Hardware/OS Geek Thread

[CALSGR8]

All I know is when my Mom was ill, she was secure in the fact that if need be, she could reach me at any time.

I think a cell phone beats, WILL OBED_MARSH PLEASE REPORT TO FAN ASSISTANCE, YOUR CHILD IS WAITING FOR YOU, over the PA system.

[Obed_Marsh]

WILL OBED_MARSH PLEASE REPORT TO FAN ASSISTANCE, YOUR CHILD IS WAITING FOR YOU, over the PA system.

I disagree. I'd love to hear that over the PA. Now they charge you hundreds of dollars to put your name on a screen. PA announcements were fun for everyone.

Will Oliver Clothesoff please wave in section 301?

Now get off my damn lawn CALSGR8 and take that newfangled cell phone contraption with you.

[CALSGR8]

On another Topic that I'm not sure belongs here.  I may have asked it before but I couldn't find a thread.

Direct TV.  Good?  Bad?  Do you get all your MASN CHANNELS ON IT?  What level of service do you have?

[imref]

On another Topic that I'm not sure belongs here.  I may have asked it before but I couldn't find a thread.

Direct TV.  Good?  Bad?  Do you get all your MASN CHANNELS ON IT?  What level of service do you have?

i had direcTV for about 7 years before switching to FiOS last year.  The main reason I switched was because Comcast Internet service sucked, and the cost of FiOS vs. DirecTV, Comcast Internet and Verizon home phone was about $70 cheaper (even more so for the first 6 months).  I had DirecTV with the HD package but no premium movie channels or sports packages.

That being said, i had absolutely no complaints with DirecTV customer service, channel selection, and picture quality.  The TiVO-like DVR blows away what I now get from FiOS.   The areas where I did have complaints involved having to run two lines to each TV to support recording and watching at the same time, the need to buy a wireless modem to support dialing up for updates, and the need for a wireless LAN adapter to get video on-demand services.  Verizon's VOD library is much larger as well.

Also, Verizon has access to local channels such as the local weather feeds.  I was able to get these via DirecTV, but I had to buy a Trek indoor antenna for each TV and call DirecTV for an antenna gateway (free).

I did get MASN-HD on DirecTV, I believe they carry MASN-2HD as well.

[tomterp]

I think generations of families went to ballparks without cell phones and made it home just fine.

Without GPS?   

[JMW IV]

saw a brochure in radio shack for CLEAR wireless internet.

supposedly its comparable in quality to regular home internet providers.

anyone know about it?

[Obed_Marsh]

Without GPS?    

Oh great. Another technophile. As long as you GPS is not talking while you are walking around the ballpark it will evade my wrath. What you and your car do in the privacy of your rolled up windows is your business.

My pet peeve with a GPS is when people set them even when they know how to drive to the destination. I can understand if you subscribe to traffic density but I dated a chick who always set it even though it told her nothing but which direction to turn. Beats me why she had to listen to it drone on and on when she knew how to get there already.

[The Chief]

You need to get your sarcasmometer checked, Obed

[Obed_Marsh]

You need to get your sarcasmometer checked, Obed

Back in my day when someone said something sarcastic we said something sarcastic right back at them. I claim snark trump. Now get off my damn lawn.

[tomterp]

You need to get your sarcasmometer checked, Obed

Damn, I didn't realize I was pushing Obed's GPS button a little too hard there.....

 

[Obed_Marsh]

[PANatsFan]

any way to speed up X connections across my home network? I can download files at 2MB/sec (yes, megabytes), but there's a lag making an xterm.

[Nathan]

Woo hoo!  Got a computer upgrade at work today.  From a P4 @ 2.8GHz and 512MB RAM to a C2D @ 3.0 GHz and 2.0 GB RAM.

I can actually work on more than one thing at a time without the entire system going into a crawl as it starts swapping to disk!

[JMW IV]

ok so my new netbook has no optical drive. so how do i get ubuntu installed?

[Nathan]

What's up with the UAC thing in 7?  Like when you go to open an app and it dims the screen and brings up a dialogue box.  On my PC the whole screen goes black and takes forever to come back up with the dialogue box.  Annoying as hell.  I just turned off the screen dim aspect, though MS says that makes me less secure.  Dialogue pops up instantly now.


