Desktop vs. Laptop -- I usually tell people to make sure you need a laptop before you buy one, since for the same money - you can usually get better equipment in a desktop. I usually see people who buy a laptop, and it will sit on the same desk 99% of the time (where a desktop could be sitting). So at least in my opinion, unless you will use a laptop as a laptop - desktops are always better.

Brand - It really does not matter too much these days - People will always have "bad" stories about certain brands, but most of the major brands are good these days. I get dell, and haven't had any issues. Actually just got a brand new Dell yesterday. Plenty of memory (the more the better), CPU - I was looking hard for at least a quad core since many games take advantage of more cores (ended up getting 6 core AMD myself)

pauloaguia: Yea, check your add-on's for Firefox. Yea, there are a lot of cool ones out there, but the more you have the"bigger" Firefox gets... and possible slower it will move.

Remove the ones you rarely use. Disable the ones you don't use often.

puupia: Well I agree that they should be allowed to include a browser (IE) with their operating system.

.... BUT, it should be as an additional pieces of software that can EASILY be removed from the operating system.

Just like the game solitary comes with every window computer, but at the same time you can easily go and remove it from windows. But Microsoft went and built part of the OS around IE, so makes it hard to remove (well hard for any normal everyday user)

MadMonkey: Spybot has the option to "run in the background" or "live protection" or something like that - something I NEVER use, but might be what (V) is talking about it running at strange times.

I bring it up occasionally, look for updates, and let it run. That and Ad-aware (again, don't let it run in the background - just run the scan mode when I need it - no "live" protection.)

While working on PC's, I will also load & run Tuneup Utilities.

http://download.cnet.com/TuneUp-Utilities-2009/3000-2094_4-10206416.html?cdlPid=10980955


It is a free 30 day trial, but I usually just run it a few times (fix & run again) then delete it from the system. Czuch - maybe try to run that and see if it finds anything.

EDITED TO ADD: For the TuneUP Utilities, I run the "1-Click Maintenance"

I host at a place called Powweb - they are $7.77 a month - unlimited space - unlimited bandwidth. (They have a promotional for 1/2 of the first year.)

Unlimited space / bandwidth - it's a shared hosting package, so you actually share server with many others - and the unlimited space & bandwidth is basicly as long as you don't hog all the resources or use so much that you cause other sites that are hosted there to slow down. So most sites, it is a great place - but if you have a really active site, it may not be the best.

http://www.powweb.com/

They also have a forum with many active members who can help out with many questions - http://forum.powweb.com/

It's pretty reliable - occasionally there is down time, usually not for any long amount of time.... but for the price, I'm happy.

As for domain names - I purchase all mine through godaddy - they are very reliable, price is OK and I've been happy with them.

Baked Alaskan: Do you use a custom CSS - that can put the checkboxes elsewhere. (I guess you do since the background is a different color.)

Also try a different browser (with same CSS) and see if the checkboxes are there also. (That will help tell you if it is a problem with only Chrome, or something else like the CSS)

MadMonkey: yea... I'm already back to using FireFox for now (since I don't like to see all the Ads)

Google Chrome will take a little time to get all the bugs worked out... well it is still in "Beta" so that should be expected I guess. (I normally don't try Bata software for that reason.... but I wanted to try this one.)

OK, now I've been using it for about 20 minutes, time for a second review.

(some of these might be answered by different settings which I have not seen yet)

When opening new tabs - sometimes it will open at the far right (like Firefox), sometimes it will open just to the right of the open tab (like IE). One or the other would be OK - but not both. (prefer to always open to the far right like Firefox)

Already found one site where the pluggin is not available - http://fallingsandgame.com/sand/sand1.html (of course this will probable work in time)

UGH - wow, a lot of sites have ads that I never use to see.... since I used AdBlocker Plus for Firefox.... again something that will probable come in time to fix.

As for wetware issues - I haven't seen it any slower. I have a couple of my own websites which takes a bit of time to load - and seemed to load about as quickly as firefox does it. I use bookmarks rarely, so that is not an issue for me. (but sure there will be a bookmark plug-in that will appear soon.)

