Any port in a storm refers to a ship on the high seas. It definitely doesn’t apply to input and output ports on PCs.

Most of the legacy ports have been around so long I’m pretty used to them. Mouse and keyboard (both the PS/2 type ports and the newer USB ports), VGA for the monitor, the fast disappearing parallel printer port, serial port (are there still any serial devices?), audio in and audio out port (and some ports I’ve probably missed).

My Dell Inspiron 530 threw me with another port, a DVI port. There were also two cables for the Dell SE198WFP LCD monitor, a standard VGA cable, and a DVI cable.
DVI is “a digital connector which is the ideal way to connect to an LCD monitor.”
DVI-I (Integrated) can carry both a digital and an analog signal to support VGA monitors, and DVI-D (Digital) provides only a digital signal. DVI was intended to replace VGA.

HDMI is backward compatible with DVI. HDMI carries both digital video and audio signals in a single cable. Most gamers would know about HDMI as the Xbox 360 Premium began shipping with a HDMI port last year.

They say that you can never have too much memory (in your PC), but with 32-bit Windows XP and Vista you can.

On machines with more than 3GB of RAM, Windows XP and Vista will report total System memory (RAM) of less than 4GB, often considerably less.

So why is this? Oversimplified, ranges of physical memory are shadowed to support devices in a PC, and above 3 GB larger chunks of memory are used. Daniel Rutter explains it quite well on his Blog “Dan’s Data” in the article “Ask Dan: What’s with the 3Gb memory barrier?“.

The Microsoft knowledge base article No 929605: “The system memory that is reported in the System Information dialog box in Windows Vista is less than you expect if 4 GB of RAM is installed” explains how memory above 3GB is used. Naturally Vista Service Pack 1 has a fix - knowledge base article no 946003: “Windows Vista SP1 will report 4 GB of system memory (RAM) on systems that have 4 GB of memory installed“. Of course this is “a reporting change only“, so the actual amount of RAM is reported corrected, but large chunks above 3GB are still used in the same way.

Basically what this all boils down to is that on a 32-bit Operating System, more than 3GB of RAM is a waste. So the HP (Hewlett-Packard) Pavilion dv9810us Notebook with 3GB of RAM has enough RAM, not too much.

Usually people only buy a new computer after their old computer gets too slow or crashes. I seem to have done it the other way round. My old eMachines Desktop computer just died about a week ago. It had been playing up for well over a year now. It would just suddenly cutout like the power had gone. After unplugging and re-plugging the AC power cord, it would work again. At first I though it was a power supply problem, but it was just too erratic. More research found some possible hard to fix problems. It wasn’t overheating, as it would sometimes cutout just after I switched it on, but work after that. Sometimes it did this once, sometimes twice. Occasionally I had to wait for half an hour before trying it again. Since I couldn’t trust it I bought cheap Compaq desktop computer on special, and used the eMachines Desktop as a secondary machine. I only used it occasionally, mainly for an important application which I intended to move off the eMachines Desktop.

When it happened, the eMachines Desktop wouldn’t turn on, no matter how many times I tried. I left it for an hour, then a day. Eventually I gave up: it was dead, never to boot up again. Of course the software I meant to move off was still on it.

One of the reasons I had kept the unpredictable machine around for so long was that up until a few weeks ago, it had the largest hard drive of any of my computers; 160GB. That doesn’t sound like much now, with 1 Terabyte hard drives available, but in 2005 when I bought it that was a lot of space.

Now I’m thinking of removing the hard drive and turning it into an external hard drive with a kit like the AcomData 2163 External 3.5 inch Hard Drive Enclosure. That saves me from trying to figure out how to erase the data on the hard drive in a machine which won’t boot.

(Pardon the title, somehow my first choice “PS/2 + USB <> KVM” really seemed too geeky.)

This week I was very fortunate to get my birthday present early, especially since it is a relatively expensive one. It was partly as a result of two of my blog entries (”XP still outsells Vista” and “Buying a PC with XP“) as I had decided on a Desktop PC with Windows XP. The problem was that Windows XP PCs may be hard to find when my birthday comes around. So now I have a shiny new Dell Desktop PC (well, not really shiny, but new).

