filingaccount

I suggest you go to the shops and have a look at the screens you are considering. Your own eyes do not lie (most of the time).

Ask them to hook up a PC or laptop to the screens so you can test the settings and output, preferably side by side. You are after all considering to buy a quite expensive piece of equipment.

Please consider a LED display. Generally speaking they have higher contrast, better colours and lower power use. Make sure it is not edge lit, but fully back lit.

You could consider dual or triple displays as well if you sit quite near the screen. a 30"+ at 0.5 meters could be straining.

And for those stating that large monitors require a fast VGA card:

You are partially wrong. In 2D, there is no difference in "speed" whatsoever between a ATI x1700 (or any VGA card from 3-4 generations ago) and a top of the line current generation card. None.

If you want the Aero effects in Win Vista or Win 7, most VGA cards on sale from ATI and nVidia will do. Stay away from Intel/SiS/other VGA cards for this purpose.

The difference in 3D is apparent when you try to run your games (or whatever fullscreen 3D program you decide to run) at native resolution. If you lower the resolution to a multiple of the native resolution ratio (to minimize blurring) you are again fine with a slower VGA card. Most 2560x1600 LCD's output decently at 1280x800 in games.

Rule #1.

Never give money to anyone who asks for it on the streets.

Rule #2.

Never give money to anyone asking for it on the streets.

Rule #3.

See Rule #1 and Rule #2.

Rule #4.

See Rule #3.

Easy no?

Try Xpresso.

http://www.xpresso-coffee.com/services/after-sales-service

http://www.xpresso-coffee.com/products/accessories

Canon S3IS

Auto settings

A little vibrance and lightening some parts in Photoshop.

Took this a few weeks or a month ago or something.

Yes, thats a soft drink bottle floating in the klong. People are such litterers...

If you are willing to set aside the money for a high end laptop... why try and save a few baht, dollars, macaroons by finding the cheapest place? As many have suggested, buy it where you spend most of your time. Local warranty often works best.

Also, please consider this: http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Laptop-netbo...fo-t319781.html

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Laptop-netbo...fo-t319781.html

I think this should get you started in the right direction.

Hi,

Every so often there is a topic popping up about "Which Laptop and/or Netbook should I get?"

I will try and answer it as detailed as I can, without actually saying that "this is what you need, period". This is an incomplete guide. I make no warranties of the accuracy of the information. I am probably completely wrong and this info should not be used in a real life scenario anyway... but it might help you get started in a direction.

First, consider the 3 most important things on any computer. Keyboard, Monitor and Mouse.

These are the 3 things you will always use. Always. Every single time.

Keyboard.

How does it feel when you type on it? (I suggest trying several different keyboards in quick succession. Try to type the same short message.)

Are the keys solid? Does the keyboard "flex" when you press down on any key? (Try pressing "G" and "H" and see if there is any "give"). Is there any "cracking or creaking" noises when you put a little more pressure on the keys from normal typing?

Do the keys seem "loose"? eg. They rattle when you type. Put your finger on a key and without pressing it down, move your finger left to right a few times. Is the key moving a lot with your movement? If it is, you might want to think about the extra wear this puts on the keys over time. (yes, you will always have sideways movement even though you think you press straight down when typing).

Traditionally IBM and now Lenovo keyboards have been the best. This has changed with Netbooks though and they are more or less on par with others.

Monitor. (LED backlit LCD's use less power, and are thinner.)

There are 2 main types of screens and they are easily identifiable. Glossy and Matte.

A glossy screen will always reflect a varying amount of the "scenery" around you. This is particularly noticeable with darker colors on screen.

A Matte screen will not reflect much of anything at all.

Some people do not mind the glossy screens as they like the little extra color vibrancy/contrast given. Drawback is that in Thailand, during daytime, the ambient luminance (eg. sun light) is very high, and so you have about a 50/50 chance of seeing whats on screen and whats behind you.

Matte screens seem "dull" when presented side-by-side with a glossy screen. Don't be fooled, the Matte screens are in no way inferior and in fact might be considered far superior to glossy screens due to the simple fact you will never have to worry about reflections, and thus you will actually see what's on screen...

