CoffeeFiend

Besides, you'd only be getting "400+" out of it (the unit of measurement here being "pluses" I guess... Whatever). Hardly a performance increase worth paying 180$ for IMHO. The 4200+ isn't much more expensive. And some of those have Pacifica as well (VT tech - if you're a VMWare user, it should help), SSE3, etc. I just bought a Windor core (AM2 socket) 4200+ and I'm quite happy with it (has DDR2 support too). Anyways. I wouldn't really upgrade for a difference of less than 1GHz or so, unless it's dirt cheap.

19" is decently sized (you can actually use it), while 17 is too small (ok for a laptop, but not for a desktop monitor) - it's just too small. There is a huge difference.

Enabling repositories is easy (check the options in synaptic). Or just use easy ubuntu. It'll take care of that for you, as well as install codecs, video drivers, DVD support (libdvdcss), install java, apps to handle various archive formats, etc. All that, without having to think or know what you're doing. That finally leaves you with some time to setup the other stuff, instead of the same old repetitive and unecessary steps to get basic functionality that's not there out of the box. Works for me at least. You say you got no clue where to begin (if that's true, then you're STILL doing better than I am), well, could be an option for you too BTW, there's an IRC chan for ubuntu on freenode and also tons of wikis...

You could try something like easy ubuntu. Also, there are some NTFS drivers (new kernel module, captive ntfs, etc...) Mind you, you'll likely still have problems. Things like players not playing mp3s over smb (at least XMMS didn't without a patch last I've tried). As for your DRM'ed AAC files, you're SOL. Personally, I find there are lots of very good uses for linux (and BSD/Solaris - things like *cheap* hosting, Asterix, DB servers, cheap NAT/FW, on some embedded devices, etc), but as a desktop OS on my primary PC? Not a chance. None of the apps I use (or make) run on it (although I could always try Mono). WINE is hardly a solution. I'm not about to give up VS2005 (C# is great, .NET FW 2 is amazing, and I have yet to see anything coming even close to asp.net) and tons of related coding apps, or photoshop (and camera RAW software and plugins and all), all kinds of apps that seemingly have no alternatives (things like yearly tax income apps, kids' educative games, etc), and even throwing away all my hardware that isn't supported (costing me hundreds to replace), etc. And thankfully I'm no gamer (that would only make the problem worse - unless you're a tux racer addict i guess). I've tried various distros many times, but so far none has even come close to replacing windows for me, and likely it never will...

Indeed. There are attacks on everything all the time. We're not giving up on C++ even though we never stop seeing buffer overflow exploits. Stuff will be attacked, and compromised. Giving up on javascript? Not a chance. It's stronger than ever. It's a truly useful tech. I don't like the language itself much (if at all), but it makes things possible. Things like: -client-side form validation (no need to postback to told your passwords don't match, "765" isn't a valid age, you MUST enter your email address or such) -it's used by tons of widgets (think FCKeditor/FTB/dropdown controls, sliders, etc - normal html form controls suck really) -it's used for tons of useful things like expanding/collapsing menus and sections. -it's used for various useful animations or such (hiding panels, etc) -it's used for accessibility (techniques like JS image replacement) -it's used for enhancing pages in many ways (altering stuff by walking the DOM, etc) -anything you've seen that referred to dhtml -and of course, all that newfangled overhyped "web two point oh" total AJAX overload stuff! That one point alone (seeing how things are evolving - new and hugely popular sites) means it's not going away - things like google maps. There's tons of new frameworks popping up everyday too (Atlas is nice). Javascript usage is almost exponential, it's used more and also increasing faster than ever. Giving up on javascript would take the web back like 10 years. And it's already somewhat stuck in the past. W3C being too slow (slowly becoming irrelevant), technologies evolving but getting no support, etc. Not to mention MS' sorry excuse for a sh***y browser (IE) holding adoption of standards back. Tabs may be nice, but what about basic CSS support and such? IE8 (shipping with Vista's successor in 2025?) might finally support basic things every other browser has supported for ages. Who knows. Heck, we might have to wait for IE 324 for it to support for proper XHTML MIME type (application/xhtml+xml) - in 4500 AD, give or take a couple hundred years... Today's browser CSS support is just *starting* to be half decent (with one big exception). But where's XForms? SVG support? A *decent* set of widgets? (we could *REALLY* use a combobox control - stuff like VB3 had MANY years ago) Newer/better styling & scripting technologies? Better typography? Better parsers than the DOM? SMIL? XHTML+Voice? MathML? Decent multimedia stuff (don't even mention QT or flash video)?... There's so much people out there still serving ugly non-validating almost-but-not-quite-html 4 tag soup - a HUGE mess of content, markup and styling (countless font tags) in every page, using tables for layout, breaks instead of styled paragraphs, often with no doctype (quirksmode), IE-only pages, etc. Then there's all the ugly hacks to solve some browser's rendering issues and all. Character encoding/unicode issues. There's days like that where I wish we threw it ALL away and started again from scratch. Seemingly, some people are kind of doing that already - using the html page itself for nothing more than a flash container, and doing everything in flash (I truly despise flash though). Javascript and even more javascript seems like the only hope to have somewhat modern/interesting features these days. We can already see what the web (from a technology standpoint) will be like in 5 years - nothing's changed, old browsers not supporting new techs and such (CSS2? SVG? nah, 50% of the web will still use IE6 or such, and it supports nothing new or useful) The day we're dropping javascript, we might as well ditch web browsers and use telnet instead as far as i'm concerned. Why not drop markup and images too (images can cause buffer overflows in decoding libs - see WMF exploit), and only have plain 7 bit ASCII text left while we're at it? I bet it would be real secure (although not quite as much as not even having a network connection -- hey, now THAT'S an idea!) If anything, they've got to figure out how to secure javascript better or such (rework of ecmascript engines in browsers), as nothing's going to replace it anytime soon. And without it, it'd be back to the web's stone age more or less.

