CoffeeFiend

Not really. It's pretty much the everyday price at a lot of places. You can easily find 25ft cables for $25 (sometimes even the HDMI 1.3a kind)... Unless you happen to only shop at WorstBuy who only sells greatly-overmarked already-overpriced cables that are no better, but attract the crowd who thinks it's magically better because they paid more. monoprice has a 25ft hdmi cable for $17 here (they got a gold plated one for a couple bucks more if you're into that). If you can get by with 15ft, there's some around $5. There's no reason for HDMI cables to cost a lot. It's a simple digital signal (doesn't degrade unlike analog signals), with simple and inexpensive connectors -- much like USB. Audio wise, GTX260's seem to have a SPDIF port (to connect your sound card output), so you can have audio over HDMI as well.

How's that an issue? Because you can't easily reinstall Windows or something? Just partition it then... It probably doesn't make that much of a difference really, unless you have some kind of app with a particular usage pattern, that will make the drive seek a lot (how much data it loads, where it's physically placed/how it's partitioned, etc). I've never seen that impact overall system performance very much (for typical everyday desktop usage anyhow). Fragmentation might be an issue for some people (depending what they do), but then again it's the things like newly downloaded files and such that will mainly get fragmented (the previously defragged system files won't move by themselves to a fragmented area), and that's easily solved too. Again, it's your money. At the same price, the raptor offers 7.4% of the space, or to put it another way, it costs 13.5x as much per GB. That's pretty awful IMO. You can even get MUCH faster 15k rpm SAS drives for not a whole lot more (then again you need the SAS controller). Personally I chose space over speed, but it's perfectly fine to prefer paying for speed too, just like some people don't mind dropping hundreds of $ on fancy vid cards I got absolutely no use for. Edit: BTW, your Spinpoint F1 is faster than the original 74GB raptor in every way but access time, if that's what you were considering buying: it scores like 75% faster in read burst (in hdtach), 50% faster average read speed, 33% faster average write speed. Your drives scores like 1/3 higher in PCMark05 too.

No one can decide for yourself. Personally I need a LOT of space (I really gotta get a few more TBs soon). Speed is nice, but not to the point where I'll pay an incredible premium like that for it (and even then, SSDs are becoming an option too for those who want speed at any price). I/O speed is becoming a bit less of an issue in my case, in part because with > 4GB your system doesn't need to page to disk much even when you're doing very heavy multitasking, running very heavy apps, or using VMs and such. Also because of less frequent boots (if anything, I just set the machine to sleep), and even apps starting are faster anyways (pre-loaded by superfetch in a lot of cases). But someone who uses next to no disk space, has less RAM, and just wants raw I/O speed would buy the raptor likely... But then again, it's mostly a question of access times, as 2 decent quality drives drives will beat the raptor in throughput anyways and offer a LOT more space for the same price...

Things on the OS side have stagnated during the XP years (very little changes, over a LOT of years). An awful LOT of people got very lazy, and somehow now seem to think having almost no changes and nothing to learn is the norm. From any OS to MS-DOS was pretty drastic changes. MS-DOS to Windows 3.x was too. Win 3.1 to Win 9x as well. Win9x to the NT series too. Overall, most transitions brought us big changes. Sure, Vista brings a LOT of different stuff (be it on the GUI side, where it's all minor IMO), as well as on the "system" side (new deployment method, new installer not dating from the early NT days, etc) but once you learn it, for the most part it's better. And like I said, having to learn a LOT of new stuff all the time is more or less the norm when you work with computers. Programmers have learned new languages (C#, VB.Net, etc), the .NET framework, MSIL, changes to the language with some new versions, winforms, ASP.NET, new versions of SQL Server (which changed significantly since 2000), new APIs in general, various ORMs, TDD and refactoring and other similar/related things, new SCMs (e.g. VSTS and Hg), new IDEs, new tools (e.g. codegen tools), changes in architecture (and patterns and such), SOAP/REST web services and remoting, now replacing winforms with WPF (a HUGE change), LINQ, new IIS v7 and various system components, TONS of web stuff (CSS design and the box model, javascript, AJAX, new frameworks like jQuery, etc). It's a VERY long list. Hardly anyone can keep up with all that stuff. There's TONS more new stuff coming up, like ASP.NET MVC (currently looking into that), the .NET framework 4, Windows 7 (yes, we still have to learn all that new OS stuff too, just like sys admins -- and yes, I did learn PowerShell too), Visual Studio 2010 (already using the CTP), SQL Server 2010 next year, etc. And that's assuming you do only that for a living... Lots of us do all that stuff to a fairly advanced level (programming win /web apps, sys/network admin work, assume DBA duty, maintain the internet site and the intranet, work with various "advanced" apps like wireshark/windbg/etc, do server backups and so on) but only part time (a few hours a week, or a few days a month, or whatever the case may be). I also have to write code (in different languages, using different compilers, etc) for different embedded platforms (we sell custom embedded solutions), do EDA work (and I don't mean 74LS chips here... things are also moving REAL fast there) e.g. capture schematics & route PCBs, use various CAD apps, test/repair stuff and various lab work, resolve various problems, do graphics work (just took a Photoshop CS4 "what's new" course as a matter of fact) and what not... I hate to say it, but I don't feel pitiful or compassionate one bit towards people who cry over a new start menu that's essentially the same as XP's but with an added search box at the bottom. They just don't know how easy they got it!

