OT: Technology and Geek Stuff Thread

[Coop]

can't compete with the wiiiiiiiiiiiii

[Timmy]

That rocks DWT. My drive is getting noisy plus I'd love an Elite. Might be time to Fleabay it.

Hoping Sony keeps owners as well covered wrt overheating issues. :D

I'm thinking of picking up a Wii if I can find one outside of a bundle and at MSRP.

[Jdoggie]

I just bought a dell for the wife and have yet to have a problem. I haven't called customer service yet so i can't say if it is good or not. However the Dell i bought has a great warrenty and also included a LoJack system incase it was stolen.

[Panoptes]

I've had my Toshiba Qosmio G25-AV15 notebook (PC replacement) for over 1.5 years. I purchased a +3 year walk-in extended warranty from Circuit City but to date I have yet to have any sort of problem even requiring a simple phone inquiry.

My laptop is a big hit everywhere I take it.

Also, I insure it as a valuable item on my homeowners insurance for about $20/year. I can break it, spill on it, run over it with my car and its fully covered at RCV. If someone else steals it, no biggie.

[The Cat]

Also, I insure it as a valuable item on my homeowners insurance for about $20/year. I can break it, spill on it, run over it with my car and its fully covered at RCV.

Do that every day Gonz. Most common method....out the window.

[The Cat]

Tim explained my position pretty well. I wouldn't recommend your average Joe get into a custom built machine. Of all the brand names, I still think Dell is a good buy. And they make it fairly idiot proof, which is what most average Joes need.

Don't forget subaverage Deb, i hate being excluded.

[dwt1]

20/year that's relativey expensive for valuable item insurance, I don't pay that much for two gold Rolexs and a Breitling. But I have USAA and they really can't be touched. For the last two years I've actually made money on my car insurance bill. I get more cars than drivers discount, safe driver discount and since the customers are owners of USAA we get a percetage of our premiums retuned to us in sucribers saving account and since I've been with them for over 22 years that account has grown quite large and the return and the account the the rebate and savings is now more than what I pay in auto insurance. Why can't more insurance companies operate that way.

[-Deborah-]

No doubt, sounds like quite a deal.

BTW, my State Farm valuables insurance policy for my laptop was about $32.

[dwt1]

wow

[Coop]

changing topics - I've learned recently that I can capture streaming SD and HD (selectively) via the 1394 firewire ports on my Motorola 6200 cable box - any of my fellow geeks had any luck with HD capturing or porting captured files off of their boxes?

In theory all of the channels charter offers right now should be capturable as the 5c encryption is turned off, but I'm finding that in some cases that although the stream acts like it's capturing the resulting file can't be played back....

[-Deborah-]

I haven't tried, although I've heard that's possible with my Moxi box. The AVSForum.com site probably has a thread on it.

I found one here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...postid=3818890

And this post tells how to test to see if the channel is encrypted: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...86#post3855086

[dwt1]

since your slingbox streams your TV onto your computer - wouldn't you beable to capture it that way??

[-Deborah-]

Probably, but it would have to be with a third party program. The Slingbox Player does not capture, it just plays.

[Coop]

Deb - spent most of the weekend on AVS forums and scouring the Internet - the encryption flag is not set on any channel I've tried, but something is different. I found a few other posts from Charter customers that are having the same issue but none have had any luck figuring it out.

[unknown lions fan]

For every PC out there, you'll find someone who has had a bad experience.

I run Dells on my personal and company PCs, and they work very well.

As far as customer service goes, do yourself a favor - don't use it.

Troubleshooting a PC problem over the phone is useless. You cannot convey enough information about the problem to an underexperienced tech (who is following a rigid set of troubleshooting guidelines, and is under corporate time constraints to handle so-many-calls-per-hour to keep his job) to fix your issue.

Do a Google search on the error message or the problem at hand and learn for yourself. Use the software or hardware company's support site to read and learn.