Greetings & Salutations

[Adrian Wong]

Oh yeah, get a larger hard drive, man! The price difference is minimal.

And if I were you, I would skip the CRT too. Go for an LCD. It's really not that expensive these days.

[Chai]

Originally Posted by diaboluz666

To Chai,

Pardon me if how im replying is wrong. i'm new in forums as well. but, refering to your suggestion on the sound card bit, would onboard be able to churn out good sound as opposed to the (less than entry level) SB 5.1? my friend suggested the same thing as you did, but, someone did tell me that as a rule of thumb, anything onboard wouldnt be as good as add-ons (e.g. mid-range graphics card vs. high-to-mid range integrated graphics accellerator). i'm a music fan who is quite particular about sound, but with a budget. Thank you for your 2 cents. 8)

SB 5.1 is a crappy sound card to begin with, unless you are still into MIDI, which I find it lacking with most of the sound cards today. It only applies if you are a MIDI music composer.

Most of the onboard sound today matches or exceed the ability of the SB 5.1. Yes it's true that standalone card is better, which is why there are better alternatives and you intend to spend more. I have an old EMU 0404 PCI card. This was one of the audiophile card, but now there are better alternatives, which are not cheap, like the one mentioned by Adrian, Auzentech cards.

[diaboluz666]

Thank you for all d input/info. Most helpful. FYI, I'm a graphic designer who deals with mostly 2D vector graphics/photo editing, I might also be doing 3D modelling/rendering work as well in the near future. Apart from that, I listen to music extensively and I also play games on my PC (anybody who doesnt?)

I chose the CRT mainly because I dont think with my budget I could get a really nice LCD. IMHO I dont think they have any (below RM600) that is comparatively fast (fps) and sharp enough like a CRT monitor. I work with a BeNQ FP1G+. Pretty sucky I would say and that's just doing work. I dont play games at the office (they should change the rulings here ). Also, there is the matter of ghosting on these low-end/entry level LCDs, rite?

So, until LCDs get a lot cheaper or till I've saved up enough, I'll just settle with a tried & tested, bright, although heavy as s**te CRT monitor. That is the learned and good people of ARP have an alternate suggestion to my (cheapy) choice.

As for the HD issue, do you think I will need all that space? I would definitely agree with you if I had the $$$. But, then also, wont it be a risky thing to do, in case the HD gets corrupted? I'm just voicing out something that's been drummed into me over time. And will it take ages to do a virus scan (I do that very often) and during defragmentation?

I will definitely follow your suggestion on the soundcard. I will upgrade it as I go along.

thanks again.

[Adrian Wong]

Actually, ghosting is not an issue on lower-end LCD panels because they all use TN panels which have a fast response time. Of course, the colour and viewing angle sucks. So, yeah, probably you can stick with CRT for now.

Huh? More HDD space won't increase the risk of corruption. Where did you read that? You should read this - Tech ARP - Hard Disk Drive Myths Debunked Rev. 2.1

[diaboluz666]

Thanks. About the HDD, what I meant was, will it not be a major bummer when ALL 500GB of data is lost when the HDD gets corrupted, as opposed to a little lesser amount of data loss in a, say 250GB HDD. I say this because, with 500GB of space, I would think that I'm gonna save a LOT of stuff in it, rite.. That's a LOT of data to be lost in the event of a corruption/death of a HDD.

My practice of backing up data only comes into play when I have no more space in my HDD. Other than that, I'd normally leave it in my computer. And honestly, I've never had any larger than 80GB worth of space.

[Chai]

Originally Posted by diaboluz666

Thanks. About the HDD, what I meant was, will it not be a major bummer when ALL 500GB of data is lost when the HDD gets corrupted, as opposed to a little lesser amount of data loss in a, say 250GB HDD. I say this because, with 500GB of space, I would think that I'm gonna save a LOT of stuff in it, rite.. That's a LOT of data to be lost in the event of a corruption/death of a HDD.

My practice of backing up data only comes into play when I have no more space in my HDD. Other than that, I'd normally leave it in my computer. And honestly, I've never had any larger than 80GB worth of space.

Either way, you will lose precious data. The best way is to have another backup HDD if they are important to you.

So I have 2 500GB HDD, one for backup.

[diaboluz666]

Okay. I hear you. Thanks. Anyways, would it be ethical for me to discuss/ask about which broadband service provider would be a good/stable one. Streamyx has been around for quite a while and probably the most stable around, IMO. The thing is, a land line is required, meaning there are rental, contracts and so on, rite. I might be shifting places sometime. It'd be great to have a wireless broadband connection, you know what I'm saying. I read and heard a lot of bad things about Maxis' service/product. Apart from them, which provider would be a choice? What say you?

[Adrian Wong]

Originally Posted by diaboluz666

Okay. I hear you. Thanks. Anyways, would it be ethical for me to discuss/ask about which broadband service provider would be a good/stable one. Streamyx has been around for quite a while and probably the most stable around, IMO. The thing is, a land line is required, meaning there are rental, contracts and so on, rite. I might be shifting places sometime. It'd be great to have a wireless broadband connection, you know what I'm saying. I read and heard a lot of bad things about Maxis' service/product. Apart from them, which provider would be a choice? What say you?

Yeah, but you already posted it in another thread, so let's discuss it there - http://forums.techarp.com/general-di...providers.html

[fiddler]

Originally Posted by Chai

Either way, you will lose precious data. The best way is to have another backup HDD if they are important to you.

So I have 2 500GB HDD, one for backup.

Me too, although I wouldn't recommend the Freecom HD pro I bought - the esata doesn't work and the interface is a bit sticky.
How's the system-building going? After another crash and XP serious error I removed the SB Audigy card and all the drivers and software and loaded the Audio that came with the gigabyte mobo. I'm sure it will suit your purposes - note the warning in the manual - load the MS UAA Bus Driver for HD audio first. Don't know why, but it's best to follow these things

As an aside - having loaded all the other Gigabyte drivers on the included DVD I had to reactivate XP for some reason - it didn't like the "hardware change" - maybe it sensed a chipset driver update or something - which was a PITA but worked OK.

Miles

[Dashken]

Originally Posted by fiddler

I'm sure it will suit your purposes - note the warning in the manual - load the MS UAA Bus Driver for HD audio first. Don't know why, but it's best to follow these things

Yeah, load the UAA Driver first. It's weird that XP SP2 doesn't come with one. Even the latest SP3 RC, the KB888111 is not included as well. But most of the time, if the KB888111 is included in the installation driver (in one of the folders), when you run the audio driver setup.exe, it should automatically install the KB888111 and then the audio driver. If it doesn't, then you won't see your audio device under the 'Sound, video and game controllers' in device manager. Then, you'll have to manually install the KB888111 and the audio drivers.