Archive for the ‘Hardware’ Category
When you think about buying a new laptop, WalMart may not be the first vendor that springs to mind — but perhaps it should be.
WalMart has great prices on laptops from vendors like Everex, Acer, Toshiba, Dell, Sony, and HP.
You may find the best deal by visiting your local WalMart instead of going online. WalMart’s web site offers a basic Everex NC1501 laptop for $398. My local Wal-Mart is selling a much more well equipped Acer for the same price.
Acer is a better brand than Everex. Toshiba, Dell, Sony, and HP are all premium brands which you can buy for very good prices at your local WalMart store.
For $648, you can purchase a Toshiba Satellite with a 15.4″ WXGA widescreen display, a 1.8 GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core processor, 1 GB RAM, and an 80 GB hard drive. That’s quite a reasonable machine!
In addition to comparing brands when buying a cheap laptop, you will also want to compare:
- Display size
- Display resolution
- CPU
- RAM (How much? How many available DIMM slots?)
- Storage (How much? How fast?)
- DVD drives (Read-Only or Read-Write?)
- Wireless (Built-in or add-on?)
When looking for the best deal, it pays to do your research and shop around. My recommendation is that you add WalMart to the list of places you look for your next laptop.
Friday, September 21st, 2007 | Posted in Hardware | No Comments »
There are two main types of computer monitors, the old, but extremely reliable CRT monitor and the newer flat panel monitors. If you have been computer shopping, you will immediately notice that the older monitors have all, but disappeared. You might be saying what gives? Well, for most computer users the flat panel monitor has definite advantages over the older CRT monitors. (more…)
Thursday, September 13th, 2007 | Posted in Hardware | No Comments »
If you are tired of your plain old looking external HDD, you might like the following gadget. It’s a nice looking golden case, with a nice HDD inside. Comes in a package with LaCie backup software and works under Windows 2000/XP and even MacOS X. It connects to your PC via a USB 2.0 cable, and under the hood there are 500GB of storage working at 7200rpm that are ready to reach speeds up to 480MB/s.
Alienware released their media server platform as a response to Sony’s Home Entertainment Server. But unlike Sony who offers a meager 500GB of storage, Alienware gives you 4TB to store your favorite movies, songs, etc.
And not only that but the HD Media Server offers a HDMI output, Dolby Digital 7.1 preamplified output, wireless connection with other devices like computers or mobile devices. Besides it can provide automation for many functions around the house like lighting, air conditioning, or room music.
What Alienware is trying to do with this new Media Server, is not only beat Sony, but conquer a new market of centralized home entertainment. A Media Server that not only takes care of your movies and music, records TV-shows or downloads media content from the web, but also centralize other house functions into one media core. It sounds good but I don’t know for sure if this trend for centralization is leading us in the right direction.
Saturday, August 18th, 2007 | Posted in Hardware | No Comments »
Stealth Computer Corporation a leading ISO 9001 manufacturer of industrial rugged computers and peripherals has released a small form factor or mini PC that is so small that it can fit on the palm of your hand. The LPC-350PCI Little PC employs Intel’s Pentium and Celeron M series processors, designed for optimum power efficiency without compromising processor performance. The robust anodized aluminum chassis measures just over 2 inches tall having the overall footprint about the size of a hard cover novel, measuring in at 10″ x 5.87″ x 2.75″ and weighing approximately 6 lbs.
One of the unique attributes the LPC-350PCI possesses is the open PCI card slot. “Clients can simply add specialized I/O, video, data acquisition and communications cards, something that cannot be achieved with other small computers such as notebook PCs” remarks Stealth’s President & CEO, Ed Boutilier.
The LPC-350PCI mini PC features a multitude of I/O connectivity built into its impressively small design such as; LAN, Serial, 3-USB 2.0, FireWire, Video, Audio, PS/2 Mouse & Keyboard ports. The LPC-350PCI has a built-in 2.5” high-shock hard drive with up to 160GB’s of storage space for archived data.
