Computer Overclocking, Customizing and Hardware

Message to my readers.........

2012-04-07T10:34:00.000-07:00

Hello to my readers i would like to apologise for my absence as my blog has not been updated for 4 months this is due to me moving into bigger premises and having Internet installed throughout. I have received alot of products for testing and reviewing while i have been away so my blog will be updated quite regular again now. Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused. My blog is now up and running again and will be for a very long time thank you for understanding....

best regards

Lee

Sony VAIO Z Series review

2011-12-14T14:25:00.000-08:00

Most of Sony's VAIO laptops are nothing to write home about. Though they are fine laptops, they don't distinguish themselves from many other modern laptops.

They are, for lack of a better description, typical. But every so often, Sony bucks common trends with a product that is clearly ahead of the curve – and very expensive. These special laptops remind us of olden days when a Sony TV or music system carried a huge price premium but virtually guaranteed superior design and quality.

The new Sony VAIO Z is one of those rare, ahead-of-its-time, money-is-no-object Sony laptops.

The 13in Sony VAIO Z is ridiculously thin and light. At 0.7 inch when closed, the body is about as thick as the thickest point on the larger 13in Apple Macbook Air, though the VAIO Z doesn't taper as Apple's ultraportable does. It's even lighter than the 13in Air, too, at 2.5 pounds.

This is due in part to Sony's having made the body out of aluminum and featherweight, durable carbon fibre. It looks good, and it feels good.

And despite the laptop's incredibly svelte size, Sony crams a full-voltage Core i5 or Core i7 processor into it.

Our review model came with an Intel Core i7-2620M and 4GB of RAM. It also carried a 256GB solid-state drive, and the combination powered the system to a very impressive WorldBench 6 score of 138 – one of the highest scores we've seen for an ultraportable laptop.

Amazingly, the battery lasted for 5.5 hours, about an hour less than the batteries on most recent ultraportables have managed, but quite impressive considering the horsepower under the hood.

Sony loads this thin system with other goodies, too. You get a VGA port on the left; a pair of card readers (for Memory Stick and SD Card) along the front edge; and an audio jack, gigabit ethernet, HDMI and a pair of USB ports on the right.

Sony uses Intel's Light Peak technology to turn the lone USB 3.0 port into a special high-speed connector to a thin dock that houses the optical drive (DVD or Blu-ray) and a discrete Radeon HD 6650M graphics card with its own set of video, display, and USB connectors (including USB 3.0).

The base-model VAIO Z – with a Core i5 processor, 128GB SSD, and a 1600-by-900-pixel display – will set you back £1434.

Our review model packed the aforementioned Core i7 CPU and 256GB SSD, plus a 1920-by-1080-pixel display, all for about £2303. The 1.5-pound dock is included with the package, though the type of optical drive it contains may vary. The price quoted here is with basic DVD writer.

Though many people have erroneously called the media dock port a Thunderbolt connector, it isn't one. Thunderbolt is the port that eventually emerged from Intel and Apple, based on Intel's Light Peak technology, but with a few changes.

Light Peak was going to come to market using a USB port and an optical cable, as in the VAIO Z, but it underwent some tweaking before its designers settled on a Mini DisplayPort connector and copper cable. So Sony's implementation, though it uses very similar technology to Thunderbolt, is incompatible with Thunderbolt devices. It is essentially a proprietary dock connector, but it also serves as a USB 3.0 port, so there's no wasted space.

The glossy display is impressive, with bright, vivid colours and good contrast. Cramming a 1920-by-1080-resolution full-HD display into only 13 inches is a neat feat, though in our tests the display sometimes made default text sizes look a bit small and hard to read. Off-axis viewing was above average. Movies and games looked great, especially when powered by the Radeon HD 6650M in the Power Media Dock.

With so much to love about this system, it's a shame that the keyboard and touchpad ergonomics aren't especially good. The keys are on the small side; and though they are spaced apart well, they have very little travel when pressed. The result is a keyboard with poor tactile feedback, which can make extended typing feel a little uncomfortable.

The touchpad is smallish, too, and it doesn't have discrete buttons, though the left and right clickable zones along the bottom (separated by a fingerprint reader) are obvious. The touchpad tracks well, but we'd prefer a little more size and buttons that are either physically separate or totally absent – none of this “button zones” business.

We’re not a huge fan of Sony's software loadout, either. The drop-down menu at the top of the screen is distracting and superfluous. Windows 7 already has application launching from its own toolbar at the bottom.

Sony's VAIO Care application is a good way to keep your system up to date, but Sony's Media Gallery and photo apps don't work any better than more-common software.

Sony also bundles in Skype, Arcsoft Webcam Companion, PowerDVD and a limited trial of Norton Internet Security.

The last of these is a common annoyance on modern PCs that every laptop maker would do well to avoid; it does a fine job of protecting users from viruses, but it slows performance and nags you incessantly until you either fork out your money or uninstall it. Overall, it's not a good customer experience when you've just spent more than two grand on a new laptop.

These are relatively minor shortcomings, however. The software is easy to remove if you don't care for it, and the typing and pointing experience is by no means poor.

The Sony VAIO Z provides a road map to the kind of incredible industrial design and advanced technology that Sony would do well to bring to much lower-cost laptops. This ultraportable is so thin, light, and powerful that it's almost like getting next year's laptop today. Fantastic style and power that's easy to carry around make the VAIO Z a winner, even though it costs more than twice as much as most customers are willing to pay for a new laptop.

An Add-on to Control Your Computer Using Your Eyes

2011-12-10T10:46:00.000-08:00

One of the most difficult things that can happen to a technology enthusiast is to lose control of his or her hands due to Lou Gehrig’s Disease or a spinal cord energy. So much of what we do on computers depends on our hands. I have heard of violinists who have had great difficulty with the same issue of not being able to use their hands as they did in the past. It is a very unfortunate situation when doing what you are passionate about is dependent on your body. For computer aficionados with limited hand mobility, there is hope, however. There is actually a device you can add on to your computer that will allow you to control your computer using your eyes, instead of your hands. It’s called the Tobii PCEye. Here’s how it works:

1. You hook the Tobii PCEye up to your computer. Once it’s set up, you just have to calibrate the device to adjust to your personal eyes. Once calibrated, the device immediately recognizes where your eyes are and how they are moving. It works even if you are wearing glasses or contacts.

2. When the Tobii PCEye is up and running, your eyes will essentially become your mouse. When you move your eyes to the left, your computer’s cursor will move to the left. If you want to click on something, all you have to do is stare at it for a few seconds, and your computer will register that you want to click on it.

3. You’re given a control panel to help you do things like right click. You can access this control panel by clicking on the icon for it with your eyes.

4. If you want to type on your computer, all you need to do is shift your gaze in the right places on an on-screen keyboard. Or you can use Tobii’s spot-on voice recognition technology to speak what you need typed.

5. This add-on is compatible with all Windows PCs and most software programs. If you’re a Mac user, you may have to wait a little while for an add-on like this to become accessible to you.

This technology is most definitely good news for those with limited mobility issues. Right now the Tobii PCEye costs around $6000 or more. Hopefully as time goes on and technology becomes even more advanced, devices like the Tobii PCEye will go down in price and become affordable for everyone who needs them.

Author’s Bio: Sean is a guest post writer on the subjects of computer customization, technology for those with disabilities, and finding the best HP coupon for a new HP computer.

How to get your computer to have an FBI login screen

2011-12-09T14:19:00.000-08:00

How to get your computer to have an FBI login screen

1) Download LogonStudios (It's Vista version but if you have Windows 7 it works)

Code:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=I8DIQ2YN

For xp users:

Code:

http://www.stardock.com/products/logonstudio/downloads.asp

2) You can download the FBI file here

Code:

http://www.wincustomize.com/explore/logonstudio_xp/9606/

Code:

http://skins19.wincustomize.com/24/79/2479496/26/9859/preview-26-9859.jpg

Optional 3) The switch user button was annoying me so i downloaded this to remove it (I'm the only one on my computer so i doubt ill miss it)

Code:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=8N0EGIW4

Start it up, then open it and it'll do the rest

For the users that want their 'switch user' button back download this:

Code:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=AA5V5SFQ

Just run the file and it will return your button.

thats it enjoy

Toshiba Satellite Z830-10T review

2011-12-09T05:58:00.000-08:00

Toshiba Satellite Z830-10T review

The way we hoped Ultrabooks would materialise when we first heard about them is about as close as Toshiba has gotten with its design of the 13.3in Satellite Z830. It's a magnificent piece of work that fits necessary ports and slots into an almost impossibly thin and light chassis, a chassis that also houses speedy enough components to make everyday computing tasks a breeze. While most vendors talk of no-compromise thin-and-light computing when it comes to Ultrabooks, only Toshiba has walked the walk thus far.

This is what we expected from Toshiba. The company has a lot of experience building thin and light machines, with the company's Portege R500 and R600 models being marvels in the mobile computing field because of their truly ultra-light designs and full feature-sets. It's only natural then that Toshiba has used its prowess in this area of mobile computing to build an Ultrabook that is currently much better than the offerings from Acer and ASUS on the market.

Design and user comfort

The metal body of the Satellite Z830 is strong and light and it has the most original design that we've seen so far — the Acer and ASUS Ultrabooks take too many design cues from Apple's MacBook Air. The Toshiba looks square, but classy and the chrome details covering the hinges and around the touchpad's buttons add a dash of flair.

Most importantly though, the Satellite weighs in at a barely noticeable 1.1kg and it's only 16mm thick (with the lid closed). It's much thinner and lighter than the Acer and ASUS Ultrabooks that we've seen to date. Funnily enough, the Toshiba also packs the most features.

Along the spine of the Satellite you will find Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI (full sized), power, VGA and two USB ports. The right side has another USB port, which is USB 3.0-capable, and a cable lock facility; the left side has headphone and microphone ports and an SD card slot. The Acer Aspire S3-951 that we reviewed doesn't have Ethernet built in to it, nor does it have USB 3.0 or a VGA port. The ASUS Zenbook UX31 that we reviewed has USB 3.0 built in, but it doesn't have a full-sized HDMI port (you have to buy an adapter) and it comes with a breakout adapter for VGA and a USB adapter for Ethernet. On the inside, the Satellite has 2.4GHz, 802.11n Wi-Fi (Atheros AR9002WB-1NG) and Bluetooth 3.0. You also get a 0.9-megapixel webcam.

The balance of the Satellite Z830 is excellent. Its latch-less lid can be lifted with one hand without the chassis coming up off the table at all. The hinges could use a little more stiffness though — sometimes simply lifting the notebook up off the table made the screen tilt back all the way it could go.

We found the screen's contrast good enough to make photo and video viewing pleasurable, but only as long as the screen was angled perfectly. Like so many notebook screens, the Toshiba's vertical angles in particular are narrow and a lot of fiddling is required to get the view just right. Furthermore, it's a glossy screen, which means that reflections will probably get on your nerves more often than not. It's not as bright as the screen on the ASUS Zenbook, but it's not a dull screen either.

As for user comfort, we think the Satellite Z830 is the best of the Ultrabooks so far. It has an ample palm rest (82mm deep) that feels good to rest on and its chiclet, spill-resistant keyboard is backlit. It looks great at night and is very easy on the eyes when typing in the dark. It has keys that are somewhat 'spongy' to hit, but they are impressively responsive and we didn't have any problems typing on this Ultrabook for long periods of time.
We think it's much better than the keyboard on the Acer and ASUS models in this respect. It's also better because of its layout, which is standard and roomy. You can easily make out the arrow keys — they are not squished — and there are dedicated Home, End and Page Up and Page Down buttons on the right-hand side that come in very handy when perusing long documents. The down arrow makes an annoying 'click' sound sometimes when it is pressed, which can be annoying in a quiet room — what is it with down arrow keys? We also noticed a squeaky down arrow key on the ASUS unit.

The Toshiba felt very comfortable to use while resting it in our lap, but you will need to look out for the pointy corners. The front edge of the laptop has a rounded finish that feels good against the flesh while typing, but you won't want to accidentally hit the corners of the chassis with your wrists as they feel a little too sharp.

