#6 Obsess much? Undervolting... Rivalling Jedi for my new religion.

My poor old Tabatha, that is, TC1100, has a 50kmWh battery, which can now only charge to 27kmWh, which means that the battery is 5 years old, was free, and is now 50% poked. To combat this, I am faced with several options:

1. Do nothing. Free, but not very satisfying.
2. Buy a new battery. Very expensive and very satisfying. But remember this platform was supposed to be a cheap-or-free, so not the best option.
3. Reduce the voltage load use of the processor, so it uses less power per cycle: Undervolting.

First of all, webetiquette requires I thank the Mobile PC Wiki crew for this article, which pointed me towards the Flipfire article, which is awesome. Running Windows7, the only program which had a slight problem was the RMClock, which doesn't install unless in compatibility mode, but thanks to Windows7 you just click 'Give it a try' and it works... ANYWAY, I digress.

If you follow the instructions in this article you really can't go wrong. The only thing is, you can't really guarantee great results. Nevertheless, I managed a 0.15v reduction at the highest multiplier, and a 0.25v reduction at idle. Not massive gains, but I may get another 20min or so from the battery now, which is 20min for free, no matter what.

What I really think is impressive is that you can use RMClock to underclock your cpu on purpose so you can essentially turn your 2.2ghz beast into a PIII 1000 if you want, which will definitely have benefits for laptop and netbook users who do not need all their processing power all the time - for example when browsing the web. Nice.

This blog was brought to you by MacBook Pro, cos you can't blog when you are purposefully BSODing your PC...

#5 Spinning the Black Circle

So, I'm not really sure if it qualifies or not, but it's my blog right? But recently I have been getting really stuck in to my old records. There's something really great about records, apart from the fact that I have some awesome albums.

My favourite trick, unplug the amp after lowering the needle, stick your head right up close to the needle: YOU CAN HEAR THE MUSIC! THERE'S NO AMP BUT YOU CAN HEAR THE MUSIC!

Ok, so apart from that, what about the negatives: lower fidelity reproduction, scratches, crackley dusty noises, having to turn it over half way through, having to buy new needles all the time. I could go on...

Well, I have given this question some thought, in various states of mind, and come up with the following definitive answer: the reason vinyl is still great even considering all the negatives is, It's big, and black, and round, and cool. That's it. End of argument.