Sandy Bridge

Interesting... Win10 Enterprise's feature stability is what I wanted, but I didn't see a way to purchase it as a non-enterprise. There's a pretty decent chance I'll be building a new system in the second half of the year, but either at that point or if I do decide to stick with my ancient rig another few years, I might have to look into that more seriously (and double-check that I'd be buying the right one). I wouldn't miss the Microsoft Store, but would appreciate not be surprised with new features. Although maybe by that point Windows 11 will have stabilized enough to consider... still preferably without free feature upgrades.

I also suspect TechTarget has basically been ignoring NBR and its sibling sites for years, not spending anything more than the bare minimum to keep the servers on. One of the indicators is that NBR never went HTTPS, despite Google and other search engines implementing significant penalties for unencrypted sites in search results a few years ago. In a world where search engines drive traffic, adding https was a bare-minimum feature in order to stay relevant. Does anyone remember how NBR became part of TechTarget? I don't remember whether it was independent or already part of Tech Target when I discovered it in 2007.

The funny thing is there was a big uproar over how inferior the NBR vBulletin 4 style was when that forum upgraded from vBulletin 3. That's why they introduced a "retro" vBulletin 3 style. Not everyone liked it when it was new. I wasn't really active when NBR went to XenForo, so I can't speak as much to how that was received. Thanks for posting the link to the NBR theme creator, by the way. I had no idea there were companies that created themes for forums, and one of my other forum homes is a XenForum. Every year or so someone bemoans how they only have a couple themes and they used to have more before they migrated to XenForo. Now I'll be able to offer a more practical suggestion, particularly given that they have some standard options that are not very expensive. (I still need to try out the styles we do have, been too busy archiving things to play around with that)

The two points that Aaron mentioned about getting "features" in updates and the increasing monetization of Windows are why I'm still on 8.1 on my desktop. It seems Microsoft is going more in that direction for Windows 11 than they did for Windows 10. And while I'll admit that I haven't had any real horror stories with 10 on my laptop, I also didn't jump on it right away in 2015, giving it a few years to mature. I tried pre-SP1 Windows once, with Vista... never again. Stability is king. The Thread Director and Windows 11 item reminds me of how Kaby Lake and Ryzen only supported Windows 10, at least officially. The uncertainty about whether I'd get the full performance and functionality of Ryzen with Windows 8.1 was part of why I didn't upgrade to Ryzen and am still Sandy Bridge. I wonder how many people will decide to stick with Rocket Lake or Zen 3 due to the lack of Thread Scheduler support in Windows 11.

Hopefully the question is self-explanatory.

As the poll says. SSDs don't count, nor do external drives. I have 4. Two data drives, and two backup drives. There's space for one more comfortably, but I'll probably retire my oldest drive the next time I buy another one.

We used to have a tradition of threads speculating about the performance of future generations of processors. Alas, the member who posted most of those threads moved on over five years ago, and, well, the performance improvements had been mediocre for awhile before that. In that spirit, I've decided to open a thread about Intel's potential 2025 architecture. Yes, it's skipping a few generations ahead, but just read the rumors: Who knows whether it will pan our as such, but don't you want that biggest architectural improvement since Core, and as big of performance gains as Ryzen? Isn't it worth planning your next upgrade for that? 50% chance those plans change entirely over the next three years, and I doubt this thread will have much to discuss for quite a while. But if things to pan out, chances are we'll be discussing it earlier than most forums. (Feel free to start threads for other more near-term architectures such as Raptor Lake as well)

The great news is we shouldn't be dependent on the Archive Team for the forums, although if they were also successful, all the better. Our motley crew of NBR archivers has now covered (with minor and still-shrinking exceptions) all of the forums except What Notebook Should I Buy, Toughbook Buy/Sell/Trade, Site Suggestions, NBR Marketplace, and Off-Topic. That includes the Windows forum, and the thread you linked should be included there too (although I didn't archive that one personally, so I can only vouch for it not falling into one of our known exceptions). It's definitely handy learning ways to make personal archives. We used HTTrack for parts, but JSoup (a Java library) for the majority. If you have time this week to dig into Open Wayback, you may be the first to validate that the Internet Archive archive is working.

I wish I'd seen them when they were last in my part of the country. I'm not much of a live music person, but Nightwish is the one band I'd really like to see live. Angels Fall First was what I listened to while driving a few days ago; Century Child got a couple spins tonight; right now it's the very song you linked above, from Showtime, Storytime. I tend to prefer the live albums to the studio ones, but whether Showtime, Storytime or End of an Era is my favorite... I can't really decide. Now switching to From Wishes to Eternity.

