Sometimes we would need to find out the technical details of our LCD or CRT monitors. In normal cases we would be referring to our user guide that came when the monitor was purchased or we will refer to the manufacturers website for more details.

To quickly find the technical details of the monitor from Windows we can use a free utility called Monitor Asset Manager. This utility is primarily aimed at corporate IT administrators who can use this utility to manage multiple monitors but even average home users can keep this utility handy as it is free for personal use.

Monitor Asset Manager reports the various technical details about the monitor. This utility directly queries the monitor to get the technical info rather than rely on the Windows registry entries. Hence reported information is more accurate when compared to the information extracted from the Windows registry.

The following are the technical details or information you can find about your monitor: Model name, Manufacturer, Plug and Play ID, Serial number, input signal type, screen size, sync input support, power management, display type, firmware version, technology used, Default color space, Display gamma, Red chromaticity, Green chromaticity, Blue chromaticity, Horizontal scan range, Vertical scan range, Video bandwidth, CVT standard, GTF standard, resolutions supported and etc.

In addition to LCD and CRT monitors you can use this utility to find information about your HDTV as well. You can quickly save the technical details about the monitor in a txt file or MIF file. You can also find the details of the monitor as stored in the Windows registry.

This utility works both in 32-bit and 64-bit Windows environment. We tested this Windows XP and Windows Vista and found this utility to be working flawlessly.

Download Monitor Asset Manager

Thanko has introduced a unique optical mouse that features 3 button with scroll wheel layout. The unique feature that sets apart this mouse is a 2 inch fan that is present beneath. The 2 inch fan helps cool palm while you are using the mouse. If you are person who has got sweaty palms like mine then you really love this mouse. The fan can be switched ON or switched OFF using a switch that is present in the side panel of the mouse.

This mouse uses USB interface for connectivity,  measures 6 x 12.6 x 4 cm and works with Windows XP, Vista. You can get this mouse in Japan for around USD $18.

Via Fareastgizmos

Brando USB 2.0 to Dual SATA HDD Adapter lets you connect two 2.5″ / 3.5″ SATA hard disk drives to your computer via USB port and the best of all it supports RAID1 functionality. The USB 2.0 to SATA adapter contains a Silicon Image Sil5744 storage processor that operates it with one USB 2.0 and two SATA HDD simultaneously. The SATA drives are connected to the adapter using the eSATA ports that are present in the adapter.

Brando has also provided a power supply so that you can power your SATA hard disk drives. When the drive is connected to computer it gets recognized as USB mass storage device under Windows there by making it plug and play compatible. Brando USB 2.0 to SATA adapter can be used under Windows 2000/XP/Vista. The adapter is compliant with SATA 1.0a specification, USB 2.0 specification and USB & SATA Mass Storage. This entire package weighs only 41gms and the dimensions are 85 x 50 x 16mm. Two 3.5″ silicon cover is also provided so that hard disk drives can be safely used with out causing any accidental damage to their sensitive electronics that are exposed.

Package Contents:

Gallery:

The Brando USB to SATA adapter retails for around USD $69.00 which we feel is quite worth for the features and functionality this gadget offers. You can get Brando USB to SATA adapter from here.

Today CD / DVD burners are a standard component in every computer be it a Desktop or a Laptop. The CD / DVD media is the most affordable and most easily available backup options that we have today. But many times we end up creating discs that are either not readable, fail to read after a period of time and ofcourse the dreaded coaster. Well now you would be wondering what this term coaster is that I keep referring.

What is a CD / DVD Coaster?

Well coaster can be defined as a unreadable disc, a badly burnt disc or a disc with lot of errors.

CD / DVD Burning Tips and Tricks to Avoid Coasters:

1. Check if your CD /DVD writer has the latest firmware: Always make sure that your CD/ DVD burner has got the latest firmware. The latest firmware offered by manufacturer of your drive would have support for latest blank CD / DVD medias and bug fixes if they were present in the earlier version of firmware.

2. Always use good quality media: Those nameless flashy cheap CD / DVD are no good. The quality of these cheap media is very poor so if you use those then you are risking your backup data. It is recommended that you buy branded media that can offer good results.