Personally, as long as it's not western digital... Just bought 6 new Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATA2 3GB/S 7200RPM 16MB Cache NCQ HDs. 110$CAD a pop, not bad (34 cents/GB). Will work great in RAID5 (1.6TB total) on an ASUS M2N-E motherboard If you count the "space lost" for parity and add tax and shipping, it's still under 50 cents/GB. As for the 750GB'ers, they're coming down in price a lot. They're currently 520$CAD here, but that's still a LOT more per GB than the smaller drives (69 cents/GB - so the double!) If you need a lot of space, you also need a lot of money to buy it with large drives like these (it already costed me like ~800$CAD w/tax & ship for the bunch of 320GB'ers - that much space at twice the price per GB? Ouch! Can't afford that - or at least different priorities!) And if you want a RAID5 array (so if one drives dies, you don't lose everything), you also need to buy a bunch (preferably 4 or more), so again a big investment. For the price of one 750GB drive, you can almost buy five 320GB'ers (can't buy 4.7 drives), and you'd end up with twice as much storage space (that's what I did, just add a 6th drive for parity!) The only problem with buying smaller drives is the low number of SATA ports on motherboards these days (which is half the reason why I picked that board - it has 6!) Half-decent SATA RAID cards (even software RAID) with enough ports are way too expensive (several hundreds) for home use, and even "cheap" PCI (not PCI-[e|x]) non-RAID SATA controllers are a pain (hard to find here, and usually cost as much as a new basic motherboard with SATA - 70$ or more) and being PCI they're slow too. [edit] Kamil: chances are you already know... But those molex connectors (the pins) can become loose too. It gives the same problem you described, so I thought I'd mention it anyways. And I have a bunch of maxtors, which are doing just fine.

Still FAR better than getting your tonsils taken out. Now, THAT sucked (can't eat anything, hurts much more). Had to stop taking pain killers soon after too even if it hurt, as I'd be awake for 5, be given more pain killers, and go right back to sleep. Sleeping 23 1/2 hours a day is a little too much.

bleh... nevermind. pointless arguing w/ you, it's more about calling people things, like "close minded" (and I was going to buy a C2D until AMD dropped prices heh), "fanboy" and all, or sayings nice things like "educating yourself" (gee thanks, don't know what to say... now maybe I can hope to pass highschool some day?) to others more than anything.

