Sony, Sony, Sony, Sony, Sony, Sony... until you feel like dropping $1k (Harman/Kardon has some sexy stuff) on a receiver alone I say go Sony. :lol: Though honestly Sony and Yamaha are probably the two best companies on the market today for recievers that don't cost an arm and a leg. I like Sony's BluRay players, though Panasonic seems to be the second best in those. There really aren't many out, and Samsung has some nice ones but if you read the reviews it seems to be, "X didn't work and then I downloaded a patch which fixed X, but now Y and Z don't work." So I'd stay away from Samsung.

Components, well find something that doesn't look like it is going to break if you tug on it and is not from MONSTER. I am a firm believer, and it may just be the TV, that the HDMI cable I bought for $9 at a local hardware store does just as good a job as the $100 Monster cable my friend uses on his TV, and it's 12 ft. compared to 6 ft.

Speakers, well I haven't looked much into speakers but Polk Audio has kind of impressed me from what I've looked around at.


P.S. - My mother has been thinking about updating the home theater system as the TV recently died. So I have done a little research, and above is basically what I know.

Don't waste your time with bluray.

... but it's pretty. =(

sup lod, i didn't accomplish anything today

well, thats not true, i accomplished a bag of cheetos and a couple missions in gta iv

Why can't Microsoft make software that works with their own damn OS? Last semester I installed Microsoft Virtual Studio 2008 for a class and it was the worst decision ever. When closing more visually taxing games it kept popping up with these, "Virtual Studio Just In Time Debugger" bull **** errors which would some times freeze my computer. So, I finally got annoyed like two days ago because it does it every time I closed Oblivion which I had been playing as of late. Now, I get "we can't find Virtual Studio Just In Time Debugger" errors when I start up Windows and "can't find CRYPT32.dll file" errors when I open/close Fallout 3, or close Oblivion (haven't checked the rest of my games).


So tonight after I did my hw I looked up the CRYPT32.dll thing and have been trying everything, but it just gets worse. Checked for viruses and malware, uninstalled and then updated my graphics drivers, and now I'm getting ****ing BOS when I try to play my games after about a minute.


Why can't Microsoft do anything right? I REALLY don't feel like doing a full re-install of windows on my day off Thursday, or any day for that matter. I have too many damn games and software, reinstalling takes forever. Plus seeing I built this computer I have to go track down all the newest drivers and install them one by one.


*complain* *complain* *complain* *b!tch* *b!tch* *b!tch*


Edit: Yeah, gonna have to re-install Windows... <3 Microsoft. System restore only "reinstalled" the program, which only got rid of one of two errors that popped up after I deleted Microsoft Visual Studio 2008... irony. Also, deleted Fallout 3 from my computer of course... so I'm going to un-do that and then just reformat the bitch.

F*ck Microsoft.

Edit 2: I have way too many programs... I decided to copy most my stuff over to my external and download all the new versions of programs which I use on my computers (i.e. update my software folder) while downloading the newest drivers and stuff so everything I will install will be in one convenient folder on my external. So I'm downloading like 20 programs, like 1/4 for school half for computer upkeep/monitoring, and then half are basic programs like Firefox and VLC media player.

Of course you can't forget Java, and Adobe Acrobat Reader, or Adobe Flash Player, etc. etc. etc. Too many damn ducks, didn't think I had this many.

mexican independence day today, had a blast, been drinking since 2 pm, awesome girl with me, what more can I ask?

two... awesome girls with you?

sounds like a party

Lod, I need your help... should I reformat my computer with Windows XP Pro x64 or jump ship to Windows Vista Enterprise x64 seeing my school now offers it for free w/o the strings of having to jump through hoops to get a license key. They now have Vista Ultimate, and make you jump through hoops for that not Enterprise like originally.

[QUOTE=Left Face Down;17511630]Lod, I need your help... should I reformat my computer with Windows XP Pro x64 or jump ship to Windows Vista Enterprise x64 seeing my school now offers it for free w/o the strings of having to jump through hoops to get a license key. They now have Vista Ultimate, and make you jump through hoops for that not Enterprise like originally.[/QUOTE]

Vista is said to be quite a resource stealer, but with XP you have the problem of many lacking drivers when reinstalling.

