Here we explain the latest important technology advances
from the computer industry in plain and simple English.
Latest Headlines
No Geeks Allowed!
Here is why you don't want a "geek" in your home or office! The following links are from various news agencies and show clearly why you should not trust your computer repairs to just anyone:
These videos may seem outrageous to real technicians, but to the consumers who count on a professional service provider it's just plain despicable. In my 25+ years of computer repair experience I have never seen anything so appalling and unprofessional!
Build Your Own PC!
If you'd like to attempt to build your own personal computer we found this video on youtube.com and it is done fairly well. However, there is one glaring issue dealing with static discharge. You should wear an anti-static wrist band at all times when working with electronic parts. Depending on your clothing, as you move your body may build up additional static charges which need to be dissipated. Overall, this video will give the average person a good chance of putting together the basic system hardware and then all that's left is to install the operating system.
Recent Topics
Well it's out and as our early insider information predicted it's expensive. There are 4 versions totaling 8 options as expected, but we cannot fathom why Microsoft cannot simply sell one version and lower the price. It makes absolutely no sense from any logical viewpoint. One version (2 options Full or Upgrade) would mean one disk (with upgrade verification), which would in turn mean one package style (Full or Upgrade sticker), which would mean less logistics, which would translate to lower production & support costs, which could lower the retail price substantially, which would sell more product! Simply eliminating three packaging styles could lower the Premium price by 20%. Hello Bill, we know you're rich but maybe you should go back to college and take a basic economics or marketing class and have your entire executive staff join you.
Oh we know, Microsoft has to recoup the R&D costs and what about the billions of dollars they're losing to piracy?! I'll give you the R&D argument even though it's next to impossible to calculate even using programmer hours, but the piracy issue is a farce. Most piracy occurs outside the US, in countries like China who will not adopt U.S. policies on Patents, Trademarks & Copyrights. It seems to us that instead of penalizing the honest citizens of this country Microsoft should stop the illegal export and piracy of their software.
Let's be serious for one moment. Microsoft has the right to verify a particular consumer owns a legitimate copy of their software. That's what the "Activation" verification does. It's a simple step from there to assure that that consumer resides at an IP Address within U.S. borders or within a country that is not the worldwide hub for software piracy (not the mention manufacturers of millions of substandard products) without further infringing on our personal freedoms. Every major online retailer, bank, and illegal phishing website does the same every time we surf the web and most people have no clue. Nobody will disagree that Microsoft has the right to stop theft of their products, but who protects the small companies from Microsoft? Well we've digressed, let us get back to the new operating system.
If you're running Windows XP Home or Pro don't bother upgrading. The most notable features of Vista are as follows:
It's simulated 3-D desktop environment. I say "simulated" because you cannot get 3 dimensions from any 2 dimensional device, like a television or monitor. In order to have true 3-D someone is going to have to invent a very sophisticated holographic (or photon) generating device that actually produces the dimension of Depth. Rent "Paycheck" starring Ben Affleck for an interesting insight on this idea.
ReadyBoost feature which sounds great when Microsoft talks about it, but in reality is a nightmare to a technician. By using a USB drive you can speed up a systems' performance because Vista basically uses it as extra system memory. That's great except the number one way computer viruses infect multiple computers are from the transporting of disks or storage devices from one machine to another machine and it will happen. Hey wait, we can all buy One Live support from Microsoft to protect ourselves!
There's other features like Windows Photo Gallery, integrated search, blah blah blah! Been there, done that. How does Microsoft get away with repackaging, renaming, or otherwise remarketing existing features and calling them new "Wow" selling points. IE7 has the integrated search, Photo Gallery is simply a repackaging of existing Clip Art Organizer and borrowed features from competitors.
The Side Bar feature is cool, but they stole (I mean borrowed) that idea from something like StarDock's DesktopX which has been out for years.
Yes, we've made this whole subject sound negative. We didn't intend that to happen. It's been over two years since we first started investigating Microsoft's Vista (Longhorn) operating system plans and the more we look at it versus the price they are asking consumers and businesses to pay, the more irritated we get. Not to mention the 100's of hours of technical training we endure in order to support these new versions. Microsoft is completely out in orbit on this one.
Anyway, here's how your 8 options break down...
| 1 | Vista Home Basic Upgrade | $99.99 US |
| 2 | Vista Home Basic Full | $199.99 US |
| 3 | Vista Home Premium Upgrade | $159.99 US |
| 4 | Vista Home Premium Full | $239.99 US |
| 5 | Vista Business Upgrade | $199.99 US |
| 6 | Vista Business Full | $299.99 US |
| 7 | Vista Ultimate Upgrade | $259.99 US |
| 8 | Vista Ultimate Full | $399.99 US |
Why do some installers use CAT 5e instead of the newer CAT 6 cabling for your installation. EIA/TIA standards organizations create minimum operable levels for everything from computer cables to telecommunications switches. These standards give, a cable manufacturer for example, a low end performance specification to aim for.
In the case of CAT 5e and CAT 6 data/networking cabling it makes little difference with respect to the overall applications performance. CAT 5e cable has a requirement of 100MHz frequency that must pass along the cable without signal interruption. CAT 6 has a requirement of 250MHz to meet the standard. These numbers have become pointless in that cable manufacturers have been able to manufacture cables that allow up to 350MHz transmission over CAT 5e and 550MHz transmission over CAT 6. So until a newer cabling requirement is specified, it matters not which cable your installer uses at this time in relation to your overall application performance.
