The computer and electronics super geek thread

[myk]

As long as the cleaner is ammonia free, it should be fine. Compressed air is perfect for the keyboard.

I'm guessing the ammonia discolors the plastics on the casing? Is there something special I need to use for the screen?

[emajnthis]

you can dab a microfiber towel in some distilled water and very gently remove smudges/dirt with it on your LCD. If your screen is really nasty (mine usually are from the kids) you can mix some white vinegar with the distilled water to get a little more action out of it.

[mikeszekely]

Hey laptop guys, I got a question for you. I've had my Toshiba Qosmio X505 for about a week now. Although used, when I received it the unit looked like it had just been plucked from the factory. After a week of ownership it doesn't look so new anymore; I'm sure it doesn't help that I take this thing EVERYWHERE-home, work, dinner, movies, everywhere. What do you guys use to clean the screen, keyboard, casing, etc? I'm assuming that things like glass cleaner are too harsh for these surfaces? I read somewhere that any sort of household cleaner could cause harm to the finish, and this Qosmio is all shiny-piano-black. What about the keyboard? A vacuum, canned air or something to get the particles out of the keyboard? I'm also still searching for a backpack not just big enough to hold this thing but hold it safely too. Thoughts and suggestions are appreciated, thanks guys...

I'll second the distilled water thing. As long as it's not dripping wet and you keep away from ports and vents, it should be ok for the palm rest and top case, too. At work, if it's really grungy or sticky, we'll maybe use a little dab of Goo Gone. Then canned air to clear dust and crumbs from the keyboard and ports.

As far as backpacks go, I have this Targus one. It has a padded back and a padded compartment for the laptop with a velcro strap to keep it from moving around, plus it's big enough to put my Asus laptop in with room to spare, plus still has extra compartments for for a mouse, AC adapter, my dice bag, and several D&D books. In fact, I packed this thing with my laptop, AC adapter, phone, iPad, iPad charger, phone charger, and a jacket and took it to Beijing with me. It's a solid backpack and not too expensive. It's big, though.

[Archer]

Picked up a nexus 7 16 GB. Really REALLY nice tablet for a $250 asking price. The $25 free google play money, $10 google wallet cash, and access to some new books, songs, and Transformers Dark of the Moon is icing on the proverbial cake.

The stock jelly bean with its "Project Butter" is extremely crisp and "buttery" to use, with the machine responding quickly. Unfortunately, they haven't been able to reproduce the refinement and reliability of iOS as I still found a couple hickups, but it really is well done for the asking price.

Google must be making little to no money on these things, especially the 8 GB one....

[myk]

As far as backpacks go, I have this Targus one. It has a padded back and a padded compartment for the laptop with a velcro strap to keep it from moving around, plus it's big enough to put my Asus laptop in with room to spare, plus still has extra compartments for for a mouse, AC adapter, my dice bag, and several D&D books. In fact, I packed this thing with my laptop, AC adapter, phone, iPad, iPad charger, phone charger, and a jacket and took it to Beijing with me. It's a solid backpack and not too expensive. It's big, though.

Ok, I want to like that Targus bag, but I have conflicting information on it. Toshiba sells it on their website as one of the few bags capable of holding their Qosmio laptops, however everywhere else I look that Targus bag is listed as only being able to accommodate laptops with 17" screens or smaller; which is it? My dream bag is from Targus, as every one of their bags that I have seen is absolute quality, but if I can't fit this monster in there it's pointless. What's the screen size on your ASUS?

[VF-19]

Wound up getting an Asus 1225B. It's the same size (but not thickness) as the UX21, but for much much less. Once I was happy with it, I swapped out the hard drive, and put in a SSD. SSDs make everything seem faster!

