CoffeeFiend

Not so sure what your point was, but x86 is behind on every single test you linked to (20-something% in winrar, 6.x% in * mark vantage, 5.x% in Cinebench), save for the GPU-bound one (which might not be very much optimized either) where it obviously ties. There are multiple benefits to x64, from twice as many registers (they're larger too) both the general purpose and the SIMD kind, to better calling convention (far less stack operations), to more available memory. So it's hardly surprising it runs faster (usually around 10% but sometimes it's very significant like Photoshop where it's sometimes more than twice as fast). Also there's more and more x64-only apps.

Yes, but the Itanium is still significantly different. The CPU has a fundamentally different design, not only the registers and instruction set and such, but also the way the compiler has to optimize for the code (it has to be optimized very differently -- the usual out of order stuff won't run so great; again, because of the EPIC architecture). Most apps that require that kind of power to get decent performance are, and that's the main thing. I couldn't care less if notepad could use up 64 cores but I'm happy that my video codecs, Photoshop, SolidWorks and others can. I'm not real sure what the Intel/MS bashing was about...

I'm not quite sure if you guys read the same question as me: That sounds like it's going to be used for home, so solutions over $1000 (NetApp, EMC and whatever) might be a little too pricey for his taste. You're looking at something that does about 20MB/sec (depends on the particular model you pick obviously) If you want a NAS that doesn't suck and doesn't cost completely ridiculous amounts, roll your own using freenas or openfilter or whatever. That, or go with direct attached storage (eSATA) for even cheaper and faster (so long as it doesn't need to be "networked", or at least not without using fileshares on a host computer)

That *is* dirt cheap. Because it sucks, it's darn old (from 2002), it's slow as molasses (reviews say things like "1.1 times the integer performance of a 1.67GHz AMD Athlon XP 2100+ processor" about the faster 1GHz part -- ouch), and it's 2nd hand (the kind of people that used to need this would buy it new). That's totally unlike the kind of system cluberti was making reference to. Buying that back when it was current or a similar system was several thousands of dollars. If you went with a 4-way with plenty of RAM, lots of fast drives and all then it was in the 5 figures.

Dio - Holy Diver R.I.P.

That totally depends on which player, which version of it (and often what particular codecs are licensed in a specific edition), and even in which player one attempts to play it (I've seen some of those codecs installed by DVD player apps that checked the executable's name and would work or not depending). There's a LOT of factors That depends on the OS one is running and some other factors, like the media player used and hardware (including GPU). A lot of decent players (MPC or VLC namely) already support most stuff out of the box. Some codec packs play better with certain versions of Windows, and some players don't need quite as many codecs to play most files (or for things like subtitles). I used to use PowerDVD but I don't see a point anymore (too many problems, too little options, too pricey for nothing). Just like I don't use CoreAVC anymore (there's better options out there for free). MPC HC will happily decode 1080p H.264 @ 10mbit with like 1% CPU usage (profile 4.1 obviously, and the vid card must support that of course) but that's old news Even VLC is getting that with v1.1 (late to the party for sure, but VLC is nicer in other departments). Personally I use MPC HC to play the vast majority of my files. But I override a fair amount of the settings manually (including the internal codecs) so files play using the codecs I want (like ffdshow for the great decoding options and such). I normally use the EVR renderer (not available on XP obviously). Ideally I'd install and configure every single codec I need (ffdshow tryouts, haali & gabest, ac3filter, directvobsub, etc) by hand by lazyness often wins. Anyway. There are some fairly decent codec packs out there... and some that suck too (I remember trying that really awful Nimo codec pack back in the early 2000's -- now THAT sucked)

I don't see how it would change anything. Usually, the main problem with login forms is the risk of SQL injection. Framesets are a relic of the past (from the Netcape days). Frames already sucked 10+ years ago. They're ugly, bookmarking or linking to one of your pages is a pain (the bookmarks/links that will work will lose your frameset too), often the back and refresh buttons don't work as intended, printing is a pain, etc. Again, they just SUCK. Just use some server-side includes instead. Just put it in your first server-side include (like the one for the top portion of the page).

It is equally trivial to install PHP on Win7 or 2008: 2 clicks in WebPI (platform installer). One doesn't need a fancy server OS and a separate server for that, Win7 will handle it just fine (assuming your edition includes IIS of course). I believe it would even work on WHS (much like it also works on XP and 2003). Not that I see how Win 2008 Web Edition would be more "friendly" as the install process (even the manual way) is exactly the same. In fact, I'd just about say IIS is more PHP-friendly than Apache (it's easier to setup at least -- again, just 2 clicks; it'll even install the most popular PHP apps for you if you want it to, again, they're just one click away). So easy your stereotypical grandma could very easily do it. Just try WebPI once and you'll see.

