stingwray

PeerGuardian isn't the best program, but it does the job and doesn't cause me any problems on my server (which this one is only a 500MHz Celeron with 128MB of Memory).

most decent torrent clients have encyption available and it is cross client compatible usually. so enable that (you might see you speed up because you packets don't get traffic shapped then by your ISP) and also you could get something like PeerGuardian going as well, which blocks connections to black-listed IPs.

Widescreen is nice because it gives you more of a cinematic feel, plus it means that you use more of the screen when you are watching vidoes/films in widescreen which is always good. Your also supposed to get more room than a normal 4:3 ration equivalent monitor. I suppose it help multitaking as well as you can have Firefox etc. open in 2/3rds of the screen and the in the bit left down the side you can have irc/im open or winamp etc.

Creative did a PCMCIA version of their Audigy 2ZS so that would have some pretty good sound quality. I would agree on that while a tablet pc in that sort of area would be fairly nice there are better things that you could do with it. Like using it as the terminal for a media center setup. So connect wirelessly and then you can control all your media from the tablet and have it output on your TV or your speaker system. I have always toyed with the idea of either modding an old hi-fi system or scratch building a system to look like a hi-fi which would be my meda server. Never have got round to it, but still like the idea.

Have you thought about using Linux? You can get older distros around so you can test things of different ages if you want. I personally don't think it would be worth looking at anything past 2000 anyway. 2000 can be got easily if you look at the online retailers but it still comes at a price because a large number of compaines never upgraded to XP so Microsoft never lowered the price because of less of a demand.

Sounds like you need some sort of sound firewall, that only allows allowed programs to contact the sound drivers. Haven't got much of an idea how you would do it, my guess would be to start looking around in the drivers for you sound, but I think your not going to have much luck unless you are using Open-source drivers.

I'm not an AMD nut, but won't buy something that costs more and offers less performace. AMD has had the lead against Intel in all the CPUs so far as well as price so that is why i have bought AMD. I also like supporting the underdog and i like the fact that AMD is based in Germany. I am worried about Intel's Conroe as that does look like bit of a beast (except in encryption oddly). For mass buying Dell does seem to have it wrapped up in a bag, they have offered my school numerous deals on hardware with stupid price tags (like £50 for a blade cabinet filled with specced up blades). In fact we have been playing Dell of against RM recently which has proved very enjoyable. However I would like to give some other companies business, like I said, I like supporting the underdogs.

Perhaps for buying large amounts of systems then I would probably never use Dell, and even then I would try and go else where. Their servers are quiet good but they still don't offer AMD Opterons in them which are king of the Server CPUs at the moment (they are saying they will at some point though). I dislike their Desktops because if you upgrade with them and they come and fit some new stuff, take the old stuff away, then that old stuff will end up in someone elses "new" computer. Now i don't have a problem with this because recycling. I have the problem that they charge the same price to the other person for secondhand hardware. For their laptops, well Dell don't actually make them, a company called Ergo do, and ergo make some very very very nice laptops. But once again I would prefer a AMD chip in my laptop than Intel so it counts Dell out.

For a firewall I think it would be too much, espcially as I know that Monowall isn't dual processor enabled by default, and its the easiest thing to turn back on. I would say follow one of the "Perfect Setups" at www.howtoforge.com for which ever distro you fancy using, they have just added one for Ubuntu 6.06. Make sure you install the ISPConfig, and then you will have a nice graphic way of looking after your Web/Mail/FTP accounts. With 1GB of RAM and dual processors it shouldn't have much trouble doing anything as long as its not being pounded constantly.

Dell is not going to rebrand Alienware because the reason why they bought Alienware was for the name and brand in the first place. Dell has had a lot of trouble with enthusiasts not liking them and their systesm, so they bought a company which had the hearts of many enthusiasts. By Dell buying Alienware you now know that Alienware is never going to go bust because Dell will unfortunatly never go bust and there will always be money around.

that sucks, PHP5 has been out for quite a bit.

I'd post a desktop screen but currently my desktop is the location of all my files, i really need to sort my hard drives out.

Now that looks like a cool project. Although it looks like it needs a relatively powerful computer and some money spent.

Alienware: http://www.alienware.com/product_pages/not...ll_default.aspx They have a new laptop out with SLI and 17" screen which starts at $2000, so you might not want to go for it unless you can raise some more money as there is always extras that you want to get.

128MB is fine, 80% of people have that or less.

I recommend Corsair for memory, always been very happy with it, from the ValueSelect to the XMS modules. As what to do with the memory you could always decorate something with them like the outside of you computer case.

I find reading large amounts of text on the screen really difficult in the first place, plus I always like having something physical for my money. I'm not going to spend £15 on a ebook and not have the book on myshelf. Create for quickly looking through and having with you on the go though.

I've seen things like this already and they have never released any ebooks, i guess I will have to wait and see if this one does. Not that there will be any books which are worth downloading probably.

Linux doesn't take any more effotr than windows to use. Your just to lazy to learn how to use linux effectively and make the switch because you have been brought up only knowing windows.

Well I suppose I am a student still. But I run my own quite suceessful IT company with a good fried, so I like to put CEO down whenever asked.

Wow, I thought AutoCAD was industry standard nowadays. I use Rhino3D for all my CAD work. (and its is pretty horrible to use, although i can get it to work.)

Well it depends what you are transfering between the interfaces: Internet <---> Firewall <---> Lan (Setup 1) Then you are only going to have possible a max throughput of 8Mbps (it will be your internet connection). However if like me you have something like this: Lan 1 <---> Firewall <---> Internet (Setip 2) Lan 2 <---> Then you may have traffic going between Lan 1 and Lan 2 which then your max throughput would be of the hardware you are using, so in most peoples cases 10/100 and a 200MHz - 500Mhz PC would be able. But if you have gigabit then you might need nearing 1GHz.

Nice! I have access to a CNC miller (but unfortunaly it won't even take Aluminium) and a Laser Cutter (which is brillant, for plastics.) Have you seen http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=76374? That is one awesome project. I recommend anyone to spend about an hour (it will take you that long to go through the post) if you want to pick your Jaw up off the floor.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/turbocache.html nVidia won't admit that it saves money and reduces performance but there is their page about it. You just have to remember if it was so great then all the GFX cards would support it, it don't see any 7900GTX with only 64MB of onboard RAM and 512MB of TurboCache.

Vako, that kind of spec is for if you have Gigabit running through the firewall, which in most cases people don't have more than 2Mb on their internet connection. Celerons make good firewalls, they run cooler as well than the pentium brothers. http://www.m0n0.ch/wall/ for those of you are interested in Monowall theres the link. What I love about it is that I can run it off an old 8MB compact flash card on a cf to ide adaptor. Its on freebsd as well and most of the coding for the OS is in PHP which saves space and means its easy to tweak. It is lacky wireless support at the moment but this should be fixed in v1.3 which will use the freebsd v6.x OS. If anyone has any questions then I would be happy to answer them about Mono.