Yes they are tests versions. But they will ship soon. That was exactly my point. And no, I'm not an "AMD fan", I can just read a product roadmap and press releases to expose your FUD. And no, that's not mid-2007, that's before that (end 2006 to Q1 2007). And if anyone here seems like a fanboy... (this is typed on a P4 519J, with Intel chipset and Intel GMA 900 video, and also have a P-M lappy besides me... heh) Well, I suggest YOU re-read the news post (yeah, the inq...) It's ridiculously simple and clear. They didn't renew it, essentialling revoking them rights to their chipset bus (or so they say). So, soon enough, no more boards with ATI chipsets for Intel. (Some people say thew news isn't true, but I have yet to see anything official stating the inverse either; and even if it wasn't the case, they could and would be likely to do it anytime being competitors. Not exactly what I'd call a strong alliance by any means.) ...which will give 'em a 6 month lead, like I said in my previous post. That wasn't a done deal. That would have made one single giant satellite company, and we like to see competition in the free market. But I understand you'd like to see AMD die and have a Intel-only 100% monopoly and believe they have any valid reasons to do so. Nobody's expeting that. You keep dreaming the FTC will block it...

Wrong. There are even some sightings of them said 65nm CPUs on the web. They will ship soon; new X2 CPUs using the Brisbane core around December to early Q1 2007. Same goes for Opterons. Fab 36 will be making 65nm chips at the end of this year. An 24 extra watts used when runnin at top speed (there's always cool and quiet) is hardly a big deal. Likely, it'll take that long to have some decent and not extremely overpriced Core 2 Duo motherboards available, which is a far bigger deal IMHO. Pay 150$ too much for a [poor selection of] motherboard (and have lesser 64bit perf), or pick a CPU that takes up 24 more watts at top speed? For most people, the choice is easy. It was for me at least (nice X2 4200+) Right. Intel will be rolling chips based on 45nm process yesterday. Suuuuuuuuuuuuuure! BTW, AMD w/ IBM already did something like you claim Intel will (e-SiGe w/ DSL & SMT)... That, and 65nm, and 45nm transition 18 months after that (Intel will be 6 months early only)... 65nm transition will bring 'em down to the same wattage as the Conroe (Not that 24 watts was a big deal in the first place). Quad cores are coming too, mid-2007. Still makes no sense. Intel doesn't need anything from nvidia. They already make fine chipsets, and make their "good enough" video stuff (they DO have a bigger share of the graphics market than ati or nvidia), and have slots on their boards for people that want something better (gamers). And why would nvidia want to partner or otherwise restrict/tie itself to either platform? They wouldn't gain anything from it. Unless you mean alliance as what ATI once had, which they've more or less always had (they already make chipsets for Intel boards), so nothing coming up either. BTW, Intel and ATI are hardly in an alliance - much the inverse! Intel pulled ATI's license to their bus. That's exactly why I say it's more or less already a done deal. It would be absolutely STUPID for them to block it. Let the Intel monopoly rule, and let AMD die (they *NEED* ati's tech to stay competitive)? Of course, some competition can't be good for the market - it brings decent prices and drives innovation, and we wouldn't want that, would we? As related news, IBM just announced they'll be using Opterons for their blade servers (Sun is using a lot of Opterons lately too). Hypertransport scales so well (even Cray uses it!)

It would make no sense for Intel to merge with nvidia. They don't need 'em in any way, shape or form. nvidia will continue to make chipsets for both platforms, and video card stuff as always. As for ati & amd, I do pretty much consider this a done deal. Really can't see it not happen, nor any reason for that. Oh, BTW, I'm building a new Athlon64 X2 4200+ AMD Windsor/ASUS M2N-E system (very nice motherboard! 6 SATA ports w/ RAID5! A normal Core 2 Duo board with that would likely cost betwen 500 to 600$ if they made one...) Really looking forward to it! (I would have went for the Conroe if it wasn't for the poor selection and high prices of motherboards) @Beppe: AMD has a energy efficient version of most of their chips. And they're going to transition to 65nm soon too. As for intel fixing something as big as their IA64 arch with a rev/stepping... Good luck with that. And as for quad cores and such, Intel really needs to get their CSI bus out if it wants to compete with HT.