Good attempt at trying [rather poorly] to attack someone instead of trying to refute his points (obviously you had to resort to a ad hominem attack as you were wrong from the start). All this, just because of a new (and much better) start menu... No need to quote entire posts BTW (then again, why should I be pointing this to a experienced IT "guru"? BBCode ain't exactly rocket science...)

Not so. But I already made up my mind that you're a Vista basher, and that what you say are merely personal opinions, without much (if any) facts to back them up. You mean exactly like it always was? Like when you could get XP but not Win2k anymore? (and son on for every n-1 version) OEMs complaining? Yeah, that'd be because they now have to sell you a machine with more than 256MB of RAM and onboard Intel GMA video. That would be me. You can get enough RAM to run Vista for much less than $60 at full retail price, in big name brands no less, at full retail prices and in quantities of 1. And that's assuming you had no RAM at all, or will dispose of the old one. Newegg will sell you 2GB of DDR2 667 for $17 everyday. If you shop around, and are buying 3000 packs, you'd get a better price (let's say $13.33). So let's say $40000 total, which isn't much $ for a company with like 3000 employees. Iit may still looks like a large number, but a company that size pays several millions of $ on salaries weekly. $17 is a ridiculously low investment in fact, and it'll pay itself VERY fast. If it just saves a single hour worth of wait time over the lifetime of the machine (several years), then it already cost less than nothing. If it saves a single second everyday it already paid for itself. It's nowhere near as bad as you try to portray it. BTW, 250x$1200 isn't 1.2M but 1/4 of that (not that it would cost anywhere near that in the first place). That's if they don't wait until extended support is over in 2014. And then upgrade to Windows 8. They're not avoiding Vista at all (unlike what DeathNACan claims), they're just in no hurry to upgrade yet as they just got XP recently.

Good joke! Totally hilarious Edit: btw, Vista will hit 100x the market share of Win98 in a few days, and it'll be up to like 300:1 within 6 months

128GB for $539.90, when you can get a 500GB HD for $50... Nope, not mainstrean soon.

Wow, you're making such a big deal out of nothing, it's incredible. All this, over a much improved start menu? People will adapt to new ways and new GUI changes, just like they always have. And no, it's not gonna cost anyone their job, nor any of that nonsense. [Citation needed]. That's merely your own opinion on the subject. Of course not a whole lot of companies have rolled out Vista yet -- last place I worked rolled out XP like 2 years ago (like 5 or 6 years late). They've *always* been upgrading late, nothing new here. It's not that they don't want to go near it, just like they weren't avoiding XP either. They'll eventually upgrade, just give them the time. Vista has a nice market share. There are still XP boxes because most people don't see a need to upgrade yet (nor a reason to buy a new computer -- which is how most people get a new OS), and they'll be getting Vista or Win 7 with their new box whenever they upgrade next. No news here either. XP's adoption rate at the same point in history was no better (some would say even worse). Again, just your observations and opinions. I've seen a LOT of people getting new boxes & Vista lately, and have been very happy with it. I personally ain't ever going back to XP. If we listened to you, nobody would have made the jump from MS-DOS to Windows, nor from Windows 3.x to Win 95 (and so on) -- it was different people had to learn new stuff (the learning curve was FAR steeper than a new start menu)

I very much doubt you'll find anything. There just aren't many *good* XML editors out there in the first place. And most of them are commercial. Now, not only you want a good one, but it has to be free (you basically threw away almost all of them already), can't be written in delphi/vb/any .net language (and probably not java either) for some reason, making that already very short even shorter, and on top of that, it has to be very lightweight, and have a certain look too...

