My answers:

1. I wouldn't bother. I only use them for backup, not performance.

2. Maybe confused, but the DPI is not important. The actual pixel dimensions of the picture is important. What are your actual pixel dimensions? Also, can you view your camera as an external drive and just copy the files to the computer in Windows Explorer?

3. I haven't got that feeling, but I'm not as internet-connected (other than web browsing) as most people seem to be.

My 'tech' questions:

a. I want an electric space heater. Is there one anyone here likes? Are they all about the same as for efficiency? I don't just want radiant heat. I want to heat the air in a room about 10x15 ft. Is my old (80s, working, 1500 watt) Pelonis Disc Furnace as good as anything else?

b. My car doesn't start well in rainy weather. The internet says this is due to bad spark plug wires. Garage says it could also be the coil. Coil was replaced 2 years ago. I look at my spark plug wires (94 Honda Civic) and find they are all twisted 1-2 rotations between the distributor (or whatever) and the spark plugs. Is this the way it ought to be? It seems odd if you want to keep them isolated from each other. I'll post a picture if it helps.

3. Anyone tried ready-boost with Windows Vista? Did it really seem to help much?

I have many more, but that's what comes to mind at the moment...

DarkForest, your stuff:

a. Those little ceramic space heaters have come way down in price and rock. But for a larger room, not just cold feet under an office desk, you might need something larger. Sorry, that's all I got! Maybe just get the most BTUs for your bucks?

b. I dunno. Plain old cheap rubber boots on plugs often work wonders, but they're more for fighting cold weather, not so much the damp.

c. I be stupid, not know teh nuttin'. I avoided Vista on my new 'puter, too, 'cuz ALL my photo/art software, even my Wacom tablet, only runs on XP and I can't afford to replace it all.

Sorry. Not much help.

Re my stuff:

2) For example, let's say I plug in my digital camera to the USB port. Go directly to My Computer and open the Sony MemoryStick (E:) file. Right click and open a photo in Photoshop and look at Image Size. 72 pixels/inch! (Sorry, not 92 DPI, my mistake.) It is teh sux0r.
;-)

Thanks!

Shane,

I guess we're the only ones here today.

In Photoshop, when you open the image, how many pixels wide and how many pixels high are they (the width and height in the image size dialog)? As far as I know, the DPI is just some metadata that comes with the image and which can be changed. It only affects how the image is printed/displayed.

My old space heater works well enough, though I'd like it if it heated my room faster. I just wonder if newer ones are more efficient (my electric bills are bad enough as they are) or if being old, it's efficiency has been compromised by age... I should probably just buy a new bigger one. They don't seem to be that expensive.

For a 4 megapixel camera, the image dimensions should be about 2,200 x 1,700 pixels. Are your images about that size?

2304 pix wide x 1728 pix high. But only 72 pix/inch. I generally like to work at a resolution of 600, especially if I'm painting or painting over a photo or somesuch.

If I open in MS Paint and look at Attributes I see 96 x 96 DPI.

I dunno, I get really confused at these things. I can adjust the pix/inch higher in Photoshop, but you can't "up" the quality of a low-rez image just by adding pix per inch, can you?

My camera saves pics as jpg files. Maybe that's the problem, but I can't find the set-up program to tell it to save them as tifs.

Ghaah. I'm probably just being an idiot.

I guess we're the only ones here today.

Do U.S. MeChatters go Xmas shopping on Black Friday? That doesn't seem in character. Ehhh, they're probably all hung over, or maybe drinking now to deal with time spent with relatives last night. I know I'm tempted to grab my flask.
;-)

At some point in the day, I'm going to go out and buy some beer. I'm kinda dreading it.

To change the DPI: In Photoshop (I have photoshop cs), open the image size dialog, uncheck the resample image check box, then just change the DPI value to whatever you want. Naturally, this will change (reduce) the size of the image as measured in inches, but the pixel dimensions of the image will remain unchanged. This shouldn't change your image data in any way. It just changes the DPI metadata. No, this doesn't improve the resolution of the image in any way. The 2304x1728 image size is just what your camera is capable of, as a 4 megapixel camera. DPI just indicates how those pixels are to be displayed/printed.

TIFF or RAW images would probably give you slightly better quality, depending on what you're using them for.

