Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2010 June 5

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June 5

How are animations like this synced?

See this:

http://www.hoopsandyoyo.co.uk/pages/ecards.php?action=view&code=43&history=5

Out of curiosity, I decided to measure how many thank you's are coming out per second. I got:

12.00 +- 0.01 per second 11.970 +- 0.001 per second 11.983 +- 0.001 per second

Why would the rate vary? I used the computer clock for time, so if it's synced with the computer's clock, the rate should stay constant within experimental error. --Bowlhover (talk) 02:55, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

You should note that you can write

12.00 ± 0.01

instead of 12.00 +- 0.01.

Or if you must write plus followed by minus, you can write

12.00 + − 0.01

i.e. a minus sign is not just a stubby little hyphen. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:04, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

What a useful reply, Michael! Aaadddaaammm (talk) 08:47, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

There are a number of possible sources of timing jitter (which is responsible demands a considerable degree of analysis of a specific case). Disk, cpu-cache, memory, memory cache, system bus, video, and audio transactions are all prone to jitter, as they involve physically distinct electronic objects communicating asynchronously across a (comparatively) large distance. Your operating system is a major cause: dozens or hundreds of other activities are also vying for the CPU's time (and for other resources like those I listed above), which while invisible and mostly trivial still cause timing jitter. The specific thing you linked to is written in Adobe Flash, which uses a garbage collector to manage and reclaim memory - GCs are a common cause of (these days generally small) delays, the nature and pattern of which is quite complex (it depends on the allocation strategy of the program(s) using it, and the often quite intricate collection scheme). All of this happens because, for cases like this, the jitter doesn't matter. Where cases where precise timing is necessary, a real time operating system is used (or the RTOS-like features that some full-featured OSes have), with software that is similarly strict about adhering to a rigid timebase. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:01, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Nothing these days, especially not flash, runs in "realtime". see Call Stack Riffraffselbow (talk) 05:38, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I think you mean, "nothing these days that runs on a general purpose operating system runs in realtime." Loads of embedded systems use RTOSes - things like networking gear, telecom electronics, digital cameras, aircraft electronics, robots, rockets, musical instruments, refrigerators, automobiles, medical electronics - all of these have specific needs for deterministic execution time. Your average PC or laptop is designed with a totally different set of objectives - real, accurate, deterministic timing is less important. Nimur (talk) 14:59, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

reporting a bug in google

Where do I report a bug in the Google search engine? Michael Hardy (talk) 04:02, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

A bug? Probably best to make a post at Google's Unexpected Results forum.Smallman12q (talk) 14:10, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Single Vs Dual Core Processors

A game I want to play requires a 3 GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor. My laptop has an Intel Pentium Dual Core CPU at 2.16 GHz and 2.17 GHz.

• Does that mean my laptop would be able to play the game?

My laptop meets all other requirements about operating system, RAM, ROM and video card memory.

• Does my dual core processor equate to a 2.16 GHz + 2.17 GHz = 4.33 GHz single core processor?

•• Fly by Night (talk) 12:37, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

The short answer is yes, your CPU can handle it.

There is a misunderstanding that the higher the clock rate, the faster the CPU. This is called the megahertz myth. However it also has to do with the architecture and what techniques are used to handle the data. The Pentium Dual Core is considerably newer technology and has several new instructions that the Pentium 4 does not.

The technology is such that growth has been more horizontal than vertical in the past few years, as around 4GHz or so, the heat buildup becomes so dramatic that it is not cost-effective to come up with cooling solutions to deal with it.

To answer your other question regarding a comparison of dual-core and single core, the short answer is: not exactly. It's very hard to draw a comparison because the programs running in a dual-core setup have to be programmed to make use of those two or more cores (most modern software has this functionality if needed, such as almost any modern game). So how well it functions on multiple cores really depends on the program itself. Ideally, it should, but in reality it is often not as quick in terms of clock speed. Remember, though, that the architecture is superior in the newer Pentiums, and so that will absolutely make your processor much faster than a Pentium 4 with 4.33GHz. -Amordea (talk) 13:29, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Doing a little bit more research reveals the article Multi-core processor which will explain things better than I did. -Amordea (talk) 13:54, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks a lot; that was a perfect answer! •• Fly by Night (talk) 14:02, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I would, however, still be concerned: not about the CPU but the GPU. Graphics memory is one thing, but which graphics controller the laptop has is an issue. Many laptops ship with an integrated GPU, which can lag dedicated desktop GPUs by a generation of performance - that's because many laptops are just targeted at business people using Word and email and the web, who have no business case for performant 3d graphics. Some laptops do ship with pretty decent video adapters (as they recognise that many laptop uses do care about games). So check whether the GPU is sufficient too. In practice most games suffer worse if the GPU is sub-par than if the CPU is. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:11, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

