Computer Tips -Tech Info

I’ve got a single access point for my wireless network layer at the house and unfortunately have at least one real “dead spot” in the house. As luck would have it that dead spot is at the couch… so for some time I’ve looked at ways to extend the wireless network range or other ways. […]

The Hawking Technology Print Server (HPS1P) is a nice little parallel port to ethernet print server that can be configured to make a single printer available to multiple machines on a LAN (local area network). It supports a number of different protocols and can be configured through a web interface, or with a Windows based […]

Ouch, Dell is recalling 35,000 notebook batteries that were shipped between October 5rd and 13th of this year. They were made in China or Japan and “pose a risk of fire.” There is a web-site setup by Dell on the issue… here. They also suggest “Batteries subject to recall should not be used while awaiting […]

For a long time I really disliked seeing USB network adapters. The main reason is the performance. USB 1 can only do ~ 12Mbps which compared to a 10/100 ethernet controller “significantly limits your ability to do more than 10…” Even USB 2 supports 480 Mbps which should give you the ability to get full […]

It sounds like Microsoft Windows Vista will not support old DVD drives when it ships. By old, I’m talking about drives that don’t support the region selection limits that newer drives have. (In other words, they won’t support old drives that are effectively region free.) Supposedly this is because they lack the older drives to […]

This is the first of a few articles that will highlight some of the tools/gadgets/gizmos that I find useful. I’m starting off with one that’s almost essential. External USB hard drive adapter. Recently, I’ve been looking for something a bit leaner than your typical usb -> hard drive converter. Yes, I’ve carried something like this […]

I know it’s not an ipod… but I’m looking forward to hearing some word when Fronteir Labs releases their “Nexblack”. For background…. the nexblack is priced at around $89 (at the frontier labs store), but I’ve found $69 here. It’s a portable mp3/wma/wma with drm/ogg player (according to the spec sheet.) It uses AA batteries […]

Think about it: one pc, 3 monitors, 3 keyboards, 3 mice, 3 users all on the same machine at the same time doing different things. Ah yes, some of you are saying terminal clients, been there… Think of a standard whitebox pc powering it and a full graphical user interface and you have what’s known […]

This kind of get’s glommed into hardware, software and security categories all…. I’ve mentioned DBAN a couple times already (Darik’s Boot and Nuke). I had a chance to sit down this afternoon to nuke a few disks I’ve collected over the last little while and thought I’d pass along some points on the DBAN for […]

Although some of the linked reviews are old, PCWorld has released their list of top 100 products of 2005. It’s nice to see a number of familiar products in the list, several Google offerings are listed (main search engine, desktop, and GMail at #2). Ubuntu makes #26 which is noteworthy. I notice Wikipedia is in […]