Zxian

Wow... that's going on my desktop XPero... *whips open Photoshop* Now... to make one for Outlook, Opera, and Winamp...

Very nice... I'll have to dig through that when I get the chance.

If I may make a suggestion... if you're going to be doing gaming on your computer, go with AMD. Intels are generally better suited for multi-tasking, while AMD is better for single-threaded applications, like games. The 3200+ should suit your needs (matching the 3.2 you listed). ASUS makes good motherboards. I'd go with them if you can find a board that suits your needs. Hard drives - Seagate, Seagate, Seagate. The 5 year warranty should be enough to sell you on that one (compared to 3 for the other manufacturers). I actually would disagree with getting the Raptors. I've heard that the performance increase isn't really all that great over SATA-NCQ drives considering the price premium you pay. DVD-RW - I think jcarle will back me up on this one... Pioneer. I can't remember their latest model... jcarle will. Cabinet (I'm guessing you mean case) - Antec makes very nice cases. The P180 is really nice and sleek if you're not looking to show off your components with flashy lights and crap like that... Antec also makes great power supplies. RAM - Corsair, if you can afford it. It's a bit more pricey than other RAM, but it's the best there is. Graphics - Either the 6800 Ultra, or the 7800 if you've got the funds. Again, it depends on your budget. The again, the extra price for an SLI system hasn't really proven itself in most games, since they aren't coded to take advantage of the dual video cards. I think the most helpful for us would be to tell us how much you're willing to spend. If you had $5000USD (I know you're not in the states) I could easily sum up the ultimate gaming machine (X2 4800+, 7800GTX, etc etc), but that's a bit extreme.

It's in German...:S Does the ISO file name have "EN" in it? If it runs and you can run programs and such for a good long while (several hours, or much longer than you would in Windows), then like I said, you've got a problem with your Windows settings or installation. If you get a crash in Knoppix, then we can say that your problem is hardware related.

Standby/Hibernate are associated with video drivers. I would try uninstalling the current video drivers, and then installing the latest drivers from your video card manufacturer. Sometimes Windows will detect the video card and install the default drivers, which can cause quirky behaviour.

General networking trouble shooting: - Can each computer ping the other four? - Can you access the other four comptuers by entering the IP address (e.g. \\192.168.1.100) into the address bar? - If above works, can you access the other four comptuers by manually entering computer name (e.g. \\Computer1) into the address bar? How is the network setup? Is it a single router that's acting as a DHCP server? Multiple routers acting as DHCP servers will cause headaches. Trust me. Have you enabled/disabled "Simple File Sharing" on the XP Pro computers? On the computers that can be "seen" but not accessed, try removing the share (pressing OK after removing) and then re-sharing the folders. Hope this helps!

You like the keyboard? You should have a quick look through Opera's keyboard layout. You can set just about every menu item, feature, and button with a keyboard shortcut. It's probably the most customizable feature of Opera that most people miss (since 90% of the world - or more - are still point-n-click). The only reason I use the mouse is to click on links. Everything else is keyboard shortcuts. Yeah, Tab Mix Plus is one of those "must-have" extensions to make Firefox really good. It's already on my list. As with my other point, there are advantages and disadvantages to removing preference dialogs. Yes, it makes things less confusing to look at, but it does make it harder for the average Joe/Jane to change things to what he/she wants. Pros and cons... pros and cons. Yup... those extensions are all good. I've seen some extensions however, that I would never associate with a browser on the other hand. For example, I know that you can integrate Winamp controls into both Firefox and Opera... I've never really understood the point of this. Again... keyboard shortcuts! Yup... I really don't like people saying "<insert program here> is the best!!!" or whatever h4x0|2 variation people can come up with without saying why. I appreciate that you and atomizer have been very open and provided the positive arguments for Firefox, and not simply bashed Opera. I hope that I've been seen as the same. Nuff said. You're saying you're not? Half of your list is either opinion, or features I don't need. I have much better programs for half of them, so why would I need them build into my browser? At least you have someone like Zxian arguing your case, because you make Opera look bad, fanboi. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Grr eben... you're not helping. I will bother you since (a)the topic isn't just for the original poster (it's for everyone) and (b)you haven't really added anything to the conversation. Sure, you spewed off a list of features of Opera... Like sleepnmojo said, some people don't really care about them. I don't use the notes or the mail features of Opera (I use Outlook for that), but everyone else here has given good reason as to the features and functionality of their favorite. Sorry to say, but your original post was highly "fanboi"-ish. Any time that you list only the good things about one program and only the bad things about another, that's flaming and being a fanboi. At the very least, just leave the competition alone, or give both sides of the coin. There are better ways of saying you don't like something.