AND GUESS WHAT - I can easily drag and make this input box bigger and smaller with no extra plug-in's installed. COOL!!!!!

OK, I've been using it for about 5 minutes now - time for a review.

It installs very quickly.

All the sites seems to load very quickly.

I tried to go to http://www.dialygammon.com/ - which is of course misspelled - and it gave me a very nice error with the suggestion to the correct place!

I'm only had 5 minutes with it so far.... but so far, I'm impressed.

go...

http://www.google.com/chrome

MadMonkey: I tried CUIL the other day - HATE IT

Why - because none of my sites are indexed. (and if mine are missing, how much more is missing) Easy to say they indexed more then Google - but I don't believe it.

My Rating of CUIL: D- (only ready not an F is because the results are displayed nicely - but I question how good their index is which is the most important part of any search engine.)

MadMonkey: Nice wallpapers - about 3 days ago I added a second monitor on my PC (so I have 2 monitors right next to each other) - so now I've found a couple nice ones that will stretch to both monitors here: http://www.dualscreenwallpaper.com/

Thing is it could be many different things. OS got messed up and not loading correctly. Motherboard messed up. Memory gone bad. Hard drive gone bad. Fan/cooling not cooling unit enough.

I guess if I was troubleshooting it - I would first try to bootup with XP disk and reload XP (assuming XP is loaded)

After that, if you have extra equipment - try swapping out the hard drive for a different one.... same with memory.

it is just hard telling. I would hope for just a software (operating system reload), but it is hard to say.

awesome: I checked both out - are they both the same add-on?

Haven't tried it yet - but looks very cool.... if it works that fast. I may try it out when I get some free time.

Snoopy: If you would like to do some expreiments, it would be cool to:

1. know what addon's you have in firefox.

2. Disable all addon's in firefox and try to use it for a little bit to see if there are speed differences.

... Not that I'm trying to get you away from using Safari - but would be cool if we could narrow down what addon's might cause issues.... in which that might help others who are also having issues.

There was a conversation on the BrainKing.com board which I would love to talk about more - so I thought I would try to bring the topic here since hopefully it will be something that can help others.

I'm a firefox fan, and I do have speed issues occasionally with this site - but not "REALLY" bad for many months now.

Anyway, it seems that a few think that Safari is working a lot faster then Firefox, so even though I have not downloaded Safari yet (but probable will try it out), I'm wondering how many add-on's you have in Firefox?

Myself - I have adblock plus & forecastfox. (of course it is obvious the more stuff you add to it the slower the program will go, so I don't try tons of add-ons)

Baked Alaskan: You could try right click on My Computer, and choose "Manage"

On the left side, under Storage, choose "Disk Management"

Then in bottom right, you should see all the drives connected to the PC - and should be able to right click on the un-mapped hard drive, and choose to assign a drive letter.

If it is not there - I guess the next thing I would do is manually disconnect the slave drive - boot up PC, then shut down - and then install the slave drive again to see if the PC will auto-find it.

TheCrazyPuppy: Yea, I've tested out the Version 3, Beta 2 in the portable version (A version I can run from my USB drive without uninstalling my main version) - One of the big problems with version 2 is that it manages my memory very bad - something that version3 should fix. Nice what I've seen so far - but I still use version2 daily since most add-on's won't make a version 3 until a final version is ready.

Portable Information (V3): http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable/test

Portable Information (V2-stable): http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

Puckish: Yea, the biggest issue is if you have the power to it and liquid is added - with a laptop, the "heart" of the computer is under the keyboard so... ouch.

Normally (of course you never want to do this), but if there was no power to a PC or laptop, you could open it up and spray it with water. As long as you allowed to to dry completely before you powered it back on - it should do no damage. (or course you don't want to try this - since watch *might* warp certain parts and such.)

Best bet now is to take it to a shop and see if they can fix it - they might just be able to purchase certain parts - keeping others that are not damaged - and get it working again, but will probable cost you at least a few hundred for parts and labor I would guess... but might be better then a totally wasted laptop.

