I’m usually favoring the “second-best” part or device over the best, e.g. not the latest and greatest video card for $600+ but one for $300 that is not super fast but still fast enough for everything.

Usage:

I need the PC for blogging and research on the Internet mainly. I want to view movies and listen to music. I also want to work with Visual Studio and play some games with friends every now and then.

Components:

CPU: Intel I7 9xx or 8xx. If you have other suggestions or favor a specific processor let me know
Computer Memory: 8GB or more
Motherboard: No favorite yet. Do not need a lot of extras like firewire, bluetooth, infrared connections on the board. Should have a fast network connection build in.
Video Card: No idea. Do not want to pay more than $300 for the video card. I currently have a ATI 4870. Are there any DirectX 11 cards out there yet? Video card should not make a lot of noise.
Hard Drives: I need at least 2 Terabyte. No more than two hard drives. Currently thinking about getting two 1.5 Terabyte drives. Hard drives should not make lots of noise. More important than speed to me. I do not need Raid but I though about having a faster boot hard drive and two slower data drives. Would you favor a fast hard drive (or two in Raid) or SSD drive for that task?
SSD Drives: I’m not sure if I want an SSD drive. Are there any next gen SSD drives out there that do not get slower over time?
Sound Card: Not necessarily needed but if there is a good one for little money I take it. Otherwise it should be onboard sound.
Case: Mid-tower is fine. I do not care about color but it should have a few connectors on the front (e.g. USB)
Power Unit: It has to be quiet. Should supply enough power though for the computer system.
Computer Monitor: Do not need one

Did I leave anything out? I’m keen to read your suggestions. I also do not have a problem waiting another few months before I build the system in case some ubercool hardware comes out in that time that is worth waiting for.

Related posts

• Power Supply Calculator (13)
• Building a PC March Progress (5)
• Zombie City Tactics (0)
• WinShake Adds Aero Peek And Share To Windows Vista and XP (2)
• Windows Media Player Light (2)

The admin can then control the computer systems that run the client software and are connected in the computer network. The admin can use the interface to get an overview of all client computers that are currently connected. Basic options include issuing a ping or tracert command. The major functions on the other hand become available after clicking on the Package Work button.

This menu gives the administrator the option to enable or disable cd-rom drives, flash (read only) devices, floppy drives and flash drives. It is furthermore possible to restart a connected client computer or synchronize the time between computers. The client version of the software program uses less than three Megabytes of computer memory while running which is perfectly acceptable for a software of this kind.

Passwords can be added to the server version of the software to protect it from unauthorized access. AdminDeviceLan is definitely not the most sophisticated tool to control hardware devices in a computer network but it handles its tasks nicely.

Related posts

• Network Security Analysis With Network Miner (5)
• Network Monitoring Software Open Monitor (27)
• Internet Maniac Networking Software (2)
• ZoneScreen Finally Gets 64-bit Update (7)
• Use Drive Manager To Manage And Identify Drives (6)

Newegg’s Power Supply Calculator is a online form that can be used to calculate a rough minimum power supply unit wattage. Many computer builders select a power supply unit that is over-dimensioned for the computer system that they are building. This is usually fueled by users on the Internet who give advice to pick a high-end power supply unit to be on the safe side.

The user has to enter data in the requested fields of the power supply calculator including information about the processor, video card, motherboard, computer memory, hard drives and optical drives. The calculator will then crunch some numbers and suggest a minimum wattage for the power supply unit.

It is always a good idea to pick a power supply unit that offers additional capacities to be on the safe side. This could be important when adding new computer hardware to the PC. It is therefor not advised to select a 400 Watt power supply unit of the calculator’s suggested wattage turned out to be 396 Watt.

There are obviously other factors that play a role like picking an energy efficient power supply unit (check out the 80 plus power supply units article for pointers).

Newegg’s Power Supply Calculator offers a quick calculation of the minimum wattage required for a specific computer system configuration. It is therefor a good starting point before selecting a power supply unit.

Related posts

• 80 Plus Power Supply Units (6)
• Building a PC March Progress (5)
• Ask The Readers: New Computer System Suggestions (24)
• Zombie City Tactics (0)
• Why you should switch your parents pc to ubuntu (20)

The software program displays a list of all devices that are currently connected to the local computer system. The display is very informative and it is possible to get an overview of all the connected drives in a few seconds. Information like the drive letter, label, type, size, vendor or format are displayed. It is furthermore possible to filter the list to hide certain types of drives like those that are not mounted at the moment or network drives.

The header of the application contains links to several functions and options that can be used to manage the drives. It is for example possible to explore the drives, look at their properties and smart values (for hard drives), run check disk, hide them from the system or use the subst command to substitute drive letters.

