Zxian

Just found this on the Winamp Forums... Dangit... Oh well... I got the pro version downloaded... I'll probably reinstall the final version when they release it. Sorry about the false alarm... I'll let you guys know when it comes back.

Well... first off, Opera and Firefox are software, so they should go in that forum. Mods... please work your magic. There have been posts about this before, but I don't think I've done as extensive of a description about Opera before. Sooo... here it is! Note - I use Opera as my browser, but I always update and try out the latest release of Firefox. You can't make judgements about something if you haven't tried it. I threw these topics together since they are somewhat related.Both do well. I use the pop-up blocker in Opera as well as the Opera Adblocker and I don't have any troubles with either. The Adblock extension in Firefox will do pretty much the same thing. I have personally found Opera to be faster, but that could also be because I can't be bothered to dig around in 10-20ish settings just to increase my network speed. There are also some tweaks that work for some people and not for others (depending on computer, network, etc). Out of the box, Opera is much faster, but for the most part Firefox can do well. That really depends. The longest period of time that I've seen a security advisory on Secunia for Opera was about 3 days. There are still 3 unpatched security advisories for Firefox. They are listed as mild, but they're there. I will say this with absolute confidence - Opera is the king of UI customization. Firefox can't touch this with a 10 foot pole. In Opera, you can place buttons and toolbars wherever you want! Drag buttons around, move them from this toolbar to the next, etc, etc, etc. No amount of extensions will get you that level of customizability. There are plenty of skins out there for both, so I'm sure that you can find one that suits your tastes, but for the rest of the UI...Opera. I run Opera all day with all kinds of plugins. Sure, it can be a bit different at first to get quicktime or WMV to play in the browser, but in the end it does work beautifully. I can't comment on Firefox here, since I don't use it enough to that extent. Are you talking about rendering or program compatibility? For the former, there are some sites that won't render properly in Opera since they send it bad HTML upon IDing the browser. A simple addition to the ua.ini file will solve that. For the latter, there are none that I can think of. Like with #7, I can't say all too much about Firefox. If there's a site that I simply can't go to in Opera (even after the ua.ini trick), I use Maxthon.I know that there will be people who will write the other way, and that's fine. I'm just throwing out my opinion. I'm not saying that "Opera is better than Firefox", because the definition of "better" varies from person to person. I don't want any flaming. In the end, only you can decide which is better. Download both (get your registration key from Opera.com today to get it for free) and use them solely for a week. If you can manage to find all the settings/extensions/plugins that you need and enjoy your browsing, then you've found a browser.

EDIT - Links removed... sorry for the confusion All I can say is wow... I just ripped some music with the built in AACPlus encoder at 96kbps and it's hard for me to hear the difference between it and the CD...I can hear it, but I have to pay attention.

Bah... USB network adaptors. They're like some sort of plague... Try uninstalling the device and all software, then reinstalling it as instructed. If that doesn't work, you might have got some faulty USB drivers from the bummed first installation. This procedure will clear all history of your USB devices, so Windows will have to re-recognize them when you next plug them in again, but they should work as normal. - Right-Click My Computer and select Properties - Under Hardware tab, click on Device Manager - Expand Universal Serial Bus controllers - Right-click every device listed and select Uninstall to remove them one at a time - Reboot the computer All the default drivers should install themselves upon startup. After that, install the Linksys drivers as normal and see if the device works. If it doesn't after that, then the device is faulty. In future, get PCI or PCMCIA based wireless devices (if you can trade, do it). I've found nothing but problems with USB and wireless, whereas PCI/PCMCIA devices have been rock solid.

How hard do you abuse your keyboard? I've had a keyboard that's laying around the house that I've had since we got our first 486 and it's perfectly fine. If the problem happens even with new keyboards, then I'd look into a motherboard problem. As strange as it sounds, my mother bought a computer a couple of years ago, and the keyboard did strange things. We tested: new keyboard in the old computer - fine old keyboard in new computer - not so fine For example... the "i" key wouldn't do anything, the "j" key would type "i", the right square bracket would make the computer beep, and the left square bracket would put the computer into standby. Returned the computer, got a new one (with a new motherboard, kept the keyboard) and all was well. I don't really think that it's "normal" for keys to wear out on a laptop more than any other keyboard. Manufacturers usually test their key mechanisms for many more presses than you or I will ever type on the machines. If you get a chance, test the keyboard in another computer to see if the same thing happens. At least then you'll be able to better pinpoint the problem.

*gasp* Sacrilidge!!! And as for the "Acquiring Network Address" problem I was having, it was because I had disabled the NLA service. Chilifrei confirmed this for me. Ever since I turned the service back on, I haven't had this problem at all.

Check your registration key. If it is entered incorrectly during setup, you will end up with the demo version after install.