The Synaptics touchpad was responsive during our tests. The pointer didn't over-shoot objects and it wasn't sluggish. It also performed multi-finger gestures beautifully (including three-finger flicks in Firefox). At 85x80mm, it's an ample-sized pad that we found a lot more accurate and pleasurable to use than the touchpads on the Acer and ASUS Ultrabooks. Rather than its left- and right-click buttons being concealed under the pad, it uses conventional buttons that are separate to the pad itself. However, these aren't great. They feel a little too stiff to press easily and just a little bit cheap.

If you use the Satellite on your lap for long periods of time, then some heat will be generated and it might end up feeling uncomfortable, both on your lap and under your palms as you type. After typing up documents and browsing Web pages for a few hours while using the Ultrabook on our lap, it got mildly warm and somewhat uncomfortable, but it wasn't unbearable. It runs hotter when the CPU or graphics components are tasked with a lot of work; for heavy processing loads, you'll want to rest the unit on a hard, flat surface. There is a vent on the spine of the laptop and there are holes on the base for the fan that sits near that vent. It makes a low whirring noise, but we didn't find it to be annoying.

Overall, we're pleased with the user friendliness of the Satellite Z830 and we like Toshiba's design choices. Its keyboard and touchpad are good, we love the backlight and the chassis didn't feel harsh as we rested on it while typing. It's screen could be better, but that's a common complaint we have with most laptops.

Specifications and performance

From a performance perspective, the Satellite Z830 mostly lived up to our expectations. It has an Intel Core i5-2467M low-voltage CPU, 4GB of DDR3 SDRAM (expandable to 6GB) and a 128GB solid state drive (SSD). With this configuration, the Z830 recorded 1min in the Blender 3D rendering test, 1min 8sec in the iTunes MP3 encoding test and 1hr 14min in the DVD-to-Xvid file conversion test. These times indicate that it has more than enough grunt to tackle daily chores and time-passing tasks, and it can even be used for tougher tasks if you're game, although it's not designed to run complex workloads. It felt responsive during our evaluation period and it was quick to come out of sleep states, although it was not as quick as the Acer and ASUS Ultrabooks in this respect. We're talking about a three second difference at most.

•Ultrabook specs compared: See at a glance what the Toshiba offers compared to the Acer and ASUS Ultrabooks

•See how the Toshiba Sattelite Z830 compares to the Toshiba Portege Z830

Its 128GB SSD also performed adequately, recording 33.65 megabytes per second (MBps) in our file copy tests; this is a better result than the Acer's 320GB hard drive (28MBps), but slower than the ASUS' 256GB SSD (36MBps) in the same test. In CrystalDiskMark, it wasn't as impressive, recording a read rate of 164.6MBps and a write rate of 50.62MBps. The write rate is a little slower than what we expected.

Graphics are the responsibility of the integrated Intel HD 3000 adapter in the CPU and its score of 4219 in 3DMark06 is actually a lot better than what the Acer and ASUS Ultrabooks recorded in this benchmark. You will have no problems with basic video and imaging-related tasks at the screen's native 1366x768 resolution.

Battery life

The battery in the Satellite Z830 is located within the chassis and not easily replaceable (you'll have to attack the chassis with a screwdriver). It has a 47 Watt-hour rating, which is slightly less than the 50 Watt-hour rating of the ASUS Zenbook and the Apple MacBook Air, but it put up a good showing.

In our rundown test, in which we disable power management, enable Wi-Fi, maximise screen brightness and loop an Xvid-encoded video until the unit runs out of power, the Satellite lasted 4hr 7min. This is 41min longer than the Acer Aspire S3-951 (which uses a hard drive), and 29min better than the ASUS Zenbook US31 (however, the Zenbook UX31 we tested has a brighter screen, a Core i7 CPU and a 256GB SSD).

Of course, how much you get out of the battery will depend on your workload and how you configure the notebook. If you run an efficient power scheme (or in the available Eco mode), use a lower screen brightness and disable the keyboard backlight, you might be able to squeeze up to six hours out of the battery when using the laptop for basic Web tasks and word processing.

Conclusion

Toshiba's Satellite Z830 is the Ultrabook to beat so far. It has the lightest weight, the thinnest profile and the most features of the Ultrabooks we've seen so far, and in our opinion it also sports the best design. Its user-friendliness is also very good. We like its backlit keyboard, which we also found to be quite comfortable to type on, and we like its touchpad, which was cooperative with our movements.

We wish the touchpad's buttons were better though, that the corners of the chassis weren't so pointy, that the screen's viewing angles were better and also that the SSD was a little quicker. We're not sure how well the unit will stand up over time when it comes to heat dispersion due to the very thin chassis, but we didn't have any problems with overheating during our evaluation period.

ASUS K53SC review

2011-12-09T05:43:00.000-08:00

ASUS K53SC review
There's nothing that immediately stands out about the ASUS K53SCC. It's a solid 15.6innotebook with good specs that can be purchased for under £500. You should consider this laptop if you're a student or home user who just wants something simple for everyday Web and office tasks, or even tougher media creation or file converting tasks. It's not the most comfortable notebook to use though, and some parts of its design are questionable, but with a Core i5-2410M under the hood, as well as 6GB of RAM, GeForce 520MX discrete graphics and a 640GB hard drive, you get plenty of value for your money.

Design & Features

The build quality of the K53SCC feels plasticy, there is no doubt about that. That said, it doesn't feel badly made. The palm rest is smooth and the lid has a texture that feels good. The hinges hold the screen in place at your desired angle and there is no latch to fiddle with when opening it. We're not fans of the position of the power port, which is located in the middle of the left side of the unit, rather than near the rear of the notebook. It sits between the air vent and the Gigabit Ethernet port and the cord definitely gets in the way. It can make it hard to use comfortably when the notebook is plugged in to the mains as you have to sit in such a way that the cable doesn't become too much of a nuisance.

While it has some shortcomings, the K53SCC is meant to be a budget notebook, so its build quality was never going to be great. For those of you who are non-picky users that care more about getting good specs for a good price, it's definitely a model to consider. You could always plug in an external keyboard and mouse, especially if you want to use the notebook as a desktop replacement — it has three USB ports, one of them which is also USB 3.0-capable.

Keyboard Usability

The keyboard is a little too hard to type on until you get used to the stiffness of the keys and adjust your hits accordingly. We're not fans of how packed the keyboard is. The number pad pretty much seamlessly flows on from the main part of the keyboard and can make some keys difficult to distinguish, such as the 'delete', 'backspace' and 'right arrow' keys. The right arrow key actually sits under the number pad's '1' key, which means that the 'zero' key is under the '2' key — this can be inconvenient when you want to quickly punch in a lot of numbers. We've seen this key layout from many ASUS models for a while now and we think it's about time some changes were made to give the board more space overall.

The palm rest can feel both a little slippery or sticky depending on how long you have been using the notebook, and the touchpad sometimes feels way to resistive to use comfortably. It recognises multi-finger gestures for scrolling and swiping and, for the most part, it was accurate if not a little too sensitive when we used these gestures.

Performance

Performance felt a little sluggish at times during everyday use, but if you're upgrading from a previous generation notebook or PC, then you'll definitely find it to be a step up. It recorded times that were bang-on the money in our tests: 44sec in Blender 3D rendering, 52sec in iTunes MP3 encoding and 52min in the DVD-to-Xvid conversion. These times are identical to the Acer Aspire 5750G, which uses the same CPU and is also designed to be a value proposition.

The graphics performance of the ASUS was noticeably slower than the Acer though — it recorded 4546 in 3DMark06 while the Acer recorded 5323. It won't fare too well when used for gaming, but it depends on the types of games you play. Graphics-intensive games won't run smoothly, especially if they are recent titles, but older titles should work okay as long as the graphics details are not set too high. The native resolution of the screen is 1366x768, which is standard, and the screen itself is like most others in its class — it's glossy, a little harsh when it comes to colour reproduction and contrast, and its vertical viewing angles are narrow. But for basic Web browsing and document creation it will suffice.

Battery life wasn't great. In our rundown test, in which we disable power management, enable Wi-Fi,maximise screen brightness and loop an Xvid-encoded video, the K53SCC lasted only 3hr 8min. We were expecting closer to 3hr 20min so it fell a little short. That said, anything over three hours for a 15in laptop with a Core i5 CPU is decent, and you could get more out of it, too, depending on your usage.

The laptop remains reasonably cool after long periods of usage, but this assumes that you use it in such a way that the vents get adequate airflow. There is a fan installed on the left side and it kicks in when the CPU or graphics adapter are under load. The other side of the chassis has a DVD burner and there is an SD card slot that is located at the front and is somewhat inconvenient. You get both VGA and HDMI video ports as well. Rounding out the feature-set is a 0.3-megapixel webcam, Bluetooth and 802.11n Wi-Fi (single-band).

If you have a sub-Rs. 40,000 budget and want to get a notebook with good speed, plenty of RAM and storage space, the K53SCC is it. Don't expect too much in the way of user comfort though; its keyboard and touchpad could definitely stand to be a little better. But if you're not fussy about such things then these won't be a problem. If you're wondering what its speakers are like, then don't. They are typical notebook speakers, which are fine for watching the odd YouTube video, but you'll want to plug in a pair of external speakers for more pleasurable listening.

Acer Aspire S3-951 review

2011-12-09T05:40:00.000-08:00

Acer Aspire S3-951 review

The Acer Aspire S3-951 is the first of a new wave of Apple MacBook Air clones that have been announced by Windows PC manufacturers.

The new product category has been dubbed ultrabook by Intel, keen to keep its processor order-books filled as consumers abandon the netbook which previously propped up sales of its underpowered Intel Atom processor.

Intel is not only creating a slush fund to help incentivise this push into Apple’s ultraportable territory, it’s even handed out a blueprint notebook design for the likes of Acer, Asus and Toshiba to follow.

Acer was quick to market with its Acer Aspire S3-951, a copy of the 13in version of the Apple MacBook Air. But in order to compete with the original, Acer needs to innovate with useful technology not found in Apple’s lightweight notebook; or match the quality and sell for a much lower price. Let’s see where it’s succeeded.

Design

First impression of the Acer Aspire S3-951 with its lid closed is positive. But what appears to be an all-metal construction is soon revealed on handling to be a plastic laptop with a thin skin of brushed metal just covering the lid. The rest of the S3-951 is assembled from plastic that’s been painted a silver-grey colour to mimic the Air’s high-grade all-metal construction.

Like the Air, the closed Acer Aspire S3-951 tapers from the rear to the front, only is fatter at both edges. At its maximum at the rear, the S3-951 is 18mm against the Air’s 17mm.

In weight, Acer has patently been paring down the grams in order to beat Apple’s example, settling for 3g lighter at 1338g on the sample we reviewed.

The keyboard is like Apple’s now-familiar Scrabble tile type, but without the same precision feel. There’s a little more sponginess on these grey keys. Also troubling was the way the double-height Return was actually a single-height key. We often found ourselves hitting the ‘\’ key above, which has been shaped to look like part of the Return key.

The trackpad follows Apple’s idea of buttonless operation. Unlike the MacBook Air, multi-touch support is rather hit or miss here. Mostly the latter – you can try two-finger vertical scrolling, and pinch-to-zoom sometimes works in some apps. There’s even a four-finger swipe ro hide an open Windows program. But sideways scrolling, three-finger gestures and four-finger-and-a-thumb gestures are all absent.

All ports are behind the back, under the screen hinge: power inlet, HDMI, two USB 2.0, plus a cooling vent. There’s an SD card slot on the right, and headphone jack on the left.

The Acer Aspire S3-951 screen has the same headline size of 13.3in, but is smaller in area due to its wider 16:9 aspect ratio, where the MacBook Air has a 16:10 screen that’s arguably better suited to a PC.

More important is the screen quality, which is sadly lacking on the Acer Aspire S3-951. It’s too shiny for comfortable viewing, has a relatively low resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels, and has serious visibility issues when viewed off-axis.

One area where Windows PCs have traditionally stumbled may have been resolved – standby mode. Instant-on worked well in our tests. In fact, this is the first Windows laptop we’ve encountered that could be consistently put to sleep by closing the lid, and which would wake again and be ready for business when opened.

