Artwork said:
*edit*
Jezus christ. MKV's still aren't supported. You'd think in this age they would add support for some 'newer' containers. While MKV has already been around for like 6 years. It's one of the most used, if not the most used HD video container. Seems like I have to install VLC
To our community (fansubbed anime viewers), MKV seems that way. The masses use MP4 containers or some variation of it. MP4 is an official standard regulated and defined by an international organization. If I recall, it's part of the ISO MPEG suite of standards. MKV is a 3rd party container managed and developed independently. Hell, even the original, official decoder for the container codec was abandoned by the original dev in support for a separately developed one. (I believe Haali Medai Splitter became the officially endorsed MKV splitter/decoder.)

MS is not gonna spend money on supporting a format that always being development and not standardized. Other companies might (like Western Digital). Damn near anything can open MP4 because it's industry standard. Not the same in the case of MKV.
Hmm. Even so, I've been using MKV's in a lot of different video's. Almost every HD video I download is in the MKV format. I can't even remember the last HD video in MP4. I've actually never really used MP4 much.

Either way! Another finding: The W8 store currently sucks balls. Yes it's really really bad! - My system was set up with Netherlands as location, so I got the Dutch W8 store. There are almost no apps to be found. maybe around 10 games, and a few other random apps. I couldn't even find a twitter app. Now! I changed my region to UK, rebooted, and got a 'different' W8 store. The strange thing is however, the tiles under the different catagories do show new, UK apps. For instance, there's Ebay, Cut the Rope, Armed!, Rowi, Fliptoast, Netflix and quite a few more. But once I press the 'Social Network' tab, where Rowi and Fliptoast should be, I still end up getting the Dutch store apps.
I'm left clueless. And honestly I prefer to be able to use 1 general store which has everything. - I downloaded a game, Adera, in the Dutch store. But I ended up with this lame ass Dutch voice over. Bah I hate listening to my native language while gaming.

Ohh and I should add, I was able to Instal a Metro Twitter app just by googling it. The link directed me to the W8 store where I was able to download it. - Still I couldn't find it in the store if I searched for it. Only by googling.

*edit* I couldn't find it by using google, but the largest dutch Tech site had a forum topic about the W8 store where everybody was complaining about the same issue. There was an option 'Make it easier to find apps in your own language'. I never thought this option would remove all the other language apps from the store. - So it's solved. Though I have to change the complain to: 'The amount of settings, and info is really minimal''.
Bardiche752 said:
~snip iTunes pins ~
iTunes is the worst piece of software ever developed. But don't worry, every sane person who uses an apple macbook is also hating on it. I also used to have an iPod, hell that was around 6 years back, maybe even more. So I've used iTunes for some time. I just got fed up by how slow it was. It also seemed to suck a lot of resources, my pc wasn't happy to say the least. I spend more time waiting for it to boot, and changing artist info because everything seemed to get imported wrong.

Though, this has to be said, Samsung uses 'KIES' which is just as bad as iTunes. With a few neat features, but it just doesn't work accordingly. The easiest way is always to copy something straight to your SD. And that's no problem with samsung phones. You'll be amazed by the S3 really. And they started rolling out the 4.1 Jelly Bean update in various countries, so you got even more reason to pick it up now. 4.1 is a huge improvement over 4.0 ICS. It's faster, smoother, and better in every aspect. (Jelly beans focus was improving the FPS rate.) - Also if you're good with tempering, you can root your S3 and overclock the CPU, flash some custom roms, and greatly improve your user experience. (And you can get rid of crappy pre-installed samsung apps)
NEW COMPUTER (possibly)
So finally after like 11 months of wanting a beast computer I'm finally putting together a shopping cart for it. This will happen over the next month or so. I promise pictures if I remember to post them here. Budget $3,500 (really high) to give you an idea of what I'm aiming for.

Must have in it.
Anyone have any thoughts?

