7200rpm not found

Ive got an IBM Thinkpad X31 and want to get the most out of it. It stays plugged in most of the time.
I think we have a 100gb 7200RPM 2.5" HDD in the store. I’ll check tomorrow.

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NetStumbler is useless to me because it does not allow me to connect to that mac address.
So what’s the name of the program you found, since the suggestions you got here weren’t good enough?

Don’t just take, give back a little.

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I think the XPS line is overpriced for what you get. I’ve had an Inspirion for the last 2 years and it’s been great!!
I really don’t do alot of gaming (not enough time on my hands). I want something small, fits in a backpack so I can take it to class/work. Definately a lap top that will replace my desktop.

buying a dell is a stupid idea. horrible machines.

for a $1500 budget, I’d say get a Lenovo Thinkpad T61.
If you don’t game, then definitely go wth a Thinkpad.
For that money, and your uses of the computer, I would get a Macbook. Its small, it fits in your notebook, its instant on when you open it, has good battery life and has a better OS than windows.

Students get a $100 discount, and you get a free iPod too. Kinda nice.

OSx *is* better than windows….. but if you’re okay with Windows, you get more hardware and a better machine with the Thinkpad.

In this case the free iPod and the $100 discount make a pretty big difference too: Thats like $250 worth of value for him. And the ergonomics/sleekness of the Macbook are really good for pulling in/out of your bag between classes. Its small, no lines on the case to get hung, and the macbooks instant-un-sleep better than any computer I’ve ever used. Macbooks also help with college whores.

I mean, PC/Mac war aside: this particular guy really is a good candidate for a Macbook. For students they start at $999. He will probably want 2GB of RAM (its $90, so I would get it from Apple.com just for the warranty), and a larger HD so that puts it at more like $1200.
Thanks for the help. I’ve considered a mac before (never had one), only thing holding me back is the changing operating systems (had a PC all my life) but I’m sure I can adjust like everyone else.

The thinkpads sound cool too, but which model would you recommend? I’m looking at the lenovo website and should I just pick one of the lower priced ones and add stuff on till I get to around $1500 or pick one that’s near $1500?
Great battery life would be a plus, I like typing my notes during classes and If the laptop could go w/o having to be recharged in between that would be great. 4 classes a day, each one around 1:15 = 5 hours batt life? Anyone had a Lenovo that could shed some light for me?
Most people prefer OS X to Windows once they get used to it. In fact, that is the main reason people switch: OS X lacks most of the recurring problems people have with Windows.
@ $100 discount

I got like 20% off my Dell when I bought it through the Uni. Dell has some remarkable computers and they’re rock solid regardless of what other say.

I almost didn’t buy one because of the Dell hate here. But I’ve had mine for 2 years and it’s still rockin’. Had one prob but they came to my house the next day and fixed it.

Like I said tho, I would stay away from the XPS line and go for the Inspiron line.
[quote=Coottie;102537825] @ $100 discount[quote]

Its actually $100 + Free iPod, which is > 20% value. And its a much better machine than a Dell, and no Windows issues.

I would advise OP to try whatever he’s going to buy before he buys it.

You tried your mac before you bought it and IIRC you had to go without it for like a week before you got it back AND you had to take it to the store??

Where as I made one call, set the appt and BAM, they were on my doorstep the next day with parts in hand ready to fix my comp.

Not only that, I got 3 year warranty covering accidental spills, drops and other damage. It was a total of $50 with no additional charges and certainly no charge for hardware to fix whatever is broken. $50 and that’s it for 3 years. That’s a hell of a good warranty but then you throw in at home service and it’s flat out PIMP!!

I do like the free ipod idea tho. In fact, now that I’m gainfully employed, I’m thinking about picking up a macbook to see what all the fuss is about.

Unrelated to trying it before I bought it – my MBP has been in for service twice. I was without it for a week. It did suck. Macbooks are not exempt from the laws of physics, and do sometimes malfunction. The service is good, though.

If you’re not a student, you aren’t eligible for teh free iPod.

Yeah but let’s go back to the days when I was looking for a computer. You would spout, "Mac just work" or "Macs are teh best cuz the just work, they really do". And you do it at every opportunity…..never once even admitting that people had some serious problems with them.

You constantly gave the impression that they were bulletproof and rock solid machines when in fact, they’re just like any other computer.

Anyways, you’ve changed your tune but you still had to be coaxed into admitting that.

Macs are the most bulletproof computers available, but they are still subject to the laws of physics. They’re just like any other notebook available: but better.

And yes, that means they break and people get mad. Just less so than other brands. Thats why they are taking over the notebook market.

I don’t think I have read any more bullshit on this board in a long time if ever.

