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I know there are going to be lots of questions on where to buy stuff from and wt are the best places so im making a list....

Jab-Tech
Ships: Everywhere
Sells: All Computer Parts

http://www.overclockingstore.co.uk/
Ships: United Kingdom mainland, North American and European Customers
Sells: All Computer Parts

http://www.pcnut.com/
Ships: United States
Sells: All Computer Parts

http://www.directron.com/
Ships: Internationally
Sells: All Computer Parts

http://www.newegg.com/ RECOMENDED!
Ships: United States
Sells: All Computer Parts

http://www.compusa.com/
Ships: United States
Sells: Most Computer Parts, Other Hardware, and Accessories

http://www.wiredzone.com/
Ships: United States
Sells: All Computer Parts, Software, and Other Hardware

http://www.mwave.com/
Ships: United States and Canada
Sells: All Computer Parts

http://www.bestbyte.net/
Ships: United States
Sells: All Computer Parts

http://www.overclock.co.uk/
Ships: International. Europe and UK Mainland
Sells: General Computer Parts, Air Cooling Items

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/
Ships: UK, Europe, USA and Canada
Sells: Complete Systems, Heatsinks and Fans, all computer components

http://www.googlegear.com/
Ships: United States
Sells: Hardware, Software, and Systems

http://www.tcwo.com/
Ships: Internationally
Sells: All Computer Parts including Cases

http://www.nutrend.com/
Ships: ???
Sells: Systems, Cases, and Parts

http://www.svcompucycle.com/
Ships: United States and ???International???
Sells: Cases, Parts, and Software

http://www.nexfan.com/
Ships: United States and Canada
Sells: Parts and Hardware

http://hardcorecooling.com/
Ships: United States
Sells: Most Cooling Equipment, Memory, and Other Parts

http://www.heatsinkfactory.com/
Ships: United States
Sells: Heatsinks, Fans, Cooling Accessories

http://www.crazypc.com/
Ships: United States and Canada
Sells: Cooling Equipment, Case Mod Equipment, and Hardware

http://www.kdcomputers.com/
Ships: United States
Sells: Components and Cooling Equipment

http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/
Ships: United States
Sells: All Computer Parts

http://www.over-clock.co.uk/
Sells: watercooling, peltiers, extreme cooling, air cooling
Shippng: UK

http://www.overclockedpc.co.uk/
Sells: watercooling, computer components
Shipping: UK mainland

http://www.tekheads.co.uk/
Sells: watercooling, computer components and air cooling
Shipping: UK mainland

http://www.ebuyer.com/
Sells: cheap computer components, some external periphals
Shipping: Ships within Great Britan

http://www.dabs.com/
Sells: general computer components, many manufacturers
Shipping: Within Great Britan

http://www.extremecooling.co.uk/
Sells: Cooling and Watercooling Parts
Shipping: Free within the UK

http://www.pclincs.co.uk/
Sells: Watercooling, general computer parts
Shipping: UK

http://www.aquatics-online.co.uk/
Sells: pumps - under power heads
Shipping: UK

http://www.coolcasemods.com/
Sells: Case Modding Equipment, Cases
Shipping: UK

http://www.kustompcs.com/
Sells: Case Modding Equipment, Cases, General PC Bits
Shipping: UK

Also you can try Pricewatch.com but make sure to check and make sure the dealer is reputable at Reseller Ratings

I know alot of ppl live in Canada ( i do ) and there arent alot of good online deals...and stores but i found some :

(everything below ships to canada...and all sell comptuer parts of all sort

http://www.ncix.com/ RECOMMENDED
http://www.e-compuvision.com/
http://www.clayton-computers.com/
http://www.atic.ca/
http://www.anitec.ca/
http://www.gbcomp.com/
http://www.amkcomputer.com/
http://www.bigfootcomputers.com/
http://www.ablecomponent.com/
http://www.memoryexpress.com/
http://www.pcwholesale.ca/
http://www.firestorm.ab.ca/
http://mark099.homestead.com/buyers_guide.html
http://www.apower.com/
http://www.ntcw.com/
http://www.cancomputer.com/
http://www.cpuwatercool.com/
http://www.computers-canada.com/
http://www.pccanada.com/
http://www.computerboulevard.ca/
http://www.mlhsystems.com/
http://www.dgraphics.mb.ca/
http://www.accelerated.ca/
http://www.coreyscomputing.com/
http://www.acrazycomputer.com/ RECOMMENDED by ppl
http://www.greenlyph.com/ RECOMMENDED
http://www.ntcw.com/
http://www.oemexpress.com/

