Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 March 1

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March 1

Way to "trace" an IP number?

Is there a way to get an street address from an IP number? I was thinking about one of those movie hacker scenarios that doesn't have to be completely real, but just has to be based in reality. So my hacker has an IP number from an email. He hacks into the phone company to match it against their DSL modems. He finds a match and the phone company has the billing address on file. Does that sound plausible? I guess the only hole would be trying to find which ISP owns the TCP number. Thoughts? --Navstar 02:18, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Is there a way to get an street address from an IP number?

Not unless you're the ISP, a very bad person at the ISP, or the police with a subpoena for the ISP. Using some extrapolation and known databases, you can often figure out a general geographic location for an IP, but usually nothing more.

So my hacker has an IP number from an email. He hacks into the phone company to match it against their DSL modems.

The whole "getting into the ISP's logs and billing records" is the tricky part. It's very easy to figure out which ISP owns which IP address. Those are usually very protected systems that aren't designed to be accessible from outside networks. That being said, sensitive data slipups have certainly happened in the past, so you couldn't rule out the possibility. The only real fallacy in this thinking is that "anything can be hacked through purely technological means given a clever enough person", which really isn't true. In fact, some of the most clever hacks have involved a lot of social manipulation and diving through dumpsters. It's usually negligence that causes data to fall into the wrong peoples' hands, not a flaw in the system (though security flaws certainly turn up regularly and are sometimes exploited). -- mattb @ 2007-03-01T02:26Z

Word Retrieval

Is it true that MicroSoft Word files keep track of everything you've typed, including what's been deleted? (Deleted as in backspace, not deleted as in erasing the file.) If so, how do you retrieve that? I'd be interested in going back over things I've written and seeing how I came up with them. Black Carrot 04:33, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I think MS Word can keep revisions, I just don't know how... search the Tools menu. --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 09:42, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

It's called "reviewing"; if you go View->Toolbars->Reviewing, you can activate the reviewing menu. However, you'll need to have "track changes" activated on the Reviewing menu. Incidently, you should deactivate track changes if you happen to be a Government employee; all sorts of sensitive information has been found by clicking on the "show all changes" option[1]. Laïka 12:37, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Nifty. I'm not sure that's what I'm looking for, though. I went through the tutorial on it, and it's for red-penning something that's otherwise finished, and the markup is deleted as the changes are accepted. I was thinking more along the lines of keystroke tracking or previous save points or something. Black Carrot 05:59, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

If you are throwing this idea around for your personal use, I'd suggest finding a proper commercial keylogger that is not malicious, or dangerous.

You would have to be EXTREMELY careful, however, as keyloggers are a touchy subject and finding a genuine, working, non-malicious keylogger for personal use is probably a darn near impossible task. Watch out for fakes. :P Zorlin 05:13, 8 March 2007 (WAST)

Lockpicking/Cryptography quotation?

There was a quotation by a nineteenth-century (or thereabouts) locksmith, which could be applied surprisingly well to modern cryptography and full-disclosure security debates. Does anyone know what it was? grendel|khan 05:38, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I could guess it would be along the lines of saying they could make any lock secure, but it would require a huge key. StuRat 17:52, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Left and right handed Dvorak on OS X

Does anyone know if there is a way to install left and right handed dvorak keyboard layouts on OS X?

Thank you,

Does this help? Mabris 23:39, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Excel number formats

Is it possible to create an Excel number format so that instead of displaying a number as 1.473E-03, it displays it as 1.473x10^-3, or better yet as 1.473x10^-3? Laïka 12:26, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

This Excel number formatting article should help. Droud 13:25, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

pc freezes before xp loads

i can't figure why my pc won't start; please helpIpeariso 14:02, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

By "freezes", what do you mean exactly? Is it not starting at all, does it start partially and then stop, does it display any error message? Does it beep? -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 15:22, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

And also, what stage does i freeze. For example, does it stop before any windows logos appear on the screen? - Akamad 20:11, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

When if freezes, does it just shut down, or does it flash you a blue screen first? --VectorPotential^Talk 14:06, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Data Retrieval - Expensive?

I run a 160Gb Lacie external firewire drive in conjunction with my Macbook Pro. However, it has now stopped working. The error seems mechanical ( ie, disk not spinning ), but Lacie will not offer to save my data. All the data retrieval quotes I've had seem VERY expensive. Why is this so? Can I recover the data myself? I believe the drive isnt corrupted, and ultimatley, the drive is out of warranty.

