Over the years I’ve gone through a few wireless routers, but surprisingly not that many as most tend to stay working for at least 3 to 4 years at bare minimum before they conk out. With Wi-Fi routers there are obvious and not-so obvious reasons as to why they fail with network connectivity. Examples of obvious issues: On one router I had, it started making...

Quick quiz: What is this?Give up? It’s a mouse. Specifically, the M.M.O. 7 Gaming Mouse Cyborg. And it’s $130 to get one, which in all honesty is worth it considering what it does as the self-proclaimed "world’s most adjustable gaming mouse". And how programmable are we talking about? 13 programmable buttons and the ability to...

If you’re thinking about buying an external USB-powered external optical drive, because there are a few things you should know about them. Why buy an external USB-powered optical drive? a. Your existing laptop’s optical drive is busted or semi-busted (i.e. sometimes it will work and other times not). b. Your laptop has no optical drive to speak of...

The original DVD optical disc format specification was finalized in 1995, although test marketing of the format didn’t begin in the US until 1997. It wasn’t until around the early 2000s where DVD established itself as both a replacement to VHS video and CD-R started, and from there became the de facto optical standard. DVD is still the standard of...

At the time I write this, a "good" 120GB solid state drive will cost you $200; such an example is the Intel SSDSA2CW120G3K5, a.k.a. "320 Series". Generally speaking, nobody really needs more than 120GB for a host drive. In fact, you could get away with an 80GB easily. Remember, Windows 7 does not take up a lot of space on its own, and one of...

Since Intel announced the processor in Q3 2011, there’s been a lot of talk going around about the new Ivy Bridge processor. Everyone’s beaming about how powerful Intel’s new microarchitecture is, how they’ve come up with a revolutionary new design, and how the new processors could well spell doom for graphic card OEMs. Some of you are...

There are plenty of computer users who absolutely hate the glossy screen, be it a laptop panel or desktop display. And sure, it’s easy enough to tell someone “Well then, don’t buy one!”, but sometimes there’s no choice in the matter. Maybe your monitor quit on you and you needed to buy a new one that day, and the only thing...

Cleaning a laptop keyboard – and there’s really no other way to say this – is a serious pain in the ass. You can’t pop off the keys like you can with a normal PC keyboard because of the way they’re designed, and it’s usually ridiculously difficult to get to that one spot where all the crud seems to crop up – the edges...

So…the unthinkable has happened. Somehow, your hard drive has just….given up. What can you do? How can you proceed from here? Is your data safe? Will you need to replace your computer? What about all your personal information? Here’s a few steps you should go through when you’re having hard drive troubles, in order to determine what the...

When people make PC cases, they want to make them unique. They want them to reflect who they are as people, to be a unique demonstration of their individual personality. Of course, sometimes they take this uniqueness too far. Whether as a result of eccentricity or just odd taste, the five computers on this list stand apart from the rest. There’s going out...