I’d recommend a thinkpad.

i have to disagree with this here. i have an Inspiron 1520 and while it is great and all, i would NEVER recommend it for what the OP is asking for. i don’t know why exactly, but the 15" Dell I have feels so much heavier than the 15" MBP i had recently with identical specs. i would never consider this a portable laptop. at around 6.4lbs, it is a full pound heavier than the MBP.

if you were comparing the 13" MB to the 14" Inspiron, you’ll find again that it is .4lbs or more heavier. if you want to bring this into class with you, then smaller and lighter wins.

EDIT: i think you can get a Thinkpad 14" laptop that is under 5lbs. i can’t be certain since i can’t find the actual specs on the lenovo site.

1 lb isn’t going to hurt anyone except the lightest and smallest among us.

I know because I carried around the E1705 for a full year while I was in school. It was only a pain for a week then I got used to it and don’t even notice it.

It’s a portable and very powerful computer and compared with a MBP price, way, way better.

So while YOU may not consider it to be a portable computer, it most certainly IS!

Not hardly….only for someone who isn’t concerned with the processing power, larger battery, bigger HD and all that. Smaller and lighter generally means trimmed down with less features.

Weight is an important consideration but it’s not the sole and only consideration. Price, warranty, components these are all much more important to me than weight. Sure I’d like it if my laptop was lighter but when I got it, it was an awesomely powerful machine.

FYI, the Dell 9 cell batter is what I got with my E1705. I could play games at full graphics and full brightness for almost 2 hours without needing to plug it in. If I turned down the brightness and actually tried to conserve my batteries, I could have gone much longer.
what about a good laptop for music production? I dont really plan on ‘gaming’ with it or getting on the internet or anything i just need a good processor and nice size ram. Which brands should I stay away from? Are toshiba Satellites any good? I really dont feel like blowing over a thousand on this but I hear Macs are the shit for my needs so any suggestions?
So do I look into a lower priced laptop and add on features or just get an expensive one ???????
If you’re carrying it with you you want a quality notebook with a sleek, small design that is light and durable. You also want it to instant-on really fast. I don’t know why, but that turns out to be HUGELY important. Let that guide you.
You go out an research for yourself because everyone is going to recommend what they bought. Having actually had my hands on a few brands myself and purchase on behalf of the company, I will second what Jolly has said, ThinkPads are the corporate standard for a reason.
A thinkpad would also be a good choice. I’m not just recommending what I bought: I don’t own a Macbook and one would NOT work for me.

I would strongly recommend against a Dell as I’ve never seen one that was very good at what he wants.

I work for a fairly large corporation and we’re a 100% Dell shop.

The impression that corporations ONLY buy IBM is one that is not supported by my experience or knowledge…yet it sure is popular on this forum.

Ok, good corporations…

Seriously, a lot corporations used Dell in the 90’s and early 2000’s but support wained from them a few years ago when they quality started to fall, and Lenovo started pricing their equipment at a reasonable price. We stayed away from IBM for latter reason for a number of years until it got to the point where you would be stupid not to spend a couple of hundred extra to get a quality machine. My respect for Dell disappeared when they started to sell in WalMart.

BTW, our parent company that bought us out is also a Dell house. Of the 3 Dells they sent us, 2 failed within a week – one had its processor disconnected from the MB. We are desperately trying to get them to wake up and smell the coffee – the Dell train has run its course
I’ve never seen a Dell laptop that isn’t big, plastic, heavy, hot, loud fan, etc. compared to other brands. Did that change?

The one we got actually looked pretty good – I was actually looking forward to playing around with it. Then I turned it on.

I’m currently working for a school district that issues all of the high school students Dell latitudes.

They’re pieces of shit.
There’s currently like a 40% off Thinkpads thing going on for stockholders. Buy a single share, and then shave off nearly half the price of the laptop.
Thanks again to everyone, so I think I’m gonna look into the thinkpads. I really don’t have much of a problem with windows since it does everything I need it to. The only dowloading I do is the occasional song or video clip, so should I invest in larger internal memory/hard drive or maybe get an external hard drive to keep it all on?
Funny thing is, I was in the OPs place about 2 years ago and I almost completely avoided a Dell because of this forum. I’m SOOO glad I thought about it more.

Here’s the thing, everyone here is telling you what they would do if they were buying another computer. The only reason I suggested only Dells is because everyone runs them down so much but the reality of Dell ownership is much different than the HATE you hear in this forum.

For me, the choice boiled down to a number of things….weight was NOT a huge criteria. Sure I didn’t want to haul around a load of bricks but someone is honestly complaining about 1 pound….one lousy, stinking pound. That is hysterical to me.

