January 2005 Archives

Just when you thought iPods were easy, you get an unknown error (-39) to remind you that these really are computers and you can actually still see a return code. In my case, this is the error my iPod Photo throws because of a bad file somewhere.

You mainly have to be careful with iTunes that you don't change this directory otherwise you lose all of your photos. Be caseful, just switching from say My Photos to c:\pictures will wipe everything out!

I haven't seen this documented yet, but I have 3,000 photos and 5,000 tracks (I know I'm a nerd!) to get onto an iPod Photo. That causes its own instability. In my case, I have found that:

• TIF files. The really massive TIF files don't compress correctly. If you have a 200MB TIF, you get garbage in the thumbnails. Plus it takes iTunes an incredibly long time to read and compress. (BTW, I have these from full resolution 35mm scans).
• JPG files. I have one or two files that seem to cause major headaches for iTunes. Again, there aren't any error diagnostics except that iTunes would crash and leave me with nothing. I did find out that iTunes leaves a special directory called iPod Photo Cache in the root of the directory being synchronized. This can get corrupted if it doesn't translate the JPG correctly. You then get the (-39) error. The fix is to delete the iPod Photo Cache directory and it trys to translate again. By carefully copying certain files, you can figure out what the offending photo is.

Longer term, you really do have to undertand iPod internals I've found when these crashes happen. There are two things to understand for photos:

• iPodlounge Forums - Photo Storage on the iPod photo -- The Gory Details. This is a great explanation of the files on the iPod. The iPod acts just like a standard hard drive, there is a directory called \Photos that has a whole series of chronologically sorted directories.
• On the PC there is this big iPod Photo Cache directory as I mentioned above.

Well I've got my new Pentium M system up and running and now running benchmarks. Right now, I can overclock it by about 22% so a 1.8GHz Pentium M is running at 2.1GHz right now.

According to Sis Sandra 2004 (I can't get 2005 to run on this machine right now), I'm the equivalent of a 3.6GHz Pentium 4 desktop chip. Wow, that's pretty amazing since this thing uses 20 watts and the CPU temperature is 40 degree C vs. 120 watts and much hotter. It still isn't faster than an Athlon 64 2800+ overclocked to 2.45GHz, but I'm not quite done tweaking the thing.

The main problem is the incredible noise from the graphics card and the fact that the neither the CPU fan seems to temperature control nor does the case fan. Am getting a NV5 Silencer from Arctic Cooling, but the other changes are to install an Arctic Cooling 80mm case fan (easy to do since it the nMediaPC case is perforated at the top and also added a fan voltage control.

So how to tell what the GPU temperature is? Smartfan doesn't do, this you have to use Rivatuner which has a monitoring program, or if you have the latest nVidia driver installed, right click the desktop and go to Display/Advanced/6800GT and select the Temperature monitoring option. My stock fan for the eVGA 6800GT runs at 55 degrees C at idle. I was able to turn down the fan manually to halve the noise volume and stay there.

There doesn't seem to be a utility like SmartFan that automatically changes temperatures under load though.
Hardware Analysis - Forum - video card monitoring

just wondering which r the best programs for monitoring your GPU temps

Rapid Satellite - Detail

What do you get with your UPGRADED TiVo?

Automatic recordings of your favorite shows without the hassles of videotape or timers. Watch what you want, when you can!
Because a TiVo is, in it's most basic form, a computer hard drive, by replacing the internal hard drives of the standard TiVo unit and adding 2nd drives, we are able to exponentially add additional hours of programming and recording to your TiVo. The outside of the unit will remain the same... but the performance will blow you away. You still get the same great features offered with a standard TiVo unit.
Why settle for an average 35 hour DIRECTV TiVo unit when you can have 105 hours or even 240 hours?

McDonald's: Want VOIP with That?. Hat tip to Bob for pointing this out.

McDonald's: Want VOIP with That? They are using a VOIP system so that they have centralized order taking for the drive through line. Classic queueing theory problem. Instead of having 1 person for every store, you have six people for nine stores.

