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SATA Multiplier

Hey, did everybody see that Walmart is going to stock - as in keep in inventory - a few models of Dell PCs? Desperation move from Dell? Another nail in the coffin for mom and pop shops? Or is this the big opportunity for the Michelob and NASCAR set to realize what kind of crap Dell actually makes?

You have $200 and no stock of parts any additional parts. Build a worthwhile computer.

Anyone know of a particularly cheap place to get lots and lots of standard molex to SATA connectors? Used to be, they just gave you bunches of them when you bought motherboards or something. Now I need a bunch of them and I do not want to pay $2 apiece for them, which what everybody wants to...

Found this tool via Lifehacker today. It's a quasi-virtual machine for running applications you don't entirely trust.

I am four for four on LiteOn SATA optical drives. As in, I have four that need to be RMA'd. They were ordered at different times, so it's not like I got one bad batch of drives, but I haven't had one live longer than six weeks. Not only that, but the damned things are LOUD. Anyone had better...

That's right, a general purpose crap-removing program. Huzzah!

I have a whole lab of PCs where, for some reason, Windows integrated CD burning has stopped working. These machines all have Nero 6.3 installed on Windows XP, and Nero works just fine, but when I try to burn a CD with Windows Explorer I'm told to that the media I'm using is not writable and to...

No particular reason for this, just taking a poll: What, in your opinion, are generally the least offensive vomit boxes among all vomit box brands? Is there anyone willing to stand up and champion an HP or a Dell? Sometimes someone will ask me to recommend one and I cannot bring myself to do it.

WalMart to crushinate Blu-Ray. Generally I don't have anything good about the land of Jebus, gun racks and NASCAR, but if it's going to give the world the price pressure that will result in $200-by-Xmas HD-DVD players I think I can be slightly charitable.

Anyone have a recommendation for a good, *quiet* 120mm fan? I'd like to replace a couple case fans and also get something better than the fan component for a "silent yet somehow very, very loud" heat sink setup I have.

:D x2/6000 is now a $241 chip? x2/3800 for $83?. I guess it can be said that AMD is hurting.

Where are the 1x PCIe video cards? Does a Radeon x1050 really NEED an extra 15 PCIe lanes to operate? Does a Geforce 7100? Are there secret things we can do with all the 1x PCIe slots on our motherboards besides put USB faceplates in front of them?

The Windows cursor bug hits a compromised Asus web site. And there are some WoW exploits for the cursor bug. Also, there's a nasty Windows cursor bug that took an exceptionally long time to get fixed.

US National Security Agency guidebooks to configuring security for a variety of desktop and server OSes. High quality and very comprehensive.

Has anyone ever used or had any experience with any sort of Document Management System? I've been asked to choose and implement such a system and other than knowing a couple names (e.g. EMC makes Documentum), I really don't know a whole lot about them. I know they tend to be horribly expensive...

No one has mentioned it here so I don't know if anyone cares, but running around and applying DST patches at client sites over the last couple weeks and the weeks to come is one of those happily lucrative things that is going to wind up make my contracting year. Here's Microsoft's site on the...

Yes, I just got my first "Vista Upgrade fucked up my computer!!!" call. 8 hours, 43 minutes after the public launch.

Microsoft Shared Computer Toolkit

Plextor's Japanese parent has announced plans to exit optical drive markets, according to These guys. This should surprise no one who has seen a price list lately, but I imagine that huge swathes of the computer trade press will now have to find a new optical drive vendor whose nob they can...

8GB Thumb drive. $99. The ultimate tool for doing deployments. In 8GB I can fit my entire classroom disk image + all the miscellaneous printer and scanner crap I have to install.

One of my students is a WoW player. She's on a 6Mbit cable connection to the internet and has a very nice PC (x2/3800, 2GB RAM, Gigabyte nForce4, x800 Pro). She emailed me to ask why her World of Warcraft updates take so long; her boyfriend's notebook (which is a Dell Inspiron of some kind...

The Tech Lounge has pictures of new Antec Stuffs. Nothing particularly drool-worthy, but the P190 having room for a second PSU is kind of interesting.

USB 2.0 to SATA/2.5" PATA/3.5" PATA cable for $10, shipped free. I bought a bunch of them.

I just installed Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 on a new Windows PC. I notice that the cursor disappears while I'm trying to compose a new E-mail. It's driving me nuts. I can't see where I'm typing. No, switching cursor sets does not seem to help. Anyone else seen this?

I have before me a great mystery. It is a Dell XPS 600. 3GHz P4, 2GB RAM. nVidia-based motherboard, GF6800. It has XP Media Center on it. It also has well over 30GB of installed PROGRAMS. I mean a 27GB program files directory. Only about 4GB of user data, but every fucking program known to...

