The Noodle Compound V. 2.0
- Thread starter Gorny1
- Start date
I think I'm going to be looking into a new comp before long, tower only. Thinking of Alienware possibly.
My old and pretty decent machine is 7 years old now and is having hardware issues...
My old and pretty decent machine is 7 years old now and is having hardware issues...
Alienware is only worth it if you're interested in the in-home repair service, electrical damage insurance and the warranty in general (don't skimp on that). That said, the Area-51 is a beast (although mine shipped with garbage-tier harddrives so I replaced those immediately).
I also have an Aurora and A17 laptop, so if you have questions, let me know. A few quick pro-tips:
- Upgrade to Win10 Pro. Home (which is offered by default) sucks and is difficult to lock down.
- Alienware peripherals suck as well. Don't even bother. If you need new gear, spend a couple hundred extra bucks on a nice zowie mouse and cherry mx keyboard (topre switches are nice too but a bit more expensive).
- If you've never purchased anything significant directly from Dell before, sign up for a Dell Preferred Account. You get nice kick-backs for doing so.
- With your purchase, you should get a really nice gift card - at least enough to basically get an Inspiron notebook for free (or close to). Said gift card has an expiration date, so don't dilly dally for too long.
- Both the Aurora and the Area-51 are quite heavy and have enormous cases. They can also run a bit warm if you're gaming in 4K or on a 144hz monitor (especially with an SLI setup) so make sure you have plenty of room with good airflow.
- As I mentioned earlier, the convenience of in-home repair and warranty is the only worthwhile reason to buy an Alienware rig. You can build your own monster for half the price or spend the same amount to build a monster and then add a killer custom liquid-cooling kit to it. Just something to consider.
Windows 10 isn't that bad if you switch off the ugly tiles, turn the start menu into something which is halfway close to what it was in Win7 and before and make the notorious chatterbox Cortana shut up.
Cortana: Good morning! How are you?
Krischen: <chambers a round>
Everything more than a virtual nod of the head by playing a 1 second jingle is inacceptable, in particular in the morning.
I also have an immense hatred of the auto-update misfeature. I'm fine with updates and bug fixes, but I want a notification in advance, I want to know what they are about and I want to install them when I want!
I just asked a question about butter and mayonnaise.
Cortana: Good morning! How are you?
Krischen: <chambers a round>
Everything more than a virtual nod of the head by playing a 1 second jingle is inacceptable, in particular in the morning.
I also have an immense hatred of the auto-update misfeature. I'm fine with updates and bug fixes, but I want a notification in advance, I want to know what they are about and I want to install them when I want!
I just asked a question about butter and mayonnaise.
Kind of hard to describe, but I'll try my best:
Settings>Network & Internet>WiFi (or whatever)>click on your connection>turn "Metered Connection" on
Then if you go into Settings>Updates & Security, you should see something like this on the page:
Update settings
Available updates will be downloaded and installed automatically, except over metered connections (where charges may apply).
Then you'll have to put up with the occasional nagging that windows has updates ready, but you can postpone it as long as you like (just turned "Metered Connection" off when you're ready). Also, while Metered Connection is on, you can then check for updates manually and see the list (and their knowledge base numbers so you can look up exactly what they do).
Ridiculous and hacky workaround, I know, but it gets the job done.
Also, google "Spybot Anti-beacon". Anyone with Win10 should have this installed.
That's a nice trick and I didn't know it, but as far as I understand, it doesn't prevent all kinds of updates, like those which are allegedly crucial for running windows. Whatever, it prevents a couple of them and that's certainly useful.
As far as I understand it, this doesn't prevent programs from accessing the network in any manner or influences them at doing that, so it's just for information, right?
As far as I understand it, this doesn't prevent programs from accessing the network in any manner or influences them at doing that, so it's just for information, right?
-The XPS 9000 I have always crashes multiple times after turning it on. Sometimes when it does, the screen looks like someone completely tore it up with the colors mixed in an odd pattern. Or it just freezes and does nothing. slso gets blye death screens with a message about amalfunctioning piece of USB hardware, which there isnt.
I google it and it seems to be a motherboard issue. I do already have a Dell preferred account and get a discount from work. I'm still a few months from actually buying anything... just weighing my options at this point.
I google it and it seems to be a motherboard issue. I do already have a Dell preferred account and get a discount from work. I'm still a few months from actually buying anything... just weighing my options at this point.
Any excel wizards here?
I'm trying to do this:
In column A I keep scores.
in column B I have ranges to notify me to go up. (like 50, 250, 850)
in column C I have ranges to go down. (like 30, 190, 710)
In coumn D I have what I should be at. (0.25, 1, 3)
Now the hard part is this, if I have been above 50 and I'm on 1 I can keep beeing on 1 till I dip under 30. The going up and going down works like it should but the ranges in between from 50-30 gives me the lower value of 0.25 while it should be 1.
I'm trying to do this:
In column A I keep scores.
in column B I have ranges to notify me to go up. (like 50, 250, 850)
in column C I have ranges to go down. (like 30, 190, 710)
In coumn D I have what I should be at. (0.25, 1, 3)
Now the hard part is this, if I have been above 50 and I'm on 1 I can keep beeing on 1 till I dip under 30. The going up and going down works like it should but the ranges in between from 50-30 gives me the lower value of 0.25 while it should be 1.
I'm not sure. With my set-up, I never see any updates go through. I have to go into "Update & Security" and manually check for them. I typically do this every Sunday. If there are updates, I disable Spybot Anti-beacon, restart my computer and then start the updates when I go to bed.
Oh, speaking of the "Update" tab, you might want to go into "Advanced Options" and check "Defer feature upgrades". New builds of Windows can be unpredictable when they debut so it's best to put off upgrading for a month or so.
You should also go into Settings>Privacy and go through all 15 goddamn tabs and disable anything that seems fishy (protip: EVERYTHING).
The "Metered Connection" setting: no, it just prevents auto-updates. Spybot: Yes, this will prevent all sorts of Microsoft-specific apps and background processes from phoning home (examples: Office, OneDrive, Bing, known data-harvesting apps). You can manually set what does and doesn't get blocked, however, so if you like using Bing as your primary search engine, don't block it.
It CAN interfere with the updater - so you'll want to disable Spybot and restart your computer before updating Windows.
Spybot won't interfere with common third party apps like Steam or Discord though, so no worries there.
No, it's fine... but you did
misspell your own user name. 
No, it was funny. Perfect English too.
I had a mental image of you chambering a round and preparingto shoot your comp when Cortana stated yammering.
No, it's fine... but you did
misspell your own user name.
Yes, I noticed that a bit later... it's my old, notorious a versus e typo habit.
I was going to call you a paranoid old hillbilly here but I took the opportunity to check my own Win10 Privacy settings ...
Yeah, pretty much everything turned off here, too.
You're still paranoid though. My entire InternationalEndTheDredd cabal agrees on this point although we don't all agree on methodology. Yet.
