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FireFox 1.0
Geforce 6600GT
Unattended XP
PC4400 Corsair
Wi-Op Mouse
PowerColor X700 Pro
Tracer PC4000
G-Max N512 Laptop
ASRock K8 Combo
PCstats Weekly Tips |
FireFox 1.0 Browser - move over IE
Hello,
It's 2005! Happy New Year from all of us here at
PCstats.com! In this issue of the newsletter we're taking a look at a new
internet browser making waves; FireFox
1.0. Built by Mozilla, not Microsoft, FireFox is
quickly winning over users and taking market share from IE6's stronghold,
so be sure to give our
review a read.
The second half of PCstats three part
series "Mysterious Motherboard Troubles," continues on from where last week's issue left off,
and explains what went wrong. A little further down the page
are three new PCstats Q & A
letters, followed by PCstats Weekly Tech Tip.
On the review front we have a look at Gigabyte's
NX66T128D
6600GT videocard, a nice set of Corsair
PC4400 DDR memory, PowerColor's X700 Pro videocard, and a funky wireless
optical rechargeable mouse. PCstats Guide to Unattended
Windows XP Installations is a handy tool if you're in the IT business,
and a real time saver. There are a couple other reviews here for you to check out, including the very ingenuitive Asrock K8
Combo-Z motherboard.
Nothing compares to the power of positive
press. One moment there was Microsoft's Internet Explorer, standing
tall against a small horde of 'alternative' web browsers, none of which
had the following to seriously threaten the giant; the next moment Mozilla's
Firefox 1.0 appeared, seemingly fully formed in an instant and gaining
momentum at a furious rate. Suddenly we have the potential for a browser
war again... we haven't seen anything like this since Netscape. Firefox
(like Mozilla) has been in development for a while, slowly perfecting
its browser technology
on both Windows and Linux
platforms, and it shows.Continue
Here>>
The
Gigabyte
GV-NX66T128D is a PCI Express x16 videocard based on nVIDIA's GeForce
6600GT GPU, and packs in a svelte 128MB of Samsung GDDR3 memory On the
accessory front, the Gigabyte
GV-NX66T128D includes a DVI/VGA converter and a Component/S-Video
break out box. If you're holding out for a motherboard that has two PCI
Express x16 slots, you'll be happy to know the GV-NX66T128D is SLI
compatible as
well.Continue Here>>
Make a customized Windows Install CD
with all the drivers already included. Let the install process go ahead
100% unattended, so you can get down to some real work, and leave the
"click ok" job to the non-IT folks.
Every now and then there comes along a computer or
server that needs Windows installed with a specific blend of drivers and
settings. It's times like this that having your own customized
Windows installation can be a time saver, and life saver. The goal of
this guide is to help you create a bootable WinXP/2K install CD which not
only contains the latest version of your operating system, but also has
any SATA/RAID drivers
needed to install Windows and all the necessary drivers Windows will
need for your hardware. Not only that, once you start the
installation process it will install all of this automatically in on go, without any
input from the user. Continue Here>>
These two TwinX1024-4400C25PT
Platinum Edition
DDR modules are 512MB in size,
and run at 550MHz. Officially the TwinX1024-4400C25PT is designed to run mainly on
Intel systems and is rated for dual channel
configuration at 275 MHz, with 2.5-4-4-8
memory timings and 2.75V. Upon removing the heatspreaders we found
that the TwinX1024-4400C25PT is equipped with Samsung K4H560838F-TCCD
DRAMs. It's the same stuff that Corsair use in its "XL" PC3200
memory, which means at lower speeds the memory should be able to
run with tighter timings, good news for AMD systems. Continue
Here>>
Gigabyte's new wireless
rechargeable optical mouse, the GM-W9C, is an RF device that is scaled
for portability, and includes a rechargeable battery that can be charged
within the mouse itself for convenience. What makes this a particularly
interesting item? In one word - 800DPi
Optical technology.Continue
Here>>
Call me a snob, but I until recently I never would
have considered using anything but a high end card in my main computer.