No. 128 bit hardware & software isn't anywhere near in sight. We've had 32 bit x86 CPUs as of 23 years ago, and we just hit the barrier where it's not enough anymore (4GB memory for the main part). Even if the current x64 CPUs only use 48 bits for addresses (which allows for 256 terabytes of RAM), and that Windows only uses 44 bits (that still gives us a 16TB limit), it's still enough RAM for the foreseeable future. I don't know about you, but I'm thinking the day I will have 16 sticks of 16384GB each (or only 4 sticks, of 65536GB each) on my motherboard are pretty far still. And even then, we won't need a 128 bit CPU, they'll just have to start using more address pins. Making full use of all of them will allow for 17,179,869,184 GBs of RAM "only" (yes, that's over 17 thousands of millions of GBs!) Then once that's not sufficient, we'll need 128 bit CPUs to address more (assuming we don't use anything sort of like PAE). I'd say we're good for another 50 years or so. Chances are, lots of us won't be alive by the time 128 bit processors become mainstream. No, it just means the old boxes with "legacy" hardware will keep using their old OS. There's no need to either. It's just the way the x86 kernel of Windows works/is designed. They could try to spend a LOT of valuable time working on that (e.g. using PAE), and then get companies to write all new drivers that would work with it, and probably need a fair amount of software to be rewritten too... Which is kind of pointless when we already have a new, better architecture that already solves all that and more, and that pretty much all CPUs sold these days are 64 bit (all AMD CPUs sold since the Athlon64 back in 2003 -- 6 years ago; which will be more like 8 by the time Win 7 is out, and Intel not too long after). It would also be way more problematic to get everything moved to a significantly changed x86 platform than using the existing WOW64 (which actually works quite well). 32 bit is the new 16 bit. Kind of reminds me of the Win32s days...

I've been using both the software and hardware kinds. And no, it wasn't astray. No we aren't. We're talking about the constant FUD, misinformed propaganda and ludicrous claims you're spouting non-stop, without the slightest bit of evidence of course. If Vista is sooooo busy checking for DRM for everything, why is my average CPU load ~1% (and how come my power bill hasn't gone up at all)? Especially when watching 1080p H.264 material that's even DRM'ed? Why are my encoding speeds the exact same as on XP (if not even *better* now that I switched to x64)? Why doesn't Vista take forever to do things on everyone's box but yours? ... Seems like you're talking to yourself here. I already kind of guessed it was an OEM as I doubt you're even able to install an OS or ever have done so, and much less build a computer (seeing how very little knowledge you have about them). We also kind of assumed it was one of those garbage installs, filled with OEM trash and garbage stuff like Norton, and wow, it is the case! How thoroughly un-surprising! Your problem is the OEM install, not Vista. HP will also gladly sell you an XP box that runs the same garbage just as slow if you want... That someone forgot to take his pills obviously. Because it's an OEM install with tons of crap.

Yes. AFAIK it's the last one that will come out with a 32 bit version. Yep. In fact, probably less... Depends on your vid card's memory and other such factors. No point IMO. I have yet to find a program that doesn't actually work on Vista x64. The only real issue, is if you're using 20 year old 16 bit apps straight from the MS-DOS era (which won't run).

First, you had a post about your motherboard being dead, then a post about your NIC making your computer BSOD lots, and now it's slots that don't work... There's obviously some problem with your hardware, might be your motherboard.

If you can't afford the extra ~$30 or so for the Q6600, then I doubt you want your computer to cost you an extra $50 or so in power every year (and that 140W Phenom will). In that case, you're probably better off getting a dual core, especially if you're already stretching your budget to the point where you have to settle for a flimsy case and crap PSU. An inexpensive yet good case would be an Antec 300 (I got a pair on black friday for $40/ea), and there are some significantly better PSUs out there for not much more dough. Look for something 80plus certified, from a reputable brand. You can get some very good Seasonics, some FSP and what not under $50 (I bought a pair of SeaSonic SS-350ET's on black friday at $30/ea). You don't need a lot of watts. Watt ratingss are very misleading these days. Look at the *combined* amps or watts on the 12v rails (on the label).

Why get a Phenom? It's no faster than the old Q6600, and uses significantly more power too (140W? ouch), which will quickly negate the slight price advantage (assuming you even want/need a quad core to begin with). Not very fond of the cheap/flimsy case either but at $30 I guess you can't expect much at all. But the one thing I surely wouldn't buy is that cheap (and I don't mean cheap just as in inexpensive here) PSU. I've seen beefier (and FAR better) 350W units out there...