Why can they charge so much? And is there any other hope to recover my files on a student budget? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.13.35.175 (talk • contribs) 14:54, 1 March 2007

They can charge so much because people are willing to pay that much to recover their precious un-backed-up data. A hard disk drive is a black box; when it stops working, there's not much you can do. If the error is really mechanical, it might be stiction; you might try to put the drive on a fridge (carefully wrapped in plastic, to prevent condensation) for some time and see if it spins (if it does, quickly copy all the data; it won't last long). If it's not, it can be several things; the spindle motor might have burned, the motor electronics might have failed, the whole circuit board might not be working anymore, or a defect somewhere else is being detected by the drive's firmware (which then stops before starting up to prevent damage). Since it's an external enclosure, it's also possible that the power supply is out of specification; the drive will not spin up without enough power (and out-of-spec power can even burn the drive's electronics). If the drive can be removed from the enclosure, you might try using the drive outside the enclosure, as the defect might be in the enclosure (but be careful when doing that, as a defective drive might burn the computer's IDE interface). As an aside, an interesting article on that subject appeared on Slashdot some days ago; it's called RAID Recovery: The Data Knight Kroll Ontrack To The Rescue!, from Tom's Hardware. --cesarb 15:42, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Hindsight is always 20/20, but always back up data, preferably to a remote location. This summer, I lost 50GB of data due to a botched NTFS 'grow' operation in Gparted. While I cannot believe I attempted such an operation without a backup, I suffered the consequence of approximately $40,000 in lost data, measured in my personal time to make documents, take photographs, commercial value of photographs to sell, time for research, commercial programs, custom configurations and preference, virtual machine and emulator configuration an data, commercial music, time and bandwidth downloading freeware and ISO images, etc. (shudders). Data recovery may seem expensive, but it is often better than losing thousands of dollars of data, especially if the data includes documents, such as those for corporate records. But, the much more cost-effective solution is backing up. Listen to User:CesarB, sounds like he has a bit of experience in this. Freedomlinux 04:46, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

No experience here, just knowledge (I read a lot about these things). --cesarb 11:40, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Follow cesarb's advice (i.e., check the power supply, etc.) Remember that the drive mechanism can be moved from one external mounting box to another, or even into your computer; there's nothing magic about the LaCie mounting box. If the drive works in its new environment, you're all set, but take this as a lesson and begin backing-up your data on a regular basis.

But additionally, if the problem really is stiction in the drive mechanism, there are several more things you can try:

1. Hold the drive mechanism in your hand. Imagine the platters inside it and sharply rotate the drive in the axis in which those platters would turn. (You're trying to use the inertia of the platters to break the stiction.) Do this several times and then try operating the drive again.
2. If you're truly at the end of your rope, take your Torx screwdriver and carefully open up the drive, working in as clean a space as you can manage. With the platters exposed, turn them slightly. (They turn in the direction the heads are pointing and you should only touch the very edges of the platters or the raised hub assembly and not the disk surfaces.) If you don't hear any truly evil scraping sounds, try operating the drive again. It will actually work for a while exposed to the environment but eventually, the heads will probably crash due to dirt contaminating the drive. (I'm not kidding about this; I have several drives opened up for demo purposes and they still mostly-operate.)

If the drive works after following either of my steps, again follow cesarb's advice and immediately back up all the data you can snarf off of the drive. Don't get entranced by the sight of the head comb flipping back-and-forth and don't give into temptation and Photoshop that "one more file" before beginning the recovery process because you're living on borrowed time and the drive will fail again.

Atlant 17:56, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

It's at times like this that you need to make friends with someone who has access to a class 100 clean room. :) -- mattb @ 2007-03-01T18:10Z

I wonder if you could buy a used version of your drive on Ebay, swap your disk into that drive, and get it to work like that. That would mean working with some tiny electronic components, do you have much experience with that ? StuRat 17:50, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

The electronics boards of disk drives contain data that is unique to each set of platters (mapping bad sectors and the like; you can't just take the electronics from drive A and the disks from drive B and put them together and have the data from drive B be accessible. This is one of the reasons why the data recovery places can charge the big bucks that they do; they know how to utilize the drive-specific data.

