Monthly Archive for April, 2006

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Build Your Own: Xbox 360 Liquid Cooling Solution

Published on Monday, April 17, 2006 in Gaming, Microsoft, PC and Technology. 1 Comment

This is a detailed tutorial with many photos showing you how to modify your Xbox 360 to water cool it. XboxExpert, posted a topic on XboxScene forums showing what he used, and how he modded his 360. Be warned, this is for the pros only! And what price does it come at?

$209.99 – ThermalTake CL-W0042 Cooling System (The cooling system)
$35.49 – KOOLANCE GPU-180-H06 VGA Card GPU Waterblock (For the 360′s GPU)
$41.99 – KOOLANCE GPU-180-L06 GPU Chipset Heatsink (For the 360′s CPU)
———
$287.47 – And that’s without shipping!

So it isn’t the cheapest solution, but if you really feel the need to cool down that 360 to make it quiet then you might as well try. My 360 is very quiet, only during games is it loud and that is because of the DVD drive inside it. So this would be useless for me, unless my 360 was particlarly hot, which it isn’t.

Got any tips or ideas for the site?

Published on Monday, April 17, 2006 in General, Internet and Technology. 5 Comments

I’ve been experimenting with the design of the blog and I want some of your ideas / tips. Anything small to big I would love as I am looking for a unique design (which I don’t think it quite resembles yet). I’m not much of a designer, at all, so anything to freshen up the site would be really helpfull

So, got any ideas? Then leave a message in the comments, or send me a note using the contact form.

Thanks!

Apple to exploit tax loophole for UK iTunes Music Store

Published on Sunday, April 16, 2006 in Apple, Internet, Software and Technology. 3 Comments

itunes logo

Here in the UK, we really do get ripped off. For everything we buy we get charged an extra 17.5% for the VAT (value added tax). So what does this pay for? All sorts of government things such as health care, etc. But for electronics goods, the price does increase a lot, that is why we pay around ⅔ extra than you US folk.
So good old Apple discovered a loophole in the tax law, that allows them to avoid paying the extra 17.5% VAT on sales in the iTunes Music Store (for the UK).

Over the past two years Tesco, Asda, Britannia, HMV, Amazon and Woolworths have all set up delivery operations in the Channel Islands to exploit a law which allows retailers outside the European Union to sell goods worth less than [£17, which is roughly US$30] to UK consumers free from VAT.

This means that we would have to pay 12p less for songs (67p down from 79p). That is around $0.23 per song. Considering the fact that we already pay $1.34 for a song, $0.35 more than the Americans do, I’m sure that there are many people who would welcome this change. “Apple confirmed that it is looking at setting up a similar operation on Guernsey,” so that’s it then? Well it looks like the government has realised what has been happening:

The Government is becoming increasingly concerned by the amount of tax being avoided by these operations. Treasury officials believe the practice will soon cost the Government up to £200m a year. Nick Goulding, the chief executive of the Forum for Private Business, said: “This is more evidence of the urgent need for Gordon Brown to end this cynical tax dodge.“

Damn, it always seems to good to be true. All we can do is pray and hope that Apple can help us, and that the government won’t take much action.

UPDATE: It seems that this story is quite old, and Apple had denied it back in January. Sorry for this, but I had no idea. It looks like the government did screw us over! [link]

How Mac Geniuses find out about new Apple products…

Published on Sunday, April 16, 2006 in Apple, Shorts and Technology. Closed

Everyone asks about new products. When is the new PowerBook going to come out? Is Apple every going to release a PDA? When I answer that I don’t know, I’ve actually been called a liar. Bluntly. Sadly, it’s not even a rare occurrence. The truth is, no one in the store knows anything. Sometimes we have vague notions that something might be coming out, but the notions are, indeed, vague. Vague as in, “Something’s going to happen,” not as in “New PowerBooks, but I don’t know the specs. We find out about new products when you walk into the store and ask for them.

“Hey, do you have the new MacBook Pros yet?”

Arrrru? What the hell is a MacBook Pro?

This is not exaggeration, and is all too common. Apple not only shields its product roadmap from the public, but also from all public-facing employees. And nearly all non-facing employees. The litmus test is “Are you actively involved on the project or the project’s marketing and rollout?” If the answer is “No,” then you are generally left clueless.

Firefox goes Universal

Published on Sunday, April 16, 2006 in Apple, Internet, Shorts, Software and Technology. Closed

I know that many Intel Mac Firefox lovers have been dying for a Universal version of Firefox. Firefox is a great browser, but on the Mac, I think it is just too slow, so I use Safari. On the Intel Macs it would have been even worse, because of Firefox haveing to use Rosetta. But no fear, as of version 1.5.0.2, Firefox is now Universal. Go on and grab the latest version.