Over-complicated perhaps but maybe problematic. It's based on J2ME, and if it's as it is for cell phones... No 2 VMs seem to be compatible. I wouldn't be surprised if they had problems getting discs to play on all players (right now there's only one out, so it's still too early to tell). I don't see a need to run a complex language/program for something as simple as a menu. Sounds totally overkill. I doubt the usual authoring tools will do much in terms of fancy java code, so I don't expect to see many special menus either. In contrast with HD DVD, which uses a simple semantic XML format (you'd be able to do it yourself, even with notepad). Everything is simple, and quite alike to commonly known web formats (simple markup, javascript, standard fonts, jpg/png pics, etc). There's even a free iHD simulator download from MS' site. You can find some samples and related blogs too. Simple, elegant, good and easy dev/authoring tools, familiar technologies (very web-like). What more can one ask for? Add your video, encoded in your favorite format with your usual encoder (MS has WM Encoder Studio Ed for VC1 too), and you're set. No need to learn anything complicated, ditch all your tools and buy expensive soft or anything. Add to that the much higher prices of Blu-Ray players (and seemingly the current Blu-Ray player has issues) and blank discs, and such... Beta-Ray it is! Oops, maybe a little OT indeed?

There, fixed your post for you Seriously, EVERY format Sony launched in the last 20 years or so is dead or dying. And the PS3 is already a flop regardless If I was buying a new console I'd be getting a Wii for the kids.

gMail... Sure, if you like it (I didn't like it whatsoever, but why not). That's if you want webmail that's read/analyzed/data-mined/hosted/logged by another company (and never truly deleted)... Still one of their best [few] products. gCal? No thanks. Sync'ing is a joke. Sucks all around IMHO. Again, it's a hosted app that requires an internet connection and all. gSpreadsheet? Took me an hour to stop laughing at that and finally picking myself off the floor. Saying notepad is a match for Word would be far more accurate than saying this is a Excel equivalent. It's a TOTAL JOKE. Pathetic. Sucks. Ridiculous. It has 1% of Excel's features at most. No charts? No pivot tables? No scripting (like VBA) nor any VSTO equivalents. Functions beyond the basics aren't there. Nothing like v/h lookup. Formatting sucks. Sorting is very basic. No conditionnal formating. Format support sucks. No OLE-like functions (to get data from other sources like DBs - something I use all the time). Low dimension limits. It relies on a ridiculous amount of javascript (like google maps), and it's only going to get worse as they add features. On a slower PC (or one that's actually doing something else), it gets sluggish pretty quickly. And at that size, it must really suck over dialup (it's like if microsoft made you download MS office's ISO each time you wanted to use it). Bandwidth waste. And being javascript, it sometimes crashes (far more often than any real spreadsheet). And it lags badly. Hell, claris works in the WFW / OS/2 era was MUCH more powerful & far better. Heck, I'd go back to lotus 123 for dos over that. There are TONS of better spreadsheets than that one (although that's no feat - I've yet to see one that was worse), including free/OSS ones that aren't online/javascript based. I wish to nominate Google Spreadsheet at the most pathetic, laughable, crippled, underpowered, ridiculous, sucky web app of 2006 (it WOULD win the prize if there was such a constest) Anyways. OOo and WordPerfect Office (too expensive though) are perhaps the best two alternatives out there. But indeed, there are more (StarOffice, gnome/kde apps, etc). Also, MS Works could be sufficient for a lot of people (although the WGA like stuff could become an issue here too). Evolution is nice, but it's not quite a match for outlook if you're using Exchange (I truly hate outlook though; stuck with it at work, but using thunderbird at home)

Gas? That must be a new thing. I've had mine removed years ago, back then hooked us to an IV. The only thing I remember from the whole experience: dry sockets hurt.

Another vote for PS CS2! Elements is "good enough" for most people (my dad's extremely happy with it), but if you have a previous legit copy of photoshop, the upgrade is not much more expensive. For a photographer, it's definitely worth the 150$! (Like I said in another thread, I upgraded from a copy of PS 5 LE that came bundled with a P&S digicam I bought to complement my DSLR a while ago) Not that pricey really, and it's truly better than everything else, by FAR. Nothing comes even close.

