This piece has been forming for sometime now and I'm going to start by paraphrasing the line from the old "Dragnet" TV show to the effect of "The stories you are about to read are true - names have been changed to protect the guilty ( Read more... )

Sometimes when you do computer repair and mostly deal with folks who know the basics about computers it is easy to think that most people should at least be able to identify what the parts one is built up from are. And then there are those who should not get close to a computer without a gaurdian/keeper let alone open the case and try to work on/ ( Read more... )

Been awhile since I've done an update here - the usual reasons, most having to do with working and earning a living as I get closer to retirement. Still a lot of turnover at work with the resulting need to continually train new people on the job - its getting to where we have trainees with 6 to 9 months service having to help train the newer ( Read more... )

Sometime back I wrote about netbooks and how they were morphing into what to all intents and purposes were UMPC class laptop computers. That trend has continued and the small Intel Atom processor equiped laptops have pretty well taken over the market for small ultra portable computers. They are still lacking in some respects - mostly in keyboard ( Read more... )

Awhile back, in mid 2007 if memory serves a new class of notebook computer was brought out by ASUS that has come to be known as the "netbook". As originally designed, the netbooks had small 7 to 9 inch screens and reduced size keyboards. They also as a class had very small solid state "hard drives" that in reality were nothing more than flash ( Read more... )

It's been quite awhile since I've had the time or energy to post anything here - just the usual routine of work and finally after surviving another rotation of midnight shift some time off ( Read more... )

Its been awhile since I've updated this journal - something that I can only blame on my work schedule leaving me little in the way of time or energy for writing. So bear with me as I play catch up here ( Read more... )

To "Have your cake and eat it too" is an old expression that in some ways means that you want to have it all - without compromise. For the last couple of weeks I have been playing with a Linux distribution optimized for the ASUS EeePC - my 1000H came with Windows XP and I want to keep that on the internal hard drive but be able to boot the fully ( Read more... )

When I last posted I was in the middle of downloading the Beta release of Windows 7. Wonder of wonders the download finished successfully and I've swapped out the hard drive on my HP laptop and loaded it there on. I must say that for a Beta software release that there has been a surprising lack of problems/bugs. In some ways it looks and preforms ( Read more... )

Its been awhile since I wrote about my on going experiments with finding a Linux desktop application that would be a good stand in for either Windows XP or Vista. In order not to mess up the Windows install on one of my regular machines I elected to do my experiments on a mini ITX box for the most part built out of parts on hand. For the most part ( Read more... )