SuperSpeed USB, which was demonstrated for the first time in 2007 will advance the serial bus standard once again. Transfer speeds have been raised to a speed of 5 Gbit / s which improves data transfer speeds tremendously. To copy a 25 Gigabyte file USB 1.0 needed 9.03h, USB 2.0 13.09 minutes and USB 3.0 1.10 minutes. USB 3.0 receptacles are backwards compatible with USB 2.0 device plugs which basically means that computer users can still connect their USB 2.0 or USB 1.0 devices into a computer system supporting USB 3.0.

Another interesting addition to USB 3.0 are power saving features which were especially designed for mobile devices. Packet traffic is no longer being broadcasted to the USB device which reduces its power usage. Additional power saving features like idle, sleep and suspend states have been added to USB 3.0 as well. A device entering sleep mode will practically be left alone by USB 3.0 Hosts until itself initiates a device mode change. The power specs have been increased on the other hand to be able to provide devices (like external hard drives) with additional power for their operation.

First devices that make use of USB 3.0 are expected in 2009 but the main push towards USB 3.0 is expected to begin in 2010.

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)
• Testing a newly build PC (4)

Hardware: Trent (the author) suggests scouting around garage sales and social networks specializing in giveaways to find free or cheap hardware. This includes the CPU with a CD or DVD drive, a monitor, mouse, and keyboard. He also threw in speakers. His theory is that people are forever upgrading their computers and usually get rid of good quality equipment for free or at a throwaway price. According to him, this is the only step of the process that involves spending money.

Software: For the OS, Trent recommends the Linux distro Ubuntu. Like most Linux distros, this one is a free download or you can have the Ubuntu folks mail you an installation CD. Ubuntu comes with almost all the programs an average person needs on their PC.

My thoughts: While Trent’s PC building post suggests that a cheap PC is possible, I’m not so convinced. For one thing, picking up hardware at a garage sale can score you a good deal, you also have no idea what you’re getting. Not to mention the havoc someone can wreck with a hard disk that hasn’t been wiped clean.

My other source of hesitation is the choice of Ubuntu. While I have no problems with it, I don’t think it’s effective for computer novices, who are the recipients of this kind of PC. Thirdly, old hardware components are notoriously power-hungry. There’s no point in building a cheap PC if it’s going to feast on your power bill.

Overall, I think it’s possible to build a cheap PC but you may just get more than you bargained for. What do you think of these PC-building suggestions? Would you want to use a computer built this way? What’s the cheapest you think a PC should cost for a novice user? Let me know in the comments.

Related posts

• Why you should switch your parents pc to ubuntu (20)
• Use a Magnet to protect your PC (10)
• Testing a newly build PC (4)
• Risks of selling your old pc (0)
• PC Building Advice (1)

I needed MozBackup to import the data from my old computer. Once I had access to my bookmarks and emails I began to install several applications that I needed for work. The screenshot application MWSnap, WinSCP and Putty to administrate my dedicated server, GIMP for editing images and XNView Lite for viewing images.

Then Extract Now to be able to work with all kinds of archives, XMPlay for playing music, SMPlayer for videos, Notepad++ for working with texts and source codes and True Crypt to work with encrypted partitions.

Some applications that I need from time to time are not installed yet. This includes the awesome Unlocker to get rid of the “currently in use” message when deleting or moving files, Eraser to delete files permanently, Recuva to be able to recover files and Revo Uninstaller to completely remove installed applications.

I do install Newsbin Pro, uTorrent and Opera as well but that’s it basically. That’s my main set of applications that I need regularly. I may have missed one or two but they will come to my mind in the moment I need them and miss the function that they provided.

Have anything to add ? Let me know please.

Related posts

• Why you should switch your parents pc to ubuntu (20)
• Solution for bug hunters (3)
• Games for the Weekend 5 Base Invaders (2)
• 20 Minute Guide to Pc Security (0)
• Zombie City Tactics (0)

The second reason is to make sure that the hardware is working properly. If your computer ram is faulty you can run into all kinds of difficulties from crashes and bluescreens to severe data loss.I use several applications to test a new computer to reduce the chance that I will run into such difficulties.

I consider the first start the first test of the computer. Why ? Because if the computer boots properly I know that all the devices that are needed to boot are working properly at that time. I usually check the BIOS first which normally does come with a PC Health menu that displays PC temperatures. This first step is essential.

