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  1. Mercutio

    Wireless recommendation for Laptop

    802.11A stuff is less subject to interference, largely because there are fewer 5GHz source. It isn't compatible with B or G though, and ranges are shorter (this is basically a good thing for home use, but it sucks royally for businesses). B equipment that manages to join a G network knocks the...
  2. Mercutio

    Console gaming?

    No PCs. His parents are basically afraid of the internet - and don't understand that the "internet" doesn't come with the computer. I already made that pitch and got shot down. The distillation of my research: Playstations 2s have lots of general-interest titles and compatibility with previous...
  3. Mercutio

    Console gaming?

    I don't think he'd do too well in that direction. This is the "enjoys TV wrestling and NASCAR and Isn't-Wheel-of-Fortune-Hard" side of the family.
  4. Mercutio

    [NEWS] - High end Athlon 64's to use 940 pin socket

    [Thread Hijack] Alpha suffered at the hands of DEC, Compaq and HP, three companies that collectively couldn't strategize their way out of a wet paper sack. I had the good fortune to work on 266MHz alphas when 66MHz 486s were exotic machines. The whole DEC/HP/Compaq thing would probably make a...
  5. Mercutio

    Console gaming?

    My objections are based more on things like the relative richness of content in PC gaming (e.g. Doom wad files or highbrow titles like Civilization) and the superiority of available input devices. That and the unmistakable, horrible Japanese-ness of all things console. Apparently, no one likes...
  6. Mercutio

    Console gaming?

    I've somehow been roped into buying a game console for one of my cousins, on the grounds that I'm "the computer guy". He's almost 16, his parents are severe technophobes of the worst sort - my uncle is a writer who still writes with a manual typewriter and I've heard them refer to their VCR as...
  7. Mercutio

    Windows 2000 SP4

    The article in question has been written. Once you read it, you can't un-read it. $50 for a real copy of ghost, plus sysprep, which you already have, and you'll have techies weeping for gratitude.
  8. Mercutio

    [NEWS] - High end Athlon 64's to use 940 pin socket

    Given how "right" AMD's present socket has been (please to compare 370, 423 and 478), I rather hope that you're worrying needlessly, Liam; the fact that AMD motherboards *do* tend to have longer lifespans is one of the reasons I personally recommend them. Even as I tell my customers "You'll...
  9. Mercutio

    M/B AGP CPU NIC SOUND DRIVES

    How about $60? $1/GB is quite a bit better than most new hard drives...
  10. Mercutio

    Hmmm...That sure looks familiar

    The two designs seem oddly similar, but until just now, I thought Thermaltake and Thermalright were basically the same company (sorta like Speeze and Spire). Either one looks to be a nice product, regardless.
  11. Mercutio

    It Professional's role in preventing piracy

    Coming soon, in this very thread: My opinions of SuSE 8.2. ;) It's been a good thread, regardless.
  12. Mercutio

    M/B AGP CPU NIC SOUND DRIVES

    What do you want for the hard disks?
  13. Mercutio

    It Professional's role in preventing piracy

    It's going to be turned into a park. Mayor-for-life Daley has something of an obsession with greenery (Chicago, incidently, is very possibly the cleanest large city in the US). The area around Lake Michigan in Chicago is exceedingly well-decorated and very pretty. Meigs wasn't used much...
  14. Mercutio

    On the use of sysprep.exe

    There are a number of users here who regularly build computers. Others support desktop machines, and others are simply hobbyists keen on a handy treat. Want a treat? Sysprep.exe is a treat. Available from your Windows 2000 or XP installation CD, or here, Sysprep, used in conjunction with your...
  15. Mercutio

    Windows 2000 SP4

    Tea, one of these days I'm going to show you how to properly use all the tools you already have. Sigh. Maybe I'll write up an article today...
  16. Mercutio

    [NEWS] - Xbit Labs' Review of External 250GB WD Caviar

    USB2 is slower in real-life than Firewire, yes.
  17. Mercutio

    Compucase CI-6606 300W for AthlonXP 1700+

    It's almost certainly a HEC power supply. Sometimes they're sold as AGI or... some other brand I can't recall. Nonetheless, they ARE HEC power supplies. HEC PSUs have been Athlon-rated since 2000, so it should take any punishment you'd care to dish out. My PC with 11 internal hard disks is on a...
  18. Mercutio

    Behold! The future..... Tejas revealed!

