Hardware Archive

What is “Hibernate” in Windows?

By
Andy
 – October 29, 2007Posted in: Hardware, Windows

This is a little bit “lower tech” than usual for me but it seems to crop up again and again, either when I set up new PCs for people or just when people are asking me one of the usual computer questions. The question being “What is Hibernate?”.

Well, simply, it makes your PC boot up and shut down a hell of a lot faster than normal. For those of you who aren’t obsessed with having the fastest PC, or just use it for ordering the weekly online shop, it will save you a lot of time and make your PC last longer (it won’t, but you’ll keep it longer because you won’t get so frustrated with it).

So, slightly more technical: how does it do this? Well, when you shutdown, everything it the memory (RAM) is saved as an image on the hard drive and this is then loaded back into the memory when you start up again instead of the PC having to go through and load everything up from scratch. This also includes all your programmes you had open and any documents you were working on.

This is absolutely brilliant for laptop users as anything you were working on when your battery dies is still there when you finally get back to your charger. I wouldn’t recomend on relying on them to be there when you boot up though as it is Windows and a few crashes while restoring everything has caused me a few lost files.

Access Network Shares over the Internet

By
Andy
 – September 2, 2007Posted in: ADSL & Networking, Hardware, Linux, Software, Windows

Note: I tend to ramble and build up to the point by painting a wonderful picture in words… Straight onto The Point

I tend to have a slightly complicated setup at work as far as my files go. For the most part, it’s the same as anyone else’s. Email in my email client, documents in My Documents and shared stuff on the central network share. Bu the files I spend most of my time on are stored on another server. The setup is something like this:

  • Desktop running Windoze XP with a Network Share mapped to X:
  • Linux box running Redhat with Samba and a username/password protected share with all my web files on it
  • Dreamweaver accesses the network share and FTPs to a range of production servers when ready

There’s a couple of reasons for storing everything on a central Linux box and not on a local drive:

  1. They get included in an automated backup routine that backs up all remote and local files into one archive to be moved offsite on my laptop
  2. The root directory of the Samba share is also the root directory of the Apache installation so I can test stuff locally

When away from the office I tend to FTP to the production server I want and make any changes, FTP them back and then either email myself a reminder to download them when I get into the office or Remote Desktop in and download them straight away. This has always worked and although it’s a bit of bind, noone likes working on the weekend so it means I don’t fire up my laptop to do little bits of bug fixing or whatever on a quiet Sunday.

This morning though I got an email off the MD saying I could do with a new desktop and he’d a catalogue through with a few offers in. I put the kettle on and headed over to www.dell.co.uk to see which ones he was on about. Unfortunately by the time I’d added the options I wanted (RAM, Dual Screen) it was about twice what it was to begin with. I’m now trying to convince him on a nice single monitor spec but with a 22″ wide screen TFT instead, but that’s a bit off point (I haven’t even got to the point yet, but hey!).

While I was waiting to see if he was willing to re-mortgage his house just to buy me a new PC, I thought I’d have a look at improving the rest of my work setup and that’s when I decided to find out if I could access the network share from home as well. I so couldn’t be bothered with a VPN so after a bit of Googling about other options I decided the easiest optikon was to set up a SSH tunnel and send all SMB (port 139) traffic through that.

The Whole Point Of This
Here’s a step by step guide of how you do this in case you want to access Network Shares accross the Net. If some things are called slightly different things on your machines, don’t worry, that’s just because I couldn’t be bothered to look at what they were called, I’m just doing it from memory.

  1. Boot up the PC that you want to access the Network Share from, i.e. accross the Internet (call it the client)
  2. Go to Start > Control Panel > Network Connections
  3. Open any of your connections and go to Properties. Click on “File & Print Sharing” and hit Unistall
  4. Reboot (only time, honest)
  5. Download and save Putty
  6. Open it up and enter the address of the server which has the network share on it*
  7. Go down to SSH > Tunels and in the Source box put 139, then in Destination put yourdomain.com:139 and hit Add
  8. Go back to Session and Save. This just makes it a double click to load up next time
  9. Connect, enter your username and password for the server
  10. Go to My Computer and go Tools > Map Network Drive
  11. Choose any drive letter you want and then in Folder put \\127.0.0.1\sharename (plus any username and password info you need

You should now have access to your remote Network Share from wherever you are! The speed will depend on the internet connections at both ends plus how busy the net inbetween is. For loading up and editing the 12K PHP files I use, it’s perfectly fine. I’ve also copied accross a 22M zip file but was writing this so didn’t see how long it took. I’m now copying across a 540M zip file to see how long that might take (I’m guessing about 20 times faster than doing it through Remote Desktop) [took about 3 and 1/2 hours on 512kb connection].