Another idea, depending on where you purchased the laptop - try to clean the laptop the best you can to try to remove any indication that something was spilled - then take it into where you purchased it and act dumb and just say it stopped working. Again, worse that will happen is it won't get fixed - but possible maybe fixed - maybe just labor and/or part cost - again, depends on where you got it at and if that place has PC help center and such. (Best Buy - Circuit City both have PC help centers.)

volant: it works for me here - I love the firefox spellchecker. Is it you are using the box reply?

Just typing in the normal text box, NON-rich text editior - spell check works fine for me

Look - I mispelled editor in the above sentence - and mispelled is not spelled correctly either.

ellieoop: Oh yea, forgot the menu bar is not there by default in IE7

Up near the top in IE7 (next to the tab for example), right click and choose "Menu Bar"

At that point, the menu bar will be there so you can choose View, and font size.

ellieoop: 2 things you can do.

If you have a scroll wheel on your mouse, you can hold down CTRL key and scroll the mouse.

Or in the "View" menu bar, choose text size and increase it.

MadMonkey: Does the printer also have slots to put memory cards? And is there a memory card in it while it boots?

MadMonkey: The only thing that quickly comes to mind is some sort of device hooked to the PC is causing it to hang.

As a side note, I just troubleshot a laptop which about every 2 of 3 bootup would hang as it was initializing it. Found the problem to be a newer USB thumb drive that he kept attached to the laptop. He actually had 2 attached - the older one never caused a problem, but with the newer one attached, the bootup process would just hang. Now he just waits until windows boots up before plugging it in.... and remembering to remove it before next bootup.

In the menu bar on top - go to VIEW - then find the increase font option to make it bigger.

You can also hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard and use your mouse wheel to increase/decrease the font in a web browser.

Eriisa: SpyBot actually has a warning when you first start it giving some sort of warning about the Ad-aware program - but I never had any problem.

Also - I DO NOT use any type of feature of any of those program to let them run in the background while I'm doing other things - I simply use them as stand alone scanners. I have not tried the Spyware Terminator yet - but did notice when I went to download, you have to be carefull to get just the Spyware Terminator - and not the one that includes some sort of "web security" which I think runs in the background all the time.

I just use these occasionally to scan my PC.

So if you are running 1 in the background and try to use another one at the same time - then yes, there might be conflicts between the programs.

MadMonkey: Hum... well I will have to give Spyware Terminator a try.

I use both SpyBot & Lavasoft Ad-Aware Personal as "free" spyware scanners. I use both since I have found sometimes 1 will find something the other does not... but always looking for new ones.

Gordon Shumway: It's just another format for video file.

I can't help with converting since when I want to watch it on the PC, I just play from the .vro file - or when I want it burned, I just burn the .vro file - I never convert it so I'm no help with that.

MadMonkey: If you have a lot of add on's, it could be one of those that is causing problems. Maybe even disabling a few and testing/playing to see if having certain ones disabled will help the speed

rednaz23: iPod Video vs. iPod music player.

I guess the question would be do you want to watch video? I have iPod video which I won about a year ago from a local TV station - and in the year, other then just playing around to impress friends that I had it - only 1 time have I actually used it. (when driving 4 hours down to an amusment park, I loaded a few movies on it for my wife to watch) - other then that, it sits on my shelf collecting dust.

Now as for a music player - the question would be iPod (Nano) vs. other mp3 players.

Let me tell you - I HATE loading music on an iPod. Why? Because lets say I have 30 songs I want on my mp3 player. For the iPod, I first have to load there software. I then in the software, have to make a library and import the songs that I want in there - then I have to sync the library with the iPod. And on top of that, the iPod can only be "synced" with the main computer. That is if I help load some songs on a friends iPod, if they take it home to their computer, they will be unable to sync it without removing all the songs I first put on there. I'm sure there are some hacks and such to get around this, and I'm sure it is probable pretty friendly to first-time users who don't know much - but it's a pain for me.

Oh, and the process of adding the 30 songs to just about any other mp3 player. Open my computer, and click & drag the songs over to the mp3 player. All done. Nothing to load - nothing to sync - etc.....

