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Richard E.

Richard E.

Joined on 09/09/07

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 21
Most Favorable Review

FINEST BUILD QUALITY I HAVE SEEN – part 2

HIS IceQ Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card H795Q3G2M
HIS IceQ Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card H795Q3G2M

Pros: Overclocked to 975 this card can handle 2560x1600 resolution Sleeping Dogs at high res texture pack and DX11 and max settings, with a fluid average 28 fps. This is a followup two months later to my 8/5/12 review below. Both cards have performed flawlessly alone, or in crossfire. If you are put off by some of the bad reviews, remember that you are protected by Newegg if you have to RMA, and if the card is defective, you will only be out the cheap shipping. So when you get your card, thoroughly test it - more on that below. And keep all of your packaging for at least the 30 day return period. If you look down at my 8/5/12 review, you will find that I was having problems fitting two of these cards in a beautiful mid-tower Antec Sonata case. In that review I speculated that I might move all my components to a full-tower Thermaltake Spedo case that I had bought about 4 years ago, which was still in its box brand new in the garage. That case is a bottom psu design. Since the part of the HIS IceQ card that is 3 slots wide, is the end where the fan is, that part extends way past the bottom PSU, and so there are no issues any more of the second card fitting in the bottom PSU case. I could have made it work in the mid-tower Antec in slot 6, only by cutting a hole in the case bottom and adding feet to the case - I was seriously considering doing that. Back to single card performance - I pulled out Crysis, Crysis 2, and Warhead, which I bought but never played, waiting for this upgrade. I ran them with one card, 2560x1600, max AA, max AF, everything max, and averaged about 32fps, and it was completely fluid. On Crysis 2 I opted for DX11 - I took every max or ultra setting available. A super tech guru warned about a major fps drop in Crysis once you hit the ice. Guess what - it never happened. The card sailed through and I never got below the low 30s which for me is fluid - never any feeling of lag. Same for BF3 ultra. Finally along came Sleeping Dogs, at 30" gaming, 2560x1600, high resolution texture pack, DX11. The game looks awesome. It is the only game so far that has seriously tested this card. Initially I got about 24fps average in the game, a little laggy, but at the rock solid overclock of 975, 1350 memory, and vddc 1087, it gets a fluid 28 fps, and never drops below that. I ran the game in crossfire, where I get fps in the 40s and up - pretty good scaling on the second card - but the higher frame rates seem to put more stress on my slow 9450 cpu, and a few times I noticed my cores max out at 100% load every core!! I finished the game, but at the end I dropped to stock clocks on both cards in crossfire, and fps at about 40. I didn't really notice a major change from one card overclocked at 28 fps. It's a gorgeous game. If the karate is trouble (I think pc reacts slower than console) find all the health shrines, and before major fights, like Stickup, do 3 things: A. Eat, and drink: b. energ

Cons: I have discovered what I think is a driver incompatibility problem on BF:BC2. I am running the latest Catalyst, 12.8. I have tested both cards singly and in crossfire. Singly, each card stops reporting gpu temp, and load, within about 10 minutes. I am monitoring temps and load in-game with MSI Afterburner. But I am setting my overclock with Sapphire Trixx. I have tested gpu core clock of 975, memory at 1350, and vddc of 1087, and had that be completely stable. Sleeping Dogs at stock clock runs only about 24fps at 2560x1600, but at the 975, as I mentioned, I get 28 or more, which is fluid. With both cards, I get near 40fps. There is nothing that tests a card like a game, and the 975 is stable, whereas 1000 appeared to be stable in furmark, and in Heaven, but in-game, that overclock caused a hang in Sleeping Dogs after 10 minutes. So 975, 1350, and vddc of 1087 seems a solid combination. Vddc you can set with Trixx. (Close CCC and Mom.exe.) MSI Afterburner gives me the OSD (on-screen display) and because I formerly had an old nvidia card, and I was setting my OSD with Riva Tuner, when I now start Afterburner, and then riva, the cpu core information from Riva shows up in my Afterburner display - that is wayy cool. You could do the same by picking up a dirt cheap nvidia card for $25, preferably an older one (but maybe a new one would work) getting everything set up in Riva, then putting the HIS IceQ back. Riva won't work with the 7950, and in fact initially Afterburner wouldn't either, but I won't let Afterburner update to the new revision that WILL work, because I don't want it adjusting my Trixx settings - I only want it for its OSD. I decided I didn't like how the core temp and load info was laid out, so I took out my HIS, put the old nvidia back in, set everything how I wanted it, then reversed. That was a lot of driver changing, and I ran Driver Clean each time, but my OSD now is awesome, with gpu temp and load, fan rpm, clock and memory clock, and memory vram usage, for both cards, then a full set of core info on all 4 cores, temps, load, and speed, which is the same on all cores of course, but that lines up the load so I can glance from top to bottom and see my cpu usage - in Sleeping Dogs it has occasionally hit 100% all 4 cores - and THEN I might suffer severe fps drops to the low teens. This is because my processor is a slow 9450, overclocked to 3.343ghz, with 8 gigs RAM-which is sufficient. This only happened in crossfire, overclocking the HIS at 975. So, in crossfire, I dropped to stock 800 clocks on the HIS cards so my cpu didn't have to work so hard, my core loads dropped to around 95%, and I still got a smooth 40fps or more in Dogs. The BF:BC2 incompatibility affects one card more than the other - why I have absolutely no idea. The least affected card gives me several hours before a hang - so that one is now in main slot 3. I run that game with crossfire disabled, all max = 45