I'd install Ubuntu (20 minutes installation and you have the newest driver for most things) if you're not forced to use Windows apps by your school and/or company and wait for Win7. ;-)

Ugh, F*CK Ubuntu... that's about the worst supported Linux I have ever used. Couldn't get the damn internet drivers installed because the online help thing kept telling me to do things that were not even there. It'd be like, go here (o.k.), then go to this sub-menu (ok), then go to this sub-menu... and it's not there. WTF?!?!?!?! Post on their web forum, wait a week, no answers so I un-istalled Ubuntu and never looked back.


I use to rock Gentoo back in the day, used Slackware, Arch, and another Linux or two in my past... but I actually need Windows for not only school apps but the fact I am a gamer at heart. Mostly I was thinking about putting Vista up just because A) It's not horribly buggy anymore B) I'm bored, and it's free C) Win7 isn't out for another month, and I wont be in-stalling it until mid-next-year when it is stable and free to me through my school. Seeing supposedly my log-in details work for a year after I graduate, Win7 is still a possibility of getting free. =)

hdmi cable prices are nuts the cheap cables are perfectly fine, all it does is carry the digital signal not analog so the cheaper ones are perfectly fine

[quote=Left Face Down;17511630]Lod, I need your help... should I reformat my computer with Windows XP Pro x64 or jump ship to Windows Vista Enterprise x64 seeing my school now offers it for free w/o the strings of having to jump through hoops to get a license key. They now have Vista Ultimate, and make you jump through hoops for that not Enterprise like originally.[/quote]
64 bit XP is crap

:lol: It has done me no wrong for over a year, until Microsoft Virtual Studio ****ed my install up. I'm going to install Vista Enterprise x64, if I don't like it I'll revert to XP Pro x64. I have two HDDs (1TB each) which I'm not using because I wanted to run them in RAID, but the drivers given to me by my mobos company blow and XP didn't like them when I tried to install them. Which is why those two drives have gone empty up until now. With Vista you can install Raid Drivers after OS install, something you can't do with XP. So I'll throw Vista on there, worst case scenario go back to XP and my two 1TB drives wait for Windows 7 to be free. Though at the end of the year I'm buying a new mobo/CPU/RAM and donating my current ones to my mother's computer build. Hopefully Vista isn't as bad as it is said to be, though it probably is, and I don't have to do a clean install when I do that. Though I hear if you change a major component (i.e. mobo or CPU) that Vista locks up because it thinks you're trying to install it on two different computers. Though I may slip through the cracks with this because I'm installing Enterprise, which is made for companies to do many installs with just one licensing key.


If Vista works properly I'll probably throw Gentoo Linux on the drive (500Mb) I'm using for XP, just for good old sake.


Wish me luck, going to try to install Vista before I have to go to my night class so maybe it can auto-update it self while I'm gone. Got a 1 hour and 25 minutes before I have to leave. This should be close...

good luck ;-)

[QUOTE=Left Face Down;17512501]:lol: It has done me no wrong for over a year, until Microsoft Virtual Studio ****ed my install up. I'm going to install Vista Enterprise x64, if I don't like it I'll revert to XP Pro x64. I have two HDDs (1TB each) which I'm not using because I wanted to run them in RAID, but the drivers given to me by my mobos company blow and XP didn't like them when I tried to install them. Which is why those two drives have gone empty up until now. With Vista you can install Raid Drivers after OS install, something you can't do with XP. So I'll throw Vista on there, worst case scenario go back to XP and my two 1TB drives wait for Windows 7 to be free. Though at the end of the year I'm buying a new mobo/CPU/RAM and donating my current ones to my mother's computer build. Hopefully Vista isn't as bad as it is said to be, though it probably is, and I don't have to do a clean install when I do that. Though I hear if you change a major component (i.e. mobo or CPU) that Vista locks up because it thinks you're trying to install it on two different computers. Though I may slip through the cracks with this because I'm installing Enterprise, which is made for companies to do many installs with just one licensing key.


If Vista works properly I'll probably throw Gentoo Linux on the drive (500Mb) I'm using for XP, just for good old sake.


Wish me luck, going to try to install Vista before I have to go to my night class so maybe it can auto-update it self while I'm gone. Got a 1 hour and 25 minutes before I have to leave. This should be close...[/QUOTE]

I've never had a single problem with Vista 32-bit, ever. I had to switch motherboards a couple weeks after I bought my PC 'cause I didn't realize the original one didn't support the wattage of my CPU (got tons of stuttering in games and other CPU heavy programs) and I had 0 problems swapping them out.