Photoshop isn't necessarily overpriced... I got PS CS2 legally for 150$ (I don't need or even want the whole suite, but I *DO* need PS for photography!). It's an upgrade version, which will upgrade from anything (like PS 5 LE that came with a point and shoot I bought to complement my DSLR a while ago). It was worth every penny I spent

It really depends on what country you live in (not the same providers), what type of calling plan you need (they vary a lot), any special features you need (including protocol support - including IAX; voice quality and bandwidth used vary a LOT too)... Some will let you use your own ATA, while others won't or will force a ATA rental fee on you or such (not all ATA are created equal!) And tech support isn't the same for all of them either... Which can sometimes be required, because of some ISP's [illegal] actions, excessive latency, network problems, problems with your ATA (can also need to be reconfigured to do or be behind NAT, etc). Depending on your area, the providers available will vary a lot too (may be less of a problem in the USA though). The prices are one of the main things to check (price is the main reason for most to switch), but also look at activation and shipping fees - and cancellation fees (in case it sucks so bad you have to break your contract or such) - money back guarantee is a good thing to have (peace of mind)... Just in case the quality sucks, or their service goes down all the time or such. As you're in the USA, I can't really make recommendations myself, but there are lots of very big sites on VoIP, which also have reviews and comparisons - sites like VoIP-info and such, which have lots great of infos, including a cheapest ATAs and services topic. If you have a linux box (or want to make one, and have basic knowledge), then you can look into Asterix - there are even free services you can use with it (like Free World Dialup [FWD] for free international calls). As for in Canada, Vonage was basically the most overpriced plan I found. The monopoly telco (Bell) had better rates, so did the cable company and everybody else... I looked at MANY MANY plans - lots of which looked really good but were only offered say, in Toronto - but there were still a good amount of good ones left. Being in a major city, I was covered by most providers (although Halifax wasn't when I lived there a few months ago), but I finally settled for iristel. 20$CAD unlimited calling 24/7 in my area code (base, long distance, ATA rental, all features, etc - ALL included in the price), and very low rates for people outside of it. I can call the family anytime for as long as I want for less than the local telco charges for basic phone service. Their codec support is one of the best (and their ATA uses the best too - and very low bandwidth), and they support IAX (for Asterix). I rate 'em 15 outta 10

That's a much better post! So you're using MSSQL and IIS, and even have VS2005 - too easy! If I had the schema, I could even make some simple pages for you to get you started... I don't know if I'd have a dropdown with every single PC listed in it though... Unless you don't have many PCs then that'd be OK I suppose. Scrolling through 2000 PCs in a dropdown would get frustrating real quick IMHO. As far as coding this, there are 2 main ways you can pick... 1) the "quick and dirty" solution - read the from tables directly, and just dump the contents into tables... Nothing fancy, that would take only a few minutes to put together in asp.net 2) the "enterprise grade" solution - a solid n-tier architecture, using OO concepts extensively and all. You can accelerate this using ORMs and code generation, but if you want something simple and easy and don't have a lot of coding experience... I doubt you want to to do for something so trivial. (I'm taking for granted you already know [x]html, if not, then tiem to visit w3schools! Same story about basic SQL queries and such. Oh, and some basic C# or VB.Net, ado.net basics and basic knowledge of the .net framework req'd too...) As for learning how to... There are countless resources for learning asp.net: www.asp.net has a learn section; there's also the quickstarts (and the old ones); there's the Visual Web Developper (free app) guide here that shows how things works (not just to use VWD); There's videos and webcasts (some made especially for beginners), they've got help forums (and newsgroups), there's some extensive training DVDs available for the price of shipping, even w3schools have a asp.net section, there's some resources from moving from classic asp to asp.net (webcasts and such, if you've used classic asp before), many community sites like 4guysfromrolla have a asp.net section with a bunch of articles (and learning links at the bottom). There are starter kits (which could help you a great deal - seeing how some pre-built apps work and play with them a bit), the entire documentation (MSDN lib) is available for free direct from MS' website (just like the BOL for SQL Server; and the .NET SDK too which also contains some samples). MSDN has a asp.net development section too. There are some sample chapters available for some good books which you may also find helpful. There are FAQs... There is so much stuff out there - it's unbelievable. There are data (ado.net) tutorials and resources out there too (just as many as there are for asp.net). Be it websites, pdf docs, videos and webcasts, etc. It may seem like a lot of stuff to learn (C# or VB.Net, ado.net, the .net framework, asp.net and all), but don't worry it's quite easy. With some basic asp.net knowledge, one could write an app to do this in a few minutes... As for dreamweaver... Yuck! What a useless steaming pile of [censored]... No need for it thankfully

