When I bought my PC recently, it was a very ordinary PC, and yet it was specially customized. It was customized to exactly what I wanted, because I selected everything that went into it. Yet at the same time, it wasn’t anything very out-of-the-ordinary. In particular, the CPU I chose to go with was the Intel Core i5-2400 CPU. I also went for H67-based Sandy Bridge motherboard. I can just imagine many DIY techie persons will find this a little…
It’s been quite a long while since I last built my own PC. My last desktop PC was built some time around 2005. I was reasonably familiar with PC components at that time. Technology has changed so much, and even though I do work in the “IT line”, and I do occasionally spec out server requirements, I’ve for the most part gotten out-of-touch with consumer PC components. Fortunately, there hasn’t been much in the way of technological revolution, so all…
Earth Hour in 2011 is observed on 26th March, from 8:30pm to 9:30pm. People around the globe will switch off lights and commit to actions that go beyond the hour. At http://zitseng.com/, I will observe Earth Hour by switching to a dimmed style for the website. It’s not quite the same as switching off the lights, but if you think about AMOLED displays, less power is consumed to display a dimmed page. It’s a show of support. I started to…
I just bought my first non-DIY desktop PC. Yeah. It’s surprising, yet I’m not surprised, that I did not DIY it myself. I guess after years of building PCs, installing software, I decided to give in and let some branded PC company take care of all the complicated things for me. This branded PC company is Acer. That’s not the surprising enough thing, actually. On top of buying a PC from a branded PC company, I actually ordered a business-level…
Time and again I’ve eavesdropped (unintentionally no doubt) and been amused by how PC salesmen try to confuse and misinform their customers. Now that I’m trying to buy a PC, it is not so funny anymore. I was at Courts earlier this evening and wanted some information, but I found myself speaking to a salesman who tried to sound like an expert, but in reality he was quite clueless and spewing false and misleading information.
The symptoms: No beep, no video. Sounds bad. What happened at the start was that the PC, which runs Linux full-time, had become unreachable over the network. There was nothing on the video, and keyboard/mouse provoked no response. The PC has not hung in a very long while, but perhaps it did for some strange reason this time. Nevermind, hit the reboot button. No beep, no video. Okay, power cycle. Still, no beep, no video.
Nowadays, it is not enough to just get a “best value” PC. Aesthetics have become an important factor in the overall consideration. Buyers are looking for PCs that look nice, are compact, clean design, blend in with the environment, etc. Now that PCs are so cheap, sometimes the price becomes a lesser important issue. Here’s the PC I bought last weekend. Two sets of them actually. It was for work related purpose. I didn’t need a fast or powerful PC,…
[photopress:20070923365.jpg,thumb,pp_image]The power supply unit of my home desktop PC started to make some uncomfortable noises, or rather, it was the fan of the power supply unit that was making those noises. Most likely the fan was going to die. And then when it dies, the power supply would start to overheat… and since my home desktop actually functions as my 24×7 Internet server for my home, any downtime would be rather inconvenient. Ok, so I went out to get a…
