Recent content by etittel

I meant to identify the 8GadgetPack author in my preceding comment: it is Helmut Buhler, and while it is free, he does accept donations to fund maintenance and other development projects. I just sent him $5 using PayPal myself.

It is, in fact, still possible to run gadgets on a fully-patched Windows 7, 8, or even 8.1. The excellent utility from called 8GadgetPack [http://8gadgetpack.net] restores gadgets to their place on the desktop, with or without the Vista-era sidebar "container." And Windows security Deb Shinder...

Gee, I can't tell you anything about this. I've never even seen this drive, let alone tried it in a Mini 9. However, I live in Round Rock, and have access to several friends who work in L3 Tech Support for Dell. E-mail me at ed@edtittel.com and I'll put you in touch with one of those guys. If...

Thanks for all the great comments and pointers. As for 4 GB in the netbooks, everything I've researched seems to indicate that Intel limits RAM to 2 GB as part of the Atom chipset/motherboard design specs. That said, I'm buying a couple of 4 GB SO-DIMMs for another machine of mine and will...

Dear Readers: Thanks to eagle-eyed Netgear Powerline AV product manager Chris Geiser (who posted just before me in the forums here at my request), we have discovered errors in the column of numbers for 802.11n on page 4 of the story (URL...

To Arbie: Re: the useless happytalk remark. 1. Google me: I've contributed to over 100 books. How many have you written (over a dozen different ...For Dummies titles included) 2. The editor's assignment asked me to make this approachable for newbies. Maybe it was a waste of your time, but I...

FWIW, my goal in writing this story was to document actual issues that I've had to research and solve on my system in the past 6 months or so. It was written from the perspective of "If this happens to you, try the following..." I do understand that the level of info provided here is not...

I'm working on lining up the newer units for review. I cheerfully but abashedly concede this review should have posted in March or April, but I got hung up with some horrible family stuff (you don't want to know). All that said, this unit remains a good buy for those buying on the trailing edge...

Dear Rafael: thanks for the feedback. I'll be reviewing the Asus Xonar HDAV1.3 as soon as they can get one into my hot little hands, and I'll suggest to my editor that we consider doing something on speaker placement, and multi-room sound system set-ups, too--an excellent suggestion! Thanks...

Dear LBT: thanks for the feedback: I'll definitely check out the issue with DTS-HD High Resolution, to see if it can be fixed. Thanks also for your kind words about the work involved: it was time-consuming and often confusing but ultimately very educational. It's also a good idea to remember, as...

About verifying audio streams: The only way I know of to do this is to pipe the stream via HDMI into an HDMI 1.3 capable receiver or pre-amp/pre-proc. These units will invariably tell you what kind of audio stream they sense incoming on the HDMI channel of which the audio is a part. There are...

More on the Asus Xonar HDAV1.3: 1. Looks like only the op-amps are socketed and thus the only items that users can switch out if they like 2. the DAC and the A2D converters offer very high signal-to-noise rations (120 dB SNR or better) but may not be swapped out. My mistake in conflating these...

Response to Dmac225's question/assertion: Indeed the issue is the uncertainty of how well your proposed signal chain will deliver the high-def digital audio goods. It should work, but the real question remains: will it work well enough to be listenable. As long as the your rig can handle your...

Thanks to one and all for the feedback. I'll get the Burr-Brown/Frown typo and the incorrect DAC mention fixed ASAP (and yes, it did come straight from the Asus press release, so far my only completely reliable source of information on the Xonar HDAV--that said, I'm supposed to review this as...

Don't forget the grads, too. And yes, given that our focus at Tom's Guide is to be "your source for high-tech information" I hope that you're just playing with what's far more typical versus the kind of stuff we cover here. All in good fun, I hope. Thanks for posting! --Ed--