I opened the laptop last week to retrieve the HDD. This is what I found. Definitely the battery; it is swollen and burned. The fire did not reach the HDD. I was able to pull it, retrieve data and then encrypt. Dell wants the burned machine back as part of the support case. After a bit of back and forth with […]
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I always wondered about posts and videos reporting laptop and cell phone battery fires. I do not have to any longer. My husband has a Dell Inspiron 15 7000. He closed the lid on it Thursday night and left it on the couch. The laptop goes to sleep and everything is good. Friday morning the laptop started smoking. This is what […]
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I remember clearly when the first UltraViolet (UV) titles launched. I had followed the development of the UV content ecosystem over several years and was excited to finally be able to start building a digital locker where I would be able to access my entire library in the cloud without the hassle of disc based backup to burned discs or […]
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The other day I received a email from Monoprice lauding the arrival of its new $19 “Smart LED bulb… Works with Amazon Alexa & Google Assistant…“. Which is cheap for a single Wi-Fi enabled “smart” bulb, but it reminded me how wrong these sorts of home automation devices are. OK, that may be a little hyperbolic, but just a touch… […]
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Hi NVIDIA, Big fan of the Shield Android TV here. The Shield is great because provides a wonderful intersection of steaming and local content without the hassle of many other devices. There was a time I didn’t think anything could replace a home theater PC (HTPC) in my A/V stack, but the Shield has… It does almost everything I need […]
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Everything has a lifespan, including the products we use. I don’t have a problem with companies understanding this, and specifically designing their goods to fall within a specific number of years or uses. They have incentives to maximize profit, so in markets where they can’t rely on technical innovation to drive sales, planning obsolescence is a viable tactic. The main […]
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This morning my sister, with whom I have an ongoing discussion around “smart device” privacy, sent me a link to Gizmodo’s “The House That Spied On Me”. As you can probably tell from the title, it’s mostly about how our connected devices collect and transmit information about us to The Cloud. Some of this is quite alarming, for e.g. Hulu […]
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The DVD was unleashed on the Japanese public all the way back in 1996 and the Blu-ray format has been around for 11 years already, meaning we were absolutely due for another shakeup. That transition began with the introduction of the Ultra High Definition (UHD) Blu-ray format and the first movie releases in early 2016. A year and a half […]
Read moreThis is my kit list for our coming move. Ubiquiti Unifi Security Gateway Ubiquiti Networks Unifi 802.11ac Dual-Radio PRO Access Point (UAP-AC-PRO-US) ARRIS SURFboard SB6183 DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem Vera Control VeraPlus Yale Touchscreen Z-Wave Deadbolt CyberPower 1000VA UPS SiliconDust HDHR Connect Denon AVR-X3300W Ubiquiti UVC-G3-5 Unifi Video Camera (5-Pack) Ubiquiti UVC-G3 Unifi Video Camera UVC-G3 Dome UVC-G3-Micro KitchenAid KSM150PSPN […]
Read moreA Look at How Smart Technology Brings the Future to Our Homes Many people can still remember the early days of computer technology when everything we have been doing was the stuff sci fi flicks were made of ‘back in the day.’ However, it goes beyond saying what would have been the reaction if someone would have told them that […]
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