Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 August 5

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August 5

Macbook pro (core duo)

What is the highest output (resolution) that a macbook pro with a radeon x1600 card can do?

All Mac Book Pros support Dual-Link DVI, which can support an Apple 30" Cinema Display (2560 x 1600) -- which is the maximum dual-link DVI can handle.

Thank you. And holy crap, too bad those cost so much...

You can buy the Dell 30" which has the same LCD component as the Apple 30" and you'll save hundreds. But then you aren't getting the cool brushed aluminum case and you'll be forced to stare at a Dell logo all day long! --24.249.108.133 17:03, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Can't you tape over it? 68.39.174.238 15:06, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Lightest and Thinnest Laptop

What is the Lightest and Thinnest Laptop? 68.193.147.179 01:33, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

What screen size are you interested in? Sony claims the Vaio is the lightest and thinnest. Acer claims they have the lightest and thinnest 15" model. Toshiba claims they have the lightest and thinnest full featured laptop. Are you going to include the plug-ins? Most of the super-thin laptops have external plugin drives, speakers, etc... -- Kainaw^(what?) 01:38, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Depends what you mean by "laptop". There's a tradeoff between size and computing power (and features and price and all that). How small a "laptop" can be totally depends on how much computing power it takes to earn the label "laptop". My Sharp Zaurus is quite light and thin. Would you call it a laptop? What about this model with a hinge? —Keenan Pepper 01:52, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Inspiron 8100 Help

Hi I have a Dell Inspiron 8100 and almost a year ago it completely crashed. Today I put the recovery disc in and sort of got it to work. I would like to know how to completely wipe out everything(not just remove programs, but nuke everything possible) on my hard drive so I can reinstall everything. Thanks

Just by reinstalling widows (or some linux distro), things will be automatically reformatted over.

fdisk will departition the disk, which you can then format and install stuff on. I suspect you already know this, but ages of history still force me to give you the obligatory "Be sure you know that everything will be deleted" warning. 68.39.174.238 15:09, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Sound Card

Hi,
I've currently got on board sound (ALC 850 7.1) and 5.1 surround sound speakers (MegaWorks THX 5.1 550). Oh and I'm using a desktop (reasonably good one). They're nice and play music well enough, but I was wondering if there would be much of an improvement in audio quality from a dedicated soundcard such as this or even an external one. Does anyone here have any experience with this? I'm particularly looking for an improvement in DVD playback - before I get decent sound levels for most DVD's I have to crank it up to four LEDs (sorry for the unscientific term :) out of the five on the control thingy. And that's OK but in quiet spots in the movie you get a lot of distracting hiss because the speakers are up so much. Anyway thanks, --121.219.227.153 12:13, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

If your issue is volume you should look into your software settings. --Alph Tech STUART 18:13, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Something that works well for me is to set the media player's volume to about 50%, then crank up the speakers. That tends to work pretty well --L-- 19:13, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

delete recent

In windows XP home edition is there a way to delete/clear the list of most recently view files that appears from the 'taskbar'{start} under {documents}?83.100.183.144 17:56, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

• I've got that turned off, but I'm pretty sure you just right click. --Alph Tech STUART 18:05, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I've got Windows in an other language, so I can't give you the exact details, but here's a knowledge base article on it --Oskar 18:50, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I get as far as step 3, but there is no "recent documents" tab, clicking the advanced tab brings up a whole directory listing - odd!83.100.183.144 19:10, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

You can use Tweak UI to not keep records of it too. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 20:21, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

thanks, I found 'the button' - didn't match microsoft's help page though, odly enough..

If your reading this 'generic microsoft employee' the button appears in the window after step 3 - step 4 is not needed - should read "step 4 - press the clear button" on http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307875 - if that message doesn't reach MS HQ nothing will.83.100.183.144 21:34, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Right click on taskbar, click on Properties. Select Start Menu tab, then Customise. Go to Advaced tab, click on Clear List button.

Questions on Kubuntu and KDE

I recently switched from Ubuntu to Kubuntu, and since I'm trying to get my PC looking pretty, I have some questions.

