Although black-outs apply to GameCenter, so if you live in Phoenix, it's not doing you much good unless you just want to watch the archived version later. I live in Florida, so this does not apply to me.
1. I don't have a television, and I don't want one. Can I watch every Coyotes game on my laptop? Anyone here do that? How much does something like that cost? Is it realiable? How about quality? Thanks.
It's hit or miss with Coyotes games. They always have the game, But like 20% of the time the quality is terrible, the other 80% its great.
And it's free of charge, and free of viruses!
No payments needed. For the year, I'll get 5,550 in grants and 12,500 in loans. Those come in two disbursements. That's 9,025 in the first disbursement(not including the loan origination fee of 1%). As soon as I get the first disbursement(thirty to ninety days), I'll cancel the second disbursement of the loan, but keep the second grant disbursement coming. That will put me in debt 6,250. I'll use the second disbursement of grant money(2,775) to pay back on the loan, and reduce my debt to 3,475. My piece of **** vehicle is worth probably two grand on a trade-in. That gives me something like 11,025 to buy a truck. I can certainly find an acceptable one for 8k. Leaves me 3k to pay back to the lender. Reduces the student loan debt to half a grand-ish. That's subsidized so no interest until six months after I graduate.
Still, it'd be nice to just have credit and be able to buy a car like a normal person. Haha.
There are two kinds of credit, revolving and installment. Revolving is your basic credit card, it's where you have an upper limit but how much you borrow and the time you take to pay it back is at your own discretion. Installment is your typical car or house type loan in which the amount is determined at the point of the loan and payments are fixed until the loan is paid in full.
Revolving credit will certainly help you improve your credit score but it provides much slower results. The installment loan is the quickest way to increase your credit score (provided you honor terms of course) but it can be harder to obtain. My advice would be to get the secure credit card which has already been mentioned and go to whomever you bank with an apply for a small personal loan. You will certainly get a high interest rate but that's going to be expected until you can establish credit. You obviously have money from your student loans so I would suggest getting a small personal loan wherever you can get it (your normal bank or local credit union preferred) then instead of actually using the money you were loaned, throw it in your bank account and make your payment early or on time until the life of the loan (keep the term 24 months or less). If you complete that loan without hiccups, you're credit score will climb dramatically.
btw...considering your vehicle requirements, I think you could come in lower than $8k easily.
The more I think about it, I think you should just kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Get yourself a newer vehicle while building your credit. It's surprising to many people but qualifying for a car is actually a lot easier than most other forms of credit. Granted you're going to get dinged with a high interest rate but there really is no way around that until you've established a good credit history. However, it can be minimized by putting a good chunk of you money down (which you have from your student loans). Here is an quick and dirty example:
Car Price: $8000
Down Payment: $6000
Finance amount (loan): $2000
Rate: %20
Term: 24 months
Payment: $101.79
Full term cost: $2442.96
Cost of loan: $442.96
In that example, you'd have good credit quickly and the cost to you would be about $18 a month and that's even at a new worst case scenario as you should not be near a %20 interest rate!
btw...I highly suggest trying to acquire a loan first, not at the dealership. The latter is extremely shady no matter where you go and they will do their best to get you into the worst deal they possibly can. If you must go that route, do not tip them off that you're concerned about your credit worthiness or they will use it against you. A common trick is to get you an interest rate higher than necessary. E.g. They run the numbers and see that you qualify for a %8 loan but since they know you're concerned about qualifying at all they come back and say "well as you know you're a bit of a tough case but we pulled some strings and were able to get you a %16 loan!!!". Then through some creative paperwork, they essentially pocket the difference between the %8 loan you could've had and the %16 loan they "got you". Now add in term lengths and they'll take advantage of you even more because the longer the term, the more interest they collect and the larger bounty they receive from your %16 to %8 loan discrepancy. This is why salesmen want to talk payments with you, not price. It essentially allows them a lot more freedom to **** you over!
You can use the above for any installment loan such as cars, boats or personal loans. You could even use it for a home loan though in that case it'd be more of a ballpark estimate since housing has a lot of extraneous factors.
Look into getting a bank account with a credit union. Their loan rates are good, they don't screw you, and they tend to be easier than a regular bank. That's how I got my first used car loan as a student. I had basically no credit.
