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19" LCD Monitors
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XP Home vs. XP Pro
Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows: Windows XP Home Edition vs. Professional Edition, What’s the difference?. This is the first PC I’ve bought that uses XP Home instead of my buying XP Professional from the Microsoft Company Store. I have to say having used it for a while at work, I’m not sure it is that…
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ASUS M5N
We are looking for a new notebook standard at “Ignition”:http://ignitionpartners.com. I’m partial to the build-it-yourself models that ASUS has. I have the older M3N and it is just as good as any other that I’ve seen (Dell and IBM thin and light), but you spec exactly what you want. Here are some reviews; * ASUS…
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iPod Photo
Been using this for about two weeks now. Its my first iPod. A nice device mainly because the screen is so easy to read. In termsof buying one, it is impossible to get much off the list price of $499 right now. Best you can do is to get free shipping and no sales tax…
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Negative Conversion
My Minolta-Konica Dimage 5400 scanner only produces 16 bit scans in negative mode. So, you get an inverted picture. How depressing. Works find in 8-bit mode, but why the heck pay so much for a scanner if you only get 24-bit (3 colors x 8-bits) and not the full 48-bit range. So how to fix…
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Textile 2 does that
Brad Choate: MT-Textile does that???. We use Textile 2.0 on this site. Still learning some of the amazing features. The float left and float right are great, but I still can’t get tables to work as well as with the first Textile. Textile(tm) drew a dark line by default, but this Textile 2 doesn’t seem…
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PC Guide
Well, it is Christmas time, so this might be a good guide for those of you who want to give the gift of computing. As usual, we’ll cover a “high value” system and a “low cost” system. The best value means the best price/performance for a computer but it is more expensive. The “low cost”…
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Software I would Pay For
The list isn’t very long, but since I’m at it (and it is the holiday season), here’s a list of software that I would (and have) paid for over the last year. Amazing utility for little cost: * “DBPowerAMP”:http://www.dbpoweramp.com/. I’ve only been using this for a short while, but it is amazing in that it…
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cbr 192
EncoderRoundup A counterpoint. This reviewer found simple !(@ cbr to beat –preset standard because these fancy vbr schees can get fooled. And can be bigger than cbr. For spoken word, cbr(^kpbs sounded terrible
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LAME presets
mp3dev They’ve been changing the presets in Lame. With 3.96, the names changes from –alt-preset to just –preset. Here is a quick list: h3. –preset medium This preset should provide near transparency to most people on most music. The resulting bitrate should be in the 150-180kbps range, according to music complexity. h3. –preset standard This…
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Getting Hit
!{float:left; margin-right:10px;}http://www.velorution.biz/images/Velorution%20-%20passenger%20airbag.gif! As someone who has been hit, I can say I wish someone would spend the $150 and make cars safer when the monsters hit you đ
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WordPress
WordPress Download. It’s a MovableType world for me and I’m spending more time figuring out BitTorrent and Podcasting, but sometimes I’m tempted to switch to a different blog tool. WordPress is one of those at the top of the list. Maybe the next blog I do I’ll use it.
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17 inch monitor review
X-bit labs – Articles – Closer Look at 17â LCD Monitor Features. Part V (page 19). X-bit did their usual thorough job. The Samsung Syncmaster 710N was expensive but the best looking of the monitors. Of course these days I’d recommend getting a pair of 17 inch monitors or splurging for a single 19 inch…
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nVidia SLI
AnandTech: NVIDIA’s GeForce 6 SLI: Demolishing Performance Barriers. The coolest thing out there. You can now slam two video cards into a single machine. The first board out is the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe (nForce4 SLI) Motherboard. Available for about $180. Its a dream motherboard if you want SLI, otherwise get the nForce3 and a AGP…
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Accurate Rip
“Accurate Rip”:http://accuraterip.com. An interesting idea works with either Exact Audio Copy (my favoriate freeware ripper) or with dBPowerAmp. It collects a database of folks who have ripped and compares your rip to make sure that it is in fact good. Make sense since every CD should be identical. Of course, one could ask why we…
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Random Hangs and Restarts with XP SP2
Windows Support Forums – Restarts in middle of boot-up (WXP-Pro). Proving once again how great the Internet is. Since I’ve installed SP2, I’ve been having all kinds of instability on two of my machines. I get hand the same symptoms where you’ll get a hang or you’ll be booting and get blown back to the…
