geekysteve

Agreed. I'd like to add: Best CD-RW: Plextor Best RAM: Micron ------------------ BMW- The Ultimate Driving Machine. Klipsch- The Ultimate Listening Machine.

'round these parts, I'm known as 'King Fan'. I have a total of 11 fans running in my PC all from a 300W Turbo-Cool power supply. 120mm fans are noisy- way over 30db, but my one 120mm fan dropped my video card temp almost 30 degrees. ------------------ BMW- The Ultimate Driving Machine. Klipsch- The Ultimate Listening Machine.

While I'm an AMD-man myself, I can offer this info to you: Pentium II ========== The Slot1 350, 400 and 450MHz PII's are 100MHz FSB with 32K L1 cache and 512K L2 cache running at half-processor speed. The BallGridArray 300, 333, 366, and 400MHz PII's are 66MHz FSB with 32K L1 cache and 256K L2 cache running at full-processor speed. 90% of the PII's use a .25micron core. Slot1's consume around 27watts, BGA's consume about half that power. Celeron (466MHz and higher) =========================== They all feature .18micron core and consume around 18watts (+/- 4watts). They all feature 32K L1 cache and 128K full-processor speed cache. The 500, 550, 600, 650, and 700MHz Celeron's are available in 100MHz FSB (in BGA/PGA configuration). The 500, 533, 566, 600, 633, 667 and 700MHz Celeron's are available in 66MHz FSB (in Socket 370 configuration). Pricing ======= I've found Celeron's from $75 - $105 (retail box) and Pentium II's from $75 to $120 (retail box). It's really a toss-up; the performance is so close on these 'as is'. The Celeron's are known for their overclockability, but they all suffer the same L2 cache bottleneck. Conversely, you can get a nice AMD Duron 700 for $85 and blow away all of the Intel offerings in that price range (and PIII's as well). ------------------ BMW- The Ultimate Driving Machine. Klipsch- The Ultimate Listening Machine.

hehehehe; Hofy you know me too well (even though we barely know each other!)... I finished the case, I painted it with PPG Base/Clear (three colors- blue, white, black). I installed the fans- 120mm on video card, 80mm blow-hole; upgraded the other fans (Sunon 80mm's) and cleaned-up the wiring in my case with Panduit organizers/zip ties- even harnessed my ATA cables. I'll post some pic's next week- I'm in Chicago this week for a class, don't have pics with me. ------------------ BMW- The Ultimate Driving Machine. Klipsch- The Ultimate Listening Machine.

I agree with Wingnuts- I have 2 Addtronics cases (6896 and 6890) and love them. They are awesome. ------------------ BMW- The Ultimate Driving Machine. Klipsch- The Ultimate Listening Machine.

Which drivers are you using with your geForce? I used to have some weird lock-up problems, then updated to Detonator 2 drivers- fixed all my troubles.

Hi Hofy, Time and time again, I've compared PIII's to the Athalon's (now the TBirds) and I always end up going with the Athalon over the PIII. But, if you've already got the processor, I'd sell the 667 and use some of the money for a mobo and invest the rest Good luck!

I got my new signature quote from our Governor. He was at a meeting at our office and shared that story with us (we were talking about database solutions) and I thought it was really funny. So, I decided to share it with you guys (and gals). The Commodore statement came from a website that's anti-Microsoft, called "www.f**kmicrosoft.com". I just happened to see that one on the same day I heard the story about the pen. So, I guess it's just by luck that I happened to have two space quotes at the same time. Oh well, stranger things have happened!

I just saw a quote the other day that made me laugh my butt off...here it goes: "It only required the computing power equivalent to about 3 Commodore 64's to get a man to the moon, yet Windows 2000 requires you to have at least a Pentium 133." ------------------ In the 1950's, when the great "space race" was at a feverish pace, the American's faced a dilema. How would the astronauts write information to their logs? The weightlessness of space would cause the ink from fountain pens to leave the pen and float all around the spacecraft. Surely this would wreak havoc with the delicate electrical components within the space capsule. So, NASA spent $2.odd million 1950 dollars developing what is now known as the "ball-point pen". Truly a remarkable invention; one that has been very useful to the entire world. The Russian's, faced with a similar dilema, sent their cosmonauts to space equipped with pencils.

I use: SiSoft Sandra 2000 Winbench 3dMark 2000 You can find all of them using a search engine. Caution- they're large downloads!

