The Ask anything about computers thread

[JDPNYY]

Grazie amico mio!

Were you able to get your problem solved?

[TheHugeUnit2]

Yesterday morning I woke up and my computer had a black screen with a blinking underscore in the top left of the screen. I turned it off and back on, same thing. I tried F10 when it started up the third time and nothing, I tried F2 and F12 they went to those programs, but still wouldn't start windows. When its on the black screen ill hit cntrl alt and delete. the screen will go completely black and ill hit down and enter. Im guessing it brings up the task bar thing and will shut down whatever program, but it just starts the bios loading screen and back to the black screen with the underscore. I really don't know what to do. If anyone could help me out, thank you so much.

[Mr Coffee]

Maybe try this: http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-2...en-with-cursor

[fredgmuggs]

I need a replacement laptop battery and I don't feel like paying Dell the big bucks they want. Any suggestions for sites that sell good quality aftermarket batteries? I've seen a ton of sites that offer ridiculously inexpensive batteries but I have this nagging feeling that you get what you pay for. Has anyone bought from an aftermarket site they can recommend?

[Jersey Yankee]

I need a replacement laptop battery and I don't feel like paying Dell the big bucks they want. Any suggestions for sites that sell good quality aftermarket batteries? I've seen a ton of sites that offer ridiculously inexpensive batteries but I have this nagging feeling that you get what you pay for. Has anyone bought from an aftermarket site they can recommend?

This place gave me a good deal on their replacements for my Acer: http://www.richbattery.com/

My regular battery is a 4400maH, 6-cell unit. They sold me a pair of 7800maH, 9-cell batteries @43.00/each.

You can also try eBay's laptop place (check the feedback percentage and total number of sales to determine the seller's trust rating).

http://www.ebay.com/sch/Laptop-Batte...p3286.c0.m1538

[fredgmuggs]

This place gave me a good deal on their replacements for my Acer: http://www.richbattery.com/

My regular battery is a 4400maH, 6-cell unit. They sold me a pair of 7800maH, 9-cell batteries @43.00/each.

You can also try eBay's laptop place (check the feedback percentage and total number of sales to determine the seller's trust rating).

http://www.ebay.com/sch/Laptop-Batte...p3286.c0.m1538

Thanks, Brad.

How long have you had it and does it still hold a decent charge after a year (that's my biggest concern about buying an aftermarket. Well that and it not setting my house on fire)

[yankeeschic12324]

I need a replacement laptop battery and I don't feel like paying Dell the big bucks they want. Any suggestions for sites that sell good quality aftermarket batteries? I've seen a ton of sites that offer ridiculously inexpensive batteries but I have this nagging feeling that you get what you pay for. Has anyone bought from an aftermarket site they can recommend?

I bought two off ebay (for two laptops..not 2 for one laptop lol) And they work just fine. Still holds a charge and was fairly inexpensive.

[Tifoso]

Were you able to get your problem solved?

It hasn't shown up again (thankfully), amico mio.

[Jersey Yankee]

Thanks, Brad.

How long have you had it and does it still hold a decent charge after a year (that's my biggest concern about buying an aftermarket. Well that and it not setting my house on fire)

You're welcome, Tom.

I bought my laptop on Aug 2011, so I couldn't say for a year. However, the batteries work just fine. They're taller than standard batteries, since they keep the laptop charged longer (similar to the hi-capacity batteries for cell phones).

Their cust svc dept is also good, since I'd bought a pair of spare AC adaptors from them for the same laptop. Some "tweaking" needed to be done on the end part which connects to my laptop (the connection was loose), but they replaced those for free.

I don't think that anything will set your house on fire. The "UL Listed" label should indicate that this wouldn't happen. Just remember to set your computer so that on battery power, it goes to sleep/snooze or wot-evah, whenever you have 5-10+ minutes of inactivity. Oh, and recharge once you get home.

[fredgmuggs]

I ended up buying a battery on Amazon for less than 26 bucks with free shipping. I'm pretty skeptical about the quality of this battery but for the price I figure it's worth the shot (and it got pretty good ratings from the reviews which is another thing I'm generally skeptical about). We'll see.

[Jersey Yankee]

I ended up buying a battery on Amazon for less than 26 bucks with free shipping. I'm pretty skeptical about the quality of this battery but for the price I figure it's worth the shot (and it got pretty good ratings from the reviews which is another thing I'm generally skeptical about). We'll see.

