gharknes

my guess would be that the BIB are feeling te pinch like all others in this city, incomes are down visitors are down, falangs are generally getting pissed off being singled out and scammed or robbed (same same) BIB have monthly bills for cars homes etc so they pick on a few bars and turn the srews, I know for a fact that one very busy gogo bar was given this notice also and told to close immediatly (1am) they did close and all customers had o leave but where open until 2am as usual the next day, anybody want to guess what happened ?????????????

so reduce the number and reduce the deaths, it's acceptable for people to die from this dangerous practice but just not as many

what a wierd way to think, same as mobile phone use and motor acccidents, i'm pretty sure it contributes to at lest 20% of all road accidents, i have witnessed a few myself and the driver causing the accident had a mobile phone stuck to his/her ear.

I have a IBM T40p 1.6Ghz 1G memory Pentium M laptop that I bought back in October 2003. Over the course of the past year, maybe longer, occasionally my laptop would just suddenly shutdown. The CPU would max out at 100%, the fan would come on and seconds later, it would just shutdown. When I attempt a restart, it would perform a normal start, no safe mode, almost as if it had saved all of my data before shutting itself down because no data would be lost, even if I was in the middle of writing an email or word document.

Now it is happening more and more often. I used to use Norton Internet Security 2005 until it expired then I switched over to Zone Alarm Pro version 6.0, 6.5. I don't think the sudden shutdowns began until well after the switch to Zone Alarm, but thought I would mention it anyway. Sometimes it will go for weeks without shutting down, but over the course of yesterday and today, my laptop has shutdown more than 15 times. It took me at least 5 attempts to open my internet browser and Microsoft Outlook today. Each of the 4 previous attempts resulted in uncommanded shutdown partially through the loading. Sometimes, it will shutdown even before Windows begins loading, sometimes during the Windows loading and almost anytime thereafter. I suspected a possible CPU problem, overheating problem and hard drive problem, but with the inconsistency of the shutdown process, I have not been able to pinpoint the source of the problem. It seems to shutdown most often during multi-tasking operations. I downloaded CPU and memory testing software a while back and my laptop passed all of the tests.

I have not been able to run a virus or spyware scan on my computer without it shutting down before completion of the scan. Occasionally, I have been able to run the Ad-aware SE scan, but programs like Spybot, Spy Sweeper, Spy Doctor barely get started before computer shutdown. Even opening Firefox 2 or Opera 9.1 result in numerous shutdowns (I do have multiple tabs open). I can't confirm as to whether I have a hardware or software problem. I am at a loss of what to do to correct the problem and I am looking for your expertise for help.

I had considered reinstalling my Windows XP Pro operating system. I've never had to reinstall it since I purchased my laptop. The major problem with doing so is that my original Windows XP Pro is part of the IBM OEM installation disk and I don't know if I can install only the XP Pro or will the disk reformat my hard drive to it's original configuration. October 2003 is a long time ago and a lot of things have changed since then. My original software did not include any Windows Updates or Service Packs so that would leave me a lot of work to bring it back up to speed.

Can I buy a disk at TukCom that would contain both service packs and all of the windows updates that I could install if I did a clean Windows XP Pro installation with my original software?

This is classic overheating. Most likely your fans/heatsink have dust in them. I've had this problem before. Two choices at this point. If you have under warranty take to IBM service center and have them do it. If not, go to Pantip and have one of the tech guys on the bottom floor clean it for you. I used to have this problem here with my Toshiba. Its not a software or virus thing. The fan is a dead giveaway. Once you clean out the dust, your laptop fans will rarely come back on, depending on what you are doing. This is a common problem seen in the repair shops.

No big deal.

by the description of the problem I'd disagree, a CPU will function for a while without fans running (depends of course on what load) there is nothing described above that would indicate a pattern suggesting overheating especially since it happens during battery power when everything is slowed way down to reduce power consumption, the fans will very rarely even come on when on battery power, not required. so although this type of problem could be heat the sympton don't suggest that to me.

There have been several bars that received notification (document) from the police about opening hours, they where instructed to limit the times they can sell booze to 11am 2pm then 5pm to 1.00

anyone else heard this

soi xite of soi bakeow (spelling) has a very good place, I think 10,000 month for a very nice room.

yup road blocks all over the place and at late times too, I've gone through 3 so far and not been stopped, looks to me like they are stopping more thais than falangs, perhaps a crackdown on guns and gangs, nice to see an effort in the right direction

1900/1200 on 17" Dell Laptop WUXGA, I wouldn't use anything lower, text is better than magazine quality with a large desktop work area.......sweet

Firefox your statement is 100% correct, this kind of resolution is expensive no matter if laptop or desktop a point I tried to explain on the other thread, most people think desktop PC's are cheap but when you add a high quality display - well not so cheap, I fail to see the point in having a high end graphics card feeding a cheap (which most are) display, kinda like having Linn pre and power amp feeding a set of Binatone speakers.

