Budget PC's - To build or not to build?

It never ceases to amaze me how cheap PC's are getting these days and how less and less it becomes worth building one yourself (unless you want something special). After being asked to spec up a PC for a customer whom I provide IT support for I went on to see how cheap I could possibly make a reasonably decent PC.

Posted by Daniel: 12:07, Thu 16th Aug 2007

Antivirus - You don't always get what you pay for...

I recently came across an interesting article in PC Pro (one of the better PC magazines out there) where they performed a group test of some of the more popular domestic antivirus products. I wont go into too much detail here because you really need to buy the magazine (Issue 155, September 2007) but the following table is a very revealing extract from it. It basically shows the annual renewal price and percentage of viruses that were detected by each of the antivirus packages when placed under test conditions.

Posted by Daniel: 21:39, Mon 16th Jul 2007

Codec Confusion - Audio and video compresison options...

I'm not sure exactly why (perhaps its because codec selection is mostly done without our knowledge?) but there is often a lot of confusion and mystery surrounding audio and video compression which can lead to many misconceptions. For example did you know that AAC is NOT an Apple codec? It is actually the successor to MP3 developed by Fraunhofer - the same people that created the original MP3 format. Also like MP3 (to use its full title MPEG1 Layer 3) it has also been included in the Motion Picture Expert Group's standards as MPEG2 Part 7 and MPEG4 Part 3.

In this blog I hope to describe the important elements of audio and video compression and summarise the standards which are out there in a way that people can understand.

Posted by Daniel: 14:56, Sun 13th May 2007

Practical cheap colour lasers?

The world is a changing...

If you had asked me a few years ago about buying a colour laser printer for home I would have laughed. They were expensive, large and obtrusively noisy. Well like most things in the PC industry it seems times have changed. With the new generation of colour laser printers hitting the market for less than £200 and in a size you can sit on your desk, its now quite a sensible proposition to have one at home.

So what is out there?

Hunting through websites and even in PC World gives an overwhelming amount of choice, don't let that scare you off though; drawing up a quick lists shows theres quite a bit of variation between the products and narrowing it down isn't as hard as at first it seems.

Posted by Daniel: 17:45, Wed 11th Apr 2007