A few months ago I decided that it was about time to upgrade my second-hand, iMac desktop (G5 2.0 GHz single-core PowerPC, 1GB Ram, 200GB hard drive, 17” display.) The computer had spent about a year suffering through problems booting and subsequent bouts of kernel panic. I probably could have reinstalled OS X but there would be little to gain from it. As configured this aging desktop was stuck with OS X Tiger…
New Computer
For the better part of the last decade and a half, I have made my living supporting folks in a Windows environment. I have guided users through the process of learning Windows and upgrading from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 to Windows 98 to Windows 2000 (happily skipping WinMe) to Windows XP to Windows 7.
Desktops & Wi-Fi
A couple of weeks a friend was telling me about a problem with her home computer. She said that she had internet access through her cable company and she has been connecting to the internet with a laptop for the last couple of years without incident. Recently she got a new desktop computer and started running into problems.
She has not been able to get the desktop to connect to the internet. After reaching out to cable company, she was told a tech would have to come out at a rate of $150+ per hour to get to the root of the problem. She decided to hold off on that to see if there was…
Choosing a New Hard Drive
I went to the local Office Depot to pick up a new hard drive for a PC that I am rebuilding. As I have not really needed a drive recently, the specs that I had in my mind were: IDE interface , 7200 rpm, and a capacity of about 80 Gigabytes (GB).
Electronic Paper
I eagerly look forward to the arrival of a decent electronic paper device. I await the day when I can just have one magazine at home, be able to sync it up to my computer, and download content into it.
The Joys of Upgrading
I have been teetering at the brink of upgrading my home computer for a while now. This has mostly been due to the amount of noise that my current system generates (loud fans), but that wasn’t quite enough to make
Injured Laptop, Round 2
I took my new soldering iron, replacement DC power jack, & small screwdrivers and set off to fix my injured laptop. It took about two hours to completely break down the laptop. It turns out that you have to remove
Injured Laptop
Last week there was a small mishap in our home. This mishap involved my wife, a power cord, and the power jack on our laptop. The end result is that we can no longer plug our laptop in to a
Keep the Aging Printer
As I sit here looking at an HP LaserJet 4000 series printer (in fact this one is a HP LJ 4050N), I find myself thinking that they just don’t make printers like this anymore. These things still sell for about