I'm also thinking about getting an ASUS UL35JC when they come out.  About $800, Core i3, nVidia g310m + optimus with the intel igp, and about 8 hours of battery life.

[The Chief]

The slowness of the screen dimming is related to the graphics driver.  Some are better (faster) than others.  I have no idea why that is or why it would be so hard to write the driver to do that quickly, but that's just how it is.  Personally I just disable the dimming.  You can also enable password prompting as well if you want it to work like Mac/Linux (which IMO is how it should be - what's the point of adding one more "click OK to continue" prompt?)

[Nathan]

The slowness of the screen dimming is related to the graphics driver.  Some are better (faster) than others.  I have no idea why that is or why it would be so hard to write the driver to do that quickly, but that's just how it is.  Personally I just disable the dimming.  You can also enable password prompting as well if you want it to work like Mac/Linux (which IMO is how it should be - what's the point of adding one more "click OK to continue" prompt?)

Yeah, I disabled mine too.  I should think something as powerful as a 5850 wouldn't have trouble.  It also seems to make the HDD work a good bit, so maybe it does something else behind the scenes.

I'll probably try to find and turn on the password prompt, like OS X, as I agree that's how it should be.  Is there a way to turn it off for some programs though?  Like Core Temp and CPU Z always ask me.

[The Chief]

I'll probably try to find and turn on the password prompt, like OS X, as I agree that's how it should be.  Is there a way to turn it off for some programs though?  Like Core Temp and CPU Z always ask me.

Pretty sure you can set that up somewhere in Local Security Policy (start > run > secpol.msc) or local group policy (gpedit.msc), but I'd have to look.  Which means...  you do it, I'm lazy

[NatsAddict]

God has endorsed Linux:

I liek Linucks, liek goldun rool: "Codez fer othurs as yu wud codez fer yerself." Srsly.

Ceiling Cat on Twitter

[PANatsFan]

Pretty sure you can set that up somewhere in Local Security Policy (start > run > secpol.msc) or local group policy (gpedit.msc), but I'd have to look.  Which means...  you do it, I'm lazy

If you don't run as administrator it always prompts for password

[The Chief]

If you don't run as administrator it always prompts for password

Ha, just tried that and sure enough you're right.  I am so busted

Even still, I stand by what I said.  If you ARE running as an admin, it would help in the event that someone else walks up to your computer with nefarious intentions.  And yes I know you should always lock the computer when you leave the room

[PC]

I have two netbooks among my VAST inventory of hardware and I'm coming back around to the netbook.  I'd sworn off them for awhile, mostly because of flash.  Watching flash video was dreadful.  You could do nothing other than watch the video because of the resource limitations of the netbook and the resourse hogginess of flash.  It was particularly bad with my first netbook because it was one of the older ones, 8GB drive, linux, 512MB RAM Acer Aspire. My newer (I"ve had it for about six months) netbook is an HP Mini, 1GB RAM, 160GB drive, Windows 7 Starter (it came with XP and I LOVE my technet sub  )

I don't know if it the better resources of the HP Mini but flash video is much smoother on it.  It might also have something to do with the Flash 10.1 upgrade.  I was using 10.0 on the old netbook.

[PANatsFan]

I have two netbooks among my VAST inventory of hardware and I'm coming back around to the netbook.  I'd sworn off them for awhile, mostly because of flash.  Watching flash video was dreadful.  You could do nothing other than watch the video because of the resource limitations of the netbook and the resourse hogginess of flash.  It was particularly bad with my first netbook because it was one of the older ones, 8GB drive, linux, 512MB RAM Acer Aspire. My newer (I"ve had it for about six months) netbook is an HP Mini, 1GB RAM, 160GB drive, Windows 7 Starter (it came with XP and I LOVE my technet sub  )

I don't know if it the better resources of the HP Mini but flash video is much smoother on it.  It might also have something to do with the Flash 10.1 upgrade.  I was using 10.0 on the old netbook.

I found the extra GB of Ram I put in made a huge difference

[Nathan]

ATI is dead....

http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/30/amd-kills-ati-brand-you-can-look-forward-to-blood-stained-radeo/

[The Chief]

They're keeping the Radeon and FireGL brands and the red theme, so I doubt it will matter much.  This was a long time coming.

Meeeemmmmries....  nothing moooore than mEeEeEmries....