Hervey Bay Gossip

Now there’s a subject that embedded in the minds of every computer user in Hervey Bay, and if it isn’t then it really should be.

You may think I’m joking but I am really being very serious. You don’t have to work with your computer for hours every day as I do to feel the need for an ergonomic mouse. Repetitive Strain Injury can strike anyone and when it does using your mouse becomes torture.

That’s why you should check out this story over at the Home and Small Office Computer Guide

Identity theft is become a major concern for many people and if you’re online then you face an even greater risk of it happening to you.

However, you can minimise that risk with some very basic precautions and Jim Faller talks about those precautions here

All right, admit it, you like playing games on your computer. I know you do, everyone does. I do it … when I should be working. She-who-must-be-obeyed does it when she needs a break from working and everyone does, even us oldies.

But if you find that there are times when the screen freezes or the computer crashes then you’re probably trying to play a game that requires more resources than your machine might have. Those resources, things like more memory, a better graphics card and even a better processor do cost money.

If you’re into computer gaming you will know that when it comes to the price of a machine that will run all those games without the screen freezes and crashes then the sky really is the limit.

$US600 for a graphics card doesn’t even cause a hardened gamer to catch his breath and the gaming machine that my friend Rick has for sale down at Fraser Coast Computers for $A4000 is nothing out of the ordinary.

What is out of the ordinary is a good budget priced gaming PC and while you won’t find a manufacturer who supplies them ready built it may be possible to assemble on of your own for around $US500.

If you want to know how then jump over to this article on Tom’s Hardware Guide

Maybe if you want to get serious about some gaming you talk to Rick – $US500 is probably not achievable here in Australia but you might find that just by upgrading a few components you can get more enjoyment and relaxation out of playing games

If you can’t beat them then it might be time to join them and add some deep throbbing bass to your computer’s speakers or sound system.

Here is a little collection of black bits that she-who-must-be-obeyed added to her computer a couple of weeks ago.

She assures me that the only reason she added it was to increase productivity but personally I think she might have come to some arrangement to keep the neighbours entertained with some of the music that was considered ‘heavy’ back when we were less than sane teenagers.

Of course, you don’t have to go to the exteme that the boss has – although the Logitech system that you see here costs something less than $200 if you buy it from Fraser Coast Computers. But if you want to improve the sound that comes from your computer then you can do it for less than $100 – just check out the current specials that Rick is running down at Fraser Coast Computers.

Your scribes are currently subscribed to an Internet broadband plan that is supposed to deliver 256kb per second download and 64 kb per second upload. And oh how we wish we could get what we pay for.

Last week it took over seven hours to upload just part of a major project that we were working on for a client and if we had tried it on the weekend it would have taken even more time. On Saturday instead of downloading at 256kb per second we were getting just 17kb per second download and uploads of around 60kb per second.

And so we are among those who watch the developments that are taking place in the power industry that are going to give us the sort of Internet speeds that we need.

Broadband over power lines has been trialed successfully in Tasmania, it is in use in a few places in Europe and now over 50,000 homes in Cincinnati are using it so come on Ergon when can we have it?

Oh, in case your wondering about the relative speed of broadband over power lines just compare our pathetic 17 kb per second with the 130 mb (yes that is megabytes) per second we could get if we were accessing the internet via the power lines.

If you’re reading this then you’re obviously into computers and you almost certainly have a mouse on your desk.

If you’re like me the mouse is probably attached by cable to the computer and it’s perhaps a little shabby and nondescript.

But if you’re a gamer you might like to drool over this latest release from Logitech:

How’s this for a rather wild computer mouse. It’s thhe latest offering from Logitech and it features include:

Cordless

USB

Scroll Wheel

Application Switch

Tilt Wheel Plus Zoom

Rechargeable

Laster Techonology

Not only does it talk to the computer but the computer also talks to the mouse via a 2.4GHZz wireless connection. It comes with two rechargeable battery packs and the packs can be swapped on the fly. There’s even a battery level indicator that you can see on the top left hand side of the mouse.

This mouse will work with IBM or any compatible computer runing Windows98, 200, Me or XP that has a USB port.

The Logitech G7 mouse is rated at 4 times faster than conventional mice and is aimed at the gaming market. It’s also aimed at people who are prepared to pay for a quality mouse and retails for around $US100.00

Now you may wonder why I would bother including something like that in the Gossip – well there are some very serious gamers here in the Bay.

I’m sure that there are a lot of people out there who have heard about Konfabulator and their widgets before. If you’re one of those people then I guess that you’ll just have to humour me because I only found out about them on Friday.

Konfabulator popped into someone’s brain back in 1998 when that person thought it would be cool to have a skinnable MP3 player. From there it was only a short step to thinking about skinning any information you wanted to see on your desktop and that is how Konfabulator came about.

Kofabulator is a fairly quick download and an easy set up and once you have it you can then go to their site for the widgets that you think you will need. A widget is a simple script that can display information on your desktop.

There are currently over 1300 widgets to choose from and they include games, dates and times, news feeds, systems utilities, webcams from around the world and a lot of other stuff too. There are even several widgets for cricket scores.

Downloading the widgets is pretty simple too and most of them are self-installing. Once they are on your machine you can have them running on your desktop continuously. They consume little in the way of resources and disappear into the background when you’re working.

At the moment, because the novelty hasn’t worn off yet I’m running six widgets on one of my screens. There are

a couple of system utilities

an analog clock

an interesting little widget that shows which parts of the world are in darkeness (that might sound useless to lots of people but we work constantly with clients all round the world so it helps to know when they’re asleep)

a picture frame that cycles through any image directory I might point it to

a headline reader that shows me the latest offerings on slashdot.com

I think it’s a great idea and most people will find something useful in amongst all those widgets. Yahoo thought it was such a great idea that they bought the company.

Not only have Apple just released their latest iPod but they have also just released their latest desktop computer.

Apple have just released their latest desktop computer – the iMac G5. It comes in two versions – 17 inch or 20 inch and what you see is what you get. There’s nothing else to this computer so it’s not going to hog a lot of space on your desk top.

The features of the iMac G5 include:

1.9GHz or 2.1GHz processor

a new PCI-Express ATI Radeon X600 Pro or XY grahics processor

128MB of dedicated video memory

OS X Tiger operating system

pre-installed AirPort Extreme Card for wireless connectivity

It also comes with USB2.0 and Firewall 400 ports, composite and S-video outputs, audio in and out so you can connect almost everything from cameras to extra hard drives to this computer.

You can find more information and have an online demo here