Plug it in. Let it run down. See how long it lasts w/o electricity. Then recharge it fully. See how long it takes.

Use the laptop normally w/o an AC cord, recharging when you need to power it back up.

If it's a lithium-ion battery, then it should be good. There are quite a few good batteries out there, so I doubt that anyone who wants to stay in business (especially having repeat customers) would risk selling poor quality laptop batteries.

[Tifoso]

Can someone give me a brief explanation of this? Worth doing?

Yahoo probably will do or does the same as Gmail. It's a free service relying on selling of ads. So they will datamine your mail to present relevant ads to you and perhaps later sell that information to other companies or to their affiliates. If one is really paranoid one can try a high end privacy email service like "countermail". Alternatively a cheap non-free email provider is OK. You're not really afraid of the government here, but what you want is your email to be safe from companies who may want to sell your data.
There are sites with collections of free email providers too:
http://www.fepg.net/
It may help to get an email provider in Sweden which has very strict privacy laws.

VPN set up is simple.

There are two basic types for personal computers. PPTP and OpenVPN. PPTP does not require additional software but with the new ipv6 system it could be less secure unless you disable ipv6 on your machine. You subscribe to a free or a premium VPN provider and obtain their address, login and password. For PPTP, in Windows XP:

Click Start menu, Settings, Control Panel.
Choose Network and Internet Connections.
Click on "Create a connection to the network at your workplace".
Select Virtual Private Network connection (VPN). Click Next.
Enter company name "xxxxxx". Click Next.
Enter "vpn.xxxxxxx.com" as "Host name or IP address". Click Next.
Select "My use only" if you want this connecion to apply only to your user on the computer. Select "Anyone's use" if you want this connection to apply to all users. Click Next.
Check "Add a shortcut to this connection to my desktop" if you want easy access to the VPN service.
Click Finish.
You should now disable "File and Printer Sharing" as it can pose as a security issue.
Right click on the newly created connection and choose "Properties"
Click on the "Network" tab and uncheck the "File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks".
Click OK.
To use the service, double click the connection.

When you connect with such a connection, similar to the way people used to connect using Dial Up connections in Windows, all your traffic - email, Skype, ICQ, www, etc. will go through the connection.

For OpenVPN services you need to download their applet or use an open source (free) alternative. The applet then creates an encrypted tunnel between you and the provider. A good service is perfect-privacy.com although it's not the cheapest. There are free services and there are also pay services, some for as little as $4 per month.

There is a review site here:
http://lifehacker.com/5759186/five-b...vice-providers

So to summarise, you may want TOR or a VPN to protect you from the search engine gathering data about you. They hide your IP address and your MAC address. If you don't worry so much about that you can use a paid email account or a better free email account. Gmail is notorious for data mining. Remember that also includes sending emails to Gmail, even if you don't have an account there. There are also free proxy services such as Anonymouse but they're quite limited in what you can use them for.
http://anonymouse.org/anonwww.html

Most ISPs also offer email accounts. They should not data mine either.

[Tifoso]

Uh oh

But what you have failed to mention is that, using VPN or https slows down traffic. That is why some sites use it (https) only for login.

I am using the wireless network on a campus now and these are the results of the speed tests I performed:

Without using a VPN



With a US-based VPN server



Of course the location of the server matters. But the time it takes to encrypt and decrypt data makes it slow. In the images above, just compare the upload speed without a VPN vs the upload speed with a VPN (i.e. the last columns)....

It should be used only when needed. One should weigh the trade-off.

So I would prefer to use a secure channel only when I want instead of having all my traffic being tunneled (even when it's not necessary) by setting up a VPN. So it's a matter of speed vs security. Speed is always necessary but security is not always necessary. E.g. Downloading a very large public file. Why have it encrypted and decrypted when it's not necessary?

[RhodyYanksFan]

I lock my PC up at night. Today when I came in to work for some reason my scroll wheel on my mouse is super super sensitive, like what used to scroll 3 lines on Excel is now scrolling 20, almost like hitting page down. It's very annoying. I remember seeing something that lets you put in how fast scrolling goes, but I can't find it on Win7. Help?!

[theDurk]

I lock my PC up at night. Today when I came in to work for some reason my scroll wheel on my mouse is super super sensitive, like what used to scroll 3 lines on Excel is now scrolling 20, almost like hitting page down. It's very annoying. I remember seeing something that lets you put in how fast scrolling goes, but I can't find it on Win7. Help?!

