WorldCAD Access

From Cassette to MP3

Limitations galore For my daughter's upcoming major birthday, her husband wanted to make a playlist of the music she used in her figure skating routines. It was my job to hunt them down. One song was on a CD, so that was easy to convert to MP3. There is lots of free software that does that, even iTunes will do it once you jump through the correct hurdles. Another song was on a cassette tape. There was a time when I had hundreds of tapes, which I listened to, to spare wear and tear on the roughly 400 vinyl records... Read more →

Updated: Lenovo announces first workstation with 64-core CPU

Lenovo ThinkStation P620 Summer used to be quiet time for user conferences, press events, and product launches. People were, after all, on vacation. Fall was the busiest time for me, but spring was busy for others who cover tech events. Then a thing called coronavirus happened, and people said that "afterwards everything would change." For these events, it has changed. Last week and this week, I received invitations for five online events -- from Graphisoft (2 events), 3D Systems, Siemens, and Lenovo. In July! That I am travelling and on vacation during summer months -- well, that's not a factor.... Read more →

ChromeOS Grows Up

Now with Android & Linux support A number of years ago, I bought one of the very first Chromebooks out of curiosity. It was pretty lame. About the only thing I found myself doing with it was periodically booting it up to update ChromeOS. Chromebooks run Google's Chrome Web browser as the operating system. This means that the only thing a Chromebook can do is run Google's Chrome Web browser, and any extensions supported by ChromeOS. Very limiting. I was limited to using apps like Google Docs and lame photo editors, which held no interest to me. Further, the Chromebook... Read more →

The Determinism Future of AI

You will be harmonious I've told my kinds, if you don't like where you're working or who you are working for, quit. (In my job, I get to fire clients who are too annoying.) And so we read that "Organizer of Google Sexual Harassment Walkout Leaves The Company." Actually, organizer Meredith Whittaker is one of four out of the six organizers who have left Google by this point. Meredith Whittaker is not the only whistleblower speaking against Google mis-culture. James Daemore did, too. For the mainstream and tech media, however, Whittaker is a martyr to be hallowed; Daemore is an... Read more →

MX Performance 2S is Logitech's expensive mouse mistake

The MX devolves As a professional technical writer who often puts into 12-to-14-hour days writing and typesetting, I rely on an excellent keyboard (currently loving AZIO's MGK 1-K backlit, aluminum-bodied brown-switch that is such a joy to use that it makes me just want to type more) and Logitech's MX Performance mouse; see figure 1. I use the MX, because it is a big, tall mouse on which I can rest my hand; has plenty of buttons; feels hefty; and it... Figure 1: Logitech's (old) MX Performance mouse with its band of steel ... switches between freewheel scrolling and clicked... Read more →

How to resurrect your old Pebble smartwatch

Users arise For 19 years, I appreciated my titanium Citizen Eco-drive with its perpetual calendar (see figure 1). Titanium, because I don't want the weight. Eco-drive, because it never needs a battery (a solar panel on the face recharges a capacitor). Perpetual calendar, because I never need to set the date, even in leap years. Figure 1: Kind of like this, but in titanium I tried a few other watches, and even some smartwatches, but always went back to the Citizen as it was reliable. Until it wasn't. One morning I noticed that its hands weren't moving. Now, this could... Read more →

This is what it's like using a $30 smartwatch

100 calories an hour After Apple taught manufacturers in China how to design and build smart watches, the market over there became flooded with sub-$100 models. During Black Friday weekend, Umidigi offered their new smartwatch for US$30, instead of US$50 -- with choice of rubber or metal mesh strap. Apple charges $100 for its metal strap alone, so this was a deal! I wanted to see what the very latest in smartwatch could offer me, albeit cheap. This would not be my first, but my fourth. My first was Sony's original one came out in 2012 and barely worked. A... Read more →