also if u live in the GTA area ( i do ) i highly recommend http://canadacomputers.com/

also remember canada has a 15% tax in some provinces

also if u would like me to ADD and more LINKS or DELETE, EDIT some or u want me to add the "RECOMMENDED beside some...plz post here or PM me

also i apologize for any typos or mistakes made

Enjoy

Kin's death may signal mobile morbidity at Microsoft

As post-mortems of the untimely death of Microsoft's Kin mobile phones continue to be written, some observers have started wondering aloud whether Microsoft has any future at all in the mobile technology business.

The software giant has announced that Windows Phone 7, or WP7, will start appearing on mobile devices in the fall, but observers question it can be successful at a time when Research in Motion is planning a major update for BlackBerry, and Apple's iPhone 4 and a raft of Android devices have had time to reach ever-larger audiences.

"Microsoft is in a tough spot with mobile," said Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft. "They've let Apple get a three-year lead with iPhone, and there's BlackBerry with the same approach for control of hardware, software and applications. At the other end of the spectrum you have Android on many devices and carriers."

Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates, believes that Microsoft's decision last week to basically kill the Kin will be viewed by enterprise buyers of traditional Windows Mobile devices as further evidence that Microsoft's efforts to gain traction in the mobile device business are in trouble.

"It's looking bleak for Microsoft in the mobile OS space," said Gold. "The longer they delay getting [WP7] to market, the more bleak it looks. Whatever they release has to be rock solid out of the gate or people won't give them a second chance."

The Kin One and Kin Two devices, based on technology gained from Microsoft's $500 million acquisition of Danger Inc. in 2008, were at targeted teenagers and young adults. But even though Kin buyers were not enterprise workers, IT managers interested in Windows Phone 7 devices will look closely at how Microsoft handled -- or mishandled -- the Kin effort, Gold said.

"Enterprises will look at this Kin decision and ask, 'If Microsoft can't get Kin right, why would I think they will get WP7 right?'" Gold said.

The most celebrated technology feature in Kin was the Studio feature that allowed the storing of pictures and other multimedia in the cloud. It's unlikely that the initial version of WP7, whose release to manufacturers is imminent for an expected release by the fall buying season, will include Studio, Rosoff said.

However, both Gold and Rosoff said Microsoft should incorporate Studio in any future WP7 release.

Gold suggested that WP7 "may not make it to market this year," noting that the demise of Kin put the WP7 effort even further behind schedule.

Gold also called Studio the "best part of Kin" and suggested that Microsoft expand it into a cloud-based hub for storing multimedia across a work group or small organization, as well as a family -- more of a competitor to Apple's MobileMe service. "It needs to be positioned as more than a place to put photos," he said.

Microsoft wouldn't comment on the future of its mobile business in general, or on the WP7 release plans in particular. The company would only repeat its statement from last week that said it is combining the Kin team with the Windows Phone 7 team, and focusing on the WP7 launch.

Microsoft noted that the Kin won't be shipping in Europe as planned, and that the company will work with carrier Verizon Wireless in the U.S. to sell out the Kin stock.

Absence of instant messaging and a calendar, as well as an inability to download apps, were big disappointments for users. Even lacking such features, Verizon's price tag for Kin's monthly services were the same as it charged for top selling smartphones such as the Droid Incredible -- $30 for a minumum data plan and $40 for a minimum voice plan.

"It seemed like a hard sell, with customers hard-pressed to choose a phone with fewer features at the same monthly cost," said Rosoff.

Verizon defended its monthly pricing today and noted it is still carrying the devices for $29.99 for the Kin One and $49.99 for Kin Two, a 50% reduction from the prices, after rebate, first offered in mid-April.

"We think [the Kin] was priced the way it needed to be," a Verizon spokesman said in an interview. "We still sell it and support it."

The Kins were due for a major software update, possibly adding instant messaging to texting, prior to the decision to kill it, Rosoff said. Verizon is expected to support the phones with Microsoft through the life of each user's contract. Verizon wouldn't say how many sold, but analysts speculate the number at between 1,000 and 10,000, a tiny fraction of iPhones sales, which number in the millions.

