HP 550 – Review

Posted on June 15th, 2009 | by admin

The HP 550 is a laptop (best recommended with Windows Vista Business) that fits medium sized budgets and also delivers practicality in terms of design, upgrading, and expansionary options.

This highly portable design weighs around 5 and a half pounds and possesses a high definition and easy viewable/Bright View 15.4 inch screen.

Further going, although the battery lifetime reaches up to around 180 minutes only, the laptop is a fast charging one with a battery that is able to reach up to 90% within less than two hours.

In terms of connectivity, the HP 550 possesses main features including: wireless integration and Bluetooth (not integrated but can be added).

For less than R 6000, you can now purchase the HP 550 which is the one of the cheapest practical small business laptops available widely at many channel distributors and local point sellers too.

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Dell Vostro A860 – Netbook Review

Posted on June 15th, 2009 | by admin

1 comment

dell vostro a860

To provide a product of price and quality competitive advantage, Dell has introduced its Dell Vostro A860, a business class netbook that has proven to be reliable, easy to set up, and an excellent match for business people.

The Dell Vostro A860, in its delicate and smooth black design, follows the contemporary trends of laptops. For a business user’s laptop, this netbook was designed to be a very stylish one. Not only is it an affordable solution that meets the needs of daily business computing activities, the Vostro A860 also possesses a 15.6 inch wide screen for easy viewing.

Balancing between technology, advanced features, and affordability, the Dell Vostro A860 is said to be the perfect choice for the business professionals looking for a laptop to meet their business needs while being mobile and highly flexible. (more…)

Speed Up Your Computer – Part II

Posted on June 6th, 2009 | by admin

10 comments

In the post “Speed Up Your Computer – Part I” I discussed how to

remove programs from your start-up to free up more RAM. This usually has a major impact on how the speed of your laptop compares, but sometimes freeing up memory is not enough. This is because sometimes your start-up is not the problem but your registry. Your registry is like the “mother setup” of your computer, and if your registry gets messed up your computer is usually in a lot of trouble. So how would you know if your registry is corrupted? You can check for these signs

>> Blue screens
>> Your system crashes
>> Unable to install or uninstall software
>> Slow system performance
>> Unusual error messages

Luckily there are some good software packages on the market that can help you clean up and fix your registry. I have tried a few but personally I like Registry Ease the best. Since I have been using Registry Ease I have never had to format my PC again to keep it in working condition.I strongly recommend (more…)

What does your Laptop say about you?

Posted on June 6th, 2009 | by admin

3 comments

People don’t realize how much their laptops communicates about what type of person they are. I look at peoples laptops at work and in Coffee shops to profile them. Ya I know, do not judge a book by its covers, but this is not judging. It is mere categorization of people to help me relate to them in special ways. Here is the decision criterion I use. Take a look at how the users of laptops compare to each other. Please add your own in the comments below.

Male with a Pink Laptop – Don’t drop your teaspoon in the pantry. He just might want to run a virus scan on you! Or he is an out right rebel, challenging everything and everyone around him.

Chick with a Pink Laptop – Should not be common in the work place as colored laptops may be considered unprofessional by some. With the pink laptop she basically communicating the following.

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3G or ADSL – Which One Should You Pick?

Posted on June 1st, 2009 | by admin

2 comments

In this modern, digital world there`s no need to be left lagging behind with a slow, clunky internet connection, and if you`ve yet to experience the true power of broadband for yourself then you`re missing out big time. For home users broadband can open up a world of entertainment and information as well as providing unification and connectivity for your whole home if you have the know how or the desire to learn. There are now many ways to stream videos and even whole movies online, and using the many social networking portals to share information and media with your friends and loved ones is made pain free by broadband. For business users the benefits of having a broadband connection in your office are huge.

You`ll be able to ease the flow of commerce and synchronise every aspect of your business life, provide a portal for you and your employees to access important files from anywhere in the world, and even use Wi-Fi internet as a way of attracting new customers to your place of business. However, landline ADSL broadband isn`t the only broadband solution available, and there`s currently a new kid on the block when it comes to broadband. That new kid would be 3G mobile broadband. There are positives and negatives for both ADSL and 3G broadband connections, which will be outlined below to in order to inform your decision.

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Should You buy a Netbook?

Posted on May 31st, 2009 | by admin

1 comment

So we are all very familiar with laptops, but what is a Netbook. A netbook is a stripped down version of a laptop that is built mainly for online applications. The reasoning behind the design of a netbook is that more and more aplications move to the internet, thus decreasing the demand for a laptop with super hardware. Why would Net aps decrease the need for power? Simple, all processes are run on the webserver so the webserver does all the number crunchung and you just use your Netbook as terminal.

How do I identify a Netbook?

Look at the price and specs. If you see a laptop that costs a fraction of a regular laptop and is about half the size. Chances are good you are looking at a “Netty”

Processor

Netbooks usually run on the Intel Atom processor, a processor designed for low powered mobile electronics like Mobile Phones and Netbooks. Don’t try and compare performance of the Intel Atom with regular processors from Intel, you will be disappointed. Some benchmark tests reported that the Atom takes up to 3 times longer to perform the same spreadsheet calculations as the bigger Intel CPU’s.

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Cool Prank you can Play on your Friends

Posted on May 27th, 2009 | by admin

1 comment

This is one of the best pranks around. I love playing this on people when I get hold of their laptops without them knowing. Basically what I will be showing you is how to replace the Desktop with an image of the Desktop. If have written down the steps below and created a YouTube video for additional help. Enjoy!

