A less expensive option might be to go 'wide screen'.

Its always preferable to have fewer parts. That is, one monitor is better than two. Having written that, many 'contemporary' video cards will easily handle wide-screen monitors without an up-grade of your PSU.

What is the make and model of your video card?

Below is linkage to two wide-screen monitors. I would not get smaller than 19".

Samsung 19" Wide Screen

Eizo 21" Wide Screen

dual screen configs are pretty simple, you just need a second monitor and a video card or mobo that can support two outputs. the power supply only needs to provide enough for the card to work (and for whatever other cards you have attached to the motherboard); the monitor will have its own juice line....

note that this is assuming you want a simple graphics card that can handle office tasks, and not a super high end 3D dual card monster setup..... in that case you would need quite a lot of juice to power the two cards (but in theory with the right cards you could then have 4 monitors running....)

I suppose -- of course, it'd be nice to (have) plan(ned) ahead and go matchy-matchy on the lcds as well.

It's all pipe-material at this point; the tax man is still waiting on his cut from last year, so the missus would NOT take kindly to the sudden appearance of a 2nd screen.

a triptych, though...?

Currently, NVidia GeForce2 and a Dell 19" LCD at 1280 x 1024. I haven't been running anything too graphics heavy, particularly after the bargain-bin Half-Life box I picked up wouldn't run beyond the training portion

My son, though, 16, has had some recent luck getting Quake II to run on his laptop, and with some network reconfiguration that would be fun to play vs, particularly if we put on the right mods -- I love the happy mines!

quote:

Originally posted by Bravus:
Farcray has been pushing the 9800 pretty hard too, with crashes and jaggies. No further bids...? Think I might be ordering a new card today.

IMHO, you may not be throwing enough duct tape at the solution, Bravus! Buy a cheap-ass mini fan, pop the top on your PC and set the fan on high pointed at the guts of your PC. As long the case is not in reach of pets, this solution has worked for me in past cooling emergencies...

quote:

Originally posted by duncan s.:
I suppose -- of course, it'd be nice to (have) plan(ned) ahead and go matchy-matchy on the lcds as well.

It's all pipe-material at this point; the tax man is still waiting on his cut from last year, so the missus would NOT take kindly to the sudden appearance of a 2nd screen.

a triptych, though...?

Oh yeah, if you're going wide-screen, the cheap-ass Dell 21" models (2007wfp I believe) are a pretty decent deal. Buy from Dell Small Biz (they're less of a pain to deal with) and hunt around for a coupon. If you find the right one, they can be had for $350 shipped which is not bad at all...

heavyboots, I know more duct tape is almost always the solution, but this case is a major gamers jobbie with 5 fans in it, 4 of them very large, so I don't think it's that kind of cooling problem... It's just an EOL issue with this vid card, which after all is almost 3 years old, and the newest and most demanding games.

Maybe you just need to add some watercooling around those fans?

(ordered the new card, it'll be here later this week, so I guess we'll see)

Edit: going from 128 MB of RAM on the card to 512, 380/340 to 600/700 on core and memory clocks respectively and adding a bigass serious cooling system ought to help a bit...

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Bravus,

Sounds like good fun, Bravus! I know the pain of weird inexplicable card issues only too well. I have an NVidia 6600GT in my little PC box. Much further down the road after purchase, I have discovered that a LOT of people have trouble with this particular card/mobo combo in that it occasionally just freezes when generating 3d grafix. Mutter, curse, grumble...

At any rate, enjoy the new card!

Maybe I should put this under the "Stupid Questions" thread, but how do I clean my PowerBook? Particularly the screen.

I've had this thing for about a year now. While I've tried to take pretty good care of it, it's gotten pretty gunky. I've tried the "damp cloth/paper towel" method and suggested in the manual, but all that does it seem to smear stuff even. Now instead of random blotches of opacity I've got a film of translucency.

first, i unplug the powerbook, and take out the battery. then i do the damp cloth wipedown. i make sure and clean it near a bright light source so i can twist and turn the surface and check my progress. for built up gunk, i attack it directly with a wet cue-tip. if the cue-tip cannot remove it, i use my thumbnail, placing the nail perpendicular to the gunk and pushing upwards to scrape/push the gunk out of place, using a cuetip to remove debris. the thumb method is mainly for the screen, since you can push pretty hard with a cuetip on the casing.

be very gentle (imagine applying peroxide to the wound of a child) with the thumbnail scraping; it is better to spend more time using weak scrapes than punch a hole through the screen with your thumb

Dawn dish soap. They're not kidding about the "doesn't leave a film" part. I've actually heard it recommended for cleaning contacts too in an emergency. DISCLAIMER: I have NOT tried it as a contact cleaner!