Paying off your student loan quickly is not necessarily a good idea. If it is indeed a student loan, there are benefits that come with it, like a ridiculously low long-term rate. After college I consolidated my wife's $ 25 K student loans over 20 years (or is it 25? not sure), the interest rate is 2.5%, which is also tax deductible. So that's basically free money. Keep your grant cash for a rainy day, consolidate your student loans, be good on your payments, it'll help your credit since that'll count as an installment loan.
I hate to jump in the middle of this conversation, but rt, are you, or have you ever been, in the military service? Any immediate family in the military service? The reason I ask is because you could get a great loan from USAA, which provides a great banking service and loans. Loans are only for members, which is military only. My grandparents were members, my parents became members, and therefore I was eligible to be a member.
I got a car loan through USAA for 5.9% (with my dad as a co-signer) when I was 21. I've had credit cards since I was 18 and have never been late on a payment so my credit has always been great. I'm telling you this because my primary bank (BofA) where my mom has worked for about 20 years now and where I worked at the time, denied me an auto loan for $20k. Flat out. No, "We'll give you this amount instead," just a big fat no. I went to USAA and not only did they give me a loan for $20k, they said I could take out a loan for $30k if I wanted. I also used their auto buying service to negotiate the price of the car I wanted with no haggling involved. I emailed the dealership that had the car I wanted, chose between 3 available, told them I already had a pre-approved loan through USAA as well, and I walked in and took the keys in less than 3 hours while watching the Cardinals game in a big over-stuffed couch. No hassle, no BS.
I certainly recommend them or a credit union as well. Good luck!
Had an angiogram done a few weeks ago after my stress test results show sign of possible blockage in the APEX of my heart.
The angiogram showed my heart as being normal without a trace of blockage anywhere.
I was told to lose weight and change my lifestyle or else since Im borderline on my numbers. Now im eating better and working out at LA Fitness with the help of a personal trainer.
Ive lost 10 pounds in less than 2 weeks.
Also I had a sleep study done and I was diganosed with very mild sleep apnea which the doctor believes will go away when I get in better shape. To be on the safe side im going to get the CPAP machine since sleep apena can kill.
Had an angiogram done a few weeks ago after my stress test results show sign of possible blockage in the APEX of my heart.
The angiogram showed my heart as being normal without a trace of blockage anywhere.
I was told to lose weight and change my lifestyle or else since Im borderline on my numbers. Now im eating better and working out at LA Fitness with the help of a personal trainer.
Ive lost 10 pounds in less than 2 weeks.
Also I had a sleep study done and I was diganosed with very mild sleep apnea which the doctor believes will go away when I get in better shape. To be on the safe side im going to get the CPAP machine since sleep apena can kill.
Off to the gym.
If you need or want any workout tips let me know, it's one of those areas I'm fairly well versed.
Anyway, 10lbs. in 2 weeks is a great start, keep up the good work! We don't want anything bad happening to our favorite AZ homer!
These sports shows are really making a huge deal out of the Jeter missed call. Ridiculous if you ask me. Like he's the first player in the history of sports to embellish a call.
Is it cheaper to buy one whole or build one from scrach?
On a $ 500 computer, you'll save about $100 building the thing yourself, but the Windows license is going to cost you more (you may have to spend $ 100+ on the license alone, whereas Dell only pays $ 20 for it and bundles it with the machine), so it's kind of a wash. And if you don't know what you're doing, it can be a painful experience.
If you want performance though, $ 1200 can get you a pretty good gaming machine, with a good over-clocking motherboard.
All in all, I'd only recommend building your own machine if you're a gamer, a geek hobbyist, or have a geek friend willing to spend a couple hours helping you out.
If you're going to go ahead and build your first box, just post your budget and type of usage (gaming, office apps, web etc...), I can help you pick out some components.
I like building PC's as well. I just replaced a power supply in my mainline system that died out yesterday
You can catch me in the Geek emporium section on HF as well on that topic.
So did you go i7? How about an asus ares
Probably should continue on in the OT thread though.
I've been using an i7 920 OCed at 3.6 GHz, 12 GB RAM OCed at 1600 MHz with an ASUS P6T board and 4 Raptors in RAID 10 for the past 18 months, running Win 7 x64, it literally doubled my productivity.
