Frozen Cursor on Dell Vostro 1520 Laptop

Dell apparently issued a bad batch of AC adapters for Vostro 1500 laptops. After a customer brought it to my attention that the track pad wasn't moving the cursor on screen. Plugging a mouse into the USB will release the cursor to move freely about the screen. This proves it's not a virus or a windows glitch. This Forum provided the answer to the problem. Unfortunately it doesn't look like Dell will reimburse or send you a new one. Fortunately...

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Apple Starts Independent Approach to Accessory Purchase

Next time you go to the Apple retail store, take a look over near the phone cases. You may notice a customer holding some merchandise from their wall of accessories, pull out an iPhone, and snap a quick picture before walking out with it. Before you decide to run and flag the security, you might wish to be briefed on the procedure called personal pick up. Now at Apple, instead of pulling out cash or card, you can simply pay by...

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Installing RAM in an iMac 2.4GHZ Core 2 Duo

In an effort to upgrade my iMac to play Sky Rim, I made a dash to Fry's the local electronics sotre here in California. I bought a 4 GB SODIMM 667mhz stick of RAM. It put me back about $67 after tax. Installed and booted no problem. Then hours later I noticed my browser dumping my pages every 5-10 minutes and the OS completely freezing up so it needed to be rebooted. Clicking the Apple at the top left and selecting About this Mac, it show there...

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Dodge Havoc and Destroy Dust Bunnies

BeforeAfterWant an easy way to make your system significantly slow and sluggish? Run it on the floor in a room full of dust for a year and let it slowly absorb every particle. Your PC is not a vacuum. If your CPU heat sink looks like this, I should turn you in for attempted arson. Please excuse the sarcasm. Just take note: The computer I pulled this from had a bad stick of RAM preventing it from booting. The RAM on this particular model...

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Following an Obsession: Announcing "HecticGeek.com" (My New Wordpress Site! :D)

If you just arrived here, then ...I started this blog like 10-11 months ago which, when compared with other web sites (most) is like a newborn baby :). This blog currently has like 800 + articles, all written by me. It gets a reasonable amount of traffic and as you know I use Google Adsense on the site which makes a very little $$ as well (better than nothing, hey!).But after all these months, suddenly out of nowhere, a thought came to my mind (errr, damn you "the thought"!! :)) around the idea of the "true ownership". First it started small but...

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Remote Desktop Access Comes to Google Chrome!

If you have a reasonably faster internet connection then using free & popular tools such as the TeamViwer for instance, you can easily establish a remote desktop connection that has a lot of uses. This is a feature that's being largely used by both professionals (remote help desk providers) and users all around the world which helps to access a remote location with as low cost as possible :).Anyhow, the latest news is that, Google has released...

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HTML5 Based Text Editor for Ubuntu Linux - GWrite!

The world wide web loses its meaning and purpose if the "contents" is only readable by either humans or computers. Thus the purpose of HTML (which is the basic framework of web pages) is to make the contents readable for both computers and humans since computers are still our slaves who's purpose is to search and structure the data so we can access them as efficient as possible (poor buggers :D).Since its introduction, HTML has undergone 5 major...

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How to install Fluxbox Window Manager in Ubuntu ?

Fluxbox is a super fast window manager written in C++ that is being used as the GUI "creator" by many desktop environments. And just like with OpenBox (another WM) which is used in LXDE, Fluxbox is also extremely resource friendly thus it's especially being used in those "small GNU/Linux distributions" (you know small in size and resources, etc) nowadays more than ever as well.Although the last time I tried it (bit of a long time ago actually), well...

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Cross Platform YouTube Music Player - MusicTube!

For the good or worse, by using online video sharing services such as the extremely popular YouTube for instance, we can watch or listen to thousands or millions of songs without having to pay a penny :). Although I don't use it that often (because I have a limited-bandwidth internet connection, damn!) but if you use it quite often then would it be nice if we could have a dedicated application that lets us listen/search & manage all the music...

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Free Hard Drive Eraser - KillDisk!

Whether you use Windows or GNU/Linux or most other similar tools for erasing your hard disk drive (not just formatting but deleted the partitions, etc) hoping that the "sensitive" data on the drive will be wiped securely... but as most knows, by using the "right" utility, it is possible to recover most of those data, if not all.Or if you use a USB storage device such as an external hard drive or a pen drive, then having the ability...

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Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Gets the Official Code Name!