1. as you can see here, some parts of applications accept the KDE theme, and others don't. Typically, things like the menubar are fine, but other things like the actual menus themselves or other things like you can see the tab bar in firefox will stay with their initial gray theme. Is there a KDE setting I'm missing somewhere, or is this just a part of the GUI you can't change? (For reference, I HAVE changed Use GTK/QT to Use KDE settings)
2. In addition, awhile ago I changed my boot screen to show all the different things it does, instead of just the splash screen. I also changed the shutdown screen. Despite googling and asking on IRC, I can't find an answer to this, even though it should be fairly simple.
3. Also, something I haven't searched nearly as much for, but might as well ask, how do I use themes like from kde-look, and how do I modify my log in screen? I just can't figure out how to use the tar.bz2 and tar.gz files from theme sites, I figure there's somewhere you just drag and drop them.. and I also figure there's some settings screen for log in stuff I'm not seeing.

Thanks in advance --L-- 19:02, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry I can't help directly, but I'm pretty sure you'll find the answers you need at ubuntuforums.org. --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 20:46, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I won't. Does anyone actually have a helpful answer? L-- 22:24, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Assuming Kubuntu is a normal KDE install, everything you are asking about (from what I can make of it) is in the Control Center. Click the KDE "start" button and then select Control Center. Look under Appearance and Themes. As for those themes, look at the Theme Manager - you'll see an Install New Theme button that loads the themes you download. -- Kainaw^(what?) 22:44, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

It has a system settings menu, with "Appearance", but I don't see anything in there for the stuff I'm talking about. I'll look for Control Center, thanks --L-- 23:37, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Run the command kcontrol from the command prompt if you can't find the program in any menu. If you don't have it, then Kubuntu must have removed it. Do you have yum for installing programs? -- Kainaw^(what?) 02:39, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I figured that out, but kcontrol still doesn't have any settings that seem to fix this. Halp? --L-- 02:57, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

If yoru kcontrol screen doesn't have "Appearance and Themes" on the left menu, Kubuntu is using a very weird version of KDE. That has been there since KDE version 2. I know that Kubuntu wants to make the user experience "easier" by removing anything that seems "complicated" - but removing functionality has always seemed a bit ridiculous to me. -- Kainaw^(what?) 03:03, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm saying that none of the settings fix the problems. --L-- 04:33, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Control Centre > Appearance and Themes > Splash Screen affects only the last stage of the booting process (see also splash screen), not the screen that obstructs the view of the boot process, which is a bootsplash. Splashy is mentioned there, don't know if that has a setting for 'no bootsplash', but I assume it does. DirkvdM 07:29, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

DVD to PC?

Is there an easy way to copy a DVD I own to my PC so that I can watch it without having to carry around a bulky disk + case?--172.131.214.124 19:35, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes - you just need a DVD ripper. If you use Windows, I don't know of a free one. On Linux, I use dvdrip. -- Kainaw^(what?) 19:41, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Try DVD Decrypter. It's free and it always works for me. --Waldsen 20:16, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Ditto HandBrake. --24.147.86.187 21:38, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

DVD ripper is a rather messy article. Is that a generic term or indeed an msWindows program? Or did Microsoft steal yet another name? DirkvdM 07:20, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

It is a bad article. DVD ripper should go to a page about DVD rippers in general (like CD ripper does); if there is a specific program called DVD Ripper then its page should be DVD Ripper (capitalized). --24.147.86.187 14:32, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I have made it so. And I've also moved the details of HandBrake to its own article. A s a result, DVD ripper is a stub now, though, and I'd like to see it expanded because I want to learn more about it but haven't the time to delve into it too much (sufficiently to expand the article, anyway). DirkvdM 17:50, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Help. My edit to DVD ripper has been reverted to the old mess twice. Might do with some aid. DirkvdM 06:17, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

DVD Shrink will copy the VOB files from the DVD and compress them as well - good for saving space as DVD's are almost always over 4GB. Think outside the box 15:21, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

MAC (Apple) Computers.