Wow, a redirected link, to a un-named program, hosted on a unreputable site, for a crap util that doesn't work on *any* modern OS... Doubly so as the newer OS'es don't even ship with NTVDM anymore: it's a 16 bit MZ exe (the best early 1980's/early MS-DOS era had to offer, and that were already being run inside a VM 16 years ago in WinNT)! Even the author called it obsolete many years ago on his page. Useful, if you happen to have a time travel machine handy that's set for 1995. Edit: Excellent program? lol. Worthless crap if you ask me... Not even worth the $0.000002 worth of storage space it uses, nor the ~$0 waste of bandwidth to download it, nor the second worth of my life wasted over clicking the link. Besides, it doesn't even run on over 99% of computers out there, and in case you haven't noticed, we're quickly moving to 64 bit these days.

That's basically it. Some people prefer to fight change instead of embracing it, and usually whine in the process. If they listened to these people, we'd still be using the command line (no GUI), because "it's just as good of a program launcher" (that's what they all said in the win 3.x era anyhow) -- who needs a mouse anyways? There's always someone complaining about any minute change in the interface, something that got moved by an inch, any new way that's actually better, things placed more logically and all that -- just because it's different, and they don't want to adapt ("the old one worked! why did they do this?") Just like if they change the GUI, people say "it's just a new skin" (whereas if they didn't change it, they'd say NOTHING as changed as they don't seem to see past the GUI). Just like they complain about "bloat" for any new feature that's added (they don't use it, so surely nobody else does, right?), and if they added nothing, then it would be a worthless upgrade, etc. And so on. The good part is soon they'll stop whining about Vista. The bad part is, they'll be whining about Win 7, then Win 8, 9 and so on. The ONLY way to please those people is to have a totally identical GUI (no changes at all, nothing moved) yet still have a new shiny GUI, has new features (yet doesn't have them), various enhancements (yet not have them), and have that run on a vic 20, and be free and open source -- and even then, they might have to pay you to run their OS before they stop complaining. It's a good thing they don't listen to them. Not every change is for the best, but for the most part (~95%) it is.

Fools and their money are easily parted. Just look at the big audiophile market, filled with overpriced cables and all...

See this thread for your answer. In short: no it's just fine. I've had 0 such problems with onboard realtek "NICs" (which a LARGE number of PCI and PCI-e cards also use) over the years, neither did we have at work (and that means on thousands of PCs). Your BSOD is either a bad driver (it happens), malware, or defective hardware (may or may not be the NIC). If you need help with your BSOD problem, post a dump or minidump...

Like Zxian said, just because you don't know what you're doing, or have a really ghetto install of Vista (like those preinstalled by OEMs with tons of garbage) or a mix of the two doesn't mean Vista sucks. If your Athlon 3200+ can do that in 30 minutes, my plain old E2160 on Vista would do it in about 15. Even encoding to mpeg4 (which is harder than encoding in mpeg 1 or 2), along with cropping, fancy deinterlacing, Spline36Resize and what not (fancy avisynth script -- often using LimitedSharpenFaster and such), I can encode at like 150fps+ (with peaks approaching 200). Encoding most movies in XviD takes like a half hour or so -- for both passes combined... And it would be a LOT quicker if I was using simple bicibic/bilinear settings, less fancy XviD settings and all. In crap MPEG(1) it would probably be a single digit number of minutes... I've seen no difference at all between my encoding speeds on XP and Vista. No problems here, it's just you. Which again shows you don't know much about this... see Zxian's post. Nope! *ALL* cores @ 1%, and it's not misreported at all (see previous point). And you can find benches on the web, from various reputable sites, showing the exact same results too. But then again, feel free to believe everybody is wrong except you, and that it's a big conspiracy by the big and eeeeevviiiiiiilllllll Microsoft (which has us all fooled but you apparently)

Even going to the 9600 is only a 25% clock increase, on a processor with very poor single core performance. Assuming your motherboard and PSU can handle it, I still doubt it will be very fast... In fact, even the most expensive & brand new Phenom (X4 9950 BE) barely competes with the two year old Intel Q6600 in terms of performance, and the few bucks one saves buying one of those he pays back several times in power... I'd wait for the Phenom II. At least they might have good performance (but it won't be cheap: $275 for the X4 940, and the X4 920 is not much faster than the old Q6600), and lower power too.

vbscripts don't need a VB runtime to work. All it requires is the windows scripting host, and XP already ships with it (v5.6, but latest vers is 5.7 -- which is already included in SP3).

Lazy answer: read this page. A quick google search for "installshield silent switches" or something similar would also have found the documentation on acresso's site like here

SP3 works fine. The only real issue I encountered was D-Links wifi drivers that needed to be updated to work with it, but that was a while ago, they must have been fixed since then. Strangely, no issues with Realtek sound on any of them so far (might depend on which actual codec, and drivers used)