Blast from the past: originally published December 31st 2003.

After having repeated success with the Antec SLK3700AMB mid tower case, I had the opportunity to build a PC using its smaller sibling, the Antec SLK2600AMB. Someone had asked me to construct our $1000 PC, so I gathered the parts and went to work. This case is a meant as a smaller, cheaper version of the SLK3700AMB and as such some features are removed, while other small touches have been added. Read on.
Let’s look at the Antec SLK2600AMB from the …

Came across a great Firefox add-on today: Siphon.  It syncs your Firefox add-ons across multiple PCs.  Install and create an account: that’s it.

Unfortunately it doesn’t sync settings but it’s still in beta and we can always hope for more features.

I was searching for an easy way to identify the hexadecimal number of a colour on a web site: they had black as the text colour and the link colour so no one could identify a link.  An internet search led me to Hex Color Finder, a nice free utility.

It’s very simple: click and hold the eye dropper and place it on the colour you want to identify.  Once identified the sliding scale at the bottom shows variances of that colour in case you’d like something darker or lighter.  If you …

Blast from the past: originally published September 27th 2004.

Antec has been a favorite case manufacturer here at eBabble for some time, and with good reason. They consistently produce quality cases filled with features. With the surge in popularity of the small form factor (SFF) PC cases from the likes of Shuttle and Iwill, Antec saw an opportunity to produce a case that could accept the micro ATX form factor, thus allowing anyone to build their own SFF PC without the need to but the case and …

Blast from the past: originally published June 25th 2005.
Tape libraries are not new to the industry, but entry-level rackmount units can fit the small to medium enterprise bill. I recently had the opportunity to install and experience an adic FastStor 2 LTO eight slot 2U rackmount tape library.
We had been using a single tape drive that required swapping tapes daily. This was sometimes hard to remember but guaranteed a backup of critical files that were frequently accessed. As we added more storage it sometimes required swapping the tape out for daily backups, which …

This is a Firefox add-on so simple and yet oh so handy.  Textarea Cache runs in the bottom right corner of Firefox and keeps a copy of text you’ve typed.  It’s a life saver for blogging since you have a backup always available.  Keep in mind it only saves text from the last or active web page: that’s why it’s perfect for PC or browser crashes.

Above is the Textarea Cache window open for this post.  It’s a lifesaver!

I’ve been downloading and watching television shows that aren’t available in Canada.  I don’t have a media center PC but do have a Sony PS3 hooked up to my television.  Most of these downloads are MKV files and aren’t natively supported so I needed a way to convert them.
At first I ran PS3 Media Server but it was buggy and I had my share of issues running it on my Windows Home Server: no sound or no picture, odd stuttering, overall pain.  The beauty of this program is that it …

I’ve been playing around with Windows Home Server and the Vail beta the last few weeks and found things were a lot easier when a user was logged in.  Windows Home Server is based on Windows Server 2003 and has a utility that allows any program to run as a service but this doesn’t always work for me, plus WHS Vail beta is based on Windows Server 2008 and no such utility exists to my knowledge.  I want PS3 Media Server running so I can stream video to my television …

Last week Apple released iOS 4.1, the latest operating system for the iPhone and iPod Touch.  It introduced some exciting new features for users of the iPhone 3GS and 4, but I have the iPhone 3G so I didn’t get those.  Instead I received something wonderful: speed.

I use my phone mainly for email and at a distant second actual phone calls.  I occasionally check Twitter but that’s about it.  After my upgrade to iOS 4.0 my iPhone 3G became unusably slow; long pauses switching between screens, loading screens, accepting calls.  …

Dell had a fourty-eight hour deal on a TomTom XXL 540 M GPS with case for $150 CDN so I jumped all over it.  Five inch screen, spoken street names, advanced lane guidance, U.S. Canada and Mexico maps plus lifetime map updates.  Everything I was looking for in a GPS for the car.

I unpacked it and turned it on: very straightforward questions about date, time, home location, voice to use.  Nice and easy: screen was large and easy to read and navigate.  On my previous TomTom One 3.5″ GPS my …

Windows 7 is amazing but clicking the Downloads folder and then waiting and waiting while the green progress bar slowly progresses drives me crazy.  Luckily there is an easy fix to speed it up.