3. Take care of your Media: Buying good quality media alone is not sufficient, you must also take precautions that these media don’t get damaged. Keep the blank CD / DVD media away from sunlight and dust. Before you put the blank CD / DVD media into your burner make sure that they are clean.

4. Burn at lower speed: Burn at lower speed to get the best quality burning rather than burning at max speed or using overspeeding than the rated speed. I have noticed that the slower I burn the better quality of burns I get when compared to the max rates speed. I don’t mean that you have to burn you media at 1x speed, if you have 16x rated media try to burn at 12x which is quite optimal and you also don’t loose lot of precious time.

5. Defragment your hard drive: To get the best quality burns your CD / DVD writer needs to get data at the desired speed at required rate. To achieve this the hard disk drive would need to transfer the data at that rate hence it is advisable to have your data defragmented so that hard disk drive can transfer the data without any hiccups. Even if you set the max burning speed the burn rate will slower if the data is highly fragmented.

6. Close the programs that you do not use: The CD / DVD burning is more of hard drive taxing job rather than the CPU, close all those hard disk hogging programs that you don’t intend to use. To make the burning smoother the CD / DVD burning program uses quite some RAM if you are running low on RAM close all the unwanted programs that would free up more memory to the burning application.

7. Enable DMA for CD / DVD drives: The DMA mode allows the CPU to transfer huge chunks of data to the drive thereby reducing the CPU utilization. If this mode is enabled then high speed and high quality burning can be performed. You can read here further on how to enable DMA in Windows XP.

8. Make your CD /DVD drive as Master: If you are using IDE or PATA based CD / DVD burner then it is a wise decision to make that drive as master drive to get better performance.

9. Opt for SATA based DVD drive: Planning to buy a new drive? If yes then it is better that you a SATA interface based drives as it offers better performance over its PATA counter part.

8. Enable buffer under-run protection: Enable the buffer under-run-protection in your burning application before you burn your data.

What is buffer underrun?

A buffer underrun occurs during recording if the recorder runs out of data in the recording buffer. Once the laser is on, it cannot stop and resume flawlessly; thus the pause necessitated by the underrun can cause the data on the disc to become invalid. Since the buffer is generally being filled from a relatively slow source, such as a hard disk or another CD/DVD, a heavy CPU or memory load from other concurrent tasks can easily exhaust the capacity of a small buffer. Therefore, buffer underrun protection was implemented by various individual CD/DVD writer vendors. With this technique, the laser is indeed able to stop writing for any amount of time and resume when the buffer is full again. The gap between successive writes is extremely small.

Modern burners and burning applications by default enable the buffer underrun protection but it is always better to double check it before you start your backup or burning project.

9. Use Ultra DMA (80-Conductor) IDE/ATA Cables: If you are using a PATA or IDE CD / DVD drive use the 80 pin ultra DMA IDE/ATA cable over the 40 pin cable as it offers better performance.

Image courtesy: Seagate

If you got any more tips then do let us know we will update those here.

ZDNet has developed a tool for Mac Pro using which now Mac Pro’s can be overclocked. Overclocking from within the Operating System (OS) was something that was always available to Windows but not for Mac users.

Features of ZDNet of Mac Pro

• Overclocking of CPU, main memory and front side bus, no CPU-Only solution
• Automatic clock chip detection
• Extensive diagnosis via Mac OS X console
• Does not use voltage increase for overclocking

This utility from ZDNet does not increase the voltage while overclocking CPU, front side bus (FSB) and Memory modules (RAM). This is way you are very safe from frying your CPU, chipset and motherboard from voltage increase.

ZDNet team was able to overclock Mac Pro 1.1 which sports two Intel Xeon X5355 processors clocking at 2.66Ghz to 3.10 GHz and Mac Pro 3.1 sporting two Intel Xeon E5462 processors clocking at 2.80GHz to 3.2GHz. After overclocking the Mac pro 3.1 was able to outperform the most expensive model that was available from the Apple stables. ZDNet claims that is equal to a savings of 1430 Euros.

The tool can be downloaded from here.

Via ZDNet Blog

Note: Overclocking is a risky affair and you will be voiding your warranty by overclocking. Use this tool at your own risk.

