Re: [H] Thinkpad T23 dying battery
At 08:53 PM 4/5/2006, you wrote: You could save a lot of money by going to eBay. A quick search revealed a brand new OEM battery for around half the price of the generics listed on Froogle. Greg Thanks, I didn't think of Ebay. 15 bucks for a battery ! Can I trust it not to leak, or die right away, or blow up... a crap shoot I guessI just read a article in PC World about counterfeit batteries. Still, it is very tempting. Anybody buy a laptop battery off Ebay, any personal experience or recommendation. - Original Message - From: Winterlight [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: hardware@hardwaregroup.com Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2006 10:01 PM Subject: [H] Thinkpad T23 dying battery My Thinkpad T23 Li-ion battery is dying. It lasts about 30 minutes. I guess there is no way to refresh them, like a NICAD , is there? First time I had a laptop battery go badthese things are expensive... any suggestions on where to buy one? Any reason I shouldn't buy a generic on like this http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclientie=UTF-8rls=GGLG,GGLG:2005-47,GGLG:enq=Thinkpad+T23+Battery
Re: [H] Is activating XP necessary?
Volume License Key, key's issued to members of the MS Volume License Program (VLP). 1 key, many copies, none need activation. Common in big companies and schools where they have many machines so they buy a site license 1 set of media for all the PC's. The FCKGW key for XP that floats around the net and is blacklisted by SP2 was a VLP VLK. FORC5 wrote: what does VLK stand for ? 1st time hearing that term. fp At 09:12 PM 4/5/2006, warpmedia Poked the stick with: There are also VLK versions like I'm using in college right now that do not need to be activated at all. There is no Corporate edition, that's a warez term for a VLK version that needs no activation.
Re: [H] Microsoft Says Recovery from Malware Becoming Impossible
- Original Message - From: Christopher Klein [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'The Hardware List' hardware@hardwaregroup.com Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2006 10:18 PM Subject: RE: [H] Microsoft Says Recovery from Malware Becoming Impossible That takes way too much time. Boot from CD and clean it from there. Oh, I forgot that few cases are similar to the misnamed Enlight case. Pitstop should have been their name, not Enlight. Put a fully assembled (right from being in use by the customer) Enlight case computer on my bench and I have the completely disconnected 3.5 bay frame in my hands within 25 seconds. It takes another 5 seconds to hook it to my shop computer which is kept on a shelf at eye level with its side open, ready to work. Then booting to a Windows XP operating system is far quicker than booting to a CD. I love working out of my home as I can have the equipment that I need. How many bench techs who work for a business have flat panel shop monitors (the space savings are worth the cost)? How many have a computer sitting at eye level with side open with 4 IDE and 2 SATA channels available to do testing, virus scanning and hardware testing? How many have an office computer to do their paperwork, Internet access and other computer related tasks on? Both my shop computer and my office computer are for me, only. My wife has her own computer in another room. How many have a second workstation wired to share one monitor, keyboard and mouse with 2 computers? By having dedicated equipment I was able to run Spinrite for 10 hours on a drive and then run Scandisk for another 4 hours on the same drive and patch it up just enough to recover the customer's important data. I did this without interfering with my normal operations in my shop. I recover their data for free if they buy a new computer from me or for a reasonable fee if they are simply getting a new hard drive. If they choose to do no business with me, I charge them $50.00 for a DVD with their data on it. In my area many choose to do no business with me. They just want to drop back by and pick up their hard drive that I put 10+ hours of repair and recovery time in and copied its data to a DVD before it totally crashed. Hard drives seem to know when their owner is a cheap bastard and crash after I get the data onto a DVD but before the customer picks it up. Albany, Georgia is an area where people do not haggle over the price of a new forty grand vehicle but want to haggle for 3 days over a thousand dollar computer and then either go buy a five hundred dollar Wal*Mart special or a three grand dell, no haggle, of course! Chuck
Re: [H] Is activating XP necessary?
