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The HP Elitebook 8440p and Windows 10

I got an HP Elitebook 8440p because I wanted something a little newer and faster than my old Dell E1505. It was certainly newer and faster, but it had a problem. Every morning it greeted me with a BSOD. That E1505 was getting older and it had its own quirks, but I don’t remember it ever bluescreening on me. Here’s how I fixed the bluescreens I got with the HP Elitebook 8440p and Windows 10.

Not only did it bluescreen, but the behavior seemed pretty consistent. Two days in a row, I woke the laptop up from hibernation, and about nine minutes later, it bluescreened.

Read More »The HP Elitebook 8440p and Windows 10

4K displays get affordable for Cyber Monday

I’m not quite ready to upgrade to a 4K (4096×2160 resolution) monitor yet, but if you are, Samsung’s 28″ 4K display is on sale for $400 (down from $700) for Cyber Monday.

At that size and resolution, it works out to 165 pixels per inch, which is very close to what we used to call “near letter quality” in the days of dot matrix printers. To me, this seems more practical than using a 42″ 4K television, and the refresh rate is much better.

Keep in mind you do need Displayport to drive a 4K display. Most video cards costing $100 and up have those these days, but even some Geforce 210 cards have them, like this Jaton.

The time bomb in your older computer

I was listening to an interview between Paul Asadorian (of Pauldotcom fame) and Cigital CTO and software security expert Gary McGraw. They discussed how the target of attacks moved from Microsoft to Adobe and now that Adobe is showing signs of getting its act together, it’s going somewhere else.

“If I were Nvidia,” McGraw said, “I’d be thinking a lot about software security. Fortunately they are.”

Nvidia does sound like a juicy target.Read More »The time bomb in your older computer

How to get 1440×900 resolution out of an Nvidia video card

I have a Gateway FPD1975W LCD monitor with an unusual 1440×900 resolution. Intel video cards have no issues with this resolution, but Nvidia cards don’t support it by default when running under Windows.

Hack the drivers a bit and you can get this monitor to work just fine with an Nvidia adapter, though. Believe it or not, the only hacking tool you need to accomplish the deed is notepad.exe.  Read More »How to get 1440×900 resolution out of an Nvidia video card

My $30 desktop PC upgrade

I built my main desktop PC three and a half years ago and have no complaints about it, save one. Hard to believe, but PC hardware has improved considerably in recent years. This weekend, I sunk $30 into it to solve my single complaint, and now I can reasonably expect to get another three years out of it, if not longer.

Read More »My $30 desktop PC upgrade

The Asus Memo Pad HD 7 review: It’s a nice inexpensive tablet

I’ve been messing with an Asus Memopad, the 7-inch version. I think it’s a well-built, good-performing tablet for $149, and when you can get it on sale for less than that–and this is the time of year for that–I think it’s a great tablet for the money.

It’s not a high-end tablet. It has a 1280×800 screen, a quad-core 1.2 GHz Mediatek processor, a middling GPU, and 1 GB of RAM, and importantly, it includes a micro SD slot so you can add up to 32 GB of storage to it. The specs are all reasonable, but not mind-blowing. Most of the complaints I’ve seen about it are that it’s not a Nexus 7, but it’s 2/3 the price of a Nexus 7, too. When you compare it to other tablets in its price range, the worst you can say about it is that it holds its own.Read More »The Asus Memo Pad HD 7 review: It’s a nice inexpensive tablet