Additional options are provided in the main menu that include benchmarking a drive, defragmenting it, ejecting CD or DVD drives or mapping network drives.

Drive Manager is a free and portable computer program for the Windows operating system. It can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

Related posts

• Enable SATA Hot Swap (3)
• Device Driver Cleanup (9)
• Computer Hardware Drivers List (6)
• Youtube Video Search Is A Barebone Youtube Downloader (2)
• Xkcd Comic Wallpaper Changer (2)

Modbook has been treating Apple users to tablet PC’s for ages (mainly because of Apple’s lack of plans to bring a tablet Mac to the market), but to be honest there has been no real players in the tablet Windows field. Most tablet computers have some type of keyboard attached and that makes them kind of bulky. The idea of having a tablet PC for use on the go is an amazing idea that Archos is just beginning to catch onto.

All the former models of the Archos line have been Linux powered and carried little to none productivity capabilities. That will all change when the Archos 9 Tablet goes on sale later this year in the UK (a US date is yet to be decided). A tablet like this would fit very nice into a carry on bag or handbag and could easily be used to check up on emails, weather, stocks as well as providing the whole entertainment pack while waiting for the bus, train, plane or any other situation where a keybaord is not practical and a cellphone is just too simple.

That said, the Archos 9 tablet features an 8.9-inch 1024×600 pixel resistive touchscreen display. While there have been rumors of multi touch support, that has not been confirmed by Archos as of yet and frankly from what I know, it seems pretty unlikely. The device is only 16mm inches thick and carries a host of features such as Bluetooth, 1GB of RAM, 802.11b/g WiFi, an 800MHz or 1.2GHz Atom Z515 processor as well as a SIM card slot for WLAN. Hard drive space is either an 80GB HDD or 160GB model. So far no word on an SSD option but as we all know that would be an arm and a leg.

So far from demos and FAQ’s the system seems pretty capable to run a stripped down version of Windows 7, but it would be a lot nicer if we could get a Core 2 Duo option. I’m sure I’m not the only one who would like to be able to play WoW on the go or test out Photoshop while miles in the sky. Secondly we’re hearing that it will be fitted with the integrated graphics thingy from Intel. There is no need to go over the fact that NVIDIA’s Ion platform would have been a much better choice.

According to Archos the device can be navigated pretty well VIA the touch of a finger but for some tasks the included stylus would be a better choice. For this reason I doubt it carries multi-touch.
Recently Archos released the pricing for the system. For the 80GB version it will run you £449.99 which is the equivalent of $735 USD. The doubled hard drive space (160GB) will run up the cost to £499.99 or the equivalent of $816 USD. The launch date is set for September. That’s nice and all but this comes in direct conflict with the October 22nd launch of Windows 7. So unless Archos is cutting a special deal with Redmond, or that date is for pre-orders, we think someone at Archos French HQ has their facts wrong or it’s a typo.

In any case, the idea of a full tablet PC without a keyboard that carries the processing power of a netbook is a nice one indeed. My only concern is if the price tag will be the biggest hurdle the Archos 9 has to jump.

Related posts

• Free your mind hand (3)
• Why Apple needs a Tablet PC (5)
• Use Drive Manager To Manage And Identify Drives (6)
• Turn Off Computer Hardware With A Single Click (6)
• Tablet Enhancements 3 for Outlook (1)

As the name suggest the Disney Netpal is a netbook designed specifically for children. According to Disney, the age range is between 6-12 years-old. The Netpal features an 8.9-inch LCD display, WiFi capabilities and Window’s XP Home “with over 40 parental control options.”

Since this is a netbook marketed to kids Disney took special note of durability. The device not only features a spill proof keyboard, but also ASUS ShockShield data protection which prevents loss of data should the device experience sudden shock such as a fall.

On the design front, the netbook boasts two color choices, “Princess Pink” for the ladies err girls and Magic Blue for the boys which also features “miniature Mickey Mouse icons (the former carries “beautiful pink florals”).

But what makes this little netbook shine is the work Disney has placed under the hood, geared to kids and parents alike. The Netpal features 10 customizable themes derived from popular Disney and Disney/Pixar franchises. These include, Cars, Club Penguin, Disney Classic Characters, Disney Fairies, Disney Princess, Vintage Mickey Mouse, Toy Story, WALL-E, Jonas Brothers and you guessed it Hanna Montana (where’s Lizzie McGuire?) Children will be able to use icons from these themes as email attachments such as signatures.

But Disney has gone even further with the inclusion of software built specifically for the Netpal. An example of this is the Disney Mix which, as the name suggest, is used for music and media management. There is also Disney Pix for photo customization/organization. One of the features of this application is the ability for kids to insert pictures of their faces into Bobblehead software. Another feature (via the Disney Radio Widget) allows children to stream real time music from Disney Radio as well as submit requests for songs. There are also a number of games included (racing, memory, scrapbook etc.)

