The Sphere
General Garbage => Tropical Paradise of Hard Shelled Fruits => Topic started by: B E C K on Jul 23, 2009, 10:47:18 PM
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1) I didn't know recording sound in Vista was such a bitch.
Apparently, I can't record sound off the internet on my laptop with the Windows Vista Home Premium OS. Some apparently can by showing disabled features or something, but it doesn't apply to me. I already tried updating the sound drivers with no solutions. Truthfully, updating (or attempting) to update the sound seemed to create problems. There's various work-arounds being tossed around like some Virtual Audio Cable thingy and other software, but I don't know if I should try any of this shit or not. I'm not in any hurry and I have other comps I can use instead. It's just a pain in the ass. Must be one of the reasons people hate Vista. I didn't have that much to hate it for until now.
Not so long story short, if I had known about Vista's selective sound recording issues, I would looked at comps more carefully when I was buying.
2) 20/20, my preferred graphics program, doesn't function in Vista. What do you guys use for your graphics needs? I dl'ed Gimp, but it's kinda annoying to use.
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I really dislike Vista...it had me pulling at my hair for about the first week I had the new comp.
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I'm still not used to the Start menu. I smell cinnamon. Did you do that?
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I...don't think so, but I also wouldn't rule it out either.
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I like Spider Solitaire.
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Yeah, I usually play that or Free Cell as I wait for pages to load.
I actually want to get the Windows upgrade "Windows 8" or whatever, but at a 150 bucks it's a pretty expensive upgrade.
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Isn't it 7? Why do you want to? What have you heard about it that makes it better?
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Proably is 7.
And I just heard it fixed a lot of the headaches that came with Vista, but in the end I proably won't. I've got use to Vista for the last few months and I can live with it.
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I'm always wary of fairly new OSs. But at least I'm not those supposed "musicians" I keep coming across on support forums that talk about how they bought a new laptop for their music and are screwed because they can't record sound using Vista. "But that's what I bought it for!" Yeah, that sucks. I don't know how that discourages theft by preventing ppl from recording. It would just make people want to take more, I'd think.
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I use paint shop pro. It's better than Photoshop.
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What I don't get about the Vista Media player is that I can rip CDs, but not DVDs. So if I wanted to Pirate music that's ok, but not Movies or TV shows that's wrong.
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Well, music is a lost cause.
But television and film? They're still fightin' that battle!
This PC came with Vista, and it's never really given me much grief, but then all I really use it for is watching illicit video files and surfin' thems internets.
I'll probably just avoid Windows 7 until everyone stops supporting Vista completely.
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Did you have XP on that computer before Vista? It could just be a crummy built-in sound system.
As for the sound issues, I'm assuming you've got the correct boxes checked in the Recording Control dialog screen? I had a bitch of a time recording until I found that I had some of my channels disabled. You can probably chell this in Audacity or whatever audio prog you use.
I use Photoshop and The GIMP, and I hear Paint.NET is good for less extensive stuff. Haven't used PSP in years, and that was the 16-bit version.
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Thanks for the suggestions.
@Squirrel: I don't know if you mean me or joe with that "XP on that computer before Vista" but if it's me, no. This is a new laptop that came with Vista. What channels do you mean? Anyway, I've been reading up on this and it seems to be a common issue, especially with Dell and Sony Vaio (but I have a Toshiba). The only way for me to record any sound appears to be through the microphone, which is not something I've done in years. There's one built in and there's also a jack for one, but I haven't used either yet.
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It's probably your sound hardware, particularly if it was a comparatively inexpensive laptop.
Double click the speaker icon in the lower right corner; select Options and Properties (I'm assuming it works the same as in XP) and tell it to adjust volume for recording to see what inputs you have. It may just say microphone or line in. If so, then, yeah, you'll probably be reduced to recording into a mike.