Locate your Downloads folder: it’s at c:\users\your-user-name\Downloads.  Right click on it and select Properties, then click the Customize tab.  Under “Optimize this folder for:” drop down the menu and select “Documents”.  Click OK and you’re done.  Accessing the Downloads folder is now speedy and without delay.
If you’d like to move your Downloads folder click on the Location …

Hurray!  Google has finally enables multiple sign in for the majority of its services.  It’s slowly being rolled out to all users but it was there for my three accounts as of today.  It’s very easy to enable: log into your account settings page and in the top middle column titled Personal Settings look for Multiple sign-in and click edit.  Here you’re greeted with this page where you have to enable and agree to the settings.

This has to be done for every account you want to switch to, but it’s …

Here’s a golden utility for the ages: SafeMSI is a user contributed single file to Windows IT Pro that does one thing and one thing only.
When you’re in Safe Mode you can’t install or more importantly uninstall an application because the Windows Installer Service isn’t running.  With SafeMSI.exe you enter Safe Mode on Windows NT, 2000, 2003, Vista, 2008 or Windows 7 and run the program.  You get this notification:

You then uninstall whatever ails you and reboot your system.  Wonderful!

Started to experience a different error with a group of Hewlett Packard DX2200 PCs; earlier I discussed at length .  I powered on a DX2200 and it started a rapid beeping, like when you hold a key down on your keyboard.  I had experienced this over the years with defective keyboards so I replaced the keyboard but the issue persisted. I removed the keyboard and tried again with the same fast beeping.  I then removed all cables except for power; same thing.  Opening the PC up I removed the hard …

I went on a three week trip to Europe and Africa this spring and wanted a portable computing device.  OK, I really wanted an iPad but they weren’t available yet so I started looking at notebooks using Intel’s ultra low voltage ULV processors, the SU series.  The PC had to be small and portable but big enough to be usable and not cramped, plus not too expensive: this led me 13.3″ ultra portables from Acer.  Yes Asus makes great models but they were too pricey, and Gateway has good models …

I look after a number of HP dx2200 PCs at work; it’s a solid Pentium 4 PC with off the shelf components.  I mention that as all it’s components are standard and not crazy OEM modified items: motherboard, RAM, CPU heatsink, power supply, storage drives, everything can be replaced with a non HP part and continue to work without issue.  I wish the same could be said for most of HP’s other PCs.  Sure the dx2200 case is thin, a bit flimsy and a little noisy but it works, mostly.

My …

While on my recent trip I picked up the June 2010 issue of PC Plus; in it they glowingly recommended a product called DriverEasy.  I was on vacation and although PC Plus is the most expensive British tech mag import I was in Paris and splurged, but that’s an aside; back to DriverEasy.  It is a tool that scans, downloads and installs device drivers for your Windows system, all for free.  You can upgrade to the paid version that provides device driver backups and faster downloads.  I took the free …

I’ve been running two WordPress sites for several years on 1 & 1 web hosting.  Last year I made a major restructuring of eBabble and in doing so created a new SQL 5 database to keep it separate.  Early this year on eBabble Art I received an error when trying to upgrade WordPress past 2.8.2: that was the last version that would work on a SQL 4 database.  It wasn’t a big deal so I left it at version 2.8.2 and kept going.

With WordPress 3.0 released I decided to finally move eBabble Art to a new …

With Apple’s release of iOS 4 for their cornucopia of portable devices I was anxious to get this update for my .  Before I could install the new OS I had to install a new version of iTunes, 91.1.1.12, which I did successfully through the prompts in iTunes.  Everything was very smooth.

On reboot I again connected my iPhone and was prompted to install the new OS.  It first started a backup of my phone and I waited for it to advance.  And waited some more: I gave it an hour …

Setting up a PC for a friend and they needed some sort of backup.  My first thought is always Windows Home Server but this was a single PC and the extra cost couldn’t be justified.  I turned again to Macrium Reflect Free Edition: the user had an older 200 GB Maxtor external USB hard drive that would hold the backup files.  To be fair I first tried Paragon Backup & Recovery 10 Free Edition and ToDo Backup but neither one did exactly what I wanted: a backup that could be …