There are some things that every computer wizard just ought to have under his belt. A decent working knowIedge of IDE and SATA hard drives is one of them. While IDE is becoming increasingly rare, if you’ve ever owned an older PC or frequently do computer repair work for others chances are still good you’ll find one of these guys laying around sooner or later, and that being the case, chances are also good you’ll want to read the data off of them and perhaps even use one as your daily driver. The ...

Adapt an old IDE Hard Drive to SATA (Tutorial)

What you’re looking at is not a mockup or some third-party application, it’s the real deal built right into Windows 8.1, suggested to hit the public come August 2014. It was first announced at Microsoft’s BUILD conference earlier this year to much applause, as you can see in the video below. Based on that first paragraph, the upcoming Windows 8.1 start menu might sound like a very good thing. People want it, Microsoft is giving it to them, everyone’s happy, right? Well, not everyone, but those few ...

Why Windows 8.1’s Start Menu is a Bad Thing

Well, it’s official: Microsoft has pushed out the door what is likely the last build for Windows 8.1 Update 1, set to hit the public on April 8 (whatever could have made them choose that day?). The name may imply that not much has changed—and truly that is the case on the system level—but Update 1 actually brings a fair amount of UI tweaks particularly targeted at keyboard and mouse users. Yes, Microsoft is still designing Windows 8 for you. But is Update 1 the patch that will finally let desktop ...

Windows 8.1 Update 1 – 1 Step Forward, 1 Step Back

It is an interesting time of year for anyone on Team Green to consider upgrading their GPU. While NVIDIA had nothing to say about their next lineup of desktop graphics cards at CES last week they are inevitably on their way, most likely for Q2 of this year. Making it an even bigger deal is that both the 600 and 700-series cards were based on the same Kepler architecture, whereas next time NVIDIA’s finally leaving it behind for the new Maxwell architecture instead. But while such names and numbers make ...

Gigabyte GTX 770 4GB Windforce Unboxing

Is your Android device rooted? If so, then you’ve got access to a relatively under-publicized feature of Google’s popular OS: the boot screen animation. Contrary to what you might expect, this boot animation is extremely versatile and it’s completely safe to tinker with as well. The worst thing that can happen is you get a blank screen instead of the animation you desire, but the device will boot normally in the background all the same. And the best thing that can happen is you get a snazzy new boot ...

Custom Boot Screens on Android Tutorial

As Android is based on a Linux kernel, it has long been the dream of fans of Google’s mobile OS to see desktop Linux applications running on portable devices. In the early years of Android, hardware limitations prevented this dream from becoming a practical reality, but these days things are not so difficult. Many of us regularly use tablets and smartphones with quad-core CPUs running in the 1.5GHz range, a gig or two of RAM, and a capable GPU, whether that be based on NVIDIA’s famous Tegra platform or ...

AndrOpen Office – Finally the Real Deal Comes to Android