Hardcore Computer

March 5th, 2009  |  Published in Technology  |  Comment

I had the opportunity to witness the unveiling of a new Reactor PC by Hardcore Computer at the office yesterday. This thing is sick.

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Western Digital’s Digital Home Tour

October 16th, 2008  |  Published in Events  |  Comment

Just received word that Western Digital will be coming to San Francisco on Thursday, October 30th to showcase their new technologies, part of the “Digital Home Tour”.

Thursday, October 30, 2008
4-8pm
@ W Hotel
181 Third Street
San Francisco, CA 94103

If you would like to attend the event, you may RSVP via wdc.com/wddigitalhome

Apple Releases New MacBooks

October 14th, 2008  |  Published in Technology

If you don’t know already, Apple has just announced its new line of MacBooks[1] earlier at 10 this morning in Cupertino. Today’s line is a completely new build from the ground-up, starting with its “unibody” approach.

Other than the unibody being totally new to the line as well as the industry, I am liking the following on the MacBooks:

  • 13.3-inch LED-backlit display. The 12-inch ones is just to small. Having that extra 1.1-inch is truly a big step.
  • Upgraded video adapter, NVDIA GeForce 9400M[2]. Nice upgrade for those wanting to do more gaming on these. But I think this is also nice for those doing photo editing like me.
  • All-new, smooth glass Multi-Touch trackpad. No buttons—it itself is the button!

Though these are nice upgrades, the price went up to $1299 for the MacBooks. If I was in need of a new laptop/notebook computer, this would be the best pick. It’s just too bad it doesn’t have an ExpressCard/34 slot like how the MacBook Pros have them. It would be great to have for those people who take their MacBooks on vacation or on trips and wanting to edit/backup/upload their photos from their SD-based media cards (like the one I have for my Canon PowerShot) along with a card read for the slot.[3]

You may get more information and/or watch the video via apple.com/macbook/. If you don’t know which MacBook is for you, click here to compare them at a quick glance.

Update
If you are leaning towards buying a MacBook Pro and need the quick rundown of the new bells and whistles, click here to read up The Apple Blog’s review about it.

  1. MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air [↩]
  2. The MacBook Pro has both the 9400M and the 9600M GT. You may switch to either depending on your need for performance as well as battery life. [↩]
  3. They do have a ExpressCard/34 slot. I don’t know where I read that different. [↩]

EVGA Wallpaper Design Contest

October 3rd, 2008  |  Published in Design  |  Comment

It’s this simple, create the most EVGA themed desktop wallpaper in ONE of the three categories listed below and show it off to the world! The opportunity is here to show your love and be creative all at the same time. Design a wallpaper about EVGA motherboards, graphics cards, or Mods Rigs. Get out there, get involved, have fun, be creative and have the opportunity to win some serious prizes, by designing the ultimate EVGA themed wallpaper!

Contest timeline looks something like the following (all times Pacific):

  1. Submission. From 2008-10-01 12:00pm to 2008-10-31 11:59pm
  2. Judging. From 2008-11-03 to 2008-11-07
  3. Winners announced. 2008-11-11 12:00pm

The Grand Prize will be Velocity Micro Edge Z15. More details and prizes available by going to http://www.evga.com/wallpaper/

Good luck!

How to Make Synergy Work on Apple Leopard OS X Machine

April 25th, 2008  |  Published in Technology

For those that have a laptop and a work-station or desktop PC/Mac, we are often faced with the question of how to fit and work on both on our tiny little desks (but that’s probably just me). Anyways, if you haven’t heard of Synergy:

Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It’s intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s).

… it’s a dang useful tool. I have recently tried this on my MacBook Pro (as the client) to work along my work Mac 24″ and my new rig at home (as the server).

If you are on an OS X system, you won’t need to install the original Synergy package, but might want to consider stepping in to the GUI version of it called, SyneryKM:

SynergyKM is a GUI wrapper around the synergy command line tool that lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems without special hardware.

Here are the steps I would take; at least making your main Mac the server, and your MacBook+ the client:

  1. Download and install SyneryKM to both machines. The install should put Synergy in your “System Preferences”.
  2. Clicking on it to open it up, select the appropriate behavior:
    1. To make the machine the server, click on the option with “Share my keyboard and mouse.”
    2. To make the machine a client, click on the option with “Connect to a shared keyboard and mouse”.

    It should be intuitive enough.

  3. Now the next step is to setup the display configuration on “the server” machine. Click on the “Server Configuration” tab. You would then Add each of the machine; you may either use their computer name(s)
  4. In “the client” machine(s), you are instead clicking on the “Client Configuration” tab. Enter either the Server IP or hostname of “the server” machine.
  5. Last but not least, you just need “Turn Synergy On” and that should do it.

Note: if you have upgraded to at least Leopard v10.5.2, you will need to make sure than “Enable Bonjour” option is turned off. There seems to be a problem that causes SynergyKM to not work correctly with it enabled in this version of Leopard.

Anyways, I’ll see if I can write up the steps to getting your PC/Windows machine working when I get a chance later. For now, soak in the glory of using just a keyboard and a mouse to control your machines.