Tech Now » Mobile Computing

What Can You Do With a Dead Laptop?

JD — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:50:39 +0000

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When a desktop computer starts to struggle, they’re usually a few options for upgrading the core components and give new life to its performance. Unfortunately, upgrading the laptop is impossible, or at best very, very difficult.

If your laptop is no longer working, or is much too old to keep pace with the demands of today’s software, the temptation is to throw the whole thing away. But don’t give up on your baby just yet. With a little transformation, your “laptop-formerly-known-as-useless” could turn out to be quite useful. Recently, TechRadar.com published an interesting piece about cool things to do with your laptop. Let’s take a look at some of their suggestions.

Believe it or not, you can salvage some of the components inside. This is an option you should reserve for laptops that are truly and finally dead. Start with the hard drive. Is it still working? Then you can have a “new” external hard drive (and also recover any files you may have lost in the death throes of your laptop). Purchase an external case for a 3.5 inch drive and your old laptop’s hard drive will plug right (usually). There may be a chance that it won’t fit-I’ve run into a few old IBM drives that are two thick for the enclosure. But guess what, it works without the enclosure too, although it does look a little Borg-ish. It’s a quick, easy and inexpensive route to an additional external drive.

Pull the memory cards out. They may be of no more use to you, but lots of people are always on the search for replacements for their broken laptops (broken less than yours, of course). Actually, there may be a few people farther behind the curve than your laptop and would love to upgrade their memory with your cards.

What about the optical drive? Do you fancy a new home theater computer? To fit with the living room décor, cases for media computers are usually thinner and require a slimline optical drive. Your salvaged laptop drive may be just the thing.

There you have it, at least three components that you can extract from your dead laptop and use to make something else, save some money, or even make money by selling them on eBay. Just don’t start throwing your laptop around to hasten its demise!

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Help Your Battery Go The Distance

JD — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:16:12 +0000

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As much as laptops, notebooks and netbooks have progressed in terms of raw computing power and vivid graphic displays, there is one component that just isn’t pulling its weight in term as technological advancement-the battery. If you’re a mobile computer user, you already know this.

Let’s take a look at some tips that are easy to implement and may add up to an hour onto your average battery life.

Close programs you aren’t using. Better yet, never open them in the first place. The more programs you have running simultaneously, the harder your laptop’s components have to work. When they work hard, they use more power. Plus they eat up your system resources, slowing down your computing in general. Keep open just the applications you need and save the big power drainers until you’re plugged in again.

You would probably be surprised to know how many processes are running on your computer at any given time. Many of these processes are related to handy little items on your computer desktop that might be nice, but not worth the power drain when you want to maximize your battery. Start by removing some of the programs from the automatic start-up list.

If you are confident that you won’t stop a needed process, you can also remove some of the power hungry processes using task manager. Are you using wi-fi? If not, turn off the wireless radio on your computer. There’s no point in wasting watts just to look for a connection that’s not there or not needed. And if you’re not online or using a suspect USB stick, you can probably kill your virus protection as well. Just remember to turn it back on when you reconnect with the world.

Use a little common sense. If you are starting a business and will need to hit the ground running with your computer, then by all means, don’t sit in the airport lounge watching a movie or playing a graphics intensive game. Save that battery power for when you’ll really need it-your big presentation that lands you the next big client!

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Netbooks–Are They Right For You?

JD — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 04:20:24 +0000

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In the world of mobile computing, it seems like new models are released every day. The pace may not be that fast in reality, but it’s hard to assimilate the last greatest thing before the next greatest thing comes along. Recently, the marketplace has witnessed the invasion of netbooks, very small versions of the venerable laptop primarily designed to access the web. Their advantages include their small size, light weight and multiple connection options. But don’t expect the netbook to replace your desktop. In fact, if your computing needs give your laptop a workout, don’t give it away when you get your netbook.

For the longest time, you could only compute at home. The desktop computer was everyone’s only option. A few portable (or transportable) computers came and went, but they were like carrying luggage. Reasonably well-performing laptops that you could actually carry began to proliferate in the mid to late 1990s. The IBM Thinkpad was a definite leader in this era. Over time, laptops actually grew in size and power to become true desktop replacements.

A funny thing happened at this point. People began complaining that their laptops were too heavy, too hot and ran short on battery power too quickly. Manufacturers responded by introducing the notebook computer. These new machines were lighter, lasted longer without being plugged in, and accomplished this with only a small sacrifice in performance (but a sacrifice nevertheless).

Not long ago, the mobile computing customer changed again. With the advent of socially interactive sites like Facebook and Twitter, people began wishing they could stay connected to the web pretty much all the time. Smartphones filled the gap for a while, but people wanted more. Enter the netbook.

