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3-30-06
1 Time waits for no man
2 Indian OS, Blu-ray bargains, MS patch but not from MS, Indy hates the Interwebs
4 GeForce giveaway
5 Prefetch
The times they are a-changin’, and come this weekend many Indiana readers will face the dreaded Daylight Savings Time for the first time. Since most of their computers are set to the Indiana East time zone (thoughtfully provided by Microsoft, since Indiana has until now avoided the semi-annual ritual) their clocks will be off Sunday morning, causing an unwarranted amount of consternation I’m sure.
Since I work in Madison I’m already getting calls concerning this issue and I expect to get inundated come Monday, but it’s a simple thing to prepare now and avoid any lag-time in your time.
Every version of Windows from 95 on features the current time (more or less) displayed in the System Tray in the lower right corner of the screen. Double click the time and you’ll get the Date and Time Properties dialog box. Here you can adjust the actual time as well as change the date (very seldom necessary) AND change the time zone in which you reside.
It varies among the different versions but all are pretty straightforward. Instructions for 98, XP and Server 2003 are as follows:
98: Double click the time. In the dialog box adjust the time if needed, then at the bottom of the window change the time zone to Eastern Time and check the box next to Automatically adjust clock for daylight saving changes. Click Apply and OK.
XP and Server 2003: Double click the time. In the dialog box adjust the time if needed then click the Time Zone tab. Change the Time Zone to Eastern and the Automatically adjust clock box will appear at the bottom of the window. Check it and click Apply and OK.
If you make that change now your Sunday (or Monday) morning will be problem free. You’ll be presented with a new dialog box when you first fire up the PC advising you that your clock has been adjusted for daylight savings. Click OK and your job is done. At least until October ;)
On a completely different note I purchased a new photo printer last week that has me highly impressed. I had bought a fairly expensive Epson inkjet photo printer a couple of years ago and after a few months of idle time it was basically ruined. The ink had dried like glue in the print head and, due to the design of Epson and Canon printers that feature the print head on the carriage, it would have cost more to fix than to replace.
Epson makes great printers and the design means the ink cartridges are much less expensive than those for Lexmark or HP inkjets, which have the print heads built into the cartridges themselves, but you have to use the thing occasionally or it will become just another doorstop.
Since my photo printing is pretty rare I decided to replace the Epson with a dye sublimation printer from Samsung. With dye sub the colored dye is embedded in a film much like a ribbon for a dot matrix printer. The dye is heated during the printing process and transferred to the paper in several passes. Since the consumables aren’t a liquid they don’t dry out during periods of inactivity and the prints are amazing.
Affordable dye sub printers generally handle only one paper size (the Samsung SPP-2020 I got does 4”x6”), which is a bit of a drawback, but full sized printers of this type cost a bundle.
If you’re in the market for a new photo printer take a look at this technology and you’ll be pleased, just don’t count on printing standard text with them.
Spring forward!
Kevin Mefford, Editor
Intel has
launched a PC platform that has been developed exclusively
to meet the needs
of rural villages and communities in India:
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=6098
Panasonic
said on Tuesday it will start selling a Blu-ray
high-definition disc player
in September for under $1,500. What a
deal!!!! :
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2006-03-29T132724Z_01_N28173361_RTRIDST_0_TECH-MEDIA-PANASONIC-BLURAY-DC.XML&archived=False
eEye
Digital Security's unofficial fix for a high-profile Internet
Explorer flaw
is proving popular. Steve Ballmer was last seen
throwing a chair out a
20th floor window:
http://news.com.com/2061-10789_3-6055156.html
Finally,
because you were dying to know, Harrison Ford hates the internet:
http://contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/mndwebpages/ford%20i%20hate%20the%20internet_30_03_2006
Feeding
your inner Luddite,
Matthew
Dattilo
thepcgurus@gmail.com
www.mattstodayinhistory.com
An email question earlier this week led to this handy download. The question was why 98 and ME didn’t have the network connection icon in the System Tray for ethernet connections like 2000 and XP do. In the earlier versions of Windows only a dial-up connection had the icon showing both active connectivity as well as incoming and outgoing activity.
A bit of digging turned up LanLight, free from http://www.dalesplace.net/download/lanlight.php, which brings the same feature to older versions of Windows.
The newest video cards are a must for PC gaming enthusiasts and eVGA is introducing a monster this month. The eGeForce 7600 GT EGS is a phenomenal card with specs you wouldn’t believe. Read the spec sheet at http://www.evga.com/articles/281.asp (the EGS link is at the top), then click Community and Monthly Contest to answer a few questions and take a chance on winning this baby.
This contest ends at 5:00 PM tomorrow (EST) so you need to hurry, although the site does one monthly so a new one will pop up sometime next week.
_____________________________________________________________
Q: I was wondering if disabling prefetch is
something you want to do. I
am running windows xp pro 512 ram. I know
changing registry to 0,1,2,3
for prefetch. Which one should I set it
to.
A: With 512MB of RAM I would suggest
leaving it at the default
setting, which I believe is 3. It doesn't hurt to
dump the contents of
the prefetch folder every few months just to flush out
old entries,
but turning it off all together would just slow the machine
down.
If you want to
experiment with the 1 and 2 settings you won't do
any damage but I doubt
you'll see any performance increase.
Hope that helps
and keep us posted...
Kevin Mefford
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