Samsung introduced 2.5″ 64GB solid state disk (SSD) with native SATA II support. These drives are primarily meant for notebooks or laptops and these high performance SSD hard disk drives are much more efficient than the conventional hard disk drives.

Specifications of Samsung 64GB SATA II 2.5″ Solid State Disk (SSD)

• Type of Drive: Solid state disk (SSD)
• Manufacturing technology used: NAND
• Interface support: SATA II
• Interface speed: Upto 3Gbps
• Sequential write speed: Upto 100 MBps (MB/s)
• Sequential read speed: Upto 120 MBps (MB/s)
• Weight: 73g approx

Photos of Samsung 64GB SATA II 2.5″ Solid State Disk (SSD)

Shivaranjan.com’s View:

The solid state drives have definitely have an edge when compared to the conventional hard disk drives. As usual this would command a high initial price and slowly it would drop down as this technology becomes mainstream. If you are a performance junkie and have lot of money to burn then this drive is definitely for you.

Eye-Fi would soon be introducing 2 GB SD memory card which has Wi-Fi 802.11b/g capabilities. If you happen to use this card then you can forget using data cables and memory card readers as this card would directly upload photos to your PC from your digital camera via Wi-Fi interface.

How does this SD flash memory card with Wi-Fi capability work?

• Install this card in your PC or Mac with the SD USB adaptor that ships with it.
• Register your Eye-Fi card with PC or Mac using the Eye-Fi manager.
• Now remove the card from the PC and insert this in your camera and start shooting photographs.
• Now keep your camera powered ON so that the pictures can be uploaded to your computer via Wi-Fi interface.

You can read the detailed draft manual here.

Shivaranjan.com’s View:

It is great to know that most of the devices and gadgets that we use daily are slowly migrating to wireless technologies. It is always a wise decision to buy gadgets with wireless capabilities as they are always pretty useful. You should probably not use this card much when your camera is not near a power source the wireless capability of the card uses the battery power of your camera therefore you may see a dip in your camera’s battery performance. I am still not sure what kind of Wi-Fi security standard they are using to transfer the images from camera to computer. The bang for the buck that this card would offer is not yet known at present.

Update Nov 04, 2007:

Xbit Labs reports that this card has been launched.

Found Via TGDaily

2.5″ and 3.5″ SATA HDD Stage Rack is new innovative product in the market where in you can directly connect your 2.5″ and 3.5″ SATA hard disk drive without the need for any enclosures. All you have to do is plug in your SATA hard disk drive to the docking station and start accessing your drive.

Features of 2.5″ and 3.5″ SATA Hard Disk Drive (HDD) Stage Rack:

• Support for 2.5″ and 3.5″ SATA hard disk drive
• Connects via USB interface in USB 2.0 mode so data transfer can be achieved at max rate of 480 Mbps
• Glowing blue ring indicator indicates the status of drive
• Switching drives is very simple.

Some images of 2.5″ and 3.5″ SATA Hard Disk Drive (HDD) Stage Rack:

(Click to enlarge all these photos)

Shivaranjan.com’s View:

This very interesting stuff that I have come across recently. If I lay my hands on this stuff then I would not have to open up my desktops case, hunt for external case and those SATA to USB adapter cable anymore. This docking station is also very reasonably priced at USD $47 (INR 1,880) so this would not burn a big hole in my pocket.

It could have been better if they could add the following:

• IEEE 1394 interface
• Multi card reader so that I can plug in my camera’s memory card and quickly transfer the photos
• Additional USB port in the docking station so that I can plug in my USB flash disk drive.

Most of the people who upgrade their hard disk drive usually end up converting them to an external drive so that they can use it. But over the years this number would keep on increasing so it would make lot of sense if you get this thing and keep it around so that when ever you want to access to your old drive, all you need to do is plug it in.

You should be careful when you are using this dock as it exposes your hard disk drives critical electronic components and if you are not careful then there is a possibility of screwing up your old hard disk drive. You can get this docking station from here.

Xbit Labs reports Intel’s next generation processors based on Nehalem are to be code named Bloomfield. Now let us discuss what this Nehalem microarchitecture all about.

What is Nehalem Microarchitecture?

Nehalem microarchitecture would be successor to the highly successful core microarchitecture based processors (CPU). The Nehalem based cores would be debuting with 45nm manufacturing technology and in course of time they would switch to 32nm manufacturing technology.