The Acer Aspire S3-951 includes a pair of very small speakers that vent through the bottom and the keyboard. Don’t be misled by the Professionally Tuned script on the bodywork – these speakers sound dreadfully tinny despite the efforts of Dolby and its ineffectual Home Theater v4 software.

Performance

The sample of Acer Aspire S3-951-2634G24iss we tested with Intel Core i7 running at 1.7GHz, along with its 240GB SSD from ADATA and 4GB of memeory, let the Acer Aspire S3-951 run very fast.

It recorded 134 points in WorldBench 6, where the 13in MacBook Air scored 122 points. The Acer Aspire S3-951 generally did run noisier as well, it’s fan quite audibly ‘on’ much of the time.

As is typical for an ultraportable, the Acer Aspire S3-951 relies on integrated graphics. These aren’t really cut out for heavy gameplay, but we saw the Acer Aspire S3-951 play FEAR at Maximum detail at an average of 12fps. After dropping detail to High, it averaged 38fps, proving that Intel’s last generation of Core chips can get you by, if you keep the quality down.

We wonder if Acer has underclocked the Intel graphics processor here, however, as Apple’s ultraportable managed a smoother 17 and 52fps in the same two tests.

Battery life from the non-replaceable built-in battery was very good, at a little over 6 hours (370 mins) in the MobileMark 2007 Productivity challenge.

Price

Acer UK doesn’t have the resources to provide relevant review samples of its products. Instead the company loaned us an Acer S3-951-2634G24iss model that is not sold in the UK.

The nearest UK version we could find to match this 1.7GHz Intel Core i7-powered laptop was one with a 1.6GHz Core i5 processor. With the same 240GB SSD storage capacity and 4GB memory, this slower model sells for £1099.

Modern Warfare 3 Review

2011-11-15T14:42:00.000-08:00

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3: 'every bit as ridiculous and exhilarating as ever'.

It's business as usual for Modern Warfare 3 – though whether that's a criticism depends on expectations. Should sequels offer some form of innovation? Or are you one of the tens of millions of players champing at the bit for more of the same?

The single-player campaign provides ammunition for both camps. Set in several major European cities (with the odd African detour) during the third world war, it is once again a five-hour series of linear, over-the-top set pieces at the very limit of credibility.
Even Hollywood couldn't afford this. Players pitch up to one bombed-out landmark after another, blowing up what isn't already destroyed before moving on in search of the villainous Vladimir Makarov. It's as ridiculous and exhilarating as ever, and pleasingly without the occasional sudden leap in difficulty that blighted its predecessors.
Of course, the campaign is but an appetiser to the hundreds of hours that await in the game's multiplayer. Modern Warfare 2's co-operative spec-ops mode returns in expanded form, progress here unlocking weapons for use in the new survival mode, where up to four players team up to take on untold enemies.
On the competitive side, developer Infinity Ward has learned from its Modern Warfare 2 missteps and done much to prevent players holing up in safe havens and just waiting to take shots. There are fewer obvious hiding spots, and the division of the game's signature killstreaks into two categories – one for kills, one to help your team – means both teams have an unmanned aerial vehicle in the air more often than not and are therefore visible on each other's radars. This necessitates constant movement, the more enclosed maps making for a faster pace and a renewed emphasis on gunplay – though there are plenty of new toys to play with too.
These tweaks are subtle enough to please hardcore fans looking for improvements but also significant enough to have a profound effect on how the action pans out for casual players. Essentially more of the same, then, but that's precisely what the developer set out to do – and exactly what all those fans wanted.

Battlefield 3 review

2011-11-15T14:39:00.000-08:00

Battlefield 3 ... you won't want to play it alone

For the better part of a year, EA has been hyping Battlefield 3 as the game that will bring down Call Of Duty. This approach has doubtless provided an awareness boost for DICE's military shooter, its advertorial wagon hitched sturdily to the zeitgeist surrounding Activision's mega-selling shooter. "Above and beyond the call," claim the billboard ads that currently clutter major US cities.

Thus, nearly every single CoD: MW3 feature and preview so far has had to address EA's game in some way. The only way you could not be aware of Battlefield 3 is if you have no interest in video games, or if you've been locked in an isolation ward for the past year and a half.

Of course, all of EA's Activision-baiting can't help but impact negatively on Battlefield 3 now it's been released. To wit, there is now the expectation among some gamers, whether fair or not, that Battlefield 3's success depends, to some degree, on it beating CoD at its own game.

This was never going to happen. While there are similarities between the two franchises, they couldn't be more different in the one area most shooters rely on to keep the affections of the faithful tightly in their grasp – the online multiplayer.

With Battlefield, the multiplayer was present and correct long before CoD's sales figures became the brass ring to shoot for. It's not surprising, then, that this mode is Battlefield 3's strongest asset – and is indeed one of the strongest examples of this mode in the medium. DICE has taken what made the franchise great to begin with in the seminal Battlefield 1942 and then refined and polished everything until it gleams with a diamond-tipped edge.

More than any other online multiplayer shooter (with perhaps the exception of MAG), Battlefield 3 makes the player feel like they're engaged in an ongoing ground war.

Arriving in the conflict zone via a spawn point or parachute, players are immediately aware of the size and scope of the battle zones they'll be traversing. They could drop in right in the middle of a gun-battle, or land near a couple of vehicles and have to cross some distance to pick a fight.

The action, when it comes, is eerily realistic; players are advised to take in the contents of their surroundings when the echoing pops of gunfire sound off, as tactics, cover and high ground can all be crucial factors in establishing supremacy in any gun battle.

That said, while reality dictates that the most organised and skilled teams with the best working knowledge of the terrain are more likely to be victorious in Battlefield 3, players aren't a forced into a style of play they don't like.

This isn't CoD, where a fast-paced, close-quarters run-and-gun fragfest is the order of the day. This is the Battlefield experience gone widescreen; it's an open, realistic affair where teamwork is encouraged, vehicles are available and maps are meticulously constructed to allow different styles of play to coexist.

The only real rule of thumb in the multiplayer is that of common sense; desert your teammates and run obliviously out in to the open, and you'll find yourself dying and dying and dying some more.

The modes and class systems have received a couple of tweaks and tucks and there's still an RPG element in which players are rewarded with new upgrades, gizmos and promotions.

The principal draw in online, though, has less to do with soldier classes, match types and unlockables, and more to do with creating your own moments of brilliance – either solo or with your teammates – in the combat zone. The sense of freedom and potential for improvisation is the best thing about Battlefield 3.

We haven't been furnished with a PC copy to review, but we can point out a couple of disparities between the console and PC versions from several hands-on previews we've attended. Firstly, up to 64 players can take part in BF3's online wars on the PC, but console owners are limited to 24-man battles.

PC owners will claim that as a rule their platform has the edge over consoles in all games, but with BF3, the difference in quality between PCs and consoles is less pronounced in the multiplayer than it is in the game's campaign, provided players load the HD install available for the Xbox 360.

While the lighting and sound in Battlefield 3 was uniformly excellent across the modes on the modes console copy we played, the campaign experience was frequently marred by visual kinks and bugs.

In the time we spent with the game, we witnessed anomalies such as floating corpses, troops that sprinted at snail's pace and one instance in which our entire platoon entered a combat area by walking through a closed fire-escape door.

EA has told us that it is aware of these glitches and that patches and updates are forthcoming. But for now, we have to note that, due to the fact that Battlefield 3's overall experience puts such a premium on realism, it's alarming how often the game we were sent to review pulls the player out of the proceedings with glitches that break the fourth wall.

Whether or not DICE is working to remedy all of this is beside the point, though, as it won't improve the experience of playing the campaign, which is Battlefield 3's big weakness.

It's a short, bland affair shot through with an uninteresting story – which seems bizarre when you consider it's about missing nukes and marines searching for terrorists in the Middle East. There are a couple of note-worthy levels – a gun battle on the streets of Tehran, which escalates to Michael Bay-worthy proportions, and a dogfight in an F-18 are two high points. But for the most part, players will find themselves hurtling down corridors, moving from one uninspired gun-battle to the next.

Perhaps the worst aspect of the campaign, though, is how rigid, scripted and restrictive it feels when compared to the game's multiplayer. There are precious few instances where the open, multi-purpose style of play from the online mode is applicable – or even allowed – in the campaign.

There are also a couple of instances where the game's realistic elements eat into the player's enjoyment of the proceedings. After a while, they may become fed up with being unable to see opponents who are a few metres away due to the amount of dust their firefight has thrown up. This, by the way, doesn't impair the vision of the AI, which at times strikes at the player with laser-guided accuracy, and at others, seems to be unaware of them when they're emptying a clip into their compatriots from close range.

Finally there's the co-op mode, a series of mini-missions whose story runs alongside the single-player campaign. It's a fun, if slightly brief diversion from the other two options. It's less constrictive than the single-player campaign, in that some improvisation is allowed from the two players in how they tackles some missions, but it also contains some of its weaknesses – such as the wonky AI.

So Battlefield 3 feels like three distinctly different experiences offered in one confusing game, which, to be honest, has proven hard to judge on its merits as a package.

Do we praise the game for its incredible multiplayer or mark it down for its woeful campaign? There are those who would posit the opinion that the campaign shouldn't affect the score because most people who buy this game won't play it anyway and instead will spend all their time in the multiplayer.

Then again, the counter argument to this is, why bother with including a campaign at all and instead use the extra disc space to provide more modes, maps, options, weapons and other content for the superb multiplayer?

The answer is, of course, that Battlefield 3 was supposed to bring down CoD, and without a campaign – which seems to be DICE's approximation of a CoD experience – this wouldn't have been possible. This is unfortunate, because the instances in which DICE seem to have tried to beat their rivals at their own game have resulted in Battlefield 3's weakest content.

Where they've ignored their competitor completely and stuck to what they do best, they've created one of the finest experiences in the medium. There's a lesson in that somewhere…

Sony PS Vita UK release date and price

2011-10-20T06:19:00.000-07:00

Sony PS Vita UK release date and price

Sony’s latest and greatest creation, the Sony PS Vita, has now received a release date and UK price.

Amazon, the online retailer, have outed the Sony PS Vita release date and prices way ahead of the New Year’s Eve Arrival.

The PS Vita has been added as a pre-order item with prices starting at £229.99 for the WiFi only version and £279.99 for the WiFi + 3G version.

The suggested delivery date has not been listed in the UK though, however the US version states that the PS Vita will be available from December 31st.

The Sony PS Vita is set to feature a quad-core ARM Cortex A9 processor as well as a 5-inch OLED touchscreen display sporting both front and rear cameras.

Will you be purchasing the PSP successor? Let us know in the comments section below.

How to assemble a computer

2011-09-16T02:03:00.001-07:00

How to assemble a computer step by step

The entire procedure should take 3-4 hours if you have no problems. We'll proceed in stages. Rather than install all of the components in the system at once, I prefer to the bare components necessary and test as we go along. In the first part we'll install the motherboard, floppy drive, RAM, CPU, and video card and test that the system boots and detects the floppy, hard disk, CPU and video. The next stage is to install the CD-ROM and Windows9X. In the last stage, we'll finish by overclocking the system.

Tools and Supplies Required

Grounding Strap - This can be purchased from Radio Shack or Compusa for a few dollars.
Phillips screw driver
One medium sized flat screw driver - Used mostly to help with releasing clips from power connections.
1/4" socket screwdriver - I've found this better to use in most cases than the phillips with the 1/8" hex screws. It keeps the screw driver from slipping and potentially causing damage.
Electrical tape - I use black electrician's tape to tie up any lose wires.
Bungee straps or Plastic tie wraps - Same as above. I've even used velcro wraps purchased from CompUSA.
Cardboard sheets - Cardboard sheets can be used as a working surface. It is safe to use cardboard to rest components that are sensitive to static electricity.
Non Conducting 1/8" washers - I use nylon washers purchased from Home Depot. They work great.

Setup the Case

Set up your work area - Gather your tools and materials and have them nearby to minimize running around. Make sure you have plenty of lighting and a power socket located nearby. As mentioned above use cardboard on your working surface. This helps to reduce the risk of static discharges to your electrical components.
Before you begin read your motherboard manual, case manual, etc. Familiarize yourself with the layout of the board (the 20-pin power, fan connectors, IDE controlers, PCI slot, AGP slot, RAM slots, CPU Slot, etc).
Orient your case so that you can work with it comfortably. Lay it on it's side. Not in the upright position. The case should be open and the insides exposed.