Newegg.com - ARCTIC-COOLING NV SILENCER 5 Fans, Heatsinks (Case, CPU, Chipset). OK, here is where you can get the cooling system. You need thermal paste too.

OK, sometimes I wonder about the Internet. Two funny stories in the last 24 hours:

Robert was looking for information about handset shipments. And Tongfamily pops up as the first hit.

Steve Holcomb was looking for Acura MDX information and again this site pops up.

How amazing that this crappy little site actually has a high level of hits for things. Cool.

NV5 Review. This is a $28 after market fan that is supposed to be much quieter than the stock nVidia fan. The main thing is that you have to remove the fan unit and install this thing.

Finally got my first HTPC to boot. Main issue was a documentation one, which is that when you put the CPU in, you have to half turn a little screw otherwise, you put the whole thing together and it doesn't boot!

See GamePC - Are You Game? - Dothan Delight : DFI’s 855GME-MGF Pentium-M Motherboard. The Socket-479m (mPGA-479m) CPU socket which the Pentium-M processor utilizes is a standard beige color (compared to the dark gray variant which AOpen utilizes). The CPU socket can be opened and closed with the use of a slim flat heat screw driver.

So how does it look so far? Well main problem right now is that I stripped some of the wires when I took it apart and these little connectors are tiny. I loosened two ground connectors for firewire and for usb 2.0.

Other thing is that the nVidia 6800GT is a loud card, its fan swamps just about everything else. Other issue is that the front panel doesn't light. I think I have to tie the CPU fan to the front panel for it to report out.

Thanks to the folks at Madshrimp's Forum for figuring this out.

Final aside, Dan asked me why I'm playing and installing machines when you can get prebuilt. Main answer is that it is fun to hot rod. Clearly it is not economic to build your own computers and maintain them, but it is certainly a fun thing to do.

Well, CES is over and the honorees are in, so a good time to reflect on the future of the home. Its interesting to see what has and hasn't happened. Right now, the home entertainment business reminds me a lot of minicomputers in the 1980s (Ok, I'm dating myself!). That is, lots of standalone boxes that can do everything. Microsoft is the IBM giant with their System 36 and AS/400, big and most share and highly intergrated. Digital Equipment Corporation feels much like Apple, they are stinging like a bee and moving around, but essentially with designs to be the next IBM in terms of being totall integrated.

So what could be the left hand turn here? Well, I'll go out on a limb and say that this feels much like the music business in the mid 1990s. Back then, all the talk was about protectable content, etc., and I remember thinking as I ripped my first CDs that this just isn't sustainable. It is just way to easy to copy things and it is so convenient. Now it did take a decade for things to mature to the iPod today, but I wonder if the same thing isn't going to happen with video.

Right now, the hearty are using Tivo (reminds me so much of the Apple II to strike another analogy), but the excitment for me is in Bit Torrent and in Isohunt. They are horribly hard to use, etc., but it is way more convenient.

So here's one way to think radically about the home and video. Suppose there are the following pieces:

* The PC. Also known as its OK to use a keyboard. The home is really different from mobile. A keyboard is one room away. So why can't I select an entire stream of video and then just watch it anywhere. It's the playlist analogy. Now everyone at this point will say what about digital rights etc. I agree these are big issues, but fundamentally because
* The TV. To me, this is more about what you can do with a 9-key remote (ideally, 9 keys plus 5 buttons, but more on that in another post about user interfaces). The idea is that you should make it easy to take the "playlist" you have from the PC and then watch it. Personally, I'm less of a believer in this EPG like world, where you have to adapt to what is on and more of a believer in the, you should watch what you want to watch when you want to watch it. If you don't like it, then you should be able to iPod-like skip fast. Most folks are very good at browsing lots of stuff and skipping quickly, that's why skip is promoted to a top level button in most interfaces from Blackberry to iPod. I'm also a believer in the idea of shuffle. That's not a bad way to think about, it if you just to lie on the couch and watch, then pick the things you like and shuffle away. Now live content is a little different in that you don't pick but same idea applies, make it easy to channel surf. The best demo I saw was the Dish network, see 9 live feeds at once. I think people are super good at scrolling quickly through content. Witness the simplicity of the iPod Photo. I have 3,000 photos on mine and I'm amazind how easy it is to just scroll through huge lists if the machine is really keystroke fast.
* The Internet. I love netflix. To me, that's a way better model than this Tivo, find a program and then record it all. The content is in nice chunks, you treat people like adults who know how to use Keyboards. Another analogy is that 90% of our movie watching is what United Airlines shows. Turns out that these shows are just perfect for our house (not too violent, lots of romantic comedies etc.). That's the iMix of our house and you can see the analogy in the wonderful future world. With RSS and Blogs, I should literally be able to subscribe to what Ludwig is watching.
* The Home Network. The world seems to be filled with loosely coupled standalone devices. Seems to me that the right world is one where you insert a new device into the network and like enterprise computing's push to the grid, you get the same thing at home. When I put a Mac Mini or a PC in, then I get its hard disk as part of the virtual hard disk. I shouldn't have to manage all the video and music everywhere. Similarly, any device I plug in shouldn't require some expensive set top box, but it should just have Ethernet and you plug it in. Same for displays, you should be able to plug a display in anywhere and every input and disk is available.

What are the implications of this:

• Channels. Someone said, what's a channel if you can select exactly what you want. That's my Bit Torrent experience exactly. I just want to see the shows and shuffle them for me.
• Digital Rights. There is alot of locking on stuff right now, yet eventually, it all has to appear in analog form somewhere and there are always going to be digital camcorder lurking about. Maybe the first copy won't be full fidelity, but everyone after that will be, so that means that the first folks who make things easy and reasonably priced are going to be big winners.
• Text entry on distance viewing. Probably wrong, but it does feel like you enter on a keyboard and then view/surf in the family room.

So who is working on things in this area. Some interesting companies are ideas came out of CES. I just picked CES winners:

• Meedio - Media Center PC And Automation Software For The Digital Home. This came out of the myhtpc effort and is now a commercial product. They have three products. First an EPG (electronic program guide) that make it possible for any PC with a OTA or cable tuner to be a DVR and record shows. They also have a viewer that lets you have a simplified user interface so you can use a TV and remote with your PC. Finally, they have a bunch of home control widgets so you can turn the lights on and off. And there is a development environment so folks can writes applications and drivers around their user interface.
• Snapstream. These folks have similar offerings, they have an EPG and a DVR for your PC. They also have a distance viewing user interface and then a way to have other PCs look at recorded shows.
• Tivo. The early market leaders, they have a DVR and an EPG and are well known for simplicity. You buy this as hardware plus either a monthly subscription to the EPG or for $250 you can buy it forever. They have a deal with DirecTV that integrates DSS and a HD DVR, although this device (the 921) is expensive and phasing out as DirecTV is going to build their own.
• MythTV. This is the Linux version of the above.
• ATI. From their first Wonderboard, ATI has been building hardware cards, the latest called Wonder Elite
• DVR. An open source project to do the same.

There are lots of places posting about this including:

• PVR Blog. Well named blog focused on the travails of Dish these days.

isoHunt - IRC and Bit Torrent Search Engine. It must be me, but as I've been to CES and heard about all these electronic program guide, I have to admit for HTPC or PC viewing experience, I'm not sure that I get it.

There seem to be many pretty interfaces that I've tried (Comcast/Gemplus, DirecTV, Dish, OnCommand, etc.), but while this might work for 9 key remotes, for something that is high resolution and also has a keyboard, I'm a little confused why the search metaphor doesn't work.

In fact, I could argue that there are a couple of current Internet user experiences that could be video on deman tomorrow if you are talking PCTv experience (e..g, not distance viewing):

• Netflix. Instead of saying rent the DVD, just download it.
• ISOHunt. This is just a search engine or maybe the new google video service. It just does searches and then uses a Bit Torrent compatible client like Azureus to do the download.

For me anyway, having a new HTML tag like vod: makes more sense than a custom guide world.

Things are different in the DVR world where you have to work with a limited remote of course. FWIW.

Keyhole. A cool company bought by Google that lets you see maps.

SD-6.com / Alias Info / Episodes, Cast, Crew, Music, 47, Ratings & More. There is an entire site dedicated to alias. wow.

Music, Et al

ALIAS Season 4 Music List
iTunes has an iMix of songs that will be featured on this season's ALIAS. All are great, but my personal favorites are the tracks by Mazzy Star, Jet, Michael Lord and Steriogram. You can check it out and hear song samples here.

This is a pretty cool use of iMix. Now you can get the Alias Season 4 songs from iMix and then just buy them. Pretty amazing use of iTunes/iPod as a platform

Tom's Hardware Guide First Look: TriGem's Kloss KL-I915a: Power Aplenty and Almost No Noise - Nothing's Easy In The Beginning. If you have to have the latest Prescott from Intel, here's a small form factor machine that actually handles it well. It uses a special design where the motherboard is in the middle, so the 110 watts (wow!) of heat from a 3.6GHz Pentium blows up and the rest of the system is separated in the cool area below.

Not a bad solution to an ultrahot processor.

Well one of the great things about homebrew computer is that the little connectors are never quite compatible. Here's a guide to the little pieces you need to get an nMagic case to work with a DFI 855GME-MGE Motherboard:

• Connect a standard 24-Pin ATX Power Supply to a 20-Pin ATX Motherboard Power Connector. Turns out the the power supply is a modern 24-pin power supply while the motherboard uses the older 20-pin standard. $10 to fix this.
• Koutech IO=PU221. This has External 2x USB 2.0 ports, but most important Internal Port: 2x USB 2.0 pin headers support 4 ports. Cost is $7 from Newegg, so I can connect the two front USB and the Flash card readers. The problem is that the 855GME-MGE has only 4 USB and they are all in the back external, so I need 3 more. This card solves that problem.
• Lite-on Wireless Keyboard version is just $20 and is a wireless with a a pointing device. Comes with a receiver too. I need IR since I want to be able to use it with my Pronto remote which only speaks IR.

iPodder.org :. Had some folks in here who have done lots of traditional radio and other media, reminded me how much the ipod and digital are going to affect entertainment. Right now the big miracle is with a standard digital music platform out there (the iPod), folks are building a big infrastructure for you to select it. Its called Podcasting and the essential idea is to combine an iPod (or for that matter anything that can play audio) with RSS so that you can get notified of new music or audio from the blog world.

What's the net? well, now ifyou want to hear the latest Nascar event, plug your iPod into the dock and download it.

Here are some sites to try:

• Ipodder.org. Call it the portal for Podcasting, it broadcasts via RSS, new downloadable audio including comedy, radio shows, etc.
• Podcasting.net. A good yahoo-like directory.
• Podcastalley.com. Another interesting directory.

In terms of software to use:

• iPodder. The most popular version, I hear.

DiscountHeadphones.com

I love headphones.com for its information and their headphone amplifiers, there is also a site that has slightly great discounts called discountheadphones or idealsound on ebay, if you are price surfing. About 10% cheaper usually, but I don't know about service and support.

TVSoundtracks.net » TV soundtracks. Since I lack high school friends or people who listen to music less than 20 years old, the main way I hear new music is in movies and TV shows. So voila there is a site that indexes the major shows and the music they play. Enjoy!

TVSoundtracks.net has listings of all your favorite movie and TV show soundtracks!

Jobster. It's kind of fun to see an idea that is a bunch of powerpoints get funded less than a year later. Jobster started with the idea that its too hard to hire, now its up and running. Kind of neat this, create a company thing...

Jobster announces $8M financing from Trinity Ventures and Ignition Partners.

Network Magic attempts to fix your home network - CNET.com. My favorite project, after two years of hard work, folks are finally seeing what those guys are Pure Networks can do...

Anyone who's ever tried to set up a networked printer at home knows: Windows networking is nearly impossible for the mere mortal. Today, Pure Networks announced a product that capitalizes on our pain--and might just ease it, too.

