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Erkki

Damn it, but computers have become really complicated

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I ended up going with Newegg. All I needed to fix my computer was a new copy of Windows, a new DVD drive, and a new HDD. That was like $200.

 

But then I realized I should get a new surge protector and I let a friend talk me into getting a (very short-term) UPS/surge protector.

 

Also I wanna run a write under the house from my room to where the router is so I got a 40 foot CAT5 cable for $15. Remember when they used to be like $1 or $2 per foot? Thanks WiFi hard-ons!

 

So yeah altogether I may have just dropped $300 BUT WHATEVER I want my life to have some normalcy; me being in the comfort of my room to be a nerd.

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For the hell of it, I looked it up - you can get a 50ft Cat6 cable from Monoprice overnighted within CA for $14. Remember that for next time, I guess.

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For the hell of it, I looked it up - you can get a 50ft Cat6 cable from Monoprice overnighted within CA for $14. Remember that for next time, I guess.

A price that cheap would make me suspicious.

 

I made sure all the stuff I was buying was from Newegg directly. I've always been suspicious of sites allowing outside vendors to sell things through them, and only needed one incident to have that suspicion confirmed.

 

A few years ago my mother's printer died and she wanted a new one, but the same model. Which is fair enough to ask for, so I found exactly one on Amazon. But it was from a non-Amazon vendor. I warned her about it, she wanted it anyway. On arrival, we found that they didn't pack the ink properly for shipping, and it spilled all over the place, including the internal components of the printer. Because it wasn't Amazon directly (just indirectly) my mother couldn't get a refund through them, and the vendor refused to refund even though we shipped it back.

 

So yep. I am very brand-name driven in this kinda shit.

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I highly, highly recommend Monoprice for cable needs. Pretty sure they cut all their own cables in house from huge spools with quality connectors. They don't have the very highest quality of product, but they're consistent and widely used by geeks whose reviews I trust.

 

I love getting cables from them to fit the exact needs of my setup - for instance I have all the components of my home theater setup hooked up to my network via HDMI and I have the cables color coded so that my Xbox 360 uses a green HDMI cable at the exact length to reach my receiver and a green ethernet cable at the exact length to reach the ethernet switch. Same goes for all the USB, audio, and video cables for my computer. No cable slack really cuts down on the cable clutter of my setups, plus I can get it all relatively cheap. They even list the gauge of the wires where necessary, and offer cables with or without ferrite cores on the ends if signal degredation is a problem.

 

Anyways, I just <3 Monoprice and am an unapologetic evangelist for them.

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Giant Bomb uses Monoprice for all their cables, and they're a pretty professional operation.

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Throwing out a link for www.microcenter.com which is a store out of Houston and a few other places in Texas. Sometimes they are the cheapest around for parts, but often the way to do that is to live in Houston and subvert the shipping costs. Either way, I don't live in Houston anymore and I used them recently for a part for my newest rig that was cheaper than Newegg, Fry's, and Amazon.

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Ugh, my Windows 7 64 bit keeps freezing after I exit a game. I just recently installed this system and it's annoying. I've looked into various solutions, most of which seem to point to my (new) RAM, but all the tests I do come up with zero problems. It's a common thing for W764 apparently, but that doesn't make it less annoying.

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i too am suspicious of seemingly underpriced deals but monoprice is legit.  ive gotten cables before & turned some people on at work to them for speakers/audio gear to very good results.

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My computer is now up and running. Still getting Windows and my browser sorted as far as font and other settings go, but the rest will be cake. I'm just happy to have my own goddamn computer again.

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My screensaver and power options stopped working last night. I spent three hours trying to fix them (or rather, trying to find out what had broken so I could even start fixing them) and gave up out of sheer exhaustion. Woke up today, did a few minor tweaks, and now it looks like it's working fine... except nothing I changed should have fixed it, I was just being desperate. The feeling of something seeming fixed but maybe still being broken is my least favorite part of owning a computer.

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I am putting a fresh windows 7 installation on my PC today, can't wait.

 

I have been experiencing some slowness on startup as well as an odd performance issues in certain games that are resolved on a reboot.  Looking forward to starting over fresh. Thank god for Google Drive, makes backing up stuff a breeze. 

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Ug, whenever I want to re-install I just buy new drives, just in case I forget to move something. I also have a lot of crap.

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I want to also throw my hat in for Monoprice.

 

I got some nice-looking fluoro green SATA III cables for all my devices a few months back; wired up three storage drives and an optical drive for less than $10 shipped.

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Suddenly a large portion of Youtube videos aren't playing on my laptop - they just load for a while then give up. I don't have the issue on my desktop, so I'm wondering if it's an issue with 64-bit Chrome which I installed on my lappy after Gormongous recommended it, or perhaps something to do with internet or processor speed. Or maybe it's an html5 player issue that my desktop just isn't having for some reason.

 

I finally uninstalled and reinstalled Chrome to get back to the normal version but that hasn't helped :(

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My screensaver and power options stopped working last night. I spent three hours trying to fix them (or rather, trying to find out what had broken so I could even start fixing them) and gave up out of sheer exhaustion. Woke up today, did a few minor tweaks, and now it looks like it's working fine... except nothing I changed should have fixed it, I was just being desperate. The feeling of something seeming fixed but maybe still being broken is my least favorite part of owning a computer.

 

Screensaver seems to be working, but when I got home tonight, I noticed that my computer was really slow and that I was losing approximately seven gigabytes of hard drive space every time I rebooted. After some panicked Googling of symptoms for hard drive failure, I thought to check system restore, which has always been disabled on my machine. Even though the system was still disabled, the max usage slider was all the way to the right and Windows appeared to be making or updating a restore point every ten minutes or so anyway. I tried enabling and then disabling the system several different ways, one of which finally seemed to stick, but it was really freaky for a while there. I just formatted this computer at the end of June! There's no reason it should be having any of these glitches yet, certainly not two in quick succession.

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Does anyone have any words of advice regarding the custom OS CyanogenMod for Android devices?

I'm thinking of installing it as it seems like a good way of ensuring better support for an older device and getting rid of carrier bloat.

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Ok i've spent the good part of a afternoon trying to find a new monitor for my PC. My current monitor (a Formac Gallery 2010) has lasted me 10 years of faithful service but i think its probably time i moved on.

 

What i'm looking for ideally is a:

- 24-27"

- IPS panel

- Good colour accuracy

- VESA mountable

 

ideally i'd like something with a decent response rate too, i know i'm probably not going to find something which has either the response times or input lag of a dedicated gaming monitor but if i could find something reasonable in both those it would be nice too.

 

I've got a list of about 10 different candidates atm, but its a damn pain because people seem to have hugely varied opinion and model names seem to get abandoned or refreshed at the drop of a hat so any & all advice would as always be appreciated.

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Jon you're making my wallet cry. I'd love to grab a 4k but i just can't justify that outlay atm probably spending 50% of that roughly. 

 

Which is the the heart of my problems i suppose, last time i bought a monitor it was a premium one, now i have to go for something more reasonable.

That looks like a monitor to last me another 10years but sadly thats probably not something i can afford to do atm :(

 

Edit:

ok thats not actually as expensive in UK as i thought it would be http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dell-Professional-P2415Q-Monitor-210-ADZC/dp/B00QAJ2MOM

 

but still it would be far too easy to let myself start justifying that when my initial thoughts was try to keep it around the £200 mark.

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Don't forget that with a 4k monitor you'd be hard pressed to run anything at native resolution unless your PC is a monster.

 

I've got this one and I like it pretty well. Don't know about the VESA mountable part though.

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