Features that Nehalem Microarchitecture would have:

• Dynamically managed cores, threads, cache, interfaces and power.
• Leverages leading 4 instruction issue Intel Core microarchitecture technology.
• Simultaneous multi-threading (similar to Intel Hyper-threading technology) returns to enhance performance and energy efficiency.
• Innovative new Intel SSE4 and ATA instruction set architecture additions.
• Superior multi-level shared cache leverages Intel Smart Cache technology.
• Leadership system and memory bandwidth.
• Performance enhanced dynamic power management.
• This would be the first Intel processor that would sport integrated memory controllers which AMD has implemented in its processors long ago.
• The Nehalem microarchitecture is expected to sport upto 8 cores and can execute 16 simultaneous thread at a time. That means we can see a huge difference in multitasking environments.
• These cores are so much customizable that Intel can add a built-in graphics core into Nehalem central processing units and alter the number of memory controller channels besides changing the number of operating processing engines.

These processors are expected to be available from early 2009.

Shivaranjan.com’s View:

Once this processors come to market, then AMD would be in real fix until they bring out something that beat this. I am pretty impressed with the customizable cores that Nehalem cores offer, probably we can even get a custom built CPU from Intel but that would come with huge price tag.

BIOS is an important component of your computer, with out which your computer won’t run at all. Many motherboard manufacturer often issue BIOS updates to fix bugs, minor enhancements, support for newer processors (CPU) and RAM. Many people end screwing up their computer’s motherboard because they don’t take proper precautions when flashing their motherboard’s BIOS. Remember most motherboard manufacturers do not offer warranty for bad flash.

Tips to prevent bad BIOS flash (Motherboard):

1. Check your Power Supply before you start flashing: The most common cause for screwed up BIOS is power failure during the flashing process. Before you start flashing make sure to connect your computer to a UPS. In event of power failure the UPS would be able to provide power to your computer.

2. If you use UPS make sure that its battery has got enough juice: If the battery of your UPS does not have enough charge, then your computer would go down when there is a power failure or surge. I suggest you plan your BIOS flashing process in advance; you can check your UPS’s battery by putting in battery mode. By doing this you would also come to know how long your UPS would last in event of a power failure. Also make sure you charge your UPS properly so that the battery charge is full when start flashing you motherboard.

3. Correctly identify your motherboard model and current BIOS version: To flash your motherboards BIOS you require the correct BIOS flash file, if you flash your motherboard with wrong BIOS then your motherboard is dead. Though you can identify the your motherboard model using software utilities but I usually do not rely on them. I open up the computers cabinet and find out the motherboard model from there, remember your motherboard model number is always printed on your motherboard. Once you know the motherboard model can head to your manufacturers website and download the latest BIOS update. All of today’s modern BIOS flash utility that manufacturers provide have inbuilt mechanism that prevents you from flashing the wrong BIOS version. This is for people who flash in DOS mode.

4. Close unnecessary programs when you flash within Windows: As you all know sometimes Windows may behave strangely or become unstable so to avoid all this, you better close all programs. My sincere advise would be avoid flashing from within Windows, instead flash from a USB Flash drive in DOS mode.

5. When flashing in DOS mode prefer USB flash drive instead of a Floppy: A floppy disk is very sensitive to environment when compared to a USB flash drive and can get corrupted very soon. So I would suggest you to use USB flash drive instead of a floppy disk.

6. Scan your USB flash disk or Floppy disk for errors or bad sectors before flashing: If your USB flash disk or floppy disk has bad sectors then the BIOS file would get corrupted and probably you would end up with a bad flash. So scanning your USB flash disk or floppy disk makes lot of sense.

7. Read the manufacturer’s instructions carefully before flashing: Each manufacturer provides various ways of flashing your BIOS so before flashing read the instructions for the method that you plan to use carefully and proceed further.

I have made all these mistakes in past and screwed my motherboard many times over and that is the reason why this post published. Bookmark this post and use it next time when you plan to flash your BIOS. If you wish to add something to this then let me know, I will update this post with a link back to you.

