ads

Slider[Style1]

Style2

Style3[OneLeft]

Style3[OneRight]

Style4

Style5

Save money by running your PC more efficiently

Posted by: Unknown Posted date: 12:55 AM / comment : 0 ,

How mach power do PCs use?

Most desktop computers use between 65 and 250 Watts. Laptops are less demanding and use between 15 and 45 Watts. LCD monitors can use 20 Watts while they're switched on. and even energy-efficient models can still use 2W while on standby. If you're still using an older CRT (cathode ray tube) monltor. It could be using as much as 80 Watts. The more work your PC is doing. the more power it will consume. 50 if you're using lots of peripherals or playing games. your power drain will be greater than if you’re just doing a bit of typing. If you're accessing the intemet. you'll be using more power because more devices and components are being used to send and receive the data.
Save money by running your PC more efficiently

Monitor your energy use

The figures above are just a rough guide.
To get a more accurate measure of how much electricity your PC uses. attach an energy monitor to your mains supply cable. This is very easy and perfectly safe. and you'll be able to see the power consumption of your computer the moment you turn on your PC. You'll also be able to work out how much electricity individual items use - such as your screen or printer. Some energy suppliers provide free monitors with certain tariffs. but you can buy one yourself. OWL (www.theowl.com) has a range of models, priced from around £28. Once you've measured your electricity consumption. you can work out how much you’re paying. See our Mini Workshop below for instructions on how to do this.

Speed up boot up

The main reason we fail to switch off our computers is that it takes a frustrating amount of time to start them up again. Reducing your PC's boot time will encourage other computer users in your household (usually the ones who don't pay the electricity bill) to switch the PC off when they've finished using it.
Start by uninstalling unwanted programs and removing clutter using a program such as CCleaner (www.piriform.com). Then defrag your hard disk using the built-in Windows disk defragmenter or a program such as Auslogics Disk Defrag Free (www.auslogics.com). Slow boot-ups are most commonly caused by a lot of extra programs launching alongside Windows. You can easily remove unwanted auto-starting items using the Startup manager in CCleaner. or a program such as WinPatrol (www.winpatrol.com). Replacing your current mechanical system drive with a much faster $50 will make a big difference and can cut boot up times from several minutes to a matter of seconds. Decent-sized 5505 are getting cheaper. and you can currently buy a 24068 Kingston Technology V300 drive from Amazon for £73. The other benefit of upgrading to an $50 is that they are far more energy efficient than traditional hard drives. A typical hard drive will consume around SW at peak load while an $50 will use less than 2W. 

Turn off your screen

Old fashioned CRT monitors are rare nowadays. but if you still use one, it will be your biggest consumer of electricity by some margin. Modern flat screens are much better. but you should still get into the habit of switching off your monitor when you step away from your computer. Use the off switch rather than just letting it go into standby. Try turning the brightness down. too - you can usually get used to a darker screen fairly quickly. Screensavers were originally designed to protect your monitor from phosphor burn-in. which is a permanent ghostly image on the screen caused by a still image being displayed continuously for a long time. This is no longer an issue with modern monitors. so screensavers serve no real purpose beyond looking nice. Some of the fanciest screensavers can be very processor intensive. keeping your graphics hardware working and your monitor switched on, all of which wastes electricity. 

Make use of power-saving plans

Windows comes with a comprehensive selection of fully customisable power plans. A balanced set-up will suit most users. but you can reduce overall energy consumption by switching to a power-saver plan instead. In windows 7, click Start. type Power Options into the box and press Enter. It's the same in Windows 8.x. except you need to type Power Options on the Start screen and press Enter.

Why I am receiving these graphics card warnings ?

Posted by: Unknown Posted date: 2:44 AM / comment : 0 ,

The question:
I'm wondering if you can help me with my Windows Vista problems. They don't appear to affect the computer‘s performance or my ability to use it, but do result in annoying messages that appear every time I start my PC.
The first message appears just after I switch on, saying “Unsupported Video Configuration Detected”. It also says that my computer “has an add-in graphics card but the monitor cable is plugged into the integrated video connector”. I am offered the option to press F1 to continue or F2 to enter setup. I press F1 and all seems fine. Then, when Windows has launched, I get this warning: “The Catalyst Control Centre is not supported by the driver version of your [obscured words] graphics adapter. Please update your ATI graphics driver, or enable your [obscured words] using the Displays Manager.” The obscured words are off the edge of the screen, so I can’t read them. Do you have any idea what’s causing this and how to silence these annoying messages?

The answer: 
The messages contain clues to the cause of your problem. Catalyst Control Centre is software from a company called ATI, which makes graphics cards. So, your PC has a dedicated ATI graphics card installed and also a graphics card that’s integrated onto the motherboard. From the warning messages it sounds
like your monitor’s cable is plugged into the connector for the motherboard’s graphics card. That’s fine if that’s what you or the manufacturer intended, but your PC detects a dedicated graphics card fitted, so you’re seeing these messages. 
graphics card warnings solution
The solution most likely to work is to look around the rear of your PC and plug the monitor cable into the other connector. If it does, all well and good your problem is solved.

If not, it could be that your drivers are out of date or that you need to install Microsoft’s .NET framework, which is required for ATl’s Catalyst Control Centre to work correctly. You can download the latest version of .NET from http://www.microsoft.com/net/downloads and the latest version of your graphics card’s drivers from http://support.amd.com/en-us/download.

