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I give my customers a simple set of guidelines, around the changes from Daylight savings in the spring and fall... "Change your clocks, change your batteries, clean your computers". I generally supply a can of blast air with the purchase. Seems to work out fairly well.

Yes indeed most computer problems are people problems... I've been at this a long time and I can say with high confidence that way more than half of the "service calls" I've done have been fixed by correcting errors made by customers. Moreover, a significant portion of that "way more than...

When that is the criteria Micro-ATX is your answer. It does require a much larger case but if that's what you need it's what you need. As I mentioned, I almost never build ATX machines anyomore. This is certainly true of the Atom based solutions. For anything except use as a glorified...

I tend to baby my stuff... but the Toshiba does get carted around rather a lot so I can say it's pretty well put together. The only issue I'm aware of on these machines is the one where over zealous insertion of the power plug can push the in-machine connector back into the casing. It's easy...

On the media system a 24" ASUS... On the desktop a 19" Acer widescreen. The ASUS is pretty steady... but that's a headless system, operated entirely by remote control. The Acer, although very easy on the eyes, is wiggly as all get out when I get typing along with some ambition... Side to...

If I can dare a prediction.... the move to mini-ITX is the future. With the exception of high end gamers, full sized ATX boards are probably "last generation". Micro-ATX is pretty much the standard for SOHO and Home users. Currently all my builds are on that form factor. Only once have I...

Can't speak about their notebooks... but I've been using Acer monitors for some time without any big problems. My biggest critque there is the same as for all LCD monitors... the lack of sturdy bases... if the table is the least bit wiggly you end up with your monitor bobbing around like crazy...

I'll go out on a limb here and suggest you replace the cable... It's far more likely to be a connector or connections problem than a HD problem. Most IDE cables are good for about 3 tugs then you replace them.

:D And even if it did bother you... what you gonna do about it?

Brand new, right out of the boxes... It took all of a day to figure out that we had to turn off APIC support to get the installer to run... From there it all went down hill very quickly. The first installed a "third party" driver that clunked and bumped along like it was dragging a ball...

Generally, if it's within the store's return period (typically 30 days) you will need to take it back to the store where you bought it. It costs a store money for shipping etc. to honor a manufacturer's warranty and it's not really fair to ask Fred to deal with something Dave has made the...

Yep... simple method ... Watts Out / Watts In == efficiency. Another Bat-Labber .... cool.

Nice review, Rory ... I may just give these a try. Been looking for something to replace my aging Koss set for a while and this seems a good candidate. One thing you may want to consider is that due to the close proximity of the drivers to your ears and the resulting lack of free air around...

I don't recall the program names on Linux right off... however I can give you a pretty decent example... When I first got into the "networked home entertainment" thing with a friend, we talked about it and decided that such a widely divergent venture (he was building speakers, I was building...

The HTs I used to service had a copper coil of about 200 turns in their back casing. the charger stand had a similar coil and a magnetic core similar to a transformer. When the HT was in it's charger base the coils were about 1mm (thickness of the case) apart. It would charge the HTs in about...

Actually the induction method would be considerably more reliable. With properly designed coils it could be 80 to 90% efficient in close proximity. Apples magnetics are a good idea but still susceptible to dirt... they still rely on a physical/electrical contact to work. You won't see...

I argue against BLOAT, my friend. Since Win2000 Microsoft has been dealing mostly in eye candy and needless built in packages... I mean come on... a little barking dog in the search window? Get real. For the jumping over to Linux thing... Think about someone with hundreds of pictures...

Actually I know what it does... I was tyring to point out that one of the biggest failings of the Linux platform is that it is not entirely something you can figure you way around without a LOT of help and documentation. It would help enormously if one could install Linux and then launch a...

Way I figure it burials and funerals are for the survivers not the deceased... so, way I figure it, once I'm gone it won't make any difference to me, so they can do whatever they like with whatever I leave behind...

Proximity charging is nothing new Rob. It's based on the same theory as transformers...Induction. Basically Induction says that one coil of wire when charged with electricity will produce a similar charge in a second, nearby coil of wire without any physical connection between the two coils...