GoRedwings19's Computer Help Hotline

I have a bunch of movies on an external HD, but they're in a whole bunch of different formats. Is there a straightforward way to convert them to whatever iTunes needs so that I can view them on my iPad/iPhone. Performing such conversion within iTunes itself doesn't seem to cut it.

I've just replaced my old Iphone 5 battery because the original one was below 65% capacity. I purchased it from iFixit, which is supposed to be good quality, they have an EU store. The replacement process went pretty much forward and flawlessly until I switched the iPhone on. It wouldn't light up. I thought the battery could be empty, so I plugged it into the charger, then the "connect into iTunes" logo appeared: I plugged the iPhone into the MBP, started iTunes, it asked if I wanted to restore factory default or update. I chose update the first time. The thing is now giving some error and won't either update nor restore to factory default. I've repeated the se…

Have on my iPhone, but not in my laptops browser yet.

Well in the string of broken shit that has occurred of late my mini may have bit the dust tonight. It won't see my seagate hard drive, won't play any music, won't fire up any of my audio editing programs... I'm going to let it rest for the night and hope I can get it to fire up for a restore from time machine but who knows. The cpu temps ramped up fast to about 210 degrees is that too hot?

I am thinking of possibly getting my niece a budget laptop (that depends on whether I can find something cheap and decent enough to justify it). She basically goes to sites like barbie.com (flash based), plays the Sims, and types some homework for her classes. She is 10 years old but fairly mature for her age. My budget is optimally around $300. Is there any decent around that price? With Windows 8? I know there are a bunch of Android tablets and portable laptops and maybe this would be ok but she wouldn't be able to do barbie.com. Since I am basically an Apple person, I don't know where to begin. Also, I know there some differences between different Windows…

I'm going to buy my niece (12 years old) a new chromebook for Christmas (her Uncle stepped on her old one and broke it, at least the screen). She really liked her other one. Has anyone recently researched them? I am think of the Asus C200 with 32GB storage and 4GB RAM. It has a SD card reader which will be good for storage expansion. It's not the fastest but seems to be well built. Is there another one that is clearly better (and still around $300 or below). 11" would be better (since she doesn't have a lot of room in her bedroom) but 13" might be ok and SD card reader is a must.

So, I've been using MontyPics for years now... Crummy interface for uploading and organizing, but I'd been uploading and using those photos in forums for so long that changing hosting wasn't an option. Well, unknown to me until this morning, they had a complete meltdown over the weekend, had little redundancy and they lost about 99% of my photos going back about 6 years. So, if I have to start from scratch, re-uploading the critical stuff from before, plus continuing to upload going forward, I want things to be a little better this time around on pretty much all fronts. What I'm looking for: An improved interface for uploading and sharing Batch uploading/resi…

I'm starting to accumulate a fair bit of hi-res material in iTunes and much of it is made up of higher-bit rate versions of albums I already have in CD format. What I can't seem to figure out is how to tag these duplicate albums so they will sort and display separately without adding a modifier (like [24/96] or [DVD-A] or whatever) to the Album field -- since doing that screws up LastFM and other apps that pull that data. Sub-fields like Comments, Grouping etc. don't seem to be used by iTunes to distinguish different versions. Any iTunes power users out there?

With my MBP dead and dying, I'm looking to to build a Windows box based on either 4690(K) or 4790(K). The main purpose of the machine will be for editing photos under Lightroom/Photoshop and gaming. I'm hoping to make it as future proof as possible (not that it's really possible) within the budget. Can anyone here suggest a build/parts list for $1000 (including CPU)? I already have a monitor, mouse, keyboard, and SSD. Thank you for the help. EDIT - And I'm not doing Hackintosh - I don't need this to be more work and it needs to be.

hey guys- being attacked by a malware program called AV Suite. no idea where it came from. I can't run firefox for more then 10 seconds, can't open my regedit for more then one second, can't open taskmgr at all. I'm think I gotta format. any words of advice? thanks.

Our last year resident is finishing next week and the graduation gift is going to be a laptop she needs. The budget is about 900 bucks (800€). These days I'm not that sure that Toshiba is as reliable as it used to be, nor that all HP are bullshit. Things change too fast, specially if you don't pay much attention. I've looked at several options with 15" screen. Other desirable feature is it's available in pink No especial needs of HDD size, RAM, connectivity... Wifi, good screen and lightweight, that's all, she won't be playing games or editing video. These are my candidates in no special order Dell Inspiron 15 7000 (i5, 256SSD, 8GB, ips screen, GeForce® MX150) I thi…

Warning: complete laptop newb, heads-up. Looking at getting my wife a new laptop, christmas/MBA graduation gift. Budget is $600 max. Biggest application will probably be the new adobe photoshop 8 that I bought her as well, she loves taking pics and the new laptop should be powerful enough to load full resolution pics pretty fast and for her to edit and adjust with ease. We are windows PC people, sorry mac users, and for her, ease of use as well as her picture stuff are her priorities. Thanks.