Why stay away from Kerio? It's my second choice after Sygate.

It sounds like some sort of dying hardware. When hardware goes, it doesn't always just turn belly up right away. Over time, it will gradually fail and give you errors along the way.

... they only use Firefox but all the pop-ups are in IE? It would also help to set up a limited user account for your sister. Malware has a lower chance of infecting the computer from a limited account than from an administrator or Power-user account. Are there any instances of iexplore.exe running on startup? Do an online scan from Safe Mode with Networking at TrendMicro's HouseCall just to be sure that the computer is clean. I remember when I used to run NAV and stuff still got through.

The usual big three of Spyware protection - Ad-Aware, Spybot, MS-AS. Download them all, update their definitions, and then run them in safe-mode. A good virus scan wouldn't hurt either. As for prevention in the future, run the Immunize feature in Spybot, as well as run SpywareBlaster. As for your sister, try to tell her not to go to those websites in IE, and definately not click on any pop-ups, no matter how good they might look. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Yes, they are all patched, meaning that anyone who uses Opera doesn't need to worry about anything that a IE/FF user does. And yes, I will agree with you that if the Opera userbase grows, more security vulnerabilities will be found (it's inevitable), but I'm sure that the Opera group will be quick to patch them (the longest I've seen a security vulnerability unpatched by Opera is 3 days). I disagree. I've said in other posts that I've run Opera for one week straight - no closing, simply minimizing when not in use. Every day, I've browsed to forums, and used just about every plugin there exists for media (QT, WMP, Flash, java) without any problems. Memory usage stayed pretty constant and only went as high as 110MB when using a hefty Java plugin (playing Runescape ). Ever since I've switched to Opera, I have found zero spyware on my system, something that I couldn't claim with IE (well... Maxthon). I realize that this picture is meant more as a joke than anything else, but it does hold some degree of truth. I don't like the Firefox logo and advertisements, but I use it more to show the vulnerability of an un-prepared IE (see below) compared to other browsers. Sorry to say, but that is fanboy ranting. You are bashing IE by saying how much better the competition is without providing any real proof (aside from the link to Secunia). Let me break it down for you. I agree with your initial statement that IE7 won't be much better than IE6 in terms of web standards, but that has nothing to do with anything of what you said. It has to do with the fact that Microsoft has said that they want to focus on security and user-interface over web standards for IE7. As for the security advisories, it's actually surprising that Firefox has as many advisories that it does considering the market share that it holds... 21 advisories for ~7% vs 84 for ~90%. Ever notice how the number of security advisories for Firefox jumped as soon as it was mentioned in the news and the media? As for proper rendering - all web browsers are interpreters. Anyone who writes programs will understand what I mean by this. The problem with rendering is that the Microsoft rendering engine is slightly (*ahem*) different than the ones used by the rest of the world. As for being safer because it's written from scratch... you're missing a big point - all the code for Firefox is available to everyone. This means that anyone who knows what they're doing can dig through the code and find the flaws that they want. Your argument here is completely backwards. Regarding Opera 'copying' IE's display bugs... mind offering some documentation of that? Does it really make Opera bad if it works on more webpages that are improperly coded? As long as it is fully W3C compliant first, I don't really mind that they make it work for those pages that are improperly coded. To put a final nail in the coffin here, find a spare computer. Install XP-SP2 on it, as well as Spybot S&D 1.4, and SpywareBlaster 3.4. Update both programs and run their immunization features. Now find me a website that will infect the computer with spyware (without user intervention). Unless you go out of your way to find a website in the very depths of cracks.ws or the like, you probably won't get spyware (except for the occasional tracking cookie, but I delete cookies on close anyways). The pop-up blocker in SP2 is pretty good at what its supposed to do and for most people, that's enough. Now that that's done, to get back on topic - does anyone know if Beta 2 will be open to the public?

My recommendation - CDex. It's got everything that you want. You can replace the LAME encoder that comes with it (I think it's v3.92) with the latest release for better sound quality.

The site is alright for most things, but there are some problems with it. It assumes that you're sitting at a desktop and that your network connection is always connected (see here for more info). For the most part, he's right, but there are a couple of mistakes. Nobody's perfect.

I'm not sure if reinstalling will make things better, since the problem happened after you upgraded the firmware, not any software (firmware is the code that controls the onboard circuitry - nothing to do with the OS). Can you "upgrade" the firmware again? Or perhaps downgrade? I've heard of rare cases where new firmware doesn't work properly on all models. IMO, if the drivers/firmware/BIOS that you have work, use them.

Yes... after registering WinRAR with the .rar1 extension... Windows will ask you the first time what to do with the file since WinRAR will only register itself with the typical archive extentions and .001-.039 (I think that's the highest it goes).

