Sure, we’ve all grown used to have dual-core CPUs in our home machines, and there are lots of quad-core machines in offices, but how about 6 and 8 cores?! Well, thanks to AMD, we may soon see 6-core chips geared for home use. Codenamed Thuban, it’ll probably be called Phenom II X6 when it comes out, probably next year.
Comcast just launched a trial of an automated service that would alert its customers if they have possible virus or malware infections on their home computers. Great, but… it works as a browser toolbar. Granted the average customer probably uses their Internet connection mainly to surf the Web, but what happens if they switch browsers or simply stop paying attention to pop-ups or blinking text?
My experience working with end-users is that they need an out-of-band alert. Email doesn’t do it. Pop-up alerts on their computer doesn’t do it. Telling them does! I’d like to see Comcast stick with the original idea – calling customers. They can automate that too.
Don’t get me wrong; I give Comcast a lot of credit for being the first to institute something like this – it should have been done ages ago and by many ISPs, but I’m a bit concerned about its eventual effectiveness. Well, it’s a trial, so hopefully they take the results to heart.
Part-humor, part-truth, today’s xkcd webcomic totally nails how we ‘computer experts’ actually know where to find everything in every program!
Click the image for the full-sized version.
Imagine walking around with a mobile computing device embedded in your clothes or hanging around your neck that lets you compute, take photos and more without needing to actually handle a device. Instead you use gestures and your fingers to ‘perform’ the computer commands.
SixthSense is a project run out of the MIT Media Lab
that takes wearable computing a step further.
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Wearable computing’s next step – gestures only, no handheld deviceRead More »
Silly Putty – is there anything you can’t do? Alright, that may be a bit extreme, but take a look at this very practical use for silly putty. Called Cyber Clean Electronics Cleaning Putty, you can use this to quickly clean electronics without risking damage to them.
Think about how dirty your keyboard gets with stuff falling into the cracks constantly. Now just smush some Cyber Putty onto it and peel it away to lift away the dirt. Simple.
Buy now!
Price: $9.99
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
Sad, but true, Silicon Graphics Inc. recently declared bankruptcy for the 2nd time in 4 years and has now been sold for a mere $25 million to Rackable Systems. Just about a dozen years ago, SGI was pulling in $4 billion/yr. Yes, that’s billion with a ‘b’.
I have fond memories of artsy, colorful, good-looking SGI workstations and I thought IRIX was an underestimated UNIX variant, and let’s not forget that the XFS file system was invented by SGI.
Rackable specializes in server and storage hardware for data centers, so it’ll be an interesting purchase.
Fantastic 5 minute video that gives a great insight into the impact that technology is having on all of our lives, the economy and job market.
What’s the bottom line? Mostly unknown. However, if I were a student right now, it should give me pause as I’m trying to decide what direction to point my career in.
If you’re running Windows, then you should get your system patched ASAP and check that your virus scanner definitions are up to date. Not that you shouldn’t be doing this all the time, but there is a worm called Conficker C that has already infected millions of computers and will allow the author to control those computers on April 1.
Luckily, the world has been mostly spared from really serious attacks. Most viruses, worms and trojans have been written to make the authors lots of money, not necessarily inflict damage on the target computers. But that could change easily. Be afraid and take steps to prevent that from happening to you.
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Picture the scenario; you have an 80GB SATA drive, but want a 160GB one, do you sell the 80GB and buy a 160GB? No. At least not with this gadget, all you have to buy is another 80GB and get them plugged up together with the External USB SATA Drive Dock. Or, if you have lots of SATA drives, you can swap between them with the touch of a button thanks to hot swap.
Available in either single- or dual- dock, the simple plug-and-play system will work equally well with Windows, Mac OS or Linux and has a very usable transfer speed of 480Mbps when connected via USB 2.0, or a fast 3Gbps when connected via eSATA. You don’t need to worry about the type of HDD you have either – it accepts both 2.5” and 3.5”.
Price: $39.99 – $77.99(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
Almost 3 years ago, Gizmos for Geeks reviewed GoodSync with the intent of using it to backup important data from a user’s desktop computer to USB thumb drives. Fast forward to today where hard drives have grown tremendously in size and so has data storage and you have an even tougher backup issue. For those of us who also perform a lot of work out of our own homes, backing up data is crucial and backing it up to offsite locations is just as important. I’ve personally decided to test using Amazon’s S3 service to backup my computer’s data and GoodSync has been recently updated to include S3 support. We put the latest version of GoodSync through its paces and in particular, focused on its S3 support.
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