Category Archives: Hardware

How Much Power Does Your PC Use?

I can’t say I’ve ever worried too much about how much power my PC uses. I care about battery life on a laptop and like laptops that use a lower wattage transformer because it’s smaller and lighter. Power to servers … Continue reading

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Building My Next Workstation–Part 6 (The End)

Let’s start with a quick review of the pieces and what I paid: Item Cost Antec P280 Case $90 (may be higher now) ASUS P8Z77-V LK Motherboard $120 Corsair 500W Power Supply $50 (400w would have been plenty) Intel I7 … Continue reading

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Building My Next Workstation–Part 5

With the motherboard and CPU installed I was ready to add the final and perhaps easiest parts to the build. I started with a DVD drive. In practice I almost never use DVD’s any more, preferring to mount ISO files … Continue reading

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Building My Next Workstation–Part 4

Reading about the motherboard choices took a while. Because I had already decided on a CPU, the Intel I7 I at least had an initial filter. If you’re shopping for one today you want a board that has the Z77 … Continue reading

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Building My Next Workstation–Part 3

With a case ordered and a CPU in mind I decided to focus on the power supply next. Remember that the better cases come with fans but not with a power supply (and in general that’s good, you want to … Continue reading

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Building My Next Workstation–Part 2

Building a computer, at least in the beginning, feels like something you have to do holistically and at the same time like a chicken and the egg scenario. For example, what size power supply you buy depends on what you’re … Continue reading

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Building My Next Workstation–Part 1

It’s been four years – maybe more – since I last bought a workstation to use for development and lab work. It’s served me well since then, hasn’t changed much, but is slow by the standards of what I use … Continue reading

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My $200 Oops

My Nexus 7 tablet has grown on me, though I think it’s more about having a dedicated tablet than the hardware. I’ve never been a big fan of cases for devices, they seem to throw away the lightness of the … Continue reading

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Trying the Nest Thermostat

I’ve had the Nest Thermostat on my wish list for a while. It has looked like an interesting bit of technology, just hard to justify the $249 price. This past week the little plastic nub that changes from AC to … Continue reading

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Phones, Tablets, and Even Windows 8

Last year I purchased two Kindle Fires for the family to use. The UI could be just a little bit/slow twitchy at times, but never so much to make you put the device down.  Looking at the usage over a … Continue reading

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