If the CPU temperature for instance would look very high (consult the CPU booklet or website of the developer if you don’t know the values) then something went wrong with the cpu cooler. It could be that the cooler has not been properly placed on the cpu or that the cooler does not have the capacities to cool it effectively.

I usually only test the memory and the cpu of the computer. Especially the memory is essential. The applications that I use for testing purposes are Prime95 (Torture Mode) and Memtest86. Memtest86 is available as a bootable ISO version which means that you can run the application before installing the operating system.

I suppose there is some Live CD that is offering additional applications, anyone having a good tip about that ?

Both applications stress test the computer and should not display errors or cause reboots and shutdowns. A reboot or shutdown usually means that the computer has a cooling problem or faulty hardware. I normally run both applications for at least six hours to make sure everything is alright.

Keeping an eye on the computer temperatures is essential in the beginning. It’s not only the cpu that is important, hard drive, video card and system temperatures are important as well and should not rise to critical levels even when stress testing the computer.

The first application that I usually start after installing the operating system and the drivers is one of those system analysers. Something like Sandra Sisoft or Everest Ultimate. The trial versions are sufficient for my needs and I uninstall the applications after a while again.

Both display the temperatures of all important components and they usually come with their own system stress tests as well.These programs are also excellent for comparing the build in hardware with the hardware that you did purchase.

Gamers can also run 3D Mark 2006 to test their system and observe the temperature level of the video card and cpu afterwards.I usually run Speedfan all the time for the first week which display all temperature sensors of the computer and has the advantage that it is a tiny application that does not use a lot of system resources.

Do you use other programs to test a computer ? Let me know about them.

Related posts

• Risks of selling your old pc (0)
• PC Building Advice (1)
• Building a PC April Progress (7)
• Zombie City Tactics (0)
• Why you should switch your parents pc to ubuntu (20)

The first thing that I did when the packages with the PC parts arrived was to check if everything was there and it it was the correct component. Nothing is worse than to find out that a component is missing when you’re in the middle of building the PC. I normally put everything on a table and make a quick check that I got everything that I need to build the PC.

Building a PC is much like a puzzle. You got finite parts and need to place them in the right location of the computer case and connect each and every piece properly to get a PC that is working and booting. Before I start adding pieces to the PC case I divided them into primary and secondary components.

Primary PC Components:

• Computer Case
• Motherboard
• CPU
• CPU Cooler
• Power Supply
• Thermal Grease
• Case Fans

Secondary PC Components:

• Memory
• Video Card
• Hard Drive
• Sound Card
• Other Cards
• CD and DVD Drives
• Mouse
• Keyboard
• any other external device

The reason why I’m dividing the components up is because the primary components are harder to assemble than the secondary ones. You can add the video card and remove it in a matter of seconds but you cannot do that with the CPU if the CPU cooler has already been placed on it.

I usually start with the computer case and the power unit. The computer case normally comes with a lot of screws that are needed for various parts. The problem with the power unit is its size mainly. If you have other components in the PC you might have troubles placing it in the right location. It is usually connected to the PC with four screws.

The next part is in my opinion the part were many things can go wrong. I’m talking about the motherboard. Some builders prefer to add components to the motherboard when it is outside of the computer case because they have additional free space to add the components that way. It cannot rest on the tower directly and you have to place standoffs between the motherboard and the case. The standoffs have to be in the location that corresponds to the holes in the motherboard because you will use screws to firmly place the motherboard on those standoffs.

This part is really important, especially for those builders who place the motherboard in the computer case and add other components afterwards. Some computer parts need a little bit of pressure to be properly put in place. If you do not use enough standoffs you can break your motherboard quite easily if you apply to much pressure. The more standoffs the less the chance that it breaks.

Most motherboards come with their own back panel that needs to be switched with the default one from your computer case before connecting the motherboard to the computer. The back panel contains all those USB and sound device connectors from the motherboard.

When the motherboard is in place I connect the wires from the computer case to the motherboard. The wires are used to power certain buttons and lights on the computer case, for example the Power button. You need to consult the motherboard manual to find the proper place for them.

After that I add the cpu first. Again, that is a easy task. Just consult the motherboard manual and it will tell you exactly how it is done. It comes down to raising the socket laever, lifting the metal load plate and placing the cpu in the correct position. The cpu displays a tiny triangle on one edge and that triangle is aligned with the pin one corner of the cpu socket.

I then apply the thermal grease to the cpu and place the cpu cooler on top of it. This can be quite tough depending on the type of CPU cooler that you bought. Just read the instructions properly and you should be fine. The cpu cooler is usually connected to four holes that are next to the cpu.

