Windows 7 on the Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC

Two years ago I decided to upgrade my tablet PC to Windows Vista, a process that I detailed here. I don’t use my tablet very much, but I do like to get the pen out from time to time to do some scribbling. The improvements in Windows Vista made the tablet much more usable, and [...]

My Dell Inspiron Mini 9

On January 1st, I decided to order a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook. I had been reading a lot about netbooks, and was in the market for something smaller to carry around. My aging Toshiba M200 Tablet PC is fairly small and light, but it’s still quite big compared to a netbook. I went [...]

Netbooks are trendy

What kind of computer do you use? Most of my work is done at a desktop or workstation; a tower attached to three monitors. The rest of the time I’m using either my laptop or tablet. I’ve also got a little Sony UMPC but it doesn’t get used much. It was kinda cool for [...]

Making an effort to use sleep mode

Events like Earth Hour raise awareness about our “planet in peril”, but as I’ve said in the past, they don’t have a positive impact on the environment. You need to do the little things to truly make a difference. I try to do my part. I always take a stainless steel mug to Starbucks [...]

Windows Vista Ultimate on the Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC

I’ve had my tablet for few years now and I just love it. I don’t know why these things haven’t taken off in the marketplace! They’re a bit more expensive than normal laptops, but it’s definitely worth the extra cost in my opinion. Mine is a Portege M200 from Toshiba (a “convertible” tablet). It came [...]

Blast from the past: hard drives

The computer industry changes so rapidly that it’s easy to forget about the hardware and devices we had just a few years ago. I’ve been cleaning up the office, getting rid of some junk that we’ve had lying around for years, and I’m amazed at some of the hardware I’ve found. Hard drives best demonstrate [...]

Tutoring CMPUT 101 – Introduction to Computing

A few months ago I was walking through HUB Mall at the U of A when I ran into an old friend I hadn’t seen since high school. We had a brief chat, and I of course told her about all of the geeky things I do. Turns out she was taking CMPUT 101 this [...]

Coming Soon: Dell Tablet PC

As you may know, I am a big fan of the Tablet PC. I’ve had a Toshiba Portege for a few years now, and before that I had the first Compaq model. Unfortunately, most people still buy regular laptops. I think there are two reasons for that:

Tablet PC’s are a little more expensive than regular [...]

Did you shutdown today?

I sure as heck didn’t. Like Engadget asked back in February, “how about we all decide to hold our breath for 24 hours, too?” In case you hadn’t heard, today was International Shutdown Day. Yup, they wanted us to not use computers for a day. Fat chance! Engadget explains:

It seems that a pair of men [...]

Windows Vista available today

Today’s the day. Windows Vista is now available in stores, ready for you to purchase. I went to Best Buy today (for something else, not for Vista) and I have to say, the Vista display was sad. There were only a couple boxes on the shelf, and one demo computer. More people were buying the [...]

Seagate says 300 TB by 2010

It’s hard to imagine that in just three years a single hard drive could store 300 TB, but we’ve been here before. Five years ago, who would have thought we’d have the 750 GB drives that we do today! Seagate claims the larger drives are on the way:

To pull the 300 TB rabbit out of [...]

Rendering Frames at Pixar

I recently agreed to help a colleague with a video project, and we met this week to go through some of the raw footage. While we were chatting I mentioned that the animated movies that are made today take longer to render than those of ten years ago, simply because they are becoming so much [...]

Largest Consumer Electronics Recall Ever

This is one record you don’t want to be setting. Dell has announced what the Consumer Product Safety Commission is calling “the largest safety recall in the history of the consumer electronics industry.” That’s right, 4.1 million laptop batteries installed in Dell machines between April 2004 and July 18th, 2006. Is yours one of them?

Dell’s [...]

Format and Reinstall

After attempting to install another gigabyte of RAM into my computer yesterday, it went completely bonkers. I don’t know what happened, but I couldn’t seem to fix it (and actually I don’t think it was related to the RAM itself). I have lots of experience fixing computers, and yes I tried everything, but I just [...]

The History of Apple

As you may or may not know, 2006 marks the 30th anniversary of Apple Computer, and yes I find it amusing that they still have “computer” in their name (seriously, the iPod is not being represented)! Anyway, via Derek Miller I came across this rather amusing history of the company, with entries starting 4-15 billion [...]