The netbook is perfect for whipping out to update your Facebook page or post your Twitter updates. Widespread wi-fi and 4G networks make it possible to stay connected in most urban and suburban areas. However, if you think the netbook is something you want, you should not expect it to replace your laptop, notebook or desktop. The netbook is designed primarily for the ‘net (hence the name). So you’ll be getting a machine with a less powerful processor, no optical drives (CD or DVD), a much smaller screen and a really tiny keyboard.

As long as you know what you’re getting into, you may be perfectly happy with a netbook. Just remember it’s probably better to think of it as an oversized phone.

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Common LCD Display Problems with Possible Solutions

JD — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:50:04 +0000

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Laptops are notorious for having issues with their displays. Let’s take a look at some of the common display problems and possible solutions.

The backlight on my LCD lights up, but the screen looks blank. Sometimes when I press on the corner, I see some images.

This problem isn’t related to the inverter. If your display lights up-even without images-this means that the backlight lamp and inverter board are still working. Probably this is a failure in some of the connections on your screen controller board. A less likely cause could be a loose video connector on the back of your display.

My screen is a flickering rainbow all the time. I need to see my work, not a light show. (Everything looks fine on an external monitor.)

If the external video output works fine, then you have eliminated software, your video card and your motherboard as the cause. Otherwise, your external monitor would be garbled too. Possible causes for this colorful symptom include a faulty video cable, a loose video cable, a defective LCD panel, or a loose video card.

My screen randomly goes blank, usually when I use certain programs. The backlight is still on and an external monitor works fine.

Here’s what to try. Start with making sure you have the latest BIOS version for your laptop motherboard. You can find out by checking your manufacturer’s website. If that doesn’t fix your intermittent video problem, check the video cable connection both at the motherboard and the back of your LCD. If reconnecting or reseating this cable doesn’t work, the cable or your LCD is probably failing.

My display is a blank white screen. I replaced it and it is still blank white. External monitor is working OK.

When you replaced your LCD panel, did you replace the video cable too? If so, then you probably have some issue with your graphics card. Since this is probably integrated with the motherboard, it may be time to think about a new laptop.

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17 Must-Have Portable Apps for Your USB Flash Drive

JD — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:09:16 +0000

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You should push your flash drive to work harder, so you can be highly productive and have plenty of fun even if you are not using your own PC. These portable apps are light and you can run it immediately (without installation process), they’ll work great in any public PCs.

Truecrypt – Why is it first on the list? It’s obvious. An easy-to-lose, multi-gig, unencrypted flash drive with your important data on it; is a high security risk. This app can help in keeping all your private stuff locked down safely.

Operator - I’ve never really been a fan of Opera, but if you want to browse on a public computer, you should use Operator. It has a built-in anonymous browsing feature to keep you safe. But, if you’re on a trusted computer, you may opt for Portable Firefox.

Pidgin – A useful app if you need a quick instant messaging

Filezilla - The portable version of Filezilla will keeps all your sites accessible from wherever you are.

CCleaner - When you are traveling, you may find a lot of computers that have gigabytes of useless temporary files and bloated registry. CCleaner can make short work of dumping tons of trash files and tidy up the registry.

Revo Uninstaller - It will purge the filth off sluggish computers by ridding them of unwanted programs. Revo is way more powerful than Windows’s add/remove feature, and its “hunter mode” quickly uproots stubborn apps.

Treesize Free - If you suddenly get a hard disk full warning. Treesize can make drive cleanup a snap by identifying unusually large folders.

CDBurner XP - Burning software tends to be big. CD Burner XP offers quick burning capability while using other PCs.

Screamer - Great for accessing internet radio streams

VDownloader - Sometimes we stumble across a totally amazing YouTube video. VDownloader will quickly download Youtube clips and support many popular video formats. It also saves audio clips as MP3.

Irfanview - A light but powerful app for picture viewing and basic editing (resize, rotate, crop, etc.).

VLC - An excellent portable media player that supports many video formats and does not require 3rd-party codecs.

Notepad++ - If the old Notepad is too simplistic and Microsoft Word is too big, then Notepad++ is a perfect option to get a powerful yet portable text editing capabilities. It comes with tons of nice features, like tabbed interface, syntax highlighting, macro recording, and much more.

Abiword - Some may choose OpenOffice, but you should pick Abiword if you use Google Docs and Zoho for out-of-office chores.

Foxit PDF Reader - It can be quite annoying when using a public PC and it doesn’t have a PDF viewer installed. Foxit is a light and powerful app for opening your PDFs.

Total Commander - Total Commander is an excellent tabbed, dual-pane Explorer replacement, it also supports all kinds of archive/compressed files. That eliminates the hassle of using two more apps just to handle file extraction and syncs. It also has basic text editor and FTP client features.

PStart - It gives you quick access to all the portable apps on your flash drive, and it creates a tray icon for quick access.

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The 2010 Netbooks – What to Expect

JD — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:25:44 +0000

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In 2009, netbooks began to sell briskly worldwide and the trends are pointing upward. Experts predict that Windows 7 may bring another step up in demand in 2010.

