Veazer

I knew this was coming, but I never found out what type of plug converter to bring with me to Thailand for my laptop and camera and shaver stuff I'm bringing on my extended trip to Thailand.

Basicly, I have only a few days to pick one of these up. I'm concerned mostly about the laptop, and any surges it may incounter.

Do I need a simple prong adaptor, OR do I need a device that REDUCES the voltage, and then a prong adaptor?

Can someone suggest a certain model number of your basic device that will work on the everyday basis for my vacation, and staying with the wife's family?

I found something online and its called "TA-50A Transformer". Is this what will work?"

Thanks so much, max.

p.s. would a radio shack have one of these?

Many devices can handle US voltages (110-120) and Thai voltages (220-240). The laptop & camera will likely handle both, just check the writing on the adapter and see what it says for input voltage. The shaver is probably 110v only. You'll almost never need a plug adapter, nearly every thai outlet and powerstrip i have seen can fit the US style plugs. The only possible exception would be 3-prong grounded plugs, but adapter are available here for those as well.

Radio Shack does have a small inverter 'brick' that can power the devices that are 110v only, but it can only handle about 50 watts.

...Veazer did you realize that you talking from thousands of text lines? ....

Yeah, i've already created the whole list of registry replacements. It is very long, like you said, more than 3,300 lines. I just used WinMerge to check the differences of the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT hive before and after an OpenOffice installation.

The easiest backup method, I think, would have been to backup the entire HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT hive before applying my changes and later restore it when removing the usb drive. This would be a bit slower than necessary because it would be replacing a lot of reg entries than hadn't changed and didn't need to be restored.

Thankfully, I don't need to do any of that any more. I just found a portable app today called C.A.F.E. that runs in the background and uses alternate file associations pre-programmed by the user. It's better than my solution because there's not the risk of messing up the registry on the host machine. You can toggle it to be enabled or disabled with a double-click on the tray icon and easily shutdown when done with it.

Thanks Tywais and Reimar for your suggestions. If you use portable apps and want to easily open data and documents with your own apps you might give the C.A.F.E. app a try.

For those looking for an alternative with better resolution, though not in the same price range as the EEE, you might have a look at the Fujitsu u810 (another review here). I played around with one in the US and I was quite impressed. I personally would not attempt vista though, XP tablet edition is far better for this machine's specs imho.

The screen resolution is 60% greater than the EEE, running at 1024x600 instead of 800x480. It's also a touchscreen (with pen) and flips over for tablet mode. And of course it can run in portrait or landscape mode.

It's the smallest laptop I've ever seen with a 'real' keyboard, just 6.73" (W) x 5.24" (D) x 1.04 - 1.26" (H)

I've seen them going for $900 new and about $750 for refurbs. With an SSD drive they could be quite nice.

The processor on the Asus looks to be a bit more powerful, however.

I don't dare use speed fan again though

in my case there were problems too with speed fan. after loading and without changing any settings my good old spreadsheet that runs under DOS is freezing. since a few days (on a different computer) speedfan does not load completely, hangs and i can only shut the program down with the task manager. <deleted>?

If your pc happens to be a Dell laptop, you might try i8KFanGUI instead. It works quite well. I never got SpeedFan to work right.

If it's not, disregard my advice.

All answers to your qustions could be found at google.com

Where? I've found tools to backup entire hives, tools to read specific registry keys, but nothing that does quite what I'm looking for.

You can use portable Eraser to do this.

Different erase schemes use a different number of passes and different write strategies. While recovery is "possible" by a forensic lab with some overwrite techniques, it's secure enough to safely get rid of the drive. With the most secure methods of overwrite, like the Gutman 35 pass strategy, recovery is essentially impossible. You certainly wouldn't need to worry about the local shop or a new owner getting the data back.

I would use this:

http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/eraser_portable

More info about it here:

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

I need a registry tool that can do the following:

1. Backup specified keys, if they exist, and store them to a backup file. I'd like to specify the keys from a text file list.
   
2. Apply a list of registry values to the registry. This step can be done with regedit easily, so i'm not bothered if the app can't.
   
3. Restore the registry values backed up in step 1
   

A command line app is preferred, I need an app that can do this via scripts. It cannot require an user intervention. An app that can run 'silently' with command switches would be fine too.

Specifically, I'm trying to create a startup script on my usb drive that associates all OO filetypes and MS Office filetypes with PortableOpenOffice on my thumbdrive. I want MS Office files to open with OpenOffice while the drive is in place, but i definitely need to restore the file associations to MS Office in my shutdown file.

How much control of the FTP server do you have, if any? Can you change ports?

The first thing I would try is using SFTP instead which uses port 22 by default. If you can control port numbers on the server, do that as well. Using encrypyted traffic on a non-standard port might be enough to get the speeds back to normal.