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Double click the speaker icon in the lower right corner; select Options and Properties (I'm assuming it works the same as in XP)
It doesn't. I record stuff in XP so I have an idea of what you're talking about. Double clicking brings up a Mixer thing. Recording Devices, an option by clicking and then selecting it, shows only a mic. Some Vista comps--when you show disabled devices--actually manages to display wave out, stereo mix, or something of the sort like you see in XP. Then you can select it and record streaming internet audio. However, I can't even get any of that to show.
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It's probably your sound hardware, particularly if it was a comparatively inexpensive laptop.
Less than a $1000 but considering Merla's POS Gateway with XP records sound just fine, mine costing several hundred more should have some comparatively able sound hardware. Would the sound card being integrated with the motherboard cause these sorts of problems? I only ask because I saw that issue bandied about various posts I read on support forums about this topic.
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(but I have a Toshiba).
A Satellite? Those are pretty good from what I hear, but I'm such a company mark that in my search for a Laptop (which I am in the middle of now) I'll proably end up with a Gateway, but if I don't I'm buying a Toshiba since I had one before a long time ago.
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Yeah, it was on sale, right? Supposedly 50 bucks less than normal. So I go in to buy it and the guy's all, "Well, we have three in stock including our floor model. We've done some shit to them, so it'll be $$ + $$ + $$." (I'm paraphrasing, of course.) So I pretty much am all "FTW, you have a sale price in your ad and the only ones you have stock cost more because you did shit to them w/o my permission?" And he's all "Most people want shit done to it so they don't have to do shit to it later. They like having shit done." and I'm all "I can do my own shit to it. I came down here today to buy one of those because of the sale and now you want me to go to another store so I can find one you didn't do shit to when no one told you to do shit to it in the first place?" After a few minutes of this, he let me have it for the sale price. I don't know if he was being nice about it, just trying to get me out of his hair, or if they're paid on some sort of commission or quota or whatever, but either way I appreciate it.
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Was this at Best Buy? Cause when I bought my Desktop they tried to talk me into paying them to like take a bunch of stuff off and do this and that to the computer so I didn't have to. I was like "No...I can do it myself thanks."
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Yep and I said the same thing.
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They try to talk you into all kinda of extra stuff when buy there. They tried to get me to buy an 18 dollar cord or connect my printer. (No idea why it doesn't come with it, but whatever.) Basicly told the guy I wasn't paying that for it and that was that. Got it later at Wal-Mart for like six bucks. Works just fine. I did buy a 20 dollar surge protector though, which I wish I hadn't as soon as I got it home. Espeically since it didn't have a Phone Jack to protect the modem.
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I remember this boner in my law class was all pissed off because he had bought a new laptop and when they tried to sell him the extra warranty bs, said "yes" and that he wanted it because he always cracks his screens. I have no idea how this always happens to someone, but apparently it does. I think he mentioned this nasty habit of picking the computer up by the screen or something. Anyway, he asked if what he was buying would cover that and they said it would. Turned out it didn't.
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I've never known anyone that's cracked the screen on their laptop before. Hell I mistreated my old Toshiba the short time I had it (although it was from the 90s) and the screen was just fine. Outlasted three or four Computer Moniters.
But why didn't he just stop picking it up by the screen if he knew that's what caused it?
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Granted, I didn't really know him but I assumed because he was a fool and could afford to be one.
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A Fool and his money.
I really hate people that have that kind of cash to just throw around. Actually, no...not hate. I'm jealous of people like that cause I've never been able to do it.
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What really brings on the jealousy/hate is people who have that sort of money complaining to be poor. You can't tote around your designer handbag, your brand new outfit, your spanking new shoes, your Blackberry, a car (whether daddy bought it for you or not), the shiny laptop and then whine about being poor and hungry. I can respect people who'd rather have a Blackberry and go hungry because at least they're aware they could otherwise go un-hungry but would rather have their Blackberry. Most people (and by ppl I mean college students), however, aren't that aware.
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They never had to be, so they don't understand what it means. To them they are suffering cause they've never know anything worse then that.
I mean I wish I could throw money around like that. I mean I'd like to drop everything jump on plane and just GO someplace. But I can't. I have to save up to do stuff like that. But some people just do it at the drop of hat and think nothing of it and it's always those people that bitch the most about how bad things are for them.
