JDPower

The specs are good enough for me at a very affordable price, just wondered how Dells were generally. Here they are: AMD? Athlon™ 64 X2 Mobile Technology TK53 (Base model ships with a Sempron 3500 but its only ?35 extra for the Athlon X2) 1024MB 533MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM ATI Radeon? Xpress 1150 HyperMemory 120GB (5400rpm) SATA Hard Drive Fixed Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Drive 15.4" Wide Screen WXGA (1280 x 800) Display All for around ?310 inc VAT and delivery. I wasn't actually planning on buying a laptop but this seems to good a deal to miss out on (currently use gf's laptop - P4 3GHz, 512Mb RAM, ATI Radeon 7000 gfx - so an upgrade over what I currently use). Only problem is its only offering Vista on the website so I'm gonna be contacting them to see if they'll give me XP instead if I decide to go for it.

My gf has been getting a believable email scam in last couple of days asking her to reset her Live Messenger login details. Thing is the email address it came from looks like a genuine MSN addy and the email is well written (none of the usual typos etc). Main thing that arose my suspicion when , thankfully, she asked my opinion was the fact she had four of these in her inbox and the link it asked her to click, though looking like an MSN link, was too long and random for my liking. Luckily she's sensible enough to ask me about any dodgy looking emails, it was certainly convincing

And please try not to post three times with the same thing

Considering getting a bargain Dell laptop and was wondering what peoples opinions of Dell are generally (build quality, reliability etc)

Quite a few duff tips in there, use them all with caution though (especially the reg tweaks with no explanation!!!) Few that jump out. The enable preftecher setting to 2 disables application prefetching and enables only boot prefetch (which will slow the time taken for apps to start). Disabling the 'Background intelligent transfer' service will break Windows update, whether you use automatic updates OR update manually. Disabling 'Task scheduler' service will break prefetch. Deleting the entire contents of the prefetch folder is pointless (I know, can of worms open), and if you delete the entire contents including the layout.ini, prefetch won't work at least for a while (till Windows runs the 'ProcessIdleTasks' command). Safe, probably. Worth doing, mostly no. Its worth disabling any services you don't need and removing any unnecessary startup programs in msconfig but make sure you know what you're disabling. But most of the so called tweaks IMO are pointless and will provide little, if any, performance difference.

Piriform means pear shaped. I've always assumed it was originally a clever joke from the phrase 'Its all gone pear shaped'

Um, yes, if you custom make it yourself

Whats wrong with just using the upload button when replying to a post, surely easier?

And just to point in the right direction (as I currently have it installed) - in TweakUI the 'Enable balloon tips' tick box is in the 'Taskbar and Start menu' section

I do, nice original take on the default windows background.

So, just so I've got this clear, is this ransomware stuff blocked by AV software (as much as any malware is)? And the info it steals is from autocomplete, cookies etc?

That was posted a while back I think. Never used to work for me on Firefox but works now. Not sure how much use it is though - FF passes, IE passes, I even fired up the sodding awful AOL browser and that passed

Thats because IE7 has Cleartype enabled by default (one of the first things I turned off), Firefox respects the system default font settings.

And keep any unnecessary weight out of the car, keep Windows shut and don't use air con. How much do you want it

That may be all that can be monitored if thats all it detected. Hard drive temp works for me as a rough guide (using HDTune) but I'm using a laptop, probably not as usesul with a desktop.

And also make sure you have 'Custom files and folders' ticked in the cleaners advanced section (under the Windows tab)

Just seen this on Download Junky, I don't really watch many video clips (online or offline) but looks a promising piece of software and I though others may be interested: http://www.getmiro.com/

Nope, never got the whole 'adults reading kids books' thing. I had to sit through the last Potter film (thanks to gf) and it was bearable but just don't get the adult appeal.

I don't like clear type, makes the text look slightly blurry to me.

LOL, obviously not a common phrase on that side of the water - 'Do you like hospital food?' ie you'll be spending some time there eating it if you carry on like that

Nope sorry. Generally stick to freeware.

Nice one, would be interested in hearing more if you get the time to post it.

Probably easiest to do a system restore to a date before you did this

My first reaction was 'Oh, is that it, looks like the current one'. But as I thought about it I'm quite glad of that, at least it hasn't been given some gaudy modern skin and most of it should be familiar. Alot of grey though

Hate to ruin the mysticism but that is actually quite common, its a kind of a semi awake dream (My gf has these quite often).