In other news, my day involved putting the chains on my truck to get it up my snowy/icy driveway. As I'm working on it in the blowing snow, a neighbor, seemingly drunk, peels out in his truck and yells "Plow your fucking driveway!", not in a nice way. Joy. At least I eventually I got it up the driveway where I used it to jump start my Honda, whose battery I depleted the other day trying to start it in the rain. Meh. Sometimes I wish I could get something out of drinking, but I get no relief there.

Thanks, DF. It just has to be the jpg setting that's screwing me. But I SWEAR this never happened until recently, and the camera is getting a bit wonky, so it might be time for a new one when finances are looking up.

Sometimes I wish I could get something out of drinking, but I get no relief there.

I'm getting that way again lately too. Gawd, I dread going back to having to jog and eat lots of healthy food to feel good and relieve stress instead of sipping Tullamore Dew or G-n-Ts.
;-)

Does this page really and truly cover everything I would need to do to add Linux to a Vista machine and make it dual booting? Or will it be like every other time I've tried to set up a dual boot system, where there's some critical piece of info I "should have just known" that makes the project impossible?

Shane - Could the resolution used when taking the pictures have been changed? Check the settings on your camera.

Checking back, my old digicam produced 72dpi photos at the low jpeg quality setting, but 300 dpi photos at the highest jpeg quality. Not sure why it did that, I dont think there's any good reason for it as far as I understand DPI, but you might want to check the jpeg quality setting on the camera.

Lontrohamsanin, I've set up dual boot systems on XP, but not Vista. I have no idea if Vista would be very different. They've mostly worked out for me, except for a FreeBSD distro which screwed my whole system a few years back. I wouldn't bother shrinking my current partition by half, as that page says, just make sure you give your Linux partition enough space for what you want to do. For me, I'd want about 10Gb. Make sure you leave Vista enough room. You'll have to edit the grub script to make Vista boot by default, as detailed on that page, if that's what you want. In the past I've used the linux utility for partition resizing. I don;t think XP has a utility for that. Be safe and back up your Vista machine before partition resizing (I don't know if anyone ever really does this, but it's good cya advice). I imagine there's lots more pages around concerning dual booting Ubuntu with Vista.

Lentrohamsanin, I mean... That's a hard one for me to scan and spell...

Lentrohamsanin: OpenSUSE can automatically resize your Vista partition during installation and set it up so it'll dual boot. I don't know about crappier distros, but I'd imagine they have something similar.

Thanks, Amanda and DF. I think the camera may be goofing up. It is set at highest resolution (4M) and it used to download large files at this setting. Now it is set at highest resolution and the pics are evidently being taken at the lowest rez setting.

I think the cam's just getting old. Luckily I like grainy shots, heh.

DarkForest, a good fan could help spread the heat around faster. I've been using the same Vornado fan for years. In the colder months, I pair it with a small space heater.

As to your car, call Car Talk tomorrow.

RE the car ignition: When it gets dark this evening, start up your car. In a darkened area, away from lights, open up your hood. If you see sparks shooting around inside your hood, they are most likely emanating from your spark plug wires and the wires need to be replaced. If it's a bad coil, you should be able to see sparking near the coil.

sorry to keep chiming in... The picture resolution and the jpeg quality will be separate settings in the camera. The higher the jpeg quality (or picture quality or whatever your camera calls it) the larger the picture file downloaded will be. Make sure your jpeg/picture quality is set to the highest quality. you've probably already done this. If so, don't mind me.

DarkForest: I've heard great things about oil-filled space heaters (not necessarily that brand, that's just what came up. They're energy efficient, quiet, and apparently work quite well. (More info here.)

Thanks, all, for your help with my questions.

Still not sure what kind of heater I want to persue. All 3 types seem to have something in their favor (silent oil heater, fast electric coil with fan, or instant radiant heat right at my feet).

For the car, I didn't see any sparks at all under the hood, but then, it's not raining anymore, and the car started right up. Got an appointment at the garage Monday. It probably won't rain again before then.

I've got a "4Gb Cruzer ReadyBoost drive" on order from Staples from their Black Friday sale, so I'll see if it makes much difference. My Toshiba Vista laptop, much improved with 2Gb of memory, still needs all the help it can get. Even if ReadyBoost not that useful, I'd like it for keeping my projects synched between laptop and desktop computers.