Colin DiPonio - Computer Consultant (Cheshire, UK)

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Nvidia have announced that some of their Laptop video cards are failing at higher than normal rates.

From their press release:-

"Separately, NVIDIA plans to take a one-time charge from $150 million to $200 million against cost of revenue for the second quarter to cover anticipated warranty, repair, return, replacement and other costs and expenses, arising from a weak die/packaging material set in certain versions of its previous generation GPU and MCP products used in notebook systems. Certain notebook configurations with GPUs and MCPs manufactured with a certain die/packaging material set are failing in the field at higher than normal rates."

However they haven’t disclosed which are the affected products/models.

That isn’t good enough. We now know there is suspect Nvidia products on the market but unwitting customers are likely to be buying affected laptops as I write.

The bad news is this directly affects OEM’s like Dell who for example offer Nvidia video cards in their:-

XPS, Latitude, Precision and Vostro product lines.

Until we know which Nvidia products are affected how confident can consumers be!

Tech Tip: If this issue is a concern consider the Dell Studio laptops as these come with ATI based video cards.

Tech Tip: I always recommend 3 years on-site warranty, as this would cover you for this type of issue.

It is believed Nvidia have told OEM’s to issue software based updates that force the hardware cooling and fans to kick in earlier to combat these issues.

So a quick look a support.dell.com reveals a July 1st 2008 update to their XPS M1330 running  Nvidia GeForce 8400M series cards.

This is significant as Dell are notorious for never updating their 3rd party video drivers.

Make of that what you will. This of course could be completely unrelated.

One way to find out would be for the companies selling the technology to tell us.

Link: http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1215037160521.html

Popularity: 4% [?]

This is basically a rental/subscription model with an annual price of $69.99 a year and appears to be US only.

The package consists of Microsoft Office Home and Student and Windows Live OneCare.

OneCare is Microsoft’s security suite.

The $69.99 fee allows for installation on 3 PC’s.

Clearly this them tipping their toe into the rental/subscription market.

Office 2007 Home and Student consists of:

Word 2007
PowerPoint 2007
Excel 2007
OneNote 2007

But Not Outlook 2007, the thinking is you can just use a free online e-mail service like Live mail or Google’s Gmail.

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/jul08/07-02EquiptPR.mspx

Popularity: 4% [?]

Your poor old Laptop can get confused if confronted by multiple network connections.

These days lots of people have both Wired and Wireless access in their offices.

It would best not to have both connected at the same time.

Tip: The first network interface to connect is the one given preference.

Tip: If your laptop has a physical WiFi switcher (pictured above) use that to turn off and then turn on when needed.

Tip: If your laptop does not have a physical switch you may have a keyboard shortcut to turn it off and on.

Tip: Failing that locate the Wireless Network Connection in your Network Properties and choose disable, then enable when you want it back on again.

To see other Tech Tips Click here: Tech Tips

Popularity: 3% [?]

Solid State Drives are basically flash like memory instead of a hard disk thrashing away.

With no moving parts they do generally give better performance and are silent.

However there are several nails in SSD’s coffin.

1) Cost: If I were to put an SSD into my Dell XPS M1530 it would come at a significant cost premium (see main picture).

2) The long thought power savings offered by the “no moving parts” SSD technology just don’t exist in the real world.

The Guys over at Toms Hardware did some power consumption tests using a Dell Latitude D630 and found using SSD could cost you up to an hour of battery life compared to a 7200 rpm traditional Hard Disk.

Link: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hdd-battery,1955.html

Popularity: 4% [?]

Here is a Windows Vista tip for those that still like going to the command line.

Windows XP had a Powertoy called Command Prompt Here.

This would allow you to open a DOS box at the desired folder location. This was handy as it saved you typing in really long path names.

Example: C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents etc

This feature ships with Windows Vista but it buried.

To use it you have to hold down the left hand shift button while you right click your folder you will see an extra option “Open Command Window Here”.

Popularity: 6% [?]