Alien

...or just get it from their downloads page: http://www.xteq.com/downloads/#xset

LOL - in otherwords I'm gonna have to try extra hard not to sound nasty, cos I don't intend this as nasty, just honest & constructive criticism. 1. Get your own URL [& webspace that doesn't come with a pop-up] - if someone else had given me that link & told me that they were thinking of buying from it & asked for my opinion 1st I would have closed the window about 1/2 a second after the Geocities pop-up appeared & told them not to bother, & given them the links to sites I've already dealt with. 2. Sorry for nit-picking, but technically it's not a site, it's a page - it doesn't have any clickable links or pages to go to @ the present time. 3. adjust your table formatting so that it adjusts to the size of the window. 4. Take another look @ the greeting text under the title/logo - you might want to re-think your wording 5. Some sort of indication of whether prices include VAT. 6. I can't believe I'm actually suggesting this as it normally bugs me on websites that do it, but perhaps some sort of subtle wallpaper or texturing as it looks rather bleak, wouldn't be so bad if it had a side menu or something. 7. In future, don't say click here until there's actually a link to click on - very good way to annoy ppl & make them leave. Just a few things for you to think about.

Perhaps you should state what sort of comment you are looking for in terms of honesty, as some ppl [myself included] tend to be rather brutally honest when someone asks them for their opinion, so on a scale of 1 to 3, what level of honesty are you looking for: 1 - You want your arse kissed & want to be told how wonderful it is, regardless of whether it is or not. 2 - Vague & non-committal, so as not to hurt your feelings, but without lying. 3 - Brutally honest. Personally I never do no. 1, no. 2 I can manage, but I prefer no. 3.

I've never known S.M.A.R.T. to cause any probs, in fact it's the reason why I know that my IBM 75GXP is curently @ 35&degC, thanks to SpeedFan - gotta love that little prog.

IE only really has 3 significant probs, from my point of view: 1. it can only enlarge variable sized fonts, unlike Navigator which can enlarge all fonts - so I have to resort to using Nutscrape for webpages that are made with fixed size fonts. [Personally I think making a website using a fixed sized font should be a capital (sp?) offence! Grrrr......] 2. cookie handling/control isn't as good as it should/could be. 3. no built in anti pop-up control/filter.

Quote: Alien big CPU and fast 7200 harddrive with lot of space if you plan on cap AVI. I think my drive's fast enough [iBM 75GXP 30GB], or @ least it will be when I have a UDMA/100 motherboard next week, & I'll be getting the new CPU next week as well. The funny thing is that before I got my Radeon I was using a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI as my graphics card & was using a Pinnacle Studio PCTV PCI for video capture & used to be able to capture in AVI format using Pinnacle's own [AVI] codec @ 320x240 without any distortion in the sound or dropped frames. And yet with my Radeon it doesn't matter what settings or codecs or bitrates I use, or even whether I use AVI or MPG - if I use any resolution higher than 176x144 the sound is garbled. So, for the moment I use MPG as it uses less space then AVI.

I have a 64MB Radeon DDR ViVo & the highest res I can record @ is 176x144, if I try any higher than that the sound gets all distorted. This could be due to either my CPU [K6-2/500], or my motherboard [TMC TI5VGA], but I don't know - I'll find out next week when I get my KT7A-RAID v1.3 & Athlon XP1900. [can't wait! feel like a kid @ xmas! ]

Don't forget that if he wants to go the P4 route, he's gonna need a "P4-ready" PSU anyway [they have an extra power lead with a 4 pin square-ish plug], which is gonna be 300w or higher anyway.