So far everything that we just covered are things appealing to the kids, for the parents there are (as we mentioned earlier) over 40 control options so parents can protect their children as well as allow limited access to certain things.. For example a parent can pre-select email correspondences, determine which websites their children can visit, as well as a scheduling option so certain features can be automated such as the time of day the child is allowed to go online or play a game etc. And more importantly parents will be able to see not only what their children were doing on the computer but how long they spent.
All in all, this sounds like a perfect idea. While I do not have kids of my own, I have quite a few friends who would be interested in something like this for their son/daughter, and with a starting price of $350 this sounds pretty reasonable. As for a release date, that is set sometime in July

Related posts

• Turn Off Computer Hardware With A Single Click (6)
• Phoenix Instant Boot (7)
• Windows EeePC 900 cheaper than Linux model (6)
• What You Should Do After Buying A New Computer System (18)
• Web Browser Have Impact On Battery Life (1)

Driver View is a quality computer software that has been designed for exactly that purpose. It will create a listing of all computer hardware drivers that are loaded into system memory. The listing contains extensive information about each driver including the name, company and product name, modified date, description, file type and filename.

The software highlights non-Microsoft drivers and offers the additional option to hide all Microsoft drivers in the listing. Each column is sortable which makes it easier to find specific drivers in the long listing. A search is integrated in the software as well.

It is possible to export the data into various formats including html, text or csv. It is furthermore possible to generate reports from the command line. Driver View is another excellent Nirsoft application that is compatible with most Windows operating systems including Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Related posts

• Powerful Device Manager Device Remover (12)
• Windows System Control Center (7)
• Windows Shortcuts Manager (2)
• Windows Registry Monitoring With RegFromApp (3)
• Windows Operating Systems Special Folders View (6)

It is possible to write a simple batch script that can turn computer hardware off. Might be a handy for users who connect their mobile computer to a power source and use it on the road as well. They would simply turn off the unnecessary computer hardware on the road and turn it on again once it is connected to a power source again.

The creation does not require programming skills but you need to know a bit about the computer hardware installed on your system. Not all hardware should be disabled, possibilities include

• Audio Devices
• Network Adapters
• Wireless Networking Adapters
• CD, DVD and Blu-Ray drives
• Floppy drives
• webcams, card readers and other peripherals

You need three commands to work with devcon.

• devcon find
• devcon disable
• devcon enable

Start by downloading devcon from the official Microsoft website. Unpack it to a directory of your choice. It might be a good idea to put it into a directory that is listed in the system path of the operating system, e.g. /system32.

Open the Windows command line with [Windows R], [cmd], [enter].

Enter devcon find * to get a listing of all hardware devices. This can be a long list, you can use the following command to find a specific device (the command is case sensitive):

devcon find * | find "computer hardware identifier"

To find all Creative devices one could enter

devcon find * | find "Creative"

The device in the screenshot above would be the Creative Soundblaster X-FI sound card. To disable that sound card one would use the following command

devcon disable PCI\VEN_1102

It is enough to add the unique identifier for the hardware device. Here are some tips to make the most out of the find command:

Find all PCI devices

devcon find * | find "PCI"

Find all USB devices

devcon find * | find "USB"

All that needs to be done now is to collect the unique identifiers for all computer hardware devices that should be turned off at times.

Create a new text document on the computer, name it disable.bat. Right-click it, select edit and add as many devcon disable lines to it as you want.

devcon disable PCI\VEN_1102
devcon disable PCI\VEN_1317
devcon disable USB\VID_1532

Now create a second batch file, name it enable.bat and use the following code (you basically exchange disable with enable)

devcon enable PCI\VEN_1102
devcon enable PCI\VEN_1317
devcon enable USB\VID_1532

That’s a basic script. You could add echo commands to it, combine the two scripts into one and beatify it further. The basic script on the other hand does what it is supposed to do.

Related posts

• Disney Netpal (8)
• Windows Device Manager Alternative (3)
• What You Should Do After Buying A New Computer System (18)
• Web Browser Have Impact On Battery Life (1)
• Use Favorites to access Folders faster (1)

Their biggest downfall besides the price is the write speed which can be low. So low that it will slow down the computer system when data is written on that drive. Many programs, including web browsers, email programs, editors but also the operating system itself cache data on the hard drive or use the hard drive to store temporary data. That’s a problem if the cache folder of that application is located on the Solid State.

What can be done to speed up the overall computer system?

