GoRedwings19's Computer Help Hotline

My Lite-On DVD/CD recording drive is on its lasts legs. It still reads and writes okay, but the drawer only opens one time in 20. I suppose I should not complain much, as it was about $30, 3 years ago. Recommend to me a new DVD recorder. It must be internal, IDE, and preferably in stock at newegg. I have been perusing different models here [i am not sure this link will work for other users], and I notice with some distress that most such units cost $20 or so, which leads me to doubt their reliability. I see a couple Pioneer units that are around $40. It used to be that Pioneer made excellent DVD drives, but that was years ago, and I understand they are crap now. T…

I realize there've been a couple group buys/runs on deals/etc., but has anyone seriously shopped these around? I was looking at what Samsung had to offer since I was looking at a second battery for my phone, but they charge full retail, so ixNay that... Looks like I can get 20,000 mAh for ~$34 -- that's the only number that matters, innit? Well, other than getting a bunch of low ratings for exploding or setting things on fire or leaving scorch marks...

Alrighty, here are the spec's of my Dell that I've had together since the start of college: Mobo - Intel P965 (Dell proprietary bullshit) CPU - C2D E6600 RAM - 2GB G.Skill HK GPU - EVGA 8800GTS 320MB PSU - Corsair HX520 HDD's - 1x WD Caviar 250GB, 1x WD Caviar 500GB ~~~ I'm considering: 1) New GPU. This is complicated for me as I haven't been following either Nvidia nor ATi for at least a year. I know of both the GTX and 4-series, but I don't know where the best value is in either lineup. GTX275 looks good but might just be a bit more than I'm looking for. GTX260 perhaps? $160 is very attractive. Both 4890 and 4870 looked interesting on the red side of th…

I just installed OS X in a G5. This is my first interaction with Mac. Whee... Yeah, yeah, I know, Tiger is like so last year...

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…

Well, our wireless router may have kicked the bucket. One of the lower ended netgears I believe. Looking for something reasonably priced that won't break down on me in a year, and gets the job done. Thanks guys

Is there any way I can remote view my dad's computer desktop? I'm in Nashville, he's in Tulsa. Both are cable modems and OSX. He's not computer literate so everytime I try to troubleshoot he gets confuses as to what's the desktop vs. whatever. If I could see and possibly control it that would help a bunch. Hopefully something free as opposed to buying another piece of software.

only $10 a minute yo. (not sure where this number will go if dialed, so um... don't dial. )

Honestly I've looked at both of these cards and I have a general sense of what these cards are. 9800GX2 is like 2x of those G92 8800GTS 512MB video cards but inside one enclosure. GTX280? The newest card for like $500-600. Recently my G80 8800GTS 640MB has been acting weird, over heating (over heated for the first time during one hot day when I had a BBQ and left the computer on in a closed room which was a bad idea) and weird things has happened to my computer like screen messing up and not receiving signals from my GPU or something. The problem is once I buy a newer card, I would probably have to upgrade my 600W power supply which would be irritating but thi…

I'm constantly having problems emailing back my Dad. I'm the only one in our family that seems to have this problem. Here's an example... Reporting-MTA: dns; comcast.net Arrival-Date: 25 Aug 2007 3:00:41 +0000 Final-Recipient: rfc822; (dad's address) Action: failed Status: 4.4.7 Unable to contact host for 2 days, Diagnostic-Code: smtp; Persistent Transient Failure: Delivery time expired Last-Attempt-Date: 25 Aug 2007 3:00:41 +0000 He can email me fine, but it's like 70% chance my response won't make it. I've tried sending a new message as well as responding to his email. He's on DSL... not sure what company. I'm on Comcast using Thunderbird.

So I'm seeing this, and I'm thinking to myself -- you know, I've been meaning to (ahem) laserdrop my laserdisks. Talk me down? Talk me up (I.E. should I go all the way to 1080p)? Do whut now? This coming from someone who has immediately fallen in love with blu-ray -- I may not know shit about this stuff, but I know what I like.

Are there any secure ebook formats that are readable in linux ? I was wanting to try and read "Dark Angel: Before the Dawn" which appears to be available only in secure formats Mobipocket/Microsoft Reader/Adobe ebook/eReader are any of these accesible from within linux ? I'm using Opensuse 11.2

It seems there are a lot of sysadmins here. Our company recently got Websense, which blocks a lot of what we can see on the web. Is it also logging my posts to HC? Anything else I should know about it?

It pisses me off. It can be working find for months on end, then, all of a sudden, it decides to crap out -- not completely, mind you, but one aspect of it or another, with a particular device stops working. Can do you anything to fix that?

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'm waiting on one of these at present. Runs GoogleWave, GoogleVoice, and Skype. Flash enabled browser. Full OPEN implementation of Debian/Linux. 32GB native, easily expandable to 64GB. 3.5mm Headphone Jack, the specs go on for days. [url=http://maemo.nokia.com/]Maemo software | Nokia

Hello! I'm thinking about buying a new laptop. I gave my old HP to my sister and it weighs 400 pounds. I want something light and tough (can I have both?) for around a grand or cheaper that will be used exclusively for internet and music on the go. There have been a lot of threads lately about laptops, so judging from those I'm either considering a Lenovo T series or (shudder) going back to macland with an iBook. Any other thoughts or recommendations appreciated.

I've been getting into Linux a bit lately and so far I really like Ubuntu the best. It's easy to use and their forums are a wealth of information. Ubuntu 7.04 just came out today and I figured I'd mirror it here: Ubuntu 7.04 Desktop (32-bit) Ubuntu 7.04 Desktop (64-bit) Ubuntu 7.04 Server (64-bit)

Hey gang- Having some really bad video issues. I've had this BFG 8800GT for a while now, and its been great. Last week I started having problems: yellow lines across the screen, random swirly blue dots showing up in any picture, and several minutes after these errors begin, my screen starts going black for several seconds, then flick back to normal for a second or two, then black, and so on back and forth, basically making it impossible to do anything with my computer. I haven't run any games in a while, this just happens when I'm browsing the internet. My quick resolution is to shut down the computer for a couple of minutes, then turn it back on. Everything works…

Doing online research for a cpu that will meet my htpc needs, I came across this: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-12/05/tongue-and-bum-controller I wonder what Valve is up to... hmmm...

I'm looking for a very easy to use, and easy to read RSS Reader. Integration with Firefox would be good but not essential. Is there an industry leader here?

I've already reinstalled the DVD drive, followed the instructions from this site http://sniptools.com/tipstricks/getting-back-to-dma-mode-in-windows-xp and followed microsoft's recommendation (set drive options to "PIO only", then back to "DMA if available" again), repeatedly. and its still stuck in PIO mode :< HELP

So Google has a new Wikipedia competitor, called KNOL. Chief difference? Settings preventing an article from being modified by anyone other than the original author. LOL

If, like me, you find it annoying to have Time Machine start churning away when you're already employing your Mac's FireWire bus to transport bits to your Duet, then you're in luck. Time Machine Editor Let's you schedule backups when you want them rather than the default hourly behavior. Works fine for me so far, doesn't appear to perform any dodgy hacks and is free as in beer.