I figured I might as well post my system's specs - might make some of you lot feel a bit better about your own PCs. Fortrex "Magic" MG-780 ATX Full Tower [a.k.a. that rather big full tower that Maplin sell under the wrong name ] [They call it a "Jupiter Full Tower"] Macron MPT-300 PSU K6-2/500 TMC TI5VGA mobo [w/ 2MB cache] 320MB RAM IBM 75GXP 30GB ATI Radeon 64MB DDR ViVo Sonic Vortex 2 Lite-On LTR 12101B [12x 10x 32x] BTC BCD24XHM 24x CD ROM 3.5" & 5.25" floppy drives [1 of each] Antec EzUSB Realtek RTL8029 based NIC MRi PCI1456 56K modem [just in case cable server dies ] Motorola Surfboard 3100 cable modem Eizo Flexscan 9400 20" monitor

I had a friend with the exact same prob - turned out he had to get an update patch or whatever for the c-dilla wotsit I think.

Talking of chkdsk, is there any way to get rid of the 10 second delay/countdown when chkdsk comes up during a boot up, either because XP crashed or because you told it to run. With 98 you had the prompt/never/always setting that you could set with some tweak progs, but I have yet to see the equivalent for XP.

Errmmm Sapiens - have another look @ the article - what DATE was it published? Hmmm?

LMAO Look @ the date the article was published dude!

Dunno, you'll have to ask someone with way more money than me

Quote: yep kinda messed up but they all do it Not all - I forget who actually gives honest figures, but I'm sure I remember reading that @ least 1 mfr does.

's an HDD manufacturer [dishonest (IMO) ] marketting thing. Software [eg windows] & most ppl look @ a HDD's size based on calculations using a base figure of 1024 to work from, whereas the manufacturers use 1000 as a base for their calculations - giving a higher size figure [basically they just take the 1st 2 digits of the total size in bytes] 80,000,000,000 / 1024 = 78,125,00 [KB] 78,125,000 / 1024 = 76,293.945 [MB] 76,293.945 / 1024 = 74.505806 [GB] 80 [real] GB = 85,899,345,920 bytes

LMAO @ M4 - that's pure evil dude - trying to inflict them on someone!

Well, I don't have the same model, but I do have an IBM HDD & you do have to be careful about letting it get too warm. Letting it get too hot is just asking for trouble - hence why my next PC part purchase after my new mobo & CPU will be a HDD cooler.

Yeah, PC-cillin would really slow stuff like searches & being able to access the right-click menu of a file in Explorer if I left the realtime file monitoring on, so I just make sure I scan everything I download.

58°C ? Is the computer itself an integral part of the central heating system in that house??? It may be within tolerance levels set by AMD or Intel or whoever, but I'd be a tad concerned if my system got that warm. [my system & CPU both currently running @ 30°C, with only 2 case fans (not including PSU fan) ]

Quote: Financial troubles are high when you've never been approved for credit before LOL - know the feeling dude - all too well. My bank's only just agreed to allow me to have a £100 overdraught, which is better than nothing I guess - means I'll get new mobo & CPU a bit sooner.

easy way to fix this is to just turn off menu fading/sliding.

Have you checked CPU temps & fan speed? Maybe the HSF isn't seated on the CPU quite right, or maybe the fan's decided to wear out before its time? From the fact that it used to work fine with you, but now it doesn't, this would be the 1st thing I'd check. Another thing to consider - did you sell him your PSU as well, or is he using his own, & if so - what are its specs? [though I still think a heat issue is the most likely candidate ]

1 to add to the "other" category - TMC.

Quote: Its not really dabs look of their site, its that their actually way that there site works is extremely confusing. Really? How so? Ok, so maybe it took me a bit of getting used to when I 1st used it - but then I'd never done any online buying before so maybe that had something to do with it. Once you get to know it it's not too bad. As I said before, my only real beef with it is that it's designed for ppl whose screen resolution is 800x600...actually I just checked - it isn't - it's designed for 640x480!!!!!!!!! seriously! If you load up their site it fills just over 1/2 the window width, if you change your screen res to 800x600 it still doesn't fill the window - to make it fill the window you have to switch to 640x480. How daft is that?!?