Thomas

It's not the length of the cd-key that bothers me...it's the font they use. G and 6 look the same. Same for 8 and B. It's little things like that make me realise the contempt MS has for it's customers.

I love Linux...I can't imagine my network without my linux box controling it. But it's not ready for the average user. Alot of distros have excellent installers (a few years ago that wasn't true) but installing software itself isn't the most fun thing in the world. And configuring it is painful, but we're getting better gui tools to do it with. Having said that, the major reason is compatbility. People have/need software that doesn't have a native linux port. Given time, linux will be a truely viable threat to MS on the desktop.

Rory, did their CDs have a nice shiny hologram as the top of the disk? It's actully rather trivial to set up an unattended install using a corp key. Given the Bahama's rep with piracy, I'd hazzard a guess they they weren't legit.

That three has some flexablity in it. I've seen it need to be changed after one part change (mobo) and my wifes has never asked for it (upgraded cpu, video card, dvd drive, cd burner, internal sound card...).

It's not hype. I've benchmarked alot of sticks of ram with memtest, and kingston, crucial and some of the others, kingston consistantly gives less failures.

It's a poor comparison. Sure the chips come from the same factory, but the acceptable tolerances between the two companies differs. Kingston allows for X number of defects in a batch to consider it acceptable. Samsungs tolerance is X+3 (all numbers here are just to demonstrate the point.). I know if I put kingston into a machine, I am less likely to put a bad stick of ram into the machine. Sure, Samsung sells ram of the same quality as Kingston, they also sell ram of lesser quality. Cameras are the same way, only a few companies make CCDs, but that doesn't mean the cameras all put out the same quaility of image. It's worth the extra $20 to not have to deal with the wierd behavior that flaky ram gives me. You might save up front, but all it takes is one or two machines acting up (and bad ram will look like alot of other things before you see it as bad ram) and you having to make a bunch of service calls.

Kingston's requirement for the pass rate on memory is what your paying for. What they consider acceptable for sale is a much higher tolerance then some of the no name brand.

Probley rooted boxes for both the fake site and the e-mail sender.

Phishing scams are pretty bold but nothing new.

You can do it from the drive itself. Just copy the /i386 folder to the drive and run the installer. It works alright, but it doesn't do a reformat.

http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10215 Also some bioses will support booting from USB devices, which would include an external CD-Rom.

I can't vouch for outside the US, but with in the US, it doesn't take too long to reactivate XP.

I don't mean this as a flame, and if it gets that tone then I apologise now. As far as the camera's go, hire a professional. I deal with a number of DIYers and the all call up complaining that product X makes thier camera look like crap and will ours make it look better? You talk to them for a few mins and you realise that they have a ground loop on one camera, they have cheap bullets for the rest, the camera's arn't focused, or they are trying to see too wide of an area without the right lens...and they will never, ever belive that the problem is thier cameras, or thier wiring, or thier placement, ect. Building the systems isn't hard, but doing a good job of setting up your cameras is very hard. You'll be much happier in the long run by spending the money.

If you can get me the dell laptop model, I'll check if the bios in it supports USB on startup, if it does then you're golden.

Not really, but I would do two things under those circumstances. First, it gets it's own connection to the internet. Second, I would use a hardware firewall. Doing that should prevent any virus/spyware related downtime.

The dells support USB on start up to a limited degree. I'm assuming you can't boot into windows at all right now?

I would turn automatic update off. Do manual updates when the system can be taken down.

He was refering to the HAL part of Windows. But Rory, a good firewall will prevent just about every thing that will bork a windows machine. If the end user decides to use it to surf the web, then that is their own foolishness.

From looking at it, alot of the clone type stand alones are using generic x86 boxes with a dedicated Linux App. So at least some will do it. A number of cards I've played with have linux drivers but no software.

The only major problem you may run into is windows wanting to be reactivated. The setup issue that you're refering to is tied into the HAL (Hardware abstraction layer) which hides the processor differances from windows. It's why we don't need a seperate version for differant processors, motherboards, ect. As a general rule, if you move windows to a new mobo then reinstall windows. You shouldn't see it more then that. www.newegg.com Has OEM copies of windows for about $140.

The trick to telling which mobos will get along with the prescott is looking for it's FMB spec. You need something supporting 1.5 or 2.0.

The drive bay fans are iffy (depending on who makes them), where they help is drawing air in to get better airflow. They are pretty loud, but I'm noticing that people want these machines tucked away in little nooks. They don't get the server room treatment alas, so the sound doesn't matter as much, but maxizing airflow does matter.

Shockwave and flash aren't so bad, they lack the raw power of a real scripting langauge. Active X is put to far, far too much harmful use. One of the reasons I like our product is that we don't have any kind of plugin needed.

The performance is nice, but the bonus is in the reduced calls on site. I see it here alot. The installers who do good work, thier clients don't call us often. And I don't mean the little "how does X work calls" but the evil hour long calls.

I would probley upgrade the heat sink. You going to get more heat with that CPU but you can do somethings to ease that. They make fans that are mounted in a CD-rom bay, they will help with air flow. (These are great for when someone insists that the thing go in a closet.) Then chose your cabling carefully. Wire it with an eye toward airflow. And if you're still truely worried, they make PCI slot fans and you can mount it next to the card.