Never work on your system with the power turned on. Before you touch anything always make sure the power is turned off. (You should leave the PS plugged into the wall socket to keep it grounded, BUT make sure the power supply is turned off.)
Punch out any openings in the back of your case to fit your motherboard ports. You may need to use a plate supplied with the case or motherboard that fits the ports for your motherboard.
Attach your grounding strap to your wrist and the clip to the metal chassis of your case.
Examine the floor of the case. If you do not have stand-offs you will need to insert them. stand-offs are meta hex screws that screw into the motherboard plate of your case. The motherboard rests on the stand-offs. The stand-offs are usually supplied with your case. Align the stand-offs with the holes on your motherboard. For now just screw the stand-offs in for the holes that align with your mobo. Snug them up but be careful not to over tighten or strip the screws.
Examine the cables coming from the power supply to ensure that they are proper length. Make sure the power cables are out of the way temporarily.

Install Motherboard

Insert your motherboard into your case. Make sure that your stand-offs are in place. Be careful to ensure that your ports are aligned with the holes you punched out in the back of the case. Don't force anything; the external ports should fit nicely but snug.
Take your 1/8" hex screws and put the non-conducting washers on them. Now use them to screw down your motherboard. The screws go into the holes that aligned with your stand-offs. Do not over tighten your screws. You want them to be snug, not crushing your motherboard.
We've got the motherboard in!

Find your 20-pin power supply cable and connect it.

Install the RAM, Video Card, and CPU.

Slot 1 CPU's require mounting brackets to keep them firmly in-place. My brackets came with my motherboard. In my case, I had to first put the mounting brackets in place on my CPU and heatsink combo and then insert the CPU into slot 1. I then had to flip over my mother board and screw the brackets from the bottom. Non-conducting screws were provided with my motherboards.
If you don't have a jumperless motherboard you'll need to set the proper jumpers for your CPU multiplier and bus speed. Read your motherboard manual carefully before attempting this. It is important that you use the correct settings or you could potentially damage your CPU or motherboard. If you have a jumperless motherboard you will do this in the BIOS later on.
Next we'll install the memory. SDRAM memory goes straight into your DIMM slots. Mine has clamps that lock into place once the memory is firmly seated. Consult your motherboard manual for types of memory and configurations for your system.

Place your graphics card in the PCI or AGP slot. Remove any plates covering the the slots on the back of the case. Screw down the card's bracket to the case. Connect the SVGA cable to the monitor.

Install the Floppy Drive

Select the 3.5" floppy drive bay and install the drive. My case came with mounting brackets which are screwed to the sides of the drive. The drive is then slid into place and locked with clips. This is a nice arrangement that makes for easy installation and removal.
Examine the floppy disk controller on the motherboard for the position of pin 1.
You should also have a 34-pin floppy cable. Note the twist in the cable located between two of the connectors. The connector located next to the twist in the cable should be then end that goes into the floppy drive. The connector on the other end goes into your floppy disk controller on the motherboard. Be sure to align the red strip on the cable with pin 1 on both the drive and the floppy controller.
Connect the power to your floppy drive.

Power On and Test

Now we're ready to try a power on test to detect the CPU and floppy.
Turn your computer on and enter the BIOS. Hit the "Delete" key as the system is booting.
Once in your BIOS make sure that the floppy drive is selected as a bootable device.
If you have a jumperless motherboard you will now need to select the proper CPU setting. On the ABIT VA6 this is done in CPU Soft Menu.
Our PIII 500E works on a 100MHz front side bus with a multiplier of 5.0. Later on we will increase the FSB setting to overclock the system but for now leave it at 100MHz.
You may also need to make sure that your BIOS has set your floppy drive to bootable. Read your manual to find the proper settings.
Save your BIOS settings to the CMOS and exit.
Your system should reboot and detect the floppy drive. If it doesn't. Power down and go back over your settings. Make sure your cables are firmly connected and correct pin 1 alignment.
Insert you boot diskette into the floppy drive and test again.
If you succeeded to this point you should be able to boot into DOS and see your a: drive.

Install Hard Disk

Again you should have mounting brackets that came with your drive and/or your case. Connect the IDE cable to controller one on your motherboard. Make sure that the red strip on the able is aligned with pin 1 on both the drive and controller. Connect the power. Make sure that your drive has the Master jumper pins set. Consult your drive's documentation if you don't know how the jumper pins should be set.

Once your drive is installed we're ready to boot the system again.

Turn the system on.
Enter your BIOS and make sure the drive is selected. Usually, auto detect should be enabled for the IDE controller. I had to enter the "Detect Hard" drive on my BIOS. Save your settings on exit.
Insert the installation diskette that came with your hard drive.
Reboot your system.
The drive software should partition your disk and create a boot sector. You will need to have your operating system's boot floppy handy. Once the hard disk drivers are installed the system should be rebooted. Remove any floppies from the drive.
If installation disk doesn't automatically partition and format your drive you can do this manually with the fdisk and format commands.
Power down the system.

Install CD-ROM

Now we'll need to install the CD-ROM before you can install Windows.

You're CD-ROM should come with a diskette containing the DOS drivers. It should also (if you're lucky) provide you with the installation setup to do this automatically. If it doesn't you can do it manually if you have the right drivers. You'll need to modify the config.sys and autoexec.cfg files to load the drivers and run the MSCDEX.EXE program.

Your config.sys should contain a line similar to the following: REM - other gump in your config.sys goes here - Device=C:\ATAPI_CD.SYS /D:OEMCD001 Autoexec should have the following line:

Device=C:\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD001

Install the Operating System

Once you have completed installation of the drivers reboot and test to see that your drive is detected. If successful you can now begin installation of Windows9X.
After your system has booted and your CD-ROM is working you can run the Windows9X setup installation procedure. 'cd' to the CD-ROM drive and run setup.exe.
Windows will load and reboot and begin detecting the new hardware devices on your system. This includes the graphics card. You should have your graphics card's drivers handy as Windows will prompt you for them.
If you're running Windows 95a you may also have a problem with the 440LX or 440BX chipsets. Hopefully, your motherboard manufacturer provide the patches to your operating system for these new chipsets. Otherwise, Windows 95 will run in compatibility mode. Everything will still work but your PCI bridge will not be working correctly. If you do not have the patches for these chipsets first see if you can obtain these from the vendor you purchased your motherboard from, motherboard manufacturer or Intel. I downloaded mine from Intel and they worked fine.

Start Having Fun!

At this point you should have a functioning system and can begin installation of your sound card and modem. I will not go into any further detail here as this is a fairly straight forward process. I recommend installing them one-at-a-time. Install the hardware and drivers for one before proceeding to the next.
I hope this guide proved to be of some small help to you. Enjoy your new system!

Tools You Need to Build Your Own Computer

2011-09-14T14:41:00.000-07:00

Tools You Need to Build Your Own Computer

You don't need an expensive toolkit to build your own computer, but there are a few simple tools that you absolutely must have. All of these can be easily obtained at almost any computer store or online, usually in a little case that contains everything you need. You can also buy most of them at ordinary hardware stores.

As with all tools, you should buy the best quality computer tools that you can afford. Good tools last longer and make the job easier. All computer tools should be non-magnetized.

You will need, at a minimum, the following simple tools:

Screwdrivers and nut drivers.

You should have available, at a minimum, small- and medium-sized Phillips and flat screwdrivers and a 1/4" nut driver.

Needle-Nosed Pliers

Very small needle-nosed pliers are very handy for removing and inserting jumpers on motherboards and hard drives. (A pair of tweezers or surgical forceps also works well for this purpose.)

Cable Ties

Plastic cable ties are useful for neatly bundling wires and cables away from fans and other components inside the computer. If you can't find them, electrical tape is an acceptable substitute.

Anti-Static Wrist Strap

This is a little elastic strap connected to a wire with an alligator clip on the other end. The alligator clip is attached to a metal part of the computer chassis, and the elastic band slipped around your wrist. Better-quality anti-static kits also include a rubberized mat that connects to the wire and is placed under the computer being worked on. This provides extra static protection, and also protects your tabletop from scratches.

Heat Sink Compound

This is usually included with processor fans, but may be purchased separately. It is applied neatly to the area where the processor contacts the heat sink to improve cooling efficiency. (Some heat sinks have the compound "built-in" behind a little peel-off label.) I like Arctic Silver.

Canned Air

This is really needed only if some of your parts are used and/or dusty. Never blow into a computer with your lips to remove dust. Your breath contains too much moisture (and maybe other things depending on what you ate for dinner). Use canned air instead. It's cheap.

Pill Bottle

You'll need a pill bottle or other small container to hold the various screws, jumpers, and other small parts used to assemble and configure a homebuilt computer.

How To Prevent Bad Sectors In Hard Disks

2011-09-07T13:24:00.000-07:00

1.
Do not bump your hard disk at all. The HDD may be mostly made of

metal but you have to handle them like eggs;

2.
If you dont want bad sectors, never move your PC while it is on.

Never. Shutdown. Shutoff. Move the PC. Then turn it on.

3.
Do not put anything on top of your HDD. If your gonna store it, make

sure they are in proper packaging (anti-static bags and clamshells o

styro boxes).

4.
Only hold or handle your HDDs by their edges, never touch the printed

circuit boards or electronic parts.

5.
If you have to put the HDD down on, lay it down on an anti-static bag

6.
When mounting HDDs use the proper screws (coarse thread and

shorter screw) as opposed to the screws for CDROM drives and Floppy

Drives which are fine thread, and the case screws which are coarse

thread but longer.

7.
Use as many screws to mount your HDD as possible, usually 4, some

techs will use only 3, I have seen HDDs mounted using only 1 screw.

Why? The 4 screws will ensure proper heat transfer from the HDD to

the case and will handle the vibration properly.

8.
Tighten but not over tighten the screws. Your screws are steel, the

HDD case is aluminum, you endanger or damaging the thread in you

HDD if you over tighten.

9.
You may mount the HDD in any way (level, un-level, upwards,

downwards, vertical) whatever it takes to make it fit your casing. There

will be no problem performance-wise.

But keep in mind, in the, future say 2 years, you have to unmount and

reinstall the HDD in a configuration different to what it has been

accustomed to, the HDD might die on you just like that. Example ?

vertically mounted for 2 years, then i-reinstall mo horizontally. Probably

on the startup, your hdd possibly die. It happened to me 3X already.

Perfectly working HDD, then remounted in a different way, then my

hard disk just gave up . Most probably the bearings have gotten used

to the old mounting and seize up when mounted differently.

10.
Keep your HDDs cool. Blow fans on them, use coolers. At the very

least make sure your casing is properly ventilated. Heat shortens the

life of HDDs. But Choose carefully on what fans you will use, choose

the fan which produce less vibration.

11.
Cables? Make sure your cables are good and connected correctly. It

may cause damage to the HDD

12.
Power Supply? Make sure your power supply is up to snuff. This is

where most HDDs fail after serving you for a long time. Low 12-volt

rails kill HDD motors. Bad 5V kill HDD electronics.

13.
Power connectors. Make sure your power connectors (those white

plugs with yellow, black and red wires) fit well. Loose connectors

provide bad power. After running your PC for a while, say 15-30

minutes, touch your connectors, if they are hot, then there?s

something loose, replace with a spare connector and label the bad

connector. If you do system checkups, it is good to take note of heat

discoloration on power connectors and replace those bad ones;

14.
Black outs do not just kill lights, they kill HDDs. Black outs are

sometimes accompanied by bad power spikes and deadly voltage

fluctuations. If you can afford a good UPS, buy one.

15.
When transferring HDDs between systems don't just take one and

install into another and fire it up just like that. Please make sure you

get into BIOS first and make sure that your new system is set to auto.

If your old system detected the HDD using manual or non-standard

parameters, then duplicate the parameters first in BIOS in the new

system before booting up. You might scramble all your data if you

new system tries to read the HDD using wrong parameters.

