GoRedwings19's Computer Help Hotline

Ok... I've done it. I really did! I went ahead and bought the worse possible sound card ever with the Razer brand name smeared all over it instead of the Asus Xonar or the Azuretech Prelude, which are supposedly much better for their price and actually designed correctly. I mean... how bad could it be? Reason? Nothing really, it costs $199.99CAD here and jumped on it when saw it go for $89.99CAD in one of the Sunday special savings ad for my local computer shop. Impressions: I just installed this card into my computer less than an hour ago and I already have many complaints about it. The main reason I bought it, apart from the relatively cheap price, was…

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.

I think it dissapeared around the time I installed service pack 3. Does anyone know the name/location of the exe that launches the search command? Thanks, Biggie.

Wondering if anyone might be able to give me some insight into a minor issue I'm having with the USB audio on my Gateway FX laptop running Windows 7. I've never had much of an issue with the Pico and USB audio, generally it's been plug and play without glitches. I get occasional noise from one thing or another, mostly at work where I haven't done much in the line of special setup and there's a ton of interference. When I got the laptop though part of my intention was to use it in conjunction with my Pico for music playback allowing me a system I can more easily move around the house so I'd like to get the best out of it I can. Generally the sound is fine but I get the …

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz6amk3P-hY Really? This is what $10 million buys you? The old mugshot is a nice touch. But again, really?

I have received a HP tablet PC from work. Which I don't have any use for work wise. My current laptop is a P-M 1.8 GHz with a gig of RAM running XP which is plenty fast for the research and patient software I need to run. And seeing how this was some how factored into the hospital/academic budget I'm free to do whatever I want with it. I think these are the specs: Genuine Windows Vista? Business (except it's coming loading with XP Pro) Windows Vista? capable*Windows Vista? Premium ready Intel? Core?2 Duo Ultra Low Voltage Processor (up to 1.2 GHz, 2 MB L2 cache) 1 x 1024MB DDR2 80 GB No optical device 12.1 Illumi-Lite WXGA (1280 x 800 resolution), UWVA, with…

Finally got fed up with my monster 17'' CRT + Pentium 4 setup. My thinking is to get a more or less future proof system with a i7 3770 cpu paired with a GTX660 ti gpu. One of the local guys recommend getting an Intel DH77EB board. Not to mention Intel announcing leaving the standard form factor mobo scene I initially found the board to be very erm... pedestrian? What's your take on Intel mobos? Sure, they lack the bling of other makers but supposedly they are very reliable. I'm not sure I'f I'll miss SLI/X-fire or extreme overclocking very much. Thank you!

Can anyone recommend an alternative to wireless or Cat5? Specifically, I'm wondering if powerline or MoCA are actually viable alternatives.

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.

So with the L3000s sold, I finally have the funds to replace my laptop, and I'm thinking of going Mac this time, as I've never used an Apple computer before and am curious. My question is about hard drive compatibility. Currently I have a 300gig PATA hard drive in an external closure connected to my PC via USB. I am wondering if I need to format the HD to be compatible with OS X. If so, that will be a significant problem because all of my lossless music is stored on that drive.

I've been using Max quite happily for all my codec switching needs for a while, but have recently found it's crashing when asked to chew 24-bit FLAC files and spit out MPEG4. Have been working around by using AIFF instead, which works fine, but just wondering if anyone knows if this is a limitation of the converter or the output format? Thanks.

A friend of mine just called me with an interesting wireless network problem he is about to have and asked for possible solutions. Currently, he's running a wireless Applenet network at home with an Airport Express as his wireless router, which connects to the cable modem. He runs WPA and he is the only user so his network is pretty much secure. He has several computers on the network which talk together plus he often goes out to the internet. The problem is that he's about to get a roommate who also wants to get out to the internet. This is OK, but he needs to be able to hide his computers and traffic from the new user. Simple enough, eh? Normally I would solv…

This is my first year without cable. I would like to be able to watch the Astros games in real time instead of just watching the highlights, with mlb.tv. Some suggest using unlocator dns service. Is there any security risk to using this on the apple tv or ps3? I don't think I would feel comfortable using it on the computer or router. I don't use my ps3 for anything but playing local games so it seems I could use it only for mlb.tv and playing games without much risk. https://unlocator.com/faq/ If so, has anyone been able to get around the mlb local team blackouts?

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!