Atlant 17:58, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Though swapping out the spindle motor is feasible (and non-trivial). Of course, if the problem is solely the motor, the above methods should be tried before attempting to replace it (I wouldn't even attempt it without a clean room and a very steady hand). -- mattb @ 2007-03-01T18:16Z

Actually, I have heard of people who did exactly that (replaced the electronics board) and it worked. It's quite possible that the data about the bad blocks can also be found on the plates (and even if not, you would still be able to access most of the data). Of course, to do that you need a board from the exact same model (sometimes down to the hardware revision, which is not announced in the model number). And there's no need to say it would work only if the problem is on the board — if the problem is on the inside of the drive (burnt motor, head crash) replacing the board would not make any difference. --cesarb 19:16, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd say the first thing you'll need to decide is how much you value your files. If you had to pay $x or risk losing them, how much would x be? If it's anywhere near the cost of professional data recovery, go for that. Anything you might do to recover the data yourself could also make things worse, especially if you don't know what's causing the problem in the first place.

If you do decide to try recovery yourself, the second question is whether you can still get the drive to spin up and give you some data. If not, there's not much you can do. Some of the suggestions above might help if it's a small, purely mechanical problem, but if there's more significant damage or if the controller circuits are fried you pretty much need to call in the pros.

In any case, get everything ready before attempting recovery. If the drive is right now powered down and sitting in a safe place, leaving it that way for a while isn't likely to make things worse, but spinning it up needlessly might. I'd recommend getting a new disk that is at least as large as the original — preferably two or three times larger — and some software for making disk images. A live Linux recovery CD will do nicely if you know how to use one; all Linux distributions generally come with the dd program which can image disks nicely.

If you use dd, remember to use the conv=sync,noerror option to make sure a single read error won't break everything. Also save stderr to a file; that way you'll know where any failed blocks are. If you got errors, you may want to try taking a second image; with some types of damage, the errors may come and go, so that a second read may get blocks that the first read missed, allowing you to combine the images. I've done this before myself — unfortunately, following these particular instructions won't be very easy unless you're rather good with computers already. Still, it might give you some ideas. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:15, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

dd_rescue (I think there are two separate programs with the same name) is better than dd when reading from failing media. --cesarb 01:35, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Cat 5 wiring problem

I want to run a Cat 5 cable to a part of my house that gets low WiFi signal. I have a big spool of Cat 5 cable. I have some outlets that can be wired.

In my first attempt, I stretched bulk Cat 5 cable under the house. The run is about 50 feet. I tested each wire for continuity and found no problems. I then went to connect the cables to the outlets. I connected like colors in the Cat 5 cable to like colors in the outlets. This gives me a female connection at both ends of the house. At one end of the house, I used a regular store bought cable to go from this new outlet to my internet hub. At the other end of the house, I used another store bought cable to go from the outlet to the computer. The computer does not recognize a network signal.

I have tested both of the short store-bought cables by themselves and found they work fine. I have also tested the port on the hub and it works fine. In trouubleshooting this problem, I replaced the computer with a second hub. I notice that the WAN light on the hub blinks. Usually it is steady when it has a valid signal.

Where did I go wrong? Should I not connect like colors to like colors?

Thank you, Johntex\^talk 15:49, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

You have too many unknown variables. I wired my house, but I just put a normal connector at the end (no outlet) so I could test it with a laptop. I still screwed up a few times. --Zeizmic 16:22, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I first tried to do this with plastic connectors and a crimper. I found that even with a very expensive crimper it is hard to get a good connection. That is when I switched to the outlets. Johntex\^talk 16:37, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Just testing for continuity is not enough. Testing for continuity only shows the cable can transmit a DC signal, but not that it can transmit a higher-frequency signal well (it needs to be able to transmit up to 100MHz). There are also several other parameters which need to be within specific limits; for instance, NEXT and FEXT. The only way to correctly test a Cat5 cable run is with a special tester. It's hard to know exactly what went wrong, but check this:

• Did you untwist too much at the ends of the cable (you must untwist as little as possible)?
• Did you use the punch tool to install the cable in the outlets (doing it by hand will not give you a good enough connection)?
• Are the outlets of the correct type (wrong outlets might cause problems, and even have the wrong colours)?
• Is the cable run near an AC power cable (which might induce too much interference)?

