by David Hakala
A memory card is essentially portable RAM, electronic memory that you can put in your pocket and plug into various devices to use as storage. A USB flash drive is a type of memory card. So are the wafer-thin cards you slide into digital cameras, game consoles, etc. There are different types of memory cards made for different purposes.
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by David Hakala
We discussed Setting Up a Web Cam For Video Chats in a previous article. But there are other uses for Web cameras.
You can turn your Web cam into a motion-sensing surveillance system. It will start recording when anything moves in its field of view. This can be a handy security system or a way to get into “lifestreaming,” the bizarre practice of streaming video of everything you do to the entire Web. Yawcam is a free program that does motion-sensing recordings, and it can automatically upload video files to a Web site where the whole world can watch you drink coffee while you check email.
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by David Hakala
I bought a Thinkpad T61 notebook recently, retiring a vintage 2001Toshiba Tecra 8100 laptop. (Go ahead and snigger, but we made lots of money together.) The new machine, like most others made in recent years, has a small touch-sensitive cursor-moving pad in the center of its front edge – right where I like to rest the balls of my thumbs when I am typing. As a result, the cursor sometimes jumped around unexpectedly and the characters I was typing ended up in the middle of previously written words.
I learned this nuisance is called a touchpad. It is useless, too small to give me good control of the cursor. I use a USB mouse with a self-retracting cord. The touchpad had to go.
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by David Hakala
If you work on a laptop computer in low lighting conditions, you may wish you could see the keyboard better. In fact, many people want a laptop keyboard light. That’s why a keyboard light is built into some modern laptops.
Read your laptop’s documentation. If there is a keyboard light built into the machine, you will probably need special software from your laptop’s manufacturer to activate it.
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by David Hakala
After buying a laptop computer, you need something to carry it in. Laptop bags come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and configurations. If you answer a few questions, you can quickly narrow down the choices to the right laptop bag for you.
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by David Hakala
The video adapter that came with your computer may be just fine for ordinary routine tasks: email, Web browsing, a little business or personal writing, etc. But if you play games or watch high definition videos on your computer, you will want better performance than most factory-installed video adapters provide. When shopping for a video adapter card, follow these guidelines.
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by David Hakala
Thousands of laptop computers are stolen each year. It’s not uncommon for a brazen thief to simply snatch a laptop right out from under the nose of its owner in a coffee shop and run out the door. So it’s not surprising that many anti-theft solutions have been developed for laptops.
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by David Hakala
A scanner is a handy device for getting graphic and text information into digital forms that your computer can use. Scanners come in many different forms with different features. Choosing the right one for you depends on your needs.
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by Tina Gasperson
The old-fashioned cathode ray tube (CRT) computer monitors were easy to take care of. A damp cloth or even a squirt or two of window cleaner and you were back in business. If there was something really stubborn on the screen, you could take the scratchy side of a sponge and scrub it off. Now, you probably have an LCD monitor. If you’ve ever touched the screen, you know it’s a bit like a layer of jelly under a flexible plastic cover. Not something that lends itself well to window cleaner and fingernails. It still gets dirty, though, so what’s the best way to clean your monitor without damaging it?
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by David Hakala
A netbook is a physically small portable computer that relies on wireless Internet connectivity to access Web-based services that provide much of the functionality found in more powerful desktop machines. Netbooks typically run Windows XP or some flavor of the Linux operating system rather than the more resource-hungry Vista. Netbooks are significantly cheaper than desktop or notebook computers. But are they worth buying at all?
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