The Spam Thread!

[RAMChYLD]

Doesn't that compress the data? If the data becomes compressed, then each time the files are accessed, they will have to be uncompressed, which could result in a performance hit if the system isn't a high-end rig.

Not really. Basically using these features means that you're resizing partitions. Resizing partitions, especially shrinking a partition, is always risky. Personally, I'd just move whatever that is in the D partition into a USB disk, delete D, and then tell C to expand to take up the whole disk. The idea of using a secondary partition for backups to me is kinda moot, since a virus attack means that D will still get infected since it's always available, and if the hard disk dies, anything on D will still be lost.

[cpd2009]

UI Confusion at it's greatest... and I love it.


Clockwise from top right.
1 - UltraPlayer with Wincognito skin. UltraPlayer was this uber-edgy MP3 player from the late 90s that aimed to overthrow Winamp. It never did, and their official website still lingers in a mostly functional state...but I digress.
http://www.ultraplayer.com You may get a Java warning. It's no security risk. It just loads a small applet proclaiming the good news of UltraPlayer.

2 - Adobe Photoshop CS2. For some reason, interacting with Photoshop CS2 on Win8 makes the window border revert to the Vista-style basic theme for that program only. Otherwise, Photoshop CS2 runs fine.

3 - VLC Media Player with modern desktop theme. 'Nuff said.

[cpd2009]

Audrey is all well and good again. No more RealPlayer for me. VLC shall do fine.

As for Greta... she is due for a reinstall of Windows 7. She has been running the same factory install for nearly two years now and she is starting to slow sluggishness here and there. She also needs a RAM upgrade as well, which may help with the sluggishness. Even so, she has had so much software uninstalled and installed that some slowness is bound to stick.

I can't seem to find a Linux distro that plays nice with Audrey, so if I do plan on going ahead for a Win7 reinstall, I plan on using Greta as a Linux test system for a few days. My choice? Linux Mint.

Linux would be good for Greta since Audrey is becoming my main system at this point. Linux would be good for a system that is secondary.

File backup and Linux testing begins tomorrow.

[RAMChYLD]

Guitarrrrrrrr!!!

[cpd2009]

Finally getting finished with restoring Greta to Windows 7.

What happened to Linux? Well, I I'm just going to save up for a dedicated Linux box. More on that in a future posting. Anyway, this time, Greta is going to have some big changes in default software...

First, Norton is out. I have no problem with Norton, as the program has worked wonderfully the two years I have had it. Unfortunately, my money is tight, and all I really need is basic, free antivirus. Norton has that, but also has a boatload of other features I don't use. Thus, Norton is out, and Avira Free Antivirus is in.

Same goes for Adobe Reader and Winamp. Adobe Reader is mostly the same as Norton, and ends up being slow. It's being replaced with Foxit Reader.

As for Winamp, I still hold a deep love for it, but after using it for so many years, and with an uncertain future, I decided to try out UltraPlayer on Audrey. It's very simplistic... no Media Library, integrated Shoutcast, or any of that... just beautifully simple playback. Closest it gets to a library is Playlist creation. It also has limited skins and visuals So few they total around 10mb!, but I hardly used the Winamp AVS as it was.

Maybe I shouldn't have fired off that fanboy email to the UltraPlayer staff when I was a rebellious teen.

[RAMChYLD]

SIGILL

[huckleberrypie]

Took me more than a dozen attempts to successfully troll Darius in Need for Speed: Carbon. Even with a swift-handling car such as the Lancer he's still a drag to smoke out.

In other words, get an Evo IX, tune the hell out of it, practise practise practise at the canyons then smite the lousy worm when you're ready.

[cpd2009]

Took me more than a dozen attempts to successfully troll Darius in Need for Speed: Carbon. Even with a swift-handling car such as the Lancer he's still a drag to smoke out.

In other words, get an Evo IX, tune the hell out of it, practise practise practise at the canyons then smite the lousy worm when you're ready.

Oh...

I thought you meant the Darius shoot 'em up games by Taito.

Speaking of racing games, closest thing to a racing game I have is Flatout 2, and I may actually install that on Audrey as I'm trying to make Greta more of a casual gaming system. I just hope the AMD Radeon 8400 can run Flatout 2 with no problems. It's an entry level GPU.

[cpd2009]

Shared this on Facebook, but I'll share here too.

Media Player Showdown everyone! Two media players from the dawn of MP3 sharing duke it out on Greta's desktop. Sonique at the top, and UltraPlayer at the bottom.

What music are they playing? The Redbook soundtrack to an advergame from 2001 called "Mall Maniacs". More on that later.

For those who are unaware, Sonique was a popular music player for Windows, and they were Winamp's true competitor in the late 90s and early 2000s. Unfortunately, Lycos bought out the small developer, Media Science, and they ran Sonique into the ground even moreso than Winamp at the hands of AOL. While Winamp almost died recently, Sonique died in 2003 with the final release being an unfinished beta of Sonique 2.

As for UltraPlayer? They were the underdogs here, and technically still are seeing as how their website remains in a mostly functional state to this day and you can easily download the last release at Cnet Download.com.

[Blackberry Bun]

Love you all.

Call me paranoid, but to me that short sentence feels like a last message before committing s...
Please tell me it's just a regular short message.