Search results

I seem to recall load times for HL2 levels in the 45 - 60 range as well. They seemed unduly long, given the PC I used to play HL2 (3GB RAM, 64/3500, 9800XT). Even Source Halflife has longer load times... and graphics that are about 0% improved over the Blue Shift high-res pack. I know there's a...

It looks decent enough. That flat exterior just BEGS to have things done to it. Looks like *I* could cut wood veneer for it, for example. To me it looks like there's not nearly enough places to put hard drives. And why are we so worried about airflow when Athlon64s don't get too much warmer...

Besides, what's your 3GHz CPU got to do besides assemble framess? :)

Sysprep is the best of all worlds. Build the machine. Throw in Acrobat and Firefox. Download all the windows updates, all the drivers you need, then dash it off to a CD or DVD. It's a little bit of a hassle when you run into something that's vastly different from your base (Via vs. Intel/SiS...

I've seen the same thing on some nforce3 boards.

Samsung seems to have that part down pretty well. I'm not sure about 20GB drives. 10k 40GB drives would be nice, if they didn't say Western Digital on them. Actually, I'd be extremely happy to get 20GB drives... if they were built to Samsung's current level of quality and cost about $30...

Am I right in thinking you don't know much about Linux, Fushigi? CPU-wise, I'd go with something modest and low-heat. Possibly a Celeron (to get CSA, although this application doesn't need it), more probably a Via (really low power) or Athlon64 solution (for encoding work etc). Any flavor of...

The connector issue is supposedly going to be addressed for SATA2 devices. The more pressing annoyance I have with Serial ATA is the lack of consideration that's given to providing users with data cables. I've bought quite a few motherboards recently that don't come with any, despite the two...

A 300GB SATA drive from Samsung would make me a happy camper. I'll probably get a .5TB brick from Hitachi. That will help, too. But what I really want is for SATA ports to sprout and bloom all over the motherboards of 2005. The last few years spoiled me as I filled PC after PC up with 8 PATA...

I picture a land where there's a porno site in every home...

All my SATA drives show up as SCSI disk devices. This machine is a Windows 2000 Server.

On my Albatron 8x800 (Via with Via SATA), going from an SP1614N (PATA) to a 7k250 (SATA), I used between 18 and 33% of an Athlon64/3500. As a guess I'd say it was around 22% on average. I tried several times with a 1.5GB file.

At a guess I'd say Maxtor. Most of the repackaged drives I've seen have been Maxtor drives.

That person is an idiot. OK, no. That person is a clueless moron. An argument against free will. A prime target for surgical castration. See, the thing is, his "profit making home business" isn't going to be able to turn to Compaq to get support. And Mr "not a hot chick" Dickweed will then end...

Sounds like a good reason to stop socializing with that person. Unless she's hot, or something. I wouldn't THINK of going off to spend $500+ without asking someone with more knowledge than I have about the products I might purchase with my money. Experts have their opinions for a reason, you know.

You let a "friend" buy a Presario? Are you sure you didn't misspell "person whom I secretly loathe"?

Since Sony exited the consumer CRT market a while back, I think the only obtainable large tubes are, in fact, Mitsubishis. Which is fine, 'cause they are gorgeous.

Personally I'm putting a lot of hope on Verizon's home fibre program. Supposed to be 30Mbps. It's in testing stages right now. Somewhere, there are some very lucky homeowners.

I've had good and bad experiences with the 624 and 634 models, namely with poor range, more frequent need for reboots and admin interface weirdness with Firefox. But I have to say that they don't seem to break. The reliability of the Linksys units is questionable but while they work, they work...

I'd be inclined to try a different cable, first.

Those are single-platter DM8s. They are horribly slow for 7200rpm, single platter drives and are obviously made to go in vomit boxes. The Dells I see tend to have WD drives in them if they are home machines, and Seagates if they're corporate models.

Oddly I have noticed that as well. Actually, though, I have some observations on the subject of Maxtor's showing. Namely, for the longest time I was rabidly pro-Maxtor. Those drives, at least from the 4GB models I started with, up to the time of the Quantum merger, were wonderful. But the new...

I am highly annoyed at Seagate's showing in this poll. Seagate, manufacturer of such pustules as the U-series, Medalist and modern "Barracuda" drives, deserves absolutely no credit for its work. The biggest drive manufacturer cannot and does not manufacture any IDE hard disks that are even...

