tkam

mac filtering is utterly useless, not broadcasting your ssid is slightly less useless. WPA2 would be best, but WPA is pretty decent.

K&K's boston creme donut sucks IMO

My Favorite Donut: Dunkin' Donuts Boston Kreme Donut

1) I agree he is terrible with giving wait times which is unforunate 2) Lack of information? Publicly available (ie his website) sure I agree but if you call and ask him he'll tell you about anything 3) Some of the upgrade prices are rather high, but so what? No one is forcing you to get them. The stock amps sound very good already.

I know a number of Aristeaus owners who would beg to differ

Are you really sure it was? Or did you just think they looked like rivets? And just because I can here's some hi-rez internal shots of the power supply for my amp: http://head-case.org/tkam/thedragon/psu/ i'll put some shots of the audio section internals up later

he could get rid of 80% of the phone calls and e-mail if he actually had a decent, up-to-date informative website.

Well my SP amp is sure pretty easy to open up. Just four 1/16th hex screws for each case. Simple enough.

Maybe he means the bases? If its a tube with a plastic base it's very possible that the base wouldn't be terribly hot to the touch. If he's talking about the glass though, then yeah something seriously wrong there.

The SP chassis are typically secured w/ a 1/16th Hex screw. So while it's not exactly the most common size in the world it certainly doesn't require a special tool. A quck trip to any hardware store and about a $1 willl get you a 1/16th hex or $3-4 for a hex set that includes a 1/16th.

Nate you could always check out dell's refurb site as well: http://www.dell.com/outlet/

Yeah if it's a custom job, like that ES-1 you mentioned in another thread I would honestly expect about a year wait. Mikhail will quote you a much shorter time period I'm sure but it won't be realistic at all.

I really wouldn't bother with the AudioNote caps, V-caps will be just as good and will cost a hell of a lot less.

cause thats where he bought his

You realize that the add/remove ubuntu app is just a pretty front-end for apt-get right?

LOL OS/2 really did own back in the day

Again I'll disagree, if MS like Apple sold Hardware (Full Systems) I guarantee there'd be less problems because they'd have much tighter control over the drivers. I'd say 80% of the problems Windows users have are in some way related to poorly written drivers. MS is attempting (well a half ass attempt I admit) to curb some of those problems with Vista-64bit by only allowing digitally signed drivers to be installed. Yes this can be bypassed, but you get the idea. I'm not going to turn this into a windows vs macos argument cause we know where that will go and we know how pointless they are. Both have their strengths and weaknesses end of story.

Jacob I have to disagree a bit here, your running Vista Ultimate. The entire purpose of Ultimate is to have every single possible add-on/component/whatever of Vista installed. So by its sort of bloated by default. I've been running Vista Home Premium on my Core Duo laptop and it runs pretty fast.

Unfortunately all consumer grade wireless routers are really hit or miss. For every 10 people that have never had an issue you can probably find 5 that think they are garbage. I've had fairly good luck with the Linksys WRT54GL and you should be able to find them for $50 or so.

That pretty much sums up my general thoughts on Apple, paying a premium solely because they have enough rabid fans that don't mind forking out the extra cash. I mean I can't blame them for that they've done a wonderful job of building up a following, but other than the ipod I'd never buy anything Apple makes unless their pricing falls more in the line with the competition.

Yeah failures are pretty much par for the course, they'll happen at some point to every one. In my opinion what matters is how they are dealt with. For example the power button on my 24" dell lcd died a few weeks back. They sent me a replacement monitor w/ overnight shipping. Hard to beat that IMO. I've yet to have any problems with my Inspiron e1705 in the little over a year or so that I've owned it. Nate, since cost seems to be a pretty big driving factor for you here, you might also want to take a look at: discountlaptops.com . They have a pretty good reputation but I have no idea how good their support is.

I've been happy with my Dell Inspiron E1705. If you do go with Dell remember to search around for coupons to get even better deals.

LSU vs VA Tech GO TIGERS!

Penn State vs Notre Dame Watching ND lose always brings a smile to my face

Those things are ugly as sin. Let's not forget that they also likely sound like crap as well.