Home & Small Office Computer Guide

The latest offering from Nikon is their pocket zoom camera, the S4. The key features are:

6.0 megapixels producing prints up to 16×20 inces

10x optical zoom Nikkor 38-380mm glass lens

4x digital zoom

2.5 inch LCD screen

16 scene modes for portraits, panoramas, etc. Four of those modes come with Scene Assist to automatically guide you in taking better pictures

Long battery life from a set of Coolpix rechargeable AA batteries that will allow you up to 290 images or 450 images with a set of lithium AA batteries

Adjustable graphic user interface with a help button that will instantly display an explanation for all the main menu functions.

Versatile swivel design that allows you to capture low angle and overhead shots

The MSRP for this camera is $US399.95 but if you shop around at Amazon or Overstock I’m sure you will pick it up for much less.

Now I bet you looked at the title of this piece and thought that it didn’t really apply to you because you only spend an hour or two on the computer every day.

Well, if you’re lucky it won’t ever apply to you but repetitive strain injury can occur through using a computer mouse whether you’re on the computer for only an hour or two ever other day or whether you’re like me and working online for many hours every day.

So one day you just may need an ergonomic mouse and that means that it might pay to read about what is on the market today.

They may look weird but I can tell you from first hand experience that they really work and if computers are part of your business then they can actually save your business.

You will find the review here.

If you’re into computer gaming you will know that when it comes to the price of gaming machines the sky really is the limit.

$600 for a graphics card doesn’t even cause a hardened gamer to catch his breath and the gaming machine that my friend Rick has for sale down at Fraser Coast Computers for $A4000 is nothing out of the ordinary.

What is out of the ordinary is a good budget priced gaming PC and while you won’t find a manufacturer who supplies them ready built it may be possible to assemble on of your own for around $US500.

If you want to know how then jump over to this article on Tom’s Hardware Guide

If, like me, you use Skype then you should be warned there has been some critical flaws uncovered in a recent version of the programme. They actually came to light yesterday and were quickly fixed.

So perhaps you should pop along to the official website and see if you are one of those that needs to download the security patches.

If you are not using Skype then let me tell you that it’s a very handy and very FREE Internet phone programme. All you need is earphones or speakers and a microphone and once you have gone through the easy install procedure for the software you are ready to talk to the world for free.

And you will find it at Skype.com

Teenagers might find it hard to believe but under the crusty exterior of every older person there resides a youngster who grew up on a diet of The Doors, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones and all those other wild groups that our parents disliked with a passion.

And sometimes that youngster wants to break out and rock again. For Toni and I that time almost always comes when we’re sitting in front of the computer trying to get enthusiastic about some piece of work we have to turn out.

So Toni finds a play list and launches the MP3 player and pretty soon her office and mine are really rocking - the neighbours haven’t complained yet so maybe we’re playing the music they like too

If you want to set the house alight with some great music stored on your computer then here is what we would recommend if the dollars are short but the hunger for hard rock played on a good system is hard to resist. It’s a Logitech X530 and you can pick one up at any good computer store.

In the US they retail fro around $US80.00 and here in Queensland they’re going out the door of Fraser Coast Computers for $179.00 - once you’ve got it set up and playing you will wonder how you ever did without one … and your neighbours might love you too

The last thing most of us think about when we’re sitting in front of our computers working hard is what processor is inside the computer. As long as it keeps working there’s no need to worry about whether it’s an AMD or an Intel.

And for most of us the processing speed isn’t going to be of great concern either because most of us won’t even notice any discernable difference in the speed between a high-end AMD chip and a low-grade Celeron.

The only time we are ever really going to ponder the question of what processor we want is when the time comes to buy a new computer and the salesman starts asking us for our preference.

At times like that we usually don’t want to appear dumb and we would sometimes like to dazzle the salesperson with our brilliance and so, with that thought in mind I offer you The Right Desktop Processor:CPU/Performance

You will find that it’s a lengthy and in depth look at a number of processors. and if you don’t have time to read everything let me tell you that the bottom line is that there is no definitive winner.

And my personal preference? Well we do a lot of graphical work, we regularly run programmes like Dreamweaver and Photoshop and we have a variety of AMD and Intel processors in our machines and we can’t tell the difference either.

Ask the computer guy who repairs our machines though and he has no doubt. When the customer has no preference he’ll install an AMD chip every time because the latest Intel chips run way too hot for his liking.

Just what you always wanted on your computer, spyware that will sniff around all your files - including your email - and report back to it’s makers. If that’s what you want then World of Warcraft delivers.

It comes prepackaged with the game and installs itself without you needing to do anything - now isn’t that handy?

I wonder where that leaves the makers of the game now that spyware has been declared to be a matter of trespass?

If you want to read all about the spyware that comes with World of Warcraft then you can find it here.

We have a friend who runs a small computer shop where he custom builds computers for just about any application you might want. He has always been a big fan of Asus motherboards until yesterday when he found a major problem.

The latest Asus motherboards that he would use for most of the machines he builds has a major problem with Pentium 4 chips. It’s not something that manifests itself until you are well into the loading routine and then the computer stops and posts an error message that it can’t find a vital file.

The file is there of course and you can even manually point the computer to the file but it can’t read it.

Asus do have a solution to the problem, all you have to do is flash the BIOS.

Now that sounds pretty simple doesn’t it but … to flash the BIOS you have to have loaded the basic operating system into the computer … and you can’t do that because the Asus motherboard has a problem.

Oh well … it seems that the board works fine with AMD and Celerons.

The last few posts have been out on the fringe so why spoil the record and go back to something serious?

Instead let’s talk about what could be one of the world’s oldest computers. It’s known as the Antikythera mechanism and back then they sure built things to last. It is believed that this gizmo was built around 87 years before the birth of Christ and at some stage one of them went to the bottom of the sea in a shipwreck. 1900 years later it was brought up by sponge divers.

The mechanisim is now one of the oldest known surviving geared mechanism. After being at the bottom of the sea for 1900 years the mechanism wasn’t quite in pristine condition and there have been a number of attempts to build a replica of what the machine might have looked like.

Unfortunately there seems to be a lot of divergence on how the machine looked and function but everyone seems to be agreed that the device was used to calculate the positions of various celestial bodies on any given date.

Yet another reconstruction has now been unveiled at the Technopolis museum in Athens.

And if you wondered why researchers have had so much trouble deciding on what the mechanism looked like then you can see a photo of this amazing piece of equipment here

Hmmm - I wonder if there is still some warranty left on that thing?

If you haven’t tried Wikepedia before then before you do perhaps you should take heed of what the co-founder - Jimmy Wales - is now admitting.

He now freely admits that there are real quality problems with the online project.

Well I would have thought that was always going to be a very real and almost unavoidable danger.

If you don’t know about Wikepedia let me give you an analogy so that you can understand the scope of the project and the looming problems.

Think of it as an enormous online encyclopedia - with parts of it written by anyone who wants to. There doesn’t seem to be any requirement for them to have any knowledge of what they are writing about. The general idea is that someone who does know what they’re talking about will come along and correct the misinformation that others have added.

Perhaps I am being a litte unfair but it is only and analogy.