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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...

Yesterday I went and did some work for a wealthy man I know. His current SO is apparently someone I apparently should have known from several years of high school choir classes - a very pretty woman a year younger than me, someone who, a few years before, had been a model. Someone who should've...

I do not have an SO nor any hope of getting one. When I take vacation time from my day job it is only so I can go work more for myself. I usually take my vacation time around Xmas because we don't schedule classes during that time anyway and it is a good time to talk to my personal clients...

There's nothing I do for myself that can't be put off or rescheduled. I take satisfaction in work and in the demand others have for my skills and I have structured my life to accommodate that.

You could've saved a lot of typing with a single sentence. "I am a masochist."

What makes running with a bunch of people with someone else running a stopwatch more valuable or important than doing it yourself on your own time? There are certainly things that would cause me to say no to a paycheck, but at the very least, all of them would require a commitment to another...

Exercise is punishment for having done something wrong.

Mr. Ventura is a very wise man.

No idea on the TV, but AllUC.org is a HELL of a replacement for basic cable.

Calendars and address books are crutches for the weak.

I'd do the job, no question. You can time yourself running any time you want. You do the job and you're a stand-up guy for a whole bunch of other people.

I am trying the current beta of Tbird 2.0 and I literally see nothing different nor any improvement from the previous version. Even the memory usage is pretty much identical. But hey, I found this neat article about using Tbird to view and update a google calendar. For you strange people who...

Comcast, at least, has gone about implementing digital cable in complete the worst way possible. The carrot they use is more channel choices. They also claim better picture quality. The picture quality might be better under some conditions, but not when they keep adding lots of pointless...

Honestly, the HTPC thing is a lot nicer if you dedicate a PC to it. A "cast-off" 2GHz machine with a bt878 capture card, soundblaster or Via Envy and a largish hard drive can make a pretty spiffy MythTV machine (LinuxMCE looks REALLY nice and is supposed to be trivial to set up, though I have...

Between that and this morning's exchange about eating dogs, I think I need the brain-bleach.

The tests you're talking about probably indicate games that are being limited by something other than the graphics cards, and were conducted a very low resolution. An x850 is a pretty pokey card by modern standards.

You really want to use a digital audio output to a home theater receiver. Just like Pradeep said. Very simple.

I am in no way smug that the New York Times says renting is a good idea right now.

I'd say you'll be fine, if you can stand Intel's cruel joke of a stock fan.

When I wanted HBO in HD, Comcast made me sign up for literally everything else they had. Even a bunch of sports crap that no human should ever want to watch let alone pay for. My cable bill right before I completely dropped TV service was $165 a month.

It's true for all Comcast customers. I wasn't aware that there were any other options in Chicago itself. Comcast is turning off everything but local channels on standard cable and giving all its customers a "free" digital cable box in Chicago. The change is supposed to happen in mid-July...

In Chicago, by the end of this summer, there will be no non-digital cable. You will have a box or you will have no cable.

The Westinghouse units are pretty widely recognized as a bargain for the money. I've never personally seen one, but they're certainly nothing to complain about. Not having a tuner is not an issue unless you actually want to hook up an antenna. The vast majority of the time you're going to have...

Today's woot is a $1050 42" 1080p Westinghouse HDTV. Even as a refurb with a crappy warranty, that is making me regret the fact that I have a very large 720p DLP set.

I suppose that I should clarify that I was referring to dd's screen situation with regard to gaming. He does not seem the type to need a CAD app or IDE open all the time.

P5, that is a perfectly reasonable thing to post. I really don't know how to value the x2/4800s I have. They are still ridiculously fast CPUs, and they're scarce, which means they should be worth more than the AM2 ones... and when I bought them they were not cheap either.

So, really, what are you getting out of 2500x1600 or whatever the hell resolution those 30" monitors support, that you aren't getting out of 1920x1200? Other than a warmer video card?

I have a couple x2/4800s sitting around. They're used, but they're in "spare" machines sitting in my office. Those PCs could just as easily have 3200s or 3000s or Semprons or whatever in them. The reason 939s went for fire sale prices last summer was to clear them out of inventory. Now they're...

re: Vista Slow Copies 4GB of files from a 100Mbit switched network to a USB2 hard disk: 3 hours and five minutes, actual time. Vista claimed it would be at most 40 minutes, and even that is unreasonable.

I was pretty "meh" about Children of Men as well. Several people told me it was as good as Blade Runner. Those people need to have their taste recalibrated. The score was the best part of the movie, but it wasn't a particularly deep film. I guess the big deal of the whole thing was the very...

If it's running at all, you can do the standard repair install. Only this time, use a proper key. :)