Quick [tech] Questions Thread

[Salamok]

Have fun with the Windows 8, I just walked into Costco and told my Dad to buy this one, then spent the next 3 days getting it to look like something he was used to:
http://www.costco.com/Dell-Inspiron-15-Touchscreen-Laptop-%7c-Intel-Core-i3.product.100082432.html

edit - the Metro replacement for Outlook is shit.

[schild]

How portable does it need to be? Does she have good eyesight (i.e. can use a small screen with very high DPI)?

Any luck?

[Venkman]

Have fun with the Windows 8, I just walked into Costco and told my Dad to buy this one, then spent the next 3 days getting it to look like something he was used to:
http://www.costco.com/Dell-Inspiron-15-Touchscreen-Laptop-%7c-Intel-Core-i3.product.100082432.html

edit - the Metro replacement for Outlook is shit.

I had to do something similar for my wife. Similar model too. She uses Desktop mode exclusively. After configuring a bunch of shit, her Win8 experience is basically the same as Win7 except that the Start menu is a full screen set of tiles instead of the clean list of icons and names she was used to.

[Trippy]

How portable does it need to be? Does she have good eyesight (i.e. can use a small screen with very high DPI)?

Any luck?

Dell Inspiron 15. One issue with those though is they only have 1366 x 768 screens.

[Yegolev]

Recommendations on IP-phone management software to replace the free one from Comcast?  Office of five to seven phones.

[Lantyssa]

What sort of capabilities are you talking about here?  And price?  Are you talking a full PBX?

[Chimpy]

Recommendations on IP-phone management software to replace the free one from Comcast?  Office of five to seven phones.

I have heard a lot of people say they like Asterisk.

[Yegolev]

What sort of capabilities are you talking about here?  And price?  Are you talking a full PBX?

Basic capability but not as dumb-ass bare-bones as the free offering.  Not a PBX since... IP phones?  I don't really know anything about IP phone systems other than they probably just run as a service on a Win server.

One complaint from the wife is that she gets VM on her PC but still has to dial in the phone to delete the message and have the light stop blinking.  Or something.  Also something about not being able to transfer calls.  She wasn't completely coherent in her ranting, also I didn't take notes.  I expect she wants:
1. Email on VM toggle
2. Transfer and conference without any BS
3. Respectable but simple message management

I suppose the best way to think of her office is to imagine an office of five people set in a 1970's TV show.  Barney Miller will yell to Sgt. Fish that someone want to talk to him, and he transfers the call over to Fish's desk.

[Yegolev]

I have heard a lot of people say they like Asterisk.

Apparently this is a framework, which would be great if I was going to deploy a phone system myself.

I just talked to my wife a few minutes ago and she said "Don't look for a phone system, I'm paying Ryan to do that."  So, thanks everyone.

[Chimpy]

She has an office of 5 people? What do they use for email/calendaring?

If they are already semi-invested in MS products, going with the Office365 tier that includes lync might not be a bad choice.

[Yegolev]

As far as I know, they use Office.  I'll remember O360 for when it comes up again.

[Chimpy]

Ironwood would be more knowledgeable about this than me, but when I last priced it out it really seemed like Office365 was such a better deal for the money than paying for stand alone Office licensing for a small business. I could not get the people I was pricing it out for to go for it because, well, they are 'special' 

[Yegolev]

Yes, people like to "own" things.

I read the front page or two of the site and it looks nice and cheap, as well as somewhat fancy.  The thing I immediately wondered about was how to go about setting up Lync with office phones, and decided I'd let Ryan worry about it.   If it was my office, I'd probably do it.

[Chimpy]

I am not sure how office365 handles stand alone IP phones but there are several different varieties of them that work well with the full blown version. I have a USB Polycom CX300 on my desk that works like a normal phone when I am signed into lync on the computer (it is basically a headset shaped like a desk phone)

[Ironwood]

Sorry, I don't regularly check this thread :

Chimpy is right.  I would seriously look at 365 for this.  Owning things is a retarded excuse not to go for it, since with IP phones or software, you don't own shit these days anyway.

With 365 the additional functionality you get on smart and mobile phones as part of the package is also a huge bonus to consider.  Possibly one of the new Mid-Sized business offerings might work for you ?  I don't really recommend the small business flavours because they suck so much ass.

[Hoax]

Had a friend with a 5+ year old desktop gaming machine that has probably been on its last legs for awhile. He was having what I thought were power issues (couldn't run his cd drive and external hd at the same time) so I had him get a solid SeaSonic PSU that he can also carry over to his next build that we'll have to do sometime this year I'd  bet.

So his computer wouldn't post after he had torn it down and hooked everything back up but that was just because he had not plugged in the 4-pin ATX correctly. I fixed that and the computer seemed fine, I ordered the new PSU and told him I'd come hook it up when it showed.

Apparently the machine worked for a couple of days but he stopped getting a display.

I can't get a display and what is even more strange is I'm not getting solid power seemingly to the main usb ports. I get no light from mice except a brief flash when I unplug them but some random wifi dongle does get enough power to flash blinky green lights.

I've:
-tested both the old psu and the new psu.
-tried two different gpu's and tried to use the mobo built in vga and dvi.
-tested 2 monitors

And I can't get any display.

Its gotta be motherboard right? What should I try? I can't think of anything beyond clearing the CMOS battery which is just a thing I remember from way back when nothing I've done before.

The HD spins, all fans work, including on the gpu's.