For applications that require extra high shock, vibration and wide temperature ranges an optional Solid State Hard Drive or Flash Drive is available. A slim DVD/CD-RW optical drive comes standard with an optional DVD burner available. Systems are compatible with Microsoft Vista/XP, Linux etc and can be custom configured to meet the exact needs of the OEM or end user. The Stealth LPC-350 series Little PCs are shipping now with prices starting at $995.00 USD depending on configurations. Stealth’s LittlePC products serve a demanding market where powerful solutions are being deployed in space-challenged applications around the world. Digital Signs, Kiosks, Embedded Control, Thin-Clients, POS & Human/Machine Interface are just a few of the applications that are ideal for Stealth’s LittlePC products.
Thursday, August 16th, 2007 | Posted in Hardware | No Comments »
Some new cooling systems are in order for the ever-growing heat produced by new generation processors. And although for now it’s just a project, the new ionic cooling project is just crazy enough to work. Water cooling systems, considered one of the best solutions to date might become obsolete if the developers manage to scale down their prototype and launch the product on the market.
The idea behind ionic cooling is that small “wind engines” will generate a constant flow of positively charged particles (ions) over the microchip, thus dissipating the heat in a much more efficient way. Traditional fans, although provide a strong flow of air have problems in removing molecules really close to the processor, and it’s exactly those particles that keep the microchip hot. This won’t be a problem of course for the ion cooling system, as it can move these particles in an ergonomic way to provide optimized cooling.
Here’s what researchers have to say about it:
“Other experimental cooling-enhancement approaches might give you a 40% or a 50% improvement (1.4 to 1.5 times the cooling rate of a conventional fan). A 250% improvement (3.5 times the cooling rate of a conventional fan) is quite unusual.”
New iMacs were expected for a while now. That’s why Apple’s morning release was not such a shock to the tech passionates out there. To skip straight to the point, Apple released new iMacs. Built from aluminum and strong glass the prototypes “suffered” a complete redesign. These now come in two basic sizes. A 20-inch and a 24-inch.
Here are the main features, for those interested:
* USB 2.0, Firewire 400/800 ports
* SuperDrive
* iSight camera
* Glossy display
* New keyboard (mini wireless or extended wired / Bluetooth 2.0 included)
* Core 2 Extreme 2.8GhZ processor
* ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro graphic card
* 1TB storage space
* Wireless and Bluetooth 2.0
* 1GB of standard RAM
The price for these fancy iMacs? $1,799 for the 24-inch one and $2,299 for the Core 2 Extreme. They might seem a bit expensive in the beginning, but trust me, they truly are worth it.
Nintendo Wii’s Shopping Channel was unavailable for three hours or so earlier. It was a sign. It seems that Nintendo updated the Wii firmware in order to include a few small but very nice features. Some sources report that an increase of the User Interface’s speed is in place.
See this report on the full features implemented with this Firmware upgrade, and you can see some interesting screenshots from the referred source.
I myself own a Nintendo Wii and I will update it to the new features as soon as I have some free time 
Heads up, Europeans. The iPhone has been hacked for real now. Senad, a 28 year old hacker originating from Macedonia, along with a team from hackint0sh.org cracked the iPhone, enabling full functionality and support for European SIM cards.
Senad’s nickname is Deepdark, and he was previously involved in various projects of Digiturk Cryptoworks as well as the Digital Satellite scene. He said the hack is very real and was accomplished by using a simple SIM card reader/writer unit and some sophisticated software.
They simply enabled the iPhone in Europe, allowing people to take advantage of all of its features (incoming/outgoing calls, SMS, GPRS/EDGE).
“It was just a matter of time…”
Senad (Deepdark)
VideoGamer.com had a short little chat with Senad, and I strongly encourage you to read it.
Will this be the gPhone? Maybe not. With a few months before iPhone being released, our-picks.com gathered a 51 pictures mock-up of how the iPhone *might* look. As you can see, none of them actually approached the real thing and this might be true regarding the gPhone as well.
