Random Technology Questions

[Finn 7 five 11]

Why is DDR ram so expensive? 2GB of some unbranded DDR costs $43 whereas 8GB of dual channel GSkill DDR3 ram costs $46 on Newegg, just wondering.

 

 

While I'm here, whats a good FTP like file hosting service that's free? Mostly for stuff like schoolwork, forum sigs, maybe some tunes or other stuff etc.

DDR ram is much less popular, which means that more money is spent on less production and less money is made for the company unless they jack the prices.

[yoječ]

(Does PCIE 2.0 vs 2.1 make a difference?)

No, it doesn't. Even PCIe 1.0 doesn't make that much difference. If the card has PCIe 16x connector (it does), then it'll fit.

 

HD6770 is a bit better than 8800GTX.

[Finn 7 five 11]

Important Question

 

I plan to buy a new laptop tomorrow, i was going to go for a very gaming suitable laptop.

But i decided against it, i save 400 bucks on a laptop that only difference is there is 1gb less graphics (same card though) and no blu-ray.

 

Anyway it all looked quite good until i saw this.

 

Wireless Integrated 10/100BASE-T Ethernet LAN; 802.11b/g/n WLAN

 

I noticed it is only 10/100 as opposed to Integrated 10/100/1000.

 

Alright what does this mean? What is the difference?

Will 10/100 be fine if i am mostly browsing the net?

Edited September 23, 2011 by finn4life

[sivispacem]

 

Important Question

 

I plan to buy a new laptop tomorrow, i was going to go for a very gaming suitable laptop.

But i decided against it, i save 400 bucks on a laptop that only difference is there is 1gb less graphics (same card though) and no blu-ray.

 

Anyway it all looked quite good until i saw this.

 

Wireless  Integrated 10/100BASE-T Ethernet LAN; 802.11b/g/n WLAN

 

I noticed it is only 10/100 as opposed to Integrated 10/100/1000.

 

Alright what does this mean? What is the difference?

In practical terms, very little as most wireless routers run on the 100MBit/s bandwidth and therefore don't use the 1000 setting anyway. Large businesses such as architecture firms who shift a lot of large files and complex data from individual machines to the main server or vice versa might use 1000MBit/s routers, but I don't think many home-use routers come with it.

Edited September 23, 2011 by sivispacem

[Punk-in-Drublic]

@Wreckless Jake

Normally for the USA shows are around 20 episodes per season.

You're not likely to get a full season of what is normally a 1-hour show onto a single 4.7GB DVD, that is without losing a lot of quality. Even a dual-layer DVD it would be hard to do without losing quality.

This if you want it to be like a normal DVD movie disc might be. If you just want to burn it as data then you could do it if they are small enough or just a few episodes per season.

 

http://www.dvdflick.net/ is a nice simple to use program. The problem is that's so simple that you can't get a whole lot of options either. You can create chapters based on each video or per minute or just let it create X-number of chapters, but you can't create chapters where you really want them to be within each video. You can do menus but you're limited to what they have to offer, not a whole lot of customizing there.

Don't get me wrong, it's great in a pinch for a simple, fast, dirty DVD creator but if you want something you can really customize with then this ain't it.

It's a sitcom so most of the episodes are about 20-23 minuites long. Most seasons are about 3-4 GB each, but one is slightly more than 4.7GB so i'm going to try and get hold of some of them 5.0GB DVD's.

 

I used to use DVD flick, I might aswell just use it again on my new computer. Just thought maybe the built in one would do the job.

[Andrew]

Bit of a random question here, I've got an old machine that I built a while ago and It's currently running Windows Home Server v1, run's quite nicely for what I want. However I'm looking at virtualising this, so that I can add more 'machines' to it without disturbing anything. I like to play around with different stuff.

 

I plan to run vmware vsphere hypervisor which they are offering for free. Would this specification be able to cope with running probably at most 2 - 3 virtual machines at once?

 

Intel Core2Duo E6750 (supports vt-x)

3 GB Memory.

2 x 500GB HDD

 

I do plan to upgrade the memory at some point as well.

[Wolf68k]

@SmellyJelly

If it's an eVGA card then they still have your info on file and if it's one of their lifetime warranty cards then you should be ok.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to stop you from getting a new card, just making sure you looked at all your options.

 

 

@finn4life

The wording on that is confusing. It starts off talking about wireless then mentions ethernet and mentions the speed.

