Zxian

Testing.... SUCCESS!!! There ya go Martin.

Ah... ok. So thumb.php?id=XX doesn't work inside IMG tags in IPB? I'll see if I can find a workaround.

Nintendo definitely hit the nail on the head this time. The Wii is something that people use and continue to talk about after they're done using it. You play on an X360 or PS3 - sure they've got great graphics - whoop de do. The Wii controller? The fact that you're not just mashing buttons? Wicked. Wicked. Wicked.

Well... kinda makes sense... 128MB card = 128MB aperture or higher. All the other video cards around here are 32MB, so the usual default of 64MB has been fine for me.

Hey everyone, Just wanted to let everyone know about a new image hosting service I recently setup. I'm guessing that there are still kinks that I need to iron out, but I think it's good enough for people to use. www.kwikpiks.com It's a simple one-off image hosting that I set up - no accounts, no signing up - just upload your pictures and link to them. I still have to add a terms of service page, but for the time being, we'll just say "Don't be stupid." If someone finds the "bad" in anyway, it will be deleted. Please, please, please let me know of any bugs or problems you find with the system. Please be sure to include either a link to the problem page, screenshot, or anything else that might help me better solve the problem. If you have any suggestions on how to improve the site as well - fire away. I'm always open to suggestions. Cheers!

Yea Dig - I know I can do that, but I'd prefer to have a single shortcut to open just the VM.

Well that was dumb of me... at least I think I have the problem fixed... AGP Aperture size was set to 64MB... this is a 128MB card... I've set it to 256MB now - and both drives are running in UDMA. @puntoMX - you're right - it's a VIA chipset. It's the ASUS CUV4X motherboard with a PIII 700 and 1.5GB of PC133 (I know - totally lobsided). I'll let you guys know how Mechwarrior III goes...

Does anyone know how to make a link to start a VM directly? I'd rather not have two windows open when I want to just run my single VM.

How is memory usage an indication of a minimalist approach? You didn't seem to pick up on my point... RAM and CPU are generally a tradeoff in terms of optimization. If you want less RAM usage, you'll need more CPU cycles. Leak tests are indeed to test outbound connections, and no - you don't need to be infected to be suceptible to such an attack. There are several sites out there that will generate a page with an image of your desktop as it appears to them. Good firewalls will try to stop this type of activity, but separating out "good" data on port 80 from "bad" data is more difficult than a simple rule can specify.

A great rules based firewall for someone who knows how to use it. Leak Tests are not for "newbies", and they give a very good idea of how well a firewall protects your system. 1MB or 20MB of RAM isn't going to affect the prerformance of your system. I could easily write a program that uses less memory but takes MUCH more time to compute. If you look at any decent programming textbook - usually we face the tradeoff between memory and processing time. The more of one you use, the less of the other you can get away with. People somehow have this misconception that lower RAM usage leads to faster computation, which is not the usual case for programs. And I'll say this again - task manager does not give reliable information about process memory usage. The old "minimize trick" should prove that to anyone who takes a second to think about what's going on.

So here's something for people to scratch their heads over... I recently got my hands on a nVidia Ti4200 that I was planning on using to upgrade my old system (from a RIVA TNT2) . After installing it, I noticed a decrease in performance. After quite a bit of digging, I realized that I was suffering from the dreaded PIO Mode problem... I tried to do the whole thing of uninstalling the IDE Controllers, setting that registry entry to reset the error count, etc etc etc. No dice. I checked in BIOS, but all settings were correct. Tried changing some settings - no dice. Swapping the old card back into the system made the drive run at UDMA-4 (the max of this mobo). I can't really figure out why this is the case. Could it be a lack of power for the AGP 4x slot? The PSU checks out, and isn't running anywhere near it's limits (drawing about 90W from a 300W PSU). MBM is showing my 12V as pretty high (12.7), but I'm going to check the BIOS when I get home (I trust BIOS more than software).