    Prof, your sig is huge again.
  19. Mercutio

    Mozilla Annoyances - Any Solutions?

    Mozilla uses proper, Netscape-style bookmarks: a single file called bookmark.html that lives in your profile. You can view but not manipulate IE favorites through Moz bookmarks. There are tools for converting one to the other. I don't know of a way to use IE bookmarks exclusively with Moz. Some...
  20. Mercutio

    Browser Innovation

    IE has less features than any contemporary browser I'm aware of.
  21. Mercutio

    Using a broadband wireless router/switch with dial-up ICScon

    They're actually fairly stupid. Whatever comes in over the WAN port is going to come out the other side as a 192.168.something network.
  22. Mercutio

    Browser Innovation

    Oh. Support for vi-like key key bindings in editboxes. Man, that would be sweet. :)
  23. Mercutio

    Browser Innovation

    When I read Andreeson's comments, I get the sense that he's very bitter about things. The statement that stands out, though, is I had some thoughts on the subject I posted to slashdot earlier but they came down to a couple of fundamental things: 1. We have fantastically powerful computers and...
  24. Mercutio

    Browser Innovation

    I'm sure we've all seen that Marc Andreeson, ex-netscape guy, thinks that there's no more room for browser innovation. So, let's put the issue before the members here: Are there any areas were web browsing could be a better experience?
  25. Mercutio

    Make friends and influence people, Burlusconi style.

    What a great guy! Makes Murdoch look like a puppy dog. IIRC Italy's previous PM was a neo-sociallist. Must be fun to have an electorate that diverse.
  26. Mercutio

    Motherboard audio article

    Thanks for linking to the printer version instead of the "5 paragraphs over 25 pages" verision.
  27. Mercutio

    Formatting question #2

    Why would you want to? Still booting into 98? Don't have a different drive (or a different machine, as is proper) for *nix?
  28. Mercutio

    Mozilla v1.4 Final Released

    Scenario: I visit a "certain kind" of web site, right before I head off to bed. Mozilla has a tool called Linky, that lets me open whole pages full of links with just a couple of clicks. I wait around, I just "open all links on page" and wander off to bed. When I wake up, there are dozens or...
  29. Mercutio

    Formatting question #2

    Yeah. Right click on your drives in disk management and if there's at least 1MB of unpartitioned space you'll be able to convert to dynamic disks, which are required for 2000/XP support of more advanced data storage (e.g. software RAID) anyway.
  30. Mercutio

    Mozilla v1.4 Final Released

    Moz runs "as normal", but doesn't seem to refresh the screen properly It's a weird thing. Apparently I need to visit bugzilla. Or maybe try phoenix again.
  31. Mercutio

    [NEWS] - Opteron launches today.

    Blah blah blah compatibility blah blah blah alpha blah blah x86 blah blah. There aren't many reasons to run 64-bit programs on the desktop. That will change someday, I know, but Santilli asked about compelling reasons to purchase a 64bit x86 platform today. Yup, you can run 32-bit Win2000/XP...
  32. Mercutio

    [NEWS] - Opteron launches today.