Sorry if this topic has been discussed before. I am planning to add a new PCI video card in desktop computer. Just wondering what are the advantages of installing a good PCI video card in an expansion slot? Does it improve overall image quality or is it more beneficial to gamers? BTW I have a desktop computer running Windows 7 home premium. Just got a new ASUS 24-Inch widescreen LCD monitor from buy.com through http://www.dealrocker.com discount deal. I appreciate any assistance you experts can provide.

Thanks..

My old Toshiba laptop is broken and I need to get the hard drive out so I can get all the files off of it. How can I take it out carefully without damaging it though?

Laptop is a Toshiba Satellite L300

Warning Will Robinson! Robotic girlfriends hit the market
Artificial intelligence should enable robot to speak, carry on conversations

The world's first robotic girlfriend has hit the market.

We've been hearing a lot about robotic arms on the space shuttle, as well as robotic snakes and robotic birds and bugs. But now we're hearing about a robot worthy of being considered a companion.

A New Jersey-based company, TrueCompanion.com, has unveiled its talking robotic girlfriend. This is no life-size doll. Roxxxy the robot is designed with artificial intelligence and lifelike synthetic skin. At 5 feet, 7 inches tall, the robot can't walk or move its arms and legs, but it is designed to not only talk but carry on a conversation.

The robot, partially designed by Douglas Hines, a former engineer for Bell Labs, is also designed to have sex.

And while that may catch some people by surprise, a British researcher predicted two years ago that people would one day have robotic companions that they could fall in love with and marry. David Levy, a British artificial intelligence researcher who wrote the book Love and Sex with Robots, said people will be marrying robots by 2050. He also said late in 2007 that people would be having sexual relations with robots within five years.

So far, it looks like Levy's predictions are on track.

TrueCompanion.com didn't offer information on how complex a conversation Roxxxy can carry on. The company noted that the robot can remember the owner's name and "express her love to you and be your loving friend. She can talk to you, listen to you and feel your touch."

Levy had said in a previous interview that getting robots past walking with jerky movements would be the easier part of building artificial companions. The difficult part, he noted, would be creating an artificial intelligence system good enough to mimic a flowing, sophisticated conversation.

"There are already people who are producing fairly crude personalities and fairly crude models of human emotions now," Levy said in 2007. "This will be among the harder parts of this process. ... Human/computer conversation has attracted a lot of research attention since the 1950s, and it hasn't made as much progress as you'd expect in 50 years. But computers are so much more powerful now and memory is so much better ... so we'll see software that can have interesting, intelligent conversations."

Levy also estimated that robots will be able to have interesting conversations -- not yet at the level of a college graduate but enjoyable -- within 15 years. In 20 or 30 years, however, he expects them to carry on sophisticated conversations.

The company, which has worked on Roxxxy for the past two decades, said on its Web site that engineers are working on a male robotic companion called Rocky.

TrueCompanion.com hasn't responded to questions about how much the robots cost.

A friend of mine recently purchased a new DVD burner and hooked it up. But both DVD burner and original CD Rom drive are not working. In device manager there is not any DVD/CD Rom tab listed. He tried switching the IDE cable, but no success. Read somewhere to delete upper and lower registry values, but found nothing there. Looking for a effective and easiest way to fix this problem.

Any help will be greatly appreciated

I have a Belkin Router on my home network, which connects 4 computers (including a laptop) to the internet.

All 3 desktop computers are fine, however the laptop is having problems with very slow transfer rates even though the signal strength is excellent.

It doesn't matter whether the laptop connects either wirelessly or with an ethernet cable directly into the router, it practically crawls at downloading stuff and trying to listen to a music stream or watch a streaming video is nigh on impossible due to constant buffering and jerkiness.

The laptop has XP Pro SP3 installed.

Can anyone give me any clues as to what might be wrong please?

Mac laptops less reliable than ASUS, Sony notebooks
After-sale warranty firm says 17% of Apple's laptops fail within three years

Apple's line of laptops ranked fourth in a multi-year reliability survey of nine notebook makers, according to a study of 30,000 portable computers published today by a company that provides after-sale warranties.

SquareTrade, which broke out the warranty claims of its customers by manufacturers, said that Apple took the No. 4 spot, behind ASUS, Toshiba and Sony, which held No. 1 through No. 3, respectively.

Over a two-year period, slightly more than 10% of Apple laptops -- the company sells two lines, MacBook and MacBook Pro -- failed in some fashion, said SquareTrade. The projected failure rate of Apple's notebooks within three years, added SquareTrade, was 17.4%.

ASUS, Toshiba and Sony, on the other hand, sported projected three-year malfunction rates of 15.6%, 15.7% and 16.8%.