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I watched this Oprah the other day, which was part of several episodes where Oprah (yeah, of all people) is trying to get others (i.e. upper middle class families that waste too much and raise spoiled kids that don't talk to each other) to "live with less". This one family of four (two of them being small children) had a giant store of food. Assloads of food. So the wife of the family (the one who's buying all of this food) hears about a hungry family in need. I guess the audience was supposed to be touched that she managed to feed another family of four for several days if not a week by pilfering extras from her own stores. But compared to what she had left, it was a pittance. She still had tons of food left! Way more than she needed. If she really wanted to make a difference, she would've given more of it away. She's a decent soul for giving away some of her food, but making a whole production out of a tiny percentage of food just looked sad.
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Why did she have so much food saved back? Did she thnk that Y2K was just going to be late. I mean I only get what I need for a certain time period. Don't really save anything back..if it gets saved it's cause I changed my mind and didn't eat it when I planned.
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This.
A Fool and his money.
I really hate people that have that kind of cash to just throw around. Actually, no...not hate. I'm jealous of people like that cause I've never been able to do it.
She had no reason. "Hyuck, I jus keep on buying."
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Just has to keep buying something.
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Gosh, it sounds like you all have had tons of fun with Vista...
My experience has been... Well I've had to reformat my computer twice, and still having freezing issues with Nivida drivers...
I can't wait for Windows 7....
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Firebird1 makes Vista FirebirdFun!
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Firebird1 makes Vista FirebirdFun!
Yes.....
Even when it works it usually doesn't work......
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What specific issues have you had with it? Do tell.
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Dudes, does IE get wonky on anyone else with multiple tabs? I've been a Firefox girl for a while, but had a mild virus scare recently that appeared to involve FF. So I've been using IE in the meantime. I notice once I open "too many tabs" (in quotes as this number appears variable), sometimes some of them stall on me and literally take forever before I get some sort of error message. Sometimes I had 20 or more tabs open in Firefox, and I can't get even close to that with IE.
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That never happens to me, but I only have 2-3 tabs open. I've never had big issues with IE, it crashes maybe once every 2-4 months (usually because I'm on a torrent site from the third world where I understand some wierd-ass popup will fuck me over). I have FF and google chrome installed... but I never use them. I find IE to be just the best. I only use FF for the dl manager. If IE comes up with that, then I probably wouldn't use FF.
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Sometimes I get "page cannot be displayed" when using more then one tab. I just figured it was my slow ass connection.
The problem I've been having lately is my computer will just turn it's self off suddenly. When I restart it says that computer was not responding and that's why it did it. But everything was running fine when it does this. Happened like 5 times in a half hour to me last night when I was trying to chell for error or spyware that might be the cause of the problem. I actually have it running in safe mode and scanning, and I'm using my old computer at the moment. I hope I don't have to take it in. It's less then 6 months old. =\
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Sometimes I get "page cannot be displayed" when using more then one tab.
Yeah, it'll give me that IE page to diagnose connection problems, but I'm connected perfectly to the internet each time. I close the offending tabs and re-use one of the earlier tabs instead and it works just fine. Must be a bug or something. I've had to wean myself down to eight or seven tabs, which is difficult.
Have you posted at a help forum about your problem? It sounds kinda serious.
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I usually just hit the diagnose connection problems button and then it says there is no problem and reloads and it works after that.
and no I havn't, but I unplugged everything (powet, moniter, all the cords basicly) and plugged them back in and it hasn't done it since. I still don't know why that would fix it, but it seems to have. Like I don't know why when I try to dial in to my ISP is says there is no dial tone, but if I unplug it from the phonejack and then plug it back in it suddenly works. Don't know why...but it does.
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I use Opera, made by the people who invented tabs in the first place. I've had dozens open at once with no loss of snappiness.
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I think I'm too OCD to ever use more than 2-3.
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I've used up to 5-6 but only when I'm loading stuff. I never have 5-6 open to just cruise, that's a limit of 3. Got two open at the moment.