16.
If you use your PC a lot, defrag your partitions once a month. If not,

defrag once every 3 months will be fine. For those of you who think

that defragmention speeds up your HDDs death, may I give a small

explanation. If your partition is quite fragmented, your HDD will be

doing a lot of unnecessary work by default, its head going back and

forth trying to get to the different parts of your files scattered all ove

your disk. Besides with a defragmented disk, you will have a more

responsive PC.

17.
Install enough RAM. You don't want your HDD swapping files back and

forth from system RAM and the swap file. Lots of work for the HDD,

slow PC.

18.
Partition your HDD. At least 2 partitions. One partition for you

Operating System. The other one for your data. This way if your OS

gets corrupted (and it happens) you don't have to perform PC

acrobatics to get your data back. You can reformat your OS partition

and be assured that your data is safe in a separate partition.

(In case your hard disk had a bad sector, use HDD Regenerator by dposoft. It Can Recover Damaged Sectors. I prefer it than Spinrite.)

How-to build a computer

2011-09-07T13:22:00.000-07:00

Hello new builder, I have seen many people posting requesting help/tips/how-to build a computer. Chances are if you are reading this you are one of those people anyways, lets get started.

First off lets start off with if you actually need a custom built PC or is a pre-built machine such as a dell or hp a better value for you.

Some of the questions I recommend you ask your self are:
What am I going to be using my computer for?
How often do I use my computer?
Do I plan on using my computer for anything more advanced in the near future?

If you are using your computer for music and the occasional game of solitare with some web browsing mixed in; perhaps you should consider a pre-built machine t will most likely be a better value because they buy there parts in massive quantities and are able to sell them way cheaper than you can ever buy them.

If your planning on a more intensive computer experience such as editing, gaming, or hacking (lol) you may want to consider building your own machine. It will be way higher quality product and a much better value than any pre-built system. It is also more "future-proof" since when you build your own you are most likely purchasing some of the highest quality parts on the market its safe to say you wont see it in any computer at best buy for at least two more years. Like 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM with a 890(AMD) series chipset or a x58(intel) series chipset on the motherboard.

Dont be afraid though just because a custom built PC is so much better doesn't mean you have to break the bank.
You can get away with 600 USD easy
you can be proud with 900-1100 USD
and you can brag your ass off to just about everyone for 1200-2400 USD.

I will be teaching you the basics of everything you should look out for when first building a computer.

Here is a list of components needed. (no particular order)

Motherboard

CPU/Processor (Central Processing Unit)

Fan/Heatsink (Many times included with CPU but aftermarket heatsinks are recommended)

RAM/Memory (Random Access Memory)

Graphics Card (Sometimes optional but recommended)

Power Supply

CD/DVD Drive (Blu-Ray optional)

Hard Drive

Case

OS(operating system)

Now lets go through the components in greater detail. I believe it should help you to see this list with and without the descriptions.

Motherboard - The motherboard is a crucial piece of hardware in your build. Do not go to cheap on the motherboard or you will sacrifice a huge amount of perfomance, durability, and overall quality. When selecting your motherboard be sure to check the CPU socket and wattage! If you choose a motherboard but the socket for the CPU is not compatible you will not be able to run your computer. For example, If you are shopping for an intel i7 with a LGA1366 socket and you choose a LGA1156 socket motherboard it will not work! LGA1366 CPU = LGA1366 motherboard, etc. Although when shopping for an AMD CPU, You can buy an AM3 CPU and put it in a AM2 socket motherboard and it will still be compatible, BUT you will have a performance decrease compared to an AM3 socket motherboard.

You also need to check the wattage for your CPU and motherboard. If you select a 140w CPU but buy a 125w motherboard you could potentially destroy everything in a power surge. It could all FRY into smoke! (maybe not quite that extreme but DO NOT choose a CPU that has more power than your motherboard can handle!!)

CPU/Processor (Core Processing Unit) - This would be the "brains" of the operation. It plays a hand in everything. The main objective is to handle your task in your OS(operating system). I would get the highest quality CPU possible with your budget, if you are on a strict budget AMD offers a lot of "bang for the buck". Again make sure you check wattage and sockets.

RAM/Memory (Random Access Memory) - This is another huge roll in speed. It stores memory from applications and processes temporarily. If you do not have enough RAM then your computer will be much much much MUCH slowerr. I recommend 4 GB of high quality RAM. DDR3 with a speed of at least 1333MHz should do, Although I would suggest 1600MHz. If you plan on doing something like 3d or video editing then You may want to get more but for multi-tasking and gaming 4GB should be enough. Sometimes you will need to go into your BIOS and manually select your clock speeds for it to function 100%. CONSULT YOUR MOTHERBOARD MANUAL FOR THIS! I can not tell you how to do this because not every motherboard's BIOS is the same. So navigation and settings could all be slightly different. I can suggest if you do not want to read your manual to go on YouTube or Google and search "YourMotherBoardModel RAM timings" You should be able to find something. If you do not find anything, just read your manual!

Fan/Heatsink - I did not originally intend to go over this but it has been "requested" so I will give you a quick run-down. When selecting this look at your budget, find one with good reviews. Look for idle temps and load temps. if it idles around 30 or below that is good much higher than that it might not be as good. Also check the load temps. The good ones I have seen don't go to much over 60. Also when you purchase a CPU a heatsink usually comes with it. If you do not plan on overclocking then you will be fine with stock cooling. When selecting a heatsink be sure it is compatible with your socket type and that it will fit in your case with no problems.

Graphics Card (Sometimes optional but recommended) - If you plan on gaming you NEED a gfx card! If you plan on basic web browsing movie watching and low computing you should find a mother board with display outputs (most of them have that) Anyways with how fast games are advancing always get the latest technology!!! It is crucial that you get the latest technology or else you may not be able to take advantage of all the features of new games and you may not be able to see the graphics as they were designed to see. If you are wondering how much you should spend on a gfx card the answer is simple. If you select a $500 CPU chances are a $500 GFX card will be just about perfect for your system. One thing you need to make sure of is that your PSU has the connections and meets the minimum power requirements. That is VERY important.

Power Supply - Well not much to explain here it supplies power to everything in your system.

When selecting your power supply DO NOT skimp out towards the cheaper ones!! This is very important, you need to give your computer nice clean smooth power in order to see full performance. If your budget allows it go for a modular PSU, It will keep your case organized and increase airflow witch increases performance.

CD/DVD Drive (Blu-Ray optional) - Two words. SATA, High-rating.
Get a drive that connects through a SATA cable it is faster, and more efficient. Get the one with the best rating to price ratio. Like if ones 5 stars by 50 people and cost $75.00 but another one has 50 5 star ratings and cost $34.99 go for the $34.99 drive.

NOTE: Make sure to compare specifications.(Sometimes there is a reason one cost more)

Thats about all you need to know to select a proper CD/DVD/BR-D drives.

Hard Drive - Well pretty simple here as well, SATA, SSD if your budget allows, high ratings, good price and memory capacity.

Recommend you get a traditional HDD and a SSD. Get a SSD to boot off of and store programs (I would say at least 64GB) and then get a traditional HDD with a much larger capacity to store things like photos and music.

NOTE: Make sure to compare specifications.(Sometimes there is a reason one cost more)

Case - Again high ratings. To choose the right size case look at your motherboard, and gfx card. Is your motherboard micro atx, full atx, or extended atx? How long is your graphics card? If you have a micro ATX with a small or no GFX card you can get a micro/smaller case. ATX size motherboard requires at least a Mid size case. Extended ATX or ATX with a huge gfx card requires a full sized case.(ext atx mobo check case to ensure compatiblity)

OS(operating system) - I recommend you get W7 Home Premium OEM 64-bit. 32-bit only supports about 3 GB of ram, 64-bit supports as much as you could possibly fit on one motherboard.

Where do I shop?
Well I am glad you asked! Here is a list of sites recommended by custom modding

US:

newegg.com: well this site just has everything for highly competitive prices with customer reviews that can be extremely helpful. Awesome shipping as well.
tigerdirect.com: Good prices, fast shipping, reliable products

Canada:

tigerdirect.ca: Good prices, fast shipping, reliable products
Newegg.ca: It's newegg, they have just about everything you'll ever need for great prices with very reliable shipping!

UK:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk (good for components, cheap and fast)
http://www.novatech.co.uk (good for bundles and basics, also good for components)

Australia:

umart.com.au: Good for finding what you need. Very clean and organised.
msy.com.au: Cheapest around. Best prices by far.

Now when building it is actually very simple.

I may go over this in more detail but for now YouTube has like a gazillion howto videos on this already.

Before beginning make sure you are on a static-free work area (not your carpet) and have an anti-static wristband as well as being properly grounded.

Step 1 - Put power supply in case, screw into case.
Step 2 - Screw in spacers/standoffs where motherboard will sit.
Step 3 - Install hard drive(s) and CD/DVD drive(s) into case.
Step 4 - Install CPU, RAM, and Heatsink into motherboard.
Step 5 - Mount and Screw in motherboard into case.
Step 6 - Install GFX card into PCIx slot
Step 7 - Attatch all power connectors to specified spot on motherboard (consult manual for more information)
Step 8 - Push the power button and watch it post. (boots into BIOS)
Step 9 - Go back and spend a lot of time getting your cables organized. (this is called cable management)
Step 10 - Boot up with OS CD in disc drive and go through the installation process, and BOOM your done!

Thanks for reading this and I hope it helped your venture into building computers!! If you have any other questions go ahead and let us know!

How to: Overclock Your Graphics Card.

2011-09-01T15:29:00.000-07:00

How to Overcklock Your Graphic Card.

You will get about 10-15% more performance for free.
The only bad thing is that the temperature will increase and life of the hardware will decrease.

I know this work whit Nvidia but I think it works whit ATI to.

Start to download RivaTuner, Furmark and GPU-Z. Install the programs and follow the instructions.

Download GPU-Z: http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/
Download Furmark: http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/
Download RivaTuner: http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=rivatuner

Start Riva Tuner. At the moment Riva tuner doesn't support the latest Nvidia drivers.
This is done under the tab "Power User". Navigate there and expand the list "System". A bit down in this list, a parameter called "Force Driver Version". This value will be changed to 18585, ie the driver's version number. Save the settings, click "OK". Restart the program.
Always keep an eye for the new version of Riva Tuner.

Although the program will still say that the drivers are not supported, but we can access the overclocking menu. Click on the small arrow to the right under Driver Settings. In the four icons that pup up you will choose the one to the left, that looks like an graphic card.

Click on "detect now" in the window.

The upper lever controls graphics processor (GPU) clock frequency, the middle takes care of the stream processors and the bottom changes the memory clock. Move the slider to the right to increase the frequency.

Now is the time to trim the clock frequencies. Start Furmark and GPU-Z. The first program is used to check if the clock frequencies is working and what temperature the graphics card reaches, and the other to see which clock frequencies used at the moment.

With Furmark and GPU-Z running, we return to overclocking tab in Riva Tuner and start raising the clock frequencies. It is easiest to start with only the GPU and then take care of the stream processors and memory by hand. Raise the clock gradually by 10-15 MHz at a time. Furmark ensures that the graphics card is under full load, which will appear when the temperatures shoots away.

Depending on the graphics card is used, sooner or later encounter a limit where graphics error occur. This is usually seen in Furmark as small dots or nails projecting from the hairy ball. When this occurs, lower the clock rate slightly and try again.

When you know the clock frequency GPU is capable of, just apply the same method on the stream processors and graphics memory, with small incremental increases in time. Should your computer freeze because of too high overclocking, just reboot, then the default settings will be loaded.

Let Furmark runing a moment to make sure that the clock frequencies are stable. Between 45 minutes and two hours will do it. When you are satisfied, it is possible to let the Riva Tuner apply the settings each time Windows boots. To do this, tick the option "Apply Overclocking at Windows startup" in the overclocking menu.

Now you are done. You can see how much the performance have increased by running 3Dmark before and after.

Intel Overclocking Guide

2011-09-01T15:24:00.000-07:00

First of all, you need the following programs :

CPUz:
Displays your current vcore, FSB, multiplier, RAM settings. You'll need it all the time.
RealTemp:
Displays the temperatures of the cores. Must have.
OCCT:
Used to check stability of the system.
Prime95:
Used to check stability of the system. Use this for 12h or OCCT for 2h.
Intel Burn Test:
Not for beginning overclockers. This program WILL stress the CPU, Memory, North Bridge, and other system components to their highest extent! Make sure your PC is properly cooled and ventilated! I prefer the beginners to use it after their system passes OCCT or prime95 test.

