Archive for the ‘Hardware’ Category

Mommy, Why is There a Server in the House?

Posted on December 8th, 2007 by Elliot

Clever advertising campaign by Microsoft for the Windows Home Server.
They also have a lot of news report-like videos which are, in fact, just ads for the Windows Home Server.
via Scott Hanselman

OLPC XO-1 Alternatives

Posted on November 26th, 2007 by Elliot

Here’s what Wikipedia says.
 
Project page

One Laptop per Child

Similar products

ASUS Eee PC, a low cost machine developed by ASUS
Classmate PC, a low cost machine developed by Intel
Linutop is another Geode LX -based computer meant for emerging nations.
Longmeng or Dragon Dream is a low-cost computer being designed in China
Tianhua GX-1C, part of a line of affordable machines [...]

The Asus Eee PC and the OLPC XO-1

Posted on November 26th, 2007 by Elliot

Small is back!
I remember many years ago I’d spent hours reading about the Toshiba Libretto. It was maybe 5 years ago. I would use Google and find everything about it I could. I’d read everything I could find on every fansite.
I searched for it on eBay and went on forums to find people who were [...]

NASA Reports Origins of Space Station Crisis

Posted on October 17th, 2007 by Elliot

From an article in IEEE Spectrum, it looks like they had a pretty serious situation on the International Space Station this past June, but they’ve worked it out. It shut down the station’s three computers, which are crucial for space station operation.
October 2007 -Aboard the International Space [...]

Not a genuine Lenovo battery

Posted on September 29th, 2007 by Elliot

When I bought my IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad Z61t, I chose the lowest-end battery option because the battery is one of the easiest parts to replace in a laptop computer. I always intended to someday get a battery that would last longer, so that I could truly have laptop portability.
While preparing for BigSeminar X (more about it [...]

SpinRite Stuck?

Posted on September 28th, 2007 by Elliot

Here is some valuable info from the Google cache for a website that’s now down.
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Working on a Disk…
I’m working on a disk. It’s has some nasty bad areas on the disk, so much so that I can’t use Acronis True Image to clone the data. It’s probably not completely necessary [...]

How to PXE Network Boot SpinRite

Posted on September 27th, 2007 by Elliot

Today a couple of laptops came in for repair. One is a super-thin Sharp laptop with a dead hard drive. What an opportunity to run SpinRite!, I thought. But there was just one problem: no disk nor disc drives of any kind.
These super-thin laptops have a hard drive, but no optical drive and definitely no [...]

7 Screens Controlled by One Keyboard/Mouse

Posted on September 17th, 2007 by Elliot

With Synergy, you can use the same keyboard and mouse to control any number of Windows, Linux, and Mac computers.

Dell Computer Funny Noises

Posted on September 14th, 2007 by Elliot

Funny noises can sound like different things, and it may take someone with some experience to accurately describe and determine what the noise is caused by. Here are some common ones:

The hard drive.
The CPU fan.
The power supply fan.
Case fan(s), if applicable.
The internal speaker.
An optical drive.

The hard drive will typically make more of a “clicking” noise, [...]