The reason most people don't go above 1280/1024 even if it is possible on their system is because the clarity of the image is so bad, especially on CRT's, I ran a 21" Dell CRT monitor for years and the best you could get before convergence went off and flicker got unbearable was 1280/1024, I used to work in IT support and the first thing I did for people when attending a support call was set up their display correctly, refresh rate had the most impact, most where set on 60Hz which can actually damage vision over a long period, the difference is unblieveable especially with white backgrounds.

How many out there are wondering?????

If its a gag it a cracker, if its not ........ Oh sh*t

and today is ?????????????????

how much is it per month ?

sorry if i missed it.

I understand that the Majority of Thai People are very Bhuddist but I think that goes out the windown when they get behind the steering wheel of a car. They are overly aggressive, take dangerous chances (even if they have twenty people piled in the back of the truck) and don't understand how to use their mirrors. My lastest example was when a truck tailgated me ( he had to be doing at least 140km/h) because I wasn't going fast enough or moved out of the way fast enough for him. He finally got around and skidded against my car. It turned out that he lived in the same little village complex that I did. We both got out and I pointed at my car to show him what he was done. I could then tell by his mannerisms and then by his breath that he had been drinking whiskey. I also saw that he had his wife and a little baby in the car. I began to insult him in the best Thai that I could for what he had done and that he was endangering his family. He proceed to gait up to me and place his hands on my shoulders...which is where I went off and proceed to choke the life out of him and throw him around. It took my wife's uncle and two other thais to pull me off him. I have lost a girlfriend and a good buddy to drunk drivers and the fact that this one did is so nonchalantly like (which is how drunkiness is viewed in this country, it seems) made my little demon come to forfront. I also called the police twice but they never showed up. That is the other thing: we all know that the police department is corrupt, just think of the money they could rake in if they tried to actually enforce traffic laws...stop speeders, traffic violations (not including having your helmet on when riding your bad motor scooter), ect. Are they just to lazy to work on being really corrupt? I was so made that this guy could have hurt my wife, did whack my car (have insurance for that) and could have killed his family that I just wanted to choke the life out of him. Doesn't Bhuddism also apply to driving? They wouldn't need all that Bhuddist iconology in their cars if they drive sensibly. Maybe one problem is the perception of driving. In the west, driving is a privledged that is earned through testing or classwork and can be taken away from you any time if you get stupid. Here, you can get a license to drive in hour, or so I have been told. I'm sorry to say that I really wanted to kill that guy for a few seconds...smelling that cheap whiskey on his breath.

interesting point you make about the police, I think the police tend to try and make their backhanders from us falangs and not Thais, in general I think that falangs tend to drive properly here in Thailand, aghereing to the rules of the road, my point is that enforcing general traffic laws here would net a substantial number of Thais and less falangs, they prefer to stop falangs

Laptops vs desktops, the neverending feud.

There is always the argument of "anything is fast enough these days" popping up. Yes, CPUs have come a long way, but so have applications. Let's run, say, DOS on a typical low-cost laptop today, and it's pretty darn fast. Thing is, is anyone really still using only DOS? How about movies? Before, anything that could play a VCD well was considered fine, and the high-end machines needed for playing DVDs were considered frivolous. Now where are we? Most computers can play DVDs well, but HD-DVD movies will bring them to their knees. What kind of pictures were we looking at in the past? 320x200 size. Now it's typically 3200x2000 that our digicams are taking. Would the 8086 CPUs of the past have handled today's high res pics? Look even at the progression of OS's. They get more power hungry and slower with each fancy upgrade. Yes, you're not "forced" to use them, but most use them eventually. Will the entry-level CPU and 512MB ram you buy now run Vista? Probably, but you won't be enjoying the experience.

Let me tell you this: I have many many (more than 2 dozen) computers of varying power. I absolutely HATE working on ANYTHING (and that includes simple office tasks) on the computers that are, say, around 20k baht. They're FREAKISHLY slow whenever I push them even the slightest. 512MB is enough? No freakin way. Entry level CPU is OK? NO. Yes, there are the patient people who will wait and wait and put up with all the pauses, but a computer is supposed to help you, not hinder you.

As for resolutions, my Samsung CRT (yes, CRT) 17" monitor is nearly a decade old. It can do 1920x1200 quite happily. My friend's 17" Sony laptop (really stretching the meaning of the word) can also do 1920x1200, and is gorgeous. He's not using it anymore since it weighs a ton. "Portable" and "big, gorgeous screen" don't really mix together, unless you add in "aching back". Just the power adapter alone weighs more than most notebooks. He paid more than 100k for it, when he could have bought some equivalent (and even more powerful) desktop for half that.

