Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2008 February 26

= February 26 =

Laptop and External Monitor Resolution
I have a VGA out port on my laptop. The laptop has a 1280x800 native resolution. Now, my question is, can I connect an external LCD monitor that has a higher resolution, say 1440x900 or a 1680x1050 and have content displayed on the external monitor at the native resolution of the external monitor, even though the built it screen has a lower one? Sorry if this isn't worded very well, I'm not too good with computers. (The laptop's running Vista btw.)(And it also has a HDMI and S-Video output, if that matters) RedStateV (talk) 03:31, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * It's possible - maybe you should supply the type of graphics chip the laptop has so that someone can tell you if it's capable of outputting a higher resolution. Alternatively open 'help' and search for 'monitors' or 'graphics' you might be able to get the answer there..83.100.138.74 (talk) 05:06, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

The graphics card is a 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT. RedStateV (talk) 05:24, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * look around here : http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_8600M_techspecs.html - the 'chip' has quote "Dual integrated 400MHz RAMDACs for analog display resolutions up to and including 2048x1536 at 85Hz " - there are the max resolutions. 87.102.118.114 (talk) 20:13, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Do you want to clone or extend? In other words do you want the external display to have the same content as your primary one, or do you want extra desk space like as if you have a super wide monitor? If it's the latter, then yes you can, but if the former, no they must operate at the same frequency, and so will be limited to 1280&times;800. --antilivedT 07:15, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

What do "clone" and "extend" mean? Hah, I really don't know that much. RedStateV (talk) 17:32, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * "Clone" means that the exact same image is displayed on both screens, "extended" means that your desktop is spread across both screens, and you can move windows between screens. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 18:38, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * With reference to a previous answer I don't think the only two possibilities are 'clone' and 'extend' the other option is to turn off the laptop screen and only use the external monitor. The graphics card is almost certainly capable of different and higher resolutions, so I guess the answer to the original question is yes. BUT you might need to find out how change the settings - the hdmi should automatically detect the correct resoloution for it, whether or not it will automatically turn on, and whether or not it will turn off the laptop screen depends on the software you have.. maybe someone else can answer these points.87.102.118.114 (talk) 20:08, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

With all this new information, let me try to refine my question, can i plug in an external monitor at a resolution of say 1440x900 while keeping the laptop resolution at 1280x800; both screens at their full native resolutions? RedStateV (talk) 20:48, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, if you run them on extend mode. --antilivedT 03:24, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Alright cool, thanks. RedStateV (talk) 03:02, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Firefox Resources
I've noticed that after having Firefox running for a long time, and then look at the "Mem Usage" in the  Task Manager, Firefox has gone from a relatively small number to a relatively large one. It does this on both XP and Vista and my question is why does this happen and is there anything i can do to fix it? Thanks Deltacom1515 (talk) 03:56, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Try disabling all your addons and see if it changes anything. Ariel. (talk) 10:08, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * This is a result of known problems in Firefox's memory management. It should be fixed in Firefox 3. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 13:35, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Time-Consuming Machine
How long should Apple's Time Machine take to backup a disk for the first time? Mine has been running for 22 hours now and has moved less than 16 GB. (The external HD that I got for the purpose claims 480 Mb/sec, which ought to move the whole 80 GB in 22 minutes.) I guess it compresses as it goes, so one shouldn't expect "raw" data speeds, but still ... —Tamfang (talk) 05:29, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * i would count in days, not hours. the whole point is for you not to have to notice it (as a resource hog on your machine being backed up)!!  it's ideal, and better than other backup solutions precisely BECAUSE it chooses to be so discreet you dont notice it's going on the background, but when 8 months from now you still haven't turned it off and need a backup, VOILA.  can more intensive backup solutions say that?  that they don't get turned off to make things faster?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.84.247 (talk) 09:53, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Sure, it ought to run at low priority; but during most of the day the computer is doing nothing else but screen-saving, so what's it waiting for? —Tamfang (talk) 19:17, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Screen-saving possibly? D\=&lt; (talk) 22:43, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Ideally, Time Machine should speed up when the computer is not doing anything else. By the way, it was very funny, Froth! Kushal 17:53, 27 February 2008 (UTC)