What is overclocking?

Overclocking is the process of making your hardware run faster then originally intended by the manufacturer. It is operating hardware (particularly CPU, RAM, motherboard, and video card) above the specs to which a piece of hardware is expected to, has been tested to, and is warranted to perform.

Overclocking is more of an art than a science. There is no combination of settings that will yield the best results for every system. it is and will be a trial and error process. Don't be afraid to experiment, but I suggest to always go slow. Experience can make overclocking easier.

What is FSB?

FSB is Front Side Bus also known as System BUS and connects the CPU with the main memory and is used to connect to other components within the computer. Depending on different processors, the FSB can range from 66MHz to 500MHZ and beyond. That means Rated FSB the quad pumped processors will range from 476MHz to 2000MHz and above.

Remember, throughout this tutorial and throughout all the tuts and overclocking discussions, try to think about external clock speed as FSB. Because, the latest processors are quad pumped. That means, the Rated FSB of these processors are 4 times the original FSB [I mean the external clock speed, that how intel owners name the original FSB]. Suppose, I say that the FSB is 333MHz, then the Rated FSB is 333MHz*4=1333MHz. But you don't need to worry about the rated FSB. All you need to know about the "FSB". Because the BIOS will allow you to edit the FSB, not the rated FSB.

Rated FSB = FSB*4

Overclocking in the BIOS:
Many boards will offer you overclocking softwares. But the best way to overclock is to use the BIOS.

Limitations:

Each hardware component has physical limitations that, at a minimum, meet the stock specs. In the process of overclocking your system, you'll face motherboard limit, processor limit, ram limit. PSU and cooling of your system will also affect the overclocking process.

Basics:

First of all, read your motherboard manual properly. Make sure that you know everything about your BIOS settings and know how to reset your BIOS if your PC just keeps restarting or acts abnormally or doesn't reboot normally.

Now, the formula is-

Code:
CPU Speed = CPU Multiplier x Front Side Bus [FSB]

For example, the default speed of E7200 is 2.53GHz.
Here, default FSB is 266 MHz and default multiplier is 9.5.

SO, [266MHz*9.5]= 2530MHz=2.53GHz

Some of the processors have locked multipliers. That means you cannot increase or decrease the multipliers. In some case, you can only decrease the multiplier. And in some processors, they give you the ability to both increase and decrease the multipliers.

Memory Bandwidth:

DDR = Dual Data Rate. If your use DDR,DDR2,DDR3 RAM, your BIOS may list RAM/DRAM frequency (Half of RAM's rated DDR speed) or actual DDR speed. The PC equivalent is 8 times the DDR speed or 16 times the actual frequency. As example we can say DDR400 is rated as PC3200 (also DDR2-400 = PC2-3200). DDR2-800, is DDR2 memory rated at 800Mhz. However, that is its rated (Dual Data Rate) speed. The memory is actually only running at 400Mhz, but since data is being read on both peaks of each cycle, its rated speed is doubled.
People compare the speed of the memory as a ratio to the CPU's FSB.

What is Divider?

The ratio of CPU:RAM is known as a divider. For this ratio, you use the actual memory speed, not the rated speed.

For example, a CPU with a FSB of 266.66MHz will be in a 1:1 ratio with memory at 266.66Mhz [DDR2-533]. Or a CPU of 400MHz will be in 1:1 ratio with a memory at 400MHz [DDR2-800]. Depending on motherboards, you will see 1:1, 2:3, 3:4, 4:5 etc ratios. Cheap motherboards will not give many ratios. Some boards give this ratios as numbers like 2x, 2.5x, 3x etc. In those cases, just multiply the numbers with the FSB to get the cpu speed.

Code:
The max FSB supported by a  DDR-xxx ram is xxx/1=yyy

The max FSB supported by a DDR2-xxx ram is xxx/2=yyy.

The max FSB supported by a DDR3-xxx ram is xxx/4=yyy.

Like DDR2-800 rams can support a maximum of 400 FSB if the ram is not overclocked.

BIOS Settings:

All the BIOS are not same. Some features are named differently on different motherboards. Some are not available and some are hidden. You're on your own to figure them out and that shouldn't be that tough. It goes without saying that your board will have these organized differently as well. Because you can't rule out the basic settings from the BIOS. xD

Enter the BIOS and look for the following options. The BIOS on most boards can be accessed by pressing the DEL key at system startup. Browse through the BIOS options and get familiar. Try to know if your mobo has hidden options. If any, learn which button will unlock them. Generally Ctrl+F1 works. Or there should be an option saying "Enter advanced options" or something like that.

Now we will fix some basic settings. [Not overclocking, but are needed to overclock]

First Disable this settings-

C1E, Max CPUID value limit , Vanderpool, SpeedStep/EIST, Legacy USB, Spread Spectrum.

C1E and Speedstep/EIST are power saving options. You can turn them on later and see that if the overclock stays stable.

Then Enable these settings-

CPU TM function/TM2 function, EDB/ Execute disable bit, PECI.

Now, you'll have to set any options relating cpu frequency and ram frequency to manual. But, for first time set the voltage and ram timings options to auto. Also, if there's any "AI' option, set it to manual.

Ok, now we will overclock. In my case I'll overclock a E7200 which has a default FSB of 266.

PCI Express Frequency â€“ Set this to 100 MHz first. Don't use auto.

PCI Clock Synchronization - Use 33.33 MHz here. Don't use auto.

DRAM Frequency - This the speed your RAM will run. This will change with the cpu FSB. Make sure you donâ€™t exceed the amount for which your specific RAM is rated. Most good boards will offer several fsb : dram dividers. Some will offer a few.

Assuming that youâ€™re using a 320 MHz FSB the ratios will be:

Code:
1. FSB :  DRAM

   2. 1:1 =  320 MHz : 640 MHz

   3. 4:5 =  320 MHz : 800 MHz

   4. 2:3 =  320 MHz : 960 MHz

   5. 5:8 =  320 MHz : 1024 MHz

   6. 3:5 =  320 MHz : 1066 MHz

   7. 1:2 =  320 MHz : 1280 MHz

If you use 333 MHz FSB, ratios will be-

Code:
1. FSB :  DRAM

   2. 1:1 =  333 MHz : 667 MHz

   3. 4:5 =  333 MHz : 833 MHz

   4. 2:3 =  333 MHz : 1000 MHz

   5. 5:8 =  333 MHz : 1066 MHz

   6. 3:5 =  333 MHz : 1111 MHz

   7. 1:2 =  333 MHz : 1333 MHz

If you use 400 MHz FSB, the ratios will be-

Code:
1. FSB :  DRAM

   2. 1:1 = 400 MHz : 800 MHz

   3. 4:5 = 400 MHz : 1000 MHz

   4. 2:3 = 400 MHz : 1200 MHz

   5. 5:8 = 400 MHz : 1280 MHz

   6. 3:5 = 400 MHz : 1333 MHz

   7. 1:2 = 400 MHz : 1600 MHz

You can calculate these yourself with this formula:

Code:
DRAM Final Clockrate = [2 x FSB]/Divider

Example, 4/5 divider @ 400 MHz FSB: (2 x 400 MHz)/(4/5) = 1,000 MHz.

If your ram is only 800 MHz, you have to select FSB as 267. Then you will be using your maximum ram without overclocking the ram. Or you have to select different ratio.

Now, set ram timings and ram voltages to auto because we are not overclocking the ram yet. And as you are new, do ot mess with nortbridge voltage.

Now, I want you to see your default cpu voltage or cpu vcore [It is supposed to set to auto, the voltage will be shown]. Write it down and set cpu voltage or cpu vcore to manual. And put the value that you just wrote manually. Suppose, when your cpu vcore was set to auto, its value was 1.175. Now set it to manual and manually put the value 1.175. This will ensure safety. Now save the settings[Save to a profile if available].

[Step XXX]
Now, increase your FSB by a small amount like 5-10MHz and make sure the ram is not overclocked [Ram can be underclocked]. Then save and restart your PC. If you can boot normally, go to step xxx. Raise your FSB upto to the amount you want[by small increment and saving and restarting- be sure not to get a very high frequency. If you browse the net, you will see what is safe overclocked FSB and voltage for your processor ] until the system resets automatically or if you cannot boot. Ok, now get to BIOS and increase your vcore a bit[1 step] and see if you can reboot[Never go over 1.25v because you are new. Veterans run PCs at even 1.45-1.5 volts]. If you cannot reboot properly, increase the voltage a notch. Increase it notch by notch until you can reboot properly[Don't go over 1.25v]. If you can reboot properly, run OCCT cpu test for 2h for stability check. If you fail, lower the FSB until you are stable with OCCT. If you pass, run 5 cycles of intel burn test. If you pass, note the highest temperature on load and while idle from real temp. Also note the voltage while idle and voltage on load from CPUz. If you think the temperatures are too high[more than 55 degree Celsius on load], decrease the vcore a notch. If you cannot reboot successfully, lower the FSB until it is stable with OCCT.

You don't want to overclock more than 20% if you are new. So be happy with mild overclocking unless you gain experience.

Generally, you won't be able to increase your multiplier. But you can decrease it and still gain same overclock. Look at the example-

Code:
E7200 , DDR2-800 ram, Multiplier: 9.5

Now @default, I have 266*9.5=2.53GHz 

Overclocked, 320*9.5=3.04GHz

Divider ratio I've used is 4:5=4/5. With it, my ram will run at  [320*2]/[4/5]=800MHz. Which is the maximum stock ram frequency. So, I'd  say my overclock is optimized for its best result because I'm not  risking overclocking the ram but I'm having the most of the rated  frequency.

What if I used 2:3 divider? 

Then the ram would run at [320*2]/[2/3]=960MHz!!! But my ram is rated as  800MHz. So if I do it, the ram will die. So I won't do it. I could  overclock the ram but I'm not showing you that since you are new. Just  remember, do not go over rated ram frequency. If you had to underclock  the ram upto 60~70 MHz to  have a large overclock, you can do it though.  

I could've set the frequency and multiplier differently but still I could gain the same overclock using the maximum rated ram.

See-

400*7.5 =3.04 GHz and I'm using 1:1 divider.

So, my ram will run at [400*2]/[1/1]=800MHz. See? I'm not overclocking  the ram. But I'd recommend setting the multiplier to its highest value  and playing with the FSB and divider. Because some mobos and processors  don't like high FSB[Yes, 400 FSB is pretty high].

So, the finally the key is optimizing the performance of the overclock by varying the FSB, multiplier, divider etc. Set voltages other than the vcore to auto. Don't mess with timings. Don't go over 1.25 vcore. Don't overclock ram. Don't jump with the overclock. Ok, now if you did everything properly, you should be stable in OCCT. But do a final stability test with prime95 mix test and run it for 12 hours. It should be successful.

Welcome, you have successfully done. If you read the guide properly, you should be able to have good overclocks.

P.S. : If anything can't increase the FSB, up the PCI-E frequency. UPing upto 120MHz is safe.

Sony VAIO VGX-TP20E/B Home Theater Personal Computer

2011-08-21T04:35:00.000-07:00

The Bottom Line

Sony's previous TP model home theater model was very distintive with its white round shape. The new black design really does make it look like a hockey puck, but it is a realtively small system that fits well with a home theater systems. Its relatively low price for a home theater PC also makes it attractive, but be aware it has limited drive space for storing much video.

Pros

Good Pricing
Distinctive Styling
Low Noise Operating

Cons

Lower Performance Because of Mobile Parts
Fairly Limited Drive Space For Storing Video
Doesn't Support CableCard

Description

Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 Dual Core Mobile Processor
2GB PC2-5300 DDR2
500GB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive
Blu-ray Reader and Dual Layer DVD Burner Combo Drive
NVIDIA GeForce 8400M Graphics Processor with 256MB Memory
Digital and Ananlog TV Tuner
Intel HDA
10/100 Ethernet and 802.11b/g Wireless
Four USB 2.0, FireWire, HDMI and 3-in-1 Card Reader
Windows Vista Home Premium, Sony VAIO Suite

Guide Review - Sony VAIO VGX-TP20E/B Home Theater Personal Computer

6/26/08 - Sony's VAIO TP20E/B offers some strong features for those looking to integrated it into a Sony based home theater setup. The TP20 can connect via a cable to the Bravia to allow for a single remote to control both units. Definitely an excellent feature but limited to just Sony brand products.