- Original Message - From: Wayne Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: The Hardware List hardware@hardwaregroup.com Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2006 12:44 AM Subject: Re: [H] Is activating XP necessary? volume licensing but volume licensing is suppose to be used as upgrades to existing licenses only. I had previously submitted that link but I don't believe it's valid any longer I've not gotten the If anyone finds a legal deal on Windows Home OEM that is for less than the $254.00 I pay for a 3 pack, please let me know. I have been paying $90.00 for Windows since I bought my first upgrade CD to upgrade from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 back in that era. I know I will never come close to the twenty or less dollars dell pays for Windows. I do take pride in handing the customer the sealed Windows kit after I remove the COA and affix it to their computer. I use my media for installation. Chuck
Re: [H] Microsoft Says Recovery from Malware Becoming Impossible
- Original Message - From: Wayne Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: The Hardware List hardware@hardwaregroup.com Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2006 12:50 AM Subject: RE: [H] Microsoft Says Recovery from Malware Becoming Impossible Still I would much rather boot a BartPe or XpPe disk CD that remove the HD put it into another machine. I tried booting the new Knoppix 5 DVD on a 2700+ machine I thought that would never boot up but it did eventually. I know my shop computer is a P4 2.53 GHz with a gig of RAM (If I had felt memory starved I would have doubled that as I did in my office computer) and it has no major issues. I trust it lots more than I trust a customer's computer. I tried one of those homemade boot Windows XP operating systems. That thing took a long time to boot up. It had to copy all of that stuff from the CD into RAM which I guess is the reason it was slow to boot. In a normal boot, my shop computer simply copies the needed data from the hard drive into the 1024 MB of RAM. I simply tell people what is more comfortable for me. I realize they are going to continue to do what they feel best with. My purpose is not to get them to change as what y'all do has no affect on the success of my business. I believe that the more opinions and the more information a person has to work with, the more informed decisions they can make. My guess is very few computer shops work with workhorse shop computers. The computer shop I got trained in was so cheap they refused to replace the one old 13 CRT monitor that was defective, cutting off while in use etc. It was difficult to get a dedicated 3 to 4 feet of bench space! A second workstation would have been totally out of the question. Now I have 8 feet on one bench and 6 feet on another plus my office space. Chuck Chuck
RE: [H] Microsoft Says Recovery from Malware Becoming Impossible
There are, however, numerous add-ons that do copy plenty to RAMDISK before working. What slows it down isn't a slow optical drive, necessarily, it's the amount of drivers and items that build in. For those of us that just use universal type BART discs, with all drivers we might potentially need, the load time can be sucky, no matter what you do. CW -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Wayne Johnson Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2006 8:44 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; The Hardware List Subject: Re: [H] Microsoft Says Recovery from Malware Becoming Impossible At 08:05 AM 4/6/2006, [EMAIL PROTECTED] typed: I tried one of those homemade boot Windows XP operating systems. That thing took a long time to boot up. It had to copy all of that stuff from the CD into RAM which I guess is the reason it was slow to boot. In a normal boot, my shop computer simply copies the needed data from the hard drive into the 1024 MB of RAM. Woah there cowboy. BartPe XpPe do NOT copy hardly anything to RAM. The reason they take longer is because they're on an slow optical disk not a 7200rpm HD. Why would your copying stuff to RAM be any faster than their copying stuff to RAM ? The logic makes NO SENSE. The next thing you'll be telling us about the 150w Dell ps but not tell us that you were only counting the 3v 5v rails. What about the 12v rail ? I certainly would take more time to do some research on statements that I was about to make if I were you. --+-- Wayne D. Johnson Ashland, OH, USA 44805 http://www.wavijo.com
Re: [H] Microsoft Says Recovery from Malware Becoming Impossible
At 07:45 AM 4/6/2006, [EMAIL PROTECTED] typed: Albany, Georgia is an area where people do not haggle over the price of a new forty grand vehicle but want to haggle for 3 days over a thousand dollar computer and then either go buy a five hundred dollar Wal*Mart special or a three grand dell, no haggle, of course! You just described most of America. If more people thought computers were worth 3 grand then more people would buy them. How many 3k systems do you see advertised on TV ? Almost none but how many 40k+ vehicles do you see advertised on TV? Only 2 or 3 per hour of prime time TV broadcast. How many cheap computers do you see advertised? Almost as many as the car commercials. Gee, if I knew nothing about computers I would buy a cheap one I'm sure that your first vehicle wasn't 40k+ either. When are you going to learn to give the American public a break? People understand transportation but have failed to fully understand what computers can do therefore they don't value computers as much especially their 1st one. How many things have you learned the hard way? I have learned many things via the school of hard knocks the rest of the American public will too but not as fast as you like. --+-- Wayne D. Johnson Ashland, OH, USA 44805 http://www.wavijo.com
RE: [H] Microsoft Says Recovery from Malware Becoming Impossible
At 09:46 AM 4/6/2006, Chris Reeves typed: There are, however, numerous add-ons that do copy plenty to RAMDISK before working. Sure there are. Everyone that creates a plugin thinks their apps must install to the RAMDISK. Heck I even copy my Favorites to the RAMDISK on bootup but is it req'd? I don't think so. What slows it down isn't a slow optical drive, necessarily, it's the amount of drivers and items that build in. For those of us that just use universal type BART discs, with all drivers we might potentially need, the load time can be sucky, no matter what you do. That's the catch22 all drivers we might potentially need. Once we do that it's more like we're installing Windows versus just booting an existing OS but that's also a caveat of the beast. We never know what drivers are needed for the system we've not yet seen are asked to fix so we're damned if we do have almost all the drivers that we can think of or we're damned if we don't. Maybe we need 2 BartPE disks with one with just the basic driver set that comes with PE Builder another with a much wider assortment of driver just in case? --+-- Wayne D. Johnson Ashland, OH, USA 44805 http://www.wavijo.com
[H] superconduction...