There is a major problem though. Even though I knew that the latest Dell machines don’t have PS/2 ports for mouse and keyboard, but instead supply a USB mouse and keyboard, which take up two of the numerous USB ports , I had not really thought it through. Somehow I thought that it would be possible to connect to the existing PS/2 KVM with just two USB to PS/2 adapters. After looking at the Dell PC I realized that what I actually needed was a PS/2 to USB adapter like the Cables To Go USB To PS/2 Adapter. After some research it appeared that this might not even work. Just to get two PCs working I used an “old-fashioned” manual VGA monitor switchbox (which shares one monitor between two desktop PCs), and for the moment I’m using two sets of mice and keyboards. It looks like the best solution would be a USB KVM and a USB to Dual PS/2 Keyboard Mouse Adapter to connect my newest old PC to the USB KVM.

Of course the PS/2 I refer to above is the “PS/2 connector, an interface standard for PC mice and keyboards” not the Sony “PlayStation2″ (from Wikipedia)

I’ve been dealing with a cartoonist lately for one of my jobs. He’s got a nice style — loose and simple. But he works in hard copy. As in, ink and paper. And since he’s in one state and I’m in another, this has posed some challenges for shuttling work, particularly since he doesn’t seem to own his own scanning device. (These days, I thought scanning devices were so common as to be handed out in cereal boxes.)

I’ve mildly suggested that he consider getting a software application to handle his work so that the digital copy of his art could be emailed to me, but there’s something about pen on paper that appeals to this guy.

But I’m thinking that maybe I need to present him with cool toy to spark his “inner geek.” Specifically, I have my eyes on the little Wacom Bamboo Digitizing Tablet. Priced comparable to the nicest Etch-a-Sketch you could ever buy, this device lets the user touch a pen tip to the tablet to write notes, mark up digital documents, create a digital signature and best of all, make quick sketches.

It works with Microsoft Windows Vista and Office 2007 or the OS X-built-in Mac Ink and connects to the computer via USB cable, which is detachable.

PriceGrabber reviewers love it. “My favorite aspect of this tablet is its texture,” writes anvilfactory. “When you press the tip of the pen onto its active area, it resembles the feeling of a pen against paper!”

“Compared to what my conventional method used to be, instead of having to scan my sketches and then redrawing solid lines with the mouse, I can now draw directly on the computer, as if I was drawing on paper,” writes shmps.

“This is the best for the bang tablet that made by a well known vendor and the only tablet that doesn’t use batteries!,” writes pcdoctor01 from GA. (The power draws through the USB connection from the PC — standard operating procedure, apparently, for Wacom products.)

Hmm. Maybe it’s time for me to put aside my keyboard and find my inner artist…

Today, in my quest to understand just what could make a computer cost $30,000, I’m going to drill down on the processor that PC World editors have chosen for their dream machine.

That would be the Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad Processor QX9975. The plan is to put two of these into the system.

This processor has four processing cores (whatever they are) and a 45 nanometer lithography, which is small. (I know what that means.) The processor speed is a blazing 3.2 gigahertz. If that were typing performance, I’m pretty sure your fingertips would catch fire.

Although descriptions of this chip say that it’s great for multi-threaded games and multimedia applications, it’s probably best suited for server operations — where a whole bunch of processes are hitting the computer for data access or processing power all at the same time. How could a lone human being sitting at a keyboard be that needy? OK, so I’m not a gamer and I don’t do high-end GPS mapping work. Maybe you could be that needy.

Of course, even as PC World was putting in its quad-core order, Intel was announcing that it expects to ship a six-core processor later this year, according to Computerworld.

The story quotes a senior VP and general manager of Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group as saying, “The big cache and six cores will give customers a nice bump in performance.” Plus, it keeps Intel ahead of the speed game compared to AMD, which just announced it is shipping a triple-core processor as part of its Phenom series.

I suppose that if you’re spending $1,500 to get a custom paint job for the box that holds the computer components as PC World is, you don’t want to be putting in a little $300 processor — or even two of them. You want to go with what’s newest, fastest, and priciest. In that regard, the magazine has done it again!

The last desktop PC I bought had a LightScribe CD/DVD writer. This is really a neat idea. I was never really one for printing labels for CDs and just wrote on them with a permanent marker pen. A colleague who used to print labels for backup CDs eventually gave up when the labels begun peeling off after several months. Since I’ve had this LightScribe writer I’ve printed a number of labels.