Usually when wifi is mention in a product description it doesn't mention the speeds. However when they mention the wired connection they do mention the speed.

As for why it's 10/100 and not 10/100/1000, don't worry about it. 100 is more than enough for most people. Unless you live some place that you can get 100+ downloads from your ISP, in which case I HATE YOU. Since that's rare, I still like.

Gigabit network is mostly found in offices and homes of people that think they need to transfer a movie from one computer in the house to another in 5secs rather than 5 minutes (ok not really that fast but you get the idea).

 

 

@Wreckless Jake

The funny thing about DVDs is kind of the same thing a CDR odd thing is. With a CDR that's 700MB can also hold 80mins of play back. I've had movies that I've downloaded back in the day that were 750-800MB yet was only 1 hour long. So obviously if I burned it as the movie file itself it would have to be split, but if I burn it as a VCD or SVCD it'll fit easily. Where that would get even more bizarre is that the file was already an MPEG1 and VCD compliant, pointing being that it wasn't transcoded to make it smaller before hand at most it was renamed from .mpg to .dat and when I extract it from the VCD that was created it was 750-800MB again.

Sorry to rant about that....now I feel like Slamman...pardon me while I go shoot myself

 

 

....aaaand I'm back

DVD4.7 (single layer) are limited to around 2 hours of video. Dual-layer obviously ups that to 4 hours. This is why when you get a show like CSI on DVD there is 4 shows per disc.

 

Just something to keep in mind when you go to try cram a full season of even a half hour show onto a single disc.

 

Also keep in mind that most modern DVD and Bluray players can play video files directly without them needing to be converted to a DVD movie style disc.

[KilnerLUFC]

First make sure the problem is with the wifi and not the router or modem itself. Try a wired connection to the router. If that has problems as well then try going directly to the modem. If they are one in the same then never mind that last part.

Next I would try either another wifi device; laptop or mobile device with wifi and see what they get.

In the end if it's all still failing no matter what else you try then call your ISP. It could be that the modem/router took a power spike when the power came back on.

It's not possible for me to plug directly into the modem due to the router being downstairs. Was planning on moving it downstairs the other day to check it out, but thought it would be pointless if it's just Virgin capping my speed. I'm on the 5th day of sh*tty connection now, so looks like I might have to try and move it downstairs this weekend, and see what happens when I'm plugged directly in.

 

I know for a fact it's the dongle/wireless, as my 360 (connected straight into modem) gets perfect speed on MP.

 

As a little question, anyone else here in the UK and with Virgin, and if so, anyone know the free phone number? Google brings up nowt.

[SmellyJelly]

@SmellyJelly

If it's an eVGA card then they still have your info on file and if it's one of their lifetime warranty cards then you should be ok.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to stop you from getting a new card, just making sure you looked at all your options.

Nope - BFG. And, unfortunately, it looks like they're not honoring their warranties anymore:

 

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/56587/Ba...deo-Card-Owners

[sivispacem]

First make sure the problem is with the wifi and not the router or modem itself. Try a wired connection to the router. If that has problems as well then try going directly to the modem. If they are one in the same then never mind that last part.

Next I would try either another wifi device; laptop or mobile device with wifi and see what they get.

In the end if it's all still failing no matter what else you try then call your ISP. It could be that the modem/router took a power spike when the power came back on.

It's not possible for me to plug directly into the modem due to the router being downstairs. Was planning on moving it downstairs the other day to check it out, but thought it would be pointless if it's just Virgin capping my speed. I'm on the 5th day of sh*tty connection now, so looks like I might have to try and move it downstairs this weekend, and see what happens when I'm plugged directly in.

 

I know for a fact it's the dongle/wireless, as my 360 (connected straight into modem) gets perfect speed on MP.

 

As a little question, anyone else here in the UK and with Virgin, and if so, anyone know the free phone number? Google brings up nowt.

They don't have a freephone number. If your a new customer you get to call them for nothing, but an existing one? You pay.

 

Virgin suck, anyway. It took me over 3 years to cancel an old contract with them, such are the complexities of their cancellation policy. I never even got that good download speeds- when I switched to Be* after a year or so I was experiencing exactly the same download speeds, and more than twice the upload speeds, of their (at the time) "fastest" fibre optic broadband, and that was on an ADSL2+ line.

[KilnerLUFC]

First make sure the problem is with the wifi and not the router or modem itself. Try a wired connection to the router. If that has problems as well then try going directly to the modem. If they are one in the same then never mind that last part.

