Search results

  1. M

    Folder structure for personal data

    What do you think is the best place to keep your data, at home? I keep photos + MP3s on a network share. I keep bigger programming projects in source control, and smaller ones in My Documents. I have some spreadsheets which are ongoing and need to be regularly updated, and I have others...
  2. M

    How come the iPad is still more popular than the Surface?

    I use an iPad 4, it weighs 660g. I have never felt that it is heavy. The Surface Pro 3 is 800g, which is heavier, but not absurd.
  3. M

    Want to ditch my iPad for a Windows device

    No smaller than the big ipad, and about the price of an ipad.
  4. M

    Want to ditch my iPad for a Windows device

    I have had an ipad for about two years now. I use it every day for web browsing. But I'm kinda sick of being cramped by Apple's DRM and other BS. So I want to try Windows. Real Windows that I can run software on. Is there something that would give me say: (a) 8 hours web browsing...
  5. M

    APU Wars - Ongoing APU Review by AtenRa

    The A8-7600 is a very nice chip. It's the sweet spot for the current gen of AMD APUs, in that A6, A4 are dual core, and there's a nice upgrade over the previous A8s in terms of graphics hardware. I am not sure how well it overclocks. But the A10-5600K is interesting also, due to pricing.
  6. M

    Is there any reason to use FX CPUs right now?

    Basically, for 99% of people, no. An FX costs within $10 of an i3, which is a superior choice for home purposes. The X4 is a little cheaper, but even so, $30 in a first world country is nothing. (And bear in mind that the most popular PCs sold have a Celeron low-power J1800, so even an X4 is...
  7. M

    Crackling in speakers

    I have a Soundblaster Xtreme Musics. I've had both for 6 years or more. I'm running Win 8.1 I'm finding that there is a crackling/distortion in the audio when audio plays (silence when no audio), which does not occur immediately, but maybe sometime after the system is booted (rebooting fixes...
  8. M

    No dual core love in 2015

    Q6600 came out in 2007. By 2010 it was already the past.
  9. M

    No dual core love in 2015

    This is correct. Both Xbone and PS4 are AMD CPUs with many cores, so that's what games are being built for. IPC might be better on Intel, but things are only going to get worse for those with only two cores, given that the AMD consoles will be driving PC development as well. Here in the UK...
  10. M

    Gaming TV PCs

    My son is 12 going on 13. He doesn't play strategy games, but maybe that's because he's never tried. I don't think a mouse and keyboard would be too comfortable on the sofa. I guess TV gaming tends to make games more casual, and less time-consuming in one session. So that's probably a good thing.
  11. M

    Gaming TV PCs

    Well I don't necessarily want to. I was more wondering how well it works with the typical PC gaming line-up. Obviously console games are designed to work at 10 feet, I'm not sure how that plays with PC games. I was thinking of building a mini-itx gaming PC for my son (ahem), rather than...
  12. M

    Gaming TV PCs

    I owned an Xbox (the original one), Nintendo 64, and a Wii. But I'm thinking of building a GTX 750/750 TI gaming PC to go in the living room. In many ways it makes sense in that there's a 42" Panasonic 3D TV, and a nice set of 5.1 hi-fi speakers + 5.1 AV receiver. OTOH, I'm not sure on...
  13. M

    SSD upgrade

    Thanks for the advice, I think I have learned my lesson on the 80GB SSD and will go for a 512GB. The MX100 from Crucial is £150 for 512GB. The Samsung 840 Evo is £160 for 500GB. Kingston V300 480GB £156 Just get the MX100? And I guess I need to reinstall Windows, because I have software...
  14. M

    SSD upgrade

    My server does nightly backups. Is an SSD much faster as a system drive than a hybrid drive?
  15. M

    SSD upgrade

    I have a Intel X25-M 80GB SSD. And a 500GB hard drive, which has SMART fail. It's just a productivity PC - no gaming. I also have a server with several TB of space. I would like to ditch the undersized SSD, and go for a larger drive. I'm not sure if it should be SSD or hybrid drive...
  16. M

    Unstable router

    Any tips for debugging? My router is crashing when streaming video (iplayer) over wifi. It's a Buffalo wzr-ag300nh. I have to power cycle for it to work again. I am running the latest (v1.49) firmware.
  17. M

    Moving spanned volume

    So apparently the problem is that the disk is 4TB, and the maximum size for a simple volume is 2TB. So I can't create any simple volume there at all. If I shrink the disk to 3TB I can.
  18. M

    Moving spanned volume

    Hmm, I ran gparted, but it seem very wrong. It says I have a 1.64 TiB partition, and 2 TiB of free space on /dev/sdb, which is obviously wrong, as it should be 1TB and 3TB free. It doesn't seem to know what a dynamic disk/spanned volume is. I didn't let it make any changes.
  19. M

    Moving spanned volume

    I have a spanned volume on my Windows Home Server. Originally it was a 1 TB, 1TB, and 4TB drive. It runs under Vmware, so these are virtual disks. I moved the first 1TB to a 4TB drive and then resized the virtual disk to 4TB. Now I have a 3TB space on the end of that virtual drive...
  20. M

    RAM upgrade for my ESXi server

    Is it ok to just buy any random RAM? Or should I stick with the compatibility list? Can I mix RAM e.g., buy one 16GB and keep the other five 2GB?
  21. M

    RAM upgrade for my ESXi server

    I have a server running ESXi (free edition). It has 2*Xeon E5620 CPUs and an Asus Z8NA-D6 motherboard running Windows XP clients + 1 * Windows server. Currently I have 6 * 2GB RAM Hynix HMT125R7AFP4C-G7TB RAM (DDR3-1066) I want more RAM, and I don't want to spend more money than...
  22. M

    Portable audio/video solution, ipad, rasp pi, etc.

