A thread for boring computer questions.

I am living in rural Mexico for several months. My computer support is limited to my spouse, who is a systems engineering type who has no aptitude for help desk type support (his support is limited to "just buy a Mac" and/or "just use Linux").

My PC (an HP probook that I like just fine) is my lifeline to 1) grad school coursework and 2) everything else outside of rural Mexico. It came with Windows 7 and Office 2010.

The thing has some sort of "HP Support Assistant" that periodically seems to run some sort of updates, although I can't ever tell if everything is really up to date or not.

My boring computer question: do I need to get a copy of McAfee or some other anti-virus software thingie? Anything else I need to do to keep this machine trouble-free? I am backing up docs with Dropbox, but is there other stuff I should be doing to avoid problemos?

1) skip ahead to "Let's talk about your anti-virus solution" on http://www.metafilter.com/user/77879. follow the instructions there, i.e. uninstall any norton/mcafee-type antivirus stuff you've got, and install MSE.

2) bookmark that page, you will need it one day, unless you...

3) buy a mac

i don't know if windows has something like time machine, but you could (should imo!) also make a full backup of your hard drive once a week. by an external drive the same size as your hd. use something like "driveimage xml" (maybe there are better options, i last used windows before 9/11, but http://lifehacker.com/5839753/the-best-disk-cloning-app-for-windows says it's the best).

also never used it, but max iirc recommends http://www.crashplan.com/.

but if your internet isn't the best down there then your #1 priority should be an external drive

(or two)

Oh hey looks like MSE is already on here! I still need to implement a hard-core back-up plan, though. It would help if I had a clue about (or patience for) computer shite. But thanks much for links, that will help me get started!

Anyone else having youtube issues lately? I've had them all week, on multiple devices connected to different internets

Basically the videos just stop at random points, clicking on the timeline bar a bit further ahead resumes. Happens very often though.

Can't find anything on the web other than 'clear your cache' which I've done multiple times and hasn't changed anything

i've tried both Chrome and IE btw

guess its just me.

yt now defaulting to 144p lol i didn't even know that existed!

I've had that happen in the last few days as well. Start playing a 20 min or longer video, and it suddenly stops halfway through as though it's only 10 mins long. Refresh the page, click on the timeline to get back to where it stopped, and Youtube will only play another 5 mins or so. Rinse/repeat. Also for a couple of days it defaulted to 144p, but so far today it's been fine. (Win 8, Chrome - haven't tried any other browsers on this PC)

got so bad that I'm now referring to using a proxy site to view any youtube vids. It's not bad, apart from losing a lot of YT functionality like playlists and signing in, but meh as long as I can watch a damn video without it stopping.

No problems here, apart from this odd thing that's been happening in the last couple of days where a video will play for about a minute, skip over a couple of seconds, and then continue playing like nothing happened.

I checked some forums and I'm definitely not alone, I wonder if its anything to do with location or isp.

I don't know where else to ask this, so it goes here: In what format should I be saving images (photos, stuff from the web)? I guess not JPEG, right? BMP?

Especially wondering about things I want to print in photo quality.

Could you clarify your use-cases?

They're mostly iPhone pics since my digital camera broke and I haven't replaced it. I'd be doing some light photoshop and printing them either at a lab or on my quite decent photo printer. (Is that what you meant?)

jpg, as high quality as you can stand.

if you're really concerned about quality tiff w/ lzw compression, but if you're dealing with the web, jpg over bmp, png etc

OK, thank you. Somewhere along my life's journey, I got the idea that jpg was bad? I don't know why, though. May I ask why jpg or tiff are preferable?

jpg is lossy compression format while tiff LZW compression is lossless. you will gain nothing from saving a jpg as a tiff. however if for some reason you are going to be opening, editing and resaving an image over and over again then save it as a tiff or psd, a jpg will re-compres with each save which will add up to a loss of quality. (theoretically, with a high quality jpg setting you could resave it many, many times before you would ever notice a difference.)

thread i have need of you! ty for the bump, i had completely forgotten

does anyone know how much it would cost to replace a laptop's casing? specifically the top half? the screen itself is totally fine, the plastic is just fucked and cracked and possibly has something stuck in it.

I don't know if "fixing laptops" is a thing that happens in America

xp Depends on manufacturer, model, and age. In the past I've sourced and installed laptop components for people, including the top half (assume you mean the bit that covers the back of the screen when the lid is shut).

is it a bad thing if my cheapo $10 charger looks like it's slowly bursting open at the seams

i need a new laptop

the answer to your first question is yes and the answer to your second question is get a 13" MacBook Air

basically

i mean, depends on what you need to do with it, but

you're probably not gonna go wrong following silby's advice re the macbook air

it will cost a lot more than a typical laptop tho

$_$

yeah the main thing i need out of a new computer is for it to not cost more than a refurbished dell

we're talking like over a thousand for new mba

i've never even heard of a thousand dollars

me either

i actually have zero dollars in my wallet right now

it's empty

there are some coins in other rooms

zachlyon, if you're in the US, check out http://slickdeals.net

For word processing stuff, core i3 is probably enough. Video/audio/multimedia stuff, you're probably better off with a core i5 (~$500-700).

Check that link, there are specials all the time.

But like markers said, depends what you want to do with it.

Guy I need serious help; this is the first time in many many years I've not been able to self-diagnose a computer porblem.

SYMPTOMS:

BSOD's when the computer falls asleep (DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE, error 9f I think)
I cannot connect to my home WiFi network
I can connect to the one at the coffee shop, and I can also connect via Ethernet, but a lot of images load corrupted (weird stripey neon colors) and a lot of pages load as giant blocks of text code (also some downloads download corruptedly too)

I've already updated bios and done a system restore. I'm thinking it may be a network driver but I don't understand why it'd also be fucking up over WiFi AND Ethernet. I really need my computer to function. Any suggestions?

have you tried a liveCD to see if it's hardware or software problem?

No; I will look into that

Any one in particular?

i used xubuntu recently for an older laptop but i bet most livecds will do fine. some are also quite small so you won't have to wait for a long download.

I can't even download a live cd because every file I download is corrupted

can you get at another computer? if the ram is easy to remove, i'd try removing one of the sticks if there are more than one.

(if you're near an apple store, i might surreptitiously bring a blank CD-R and burn one from there, or maybe ask the perky employees if it's OK if you do)

Those types of issues are always such a pain to try to solve over forums/Internet, instead of in person.

Throwing some (semi-random) ideas:

try to download on different browsers (chrome, firefox, ie)
clear your cache
if you can, don't connect through router/hub, but directly
i believe you can request an livecd from ubuntu?

do you download small files okay? or both large and small are affected?