Posted 12/12/2008 at 01:17:11am

I read that as "Defragmenting SSD Drives is UseFUL (not UseLESS): FALSE".  Seems to make sense to me.

Posted 11/03/2008 at 08:19:57pm

Having just turned 52, I vehemently resent your categorization of a 54-year-old as a "senior citizen".  I do not come to Maximum PC to be insulted.  If I could find my glasses and cane, I would certainly pummel you, Sir!

Posted 10/12/2008 at 12:04:01pm

"I don't recall. . ."  (As you get older, you have more of those kind of moments.)

Posted 10/10/2008 at 05:11:39pm

I don't recall any Craftsman mentioned in the review.  Perhaps there wasn't a Sears nearby?

Posted 10/10/2008 at 01:13:49pm

What about the screwdriver, which is clearly shown on top of the rig in the first picture?  After all, you did an entire article on them without naming one the "Best of the Best".

Posted 09/18/2008 at 07:18:25pm

As I said, I have gotten a 4:3 AR (aspect ratio) monitor to work.  My widescreen monitor works with DVI in XP, but not in Vista.  And it is definitely a driver issue - ATI has admitted as much.  Just look in the AMD forums, for instance.

Apparently, no matter what settings one uses in Catalyst, upon reboot the driver defaults to the highest values for both the screen resolution and refresh rate in the monitor's EDID - even though the highest refresh rate is for lower screen resolutions and the highest screen resolution only works with lower refresh rates.   My 4:3 ViewSonic, which does work, has for its highest EDID values: 1280x1024 @ 75Hz.  And it works at those settings.  On the other hand, my widescreen monitor has 1920x1200 @ 60Hz all the way down to 1280x1024 @ 75Hz.  (Highest res-lowest refresh and lowest res-highest refresh)  But when Vista starts, the DRIVER defaults to 1920x1200 @ 75Hz (highest res-highest refresh), and therefore, I get no picture.  So yes, one could say that it is my monitor's fault - for having more than one screen resolution and refresh rate referenced in its EDID.  But the fact remains that ATI's driver is unable to correct for this.  Something that I have never experienced with any nVidia driver.

Posted 09/18/2008 at 06:03:49pm

I have gotten a 4:3 AR monitor to work with DVI in Vista (ViewSonic 922), but not a widescreen.  I am curious as to what motherboards you, who have not experienced the issue, are using.

 BTW, people who cannot spell should be careful applying the word "stupid" to others.  (I'm just saying. . .)

Posted 09/18/2008 at 02:21:04pm

But ATI, in its infinite incompetence, still hasn't fixed the DVI issue with Vista:

http://tinyurl.com/4j7qj6

In short, all 3800 and 4800 series cards seem not to work with DVI connections in Vista.  It is definitely a driver issue, because DVI works in XP and VGA connections work in Vista.

Apparently they don't see this as a problem.  I wonder how many repeat customers they are losing because of this.  I, for one, will be returning to nVidia for my next graphics card purchase.  In fact, ATI's failure to even address this issue has soured me on ever using another of their cards in the future.