So I was more interested in longer battery life, large HD, large amounts of RAM and a kick ass video card. I’m into gaming and want to mobile game. Another HUGE consideration for me was the warranty. Laptops are a big investment and I didn’t want a 1 year warranty. I’ve described my warranty previously so I won’t do so again but that was a huge consideration.

Also another huge consideration, price. I found Dell was a much better value with their Inspiron line. I was able to go through my Universities IT department (something available to all students but you have to look for it on your Universities website. If you can’t find it….call the IT dept). My Uni had deals worked out with IBM, Dell, HP and others. I chose the Dell for the reasons above and because I didn’t like the think pads at all…..they just didn’t look good to me.

The financing options were the best also. I got 1 year NO Interest! NONE….as long as I paid off the computer in that year. Apple was 6 months only and no one else could match the 1 year deal.

So it’s funny to me….2 years ago, I was scared shitless to buy a Dell because of all the hate I read about them here. But then I talked with some real life friends that owned them and their experiences were totally different than I hear here. Not only that….3 years in home warranty and 1 year no interest was pimp!! So I bought a Dell and I’ve been very, very happy with it.

So do your own research and figure out what’s important to you. The applications you’re describing can be easily done on almost ANY computer. If you were a gamer I’d make more specific suggestions about the components you add but right now, pretty much any computer will fit your needs….or so it seems.

Anyways, good luck.
You should also look into a Lenovo Y510 Ideapad while you’re looking at T61s. I just picked one up last month and it’s a pretty sleek machine. Got 1.83 C2D, 4gigs of RAM, 250gig HD, Geforce 2600GT 256meg for $950 off of newegg. It beats the everliving shit out of the Macbook 2.0 C2D that it replaced.

I built a Macbook Pro with similar specs on Apple’s site. Fucking cost $2300.

I do have to warn the OP though: the one shitty thing about Lenovos… The box you get the laptop in is just plain brown cardboard, unlike the pimp looking Mac boxes.

the old ones were plain. the new ones actually look nice. It’s like a black box with colored lines runing at angles across it.

Advantages/disadvantages between having an ideapad or thinkpad? Is one better than the other or more preferred?

thinkpad is decades ahead.

ideapad is not really any diff than a gateway or hp.

thinkpad has magnesium chassis, spill tray/drain hole, aluminum hinges, drop sensor, etc.

well unfortunately the loudest and most opinionated individuals are the ones making sure their voice gets heard (mainly through trolling and whining) on this forum; and the most blatant of these individuals vehemently opposes dell…

yet sack-rides gateway

oh man that’s irony at its finest.
Why in god’s name do they put so many buttons on a thinkpad? They look ok other than that: WHO NEEDS 4 MOUSE BUTTONS? I mean, gimme a break!

Yep and I seem to recall he was also sack riding Asus.

I feel dirty defending Jolly, but the whole reason he does that is because manufacturers’ quality changes from year to year. Dell really was good a number of years ago, Gateway was really shitty, and Asus has fallen from where they started.

In other words, his opinions are based on the most current information collected both professionally and thru experience, not from sackriding one brand with blinders on. Like some of you.

I need a shower.

Thing is…he’s always been down on Dell as have most people in C&P.

So while your post makes it seem like he’s right because he’s current it ignores the empirical evidence that many of us have had and that is, Dell ain’t so bad afterall.

There’s nothing wrong with Dell at all. In fact, there’s a LOT going right with them and even Jolly admitted they’re coming around…..however, he still refuses to give them props. Seriously he sounds like a jilted lover that simply can’t get over the hurt.

But whatever, he’s entitled to his opinion. I’m just thrilled I didn’t listen to him.
For someone that doesn’t care about an extra pound here and there in a computer – there’s nothing wrong with a Dell. I can’t stand them because I carried one around for a year and it was big, heavy, plastic, loud and hot. I.e. a not very good portable.
You’ve been here two years, Dell has been shit for at least that long.

Just out of curiosty, you said your company is a Dell house. For how long have they been like that?

Most likely so you can search ALL the internets more effectively
Go to dell.com and configure one for yourself……..

You’ve always been more rational than Jolly.

Says you…..they haven’t been shit for me nor a lot of other people.

I know…it’s like you’re Al Gore trying to recount votes in Florida that just don’t add up. You just can’t accept that Dells are as bad as you want them to be.

Long time….from what I gather from others, about 10 years or so.

And before you say "That explains it, 10 years ago they were good and you guys just didn’t change" you need to understand the corporate culture where I work. We invest heavily in technology. We’re public and we’ve got lots of money to spend. If Dells weren’t reliable, we’d switch. I have absolutely NO doubt about that.

But like my mom always says, "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still" so you’ll likely discount everything said and still run down Dells.
We are an all Dell shop too… I’ve been at my job 6 years and back then we had about 90% Dells. Even our servers are Dells… Sure I’ve had to replace a hard drive here and there and some screen hinges, but zero problems overall. A couple of the machines that were new when I started are still being used.