Overall Review: When I said make sure you test your card during the 30 day return period - what is a good test? Well, Furmark is a basic test, but not really that good to detect flaws. People who have written reviews on overclocking, choose some massive overclock, and say "It runs great!" but they are testing with Furmark. Also, be careful of Furmark - it may overheat your card. These HIS IceQ cards can run full 2560x1600 Furmark, and at fixed max fan speed, can stay under 80, even the main card which does more work than the second card, and therefore runs hotter. Furmark will graph each card in crossfire, provided you run it full screen - crossfire only works in full screen mode, and that is also true for games I believe. If you allow auto fan, you may get temps to 85. I suggest you not let it get hotter than that. Furmark will graph temps, and let you see the effect of fan speed on temps. Using Trixx, I either use 100% fan speed, or I use a custom fan setting, a line from 0 to 80% and 80 degrees. Since my HIS hits near max rpm at about 75% tachometer, that keeps my cards cool. But on Sleeping Dogs, in crossfire, I was so close to maxing out my cpu core load, I dropped the custom fan setting, which put my cpus at 100%, and I went back to max fan on Sleeping Dogs. Now that I have finished that game, I am back to the Trixx custom fan setting. The custom setting seems to only affect the main card - the other runs slower fans at auto fan setting. That is okay - that card, while it may show 100% load like the other, is not charged with assembling the whole frame. The main card, as shown by gpu-z logging, carries more core amperage than the second card, therefore that shows it does more work, and it gets hotter. Ok, so Furmark is just a basic test - it will show you also if your OSD is working - don't let temps get past 85. Better to keep them below 80, and my temps often run below 70 in-game, depending on how hot my room is - we have had some hot 100 degree weather and I had to game only at night. Other than free Furmark, I recommend you pay $19 for the new 3dmark11, as I did. And I am glad I did. That test picked up artifacts on a Power Color 7950 that I RMA'd, in the first test segment with the submersibles. For testing there is also Unigine Heaven - which is free - but which however did not exhibit any artifacts with the defective Power Color card. That gives you 3 tests, Furmark, Heaven, and 3dMark11. At 975 core, my 3dmark11 was about 2560, my Heaven at 1920x1080, normal tesselation, 4x AA, and 16x AF, was about 1630. With Heaven in crossfire, I broke 2900, but at 1000 core, which later hung in-game. So I consider 975 my max stable. (My overall 3dmark11 is low due to my slower cpu.) Once you get through with your testing, do some serious gaming, on max settings. You can start up gpu-z, which is free, and do some logging - to the desktop. Open the log with notepad, and you will clearly see down the var

Most Critical Review

*BEWARE* This is a crossover cable.