Hacking the OS X Login Window…

Published on Sunday, April 16, 2006 in Apple, Noteworthy, Software and Technology. Closed

This is a cool hack. You can modify your OS X login window so that it displays the image of your choice and/or other text. It is quite simple to add the extra text, you just download a piece of software called Cocktail and navigate to the Login pane. The image modification is a bit more dificult.

For this, you’ll need to modify the LoginWindowUI.nib file. Before you get around to modifying the file that tells Mac OS X what images to display at login you’ll want a custom image for that file to actually use. A little pre-hack homework is in order. Create a 90 × 90 image (.tif format naturally) that you would like displayed in the Login Window and store it on the Desktop. The file you just created needs to be stored in a specific folder for the file you are going to modify to make use of said image so it is off to the Terminal.

As you can see, it isn’t really for the faint hearted, so a word for the wise: Take care and backup all the files you are going to modify. And remember, you are doing everything at your own risk! I didn’t change my image, as I quite like the Apple logo, but I did add that extra line of text…

Fixing the Mighty Mouse

Published on Sunday, April 16, 2006 in Apple and Technology. Closed

Mighty Mouse

What causes the Scroll Ball to fail is dust, lint, and other detritus that ends up inside the mouse and blocks the optical reader. Many of you will remember mice past where you had to open the retaining ring around the mouse ball and clean the gunk off the rollers to bring a flaky mouse back to like-new operation. Unfortunately, the Mighty Mouse cannot be opened without causing severe damage. There are numerous suggestions on the Web that tell how you might fix a clogged Scroll Ball including one technique that suggests using a damp cloth. Call me crazy, but I would rather not introduce water into my mouse, so we need to find a better way to dislodge that obstruction. The most reliable fix that I have found is this:

Unplug your Mighty Mouse from its USB port.

Place the bottom of the mouse in the palm of your right hand, hold firmly and turn it upside down so that the top of the mouse is facing down.

With the index finger of your left hand, press firmly the Scroll Ball and while keeping the ball firmly depressed, roll it towards the back of the mouse.

Repeat step 3 at least six times to clear the obstruction.

Plug your mouse in–you should be back in business. If not, repeat this procedure.

I sadly had some problems with my mighty mouse, where it wouldn’t scroll down, only up (weird, eh?) I had tried this and sometimes it would resolve the problem, other times not. I got so fed up with it that I took the mouse to the Apple Store and sat down with a Mac Genius. I explained my problem and they replaced the mouse, for free! I know have a new (probably refurbished) Mighty Mouse that works perfectly

XSATA Attachment for Xbox 360

Published on Wednesday, April 12, 2006 in Gaming, Microsoft, PC, Software and Technology. Closed

This is a pretty cool device. It fits in between the 360′s HDD and the 360 itself. Then it links up to your PC via USB and you can move/transfer data that is not in use. It also has a blue LED’s on the side to give it that extra touch. It works with Xplorer360 (remember that software that initially allowed you to move data from the 360′s HDD) so anyone can ‘hack’ their HDD. And all this for £30, seems like a good option to me. You can then do whatever you want with the data, as long as it isn’t linked to your Xbox Live account (because then you won’t be able to share the file).

XP on MacBook Pro Benchmarks – looking good!

Published on Wednesday, April 12, 2006 in Apple, Microsoft, Noteworthy, PC, Shorts and Technology. Closed

It’s not that I’m mulling over a platform switch—rather, this XP overload is part of Macworld Lab’s efforts to see how Microsoft’s operating system performs on Apple hardware now that software exists that enables you to boot into XP on an Intel-based Mac. With the help from our sister publication, PC World, we’ve been running the WorldBench 5 real-word benchmark suite on all of our Intel systems to gauge cross-platform performance. Even with Boot Camp, it still takes a couple of hours to set these systems up. But once running, they’ve been very stable. Here are some WorldBench 5 results, compared to three computers recently tested by PC World.
[Results:] As you can see, the Macs running Windows gave these PCs a run for their money, with the 2.16GHz MacBook Pro turning in the fastest scores on three of the five individual tests. The build-to-order MacBook configuration also tied the 2.16GHz HP Compaq in the sixth test, involving Roxio VideoWave.

Installing a WiFi adapter into the Xbox

Published on Tuesday, April 11, 2006 in Gaming, Microsoft, Noteworthy, Technology and Wireless. Closed

This is a really cool tutorial which explains to you how to install a wifi adapter into your Xbox (1) so that you don’t have to have that extra baggage. All this does is use the power from the Xbox (via a 8-inch power cable splitter) to supply the power to the WiFi adapter, and use an external small CAT5 cable to hook the units up. They use a Netgear WGE-111, because it is small and will fit inside the Xbox. So this will work for other adapters, but it may not fit inside the Xbox as neatly as this does (or at all); Note: The power supplied by the Xbox is 5V so make sure you don’t overpower the circuit inside your adapter. The tutorial is very detailed, showing you what parts to cut off inside the Xbox, and what to connect where. The end result looks quite neat, at least I think so!