I have the XPS M1210 and LOVE it…
I have a Sony Vaio SZ58, and I absolutely love everything about it! Pricey, sure, but I fucking love the simple design/ultra lightweight/ultra fast machine.

Can’t go wrong with an SZ

I do . You are most likely still with Dell because they give you a great price, and great service. Your IT group is quite complacent to keep things status quo – and to some degree, I don’t blame them. But it doesn’t mean it’s a better or even a good product.

If you seriously think that Dell has been at the top of the game for 10 years, YOU are deluding yourself. It’s not even possible if you look at it rationally. I run down Dell’s not because I’ve always hated them, I run them down because they’re quality has gone down the tubes.

see, you’ve just listed all the cons i considered when purchasing my dell laptop. it is big and heavy and plastic (all of which make it UGLY), although not very loud and not as hot as i’ve heard people complain about. it gets hot, but not hot enough that it’s going to burn your lap after prolonged use.

however i can say i’ve seen the new XPS laptops as well as inspirons and they have a much nicer form factor and are sleeker. although i think they’re still plastic. but that’s some of the problems fixed along with the nice prices still.

in fact i just helped my friend purchase an inspiron from best buy the other day for $600 even with a core2duo 2ghz, dvd burner, and all the other nice specs you could imagine (other than a crappy video card, although it still ran vista’s aero fine) and i was quite impressed with it. normally i wouldn’t condone buying from best buy but this was a slickdeal.

You do not know the culture and the company where I work nor do you even understand how competitive it is there. You literally have no idea what you’re talking about…..just accept that fact. You can’t know, you aren’t there yet you’re seriously trying to argue that you know what you’re talking about. In regards to the company where I work, it’s culture or what we would or would not do in a given situation…..you don’t….period.

I never said Dells were the best. I have however said they are no where near the worst and they are actually a hell of a lot better than most people say in this forum.

But lets examine this idea of "best". It’s a ridiculous notion that one company is best in some objective sense of the word. It’s totally subjective and what’s best to one person isn’t to another.

Look it’s OK if we disagree. The only reason I keep discussing it is because people sack ride the shit out of hating on Dell. It’s annoying and it’s unfair to Dell and people who visit this forum that don’t know this fact.
i am super happy with my sony

and i abuse the fuck out of it

Don’t try to convince the world that your corporation assesses their current IT needs and suppliers every year with an open mind and manage to come up with Dell as their choice. Every company and government agency who has ever done that has switched over the period of a decade. And I’m not picking on Dell when I say that – it’s simple fact.

Jesus….this shit gets annoying.

Never did I say we analyze your computers ever year and make a decision. Are you seriously incapable of reasoning this out for yourself?

Look if Dells were as shitty as the Dell haters here would like to believe, we’d have machines crapping out left and right. We don’t. If the comps crapped out on a regular basis or even semi-regular basis, we’d switch in a heartbeat. They don’t….so we stay with them.

There…I refuse to lead you around by the hand anymore.
In other words, your company is a de facto Dell house. Kinda what I’ve been saying all along…

like i said, i have a Dell 1520 and it is fine for me, but it is noticeably heavier than my MBP was which had identical specs. 1lb is not a lot on its own, but you are talking a 20% weight increase. i’d probably buy another Dell for what i use it for, but i definitely would not carry it back and forth to work like i did with my MBP or even my older 15" widescreen HP/Compaq laptop (i can’t remember which model, but it was a decent business model). i couldn’t even imagine carrying it around and taking it out regularly, especially when it is unnecessary with lighter laptops out from equally good vendors like Lenovo that are still within his budget.
For your purposes, I’d go with a T61 or MacBook. As a owner of both Leopard and Windows, OSX is not that much better than a well-maintained Windows system (not hard to do) in terms of security and stability. However, it’s visual aesthetics are eons ahead of Windows, even with the uxtheme.dll hacks and explorer.exe shell replacements. For that reason, I use my Mac the most for my work/internet browsing/media, and fire up my Windows box really only for some gaming here and there.

I’d suggest you test out OSX, and if you really like it, I’d get a MacBook.
ford vs chevy huh guys?

I think I can be of some help. I carry my laptop around at college often and I’m a heavy user. A lot of your concerns haven’t been addressed yet, so I’ll try and do that.

And, before I get started, I own a refurb Gateway (1 yr old). My girlfriend a macbook (1 yr old), my roommate a dell XPS 13” (1 yr old) and my suitemate a macbook (2 years old). I’ve used them all. Never used a Lenovo, but have heard good things – you probably won’t go wrong and you’ll have to do your own research when it comes to Lenovo.

