Archive for the 'Hardware' Category

10
Aug

Logitech Comes Through

By Puck 2 Comments
Categories: Cool and Hardware

Logitech Harmony 880 Universal Remote

A few years back we splurged and bought ourselves a Programmable Universal Remote.  As I always do on such purchases I did my research online, comparing features, prices, and customer satisfaction, and decided on the Logitech Harmony 880 Universal Remote.  That’s it to the right, beside its charging station.

The remote worked great, allowing us to easily switch between our digital cable, XBox, PS2 and DVD player.  Every function was supported, every piece of hardware was recognized.  When I got an XBox 360, the remote software was able to update it to fully control it too.

But right from the start we had a problem — the charging station was finicky.  In order to get the remote to sit on it and charge, it often had to be on a slight angle.  Even then I’d often have to monkey with it for minutes to get it to start charging, and once it was you had to let it sit untouched and unbumped or the whole dance had to start again.  I googled for an answer to this problem and noticed that many others were having the same problem and at that time Logitech didn’t have an answer for them.  I sucked it up and waited.  The battery lasts long enough that one overnight charge per week was plenty, so we just put up with the hassle.

About a week ago I was having even more problems getting the remote to charge and finally decided to google for a solution again.  By now we were out of warranty, but I thought that perhaps some kind of sandpapering or even soldering could help the contacts meet properly.  I didn’t care, I just wanted it to work.  I was surprised to find that not only had Logitech owned up to there being a problem with the charging station, but that they had fixed it and were sending out replacements to those that asked for it.  There was even a report online by someone who was out of warranty that managed to get it.

So I gave Logitech support a call.  The “Tier 1″ woman I got was very helpful and after going through her support script — I’m technically savvy so I wanted to skip past it, but she couldn’t — she acknowledged the problem with the base but reported that because I was out of warranty she didn’t have the authority to get a replacement sent.  My heart sank, but she followed it up with, “but Tier 2 support can, so I’m going to bump you up to Tier 2 with a note that you’ll need a new charging station.”

And she did.  And when I talked to the Tier 2 guy, he listened to the problem, asked a few specifics then went on hold and came back to tell me he’d be sending out a replacement charging station!  Out of warranty!

And today a courier arrived with a big box and inside it contained not just the charging station but a whole new remote as well!  Of course I have to ship back the defective one, so no, I don’t have a spare for someone that wants it.  With support calls normally a real pain in the butt to get anything done with it was a real pleasure dealing with Logitech, especially since I acknowledged the entire way that I was out of warranty and should have called right away.

The new remote is charging on its station right now.  I carelessly dropped it down and it instantly made the “charging” sound and the charging light came on.  One less tech annoyance down.  Thanks Logitech!

27
Jun

iDon’tCare

By Puck 5 Comments
Categories: Hardware and Rant

Apple’s new iPhone is coming out soon, and I find myself caring very little about it.  It’s a pretty big change from a few years back when Nokia announced their nGage and I was instantly filled with desire.  Thankfully I didn’t get an nGage because they turned out to be an incredible flop.

Now?  Well, the iPhone is certainly impressive.  It’s beautiful and classy, and does a ton of things that makes gadget geeks like me drool. 

So why don’t I care?

Because all I really want my cell phone to do is be a phone, and the reviews on that portion of its capabilities have been lukewarm.  I have a Motorola Razr.  It’s got a camera built in, but it doesn’t compare to my digital camera.  I think I’ve taken two pictures in the two years I’ve owned it that I kept or used anywhere.  It has other capabilities too, but I don’t use any of those either.  I use it to talk to other people and it does that just fine.

Music?  I have an iPod and it holds WAY more than the iPhone does.

Video?  Do I really need portable video that badly?  Or *that* portable?  If I’m travelling I’ll have my notebook with me and its screen is heaps better than the iPhone’s, and it also holds far more information.

Another reason is that a large amount of what the iPhone does requires data transfer from your provider, and the rates on that are outrageous.  Not just “expensive” but “sickeningly expensive”.  I can browse the web through my Razr, but Rogers charges me $.15 per kilobyte.  Yes, KILOBYTE.  Download 100 kb and they charge you $15.00!  I can’t imagine the cost of using the iPhone at those extortionist rates.  Yes, I’m sure there are plans with cheaper data, but I wouldn’t use it enough to justify an increased regular fee.  I’m annoyed enough as it is with what I’m paying for cellular service, and that’s just to talk to people.

While I’m ranting here, hey Rogers, thanks for charging me extra for call display.  I’m sure it actually costs you more to DISABLE that display for people who don’t want to pay for it.

So yeah, drool away over the iPhone.  It’s slick, it’s just not worth it in the real world.

15
Dec

PS3 sucks at PS2 games

By Puck 1 Comment
Categories: Hardware

View This Video on You Tube

Did they think nobody would notice that?  The 360 plays XBox games better than they do on the XBox, btw.

