Zxian

I figured that the newer Raptors would also have NCQ, but I was trying to push the point of where the price/performance ratio drops off. If you've got the money to throw down, go for it. If budget is a consideration, then a high density hard drive will also perform quite well.

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=41967&hl= Nanaki - remember that name.

Or... he could get a 200GB Seagate SATA /w NCQ drive for a lot less, and have more space. I'm really wondering how much of a difference the 74GB 10K raptor would have over a 200+GB 7200RPM drive with SATA-NCQ. RAID0 those suckers and you'll have a pretty fast setup there.

http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_3482712 If it's true... wow. 'Nuff said.

Also, look at installing User Hive Profile Cleanup from Microsoft. It might help with slow shutdown times.

First impressions - very nice! I'm gonna be really happy when the iframe z-index bug is released in a final version. Other than that, Opera is pretty much perfect for me...

Granted... but if you've got a RAID-1 setup in your system at home, you don't need to worry about making backups in the first place. If one of the drives dies, just replace it, rebuild, and all your data is backed up again. It's expensive, but peace-of-mind. Also, pre-built external hard drives cost a fortune for the average user (retail prices), whereas setting up a RAID array would be about the same price. Example: External 300GB HD - some random no-name brand, 1 year warranty - $299 CAD Seagate 300GB SATA /w NCQ HD - Seagate, 5 year warranty - $168 x 2 = $336 CAD For me, the extra $36 would be worth it to have 4 more years of warranty, and to have all the data automatically backed up. Many motherboards now support RAID0 and RAID1 by default, so all it takes is a little learning or know-how to set it up.

Here's my new baby... So pretty, and pretty freakin fast... not to mention 4-5 hours of battery life. Specs in sig. (the RAM is not shared - it just says so because the default video card is) (btw... don't complain to me about the video card. I don't game much, and it handles HL2 just fine. )

It's been a while since I posted my screenshot, since I haven't had a laptop to take a screenshot from... Here's the desktop from my new toy and a picture of what it actually looks like. Screenshot - 380KB Laptop Picture - 1.2MB That's right.... 1680x1050. I love my new baby...

Moved to Unattended forum.

http://www.kontron.com/products/pdproductd...eyProduct=32501 There's a link right to it on the site...

The latest update of Firefox does not fix those issues. The two memory leak fixes that they list in the change log deal with relatively small fixes. On certain systems, closing pages that contained flash content would not release the memory that was allocated for the flash objects. This problem still hasn't been fixed. I use Outlook for e-mail, which has a pretty decent junk e-mail filter. It catches about 99% of the spam that I get. Opera has the wand, and otherwise, entering in your username and password in IE isn't too big of a deal.

Have you installed all the drivers for your hardware? Also, you might want to check what data transfer mode your hard drive is running in. Check under Device Manager->IDE Controllers to see if any devices are running in PIO mode. If they are, then that's the cause of your problems. You'll probably want to find updated chipset or IDE controller drivers to solve your problem.

You haven't looked very hard then... Like Lazy8 said, there's an entire forum for this. Search first before asking questions. Everything you want has been done before. Topic Closed

To speed up Windows boot times: a ) Disable all startup items that you don't need/want (use AutoRuns for this) b ) Defrag your drive. Best bet performance wise is PerfectDisk, but the Windows Defragmenter is better than nothing. c ) Use NTRegOpt to optimize the registry. This is the only registry compression/optimization tool that I would recommend using. Other than that, there isn't all too much that you can do to a regular XP install to speed things up. If you're willing to take the time to test a few times, you can try using nLite, but you should do some reading first to see what you're getting into - there's the potential to make your favorite software not work once you've nLited your XP. One last option is to use hibernation instead of shutdown. You'll get much faster "boot" times than a full boot, and there's not really too much reason not to use it.

You could try learning AutoIt. It can handle all the stuff that you can do in batch files, as well as press buttons for you.

What he also fails to mention is the continuing problems that Firefox has with flash and memory leaks. Not to mention that poorly written extensions can cause Firefox to crash - leading people to believe that Firefox is the cause - not the extension. This is actually the exact reason why Opera and uTorrent developers have not implemented extension/plugin capabilities into their programs. Also, since he's a Linux user, he'll rarely have to deal with the kinds of problems that Windows users have to, since you've got a better chance of getting someone's credit card number if you go after 90% of the market (Windows) vs. 5% of the market (Linux). The average malware writer is probably out to get something out of it, not just cause havoc. There's more to be gained from all the Windows users than all the Linux users out there. Wrong. Sorry, but this just isn't true. The data that is transferred from you to your bank (or whatever financial institution) and back again when using Firefox or IE or Opera is essentially the same. It's the same standard 128-bit encryption for all browsers. It's only if you've already got malware on your system that you can run into troubles.The problem with this whole article is that the author is a knowledgeable Linux user. It's a fairly biased article with quite a few old misconceptions about IE. Properly configured, Windows can be very secure. I've never had a piece of malware affect my system for a good long while now. Service Pack 2 does wonders for preventing malware (i.e. no automatic ActiveX installations), and if you take 10 minutes to tell people how to properly use IE, they'll be fine. The real question that people need to be asking themselves is: "what does the average joe user need from an internet browser". For older computer users who aren't too tech savvy, it's probably just something that lets them check their e-mails and read the news. I tried to show my parents Firefox and Opera and they hated it. Firefox isn't got everyone and it's got a lot of hype. I think the bubble is going to burst at some point... either that or the usage figures are going to level out eventually.

Huh? The only heuristic detection at the desktop level? Any anti-virus that has the ability to catch an ITW virus probably has heuristic detection methods. NOD32's main selling point is that it uses heuristics to detect viruses - not signatures. Interestingly enough, they didn't test ZoneAlarm - their 2005 World Class winner - nor NOD32. Also, they talk about scanning speeds, but isn't a good anti-virus mainly supposed to prevent you from getting a virus in the first place? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Ahh.... the glorious Google Video brings us this link. AMD Duron Vaporizes The long of the short of it... 1GHz Duron overclocked to 3.8GHz... then they remove the heatsink.

Read through the Rules at the top of this forum. There's a link to my guide there. Follow all the applicable steps and then see if that helps any.

@PUnitBabyDaddy - I think that this will just bypass the user creation and leave you just with the Administrator account. You can then create new users from there as you normally would. I'm not sure if you can rename the administrator account in XP Home though. @Sonic - entering "local" in OOBE should just bypass the user creation completely. What you end up with is just the Administrator and Guest accounts (i.e. the default accounts that exist on all installations).

Yes, it depends on the amount of RAM in the system. And you should always have a pagefile. Many programs won't work properly if you don't have one (for example - Photoshop). For me, I've got 1GB of RAM, but I still set a 1.5GB pagefile (max=min=1536MB). I've got space to spare on my hard drive (most people do these days), and it doesn't hurt to have a little bit more than you'd normally need.

Did you use nLite to remove any components? Can you add other toolbars to your taskbar?

What part of that EULA is hard to understand? It's straight from the source, and the bolded parts make it quite clear - one computer with a maximum of 2 CPUs per licence. Anything more and you're breaking your EULA.

At the OOBE screen, you can just make a user called local and it should simply bypass that stage of installation. I'm pretty sure that's how it works...