Rich's Tongfamily (Richtong.net add-on)

“CD Freaks”:http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/134/. A super comprehensive review of the new NEC ND-2500A. It is the first drive that can write DVD-Rs at 8x. (Most drives can now write 8x DVD+Rs). But, the most impressive thing is that it has very low write error rates for CDs and DVDs. Most interesting though…

OK, so I just used the “Power Calculator”:http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/ to see how close I am to the limits for the machines I’ve built: | Machine | JS Power Estimate | Power Supply | Random Crashes | | ASUS A7N8X-X | 448 watts | 350 watts | 1/10 minutes | | Shuttle…

Most reviews really like the Antec (Tom’s Hardware love the True 480). These power supplies are big BTW, for the traditional AT or PS/2 size cabinets, so they won’t work in mini-PCs like the shuttle. The big bruiser is the True550. Guess which one I want 🙂 Here’s a good…

Hmmm. Connie’s machine is now in a strange state. Seems to randomly reboot and now it hangs on IDE detection. I’ve turned off all the overclocking, but basically, it gets blown back to the power up. As if the reset button were pushed. I noticed that if I have the…

Well, I have an old laptop. a Compaq Evo400n, running an 850 MHz Pentium III, I’m really curious why it takes 2 minutes for the thing to boot up. First I defragged the hard disk. (Using O&O Defrag), then I started removing startup junk. It’s amazing what people are throwing…

Well, we’re getting closer to a big architectural shift. In 2H04, there will be a new pinout for processors from Intel (over 700 pins), a move to a new bus (called PCI Express). Intel’s Prescott has shipped, so their costs have gone way down (going from 130nm process to 90nm…

“Office 2003 Research Pane”:http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dno2k3ta/html/odc_customizingtheresearchpane.asp. John Ludwig points out there is this new research pane. Wow, talk about not going through a product. I had no idea it had this. Need to figure it out. One of the problem with hidden menus, is well things are hidden, you choose Tools and…