Hardware
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13 Things You Must Do First with Your New PC
A new computer is like a blank state--there's a lot of potential there, but without some work on your part, it's useless. It's not hard to get started, but there are some essential first steps that everyone should follow when breaking in their new PC. In this guide, we've compiled a step-by-step list of essential tips, tricks and advice from many of our other features, to provide you with just the information you need to get off to a great start with any new PC.
Have you ever noticed how you pc tends to slow down near the end of the day? Well there is a way you can put it back in its fresh start state without a restart! First up, why do you need a booster?
Boost your pc’s performance in 5 secs.
The fanless heatsink: Silent, dust-immune, and almost ready for prime time
The fanless, almost-silent, dust-immune, 30-times-more-efficient Sandia Cooler heatsink is almost ready for prime time. Sandia National Laboratories has announced that two companies — one computer heatsink maker, and one LED light maker — have licensed the technology. In the Sandia Cooler, the heatsink itself is the fan. It is a cast metal impeller that floats on a hydrodynamic air bearing just a thousandth of an inch (0.03 millimeters) above a metal heat pipe spreader, powered by a brushless motor in the middle. The end result is a cooler that is very quiet and 30 times more efficient than a fan-and-heatsink solutions. The prototype (shown above and in the video below) is 10 times smaller than a commercial state-of-the-art cooler, but has the same cooling performance.
Night School News, Videos, Reviews and Gossip - Lifehacker
Last week, we showed you how to build your own custom PC, from picking the parts, to putting it together and installing your OS. Here's the complete guide, along with a printable PDF version that you can use as a reference. Note: Click the lesson title to view the lesson—it's a link!Note: This article is now available on the Amazon Kindle Bookstore: Repairing Windows XP in Eight Commands . Download a convenient e-book version of this article to keep at your side while you repair your computer. Every IT tech from casual to professional should have a copy of this handy reference on their e-reader! Most of us have seen it at one time or another; perhaps on our own PC, the PC of a loved one, or perhaps a PC at your place of employment. The system spends weeks or months operating in a smooth fashion, taking you to the far reaches of the wide, wibbly web, and after one particularly late evening of browsing and gaming, you shut your PC off and go to bed. Millions of people across the globe do just this every night, but a few of us have turned our PCs on the next day not to the standard Windows XP loading screen, but instead this dreaded error:
Repairing Windows XP in Eight Commands « Icrontic Tech
If you want to squeeze every last ounce of processing power out of your new computer or aging system, overclocking is a great—if slightly nerve-racking—option. Here are some simple guidelines for safely overclocking your CPU. Photo by blazor85 . Simply put, overclocking your CPU involves running your processor at a faster speed than was intended out of the box. While overclocking, at its core (no pun intended), can be quite simple, there's a bit more to it than just tweaking one setting. The main setting that determines your CPU speed (known as your Base Clock) also affects your RAM speed, so there's a bit of tweaking required to get the right balance.
A Beginner's Guide to Overclocking Your Intel Processor
So you've been computing for quite a few years now, and you've built a nice collection of hard drives, internal or external, collecting dust in the corner. Here's how to put them to good use. 10. Turn an Old Hard Drive into an External Drive
tips and downloads for getting things done
Howstuffworks "How Liquid-cooled PCs Work"
Whether you're using a desktop or laptop computer, there's a good chance that if you stop what you're doing and listen carefully, you'll hear the whirring of a small fan. If your computer has a high-end video card and lots of processing power, you might even hear more than one. In most computers, fans do a pretty good job of keeping electronic components cool. But for people who want to use high-end hardware or coax their PCs into running faster, a fan might not have enough power for the job.
The First-Timer's Guide to Building a Computer from Scratch
If you've never done it before, the idea of building a computer from the ground up can seem very intimidating—but it's one of the most satisfying projects a tech enthusiast can take on. Being more of a software gal than a hardware geek myself, I was the only Lifehacker editor who had never built a PC from scratch. So when I needed a new PC late last year, I took the plunge and built my custom system. I'm so glad I did—the project turned out to be one of my proudest accomplishments of 2008.
Top 10 Hard Drive Upgrades and Fixes
You should never feel like your hard drive is holding out on you. Anyone should be able to back up, recover files, boot multiple systems, upgrade, or otherwise improve their storage space. These tips explain the possibilities and procedures.
Over the last several years working in IT for various companies as a Systems Administrator, Network Administrator, and Help Desk professional, I’ve written and learned about many ways to increase the performance of not only my PC, but also of the many PCs on my networks ranging from Windows 98 to Windows Vista. In this article, I hope to compile a complete list of all the different methods and tricks that I’ve used to get the last bit of juice out of a slow PC. Whether you are using an old PC or the latest and greatest in hardware, you can still use some of these to make your PC run faster.
99 ways to make your computer blazingly fast
Faster programming gives you more time for small business website design and other projects. This is my first post on Cheat sheets. Actually Cheat sheet is a concise set of notes used for quick reference.
25+ Useful Linux and Unix Cheat sheets
Mozilla Firefox
I was opening up my almost brand new Dell 600m laptop, to replace a broken PCMCIA slot riser on the motherboard. As soon as I got the keyboard off, I noticed a small cable running from the keyboard connection underneath a piece of metal protecting the motherboard. I figured "No Big Deal", and continued with the dissasembly. But when I got the metal panels off, I saw a small white heatshink-wrapped package.You already know that if you want to lock down your Wi-Fi network, you should opt for WPA encryption because WEP is easy to crack. But did you know how easy? Take a look.