--cesarb 16:29, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

• I have a Cat5 tester that consists of two blue boxes with lights. Unfortunately, I can't find the instruction manual so I am not sure what the lights mean or what to do about them. I may need to buy/borrow a new tester or see if I can find an instruction manual online.
• I tried not to untwist too much but at one end I probably have untwisted 1.5 inches and maybe 2 inches on the other end.
• My outlets are not the punch tool type. They are like a phone wall outlet (but with more wires). You twist the wire under a screw to make the connection. Are the punch type better?
• The cable is under the house so of course there is electrical under the house. I made sure not to come near the breaker box and I made sure not to run directly alongside an electrical line. How close is too close?

Thanks to both of you for your help. Johntex\^talk 16:37, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

AFAIK, there are no Cat5 outlets which are not of the punch tool type (all I've seen are of the punch tool type). Twisting the connection under a screw would not make a good enough connection at the frequencies involved. That's probably your problem. As for how close is too close, I don't know; your guess is as good as mine (but remember to cross them at 90 degrees if they have to cross). --cesarb 17:00, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm.... OK. These were billed as Cat 5 outlets. I bought them at Fry's Electronics. I will replace them with the punch-type because this is easier than getting back under the house to run new cable. Johntex\^talk 17:17, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Have you tried running Cat 5e or Cat 6 cabling? It's better shielded against interference. --24.249.108.133 17:14, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

No, I have not tried that. Are they just higher quality versions of Cat 5? In other words, same connector type and all that - nothing different as far as my computer would be concerned? `Johntex\^talk 17:17, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

The 2-box tester you mention works as so: 1) Plug the boxes into each end of a cable run. 2) Turn on the box with the switch. 3) The lights (there should be 4 of them) will light up in order from left to right, 1..2..3..4..pause..1..2..3..4. A common problem is to hook up the loops backwards. Then, you either get 1..3..2..4..pause..1..3..2..4.. or you get 1..2..pause..3..4..1..2..pause.. --Kainaw ^(talk) 17:18, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I have had the same problem, Make sure you are wiring the connectors according to TIA/EIA-568-B#Wiring Back in the 10megabit days it didn't matter so much which wires went to which pins on the connector, as long as it was the same on both ends. Now with 100 and 1000 megabit it is important that the wiring standard is followed (especialy on longer runs.) -- 71.86.121.200 16:05, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

iPod problem

I have had iTunes installed on my (Windows XP) computer for some while and have just bought a iPod video (30gb) to accompany it. However, I have some video files that iTunes and the iPod seem to treat as music files. The video does play in iTunes and it objects to putting a video file in the same playlist as audio files. However, a playlist of videos alone has a music symbol next to it and I can't make the video play in the movies screen. When the iPod plays it, it plays it as if it's an audio track with a frame (not the first frame) as the album picture.

I'd like this to work properly. Can anyone tell me how I might do this?

Many thanks,

Sam (85.210.161.98) 16:43, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

music scheduling software

Does anyone know of a program for Windows XP (preferably freeware or relatively inexpensive) that can be used to play music at 6 specific times of the day and is easy to use? I've been using Raduga, but it is too expensive and has too many features for what I need. Any help would be appreciated. And do you know of any software to normalize volume across mulitple tracks? I'd very much like to keep the volume about equal between the songs. Thanks -Mysekurity 17:30, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Audiograbber is freeware and can normalize wav files, but I'm unsure about the multi-file and mp3 format ones. As for making music play at 6 specific times, you can just use windows scheduler. I remember making my computer into an alarm clock briefly with it by opening a music file with scheduler. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 05:57, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

iTunes has a sound check to level volume, don't know if that's useful. Sounds like a cool idea though

Mix Lord 00:51, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Free RAW images?

