GoRedwings19's Computer Help Hotline

I've picked up a Duet (again) and would like to start playing around with ripping vinyl. Could one of you chaps who've already been down this road please point me in the direction of some decent software for the Mac to facilitate the process? Workflow tips also welcome! Thanks very much.

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 need a new laptop PC some time between now and fall quarter (september 23rd). Is there a time of year when laptops can be found at a discount or do their prices remain pretty constant?

Hey folks- So with CPA exam and busy season behind me, I'm finally starting to re-evaluate on what is important: having a kick ass PC to play games on. My current PC is actually pretty great. Surprised to find my i5-3570 CPU I purchased in 2012 is still completely acceptable for gaming. I did upgrade my graphics card to a GTX 980, which is awesome. So I don't see the need for any additional upgrades. What I'd like to do now is thoroughly clean the outside and inside of my PC case. My NZXT is one of those silent cases, and it does a pretty good job of keeping dust out, but nothings perfect, and I'm basically done zero cleaning the past three years. I tried some…

I need to purchase a slim SATA ODD for a slim HTPC case. I'll need DVD, CD, and Blu-Ray read support (best accuracy is what I'm looking for). Write support is not as important but CDR, DVDR would be needed at least. I'm really looking for the best slim ODD to finish ripping my CD, DVD, Blu-Ray collection to storage.

I have a HP PC with a 365W power supply, and I want to upgrade the video. The system currently has a single HD and a single DVD drive. The CPU is an Intel Core 2 Quad. How do I figure out whether the system can handle the power requirements of a video card? I'm looking to spend $120-$170 on a video card -- a middle of the pack gaming performer. I'm looking at Radeo HD 5750 cards and some nVidia cards. I also found an interesting fanless Gigabyte GeForce 9800 GT card. Quiet performance is always good. But as I read the product specs on newegg for various video cards, I see many cards requiring 400+ watt PS. Assuming I can even upgrade the PS in this HP, is that what …

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...

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!

I have a good client/friend that has cancer. He is having major surgery in about 2 weeks. I've been telling him to get a drive for me to transfer a bunch of music for him to use on his ipod and at home. I have an external in my office which I reformatted by accident. I have a 1 tb drive at home that is Mac OS formatted. I would like to be able to transfer about 400 gb of music from this drive to his new 1 tb Seagate Freeagent (not Mac OS). He uses a pc. Is there anyway for me to do this?

As some may know, I recently have started a job that involves a good bit of travel, something like 2 weeks a month on average. I need a laptop, and think an ultrabook would really be the ticket. Does anyone have experience with any, not counting the mba? I have been looking mostly at the Gigabyte u2442n and asus nerdbook prime (err, zenbook). Any others people have had good experience with?

So I went to the Apple trailers site, and it said I needed QuickTime v. 7 to view the Simpsons movie teaser. So I went to download it, and it's called "iTunesSetup.exe" -- WTF? Have they merged the two softwares? Is this like RealPlayah? I really like just having the media player, I don't need iTunes' other carp. So I guess the real question is, has anyone else installed this, and if so, can I still just watch vid clips like on the trailers site with it? Or if I click on the wrong thing, am I going to accidentally buy some MP3's...or somesuch whatnot...?

Need to connect a Sony GT1/Google TV to my Macbook, mostly for video. Anyone have a recommendation of which uPnP server to use? http://www.yazsoft.com/products/playback/ http://www.nullriver.com/products/medialink http://www.twonky.com/products/twonkyserver/default.aspx

After waiting for the painfully slow download from MSDN I was able to install the RTM of Windows 7 (ultimate x64 version). I didn't have any blank dvd's around so I installed it from a usb thumb and I really think it's the way to go. The install only took 10-15 minutes. Some early thoughts on Windows 7, it's definitely snappier than Vista, especially when it comes to UI affects and such. I should mention that 7 had drivers for everything in my laptop which was nice. I like the new taskbar it's refined and the UI affects actually improve overall usability.

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.

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.

Anyone have any experience with cloning a windows 7 installation to a new disk? This one is slightly complicated in that the disk is in two partitions, and overall is 500Gb and I want to clone to only a 120Gb SSD. I only need the C: partition (D: is manufactuers recovery partition), however I'm not sure how to make sure the thing boots normally without cloning the entire disk, which isn't possible in this case...

Ok gents I've worked on this thing for days now to no avail. My Toshiba LT (Vista) will not recognize my HR DAC. I've rebooted, gone into my INF files to check if any of the USB got renamed, tried all the USB ports, checked for driver updates, etc. Nothing. Any help is immensely appreciated, Thanks!

I know iTunes can playback pre-emphasis CDs on the fly applying the required filtering to de-emphasize them, but it won't play FLAC files, nor will apply the de-emphasis filter on ALAC files made from pre-emphasized FLAC files. So it's either de-emphasizing the FLAC files using SoX or some other filtering tool and playing back the new corrected files on your preferred software, or using some software that can de-emphasize FLAC files on the fly. Does this even exist? I'd like to know about any music playback software for OSX that can play pre-emphasized lossless files applying the required filtering on the fly. Thanks.

I'm trying to decide on a notebook. I haven't purchased a computer in a long time and I am really confused by all the new processors. I intend to use this notebook for web browsing, e-mail, word processing, spreadsheets, music (iTunes, foobar, running SqueezeCenter), ripping/burning cd's and dvd's, and hopefully be able to watch HD videos without dropoffs. I also like being able to open several tabs in Firefox/IE at once without slowing down. In other words, everyday tasks just no gaming or video editing. I don't have much money so my budget is around $350. I know that makes my selection very limited, but I saw these refurbished notebooks from Circuit City/Tiger Di…

I am trying to simlify my life, and it is proving to be really complicated. Here's the story -- I would like to run a bunch of different software all on one computer. Most of it is not cross platform, or for one reason or another, I want to use various OSes for various tasks. Also, most of it is not goig to be in use all the time, but it would be nice if it was running when I needed it without a lot of configuration, and it would be nice to run much of it at the same time. Ideally, making this feel like a bunch of computers conected to a KVM would be perfect. So, for instance, I would like an automated cd ripper, a squeezebox server, and a music player. VortexBox will …

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?

and how do I make sure I don't have to waste my time with this stuff ever again? let's see... I guess we can say the laptop isn't exactly responsive, there's a few too many search toolbars in IE (google, AIM, and something called MyWebSearch), some website popups occur once in a while telling her to buy "WinAntiVirus Pro 2006," she tells me that whenever she types in "www" into the web browser it disappears or something so I have to fix this so-called "www" problem (hint: the actual address bar is minimized and only the search tool text boxes are showing), some website told me to run PandaSoftware's online antivirus (pandas finding viruses? they don't seem exactly fit…

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…

dell lcd was purchased ~5 years ago. as you can see in the pictures, theres a darkish horizontal area that curves up a little to the right side of the panel. visible on white backgrounds but very very obvious on greys. its actually worse in person than it seems in the pictures. any thoughts? suggestions? my thinkpad backlight just died 20 minutes after i installed a replacement harddrive (the deathstar finally kicked the bucket). the laptop has been with my for the better part of 4 years now. just hate all this stuff happening to machines i have gotten very used to.

It makes the bits sound sweeter: https://www.hifiplus.com/articles/english-electric-8switch-streaming-audio-network-switch/ I think I'd save my money for a 10 Gigabit switch instead.