A thread for boring computer questions.

there are mathematically superior algorithms like bzip, but, yeah, i don't think there's a crying need for a better one-size-fits-all losless compression. all the energy is going into lossy compression, esp. on video.

is it possible for half of my macbook's memory to die? i could have sworn i had more memory than 512 mhz, because that's what it came with and i added more, but it says 512. it's coming up on 4 years old and in the last couple months it's gotten so sloooooooow

Yes, def. possible.

uh i think i broke my computer now
turned it off, took out battery and took out ram, then put it back in. now i had trouble getting it to start back up and it seemed to only work without the battery in. many times i tried to start it up and heard the cd drive sound but got no apple boot screen, just black. then it started after making the sound repeatedly. so now i'm using it without the battery and probably exposing it to dust. i thought one of the rams might be loose in there but nope, and it still says only 512.

hm. did you try clearing the pvram?

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379

otherwise your RAM stick might be be corrupted? or it might really not be seated in properly - try pushing it in harder

i'm afraid to turn it off now, i'll do it some other time i guess. def possible it's not seated right, one side of the bracket was loose too. i need a better small screwdriver.

afraid to even put it to sleep! i hate computer problems.

my computer just died!

i need to buy a new computer. what should i buy? i want a MAC that is really good for making music, lots of it -- and will never die!!!! :D

i will take ur suggestions very seriously, so please give them to me <3

wasn't there a thread where dan did this recently or something? or where someone else bought a new computer?

15" macbook pro with intel core i5? never had a macbook pro before. i mean, that's good, right

how bout the 13" macbook pro with intel core 2 duo? is that like, not as good?

it's outdated tech

well, let's put it this way. the highest-spec macs (i5 and i7) will show their superior horsepower in tasks like video-encoding, graphics editing, playing computer games. in normal day-to-day operation you probably won't notice a difference.

I don't know how much processing horsepower is needed for making music. if it's not a lot, then you might be well off with just a core2duo 13".

if you don't mind buying refurbished & having tech from the previous generation, and don't an education discount/can't get someone w/ one to buy a mac for you, then you can save some money. refurbished models are usually $1-200 cheaper than their comparable current models, and still come with the 1 year apple warranty.

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac?mco=OTY2ODY2NQ

in all cases, it's probably a wise decision to buy applecare, which will ensure your mac for 3 years from the date of purchase.

Don't forget to update How long have you had your computer?

If I waited for a computer to die before buying another one, it'd be a long wait. My HP Pavilion laptop is still working 6 years on - but I got an iMac coming up to 3 years ago.

ok. i mean, i don't know that i'll need the i5 for everyday processing, but i imagine it couldn't hurt to have it for the sake of the music.

music processing was a done deal for CPUs a long time ago, i5 is way overkill but processing power just keeps getting cheaper so why not.

lol @ using ensure instead of insure. living overseas is killing me :|. also missing a 'have' somewhere in that third paragraph.

you may want the 15 for the bigger screen though...some of the music programs really benefit from the larger screen. I just bout the 15 with the hi-res antiglare screen. Sometimes when its on my lap I need to zoom in on txt while surfing, but when sitting at a table it's generally fine, and I like how much space I have for palates and such.

well, i've been doing a 13 screen for a while and tho i know exactly what you mean, i think i'm going to stick with it and save myself $600, seeing as ppl seem to think the core 2 is perfectly sufficient. i can also get a separate monitor later if need be. nervous . . .

PS what's the batteries being "built in" now? i know the life is supposed to be improved but that seems kind of inconvenient

Black background/white text gives me a blinding headache, but a few sites I like make use of it.

I have a Firefox plug-in that lets me reverse the colors, but I can't find anything similar for Safari (and I hate using Firefox). Is there a plug-in that will do it for me, or an easy CSS generator that would let me just specify background and text color without bothering any of the rest of the formatting?

maybe not what you're looking for, but I use this:

http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

it's no good on complete pages but if you're reading a blog post, you click on the bookmarklet and you just get clean black text on white background with no ads.

Apple's been doing the built-in battery thing for sometime, I think they weighed the pros and cons, figure most people didn't carry around spare laptop batteries, and they're getting tons more battery time (and prettier design) with this.

well, i've been doing a 13 screen for a while and tho i know exactly what you mean, i think i'm going to stick with it and save myself $600, seeing as ppl seem to think the core 2 is perfectly sufficient. i can also get a separate monitor later if need be. nervous . . .

