Mayuri Krab

Not a electrical engineer, but I think they should be both protected, not sure of any negatives from that (other than the more connections there is, the weaker the signal will be). Its similar to like plugging in another basic power board to your surge protector board, so all the stuff connected to that board will be protected also. VGA. Is the TV you are talking about a LCD/Plasma or old CRT? I assuming LCD/Plasma as not many CRT TVs had VGA input (I have only seen was some "HD" Panasonic widescreen CRT TVs that had VGAs).

They always do that... when I had my accident ages back, similar situation; guy didn't give way to me when I was traveling down the main road & he was coming out of a driveway from a car park. Tried to pull excuses out from his a** to blame me that I was speeding 80 - 100km/h (limit was 50), which was complete BS, if I had being going that fast the damage would have being A LOT worse. Anyway, bad luck, but you have full comp insurance & his clearly at fault so it should all sort out for you. When I had my accident I only had 3rd party at the time so I had to go & get all the stuff sorted myself. Best luck with it.

One thing you have to realize is that even the so called "wireless" systems still have the power cord running from the wireless speakers that must be connect to a power source somewhere (unless its running on batteries which I doubt it will). Also, when you say wireless do you want all 6 speakers to be wireless? As the only wireless systems I have seen only have the 2 rear speakers "wireless" the front 3 & the sub woofer still has the wires. Finally the only ones I think that are </=$500 are the Z5450s (not Z5500s, those aren't wireless) mentioned above. There are a couple of entry level home theater DVD systems which have wireless rear speakers although I think most of them are over the $500 mark.

Is this the same seller? (Link) Seems like a dodge seller if he/she sold it to BOTH you & the other poor guy.

The z-5500s are great for smaller rooms, also be on the look out for some kind of THX-certified Altec Lansing speakers. From what I have read the Altec Lansing tend to have better mid range compared to Logitechs.

Sounds like the game's copy protection messing stuff up... if all your other normal discs reads fine except the game ones... Not 100% sure though.

I have never driven a car that had TC to begin with; 91 VN commodore, 02 Camry & 93 R33 (only the Camry had air bags & ABS), none of them had Traction Control & I have never lost traction in any of them. So I will say no. Then again, I do drive like an old lady most of the time

A supercharged R34, sounds interesting

They mean pretty much the same thing, GTS-T/GTS25-T is for R33, GT-T/25GTT is for R34. As for TC, depends on the year I think, my 1993, series 1 GTS-T don't have TC or ABS, the S2s had ABS not sure about TC though. As a side note, insurance for me is just over $2k per year, with $2.6k excess (or $2.9k excess if it was stolen or caught on fire) & Im 22, still on my Ps (did my driving test really late), have a perfect driving record (no fines yet).

1st of, what resoultion & graphic details are you running at? This game is known as a crappy console port, the developer pretty much just complied the original code (desgined for consoles) straight to PC without much optimization for the PC, also I think this game doesn't support SLI properly neither. My friend had a 9800GX2 (= 2x 8800GTs on 1 PCB) & the option menu in the game still shows his video memory as ~500Mb rather than 1Gb, same as my single GTS card. I used to have the game installed when I was still using a 8800GTS, & it ran okish most of the time (~30 -40fps), but that was with a resolution of 1280x1024 (using old 19" LCD) & all the detail silders when only on about 30%. I have yet to try the game out with my updated GTX260+ card. The other sandbox game that is also known as a crappy console port is saints row 2.

Don't get a WRX, its a girl's car... or so I have being told. Jokes aside, its your $ & your choice.

Agreed ^ To me 3rd party insurance should be compulsory for any car. (Talking to all those people driving sh*tboxes without insurance!!! ) Full comp is optional depending on how much you think your car is worth to you. IE, If I were still driving my mum's old VN, I would only go for the very basic 3rd party insurance just in case if I hit someone else, so the insurance can pay for the repair fee for the other car. For minor damages its not really worth fixing the VN up as that car is already full of dents anyway (she ended up selling that car to the wreckers for $100)