Asus has launched P5E3 Deluxe/WiFi-AP motherboard that features a embedded Linux distro a.k.a Splashtop which comes with Firefox and Skype installed. When you use this motherboard you are given a option to boot using the embedded Linux operating which boots within 15 seconds and you would be able to access Firefox and Skype or the operating system of your choice. This means that you would be able to browse, chat and call your friends or families in within a few seconds of switching on your computer

Features of Asus P5E3 Deluxe / WiFi-AP:

• LGA775 Intel Core 2 Processor Ready and supports next generation 45nm Multi-Core Core 2 microarchitecture CPU
• Intel X38 Chipset that supports support 8GB of dual-channel DDR3 1333/1066/800 architecture, 1333/1066/800 FSB (Front Side Bus), Dual PCI Express 2.0 x16 graphics and multi-core CPUs.
• Support for DDR3 1800 high speed RAM
• Wi-Fi access point built in motherboard that is capable of working with IEEE 802.11n draft standards.
• Embedded Splashtop Linux distribution.

You can also see this motherboard in action: (RSS readers open this post in web browser to watch the video)

[youtube width="425" height="335"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd_kZhbXkXA[/youtube]

The motherboard would sell for USD $350 (INR 14,400) which is pretty costly but I would say it is worth that much with the specifications it has got.

Shivaranjan.com’s take on this:

Now question that comes to my mind is how are the consumers like you and me going to update the software as Firefox and Skype get frequents updates. I guess this would be done by the flashing the ROM that holds the embedded operating system.

Dell offers somewhat similar feature in its laptop which is also called Dell Media Direct which boots Windows quickly from the hard disk drive and you can watch movies and even access your office documents but you cannot browse the Internet. Well I may opt for this motherboard if it comes to India not for the embedded Linux that it offers rather for the other features that this motherboard offers.

Elpida and Rambus have jointly introduced 512MB 4.8GHz XDR-structure DRAM that can deliver data transfer rate of 9.6 GB/s which is almost six times more than the current DDR2-800 RAM can achieve. These speeds are achieved as the RAM runs at Octal data rate of 600 MHz bringing the total clock speed to 4.8 GHz. This is the fastest DRAM that is available in the market now. These new high speed RAM would be available in April 2008.

Press Release of Elpida:

Elpida’s 512Mb, 4.8GHz XDR DRAM (Part number: EDX5116ADSE-5E-E) device is organized in 8-banks (x16/x8/x4 programmable), and with a 9.6GB/s data transfer rate delivers six times the peak bandwidth of industry-standard DDR2-800 memory devices. The 4.8GHz XDR device is manufactured using Elpida’s 70 nm process technology and is available in a 104-ball FBGA package. To support both high-speed and robust data transfer, XDR DRAM utilizes key enabling technologies built on patented Rambus innovations such as Differential Rambus Signaling Level (DRSL), which minimizes signal swing and noise; Octal Data Rate (ODR) technology which transfers eight bits of data on each clock cycle to achieve 4.8GHz operation with just a 600MHz clock; and FlexPhase™ circuit technology for precise on-chip data alignment with the clock. The 512Mb XDR DRAM device also features adaptive impedance matching, dynamic request scheduling and zero overhead refresh.

“Elpida’s 4.8GHz XDR DRAM is an excellent fit for consumer electronics applications requiring high bandwidth for 3-D graphics, high-definition image processing, and advanced multimedia,” said Sharon Holt, senior vice president of worldwide sales, licensing and marketing at Rambus. “Elpida is well established as a leading XDR DRAM supplier and we are proud to work with them to advance the roadmap for XDR to 4.8GHz, achieving the world’s fastest DRAM.”

My View:

The clock speed and data transfer rate are pretty impressive. But what bothers me is who would be adopting this RAM technology? whether Intel or AMD? I feel there would be a new chipset from either of these CPU manufactures that would add support for these XDR structure DRAM. Another question that arise is what would be the price of this RAM? My gut feeling tells that it is going to be expensive and probably enter the server market first rather than the desktop market.

In this post we will explore the various options that can be used to network or link two computers for file sharing, networking more than two computers is beyond the scope of this post. I have encountered situations where I had to link two computers for file sharing and that is the reason why I decided to put this post.

