Category
Hardware
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02.03.06The silence of the fansI have my HTPC and the amplifiers inside a cabinet in the living room. The cabinet is well wentilated and has a specially mounted fan in the bottom to push air though it. I have described the cabinet here and the mounting of the fan here. To put it short the fan is mounted in rubber bands to eliminate vibrations and noise. However, I should have said "was mounted". The problem is that rubber bands need maintenance. Of course I could try to find better quality rubber bands, but I have choosen another soultion. It works fine so far, so ...
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08.05.05My brief encounter with a Creative Zen TouchI recently bought a Creative Zen Touch. My plan was to use it for podcast listening, audiobooks and music. A good price, 24 hour battery life and a nice and sturdy construction tempted me. As my regular readers may know, I run a quite advanced media system at home, built on Windows Media Center Edition. The only reason for not buying an Apple iPod was that I wanted a player that could communicate as seamless as possible with my existing media. The Zen Touch plays WMA including the files with DRM. According to all the reviews I found a firmware ...
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06.12.05The similarity of cars and computersOn my quest to build the perfect home theatre PC I have stumbled upon several interesting areas of perfection. And on my way, one thing suddenly became very clear: there are two quite obvious similarities between cars and computers. 1. Trimming cars and overclocking computers. The art of making something go faster without actually buying a bigger engine or processor. ---------- 2. Styling cars and modding computers The art of adding huge amounts of stuff that is supposed to make something look better. In addition to this, you have some not so obvious similarities: 3. The fanatic and passionate Alfa Romeo owner and the fanatic ...
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04.27.05Why you do not want to show static information on a Plasma screen!I snapped this picture at the train station at Stansted. One of the worst cases of burn-in I have ever seen. Click the picture for a closer look. This is why a Plasma screen is totally out of the question for my HTPC! I wonder what the sales persons told the people at the train station when they sold these screens? "We have these new fantastic flat screens for your train tables. They are only £ 10 000,- a piece and will last for at least two years."
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04.26.05Silencing an XFX GeForce 6600 GT AGP with a Zalman VF700 CuRecently, I bought a new screen card to be able to run Win MCE 2005. I went for an XFX GeForce 6600 GT AGP. Mainly because the GeForce 6600 GT supports NVidia PureVideo and because the XFX Card had two DVI connectors. I knew that I had to remove the original fan and mount something more silent, so at the same time I ordered a Zalman VF700 Cu. I followed the instructions and the VF700 is quite simple to install. However, I encountered one problem on my particular card. The instructions tell you to mount the RAM heatsinks, ...