Jackster

crucial.com are pretty good, and if you're not sure what type you need you can just stick in your computer or motherboard manufacturer and model and it'll tell you what you should get. And I agree, best to buy from a big name. I've bought RAM a few times from a cheap components shop in Glasgow and it can cause problems.

Signed! I don't trust the whole idea behind going completely wireless for Internet, at least not while it's the likes of Orange and Vodafone providing it. Maybe Three would do a good job as long as you didn't need support but all the mobile network's uage limits are awful. I've been wanting a UK equivelant to Verizon FiOS for a while now. The UK's biggest problem is that BT has an almost complete monopoly, with only some places having Virgin cable and even then, Virgin aren't necessarily that great. At least in the US you've got all the different companies trying to get people to choose them, e.g. Verizon (FiOS! Woo!), Comcast, AT&T etc.

Well.... there's a Mac thread, why not have a Linux thread too? What is Linux? Linux is a Free, Open Source Operating System originally designed by Linus Torvalds in his bedroom in Finland. It grew from there and now has hundreds, if not thousands, of contributors from all around the world. Some of the contributors are paid to help, others do it for free but they are all working together to make Linux the best operating system it can be. but linux is a kernel... OK clever-clogs, Linux is a kernel and the operating system is GNU/Linux but that has a tiny potential to confuse some of our less technically able users Why should I use Linux? Because it's free, as in you don't have to pay for it, and it's liberating in that you're not restricted in what you can and can't do with it. Where can I get Linux? Because the source code for Linux is freely available there area few different distributions of Linux. In my experience there's only one type of distro that I can say I truly enjoy using and they are Debian-based distros, especially Ubuntu ones. Personally I use Kubuntu, but there's also Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, nUbuntu, zUbuntu and many more. http://www.ubuntu.com/ Where can I get support for Linux if something goes wrong or I don't understand? If you go down the Ubuntu path then by far the best place to get help is http://ubuntuforums.org/, where the people are friendly and no question is too simple, although you might want to have a quick go at the Search function to see if anyone's asked the same question before. What Programs do I use for What? Office OpenOffice.org - A high quality office suite containing a word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentation package and drawing package. Compatible with and similar to Microsoft Office. KOffice - Another high quality office suite by the good people at KDE. Similar to OpenOffice.org, I guess you'll have to try both to see which you prefer. Abiword - A useful word processor with less 'bloat' than OpenOffice.org writer. Gnumeric - A useful spreadsheet app, again with less 'bloat' than OpenOffice.org calc. Multimedia Totem - The default media player in Ubuntu, easy to use but not the prettiest thing to look at. Easily extendable using different engines, when trying to play a file it can't currently it will prompt you asking whether you want to install that capability. Kaffeine - My favourite media player, another gem from the KDE people. Uses the Xine engine by default which is also my favourite as it easily plays all sorts of files, including mp3, out of the box and it can play many other files easily by just installing one package: libxine-extracodecs Amarok - Yet another one from the people at KDE, a great little jukebox program like iTunes with a very nice user interface. Realplayer - Just like Realplayer on Windows and OS X, good if you want to watch certain web streams, such as those from the BBC. Web Browsers Mozilla Firefox - The same FIrefox you know and love from Windows and OS X, a great all round themable and extendable browser. Konqueror - Yet another KDE application, it's a very speedy and nice looking browser who's engine is used in Apple's Safari. Instant Messaging GAIM/Pidgin - The default IM app in Ubuntu, it supports simple text, file transfer and display pictures in many protocols such as MSN, Yahoo!, AIM and Jabber (Google Talk). Kopete - In my opinion, a superior IM app, it supports the same protocols but with more features such as web cam support and custom emoticons. XChat - An IRC client similar to mIRC. Konversation - Another IRC client similar to mIRC. Distro List *Ubuntu Ubuntu is based on the popular Debian Linux distribution and was started by Mark Shuttleworth's company, Canonical, to be a free operating system for everyone to use. The name comes from the African Ideology meaning, among other things, Humanity Towards Others. Ubuntu is currently the top distribution on distrowatch.com, so that pretty much shows you how good this distro is, definitely a good distro for beginners and experts alike. You can request absolutely free Ubuntu CDs from here if you don't mind waiting a few weeks for their delivery: https://shipit.ubuntu.com/ Otherwise download it here: http://www.ubuntu.com/ OpenSUSE A popular distro from the folks at Novell which started off as a Slackware based distro but it's now definitely it's own distro in many ways, A lot of work has gone into making it easy to configure and maintain. Check it out here: https://shipit.ubuntu.com/ Fedora A great distro funded by RedHat (A Prominent North American Enterprise Linux Vendor), unfortunately I haven't had much experience with this distro, so if anyone would like to contribute a summary I would greatly appreciate it Check it out here: http://fedoraproject.org/ Your favourite distro not listed here? Contribute a description below or request one and myself or someone else may write one Any other suggestions for useful applications? Or need any help? Post them in this thread ^_^

