Hot on the heels of reporting one of its best quarters ever, Apple upped the ante by releasing all new iMacs, MacBook and Mac Minis.
Headlining the updates are the new iMacs. Now available in two sizes. A 21.5″ version as well as a massive 27″ model. Both models feature a 16:9 aspect ratio LED-backlit display that gives it stunning images. The new displays also feature a technology called in-plane switching or IPS that makes for great viewing at a wider angle. So even if you’re looking at the screen skewed it’s still manages to give a superb image.
The iMac isn’t …read more

You are not a geek and could not find your way to various parts and areas of your computer. That’s not a problem as you can always hire a techie and do the looking for you in situations where you need to get information about your box.

Before you go ahead and spend the extra dollars for the techie person, you can download Belarc Advisor which is an application that does all the work for you. It goes through every component of your computer, ask questions from manufactured date, to firmware including the installed software.
Through this application you can save …read more

A few days ago I discovered what I believe to be a USB port on my computer that’s going out. Nothing seems to work when you plug a device into it, my phone doesn’t even start charging when I plug it in to that port.

The question came to my mind today is how do I know if the USB port is having an actual hardware failure issue, or if it’s just a software driver issue? How can I match one of the USB ports displayed in my Device Manager, with one of the physical USB ports on my computer?
I’ve …read more

Apple quietly updated it’s entry level MacBook. The white polycarbonate MacBook received a processor upgrade from 2.0 Ghz to 2.13 Ghz. Apart from this it also got an hard drive upgrade. It now packs a 160GB hard drive.

[image courtesy of Apple]
This upgrade puts it up the low end Aluminum MacBook who’s processor is still currently 2.0 Ghz. The update polycarbonate MacBook is now a much better value for money notebook for students with it’s price tag of $999.

The last week has been filled with frenzy here in India with rumors about a $10 laptop. Not $100. It is $10. The prototype designed and developed by IISC Bangalore and IIT Madras (my alma mater) was unveiled today. Immediately, it has been hit by very negative reviews with reporters disappointed that it isn’t really even a netbook with scaled-down features. Of course, you can’t yet get a computer that costs 40 times less and has similar functionality.
Called “Sakshat”, the concept is similar to OLPC. While screenshots aren’t out yet, Sakshat has a small screen, 2GB disk space, wi-fi connectivity, …read more

Ever wondered what the network connection details actually mean?

Physical Address: Also called the Media Access Control address, is a serial number that can uniquely identify your ethernet card or wireless adapter.
IP Address: An Internet Protocol address is assigned by your LAN provider(say, a modem at homes) to each of the systems connected to a network through the provider.
Subnet Mask: When there are multiple systems connected to a network, the network is divided into subnetworks to avoid interference (traffic), and routers manage the overall traffic. In a manner of speaking, the subnets can be differentiated by the subnet masks.
Default Gateway: As …read more

What a journey the last 25 years has been! Here is wishing Mac a very happy birthday.
The first Apple Macintosh was launched on Jan 18, 1984. It was the first commercially successful computer with a GUI and a mouse instead of CLI.

To the left is the first Mac and to the right, the latest.
Jef Raskin envisioned the first Mac and wanted to name it McIntosh, after his favorite type of Apple, but had to settle for Macintosh. That compromise allows us to call it a Mac.
One specialty of Mac is that Apple oversees all aspects of its hardware and …read more

After the touchpad mouse failure (overuse and abuse) and the keyboard failure (accidental food spillovers), one of the most common failures in a laptop is the hard disk failure.
A quick survey using Google tells us that there are nearly a million results for laptop hard disk, about a half million each for laptop hard disk recovery and laptop hard disk replacement, and a quarter million for laptop hard disk failure.
Let us look into mechanical hard disk failures as there are recovery tools which can very well work in case of other kinds of failures.
One obvious reason why a hard disk …read more

I came across an amusing short film through one of my twitter friends, @stanleytang. The video has some wonderful visual effects, takes unexpected turns, and keeps us at the edge of the seat. Inspired by Transformers, what starts off as a harmless debate about whether the PC or the Mac is greater turns into a full-blown battle between… you will see what.

I am looking forward to the sequels. Tell me there are sequels. Dan Chianelli and Nick Granlee are the directors of the movie. The latter calls himself a digital impositor and you can find more of his videos on his website.
Follow …read more

We are still more than ten days from the new year, but a majority of the world has already started retrospecting the last twelve months and forecasting the next twelve.
Jayvee inspects the culture of FAIL on the Internet and finds that video advertising is going to decline. Actually, the rate of growth of online advertising has reached a saturation point even though online advertising itself is continuing to rise.
In these tough times, when the economy has been slowing down, Clair suggests that choosing Linux and open source software has become more necessary. For those who are already in that path, there …read more