You can set both services of PerfectDisk to manual. That way, they'll start when they're needed, but won't bother you otherwise.

Dammit... there's just no pleasing you, is there?!?!?!? j/k

I think they will, but you have to place them in an m4a "wrapper". I'm just spewing out what I heard from somewhere else. If they do, I would suggest getting off the OGG and MP3 bandwagon... those days are over! With OGG, there's a noticable delay if I want to seek through a song. ACC+ is far better quality for the bitrate (compared to anything I've heard before), and like I said, it's hard for me to hear the difference on a 96kbps stream. With 128kbps, I can't hear the difference (and that's with Sony MDR-V700 headphones....). The seeking is pretty much instantaneous as well.

The Apple Keyboard... lol

Like I said... no flamewars. I've seen enough of them in the year or so that I've been here.

Thanks for clearing that up. AAC+ is simply awesome...

As for Knoppix - You should be able to find a faster server... you're only getting about 15-20kbps, right? There should be servers that will download at 60-100kbps depending on your location and theirs. Try to find one that's in Canada or the States. If it's DDR RAM, then you shouldn't have troubles with different speeds. All that will happen is that both sticks will run at the slower of the two speeds. If you've got the sticks visible, there should be a sticker on each of them. It will say PCxxxx where the last 4 digits will tell you the speed (2100 = 266MHz, 2700 = 333MHz, 3200 = 400MHz, etc etc). If the numbers are different, like I said, the RAM will simply run at the speed of the slowest chip.

Hehe... those are always neat.

How about something like this? The only thing left to do is to hide the menu bar (which you can set as a keyboard shortcut or find a custom button for it). All the menu items are now buttons that produce the same drop-down menu as the items in the menu bar.The only difference that I can tell between this and the real menu bar is that you can't move from one menu to the next without clicking on the button (in the real menu bar, click on File, move over to Edit and that menu appears - can't do this). To some people, that may be a problem, to others, maybe not. It's not exactly what you've got in FF, but it's pretty close. The buttons I used (and more can be found) here (scroll down to menu buttons). The "Toggle the Menu bar on/off AND dropdown the main menu (with 'Notes' image)" button may be of some interest to you - it hides the main menu and when you click and drag down, a pull-down menu appears with all the items that are now hidden. It's something different to try out. You can also customize the right-click menu in Opera. All the settings can be found in the Opera6.ini file. For more information, look here. The 4 toolbars was just an example of how I can create a toolbar below the tab bar, something that I can't find out how to do in Firefox. Normally, I only have the tab bar and the navigation bar (back, forward, address, etc), I like my browser nice and simple, as I'm sure you do. Like I said to atomizer, if you can tell me how to do this, I'd appreciate it. I do use FF from time to time, and I'd still like to have it look the way I want. These are all very valid points, and I agree with you on most of them (I don't think that IE6 could ever match the features of FF/Opera). Firefox is a very powerful browser, and the fact that it is open-source means that in the end, it could completely emulate any other browser out there. I realize that the possibility of extensions is nearly endless, but what functions do you find missing in Opera? I'll try to find an equivalent or a workaround if I can, just so you can make a fair comparison. Usually the argument for this point is the other way around, since Opera comes with a number of features that you need extensions for in Firefox (mouse gestures, for example), but I know there are circumstances where the argument goes the otherway (the BBCode extension). The Opera group has added UserJS to allow for a bit more user-customization, but honestly, I haven't done all that much with it because I've never had a need for it. And yes, to get a fundamental feature of Opera to be changed, you need to ask the developers. This can be an advantage or a disadvantage depending on how you see it. With an Open source browser, if a person makes a change to the code to improve it, that change will take a very long time to spread out to the rest of the community (unless the change is made centrally). With a localized development team, any changes made are introduced to everyone at the same time. It takes longer for the centralized development team to release the change, but it gets there faster. Pros and cons on each side. Usually the Opera team is pretty open to new ideas, and if there is enough support on the forums, they will try to work it into a future release. As for the flexibility, yes, for power users like yourself, you have the ability to do essentially whatever you want, but for the average Joe, they get lost. Most people I know who use Firefox have no idea about the potential, and even less of them understand the term "tweak". I don't want this to turn into a flamewar (I said this before). I am in no way anti-Firefox - I've just found Opera suits my needs better. I'm sure that there are ways to get each browser to act like the other. Let's all just share ideas so that people can make their own decision.

