Life is Good

Since computer users are human, the user can be the primary cause of computer failure. And we operators of our computers are in most cases but that, we operate the computer but know very little concerning software and hardware components and peripherals.

Since this is the case, you should ASSUME NOTHING when diagnosing any computer problem. We diagnosed a new PC with a video display problem. After briefly looking at the video card it took a while to see that the video card was not pushed into the adapter slot completely.

Even though I looked at the card, I failed to check it thoroughly. This cause me to spend more time on troubleshooting that was not needed.The thought of a hard drive failure strikes terror in the heart of every computer user.

This is because a hard drive failure may lead to invaluable data loss. Here are the most common procedures you should perform when you experience hard drive failure.

General Hard Drive Troubleshooting

The hard drive can display problems such as “retry, abort, ignore” or “cannot read sectors” while operating. This is an indication that there may be bad or unreadable spots on the drive. Reformatting and reinstalling the operating system can normally correct this problem. This will cause you to loose all data on your drive so it is important to always have a good backup of yourfiles daily.

There are good good utilities you can purchase that can repair hard drive problems without destroying data. The utility Spinrite is a good utility and only cost $200.00 which is a good price if you want to avoid the hassle of reformatting the drive and restoring the operating system. Here are some general hard drive problems you should start from and we’ll be more specific later.

Use Operating System Utilities

First you may be able to correct those bad spots and errors from your hard drive by performing those PC maintenance in the operating system. Windows has Disk Defragment and you should run disk defragment after running Scandisk since scandisk will need to fix any problems it finds. After scanning the drive and defraging the files, run Disk Cleanup to ensure all junk files have been delete.

Check Drive cables and connections

If there is on indication that the drive is receiving power (you don’t hear that familiar clicking noise or the drive light is no working) check the 4 wire connector coming from the power supply.

If the connection is secure, you can remove the power supply connector and do two things. You can check to see if there is voltage with a multimeter. But its much faster to connect another 4 wire connector to the drive to see if the drive works. There are normally extra connectors from the power supply or you can use the connection to the cdrom drive to test for voltage from the power supply.

If the connection indicates no or very little voltage (4 volts or less) from the power supply, the power supply may be going bad. Now check and double check all connections, especially if you are someone else have recently worked inside the computer.

If the drive will not boot up…?

Boot the computer with your bootable DOS disk. If you don’t have one made, STOP and make one NOW by clicking on Start, Settings, Control Panel, Add and Remove Programs and Startup Disk.

Try to access drive C: by typing DIR C: and press Enter. If you see the directories on drive C: try to make the drive bootable by typing sys a: c: and press Enter. The system files should be restored and the drive may be restored to boot on its own.

If this fails, you may have to reformat and partition the drive with the setup utility that came with your drive or computer.

If the Drive boots but hangs up at boot…?

Turn the computer off, open the system unit and disconnect the ribbon cable at the motherboard end. Turn on the PC AND You will get an error message that the drive is bad and in most cases will go into your BIOS. Change the hard drive type to AUTO and shut off the computer.

Reconnect the ribbon cable and see if the hard works properly. The drive settings should be restored and should operate fine.

A hard drive that fails to boot up may also have a bad controller. If the controller is mounted on the hard drive, there is not much you can do except replace the drive.

LCD monitors or Liquid Crystal Display monitors are replacing the old CRT or Cathode Ray Tube screens and are far superior in a vast majority of applications.

There are several advantages of LCD Monitors over the old CRT Displays. While LCD Monitors are compact and lightweight and consume less power approximately 20W whereas the CRT monitors are bulky and heavy consuming upto 150W. An LCD Monitor produces perfectly sharp images with perfect image geometry whereas in CRT the sharpness is limited and it tends to blur more at high brightness and with the aging of the tubes and suffers from geometric distortions.

LCD monitors have a consistent tonal scale and can display text with excellent contrast whereas the CRT monitors display strong bright areas which can cause other regions of the picture to dim and also has poor text contrast because of limited bandwidth.

LCD monitors do not normally flicker whereas a faint flicker can always be observed in a CRT monitor.

There are also some inherent disadvantages of LCD monitors over that of the CRT monitors. The contrast or the color changes with the viewing angle in a LCD monitor whereas in a CRT monitor it is always a consistent image irrespective of viewing angle. LCD monitors may cause motion blur and has a poor black on dark images. Whereas the CRT monitors usually portray motion well and also has good black contrast.

When viewing photos or videos on a LCD monitor it may appear flat and the peak brightness is limited by the back light. A CRT monitor displays movies/video/photos with a sparkle and life to images with very high peak brightness.

If LCD Monitor screens are damaged, it may develop stuck pixels whereas no such pixel based problems are present.

In LCD the natural interface would be digital e.g. DVI interface and the image can be sub-optimal with analog interface whereas CRT’s are naturally suited to analog interface.

On the basis of image-quality LCD monitor is best suited for technical/CAD applications and office uses such as large, detailed text-based but -non-critical color graphics while CRT still has the upper hand for high-end photography or art work and for television displays.

