A thread for boring computer questions.

Sorry, I can't find anything on yer Flash problem but I don't use Flash anyway.

My wireless thingo is restricted to certain MAC addresses. That, together with WPA, prevents 99.5% of all hax0r attempts. I can't tell you about tracking apps though.

I stupidly left my work laptop's AC power cord / adapter in my hotel room, when I was at a conference.

If I order another from the Dell website, it's $$. But, if I get it from here, it's much lest costly. But these sites scare me. Do you think it's legit and not some knockoff? (I want a Dell converter so the warranty still applies, blah blah blah)

"N" key on my Acer laptop stopped working completely. Started to go a while back, took the key off and adjusted it a couple of times. I think I might have fucked up the sensor somehow this time because now it doesn't respond at all. Anything I can do? Kind of urgent.

avoid words with N.

does it work with the key casing off?

usb keyboard = £7
virtual keyboard = £0 (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/accessibility/oskturnonuse.mspx)

Can you replace the keyboard? I put a new keyboard in my Dell laptop just last night.

also

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does it work with the key casing off?

Yeah, actually it does. Could I just need to replace the little rubber thingy?

OK, so I've been noticing how cheap express card flash drives are recently. Would I gain any speed and battery life benefits if I moved my OS, applications and SWAP to one of these?

OS X, will be leopard as soon as 10.5.2 comes out.

Jon Williams, I demand you come and rubbish my scheme.

ahem

Swap on flash is a bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad idea. Also how fast is a card express interface and does it work as a boot device?

Booting is apparently not a problem with Leopard, some reports of failures with Tiger.

I think that swap might be an issue though

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20040809191855264

worth a shot

Definitely thinking about it. I guess it is a choice between buying Flash or Time Capsule when I come over next. time capsule has it's attractions as it means i can ditch the G3 iMac doing fileserving duties and free up some space and power.

Flash has limited read/writes so bad for swap, also not as fast as HDD.

SSD on the other hand but they are $$$

I thought SSD had limited rewrites too.

I don't think flash has limited reads. I would imagine that the I/O is bound by cache and media speeds much greater than drives which are designed for high-throughput.

xpost

SSD does but there's some controller block relocation logic that makes this more "theoretical".

Oops no idea why I mentioned reads.

NAND flash which is what most SSD are is better on the writes.

SSD has re-writes but the maths mean it's immaterial, I think:

See here.

I am trying to write a simple bat script to empty a folder but I can't get past the stupid prompt that comes up. Tried ECHO Y but it doesn't seem to work :(

del "D:\Folder Name\*.*"

/f

i mean /q

del c:\test\*.* /q

thanks!

i'm having a problem with my laptop, a dell vostro 1500 and want to format it and reinstall windows so i can start from scratch. however, i want to format the whole c: drive so im not installing windows on top of an installation that already exists.

i have a few different discs for all this:
1) operating system (reinstallation cd) xp pro2
2) application (for reinstalling dell mediadirect 3.3 on dell inspiron 1520 computers)
3) dell drivers and utilities (for reinstalling dell vostro 1500 computer software)

im not sure what the mediadirect cd is at all.

so i put the xp reinstall disc in and got up to the bluescreen section asking about deleting partitions. it has 4 different options:

-: Partition1 (FAT) 110mb
C: Partition2 (NTFS) 146883mb
F: Partition4 (Mediadirect) (FAT32) 2557mb
E: Partition3 (FAT32) 3075mb

i tried to delete the c: partition but i got the message "cannot delete this partition as this partition contains the temporary setup files that are required to complete the installation". i'm confused about those other 3 partitions too, should i delete them first then the c partition?

how can i force it to completely wipe this c: partition?

get a mac

no

actually i might well do in future

but your advice is crap

perhaps but then my computer is working properly

shh.

just sorted that problem. for anyone else in future the solution is to press f12 when booting and get it to boot from the cd-rom. my problem was that i tried to do the reinstall direct from windows (which sticks a load of temp files on the pc, preventing you from formatting the drive which contains those temp files).

I have just had Office 2007 installed. On the previous version of Excel I was able to add a button to my toolbar so that Paste Special: Value could be done with a single click.

Is this possible in Excel 2007? If so, how? Doing Ctrl+Alt+V to bring up the Paste Special dialog box and then selecting Value is doing my head in!!

I have an old Mac or two -- not super old, but a few years old -- that have given up the ghost, for various reasons, and I'm pretty sure they would be not worth spending the money to fix. Is there a way to convert such computers into cash?

I don't think so, casuistry, from a uk viewpoint. Charriddee is the easier way, although i'm sure the charrideeers will be making money first.

I have an old Mac or two -- not super old, but a few years old -- that have given up the ghost, for various reasons, and I'm pretty sure they would be not worth spending the money to fix. Is there a way to convert such computers into cash?

The most common reason people think that their old Macs have died is PRAM battery death. It's a $7 fix, in most cases. Now, it's certainly possible that you have other issues, but if you want to sell the Mac, it's worth checking out the easy fixes first.

One of them, a laptop, seemed to no longer want to accept electricity into its life, and it might just require a bit of soldering to get the thingy fixed. The other, a Mac Mini, is acting very oddly about its harddrive, and seems unable to write to it properly -- or thinks it can't? I had to hook it up as a slave drive to reinstall the OS, and it still wouldn't actually DO much.

I am not a techie enough to fix either of those things -- or, I am lazy. So I would rather sell to someone who would be interested in fixing, or something.

The first one sounds like a bad PRAM battery. This is somewhat tricky to replace in a laptop, since it requires hardware most people don't have on hand and careful attention to the disassembly guide. The second sounds like an easy fix you could handily perform: Replacing a hard disk.

Both of these Macs are worth VERY little if sold as-is. The salvage market for Macs is just about as good as that for automobiles, i.e., not very.

Going on the supposition that you don't have any Mac geek friends who owe you a favor, I'd recommend that you take the items to a Mac repair shop and pay the small fee for an estimate on repairs. Then you can make a decision based on a sound set of financial criteria and dispose of the matter once and for all.

Oh, no, I'm pretty sure based on being able to get it to work if I hold it just so that it isn't a PRAM thing. But I could be wrong. But if salvage isn't worth very much, that's fine then, I will not worry about it.

What would I need to do to replace the hard disk? Sigh. I not a "physical parts" kind of person. I will install RAM but I use Macs so that I don't have to tinker, you know?

Once you realize that modern desktop-style computers are basically legos, it's a lot less intimidating to deal with them. Macs make things just a bit harder, but it usually winds up to be a problem of remembering where the various screws were removed.

http://www.applefritter.com/Mac_Mini_Take_Apart_Guide

Well that might be doable. If you can save me the agony of figuring out what HD to get... that would be sweet of you.

lol "legos" when surely you meant "lego". no need to thank me.

I'm 95% sure that something like this is what you need. It's 4200 rpm, SATA, and notebook-sized, which is what the Mini uses. If you have any doubts, buy it from a place you can easily return it to.

By the way, you could get a faster disk, say 5400 rpm or 7200 rpm. The only real risk is that it could overheat other components, possibly destroying them over a period of time.

Wait, could I salvage the harddisk from my deadish iBook? Hmm...

Again thanks a googleplex.

A good question, but probably not. I don't believe that any iBooks had SATA disks.

There are a few disks on eBay now for around $50, and some salvage shops might have them for less.

How do I embed an image link to a youtube video on IL* (instead of a text hyperlink), if I can?

You can't.

ty

what is zotero and can you eat it?

what is ruby on rails and can you eat it?