Calling all geeks: Now Including Tech-o-Wienies!

[1992casey]

The amazing thing is that doctors still rely on fax. And one time, when I forgot to print out a medication list, I had to send a PDF from my iPad to the receptionist's personal e-mail address so she could give the doctor a printed copy.

[Patrick425]

Placing this question here for lack of a better thread and not wanting to start an entirely new thread.

 

Are there any places, besides Best Buy, that install car stereos any more? If anyone knows of a good place, please let me know (preferably near Waukesha)?

 

My son is on the verge of a 4.0 GPA this semester and my wife and I thought it would be a nice reward to get him a stereo for his 2004 Grand Prix that has a basically non-functional stereo. I called Best Buy and it sounds like installation would run about $200 (not including the stereo itself)...that's a bit more than what we are looking to spend.

[logan82]

Holy crap. Installation used to be basically free if you bought a stereo there. If you don't fear doing it yourself Crutchfield will give you really good instructions when you buy a stereo from them.

[jerichoholicninja]

I'm trying to use Bootcamp to install Windows on my MacBook since my Windows laptop is basically a paperweight now. I only need to use a couple Windows based programs and I like having everything on one machine which is why I'm not going to buy a new laptop. I had done this before right after I bought my MacBook but I wasn't using Windows enough to justify the diskspace so I got rid of it. Now as I'm trying to partition the hard drive I'm getting an error that says I need to format my HD as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Seems like I would have to reformat my HD and then reinstall everything. I really do not want to do that. Do I have any other options or am I [out of luck]?

[1992casey]

You could run virtualization software. It wouldn't be quite as fast as Boot Camp, but that might not matter with the apps that you'd like to run. An advantage to virtualization is that you'd be able to access your Windows apps without rebooting.

 

http://lifehacker.com/5861391/the-best-virtualization-app-for-mac-os-x

[jerichoholicninja]

You could run virtualization software. It wouldn't be quite as fast as Boot Camp, but that might not matter with the apps that you'd like to run. An advantage to virtualization is that you'd be able to access your Windows apps without rebooting.

 

http://lifehacker.com/5861391/the-best-virtualization-app-for-mac-os-x

 

Do you have any knowledge or experience with this? I had looked into it and I'm hesitant because I don't want to pay for anything.

[1992casey]

No, I have zero knowledge or experience outside of a general awareness of the options.

 

If I needed to do this, I'd think in terms of the free option (Virtualbox) unless I could get one of the paid apps at a substantial discount.

[jerichoholicninja]

Cripes. When I did this 6 years ago it was no problem. Now, I'm having nothing but problems. I'm trying Virtualbox and everything's going fine until I get my XP disk to install and it's cracked.

[logan82]

How is Linux as an OS? I recently acquired a laptop that I don't really need but it doesn't run well. It has Vista and is 2-3 years out of date. It meets the minimum requirements for Windows 7 but I really don't want to pay for a Windows 7 OS. I lnow later this year Microsoft is letting everyone upgrade to 10 free for a year after it's release.

[jerichoholicninja]

I've been running VisualBox with an XP Pro disk that I found stashed away since last night. Seems to work fine so far.

[LouisEly]

I have a HP OfficeJet 6600 printer and the pick rollers no longer turn to pull paper up into the machine. The paper feed rollers work and turn, but the pick rollers won't turn (I got some hard stock paper jammed in it and I think I broke something pulling the paper out). I've reset the printer and cleaned the rollers and now am at the point where the HP website says "contact for service". Does anyone know if this is something easy/cheap to fix? This printer blows through cartridges and will not print, even in only black ink, if just one of the color cartridges is depleted so I have no desire to plug a lot of money into it to fix it.

[logan82]

Unless your printer is really expensive it probably isn't worth fixing. I would have been looking to replace it based on not being able to print because you are out of a color you don't need. That's crap.

[AZBrewCrew]

Placing this question here for lack of a better thread and not wanting to start an entirely new thread.

 

Are there any places, besides Best Buy, that install car stereos any more? If anyone knows of a good place, please let me know (preferably near Waukesha)?

 

My son is on the verge of a 4.0 GPA this semester and my wife and I thought it would be a nice reward to get him a stereo for his 2004 Grand Prix that has a basically non-functional stereo. I called Best Buy and it sounds like installation would run about $200 (not including the stereo itself)...that's a bit more than what we are looking to spend.

$200 is absolutely *insane*. If you have any mechanical knowledge, the older GM cars are really easy to work on. Wiring harness and dash kit should run you about 30 bucks tops and there are tons of install videos on Youtube. I used to do car audio installs (on my own, not professionally) and Id never take a vehicle to Best Buy. The higher end shops might seem intimidating because they carry expensive products, but ive found their install departments to be second to none.

[GAME05]

I had mine installed at Best Buy many years ago and they didn't charge to install (but of course there were extra parts I needed to buy). But they didn't do a great job with the wiring. I've taken it apart and so much seems to be pretty basic plug-and-play and then just finding the right size faceplate, and I'm sure wherever you buy it could tell you just which parts to get. It sounds like installation could be a fun project, actually. That's a nice gift.

