I’ve gotta send in my Seagate 200GB 7200RPM 8MB drive. Twice it after I put so much data on it it looses all its formating and can’t be recovered by any software. This is the first seagate drive I’ve owned and I’ve been incredibly happy. This drive is huge, fast, and almost silent and at $99 for it I couldn’t lose. Sure I lost some data but that is why I make backups. I called the support people today and they didn’t even ask why I was sending it back, I just told them I needed it replaced and they started the process without any BS. I like that in a company that I don’t have to go through my story. I know when something is wrong and I know when it can and can’t be fixed, I don’t need a stranger trying to figure out my setup and trying to fix something that is unfixable over the phone. So I’m off to the USPS to get the drive sent their way. Hope to get the new one by the first of next week but who knows.
Posted by chris at 12:45 PM Hardware • (10) Trackbacks
Purrs like a kitten
I got my new Seagate Barracuda 200GB 7200 RPM 8MB cache hard drive from TigerDirect.com for $99 after $50 MIR. Why didn't anyone tell me about Seagate before??? This drive is pretty much silent!! I wish I had the cash to order a 2nd one to replace my loud Maxtor 80gb 7200 RPM 8mb cache. (using 80 for windows and the 200 for storage)
Posted by chris at 09:57 PM
Hardware •
(0) Trackbacks
Friday, January 30, 2004
LCD Cleaning?
Anyone know any good household chemicals to clean an LCD monitor with? I've heard that mixing household alcohol and water at a 1:1 ratio does pretty well. Just thought you guys might know some kewl way to do it. I'd rather not buy those expensive cleaning clothes.
Posted by chris at 10:12 PM
Hardware •
(0) Trackbacks
Thursday, January 08, 2004
Mac vs. PC (third party tests)
Nice to see a G5 vs. Duel Xeon contest! Check it out here
Ultimately, the Mac tied or led the PC in 19 of the 77 tests that comprise this report. Put another way, the PC was faster in 58 of 77 benchmarks. And this is comparing desktop machines. Though we haven't published specific performance numbers for laptops in this report, we did run a Mac Powerbook and a Dell laptop through a subset of the same tests. The 15-inch Powerbook G4, powered by a G4/1.25GHz processor, was thumped in every test by a Dell Inspiron 8500 and its P4-M processor running at 2.6GHz. And while the PC is still quicker overall, the Mac is at least back in the race. Posted by chris at 10:01 PM Hardware • (0) Trackbacks
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
Ultimately, the Mac tied or led the PC in 19 of the 77 tests that comprise this report. Put another way, the PC was faster in 58 of 77 benchmarks. And this is comparing desktop machines. Though we haven't published specific performance numbers for laptops in this report, we did run a Mac Powerbook and a Dell laptop through a subset of the same tests. The 15-inch Powerbook G4, powered by a G4/1.25GHz processor, was thumped in every test by a Dell Inspiron 8500 and its P4-M processor running at 2.6GHz. And while the PC is still quicker overall, the Mac is at least back in the race. Posted by chris at 10:01 PM Hardware • (0) Trackbacks
New 19" LCD
I got my new Envision 19" 9110 LCD today. Here's a pic, I'll review it later. I promise.
Monday, November 24, 2003
Mobo Update
Well I figured out what was wrong with my motherboard.
Ya, I'd say it's a little screwed up. The power supply is also screwed up. Thanks to Xoxide for having a 420W PSU on sale last night for $7, and to AccuPC for a $54 mobo. I should have my good system back up and running within a week. Posted by chris at 08:56 PM Hardware • (0) Trackbacks
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Ya, I'd say it's a little screwed up. The power supply is also screwed up. Thanks to Xoxide for having a 420W PSU on sale last night for $7, and to AccuPC for a $54 mobo. I should have my good system back up and running within a week. Posted by chris at 08:56 PM Hardware • (0) Trackbacks
Dead MOBO
My Giga-Byte GA-7VAX is screwed up. I happened a couple days ago. About a week ago I would come home and my box would have restarted itself and I had an error report about they video card causing the system to crash. My first thought was drivers, so I jumped on the Nvidia site (I use a ganeric TI-4200 4X 128MB card) and grabbed an archived driver version. Still had the issue.