As most knows, with almost all the other GNU/Linux distributions (or other major software projects in general), Ubuntu also assign a code name every time they release a new version of their operating system. The current version number is 11.04 has the code name of "Natty Narwhal" and the upcoming 11.10 is called "oneiric ocelot".I'm not a marketer thus have very little knowledge about how or why code names are used... but I guess it has something to do with branding. Anyhow, few hours ago, Mark Shuttleworth announced (the founder...

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How to Split or Merge Files Easily in Ubuntu?

Almost all the popular file compression tools (archive managers) have the ability to split files and then merge them later, which is also the case with Ubuntu. Thanks to the default archive manager (called File-Roller), you can split any file by using it as long as you're using a compression format that supports file splitting (.rar for instance).But the problem of using A compression container format to split files and store them has a bit of a...

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Best, Opensource Multimedia Player Frontend for Windows: MPlayer-WW

When it comes to software multimedia players there are millions out there but in all my honesty, the fully open-sourced, MPLayer is one of the best!. Not just playing video/audio files but it even has one of the most extremely powerful encoder which is being used as an "engine" for some of the most popular encoding tools as well.Ironically, the default GUI of MPLayer (for both GNU/Linux and MS Windows) is a joke (no disrespect intended for the developers...

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Individual Web-Page Zooming Extension for Google Chrome - AutoZoom

Google Chrome is a fast loading (both start-up times and web pages) & highly simplified web browser based on the open-source Chromium browser. It is also one of the most criticized for "tracking" user data in somewhat secret ways, so may not be the most secure web browser out their either. But the rest assured most people just love it!.Simplicity is not bad but it'll only do good when implemented in a more sensual way. For instance, if you...

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OpenSource Audio Encoder for Windows - winLAME

As most knows, if all you need is to rip a CD into either MP3 or WMA format in Windows, then you don't need any dedicated app since Windows media player is more than capable of doing that. But if you want to convert few additional file types such as MP3, WMA, WAV, AAC, OGG into other multimedia formats with ease and looking for a completely free, open-source application, then winLAME (named after the famous Lame encoder, I think) is a pretty cool...

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Boost System Performance (RAM specifically) in Ubuntu using zRam!

I gotta admit that apart from all the criticism, MS Windows Kernel is pretty good at managing memory and system resources. Although the GNU/Linux Kernel is certainly one of the most robust & highly secured ones out there, but sometimes I do feel a bit "sluggish" performance while the Memory gets filled and when it's time to move the data between SWAP (virtual memory, a file, stored on or as a partition in GNU/Linux) to the RAM or vice versa...

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Wanna Add an Awesome Looking Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot Count-Down Banner?

Ya all Ubuntu Linux geeks, are you excited or what! :D. It's like 11 days left for the official Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot release which brings some new features (the Kernel 3.0, Gnome 3 support + some other major changes, etc). So, out of the excitement, perhaps you could be thinking of adding a count-down banner on your website, just to show-off? ;-).The default banner looks OK... but for a change would you like to add a third-party created awesome...

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Free ISO Burning Software - ImgBurn

Burning an ISO disk image (whether it's a CD or DVD) in GNU/Linux is pretty easy + you don't even have to install a dedicated utility since it can be done using the command-line. But to do the same in MS Windows, well, you gotta have to install one separately.I'm pretty sure there are dozens of them out there. But if you're searching for one of the best & free, disk image burning software (not just ISO container) that also supports Blu-ray disk...

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Free & OpenSource CD/DVD Burning Software - InfraRecorder

Starting with Windows XP ... it's true that Windows in general comes with a basic built in CD/DVD/Blu-ray burning utility. But if you want a dedicated optical disk burner with some decent amount of features that also happens to be free  and opensource :), then InfraRecorder (only for MS Windows) is a pretty cool application that I've been using from time to time.Although when comparing with professional burning suits such as Nero for instance,...

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New 14 Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot Wallpapers Available for Download!

Every time Ubuntu releases a new version of their GNU/Linux distribution, they also make sure to include few brand new wallpapers where other GNU/Linux vendors just include one or two "official" wallpapers.If you're a graphics designer and want to show-off your talent with Ubuntu, well there's a certain protocol that has to be followed before you can send your "baby" :D to Ubuntu art-work team for consideration.  Anyhow, since we're like 12-11...

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A Portable Search Tool for Windows: Dropout

Index is the single most important thing for any search engine. The more faster and efficient it is ... the better the results are (obviously). Starting with Windows Vista, the Microsoft operating system uses an advanced index that gives you extremely faster search results when comparing with the latter versions such as 98 or XP for instance.But still, to achieve this relatively "faster" performance, first Windows has to create a data-base (index)...

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