Neede: Driver, For: Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback Pro Joystick. I have an old Microsoft joystick. So, where is the drive, in XP itself of course. How good.

go into Settings/ Control Panel in the Start menu. Select Game Controllers from the list (If you can't see Game Controllers in the list select "Switch to Classic View" at the top left of the screen then select Game Controllers from the list). Select Add in the dialogue box which appears. From the list that appears select Microsoft Sidewinder (auto-detect). Click OK and exit your way back out. After doing all this, sure enough my computer has detected my Sidewinder Pro Force Feedback joystick. Unfortunately, I haven't yet re-installed any programs which use it yet so I don't know how well it works.

I'm so sad, my lovely Sony VAIO VGN-T140P has died. Will hang before it gets to the VAIO splash screen. Trying to call Sony is a lost cause, more succes with their web "chat":

They have a bunch of web things to try including:

• How to troubleshoot power issues. Basically, there is a reset button that you can try to hit on the back. Also, there is a procedure where you hold the power button for 15 seconds. And, the light sequence tells you alot.
• There are some magic keys to try too, F2 when you boot will show you the BIOS bootup. F5 will do the normal XP alternative startup and F10 will get you to the invisible partition that will reinstall all the startup software and get the machine back to the factory configuration.

I bought a Cingular phone through Amazon and returned it. Beware if you are doing this!

The biggest warning to everyone is that returning this through Amazon is a true nightmare. If you read the fine print, Amazon will take it back, but you have to call Cingular immediately separately.

Here is what you have to make sure to do:

1. Make sure to get the UPS tracking number for the return package. That is the only link between Amazon and Cingular. Amazon doesn't take any responsibility for the plan and if you don't have that tracking number then they will say they think you still have the phone.
2. The phone activates the second that it ships so you are paying charges the whole time even if you never turn the phone on. So if you talk even one second on the phone, you are paying for at least a week of shipment time as well, so if you don't like the phone don't turn it on.
3. Cingular doesn't know anything about Amazon as a reseller and Amazon doesn't know anything about Cingular, so what you have to do is to call Cingular and have the UPS tracker for the package so when you return you can prove that you really did. Also, you'll need to print out all the return web pages and fax it to Cingular to prove you really returned it.
4. It takes about an hour and a half, but if you are lucky like me, you can get it taken care of.

Apple. Well after zillions of hours of speculation, Apple launches two products. Both very cool and design oriented. Compared with the sad state of affairs of the rest of the consumer electronics business, I'm sure these will do very well. It's amazing how there is a lack of leadership in the consumer electronics business in terms of simplicity and ease of use.

For instance the iPod Shuffle has just 5 buttons like its brother and like the Blackberry. The other devices we saw at CES, the XM2GO for instance, had no less than 14 buttons. The average cell phone has 13 buttons.

Pricing is much lower at $99 for the 512MB and $149 for the 1GB flash.

They also announced a much cheaper and way beautiful Mac Mini. Just $500 and it is tiny and white. No buttons either. Beautiful thing.

Tech Support Forum - Query on overclocking ATI 9800 Pro 128MB. Another hat tip to google for this one.

You will want an over clocking tool such as (ATI Tool) this tool features an artifact tester to test your settings and if you want to wait, will automatically find your fastest settings with no artifacts for you. Let it work at night when you are asleep with ATItool

This thing lets you find the Maximum automatically for both the core and also the memory. The main thing though if you want to overclock is cooling the card, so don't expect much with the stock stuff.

X-bit labs - Articles - New Budget Processors Comparison: Intel Celeron D vs. AMD Sempron (page 10). Xbit did a nice job of comparing the Northwood and Prescott Pentium 4s with the Northwood Celeron and Prescott Celeron D. They also compared the Athlon 64 with the Semprons (both flavors, the 3100+ is a crippled Athlon 64) and other Semprons (renamed Athlon XPs).

Confused yet?

Their net is that the Celeron Ds are much more competitive with the Semprons now, but the Sempron 3100+ is a real bargain. About the same speed as an Athlon 2800+ in real life and about 10% cheaper too.