1. Close all Windows and Aplications. You should see the desktop in front of you

2. Press the Print Screen Button. This will create an image of the desktop

3. Open Paint.

4. Hit ctrl+v or go to edit and paste. This will paste the image of the Desktop into paint

5. Save the file

6. Go back to the desktop

7. Now you will have to hide the icons on he desktop. I suggest that you just cut and paste them to some folder where you can find them in later on. The reason is that you will set the image you have just saved as the wallpaper. The computer user will see all icons but none if them will be active as they will just be part of a picture and not actual icons. The reason for hiding the icons is because the original icons will still apear and overlay the “fake” icons.

8. Right Click on the Desktop → Properties → Desktop → Browse → Select the image of the desktop that you have saved in step 5

9. You should now see an exact copy of the original desktop but it will not have active icons.

10.Now you wait for the user of the laptop to return and enjoy there fit while they try and open application from shortcuts.

Stay tuned to my blog for more Laptop Pranks

Henry Chinner

Free Anti-virus Software.

Posted on May 26th, 2009 | by admin

1 comment

Ask a dozen who owns a computer or laptop what their preferred anti-virus software is, and two names are going to pop up regularly – Norton and McAfee. In fact, you can get into a heated debate with some people over those two programs. Why? Well, for a lot of those in the tech industry, they use one or the other on their company servers, so when they give advice to end users as to which is better, they tend to side with the one they’re the most comfortable using.

Now both of those programs are fine for anti-virus software in their own right; however, I prefer something that doesn’t cost me an arm and a leg to own. I don’t have a major server network, and I don’t need phone support 24/7. What I need is an anti-virus program that does what I need it to (stop bugs from getting into my system) and is cheap – or in this case, free.

That’s why I go with programs like Avast!, AVG, Panda and others. Now, out of that list, the one I personally prefer (currently) is Avast!. Why? Well for several reasons. First of all, they’re a smaller company, which means they have to try harder than the big dogs to impress me. That means they’re going to work harder at catching everything they can. Secondly, they have one of the few Anti-virus softwares I’ve ever seen that can install on an infected system without corrupting the program in the process.

I recently installed it on a client’s laptop, rebooted and discovered over 200 viruses on their computer – all of which were caught and quarantined. After the reboot completed, I let it update the virus database and ran the scanner under Windows – to find over 100 more viruses on the system. All were caught and quarantined by Avast!.

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Lenovo Laptops

Posted on May 22nd, 2009 | by admin

2 comments

lenovo-laptop

Laptop buyers often ask me about the Lenovo brand. It seems as if though little is known about them. This article is meant to give you some background information about the Lenovo brand.

Lenovo is the 4th largest personal computer manufacturer in the world. They were founded in 1984 and are based in China. They are the largest manufacturer in China. The produce laptops, desktops, servers etc. Lenovo is listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange.

In 2005 Lenovo bought the personal computing definition of IBM in exchange, IBM got a 20% stake in Lenovo. That is why names like the Lenovo Ideapad and Lenovo Thinkpad, will sound very familiar as it was former IBM products.

Lenovo has some beautiful designs and great reliability. Their main selling point however is the value for money. From the cheapest Netbook to the most expensive Thinkpad – laptop, you will go far to get the same value for money you get from Lenovo.

Do a search on www.laptop-computers.co.za for Lenovo and take a look at what is on offer. From as little as R5000 you can have your own Ideapad, Netbook, with Intel atom and Windows XP. Or for R 9 499 you can have the G530 cutting edge business laptop with Centrino Core 2 duo T6400, 3GB of Ram.

They have a lot more in range and it is always quite a lot cheaper than their nearest competitor.

Try them I think you might be pleasantly surprised.

Vian Chinner

Speed Up Your Computer – Part I

Posted on May 5th, 2009 | by admin

0 comments

Have you ever noticed how fast your laptop runs when it’s still new and how it tends to slow down over time. This happened with my laptop recently. My browser started to crash and it took time to open the most basic application in Windows. With 2GB RAM and running Windows XP, the specs wasn’t the cause for my Lappies civil worker like performance.

Here is how I managed to speed up my laptop

1. Hit ctrl+alt+del. This will bring up the task manager

task-manager1

2. Click on the processes tab; Here you will see all the processes running on your system, sapping out all your resources. Most of these processes you don’t even need. It is just running without you knowing about it. So where does all these processes come from. Most of them are Windows related and they need to be there to keep your operating system running but some of them are actual programs running on the background.These are usually programs that you have installed that are opened automatically when your system boots up. We say, these programs are on the start-up.

3. The first step to improve the speed of your laptop is to remove all unwanted programs from the start-up.

4. For step 3 and steps to follow you will need a free program called CCleaner. Click here to download

5. Start CCleaner after you’ve installed and downloaded it

6. Click on the tools icon

cccleaner1

7. Click on the start-up tab

8. Go through the list and uncheck all processes you don’t want to run on start-up. ( Don’t remove any processes that are in the Windows folder. The programs you will uncheck will usually be in the program files folder

9. After step 8 you system will only load the necessary programs on start up. This will have a dual affect.

Windows will start-up quicker
Your system will have more available RAM. This will increase your systems general performance

10.Let’s move on to the next step. Still under the tools section, click on uninstall and uninstall all programs that you don’t use often. Don’t be a hoarder. Get your house clean. Uninstalling programs will have a major affect on your system’s performance

11. Now will be a good time to restart your system before you proceed to step 12. You will already notice drastic improvements.

12. Read and apply “Speed up Your Laptop – Part II”

HP 550 – Review

Dell Vostro A860 – Netbook Review

Speed Up Your Computer – Part II

What does your Laptop say about you?

3G or ADSL – Which One Should You Pick?

Should You buy a Netbook?

How do I identify a Netbook?

Processor

Cool Prank you can Play on your Friends

Free Anti-virus Software.

Lenovo Laptops

Speed Up Your Computer – Part I

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