That's a very good point and I should have thought about that. If the OP returns, could he relay to us what graphics chipset he's using? -Amordea (talk) 14:20, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I have a Mobile Intel 965 Express Chipset Family. I have 128 MB System Video Memory and 230 MB of Shared System Memory; giving 358 MB of Total Available Graphics Memory. The game asks for 128 MB of Video Card Memory. I am using a Dell Inspiron 1525. •• Fly by Night (talk) 14:36, 5 June 2010 (UTC) Come to think of it; I have managed to play Spore perfectly on my laptop, and it too asks for 128 MB of Video Card Memory. (But only a 2 GHz processor). •• Fly by Night (talk) 14:41, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

This game may or may not be playable on your system (it's not officially supported). The Intel GMA series is definitely not intended for gaming, although can run some less intensive games acceptably. You may have a X3100 graphics adapter, which seems roughly equivalent to some of the low-budget GeForce 6-series (like a 6100 or a 6200, which is right near the minimum requirement). It may run, but I would not be surprised by some chop and slowdown when a lot of rendering is required at once. -Amordea (talk) 15:29, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Just beware, being as it's not officially supported it may simply crash. I had this experience with my dad's old Dell which had an Intel chipset. When I tried to install Portal for him to play, it would load up and render but then crash always when trying to step through a portal, making the game unplayable. A driver update did not fix this problem. -Amordea (talk) 15:33, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

You're exactly right: my Adapter String is Mobile Intel GMA X3100. I paid to download the game before Finlay McWalter mentioned the GPU problems. I've finished the download, and even with the graphics detail set to low, it is really jerky. It's a scrolling landscape type game, and so is constantly rendering. It's really annoying, and almost unplayable. It's my own fault; I should have waited. Thanks for all your help. •• Fly by Night (talk) 16:03, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Ach! My apologies. I wish I had thought of that sooner. Didn't even pass through my mind when you mentioned that all the other specs were clear, but should have as the GPU has a far greater effect on the performance of games than the CPU. -Amordea (talk) 16:15, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

No need to apologise! Like I said: it was my fault. Thanks again for all of your help :-) •• Fly by Night (talk) 16:21, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Easy backing up to a writeable CD

I use XP. I would like to be able to put a writeable CD in the drive, click on something, and have the program backup to that without any further bother. Is there any free software that can do that, that people would recommend please? Thanks 92.15.0.59 (talk) 12:46, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

InCD? —Preceding unsigned comment added by PeekyWeedia (talk • contribs) 01:13, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, all the backup software I have ever used (a) is automated (I configure it to back up every night at 1AM or whatever), but (b) has many options to configure and one click doesn't do it, even on that 2nd manual backup after everything's configured. List of backup software may be useful. By the way, are you certain your hard disk is this small? A writable CD stores 650MB, and a writable DVD stores 4.7GB. Without knowing anything about your system, I'm going to bet a dollar that you've got more than 4.7GB on your hard disk. Comet Tuttle (talk) 01:26, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

My important stuff like letters and documents is only a few MB. My less important stuff is 10GB - more than I thought. I had expected to spend some time copying what I wanted, but after doing that, I had thought I would be able to only back-up new material, which would not be much. Backing up is regarded as important thing to do, its odd that the software does not exist to make it easy. Another option would be to install an old HD as a secondary drive and backup to that, but that would not protect me from my computer being stolen. 92.24.185.225 (talk) 13:11, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

This freeware should do the backing up with two clicks: http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp The problem is then getting it to copy to a writeable CD. Any ideas anyone? I have not done any writing to a CD for a long time. Will just telling the software to copy it to the CD drive work?