    The better question is. do you actually have an application in mind where investment in a 64-bit platform is a sound decision? And if so, why is x86 compatibility important And if x86 compatibility is important, are you fully aware that none of the normal reasons for sticking with x86 apply in...
  33. Mercutio

    Wireless 5.1 Speakers

    Wireless speakers tend to not be so good, for the simple reason that most operate in the 900MHz and 2.4GHz spectra. I've got a pair of Advent wireless speakers I've never been able to use because I've never been anywhere where there wasn't interference in the 900MHz range. On the computer side...
  34. Mercutio

    Formatting question #2

    If you've converted to dynamic disks and use NTFS, you can. Also, there is a command line partition tool available in 2000/XP. It's called Diskpart, and it can do everything Disk Management does.
  35. Mercutio

    Mozilla v1.4 Final Released

    I can, too, but not when they have that many images. 300 windows full of text, maybe a graphic or two, no problem. 1000 or so reasonably large pictures all at once and I suddenly I have to close a couple tabs. If you're managing 300 windows with 10 100k images per page, I might actually be...
  36. Mercutio

    Formatting question #2

    I always use the manufacturer's tools from the appropriate web site when formatting.
  37. Mercutio

    Mozilla v1.4 Final Released

    My least-favorite bug still isn't fixed. Open up several dozen tabs full of image files and the display goes all wonky. I think Moz is using video memory for all of it. At least, I get the problem a lot sooner on PCs with less-capable video cards. Of course, no other browser I'm aware of can...
  38. Mercutio

    Time for Heresey!

    They're newegg-able. The previous trays I had came from one of those hopelessly bad Taiwanese companies. The name was something like "Harmony Sunshine" or something similar. The Kingwin enclosures I use and do not like are, by some frickin' miracle, electronically compatible with my old trays (a...
  39. Mercutio

    It Professional's role in preventing piracy

    Your post seems to indicate that there's some absolute set of ethics or morals that should apply to everyone at all times. Which, of course, there isn't.
  40. Mercutio

    Time for Heresey!

    For legacy reasons I use Kingwin enclosures on my lab machines. The fans are the usual (lousy) but the key and retention mechanism is decent enough. Honestly I don't think those tray things are worthwhile, period.
  41. Mercutio

    Time for Heresey!

    They don't work that way, and you don't want the $10 ones anyway. They're swappable in the sense that "if the power is off for the whole computer, you can change the drive". This is a very different thing from "hot swappable" The $10 ones have crappy fans and crappy retention mechanisms, and if...
  42. Mercutio

    IN retrospect, doesn't IDE, and the computer HD makers suck?

    I have 6 USB2/Firewire enclosures, and 2 USB2 only. Four have 80GB drives in them, two have 120GB drives in them, and two of them have Sony DVD burners. They're quite handy, but unless you disable the built-in fan, they're also a bit loud.
  43. Mercutio

    IN retrospect, doesn't IDE, and the computer HD makers suck?

    160GB Samsung bricks. $100 a pop and a useful capacity. I have lots of them. 12 or so. Take your photos at the highest resolution and keep all of them. Considering that you can get a 160GB AND an 80GB Samsung 5400rpm drive for about what the Raptor costs, I don't think there's a down side...
  44. Mercutio

    Spire Falcon Rock II review @ Frostytech

    Don't give me any ideas.
  45. Mercutio

    [NEWS] - FreeBSD turned 10 years old yesterday.

    FreeBSD is a feature-filled product that is essentially made for x86. NetBSD has the goal of portability. It runs on just about every platform I can think of, so they're doing something right. OpenBSD is somewhere between FreeBSD and NetBSD in terms of portability and has a goal to provide an...
  46. Mercutio

    media players, a questioneer.

    PowerDVD for video files. It plays back divx and stuff, probably with media player codecs. Winamp 2 for audio.
  47. Mercutio

    National Do-Not-Call List Open for Registration

    Are you sure you live in DuPage county?
  48. Mercutio

    National Do-Not-Call List Open for Registration

    While I'm at it, I'm aware that Democrats are nearly as guilty as republicans in the corporate welfare department, and I'd also like to say that Joseph Lieberman (hawkish democrat and orthodox jew who supports widespread media censorship) scares me more than a little bit.
  49. Mercutio

    National Do-Not-Call List Open for Registration

    New York sent Daniel Patrick Moynihan to the Senate. Hardly something to complain about. I can get behind high taxes (as long as they aren't regressive taxes like sales tax) for social services. People deserve better than homelessness. There's nothing worse than seeing someone wither and die...
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