Hardware

Posts with category: hardware

• The sorry state of keyboard layout management • 15 Feb 2018
  How is it possible that today, in 2018, it is still up to the end-user to detect/guess what the layout of the computer keyboard is he has in front of him/her? In any Belgian office with more than 10 computers,...
• Speed test of Samsung external SSDs: T1, T3 and T5 • 07 Nov 2017
  I just bought my 4th external USB3 SSD for my MacBookPro. I obviously don’t use all of them together, I just was just constructing my latest external Sockle storage bay. This time it’s a 1TB SSD and it’s a generation...
• Wifi in my car: proof of concept • 19 Nov 2013
  Some drivers love fancy chrome wheel rims, some add a huge wing spoiler on their car, or fuzzy dice hanging from their rear-view mirror. Me, when I bought my new car, I decided that I wanted a Wifi network in...
• Bose Soundlink: ideal travel companion • 20 Jan 2012
  
• Review: Synology DS410 8TB NAS • 10 Jul 2011
  Storage vendors should come to me for heavy duty testing, I have way too much hard disks break down on me. Last year my 4TB Lacie drive died. It’s a good thing I’m paranoid about data storage and I had...
• Review: Panasonic TX-L42E30E LCD TV • 09 Jul 2011
  I bought and/or used quite some new gear the last couple of months and I’ve been meaning to write about my experiences and never got around to actually start. Because I like reading other people’s reviews before I buy anything,...
• Track your (Synology) NAS when it’s stolen • 16 Apr 2011
  When a friend of mine recently got his MacBook stolen, I quickly verified if I had installed Prey Project on each laptop/desktop PC I have. For those who do not know Prey:
• Fax 2.0: because fax won’t die in the internet age • 02 Jan 2010
  In one corner of my apartment: my fixed telephone line. In another my printer/scanner/fax device. Challenge: run a wire from one to the other, every time you rearrange the furniture.
• AC adaptors: standardize, please • 25 Apr 2009
  I was just cleaning up around my computer and I got annoyed again because of the utter lack of common sense hardware vendors seem to have in their choice of AC adapters (I’m not the only one, Douglas Adams wrote...
• Touched by the iPod • 26 Sep 2008
  As most geeks in my circle of friends, I am known to buy hardware slightly more often than the average Joe. I have 3 Wifi routers at home (just gave away my 4th one), I have more than 2TB of...
• Netgear ReadyNAS: NAS done right • 30 Apr 2008
  One of the most popular pages on this blog is about a storage device that has a lot of enemies and few defenders, the SC101. It’s Windows-only, uses a proprietary filesystem and when (not if) it starts crashing, just say...
• WD My Book is not really ‘Pro’ storage • 07 Jan 2008
  After having Lacie, Maxtor, Iomega and most recently Netgear StorageCentral external storage fail on me, I am now the proud owner of a broken Western Digital My Book Pro II 1TB. I bought it less than a year ago and used...
• TomTom One: beauty with short breath • 27 Oct 2007
  The TomTom One (the ‘old’ model) is my first ever GPS. Overall, an excellent design. I never had to open the manual because it is a very intuitive device. The route calculation is quite fast and accurate, and with the...
• Logitech online store: haunted • 18 Oct 2007
  I have wanted to buy a keyboard with Bulgarian layout for a while, and as you can imagine, you don’t find these in the local FNAC or Vandenborre. So when I saw that the Logitech site allowed purchasing online, of...
• Two dice make a calendar • 28 Sep 2007
  
• LG KU-800: have low expectations • 06 Jul 2007
  Because the posts on disappointing hardware are very popular on my blog (e.g. Netgear storage and Lexmark printer), I’d like to write about a device that also should be avoided: the LG KU800 GSM. The KU800 is the Vodafone version...
• Pimp your laptop: Apple vs Dell • 20 Jun 2007
  Imagine you can walk up to your favourite hardware store and tell the guy: “Give me the biggest, fastest, meanest laptop you have. Money is no issue”.
• Paypal-ready shops in Benelux? • 23 Jan 2007
  Imagine one would have a certain amount of money on one’s Paypal account, and one would like to spend that on hardware or other physical goods. Let’s now limit that to shops active in Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg. What are...
• Best way to store one terabyte? • 26 Aug 2006
  I’ve gotten quite some response on my Netgear SC101 post (in short: they don’t always work). There’s some catharsis in bashing inferior products, but at the end of the day, how DOES on store lots of data securely? Let’s make...
• Netgear SC101: crappy storage • 10 Jul 2006
  UPDATE: also read my post about testing the Netgear ReadyNAS (it doesn’t suck)
• Database war stories: DB vs ‘square’ files • 05 May 2006
  I’ve been following the Database War Stories of O’Reilly Radar: how companies use text-based alternatives to classic relational database systems in order to cope with huge volumes. Check out the stories of Findory/Amazon, Google File System, Flickr and Second Life....
• Double Wifi: municipal wifi with protection • 13 Apr 2006
  I have written about FON before (they provide a business model for sharing one’s bandwidth through Wifi). They use a custom firmware for the Linksys WRT54G routers. I have the feeling that current Wifi routers (or access points) cannot offer...
• User-generated media is Intel’s wet dream • 14 Feb 2006
  Since the CISC processors were invented some decades ago, companies like Intel and AMD have tried to follow some form of Moore’s Law: double the number of transistors on a chip – or the corresponding CPU clock speed – every...
• Lexmark printers with “Hardware Error 0502” • 11 Feb 2006
  Good tip for the Lexmark All-in-one inkjet printer owners (mine is the X6170):
• Who makes a pretty PC? • 30 Jan 2006
  I have to buy a new PC for my parents. I want to reuse an existing 19″ screen, so I am only looking for a desktop. My dad has been using a PC for a couple of years and don’t...
• My iPod is a girl • 17 Jan 2006
  the first time I saw her, I thought she looked absolutely stunning and I wanted to have her there are others that are thinner, bigger or last longer, but I don’t want any other I did not have to read...
• Filling a terabyte iPod • 23 Nov 2005
  
• Know Your (Metric) Limits • 28 Apr 2005
  From Wired – July 2004:
• IT Conversations: podcasting feeds your brain • 08 Nov 2004
  There’s only one way to check if podcasting can change your life, and that is by diving completely into it. Since last week, I am the proud owner of a 20GB iPod, (the first Apple product I have ever bought)...
• Cool speakers: Bose Personalized Amplification System • 10 Jun 2004
  While researching speakers, I came across a new concept of amplification for musicians: the Bose Personalized Amplification System.
• A Pentium 4 is not necessarily a Pentium 4 • 06 May 2004
  I was throwing my DAW system together, first time I actually ‘built’ my own PC, and I thought it went kind of smooth. But my PC did not want to boot every other time. It just started beeping ee-oo-ee-oo, which...
• My new DAW in the making • 19 Apr 2004
  I just purchased an AOpen XC Cube EZ-65 – hope it does not take too long to deliver. I will be turning it into a dedicated DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). I’m going to use my M-Audio Ozone MIDI/Audio/USB keyboard as...
• Pictures of my home studio • 19 Apr 2004
  Using a nifty little feature from www.pixagogo.com I can now have a picture of a random gizmo from my home studio displayed.