The UK's #1 Mobile Phone Recycling Comparison Site. Sell mobile phone handsets with leading phone recyclers - Envirofone, Mazuma & Fonebank

• Search for:


• 
  The Sell Cell Phone Price Comparison Site.

• Cash For Mobile Phones you no longer need

• Categories

  • Auto & Motorcycle Tech
  • Consoles
  • Desktops & Laptops
  • Gadgets
  • Gaming
  • Graphics / Design
  • Hardware
  • Internet
  • Mobile
  • Multimedia
  • News
  • Operating Systems
  • Performance
  • Reviews
  • Security
  • Software
  • Technology
  • Tips & Tricks
  • Tutorials
  • Web publishing



• Affiliates

  • bork designs – affordable web design
  • Software Development
  • Wifi Antenna

• Recent Posts

  • Fire vs. Nook: Different Strokes For Different Folks

    ---

  • Windows 7 lag when using dual monitors with different refresh rates

    ---

  • Sticker Mule Review

    ---

  • Supermoto on Highway 1 – DRZ400 and Ducati Multistrada

    ---

  • Rider brushes flying crashed motorcycle during race

    ---

• Random Posts

  • Hummer H4 in 2010

    ---

  • How to save your electronics from water damage

    ---

  • DIY Helmet Cam and Shock-Proof, Splash-Proof Camera/Phone Case is Free and Beats the Real Thing

    ---

  • Apple Releases the iPad, and it's Just an Oversized iPod Touch

    ---

  • Redlynx Trials 2 Second Edition Review

    ---

Why do so many people buy gaming laptops? It doesn’t make any sense because laptops aren’t meant for gaming. Laptops are supposed to be lightweight and for doing things on the go. Gaming laptops are useless, and here’s why.

Gaming laptops are very heavy. They usually weigh around 10 pounds, while normal laptops weigh around three pounds. They’re also big and bulky. I wouldn’t want to carry around a gaming laptop in my backpack. It’s just inconvenient to have a heavy laptop.

A terrible battery life makes a laptop pointless. If you’re going to be gaming on it without it being plugged in, it won’t last more than an hour if you have a new laptop, especially with dual graphics cards. Laptops are for portability, and they become useless if the battery life is so low.

Gaming laptops produce a lot of heat. While normal laptops get very hot, I can still usually put one on my lap for an hour. After all, it is called a laptop. However, gaming laptops get so hot you will need a surface with fans blowing at the laptop if you don’t want it to overheat while gaming. Again, if it has dual video cards, it will produce a lot more heat, will weigh more, and will drain the battery more. SLI just doesn’t belong in a laptop.

Another factor is price. A gaming laptop will run you about $1500 or higher. A normal laptop will cost you $700 or higher. And here’s the thing – you can buy a desktop for $700 that will have better parts and will be faster and better at gaming than the $1500 laptop. So there is absolutely no point.

Laptops are for word processing, bringing on trips to stay connected on chat or email, and things like that. They were never meant for gaming. If you’re looking to buy a gaming laptop, do yourself a favor and get a desktop instead, and use the money you saved for buying a normal laptop.

If you are getting a new computer or thinking of upgrading yours, you might have thought about what kind of hard drive to get. If you are looking for performance and speed, people often recommend the Western Digital Raptor. But should you pay $170 for a 150GB hard drive, only to have it load Windows 5 seconds faster?

The Raptor is a great hard drive, but you can get much more value for the money. A solution to both performance and space is RAID 0. RAID works by using two or more hard drives as one. RAID 0 distributes data across several discs in a way which gives improved speed and full capacity, but all data on all disks is lost if any one disk fails. Most of the time a two hard drive RAID 0 setup increases your performance by 1.5 times.

With the new Seagate Barracuda hard drives, you can set up a RAID 0 configuration that will destroy a Raptor in speed, space, and cost. You can buy two 320GB Barracuda hard drives for less than $150. When put in a RAID 0 setup they will be faster than the Raptor and hold roughly four times as much, for less money.

Your computer must also support RAID; otherwise you will need to purchase a separate RAID card for about $50. But overall I recommend RAID 0 as an alternative to a 10,000 RPM hard drive. For more information on setting up RAID, take a look at this tutorial. Find latest, Best selling External Hard Drives from Segate, Western Digital, Buffalo, Iomega at ExternalHardDrives.org.uk.

