Smacking lusers with the clue-by-four (the new tech support thread)

[FreddyKnuckles]

Yeah I'm more than cool with deleting a little bloatware.  I've googled how to get into the partition and reinstall but I can't for the life of me figure it out. Oh and basically I'm just getting it spruced up to play Civ 5 smoothly.

[elpollodiablo]

I mean I think you just hit F10 during startup to get in there?

[FreddyKnuckles]

F10 didn't do it. Here's what I had to do

Start-programs-sony-Sony vaio center-support-scroll down-click recovery center-click restore entire computer ETC

[alex]

I'm getting completely flooded with "failure notice" and "undeliverable mail returned to sender" mails at the moment in the email address I use for not-so-important thing. As in, in the few minutes that I've taken to write this post, 7 have come in. I've deleted a few hundred earlier already today. About half of them have attachments that I ain't gonna look at. My spam filter doesn't seem to want to understand that these aren't legitimate messages, no matter how I often I update it. Does this mean that someone's actually sending out spam in the name of my account? Is there anything I can do? I don't suppose it's a virus which actually sends out stuff from my computer, because the only computer I access this e-mail address from in non-webmail form, using Thunderbird, a) is a Mac (though admittedly, one without virus protection), and b) is set up as receive-only for this particular e-mail address, i.e. if I try to reply to messages received on this address, I get an error message because it's not set up to send messages at all (I always respond from a different address that goes into the same Thunderbird inbox, and which is unaffected by this problem). If even I cannot send messages from this e-mail, then a virus can't either, right?

So: What are these things, exactly - just spam or are they genuine error messages sent out in reaction to an attempt of spamming that goes on in the name of my e-mail address? And is there anything I can do?

[YojimboMonkey]

I'm leaning toward spam.  Do you have anybody in the address book of this account? You could ask them if they've been getting e-mails from you about boner pills.  Also, if this is a webmail account, you might try changing your password and seeing if the bounces stop coming.

[ellaguru]

I had that for a bit on my Yahoo account a couple months back (maybe last month?). I changed the password, and I think that worked. I didn't get hundreds, though, but maybe a dozen on each of several days over a couple weeks, something like that. Anyway, I haven't gotten any in a few weeks now, so probably the password change did it. It didn't seem to work immediately, but that might be that the undeliverable mail spent a while trying to get delivered. I think that happens.

[alex]

Okay, thanks. And yeah, I had a period a couple of weeks or months ago where I got a few dozens within a short time, then it got better, and now, really only today, it's been going totally insane. I did just change the password now, so hopefully that'll help. I also checked and it turned out there were a few email addresses in my webmail mailbox, but they're all superold and I doubt many of them even still exist. The only one I am confident still does was my mother's, and since I know her password, I simply logged into her account to see whether she got any spam mail from that address, and it turns out not.

[FreddyKnuckles]

My laptop screen went black a little bit ago but I could still hear the sound. Had to force reboot. Then on startup there's all these weird boxes and lines.

Is my vid card shot? Is replacing it something I can do on my own? It is out of warranty...

[FreddyKnuckles]

huh... cool... free fix, even outside of warranty.  how often does that happen?

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/news-item.pl?mdl=VGNFZ4000&news_id=349

The only bummer is that my girlfriend is leaving town till wed and I had new Vegas planned for the whole time. Maybe I will buy a computer, play fallout on it until the repair tech comes and then return it.

So you tech guys... what's the realistic timeline for this Sony tech to actually call me and then how long till they come and fix...

OKAY.... another update, even though no one cares.  I came back from lunch and it was perfectly fine.  It was blue screen of deathing me and bringing me wild random characters and now it is back to normal and I didn't shut it down or do anything to it.  Played an hour of New Vegas even.

[DCDave]

My new job will let me get any Mac under 2K.  Suggestions?

[elpollodiablo]

You've got like three options there, man. Just get a MBP, highest specs possible for the price point.

[dieblucasdie]

Go refurb, too, lowers it about $300.  If don't really need a laptop (and not many people *actually* do in the smartphone-era), get an iMac.  Like this guy:

http://store.apple.com/us/product/G0JP0LL/A?mco=MTkwMzU2MjQ

[DCDave]

Go refurb, too, lowers it about $300.  If don't really need a laptop (and not many people *actually* do in the smartphone-era), get an iMac.  Like this guy:

http://store.apple.com/us/product/G0JP0LL/A?mco=MTkwMzU2MjQ

I need a laptop because I'm going to be giving presentations in DC, using it in DC, and bringing it to Cambridge.

[dieblucasdie]

Then I would say this one:

http://store.apple.com/us/product/G0GW4LL/A?mco=MTA4MzQ4NjA

Unless the 17" is too bulky for your purposes, in which case, this one:

http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC373LL/A?mco=MTgxMzM0Mjk

Unless you have something against refurbs, in which case do as pollo said and just build your own at apple.com and max out the specs as far as you can without going over $2000, which ain't going to be much.

[elpollodiablo]

Nope. I would suggest something like mine, which I absolutely love. It's a 15", and it clocked in at right around $2k, with these specs:

2.53GHz Intel Core i5
4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm
SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
MacBook Pro 15-inch Hi-Res Glossy Widescreen Display

Retails at $2150, but was a little less with the education discount. I would definitely suggest the extra hundo for the hi-res screen, though.

[Greg Nog]

I'm a big fan of 13" laptop, myself; I suggest that one!

[elpollodiablo]

I loved my 13" MB, but I gotta say the extra two inches of screen space make a huuuuge difference with relatively little change in weight or space in a bag.

[coldforge]

Dude, get the new air, obvioudly

[DCDave]

Will I miss not having a CD drive?

[elpollodiablo]

You'll miss the thousand megahertz

[DCDave]

Jiggawatts

[coldforge]

you will not miss not having a cd drive, because you will be not having a cd drive!

seriously though, you won't miss it

[Ignatius]

Will you ever need a CD drive for work?

[jm]

Or rather, will there ever be a time when you somehow need a CD and absolutely can't use a USB drive?

(this is a serious question - I do not own a USB drive.  Or at least, I don't own a USB drive that isn't my phone.  There are times when, if I had a laptop, a CD drive would come in handy.)

[coldforge]

And can't use an external superdrive, mind you.