Official PC Thread

[Horhay]

By Popular demand I have created this thread. Share your tips, tricks, tweaks, shareware, freeware, etc.​

Just like in the Mac thread IF YOU HAVE NOTHING GOOD TO POST KEEP IT TO YOURSELF!

 

[mobius387]

when does office 2010 come out, do we know yet? i was thinking of buying 2007 but if 2010 is coming out soon i might wait.

or i could wait till it comes out and pick up 2007 for a cheap price

 

[Horhay]

when does office 2010 come out, do we know yet? i was thinking of buying 2007 but if 2010 is coming out soon i might wait.

or i could wait till it comes out and pick up 2007 for a cheap price

Usually M$ has discounted price for students. Anyway there is no real date for the release so if you want to try it out there's the link.

64bit Office (yes that's right 64bit) is 749.87 MB
32bit Office 684.48 MB

A key will be provided when you download the software.

 

[Horhay]

Ok I've been using OFFICE 2010 since Thursday and I must say I am loving it, finally I think M$ got it right. Outlook finally is including threaded conversations (obviously still in beta so it's not perfect), word and excel have gotten a facelift and I am please to say most menu items are much easier to get to. I wonder what the final version will be like.

Also, if you use Word or excel often or you have multiple instances open you can use Office tabs. Google it you'll find it on some Chinese site, but don't worry is virus free I've downloaded and been using it for a while!

 

[mobius387]

ill give this a shot. my wife hates 07 so hopefully this is good and she'll let me buy it next year

 

[BlueCali]

Thinking about getting a New Desktop for Christmas instead of video games... What do you guys think about this one..

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+Pa...1218123847575&skuId=9555723&st=9270&cp=1&lp=1

 

[Horhay]

Not bad, but if you are just going to type stuff it seems like overkill and overpriced. I like the specs though.

 

[BlueCali]

Not bad, but if you are just going to type stuff it seems like overkill and overpriced. I like the specs though.

Me just type? Nah, its a raw gaming machine, that will allow me to do anything and everything, without any slow down.

Want something that's going to last me years, and is just a badass.

This thing could last a LONG time.

 

[Horhay]

Me just type? Nah, its a raw gaming machine, that will allow me to do anything and everything, without any slow down.

Want something that's going to last me years, and is just a badass.

This thing could last a LONG time.

Well if you don't plan on upgrading anytime soon then go for it.

 

[Horhay]

Here's a nice little addition for Media Center

http://lifehacker.com/5411061/my-movies-3-is-a-beautiful-movie-add+on-for-windows-media-center

 

[Horhay]

One of my PCs is 6 years old, I gave it to my sis, I built one 2 years ago, I am thinking of building another one sometime at the end of this year or beginning of next.

BTW there's a free copy of Paragon Partition Manager 10.0!

Link

Enjoy!

 

[mobius387]

Alienware announces m11x--Ushering in netbook gaming??

It's got an 11.6-inch display, NVIDIA GT335M switchable graphics, a rumored 6.5 hours of battery life on integrated and "over 2 hours" on gaming mode. This bad boy will ship in the spring for less than $1,000.

 

[mobius387]

this looks like a sick little devil of a computer. im very happy with my asus eee seashell, but man if i ever see someone with this bad boy ill be sooooooo jealous.

 

[Horhay]

Those laptops are so over priced!

 

[BlueCali]

What's the CPU in it?

Think I'm going desktop in year.

 

[mobius387]

Those laptops are so over priced!

disagree. maybe the desktops, but not the laptops.

the thing i dont understand is, for people who are tech savvy all say the same thing, yet everyone just accepts Mac's as a good computer. there is pretty much no more overpriced computer than a mac. heres a little comparison between alienware's 17in and a macbook pro:

Alienware m17x

Processor: Intel® Core™ i5 520M 2.4GHz (2.93GHz Turbo Mode, 3MB Cache)
OS: Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
1 year service plan (through Dell)
GPU: 1GB ATI Radeon™ Mobility HD 4870
Display: 17-inch WideUXGA 1920 x 1200 (1200p)
RAM: 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1066MHz
HDD: 500GB 7,200RPM SATA-II HDD
Optical Drive: Slot-Load Dual Layer DVD Burner (DVD+-RW, CD-RW)
Battery: 9-cell
Wireless card: Wireless 1520 802.11n Half Mini-Card; BT
Price: $2,024

Apple Macbook Pro 17"
Processor: 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
(dont know Apple's standard service care plan, probably 1 year?)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR3 memory
Display: 17-inch (diagonal) high-resolution LED-backlit glossy widescreen display (1920x1200)
RAM: 4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2X2GB
HDD: 500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
Optical Drive: SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Battery: ? (website says up to 8 hrs)
Wireless card: Built-in AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi wireless networking2 (based on IEEE 802.11n specification); IEEE 802.11a/b/g compatible; BT
Price: $2,499.00

Alienware's is just about $500 less and packs a lot more in. Bought the only thing the Macbook can beat it is in battery life and portability.

Doing a quick check around, ASUS has their G71Gx for $2k, and Toshiba has a gaming laptop 18" for over $1,500 with similiar specs.