You will not be able to copy over your SP1 file to your SP2 CD. Unfortunately for you, you'll have to remake it from scratch. However, with WinntbbuED you can extract all the bitmap files and simply replace them in the new file. It shouldn't take you that long - the program does make things a lot easier.

Yes... I know about prefetching. The problem with that argument is that I'm running Windows 2000 here at work, and I don't have the authority or the licence to upgrade to XP, so that's out. Another argument is for systems that don't have the advanced prefetching ability that was added to the NT 5.1 kernel, such as Win2K (or earlier), Sparc, Linux, FreeBSD, or OSX. Regardless of prefetching or not, Opera does load up faster than Firefox in any test. I don't know of a system in which this wouldn't be true. Several people I know have tested this and confirmed it.

Download CPU-Z and see for yourself. It'll tell you the instruction sets that your CPU supports and much more.

Actually... I figured out that the problem was my motherboard and the fact that the hard drive in question was on its way out. My old mobo couldn't handle the data transfer between the devices. When I was burning CDs, I wouldn't have any troubles whatsoever, and my CPU usage was at ~10% tops. Do you get high CPU usage if you burn CDs or transfer large amounts of files to/from the hard drive? Check in Device Manager under the IDE controllers if any of the devices are running in PIO Mode. I wouldn't say that the high CPU usage is "normal" anymore, especially not with a 2.66GHz CPU, since with my new motherboard when I burn DVDs at 4x, CPU usage usually stays at about 5-10% and I can go about doing everything else as normal. @feronimo - I would suggest the same as what I said to hakeem5454. Check to see if the firmware was a bad upgrade and the device is running in PIO mode. @ripken204 - It doesn't take that much processing power to transfer data from the hard drive to a disc... I've burned DVDs on a PIII 650 before without any problems...

You need to set your computer to not automatically restart in the event of a system failure. To do this: -Right-click My Computer -Advanced tab -Click on Settings under Startup and Recovery section -Uncheck the box beside Automatically restart You may need to manually reboot the computer for this setting to take effect. Next time that the computer restarts, it may show the blue screen again. Write down the STOP code (something like 0x0000000A and the numbers after it) and check that to the codes listed here.

The hyperthreading technology was meant to allow the CPU to make use of unused CPU power while running one thread. A thread is basically one set of instructions that a computer needs to calculate. Since we have many programs running at the same time, these threads need to be scheduled to figure out which gets to run next. With a hyperthreading computer, two threads can be processed at once, allowing you to performe multiple tasks at the same time more efficiently. If you see the two parts to the CPU graph (and two parts to the CPU bar meter), you'll see how each "half" of the CPU is working.

Opera unstable? If that's the case, then you've probably got a bummed install of Flash or some other plugin. I've got Opera running pretty much all day, going to all sorts of sites, watching Quicktime, WMV, and Flash plugins, and it just runs rock solid all day. I'd suggest doing a complete reinstall and installing all the plugins from scratch. Remember... all the options that you use in Firefox are extensions that have to be added on top of the base install, meaning more memory usage and longer startups. good article, but i think the guy is using totally unrealistic hardware for his testing (P3 800???). over 11 seconds to load FF??? i can almost say that i know for a fact that if i fired up my old P3 800 box with FF installed, that it would load in FAR less time. however, how many people are running less than 2 gHz these days anyway? FF, on my box anyway, loads in a couple seconds, cold, and just over a second warm (with 16 extensions and several plug-ins). Opera would probably be even faster i guess. IE, when i used to use it, popped up just about instantly, but that's because it loads itself in memory at logon. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> *raises hand* I use an Althon 1GHz computer every now and then, and I can say for a fact that Firefox takes quite a while to load up cold. Even to dispute your question about the 2GHz comment, my workstation here at work is a dual 2.4GHz Xeon system with 1GB RAM, and Firefox still takes 6 seconds to load. I've got 3 extensions on it, but that's still a rediculous amount of time to load a browser. Not to mention that 18K memory usage with a blank tab open (no browsing done yet) compared to Opera with 5 tabs open (now, was up to 8 a while back) and using 30K is kinda nuts. IE usually does the trick for most people. With SP2, Spybot, and SpywareBlaster, you're pretty much in the clear as long as you don't go out of your way to find spyware. If it works for you... I agree with your comment about the advertisements regarding Firefox... it's getting a bit annoying since they're basically doing the whole "we're better than IE because we're not IE" marketing, and not really helping people learn about internet security.

@hakeem5454 - Can you check the website of the company that made the TV? Maybe they have a driver for the monitor itself, and right now Windows is running it on the default drivers (which might limit you to 800x600). @matt5104 - No worries copying and pasting. It's funny how many people think that by clicking randomly, their computer will go back to "normal"...

I'm in! I'll just have to remember my eye patch and pirate hat. Yarr...