On my day off I kinda left my big machine (nickname: Krysta) alone and did most of my work on my laptop (Janelle) and my 2nd XP box (Stephanie). What seems to be happening is the video card is giving out, because the screen will go black and the monitor will kick off as if I turn the PC off. It's not hibernate or suspend. It just dies, it brings the whole system with it. I tried to VNC into Krysta but it wouldn't respond.
So I killed the box and threw in my old trusty Radeon 7500. With this card the screen was off register, the screw would scramble constantly. It was very odd, ckecked the screen resolution and refrest rates but they were all ok.
Next I popped out that card and dropped in a Radeon 9200 I had in a friend's system I was working on. With this card it wouldn't even bring anything up on the screen.
By now I'm a little mad. For a last chance I drop in my OLD Voodoo3 3500 TV card. Here I get the same thing as the 7500 (but still get the "3DFX" look (inside joke)). So I'm going batty because of course my powerpoint presentation for church is on that machine. This is my modded to crap box so I didn't want to pull the HD because I have modding done to it and it would have screwed up my wiring. So I got the machine to run long enough to grab the files over the network.
My guess is that the AGP port on the MOBO is going, all thos video cards are fine, but yet they all have issues. Those issues accur in both POST/DOS and Windows/Linus so it isn't a driver issue. Has to be hardware. I haven't had a free hour to call Giga-Byte. I currently have my notebook hooked up to my monitor, keyboard and mouse. I'll be glad to get this thing fixed. Posted by chris at 09:46 PM Hardware • (0) Trackbacks
Friday, August 22, 2003
On my day off I kinda left my big machine (nickname: Krysta) alone and did most of my work on my laptop (Janelle) and my 2nd XP box (Stephanie). What seems to be happening is the video card is giving out, because the screen will go black and the monitor will kick off as if I turn the PC off. It's not hibernate or suspend. It just dies, it brings the whole system with it. I tried to VNC into Krysta but it wouldn't respond.
So I killed the box and threw in my old trusty Radeon 7500. With this card the screen was off register, the screw would scramble constantly. It was very odd, ckecked the screen resolution and refrest rates but they were all ok.
Next I popped out that card and dropped in a Radeon 9200 I had in a friend's system I was working on. With this card it wouldn't even bring anything up on the screen.
By now I'm a little mad. For a last chance I drop in my OLD Voodoo3 3500 TV card. Here I get the same thing as the 7500 (but still get the "3DFX" look (inside joke)). So I'm going batty because of course my powerpoint presentation for church is on that machine. This is my modded to crap box so I didn't want to pull the HD because I have modding done to it and it would have screwed up my wiring. So I got the machine to run long enough to grab the files over the network.
My guess is that the AGP port on the MOBO is going, all thos video cards are fine, but yet they all have issues. Those issues accur in both POST/DOS and Windows/Linus so it isn't a driver issue. Has to be hardware. I haven't had a free hour to call Giga-Byte. I currently have my notebook hooked up to my monitor, keyboard and mouse. I'll be glad to get this thing fixed. Posted by chris at 09:46 PM Hardware • (0) Trackbacks
B-Day Present?
Hey, my B-Day is comming up, anyone wanna buy me this!
Posted by chris at 12:59 AM
Hardware •
(25) Trackbacks
Saturday, August 02, 2003
Eat THIS Apple
Looks like Apple no longer has the only 17" notebook on the market. Toshiba has released their 17" notebook for under $2000! Now I know that is 2X more than I paid for my 15" Asus but I think this thing will kick some butt! I know I will have you Mac guys saying your has better battery life and the such, but I could really care less. And I like the look of this machine better than the Apple. I used the 17" powerbook and wasn't impress (OS X and I don't get along). Now that I'm done ticking off you Apple fans, let the flames fly!
Posted by chris at 01:52 PM
Hardware •
(8) Trackbacks
Thursday, July 31, 2003
Looks like Apple no longer has the only 17" notebook on the market. Toshiba has released their 17" notebook for under $2000! Now I know that is 2X more than I paid for my 15" Asus but I think this thing will kick some butt! I know I will have you Mac guys saying your has better battery life and the such, but I could really care less. And I like the look of this machine better than the Apple. I used the 17" powerbook and wasn't impress (OS X and I don't get along). Now that I'm done ticking off you Apple fans, let the flames fly!
