The Windows Fix » Gadgets

USB 3.0 Spec Announced

T.J. Mininday — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:04:54 +0000

The long awaited USB 3.0 was announced today from the “USB 3.0 Promoter Group”, promising speeds of up to 5.0Gb/s, six times the 480Mb/s speed from USB 2.0. It’s been 8 years since USB 2.0 was announced in 2000, but it’s been well worth it, and I think it’s safe to say that the Universal Serial Bus is here to stay.

Apple, with their most recent release of Apple Notebooks, did not have what had been become the most popular of video production connections, Firewire, hence what was inevitable…USB 3.0. What seperates the new spec past what 2.0 contains, is bi-directional support using four-wire differential signal wiring as compared to half-duplex two wire differential wiring. All of the technical aspects can take a back seat to what we really want, speed.

Although the spec has been announced, we won’t see anything physical until late 2009 and no consumer products until 2010.

via TG Daily

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Audit and Gather PC Information with WinAudit

T.J. Mininday — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 03:48:09 +0000

It can be incredibly useful to have an application that can give you deep specifications of a PC at any given certain point and time. See exactly what hardware is installed, what hardware can be installed and what software is eating up all of your resources. There are a lot of the applications out there, but many require an individual install and many require registration, or even a purchase. WinAudit gives you extremely deep analysis of hardware, software, services and operating system, all in a incredibly small, single file application.

WinAudit gives you the all-in-all for your Windows operating system, as far back as Windows 95, and it doesn’t hold back any information. It includes every single piece of hardware hooked into your OS, along with every single application running and not running in the background. It then allows you to export the information into several different formats, including xls and html, and keep the information archived for years to come. It’s a great way to track your hardware and software, for future upgrades, licensing issues or simply just protection.

Check it out…WinAudit

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Splashtop – Instant On and Off Computing

T.J. Mininday — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:54:55 +0000

Just recently Lenovo announced that one of their latest notebooks, the IdeaPad will be rolled out with a new and amazingly innovative OS called SplashTop, from DeviceVM. It’s possibly a BIG glimpse into what the future hold for traveling, on the go users and possibly the way everyone will be working.

The video below, talks about it’s ‘instant on’ capabilities, comparing it to your TV, room light or toaster. After simply powering it on, you have quick and easy access to a web browser, e-mail and many other items. It not only has instant on capabilities, but instant off as well, so there will no longer be the need for hibernation or standby. It will simply turn on and off as you please and will save you tons of battery life at the same time. The concept and how it works could make it easily the OS of the future.

It doesn’t look like Windows 7 will have instant on capabilities anytime soon.

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Synergy – Free Software Based ‘KVM Switch’

T.J. Mininday — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:33:31 +0000

One the many things that comes along with putting together and setting up multiple servers, is the keyboard and mouse requirement. There are many situations when you can’t remote into a machine and you need to work at the server itself. The problem is, you don’t want dozens of different mice and keyboards lieing around to get tangled and to confuse you as to what is connected to what. That’s where our old friend the KVM switch comes in.

However instead of using multiple mice and keyboards, why not use the great open source product, called Synergy. Synergy allows you to share one, mouse and keyboard, with several different PCs, on several different monitors. So, this really doesn’t replace an entire KVM switch, as you’ll still need some type of viewing for the other PCs/Servers. The amazing part about it, is it’s cross platform compatibility. It works with Windows, Linux, Unix and Mac OS X. Here is a quote from Synergy on what it’s true power is:

Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It’s intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s).

Redirecting the mouse and keyboard is as simple as moving the mouse off the edge of your screen. Synergy also merges the clipboards of all the systems into one, allowing cut-and-paste between systems.

And here is an amazing video, displaying its full potential:

Download Synergy

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