Next I would try either another wifi device; laptop or mobile device with wifi and see what they get.

In the end if it's all still failing no matter what else you try then call your ISP. It could be that the modem/router took a power spike when the power came back on.

It's not possible for me to plug directly into the modem due to the router being downstairs. Was planning on moving it downstairs the other day to check it out, but thought it would be pointless if it's just Virgin capping my speed. I'm on the 5th day of sh*tty connection now, so looks like I might have to try and move it downstairs this weekend, and see what happens when I'm plugged directly in.

 

I know for a fact it's the dongle/wireless, as my 360 (connected straight into modem) gets perfect speed on MP.

 

As a little question, anyone else here in the UK and with Virgin, and if so, anyone know the free phone number? Google brings up nowt.

They don't have a freephone number. If your a new customer you get to call them for nothing, but an existing one? You pay.

 

Virgin suck, anyway. It took me over 3 years to cancel an old contract with them, such are the complexities of their cancellation policy. I never even got that good download speeds- when I switched to Be* after a year or so I was experiencing exactly the same download speeds, and more than twice the upload speeds, of their (at the time) "fastest" fibre optic broadband, and that was on an ADSL2+ line.

It's never been so bad for me though. The speed has always been set at 300mbps, and rarely drops below that; But just recently it's lucky to get past the 11mbps mark. Google takes around 5-10 minutes to load. This site seems to work fast though, which am guessing is because I'm on here everyday.

 

And I just found a website that lists all companies FREE phone numbers, and found one for Virgin. I remember last time that I rang them from a free number, but could never find it again.

 

Have plenty of evidence of my sh*tty connection, but I doubt they'd be happy to cut some of my charges down.

[sivispacem]

Have plenty of evidence of my sh*tty connection, but I doubt they'd be happy to cut some of my charges down.

You'd be surprised. I got the equivalent of 6 months worth of bills rebated by them, along with all the costs I'd accumulated from them trying to take money by direct debit from a non-existent account, plus a grovelling apology. Then again, I had threatened to take them to court for breach of their own terms and conditions.

 

Present a convincing enough case for you terminating your contract with them before they've managed to make a profit from it (like breach of their own terms) and they'll do literally anything to keep you as a customer.

[Finn 7 five 11]

@finn4life

The wording on that is confusing. It starts off talking about wireless then mentions ethernet and mentions the speed.

Usually when wifi is mention in a product description it doesn't mention the speeds. However when they mention the wired connection they do mention the speed.

As for why it's 10/100 and not 10/100/1000, don't worry about it. 100 is more than enough for most people. Unless you live some place that you can get 100+ downloads from your ISP, in which case I HATE YOU. Since that's rare, I still like.

Gigabit network is mostly found in offices and homes of people that think they need to transfer a movie from one computer in the house to another in 5secs rather than 5 minutes (ok not really that fast but you get the idea).

 

Thanks sivispacem and wolf68k.

 

by the way i am in australia, we have like the slowest internet around, the fastest is 21mbps, but the actual speed is around 10mbps.

We still use the 3G network as well as opposed to 4G.

 

But the government is rolling out fiber optics all over the country known as the national broadband network, with speeds up to 1 gigabit, and Telstra is rolling out the 4G network by the end of the year hopefully

 

Tesltra is the bigger one of the two companies which between them owns the whole internet and phone market, no other company aside from these two have their own broadcasting towers for mobile/internet, and these guys own all of the rights as far as i know to all the home lines as well, and telstra is in charge of the NBN too, they have monopoly over the whole market, and it looks like their stranglehold is only getting stronger.

[Wolf68k]

@SmellyJelly

Yeah I remember BFG and that really sucks that happens to be the brand you got. Looks like you're screwed on that deal.

If you stick with nVidia then look at eVGA. If you're sure you want to go to AMD/ATI then all I can say is good luck and pick someone that's going to stick around and has a really good warranty.

 

 

 

@finn4life

Don't read too much into the fact I'm saying this; but you do know that 3G and 4G are for cellular, so unless this laptop you're looking at supports cellular service then there's little point in worrying about those.

For the national broadband, that would be nice if they did it here but there ain't no chance in hell that'll happen. But when you do get it and you're able to get the full gigabit download and upload speeds, well then I really will start to hate.

[KilnerLUFC]

Have plenty of evidence of my sh*tty connection, but I doubt they'd be happy to cut some of my charges down.