Unlike CRTs that are actively displaying the light through coated phosphors, an LCD actually takes white light and filters it to get the desired colors. To do this for each given pixel there are three sub pixels one for red, green and blue light. When the sub-pixel is off, the filter will block that particular color of light. When the sub-pixel is on, it will open the filter to let a desired amount of light through.

Have you ever wondered how your inkjet printer works?

How does the ink get from the inkjet cartridge to the paper? Why is the print quality is so clear? Why the printing is so quiet?

Generally, all that most people know is that there’s some movement and a faint high pitched sound when it’s printing something — and then the finished document comes out.

Unlike dot matrix and character printers that strike ribbons to create an image, inkjet printers do not physically touch the paper.

All inkjet printers function using the same basic principles. Tiny ink droplets are “jetted” (or pushed) out multiple holes onto paper in a controlled and systematic fashion. This is where the term “inkjet” comes from.

The size of ink droplets, speed and reliability of this type of printer has been continuously improving since its inception in 1976. In 1993, Epson was the first manufacturer to produce an inkjet printer using micro-piezo technology. The Epson Stylus 800 was the first printer to use the multi-layer actuator printhead (the printhead is the part of the printer that holds numerous tiny nozzles that actually squirts the ink onto paper).

This specific printhead utilized an electro-mechanical element that acted like a tiny control room. When pulses of electricity passed through, it that gave specific signals to fire individual or multiple nozzles loaded with ink.

Micro-piezo technology utilized a tiny crystal in each individual nozzle that when electrically energized, would vibrate or bend causing a controlled amount of ink to be forced out onto paper. When the electrical current is off, the crystal bends back to its original shape, creating a vacuum, thus pulling ink into the nozzle from the reservoir for the next commanded fire.

The Epson printhead was fixed to the carriage so it never needed replacing (the printer carriage is what moves laterally across the paper). This also kept the cost of ink cartridges low since they were little more than reservoirs of ink.

This breakthrough printer produced a whopping 360 dpi (dots per inch) that was deemed, almost “letter quality” at the time. With a printing speed of 150 – 180 characters per second, the new Epson became the user favorite printer for home and office.

At the same time, HP was using a similar technology. A thermal jetting system was utilized in their printhead. The printhead still acted like the control room but each individual nozzle was instead independently super heated by electricity, which caused the ink to explode onto the paper. HP claims the temperature of a fired inkjet nozzle approaches that of the surface of the sun.

HP elected to put the printhead on the inkjet cartridge itself instead of mounting it permanently to the carriage. Since each inkjet cartridge would have its own printhead, replacement cartridges would be more expensive for these printers.

HP inkjet cartridges also could not print as fast as Epson because each nozzle needed to cool after firing. This heating technology also limited the types of inks that could be used.

In the 1990’s, Canon, Epson and HP engineered printheads that applied even smaller droplets of ink, drastically improving dpi and resolution.

While Canon and HP could produce a 6 – 10 picoliter droplet size from one nozzle, Epson was about half the size (between 3 – 6 picoliters). Currently, there are printers available which will produce an amazing 1 picoliter droplet! To get an idea of how small this is; a human hair is about 12 picoliters in diameter. Most human eyes can’t see one jetted droplet of ink on paper.

Inkjet printers have come a long way since their first inception.

Printers today are twice as fast as their predecessors were, and are cheaper than ever. Many printers can easily produce color photo quality images in at an incredible 6000 dpi.

As time goes on and as demand for printing remains high, the quality, speed and features of inkjet printers will only continue to improve.

I’m sure that it’s not news to you that MP3 players can be used to play many different forms of music. Your MP3 players can be used as an educational tool as well, a virtual mobile university if you will.

When I bought my first MP3 player I did what people typically do with MP3 players. You take music from your computer and you load it into your MP3 player. I had a great time with it listening to my favorite tunes. What I didn’t know at the time was that I had a ton of knowledge at my fingertips that I wasn’t even using. I decided to download some motivational MP3s to my MP3 player.

I then decided that I’d love to listen to some motivational MP3s while I was in my car. At that time, my car just had a radio and cassette player, but soon I was able to find an adapter that can go right into the cassette slot and the other end plugged directly into the headphone jack of my MP3 player. Before you know it I was listening to tons of motivational and self-improvement MP3s and really, really enjoying it.

I know a lot of people listen to music while they’re in the car and as alternative the radio I could always bring some of my favorite music cassettes. But even my favorite music didn’t put me in the right mood and frame of mind for the workday. My MP3 player soon solved that problem.

I was able to listen to the unique perspectives on life from a number of different speakers. While I was on my way to work in the mornings I found this particularly refreshing and it set a positive tone for the remainder of my day. I did this each and every morning. Okay. Basically I was addicted at this point. Now there is absolutely no turning back.

I’m certain that you really enjoy listening to music on your MP3 player, but you might just want to give listening to some self-improvement, educational or motivational content a try. You might find it will fill your day with a new and positive outlook.