I've seen the error message that my display name can't be changed, but not that it's an "invalid name"... odd. I'm guessing that you've tried reinstalling the program?

@crahak - Hamachi does just that. I use it all the time to connect to my files at home. I'm sitting here in class and I can print out something on my computer at home over my "LAN", and it all works seemlessly. Oh - and if you're worried about security - Hamachi is 256-bit encrypted. That's better than you get for your bank's website.

To give you a simple answer - the 820 should be plenty for your needs. It'll give you a significant boost in performance (being dual-core and having much more cache) for not too big of a hit in price. The 9xx series start becoming significantly more expensive, and the incremental performance increase won't match the price tag. For your next upgrade, I suggest saving about $500, and I can give you the details (more or less) of a system I built a little while ago. Motherboard - ASUS P5LD2-VM mATX Case - Antec SLK1650B Memory - 1GB Corsair Value Select PC2-5300 Hard Drive - Western Digital Caviar SE 80GB SATA Video Card - BFG GeForce 7300 GT OC Note - those prices are in Canadian Dollars. Take the processor I mentioned above (or a CD/C2D if they're within your budget) and you'll have a system that'll easily handle anything you do today, and probably most of tomorrow. AND... the motherboard has everything that you need to upgrade in future. DDR2, PCI-E, and LGA775 are all standards that are here to stay for a while. The reason why I don't like to build on AMD systems is that there's just about no guarantee that a certain socket will stay. Look at S939 - it lasted... a year or so? LGA775 has been here for a little while, and there's no sign of it disappearing any time soon.

@n7epsilon - thanks for the reply, but it doesn't seem to work for me in Opera or IE7. I had thought of something like that, but sending conflicting information about an object usually ends up with strange cross-browser performance. @ripken204 - nope... try it yourself.

Discussion about warez is not allowed. If you downloaded it from anyone but Microsoft, then that version of Windows is illegal. Topic Closed

I'm wondering if anyone has any CSS-only methods of making a div of a fixed height appear vertically centered in the page. I've found methods that make it appear like this, but most of them use some sort of 25/50/25 rule (percentages here) to make the "middle section" appear in the center. Any ideas?

-5V isn't required anymore as of ATX v 2.xx. The PSU he has probably just omits it (Jeremy - you can check this by seeing if there's a "missing" wire on the ATX connector). Many onboard sensors have a hard time reading the -12V line, but yes, the 3.3 is a little low. Still within tolerances though.

Cluberti has given you the greatest amount of detail of any reply here - you should listen to him... Cluberti = Master of Windows error messages.

The Corsair HX520 is an excellent power supply, and would more than meet your needs. You'd be able to run that system and still have room for more. Corsair HX520 Review @ SilentPCReview.com As a side note - if you want to find reliable PSU tests, SPCR is one of the few sites that actually does proper PSU testing. Many other places put the PSU "at load" by putting a high end system and connecting as many components as they can find to the PSU, but often this still isn't enough. SPCR uses a special PSU test rig (you can find the link in the article) that allows them to vary the load on the PSU to pretty much any value they choose.

@crahak - Sure... but for someone like me (and I'm sure I'm not alone here), VirtualBox does exactly what I need. I don't make use of scripts, remote administration, etc etc. I want something that I can test my latest XPlode config, or a new Linux distro, or something like that. A computer within a computer - nothing more - nothing less. Many people here like to use VMware to test out their nLite ISOs before installing them on their real PCs. I don't think that anyone would argue that VirtualBox is a replacement for VMware, but it's a pretty good freeware alternative.

Yea.. I was about to say. If you've got any decent fans in the case, high temperatures are often the cause of poor thermal paste application.

What brand of enclosure is it? Have you tried removing the drive and reinstalling it in the enclosure (i.e. unplugging and re-plugging the connectors)?

Ok - I'll definately say wow about this... so much simpler than VMware or VPC, and the performance is just stunning...

Have you tried setting the jumper to master? It can have strange effects to use CS in some enclosures.