CoffeeFiend

Actually, I would say the inverse. The menus haven't changed too much. The tool palettes and such are more or less the same too (with a few extras). Same MDI window setup (swatches, layers, channels, etc). It's consistant user interface is actually one of its strong points I would say. No single version upgrade made me feel like too much had changed at once. AutoCAD though... Peeked at the last version, and it's changed dramatically since the days I was using it intensively. Even basic commands don't work anymore (like l [space] to draw a line, from anywhere, then try to type say 20<45 for a line 20 units long @ 45 degrees - nope! it writes stuff on dims instead and errors out and stuff - absolutely RADICAL changes!) Menus changed entirely. All kinds of stuff's changed dramatically. Back in the v12 era, I could have teached this thing, I knew it inside out (even knew like all the dim vars by heart and wrote some autolisp and such), and now I've got a hard time drawing simple 2D lines with it... Lots of awesome and overly useful new stuff, but the changes... Never had such problems with PS (basic stuff like opening a file, using the basic drawing tools, applying filters, printing, saving and such has hardly changed at all since at least v2.5)

Photoshop, hands down, all-around (features, interface, new superior/useful/innovative tools, better for layers & channels, etc - all of it!) And no, it's not that expensive, upgrade version (from ANY old version you may have/get your hands on for dirt cheap -- I had an old version bundled with a digital camera personally) is 150$, and it's definitely worth every penny. Worst case scenario, you can likely find a 2nd hand copy of CS (not CS2) for dirt cheap too, and it's still a very good tool. Very good integration with other Adobe apps too (illustrator, premiere, etc). Paint Shop Pro is not much cheaper (the upgrade is though, if you've got some old version of it). And I wouldn't say it's easier to learn. I find the interface TOTALLY backwards to start with (and since Photoshop's the standard out there, you'll likely find more resources for it too). Too many bars getting in the way all around the screen too (even on a dual monitor setup screen estate is valuable) It may have RAW support, but it's nowhere near Camera Raw, and it doesn't support my DSLR either (PS has for pretty much forever like pretty much every other RAW tool). I'd rather use several other apps before it, including Photoshop Elements.

My last PC used a Thermaltake Armor. Honestly, I don't think I'd buy one again. Just check out the thread where I was talking about a new rig. I didn't think much of the Coolermaster Stacker (looked like a very generic tower), but after looking into it a bit better I'm sold - thanks to puntoMX! It's better in every aspect IMO (except perhaps looks which really was the last criteria on my list) [edit]: I only own the silver one, so I can't compare between the 2 (not that I'd buy one again). SECC is a [good] type of steel (better than SGCC, and cheaper than [overrated] Aluminum). BTW, The CM Stacker is made from SECC too.

If you want to post MS articles about backing up MSDE, why not post relevant ones? This mentions NOTHING of how to back up a DB. Try http://support.microsoft.com/kb/325003 or http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q241397/ Short answer: use the OSQL utility or sprocs (with a TSQL "BACKUP DATABASE" statement)

What you need is more often called a phono preamp (e.g. TCC TC-750LC), not an amp! (Well, some amps do have a line out though, so he's not really wrong either). You obviously want something decent (there's *all kinds* of them out there, won't get into details). You can find some that aren't too expensive (even on the 2nd hand market - I'm sure you can find a bunch on ebay) Then a good sound card is of course a good idea - something with a decent S/N ratio, low noise/crosstalk/intermodulation/thd, good frequency response, good ADCs and all (a 24/96 capable card is not a bad idea either - downsample later if you want). That terratec seems like a very good pick (well known name, likely good drivers unlike Creative's junk, ASIO support and all). Perhaps even a bit overkill, unless your records are in very good condition, that your turntable is also very good, that you have a very good preamp, and half decent cables too. Makes no sense to get a super high-end sound card if you'll use a so-so preamp that adds too much noise and distorsion (and get hum in cables or such too). It makes no sense to have a sound card record a poor quality signal in high fidelity (s**t in, s**t out). And again, squeezing the last little bit of fidelity out of it only matters if you're going to encode to a decent format (if it's low bitrate mp3, then no need to overly worry about anything, it just won't sound that good regardless; and you'll end up redoing it again later). Make sur you don't get any clipping when recording either. Most onboard AC97 sound sucks - especially for recording. Poor / cheap ADCs, low S/N ratios, etc. Mind you, you can even scan them