Computer industry executive finally realizes his place in life. Details at Cnn.com. We are not worthy!

Customer of mine has a Dell Latitude C400. He's had it 3 years and it's NEVER been out of its dock. 3lb. laptop used as a desktop. It's cosmetically perfect. It's a 1.2GHz P3 system, 256MB RAM, 30GB hard drive. And it weighs 3lbs. The guy can't find the CD-RW or floppy drive it came with. No...

Duplex printing. 350 sheet tray. Builtin LAN. Photo-printing cartridges that aren't horribly expensive ($18 apiece). It's a little louder than a personal photo printer, but it's a workgroup-type unit, so that's not entirely unexpected. It's also enormous, as big as two reasonably new HP...

VMWare converter, a tool for turning running systems into virtual machines is presently available free of charge on the vmware site. Sweet.

I've been spending some time today reading the stuff on Lifehacker. And some of it is AMAZINGLY useful. Here's an article on setting up mass extension installs for Firefox. Looks really straightforward and simple to use. And this article describes InstallPad, a tool for tracking and...

Is there such a thing as a non-sucktastic Windows web hosting company?

Anyone know anything about Sharepoint? The Microsoft Product page is remarkably free of content or information other than "business 2.0"-buzzword crap. I know it has something to do with sharing MS Office documents on the web. Anyone know more than that?

Earlier in the week I had a conversation with the parent of a 13 year old girl. She asked me how she could be sure her little darling/hellion was being safe on the internet. I got the impression that her idea of what "safe" was meant an internet that ended at disney.com, but just the same, it's...

Just thought I'd note that Newegg.com has Lite-On SATA optical drives. CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives. No burners as of yet, but since they're the first SATA optical drives I've noticed from a non-Plextor source, I thought it might be worth a post. Link

Security Software that is not evil. Don't Use - Software from "big name" security companies. Symantec/Norton, McAfee, Trend, Computer Associates. Every single thing they make, everything they touch, sucks. This is the lesson techs learn over and over and over. Firewall - Use the one built into...

I've posted before that I had a good experience with getting support from Gateway. My Gateway Laptop - one that I use pretty much exclusively for running projectors in classrooms and reading comics I've downloaded (one of the few good applications for a 16:9 display!) has had minor display...

Don't know if anyone cares, but the folks who make the 3D Rendering Program Bryce have put up a free version on download.com. I had a ancient, pirated copy for a while. I thought it was a lot of fun to play with. Linky.

Anyone have spare 168pin SDRAM laying around? I'd like to find rather more than I have. I'll buy 128MB and 256MB modules.

Here's a fun idea. Just got off the phone with a guy who wants to upgrade his PC. I told him there's probably no point, he should just buy a new one. Nope, he wants an upgrade. He has a 1.4GHz P4. A six-year-old PC. It would need a new PSU (200W), a new motherboard, new RAM (his uses RIMMs)...

It has suddenly become important for me to be an expert on World of Warcraft and specifically what kind of hardware one needs to reasonably max out graphics performance in Wow. Problem: I don't have WoW or access to anyone who does have it. Here's what I do know: Blizzard's POS has problems...

A couple of weeks ago I did a quick and dirty "data recovery" job for the local women's shelter. No charge; it was only about 5 minutes of work restoring the data off a ZIP disk that someone accidently formatted. After I fixed the disk, I spent 10 minutes showing the lady who brought me the...

Someone brought me a really nice 19" Dell LCD today that has a couple giant scratches down the front. Their toddler got caught in the cord or something and I guess it went for a little ride off a desk and over some legos or something. There's nothing wrong with the monitor other than the...

http://money.cnn.com/2006/07/21/technology/amd_atitech.reut/index.htm?section=money_latest

Talk amongst yourselves.

Monarch Computer is offering preorders for price-cut AMD X2s + motherboards right now. AM2 X2 3800 + Gigabyte 6100 motherboard = $237.

Has anyone used or tried a draft-N 802.11 product yet? I'm about to order a Linksys WRT300N; I've heard PreN equipment pretty much KILLS b/g signal if it overlaps, and my poor old Linksys 802.11A router is acting like it's about to die.

Someone has finally gotten written a full read/write NTFS implementation to work under Linux. For the non-Penguin-enabled, this means a much higher degree of interoperability for dual boot, forensic and filesystem repair/data recovery options. Previous versions of NTFS support under *nix were...

Whether Microsoft virtualization technology is an important component of your existing infrastructure or you're just a Virtual PC enthusiast, you can now download Virtual PC 2004 Service Pack 1 absolutely free. Microsoft is also offering the free download of Virtual PC 2007, with support for...

This software is a helper program that allows DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink to do their job even against up-to-date copy protection. I am thinking that I'm not the only person with a use for such a thing.