Notes

I have a relatively old PC (5 years or more) which has only 1GB of RAM. I'm running on Windows 7 and unfortunately it doesn't like being so senile... I have a Gigabyte mother board but I have no idea which (I lost the invoice) . I also don't know what type of memory slots it has nor the type of the current memory I have (basically the same piece of information ...). I tried using Everest to analyze my specs but it failed. Is there any other manner of doing that? I'm running on 64bits ( AMD Athalon , so I'm thinking of upgrading to 4GB . But I don't know if: The mother board supports it If I can buy a 3GB module, or replace the current 1GB with a new 4GB Any ideas? Answer If you open the Device Manager (Windows 7 & 8 it's from Control Panel > Device Manager). Then open the "System Devices" item and it should list all sorts of stuff to do with your motherboard. Mine (for example) has several starting with "Intel(R) 82801" and ...

Say I'm setting up (brand new) multilple PCs at one time and I don't have enough ethernet ports to hook them all up to the internet at once, is it possible to create a CD/DVD of updates that I could use instead? I know you can download update packages and run them as a stand-alone installer... but I would want to deploy them all at once from the CD/DVD without any further user interaction after inserting the disc. Maybe kick off some batch/script to do the deployment. Answer Take a look at the WSUS Offline Update project. I'm sure it's not Microsoft approved but I'm not aware that it's considered illegal either. http://download.wsusoffline.net/ While I think it's possible to make a DVD by copying the Client directory, I think it's probably better to use an External USB drive or else a Flash Drive. It's unclear to me if the updater process needs write access to the directory it runs from. I've used this but have only ever used it on a large Fla...

Pixels in screens are square, but I'm not sure why. Both pixelated images look pretty bad - but I'm not sure there's any advantage of squares over hexagons here. Hexagons also divide up into 3 colours nicely: So what's the advantage of squares in an LCD / CRT display? Answer Pixels in screens are square, but I'm not sure why. They aren't (necessarily) square. Some would argue that they are never square ("A pixel is a point sample. It exists only at a point."). So what's the advantage of squares in an LCD / CRT display? Other arrangements (such as triangles, hexagons or other space filling polygons ) are more computationally expensive. Every image format is based on pixels (whatever shape they are) arranged in a rectangular array. If we were to choose some other shape or layout a lot of software would have to be re-written. All the factories currently manufacturing displays with a rectangular pixel layout would have to be retooled for some othe...

Do disabled Firefox extensions make Firefox slower? I know that extensions make browsing slower, but what about extensions that are disabled and not in use? Answer No. Firefox doesn't load extensions that are disabled. If it's not loaded, it causes no loss of performance. An extension is disabled for one of these reasons: It's incompatible with a given version of Firefox. There is an error in the extension. The functionality could be prohibitive to certain users. It's only needed at certain times. The user explicitly does not want to use the extension. Loading a disabled extension can cause errors, or undesired / unsecure behavior. It makes sense that the developer would not load the disabled extensions in any fashion for these and performance reasons. Consider: Why would you load something that isn't by definition supposed to be loaded? Imagine if you had a buggy extension that crashed as soon as it was loaded, and took the browser with it. You wouldn't see t...

I have been tring this for a while now, without success. I have read online this can be done, either by changing the default gateway (DG) or messing with the DG's metric The short story is: I need to connect to my company's ERP system (port 80 for some web services and port 22 for sftp and bash) with using my notebook computer's LAN card - but I can't connect to the Internet on this network. So I have my mobile phone's 3g hotspot when I need to go online. But I want to use both at the same time without so much as opening another web browser process. At the moment, I am using the ERP system regularly - and whenever I need to go online to check a mail or research something related to work, I need to unplug the network cable so the wifi can kick in... which is starting to become annoying especially if I am connected to the ERP system using FTP (Filezilla) or Shell (putty) Can someone help me with the configurations? Below are some of the details I can provide: Wired ne...

I would like to install Windows 7 Ultimate on a PC with 1GB of RAM. What's better for me? The 32 or 64-bit version?

It appears that freezing your hard drive (literally placing it in a freezer for 12-24 hours) might help to bring the drive back to a temporarily working condition. Google has many links to various blogs where this issue is brought up and the concept proven to be working for some people. What happens to the drive when it's being frozen for that amount of time on a mechanical level and why does it work?