Nano World: Superconducting wires By CHARLES Q. CHOI NEW YORK, March 31 (UPI) -- Nanotechnology could help enable the next generation of superconducting wires for everything from new city power grids to levitating trains, experts told UPI's Nano World. Superconductors allow electrical current to flow with virtually no resistance. This enables superconducting wires to carry high levels of current very efficiently. The problem is these wires often stop being superconducting when around strong magnetic fields, the kind often generated by motors and power lines. Researcher Amit Goyal, a materials scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, and his colleagues experimented on wires made of yttrium-barium-copper-oxygen, or YBCO, which is a high-temperature superconductor. This means it operates at about the same temperature nitrogen is liquid at, relatively high compared the near absolute zero temperatures other materials are superconducting at. Passing a current through a superconductor while in the presence of large magnetic fields causes magnetic vortexes to move, which results in electrical resistance. Goyal and his colleagues discovered that columns of dots only 10 nanometers or so wide made of a non-superconducting ceramic known as barium zirconate could help overcome this interference. The researchers created their wires by growing films of YBCO on top of flexible metal foundations. Mixed in with the YBCO were barium zirconate nanodots. Due to interactions between the barium zirconate and the superconductor, these nanodots automatically lined up into columns that ran vertically through YBCO. These columnar defects in the superconductor serve as a barrier for the magnetic flux to move, and hence allows the superconductor to carry supercurrents in high magnetic fields, Goyal said. The nanometer scale of these dots is crucial for pinning down the magnetic flux -- if they were larger, the vortexes could move around within them, Goyal explained. It's a considerable advance, said materials scientist David Larbelestier at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The results are wires that for the first time meet or exceed the high temperature superconductor industry's performance standards for many large-scale applications, including motors, power cables and high-strength magnets. Goyal expected companies to have superconducting wires possessing such nanoscale defects within a few years. One can think about super-efficient, environmentally friendly motors, and underground transmission lines that can revolutionize the power grid, Goyal said. In congested cities like New York, the power requirements are increasing daily, and in time, it will reach capacity and the grid will not be able to transfer any more power. Replacing them with superconducting wires is perhaps the only way to move forward. While the researchers have demonstrated their findings in short wires just slightly more than a half-inch long, Goyal noted a lot more work remained open when it came to creating mile-long wires power companies would likely need. Goyal and his colleagues present their findings in the March 31 issue of the journal Science.
