Last week I read on SlickDeals that InvisibleSHIELD had a 50% off sale and free shipping promotion going on. I’ve heard many positive reviews on this product and decided to give it a try. Hey, for $12 shipped you can’t go wrong. 
I’ve been getting tired of my military grade Sprint case because of its bulk. After installing it I must say this product is impressive so far. It’s nice not having to worry about scratching up my shiny new phone anymore. The film is very thick and looks impenetrable by anything other than a knife. Installation took over an hour and wasn’t easy because of the small peices. Apparently over the next few days the film will get tighter and I’ve already noticed the micro air bubbles slowly going away. Check out my install pics below: Read more…
According to this article, Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives are failing at an alarming rate globally. Ask any Seagate user and this will be no news to them as this has been a hot topic on the forums for a little while.
This article is concerning though. I’ve had 4x 750GB 7200.11 in a RAID 5 in my NAS since June. When I first bought the parts to build the system, 2 of the drives came DOA. Newegg quickly replaced them and I’ve been fine since. No weird clicking anymore but this makes me think I should consider running RAID 6 dual parity incase two drives fail at once. Having all the build dates nearly the same is worrysome. Even with rock solid linux RAID I won’t be able to sustain two drive failures.
As the race is on its final days, things are starting to heat up for Mitsubishi – literally – on the Atacama Desert. Due to technical problems they are unable to finish stage 12, giving them a 6th place in the stage. In finishing they would have received a 3rd place ranking, moving up in the overall race ranking. Here’s an excerpt from Mitsubishi-dakar.com:
The crew Nani Roma and Lucas Cruz of the Repsol Mitsubishi Ralliart team did not succeed in passing the white dunes of the Atacama Desert. The Spanish duo was stuck halfway through the stage while they were still in the middle of the mountains of sand.
An as yet unidentified technical problem prevented them from being able to finish stage 12, where they would have held 3rd place after the driver Carlos Sainz (VW) dropped out.
The Dakar is a difficult cross-country rally and nothing has been won until the finishing line of the last stage has been crossed. All the competitors know this very well, and nobody makes any predictions before that last important day.
What do you think? Can Mitsubishi pull off a win?
So I have found the solution to the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) and it had nothing to do with nVidia’s Windows 7 pre-release driver. When I first installed Windows 7, it notified me that I had no anti-virus software (obviously) and listed three recommendations, one of which was free: Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows 7 technical preview. I’ve heard many good things about Kaspersky and decided to give it a try.
Kaspersky Lab releases technical preview of Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows 7
After installing it seemed like it was working OK, but after a while it would generate a BSOD with the error pointing to kl1.sys. A quick Google search revealed that this file belongs to Kaspersky AV. I uninstalled it, installed AVG Free and I’ve been error-free since.
Now Windows 7 is running completely stable and fast. For being a beta release it runs pretty much like an RC, except for the recent MP3 corruption hotfixed they pushed out yesterday. Great job so far, Microsoft.
After much anticipation from the tech community, last weekend Microsoft released Window 7 Beta to the public – initially with a 2.5 million download limit (which was removed today). Being the geek that I am, I decided to download and install it and see if the next iteration of Windows lives up to the hype. I was delighted to know that the beta ISO was available on TechNet, which I am a proud (and paid) an member of. Not having to deal with the public download frenzy, I painlessly downloaded the 3+ GB Windows 7 64-bit ISO and began the install process. Here’s my breif review and initial impression of the OS. I will be going in to more detail in future posts. Read more…
After about 18 months of use, my stock Sony VAIO SZ460N battery started showing signs of wear. To Sony’s credit, I am very impressed as the wear is very minimal – maybe 5 – 10% less capacity. I was browsing ebay and found a 7200mah extended battery for $55.61 plus $12.99 shipping, which is incredible considering the OEM version of this same battery sells for $265 on Amazon. It was an obvious decision. Read more…
If you’re a Dakar fan like me, you’re well aware of Mitsubishi’s role in this epic annual race. 2009 is a year of change for this race – and for Mitsubishi. Due to terrorist threats, the race was moved from Africa to South America and proves to be every bit as challenging as the previous years. To add to this challenge, Mitsubishi has a new vehicle – the Racing Lancer – to attempt to claim their 8th consecutive Dakar win. New terrain and new car – sounds like the perfect Dakar recipe!
Check out the images of the Racing Lancer at Mitsubishi HQ in Cypress, CA. While this one will not be in the race that starts on January 3rd, it’s a replica of the 4 actual race units. Click here to learn more about the Dakar race.
(Taken with HTC Touch Pro – not bad for a phone!)
Those complaining about a laggy interface on their HTC Touch Pro / Fuze will be delighted to know that there is a fix that will make it feel much snappier (especially TF3D). Apparently by default the device is set not to use hardware acceleration through the built in ATI Imageon processor. Instead it uses the normal CPU for these types of processes. Enabling the ATI hardware is as easy as modifying a registry entry to point to the ATI driver and rebooting, or you can install the cab over at xda-developers.com.
According to the thread, this cab makes the following registry modification:
HKLM/System/D3DM/Drivers/LocalHook
Replace the original value 'D3DMXSx50PB.dll" to "d3dm_ati.dll"
The best way to test if the driver is working is to use the Diamond VR Hologram App on the first page of the thread. A successful install will yield 20 – 25 FPS in the app.
UPDATE 1/7/09: For those looking for the CAB install file, I have uploaded it here:
diamond-ati-d3d-driver.cab
(save to your phone and open with File Explorer to install.)
If you have any questions, please post in here and I will try my best to help!