Finally, there's also the outside possibility that the dedicated graphics card has been loose or faulty since you bought it, so you’ve always relied on the motherboard’s graphics connector, consider this normal and have put up with the messages. If this is the case, then switch off the computer and remove the power cable, earth yourself by touching a metal—grounded object (like a radiator) then carefully open up the case and look inside. Remove the graphics card’s retaining screw then remove and reinsert the graphics card, using firm thumb pressure. Reassemble, attach the monitor cable to the graphics card’s connector then fire up your PC.
If it doesn’t work, open the case again and then remove the card completely. This should fix your first message. If the second still appears when Windows loads, use Control Panel to uninstall Catalyst Control Centre.

How to hide your tracks on the internet

Posted by: Unknown Posted date: 2:41 AM / comment : 0 , ,

Staying safe when you're online is more important than ever. These handy tips allow you to avoid its dodgy bits.

How to hide your tracks on the internet

Thanks to the ubiquity of internet connected devices, we’re online more often and in more places than ever. But there is a dark side to this world: cyber criminals want our money, our identities and our information, and they’re often successful in getting them. We’ll show you how to stay safe and cover your tracks when you're online. Of course, you don’t need to cover your tracks if you don’t make any in the first place. Using a PC in an internet cafe is a secure way to browse the internet, providing you don't log in to any sites. Having to go to a specific place to access the internet kind of defeats the point of mobile, unlimited internet access though. Fortunately, most browsers come with incognito or private browsing modes, which mean anything you enter is wiped when the window is closed down.

In Internet Explorer, pressing [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[P] opens an In Private window, while [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[N] opens an Incognito window in Chrome. These modes are particularly useful if you don't want sensitive information such as passwords to be stored by your browser. They’ re also useful for checking out suspicious internet links as they prevent websites accessing personal information.

However, incognito modes won’t stop spyware or malware accessing your keystrokes or passwords. For these you need a robust antivirus package that's kept up to date. It’s a good idea to run scans regularly to stop nasties getting in, and to use any identity protection tools included with the software. 
Google’s internet searches tend to deliver the best results, but at a price the company traclm the things you search for so it can deliver relevant adverts to you. If you’re not happy about this, you can use Duck Duck Go’s (http://duckduckgo.com) search to find what you’re looking for without being tracked. We’ve found it to be as accurate and useful as Google.

Lenovo ThinkVision Pro 2840m

Posted by: Unknown Posted date: 1:21 PM / comment : 0 ,

A stylish looking panel, but its chic looks conceal some serious problems

£450 | $799 

Lenovo ThinkVision Pro 2840m
Most of the monitors on test this month get so much right, it seems all the wrongness has been reserved for Lenovo’s unfortunate ThinkVision. To be clear, this is largely a high quality product from a normally highly reliable brand. The chassis is a nice bit of engineering, as is the fully adjustable stand. Overall, it feels reassuringly expensive. However, it has serious problems. It starts with the glass cover over the screen. No doubt product managers at Lenovo spotted the same feature on Apple’s hot-selling iMacs and assumed it’s a premium feature that buyers want. Indeed, it might be a feature Apple customers like, but it’s not one that improves a PC monitor. It’s one that introduces unwanted reflectivity in return for zero improvement in image quality. 

Crushed to death

Bad indeed, but not actually the worst problem. No, that involves this monitor’s image-processing chipset. The default setup is off-the-map wonky, with crushed details in white tones and a similar lack of definition in the black scales. This thing is just compression city.Normally, that kind of thing is the result of a wonky factory setting that can be mitigated through on-screen display tweaks and, if necessary, some image-tuning using your graphics driver. But not here. For starters, the options in the OSD are limited. There’s no gamma adjustability and the contrast option really only serves as a brightness adjustment. It doesn’t help matters at all.Into the Nvidia driver, then – but oh no, that’s not helping either. In fact, we can’t remember the last time we tested a display with such wonky default settings that we were unable to arrive at a semiacceptable solution through the video driver. It’s very disappointing.In fairness, when you’re not looking at test images, the ThinkVision doesn’t look awful. Actually, it looks pretty nice at a glance, but you will spot the compression problems from time to time, and it will drive you crazy.In other regards, it’s broadly on a par with the rest of the brave new 28-inch 4K brigade. Colours are impressively vibrant for a TN, and even pretty decent by IPS standards. Likewise, black levels and light leakage in general are kept well in check (even if its glass cover does a decent job of disguising that).As ever, then, it’s the mediocre vertical viewing angles that give the TN game away. Oh yeah, and just in case you aren’t already terminally put off, it also suffers from a spot of input lag. Nice. All in all, this isn’t a monitor that we can recommend. Not even a qualified “It’s okay if you don’t mind x and y.” Sadly, this is a screen that we must in all conscience warn you away from in its current state. With tweaked electronics it might be a possibility for anyone wanting a screen with a cover, but until then, steer well clear.

Looks like a quality product, but unfortunately its default settings are no good at all.


Price:£450/$799
Manufacturer: Lenovo
Size: 28-inch-TN
Resolution: 3,840 x 2,160
Viewing angles: 170/160°
Contrast: 3,000:1
Response: 5ms
VESA mount: 100 x 100mm 
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)
Copyright © 2014 PC Pro Tuts
⬆
Top