CoffeeFiend

There's only so many brands of good universal remotes. There's Harmony of course, and the Pronto too (another popular pick, but tend to be rather pricey), and for those without budget, there's always the $15 universals with a JP1 interface... I was going to buy a Harmony remote before, but now that we use our PCs mainly to watch movies and stuff, I don't really have a use for one anymore (the TV only gets used by gaming consoles basically)

Not really. RAID5 and RAID10 aren't useful for 2 drive setups (which does bring a very significant speed boost -- beyond that you have diminishing returns anyways). You need 4 or more HDs (all the same) to use 'em which most people don't have (yes, you can do 5 with 3 disks, but it's not much better than 10 still). Also, RAID10 wastes half of your space (need to buy twice as many drives, doubling costs instantly), and while RAID5 isn't as wasteful in terms of disk space, it eats a lot of CPU power (slows down your computer), unless you bought a very expensive "hardware" RAID controller (the kind with a beefy processor doing the XOR'ing onboard -- hundreds of $$$ for something nice). RAID5 isn't completely safe either (RAID6 is safer, but again, more wasteful) I use RAID0 for my OS & apps, various places where I do a lot of work with large files (downloading, editing ISOs, AV editing, decompressing stuff, whatever... I wouldn't really care if I lost those things to a dead HD), and RAID1 along with proper backups (of course) for the stuff that matters the most (like pics of the kids).

Title says it all. What's your favorite candy type, of all time? Jelly Beans? Cracker Jack? Candy Cigarettes? Gobstoppers/jawbreakers? You name it! It should be interesting to see what others have to say. It's probably going to vary a lot depending on where people are from. I have to go with black licorice pipes. Those rocked.

No need to apologize. The vast majority of people think that column in task manager is what processes use. I don't blame people for not reading Windows Internals (which I didn't manage to read cover to cover myself; BTW 5th ed is just out, I gotta order it ASAP). There's also some other good resources on the subject, like the Sysinternals Video Library ($400 though...) As for vmnat.exe and vmnetdhcp.exe, there's basically no difference. vmware-authd.exe takes a couple MB extra vmware.exe about a dozen MB extra So in total, it's like perhaps 15MB extra for a lot of new features (four years' worth). Not that bad really. More disk space too (about 5 cents worth), but then again, if you removed the tools ISOs you don't need (like the 200MB Linux ISO by itself) the difference quickly narrows down there too (and those ISOs are invaluable if you need to use those client OS'es -- especially in Linux's case where an ISO that's 6 months old is often obsolete/useless with the current Ubuntu release) Either ways, I'm definitely moving to Hyper-V soon.

I'll second DigeratiPrime's post. It's worth a look. Then again, that still depends what formats you're going to/from (DVD format, mpeg1/2/4 asp or avc files, NTSC or PAL, etc)

About 800MB commit charge, build 7100/RC1 x64, after clean reboot. That's with no AV or anything else running, no IM, no systrays for video/sound/anything, no whatever. Mostly an untouched install. That's more than double what my Vista SP1 box uses (365MB last I checked; not vLite'd or anything either) I thought it was supposed to be more lightweight Edit: and I thought 800Mb was bad enough, but the next few posters have it even worse. 1200MB? That's over 3x my Vista box...

Those numbers are totally innacurate (which also makes me doubt about the other previous numbers you got). Sounds like you're going by the memory column in task manager or such. That's definitely not private bytes. For example, vmnetdhcp.exe actually uses about 1MB, not nearly 10MB like you stated.

Compared to 9x and 2k? Just about. Not that I use XP anymore mind you. @starcraftmaster: you were lucky for not being banned last time (not by me) for your foul language and were warned. Looks like you didn't learn your lesson. Goodbye. [Topic closed as no good is gonna come out of this]

If that was the case, people would move on from older OS'es only when the support for them starts to disappear, and it's just not the case (just like they've started replacing XP now, despite it supporting all the new stuff still). People in general actually love the new features it brings (tons of them -- even for the average end-user e.g. cleartype or sleep that works), the eye candy, the stability, the newer faster more reliable hardware, the new things they can do with their computers (like watching HD content), there's about a billion different reasons for IT departments too (better GPO, better deployment stuff, etc). Yep, people are moving away from older OS'es because they found something genuinely better. Yes, again because running on a grossly outdated POS computer with specs worse than those found in dumpsters is the only thing that matters. You should "upgrade" to MS-DOS 1.0 then. Since it's your only criteria, the only versions of any OS you're ever going to like are those older than what you're using now. You're certainly never going to upgrade to anything else.

