GoRedwings19's Computer Help Hotline

I bought an external hard drive with an eSATA port and am thinking about getting an eSATA pci card. I've skimmed infformation about eSATA and I keep reading about how you need a motherboard that supports it. Are they just talking about integrated eSATA on the motherboard or will I not be able to even use a PCI card on a noncompatable motherboard?

Somebody gave me a computer a while ago and I just noticed that in the hardware manager it shows there being two processors. also in the Task Manager it shows two processor windows. Could I be dreaming? Here are some pics of what I'm talking about.

I'm thinking of buying a new laptop with 4 gb of RAM installed. It comes with windows vista but I'm planning on installing XP pro 32bit edition. I've read that XP has trouble with more than 3 GB of ram. Will I encounter a problem with this if I decide to do it? Here's a link to the computer if it will answer any questions. Gateway - Laptop with Intel® Centrino® Processor Technology - Pacific Blue - T-6836 Thanks!

Anyone have experience with the Drobo 5D--good or bad?

Hi everyone- Simple question before I cram this drive in my Drobo: can I put a drive in there that already has stuff on it, or should I only insert blank drives? I tried and tried to google this info up but no dice. Just want to make sure before I proceed. By my calculation there should be plenty of space left for protection after I insert the drive.

so last night I got through transferring all my music to my new drobo. this morning I wake up and it is in standby mode, unrecognized by Windows 7. I couldn't get it to mount by unplugging the USB cable, trying different USB ports, different USB cable. so I shut down my computer and power cycle the drobo. it comes back on fine, all green lights lit up, etc, but windows still won't recognize it. I get bad USB device errors when I plug it in. I'm currently scouring the Internet for solutions, and have tried lots of typical solutions, though I haven't power cycled the drobo again for fear of corruption (which might be what is already going on anyway). the screwed up th…

I have an AGP (yes, it's old) video card with dual DVI outputs. Currently, I only have one working monitor. Are the the outputs on AGP and PCI video card standardized with regard to the location of monitor one and two in Windoes? i.e. is the left DVI out (when looking at the back of the card) always monitor one? Unfortunately, I am not in a position to test this myself. I need the one working monitor I have to be monitor one on the first boot in this instance.

My Asus Eee PC arrived yesterday. This is my first post from it. Impressions so far are ok. It's tiny. The keyboard is tiny. Probably easier to use for a "hunt & peck" typist like me. I'm still using the Linux based OS it comes with, but on Monday when I have access to a USB DVD drive will probably load XP. I'll do some pics later to give an idea of this little thing. For now it's a cool toy, I'll just have t see how much I use it.

Two separate questions: What are the best choices for ergonomic keyboards? What are the best choices for trackballs?

I need a new, ergonomic mouse. Stacy bought me a Logitech Nano V450 last night and I like everything about it except it's too small and not ergonomic. Can somebody please suggest a mouse with similar characteristics to the Nano (laser and wireless included) in a full size, ergonomic package? Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

There's a lot of conflicting and simply fuzzy information out there on using the exFAT file system in a variety of situations and drive types. Being able to use on Mac and PCs would be desirable and general specs looks good, so anyone have any advice about when to use or avoid using exFAT? Considering for a music backup drive.

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...

Anyone have any solutions for the eye fatigue that results from staring at an LCD all day? In the ad from buy.com today, one of the items was a $50 pair of glasses designed for exactly that, that I'm actually seriously considering. Also, there's an overlay that one can put over one's screen. Anyone use any of these things? Are there other options ("go blind" does not count -- I'd rather not) that you prefer?

Has anyone used these things successfully? If you have any thoughts or experiences, post them up. Planning to get one for my wife's new camera.

Well it has taken me almost 5 days to upgrade my EeePC disk from the 80Gb stock issue to a 320Gb drive. The main problem is that most of the disk cloning software just absolutely sucks and failed in one way or another when I tried to use it. However xxClone came through, worked superbly and was extremely easy to use. I now have 268Gb for music/data, WooHoo.

Mozilla released the final version of Firefox 3 today. You can grab it from our download section here

Have any of you downloaded it yet? It handles complex code really well and loads pages fast. I'm really liking it.

I've been using the default theme since 2.0 came out and I'd like to switch to something more interesting. So let's hear what theme you're using

I have a bunch of flac files I want to convert to alac. I dl Max and it will transcode to aiff. It is asking me to choose linear pcm 8, 16, 24, 32 bit big endian integer. What should I choose?

Do flash drives have a limit on the number of times they can be written to, or can they be written to indefinitely? I want to get an 8G USB flash drive and use it for swap (virtual memory)...I realize it's over the bus and USB, but it should still be faster than an internal hard drive, no? Seems like a good way to artificially boost my performance. Paying US$50-ish for 256Mb of internal PC133 SDRAM seems like a waste of money. I currently have a Sony Vaio PCV-RX550/PCV-7732 (depending on whether you believe the front or the back), which has 256M upgradeable to 512M. I think the real solution is to get a new computer, but I'm just wondering if the above trick is worth t…

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.

I'm looking into setting up a forum for my apartment building. I want something easy to set up, maintain, and administer. Basically, I want a service to do the work for me. And I want it cheap. Grawk suggested freeforums.org, which looks good, but I seek some additional recommendations if you've got 'em. I guess I'd also be willing to pay a small (read very small) fee.

For those of you playing the home game, my 2015 Macbook Pro went tits up a few months ago. Since then I have been wrestling with the idea of a replacement. Apple's current lineup is ...old and kind of crap. Their recent "California Streaming" event was a massive disappointment (I will not be doing my radio show from a smart phone, KTHX.) More broadly, I'm kinda done with Apple's anti-repair bullshit. I'm not done with MacOS, but I think for the next period of time I'm going to be sticking with stationary Apple products (I still have an iPhone, which I dislike but view as an inescapable evil like taxes and leaf blowers.) I have never owned a PC laptop. I don't…

My Mac mini (2011) died. No warranty. I was using it with attached USB drives and a Drobo I replaced it temporarily with a laptop I had lying around and re-attached my existing drives to it to serve files. This is a temporary solution. Before I had the mini I had a Netgear ReadyNAS with two drives in it. I need to serve out video, back up photos and other important files from across my local network, and run Crashplan and such. Maybe Plex? I was thinking of building a FreeNAS box myself, because it's the kind of thing I like to do. Then I stumbled across the FreeNAS Mini. Overkill? Probably. But that's when my middle name again reared its head: "Pay For Con…

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.