January 16, 2005
Digital Happiness
To get over the temporary gloom in my life, I decided to bring in some digital happiness. I replaced my CRT monitor with a Samsung Syncmaster 17-inch LCD. Given its performance, I didn't bother to look at the BenQs and LGs making rounds at the local computer hardware shops. Supposedly Umax also has good performance LCDs. But nothing beats a Samsung when you club features, quality and price together (atleast here in India). There's one negative about this particular model, though. It does not have a DVI input. But that hardly matters. Plus having a DVI input shoots up the price of an LCD. So unless you are an imaging professional (they have better LCDs available to them) or a crazy geek, you are better off with an analog input. Oh and if you have never heard words like sub-pixel death, contrast ratios and ghosting, you should definitely take a look at Anandtech's LCD primer.
December 05, 2002
Ultimate Desirables
The Ultimate Geek Gift Guide from Wired. It consists of robo assists, hideaway pcs, kitchen gadgets, walkie-talkies, bathroom gadgets and what not. To all you non-geeks, refer to this guide when gifting a geek. :-)
Bit-tech has put up a nice plasma globe PC case mod. It's a plasma globe fitted inside a PC. Looks like one of those witches's crystal balls have found their way into the PC. 
What about interference, static, electromagnetic radiation, magnetic fields? Who cares, as long as it looks cool! How does a plasma globe work? Here you go. And what do you do with a plasma globe? Well, you can try moving a magnet around it or try putting a drop of salted water on the globe. Or like me, console yourself with this animated gif [197k].
Finally a crazy recursive mirror illusion by a UK guy. This one seems more mind-boggling than the Checker Shadow one.
November 21, 2002
Liquid cooled fire breathers
Some people seem to have all the time and money to do the ultimate PC case mods. Here's one from athlonxp.com. 
The guy manages to stick 2 mini-towers side-by-side for a dual Athlon 1900+ system. He has 3 monitors attached to the system and has 1 gig RAM, 160 gigs real estate and a 431 watt PS and plans for a liquid cooling system. Admittedly, not one of the best PC mods, but still awesome. Somehow I don't seem to find the time to hardwire my 1600+ Athlon XP to a 1900+, even if the trick to do it is pretty simple and it doesn't cost me a bomb.
October 03, 2002
Eco PC
A normal PC consists of a complex assembly of 1000 components, of which many are highly toxic. Given the boom of the electronics industry on the advent of the computer age and the effect of Moore's Law on the hardware industry, millions of PCs are discarded every year for faster and cheaper devices. This is causing a huge strain on the environment today, more so in Asia. Although organisations like the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition have Clean Computer Campaigns and what not, the source of the problem is the ubiquitous PC itself. It feels good when companies like NEC come out with PCs (Powermate eco) that are one step towards eco-friendliness. This particular PC has a 100% recyclable case, fanless design(which means it is quiet), a harddrive with FDB (again low noise). Price: $1599! Still far away. :-(
September 29, 2002
DIY PC
Tom's Hardware Guide has an excellent article for all you Do-It-yourselfers on how to assemble a PC.
June 03, 2002
Hard-beep-ware
For any of you hardware geeks, PC Guide will keep you occupied for hours. I was particularly interested in their BIOS beep codes section, as my PC was giving me those frighteningly complex beeps.
May 13, 2002
The dual-headed monster
Are you interested in having multi-monitor support on your desktop? Actually I have tried earlier using Win98. But multi-monitor support has matured very much and is supported by Linux/Win2000/WinXP . You can have it easily even if you have a spare 2MB video card and an old 14" monitor. For the guys who can afford 2 GeForce4 cards with 2 17" monitors, here's a good article. Nowadays, you get video cards with two outputs for 2 monitors. There is the NVidia Twinview and Matrox DualHead cards. Another article
June 08, 2001
Sound as DSL
Using the old sound card as a DSL modem reminds me of a long time ago, not so far away. The old Sinclair Spectrum used to store its data on audio cassette, so one day we conencted two of them to the telephones via audio couplers attached to their audio out. No modem and data flowing!
June 07, 2001
AuDSL
Do you have a old junk sound card?? Dont throw it away!! You can use it as a DSL modem!!! Hehe, Read more here
June 06, 2001
CPU Thunder
Now that it has been proved, an AMD Athlon 1.2Ghz can beat an Intel Xeon 1.7Ghz, what do you think a dual AMD Palomino(or 760MP) 1.2Ghz system with a 268Mhz FSB(front side bus) can do? Absolute mayhem !!!!!!