I'm pretty sure its not PSU since one is brand new.

I'm pretty sure its not Monitor since one is brand new.

[Trippy]

If the motherboard has a BIOS reset button I would try that. Is there an internal speaker hooked up so you can hear POST beeps or does it have a POST code display on the MB?

[Yegolev]

With 365 the additional functionality you get on smart and mobile phones as part of the package is also a huge bonus to consider.  Possibly one of the new Mid-Sized business offerings might work for you ?  I don't really recommend the small business flavours because they suck so much ass.

I'd like more detail due to academic curiosity and from being an unpaid consultant, but I'd need to pay you.  The amount and brand of ass may or may not be tolerable, for the money involved; I can always say "Yeah, but it's only $5 per month."  Also we will need for the old folks to retire; that may seem odd but they are impervious to technology and own the place.  Anyway, I primed the pump today with 360 and was not immediately rejected.

[Ironwood]

365 is neither complicated nor arcane.  I'm happy to provide information and advice.

Frankly, it's just the same way of doing stuff that they'll always have done, so I wouldn't worry them unduly.

[Lantyssa]

I have heard a lot of people say they like Asterisk.

Since I forgot to check back, I just wanted to mention that Asterisk can do quite a bit, but it can be a pain to manage, too.  You need someone who can dedicate enough time to it.  Preferably one with programming experience that doesn't mind learning its scripting language.

Switchvox is a decent low-cost PBX if you have a good number of office phones.  (It's built on Asterisk and has a pretty good GUI, but you can't modify anything the GUI doesn't have a setting for either...)

Most places will probably be better off going with Office 365 or a big PBX like Cisco if they need to do it in-house.

[Yegolev]

This group of misfits has the IT they deserve.

[Signe]

I have tried and tried and tried to register this stoopid new computer and it just won't do it.  I keep getting stoopid registration pop-ups that I can't seem to disable.  Do I REALLY need to register my computer?  Ok, so this isn't really a tech question and I don't really care all that much but I wanted to see Trippy say something.

[Trippy]

What kind of computer and OS is (are?) it?

[Signe]

Wow, you are quick. 

It's an Asus M51AC-B05 and it's running 8.1 which I hate but I made it look like 7.

[Trippy]

ASUS laptops typically come with a lot of bloatware including that product registration program. Go to Control Panel -> Uninstall a Program and see if there's an "ASUS Product Register Program" or similar and uninstall it.

[Signe]

It's not there and, yes, I spent the yesterday removing all the shit they stick on it.  Annoying.

[Trippy]

If you can figure out how to get to the Run command in Windows 8 you can try 'msconfig' (no quotes) and then go to the startup items sections and see what sort of crap is in there.

[Signe]

I pretty much found most stuff that was bothering me and deleted or disabled it but I can't find that registration thingy.  I emailed the company and complained.  I'm sure they're spending all their time trying to find a solution for me which is why they haven't written back. 

[Salamok]

What is it wanting you to register?  Windows? The ASUS laptop? Some other piece of software?

[Phildo]

Its probably the hardware.  Like Trippy said, ASUS loves to have you register their shit.  I had the same issue with my PC until I got fed up and just registered the motherboard and CPU.

In Windows 8, you can hit Windows-C to bring up the charm bar on the right, which has a search function similar to the Windows menu in 7.  In case you want to mess around with msconfig like Trippy also suggested.

[Signe]

Asus wants me to register.  I've disabled nearly everything that says "Asus" so I'll see if it happens again.  I did try and search for it separately with no success and msconfig was where I went first.  I have that app that makes my desktop look like 7 so all that stuff is where I'm used to it being.  I have no idea why Windows decided I needed to have two weird screens to look at before I get to my desktop.  This computer also tricked me into having a password.  I don't want a password but it won't let me not have it now.  Luckily this thing has other features I like or it would be so sent back to the annoying place from whence it came. 

[Miasma]

They might have been sneaky by putting the registration program in a more obvious place, the startup folder.

And I googled windows 8 startup folder in case microsoft screwed with that too, and they did.  Hopefully you can still get there from your windows 7 lookalike program by just going to the start menu but if not here is the horrible way windows 8 makes you do it.

http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/where-is-startup-folder-how-to-edit-startup-items-in-windows-8/

Edit: I dunno if this would help with the password.  It also looks horrible to use due to windows 8.

[Signe]

It hasn't shown up lately.  I don't know exactly what I did but I went to all the places you guys said to and turned off all sorts of things that looked dodgy and I suppose something worked.  I still have the password issue, though.  Anyway, thanks to everyone for helping with this small, yet very frustrating, issue.  I haven't heard back from the company.  Maybe I should let them know they can stop frantically working on my problem.

[SurfD]

Anyone familliar / knowledgable with the inner workings of No-Script for Firefox?

Recent update of No-Script seems to have broken the comments functionality of the WoWhead website.  Literally every other feature works, but I can not manage to bring up the comments section for anything on the site.  I have tried allowing EVERYTHING I can possibly allow through for the site under the No-script options menu, and it still remains unavailable.  Driving me a bit nuts.

edit: Annnddd never mind.  Turns out manually updating it to the current beta build fixed the problem. 

[Selby]

Anyone familliar / knowledgable with the inner workings of No-Script for Firefox?

Yeah, something they did in the latest "auto update" RC broke JavaScript, even for white listed sites.  I went back to the previous stable version and it fixed it.  Was quite a frustrating Saturday morning for me until I figured it out.