And that was the hardest part of assembling the computer. It really comes down to these few components that can make or break the computer. Everything else is just a matter of placing the cards in the correct slots of connecting drives to the computer.

I can understand that most users do not want to build a computer because of fear that they break something. Another fear is connected to the different parts one has to buy in order to build the computer.

The whole process is not that difficulty if you read the manuals properly and use the above build order. Last but not least, here are the components that I finally purchased for my computer. It is not the fastest computer but it can do everything that you need to do, play games, watch videos, work with it.

• Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 CPU
• Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler
• Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4 Motherboard
• MDT DIMM Kit 4096 MB PC2-6400 CL5 DDR2-800 RAM
• Seasonic S12II-500 ATX PSU
• Samsung Spinpoint F1 1000 GB SATA II Hard Drive
• Lian Li PC-A09B Computer Case
• Leadtek PX8800GTS TDH 512MB Video Card
• Creative SB X-FI XtremeMusic Sound Card

It took me roughly 2 hours to build the compute and it started immediately after connecting the power unit. Now I had experiences in the past where that was not the case and it usually comes down to checking all connectors making sure everything is connected properly.

A friend of mine prefers the minimal approach. He only connects the primary components first, that is computer case, power unit, cpu, cpu cooler, motherboard, video card and ram and tries to boot the PC. If the PC boots he knows that everything up to this point is working nicely. He then adds one component at a time until every component has been added to the computer.

You do not need a degree in computer science to build a PC. It all comes down to reading the manual properly and the correct build order.

Related posts

• Building a PC April Progress (7)
• 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)

The new PC basically consists of an Intel Core 2 Duo Wolfdale cpu, a Gigabyte DS4 motherboard, 4 Gigabytes of DDR2-800 RAM, a Samsung Spinpoint 1 Terabyte hard drive and a Leadtek 8800 GTS video card with 512 Megabyte RAM. I did add some other stuff to the mix to break the 1000€ goal. My plans are to write an article about the building process with lots of pictures and details about the hardware.

The second purchase was a Xbox 360 Elite video game system. I never thought I would buy one but this offer was just to tempting. The German Amazon website is currently selling each Xbox 360 system, that is the arcade, normal and elite system with a free copy of GTA IV, a free HD DVD drive and a free 3 month XBOX Live GOLD membership. I did pay 374€ (about $600) for the complete set.

I first thought a normal arcade version would do it but I have hopes that I can eventually add XBMC to the XBOX so that it can replace my old Xbox as a media center. The package with the Xbox 360 Arcade sells for 200€ (roughly $320) currently. If you wanna take a look here is the link to Amazon Germany. Remember those are European prices, they are not comparable to US prices.

I probably will have to purchase a new television soon to gain the full benefit of the video gaming system. Any suggestions on a good LCD TV ?

Related posts

• Building a PC April Progress (7)
• Xbox 360 HD can be connected to your pc (3)
• Use a Magnet to protect your PC (10)
• Testing a newly build PC (4)
• Risks of selling your old pc (0)

Some new items have recently been introduced, for instance the Western Digital VelociRaptor hard drive that will most likely be the fastest SATA drive on the market when it comes out in Mai 2008. The question that I have to ask myself is if I really need to buy that 300 Gigabyte drive that is definitely faster than any other SATA drive that I could buy for roughly $300 or invest in more space and less speed.

Since I’m not that much of a gamer anymore I decided to not buy that hard drive. The same holds true for my choice of video card and cpu. I do not need the fastest, I need reliable hardware that runs Linux and Windows plus the applications that I need. I need Windows to test software for Ghacks and for the occasional game that might come out that sounds interesting, Starcraft 2 anyone ?

Some other thoughts: I always choose a low noise level over performance. That means I tried my best to find pc components that produce the least amount of noise possible. I’m not talking about passive cooling here although that would probably be an option as well but about components that have been developed to be less noisy than the usual pc components.

.

All components for that pc cost $844.92 which is more affordable than I thought it would be. That leaves enough money for a better LCD monitor and a sound card. I know that some components are not the fastest like the video card. Nvidia and ATI are pumping out new video cards every three to six months it seems that are faster and more powerful than those that have been released just a few months ago.

I don’t need to play games on highest settings and the card that I have chosen is perfectly capable of delivering a good gaming experience on my Samsung Syncmaster 19″ lcd monitor. Did I miss something, would you change something in the setup ? Let me know, this might be the last chance to change components.

