BladeRunner

Ah, you're in the UK. I don't think the above link posted will actually work for you. Try: www.pricewatch.co.uk Then type "Windows XP" into the search box. Any version of WinXP you purchase now will have SP1 integrated.

Using WinXP now £0 Upgrading to Server 2003 £399 No competition.

Actually you can use a 400Mhz FSB chip with dual-channel memory: 400Mhz FSB - Dual Channel PC2100 533Mhz FSB - Dual Channel PC2700 800Mhz FSB - DUal Channel PC3200 However, unless you are on a real tight budget just get a Northwood C CPU - 800Mhz HT Even if your budget wont stretch that highm wait a month or so until it does Get some TwinMOS DDR400 memory (usually nice and cheap and good quality) and you'll be laughing.

Although this is a fake message and has been doing the rounds for a little while, it isn't unheard of for MS to use unmonitored e-mail accounts. A lot of the Beta e-mail addresses are simply used to send mail messages out and replying to those messages gets you nowhere. In fact the wording: "Please do not reply to this message. It was sent from an unmonitored e-mail address and we are unable to respond to any replies" is exactly what does appear at the bottom of lots of beta related e-mail's.

A couple more to add to mine: SB Audigy 2 - To replace a dead Audigy 1 Maxtor 120GB SATA HD - Well work paid for it and by the time it made it into the work machine it was an 80GB ATA100 drive

The following CPU's have Hyperthreading enabled: Northwood B (533Mhz) 3.06Ghz All Northwood C (800Mhz) All Northwood B CPU's have had HT built in, however this is disabled at the factory and cannot be enabled, despite what some sites have said.

Oh please. I have Norton 2003 running on my home machine. It loads with Windows and I have it set for full security, ie all files are scanned before execution. All e-mail messages are scanned as they arrive and as they leave my system. The impact on system resources is next to nothing and with a real-time scanner running you are not going to get infected with anything. The corporate edition we have running at work also does real-time scanning and checks all e-mails and as I type this all of the services used by the program take up no more than around 12MB - there is also no drop in performance because it is running.

Pop along to the following link: http://uk.europe.creative.com/support/dr...mp;drivertype=1 There were some new beta drivers posted on the 7-5-03 for the Audigy & Audigy 2 under Win2k/XP only. This download is due to expire on 31-8-03, however the final software should be available before then. Fixes & Features: Sound Blaster Audigy Specific Sound Blaster Audigy performance increased by 10%-15% for EAX ADVANCED HD Number of simultaneous voices has been doubled from 32 to 64 Sound Blaster Audigy and Audigy 2 Benefits Reverb presets setting by game audio engine is now on average 10X faster EAX Morphing performance enhanced, typically yielding a 2X improvement in frame-rates for morphed sections.

I think in all honesty it is just too much hassle to start releasing two versions of SP's - one for the UK and one for say the US. Also people would find a way of installing the UK version with Java on their US versions - then the US government would get all upset again. I personally felt all these anti-MS rulings were about choice for the people, that things should not be forced on people. But they were forced to remove Java from the SP, not offer it as an optional installation. I believe that unless MS can get the ruling overturned in the courts then they are actually going to totally stop production and development on their own JVM. Then we'll have no choice but to use Sun's - If this happens we can only hope Sun get their fingers out of their arses and actually release something worth installing.

It is highly debateable as to if anything you do on a home network would even be able to touch the surface with regards of GB ethernet. Sure you might be able to transfer files quicker between your machines but that is about it - if you think gaming is going to suddenly be 100x better you'll be in for a disapointment. With the price of GB Switches still being sky high I'd very much deem it a waste of money for the home user.

The only reason SP1a was released is because the courts told MS to do so - scary isn't it, government getting involved in what can and cannot be released, and you think MS are "out of order"? Anyway, the only difference is that the MS Jave is removed. You are then supposed to go to Sun's site like a good boy and download their's instead. Personally I found it slow, clunky and so full of bugs you wouldn't believe. That's why even when I did my latest reinstallation I used SP1 and not SP1a as I wanted the MS Java. If I'm forced to do a reinstallation again after the release of SP2 I'll install SP1 first and then SP2 over the top - only way to make sure you get the MS Java and are not forced to get the Sun one.

Speed, stability or not - I really cannot think of anybody who will be able to justify the price tag of this OS for a desktop.

The 9500 only has 4 pipelines. The 9500Pro has 8. Whereas historically the only difference between the Pro and standard models is clock speed this is not the case with the 9500 cards.

I can't see it happening. Release a game and you've potentially got every single PC owner as a customer. Restrict a release to NVidia only and you've immediately lost 30-40% of your potential market. More importantly people will say "Well I'll never buy from that company again". Not only have they lost 30-40% of potential sales on that game, they have in turn then lost 20-30% of potential customers for life.

