Five Gifts of Awesome

Having a hard time getting your special someone who is also a big computer lover/geek/gamer a present? Here are five things you can buy them as a gift (or gifts).

A New PC

Buying a PC will be difficult, therefore I do recommend the Speed Dating process for it. It’ll take some knowledge to buy the right PC, whether your family member needs a nice laptop for school or a desktop for more powerful processing. You also have to take into account if they play video games. Computer packages nowadays come with a keyboard and mouse, but maybe they’ll need different types of peripherals (i.e. gaming mouse, gaming keyboard). Figure them out so that you can figure out what they need for a new PC.

Hard Drive (Internal and/or External)

Storage is important! Hard drives nowadays are cheap and easy to buy. Your techie will surely love the gift because it’s thoughtful and it’s the thought that counts, right? Surely, they need the space, either for backup purposes or just for extra storage. You can never go wrong with hard drives. One terabyte of an internal or external hard drive would be great. They don’t cost much and most of them run on USB 3.0, which is the new USB standard for computers. This allows the hard drive to move around files at a rate of 10 Gbps! The price will depend on how much storage it can hold. Remember, one terabyte will not equal the exact capacity. Same thing for other storage capacities.

Headphones

Who doesn’t need headphones right? Music is such an important part of, well, anyone’s life. Whether they listen to their Rock ‘N’ Roll music from Kiss or listen to Classical music from Mozart. A pair of headphones is a great gift. Just make sure that whoever you’re giving it to, they don’t listen to Miley Cyrus.

Video Games!

The holiday season is the best time to stock up on summer games to play. You can buy brand new video games at an average price of $60. Also, consider buying them Steam gift cards if they play on the PC. That way, it won’t be much of a hassle for you and they’ll still love you for it. All you can hope for is that they won’t get addicted and just ignore you for the rest of the Christmas break.

New Gaming Console

This goes hand in hand with the PC, because most of the time, your techie friend likes to play on a PC. But, in the case that they don’t, Sony and Microsoft just recently launched their next-generation (or current-generation, considering they are already out) consoles. It’ll be tough to find one, considering most of them are sold out (except for the XBOX One).

Nintendo also announced nine (9) new console bundles for the holiday season. Prices are ranging from $99 – $299.99 (I’m only hoping that my parents get me the Nintendo 2DS Pokémon X/Y bundle).

It’ll be tough picking which one to get for whom, but hopefully this can help you this Christmas.

Keep Chewing!

Cheat Sheet for Geeks

There are so many things a computer geek needs to know.

We need to know everything from hardware to software to freeware to groupware — and trust me, that’s not an easy task.

One of the things that can actually make a computer geek feel dumbfounded are those computer ports at the back of a desktop PC. At some point, I’ve always messed up at least twice or three times and confused one port to the other. So, I searched far and wide to find this!

Not only does this include ports, but it also showcases different types of RAM, CPU sockets, peripheral cards, power connectors, desktop card slots, hard drive types and processor card sockets and slots. It’s a great resource to carry around.

I, myself, have one on my phone in case I need it — and I think computer geeks need to know, or at least familiarize themselves, to these components.

Keep Chewing!

My Precious Partition

Over the weekend, I initiated myself to lengthen the life of our old PC Andrea.

She’s on her fifth year as a computer and even with Windows 7 Ultimate installed and everything, it’s still slow. I know that the hardware is the reason for this, but I have to make sure that my parents and younger brother would still be able to use it. I need to squeeze the life out of it and get maximum use from it. Hopefully they’ll be able to get a new one next year.

All I know is that the hard drive is nearing its end, the video card might be broken (outdated to say the least) and the processor is about to give.

I decided to install a Linux distribution, only hoping that might increase the life of the computer itself.

I created a LiveUSB of Ubuntu and began installation. There it was, the partition interface. I mean, I’ve seen it before. The only scary part about it is that if I make one mistake – no matter how small – I could kill the partition.

Alas, fate is cruel. The partitioning system crashed. I restarted the computer. I entered Windows 7 and only saw one partition. Panicking, I started to look for ways to get it back.

Then I found EaseUS Partition Manager, which also comes with a partition recovery tool. I used it to recover files that were in that partition that I knew was important like pictures and converted home videos.

The recovery tool worked with a little help from Black Beard. I got my stuff back!

In short, the lesson here is: always back up your files. Don’t be an idiot like me.

Right now, after that whole event, I just think that reinstalling Windows 7 might do the trick. Probably after that, I’ll install a distribution of Linux, but that’s another story. Besides, I don’t want it to go back to its prime, because I know that will never happen. All I want is for it to just last long enough until my family gets something new.

Keep Chewing!

Tips on PC Speed

We’ve all been there. The computer is not running at its maximum performance, your data entries and other documents are always crashing. It’s tough when you’re in that situation.

You Should Probably Do This Now

Do you have a buddy who has a computer, yet does not have a backup image for their hard drive? Would you like to remind them?

Then search no longer!

This is the site for them! It’s a great website to remind you — and your very careless friend — that hard drives are not invincible and they are able to shut down or malfunction anytime.

Go ahead, send them the link. They’ll thank you later!

BACKUP NOW!

Keep Chewing!

Where Do Deleted Files Go?

I’ve always wondered this question. Where do our deleted files go. I know that it stays in our hard drive, but I did not know that it was still accessible.

You can learn a lot of things from watching a 10 minute video. Especially from VSAUCE. Take a look!

I’ve learned that for you to “delete” files, you have to overwrite them. This means that you have to write over the hard drive multiple times before it’s “deleted”

I enjoy their videos because they are educational, short and sweet, and definitely entertaining.

Keep Chewing!

 

Building a PC

Consider the following:

You’re a computer lover. No, a computer enthusiast.

Tweaking your own PC is everything that you do. Coding is second nature to you. When your friends need tech help, they almost always go directly to you.

You’ve also taken Computer Engineering courses, only to learn multiple and helpful things. One of which would be learning about the internal parts of a tower PC. You’ve read about CPUs, GPUs, HDDs, SSDs and everything hardware. The BIOS menu is now your close friend. You know every piece and you also know how to use every tool in your dad’s toolbox. Now what?

Well, it comes down to one thing, and one thing only. Building your own PC.

Truth be told, I was planning on building a tower this year and write about the journey in this blog. But due to priorities being held against me (like paying my phone bill and saving up for University), I am monetarily unable to purchase parts. However, that does not stop me from learning and finding resources.

That’s where PC It Yourself (pronounced “Piece It Yourself”) comes in. I found this amazing site where beginners – like myself – can get some interactive help for building a PC from scratch.

PC It Yourself

As my plans for making Nixxy (my future PCs nickname) takes a step back, I’m sure there will be some beginners out there who will use this site wholeheartedly.

Keep Chewing!