I have 2 SanDisk MP3 players. A regular 1gig one that I gave to my wife, and another 1 gig one that also takes extra memory cards to hold more music. (So I can put certain types of songs on different memory cards to play them.)

Fencer (and others) don't be too quick to install Safari for Windows - on day one, already 8 bugs along with big security hole already found.

Consumerist.com Article about it

Drive Cleaner - When I use Firefox, everything is great. On my same machine, I was stuck using Internet Explorer for a little bit - and visited this site, and after visiting my second discussion board, I got the Drive Cleaner pop-up that others have talked about. Not sure if it will help Fencer, but the ad at the bottom of the page when the pop-up came up was for WeightWatchers.com.

So when others see the pop-up, what ad is up on the BrainKing site, since with so many complaining - and myself seeing it in person, I also believe it is something on the BrainKing site that is triggering this pop-up.

rod03801: For the AT&T/Yahoo DSL, you will also need a DSL modem which they will provide to you.

NOTE: This is me speaking from memory - things may have changed - I think now they even offer higher speeds for more $$$$ - but the lowest $14.95 a month deal is still very quick compared to dial-up.... and a good place to start in my opinion.

You need a DSL modem, which they will provide for you. It use to be like a year contract, you buy they modem for $79.99 - but could send away for a $79.99 rebate - so the modem would be "free". (NOTE: The rebate comes in an envelope that looks like junk mail - with the rebate check attached at the bottom of the letter. So make sure you don't quickly throw away junk mail, and be on the lookout for the rebate. I guess they figured they can save some money if people throw away their rebate check instead of cashing it.)

It also comes with a CD that you stick in your computer and will walk through all the step to setting everything up. Annoying for someone like me who wants to skip to the last step, but nice for people who could use the instructions on what to plug in where.

Your computer will either need a network card or USB. I'm not sure of other requirements for the PC - probable on their website - well whatever phone company you are going through - guess I'm writing assuming you are also under AT&T/Yahoo - but I guess you might be somewhere else - which in that case, the information above probable does not apply much.

rod03801: At my old house, I had the (what is now called AT&T/Yahoo DSL), and I loved it.

It was cheap - about $15 a month for first year, and fast - well fast compared to dial-up. Plus for the price, if when it got close to a year, a quick call can keep that rate the same. (even though now I think it is always $15 a month - not sure)

When I moved, the AT&T/Yahoo DSL was unavailable at my new house - but Cable internet was - so I went with that. It is more expensive ($40 a month), but I also LOVE it because it is usually a lot faster then the phone DSL. I've had some minor issues with the cable - they had to come up about 4 times to replace something out on the pole - but other then those down-times, the speed is great. It would have been cheaper if we had cable TV to combo with the internet, but we don't have cable TV.

Other differences: Cable shares the speed with other connections close by. So if all your neighbors also have Cable internet, if they are doing a lot - it can also slow it down for you also. And when I say slow it down, I mean just very little - probable never down to the point of dial-up speeds. I've personally never noticed any type of slow-down where I live - then again, I don't know of any of my neighbors having cable internet.

Phone DSL is not "shared", but distance from where they have their DSL connection point can hurt speed. Chance are they will not even sell you service unless you are within a certain distance from one of those spots - so there should be no problem.

So in my opinion - go with the phone DSL - it is cheaper, unless you need very high speed, then try cable.

This is probable a tool that only "expert" computer people will want to use, but I was troubleshooting a couple of PC's which were have some problems, and came across this tool:

It is called Process Explorer

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/ProcessesAndThreads/ProcessExplorer.mspx

Find out everything about what is currently running on your PC. (Like Task Manager - but will tons and tons and tons of information)

It's one of those tools that I'm already saying "How didn't I know about this before"

ljeffers: The new PC's I buy for work have 3 fans on them. 1 dedicated just for the processor. The other dedicated just to the power supply. The 3rd is for the rest of the box.

afella: I was unsure what websense was, but after a quick search - seem like software some companies use to block certain websites.

