Tag: hdmi cable

Google Chromebox

On By Michel McDonaldIn Computer, Google ChromeLeave a comment

I guess I am so far out of the loop with Google tech because I had no idea this even existed until tonight.

A friend of mine told me she didn’t have a computer tonight, she uses the internet right from her cell phone.  I told her that I was surprised, that I thought every household in America had a computer by now.  I was about to tell her that they are so cheap now that you can get a Google Chrome laptop for $299, but wanted to back it up with a link, so I Googled “Chromebook” and found the Chromebook page which also had a link to the Chromebox.  My mind was blown away.

Ok so here are the specs.

  • Intel® Core™ processor
  • 4 GB RAM
  • Built-in dual-band WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n
  • Gigabit ethernet
  • 6 USB 2.0 ports
  • 2x DisplayPort++ Output (compatible with HDMI, DVI, VGA)
  • DVI-I single link output (compatible with VGA)
  • Bluetooth 3.0™ compatible
  • Kensington™ key lock compatible

The specs don’t say that it also has a 16GB hard drive which doesn’t seem like a lot, but this is an internet based computer only, you can’t install anything on it*.  You turn it on and you are automatically connected to the internet.  Actually, it takes 7 seconds to boot up into the internet.  I mean, it’s like you turn it on and BAM instant websites.  So the only reason you even need a hard drive is for downloading pictures of your friends and family and/or music.  I mean, that’s all I download with my Chromebook *wink*.

The best part about this baby is that if you have an HDTV, just plug it into your television with the HDMI cable.  You can have it sit right next to or on top of your cable box and/or video game consoles, and then have the keyboard and mouse on your living room table, or wherever it is that your HDTV lives.  You could also buy an external monitor and put it on your desk if that is what you wish I suppose, although I think it would be cool to have it hooked up to the TV instead.

Why get this instead of a regular computer?  Well, some people ONLY go onto websites to look at their email or Facebook or Twitter.  Why buy an expensive gaming machine just to check your email and to get into political rants with your Aunt Beverly?  You can do everything with the Chromebox that you can do with a regular desktop.  For example, you can write a book, yes you heard me, you can write a book using Google Documents.  You can, like I said earlier read your email, you can go on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, you can even play games.  Yes, the Chrome Web Store has games like Angry Birds, Bejeweled, Crash Bandicoot among many others.  You can check the news and the weather, you can even watch Netflix movies or even watch your favorite TV shows on Hulu.

Now aren’t you glad you follow my blog posts?

I love Google Chrome not just because it’s (IMO) the fastest browser available, but also because they were gracious enough to include me in their Chromebook pilot test “CR-48” which I love and have been using ever since they sent it to me in mid-December 2010.  I went several months last year without my desktop and I wouldn’t have had a computer had it not been for Google for sending it to me.  I had to do everything on the Chromebook from writing the first half of my book, to email and twitter and Facebook, I even watched the first 3 seasons of Sliders on Hulu with it.  So yeah, thanks Google for that.

Note: *When I say you can’t install anything on it, I mean like Microsoft Word or Lord of the Rings Online.  They have an app store where you can download and install apps and extensions.

Hulu on My TV

On By Michel McDonaldIn TV6 Comments

I got my new video card less than 2 weeks ago and I have been having so much fun watching TV with it on my TV.  Yes you heard right.  It has a HDMI cable on it so I have it hooked up to my HDTV to watch Hulu.

I love Hulu but what I absolutely cannot stand about watching tv on my computer is that my computer speakers suck.  They are the speakers that are attached to the monitor and they aren’t great.  I’d rather watch it on my tv with the tv speakers.

I downloaded the Hulu desktop program for my PC so when it plays, its full screen.  I don’t have to worry about making each episode full screen, it does it automatically.  Then I go on to the Hulu website with my netbook and add shows to my queue.  I can do that with the Hulu Desktop program but it’s faster on my netbook.  When I’m done I go into the Hulu Desktop program and refresh the data so it shows all of the new shows in the Queue and just start watching.

So far I have already watched the entire first 4 seasons of The Guild.  I saw the entire first (and only since it was canceled) season of Happy Town.  Yesterday I watched the only 10 episodes of The Mercury Men and 10 episodes of CTRL which both have very short episodes around 6-8 minutes each.  I also watched a show called Gay Town.  It was one of the most hilarious shows I’ve seen.  It also had short episodes.