"It's not really surprising that Apple's in the middle of the pack," said Vince Tseng, the vice president of marketing at SquareTrade. "What was surprising was that ASUS came out on top."

Tseng defended his company's rankings against the inevitable backlash by opinionated Mac owners. "Ours is pretty similar to other studies that have been published," he said, pointing to those done by Consumer Reports in particular.

Hewlett-Packard, which shipped more notebooks in the past year than any other OEM, came in dead last out of the nine manufacturers, with a two-year failure rate over 15% and a three-year projected failure rate of 25.6%.

SquareTrade based each company's three-year projected rate on the failure curve of all notebooks, which rises quickly from year one to year two to year three. "There is a notable acceleration of malfunctions in the second and third years," SquareTrade said in today's report.

While only 4.7% of all notebooks failed from a hardware malfunction in the first year of ownership, that more than doubled to 12.7% by the end of year two, and then leaped again to 20.4% by the time three years had passed.

SquareTrade said that the increasingly high failure rate was no surprise. "Laptops have a high usage rate," said Tseng. "People leave them on all the time, and notebook components are sensitive to heat. Two, they're portable and take a lot of abuse. And three, they're more complex than most other consumer electronics devices."

Apple may have played its cards right by not moving into the netbook market, according to SquareTrade's data. Netbooks, which the warranty firm defined as notebooks sold for less than $400, fail at a higher rate than more expensive alternatives. After just a year, netbooks fail at a rate 23% higher than entry-level laptops, those priced between $400 and $1,000, and at a rate 38% higher than notebooks that cost more than $1,000. By the end of three years, a quarter of netbooks will have malfunctioned, said SquareTrade.

"It's difficult to compare apples to apples," noted Tseng, "no pun intended," referring to comparisons between netbooks and higher-priced notebooks. "Netbooks have been sold in scale only the last 12 months, and up until the last six months, netbook sales were dominated by ASUS and Acer."

While ASUS held the No. 1 spot of the nine notebook makers, netbook rival Acer was No 7, with a three-year projected malfunction rate of 23.3%.

"It's just a guess, but one explanation for the higher failure rate of netbooks is that the components are typically cheaper," Tseng said when asked why netbooks failed at a higher rate than more expensive notebooks. "Early on, when component costs were fairly high [for netbook makers] because of their low volume, they were taking the lowest bidder on components."

Apple's executives, including its CEO Steve Jobs, have repeatedly dismissed netbooks when asked whether the company would enter that category. In October 2008, Jobs famously said, "We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk."

SquareTrade's data was based on an average of 3,000 laptops from each of the nine manufacturers, and tracked the actual lifecycle of the machine, since it offers warranties only to buyers within 90 days of a hardware purchase. "The vast majority of the warranties are bought within 30 days," Tseng confirmed.

SquareTrade's report can be downloaded from the company's site (download PDF).

I already have 4 Gig of RAM on this computer and want to add an extra 4 gig. (It's a 64-bit processor and OS etc.)

Do I need to get exactly the same type of RAM as is already on here or doesn't it matter?

I've installed extra RAM on a pc before but I've never gone over 4 gig before and I can't remember now what I had to do to find out what make/type is already installed on here.

Can anyone help please?

Idle wild: how Intel's mobile Core i7 speeds up to slow down

Turbo Boost, Thread Parking and the drive for low-power performance

Intel's first mobile Core i7 processors - codenamed 'Clarksfield' - incorporate a feature the chip company is calling Turbo Boost. It's not new - the technology is a part of every 'Nehalem' architecture-based CPU the company has released to date.

So, Turbo Boost can be found in desktop chips and it's in Xeon server parts too. But it really comes into its own in processors produced for laptops.


Intel's Clarksfield: all four cores can be powered down to zero

The mobile Core i7s are all quad-core parts, and while model numbers and operating clock frequencies differ, Turbo Boost works the same way in each case. The technology takes feedback from on-chip thermal sensor and watches how the operating system is scheduling work on the available cores. Using both sources, Turbo Boost sees if it can lift the chip's clock speed and operating voltage above baseline.

A 2GHz chip with threads scheduled on all four cores has the scope to be dynamically overclocked up to 2.26GHz, provided there's room within the chip's thermal envelope to do so. That's 55W on the 2GHz Core i7-920XM, falling to 45W with the 1.73GHz i7-820QM and the 1.6GHz i7-720QM.

