Tag: hardware

  • Lots to think about when diagnosing a slow Internet

    Occa­sion­ally I get a tech ques­tion in the inbox that is quite com­mon. So much so that it makes sense for me to put and answer the ques­tion here where more can read and bene­fit from it.  By the way, if you’ve got some­thing you’d like to ask, feel free to drop me a line…

  • Protecting your tech

    When ever I get a new tech device, espe­cially one that’s small, port­able, and has a dis­play screen, I imme­di­ately look to pro­tect­ing that screen and device. I’m kinda clumsy at times, and any­thing that can pro­tect my hard­ware from *me* is a worth­while invest­ment. I dropped my iPod Touch down the stairs last year,…

  • Cute name. Cute scanner. Great value.

    I have two dogs, mini­ature Daschunds. They’re about 6 inches tall at the shoulder and about 14 inches longs. Wein­er dogs. Dox­ies. I now have a scan­ner, and it’s a Dox­ie too! It’s about 2 inches tall, and about 10 inches long. Appro­pri­ately named. But the name doesn’t do justice to the scan­ner itself. The Dox­ie is one cool…

  • It’s Computer Shopping Season — Tech Types in demand.

    It seems that around this time of year, the dog days of sum­mer, friends and rel­at­ives start pinging me with ques­tions about buy­ing new com­puter hard­ware. I’ve come to call this time of year Com­puter Shop­ping Season. My own unscientif­ic obser­va­tions of this trend have con­cluded that there’s a bit of a mar­ket­ing push hap­pen­ing…

  • Are faster blogs more Google friendly?

    Per­haps. And if you’re look­ing to be found by Google, you want to do everything you can to make sure you’re not doing things to make the pro­cess harder. A month or so ago, Google announced that they’re rank­ing sys­tem would take page-load speed into con­sid­er­a­tion when determ­in­ing how to present search res­ults to vis­it­ors.…

  • Legacy Hardware loses flagship application

    Five years ago I mod­ded my first Xbox to cre­ate a Media Centre. The soft­ware I ran, and still run is the über awe­some XBMC (for Xbox Media Center). But now it seems that the days of using my ori­gin­al Xbox as a media cen­ter are numbered — the developers are stop­ping work for that…

  • Fat lady sings. Winners announced soon.

    Thus endith my first blog con­test. And a very cool ride it was. My good friends at Click­free, a Cana­dian backup tech­no­logy com­pany, agreed to provide the prizes (Click­free Trans­former SE) for a blog con­test chal­len­ging folks to provide there best (or worst I guess) backup hor­ror story. I’ve received some rather good entries. Check out the…

  • How to backup files across a network easily

    Before I start, a friendly remind­er that you only have a day left to enter the con­test for a free Click­free Trans­former backup sys­tem. Tell me a backup hor­ror story. It’s one thing to backup the files on your loc­al com­puter and anoth­er to backup files stored on oth­er com­puters on your net­work, or Net­work…

  • Monthly Backups: Have you started yours?

    Before I start, a friendly remind­er that you only have 2.5 days left to enter the con­test for a free Click­free Trans­former backup sys­tem. Tell me a backup hor­ror story. One thing I like to do is, at the end of every month, veri­fy that I’ve got a full backup of what I like to call…

  • Spring’s on its way. Backup now — before you’re too busy.

    I’ve writ­ten a lot about back­ing up your data over the years. But even though backups are import­ant, some­how they’re always 2nd or 3rd on the pri­or­ity list. ‘Some­thing to do when I get time’. And as Spring approaches, time is one thing that there’s going to be less of as pri­or­it­ies shift from inside…

  • Go Go TomTom!

    I’ve been a GPS and in-car nav­ig­a­tion fan for years…mostly because I can­’t nav­ig­ate my way out of a wet paper bag, so my wife’d have you believe 🙂 Which is why when I was giv­en the oppor­tun­ity to take a look at the TomTom GO630 nav­ig­a­tion sys­tem, I jumped at the chance. …more This…

  • It’s the iPlatform, not the iPad

    Steve’s just announced the iPad (not the best name selec­tion in the world, but it’ll do), and after watch­ing the announce­ment event being repor­ted by vari­ous online media, includ­ing our own Future Shop Techb­log­gers, I’m struck by the impres­sion that the hard­ware is cool, inter­est­ing and looks great, but the iPad hard­ware is not the…