Replace Those Wireless Microphones
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
June 12th is the US government’s official cutoff date for wireless microphones that transmit in the 700MHz band. Turns out that these microphones, employed by quite a few churches, schools, and sporting venues, have been “squatting” in the upper regions of the UHF television spectrum (specifically channels 52 through 69). As part of the whole DTV transition, those channels are no longer being used for broadcast television, and rights to that part of the spectrum have been sold to various telecom companies. Starting June 12th it will be illegal to use the old microphones, forcing many organizations to purchase new equipment.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
The best way to speed up older computers is by adding more memory. But in lieu of that, replacing the hard drive with a solid-state drive (SSD) gives a significant speed benefit. The linked article does note, however, that it’s almost more cost-effective to purchase a new computer.
I remember when having 8MB of RAM on a graphics card was a big deal. But 
Here at the Chad’s News network command center, we have long been aware of the difference between the hard disk capacity reported in decimal bytes by the manufacturer and the the same capacity reported in binary bytes by Windows. In fact, I was once published in a print magazine after the editors incorrectly answered a question on the subject.
The linked article details 15 design mistakes from the early years of personal computers.
Boy this takes me back. The title for the linked article is a bit inaccurate, since some of the products did actually die. And for several of them, only the naming rights have survived.
The SheevaPlug is definitely the smallest PC I’ve ever seen. It’s literally the size of a power adapter and just plugs in to the wall.
Apple has been making changes to the standard 1⁄8” audio jack. Take a look at the picture in the linked article to see what I mean. My (older) iPod came with the normal three-part headphone adapter.