Is it cheaper to buy one whole or build one from scrach?
It's pretty much always cheaper to build from scratch but as zz pretty much states below, the cheaper the computer the less savings you'll see. I literally just built a new machine this week and I saved a TON but I built what would easily be considered an enthusiast level PC. Also as zz stated the OS is going to cost you a lot but if you happen to know someone in school you can save a lot buying it that way. Another option is to go with Linux which is free and will do %90 of what people do on their computer.
Quote:
Originally Posted by zz
All in all, I'd only recommend building your own machine if you're a gamer, a geek hobbyist, or have a geek friend willing to spend a couple hours helping you out.
I totally agree with that sentiment. If you're not gaming or a hobbyist/enthusiast your hardware specs are going to be pretty low and thus the money you save will not be worth it. You're better off just catching a Dell deal. I actually ran Dell's for the past 10 years and they were great.
I've been using an i7 920 OCed at 3.6 GHz, 12 GB RAM OCed at 1600 MHz with an ASUS P6T board and 4 Raptors in RAID 10 for the past 18 months, running Win 7 x64, it literally doubled my productivity.
4 Raptors, wow that is impressive! Is your system loud? btw...I haven't done much research on RAID but I hear it's fast, is that the main reason one would go with RAID?
Here is my new system:
Case: Coolermaster Storm Scout
Motherboard: MSI Big Bang Xpower
CPU: I7 950 (haven't overclocked...yet)
Cooling: Corsair H50 Water Cooling
RAM: 6GB G.Skill Pi 1600MHz (CAS 6)
Hard Drive: Patriot Inferno 128GB SSD
Hard Drive: WD Caviar Black 1TB (6GB Sata)
Video Card: XFX Radeon 5830
Power Supply: XFX 750W Black Edition
Monitor: 3 Viewsonic 22" LCD (LED backlight)
I've only had it running a couple of days but so far so good. It's insanely fast, I can boot Windows 7 in 10 seconds and every application opens like it's Notepad. I largely attribute this to the SSD. I haven't overclocked yet but I didn't go the water cooling route for nothing. I'm going to shoot for a stable 4.0MHz which should be attainable.
The only problem I've ran into is the Eyefinity 3 monitor setup. The adapter I have didn't work so I had to RMA it. So for now one of my beautiful monitors is just sitting there dark. It's a little annoying because this was the brand new adapter, which literally appeared on Newegg just this past weekend, that is supposed to be the answer to all the Eyefinity/DisplayPort issues. I'm hoping I just got a bad adapter.
lol...oh and this will make some people weep...I don't game on my PC.
4 Raptors, wow that is impressive! Is your system loud? btw...I haven't done much research on RAID but I hear it's fast, is that the main reason one would go with RAID?
Here is my new system:
Case: Coolermaster Storm Scout
Motherboard: MSI Big Bang Xpower
CPU: I7 950 (haven't overclocked...yet)
Cooling: Corsair H50 Water Cooling
RAM: 6GB G.Skill Pi 1600MHz (CAS 6)
Hard Drive: Patriot Inferno 128GB SSD
Hard Drive: WD Caviar Black 1TB (6GB Sata)
Video Card: XFX Radeon 5830
Power Supply: XFX 750W Black Edition
Monitor: 3 Viewsonic 22" LCD (LED backlight)
I've only had it running a couple of days but so far so good. It's insanely fast, I can boot Windows 7 in 10 seconds and every application opens like it's Notepad. I largely attribute this to the SSD. I haven't overclocked yet but I didn't go the water cooling route for nothing. I'm going to shoot for a stable 4.0MHz which should be attainable.
The only problem I've ran into is the Eyefinity 3 monitor setup. The adapter I have didn't work so I had to RMA it. So for now one of my beautiful monitors is just sitting there dark. It's a little annoying because this was the brand new adapter, which literally appeared on Newegg just this past weekend, that is supposed to be the answer to all the Eyefinity/DisplayPort issues. I'm hoping I just got a bad adapter.
lol...oh and this will make some people weep...I don't game on my PC.
Given that you don't game I'm not sure why you even bothered with the 5830. Just in case maybe?