Why my mother-in-law's new laptop is a desktop

So much cheaper My mother-in-law's laptop was getting so slow that even she was complaining about it. It's a Toshiba I got for her from Staples many years ago; it still runs Vista. As I thought about how to replace it, the high cost of decent laptops put me off. Browsing black Friday sales I came across an offer for a reconditioned mini desktop. That was it! I realized that she never moves her laptop from the desk in her office, so a desktop would (1) save her lots of money and (2) be more powerful. A Dell, it had... Read more →

Fixing problems with HP's Elite laptop

Not so elite My dad bought himself a "really good" computer last year. Normally I spec them out for him, but this time he decided to get his own -- at age 93 . He ended up with a fairly impressive machine: 17" HP Elite (but with no touchscreen, oddly enough) 2.0-2.7HGz i7 CPU 12GB RAM 1TB hard drive, which was replaced by a 1TB solid state drive nVidia graphics board Backlit keyboard, CD/DVD drive, etc. And then after a year he decided he didn't like it, and gave it to me -- as per usual. I am unsure what... Read more →

A second monitor for your laptop

Sibolan S1 portable monitor I was envious of editor Roopinder Tara having a second monitor for his laptop. I believe that it was an add-on from Lenovo, who also made the laptop. When we editors are into serious writing and editing, two monitors are a must! Some guys use the LCD tv screen in their hotel rooms, but they aren't particularly portable. And so year or two ago, I looked into getting one, but they were priced like $1,500 -- shocking, given that it is basically a laptop-less screen! On a whim, I last week checked again on eBay to... Read more →

New HP Workstations and Monitor

HP Z8, Z6 and Z4 It used to be that workstation makers made their own CPUs. I suppose Oracle-owned Sun is the only one still doing so, called the SPARC. Integraph was the most interesting, as in the 1980s they designed their own CPUs to power their own workstations on which to run their own CAD software. An Apple before its time. (Intergraph benefited financially later in its post-hardware era when courts in USA and Germany found Intel stole intellectual property from Intergraph for use in the wildly-popular Pentium CPUs.) By relying on Intel and AMD, workstation makers limit the... Read more →

Benq's Brand-new PD2710QC Monitor

Reviewed by Ralph Grabowski When the public relations firm for Benq asked me if I would want to review one of their new 27" and 32" monitors aimed (in part) at CAD users, I asked for the smaller one of the two. That's because a couple of years back I reviewed the first-ever 30" monitor from Lenovo, and was unpleasantly overwhelmed by its size, but even more so with its weight. Sure, once placed on my desk, the 25-pound weight was no longer a problem, but the huge size was overwhelming for my desk and the adjacent monitors. (From what... Read more →

What I found when I bought a commercial-grade WiFi access point

Ubiquiti UAP-AC-LR wifi access point I live in a "BC Box" home, a rectangular house designed to maximize the interior space. These homes put the natural gas furnace and hot water heater in the center of the house, in the basement, with sheet metal ducts and copper piping spreading tentacle-like throughout the home. My Internet service arrives via an ADSL cable in the basement, at a corner -- the worst possible location. For more than a decade, I battled to get a strong, reliable WiFi signal past all that metal in the middle of the house. A few years ago,... Read more →

PTC ceo talks about IoT, VR, and AR

James Heppelmann from last week's conference call There's been a lot of buzz about augmented reality [AR] generated recently by Facebook and Snapchat. That technology is fun for consumers, but it'll be transformational for enterprises. You may not have thought of it this way yet, but if IoT [internet of things] brings data from the physical world into the digital world where it can be analyzed and understood, then augmented reality takes the resulting information from the digital world and overlays it back on the physical world to put it in context. Because AR is not very interesting without a... Read more →

Update: My HP Spectre X360 After One Year

A reader writes: I have always enjoyed your hardware experience blog posts, and so I have been waiting to read your conclusions and experiences with your HP Spectre X360 -- especially in view of your Yoga failure. - J.L. A bit of history: I bought the HP Spectre after my Lenovo Yoga 2 failed from bad memory chips. The chips are soldered in, so I could not repair them myself. It was just out of warranty, and the local Lenovo Repair Center estimated a repair cost of $1,500 -- about $300 more than what the laptop originally cost me --... Read more →