The way LightScribe works is that instead of having to print paper labels for your CDs or DVDs, once you have burned the CD or DVD, you just turn the disk over, pop it back into the writer and burn a label on the special surface area on the label side of the disk. Of course, you need special LightScribe writable media to do this, as well as a LightScribe compatible writer. The CD and DVD media have been coming down in price and are often on sale.

If you do not have a LightScribe Writer, internal or external ones are easy to come by, like the internal LG Electronics LG 20X DVDR DVD Burner with LightScribe or the External LaCie d2 External Dual Layer DVD±RW Writer with LightScribe.

I admit it. I’m a slob around my desk. If I’m not chowing down on a bagel and steamed cocoa, I’m sucking back a Diet Coke or slurping my beloved travel mug of green tea. And, yes, I realize that sesame seeds in between the keys of my keyboard aren’t an attractive addition to my personal workspace. (But it does keep others from borrowing my system when I’m not using it…)

So maybe it’s time to clean up my act and stop consuming food items and libations above my notebook. Or better yet, so that I don’t have to change one cell of my being, perhaps I could simply apply technology to the problem

Here’s a new device that hasn’t yet hit the market, but will any day now! The Belkin Washable Mouse. Retail price: $29.99. Belkin knows mice. These are the folks who sell a slew of mice: wireless mice, mice with retractable cords, Bluetooth mice, mini mice, mice with five buttons. And now they’re about to start selling a mouse that you can spill on, get wet, and wipe clean. That’s a smart application of technology — one that any mother of a kindergartner will appreciate.

Of course, I’m already so in love with my Microsoft wireless notebook optical mouse that it’ll have to be truly trashed for me give it up. But, given my current state of consumption at the workstation, how far off can that day really be?

Here’s a gizmo I’d like to try: the Yoggie Pico, a USB key-sized computer with 12 security applications. The device just received a Best of Innovations - Computer Accessories award from the Consumer Electronics Show.

The Pico connects to your PC or notebook, blocking Internet threats outside the host computer. Here’s the gimmick: Even though it’s the size of your thumb, it’s a full-fledged computer with its own processor, memory and operating system (based on Linux).

According to the company, people running the Pico no longer need to run software-based security suites, which supposedly increases performance for the computer because you’ve offloaded those bottleneck applications. Plus, it isolates your PC from public networks.

If you’re looking for a way to impose parental control over where online your kids can surf, you can configure the device such that if it’s yanked by somebody wanting access to off-limit websites, Internet access will be totally denied.

The security functions provided by the Pico include:

• Anti-virus
• Anti-spyware
• Anti-phishing
• Anti-spam
• Intrusion detection
• Firewall
• Web filtering
• Transparent email proxies
• Transparent web proxies

There’s more, but you get the idea.

 Devices run between $100 and $160 through PriceGrabber, though it lists for $179 from Yoggie itself. Plus, you’ll need to add in the cost of subscriptions for those security applications, which seems to run about $30 a year (first year free!).

If easy security is what you’re looking for, tomorrow, I’ll share the details of a new product that I hope to start seeing become standard issue for touchpads.

In my last post, I promised to share a solution to my iPod speaker challenge that I wished I’d followed.

Thanks to my friend Neal, who introduced to me to the Accurian Wireless FM Transmitter (and bought me one too!).

He found it at Radio Shack (the same place I picked up my iSymphony speaker), and the sale price was exactly the same: $19.99. But the Accurian model, which looks like a computer mouse, uses your car speakers to broadcast the audio. Just plug in the jack (which hides inside the device when you’re not using it) to whatever you’re playing from — iPod, CD player, laptop, or satellite radio receiver. Then choose one of the eight available frequencies not already in use where you are, set your car tuner to the same frequency and rock out! (Or, in my case, listen to Annie Proulx’s Bad Dirt.)

The Accurian runs on two AAA batteries — or you can use the car power adapter and eliminate the waste.

I wasn’t familiar with this little gizmo before, but, of course, now I’ve found a slew of alternatives, the cutest of which is probably the Mito AudioBUG 350.

Can’t wait for my next road trip.