Im leaving for the land ov smiles today and i have a motorola mpx200 smart phone can i use this here and will the windows side ov things work properly,thanks

I've got an mpx200, it works just fine. BTW, i've also got a Windows Mobile version 5 update for it, but you'll need to keep an SD card in at all times. The OS cannot fully fit on the phone memory.

I cannot find batteries for it here, so you might want to grab one if you can. As you know, the battery life on these phones is not too great.

got one issue with Winamp...I added some songs to the favourites, however, winamp doesn't find those songs anymore although the file location has not been changed.

Other question: for the star ranking, does winamp write this in the metadata of the mp3 file or in a separate database? I.e. if I move the file, will the star ranking still be there?

By favorites, do you mean bookmarks? They are actually intended for storing online streaming stations. It should work with local files though, can you edit the bookmark and verify that the path really is correct? If you found a bug, they'd probably like to know. It would be better to create a playlist of your favorites.

Rankings are not stored in the metadata, and this has been the subject of some rather heated, if not childish, discussion in the winamp forums (here). Some users like us want it stored in the metadata and others don't want 'pre-rated' music flooding their library every time they get some shared music from other users.

Another user tried to make their own plugin to solve this problem, but i never tried it because the development seemed to stop. check here for that.

I hate winamp but have no choice but to use it for certain audio and video types as well as flac conversions.

You might want to check out foobar2000 if you haven't already > http://www.foobar2000.org/

It's free, lightweight and handles many formats. Just not fancy as WinAMP but works well and is fast.

If you're a headphone user, be sure to check out the Dolby Headphone hack for foobar that's out there. Very nice.

Foobar would be my second choice, but it takes a lot of customization to get it just how i like. I really think foobar would have a better following is they distributed pre-customized versions. They could hold a little Foobar contest and maybe add the winners circle to the downloads with a brief summary of each. I've seen people do some fantastic layouts with foobar but not reveal exactly how they did it.

..Why is it that whenever anyone asks about the legalities of something, people quote US law?...

Sorry! Bad habit.

...Half the components that appear on the side bar are to me unecessary. I basically don't need any of the web services on my music player. I never use the dashboard, never use Remote Media, Portables, or Bookmarks, so I'd love to see a lighter, sleeker version. There's probably some way to remove them, but i'm not that technologically adept...

It's pretty straightforward, just bring up preferences when winamp is loaded (CTRL-P) and scroll all the way to the bottom on the left hand side. Most of the unneeded plugins are in the Media Library section, as you noted. You can uninstall directly from winamp preferences.

The only downside to uninstalling this way is you can't easily get the component back if you realized you did need it. If you want to disable something without removing it, just take note of the plugin's filename (listed on the right side) and rename it in the winamp plugin folder (ie 'ml_nowplaying.dll' --> 'ml_nowplaying.dll.disabled') If you realize later that you need it, just change the name back. The plugins folder is at 'C:\Program Files\Winamp\Plugins\', assuming you installed in the default folder.

Good luck!

Theft?

I was kinda hoping for something a little more specific and descriptive... Along the lines of trojans, keylogging, hijacker, logic bomb, macro virus, nuker, phishing, rootkit, worm, etc.

so how can this be avoided then ?

Use FoxyProxy, or a comparable extension, to only use the proxy for wikipedia.

@JoeBuzzard- You might want to try the IE Tab plugin for Firefox. It lets you load pages using the IE engine inside of Firefox. You can even setup site filters to automatically us IE Tab for known problem sites.

EDIT: Added links

I'm creating a document of security risk for newbies and I haven't been able to locate a term for this.

Suppose some goes to an internet cafe and plugs in their USB flashdrive. Upon inserting it:

1) A malicious script intentionally placed on the computer immediately copies all contents of the drive to a local folder on the pc.

or

2) Someone working at the cafe notices the drive has been added and copies the contents of the drive, or a portion of the contents, to a local folder on the pc, or their pc. (Using defaults network shares, vnc, etc)

or

3) A trojan on the pc copies some or all file to the pc or a remote location.

What is the term for stealing files from removable media? I don't want to start using my own name for this act if an 'official' name already exists.

Thanks.

I've been updating my music collection and thinking about digital formats and so forth, when the following copyright questions occurred to me:

1. If I own an older *legal* medium for some music- vinyl record, cassette, etc.- and I use a computer to digitize and preserve the music, is this new digitized copy legal for me to have and use? I assume I have to keep all of the original media even if it crumbles to dust- but as long as I do so, will the new digital version be legal forever?

2. If I own a licensed version of the music (on vinyl, cassette, cd, etc.) and I have made an MP3/MP4 file from it, and I keep it on a computer or a player and travel with this computer or player, have I in fact broken the law, or would I be at risk of legal harassment, if I did not simultaneously have the original media on my person? This might not be a problem in one's own country where you could simply go home and get the media, but what if the media were in another country?