C2G 01936 RJ45 Modular In-Line Coupler
C2G 01936 RJ45 Modular In-Line Coupler

Pros: When you go to the mftr page - you see that this is a crossover cable - not sure what it is used for, but pin 8 is matched with pin 1, etc. If you want a normal coupler, to extend your patch cable, you want pin 8 to pin 8, 7 to 7, etc.

Cons: my fault I guess for not reading enough - duhh. Who woulda thought? The one egg is for faulty description - the product probably works as intended - I will never know because it is not what I thought I ordered.

Overall Review: I am the one who RMA'd this product in the other review - my bad. Probably newegg should fix their information and educate people that this is not just a regular RJ45 coupler.

12/30/2010

high quality "thick" cable - switching to thin (even though on single-link application) took out my graphics card within 2 hours

BYTECC DVI-D06 Male to Male DVI-D Dual-Link Digital Cable w/Ferrites
BYTECC DVI-D06 Male to Male DVI-D Dual-Link Digital Cable w/Ferrites

Pros: Read all the below reviews. That is what I did 5 years ago in 2012 when I bought two of these exact same cables (I just ordered 3 more.) I have a high-def gaming monitor, 2560x1600, and it requires a dual-link dvi cable. The monitor came with a cable, but I wanted some spares. One of the cables was put away in a box and was never used. The other one I could not find. Two days ago my brother's CAD Dell Precision T5600 CAD workstation, with dual high-def 2560x1440 monitors (xeon processors, 32 gigs ram, etc.) was acting up, and he put the tower and one of his high def monitors in the very hot sunroom (no AC and we are having a massive heat-wave with temperatures in the 98-100 range here in the LA area - for about 10 days total - it's still going on for about a week.) He put a dvi cable out there connected to his monitor. For some reason he had taken his equipment to work to demonstrate it, and misplaced his dataport cables. He was successful in his demo - his work got him a better graphics card - not quite as good as his Quadro K5000 graphics card - but one much more powerful than the weak one they had been having him use. So he tells me - "I can't run high def - and my youtube videos won't work even not at high def - my computer is acting up.)" I am the one who helped him set up that system, when the tech at his work gave up on it - the tech got confused by the SAS interface, and the fact that you cannot see your sata drives, even in the bios, until you load the storage controller drivers. But we were installing windows 7 from the optical drive right to the 256 gig SSD, so I just did that, loaded all the drivers, then I put the hard drives on the SAS cables - which were interfaced to sata - pulled the SSD out and taped it somewhere, and added a second hard drive to clone the SSD. So system restore wouldn't work - the rstrui.exe file was sitting right there in system32, but "windows could not find it." I could not get past 1920x1080. The screen had a mesh over it, a light mesh until the 1920x1080 kicked in when windows loaded. The clone I had made 3 years before was garbage, but I used it later to identify a few items in device manager. In the course of this, I found the thick dvi cable - this cable - in a box. But I wondered where the second one had gone. Then I noticed my i7 HTPC computer, with the little 6450 sapphire card, with vga, dvi and hdmi, which is also in the sunroom. I have a good 50 foot hdmi cable running around the room to a 48" 4k samsung monitor, but we only play 1080p videos - we got the 4k because it was only $50 more - mostly as a lark. That is a very hot i7 which I decided to not try to make as my faster gaming machine, because it runs so hot, and would not hold an overclock. So I pulled out the gaming card and put in the little $40 AMD 6450 from newegg. I looked over at that rig, there in the oven-hot sunroom, and noticed that the cable was much thicker than the dvi cable connecting the test stand tower - the CAD machine - to the test-stand high def monitor - one of his two monitors. There was another thin dvi cable around and I thought - I'll switch to the thin one, because I know this small 20" dell doesn't need thick dvi - I had sort of started to remember dual link and single link - and I might need the thick one in getting everything working - I had not quite put the dual link idea together in my head - it was later - but somehow I thought I might need the "better" cable. Within two hours of changing to the thin cable, the i7 HTPC, in moving some videos over ethernet to the cool kitchen computer where the main server storage is, which took about 45 minutes - about 25 gigs of stuff - suddenly its display was dark. The machine had not gone into hibernation - the little front lights were on - but no matter what I did, I was not getting anything on the screen. MY LITTLE 6450 GRAPHICS CARD THAT HAD SUCCESSFULLY RUN A 50 FOOT HDMI CABLE ON THE HDMI PORT, AND HAD TALKED TO THE LITTLE DELL NEXT TO IT ON THE DVI PORT, HAD DIED. IT HAD BRICKED OUT - IT WAS JUNK! NOTHING FROM DVI, VGA, OR HDMI. I WAS TOO STUNNED TO TAKE IT ALL IN - THINKING "WOW, WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS" AND THINKING THAT I WOULD GET TO IT LATER AFTER I GOT MY BROTHER'S RIG FIXED. Shortly after that, it hit me like a ton of bricks - the white mesh on the screen in bootup, and the white mesh on trying to go from 1920x1080 up to native resolution, 2560x1440, was not a driver issue, it was not a windows issue, it was not a pci-e issue - it was a cable issue. We had a single-link thinner cable, not the required dual link cable. THAT FIXED THE HIGH RESOLUTION PROBLEM, and the white mesh disappeared even in bootup - apparently it defaults to its native high res as it is booting - I had asked my brother - "HAS IT ALWAYS DISPLAYED THIS WHITE MESH" - he couldn't remember. I changed the cable to this thicker, and booting was now white on black, and native resolution now worked.

