Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread II

[H4run]

The point of a cooling stand is to reduce overheating as much as possible, and that's why air circulation is vital for laptops that are de facto heat factories, and plenty of empty space and the surface it is on is what you need. Placing the laptop on top of one large book, which is what you seem to doing, doesnt really address the heating/air circulation issue, as air is still chocked off by the two millimeters between the laptop and the book. Performance isnt affected much, unfortunately, but if you really value your laptop and your money, it does extend the lifespan of the laptop. By how much depends on the cooling stand.

If you use Amazon.com or an equivalent, typing "cooling stand" or "cooling pad" (both without quotes) in the search bar should give some ideas.

Hope this helps.

Thanks Pluto!

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

You're welcome!

 

[cardgame]

I heard from a friend that the cooling stand main function is just to lift up the laptop so it not really stick to the platform and have decent air circulation. So I use big dictionary book and put my laptop above it. Still it not change so much. But if you think it will change the performance of my computer if I bought a good quality cooling stand, I will buy that instead having new laptop. Do you have any suggestion for the brand? or the design? I don't have experience on buying that device.

If your computer is experiencing slowdowns because of heat budget and underclocking performance, it should be an apparent slowdown over time; after a cold boot, it should perform normally. If it's slow all the time, a cooling stand won't do jack to help.

 

[dutchfire]

I'm trying to use Bing and I've got some questions:

* When I'm on a bing search results page, the F6 button (put my cursor in address box/omnibox) does not work. (Firefox)
* In google, if you type a mathematical equation, e.g. 62*143=, google will act as a calculator. I use this a lot. Does bing have a similar feature?

 

[bhsup]

F6 does nothing for me in Firefox. In IE it bounces my cursor between the URL field, suggested sites, and the bing search field.

EDIT: Okay, google does the calculations on the fly. I had to whack enter in Bing to get search results.

 

[dutchfire]

Weird, the calculations don't work for me in bing

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

This maybe a silly question:

I do a lot of realtime video recording with screen capture software games and such. If I were to make an extra partition at the beginning of my data drive just for that, a few GB or so, would there be any better performance thats actually noticable?

 

[Cutlass]

Probably not. It's the same physical drive.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Speaking of which, what's the best way to avoid or reduce choppy framerates when capturing screen recording in real time?

 

[cardgame]

- Reduce recording resolution (fraps has an option for half-size)

- Reduce game resolution or graphic level

- overclock the cpu

- upgrade your hardware


Those are, as far as I'm aware, the only solutions. Ordered by practicality.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

New question:

Spoiler kinda big :

The wireless signal on the upper right. Why does it say "LTE", and WTH does "LTE" mean anyway?

 

[J-man]

IIRC, LTE is a 4g standard.

 

[Zelig]

This maybe a silly question:

I do a lot of realtime video recording with screen capture software games and such. If I were to make an extra partition at the beginning of my data drive just for that, a few GB or so, would there be any better performance thats actually noticable?

My rule of thumb is to never use partitions for anything, they're pretty much always more hassle than they're worth.

Pretty much any modern drive will give you at least 80 MB/s on the slowest part, I'm doubtful there are many situations where you're doing video capture stuff where 80 MB/s isn't sufficient for full performance but 120 MB/s is. If 80 MB/s is a performance bottleneck, the solution is to use an SSD.

Probably not. It's the same physical drive.

There can be a difference of about 2x between the inner and outer parts of platters on HDDs.

 

[kristopherb]

Question 1 - Can you recommend a good free video editing software? I'm considering using windows movie maker. In all seriousness its just a glorified slide show with audio (the pictures will relate to the audio) . Any suggestions?

Question 2 - What does this symbol mean? its infuriating. Its attached below.

 

[peter grimes]

New question:

Spoiler kinda big :

The wireless signal on the upper right. Why does it say "LTE", and WTH does "LTE" mean anyway?

Yes, LTE is a "4G" standard, but from what I understand no US 4g is actually adhering to established minimums. Do you use Verizon? That visual voicemail app costs $36/year it's one of the most expensive wide-spread apps around.

Question 2 - What does this symbol mean? its infuriating. Its attached below.

It might indicate data roaming. Not sure, though.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Interesting, because "LTE" only ever shows up when my device is unable to connect to the internet. When connected, there is a blank space under the "4G". Also, I'm using at&t. Naturally, this is an Android device.

Edit: The voicemail app came with the phone when I got it.

 

[peter grimes]

I have a 1Tb hdd in my iMac. I want to install a Windows partition / virtual machine / something to play Civ5 and, maybe ME3.

Should I go through the boot camp route or a virtual machine? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each method? What size partition should I use?

 

[cardgame]

bootcamp for performance, cheapness, etc.

as big as you aren't planning to use for mac. Games are freaking huge. Minimum recommended would be 80-100gb. My Windows partition is 300, and it's just about full. My Mac still has 120 or so free, on a 750gb drive.

 

[Zelig]

Virtual machine for ease of use, general usability and no partition requirement, bootcamp for cheaper and performance.

I generally prefer Parallels to Fusion, VirtualBox I mostly avoid using except for servers.

Ars comparison of Parallels and Fusion: http://arstechnica.com/information-...wdown-parallels-desktop-9-vs-vmware-fusion-6/

 

[antimuff]

New question:

Spoiler kinda big :

The wireless signal on the upper right. Why does it say "LTE", and WTH does "LTE" mean anyway?

LTE stands for "Long Term Evolution", which is the current accepted 4g standard. It was a tossup between that and Clearwire's 4g, which was mainly Sprint.