I have a 15.4” c2d 2.0gh, 2gb ram, 160gb 5400 rpm hdd for $740 a year ago. it was a G R E A T deal. similar dells were costing me $300 more, and even more with a warranty, which i debated getting. If you’re willing to troubleshoot or do your own repairs (or you know a guy), then warranties aren’t worth it. Anyone who buys a dell warranty for full price is a n00b.

I looked at teh 1520 dell and through my school I also recieved a discount, but their back-to-school sale open to the public was better than the discount I recieved. It was something liek a flat rate off + 12% and my laptop came to be $1500 (with simialr spects to my gateway plus a graphics card, extra battery, bluetooth, some more stuff, it wasn’t bad for the price). And since it got to be that expensive, removing the warranty option made -$100 difference maybe (to $1400 – removing warranty also halved my discount). Then I had to factor in tax + shipping, which bumped it up to < $1700. It would be superior to my $740 gateway, but not enough to justify double the cost.
My Point: you really need to do your research. Shop around. Wait for the perfect deal, ESPECIALLY when looking at dells. It’s SUPER easy to get ripped off by them, but if you wait for a deal you can get good hardware for the best prices around.

Dell overprices liek hell and then gives you "discounts." Only sometimes are their discounts legit. Do your homework with dell.

Also, my roommate has an XPS 13” and my girlfriend a 13” macbook. They’re SO portable and it does make a difference when I go from my 15.4” to their laptops. Theirs are much more convinient to use around the dorms/campus. Also battery life on the macbook especially is SIX hours. The XPS is probably > 4. And screen brightness on the mac at the lowest setting is actually readable, whereas on my gateway the lowest setting is good only in the dark. For portability and battery life and quick startup from suspend mode, the macbook is the way to go. If you’re really into Windows look for the 13” XPS, but wait for a great deal OR look at another brand’s portable laptops.

Another plus of the macbook is that it has garageband, which is great for audio editing/playing around or even using as a guitar amp (great range of effects and what not). You should go try this program out.

The 13” screens a little small, but IMO worth it for portability and battery life, especially since gaming isn’t your think. For web browsing, word processing, audio work, it’s fine. Plus your budget allows for ram/hard drive/whatever else upgrades. Also, you’re guaranteed decent hardware and support for the price you pay. Go buy a laptop from Best Buy, and you might get hardware that was in its prime 4 years ago and pay WAY too much for it. Not to say you can’t get a good PC laptop, just shop around more because there are so many more options. If you’re looking for a simple solution go with the mac.

BTW, I never have, never will own a mac. Just not for me (Windows > Mac), but I think they are perfect for what you’re looking for.
Thats a solid post right there. OP should take note.

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he already did a clean and defrag…

did you even read his post ?

but you are right about wiping and reinstalling fresh when things get bogged down.
I think the problem is that the M and the B are backwards… fixing this will surely make it run faster.
can you run ccleaner and goto the tools tab and click on startup, the post a screen shot?

Those damn Chinese knock-offs.

I’m a fucking retard.

I don’t really want to format this as it’s not my computer. I’ll try looking into the startup programs. Maybe IBM (lol, I spelled it right) installs a lot of crap that’s not needed and is running in the background.
I’m surprised no one has asked this yet…what are the system specs?

doesn’t matter much really. sounds like tons of crap is running in the background that is hogging up all the resources.

i’ve had a pentiumIII 750mhz computer run better than a core2duo setup before, because the core2duo was loaded with crap and had barely any available ram

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I’ve never replaced laptop RAM before (can’t imagine that its terribly difficult?) and wanted to double check that this is the proper type? IBM’s aren’t terribly picky about certain brands of RAM are they? Should I be looking at a different brand?

Also is the ultrabay battery something any of you guys use? I use this machine outside a lot and wouldn’t mind an extra hour or so.

Two ram slots total on this machine? It’s only $40 to swap it out with matched sticks? I dunno, lots of reasons. Mostly because I feel like it.

Gracias.

I see your point – I’m just too much of a cheapskate to simply toss half a gig

My brother and dad both have T43’s as well. We all got them the same year, so I’ll probably toss my old stick into one of those machines. Amen on being a cheap fuck, took me about two months to convince myself to recycle an old PIII machine I’d had sitting around forever. I almost pulled the 8 gb hard drive I thought I’d never fill up.

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I cloned my old HD (30gb) onto a 160gb HD using Acronis True Image 11. There’s a hidden partition on the old HD around 5gb, used for system recovery and what not (IBM). When I went to clone the drive, Acronis originally set the hidden partition on the new drive to be around 18gb, which is ridiculous and a waste of space. So I set it back to around 5gb, leaving 13 or so gb free and unallocated. Unfortunately, Acronis would not let me resize the primary partition to use up the unallocated space. It kept saying the 130gb primary partition was at its max.