The computers can be linked in wireless method or in wired fashion. Let us see what are various options that are available:

The Wired Methods:

1. Link or Network two computers via USB port

Image courtesy: Microsoft

Two computers can be directly linked or networked using the standard USB port that is available.

Interface: You should connect the computers using the special USB-USB bridged cable else if you use the normal cable then you may end up with burnt motherboards.

Below is a image of USB-USB bridge Cable:

Speed: The max speed you can get is 480 Mbps with USB 2.0 or 12 Mbps with USB 1.1.

2. Link or Network two computers via standard Ethernet port

Image Courtesy

Most of you would be using this method already to connect your PC to your modem or your home network. You can find Ethernet ports in almost every computer that you buy today and this is the most popular way of networking.

Interface: To connect or link two computers you need a CAT5e cross over cable

Speed: With Gigabit Ethernet interfaces the speed achievable is 1000 Mbps. If you have 10/100 Ethernet then you can get speed ranging between 10 Mbps to 100 Mbps.

3. Link or Network two computers via IEEE 1394 or FireWire

Image courtesy: Microsoft

This is was the fastest wired interface before the Gigabit Ethernet interface arrived.

A FireWire or IEEE 1394 Cable:

Interface: You can directly connect two computers using FireWire or IEEE 1394 and start sharing your files.

Speed: The maximum speed that can be achieved is 800 Mbps with FireWire 800 capable ports, and with FireWire 400 the speed achievable is 400 Mbps.

4. Link or Network two computers via Serial or Parallel ports

Image courtesy: Microsoft

This is a method of file sharing which is obsolete today but still it was used earlier. You can use this method if you still own an ancient computer. The speed transfer is very slow when you compare it with the other wired methods that are mentioned above.

Interface: You can link or connect two computers directly using the Serial or Parallel port. You can use a Null modem serial cable or parallel peripheral cable to make the connection.

Speed: The max speed that can be achieved is around 112 Kbps, it is the slowest of all the interfaces.

The Wire-Less Methods:

1. Link or Network two computers via Bluetooth

A personal area network (PAN) can be created between two computers using Bluetooth.

Interface: Both computers should have Bluetooth capability. If your computer has not got Bluetooth capability you can add one easily using a USB Bluetooth dongle.

Speed: The speed ranges between 2 Mbps to 10 Mbps. The range of typical Bluetooth devices are 10m (meters).

2. Link or Network two computers via Wi-Fi

You can create a Wi-Fi ad-hoc connection between two computers if they both are Wi-Fi enabled.

Interface: All of latest laptops these days come Wi-Fi enabled so there should not be any issues. To make your Desktop Wi-Fi enabled you can use either the USB Wi-Fi adaptor or a PCI Wi-Fi adaptor.

Speed: The speed you can get ranges between 11 Mbps to 248 Mbps depending upon the IEEE standard that you use.

The maximum indoor range that is achievable is 70 m (meters) with IEEE 802.11n standard. This is the fastest interface that you can use for file sharing wirelessly.

3. Link or Network two computers via Infrared (IrDA)

You can share files using Infrared interface but I would not prefer this method as two computers need to be in line of sight for the files sharing to happen.

Interface: Your laptop or computer has to have a IrDA device, if you don’t have one you can always buy a USB IrDA.

Speed: The maximum speed that you can achieve is around 4 Mbps and the range is round 1-3 meters.

As told this method suffers from line of sight issue i.e the two computers IrDA adaptors should be in a straight line.

This post mainly covers the most commonly used file sharing methods though there can be other methods of doing so. Let me know if you have used any other methods for file sharing.

I have been using a laptop for more than 2 years and the biggest challenge that I still face is to make it go for longer periods when operating in battery mode. Over these years I have found and learnt many tips in improving the laptop’s battery performance and would like to share them here.

1. Screen Brightness: When operating in battery mode dim your screen brightness. All the today’s modern laptops come with this feature, this usually can be done by using the Function Key (Fn) or by your manufacturer provided software.

2. Hibernate instead of Shut Down: I have seen many people using laptops are not aware of hibernate feature hence they tend to use the more power expensive shut down instead hibernate. For those who are not aware of hibernation: “Hibernate saves an image of your desktop with all open files and documents, and then it powers down your computer. When you turn on power, your files and documents are open on your desktop exactly as you left them.” You can use hibernate option instead of standby in situations where you are required to leave your laptop unattended for more than 20 minutes.