Related posts

• Building a PC from Scratch (8)
• Testing a newly build PC (4)
• Risks of selling your old pc (0)
• PC Building Advice (1)
• I’m on a shopping spree (9)

The article is divided into four parts, the first talks about the parts that you need and some things that you should take care of. What I really like is that he gives tips without hardware recommendation. The advice is general and users who have never build a PC in their life will love his advice will professionals will probably only skimp over it and come to the conclusion that they hardly learned anything new from the article.

The other three parts are Assembly, Testing, Loading the Operating System and as a bonus optional tweaks. The assembly part is without doubt the most important part if you want to build a PC. Believe it or not I did not put any thermal paste on the CPU of my first PC that I build myself. I was lucky that it ran without problems until a friend reminded me that I had to apply it immediately.

You will find those tips there, tips that you learn the hard way sometimes but are guaranteed to never miss again. I will write an article with images detailing the process of building the PC from the parts that I will buy. The only thing that I do not like that much is that you actually have to click on the different parts to read the whole article. That’s not very user friendly.

Related posts

• Testing a newly build PC (4)
• Risks of selling your old pc (0)
• Guide to Pc Building (6)
• Building a PC April Progress (7)
• Zombie City Tactics (0)

It was an old computer, an AMD Duron 800 Mhz with a 40 Gigabyte hard drive, 256 Megabytes of RAM running Windows XP. The first thing I did was to lookup the Stop error message that was showing when the bluescreen appeared only to find out that it was most likely a hardware related problem.

My guess was that it was either the motherboard, the RAM or the hard drive that were leading to the bluescreen so I had to test them to find the cause for it. Oh, before I started I made sure that every piece of hardware that was not needed to run the computer was disconnected, like sound and network adapters but also secondary drives and onboard components.

The only way to do this was to burn a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD which contains tools to analyze the hardware and boot it. The disc contains all kinds of utilities to scan, analyze and repair hardware connected to a computer and it is especially effective when it comes to RAM and hard drives.

I decided to run Memtest to test the RAM of the computer which turned out to be fine. The next tool was the Drive Fitness Test designed for IBM and Hitachi hard drives. It turned out that the hard drive had damaged sectors which the tool was able to repair.

With the errors corrected I tried to boot into Windows again and it happened to load just fine. If that would not have helped I would have tried some additional tools to test the CPU for instance. I would have used the cloning tool to clone the hard drive and format it completely to start the installation a new.

The Ultimate Boot CD is an excellent utility if you want to test major PC components without having to install software on the computer.

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)

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)

I’m not saying that this will be a perfect build. It will be a good allround Pc with enough power for all the applications, games and multimedia that you throw at it.

Please add your opinion about this build because I will need at least another month before I make the purchase and there is not a problem to replace a component if a better one is available. I’m using Newegg for price comparision as always.

I still have not made a decision about the Solid State Drive that I want to purchase and use as the hard drive for the operating system. A good one cuts boot time and application launches in half but they are very rare and expensive. Many of them are called SSD but do not have the read advantages yet. I don’t want to build a PC without them and buy them later because this would mean that I would have to setup Windows and Linux once again when I make that purchase.

I guess I have to pay more attention to hardware websites in the next month and hope that some will write a few comparisons so that I’m able to collect more information about them.

The price for the computer was mainly reduced because I removed the SSD for now which attributed to $700 last month. I made sure to pick a 512 MB video card this time, everything else remained the same.

Related posts

• Use a Magnet to protect your PC (10)
• Testing a newly build PC (4)
• Risks of selling your old pc (0)
• PC Building Advice (1)
• I’m on a shopping spree (9)

You basically cut the power button cable of the motherboard, install the reed switch (controlled by magnetic fields) in between and tape the reed switch to the front panel. Now, whenever someone presses the power button nothing happens. Only if you press the magnet against the case at the position where you placed the reed switch and the power button the PC will turn on.

This is of course a basic protection and someone who really wanted to access it could simply remove the switch again or replace the power unit in the PC. Take a look at the video below that walks you through the installation of the protection.

Pc Protection With Hidden Switch – A funny movie is a click away

Related posts

• Testing a newly build PC (4)
• Risks of selling your old pc (0)
• PC Building Advice (1)
• I’m on a shopping spree (9)
• Can You Build a PC for Less Than $100? (16)

It can go on by using recovery softwares to gather a list of softwares that once were installed on the computer but have been deleted by the user. In the end they have access to almost everything if you did not take the necessary measures to make sure that no one is able to access sensitive data.

