Home & Small Office Computer Guide

How’s this for a rather wild computer mouse. It’s thhe latest offering from Logitech and it features include:

Cordless

USB

Scroll Wheel

Application Switch

Tilt Wheel Plus Zoom

Rechargeable

Laster Techonology

Not only does it talk to the computer but the computer also talks to the mouse via a 2.4GHZz wireless connection. It comes with two rechargeable battery packs and the packs can be swapped on the fly. There’s even a battery level indicator that you can see on the top left hand side of the mouse.

This mouse will work with IBM or any compatible computer runing Windows98, 200, Me or XP that has a USB port.

The Logitech G7 mouse is rated at 4 times faster than conventional mice and is aimed at the gaming market. It’s also aimed at people who are prepared to pay for a quality mouse and retails for around $US100.00

Sony has recently released it’s latest S series laptop/notebook. It’s the S480 and it is definitely rich in features.

Those features include:

13.3″ wide XBRITE

Intergrated optial drive

nVida GeForce Go 6200 graphic card

Bluetooth wireless technology

915PM Intel Centrino Mobile chipset with integrated wireless LAN

Connectivity for a wide range of digital devices including digital cameras, video cameras and PDA

And all that comes in a slim and lightweight package.

Hewlett Packard have announced the voluntary recall and replacement programme for battery packs used in some HP notebooks. The battery packs affected by the recall were manufactured between March and September 2004 and distributed worldwide.

Hewlett Packard have a full list of machines that could be carrying the problem batteries on their website at:

http://bpr.hpordercenter.com/bpr/

It seems that Asus is about to release a new video card that is fairly unique. The Extreme N7800 GT Dual is two Nvidia GeForce 7800 GT GPUs and a whopping 512 MB of RAM on one single board.

Basically that’s two PCI Express video cards in one package that takes up just one slot.

For more information check out the full report at Hot Hardware

Apple have just released their latest desktop computer - the iMac G5. It comes in two versions - 17 inch or 20 inch and what you see is what you get. There’s nothing else to this computer so it’s not going to hog a lot of space on your desk top.

The features of the iMac G5 include:

1.9GHz or 2.1GHz processor

a new PCI-Express ATI Radeon X600 Pro or XY grahics processor

128MB of dedicated video memory

OS X Tiger operating system

pre-installed AirPort Extreme Card for wireless connectivity

It also comes with USB2.0 and Firewall 400 ports, composite and S-video outputs, audio in and out so you can connect almost everything from cameras to extra hard drives to this computer.

You can find more information and have an online demo here

Intel has now officially launched it’s first server chip that places multiple microprocessors on a single piece of silicon.

Intel claim that the dual-core technology used in the servers speeds performance while preventing overheating - a problem that plagues high-performance processors.

It’s reported thatboth IBM and Dell will use the new processors in new machines.

High-end technology like this does not come cheap and the new processors are said to be selling for $1043 each when bought in volume.

My thanks to Ployer.com for this story.

Laptop’s are an invaluable tool for anyone who needs to work online at time s when they’re not near the office. Anyone who has lugged a laptop around with them knows that they’re not as light and portable as they’re made out to be. After a while they become weighty little monsters that become a nuisance.

But any laptop that weighs in at 1.15kg is worth having a look at and the Toshiba R200 is one laptop that isn’t going to weigh you down.

The specs for the R200 are:

1.6 GHz Pentium low-voltage chip

512MB of DDR2 RAM

Wi Fi

60GB hard drive

And that’s all packaged in a magnesium alloy case that is less than 2 cm thick.

There’s no reoom for an optical drive and so it doesn’t have one.

Now if all those specs and the ultra thin image really made you want to rush out and buy one then perhaps you should take a deep breath first because they are not cheap. Here in Australia they retail for around$3.5k and I saw one in the US advertised for $1999.

But they are a nice looking unit and they only weigh 1.15kg …

Looks interesting doesn’t it? It’s a USB thumb drive … but it’s different. This one has a brain … and can perform limited functions away from the USB port on your computer. It can connect to anything that has a USB port - including another Flashpoint thumb drive.

And when it’s connected it can exchange data with whatever it’s connected to. Got some great MP3 recordings you want to swap with your friend? If he has one of these units it’s a simple matter of connecting them together and the job’s done!

It’s small and lighweight and comes complete with it’s own rechargeable and removable battery.

It comes in five different sizes:

128 meg

256 meg

512 meg

1 gig and

2 gig

And all of them connect to a normal USB thumb drive as well.

You can order your very own right here

Never let it be said that the Home and Small Office Computer Guide is so lost in it’s own geeky world that it doesn’t know when Christmas is coming. We know that it’s coming soon and so here is a gift suggestion for the lady in your life.

If you haven’t quite worked out what it is let me tell you that it is a 128 meg USB thumb drive done up in a package that resembles a lady’s lipstick.

It’s available from Digital Era in the UK and if you
follow the link it will take you right to the information page.

Now I know that this sounds really weird and I really shouldn’t be letting my imagination run away with me but I think my partner - the light of my life - she who brought light and happiness into my life - has some strange ability to communicate with operating systems.

Yes, I knew it! You’ve immediately consigned me to the bin marked ‘Crack Pots, Looney Tunes, and other Demented Nitwits’ - but not so. I am as perfectly insane as any other computer user but my wife does have this strange ability.

Consider the evidence - ever since the introduction of digital watches she has been unable to wear one and have it last longer than three days. Good quality or absolute crap - it doesn’t matter, they all die after about three days.

And now that strange ability to destroy things is beginning to manifest itself in her computers. She has a laptop that works fine but after she has used it for a couple of months it dies. The software corrupts and it has to be formatted and re-loaded.

And then there is her PC. Over the last couple of years, despite changes in motherboards and peripherals it too starts to die. Invariably it’s the USB ports that go first. One at a time they just stop working for no apparent reason. Anything that is plugged into those ports can be moved to my computer and it works fine but if she tries to transfer a file across the network to anything plugged into a USB port on another machine it never reaches it’s destination.

Last week it all started again and one by one her USB ports failed so tomorrow it goes back to the computer shop for another format and reload.

I guess we could live with it but the failures are happening more frequently.

And you thought I was joking - where is the them from the X Files?