Honestly, Win98 was a FAR better OS for most people (if not just for driver availability alone), until XP was released. At which point XP became a FAR better option. BTW, things like "But XP Dont clean up memory as good as Windows2000" don't make sense. RAM doesn't have to be "cleaned" or anything. I had no such issues as you describe on my old Duron 800 back when XP was released (circa 2001). Great uptimes too. As for BSODs, I've had more BSODs in a single day using Win2k (again, thanks Creative & VIA!) than I've ever had using XP. So you're willing to adapt, so long as it doesn't require you to adapt? *All* new OS'es will require you to adapt to new changes, and there will always be some that will need you to learn to do things differently. Like the new start menu in XP, the seach in Vista, or the taskbar in Win 7. It takes some time, but in almost all cases most people wouldn't go back to the old ways. (Not that XP really needed you to adapt in any way if you're using classic everything, it's like Win2k but without the suck) No one said that. Besides, XP runs great on a P4 so you wouldn't even have to. Win2k totally is a bloated monstrosity compared to NT4 and Win98, so one could say you are into bloated OS'es (I would also bet you did in fact buy this machine you're running this bloated OS onto). Min reqs: NT4: 486 33MHz, 12MB RAM, 110MB HD Win98: 486 66 MHz, 16MB RAM, 500MB HD Win2k: Pentium 133MHz, 32MB RAM, 650MB HD Win2k uses 4x more CPU and nearly 3x the RAM and 5x the HD space than its predecessor! Wow! Such horrible, unbelievable monster bloat!!! 2x the CPU of Win98, 2x the RAM and more HD space too! Where will the bloat end??? That's EXACTLY how Win2k'ers sound when talking about XP (min specs are double of win2k's basically). Win9x fans are no better. Same exact scenario: Win98 had horrible bloat beyond comprehension (BTW, it *did* run like molasses, extremely slow on my P133 at the time), and Win95 is no exception, what a pig!!! Win98: 486 66 MHz, 16MB RAM, 500MB HD Win95: 386DX, 4MB RAM, 50-55MB space Win3.1: 286, 640K Conventional + 256K extended memory (under 1MB), 6MB free HD space Wow. How ridiculously bad! Win98 needs like 4x the CPU, 4X the RAM and 10x the disk space of Win95! Win95 needs about 4x the CPU and 4x the RAM too, and neary 10x the disk space as well compared to Win 3.1! Nobody should have ever upgraded to that absolute extreme bloat nonsense! Win 3.1 had a GUI and could start apps -- what else does one need? </I-don't-need-or-use-any-of-this-new-stuff> BTW, who needs MS Office 2007? MS Office 4.3 (that runs on my Win 3.1) has bold/italic/fonts and can save and print stuff -- everything I need right there, new apps are useless </I-don't-need-new-software-either> For the record, Win 3.1 was extreme bloat, compared to just using MS-DOS. and MS-DOS itself was extremely bloated compared to many OS'es of the time than ran straight from within the onboard EPROM. See how silly it sounds? Sticking with Win2k or WinXP doesn't make any more sense than those. New OS'es always have, and always will always need more resources, but most people don't get stuck in the past over it. Using Win2k today is exactly like using Win 3.1 in 2003 (8 years or so after being replaced). I disagree. It clearly shows that most people and businesses are dumping older OSes they clearly don't want of as they found something better to replace it. People are moving on for a reason. $3? That almost buys 40GB worth of space these days. It's not like you need anywhere near that much extra to run XP instead. Mind you I've given away 120GB'ers... Not even. 1TB'ers are like $80 -- that's 8 pennies a GB. And I got a 2x2GB kit of "Buffalo Firestix Heat FSH800D2B-K4G 4GB 2X2GB PC2-6400 DDR2-800 CL4" for $37.99 CAD ($33.45 USD by today's rate). Those never ending "bloat" claims always seem to be over a few pennies worth of hardware. I saw barebones (case, power supply, 3GHz CPU, mobo, 1 or 2GB RAM and all -- just re-use your HD & DVD drives) several times for like $100 last year (at places like tigerdirect). You can get entire P4 setups (including the whole tower, monitor, mouse, keyboard, legit XP license and all -- with warranty too) for that much anytime (in fact, a co-worker was just given exactly that last week). Yes, I like to quote posts following mine instead of posting a hundred times to confuse others!

