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50 minutes ago, Tugboat said:

Can't imagine it's a bandwidth thing, but then...i've heard there are a lot of craptastic IPs out there who do all manner of shady throttling stuff.  So idk.

As an alternative though, what sort of hardware are you streaming on?  I know sometimes especially on older computers with less graphics processing power and integrated graphics rather than external, a lot of 1080 streaming over time can get kinda extremely suboptimal and super laggy looking.  But it's more a graphics/hardware failure than an internet speed one.

I have a 1-year old laptop with an i7 and GTX 1060, so I don't think it is hardware. I think Centurylink is just being rude and throttling me

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3 minutes ago, Heimdallr said:

I have a 1-year old laptop with an i7 and GTX 1060, so I don't think it is hardware. I think Centurylink is just being rude and throttling me

Seems about right.  I blame Richard Sherman back at home base being grabby as all heck.  Should clear up now that he's gone.

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Not sure where else to post this but anyone familiar with the Acer R11? I'm in the market for a tablet/2-in-1 for multimedia, social media and light gaming (think Hearthstone) - this seems to be the top option for a lot of folks. Just wondering if anyone here had any first hand experience with it and could recommend it?

Probably going to be buying it refurbished from Acer so it's going to be just under $200. 

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On 3/9/2018 at 9:28 PM, Heimdallr said:

I'm pretty sure you cannot daisy chain monitors over HDMI. Pretty sure it needs to be a straight DP connection.

I was hoping cause I was using an adapter it would work. But I believe at this point you are correct.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just made the switch from Mac back to Windows as my home computer for the first time in what seems like almost a decade. It was a tough decision considering a periodically backed up my 2011 Macbook using an external hard drive and I was looking forward to a plug and play experience whenever I got a new laptop. Unfortunately, I don't think Apple has a reasonably priced option to compete with the Windows laptop I ended up with: the Razer Blade Stealth. After playing around with it for about a day, the Stealth really is a Windows laptop for Macbook users. The build quality is nearly identical to the Mac and it could certainly pass for one in the gunmetal coloring at a glance. I also look forward hooking up an eGPU (when they become more reasonably priced) and get back into PC gaming.

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1 minute ago, Rich7sena said:

I just made the switch from Mac back to Windows as my home computer for the first time in what seems like almost a decade. It was a tough decision considering a periodically backed up my 2011 Macbook using an external hard drive and I was looking forward to a plug and play experience whenever I got a new laptop. Unfortunately, I don't think Apple has a reasonably priced option to compete with the Windows laptop I ended up with: the Razer Blade Stealth. After playing around with it for about a day, the Stealth really is a Windows laptop for Macbook users. The build quality is nearly identical to the Mac and it could certainly pass for one in the gunmetal coloring at a glance. I also look forward hooking up an eGPU (when they become more reasonably priced) and get back into PC gaming.

I switched from Mac to a Windows laptop last year, after over a decade of Mac use too. Apple has really dropped the ball on the mid-level market that made them so successful in the student market. The laptops/desktops/monitors are all so far overpriced it vastly outweighs the quality advantage they have. Also, they are getting more and more restrictive with their software. I understand they want the all-in-one system and fully controlled app  store in order to control the entire experience, but it is completely restrictive and anti-consumer. 

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2 minutes ago, Heimdallr said:

I switched from Mac to a Windows laptop last year, after over a decade of Mac use too. Apple has really dropped the ball on the mid-level market that made them so successful in the student market. The laptops/desktops/monitors are all so far overpriced it vastly outweighs the quality advantage they have. Also, they are getting more and more restrictive with their software. I understand they want the all-in-one system and fully controlled app  store in order to control the entire experience, but it is completely restrictive and anti-consumer. 

