Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 April 2

= April 2 =

Automatic recording on VCR
I've got a VCR and plan to go away on holidays for 2 months. Now my VCR can only record one time in advance - you can only set one future time for recording. But my favorite T.V series comes once a week on television so out of 40 shows, I will only be able to record one. One cannot access the shows online and nor is it feasible to buy a HDD recorder. Can I invent a practical device to record? Of course, the device would have to press the record button at a fixed time each day, and move over and press the stop button half and hour later (each day). This would have to go on everyday. I know that you can buy timers which can automatically start a device and stop it (start and stop at whatever time you please). For instance, you can automatically keep a lamp lit from a fixed time til later by setting the times on your timer. I have two timers. Can I achieve this recording? (My idea was to exploit Faraday's law: use the timer to start a current going through a coil (hovering above the record button). If a magnet was hung above the coil (a very thin magnet; similar in shape to a pencil), this would push the record button. Have a similar system set up above the stop button. The only problem is that you would have to re-set the system at the end of each day in-order-to prepare it for the next day but unfortunately no one is at home. Thankyou for any practical suggestions and note that the space on the video is not a problem. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.161.138.117 (talk) 01:16, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * A spare computer and a couple old CDROM drives, perhaps? (My preferred solution would be to purchase a DVR or download the shows from The Pirate Bay.) –  7 4   06:24, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks but would my device work? Or can a similar device be used and would it be practical? I appreciate your help but unfortunately I don't have access to these things. I'd like to know how one could use a device similar to mine to achieve this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.161.138.117 (talk) 09:53, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Great story about the CDROM drive! Jørgen (talk) 13:22, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * You said that the space on the video tape is not a problem, but I don't understand how that can be. If this is an hour length show, that's 40 hours.  For a half-hour length show, that's 20 hours.  I don't think even the longest tape on the lowest speed/quality setting will last that long.  So, in your case, perhaps a low tech approach is in order: have a friend or relative record it for you.  Also, the show may very well be available where you're going for vacation, so you could possibly watch it there.  What's the show and where are you going ? StuRat (talk) 10:49, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks but as I said, none of your options are feasible in my case (don't ask me why but if I were to tell you, you would know what I mean). I know for sure that the show will be on in the place I am going to - the only problem is that this place is a non-English speaking country. I can speak the language but not very well and certainly not well enough to understand the show. I mean, it is not going to be the end of the world if I miss it - I initially thought so and thought long and hard as to how I could record it. I worked out the method using Faraday's law but then I realized the space problem. So really, my main interest now is how I can alter my method to record my show (practical alterations allowed only). If I can find an alteration, it'll be a bonus as I can record my show. Otherwise, it's not a big deal because I can live without watching the show anyway. Thanks for any help and the suggestions I have got so far. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.161.138.117 (talk) 11:58, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, because of the length of the recording, you can't use unattended VHS anyway, right? If your computer has a "video in" port (uncommon on PCs unless you knowingly bought a TV card (in which case you wouldn't be asking this question) but I know these used to be around on old Macs, for example) you can use the TV tuner on the VCR to feed the correct channel into the PC (via "video out" on the VCR), and then set up a timed recording-to-harddisk on the computer. Other than that your best solution would be to leave the VCR with a friend and kindly ask them to turn on the timed recording each day and switch the tapes now and then. Jørgen (talk) 13:27, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure that those timers you get for turning lights on and off have enough accuracy to tape a TV show. The ones I've used are pretty crumby. APL (talk) 14:18, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I feel compelled to caution against creating an automated device using mains power without sufficient understanding of the principles of electricity. At best your design would work chaotically; at worst you could do serious damage to yourself, your house, etc. So far, the best advice presented is to have a friend/neighbor record the shows for you. If none of the advice above is acceptable then I suggest you resign yourself to missing your show while you're gone and have a good vacation. –  7 4   01:55, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Buying a HDD recorder may not be feasible, but you could certainly upgrade your VHS recorder. Before I recorded DVDs I set my VHS recorder while on holiday. It could set up recordings a month in advance and had slots at least 8 recordings. The limiting step in my case was the size of the tape. - Mgm|(talk) 12:02, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