Laptops will soon outsell PCs (I think they just did, according to some report). It's just the way things are. Laptops look nice, are portable, and project a sense of class. They're also becoming cheaper by the moment. One thing that's remained the same is their expandability... no changing of the VGA, CPU, keyboard, and screen. The components also have a limited choice, and if you venture into the high-end market, you're going *really* high end in terms of cost (but never as good as a desktop in terms of performance). You'd better make a good decision since you're gonna be stuck with it, and going to have to buy a new one a lot more often than a desktop. Laptops are still a compromise, and if you want raw power you still can't beat a desktop. However, the compromise is a lot less painful and expensive than it used to be.

great post and very very true, only thing I would comment on is that modern laptops are quite upgradable, take a look at the Dell XPS 1710, my next machine when I can afford the 1k sterling price tag, and yes the 1900/1200 UXGA laptop screen is very impressive. Here;s a nice article............................ http://www.pcper.com/article.php?type=expert&aid=270 a very very nice bit of kit

SOURCE: Pattaya City News: March 29th 2007

Man caught spying on a Woman inside the Ladies Toilets at the Royal Garden Plaza.

Police were called to the Royal garden Plaza on Wednesday Night to investigate claims of a Thai man who was allegedly caught in the Ladies Toilet watching a woman inside one of the cubicles.

The victim raised the alarm and security guards detained Khun Samat aged 19 who was subsequently taken to Pattaya Police Station.

He confessed to following the woman who he initially saw outside the Movie Theater on the top floor of the Royal Garden Plaza. He liked what he saw and felt compelled to follow her into the Ladies Toilet.

The embarrassed man paid a small fine at the Police Station and was released without further charge.

now there's a guy needs to be watched, scary behavior

Look, I am not sure why you want to flame. I agree that desktop replacement laptops make perfect sense for some people who need portability of their office. The original post was asking for laptop advice and seemed price conscious. For some people who want to work or play games at home but still be able to check email or browse the web from cafes, etc., buying a basic laptop and a fast desktop can be more sensible.

I'm really missing something here, because the link to an "UltraSharp" LCD desktop panel you provided shows a nice 24 inch LCD with 1900x1200 resolution for $629 US. Are you suggesting you can get a comparable LCD in a laptop? I feel like this Dell LCD is a perfect example of how you can get nicer desktop equipment than laptop for a given price. I know these prices do not compare well to Thailand pricing, so let me give another comparison. I know that six months ago, a Dell Workstation 390 (high end PC) with 2.4 GHz Intel Core Duo, 1GB RAM, 300 GB SATA II, NVIDIA Quadro graphics, and a 21 inch 1600x1200 LCD could be had in Bangkok for 85k THB. Could a laptop be had here with those specs for a price anywhere near that?

I also know that in the US last year, one could put together an AMD based system with nearly identical performance (socket AM2 dual core Athlon64) for about $800 US, including the same 21 inch LCD from Dell and some components from newegg etc.

I'm not flameing, your first post on this thread was to inform me I was wrong, I am simply showing you that you are not totally correct and laptops can perform on a similar power with desktops, the reason I included the link to the monitor was to illustrate that a high end screen for a desktop is expensive, also a large screen does not equate to a large desktop area, it's all relative, for example my laptop has a considerably larger desktop area at 1900/1200 than a desktop at 1280/1024 yes it's smaller in physical size but the work area is bigger, I couldn't work with something at 1280/1024 no matter how large the screen, don't know why you fail to understand this.

don't know exactly why but in my experience 512MB is the worst config for Windows XP.

machines with 256M work fine as long as you don't run more than one or two apps at a time, but 512MB - which should be faster- seems to be much worse, accessing the page file pretty much constantly.

768 is then again way better than 512 and as expected way better than 256, and 1GB and above is ideal.

i don't have any grand statistics to back this up but it would interest me if others have observed this strange performance hole at 512MB as well?! I found my XP machine with 512M near unusable. I didn't have any 256MB machines, but I have fixed enough of my friends' machines with 256MB to know that they work OK.

probably the cheap hardware you bought get yourself a good laptop

just kidding

people really talk some crap, for those that think they know all, go look at some CPU development history, you will find that the advancement in technology is driven by higher speed less heat low power usage decrease size blah blah blah, you will also find that most of the technology inovation is primarily achieved for laptops and other mobile products because that is where the challenge is, eventually it migrates to desktops, do your own DD, take a look at the history of the mobility CPU, it was an old pentium that just got better, higher deveopment costs, some of the technology migrated back to desktops.

granted laptop cooling is an issue which is why laptop development and r&d is where it all happens

as for screen rosolution and quality I have nothing to add because you don't listen

as for cost versus performance, if cost is an issue then buy a desktop, but purchase a highend laptop and you will be spending quite a bit on a desktop to equal it's performance in every rerspect, now get your facts straight before posting again, I worked in this industry for many years, maybe you should start to listen you might learn something.