Out of the box all the permissions crap is annoying but once you set it up the way you want it's no problem.

Well I've pretty much set it up, maybe took me an hour to install Vista and install all my programs minus games. I don't know what it is, but EVERYTHING seems to install in the blink of an eye on Vista. :lol:

The only thing I didn't get around too, which was my stupidity (can't think of everything), was making sure I have Vista x64 drivers for my mobo. Just got back from my night class and downloading the chipset drivers right now, after which I'll hopefully (I don't see it not) fix the one problem I have -- no internet.

Past that I don't mind it asking me if I want to install something... tbh. It doesn't bother me what so ever, I got use to it after using a Mac. However, the similarities stop at that as a lot of Mac progs don't have to be "installed". Though I don't really find it to be that annoying. Of course I'll have to learn Vista and tweak it the way I want it.


Edit: Ok, I was hopeing to post this nice now posting from desktop, but I wont be because the internet is being gay. Time to google...


Edit 2: Ok, installing drivers that don't have automatic .exe attachments (i.e. my mobo drivers which come in a compressed file) need me to manually go in and click the setup button. That's kinda lame, but hopefully after installing these correctly I can post from my desktop.


Edit 3: Yes, I will keep you all up to date despite the fact yall could care less. So my Ethernet drivers are failing to auto-installing, now to download and try to manually install.


Edit 4: Such a small thing is becoming such a big headache. Installing the Realtek internet driver fails when Vista does it automatically on start up, "installs" if I do it manually but still shows up broke in Device Manager, and now I'm getting annoyed.

Edit 5: The long awaited post from my desktop. Downloaded a file from the realtek web site which was supposed to check and see which driver you needed, then install it. I ran it, it said it installed it fine, Vista popped up a message saying it failed, but I have internet so I don't care. Now to install a few more minor programs, and play Fallout 3 which I already installed, because I don't need internet to play Fallout 3.

For F ucks Sake

just lost $85 rollin dice in an hour

took the school like 4 hours after ups' tracking thing said my package arrived for them to send me a package notification. now they are closed.

now i have to wait until tomorrow to pick up my new harddrive.

1 tb. i think i'm gonna call it a terror-byte rather than a tera-byte, what does lod think

Hopefully you can be happy in the morn. that you recieved it undamaged Max.

man, that would suck if it arrived damaged.

also yayayay lod i found my flashdrive. now i can move files and stuff yay this will come in handy atleast once this semester

I don't like ordering HDDs through the mail, done it twice and both of them were defective. I don't know if it's because they were Seagate, which I have a HORRIBLE history with (despite the fact they are good HDDs), or because being tossed around by FedEX/UPS, heat, etc. etc. doesn't do a HDD good.

To elaborate on my horrible history with Seagate, I've had 7 of their HDDs and the longest lasting is in my laptop which is pushing about 3 years now. However my second longest lasting Seagate lasted 7 months, the third 3 months. With that said, I've used 5 of them in computers for friends and they haven't died yet, with the oldest two (same age) are 6-7 years old. Though the last one I tried, ordered offline, was "working" but obviously defective upon arrival. Took Windows XP like 2 minutes to load up, everything was **** slow, and it made this lovely grinding noise.

So lod, which games should I install? I'm already installing Unreal Tournament III, installed Fallout 3, but past that I think I'll only install The Sims 3. However I further have:
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Civilization IV
Half Life 2
Battlefield 2


I don't see any point in putting The Sims 2, I'm getting my Oblivion fix through Fallout 3 (well RPG fix), Battlefield 1942 is out of date, World of Warcraft I'm over, and that basically rounds out the games I had installed on my XP install past Spore which I got from a friend and downloaded a crack. So I don't have the install for that, but I mean that game got boring REALLY fast.

[IMG]http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/8065/yeh.png[/IMG]

you guys are all jealous

[quote=Left Face Down;17513655]I don't like ordering HDDs through the mail, done it twice and both of them were defective. I don't know if it's because they were Seagate, which I have a HORRIBLE history with (despite the fact they are good HDDs), or because being tossed around by FedEX/UPS, heat, etc. etc. doesn't do a HDD good.