 * That's a good point. You could probably buy a much better VCR cheaply, say over eBay, as that technology is rapidly becoming obsolete.  You might either find used VCRs or new ones that just don't sell any more.  If they are really cheap, you could pick up several, so you can set each to record maybe 10 hour-long (or 20 half-hour) episodes on a tape.  Also be sure you have enough antennas for all those VCRs.  StuRat (talk) 18:29, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


 * But could you exploit Faraday's law to record the show using my idea? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.161.138.117 (talk) 06:34, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Perhaps, but if you're buying VCRs anyway, just get ones that have an adequate number of event timers, so this won't be an issue. StuRat (talk) 15:01, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

If you don't have a Lego Mindstorms set, invest in one right now. It would be perfect for building a small machine to press buttons at a specified time each day, and could even water your plants for you while you're away.. LHMike (talk) 23:02, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

My Firefox is lazy...
Using Firefox 2.0.0.20 in Windows 98, it complains of an "Unresponsive Script" and asks if I want to continue whenever I refresh my Netflix queue. It wouldn't be so bad if it asked just once, but it asks several times when I try to refresh the page. Is there a way to get it to only ask once per action on my part ? Or, perhaps to give it a bit more patience and try a bit more before it bothers me with it's complaints ? What I'd like it to do is go on working to load the page, without bothering me, while I go to another tab, like here, and work on something else. Note that I don't necessarily want to disable this warning entirely, since I do sometimes cancel an unimportant action (like loading some page that's full of annoying ads), when I get this warning. StuRat (talk) 10:32, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * To increase the javascript timeout, go to about:config. In the search, type dom.max_chrome_script_run_time.  I believe it starts out at 20 (seconds).  You can increase it to any value you like.  I looked, but didn't see any setting that looks anything like "show script error". --  k a i n a w &trade; 16:06, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * That sounds like what I want, what directory should I search to find it ? StuRat (talk) 18:19, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Type "about:config" in the URL bar of Firefox. --140.247.250.235 (talk) 20:15, 4 April 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, I tried that. For some reason the "Find" function didn't work on the "about:config" page, but I manually found "dom.max_chrome_script_run_time" and changed it from 20 to 60, anyway.  This didn't appear to have any effect.  I was thinking I may need to reboot for the setting change to take effect, but also noticed that the time before it gives me the "Unresponsive script" error is less than 20 seconds, more like 15.  So, this makes me think that I need to change a different setting.  Are there any such settings that default to 15 seconds ?  The two I saw that seemed like possibilities were "network.http.request.max-start-delay", set to 10 initially, and "browser.tabs.maxOpenBeforeWarning", set to 15 initially (that sounds more like a number limit than a time limit, but I could be wrong). StuRat (talk) 14:19, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I noticed a suggestion for Netflix... Make multiple profiles and break up your queue among the profiles. This will decrease the script time. --  k a i n a w &trade; 16:37, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * That's an interesting idea. I get 3 Netflix mailed to me at a time and also use the streaming video service through an LG set-top box.  Is there some way to have 3 different profiles, each of which will have one mailed to me at a time ?  In that case, how would I select which of the 3 streaming queues shows up on the set-top box ? StuRat (talk) 18:17, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, you can set up multiple profiles and allocate as many of your DVD slots to them as you like. Only your primary profile can access your streaming videos though, last time I checked. --140.247.250.235 (talk) 20:15, 4 April 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, I set up multiple profiles (5, which seems to be the limit), put most of the DVDs into the 2 profiles that don't currently send any DVDs, and put the ones I want to get soon into the 3 profiles that do send one DVD each at a time. That did seem to help this problem somewhat, as the 3 profiles I use most often now have a small enough number of DVDs that they don't give the "Unresponsive script" error.  The two "long-term" DVD profiles do still give this error, though, as does the one streaming profile.  Unfortunately, moving DVDs between profiles was quite painful.  I had to delete them all from the initial profile then manually add them back to the new profiles.  I also found that Netflix can't handle having two profiles open at once on the same computer.  It would randomly switch between profiles when I did this, adding movies to and deleting movies from the wrong profile.  So, this meant that I had to keep switching profiles (closing one and opening another), when "moving" DVDs.  This took several hours. StuRat (talk) 14:50, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Have you considered updating to the latest version of Firefox? Tempshill (talk) 20:33, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Or even Windows? 98 is not designed to work with anything new, like Firefox (ok, Firefox is not new, but Microsoft have only just acknowledged its existence).--KageTora (talk) 21:07, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Just steal Windows Xp, holy moly. --70.54.192.144 (talk) 08:59, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


