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- VAIO T140 Laptop
- Website Building Guide
- 16X Dual Layer DVD
- Efficeon CPU
- Asus N6600Top
- Megaview 561 PMP
- Centon PC3200
- MSI K8N Neo 4
- Vantec 520W PSU
- Chaintech VNF4 Ultra
- PCstats Weekly Tips |
HomePC Website Hosting How-To
Hello,
Rejoice! Windows XP Professional x64 Edition is finally available! (yay)
While this OS will spur on sales of AMD & Intel 64-bit CPUs,
it apparently falls short in two areas; comprehensive 64-bit
hardware drivers and 64-bit compatible antivirus software from
major vendors. Compatibility issues aside, 64-bit computing offers plenty
to get excited about, as we have illustrated previously.
Do
you use the PCstats
ShoppingList? We'd like to know what you would change or add to
the ShoppingList tool to make it better, more informative, easier to use, or whatever.
Drop off your suggestions
here.
Sony's sleek VAIO T140/P
laptop makes it past the PCSTATS test bench this week, scoring high
marks for its design aesthetic, and less so in the 3D tests...
following that review is a new Beginners Guide to Website
Hosting from home (by popular demand!), a test report for the new Dual Layer
16X DVD drive from Gigabyte, and some words on the 520W Vantec
Stealth PSU.
A really great budget Athlon64 motherboard (socket 939) that caught our attention recently is the Chaintech
Zenith VNF4-Ultra, and I think you'll find the benchmarks interesting
too. Rounding out this issue are articles on the Transmeta Efficeon
processor, ASUS N6600TOP videocard, MSI K8N Neo4 motherboard and Megaview
561 personal media player. Our newsletter is your oyster, so
shuck! :-)
The
navy blue and silver Sony VAIO
VGN-T140P/L laptop is the size of a hardcover book and weighs only a
little over three pounds. It packs a weighty list of features, beginning
with a DVD/CDRW combo drive and a massive WXGA (1280x768) resolution on
its tiny, shiny, 10.6"
widescreen LCD. The VAIO sports a 1.10GHz
Pentium M '733' Ultra low voltage processor. 512MB of DDR memory comes
standard, 64MB of which is shared with the onboard video. A smallish
4200RPM 40GB hard drive provides storage and the integrated
Intel Extreme Graphics 2 engine provides excellent image quality
and DVD playback, along with mostly theoretical 3D support. Continue
Here>>
Obstacles like
IIS and dynamic IP addresses can make the process of running a
website off a home broadband internet connection complicated... There
are several tricks you'll need to know to get it working, so follow along
and get clicking! If you want a website badly enough, you can have
a website of your own quickly and easily. But why pay someone else to host
your website for you when you can easily do it
yourself on the home computer over a broadband Internet connection? In
this guide, PCSTATS will explore the process of hosting a website from your
home computer using a
broadband Internet connection. Continue
Here>>
With all the DVD
writers flooding into the
market, choosing the right one can be a confusing situation. Our advice is
this, to make sure your burner is future-proof you should really only
consider drives which are are dual-layer compatible. DVD recorders that are not, will very shortly be obsolete. With that in mind, the Gigabyte
GO-W1616A drive we are looking at today has some impressive
specifications, in addition to dual-layer DVD
recording, and it comes with
a few goodies such as Nero software suite and PowerDVD 5. Continue
Here>>
The Efficeon was
in the works before the then-codenamed Intel 'Banias' was launched, but it
has yet to have the same effect on the market. Recent years have seen much
of Transmeta's long-battery-life
thunder stolen by Intel's vastly improved mobile chips. While the (toasty
hot) Intel Centrino has finally proven that consumers can have an Intel
processor-based notebook with excellent
battery life, had the world not
first experienced the Transmeta Crusoe this mobile processor renaissance
may never have even occurred... Continue
Here>>
The Asus Extreme
N6600TOP
PCI Express x16 videocard uses a vanilla GeForce 6600 GPU, but backs
it up with Samsung GDDR3
memory (128MB, 2.0ns DRAM). ASUS has also set the GPU and memory clock
speeds of this card considerably higher than that of a stock GeForce 6600,
accordingly the speeds are 400Mhz core
and 900MHz memory.Continue Here>>
We like gadgets
here at PCstats, we really, really do... So when something comes along
that excites that hidden need for all things tiny, shiny and
technologically advanced, we review it (and play with it) as quickly as
possible. Such was the case when MSI's Megaview 561 portable Multimedia