    Well I just picked up a Seagate Wireless Plus (1TB) for £70 on ebay. So that's done. Now I just need to figure out if I bring the Raspberry Pi or just get hold of a lightning-to-hdmi adapater. Looks like the adapters cost as much as a Pi though....
  23. M

    Portable audio/video solution, ipad, rasp pi, etc.

    Yeah my ipad is already jailbroken. You connect the external hard drive to the ipad using the camera connection kit I take it? (Wired.) I have used XBMC for almost 10 years now, I didn't realise the ipad had its native client though, will take a look.
  24. M

    Portable audio/video solution, ipad, rasp pi, etc.

    Thanks. I bought the JBL Charge speakers, they are kind of overpriced (£90), but I figured I can probably sell them afterwards for something if I don't want to keep them. So that's fairly simple. My movies are flv, mkv, mp4 and avi. I am not going to be doing any recoding or anything like...
  25. M

    Portable audio/video solution, ipad, rasp pi, etc.

    We are going to rural Asia for a couple of months next week. I own the following portable gadgets: Nokia Lumia 800 (16GB storage of which around 10GB available, no SD slot) Apple Ipad 4 (16GB storage, with less than 1GB available, wifi only) Nokia Lumia 920 (32GB storage of which 24GB...
  26. M

    Setting my ADSL router up to bridge

    I have a one-port ADSL modem, running on Routertech firmware. I have it running in bridged mode, because I have a separate four-port wireless router, which has four devices connected over ethernet, as well as wireless clients also, so therefore the wireless router, as I understand it...
  27. M

    Routing problems

    Here is my config
  28. M

    Routing problems

    No I don't, but I couldn't get the Buffalo router to see the routertech modem/router without setting up the Routertech as a DHCP server.
  29. M

    Routing problems

    I have a network configured thus: ADSL modem (routertech) on 192.168.1.1 with dhcp server Wireless router (Buffalo) on 192.168.2.1 connected to the ADSL modem. Router is 192.168.1.2 (via DHCP) I have numerous devices connected to the 192.168.2.1 gateway, PCs, phones, an internet radio...
  30. M

    Network config help

    I have two 4-port routers. One is gigabit + 802.11n, the other is 100mbit without wireless. Both have their own internet connection. I also have an 802.11n bridge, which is connected to the 100mbit router. My config gigabit - 192.168.2.1 100mbit - 192.168.2.6 My PC is physically...
  31. M

    dual xeon esxi server specs?

    Ok I am nearly ready with my order: 2 x Intel BXSTS100C HSF = £43 Antec Three Hundred = £40 Antec BP550Plus £50 Lite-on SATA DVD drive £14 2 * Xeon 5620 CPU £539 1 * Samsung HD103UJ 1TB drive, but I will probably add a second depending on how performance is...
  32. M

    dual xeon esxi server specs?

    RAID is for availability not data integrity, something which isn't too big a deal to me. Files are only my MP3s and stuff.
  33. M

    dual xeon esxi server specs?

    I only just bought them... I plan to use them for CPU-intensive simultaneous processing. I'm not bothered about the cost so much as not wanting to spend money on things that are useless to me like remote monitoring and dual PSUs.
  34. M

    dual xeon esxi server specs?

    Regarding the file server I was thinking like 4 * 250GB for the VMs and 1 * 1TB for the file server. I assume mixed drives is no problem... I actually have a pair of Samsung HD103UJ terabyte drives in my desktop at the moment (running Win2008), which I'm going to rebuild as a Win7 machine...
  35. M

    dual xeon esxi server specs?

    I wasn't really planning on RAID. I don't have high availability requirements. I figure a backup solution would be a better investment... I was just looking through the Asus boards, the Z8NA-D6(C) looks pretty good - SSI-EB cases/power are going to cost $$$, right? The other option is eATX...
  36. M

    dual xeon esxi server specs?

    Any recommendations? I own two Xeon E5620s, I need the rest of the hardware - case, RAM, nic, motherboard, hard drives/controller, PSU. I'm looking for low-cost components generally. I would like to put two WinXP VMs on each drive, so low-cost storage would be nice. Plus a file server. Each...
  37. M

    Need a basic card

    My Sapphire Radeon X1650PRO (512MB DDR2, PCI-E, Dual DVI, VIVO ) is dead, and I need a replacement. Any suggestions? No gaming. Just needs to work in Windows 7. Fanless would be preferable.
  38. M

    Ati2vexx reboots

    This has caused my PC to reboot a couple of times lately. Is there any log somewhere as to what's wrong? I have an X1650 pro, and the fan is making an annoying buzzing noise.
  39. M

    LCD repair

    yeah the $70 screens are a nice price, but I'm inept at repair, so I'd probably break it. I guess it's time for a new laptop.
  40. M

    LCD repair

    I have a three year old Sony Vaio SZ2VP laptop (120GB, 13.3" screen, carbon fibre case, 1.6kg weight, Core Duo 2.2 GHz, 2GB RAM). Cost me £1800 Yesterday it was worth £400. Today, it has a hairline crack 2/3 of the way down the inside of the screen, about 5% of the screen area (60% of the...