On mine (also Win 7, Logitech mouse), I would open Control Panel, select Mouse, then the Scrolling tab, then there is a slider for scrolling speed.

[RhodyYanksFan]

On mine (also Win 7, Logitech mouse), I would open Control Panel, select Mouse, then the Scrolling tab, then there is a slider for scrolling speed.

This is a Microsoft mouse. I found the mouse control panel, but the slider you're talking about only adjusts the speed the scroll wheel that's on my keyboard is scrolling at. I guess I should start by rebooting.

[theDurk]

This is a Microsoft mouse. I found the mouse control panel, but the slider you're talking about only adjusts the speed the scroll wheel that's on my keyboard is scrolling at. I guess I should start by rebooting.

Yep. If that doesn't work, go to Device Manager (Control Panel...System, then Device Manager is in top left corner), uninstall the mouse driver, and reboot. Windows will then reinstall the driver.

[krystl]

Maybe there's something in the ball or blocking the laser thingy if its optical.

[fredgmuggs]

I received my aftermarket made in China laptop battery today. The instructions are something else - it's like someone did a google translation of Chinese into English. (I'm not having a good feeling about this battery but so far it seems to be functioning as it should.)

[Jersey Yankee]

I received my aftermarket made in China laptop battery today. The instructions are something else - it's like someone did a google translation of Chinese into English. (I'm not having a good feeling about this battery but so far it seems to be functioning as it should.)

Dude, a battery is like a Q-Tip: it doesn't need instructions ... in ANY language.

Does it fit into your laptop? Does your laptop power up with it? Does it charge?

Keep it charged overnight and see how long you can go w/o having to use the AC adaptor.

[Big_E]

Aftermarket equipment is one thing...but with all the battery recalls companies have had, I dont put anything into my laptop that does not have a UL logo on it.

[fredgmuggs]

Aftermarket equipment is one thing...but with all the battery recalls companies have had, I dont put anything into my laptop that does not have a UL logo on it.

I hear you, E.

It claims it is CE and UL rated but I imagine that can be faked fairly easily.

I bought it on Amazon (as my kid calls Amazon - the WalMart of the internet) and it had a ton of reviews going back over 3 years. While the reviews had the usual mix of people claiming it was the best battery for the dollar ever created and other people who said it was junk, there were no mentions by anyone about it overheating and causing a fire. So I took that as a good sign.

Dell had a ton of problems with their own OEM batteries so I don't think there are any guarantees.

[Jersey Yankee]

Aftermarket equipment is one thing...but with all the battery recalls companies have had, I dont put anything into my laptop that does not have a UL logo on it.

Laptop battery recalls? I must've missed that news item.

I'll have to remove the OEM battery from my laptop, but the 3rd party ones don't have any UL sticker on them. I think it's more important to have the correct voltage being matched. If the voltage is off from the OEM, then the UL sticker won't matter anywayz, since your laptop's motherboard will end up being fried (short-circuited), instead of a fire hazard.

[Jersey Yankee]

My OEM battery is 10.8V, 4.15mah, made in Japan, assembled in China.

My 3rd party batteries are 10.8V, 7.8mah, made in China. I don't see any UL listing or label on either of them.

[Big_E]

Laptop battery recalls? I must've missed that news item.

I'll have to remove the OEM battery from my laptop, but the 3rd party ones don't have any UL sticker on them. I think it's more important to have the correct voltage being matched. If the voltage is off from the OEM, then the UL sticker won't matter anywayz, since your laptop's motherboard will end up being fried (short-circuited), instead of a fire hazard.

Really? I had a battery recalled for my laptop...

http://www.dellbatteryprogram.com/
http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/20/h...-recall-again/
http://www.pcworld.com/article/22910...d_to_know.html

After working for a medical device manufacturer for 5 years, and knowing the strenuous testing UL does before putting their logo on something, I insist on seeing the logo. I bought replacement for a dead laptop battery, the guy claimed it was the same as the Dell battery, but it came from china, and had no safety certifications. Even though he said no refunds, as is, blah blah, i got my money back.

When we were shopping for a new washer/dryer, i checked the serial plate on every device for the UL symbol. Even had the salesman pull one away from the other units, because the serial plate was not easily viewable.