I am considering a purchase of a new digital camera that can do RAW image captures. Are there any free RAW sample images I can download to process with Photoshop's RAW importer? --24.249.108.133 17:11, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

This sample Olympus RAW file (15MB) is linked from the bottom of RAW image format. RAWpository has a bunch of RAW samples. There are some more scattered around if you Google for raw sample images. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 18:12, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! I had tried Googling "raw images" and didn't get anything useful. --24.249.108.133 19:13, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

DPReview has lots of RAW images in the camera reviews. Gilesmorant 11:12, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Cleaning Dust From PC

I've read many sources that say a PC should never be cleaned with a vacuum cleaner due to static, however, I've also read that many people do it anyway. At two shops that I was in recently (looking for a can of compressed air), it was suggested that I use a vacuum cleaner, including a guy who repairs computers and says that's what they use in his shop. Some people use paintbrushes to sweep across components which I imagine would also be risky. I want to know once and for all, how safe is it to use a vacuum to clean PC components? Exactly how is static electricity generated by using a vacuum? What is losing electrons and what is gaining them? --Seans Potato Business 17:23, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

A lot of vacuum cleaners have plastic hoses that do indeed build up a significant static charge (lots of little particles bumping around inside the hose). I personally wouldn't use a vacuum cleaner around any electrostatically sensitive components. -- mattb @ 2007-03-01T17:29Z

I question the need to clean dust out of your PC at all, unless it's in a saw mill or otherwise excessively dusty environment. My experience has been that they become obsolete before the dust builds up to a level that causes a problem. StuRat 17:44, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't agree with that. Significant dust buildup can easily impede air flow through heat sinks and the like, and that will cause cooling problems. I mean, cleaning out the dust isn't something you'd likely need to do on a monthly basis, but once a year might not be a terrible idea. I usually use compressed air or just take the thing outside, open it up, and use a power blower (you should disconnect any fans and still be careful about electrostatic discharge, though). -- mattb @ 2007-03-01T18:08Z

Pros do it with specialised vacuum cleaners that are designed with anti-static (mildly conductive) hoses and brushes. You might find that "toner vacuums" (used for servicing photocopiers and laser printers) meet these needs. Me, not having such a vac, I'd tend to blow the dust out with compressed air and then apologise afterwards to my wife for all the dust bunnies that were now on the loose.

Atlant 18:09, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

The recommended method is to buy canned air. --h2g2bob 19:39, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I take it outside and use canned air myself, maybe twice a year. Cleaning it does matter, if you monitor the temperature with your motherboard or whatever. As for static, I've never messed a chip up from static, and I work with them in my field. However, theoretically, it doesn't take that many volts to mess up a CMOS device, so you should be cautious. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 05:54, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Theoretically nothing, it's not difficult at all to build up sufficient charge in something like a vacuum cleaner hose to create electric fields beyond the dielectric breakdown point of materials used in modern microprocessors/DRAM. One good zap may be all it takes to cause permanent lattice damage. I wouldn't risk it if the idea of damaging important parts of your computer isn't attractive. -- mattb @ 2007-03-02T06:31Z

The suggestion to use an anti-static vacuum nozzle is a good one. Not having one of those, I just take the standard plastic nozzle off the metal pipe between it and the vacuum hose, and ground the bare pipe to the computer chassis with alligator clips. In fact, just holding on to the metal pipe with one hand and the chassis with the other should be enough to prevent a significant static buildup. Try to be careful not to touch any exposed wiring with metal objects, though — even with the power off, the power supply delivers standby current to the motherboard, and even if you disconnect the computer from the mains entirely, many capacitors will still retain charge. Grounding the nozzle should reduce the likelihood that you'll fry anything even if you do manage to create a short circuit, but the risk is still there. Besides, you don't really want to bring the nozzle of a powerful vacuum cleaner too close anyway; accidentally sucking a chip off your motherboard is never a good thing. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:31, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Also vacuum devices have a tendency to pull the end of the hose violently against components or traces and may cause impact damage. Do not think that blowing air is safe and can not cause static damage because it can. The problem is the motion of the air including motion produced by cans of 99% pure compressed nitrogen I believe. Brushes not moistened with an evaporative antistatic solvent are not a good thing and can generate static electricity. Solution? Minimize dust intrusion by using box filters (more surface area eqauls less air flow restriction) using high efficiency electrostatic 1/2 inch thick mesh over the incoming fan and seal all holes and cracks in the case so outgoing fans do not suck dust through these holes. Then turn off your computer once a month (or more) and remove and clean your box filters. At the end of the year you can open her up and find that the problem is none existent or at least manageable with a antistatic moistened brush. I used R-11 until banned and now use Naphtha or the R-11 replacement. But be careful. It can sometimes loosen stickers or erase other printed information. Be sure to let it dry completely before re-assembly and turning on the computer and do this only in a well ventilated area preferably outside. I usually run a backup computer overnight during the drying. Also never use a conductive liquid like water. Nocternal 08:44, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

