GoRedwings19's Computer Help Hotline

Looking at getting a 13" MacBook Pro, and am trying to decide which one to get... 2.4 GHz Core2Duo, 4 GB RAM, 250 GB HD or 2.66 GHz Core2Duo, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB HD, which can be had for $260 more. Is the performance bump between the 2.4 & 2.66 worth while for $215, knowing the 250 GB to 320 GB HD upgrade is a $45 upcharge? Thoughts? Input? And no, I don't want to wait for the rumored new model in a few months. I'm not liking what I'm hearing.

Does anyone know of a program in which a novice graphics artist could get started? I have an idea for the logo for my band, and I wouldn't mind being able to create a rough (computer) sketch of it.

Just saw a thread about this on Audiocircles so I thought I would post the link here: Something wicked this way comes…the Dell Inspiron Zino HD AMD at Home

I created a seperate libarary in itunes in order to do some shuffling and converting of my existing library without touching it. Job done I came back to my original library. Except that it seems to think that all of my music is where i had previously copied the files to for the second library. The only thing unaffected is podcasts. Now I could simply recompile the library. I havent lost any files or anything. But Id have to sit and wait for all the artwork and volume levelling to process again. And the gapless stuff. And then run iVolume again. And this is all very time consuming and irritating. I'd also lose my play counts and probably my ratings (which I use f…

Is there a way to send a fax via the internet without having to sign up for a service (i.e., a one-time thing). Or, in the alternative, is there a super cheap way to do this? I don't have a fax machine and need to get something out.

Anyone have experience with the Sewell 16ft extender or recommended another cheap alternative? Debating about switching to a USB DAC solution for a largish space (instead of Squeezebox).

I've heard that one should avoid no-name flash drives because then they'll only last a couple of refreshes -- is that true? I was going to get one of the $10-ish 16G ones. Are there any brands I should avoid? Corsair, Kingston, OCZ, Patriot, Crucial, Transcend, IPSG, Lexar, Sandisk, etc.? E.G., I was told to avoid anything like these.

My grad school group is looking to host web based calendar system on our server to reserve instruments. Do any of you, perhaps Todd, know of a good one? Here are some features we'd like: -ability to email all users simultaneously -email users by clicking on their scheduled time -prevent an instrument from being doublebooked -email administrator to request training for an instrument -web based administration interface

Horrible as their sometimes use may be, after reading this pretty critical article I kinda want to try out "Second Brain" apps/services. Anyone try and have an opinion of Notion, Obsidian, Mem, or other? I'll likely dive in all three, but thought I'd use the collective first. I've gone years using some older software like DEVONthink, The Brain, and even Yojimbo, but generally they've been slow to move to the cloud, so I've dropped all along the way for more primitive organization.

Well, as the title says, my PC is kaput. It has passed on! The PC is no more! It has ceased to be! Now, I have the fun task of trying to retrieve any pertinent data I hadn't backed up. Oh joy.

There is going to be a pretty big sale on a 1 TB internal sata hard drive from Seagate at Best Buy. $189. 32mb cache Just a heads-up http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1292021

See basic info here and official comic book here.

The default umask setting when I save anything on the unix system at work (via samba) is that everyone can read it. This is totally stupid and I have talked to the chair about this but nobody wants to change it. I know that one can change this setting for the whole system in the smb.conf file. Is there a way that I can change the default for me when I login. I have already changed the default setting when things are created when I am logged in via ssh but can't figure out how to do it when copying files from my computer. Most of the files I save are grades and letters of recommendations and things like that and I don't want to risk forgetting to change the umask…

I suddenly find myself inundated in projects, all with different final deadlines, and all with multiple progress points. For instance, I have a project I want to complete by May 1, but in order to do that I'll need to complete part A of it by March 30th, and part B by April 14th, and send out part C by March 21st, etc. There is obviously lots of project software out there, but most seems geared toward groups, or has too many features. I am looking for simple - no need for discussion boards, bug tracking, user management, etc. Does anyone know or use something that works well?

I have a really old 1.1ghz computer with 512mb of really old slow ram. I'm getting irked at my computers sluggish speeds when oppening web browsers and files and even transfering things to my portable player. I don't however have the resources to get a whole new computer. I can get a stick of 512mb of ram thats clocked at 633mhz for 39.99 at circuit city. Will I notice any differnce in my computers preformance or will I just have to save for a new computer? Thanks for any help, aaron.

I'm having a bizarre network issue. Do you have a favorite free network sniffer that you can recommend for a Vista system? Thanks in advance for your recommendations.

I upgraded my motherboard recently. Backed up everything that was on my C drive (Windows boot drive, main drive) then proceeded to reinstall Windows XP. My setup is 2 PATA hardrives sharing the same ribbon cable on one channel. A DVDRW drive on another channel. 2x SATA drives using a RAID card. After installing the RAID card drivers those hardrives worked fine. My main C drive works fine. But I can't get the second slave PATA drive to show up in Windows. I've tried Admin Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management, which usually works fine. But this time it's not even showing up as a hidden drive. The second PATA drive is set to cable select (I beli…

I'm messing with integrating a wordpress blog into my site, by taking a basic theme and modifying the header and footer php files with the code from my html home page. This works except i can't seem to get my javascript menu to work on it...is there anything special i have to do w/ javascript in a php page? http://www.headamp.com/blog/ test blog http://www.headamp.com/ regular site

I use iTunes to manage my music collection. Its tagging capabilities leave a lot to be desired. I'm playing around with fixtunes to clean up some of the tags, but I was wondering if folks have any other suggestions about a good tagger that works with Mac and iTunes.

In case any Mac+Last.FM users are interested... SweetFM now an open source project

I've been cleaning the spare around my computer, and in the process I put about six wallwarts in a box. One of them goes to my BlacX. I've got a couple that fit the power socket on the unit. Unfortunately, Thermaltake saw fit to not mark the BlacX's voltage requirement on the back of it. It just says "DC IN." Mine is the SATA model with USB and E-SATA out. Any head-casers have a BlacX and PSU handy? Can you tell me the voltage and tip polarity?

Need some help putting together a parts list for a desktop machine needed for editing photos. Will have a macbook air for everything else. The air struggles with D800 and XT1 files frequently and I can't blame it as that is not the intended purpose for that machine. I'd love to stay in the apple ecosystem but the mac mini's have the same graphics card as the air so not much in the way of performance improvements there. Intended usage for this new computer will be Lightroom and Photoshop and any other random photo editing software. Don't care about video. Will never be doing anything with video in the foreseeable future. Can anyone suggest a parts build for <$1000 …

A quick search online hasn't yielded any helpful results.. I picked up a refurb T40 a while back. The last few days I've had issues where the video would cut out completely, or the display would get distorted, looking as if there were a bunch of the same images just barely offset. It always happens when handling the laptop or when typing. It can be manipulated by applying pressure on the case. Sometimes a bit of pressure tweaking the case can make it come back completely, or at least get it to the point where I can save what I'm doing. I'm guessing it's the display adapater, which AFAIK is integrated and non-servicable. But I thought it was worth seeing if th…

I used to use Delicious, until without announcement they switched to a new system and I lost around 20% of my bookmarks. I've now mostly moved everything over to Google Bookmarks. The tagging isn't as seamless as it was on the old Delicious.

Because of neck stiffness, I am thinking of switching from 2x 20" Apple cinema displays to a single 27" display (for the office). Given that Apple's 27" is glossy and expensive, I started looking at the Dell 27" U2713HM. Is there anything else that is a lot better in that price range? I will be using it with a Mac.