Recent content by shadamus

Ditto the 'hold the fans" comment. I used my compressor on one of my machines last year and didn't hold the PS fan. It generated enough current to trip the fuse inside of the PS. A little extra expense, and a good bit of extra frustration -- this was my main development workstation. I had...

You can add a PCMCIA Wireless or Ethernet card to the thing for dirt cheap, if you just want something to surf and check e-mail on.

I submitted something very like this to Google's Project 10 to the 100 (http://www.google.com/onceuponatime/project10tothe100/) contest a few years ago... my idea was close-captioning eyewear so that hearing impaired people, and people not speaking the same language could communicate. The same...

To expand on what COLGeek said, you can add a USB tuner to pretty much any working laptop (or desktop, for that matter), for less than $50. Search sites like NewEgg.com for USB Tuner and you'll find what you're looking for. If you just wanted to re-use the screen from a non-working (or very...

Neal Stehpenson's presentation of it in "The Diamond Age" as a "Matter compiler" is a far closer fit than Star Trek's replicator for the current state of the technology, and we're still not even quite there -- close, but not quite... Good stuff. Also checkout the recent Kickstarter...

There are some devices, cheapest I found was around $200, which allow you to capture from HDMI via USB 3.0... which may allow you to view the feed as it's coming in -- I don't know... The cheap one I found was "Blackmagic Design Intensity Shuttle for USB 3.0 Computers"...

I've owned one Dell refurb, and referred them to several others as well (from their "outlet" website) over the past 10 years or so, all to good effect. Dells may be a bit different though, since many of the ones they sell on the outlet site are ones that were returned having never been used...

In general Dell tries to target the Lattitude at businesses since they tend to keep the models in production/support longer, and they make them to be hauled to/from the office every day. The Vostro line was introduced to bring a lower-cost option to the business market. If your users will...

Just caught this one in the CompUsa.com e-mail: http://www.compusa.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1705041&sku=S203-140403 It's the Samsung 14" with i5 2.4GHz, 1600x900 screen, and the AMD Radeon HD 6490M w/1GB DDR5. Looks like a nice unit, if you don't need the extra...

Seems I'm mentioning these to a lot of people lately... probably because I'm contemplating one for myself in the near future. For a highly-portable powerhouse, checkout the Alienware M14x. Start with the lowest priced model and upgrade from there (stick with the 4GB of RAM from Dell, upgrade...

Since you're looking for "Desktop Replacement", the added portability may not be worth the trade-off in gaming power. But... if you're serious about looking down to the 14" size, checkout the Alienware M14X. It can do the 1600x900 screen, but with a weaker video card than you had with your...

Either one would work fine for the uses you mention. Considering how inexpensive memory is these days (less than $50 to replace the 4GB with 8GB, when your needs change to actually need it), I would opt for the i5, since your usage may change to be more CPU intensive in the future. The only...

It's pretty much 1600x900 or 1920x1080 now. The few models still available with 1920x1200 are very overpriced.

I got in contact with the NextComputing guys, their price-range is from $4500 up... way up. The single 6-core xeon, 64GB system I asked about was going to start at about $9,000. Apparently they use low-profile 8GB DIMMs, unless you get a dual-socket machine, which has more DIMM slots, so they...

Since the G74SX-HBK7 is the 2630QM, it's from this year. This is still the current model (see a couple options on NewEgg.com). Just get the 8GB version, you can upgrade the memory further yourself for very low prices (and easy) later if needed.