You're not really giving us enough infos to help you much. You only say "SQL database" (which really means nothing - that's akin so saying "a vehicle with wheels"), but fail to mention which actual database it is (or could[n't] be). No mentions about the schema you intend to use either (you don't say how or when you intend to fill & update the DB or with what data exactly, but we'll forget about that for now). You also fail to mention which server side tech you intend to use for your web app, nor how you mention any types of features it needs (list what? how? secured how? tie in with what? what type of architecture? etc). Not knowing what database, not knowing the schema, nor the server side tech you want to use, we can't really help. You didn't mention any resources you might have, be it hardware to host all this, software (DB, OS, web server of some kind, etc), or personnel (web master? DBA? programmers? anything?) or their qualifications/preferences (mainly which techs they know and like), nor how much time or money you can afford to spend on this. With so little information, we can't even be sure you have everything you need to make it happen, or what you really want/need in the first place. Hard to give any recommendations based so little information. If you want some in-depth/helpful answers, we'll definitely need WAY more details. Until then, you can look at the existing solutions that do this kind of thing. There are some expensive and not-so-expensive commercial ones, freeware ones, and even open source ones (some hosted on sourceforge). Or you can even hire someone to do it for you or to customize an existing app...

Exactly. MS is truly shooting themselves in the foot. I'm sure WGA is selling a lot of copies of XP (right before Vista is released nonetheless!), but if you look at the long term scenario... If they stop piracy (or make it sufficiently bothersome/annoying/difficult), people will flock to Linux and Macs in masses (or just run old/outdated versions or plain not update anymore). Forcing people to buy Windows? That wasn't too bad considering most PCs already come with Windows preinstalled (and XP Home OEM is cheap). But now do the same for office... Nobody that pirates it is going to buy it at 600$. I'm lucky enough to have a licensed version thru work (and I might take advantage of an academic version too if I go back to uni - depending on the license and price), but most people don't have that kind of luck. Doing this would be the quickest way to lose the grip on MS proprietary formats (forcing everyone to have MS Office) as everyone will now use OOo instead (and nobody will buy it anymore). I'm just hoping to see a OneNote equivalent some day... And better office automation tools for OOo (not holding my breath tho).

I wanted to buy a Core 2 Duo, I'm sure it's good enough for my needs... The prices seemed great too - a 300$ CPU that beat the FX 62 on most benches which was like 1500$CAD at the time of the announcement - finally a fast and affordable fast dual core CPU! Now that they're about to ship to the masses, AMD have reduced their prices significantly. That alone might not have been enough to convince me to buy AMD. But the prices of the [poor selection of] motherboards for the Core 2 Duos! Ouch! For the price of a half decent Core 2 Duo motherboard (the Asus P5W DH Deluxe) alone, you can get a similar socket 939/AM2 motherboard, along with a Athlon64 X2 4200+ or so. For the price of that motherboard and the Core 2 Duo, you can almost build an entire PC. If I'm paying ridiculous prices for a motherboard, I might as well get a nice Dual Opteron board instead...

Funny to see the end result (already read about that yesterday), all this because of a mic gain problem...

Yes. Analog capturing and recompressing in a lossy format will ALWAYS result in a degraded picture (all explained in previous post, even with analogies). You use 25 or 29.970 frames depending on what system is in use where you live (PAL or NTSC). If it only lets you select one, chances are it's the one in use in your area. As for audio, 44.1KHz is AudioCD-like sampling frequency, 48KHz is the frequency used by DVDs. But it will not make a difference... You're still doing low-quality analog capture and recompressing anyways... As for mpeg4, it's not a capture codec but more of an archival one. That's what you'd use to convert your shows post-editing and recording if you want smaller files, losing even more quality in the process...

Depends... Most PVRs and recorders are also analog solutions (tivo et al). I've only seen 2 types of "real" DVRs before, those for use with digital cable packages (which are proprietary, and vary from a provider to another, and I don't have cable), or the satellite PVRs (which is what I use - the echostar 510 or 5900 specifically). But I can't stay echostar stuff is reliable. They've replaced this receiver 5 times under warranty so far! (HD in the original broke, all replacements were DOA except the last one). But the recording quality is there... (I also used to use a DVB-S card, but with recent changes in nagra2... there's nothing left to watch)