Here's hoping my new cell phone will be really great

UMI Super My current cell phone is an LG-made Google Nexus 4, that's over 4 years old. It is showing its age. Increasingly, the screen stays black when I turn it on; the only recourse is holding down the Power button until it reboots. Its CPU is struggling with today's app load, and the default camera app sometimes crashes but more often takes a long time to be ready. A replacement, clearly, is needed. At one time, I would have got the same phone as I got for my wife and my mother-in-law, the $200 Moto G with smart cover.... Read more →

HP and the World's Smallest MCAD Workstation

HP Z2 Mini G3 HP last week gave about 70 of us media people a preview of its new Z-series workstation. "Z" means computers meant for users of high-end desktop software, like mechanical CAD design and movie editing. This one is called Z2 Mini G3 -- a riff of Apple's Mac Mini. HP product managers were pretty huffed up about the angular design (see figure 1), which is a problem for me, because I like rectangular black boxes. The more rectangular and featureless the better, and silent -- like my six-year-old Acer desktop; think monolith from 2001, but fatter. Figure... Read more →

The Cliq of Death

Zip! There was a brief interlude when the Zip disk reigned supreme. I was reminded of this when my dad plonked a box of computer cables on my floor. Amongst the tangled mess was an Iomega Zip drive (see figure 1). Figure 1: The second generation Zip drive from Iomega The Zip disk was a kind of corporate standard in the late 1990s, because it held 100MB. Not a lot by today's standards of cheap 64GB USB drives, but in the day that was 32x more than the ubiquitous 3.5" floppy disk. Now, 100MB was 6.5x less capacity than a... Read more →

Miscellaneous Tips about Storage Media

My friend Don writes Slashdot is mostly devoid of useful info nowadays, but there were some useful comments about the value of CDs/DVDs/BlueRays in this article: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/08/26/1420259/ask-slashdot-do-you-still-use-optical-media He made for me this summary of important comments, which I am happy to share with you: - - - I have collected almost a thousand audio CDs over the past 25 years. They served as masters for the digital copies I keep on my PC. Now I've discovered that a few of them are suffering from visible bit-rot, with the aluminum layer slowly being eaten / corroded in from the edge. -... Read more →

How to turn off CapsLock on G-series keyboards

It's in the gaming software I only ever buy keyboards and mice from Logitech, because the quality is excellent and I know what to expect. SetPoint, right? 'Tis not the case for its G-series keyboards, where the G is short for Gaming. With SetPoint not available for these keyboards, it becomes harder to turn off irritants like CapsLock. But it is not impossible, just more work, because G-series keyboards let you turn off any and all keys! Here's what I did: Started the Logitech Gaming Software. Yah, that's the generic name for its keyboard utility program. Click on Game Mode... Read more →

My new keyboard (even though I didn't want it)

Logitech G610 I came back from vacation to find the S and K keys no longer working on my Logitech Illuminated Keyboard (yip, that's the model number). As a professional writer and touch typist, I need a good keyboard under my fingers. The definition of "good" is a keyboard that lets me type fast and accurately. I type over 120 words per minute -- almost as fast as people talk (160 words per minute, typical). Poorly-designed keyboards (like those super shallow ones on Surface-style tablets and thin laptops) make me miss keys and slow me down. So Monday morning there... Read more →

Performing a brain transplant on that old Lenovo

$1500 or $300 After the soldered-in RAM malfunctioned in my Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro just three months past the warranty expiration, their Authorized Repair Center quoted me $1500 to repair it: US$950 for a new motherboard from Lenovo, plus the technician's time, plus taxes. As that was more than the cost of buying the computer a year earlier, I threw it into our recycling bin. (I wrote about all the problems with Lenovo's Yoga 2 Pro at http://www.worldcadaccess.com/blog/2015/12/why-ill-never-buy-another-lenovo.html.) But then I wondered: could I get a motherboard from another source. I recalled when a roommate spilled orange juice on my... Read more →

