Fish

The thing I found was that by the time you've built it its out of date! There's always something faster bigger better but I went from PIII 600 to 2gig processor so the difference to me was plenty. You may well be right about Dell and I can certainly say I had no complaints about the m/c or service I rec'd from them on my first m/c.

Regards
Rob

Re post 39 - ay suggestions anyone pls?

Fish,

It is also worth noting that Dell and the other computer manufacturers spend a lot of time ensuring the compatibility of the parts in their systems, to reduce conflicts.

If you build yourself, you could possibly end up with some (costly) conflicts and a problematic machine...

I always used to build, but I cant see my self ever doing a home build machine again with the deals that are out on the highstreet...

J.

Fish - I consider myself quite technical (degree electronics) built own PC recently, switched on and nothing. What if this was you? Who would you call?

Took me ages to find out that the processor was not properly seated - still beats me why not. Anyhow I think you sould consider this point seriously.

If you do build you own - it will cost you more - but you can end up with a great config. One techie point - consider ECC memory. Good luck.

Most important is to buy the best motherboard you can afford. Currently in the TraderPC we use the New Gigabyte RAID motherboard. Very reliable and good online support.
D.

/me imagines ironing his mother flat.

Oh, not *that* kind of motherboard.

*grin*

Ill get back to work now ;)

J.

Just noticed the debate on build or buy. I and many of my friends now use Dell Outlet to buy. When Dell shpi a system and it is faulty their warranty guarantees a new system. What they then do is take the knackered one, put it right and sell it online at knockdown prices. You end up with a new machine including 1 year's warranty (standard Dell warranty) for 50-75% of the current retail price.

For example, about 3 months ago, I bought a 4500 for my kids. 2Ghz, 512 Ram, 80 gig hard drive, good sound and video card, DVD, CDRW and 15" TFT. 915 inc VAT and delivery and the year's warranty. I think retail was around 1400 then. The was the second system I'd had from them inside 6 months. The one I bought for myself last March cost just short of 1200 vs book price at the time of almost 2000.

That site will always be my first call from now on. If you do not want the most up to date it is even cheaper. I don't think you could build them that cheaply yourself.

Look for the Dell Outlet button towards the bottom of the dell.co.uk website.

Thanks all for the thoughts on build or buy. Gives it some perspective. Looking for the Dell Outlet button now....

Morning all,

HELP REQUIRED......

I need to install a usb pci plug and play card so that i can use a digital camera that i bought my wife for christmas,i now how to install the card but is the usb software going to be a pain to setup.
Using window 98se so should be ok but any info would help.

TIA

Rick...M B

MB, shouldn't be any problem to set up. As far as I know there isn't any setup as such for USB, it's totally plug and play.

Kayak

Many thanks for your quick reply,hope you are keeping well.

Rick...M B

I've been trying to install a USB 2.0 card on my ageing 450 PII runnig Windows ME.

All went well to start with, the PnP found the card and got the drivers from the installation CD.

I moved my scanner from the USB 1 port to one of the new USB 2 ports and it all worked fine.

Drunk with success, I then moved the scanner over to the 4th port on the new board and moved my external CD R/W from the USB 1 port to the 3rd port on the USB 2.

Got up off the floor after fiddling with the cables and saw the blue screen of death.

I couldn't do anything other than reboot by powering down and up, and then couldn't get the machine to start windows at all, although occasionally I could get it to start in safe mode.

If I remove the USB 2 card the machine boots up ok.

Looking in the device drivers there appear to be two installed

Intel 82371AB/EB PCI to USB Universal Host Controller
USB Root Hub

I think I ought to remove the new driver and try again, but I'm not sure which of the two to remove.

Any ideas or helpful advice appreciated.

I'm not sure that you can have two USBs in the same machine. If you look in the BIOS (type Del on boot) you will probably find an option to disable the motherboard USB ports (might refer to allocating an IRQ address for USB). Try disabling to leave just the new card.

The devices you see are the normal ones for just the motherboard USB.

Gents, reading of all these attacks and hidden spys has made me a tad concerned for my data. I keep my Norton updated but should I look at installing a firewall? If so where can I get one and are there any drawbacks?

Thanks.

Mr Euro,

Just been down the firewall route after getting attacked the other week.

Zonealarm PRO is the bees-knees at $39, painless installation and very easy to set up. They do have a less functional free version. Zonealarm gets consistently good write-ups both on the other side and in the computer press.

http://www.zonelabs.com

Thanks a lot Biffer, I'll order it now.

Do you know if there are any drawbacks on having a firewall?

None that I'm aware of, they do have a FAQ page that's worth looking at I think. I've only had it for just over a week, but it just sits there in the background now and checks incoming and outgoing traffic.

I even use a remote VPN that the firewall copes with quite happily, as well as mytrack and downloads from TC2000.

The first time you try to access a remote feed, eg Mytrack, a pop-up appears and you can then allow permanent (or temporary access). Really is very good and intuitive.

Also with the pro version, you can stop those bloody pop-ups you get from some sites and also stop banner ads.

BTW, you can install it on a no cost basis and try it out for free for two weeks if you go for the pro version.

Rizz - 29 Jan'03 - 15:14 - 752 of 754 edit



if any techie out there, perhaps they could tell me how to get rid of this security warning every time I refresh this page


Rizz - 29 Jan'03 - 15:15 - 753 of 754 edit



saying this page contains both secure and none secure items

Rizz, check that the link you are using to enter the BB begins http: and not https: .

Thanks, Kayak.. looks you're right it happens when its https