Solid state capacitors, fail proof?

I don’t have any solid numbers or real facts to back me up but do have real life experiences that make me want to make this post.  Part of the inspiration for this post is my past post about XFX video card failures.  In that post I discussed how all 3 video cards we had purchased over 2 years ago started failing after only a year.  All 3 of them ended up dying but support was great so we received replacements.  In all 3 of them they were built with solid state capacitors, all three of them failed because of those capacitors.  My guys described them “popping” loudly.  I personally came home to a BSOD a few weeks ago and through troubleshooting found bad capacitors on the cards.  I am a bit disappointed that I missed the popping, that had to sound cool!!

I have seen many bad solid state capacitors over the last few years.  I think I have only seen them on video cards though?  With all the press on bad capacitors and many motherboard manufacturers advertising ALL solid state capacitors for some of the motherboards they sell, makes me wonder if they are better?  Makes me wonder too if maybe some video card manufacturers are buying cheap ones?

So what have you seen?  What do you think is happening?

So forgiving?

In most cases I am really not that forgiving.  If I have a problem or feel a company is trying to rip me off, I let them have it  I really think I am on a “secret list” of jerks, or maybe will be the inspiration for this list.  I’ve thought that maybe I could make money from this if it doesn’t already exist?  Do companies really need this list and would they be willing to pay for it?  I think it could help them.  I don’t think any of these companies like me or want to deal with me.  I’ve gotten into big arguments with PayPal, AT&T, Time Warner, DirecTv, HP, Dell, and many more.  The sad thing is my concerns and/or problems come to “deaf ears”, these people are trying to do a simple job and can’t fix the problems I bring to them.  At least in most occasions they take care of me with a credit on my bill or something else.

Most of the time you are kinda screwed and can’t do much of anything.  AT&T and DirecTv (to name a few) suck you into contracts so you have to deal with their crappy prices.  In most cases you are going to get the same crappy service and prices from the competition.  So you just have to take the time every month to skim over all the bills you receive so you can catch goofy charges.

When you do have a choice, it is still hard.  Now I am finally getting to the real point of this post.  Over 2 years ago thanks to a great donation rally a few members of my UBCD4Win development team received new computers.  I made most of the decisions for the builds and one of them was to use XFX video cards.  Over the last year every single one of them have failed.  Their support has been ok so it really hasn’t bothered me too much.  It sucks for a failure but luckily most of us have the ability to get by with a cheap card until the replacement arrives.  It’s quite strange for me, even with a 100% failure rate…..I still order and recommend their cards?  Their support is good and they offer the double lifetime guarantee so I still like them.  What experience have you had with XFX?

I just don’t understand??

I am a pretty careful computer user.  I really have to be because I have more on me than the average person.  If I were to be hacked or infected it could affect thousands of people.  If a REAL virus were to be accidentally included in UBCD4Win or any future projects (UBDVD & UBDVD4Win7) it could be devastating.  I have worked hard for close to 6 years now to build your trust and to give you good and honest advice.  Luckily over the years I have been able to build several test systems and find technology to help me be more secure.  Be it sandboxes, good AV and AS software, or even other virtual technologies.  As most of you know though, it really boils down to what you do.  If you are not careful and smart about what you do online you can get into trouble.

So that brings us to the point of my post.  I just really do not understand?  Friday I checked out MSN.com and found a few things I wanted to read about.  Now the first mistake I made was using Internet Explorer, however this probably could have happened with FireFox also. I was moved to a FOX Sports page because I chose to read an article on the 10 coolest goalie masks in the NHL. When I clicked to check out the #6 mask, this is what I was presented with:

When I closed it, this is what I saw:

I read an article a few days later about an advertising company being hacked, so I wonder if that is what happened?  I can’t confirm anything but it really bothers me.  Luckily my Kaspersky and Super AntiSpyware kept my system protected, but if you use “garbage” like McAfee or Norton……you might not be as lucky.  Really sucks that WE can not trust any site any more.

Don’t be alarmed! I did not hack into your computer!!

