Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread II

[Valka D'Ur]

I dunno, Firefox has been working fine for me on cfc across my four PCs. Have you tried disabling any/all add-ons?

IE has been deprecated for some years other than security updates anyway.

I specifically recommend against Opera, it got bought out by China. Any of Chrome/Vivaldi/Opera are going to render the web comparably, they all use the same engine.

I did read up on Opera before deciding to try it, and I know about it being owned by the Chinese. I don't intend to do anything sensitive when using it, like banking or purchases. I just needed something that would let me get around this place and other XenForo sites.

Hopefully the next version of Firefox will be less... troublesome.

As far as I'm concerned, this is a trial run, to see how it works. If something goes wrong or if I find it can't do something I want it to do, I'll try Chrome... although I did try Chrome a couple of years ago and didn't like it.

 

[Disgustipated]

With Firefox I can't access Alerts properly, can't edit posts, can't "like" posts, can't quote posts, can't even navigate to someone's profile page to send a PM. Have you been having any of these problems?

I haven't had any problems with firefox on this forum at all. Works great.

*shrug* Not really meaningful without context. By most metrics FF57 is drastically better performing than before Quantum. You can presumably close tabs until the CPU usage goes down to see which website is offending.

I thought it might be Netflix since I was watching that. But it's doing it again today. Right now I only have Gmail open, Yahoo mail, and CNN website. I can try to narrow it down, but it doesn't matter, because I use all 3 websites regularly, and I need all 3.

I'm up to 78% memory usage right now, not as bad as the 95% I got yesterday, but almost all of it is Firefox. Up to 79% now. I think it will eventually get to 95%. There has to be a memory leak somewhere. The best bet is to uninstall and reinstall. I just have to make sure to save my bookmarks. I don't want to have to find those all over again. I'll eventually get around to reinstalling it from scratch. Which is usually better than "upgrades".

 

[Zelig]

I wouldn't expect Google to make the gmail web client play nice with any non-Chrome browser, or Verizon to be technically competent for Yahoo web client to play nice with any browser.

I'd really recommend a desktop email client rather than web clients.

Personally, I use Firefox for nearly everything *except* Google services. I open Chrome when I have to use Google services. (And only then.) (Most often, the Android developer portal - I've weaned myself off most other Google services.)

 

[shadowplay]

I'm looking to replace my 4 and a half year old Surface RT tablet. What tablet would give me the best bang for the buck? I don't particularly care about the brand, though I'm most comfortable in the Windows ecosystem. I'll mostly use it for web browsing and sending email.

 

[Zelig]

If you don't need a keyboard, base model iPad is $450: https://www.apple.com/ca/ipad-9.7/

Since MS abandoned the non-Pro Surface line, there's nothing worthwhile available with a keyboard for under a grand.

Since the entire tablet ecosystem went to crap, and I use a keyboard, I got a 12" MacBook and abandoned tablets entirely. (Previously with Galaxy Tab, then Surface RT, then Shield Tablet.)

 

[shadowplay]

If you don't need a keyboard, base model iPad is $450: https://www.apple.com/ca/ipad-9.7/

Since MS abandoned the non-Pro Surface line, there's nothing worthwhile available with a keyboard for under a grand.

Since the entire tablet ecosystem went to crap, and I use a keyboard, I got a 12" MacBook and abandoned tablets entirely. (Previously with Galaxy Tab, then Surface RT, then Shield Tablet.)

The iPad might be a bit excessive for me in terms of features. I don't really use many apps and mostly want one to browse the internet, at something other than the painful crawl the Surface RT moves at.

This is what I'm leaning towards at the moment:
https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/produc...ro-1-year-warranty-refurbished/12063634.aspx?

 

[Quintillus]

Since MS abandoned the non-Pro Surface line, there's nothing worthwhile available with a keyboard for under a grand.

Since the entire tablet ecosystem went to crap, and I use a keyboard, I got a 12" MacBook and abandoned tablets entirely. (Previously with Galaxy Tab, then Surface RT, then Shield Tablet.)

That's unfair. There are good tablets/two-in-ones with keyboards below a grand. I was looking at some of those with a friend 3 or 4 weeks ago, and our local Micro Center had 4 different models from 4 different manufacturers - and that's only looking at midrange ones ($600 - $900). He wound up going with the Lenovo Flex 14, which has a quad-core option for $700, with good build quality and more than adequate performance for anything other than gaming. If anything I'd say the tablet/2-in-one ecosystem is as good as ever, particularly in selection.

I'm less familiar with the low end of it as I haven't known anyone looking to buy one recently, but I don't see anything particularly wrong with the one shadowplay linked. With an SSD and 8 GB of RAM, it's set in those departments, and while its 1.6 GHz dual-core is not going to knock anyone's socks off, it's probably still a good bit faster than the RT. The build quality probably isn't quite the same at that price point, but you can't expect it to be while also spending so much less. If you're okay with that tradeoff, there's nothing wrong with that option.

Edit: I should also note that I'm saying this as someone who doesn't actually own a tablet. Despite their not being my cup of tea, I can't deny that there are a lot of perfectly good options (and yes, probably a few not-so-good ones too... but it's not like a few years ago when it was a race to the bottom and it was a couple premium options and everything else of questionable quality).