I went ahead and cloned the drive with the existing issue in the hopes that Partition Magic would bail me out once the new HD was installed. Using PM 8.0, I tried to resize the primary partition, and once again it would not let me do so. I tried creating a partition with the unallocated 13g then merging it with the primary drive, but it gave me an error "there are no drives to be merged" or something. So now I have 13gb partition.

I know it’s not that big of a deal, but I personally don’t like partitions and would rather have everything together. Anybody have any ideas? Thanks.
Not sure what gparted is?

I updated my BIOS and that fixed the problem. PM8 still wouldn’t let me "resize" the partition, however it let me "redistribute free space." Kind of weird, but it worked.
You may need to multi step the process, resize/remove teh 13GB to 5, commit. move the 5GB to the end, commit. then resize mthe 130, commit

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I’ve been in IT about 13 years or so now with about 4 years in PC type support (helpdesk and desktop), around 10 years in UNIX (HP-UX and Solaris) and about 4 years in storage (HP, HDS and EMC, midrange and enterprise across all three, and Brocade switches). there was obviously some overlap with these.
personally working with computers for about 15+ years now. actual employement in IT related field since ‘98. Done everything from basic computer repair to webpage design. Have a side business fixing computers on top of my full time job as a systems admin.

3 years of professional experience doing everything from building servers to specifying systems configurations to domain administration to software design to website development. (Small companies are good for covering a lot of ground quickly.) I have a BSSE in software engineering, based largely on the Bell Labs paradigm of formal up-front design (none of that "agile development" cart-before-the-horse BS), and I’ve been writing code for myself for 12 years.

as a sys admin, is your focus exclusively on one platform or another or are you touching on a number of technologies? for example, are you more into Windows, Linux or UNIX or do you end up working with all comers?
1 year as a field tech, 2 years in tech support, and ~ 12 years as a hardware enthusiast.

I find too much of what you just said, unbelievable, as you seem to be totally dumbfounded on some of the most basic things you have asked in these forums.

My core competency is software engineering. Everything else is stuff I picked up along the way.

i wouldn’t say that. 3 years doing everything under the sun means no time to really focus on any one area. lots of breadth, very little depth. this type of experience means you can talk generically about a lot of topics, but when you need to go more than surface deep you’ll tend to hit a wall.

how old are you? in case you’re wondering, i’m 33 or so. i stopped paying attention after my son was born and forgot what age i was back then. he’s 17 months old. i think i aged 26 months in the last 17.
I’m a senior CS major, focusing on Software development.

Still getting my feet wet at the moment, and trying to do as much as possible. Right now my focus has been on web stuff, as currently it’s paying the bills for me.

Were most of you guys CS majors, IT type majors, or did you just pick it up on your own and roll with it? Any of you guys go for post BS educations; IE masters/phd? I’ve been debating heavily on going that route, as I’ve always wanted my MBA.
Nah, I stopped at Bull Shit. I don’t really think I need More Shit just yet, and I certainly don’t need to Pile it Higher and Deeper.
No professional or school experience, just what I learn from online and read. For the past couple years I have been a free on-call tech support person for the church that my mom works at (their IT staff, yes they actually have a couple guys, to be frank is a bunch of idiots who have no clue what they are doing). For a little over 10 years, if not longer, I have been a hobbiest (granted for part of that I was too young to do much). I think I made my first website when I was 13 and a stupid joke virus when I was 14 (not sure on the ages) but I’m 24 now.

I currently work for an external storage company as a price analyst. That’s what we do at the location I work at. I will finally graduate college in December with a degree in accounting.
my experience is pretty much nothing more than what you get having computers as a hobby for a few years i don’t know shit about shit other than standard hardware.
I’m with thebox on this, mainly just the standard hardware because I’ve been building computers and upgrading them for the past several years. As for programming I know what one semester of CS and one semester of MIS will teach you minus what 3 years of business college will make you forget.

i was a CS major, but went into the system side instead of development or any kind of programming. so, while i’m glad i got my degree, i wouldn’t say CS in particular did too much for my career other than getting me used to messing around in UNIX while trying to do my programming assignments. though, i got my PC desktop support job specifically because i had some basic UNIX experience. my boss was the existing UNIX admin and wanted out of the technical side of things. so, she hired me for showing some knowledge and interest in the subject. i didn’t have my degree yet though.