 * If your computer is running too slowly, upgrading to a newer version of Windows is pretty much guaranteed *not* to be the answer (because of the significant increase in required resources in each new version). –  7 4   12:15, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, upgrading FireFox further likely requires upgraded the O/S, which requires tossing my ten year old computer out and getting a new one. Not an option. StuRat (talk) 18:13, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, I should say, I actually have found Windows XP works a LOT better than 98 EVEN ON a slow system. I have a 10 year old PC too (550MhZ, 256MB RAM, or something like that... not a bad machine in 1999, when I got it, but pretty sad by modern standards) and upgrading to XP was a HUGE boost in speed, believe it or not. 98 is NOT very efficient when it comes to memory management or really anything else. When I was trying to run 98 it was just a huge pain all the time — programs wouldn't properly free up memory after they had terminated, for example, and I had lots of crashes and other nastiness. XP with all of the graphical perks turned off works remarkably well on a slow PC. Your results may vary. --140.247.250.235 (talk) 20:15, 4 April 2009 (UTC)


 * One of my computers is a 1997 P2 266 Mhz system with 128 MB RAM. It has been running Windows XP (SP3) since it came out. (It initially had 64 MB of memory which worked, but I upgraded.) The current browser is FireFox 3. While the system is generally fairly slow, it is perfectly acceptable for browsing the web and general word processing. XP is a huge improvement over Windows 98. While Windows 95 and 98 crashed multiple times a day, I can not recall XP ever crashing. Do yourself a favor and dump Windows 98 for XP. Then get a recent version of FF. 124.214.131.55 (talk) 07:57, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I do have XP on another computer, and, while XP itself doesn't seem to crash, I do need to reboot fairly often when the apps on XP lock up, like the PowerDVD player. So, there doesn't appear to be any diff in how often I need to reboot. StuRat (talk) 14:55, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Atomic operations on NFS
Certain POSIX file system operations are normally guaranteed to be atomic &mdash; if several processes attempt conflicting operations, exactly one of them will succeed, and all will be properly notified of their success or failure. Examples include appending to (with O_APPEND) or creating (with O_EXCL) a file, making directories and links (of both types), and renaming files (except when it isn't). These become dicey over NFS: append doesn't work, and O_EXCL depends on the NFS version and kernel. mkdir is apparently how CVS deals with the issue, and link is the documented way of dealing with it. The system calls link and rename may have false failures on NFS; symlink makes no such disclaimer, but I can't imagine how it would defend against the same problem. mkdir just says "here there be dragons", and <tt>unlink</tt> is even scarier (I suppose it is referring to the potential for a local <tt>unlink</tt> on an NFS server to break processes on clients that (think they) have the file open &mdash; is this better understood by anyone?).

Meanwhile, a narrative of solving this problem suggests that the documented approach using <tt>link</tt> doesn't work, and that there can be false successes from these functions (see the discussion of <tt>move</tt>)!

So: what's the whole story? Are NFS versions that don't support <tt>O_EXCL</tt> vanishingly rare yet? (I doubt it.) Are <tt>mkdir</tt>, <tt>link</tt>, <tt>symlink</tt>, and <tt>rename</tt> really guaranteed to be atomic even over NFS (bugs notwithstanding)? When these functions falsely report failure, with what <tt>errno</tt> do they do so? (I should think <tt>EEXIST</tt> except for <tt>rename</tt>, which should be <tt>ENOENT</tt>.) Of course, the retransmitted RPC (are there other false-failure mechanisms?) could also fail in any of a variety of ways if other processes have manipulated the file system (a new symbolic link could make the destination path for <tt>link</tt> now be on a different filesystem for <tt>EXDEV</tt>, for instance). So perhaps the point is that any <tt>errno</tt> could mask a success (almost: <tt>EFAULT</tt>, <tt>ENAMETOOLONG</tt>, etc.)?

