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Gadget Wisdom

Category: Lifestyle

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Tips on Buying a PC

SeekingAlpha’s Sound Money Tips is a good source for interesting advice for cost-conscious individuals. We do not always agree with their advice, but it is certainly a good starting point. Today, they present their Tips on Buying a New Desktop PC. Their three tips are…

  1. Back to Basics
  2. Remember Memory
  3. Process This

Back to Basics advises you to avoid frills, but make sure the basics you buy are easily upgradeable. We agree that fancy components can add to the bottom line of your price, but the question is what you plan to do with the computer. Prune down the list of things you want to do with the computer to the most important, and start your design with that. You can always add extras later if the company isn’t offering a good bundle rate for them.
Remember Memory…Memory is a very easy to accomplish upgrade that most non-technicians can do themselves. It is not as delicate as CPU replacement. Remember that many PC manufacturers will give you 2 pieces of RAM to reach your total amount as it is cheaper to them than giving you one piece of the total size. Remember…sometimes it is worth a little extra to have that extra slot available for later. Obviously you should get the type of memory your computer’s motherboard uses(just remember there isn’t only one type), and while size is a consideration…memory speed can also enhance your offerings. Unlike megabytes, speed has to be the same across the chips to get the benefit.

Process This…the CPU is the heart of your computer. A program goes from your hard drive, to your RAM, to your CPU. Slowdowns at any stage can mean performance decreases, although the percentage of performance varies. Intel and AMD both have their advantages. For the last few years, AMD had outpaced Intel in the 64-bit and dual core areas, but reports indicate Intel’s new dual core offering blew AMD out of the water. However, AMD has a lower average price point.

Obviously, the issue is more complicated than that. Specific issues of processors, memory, etc will likely be addressed in future articles. For now…just remember rule of thumb if you aren’t building it yourself…never buy bottom of the barrel…always try to buy somewhere in the low-end of middle of the price spectrum at the least.

Published on October 18, 2006
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Got Plenty of Buttons…what is missing?

We’re always looking for new ways to improve our experience controlling our computers. Sometimes this means a trackball instead of a mouse, an ergonomic keyboard, remote control, etc.

CrunchGear brought this particular item to our attention. It is a USB Powered Knob which can be programmed to control anything from volume to fan speed. If you are interested, the PowerMate USB 1042BPMT is available through Amazon.

Published on October 18, 2006
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What is a Hack and Why Should I Not Be Scared By It?

Hackers have received a bad name, mostly because of the abuse inherent in circumventing design. Hacks are innovation…the result of those who explore and experiment.

Teaching hardware tricks it wasn’t originally intended to do is a great example of that. We will be featuring new ways of using old ideas over the coming days as an introduction to this new feature.

Published on September 28, 2006
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Toshiba Joins Apple and Dell in Battery Recall

The Associated Press reported the other day that Toshiba is recalling 340,000 laptop batteries made by the Sony Corporation. Toshiba insists that no injuries or accidents have been reported. All this bad publicity for Sony batteries may not bode well for the company’s public image.

Certainly puts into people’s minds doubts about the quality of Sony electronics. But we will see what will happen.

Published on September 22, 2006
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Using Your Laptop at the Airport

Our colleagues at Flight Wisdom have posted a quick post on using your laptop at the airport. We thought it was a good opportunity to discuss the wireless hotspots in general.

Now, there are hotspots operated by individuals, community hotspots, and hotspots operated by companies(Sometimes for Pay). Paid Hotspots are popular at coffeehouses, airports, some hotels, and other places. Community hotspots are operated by nonprofit organizations, although occasionally by municipalities. NYCWireless, a New York City group responsible for free wireless in places like Bryant Park, is a good example of this. And individual hotspots are those unaffiliated ones.

Sometimes, individuals do not realize they are running a hotspot. They have simply not enabled any security on their wireless router and thus are giving their internet away to the neighborhood.

In a future post, we will be discussing ways to secure your wireless network. Stay Tuned.

Published on September 18, 2006
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Electronic Paper

As Wikipedia says, electronic paper is a display technology designed to mimic the appearance of regular ink on paper. Electronic paper reflects light like ordinary paper and is capable of holding its display without power, requiring it only to change the display.

The technology has been used limitedly for various things and is now coming into the mainstream. The E-Ink Corporation is responsible for many applications of this technology thus far, including the Lexar 2 GB JumpDrive Mercury JDMC2GB-431 or the Lexar 1 GB JumpDrive Mercury JDMC1GB-431. The Jumpdrive Mercury uses an electronic paper display from E-Ink to display an exterior usage gauge on the drive. Since it draws no power, the gauge is always visible.

While E-books as well as low-power informational displays are the most popular of the expected usage of this technology, it is definitely worth monitoring. For now, its use on the Jumpdrive makes us endorse the Mercury should you wish this feature. We will be reviewing USB drives and purchase considerations in a future article.

