Archive for category Hardware

Driver Scanning Scammers

Posted by Randy in Hardware, Internet, Operating Systems, Tips, Windows, technology on July 11, 2010

I was trying to locate a simple audio driver for a Windows XP VM I have. Basically, I'm in Linux and I want to watch Netflix but my main VM is having trouble with SilverLight for some strange reason, and rather than deal with that, I decided to use a spare VM. The movies play but I don't have sound in that VM. I realized that the VM was an N-Lite created image, which means that most of the drivers were stripped out of it. So I decided to find the driver and install it.

This is when I started getting furious. The problem is, when you search Google for driver downloads, you will undoubtedly run into nothing but scams. This is the same for Bing and Yahoo. The entire first page of just about any driver download search will have nothing but scams. By scams I mean people trying to get you to download software that costs money, just so you can download and install FREE drivers for you hardware that you've already bought.

So, looking through these scams I realized that there are at least three different pieces of software everyone is trying to sell. The first one I ran into was Driver Detective. This seemed to be the most spammed software out there. Tons of fake sites with fake "Thanks" comments on them, but no true download for your driver, blanket the first page of search results. These sites don't actually have the driver, only a download link for the DriverDetective software. Whether or not the driver detective software works isn't even the questions. The tactics used to sell this software make it nearly impossible for even a very computer-literate person to find the driver they need.

It's days like this that make me appreciate some of the OEMs like Dell, which make it very easy for customers to find drivers. Undoubtedly the adsense to the right of this post will have links to driver software, but that is expected, those are ads. They clearly say so. They are required to disclose what they are selling.

If you run into this problem, here's probably the easiest way to find the correct driver for your system. Open up device manager. This is usually accomplished through the Windows Control Panel. Once there, find the problem device, with the exclamation point beside it, and right click on it. Choose "Properties". Go to the details and look for the VEN and DEV ids. These should each be four characters long. Pull up http://pcidatabase.com on your browser. Search for those ids. You should get the manufacturer and device from that. This will at least help narrow down what driver you need. Get the drivers from the manufacturers website. Don't even bother Googling it.

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How to buy a Mac

Posted by Randy in Apple, Good Deals, Hardware, technology on September 29, 2009

I've bought a few Macs from Apple, recently. I bought a Mac Mini about 1.5 years ago and was very pleased. My company bought a MacBook Pro for me a year ago, so I sold my Mini. I left the company about 6 months ago. I was left without a Mac, so I recently bought a MacBook Pro.

So, that's my history with Macs. I've found that ordering a Mac from Apple is fine and all, but there are a few things that are lacking.

1.) It sometimes takes days before items are shipped. Most of these items are coming from China. The shipping process itself takes too long. People can go to Wal-mart and buy a Dell. They can also order a Dell straight from Dell. Chances are, the product will ship a lot fast than a Mac. Of course, you can buy Macs at your local Best Buy or Apple Store as well. Shipping is not really an issue there. It just happened to seem strange to me that it takes so long to get the product straight from Apple when ordering from their online store.

2.) While Macs themselves aren't overpriced when you step back and look at what you are getting for the money, the upgrades for Macs are ridiculous. They are actually unbelievable to anyone who follows hardware prices at all.

For instance, to upgrade a Mac Pro from the standard 3gb of RAM to 16gb of RAM costs $1850. Someone should tell Apple that RAM has been dirt cheap for at least 5 years. One can buy 16gb of 1066mhz ECC PC8500 RAM from Newegg for around $620, or as noted later in this article, one can get the same Ram for as little as $400. That's 4 chips at 4gb each, exactly what Apple offers.

Some may argue that the quality of the RAM is better from Apple. People please...It's the same stuff. Apple doesn't make their own RAM. They order it from the same RAM manufacturers that companies like Dell and HP order from. The same thing goes for hard drives, video cards, and DVD drives. Each of these are not better just because you ordered them from Apple.

I like MacBook Pros, Mac Minis, and iMacs, but I wouldn't advise anyone getting an Apple upgrade for any of them except for the processor. Even with the processor, I would advise to stick with the standard. If you need to upgrade anything else about your Mac, buy the hardware online. Get the specific type needed and buy from an online retailer.

Here is 4gb of 1066mhz ECC memory for just over $100. Get 4 of those and you have saved around $1400 compared to the Apple upgrade.

So, when buying a Mac, it's best to buy from a source other than Apple's online store, if you like getting your packages in a timely manner. If you must get your Mac straight from Apple, do not purchase upgrades from them. Buy your upgrades the smart way, from someone else.

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Adventures in analog video recording on Linux

Posted by Randy in Hardware, Linux Stuff, Open Source, Operating Systems, Tips, technology on July 28, 2009

Linux does many things well, but the multimedia experience can be lacking without the correct bit of hackery. I mean, some cool things can be done with Linux on the multimedia side, but typically it'll take a lot of work to learn how it's done. Mac and Windows make complex things simple, while Linux makes simple things complex.

Back when I purchased my TV tuner card for my PC, I was using Linux as my main OS. I still use it daily but not on my main PC. Only occasionally do I boot to Linux on it. I typically run Windows Server 2008 as I've talked about on previous posts. When I bought the tuner I wanted to make sure that it worked under Linux. So, I purchased one that was made specifically for Linux, a PCHDTV 5500.

It has served its purpose as a TV tuner, since I watched a year or so of cable TV in analog on it prior to the digital switch. I have never been able to get the HD side of things to work on it. Either it's beyond me or my cable company just had all of the channels encrypted. I didn't spend enough time on it to find out.