3. Clean your laptop’s air vents regularly: Your battery works most efficiently when the operating temperature of your laptop is lower. To avoid overheating and improve thermal efficiency you need to avoid dust build-up in air vents. If your air vents are dust free the cooling fan would run at much lower speed there by reducing the load on your laptop battery. I usually blow dust out of air vents once a week, you can select your time interval depending upon your usage.

4. Close unwanted programs that you do not use: Close unnecessary programs that are running in background which you do not intend to use. For example you can close IM applications that are not required. Another advantage of closing unwanted applications it frees up your RAM and this avoids using the power expensive virtual memory.

5. Don’t perform Hard disk and CPU intensive tasks: The more CPU and hard disk intensive task you carry out the more pressure you put on your laptop battery. Avoid playing games or watching movies when in battery mode. Always shutdown your desktop indexing program like Google desktop and other desktop indexing programs as they tend to use more hard disk and CPU resources there by increasing the load on your laptop.

6. Turn Off unused Devices: You can turnoff bluetooth, Wifi, infrared devices when not in use. Most of the devices get powered from your laptops USB port hence makes lot of sense to avoid using them when in battery mode.

7. Laptops with Intel Centrino Processors: Laptops that are using Intel Centrino processors make sure Intel speed step technology is enabled in your BIOS.

What is Intel Speed Step Technology?

Running a processor at high clock speeds allows for better performance. However, when the same processor is run at a lower frequency, it generates less heat and consumes less power. In many cases, the core voltage can also be reduced, further reducing power consumption and heat generation. This can conserve battery power in notebooks, extend processor life, and reduce noise generated by variable-speed fans. By using SpeedStep, users can select the balance of power conservation and performance that best suits them, or even change the clock speed dynamically as the processor burden changes.

8. Make best use of your Operating Systems (OS) Power Management feature: All the present generation operating systems (OS) come with good set of power saving features so make best use of them. You can configure how your laptop should behave when it is idle with these features. An example would be like turning off the display after some minutes.

9. Disable Scheduled Automated Tasks: When in battery mode disable scheduled tasks like virus scanning that can put pressure on your laptop batteries.

10. Avoid running programs from CD/DVD drive: CD/DVD drives are expensive when it comes to power consumption when compared to your hard drive. When running battery mode copy the programs that you need to run to hard drive and then use them.

11. Use the latest BIOS update from your laptop manufacturer: Make sure you are running your laptop with the latest version of BIOS as sometimes laptop manufacturers issue BIOS updates that can enhance your laptops efficiency.

12. Plan your Work before hand: When you plan to work in battery mode plan your activities before hand so that you don’t spend time thinking and your battery at the other end is draining. When ever I need prepare presentations or prepare some documents I always plan before and then only start my laptop.

Bonus Tip for Vista Users: To improve your battery life under Windows Vista you can disable Aero and Windows Sidebar. You can also make use of Vista Battery Saver program that does this automatically.

If you have any tips that have been missed out here then you can post them in comments section and I will add those tips to main post with a link back to your blog.

This post is a part of Blog Writing Project : Tips and Tricks by Daily Blog Tips . Participate and win over $500.

I guess all of you would be aware of water cooling systems for CPU and graphics cards, now NEC and Toshiba have announced the world’s first water cooling system for hard disk drives. These systems were initially developed for top of the line audio visual machines but looks like it would be available for the masses. The companies claim that the maximum noise that these cooling systems emit would be only 25db. The pricing of this cooling system is not revealed as of now but I guess it would be expensive atleast initially.

Pictures of Water Cooling System for Hard Disk Drives (HDD): (click to enlarge)

My View:

In my experience I have found that hard disk drives are one of the hottest things that reside in your cabinet after CPU, motherboard and graphics chipset. So people who are thinking on improving the ventilation of your cabinet should consider this product if you can afford the price that this product would command. Currently I have 3 fans serving the purpose of cooling and ventilation, out of these 3 fans one is dedicated to hard disk drives alone. If you are very serious about your hard disk drives then this the best gift you give your hard disk drive as this would make it run lot more cooler.

Found Via Akihabaranews