It’s becoming more common that both kids and adults are (re)building PCs to specifically run Windows 95 as fun side projects. Why Win95 and not Win98? Probably because there’s just more retro flavor to running a real Win95 environment, and the fact that it’s more of a challenge. Sure, you can put together a Win98 [...]
Chances are pretty good you probably have some blank CD-R discs. Maybe you bought a 100-pack spindle, only used maybe 20 or 30 of them, and the rest sit in the spindle, unloved and unused. You bought them, you you might as well use them. Before I list what you can do with those discs, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
Getting a great work lamp for working inside a PC isn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world to find because there aren’t that many choices available. In addition, there aren’t too many lamps that are specifically made for PC use (there is decorative, but I’m talking about work lamps here). A truly great PC [...]
I’ve a confession to make: I don’t actually have a cable connection. For obvious reasons, I’ve eschewed television altogether. What few shows I actually do watch, I can legally view online. Why bother paying an extra thirty to one hundred a month for something I’m not actually going to use, right? But I digress – [...]
So, your computer’s not running as smoothly as it used to? Is it having trouble performing tasks that other people’s systems seem to find menial and untaxing? It might be time to upgrade your system’s Random Access Memory, or RAM. This’ll give your system that extra ‘oomph’ and go a very long way towards helping [...]
