Posts about Computers

Oh Dell

Published on 22 February 2012 in , , , , ,

If any retailers near me sold 14" laptops with an Intel Core i7 processor, then this wouldn't be a tale I'd be telling. But they don't which meant I couldn't just walk in to a store and buy what I needed.

First Ever Games Console

Published on 29 November 2009 in , ,

Throughout my life, computers have always reigned supreme. The first was a Dragon 32, followed by a ZX Spectrum +. An Atari STE came next, then a 386DX-40. After that it all went a bit blurry, but there's been several upgrades and new machines. Our house now contains a desktop PC, two laptops (one nine years old) and a very shiny and new netbook.

It just worked straight away – using a 3G dongle on Linux at Beebcamp

Published on 28 November 2009 in , , , , , ,

I've never had any experience with 3G dongles, and I must confess I approached plugging one into my Dell Mini with some trepidation. I'd heard scare stories of faffing with config files and other horribleness. I remembered a whopping four page feature in Linux Format on "how to get 3G dongles working." I mean - four pages. That means it certainly wasn't going to be easy...

A plethora of cables

Published on 4 May 2009 in , , ,

there's a draw in the spare bedroom just of computer cables and other bits - full to bursting. All tangled up, and with no idea what was what. As such, an obvious bank holiday task was to actually sort it out. And looking through, I was amazed at what there was in there.

The Pit

Published on 13 July 2008 in , , ,

Anyone following my microblog updates yesterday may have noticed a certain anger with the trauma centre that is iTunes. I've never been a huge fan of iTunes (bloated, slow, klunky), but after yesterday I now hate, loathe and despise it.

Installing Linux on an elderly laptop

Published on 17 May 2008 in , , ,

Windows was slow, and whilst I felt that re-installing Windows XP might help, Muffin is only a 900Mhz Celeron with 384meg of RAM and a 20Gb hard drive. And I don't like Windows (although XP is far better than Vista) - I'm a Linux user and have been for years. And it was time for Muffin to get a conversion.