To elaborate on my horrible history with Seagate, I've had 7 of their HDDs and the longest lasting is in my laptop which is pushing about 3 years now. However my second longest lasting Seagate lasted 7 months, the third 3 months. With that said, I've used 5 of them in computers for friends and they haven't died yet, with the oldest two (same age) are 6-7 years old. Though the last one I tried, ordered offline, was "working" but obviously defective upon arrival. Took Windows XP like 2 minutes to load up, everything was **** slow, and it made this lovely grinding noise.

So lod, which games should I install? I'm already installing Unreal Tournament III, installed Fallout 3, but past that I think I'll only install The Sims 3. However I further have:
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Civilization IV
Half Life 2
Battlefield 2


I don't see any point in putting The Sims 2, I'm getting my Oblivion fix through Fallout 3 (well RPG fix), Battlefield 1942 is out of date, World of Warcraft I'm over, and that basically rounds out the games I had installed on my XP install past Spore which I got from a friend and downloaded a crack. So I don't have the install for that, but I mean that game got boring REALLY fast.[/quote]


seagate sucks.

Ive got a 2 year old maxtor exhdd and a 7 year old maxtor hdd in an old computer that still kickin'

i installed a seagate into a computer like 3 years ago, 2 months in it was dead.

[QUOTE=mnemonic;17514469][IMG]http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/8065/yeh.png[/IMG]

you guys are all jealous[/QUOTE]

*Roberts'

In other more depressing news, I had to put my cat which I've had for 16 years to sleep on tuesday. It's weird not having him around.

[quote=mnemonic;17514469][IMG]http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/8065/yeh.png[/IMG]

you guys are all jealous[/quote]
what is in "The Duck"

[img]http://www.lolbot.net/pix/1971.jpg[/img]

[QUOTE=Sad But True;17514497]*Roberts'
[/QUOTE]

yeah, windows has bad grammar.

[QUOTE=The Transporter;17514518]what is in "The Duck"[/QUOTE]

pictures of ducks, of course

[QUOTE=mnemonic;17514469]
you guys are all jealous[/QUOTE]

Bah, don't make me format my 500GB and my extra 1Tb HDD. :lol: I have 2.5 Tb worth of HDD sitting in my computer, I'm only using one of th 1Tb HDDs. Not to mention my 650Gb External and older than all hell 120Gb External.

[QUOTE=Crapdragoon;17514485]seagate sucks.

Ive got a 2 year old maxtor exhdd and a 7 year old maxtor hdd in an old computer that still kickin'

i installed a seagate into a computer like 3 years ago, 2 months in it was dead.[/QUOTE]

Well Seagate owns Maxtor now, but I can't recall exactly when that happened. I want to say 2007, so your 2 year old exhdd is probably oldstock which Seagate sold off when they purchased Maxtor. However todays Maxtor is Seagate.


I prefer Western Digital, simply because the shortest life span of one of their HDDs I've ever had was 4 years, which is about the time you really should start watching HDDs no matter what company they are from. My longest living Western Digital lasted like 9 years, installed in a computer we had built in 1998 and it died with Linux on it in 2007.

[QUOTE=Sad But True;17514497]
In other more depressing news, I had to put my cat which I've had for 16 years to sleep on tuesday. It's weird not having him around.[/QUOTE]

Sorry to hear about your cat. =( I still remember a few years back when my family had to put our 13 year old (or around that) Golden Retriever to sleep because he had pretty much lost all control of his hind-quarters, which includes his legs and lovely bodily functions, then a half a year later our cat of similar age passed away while taking her to the vets. She hadn't eaten in two days, really hadn't even moved from one spot, didn't even clean herself in those two days, just sat around and wheezed. She didn't like the cat carrier, put up a fight, and when she went silent on the way to the vets is probably the ill-fated moment. =/


Oh animals, they become part of your family.

[QUOTE=Left Face Down;17514907]Bah, don't make me format my 500GB and my extra 1Tb HDD. :lol: I have 2.5 Tb worth of HDD sitting in my computer, I'm only using one of th 1Tb HDDs. Not to mention my 650Gb External and older than all hell 120Gb External.