Cons: There are no cons to the product. It is a super great product. WHY DID MY GRAPHICS CARD ON MY HOME THEATER PERSONAL COMPUTER, SUDDENLY DIE? I do not need a thick cable on that computer - I am running a 1200x1600 screen, so single-link is okay. The thick cable, this cable, was "overkill." BUT WHEN I CHANGED TO THE THIN CABLE, THE 3 YEAR OLD GRAPHICS CARD DIED WITHIN TWO HOURS. A COINCIDENCE? AT THE TIME i JUST SCRATCHED MY HEAD. THERE IS NOTHING ON GOOGLE ABOUT THIS. This cable offers reduced resistance to the current flow. The cable is shielded. This is a high quality cable. The day was sizzling, the temps were high - but I presently run a thin dvi cable in my trailer office, also to the same dell 20" 1200x1600 monitor,using the same 6450 card, and no problems. However, in my trailer office I am not running a hot i7. Compared to the i7 my trailer tower is lightweight, a compaq DC5800 dual processor, no hyper threading, only two processors - but still pretty fast for what I do. SO WAS IT JUST A CASE OF A LITTLE EXTRA HEAT - CAUSED BY TAKING OUT THE THICK, LOW-RESISTANCE, HIGHER-BANDWIDTH DUAL-LINK CABLE, AND PUTTING ON A THIN SINGLE-LINK CABLE, IN THAT HOT ROOM, IN THAT HOT I7 COMPUTER, ALL OF WHICH KILLED MY GRAPHICS CARD OR WAS IT JUST A FREAK COINCIDENCE? YOU TELL ME. BUT AT LEAST FOR THAT COMPUTER, I WILL BE PUTTING BACK THE THICKER DVI CABLE - THAT'S WHY I AM GETTING THESE NEW ONES, ALSO TO REPLACE MY BROTHER'S MISPLACED DATAPORT CABLES. But I think it is more than "just a coincidence." I think it is a causal relationship. I think the change in cables added one last straw of heat to the camel's back. However, on the other hand, this all may be garbage. It is based on one observable instance. But I just cannot believe it is coincidence - it is too much of a coincidence. So I will be using the dual link cable on that application, which "only needs" a single-link cable - because I think that computer "NEEDS" a dual-link dvi, or I might blow another 6450 hdmi card (two are on order from newegg.)

Overall Review: The thick cable went on my brother's machine and as I mentioned, no more white mesh on bootup, no more white mesh on trying to increase resolution to high def native resolution. Boy that one really puzzled me - until finally some memory kicked in - "Wait, thicker cable, thinner cable, let's look at the pins. A separation in the pins, but not on the thicker." Oh yeah, you have to have a dual-link to run high def. How stupid could we possibly be to not remember that? So it was good to find that out, but kind of embarrassing at the same time. Like forgetting which lever is the blinkers, and not the windshield wipers. And now I come back to the COINCIDENCE of having the graphics card blow, just a couple hours after taking away the "unnecessary dual-link" and replacing it with a single-link dvi cable. Let's get you Anandtech techies in on this - can you find any evidence - can you come up with a hypothesis other than coincidence? Well, this is probably the strangest review ever written - something works that is supposed to not need that to work, but when you put on "only what is needed but not more" then the part dies. Bottom line - these cables are a great value. The warning says they may give you cancer, but i don't plan to eat them. I will wash my hands after connecting them. "Don't change the formulation, Byktecc, you don't need to go organic on this and triple the price - we love the product the way it is." Are you guys with me on that? Will somebody please come along and write a review and tell me why my graphics card died? :) - Rich