2011 Honda Fit. I've never been into cars like computers, and it gets me from Point A to Point B very reliably. 80K miles, so if I keep up my long-term-average miles per year, it could last a long time. Here's a picture of it training for being in a commercial someday:

That was me, but I was trying what they had posted on 1/25, probably on 1/26. The new 5 GB file are from 1/26. It still says it's indexing, but I am skeptical. I wonder if it's the Webrecorder software not being able to handle 5 GB? There's an advanced guide linked from https://guides.lib.vt.edu/webarchiving/openwarc (where I learned about Webrecorder), so if someone has the time to try that, we might find out the answer sooner. I'm too busy filling in gaps in the archive to try it now.

Nightwish, by the band Nightwish, from their demo album Nightwish (1996). I've been appreciating the folk metal on their first full-length album (Angels Fall First, 1997) recently. Their first demo is a fair amount less polished, but is in the same style. Quite a difference from their heavier later music, although I like much of that as well.

Well, it's been over an hour, and the Web Recorder is still indexing it. Stopped it and restarted, but it's still indexing. I'll try moving it to my SSD, the HDD is getting hammered right now. Web Recorder did open the unsuccessful 5.58 GB WARC on the 25th, so I know it works... hopefully the fact that it's taking forever means there's more stuff in this one.

That would be great if they have the main site. I downloaded one of their WARC archives a few days ago and forgot about it; the Web Recorder desktop software is now indexing it. The Latitude/Vostro/Precision section looks great, even the forum styling, with page navigation working (although a few gaps of course; sorting the columns takes you to the "real" NBR, although you might not realize it right away). Though I agree with Samir that I probably would have started out with a "less" NBR version initially, just to allow some time to pass.

I've noticed a few people reacting with thumbs ups, but I for one haven't seen an option to do so, and I'm guessing @Samir didn't either given his post above the quoted one. Which corner is it supposed to be in/can someone who sees it post a screenshot? I've checked the "..." menu in the upper right, and see the "+" for Multi-Quote in the lower-left, and if someone has a signature there's an "x" down-arrow "Ignore signature preferences" in the lower-right... but no sign of a thumbs-up button anywhere. Edit: Found it: There's no user interface element for it with the default theme. The arrow in the screenshot below shows where to click:

The second HP Business Class run has finished, and I'm pleased to say that none of the threads conked out this time, and not a single error was printed in the logs (although of course some external images from years ago are no longer up). So we should be able to restore that, and I specifically verified that the 8760w Lounge will be intact. It is worth noting that for the threads already on this archive, you can save your own local copy as an MHT file using Internet Explorer, Opera 12, Vivaldi, and I believe Chrome as well nowadays, although unfortunately not with Firefox. These archives can be re-opened with any of those browsers. Printing to PDF via the Print menu is also possible. I'd recommend this option for any thread you really want to have forever, such as your laptop's Owners Lounge or Ultimate Upgrade Guide.

For some of the first forums archived (HP Business Class was one of the first two), there were still some technical hiccups to be worked out. In particular, some broken images and links could cause progress to stop at times, leaving the archival of that thread "dead". The program I wrote had mainly been used for individual threads as of two weeks ago, and prior to this effort it had only been run against individual sub-forums twice, totally roughly 2000 threads - and only downloading the first page of those 2000 threads at that. So, with hundreds of thousands of threads and millions of posts over the past week, it was not very surprising that it ran across some invalid data that tripped it up, which it had not come across before. The good news is improvements have been made to how resilient our archiving process is. I've started a second archive of the HP Business Class forums, since it has perhaps the most incomplete threads, due to being prioritized as early. It's also worth noting that as of a week ago, it was far from certain that we'd get even a partial archive of all the manufacturer forums, which is why we decided to start with high priority ones even though we knew we might have some growing pains.

It depends on how you define modern networks. I don't believe there are any 4G Symbian devices, so as 3G is phased out, they will stop working on modern cellular networks. From the WiFi front, my 808 supports 802.11n, which is still widely supported, although definitely not the newest anymore. In the U.S., 3G phase-out is this year, in February for AT&T, March for Sprint, July for T-Mobile, and December 31 for Verizon. So right now the answer to whether they still work on current networks is, "yes", but a year from now it will be "no".

Every day or so, I'm getting noticed that I've increased my rank. Cool, so now I'm a Contributor. But what's it mean, and how do I find out why I'm increasing my rank? I can see that I have 148 "points" to my next rank, and I can see the ranking of ranks if I go to https://efgxt.net/profile/96-sandy-bridge/badges/, but it's still mysterious what they are exactly.