-------------------------------

 

just bought myself a new internet radio. I've been without one for a year and I miss listening to good talk radio stations at night. Plus this one plays podcasts!

[logan82]

I am trying to put together a flash drive with software on it to fix computers. I already have Chrome Portable, Malwarebytes, CCleaner, and Ubuntu on the list. What else would you guys recommend?

[jerichoholicninja]

Does anyone have a copy of Windows XP Home direct from Microsoft (not OEM) that they are looking to get rid of? I'm willing to pay for shipping plus a little extra. PM if you are interested.

[logan82]

What kind of system specs should I be looking for to run 2 VMs at a time on a computer? this semester I was able to do a lot of my work in the computer lab, but I don't think I will have as much time to work on the campus computers next semester. I think I will be spending more time using VMs next semester too.

[LouisEly]

Need some help from the computer experts here, particularly those who know Outlook. My school email uses Office 365, made the switch about 9 months ago, and I access it through Outlook 2010 on my laptop. It was working fine until yesterday early evening. I tried sending a rather large file (~19MB) to three people in three separate emails. Afterwards, Outlook kept hanging and my computer would freeze. I had to go into Task Manager to kill the process. Tried this a few times, kept having to go into Task Manager to kill the process. Seemed to have trouble syncing the Sent Items folder, so I changed the laptop settings so that it would do nothing for four hours (not go into sleep, hibernate, etc.) and re-launched Outlook and just let it go for a couple of hours.

 

Still having the same problems this morning. When I launch Outlook it will download headers and show in the preview pane, but when I try to click on another email in the Inbox it will usually hang and get the spinning circle with (Not Responding). It also keeps asking for my username and password, which is automatically populated in the window, every 2-3 minutes. Basically I can't do anything with it.

 

I logged onto Office 365 through the web and checked my Sent Items folder - two of the three emails were in the Sent Items so I deleted those and deleted all large emails from the Sent Items and Deleted Items folders. Tried launching Outlook again, but it keeps hanging if I try to do anything and it keeps asking for my username and password.

 

Any suggestions on how to fix this?

[logan82]

Might be an outlook issue. I have been having problems with my hotmail accounts on my phone since last night.

[TheCrew07]

Most organizations cap the max email size, for example my company caps the message at 5mb, so messages which are larger can get stuck in the outbox/sent items depending on how it's configured. Instead of bouncing the message back corporate has it set up to automatically delete the email, which leads to user confusion because they believe the email was sent, when it fact it wasn't because the email was too large. I run across this a couple of times per quarter.

 

I would check both spots and delete the email, then try zipping up the file to reduce the size.

 

Most "free" email accounts have size limits as well.

[LouisEly]

I created a new profile for Outlook and it seems to be working; it successfully connected to and synced all of my folders. I logged in through the web to Outlook 365 and deleted any emails with large attachments (>1 MB) in my Sent and Deleted folders and that seems to have helped as it synced all folders fairly quickly.

 

I changed my old Outlook profile to not connect to the server automatically and work offline. When I do that, I can sync individual folders but when I try to sync all folders it hangs and keeps asking for my password. Weird.

[LouisEly]

Been having some issues with my laptop freezing up for 3-4 seconds at a time. This seems to have been occurring more frequently the last 3 weeks or so. Happens when I'm navigating through folders (will click on a folder and it will take 3-4 seconds to open) or when on-line (trying to scroll down on a page, and will freeze for 3-4 seconds).

 

Been backing it up just in case, ran Malwarebytes and no infections. Does anyone have any ideas on what could be going on (and how to fix it)?

[Invader3K]

Had two computers within the last 48 hours go bad. A laptop and a PC. Both had been upgraded to Windows 10. I know it's probably just a coincidence but it doesn't feel like it. I rolled the desktop back to Windows 7 and it's running great. The laptop will be a bit more of a project, as I need to wait for a recovery disk from Toshiba. Ugh.

[logan82]

If you like 7 or 8 and are running those operating systems I would say I am 50/50 on 10. I like 10 and think it runs faster than 7 or 8, but there are some issues and unless you configure it right it collects a lot of information on you. You have a long time to upgrade for free.

[Invader3K]

If you like 7 or 8 and are running those operating systems I would say I am 50/50 on 10. I like 10 and think it runs faster than 7 or 8, but there are some issues and unless you configure it right it collects a lot of information on you. You have a long time to upgrade for free.

 

Thanks. I did like Windows 10, but it sure seems like it did not work well for me after upgrading. The desktop is running fine on Windows 7 (after I rolled it back), but that's less important to me, since I'm just going to use it as a gaming machine going forward. The Toshiba laptop (which I've only had for a little over a year) taking a dump is quite frustrating. Best Buy (where I bought it) was zero help since I didn't buy an extended warranty. Toshiba is sending me a recovery disk and a new hard drive (though I had to pay for both). Hopefully it will be fine after I get both installed.