a computer post
as the title says this shall be a computer themed post.
I was having some problems with my wireless card in my laptop (as it wouldn't connect), so I finally cornered my dad and we spent some hours messing with it and the network this weekend. Conclusion: The card and the security on the router are no longer on speaking terms, literally. When the encryption is turned on, the card won't connect. When it's turned off, the card has no problems connecting to the network. When it went out, I was in the middle of surfing the net and im'ing some of the Last Gate folk, then wham out it goes. The card always got soo hot (being near the hard drive and the fans), so until we can test on another laptop, out best bet is something inside the card has fried.
Which leads me to a dilemma. This laptop is old. I got it in 2001 before heading to Savannah for grad school. It runs on Me, which Microsoft stopped supporting last summer. It's a pentium 3 (later model, but still slow by todays standards), and I've got the RAM maxed at 512mb. Thing is do I want to buy a new wireless card and do the necessary upgrades (necessary: HD, OS to XP; possible: motherboard, processor, dvd drive to a combo, cooling system, graphics card and see if possible to put internal wireless network card in it) or should I just aim for getting an entirely new laptop (which for what I'd want would run probably at least $2000).
If anyone tries to play the recent EPs for the Sims with the most current Nvidia drivers, entering boolprop useshaders false into the cheat box does help the game run longer most of the time, instead of the drivers crashing within an hour of starting. but not always. Some times the drivers will still crash after a while. Hopefully ea and nvidia can figure out the issue it's having. Atleast it seems to behave with Civilization. But it's highly irritating to have to program the custom timing each time the driver gets updated just because it uses dvi connection (and remembering how it goes without cutting off the clock). So might consider upgrading it in the summer.
I was having some problems with my wireless card in my laptop (as it wouldn't connect), so I finally cornered my dad and we spent some hours messing with it and the network this weekend. Conclusion: The card and the security on the router are no longer on speaking terms, literally. When the encryption is turned on, the card won't connect. When it's turned off, the card has no problems connecting to the network. When it went out, I was in the middle of surfing the net and im'ing some of the Last Gate folk, then wham out it goes. The card always got soo hot (being near the hard drive and the fans), so until we can test on another laptop, out best bet is something inside the card has fried.
Which leads me to a dilemma. This laptop is old. I got it in 2001 before heading to Savannah for grad school. It runs on Me, which Microsoft stopped supporting last summer. It's a pentium 3 (later model, but still slow by todays standards), and I've got the RAM maxed at 512mb. Thing is do I want to buy a new wireless card and do the necessary upgrades (necessary: HD, OS to XP; possible: motherboard, processor, dvd drive to a combo, cooling system, graphics card and see if possible to put internal wireless network card in it) or should I just aim for getting an entirely new laptop (which for what I'd want would run probably at least $2000).
If anyone tries to play the recent EPs for the Sims with the most current Nvidia drivers, entering boolprop useshaders false into the cheat box does help the game run longer most of the time, instead of the drivers crashing within an hour of starting. but not always. Some times the drivers will still crash after a while. Hopefully ea and nvidia can figure out the issue it's having. Atleast it seems to behave with Civilization. But it's highly irritating to have to program the custom timing each time the driver gets updated just because it uses dvi connection (and remembering how it goes without cutting off the clock). So might consider upgrading it in the summer.