03
May

Toren In the 21st Century

By Puck 3 Comments
Categories: Hardware

A month ago Toren told me he was getting a new computer.  Now when I hear that, I think “Oh good, a nice fast new computer that you buy from a store or in parts and build,” but no, he meant that someone was giving him their old computer for free, so it was new-to-him. 

I’ve got this weird thing about computers that goes completely the opposite to the rest of my life:  they have to be set up properly and cleanly with the right software, antivirus and utilities.  I guess I’m digitally anal-retentive.  In the same way that Omorachel has a desire to clean my house, I have a desire to keep my friends’ computers clean.  So I told Toren that when he gets it, he should let me get it all set up properly for him.  He finally got it last week and I took a look at it on Sunday.  It’s a Duron 850 with 128 MB RAM.  Not a terrible machine for what Toren usually wants to do but while I was explaining that he’d need to drop an extra 512 MB of memory in there to make it work at a decent speed he informed me that he wanted to use it to do audio recording and editing for his voice work, as well as mixing music.  I started doing the math for that, realizing he’d need not only the more memory, but a better sound card, much bigger hard drive and it’d still be slow.

So then, with his blessing, I priced out the parts for a whole new computer.  Total:  Just shy of $700 with tax for everything he needs.  To my incredible surprise he said “Ok, let’s do it.”  I had to ask him who he really was and what he’d done with the real Toren Atkinson who not only wouldn’t have that kind of money, but would also never spend it.  “I have a job now,” he explained as though that is a reason for someone’s inherent personality traits to change.  Bah!  Something is going on here, and I will know the truth.

But I digress…

I picked up the parts from NCIX yesterday and built the system, formatted the hard drive, installed the OS and then got all the security updates and installed a bevy of free (and free-ish) utilities and software.  Then I gave him some of my old games.

So Toren has gone from his old Pentium 2-400 (?) to a new Athlon 64 3000+ with 1GB of memory, a 250 GB hard drive and onboard Geforce 6100 video (he wanted it cheap and doesn’t care about playing games — if he ever does he can buy a better video card and turn off the onboard).  I dropped it off last night and, being me, spent most of the time showing him the games I installed for him.  I think the only one he appreciated was The Ur-Quan Masters, which is a truly free and awesome port of an old PC/3DO game that everyone should play.

Here’s the thing:  Toren’s computer is faster than MINE.  Ok, I have a much better video card and 1.5 GB of memory, but he’s got 64 bit architecture (on a 32 bit OS, though) and more speed.  It’s humbling.  I’d upgrade mine but it’s not time yet, plus I’m going to finally drop the cash on laser eye surgery.

27
Apr

Nintendo’s Revolution gets a new name

By Puck 1 Comment
Categories: Hardware

It’s “Wii”, pronounced “We”.  I immediately realized this had to be done:

All Things Console

14
Apr

Computer Problems Update

By Puck 3 Comments
Categories: Hardware

I’m working my way through reinstalling everything.  I tried reconnecting the old broken drive so I could use some recovery utilities on it but any time it’s connected my computer bluescreensw with an ntfs.sys error, even if I’m already in windows and try plugging it in live (it’s SATA so it should theoretically work).

Warning, geekery follows:

I then tried rebooting to my XP CD so I could run a chkdsk on it to repair the broken ntfs.sys, but it actually freezes up when “inspecting your computer’s configuration”.  I get the same kind of freezeup when I boot to my utilities CD.  I was going to get it to wipe the MBR — my recovery utility doesn’t need that and it should bypass the ntfs.sys problems.

It looks like if I want the data from this drive I’m going to have to bring it to one of those professional drive recovery places and that’s going to cost me money I simply don’t have (eyes clients who are still late with payments…)

The thing is, though I had a lot of that drive backed up, a lot of things weren’t.  My email, my huge collection of Fonts (dating back from Corel 4.0 and a ton of favorites I’ve collected from the freeware versions on the web) as well as my iTunes music preferences.  I had almost two thousand songs rated, which makes it easier to make playlists, now that’ll be blank — the songs themselves were on a diferrent drive, however.

And then there’s the recent client data, mIRC scripts and logs, base artwork for several personal projects, some saved scripting code… ugh, it’s a mess.  Looks like debt is coming up soon.

12
Apr

Hard Drive Failure

By Puck 3 Comments
Categories: Hardware

My computer was being a little weird today, with a few odd errors popping up.  I chalked it up to general Windows weirdness but then when installing new video drivers it just crapped out halfway through.  When it rebooted it was very slow and many of my startup programs crashed.  Not good.  I planned on a rollback but couldn’t even get System Restore back up.  I decided to reboot again to Safe Mode and that was the last I was in Windows.  Apparently my windows\system32\config\system folder is corrupt - that’s where the registry is kept.

