Yeah, it's a pain in the ass, but with years and years of using WinXP behind me, my experience is that it's one of the only ways to get a machine back to working normally. I just did it to 4 of my machines and it's amazing how much better they run. I'm also anal about making sure I keep install disks and license codes where I can get them.

Yeah, I agree with ND. There's a lot of stuff that can go wrong; you could be chasing problems for a long time without getting everything clean. You definitely want to check for all your install discs and codes beforehand, and you almost certainly will lose something or other (check for applications that save their data in unusual places).

But seriously, it's the only way to be really clean and back to fast and you've spent a lot of time on it already. Wouldn't you be happier to be nuked and restored and on your way? Wouldn't that be less stressful than worrying about it every single day?

We just did it with the SO's machine, and I did my desktop recently. Still need to nuke my old laptop from orbit, but I got lazy. With the NAS now it's super simple for us.

The horror! Not that! Anything but that!

Heh. Not meaning to imply it would be the end of the world, just that their reason for the Kindle dying isn't a very good one.

I am pondering getting a netbook. My current laptop is usable, but heavy, on the slow side and has a short battery life. It has been suggested to me that, since I work at home, occasionally taking my work to a coffee shop or something might help keep me more focused. This would be a labor-intensive process with my current laptop. The laptop also sucks up one of my carry-ons when traveling. A lot of the reviews fault them for things like not being able to handle complex graphics. I can't do complex graphics on a laptop now, except in an emergency, because the ergonomics kill me.

I know some of you have netbooks. Gud and Plei do, IIRC.

Pros? Cons? Suggestions?

My friend Kevin bought an Asus EEEPC netbook, model 900HA, with 1 GB ram and 160GB hdd. (1.6 GHz Intel ATOM N270 Processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, 10 GB Eee Storage, XP Home) [link] (Buffista Affiliate link)

He found some sluggishness dealing with full sized RAW files from his pro-level camera, but I bumped it up to 2 GB RAM for him for about $30, and pointed out full performance mode and it's helping.

Before I upped the RAM, I watched an *ahemmed* tv episode on it, and got a slight pixelation in one scene.

I'd be tempted to go with the next one up, the 1000HE for a bigger screen. [link]

But then that's the only one I've delt with, so I have only 1 data.

Ginger, if you act fast, and act NOW!, Woot is offering an Asus netbook for $150. I hope you see this soon, because they'll probably go fast, and once they're gone for the day, that's it. Woot is selling something else tomorrow.

[link]

GO NOW, GINGER!

(Details on the Asus - 1 Asus EeePC 900 Netbook 8.9" LCD 4GB SSD 512mb DDR2 802.11b/g)

Dang - sold out already!

Well, that's what I get for leaving the house.

What's the simplest wiki software out there? Or, more specifically, which app has the simplest user authority module, because I want to swap it out.

Wouldn't you be happier to be nuked and restored and on your way? Wouldn't that be less stressful than worrying about it every single day?

OH MY GOD I FIXED IT.

crosses fingers

I was all set to uninstall and reinstall the K-Lite Codec Pack, which contains libmplayer.dll, but I didn't remember whether it would require me to restart, so I was waffling on whether I wanted to bother this morning. But I Googled Pixie Pack Codec Pack, which also came up on a search for that file and I don't remember ever installing. It turns out that it got installed when I installed Tunebite, which I recall gave me some problems (I feel like it did some freaky things during the install that scared me). That was last year. But I thought, fuck it, let me uninstall Pixie Pack Codec Pack since I don't even need it and never wanted it.

AND NOW EVERYTHING WORKS. All four programs that crashed when opening things—Paint, IrfanView, Outlook Express, and Explorer—now open files with no problems. I have no idea why the issue only presented now and why it was an issue at all, but uninstalling Pixie Pack Codec Pack and getting that DLL file off my system has solved my problem. No nuking required at the moment, thank goodness. And I also feel a sense of accomplishment for sticking at it, researching, and detectiving. Thanks to everyone who listened to me bitch and moan for the last week!

Did a JPG manipulator ship with Tiger? There was something quick and dirty that I was using when I didn't need to Gimp it up. But I don't remember the name.

I am getting very old.