 * A few points:
 * I don't remember the specifics, but when I first installed OS X 10.5 and did my first Time Machine backup, Time Machine copied 60–70 GB in less than an hour. So clearly, something is wrong. What it is, I can't say. I do have a FireWire 400 drive, but I doubt that accounts for such a disparity.
 * Time Machine doesn't compress its backups.
 * Time Machine doesn't transfer data continuously; it does copy operations every hour or so, while your external hard drive is connected.
 * Larry V (talk &#124; e-mail) 22:37, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Specially enumerated list in LaTeX
Hi! Does anyone know how to, in LaTeX, produce a list that looks like this? 1.1 asdf 1.2 asdf 2.1 asdf 2.2 asdf 2.3 asdf Thanks. —Bromskloss (talk) 12:55, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * According to Guide to LaTeX (Fourth Edition), you can use \renewcommand to change the label for the second nested list \labelenumii, and have it include the label for the first nested list.
 * Unfortunately, if you don't have any first level items, I think you'll have to blank \labelenumi. So:

\renewcommand{\labelenumi}{} \renewcommand{\labelenumii}{\arabic{enumi}.\arabic{enumii}}
 * followed by something like:

\begin{enumerate} \item\begin{enumerate} \item asdf \item asdf \end{enumerate} \item\begin{enumerate} \item asdf \item asdf \item asdf \end{enumerate} \end{enumerate}
 * which compiles fine for me in "LyX". Hope this helps. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 18:58, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks, that works for me. Now I just have to figure out how to get rid of the indentation. —130.237.45.207 (talk) 08:47, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

iPod managers
Which of the iPod managers (Comparison of iPod managers), thats compatible with Windows Vista, allows the user to transfer songs and videos to the iPod without ever having to install iTunes and without needing access to the internet? 99.240.177.206 (talk) 12:57, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

List files
Is there an easy way in Windows XP to make a list of files contained in particular folders (e.g. as a txt file)? 200.127.59.151 (talk) 13:32, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Pretend it's Unix. Open a "cmd" window and at the prompt, type: dir > temp.tmp. A file name temp.tmp will be created containing the output of that directory command.


 * Atlant (talk) 13:40, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * But go ahead and call your file temp.txt so that it will open in Notepad. And if you don't want to clutter up the directory whose contents you are listing, give it a full path, such as dir c:\temp.txt.  And if you only want the filenames, and not all the size and timestamp malarkey, use the b switch  (b is for bare) - dir /b c:\temp.txt.  Oh, and I'd say that's pretending that it's DOS, if it were Unix, you'd have to type ls -al or something similar and cmd.exe would choke.  -- LarryMac  | Talk  14:33, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * If you put it in the same directory as the dir you're diring, the listing itself might show up in the listing. Depends on buffering and such D\=&lt; (talk) 15:46, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Wrong again. --Kjoonlee 00:50, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Back
A year or two ago, whenever I pressed the "back" key on my browser (IE), I almost always got precisely the same page I had previously been looking at: presumably taken from my own computer's cache. Yet lately, pressing "back" takes me to an updated version of the page - rather like I'd pressed "back" then "refresh".

My question is this. Suppose I prefer things the old way: is there a setting where "back" means (or, at least, defaults to) the version in the cache. AndyJones (talk) 13:47, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * If it's IE6, try this - go to Tools\Options\General then click the Settings button in the Temporary Internet Files section. Change the radio button at the top to Never.  This may cause you to need to use refresh a lot more often, depending on your browsing habits.  IE7 might be similar, but I don't have access to it right now.  -- LarryMac  | Talk  14:24, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I'll try it. AndyJones (talk) 17:46, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Excel data sieve
I have a spreadsheet laid out kind of like this: A     B 1  Alan   Yes 2 Bob    No 3  Carol  Yes 4 Dan    Yes 5 Ellen  No .... What I want to be able to do is harvest the data from this list on a separate worksheet, to give an automatically updating list of all those entries in column A that correspond to a "Yes" in column B, like this: A 1 Alan 2 Carol 3 Dan I've tried approximating this using a list, but that is only compatible with more recent versions of Excel, and this needs to work across older versions as well. I also tried Pivot Tables, but that didn't seem to work. I'm sure I've seen this done before. Any suggestions? Thanks, jeﬀjon (talk) 14:21, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah, Excel. Unable to do very obvious and simple things without a lot of trouble. The easiest approach, and it isn't very easy, would be to write a VBA function to harvest the information for you. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 14:53, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