Finally, is there a standard for how the corresponding user commands (<tt>mkdir</tt>, <tt>ln</tt>, <tt>link</tt>, and <tt>mv</tt>) behave in the presence of NFS and false errors? Looking at, for instance, <tt>mkdir.c</tt> and its subroutine in <tt>mkdir-p.c</tt>, I see only a single call to <tt>mkdir</tt>, so it would seem that a shell script cannot assume that a failure of GNU <tt>mkdir</tt> is real. --Tardis (talk) 18:02, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * This answer over at Stackoverflow quotes the Callaghan book as saying that in NFSv2 only symlink and rename are atomic (and not mkdir or unlink), and that v3 adds creat as atomic too. Yes, the rename(2) manual does look scary (although it says if the server "crashes"; an ordinary network error shouldn't cause this, so you could be horribly unprofessional and pretend it'll never happen). I agree that if rename has that problem then surely symlink must too. The "solution" is (tee hee) to use NFS locking instead, but of course that has its own "what happens if the server crashes" problems. What's needed is real transactions, but I see no guaranteed safe way of implementing them on such a shaky foundation. 87.115.166.150 (talk) 19:19, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Ah ha! This must be why some locking schemes (including the one emacs appears to use) use symlink(2) and use a fake string for the link target which uniquely identifies the requesting process across the network. Emacs appears to use the format $username@$hostname.$pid:$somenumber (where that $somenumber might be unix time or maybe just a random number). With that you can:

while True: symlink (lockfile, <lengthy name using above recipe>) if success: return SUCCESS else: // fail if the lock exists: if it's our PID etc: return SUCCESS else return FAIL // if the lock doesn't exist, loop around and retry