Our 10-second STEM test

Science, technology, engineering, mathematics With the push to put more students (a.k.a. women) into the fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics, how can they tell if they are cut out for a career in STEM? Take our 10-second test to find out: Q. Spend 10 seconds or more examining all aspects of this image. Does it excite you? Can you figure out (on your own) what a lot of it means? See below for what your answer means. A: Yes, to both questions. This means that you probably will succeed in STEM. A: No, to one or both questions.... Read more →

Why I no longer wear a smartwatch

Not so smart, after all A year ago I got myself a Pebble Steel smartwatch for myself as my Christmas present. I chose the Pebble because it has a 5-7-day battery life (instead of 1 day), was on Black Friday sale for cheap, and came with a stainless steel strap (which I need, as plastic and leather straps don't work well with me). When I ordered it, I also ordered a spare charging cable so I'd always have a spare, as the cable had a proprietary magnetic attachment. No cable, no watch. I liked being able to read it easily,... Read more →

Why I'll never buy another Lenovo , part ii

BSOD One ongoing problem haunted Lenovo's ill-fated Yoga 2 that lived only 15 months under my ownership: frequent BSODs [blue screens of death]. Typically, they occurred a few moments after I opened the laptop's lid while in sleep mode. That was the pattern. Blue screen of death At the time, I thought of it as an irritation, but now I wonder if it was an early sign that bad RAM was soldered to the motherboard. More blue screens of death There are two reasons I didn't suspect this serious problem before the warranty expired. Firstly, the error messages displayed by... Read more →

Why I'll never buy another Lenovo

Soldered-in memory I bought a Lenovo Yoga 2 almost as an impulse just over a year ago, because it had a wonderful keyboard that was backlit. Some Lenovo laptops do have the best keyboards in the industry, owing to their IBM legacy. (Most laptop keyboards are awful due to the thin size not providing sufficient space for key travel or indented keytops -- and excellent keyboards are crucial to professional writers.) The ill-fated Yoga 2 by Lenovo soon to be pining for the fiords (image credit Digital Trends) Anyhow, no sooner did I get it home that I discovered this... Read more →

What It's Like Running Solid Edge on a Cheap Windows Tablet

Your Christmas Special It's that time of year again when the staff of upFront.eZine takes its annual Christmas break. See you again in January! But before we do, one more issue of upFront.eZine to grace your inbox this week. The topic is running an MCAD system on a cheap tablet -- specifically Solid Edge on a $275 Intel-powered dual-OS (Windows and Android) Teclast TPad X98 Pro tablet. (See figure at left.) We test the CAD system running native in Windows and then again in the Chrome Web browser on Android and Windows. To subscribe, write me at [email protected] PS: The... Read more →

Bricked twice

Android and Windows I've managed to brick two computers in two months, and it wasn't even my fault! Android Agony I bought earlier in the year a new Android tablet, and each month the manufacturer issued a system update. After I applied the September update, the tablet would not reboot into Android. (See Figure 1.) Figure 1 "No Command" means Android can't find the code it needs to finish booting I spent quite a lot of time using different methods Android has for self-resuscitation, but to no avail. One brick. Windows Woe Last week, the same scenario occurred in Windows.... Read more →

Fixing the sound that Dolby breaks

Better sound through less software One thing that's puzzled me over the years is why computer manufacturers claim the sound on their laptops have been optimized by one sound company or another -- Dolby, Beats, and so on. Their tiny speakers all sound like tinny transistor radios from the 1960s. Well, come to think of it, my transistor radio had a speaker larger than any laptop, and if I positioned it just right between the end of my bed and the wall, I even got some respectable bass out of it. OK, let's reverse it. Why would a respectable-sounding sound... Read more →