A pivot would work. You would highlight the data range (or simply columns A:C) and then pivot. Youc an then add "B" into the 'page field' filtered to 'yes' and then 'a' into the row/column field. This will provide you with a list of only those with "Yes". The only problem is that this would mean if 2 Carol's appeared in the list it would only have one entry rather than two. Your best bet is to use VBA - it's not a difficult function to write (though I don't unfortunately have the time to write an example for you). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.221.133.226 (talk) 15:07, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Have you considered using an Autofilter? This would let you show just the "Yes" names without needing to have an extra worksheet. The tricky part of your question is the "automatically updating" bit: I presume you mean by this that if you change Bob from No to Yes then his name will appear in the filtered list without any extra action. I've worked out a way to do this using only worksheet functions: let's see if I can explain it here:


 * Copy down as far as you need. If I haven't messed up, then column G will show precisely the names from column A that have Yes against them in Column B. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 15:57, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * P.S. Just to explain the idea behind this: I work down the rows counting how the cumulative number of Yeses. The numbers of times each of these numbers occur are the sizes of the gaps between the names to be selected. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:01, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Could you please fix the row numbers? It's driving me crazy every time I look at this page.  :-)   -- LarryMac  | Talk  19:35, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Fixed! AndrewWTaylor (talk) 20:05, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Andrew, that works perfectly. It took me a bit to realize what was going on here, but it's very clever. Thanks for your effort. To 194.221.133.226: I did try Pivot Tables, but specifically what I couldn't get to work was the backwards compatibility; it has to work in Excel 2007 and 2002. VBA is a last resort for me. Thanks to all. jeﬀjon (talk) 17:00, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Frontpage = problem...
I was trying to show someone how to do the basics of Frontpage and they accidentally made my desktop a website. Is there a way to reverse that? Thanks!! --Zach (talk) 16:27, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Control panel > Display > Desktop > Customize Desktop... > Web > uncheck anything that's checked — Matt Eason (Talk &#149; Contribs) 17:09, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I tried that but there was nothing checked... --Zach (talk) 20:27, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Can you tell us which version of Windows you are running? Active Desktop is sometimes enabled by settings in the Folder Options dialog, if I'm not mistaken.  -- LarryMac  | Talk  20:41, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Just say no to FrontPage! (luckily, discontinued by Microsoft in 2006). EdJohnston (talk) 01:38, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm using XP Media Center.... And I usually use Dreamweaver and Flash, but this was a quick tutorial of Frontpage :) --Zach (talk) 12:26, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Linux Puppy display problem
I'm completely new with anything but Windows, so I have no idea what to do. I installed Puppy Linux on a usb-stick a few days ago. Now the problem is that when if I choose to use Xorg for my display, it only shows a part of what "there is to be shown", about 1/4 of it with 1280x1024 resolution, less with smaller. This seems somewhat intended since the view can still be moved around with mouse. Xvesa works fine resolution less than 1280x1024, but at 1280x1024 ironically gives me an error that 1280x1024 is the optimum display mode. I really would like to have higher resolution. What to do? --212.149.216.233 (talk) 19:52, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

HELP
I AM NOT TYPING IN ALL CAPS ON PURPOSE. something is messed up on my keyboard. have to hold down each key for one second to type - all caps was because i must have held down caps lock. Also audible click from hard drive when each letter appears. Please help - no extra keyboard. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.194.241.127 (talk) 21:14, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Me again. I restarted the computer, and now it's fine - including no audible click when each letter appears. What was going on? --71.194.241.127 (talk) 21:25, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Assuming you're using Microsoft Windows, it's possible you accidentally activated some of the Accessibility Options in Control Panel. Then again, I find that some applications sometimes seem get confused as to whether the Shift or Control keys are up or down, with annoying and confusing results. Usually tapping the offending keys and switching between applications fixed the problems, but in extreme cases it might be that only a reboot would do. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 22:51, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I doubt it. If accessibility options got reset each time you restarted the computer, that would be the most stupid accessibility software. Kushal 06:16s, 27 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Stupid or not, it does seem to be the case, at least for the Windows Sticky keys option. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 08:26, 27 February 2008 (UTC)