It is time-consuming. Arguably rewarding though, but I haven't reached the end. Alas, Stellaris is one of the Paradox games that hasn't drawn me in. It may just be because I tend to be a fan of history; Galactic Civilizations never pulled me in like Civilization did, either. But my top four Paradox games, pretty much in order, are EU4, HOI4, Vicky II, and CKII (EU3 is probably second or third in overall playtime, but has been eclipsed by EU4). It's not so much that I don't like Stellaris as that when I play it, I play the expansion phase, build a nice empire, make some allies, and then when it's time to go fight a few neighbors, I don't have the enthusiasm for that. Haven't got into Imperator at all (somehow the learning curve seemed steeper than Vicky II, maybe it's just harder to realize you're doing things wrong in Vicky II), and haven't picked up CK III yet. In December and early January I was playing a Novgorod EU4 game, which was quite satisfying finally overcoming Muscovy after failing in previous attempts over the years. But now it's at a point where Novgorod is a pretty much impervious power, so it's not as interesting as when there were real, scary opponents to deal with.

It's a new one called, "back up knowledge from NotebookReview." You can restart if you fail, but you only have a set amount of real-life time from the start of the game until it's over. So not really permadeath like survival games, but with that interesting time-based twist. Prior to that, I'm a strategy gamer, so I play a lot of Paradox games. But most recently, Civilization III. It still has a community around it that organizes games that everyone plays in single player each quarter and then compares how it went for them. I'm far from one of the best, but it's still fun seeing how it winds up. I'm eagerly awaiting Old World arriving on Steam and/or GOG, probably in Q2.

All but 4 Acer threads with a minimum of 100 replies (101 total posts) have been backed up; those 4 are partially backed up (97 are entirely backed up). This thread at NBR in particular is backed up through post 1347, i.e. everything through the day before yesterday. Threads that are partially backed up in Acer: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/acer-mxm-models-and-cards.396320/ http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/the-official-arrandale-timeline-thread.464512/ http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/acer-aspire-3820t.479584/ http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/acer-timelinex-3830-4830-5830-t-g.553306 At some point I plan to re-run the backup of the 4 that only partially succeeded, and if we have enough time we'll run on some more midsize threads as well. But getting at least a first pass of all the manufacturer forums is a priority before moving on to smaller threads/fixing ones that have elements that made them problematic to import. If you really want all of one of those 4, make a note of it; I have one other (HP Business Class) partially-imported high priority one as well.

I have a ThinkMod adapter on order, but wasn't one of the early ones so I'm a ways down on the list. Planning to use it in my Inspiron. I'll try to remember to post a review here when it arrives, whenever that is. Although my 1520 is old enough that it probably will be limited to about 220 MBps; still faster than its HDD but the M4800 may be capable of faster depending on its PCIe setup. I agree that it's unlikely there's going to be a cheap mass market one; if there was enough demand for that it would have been around years ago. The parts are made in China and assembled in New York, so it's not entirely true that they aren't being made in China. Pandemic shipping between iterations of the product was part of the reason for the delays, although I'm sure like many projects the "it always takes 3 times as long as you expect" rule was part of it too. Overall I'm amazed that this is coming together at all. $40 is still fairly cheap IMO, and if you consider that he might sell 1000, and has been working on it for a couple years at least, and the manufacturing isn't free... it's not exactly a way to get rich. It's definitely in the realm of "a lot of the cost is going to cover the engineering expenses rather than parts".

Oooh, Sony Ericsson. All my dumbphones were Sony Ericsson, the last being the K800i. Never had a Symbian Sony Ericsson though.

Since we've already got a topic about Windows Mobile (albeit PDA focused), I thought I'd start one on Symbian. I stayed on Symbian longer than most people, until mid 2019 as my only phone system with a Nokia 808. But I must admit I don't really use it anymore. One of the major problems was that it wasn't charging as reliably (the connector being the problem), but its UI performance also leaves something to be desired once you've used a mid-2010s phone with a much faster processor. Still, it has some advantages over my iPhone. The OLED screen was really nice, including some great screensavers that have hardly any impact on battery life. Theoretically better picture quality thanks to its sensor, tied only by the Lumia 1020, although in practice software improvements since 2012 mean newer phones are better in many situations. An easily swappable battery. And some of the software was nice; the notes on the home screen were great to-do reminders, and I haven't yet found an iOS music player that I like as well as QuasarMX (which released an update for all platforms, including Symbian, last year, if you happen to need a maintained Symbian music player). Every so often I still fire it up to enjoy the OLED screensavers, and I wonder if it might have resulted in some better pictures when traveling in the mountains this year; my point-and-shoot beat the iPhone in situations with zoom, and the PureView system and larger lens might have too. But it's hard to justify taking it along as an additional device just for the pictures when I could take a dedicated camera for pictures.