dell

Entry-level troubleshooting

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , ,

Ars Technica offers a very good, brief guide to troubleshooting computer hardware. Being two pages long, it doesn’t tell you everything, but includes some good tricks, including one I don’t always remember to tell people. To fully discharge a device, unplug it from the wall, remove the battery if it has one, then press and hold down the power button for 10-15 seconds. This discharges any power that could be lingering in the capacitors inside. Read more

The Samsung SSD 830: A user review

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , , ,

I didn’t need much convincing to purchase a Samsung 830 SSD; I was in the market for a bigger SSD, and my short list consisted of Samsung and Intel drives. So when I found a good price on a 128 GB Samsung 830, I bought two.

The laptops I put the drives in aren’t able to fully take advantage of what the 830 brings to the table, but it’s still a worthwhile upgrade. I thought that two months ago when I installed them, and two months of living with them hasn’t changed my mind. Read more

The Dell Inspiron E1505 and its maximum memory

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , ,

Last year, I got a deal I couldn’t refuse on a Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop. It’s old and quirky, but modern enough to make it serviceable. It has a dual-core processor and SATA2, so you can put an SSD in it. It uses DDR2 memory, which isn’t as cheap and plentiful as DDR3, but at this moment isn’t unreasonably expensive either.

Its biggest problem is that it’s officially limited to 2 GB of RAM. Officially, that is. Read more

Remove ghost device drivers from Windows 7

Dave Farquhar Windows , , , , ,

If you want a way to remove ghost device drivers from Windows 7, or other recent versions of Windows, it just got easier.

What’s a ghost device driver? When you change or remove hardware from a Windows system, Windows keeps the old device driver lingering. You don’t see it in Device Manager, but the time Windows spends chasing ghosts increases boot time, in addition to consuming some memory, registry space, and disk space.

It’s not as much of a problem as it used to be, but if you want your system to run as quickly and smoothly as possible, you don’t want it wasting time managing hardware you’ll never use again. (Don’t worry–if you change your mind and plug the hardware back in, Windows will reload the driver.) Read more

RIP, Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
RIP, Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore

Commodore founder Jack Tramiel, the orchestrator of the first line of affordable personal computers, died this weekend at the age of 83.

I don’t know exactly what to think about it, and I’m probably not alone, though it didn’t take long for tributes to pour in. Read more

Speeding up an Acer Aspire One 722

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , , , ,

I gave my out-of-box impression of the Acer Aspire One 722 last week. It’s completely unacceptable out of the box, and adequate when you do some basic cleanup on it.

Now I’ve installed an Intel SSD in one and clean-installed Windows, and I’m much more impressed with it. Read more

A snafu when installing an SSD in some laptops

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , ,

I hotrodded an old Dell Inspiron e1505 laptop by installing a Samsung 830 SSD in it. I hit a snag along the way. The fix is easy but not necessarily obvious.

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HP has a brilliant idea

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , , , , ,

After last year’s flip-flopping on getting rid of its not-quite-as-profitable-as-they’d-like PC business, and the resulting self sabotage, HP needed a good idea to try to undo the damage.

Their idea is completely unoriginal, but it’s tried and true and more likely to work than anything else they could possibly do: Bundle their premium PCs with premium-level customer service and charge a little more.

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Why Amazon can’t make a Kindle in the USA

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , ,

Dan Bowman sent over this ongoing series at Forbes. I’d seen the first couple of parts of it, but didn’t realize it was still ongoing. In light of new Amazon tablet rumors, it takes on new relevance.

It’s a thought-provoking look at the state of U.S. manufacturing today, and the state of management. I don’t know if the author thinks it’s too late to reverse this decline, but presumably no. Otherwise he wouldn’t be writing it, probably.
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Shame on you, Medtronic

Dave Farquhar Health, security , , , , , , ,

Insulin pumps marketed by Minneapolis-based Medtronic have a serious, life-threatening security flaw, and the company couldn’t care less.

For these two reasons, this isn’t your typical security flaw, and Medtronic’s response–in 30 years, we’ve ever seen a problem that we know of–is beyond deplorable. Ford’s infamous decision to pay lawsuits rather than fix a deadly flaw in the Pinto comes to mind.
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