[mikeszekely]

Ok, I want to like that Targus bag, but I have conflicting information on it. Toshiba sells it on their website as one of the few bags capable of holding their Qosmio laptops, however everywhere else I look that Targus bag is listed as only being able to accommodate laptops with 17" screens or smaller; which is it? My dream bag is from Targus, as every one of their bags that I have seen is absolute quality, but if I can't fit this monster in there it's pointless. What's the screen size on your ASUS?

My Asus is a 16.1", but like I said, it's a mammoth bag. There's plenty of room left over in the padded laptop pocket, which itself is in the largest of the bag's pockets. I've routinely used it to carry multiple D&D books and the laptop, and like I said before, I used it to carry all but my clothes with me when I went to China.

I'll show you a pick of my Asus nestled inside. Note how much I can pull the pocket back, and the fact that there's still a bit of space between the laptop and the top of the bag.

Edited August 9, 2012 by mikeszekely

[myk]

My Asus is a 16.1", but like I said, it's a mammoth bag. There's plenty of room left over in the padded laptop pocket, which itself is in the largest of the bag's pockets. I've routinely used it to carry multiple D&D books and the laptop, and like I said before, I used it to carry all but my clothes with me when I went to China.

I'll show you a pick of my Asus nestled inside. Note how much I can pull the pocket back, and the fact that there's still a bit of space between the laptop and the top of the bag.

Thanks for the review, Mike. Based on what you've said and the slew of Newegg reviews I'm probably going to buy this bag...

[mikeszekely]

Thanks for the review, Mike. Based on what you've said and the slew of Newegg reviews I'm probably going to buy this bag...

You won't regret it; it's a really solid bag. And I'm telling you, if your laptop doesn't fit, they don't make a bag big enough for it.

[bigkid24]

Holy crap! That bag you guys are talking about looks huge. In that amazon listing some guy posted pics of everything he carries in it including his laptop, keyboard, and a 19" monitor plus cables and accessories. I might pull the trigger on it because I often travel with my personal and work laptops.

[EXO]

Holy crap! That bag you guys are talking about looks huge. In that amazon listing some guy posted pics of everything he carries in it including his laptop, keyboard, and a 19" monitor plus cables and accessories. I might pull the trigger on it because I often travel with my personal and work laptops.

That's the bag I travel with. Dude. I had that the last 3 comicons we've gone to. I have a new one now. It's thinner but its taller so I can carry art pads, but still holds my laptop and stuff.

[mikeszekely]

Holy crap! That bag you guys are talking about looks huge. In that amazon listing some guy posted pics of everything he carries in it including his laptop, keyboard, and a 19" monitor plus cables and accessories. I might pull the trigger on it because I often travel with my personal and work laptops.

It is huge! I can safely say that it will fit both my Asus gaming laptop AND the HP Envy 6 laptop I use for grad school, plus chargers for both, plus books, plus an external hard drive, flash drives, a mouse, and an external DVD burner.

[myk]

It is huge! I can safely say that it will fit both my Asus gaming laptop AND the HP Envy 6 laptop I use for grad school, plus chargers for both, plus books, plus an external hard drive, flash drives, a mouse, and an external DVD burner.

I think this bag has the same undetectable extensions charm that Hermione used on her bag in Deathly Hallows. Yeah I read that some guy carried his 17" laptop and a '360 and all of the related junk in his TXL 617. I think it's possible to load this thing up to the point that you can't carry it, lol..

[anime52k8]

So, The motherboard on my laptop crapped out on me about a week ago. I went ahead and bought a new laptop but I'm thinking about buying a replacement motherboard and fixing it myself. (the old laptop was less than 2 years old and my mom could use a better computer).

my point is, when I re-install the CPU/GPU heat sinks, do I need to hunt down and use the thermal pads the repair manual calls for, or would I be fine just using a dab of thermal paste?

Edited August 17, 2012 by anime52k8

[mikeszekely]

So, The motherboard on my laptop crapped out on me about a week ago. I went ahead and bought a new laptop but I'm thinking about buying a replacement motherboard and fixing it myself. (the old laptop was less than 2 years old and my mom could a better computer).

my point is, when I re-install the CPU/GPU heat sinks, do I need to hunt down and use the thermal pads the repair manual calls for, or would I be fine just using a dab of thermal paste?

