Computer Rage

To be honest I haven't turned it off on mine (I now have a vista laptop, for those that don't know yet), since I can never be too careful with what I do.

I just wish it won't nag me everytime I do something on my USB disks.

And I still have yet to find a third-party firewall for vista.

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If it's your own computer, yeah. On 7, I'd leave it on though, just in case (no-dim), and just make Shortcuts for apps that I use that give UAC prompts. On Vista I turn it on Silent mode.

Q8300, eh. Not particularly a great model line from Intel, unfortunately. XP is always welcome though

Re: UAC
Pssh, you don't need UAC. I didn't need it in XP and I sure as hell don't need it in 7.

Re: Vistahate
Windows Vista certainly isn't that bad with its first service pack (and beyond) though, although it was definitely horrid before.

Considering my last PC was a Athlon 64 XP 3800+, which is a 2.4GHz single core, I don't particularly care if it's slightly better or worse than other Intel model lines.

My home computer was a hp pavilion xt963, not upgraded so I was stuck with 128 MB of RAM. Downside is that even if it doesn't exceed 128 MB, it's still slow as hell because most of the use was virtual memory. I only have 16 processes as shown in the Task Manager and it still ****s up. Also, when I close an explorer window or hit back or double-click a folder, the desktop icons screw up visually and reloads them incredibly slow no matter how much RAM is being used.

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Not even joking, get a new computer immediately. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5390933&CatId=6

My computer doesn't start without using like, 1GB of RAM. Honestly, memory is so cheap there is no excuse to be running such outdated RAM, you can't even buy that anymore.

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I am currently stuck in a dilemma. I have to choose between a Nvidia or an ATI graphics card. Thing is, they both have certain things that make it suck and things that make it awesome.
The Nvidia was the initial one we got with the PC ( custom made ). On game like TF2 and Portal, etc, it would run great. Nice and smooth. Not choppy at all. Then here's the con about it. The card will refuse to let one of my music games calibrate to a decent refresh rate. No matter how many times I tweak the number or press calibrate, it will always feel off. Another problem is that when I am playing a game, it will randomly freeze the screen and become unresponsive. It is like the program stopped responding entirely. Task manager says it hasn't and I return and the game starts running fine again after I re-enter full screen. It may be easy to adjust, but when you play online, this can really tick you off.
Now the ATI has some other pros and cons. The ATI indeed has better video blending and things look superb for its colour. My music games can obtain a accurate fresh rate. Now here's the bad news. The blending I believe does make it a bit rougher than the Nvidia for smoothness and some video run very choppy in a game.
So now I got to choose whether I want performance or quality and slight downgraded performance. I'll probably end up sticking with ATI because I got more pluses out of it , but I just loved how smooth the Nvidia card projected my games

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To the incompetent idiots at the IT offices for certain organization which I shall not name:
If you're going to make me use a specific program that your people made, make sure it actually WORKS. If I can run your program three times in quick succession with the exact same valid input and it gives three different results, all of which are some kind of freezing, crashing, or error message, and none of which it's SUPPOSED to do, you need to fire someone on your staff. Possibly everyone in the entire frakkin' office, seeing as how this has apparently been a problem for over a year before I came along and complained.

And on another note, people need to stop using Symantec's crappy products. In my experience with at least four different Symantec products I have found on school computers and pre-installed with store-bought computers, none of them have ever managed to do anything useful, but every single one of them has managed to get in my way while massively bogging down the computer. And some of them function as adware for Symantec's other "services," to which I reply "no thanks, I would much rather spend my $19.95 on a $1 bill" only to have it repeatedly pop up as if trying to "But Thou Must" me into paying their protection racket.

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ATI for cost-effectiveness, nVidia if you have money.

Low tier ($100-ish): ATI HD 4670 or nVidia 9800 GT
Mid tier ($150-$200): ATI HD 4870 or ATI HD 5770 or nVidia GTX 260 (216)
High tier ($400~): ATI HD 5870 or nVidia GTX 285
lol i have money to piss away tier ($600+): ATI HD 5970 or nVidia GTX 300 (released in March, 295 GTXs are a rip until GTX300s come out)


RAM got pretty expensive over the past few months, $2 gigs of RAM is now $40 where it used to be $20. It's even worse for 2GB sticks of RAM.

I stripped all of Symantec's products the minute I see them in my computers. Them things bog down the machines that I needed to remove them. I ended up using avast! Anti-Virus for the past 2 years with no problems (though with no real-time protection, but I can live with that). However, I'm looking for a good, free firewall program. Windows Firewall just doesn't cut it for me. NOTE: Vista SP2 user here.

An additional firewall isn't really necessary if you're behind a router and using Windows Firewall. I'd recommend Comodo's firewall (Comodo Internet Security or something? I forget the name) if you're really intent on using a firewall though.

I have to agree with limewirelord - software firewalls aren't really all that useful if you're already behind a hardware firewall.

And in case anybody else is looking for an AV, I second Exor's recommendation of avast! for an AV.

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Windows Firewall and Microsoft Security Essentials are all you need if you're on Vista or higher. They work, they're unintrusive, and free.

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Gonna agree with him here. Nothing else is needed, even if you have a multi-user situation where stupid people (family members) tend to not know what they click. MSE has proven its worth and ranked up there with the big boys (Vipre, Sophos).

I actually already have both the ATI and the Nvidia. It's just we got the ATI to replace the Nvidia, but I couldn't tell which is better. Though after some analyzing, I think the ATI is better. The Nvidia I believe was around 60$ or so (I have no clue because it was bought with the computer) and the ATI was I think 60 or 80$ but was on sale with an original price of like 180$. The Nvidia does this weird glitch where it freezes my game in mid play and you can only unfreeze it by minimizing it from full screen and maximizing it again. That gives you about 20 to 30 seconds of lost gameplay and it really sucks when playing online.
The ATI had given me some issues of its own but overall I think it does perform much better.
Some day I will buy the most top of the line computer. That day will be awesome. Though my current one does a fine job which I am happy of. If only my laptop had some graphics capability

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Wait... what?

What?

-He has already purchased both and was posting to ask which was better.
-The Nvidia has some issues.
-His ATI is better.
-His laptop doesn't likely have dedi gfx.

Yeah, that basically sums that up.

My original post asking was posted before I actually ran some tests and compared it to when I had the ATI card in. Now that I have ran my tests, it would appear that ATI is superior. Though I think I will try looking at the specs of them once I get their model numbers to see if there is actually supposed to be a difference.

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Post model numbers, eg 9800 GT or HD 3800 and whatnot.