For me, replacing an old SS51G which has an older socket 478 that can't take the new Prescott Pentium or Celeron D, it says that the older Celerons are about 1/3 lower with the same clock. For instance a Celeron at Newegg had a pricing like this:

• Celeron 2.6GHz for $88, so it is equivalent to a Pentium that is about 25% slower (2GHz Pentium)
• Pentium 2.26 at $118. So for 34% more, you get about 10% faster.
• Pentium 2.4B. for $127. This is a NOrthwood running a touch faster (about what my old one was). That's 6% faster for 8% more money.
• Pentium 2.4C. for $137. This is a slightly update Northwood with 800MHz FSB vs. 533MHz and aHyperthreading. Unfortunately my Shuttle SS51G can hyperthread but has a slower bus. Hyperthreading by the way doesn't clearly help performance (but it is kind of cool!).

Net, net right now at the ultra low end, the best price performance is the Celeron 2.6 which is slower than the Pentium 2.4GHz that was originally in the machine (by about 1/3). If want to get the same performance, then the 2.4B is the ticket at $127. I think I spent about $200 for the thing when it was new, so prices really haven't gone down all that much in the Intel world really in the last two years.

Antec's new P180: Ultimate Silent Case? :: SilentPCReview.com. The folks there think it could be the ultimate silent case. Great specs. Available at the end of February.

LOGIC Supply CoolerMaster Pentium M CPU Cooler. The DFI 855GME motherboard I got came with one screw missing on its cooler! What a bummer, literally for lack of a nail, the horse was lost to quote Shakespeare.

The only place on the planet I could find a cooler was from Cooler Master (in fact, this looks like the cooler bundled with the DFI board). Outrageously expensive at $28 plus $9 shipping, but at least it is a pretty copper color :-)

2.5" to 3.5" Hard Drive Adapter - FLT-3120. In building Grace's new minicomputer, one thing I forgot was something that will take a 2.5" notebook drive and let you fit it into a 3.5" slot. Here's one from google. These are actually hard to find.

The standards are different, not only is the drive smaller, but it uses a 40 pin connector vs. a 44 pin IDE and a separate power Molex power connector.

DFI NEWS. Everyone is launching nForce4 and SLI boards, so if you can wait and see how the dust settles and the reviews come out

DFI®, a worldwide leader in industrial computing solutions and maker of the LANPartyâ„¢ series of motherboards, today launched the new LANParty NF4 SLI-DR and LANPartyUT NF4 Ultra-D motherboards for the socket 939 AMD® Athlonâ„¢ 64 platform

PC Perspective / Amdmb Forums - Chaintech. This seems to be the most active sourc eof information thanks to UncleBob!

AMD64 and Far Cry. Hard to happen eventually, the Athlon 64 is so good at gaming, that folks are doing specific versions.

The AMD64 version of Far Cry is now available! This version is a patch that installs on top of the retail boxed version and gives you an enhanced experience for/in Far Cry. It supports fully functional, in-box single- and multi-player modes. The AMD64 version gives you enhanced content and higher frame rates with enhanced textures, longer view distances, and more physicalized objects.

Six Apart Guide to Combatting Comment Spam. Short of it is that you have to install three utilities.

Tom's Hardware Guide Graphics Cards: VGA Charts V: PCI Express Graphics Cards - Farcry. First benchmarks I've seen that compare SLI and regular PCI Express/AGP (btw, a single graphics card is not faster under PCI Express, so the only reason to get it is for future card upgrades).

Here are the results pushing the cards hard at 1600×1200, 4xAA, 4xAF, very high quality, 32bit:

So you can see that SLI really does work in that it close to double performance. It makes a pair of 6600GTs ($180 each) about equal to a 6800GT ($380), so that's fine it you get another card later that is say $50.

Or, if you are power geek, get $880 worth of 6800GTs now and beat out the $600 6800 Ultra.

Tom's Hardware Guide Motherboards & RAM: Finally Available: Nine Socket 939 Athlon64 Motherboards! - Introduction. Yes, Tom's Hardware finally has gathered them all.