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I only have one, but then I am typing a document up on my word processor while listening to pr0n. Why listening? Because for some reason a lesbian pr0n got caught in my playlist, and I'm too lazy/enjoying it too much to change it.
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Yeah I also have Windows Media player and Spider Solitaire going as well.
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I think I'm too OCD to ever use more than 2-3.
It was always sad--though hilarious in retrospect--when I'd have 2 or so Firefox windows with 20 or so tabs in each and something would crash or whatever and I'd lose everything. Sometimes I was able to restore the session so all these fucking tabs are all trying to load at once. (And if we're talking before July, that would be on dial-up!)
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I wouldn't even try to attempt that on Dial Up. I might as well just kick myself off the net if I tried to do and just cut out the middle man. That's what Netzero would do anyway if I tried to load that much data at once anyway.
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I wouldn't open them all at once. I would open a tab at a time and let stuff load on one page while I read the other. Sometimes I'd just keep the pages open so I could go back to them later. It was a decent system, but IE won't have of that.
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Oh...well that I do. You have too. You'll go crazy waiting for something to load with nothing to do. I just close mine after I am done...thus no 16 tabs open at once.
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and no I havn't, but I unplugged everything (powet, moniter, all the cords basicly) and plugged them back in and it hasn't done it since. I still don't know why that would fix it, but it seems to have. Like I don't know why when I try to dial in to my ISP is says there is no dial tone, but if I unplug it from the phonejack and then plug it back in it suddenly works. Don't know why...but it does.
Well I thought I had this fixed, but it's done it again to me a few more times. I just reconnected infact after a sudden shut down. It acts just like a loose powet cord, you know like it's worked it's way loose and you nudge it and the whole thing just shuts down, but the cord isn't loose. If I at least had an idea what was causing it I would have an idea of a cours of action to take. I do know it's not spyware or a Virus. And I don't think it's an error. It could be as simple as something I set up to happen and I don't know it. But it's not like a hibernate or anything like that. I'm puzzled that's for sure. I think I might have to dig out the paper work and get ahold of someone cause I'm stumped.
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Rama: your situation with tabs coming up "page cannot be displayed" is very likely due to your dialup connection not being able to fetch everything at once, especially if there's stuff streaming into previously opened tabs. But I used tabs more while on dialup because I could be loading a link while reading a page or pages, so just try spacing things out a bit more. Pretty much what Beck said.
As for your computer turning itself off, I had a problem with that once upon a time with a a crummy powet supply. But another cause could be a misaligned card in the motherboard.
Personal story time: my aunt had a computer that would turn itself off, stay on a few minutes, only to die minutes later. I offered to look at it, but she was ready to upgrade anyway, since it'd gotten sluggish. After setting up the new one, she gave me the old one. I looked at it for two seconds after taking off the case cover, and I found the problem was the modem card was half-way pulled out of the slot. Reinserting it solved the problem. Also, reinstalling windows solved the sluggish problem.
So try opening the case and make sure the cards are all seated properly. And be sure to hold onto the metal part of the case before touching the cards to make sure you don't electrifry anything with static.
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It could be a powet supply problem. The wiring in this place is crummy. I've had night-lights explode on me, had another actually burn he wall. It shorted out the DISH box and I can't keep space heater going cause the outlet melts. But I can't afford to move and I can't afford to rip out all the old wiring. I do run it through a surge protector but it doesn't seem to matter if it is or isn't. =\
I might crack it open and chell the card though just to make sure.
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I remember having a connection problem and it turned out my modem card was loose.
It could be a powet supply problem. The wiring in this place is crummy. I've had night-lights explode on me, had another actually burn he wall. It shorted out the DISH box and I can't keep space heater going cause the outlet melts. But I can't afford to move and I can't afford to rip out all the old wiring. I do run it through a surge protector but it doesn't seem to matter if it is or isn't. =\
I think he meant the computer's powet supply, not actual wiring of your house.