Like most said kaspersky's pretty good. Very thorough (especially the scanning inside archives part) and catches pretty much everything, but a little high on the resource usage for my taste though. I used it for a while (even though I didn't like the NTFS streams it adds to every file) until I ran into some problems (the service using up 99% CPU for no apparent reason). Since then I've switched to NOD32, which is nearly as good (more than good enough), but much lighter on system resources, not more false positives than kaspersky, and hasn't bugged on me yet. Well priced and all. Avast (free) is still good enough. Pretty good on system resources. It'll catch most viruses you throw at it. For everyday use by the somewhat cautious person (won't open .jpg.exe attachments in email and stuff like that), it should do the trick, and the price is right. I haven't catched a virus in years, and if I was exposed to one, likely this would have done the trick just fine. Something that will positively catch every single "exotic" virus is unecessary in most cases.

Yes, but then the app can't be used. Considering it's just as much trouble to stop and restart the database than to just back it up the standard way, I see no reason to create unecessary "downtime" every time you want to back it up. I mean, it comes with standard and very good backup mechanisms - it can take care of it by itself all using sprocs (self-contained), without scheduling anything if you want. There's no reason to stop it (in most cases, people can't afford totally unecessary downtime like that - much less for every single backup)

I'm sure there are tons of commercial apps that can do the job (I bet searching for "MSDE backup" finds LOTS of them), some being ungodly expensive, and some cheap but often unreliable ones, but why bother? OSQL is all one needs - along with the proper TSQL statement e.g. BACKUP DATABASE SomeDataBase TO DISK = 'c:\backups\something' or such; replace DATABASE for LOG if you want to backup the logs If you need help on how to write such queries, just consult BOL (Books OnLine), a free download from Microsoft (google it if you can't find it). I bet technet and such places have articles too, and google can most likely find lots more. Write a little script/batchfile to do it for you, and schedule that task or whatever you want. Free, quick, reliable, you can tweak/modify it as much as you want as you have the "source code" of the script. I like to append backup date in YYYYMMDD ISO date format in the backup name personally. If you want to be fancy, wrap up all your backup TSQL in a sproc (which will even generate & append the date and even email if you want), and just call that sproc from OSQL (schedule that). You can even schedule it (using a sproc - sp_add_jobschedule) to run too, bypassing OSQL altogether. It's actually pretty straightforward, and if you look around, I'm sure you can find basically "pre-made" statements you can reuse with very little changes. BTW, I'd look into support for SQL Server 2005 Express. MSDE is a bit dated, and not very good by today's standards. Whatever you do, DON'T pick something that just copies the files as-is! Databases aren't backed up like that.

I have to agree. I'm getting almost but not quite 1000KB/s (high 900's) without even using any kind of accelerator/segmented downloading - and considering the download links have been released everywhere (including slashdot), it's pretty amazing (likely they're akamai). Kinda sad I hadn't time to install RC1 yet I didn't think RC2 would come so fast.

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That's not very useful for most people. You don't expect the average A+ guy analyzing stack traces of crash dumps, trace kernel mode drivers or something, do you? (Time for a reality check - really!) To be useful, you have to have relevant programming experience (which is very uncommon in plain "admin" folks) And it's not the type of tool that's used much for the type of jobs he'll be doing (like removing spyware). A lot of people can't even understand half of what's on the BSOD screens already... Highly recommended to programmers (with enough understanding of the system), but admin guys? Not really. BTW, you may want to keep a bunch of other utilities handy. Things like the Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder (to find their keys so you can reinstall stuff), apps to backup their XP's activation files, etc. Perhaps some free partitioning tools like gparted/qtparted and others. Something to reset the local admin password (there's various ways/apps/methods). Some disk cloning/imaging app sure couldn't hurt. Bootvis can come in handy. System testing/monitoring apps perhaps. A good pack of drivers (and perhaps an app to backup those from an existing system in case you don't have the drivers for those handy and if they also happen to be hard to find) - and some quick app that will tell you what hardware's in the box quickly (so you know what drivers you need). Most updates handy - like SPs/IE/DirectX, and fixes (e.g. latest MDAC). Something to backup their user profiles & data if needed (main thing is having somewhere to dump it to really). Scripts and batchfiles and reg tweaks pre-made for common tasks. Something like TiddlyWiki or such to keep notes. There's all kinds of free apps that can come in handy for a reason or another (from cd burning apps, to text editors, to 7zip, to whatever)... Perhaps a nice USB memory stick to hold most of this. And of course, lots of the good stuff's already been mentionned (various WinPE/BartPE based discs, LiveCDs like systemrescue cd or distros like DSL, sysinternal apps, etc)

Everyone seems to think I said imaging is a better way to install or something. What I said is basically: imaging is good enough (and no, we've NEVER had HAL/SID issues - not even once). But mainly, life's too short to wait after unattended installs that easily take over an hour (vs like 3 minutes with ghosting) -- unless you have the luxury of endless spare time. It's not easier by any means. It's just much *FASTER* - that's all.

