smart computer use?

I’ve been using Windows Vista for a couple months on a laptop. This has been my first experience with Vista. I have been pretty happy with the operating system overall, but there is one nagging thing I repeatedly get annoyed with.

Windows Vista, at least on my laptop machine, can’t copy or move files at a fast rate in many instances. I frequently have to wait 5-10 minutes to extract the files from an approximately 100k zip file or similar. That is pretty rediculous. I’m actually typing this as I wait for a some files to copy for a web site installation, and it’s taking way to long for that copy to execute.

I’ve been able to find information about turning off certain indexing services on Vista to speed up this kinda stuff. I had a problem with not being able to copy files from an XP machine over a network to this Vista machine when I first got this laptop. I did some research on Google and found that some people were eliminating this issue by disabling some indexing services on their macine. I tried it and it worked, but only for the network transfers. It didn’t fix my local file moving and copying issues. The local file system operations are still way to slow for my liking.

Here’s a quote from a related forum thread, kinda funny.

It’s quicker to copy stuff to a USB pen drive and walk between the machines! As with the guy above, I can get 500kb/s+ downloading from the Internet, so what’s with Vista copying?

Good stuff. There’s tons of stuff out there on the Internet similar to this.

After this 12.5 minute unzipping process of a 100k file ends I’ll probably not try this again tonight. I’m going to probably just call it quits and go to the office tomorrow to use my XP machine to install my plugins and finish the web site installation. It’s so much faster.

If you’ve used a laptop to any extent in your career as a computer user, you understand how much it pretty much sucks that laptops batteries need to be charged A LOT.

The day when you have a laptop that can run without charging for up to a month may be near.

Puiu Tiberius from Digitpedia.com writes:

Samsung SDI has presented, at one of their own shows, a new notebook prototype feeded by a “fuel cell” system, which apparently would have a autonomy of no less then one month(yeah, as in 30 days!).

Of course, being a fuel cell, there is re-fueling involved. This wouldn’t be a simple “plug into the wall to recharge” type of scenario.

Read the article here.

A hot laptop computer is not a good idea. Keeping your laptop cool is smart. Keeping a laptop cooler is easy with a laptop cooler and/or a gas duster.

There are plenty of laptop computer horror stories out there, many involving overheating machines. I have had a particular laptop computer that for about three years has now developed a severe overheating disorder. I have figured out ways to keep the laptop from overheating, without spending too much money. You can make your own laptop coolers if you are up to the challenge.

When you think about it, there isn’t much to a laptop cooler. It’s either a base with fans, or a base that simply gives more air-space to the bottom of the laptop.

Purchasing a cheap laptop cooler base is the easiest way to go

The most effectively cheap way, and the most time-effective way (you won’t have to build your own) to keep your laptop from overheating is by going out a picking up an fan-based laptop cooler. There are many options on the internet available for purchase:

• Here’s a laptop cooler for cheap
• Here’s a laptop cooler for a little less cheap, yet still very cheap
• Here’s a laptop cooler that has a multi-port USB hub, and it’s still really cheap
• Here’s a laptop cooler that doesn’t use fans

And then I ran across QuadCooler.com

• The Original Quad Cooler
• The Tri-Cooler
• The AOP Cooler (using Aluminum)
• The Big Brian

The stuff at quadcooler.com looked pretty sweet. And for kicks I also found a review site that looked promising as far as providing reviews of the quadcooler, but it degraded pretty quickly into a bunch of arguing about laptop coolers.

Are you thinking to yourself, “wait, these things look pretty simple, I want to make one”?

If you are you might want to check out this Instructables page about making your own laptop cooler. Or you might want to check out how to make a laptop cooler in about an hour and a half. Even if you don’t follow these instructions to make your own laptop cooler, these page might give you a good idea about what some other people have done to make their own. They might help you to get started on your adventures of trying to cool your overheating laptop, on the cheap.

My overheating story, it’s not that interesting

I have used a simple 2 fan device, powered by USB. It has worked fine, and kept my laptop from overheating. One of the fans eventually got clogged up with dust and needed to be cleaned. Then after that the fan did eventually just wear out. Now it makes all kinds of noise while it tries to spin. I’ll need to replace the fan or buy another. I’ll be looking into a fan-less unit this time around, mainly for power consumption reasons.

Even as much as the 2-fan laptop cooler was important to keeping the heat levels down on my laptop, using compressed air to clean out the air channels in the unit was just as much important.

Try this out: buy and use a can of compressed air, or more correctly a gas duster. Yep, they’re actually called gas dusters. Check it out at that link if you have some extra time.

So, it comes down to 2 things

2 things, that is, to help keep your laptop cool:

• Use an under-laptop cooling unit, either fan or non-fan based
• Use a gas duster to clean out your machine and allow for better air flow
• Turn up the air conditioning (gratuitous 3rd unnecessary item)

Yep.

People will become more like cyborgs as computer technology increases in power. Computers keep getting smaller. Computers keep getting more powerful. All other electronic devices also are following the same patterns. Devices get smaller, and they become more portable and powerful.

With these increases in power and decreases in size, devices are becoming easier to wear, attach to your body, or even have implanted in your body.

We are starting to see this in applications such as:

New Wearable Computer Helps Blind Navigate

This is a refreshing, smart use of computer technology. These are the types of applications of computers that will pave the way for more powerful uses of computers. Uses of computers beyond the traditional Desktop/Laptop PC’s, phones and iPods.