A few weeks ago an associate sent me a link to some pretty interesting software.  I have been playing with this and testing it over the last few weeks.  It is called Woopra and it is some very nice software.  I have access to all kinds of reports on the traffic to my sites but I rarely have the time to dig into all those numbers.  It usually requires me to log into my hosting account and then run the different reports.  Woopra puts all of this information into a slick interface and offers a few nice extras.  The chat feature is what I find to be pretty cool and is the basis of this topic title.  I have tested this feature with a few of the guys in my development and beta teams and it seems to work pretty well.  If you have your browser locked down though this feature does not work, I found that out when trying to chat with one of my beta testers.

I really do not know how I will use the feature.  I think it would be cool to randomly chat with visitors but I figure it will freak them out!  I would almost suggest that my regular visitors allow pop-ups from this domain but I don’t know how well you all really trust me?  As most of you know for the 5 1/2 years that the UBCD4Win site has been up, there has never been pop ups on the site.  So some of you know I am trustworthy.  I will never go to extremes like that just to make extra money on clicks to my sites.  Donations and Google ads take care of most of our costs so we are normally good.  I think for now though I will probably just use the chat feature if I need to help someone.  Basically request they visit this site at a certain time that is convenient for the both of us and then initiate a chat with them.  There are other chat tools out there and we have tested a few of them but I still think this one is very useful.  So if you ever get a pop-up box from this domain that states “Webmaster wants to chat with you”, it is me and you can accept it if you wish to bs with me a little.

Conflict of interests

I offer services to fix laptops but today I am recommending another option.  I’m not saying that I do not want to repair your laptop, just giving you some good information if you would like to do it yourself.  I understand some people like to try and repair something if they think they can handle it.  If you do not want to go through all of that I will gladly repair your laptop for you.

Steve Cherubino is a pretty smart guy and very friendly.  He owns a computer repair business and does a lot with his Podnutz site.  Over a year ago he asked me for an interview about UBCD4Win which I gladly accepted.  We spent a few hours on the phone before the interview and then finally did the interview which is a little over an hour.  He hast interviewed a lot of interesting people and I highly encourage you to at least check out his site and listen to a few of his free podcasts.  His videos are excellent and full of tips and tricks for repairing laptops.  He sells close to 20 hours of high quality video for only $54.95.  So you could either pay me $80 (my total repair fees) to repair your laptop or spend about the same amount for the video’s, soldering iron, and dc jack.  If you are not comfortable do that kind of repair then by all means please consider having me do the job for you.  But if you like to tinker I think these videos are well worth the price!!

You can check them out here from this link:
Laptop Repair Videos

DDR2 Memory prices

I do not like to post like this but I just have to touch on this quick.  Generally I like to space out posts here by a day or two to give everyone the chance to read the new post.  Especially since my other post was put up less than 12 hours ago.

The computer “game” can be very frustrating.  From users that screw their systems up so badly with spyware to finding good prices on hardware, it’s tough.  I think maybe I get a little too fired up about stupid things and it’s a bit silly since I/we have no control over this.  To my point, do you watch prices?  Do you remember buying a 2GB stick of DDR2 for only $25 about 4 months ago???  Over the last month it has been a hellish roller coast ride.  I was ticked when they went up to $30, getting worried when they hit $40, and now am just honestly pissed to see them at $50-$60!  It does help me a little though.  I have 2 brand new sticks still in their packaging that I plan to put up on Burrows Solutions soon.  Originally I planned on using them in Intel Atom computers that I tried to sell on my Burrows Solutions site.  Sitting on $1000 of hardware is tough and really hurts when you do not get rid of any of it for 4 months.  Luckily I’ve been able to get rid of some of the components individually to at least recoup some money spent.  With these crazy DDR2 prices I at least have the chance to make a little money and still give you one hell of a deal!!  Expect to see those Kingston 2GB DDR2 memory sticks on my site soon for only $39 plus shipping!

