HARDWARE WARS

Jun 4, 2003 | computers, hardware

Dell continues to dominate the computer market, of course. Here’s what some of the other players are doing. Sony just announced its summer lineup, loaded with multimedia components (DVD rewritable drives, digital video recorder software, and the like), at the higher...

UNDERSTANDING THE CENTRINO

Apr 3, 2003 | hardware

Intel is doing an all-out media blitz to establish “Centrino” as a brand name that you know and love. Hey, it worked with “Pentium.” Here’s an article that cuts through the advertising hype and the confusing names and features. Highly recommended if you’re considering...

HOME MEDIA CENTERS

Mar 31, 2003 | audio, hardware, video

There’s an exploding market for home media centers. I can’t cover all the new equipment, but maybe this will help. I have a huge digital music library on my computers, which I maintain scrupulously – all sorted into folders, with ID3 tags for artist and album and...

SLOW COMPACT FLASH CARDS

Feb 14, 2003 | hardware

Costco has tempting prices on the SanDisk line of memory cards – Compact Flash, Smart Media, Memory Stick. I’m all set up with USB 2.0 ports and a USB 2.0 card reader, and I couldn’t figure out why it was taking so long to copy mp3 files to my card. Turns out there’s...

IOMEGA AS A TAKEOVER TARGET

Jan 20, 2003 | business, hardware

Iomega never recovered from the double blow of manufacturing defective Zip drives and failing to foresee the world of cheap, ubiquitous recordable CDs. It has no growth products and no new ideas. Apparently it’s been hoarding cash and cutting costs. According to this...

DELL AXIM HANDHELD

Jan 12, 2003 | hardware, mobile

My new Dell Axim PocketPC looks just great. Although the $199 version would be just fine for everyday use, many people will appreciate the extra memory in the $299 version (64Mb instead of 32Mb) – and the $299 model includes the cradle to sit on the desk for syncing...