Your local Apple Store is home to a mysterious tractor beam that pulls in unwitting shoppers who venture less than 25 feet from its storefront, says Apple Insider. An anylst from Piper Jaffray spent 6 hours monitoring traffic in front of various Apple Stores and found that shoppers were inexplicably drawn to the big glowing Apple.
computers
Who Should And Shouldn't Buy A Mac
By 11.19.07
Walter Mossberg wrote a guide for buying a Mac and we like the parts that say who should and who shouldn’t get one. Mac vs PC debates are highly personal, often end in bloodshed, and usually make no sense, so it’s nice to see a rational discussion of each system’s attributes. In the end, it really matters what kind of user you are, and what your price point is…
By 10.30.07
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The forthcoming XO laptop’s price has officially hit $200 now—double the initial $100 target. [Reuters]
How To Extend Your Battery Life
By 10.30.07
Reader Don felt compelled to share this tips about proper love and care of your electronic items’ batteries so they last longer and you don’t have to buy more unnecessarily…
Best Buy Says Laptop Batteries Cost $500 To Replace
By 10.26.07
Sean writes:
I am “The Computer Guy” in my family and my mother needed a laptop for work. My wife and I went to Best Buy in Bel Air, MD with her to pick out one that would fit her budget and allowed her to work from home. I found a Compaq for a little more than $700 on sale without rebates. I signaled for an employee and told her the laptop we wanted. The employee got the laptop and went on about needing the service plan. I let her drone on because I wanted to see if it covered accidental breakage (it doesn’t). During the speech she talked about the battery, how it’s like a cell phone battery, and that they would replace it once a year for the length of the contract. She then mentioned that the battery would cost my Mother $500 if she had to buy it separately…
iPhone Security Is On Par With Windows 95
By 10.24.07
We owe Apple an apology, because it turns out they weren’t kidding when they said that opening the iPhone up to 3rd party software was just asking for trouble. That’s because the iPhone runs every single app as “root,” which is computerese for “more power than Steve Jobs.” It was this root access that made the Safari exploit possible back in July, and it can’t be fixed without a complete redesign of the firmware.
By 10.18.07
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How to replace a broken laptop LCD yourself. [Instructables]
Protect Yourself From Badware
By 10.8.07
Stopbadware.org has just released its “Trends in Badware 2007” report, a free overview of all the ways you and your computer can be slipped digital roofies while you’re online looking at LOLpornography and doing your banking through Twitter. It’s written in a deliberately non-technical style, so if you’re put-off or intimidated by the Slashdot crowd, this is a great way to educate yourself or a naive loved one about the dangers of drive-by downloads, website hacking, and so on.
Man Gets 11 Years After Geek Squad Reports Child Porn On His Computer
By 10.4.07
A man got 135 months in jail and a $10,000 fine after Geek Squad reported the computer he brought in for servicing had child pornography on it.
Sting Op Of 10 Different Computer Repair Companies Finds 70% Don't Know What They're Doing
By 10.4.07
CBC Marketplace did a kickass hidden camera investigation into computer repair companies and found only 30% were able to correctly diagnose their problem.
Not Everyone Loves Vista, XP To Remain Available Until June, 2008
By 9.29.07
It seems people aren’t taking to Vista as quickly as Microsoft would have liked. The result? XP will remain available through June 30, 2008.
4 Tips For Keeping Your Digital Pictures Safe
By 9.18.07
Where would we be without photos? We’d have no blackmail, no things to cut up after a divorce, no US Weekly, and no pictures to stare at on The Consumerist. And now that there are digital cameras, anyone can take ’em. But like emails, thesis statements, and that Great American Novel you’ve been working on for years, they’re prone to digital oblivion if you don’t take some precautions. The Associated Press has four basic tips that you should already be following to keep your digital pics safe.
Tiny USB Flash Drive In Entertainment Weekly
By 9.17.07
CBS and Cadillac are running a fancy-schmancy new ad campaign in the September 21st issue of “Entertainment Weekly” (the one with Britney on the cover) that includes a free “world’s smallest” 128MB flash drive. It doesn’t appear to be in the issues for sale on stands, so if you know anyone who subscribes, ask them for their copy.
Good Laptop Bags For Guys
By 9.13.07
Buying a decent bag for your laptop can turn into an epic quest if you’re at all picky—there are a hundred bulky or badly built bags our there, and some flat-out ugly ones that look like they were designed by camels. A member of Ask Metafilter posted the following request earlier today: “I need a bag for a man with a computer.” His qualifications included that it should be padded, stylish, affordable, and not too bulky.
Blue Hippo Angers Florida's Attorney General
By 8.31.07
Blue Hippo, the notoriously scammy computer layaway service, has annoyed Florida’s attorney general.
Dell Tech Chatbot Tries His Best
By 8.29.07
April’s Dell said it couldn’t find “systems 32 config” and after going through a series of troubleshooting steps with a Dell tech in chat, he said it was due to a bad sector on the hard drive and it would need to be replaced. While that very well may have been the case, we were amused by how the conversation wrapped up, as shown in the logs April posted to the RolePlay Gateway message board…