Yes, because the only important thing about an OS is running on grossly outdated hardware, right? At least, that's what it seems to be all about when you hear all those people who keep saying win9x and win2k are great. Most of them seem to not want to replace their 10 year old hardware (in average) either (P2's and P3's with 128MB RAM or so) or are just stuck in the past, or unable/unwilling to adapt to any changes. 2010 is right around the corner, it's not 1999 anymore. XP is history as far as I'm concerned, and Win 2003 is quickly heading there too (and Vista in a few years). Win7 will be released in 4 months, then they'll start working on its replacement (Win 8, or whatever it'll be called)

There's about a billion different programs, and none of them is the absolute best at everything. Some are great at non-linear editing, special effects and the like, and full of advanced features. Others are just 1-click converters that are meant to be easy to use for people who have no idea what they're doing. Depends what you want.

Looks over function IMO (and even then, I don't find doors particularly attractive). Once you have a big heavy case (a good 30lbs right there), put a dozen (relatively heavy) hard drives in it, a big PSU (none of this 350W generic stuff that weighs 50 grams -- big transformers, big heat sinks and all), big coolers and everything else, wheels start to look very attractive (this PC likely weighs about 70lbs) I was thinking about a Corsair TX850W. It's not modular, but it's not like there's no place inside the case for the couple extra cables. LOTS of power: 840W/70A on 12v rail alone! And tons more on the 5v/3.3v too should you need it, 850W combined (rated at 50C), plenty of cables for everything (8 SATA, 8 molex, etc) which are plenty long, it's 80 plus (more like 83% around where I'll idle), clean stable power and all. Built by Channel Well Tech (not bad, good Japanese caps -- even some polymer, no wimpy parts, no small heat sinks, etc). Power which tends to be needed when a dozen hard drives decide to spin all at once (I'll gladly accept donations of $800 12 port Areca cards if anyone has too much money; I just can't afford staggered spin up) on top of your average load. Not bad at all for $132 CAD (that's $116 USD at the current rate). A similar Enermax (which I've had numerous problems with in the past -- and sometimes worries me a bit e.g. the very high ripple on the 1000w galaxy) e.g. the ERV850EWT (840W combined on 12v rails too) would run me at least twice that even after mail in rebates. The extra $100 to $150 is a little steep for having a couple less cables in the case (I'd rather put that money towards more storage) Good to hear. Although I wasn't too worried, CM just seem to do such a great job out of cooling/airflow.

Very similar to the Cosmos S I was looking at. Different side panel color, couple drive bay's size, a couple different fans, but it's nearly identical (only $5 difference at ncix as well). I'm also leaning towards that right now. In fact, I most likely will pick the 1000 over the S now. Thanks!

I'm not worried about that, it ain't my money I just haven't come across what I'd call a "decent NAS" ever (especially if you want more than 4 drive bays). Mind you I pretty much gave up on looking in the last couple of years, so there might be some by now. One is more basic NAS-oriented, the other is a "more advanced" solution (IMO), with more SAN-like features (e.g. iSCSI). Personally I'm not worried by how active a project is, versus what features there are, how good the admin interface/tools are and so on. Personally I'm using Windows' own network shares

Funny you say that, because I was thinking 100% the inverse NT4 was running stable at the time, and moving to win2k sucked real hard (initially). I never actually cared much for it. I never considered going back even once (BIG step back IMO -- not that I run x86 OS'es anymore). I find it unbelievable some people are still arguing over 40MB of RAM in 2009 and calling "bloat" over that much... That's not even 50 cents worth of RAM. What kind of extremely obsolete hardware does an OS has to run onto before you don't call it bloated? Win2k was a LOT heavier than its predecessors too. Much like Win95 was really heavy compared to dos+win3.x... In fact, I'm sure there's many people in the Win9x section that would call Win2k bloated. You could call every version of any OS ever released "bloated" just the same (including those not released yet, and those not even in planning). IMO it's the absolute very worst browser of them all (including IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and several others), and it's also a worthless mail client compared to outlook (much like it sucks at everything else e.g. for torrents compared to any decent client). Yes, I'd actually use IE8 before Opera (and no, I'm not an IE user at all!). They also seem to accomplish the miracle of making their GUI even worse with every version seemingly (just how do they manage? no idea!) Just my $0.02. Anyways. He can try Win2k, but I bet he won't use it for long Very much a personal thing. I've tried opera, I'd say about a million times, and each time I did feel like going back even more. It used to be OK way back then, then passable, but now it's beyond horrible. Anyhow, asking for answers in the place where most Win2k die-hard fanboys still hangout won't really get someone objective answers. Asking for that here is gonna get you answers just as biased as asking in the Win9x section if Win98 is good or not. We already know what people are going to answer before anyone has spoken.

