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Gadget Wisdom

Category: Lifestyle

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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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