I haven’t mentioned security here. SSH means that while copying files across you’ll be pretty safe but I’ve gone the whole hog and blocked SSH acess to everywhere but my home IP just to make sure (no, this isn’t my work or home server). It’s up to you how far you go on the security.

* I’m assuming you’ve got a share running, a SSH server running and can open up SSH traffic to it through your firewall as well as all the necessary security/authentication

Vaio SZ: Remove or replace the DVD drive

By
Andy
 – July 12, 2007Posted in: Hardware

About a month after I bought my Sony Vaio VGN-SZ1XP, I nocked it off the desk. It seemed that everything was alright but recently the DVD writer has been failing to write and it doesn’t read some of the old disks I burnt. I decided to get a new drive so off to eBay I went and managed to get one for £30. Bonus.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find out how to actually get in to the damn thing to get it out. Well I figured it out and here it is:

  1. Hold down the F1, F2 and Num Lock key and while doing this, slide the keyboard backwards.
  2. There are three screws holding down the palm rest / mouse pad thing. Undo these
  3. Slide the palm rest towards you.
  4. There’s one screw holding down the DVD drive. Undo this and then slide the drive out.
  5. Put new one in and then repeat these backwards.

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Get rid of your broken laptops

By
Andy
 – April 2, 2007Posted in: Hardware

Was just reading on Blog-Ed about how Joe has become a finalist in the Guardian competition to make as much money as you can on eBay. What he’s doing is buying broken laptops and doing them up and then selling them again. You can check out how it’s going on Laptop Scrapyard.

When I get round to it, I’ll back up this Vaio at work and if you can sort out whatever’s wrong with the power circuitry then you can have it.

Time to replace the Nokia 8800

By
Andy
 – March 27, 2007Posted in: Hardware

I’ve had my Nokia 8800 for a little over a year now and I still love it to bits. It’s still very very good looking and just as importantly to me, it’s got a simple feature set and does just what I want it to – calls, text, alarm, reminders and that addictive golf game. Nothing more.

The only problem is that it’s recently started playing up a bit. When texting, occassionly the screen will go completely white for a few seconds. Also, it sometimes has a bit of a fit and insists that the hands free is plugged in when it isn’t so I can’t make calls as noone can hear me. Luckily it’s indestructible so I haven’t broken it by whacking it on my desk yet.

Unfortunately, it’s probably just a case of phones not living as long as people… It might be time for an upgrade. I was tempted to go similar again and go for a Nokia 8800 Sirocco as it’s pretty much the same, but black. Hmmmmm…. nice! The only problem is that it’ll set me back at least £600 and I should probably pay the rent instead. So, the alternatives?

I’m not bothered about the Nokia N77. It’s quite a nice phone but like the Samsung D900 and all the rest, it’s all become about live TV, 20 mega-pixel cameras, smart phone features, etc, etc and none of this interests me since I never used any of it when all this stuff started coming out on 3. I’d rather have a good looking phone that just does what I want (that said, the camera on the 8800 is useless).

So, the rest? Top of the list at the moment would probably be the iPhone since it looks good and as mentioned previously, I broke my iPod so that would take two things of my “gadgets to buy” list. Only problem is: it’ll cost about £350! Oh, pricy.

At the moment though, thats the only real contender… Unless Google actually makes the gPhone (or whatever it’ll be called). There’s not currently much information about it, about as much as the Google OS, but considering Google is always brilliant at simplicity, all they have to do is come up with a nice design and it could be the winner. The problem with this one? It doesn’t exist.

Any others? Hmmm… not really. I’ve been googling for about an hour and there’s a lot of nice phones out there but they’re all Mazda MX5 ‘nice’, not Aston Martin DB9 ‘nice’ so they’re off the list.

I think I’ll just have to work harder and get the Nokia 8800 Sirocco!

Universal Nokia and Vaio chargers

By
Andy
 – March 22, 2007Posted in: Hardware

Everybody knows that pretty much any nokia charger from the last decade will work with any nokia handset from the last decade which is great as I’ve got the charger cradle from my Nokia 8800 at home and an old charger from a 3310 at work in case I need a bit of extra juice to get through the day and don’t have to worry about remembering to take a charger with me.