Mostly sold today are glossy screens for some reason.

Mouse.

Oh-boy. There are as many touchpads as there are laptop/netbook models. I suggest looking for a touchpad that allows your finger to move effortlessly and without you having to press down or other wise make an effort to move the cursor. How does it react when your finger is a little damp? Cursor not moving or moving slowly? Are the mouse keys easy to press? Does it have the features you need (eg. scroll bar)?

It should not be a pain or an effort when you use any of the 3 above. In a good scenario you should not even recall how it was to use the keyboard and mouse. It should be automatic. If it is not, try another. You should not have to strain your eyes trying to read whats on screen because of a blurry screen, reflections, glare or any other issue. If it's difficult to read now, imagine how it will be when you really use it 3-4 hours at your home/office.

Ok, so now the very basics are cleared.

On to the specs.

Nowadays you can get a hold of almost any sort of performance in a laptop/netbook. From the painfully slow, to the ridiculously fast.

The first question you should ask yourself is "What am I going to use it for?". If you know how to answer this, you already are 90% of the way to the correct purchase.

There are way too many variables for me to even begin to explore what would be good for what purpose. Everyone has their own preferences when it comes to programs, all of which have different requirements.

I can offer you a few guidelines though.

Longevity comes from 2 things mainly. CPU speed and amount of RAM. The more, the better. But more power comes with a big drawback, less battery time. It also means it will run hotter, and quite likely noisier.

Batteries generally last 1 year with 80-90% of full capacity, then they tend to decline rapidly. Few batteries make it past 3 years and are still usable. Take any manufacturers claim of battery time and cut it in half. Yes, half. That's what you are going to get in a real life scenario. A good practice is to try and keep the battery fully charged as much as possible. This reduces wear.

Do you want to take advantage of the Windows 7 fancy Aero effects? Then you need to purchase a laptop with a more powerful GPU (aka VGA card). Currently (end 2009) this means you'll end up spending a few thousand Baht more.

Do you absolutely need an optical drive? Can you switch to USB flash memory?

Does it have a media card reader (eg. SD card reader)?

Make sure it has all the USB/firewire/pc card/other expansion port that you need.

Does it offer Gigabit (1000 Mbit) LAN and 802.11n WiFi? (traditionally LAN's are 100 Mbit and WiFi 802.11g).

802.11n WiFi is backwards compatible with .11 b/g. To fully take advantage of .11n you need a .11n WiFi router. The benefit is higher speeds, up to 300 Mbps, instead of 54 Mpbs with .11g. Practically it means you get about 4-5 times the transfer speed. This is particularly beneficial if you transfer large files over your WiFi network between PC's.

Sound generally is quite bad on a laptop. The hardware might be decent, but most speakers are bad.

Make sure it has good headphone/external speaker jacks if you need to use the sound for any media/communication.

Warranty.

Most cheaper laptops/netbooks offer a limited 1 year local warranty.

If you need anything different please ask if they have an extended warranty program or an alternative laptop/netbook with longer and/or international warranty.

Buy from a reputable dealer. If the shop seems shoddy, it probably is.

Good luck.

Jae Kee

Tel: 026558489

Open: 7 am to 9.30 pm

Delivers all over Bangkok. Delivery fee depends on distance from their shop.

They are very well known for their fried chicken.

I can also suggest the S&P somtam. It's always done with very fresh ingredients. Just make sure to ask for pet-pet or it will be too sweet and not spicy enough.

If anyone is interested we could collaborate and study the feasibility of solar power in Thailand. Currently there is production of 300 Watt panels at decent prices, but we need to figure out what the real amount of sun hours are available per year in Thailand to start with.

One 300 Watt panel produces about 162 kWh in mid Europe per year, so Thailand, realistically, should be something around 250-300 kWh per year.

Anyone interested, please PM and we can discuss. Serious individuals only please. For idle curiosity, please turn to google.

