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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Recently my sister had some good luck and happened to win a $500 gift certificate for Apple products. Per her profession she took an online survey for work-related products, and one of the perks is that if you filled it out you might win the gift certificate. Sounds like a spam, I know, but it [...]
One of the more annoying parts of putting a PC together is where to put an external USB hub. Many people use the smaller 4-port flavor, and of course whenever the cable connecting it in the back gets moved, it slides all over the place because it has barely any weight to it. Smaller 4-port [...]
The standard color for any computer-related item made of plastic these days (keyboards, mice, monitor bezels, etc.) is black or silver. Black is usually a true black, as in the plastic was molded originally in that color. Silver comes from paint, and to the best of my knowledge the base color before the silver is [...]
As I’ve said before, computer geeks are packrats by nature, and chances are you have an old clunky PC (or laptop) somewhere in your dwelling that you would like to put to good use but can’t because the hard drive is dead, and you really don’t want to spend the cash on one given the [...]
Generally speaking, when most people hear "webcam", they don’t exactly equate that with "high quality image"; the main reason for this is that webcams started out as being very poorly-constructed, awful-image-resolution plastic pieces of crap. In addition, there were scores of higher-priced webcams that shoved in software features but didn’t improve picture quality at all. [...]
I’m honestly shocked at how much lower in price AMD desktop processors are compared to Intel these days. Considering a quad-core from AMD starts at $90 and Intel at $180, you can easily see why so many PC builders choose to go with AMD as their CPU of choice. But are AMD processors any good? [...]
There’s a fair amount of people (yours truly included) that don’t own a printer. My reason for not owning one is that since I print so infrequently, the ink would dry out resulting in wasted money. So how do you print when you don’t own a printer? Use someone else’s. Here are 5 ways to [...]
Example of "crazy synchronized light show": Some of you out there with a flagrant disregard for your electricity usage like to set up advanced displays like the one shown above. But where does one get all the stuff to put together a light show like this? One such place is Light-O-Rama. If you want just [...]
A PC emergency kit is basically nothing more than a shoebox of PC accessories and peripherals that exists for the sole reason of getting your PC back up and running when something on the box or laptop dies on you. And by "emergency" I don’t mean the all-out-disaster type but rather parts that will keep [...]