Last night I started watching Wilfred but it got really late so I only watched the first 4 episodes.  It appears that it only has 8 episodes and the last episode was on August 11th (that was 2 weeks ago) and apparently they are only showing episodes 8 days after they air so I will simply have to wait.  But, considering I have so many shows in my Hulu queue, I have plenty of time to wait.  A friend told me this one was a little twisted, it is and it’s my kind of humor.

I have been adding more and more shows to my queue which means I have many hours to watch.  There are shows that I didn’t know about and shows that I’ve always wanted to watch but never really had the time to or they aired at the same time another show so the schedule was too conflicting so I skipped it.  Whatever the reason I couldn’t see them doesn’t matter anymore because now I can.

I noticed last night that some shows have expiration dates on them so I’m going to have to pick which shows to watch first based on their expiration dates.  Today I’m going to watch the final 4 episodes of Wilfred but then I have to move to the first expiring show Sliders while I have time because it expires at the end of this month.

After Sliders I will watch Flash Forward, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Dresden Files and Legend of the Seeker.  Then the rest of the shows I have in my queue have no expiration date so I can watch those at my leisure.  I have (as of this moment) 12 shows with 214 episodes worth of shows to watch.  I am going to be quite busy.

I was going to get Netflix in September to start watching shows that are premium on Hulu because I figured that if I’m going to be paying more money to watch tv I might as well get Netflix because they have more current movies to stream that Hulu doesn’t so that should be fun to be able to watch movies that I missed in the movie theater.  Since I have so many shows in my Hulu Queue, I figure I’m probably going to have to wait until October to start Netflix.

I downloaded Boxee for PC but it doesn’t work as good as the Hulu desktop program.  I was really excited about having Boxee too but it’s not that good.  Maybe it’s that I only have 1GB of memory, I don’t know but when I try to watch a video it either takes forever to start or the video is too choppy.  So I will be taking it off there because it does me no good to keep it on.  Also, I get more out of the Hulu desktop than any of the apps on Boxee.  I’m sure Boxee is good, it’s just not very good on my computer.  Maybe if I had the actual boxee box I might be happier with it.

One show I wanted to watch on the Boxee for PC program is called The Legend of Neil about a guy who was transported into the Legend of Zelda world while he was… well, I won’t say why.  I can’t watch it on Boxee because it’s too choppy.  It is on the Effin Funny website so I can watch it there.

Well I’m off to go watch the rest of Wilfred then start with Sliders.  Have a wonderful weekend, I know I will.

My New Video Card Arrived

On By Michel McDonaldIn Computer2 Comments

Last month the video card in my computer went bad.  I started getting the blue screen of death (BSOD) saying the issue was video hardware.  I had no money to buy a new video card so I had to wait until August when I got some money to buy a new one.

I finally got the money and bought a new video card and HDMI cable (pictured above).  It has taken 7 days from the day that I bought it until the day it arrived.  It was supposed to come this Friday but luckily it came today.

I immediately install the darn thing and plug everything back in and turn it on.  Nothing.  I don’t understand why it’s not turning on so my instinct is that I must have installed it improperly so I unplugged everything, opened it up and looked to see that it was properly seated into the motherboard, which it was.  I plugged everything back in, turn it on and still nothing.

I stood there with my hands on my head thinking “oh crap, this card is incompatible with my motherboard and I have to return it.  I’m going to have to bring it to the computer store and pay $60 to have them diagnose the problem and buy another video card.  But I don’t have any more money to do that, what am I going to do?”  Then suddenly it turned on.  At this point I’m very happy but confused at the same time.  I don’t understand what happened, why it won’t turn on.

Since I bought an HDMI cable for it, which by the way wasn’t long enough.  I mean it’s just long enough but it is more visible behind the tv than I thought it would be.  I thought it would be long enough that it would be laying down on the floor but it’s not.  But I had it plugged in and cloned on the tv.  I loaded Lord of the Rings Online and the resolution on my desktop shrunk down for some odd reason.  I didn’t turn the tv to HDMI 1 to find out what it looked like there but that doesn’t matter as much as it matters how it is on my monitor.

I shut the computer down because I really didn’t have anything else to do on it for the night and I figured since it is starting up normal now it’d be ok.  I rebooted a couple of times and it started up right away.  No problem.

