CoffeeFiend

I'd have to say same as MCT. Back when the GeForce 4 were still new, I bought a Ti4600, and I still can't see a difference from the pre-radeon-era Rage Fury Pro 32mb card that was in the box before... (it's also my first-and last GeForce card)

As far as kids movies go, I make a decent xvid rip (a properly made 2CD rip with gordian knot does look good) of the DVD and leave it on the video server until the kids aren't bugging me every other day to watch it. Can't get more scratch-proof than that. I don't backup video DVDs...

Another vote for a router (and not a cheap 10$ refurb DLink DI-604 but a good one). I like my zyxell.

There's more to it than just using percentages. In fact, I wouldn't do just that. There's many sites dedicated to this (and CSS positionning). I'm sure if you peek around bluerobot, alistapart and csszengarden you could find lots of resources.

I so happen to have the one for the recycle bin confirmation handy. (I'm sure I have the others as well but I'd have to dig deeper). Either there are utilities to help you find those settings (registry snapshot/compare apps such as RegSnap Pro 4). Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer] "ShellState"=hex:24,00,00,00,37,88,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\ 01,00,00,00,0d,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,01,00,00,00 I haven't tested personally (yet) it but it should work...

If he's running windows, he can use IIS too... (and ASP, ASP.Net, PHP and all). Unless it's for *very* limited traffic, you'll find your connection way too slow, especially if you use P2P apps or such.

That stuff has been know for ages. I've even used it in an app for a place that offers free internet access and needs to restrict what people can use/install, made a list of "approved" ones, and it parsed them, if it's not on the list, it launches either the uninstall or the silent one... (and lots more stuff of course). Quite an oldie... Oh, also, every time we copy an app to $OEM$\$Progs (Firefox, Zoom Player, mIRC, Klipfolio, bpftp, ...) and we want to keep the uninstall information, that's what we grab. (sometimes the uninstaller .exe/.log files can be in %systemroot% (ie c:\windows) too)

I do a lot of installs from shares on a network, but I don't see what more FTP brings...

Use /VERYSILENT /SP- (/silent works too) then, if you want: del "%UserProfile%\Desktop\UltraISO.lnk" regedit /s "%cdrom%\install\UltraISO ME v7.21 SR2\ultraiso.reg" contents of ultraiso.reg (to register it): REGEDIT4 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\EasyBoot Systems\UltraISO\5.0] "UserName"="your_name_here" "Registration"="whatever's_in_your_registry" Did you even try to search?

I find that "waiting", in the computer industry is pretty much futile. By the times the fast/dual layers/... (and the media) will be cheap, we'll be starting to buy blue ray writers or such. There's always gonna be something better/faster out there no matter what... Even the 4x single format-one layer burners served me very well already. Just like, did anyone waited for CD burners to hit 52x to buy one? I hope not because they've missed most of it's useable life since we're all moving to DVDs now (and pretty fast too). Something that is fast, mature and cheap is usually getting close to be replaced/obsolete.

Does your homemade version of netmeeting actually work on XP? Did you try? Or is it just the installer that says that it doesn't? I've looked at the SDK but never found the time to play much with it

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I recompress them with xvid with Gordian Knot and leave them on the video server. Mostly it's the kids movies - which they watch over and over again - and that would easily get scratched. Otherwise I don't bother.

Oh, didn't know about that one... Anyways, I can't even think of a burning program that won't do bin/cue, iso, ...

I'm already on my 3rd DVD burner, and soon 4th (and I''ve stopped counting CD burners a while back) I don't know of any friend/close family member without one. (ok, except maybe grandma ) I call it a necessity nowadays.I don't use it to backup video DVDs (movies), but 99% for data DVDs. The discs read a lot faster (talking about kb/s), they make less noise when spinning, the media is under half the price of CDs (talking in MB/$, not actual unit price)... And it's a lot less hassle to burn it all on one disc rather than having to handle/swap/write on/burn 6+ CDRs for the same thing. Disc swapping is just annoying. Also, all my unattended setups are on DVDs (so you can toss a windows AIO and everything else you want to on the same disc). Also, since the DVD contains as much data as around 6 CDs, it takes much less space to store them all (a 200 CD wallet filled with DVDs contain as much as *many* spindles of CDRs hehehe)

WMI/vbscript rocks. It can do things like that but also a LOT more stuff. It's pretty amazing to see what you can do with it. I use it a lot.

There are at least 2 ways of creating shortcuts like that. But even then I wonder why bother going thru all that hassle. I create the shortcuts the usual way, and copy them in my "%cdrom%\install\shortcuts" directory, and xcopy them all to the proper place during the install. Doesn't get much easier than that...

Weird. I've never seen Nero fail at that (unless you don't follow the proper steps - but there's even a guide for that)

I'm using firefox. I've used/tried many before (bunch of ie's, netscapes, opera, myie2, ...) I never cared much for any of them until I tried firefox... I'm never using anything else. Lots of great addons too like the developper toolbar, checky, ...

Nero works fine too.

Actually, the files have to be registered as well. (I've never tried without doing it anyways). I use: "%CDROM%\install\vb runtimes\vbrun60sp6.exe" /Q:A /R:N to install it unattended and it's never failed once.

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Exactly. XP Home is too limited for big companies (can't join domains, etc.). I just can't think of a reason why they would want to make a corp version of xp home.

The 3 OS'es are very different. Some are server OS'es, some are desktop OS'es. Lots and lots of differences. Perhaps you should go visit microsoft.com and find out what's new in them, or even google for such information. There definately are major changes in all of them (too much to even try to list here). Unless all you want just about anything, as long as it plays your games and has a start menu... Also, if you have problems and need to reinstall your OS so often, chances are your PC has hardware problems. I never had to reinstall so often (desktop or servers... anything goes) - nor anybody who I've done it for.

i would be interested in helping build the database if someone would make the gui part I've already made a similar database, and I'll be working on the GUI (front end) soon (as soon as I'm done with registry tweaks lol)