GoRedwings19's Computer Help Hotline

Alright, so my sister had the brilliant idea of getting my mother a cheap tablet and a magnifying app to assist with reading and spontaneously reading things like medicine labels. So what's the best cheap tablet for this? Kindle Fire? Anyone know of a magnifying app that deshakes? My mother does, indeed, have the tremors.

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)…

I need an online to do list manager, primarily for coordinating a move, but doesn't need to be specific to that. I've looked into a bunch of the major ones, which seem ok, but I'd be curious to hear if folks have recommendations.

I'm looking into getting a 2560 x 1600 30" monitor or so -- what's the best place to look up these guys? I know how to google, but someone posted a couple of good sites to look up laptops, I was wondering if there was an equivalent site for desktop components -- Tom's Hardware? I mean, I know to look at things like contrast ratio and response time, but things like color temperature are so subjective, it'd be really nice to find a place where people have more experience with these things, because most of the local shops don't have much in the way of selection.

I reinstalled Chrome (because it was acting up, and nothing short of deleting it entirely was making it better), and can't seem to find my script blocker. I thought it was called NoScript...tried uMatrix, but that doesn't seem to remember my whitelist. Am I using it wrong? Is there a better one? Where is noScript? Any better recommendations? I should also probably add something similar to my Firefox -- any recommendations? I'm still using The Great Suspender in Chrome -- that's still a godsend. Anything similar in Firefox?

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.

Ok, I'm real late to this one. But why is bittorrent useful to me? And is it easy to use?

Is there any way I could block specific TCP/UDP ports without reconfiguring the main router? My younger brother's XBOX Live games disturbing my sleep are getting a little old. While this would be easy enough to do at the router level, my brother is smart enough (I assume) to troubleshoot via cycling the router's power, resetting any changes I might make. I suppose this could be viewed as a passive aggressive way of resolving the problem, but I think all of the interested parties would prefer it to the more destructive solutions I have in mind.

Question for the Windows 7 HTPC users: My OEM of Cyberlink PowerDVD 10 with Blu-Ray and 3D just stopped working. Should I just go ahead and buy it (14, presumably)? I'm afraid that they're one of those "perpetually pay for upgrades" nickel-and-dime mickey-mouse bullshit software that I hate. Anything better out there? VLC? What do you use in your Windows 7 HTPC to play Blu-Rays? I do use SlySoft's AnyDVD HD for delayed viewing of rentals, but I still use Cyberlink PowerDVD to play back the video files -- if I should switch video players to something that works better with subtitles (the way I do it, I lose the subtitles during the Dothrakian sequences), please …

So my computer has started doing this thing where every time I turn it on, after about 5 minutes, give or take a minute, regardless of what I'm doing on the computer, I get a blue screen of death crash and the computer resets. The weird thing is, once it resets and starts up again, its 100% fine, no more crashes. This only occurs when I start my computer from an off state. When I start back up it always gives me the "windows has recovered from a serious error" box. The reason is something to do with bad memory. Indeed I did add some new RAM several weeks back, but I did not start experiencing this until recently. Nevertheless, I've done lots of trouble shooting in…

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…

Hello Head-case. I would like to build my own website to put on my Resume and show off my fotos and skeematics better than Flickr, and a stack of loose papers on the edge of my desk. I'm not really sure where to start. What I'm looking for: I want the website to be pretty simple No horizontal scrolling, simple/easy to read fonts with high contrasts, basically paper on the internet. A few pages for photography (street, sports) A page for DIY stuff MAYBE a blog I have a domain name in mind, that is not owned yet, so that is good. I know I need to buy it and 1and1.com looks like a good place to do this, but I'm not really sure where to go from there. …

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

So I decided to upgrade my home file server from a Windows 2003 Server platform to something else. All the server does is serve files to Mac clients and run the Squeezebox Server. DNS and DHCP is performed by my router. No Email or Web serving. The reason I'm upgrading is because the Squeezebox server is running kinda flaky lately and file server speeds are kinda slow for a small Gigabit network. The hardware is semi heavy duty. It's a HP xw8200 workstation with dual 3.2 GHz Xeon CPU's, 6 GB Ram and 1.5 TB of internal disk. I also have a LacIe 4TB estata/FW/USB that's configured as a 3 TB RAID 5 external drive via esata. I recently installed a Linux SUSE 11.3 64-bi…

I recently procured some audio files with an .APE extension and am having trouble finding a free program that will let me do it. Is there one out there?

I'm tired of paying rent on my cable modem, want to get my own. What should be my criteria? Also, my router seems to be on its last legs anyway. Also I'd like something somewhat slightly secure-ish. (Read: as secure as is possible without writing my own OS.) Right now I'm on cable, but FIOS is an option. Does that make a difference? I.E. if I switch, is there a router that I can get that I will still be able to use? The lady on the phone said "Arris". Yes/no/disagree/agree-but-with-qualifications? She actually said the one she would recommend isn't even on the list yet, it has a dual-band router, which tells me they can make it work. Yes/no/disagree/a…

Well I have the iMac up and running. Right now its primary duty will be to run squeezecenter for the abode as well as some web browsing. I have to say I am really impressed by the build quality and the quality of the OS. This is the first Apple computer product I have bought since my first PC in 1981 so I have not really paid a lot of attention to MAC software. It has the standard Mac apps as well as iWork 08. I will probably also put aperture on their to see how I like it for working with images. Other than that I am in the dark so tell me what other killer apps I should get to put my PC's to shame.

I was trying to figure out if my power was out last night during the storm so I can figure out whether to throw away perishable foods. I think my computer (imac) was on when I came home this morning (although I was tired so I certainly could have turned it on without thinking). I don't have the "startup automatically after a power failure" checked in energy saver nor do I have a UPS. If I type "last" in terminal, it has a reboot at 4:37am this morning (I was not here at that time). Also, the system log says 4:37:43 AM locationd: locationd was started after an unclean shutdown So that seems to indicated that computer shut down and restarted on its own. I d…

My 2nd gen iTouch refuses to update. The key though is that it also will not hold a charge. Is there someone who is handy and can help me by installing a new battery on this thing for me?

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?

how much faster/slower would a $200 laptop like this be compared to a Core 2 Duo model w/ 2008-2010 tech? http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/productdetails/inspiron-11-3162-laptop/fndoh101sb

Google Chrome 4 lands (Windows) extensions on world+dog ? The Register Now with extensions! Including AdBlock https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom And FlashBlock https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/cdngiadmnkhgemkimkhiilgffbjijcie

So far its pretty straightforward. The apps are more like bookmarks. The Dragonfly DAC does not work but the Fiio is plug and play. I think the Pico DAC will work. I have the Acer 11.6 with Celeron and 320gb. Open box was too cheap to not bring home and try it.

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.

http://tinyurl.com/2sl2y7