ADMIN (SA): Post Moved
You even stated it in your opening sentence...[sentence removed by original Author]
[Author edit after move.]
eagleNthedesert:
OK. side note
Do any of you know a good headset that works on several platforms? I'm currently looking for a headset that works both on my xbox and PC. I have found one and it is Gioteck Ex-05 headset, but I want other headset to compare so I know which one I will end up buying.
I don't know if this falls here since I've never really been around this topic.

So my PC got f-ed up, reinstalled Windows whatever bla bla... when I got to install the VGA driver (tried both from CD and downloaded from net) it stops in the middle and screen goes black. then waiting for it, it simply reboots (the PC). Then when I'm on the log in screen it simply goes black again, with my mouse in the middle looking blocked (also it looks like it's got "bugs" on it) and then it "blinks" from time to time. Nothing happening in the meantime.

And yes, other drivers are installing without any problem.

I apologize if this is the wrong thread to post this into.
Otherwise, help is appreciated.
Tensa said:
So my PC got f-ed up [...]
Boot into safe mode and try installing the drivers from there, then restart. WinXP? Vista? Win7?

If you happen to have a spare vidcard laying around, you can try that one temporarily. If a different card works (preferably using the same driver set), then something is wrong with your current card. You can also just attempt a pull/re-insert. Maybe the contacts need to be refreshed, so to speak.

Which brand and model video card is it?
eagleNthedesert said:
So finally after like 11 months of wanting a beast computer I'm finally putting together a shopping cart for it. This will happen over the next month or so. I promise pictures if I remember to post them here. Budget $3,500 (really high) to give you an idea of what I'm aiming for.

Must have in it.
Anyone have any thoughts?

ADMIN (SA): Post Moved
You even stated it in your opening sentence...[sentence removed by original Author]
[Author edit after move.]
eagleNthedesert:
OK. side note
Computer Building rant(ish)

Regular Users "Common Knowledge" on Mod/Admins

For a headset, I'd recommend something from Razer personally. Some of them are USB ported but I do not know if they work on Xbox at all. I've only used headsets for the PC anyway.
Bardiche752 said:
Computer Building rant(ish)

Regular Users "Common Knowledge" on Mod/Admins
On computer building: Your info on fan direction, and stock heat sink, and the tower has me worried about my build so far. I did have a MB picked out already, but I just didn't say anything about it.

Any reply to set my concerns to ease would would great.

Here's what I have so far: Top Half | Bottom Half

The moved thing
If you're getting a Full Tower then you don't need to worry, cause it'll fit I think all types of MB's, mainly Extended ATX, ATX (Standard), and Micro ATX. Whatever manual that comes with the case will probably tell you what types the fans are if not in details on Newegg. It's just a bad idea to have an fan blowing out air and heat pointing in the direction of an intake fan blowing in air. If really unsure, just put something to any fan to see if it sticks.

Dunno why you'd be worried about the stock heat sink. It'll do it's job but be loud if you plan to run games. As I said get a seperate CPU Fan/Heatsink and you should be fine. It'll fit in the case that you have, as mine is a Mid Tower and it fit into mine easily. But it will be big from width wise for the case and I was worried at first too until I got it in. But no your concerns aren't very difficult. At least your GPU can do 3 monitors with 2 DVI and a DisplayPort so the choice in Monitors is ok. Monitors, like TV's, are something I'm not very knowledge about when choosing one. The one I have now is good but it's a normal LCD so it doesn't have an LED Backlight. I just bought a new one though that has it and does 120hz Refresh Rate (FPS) with 2ms. It also has 3D but I didn't get it for that. I'm also switching over from HDMI to DVI since DVI is better and it doesn't have a Displayport. Pretty much learned something new earlier today about that since it was totally unbeknownst to me. But DVI Dual-Link will apparently provide enough to get all 120 FPS.
Unless you plan on building a very expandable system or a workstation, you can get by with a fully featured mATX MB and Case. I'm currently on a mATX build. Serves my current purposes well enough (though I don't like the lack of expandability, but I don't really need that now.) My old system doubled as a workstation (I used to do minor PC help for people when I was in the Navy), so I had a mid-tower (full towers are VERY tall, BTW) and ATX system for expansion and other accessories. Mid-tower is about as large as you have to go these days unless you need A LOT of bays.