The main conclusion is that the AGP MSI Neo2 is one fast board. It is dual socket 939 and beats most of the newer nForce4 boards. For future proofing, it shows that the boards to drool over are the SLI ones, if you can afford them (at $250-300 each right now).

So, the net, if you need a computer right now, then the MSI Neo2 is the right way to go. If you can delay at all, then PCI Express won't be any faster, but upgrading to a new video board will be easier (of course, I've never in my life actually upgraded a video component, usually, the rest of the system gets obsolete too fast, but it is peace of mind.

What Is - Device Error Codes for java enabled handhelds. Ok now I get this error message. Not very helpful, it says contact Blackberry support if you get this one.

Another thread says that a 365 means the hardware is bad. Sigh.

PDA street forums - error. Just got this horrible error on my brand new replacement blackberry. Unlike the fellow I haven't installed any software.

Frankly, it sounds like a hardware problem. The Blackberry boots into a single message that is variously:

Prefetch Exception Reset
Abort Exception Reset
Error 365 Reset

Sigh. I'm never going to get my mail!

On the Blackberry site, it says that for Abort Exception you should connect the handheld to the crable, open the desktop manager and click Applications Loader and select the optoin to erate all existing data and appliations. Kind of sad to see this is the resolution.

t-break - MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum. With all the socket 939 boards being out of stock, here's a review of the Neo4. Unfortunately, all the socket 939 motherboards are out of stock right now at the big sellers and are very expensive as quantities are tight. So from safe to bleeding edge, here are (in order your choices):

1. If you have to have a board now, then get the DFI LanParty UT, its a socket 754 board, but is available ($109). All prices are newegg.com or zipzoomfly.com
2. The MSI Neo2 is probably the best board for socket 939 and AGP using the older nForce3 chipset. The safe choice is the MSI Neo2 but it is hard to get ($142).
3. The newer boards use nForce 4 and PCIExpress. Boards to look at there include the Chaintech VNF4/Ultra at $129 (no reviews yet), the MSI Neo4 ($189) see the above review.
4. There are also some bleeding edge boards that do SLI, but the ASUS AN8 SLI for one has got lots of early teething problems. Gigabyte and MSI are also close with their SLI boards. If you are doing this monitor the Anandtech motherboard forum closely to see what bugs people are finding.

Tong Family Blog: Blackberry Internal Error #4238. Darn it I got this error again. And of course I'm the number 1 site on google covering it. Talk about self-referential! You will get this bizzare error if you are trying to use a public folder for a contact. There are two things you have to do. First, make sure there is a null private folder that is included and second make sure you are using uncached mode for Exchange.

This is quite hard to do:

First, go to Start/Control Panel/Mail/Show Profiles/Add (this is for Outlook 2003 btw) and type in a new profile name, like "uncached for blackberry". Then go to Add New Mail Account/Microsoft Exchange Server/. Here is the magic entry, unclick Use Exchange Cached Mode Then type in your Exchange server and user name and choose Next and Finish

Here is how you set that, start Blackberry Desktop Manager, btw it doesn't matter how Outlook accesses things, Blackberry Desktop Manager has its own ideas about what profile to run. Click on Intellisync/Configure PIM/Address Book/Options and there will be the profile that you should have set up to be an entry for "uncached for blackberry" and click on it.

If you're curious to see what happens if you don't do this, you end up trying to debug Pumasync's confusion with Body fields as noted below

I lost my coat in a restaurant and the USB thumbdrive as well :-(.

A good excuse to get another one, so which one to get. The main criteria seems to be how big is the drive and how fast is it. Most of the software that comes with these things seems to be junk (secure section of the flash drive or booting from it).