Regarding the InCD above, is it freeware please? I do not seem to have Nero installed on this computer, although I've got an old instalation disk somewhere. The discussion page for the InCD page says it was very buggy. Are there any alternatives? Thanks. Thanks 92.15.12.171 (talk) 18:02, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

If you have a constant, non-metered internet connection, may I suggest dropbox? Why pay for media? https://www.dropbox.com/ The free accounts only hold like 2.5 gb, but an upgrade to 50 gb or so is only like 5-10 dollars a month, and then you never have to worry about it again. Riffraffselbow (talk) 05:36, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, but $7.5 dollars a month is $90 a year, which at 2% interest (less or negative if you take inflation into account) is the equivalent of $4500 capital. Expensive. How many blank CDs would that buy? And having a CD at home is far more reliable and secure in my opinion. 92.24.182.231 (talk) 09:14, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I share your mistrust of internet backups (partly because my internet connection is unreliable), so I back up to CD or DVD regularly and also to a terabyte USB hard drive. My laptop software does regular backups to DVD automatically, but a simple drag and drop between folder and CD drive (containing a formatted CD) suffices for backing up my important files because I keep them all in one folder. You could write a bat file to achieve the same thing, or you could use your free software. As long as the CD or DVD is formatted for data, there should be no problem. Dbfirs 16:11, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Don't you need to have special software installed to write to a writeable CD? At least in WinXP - dont know about more recent versions of Windows? I do not have Nero installed. And even so, I'm not sure if just partially writing to a CD is straightforward. Thanks 92.28.249.23 (talk) 18:52, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

It's a while since I last used XP, but I think it has CD writing built-in: [1] Dbfirs 10:15, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Oooooh! Well done Microsoft. That means that perhaps just a simple .bat file will be enough to do my backups. Thanks. 92.24.182.110 (talk) 11:08, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

... and use "xcopy" with appropriate switches [2] then just put a shortcut to the .bat file on the toolbar for a single click execution - or you could schedule the backup if you prefer. XP will do this, too! [3] Dbfirs 15:08, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I tried copying to the writeable CD, and WinXP was able to do it OK. But it did involve a "CD Writing Wizard" which involved quite a lot of clicking. Would it be possible to use Xcopy or a .bat file without being ensnared by the wizard? Thanks. 92.15.3.122 (talk) 22:20, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

In the "old days" of DOS programs one could just include the replies in the .bat file, but I don't know whether that will work with the windows wizard. Sorry, I haven't a copy of XP here to try it out. This [4] suggests that you can send all the wizard replies from your .bat file. Dbfirs 22:32, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I use the software that came with my DVD Writer, Nero, but before that, I used something called Xycopy, which became commercial. There are free untilities that you can find, I would recommend

Difference between Windows and Linux

Are there any very brief online guides that describe the differences between Windows and Linux please? I use XP, I'm thinking of migrating to Ubuntu. Thanks. 92.15.0.59 (talk) 12:48, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

You could start with Comparison of Windows and Linux. --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:04, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Interesting, and I will read it thanks, but I was thinking more of what the fundamental system differences are about file organisation and so on. 92.15.0.59 (talk) 13:10, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Filesystem Hierarchy Standard describes, at a very basic level, the structure of how things are generally laid out in a Linux system; it links to vaguely equivalent stuff for Windows. This will probably seem very uninformative; frankly I don't think the organisation of either file system is terribly enlightening, and doesn't address whether one should run Linux. I'd hazard that most Windows users have little idea where various kinds of files are stored, and one need not in Linux either. A modern Linux distribution has "home" "desktop" "music" "photos" etc. folders that are so strongly analogous to their Windows counterparts that you can think of them as being the same. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:33, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Is the hard drive file system the same? If you for example took a second drive out of a Windows XP computer and put it inside a Linux computer, would it be accessable, or would you have to reformat it? I remember reading that you had to "mount" drives in Linux, what was all that about? Thanks 92.24.182.48 (talk) 16:08, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Linux uses a variety of file systems but you'll probably end up with ext4 or maybe ext3 as your main partition. The good news is that Linux will read and write Windows' NTFS and fat32 file systems too. Windows will not natively read Linux partition formats, although (apparently) limited support is available from third-party plugins. See Comparison of file systems#Supporting operating systems for the compatibility matrix. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:24, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

