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PCs for dummies


Strangelove
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I am pretty happy with my DS3 and completely uninterested in controlling my PC with a gamepad's trackpad. 

 

How are the sticks and triggers on the DS4 miles ahead, Ethan? 

 

The overall design of the DS4 is much more comfortable, the sticks aren't as slippery, and with the triggers you won't feel the need to buy RealTriggers or whatever accessory you might have used to improve them on the DS4. Besides that the battery life indication on the LED is nice (InputMapper does this) and the touchpad is useful when you don't want to get up to use the mouse to select something. Overall I think it's worth it.

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I've just always hated the DS3's sticks for a variety of reasons:  the gigantic deadzone in the center, how loose they are, and the convex thumbpads which cause my thumbs to walk their way off the stick.  The DS4's thumbsticks are on par with the 360 pad's (which I think actually makes them superior to the Xbone sticks).

 

As for the triggers, that's less of an issue, but the ones on the DS3 are just so gummy feeling, and the convex shape makes your finger want to slide off the bottom.  The DS4's triggers have a better consistency to them when pushed, and the concave shape is a better rest for your finger.

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I don't have any problems with slippery buttons on the DS3, but I also feel like I've been habituated to bad gamepads due to my more than a decade-long use of cheap logitech gamepads, as I only first connected my DS3 to my PC last August. 

 

I'll add a Dualshock 4 to my list of gaming wants and will most likely get one sometime in June, as I am swamped for the next month and a half.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...

I've run into a rather annoying hitch in my computer. I upgraded my graphics card to the 970, but since then my computer boot up time has slowed dramatically. It hangs up on the motherboard splash screen for a while. I haven't timed it, but its well over a minute where as before it was extremely short.

 

Along with this I've notice it takes boot up programs, like steam and other games, to load longer than it used to.

 

I have no idea what I did to change things. Any suggestions as to what may have caused this?

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  • 3 weeks later...

When I go to speedtest.net I get a download speed of 16MB/sec which is what I've always had, but recently I cannot use streaming video on any device other than my laptop (e.g. smart TV, fire stick, consoles) which makes me think it's my router settings/router. My broadband provider won't provide the username nor password to try another router, but there is a website that will calcutate these details if you enter the LAN MAC and serial number of your router. How ropey is it to give out that info? the website is http://www.ph-mb.com/products/sky-calcand ph-mb.com is the "Home of ExPVR; the Sky+ and Sky+ HD recording copier" I'm guessing no one has heard of it? The other think you can apparently use is wireshark, but I have never heard of that either?

 

What settings could I look at on my router to try and get things working properly?

Edited by TheFlyingGerbil
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I have the "admin" password to change settings on the router but not the one the router uses to to connect to my ISP which would be along the lines of "username@provider.adsl". If I plugged in my spare router without this I would not be connected to the internet and they won't provide that one so they don't have to provide tech support for multiple routers (even though I wouldn't ask them to support that one)

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Maybe American routers are different but over here your router needs a password to connect to the ISP. They all (in my experience) come with access to the router itself so you can set up fancy shit like guest networks, static IPs n shit. At work we ring up and get those logins quite regularly, but we're a business connection and they're probs fine with a business getting other routers to power more stuff as long as you're paying business internet rates.

 

@Gerbil: Maybe research other ISPs that do hand those details out, then ring up Sky and make out you're shifting over to them. Sky tend to be quite flexible if there's a whiff of you leaving. Also check how you do through a wired connection. If that runs fine maybe pick up a secondary wi-fi router/booster and just daisy chain your current router into that.

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Now that you say that, I have seen places in third party firmware (like dd-wrt) to enter in login info to connect to the ISP, but I've never had an ISP where you've actually had to use that, and I've had 3 different broadband ISPs.  The way it's always worked for the ones I've had is you register your modem with the ISP, and then you can connect any router you want to the modem without any special passwords or anything.

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I'm guessing the difference here is that I'm using my phone line (ADSL), not a cable connection and a combined modem/router. all my other ISPs have given me the login details in the welcome info, no need to ask, but sky are an absolute bucket of arseholes in nearly every respect. Luckily I can leave in September so not too long.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Question for those in the know (likely FDS): so I upgraded my Windows 7 desktop to W10 for free. Currently, the desktop only has an HDD and I want to buy and install an SSD for the OS and select games. Am I able to migrate the free W10 to a new hard drive? How?

 

Note: I own the Windows 7 license since I built the computer myself (it's not an OEM license).

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SSD is not yet purchased, but I'll probably go with a 512 GB. HDD is 1.5 TB, about 75% full, but I could pare that down by deleting my massive collection of games just sitting there gathering virtual dust. 

 

But I also think I should be able to download an install disk image of W10, burn it to DVD, and just do a clean install on a new SSD, ideally. Just wonder if that's a possibility, too.

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Burn it to DVD? What kind of savage are you? The Win10 downloader tool straight up gives you a USB option. As for exact update methods there's now a ton of documentation on it online. My friend did the whole update, wipe, and install onto new disk thing and I think he just had to wait a few days for it to be activated. Either way it's been a week and a half. The processes are all online now so just search for them. I saw that Lifehacker had a couple and even Ars Technica had one.

Edited by Faiblesse Des Sens
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  • 2 weeks later...

So I'm going to be on the job hunt once again and have decided now is as a good a time to use my desktop for actual work. I was planning on buying an actual desk this weekend, but given recent circumstances, I'm holding off and have connected my desktop to my 55" HDTV.

 

The problem is that it's a 9 year-old HDTV with quite a bezel to where I can't always see words and buttons at the very edge of my screen. I've already gone into properties to increase icon and text size to 125%, but it's not a complete solution. Is there a way to to create, like, a margin for the edges of your screen?

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Do you have an Nvidia or AMD card?

 

If you have Nvidia, open the Nvidia Control Panel, click on "Adjust desktop size and position" on the left pane, click the "Size" tab at the top, check "Enable desktop resizing", then click the "Resize..." button.  That will bring up an interface that allows you to adjust the horizontal and vertical size to account for overscan.

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