I get a fair amount of email in my inbox at mike@MVPs.org from readers asking questions about how to do or fix A, B or C on their PCs.  One email I received this morning got me so riled that I felt it needed to be written up here, though it’s not the first time [...]

Categories: Advice

With Christmas only ten days away you might well be lucky enough to receive a new PC or laptop as a present, or you may be giving one as a gift.  New computers are fantastic, exciting, invigorating and more.  That is once you get past the trial software, the excess software bloat, the slowdowns, the [...]

Categories: Tutorials Basic

I’m becoming increasingly confused by the whole computing market with all manner of new and, relatively, affordable form factors coming to market.  There was a day not that long ago when you had a choice, Desktop PC or Laptop, indeed even laptops were commonly out of the reach of most people and it’s only relatively [...]

Categories: ask the readers

Figures released for the last quarter by IDC and Gartner show that, despite rumblings at HP that included rumours about dropping their entire PC division, the truly unprecedented Touchpad fire sale and the unceremonious dumping of their CEO, the PC maker still maintains the top spot and has indeed grown their lead in the last [...]

Categories: companies

PCs are going the way of typewriters according to an engineer who worked on the original IBM PC.  In a blog post to mark the 30th anniversary of the IBM PC 5150, Dr Mark Dean made the comments, saying that PCs were no longer at the leading edge of computing. Pointing out that no single [...]

Categories: Misc

The insides of computers get dusty and grubby, it’s just a fact of life.  Running all those electrical components builds up tiny static charges which draw in dust that clings to the circuit boards and metal structures inside the case. There’s no way around this either as your PC’s case has to have vents and [...]

Categories: Advice

In Building A Custom PC 2011 Part 1: The Assessment I mentioned what I’d needed in a new Pc that I was about to build. I have mentioned my expectations and other requirements in the same article. Today I’m using the information to select a first set of components that I might use to build [...]

Categories: Hardware

There are all manner of images, screenshots and leaked details coming out now about Windows 8 and we already know a lot about what Microsoft want this product to be.  We know it’s going to be smaller, quicker and more agile than even Windows 7 was able to be.  It’s going to have to run [...]

Categories: Windows

Whenever I’m thinking of building a new PC I’m starting the selection process months earlier. I begin with an analysis of the needs, something that is often forgotten by users. What will the computer be used for? Will it be a gaming PC, office, photo manipulation, server or all purpose PC? What connectors do I [...]

Categories: Hardware