Wednesday Night Computer Help Desk Chatroom, 7/12/06

[mommalina]

Although we scored fifth in computer chatroom attendance, it was a quiet night, probably because of the weather in the Northeast. I kept my ears open for thunder and rushed to close windows when it began to rain. rbob heard thunder and left early. We closed shop at 11:30 pm.

Who showed up: rbob, Rich, Elliot, photolady, Rob Cohan, Dale, Dan, N3BQA, I -- and briefly, Jack-in-the-box and Coyote (he was looking for Linux help).

TOPICS DISCUSSED

KH Problem Saving Group Forum
- Thread hijacking
- Guidelines/Rules
- Original poster can/should close topic at some point
- Too many forums
- Other forum moderators

Firewalls (topic now rivals AVs for diverse opinions?)

- Sygate used to be good

- Vista firewall, two-way, is good

- XP firewall

Rich finds XP firewall alone okay if in conjunction with weekly spyware scans and Nod32.

Rob Cohan, a "professional paranoid" about his customer's machines, especially those of financial institutions, thinks XP's firewall not enough. What about rootkits? Installation of store-bought software? MS Genuine Advantage?

Vista - perils of testing Vista on other than bench machine

New DSL (v3) - Coyote thinks it's nice, has easy wireless config now

XP on W98 Computer - not always impossible, Rich did one on a 166 P MMX meg 256 ram which ran fine.

XP and 2000 - little difference

Photography

Elliot sought recommendation for slave flash for Casio camera, does not have hot shoe. Thought he'd just have to use computer enhancement.

Dale said raw file format offers no more light, just allows you to work on pics prior to jpeg compression

Recommend Career in Computers? - not!

Swimming Pools - Would you get in the pool while it was being cleaned by an electrical vacuum cleaner? .... :shocked:

Gasoline Prices - Rob Cohan pays $3.50 a gallon in California :hurt:

That's all, folks. Ciao,

Lina

[compusimple]

great summary as usual Lina. tnx

Elliott

[Seth]

Thanks Lina.

This was interesting: "XP on W98 Computer - not always impossible, Rich did one."

I've installed XP on a 98 computer about twenty times and never had a problem. Typically, it's a 350Mhz to 600Mhz computer in which I upgrade the bios, as well as increase the ram to 256.

Hmmm. This would be a good topic for a new thread.

[mommalina]

Thanks Lina.

This was interesting: "XP on W98 Computer - not always impossible, Rich did one."

I've installed XP on a 98 computer about twenty times and never had a problem. Typically, it's a 350Mhz to 600Mhz computer in which I upgrade the bios, as well as increase the ram to 256.

Hmmm. This would be a good topic for a new thread.

It would be great if the weekly summary generated new threads on a topic of interest. No long discussion and thread here about it, just a brief comment and a new thread. I'm no expert. What do y'all think?

[mylanta]

Thanks Lina.

This was interesting: "XP on W98 Computer - not always impossible, Rich did one."

I've installed XP on a 98 computer about twenty times and never had a problem. Typically, it's a 350Mhz to 600Mhz computer in which I upgrade the bios, as well as increase the ram to 256.

Hmmm. This would be a good topic for a new thread.

Seth,
I corrected that it's that it was on an old pc that was 166 P MMX with 256 ram. I blew out the bios as I should have updated that so you coulc not get into bios, and it closed with "it is safe to shut down now: which was not necessary because it is an ATX box...but it ran great!

[Seth]

Seth,
I corrected that it's that it was on an old pc that was 166 P MMX with 256 ram. I blew out the bios as I should have updated that so you coulc not get into bios, and it closed with "it is safe to shut down now: which was not necessary because it is an ATX box...but it ran great!

I'll start a new thread on it, as I also have some advice regarding "it is now safe to shut down...".