You've probably doubtless read in countless other stories about how Microsoft has been having problems with a lot of Xbox 360s dying with the "red rings of death".

In the last few weeks I've heard of at least 3 of the units owned by friends succumbing to this fate.

As far as I can tell, it's caused by a failure of the thermal material Microsoft has been using to connect the heat-sinks to the processors, although Microsoft hasn't really given much information on what is causing the issue or what they are doing to prevent it from happening on more recently released Xbox 360s.

For some unfathomable reason, at least to me, my brother bought an Apple TV last night.

Why do I say this? Because the guy already has devices in his system that offer the same/similar functionality such as his satellite DVR and his Xbox 360.

Anyhow, it's his money and he can certainly spend it on what he wants. The biggest problem with his post is that he says that the Apple TV supports 1080i HD. This is, quite frankly, wrong.

While it will certainly output at 1080i to match the input of a given TV, the max resolution of the video that it will handle is 720p.

As I blogged yesterday, I had to get my Sony SXRD HDTV fixed because it caught the "yellow stain" bug.

I learned something interesting about the design of these particular HDTVs from the repair person.

There are two microswitches that the TV uses to detect that there is a lamp and that the lamp door has been properly closed.

Problem with the design is that both of these microswitches are very fragile and can be damaged pretty easily.

So keep this in mind when replacing the lamp on your SXRD set. Be very careful when taking the lamp door off, when taking out the old bulb and inserting the new one and when putting the lamp door back on.

I've previously written about the Sony SXRD HDTV sets and my experiences with them here and here.

Unfortunately, while I still like the sets and think that the technology is the best out there dollar for dollar for large screen TVs (50" and up), I have recently run into a problem with my set.

My set developed what is being called elsewhere as the "yellow stain" issue. Basically, something goes wrong with the display engine (probably in the SXRD chips themselves) that makes the TV start to put a yellow tinge to the display, most notably in the upper right hand corner of the screen. The longer the TV is on, particularly when displaying static images, the worse it gets. The problem goes away after the set is turned off for a few hours, but then comes back again after the SXRD HDTV has been on for a little while.

Here's something to be aware of when purchasing desktops from Lenovo, or from anywhere really.

Most modern motherboards and chipsets have what is called dual channel memory architecture.

Basically, this means that the memory bus can read from two sticks of memory at once.

Problem is that (at least as far as I know) both sticks have to be of same size and same speed. In fact it's best to purchase identical pairs of memory sticks (usually DDR2 SDRAM DIMM modules these days) for modern desktops.

Some laptops might have the same feature, but I'm not aware if they do or don't.

I saw this Extremetech piece while going through my feed list today. Kind of makes me wonder if this jibes with the experiences of most other gamers who have tried to run Windows games in a Linux environment.

I've heard of people running City of Heroes and World of Warcraft in Linux flavors using various technologies like WINE and such and the few that I've run into had good experiences doing so, but I wonder about those PC gamers out there who have tried and found the whole process wanting.

My boss, Simon, started blogging a few weeks ago. So far he's mainly posted some recipes he's come up with for those who need to come up with something quick and easy. You know, us geeks or other people who are pressed for time (like parents).

Anyhow, I'm still waiting for his grilled cheese recipe as well as instructions on how to cook latkes.

Enjoy.

As I wrote in my previous article "What's wrong with this picture? 4:3 is NOT HDTV", my friend is looking to buy a new 27"ish TV.

He recently went to Circuit City to check out the Samsung not quite HD 26" TV and came back with this to say "Samsung's TV is a sham of a travesty of a mockery of HDTV". In other words, not only is it not HDTV, but apparently it's a crappy display to boot.

Compared to his old Panasonic regular 4:3 CRT he found the Samsung to be quite lacking and not worth the $600.

Sorry for not posting much in the past month, but a lot has been going on in my life for past few months that has taken a toll on me and my motivation to blog.

Anyhow, on to the show...

A friend of mine is looking for a new 27"ish size TV and stumbled on to this Samsung model that claims to be HD.

Say what? Let's start with the definition of what HD TV is. Over on Wikipedia it is defined as as 1080 active interlaced or progressive lines, or 720 progressive lines, using a 16:9 aspect ratio. This definition is from the industry's governing body.