"mount" sounds fancier, and perhaps scarier, than it really is. It just means the process of making the filesystem on a disk visible in Linux. The setup program will make sure that other filesystems on fixed disks are automatically mounted at bootup time, and another system makes sure that filesystems on removable media (memory sticks, mp3 players, cameras, CDs, DVDs) are automatically mounted when they're plugged in or inserted. Things pretty much "just work". -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:54, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Since the OP is interested in "fundamental" system differences, consider reading Unix philosophy. This article introduces several of the widely held tenets of good system design for Unix/Linux operating systems. Briefly summarized, this involves simple programs with precise tasks and clean interfaces; programs that operate on text streams; and programs that play nice together. Several key authors have their opinions on the "fundamentals" of what Unix really is, all summarized at that article. I would append my own viewpoint: Linux is the natural and simplest implementation of a modern, free software operating system. If we had to start from scratch and do it all again, we'd probably end up with Linux, again. I don't think any other mainstream operating system can make that claim. Nimur (talk) 15:16, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Star ratings in YouTube

YouTube used to have star ratings by users for all its videos, which I found interested and useful. Some time ago they disapeared - at least for me. I cannot see any, either using Internet Explorer or using Firefox with everything disabled. Why cannot I see them please? The approve or disaprove buttons are still there, but not the red star ratings anymore. I run XP. Thanks. 92.15.0.59 (talk) 13:27, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Lol...this isn't a bug...but apparently an "upgrade". Youtube removed the stars after coming to the conclusion that its ratings weren't working. Although the stars are officially gone, you can install addons/scripts that will put them back.14:15, 5 June 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Smallman12q (talk • contribs)

Thanks, I've installed the Firefox addon that shows them. I prefer the earlier version of YouTube, and I prefer the earlier version of Wikipedia too. 92.24.182.48 (talk) 16:03, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Ye...you're not alone... To use the earlier version of wikipedia though, you'll need to log in.Smallman12q (talk) 16:07, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Win Vista Not Booting

Since last night, Vista has been playing up. For around 2 hours the CPU started going crazy, jumping between 0% and 100% and any point in between very randomly. I looked at the processes, and everything was 'normal'. Only the CPU had gone haywire. Then, for some reason, my HDD space magically went down to 2.6GB. TreeSize told me there was 7.1GB left, and something else said there was 6GB. In actual fact there should be around 18GB left (there was last time I looked). Anyway, I uninstalled a few programs (all games), and - as very often happens with Vista - I got one which refused to finish uninstalling. Basically, after everything is done uninstalling the entry remains in my list of programs and when I try to uninstall another program I just get the message 'Wait until the last program has finished uninstalling'. I left it on and went to bed. Waking up this morning, I still got the same message, so I switched off Vista and went into Ubuntu. After trying to go back into Vista this afternoon, I have been unable to. After the Microsoft loading bar, I get an extremely brief flash of the blue screen of death (so brief I can only just make out the colour), and I am sent back to the menu to choose my OS. I have tried the StartUp Repair option, and it didn't fix anything. I have booted from my RepairDisk Partition (whatever it's called - this computer didn't come with a disk, just a partition with some repair options on it), to no avail. I tried System Restore, but for some reason I don't have a restore point (I alwys have one - but now I don't....). I am back in Ubuntu now. I am wondering what there is I can do. Backing Up is not an option - no disk space and no external HD to put everything, and no disk to get Windows off anyway - plus I don't want to reinstall, I want to fix the problem. Any ideas? TIA! (PS A look at my recent earlier posts will reveal what I have been planning to do, i.e. get Ubuntu and Vista working together, but please do not misunderstand - I haven't even had the chance to start trying this yet, so this problem is unrelated to that.) --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:53, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Not knowing what you have altered on your system, precisely, it is hard to say if the problem is software or hardware related. The reason the BSoD message is so brief is because by default, Windows is set to automatically restart upon crashing. Technibble has an article on how to turn off the automatic restart (hopefully you can still get into Safe Mode so you don't have to do this the long way) so you can read the error it generates and then report it to someone who can better assist you. -Amordea (talk) 16:12, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks. That's got me a step closer. I was able to get the blue screen to stay on, and the 'STOP' message was: 0x000000F4 (0x00000003, 0x8738DD90, 0x8738DEDC, 0x8202E710). I hope this helps..... Oh, and booting into SafeMode yields the same result as trying to boot normally. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 16:30, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

"STOP Error 0x000000F4: CRITICAL_OBJECT_TERMINATION

STOP error 0xF4 means that a process or thread crucial to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated. STOP code 0x000000F4 may also display "CRITICAL_OBJECT_TERMINATION" on the same STOP message."

