You are looking at posts in the category Computers - General.
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These things are so amazing! There are several different models, This one being in the middle-low area. All of these use solid state drives, and most of them come pre-installed with linux. Most of us would of course wipe this and put a different flavor of linux. These little guys start at around 299 for a 2gb model, and 399 for the 4g. You can expand these with SD cards. USB 2.0 ports, wireless… what more could you want.
Well, it’s 5:30pm here in Austin and I’ve been home from work about 2 hours. After checking the mail to discover nothing from CompUSA inside, I decided to check out the tracking information via UPS. Turns out, I transposed my address on CompUSA.com and UPS was holding my new hard drive until they figured out what happened. After talking to a nice lady at UPS (why are all the good customer service people on the phone and all the bad ones behind the service desk???) she told me they would hold the package for me to pickup. Even with today’s horrific gas prices it’s worth it to me to go get it instead of waiting for it arrive tomorrow afternoon. She promised to contact the local office and give them my number to call back.
Sure enough, 30 minutes later the local UPS office called to tell me the package would be held once the driver finished his rounds and that I could pick it up between 7:30pm and 8:00pm. Now that’s a crazy window, right? Anyway, leaving out in a bit to get my hardware, will catch back up with everyone once I get everything going.
Wow, I am blown away here folks! It looks as if Novell has released openSuSE 11 today and the list of included software is simply amazing! Keep in mind, this is openSuSE, meaning that all of the software in the release is opensource. No hefty license fees or proprietary file formats to worry about here!
Isn’t She Beautiful!
This is the beginning of my future MAME cabinet. I have a friend in my town who owns a large billiard hall, and he had this old Neo-Geo game that the screen has gone out on, so I was able to pick this baby up for less than 100 bucks and have it brought to my house. The inside part works perfectly, so I’m sure I can sell that on E-bay.
I am thinking that I will repaint the entire thing, put a regular TV inside and mount it, and I have not decided if I will buy the controller set from x-arcade or if I will build my own.
I also plan to make a custom marque, stickers, and lighting. I will be mounting speaker inside also. I am not sure what I will use as the system, as I have a few to choose from.
I have a working old p4 setup that I can use, and I also have an older laptop with S-Video out that I could use. I will update further when I make some decisions in that area. Shane is supposed to be checking on a Knoppix bootable linux iso with MAME and a gui interface already installed, but if that doesn’t work out, I can always boot windows and use MAME and build my own front end or use one that I can find out there already.
If anyone else needs one of these sweet cabinets, I think I have access to two or three more. I will update this post later, when I have more time to re-write everything, and update with some more info.
1. Make sure it is properly shared on the desktop computer, and that the computer and printer are both on. Also make note of the share name.
2. On your laptop, go to Start - > printers and faxes - > click add a printer, click next, make sure the “a network printer or printer attached to another computer” is selected, click next, then click “find a printer in the directory”, and click ok, and see if it finds the share name you made note of above.
3. If you do not see it, I would make sure the computers are on the same workgroup / domain, and that the printer is properly shared.
First a Snippet From The PC WORD Arcitcle
In anticipation of Moore’s Law becoming irrelevant in the next 10 to 20 years, the National Science Foundation (NSF) wants funding for research that could lead to a replacement for current silicon technology.
The NSF last week requested US$20 million from the U.S. government for fiscal 2009 to start the “Science and Engineering Beyond Moore’s Law” effort, which would fund academic research on technologies, including carbon nanotubes, quantum computing and massively multicore computers, that could improve and replace current transistor technology.
Moore’s Law states that the number of transistors that can be placed on silicon, and its attendant computational capability, doubles every 18 months. The formula is credited to Intel cofounder Gordon Moore.
Carbon nanotubes could be the future, as I spoke about in my Nanotechnology article. These carbon nanotubes could allow for smaller transistors to be created, research into Quantum Computing is also producing some interesting results, which I will write about in a future article. There also are thoughts on improving software to allow better networking of thousands or millions of computers that act as one single processing unit. Whatever the future holds for this industry, it will be interesting to see what happens in the next 10-20 years.