Free Anti-Malware software 11/11 11:11am

Found out about some interesting information earlier today and thought I should pass it on to you.  Emsi is giving away a year license to their a-squared Anti-Malware software this Wednesday.  It will start at 11:11am and proceed for 24 hours.  It is a very good package and a great deal, you can’t really beat free!!  So if you are interested or have a friend or family member in need, download it.

FREE a-squared Anti-Malware 1 yr. license

UBCD4Win and UBDVD updates

We have all been busy, either with work or family or even deep in development testing.  I honestly haven’t had much time to do much of anything except work and spend a little time with my family.  We will however have a 3.60 version of UBCD4Win going into beta testing soon and hope to have that released before Christmas.  I’m pretty excited because John and Tom are making good progress with our new Ultimate Boot DVD project.  There will be a lot of really cool stuff with that DVD and with that we will be launching a new forum for support.  Since we have several ideas in the making it’s silly to create a forum at every domain to support each one.  After all these years I now feel that it would be a good idea to have one central forum for support on all the projects we have created over the years.  That should be launching within the next few months.  Once we have that running good then we should have a UBDVD4Win7 almost finished up and then we will launch that.  I have talked a lot about that over the last year but progress has been slow on its development.  I really hope we can launch that within the next 6-9 months.

So, there are a lot of exciting things going on and I highly encourage you to visit us here to get the latest news.  I will be giving updates on a regular basis.

Mini netbook review

My brain does not work properly, I’ll explain:
For my wonderful wife Amy I had purchased a cute little ASUS notebook this past January.  Over the summer there was an incident where the screen on it was cracked.  A replacement on eBay cost about $100 at the time (now down to about $90) but the crack was small so I decided to ignore the complaining.  The price is crazy anyways.  I can buy a 17″ LCD for a big HP or Dell for very close to the same price!!  Why am I going to spend that much money on a 10″ screen???  So I am kind of getting caught up on bills right now so I thought I would buy her a new one.
Ok, here is the problem. Let’s try to understand this a little more. The current Netbook needs a $100 screen to fix it. The new Netbook cost $350. Why am I spending an extra $250?  Mostly because I’m a dummy.  Not really but I like to give my wife new shiny things and honestly I could use the Netbook at work.  Tracy will enjoy using it at work and I’ll have something to play on when I go out back for a smoke break.  I can’t lug my 17″ monster out to the garage, too much work!!

So this really brings us to a mini review.  I am not going to evaluate all the difference between the two Netbooks but I want to describe a few of them.  It amazes me that Netbooks have evolved so much in less than a year.  Smaller system, faster processor, better specs, and longer battery life.  The first one I had bought for her was an ASUS Eee 1000HA, this new model is an ASUS Eee 1005HA.  Here is a quick run down on all the obvious changes:

• Battery-  The new model promises about 9 hours of battery life, the old promised about 5.  I haven’t taken the time to really test this but the battery life is pretty impressive, not 9 hours but still at least 6.
• Physical size- This is what impressed me the most.  The new model is about 1″ shorter in height when opened and is about 1/4″ more slim when the unit is closed.  It’s not much but is noticeable.
• Things that didn’t change much-  The processor is only slightly faster, the new model came with the 1.66GHz processor rather than a 1.6GHz.  The OS is the same, XP.  However I did upgrade the RAM and am considering putting Win 7 on it.
• Hard Drive- Both have SATA 160GB hard drives.  When I bought the first I really wanted to purchase one for her that had a SSD, but she said the capacity was too small.
• Screen- Same 10″ screen size.
• OS- Still XP, no change there.  However I did upgrade the RAM to 2GBs so I think I may end up installing Win 7 on it soon?
• Extra’s-  Both models have webcams, but the newer model really trumps it with a few little extras I like.  The new model has wireless N and Bluetooth.  I’m mixed on the touchpad though?  I do kind of like how these new netbooks and laptops have the flat touchpads.  If you haven’t seen one you need to check out a newer laptop or netbook they are pretty cool.

So I am pretty pleased with the changes and highly recommend the ASUS netbooks, they have not disappointed me yet.