Right now I use E6420 2.13GHZ OC'd to 3.4GHZ XFX GeForce 8800GTS 640MB 4x1GB Corsair C4 (comb-styled heatsink) ram. Chasis: Antec P182SE Stock cooling for everything I guess.. Windows XP 32-bit My main concern is that my videocard is very hot, so I always have to keep the 2 fans on my case on HIGH mode, which makes it very loud. Is there any way I can fix this? I don't care about the cost as long as it isn't outrageous.. so I'm willing to change to watercooling, heat-sinks, etc if it makes a significant difference. Thank you for your time I hope I will be able to quietly listen to music on my desktop one day.. Nenso

What are the suggestions for high end 15" Windows laptops for someone who does a lot of graphics? It is for a friend of mine.

Since I can't seem to get my Macbook Pro 15" (2011) working correctly with Mac OS X, I was thinking that I would try installing Linux on it (where it seems easy to turn off the discrete graphics card with a command line). I'd probably try it out with a dual boot for now. What is the best (but not too difficult to use) Linux distro out there (that will work with a Macbook Pro)? Ubuntu? Linux Mint? Something else? Pros and cons? In the past, I've like the look/feel of gnome over KDE. In order to do this, I will probably need to boot into Linux for the first time without using the GUI (command line only) since the external graphics card is (for lack of a better …

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.

Raid 0 1TB SSD http://www.techpowerup.com/86997/OCZ_Demos_1_TB_RAID0_Solid-State_Drive_with_Unbelievable_Transfer_Speeds.html

My laptop is dying. I want a MacBook Pro, but I'm not sure that's in the cards right now. So I'm considering a Netbook. I wouldn't be doing much more than surfing the ol' internets and some light MS Office stuff. But I would also want to be able to load the thing up with tunes and be able to use it as a portable listening/server solution. Is a Netbook in the $300 range capable of this? Oh, and I want it to be reasonably fast.

Hello All, My office PC is Dying, about half the time when booting it

Sorry if I'm late to the party on this one, but just found this little hint: Use fine-grain volume control in 10.5 | Mac OS X Hints | Macworld

So, I bought my Lenovo from JB w/out an operating system (but with an XP key) last year. Because I was tight on money, I threw a Windows 7 Ultimate release candidate on it. Well, I'm getting daily warnings that it's about to expire (in about a week), so it's time to get this squared away. I have a Vista Ultimate seat on my old HTPC sitting unused since switching over to the PS3 for my media. However, I've never run anything but W7 on this machine, and am a little concerned about how it will handle Vista Ultimate. But I could certainly install it in a pinch. In the meantime, my girlfriend's back in school (and her laptop crapped out too, so we're both using mine)…

Ever since I built the new PC I had this weird lag with games more noticeable with the mouse movements, specially on fps where it makes hard to point at stuff, but the thing is that the fps's are constantly 60 and above. This takes the fun from games for me.. I pretty much tried everything I could remember so I figured I should try my luck here. Any ideas ?

My laptop is on its last dying breaths right now and it seems that I need a new laptop asap. Something under $500, 14" max screen size and should be able to run Adobe Illustrator decently. I would prefer to buy new/refurb so I could get the warranty. I've been looking at the lenovo outlet site and slickdeals. But is there anywhere else to look or does anyone have any suggestions?

Ok macophiles, I've got an OS X question for you. The laptop that I'm currently using is a Powerbook G4 w/ 1GHz processor and a piddly 256Mb of RAM. It's using OS X 10.3x9 which I believe is "Panther" or some such nonsense. Basically what I'm trying to do is upspec the laptop to the point where it can use the Duet. I've got a 1Gb RAM stick, but it was unstable when I first installed it. So my thought is to try upgrading the OS to Tiger (10.4.11, I think) and I'm wondering what I have to do to do this? Can I just download the upgrade from Apple? Can I purchase a used copy? Other thoughts or suggestions appreciated. I'm trying to limit my investment here since it's…

So I've got enough free space on my MacBook that I'd like to have a go at running Windows on it, just for kicks. So is there any reason not to use boot camp? i.e. is there a better way? With the single largest caveat being that I don't want to have to wipe the drive and reinstall both OS's.