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Some time back there was a flurry of activity about a movie called The Secret. It claims to contain information used by sages and successful people down through the ages and to be informative of a way of thought that those ‘in control’ don’t want us to know. It is available now to download from such sites as www.torrentz.com as a movie, an audio book and even as a hemisync track.

The hemisync track uses binaural beats to get your brain into alpha mode while the message of The Secret is talked about. The idea is to have it almost like hypnosis so the message gets in.

Powaqqatsi and Koyaanisqatsi are movies by Godrey Reggio which tend to defy categorization. They stand, I guess, as works of Art rather than Hollywood style movies. Koyaanisqatsi is a movie with (more…)

There are a variety of ways in which computers improve our multimedia experience. Those with the cash to spare can buy a Multimedia PC, using the functions built in to connect to a home entertainment system that rivals those which, until recently, (relatively) were only available in cinemas.

Surround sound, large screens, High Definition quality – all these contribute to an experience that leaves a simple TV night in the dirt. A few years back you could spend $5,000 on a fairly basic system and you’d be lucky if you knew anyone with a good system. Now you can upgrade your screen and use your computer to boost performance for an engrossing evening deep in the multimedia experience.

But you can also do it fairly simply with your computer. Systems these days come with more than enough memory, video performance, DVD players and hard disk space to let you spend some quality multimedia time in front of your machine.

It can also, properly configured, provide an enveloping experience with computer games.

Once good speakers were a necessary part of the quality time, but now there are cheap headphones that can easily match the performance of expensive speakers. And it means you can enjoy yourself in a room with people watching TV or doing other things.

Just try not to be vocal about things happening on the screen – it gets extraordinarily annoying to others to have odd unexplained noises coming from the corner of the room. Keeping the noise down can be thought of as divorce avoidance.

So, you’ve upgraded the RAM (memory) in your computer and now it runs better than before, but when you try to edit your digital video or convert your digicam footage into a DVD, it takes hours to run. Or maybe you go out and buy the latest game and then find it shows jerky video segments or takes excess time to update screens. What’s going on?

Well a lot of video performance issues come down to how capable your video card is. Most recent computers have a video chip on the motherboard to provide video capability. The problems with this may only surface (more…)

OK, so you’re wanting to improve your computer performance and you figure you’ll start with memory. You’ve looked inside the box to see if you have free slots or you’ve decided to replace what you have.

How to tell what kind you have?

There’s a nice little tool called Hardware Info which will query your computer and present you with a nice list of everything in it. Download it, install it and when you want to upgrade things in your machine it will tell you all you need to know.

Note the memory type in your computer (write it down) and you’re ready to (more…)

RAM, or memory for your computer is probably the best upgrade. It’s been a while since there was a major change in the chip (CPU) that runs your computer apart from some tweaks in speed and the number of simultaneous operations it can perform.

Those tweaks can be important if you’re pushing the envelope of performance, such as high end video editing or creation or the latest in games. But for the average user, nothing adds extra ‘zing’ to the day-to-day as RAM. And it’s cheap.

You do, however, need to be careful about what memory you buy. There are different kinds (more…)

So… you’ve looked around, found your needs, discovered which ones suit your computer best, found a supplier with a good rep and a decent price and you’re wondering who you can pay to do the upgrade.

Relax, it’s not that hard. If you try not to worry about the complexities of what a computer actually does, there are only a few parts to see in the box and they are easy to identify.

But first, read and meditate on the following…

Rule number one – (more…)

So if you have a reason to upgrade, and the money to do it, you should spend a little bit of time to work out just what needs upgrading. In the examples from Upgrading a Computer, Part 1, there’s not a lot of point in buying a new computer if all you want is more space. Most computers have extra hard disk connectors so you can simply add in a new hard disk.

For better game play, you can add more memory to your computer or purchase a new video card and see a remarkable difference in how your machine responds. Most games don’t actually (more…)

The first question is, I guess, should you upgrade. If you look earlier in these posts, you will see ways to improve the performance of your computer which don’t cost anything except some time. (see Old Age or Clogged Arteries?)

So, should you upgrade? Well if you have a burning desire to spend money you could go out and buy a high specification computer and then cripple it with Windows Vista. Look to spending well over a thousand dollars to get something that will probably (more…)

So it’s late, I’m at home after a busy day and, after a phone call to Mr JM, he’s going to be late.

Why is it so?

Well, he’s busy with a computer (more…)

One of the pleasures in owning a computer is the variety of things you can do with it. Or rather the pleasures of owning a computer and the Internet. Or maybe it should be the pleasures of owning a computer and the Internet and high speed access.

You don’t really know how much pleasure high speed access is until it is suddenly not there. It isn’t so frustrating to use dial-up for internet access - until you have had the use of ADSL (Broadband) that runs at 10 or more times the speed of dial-up.

We have a Broadband plan that runs at ADSL2+ speeds. This means, particularly at the off peak times, speeds that allow downloads of 200MB’s in just a few minutes. It’s not unusual to start a download of sixty or seventy MB’s & have it finish so quickly you think something went wrong with the download.

So, what do you do with all that speed and bandwidth? Well, Mr JM regularly downloads TV shows that I haven’t seen. He downloaded a couple of seasons of Charmed for me – I hadn’t been able to watch them before I came to Australia – and we’ve caught up on all the new Doctor Who and Torchwood episodes.

But one of the most addictive things to do is Google Earth.
Google Earth lets you strap on a satellite (more…)