I pulled out a bootable diagnostic CD and ran the Maxtor Hard Drive test on it and it failed almost immediately.  It reported the error code Y3JS57 and told me to plug it in to http://www.maxtor.com/ – I did that (on Mel’s computer, where I’m posting now) and got no results.  Thanks Maxtor!

Of course it waited until after NCIX was closed to do this so while I could have spent the night installing and formatting a replacement drive and then getting Windows (and all my software!) back on it, I’m out of luck until tomorrow.

I’ve got some really kick-butt hard drive recovery programs so I’m fairly confident I can get all my data back.  Most of it is on the other drives anyway.  It’s just going to be a pain in the ass to reinstall everything.

Update:  I have a new drive and it’s formatting now.  I’m not looking forward to getting everything reinstalled and working.  It’ll take until after that before I can try to get my old data back.  I had a lot backed up, but not all of it, including regularly updated things like my email file.

24
Nov

XBox 360

By Puck 0 Comments
Categories: Hardware

Several months back I was in the local Future Shop and Blake (the only FS employee worth talking to) asked me if I was getting an XBox 360. I told him I would eventually and he said I should get a deposit down because they’re only getting twenty and 18 of them were reserved. So I put $50 on it and left it at that.

Cue to a few months later and we’ve got a big upcoming move (Mel’s current 2 hour each way commute is painful for me to think about, so I can’t imagine how she’s enjoying doing it!) and hidden expenses all over and a few of my clients are slow to pay me what they owe me and the 360 launches. We discuss it and decide I should just go in and get it anyway. The money will come and we’re not as bad off as we have been.

So I picked it up, along with Perfect Dark Zero and an extra wireless controller. It’s a nice piece of technology. The XBox Live interface is beautiful even without an HDTV to use it on. I easily set up the 360 to stream my MP3 collection over the network from my PC. Getting my digital music into the living room and onto the stereo has been something I’ve wanted for ages, so that’s all good.

PDZ is a good shooter, but it’s a console shooter. I’m terrible at using the console controllers to play shooter type games. I suppose I’ll get better at it eventually. I’m very much looking forward to DOA4 and some of the promised RPGs for the system.

For Mel we bought the XBox Live “Bejeweled 2″ and she’s already got us to #12 in the all-time high scores. We’d buy some of the other “classic” games online but they’re overpriced. I’m not going to pay $10 to play “Joust” on my XBox 360, and I doubt many other people will. I think they’d get a hundred times as many purchasers if they just microcosted it down to $1. Heck, make those games a buck or two and I’ll buy most of them. But at $10 each I’ve grabbed the one my wife plays obsessively on the computer and that’s it.

26
Aug

Motherboard update

By Puck 0 Comments
Categories: Hardware

My (second) new motherboard arrived today (NCIX’s next-day delivery is really quite good) and I installed it and it booted up right away. The only difference it seemed to notice was the Gigabit LAN that it had that my old mobo didn’t, and everything seems to be running perfectly.

Now I’ve got a bunch of work to catch up on! On Friday! Bah!

25
Aug

Motherfuckerboard

By Puck 0 Comments
Categories: Hardware

My computer’s motherboard died on me yesterday. The computer could power up, but wouldn’t post or give me any error beeps. I removed everything and tried to at least see if it’d try to post alone and give me errors but got nothing.

It’s covered under Asus’ 3 year warranty, but getting a replacement now that it’s past the one year that NCIX will handle means shipping the broken board to Asus in the states, waiting for them to try to fix it, and then waiting for it to be shipped back via FedEx Ground. As it’s my work machine I simply can’t be without it that long.

So I ordered a new one from NCIX. They didn’t have my exact model any more, so I got the Asus A7N8X-X (mine was an A7N8X) which you’d think would be slightly better what with all the USB ports being 2.0 where mine had a mix of 1.1 and 2.0. Except once it got here (next day deliver! Nice!) and I was ready to install I realized that it wasn’t only lacking the 5.1 sound (not a huge deal) but it also didn’t have SATA connections for my two SATA drives. That means that my work data is *still* inaccessible even if I were to hook this up with a new hard drive. Bah!

So I’ve ordered the proper new mobo (A7N8X-E Deluxe) which should be here tomorrow and has the bells and whistles I need (and the ones I just want) and should also work fine without me having to do a full Windows reinstall (hope, hope, hope) and I can get back to work.

Now, I can probably return the totally-unused A7N8X-X motherboard, but that’d involve me driving in to Burnaby and losing at least 15% restocking fee on it. Instead, I’ll offer it here to anyone local that I know that would like a good, new, cheap motherboard. It’s Socket A, so you can buy yourself an AMD chip of some type (2800+ is about $133) and some memory and you’ve got a nice cheap upgrade for an aging system. Anyone? Anyone?