Does user need to buy seperate firewall and virus protection software when a user buys MAC / Apple notbook pro?128.107.248.220 20:33, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

No. Using firewalls and antivirus software on non-windows computers is only good for wasting your money. Well, unless you're trying to protect Windows users from themselves --L-- 20:34, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Wow. Tosh :) OSX has a firewall built in; sure it's debatable if you need to buy on, but tell someone not to use it is frankly insane. There have been numerous remote exploits on OSX (for example problems with Samba). Depending on what 3rd party software you install, or default software you enable you are of course more exposed. So a firewall *is* a good idea. --Blowdart 18:13, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Macs come with their own firewalls. As for viruses, there aren't any active threats to OS X that I know of, so at this point don't worry about it unless you are planning to run Windows on it (with Bootcamp or Parallels or whatever). --24.147.86.187 21:40, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Whether you need it is a matter of opinion. But companies certainly do sell such products. (e.g. Symantec) --131.215.167.225 02:34, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Apple / MAC machines

Dose Apple / MAC bookpro machine need "Disk Defragmenter" like windows machine?128.107.248.220 21:14, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

(http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial55.html) - seems to suggest that Apple advise against doing it, but there are third-party products out there that do it. ny156uk 22:50, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Great question. Although the filesystem is really efficent, some speed can be gained from optimization. That is why its done EVERY TIME YOU APPLY SOFTWARE UPDATES TO THE KERNEL. So, the OS does it for itself. Do this experment: look at your clock, and on the hour, write down everything you do that does a disk access for the next 10 disk accesses. How many OS loads, vs APP loads vs Document loads. Document loads, unless your doing rendering/video/sound/imageediting work is insignificant. Your computer will not gain much if all you do is surf or email. I would guess that since your computer is reletively stable, that you dont do a lot of OS loads. ( its a user expernece that makes it slow. Try doing a crossword puzzle while your computer boots. ). When I updated to 10.4.10, the system optimization event happened, and it cut my boot times from 1m45s to 1m5s. Nice.

Actually Apple/Windows/Linux dont really need optimization all that much, due to the preceeding ideas, however, whenever you install a large applicaiton, I would do it. Artoftransformation 19:25, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Faster PDF reader?

I have a lot of PDFs which are made from scans of pages. They open VERY slowly in Adobe Reader and Preview.app. I need to just flip through them very quickly looking for specific pages (based on how they look, not on any OCRed text or anything like that). Is there a better application for this? A faster PDF reader? I need something with a lot more speed than either of these two. --24.147.86.187 22:07, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Silly question but if you are closing (fully) Adobe PDF between documents it takes a dogs age. If however you leave it open (just closing the document not the application) iit runs a lot faster. Other than this this discussion (http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware4/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=118804) may help. ny156uk 22:52, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

That's not the issue; I don't close the whole program between documents. --24.147.86.187 14:31, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

It is common for scans to take longer to load. A PDF created by a person at a keyboard will use actual text for the text in the PDF. I scan that does not have OCR will consider every letter one (or a combination of many) little graphic. It takes longer to draw graphics than text, so it takes substantially longer to "draw" all the letters in the scanned document than it does to throw real text on the screen. Therefore, I strongly suggest scanning the original documents with an OCR capable scanner. -- Kainaw^(what?) 23:34, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

That doesn't apply here. OCR isn't really an option with these documents, as they are very "dirty" (they are government documents that were photocopied a million times in the course of their life). What I need is a PDF reader that can read such things quicker than however Reader or the other programs do. I guess I'm looking for something which either takes shortcuts in rendering them, or caches the entire document ahead of time, because the 1-2 second delay that can occur between pages is frustratingly long (and I'm only a pretty fast machine at that!). --24.147.86.187 14:31, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Try foxit reader, it is free unless you want advanced features.[1]--64.40.88.131 16:50, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

DRM and Napster

OK, so if you subscribe to Napster for $10 a month, the files you download only work if you are still a subscriber, thanks to DRM.

But what happens if you get the Napster-to-Go package for $15 a month an then copy the songs onto your mp3 player? The mp3 player isn't connected to the Internet, so presumably the files have no way of knowing whether you're still subscribed or not. So couldn't you subscribe to Napster for a month, download a thousand songs, put them on your mp3 player and keep them forever? And if they lose the DRM when put on the mp3 player, could you copy them back to your computer from the mp3 player and use them forever? -- Mwalcoff 23:32, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

They probably check your system clock to see if the DRM is expired or not, otherwise what's to keep you from doing the same thing with multi-terabyte storage PC? --L-- 23:39, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

