Thomas

You'll want to tweak XP to turn off as much of the cruft as possible, and one of the other threads has that. But a thought from left field. Have you tried running it in Linux? DOSEmu does a wonderful job and you get less OS overhead.

Well the PCI bus runs off the 12v rail, and can draw generally a max of 5A you get a theoritcal max of 60w. In realitly most PCI cards draw between 5 to 20 watts. For figuring power needs, guess thirty.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?submit=property&DEPA=0 These are all cards that are AGP4x. You'd have to be more spefic for what version of DirectX you need. The Geforce 4 MX line should support up to directx 8.1 but check. You can also use an AGP8x card in there, it just won't be able to use all of the bandwith. The 4x/8x are the speeds of the standards of the bus. AGP 4x buses are 4 times as fast, 8x is 8 times as fast, ect, ect...

There is an ActiveX extention for Firebird, I've never used it though so I can't say how good it is. And those links generally use expliots in IE (for which there are many.)

For standalone uses of PC there are some better alternitives. Trend Micro's Housecall for instance is an excellent web based program for cleaning up your PC and it doesn't have any processes running all of the time. IMHO Norton is getting to the point where it's way too over protective, and paternalistic to make me happy. For instance, disabling it at startup doesn't seem to actully kill it, it will still launch some of it's more annoying processes anyway unless you kill them individually as services. If you must use the PC for anything else there are somethings you can do. 1. If you must get e-mail on it, don't use Outlook. 2. Only install programs from trusted sources/companies. If that means doing a little research, do it. If the company has a history of shady pratices, don't do bussiness with them (including Norton's Anti-Virus division, Black ICE is another). 3. Use a firewall. 4. Don't download stuff. Themes are becoming a popular way to send out spyware. Any office add-on/macro you see on the web should be avoided. 5. Assume unexpected attachments in e-mail are viruses untill proven otherwise. 6. If you surf the web, do so in a browser that doesn't support ActiveX. Mozilla Firefox is an excellent choice. 7. Paranoia isn't a bad thing. Unless you walk around with tinfoil around your head. I know I've wandered off, and I don't mean to sound like I'm lecturing but there is alot of FUD that the anti-virus companies spread that people take as gospel.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308417 The last of the group of three they offer there gets you the best bang for your buck. Disable system restore. It's nice for if you screw up a driver install, but that's really it. Anything else that takes your system out will probley leave it's mark in the system restore as well. Start-> Control Panel -> Performance and Maintenance -> System -> System Restore Tab-> "Turn off System Restore" -> Ok button to apply the settings Make sure all of your drivers are as up to date as possible. http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/supertweaks.htm Has some good tips for speeding things up in XP both home and Pro. I wouldn't disbale windows update unless the machine is behind a good firewall on a relatively safe network. http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm Also has a list of what services are needed and what aren't. But I don't recomend this list unless you have time to check the system for stability for your particular set of drivers/hardware/software/patches. Another thing to keep in mind. If you order your machines from Dell, and they come with windows preinstalled, reformat that machine and put a good, clean copy of windows on there. Anti-virus software...if the machine is only going to be used for DVR purposes, and is behind a firewall, then get rid of it. Those are just some basic ones.

Yes, but it's completely accessable. The worm of the month will find it a sweet target, so make sure it's firewalled with a software firewall at least.

One thing to remember is that when you move a computer into a routers DMZ zone, you're moving it outside of the firewall. All of those specs they listed are various protcalls for video teleconferencing. Are they requiring the client side to have software to view?

As far as I can tell, the clip is in the wire inside my apartment, but it's not in an area where I'd be able to pull it. And DSS isn't an option at the moment, but I could appeal for permission since it's thier fault the cable is bad.

No good freeware ones, you'll have to pay for software. There is some pretty good software for recovering files, but it's not cheap (between $40-$120). There are also companies that specialize in drive recovery but they are very expensive. ($500 to Second Morgage depending on what you did) But you'll have some problems. Video files don't handle corruption very well. And with any kind of recovery, there is a strong chance that large files will get corrupted to some degree.

You said in a differant post that you were mostly using onboard video. Is that the signal that's acting flaky on you?

Ah, PC's can edge out the embeded there. We can support up to as many servers as you'd like with the limit being the point where you DOS you're sql server or run out of bandwith on the network.

I'm not that familuar with the embeded options, but can you set them up in a p2p style network so that the client software can see all of them at one time?

*Good* KVM's won't have an effect on video quaility. Personally I like the Belkin KVM's. I use two of them, one at home, connecting my W2k box and my linux box. At work I have them set up between my work box and my test box. In both cases the machines are set at differant resolutions and I don't see any artifacting. Alot of gamers tend to swear by the Linksys ones. A couple of reviews I saw of it said that they were running it at 1600 X 1200 without a problem. Now I have seen some of the under $20 ones and well....you get what you pay for.

Ouch...yeah, not good when software requires a windows reinstall.

Here I am thinking about some exotic setup...bah.

Well tech support for the computer savy and the less computer savy have differant approches. The trick is make sure you look at what dell does and do the exact opposite.

Good tech support can make all of the differance.

For what, every moment of his life? Or is his mp3 collection just way, way out of hand?

Software/Hardware raid combo? Now that would suck. Can I ask what he was using it for?

Zyra, have you done any modifications to the programs that start up with that Dell? Dell adds alot of crap to thier OEM installs. Norton tends to be espically bad in creating install problems.

Have you tried installing it with Office Disabled on startup?

Zyra, I'm guessing when you are saying poor quality you are refering to the web demo? The web client we use doesn't send as many frames as the server is recording. The new beta will allow the webclient to have some control over the number of fps sent over the net.. The server will record at as many fps as the limitations of the hardware allows. For instance, my test machine is running six camera's, three of which are recording at 640*480 at 30 fps, and three of which that are running 320*180 at 10 fps (the card in there is a v240.) But the web client will show them at the same frame rate. It's a kind of trade off. The plus side to our webclient is that it can be viewed on just about any computer, without a plugin, or without any special codec's being installed on the client computer. The downside is that you won't get the full fps. If you truely need the full FPS for remote viewing, we recomend setting up a VPN and using the network client.

Sorry, it's an American netism. To convert it for the rest of the world it should be YKMV or Your kilometers may vary. The two are simular, but like I said, there are reasons for the price differance. I'd be less annoyed if MS had built XP Home, and then added features to get to Pro, but doing it the other way you end up with a system that can start being flaky at six months, rather then pro which seems to start it's general flakyness at about a year.

There is no more impressive bit of technowizardry then when the raid rebuilds itself. The downside is formating the darn things. I have half a TB in raid on my test machine and it took a good 4 hours to format it.