Problem!  I went to the store and came back with a receipt which has to be entered into the Microsoft Money program.  I turned the computer back on and it won’t turn on.  It wasn’t like before where it was only a minute or 2.  It was 5 minutes before it even turned on.  Again, I’m thinking “CRAP!  What am I going to do now?”.  Then it turned on…

So I’m not sure what I have to do now.  Should I leave it on 24/7 with the occasional reboots to refresh everything?  Should I try sleep mode then in 20 minutes try to turn it back on to see if it works?  Should I throw the tower out the window?  At this point I have no more money to spend and I have already cut the proof of purchase off the box because I have to send that in to receive my $15 rebate gift card.  So, I can’t return it at all.  I screwed that up for myself.  All I can do is just deal with it I guess.

Just when you think it’s all good it turns out to be crap.  I guess I have to live with a slow booting computer.  It really sucks that I couldn’t just afford to buy a brand new computer instead.  Oh well, not much I can do about it now, I have to live with it.

I Bought My Video Card

On By Michel McDonaldIn Computer6 Comments

 

Today is an awesome day because I was finally able to buy my new video card.  I was going to buy it from Tiger Direct but bought it from Amazon instead because of the free shipping.  I was going to buy a cheaper card from Tiger but I went with this one because I’d rather pay a few dollars more and get a better quality video card that might last.

This video card is Sapphire Radeon HD4650 1 GB DDR2 VGA/DVI/HDMI PCI-Express Video Card 100254HDMI and it was $46.99 (from $82, saving me $35.01) with free shipping.  What I didn’t realize when I bought it was that it has a $15 rebate which I am trying to get now online.  I filled out the forms but it brings me to the final page which I have to print but if I can’t turn on my desktop then I can’t print anything so it will have to wait until I get the video card.  They need me to send them a copy of my receipt anyway to prove that I actually bought the video card.  But once I get the rebate (in 2 months time) the video card will have only cost me $31.99 so that’s actually not too bad.  I mean, I have to wait a long time and when I do get it I’ll get a debit card instead of a check but that’s ok I guess.

I chose free shipping which means it will take longer for my order to get to me, the email said that it would take 6-8 days, my estimate delivery dates are August 9th – 13th 2011 so it will be awhile.  The rebate offer is for if I bought the card between 7/18 – 8/15 so I should get it in time to be able to print it out and send it in.

I also bought a 6 foot HDMI cable so that I can hook up my computer to my HDTV.  That way I can watch my web shows on TV full screen the way they were meant to be seen.  Heck, I can even play my game using the TV.  Not that I would but I have the option now.  The HDMI cable was only $5.50.  The reason I wanted to buy it with my order is because if I had bought this from Sears or any other place, I would’ve paid $20-$40 easily.  This  cable even had free shipping with orders $25 and over and since my order was over $25, everything was free to ship.

So, I am very happy about my purchase.  I wanted to stay loyal to Tiger but I also need to get what I need at the price I can afford and not spend that money on shipping fees.  See, I could have paid $29.99 for a video card then $8 to ship it to me.  What would be the point in spending that much money to ship it when I could spend that $8 on a better video card?

I could have gone to the computer store here in town on my bicycle but they are really expensive there.  We bought Darrin a new video card a few months ago and his only has 256mb of DDR memory (not DDR2) and his is an AGP video card.  His was $49.  That was a few months ago.  If a 256 DDR AGP video card is $50 then how much would a 1GB DDR2 PCIe card cost?  Probably $80 or more.  So that’s why I wanted to buy it online.  I’d rather wait a week for it to arrive than have to overspend getting the same or less quality.

The video card that is still in my desktop cost me over $100 from that same computer store.  In fact, I believe it was $125.  That was a Gigabyte Technologies GeForce 7600GS 512MB DDR2 PCIe Dual Link DVI HDTV.  I looked that up online and if I were to buy a new one it would cost $113 but the website I found it on has discontinued it so I can’t even buy a replacement (from that particular site).  I wouldn’t want to though because that dual link DVI thing bugged me every time I booted.  It would tell me it didn’t detect another video card or the dual link or whatever.  Every time I booted…  I didn’t have a 2nd card so naturally it didn’t detect anything.  Why would I have 2 video cards in when I only need 1?

So, it will take about a week to get it.  I’ve gone about 3 weeks without my desktop so I’m pretty sure I can wait another week.  As long as I have my netbook I’m pretty set.  And actually, not having my desktop to keep me busy playing Lord of the Rings Online has gotten me to start reading again so at least something good came out of this video card crashing like it did.