Nikster, you are not far away from the truth, some people find it hard to accept

PS I find 1900/1200 very clear and readable, very few desktops will go to this resolution and quality, I need a large destop area as I use some applications that require many windows, oh and chunky is a good description for your average crappy desktop unless you spend big bucks for a proper good quality screen, haven't seen any in Thailand they are all 1280/ 1024.....chunky, whats the point is having a highend graphics card driving a cheap low res screen ??

>even a cheap desktop can outclass most laptops<

I agree 100%

a laptop will never be a quality desk top replacement.

I even carry a full size keyboard & track ball with me to avoid the laptop keyboard & pointing device.

I do not always use the keyboard but always plug in the usb trackball.

FOR ME: a low end desktop is a much better desktop computer.

a laptop has it's place .. & I intend to always have a laptop.

but for 1/2 the price of a high end laptop one can have a nice laptop for travel & mid range desktop.

unless one is a gamer or using the box as a video / audio studio .. a modern midrange desktop will meet all of ones needs.

software has not begun to catch up with the hardware .. xp does not fully utilize dual core processing .. I assume vista does.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38508

re wide screen: a 15" 'square' has more pixels than a wide screen 17".

diagonal is the measurement .. + the wide / short screens show less lines of text ..

"web pages & paper size format documents (.doc, .htm & .pdf) " are much better suited to the conventional screen layout.

re ram: I have begun recording audio off satellite radio .. digital signal converted to .wav by my arcos media recorder .. lub this little device tu mutt.

IPOD sized & records .avi video & .wav audio direct to HD from my satellite box.

often if forget & end up with a .wav file of over 1 gig ..

in effect 1 song / .wav file more than a hour long ..

I have 1 gig ram in my computer.. after transferring the huge .wav file to my desktop & i go to rip the huge file my software really slows down .. the file is larger than my ram.

ripping is 60% slower for a file larger than available ram.

this is the first time since I got my new desktop that memory was an obvious issue.

resolution defines descktop size or area, i have a larger desktop area than most desktop pc's with 1900/1200, the limitation of laptops is related to upgradability for stuff like drives and graphics although usb has improved this quite a bit, my last desktop had a crt screen, max resolution before it started to become dificut to read stuff was 1024/768, the desktop size was small compared to what i have right now, even 1280/1024 is still restrictive, the aspect of the screen has nothing to do with it.

I have a docking station for my laptop which has expansion slots etc etc, the laptop slides into it and from then on I effectively have a desktop, I don't use it, performance wise it all depends on the spec of the machine, laptops can be just as fast as desktops, give me one reason why they shouldn't.

Does increasing the size of your paging file or virtual memory, help to get around this?

no, the point about increasing memory is to reduce XP reliance on a page file to function, HD is slow to R/W which is why xp slows way down when it has to use the HD due to lack of system ram for carrying out basic tasks, this is vastly reduced when you go above the 512k barrier, my HD spins down when it is not needed, as I type this text it is effectively off, i have enough ram for the cpu and os to run basic functions without the need to acess a page file on the hd, you can usually tell if you need moire ram when the hd is contantly active.

question: are the latest laptop screens as good as a desktop monitor?

No, not really and probably never will be. A laptop screen is always a compromise to keep its weight down and reduce its power requirements in order to extend battery life. A desktop LCD will always have brighter and more uniform back-lighting than a laptop, because it can use more power and have a thicker back-light system behind the screen. This translates to better and more uniform colors on the desktop LCD.

sorry mate but that is just complete rubbish, quality is what you pay for in any guise laptop or desktop, my laptop screen will outperform most decktop screens in every respect except for very high end kit which will cost an arm and a leg, I was going to buy an external monitor for my laptop but would have cost almost the price of a laptop to get the resolution and clarity of what I have now

e.g. http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/product...mp;sku=320-4335 ultra is the key here with a resolution of 1900/1200, non ultra monitors would be third this price but what a drop in quality and capability

walked past it a few times and it's a disgrace, one of the local animal parks may be interesred, the Thais probably wouldn't think of asking.

perhaps lack of customers is leading to frustration greed then anger, argument over money perhaps

ask them to erect something then put their cocks inside, works for me

can be used to cook veg and spuds etc........very handy

this looks like it would fit your needs

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=113360

http://help.allegheny.edu/news/archives/000427.html

could be a virus, after thinking hard and long about what you have posted I am almost 90% sure this is your problem, especially when you mention AV scanning

for XP you really need 1g, the performance increase will be more than any other upgrade you can do