If that is the case - if you are allowed to place games while at work, talk to your IT person to see if they can unblock the site so you can play during breaks and such.

You may also try to see if any of the other BrainKing addresses work. (BrainKing.cz, etc... many different languages - not sure if once you use one of those addresses and switch back to English (or whatever) if the domain will still be the same you started with - but worth some playing if all brainking.*** are not blocked.

Plus there seems to be many Yahoo pages when you search for bypass websense or How to Block websense - but use each page at own risk. Being fired because you compromised work network may not be the best reason to risk your job.

Rose: I have FasterFox installed on my computer at home, and if no one else answers before then, I will take a look at those settings and see if anything jumps out at me. Probable some kind of "performace" thing FasterFox does is clearing that data out - to help make firefox "faster".

When I loaded it at home, I played with the setting but did not find any difference... which is why I haven't loaded it on the computer that I'm using now.

But if FasterFox is the only change - most likely that is the cause of the problem.

Rose: Do you have some privacy software or something installed that clears the cache or Cookies?

Or for example, in FireFox - Tools, Options - Privacy Tab - there is an option to "Always clear my private data when I close FireFox"..... make sure that is not checked.

Mousetrap: Just wait 20-30 seconds and hit reload on the browser page. It does happen to me (not very often - at most 1-2 times a day) - but like someone else said, it seems to be when Fencer is on - and last time I seen him looking at the bug tracker right before I could not access the site for about 10-20 seconds..... like he was fixing the bug and took a short down time while the fix went in would be my guess.

Discussion Board Tip: Another thing I changed was on the discussion boards, I changed the "Messages per page" down to a lower number.

I had it at 100 for the longest time, but recently put it down to 50 which should speed things up also. (might even go down lower since I normally catch all boards before too many post are put on it.)

Mousetrap: Occasionally - maybe once or twice a day I get a "page not found" while on BrainKing - I just wait about 30 seconds and hit reload - and usually it will come back up.

Not sure if that is the same thing as you are talking about.

Well I’ve seen others complain that it seems to take longer to load pages on Brainking – well at least longer then it use to, and even though I stayed away from complaining about it, I did see the same thing. 2-7 seconds to load each page. Ugh.

So I did some tweaking with the settings, and found some things that really help – 0-2 seconds per page load most of the time! Here are the tips:

Use Firefox if you can. Faster then Internet Explorer.

NOTE: For the settings below – some are for members only – so if are a pawn and are unable to change certain settings, that could be the reason.

BrainKing Settings: http://brainking.com/en/Settings


General Tab: Get rid of things you don’t need or use. What I use:

UNCHECK – Show menu on game pages (less info to load – faster load time)

UNCHECK – Show game filter on the main page (less info to load – faster load time)

UNCHECK – Show tips of the day (less info to load – faster load time)

UNCHECK – Show tournament tip (less info to load – faster load time)

UNCHECK – Show “Yesterdays active player” (less info to load – faster load time)

UNCHECK – “Display backgroung “BrainKing” image (less info to load – faster load time)

Number of my best BKR shown on main page: NONE (less info – faster load)

Number of games shown on the main page: I like mine set at All, but if you have a lot of games – picking something smaller can help load time

Submit move actions – currently 20 actions available – each one takes a little more space – so only pick the ones you use. I personally have 8 picked, but could easily bring that down to about 4.

JavaScript Tab: Get rid of things you don’t need or use. What I use:

UNCHECK – Active pulldown game menu. This is the list of 20 games in the upper left corner. I always loved it there, but once I started to think about it – I never used it – so like others (less info to load – faster load time)

UNCHECK – Enable fast lookup at search forms – not sure exactly what this one was, but don’t think I used it – so away it goes.

*LOTS OF SPEED* - UNCHECK – Show message preview at the Message box.