True is notorious for not loading images/scripts/videos/"web 2.0" stuff. I think they are sending a ton of RST packets if you dare to load more than one static text webpage from 1999 per time. Forget trying to load more than 2 pages at the same time, specially if they are image/script/video/"web 2.0" heavy. You'll end up with plenty of frustrations.

I see this problem on many many websites, including thaivisa.com

I also do a lot of website editing and I end up enabling a decent proxy just to get a couple of pages done in a reasonable time.

My solution is using a VPN proxy. As per stupid forum rules I am not allowed to speak of it because of some imaginary scary reason they cite. PM me for details of which program to use, where to download and how to use it.

The True customer service rep I spoke with today agreed that there are problems, but nothing he could do, except recommend me to continue to use the VPN proxy.

I'm guessing they have tone of bandwidth problems internationally. One one hand all ISP's try to sell you 8-10-12-16 Mbps connections ("BUY NOW. bigger, better, faster, MORE") and on the other hand they try to limit your use of it ("You use too much bittorrent, too many youtube videos loaded, see too many pictures")...

A case of eating the cake and trying to keep it or something?

Please note that these images are NOT colorized black and white photographs. They were actually taken in color about a hundred years ago!

The photographs of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) offer a vivid portrait of a lost world - the Russian Empire on the eve of World War I and the coming revolution. Born in St. Petersburg and educated as a chemist, Prokudin-Gorskii devoted his career to the advancement of photography. In the early 1900s, he developed an ingenious technique of taking color photographs. The same object was captured in black and white on glass plate negatives, using red, green and blue filters. He then presented these images in color in slide lectures using a light-projection system involving the same three filters.

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/p?pp/p...29::SortBy=CALL

Enjoy.

This would be much bigger if the competitions and voting could be "advertised" on the main page of Thai visa and/or in other sub forums.

After all, who doesn't carry around a digital camera nowadays in one for or another?

IMHO the technical skills are good (eg. sharpness, colours, lighting) but the artistic side is lacking.

I'm not sure what I should be looking at as different parts fight for my attention. Also, the sky is too big if you want me to focus on the non-sky parts.

If my focus should be on the statue you might want to have considered something similar to the crop I have included.

Does anyone know if this is a cable problem or has MICT been up to their usual idiocy?

Based on the meager information provided I am guessing you are a True ISP user.

The remedy to access non-loading websites is to enter the proxy 203.144.144.165 port 8080 (aka, trueinternet.co.th, aka, asianet.co.th)

Alternatively use a webproxy, eg. hidemybox.com

Enable DMZ and point it to your internal IP of .103

This eliminates local routing issues.

If this works, then you just need to figure out the correct way of forwarding ports.

Another way is to enable upnp in both your router and torrent client. If your router does not support upnp, disable it in your torrent client.

The most likely culprit, if the above does not work, is the windows antivirus/firewall. Even though it is uninstalled it might have left its restrictive settings in windows. This I am not sure how to help you with, except checking the task manager for residual processes left behind by the uninstalled program (stop the processes and then delete associated files and any registry entries).

Off topic a little.

If you need a firewall that is free, functional and fairly transparent, try PC Tools Firewall Plus or Comodo Firewall. Generally speaking, antivirus programs are not needed unless you are in the habit of visiting shady porno sites or like to open email attachments freely.

Online antivirus scans for individual files or the whole HDD is a better choice (eg. virusscan.jotti.org/ and pandasecurity.com/activescan/).

This is my first post to the health section on TV. As mentioned in the topic title I have three main problems.

<snipit>

Many thanks.

Ian

You notice there are several very different suggestions below. This is because it is nearly impossible to know the cause with the information you have given. The below suggestions are exactly that, suggestions. Do not try any of them based on somebody's say so on an internet forum. Health is serious, and if you have problems VISIT A DOCTOR. There as many causes as there are cures.....

Could be sleep apnea.

It could also be as simple as low oxygen / high CO2 levels in the bedroom. Try to get as much ventilation as possible.