 

[Zelig]

Well, shadowplay and I are both in Canada, so I'm going by Canadian pricing. The one shadowplay linked is a refurb model with no keyboard, obviously you can get cheap used goods. I wouldn't functionally consider the Flex 14 a "tablet".

bestbuy.ca does not in fact have any new tablets with non-bluetooth keyboard and >2GB RAM for under $1000. You can probably find one somewhere for a bit less, but it's not going to come close to the relative build quality and CPU you could get with, say, the Surface 3 for $500, when Cherry Trail was still current-gen.

The tablet market (asides from iPad) is worse now than a few years ago - rather than a race to the bottom, Android manufacturers have pretty much exited the market entirely (is there a single tablet other than the Pixel C running Oreo?), and even Google has largely given up with their first-party apps on tablet-sized screens.

This was from a year ago, nothing's improved since then: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/09/one-year-later-can-android-7-0-nougat-save-the-pixel-c/

 

[Disgustipated]

Thought I fixed the Firefox problem by disabling accessibility options accessing the internet (I read that this might be a solution), but it still has problems. I notice if only one tab is open it's okay, but multiple tabs open seems to be what is causing the problem. I even uninstalled and re-installed. Though I don't think it was a clean install since everything was back as I left it (including which pages I had open) after I installed it.

It's perplexing because not many people seem to be having this problem.

I did install a scriptblock for Chrome which helps a little, though it doesn't seem to be as good as Noscript was for Firefox. I had to do it because for the first time in my life I got a fake ransom security alert while I was using Chrome. It looked real enough and scary. Even went full screen, and I lost control of my Chrome browser completely. Had to restart. They wanted to ransom to avoid all kinds of nasty thing, but it looked pretty fake (hasn't happened since, so I'm guessing it was fake). All because I'm using a Google product. Thank you for that Google.

edit: after some more testing, the problem seems especially related to both Yahoo mail and Gmail. Right now I only have IMDB and Civfanatics open, and the memory seems relatively stable with these two open. But opening up Gmail causes all kinds of problems with memory usage, even after I close the Gmail tab.

 

[Zelig]

Better than noscript ever was: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium-mode

 

[Cutlass]

Anyone use Thunderbird email client? Yahoo email is now preventing that from working. And logging on to Yahoo directly for email is damned annoying, because it function so much inferior to Thunderbird. Any help? I can't even figure out how to change the password in thunderbird. But Yahoo doesn't give me the option of deleting spam without opening it first.

 

[Michkov]

I'm not using yahoo, but I am an avid Thunderbird user. My troubleshooting is usually turn every dial until something changes, so keep that in mind.

Not sure what the exact problem is but for changing passwords I'd look into Tools\Options\Security for saved passwords, delete them and enter them new. For everything else play around in the Account settings (also under Tools)

 

[shadowplay]

The touch screen on the refurbished tablet I just got is much less sensitive than my old one, and it's making using the touch keyboard very difficult, and doing things like swiping downwards doesn't always work for some reason, and will register as a tap insted. Anything I can do short of returning it?

 

[Synobun]

The touch screen on the refurbished tablet I just got is much less sensitive than my old one, and it's making using the touch keyboard very difficult, and doing things like swiping downwards doesn't always work for some reason, and will register as a tap insted. Anything I can do short of returning it?

You could take it to a repair shop and have them check it over. Perhaps the touch portion of the screen isn't adhered properly.

Since you got it refurbished, though, I imagine it'd probably cost more to fix than it did to get it.

 

[shadowplay]

It's under warranty.. I guess I'll have to send it back to them to fix it. I was hoping there would be some kind of touch screen sensitivity setting I was missing or something like that. ugh. I knew buying refurbished was chancy.

 

[Synobun]

It's under warranty.. I guess I'll have to send it back to them to fix it. I was hoping there would be some kind of touch screen sensitivity setting I was missing or something like that. ugh. I knew buying refurbished was chancy.

You could try fiddling with the sensitivity settings. Based on your description I doubt it'll matter much, but who knows.

If you go into Settings and then Language & Input, there should be an option for touch screen sensitivity. It should be near the bottom of the list.

 

[shadowplay]

You could try fiddling with the sensitivity settings. Based on your description I doubt it'll matter much, but who knows.

If you go into Settings and then Language & Input, there should be an option for touch screen sensitivity. It should be near the bottom of the list.

Is that for Windows 10? I can't find it.

 

[Synobun]

Is that for Windows 10? I can't find it.

Oh. You said tablet so I assumed Android. My bad.

Control Panel > Hardware > Touch

You can also use the search bar to find it by just typing in 'touch'.

 

[shadowplay]

A recent Windows 10 update seems to have messed with my laptops brightness settings... it will now randomly suddenly change brightness intensity at random intervals and I have to reset it to my preferred (low) brightness setting manually each time. Any idea why this would be or how I might stop it from happening?

 

[Synobun]

It probably enabled adaptive brightness.

https://windows.gadgethacks.com/how...ows-10-for-maximum-screen-brightness-0163440/