Re: [H] Thinkpad T23 dying battery
At 08:53 PM 4/5/2006, you wrote: You could save a lot of money by going to eBay. A quick search revealed a brand new OEM battery for around half the price of the generics listed on Froogle. Greg Thanks, I didn't think of Ebay. 15 bucks for a battery ! Can I trust it not to leak, or die right away, or blow up... a crap shoot I guessI just read a article in PC World about counterfeit batteries. Still, it is very tempting. Anybody buy a laptop battery off Ebay, any personal experience or recommendation. I actually pick up all of my Li-Ion batteries from eBay. Laptop batteries, cell phone batteries, etc--all from eBay. I've had pretty good luck. Honestly, even if they didn't last as long, the fact that you can get anywhere from two to six of them for the same price as MFR direct is pretty appealing. Greg
RE: [H] Microsoft Says Recovery from Malware Becoming Impossible
The problem with that solution is it isn't very realistic. With more people adopting NForce4 boards, or newer Intel, Via, etc. boards, they have SATA drives without native drive support in the default WinXP. So, you have to add on drivers. And since you have no idea of what you are running into, the smart move is to plan for most anything. Which is why a lot of people just build a pre-prepped OS with something like BTS MegaStorage Pack or whatever built in, and then go from there. But it is a PITA to do so and then wait on boot for it to check for any possible raid controller, etc. :) -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Wayne Johnson Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2006 9:06 AM To: The Hardware List Subject: RE: [H] Microsoft Says Recovery from Malware Becoming Impossible At 09:46 AM 4/6/2006, Chris Reeves typed: There are, however, numerous add-ons that do copy plenty to RAMDISK before working. Sure there are. Everyone that creates a plugin thinks their apps must install to the RAMDISK. Heck I even copy my Favorites to the RAMDISK on bootup but is it req'd? I don't think so. What slows it down isn't a slow optical drive, necessarily, it's the amount of drivers and items that build in. For those of us that just use universal type BART discs, with all drivers we might potentially need, the load time can be sucky, no matter what you do. That's the catch22 all drivers we might potentially need. Once we do that it's more like we're installing Windows versus just booting an existing OS but that's also a caveat of the beast. We never know what drivers are needed for the system we've not yet seen are asked to fix so we're damned if we do have almost all the drivers that we can think of or we're damned if we don't. Maybe we need 2 BartPE disks with one with just the basic driver set that comes with PE Builder another with a much wider assortment of driver just in case? --+-- Wayne D. Johnson Ashland, OH, USA 44805 http://www.wavijo.com
Re: [H] superconduction...
Very cool, thanks for sending that out :) _ Julian Zottl CTO, Radiant Network Technology, LLC Getting ahead in the tech sector isn't about kissing butt ... you gotta sniff the right packets -- Original Message -- From: G.Waleed Kavalec [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: The Hardware List hardware@hardwaregroup.com Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2006 15:53:50 -0500 Nano World: Superconducting wires By CHARLES Q. CHOI NEW YORK, March 31 (UPI) -- Nanotechnology could help enable the next generation of superconducting wires for everything from new city power grids to levitating trains, experts told UPI's Nano World. Superconductors allow electrical current to flow with virtually no resistance. This enables superconducting wires to carry high levels of current very efficiently. The problem is these wires often stop being superconducting when around strong magnetic fields, the kind often generated by motors and power lines. Researcher Amit Goyal, a materials scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, and his colleagues experimented on wires made of yttrium-barium-copper-oxygen, or YBCO, which is a high-temperature superconductor. This means it operates at about the same temperature nitrogen is liquid at, relatively high compared the near absolute zero temperatures other materials are superconducting at. Passing a current through a superconductor while in the presence of large magnetic fields causes magnetic vortexes to move, which results in electrical resistance. Goyal and his colleagues discovered that columns of dots only 10 nanometers or so wide made of a non-superconducting ceramic known as barium zirconate could help overcome this interference. The researchers created their wires by growing films of YBCO on top of flexible metal foundations. Mixed in with the YBCO were barium zirconate nanodots. Due to interactions between the barium zirconate and the superconductor, these nanodots automatically lined up into columns that ran vertically through YBCO. These columnar defects in the superconductor serve as a barrier for the magnetic flux to move, and hence allows the superconductor to carry supercurrents in high magnetic fields, Goyal said. The nanometer scale of these dots is crucial for pinning down the magnetic flux -- if they were larger, the vortexes could move around within them, Goyal explained. It's a considerable advance, said materials scientist David Larbelestier at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The results are wires that for the first time meet or exceed the high temperature superconductor industry's performance standards for many large-scale applications, including motors, power cables and high-strength magnets. Goyal expected companies to have superconducting wires possessing such nanoscale defects within a few years. One can think about super-efficient, environmentally friendly motors, and underground transmission lines that can revolutionize the power grid, Goyal said. In congested cities like New York, the power requirements are increasing daily, and in time, it will reach capacity and the grid will not be able to transfer any more power. Replacing them with superconducting wires is perhaps the only way to move forward. While the researchers have demonstrated their findings in short wires just slightly more than a half-inch long, Goyal noted a lot more work remained open when it came to creating mile-long wires power companies would likely need. Goyal and his colleagues present their findings in the March 31 issue of the journal Science.