Videocards based on the ATi Radeon
X700 VPU and nVIDIA GeForce 6600 GPU are extremely quick, and offer a
great deal of value. In many instances, these new mainstream cards are as
fast, or faster than the previous generation's top of the line models. In
this review PCSTATS is testing out thePowerColor
X700 PRO videocard, which is native to PCI Express, and comes packing 128MB
of Samsung GDDR3 memory.Continue
Here>>
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| Gigabyte G-MAX N512 Centrino Laptop
Review |
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| This 1.7GHz Intel Centrino powered
notebook is well equipped to succeed in a variety of
roles. The G-MAX
N512 features an ample 15" wide TFT LCD screen, ATI
Radeon Mobility 9700 graphics chip, 60GB hard drive,
built-in 802.11G wireless networking, 4 hours battery
life, 512MB of RAM, and weighs a neat 2.5kg. Now, how
does all this fare when we put the N512 through a couple
rounds of Doom3, or some office benchmarks? Let's
take a look! Continue
Here>>
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Today PCStats will be testing new the ASRock K8
Combo-Z/ASR motherboard. This could be the perfect board for those of
you who want to go Athlon64 on the cheap, but don't want to be stuck
without an upgrade path to newer socket 939 processors. Based on the ALi
M1689 chipset which we'll cover in more detail later in the review, the K8
Combo-Z/ASR can be used with both Socket
754 and Socket 939 AMD Athlon processors! Although
not at the same time. The full range of socket 754 and 939 processors are
supported, from the 32-bit AMD
Sempron to the mighty AMD Athlon 64FX.Continue
Here>>
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PCstats Weekly Tech Tips: Hiding Shared Folders |
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With a Windows operating system, you can share folders or drives which allows users to see them by browsing the network. If the users don't have access to view the contents of the shared drive, Windows doesn't hide it from them. However, sometimes it's best to "hide" these shared drives entirely.
Doing so is quite easy, simply place the dollar sign ($) after the shared name. For example, if you're going to share the C drive type 'C$'.
A word of caution, while this works to
hide shared items from users using Windows operating systems, users of other OS's like Linux will still be able to see the shared drives and folders. They still won't be able to access them because of permissions, but the shares will be visible.
This tip works great if you want
to move files between PC's but not let everyone know that a
folder is being shared.
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| | Join the PCstats Forums Today @ Forum.PCstats.com! |
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PCstats Issue
No.163
Circulation: 219,763
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| Mysterious Motherboard Troubles - Part 2 |
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In the last newsletter we were faced with a bit of a puzzle over a dead PC. When that system seized up without warning everything was tried to revive it, but nothing worked. We were at a loss and ready to move on when suddenly everything became clear.
Now at first glance everything inside the system seemed in order. Yet looking closer revealed something that should never happen, but something we'd unfortunately
seen kill systems before.
Eight of the 25 low-ESR aluminum capacitors on the FIC AU11 motherboard had blown their tops,
spewing out a brown mixture of electrolytes, and not coincidentally killing
the motherboard in the process.
In 2003, PCstats had the same situation happen with another motherboard. Several of the capacitors blew, trashing the board completely. This was one of a series of such incidents to hit the computing community, caused apparently by faulty electrolyte solution that precipitated
hydrogen gas to build up inside the caps, forcing them to eventually burst. Several other members of the community speculated that more of these incidents would happen in the future, since no one seemed quite sure how many capacitors were produced with the faulty
electrolytic mixture as detailed here.
Stay tuned for next weeks issue, as we'll be detailing how to check
your own motherboard for burst and
leaking capacitor problems. If you do have an issue, hopefully you can stop it
before it costs you valuable time and data, not to mention computer
equipment. In the meantime, if you've had an issue with faulty capacitors on your motherboard
anytime in the last two years, we'd like to hear from you. Drop
us a line through the PCstats Feedback page with your story.
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| This Issue By |
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Editor-in-Chief
. M. Page
Weekly Tips
. C. Sun
. M. Dowler
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