It will however make a huge difference in your final cost for any given installation, as CAT 6 cable is nearly double the cost of CAT 5e and triple the cost if your application requires Plenum cable. If you're trying to future protect yourself, make sure the installer uses CAT 6 Shielded Twisted Pair (STP, not UTP) with a separator core to keep the 4 pairs of wires from contacting each other. Remember ask questions and bare in mind that the quote will be much higher than a company quoting you the cheaper CAT 5e. Make sure you're comparing oranges to oranges.
WATCH OUT! Many retail chains as well as online outlets are selling sub-standard LCD (Flat Screen) computer monitors to an unsuspecting public. Let's go over some of the most important specifications when looking at a desktop computer monitor/screen. Whether you're looking at a CRT (tube) or LCD monitor, the following specs are the absolute most important.
1. DOT PITCH and/or PIXEL SIZE & SPACING: This tells you (the user) how sharp the image on the screen will be. Any manufacturer who does not state this figure on the outside of the box is trying to HIDE SOMETHING! You'll want a DOT PITCH no larger than .265mm for an LCD screen & no larger than .28mm for a CRT screen no matter what the screen size is. This measurement represents the distance from the beginning of one dot to the beginning of the next. In other words, it's the width of the pixel and the void space after said pixel. Lower is always better in this category.
The honest manufacturers and retailers will proudly state this measurement in their specifications, some will even give you the complete pixel dimensions. For example, our Xerox LCD screens tell us the DOT PITCH along with the LENGTH, WIDTH, and DIAGONAL measurement of the pixels. This gives us a true sharpness rating.
2. SCREEN RESOLUTION & SIZE: Most LCD screens today are 1280 by 1024, which means there are 1280 pixel going across the screen horizontally & 1024 pixels in vertical columns. Even with this capability we find a resolution of 1024 by 768 to be the norm on 17" LCD screens. Now with 19" and larger screens you may find even higher settings more sufficient.
3. REFRESH RATE (AKA. RESPONSE TIME): This like DOT PITCH is very important, mostly to anyone playing action video games or editing video on their computer. We recommend a figure of 12 milliseconds or less. Several manufacturers have LCD's at 8ms or below. Stay away from any LCD with a response time above 16ms.
There are other important factors to consider such as: VIEWING ANGEL, BRIGHTNESS, BLACK LEVEL, INPUT TYPES, POWER CONSUMPTION, not to mention PIXEL FAILURE RATE. But the 3 specs listed above should be the very first questions you investigate. If you don't like what you hear, pass on it. What seems like a great price now might make you regret it later. Here's an example of a 17" (not the 19") LCD that we use and recommend:
http://www.xerox-displays.com/XA7series.html?product=WCP35&page=modl
IEEE 802.11n Wireless Standard:
This new specification was pushed back again this time until 2008. Minimum throughput is slated at 100Mbs. Those of you with 802.11g+/Super G/etc. may be getting performance close to this already. Be wary though, some companies are trying to preempt the certification by releasing "pre-standard products" mainly Belkin & D-Link thru several retailers. These early products will not be certified by the WiFi Alliance until the standard is certified by the IEEE standards body and therefore may not give you the functionality or performance the new standard will set forward.
MIMO-OFDM (Multiple Input Multiple Output - Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) technology will be included in the new standard and promises to dramatically improve throughput and range for wireless networks. I swear these standards groups intentionally go out of their way to make the simple complicated. Even I had to go lookup 'Orthogonal' in the dictionary.
What this basically means in plain English is this... spread-spectrum technology that has existed for decades in the military and then in the cellular market since the mid 1990's. In essence your sending multiple signals over multiple frequencies within a given bandwidth. It's no big whoop! But it is slowing the release of the new standard.
802.11n UPDATED:
Well it's Fall 2007 and the standards board has pushed back the certification
until sometime in 2009. We still only have "Draft N" products in
the marketplace, which are only slightly different from the "Pre N" products that have been out for
over two years. If you're in the market for a new router get the Draft N which
should be backwards compatible with B/G wireless standards. At this time, D-Link
has the DIR-855 and the DIR-655 which we are recommending.
Hard Drive Data Recovery Cost:
Question:
How much does it cost to recover my data from a
damaged Hard Drive?
Answer:
Here's what one leader in the data recovery
industry had to say...
Dear BestPCTech:
Thank you for your
inquiry. As a general price range expect the recovery to be between $500-$1400
depending upon numerous factors pertaining to the type and degree of physical
damage. You will be informed of exact prognosis and pricing prior to the
recovery so you can make a decision whether to proceed. There is no fee or
obligation incurred during the diagnostic phase. Time frame from receipt to
completion is 48 hours. Please contact us again if we can be of further
assistance.
Stan S.
Micro-Surgeon Data Recovery
...still don't like to backup your data? Ouch, $500-$1400 for about 1Gb of data!
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
Above information courtesy of American National Standards Institute (ANSI) |
|||||||||||||||||
One
of the most significant changes to come to PC systems in a
decade, 
PCI
Express is based on a type of serial communications technology
somewhat like that in USB or SATA hard drives. The mechanical
(physical) board connectors come in one of four types: x1, x2,
x4, and x16 (see illustration to the right) in order to meet
different peak bandwidth requirements.
The
high-performance x16 configuration will have up to 4GB/sec
bandwidth (8GB/sec concurrent) to replace AGP technology and
will also have four times the bandwidth of AGP 8x!
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Above information courtesy of ANSI |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
DRAM
technology. It is the next- generation solution of main memory
offering greater bandwidth and density in a smaller package at
reduced power consumption and is supported by dozens of major
computer vendors.
|
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||
|
Side by side comparison
of Serial ATA vs. Standard IDE Connectors |
||||||||||||
|
What Chipsets
Support Serial ATA? |
||||||||||||
|
Who Supports
Serial ATA? |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