So, expensive, yes, but overpriced? absolutely not. to get the best you gotta dish out the dough.

 

[mobius387]

What's the CPU in it?

Think I'm going desktop in year.

i dont know if thats been released yet. i think alienware has denied an atom, so this thing is not classified as a netbook...technically

 

[Horhay]

In the next week or two, Windows Update will list a new, "Important" update for you to download. It'll be called "Windows Activation Technologies Update for Windows 7," and if you're running a bootleg copy of Windows 7, beware.

The optional update will sniff out 70 "known and potentially dangerous activation exploits" that are meant to distinguish a genuine copy of Windows 7 from a pirated one.

However, if you're busted with a bootleg, it's not that big of a deal. Microsoft promises that none of your personal information will be sent to them. Instead:

If any activation exploits are found, Windows will alert the customer and offer options for resolving the issue – in many cases, with just a few clicks. Machines running genuine Windows 7 software with no activation exploits will see nothing – the update runs quietly in the background protecting your system. If Windows 7 is non-genuine, the notifications built into Windows 7 will inform the customer that Windows is not genuine by displaying informational dialog boxes with options for the customer to either get more information, or acquire genuine Windows. The desktop wallpaper will be switched to a plain desktop (all of the customer's desktop icons, gadgets, or pinned applications stay in place). Periodic reminders and a persistent desktop watermark act as further alerts to the customer.

It is important to know that the customer will see no reduced functionality in their copy of Windows – a customer's applications work as expected, and access to personal information is unchanged.

Of course, even if your Windows 7 copy is completely legitimate, there might be good reason not to download the update. Windows validation has been known to mislabel legit copies of software as pirated, which even if rare, is a pain that nobody wants to deal with.

ugh I bet this will be just like their dumb WGA annoying patch

 

[Horhay]

Looking to extend your 30 day trial of Windows Vista/7? here's a quick trick.

Go to Start>Command Prompt

Right click on Command Prompt and select Run in Administrator Mode

Once opened, type slmgr /rearm

Restart and you should have 30 more days to activate

You can only use this trick 3 times.

 

[Illiciter]

Looking to extend your 30 day trial of Windows Vista/7? here's a quick trick.

Go to Start>Command Prompt

Right click on Command Prompt and select Run in Administrator Mode

Once opened, type slmgr /rearm

Restart and you should have 30 more days to activate

You can only use this trick 3 times.

lol, now we just need to find where the 3 times counter is stored and manipulate it.

 

[Horhay]

On March 16, Microsoft is making a first developer preview of Internet Explorer (IE) 9 available for download from www.IETestDrive.com.

The IE 9 Platform Preview doesn’t include the IE 9 user interface; instead, it is the plumbing, specifically the new Microsoft JavaScript engine (which is codenamed “Chakra”) and the new graphics subsystem, coupled with a home page full of test sites. There’s no back button and no built-in security. It’s basically the IE 9 rendering engine and early developer tools.

Microsoft officials will show off the IE 9 developer preview and discuss Microsoft’s planned support for more of the emerging HTML5, CSS3 and SVG2 standards with that product during the Tuesday morning Mix 10 keynote.

“We love HTML5 so much we actually want it to work,” quipped Dean Hachamovitch, the General Manager of the IE team, during a briefing I attended at Microsoft last week about IE 9.

As Microsoft supports more of the HTML5, CSS3 and SVG2 markup, the company expects its ACID3 ratings to go up, officials said. At the Professional Developers Conference in November, Microsoft officials showed a very early build of IE 9, which earned an ACID3 score of 32. The build out today is up to 55, according to company officials.

HTML5 applications are a lot richer and demanding, in terms of graphics and speed than Ajax applications. So it’s logical they’ll work better on multi-core machines where the browser can take advantage of multicore performance, Microsoft officials argue. That’s why Microsoft’s new JavaScript engine is built to take advantage of two cores, with the second core compiling JavaScript down to native machine code to help speed up the browser. (Once the native code is available, there’s no need to use interpreted code on Core 1, meaning an app spends less time in JavaScript.)

Microsoft is planning to deliver a lot more preview builds of IE 9 before it hits beta. In fact, the team is committing to delivering an update every eight weeks, and to interact with developers via the Microsoft Connect feedback loop. Microsoft officials wouldn’t say when to expect the first IE 9 beta or to provide any kind of ship date target for the final release. (I’m still betting Microsoft will deliver the final a few months before Windows 8 ships, in 2011 or so.)

Microsoft’s high-level goals for IE 9 include making the browser snappier, maintaining compatibility with Web sites at at least the same level as IE 8 and, ultimately, enabling developers to use the same markup across IE 9 and other non-Microsoft browsers. That last of these three guiding principles is more theoretical and real at this point, but it’s interesting Microsoft is thinking this way.

I’ll be curious to hear what developers think of the preview once you download it.

Update: Hachamovitch said in a Q&A with press and analysts following the keynote that IE 9 will not support XP. (No big surprise there.) The preview runs on Vista SP2 and higher (which I’d figure will be the operating systems supported once IE 9 ships in final form).

It's time for some of you to upgrade