I can't imagine why thermal paste wouldn't be fine, but I say that with the disclaimer that I've never replaced a motherboard in a laptop (only removed them to get to the freaking hard drive that Dell thinks is fun to make as inaccessible as possible).

[azrael]

IIRC, people suggested replacing the regular thermal paste on the 1st generation Macbook Pros with Arctic Silver 5 to help with the heat so yes, you can use thermal paste instead of pads. But like mikeszekely, I normally don't find myself replacing whole laptop motherboards.

[BeyondTheGrave]

So, The motherboard on my laptop crapped out on me about a week ago. I went ahead and bought a new laptop but I'm thinking about buying a replacement motherboard and fixing it myself. (the old laptop was less than 2 years old and my mom could use a better computer).

my point is, when I re-install the CPU/GPU heat sinks, do I need to hunt down and use the thermal pads the repair manual calls for, or would I be fine just using a dab of thermal paste?

What make?

[anime52k8]

What make?

HP

[BeyondTheGrave]

Your best bet is ebay. Just hope its not a model that was discontinued after you bought it.

[anime52k8]

Your best bet is ebay. Just hope its not a model that was discontinued after you bought it.

Already found a replacement board on ebay for $160 shipped.

Edited August 17, 2012 by anime52k8

[myk]

So the replacement motherboards, DON'T have all the bits and pieces already installed?

By the way the Targus XL 617 was just enough to swallow my monster laptop. The amount of compartments this thing boasts would make a cruise ship blush. Thanks Mike and everyone else for your recommendations-finding a laptop back pack was harder than I thought it would be...

[mikeszekely]

OK, this is a weird one, so I thought I'd run it by you guys. A friend of mine recently upgraded her computer's RAM. The computer has worked fine since her husband built it, but now it's behaving a little oddly. From a powered off state, when you push the power the light comes on and you can hear the fans spin up, but nothing displays on the monitor. After a second it'll power back off, back on, do the same thing, power off, and then power on. On the third time, it boots perfectly normally. It's always on, off, on, off, on, boot, and never any video until it actually starts to boot.

Since the problem started with the RAM, I'd guess that the problem lies there, but it's weird that on the third time the computer boots fine without any issues. And once it's booted, she's not having any errors or issues. I checked the BIOS settings on her motherboard, thinking there might be a problem with the RAM timing. Everything's set to auto and looks ok.

Suggestions?

[azrael]

Motherboard short circuit? Power supply having problems? There is the chance that the CPU is at fault. If it's not POSTing, then it could be a bad CPU.

[mikeszekely]

Motherboard short circuit? Power supply having problems? There is the chance that the CPU is at fault. If it's not POSTing, then it could be a bad CPU.

It POSTS on the third power cycle, every time like clockwork. And once it posts, it boots fine, Windows loads fine, no errors. It'll run for days and days. But if they shut it off, it'll power cycle three times and boot on the third.

There's a possibility that ESD damaged something when my buddy put the new RAM in, but this computer's run fine for probably three years before the RAM upgrade. If there's an issue with the mobo/PSU/CPU, it's recent. Occam's razor would still have me finger the RAM as the culprit, I think.

[azrael]

It POSTS on the third power cycle, every time like clockwork. And once it posts, it boots fine, Windows loads fine, no errors. It'll run for days and days. But if they shut it off, it'll power cycle three times and boot on the third.

There's a possibility that ESD damaged something when my buddy put the new RAM in, but this computer's run fine for probably three years before the RAM upgrade. If there's an issue with the mobo/PSU/CPU, it's recent. Occam's razor would still have me finger the RAM as the culprit, I think.

Probably a silly question but, did they try putting back in the old RAM?