If an application is only making use of two of the four cores, the remaining pair of processing units can be powered right down to zero, dropping the chip's overall thermal output and allowing the two running cores to be clocked anywhere up to 3.06GHz.


The current Clarksfield line-up

A one-thread, one-core application presents even more room for lifting the clock frequency as the other three cores are sent to deep sleep, slashing the heat coming off them and, in turn, allowing Turbo Boost to up the one core's clock frequency up to 3.2GHz - 60 per cent higher than the stock clock speed.

Naturally, each overclocked core pumps out more heat than it would do otherwise, but Intel insists that this won't adversely affect their longevity the way traditional overclocking sometimes can. This is because the Core i7 as a whole stays within its proscribed thermal limits.


Turbo Boost: up the frequency, a little bit for four cores...

Core and die temperatures are sampled constantly so the degree of overclocking will depend on moment-by-moment heat output, which is not only dependent on the CPU's speed and voltage settings but also on the efficiency of the cooling system plugged on top of it.


...further for two cores...

You might think that upping one or more cores' clock frequency would be a bad idea when the goal is to reduce power consumption as much as possible, the better to extend the runtime of the host laptop's battery charge.


...or even higher when only one core is scheduled

True, Turbo Boost does increase power draw, but Intel maintains that it's better to suffer a burst of power and allow the cores to complete their work more quickly than to take longer processing a task at a lower clock frequency.

It's clearly a balancing act, choosing which of those two strategies you pursue to minimise power draw, and if all four cores are going flat out - which assumes that each one's HyperThreading-enable virtual second core is in use too - the thermal limit will be hit and there'll be no jump beyond the baseline clock frequency.


Intel's widget shows the level of overclocking

The use of Turbo Boost tech might seem to imply that single-threaded apps are better since they run at higher clock speeds, but four cores operating simultaneously at 2-2.26GHz should deliver better performance overall than a single core at 3.2GHz. Intel wants no let-up in software developers' efforts to exploit opportunities for parallelism within their code and create apps that spawn multiple threads.

Run the same 1080p HD video conversion on a 2.3GHz Core 2 Duo T2700 and on a laptop with a 1.3-2.8GHz i7-720QM, says Intel, and the latter will be done in 38 minutes. The first system will take more than two-and-a-quarter hours: 137 minutes, roughly 3.6 times as long.

That's not just Turbo Boost, HyperThreading and the extra two physical cores, mind - having access to faster, 1333MHz DDR 3 memory and 8MB of shared L3 cache plays its part too.

And for all the talk of "intelligent performance" from marketing types, Turbo Boost is really about power conservation. Increasing performance is HyperThreading's job, by maximising the scope for running tasks at the same time. Turbo Boost, where it can, helps those tasks complete more quickly. The sooner a task is done, the sooner a core can tell the OS it's finished and the operating system can, using established SpeedStep technology, tell it to go to sleep for a while.


Performance boost: how faster Intel claims Nehalem is over previous chips

The whole approach is to get the CPU back to idle as soon as possible without penalising performance when it's needed. Which is why it'll pay off when the notebook is connected to its AC adaptor, ensuring the CPU cores aren't going flat out all the time and so conserving energy whether it comes from the battery or for the mains.

Powering down the processor more quickly should help keep the cooling fan running less frequently. No one likes a noisy notebook, and since Turbo Boost operates within the existing CPU thermal envelope, the fan shouldn't need to spin higher, either.

We won't be able to say how well it works until real-world tests are conducted - watch this space.


Getting cores into an idle state slashes power consumption

Turbo Boost operates independently of the operating system - unlike SpeedStep and HyperThreading, for example - so it'll benefit Windows, Linux and Mac OS X users equally.

Windows Vista currently is well able to make use of HyperThreading and SpeedStep, but Windows 7 adds some new tricks to make smarter use of the available processing resources, the better to minimise power drain when performance isn't paramount.

Using a technique called thread-parking, Windows 7's scheduler is, Microsoft claims, better able to allocate resources than Vista's, switching threads in flight from virtual to physical cores so those threads can complete more quickly. It's about ensuring the OS understands there's a difference between physical and virtual cores rather than simply seeing a Core i7 as an octo-core chip, as Vista essentially does.

When all the physical cores are busy, then 'parked' virtual cores are given tasks to run. Again, this is about using the fastest resources first in order to complete work more quickly and then power down cores to preserve the battery charge. It should also make the system more responsive.

