Recently in Hardware Category

pccase3 Originally uploaded by brianc. My main PC had about a year’s worth of accumulated dust that needed cleaning tonight.... (more)

Don’t know if I’m really ready for a full-blown “switch”, but I recently bought from a friend at work his old PowerBook G4. (He joined practically every other Mac user I know in buying a new MacBook Pro, so I’m benefiting from his castoff.) I’ve been a Mac users off an on, but have never owned a decent one like... (more)

When the Xbox 360 came out, I wanted one bad. For once, I thought, I’d be on the cutting edge rather than waiting. But, scarcity of supply and the outrageous premiums on eBay turned me off and I decided to wait and see what happens with the upcoming Sony and Nintendo systems in 2006 (2007?). Steven Frank (of Panic fame),... (more)

While doing some research on APC uninterruptable power supplies, I was browsing their knowledge base when I discovered this surprising note: Never use a domestic model APC UPS on a ship In North America, one would expect to see approximately 120 volts when measuring from hot to neutral and from hot to ground. However, larger ships use delta power. That... (more)

I continue to receive periodic email newsletters from Creative, hoping that eventually they will update the firmware for my poor little Zen Touch MP3 player. Today’s email included a teaser subject that I couldn’t resist: Creative patents industry-standard MP3 player technology If you guessed that we have another example of patenting the obvious, you’d be right! Here are some choice... (more)

For the past couple of months, I’ve been getting good use out of my Creative Zen Touch 20GB MP3 player. I’ve copied over about 20 of my CDs but use it mostly for podcasts during my commute. Overall I’m quite happy with the device, but have noticed a problem with certain podcast files which would play back at the wrong... (more)

Portable USB drives (loaded with flash memory from 64MB, 256MB, and up) have become quite popular and are really handy for carrying files or data around. What I really needed was a way to synchronize my files, so I turned to an open-source package called Unison for the answer. (more)

Previously I wrote about rebuilding my home server. With the server's failed hard drive crisis under control, it was time to update the main family PC which has been showing its age and whose hard drive was starting to fail. Here's the short story on the new PC in the family... (more)