[mikeszekely]

Probably a silly question but, did they try putting back in the old RAM?

Not too silly. They didn't say if they did, and I didn't ask. But yeah, if they switch to the old RAM, and the computer runs like normal, that'd pretty much settle the matter.

[areaseven]

At least they paid up.

Samsung Pays Apple $1 Billion Sending 30 Trucks Full of 5 Cent Coins

[pfunk]

At least they paid up.

Samsung Pays Apple $1 Billion Sending 30 Trucks Full of 5 Cent Coins

hoax

[Uxi]

Never did get a new GPU. Leaning on GTX 690... jk, but seriously considering GTX 660 Ti.

[mikeszekely]

Never did get a new GPU. Leaning on GTX 690... jk, but seriously considering GTX 660 Ti.

Yeah, I've got my eye on that as well. But I need to decide if I want to upgrade my GPU, build a whole new computer, or buy a gaming laptop.

[Uxi]

I think my Core i7 is still beefy enough. X58 is a bit dated but good enough for my purposes for at least a couple years especially if I go beyond the mild overclock. I'll probably go to 24GB of DDR3 sooner or later (crazy how cheap RAM is these days)

[azrael]

Yeah, I've got my eye on that as well. But I need to decide if I want to upgrade my GPU, build a whole new computer, or buy a gaming laptop.

I bit the bullet and just got a GTX 670 (abeit with a gift card or 2). My i7/P55 combo is still good, and the only thing I would look at is an integrated USB 3 controller on the MB, but otherwise, my system still has another year or 2 of life before I consider a new build. I would look at a GPU upgrade if your system is still young but you're feeling that upgrade itch.

[BeyondTheGrave]

At least they paid up.

Samsung Pays Apple $1 Billion Sending 30 Trucks Full of 5 Cent Coins

that would be epic. and apple sucks.

[myk]

Yeah, I've got my eye on that as well. But I need to decide if I want to upgrade my GPU, build a whole new computer, or buy a gaming laptop.

C! Buy a gaming laptop!

[mikeszekely]

I bit the bullet and just got a GTX 670 (abeit with a gift card or 2). My i7/P55 combo is still good, and the only thing I would look at is an integrated USB 3 controller on the MB, but otherwise, my system still has another year or 2 of life before I consider a new build. I would look at a GPU upgrade if your system is still young but you're feeling that upgrade itch.

I guess my computer's about three. It's a first-gen Core i7... 920, I think. 12GB of RAM, Asus Sabertooth mobo, GTX 465 graphics. I can't honestly say I've had trouble with any games, so I'm not sure I honestly need to upgrade at all, but I definitely have that itch. While I could easily afford a GTX 660Ti right now with what I've got stashed away for upgrades, a part of me feels like it's time to start on a whole new box.

C! Buy a gaming laptop!

For the record, I do really prefer desktops. I have a 27" Samsung monitor, Logitech Wireless Illuminated Keyboard, Logitech Performance Mouse MX, and some kind of Logitech surround sound system who's exact mode escapes me. If I was still living in my apartment, I probably wouldn't be thinking about a laptop at all.

But there's two things that have me thinking laptop. First, when I visited Beijing this year, I took my old Asus laptop with me to entertain myself with. While it ran Civilization V like a champ and Skyrim on acceptable settings, Deus Ex ran horribly unless I turned the graphics pretty far down. The second thing was that I bought a house. While I didn't mind whiling away the cold PA winter in my "man cave," as the weather grew warmer I found myself wanting to spend more time in the living room or kitchen, where I have high ceilings, big windows, French doors to the back yard, and a more open, airy floor plan. It got bad enough that I actually bought an HP Envy 6 laptop to do my usual web browsing and grad school work on. I kind of think if I got something with an i5 or i7 and a GTX 660M or 670M, it ought to be good enough that I should get performance equal to or better than my desktop, and I won't have to play in the man cave.

Then again, fall is coming...