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...on a quad-core Intel Core i7 with hyperthreading enabled. That's just from bog standard typing - nothing fancy. It's no wonder my laptop's battery drains in a couple of hours if I'm using the program on it. Honestly I'm...

Posted at 8:15 PM in Technology

So I now have a shiny new laptop. Why? Reaching the end of my tether with my old ASUS UL30A, that's why. For the past three months or so, I've been getting random hard freezes when using anything multimedia-related -...

Posted at 12:36 PM in Technology

I would urge everyone with a BD-ROM drive in their PC to check out DAPlayer, as far as I'm aware the first of its kind: a completely free playback solution for BDs. Oh, and it plays HD DVDs too. It's...

Posted at 6:52 PM in Blu-ray / Technology

...is required reading if you're having trouble with colour profiles in Windows 7 or Vista: Stop Losing Display Calibration with Windows 7...

Posted at 4:10 PM in Technology

My birthday isn't till next month, but ever mindful of the potential for cock-ups to occur when technology is involved, if I'm planning on getting anything computer-related I generally make a point of buying early in order to (a) pre-empt...

Posted at 12:16 PM in Technology

This evening, my copy of Adobe Photoshop (CS5 Extended student edition, which I bought last year for a fraction of the price of the non-student version) abruptly decided to stop working. No, scratch that, it decided that the software had...

Posted at 9:26 PM in Technology

...try formatting it as FAT32 rather than NTFS. Sounds like a step backwards, I know, but in my case I saw a very significant improvement in performance. A couple of months back, I bought a 16 GB Corsair Flash Voyager...

Posted at 3:55 PM in Technology

...as I've come to realise when comparing the results side by side between the high(ish) end S-PVA monitor I use downstairs and the cheapo TN jobbie I keep in my bedroom for less crucial business. The S-PVA monitor, a Dell...

Posted at 7:02 PM in Technology

...for anyone else with an ATI Radeon 5000 series video card who has been suffering from latency issues due to the card's PowerPlay power saving technology, the latest drivers seem to have cleared up the problem completely. No more glitchy...

Posted at 10:46 AM in Technology

I bought a new pair of 5.1 gaming headphones to replace my faulty Roccat Kave. The Medusa NX from Speedlink is priced similarly to the Roccat Kave (approximately £50) and offers the same basic functionality and connectivity, the bonus being...

Posted at 7:36 PM in Technology

Well, I got less than twenty-four hours' usage out of my new headphones before they started malfunctioning. I'm starting to think I'm cursed. I spent most of yesterday playing DRAGON AGE: AWAKENING (it's a lot of fun, provided you don't...

Posted at 9:53 PM in Technology

Out of the blue, a replacement for my faulty motherboard arrived by courier this afternoon... and, an hour or so later, I was up and running with my new system in my new case. I wonder what was wrong with...

Posted at 10:12 PM in Technology

They say that when it rains, it pours. Or, in my case, when one computer component fails, another one won't be far behind it. Last weekend, it was my six-week-old motherboard. This weekend, it was the hard drive in my...

Posted at 7:26 PM in Technology

My lovely new computer, less than six weeks old, died yesterday. First, to set the stage, I decided I wasn't happy with the temperature inside my old Antec Sonata III case. That case was designed with noise suppression in mind...

Posted at 10:00 PM in Technology

Q: What happens when you have a hefty video card that generates a great deal of heat directly under your hard drives? A: The hard drives get very hot indeed. Despite findings by Google which suggest that high hard drive...

Posted at 5:31 PM in Technology

Well, my new system is now up and running, and stable to the point that I'm happy to leave it as it is. It's currently overclocked to 3.77 GHz (from the default 2.8 GHz), and while I could go higher...

Posted at 2:09 PM in Technology

UNREAL TOURNAMENT III at constant 60 fps with all details maxed out is niiiice. More thoughts to follow....

Posted at 6:48 PM in Technology

I just need to pick up the motherboard and power supply, and I'll be all set. (The CPU's outer packaging got a little battered in transit, but that's a small price to pay given that I got it sealed...

Posted at 2:00 PM in Technology

Yeah, really fucking descriptive, Mr. Computer. As it turns out, my laptop's hard drive is kaput. Over the last couple of days, I'd been noticing that its performance was steadily decreasing. This morning, assuming that the fault lay with...

Posted at 3:28 PM in Technology

The good news is that it fits in my current case. With about a centimetre to spare. Which is a relief, because I'm still very happy with my Sonata III. It does a great job of cancelling out fan...

Posted at 8:38 PM in Technology

I've made a few changes to my proposed list of components for my Summer 2010 computer upgrade. Over the last couple of days, I've been reading reviews of the Corsair H50 cooling solution and have come to the conclusion that...

Posted at 10:42 PM in Technology

The new system I mentioned in my previous post is still several months from fruition, giving me plenty of time to research and change my mind, but at the moment, I'm looking at going for the following components: CASE: Corsair...

Posted at 10:07 PM in Technology

What's the biggest bottleneck in your system? I'm willing to stake money on it being your hard drive. It's a curious fact that, while the performance of CPUs, memory, graphics cards etc. skyrocket every year, the trusty old mechanical disc...

Posted at 12:41 PM in Technology

My ASUS UL30A arrived first thing yesterday morning and I wasted no time in getting it up and running, which didn't take long, as I didn't have to install much - just OpenOffice, Google Chrome and a handful of...

Posted at 11:43 PM in Technology

When I bought my Sony VAIO VGN-FZ11Z back in Autumn 2007, I thought it was the bee's knees. It was actually the first laptop I ever owned, and it was a far cry from the variety of clunky old rustbuckets...

Posted at 10:46 PM in Technology