Recording analog video in Linux can be FUN. By "fun" I mean the type of fun one has pulling their own toe hairs. Be forewarned, getting a good recording is best done from the command line. I tried many ways. I ended up going with mencoder.

That being said, there's not much you can't do with mencoder and ffmpeg from the command line.

I have some VHS recordings I'm converting to AVI and then later on to DVD. I first had to purchase a VCR because, wouldn't you know it, I didn't have one that worked.

After that I had to come up with a good way to connect it to my capture card. The card has coax and component inputs. The new VCR didn't come with any coaxial connections. The capture card had a yellow RCA connection for video. I could use that but then there was the problem with audio. The capture card had a 1/8" jack for audio. Luckily I had an RCA-to-1/8" adapter for one of my gadgets (not sure which). I ended up using two sets of RCA's.

I was amazed I actually got audio and video from it. Here's where more fun came in. I was running virtualbox in the background. Everything I tried to use to record the video told me that /dev/dsp could not be opened. I went through many hoops trying to troubleshoot that issue. I should have realized it sooner but it was all virtualbox's fault. Next time I'll make sure it's not running when I'm dealing with audio.

After all of those problems were worked out, I was able to use:

mencoder tv:///1 -tv driver=v4l2:width=640:height=480:forceaudio:adevice=/dev/dsp -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=-750:threads=2 -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=64:mode=3 -o /home/five/homevid.avi

I'll try to explain some of what is going on in that command. Mencoder is the program itself. There's little to be said there. The next part is interesting: tv:///1  That tells mencoder we are using the tv card and that we want to use the composite1 input. Typically it defaults to input=0 or tv:///0, which is the coax TV input. There are three inputs on the card: tv, composite, and s-video. The next part (driver=v4l2) tells mencoder that we want to use Video4Linux2. Then we specify the width and height of the capture. The forceaudio bit was placed there during my troubleshooting. It just forces the use of audio device /dev/dsp. I had tried a couple other devices during my troubleshooting, thus the addition of that option. Then we have the option for output video codec (xvid). I set the bitrate and the number of threads. I actually upped that bitrate considerably later to around 2048. I believe I'll end up upping it even more for the next vid. I did the same with the audio output bitrate. I set it up to 256.

That should help anyone experiencing some of the pain I went through.

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My newest external harddrive reviews

Posted by Randy in Hardware on March 20, 2009

I recently lost around 750GB of data. This was due to my trust in a brand new 1.5TB Seagate FreeAgent drive. I wanted to move some data around and during the move, the drive died. So, needless to say, the drive was exchanged.

The 1.5TB drive used a standard 3.5 inch internal hard drive. I've had some bad luck with many of the newer drives. I'm pretty sure that the quality of drives in general has deminished as the capacity has increased. SATA drives in particular have given me much grief.

I decided to try out the Seagate FreeAgent Go 500GB drive even though it was a third of the size of the original drive I had purchased. The 1.5TB drive had firewire, USB 2.0, and eSATA. This wide variety of connections was a major factor in my decision to purchase it. The 500gb Go only had USB 2.0. This made it quite a bit less appealing.

That is about the only cons to the drive. There are, however, many pros. First of all, the drive doesn't require any external power. It is completely powered from the USB port. This is especially useful in that one isn't required to carry around a power supply. Also the USB port is standard mini USB, which is useful when you have about

Secondly, the drive is quiet. Many of the larger(physical size, not capacity) drives seem to be noisy. Some of this noise comes from the power adapter and the rest comes from drive itself. At any rate, this drive makes no noise.

Finally, the drive is ultra portable. Since there is no external power needed, the drive and the mini USB cable are all one must carry around. The drive itself is small. It will fit in a pants or jacket pocket. I would rather carry a 500GB drive around in my pocket than a 32GB thumbdrive.

It also appears to be much more reliable than the 1.5TB FreeAgent. This could be related to the type of drive used, since this uses a 2.5 inch notebook hard drive versus the 3.5 inch desktop hard drive used in the 1.5TB FreeAgent.

All in all, I wouldn't recommend the 1.5TB Seagate FreeAgent. There are reports that there are problems with these drives. However, I do recommend the 500GB Seagate FreeAgent Go. It's small, portable, and more reliable.

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Cheapest Mac Mini

Posted by Randy in Apple, Hardware on March 9, 2009

Apple's products have always been known for their expensive pricetag. However, a few years ago Apple introduced a product that didn't require a second mortgage to buy, the Apple Mac Mini. The mini was and still is revolutionary in its design. The latest generation of mini offers a lot of bang for the buck.

It has a sleak curvy shell. It is roughly 6"x6"x2". It contains a Core 2 Duo Intel processor. It come with a minimum of 1 gb of ram and an 80 gb hard drive. It has built-in wifi, bluetooth, and a speaker. It's also has USB, Firewire, speaker, and mic ports. Finally, it comes with the latest incarnation of Apple's Unix-based OS X.

OS X is a great OS and the main reason I bought a mini. I was interested in what OS X was like and I wanted to develop applications for it. I bought my mini straight from Apple, and even though it was pretty cheap, I could have found a better deal, like these:

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That is a small sample but it's easy to see why the Mac Mini is a good deal. It's a powerful computer with a powerful OS for a very good price. You just have to bring the keyboard, mouse, and display.

Here's a list of even more Mac Mini at great prices.
Cheapest Mac Mini

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