Standard fan arrangement in a case has air coming in the front and blown out the rear of the cases (i.e. wind tunnel style). The layout of the MB and the parts on it, plus cable arrangement, will affect cooling performance as well as how powerful the fans are. If you plan on getting any aftermarket coolers, it's not so much the case you have to worry about so much as the RAM slots. I've seen cases of cooler getting in the way of RAM slots and vice-versa. It's both a MB and cooler issue. Large tower coolers are a big culprit of this.

HDMI/DVI share the same basic protocol. Only real difference is the fact HDMI can carry audio as well. (There's a reason HDMI/DVI adapters are passive in nature and therefore cheap enough to pac-in with vidcards.) If you want GOOD monitors for everything, look to spend about 300-500 USD on IPS-based monitors. (Pricing I'm basing on 23"/24" @ 1920x1080/1200 res). I personally prefer Dell UltraSharp line, but they're pricey. They do now make a set of more barebones UltraSharp monitors that are cheaper compared to their top line models thoughs.

Is there a reason you're taking 2x 1TB instead of 2x 2TB HDDs? The price difference shouldn't be too much, I think...

For admin stuff: I have direct access to the DB. I don't know your actual PW (they are kept in hashed form anyway; no plain-text PW storage here), but I can mod the "ownership" of items in the DB. All I did was replace my user ID number for that forum post after I made with yours. Just think of it as me "moving" a post like in more fully featured forums. I did similar way back for the "Dibs" thread as well. As for deleting posts, any staff member can do that. All of us staffers see a nice little "Delete" link on every post on the site ^_~
Bardiche752 said:
snip
Heres a video I watched months ago but I'm rewatching it now. This is like all the research you will have to do on monitors except for the choice of size.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRoPQ_YEeNA
[EDIT all the below is new. (about 1.5 hrs since original posting so after your rant on YT videos Stahn, which I feel is a little off topic)]
StahnAileron said:
Is there a reason you're taking 2x 1TB instead of 2x 2TB HDDs? The price difference shouldn't be too much, I think...
The price difference w/ two 2TB black WD drives is like 140 USD more, as compared to the two 1TB black WD drives. I could go the red route and have 2 3TB for 10 USD more each for a 1TB increase, but [see below in: Me thinking out loud. Any thoughts?]. I don't think I would use 2TB of storage. I could be wrong though.

All of these HDD are Western Digital:

And I like the idea of expand ability.
*sigh* I've yet to figure out why everyone feels the need to make a video about everything. Stuff like this I'd rather just read about while looking at still images. I don't feel the need to waste 15 minutes of my life listening to someone talk (when some of it is their personal rant about stuff or self advertising) when I could spend 2-5 minutes reading and skimming an article. (Which, BTW, makes it MUCH easier to find and study data since it sits in front of you instead of passing by as time goes on.) AnandTech.com did a series of articles about monitors and I found those more informative and insightful than the little bit of the video I was willing to sit through.

Seriously, what's the fucking point of making a video if all you're doing is a bloody slideshow? ESPECIALLY about monitors. The one segment I happen to come across when I jumped the video (input lag) could've used an actual video example, not some simple math and a still image. You have a fucking video camera, use the fucking thing. (Yes, I have something against the inane stuff on YouTube trying to pass itself off as "useful info". Better to just read a transcript instead: wastes less time.)
Doesn't DVI also go beyond 60 FPS where HDMI caps at it? The monitor I have now goes max at 75 FPS so if I put a DVI in, it might go at that instead of the HDMI I have now at 60.
HDMI 1.3a should be 120FPS-capabale due to the push for 3DTVs a year or so ago. If you have HDMI 1.3a-compliant components (TV and GPU), that shouldn't be a problem. If you want to be sure right now via HMDI, check your Display settings in windows and see if it lets you manually set the refresh rate to something over 60Hz.