Was going to, but didn't end up getting it due to insufficient funds , just ended up upgrading my video card & getting some more ram as a minor upgrade to my current system. You will be correct, theres not much difference in gaming in i-7 compared to current Core 2 Duo/Quads. The i-7's main strength is its raw CPU processing power, which is mainly used in stuff like heavy video encoding, where it pwns pretty much every other mainstream CPU there is. But seeing how the OP's is already getting the fastest GPU currently available (GTX-295) & his going all out, he might as well pair the card with the mostly insane performance CPU on the market (also insanely price LOL) Rumor has it DirectX 11 will began to emerge sometime next year according to the whirlpool forums. On a side note, AMD's new Phenom II range is getting pretty good, they now offer comparable performance to the intel Core 2 range & is priced decently to match. Whirlpool's favourite budget gaming CPU seems to be the AMD's tri-core phenom II 720, as it has the added bounes of a unlocked mulitpier for easier OCs & its priced very well compared to the Intel C2D E8xxxs. Might be something for the OP to consider if he decides not to go insanely overboard with his new Comp

Must be the easter break or something... I just got pulled over again today @ ~ midnight, this time I got pulled over like about 500m after leaving my house Cop did the standard license check & did RBT this time. I told the 1st cop that I'm just driving around for a bit to let the car run for a while to recharge the battery since I had a flat battery b4. Then the other cop who did the RBT handed me the mouth piece I did the breath test on & said: "here you can keep this as a souvenir."

Awesome

Did some minor upgrades to my PC, heres the updated specs Case: Antec 1200 with 7x12cm LED fans & 1x 20cm LED fan Motherboard: Gigabyte P35 DS3P rev 2.1 CPU & CPU Cooler: Intel Q6600 OCed to 3.0Ghz (using 1.225 Vcore) with Zalman 9700 (running 5:6 ratio to get ram at stock Mhz) RAM: 4Gb Kingston Hyper X DDR2 ram @ stock 800Mhz Monitor: 19" Samsung 940B standard LCD Graphics Card: Palit 896Mb GTX-260+ (The 216sp version with OCed core & memory 625mhz/2200mhz) HDD(s): 2x Western Digital 500Gbs, 1x Seagate 200Gb, 1x Samsung 1Tb, 1x 320Gb Maxtor external HD, 1x WD 320Gb portable HD & 1x 1Tb WD external HD. Optical Drive(s): 1x Pioneer DVD-writer & 1x LG DVD-writer PSU: Corsair TX-650W OS Used: Windows XP Home with SP3 Peripherals: Logitech G9 mouse, Some Mitsubishi branded K/B, Logitech X-540 speakers Other stuff: Sony floppy drive (still working!!! tongue.gif), Case riced with LED fans, used to have a neon with my old case, but can't fit it in properly anymore. Got 15594 3D mark 06

LOL, are you serious?! Anyway its your $, but if you are gonna be running 2x GTX295s, then get a higher resolution monitor (or get 2 monitors & run dual screen). A single GTX 295 can pretty much eat any game at HD resolution. So you won't be using all the processing power of 2 GTX295s by just running them in one 1920x1200 screen.

Since you are going all out, get another GTX-295 & run them in SLI , most X-58 chipset based mobos can support both SLI & Cross Fire. Optical drive? Blue ray burner if you are going all out. Forget about liquid cooling unless you want insane Overclocks with the CPU. But get a decent after market air cooler for the CPU. SLI is nvidia's way of connecting 2 graphics card together & running them together for performance boost. In your case running 2x GTX 295s is like running 4 video cards, since each GTX 295 has two GPUs running in SLI on a single PCB.

Got pulled over again on Tuesday while I was on my way to get food. Was driving on Wanneroo road, drove past a under covered falcon who was parked on the bus stop area. A little bit ahead, the traffic lights were red, while I was waiting the undercover car started up & was behind me. I could see the cop on the passenger side pointing to my car & saying something to the guy driving. Soon enough, the siren went on & I pulled onto a side street. 1st cop came out, did the standard greetings & asked for my license. Then he said: "Mate, we couldn't see your P-plates properly under the sun's glare, just making sure you have them both on. But I can see you have them on, so its all good." & I told them I'm using the sticker on P-pates coz the old plastic ones keeps on falling off, & he was saying its all fine & stuff. By this time the other cop also came out & he said: "Mate, its all good, as long as you have them on, thats what matters." & they send me off. They didn't even bother looking inside the car, & this time the encounter was even shorter than my previous one.