Trying to hold processing resources in reserve this way means that they're ready to be called upon when a peak in demand occurs, ensuring that the user interface doesn't freeze when other tasks are grabbing lots of CPU cycles. Of course there are instances when the load patterns means this is going to happen anyway, but smarter scheduling and the extra headroom provided by TurboBoost should minimise the frequency of such moments.

Again, only real-world tests will show how valid the claims made by Intel and Microsoft are - and whether they make a difference when so much system power is drawn by, say, the display, a device that's consuming Watts whether the CPU's on a light load or a heavy one.

Snow Leopard's Grand Central Dispatch system, which allows software developers to stop worrying about threads at all and leave it all to the OS has the potential to allow Mac OS X greater control over thread scheduling, but it's not clear from Apple's GCD documentation whether its scheduler is as HT savvy as Windows 7's is.


Only four threads to schedule? Thread Parking ensures they'll only be assigned to physical cores

The Nehalem-derived Xeon 5500 processors Apple builds into the Mac Pro and Xserve have HyperThreading, though the CPUs in none of its other machines yet do, so this feature shouldn't be alien to Apple.

Linux certainly does support HyperThreading and has for years. It has also supported thread parking for quite a while too, kernel scheduler hacker Ingo Molnar told Register Hardware.

Indeed, the next major kernel release, 2.6.32, due in December, will include "further tweaks" for SMT load-balancing, he said, allowing the scheduler to "adapt to the momentary performance profile of each socket, core (and thread) on the system - even if they are asymmetric".

In short, it'll not simply favour real cores over virtual ones but also faster-running physical cores over slower ones, monitoring the state of each and switching threads as each core's frequency changes. The feature will be built into 2.6.32 but disabled by default. ®

I've been out of a computer for a few weeks now... my PSU died and I decided not to "revive" the old one... investing more money in that one is just a waste hehe.

So, one day I saw a great deal at eBay which was a motherboard+CPU+RAM+HSF combo. It was great priced in my opinion, so I decided to go ahead. After getting the rest of the components (and shipping everything here to Guatemala.... which by the way is stupidly expensive lol), I built it last Saturday.

After a few troubleshooting as it wasn't working initially, it's now running, and I'm back up

The computer specs:
ASUS P5K Deluxe/WiFi-AP [1] [2]
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 [1] [2] [3]
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro HSF [1] [2] [3]
Thermaltake PurePower W0100RU 500W [1] [2] [3]
VisionTek Radeon HD 4850 [1] [2]
4x Crucial 2GB, 240-pin DDR2 PC2-5300 CT25664AA667 [1] [2] [3]
2x Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB Caviar SATA 7200RPM 16MB Cache [1] [2] [3]
Antec Three Hundred Gaming Case [1] [2] [3] [4]
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound [1] [2]

Aside from that, I added a 250GB Western Digital SATA HDD and an LG DVDRW (IDE) that I had on the old one.

Well, just wanted to share my joy... don't mind me

Teardown Shows Apple iPhone 3G S Secrets

Were you the type of kid who liked to take a thing apart just to see how it worked? The team at RapidRepair surely was. As soon as the iPhone 3G S went on sale at the Orange Boutique in Paris at midnight, RapidRepair CEO Aaron Vronko got his hands on the new smartphone and he ran it over to the Brico Mac store where he promptly began to pull apart the perfectly assembled device piece by piece. This slideshow details the disassembly, in all its gory detail, and offers a look at the iPhone 3G S from the inside out. As of June 19, the iPhone 3G S is available at Apple and AT&T retail and online stores, as well as Best Buy and Wal-Mart.

[Photos courtesy of RapidRepair] (Got to the Source to veiw the Slide Show)

Apple said the iPhone 3G S would go on sale June 19, and European carrier Orange decided that meant 12:01 a.m. RapidRepair CEO Aaron Vronko headed to Paris to get his hands on one.

The Apple iPhone 3G S — the 16GB black model, in this instance — comes with earbuds, a USB charger, a USB cable, a SIM opener and of course a manual.

The first step toward disassembly is to remove the bottom two screws by the dock port with a Phillips-head screwdriver. To lift the LCD screen, RapidRepair instructs, you’ll need a small suction cup, or else need to poke a paperclip through the screw-less holes.

The next step is to remove the ribbon cables, highlighted here in red. RapidRepair notes that at this point the iPhone 3G S already differs from its predecessor, as the LCD screen has a different driver package, and components on the end of the cable are different

And then there were two: the front half separated from the back panel.