I think the reason way HDMI initially didn't bother with >60Hz refresh rates was because nothing in consumer entertainment media needed a higher frame rate until the 3D push came along. HDMI was meant for the consumer entertainment space after all, not as a GPU-monitor connection standard. HDMI was based on DVI and DVI's replacement is supposed to be DisplayPort, much like DVI was VGA's replacement. (Then give it a decade and DP will be in the entertainment space while being replaced in the IT space...)
Does anybody have experience with Gigabyte laptops?
So is anyone knowledgeable about the tech specifics on TV's? Like I said with monitors I'm not good at picking them out, and TV's are worse. This time though I've narrowed it down to 2 Samsung Models, the UN32EH5000 and UN32EH5300. The latter is a Smart TV so it has all those features but the former is a normal type. Both are LED so it helps me and reviews on a few sites say both are pretty good, especially the former. Now what gets me with TV's is the picture since it is important, so I plan to go to a physical store like Bestbuy to see if they have them in stock to look at. Unless ya know a better type of TV that's LED and 32" or below I'll be sticking with one of these.
I have installed windows 8, and it feels very good. I love tinkering with the new Task Manager. Also i hate what they've done with the metro. It simply doesn't work together with the desktop mode. Its ok as a start menu, but its more like a new OS, completely detached from desktop.

i have to import settings twice, for each version of the browser(chrome). If i open anything from the metro it opens in a metro browser. I open it from desktop it opens in desktop browser. and i cant even copy links from one to the other. It doesnt share cookies so no logins. Same shit with skype too, you can actually have two skypes one on metro one on desktop and chat with yourself. Voice works between them too, i mean WTF. I had better interoperability between Ubuntu and Windows 7 on dual boot. And windows can't see ubuntu's files. Mail is useless, no gmail app yet.

Another good thing with Windows 8 is the battery life. Under windows 7 i had 3 hours at maximum. Now i get 4 hours surfing and movies, and 5 hours mostly idle with bit-torrent or reading something. Memory usage is reduced too, Win 7 was hovering just above 2 GB, win 8 is around 1.5 GB, less without open browser(never).
Basically Stick with desktop and be happy while it has applications for it.

@Bardiche
tech rant that sais nothing worthwhile - Its the same TV.
Would you guys pick portability over performance?
Under portability I mean, lightweight, thin, longer battery life.

Buying a new laptop has to be one of the hardest choices I've had this year.. lol.
I'm still waiting for the Gigabyte U2442F - But the Lenovo Y500, a bit larger and not an ultrabook also looks pretty damn awesome. It has a FHD screen, this awesome backlit keyboard, and dual (not stock but possible) 650m GDDR5 graphics. But it's larger than my current Asus, and also slightly heavier. I've never really cared about carrying this 2.5kg laptop with me, but a lightweight option seems charming.
It alls comes down what kind of usuage you want from your laptop. Is it for gaming, school/uni or other programs (thinking of some design programs that can be heavy).

My personal preferance I want a laptop with good performance with long battery life (since I'm a master to drain batteries in a short notice^^). Nothing else really. It can be heavy, bulky and so on. However is it lightweight, good-looking and all other extra is just a plus for my part^^
I'm not sure really. Ha ha.
The thing is, I don't really know how my Internship (If I manage to find any soon) is going to turn out. There is always a slight chance I might have to carry a laptop with me. But I'm not really sure if I'll be bothered by it. Since I've been carrying around a fairly large laptop these last 2 years. However the 14'' form factor seems more to my taste now, while 15'' isn't necessarily too large in size, it's the weight that does the trick. The gigabyte is around 1.2kg lighter, and honestly 1600x900 on a 14'' or 1920x1080 on a 15''6 is 'comparable'. The Gigabyte however is around 300~400$ more. Oh and the Y500 has an ultrabay (swapable bay for an extra HDD, Fan or even a second GPU, so SLI graphics. Future proof, so to say. I have a few school programs, but they aren't all that heavy, my current laptop was able to run them moderately. Not fast, but not slow either.
It will be a desktop replacement for when I'm away. So I really need portability, but power for gaming and media as well.
I don't really care about battery though. 3 hours without a charge is fine, 5 is welcome, but not needed.