I've been getting DEP errors whenever I open firefox. Rather, an error comes up saying that explorer.exe needs to be closed due to a DEP error whenever I open up the browser. Also happens when I open IE. Doesn't happen with Opera. I know that I could simply disable DEP, but I would prefer to figure out what is triggering the error.

Before anyone asks, I've tried reinstalling Firefox (it was already v 2, and had been working well until last week), I've virus scanned and spyware scanned and I did not install/uninstall anything on day it stopped working.

Pretty weird, anyone have any clues?

Hey y'all, I just bought a used G4 iMac. Will it be possible to connect it to my old G3 iMac in order to transfer files? What would I use to do that, a 'Firewire'? (I almost know what that is.)

Any and all suggestions/instructions appreciated. Please don't hold back.

usb, firewire, you might even be able to bluetooth the files. Mac's are pretty easy. What os you got on that thing?

Assuming that they both have ethernet ports, all you need is a hub and two cables; if you already have a router in front of a cable/dsl modem, there may be a spare jack on that (and thus, no need for a hub).

A thumbdrive would also work, albeit in a more tedious fashion. Insert/drag/remove/repeat.

I'm not familiar with Firewire; don't know whether there's a protocol/program that will let that work. That said, there're more capable mac'heads around -- like Boogerhead, for instance.

To do firewire, you need a firewire cable. Probably cheapest on the internet, but maybe not--depending on how big your city is and what kinds of places they have (I think Fry's Electronics might have 'em pretty cheap?). For a Mac of that vintage, ask for Firewire 400 (male to male).

At any rate, assuming you find a firewire cable, hook the two Macs up and then boot one of them and hold down the 'T' key as soon as it chimes and until you see a little "firewire/triangular hazard icon-thingy" appear on the screen. The hard drive of that Mac should then mount on the desktop of the other Mac and you can transfer files at will.

Alternatively, you can do the transfer via Ethernet. Enable file-sharing on both Macs, and manually give the first one an IP address of 10.0.0.1 in the Networking System Prefs panel and the second one an IP address of 10.0.0.2 and then connect from the one to the other. To transfer the files, either browse for the other machine (Cmd-shift-K) or manually connect (cmd-K and then type in the address of the other Mac). The advantage is that Ethernet cables are probably somewhat easier/cheaper to find. Any CAT5 RJ45 cable will do.

Best o' luck!

(Edited for marginally greater clarity.)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: heavyboots,

a few issues of clarity... for Firewire to work, the G3 & G4 will need to have a firewire port already, verify they do. there are two types of cable ends on firewire, 4 pin and 8 pin. the 4 pin is shaped like [u]M[/u] (underlined M if my board code is broke)and the other one looks about like the side of the big hotels from a game of Monopoly in shape.

if you decide to use the Ethernet you may need a crossover cable to connect two computers directly together without a hub in between.... here is a way better explanation:

quote:

How do I transfer information between two Macs, ie from my old Mac to my new Mac?

If the old Mac has an Ethernet port, then connect the old to new Mac with an Ethernet (crossover) cable. You will also need a UTP transceiver for the old Mac if it is equipped with an AAUI Ethernet port. If the old Mac does not have an Ethernet port but does have an expansion slot, then you must fit an Ethernet card to the old Mac with integral or external UTP transceiver, then use a crossover cable to connect the new and old Macs.

If the old Mac does not have an expansion slot to take an Ethernet card (eg early PowerBooks and PowerBook Duos), then you should use a SCSI-to-Ethernet converter. This converter is discontinued so very hard to source. If you find a converter, you will also need an Ethernet (crossover) cable.

You can also do transfers if both Macs have floppy or zip drives (or if one Mac has zip, one has floppy, but you have temporary access to another Mac or PC (use PC-formatted discs in this case) to effect the transfer. Long-winded but okay for small files.

...but crossover cables are reasonably rare and specialised - so it might be simpler to find a hub/router/switch and two 'normal' Cat5 cables...

...and yeah, my question was whether the G3s has Firewire (which is also known as IEEE1394 if you're trying to buy a cable elsewhere)...