Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread

[aimeeandbeatles]

Actually, I don't know. It's not a laptop, and when I check HWiNFO32 it says it has a NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller.

 

[warpus]

I built my rig piece by piece, and I designed it to be fairly upgradeable. This was a couple years ago.

It contains a motherboard & PSU capable of SLI, as well as one 8800GTS 640mb video card (or perhaps 512, I don't quite remember)

I am thinking of going SLI.. maybe soon.. but I haven't kept up with GPU tech at all, so I have no idea what's out there, how much stuff costs, etc.

When would be a good time to buy another video card and SLI up? Can I still even buy an 8800GTS? If so, they gotta be pretty cheap, eh? Would I be wise to invest in one now, or wait a bit longer? Are there any price drops coming anytime soon?

Oh, and I heard that when you go SLI, you can't dual-monitor. Is this true?

 

[Genocidicbunny]

I think drivers have fixed multi-monitor with SLi, but honestly, its not even worth it really. The 8800GTS is out of production, so the only place to really find them is on ebay. And in most games, a single GTX 275 will outmatch them, especially in games not made for SLi.

As for price drops: oh yeah, they're coming. AMD just released the first of the 5xxx series, and nVidia is due to have the GT300 series out in november or so. These two GPU's (or families rather) are supposed to bring some pretty hefty improvements.

 

[Mesousa]

However I can surf internet just fine. What gives?

I had a similar message when I started using my current computer. This is with Windows XP. I googled the problem, and it was a simple matter of opening the one with limited connectivity, unchecking TCP/IP in the properties, and unchecking "automatically search for network folders and printers" (or something like that, don't know what it's called in English) in the Windows explorer folder options. Don't know if that'll work for you, if not, try googling it yourself, there were other solutions I didn't look closely at since that one already worked for me.

 

[Perfection]

I've noticed certain brands of CD-Rs are more scratch-resistant than others. Is there a basis for this or just a fluke?

Why the poop do you use CD-Rs?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Why the poop do you use CD-Rs?

For music? My fingers are too big to use any kind of MP3 player (plus they get easily lost), so I stick with old-fashioned portable CD players.

 

[Gelion]

EDIT: Problem solved.

 

[warpus]

I think drivers have fixed multi-monitor with SLi, but honestly, its not even worth it really. The 8800GTS is out of production, so the only place to really find them is on ebay. And in most games, a single GTX 275 will outmatch them, especially in games not made for SLi.

As for price drops: oh yeah, they're coming. AMD just released the first of the 5xxx series, and nVidia is due to have the GT300 series out in november or so. These two GPU's (or families rather) are supposed to bring some pretty hefty improvements.

yeah, but why would i want to spend $$$$ on a new video card, when i could buy a cheaper older card and significantly increase my gpu processing power?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Maybe I'm going crazy...

My new portable CD player has one of those neat see-through cases. It also has a 10-second anti-skip. It doesn't stop at all while playing, it just keeps spinning even though the anti-skip is full.

Now, why is it that the CD seems to spin faster on fast songs, and slower on slow songs? I think either something to do with anti-skip or some optical illusion. Any ideas?

Also, it was used when I bought it, the only problem is that when you take the batteries out, the little piece of wire for the flat end of the battery keeps coming loose and it gets hard to put new batteries in. Is there some way to keep it still?

 

[Genocidicbunny]

yeah, but why would i want to spend $$$$ on a new video card, when i could buy a cheaper older card and significantly increase my gpu processing power?

You will at best get 1.75X your current GPU's power, at best. At worst, you may halve your graphical power due to bad SLi compatibility. On the other hand, if you have the 640mb version of 8800GTS, a GTX 275 is on average about 2.5 times as powerful. If you wish to do high-res gaming, its a much better alternative. SLi, while relatively mature, still needs profiles, and other adjustments and tweaks to optimize it, and even then, you are by no means guaranteed to have your game run better.

If you find a matching 8800GTS and find it for cheap ( 50$ or so) then more power to you. Otherwise, I suggest getting at least a GTX 260+

 

[Atlas14]

I was looking to buy a 950 Gb Western Digital External HDD and under the pros/cons section for reviews it says "cons- no on/off". What exactly does this mean and will it be a big issue? I am trying to free up a lot of space on my laptop due to the large music collection i have accumulated over the years.

 

[Cutlass]

how do you turn off the popup bubble at startup for windows security alerts? i had that turned off for 2 years and then it came back and i forgot how i had it turned off before. I DO NOT want to be told to turn on automatic updates every time i start the pc.

 

[GVBN]

Open security center and on the left it should say something like "change the way security center alerts me"

 

[Cutlass]

thanks. i don't know why the settings got changed on their own. but that's windows for you.

 

[Zelig]

how do you turn off the popup bubble at startup for windows security alerts? i had that turned off for 2 years and then it came back and i forgot how i had it turned off before. I DO NOT want to be told to turn on automatic updates every time i start the pc.

You should turn on automatic updates.

 

[Cutlass]

I don't actually know if my copy of xp will pass the windows genuine craptastical advantage. And i'm unwilling to find out.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

How to get rid of the annoying paper texture on a scan? Tried smoothing, turns out blobby. Reduce noise made it worse. Rescanning not an option (I was scanning pictures from a school library book for my own personal use. Then I returned it.)

Programs I can use include GIMP, Paint.NET, Paint Shop Pro 7, and a really old version of Photoshop. Any other free ones are ok.

 

[Cutlass]

How to get rid of the annoying paper texture on a scan? Tried smoothing, turns out blobby. Reduce noise made it worse. Rescanning not an option (I was scanning pictures from a school library book for my own personal use. Then I returned it.)

Programs I can use include GIMP, Paint.NET, Paint Shop Pro 7, and a really old version of Photoshop. Any other free ones are ok.

I'm not a great picture scanner. However I've done a bit. This is more or less as good as I can accomplish. I know people who are better. Note that it looks pretty good, but if you zoom it you can still see artifacts of the printing.

Spoiler :

Get a piece of black construction paper or some other flat black item that will completely back the scanned paper and after placing the page you want to scan on the scanner face, cover it with the black paper. Then close the lid, and if it is not sitting perfectly flat, pile books or some other weight on it on press down on it with your hand while it scans.

Scan and open the pic in your editing program. Cleaning it up takes practice. Making it perfect is for artists. If you want to get it to something that looks like the raw photo instead of a scan, that's years of practice. But generally speaking the tools you want to practice with are blur, sharpen, and noise reduction. Generally you try one, see if you like the result, undo if you don't, and just keep at it until you get a result you can live with.

But you have to understand that the scanner sees everything on the printed page just as it is. And printed pages have absolute limits on what is there both ny the quality of the paper and the printing process. So it is as much art work as the program tools to get to something like a nerble scan. I never managed to get this good.

Spoiler :

 

[Till]

Depends on the nature of the texture. If it is well localized in the frequency domain, try applying a FFT (Gimp Plugin here) and smooth the high frequencies.

If it looks more like noise, you can try a selective gaussian blur. If you select a (relatively) low max delta and are careful with the blur radius, you can get rid of noise without losing too much detail:

Spoiler example :

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Thanks both.