Like I said, you have to describe the problem properly. So if it's not line numbers like you said it was before, how are we supposed to tell? From the few fake lines (unless you really have a program called XY? And that it's always going to be the one and only program you want removed?) you wrote which I bet won't be exactly that and which could be basically anywhere, not knowing what the rest of the file is like either? Nevermind that the 3 lines now seem to be more like 5. If you can't describe the problem or how it should work, then we just can't do anything. I'll wait for a proper description before offering another solution. "Just delete some lines that look kinda like this somewhere random in a file" isn't it as we can't just make a program that guesses which lines it is you want removed.

Well, if deleting lines 19 to 24 is your final problem description then here's one way: get sed from here (in the zip). Then run this command: sed 19,24d oldfile.ext > newfile.ext Lines 19 to 24 will be omitted in the new file. There are other ways to do this if you prefer...

We need more details. The first 3 lines? Lines at a specific position? Lines that contain specific text? 3 lines that are duplicate? ... It's pretty hard to come up with a working solution to a still mostly unknown problem. Either ways, I'd have a look at sed and awk first (unless you don't want of a 3rd party util) or I'd write a simple script that does it (totally trivial to do)

Why would you do that? SP3 has been out for a couple years already. Why would anyone pick the service pack that's 6 years old instead, doubly so when its support life cycle ends in less than 2 months (July 13th)?

It's there, but the unicode values are converted to hex before being written in a .reg file (admittedly not a particularly easy format for a human to read) The first part (LocalizedString) is "%USERNAME% on %COMPUTERNAME%" and the other (LocalizedString) is "%computername%".

I beg to differ. Could do the same thing, sure. It's all about the configuration. Hardly. It won't play any H.264 file, nothing with DTS sound, won't show subitles, won't play any MKV or MP4 file, on most editions of Windows that wouldn't be enough to play DVDs (still no MPEG2 decoder), etc. In fact, that probably wouldn't play half of my stuff. For decoding MPEG4 ASP (such as XviD and DivX) ffdshow tryouts is FAR better than XviD. XviD is good for encoding, if you're still encoding in that old format.

No, you simply can't. You're looking at a new laptop/computer or console.

RAID1 like you were talking about is only useful in case one drive dies. It's NOT a substitute for proper backups (just saying). It doesn't help at all against failures due to electrical problems (e.g. if the PSU in the unit fails or lightning hits power lines nearby, both drives will die anyway), it is of no help at all against accidental deletion (or virus/malware/hackers-related damage, theft, water damage, fires, etc) so I don't see it as overly useful for home usage. Not a bad drive at all (I just bought one last week actually), but I'm not sure how a NAS would deal with the 4KB clusters. It's actually plenty fast for the kind of tasks you mentioned (unlike someone else said). Even compared to "normal" drives (non-"green" and 7200rpm) it often still wins, even in the latency department -- just look at any benchmark. It's definitely NOT going to be the main performance bottleneck with any kind of NAS (*nowhere* near!) Just DON'T. You want speed? Then you don't want a NAS. It's that simple. That particular NAS, in RAID1 will give you 20MB/s at most, closer to 10MB/s with larger files (anything bigger than its RAM buffer -- like the backups you're talking about), and if you ever want to use anything even remotely fancy like FTP transfer than you'll drop below 10MB/s. When you say NAS, you're also saying slow. As for USB-attached HDs, it very much depends on the enclosure you're getting. Some are pretty decent, others suck hard. A co-worker bought one 2 weeks ago at bestbuy (on special, a 1TB unit), and writing large files it drops around 6MB/s (for small transfers, it hits 35MB/s then still quickly drops). I've also seen plenty of enclosures that just died from the heat repeatedly. The convenience of USB is attractive (take it anywhere, plug it to anything, anytime) but other than that it's not great. Personally I'm always scared that I'd manage to bump into it somehow and it would land on the floor, instantly causing massive data loss. Now that we're put aside the two options that suck, that leaves you with a couple more options: -eSATA-based storage. Super fast, inexpensive, works great. But you do need a eSATA port on your PC (plenty of dirt cheap addon cards offer this though if you don't have one). There are also DAS (direct attached storage) enclosures that use it which are priced around the same price as a basic NAS, except that the performance doesn't incredibly suck unlike a NAS. For example, look at this unit which gives you 4 bays for $110 (speed being mainly limited by the drives themselves, and the eSATA port multiplier to a far lesser extent). And if you don't like this particular unit, there's dozens of others to chose from. There's nicer units out there for not a whole lot more, like this one which gives you 5 bays (and RAID and everything) to eSATA for the same price as the crappy NAS in the first post (or $300 for 8 bays). The main downside is that it's not networked (just like for a USB device), but if you need it and your computer is on then just use file shares. -a DIY NAS, like puntoMX said (Rule #1: puntoMX is always right; Rule #2: in case of doubt, see rule #1! ). For the price of a basic $200 NAS, you can get a fairly decent motherboard/CPU and some RAM (on special, 2nd hand if you want, or even reuse some of your old gear). Then throw FreeNAS or OpenFiler or whatever else you like on it (some people swear by unraid, and others by solaris for ZFS). Pretty much all of these solutions will let you use any level of RAID without a card or even support on your motherboard too. If the motherboard doesn't have a gigabit ethernet port then buy a GBit NIC (they're like $15). Need more SATA ports? Just get one of those $30 controllers with 4 ports. This is going to give you FAR better performance than any NAS on the market (especially dollar for dollar) and also far more features. It's also customizable, the hardware is upgradable and also the software is (run any app or service you want -- you could even run Windows on it) unlike a NAS. The main drawback is that it's DIY (i.e. assemble then install the OS yourself). WD Green drives would be a good pick IMO. Plenty fast, silent, low power, reliable and cheap too. If you go the DIY NAS way, then make sure you also get a Gigabit ethernet switch, and preferably one that supports jumbo frames (your computers must also support it). They can be had for cheap too (my Netgear 8 port GBit switch with good jumbo frame support was like $50)

