Techie

We have moved the forum away from w3techie.com onto http://cubicforum.com and are working on re-branded the entire forum as "Cubic Forum" in an effort to provide a more positive experience for all of our visitors. While the moderators and I work hard to moderate all discussions on our forum, the overall value of the content provided at the forum is much lower than that provided at the w3techie blog. This negatively impacted our site during Google's last algorithmic update, and I have chosen to separate the forum from the blog to increase rankings and traffic to both sites.

Any thoughts on this?

My SSD broke and i got an RMA but I'm having issues with it. I think it has some bad sectors but I have no idea how to fix it.

When I put in in a computer and try to install Windows XP or Windows 7 (or just use the restore disk) it either crashes with a BSOD, freezes up, or can't detect the drive.

I can boot into Ubuntu with a live CD and format the drive, but it's some strange formatting and the windows install disks can't get it to NTFS (actually nothing can get it to NTFS).

I tried plugging it into my PC as a secondary drive to try to format it to NTFS through the partition manager, but it starts formatting and then it hangs and then the drive seems to disappear, until I unplug it, plug it back in, and restart the computer.

Does anyone know of any boot-time tools that I ca use to force a Chkdsk to find and fix bad sectors on the drive?

Have you guys noticed how greatly the spam here has been reduced?

I think it's the new Question and Answer challenge for bots. The questions are pretty difficult now, but regular visitors should be able to answer them with a visit to Wikipedia or some Google searching.

I just want to vent my frustration with Windows computers that you buy pre-built. It bothers me that companies put so much crapware on your computer It's a disgrace to me as a customer that they see me as nothing. It's not enough that they make however much they do from each customer, but then they need to go ahead and show me ads after that. It shows that all they care about is their money and not the customer satisfaction.

Companies, THIS is the reason why Apple is more successful with their products! You power on a MacBook and it's running at full speed with no bloat. I turn on a Windows computer and it takes forever for all this crap to load, and then it takes me forever to delete it.

To add to this, Android manufacturers have been doing this too, with their Telenav trials and stuff. Yet when I buy an iPod or iPhone from Apple, it's completely clean.

I'm frustrated.

I'm buying myself a MacBook pro and I have questions about their release cycles.

• When will the new ones come out? Is it better to wait right now and buy when the new models arrive or should I just buy now?
  
• What are the differences with each release cycle? Are the upgrades worth it? (I read some articles about the CPU upgrades but they were comparing the MacBook Air with the MacBook Pro).
  
• What happens to the pricing? How much cheaper do the old versions become? Are the new versions priced the exact same as the apst generation was?

Thanks in advance!