Published on September 17, 2006
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Mourning the Death of Imagination

CNET UK has an intriguing opinion piece on consumer electronics is causing the death of childhood and imagination and an open letter to the British government in the Daily Telegraph from 110 teachers, psychologists, children’s authors, and experts calls on the government to prevent this.

We wonder about the next generation and if they will be capable of taking on the future. We have no doubt that a technology based world is changing things. When a five year old has more mastery of a computer than their parents, we cannot say the world is not changing. However, if it is all for the worst, we doubt. We do however, believe we have some problems we must overcome.

The problems of society though, are somewhat beyond the scope of this blog. We bring it up so that you keep in mind, while we are very much in favor of a tech-filled world…it can occasionally be damaging to us.

Published on September 17, 2006
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Laptop Security

Jim Rossman of the Dallas Morning News advised of his experience leaving his laptop at an airport security checkpoint. Mr. Rossman is right, a simple business card attached to your laptop will allow its owner to be idenitified.

Our colleagues at Flight Wisdom suggested that you consider STOP. Security Tracking of Office Property, despite the name, works well for personal use as well. If you want your thief to know your name and address, putting it on the laptop will certainly help them find you, although that may be a bit paranoid. A third-party is certainly helpful in these cases. Also, the security plate, cemented to your laptop, is a theft deterrent in itself.

The next step after a security tag, or equivalent label is a laptop security cable. These cables are enough theft deterrent. Given time and a hacksaw, someone can remove these cables, but the goal is such things will delay them. Most theft is dependant on stealth and speed, not hanging around with such tools. Of course, finding a place to lash it in your hotel room on vacation is usually hard.

The final step is of course, in software. Set your computer BIOS to require a password, and then prevent booting from the USB port, a floppy disk, or a CD-ROM. If you need to do any of these things, go in and override it for the time you need it. Then, set a password for logging onto the system, be it a variant of Windows, UNIX, or the Mac OS.

Of course, protecting your files can be a matter of encyption. Check out a future post, when we intend to report on Encryption Tools as well as other software security for your laptop or even your desktop.

Published on September 7, 2006
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Ridding Yourself of Legacy Hardware

Legacy hardware consists of hardware or ports no longer necessary to the availability of better alternatives.

  • Parallel port – You would be hard-pressed to find a non-USB printer nowadays. So why do you need the port?
  • Serial port – While there are still some devices that still run off of serial ports, they are rare enough that one could purchase USB->Serial Converter cables for the last ones and eliminate that port as well.
  • Floppy controller and floppy drives – Floppy drives and floppy disks are fairly rare nowadays. We’ve removed them from all of our computers in favor of one external USB floppy drive for emergencies. Most people will find a USB flash memory drive is not only more durable, but can store more in less space
  • IDE connectors – We have yet to fully rid ourselves of 40-pin IDE connectors. While hard drives now come with Serial ATA connectors, which are smaller and more efficient, removing the headaches of master and slave that come with the IDE system, CD/DVD drives have yet to switch over in any large majority.
  • Analog Video Connector – The 15-pin VGA connector, despite having been around since the earlier days of VGA monitors, shows few signs of going away. The newer standard, DVI(Digital Visual Interface), not only transmits to the monitor digitally, but usually has the pins to transmit analog signals as well in order to remain compatible with the older standards.
Published on September 2, 2006
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Protect Yourself from Burnout

Our colleagues at Flight Wisdom wrote a few weeks ago here about the danger of laptop battery issues. Dell was followed by Apple in its battery recall. As this article from Business Week reports, the online community kept pressure on the manufacturers to do something about this. And now Dell and Apple are recalling over 5 million batteries.
But the danger of computer components isn’t limited to batteries, as one writer reports here. His hard drive burnt out in what appears to be a rather dramatic manner.

So, we thought we would take this time to give our tips to reduce the risk of preventable accidents. Obviously, if your component is faulty or improperly designed, there is no amount of preparation you can make to prevent problems…although even outside of warranty, some companies will replace an item that spontaneously combusted as opposed to other types of mechanical failure.

  1. Make sure cables inside your computer do not interfere with airflow. The biggest cables in computers are ribbon cables used for components such as ATA hard drives and CDROMs. The cheapest solution is to replace these with round cables, which compress the ribbon down for increased airflow. The better solution is to, if possible, replace your drives with the new Serial ATA drives. The SATA cables are much thinner than the older parallel ones, and the drives themselves are better as well. SATA CD/DVD drives are still relatively rare though, but at least consider replacing the hard drives.
  2. Once a month or so, shut the computer down and blow out the interior of the computer with a bottle of canned air, especially the exhaust fans to remove dust that might accumulate and reduce air efficiency.
  3. Keep aware of any product recalls or reports of problems with hardware in your system and be prepared to replace it if necessary. For laptops, blow out the exhaust fans from the outside while the computer is off.
  4. Also for laptops, if you plan on using the laptop for long periods on AC power, take the battery out. If that is not an option, regularly discharge and recharge the battery. For business travellers, consider a second battery and regular swap the two.
Published on September 1, 2006
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