A couple of weeks ago I had a few days off and because I was in a rush I forgot to take the charger home for my Core Duo Vaio and although the battery life is good, it’s not that good. I have however got an old 700MHz Pentium Vaio with a broken screen at home that’s not much use to anyone. As I couldn’t go for three days without my laptop I checked out the spec on the old charger and it matched up with the battery from the new Vaio. It also fits.

I haven’t had a chance to see if any other Vaio chargers work with other Vaio’s but it’s a pretty big coincidence so I’ll bet that they do. Now I’ve got phone and laptop chargers at home and at work and have less stuff to carry around. That’s today’s top tip!

Should software determine hardware development?

By
Andy
 – February 26, 2007Posted in: Hardware, Software

Moore’s Law has to date been dead on as far as chip development goes, but should the focus of development be directed elsewhere? If you look at the most complex computing device on the planet, the human brain, it is not a single “device” that is focused on a single task before moving on to the next one. It is a discreet set of components, each of which is specifically suited to a different type of task.

If this approach was taken with computer and chip design, I think it would produce more efficient systems with uniquely designed modules providing the support and functions required by the specific software running on that system. This way the system’s resources are focused on performing the current set of tasks in the most efficient way, thus requiring more modest components for a specific system or user. This also means less heat, noise, size and hopefully cost.

This approach is already starting to appear with multi-core processors allowing multiple tasks to be executed simultaneously and graphics cards which take it much further in the right direction with things like T&L, it just isn’t far enough.

You could take it one step further, producing systems with chips which could be programmed during use and then later re-programmed for a new task. This way a piece of software could be written with instructions on how to program the rest of the system to fully utilise all the resources available to maximise its productivity. Maybe there’s some mileage in this theory, or maybe it’s all crap. I have got a stinking hangover and am watching Mr. & Mrs. Smith while trying to think about PC design so who knows.

I Broke my iPod Nano

By
Andy
 – May 8, 2006Posted in: Hardware

Well after the previous post, Does the iPod Nano break easily? I have actually managed to break mine after nearly 6 months!
 
Yup, I´ve cracked the plastic over the screen and made the LCD bleed so that you can´t see anything apart from the battery meter in the corner. It still works fine though and since I can still tell if the battery´s about dead then I´m happy with it. Plus it means people´ll stop playing with it and skipping songs when I´m listening to it.

 
So how did I do this? I got astoundingly drunk, fell over and landed on top of it on a cobbled market place. Just goes to show, it is in fact an mp3 player and not an item of protective clothing. Be careful with the little buggers!

How many batteries does the Nokia 8800 have

By
Andy
 – April 11, 2006Posted in: Hardware

I´ve always liked Nokia´s for a couple of reasons. The operating system is pretty much the same for all models so you can pick a new one up and get to grips with it easily enough.

 
Also, the batteries and chargers are very similar. Even if they weren´t the same size you used to be able to borrow someone´s nokia battery when yours died and make a quick call. And although the power chargers have improved, charging much quicker, even the old ones come in handy every now and again.
 
I´ve got a nokia 8800 and love it. One of the main complaints people have with it is the battery life. It doesn´t bother me since I sit in front of a computer all day with an old nokia charger handy in case of emergencies and then when I get home I can just drop the thing in the super cool cradle to charge if it needs it.
 
What I tend to do though is just use the spare battery it came with and swap them when it dies then drop this in the cradle so even when it´s completely dead I can just change it and be off without waiting an hour for it to charge. Brilliant!

 
I did notice something this morning though. Whenever I used to borrow/lend someone my battery in an old Nokia, you used to turn it on and have to put in the date and time again…. I haven´t done this with mine yet. Does it have another mini battery inside as well or a capacitor that keeps the clock running for a minute or two…? This phone just keeps getting better.
 
Oh, and I still haven´t managed to break it. Or my iPod Nano. 

iMac now has the Intel Core Duo

By
Andy
 – February 3, 2006Posted in: Hardware

The new iMac is one of the ones based around Intel processors as opposed to the previous PowerPC chips from IBM. The good thing about them is that they´re using the new Core Duo chips, the new dual core (as the name suggests) so they should be pretty sweet machines.

The bad thing about them is that they come with the usual Apple price tag and cost a pretty penny. As soon as I´ve got some disposable cash in my budget then I might get one for website testing purposes and graphics and media work. Until them I think I´ll upgrade my majorly outdated main desktop to a dual core processor.

The only question is to go with AMD or Intel…. I think I´ll go with one of the AMD Athlon 64 X2s. Time to go shopping!

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