Although they advertise that these are USB 2.0, the actual speed of the flash memory limits things. The average drive is 7MBps read and 7MBps write. Typically, they cost about $80. If you spend a little more, you can get flash that is twice as fast running at 17MBps read for instance and 10MBps write. I don't know if it is worth the extra $20, but there it is. Here are some reviews:

• The Tech Zone Computer Hardware Reviews of PQI 1GB. Robert gave me one of these and I promptly lost it. It is so small. You can stick two in a credit card sized holder. About $90 and it weights 3 grams!
• Verbatim Store-and-go. This baby actually has an onboard ARM 7 microprocessor in it! Reads at 17MBps and writes at 10Mpbs. Cost is about $95 from mwave.

Another month has passed and recommendations are getting a little more complex again. Interesting to see that as the dollar has been crashing, PC prices have been stable as has technology. The machines I bought a year ago are about 10-20% slower not 50%. Main move has been with graphics cards. Still the best news is that there are some viable home-brew HTPCs and silent PCs you can build now.

HTPC or SFF PC

I haven't been recommend small form factor machines for a while now. They don't usually have the fastest motherboards and so forth. But with the new HTPCs coming out you can build a very small machine again with the right specs. They are much more expensive, but since these use the Dothan Pentium M chipset, they are very fast.

This thing is expensive at $1800, but it is a screamer. Faster than most 3.6 GHz Pentiums when overclocked and it is in a tiny chassis. The only thing I need to figure out is how to get a pair of 2.5" hard drives into it so it will be fast.

Also the Viewsonic and its brother from Nu Tech appear to be impossible to get, but the thing to try is that J&R have the incomparable Samsung 193P right now on sale with a double rebate, so it is just $500 after a $100 rebate. That is almost the cost of the budget Viewsonic q190mb.

High End PC

Like the Media It's very tough to do a recommendation right now because most of the tasty motherboards are in very short supply or not reviewed or very unstable as they are so new.

Crucial Hi-Speed USB SD/MMC Card Reader upgrades from Crucial.com. Just $10 with free shipping, this little widget is a SD/MMC card reader that plugs into any USB 2.0 slot.

Going to give it a try very useful for all those digital cameras and phones with MMC/SD cards in them.

Anandtech covers the latest in RAM. The big news is that the price of fast PC3200 CL2 Ram is actually higher than PC3700-PC4000 CL2.5 ram, it seems like an upgrade in January recommendations are in order, specifically, going to:

• Corsair TwinX 4400C2.5. This stuff is quite slow at DDR400, but at the top end of DDR550, it is the fastest around. One thing that is strange is various memory modules are faster at specific speed ranges (so you might find memory very fast at DDR400, but it slows down in comparison with others as you go higher). In this case, Corsair is slower at DDR400, but fast at DDR550.
• Crucial Ballistix 3200. This memory is very hard to find. Main place is on the crucial site itself, it is amazingly fast. The main thing is that even though it is only rated to PC3200 (DDR400), it is very fast and in fact when overclocked really holds its own. A good buy at $128 per stick from that site.
• OCZ Gold Rev 3. This stuff does really well with Athlon 939 boards in particular the Neo2. Runs at at a native DDR466 but can get to DDR500 if the motherboard can take it. It is the slow at DDR400, but very fast in the middle range. This uses Samsung chips like the Corsair but the tuning and binning of chips is different.

The net is that you have to guess about where you are going to run your machines and then buy the appropriate ram.

Anand's net recommendations:

For the fastest memory speeds possible, Corsair TwinX1024-4400C25 is your choice. For best performance at DDR400 to DDR466, almost any other Samsung TCCD module will do a little better. For DDR400 at 2-2-2 and top-end performance a bit shy of this extraordinary Corsair memory, you can choose Geil PC3200 Ultra X, Crucial PC3200 Ballistix, OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev.2, PQI 3200 Turbo, or G. Skill TCCD.

RAM from Crucial is actually made by Micron Technologies and is very hard to find. The best place is direct from Crucial.

BTW, it looks like the PC4000 is the better by according to Club Overclocker.

It is about the same price as the PC3200 ($130 vs. $128), but is rated to run at DDR500 at CL2.5 (so it will run fine at 250MHz FSB). A nice buy particularly if you live outside of Washington and don't have to pay the sales tax.

The Micron Ram also performs really well on Athlon 64s.