 * This probably still has failure modes, particularly when locks are held briefly, but it's progress. 87.115.166.150 (talk) 19:35, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * There are of course multiple levels of "usable" here. Anything must be atomic and controlled in its effects in order to be safe for locking.  Anything that additionally has a visible, client-specific side effect can be used for locking: the <tt>stat</tt> check works without needing <tt>link</tt>'s return value at all, and similar tricks work for <tt>symlink</tt> and <tt>rename</tt> [EC: like Emacs'] .  Of course, anything that always reports its success properly is also sufficient.
 * I find it hard to believe that <tt>link</tt> is out, since open(2) specifically recommends it. I also have trouble comprehending how <tt>mkdir</tt> could be damagingly non-atomic: its problem is that it (I suppose) provides neither a reliable status nor a client-specific side effect.  I guess <tt>unlink</tt> is bad because it could, after a lost response, hit again and break someone else's lock &mdash; but that applies to <tt>rename</tt> just as badly(!), and doesn't seem to fit with the use of NFS handles.  (Conveniently, for my present purpose I only need lock, not unlock.)  The proposed solutions you linked assume that their primitives are reliable &mdash; if <tt>ln</tt> falsely declares failure, no one will ever get the lock.  (These issues can clearly be worked around by using a unique target for the symlinks and checking for it.)  If my fears about <tt>rename</tt> are justified, clearly the proposed unlock routines are broken regardless of any added checking; we could make (with no error checking) a directory and (with checking) a lock file in that directory and then <tt>rename</tt> the directory away to unlock: any replay would fail because the destination would be a non-empty directory.
 * I think, with all that, it's possible to make everything bullet-proof (so long as the clients don't crash and keep their locks!) &mdash; but my inability to see Callaghan's reasoning gives me pause in claiming victory. (I'll try to look at the book sometime.)  Moreover, I'd like to know what the full set of working solutions is for the sake of having choices and understanding.  --Tardis (talk) 20:17, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I think the long and short of it is "NFS is broken", that its semantics fail to properly mirror POSIX, and that without server-site state these can't be fixed in NFS. Even if later NFS versions are better, you probably wouldn't be well advised to code just to them (unless you control the deployment environment). That leaves you having to code as if all the "guarantees" of atomicity are false (which it seems they kinda are), so you're left with the above scheme or something like it. That should work (as long as the underlying filesystem is sane), on the assumption that NFS' caching isn't so broken that it would allow two processes to "successfully" create the same symlink. It's no shock that there are so many rude alternate-expansions for the acronym NFS. 87.115.166.150 (talk) 20:34, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Ah, more issues.  To verify that symlink you'll need to call readlink(2), but it seems that readlink itself has issues, not least an inconsistent size when compared with the value reported by lstat(2)on NTFS (not NFS).  GNU solves this with areadlink - that's the function that ls(1) uses. 87.115.166.150 (talk) 12:15, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Playing Japanese games on a British PC
I lived in Japan for a while, and came back with a few games (among other things) and have recently bought a new PC here in the UK, because my two Japanese laptops have packed in now. So, my question is, how can I get these games to work on a British PC, but actually showing the Japanese Kanji, etc., as all it has done for me in the past is show a bunch of '?' and I have to guess what the option was. I read Japanese, and this would be a massive help. Just games like 'Cossacks' or 'Age Of Empires'. Cheers.--KageTora (talk) 20:06, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * For starters (assuming you're running XP): control_panel -> regional_and_language_options, and in the languages tab check the two suplemental features boxes. I don't know if that actually installs Japanese fonts (or if it's just the necessary infrastructure for Japanese rendering and input-method); the East Asian sans-serif typeface has some links to fonts, if that doesn't do it. 87.115.166.150 (talk) 20:17, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I have actually done all that because I work as a translator from Japanese and I use this computer for that. It doesn't seem to work for games.--KageTora (talk) 20:35, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * They may be relying on a specific font that Japanese XP installs; if you can get the disk from one of those Japanese laptops to work in your UK PC, copy over the .TTF files by hand. 87.115.166.150 (talk) 20:44, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * It sounds like the games are non-Unicode. If that's the case, changing your setting for non-Unicode programs should fix the problem. As long as you have all of the Japanese fonts installed, that should take care of the question marks. Microsoft has instructions here. Daram.G (talk) 15:03, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is the most likely thing to fix the problem, but it does have potentially undesirable side effects like making \ sometimes display as ¥ and causing display problems with the many programs that assume a Latin-1 locale (though if you've previously used Japanese Windows I'm sure you're used to this). You could try AppLocale instead, though it doesn't always work (and I suppose games are especially unlikely to work). -- BenRG (talk) 21:27, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Google calendar search results
When search for a specific word in my Google calendar, I says it finds 41 results, but only displays the 6 recent instances of that word. I suspect that results that are displayed are the ones that were created since I started using Google calendar, and the ones that aren't displayed are events that I imported from my old Yahoo calendar. Any hints on how I can get this to work correctly? I'd really like to be able to search my old events, which is of course the whole point of saving old calendars. ike9898 (talk) 20:48, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Why aren't you asking Google? - Mgm|(talk) 11:58, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Because places like the Ref Desk are usually quicker to response than massive companies providing services for free? --98.217.14.211 (talk) 13:10, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I searched for the answer fairly thoroughly before I came here. And yes, I find the Ref Desk is full of very smart people that can often to you to the right answer very quickly. BTW, since I posted my question, I've discovered that if I go to one of the events that doesn't appear in the search results, open it (ie click 'edit details') and then re-save it, it will then appear in future searches. That doesn't solve my problem, but maybe it is a clue. ike9898 (talk) 13:49, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Will I Need a new Power Supply?
My current PC has an Intel Pentium D processor. I have a (pipe) dream of upgrading to a Core i7 (for which I assume I'll also need a new motherboard, new ram, and a whole bunch of other wallet busting stuff.) As you can imagine, I'm trying to fit this whole thing into an almost non-existent budget, so I'm wondering, would I also need a new power supply? A few months ago I upgraded my graphics card to a GeForce 8800GTS, and I bought a new 550W power supply for that. And with it my computer would spontaneously shut off. I had to return it and get a 650W power supply. Now I'm thinking that buying "just enough" power wasn't the best idea. Is 650W going to be enough for an 8800GTS, a Core i7, and 3 hard drives? (Oh yeah and by the way, I have 3 hard drives.) Or am I going to have to scrape together enough money for yet another power supply?