In terms of its home theater features, the TP20 is a definite step up from previous versions thanks to the inclusion of a DVD burner that also has the ability to play back Sony's Blu-ray high definition movie format. The only way that could be improved is the ability to also burn to Blu-ray drives, but for this price range, it is still an excellent feature. The digital tuner also allows it to record and playback high definition TV over the air.

There are some issues though with its home theater features. First, the hard drive is on the small side compared to many other HTPC systems. The 500GB will limit the amount of video that can be stored on the system, particularly if it is recorded in high definition. The other problem is that the system does not have any means to support CableCard. This prevents it from being used with cable or satellite systems directly, two of the most common methods for receiving high definition TV.

In terms of computing power, the VAIO TP20 is a bit underpowered compared to other systems. This is because Sony relies on using mobile parts typically found in laptop PCs. This does help the overall power consumption of the system and it greatly reduces the amount of heat and noise generated by the TP20, both of which can benefit a PC in a home theater setup. It just can't power through tasks like transcoding video like a standard desktop based HTPC can.

NewerTech unveils NuGuard GripStand / GripBase bundle for iPad 2

2011-08-21T04:28:00.000-07:00

We’ve provided our readers with details on a number of different iPad 2 accessories since the tablet was first introduced back in March this year, including the ZAGGmate Bluetooth keyboard stand, a collection of Angry Birds cases, and a range of jackets and sleeves from M-Edge. Now we have news on some more iPad 2 accessories.

As Juli over on the padgadget.com website recently reported, NewerTech – the supplier of PC, Mac and mobile accessories – has just unveiled its NuGuard GripStand and GripBase bundle for the iPad 2, which enables users to take and use their Apple tablet almost anywhere they go. What’s more is that the accessories bundle is available in either black or white.

The NuGuard GripStand and GripBase accessories bundle includes a hard plastic shell – which actually works quite well with Apple’s Smart Cover – that surrounds the Apple iPad 2 in shock-absorbent rubber for extra protection and a nylon car strap, which securely mounts the tablet PC to a car headrest (in the back) for browsing the Internet and watching movies whilst travelling.

It also comes with a removable GripStand that can be swivelled 360 degrees and manoeuvred into almost any angle for both typing and viewing, a GripBase Workstation, which turns the iPad 2 into a skid-resistant desktop workstation that’s almost impossible to knock over, and a one-hand grip handle that enables users to hold their iPad 2 like a briefcase.

The handle can also be rotated and used as a hook, so users can hang the iPad 2 on the wall in either portrait or landscape mode. As for the price and availability, the NewerTech NuGuard GripStand and GripBase bundle is available immediately for $39.99, and can be purchased from the company’s exclusive distributor Other World Computing, or through the retail channel.

Are you thinking about buying some new accessories for your iPad 2? If you were, would you buy the NewerTech NuGuard GripStand and GripBase accessories bundle?

iPad 3 release date not in time for Christmas

2011-08-21T04:26:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of speculation over the last few months that Apple could be release another iPad during the fall of this year. Now we have news that the iPad 3 release date will not be in time for Christmas as first thought.

Now there are claims that because of production constraints for the higher-resolution display panels for the new device, Apple has stopped its supply schedule for the iPad 3 during the second half of 2011. According to DigiTimes Apple schedule accounted for up to two million units during the third quarter, with five to six million during the fourth quarter.

The sources are claiming that Apple’s partners couldn’t supply the yield rate of the 9.7-inch panel that has a resolution of 2,048 x 1,536, and were unable to provide high enough production levels of the display.

Since the iPad 2 first became available there have been numerous rumors that there will be a new version arriving this year but with a Retina display. Whether any of these reports were true remains to be seen, and many consumers who had just laid out for the iPad 2 would have quite angry if a new version was to come out so soon.

The iPad 2 remains to sell strongly despite the continuing rumors of a new model this year, with the company selling almost ten million units during the June quarter. Back in June LG Display had supplied Apple with three million iPad 2 displays, and Samsung provided around 1.5 million units. But the following month LG’s supply dropped with Samsung providing around the same amount.

Apple may be already working on the iPad 3 but have planned all along to release it next year. Even though the original iPad was replaced in under a year, it was longer than the six months that some predicted for the iPad 3. With any tech product these day’s from any manufacturer you can expect a new better version to become available in a short time.

Will you be looking to get an iPad 3 when it becomes available or are you thinking of getting an iPad 2?

www.youripaddownloads.com

2011-07-28T03:16:00.000-07:00

What is YouriPadDownloads? YouriPadDownloads is the internet's latest unlimited iPad downloading membership site. We allow our members to access thousands of Movies, Music, TV Shows, Apps, eBooks, comic books, and much more - without having to pay an extra cent for any downloads! Members can search and download as much as they want, limitless. All downloads are provided in the highest digital quality available

How does the process exactly work?? Members search for their items, download them to their computers (PC or MAC) and then simply transfer their downloaded items to their iPad.

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Do you have a list of the content avhttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1995371363745957961ailable? Unfortunately, at this time we do not have a list of media available. Since content is added to daily, it would be very difficult to keep it up to date. However, you can check our member's top downloaded items using the top downloads menu.

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Product Information

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Blackberry Bold 9650 (SprintPCS)

2011-07-28T01:58:00.000-07:00

Snapshot of Blackberry Bold 9650 (SprintPCS) The BlackBerry Bold 9650 for Sprint allows you to stay in touch with everyone, from nearly anywhere in the world. This global smartphone boasts an optical trackpad that makes it simple to scroll through websites, emails, texts, or your address book. Download the latest apps from the BlackBerry App World store, watch streaming multimedia and videos, take photos and videos with the advanced 3.2 megapixel camera/ camcorder, or find your way to the next meeting or next soccer practice with the built-in GPS. With support for your favorite instant messenger applications and social networking sites as well as fast, wireless access to the business applications and processes you need, the BlackBerry Bold does it all.
Highlights of Blackberry Bold 9650 (SprintPCS) A Powerful, 3G Global Smartphone With The Latest In BlackBerry Technology BlackBerry App World Helps You To Personalize Your BlackBerry To Fit Your Needs Download, View, and Edit Microsoft Office, Excel and Word Mobile Documents Easily Scroll Through The Information You Need With The Updated Optical TrackPad 3.2 MP Camera/Camcorder Captures Memories To Share With Multimedia Messaging, Email, Etc. Popular Applications Pre-Installed: Sprint TV, Sprint Music, Sprint Football Live, Sprint NASCAR Social Networking Apps Like Facebook and Twitter Are Supported By The BlackBerry Bold The Globally-capable Bold Has Integrated GPS To Help You Find Your Way Anywhere A NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile Capable Phone, A FREE App From Sprint PlayBook Compatible
Specifications of Blackberry Bold 9650 (SprintPCS) What's In The Box Additional Items Included - Wall Charger, Battery, USB Cable, Stereo Headset, SIM Card, 2GB MicroSD Card, Guide, User Tools CD Messaging Features Email Client - Easy Email Set-up For BlackBerry Enterprise Server Accounts and Web-based Accounts Like Yahoo! HTML Web Browsing - Yes, BlackBerry Browser Supports Sites With Streaming Media, Bookmarks, RSS Feeds, and More Instant Messenger - Yes, BlackBerry Messenger Pre-loaded Or IM Chat Using Your Favorite Instant Messenger Application Multimedia Messaging - Yes, Send and Receive Picture Messages Text Messaging (SMS) - Yes, Send and Receive Text Messages Entertainment Custom Ringtones - Yes Customizable Graphics - Yes Facebook - Yes Games - Yes App Store - Yes, Supports BlackBerry App World MP3 Player - Yes, Bring Your Music Anywhere, Music Player Supports MP3, AAC and WMA Files and iTunes MP3 Ringtones - Yes MySpace - Yes, Downloadable Photo Apps - Yes, Downloadable Picture Caller ID - Yes Polyphonic Ringtones - Yes Ringer Profiles - Yes Streaming Multimedia Support - Yes, Supports Fast Downloads and Streaming Media like Videos, Music and Sprint TV Twitter - Yes, Downloadable Digital Camera Camera Megapixels - 3.2MP Dedicated Camera Key - Yes Camera - Snap Photos To Share Via Email and Messaging or Easily Upload To The Web Video Capture / Camcorder - Yes, 3.2MP Camera/Camcorder Captures Videos Zoom - 5x Digital Zoom Advanced Features GPS Services Support - Yes, Integrated GPS With BlackBerry Maps and Support For Sprint Navigation PC Synchronization - Yes, PC Sync Via USB Cable, Bluetooth or Over-the-air QWERTY Keyboard - Yes, Full QWERTY Keyboard Attachment Viewing and Editing (Word, Excel) - Yes, View and Edit Microsoft Office Files Like Word and Excel On Your Phone Bluetooth Stereo Headset (A2DP) - Yes, Listen To Music Wirelessly With Stereo Bluetooth-enabled Headset Bluetooth Wireless Technology - Yes, Connect Wirelessly To Other Bluetooth-enabled Devices Like Headsets, Car Kits, Computers, Etc. Upgradeable - Yes, Upgradeable to BB 6 OS Core Features Calculator - Yes PDA Device - Yes Calendar - Yes Color - Black Color Main Display - 2.4", 480 x 360 Pixels, HVGA+, 65000 Color Display Alarm - Yes Style - Candy Bar Speakerphone - Yes To-Do List - Yes Vibrate - Yes Voice Memo - Yes Voice-activated Dialing - Yes Battery Standby Time - 5 Hours Battery Type - Li-Ion Talk Time - Up To 5 hours Technical Specifications 3G Data Speeds - Yes, Where Available Compatible Carrier - Sprint Data Download Speed - CDMA 800, 1900 HSPA Quad Band EDGE Dimensions - 4.4" x 2.4" x 0.6" Expandable Memory Capacity - Expandable Memory Card Slot - 2GB Card Included Hearing Aid Compatible - Yes Internationally Compatible - Yes, Stay Connected Any Where In The World (Roaming Fees Apply) Micro-USB Port - Yes Manufacturer Model Name - 9650 Multiple Numbers Per Name - Yes Network Compatibility - CDMA 800, 1900, 2100/ GSM 850, 900, 1800, 1900 Application Platform - Java Phonebook Capacity - Depends On Available Memory Platform / Operating System - BlackBerry OS 5.0 Software Ringtone Types Supported - Yes Standard 3.5mm Stereo Headset Jack - Yes TTY Compatible - Yes Weight - 4.8 Ounces WiFi - Yes, WiFi Capable Built-In Memory - 512MB RAM
Blackberry Bold 9650 (SprintPCS)
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Arctic MX-4 Thermal Paste

2011-07-27T09:49:00.000-07:00

Arctic MX-4

When comparing the new formula MX-4 to its predecessor, MX-3, we found two significant improvements. The first is that MX-4 spreads much better, very important for those who like to coat the CPU heatspreader before installing a cooler. Additionally it dropped the temperature of our CPU by up to two degrees celcius, something which is always appreciated by enthusiasts and mainstream users alike.

Looking to the comparison with the leading competitor, Gelid GC-Extreme, we saw Arctic in a less than ideal position with MX-3. They had a paste which performed well but the GC-Extreme was much easier to apply, thanks to being thinner. With MX-4 Arctic now have a paste which spreads in a way which levels the playing field whilst enhancing the thermal performance past that offered by Gelid.

A good thermal paste is something everyone should have in their system. Well-made pastes last years, retain their performance and can help in maintaining a cool running, quieter system. MX-4 meets all these requirements and with its industry leading performance should be at the top of everyones shopping list when it comes to a system build.