The DRM doesn't go away when you transfer them onto a player. The files need to be refreshed after a certain interval (I think it's something like 3 weeks). If you haven't hooked your player up to your computer since then, the files will stop playing altogether.--Alph Tech STUART 23:46, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh. That's no good. Is there a better deal out there? -- Mwalcoff 23:50, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Steal? There's no free access music store out there that charges only by month, mostly because there's nobody stupid enough to think people wouldn't just subscribe for one month and download all they wanted.--Alph Tech STUART 23:53, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

wrong! -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 20:07, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Can't you just burn your DRM MP3's to a CD, then re-rip them to your computer with MP3 ripping software and remove any DRM that way? Or do they charge to burn to a CD? Otherwise, you can make use of the Line-Out plug on your PC.--GTPoompt(talk) 12:24, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Just go and buy the CD instead. It'll play anywhere, forever; and you'll get a nice case to keep it in and some sleeve notes to read. Astronaut 12:13, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Pseudocode

I'm going to write both of my questions here to save space, if that's allowed. 1. For a school assignment, I need to create a game in Delphi, and I've chosen to make a Patience-type game. For this I plan to have 20 Image Objects, each of which will load a random picture from a group of 10, with the goal being to make each picture only appear twice on the page, in two random spots. Does anyone know how I could achieve this without making it incredibly tedious?

Read the rules: we will not do your homework for you.

2. I've recently discovered the Standby function on my computer and am really glad I don't have to boot it up every time I want to use it. But it makes the power light on the front flash when it is on standby and my recent climate change converted parents are concerned about the power this uses. Is there a way to disable the flashing standby light in the BIOS or something? Thanks Mix Lord 23:38, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Not in the BIOS (I'm pretty sure it's hardwired into the mobo), but you could probably cut one of the wires to your power switch to disable the light. I'm not an expert, so I can't tell you which one, but you can find the information for it somewhere.

That's really not going to do crap for the environment though. --Alph Tech STUART 23:51, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

No need to cut any wires, just unplug the power LED (it's plugged together with several other wires on the motherboard; check the motherboard's manual to find the correct wire to unplug). --cesarb 23:44, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

For your patience game, I suggest using a shuffle algorithm. Preload each pic twice into an array (or list, or set, or whatever data structure you are using). Then, randomly pick two of the pics in the array. Swap them. Do that a bunch of times and you'll still have all pics in your array twice, but in a random order. -- Kainaw^(what?) 23:54, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

For an array of size 20, a correctly-implemented shuffle algorithm will pick exactly 19 pairs of elements to swap, not "a bunch" of them. —Steve Summit (talk) 00:06, 6 August 2007 (UTC) (I've taken the liberty of wikifying to your comment. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 10:51, 6 August 2007 (UTC))

Tell your parents that the light on your PC is a LED, which are known for low power consumption. That flashing LED probably uses as much power in a day as a 60Watt lightbulb does in a couple of seconds. Vespine 04:27, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I strongly suspect the LED is lit by a cable from the motherboard (as most PCs are). Unplug the cable. If you don't know which one it is, look for a bunch of plugs coming from the front of the case. They are usually all huddled together in a rectangle on the motherboard. One will be for the power switch, one for the reset switch, one for the HDD light, one for the power light, and so on. They normally have some sort of marking on them so you can tell which is which. However, I do not support leaving computers on 24/7. I keep mine on a power strip. When I leave, I turn off the strip and it turns off everything at my desk. When I return, I tap the power strip and everything turns on (the BIOS is set to boot when power comes on). It takes 47-52 seconds for my computer to get to the login prompt. I know that seems like an eternity for most people, but I use the time to look around my desk and see if there is anything I'm forgetting to do. -- Kainaw^(what?) 04:35, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Take a small square of black electrical tape.... Gzuckier 14:47, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Think about what you have to show as a pool of images where you take and remove from, and the positions also as a pool of positions where you can allocate and remove from the pool.

• As in most cases there is more than one way at achieving your shuffling problem. For one thing you should probably start with an TImageList component, and load in 10 images (jpegs?), and your TImageList will assign each one a number (0, 1, 2, etc) - you will later refer to these numbers using the TImageList's itemindex/imageindex/index paremeter (I forget which). Then with the 20 TImage components on your form, you can select all of them and say "use Imagelist1" in the Object Inspector - and then place a button, when the button is clicked it would say
  

var i: integerl

begin

For i = 0 to 19 do //For each image

begin

MyTImageComponent[i].image :=

(etc - not going to go further than this. You may have to use a randomize function to come up with the itemindex, and, like I say, this is only one possible method)

Hope this helps Rfwoolf 12:53, 7 August 2007 (UTC)