• This one will show you a preview when you have something in your message box.
• This will also show you a preview of public boards in your favorites
  list. I have 20 public boards in my favourites board list - so that means the last message from each of those 20 boards would load on each page that shows the favourite boards list.
• This will also show you a tournament preview in a tournament game (That is mouse over the tournament link on a game page, and the tournament status page pops up). I liked this option at first - but this one of my biggest time savers - since for example, a 7 player tournament playing 2 games each counted as an extra 12,933 characters in EVERY page load. So if you have a game which takes 5 moves to play, that is 5 extra times that 12,000+ extra characters has to be loaded!
• So getting rid of this option was one of my best choices!

Autosave interval – I have none, but don’t think it will slow page load if you have it set.

Smiley windows: I have on mouse click since I have when my mouse accedently moves over it and it tries to pop up – but should not slow down initial page load.

UNCHECK – Show context menu – less info to load, faster page load.

IN A GAME:

When you get ready to submit a move – there is the game list that you can choose to go to next. Each game is written into the page source adding to the time it takes to bring up that page. So if you don’t use this option – HIDE IT (If you have few games, probable not a big deal - have many then you can start to see the slow down)

Game Notations – each game has this on the right hand side. If you don’t use it, hide it. Long games can have hundreds+ moves – again, less data to load on the page, the quicker it can go.

OK - that is all for now. Anyone else have other suggestions or ideas?

[AGAIN - these are what I choose - if you use certain option I say turn off, then don't turn them off - use them. Biggest thing is to get rid of the things you don't use.]

Rose: On windows XP & Vista computers that have that have the newest updates, it should do it automaticly.

For older PC's like 98, 2000 - or XP computers without the newest updates, it will not change automatically.

Where I work, I will be busy Monday - out of the 90 computers, about 10-15 are older that I will need to update - along with a time clock, phone system, and voice mail system which are programmed with the old rules - so i'll have to manually fix those (and then fix again in a few weeks when the time was suppose to change.)

1) Reboot computer if you have not already - if something went bad to cause it to not display, a fresh computer bootup will solve most all problems.

2) What I see some people do is make the taskbar smaller. Put your mouse at the bottom of the screen - VERY bottom, does it change from a pointer to a up/down 2 arrow? If so, then the taskbar may have been minimized - click while you see the double arrow and drag up a little bit to "expand" the task bar back to the regular size.

Wow - I been hosting my websites at http://powweb.com for about $7.77 a month. In December, I had 20GB disk space, 400GB of monthly bandwidth

In January, they upgraded me to 40 GB of space & 800GB of monthly bandwidth

In February, they upgraded me to 300GB of space & 3,000GB of month bandwidth

Anyway, if anyone is looking for a lot of space & bandwidth - http://www.powweb.com

Czuch Czuckers: I at one time loaded many different extensions since there are a lot of "cool" ones out there - but found out I never used most of them, and probable would not use most of them - so I uninstalled all but 2.

Forecastfox - nice weather related extension - I keep the 5 day forcast in the bottom bar of my browser - A lot of times I only want a quick outlook - like about what tempature it will be this week, or if it looks like rain, and I use this a lot for just quick looks at stuff. (for more details, I use some weather websites & not forecastfox - but I think it can give you more details also - I just already have a couple sites I look at for the details.

BugMeNot - As a tech guy, I visit many sites for things like tips, computer problems, drivers, etc... Some of those sites make you register before you can view answers, or download drivers. Well for sites I know I will probable never visit again, I envoke the BugMeNot - which will 85% of the time log me onto these sites long enough for me to get what I want and leave - without having to register & get on their mailing lists.

I have not had time to look at the whole list, but someone gave me this link - and it looks to cover a lot of "free" software that people can use for their PC's (including security)

http://www.carolsvault.com/pimp-windows-2/

Czuch Czuckers: What don't you like about version 2.0. I did not like a few things, but after I did some easy configs - like be able to get more tabs, and move the X off each tab - I liked it better then 1.5

Gr☺uch☺: I'm not sure (I don't use the latest version of Windows Media Player) - but my guess is that it is impossible for WMP to have every codec out there - so I would guess that even with the latest, you may sooner or later run into something that needs a codec.

... and I'm far from an expert - I could be wrong in all of this - if so, I'm sure someone will correct me.