Protecting your data is essential these days and even if some of you would call me paranoid I think everyone should do it. But, how would one do that ?

This is actually easier than you would have thought. My suggestion would be to use encryption to protect the data. This does mean however that the user has to enter a code to decrypt the data before he can use it which is far better than handing the data on a silver plate to everyone who has physical access to the computer.

Just follow the easy steps outlined below to secure your computer:

Download and install True Crypt on your system. True Crypt is able to encrypt hard drives and partitions with a secure key. I would suggest to use either an external hard drive or make space on a internal hard drive. It is far better to encrypt the complete hard drive.

Be aware that you need at least one unencrypted partition to be able to boot your operating system.

Encrypt the hard drive. I outlined the process in an earlier article called Create a secure data safe with True Crypt.
Now the important part. Move all your sensitive applications to that encrypted partition. I’m thinking of email clients, browsers, p2p applications, ftp programs, documents, pictures, videos and everything else that you do not want to share with anyone.
Make sure you change the data paths in the applications as well. It would not help if you use the email client from the encrypted hard drive but have the mailboxes on an unencrypted one. Move them all to the encrypted hard drive as well.
No one is able to access that data unless they provide the key to decrypt the hard drive. It is theoretically possible to break the algorithm or use brute force. The later would take ages if you use a key with more than 40+ chars.

Other measures that you should undertake could be to clean the caches on exit and using a software like Eraser to regularly delete information about former files on unused disk space.

Do you have additional ideas or methods that you use to protect your data ?

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)

WinPatrol offers a new layer of defense against malware that was not detected by your security softwares. It monitors the different Startup possibilities, File Associations, IE Helpers, Scheduled Tasks and Services asking the user every time a program wants to add an entry to those places.

WinPatrol also displays all entries that already exist in those places giving you the opportunity to remove any entries that you want. The best thing to do would probably be to take a look at all menus that WinPatrol offers to make sure that only applications and services are started that you trust. You can remove everything else and let WinPatrol do the rest to make sure that they or other elements are not added again.

The freeware has a size of roughly 700 K and has to run in the background to be able to work correctly.

Related posts

• What You Should Do After Buying A New Computer System (18)
• Rootkits: Sony does it again (3)
• Recover Computer System After Malware Infection (7)
• Norton Antibot Free 1 Year License (15)
• Identify And Analyze Malicious Webpages (1)

The guide is written for the inexperienced user mainly and consists of several parts. The first, called”The Basics: Spotting and Eliminating Threats” suggests to install a firewall, anti-virus software, anti-spyware software and other software like software that detects rootkits. They always recommend some programs that can be downloaded by following the links.

Now that they have covered the basics they tell you to update your operating system and software that is installed on your system. They suggest to use either Opera or Firefox instead of the Internet Explorer, want you to disable file sharing and be cautious when downloading.

As I said all those tips are good for beginners but geeks like we are should have implemented most of their suggestions already.

Next comes safe emailing with suggestions on good e-mail clients, again don’t use Outlook but tools like Thunderbird or Gmail instead. They also tell you to be wary of extensions and be cautious when clicking on links in emails to avoid malicious websites. (phishing). Last but not least you should setup email filters.

The next part deals with protecting your passwords which can be summed up by choosing different passwords that can’t be found using dictionary attacks. They also suggest to password protect the computer which I think is completely useless.

After that they make two suggestions to protect the wireless network which are really basic suggestions, they also suggest not to use the wireless connection of your neighbours because it could be setup for this case. (scanning the data like passwords that are send over the connection)

The last part deals with physical protection: Disguise your laptop and use anti-theft solutions should not bother most users but could be useful for business clients.

As you can see those are basic advices that could help inexperienced users. They miss to cover some topics that could really increase security but require knowledge of the subject. They fail to address the possibility to create a user account in Windows and use this one instead of the admin account. They also miss to mention that not needed services should be turned off, which user needs telnet or remote access anyways ?

I’m also not very fond of software firewalls and would suggest to use a hardware firewall instead. Software firewalls give a false sense of security especially if you are inexperienced.

Related posts

• Why you should switch your parents pc to ubuntu (20)
• Truemark Email Identification (5)
• New Phishing Mail Tactics (3)
• Must have software for my new computer (27)
• Ingenious PayPal mimicing spam (8)