MRGRIM

I'm a huge Dell fan, ALWAYS take the 3 year warranty. Any problem I’ve ever had has been resolved Next working business day. For minor items e.g. replacement disk drives in desktop’s or laptop’s they’ll normally just overnight the part to me.

You know; I never get bored of taking old drives apart, those shiny mirror like platters just intrigue me, then there’s those uber magnets that go right the way through the 3/4” thick worktop I have. Some days at work are just too fun.

Dog Seen as I own a Border Collie =] she's awesome I LUBS YOU!

What about COST? For me it's always been performance+cost, then I go look for what mothers are avaliable for each processor, then go from there.

Run HDD Regenerator on it http://www.dposoft.net/ also avaliable on Hirens Boot Disk This will take a long time to run depending on how big the disk is - this usually solves disk based problems for me (bad sectors etc) Worth a shot, you've nothing to lose.

Fujitsu Siemens have a 4 digit pin that can't be removed (at least on their business class laptops)

Throw RAM at the problem and see if it fixes it =] Other things to try;- Run MSCONFIG and disable everything you don't need from start up. You've uninstalled Norton but what have you replaced it with? From experience the only AV I recommend is ESET's NOD32.

What are you using it for?

http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/p-2...dev-kit-us.aspx Has anyone seen this before? Is anyone using?

i) Get the user to provide the current password. Inform then that upon their return they will need to enter a new password [make sure you check this option on their AD account] ii) Before carrying work out on the users system inform them that their password will be reset to xxxxxxx e.t.c I guess you're in a real pickle and the above doesn't help you out, but it should do going forward.

Not something stupid like having assigned it a fixed IP? :P

Buy a new CD drive? $12 Load Windows XP CD - Repair :)

Not sure about Compaq's now? I've had 3 in the past and all where very solid. I've had 2 come in to my office and they just seem to be very light weight and have a plastic feel to them.

Humm, you guys really rate Sony's? I bought a smallish one 4-5 years ago because I loved the x-black screen, its gotten a bit clunky and the Mrs uses it now, it will be replaced with a Net Book when it dies. Before I arrived at my current work they had 3 or 4 Sony's all of which have died of something usually only being 1 or 2 months outside of warrnty. It's nice how Sony laptop motherboards are worth more than the actual laptop added to which Sony Laptop's are hella expensive imo. Dell, Lenovo and then Fujitsu-Siemens all the way.

Firstly Vostros? So basically you bought extremely cheap Dell kit and extremely cheap support. Dell support gets t-bagged all the time, I've never had a problem with them, as long as you stay calm and explain problems, if they want you to run a 6 hour disk diagnostic - tell them you've done it already and it failed, they'll send you a brand new disk the next day. Don’t complain because you bought cheap consumer grade systems for everyday business use. For me Latitude and Optiplex’s with 3 Year NBD warranty every time! I’ve bought a lot of “refurbished” Dell kit, which has savings of around 60% compared to Dell.co.uk, all the kit comes with a brand new Dell Warranty – I don’t know of similar sites in the US but I’d image they exist.

My IBM ThinkPad is going strong. All my Dell's have been ok, and when something has gone wrong the parts have always been replaced like for like.

I'm also interested in running to Wireless SSID to isolate my Public and Private networks, I've not really found a 100% way to do this yet. I had hoped to do it with DD-WRT but it just doesn't seem to work right, a wireless device in my house craps out constantly when I use any kind of security so I was just going to allow it to connect to the public wireless and only allow it access to a specific server. At the moment I'm having to use 2 AP's I'll probally invest in some Cisco kit one day. ;)

Hummm way to revive a year old topic :/

Well... you learn something everyday :)

A red circle with a X inside means disabled (just went and did it now) Your computer icons look tottally different to mine.

Ok, I looked at doing this a few years ago. Linksys make an IP camera, hook the wireless camera upto your network and then configure it to save the videos to an FTP server, then you don't need an "in house" storage device. Otherwise put a Server or NAS in your loft or something.

I'm not 100% sure what you're trying to do. As someone has pointed out, you can simply run a long network cable off your router or switch and then plug this into your AP and then you'll have wireless around the AP. Depending on the model of both Wireless AP's/Routers you could bridge them and add a switch each end so that you have extended your network. Otherwise can't you look at changing the ariels on the router? It might be worth while just buying a good class AP in the first place (like a Cisco Aironet - I use 3 1130AG's and I get full coverage of our whole factory)

MIA ... Matt in Action! :D

I like fish

Some of the Compaq stuff is quite nice, not really seen a lot of their stuff since HP bought them out, their old kit used to be quite good. I've had a fair share of laptops and would say that Dell are pretty much a good all round choice, if you're ordering online I'd recommend giving them a quick call and just let them know that you are looking elsewhere perhaps spec a similar laptop and see if you can't "fudge" the price. I have ordered Dell kit for friends before (as I order for my business I have more leverage) however Dell will normally offer upgrades for no cost provided you can haggle and don't expect miracles. Calling Dell closer to month ends can be handy as well; they'll often give you major discounts to meet monthly sales quotas. If you plan on moving your laptop around a lot, I would personally avoid Sony's. I have an S1XP at home that my partner uses (it was mine before I gave it to her) it's coming up to 5 years old and starting to show its age. The Sony's our executives have all had have died horrible deaths, and I found the support on them to be rubbish.