It could also be that your circadian rhythm is not in line with your waking hours. To reset your circadian rhythm it is suggested that you do not eat anything for 12-16 hours before the time you need to wake up. Then just eat breakfast at the time you wake up.

It could also be that you are overweight and/or your mattress is not supporting your body well enough.

It could be depression. Is anything bothering you at work/home? Any nagging issues you have not addressed?

Could be sinus issues. Washing your sinuses out with a netipot filled with a saline solution helps (youtube can show you how).

More: http://www.helpguide.org/life/sleep_disorders.htm

Drool: http://www.ehow.com/how_2364061_stop-drool...ring-sleep.html

Cracked heels: http://www.epodiatry.com/cracked_heels.htm

Good luck.

"Breaking through darkness"

Canon S3IS

10/09/09

ISO 80

15 sec exposure

F5.6

Focal length 20 mm

Photoshop: Levels, contrast, light, saturation and crop.

The past couple of days I've been having problems with piratebay and . I can download the torrent file but as soon as I put it try to download the actual music file it just shows no seeds and never starts. It was fine until earlier in the week, No problems with isohunt or mininova but I like piratebay as it seems to have more seeds for the stuff I like. Anybody else having probs? Cheers.

You could try to enable DHT. It will not be fast in general, unless you are on a popular torrent and using True.

True is caching a lot of popular torrents on their locals servers. A brilliant tactic, they save international bandwidth, and users get their torrent in a hurry.

Some of Trues caching servers are located on 61.91.88.122, 61.91.88.43, 203.144.160.2 and more. They all use port 16884. You could try to add them manually in your torrent client. Be sure to allow multiple connections to peers.

If this post goes too far and breaches some rule here on Thaivisa, please feel free to edit, delete or whatever....

How about editing your post to a standard font size (2) and to a more readable font (ex. Lucida Sans Unicode)?

Too much information was not recorded or was lost.

By the way, did anyone else notice the alien in the original image?

"Simply Broken"

Canon S3IS, 6mm, F4, 1/125 s, 15/8/09

Desaturated, cropped and slightly edited levels and contrast.

They have a great set of waterfalls at Erawan......

Saw many Europeans there while shooting.....

If you say I am out of line, I'll delete the image.

Otherwise, please use it as you see fit.

(If you need any other image editing (done better as well), contact me on PM and we can talk.)

Hi 'filingaccount',

Sorry, but what did you mean by this post

Yours truly,

Kan Win

I meant that I, without authorization, edited and posted someone elses image. Of course, I allow Pooklook to use the edited image as pooklook sees fit (it is pooklooks image after all)

I just couldn't resist editing it....

The second part is me offering (via PM) to do image editing to remove blemishes etc from otherwise "imperfect" images for Pooklook and other users.

BARK! Double post.

So I post another waterfall image....

They have a great set of waterfalls at Erawan......

Saw many Europeans there while shooting.....

If you say I am out of line, I'll delete the image.

Otherwise, please use it as you see fit.

(If you need any other image editing (done better as well), contact me on PM and we can talk.)

The laptop is an Asus A8 SC model 2yrs old, and came with two 512mb RAM total 1GB, The only changes I have made is to replace the OS from Vista to XP. Thanks for the replies, that gives me some guidance on price for sure. Prices seem to have come down then. I must say I was shocked to be quoted 13,000 baht by the Asus dealer in Hat Yai 2 yrs ago.

I have an ASUS A8 model as well (although it is a JP).

They take any old regular DDR2 RAM. However, I think the max you can insert is 2 GB modules. It has 2 slots for a total of 4 GB.

I also bought mine about 2 or so years ago and upgraded immediately (with a generic module) from 1 to 2 GB... that cost me around 2,000 Baht at the shop. 13,000 is a rip-off price and the explanation they gave about the same modules etc is bogus. I use 2 different makes, with different rated speeds. As long as the RAM ratings matches or is higher than the mainboard requirement then you are fine.

Or use the tried and true way. Bring the laptop, ask around for pricing until you are happy with what you get, buy it with the condition that they install it at the shop and test if the laptop boots up. If it does, and the RAM totals match up you are good to go.