Well that doesn't help a whole heck of a lot. It was pretty obvious that your OS wasn't booting properly. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you may have deleted something you should not have, based on what you've told us about what you were doing before the crash occured. The HowTo Geek has an article on how to make a Vista Repair Disk, which may assist you in getting your operating system running again. Be sure you have the right one for your hardware's architecture, x86 or x64.

If you've been fiddling with any of your hardware recently, there was some indication on various forums that improperly-seated hardware or setting the jumper wrong on your hard drive could cause this error. If you haven't touched your hardware, then this is very unlikely to be a problem. -Amordea (talk) 17:04, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Cheers. That .iso is actually the same as the Recovery partition I already have (mentioned above). I ran it again, and selected for it to repair any problems. At the end there is a report, and looking through that, I saw that every test was completed successfully, with no errors. I have also done the memory test, and there were no errors there. Now, could it be a problem with having Vista and Ubuntu on the same disk? I have heard that this can sometimes cause problems with Vista not booting. I have had Ubuntu on this disk for the past week or so, and when booting into Vista I sometimes get 'Disk needs checking', etc., which then automatically cancels itself. As for hardware, I haven't touched anything. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 18:22, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Well your hard drive could be failing. The check you're referring to is CHKDSK, which checks the hard drive for errors (you may want to do this too, although I'm afraid I haven't used any bootable or Linux-based disk checking utilities, so have no recommendations to make there). But as for conflicts between Windows and Ubuntu, I'm afraid that's beyond my experience. Perhaps someone else here can better assist you there. -Amordea (talk) 18:39, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

After thinking about it for a moment, you might be able to run CHKDSK through the Vista Repair Disk. Although admittedly I'm not real familiar with the tool, not having had to deal with Vista much. But if there's an option there or a way to get to the command line from the disk, it should be possible. -Amordea (talk) 18:56, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Cheers, well, CHKDSK revealed no errors, so I ended up going with a clean reinstall. Everything seems fine with Vista now. The only problem is that I can't boot into Ubuntu now, as the boot loader doesn't appear - it just jumps straight into Vista. I'll sort that out another time, after I've finished reinstalling 100+GB of software. Cheers for your help. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:27, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Oof, yeah. Windows is classically pretty stingy about its boot loader and (from my experience anyway, not sure if 7 still does this, but it uses Vista's BOOTMGR, so seems likely) will not recognize any non-Windows installations. If you need to get any data off of that partition, you could try booting with your Ubuntu Live CD and mounting the drives and transferring irreplaceable data from the Ubuntu partition to the new Vista partition, then reinstall Ubuntu, which seems the easiest solution to me.

I bet there's a way to install GRUB without doing this and get it to recognize both installations, but I couldn't tell you how. We seem to have a few Linux-savvy people around here though, if you want to ask the question. -Amordea (talk) 15:11, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, if you like GRUB, but don't want to mess with the MBR, there's GRUB4DOS, which comes with grldr and grub.mbr. Save those to your system partition's root (most likely C:\) and add an entry for grub.mbr to your windows startup sequence using the command bcdedit (Details here [5]) in a CMD (you need to run the CMD as admin).