• Move the temp folders of the operating system to another hard drive.
• Move the pagefile and System Restore locations to another hard drive
• Move the cache of applications to another hard drive, e.g. web browsers, email clients.
• Disable programs that access the hard drive and that are not needed, like Windows Indexing Service
• Upgrade the computer memory of the computer system (only makes sense if sub 4 Gigabybtes on a 32-bit system)

Most of these tips center around moving the cache to a new hard drive and disabling features that slow down the computer system. If you cannot install a second hard drive to the computer system you might consider adding a fast external device that can be used for caching. The downside of this method is that you need to have it near the computer system all the time which can be annoying if the system is mostly used on the road.

Newer Solid State Drives (check the OCZ Vertex review for instance) are slowly introduced that beat conventional hard drives fair and square both in write and read performance. They come at a price though but this is going to change in the future. Prices will drop, capacities increase and the slower SSD will slowly cease to exist.

Related posts

• Solid State Drives Test Results (4)
• Optimize Windows For Solid State Drives Usage (6)
• SSD Security: Erase Solid State Drives Data (0)
• OCZ Z-Drive (0)
• OCZ Vertex Series 120GB SSD (10)

Companies began to research and produce energy efficient PC components that reduce the power consumption of a computer system without reducing its processing power. One of this programs is the 80 Plus initiative for power supply units. The power supply unit (or psu) is basically the unit that distributes the power to the various PC components by converting AC power from electric utilities into DC power.

Standard power supply units lose a lot of energy in that process while efficient ones lose considerably less. The 80 Plus initiative now certifies power supply units with a energy efficiency of 80% or more and a true power factor of 0.9 and more. This means that these power supply units need less energy to supply the computer system with the same power.

A desktop PC using an 80 Plus power supply will use 85 Kwh less per year than one with an average power supply unit. But this is not the only benefit. Those systems produce less heat which can mean a reduced noise level or reduced cooling costs. It also means that the PC components will usually last longer.

Not all power supply unit manufacturers are part of the 80 Plus initiative and it is possible to purchase efficient power supply units without the 80 Plus logo. The main benefit for the consumer is the immediate recognition that the psu is energy efficient. Someone would have to research the energy efficiency of a psu that is not included the program which could take a while and might even lead to no results.

80 Plus power supply units do not seem to cost more money than those without the logo which is why it is probably a good idea to pick one of those instead of regular ones on the next purchase. It should also be noted that there are actually four logos for 80 Plus power supply units which are standard, bronze, silver and gold with gold having the highest (7-10% above standard) energy efficiency.

Related posts

• Power Supply Calculator (13)
• Use Drive Manager To Manage And Identify Drives (6)
• Turn Off Computer Hardware With A Single Click (6)
• PC Power Management Software PowerSlave (4)
• Optimize Slow Solid State Drives (8)

The light was that bright that I had to turn the N73 before going to sleep because of the distraction by that light. My next purchase was the Razer Arctosa gaming keyboard which uses one ultra bright white LED in the top left corner of the computer keyboard. And guess what; It is not possible to turn off that light either.

Now I’m no expert when it comes to usability and quality control but I’m beginning to wonder if I’m overly sensitive to LED lights or if the manufacturer’s quality control fails big time.

The only working way of dimming down those bright LED lights was to use – preferably black – tape placed directly over the light. Do you know of other devices that have annoying blinking LED lights that cannot be turned off?

Related posts

• Zen Key An All Purpose Application Manager (3)
• Your keyboard is more dirty than your toilet (1)
• Waterproof Keyboards (1)
• Use Drive Manager To Manage And Identify Drives (6)
• Typing Software (6)

I decided to go for a slightly larger PSU to accommodate all the needs of the components. I also decided to purchase the new Intel Wolfdale CPU running on 45nm instead of the 65nm of the older CPUs. My last decision was to forgo the purchase of a Solid State Disk. The technology is incredible, the only problem is that the new faster disks are not available yet or so expensive that some would cost more than all other components combined in the PC.

Other components have been changed as well. I switched to the Gigabyte motherboard which saves me $10 and received great ratings across the board. The RAM was changed slightly from DDR2 800 to DDR2 1066 which increased the price by $50.

I might get a nice audio card as well, maybe the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer. All other components are still in my old PC and will be used in the new one as well. This includes Samsung DVD writer, Logitech Mouse and Keyboard. I’m thinking of purchasing a new 24″ monitor to replace my old 19″ Samsung monitor.

Any thoughts on this setup ? The PSU should be sufficient to handle everything smoothly. The overall costs are $1,031.91 at the moment.

Related posts

• Zombie City Tactics (0)
• Why you should switch your parents pc to ubuntu (20)
• Who is connected to your pc right now ? (6)
• Use your Wiimote in Windows (0)
• USB 3.0: What You Need To Know About SuperSpeed USB (6)