The pint-sized portable computers of 2010 will be pre-loaded with Windows 7, but users should remember that some netbooks running Windows 7 will be slower than older models running Windows XP.

More powerful netbook models are only now slowly trickling onto the computer market. The newer devices have bigger hard disks, with 250 GB (gigabytes) as the latest unofficial standard. Because netbooks are intended as mobile and highly affordable web-surfing machines with longer battery life, perhaps you should not expect any steep upgrades in 2010 netbooks since most manufacturers will want to keep price points under $400.

You probably won’t see netbooks being transformed into multimedia machines or gaming rigs. Manufacturers are keen to protect the market for their more powerful and more expensive laptops. There’s no sense in sacrificing their cash cow just to sell netbooks.

As far as processors go, Intel’s Atom N-2XX may still dominate the netbook market in early 2010, however it is predicted that the Atom N-4XX (Pineview) may finally take over by the end of 2010.

New netbooks in 2010 may have more RAM (2 GB and more), however more RAM doesn’t necessarily improve the performance vastly as most netbooks never use utilize than 1 GB of RAM.

Integrated graphics will probably remain the main graphic solution for most netbook models in 2010, since most netbook users only need basic graphic capabilities anyway. However, we have seen a few netbooks with dedicated graphic cards, and this sub-niche may continue.

Obviously, netbooks remain a great choice as a low-cost web-surfing machine for use on the go. They offer reasonable features with long-life batteries and affordable pricing. Just be sure that you will be happy with a low performance machine.

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Yet Another Five Features in Windows 7

JD — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 20:27:16 +0000

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Windows 7 doesn’t seem very different from Vista at first glance. But buried beneath that familiar look are a host of enhancements based on feedback from Vista users. We’ve already looked at eleven of those cool new features. Let’s look at the last five I wanted to show you.

There’s No Place Like Homegroup. In previous Windows versions, setting up a shared folder in a home network could be tricky sometimes. In Windows 7, with the ‘Homegroup’ wizard, you can check the default folders you want to share. You can also use a passcode to have better security in your home network. Sound nice? There’s a catch: only Windows 7 computers can join this Homegroup.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9TC-1MZTV4

Put the Music Where You Want It. After creating a Homegroup, you can use Windows Media Player to stream music directly to other computers. So, instead of playing music through those tiny laptop speakers, you can stream wirelessly to your 7.1 surround sound speakers connected to your home-theater PC in the living.

The End of Nagging. The action center is a new security center in Windows 7, that has additional features such as updates and quick access to the improved recovery and troubleshooting using restore points. Basically, it’s everything Windows used to bother you with, collected into a single place with one tiny icon in the notification bar. .

Pin the Program on the Taskbar. Just imagine a clean Mac OS X Dock with a start menu, a better ‘Show Desktop’ button; and the notifications bar. Drag just about everything on it and the associated applications will position itself on the translucent Windows taskbar, with a handy option to open files in the Jumplist.

Touch Me, Resize Me. Windows 7 is equipped with much better touch navigation (assuming you have the hardware for it). The bigger taskbar with square icons makes it very easy to navigate. This is probably the beginning of a new way to interact with windows (and Windows). There is also a bigger Start Menu when using a touchscreen display.

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Six More Cool Features in Windows 7

JD — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:07:15 +0000

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In an earlier post, I looked at five really cool features available in Windows 7. Ha ha, did you think there was only five? Here are six more…

Seeing Double. Do you constantly use different external projectors or monitors? Press Win + P to show your desktop on other monitors. The shortcut also gives you a handy menu that will help you a lot during presentations at work.

Fame for Printers. ‘Device and Printers’ button found on the Start Menu allows each device to have their own stage. With supported devices, it shows a link to the vendor’s website and a photo-realistic render, along with useful information and other updates (such as manuals and firmware updates).

You’re in Charge. Of the notification area, that is. In Windows 7, you can even get rid of the volume icons and clock. Click the arrow next to the notification area and choose ‘customize’. Select any icons that you want to remove.

I Told You It Wasn’t Working. Windows 7 now includes something called the “problem steps recorder.” It allows you to record a certain problem you’re having with your computer so you can send the steps to someone who can help. After clicking ‘Record’, all actions on the desktop are recorded and you can also add comments between the steps if required. It will be saved as a well-formatted HTML file that is immediately compressed – great for an email attachment.

I Can See Clearly Now. For visually impaired users, Windows 7 Magnifier offers two options for providing a better desktop view. The first option uses a rectangular lens that follows the mouse (without sacrificing workspace) and the other being a traditional dock (which takes up most of the screen).

Can You Hum a Few Bars? Opening an MP3 song is more convenient with Windows 7 and its new preview player. It gives you basic music functionality, album art and also a link to open it in Windows Media Player. This is an obvious attempt to duplicate the preview features of Mac OS X; fortunately it’s well executed.