Honestly, that sounds mainly like a waste of money. $340 of RAM in a laptop with a low-end dual core CPU and very slow "non-gaming" video, just to play games. Games require exactly the inverse: nowhere near that much RAM, preferably more CPU power, but mainly a LOT faster video card. You're just going to have to live with a lower resolution, lower details or such (lower the settings) in your game, or get a new computer (or a console). It's great for anything -- besides gaming. It's plenty good for Aero Glass, playing HD video (H.264, Blu-Ray, etc), OpenGL-accelerated apps and mostly everything. But not games (I mean, besides the old games that will pretty much play on anything). That video won't ever be good at playing games. You want to play games then you need a better GPU (video card), it's that simple. A reasonably nice card for a gamer would be a Radeon 4850 (~$100) or such, and that card happens to be about a dozen times faster than that you've got. I mean, there's $20 video cards that are like twice as fast as yours. Also, a fair amount of games will use quite a bit of CPU power at times, and the CPU in that laptop gets slaughtered by a super-low end $40-ish CPU like the E3300 (a bit more than twice as fast). Sorry!

WHS isn't really meant for those things. It's mainly for making backups of your computers and sharing files. Win7 is all you need.

Sure, why not. Not sure if it would be any faster mind you. It wouldn't prove it completely works (it often installs just fine with bad RAM, etc), but it would be a decent test too for sure.

I'm not totally sure it's the DVD that is bad. Chances are that some of his new hardware is defective (it happens). The first thing I would do is trying to swap some parts out (like trying to install on a plain old HD instead of the SSD just to see if it still crashes, then if that fails run memtest86+, checking the PSU voltages, temps, looking at available BIOS updates, etc). It could even be the optical drive itself that is bad (I've seen a fair amount of them that didn't play nice with some system configs before too)

Personally I think VMWare Server has been very much downhill for the last while. v2 seemed like a big step back (for one the interface to connect -- now it's web-only). And then the [unimpressive] support coming to an end rather quickly (ouch, 3 years only? I would expect WAY more out of a company to run my infrastructure; this is VERY bad), combined with the recent "expiry" bug we've seen (ouch), and the so-so hardware support/requirements of ESX... It looks like they want to lose their customers to MS and Hyper-V (which is doing a LOT of progress REAL quick) and doing everything they can to accomplish that. (I *used* to run VMWare Server too) As for using the tools from the trial of VMWare Workstation in some of their other products I don't think it's much of a problem (but IANAL, and I haven't read the fine print either).

Uncommon? Indeed, but it's really not that weird. If you had ever seen the parts lists of your average ship... Major assemblies, sub assemblies, sub-sub assemblies and so on (it can be fairly deep), all the way down to tiny little parts (e.g. nuts & bolts). The thing is most CAD programs usually output the BOM to an Excel sheet or compatible format (at least SolidWorks, OrCAD/Allegro and Altium Designer do, and I believe CATIA as well which is what you'd likely be using for an aircraft carrier, as well as AutoCAD, Pro/E, etc). It's a standard "exchange" format for this kind of work. Then if you want you can mass insert all that in a database and go from there. Haven't tried but it's probably measured in gray hairs.

For dealing with services using any .NET language, just use the ServiceController class -- not that I'd really mess with some of those services (e.g. BITS or Browser) as it's going to break a certain amount of things and most likely make zero noticeable difference in performance.

See this sample code (just click on the C# tab)

But the 661's main point is that it has onboard video (you need a chipset/motherboard that supports it too) which is normally chosen for cost reasons, and here it's very much negated by going for a >$200 i5 anyways -- doubly so since it's only a dual core (and slower than the X4 630 which costs less than half). I mean, one could get a X4 630 and a Radeon HD 4850 together for the price of the i5 661 (the CPU by itself)... Not that the i5 661 is bad, it's just overpriced for what it is. TDP-wise, it's not really impressive for a dual core. I mean, most of AMD's dual cores are 65W, some reaching as low as 45W.