I'll admit it was hard to leave some parts of the ecosystem behind. I'm both an iPhone and iPad user (although I anticipate the iPad will get much less use now that I have a laptop with more than 3 hours of battery life) and being able to call an text from my computer was great. You're right about Apple neglecting the mid-range market. Their most competitive product per dollar is probably still the Macbook Air the in sub $1000 category.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Did my computer just bite the dust?  I have a desktop computer that I've been using for just over three years.  During this time it has been extremely reliable.  About a week ago, while watching a YouTube video, the screen suddenly went completely white and everything locked up.  I pushed and held down the power button to turn it off and then tried restarting it.  When it restarted, all I got was the Dell splash screen with a bunch of vertical white stripes.  It wouldn't go any further than that, so tried the following:

- Tried resetting the computer back to a previous restore point from about a week earlier.
- Opened up the side panel and cleaned the computer out with a can of compressed air.  It didn't look all that dirty or dusty, but I hoped that might help.  No luck.
- Tried to reset the operating system back to factory settings.  It came with Windows 8.1, and I eventually did the free upgrade to Windows 10, which has worked fine for the last couple of years.  While attempting this reset, the computer ran and ran until I finally had to leave for work.  I decided to just leave it running and hope the reset would go through while I was at work.  When I came home about 12 hours later, it was still running like it was when I left.

I have only had this computer for three years, but have used it a lot during that time.  As stated previously, it has run about as flawlessly as I could have asked for.  What do you think?  Is there anything else I can try?

Also, if it is toast, can I use any of the components in my new computer?  The old computer has 24 GB of RAM, which would be nice to add to it's replacement when/if I buy one.  I'm not positive, but I think the video card is an AMD Radeon(TM) R9 270.  Could that be causing the problem?  It has a 256 GB solid state drive and a 2 TB SATA hard drive.  Here are some specs on the old computer, and also some specs on a new computer that I bought a couple months ago for my day trading station.  I was thinking of buying another one just like the new one to replace the one that just died.  Any advice would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks in advance.

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I guess I'm going to replace the computer that just went bad.  I'm hoping I can take some of the components out of the old one, however.  I have a 2TB hard drive in the old one that I'm hoping is still working.  It also had a 256 MB solid state drive that I'm guessing is probably the bad one.  One question I have is if I could take the 24 GB's of DDR3 RAM and add them to my newer computers which have 24 GB's of DDR4 RAM.  Assuming there is a slot for it, would it work to mix the two types?

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17 hours ago, Uncle Buck said:

I guess I'm going to replace the computer that just went bad.  I'm hoping I can take some of the components out of the old one, however.  I have a 2TB hard drive in the old one that I'm hoping is still working.  It also had a 256 MB solid state drive that I'm guessing is probably the bad one.  One question I have is if I could take the 24 GB's of DDR3 RAM and add them to my newer computers which have 24 GB's of DDR4 RAM.  Assuming there is a slot for it, would it work to mix the two types?

There's a website out there that can tell you if RAM is compatible.  Not all RAM is.  And you can chase seemingly minor and annoying issues for months until you trace it back to RAM that shouldn't be mixed and matched (voice of experience).

As for your original post, I'm assuming you tried a restore with a disc?  I don't know how else you would have gotten back to there, since you said it wouldn't go past the boot screen?  I think i would have tried a windows repair or whatever they call it first.  If that didn't work, and you were committed to buying a new computer anyway, then i would have tried formatting and reinstalling windows.  And probably in between the first and second suggestion a lot of googling for some other options before going nuclear.

Good luck.  I have a PC i built in 2009 that i fear is going to do this to me eventually.  I've had to replace the hard drive twice, but it's otherwise been great.  But they don't last forever.

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  • 2 months later...

So, for some reason my laptop computer screen saver never kicked on, and I was gone for 48 hours (different computer than this one). Came back to a burn image of FF's home page of all things xD.

I have a laptop that's roughly 3 years old. I thought screens were much less susceptible to this. How can I fix it? (Screen is currently off).

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1 minute ago, MikeT14 said:

So, for some reason my laptop computer screen saver never kicked on, and I was gone for 48 hours (different computer than this one). Came back to a burn image of FF's home page of all things xD.

I have a laptop that's roughly 3 years old. I thought screens were much less susceptible to this. How can I fix it? (Screen is currently off).

sue Webby

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On 04/04/2018 at 9:46 AM, texans_uk said:

So my IT buddy hooked me up with a desktop combo. 

Not what I wanted in hindsight how do I tell him? 

Just gonna bump this.

Pc is awful. It's "running" windows 10 (more like a light jog at best) and takes forever to process anything or open anything.

Absolute disaster.

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