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 Technical Tants |
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General Exploits New Mouse New Colour IPAQ
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This is a section where I can describe the coming and going of new hardware for my computer system. I am an MCSE and work for ICL at West Gorton. I have been in the computing industry for over 13 years and am mad about computers. The system ABIT BP6 Dual Celeron Mother Board Operating Systems Spare Equipment On 16th August 2000, I went to Microdirect and purchased a new ATI
All-in-Wonder 128 graphics card. The reasoning behind getting this card
was that the PCTV card that I have would not live with the rest of the
cards I have. There seems to be a conflict with irq's or addresses
somewhere. So I thought I would update my graphics card and get some
additional functionality. Happy chappy so far, next I rebooted into windows 2000 Advanced server. Managed to get the latest drivers from the web site. Would they work NOT a chance !!! No TV !!, no DVD. Rubbish. I downloaded a certified version that was digitally signed, the system seemed to like this so I loaded the Multimedia package that came with the ATI, It still wouldn't show me the TV tuner stuff. The TV out worked a treat, I treated the wife to a viewing of Blue Streak that I downloaded off the net. Too the card back and managed to get hold of a Matrox Millennium G400 Max, thus again worked a treat under windows 98. Most of it worked on windows 2000, although there was no way I could persuade the TV out to work. I'd had enough by this time, and decided that the ATI Radeon was what I really needed, but would have to wait until Microdirect stocked them. I think that at the moment, windows 2000 and adapter/driver technology is not up to speed especially where fancy features like video capture and TV out/Tuner technology is involved. I spotted a deal at buy.com Basically it was a voucher that I was sent via email, it was spend over £30 get £10 off. I looked on the site and spotted a Micro$oft intellimouse explorer mouse, you know the one with no ball. So I ordered it and promptly received it in a box 4 times the size of the mouse box. The mouse came with a USB adapter, which I haven't bothered to try yet. There are several features of this mouse which at first I didn't like but have now grown on me. The first is the extra 2 buttons on the left hand side of the mouse, these by default are used for backward and forward (explorer) buttons, all the buttons I initially thought were over sensitive. With a little time and practice they have turns out to be quite friendly. The other odd thing about the mouse is that the light stays on all the time, even when the machine is powered down. Obviously if I were to disconnect the mains the light would go out. I suppose it lets you find your machine in the dark !!. Overall I am very impressed (Well as impressed as you can be with a mouse!!) and I would recommend getting one. Whilst browsing the newsgroups I found another voucher for buy.com, this one was spend over £60 get £30 off. So I decided to order a PCTV/Radio USB thingy. I thought it would be great for watching the TV and listening to the radio on a laptop. 3 weeks later, the thing still hasn't arrived. Late on in December I my works laptop got stolen from the back of my car... I know a stupid place to keep a laptop !!. Work replaced the Laptop, but my Palm Pilot was in the the bag with the laptop. I claimed off the insurance and managed to get £200 pounds towards a new colour IPAQ. I was a little dubious at first, as there did not seem to be much support for the IPAQ and Windows CE. I had a play with the IPAQ last year at TechED 2000 in Amsterdam, and was instantly taken by the quality of the screen and the bright white glow that it gave off. There only seemed to be a version of Outlook and pocket Word / Excel on it. Pretty boring ehh. Despite all this I took the plunge and bought one. When searching the web I found lots of places where you could pick shareware up. The good bits about the IPAQ are :-
The bad bits about the IPAQ
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