Ebay. Newish Hard disks frequently exceed their retail price on Ebay. Or give them away in contests or something. I can't imagine anyone here would want them.

Better hurry on those RMAs, too. Last time I looked, WD's Bulk RMA tool only had space for 8 drives.

I'll bet he forgot the "Sacrifice a goat on an altar of virgin bones in the anti-light of a new moon" step in the installation process.

As a Founding Member of the WD Should Collectively Rot in a Turkish Prison (WDSCRiaTP) club, I'd just like to say this, for my own immense personal satisfaction as well as for public record: I told you so! Personally, I think a WD representative should be made available to apologize for...

I'm not a hard core gamer, either... but Doom3, UT2004 and World of Warcraft can probably be made to work on it.

I'm SURE there are workable USB sound packages for Macs. Given the fact that the electronic music scene largely inhales and exhales when Steve Jobs says it's OK, I'm guessing that there are in fact some fairly sophisticated options.

Most LCD displays seem to have hubs these days, and the monitor hub is normally the place I'd plug in a keyboard and mouse. iPods are often run through firewire - I hear that's substantially faster, anyway. And printing could very easily be handled over a network. HP has a line of...

But hey, give them credit for the fairly simple RMA process you'll no doubt become familiar with over the life of your Western Digital product. Which will probably be about 13 months, unless you breathe on it or look at it funny or allow the drive to run for more than five consecutive minutes.

The slider was introduced in update 3, which was released last Tuesday. Basically, you can walk up to a "Hero Corps Field Operative", pay a small amount of influence, and you can choose 5 settings from "Hard Boiled" on the low end to "Invincible" on the high end. As the difficulty goes up, more...

I don't do voice communication, personally. I find headsets uncomfortable and I'm not particularly willing to look for someplace else near my head to put a microphone. I'm pretty much tech support for the people I play with. I even built new computers for a couple of the people in my group. I...

The level of ignorance in these two statements is staggering. Macs can use two button mice. In fact, there is a rather large subset of software for Macintosh that requires a second button (e.g. GarageBand). That Macs came with a single button mouse is a holdover from the days when a mouse was...

You take that back this instant, time!

SWEET!

I've heard people say things like that, especially in relation to "dangerous driving" games like Grand Theft Auto, but I can't say I have ever experienced anything like that myself.

All my toons are on Liberty. I mostly play Defenders - I have a level 50 Emp/Psi and level 33 Rad/Dark. I play a couple hours a night with a good close-knit group.

I'd guess they probably equate to the 9200, 9550 and 9800 levels of performance. 9200s aren't bad for office use.

Mark, do you actually play City of Heroes?!?

I use Samsungs for "normal" use and Hitachis for the bigger drives my file servers need. I've RMA'd two Samsungs out of the maybe 300 drives I've sold, one DOA and one that had bad sectors. My one and only complaint about Samsung is that they don't make big drives.

Ah yes, but unlike other games I've tried lately, it's not crap. Halflife 2 I am never going to play again. The overhead and generally offensive nature of Steam ensure that. There's a great game under there, when I can get an Active Directory Domain controller to boot faster than that game...

Sigh. It has another one. Personally I urge everyone to try City of Heroes. Especially now, since teh l4merz have all left for World of Warcraft.

I store data DVDs that I've managed to organize in large binders and have not found any problems I can attribute to that storage method. I store the discs I haven't organized on empty spools. That works too. :)

All computer hardware sucks. Some hardware just sucks less.

Or, as I like to call it, Satan's Assweasel. They even rhyme. :D

Not having an electronics background, how would I recognize that part? I did use both the BIOS and monitoring software (couple different programs, even) to check temps. At first I simply thought the PC I first used was either actually overheating or that the PSU had issues. Neither of those...

I'm fully capable of installing a HSF the vast majority of the time, so I'm guessing I didn't do it the wrong way 8 or nine times in a row with different CPUs on the same motherboard. I don't recall NB temps off the back of my hand but IIRC they didn't strike me as unsual at the time. The board...

Wrong. This is a certified BIG DEAL timwhit. Basically my experience tells me that boards are either going to die 1. on arrival, 2. at some point while I'm installing them (I'll admit to dropping a screw on the wrong part of a board a few times in my life) or 3.) Sometime in the first three or...

Sob. The N-word no-warranty-service-for-motherboards company has 250GB 7k250s for $125. That's a pretty good start for one's media storage.