Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread

[Atticus]

Ok, thanks everybody!

 

[Zelig]

Thing is, with the current infrastructure the way it is, the 20% overhead may not be too far off. You've got the last mile problem, where you have plenty of bandwidth for all the customers going to the final hub, but from there you're oversaturating your lines. ive noticed over the last two years, the number of wireless networks I can see has gone up from around 10 to around 35, and at the same time our 2.2mbit connection has become a 1.8mbit which is almost exactly 20%.

Yeah, but that's real situational... I get the full advertised 15/1 mbits down/up on my line, and I'm sure there are some ISPs providing their customers with much less than 80% of the advertised speed.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

There's only two ISPs in the area and I noticed the connections seem to slow down a lot after 5 p.m. (sometimes time out) That's about when everyone's getting home from work/school/etc.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Yeah, but that's real situational... I get the full advertised 15/1 mbits down/up on my line, and I'm sure there are some ISPs providing their customers with much less than 80% of the advertised speed.

Bah, you and your fast speeds. I live in the friggin silicon valley and we still dont even have the option for anything faster than 6mbit.

 

[Zelig]

Bah, you and your fast speeds. I live in the friggin silicon valley and we still dont even have the option for anything faster than 6mbit.

When I was living in residence at school, I had a blissful 45/~30 mbit down/up connection, with very few restrictions.

Ironically, there's nothing west of the maritimes (ie. area that covers 93% of Canada's population) in Canada that gives 15mbit or better service without download caps, which is very likely where I'm going to end up after I finish school.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

When I was living in residence at school, I had a blissful 45/~30 mbit down/up connection, with very few restrictions.

Ironically, there's nothing west of the maritimes (ie. area that covers 93% of Canada's population) in Canada that gives 15mbit or better service without download caps, which is very likely where I'm going to end up after I finish school.

Where in Canada are you? I'm in Nova Scotia, and as I said, the connections slow down after 5.00 pm. I assume thats because of traffic. There's only two (actually, maybe three, but I'm not sure if that office downtown is an ISP or not) ISPs around here.

 

[Zelig]

Where in Canada are you? I'm in Nova Scotia, and as I said, the connections slow down after 5.00 pm. I assume thats because of traffic. There's only two (actually, maybe three, but I'm not sure if that office downtown is an ISP or not) ISPs around here.

I'm in Antigonish, it's about an hour's drive from you.

With Bell's 1.5mbit service and Eastlinks 15mbit service, I haven't noticed any particular slowdown due to time of day, haven't had much experience with Bell's faster services.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I use Eastlink myself. the only other one around here is Aliant and they're even worse.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Both my optical drives are Lite-Ons. In general, are they any good?
I googled it and I got things as varied as "a lot of expensive coasters" to "it never gave me any trouble." For myself, I got a few coasters (maybe three or four) but not enough to make a big deal out of it. It can be noisy sometimes, though.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Mine's quieter than my other one, although I dont remember who that one is made by, its not Lite-On though. Havent had a single cd or dvd go bad in it yet though, and ive burned ~300 DVD's and CD's on it within just the last 2 months. ( My 1TB HDD failing made me want to back up some stuff )

 

[lndm]

By modern standards rolleyes I find that Lite-On is fine, as in average.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Thanks (10chairs)

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Okay, another thing:

On XP, I've been looking a bit at the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard. The way I see it, if you have XP installed on another computer, you can copy all the files/settings over. So, could you use this for a HDD?

The way I see it is to pop the old HDD out, put the new one in, install Windows, take it back out, put the old one back in, connect the new one as a slave drive, and then go from there.

Has anybody tried this, and how did it work out?

 

[lndm]

Sure. You could even use it on/for the same HDD/computer.

You could take the old one out, put the new one in, install windows, put the old one in as a secondary drive and copy the files over..., or you could use the old installation to burn the files, put them on a thumb drive or run the wizard before swapping the drives. Or both, of course.

The wizard may simplify transferring your old emails if you have any interest in keeping them, and your general windows settings. The wizard isn't as necessary for the files.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Thank you.

Would it also transfer the registry? I have a few settings there that I don't feel like going through again.

 

[lndm]

As far as I know, it incorporates user.dat (I guess it would have to) but my memory is a little vague on that. Not sure about system.dat and others.

You may be interested in incorporating all your registry tweaks into a single text file for future use. You may have noticed that tweak sites sometimes offer theior tweaks as *.reg files that can be clicked on, and you can combine them or write your own.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310516

 

[Chukchi Husky]

Is there any programme I can use to convert a lot of image files at once instead of opening them up one by one?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Is there any programme I can use to convert a lot of image files at once instead of opening them up one by one?

IrfanView.

 

[Gelion]

I'm looking for an online storage place to upload and download files at leasure. Can anyone help?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I'm looking for an online storage place to upload and download files at leasure. Can anyone help?

I use MediaFire, but the files have to be less than 100 MB. It's a good site though, only problem I have is uploading after 5pm (because of the internet traffic around here.)