You can get a decent 24" monitor for well under $200 these days.

yes and/but if you're doing any kind of moderately color-critical graphic/photo/design work, you can look for the new eIPS monitors that are coming out in the 300 dollar range, quality generally associated with the more expensive IPS panels at a cheaper price.

http://www.pchardwarehelp.com/guides/s-ips-lcd-list.php

I have the first one, the Dell 2209WA and once calibrated, it looks fantastic, about as good as much more expensive Apple Cinema Displays.

check out the "new" ones. Good deals on IPS monitors.

http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=2025298

The 23" new Dell has a higher resolution but slower response time than mine. In either case, there's some thing you can do w/ Dell by signing up as a small business and getting these incredible deals.

For less than 300 dollars, these Dell monitors discussed in that thread, will destroy anything else around the same price in image quality.

i think i'm going to stick with it and save myself $600, seeing as ppl seem to think the core 2 is perfectly sufficient.

$600 is about what an iPad costs. ; )

how do you resize itunes when you had it open on a bigger screen and the resize corner is not showing?

hold down option and click the green resize button

Why does my clock (win XP) always run five minutes slow, even if I keep changing it?

have you got it synced? check the 'internet time' tab when you double-click the time

doesn't have that option?

is this at work? if it's part of a domain, it's synced to another source in the domain, which will be yr culprit

lol at fascist work making you work extra five mins

are there any easy, free web-to-sms sites?

google voice? if you are in the states.

have used http://www.cbfsms.com/ before

With a Blue Microphones Snowball Microphone and Garage Band, can I record and edit interviews on a Mac? Do I need anything else? Does anyone have recommendations for things like microphones for interviews?

So is there anything you can do about spammers spoofing your e-mail account? I have an old yahoo account that I only use for like mailing lists and for site where I don't want to put my main address out there. About a week ago I started getting about 20-30 "undeliverable failure" messages back per week. I've changed the password three times since then (using very strong 14-16 character strings, but I'm still getting about the same amount - no more, no less really. They aren't coming from or going to anyone on my contact list and I see no other signs of a virus, which is why I'm leaning towards my (admittedly generic) e-mail address just being spoofed from somewhere else.

"About two weeks ago"

I don't think the password makes a difference...they're not actually sending the emails from your account (you don't see them in the sent box, right>) I think there's nothing you can do but wait it out. At least that's the tech support I got from Yahoo back when I had a yahoo account and this would happen like very 2 months or so.

Oh yeah, I knew the password wouldn't have mattered once I figured out it wasn't actually a virus or something... but that is always my first instinct when I discover something weird. My research told me pretty much what you are saying, but I thought I'd check in with the ilx knowledge base. Thanks.

Lot of it around. Been getting a bunch of those for my Gmail account just recently. They go straight into spam, so not a problem, but would be nice if they moved onto spoofing someone elses address soon.

Bit of a long shot this one but anyway... The text size in my Skype chat window is ridiculously small (I'm using a high res Macbook pro).

'Command +' blows up the text just fine but in doing so kills the auto-scroll function. Incoming messages are therefore invisible until I've manually scrolled down with the mouse to view them.

Frustrating to say the least!

change the chat font size in preferences?

been havin a right old time with the old chat fonts

Anyone used freenas, clearos, or openfiler?

ok so i have this external HD, USB, seagate

it was always a biiiiit wonky... if it didnt get ejected properly sometimes it would wait a LONG time to mount,a nd need to be unplugged and sit on its own before it did. eventually, it always did.

i went away for a couple of weeks and came back and now it just won't mount at all. OSX cant see it. Disk Utility neither, DiskWarrior treither. can I do anything abotu this ish??

i have unplugged it and replugged it many times. let it set. rebooted.

'the worx'

do you need the data on there?

well... it's not 100% croosh, but i would lose a lot of my music library if it goes.

so basically, i'm willing to do a bunch of annoying shit to get it back, but not pay thousands of bucks.

yeah, my suggestion was going to be wipe and repartition. that gives you a working drive unless there's something physical wrong with the drive.

downside of course is you lose your t swift/cocorosie collection. have you tried reading the drive on another mac? do you know if it's a hfs or windows partition (if the latter then try a windows pc too).