Microsoft will murder you then spit on your grave if you use the same license on two different computers /at the same time/ . It's legal to install Vista on one box, the uninstall it and install it on another box, but having it installed on both at the same time is illegal. Oh yeah.

If anyone's wanting to convert straight from a DVD to MPEG-4 or H.264 (i.e. the formats the iPod/Touch and iPhone support), check out Handbrake, it's great on the Mac and they recently released a Windows version too.

I'm not sure how NAT can be strict or medium, NAT basically just means that 2 or more devices can share the same IP address on the Internet. You sure you're using the right terminology?

I was under the impression that the differences between a router and a switch were very difficult to define, which is evidenced more by the fact that I would have said Jordan's description of a switch could easily be applied to a router :P As far as I'm aware though, switches are generally used in big networks where there's like people with Computer Science degrees controlling them. I've seen them in universities, schools, and large office blocks, but never in a home environment. On the other hand, I've only seen routers in home networks, although I once saw a Linksys WRT54G wireless router trying to give everyone at an open source conference access to wireless internet and long story short - there were a lot of angry geeks with no internet. So, ultimately I would say you're better off going with a wireless router, I recently recommended one of the Belkin wireless routers to my cousins and it's working like a dream. But bear in mind, I had a lot of problems with my Nintendo DS using a Belkin router. If it's a regular phone line you'll either need an ADSL Modem with an ethernet port AND a regular wireless router, or just a Wireless Router with an ADSL Modem built in. On the other hand, if it's just an ethernet port in your wall you just need a regular wireless router, such as these ones: Linksys WRT54GL Linksys Wireless-N Router D-Link DI-624 Apple Airport (802.11b/g/n)

Hey people, just wondering if you've all heard of Microsoft's OOXML? Anyone got any opinions? Personally I don't think it can be called 'open'; I think it was named to confuse people, OOXML cold easily mean 'Open Office XML'; I think it's a broken standard and I think ultimately it won't do anyone anyone except Microsoft any good. If they were really devoted to open standards then they would have just implemented ODF in Office 2007. For more info on this sort of topic: Wikipedia Article on OOXML Wikipedia Article on ODF Wikipedia Article on OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org Google Docs (a word processor that works in your web browser, supports ODF)

Yeah I would agree you're not gonna get much Internet without either a phone line or a Virgin cable line. You could always see if you can get a good data plan on your mobile and use that as a modem.

All the people saying it's good for a few episodes, yeah it's ok but the problem with it is that Apple is still taking the piss out of the UK (as Nintendo, Microsoft etc. do aswell) by selling the episodes at nearly double the price of what Americans pay and giving us it so much later. Obviously we're not that important. Apple can shove this up their a-hole.

He was saying he doesn't want games like Wii Fit, he just wants more games which set Nintendo apart in the good old days and I gotta say I agree with him.

Yeah, Ubuntu will do the job for you. You probably want to make the Ext3 partition about 19GB and the Swap partition 1GB. Remember that you will only be able to store files on the 19GB of Ext3 partition, the Swap partition is reserved for the system to use should it need extra memory.

So! Climate Change! Very important we're all gonna die if we don't do something soon etc. etc. Just thought we should have one...... so..... here it is!! What do you do to help prevent climate change? Do you feel it's a waste of time? Are you one of the people who disregards the belief of today's scientists and claim it's not our fault, or do you have a new theory as to what's going on? Do you think we should all be forced to save the world we live in? And what about recycling, good or bad? Get talkin' folks!