I don't use optical media quite as much as I used to, but I always hated those things and usually ended up removing them as they only got in my way. As for looks, I don't really see a difference, and noise wise, the computers are always buried by ambient noise anyhow... Cheaper indeed. But a lot less place inside. Less cooling. Less extras e.g. no wheels and no PSU extensions like you often need on bottom mounted PSUs, one less port at the front (albeit minor), less drive bays (matters a lot to me -- one of the biggest factors actually)... Besides price, the only place where the 900 is nicer is the air filters. If anything, I'd want a couple more drive bays, a more plain looking case (no ugly side windows, no fans that light up, no weird looking plastic stuff) -- basically another CM Stacker 810. The Cosmos is probably the next best thing, but it's twice the price as a antec 900 indeed. Anyhow, there's many other options worth looking into. NZXT Whisper Silent perhaps. Or even the Antec 1200. Either ways, it's not for now. I got a pair of new LCDs to buy before that at least.

I didn't look, but just by the link's name, it seems like a batch file to delete stuff. And I have no idea where you got that "delete" part from in his post, that's where I'm getting at. I have absolutely NO idea what it's supposed to do (not that I'd really use a batch file for that kind of stuff in the first place anyways)

Well, I'm not quite sure yet. Honestly, there's one thing I really despise in cases (besides cheap flimsy crap, no airflow and all the really obvious stuff): front doors. Their only purpose seems to be being in your way every time you have to get to your optical drives :angrym: So most likely I'm going to go with something else, even though they're quiet, well built and so on. For the same price as a P182 or P183, I can get a Cooler Master Haf 932 or something like that (no dust filters though...) Or perhaps for $40 more a Cosmos S. Noise isn't my main problem here. I let HDs spin down when not used for a while, I got quiet fans, silent/passive vid cards everywhere and all. The kids make a LOT more noise

I read it 3 times slow, and I have NO idea what he's trying to do, other than it has to search for files, with a certain extension

I don't get it either. It really ruins it if you ask me...

Here it's not really "streaming" per se (like, as in wacthing a live event using MMS protocol or the like) so it doesn't use UDP. It's just a flash player (.swf file) that downloads a .flv file using a plain old HTTP GET (exactly the same way as your browser gets a html page or images and so on). Most of the requests for the flv files these days seem to be made to googlevideo.com (e.g. v11.lscache6.googlevideo.com on the last one I tried). If netstat doesn't see it, perhaps it's done downloading. I never really use netstat (wireshark is where it's at), but I looked it up, and as soon as I hit play on a vid, several entries appeared e.g. qy-in-f118:http (as in qy-in-f118.google.com), and connections to the 74.125/16 block that belongs to Google.

That only made it barely usable. As of SP4 it's not too bad. But it's hardly the best OS ever. In fact, I always had numerous troubles with Win2k (admittedly, many which were due to poor drivers at the time -- thanks Creative & VIA!), and when XP came out, I switched away from it VERY quickly and never looked back. Moving to XP solved all the problems I had when running Win2k. Now, Win2k may be a little better than back then, as XP drivers are quite mature and for the most part still work on Win2k, but still... Quite late to move to Win2k as support is disappearing (software, or drivers)

XP a resource hog? It runs just fine as-is on a bloody ancient P3 (assuming you have enough RAM). Running fine on hardware that I'd describe as obsolete (a decade old) isn't what I'd call "a resource hog"... It uses a bit less resources than a untouched XP . But as far as compatibility goes, it's quickly becoming the new Win9x. Everybody is moving away from Win2k (much like Win9x). Win2k has like a whole 1% of the market share, and is quickly shrinking into total irrelevance, just like win9x. At the current rate, Win2k would hit the 0% market share in a year. It's basically at the same place as Win9x was last year (1%-ish and dying quickly) Depends what you mean by supported. It will have some security fixes for a few more months, and that's about it. I'd call that the end of the road. Not a bad move, except it's 10 years too late. Even XP is already like 8 years old (released back in 2001). Much, much slower than untouched XP on any hardware I've tried, old or new (assuming it even works). Perhaps if you go with a very lightweight, stripped-down distro, with a simpler desktop environment like XFCE (i.e. XUbuntu) it might be a little better. WINE is hardly what I'd rely on to run apps though. I'd try the LiveCD before I install it too. Personally, I'd MUCH sooner just throw XP on there. Either ways, whatever you chose, it'll be at least a trillion times better than WinME (there's really nowhere to go but up).

Do you seriously expect end-users to use surun and the like? Besides, most people seem to think just getting a prompt (allow/deny) is already too much of a hassle, now ask them do run things from the command line instead, and see how that'll turn out.