player crossed our doorstep. The Megaview 561 sports a 3.5 inch LCD , a 20GB hard disk, TV out and A/V recording
capabilities, FM radio playback and recording, DivX and MPEG4 support, a full featured
photo viewer, USB 2.0 and much more, making it one of the most capable
multimedia video players on the market.Continue
Here>>
Vantec must have heard the call for more power,
because it has recently released the all black VAN-520A
powersupply. With 520 watts of power, an armful of connectors, and
some low-noise features, the unit has an impressive rap sheet. Add to that
its three fans with wire grills and a mesh-wrapped set of 24-pin ATX
power cables and you have something pretty interesting for your
computer. Continue
Here>>
 There's little doubt that if
you're thinking about buying a new system or parts right now, Socket 939 Athlon64
+ PCI Express is the way to go. Chaintech is one of the few
manufacturers to produce an entry level motherboard for the socket 939 AMD
Athlon64 processor, and from what we've seen, its Zenith VNF4
Ultra has
been scooping up a lot of sales.
Expansion is provided by three standard PCI slots and a pair of PCIe x1
connectors. Continue
Here>>
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PCstats Weekly Tech Tips: HDD Defragmentation |
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With applications constantly moving
data around, files on the hard drive can become
fragmented quite easily. Doing a full hard
drive defragment is sometimes not an option, so what are
you to do if you find your system slowing down? Well, there is
always the quick boot degrag! The built in Microsoft
Disk Defragger doesn't support this feature, so we'll have to
load up the command line defrag.
To do this, first load up your command
line (Start -> Run then type cmd and press the Ok button)
and from here type "defrag C: (or your boot drive letter) -b".
Now Windows will only optimize the boot files and applications
you access most. Hopefully that will give you a slight speed
boost to make things better. Looks like the command line still has
some usefulness. ;-)
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PCstats Issue
No.175
Circulation: 210,677
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| Whatever Happened To...? |
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I was talking about computers recently, and the subject
turned to old and out of business companies that we all remembered from our
youth. What ever happened to Packard Bell, Zeos, and Wang? What if things had
happened differently and Wang had decided to go into the IBM-compatible PC
business; would we all be boasting that our computers have Wang Inside®?
Behind the near limitless number of cheap jokes that this subject offers,
there's a serious point. Why have so many computer companies collapsed
or vanished in the last 15 years? Packard Bell is alive and
well (though it belongs to NEC) and making PCs in Europe, but you are not going
to get computers from ZEOS or Wang Labs anymore. A very partial list of
companies that either went out of business or no longer make computers includes:
Acorn, Atari, Axis, Commodore, CyberMax, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC),
Micron, Quantex, Zeos, and on and on... The current North American market
for desktops is held by three companies; Dell,
HP/Compaq and Sony, plus some store brands
and boutique manufacturers like Alienware. Even mighty IBM, who created
the blueprint for what we recognize as a modern Personal Computer, recently sold
its PC manufacturing business overseas.
The fact is, computer companies have thinned out drastically since the glory days of
the early 80's when everyone with a blueprint and a dream seemed to be marketing a
PC. Dell's monolithic and incredibly successful approach to selling computers has
all but eliminated competition in North America, while the proliferation of
small computer stores with access to both the knowledge and the parts
to create custom PCs has reduced the need for smaller computer companies with the
flexibility to create custom products. As the myth of the
personal computer being a complex and incomprehensible product best purchased from a
major company dies, so does the need for a multitude of consumer choices in
the market. If you want a computer built to your specifications, you
can just order one from your local store, or even build it
yourself.
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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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PCSTATS Q & A:
Send in your tough tech
questions today! |
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