Posted by Brian Cui on April 29, 2012 at 12:33 pm
Officialy a Windows exclusive, Nvidia Optimus technology switches between integrated graphics and a dedicated graphics card automatically for increased performance when you need it at the cost of battery life. Nvidia has stated that they currently do not have plans to implement Optimus for Linux, and so installing any Linux distribution on an Optimus enabled laptop results in using just the integrated graphics. The open-source Bumblebee project aims to provide support for Nvidia Optimus on Linux that works on any Optimus enabled laptop, with packages for ArchLinux, Ubuntu, and Mandriva available for download and installation.
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Posted by Brian Cui on March 18, 2012 at 11:00 pm
It’s that time again, when we have a new wallpaper pack available for download! This time, instead of a set of seemingly random assorted pictures thrown into a pack, there’s a theme! This pack revolves around elements of nature, such as plants and animals, in contrast to that of more abstract and solid modern technology. As always, the wallpapers will work for any operating system and have all been sized to 1024×600 (standard netbook resolution). The download can be found after the break!
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Posted by Brian Cui on March 4, 2012 at 10:53 pm
When building or purchasing a computer, you usually don’t pay attention to what the keyboard is like nearly as much as the internal specs. That’s because any physical keyboard can work just fine once you get used to it, even tiny netbook keyboards can become easy to type on over time. So it’s no surprise that theLITE-ON Wired Standard Keyboard is one of the most purchased keyboards on Newegg today, as it’s one of the cheapest keyboards available. Seeing all the 5-egg reviews, I chose to buy one for my desktop to get a feel for it myself.
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Posted by Brian Cui on February 26, 2012 at 1:26 pm
A lot of software these days have portable versions available that don’t require installation and can run standalone. You can put your favorite, customized browser on a flash drive so you can use it anywhere on any computer with the same OS. Since they are completely separate from the operating system, if something goes wrong, your system won’t be affected and you can just re-download the application. They come with some distinct disadvantages, unfortunately – automatic updating is rare, and configuration files can sometimes spew all over the place which can make them hard to uninstall. So is it a better idea to install all your software, or use the portable versions?
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Posted by Brian Cui on January 12, 2012 at 12:11 am
We haven’t had a wallpaper pack in a while, so I thought I would add another netbook wallpaper pack to our growing collection! Pack 5 provides yet another set of 8 stunning wallpapers all sized to standard netbook resolution: 1024×600, so you can simply drag and drop them into your wallpaper slideshow or pick one to use manually along with any of the other netbook wallpaper packs we’ve provided. The wallpapers are compatible with all operating systems, all in .JPG format, so it works on tablet devices as well. A download link of Netbook Wallpaper Pack 5 can be found after the break!
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Posted by Brian Cui on January 1, 2012 at 11:25 am
A planned, yet somewhat ironic move by the Adblock Plus team for Firefox pushed an update that enables “non-intrusive” advertising to pass through the filter and display on websites even with Adblock Plus enabled. Enabled by default, this was the best way as decided by the Adblock Plus team to support websites while disabling distracting or intrusive advertising, as advertising is what pays for sites that provide information, not services (like this one!). Some users will dislike the idea that an adblock tool wouldn’t block all ads, especially since Adblock Plus is the best plugin for the job – fortunately, it’s quite easy to get Adblock Plus to block everything again – as shown in the image above.
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Posted by Brian Cui on December 7, 2011 at 5:41 pm
Music services in the cloud have been growing quite a lot in the past year: Pandora has gotten a long-needed HTML5 overhaul, Google and Amazon are releasing music-hosting services, and even Apple has been trying their hand at a cloud-based music service. Since 3G and other always-online services are pretty expensive, I’ve always kept my music on portable devices. Turntable’s unique style of internet radio got me hooked however, and it’s a tool I now use regularly to play music not just for myself – with my friends as well. Instead of being a constant stream of music you want, you and a group of friends can set up an endless playlist of everyone’s favorite music.
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