When did it get to the point that our computer systems became our masters? After recently moving, and being assured by the technician from my local cable company that all was well at my new residence, I find that my digital cable is not working, and port 80 (thats the one that does your web browsing) is being forwarded to the now infamous “Walled Garden” landing page.
I call the automated (ugh) phone system, click through 15 different steps in 3 different languages, wait on hold for an hour, wait on hold again, talk to a “senior technician (he finished the ENTIRE 7 day training program) only to be told there is a problem with my account. They send out another technician the next day. This guy is actually smart enough to figure out what is going on, and after some discussion with my local cable office, I find out what has happened. The previous resident did not officially disconnect their telephone service through the cable company, and since this service is not scheduled to be turned off for another 4 days, the COMPUTER SYSTEM won’t let the “senior technician” turn my service on.
The tech that actually came to my house was nice enough to bring me what he called a “hot box” that allowed me to have all the channels the cable company offered until they get this resolved, (supposedly in 4 days) but in the meantime I am without internet. (I mean.. i can go through a proxy to get around their walled “garden” or VPN into work, or use one of the open wireless connections from some surrounding houses), but the service that I pay over $140 dollars per month for is not working.
I am amazed that the computer system is actually in total control of the cable system…maybe Skynet is not such a far fetched idea after all.
Disclaimer: The information in this post is meant to be educational only and not to be used to commit a crime, regardless of which country the information is received in.
In a move reminiscent of France’s opposition to the Iraqi invasion, and then their subsequent request to help with the rebuilding once all the hard work was pretty much over, Microsoft has attacked the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) Organization and demanded that they upgrade their hardware in order to better fit their bloated, memory sucking and overly proprietary operating system XP onto the benevolent laptops. (more…)
Many people are clueless around the holidays, and are purchasing a computer for a relative. I will try to briefly go over a few things you should consider when looking for a laptop to purchase.
1. New or Used? If you don’t know much about computers, and don’t know someone you trust who can help you, then I would advise you against buying used. While Ebay can be great, there are just too many things to consider for a novice computer purchaser such as yourself. You are much safer with your new computer that has a warranty, customer support, and has never been used, dropped, had anything spilled on it.
2. Processor? The processor is the brain of the computer, and can greatly affect the overall speed of the computer. At the time of this writing, Intel Core 2 Duo processors are probably the best choice for you, Although I would personally prefer one of the new Althlon 64 bit Core 2’s. The main thing is to really avoid the Celeron and go with a good core 2 processor, be it the Intel or the AMD. Typically, a processor a few notches under the fastest one available is the most cost effective per mHz. So shoot for something in that area.
3 . Hard Drive? The Capacity of the hard drive will be measured in Gigabytes (GB). This is important and what most people look for. I would personally want something at least 200GB. There are other things to consider as well though, the type of hard drive, be it IDE or SATA. SATA is more desirable. The RPM of the hard drive is a good indicator of performance as well. You will see something like “Hard Drive: 300GB Sata … 7200 RPM.” The higher the RPM, the faster the drive spins, and the better your seek time will typically be.
4. Graphics Card? To game or not to game, That is the question. If the person your purchasing the laptop for will be using it for gaming, then you should look for a good graphics card. If you can get something in the 256 MB range with the word NVIDIA, you should be fine.
5. Memory? This should be DDR2, and should be 1GB or more. That fancy super fast processor will be sitting still if you don’t have the RAM to support it. Its like taking a fancy corvette and putting watery gas in it, its just not going to run well.
6. Other? Make sure the screen is a decent size. Most of the new laptops will have good screens. You want a DVD / CD Burner, so make sure it has one. It should have integrated wireless internet, and most of them these days will. You may want to think about getting an extra battery as well. The average laptop today will only run around 3 hours on battery power alone. Make sure there is a good warranty with the laptop as well, and find out if something like spillage is covered.
There are many other things to think about as well, but I hope I have given you a few things to consider.