So I'm not going to bore you with all the details, but I'm looking at getting a new laptop, and the 1920x1080-on-a-15-inch-screen-or-smaller technology has been around long enough that my choices have expanded beyond 2 or 3 companies since last time. Where would I go to get advice? I.E. I'm looking at MSI, Toshiba, and HP Envy, and I don't know if these are better or worse (than, for example, my current Sony) in terms of ruggedness, value-for-the-dollar, intelligently chosen chipset combinations, etc. I would, of course, prefer better. As much as I like Sony, I know it's not famously the top brand, I'm just partial to it from experience.

I sent my laptop to get the charging pin replaced about a month ago. They did a fine job, but sent me a replacement charging cable/brick since the connector on my old one was a bit worn down. The replacement didn't exactly exude confidence in build quality It was working fine for a month, but just now I saw a spark in the middle of the cable which then caught into a small flame and burned a hole through the rubber covering. Fortunately it went out by itself and my computer wasn't damaged. If I had my camera I'd post pictures of the cable; it's not a pretty sight.

Radeon HD 5870 review Newegg's Stock (or lack thereof) I don't know how closely anyone else here follows the desktop GPU market, but for anyone else as intrigued as I am, this card is a BEAST. I am shocked to see it beat the GTX295 in a few game benches, and it runs pretty damn close behind in 3DMark Vantage (about as authoritative a benchmark as you can find). Not since Nvidia's 8 series have I been charged for a new release. I'm also glad to see that ATI is the one to enter the DX11 fray first; Nvidia has clearly been lagging in the aftermath of the 8 series success and it's time they feel the pressure from competition to put out something that is not only cap…

Hi Everyone, Alright, I have two HDD's in raid and would like to figure out how to get my fucking computer to allow me to access them sometime this century. Their set up in the raid utility and it says both HDD's are functional. I have a P4 2.4Ghz, asus P4P800-E Deluxe Mobo which I updated the bios (1010-001) this morning with no issues. I don't know where to go from here, any help is appreciated.

Does anyone know where I can get an old powermac g5 that still has the ibm chips and not the intel chips? The place where my mom works uses the old powermacs and they dont want to upgrade to the newer macs since they dont sync well with the older version of illustrator (not sure about this) and they dont want to buy the newer illustrator since it costs like $1000. If anyone knows, it would be very awesome

I've had the luxury of making my own Mac computing arrangements for both work and play over the last decade or more -- so I haven't really used a version of Windows since 95. Anyway, I'm about to buy a new laptop for my mom and was wondering what I should do about the OS -- is Vista really bad enough that I need to go get a copy of XP instead? She's in her 70s and uses the PC pretty much exclusively for email, Flickr and Skype video chats with the grandkids. Simplicity and stability are key -- as she's also 8,000 miles away and tech support is me. And no, she doesn't want a Macbook.

Alright, I'm trying to install Linux (Ubuntu 6.06) on my admittedly ancient (by Borg standards) computer (Sony Vaio PCV-RX550/-7732). After the install (I let it wipe the disk [200G Seagate Barracuda]), Grub comes up and says "Error 18". So I think what's going on is that the Bios can't handle the large disk drive, but if I'm reading this page correctly, they want me to shrink my root partition down to 512M? That don't seem right -- the installer won't let me even shrink it down that small...

My son wants a gaming mouse and doesn't want to spend a ton. He uses a PC laptop and is willing to do wired over wireless if the features or pricing are better. I know nothing about this subject, so please enlighten us with your gaming wisdom.

Ok, so even after I originally said it was stupid, I've been considering the Air recently. I was looking on the Apple Store, and Time Capsule sounds cool, and as I understand it, is also a wireless router? And it has a USB port? It says on their website that you can hookup a USB printer to it. What about a usb optical drive? If you can hook up a USB optical drive, is anyone aware of any wireless printers? If you can't, are there wireless or bluetooth optical drives? If I switch to the Air, I'll be getting rid of my desktop, so this is important. Anyone have experience with bluetooth keyboards and mice? Oh, and can you also partition part of the Time Capsule…

Does anyone here know if a Windows 7 OEM disc can be used to upgrade a current Vista installation? I'd rather pick up the OEM than the upgrade for the following reasons: 1. OEM is cheaper 2. In case I want to do a clean install, I'm not sure if the upgrade disc would require me to do a Vista install FIRST and then a 7 upgrade SECOND. --> Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong with this assumption. This might convince me to just buy the upgrade then. Thanks!