Everybody knows that heat is bad for electronics. Keeping your computer in an area that’s too well-insulated or not properly ventilated is a sure recipe for disaster. In the most extreme circumstances, key components could end up simply melting. Circuitry can overheat and overload. I even had a friend whose graphics card actually lit on fire because of an...

A general rule of thumb is that it’s never a bad idea to stuff in as much RAM as your motherboard can support. After all, one can never have too much memory in a PC (or a laptop for that matter). Do I believe in this rule of thumb? Yes, but with this condition: Stuff as much RAM in your computer box that your motherboard will support, as long as it’s...

A question that many have had over the years is this: "Can I buy a laptop that’s cheap, and has no operating system on it for my laptop Linux build?" Yes, and it’s called the debranded laptop. Currently, all the debranded laptops on NewEgg are "formerly"-HP brand. On the high-price side of things, the most expensive unit is $510,...

After seeing the comment discussion from my Do You Print? I Don’t. article, I noticed some people left some really good comments listing reasons why owning a printer is worth it. I decided to bite the bullet and actually buy a printer – but with the condition that I wanted to see how cheap I could do it because I do print infrequently, so I...

Since the Thailand flooding disaster that really put the hard drive suppliers in a pickle, hard drive prices have gone up. Way up. How far up? More than double. In this article I wrote back in July 2011 (8 months ago), the 1TB 7200 RPM hard drive mentioned was $55. The price of the same drive now is $120, so if you were ever wondering how high prices of HDDs...

Martin writes: I have a 15-inch LCD monitor. After being powered on for 10-30 minutes the screen goes blank, but power is still on. By pressing the power button again, the screen will display normally, but after that the screen goes blank and not display anything even though the monitor LED is still lit green. What’s wrong with my monitor?I openly invite...

Does anybody here remember the Nintendo 64? The Super Nintendo? The Atari 2600? The Sega Genesis? What did all of these awesome old school consoles have in common? No, it wasn’t the fact that they all used cartridges (good guess, though.)  Give up? They were all nearly indestructible. Unless you opted to take a baseball bat to one, chances are...

Micky writes: I need to replace my PC’s hard drive. I have a Dell dimension 8400. It is about about 8 years old. I am looking to buy a Western Digital 320 GB, 7200 rpm. I have two questions: is a 350 watts power supply enough for this drive & will it generate too much heat for this PC? I was unable to find any specifics about the cooling fans within...

For a while now I’ve been wanting to purchase a new Garmin nüvi for one reason and one reason only – lifetime map updates. Only recently did the Gamin "Essentials" (meaning basic) series finally come down enough in price to where I felt it was a good deal, so I bought a Garmin nüvi 40LM. Currently, there are 9 automotive GPS models by...

Most of you out there are probably using a 3-button mouse right now, as the scroll wheel is in fact a button (the "wheel click"). However what I’m talking about here is the old-school 3-button mouse, as in the one that had no scroll wheel, three buttons and nothing else, such as the one pictured right. You didn’t see 3-button mice very...