i have 0 interest in anything beyond my BA (i don’t even have a BS) as i’ve been pretty successful with what i have. hell, i was making more money without a degree than some of my friends are making many years later.
mostly self taught but recently went back to school and got my associates of applied sciences in ‘networking and convergence technologies’
will be going to UW in the spring time for a bachelor’s in CS. i’ve been a TA in large Microsoft / Cisco lab classes
helping students troubleshoot their routers and servers while i was assistant to the network admin for my school,
oftentimes correcting things and implementing solutions he never even thought of. I’m 23 now and have been operating computers
since I was in the kindergarten when I would program games on our old Commodore64. Fuck i miss playing ‘grog’s revenge’.
Most of my hardware and software programming skills are still self taught even though i went to school,
i was always more of the teacher’s assistant than actually a student.
Been working on my own projects and fixing things for friends forever now.
Looking forward to securing my first IT job in the nearby future

i plan on getting my masters as i only have 1.5 years left for my bachelors and still have 4 years of GET credits leftover to spend.
(guaranteed education tuition)
I’ve been messing with computers since I was 14 or 15. I’m 28 now. Got a BS in Information Technology from college, but I’ve learned most of the computer stuff on my own. I’ve been a Network Admin at my job going on 6 years. I’m a Windows guy…
8 years as a computer operator. I have experience with the AS/400 as well as an older IBM system we got rid of 5 years ago.
HP 3000 experience, a tiny tiny bit of Unix experience.

As a hobby I have studied networking. I took a year long CISCO CCNA course, but was unable to pass the testing.

I have an A+ cert and many years of hobby PC building and repair.
I’m going to be starting Comp Engineering classes on THIS Monday (gonna be a sophmore). I plan on doing a minor in Economics and an MBA, and maybe another Masters after that. People tell me that it worked out well, because I got to skip the BS classes Freshman have to take since I had credits to fulfill them. I haven’t taken any of the Engineering classes yet but am done with Calc 2 and Physics 1. I also plan on getting my A+ certificaton soon.

I’ve been playing with Computers since I was little. It’s funny though – if I didn’t go on porn sites as a kid, I probably would never have learned the basics about temporary internet files, cookies, etc, etc. That’s where I started learning stuff (beyond basic use of computers), and I kept learning all throughout high school. Built my first computer about two years ago and have been reading here and there about anything tech related since then.

Also took a bunch of CS classes in high school since 9th grade. I can code a little on the intro level in VB/C++/Java, and I was actually one of the best in the class (not to be pompous), except I don’t really have a desire to learn coding on my own, unless I think of a cool program to write. I really prefer a classroom setting and having the topics verbally explained to me instead of reading about them, which kind of sucks. It’s annoying to have to look up stuff online when sometimes I’m not evne sure it applies to the type of thing I’m trying to do in my program.

And you are probably smarter than most of the techs I end up dealing with just by being self taught. I am an in-house tech/administrator for an insurance software company and deal with idiot techs who know little to nothing about setting up a simple workgroup for 4 computers, let alone install antivirus.
bs in computer engineering

9 years in IT

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Could it be my temps? I installed coretemp and it’s reading 77 and 79 on the cores right now, but now it just dropped back to 62 and 63. 79 was the highest I’ve seen it read, but I’m not sure how accurate the core temp readings are.

I’m running Vista Ultimate by the way.

you should reinstall looks like you have a ton of bloatware

you have like 40-45 too many processes running
I actually did reinstall fresh copy of Vista to get rid fall the Dell bloatware.

I have 3 gigs of ram and a core 2 duo, even with some bloatware I shouldn’t be having my computer freeze up
FYI: in the Process tab all your tasks should add up to ~100%. System Idle Process is essentially unused processor. Does your CPU hang at 100% in the Performance tab?

And I agree on the excessive bloatware/crap running, if you reinstalled using the Dell restore disks you will get all the same crap you had before. You have to remove it yourself.

damn

do you have alot of programs running ? because 90+ processes is excessive

my 64bit vista ultimate only has 51 processes and i’m running mozilla, pidgin and a couple other programs right now.

i forgot about those restore CDs

just find a regular vista CD and use your dell key
i have a dell laptop with vista and quite a bit of stuff installed (no bloatware though) and im only at 60 processes, so you definitely got some excessive stuff running on there.

according to the individual processes you don’t even have 100% cpu usage though (because of system idle as the other guy said). you probably have malware on your computer.

The dell Restore disk gives you the option to just install windows clean if you want. I got Ultimate, so I didn’t use their disks. Also, you can’t just use another disk and try to use the Dell Key. Won’t work.