Technology that I couldn't get working

HDMI out -> USB in I have this Surface-class tablet I rarely use, because it is underpowered. But it is a full Windows 8.1 (well, Windows 10 Tech Preview) computer that is wonderfully light. Side rant: I think Microsoft could have had a runaway hit on their hands if (a) the keyboard were sufficiently attached to use the computer on one's lap [like Asus does with their's] and (2) it were 3/4 the price, so that the most expensive was $1,200. People like me'll spend $1,000 on a good very-portable computer, but not $1,900. Thing is, Microsoft has always dreamed... Read more →

Apocalypse nearing as computers slow down

Now! Slower than 1GHz! 2014 was the year the computer world began running backwards. Those of us growing up with personal computers in the 1980s and 1990s experienced ever increasing speeds. Some of us remember desktops with TurboBoost! buttons that sped up the PC from 4.7MHz to 10MHz. (The reason for the button: some software was written for 4.7MHz in mind, and would not work properly at other speeds.) My policy was to buy a new desktop computer anytime a newer CPU was at least 3x faster. The last time I bought a new desktop was quite a few years... Read more →

Why my desktop needs 4-5 monitors

All for one When I write my books, I use four or five screens. My Windows 7 workstation has three, as illustrated below by the screen grab: In the center is the main 23" monitor (running at a higher than typical resolution of 2048 x 1152 ) for the InDesign desktop publishing software that I use. I find that InDesign fits two pages better with this higher-res monitor than on standard HD-res monitors. On the right is the second monitor, 18" and 1360 x 768, for InDesign’s many palettes and PaintShop Pro (for editing figures). The secondary monitor with lower... Read more →

Hardware review: Logitech K480 triple-Bluetooth keyboard

Intriguing concept, flawed implementation My wife Heather is becoming sufficiently comfortable using her iPad that I suggested she take it as her "computer" the next time she travels. She would need a Bluetooth keyboard with which to type emails. The local flyer of BestBuy that week featured Logitech's new portable keyboard, the K480. I had read about this keyboard, it intrigued me, here was my excuse for buying one, and now it was available locally, finally. Well, except it wasn't. None of the outlets in our area carried it in stock; a helpful store employed finally located the elusive keyboard... Read more →

3dconnexion's new mouse: corded and 2D

CadMouse brings back middle button 3dconnexion is best known for its line of 3D mice, including most recently a cordless model. So it may come as a surprise that their latest model is a 2D mouse, and a corded one at that. The 2D CadMouse is designed to compliment their 3D mice. Well, 2D mice always have. The demo jocks show off how they can design in MCAD with the 3D mouse in the left hand, and the traditional 2D one in the traditional right hand (for the 90% of the world that's right-handed). The drawback is that we CAD... Read more →

Live blogging the Raspberry Pi 2 launch

Runs Windows 10 free Rushing to our desktop workstation, we got just 15 minutes notice about the launch event for the computer press, here this Monday morning. The new device is said to be 6x faster, still costs just $35, and will run Windows 10 free in a special arrangement with Microsoft. While I disparage Microsoft's attempts over the decades to monopolize the software side of the personal computer industry, it is good to see that the new ceo is doing what the former one refused to see: new markets. Other examples, of course, include apps for Androids and iOS.... Read more →

What it's like to own a smartwatch

Kinda handy, as it turns out A couple of years ago, I bought one of the very first smartwatches. It was made by Sony, communicated with Android phones, and cost $99. I bought it from England through eBay, as the watch was never released in Canada. It had a four-point touch screen, but the low resolution, dim display, and the need to recharge it daily meant it soon ended up in my graveyard of watches. (Second shelf, third bookcase.) In particular, it did not communicate well with the Android phone, probably because Bluetooth communications protocols were not as robust as... Read more →