You'd be surprised. I got the equivalent of 6 months worth of bills rebated by them, along with all the costs I'd accumulated from them trying to take money by direct debit from a non-existent account, plus a grovelling apology. Then again, I had threatened to take them to court for breach of their own terms and conditions.

 

Present a convincing enough case for you terminating your contract with them before they've managed to make a profit from it (like breach of their own terms) and they'll do literally anything to keep you as a customer.

I've been taking screenshots of the connection speed, together with the date and time each shot is taken, for the past week now.

 

Before I start ranting at them though, I need to know; Can it be a software/hardware problem that's causing the sh*tty connection? As I stated previously, I'm unable to connect directly into the router due to lack of a cable, and no-one I know in this area has a PC I can test it out on. I was wondering like, is there maybe some type of malicious software running somewhere that's blocking my connection speed, especially when opening up Firefox? I've virus scanned my PC to f*ck, and nothing ever turns up.

 

Might be completely un-related, but a few times now, I've had my Firewall turned off, yet I haven't touched it. Another maybe un-related error that I received today was about lack of memory, and something had failed to write to something.

 

If I had the XP disc, I'd completely wipe this PC and start a fresh.

[GTA 360]

Hope this is the right place

I just bought a game and downloaded it to my laptop and whenever I try to play it it comes up with a box telling me that I need direct x 9.0c, I can't find where to download it and can't play the game with out it, anyone know what to do?

[Suction Testicle Man]

Hope this is the right place

I just bought a game and downloaded it to my laptop and whenever I try to play it it comes up with a box telling me that I need direct x 9.0c, I can't find where to download it and can't play the game with out it, anyone know what to do?

Try this.

[Finn 7 five 11]

Alright, i am confused and need some google accounts help.

 

I have my google account logged in on my computer, i logged in via youtube.

i logged in using [email protected]

I am now viewing my Gmail details, it has the hotmail account as my email, i am trying to set up my new phone with android and it says enter google account username and password.

I enter my hotmail email and my password and it says this is not a google account, yet in google accounts it says that is my email, i am confused.

 

[Wolf68k]

I think it's looking for a Gmail.com address

 

[Finn 7 five 11]

 

I think it's looking for a Gmail.com address

So i need a gmail account?

 

I created a gmail and now got it to work.

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Another question - Things don't fit properly on my screen on all websites i have a new computer, its not a big cut-off, but enough to annoy me.

For example on youtube when i enable fullscreen i have to scroll slightly past the youtube buttons for resolution ect ect for them to highlight (so the cursor is next to the icon to select it) and this isn't just on youtube, it also occurred on my sports video website when fullscreen was enabled.

 

On google street view the arrow things on screen to go up and down, when facing directly towards and away from me, the one pointing towards disappears as well.

 

How do i fix that? i checked the res setting it is native screen resolution, the aspect ratio of the screen is 16:9 im pretty sure, could that be the issue?

Edited September 25, 2011 by finn4life

[GTA 360]

Hope this is the right place

I just bought a game and downloaded it to my laptop and whenever I try to play it it comes up with a box telling me that I need direct x 9.0c, I can't find where to download it and can't play the game with out it, anyone know what to do?

Try this.

When I try downloading it it comes up with a message saying

A cabinet file necessary for installation cannot be trusted. Please verify the cryptographic services are enabled and the cabinet file certificate is valid.

I'm confused, what the hell is a cryptographic service? And what do I do now. and why can't they make a game that plays the same day you buy it?

[Wolf68k]

@finn4life

What resolution is the computer? More details on the computer and it's screen would help.

[Finn 7 five 11]

 

@finn4life

What resolution is the computer? More details on the computer and it's screen would help.

Sorry about that, i totally forgot to add details.

 

It is a 15.6 inch screen, 1024 x 768 16:9 aspect ratio (i think).

--------------------------------------

Oh from earlier.

 

 

 

@finn4life

Don't read too much into the fact I'm saying this; but you do know that 3G and 4G are for cellular, so unless this laptop you're looking at supports cellular service then there's little point in worrying about those.

For the national broadband, that would be nice if they did it here but there ain't no chance in hell that'll happen. But when you do get it and you're able to get the full gigabit download and upload speeds, well then I really will start to hate

Of course i know that 3g and 4g are cellular, i was talking about internet in general, and how the wireless 4g network for the usb internet sticks and the Fiber optics were going to speed things up like crazy, which they will, but like i mentioned due to the monopoly the two big companies have over the market, it is going to be hella expensive.