The Pro package allows for higher bitrate and faster MP3 encoding, if I'm not mistaken.

Strange... unfortunately, I've never dealt with alternate keyboard configurations, so I'm guessing that I've reached the limit of my worth here. Hope that you figure this one out!

Did you even read the page that I linked above? The link under that Stop code also suggests the possibility of faulty RAM (Link). If you've got more than one stick of RAM, try running one at a time, and switching the slots that it/they are in. The problem with figuring this out right now is the fact that it could be either hardware or software. Have you tried running Knoppix yet? If the system works fine with Knoppix, then we can rule out a hardware problem altogether. Right now, it could be either hardware or software (drivers, specifically). If the system crashes while running Knoppix, then it's hardware - if it doesn't, then it's software. Download and run Knoppix. It will really help to pinpoint the problem.

Hehe... my computer! ftp://MSFN@zxian.dyndns.org:4200 That should do the trick. Let me know if you can't connect. Filezilla has been kinda buggy on me lately. If this is against the rules, please let me know. I will gladly remove the links if I am not allowed to host the files.

Remove Internet Explorer - it's an option of the removed components. Unless you want to cripple the system, don't remove IE Core. You'll loose access to all the MMC dialogs and the like. Help will be screwed up as well.

Hey atomizer... none of the screens are really what I wanted. In my screenshot, you can see that the tab bar is above the address bar. In all three of your screenshots, the tab bar is below the address bar. As for the loading times, the time difference isn't that much in WindowsXP because of prefetching, but for other OSes (such as my Win2K at work, or any *nix OS) Opera is considerably faster (~1 seconds for Opera vs. 6ish for FF on my workstation - dual 2.4GHz Xeon, 1GB PC2700). And yes... Tab Mix Plus is essential for FF.

Is your laptop also supposed to be a french keyboard configuration? I don't think that you'll need to format to fix that. Link

i gotta disagree. no offence at all, but FF can do all of that, and more -- no extensions needed. you can stick any button on any toolbar at any position and add/remove any toolbar as well. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That someone was me... The reason why I say that Opera is better when it comes to UI customization is because I can do something like this. As you can see, I have the same toolbar (more or less) above and below the tab bar, meaning that I can turn either of them off and have the tab bar exactly where I want it.This is something that I have never been able to do with Firefox. If you could show me, I'd be grateful. Another point for Opera is that you have the ability to hide the menu bar, something that I'm fairly sure would require an extension in Firefox. There are a couple more points here that I could add here.

I agree, but this is the kind of useless responses I got until now... this, and "change your keyboard" I was saying this to counter what ripken204 said. I've used several laptops over the years and the keys work just fine. I've even got a Thinkpad (Pentium 166) that works just fine. Keyboard wear usually only happens with $3 keyboards, and not with laptops, since manufacturers know that they don't want to deal with broken keyboards after only 2 years. Didn't try the keyboards on another computer, but tested 2 keyboards on my desktop (old and new one) and don't forget my laptop which is also affected. Also, everything goes back fine when I reboot. And I just formated and still got the bug. My guess is that it could maybe be software related. That's why I asked if anyone using NetLimiter or daemontools had this problem too, cause it was the only loaded programs after my first boot in windows anyway. And I installed NetLimiter this summer... when the bug started, and netlimiter is also present on my laptop... maybe it's not netlimiter itself but just to show it's more complex and subtle than it looks. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well... if it all started after you installed NetLimiter, then that's where I'd look to resolve the problem. You said that they problem was still there after you formatted... had you installed NetLimiter at this point? I've used all the software there except for NetLimiter. Never had the problem you describe. There can be some strange hardware behaviour with software that don't mix. For example, NAV and InCD can cause your system to completely loose the ability to read any removable media (CD, floppy, USB drive).