Digger3000 (talk) 21:06, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * My experience, which may be completely different from yours, is that hard drives are not the power problem (until they are breaking and suck tons of juice just to get the disk up to speed). The biggest problem is the video card.  I had a computer with a 300W power supply and no problems.  I got a fancy dual-head video card and suddenly my computer rebooted all the time. I read the manual for the card and it said it required 100W all its own.  So, since 300W was OK before, I assumed a 500W power supply would be fine (200W more).  Well, I continually got random rebooting issues.  I returned the 500W power supply and got a 650W.  To this day, I still get random rebooting problems - but they are very rare and always happen when there is a lot of video conflict going on, such as dragging a window with some video playing in it from one monitor to the other.  So, I have no reason to assume the new CPU will require a better power supply. --  k a i n a w &trade; 22:00, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I use an 850W PSU and I have an 8800GT, an FX-60, and 3 hard drives. I believe the required specs for the 8800 series cards are around 500W, but I could be mistaken. Useight (talk) 02:36, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Most recommended power supply specs are needlessly high, often combining the maximum possible usage of each device even though that never happens in practice. When you actually measure usage under extreme load you'd find they never use that much. Far more important then buying a high speced power supply is buy a decent power supply, in other words one which can actually deliver the rated wattage reliably and without failing. There are several brands which produce decent power supplies nowadays I would recommend you start with an 80plus certified powersuppy at a minimum because even though it's unrelated, an efficient power supply won't get as hot and is also likely to be far better made then the random junk you can find. A 650W power supply should definitely be enough for such a system provided it is a decent power supply. You didn't mention what brand power supply you got Nil Einne (talk) 11:31, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Follow-up question: I bought the 8800GTS because I thought it would give me fantastically better performance than my old 7600GS. Well...it didn't. And right now my theory is that CPU, rather than the graphics card, was holding me back. In other words, the 8800GTS is "too much card" for the Pentium D processor. (Hope that makes sense.) I'm worried, though, that if I did get a Core i7, I would run into the reverse problem. The Core i7 would be "too much processor" for the 8800GTS card. Is it likely that the 8800GTS won't allow the i7 to be used to its full potential? (I don't know if I phrased that in the best way, I hope you understand what I'm asking.) Digger3000 (talk) 02:58, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


 * What you're asking is what part of your computer is the bottleneck. The good news is that you can't have "too much processor for your graphics card" -- having one component that's more powerful than the others won't make your computer run more slowly. Chances are that the 8800 GTS would indeed be holding your computer back from its full potential, but you should still see a marked increase in performance compared to your old setup -- combining the Core i7 with the 8800 GTS won't slow anything down, but you'll certainly get even better performance with a newer graphics card -- something from the GeForce 200 Series, perhaps. The thing is, though, you're never going to be right on the cutting edge unless you spend pretty massive amounts of money and upgrade on a very frequent basis. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 06:17, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Vairy Touch Mobile Phone
On a Vairy Touch, how do you keep the screen from going off every 10 seconds? It's a PITA when you are trying to look through your music playlists.--KageTora (talk) 22:03, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Don't worry. Done it. It's apparently on 'LCD Backlight', which would be irrelevant on a mobile made by an English speaking company. Anyway, thanks for your time. --KageTora (talk) 22:13, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Be careful, I have a "Back-light time-out" setting on my cell phone, which I set to "Off", meaning I don't want there to be a time-out at all, and it should only turn off the back-light when I close the phone. However, what it actually did was turn the back-light off entirely, which was a royal pain as I couldn't see to turn it back on.  It was like some practical joke the manufacturers liked to play on unwary customers. StuRat (talk) 18:05, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

StuRat (talk) 18:05, 3 April 2009 (UTC)