 

Currently it is $90 for the fastest internet available with 200gb of usage.

For wireless 3g it is $90 for 12gb on a contract, the pre-paid is even more expensive.

I imagine the 4g will double that cost, and the fiber optics hopefully will have a price cap enforced by the government.

 

Sorry if i am going on about off-topic garbage like a certain member we know about.

Edited September 25, 2011 by finn4life

[Suction Testicle Man]

Hope this is the right place

I just bought a game and downloaded it to my laptop and whenever I try to play it it comes up with a box telling me that I need direct x 9.0c, I can't find where to download it and can't play the game with out it, anyone know what to do?

Try this.

When I try downloading it it comes up with a message saying

A cabinet file necessary for installation cannot be trusted. Please verify the cryptographic services are enabled and the cabinet file certificate is valid.

I'm confused, what the hell is a cryptographic service? And what do I do now. and why can't they make a game that plays the same day you buy it?

Go Start -> Run, then type "services.msc" and hit enter. Try to find something called the service it mentioned was needed, and start it.

[GTA 360]

Hope this is the right place

I just bought a game and downloaded it to my laptop and whenever I try to play it it comes up with a box telling me that I need direct x 9.0c, I can't find where to download it and can't play the game with out it, anyone know what to do?

Try this.

When I try downloading it it comes up with a message saying

A cabinet file necessary for installation cannot be trusted. Please verify the cryptographic services are enabled and the cabinet file certificate is valid.

I'm confused, what the hell is a cryptographic service? And what do I do now. and why can't they make a game that plays the same day you buy it?

Go Start -> Run, then type "services.msc" and hit enter. Try to find something called the service it mentioned was needed, and start it.

I found the cryptographic service which was already started but I can't find a cabinet file certificate.

[Cursed]

It is a 15.6 inch screen, 1024 x 768 16:9 aspect ratio (i think).

That doesn't seem right to me. Most 15.6" 16:9 LCDs have a 1366x768 resolution minimum. If that's the max res it will go to then I'd check your video drivers are up to date.

[Finn 7 five 11]

 

It is a 15.6 inch screen, 1024 x 768 16:9 aspect ratio (i think).

That doesn't seem right to me. Most 15.6" 16:9 LCDs have a 1366x768 resolution minimum. If that's the max res it will go to then I'd check your video drivers are up to date.

You are correct, i saw the 724 resolution, and assumed the 1024, i am used to talking about tv.

Well i will do some sniffing around google, and i will update my drivers, it could be just a graphical glitch.

 

I am running an i7 2630qm, and a radeon 6770m graphics card, do intel graphics require driver updates? and where could i find updates for both of these?

I have a HP Laptop, HP may have the updates?

 

An answer will be appreciated but i will look around anyway. THanks guys

 

-------------------------------------------------------------

EDIT: Doing all the important and recommended updates through the HP support assistant, and it actually works, unlike my dell.

They were all Bios updates it seems, i did some research via google and it was fixed with a driver update.

I tried the update via AMD but it said this.

 

 

AMD Catalyst cannot be downloaded due to incompatible hardware/software. The version of your graphics adapter is not supported please contact notebook manufacturer for assistance.

 

Alright i guess i will live with the black bar on the right with the cursor slightly off while viewing full screen vids.

 

Problem = Solved.

Edited September 26, 2011 by finn4life

[Exxon]

Will these laptops play CoD Modern Warfare 3 at smooth (+30) frames per second?

A friend of mine wants to know.

 

Acer Aspire 7730/7330 Series

Model no. ZY6 (but I'm not sure of this number, actually).

 

The second one is this

 

Medion E7216

[OverTheBelow]

 

Will these laptops play CoD Modern Warfare 3 at smooth (+30) frames per second?

A friend of mine wants to know.

 

Acer Aspire 7730/7330 Series

Model no. ZY6 (but I'm not sure of this number, actually).

 

The second one is this

 

Medion E7216

Would've been easier if you just posted the specifications straight up, but whatever.

 

I can't find anything on the Aspire, but by the looks of it that Medion wouldn't play many games very well even on lowest settings (Intel graphics).

[Exxon]

Would've been easier if you just posted the specifications straight up, but whatever.

 

I can't find anything on the Aspire ...

That's exactly why I asked

 

But I asked that friend to look up Device Manager, I'll see what he found tomorrow.