Sorry, but I have to side with Tarun on that one. We've tried SAV recently, and it's been nothing but trouble. A bit less resource hungry than NAV (still too much though), but it's by FAR the crashiest and most unstable AV app I've EVER seen hands down! Processes would crash all the time on most PCs (clean windows install on generic hardware - doscan.exe being the main culprit, crashing on ~50% of PCs), problems with MS office, etc. There's KB articles (and patches/stupid workarounds) that came out to fix most of these issues, only they didn't always work. Those that say MS releases beta products and that we pay to test them have obviously never tried SAV - it's like pre-alpha testing. I remember seeing articles about these crashes on some websites too (slashdot, etc) It sucks so bad I'd almost consider using *gasp* NAV before that (and don't even wish that to my worst ennemy). Yes, your PC will slow down to a crawl and will let viruses in if you're ever exposed, but that won't be any different, except it won't crash anymore.

Same here. Been using PerfectDisk for quite a while on a TON of PCs - also the version for Exchange, and on large arrays as well, without any such issues. It's just you...

Couldn't have said better. Selling low end systems to folks with very minimal needs like checking email only... Nothing wrong with that.

It's basically a terminal server app along with thin clients. OK for light office work and surfing the web, but sharing the average PC between 10 people... And your hardware better be REAL stable. One crash = 10 people just lost everything they were doing.

Yep!

Wow. I don't think you know what you're saying. TONS, and I mean TONS of HUGE enterprises routinely use ghost (or other imaging method) for deploying most PCs - it's more or less the de facto standard out there. Were you working in the field, you'd know people are far too overworked to use only scripted installs. Every admin ALSO uses scripted installs - to generate the basic images, that is. No one in this field has time to wait after windows and apps installing slowly (easily takes an hour), when ghosting the average business machine takes about 3 minutes on the average PC. HAL is hardly ever an issue, and it can be replaced if necessary (but most people just create one image per batch of similar PCs, so it's irrelevant). SID is a TOTAL non-issue, just use sysprep like everybody else (or newsid or whatever if you prefer). Hardly! It's every bit as easy making updated images every once in a while. And most places don't use either methods as primary patch mangement/deployment. Updates and apps are most often pushed via SMS, WSUS or such (process checking updates at logon, etc). Imaging can be done at a client's desk while he goes for some java if necessary - it'll be up and running by the time he's back. Reinstalling would require taking his PC away (and him either not having one which is totally unacceptable, or issuing them a temp one meanwhile - paperwork to fill and administrative stuff like updating asset database, stuff to move around, all kinds of wires to plug/unplug in tight spaces behind desks, etc etc), to then spend an hour to reinstall it (to end up with essentially the same end result), to have to swap it back again - more time wasted, more disturbing the person who's trying to do their job (You mind closing outlook and everything else you're busy with? We've got to swap your PC again!) or even staying late to do it... If you've got a bunch to do, then you can just multicast the thing (hundreds of PC at a time if you want). No need for those $15 obsolete floppy drives in every single machine either (none of our new machines have any, and we don't want 'em either) Every noob administrator out there blindly uses unattended installs [that take forever and often are highly unpractical] only to deploy windows, without considering other alternatives used everyday by ~95% of the industry. I've never seen a place like that were the average user will be given local admin rights either, which is totally unecessary (more like problematic) Kingskawn: That's what pretty much everybody else out there does too, unless they work in some tiny shop and are so underworked that they have tons of time to waste. Well, there's also a fair amount of places using RIS, but that's also imaging based. And about Vista? Yep. Deployment or even manual/"normal installing" is imaging-based too. Imaging is widely used, is proven and just works. There's a place for unattended installs, but it's not for massive or quick deployments for sure.

