theater system.
  26. Mercutio

    More Vista nonsense

    TinyXP FTW. I put it on two ~300MHz Celerons with 64 and 96MB RAM respectively, machines that I would not want to see running Windows 2000, let alone full-blown XP, so that some nice people could actually use the USB printers they bought. It runs better than Win98 on that hardware. What this...
  27. Mercutio

    Audio Equipment

    Sort of Tangental to the audio issue, this is a comparison between PC-based video playback and a number of standalone DVD players. Stuff like this is why I <3 my HTPC.
  28. Mercutio

    Cold

    It's cool enough for me to shut off one of my air conditioners tonight. My apartment is quiet for the first time in about four months!
  29. Mercutio

    Convert MP3 to Audio DVD Tracks

    C, I still think you should buy a DVD Audio disc or two, just to hear what you're missing. :)
  30. Mercutio

    Audio Equipment

    Home Theater in a Box setups are usually pretty anemic. If you're LUCKY they rely on the bass module to deliver decent sound. Which, come to think of it, is just like computer speakers. I use a set of Acoustic Research AR-HC5s for the audio rig in my office. The center isn't as good as I'd...
  31. Mercutio

    For BlueGears Fans (new home theatre PC audio card)

    $109 MSRP. So probably $80 or so.
  32. Mercutio

    Convert MP3 to Audio DVD Tracks

    A DVD full of 128k MP3 files will hold about 70 hours of music, Stereodude. That would be one logical reason to be interested.
  33. Mercutio

    Audio Equipment

    Oh, and on the experience of hearing your favorite music out of better equipment than you've heard before: Fully expect to hear things you've never noticed. Picks sliding across guitar strings. Tapping feet. Soft sighs of breath. More cowbell. That stuff was there all along. If you're really...
  34. Mercutio

    Audio Equipment

    I concur on the subject of headphones. Being an adult and having my own living space means being able to listen comfortably. But, on to more constructive comments: You are making a mistake by ignoring surrounds. The addition of discrete surrounds from stereo sources is one of the prime...
  35. Mercutio

    Convert MP3 to Audio DVD Tracks

    Sounds like a pretty nice setup, really.
  36. Mercutio

    For BlueGears Fans (new home theatre PC audio card)

    Who's the joker who gave this a one-star rating?
  37. Mercutio

    Audio Equipment

    You might try buying a more modest receiver, something in the realm of $300 - $500. Something like an Onkyo TXSR674, maybe (just as a suggestion; I've never heard one, but it has an appealing feature set). Your Klipsch speakers are REAL speakers IIRC, they have real speaker terminals to be...
  38. Mercutio

    It's a weird wired world

    Try a different DNS server. 4.2.2.2 is a pretty easy one to remember. Another likely possibility is that two top-tier telcos have stopped talking to one another for whatever reason. It's happened before, and can result in a similar set of conditions.
  39. Mercutio

    Audio Equipment

    I'm certain that GaryH is the guy who knows more about the actual electronics than anyone here. Also, down the path to better sound lies utter madness. I'm serious. Stereophiles are as bad as drug addicts. One of my brothers has $12,000-apiece mono amplifiers driving single speakers worth...
  40. Mercutio

    Convert MP3 to Audio DVD Tracks

    Just to be more clear (it's 2:00AM!), the difference between DVD-Audio and CD is pretty substantial... if you're in an environment where the noise level is fairly low. Driving around in most cars is not going to give you that experience. For anyone else who is curious, PowerDVD 6 and WinDVD can...
  41. Mercutio

    Convert MP3 to Audio DVD Tracks

    There are programs that can create proper DVD Audio discs, and there are car stereos that support DVD Audio, but that's not the same thing as being able to play a DVD full of CD-spec audio. Frankly, unless I was in an electric car or one that was wall to wall dynamat, I probably wouldn't be...
  42. Mercutio

    For BlueGears Fans (new home theatre PC audio card)

    The difference is that they're using a different audio chip that supports DDL/DTSI, and there's an onboard digital input. I was desperate enough to try getting the Hoontech digital I/O daughterboards that will work with the X-plosion that I tried buying them from a computer store in Sweden...
  43. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Generally, Hugh Hefner maintains around six "girlfriends" at a time. They are essentially paid for their status with magazine and newsstand-special (e.g. Playboy's Voluptuous Vixens) appearances and with the added media exposure of being seen in public with Hef. There's an annual turnover of...
  44. Mercutio

    1TB hard drive

    I'd perfectly happy to swap six piddly little 250GB drives for a 1TB unit. I'm having to hold off on consolidating my PCs at this point because the drives that I own are simply not dense enough. I'm having to keep extra drives powered on, generating heat that I have to get rid of, blocking...
  45. Mercutio

    Gigabyte GA-M51GM-S2G network problem

    The Marvell LAN chip on that board should be fine under Linux. I can't say I've tried that specific board, but Marvell's chips have been supported very well. Linux doesn't really have "drivers" for LAN hardware so much as loaded kernel modules that are precompiled by the distro's management. I...
  46. Mercutio

    Something Random

    1. I was right, even down the the correct number of women. 2. Hefner only has one F. 3. Die in a Fire, Captain Sailboat. :P
  47. Mercutio

    woot is in woot off mode

    My profit... I mean video cards came today. Are there quantitative tests for suckiness that I can do, or should I just estimate the suck from the weird green design on the translucent neon-green fan?
  48. Mercutio

    December 2006 desktop PC

    I got my first batch of Antec NSK4400s today. I was shocked and delighted to discover that beneath the classic black and silver exterior is the exact same chassis as my beloved Compucase 6812. I haven't seen a new one in over two years. With the Antec name on it, it was ~$12 more than I was...
  49. Mercutio

    Something Random

    DD probably started his day with a menage a' trois, moved on to Dom Perignon on his sailboat and right about now he's probably enjoy a Kush fattie. And having another menage a' trois.
  50. Mercutio

    RFC: SOHO NAS solutions

    WD is a four letter word. Buffalo Terastations are essentially painless to set up. I installed one to use as a network backup device, once. You could also look at the extremely flexible Linksys NSLU2. My biggest complaint with SOHO NAS devices: Out of the ones I've used to date, they ALL seem...
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