Arctic cooling accelero L2 plus review

2011-07-19T05:20:00.000-07:00

Arctic cooling accelero L2 plus review

Before we start custom modding would like to thank arctic cooling for providing us this product for testing

Thanks to the flexible mounting design, the Accelero L2 Pro is multi compatible with a wide range of VGA cards. The cooler consists of a 92mm PWM fan and an optimised heatsink, giving it excellent thermal performance - making it an ideal cooling solution for virtually any graphics card.

Accelero L2 Pro VGA Quiet Cooling Solution

The cooler features a 92mm PWM fan that runs from 900 to 2,000 RPM, the Accelero L2 Pro achieves up to 27 CFM airflow and 100 Watts cooling capacity. The optimised heatsink and the pre-applied thermal compound MX-2 guarantee excellent heat dissipation from the core.

The flexible mounting is designed for fitting a wide range of nVIDIA and ATI cards from GeForce FX5700 to the 9800 series; and Radeon X1300 to HD4850 series. The Accelero L2 Pro is surely a perfect cooling solution for these graphics cards at a very competitive price.

The Accelero L2 Pro also excels in noise management. The 92mm fan is equipped with low noise impeller and installed in a patented fan holder in order to eliminate buzzing sounds. Thanks to this excellent acoustic design, the Accelero L2 Pro remains extremely quiet (only 0.4 Sone) even at full speed.

Features

Excellent cooling performance - up to 100W
Ultra-Quiet 92mm PWM fan
Anti-vibration fan mounts
RAM and VRM cooling
Pre-applied MX2 thermal paste
SLI and Crossfire compatible

Specifications

ATI Compatibility	HD 5870, 5850, HD 5770, 5750, 4850, 4830, 4730, 4670, 4650, 4550, 3870, 3850, 3650, 3470, 3450, 2600, 2400, X1950 (Pro), X1900 (GT), X1800, X1600, X1550, X1300
NVIDIA Compatibility	GT220, GT240, GTS250, 9800, 9600, 9500, 9400, 8800GT, 8800GTS(G92), 8600, 8500, 7950, 7900, 7800, 7600, 7300, 6800, 6600, FX5950, FX5900, FX5800, FX5700
Dimensions	11.9 L x 9.4 W x 5.14 H (cm)
Fan Size	92mm PWM
Fan Speed	900 to 2000 RPM
Air Flow	27CFM
Cooling Capacity	100 Watts Max
Bearing Type	Fluid Dynamic Bearing
Weight	250g

Overall custom modding would like to rate this product 82%

Arctic Cooling Freezer 11 LP CPU Cooler Review

2011-07-19T04:53:00.000-07:00

Arctic Cooling Freezer 11 LP CPU Cooler Review

Looking for a HTPC CPU Cooler? Then the Arctic Cooling Freezer 11 LP CPU Cooler is a great choice for you. This cooler has a compact design, ultra quiet PWM fan, and easy installation for HTPCs. The cooler supports CPUs up to 90 Watts and only Intel LGA 775 and 1156 processors. This silent CPU cooler should be something you should have in mind if you’re designing an HTPC system. Read on further to find out more.

Special thanks to Arctic Cooling for providing us with the Freezer 11 LP CPU Cooler to review.

Features

Optimized heatsink designed for slim cases
Ultra quiet 92mm PWM fan
Dual heatpipe for efficient heat dissipation
Patented fan holder to eliminate buzzing sounds
Pre-applied ARCTIC MX-2
Easy installation with push pins

Specifications

Dimensions	115L x 106W x 53H (mm)
Minimum PC Case Height	70mm
Fan	92mm
Fan Speed	900-2000 RPM (controlled by PWM)
Air Flow	27 CFM / 46 m³/h
Maximum Cooling Capacity	90 Watts
Noise Level	0.4 Sone
Bearing	Fluid Dynamic Bearing
Weight	225g

Packaging
The Freezer 11 LP comes in a compact plastic clamshell package, which is form fitting to the cooler. Three plastic latches hold the two plastic parts together. On the front of the package you can see the fan, with the Freezer 11 LP logo on the center of the fan housing, while the back shows the features and specifications.

Arctic Cooling really makes the packaging small and perfect for the small amount of parts to fit inside of the case. This cooler only supports LGA 775 and LGA 1156 sockets, so multiple parts aren’t needed.

Overview
The Arctic Cooling Freezer 11 LP CPU Cooler is designed to be a low-profile (hence the LP in the name), CPU cooler for HTPC systems. The cooler isn’t meant to be a powerful one, but to be a step above stock coolers that are sometimes included with the CPUs. The 92mm PWM fan, along with the aluminum heatsink, and two copper heatpipes help cool to a maximum of 90 Watts.

The cooler isn’t very large at all, measuring in at 115 x 106 x 53mm, which makes it pretty easy to fit in the palm of your hand. The Freezer 11 LP comes equipped with a 92mm PWM fan, which has its own patented fan holder to help eliminate noise. The holes in the four corners aren’t used to attach the fan to the heatsink, but to attach the whole cooler to the motherboard.

The 92mm fan blows over the small aluminum heatsink, in which the two copper heatpipes run through. Each heatpipe takes a side of the heatsink. While the surface area isn’t very big for the Freezer 11, I think that Arctic Cooling could have added a third heatpipe down the center to help improve cooling some more.

The two copper heatpipes extend to from the top of the heatsink to the bottom of the heatsink where they connect midway onto the small base of the cooler. The base is also pre-installed with ARCTIC MX-2 thermal grease.

The base and copper heatpipes are nice and shiny, but will it be enough to cool?

Installation
The installation for the Freezer 11 LP was interesting to say the least. The cooler only supports two installation methods, LGA 775 or LGA 1156; we used a LGA 775 processor. A unique pushpin design is used as this installation method. To install the cooler you have to gather up the plastic pushpins and plastic support bracket.

Then grab your support brackets and align them in whichever direction will fit on your motherboard, just make sure they’re parallel. The direction won’t really matter since the air is going down on the heatsink and not across. Once you get it aligned you can then take the four tan colored pushpin parts and align them in the four holes. You then take the four black push parts and, well push them in. It wasn’t very easy to push them in, but I found it easier to grab another object to help force them in, since the small plastic tips aren’t the greatest for pressing with your fingertips.

Once your bracket is attached all you have to do is align the cooler up so that it will fit on the support brackets. You don’t have to apply any thermal grease, since it’s already applied to the CPU cooler base. Once they’re aligned, you then take the four long screws and fasten the cooler to the support brackets.

Then make sure you attach the PWM power cable and you can install your motherboard back in your case. As you can see from the pictures, it takes up little room inside of the case, making it ideal for HTPCs.

Conclusion
The Arctic Cooling Freezer 11 LP isn’t the ideal CPU cooler for enthusiasts it may be a choice for HTPC builders. It wasn’t designed to be a performance cooler, but to be slightly better than stock coolers and most likely quieter as well. Its compact design and pushpin installation can be seen as a benefit and a con for some, but I can see both sides of the story. While it’s hard to put this cooler on either a good or bad side due to the pros and cons of it, I’d really have to say it’s a middle of the road cooler. Since the cooler is relatively new to the market, it’s hard to find a pricing or even a product page on the manufacturer’s website. If I were buying this cooler, I probably wouldn’t pay more than $25 for it, but we’ll have to wait and see on that. Custom modding would rate this product 78%.

Keeping Your Computer Cool

2011-07-11T13:30:00.000-07:00

Keeping Your Computer Cool

Keeping a computer cool is something that is vital. A computer works based on the movement of electronic impulses. For instance, when a CPU works it transmit billions of frequencies per second. This evolves a astonishing amount of heat. Sometimes we don't expect that a computer can make so much heat from its hardware. Some people wonder why it is important to keep a computer cool and not care if heat builds up and remains in a computer. Some reasons are

Overheating

Motherboard can have a melted componet due to heat

Hardware will not live as long as expected

And More

As you can see heat that generates from a computer and remains in there can have some horrific effects to the computer itself. In this tutorial I will include

Air Cooling

Water Cooling

Tips to keeping a computer cooler

Overclocking and stabalizing the heat

Air Cooling

Air cooling is the most common method to keeping a PC cool. It is a good method if you know how to use it properly. When dealing with air cooling you always need to make sure the fans on the case are spinning the correct way and the air leads a certain way. This counts for additional fans you add to keep your computer cooler. One side should be an intake and the other should be the outake. Think about it this way, if both sides of the case were an intake all the hot air will never escape and get forced into the computer until so much generates and one of the devasting events occur stated earlier. If it was an outake the hot air will go out but more will generate faster since no cool air is going in. It is also important to have the fans making the air flow in one direction and sometimes in a straight line. Doing this will get the hot air out as quick as possible! Many people believe in that if you remove the computer case and get a house fan to cool down the hardware it would be more efficient. WRONG! Doing this will just attract so much dust daily it would generate even more heat. Keep in mind the enviroment temperatures also take a role into keep the computer cool. If it is possible try to make it so the sun does not directly hit the case. Workers in offices keep it under their desks to avoid any heat in the enviroment. Be sure to never keep a computer close to a wall. It should be atleast 1 foot away from the wall. If it is not than the airflow from the intake or outake will not work out properly.

Water Cooling

There comes a time when somoene has such advanced hardware in which the fans can not control it no more. The fans may get to loud or go to quick for you in which you decide you want a water cooling kit. Due to the fact that water transfers heat perfectly and that the CPU is one of the hottest peices of hardware in the computer this is a ideal method to keeping high end hardware cool. For people who never heard of water cooling the computer is not fully engulfed in water. Tubing leads to the hardware in which a pump cycles to pump out cool water and takes out the hot water. This cycle goes on over and over to mantain a good temperature for the computer. In addition, you can not just throw it in water from a sink. You need to get Distilled Water. You can find a gallon of it in the market for not that expensive. Keep in mind this water is not for drinking. You should change the water about every month. If you are somoene who is to lazy to do something like that then I do not reccomend water cooling. If you want a good and cheap water cooling system for the CPU I reccomend this Corsair Premade water cooling system. If you look at the Alienware Aurora it looks like it has the same water cooling system just with the Alienware logo slapped onto it. Pretty weird, right?

Tips to keeping a computer cooler

Quote:Your PC contains a lot of parts, almost all of which create heat when your computer is on. Some parts, like the CPU and graphics card, can get so hot you could cook on them.

There are many methods to keep your computer cool. Some additional tips to keep in knowledge is that you should consider getting a better heatsink for the CPU. The original stock CPU coolers are not the best ones around compared to the aftermarket ones. Also, if you purchased bundles to bundle up wires into neat piles will also help the airflow in a computer. Wires scattered like a birds nest can cause more heat. Keeping them neat will fix the airflow for you. In addition, using compressed air monthly or when needed on fans is important for keeping the fans to perform well and so heat does not form. When dirt and dust collect on a fan it slows down its Rpm which can cause the computer to be hotter especially when you overclock the computer and it is required to have a fan going fast all the time. Replacing to a stronger PSU (Power Supply) is another way to keep your computer cool. The air you feel from the back of your computer is from the immense fan located on the PSU. Purchase a larger graphics card fan or Memory fan if you want to keep high end hardware cooled down and make them perform better. Finally, a Phase Change Unit is something that is for some of the best cooling there is. Many people take into consideration of it as a refrigerator somewhat. It has the power to cool and possibly freeze a CPU. These units can cost about $1,000 or even more! These are some tips some people may not have even known about that can improve your cooling by a landslide.

Overclocking and stabilizing the heat

Quote:Overclocking is taking a computer component such as a processor and running at a specification higher than rated by the manufacturer.

When you expect more performance out of your hardware by overclocking expect more heat. When overclocking you need to be cautious and treat your computer like it is your child (Even if you do not have one). Overclocking it to much can blow out the hardware. When you overclock overclock it to a fair level and a level in which the cooling system you have can handle it. For instance, if you have a water cooling set up you can overclock the CPU around 1Ghz without getting to nervous. With an orginal fan cooling you can cool it about .3ghz-.5ghz based on the flow of the air and efficiency of the cooling hardware. As you can see overclocking varys on many aspects of the computer.

If you are looking for some nice computer cases I reccomend Xoxide.com as they have basic to high end cases. If you are looking for the latest hardware go to Newegg.com and you will find amazing sales on all sorts of things.