Now, this particular flavor (flavour, for the Brits and Canucks ;-)) of GRUB searches for a menu.lst in C:\, which isn't really handy when there's a Linux kernel update and the update routine tries to update the menu.lst in /boot/grub/menu.lst instead of the one on the Windows drive. So, we'll need to tell it where to find the correct menu.lst by placing a dummy one in C:\ with the following content:

find --set-root /boot/grub/grub.cfg
configfile /boot/grub/grub.cfg

-- 109.193.27.65 (talk) 22:55, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

open source software

What are the benefits of using open source software in an office? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Freddie ashlee (talk • contribs) 16:51, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I would think our article on open source software could answer this question pretty well unless there's something you need to know which is missing from it? Let us know. -Amordea (talk) 19:35, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Lan Internet Protocol (IP) Address

What is LAN ip ?? What role does it play in comparision to your actual ip address?? How do we find out our Lan IP ?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sushil shenoy (talk • contribs) 17:18, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

As a general rule, a network adapter only has one IP address, and most computers only have one network adapter. Therefore your computer can normally be thought of as having a single IP address. This will be allocated either by your network (LAN) administrator and manually configured into your computer, or allocated by a DHCP server on your local network (LAN), or allocated by an internet service provider, typicaly using PPP. If you have a local IP address (often one beginning 10. or 192.168.) then the gateway to the internet will translate this (using NAT) into your "public" IP address. You can find out your public IP address on lots of internet sites (e.g. [6]). If you have a PC, you can find out your PC's IP address by typing IPCONFIG into a command prompt window. --Phil Holmes (talk) 18:04, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks a lot .... Was getting real confused regarding these two types of ip Addresses ... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.178.97.80 (talk) 18:09, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

How do i make my Laptop a WIFI Hotspot?

How do i make my Laptop (TOSHIBA SATELLITE PRO A100) a Wifi Hotspot so as to be able to browse the net on my mobile (NOKIA N 97) ?? I tried AD-HOC, and it didn't work ..... Is there any other method ???

Details OS : Windows XP Professional SP2

Wireless Card: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG

Specs: 2.00 GHz, 2.50 GB RAM

Is there any other information you need ?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sushil shenoy (talk • contribs) 17:32, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

This site seems to have lots of links to information on exactly that. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 18:30, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Excel spreasheet totaling

In an Excel spreadsheet, is there a formula to put at the bottom of a column (or at the end of a row) to tell how many cells in that column are greater than 0. For example, the "Places with fruit" row in the sample I created below. (I can't just count the rows that are >0 in my actual project, because there are a couple hundred rows.)

	Apples	Berries	Cumquats	Total
Alpha	4	0	2	6
Beta	1	1	0	2
Gamma	2	0	3	5
Delta	3	2	2	7
Total	10	3	7	20
Places with fruit	4	2	3	9

Thank you. — Michael J 18:46, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

It's COUNTIF. =COUNTIF(F11:F99,">0") would tell you how many cells from F11 to F99 are greater than 0. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:11, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Yay! Thank you so much! — Michael J 21:26, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't have excel on this computer otherwise I'd check it myself, but if that argument gives you problems try removing the "s around >0. Disclaimer: I'm usually wrong. Aaadddaaammm (talk) 21:10, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Connecting two wifi routers wirelessly?

So my home is setup with a Wifi router. Everything works perfectly. In my shop in the backyard, I have plugged several wired devices into another wifi router. How/Can I get the remote router to connect to my main router in the house? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 22:50, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

If the router in your shop in the backyard can be set up to work as a bridge aka access point, that would be the way to go. (We do have an article Bridging (networking), but it's so technical that I'm not even certain that it's what you're asking for). Otherwise, you'll need to replace the router in the backyard shop with a device that can be configured as a bridge/access point, or which is specifically designed to work as one. A google search for

YOUR_ROUTER_NAME "access point" OR bridge

might get some helpful hits. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 23:09, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

How can I add more ports to a router?

Somewhat related to the post above. My wifi router has 4 wired Ethernet ports. Naturally, I have 6 devices that need a wired connection and need to get out to the internet. How can I "add ports" to my router? Connect an Ethernet switch? a hub? another router? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 22:55, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I think you only need a hub for that, but our article says they are hard to find these days and most people use cheap switches instead. A router would be overkill, since it's all one network - routers are for connecting different networks (eg. your LAN to the internet). --Tango (talk) 23:18, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

(ec)By buying an ethernet switch (a hub would work too, but a switch is more intelligent, and forwards packages only to the intended recipient). Another router is overkill, and would create problems with regard to selecting appropriate ip-address ranges, allowing your devices to communicate with one another etc. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 23:19, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, a switch is what you want. I installed one only a couple of days ago and it was very easy - connected the ethernet cables, connected the power, job done. Astronaut (talk) 03:14, 6 June 2010 (UTC)