To free the LCD module from the digitizer, six side screws must be removed.

The next step is to remove the system board, which involves removing the screw securing the camera module, as well as four Molex brand connectors and a big screw hiding behind the warranty sticker.

Who said an iPhone battery can’t be removed? Here, RapidRepair pries open the bottom of the board, removes the camera Molex connector and finally the battery, which it says is “solderless and easily replaceable.”

Once the screws are removed, the headphone jack comes out easily. The same goes for the dockport. RapidRepair says that the vibrator module, GPS antenna and SIM spring are held in place with mild adhesive and also come out with little coaxing.

Removing the digitizer, however, requires a heat gun and some care. The ear-piece speaker and “home” button can also be removed at this stage.

Here rests the iPhone 3G S. Although, RapidRepair says it can put back together by reversing all the steps.

On the left is the iPhone 3G S, and on the right is the iPhone 3G. The iPhone 3G S contains a Samsung S5PC100 CPU (the 3G contains a Samsung S3C6400 CPU) and an ARM Cortex A8 600MHz PowerVR SGX graphics card, while the 3G has an ARM 11 412MHz PowerVR MBX-Lite graphics card. The 3G S has 256MB of RAM (up from the 3G’s 128MB of DDR RAM), offers six more hours of talk time and features Bluetooth 2.1.

MIT: Batteries built with viruses, nanotech to power cars, devices

April 2, 2009 (Computerworld) MIT researchers say they've combined nanotechnology with genetically engineered viruses to build batteries that could power hybrid cars and cell phones.

The university announced today that the viruses, which infect bacteria but are harmless to humans, build the positively and negatively charged ends of lithium-ion batteries. The batteries, according to MIT, have the same energy capacity and power performance as state-of-the-art rechargeable batteries that are being considered to power plug-in hybrid cars and personal electronic devices.

"In lab tests, batteries with the new cathode material could be charged and discharged at least 100 times without losing any capacitance," MIT said in a report on the discovery.

Last week, MIT President Susan Hockfield took a prototype of the battery to the White House, where she discussed federal funding for clean-energy technologies with President Barack Obama.

This news comes just a few weeks after MIT announced that scientists there had developed technology that could enable lithium-ion batteries to charge in seconds instead of hours. They're hoping the advance could lead to smaller, faster-charging batteries that could be used in cell phones and other devices.

Another MIT research team announced in February that a new energy-efficient chip designed there may one day be able to run implantable medical devices using human body heat as an energy source. The new chip, which is in the proof-of-concept stage, uses 10 times less power than traditional chips. And that could increase battery life.

In today's announcement, the genetically engineered viruses are able to actually build the battery anodes.

The MIT report explains that in a traditional lithium-ion battery, the lithium ions flow between a negatively charged anode, which is usually graphite, and the positively charged cathode, which is usually cobalt oxide or lithium iron phosphate. Angela Belcher, the MIT materials scientist who led the research team, said that engineered viruses that could build an anode by coating themselves with cobalt oxide and gold, and then self-assemble to form a nanowire, were created years ago.

More recently, the research team engineered viruses that coat themselves with iron phosphate. Then they then latch onto carbon nanotubes to create a network of highly conductive material.

Electrons, according to MIT, can travel along the networks of carbon nanotubes, transferring energy very quickly. Adding the carbon nanotubes, the university reports, increases conductivity without adding "too much weight" to the battery.

Batteries built with this technology would likely be lightweight and flexible enough to take the shape of their container.

Smart Meters Help Household Energy Savings

For years, consumers have gauged their electricity usage with the monthly bill. Coming days or weeks after the end of the period it isn't a very efficient tool if you want to cut you household usage, but a new breed of meter is changing all that and can provide real-time updates that give you an instant indication of the cost of running a house full of gadgets.

U.S. President Barack Obama has pledged to put 40 million of the so-called "smart meters" into American homes as part of the economic stimulus package but in some European homes the devices are already a reality and helping users to save month.

At the Cebit IT fair in Hanover last week, German utility Energie Baden-Württemberg (EnBW) was demonstrating its smart meter, which has been available to customers since late 2008.

The meter is available to homes for €5 per month (US$6.34) but customers who use its many reporting features can typically save more than that amount in electricity usage, said Jörn Kröpelin, from the company's strategic product department.

The meter itself has a simple LCD showing current consumption so subscribers need a PC to take advantage of its benefits.

