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    HD6670, HD4470 and DX11

    Edit: title fail - I meant HD4770. Due to some dealings with a friend I have the option of choosing one of the two cards in the title as a freebie for my backup gaming box. I've googled, but I haven't come to a definite conclusion over which is faster. Both have 1GB of RAM, and the 6670 has...
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    Replacement MXM card for an Acer 5920G

    I've been given a 5920G laptop for repair. Boots and runs the system, but there's no video output whatsoever, even on the external VGA. When I diagnosed the fault to its MXM card (something far from unheard of, apparently), the owner gave up, bought a new laptop, and I got the half-dead Acer as...
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    Atom N270: difference in performance where no difference should exist

    I have an EeePC 1005HA. I also just received a freebie EeePC 901, which has the very same CPU - Atom N270. So why is it that all hardinfo benchmarks show the Atom in the 901 to be considerably faster? Internet browsing is affected too, the 901 loads websites noticeably faster - as it should be...
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    Where to buy lots of tiny thumbdrives

    I'd like to add a bunch of dead drops to my city. Buying a bunch of thumbdrives at the store or on eBay would exceed the expense I can justify for what is essentially an exercise in idle amusement, so I'd like to find some place that sells old thumbdrives for the tiny value they actually have...
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    Add side scrolling to non-supporting touchpad

    I've reinstalled Windows XP on a Toshiba NB200 netbook. The touchpad is an old Synaptics that doesn't, apparently, support side scrolling - strange as it might sound, the Synaptics driver (which I installed the latest version of) doesn't let me enable it in any way. Is there a third-party...
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    Defeating TinEye and Google Image Search

    On another forum, I've been playing in a "guess the videogame" thread, where people post a screenshot and everyone has to guess what game it is. Yeah, it does tend to devolve in retrogaming nostalgia - and it's a good thing. Problem is, with Tineye and ImageSearch, one just has to copypaste the...
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    Reusing HDs with bad sectors (I know, I know, this is not the usual

    Typically, when a HD starts developing bad sectors, it means that it'll die soon and you should toss it. It's possible to low-level scan it with the manufacturer's software and mark the bad sectors so you can continue using it for a while, but eventually more bad sectors will develop and you'll...
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    Software that draws always-on-top black frame

    I've been trying to play Deus Ex Human Revolution in windowed mode, which it doesn't natively support. I need this because my HD4770 can't run it at my 27" LCD's 1920x1080 resolution at decent detail and frame rate, but lowering resolution in fullscren causes ugliness aplenty. I'm going to buy a...
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    Computer and several consoles to one screen

    I'm in the market for a new screen (24"), but the computer is not all I want to hook up to it - I've been given for free two old consoles, a gamecube and a ps2, and I'd like to connect them to the screen as well. I also want the possibility to connect more modern consoles, in the event someone...
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    Disable Aero vs Disable theme service altogether

    I've just installed Win7 x86 on a netbook. Said netbook (Acer Aspire one A0571h) has one of those awful, awful 1.3GHz Z520 Atoms that even ordinary N270 Atoms laugh at, and a similarly awful GMA500 video adapter that I've just discovered is a *shudder* PowerVR product. Obviously, it's...
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    GSM dongle in GSM-less tablet = tabphone?

    Step 1: buy cheap 7" Android tablet Step 2: buy cheap bluetooth headset Step 3: buy cheap GSM dongle Step 4: ??? Step 5: enjoy a relatively cheap mobile phone with a proper multitasking OS that doesn't frustrate me with a tiny screen like, oh, every other bloody phone I've ever tried. Space is...
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    Kindle now, or wait for something cheaper

    I've been lusting after e-ink readers for a while now, and we're finally at the point where good ones can be bought for €150 (yes, yes, I know you US people have them much cheaper, but I'm in Italy and we always pay more for electronics - a sad but unavoidable fact). Case in point: a Kindle...
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    27" TN screens / Asus VE278Q

    I love huge screens. Sadly, I can't afford a 30" IPS, so I'm looking at buying a 27" TN in the 350 euro range. I've read up a bit, and I see that TN panels have issues with horizontal angle. Now, considering how big a 27" is, this worries me - would I notice weirdness at the sides of the monitor...
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    Free wifi hotspots - what's the point of scanner software?

    I'm trying to find free hotspots in my area with the help of a repurposed satellite dish. I read up before I start doing that, and I'm supposed to use Kismet or SWScanner, or another such program that'll tell me what networks are available at any given moment (Windows users would know the same...
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    Weird question: audio cassettes

    I remember when the Commodore 64 could fit about a megabyte of data per side on a 30-minute cassette. Thinking about this got me wondering: using modern data compression and translation methods, would it not be possible to store significantly more data on normal audio cassettes? This would be...
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    Bike engine dying on me

    I have a three-and-a-half year old Kawasaki ER-6F, aka Ninja 650R to you americans. It's always been a bit sensitive about operating temperature - if I started riding it before the engine had come off the automatic choke, it had a tendency to die after acceleration and when stopping at red...
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    Kingston SSDNow V SSD

    I'm thinking of buying a SSD for my netbook - not because I need superfast performance, but because I dislike having moving mechanical parts in an ultraportable machine that gets tossed around, used in vibration-rich environments and possibly dropped (though I try to avoid the last). I tried...