[/QUOTE]

up until recently all i had was my 60gb internal and 250gb external. both of which have been pretty much full for like a year. i've slowly been deleting unneeded stuff to make room for stuff thats important (as important as movies and dfhs get i suppose)

now i have a whole tb to waste before i need more storage room.

i think i'm going to move all the stuff from my old harddrive onto the new one, but i'll wait until tonight because i dont want to sit here while it takes 8 hours to transfer.

while were on the subject... Are solid state HD's worth the money?

SSDs aren't really worth it in my opinion. They have their upsides, but for your average user the only application I could see them worth wild in is a laptop. Why? Simply because they have no moving parts, and hence forth moving your laptop around while it is on can't damage the SSD. Something that most people don't realize can screw up your laptops HDD.

In a desktop, I don't see the point. They have a shorter read/write life span than non Solid State drives, however the majority of drives today do not survive long enough to actually be effected by this. So you narrow it down to the quality of the Solid State drive as to how many times it can be read/written to, but I don't think you'll run into that for a longer time period than worth mentioning.


So you narrow it down to the facts Solid State drives are quiet due to no moving parts, can access data quicker because of this as well. However storage wise they still cost an arm and a leg compared to conventional drives. I'm also pretty sure they run hotter and you can't get very large capacity SSDs yet, for the general public.


Anyways, in common language I don't see the point with conventional HDDs being cheap and large. The average conventional HDD needs to be replaced every 4-6 years, and with 1Tb being like $80 now unless you are video editing or downloading WAY too much crap, you wont need 1Tb worth of room.


Hell, I only got two 1Tb HDDs because I wanted to run RAID 1. If I ever come across $200 I don't need, I may just buy two more and Run them RAID 0/1. I mean hell, I have my parents and my own music CD collection (about 400-500 CDs) in 320 Kb/s quality on my desktop, it only takes up 45.2Gb.

they're supposed to be the next big thing i think, cos theres no moving parts (and thus it should be more reliable... in theory), but i'd wait a bit until prices go down more.

$400 for 80gb SSD, or $100 for 1tb HDD. i'd go with the HDD myself

i got my 1tb harddrive for $70 on sale though yay

[QUOTE=Left Face Down;17515331]or downloading WAY too much crap, you wont need 1Tb worth of room.

[/QUOTE]

that'd be me

Thanks for the info LFD I was just curious now I know for sure I won't be purchasing 1.

[QUOTE=mnemonic;17515334]they're supposed to be the next big thing i think, cos theres no moving parts (and thus it should be more reliable... in theory), but i'd wait a bit until prices go down more.
[/QUOTE]

Everything has it's ups and downs... I've dealt with SSD on a micro-controller and it had a limit of being re-written 1,000 times. It's hard to believe, but when you are writing software and testing it you can easily do 10 re-writes on a good day, let alone a bad day. The teacher told us he has had groups kill the micro-controllers before in a semester.


Even if your SSD has a limit of 100,000 re-writes, just think of how many times your computer accesses the drive. Eventually something is going to give, and the only upside behind that is that SSD usually fail/wear-out/etc. when you are reading or writing. So unlike HDD, you have a very low chance of actually losing data when parts of the drive corrupt, and a very high chance of just losing part of the drive instead of the whole drive when it does occur.


That, and the fact it has no moving parts is why the Military use them. They're using a laptop, bouncing around in a vehicle in God knows where, with information vital to their life on a computer. They need something like that.


If you have the money and some data which you just cannot lose, that is probably the only reason to buy a SSD. However running RAID 1 is a much easier solution, and RAID 0 is probably all the average human needs for drive access speed. Eventually they'll probably become standard, erase the need for HDD, even maybe see 1Tb SSD. Though that'll probably be in about five years, so get yourself two drives and run them in Raid 1. By the time they are old, you can go out and buy a cheap SSD.

[QUOTE=Sad But True;17514497]*Roberts'

In other more depressing news, I had to put my cat which I've had for 16 years to sleep on tuesday. It's weird not having him around.[/QUOTE]

no, see, the way max spelled it is now perfectly acceptable in america

for some god damned reason

[QUOTE=purple_hazer;17515586]no, see, the way max spelled it is now perfectly acceptable in america

for some god damned reason[/QUOTE]

WTF part of America are you from? I am by no right any where year an English major, but I know that it is not "Roberts's" but Roberts'.

Roberts'

Roberts's is more correct.
And we should all be using serial commas.
And thou shalt spell the word pheonix...

I'll buy a tube HD then