I’ve been using a Brother HL-2040 laser printer for the last couple of years. It’s a small, cheap (available these days for under $100 after not too much shopping around) and fast (up to 20ppm) printer that produces good quality. Frankly, I’ve been very happy with it.

The toner cartridges for this printer cost around $75 [...]

I know that not everybody believes in so-called Internet Security Suites. These collections of security products are designed to keep your net-connected PC free of nasties such as virii, spam, spyware, adware and the like. It is sometimes suggested that these products are, in fact, unnecessary bloatware, and that the operating system (particularly if it’s [...]

Every ton of discarded electronic equipment contains 17 times more gold than a ton of gold ore and 40 times more copper than a ton of copper ore. Amazing. More here.

On a number of occasions recently, it would have been really handy to have a colour laser printer at the House of Nerds, in order to produce business-quality colour printouts.

I thought seriously about buying one of the nifty little Samsung CLP-300N devices ($A599 RRP, available for less than half that price at IT Estate). Then [...]

Last week I took myself off to the CeBit IT industry trade show, held in the Sydney Exhibition Centre (SEC).

Window Clippings looks like a nice utility for capturing windows in either XP or Vista environments.

Checkpoint has released an update to my Internet security suite-of-choice: ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite (ZAISS). So I downloaded it, of course.

An innovative new offering from Apple?

I’ve been accepted onto my first official Beta program – the Beta for Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows Home Server (WHS).

The idea of WHS is that it can provide:

centralised (and automated, if required) backup for all PCs in the home
simple access to network-based shared (or dedicated) storage – without requiring user knowledge of drive configuration
simplified remote access [...]

By all accounts, Microsoft’s new Office 2007 suite is something pretty special. Apparently the new user interface paradigm (hey, I am a marketing guy!) exposes more functionality than ever before. I reckon this would be a good thing for the modern e-family. All four of us make pretty extensive use of Office applications in many [...]

UPDATE 14 FEB 07: Version 2 is out and it’s not free any more. Still a great little app…

Like many computer nerds, I find myself often wanting to take a screenshot of an application window or just a small region of the screen. Like everybody who has ever tried this, I have found Windows (XP)’s [...]

Being a nerd, new stuff interests me.

I’ve steered clear of the Windows Vista beta programs as I just don’t have a computer in the house that can ‘go down’ without impacting other family members. But now that Vista is released and the upgrade pricing (particularly for the Academic version—which is applicable in many home situations) [...]

My eyes have been opened. Now I want to know how this broadband thingy works…

I don’t have an iPod.

I do have a portable, digital music player. It’s a Rio Karma. And it’s now an orphan. Rio has effectively exited the market, and my Karma has no long term future. When it dies, I’ll either have to buy a used replacement on eBay, or join the iPod throng.

Anyway, that’s a [...]

I wrote some time ago about using Pamela to record Skype calls—particularly as an aid to keeping a church congregation in touch with sent/supported missionaries.

I’ve just seen details about another (simpler) Skype plug-in that claims to do the same thing: PowerGramo.

I haven’t used PowerGramo, and so I can’t recommend it. If you try it out, [...]

As promised, herewith some observations on the FreeNAS Storage Area Network application.

After my bad experience with the Netgear SC-101 (here), I was (again) the owner of two unused 200GB IDE hard drives, and I still wanted to have a free-standing backup location for the family’s computers.

A quick search led me to FreeNAS, an open source [...]

In response to Neil’s comment on my post about the Netgear SC-101 NAS (Network Attached Storage) device, I suggested that the new D-Link DNS-323 might be worth a look.

After a rebuild of the UltraBox (my home PC), I had a couple of 200GB IDE drives ‘spare’. I decided to make some sort of NAS (Network Attached Storage) device to allow the household’s various PCs to undertake regular backups.

Despite some (ahem) mixed reviews on various sites, I invested $155 in a Netgear SC-101 Storage [...]

Windows Vista Home Premium will cost $A455.

This must be some kind of joke. $455 for an operating system for a home computer? I nearly choked on my Fibre Plus when I read that.

Unless there is a SUBSTANTIAL upgrade discount (56% off list will see a retail price of $A200), I reckon the Nerd fleet of [...]

Yes, it’s a big call.

But those who have installed some form of ‘desktop search’ application will usually swear by them.

For a couple of years now, I’ve been using Yahoo Desktop Search – a free program that can be downloaded from Yahoo. YDS works in the background to index all your files and emails, and allows [...]