Posted by chris at 01:52 PM
Hardware •
(8) Trackbacks
Firmware issues
The other day I upgraded my router's firmware to 2.20 from 2.18. The only new feature/fix was that it gave you static DHCP, not a big deal but I figured I would keep up with the updates.
After installing it on my D-Link 614+ I started to notice that traffic accross port 80 was incredibly unstable and no possible on some of my machines. I thought it was an issue with the machines so I fiddles with them for a few hours but nothing seemed to fix them. Both wired and wireless connections were screwy.
So I contacted D-Link support letting them know what was up. I got a reply a few hours later saying that I should reboot the router, set it to defaults, then change the settings to what I needed. Well I had done that about 40 times. Slapped them another email saying I had done that and after going back to 2.18 everything was hunky-dory. Ended up I got another reply saying I should just stickwith 2.18. This kind of ticked me off, just because there is an issue I shouldn't have to stay with the old stuff, but i didn't email them back, just stuck with the old stuff.
Ok, so today I jumped over to the 614+'s page on the D-Link site and noticed that 2.20 is no longer available for download. I found it odd that right after my complaint it was taken down. I had been up there from July 1 - 28 and then finally taken down. I'm guessing they'll just skip 2.20 and fix the issue in another upcoming release.
I've been very happy with my D-Link router. I have an SMC WIFI router around but it gets VERY hot and since I keep my networking stuff in an inclosed space I don't need something that will produce that much heat.
In a related issue. This is a question for all you geeks out there. Back when I had my old HP notebook (Betsy) I could get 100% signal strength as long as I was within 20 feet of the router (using my D-Link DWL-650 WIFI PCMCIA card). But not with my new Asus notebook (Janelle) I can't get ANYTHING over 90%. I have tried both the drivers on the CD and the drivers on the D-Link website. I thought maybe it was a power issue but I can't seem to find where to change that. Don't get me wrong it covers most of my house but the connection just isn't as solid. I'm using the same card in the new notebook as I did the old one and I don't have another machine to test the card out on. Any thoughts/idea? Posted by chris at 12:36 PM Hardware • (6) Trackbacks
After installing it on my D-Link 614+ I started to notice that traffic accross port 80 was incredibly unstable and no possible on some of my machines. I thought it was an issue with the machines so I fiddles with them for a few hours but nothing seemed to fix them. Both wired and wireless connections were screwy.
So I contacted D-Link support letting them know what was up. I got a reply a few hours later saying that I should reboot the router, set it to defaults, then change the settings to what I needed. Well I had done that about 40 times. Slapped them another email saying I had done that and after going back to 2.18 everything was hunky-dory. Ended up I got another reply saying I should just stickwith 2.18. This kind of ticked me off, just because there is an issue I shouldn't have to stay with the old stuff, but i didn't email them back, just stuck with the old stuff.
Ok, so today I jumped over to the 614+'s page on the D-Link site and noticed that 2.20 is no longer available for download. I found it odd that right after my complaint it was taken down. I had been up there from July 1 - 28 and then finally taken down. I'm guessing they'll just skip 2.20 and fix the issue in another upcoming release.
I've been very happy with my D-Link router. I have an SMC WIFI router around but it gets VERY hot and since I keep my networking stuff in an inclosed space I don't need something that will produce that much heat.
In a related issue. This is a question for all you geeks out there. Back when I had my old HP notebook (Betsy) I could get 100% signal strength as long as I was within 20 feet of the router (using my D-Link DWL-650 WIFI PCMCIA card). But not with my new Asus notebook (Janelle) I can't get ANYTHING over 90%. I have tried both the drivers on the CD and the drivers on the D-Link website. I thought maybe it was a power issue but I can't seem to find where to change that. Don't get me wrong it covers most of my house but the connection just isn't as solid. I'm using the same card in the new notebook as I did the old one and I don't have another machine to test the card out on. Any thoughts/idea? Posted by chris at 12:36 PM Hardware • (6) Trackbacks
Copyright Chris 2004.