"Real" parallel processing is only so scalable for most things indeed. But software is going to make use of multithreading a LOT more in the future - not like we have much of a choice, single threaded performance can only improve so fast, while people have these other cores handy we can make use of... I personally started that "move" a while ago with some management apps (not so much because of CPU load though). It's communicating with PCs on a domain, running WMI queries against them, etc. - so the PC was sitting idle just waiting for answers all the time, and running the "script" against thousands of PCs one per one took pretty much eternity. With some basic multithreading, you can easily increase speed tenfold or more for apps like this. Keeping 80 cores busy isn't a simple thing to do though, but seemingly it isn't a "general purpose" CPU (more like a Cell processor or for some kind of specialized processing, like for crypto work). I posted that link in a hurry before someone else posts the news

I'd say there's a lot more to it than just that. Making images isn't complicated (not that I'd use php though), but he's also looking for the javascript "zooming" feature as seen on the page he linked to. So he has to learn javascript (and some DOM manipulation and such). Also, generating the odd dynamic sig a few times per hour for displaying on a forum is a very low load. Dynamically generating around a couple hundred pictures (26 letters, lower and uppercase, plus 10 numbers, ~30 symbols, etc - all in 2 sizes) for each and every page load would be stupid, and very taxing on a server. Something like this out to generate the pictures the first time if they don't exist and save them to HD for future times, or at the very least do some heavy caching.

Dell's target isn't idiots. It's people who want good value in a rather generic PC with half decent support. Nothing more. And no, I haven't heard about whatever deal she bought her Dell from (I just don't memorize those things). But I bet she got her 300$'s worth. Quite frankly, I don't know what you're expecting to get at that price. Celerons aren't that bad for basic office work and such (not like she was buying a gaming rig at that price - clearly a "value" machine), and it seems more than sufficient really (some Dimension 2400 actually shipped with P4s). And as the reviews I've seen on the web shows, it normally ships with 256MB, which wasn't all THAT bad for a low end PC that's more than a couple years old (and again, cheap upgrade). I'd like to see you build one from new parts yourself, with a Genuine copy of windows for that much (you likely have ~200$ left to buy all the hardware), and see how much better and faster your rig is. The DDR2 I was considering for my Core 2 Duo rig cost more than 300$ per GB. You got a whole computer for less than that, I don't know what you were expecting. That's like buying a new car for less than one buys a new engine for, and complaining it doesn't have 350BHP. Misleading advertizing for sure...

That's anecdotal evidence at best. One single defective HD from a company (likely bad luck) and you're bashing them online and never buying them anymore? Wow. Give it a couple years, and you'll have no manufacturer's left to buy from Personally, I'll buy anything BUT WD. Seagate, Maxtor, Samsung, Hitachi, etc - it's all good.

As others already said, I don't see why you don't use good old TCP/IP. I haven't used IPX/SPX in the last 10 years or so. Direct PC to PC communication worked just fine with TCP/IP out of the box, even in the Win95 days. Games wise, I doubt many games require such an outdated protocol (not that I follow games, but requiring that nowadays would be blatant stupidity at best) - unless you're playing some very old stuff (Commander Keen over IPX anyone? ) Hamachi doesn't require IPX/SPX either. It'll support/tunnel it, but it doesn't need it whatsoever. Even Novell NetWare (the ONLY reason why I could see someone want to use IPX for nowadays -- not that I'd use NetWare) got TCP/IP support (as primary/prefferred protocol, I mean) with v5, almost 10 years ago... Using IPX nowadays is like using Token Ring instead of Ethernet. Both were great technologies in their day (I very much liked NetWare 3.12 back then), but much water has flown under the bridge since then. I'm looking forward to IPv6 some day (adoption has been VERY SLOW to say the least, mainly because of NAT)

Again, Apple JUST lowered their prices, I highly doubt they'd do it twice in a month or such (they already dropped by 50$ IIRC). They can't afford to lose money on 'em like another well known company can. Like No6 said, MS is well known to take over markets - not just web browsers. They've killed some competitors many times, and they've defeated countless others with similar products many times over. From OS'es (CP/M, OS/2, DR DOS, etc) to word processors (Word Perfect), to spread sheets (Lotus 1-2-3), to web browsers, etc. Novell? Stacker? Corel? Lotus? Borland? etc. Some aren't around anymore, and the others are empty shells for their former selves. They've managed to make themselves a major player in gaming consoles (a market that's very hard to get into) in a very short time. Apple's main product is something overly trivial to make. I wish them luck, they'll need it (not that I'd ever buy anything they make)