Meet the German guys who invented the better 3D controller

from Senic GmbH Tobias Eichenwald wrote last week to give me an early look at his company's new controller, named Flow. Like a 3D mouse, it is designed to work with your existing 2D mouse. Unlike the 3D mice from, say, 3Dconnexion, this one has no buttons. (Important: this input device is not available yet, and is dependent on funding from an IndieGOGO campaign that begins today.) The puck-like device is used by rotating it and tapping on areas of the white top. It connects through Bluetooth (not available on most desktops, however), has an API, and can be customized... Read more →

Scanning through dirt and roads

Mobile Ground Penetrating Radar Catsurveys has figured out how to synchronize large quantities of data generated by ground-penetrating radar to a moving geographic location (using corrected GNSS -- global navigation satellite system). It's employed to determine the location of undergound utilities. The MGPR [mobile ground penetrating radar] uses a multitude of low and intermediate frequency antennas to boost the quality of data and its reliability. Double polarized antennas cover both longitudinal and transversal scans to create one of the clearest underground images available. The speed of data collection means it can be used in normal traffic, and not just on... Read more →

Logitech removed double-clicking from its mice; here's how to get it back

For my 3.5-week trip through Europe this month, I look along my trusty three-year-old ASUS Android tablet and my brand-new Lenovo Windows 8.1 ultrabook, one of their Yoga models. The Yoga has three input devices, and none of them is just right for me: Trackpad (its built-in buttons are insufficiently responsive for my needs, and scrolling occurs even though I turned it off) Pointing stick (I never got the handle of it, but then I never figured out 3D mice, either) Touchscreen (user interface elements are too tiny with 1920x1080 resolution on a 12" screen, and so not easy to... Read more →

Bringing our 1970s stereo systems into the Bluetooth era

Logitech Bluetooth Audio Adapter In my office, I sill use the Marantz stereo receiver that I bought in 1976 during my university years. I keep it up to date by hooking it up to an Internet radio. In our living room, we have a Sony mini component stero system that probably close to 20 years old. To listen to Internet radio, I sometimes run a cable from the MD input connector (Sony-ese for AUX) to my phone. Not that convenient. I had heard about Bluetooth audio adapters for stereo systems, and I wondered if this would make life more convenient.... Read more →

Windows Experience Index isn't dead; it's just resting

It's pining Some users and many tech sites bemoaned Microsoft's "removal" of Windows Experience Index (WEI) from Windows 8.1; it was not removed. WEI is still there as a command-line utility; what Microsoft removed was the dialog box interface. And so a number of entrepreneurs wrote free utilities to bring it back. WEI tests the speeds of the CPU, RAM, graphics devices, and hard drive, and so I find it useful for seeing where the bottlenecks are. In fact, I wish all computers sellers would post the WEI next to each computer on display so that we can buy the... Read more →

Hardware review: My new Lenovo Yoga ultrabook

...and why I replaced its SSD drive A couple of weeks ago, I saw a Lenovo Yoga at Staples, fell in love with it, and bought it a few hours later at a sale price of $1,050 for my birthday. It's one of Lenovo's ultrabooks whose screen rotates 360 degrees -- from laptop to tent, to reverse laptop, to tablet mode. Feels solid, real solid. (There are quite a few different Yoga models made by Lenovo, so your's might be quite different.) Love It! It's got an i5 CPU, albeit only two-core and only 1.6GHz. But this solves the speed... Read more →

Hardware Review: Lenovo's ThinkServer RD640 rack server computer

by Greg Reuter The RD640 is a server computer that Lenovo designed for business critical applications and virtualization and to be highly configurable. It is meant for medium to large enterprises. Servers are computers designed to serve up and store data, such as CAD files and network-compatible software. Their main purpose is to be reliable, fast and store lots of data. To be reliable, they are well-built using high-quality components and feature redundancy in the areas that tend to fail the most, such as hard drives (through data mirroring) and power supplies (replaceable while the computer is running). To be... Read more →

