PC World: Taiwanese hardware maker Gigabyte Technology has stumbled upon a faster way to boot up PCs based on Microsoft's Windows XP operating system.

Please allow me to quote something I penned back in 1999: "I'd love to see someone design and release a battery-backed hardware RAM disk for PCs... Such devices existed in the early 1990s for the Commodore 64/128 and the Apple IIgs and permitted these systems to boot their graphical operating systems before the PCs of their day had managed to bring up a C: prompt. A similar device for today's PCs would do more to boost system performance than any other innovation I see coming down the pipeline any time soon."

I just took a phone call from someone who bought an LCD flat-panel and couldn't figure out why it looked so great in the store but was purely horrible on his PC at home.

He ran into a bunch of problems that some might instinctively avoid but to others would be much less than obvious.

An article on the "new" practice of low-tier manufacturers selling untested memory got attention on Slashdot this week.

This isn't a new practice. I've known about it for about eight years.

I've never been a big fan of overclocking. I overclocked for a couple of weeks back in my Pentium-75 days but quit when my system started acting goofy. I did it again five years ago when I was writing my book, overclocking a different Pentium 75 to 90 MHz. This foray only lasted a little while longer.

I explicitly recommended against overclocking in my book, based on my experience with it. Now, some five years later, we have an analysis from a Microsoft engineer.

I "fixed" a printer this weekend. It took me about a minute.

Chances are I can teach you how to fix printers in minutes too--assuming the problem is more software than hardware, like it was in this case.

John C. Dvorak comes full circle in his column about IBM possibly dumping its PC business. He starts off saying it makes little sense, but by the end of the editorial, he has his mind made up that IBM should have done it years ago.

Of course, this was probably written before word got out that its talks are more of a joint venture or spinoff than a complete sellout.

I serviced a PC last week while my Internet connection was up and down like George Bush's approval rating. It was making a lot of loud noises and at first the owner thought his hard drive was crashing. But when he described the sound to me, it sounded like a fan.

He sounded relieved and said he'd ignore it, but I told him I should take a look at it.

That got you going, didn't it? At least I hope it did. I know I'm not the only one who has a problem with the screw-in posts on the back of computers coming off. I'm talking the posts next to your video port, your parallel printer port, serial ports, and all that.

David Huff asked today about scanners, and I started to reply as a comment but decided it was too long-winded and ought to be a separate discussion.

So, how does one cut through the hype and get a really good scanner for not a lot of money?

I set up an HP 4101mfp printer-scanner-fax machine today. My first impressions weren't good, but once we actually had it working, it worked as advertised.

I'm not about to buy one for home, but if I need a multifunction device in the office (or a client does), I won't feel too bad about recommending this one.