Quick [tech] Questions Thread

[apocrypha]

I have a feeling I've asked this before, I hope I haven't. Are there any advantages to having a headset over headphones + seperate mic? Surround sound?

The only ones I can think of are that it's only 1 thing to plug in, and the mic stays near your mouth easily. Everyone I know who has a separate mic is a nightmare on voice comms because of all the background noise you pick up because their mic is never, ever near enough to their mouth.

[Viin]

Also, with a headset, you can pipe your game sound to the desktop speakers and just have voice comm in your ears. You can do this with headphones and a mic, but the mic will more likely pickup the noise from your desktop speakers.

[Rendakor]

I just upgraded from Firefox 3.6 (or something, something old) to the latest version (10?) and I've noticed that the fonts on certain websites are...subtly different. Bold things in particular look, well, odd. They still look bold, but they don't look the way they looked 10 minutes ago and it bothers me. Anyone have any idea what changed and how I can change it back? 4chan is the most strikingly different looking, but my Yahoo mail looks funky also.

Edit: Nevermind, finally found it via google.

[SnakeCharmer]

Using autohotkey, can you create an onscreen message via overlay, and not a pop up box?  Or is there another solution?

[Furiously]

Ok.... Google has failed me on this one...

I'm looking for a distributed macro program to have a couple people click the start fight button at the same time in World of Tanks.
"Three....Two....One....Click" fails a bit too often.

[apocrypha]

Furi, can't you form a platoon and join a fight together?

My question: wanting to upgrade an old laptop to make it a bit more usable. It's about 8 years old, running XP, and only has 512Mb RAM. It's got 2 x 256Mb sticks in it, do we need to replace those with 2 sticks or can we just put a single 1Gb stick in and leave one slot empty?

[Sky]

Depends on what you mean by usable. That's relatively ancient, and laptops don't age well.

My first stop would be the crucial.com configurator, see what the max for your system is. You can probably just put one stick in it, but it's probably dual channel memory so you'd get better performance out of two matched sticks...and you'd need every ounce of performance out of that dinosaur.

My advice: put the money you'd spend on RAM in a jar and save for a new laptop. The worst modern laptop is probably better than an 8 year old one.

[apocrypha]

Cheers Sky, will have a look at the configurator.

Would much rather get a new one, even a crappy one, but we just don't have the money for that right now, and if we can make it less painful to use for £20 then that'd do us.

[Furiously]

Furi, can't you form a platoon and join a fight together?

Can but if you want to get like 6-8 people in the same match you need both platoons to hit yes at the same time to get into the que together.

[Cyrrex]

Cheers Sky, will have a look at the configurator.

Would much rather get a new one, even a crappy one, but we just don't have the money for that right now, and if we can make it less painful to use for £20 then that'd do us.

If the laptop is so old that it only has 512mb RAM in it...I cannot imagine you will get any noticeable difference in anything worthwhile.  What are you trying to do with it?  Seems to me that a better way to make it less painful would be to use that 20 quid for some hash or something.

[apocrypha]

Lol 

Situation is that we're having to relocate because my GFs job is moving to the other side of the UK, so we're putting the house on the market, so we're making the bedrooms actually look like bedrooms again. To that end we've taken the desk which had my GFs PC on it out of the room it was in, and put her (aging) PC in a box in the loft. So she just wants a way to surf the net, run Office and log onto her work PC via Citrix sometimes. This crappy old laptop is all we have that she can do that on.

Given that she is on a mediocre salary and I am effectively unemployed we're having to spend every last penny on getting the urgent things done on the house that need doing. So we *really* can't afford a replacement laptop atm without having to borrow some money, which we'd rather not do.

At the moment browsing is painfully slow. I've stripped down the XP install as much as I can, disabled a lot of superfluous services, killed as many applications as I can, and it's still awful. I'm even wondering if putting Ubuntu on it would be an improvement, although I think <1Gb RAM will make even that a bit chuggy :/

[Minvaren]

Without knowing more about your specific model, the HD is generally the biggest bottleneck on laptops.  Anything you can do to prevent the PC from going to it (more ram, uninstall cruft), or allow it to access it faster (defrag, then 7200rpm model or SSD) will probably be your biggest bang for the buck.

Also, if it's an older Centrino, updating the wireless drivers can help a bit with the surfing speed.

[Salamok]

If the laptop is so old that it only has 512mb RAM in it...

I can't imagine finding memory for that for $20, once RAM falls out of production the hoarders tend to gobble up the remaining supply and jack up the prices.  I wouldn't be surprised at all if it was well above $100 to push it to 2gb at this point the used PC market starts looking attractive and you aren't even that far off from a new netbook or a low end tablet.

[apocrypha]

It's running a Celeron 1.5GHz processor, 512Mb RAM, 40Gb 4200RPM HDD.

I couldn't get the wireless to work at all so in the end I just disabled the card in the BIOS and wired it up, so network speed isn't an issue.

I've already found RAM for it on Amazon for £20 for 1Gb sticks, double checked it's the right stuff too, 200-pin DDR PC2700 CL2.5.

Gateway no longer have *any* details at all for this laptop on their site, and no tool I can find for checking what RAM etc it can take. We've been looking at a range of options for new laptops and tablets and none of them seem to be what we need. Netbooks all seem to have tiny screens and are £100 and up. Tablets are just stupidly overpriced unless you get a really shit one... and we don't want to swap one kind of shit for another kind of shit. And new laptops that'd be worth the upgrade are in the £400+ bracket, which we just can't afford.