I should start thinking like you. 'Looks and stuff are just an extra'. Gah. Well the Gigabyte got delayed, so it will be hard to get this month. And the Lenovo isn't out in the Netherlands for another week. Not in a rush anyway. Just would've liked to have on under the Christmas tree :3
I use a desktop for most of my activities. My laptop is me secondary system. As such, I mainly look for portability, then perfomance. (I sure as hell won't ever touch a netbook. Not with the shit I sometimes do.) The things I consider when people ask for recommendations:

  • Will you be moving/carrying it often? (Portability-related)
  • Will it be your main system? (Perfomance-related)
  • What will you typically use it for? (Overall specs vs budget)
  • How will you typically use it (i.e. Plugged-in vs battery)? (Predominantly performance-related as higher specs = higher power use; portability comes into play a little size the relative size of the battery will matter as well.)
  • What is your budget? (Your line in the sand you can't cross ^_~)
I'm currently sporting a 2009 model Sony VAIO TT-series:
Specs
The above was back when I had money to spare. I personally prefer the 11"-12" screen size range for laptops. 13" if they were able to cram in some decent hardware. Anything above that I would only consider if I needed a portable workstation-class system or a desktop-replacement system.

I lean towards utilitarian with aesthetics. If the system is designed in a practical manner, awesome. (My only real complaint about my VAIO is the fact it has a VGA output for the secondary video instead of, say, HDMI.)

I actually have a second laptop, a 2007 model Sony VAIO TX-series, the predecessor to the TT-series. Its specs are horrible by comparision though ^_^; But I LOVED its portability. It's the reason I went with the TT as a follow-up when I wanted to upgrade.
Just found out my parents got me this for xmas. Going to throw it in my laptop, as I know it has an open 2.5''.

Rockin' an Asus G53JW. Specs.

The 15'' screen feels large enough, keeping in mind the 1920x1080 res scaling things down a bit. I mostly got it because it was an insane deal at the time, and it feels really damn solid, which is an important feel to me, and my parents would only fund a laptop purchase.
15'' -> large enough?
15'' is (in my standards) large for a laptop screen. It's not a problem, but I prefer the 14'' size. Toobad almost no decent laptops are packed with a 14'' display. Except for a few (A Vaio model, Gigabyte). I am curious about the FHD though.
The Lenovo Y500 I'm look at also has a 15'' FHD screen. But my old 15'' still has this super low resolution. I doubt I'll have any problems, but still.
How does the GPU perform with games? It's comparable with the Nvidia 650M in the Y500.
I can play new games on medium to high settings, and games a year or more older on all highest. (For the most part)
For example, I can play Starcraft 2 on the ultra preset, while I can "only" play Far Cry 3 on High.
It also performs well in Photoshop and Vegas, if you use those.
A great website I used quite a bit when looking around was NoteBookCheck, specifically this page the most.
It took some getting used to the screen size, but I guess it is fairly large. I was switching over from my desktop, which I have a 23'' monitor set up.
Yah I also use Notebookcheck. But the results aren't really accurate since you need to take your CPU and some other things into account. Furthermore some games just seems to perform pretty irregularly. (Guildwars 2 for example). I can get 20 FPS, but I can also get 40+ FPS on the same settings. Which is pretty damn annoying, but yeah..
And Farcry 3 on high is pretty damn sweet. Did you use the 1920x1080 resolution?

My desktop uses a 24'' Monitor. But I'll probably hook up my laptop to this screen if I use it at home.
Yeah, I did the 1920x1080 res, but it is only playable on high in fullscreen instead of borderless window which I usually use. (Makes alt tabbing a breeze!) I even have anti-aliases on in-game, hah.
That's awesome. I can only dream of the 650M SLI capabilities now.
So guys I'm back and I'm going to start off by saying hi. Anyway the parts are on the way. Here they are:

side note

Thoughts, comments?

I will have pictures of the build and possibly video that I may or may not share.