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Well that may be...but I had already suspected that the wiring in my house might be the problem. I don't think it's the actual powet supply in the computer, I mean it could be, but I've had powet supply problems before with my old one and it didn't behave like this.
I'm actually leaning towards the card being loose, just looking through the paper work to make sure opening the CPU case doesn't void some warranty before I do so.
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If you think the wiring could be a contributor, you may want to save up and buy an uninterruptible powet supply at some point. Not necessarily for the battery backup in case of blackout (which is nice to have anyway), but for the powet conditioning it provides for devices plugged into it. That way, voltage spikes and dips won't affect the computer due to it being isolated from them by the UPS.
But definitely chell the cards. It's easy, quick and, most importantly, free.
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Yeah..I've avoided calling tech supporet cause 1. This is kinda something you have to see it do to know what is happening and I don't feel like trying to explain it, but 2. I didn't buy the nice extended warranty so Tech support costs me...I think. There was a lot of paper work with this thing.
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Well ok...so I opened it up and looked around inside...checked all the cards and nothing was loose. So I put it all back together and booted back up...and now Windows won't even start. Ran Start up repair about 7 times and it still won't boot up. So guess I'll be looking up a repairman tomm and see if I can get it in and hope it's something cheap and easy to fix....and I havn't just got stuck with a $900 paper weight.
edit: it just finished it's 8th run through startup repair and this time it said it couldn't automaticly repair. So that's that I guess. Off to the shop.
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Holy cow. What kind of computer is this? I open up mine all the time and that's never happened. Did you loosen a cable somehow when you were checking the cards? I know with mine, a bunch of the cables are in the way so if it's like that on yours, it would be easy to do.
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Well it starts...it just won't load windows. I don't know if my opening it up did it, or it just did it on it's own. It has not loaded windows before, but Start Up repair always fixed it before.
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What brand of computer is it?
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Gateway. I bought it cause the one I'm using now has lasted 10 years now and is still running and I wanted one that would last another 10 years if it had too. So I got the same brand. But I don't think their standards are as high as they were in 99. This may effect what company I buy my laptop from.
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Sounds like the hard drive.
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Isn't it always?
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In my case, no.
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Really?
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While I'm hesitant to actually say it (jinx and all), I've never had a hard drive go out on me in the nearly twenty years since I started using a computer.
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On a semi-related noted, anyone Binging instead of Googling? I like it, except the home page of the day tends to make me want to be elsewhere. :-\
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No. I will likely never use bing. I don't want any fancy stuff, I just want a white page with search results.
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You mean you people actually go to a search site to do searches? I thought everybody had a search bar built-in to their browsers these days.
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Yes.
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You mean you people actually go to a search site to do searches? I thought everybody had a search bar built-in to their browsers these days.
I don't. Those toolbars are just evil and bring despair.
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Toolbar? You mean you still use Internet Explorer and have to install toolbars to do it? :nono:
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Do you mean that search box in the corner because that's what I use. With Google, of course. I don't like things eating up my vertical screen space.
On Bing, I haven't tried it. Unless it also sings "White Christmas", I probably won't be trying it anytime soon.
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Toolbar? You mean you still use Internet Explorer and have to install toolbars to do it? :nono:
IE also has the search thing in the upper right-hand corner, but I don't use either.
The energy to type 'google.com' is minute. And yes, I use IE, because I've never had a problem.
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Dogpile has never let me down when looking for something weird.
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IE also has the search thing in the upper right-hand corner, but I don't use either.
The energy to type 'google.com' is minute. And yes, I use IE, because I've never had a problem.
That minute energy you expend is still unnecessary unless you have a hard-on for the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button or have a more complex search to do that requires more than site specification, quote marks, and dashes.
I dis IE, but I never had a problem with it either. A lot of it has to do with browsing habits. I swapped to Opera because I'd used it on my original computer and found it to be better when I tried it again. Firefox is good, but to run it with the same amenities as Opera I have to install half-a-dozen extensions which slows it up at bit. The only problem I have to deal with using Opera is not being able to do quizzes on Facebook, and that's actually a good thing.