RAID is generally a setup for servers but desktop users can see benefit out of RAID 0 (Two drives write at the same time on a virtual volume), or RAID 1(drive 1 backs up to drive 2). I run a RAID 0 and its slightly faster in some applications but not a huge benefit.
Something like RAID 10 (1+0) combines the two basic concepts for both redundancy and performance.
Unless I was crunching serious data , bored, or running a server; I wouldn't mess with it.
Given that you don't game I'm not sure why you even bothered with the 5830. Just in case maybe?
Definitely just in case but also didn't want to have any horsepower issues driving 3 1080p monitors or while working in 3D Studio MAX. Though really if I was going to take the practicality approach I didn't need any of the stuff I purchased. I started out with pretty much one goal in mind, build a bad ass rig. I'm a pretty serious computer geek (lol...friends call me cerebro) so decided I should have a computer to match. Plus it seemed like a more worthwhile purchase than most other things I buy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SniperHF
RAID is generally a setup for servers but desktop users can see benefit out of RAID 0 (Two drives write at the same time on a virtual volume), or RAID 1(drive 1 backs up to drive 2). I run a RAID 0 and its slightly faster in some applications but not a huge benefit.
Something like RAID 10 (1+0) combines the two basic concepts for both redundancy and performance.
Unless I was crunching serious data , bored, or running a server; I wouldn't mess with it.
I had heard of the redundancy but didn't know much about the speed advantages. Thanks for the brush up.
4 Raptors, wow that is impressive! Is your system loud? btw...I haven't done much research on RAID but I hear it's fast, is that the main reason one would go with RAID?
Here is my new system:
Case: Coolermaster Storm Scout
Motherboard: MSI Big Bang Xpower
CPU: I7 950 (haven't overclocked...yet)
Cooling: Corsair H50 Water Cooling
RAM: 6GB G.Skill Pi 1600MHz (CAS 6)
Hard Drive: Patriot Inferno 128GB SSD
Hard Drive: WD Caviar Black 1TB (6GB Sata)
Video Card: XFX Radeon 5830
Power Supply: XFX 750W Black Edition
Monitor: 3 Viewsonic 22" LCD (LED backlight)
I've only had it running a couple of days but so far so good. It's insanely fast, I can boot Windows 7 in 10 seconds and every application opens like it's Notepad. I largely attribute this to the SSD. I haven't overclocked yet but I didn't go the water cooling route for nothing. I'm going to shoot for a stable 4.0MHz which should be attainable.
The only problem I've ran into is the Eyefinity 3 monitor setup. The adapter I have didn't work so I had to RMA it. So for now one of my beautiful monitors is just sitting there dark. It's a little annoying because this was the brand new adapter, which literally appeared on Newegg just this past weekend, that is supposed to be the answer to all the Eyefinity/DisplayPort issues. I'm hoping I just got a bad adapter.
lol...oh and this will make some people weep...I don't game on my PC.
That is such a sick PC! I'm surprised you didn't go with a Corsair PSU though? I guess I'm just partial to them. The SSD is going to be amazing for you and is exactly why your boot is so fast. Once they come down in price, I'm going to grab one myself. And DO NOT run a defrag on one of those!!! It will ruin the drive, just a heads up. Why don't you game? That hurts me a little inside with that setup!
I built this rig last year for my gf (well and myself of course!):
CPU: Intel Core i7 920 (Coolermaster V8 HS)
Case: Antec 900
Mobo: Asus P6T
HDD: WD 1TB Caviar Black
Ram: 6GB OCZ PC1800 in triple channel and made for i7 CPU's specifically
Video card: 2x EVGA 9800GTX+'s in SLI
PSU: PC Power and Cooling 750W
Monitor: 22'' Acer 1080p LCD
I need to upgrade the GPU's and add another 6GBs of ram, but I can usually run any game with max settings at 30+ fps.
Sinurgy, your computer isn't far off from a pre-built I bought from Digital Storm. I normally build them myself but they were so heavily discounted last year for back-to-school that the margin was barely even there.
Liquid cooled 920, 6GB Ram, 2 SLI 275 GTXs with a 750 PC Power and Cooling. EVGA board, HAF 932 case.
Don't recommend the company though. Initially they claimed stable @ 3.8 with their liquid cooling but I had to back it down to 3.6ish to get it to run properly. When I called them out on this (along with a few other customers) they suddenly changed all their marketing literature to 3.6
Well built, just not so sure about the policies of the company itself.