DESTROYED TWO WD3200BEVE DISKS WITHIN 5 MINUTES - 2 1/2 years ownership and usage

Rosewill RX234 2.5"/3.5" SATA III USB 3.0 LED Single Bay HDD Docking Supports UASP and Hard Drive Capacity Up to 10TB
Rosewill RX234 2.5"/3.5" SATA III USB 3.0 LED Single Bay HDD Docking Supports UASP and Hard Drive Capacity Up to 10TB

Pros: I like the design of the case in the fact that it has 4 tiny securing screws, not plastic snaps that can break off

Cons: First - I never liked the fact that it is almost impossible to see the blinking light that tells you of data transfer. If you have the enclosure open you can more easily see this light, which is the same green color as the power light. But when you close the enclosure, it is really almost impossible to see it, so you don't have a clear indication that data transfer is occuring like with other enclosures. Second - I almost RMA'd the enclosure back in 2015 when it wouldn't copy a stream of movie files, let's say 5 movies of a total of 20 gigs, from my htpc, without requiring me to re-start the transfer. I did some testing comparing the same drive in a very cheap Hong Kong enclosure, on the same set of movie files. The cheap Hong Kong enclosure worked, the Rosewill had problems. Eventually I put a shorter cord on it, and the Rosewill seemed to settle down and behave, and unfortunately I trusted it. Third - yesterday 3/24/17 after owning the enclosure for 2 1/2 years, it destroyed two WD3200BEVE disks within 5 minutes of each other. The disks are gone, and the Rosewill is in the trashcan. Read more in next section.

Overall Review: The drive was rated at 320g so it should have supported these disks. When the disaster occurred I was going back and forth from a laptop where I was trying to upgrade it to w7, to my tower where I had Acronis backup making copies of the new w7 partition, and then recovering it to the laptop D partition. This seemed to be the only way I could create dual boot, with xp on C, and w7 on D - for some reason trying to install w7 to D was not working. So I had an empty WD3200BEVE with less than 1000 hours - nearly new - and I had the main laptop drive with xp on a 120g C partition - this drive also had only about 850 hours. I had been doing this for a while, and my w7 installs were corrupt for the second time, so I had located what I thought was a better iso, and was about to install that one. I connected the empty disk to the tower in the Rosewill enclosure to partition it to prevent w7 from adding a small system partition (the laptop 28-bit bios will only see 128 gigs, so I partition at 120 gigs.) But suddenly the disk seemed to have trouble spinning up, and would not come into windows on the tower. I tried the other disk, the one with xp on it. That one did spin up, and it did connect to the tower. I had the Rosewill enclosure open and was using the usb electronics, with the piece of plastic protecting the bottom of the drive electronics. When the second disk connected, I went back to the disk that wouldn't connect - it still wouldn't even spin up. Then I went back to the successful disk, and now it too wouldn't power up or connect. So I thought "well, it's happening with both drives - that proves it's a tower usb problem." After a restart of the tower, and after testing the usb with some wireless mice, everything seemed fine. Then I brought in other external 2.5" hdds, and all of those connected without issue. Finally to my great astonishment and disappointment, I determined that both WD3200BEVE disks are toast, and that the Rosewill had killed them off - there was no other explanation. Neither drive will be recognized in the laptop, where they are direct-connected ide. I have older towers that were ide-based, but there is no point - if the laptop ide can't see the drive, then obviously the drive electronics have been destroyed. In several decades of personal computing, I never had this happen before. I pulled out an old ide/sata 2.5" enclosure, with bad end-caps (poor engineering) that was rated at up to 500 g, and set it up as my test-stand usb enclosure. Both disks will spin-up in this enclosure. The enclosure has a power light, and a separate red HDD light indicating data transfer. But unfortunately neither one will cause the red light to come on like it does for my good disks. So the drive electronics have been destroyed. I don't know how the Rosewill did it, but now you have been warned. I bought a MASS COOL ide/sata enclosure to replace the Rosewill - available here on newegg for about $20 or less, and rated up to 1 TB.