Me too, and the problem with people who don't believe in Global Warming seem to be very stubborn. Anyway, here's something which is interesting to look at between now and spontaneous combustion:

OK just a note maybe we should back up maybe at least some of the posts here with some evidence? I'm not saying you're wrong, it's just well...... you could be?

I take it you tried the latest version of Ubuntu? 7.04? If so then that's a shame, maybe your problem will be sorted in one of the next versions. That's the great thing about Linux, you only have to wait 6 months for a new version, not 5 years :awesome: Who knows, maybe the Ubuntu guys just messed up and your display would work fine in other distros.

I'm not completely sure about this, but I know nVidia cards are really easy to set up in Ubuntu 7.04 and I think it could well be the case for at least some ATI cards. If not then hey there's always Ubuntu 7.10 to look forward to Seriously though check out http://www.ubuntuforums.com and do a search to see if your card is supported. You might even want to just download the Ubuntu CD to give it a shot, you don't have to install Ubuntu to use it, the disc doubles a a Live CD so you can see if your hardware is supported. Yeah, the Ubuntu installer can take care of dual booting with Windows for you. It might seem a tad daunting at first so you might want to try and look up some info on it at first but I can assure you that over the years it has gotten a lot easier to dual boot! As long as you know approximately how much space you want to keep for Windows and how much space you want for Linux and take into account you will need a 'swap' partition about double the size of your physical RAM you should be fine. EDIT: And bear in mind the only way (as far as I know) to dual boot Linux and Windows is to install Windows first THEN Linux, I don't think you can do it the other way round.

Not really, a bios is mainly just for getting the system started up as far as I know. A kernel is just a program that sits there all the time and allocates system resources for different tasks. For example, say you're playing Doom 3 on Linux, then the kernel will allocate that game a lot of system memory and a lot of time on the CPU, but say you were just writing a document on Linux, it would give it less memory and CPU time because it wouldn't need as much in comparison to Doom 3.

Lol, I put the kernel bit in small writing so that *maybe* people wouldn't notice but obviously that was a stupid idea. A kernel is basically a really boring thing that allocates system resources to programs, but it helps not to think of Linux as a kernel and just to think of it as an operating system like Windows or OS X. And Debian is just a version of Linux (a 'distribution'), which has gained a lot of popularity recently due to a rich South African Cosmonaut starting his own distribution based on it called Ubuntu which seems to quickly have become the most popular Linux distro. And McPhee, yeah Sabayon would be pretty DIY mainly because it's based on Gentoo so you have to build a lot of the applications from source, Ubuntu is a lot simpler. Maybe tonight I'll make a list of distros and their pros and cons and post it here.

A few days ago I would have said Blu Ray would win so go for it, but now Paramount are exclusively supporting HD-DVD so I guess you'll have to wait it out a little longer to see who wins...

I've got a Macbook and it's a good laptop, not all that sure about the build quality though, the paint on the 'wrist-rest' has gone a bit shiny and the trackpad's button feels uneven. The right side of the button feels kind of firm and 'squishy' almost and the left side feels a tad too loose, making an annoying clicking noise every now and then as if I'm pushing it back into place or something. I've got a friend who has an Acer laptop and you should have heard him when he got started on it. According to him you can get lucky and buy a really good, cheap Acer laptop but if anything goes wrong with it and you have to contact Acer support you're on your own apparently. I've used a Dell laptop at school for the drama dept. a few times to run the projector during performances (Stage Crew woo!) and to be honest they do seem pretty good. Dunno the model, it was a nice silver colour though, maybe a tad bulky for my liking though. And in case anyone's interested in theatre tech, remember not to walk infront of the projector while the show's running >_<

Errrrrrr...... is it? (and lol at the boobs and pink :awesome: )

Dunno what Apple were smoking when they said that, but I usually only get around 3:30 hours on my Macbook C2D's battery :-( However, I get the feeling Intel's Speedstep is malfunctioning on my Macbook. Oh well.

If you film that and put it on youtube I would maybe give you 4 stars Ditto

The first game I played would either be The Simpsons on the NES where you had to paint everything purple or Mario on the Gameboy. The first one I really remember though is Goldeneye on the N64.