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Packard Bell vs Hewlett-Packard

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Retro Computing March 19, 2018September 10, 2022

I didn’t realize that the question of Packard Bell vs Hewlett-Packard existed anymore. The search engines say otherwise. So here’s the difference between these two rather old brands.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

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Mechanical keyboard key stopped working? Here’s a fix.

Dave Farquhar Hardware February 14, 2018June 17, 2023

Cheap mechanical keyboards are all the rage these days. People will brag on Youtube or on forums about the cheap (probably tenkeyless) mechanical keyboard they found and how great it is. Read the reviews and most people are thrilled. But there’s always someone complaining that a key quit working. In this blog post, I’ll tell you what I do when a mechanical keyboard key stopped working. I’ve fixed several, and you can too.

Mechanical keyboard keys typically stop working either due to the switch getting dirty or an intermittent electrical problem. Of the two, a dirty switch is more common, and it’s easy to fix.

Dave Farquhar

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Cheap SSD drives: Where to buy them

Dave Farquhar Hardware January 22, 2018April 18, 2022

Cheap SSD drives are relative. I fully expect platter-based hard drives to be cheaper than SSDs until 2021 or perhaps 2025. But there is a way to buy cheap SSD drives without sacrificing a ton of quality. Here’s how.

I’m a notorious miser but I’m also a tech enthusiast. The number of applications and windows I keep open frightens people. Over the years I’ve refined the secrets of running my computers harder than most people while spending a lot less on computers than most people. It’s a tricky balancing act. Using the cheapest SSD worth having is one of my best secrets. Of course, that means you have to find cheap SSD drives first.

Dave Farquhar

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Quiet your mechanical keyboard with o-rings

Dave Farquhar Hardware January 16, 2018November 19, 2018

I bought a mechanical keyboard with Cherry Brown knockoff switches in it, but found it was too loud to use on conference calls. I found the same was true even of a Cherry MX Red keyboard like a Hyperx Alloy FPS Pro. Fortunately, if you want to quiet down a mechanical keyboard further, you have some options. Here’s how to quiet your mechanical keyboard with o-rings.

Dave Farquhar

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Why is x86 so popular? Momentum.

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Retro Computing January 10, 2018June 9, 2024

Intel and Intel-compatible x86 CPUs are everywhere around us. It’s been a long time since you could buy a desktop or laptop computer with anything but an x86 CPU in it. Even Apple, a longtime anything-but-Intel stalwart, started using x86 CPUs more than a decade ago. That raises a fair question: Why is x86 so popular?

Dave Farquhar

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RAM and ROM explained

Dave Farquhar Hardware December 19, 2017February 5, 2022

It used to be that chapter one of any book about computers explained RAM and ROM. Based on my conversations with computer professionals younger than me, it doesn’t sound like they do that anymore. So here’s RAM and ROM explained, by a guy who learned the difference in the early 1980s.

Dave Farquhar

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A quiet mechanical keyboard

Dave Farquhar Hardware November 24, 2017March 27, 2024

I need a quiet mechanical keyboard. I also want it to be small, to fit on my laptop desk. And I want it to be cheap. And durable. I don’t want much, do I? I might as well ask for world peace while I’m at it.

The Velocifire TKL01 claims to be all of the above, and delivers more than I expected.

Dave Farquhar

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Types of computer memory chips

Dave Farquhar Hardware November 8, 2017November 21, 2018

It’s easy to confuse the different types of computer memory, but they aren’t completely interchangeable. Here’s a look at the various different types of computer memory chips.

Dave Farquhar

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Baking SSDs: The SSD oven trick

Dave Farquhar data recovery, Hardware November 7, 2017March 12, 2021

This sounds crazy, but sometimes baking SSDs fixes them if they break. This process causes the solder to reflow. So here’s how to do the SSD oven trick.

Dave Farquhar

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Do I need gigabit Ethernet?

Dave Farquhar Hardware November 3, 2017March 13, 2021

Ever since I first saw gigabit Ethernet, sometime around 1999 or 2000, I wanted it for my home network. Of course it was crazy expensive then. But today it’s not very expensive, and I want it. But do I need gigabit Ethernet? Do I need a gigabit router? Do you?

It depends on the speed of your Internet connection. If your Internet connection is 100 megabits or lower, a gigabit router or gigabit Ethernet won’t make your Internet faster. On the other hand, if you have a 200 megabit Internet connection and only a 100 megabit router, you’re wasting half your Internet speed. So even though gigabit sounds like overkill for a 200-megabit connection, you need it.

Dave Farquhar

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