In the processesta, t will add up to 100, but if you notice, the bottom has CPU usage percent%. Yes, when it starts to freeze, the performance tab is at 100% cpu as well.
uninstalled a couple of things Seems NBC’s player, which allows you to watch their shows online, has some media stuff in it. I still have 80 processes upon a fresh restart though.
On my Vista Business test machine at work, I have 52 processes and 512MB RAM usage after a fresh boot. The machine has Office 2003, McAfee VirusScan Enterprise, Rainmeter, and a few other goodies installed, but no civilian crapware on it. That should be a good benchmark
what i don’t understand is why that says 100% usage. that is 46% because 54% is the system idle process. so, your system should be 54% idle right now.
True Maybe it was jumping. B/c when it goes to 100%, i feel it. I can’t do shit. Do you guys think the CPU could be giving out? Sometimes my laptop feels pretty hot, which seems to coincide with the suggishness, but I’m not for certain.

Well, heat is also a byproduct of work so it could be just that your system is chugging along on something.

Why not? Works on most other brands.. Throw in Vista Home Premium CD and use the key on the case to install it.

If he was running XP, yes that would be the case. The keys from manufacturers would only work with the same manufacturer’s disks..

however, for vista it works slightly differently, retail keys can only work with retail DVDs and OEM keys online work with OEM disks.

that means you can use whatever OEM disk you want, and the key will still be valid. you just cant mix and match between OEM and retail.

Depending on how those programs are installed, you might be able to avoid installing them. Once Windows is installed, you might be able to F8 your way into Safe Mode and disable anything that might try installing programs and setting preferences on next boot.

I have never even looked at Vista, and I know that some manufacturers started using hdd images on their discs instead of OEM copies of Windows, which would render this technique useless.

This is not true. OEM keys work with retail dvds, as do volume license keys and vice versa.
try Spybot search & Destroy.it has always done good things for me. btw I have 93 running proc’s right now m my lenovo tablet and lm at 35% RAM usage and 18% CPU. I guess it’s all of IBM’s silly crap that they install
I’m starting to think I may have a virus, but symantec Endpoint is not picking anything up. Done 2 full scans now. Thinking about going back to an old drive image….
Hmm. Computer is flying again. I moved a drive image off from the D: b/c windows image restore needed it on a separate drive. Now I have 20 gb free on my D: and it seems to have made my computer faster. Doesn’t make sense to me b/c the C: still has the same 5 gb of free space.

Could this have changed anything?

Is 5.85 gigs of free space not sufficient? It started out with 30…Sp1 and all the updates are huge.
Your hard drive should be < 70% full or you’ll notice a decrease in performance. But that shouldn’t impact your 100% proc usage.

Also, I don’t fully understand what you did. Is your D drive a recovery drive with a Windows image on it? and your C has your windows installaton and all your stuff?
C: is windows drive. D: is Data. It’s a laptop, with a 160 GB HD. I put the windows Image on the D:, but when I tried to load it, it wouldn’t find it on the D: I guess it looks for it on an external drive or DVD.
There’s no point having two partitions on a single drive, it just slows things down because Windows can’t read from both partitions simultaneously like it expects to.
Drive images are easier with it partitioned. How could you expect to have a 160gb HD and up without a partition in a laptop? I guess I could just always back up my media and files by constantly moving it to another HD when I wanted to do a drive image.

Anyways, I reformatted my laptop. I made my C: 40 gb this time. Sp1 and office sp1 really take up a lot of room. I did the Vista sp1 tweak, which makes it delete the sp1 files, so that saved some space.

Well, same problem after the format. I did the hardware diagnostic test that I downloaded from dell. Everything passed. However, one test said the time would be about 72 mins, but it took around 3 hours. It was testing the processor and L2 cache.

I spoke with dell tech support and he said there isn’t really anything he could do if my hardware passed the test. He told me to uninstall symantec b/c it seems to be using the most I/O writes. I thought that would be pretty obv since it is actively monitoring my system? I uninstalled it and same problem. Intermittent 100% CPU.

What to do….
At this point, I gotta ask: Does it matter if the CPU usage is 100%? Is it affecting anything?

Also, are you using Spybot with Teatimer?
No, not using spybot. Yes, it matters that the cpu is going to 100% cpu. Sometimes the computer will freeze for a couple of minutes and all of the windows will say (not responding) and they will flicker. I’m on my brother’s laptop right now trying, which is the exact model, and his doesn’t seem to have a problem at all.

I uninstalled symantec endpoint. Is windows defender and firewall good enough in vista ultimate?
Talked to dell again today. I had been using my brother’s XPS M1330 (same exact specs), and his runs soooo much cooler. 10* celsius cooler, but you can really feel it when you type. My computer feels really warm. It is also burning up underneath.
So, after speaking with the tech today who seemed more helpful than the guy last night, they will be replacing the heatsink, motherboard, and palmrest. I know there is something wrong. That Dell Diagnostics test aint worth a damn.
I hope this solves the problem.
Well. they had a 24 hour response time. Overnighted the parts and the tech received them today. I only needed new heatsink, but they changed the palm rest as well. I have a brand new looking laptop. I’m impressed by the customer service.

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