Solving the dreadful thin keyboard problem

Ditching thin for portable As computers get thinner, designers are forced to make keyboards more dreadful. No more sculpted keys to guide our finger tips to the centers of keys; they're all flat tops now. No more decent key travel; they all feel like we're typing on plywood. When the communications link is wireless via BlueTooth, the slow BT protocol simply cannot keep up with my 120 words-per-minute speed; I experience long lags in seeing the text appearing in the word processor. And for Canadians, hardware makers cut back on their costs by providing "universal" keyboards that handle English and... Read more →

Our new home phone is a cell base station

$10 a month for the rest of my life When we first moved to this town, the local phone service was cheap: $11 a month, because we could only call two nearby, smaller towns without incurring long distance charges. Then the Canadian telephone regulator got the brilliant idea to allow competition among home phone service providers. This was going to be great: an even lower phone bill! When Regulators Fail The regulator's plan failed spectacularly for two reasons. The local monopoly phone provider asked for, and received, a more than doubling of the price to compensate for the extra costs... Read more →

Fuel3D brings point-n-shoot to 3D scanning, but at a DSLR price

by Roopinder Tara, Tenlinks.com Getting 3D models from photographs seems magical when you see the result, but there are barriers to existing systems. Consider Autodesk's 123D Catch: it involves someone taking 30 to 40 photographs. That's a lot of photos, a lot of data, and time. Though Autodesk's system doesn't require you to be precise, there is some technique involved. You must take a series of photos in two different orbits around the object. What happens if the subject moves? Then racks of cameras shooting simultaneously can alleviate the issue, but that means you now have to have 30-40 cameras... Read more →

How driverless cars might reduce traffic jams, but probably won't

Eliminating the driver is the half-cure I've been watching Google's effort to produce a driverless car with mild interest, mild because it's no panacea, with interest because my degree and first work out of university was transportation engineering. (One of my classes was on traffic flow theory; I was the only student to take it that year.) One claim is that the driverless car will reduce congestion; the counter-claim is that it won't. Let's take a look at what causes traffic to jam. The capacity of a road consists of several variables. Let's take the ideal example of a freeway... Read more →

Robert Green: Professional Graphics Should Matter to CAD Users

Independent Content commissioned by TenLinks In the early days of PC-based CAD, we knew that high-performance graphics cards and large-screen monitors were required to run CAD software effectively. Desktop computers of the day came standard with low-resolution (320x200 or 640x350), few-color (4 or 16) displays. But with 20-inch tube monitors (running 800x600- or 1024x768-resolution 256-color graphics) weighing in at 75 pounds and costing $4000 or more, the solution wasn’t cheap -- or fun to lift. We nevertheless took the plunge to attain the productivity we needed. Fast forward to today, and 21-inch flat screen monitors are a throwaway commodity. But... Read more →

Solving the Mac Mini's blank-out problem

I have a Mac Mini, but I don't use it, except when I need to test Mac-based CAD software or install an update. So rarely that I figured I could use it as a media delivery unit. I have the Linux-powered BRIX box in our downstairs entertainment room, hooked up to a 720p projector and an 80" screen. My wife calls this the Summer Entertainment Room, because the screen blacks out light from the windows and it is too cold to sit in that basement room in Winter. Last week, I put the Mac Mini in our upstairs Family Room,... Read more →

Live blogging Dell Precision workstation launch: Day 2

Dell this morning announced a new entry-level portable workstation, ie, high-power laptop. The starting price is $1200, but it will not ship until later in the Spring. Not a lot of specs at this point, but it looks like a traditional laptop, and not the ultrabook size. The M2800 is the cheapest 15" engineering laptop, says Dell, but the starting price can grow with all of the options available, some of which are listed below. It weighs just over 5.5 pounds. It can be configured with Intel's Core i5 and i7 processors, AMD's FirePro W4170M graphics with 2GB of GDDR5... Read more →