So I think we're just gonna leave it for now. Majority opinion here seems to be that going from 512Mb to 1Gb won't make that much difference, and there's no sense spending even £20 if we can help it right now! Thanks for the opinions everyone, maybe we'll be able to replace it if I manage to earn some money (ANY fucking money) this year. I hate recessions!

[Sky]

Gateway no longer have *any* details at all for this laptop on their site, and no tool I can find for checking what RAM etc it can take.

Crucial.com didn't come through? I could look up memory for the Dell laptop I had in 2000.

[apocrypha]

Yep, it did, thanks for that suggestion Sky. I had to download their scanner tool but that was what enabled me to confirm that I had found the right stuff on Amazon.

[Sheepherder]

Seems okay but not great. You'll want a colorimeter to adjust the poor factory default color settings. Relatively high input lag may be a concern if you are playing twitchy games on it.

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/content/benq_ew2420.htm
http://wecravegamestoo.com/forums/gadgetry-electronics-discussion/5382-benq-ew2420-mva-3-000-1-ansi-contrast-led-monitor-review.html

Update in case anyone else is looking for a cheap monitor: bought this when it was offered at $190 + free shipping.  No complaints at that price: it's huge and cheap and doesn't get crawling pixels or flicker from FRC/dithering.

[Hawkbit]

As much as I wanted to get us down to one TV in the house, we're all fighting over it.  How would this be for a 95% console gaming TV?  It appears to have Component Composite for the Wii and one HDMI for the PS3, I can't imagine I'd need much else.

Samsung P2770HD-27inch

Any better in that price/size range?  I'm limited by size a bit, but could maybe do a 32".  Don't want to go much over $300 if I can help it.

[Trippy]

As much as I wanted to get us down to one TV in the house, we're all fighting over it.  How would this be for a 95% console gaming TV?  It appears to have Component Composite for the Wii and one HDMI for the PS3, I can't imagine I'd need much else.

Samsung P2770HD-27inch

Any better in that price/size range?  I'm limited by size a bit, but could maybe do a 32".  Don't want to go much over $300 if I can help it.

Is this a desktop monitor or are you going to be using it sitting on a couch?

[Hawkbit]

Mostly for a desktop.  Close, straight ahead viewing and I won't hook a PC to it.  I've read that it does PC text somewhat poorly. 

Really, it's just so I can use my consoles while the wife watches TV. 

[Sky]

Really, it's just so I can use my consoles the wife can watch tv while the wife watches TV I'm using my consoles.  

[Trippy]

Mostly for a desktop.  Close, straight ahead viewing and I won't hook a PC to it.  I've read that it does PC text somewhat poorly. 

Really, it's just so I can use my consoles while the wife watches TV. 

I would prefer something with more HDMI inputs but I'm not sure there's anything in that size range with more than one of those.

[Sky]

Maybe if you had an hdmi switching receiver, one hdmi wouldn't be so bad.

[Salamok]

No TV tuner and might be slightly risky, but this is a pretty tempting 27":
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l2736&_nkw=catleap

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1675393

Stand is supposed to be shitty and there really is kind of no way to return it if there are issues, but $370 for a 27" IPS.

[Cyrrex]

No TV tuner and might be slightly risky, but this is a pretty tempting 27":
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l2736&_nkw=catleap

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1675393

Stand is supposed to be shitty and there really is kind of no way to return it if there are issues, but $370 for a 27" IPS.

See, I was sitting here all nice and comfortable, thinking to myself that I didn't need any more consumer electronics.  FUCK YOU for proving me wrong.

Damn I want that.  Damn.

I should know this, but dual link DVI?  What's that for?

[Trippy]

Regular DVI only supports up to 1920 x 1200. Higher resolutions like 2560 x 1600 (e.g. 30" 16:10 monitors) or 2560 x 1440 (27" 16:9 monitors) require a dual-link DVI interface.

[Cyrrex]

Ah, roger.  So you connect both of your dvi slots to it to get the extra resolution goodness.  I didn't know DVI had that limitation.  I am starting to get very curious as to what an extra 350 lines of resolution gets you.

[Sheepherder]

No, it's one plug, there's just more pins.

[Sky]

There was a similar limitation to the early HDMI stuff, without the ability to use dual-link.

[apocrypha]

Anyone knowledgable about SSDs?

I've just got a Crucial M4 64Gb one and installed Win7 on it. Someone then linked me an optimisation guide (here) that says to enable AHCI mode.

So I rebooted, checked the BIOS and the SATA is set to IDE. If I set it to AHCI then the system won't boot, as suspected. Does this mean I need to reinstall win7?

[Trippy]

Anyone knowledgable about SSDs?

I've just got a Crucial M4 64Gb one and installed Win7 on it. Someone then linked me an optimisation guide (here) that says to enable AHCI mode.

So I rebooted, checked the BIOS and the SATA is set to IDE. If I set it to AHCI then the system won't boot, as suspected. Does this mean I need to reinstall win7?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

[apocrypha]

You are a god among men. Thankyou 

[Strazos]

Not sure how much of a tech question this is, but...

Just received my el-cheapo HT system (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00627UOK6). I mostly bought it so that I could actually hear the TV over our loud AC units. However, I did not notice a way to pipe the 360 through it, so I'm guessing I need a receiver to pump all inputs through, correct?

If so, any suggestions for an OK entry-level receiver?

[Trippy]

It looks like that system has an optical audio input. If you so you could connect the Xbox 360 to that.

[01101010]

It looks like that system has an optical audio input. If you so you could connect the Xbox 360 to that.

Damn you Trippy... beat me to it by seconds.