More bad news for ATI... Looks like the new Radeon got a little spanking from the Elsa versioned geForce2. Chickshardware did a review, and an Elsa running detonator3 drivers beat-up on the Radeon pretty good. ------------------ PLEASE SEARCH THE GOD D@MN ARCHIVES BEFORE ASKING A QUESTION

Thanks for the info K, maybe the desktop support is better than the laptop support. We have a Dell laptop with the ATI Rage Mobility-P card, and boy is it messed up. Dell says it's ATI's problem, ATI says it's Dell's and Microsoft's problem. I got nowhere after three continuous days of fighting with Dell and ATI's phone support. Luckily, someone on Delltalk made their own driver that fixed all of the problems with the ATI driver... After that incident, I swore I'd never even speak the word ATI (or Dell). I might have to take a look at the Radeon... ------------------ PLEASE SEARCH THE GOD D@MN ARCHIVES BEFORE ASKING A QUESTION

I've always approached ATI with extreme caution- their driver support is awful. Have they improved their support recently? ------------------ PLEASE SEARCH THE GOD D@MN ARCHIVES BEFORE ASKING A QUESTION

hilarious, but too friendly. ------------------ PLEASE SEARCH THE GOD D@MN ARCHIVES BEFORE ASKING A QUESTION

My signature is a sign of pure frustration. Sure, this section of the board has 15,000+ posts but I'd bet that over 60% of those posts are redundant. Look on the main page for any topic and you'll see the same subject discussed several times. I don't know how the good folks at Klipsch can put up with such stupidity/ignorance. People need to read a little before they get all excited that they're on a bulletin board. I mean, count the new threads that say "Static"... Sorry for the harshness, and it won't do any good but I have to try to do something. ------------------ PLEASE SEARCH THE GOD D@MN ARCHIVES BEFORE ASKING A QUESTION

Don't even get me started on Ameritech...they must be the inbred cousins to GTE. I had them before I switched to TDS- same problems you have; "we can't wire DSL to your house, blah, blah...we need to raise your phone rates (from $29/mo - $39/mo for local service), blah, blah.." I switched to TDS and they fought with Ameritech for about 2 months (for access to my phone line- Ameritech owns all of the phonelines in Madison). When the switch finally went through, Ameritech started calling me almost weekly to get me to switch back. I asked TDS to put a block on Ameritech's # and haven't gotten a call from them since. Bastards. I hate them! sorry for the rant...whew...cool off...think happy thoughts.. ------------------ PLEASE SEARCH THE GOD D@MN ARCHIVES BEFORE ASKING A QUESTION

Hofy, you should move back down to Madison! I have a local phone company called TDS Metrocom. For $22 per month I get: 200 local calls 60 minutes of long distance (state/nation) Caller ID Call Waiting 3-way calling Voice Mail box w/4 mail boxes Unlisted/unpublished number Additional long distance minutes are $.09/min Then, I get 768K DSL from them for $35/month more. My total bill never goes over $65 with DSL... Sorry! Your acronym for GTE is quite accurate, eh? ------------------ The ability to speak does not make you intelligent. -- Qui Gon Jinn, Star Wars: Episode One Try the world's greatest search engine: www.google.com

Seb's correct- Back Orifice 2K (a play on Microsoft's Back Office products). ------------------ The ability to speak does not make you intelligent. -- Qui Gon Jinn, Star Wars: Episode One Try the world's greatest search engine: www.google.com

Hate to sound like a broken record, but you can't go wrong. I'm confident about my test results- the router blocks BO2K, and all of the 'traditional' ports appear to be stealth. I can't say enough good things about this router- I've had great luck with it so far. Easy to set-up, easy to network with, great protection, and a low price. Jamus, you won't be disappointed! ------------------ The ability to speak does not make you intelligent. -- Qui Gon Jinn, Star Wars: Episode One Try the world's greatest search engine: www.google.com

I've been doing a lot of personal firewall research lately...found a great article on firewall comparisons. Check out: http://www.pcworld.com/heres_how/article/0,1400,17759,00.html On a side note, I purchased a Linksys 4-port Etherfast Cable/DSL Router today (ordered it from Outpost at 8:00am, arrived at 4:30pm - unbelievable), and it rocks!!! I turned off Zonealarm, and went to www.grc.com and did the "Shields UP!" and "Probe my Ports" test- everything turned-up stealth! That router seems to do a good job on it's own. I've also been trying to "attack" myself- using a laptop on a dial-up connection, trying to scan my home network with eeye, nmap, and retina- nothing is appearing to be open. My last test will include some BO2K testing, without a software firewall program running- if my Linksys protects me from that, I'll be 150% sold on it. All this great stuff for only $159.95 ($104.95 for the 1 port version)...hehehe ------------------ The ability to speak does not make you intelligent. -- Qui Gon Jinn, Star Wars: Episode One Try the world's greatest search engine: www.google.com

Don't know if you saw this page or not, but it might help answer some questions: http://www.voyetra-turtle-beach.com/site/products/santacru/specifications.asp Also, couldn't help but notice- no mention of support with Win2K. ------------------ The ability to speak does not make you intelligent. -- Qui Gon Jinn, Star Wars: Episode One Try the world's greatest search engine: www.google.com