OK, www.overclockers.co.uk have one too. They are selling the Connect3D ATI 9500Pro 128MB Retail They have it for £140inc VAT, however with delivery you would be back to about the same price as Komplett. Overclockers also don't have any stock at the moment, they are quoting 4-7 Days. On the plus side Overclockers have also got this card: Sapphire ATI 9500Pro 128MB Retail They have it for £141inc Vat and delivery will take you to possible a couple of £ more than Komplett. The advantage is they are holding stock of the Sapphire. Hope this helps.

Oh certainly I'll point you in the direction of one of my favourite retailers I order a lot of stuff from here in the UK: www.komplett.co.uk If you follow the links to "Graphics Cards" followed by "AGP" you'll find a nice range of cards they do. If you scroll down to the bottom of this list you'll see the "Sapphire" line of cards. ATI don't actually sell any "Made by ATI" cards over here in the UK. Some company's do import them, however Sapphire are one of ATI's largest partners and their cards follow ATI's specifications to the letter. The card I've been talking about is: Sapphire 9500 Atlantis Pro 128MB Retail Actually, since I spoke to you earlier things have actually changed Grrrr. The price is now £145inc VAT and then you are looking at around £5 for delivery so that take us a good £20 over your original budget. In addition their stock figure of "5" has changed to "0, Stock expected 9-4-03" - looks like some other people saw it was a good deal too LOL I'll do a little more research, hit some more of the sites I sometimes use and see if I can find any other deals.

Well what I mean is 8x AGP really isn't anything special. To give you an example. I have an ASUS P4G8X-Deluxe motherboard, I also have a Crucial ATI 9700Pro. Both the card and my motherboard support 8x AGP however some early issues between the two meant that to have a reliable and stable setup I had to run in AGP4x. During this time I ran the odd 3DMark2001/2003 benchmark and noted down what I was getting. The issue was then more or less fixed so that I could go back to 8x AGP (although I now have to disable something else, long story). Anyway, back at 8x AGP I ran a few more benchmarks and the difference in score was "within tollerance". That being some of my 8x AGP scores were higher than my 4x ones, in other cases it was lower - it really doesn't seem to make any difference. Any new cards released now will be 8x AGP (Until AGP is replaced next year). They are of course backwards compatible, so if your motherboard is only capable of 4x AGP it will work fine. The ATI 9500 is a great card. Fully DirectX 9 compatible etc. However if you can afford to go for the Pro I would highly recommend it. In the past the only differences between the Pro and non-pro versions was memory speed. However with the 9500 Vs 9500Pro they have actually halved the number of processing pipelines (8 on the 9500Pro, 4 on the 9500). This doesn't totally cripple the card, but makes the 9500Pro at only £10 more certainly more attractive.

I still feel that ATI probably offer the best "bang for buck" right now and their drivers are every bit as good as NVidia's. £130 could get you a Connect3D Radeon 9500 128MB whereas £140 could get you a Connect3D Radeon 9500 Pro 128MB Both these cards are AGP 8X (Not really worth it, but still, its there) and DirectX 9 compatible.

For the same reason people used to post "Gaming on Win2k Advanced Server" threads. If somebody is going to download something they shouldn't rather than just ripping off a workstation OS they go and rip-off a massive server one instead.

Blimey. Your average UK Publication will have plenty of stuff on the cover CD. Very rarely do you buy one without the latest Win2k & WinXP SP's. They usually have the Office SP's as well. Game demo's, trial versions of full software and full versions of slightly older versions (no longer released) of software. The CD's are well worth keeping over here.

The free CD's from MS UK are great. I just went online and ordered XP SP1 & Office XP SP2. Both arrived to me in around five days and didn't cost me a single penny, not even for postage (to be honest I would have been happy to pay £2 postage etc). It's worth grabbing them even if you've already downloaded them - you can then keep them on a "professional" CD that is less likely to get scratched etc. Any UK people who are interested, follow the link posted above.

If you're in the UK the CD is actually free: http://www.microsoft.com/uk/windowsxp/servicepacks/sp1.asp However if you've in a hurry your best bet is to pop out and buy a computer magazine - the cover disk is bound to have the WinXP SP1/a on.

Oh it is quite possible that the Samsung works differently to other LCD's The NEC I have has a maximum resolution/refresh of 1280x1024@75hz. When I first got the display this is what I was running at, however once I moved to DVI the maximum resolution/refresh is 1280x1024@60hz - I wasn't sure if this was just the way NEC were doing it or not, however it appears that Hitachi, LG & Iiyama do the same, so I'm assuming that is official DVI specifications. Thankfully I'm running on a great graphics card (9700 Pro) so it can happily cope with running any thing at 1280x1024 (even those games with nice full detail) so I don't have to worry about scaling and the like.

You're running an LCD at 75hz? That means you can't be using the DVI connection. If you're card has got DVI on you should consider that connection - if you think your display looks good now, you wait until you've got it on a true digitial connection.

Give this Knowledge Base article a try: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;260650