Would appreciate any speculation on this- not seriously worried about anything, but it makes for entertaining thought experiments.

I think both cases would be legal, at least by US law, under the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act. DVD audio discs would not be covered, as I understand it, because copying them requires you to bypass the DRM and this is in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

I'm not a legal expert by any means, this is just my interpretation of the law.

I'm not a Gamer!

If I do testings I use normal software under normal conditions.

I understand that, i was just trying to show that Server 2003 seems to outperform XP even in tasks we wouldn't expect a server to be good at, in this case Direct3D apps.

Not to hijack the thread, but as long as we're comparing XP to 2K3 here's another interesting test...

On XP:

On 2K3:

That's a 3D benchmark, aimed at gaming, performing 24% faster on a server OS using the same pc.

Images are from the discussion here.

I had done this testing with MS Windows Server 2003 Enterprise SP2 as well using the same Spreadsheet and the time need was just 2 min 10 sec. for the same filtering.

The Spreadsheet I use for this testing is nearly 50 MB with an huge database of Thai Companies. This spreadsheet contains various infos and is exellent for to do some testings. An other file I use sometimes for to test Graphic Cards and CPU's is an AutoCAD file to rendering to 3D in 3D Max. may I do the testing with this file in the next days.

But Server 2003 is a great OS and if you know how to "adjust" the OS for your use you'll have the fastest and stables OS MS ever launches until right now!

Thanks for confirming my suspicions Reimar. So not only does XP fly past Vista, Server 2003 flies past XP!

I was told some time ago about the performance of Win2K3 as a desktop OS but didn't take the person seriously. As a former systems admin, my experience with server operating systems was quite the opposite (I was an NT4 admin).

I finally took the time to install 2K3 after reading the article above and see if it could live up to the hype. I was very impressed with 2K3 and still am, it is an amazingly fast and stable OS.

After seeing what it can do, I think M$ has really taken the wrong path with Vista.

EDIT: typo

"...So far we've found 27 different domains, each with up to 1,499 [malicious] pages. That's 40,000 possible pages."

Anyone else find this quote strange? All the malware serving domains studied had the same number of pages? And what's the signifance of 1499?

Step 5: connect the other end of the yellow cable to your Computer Case (on metal please).

Now your Computer is grounded and the UPS as well as long as you use not "modified" power cabel, which means they still must have 3 connectors on the Male side!

Reimar,

may I take exception with your Step 5?

grounding just the case does not ground the entire system! The ground has to enter at the power source.

Grounding the 'third (ground)' pin of the UPS power plug is the best way to do it and then connect everything (PC, monitor etc.) only to the UPS.

opalhort

No, Reimar is correct. They are a common ground.

I would ground the outlet though, not just the pc. Then you can use a three-prong powerstrip and ground more appliances.

I loved winamp at one time until the ads came along. Seems most things that AOL touches turns to crap so I haven't even opened it in ages. These days I tend to use my Linux machine to play music with XMMS, which is very much like the classic Winamp of old. Steaming and video I do with Windows Media Player but I hate it's library and playlist. That was always a winamp strongpoint.

I hate AOL too, but Winamp is nice these days. Winamp 5 brought back the 'lightness' that people appreciated with the 2.x versions, and thankfully they junked the bloated 3.x monster. With 5.5, they've got a full screen 'bento box' skin that works well and the whole program uses about 5-7 mb when playing from the tray (about 12-15 maximized, depends on library size).

I hate the ads as well, but they can be removed with a good HOSTS file. I use the recommended HOSTS file from here and append the winamp ad servers to the end from this post. I noticed some are already on the list anyway, i haven't fully checked for dupes. At least the ads only occur on the IE rendered pages, they're not in some special 'ad box' on the program. Because of that, any ad blocker designed for IE will block the ads in Winamp as well.

I think there's a bit of crap that should be removed, like the tray Agent and some unneeded media library components, but overall it's a nice package. Far better than iTunes for my needs.

And yes, the WMP library sucks.

Even if you found a pop3 or imap proxy, i would be extremely wary of it. Unless you have a reason to trust them, you shouldn't be routing your mail through them. I'm amazed how many people are willing to route their web traffic through a proxy without knowing anything about it.

I would first see if you can access the mail on secure server ports which are less likely to be blocked. Assuming this is your own domain, your host should be able to assist with this.

If you can't get that working, i would use CobraSnakeNecktie's idea and route mail through gmail or another a similar provider.

You might also check some of the online shops for parts mentioned in Tywais's post here, but Reimar's price looks lower than most shops.

I haven't noticed 4 port cards here either.