Maxishine has done it again, this time breaking the 80 FPS mark in Crysis, and this time using a dual core. Looks like my 8800′s not kicking it anymore.

Computers get faster every couple of months as new parts come out. The average consumer however will not upgrade their computer, cell phone, mp3 player, or other tech that often. Good computers can be expensive, so most people don’t upgrade often. But when should you upgrade?

What do you use your PC for?

Many people use their computers for checking email, browsing the web, watching videos, and sharing photos. The truth is these people don’t need to upgrade for a few years. The average computer user doesn’t do any power tasks, so there is no reason to upgrade. If you fall into this category, you should upgrade once every 3-4 years. However you should also take care of your operating system. Ongoing simple maintenance of Windows or a reformat and reinstall every year should keep your computer quick and snappy throughout the years.

Do you need the latest software?

Do you use programs such as Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, Vegas, or 3ds Max? These programs need a lot of power. If your PC is newer than the version of the program you’re using, it will most likely run the program well. But new versions come out every year or two, and these upgraded versions of power programs won’t run so well on your aging computer. If you need the latest versions of your favorite power-user software, you will need to upgrade your computer about every 2 years.

Are you a PC gamer?

PC gaming will require the latest hardware with each new game release. If you want to play the newest games at the highest settings, you will need new hardware monthly. A lot of people are fine with playing at medium settings, so for them I recommend upgrading their graphics card every year. If you only want high settings in games, you should upgrade at least every 6 months.

Gaming is a bit different from using your computer for other tasks. Most of the time, the only thing you will need to upgrade is the graphics card. If you have a dual core or quad core processor and 2GB of RAM, you will just need to upgrade the video card. Right now, I recommend 4GB of RAM for games. You might say it’s overkill, but it’s not. It was overkill last year, but this year games will have minimum requirements of 2 and 3 GB of memory.

Custom built computers

If you have a custom built PC, you probably won’t even need to read this article. Building your own computer will let you upgrade any specific part to suit your needs. I wrote this “guide” for people with prebuilt PC’s.

How often do you upgrade? Comment below.

In response to this screenshot of a Mac running 150 applications, here is a screenshot and video of my PC running 155 apps. Also, if you count the apps on the Mac, you will see there are only about 100 open, not 150 as the author claims. If you count mine, there are 155 open. And I have powerful apps open like Adobe Photoshop CS3, Flash CS3, Dreamweaver CS3, Premiere CS3, Vegas 8 Pro, every app from the Roxio 10 suite, and more.

Click to enlarge and drag:

Countless people have complained and still are complaining that Windows Vista takes up a quarter or a half of their memory. And here is the solution: do nothing.

Yes, don’t do anything about Vista’s memory consumption. It’s actually a good thing. Vista has a feature called SuperFetch. What it does is it preloads your frequently used applications in the background so they will start up faster. This is what’s taking most of that extra RAM. It’s not a bad thing as some people think. This is why Vista is actually faster than XP if your computer has 2GB of RAM or above.

SuperFetch releases that extra RAM if you need it. If you’re running a memory-intensive application or playing a game, Vista will instantly clear what it has preloaded and let your active application or game use the RAM. It’s a very smart and efficient way of memory management.

When I upgraded from 2GB to 4GB of RAM, I noticed a huge increase in system responsiveness and application and game start-up time. Photoshop CS3 takes 2-3 seconds to start. Vista took about 35% RAM on idle with 2GB, and now it takes about 30% on idle with 4GB. I wish it took more of my RAM to preload stuff.

Give SuperFetch a chance and don’t complain about it. It’s there to make your computer faster. It will give you back your RAM if you need it, you have nothing to be worried about.

Most people have slow computers. And while most people don’t know it, you can easily make your computer faster. Even if you’re using a five year old computer, you can in some cases double its performance by following these steps. This isn’t a tweaking guide, this is just a list of some ways that you can optimize and speed up your computer. Let’s start with the basics.

Viruses, Adware, Spyware

First off, you need a good antivirus program and a good anti-malware program. I use AVG Free and Adaware SE. You should not have more than one antivirus and one anti-malware program installed on your computer because they will interfere with each other. Antivirus that comes preinstalled on your PC is useless, and it is one of the major reasons why your computer is so slow. Once you have a good antivirus program, scan your computer and clean it up. (more…)