I have the IBM drives- they rule. I have the IDE Plextor 8/4/32 CD-RW, it rocks. Only burned one coaster, and that was my fault. To date, I've burned over 60 discs with only one failure. You can get a plain-jane SB Live! for $40 (w/cables) from www.compuplus.com Video card's a tough choice. I've got the nVida flavored Asus V7700 (and V6800). I think they're tough to beat. What about the Voodoo6? mmmmmmm, 4 processors and it's own powersupply... Tbirds are easily overclocked, so that's a tough choice again. I don't think there's any "clear winner" here. Intel NIC's are tough to beat- very durable. Not familiar with that case, but I hope you'll use a Turbo Cool 300watt ATX power supply. OS? Win2K? Win98? Linux? WinME (although early benchmarks show no performance increase over Win98)? ------------------ The ability to speak does not make you intelligent. -- Qui Gon Jinn, Star Wars: Episode One Try the world's greatest search engine: www.google.com

K, checkout www.pcprogress.com for some low, low, low prices on processors and mobo's. I ordered a PII 400 (for my linux box) from them for $120, got it 2 days later. I have ViewSonic P815's, and love them. I also have some Sony 17" Trinitron's (CPD-E210's), and they're nice too- but a bit smallish. I'd also dump that PC100 RAM. For $150 (direct from micron) you could have yourself 128MB of PC133 RAM. JMHO. Good luck. ------------------ The ability to speak does not make you intelligent. -- Qui Gon Jinn, Star Wars: Episode One Try the world's greatest search engine: www.google.com

Don't know if you decided on a laptop yet, but I just got another new laptop today. We just got 2 IBM ThinkPad T20 laptops- both are PIII750MHz, 128MB, 12GB, DVD laptops. OMFG. Let me say that again, OMFG!!!! These things are small, light, fast and awesome. I get to dump my Dell on some unsuspecting pencil-pusher...hehehe.. Anyway, the T20 measures about 2 inches thick (closed), weighs right around 4 lbs, has a 14.4" screen, a nice, full-sized keyboard (almost) and has one kick-arse port replicator. God, this thing is awesome!! Seriously consider the T20. It rules. I will never give-up my T20. I will never give-up my T20. I will never... ------------------ The ability to speak does not make you intelligent. -- Qui Gon Jinn, Star Wars: Episode One Try the world's greatest search engine: www.google.com

Hi Beeker, First- a little background. I do software development for a fairly large government agency. They buy a lot of laptops for a lot of different people who use them a lot of different ways. For example, I'm on my 4th laptop in about 10 months. They buy new ones and guess who get's to always have "the newest"...that's right- me!! We've had: IBM ThinkPad's, Dell Lattitudes, Dell Dimensions, Dell Inspirons, Toshibas, Compaq's, Sony's and Gateway's. I'm currently using a Dell Inspiron 7500 with Pentium III 700, 25GB hard-drive, 128MB RAM, DVD/CD, 15.4" SXGA display. It's one of the worst laptops I've ever had. It's extremely (like over 10lbs) heavy. It hangs-up all of the time. Dell Support is terrible. Previously, I had an IBM ThinkPad 600E. I loved it. Ultra-stable, fast, light, great display (although only 13.3"), long battery life, just all-around a great laptop. Never had any need to contact IBM tech support, but their sales staff sure was excellent! Prior to that I had an IBM ThinkPad 390. It was ok- a little slow, a little heavy, but still ultra-stable. We currently have one of our 390's set-up with a Linux/Win2K dual boot. These are still good laptops for under $1500. My first laptop was a Toshiba (forgot the model name). Again, it was a good laptop- better than my Dell is now. Very stable, fast, but a little heavy. Display wasn't as good as the Dell, and even a little worse than the 390. So, I've used laptops that range in price from $1495 to my current one ($3795).... If I were buying my own laptop, I'd consider the ThinkPad 600E with PII 366, 128MB, 6GB HD, CD, 13.3" TFT. You can get one from egghead.com for less than $1700. Although you said "no eraser-heads", so that kind of removes the IBM's... Our Sony laptops seem to be decent, but they don't like to be bumped around. One of our fiscal specialists took a Sony laptop to Denver for a week, and it died on her- she apparently bumped it around a bit on the plane... Finally, the Gateway's that we have are nothing special- a little pricey, loaded-down with a lot of unnecessary software 'goodies', and when compared side-by-side with the IBM's they're very slow. So, to wrap-up this huge monologue, I'd seriously consider an IBM ThinkPad. Then, I'd look at the Toshiba, then the Sony, then either the Dell or Gateway. BTW, my brother has a Dell laptop that's about 4 years old- his seems ok, but it hangs quite a bit, and the battery pack died after 1 year of use- he's currently on his 3rd or 4th battery. Best of luck to you. ------------------ The ability to speak does not make you intelligent. -- Qui Gon Jinn, Star Wars: Episode One Try the world's greatest search engine: www.google.com