Category: Interfaces

Slow Wi-Fi Speeds at Home – Check Your Wireless Devices

Since the advent of Wi-Fi many years ago, a good number of us would use some form of it in our homes and workplaces. You would be hard pressed to find a laptop or decent smartphone without Wi-Fi and many ISPs provide the option of receiving wireless router modems (if not already the default option). …

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Optical, Laser and Darkfield Mice – What’s the Diff?

Before you get any ideas, I’m not talking about mice with laser beams on their heads a la Dr Evil. If you have been using computers for a while you might remember those wretched mice with the little ball inside them that would always misbehave just when you had a deadline or wanted any sort …

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Light Peak – Beyond USB 3.0

USB 3.0 has barely made an appearance in desktop computers (personally, I am yet to see a USB 3.0 port though) and Intel is already looking at a superseding technology. Just to put things in perspective: USB 1.0 is capable of 1.5Mbps (Low-Bandwidth) and 12Mbps (Full-Bandwidth), USB 2.0 added a new higher maximum speed of …

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Powermat – Wireless Charging Technology

Powermat (Front View)

Before I dive into the subject matter, you might be wondering how something can be recharged without a cable or if it is possible in the first place. Well, yes it is possible. Technology known as inductive charging transfers energy using electromagnetic radiation as the medium as opposed to traditional wire based methods. Of course, …

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Cash – Relevance in 2010

Some time over the last couple of days, my wife and I were talking about how annoying it is to go through the ritual of forking over physical money when you purchase food or go down the shops. Of course, once all your money is gone, you need to go visit the hole in the …

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Hard Drive Revival – Part 1

Seagate Barracuda Hard Drive (Bottom)

I thought I would document my experience with reviving a seemingly dead hard drive that I have taken receipt from a friend and small business owner. To set some background, as is often the case, this hard drive contains precious data which has largely not been backed up elsewhere. Furthermore, any attempts to boot up …

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Video Card Slots – Argh!

At the moment, I have a suspect 500GB hard drive that belongs to someone else. I’ve offered to run a diagnostic utility on it to attempt to read the data from its bad sectors before consigning it to the rubbish bin. Before I can do this though, I need a working computer. For this task, …

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