Hardware

A year after competitors Lenovo, Dell, and Apple recalled hundreds of thousands of laptop batteries after reports that they caused overheating and fires, Gateway has reopened its doors to 14,000 additional units. Although the number of batteries ... being recalled is somewhat small in comparison, it denotes that notebook owners are hardly safe, even now, from poorly designed parts. Although Gateway hasn't been fingered as publicly as Lenovo, Dell, or Apple, the company has made its own recall before. In October of last year it called back 35,000 of the batteries produced by Sony after worries ... (view more)

Just when it seemed as though the war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD was settling back into a stalemate, the former has once again regained its position atop the high-definition movie standings. Sony's Blu-ray will be the only format supported by ... Blockbuster when the movie and game retail chain integrates HD content into all of its stores next month. Recently Toshiba, the primary backer of HD-DVD, made headlines with the announcement that it will ship its own HD format "under the hood" of future laptops. That means that HD-DVD drives will be standard in all Toshiba notebooks in the future, a move ... (view more)

For those who've recently heard that Blockbuster will be exclusively carrying Blu-ray discs, the high-def movie fight does look a bit bleak for HD-DVD. However, just when Sony thought the high definition movie format war was over, Toshiba pulls a ... fast one. With Sony's Blu-ray shipping in each and every PlayStation 3 and new players slowly creeping lower in price, it was beginning to look as if the company had made up for its gaming console's rather miserable start. Unfortunately for Sony, major HD-DVD backers Toshiba have recently announced their own PS3-like ploy, with each and every laptop ... (view more)

The Sony PlayStation 3, thus far, has been a failure. Outsold five to one in Japan by the Nintendo Wii and trailing the Xbox 360 in North America, the big black console has largely lost the gaming throne it inherited from its ancestor, the ... PlayStation 2. Much of the PS3's current condition is a result of Sony's high price point, with consumers forced to bone up $599 for the feature-laden system. Hopes, however, are now rising, ever so faintly. That's because Sony has recently dropped the price of its Blu-ray player, and it could mean similar reductions to the PlayStation 3. (Source: dailytech ... (view more)

Get ready for the disposable laptop. ASUS has recently announced a device that won't break the bank after being dropped, doused in coffee, or thrown from a sixth floor balcony. That's right, a sub-$200 laptop, proclaimed the lowest cost and easiest ... to use mainstream notebook, ever. ASUS chairman Johnny Shih stunned his Computex crowd with the device, which weighs just 900 grams. Using Linux technology, the device, dubbed "3ePC", reportedly runs an operating system similar to Windows. Computex attendees say they witnessed Mozilla's Firefox browser being used, meaning it will likely be capable ... (view more)

When Blu-ray and HD-DVD players launched into the home market last year, most consumers balked at the technology. Why? Despite some very impressive image resolutions, both the players and movies were far more expensive than the average DVD player. ... Those that could afford one of the two preferred Toshiba's HD-DVD lineup, however, since it retailed for about $400, or less than half the cost of the cheapest Blu-ray device. That's all changing now, as Blu-ray continues to drop in price. (Source: monstersandcritics.com ) During the latter half of 2007, Toshiba certainly owned the advantage over ... (view more)

Will you be upgrading to Windows Vista any time soon? Vote your opinion at the end of this article! -- At the annual WinHEC (Windows Hardware Engineering Conference) earlier this month, Microsoft issued new numbers in an attempt to bridge troubled ... waters concerning the success of their new Windows Vista operating system (OS). Microsoft claims to have sold almost 40 million copies of Windows Vista in its first 100 days, twice as many copies of Windows XP after its first 100 days. The big question is, who's buying them? PC makers under contract with them? Consumers aren't buying them at a rapid ... (view more)

Last month, there was a lot of talk about a comment made by Dell CEO Michael Dell. He had said in a memo, "the direct model has been a revolution, but is not a religion." This comment certainly caused some buzz. After all, Dell's direct model had ... been the root of the company's outstanding sales record. Was the company going to head in a new direction? If so, what kind of direction? In a recent interview, Michael Dell sat down to explain why the company is beginning to divert from its traditional model -- and why that's a good thing. (Source: retuers.com ) Specifically, Dell indicated his ... (view more)

Several times this past year, we have had readers write in asking if it could be possible to convert VHS tapes to DVD. I don't want you to get your hopes up too high, because what I'm going to tell you will not work for Copyrighted Videos. Most of ... those are protected with a copy protection scheme called MicroVision and cannot be re-recorded to DVD or even another VHS tape. If you want a DVD of those videos you will just have to go to your favorite DVD/Tape Movie store and buy it. But if you want to make a DVD of Uncle Henry's birthday party or the vacation to beat all vacations, read on. ... (view more)

The hard drive is a highly sensitive and complicated device that most of us tend to take for granted. Just what it is and -- how it works -- is the subject of this second article on computer hardware [read part 1 here]. If you were to remove the ... sealed cover on the drive, what you would see is a number of platters attached to a fairly thick shaft that contains a type of motor known as a servo motor. The servo motor has the characteristic of being easily controlled and stable when considering the speed of rotation. The platters are spun by the motor at a rate of speed designated by the ... (view more)