card is okay, raid software not so great

VANTEC 2-Port SATA II 300 PCIe Host Card w/RAID Model UGT-ST420R
VANTEC 2-Port SATA II 300 PCIe Host Card w/RAID Model UGT-ST420R

Pros: The card works - (if raid is not an issue.) You can see your hard drive in the bios, and you can boot to a hard drive, either one, in the bios. Read the back of the box for model number, then find that folder on the installation disk.

Cons: The Raid software is junk. The documentation is weak - overly complicated - and doesn't really match the software, The in-windows raid controller is very strange, counter-intuitive - seems like something a large shop would use - but a large shop would not have a $30 soft raid card. You can set up your raid in the bios though - it might work for you - did not work for me but that might be the fault of my bios. I returned the card.

Overall Review: I am comparing this raid with intel matrix manager that my dell supported, because it had an intel northbridge, ich7r as I recall. This motherboard on this compaq microtower DC5800 has a no-name northbridge and doesn't support anything but ide - no ahci, no raid. The bios lets you set up a raid volume, but then my bios would not let me go to windows, or even to setup. However my bios also rejected a scsi card, that I was using on an old pentium 4 machine - so my bios is definitely junk. What I don't like about this raid, is that if you want to delete the raid volume, it will let you, but it won't let you convert a drive back to a non-raid drive, unless you perform low-level format, and destroy your data. The intel matrix manager bios allowed you to take a drive and make it a non-raid drive after you deleted the volume. So I didn't like that part at all. In other words, it won't go in and delete the metadata that it puts on a raid drive, showing connection, etc. Weak - not friendly. I was initially trying to create a raid set with one that had data, another that was empty. But again, it all would have failed because of my bios. I suggest to Vantec - "just try to copy Intel Matrix Manager as close as you can - what you have put together is terrible regarding raid." :)

ABSOLUTELY EXCEPTIONAL VALUE

SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6450 1GB 64-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready  Video Card ( 100322L)
SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6450 1GB 64-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card ( 100322L)

Pros: This is my 3rd card - for a 3rd computer. The first I've had for 2 years, the second for a year. And I will likely pick up one more as a spare. This is an ideal home theater card, with hdmi and nice hdmi sound. I successfully support a 50 foot hdmi cable on the installation in the sunroom. (It's a good quality cable from (the river) reduced from about $80 that I got for about 50.) This card can run the original Far Cry, 1600x1200 (that's the same pixel count as 1080p) at ultra settings at around 35 fps, which surprised me. (Not custom ultra where you can tweak the AA even further.) But that was just playing around - I didn't pick it up for gaming.

Cons: Not really a con - but this is a passive card - if you really stress it with lots of gaming I suppose it might heat up - too hot and you'd have to add a fan - not hard to do if you have a spare molex connector. Another item - because hdmi sound is included - your motherboard could kick out the on-board sound - see other thoughts. I see there is a rebate. Great - if the mail loses my paperwork no problem, but I usually always get the rebates.

Overall Review: I have one of these in an i7 running the 50 foot hdmi cable. Trick - put a 100% (no zoom) magnifying glass window 2" by 2" on lower right of desktop, to track the mouse when it moves over to the extended desktop 1080p TV across the room - that way you don't have to try to read from across the room - it's all right there in the magnifying glass window. That makes it easy to start a power dvd 13 video on the desktop, slide it over to the TV, then go to the tv, and in your window, right-click "full-screen" again, without squinting from across the room. Slide the player window back before you shut everything down, or you will will wonder where Power dvd went. My i7 allows me to switch between hdmi sound, or on-board sound if the tv is off and I'm playing iTunes. The compaq microtower defaults to hdmi-only regarding the sound, but recently somebody said that when this card is installed - check bios for "on-board sound enable" which option will appear only when the card is installed. So I'll find that out this time.