Recent content by White Widow

In case anyone else wants to go down this route: I ended up using Win8 Pro to run a home file server (and Plex Media Server) with a bunch of disks in a Storage Spaces array. I'm also running the pfSense firewall in an Oracle VirtualBox environment. I setup pfSesne to operate as an OpenVPN...

UPDATE: All I had to do was "release" the IP in the Verizon router and then the NIC picked it up just fine.

Interesting...I've never had to login to the broadband. More importantly, I looked through the entire Actiontec set of menus and the active "Broadband Connection" is listed as "Ethernet". If I view the settings for "WAN/PPPOE", the status is "disabled". My understanding is that Verizon...

I have Verison "FIOS" VDSL service, and have been using it in the default configuration with the DSL modem (D-Link DSL-6300V-I) connected to the Verizon/Actiontec wifi router. It's been working as expected for over a year. I recently decided to experiment with PfSense and built a small...

Thanks - I wasn't really familiar with pfsense, and running that in a virtual machine seems like the perfect solution. I am definitely going to play around with that and see how it works.

I currently have a small Win8 Pro box serving as a file storage and plex media server for my home network. I have a paid VPN account Private Internet Access) that I routinely use on one of my machines, but I would like to be able to have all my internet traffic routed over the VPN. Is there a...

Thanks for the input - as much as the Q6600 has bee good to me, I think it's time to retire it. I really don't want to wait for Broadwell, especially since I'm not sure the performance delta will justify the price premium when it comes to gaming.

I'm currently running with the following: Q6600 CPU OC'd to 3.2GHz Radeon 6970 2GB 8GB RAM 240GB SSD Gaming is about the only hardware-intensive activity I do with this system, and now that I have some extra $$$, I'd like to upgrade. My inclination is to focus on the CPU - get...

Turns out it wasn't a settings or firewall issue. I went into the add-ins menu and ultimately found that Outlook had auto-disabled some DLL. When I re-enabled it and restarted Outlook, I was able to send messages again. I have no idea why that happened, but I'm back in business now. Best, A

I have Outlook 2013 and for some reason I'm having issues sending outgoing emails. I've configured Outlook per the standard GMail SMTP settings and am able to successful send that "test message" using either port 587 with TLS or 465 with SSL. However, when I create and "send" a regular...

Normally I'd enjoy digging around for several hours to do laptop research, but I'm buried with work and am hoping to leverage the collective wisdom of the Anandtech Forums. I'm looking to upgrade my 4 year old laptop, and would greatly appreciate thoughts and suggestions. These are the...

The screen just cracked on my 4-year-old Acer (yeah, I guess so,me Acer's do las a while) and I'm more than ready for something new. This is *not* a gaming system. All I really want is: - under 1" thick - USB 3.0 - backlit keyboard (preferably chicklet style) - solid battery life I...

Thanks, this is very much what I'm looking for. I've had some reliability issues with Acer in the past (one great notebook, one lemon) so I'd rather go with the MSI. Can you recommend a place to buy it from? A quick search only led me to a couple online retailers - TheNerds and Beach Audio...

I think the 14z only comes with integrated graphics which doesn't quite meet the mark for me. I need something with a dedicated video configuration. Otherwise it's a great choice.

I'm looking for a 13.3" or 14" notebook with the following critical characteristics: - thin and light - good battery life - USB 3.0 - decent dedicated video for light gaming at native resolution - under $1,000 if possible Since I won't be doing a lot of serious computing on this, I don't...