MAC OS X 10.5

Is there a way on Mac OS (w/ Boot Camp Software) to get Windows XP and Windows Vista as well as Mac OS? 68.193.147.179 21:06, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Sure, you'd need to make a parition for each of your OSs. It involves a little work in Terminal.

sudo diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 60G "MS-DOS FAT32" <name of Windows volume> 17G "MS-DOS FAT32" <name of windows volume> 15G

Also look up "Triple Boot Camp" in a search engine. --24.249.108.133 21:42, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Make sure you understand what you are doing in Terminal, since you want to partition it different ways depending on who you are and what you are using each OS for. Check MacWorld magazine for a great guide from this month on how to partition without losing any data (normally partitioning causes a full erase of the disk). [Mαc Δαvιs] X (How's my driving?) ❖ 03:38, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

What are 2EDS_~!3 files?

I'm running a Linux server connected to Macs and Windows. I notice each directory contains a small file called "2EDS_~!3". Is this important? Can I trash them? --24.249.108.133 21:11, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe they are temporary files created by Samba, which allows you to connect to your Mac and Windows boxes.... I'd leave them there. Mabris 23:33, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Could this be a problem with the Exchange?

I often received the following message when I attempted to send email to certain individual: “This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification. THIS IS A WARNING MESSAGE ONLY. YOU DO NOT NEED TO RESEND YOUR MESSAGE. Delivery to the following recipients has been delayed.” What should I do? Could this be something to do with the server and Exchange? Chailai 21:25, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

The message basically says your e-mail message could not be sent immediately and was queued, so something is going on with the e-mail server. Splintercellguy 22:05, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. We have Windows Small Business Server 2003 with Exchange 2003. There are four client computers running Windows XP Professional. Two types of email accounts were listed: Exchange (Default) and POP/SMTP. We are using the Verizon email services at each computer and have no plan to host our email service using Exchange. After writing the prior note, I moved the Exchange down and made the Verizon POP account as a default, it seems to solve the problem okay. But when I look at the account again, the Exchange moved itself up being a Default again. What’s a naughty little program!! So far I have been able to send emails okay. You have no idea how good this feel. Chailai 21:36, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Office 2007 and Windows Vista

What is the best version of Office 2007 and Windows Vista? And, can I buy them directly from Microsoft ([2])? 68.193.147.179 22:03, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

The best option is the one that meets your needs at the lowest cost. Try these pages at Microsoft: Vista, Office. They are not generally purchased direct from Microsoft for home use. — Lomn 22:45, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I am just looking for which one has the most features. 68.193.147.179 23:11, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

The ones with the most features are the Ultimate editions of each one. Unless you're running IT for a business I doubt you'd need them though. --Kiltman67 00:17, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

For most needs, OpenOffice.org is a good replacement for MS Office, and it's free so worth a go --h2g2bob 04:03, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Here we go again... And use Ubuntu with XGL and Beryl --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 00:29, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

WinXP

I heard that there a couple of WinXP editions, which one should I get? 68.193.147.179 22:20, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

It depends on what you want/need. Please explain further. Splintercellguy 23:08, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I am just looking for which one has the most features. 68.193.147.179 23:12, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

That would be Windows XP Professional, but the advantages over Home edition are minimal. Unless you need to connect to a domain, or need to use terminal services to access your PC remotely, chances are XP Home should be adequate. Cyraan 00:21, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Cyrann, does the same go for Vista? --24.249.108.133 19:36, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Vista has far too many editions. Home Premium is ideal for most people. Home Basic lacks the media center and fancy user interface. Business and Enterprise add some features that are very useful for businesses and probably not so much for end-users, and Ultimate is like those two but with extra fluffy things (i.e. a video wallpaper). See Windows_Vista_editions_and_pricing. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 21:26, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Have you looked at our article on Windows XP? There's a section on the differences between the editions. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 00:48, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

There is also a WinXP Pro x64 bit and some others like it; is it better? 68.193.147.179 22:08, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

That only works on x64 CPUs. You would very likely have driver and general software compatibility issues with it. The main reason to get it would be if you have some reason to address very large (>4 GB) portions of memory. Again, normal users won't have such a need (and most people using that much memory are probably using Linux or another UNIX-like OS). See the article, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 04:53, 3 March 2007 (UTC)