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Podcast Software
PodcastAlley.com — the place to find podcasts. A good set of reviews on podcasting software. The main ones seem to be “iPodder”:http://ipodder.sourceforge.net and “Doppler Radio”:http://dopplerradio.net. It also looks like there are literally hundreds of Podcasts. Most are nerdy topics like Slashdot. Perhaps the most interesting for those of us who care about music is “DownloadRadio.org”:http://downloadradio.org.…
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RSS and BitTorrent
a little ludwig goes a long way: I need a meta-guide for TV. A great tutorial on how to stick bittorrent and RSS together to find things. Its much better than using a search engine like “isohunt.com”:http://isohunt.com. “Pealco.net”:http://pealco.net/archives/2004/11/08/how_to_never_miss_an_episode_with_bittorrent_and_rss explains how you never have to miss another show with RSS feeds. Basically, you use Azureus and…
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Ignition Blog Roundup
a little ludwig goes a long way: Ignition blog round up 11/23. Great idea by John to just round up our dozen or so blogs. I particularly like the comment about the marketing playbook. It really isn’t marketing, don’t tell anyone that. Its really about strategy but those books don’t have a category on Amazon,…
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Podcasting
Podcasting – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. One of the most amazing trends that literally has taken off in six months is this podcasting idea. That is, there is audio on the web and it automagically downloads to an iPod. I’m stunned by how fast these platform shifts happen now. Literally overnight, judging by wikipedia. Boy…
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Sony Vaio T140P/L
Sony Unveils 3-Pound T-Series Ultra-Portable Notebook @ CHAITGEAR. This is pretty close to the perfect travel notebook. Its not the machine for everything. In fact, right now I think the dream combination is a fast and cheap desktop for office work that you can get for $1,000 or so now plus a light notebook that…
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Turkey
!{float: right; margin-left: 10px;}http://www.wholefoods.com/recipes/images/turkey_2004.jpg!:http://www.wholefoods.com/recipes/turkeyprimer.html Time once again for Rich to take charge and roast the turkey. As usual, here’s a list of recipes that work: “Whole Foods”:http://www.wholefoods.com/recipes/turkeyprimer.html. The local high end but fresh grocer around here. They have a basic recipe that includes brining the turkey. The brine ratio: 2 gallons water 2 cups kosher…
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RockXP
|MG| Free Download – RockXP 3.0. Hey this is a great program. Gives you the Windows XP PID and also the PIDs of other applications in case you lose them. Also recovers a bunch of other passwords as well.
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Get Yahoo Toolbar
Yahoo! Toolbar. YOu have to get this tool for the antispyware. Been working through what’s wrong with Connie’s computer and despite the fact we run IE 6.0, Google Popup Blocker, Zonealarm, Norton Antivirus and Spybot Search and Destroy. On running Lavasoft Ad-aware that I found zillions of spyware programs that weren’t blocked. However, it was…
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XP Hangs and Reboots
Troubleshoot Windows XP Professional. Been getting an amazing number of hangs (e.g., mouse freezes) and random reboots (no blue screen, just blown to the restart). Feels like there is instability in at least two machines at the driver level. As an old NT guy, I know that the only way this happens is if something…
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Reinstalling XP
Sniptools ?| Tips/Tricks | Reinstall Windows XP without product activation. A bunch of my XP machines are getting random crashes. With the NTFS file system, it is easy to corrupt things and one machine is now dead. Things chkdsk fine, but that doesn’t mean the operating system files themselves aren’t corrupt. So what to do.…
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SP2 Required
Symantec Support. Now that Microsoft is going to discontinue support for the “gold” XP, they are forcing everyone to upgrade to SP2. Interesting, this is the hardest core shift I’ve seen lately, but it makes me worried about the machines I have that aren’t SP2 yet. Here’s a note on how Norton works with SP2.…
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dBpowerAMP
dBpowerAMP. OK, after much experimenting, this looks like the best of the bunch for setup and also for quality. First, it doesn’t make a mystery what codecs you need. You can download the Windows Media 9 Codecs (confusing that Windows Media Player is version 10, but but the codecs are 9). The Microsoft site is…
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WMA Conversion
WMA to MP3 converter, WMA MP3 converter, MP3 organizer, MP3 tagger, CD burner. I tried CDEX to convert from WMA to MP3, but it complains incessantly about a DLL missing even though I downloaded it. Here is a whole site devote to WMA to MP3 etc. These are mainly shareware tools
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WMA fiiles
Re: WMA to MP3 Transcoding Software? – MP3. Ages ago, I ripped a few CDs in WMA format, but MP3 is the standard. Here’s a quick way to transcode so that in my core libraries I have complete portability. Note, I also have songs in FLAC for archiving (it is lossless) and in HE AAC…