There are two interfaces available. One Web-based interface provides reports down to 15-minute intervals via EnBW's server and includes historical data as well so users can, for example, compare current usage to that of their house the same time last month or last year or, via a recently added function, to that of an average home.

The meter reports to EnBW once every 15 minutes via your home's broadband connection and within 30 minutes that information is available online through the Web site.

A second option provides real-time data direct from the meter as long as the PC is on the same network. Through this users can instantly see energy consumption and accomplish things like analyzing the usage and the cost of running individual gadgets.

Energy usage is plotted on a graph through which its possible to isolate spikes, such as when a TV is switched on, and then calculate how much it costs to run for an hour or any desired time period. You can also plug in a usage scenario, such as 2 hours per day everyday and surprise yourself by seeing how much you'll spend annually to watch TV.

During a demo at Cebit, the meter was hooked-up to a single appliance, an espresso maker, and after making a single cup it calculated the annual running cost to be around €1.50 assuming four cups per day.

Among the users of the meter is Kröpelin himself.

"I was surprised by how much energy was used, even when I tried to switch everything off," he said. After cutting power to all the obvious appliances and switching off lights the meter was still registering energy usage -- the result of long various sensors and adapters around the home that did unseen and forgotten tasks. These added up to around 200 watts of constant energy use.

The next stage of the technology is to get the meters to communicate directly with gadgets. Initially this will likely work by plugging in appliances via adapters that can talk to the meter but could eventually work with products that have embedded intelligence.



I could use one of these......

Are today's Macs related to the Mac Daddy?

After 25 years on the market, it's a good question, since someone with no knowledge of computers looking at, say, today's MacBook Pro, would not necessarily know that it evolved from 1984's original 128K Mac.

But evolve it did, and on the 25th anniversary of the release of that original machine (which is this Saturday), one might indeed wonder what hereditary DNA, if any, today's Macs retain from their much more humble ancestors.

The answer is some, but not that much, at least not when it comes to specific identifiable hardware features, according to two experts interviewed for this article.

"Very little, in terms of the hardware, remains," said Bruce Damer, co-founder of the Digibarn Computer Museum, "except for the fine-quality industrial design of the cases."

But there must be something linking the earliest Macs with today's models besides the name and company that produces them. Otherwise, the famous Macintosh community known by names like the "cult of Mac" or "MacHeads" wouldn't be such a powerful force.

"At its essence, you look at it where it (is) relative to what it was before," said Raines Cohen, the founder of the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group, and "there's a sense that it's still a machine that you turn on and you do things (easily) with it. It's an interface that stays out of your way."

Basically, Cohen said, the Mac is all about ease of use and simplicity--as well as the continuity of a low-maintenance user experience.

"Recently, I had a chance to go back and use the old Mac," Cohen said. "The essential consistency was still the same. You could take a Mac user who has been on ice for the last quarter century and put them on a modern Mac, and they'd be up and using it within a matter of moments."

Perhaps that's because of a few software elements that today's Macs have that first appeared in the first versions of the computer.

"On the software side, the primary elements left from the original Mac OS come through in the user interface," said Damer. "The single menu stripe--File, Special, etc.--is a vestige of the original limited screen real estate of the 128K Mac."

Damer said there are a few other recognizable holdovers as well. For one, the arrow-cursor remains almost identical today to its origins, and window-handling also has stayed the same. In other words, he said, today, as in 1984, you can only resize a window from the lower right corner.

Today's Mac OS X got its beginnings at NeXT, the company Steve Jobs built during his years in exile from Apple. When Apple bought NeXT and brought Jobs back, first to consult and then run the company, the NeXT OS came along with him and formed the basis for the future generations of Macs.

But Apple knew that its fans had an idea of what the Mac OS was supposed to look like, Damer suggested, and as a result, it found a way to maintain some of the consistency to which Cohen referred.

"In some sense, to try to keep some of the original look and feel of the old Mac OS, the Apple team 'dumbed down' the NeXT GUI," Damer said, "which was in some ways more powerful and flexible."

But all along, Cohen said, the Mac operating system has kept the basic elements of menu navigation and windowing more or less the same.

And that, aside from the much more abstract notion that a computer built by what is seen by many to be a company obsessed with design and a somewhat pirate-like mentality, may be what really makes a Mac a Mac.

"Apple's UI guidelines have been there all along," Cohen said, "so that programs have to be consistent and have that (high) level of consistency in order to be successful on the platform."

See the rest of our Mac anniversary coverage here.