I guess its coz of the up coming easter break, but I have seen a significant increase in the amount of cop cars (at least around my area) pulling people over. Even my stockish (only mod noticeable is a cannon) car has being pulled over twice now in the last 3 days (& I have never being pulled over b4 for the last 1.5 years of owning it), 1st time by high way patrol for a license check & 2nd time got pulled over by undercover car coz they couldn't see my P-plates under the sun's glare so they pulled me over to see if I had my P-pates up?

Easiest way to reset the CMOS is just to pull that button battery out from the mobo & leave it out for a bit & put then put the battery back in, that should clear up what ever settings were stored. Alternatively depending on your mobo model, there is a specific jumper pin you have to set to reset the CMOS (have to read your mobo instruction manual for that). Some of the higher end spec mobos have a switch/button for it, instead of a jumper. Good luck with it. On a different topic, my GTX-260+ card just arrived in post today EDIT: got beaten to it.

For people in WA Netplus has 1TB external HDDs going for $168. Link Got myself one, great for using as a 2ndary storage drive. It has USB & E-SATA interface

Holy sh**... Did she just keeps on saying "your car is illegal, bla bla bla, you don't need to be driving in a fast car, & something about getting a racing license to drive a race car?" Also did she actually mention something about a "dead body?!" Obviously watches too much TT/ACA. Man I got to hand it do you for just staying quiet the whole time, I don't think I could have hold it down for that long, especially her voice annoys the hell outta of me (maybe its coz of the recording?); voice sounds too similar to those bitchy house wife voices complaining on TT/ACA. You have just inspired me to keep a tape recorder in my car for the future Out of curiosity, what did you get defected for? I could hear her constantly complaining about your car being too low & going fast?, but that was all I could make out. Seems like you guys on the Eastern states are having a harder time with defects compared to WA.

+1, if you are using your monitor to do serious graphic editing work, then you are looking for a LCD that has a 8bit panel instead of the mainstream 6bit TN panels. Basically the 8bit can display a lot more shades of different colour (I read somewhere the 8bit can do ~94% of the NTSC colour spectrum compared to the typical 75% of mainstream monitors). Just to be sure, you want a monitor that can do 1:1 pixel mapping? I.E. if you throw a 4:3 image to the screen it won't stretch it out to itself default aspect ratio (16:10 or 16:9?) but will instead keep the image at 4:3 with black bars on both sides? The high end Samsungs & high end Dells both have this feature & are both 8bit panels. But they cost like $700+ for the 24" models.

My 1st time of getting pulled over. Happened just today @ 12:30ish, having just finished work, I was going on one of my usual "cruising by myself" cruises down on Kwinana Freeway going at about 100km/h (speed limit), as I was about to take the exit onto Leech highway, I saw the blue red flashes behind me, so I drove & stopped at that middle strip area between the freeway & the exit road. Was pretty nervous at this point, I thought I was going to get done for speeding. Even though I was only going at ~100km/h, most of the other cars was going at like 90 to 95km/h which made me look fast compared to them. They must have saw the high way patrol car & all slowed down. Cop took his time getting out from his car & stuff (must be checking my rego # or something), so while he was doing that, I took standard procedure; which was, window down, turned my music off (wasn't really loud to begin with), put emergency light on & got my license out. Cop came over with his flash light, greeted me & said he pulled me over for a license check. While I was handing over him my license he said I should have pulled over on the emergency stop lane on the side of the exit road instead of stopping at the middle strip section between the exit road & the free way as its not safe to stop here. I just said yeah, sure & nodded. While he was looking through my license he saw my work uniform & asked whether I just finished from work, so I said yeah. Then he notice my C-A restriction on my license & flashed his torch inside the car & saw my auto gear selector & didn't say anything. He walked to the other side of the car & flashed his light to check my 'P' plates & road registration sticker. Finally he came back & just told me its all good & I'm good to go & he walked back to his car. & I drove off granny style In summary the whole checking thing only took about 1/2 min & it was mainly just him flashing his torch & going over standard stuff & me just saying "yeah, sure, ok" Overall, no complains from me, pretty good 1st time experience. Although I would still like to keep this "getting pulled over" business to a minimal.