Had an interesting conversation with an IT guy named Scott who was planning migration of his existing Exchange 2000 front end onto new hardware running Exchange 2003. For the time being, at least, he's keeping the back end/mailbox server on Exchange 2000.

He wanted some input from me on his plan of attack, so I gave it, although I didn't really have much to add to what he was already doing based on my cursory search of the Microsoft website. There just wasn't a lot out there that I could readily see to cover this situation.

Basically, his plan was to demote his Exchange 2000 box off of front end status and build up the new Exchange 2003 box and make it the new front end.

When the XBox 360 was released without HD-DVD built in last year, I think a lot of people were scratching their heads as to why.

I think they can stop with the digitation of their craniums.

It appears as though there's a shortage of the blue laser diodes that are needed for both Bluray and HD-DVD. I guess that Nichia, the company that makes 80% of the world's blue laser diodes is having problems getting the yield rates up.

This is causing Sony to disrupt the supply chain of the diodes headed to BluRay manufacturers so that they can crank out enough PS3s to meet demand when they are released.

Yet another example of how Sony's insistence that BluRay be in the PS3 at launch is really going to hurt them.

As the holiday season approaches and they continue to have problems getting the systems out the door with enough games to meet the demand, that will just spur more people to buy the readily available Xbox 360 instead.

Oh and for those people who think that including BluRay will give them a significant benefit to their gaming experience, guess again. While the discs do in fact hold more data, their read/write speeds are still only marginally faster than current DVD players.

So while you can fit a lot more content onto a BluRay or HD-DVD disc, it still takes just as long to do anything with it.

Related News and Opinion:

I could have used this bit of help yesterday when I was working with two spreadsheets that I wanted to view on my two monitors here at work.

On his blog Ant Drewery shows us how to change the File Type options for Excel (or any kind of documents that are automatically grouped together) so that multiple documents will open up in their own instance of Excel.

Good stuff for those of us who want to make the most of our multiple screen systems.

If you are a techy I'm sure you've run into the friend or family member who just can't seem to keep their PC free of viruses, spyware and other malware.

Over on his ZDNet column, Ed Bott recently gave his thoughts and a fairly detailed set of instructions on how to set up a PC so that a person (or persons) who is more prone to get into trouble with malware online is much less likely to get infected.

Basically, he details how to set up a separate limited account that the people who have problems with malware run under and another admin type account that is password protected that is usable only by "trusted" people. Trusted people would be those individuals who know how to avoid getting malware on their systems by not going to porn or pirate sites, although even those people might want to run as the limited access user for most situations.

More and more, I find myself using the built in Windows undo (ctrl-z), cut (ctrl-x), copy (ctrl-c), and paste (ctrl-v) hot keys to quickly work with text. I used these features quite a bit when helping others with documents at the law firm, but I use them even more where I work now as I have to manipulate text for various reports I do.

If you still do these functions by right clicking the mouse in Word or whatever, or by using the Edit menu of a window or app, I highly recommend you learn these shortcuts.

These shortcuts are particularly helpful for those of us who move and copy files around a lot through Windows Explorer. Plus it helps to know that when dragging files using the left mouse button, holding down the Shift key will force a move of the files while holding down the Ctrl key will force a copy. Alternatively, if you like being on the safe side, Windows will ask you how whether you want to Move, Copy or cancel if you drag files using the right mouse button.

My post two weeks ago on the problems Sony is facing with the PlayStation 3 got the most response, by far, of any article i've ever written. Unfortunately, most of it was poorly written fanboy screed, but it was mildy entertaining to read people yelling stuff like "PS3 pWnZ0rs j00r sool" or "ALL UR XBOX R BELUNG 2 UZ" (and no those aren't direct quotes, I made them up just now, but you get the point).

Anyhow, I read today on my brother's site that Wired magazine has published a fairly scathing article about Sony's handling of the whole PS3 business. He also points to another blogger who feels that the PS3 is too expensive ($600 is entering 3DO territory and where is that console now?).

So it's not just me that thinks that Sony is blowing all of the goodness they built up in the gaming market over the last 11 years.

Here's another chance for the Sony and/or Microsoft fanboys to go all kneejerk again.

Related News and Opinion: