Korean Job Discussion Forums

[LDJS]

First of all, it's my first post - so hi!

Some questions as I just bought a laptop.

1. Having problems with youtube. The vid will play for about 20 secs and then stop and stop loading. I turned off pop up blocker in i.e and added youtube to trusted sites etc and with a refresh or two that seems to do the trick but it is still slowish though now the full vid does load (the red bar at the bottom of vid.) My friend has an old sony vio with pentium 4 and less memory than me and youtube plays fine on his laptop. Any pointers? I have a HP dv 6500 laptop with intel core 2 duo t5250 @1.5 g each and 2 gigs of ram and an intel 965 express chipset video card thingy and am running windows 7 ultimate - which seems to be genuine as much as I find this hard to believe - even though I bought the laptop at yongsan for 550,000 (seeing as it just let me download microsoft security essentials after verification!) It is a USA model. I have the latest version of Adobe flash which I believe includes shockwave too.

2. I had the latest edition of Norton internet security installed but uninstalled it and went with Microsoft Security Essentials instead as the Norton programme controlled my firewall and I couldn't make any changes such as specify trusted sites etc (at least I couldn't work out how to.) Was this a wise decision? Wikipedia tells me that the Norton prog seems to be the bees neez of security software and better than MSE. Which is better based on posters experience who know what they're talking about? Norton did already recognise and quarentine one file which I think is a pretty new one so it is very on-the-ball.... It has a lot of features etc...

Um, what else?

3. Media players. I have windows media player and it works fine and dandy when I watch dvds, no complaints at all. Others on this site however reccomend VLC or Media player classsic HC. Would it be really worth while making the change to 1 of those? Does my media player effect youtube at all???

4. Memory. I currently have this window open and a cpl of progrmame windows open. Resource monitor reports that 1287 g of my memory is available and 716 mb in use. Does this sound acceptable? Around a third of my memory being used to use one internet window and have a cpl apps open (ie the one showing me how much memory is being used etc.)

5. I plug my ipod in and yes it shows up but it will not play my music when I click on it it just opens folders stored on ipod (calanedar, notes etc) but shows no music - nada - even though there is plenty on there. In media player it shows nothing at all. this is weird as my ipod playlists come up on my old thinkpad with pentium 3 and less than half a g of memory! What to do??? Instal itunes maybe...?

All in all I'm pretty happy with this laptop. She looks good, wireless internet runs fast as a flash, dvds look awesome, I skyped and it was fine etc and I got a bargain price, so no complaints. Everything running well and pretty darned fast. Baterry life lowish as 6 cell, but i might seek out a 12 cell on ebay or something. but I still get around 1hr 45 mins for dvd and just over 2 hrs of internet etc... so not awesome but not bad.

Finally anyone ever had or has one of these and has any tips or anything about the model, fill free to fill me in!

Cheers!!

[kardisa]

I can't even answer the question about Norton without bitching at length about how it's basically a virus in itself....

3. Media players. I have windows media player and it works fine and dandy when I watch dvds, no complaints at all. Others on this site however reccomend VLC or Media player classsic HC. Would it be really worth while making the change to 1 of those? Does my media player effect youtube at all???
-Get VLC. It's a small file, has a better interface, and supports far more formats than Windows Media Player.

4. Memory. I currently have this window open and a cpl of progrmame windows open. Resource monitor reports that 1287 g of my memory is available and 716 mb in use. Does this sound acceptable? Around a third of my memory being used to use one internet window and have a cpl apps open (ie the one showing me how much memory is being used etc.)
- What browser are you using? If you're currently using IE, then install Firefox (which you really should have already). The latter uses considerably less memory. However, that amount of memory usage is more than acceptable.

5. I plug my ipod in and yes it shows up but it will not play my music when I click on it it just opens folders stored on ipod (calanedar, notes etc) but shows no music - nada - even though there is plenty on there. In media player it shows nothing at all. this is weird as my ipod playlists come up on my old thinkpad with pentium 3 and less than half a g of memory! What to do??? Instal itunes maybe...?
- The ipod is configured for iTunes. Thank your Apple overlords if this bothers you (or get a Zune). On the bright side, the download is free and the program is relatively stable on Windows.

[peppermint]

Question 1. Have you tried viewing youtube clips in another browser? Firefox and Chrome are both good, and load much faster than IE.

Question 2. Norton hasn't been considered a good Anti virus program for the home user since some time in the late 90s. It's is a resource hog and doesn't update very often. I've heard great things about MSE for quite a while now and decided to give it a test run for the past month- so far so good.

Other free alternatives that I've got more experience with are Avast and AVG. I've used both on various computers for 7-8 years. They tend to prevent the viruses from getting on to the computer in the first place, so there's nothing to quarantine.

Question 3. There's no reason you can't have two media players. Windows Media Player is heavily integrated with Windows, which is nice but VLC is great for downloaded movies and TV shows because it will play just about any file type. I've got both, and use each for different files.

The only reason that I can think of to use MediaPlayer Classic would be for Real Audio files, which haven't been in common use since 2001 or so. I wouldn't bother with it.

[kardisa]

[red_devil]

[Kryten]

About Windows Media Player 11 (or 12) - once you configure it for the first time, it's basically impossible to uninstall because it's so heavily integrated with Windows. At this point, whenever I do a fresh Windows install on a friends' or my own computer, I deleted all WMP shortcuts and never set it up.

Also, the reason people suggest programs like Firefox or VLC player (and I'd also suggest Foxit Reader rather than Adobe Reader) is because they usually contain less bloat and use less system resources which can help improve your computer's performance.

[LDJS]

Thanks a bunch guys.

Youtube is okay now, I just have to refresh a few times. I added schockwave to flash as I thought I had it but didn't. and haven't tested it since then but I'm hoping that will improve watching youtube as I like my documentaries and was having the same problem watching TED vids and stuff like that too. Otherwise computer runs great.

I will add firefox too and see how that helps.

A couple more questions -

Should I uninstall internet explorer after having downloaded Firefox?

Oh and also - I have a very shiny type of screen, not a matt one and it gets a lot of smudges on it. What's the best and most gentle way to clean it?

Lastly, I am not an 'administrator' on my own laptop for some reason when I go into settings and want to change advanced security and stuff like that. How do I set myself up as an admin so I can change things that need admin?

Thanks

[LDJS]

Bump

Uninstal Internet explorer after having downloaded firefox?

[blackjack]

[LDJS]

Well just tried firefox and foud no noticable differances exept that I prefer Internet Explorer's layout (guess I'm just used to it.)

So uninstalled firefox and will stick with IE.

I really wish you could just go to a store and say

'I want a laptop that will play dvd's and burn em, run the internet very fast and I want to do some powerpoints and word processing. I never want to have to change anything or download anything new and bar natural wear and tear I don't expect to have to update it for a good 5 years or so.'

It's just too nerve wracking and confusing!

Oh, bump on my other question - best way to clean my screen?

[SeoulNate]

few other things to add:

1. Since you mentioned getting rid of Norton, I would imagine that you just uninstalled it through the program. You NEED to download Revo Uninstaller. Use it to get rid of any program that you are not using. When you run it, it will find like half of Norton left over and you need to get rid of that before another anti virus can do it's job. Download Avast! as your anti virus after you remove the others with Revo.

2. DO NOT keep IE, you are just asking for viruses. That is probably half of the reason why your computer is running like crap. Get Firefox or Chrome, personally, i prefer chrome.

3. You do not need a full fledged laptop for what you want to do. Get a 13 inch new netbook and call it done. like this one:

http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/hp-mini-5102/4505-3121_7-33948074.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody

[SeoulNate]

[LDJS]

[LDJS]

[LDJS]

Quick bump for the admin question.

cheers.