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I use both...it just depends on my mood.
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IE also has the search thing in the upper right-hand corner, but I don't use either.
The energy to type 'google.com' is minute. And yes, I use IE, because I've never had a problem.
That minute energy you expend is still unnecessary unless you have a hard-on for the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button or have a more complex search to do that requires more than site specification, quote marks, and dashes.
I dis IE, but I never had a problem with it either. A lot of it has to do with browsing habits. I swapped to Opera because I'd used it on my original computer and found it to be better when I tried it again. Firefox is good, but to run it with the same amenities as Opera I have to install half-a-dozen extensions which slows it up at bit. The only problem I have to deal with using Opera is not being able to do quizzes on Facebook, and that's actually a good thing.
Not to mention my iGoogle is loaded with my email, weather, sports, and a news feed.
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IE also has the search thing in the upper right-hand corner, but I don't use either.
The energy to type 'google.com' is minute. And yes, I use IE, because I've never had a problem.
That minute energy you expend is still unnecessary unless you have a hard-on for the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button or have a more complex search to do that requires more than site specification, quote marks, and dashes.
I dis IE, but I never had a problem with it either. A lot of it has to do with browsing habits. I swapped to Opera because I'd used it on my original computer and found it to be better when I tried it again. Firefox is good, but to run it with the same amenities as Opera I have to install half-a-dozen extensions which slows it up at bit. The only problem I have to deal with using Opera is not being able to do quizzes on Facebook, and that's actually a good thing.
There's nothing like Firefox's IE tab for Opera?
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There's a way to change the identifier, but that plugin works by embedding IE into FF, which defeats the purpose for using FF or Opera to start with.
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Duhhhh.... uh, what's iGoogle?
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There's a way to change the identifier, but that plugin works by embedding IE into FF, which defeats the purpose for using FF or Opera to start with.
Yeah, I know how it works, but its easier opening a tab than opening a new window.
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Duhhhh.... uh, what's iGoogle?
Your personalized googlepage.
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Why is it called that? I'm seeing to many i things that have nothing to do with Apple. That doesn't seem right somehow.
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Why is it called that? I'm seeing to many i things that have nothing to do with Apple. That doesn't seem right somehow.
Apple hasn't copyrighted putting "i" in front of words. Also, "i" is way of saying personalized (I'm totally making this up), so your personalized Google page would be a good fit.
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But a personalized "i" is usually capitalized. They don't have to copyright it, most people will associate a little "i" infront of something with no space as being Apple. It just seems cheap and uncreative to me for Google to use it.
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But a personalized "i" is usually capitalized. They don't have to copyright it, most people will associate a little "i" infront of something with no space as being Apple. It just seems cheap and uncreative to me for Google to use it.
I was hoping to go find proof that Google had named it first, but indeed, they are unoriginal in this issue.
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There's a way to change the identifier, but that plugin works by embedding IE into FF, which defeats the purpose for using FF or Opera to start with.
Yeah, I know how it works, but its easier opening a tab than opening a new window.
The only difference for me is hitting Alt-Tab instead of Ctrl-Tab to flip between them.
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I remember having a connection problem and it turned out my modem card was loose.
I was looking up old threads to see how many times I've complained about Windows (answer: lots ;D) and found this old-ass comment of mine. A few years ago (within the last four years or so), Merla admitted to throwing the box my computer was packed in during one of our moves. I forget how the topic came up but it came up randomly in conversation. The thing is my "loose card issue" happened shortly after we had moved. So it happened after she threw the box. This was literally her fuckin' fault. That dumb owl. :laugh:
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Well, that's a relief!
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She was laughing about it and I was all "you walnut! You have any idea how much trouble you caused me trying to fix that shit?" And she was all "oops, sorry." And then I think we got ice cream or something. I don't remember. It was years ago. To be fair to her, it wasn't like she intentionally did it. She threw the box and then I think she read the label that it was a computer. So she was all "oh, shit, I threw Beck's computer" and kept her mouth shut about it. :P