Skinny, Google search results in.. not much! A link to a page showing the Inspiron 580 on the Dell outlet site, and a few parts suppliers.. I've never heard of those abbreviations.

It's describing the optical drive. I think HH could be half height (slimline), MOD could possibly be something like "multi optical drive". I'm fairly sure it's just a bog standard DVD writer though.

ExecLine, thanks ;-)

Cheers Jon - having spent 25 odd years in IT, I thought I was pretty good at decipehering acronyms :-) I've just been to PC world to have a"real" look at what they have to offer - how things have changed. They can't seem to get their head round the fact that I don't want any monitors - I don't want a terrabyte of disc space etc etc. Rant over - good job I don't have a dog anymore otherwise........

Just installed a new 24" Benq monitor so back to 3 monitors now, but the monitor keeps flickering on and off and says "Input DVI" when it come back on it only a few seconds but really annoying, would might do this??

Loose video card or loose cables I would suggest.

Seymour Clearly, Thanks

I moved something around in the back and for now its settled, just wish I knew what it was

Still on my mission to upgrade my graphics to twin monitors. I'll need to upgrade my PSU to something like 500w (currently only 180w); as I have twin SATA HDs and a SATA DVD writer do I need a special PSU for SATA? I saw one PSU that mentions SATA and it's got me thinking.

It's only that every PSU comes with a set of leads to connect up to all the hardware that's inside the computer.

It's always best to get a good PSU rather than a cheapo version. Failure of a PSU can be catastrophic.

Here's a link to Antec's PSU Size Calculator. These guys make excellent PSUs. Do have a look at their 'Truepower' range.

Cheers Exec.

Forgive my ignorance,why would you want more than one-even 3-monitors?

So that you can see (and confuse?) yourself with loads of information all at the one time.

A massive screen might be just as OK, but generally speaking, using at least two and maybe even three or more at the one time, can be a tremendously useful and helpful experience.

Actually, I like to have iPlayer on at one side and work on the other side. Also trade sometimes when working so trading screen on one monitor, work on the other. I regularly work with 2 documents at a time and my widescreen monitor is just a bit too much of a squeeze.

Oh.

All modern PSUs have the connectors for SATA, which are different from IDE drives. If you are changing the PSU, just count all the connectors that you have connected various things such as disks, DVDs, motherboard, graphics card (my kids have a graphics card that needs 2 connectors of its own). Then allow some spares for extra drives. Not all PSUs are the same in terms of connectors. You can always buy connector extender/splitters. Where you plug one connector in and it gives you 2 or three comming out.

Cheers Haystack. Going shopping on the web this weekend.

There's some good computer technical stuff articles to read on Scan's site. They are brief and thorough and are called 'Techspek'.

Here's the page which talks about CPUs.
http://www.scan.co.uk/tekspek/cpus

Look to the links at the LHS of the web page for topics on other hardware items.

I keep getting notepad messages dropped on my desktop such as:

# A fatal error has been detected by the Java Runtime Environment:
#
# EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xc0000005) at pc=0x7c919af2, pid=2832, tid=2584

Then follows masses of code but nothing to my inexperienced eye pointing to where the problem is. Nor am I aware of any crashes on windows I have open. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Anyone get telephone calls from some IT outfit supposidly in Slough and indian sounding saying that they are collecting data from my PC and I have a problem with windows. Not sure what they might want to sell me as I tell them to F Off.

I get called at least twice a week

Anyone else?

Sure have. Definite scam. I told them so and they hung up.

TOK - I've been getting similar in the last couple of days, but coupled with IE or CHROME locking up - no idea as to the cause (as yet).