Finding that the GTX 275 has aged well, and keeps up with new games so far @ 1920x1200
OT: Caved in and got an Xbox after watching roommates (Im at ASU now) play Reach so much. I see the convenience appeal of consoles now. But after a decade of shooters using a mouse I still get frustrated by the joysticks. Just so imprecise.
A) Penn State received an $88 million donation that they'll put toward building a new hockey facility, and they'll have a Division I hockey program ready in time for the 2012-13 season. I finally have a college hockey team to root for, as opposed to just players. And I finally have a reason to visit State College after my brother graduates.
B) I mentioned a job interview in post #18 in this thread, and I found out yesterday that I got the position. Starting this week, I'm a web editor for George Washington University. The job itself is a perfect fit -- equal parts creative and technical -- but it's got a lot of peripheral benefits too:
-For the first time in over a year, I am just in a relationship, and not a long-distance one.
-I will still have plenty of time to work on my book.
-The university will pay 96% of my tuition, for credit toward a degree or otherwise.
4 Raptors, wow that is impressive! Is your system loud? btw...I haven't done much research on RAID but I hear it's fast, is that the main reason one would go with RAID?
With modern hardware, your #1 bottleneck is disk I/O. I sometimes need to edit video for work, but mostly I run tons of processes in parallel and I want random access to be as fast as possible. I also need more space than SSDs allow, and the ability to quickly recover from a drive failure (hence the RAID 10 setup, which gives me the best of both worlds). I'm not saying anyone needs such a setup, but in my case, it helps. And since it's for work, money wasn't really an issue. I can currently transfer files over our network from server to desktop at 700 Mb/sec.
When I configured my machine, a 128GB SSD drive was pretty damn expensive. Today I'd probably consider it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sinurgy
Here is my new system:
Case: Coolermaster Storm Scout
Motherboard: MSI Big Bang Xpower
CPU: I7 950 (haven't overclocked...yet)
Cooling: Corsair H50 Water Cooling
RAM: 6GB G.Skill Pi 1600MHz (CAS 6)
Hard Drive: Patriot Inferno 128GB SSD
Hard Drive: WD Caviar Black 1TB (6GB Sata)
Video Card: XFX Radeon 5830
Power Supply: XFX 750W Black Edition
Monitor: 3 Viewsonic 22" LCD (LED backlight)
Nice! You have to overclock this baby...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sinurgy
The only problem I've ran into is the Eyefinity 3 monitor setup. The adapter I have didn't work so I had to RMA it. So for now one of my beautiful monitors is just sitting there dark. It's a little annoying because this was the brand new adapter, which literally appeared on Newegg just this past weekend, that is supposed to be the answer to all the Eyefinity/DisplayPort issues. I'm hoping I just got a bad adapter.
I had the same problem with EyeFinity, I had to purchase these for our 4 -monitor setup:
Works well, but it's costly. We tried the cheaper adapters first, but it didn't work. I don't know why. It was supposed to work.
Also, depending on what kind of stuff you're doing on that machine, you may want to increase your RAM. I usually have 3 Visual Studio 2010 solutions (80 projects) debugging concurrently, Photoshop, Eclipse / Flex Builder, 2 VMWare instances and SQL Server running in the background. I know for sure 6 GB wouldn't cut it for me.
A) Penn State received an $88 million donation that they'll put toward building a new hockey facility, and they'll have a Division I hockey program ready in time for the 2012-13 season. I finally have a college hockey team to root for, as opposed to just players. And I finally have a reason to visit State College after my brother graduates.
B) I mentioned a job interview in post #18 in this thread, and I found out yesterday that I got the position. Starting this week, I'm a web editor for George Washington University. The job itself is a perfect fit -- equal parts creative and technical -- but it's got a lot of peripheral benefits too:
-For the first time in over a year, I am just in a relationship, and not a long-distance one.
-I will still have plenty of time to work on my book.
-The university will pay 96% of my tuition, for credit toward a degree or otherwise.
I'm pretty stoked about this.
Congrats!!!:handcl ap:
I'm an English major and have always wanted to get a job in writing/editing somewhere. I hope you have a ton of fun and learn a great deal in the process!
