Philips is a company almost everyone has heard of. They now make just about every type of consumer electronic device out there.  PC sound cards are probably the last thing most people would associate with the Philips name. To those of us in the PC hardware field, this has changed to a marked degree with their entrance into the PC sound market with...

Okay now - admit it. More than likely, you neglect your PC. It just sits there and runs and you don’t give it an ounce of thought until it breaks. Sounds like too many of us with our cars. Sure, you probably complain about all the noisy hard drive activity when you’re not doing anything. You might moan about how it takes all day to boot up. You...

Microsoft has been a punching bag for money-hungry lawyers and politicians in the previous years. The recent anti-trust suit against them seemed to come out of nowhere under the Clinton Administration and is disappearing just as quickly under Mr. Bush. This kind of thing can be expected in our society, I guess. Those who breed success are doomed to suffer the...

Two things blend together to make RAID more powerful than ever: An increasing number of die-hard, PC-loving speed- freaks and an ever-decreasing price of the hard drive. We\’re (for most of us) beyond the stage of thinking our hard drives are too small. We\’re beyond the stages of making due because a hard drive costs so much. But, for the PC...

You might think, huh? What the hell does an Easter Egg have to do with software? Read on. I haven’t much doubt that you’ll find this both interesting and entertaining. Yo, what is it? Most people never give an ounce of thought to the people who programmed the stuff on their PC. Software is not magic. It has to be written by someone. Everything from...

Simply put – broadband is dirt cheap these days. Almost anyone can afford it now days. And this is a good thing, too. Traditional dial-up connections to the internet are more than an annoyance. I have spent my share of time waiting for downloads or slow sites, looking at a 5 MB download and thinking it will take up my whole connection for at least a half...

Here is a quick rundown of all the different sockets and slots for processors: Socket 1This is an old slot. Its found on 486 motherboards and supports 486 chips, plus the DX2, DX4 Overdrive. It contains 169 pins and operates at 5 volts. The only overdrive it will support is the DX4 Overdrive. Socket 2This Intel socket is a minor upgrade from the Socket 1. It has...

Computers come in different form factors. ATX is the most common. AT used to be the standard but is now obsolete. NLX and LPX are two others. These forms describe the shape and size of the motherboards, as well as the layout of the components on the board. The form factor will also determine the type of case you must buy, as the case is laid out differently and...

The battery in a PC is often one of the most forgotten parts of the computer. It is quite important, too. It is what holds all of your CMOS settings while your computer is off. Without it, you would have to re-program your CMOS each and every time you turned on your PC. The history of this is quite simple. The early PC’s from IBM used DIP switches to set...

Via was founded in 1997 and it has since proven to be a worthy competitor to the Intel behemoth. In some areas, I actually like the Via chipsets better than those of Intel. Let\’s go through some of the chipsets Via has to offer: Apollo Pro 133This chipset, as you can tell from the name, supports the newer PC133 standard, meaning it can support 100MHz and...

When Apple released it’s Imac to the public, it was the craze for a little while. What was it that made this little computer so interesting? It didn’t perform well and had mediocre specs. No, it was the design. The case was translucent, allowing the owner to peer into the system and see the...

Dimensions21" H x 7.5" W x 17" DDrive Bays4 5.25” external2 3.5” external2 3.5” internalForm Factors accepted...

Motherboard SpecificationsCPU Interface Socket 7Chipset Via MVP3L2 cache 512 K / 1 MBForm Factor ATXBus Speeds 66 / 75 / 83 / 100 / 112 / 124 MHzClock Multipliers 1.5x –...

ASUS has always been known to produce high quality motherboards. This is one of the reasons why I wanted to review the ASUS P3V4X mainboard, which features the VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset. Unlike ASUS, VIA hasn’t been known to manufacture high quality products. I wanted to see whether ASUS could provide a stable platform that is based on a chipset made by...

Motherboard SpecificationsCPU Interface Slot-1Chipset Intel 440BXForm Factor ATXBus Speeds 66 / 75 / 83 / 100 / 103 / 112 MHzClock Multipliers 2.0x – 8.0xVoltages Supported 1.5v – 3.5v (Auto-Detect)Memory Slots 3 168pin DIMM SlotsExpansion Slots 1 AGP Slot 4 PCI Slots ...