From the realm of the itty-bitty comes the ARTiGO A1150 from VIA. We’ve seen itty-bitty computers before, but the problem has always been that they’re so darned slow. Not this one. It does have a real-deal 1GHz 64-bit dual-core processor, can do HD video, has both VGA and HDMI, can support up to 4GB DDR3 RAM, has optional Wi-Fi and has 5 USB ports,...

Some of the larger offices in parts of the world want email to completely go away, such as the CEO of Atos who absolutely wants a zero-email policy implemented. The linked article states that at that company, only 10% of the messages are "useful", way too much time is spent going through hundreds of messages, and that a SMS/forum/instant-message system...

Every day, more people are getting online and the world is a whole lot smaller than it used to be. That’s really great, but a problem that’s been an ongoing issue in the world of electronic messaging is the date format. Problems with date formats predate the internet and go back to the BBS messaging days. In America (en-US), the standard format is...

Yesterday, I went in for my biannual teeth cleaning at the dentist (in the US, dentists schedule routine cleanings once every 6 months). After the cleaning was done, I receive the dentist’s reminder card at the front desk stating that my next visit is scheduled for May 2012. Now while it’s true the office will call me a few days before the day of...

Some tech items for sale simply defy belief as far as their shoddy quality is concerned, and believe me when I say this is not dictated by price alone whether the cost of the item is high or low. There have been some out there (maybe you’re one of them) who have spent $300 on a graphics card only to receive it and it doesn’t work. Or maybe $400 on...

It’s well known that the most expensive part of a laptop is the LCD panel (i.e. the screen). If you’ve ever shopped around for a replacement panel – even if it’s just the thin-film part and not the surrounding bezel – you know exactly what I’m talking about. LCD panels have never been cheap and probably never will be. Because...

Although I live in Florida now, from age 0 to 30 I lived in New England, so I have a pretty good idea what it means to deal with harsh weather conditions and winterize things appropriately. Something that most people don’t give a thought to are the operating temperatures for mobile devices. Every one sold states in the manual what the minimum and maximum...

Internet back in the late 90s was a completely different online world compared to now. Back then, terms were used like "the information superhighway", "cyberspace" and the like in a desperate attempt to describe to the masses what the internet was. The way people find things online is still primarily based on search engines; in fact,...

Today is “Black Friday”, which means everybody is out looking for bargains. Well, how about one you can actually use? It is web hosting by Hostgator. And, for TODAY ONLY,  you can save 50% on any new Hostgator account. This means you can get good, solid hosting for as little as $2.48/month. Have your own website - for as little as...

The 7 services the Goog is killing off are Google Bookmark Lists, Google Friend Connect, Google Gears, Google Search Timeline, Google Wave, Knol, Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal (RE<C). Rather than go through each of these one by one, I’m only going to concentrate on the ones I actually used, even if only very briefly. Friend Connect admittedly had...

Most of us don’t give a second thought about browsing with JavaScript completely turned off. For those of you out there who are very anti-JavaScript, you’re probably using NoScript for selective enabling/disabling of JS based on what site you’re using. I wanted to see however which webmail would work with no JS enabled whatsoever. Why do this?...

I live in an area where there are Wi-Fi routers all around me; this presents a problem because if I’m using the same channel others are using, the signal will stutter/drop for any Wi-Fi device I use. In most wireless routers (at least for newer ones), they come preconfigured to automatically select the first channel available, usually settling on channel...

When editing a photo in an image editor, sometimes you want to get that cinema-style look by cropping the photo to a specific ratio. The problem however is that other than the templates you may be given for "pre-boxed" cropping, you really have no clue what dimensions you’re supposed to use since photos are in different pixel dimensions depending...

I know and you know that Netflix recently upped their prices and lost a whole bunch of customers because of it. Even so, it’s still a darn good service if you use it online-only. Unlimited streaming from Netflix is 8 bucks a month, which in all honesty is pretty good. Also, the first month is free so you can try it out for 30 days. Now before I give you...

When Microsoft introduced the taskbar with Windows 95, this was as far as I’m concerned the greatest breakthrough in desktop GUI productivity. Why? Because before that, desktop UIs simply weren’t designed for multitasking very well. Yes, they could multitask, but the way in which it was done was awful. In just about every GUI prior to Win95, all...

A friend of mine visited Florida all last week and this friend’s only computer that was taken was an iPod Touch, which most of you know as "an iPhone without the phone part". For all intents and purposes, that’s a fairly accurate description of what an iPod Touch is. Something that truly amazes me about iPod Touches and other devices with...

In the context of this article, "safe" concerning a hard drive means "least likely to have mechanical failure". While true you can buy 1TB drives new for under $150 easily, there are tens of thousands of platter-based hard drives out there that are used and much cheaper – but which are the safest? Laptop HDDs Rich’s...

I think it’s safe to say that out of all CPUs considered vintage, the Intel 80286 will be the one missed the least – if at all. A PC with a 286 CPU was a bit of an odd duck for most computer hobbyists of the time as there was no real reason to own one. Yes, the performance per clock cycle was double that of the 8086/8088 and yes, it could address up...

A complaint I’ve had for a good long time concerning any web site where you post anything be it status updates, photos or the like is that there is no way to go to a specific part of the site, hit a button and download a copy of everything in your account for archive purposes. Fortunately, Google has stepped up to the plate and truly does have a 1-click...

HP these days is making some pretty good full-size laptops these days. Compared to just a few years ago, a lot more attention is being given to build quality both on the inside and outside. If you haven’t checked out HP laptops recently, here are 3 for under $500 that are worth a look: Note that all these laptops have 15.6-inch screens at 1366×768...